Backpack, Jacket, Surfboard: My Journey Across America, Then and Now

GRAHAM BROYD is a British-American businessman, writer, and athlete. Born in Dorking, England, he went to school in Bedford and then Liverpool, before taking two gap years working and hitchhiking around Europe. In 1978, he went to Birmingham University to study International Relations.

After graduation, Graham started a career in international banking, with his primary purposes being to travel and earn some money--in that order of priority. His first assignments were to New York and the Republic of Panama. Graham spent almost forty years in banking, his time mostly split between New York and London, before retiring in 2024. He was a CEO of the North American businesses of the Royal Bank of Scotland and Mr. Fix-It when the bank encountered existential problems after the global financial crisis in 2008. Graham published his first book, The Panama Canal Treaties: The diplomacy and economics behind the treaty that changed the international order , in 2024.

After his retirement, Graham found his writing voice. A lifetime storyteller, Graham wanted to write down the twenty hitchhiking stories he had told for more than forty years from his original trip to America in 1980. On hearing the stories, friends had always encouraged him to write his story. And so he did.