Highly observant, with a keen sense of the incongruous, Eric Newby is always entertaining in this recollection of highlights from an eventful life. He transports the reader around the world, from his earliest childhood adventures among the shops, streets and eccentrics of darkest Barnes, to an elephant fair in India; from the faded glamour of days and nights on the Orient Express, to a troglodytic settlement of opal miners in Australia, where men carrying large amounts of cash travel armed, but have still been known to disappear.
Whether he is putting heart and soul into building the perfect grotto in his Devon garden together with his wife Wanda and Mr Perring the stonemason, rambling around a semi-abandoned and despoiled Calabria, attempting to escape from the tourist trail in China or wrestling with the logistics of baby-rearing, both existing admirers and new readers will enjoy the exuberance and humour that distinguishes Newby's best work.
