Spinning The Globe

This book describes a number of river journeys, clustered around one extraordinary trip down the Congo. There Noel Purdon comes down with malaria while watching bound prisoners pushed into the river by soldiers, eats monkey when stranded, and forms a strange relationship with the head of Zaire's secret police, who saves him from prison.

Elsewhere he travels down the Cam on a punt with Pasolini, visits Angkor Wat in the midst of an artillery battle, and dines with the governor of Timbuktu. Always the writing is charged with a breadth of knowledge and a thirst for new experience.