"One cannot describe a smell because there are no words to do so in the English language, apart from those that place it in a very general category, like sweet or pungent. So I cannot characterize this, nor compare it with any other, but it was the smell of travel in those days, in fact the smell of Africa—dry, peppery yet rich and deep with an undertone of native body smeared with fat and red ochre and giving out a ripe, partly rancid odour which nauseated some Europeans when they first encountered it but which I, for one, grew to enjoy." Chapter 1, p. 8.

"Robin wants a castle in Scotland, and I should like a safari across the Northern Frontier into Abyssinia and home by the Nile. And then I'd like to own a balloon, and to breed New Forest ponies, and to get to China on...