Each day had a tranquility a timelessness about it so that you wished it would never end. But then the dark skin of the night would peel off and there would be a fresh day waiting for us glossy and colorful as a child's transfer and with the same tinge of unreality.

‎'All we need is a book,' roared Leslie; 'don't panic, hit 'em with a book.

As I watched the pulsing fire among the trees and heard the beat of the drum merge and tremble with the voices, forming an intricate pattern of sound, I knew that someday I would have to return or be haunted forever by the beauty and mystery that is Africa.

They were maps that lived, maps that one could study, frown over, and add to; maps, in short, that really meant something.

Gradually the magic of the island [Corfu] settled over us as gently and clingingly as pollen.

My childhood in Corfu shaped my life. If I had the craft of Merlin, I would give every child the gift of my childhood.

Tea would arrive, the cakes squatting on cushions of cream, toast in a melting shawl of butter, cups agleam and a faint wisp of steam rising from the teapot shawl.