Justin Marozzi

Another good man in Africa

INSIDE SAHARA
by Basil Pao
Weidenfeld, £25, pp. 200, ISBN 0297843044

Michael Palin is a decent chap, I thought, after bumping into him for a nanosecond at the Hatchards Authors of the Year party a few months ago. It was just long enough for the briefest exchange of desert tales before he was mobbed by growing numbers of the Palin Fan Club, at which point he faded from view and I was left wishing I had cornered him for longer.

That was back in May, and this being October, it is time for the latest Palin tome to land in bookstores the length and breadth of Britain, for what could be a nicer Christmas present than this sleek volume from the man who brought us Around the World in Eighty Days, Pole to Pole, Full Circle and Hemingway Adventure?

Although this is not a BBC book, it’s still a spin-off from the series now showing on BBC1. You might have heard him plugging it on Radio 5, or in Radio Times, the Daily Telegraph or any one of a hundred outlets willing to give space to this affable fellow in a blue button-down shirt and chinos.

The problem with these sorts of books, though, is that they tend to be almost an afterthought to the television programme, rushed out to coincide with its broadcast. In other words, it’s a reversal of the time-honoured reviewer’s lament that Film X did no justice to the original book, be it Howards End, The Honorary Consul, or Nineteen Eighty-four. In this case, the book doesn’t do justice to the television.

This is not to say that Sahara is not an engaging read. It is. It’s just that with all the charging around 10,000 miles across nine countries in three months – the reader is no sooner drawn into wrestling in Senegal, the early days of aviation in St Louis, Michael on his moped in Mali, or Mungo Park’s efforts to chart the River Niger, than our adventurer is slipping into a fresh Brooks Brothers shirt and chinos and hitting the road again.

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