Not so happy valley

Simon Barnes opens with a presumably true idea, that we are all in search of our own versions of paradise — a special place presented here as the sacred ‘combe’ of the title, being a word with Celtic origins that describes a steep hollow or hidden valley. These paradises might be real or imagined, exist only in memory, or live in fiction like Narnia or Robin Hood’s forest; they can be unattainable, beyond reach, or ruined, like Eden. His point, frequently stated, is that we are always on a quest for them, and need them.

The particular combe of this book is not on the edge of Dartmoor but in the national parklands of Zambia’s Luangwa river valley. Barnes fell for Luangwa after waking up one day to discover a herd of elephants snacking on the thatched roof of his safari hut. He has been returning there for years, staying at tourist safari camps so often that he has ended up guiding guests and manning the spotlight on night game-drives.

Most of the book is about the Luangwa; its seasons, its birds and plentiful larger animals. He elevates these descriptions to a paean to paradise with many references to childhood, books (Gerald Durrell, Tolkien, C.S. Lewis), painting and even the movie Withnail & I. At its core, Barnes’s argument is that people are driven by what he calls biophilia — the need for contact with non-human life — ‘to be revived when we smell a rose or pat a dog or see a passing skein of geese from the window of the train that takes us to work’.

While visiting the Luangwa, Barnes didn’t need to earn his keep as a safari wallah. A former top sports writer for the Times and the author of many books on birdwatching, horses and cricket — an output that amounts to logorrhoea — he is presumably full of what Zambians call ‘cash money’.