Norman Lewis recounts the first half of his adventurous life with his dry, infectious, laconic wit. He takes us on a journey that transforms a stammering schoolboy into a worldly-wise multilingual sergeant in the Intelligence Corps, on the point of becoming a legendary travel writer. Covers his childhood in London with a psychic father, to his open marriage to the enigmatic Ernestina Corvajas and to his wartime experiences in the British Intelligence Corps which allowed him to travel, observe and fall in love with native society in both Algeria, Sicily and Italy. We leave him in 1950, just before he started creating that series of superbly crafted, wry but deeply humane travel books: Dragon Apparent, Golden Earth, The Honoured Society, and Naples `44.