Distant Places

The world knows Noel Barber well by now as the ace of foreign correspondents. He as the first and for a long time the only newspaperman to penetrate Budapest at the time of the uprising. He was certainly the only Englishman to fight a battle in the streets fro an upturned tram and to be spattered in the head with bullets from the tommy-gun of a trigger-happy Russian.These are the personal reminiscences of that extraordinary man, who has just flown his millionth mile in search of 'the story'. His book does not re-cover the stories, which are much too famous to be retold. These are the oddities, the eccentricities, the absurdities and the strange adventures which he encountered while on the job. Some of them are very strange indeed. In no other book could you read of the school for snake charmers, or the lady with six husbands, of the Saudi slave trade with its disconcerting element of the famous pilgrimage to Mecca, where girls are hobbled like mules with their ankles strapped, in mud huts, and sold to the pilgrims.