In 1954 the author, aged 18, spent a year as an “au pair” in a French chateau. From there she went to East Berlin at the height of the Cold War to work for two years as a translator. During these two years she travelled to Moscow and across Siberia and Mongolia to China. In 1958 she spent seven months in South Sudan and from there she travelled to Aswan in Upper Egypt by paddle steamer on the Nile. In Aswan she was arrested, locked up for a few days and returned to Khartoum, Sudan. In 1959 she embarked on a four year course at a Scottish University. There was further travel in East Africa in the 1960s. In later life she spent four years in Tanzania, Bulgaria and Poland. The final chapter tells us something about her childhood during World War II.