Tim writes vividly about his extraordinary life, his journey from the hard work and poverty of the coal mining towns around Nottingham to the beautiful islands of the Pacific, becoming an important figure, advising Ministers and Presidents in new Nations. All the time, though mixing with and working for the establishment, he retains the perspective of egalitarian socialism that he learned before the war: a man who left school at fourteen to go straight to work mixing with public school, University educated people raised to rule people like him and his family. He writes knowledgeably, critically and very readably of the British Colonial Military and Security services in, for example, Hong Kong prior to the takeover by China. Throughout his love of the places and peoples he lives among is conveyed by a humorous and lively descriptive style.