This thick, A4-sized book that sits on the bottom shelf of our bookcase is yet another memento of colonial days long passed. I have no particular recollection of being given it, although....
....my name in my mother's handwriting on the inside of the front cover suggests it wasn't from her as I think she would have given it to me 'with love' yet, if someone had sent her the money to buy it for me, I would have expected her to have acknowledged it. It's an abridged version of the book with....
....plenty of illustrations, both of which suggest it would have been appropriate for someone around the age of nine or ten - so perhaps it was given to me on one of the occasions when I set off from Mombasa on my return to prep school in England.
It's certainly the sort of gung-ho book a ten-year old would have enjoyed back in the 1950s, with descriptions of how Crusoe survived and also of the dreadful moment when....
....he realised he was no longer alone on his island.
I love it as a product of its age, the story of a Britisher surviving against all odds and....
....having rescued, named and civilised him, striking up a warm rapport with 'My Man Friday'. And, oh dear, I do so envy the man his life on 'his' tropical beach.
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