Women & Children First

An Audience with an Elephant is a compendium of the oddest and most eccentric travels -- a book to set alongside Eric Newby or Norman Lewis for the variety and comedy of its encounters. Byron Rogers didn't need to go to exotic lands to find singular custom and heroic idiosyncrasy, for this is a book about the strange and distant land of Britain -- about the ancient tortoise that survived the Gallipoli campaign and now resides in Great Yarmouth; and the "ghost" train of Stalybridge that runs in one direction only; about octogenarian triathletes; and the decidedly odd kingdom of Buckingham Palace, to which the author found himself admitted on a commission to write speeches for Prince Charles. Here, exploring forgotten counties like Northamptonshire or the wilder reaches of Wales, Byron Rogers chronicles a secret history of Britain -- touching, hilarious, even magical -- and the extraordinary lives of ordinary people.