A Talent For Trouble

It is fair to say that this book didn't really match up to the expectations. A Talent for Trouble - certainly, Fiennes lived up to that, but “leading a hovercraft expedition from its mouth to the source of the Nile”, not so much.

It was definitely not from lack of trying, but because of the political and military situations in Egypt (United Arab Republic, as it was known at the time) and Sudan, the weather and river conditions, the actual amount of hovercraft travel was pretty limited.

Much more was made of the towing of the hovercrafts (there were two of them) on trailers behind the Land Rovers, or lashing them to barges, lifting them onto the roof of a military truck, trying to get them onto and off ferries, across narrow bridges and finding suitable banks to launch them on than any actual hovering - although there was some.

Nevertheless, the book was interesting in its explanations of the situation at the time, the interactions with the local government and military leaders (the source of some of that trouble for Fiennes), and the general description of the river and the travel. It also veered off into interesting and brief side stories about Fiennes past exploits and ‘trouble'.

Given the almost blanket ban on photography - generally they were not permitted to photograph any people who might make the country look backwards, or uncivilised, or poor (!) therefore not very many people, and no photographs of anything remotely military - no buildings, no vehicles, not even in the background - it is unsurprising that the photographs are a bit disappointing in the book.

However, they considered their expedition a relative success. The travelled “with hovercrafts” from the mouth to the source of the White Nile at Lake Victoria. They received international publicity thanks the stories in the Telegraph and from those stories secured significant orders for hovercraft from the USA and Canada (although not from Egypt, Sudan or Uganda), thereby repaying the company who provided the hovercraft for the expedition.

Probably a 3.5 star read for me, rounded down given some other great books I have recently four starred!