Planet Ustinov : Following the Equator with Sir Peter Ustinov Book

Peter Ustinov was not perhaps the most obvious traveller to send in the footsteps of Mark Twain, but that was the decision that Channel Four made...Mark Twain's Following the Equator is a travel book of the heyday of colonial empire--he visited Fiji and India, Australia and South Africa, and everywhere found old ways of life in retreat and the sun never setting on the British Empire. Ustinov and his camera crew find, as might be expected, something rather different-- old ways of life being reclaimed with 20th-century tweakings and the Empire gone, yet its legacy constantly and bizarrely present, whether in the shape of the English language or of stranded eccentrics. This is also a book about the practical logistics of moving an elderly celebrity around the world--Waldman talks in a way that Ustinov himself would never do about his hard-working attitude and occasionally failing health. What might have been a rather catchpenny spin-off from a competent but unexciting travel series becomes something rather more--Ustinov's love of good talk takes him to Maoris recovering their culture of facial tattoos, to surviving Maharajahs in their palaces and to Nelson Mandela. --Roz KaveneyRead More