I am currently ploughing through a book called Always Feel a Friend by Peter Biddlecombe.

I sort of enjoyed his first couple of books, so when I saw this for a pound or two in the remainder shop near work I thought it would be worth buying, but its starting to look as if it wasn’t even worth that meagre outlay.

It started with an overlong and rambling introduction which appeared to have no point whatsoever and consisted mostly of an extended list of unpleasant things the writer has eaten in obscure places. I was very tempted to just stop there and shove the book on the shelf unread.

When I read a couple of his other books they were annoying (Mr Biddlecombe comes across as a very smug know-it-all type) but had some interesting descriptions and let me visit a few places vicariously. They generally followed the normal travel book routine of describing visits to places and throwing in some background information probably gleaned from reference books.

The first couple of chapters of this book seemed to be mostly historical information and very little of his own personal experiences. I might as well read about Skopje and Pristina in an atlas! By now I really was going to give up, but the third chapter on Asuncion was quite amusing so I continued onto the next one about Kigali.

Thats when I really got pissed off. The chapter starts with references to the Rwandan genocide in April to July 1994 when the Hutus killed hundreds of thousands of Tutsis. Biddlecombe told of the quite disgraceful behaviour of the rest of the world in letting this happen, but he saves his worst criticism for Tony Blair, singling him out several times for not doing anything to help.

Peter Biddlecombe always likes to give the impression that he knows everything. Everywhere he goes he will tell you about the history, culture, customs, food, languauge and politics. Maybe he should spend more time at home and brush up on his British politics. Tony Blair was not Prime Minister until 1997 so he was hardly in a position to do anything. Not only that, he was not even the leader of the Labour party until July 1994.

I can’t say whether he would have done anything about Rwanda. I would like to think that he would at least have wanted to. He may have done a few things that some of us in the party are not happy with, but I can’t see how he can be blamed for the lack of UK intervention in something which happened while he was still sitting in Granita with Gordon Brown tossing a coin to see who would be leader of the opposition.

Anyone want to buy a half-read travel book?