20 APRIL 1944, Page 18

The Odyssey of a Cameraman

Desert Journey. By George Rodger. (The Cresset Press. I58.) MR. RODGER is a photographer and in this book he tells the story of a journey he undertook for Life, beginning with his departure from the Clyde " at the height of the x94o London blitz,". and ending with the receipt in Cairo at the end of i941 of a telegram ordering him to go to Burma and Singapore. Mr. Rodger has thus not rushed into print.. He has been able to use his rough notes as material for a carefully composed book, illustrated with a wealth of his own

photographs and issued by its publishers in an attractive format Although he is primarily a photographer (and a very good one), Mr. Rodger has a highly. developed skill in narrative and has succeeded admirably in carrying out his intention of writing " a saga of travel " with " no attempt to comment on the strategy of the various cam- paigns, to criticise the past or foretell the future." Although in one sense this book is objective, it has nothing of the dullness which too often goes with objectivity, for from the beginning we are able to enter the author's mind and appreciate his reactions to the people he meets and the things he sees. The desert journey begins at Douala and takes him through Chad Territory to Koufra. He arrives there with the help of the ingenious but irritating Baron just too late to see its capture by the Free French. He then drives three thousand miles across the desert to Abyssinia, getting there after the forcing of Keren but before the campaign was over. He was in Syria for the fighting there and in Persia was fortunate in seeing the meeting of the British and Russian forces. Atter a flying visit to the north-west frontier, he is back in Africa in time for the second entry into Benghazi.

What the author saw at the end of his various journeys is always well described and often important--for example, his interview with the Emir of Transjordan or his experiences in the Syrian cam- paign. But it must be confessed that our main memory of this book is not of what the author went out to see but of the fascination of the journeys themselves. To travel with Mr. Rodger is better than to arrive. There is the long trek in trucks across Africa from the Cameroons to Abyssinia—and how skilfully we are shown that the Baron, with whom at first we sympathise because of his resourceful- ness and pancche, is really an extremely annoying travelling com- panion. There is the drive from Teheran to Jerusalem in a specially hired nine-seater bus. And best of all is the chasing of news from Baghdad to Teheran in a taxi driven by the fatalistic " George." The book is a godsend to the armchair traveller, who will find Mr. Rodger not only an ingenious and pertinacious seeker of photo- graphs but a gallant one as well (witness his plate 34), and, above all, a good and entertaining companion. S. H. F. JOHNSTON.