SCARRED BACKGROUND By Nigel Heseltine
You can write travel books either about countries (Marco Polo) or about yourself (Aldous Huxley) ; or you can mix the two methods, which is what Mr. Nigel Heseltine does in Scarred Background: A Journey Through Albania (Lovat Dickson, ins. 6d.). Albania, in this book, is rather more interesting than Heseltine ; but then Albania is -old, and there, and a fact, and Mr. Heseltine is young and a process. This kind of thing is excellent : ." I indicated my thirst, and the man took me higher up to a spring hidden in a hollow dedicated to Elijah. The saint's ikon was painted on a piece of board and fixed to a stone above the spring. Then the man went to his oven of loose stones and much white ash, and brought me a flat loaf of fresh maize bread. I ate a panikin of yoghurt, using the warm bread as a spoon." There is plenty more of it, since Mr. Heseltine certainly tramped a long way through Albania. Mr. Hesekine being himself is not so good : his reflections and obiter dicta and animadversions on—well, Auden and MacNeice are very often skittish, but not always. He is no fool and no folk-fancier : " to be condemned to the twelfth century in the twentieth is a horrible fate "—which is a sensible comment on Albanians. Scarred Background is not one of the boring travel books. And there is plenty of evidence in it that Mr. Heseltine could, and may, become a good writer.
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