Book of a lifetime: Journey Without Maps by Graham Greene

From The Independent archive: Tim Butcher joins the literary giant on an arduous exploration of remote Africa

Greene, pictured here in 1954, travelled through Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea (Getty)

I rather think Graham Greene, an eager war correspondent himself, would have approved of the setting when I first read Journey Without Maps. I was locked down after curfew in a dank hotel in Monrovia, Liberia’s capital, trying as a reporter to work out whether noises outside were thunderclaps from rainy-season storm clouds or mortars going off as rebels circled the dying regime of the west African warlord, Charles Taylor.

The only book I could find on the country was Greene’s first travel book, the account of his 1935 journey by train and truck through Sierra Leone and then on foot for 350 miles through Liberia and Guinea. For Greene, it was a turning point. After publishing four novels he was struggling to make a living, rootless in rented accommodation; so he turned to non-fiction. He got fit by walking prodigious distances along Cotswold lanes fretting over how he would write a travel book that avoided the “awful tedium of A to Z”.

The resulting work tells of two journeys. First is the genuinely arduous trek Greene made through remote Africa with his travelling companion and cousin, Barbara Greene, four servants and 26 bearers. Last year I followed every blistering inch of their trip and came to see a very different side to Greene from the literary giant. After struggling for weeks with the choking climate and jungle, I now see him as a man of considerable physical toughness and mental strength. What he did in 1935 demanded both practical nous and spirited determination.