Will Randall

	Another Long Day on the Piste Daily Mail ‘Self-deprecating and entertaining.’ Times ‘Highly entertaining.’ Daily Mirror ‘Timely and humorous account of a season spent as a ski bum.’
	Botswana Time Mail on Sunday ‘This enchanting chronicle will leave you feeling charmed and uplifted.’ Independent on Sunday ‘A thoroughly uplifting book, Botswana Time manages to capture all the old –fashioned humour of an Englishman abroad without once insulting the locals.’ Guardian This is an affable and easy-going book with a nice line in gentle chuckles….’
	Indian Summer Daily Express ‘Many great writers have written about their time in the East: Somerset Maugham, EM Forster and Rudyard Kipling among them. Even if he never writes about India again, Will Randall should be added to this illustrious list.’ Critic’s Choice, Daily Mail ‘ The start of this book finds Will Randall trying to make a new start. Having ambled his way to his mid 30s, teaching in quiet rural schools and then working for a charity in the Solomon Islands, he heads off for London and a new career as… well he’s not quite sure. Maybe something in the City? Not surprisingly, he drifts back into teaching, but this time in a dilapidated and scary London comprehensive. Understandably enough, he seizes the chance to resign when he is offered a free trip to India, courtesy of a formidable lady with a formidable name, Maria-Helena von Wurfelwerfer, who employs him as a travelling companion. The job ends in Chapter Two when Randall delivers her and her many matching bags safely into the arms of the elderly maharajah boyfriend who awaits her at Poona. Which means the author now finds himself in Poona, for no good reason and with absolutely nothing to do. Fortunately Randall is blessed with the travel author’s paranormal gift for having dramatic things happen to him and soon he is being accosted in a café by a complete stranger who wants to show him an ashram for orphans. Randall is led into the heart of one of Poona’s shanty towns and is introduced to a clutch of beautiful, funny, heart-breakingly poor children. One chestnut-eyed girl holds his face. ‘You very nice man,’ she whispers. ‘Of course, it was hopeless,’ Randall reflects. ‘I was hooked.’ He enlists himself as the ashram’s English teacher. In marked contrast to the spoiled thugs he had to deal with in London, the children from the Poona slum are unfailingly sweet and plucky in the face of terrible deprivation and loss. One heart-rending case is that of Dulabesh, a little boy who let go of his mother’s hand at a crowded railway station, wandered onto an inter-city express and lost her forever. Somehow even the brother and sister who were effectively orphaned when their father pored kerosene over their mother and set her alight are grateful for every small mercy. And, somehow, despite their tragic, appalling lives, all the children have retained an innocence long lost to any Western kid whose idea of hardship is not owning a Playstation.. The innocence of these children shines through everything they do – in the name they give their goat (Beckham) for example, or in little Tanushri’s worship of the pop star she calls ‘Maradona’. It also explains Randall’s unpaid devotion to their cause. Soon this involves much more than teaching the children English. Threatened by ruthless landowners who want to knock down the entire slum the ashram need money to buy its own land and buildings. A scheme is concocted to put on a play as a charity event. Inevitably the hapless Randall is roped in as the alleged director of what is to be a very, very abridged version of the Indian epic, the Ramayana. At which point Randall is again visited by the travel writer’s godmother who waves her wand and has him whisked away, by a bizarre chain of events, into a new adventure as a Bollywood actor. This comic interlude over it’s back to the ashram for an outing to a cricket match then those last-minute, nerve-wracking preparations for the school play and – finally – its triumphant performance. In spite of Randall’s convenient knack for stumbling across great stories and characters, it still requires skill and tact to avoid coming up with self-serving smugness or a hand-wringing rant. This book is neither. Indian Summer is an engaging account of an India that most people try to ignore – an India of ramshackle huts, raw sewage, dire poverty and gnawing hunger. It is in this India that Randall found inspiring goodness – and with it the material for a fine and moving book.’ Observer Books of the Week ‘…. The style is light and avoids the tedious introspection of many travelogues. Nor does Randall succumb to the temptation in Bill Bryson fashion. Instead, it’s his evocation of the glorious, multi-coloured chaos of India that widens the eye, and his good nature towards all things and all men that leaves the heart warmer.’ Ink ‘… delightfully funny…this wonderful book captivates from the start. In capturing the unique energy, vibrancy and optimism of the inhabitants of this poverty-stricken world, Randall imparts valuable life lessons to his readers.’ Scotland on Sunday ‘… Readers wishing for a proxy, palpable, virtual-reality version of India will find it on page after page… [Randall] does not skimp on the dark, sad nature of survival and how its dividend is brutality – despite which his version of India aspires to be elegiac as well as chaotic. Well worth the read.’
	Solomon Time Shortlisted for the WH Smith Travel Prize 2003. THE SCOTSMAN (four stars!) 06/07/02 Travel writers and merge in three varieties -- those born to it, those who fall into it and those dragged into it. Will Randall is in the latter category with this tale of escape to an exotic idyll and the British innocent abroad. His odyssey is that of an endearing Everyman, an unwilling adventurer and an amusing and bemused observer as he tackles the often unintentionally bizarre realities of his new life. Sunday Observer, 14th July 2002 Stalking Sharks or Mourning Camels? Stephen Smith Swimming, sunbathing, drinks: this was the Falklands war for my friend Brian who was hundreds of miles away from the fighting on a lonely rock. Brian's war consisted of taking delivery of film from the distant front once a week or so and leisurely sending it to broadcasters in Britain. When he returned to a familiar street, tanned and relaxed he was astonished to see yellow ribbons around every bough and a banner spanning the road which read, "Welcome Home, Brian!" In every triumphant retelling of his story, Brian resisted pressure to add that he had been worshipped as a god by the islanders and that his likeness worked in coconut and coral could still be found in their shrines. According to Solomon Time, a peppery old salt, not unlike Brian, known as the Commander is venerated as the father of Mendali, a village in one of the smallest of the Solomon Islands. The Commander is also the deus ex machina of Will Randall's immensely likeable travel book. Once encountered by the author on the rugger touchline, the Commander leaves Mendali some money in his will. Randall, otherwise set for a future as a day-dreaming schoolmaster, agrees to go to the South Pacific to disburse the legacy. Sharks stalk his flimsy fishing vessel, he is swept overboard and marooned on an even smaller island; for a moment, it seems as if he witnesses headhunters doing their worst, fulfilling his fears about the trip. Randall has a deceptively guileless style. This allows him to negotiate the twin hazards which face the travel writer: the boiling feeding frenzy of bravado and the desolate reef of faux naivety. On second thoughts, travel writing seems an inadequate and inaccurate description of what Randall has achieved. It's more like live-in writing since [he] settles in the community he portrays, a tougher undertaking than the dispatch of an itinerant scribbler. Book of the Week, Sunday Times' Travel Section by Anthony Sattin Randall had been a school teacher facing the Four Weddings dilemma — a thirtysomething watching his friends getting married — when an opportunity arose for him to leave the country. An elderly British commander had been running a coconut plantation for some 30 years on one of the Solomon Islands. On his death, the commander bequeathed money for projects that would support his former workers on the island. Someone was needed to travel out there and make it happen. Randall’s decision to go was unusual, considering that he seems never to have harboured dreams of being an intrepid traveller. His account of the time he spent on the small island is a belated coming-of-age, brought alive by some vivid descriptions of the sights and smells of the place, and of the people who made his stay so uplifting. The work is a little twee in some places and a touch sentimental in others — he is neither a Durrell nor a Stevenson — but as a tale of a western castaway on a remote tropical island in a cynical age, it still offers plenty of pleasures. Reader's Reviews from Amazon 10 April, 2003 Solomon Time is a truly brilliant story. The real life adventures of Will Randall, and his quest on the Solomon Islands is fantastic. Its a book that makes you feel warm, there's nothing too complex or that special, but that's the point. Its not a novel, its just apiece of writing, but is truly gripping, i could not put it down. It also has many points of laughter and comedy within it. WARMING & RELAXING 24 March, 2003 Will Randall, though a high school teacher for ten years, is really just a kid--thirty-two years old, but still young in his attitudes and in his views of what life, and his own life, in particular, are all about. Unsophisticated and incurious, he has been content to let life happen to him. When his friend Charles suggests that he give up his job and go to the Solomon Islands for a year, he demurs, but Charles is an executor of the will of a man known as the Commander, who has left money for the benefit of the islanders, if someone will go there to develop a reliable industry that will provide the villagers with income they can use for community improvements. Eventually, Randall finds himself agreeing to go, not making a decision so much as just going with the flow. Randall experiences a delayed coming of age on New Georgia Island, a process he documents in this good-humored tale, filled with delightful characters and observations about life in a community in which there is little change. Ingenuous and unambitious, he enjoys the lullaby rhythms of life in the tropics, but he eventually determines that raising chickens would both provide income and expand the limited diet of the villagers. Describing how he sets up this business, he also comments on village mores, including the cannibalism which existed until the early 20th century. He briefs the reader on the World War II history of the nearby island of Guadalcanal, retells the story of JFK and PT-109, which went down in the Solomon Islands, and describes his own personal disasters, mocking himself at one point, after he falls overboard in shark infested waters and watches as his motorized canoe continues on its way. Far more interested in telling a story than in contemplating his inner growth or making weighty observations about what he has learned, Randall pokes fun at himself and at the one or two "villains" he encounters with the chicken-business, and he concentrates on telling amusing episodes rather than developing any deep or universally meaningful conclusions. His decision to return to England comes suddenly, with no fanfare and even less explanation, and he offers few clues about what he has learned or why he has chosen this particular time to leave. Though the author is very entertaining, he sometimes mixes metaphors and similes into a colorful but almost incoherent jumble. At one point, he describes Honiara, the capital, as "the unsightly boil in the navel of the islands." In the next sentence, he says Honiara is "reminiscent of the cardboard set of a low-budget spaghetti Western," and describes it also as "slouching like a hungover vagrant against the foothills of Tandachehe Ridge." Despite such confusions in imagery, however, he succeeds in writing an enjoyable, good-natured, and often charming story which will amuse readers of all ages. Mary Whipple 29 July, 2002 As soon as Will Randall writes about setting foot on the Solomons, he communicates both the tropical and personal warmth from the native islanders. Having been charged with the task of securing the economic future of a group of villagers through the creation of some sort of enterprise, Randall sets about his task with gusto. His gradual realisation that getting things done may not be as easy as he had expected is expressed good naturedly as you watch him settle into life on the Islands and get used to the idiosyncrasies of its natives. the author's self-effacing style quickly endears him to you and his anecdotes will have you grinning like a fool. This is an engaging and easy book to read, one of those where you feel a sense of loss on its completion. I really can't recommend this book highly enough!