Will Randall

Botswana Time was published by Abacus in May 2005

Will Randall travels with a purpose, as well as an outrageous sense of fortune. In INDIAN SUMMER he found himself, by chance, having the extraordinary experience of helping slum schoolchildren put on a play to help save their school. In Botswana he was taken up by a headmaster to teach a class of six year olds at The River of Life School. They are football crazy and one of Will's jobs is to take them to play neighbouring (sometimes as much as 100 miles away) schools. Camping enroute or staying in farms and rural villages, often travelling by foot or dug-out punts, thousands of antelope, elephant, buffalo and zebra follow their progress. The sound of lions, leopards and hyenas become the soundtrack of their dreams. Against all the odds they find themselves preparing for the Grand Final of the season - the titanic clash with arch rivals, Victo ria Falls Primary school.

Indian Summer was published by Abacus on 5th February 2004

Will Randall thought teaching in an inner London comprehensive was a difficult job. But that was nothing compared to his next assignment: saving a slum school in the Indian city of Poona.

Learning as much as he is teaching, Will finds that his life is transformed by his remarkable class of orphans: Dulabesh, the head-standing joker who lost his parents on a crowded railway platform; Prakash, who learnt self-sufficiency the hard way by scavenging in skips, the nutty yet charming Tanushri, fan of the singer ‘Maradona’. When the slum barons threaten to level the school, Will hits upon the idea of a fund-raising play to save it: the 24,000-verse Indian epic the Ramayana, ever so slightly condensed…

Funny, sharp and poignant, Will Randall’s second book is gloriously life-affirming, exposing the India the tourist doesn’t see.

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Shortlisted for the WH Smith Travel Book of the Year Award 2003

"Solomon Time - how it was to dominate future events I then had no idea. It is liquid, a fluid that cannot be contained, that has no master, that sloshes backwards and forwards and even from side to side. It has no symmetry or order. Solomon Time plays nobody's rules.

"My neighbour's godfather had run a plantation in The Solomon Islands for thirty years. He had come back home to England to die and when he did it was discovered that he had left some money for the welfare of his former workers. Someone needed to go and find a useful purpose for the fund. 'Why don't you go, Will? Just the thing - you're looking for a change. ' Err, yes, no, not sure. I went.

"My life in this wonderful place is recorded in my first book 'Solomon Time - Adventures in the South Pacific', in which I discover, amongst other things, how to survive a shipwreck, avoid malaria and run a fast food restaurant."

The Solomon Islands archipelago is scattered in the southwestern Pacific, east of Papua New Guinea. The 992-island group is the embodiment of childhood dreams; desert islands, coconut palms overhanging waters of every shade of green and turquoise, secluded bays, little rivers and great cliffs that fall like the walls of ancient fortresses sheer into the sea. Many of us dream of getting away from it all and living on a desert island, popular programmes such as 'Survivor', 'Shipwrecked', and 'Castaway' fuel our fascination, but as Will Randall found out all too quickly, the reality of living on an island, is far removed from the fantasy.

His mission was to set up a basic business which might produce sufficient income for the villagers. Despite the efforts of international developers, rodents, insects, the sea, the sun and the strange effects of Solomon Time, together they succeeded. A band of unruly chickens, a cast of extraordinary characters, and a bird called the Spangled Drongo, accompany Will Randall through some of the most fascinating and certainly funniest scenes to be found in travel writing since Gerald Durrell.

Echoing the experiences of Robert Louis Stevenson - who spent several years in the South Pacific - here is the story of a contemporary writer who lived in and came to love the Solomon Islands. It is dedicated to anybody who thinks it might be time for a change.