One Mans Jungle - Ralph Baker

Hardcover, 1975

Explorer, mountaineer, schoolmaster, Freddy Spencer Chapman was early conscious of being a special person, and of a deep-seated need to prove himself. Orphaned in childhood, he grew up to be something of a solitary, a natural rebel who rejoiced in physical exertion as an antidote to latent sensitivity and introspection.

The man of action who, when just 23, was a member of the relief team that rescued Augustine Courtauld on the Greenland Ice-Cap, was also the man of indecision who wavered between the expedition life he loved and the nagging desire to do something more socially creative with his life - a dilemma which he appeared to resolve by becoming a schoolmaster at Gordonstoun under the famous educationalist Kurt Hahn. But then came the war, in which he not only survived disease, pursuit and even capture during three and a half years behind the Japanese lines in Malaya, but became the writer who could convert his experiences into that classic of guerilla warfare, The Jungle is Neutral.

Altogether he wrote seven books recording his expeditions and adventures; but although they won him many admirers, they gave no more than a glimpse of the extraordinary complexity of the man. Few of his readers could have guessed that, for all his exceptional stamina and courage, he was the victim of recurring bouts of depression and melancholy. It is this paradox which lies at the heart of this penetrating biography.

Ralph Barker unravels the achievements and the character of a truly remarkable man.

F. Spencer Chapman is author of The Jungle is Neutral