Mercenaries, Missionaries and Misfits: Adventures of an Under-Age Journalist

Publisher and industry reviews

UK Kirkus review

When he was 18, Tarquin Hall decided he would not go to university, instead he was going to be a journalist. Rather than follow the usual route of joining a local paper and working his way up, he set out for America creating his own kind of university course in search of the big story that would set his career off. He ended up working for a while as a bellhop in a posh New York hotel, then in Texas he joined a snake hunt. While he was waiting to see if his story about the hunt would be bought by a magazine he worked for a while on a ranch. Then he decided that if he wanted to be a journalist he had to be where the action was, and headed for India where he mixed with mercenaries, murderers and Bollywood movie stars. Sneaking across the border into war-torn Afghanistan he somehow managed to get himself accredited as a photographer and his career began in earnest. As he started getting commissions from reputable newspapers and magazines, he headed for Africa where he met everyone from an ex-Mau Mau warrior to Wilfred Thesiger to 'the women who marry women'. Hardly a textbook example of career guidance, this is till an entertaining series of snapshots on the way to success, and the variety of comic and dramatic incident is proof enough that Hall really does have a nose for news. (Kirkus UK)

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