Freya Stark was born in Paris and began travelling at an early age. By the time she was five she could speak three languages and spent her cosmopolitan childhood between France, Italy and England. Though she received no formal schooling, she succeeded in matriculating and gained a place at the University of London. During the Great War she became a nurse on the Italian front, and afterwards turned her considerable energies to learning Arabic and mountaineering in the Alps. This book is a lively account of her unconventional upbringing which shaped her destiny as a travel writer of rare talents