The Backpacker’s Handbook

Born in Oxford, raised in Australia, trained by the British Army, educated at Oxford University, after a 17 year military career, now writing books, running a scientific research foundation and living in Oxford. I really liked Australia, Sydney's glorious harbour and beaches, and my school Shore, so at the age of 13 it was a nightmare coming back to grey, dismal UK, where handicapped by my Ozzie accent at Magdalen College School, I had to learn Latin from scratch in a class of unbelievably cultured boffins who were already reading Horace (and other writings that were of much mystery to me). But after a lot of fun playing bass guitar in one of the earliest heavy rock bands, my attempts at 'O' and 'A' Levels at one of the UK's first comprehensive schools - as a guinea pig in the great 'Leicestershire Plan', left me with no choice but to join the Army. The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst was a severe culture shock. But after a couple of very happy years in a commando unit, my three years at Oxford University reading geography at St Edmund Hall, and doing boxing (please note my careful use of verbs) were both antidote and stimulus to further military adventures. The apogee of my military career was the Falklands War. I then declined gently into Staff College Camberley, MoD staff appointments and a rather jolly final few years commanding an artillery gun battery in Northern Ireland, Thorney Island, and beside a lake with ducks in northern Germany. Since then, I've produced television documentaries, spent five interesting years as the Sunday Time's defence correspondent, whilst writing the sort of books Amazon so efficiently sells under my name on this site. I live in Oxford, and have two astonishingly musical sons: one now in the Army - a lieutenant in the Light Dragoons. More information, blogs and various guides to the Army, survival and other related subjects maybe found at www.hughmcmanners.com