The Africa Run

It's summer 1955 and three people who were wartime friends are appalled to find they are fellow travellers on a small, old British passenger liner on the ten-week round-Africa run. Elinor Mackenzie, widowed during the war, is now determined to make a new life for herself. Dr Paddy Brown is sailing around Africa to convalesce from the polio that has ruined both his intended marriage and his soaring medical career. George Ashden, ex-GP, is travelling to Rhodesia. Recently widowed, he is still haunted by his unhappy marriage—and the memory of Elinor in 1945. It is only in the Suez Canal that Paddy finally discovers the secret which Elinor has known since Genoa. And in the burning heat of the Red Sea his action forces the three old friends into the inescapable proximity of passengers in the same class. Swinging between dark, bombed wartime London and the brilliantly sunlit decks of the liner, The Africa Run is a memorable and evocative love story.