TRAVEL: In Sugar-Cane Land

‘I SPED away over the ocean into a region of tropic sunshine and blue waters, of islands built by volcano or raised by coral insects, there to see the sugar-cane grow and study the people who grow it,’ wrote Eden Phillpotts in his 1890 travelogue, In Sugar-Cane Land. I discovered the Victorian’s intense words in a dark, dusty bookshop in Putney one wintry morning. A century-and-a-quarter after it was published, the prose of the insurance officer turned author, dramatist, poet, and best friend of Agatha Christie, inspired me to set course for the West Indies... 

Read at Good Things >