Norfolk Adventurer

Reginald Robertson was born in Norwich in 1879. His father was the manufacturer of Robertson’s Mineral Water in St. Stephen’s Street. Reginald’s journal, notes and letters to his fiancée chart his tours by foot, canoe, motor launch and steamer in Southern Nigeria. His colleague brought with him his pet dog, a bicycle and a Wincester rifle. Reginald carried the ledger book of Empire to remote stations in the rainforests, coastal plains, salt water lagoons, mangroves and the unmapped hinterland, “It reminds me somewhat of the Norfolk Broads,” he wrote. His writing has a sense of authenticity, reflected in his frankness, unvarnished style and absence of sensationalism, even when he writes about recent murders.

The preservation of first-hand material from the Edwardian era adds a unique, personal dimension to colonialism—a catalyst to discussions surrounding the legacy of British Empire which form a large part of the book. Norfolk Adventurer also focuses on the Robertson family in the interbellum years which creates an impression of the leisured classes in Norfolk in the 1920s and the architecture of their houses. The family lived together at Rainbow End, an Arts and Crafts house in Sheringham on the Norfolk coast, where they cared for Reginald whose health was failing. The Robertson’s spent their summers at their riverside retreat near Wroxham on the Broads, a certain Arcadia for Reginald which he clung on to while he was navigating dangerous African rivers. The story begins at Martincross, a large house in Sheringham where the author’s grandmother lived. In the flat across the hallway was Patrick Hamilton, author of Rope and Gaslight.