An unusual collection of fascinating, offbeat anecdotes from the life of a much-travelled Welsh professor. The stories become more and more unlikely – though all are true! Randall Baker has a real talent for making the mundane marvellous, in an engaging, humorous style with echoes of P G Wodehouse.

• Before You Start
• First instalment: Being British
• 1 – Train of thought
• 2 – Rite of passage: The Welsh passion for funerals
• 3 – Cars for concern: Hiding one’s light under the boot
• 4 – Coming out of the closet, or The Dutch lieutenant’s jacket
• 5 – Fighting unemployment in rural Norfolk
• 6 – Up, up and… uh-oh
• 7 – Adventures in eating
• Second instalment: Foreign Parts
• 8 – Why are you photographing that church? An innocent encounters Ohio 1964
• 9 – Two cups of coffee, a brown paper bag and a magic carpet or two
• 10 – The case of the homicidal optometrist
• 11 – The hypnotic briefcase
• 12 – Typhoons, lettuce and temporal displacement
• 13 – On the banks of the mystic Nile
• 14 – Elephant, white nights and an amorous hound
• 15 – The unexpected stripper
• 16 – The elixir of life, eternal love, and a Swiss roll
• 17 – Strange doings in Terre Haute