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I first read this book aged 11 or 12, when it left me with an odd fascination for hollow ways and green lanes in the English landscape – picked up by others, including Hugh Thompson Green Road into the Trees , but more particularly Robert Macfarlane and his wonderful The Old Ways .  However, my schoolboy memory was also for a great adventure.  When this special reprinting in hardback by Mr B’s appeared ( http://www.mrbsemporium.com/ ) , how could we not get it?!   We are now the proud possessors of copy number 41 of a limited edition of 500. The Introduction is by Robert Macfarlane himself and describes a trip with Roger Deakin ( Wildwood ) to Dorset looking for the possible site in Rogue Male {just found Holloway (2013) describing that trip and more is out}!   On a second reading, Rogue Male turned out to be a wonderful chameleon of a book.  OK it is a man’s book, but it has achieved something that is only rarely done – it is a boy’s adventure, an adult th...

This a cracking read and a wonderfully full and complex story woven about Jun Do, the main character, and his life in North Korea.  It is a story about sacrifice, but it is a wonderful tale.  The environments and the lives may be bleak, in this totalitarian state, but they are human and carefully brought to life.  Starting as an orphan, he knows he is treated badly by the orphan master, but only because he is special.  He is clever, so he is trained in the army, and goes to work in the tunnels under the DMZ into South Korea.  He becomes at home and can fight in the dark.  Described only in snippets through the story, he undergoes pain training and learns to take terrible punishments.  He is bright and is selected to join a team of kidnappers, pinching people from Japan and South Korea, often for people with specific talents needed by the Pyonyang elite.  He learns foreign languages, especially Japanese and English.  Thus, he is sent to sea on...