TRAVELS WITHOUT MY AUNT: IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF GRAHAM GREENE by Julia Llewellyn Smith. Published in hardback by Michael Joseph, £16.99.

Graham Greene's travels took him to some of the world's most dangerous countries, providing a vivid backdrop to some of his best-known novels.

He left an enduring legacy of evocative writing in exotic

locations - indeed, 17 of his books are set outside England.

Now, more than 30 years since Greene wrote Travels with My Aunt, Julia Llewellyn Smith has retraced his footsteps to some of the globe's most troubled and neglected corners.

Llewellyn Smith was inspired by a journey to Haiti in 1997, where she read Greene's

portrait of the unique island, The Comedians.

She then travelled to places as diverse as Spain, Vietnam and Cuba to see if the countries Greene had written about had changed or were still as bizarre as he had described.

Confronted by extreme danger, she describes the voodoo

ceremonies and gunshots after dark in Haiti, conversations with child killers in Sierra Leone during a lull in the civil war and a bizarre dinner with a Rockerfeller socialite in Buenos Aires.

She offers us intelligent and entertaining travel writing, giving a glimpse of countries which are still some of the least-known in the world, against the fascinating backdrop of Greene's own novels and life.