Things were different when I

was young. As I prepared, in 1962, to cycle from Ireland to India, no one thought to ask me if I was going in order to celebrate feminine auton-

omy, or to get my own country in perspec- tive, or to acquire heroic standing in the public eye. Nobody inquired if I was at- tempting to escape from a world in which I felt a misfit or to test or find or run away from myself. People just thought that I was crazy and made no further comment, Thirty years ago my sort of...