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Gathering No Moss is the autobiography of a possibly autistic child, born in 1925, who, idiosyncratically educated, grew up to see out, as a member of the Colonial Service, the end of the British Empire in East Africa. In later service with the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation, he witnessed novice states exulting in new-found independence. His last appointment, as deputy director of the Centre for International Briefing, at Farnham Castle in Surrey, was in an organisation devoted to inculcating, in those going 'abroad', better understanding of cross-cultural relations. Post-retirement, he keeps an eye, Pooter-like, on our changing world.

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Alan Hall was born of Scottish parents in 1925, and spent most of his working life abroad during and after the momentous process of decolonisation that changed the world order in the second half of the twentieth century. Demobilised after war and post-war service in Holland, Germany and Italy, eagerness and a degree in economics allowed him to join the British Colonial Service, where he was posted to Tanganyika (now Tanzania), working up-country for twelve years, assisting farmers to sell their produce profitably through co-operative societies, until that country's independence in 1961. Thereafter he passed seamlessly over to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, where he worked as a so-called marketing expert, mainly in Mauritius and Iran (before the fall of the Shah) and at FAO's headquarters in Rome, travelling frequently throughout Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Retiring from FAO in 1980, he put the lessons of his life to good effect on the staff of the Centre for International Briefing, at Farnham Castle in Surrey, latterly as its deputy director. Now a great grandfather, he looks back and records with humour and a refreshing lack of amour propre the ups and downs of a life of unusually wide experience.

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