Heaven on Wheels

To see Britain through the eyes of Firdaus Kanga is a rare revelation. It is a view, as he says himself, gained "from one eye misted with Anglophilia and the other clear and wide open". Firdaus arrived in London for the first time prior to publication of his first autobiographical novel, "Trying To Grow", an account of a Parsee childhood in Bombay in which a congenital condition characterized by brittle bones left him disabled but undaunted. Firdaus has always found that one of the bizarre consequences of his situation is that people tend to tell him things about themselves that they would not readily tell anyone else. As evidenced in "Heaven on Wheels", this proved the case everywhere from London literary circle to Bradford Pakistani community centre, from Birkenhead ferry to Edinburgh gay bar. In return, Firdaus has not hesitated to speak as he finds Britain in this unprecedented tour by rail and wheelchair round historic places, regional politics, colour and cultural prejudice, disabled facilities and bookshops - general, gay and Glastonbury-spiritualist. It is a journey through England, Wales and Scotland that branches out unpredictably - ideologically and grographically - with stopovers at Rostropovich's dressing-room, Margaret Thatcher's Grantham home turned "Premiere Restaurant" and Stephen Hawking's Cambridge garden.