My face lit up with pleasure when I heard that a Book of English Eccentrics had appeared. The world of English Eccentrics is a sunny place, filled with eighteenth century hobbyists with names like Mad Jack, and given to riding on bears or crocodiles. Many Great Eccentrics were squires or writers, others rose from humble spheres of life to become great enthusiasts, philanthropists and reformers. Enthusiasm for a hitherto unthought-of or despised subject is the mark of a True Eccentric, such as the late Miriam Rothschild who became a world authority on fleas. Her distinguished Uncle Walter sometimes rode on the back of a giant tortoise or drove around in a coach pulled by zebras.

Henry Hemming’s book opens in the Amazon rainforest, where the author meets an Amerindian villager named Krentoma. The other villagers smile in an embarrassed way when Krentoma’s name is mentioned. They live in a group of thatched huts. Krentoma leads the author into the forest andthere proudly shows him a lone hut made of concrete and strips of corrugated iron. Hemming concludes from this that the eccentric Krentoma, shunned by his tribe, is proof of the Eccentric as Innovator. He is only mildly disconcerted when he learns that Krentoma (who drinks diesel oil) had previously cut a fellow villager’s throat.

Judging by African tribal village standards (as known to members of my family), the picture is rather different. Krentoma has obviously been banished as a murderer, and possibly a witch. It is his tribe who are unusual for not admiring his hut of corrugated iron.

All over Africa, and perhaps South America, progressive villagers are abandoning their beautiful old huts and building new ones in Krentoma style, to great acclaim. Krentoma seems a deplorable person: those who despise him are admirable.