Borneo and the Poet

In May 2005 Penguin will publish 70 unique titles to celebrate the company's 70th birthday. The titles in the Pocket Penguins series are emblematic of the renowned breadth of quality of the Penguin list and will hark back to Penguin founder Allen Lane's vision of good books for all'. When Redmond O'Hanlon set out to rediscover the lost rhinoceros of Borneo, accompanied by the poet James Fenton, it was in the best tradition of nineteenth-century exploration. They were armed with backbreaking kit suitable to surviving two months in a steaming jungle of creeping, crawling and biting things; their heads brimmed with training provided by the SAS; and O'Hanlon himself had an encyclopedic knowledge of the region's flora and fauna. And yet they proceeded to have an adventure that neither O'Hanlon, his poet friend nor his guides were quite prepared for