The book begins with details of the author's childhood in Libya, Scotland and Hong Kong. It describes his life as a De La Salle Brother, and how he came to join the Special Air Service. It describes his training in the SAS, and his experiences of the counter-insurgency war in Dhofar, in which he was ultimately commissioned as an officer in the Sultan of Oman's Army, leading a group of former enemy. After the war, he worked for the Oman Government helping to develop the mountain areas of Dhofar and Musandam, which had changed little since the Middle Ages. It describes how he collected the data for the first ever demographic survey of Dhofar, and finishes when he decided to leave Oman in 1984.