A self-described "lone wanderer," L. Grace Dibble spent her life traveling and working abroad. Trained as a geographer, she had posts at schools in Canada, India, and Nigeria. An early and dedicated traveler, she purchased her first round-trip (or return) ticket in the early 1930s. In thirteen books, written in diary form and illustrated with her own photographs, Dibble recounted her excursions to more than sixty countries in simple, straightforward prose that aptly captures the persevering spirit that made her a traveler well into her eighties and a published author into her nineties.

Born in Basingstoke, Sussex, on 3 October 1902, Lucy Grace Dibble moved as a child to Friningham farm, on the North Downs in Kent, and later to a nearby village, Bearsted. Finally, the family settled into Mount Pleasant, formerly the home of cricketer Alfred Mynn, in the village of Thurnham. Her father, George Dibble, a farmer, played...