In "Tramp Royal", by means of a piece of biographical detective work, Tim Couzens picks up the fading trail of Aloysius Smith, alias Trader Horn, from Lancashire in the 1860s, through the frontiers of Africa, Buffalo Bill's America, Cockney London in the 1890s, gunrunning in Madagascar, the Boer War in South Africa to the doss house in Johannesburg. It is the tale of an unquenchable free spirit forever in search of adventure and Couzens tells it with a verve and enjoyment entirely appropriate to the larger-than-life character he celebrates.