Visionary explorer, scientist and soldier Ralph Bagnold, founder of the LRDG, wrote in the 1930s in his book ‘Libyan Sands’ how a Briton could drive from the Atlantic coast of Morocco to the mountains of Nepal unhindered by bureaucracy. How the world has turned. Now in 2015 living in the Cairo suburb of Maadi, only yards from Bagnold’s home and living in a building he would recognise and with a desert-equipped Land Rover sitting at my garden gate, it’s incredibly frustrating that we cannot get out into the desert a few miles down the road because of the activities of ISIS and the Egyptian Army. The world has got smaller, yes, but intolerance, extremism and downright stupidity have got much, much larger. Pax Britannica may have a lot of detractors, possibly deservedly so, but it had an awful lot going for it