The Mango Orchard: Travelling Back to the Secret Heart of MexicoBy Robin Bayley Preface Publishing, £11.99

Robin Bayley’s grandmother had a theory: “There are three versions of every story: my version, your version and the truth.”

This is Bayley’s version of his great-grandfather’s story – and it is quite the tale. Arthur “Arturo” Greenhalgh left Lancashire, in England, and travelled to Mexico, where he started a new life in the chaos of a country turning to revolution.

Bayley attempts to piece together the history and journey his ancestor took, and has a stirring adventure all his own.

The reasons for Bayley’s trip are somewhat vague beyond that of a simple yearning for knowledge about a man who has become something of a legend in his own family. Indeed, Bayley frequently confesses that it is mostly intuition and a sense that it his destiny to travel in his great-grandfather’s footsteps that have driven him to Mexico.

This sense of the mystical, and of a barely perceived otherworld, chimes with the Mexican experience in these pages, colourful and ghostly, eerie and vibrant, and it makes for a satisfying read.

The history of Mexico’s revolution is perhaps not as well known on this side of the Atlantic, and Greenhalgh was not only a witness to its events but also had experienced some of its central protagonists.

Bayley fleshes out his story with these thrilling, bombastic elements, and eloquently marshals the glittering elements of a very personal story with a hefty dose of topical history that always homes back to the paths of two men’s journeys, taking place a century apart. This is filled with the sights and smells of a very Latino journey, and a healthy dose of wanderlust and the thrill of the open road.