Short Walks from Bogota, by Tom Feiling

Ten years ago a cartoon appeared in the Independent showing the New World Order — Bush and Blair peering at a distorted global map with only one entry for South America: over Colombia was written ‘Coke-snorting bolshie gorillas’. Back then the Farc guerrillas were on the edge of the capital Bogotá, the country had the world’s highest kidnap rate and ‘failed state’ was considered its next realistic destination. Then even the title of this book would have been ironic, as to walk anywhere was to risk mugging or murder.

Tom Feiling, a British journalist and film-maker who has written a previous book on the cocaine trade, knew Colombia in the bad old days. Speaking good Spanish, well-read in the country’s troubled history, with a network of excellent contacts, he decided to go back and see if the ‘New Colombia’ lived up to the hype.

For Colombia is now a free-wheeling success story, the Farc beaten back to remote jungle outposts and kidnapping a thing of the past.