Andromeda has broken her femur while trying to 'eat muesli and roller skate at the same time'. Deserted by her separated parents, she lies in a hospital bed feeling very lonely. Anne Plass mobilises the whole church into writing letters. Among the old friends who put pen to paper are Gerald Plass, the enigmatic Leonard Thynn, Charles Cook (from Deep Joy Bible School), Adrian himself and even the dreaded Mrs Flushpool. Andromeda not only replies to these letters, but writes to the famous - among them Cliff Richard - with stern, if badly spelled, advice. Then, with the urging of Father John, Andromeda decides that her family problems will only be solved if she goes right to the top. She writes to God ...

    Throughout the war years, Vera kept a diary, recording her day-to-day experiences, her longing for her parents, her hopes, and her prayers for the freedom of her country. By the time she returned to Prague to set up home with her aunt in 1945, she knew that both her parents had died—her mother in Belsen, her father on a death march. She came back to England in 1949 and has lived there ever since. The memories and emotions rekindled by a reunion of the Czech school in Wales where she was educated encouraged Vera to go back to her diaries and the letters from her parents that she had not touched for 40 years, resulting in this powerful and moving account of the life of one child growing up in extraordinary circumstances.

    Biography and Memoir. Edited and translated from the Greek by Roderick Beaton. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Greek poet and diplomat George Seferis stands as one of the giants of twentieth-century literature. This book presents for the first time in English selections from the journals he kept while traveling in the Middle East. With characteristic vividness and concision, Seferis reflects both on what he sees and what lies behind (and ahead of) the visible, as the journals include superb passages of travel writing and meditations on the Levant's Hellenistic legacy, the holy sites of the region, the history of prominent British women travelers to the area, and of course the turbulent politics of his day. As such, they move between private and public dimensions of the poet's life and provide an intimate look into his world.