“Half memoir, half travel, A Yank Back to England...is an absolutely wonderful book, not only about going home again but also about love and family and tradition and the passage of the years.”
—Michael Dirda, Pulitzer Prize-winning literary critic (Washington
Post)
To see the entire quote, click here.

Monday, April 23, 2012

Aunt May in Libya, part I

Aunt May, another of Mum’s sisters, was telling everyone about her most recent visit to North Africa. Her daughter, my cousin Rita, had eloped with a Libyan student from the London School of Economics. Dissolve thirty years. Rita now lived in a guarded, high-walled estate in Tripoli, and her son-in-law oversaw part of Qaddafi’s nuclear program. They lived well in Libya. Very well. They took holidays in Switzerland and in England, and they had bodyguards. If nothing else, it was safe to assume they lived in fear of their lifestyle.