10.30am-12.30pm, Thornbury Bookshop, 2 High Street, Thornbury (coinciding with the Thornbury Food Fair)
Authoress Joan Alexander will be signing her 14th and most recent book "Follow Me".
Joan has close family living in Almondsbury, with children, grand-children and great grand-children living in Almondsbury, Alveston and Bristol so has strong local connections. Her new book deals with her life as a diplomat's wife serving in Cyprus, Aden, Nigeria and Kenya between the late 1940s and the late 1960s and extensively features the heavy round of diplomatic entertaining that she had to carry out in support of her husband Denis' job. Friends and guests such as Joyce Carey, Cyril Connolly, Gerald Durrell, Lawrence Durrell, Prince Michael of Kent and the Duke of Gloucester flit in and out of the pages and Joan gives a series of delicious recipes for the necessary diplomatic entertaining that went with Denis' job.
The EOKA troubles in Cyprus feature as do the murders of Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa and General John Ironsi in Nigeria but Joan also lightens the book with amusing stories such as having to eat a sheep's eye; to refuse would offend her distinguished host!
The book is illustrated with many photographs and is available at £12.99. Joan is 95 and is working on her next book, "Two Girls on a Boat" the tale of her voyage on the s.s. Orontes from Cairo to Glasgow during the height of the submarine menace when the ships in front of and behind the Orontes were sunk. For more information contact Jos Gregson on 01454 411652.
www.thornburybookshop.co.uk
