Language Tethers Us To The World; Without

You Learn A Lot, Writing Fiction.

Born In Jerusalem, Wadie Said Went From Being A Dragoman To A Salesman In The United States And Thence To A Hugely Successful Businessman In Egypt.

Grief-stricken. Stricken Is Right; It Is As Though You Had Been Felled. Knocked To The Ground; Pitched Out Of Life And Into Something Else.

I Have Had To Empty Two Family Homes During The Last Few Years - First, The House That Had Been My Grandmothers Since 1923, And Then My Own Country Home, Which We Had Lived In For Over Twenty Years.

I Can Walk About London And See A Society That Seems An Absolutely Revolutionary Change From The 1950s, That Seems Completely And Utterly Different, And Then I Can Pick Up On Something Where You Suddenly See That It's Not.