[Silly Moustache]

My wife is the greater reader. She went to a talk by one of her famous authors recently - Victoria Hislop who writes excellently researched novels about Greece.

Jane and I used to frequently holiday in the Greek islands from the '80s until my heart issues in 2006.
Jane's latest read was "Those who are Loved" about families involved on the the communist side fighting the Germans with the British and how they were treated - by the Allies and the Greeks after the war.

We have experienced these long lasting divisions and feuds in Crete - where we once got lost and found a small village with a single man in traditional dress holding his rifle. He refused to speak to me in English but would, reluctantly, talk to me in German as, we wre later told, the village was on the fascist side all those years before - and effectively still are.

The chap who owned our small villa there told us that he has to avoid certain places on the island because if he meets anyone from certain families - "one of us must die".

Another book which I am still to read is Queen of the Desert by Georgina Howell about "the extraordinary life of Gertrude Bell" who traveled ,often alone through the middle east from the turn of the century until about 1926.
Jane's observation was that the troubles there now and in Bell's time were much the same!