Fun, sun and sadness - Angela Barry

Written to entertain, rather than to chronicle any worldly achievements, Fun, Sun and Sadness takes us through 76 years of the author's life, much of it spent travelling, living abroad and observing how people of other nationalities live their lives. It is written with verve, style and humour and the author manages to engage her readers so that they feel as if they themselves are experiencing the bizarre, funny and frightening events of which her life is made up.

The author takes us from a childhood destabilised by the Second World War, through a series of jobs that included a year at Hatchards in Piccadilly, where she encountered some of the celebrities who gravitated there for their books. The need to consider a tempting proposal of marriage at this time, away from London, led her to take off to Sweden for three months, where she taught English to the children of two families and was herself taken in hand by the parents. Amongst other things, they took her on The Grand Tour of Italy and showed her a life of art, beauty and culture, which she continued to develop. The three months became nine years and the author gives an interesting description of those years.

An urge to travel might have been inherited from a purported forebear, Captain James Cook, the illustrious explorer and navigator. The book gives an account of the author's researches into this connection.

A long and varied career in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office followed, with postings to Copenhagen, Berlin, Caracas, Kuwait, Singapore and Geneva, with further travel on her own in between postings. Ill health forced her into early retirement at first to Dorset and then, at the age of 72, to the sunshine of Andalucia in Southern Spain; a bold move that she describes in vivid detail. It is an interesting and entertaining read.