Pay, pack and follow (dedikált példány) [antikvár]

ForewordThe form this book has taken differs from the one I had originally planned. I had intended, by describing both my life as a diplomat's wife and the one forced upon me by the death of my husband Christopher, to illustrate how the threads of one life can be drawn together to provide the fabric for another. However, I became so engrossed in recounting our life in various embassies that I began to relive it and found that inevitably it dominated the book. The intended balance was, therefore, lost and the part which would have reflected the life which emerged in the wake of Christopher's death has been condensed into a postscript. Nevertheless, the new formula has the advantage of allowing me to distance myself from the intervening years and thereby recognize more clearly how the different stages in building a second life evolved.I found reading and rereading Christopher's diaries a source of pain and of pleasure. These journals, which he typed meticulously with two fingers and maintained throughout his diplomatic career, had, I believe, several purposes. Firstly, they provided him with an accurate record of the current state of international affairs and the relations between his country and the one to which he was accredited. Secondly, they provided an innocent means of letting off steam about professional frustrations and personal disagreements or tensions. Lasdy, I am sure he intended the diaries to provide the basis for a post-retirement literary project. I am sure he never wrote them per se for publication, so I have discriminated when quoting from them and avoided the parts which reflect the friction which naturally exists in the life of any embassy. I have, instead, focused on the parts which describe the problems which faced him as a diplomat, the