This book is as exploration of the rich and varied cultural worlds shaped by the Rhine, the Rhone and the Po.

Three Rivers traces the rivers' journeys from their glacial sources through Germany, Itals and France.

Its an entertaining and informative story.

A great holiday read!

Twenty five years ago Julian Hoffman and his wife Julia decided to leave their life in London and make a dramatic change. They would leave the city life with it's commuting hassles and move somewhere and live very different life

On nothing more than a chance encounter with a book about it they moved to Prespa in northern Greece.

They didn't speak the language, had very few possessions but their bold and brave decision has worked out very well.

They searched for home in the mountains of Greece.

How they found it is told in Lifelines.

The appalling inhumanity still happening in the world makes this conversation distressingly relevant. There is the thought that some people are less human then others. This has to be challenged.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted on December 10th 1948.

We now live in a world where the rights agreed in that document are widely ignored and some politicians openly seek to remove the UK from enforcing them.

Plus racial intolerance is on the march . The horrible spectre of antisemitism is looming over the news as is denial of the rights of Palestinians.

As an American bishop recently said ..... immigrants and gay people are as valuable as everyone else.

A good time to listen to the words of the late Sir Martin Gilbert.

Sir Martin Gilbert is known as Churchill's biographer, but also as the historian of the Holocaust.

This conversation with David Freeman took place when his book Never Again was published. Sir Martin's thoughts on war are sadly relevant.

Sir Martin died in 2015.