Footfalls in memory: reflections from solitude

What a marvellous selection Terry Waite has made of his favourite writing! Poetry and prose, comic and tragic, detective-novel and devotional literature, are here placed side by side, each selection placed in context by a short introduction by Waite (how he came to encounter the book, why the writing means so much to him). It is an ode to the joys of reading, a paean in praise of the written word, and a book to own. A book, moreover, that leads us to other books!The books are of three kinds: (1) books given to Waite by his captors in Beirut; (2) books Waite remembered from earlier years, & that he wished he had on hand in his cell; (3) books he discovered after his release. Sometimes the categories overlap. Waite once drew a penguin for one of his guards, who was buying English books second-hand, and the guard came back with a Penguin Books edition of 'The Brothers Karamazov'!Selections from the Book of Common Prayer are here, with short readings from the Quran; Hilaire Belloc's Cautionary Tales (childhood rhymes about misadventurous lads) & a snippet from Cellini's autobiography; a comically earthy snippet of Herodotus (Herodotus funny? Who knew? Waite did!); a sinister few pages from Koestler's "Darkness at Noon." The Catholic writers Bede Griffiths and Carlo Carretto are present, as well as Harry Williams, a 20th-century Anglican (new to us) writing on the Resurrection in a lucid, unhackneyed, & heartwarming manner. Other divines include Hubert Northcott, an Anglican monk, and Kallistos Ware, the Orthodox bishop.There is Betty Smith's "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" and Michael Innes's "Appleby's End"; there's part of a mystery by Dorothy Sayers in which Lord Peter Wimsey utters the most extraordinarily surreal bits of dialogue (Frasier Crane on acid?); there is Belloc again, and William Styron, detailing mishaps during travels through Italy; also, Susan Howatch, Hermann Hesse; Stephen Spender (a poem and a lapidary few paragraphs from his autobiography). And of course, there is John Bunyan (and Waite's tale of the postcard).This is a book in which the good-humoured and genial personality of Terry Waite meshes wonderfully with the very fine selections he has chosen. Must I return it to the library? Well, not for a while, anyway.

Terry Waite's moving account of how his sanity was saved during his solitary captivity by books read and books remembered. This contains short excerpts of books he read and remembered.I had never before had much interest in Hesse, having read only one work of his. Many of the authors on spiritual topics are ones of whom I had never heard, but wish now to read. You will come from this book both deeply moved and with a longer reading list.

As Terry Waite told me when he signed my copy, "this is a simple record," yet it is powerful in its simplicity. While he was in solitary confinement, more than four years, he did not have many books but had much time to contemplate them. This is a record of what he did read and what he wished he could read during that time, with small samples from those works. It was enjoyable as well as very thought provoking.