This book is a fascinating first-hand account of intellectual, political, and daily life in two vanished places: Jerusalem before the creation of Israel, and Ethiopia before the Marxist revolution. Ullendorff, who went to Hebrew University in the 1930s and held numerous British government posts in the interwar and war years, counted among his acquaintances Haile Sellassie, S.Y. Agnon, J.L. Magnes, Martin Buber, and many other eminent scholars, writers,...