REAR COVER COPY

This is the record of a long and risk-strewn life. From Winchester, where he occasionally flummoxed the authorities, Michael Burn won a classics scholarship to Oxford, pulled out from there, dabbled in high and sometimes less high life, then in 1933, troubled by the social injustice attending mounting unemployment, went to Germany to weigh up the ideals of National Socialism. He met Hitler, was shown Dachau, was a guest at the Nuremberg party rally. Soon disenchanted, he returned to work for Geoffrey Dawson on The Times. A Commando in the war, he took part in the assault on St Nazaire, where he won the MC and was taken prisoner, to be interned in Colditz.

After the war The Times sent him as staff correspondent, first to Vienna, then to Budapest with responsibility for the Balkans. He reported the fake trial of Cardinal Mindszenty, admiring his courage but unable to represent him as a champion of democratic liberty. Then, after leaving The Times, he moved, with his wife Mary, to Wales. The concluding chapters are in essence his love-story with Mary, the more unusual because he was predominantly homosexual. It is a remarkable analysis of a profound relationship. The book has many different facets: it is witty, intelligent, sometimes bruisingly frank, principled and oddly affecting.'