Come, Tell Me How You Live

8vo, (Archaeologists in Syria). An engaging record of an archaeological expedition to the Near East before the war (WWII). "This book is an answer. It is the answer to a question that is asked me very often. So you dig in Syria, do you? Do tell me all about it. How do you live? In a tent? etc, etc," adding a little later: "This is not a profound book It is, in fact, small beer a very little book, full of everyday doings and happenings." Its opening pages see her describing her travails attempting to find a suitable outfit for her travels: "Of course, Modom, we are not being asked for that kind of thing just now! We have some very charming little suits here - OS [outsize] in the darker colours. Oh, loathsome OS! How humiliating to be OS! How even more humiliating to be recognised at once as OS!" writes Christie, cheerily. More than 70 years ago, Christie recorded her arrival at Palmyra, her usually light tone giving way to one of genuine emotion. "After seven hours of heat and monotony and a lonely world Palmyra! That, I think, is the charm of Palmyra its slender creamy beauty rising up fantastically in the middle of hot sand," she writes. "It is lovely and fantastic and unbelievable, with all the theatrical implausibility of a dream. Courts and temples and ruined columns I have never been able to decide what I really think of Palmyra. It has always for me the dreamlike quality of that first vision. My aching head and eyes made it more than ever seem a feverish delusion! It isnt - it cant be real." Going to the "holy shrine of Sheikh Adi situated in the Kurdish hills near Mosul", described last year as "hell on earth" in a Guardian piece, she writes that "there can be, I think, no spot in the world so beautiful or so peaceful". "You wind up far into the hills through oak trees and pomegranates, following a mountain stream. The air is fresh and clear and pure," records the novelist. "And then, suddenly, you come to the white spires of the shrine. All is calm and gentle and peaceful there. There are trees, a courtyard, running water. Gentle-faced custodians bring you refreshments and you sit in perfect peace, sipping tea." (The Guardian)