Reading at the Beach

Agio Andrea beach Ilia Greece

A small beach with wonderful deep swimming water as you go in, someone to bring you a refreshment from the bar above, and some good books are all I require for the perfect decompression holiday. My reading eclectic at the best of times turns to wildly different authors for the beach. What did I take this year?

 A throwback to the adventure stories of my childhood with John Buchan's early 20th century spy novels (Greenmantle, Mr Standfast, the 39 steps and the 3 hostages; I reccomend the Wordsworth editions of the collected Dick Hannay stories, it has them all for a reasonable price).

To give me romance without turning to chick lit which bores me to tears, I have taken with me the Far Pavilions by MM Kaye. The author using her 1920's own experiences in India, tells a great love story spanning the British Raj.

Finally A greek holiday would not be complete without Gerald Durrell's A Corfu trilogy, delectable in its detailed descriptions of life in Corfu before the 2nd WW, throwing in a good measure of botany and biology.