176pp • 135 x 210mm •
ISBN: 978-1-908531-54-4 (HB)
ISBN: 978-1-908531-82-7 (PB)
Price: £24.95 (HB)
Price: £12.50 (PB)
Publication: December 2015 (HB)
September 2017 (PB)
A beautiful and engaging memoir through India, Jordan and beyond…
"During the celebrations held in Amman for my 80th birthday, my niece Christina read out a message she had brought from my brother, Colin. He wrote:
‘In Jullunder we heard the gun salute for the death of the King Emperor George V and watched the gun smoke drift through the trees.’ He ended his message with, ‘It’s a while since the gun smoke’.
His words brought that day in January 1936 so vividly to life and evoked such memories of my youth in India. It is a country I have loved since childhood. Throughout all my years and all my travels, it has never dimmed. The call of doves, scent of water on dust, or roadside dung fires and the brilliance of flowers brings India to my mind’s eye. It was many, many years before I was to return. As I came out of the airport into that hot, colourful, crowded, noisy scene I felt I had come home.
An enchanting and uplifting account of a long life, ranging from recollections of a childhood in India under the Raj through to accounts of life in modern Jordan.
Acclaim for The Gun Smoke Still Lingers: "Ann O’Neill belongs to a group of people, now rapidly vanishing, whose accidents of birth and background, have given them a view of the world with its extraordinary variety of histories and traditions, which is at once compassionate, informed, and yet firmly rooted in an Englishness we can still recognise... This is not just a personal history; it is (if one is prepared to engage with its panoramas of peoples and places) a plea for a way of living in the world of which we may all too soon lose sight – a respect for diversity, a dedication to the fragile wonders of the natural world, and a conviction that each human life, wherever formed, has a value that must be treasured." Reverend Malcolm White Anglican priest at the Church of the Redeemer in Amman 2001-2007
About the Author Ann O’Neill was raised in India and travelled widely before settling in Jordan. where she lives today. She has enjoyed a long career in the media, and is a passionate lover of nature.
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