The Gypsy in Me – Crossing Eastern Europe in search of youth, truth and Dad –

“… Vivid, compelling and often hilarious, The Gypsy in Me describes Simon’s encounters with Polish punks, morose border guards, a maddened bull and a would-be entrepreneur who takes him for a pig farmer. He visits the commanding officer of a Russian tank regiment, who is so poor he has to grow his own vegetables. He passes through Polish towns reclaimed from Germany after the war, which now live on income from nostalgic Germans visiting Hitler’s Eastern HQ. Deep in rural Ukraine, he is welcomed into a heart-warming Orthodox Church service. he discovers that, even within Germany, the Iron Curtain is still very much in place. And in Romania he meets the Gypsy culture, finding it at once repellent, tantalizing and intensely significant.

His personal odyssey proves equally rewarding. Simon finds a record of his father’s birth which leads him, eventually, to a man who knew his grandfather. He discovers details of his father’s early life, which help to reveal some important truths about himself.

Interweaving anecdote, colourful description and wide-ranging reflections on nationalism, history and the end of communism, he has produced an exhilarating book, illuminating half a continent as well as a single family.”