‘This is a period in which many people are concerned with the difficulty of communication. Poetry, novels, plays, paintings: they emphasize this theme so constantly that anyone who feels that human beings can communicate is beginning to look naive. But what is meeting a man from a different country, a different tradition, a different social and economic background, and finding that you and he can both speak about anything exactly as you feel, in perfect confidence of understanding even if not of agreement, if it is not communication? The discovery of trust and easiness which comes with such a meeting is another, and greater, enduring good.’Diana Athill
Best of the Transparent Hummingbird