A lively young South African, W.D. Terry, read English at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, during the early years of WW2.

His recently discovered diary and letters recount in vivid terms what it was like to be a South African student abroad as war breaks out. Travel, love and learning jostle with international politics, militarism and confusion.

We follow Terry’s travels to Ireland, Paris and the United States, as well as his romantic adventures. He debates the role of the US in the War with the journalist, explorer and broadcaster, Lowell Thomas, who tries unsuccessfully to cure Terry’s endemic Anglophilia.

Laurence Wright’s introduction, sketches the trajectory of Terry’s life, from his upbringing, education and wartime activities to his religious preoccupations and his later career as a lecturer in English at Rhodes University

The volume is fully annotated and illustrated with Terry’s own photographs.