Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

A dynamic book group meeting was had this week. I reckon that's the best word to describe how our little group stood up to COVID-19: by being positive in attitude and full of energy and new ideas. The new idea turned out to be a complete success and we held our first ever 'virtual' book group meeting.

Sorry Sue - we know you were there.

Following the national clap for our NHS, 7 of us logged into Zoom and had a lively discussion about our most recent read 'Prisoners of Geography'.

And thanks to Zoom giving us a special gift of unlimited time we were able to natter on for more than our allocated 40 minutes!

Everyone agreed that this book is brilliant. We thought it might be heavy going, we expected it to be a challenging read and perhaps a bit technical. It was none of those things, it is a very well written, thoroughly enjoyable book full of facts and clear explanation of world history and geopolitics.

Our conversation started with Russian Politics and ended with homelessness in Aylesbury! In between we explored the Middle East, Africa, Europe, America, Iran, Pakistan, India, China, Japan and Korea.

There is so much information between the two covers that, we agreed, it is impossible to take it all in. This is a book to dip in and out of and one to read more than once.

Do we recommend it? yes, of course, and we hope that Tim Marshall updates it too because we need his take on the world after Trump.

Our next book is A Month in the Country by J.L Carr and we will review our read in April. I have set up a Zoom meeting for 8.10pm on Thursday 23rd April. If you haven't received an invite and would like to join in please let me (Sian) know.