John Darwin – I Meet Myself Returning

Author reading and book signing.

With special guest Geneviève L. Walsh.

“Whichever way I take

I meet myself returning.”

A poetic journey from the mills and moors of the industrial north to the meals and mosques of the Byzantine middle-east and back again.

I Meet Myself Returning is about finding your feet in our ever-convoluted world and letting them take you to a place to call your own.

And, occasionally, stopping off for a pint.

“This is a book about location. Feeling at home.

It’s about feeling homesick when you don’t know where home is.

My permanent home is in Manchester. I have lived there for 28 years, although it felt like home for many years before, through football and music.

I have felt at home as a very young lad in St Albans, Hertfordshire, where I was born… In West Wales on childhood family holidays… In Yorkshire where I grew up.

Brief moments of joy in the arms of a loving family, despite an unhappy education and suffering Leeds United winning trophies (well, two) whilst my club struggled and failed.

It’s about finding a foreign culture which made me welcome and feeling loved… In Turkey, the streets, bars and bridges of Istanbul are my second home.

It’s about the joy of lazy summers with loved ones on the coast.

It’s about the accumulation of wealth, acquisition, the constant striving for more things; the things which make us sad.”

– John Darwin