The Diplomats wife

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I enjoyed reading this book because it was about a young man, Phil who was 18, and his grandmother, Emma who was in her middle sixties, when they went on holiday together back in 1979. Who would have thought that for a young man of 18, a holiday with his gran could be a great adventure. Most boys of that age would wince at the thought of going on holiday , just them and their gran. But Phil did not have a choice because he had been looking forward to going travelling with a friend , but he was unable to go in the end. This was because he had stupidly had an accident in his father`s car while driving drunk. The insurance company would not pay for the repairs , so his dad made Phil pay for the bill out of his own money, leaving Phil unable to pay for the trip. Phil was also faced with the problem of finding some sort of job until he went to university in the autumn. So when Emma came up with the idea that she would pay Phil to act as her companion on the trip, Phil jumped at the chance. However, Emma was not any old gran and this was not any old holiday. This was a tour of Europe where Emma had worked as a spy back in the years just before the second world war. Although the story is set in 1979, much of it takes us back to the late 1930s as Emma shows Phil places where she lived and stayed while her husband worked as a diplomat. Phil is then able to learn many of his family secrets that had not come to light before, especially the story of his mysterious great uncle Hugh .