The author was born Sylvia Aspden, the daughter of Lancashire parents forced to move to the East Midlands from the Manchester area in the 1930s, Growing up on the outskirts of Derby in post WWII Britain, life was austere and the family survived by a combination of hard work and sharing their resources. After her father left the Royal Navy at the end of the war, he worked at three jobs to educate and bring up his family of four girls.
Sylvia only commenced her university education at the age of 32 when as a young mother she went through a period of self-improvement leading to an academic life. In 1996, after a failed marriage, she left her work as a lecturer in the UK to take up a two year posting at the International School in Jerusalem. This period transformed her life and this remarkable book, FOR THE LOVE OF A CITY, tells of her growing love-affair with Jerusalem and its people.
Sylvia's writing flows and her descriptions of events, places and people are exceptionally insightful. The chapters are interspersed with 'private' letters home to her friends and family in the UK. She is simultaneously an insider and an outsider and this enables her to paint an amazing and graphic picture of a historic period in the life of the Jewish homeland.
Sylvia only commenced her university education at the age of 32 when as a young mother she went through a period of self-improvement leading to an academic life. In 1996, after a failed marriage, she left her work as a lecturer in the UK to take up a two year posting at the International School in Jerusalem. This period transformed her life and this remarkable book, FOR THE LOVE OF A CITY, tells of her growing love-affair with Jerusalem and its people.
Sylvia's writing flows and her descriptions of events, places and people are exceptionally insightful. The chapters are interspersed with 'private' letters home to her friends and family in the UK. She is simultaneously an insider and an outsider and this enables her to paint an amazing and graphic picture of a historic period in the life of the Jewish homeland.
