Philip Hanson is a jazz fan, a cricket fan and a Russia-watcher. He has also been a husband for many years and is the father of two sons who are, let's face it, middle-aged, though you'd never know it. So now he is getting on a bit. His employment record suggests restlessness: the Treasury, Foreign Office, UN, Radio Liberty, Harvard, Michigan and Kyoto, among others. In fact, he fitted in about thirty years' work at Birmingham University - enough to make anyone restless. Expelled from Moscow in 1971, he persisted in studying the Russian economy; eventually the Soviets let him back in. His memoir is a record of people, places, events and ideas. It even contains bits on cricket and jazz.