Overview

In the 1970s, Nigel Parsons found himself working on the French grape harvest alongside five Manouche families: a group the French advised him to stay away from. The Manouche were barred from the end-of-harvest feast and vanished overnight. Unable to forget their campfires, their music and their dancing, Nigel returned to France in search of the Manouche and fell into their world. He lived as they did, travelling from place to place, under constant pressure to settle or move on from an unsympathetic government. In his time with them he saw long, companionable evenings around the campfire, but he also saw the steady erosion of their way of life. Eventually, Nigel returned to England and lost touch with the Manouche. But his times with them had been some of the happiest of his life, and after almost thirty years he would set out once more in search of his old friends.

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9781789630657

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Nigel Parsons was born in an army camp in the South of England and spent many of his early years living in the remnants of the British empire, Malaysia, Singapore, Nepal, and Germany, wherever the army sent his father. The family finally moved to England in his late teens but he found it difficult to settle and after school continued to travel, to Iran, Afghanistan (where he rode a horse across a large part of the country) South East Asia and Australia, where he worked as a miner. He took up journalism and worked for several newspapers and radios before meeting a group of Manouche Gypsies in France while working on the wine harvest at the end of the 1970's, and stayed with them for several years, learning their language and customs and becoming godfather to several of their children. He later became a well known broadcaster and was the founding Managing Director of Al Jazeera English as well as the founding CEO of TVC Africa based in Lagos. During this time he lost touch with the Manouche, but recently re-connected with them. He is married with four children and lives in South West London.

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