Publisher's Synopsis
Dorothy McLorn was a remarkable witness to several of the most epoch-making events of the 20th century, including two world wars and the Russian Revolution. Towards the end of her life she penned a volume of memoirs... Born in St Petersburg in 1900 to the privileged existence of a British expatriate, she and her family were compelled to flee for their lives from the Russian Revolution. Present in Ekaterinburg when the Tsar and his family were murdered, she only evaded capture by hiding in huge beer vats. Chased eastward by the advance of the Bolsheviks, she endured long and arduous journeys that took her to Harbin (China), Vladivostock, and back to Harbin, where she met and, just two weeks later, married John McClorn. John's posting to Urumchi in Chinese Turkestan necessitated yet another journey, this time of 3,000 miles, much of it along the Silk Route. In Urumchi she lost her first baby and almost died. After a series of vicissitudes, in the early 1930s, Dorothy (by then a mother) was caught up in the Japanese invasion of China and the family was interned at Weihsien till the end of the war. The details of life in the camp, of privation, strength and the determination to survive, to educate her children and not to be overwhelmed by despair, are at once harrowing and inspiring. Along the way, Dorothy's memoirs provide vivid accounts of the Swedish explorer, Sven Anders Hedin, the vivacious Kalmyk Princess Nirjidma Torgutska Palta, and Eric Liddle, the Scottish miler whose story is told in the movie The Chariots of Fire. The book also draws on a memoir by her son Philip.
