The British Foreign Office is a timeless institution. Antrobus is the embodiment of everything that makes it what it is. His tales of diplomatic misadventure, accompanied by memorable and witty drawings, make a collection to cherish, for as long as the Foreign Office holds sway over far-flung British interests. 'Whatever wars there may be and whatever crises, there will still, please heaven, be the diplomatic corps, with its protocol and formalities and a field of humour which I have never seen better used than in these stories.' John Betjeman

In the wake of his father’s death, the speaker in Raymond Antrobus’ The Perseverance travels to Barcelona. In Gaudi’s Cathedral, he meditates on the idea of silence and sound, wondering whether acoustics really can bring us closer to God. Receiving information through his hearing aid technology, he considers how deaf people are included in this idea. “Even though,” he says, “I have not heard / the golden decibel of angels, / I have been living in a noiseless / palace where the doorbell is pulsating / light and I am able to answer.” The Perseverance is a collection of poems examining a d/Deaf experience alongside meditations on loss, grief, education, and language, both spoken and signed. It is a book about communication and connection, about cultural inheritance, about identity in a hearing world that takes everything for granted, about the dangers we may find (both individually and as a society) if we fail to understand each other.

A former member of Great Britain’s diplomatic corps, the celebrated author of the Alexandria Quartet offers eleven sketches of life in service of the crown. After decades spent representing Britain around the globe, Antrobus has earned a shirtful of medals and the right to pass afternoons in his London club, musing over old times. His memory is long, and every old embarrassment still rankles—no matter how ridiculous. The incident with the Yugoslav ghost train, for instance, still causes him to clench his fists in fear. When he speaks of Sir Claud Polk-Mowbray, he takes pains to lower his voice—lest an American hear. And his stomach has never recovered from the incident involving the fried flag. Based on Lawrence Durrell’s own experience in the diplomatic corps, Antrobus’s cutting observation is drawn from the strange and humorous truth. Few are those with a better sense of place than Durrell, and even fewer with wit to match.