Ian Balfour’s twenty-first birthday present was a rail ticket on 11 March 1953 from Edinburgh to the border of Syria, an airline ticket from Tel Aviv to Athens and Rome on 7 April and then rail back to Edinburgh, with some spending money but no fixed itinerary for the fortnight between the Syrian border and Tel Aviv. So many people asked about the experience that he wrote it up in the form of a diary. One of Ian’s friends returned the book with the illustrated cover and the phrase ‘The Lands of the Book’ on it.
