Poland

	A Country in the Moon     A Country in the Moon         A Country in the Moon         Interview with Michael Moran         Interview with Michael Moran illustrated with scenes of Warsaw

A Country in the Moon
Travels in Search of the Heart of Poland

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Poland was once the largest country in Europe – and one of the most powerful. The opulence of the Orient lived alongside the melancholy of the Romantic north, creating a nation of passionate extremes and paradoxical psychology, one which valued honour and freedom above all. But, devastated by waves of brutal invaders – Tatars, Swedes, Germans and Russians – Poland was virtually eclipsed in the eighteenth century, an all but forgotten magnificence.

A Country in the Moon is the result of Michael Moran’s fascination with this remarkable land over nearly two decades. Honouring a deathbed pledge to his uncle– an eccentric concert pianist obsessed with the music of Chopin – he gives an insider’s view of a country that, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, embarked on wrenching change and the present confrontation of ghosts from the wartime and communist past.

In this entertaining personal memoir and meticulously researched cultural journey we keep company with a gallery of fantastic characters – Tatars and Teutonic Knights, Napoleon’s mistress and daredevil Spitfire pilots, robbers and Rolls-Royce mechanics, heroic defenders of freedom alongside an ill-assorted group of modern Britons and Poles. In chronicling the resurrection of the nation from war and the Holocaust, Moran paints a portrait of cities lost and cities gained, monumental castles, primeval forests and picturesque landscape gardens – among the finest yet leastknown in Europe.

This captivating journey into the heart of Poland is a timely celebration of a valiant and richly cultured people only now returning to the European fold.

Publication Date April 7th. 2008