An account of intellectual, political and daily life in two vanished places: Jerusalem before the creation of Israel and Ethiopia before the Marxist revolution, including subjects such as the British in Palestine, the Emperor Haile Sellassie, the Falashas and Ethiopian customs.

This study is an account of intellectual, political and daily life in two vanished places: Jerusalem before the creation of Israel and Ethiopia before the Marxist revolution. The author was one of the early students of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the 1930s, Assistant Secretary in the British Mandatary government in 1947-8 and held various posts in the British military administration of Eritrea-Ethiopia during the Second World War. Among the topics covered are the lost possibility of Arab-Jewish accord, the conduct of the the British in Palestine, the promotion of Hebrew as a modern language, the Falashas, Ethiopian customs and the political upheaval in Ethiopia that robbed Haile Sellassie of his throne and, according to the author, the Ethiopians of civilization.