'Life does not come again; if you have not lived during the days that were given to you, once only, then write it down as lost …'

Ernle Bradford was 21 years old when he read these words of Chekhov which were forever to haunt him.

It was this simple truth that later prompted him and his wife to sell their flat and furniture, leave their jobs and, four months later, sail off to France in a ten-ton Dutch cutter, the Mother Goose.

The Journeying Moon tells of their voyage through the French canals to Southern Italy and Greece and a peaceful existence off the beaten track.

Ernle Bradford writes charmingly and evocatively of his Mediterranean adventures: of the people of Malta who were convinced he was from MI5; of his brushes with the Mafia on Sicily; of his experiences as 'assistant naval adviser' on a film unit in Palermo, and of the caves of Levanzo, which boast the southernmost examples of prehistoric European art.

The Journeying Moon is a vivid and powerful record of true adventure by a true adventurer.

'It has real poetry to it; a poetry of sea and sun, of departure and landfall' Times Literary Supplement

Ernie Bradford was born in 1921. He joined the Navy on his eighteenth birthday and served in the Mediterranean fleet, and later on Arctic convoys. He was a dedicated writer and sailor, an international authority on antique jewellery, and the author of many books on this subject, and on Mediterranean history. He was also the author of several accomplished biographies. He died in 1986.

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