From the blog 'Four Thousand Lives Lost'

Alastair Walker, author of 'Four Thousand Lives Lost' has posted these very kind remarks on his blog:


'One of the guys I met on the square rigger was Andy Miller, a multi-faceted person being a professor of educational psychology as well as a poet, author, rock climber and trainee sea captain!  His current book outside his professional domain is “While Giants Sleep”. Having had the privilege of reading it over the last couple of days I can thoroughly recommend it. It is quite unlike anything I have read previously, being an eclectic mix of poetry and prose covering a variety of topics and written over a forty year period.   It is an intensely personal reflection on some of the major influences on Andy’s life and it also externalises his feelings on activities that have been challenging but which have given great satisfaction. There is a moving description of trekking across the Annapurna Range from Nepal to Tibet as well as a tense recall of a near-fatal incident on a cliff in the Peak District. I have learned something about why people climb that I never understood before'.


The comment about me being a trainee sea captain is, of course, intended to be ironical. I can't tell my aft from my starboard. I'm reading Alastair's book about the inquiries into the sinking of the Titanic and three other vessels in the same period. He's a cracking writer and story teller and  can thoroughly recommend his book.