You probably thought John Verney did the dust jacket for his book. I wondered and he didn’t.
It’s an abstract evocation of the harsh mountains and gorges, forests and arid valleys of the Abruzzi. It works. At least twenty years ago I went on a walking holiday in the area. There were peasant women in black working the fields with primitive implements under a scorching sun, while their men-folk took their ease, smoking in the shade. In the mountains where I wanted to walk it was heavy going and easy to get lost. It cannot have changed for centuries. It is where Allied POWs hid and tried to reach the Eight Army lines in 1943/44.
The artist is Kenneth Farnhill and Verney’s memoir isn’t his usual sort of book. He often worked with Collins, Verney’s publisher, which may account for his deviation. Farnhill’s artwork is highly collectible and these are some examples.
His metier is mystery/crime fiction.
A Dinner of Herbs interposes Verney’s time in captivity and eventual escape with his return to Italy twenty years later when he meets the peasants who had so bravely helped him and there are some unexpected twists and reveals.
Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith. (Proverbs XV 17)
Now I am re-reading Love and War in the Apennines (1971) by Eric Newby. I’m getting to know the geography.
