Taken on Trust

This is it, his own heart-rending account of how he survived for 1,763 days in captivity, almost four years of which were in solitary confinement. He reveals the inner strengths which helped him endure the savage treatment he received from his captors; and how he supported himself by his deeply held faith and his resolve not to have any regrets, any false sentimentality, or self-pity. Above all it was his recollection of times past, of his life from childhood onward, which gave him the will to keep going. He relives in his memory his humble upbringing as the son of the village policeman in Styal, Cheshire, his early career in the Church Army, his years in the dangerous role of advisor to the first African archbishop in Idi Amin's Uganda, his work in Rome as consultant to religious communities and - during his time as the Archbishop of Canterbury's envoy - his gradual emergence on the world stage as one of the most remarkable figures of his generation. A humanitarian in his own right, he became a negotiator over the plight of the hostages in Tehran and Libya - he describes his meetings with Colonel Gaddafi - and finally with the kidnappers of the Beirut hostages. He explains his ever-increasing involvement with others on all sides, including Oliver North and George Bush, until that fateful day in January 1987 when he himself was "taken on trust" and became a captive. This deeply moving autobiography, with its Kafkaesque sequence of events and taut narrative, is destined to become one of the classic accounts of man's survival at the limits of human endurance.