The latest addition to my website is Lawrence Durrell‘s Livia or Buried Alive. This is the second book in Durrell’s Avignon Quintet but not, in my view, as good as the previous one. We learned, at the end of Monsieur, that the whole story had been invented by the writer Blanford and, in this one, we follow Blanford’s life, which he used as a model for the story in Monsieur. His life is frankly not as interesting as that of Piers, Sylvie, Pia and Co., even though his friends are searching for the Templars’ treasure, he meets an Egyptian prince and a Jewish financier who seems to think that the Nazis are harmless and marries the Nazi-loving but sexy and sultry Livia, the model for Pia in Monsieur. Durrell’s set-pieces and his ruminations are always interesting but this will not be remembered as one of his best.