Christian Curle, the editor of these letters, is the daughter of Sandy Curle. She was brought up in Ethiopia from the age of four, and educated at the Sandford school in Addis Ababa and then attended boarding school in England. She later read Horticulture at London University’s Wye College. After settling in Scotland where Sandy had lived and his family before him, she and her husband John set up an enterprise making an award-winning cheese while bringing up their family. Like her father Christian is a passionate gardener. And like him she has inherited his love of foreign places, Ethiopia above all. “I feel incredibly privileged to have done several trekking holidays in remote areas of Ethiopia and to have experienced the same warmth and hospitality as my father did before me.”