Journey to Nirvana : A memoir

Bernard Durrant was England's longest serving wartime English political prisoner during World War Two.

He was held without charge or trial for 5 and a half years.

During this difficult time Bernard penned many poems, some of which are included in this memoir.

His story was later told in the acclaimed BBC documentary The Implausible Spy (1995). This memoir also details Bernard's teenage experiences in pre-war Nazi Germany and Egypt.

A child-like voice is ever present in this inspiring true story, until at last it dawns upon us that strange forces in the author's psyche must have existed there since birth, growing into a wholeness of the spirit to survive what lay ahead. All of Bernard's writings have an eerie way of drawing the reader into a parallel world, one moment in the minimalist, aesthetic simplicity of a Japanese garden, another time under interrogation by the Gestapo in 1939.

In 1997 Bernard received a prestigious award from the International Library of Poetry.

His other works include From the Butterfly's Wing (1986) and The Heart of Exile (1995).