At times a memoir, at others a historical perspective, this book chronicles the history of the English-Speaking Union from its founding by Sir Evelyn Wrench and Charles Cochrane in a London cafe in 1912. In what the London Daily Mail called “this sparkling book,” the author gives special attention to the introduction of the ESU into Sri Lanka, a country that had banned English in 1956 in reaction to years of British rule.
  Michael Wynne-Parker has a keen insider’s perception of the role the English-Speaking Union has to play. His aim is to make the english language available to the whole world as a common language of tolerance and inclusion.