Lifting the Stone and other Adventures

These journeys record the adventures of a woman who isn’t afraid to travel alone. They are a mesmerising and immersive read, pulsating with humour and energy. The writing itself is beautiful and extraordinarily vivid. Every place that she visits is brought to life and imbued with a charming atmosphere. The stories are grounded in fact and characterised by a profound honesty. Her unique personal style shines out in the face of an increasingly grey and uniform world.

Lifting the Stone and Other Adventures is about the past re-visited and describes a world – in the context of the author’s romantic encounters – that is based on appearances. It is a world of male domination and control in which the feminine, the soul, is stored. This piece is the background to the urban adventures, and the reader is invited to view the show, this world of delightful appearances, as a product of repression. Any writing that is worth its salt aspires to the universal, to what touches us all.

Judy Metliss was born in 1951 and grew up in North West London. After leaving school she had a variety of jobs including library assistant at the L.S.E., copywriter at a leading advertising agency, selling cleaning products door to door and Afghan waistcoats in Kensington Market. She worked in Paris as an au-pair and in Rome as an English conversation teacher. After living for nearly two years in Corsica, where her house was blown up by the FNLC, she resettled in the UK. In her forties, she studied in Cambridge for an English Literature degree. The author has two adult children and two grandchildren. She still teaches English to foreign students and enjoys reading, writing, swimming and looking at paintings.