After fifteen years' work, this sequel to Reflections in an Oval Mirror is finally ready for publication. The original work described how Anneli Wiemer, a young girl leading a carefree existence on an East Prussian farm, gradually had to wake up to the realities of Nazism and then the Second World War, finally being forced to flee across the frozen wastes in a horrendous trek to escape the Red Army.

Her new book, Carpe Diem, describes her life after arrival in West Germany. At first, as a refugee she moves rapidly from one job to the next — interpreter for military government, secretary, hotel receptionist... Finally she finds work as a journalist, and ends up assisting The Observer's foreign correspondent in Berlin, just at the time when the Marshall Plan and Russian blockade are starting. Forced to flee again in the Berlin airlift, she is then asked to become a mother's help for the original Swallows and Amazons at Lake Coniston, before beginning her own family in Kent. But the adventures continue...

The author had drawn up an initial draft for Carpe Diem already before Reflections was published in 2008 — but died in 2011 before it could be completed. Her family have been working ever since then to tease out the details from her countless letters, diaries, and thousands of annotated photographs, and compile them into a coherent narrative.