Interesting thought Max – I enjoyed reading about Vis as an island, finding out more about a community of people but I an intrigued to find out more about Croatia as a whole. Do you have any other book suggestions that would potentially highlight the beauty of Croatia that you have noticed. It is a country that we still have on our list of places to visit so I would love to find out more.

I appreciate you bringing the facts to the attention of both myself and my readers. Whilst this is a well-written account of moving from the UK and embracing life in a small community in a different country, for many people, facts are still important if they are reading a book based on real happenings.

No criticism of yourself was intended, and I don’t think anyone can be blamed for taking the book at face value. I just wanted to shed a little light on the real story.

The Vis Cricket Club website has a history page that makes for fun/interesting reading. And the Telegraph piece is a pretty good summary of the back story as well.

Bruce, thank you for this information. I was asked to read and review the book from a literary perspective but I can appreciate that I should have perhaps looked further into the facts surrounding it. As a reviewer I have taken the information at face value, naive perhaps, but I didn’t know that there was any controversy surrounding the details. As a book, it is still interesting to read about an Englishman upping sticks and heading to a relatively unknown area of Croatia but I have learnt from this and will, in the future, make sure that the facts are also correct, if that is what the book is trying to convey.

For those that would like to find out more about the Vis Cricket club I have attached a link to the Vis Cricket Club – http://www.viscricket.com/ and a link to the Telegraph article mentioned from 2003 – http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/croatia/1425399/Croatian-island-re-discovers-its-history-and-takes-up-cricket.html.

I’m afraid that the author has invented his association with the club on Vis and in doing so has angered members of the club he claims to have founded. The truth is that the author’s claims (founding the club, ringing round for equipment, applying for a development grant, procuring the services of a coach, organizing practice, arranging the transportation of an artificial pitch, organizing the clubs first opponents, and even umpiring and scoring matches) were the work of other people and not the author at all.

That the cricket story presented in his book seems plausible can be attributed to the author having used details from previously-published accounts of the club’s formation, including the book The Ascent of Mount Hum.

We still have Croatia on our list of places to visit but after reading this book it definitely moved up that list! Vis sounds like such a lovely place I know I would need to spend a few days there relaxing. Hope you enjoy reading it! 🙂

Thanks for the link Carole – we will definitely be looking to visit Vis in the near future.

I would also like to take this opportunity to say congratulations – we ran our draw yesterday after the close of our competition and I would like to announce yourself as our lucky winner. Well Done! Can I ask that you send you address details to [email protected] and I will get a copy of Under A Croatian Sun sent out to you. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did! 🙂