Books by Simon Murray

This book engages with the relationship between ruins, dilapidation, and abandonment and cultural events performed within such spaces. The book contextualises these events within the wider framework of Ruin Studies and provides brief summaries of how we might understand the ruin in terms of time, politics, culture, and atmospheres.

Simon Murray was nineteen when he joined the French Foreign Legion. Inspired by the romantic myths of Beau Geste, he found himself in the ranks of one of the world's greatest - and toughest - fighting forces. He kept a unique diary of the hard living, harsh discipline, and the military tradition of 'March or Die' which he turned into this gripping book. 'Simon Murray's personal account of a gently reared, well-educated British youth's coming of age in the French Foreign Legion has the drama, excitement and colour of a good guts-and-glory thriller . . . Murray is a talented storyteller, and his fellow legionnaires and their disciplined and proud Corps are vividly portrayed. I was hooked from the first page.' Dr Henry Kissinger 'One of the greatest adventure stories in recent years.' Chris Patten