Adam Czerniawski is a Polish poet, essayist and translator born in 1934 in Warsaw, Poland, now living in Wales. In his memoir Scenes from a disturbed childhood he describes the war-time years when he and his family were trying to escape German and Russian occupation of Poland during 1939. With his mother, sister and dog he eventually was able to leave Poland in 1941, travelling through Austria, Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria to Turkey, and eventually to Palestine and Lebanon, where he lived until moving to Britain in 1947. Studied literature and philosophy at the universities of London, Sussex and Oxford