At the age of 18 months, Jonathan Fryer was adopted into a prosperous business family in Greater Manchester, but he felt like a fish out of water there. When his adoptive father started interfering with him sexually, his only dream was to get away as far as possible. The seeds were thus sown for him to take on the life of a foreign correspondent, beginning with his leaving home at the age of 18 to cover the Vietnam War. Eccles Cakes is beautifully written, poignantly touching, disarmingly frank. Michael Bloch Jonathan Fryer graduated from Oxford University with a degree in Oriental Studies. After a spell working for Reuters News Agency he became a freelance writer and broadcaster, working mainly for the BBC and Middle Eastern television channels. A familiar voice from Radio 4's From Our Own Correspondent, he is the author of a dozen volumes of history, biography and current affairs. He was finally reunited with his birth family in 2014.