The general framework of Charles de Foucauld's life is set out very clearly in the pages that follow, but two periods have always made an especial appeal to me. First there was the time that he spent in the wooden hut in the garden of the Poor Clares at Nazareth working as a gardener and handiman, recalling as few modern lives can do the simplicity of the Holy Family. And then the years that he spent as a priest at Hoggar Tamanrasset in the Touareg country. In the later part of this period he seems to have known that as far as this world was concerned nothing would go well with him. His work was written in the surrounding sand.