In 1977, in her astonishing account of a winter spent with her six year old daughter in the sub-zero Indus Valley in Baltistan, Dervla Murphy declared that she had ‘no head for politics’.  In ‘A Month By the Sea: Encounters in Gaza’, her no less astonishing new book, it is abundantly clear that much has changed on that front in the ensuing 35 years, and readers of Dervla’s recent books may rather suspect that her claim made in Baltistan may well have been a case of modesty over accuracy.