Live in Melbourne and love aperitif hour/s? You've likely been to Gerald's. 

Gerald Diffey’s memoir moves between postwar Europe and Australia, tracing a life that bends from displacement to hospitality. Known in Melbourne for Gerald’s Bar, Diffey writes here about exile, migration, and the making of a sensibility — how war, scarcity, and movement across continents shape taste, temperament, and work.

It is a life full of everything. There's all of these lived observations: memory serves as apprenticeship and expertise alike. For readers interested in Melbourne’s cultural life, migrant histories, or the ethics behind hospitality, it carries a particular local resonance. 

It's also fantastic to just hear the bartender's stories, when we spend so much of our time letting them listen to our own.