Borderlands, the country time forgot

Beyond the borders of Europe - in other words, the EU, likes Ukraine. It is as large country, as big as France, Spain and Germany put together, with major differences between the east, sovietised, mainly Russian speaking and centre of heavy industry and the west, which is rural with lovely rolling landscapes and fascinating old towns. Here you find gems of architecture: Baroque cathedrals, monasteries and palaces, ancient synagogues and gravestones which bear witness of peoples lost for ever: Polish and Jewish, who once called this lovely land their home.

I'm talking about West Ukraine, the areas known in English as Volhynia and Podole. The people here were multi-cultural and multi-lingual: Jews, Czechs, Germans, Poles, Armenians, Ukrainians and gypsies lived side by side with a fair degree of harmony. War with its tyrannies exploited the differences between these groups with resultant blood-baths and horror. Oh, how many battles have been fought over this lovely land! I coined a phrase: Ukraine; the land that time forgot, but war and politics did not.

To visit here is truly like going back in time, to Poland as it was fifty years ago, to rural England (rather than Scotland) as it must have been before the First world War. Here transport is by horse and cart (though mini buses , uncomfortably jam-packed, race over rutted roads with the occasional fast car overtaking them. Here water comes from a pump in the street or is borne on elderly shoulders from pure wells, blessed with an icon for water is sacred...

My husband Stuart and I are about to pay our fourth visit to this area. We are trying to research the story of one old town. Recently I've been thrilled by the books of Joseph Roth (died 1939) who writes about his own shtetl, Brody. Brody is the setting too of Jonathon Safran Froer's best selling book, Everything is illuminated. Watch this space for more