There was hardly a dry eye in the house when Camilla Carr spoke about the 14 months she and her partner, Jon James, spent as hostages in Chechnya in 1997/98. An audience of over 50 people gathered at the Longmynd Hotel to hear her tell about their trip to help set up a centre for war-traumatized children in Grozny and how they worked through dance, song and drama to help communicate with the youngsters. Two months after their arrival Camilla and Jon were kidnapped one evening at gunpoint. She spoke movingly about the long days spent in captivity and the threats, mental torture and rape inflicted on them by various captors. Despite this, and being frequently moved around, they survived by using many of the techniques they had learned from yoga, tai chi, meditation and martial arts along with prayer and love. She explained how they tried to see things from their captors’ perspective and in doing so came to forgive them and build up a relationship that helped keep them alive. Camilla’s beliefs in the power of love and compassion over hatred and violence shone through everything she said and many in the audience were visibly moved. Camilla ended the talk with a very poignant memory of standing on a hotel balcony after being freed and gazing in wonder at the stars and the sky which they had not seen for so long.