The Lipniackis arrived in Britain (via Siberia and Palestine) when Ewa was three. She was educated in a Polish convent boarding-school in Northamptonshire, and progressed to London University where she took a degree in Polish. In her late teens she was one of the first English Poles to set out to rediscover the real Poland, and found a vast family stretching from the Wol'omin Poles to the Poles of Cze?stochowa. She has been extending this network ever since. A naturalised Willesden Pole, she maintains close links with the Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Rugby and Galashiels Poles. Her home has become a central node on the Polish world trade routes linking the Warsaw, Krakow, Poznan' and Gdan'sk Poles with the New York, New Jersey, Toronto, Melbourne, Venezuela, South Africa and Patagonia Poles. Like bindweed, Polish roots are long and indestructible. A librarian by profession, she can be found most Saturdays at the Polish Library in Hammersmith. She has written several rarefied works on librarianship and a clutch of children's picture books - most of which are illustrated by her cousin, a Balham Pole.