War
Goodbye to Berlin
Peter Parker is beguiled by a novel approach to the lives of Europe’s intellectual elite in flight from Nazi Germany In his time, Heinrich Mann was considered one of Germany’s… Read more
What did you do in the war, Mummy?
By tradition, ‘What did you do in the war?’ is a question children address to Daddy, not to Mummy. By tradition, ‘What did you do in the war?’ is a… Read more
A conflict of loyalty
What was life like in Hitler’s Germany? This question has long fascinated authors and readers alike, as books like Alone in Berlin, The Boy with the Striped Pyjamas and The… Read more
Redefining the war
There are more than 100,000 American and Allied troops in Afghanistan. That is, there are more than 1,000 troops for every suspected al-Qa’eda ‘operative’. Not for the first time in… Read more
Why the heck not?
Philip Hensher recounts how a handful of British mercenaries in the 1960s, headed by the Buchanesque Jim Johnson (pictured above), trained a rag-tag force of Yemeni tribesmen to defeat the… Read more
Beasts in battle
‘Never such innocence again’ wrote Philip Larkin of an unquestioning British people on the eve of the first world war, and much has been made, not unreasonably, of the trusting… Read more
Hell or high water
As his battered bomber hurtled towards the Pacific in May 1943, Louis Zamperini thought to himself that no one was going to survive the crash. If he had had the… Read more
A far-fetched war
First, a disclaimer: this review will not touch upon some recent, odd behaviour of this book’s author, Orlando Figes, because I can’t see that it’s relevant. First, a disclaimer: this… Read more
What we did to them . . .
The perception of war changes, remarked the poet Robert Graves, when ‘your Aunt Fanny, the firewatcher, is as likely to be killed as a soldier in battle’. The perception of… Read more
. . . and they did to us
The craters are all filled in, the ruins replaced, and the last memories retold only in the whispery voices of the old. Apart from celebrating the resilience of our parents… Read more
A dream to fly
Undeniably the Hawker Hurricane has suffered the fate of the less pretty sister. It is the Spitfire, at once beautiful and deadly, that is forever the star of 1940, firmly… Read more
Mud, blood and jungle rot
The Matterhorn, at 14,679 feet in the Alps, is said to be very difficult to climb. It is an apt military designation for a (fictional) jungle peak that United States… Read more
Not cowardly enough
Nobody who reads Nigel Farndale’s The Blasphemer is likely to complain about being short-changed. Nobody who reads Nigel Farndale’s The Blasphemer is likely to complain about being short-changed. It tackles… Read more
Beyond the call of duty
David Crane’s latest book is much more interesting than its title would lead you to believe. If you buy it hoping for a collection of stories of derring-do and British… Read more
The end of the affair
Given the anti-Americanism displayed on every possible occasion by the French since the days of De Gaulle, and the crudely expressed contempt with which Americans have responded, particularly over the… Read more
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