Robert Gorelangton

What’s a war book without a dead Nazi?

Objections are raised to a cracking new children’s book on account of a dead German soldier and pictures of frostbite. But the young adore grisly bits, says Robert Gore-Langton

Objections are raised to a cracking new children’s book on account of a dead German soldier and pictures of frostbite. But the young adore grisly bits, says Robert Gore-Langton

There’s a cracking new children’s book out, Mission Telemark, by the award-winning writer Amanda Mitchison. It is set in the second world war and it’s based on the story of the Norwegian sabotage raid on Hitler’s ‘heavy water’ atomic plant in Telemark. You might remember the film The Heroes of Telemark, starring Kirk Douglas as a most unconvincing Norwegian. Both the film and the book were based on the famous 1942 mission — a tale of great courage, skis and atoms. 

In the children’s novel the saboteurs are young teenagers and the foursome are sent to Scotland to be brutally trained in special ops by a peppery British colonel. The Norwegian youngsters are dropped on to the forbidding Hardanger Plateau and eventually blow up the plant, then escape over the freezing mountains into neutral Sweden with the Germans hot on their heels. The book is part thriller, part Ray Mears-style survival guide. It tells you how to live off moss, how to suck the fat from a reindeer’s eye-sockets, how to resist interrogation by the Gestapo. Indeed it tells you how to do things children of 11 to 14 (and I) would dearly like to know. The author, the mother of two boys, was keen to insert plenty of action and grisly bits.

But guess what? The book’s schools distributor won’t touch it, the publisher is keen to eliminate all references to death, and libraries have decided that the book’s illustrations are too grisly for our delicate children. They object, for example, to a photo of frost- bitten toes and a diagram showing how to skin a rabbit.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in