I meant to tell you about Masters of the Everyday: Dutch Artists in the Age of Vermeer, the current exhibition at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace. It is a remarkably good show. I’m not writing about it because afterwards on my way to lunch. I took this picture on The Mall.
Nazi soldiers, a fighter ‘plane, military vehicles; it’s SS-GB being filmed, a BBC mini-series that will be screened later this year. It will be a five hour adaptation of Len Deighton’s novel of the same name that explores the moral and practical decisions that people would have faced if Germany had won the Battle of Britain and invaded this country.
I have not read the novel and am unlikely to. There are enough true war stories to read which I find more satisfying. I’m going to pick just three. My criteria are that they are, of course, well written and that they are on my shelves. I hope that you will be piqued into reading those that are not already familiar to you.
The best known is Love and War in the Apennines by Eric Newby. (His other great book is A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush.) Newby is taken prisoner in Italy, escapes and is befriended by locals, one of whom, Wanda, he marries after the war. Don’t let that one trite sentence put you off a beautifully written memoir.
Next, John Verney’s Going to the Wars. He writes with as much insouciance as Newby, making light of what was really no joking matter. How can you resist a war memoir with a chapter headed “Thumbs up! Tiggerty-Boo! Up the Bible Class”?
Finally, a very moving memoir written by General Sir John Hackett, I was a Stranger. He was a Brigadier at the Battle of Arnhem, was badly wounded and hospitalised. Surgery by a Dutch doctor saved his life. The Dutch Resistance rescued him and for most of a bitterly cold winter he was hidden in the home of a Dutch family. They took a great risk sheltering him and suffered hardship sharing their scarce food with him. It is a very moving account that is unexpected coming from the pen of a successful professional soldier. His depiction of the lives his protectors led will move you.
Would we in the UK have shown such moral certainty? The answer is that some would and some would not. For me it’s of great interest to read what actually happened when Newby and Hackett were protected by strangers in a foreign country. It’s of much less interest to speculate in a work of fiction (SS-GB) what might have happened here.
To add to your wish list try
A Small Place in Italy by Eric Newby when he goes back to live in Italy years later with Wanda
We Fell Among Greeks by Denys Hamson. Denys was with SOE and was dropped behind enemy lines in Greece to blow up the Gorgopotamos viaduct. Long out of print but copies still available
As a follow on to your blog today, in the midst of a very busy day I felt the urge to reread it and was struck by your sentence “For me it’s of great interest to read what actually happened when Newby and Hackett were protected by strangers in a foreign country”.
A few years ago I read, and was curiously affected by, an anthology called “The Kindness of Strangers”. This is not to be confused with Kate Adie’s autobiography of the same name. It is a charming collections of vignettes by travel writers and journalists about small events on their travels that stuck in their mind. I reflect on it from time to time and realise what a big difference to people very small gestures can make.
Check it out if you get the chance.