Tag: Reviews

#WWWWednesday – 20th April 2022

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WWWWednesdays

Hosted by Taking on a World of Words, this meme is all about the three Ws:

  • What are you currently reading?
  • What did you recently finish reading?
  • What do you think you’ll read next?

Why not join in too?  Leave a comment with your link at Taking on a World of Words and then go blog hopping!

Currently reading

Mailed_Fist_CoverMailed Fist by John Foley (ARC, Imperial War Museum)

In April 1943, newly commissioned John Foley is posted to command Five Troop and their trusty Churchill tanks Avenger, Alert, and Angler – thus begins his initiation into the Royal Armoured Corps. Covering the trials of training, embarkation to France and battle experience through Normandy, the Netherlands, the Ardennes campaign and into Germany, Foley’s intimate and detailed account follows the fate of this group of men in the latter stages of the Second World War. If this book can be said to be a history of anything, it is a history of Five Troop. Not of the squadron, or of the regiment. If anybody wants to know what happened in other troops, or in other squadrons, it’s all recorded painstakingly in the War Diaries and lodged in a Records Office somewhere.

In Place of FearIn Place of Fear by Catriona McPherson (eARC, Hodder & Stoughton via NetGalley)

Helen leaned close enough to fog the mirror with her breath and whispered, ‘You, my girl, are a qualified medical almoner and at eight o’clock tomorrow morning you will be on the front line of the National Health Service of Scotland.’ Her eyes looked huge and scared. ‘So take a shake to yourself!”

Edinburgh, 1948. Helen Crowther leaves a crowded tenement home for her very own office in a doctor’s surgery. Upstart, ungrateful, out of your depth – the words of disapproval come at her from everywhere but she’s determined to take her chance and play her part.

She’s barely begun when she stumbles over a murder and learns that, in this most respectable of cities, no one will fight for justice at the risk of scandal. As Helen resolves to find a killer, she’s propelled into a darker world than she knew existed, hardscrabble as her own can be. Disapproval is the least of her worries now.

Recently finished

The Capsarius by Simon Turney (Head of Zeus)

Fortune by Amanda Smyth (Peepal Tree) 

Mr Bunting at War by Robert Greenwood (Imperial War Museum)

The Dark Flood by Deon Mayer (Hodder & Stoughton) 

What Cathy (will) Read Next

The MagicianThe Magician by Colm Tóibín (Viking) 

The Magician tells the story of Thomas Mann, whose life was filled with great acclaim and contradiction. He would find himself on the wrong side of history in the First World War, cheerleading the German army, but have a clear vision of the future in the second, anticipating the horrors of Nazism.

He would have six children and keep his homosexuality hidden; he was a man forever connected to his family and yet bore witness to the ravages of suicide. He would write some of the greatest works of European literature, and win the Nobel Prize, but would never return to the country that inspired his creativity.

Through one life, Colm Tóibín tells the breathtaking story of the twentieth century.

#BlogTour #BookReview Mr Bunting at War by Robert Greenwood @RandomTTours @I_W_M

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Mr Bunting at War BT PosterWelcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for Mr Bunting at War by Robert Greenwood.  My thanks to Anne at Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part in the tour and to the Imperial War Museum for my review copy.

Mr_Bunting_At_War_CoverAbout the Book

George Bunting, businessman, husband and father, lives a quiet life at home in Laburnam Villa in Essex, reading about the progress of the war in his trusty newspaper and heading to work every day at the same warehouse where he has been employed for his entire adult life. Viewed with an air of amusement by his children, Mr Bunting’s war efforts subsist mainly of ‘digging for victory” and erecting a dugout in the garden.

But as the Second World War continues into the summer of 1940, the Battle of Britain rages in the skies and the bombs begin to rain down on London, this bumbling ‘everyman’ is forced to confront the true realities of the conflict. He does so with a remarkable stoicism, imbuing him with a quiet dignity.

Format: Paperback (256 pages) Publisher: Imperial War Museum
Publication date: 21 April 2022 Genre: Modern Classics

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My Review

I have enjoyed every book I’ve read in the Imperial War Museum’s Wartime Classics series but Mr Bunting At War is my new favourite and I am offically in love with Mr Bunting. As with all the books in the series, it has a fascinating introduction examining the historical context of the book but it does contain a spoiler so I would recommend reading it after finishing the book.

Mr Bunting has a quiet stoicism and a detemination to put on a brave face for the sake of his family. ‘However disheartened he felt, he always remembered to pull himself together as he reached home. He looked upon it as a duty.’

I loved all the little details of domestic life in the Bunting household – Mr Bunting’s perpetual war on waste, his love of a good sausage roll, his incomprehension at his daughter Julie’s vegetarianism, Mrs Bunting’s meticulous approach to laundry. Although the book has plenty of humour, especially in the Bunting children’s gentle teasing of their father, it doesn’t shy away from depicting the terrible impact of German bombing raids on London and surrounding areas.  The destroyed houses and businesses, the streets littered with debris, the loved ones wounded, missing or dead. There are moments of hope, such as the wartime wedding of Mr Bunting’s son, Ernest, but also moments of great sadness.  I was moved by the way Mr and Mrs Bunting face up to things when adversity strikes, each drawing on the strength and support of the other. ‘We’ve got to go through the dark days together. It helps when you’ve got somebody.’ Oh dear, I think I have something in my eye.  In a way, their determination to carry on, even in the face of personal tragedy, exemplifies the courage of a nation whose freedom and very existence is threatened.

Yes, the book could be viewed as a propaganda piece intended to maintain public morale – there were plenty of films made during the Second World War designed to do just that – but who doesn’t need something uplifting during a time of crisis, something to raise the spirits and keep hope alive? And now that Europe faces a new aggressor, there’s something prophetic about the observation, ‘All the warnings of past years, all the unheeded prophecies, were now the facts of the moment, a nightmare made true and visible’. And I found myself agreeing with Mr Bunting’s observation, ‘It was a pity there weren’t more people like himself, particularly on the Continent. The more Buntings, the fewer Hitlers he considered’. I have a feeling there are quite a few Mr Buntings in Ukraine at the moment.

It will be pretty clear by now that I loved this book. It made me laugh, it made me cry and above all it made me marvel once again at the courage of those who lived through the Second World War and found the strength to carry on.

‘He was not brilliant, nor heroic, but there was one thing he could do – endure.’ This for me summed up the charm of Mr Bunting, the earnest, dogged and steadfast hero of this wonderful book.

In three words: Eloquent, tender, moving

Try something similar: Mrs Miniver by Jan Struther

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About the Author

Robert Greenwood (1897 – 1981) was a novelist and writer. His first novel depicted the family and working life of the eponymous Mr Bunting (1940). His next novel, Mr Bunting at War (1941), continued this story in the first two years of the Second World War. Mr Bunting at War was made into a film the following year entitled Salute John Citizen (1942), which proved tremendously popular at the box office. Greenwood’s other novel about the war was The Squad Goes Out (1943), which depicted the work of a voluntary ambulance squad during the London Blitz. Greenwood wrote eleven novels in total as well as a number of short stories, including Mr Bunting in the Promised Land (1949) which tells the story of the Bunting family in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. He died in 1981.