WW2

1940 and the #1940Club

Hope I'm not jumping the gun here but the #1940Club starts next week and I've been gearing up and getting…

2 years ago

The Pineapple Party

Norman Pearson returned towards the end of January, after an absence in Spain and Portugal, bearing two bananas, two oranges…

2 years ago

Literal Nazis and the Retro-transing of History

 Researching Marienbad and the Savoy led me to Erika Mann and all the gossip, scandal, politics, and drama of her…

2 years ago

Our Flag Stays Red – Communists and Snore Detectives at the Savoy

In Our Flag Stays Red (1948) Phil Piratin - the Communist Party MP for Mile End - wrote an account…

2 years ago

Marienbad

Every Christmas growing up my family received a greeting card from the Stingl family.  I knew that my grandmother, mother,…

2 years ago

October , Propaganda, and Mrs. Miniver Buys the Chrysanthemums Herself

The Year Begins in October  Armistead Maupin based his vignettes of gay life in 1970s San Francisco - Tales of…

3 years ago

All for Nothing

Hands down, this is the best book I've read all year: All For Nothing by Walter Kempowski.  It's the bitter…

3 years ago

Evacuee Story Lines #3 Evelyn Waugh

I did, in the first weeks of the war, before I got my commission, suffer severely from 'evacuees'.- Evelyn Waugh in…

3 years ago

Evacuee Story Lines #2 C. S. Lewis

"What are you doing in the wardrobe?" "Narnia business" C.S."Jack" Lewis spent childhood years in a house in Belfast where…

3 years ago

Evacuee Story Lines #1 Nina Bawden

All our stories begin before we are born. Not Just the blue eyes or flat feet we inherit, but the…

3 years ago

War Souvenir

My father did not bring much back from his six years of war. He would have had his demob suit…

3 years ago

The Thinking

This post is in answer to the question "Operation Pied Piper: What were they thinking?" At least in terms of…

4 years ago

Bertie Wooster v. Christopher Robin

P.G.Wodehouse and A.A. Milne were the same age and in 1941 they were both close to 60. As young men…

4 years ago

What ho! George Orwell and Cancel Culture

Few things in this war have been more morally disgusting than the present hunt after traitors and Quislings. At best…

4 years ago

Operation Pied Piper: What were they thinking?

In Hamelin in Lower Saxony. there's an inscription on a wooden beam on the side of the Rattenfangerhaus (rat catcher's…

4 years ago