Catching Up On My Reading

There are loads of books that people like me (age/background/hobbies) are expected to have read. Lord of the Rings, Hornblower, Face of Battle, Watership Down that sort of thing. And films too. Casablanca, Fistful of Dollars, Alien, Guns of Navarone and so on.

There are holes in my reading in this respect (we'll ignore movies for the moment), which were brought home to me recently by almost serendipitous events. 

Firstly, Amazon let me know that Spike Milligan's "Monty: His part in my victory" was available for Kindle for 99p. Well, I've never read ANY of Milligan's war memoirs. The first one was quite the thing when I was at school, but I never read it, and never felt the need to read it since, much as I like his sense of humour and have read other of his books. 

Of course, the cheap one is the third in the series, but the preceding two were only £4.99 each, so I went in and bought all three.

The first is sort of why I probably didn't read them in the first place. There's large sections which are not just unreliable memoirs but completely fictional, and there's silly jokey pictures and all that sort of Spike Milligan stuff. I read it - it isn't very long - and didn't feel like it had moved me on all that much in terms of understanding life, the universe and everything. 

The second book sees a change of gear, especially after his unit is shipped to North Africa. He becomes more interested in exactly what is happening where and to whom. There's some silly pictures, but it is settling in to being a highly readable war memoir. By the third memoir it is full on, and the preface to the fourth (I'm part way through) highlights how much trouble he went to to get the details right. I'm pleased to have come to these later in life. 

The other book I stumbled across was Rosemary Sutcliffe's "Eagle of the Ninth" (I know - why didn't I read it at school? I read Henry Treece's "Legions of the Eagle" and loved it). It was in a bookshop at a Roman site on Hadrian's Wall, in a special three books in one edition, so I bought it on an impulse.

I've read two of the three novels in the collection now. "Eagle of the Ninth" surprised me, as the plot wasn't what I expected. I expect I'd have been engaged with it if I'd read it when I was 10, and it stands up now, being well written. The characters are very 1950s, and research has moved on, of course. It is also Shakespearean in that in this modern age it might be best not to focus on the age of some of the characters, as it ends with the lead character marrying a 13-14 year old. Accurate it may be, but best of luck getting that past an editor these days.

The second novel "The Silver Branch" is less well known, and frankly isn't as good. 

I'll read the third novel in due course, but without the tinge of nostalgia I won't be re-reading any of them. I don't need to be inspired to get interested in Roman history, for which this book was the starting point for many.

Now, off to find a copy of "Legions of the Eagle". It has an elephant in it.