A quick update since my last post. I've not posted recently as Mrs T and I were in Andalucía for 10 days immediately after I wrote it. Since I came back I've been doing publicity for the Wars of the Roses Memorial Database project led by the Battlefields Trust. In addition to the BBC website posting (which does not feature me) I did an interview for local BBC radio, and was also in the BBC Look East report. Both of the links for these have now expired, so I can just post a screen shot as evidence.
I came back from Spain with the inklings of a cold, which then emerged in full force on Thursday. I struggled out that evening to give a talk to a local history group on Northamptonshire's Country Houses during the Civil War, and then spent Friday asleep. Consequently there have been no wargames played, no painting done and no blogs posted.
I did manage to finish reading Spike Milligan's memoirs. When I left you I'd reported I'd finished Book 5, "Where Have All the Billets Gone?". This sees Milligan certified as B1 and therefore unfit for front line duty due to Battle Fatigue. It covers his time in the Recovery Camps in Italy, and then his gravitating towards joining troupes entertaining the troops(!). It is not outright hilarious (regardless of what the blurbs say) but then neither was book 4. By the end of it he is out of the army and making a go of being an entertainer in a musical comedy act called the Bill Hall Trio in Italy, performing for the troops. This is the main theme of the book, along with a detailed account of his relationship with Toni Fontana, an Italian ballet dancer he meets through the troupe. And his other sexual conquests and desires. Some of it is funny, but compared with the war memoirs of books 2/3/4 it seems more contrived and in places very smug. The final book, "Peace Work", takes him away from Italy, where he cheats on Toni, sleeps with any woman he can and finally meets up and starts to work with the people he will create the Goon Show with. It's the least interesting on the books, and the one with more jokes elf consciously included. I read books 6 & 7 because I'd bought them and they were on my Kindle when I was feeling rough. If I hadn't, then I wouldn't have bought them given where book 5 ended.
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