Nicholas Monsarrat is an unjustly neglected author. If you have read any of his novels it will be The Cruel Sea. I hadn’t read anything of his until last weekend.
Newsreaders on the wireless have adopted a new phrase: “now for the latest … “ and there is a clip, and it isn’t necessarily live, from a sports venue, Westminster, Gaza, Kiev etc. Well, you won’t find the latest here.
Olivia Manning took inspiration from her wartime service with the British Council in Bucharest for her Balkan Trilogy. Lawrence Durrell used his time with the British Council in Belgrade to write authoritatively about Yugoslavia in White Eagles Over Serbia.
”A diary is an assassin’s cloak which we wear when we stab a comrade in the back with a pen.” (William Soutar, 1898 – 1943, Scottish poet diarist and epigrammatist)