A couple of old forgotten Authors

I guess one has to just go back in time. Pertinent to what I said in the introduction. Here one is after a major mishap in ones life and as already mentioned I needed to read and read plenty. So I joined the local library for a minimal expense. This was in a rural farming community back home in Zimbabwe and was only open once a week on a Friday, when people went to the village for their weekly shopping and maybe get a few books to read.

It was manned or should I say womaned (little new Spook word there), by the local Women's Institute branch? And a fine, old, bunch of loveable duckies they were too. Over a period of time (not that I never knew them beforehand), they get to know you and when you are stuck for choice of a book, just ask the experts? Slowly they wean you onto things you had no idea existed, God bless them.

It was this way that I first came across Winston Graham, who writes so beautifully. The first book I ever read of his was: "The Walking Stick".

Gradually I read more and more of his works and became enchanted.

Now here is another remarkable faction author.

Because I was living in a country which was going through remarkable political strife and also a terrorist war, I was inclined to read his books. Furthermore, my father was a veteran of the second World War, having served in the Royal Navy and I was intrigued by the stories he told.

Part of war (the Rhodesian one), had to do with a disenfranchised black population resorting to arms guided by communist ideologies and armed by them. I never could, nor never have been able to understand this. You see, because I always knew that the majority of the people were dead set against this. I needed to read different aspects from different people and living in different times.

So it was that I came upon Leon Uris. I loved him from the first go, because, he set fictional characters against the background of Nazi Germany. More importantly, if there is any race which has suffered untold discrimination and persecution, it was the Jews. I tried to look at things, by how they were being treated and how we were treating our own people. The difference was unbelievable and it saddened me that all those great countries (the Allies), our parents fought for, were so busy selling us down the drain.

I digressed slightly, but, Leon Uris's stories about the holocaust in the second World War need to be read again.

Lest we forget?

Image from Leon Uris

Now here is an absolute master. There comes a time when I just get a bit tired of reading serious stuff. A bit of comic, light relief is a more than welcome change. I can think of no greater master than George MacDonald Fraser, a raconteur of note.

Despite this ability to make one laugh his novels are also meticulously researched and he covers a vast panorama of the world. Normally containing a few dodgy characters. The use of English remains however, superb.

An example being, he took a very minor character from Tom Brown's school days, a bully and turned this into his greatest factional masterpiece. That of Harry Flashman, great looking, a soldier of fortune, coward and cad. The story of the beginning of his career until a fully fledged General, holder of the Victoria Cross and into his dotage. Embracing most of Europe's history of the time, the America's, Africa, one adventure after the other, including meeting, amongst others, Bismarck, Abraham Lincoln and many Kings and Queens.

Kindly note, although meticulously researched and disarmingly funny, Ladies will not be keen on these novels, but , Gentlemen will love them.

After all, does a Gentleman got to stay in a hotel?

Image from The Telegraph.