The invisible victory

by Richard Gordon

Jim Elgar is a young chemist struggling to find work in nineteen-thirties' Britain. He moves instead to the scientific world in Germany and finds himself perfectly placed to undertake top-secret work for the British war effort.His ensuing role in counter-espionage takes him on a high-speed spy-chase through Europe, only just ahead of the invading Nazis.'The Invisible Victory' is the story of cut-throat medical research and life-saving discoveries in the face of wide-scale suffering and death.

309 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Richard Gordon is the pen name used by Gordon Ostlere (born Gordon Stanley Ostlere on September 15, 1921), an English surgeon and anaesthetist. As Richard Gordon, Ostlere has written several novels, screenplays for film and television and accounts of popular history, mostly dealing with the practice of medicine. He is most famous for a long series of comic novels on a medical theme starting with Doctor in the House, and the subsequent film, television and stage adaptations. His The Alarming History of Medicine was published in 1993, and he followed this with The Alarming History of Sex.

Gordon worked as anaesthetist at St. Bartholomew's Hospital (where he was a medical student) and later as a ship's surgeon and as assistant editor of the British Medical Journal. He has published several technical books under his own name including Anaesthetics for Medical Students(1949); later published as Ostlere and Bryce-Smith's Anaesthetics for Medical Students in 1989, Anaesthetics and the Patient (1949) and Trichlorethylene Anaesthesia (1953). In 1952, he left medical practice and took up writing full time. He has an uncredited role as an anesthesiologist in the movie Doctor in the House.

The early Doctor novels, set in the fictitious St Swithin's, a teaching hospital in London, were initially witty and apparently autobiographical; later books included more sexual innuendo and farce. The novels were very successful in Britain in Penguin paperback during the 1960s and 1970s. Richard Gordon also contributed to Punch magazine and has published books on medicine, gardening, fishing and cricket.

The film adaptation of Doctor in the House was released in 1954, two years after the book, while Doctor at Sea came out the following year with Brigitte Bardot. Dirk Bogarde starred as Dr. Simon Sparrow in both. The later spin-off TV series were often written by other well-known British comic performers.

Reviews

[Lucy Fisher · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author of the farcical "Doctor" books wrote several straight-ish novels each following a medical breakthrough, following its fortunes through the 20th century.

This one starts before the war. The chemist hero is studying in Germany where he becomes fond of the family he lodges with - especially with the serious, blonde daughter. They are in Wuppertal and travel around on the Schwebebahn (look it up).

The Germans are looking for other uses of the azo family of artificial dyes. Not as dull as it sounds, and he lifts a copy of a vital research paper and takes it home, as days darken in Germany. There is romance, there are spies, there is a mysterious American who seems to bear a charmed life. It all becomes rather fantastic.

He returns to Germany after the war and finds his beloved Fraülein in hospital, having just given birth after being raped by a Nazi officer. Her brother joined the party early on. Her parents? They were taken away and never seen again.

It's a ripping yarn, and a chemical mystery story, but most of all it is a clear-sighted view of how ordinary people can end up doing terrible things for terrible reasons. Perhaps now is the time to read it.