What are we reading? 19th January 2022

[Oggie]

I did not post much previously for several reasons. Firstly, I do not read so much. Last year I only managed around 20 books which did include the fantastic Boundless Sea, a history of seafaring from the Ancient Polynesians to the present day. I have mentioned this amazing book before but it touches on so many discussions here, most recently the New Christians of Portugal, who were Spanish Jews expelled during the Inquisition, and allowed to trade in Portugal if they converted. Many reverted to their faith when they resettled in Amsterdam or London, where there is still a Portuguese synagogue.

Also read a couple of dud crime novels and gave up on another Booker short listed novel - The Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead about a woman aviator in the first half of the last century. I thought it would be good holiday reading, but the story was so contrived, leading to rather lifeless characters that it all became a bit tedious.

A book which did get me through the Christmas hols was Case Study by Graeme McCrae Burnett. Set in the 1960s it's about an "alternative psychotherapist" who is an RD Laing type character, and his patients. It is a very clever and at times humorous novel which does address real issues of identity, mental health and abuse.



Secondly, another reason I do not post much is that the regular posters here all have such a great breadth and understanding of books that I worry my comments are bland in comparison

[Georg]

Louise Erdrich

I also wouldn't compare her to Anne Tyler.

I quite liked The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse. I read this as a stand-alone, apparently some protagonists feature in earlier books. There is some magical realism which was fine with me (maybe I have become more tolerant, or even appreciative to a degree, since I read "The Master and Margarita").

The Night Watchman was probably spoilt for me by one of the worst translations I ever had the misfortune to read.

Although it did have it's moments:

A lot of German readers must have been puzzled that a stew was made in an oven from the Netherlands that was put onto an ordinary oven.
And alarmed that growling children on the backseat of a car were sawing their arms.


I happen to know what a Dutch oven is and after a while figured out that there was no massacre because the original word was most likely "seesawing".

But how, ffs, can a self-respecting translator write bizarre stuff (and there are dozens of examples) she doesn't/cannot even understand herself? And be too lazy to look up words she doesn't know?

@scarlet: for an Erdrich without any magical realism I can recommend The Master Butchers Singing Club which I read after watching the eponymous film

[Slawkenbergius]

giveusaclue wrote: "Hope you didn't catch the lurgy."

I did, but that's all over now. Ready for the next one.

[CCCubbon]

Oggie wrote: "I did not post much previously for several reasons. Firstly, I do not read so much. Last year I only managed around 20 books which did include the fantastic Boundless Sea, a history of seafaring fr..."

I am so glad that you posted for I have been looking for a new non fiction book and The Boundless Sea seems just right so thanks.

We each have our strengths and weaknesses here and you should never be reluctant to post about whatever you are reading, what you like and what gets abandoned. My reading is different from most here and I do not read many authors that are featured and receive praise. Equally, my loves of poetry , mathematics and science are , how can I put it , not popular

[scarletnoir]

Georg wrote: "@scarlet: for an Erdrich without any magical realism I can recommend The Master Butchers Singing Club which I read after watching the eponymous film."

Thank you Georg for that recommendation... I shall add it to my 'possible virtual TBR list' which I keep on Amazon's 'wish list' - it's already very long, and I'll need to live many more years to get through everything... it also fills me with a degree of trepidation (I'm a veggie...)

[[deleted user]]

@Shelflife #323. Thanks!

@Oggie #378. Don't hang back! Boundless Sea and Case Study sound like great reads to me. Also good to know when a book is a dud.

[scarletnoir]

Oggie wrote: "the regular posters here all have such a great breadth and understanding of books that I worry my comments are bland in comparison...

Certainly not... your views and reviews are as interesting and valid as anyone else's... unless you subscribe to some belief in an 'ultimate authority' of good taste - which I don't - then it matters not a jot what books you review or like.

We're all different, with some Venn diagram overlaps with certain others, but many areas of, if not incomprehension, at least incompatible tastes and passions.

(BTW - I remember reading RD Laing's The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness back in the '60s, and finding it interesting... not sure what I'd think now, but I suspect he made quite a few good points.)

[Lass]

@scarlet, @Georg. Have I misunderstood your comment? I have never associated Louise Erdrich with magical realism, certainly not in her early work. Magical realism? Me? C’mon…I’m from Yorkshire!

[Andy]

Not a lot to report on or recommend this week, a few stinkers I'm afraid..

I'm just done with Grégoire Courtois 's new one, The Agents (translated by Rhonda Mullins). He has delved into science-fiction here, rather unsuccessfully. He creates a society that has very similar probelms to the one's our world does right now, but his writing style, or the translation, or both, could not hold my attention. His previous book was a 'tongue in cheek' horror that was inovative, and enetertaining, The Laws of the Skies.

I am certainly not the target audience for Nita Prose's The Maid, but I thought I would give it a go, as a media review I read a while back swayed me.
Its a very mellow crime novel, light on crime. But the biggest problem I had with it, is that it is far too long, paragraph upon needless paragraph. It would have a much stronger effect if it was half the size.

I laboured also with Callan Wink's August, a coming of age piece set in Michigan and Big Sky Montana. Wink is compared to Jim Harrison and indeed Hemingway, but I think that is some way wide of the mark. Satisfactory and ordinary only..

[Andy]

But redeeming my week was Armageddon House by Michael Griffin.
Underground bunker settings form a small sub-genre of horror, though I am only up to three.
Though this is enjoyable and suitably puzzling, it is not quite as weird or disturbing as the other two I have read; The Bunker Diary by Kevin Brooks (actually a young adult book), and the excellent Wretch by Ansgar Allen.
This, as do the others, may possibly be dystopian, but it depends on how the reader sees it.
Four people, apparently two couples, live in this particular underground bunker. Memories of what they think is the world before flit in and out. Nothing is clear. They suspect something happened, but paranoia features heavily, they fear they may be part of an experiment.
Don't expect clear cut answers. A lot is left to the reader, as with Wretch. It is cleverly done, but a bit light on darkness - not quite enough to raise a scare.

[Andy]

SydneyH wrote: "To be perfectly honest, when I came across Adalbert Stifter’s Rock Crystal on the New York Review of Books website, I found it completely irresistible. The text, which was translated by Marianne Mo..."

I loved this also Sydney. Such a wonderful piece of story telling. My review at Rock Crystal.

[Georg]

Oggie wrote (#278):Secondly, another reason I do not post much is that the regular posters here all have such a great breadth and understanding of books that I worry my comments are bland in comparison

When I started to become a "regular poster" on The Guardian TLS I felt (and said) that I would be a donkey among the race horses.
That feeling hasn't changed much, so I beg to be excluded from the "all".

Over time I have been happy to find a wide variety of four-legged hooved creatures here. If there were only race horses I would have bolted a long time ago.

People here have a wide variety of interests. And whatever you say will be interesting to others. How many? At least 1. That is enough.

Not long ago somebody posted about Heinrich Heine's prose writings. Just some lines, not likely to arise the interest of >2 people, at a guess. I wasn't among them.

But there was this tiny spark. It caused a great bonfire: one of the most inspiring/entertaining/educational/witty/funny reading experiences in my life.

It really made me happy (Heine still does; reading "De l'Allemagne" atm)

[AB76]

Andy wrote: "SydneyH wrote: "To be perfectly honest, when I came across Adalbert Stifter’s Rock Crystal on the New York Review of Books website, I found it completely irresistible. The text, which was translate..."

looking foward to reading "Rock Crystal" as part of the "Motley Stones" collection i have in next few months

I see NYRB classics have published a Von Doderer novel, from 1951,set in Vienna which interests me too

[CCCubbon]

Machenbach wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "We each have our strengths and weaknesses here and you should never be reluctant to post about whatever you are reading, what you like and what gets abandoned.."

I agree about the..."

Japanese lacquer boxes are rather lovely but I will leave you the Byzantine icons,.
I don’t have any such boxes, only a couple of picture frames , Japanese, which are lacquered in some way. There are flowers, like cherry blossom which have gradually become clearer over the years. I know they date back about 100 years to when a very dear uncle was a sailor chasing pirates in the South China Seas.

[Georg]

AB76 wrote: "I see NYRB classics have published a Von Doderer novel, from 1951,set in Vienna which interests me too

"Die Strudelhofstiege"?

[Paul]

I'm pretty sure Ben Lerner ands I could hang out on occasion. Bump into each other in Prospect Park, promise to give each other call in between our kids soccer matches. Email each other for obscure references from Sephardic poetry to pustular eczema. But when we did get together, and Ben drained the Gutturnio all by himself, and then fell down the stairs leading down from the ell, I'm pretty sure I'd take a breath or two and look around a bit before somewhat rapidly, but cautiously skipping down the steel risers and saying "Ben! Ben! Are you alright dude?"

And that's why 10:04 is a four star review and not a 5 star one. Because Ben in all of his guises and refractions and shades and iterations is somewhat of a schmuck. He could date your sister, but when you die you're not leaving your kids in his care dammit.

10:04 , it grew on me. Not like a shelf fungus, more like one of those life preservers that you inflate when you leave the fuselage. It started out as hum-drum, then became "Hmmm," to "well, I'll be damned" to "Wow" to "Ok that's enough."

It's a book that delves into the infinite of the moment, how every second of our lives is a diamond with each facet projecting a different possible pathway out of the instant. Not necessarily mulitverse, so much as muddyverse. The fact that reality is itself a narrative construct we feed ourselves and that reflection and remembrance are simply looking back through different facets at the diamond-moment. Energy ripples out of collision, and the details may change. The pathology may alter, or the name may trasmutate or the place of residency may just fold due to random chance effect.

It's a very experimental novel, a very successful one, and a very approachably readable one. This is no Burroughsian collage or Bukowskian affront, it's a physicists take on the nature of autofiction.

It worked. Wonderfully at times. But still, when Ben bounces off of the pavement already woozy from the Chablis, I'm going to say to myself "Well this is the last thing I needed tonight, a git with internal bleeding." And then I'm goign to call 911 and say "Whooboy Ben, good thing you landed on your ass, huh?"

[AB76]

my phone whenever i can be bothered to switch it on, drowns me in loads of rubbish clickbait, however a link to an "underwater ballroom", led me to this link, a Victorian financier constructed the ballroom under a lake in his house near Godalming, its a fascinating and eerie relic from a man who committed suicide on trial, Whitaker Wright:

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/w...

[AB76]

Georg wrote: "AB76 wrote: "I see NYRB classics have published a Von Doderer novel, from 1951,set in Vienna which interests me too

"Die Strudelhofstiege"?"

yes...link here

https://www.nyrb.com/collections/heim...

[giveusaclue]

Oggie wrote: "Secondly, another reason I do not post much is that the regular posters here all have such a great breadth and understanding of books that I worry my comments are bland in comparison"

Don't ever worry about that Oggie. If you look at my list of books read you will find they vary between fairly heavy history books to very basic cozy mysteries. Many of the discussions here go over my head but over the years both through TLS and ersatztlsers I have discovered so many new to me authors that I will have to live to be about 500 before I get round to reading them all! So don't be put off, come and enjoy yourself.

[Slawkenbergius]

Machenbach wrote: "Ew, unlucky, 'though for a teacher you lasted quite long sans peste."


Got it from my son, nothing to do with me being a teacher. And a 6 year-old boy cannot self-isolate, so...

[giveusaclue]

Georg wrote: "

I happen to know what a Dutch oven is and after a while figured out that there was no massacre because the original word was most likely "seesawing".

🤣😂

Wonder how they would have translated letters from France!!

[Lljones]

Paul wrote: "I'm pretty sure Ben Lerner ands I could hang out on occasion. Bump into each other in Prospect Park, promise to give each other call in between our kids soccer matches. Email each other for obscure..."

Great review, Paul. Brings back great memories. I still want to see that film doc (forget the name of it...).

[AB76]

Machenbach wrote: "Slawkenbergius wrote: "Got it from my son, nothing to do with me being a teacher. And a 6 year-old boy cannot self-isolate, so..."

Ah, bless the little mobile petri dish vivacious disease vector f..."

geez....is that all Ulysses??? All the shelves?

remember taking a walk down the Liffey in 2013 to find the house where "The Dead" was set, was lovely to find it and imagine the world contained within

[Gpfr]

giveusaclue wrote: "Georg wrote: "I happen to know what a Dutch oven is and after a while figured out that there was no massacre because the original word was most likely "seesawing".
"Wonder how they would have translated letters from France!! "

In an article about dodgy translations, I once read of a translation from English to French - I forget what the book was - where a young man's uncle decided it was time for his initiation into the ways of the world. He sent him off to a brothel, making sure to give him 'une lettre écrite en français' to take with him. 😄

[Slawkenbergius]

Machenbach wrote: "Impressed/flummoxed by this guy's collection of editions of Ulysses, which makes me feel quite a lot less geeky for only having the three:"

Impetuous! Homeric!

[Hey, I recognise some of those spines]

I once thought of collecting different editions of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, but was afraid of the space it would take on my library, if seriously endeavoured.

[Tam]

Machenbach wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "We each have our strengths and weaknesses here and you should never be reluctant to post about whatever you are reading, what you like and what gets abandoned.."

I agree about the..."

This one is for you Mach....https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...

[AB76]

I have read some very impressive works of modern latin american history recently , the best was Redeemers" by Enrique Krauze in 2018 an attempt to look at the currents and that forces that shaped Latin America since independence from Spain and how that legacy shapes the modern states we know.

Story of a Death Foretold by Oscar Guardiola-Rivera looks at the 1973 Chile coup and its origins in the history of Chile. The powerful members of society in the Northern mines and the small criollo elites that ran the nation, created a system averse to change and against the rights of the working class, the immigrants and the Mapuche people of the South.

Everybody knows what happened in 1973 but maybe not why, in detail, the backing of Kissinger and the USA is more widely known than the internal Chilean loathing of Allende by the "established order"

Sobering reading but excellent so far as the author explores the youth of Allende, interestingly Allende and Pinochet lived in the city of Valparaiso, though unknown to each other, Allende at school there and Pinochet was born there

[AB76]

Machenbach wrote: "AB76 wrote: "geez....is that all Ulysses??? All the shelves?

remember taking a walk down the Liffey in 2013 to find the house where "The Dead" was set, was lovely to find it and imagine the world ..."

yes, its the one they were going to turn into a hotel,
https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/bui...

like a lot of Dublin the preserved Georgian terraces are a gem(i have seen similar terraces in Islington, brick not render or painted, unlike Kensington where they are usually painted white, though Kensington is not strictly Georgian, more early Victorian while Dublin is predominantly Georgian in the centre). The Dead House is a subtle place really, it doesnt leap out at you or it didnt then, about a decade ago

i agree, Joyce is all over the city, in St Stephens Green on my first visit i was like "ah...so here it is...i'm walking where i have read so much about this place but never visited"

[Hushpuppy]

Oggie wrote: "Actually, Hush, you rather drove me away from this forum. I had expressed sympathy to a poster and P of C who had fled an arranged marriage several decades ago and was then offended by 2 white women who asked her as a young woman if she was married yet. The poster then named these two individuals and made sexist, mysogonist remarks about them. I then objected to the public naming of these individuals and these remarks. The remarks are still sexist and mysogonist, regardless who makes them and such offensive language against women should not be normalised.

You then attacked me, Hush, stating you were not going to let my remarks pass you by, that they said a lot about me to you and you would refrain from making assumptions about my ethnicity and gender

This single exchange between the two of us seems to have driven you away a month and a half later (with quite a few light-hearted posts from you in between), but setting this aside, this is not either quite how things happened. We could of course go into the ins and outs of how everything unfolded and what was exactly said and to whom, but this would be in nobody’s interest I feel, least of all the others here on eTLS…

So perhaps we could draw a line under this? I can see how my reply to your post might have added to other painful altercations in your life, and I am genuinely sorry that this exchange and what I wrote has contributed to unnerving you.

[Hushpuppy]

AB76 wrote: "Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Oscar Guardiola-Rivera"

Did a double take there AB! I've just checked, and it's Story of a Death Foretold, based presumably on the García Márquez's title.

[Hushpuppy]

Slawkenbergius wrote: "Got it from my son, nothing to do with me being a teacher. And a 6 year-old boy cannot self-isolate, so..."

Gah. Glad to hear you're safe and on the other side of it Vasco! Hope your son recovered well too...

[Hushpuppy]

Paul wrote: "I'm pretty sure Ben Lerner ands I could hang out on occasion. Bump into each other in Prospect Park, promise to give each other call in between our kids soccer matches..."

Great review indeed. Hope you and others here will repost your reviews when "What we're reading" will be online at the G!

PS: Off topic, but I guess you've seen this? Small-ish N, but really like the idea behind it, though I've only read the abstract and might still have time to be appalled at statistical design, etc.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s4146... Would love to hear your (brief) thoughts on it if you can (be bothered!).

[Slawkenbergius]

Hushpuppy wrote: "Gah. Glad to hear you're safe and on the other side of it Vasco! Hope your son recovered well too..."

Thanks, Glad. I'm happy to say that in the captain's household, Junior was the one with less to complain about.

[Hushpuppy]

Andy wrote: "I laboured also with Callan Wink's August, a coming of age piece set in Michigan and Big Sky Montana. Wink is compared to Jim Harrison and indeed Hemingway, but I think that is some way wide of the mark. Satisfactory and ordinary only.."

Thanks for the warning Andy. I know Denis Johnson has drawn similar comparisons, but the only one I've read, Train Dreams, has left me... unruffled.

There was a great top 10 books a few years ago on those set in the American midwest, with quite a few authors mentioned here recently, including Cather and Erdrich (and including perhaps my favourite book, the one by Harrison): https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...

[Hushpuppy]

Slawkenbergius wrote: "Thanks, Glad. I'm happy to say that in the captain's household, Junior was the one with less to complain about."

Excellent! It is as expected, but of course high probabilities and certainties are not quite the same... And quid of that of the pain-de-campagne?

[Paul]

Hushpuppy wrote: "Paul wrote: "I'm pretty sure Ben Lerner ands I could hang out on occasion. Bump into each other in Prospect Park, promise to give each other call in between our kids soccer matches..."

Great revie..."

I have seen that paper. It's quick and dirty but pretty well done and the conclusions were pretty good, and were kind of predestined. BCR and TCR crossreactivity has to give you some advantage, even a small one. I'm not too sure how solid their argument that Il2 alone secretion correlates with central T memory. They weren't particularly exhaustive in cytokines testing, but it's interesting either way

Dunb&€#@s are going to latch on to this and say "See, natural immunity is more important than vaccines!" But, therapeutically speaking its a crap shoot. Either you have naive TCR/BCR cells circulating that by chance interact with your pathogen, or you survived a previous infection with a similar architecture.

[Hushpuppy]

Paul wrote: ""See, natural immunity is more important than vaccines!" But, therapeutically speaking its a crap shoot. Either you have naive TCR/BCR cells circulating that by chance interact with your pathogen, or you survived a previous infection with a similar architecture."

Thanks! Oh dear, I am so naive, I should have seen that possible "interpretation" coming from afar!

But: you don't buy their "Our results are thus consistent with pre-existing non-spike cross-reactive memory T cells protecting SARS-CoV-2-naïve contacts from infection, thereby supporting the inclusion of non-spike antigens in second-generation vaccines" then...?

[AB76]

Hushpuppy wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Oscar Guardiola-Rivera"

Did a double take there AB! I've just checked, and it's Story of a Death Foretold, based presumably on the García Márquez's ti..."

oops....doh! apologies Hush...i have corrected it

[Hushpuppy]

AB76 wrote: "oops....doh! apologies Hush...i have corrected it"

Hehe, no worries at all!

[scarletnoir]

Lass wrote: "@scarlet, @Georg. Have I misunderstood your comment? I have never associated Louise Erdrich with magical realism, certainly not in her early work. Magical realism? Me? C’mon…I’m from Yorkshire!"

I haven't read Erdrich, but Georg wrote:

I quite liked The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse. I read this as a stand-alone, apparently some protagonists feature in earlier books. There is some magical realism which was fine with me (maybe I have become more tolerant, or even appreciative to a degree, since I read "The Master and Margarita").

so it didn't come from you!

[SydneyH]

Paul wrote: "And that's why 10:04 is a four star review and not a 5 star one."

I'm glad you enjoyed but were slightly ambivalent about 10:04. To me Lerner seems like a proper writer who could really do with an interesting concept to write about. When I reviewed it, I highlighted the relationship with his friend Alex and his efforts to help her get pregnant, complete with visits to the 'masturbatorium'.

[SydneyH]

Andy wrote: "I loved this also Sydney. Such a wonderful piece of story telling."

Thanks - I dissed it a little bit, but that may have been more about my own tastes. AB may have the right idea in reading it as part of a collection, though I just couldn't resist that cover.

[SydneyH]

Machenbach wrote: "Ha, that's how he gets you. Tall format, small print, BAM! ... Ta for the review of The Black Spider."

No worries. I wouldn't have thought the 'deal with the devil' narrative would be your kind of thing, but AB liked it (which surprised me, because he's a Gabo sceptic). The NYRB is a bit irresponsible, giving us so many obscure European texts that we have to read at all costs.

By the way, what do you think of Banville's Birchwood? I had been wondering whether Athena would be my last Banville, but I'm enjoying it so far.

[Paul]

Hushpuppy wrote: "Paul wrote: ""See, natural immunity is more important than vaccines!" But, therapeutically speaking its a crap shoot. Either you have naive TCR/BCR cells circulating that by chance interact with yo..."

Yes and no. A monovalent vaccine is never the best idea for a virus, imho. So, yeah adding non-spike proteins can only boost T cell reactivity, and probably some B cell reactivity as well. They onyl measure T cell reactivity, which would target infected cells displaying peptides from any of the viral proteins as potential targets. So focusing on the spike protein alone is good from the antibody-standpoint, but once the virus is in a cell, any of those viral proteins becomes a target. Antibody-reactivity would be less relevant for non-spike proteins, but certainly not completely negligible

[Paul]

SydneyH wrote: "Paul wrote: "And that's why 10:04 is a four star review and not a 5 star one."

I'm glad you enjoyed but were slightly ambivalent about 10:04. To me Lerner seems like a proper writer who could real..."

Yeah, I agree that the passage in the fertility clinic, with the voices behind the wall and the different levels of receptionist was probably the part that really woke me up to what he was doing and how well he could write.

[AB76]

Machenbach wrote: "AB76 wrote: "like a lot of Dublin the preserved Georgian terraces are a gem(i have seen similar terraces in Islington, brick not render or painted, unlike Kensington where they are usually painted ..."

ah, so you have Irish ancestry or british ex-pats?

[AB76]

SydneyH wrote: "Machenbach wrote: "Ha, that's how he gets you. Tall format, small print, BAM! ... Ta for the review of The Black Spider."

No worries. I wouldn't have thought the 'deal with the devil' narrative wo..."

Gotthelf was long before Gabo thankfully!

[Georg]

Lass wrote(#385): "@scarlet, @Georg. Have I misunderstood your comment? I have never associated Louise Erdrich with magical realism, certainly not in her early work. Magical realism? Me? C’mon…I’m from Yorkshire!"

Puh, it took me some time to find your comment....
But I think I have figured out now why some comments do not show up as new.

Anyway: there were snakes in Little No Horse, lass! Lets say they were imaginary ones more than magical ones (I quite liked them).

@ scarlet: The Master Butchers Singing Club is suitable for veggies. Sausages are mentioned occasionally, but thats about it.

[MK]

giveusaclue wrote: "Oggie wrote: "Secondly, another reason I do not post much is that the regular posters here all have such a great breadth and understanding of books that I worry my comments are bland in comparison"..."

On the mystery front (be kind as my memory isn't what it used to be, and I may have mentioned this series previously), I am reading yet another of the great British Library Crime Classics. This one by Michael Gilbert - Death in Captivity. Picture a WW2 prisoner of war camp in Italy where an unpopular prisoner is found dead in a escape tunnel in progress. Add to that the fact that the Allies have landed in Sicily. One would think that is good news, but as one of the camp's prison leaders says that instead of being rescued, they all will probably be killed during the Axis retreat.

I'll say no more about this book. If you want to try this series, I bet your local library has copies of this or other authors for you to check out.

[giveusaclue]

MK wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "Oggie wrote: "Secondly, another reason I do not post much is that the regular posters here all have such a great breadth and understanding of books that I worry my comments are ..."

Well if you have forgotten, so have I 🤣. I will take a look, thanks.

From wiki:

Military service
During World War II, Gilbert served in North Africa and Italy with the Honourable Artillery Company. In 1943, he was captured and taken as a prisoner of war in northern Italy near Parma. Along with another soldier, Tom Davies, he was able to escape after the Italian surrender, their escape involving a five-hundred-mile journey south to reach the Allied lines.

So he knew what he was talking about!