Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms What are we reading?

Forgotten Soldier, by Guy Sajer, incredible book would recommend any ww2 fan to read it

I was fascinated when listening to a section of "Views from lower Rhine" by Georg Forster, written in 1790, in the car radio. Now I read the full book and it is awsome concerning the power of description and high level of almost modern language. He is a generalist in terms of scientific education.
Here is a link to Georg Forster in English, worth a read.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Forster

I would not be surprised if some of you could be more aware of him than most Germans, because he traveled around the world with James Cook and his was a member of the Royal Society.
But.......in Germany he is almost! forgotten. No one of my good educated friends knew him when asked recently. It seems he is banned over here since the time he was an advocate of revolutionary thought. But even Goethe liked his work a lot.

BTW when undertaking his travel to "lower Rhine" which actually brought him also to London and Paris later on he was accompanied by a 21y old youngster (who then learned a lot of Forsters power or writing). His name is Alexander von Humboldt.

I remember it. Together with Health and Effiency ,considered a bit racy !

Yes I remember a cop of Health and Efficiency going around the school once it was a small publication in Black and White as I recall.

Reading "The Silk Roads" by Peter Frankopan.

I've long been fascinated by the history of the area that presently causes the world so much trouble. This new and highly acclaimed book takes a new look at what happened where the link east and west, north and south from the time of the Greeks onwards. Very much food for thought and makes me look at the troubled relationship between the Christians, Jews and Moslems with a new perspective.

Worth reading, not at all dry and quite compelling.

For me, it's eclectic as usual.
'A Tour of Bones' by Denise Inge (deceased), about her tour round some of the ossuaries of Europe as she faced her own journey into cancer.
This was followed by five volumes of the Secret Seven (hence the eclectic tag!).
I am currently enjoying Morgan, Malvern and Motoring by Martyn Webb, the Morgan archivist - jolly good read this one.

Just finished reading:

Max Hastings
The Secret War: Spies, Codes and Guerrillas 1939-1945

Very interesting - explodes one or two myths and also adds a lot of detail into how espionage actually worked in that war. It also details some blunders. Quite a long book but well worth the effort if you are interested in the subject.

I'm grateful for this thread as I've already read a couple of the books tipped here (The Nowhere men and forgotten soldier). Both excellent. There's a couple more that are on my list.

I've just finished Mary Beard's SPQR (very interesting, she debunks quite a lot of the stuff I learned about the Romans as a kid).

Inspired by a reference to it in an article I was reading about the Vendée Globe I'm now re-reading Joshua Slocom's book "Sailing alone around the world" which I last read when I was about 15. I'm really enjoying it.

Anyone read this- forgotten voices- Dunkirk . Very upsetting in fact you have to put it down and try not to cry as it's about our own relatives and what they suffered in buckets .

I have just finished Warlike Sketches 1939-1945 by Arrol Macfarlane. You won't find it on any best-seller list but it's the best account yet of what it was like to be an AOP pilot in WW2. These were the pilots who flew Austers, directing artillery fire on to enemy positions, flying generals around, running messages etc.

The book is based on Macfarlane's obviously well kept diaries and takes you right into the heart of the battle. If you want to know what it was like sitting in a tiny Auster a few hundred metres above the front while all around was exploding then this book puts you there. There has been very little editing of the diaries so the style is a bit Biggles like but that fits the period.

I'm biased, as my signature suggests, and this is no literary masterpiece, but as an honest and gripping account of one soldiers journey from artillery soldier to airman you won't get better. The description of the push up through Italy with the 8th Army is the best bit. I've flown exactly the type of planes he flew and just can't comprehend what they did and how he survived. Skill and luck in equal measure I guess.

Now, thanks to this thread, for George Millar's Maquis.