[book stuff] I found it!

[inulro]

The book that I was referring to last night is

Forgotten Voices of the Blitz and the Battle of Britain

The article in the Guardian is here

Late last night while I was failing to sleep I remembered that it was a publication of the Imperial War Museum, and not the Museum of London (which is what I thought it was yesterday). Sometimes that hyperactive brain thing comes in handy.

Comments

[redcountess]

I still haven't been to the IWM, but I think I will go soon, especially as their current exhibition is The Animals War, which includes the PDSA Dickin Medal ("the animals' VC") awarded to Judy, the only non-human awarded POW status.

[inulro.livejournal.com]

I haven't been to the IWM either, but there's bigger things I need to rectify first, like never having been to the V&A and not having been to the British Museum since it was still the 80s.

[mimmimmim.livejournal.com]

Ah, I want to go to the V&A at some point. Pete's comment was 'We went there for the Art Deco exhibition'. Yes, and we only got time to see the Art Deco exhibition! I want to see everything else too.

[inulro.livejournal.com]

We should get together and go some time.

[mimmimmim.livejournal.com]

The book looks much more interesting in the Amazon review than in the Guardian review. The Guardian review just sounds horribly mean-spirited and petty - 'We hate war so let's make it sound as though all people caught up in it are scum'. I'd read the book on the basis of the amazon synopsis, though.

(I think I must hate newspaper book write-ups; the one for The Last Mughal made me want to spit too.)

[inulro.livejournal.com]

I want the Forgotten Voices book because I'm interested in what people really did, rather than the official version, especially the people who are otherwise marginalised from history. Then again, it's published by the imperial war museum so presumably nothing's too subversive.

I think the review for the Last Mughal I originally read was not the Indy's. I'm a big fan of Dalrymple's historical research because he actually goes and reads the Indian sources which, especially in the south of India (the subject of "White Mughals"), have never been translated into English & thus ignored by western historians.

I'm a bigger fan of his travel writing though, because it's just fab.