MISCELLANY

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29246, 2 July 1960, Page 3

MISCELLANY

The Cunning of the Dove. By Alfred Duggan. Faber. 251 PP. Alfred Duggan has produced another historical novel of outstanding quality. In this firstperson narrative of the reign of Edward the Confessor—by Edgar the King’s chamberlain, responsible for His Majesty’s personal comfort—the reader is shown not only the broad canvas of a King and his Court in a land divided by racial hatreds, but also intimate pictures of the man and his personal habits. The man's and the King’s strengths and weaknesses are so piquantly revealed as to create in the reader a deep sense of understanding and affection for Edward; and an intense dislike for some of his Court of plotting and designing earls. Edward chose William '(the Conqueror) to be his heir long before Harold elbowed his way to the position ,of premier Earl and King’s deputy. While Edward lived Harold dared not reveal his true colours—he even visited. William, swore allegiance to him* and left his younger brother as hostage to his honesty. But, as every third-former knows, Harold met his death opposing not, as every third-former thinks, an invader, but the true heir to the throne. The narrator is a servant of the King and the story remains throughout that of such a person. It never gets out of balance by the introduction of facts unlikely to be known or understood by a King’s chamberlain. It remains a oed-chamber-lain’s eye view to the end. This is the art of Alfred Duggan which, puts him in a class of his own as an historical novelist. With My'Own Eyes. By Bo Giertz, Bishop of Gothenberg. Allen and Unwin. 237 pp. No doubt the Bishop of Gothenburg’s book is to be classed as a novel; for, although it is based on the Gospel narratives of the life of Christ, it also includes hundreds of touches of imaginative detail that come from the author’s own inventive mind. But it is remarkable' in that the title “With My Own Eyes” seems so very appropriate. Here is no parade of historical or archaeological information absorbed from encyclopaedias or Biblical dictionaries. The Bishop is a man of learning, but he is intent on creating a vivid narrative. He wishes to. make his readers see, as he himself has really seen with his mind’s eye. The story that he tells is both old and new; ■ and it only remains to say that it is written in a style of unpretentious simplicity, and at moments of stress shows a true delicacy of feeling.

Siege at Ma-Kduie. By Derrick Wright Robert Hale. 191 pp. The heroic defence of the French at Dien Bien Phu in Indo-China in 1954 against the Viet-Minh Communists inspired the author to produce this first-class story, based on fact. Himself an ex-French Foreign Legionnaire and later a British infantryman, Derrick Wright is well qualified to record an epic such, as this, and even those who have become tired of war books will, on reading this one, agree that it is quite outstanding. Captain Renoir of the French Foreign Legion (who is killed very early in the story) receives his simple instructions: “The road past the fort Of MaKouie must be denied to the enemy for five days. . . .” The responsibility fafils on Sergeant Brent, a tough renegade Englishman, hated and loved by his 20 men. Their mission is accomplished and the three remaining men surrender. The reader is in the front line before die end of the first sentence. Movement and action are realistically presented, , and there is much delightful descriptive writing. “Flashbacks’’ fill in the blank!? of the more important characters during moments of inaction, and an air of urgency, despair and nagging fear holds the reader to the. very pathetic end. Derrick Wright has written only two books. This is his second, and many a reader will hope for more from him. Out of the Red into the Blue. By Barbara Cornyns. Heineman. 202 pp. The pleasures and the worries of her everyday life provide Barbara Cornyns with the material for thiskbook. And they are, for - the most part, pleasures and worries of a domestic kind. The fact that her husband is out of a job, that her tenants are noisy, and her housekeeper something of a trial—in all this, to say nothing of the inconvenience and bother occasioned by her pet dogs, she finds, ready to hand, a theme for her writing. All that she and her husband had to live on when he lost his job as a civil servant was “a tiny private income." But it was sufficient to enable them to leave their large Kensington home, and go to live on the island of Ciriaco, off the copst of Spain. The domestic arrangements they had at first to put up with there were primitive indeed, such as cooking by candle light on a charcoal burner, and drawing water from a well. But it was not long before they began to make themselves tolerably comfortable, and to feel themselves a part of the place. The author has an eye not only for the beautiful, but also for the gruesome and the macabre. Read, for example, what she has to say in “A chapter about animals,” which is taken up largely with a description of an emaciated, wretched-looking cat which she found wandering about the city walls, and took home to do what she could to' nurse it back to health. She is not content simply

to say that she found the creature wandering about, but must describe it as blowing about in a blizzard “like a piece of dirty paper.” There is something eerie, and almost nightmarish, about the experience thus narrated. And even though it seems to have undergone a fantastic twist in the telling, the sheer grotesqueness of it is powerfully conveyed—which leads one to add that perhaps in its very strangeness lies half the attraction of this book.