A Review By Keith Smith

First of all the publisher’s blurb….For the first time, the history of the bunker – and daily life inside it – is revealed, by bestselling historian Richard Holmes. ‘This is the room from which I will direct the war’, Churchill declared, shortly after becoming Prime Minister in 1940. It was from these cramped confines that Churchill turned a seemingly inevitable defeat at the hands of the Nazis into a famous victory.

Built in 1938 as a temporary refuge in case of air raid attack, this secret bunker became a second home to Churchill – and to large numbers of military personnel and civil servants whose work until now has been largely unsung. Drawing on a fascinating range of original material, including new first-hand accounts of the people who lived there, Holmes reveals how and why the bunker and its war machine developed; how the inhabitants’ lives were transformed; and, how their work led to victory. Elegant and illuminating, “Churchill’s Bunker” is a unique exploration of one of the most important sites in British history.

Richard Holmes, one of our best military historians, died shortly after this book was published but unfortunately it is not one of his best. It is very disjointed to start with, trying to show the history of the conception and building and use of the bunker within the context of the wider world events that were taking place. It doesn’t quite work.  But also, and here’s the rub, Churchill didn’t really use the bunker an awful lot, despite his saying he would direct the war from here. Because throughout his life he was extremely brave, he preferred to stay above ground, despite the dangers. So in a sense we are defrauded…we get quite a lot of background about what it was like to be in the bunker for those who worked there, but Churchill wasn’t one of them! Also when he travels (which he did a terrific amount), the book follows him…and the bunker is left behind. So, all in all, I don’t think this book adds an awful lot to what we know about the war or about Churchill. Pity.

A Review By Lulu Minto

‘Merrily’s Border’ is a lovely companion to the Merrily Watkins Series. A guide to the locations, history and legends set against beautiful photography by John Mason, using artistic infra red images to give it’s content an atmospheric feel, with great write ups from Phil on places in and around the borders and places we’ve visited and come to know in his Merrily Watkins novels….

The book starts with a general introduction to the Marches area and to Merrily – Deliverance Consultant for the Hereford Diocese. Each of the 10 novels then has a chapter devoted to it, giving lots of interesting background information.

Apart from everything else this is a great companion to Herefordshire and its surrounding areas, it’s folklore, traditions & mystical happenings.

If you, like me, are reading through the Merrily Watkins series only read this book as far as the last novel you’ve read….. otherwise you may read about things that you don’t want to know as yet!

A Review By Lulu Minto

 December, and the river is rising. The village of Ledwardine has never been flooded in living memory. Within days it will be an island. There’s no electricity. The church is serving as a temporary mortuary for two people who drowned. Only one man feels safer. An aggressively-atheist author has been moved, for his own safety, into a secluded house just outside the village. Fundamentalist Christians have hated him for years. Now he’s offended the Muslims. Meanwhile, archaeologists, assisted by Merrily’s teenage daughter, Jane, are at work in Coleman’s Meadow, unearthing an ancient row of standing stones which some people would rather stay buried. The atheist’s temporary home is close to the site. And his young wife is becoming conspicuously agitated. Is it the fear of discovery – or the kind of fear that she, of all people, could never disclose? One thing is clear: the last person who’s going to be welcome in that house is an exorcist. With the flood water washing up Church Lane towards the vicarage and the shop running out of cigarettes it looks like a cold and complex Christmas for Merrily Watkins in an ancient community forced to untangle its own history against the swirling uncertainty of the future.

Jane really starts to come into her own in this story, I can’t wait until his next book, I’m sure Jane is going to become a great character.Yet another thrilling read from Phil. New book in the series is out September 2011, “The Secrets of Pain”.

A Review By Rev. David Boulton

 In March 1916, on a cold, spring day, the seventeen-year-old C. S. Lewis bought a book from a railway book store. He was later to write of that book, that he had no idea of what he had let himself in for. As he read the book that night, it changed everything for him. He was to feel that it ‘baptized’ his imagination. It certainly set the then atheist Lewis on the road to becoming one of England’s foremost Christian apologists and writers of the twentieth century. George MacDonald’s Phantastes was that book.

Before Lewis, Tolkien and Williams, collectively known as the ‘Inklings’, there was George MacDonald, who was the real godfather of Christian fantasy fiction. In Phantastes he created a vivid and dreamlike ‘otherworld’ as a setting for some powerful expressions of Christian truths.

Phantastes is a haunting and disquieting novel. It links the dreams of medieval Romance with the new awakenings of the Victorian age in which MacDonald wrote. In opening a long-lost door to the forgotten realm of Faerie, it became a daring and challenging forerunner of modern fantasy novels. This is what the poet W. H. Auden wrote: “George MacDonald… in his power to project his inner life into images, beings, landscapes which are valid for all, is one of the most remarkable writers of the nineteenth century. 

This particular volume is one of a welcome number or reprints of George MacDonald, which also includes his Lilith. It is reproduced complete with the original pre-Raphaelite line-drawings to accompany the text, and with a special introduction and notes by Nick Page, himself the author of over 60 books on topics which range from seventeenth century poetry to biblical history.

This book was, for me, a real find. I had been searching for it for many years, It did not disappoint. The reader will either love it or hate it.

A Review By Rev. David Boulton

I’m not surprised to find this wonderful book, written in 1908, is still in print. The copy I have has a Preface by George Bernard Shaw, no less, who calls it “this amazing book;” and amazing is what it is. Consider, Davies was born in a pub and grew up in Wales at the beginning of the 20^th century; he was educated only to elementary school level. He learned early on to rely on his wits; he also learned to drink at an early age, yet he had a certain literary ambition which would, in later life, make him an acclaimed poet.

Davies took to the life of a tramp, but no ordinary tramp. He became a tramp in America (where they are nowadays called ‘bums’ or ‘hobos’), working round the continent, taking casual jobs where he could, thieving and begging where there was no work to be had. His adventures were rich and varied, as were the characters he met. He was thrown into jail in Michigan, beaten up in New Orleans, was witness to a lynching in Tennessee.

A serious accident forced his return to England, and to the world of the doss-house and seedy down-and-outs like Boozy Bob and Irish Tim.

I first read this book at Secondary School, where it was a set text. I was about fourteen, and the memory of the book stayed with me. As a teacher, I later introduced my own English classes to it, and only last month tracked down a copy in an Oxfam second-hand bookshop. When my 2^nd hand copy was published in 1986, it had been through seven editions.

George Bernard Shaw was even more impressed than I was. He professed himself stunned by what he called the “raw power” of the book’s “unvarnished narrative.” It was largely due to Shaw’s enthusiasm that the book had its initial success, and Davies began to gain recognition as a writer and poet. Highly recommended.