Books in review

It's by Anthony Caffyn (scion of Caffyn's car dealership) whose sub-heading, The Random Jottings of a REME National Service Subaltern 1958-1960, gives more than a hint of what is inside.

The two years are exhaustively covered in 476 pages of long, multi-clause sentences packaged inside dense paragraphs.

Caffyn has the decent relationship with the written language of his generation, but his book could have benefited from rigorous editing '“ to reduce it in size, to eliminate some dodgy punctuation and to weed out lots and lots of quote marks around such perfectly ordinary words as 'launched', 'yank', 'grotty' and 'croc'. Some fussy readers will give up early on; others may look for a handy weapon.

Yet there are many redeeming features '“ Caffyn captures the spirit and humour of a long-ago time, a unique moment in history; he is often hilariously comic and, as well as lots of mostly murky mono pictures of young men in foreign parts, there are jolly cartoons sketched by retired colonel Chris Blessington. Says Blessington: 'Soldiers will readily recognise and chuckle at the wickedly accurate portraits of army drill instructors and the pithy badinage that passes for barrack room humour.' Not one for the girls, then.

The hefty paperback is published by Owlers Books at 12.99, ISBN 0 9553838 1 1. To buy a copy, e-mail [email protected] or visit www.owlersbooks.co.uk.

Still with the military, but this time going back to the Great War And Such Great Names as These by Allen Makepeace '“ who is actually W H (Johnnie) Johnson, the Sussex history writer and lecturer. Johnson, a retired schools inspector, has won many awards for his non-fiction over the years, and he has an engaging fast-moving, page-turning style in this, his first work of fiction.

It is published in paperback by Matador at 7.99, and has an ISBN of 13:978 1905886 38 8.

JM