Starting a comfort re-read as this was newly released in audio form! I have the mass market paperback but due to my chronic pain I can't read them.

I was underwhelmed by this. The selection of voices was strangely limited. The focus is British, and that's fine, but ignores the Commonwealth countries (while having plenty of USA testimony) and their contributions. It spends precious few pages on the Holocaust and has a host family member born in 1940 speaking for a kindertransport child (a great number of whom are alive and well). It also erases the British government's role in Turing's death.

My book club discussed this book tonight. I loved the book, both the writing and the structure. Ward's writing is poetic and lyrical yet compulsively readable. There's plenty of depth and analysis possibilities but it's also straightforwardly readable. Made for a great book club discussion.

Currently reading!

A really wonderful, and deeply interesting read. This history is somehow surprising and yet sadly typical. Sometimes a transition seems a bit too sudden, but I found the wiring style good overall. Highly recommended.

"You should earn enough as a writer to be able to drink one to two bottles of *decent* dry champagne per day once your within eight or nine weeks of finishing a novel. It's a sh*tty time, and this would put you in the right mood to work, and you wouldn't get ill." --Irmgard Keun, writing to her lover, Arnold Strauss.

A wonderful surprise! I didn't know what to expect from this one, but thoroughly enjoyed it. Billings writes with a lot of humor, and includes various soldiers songs and poems.