Forgotten Book - Night Exercise

The story of the Home Guard is truly fascinating, and it's why - in addition to great writing and superb acting - Dad's Army became such an enduringly popular sitcom. The notion of ordinary people, not able to take part in active military service for whatever reasons, banding together to defend Britain against a feared and formidable invading force, is intensely appealing. The story of the Home Guard tells us a lot about human nature.

My father was in the Home Guard. He was a young man when the Second World War began, but he wasn't able to follow his older brother into the Services because he had a "reserved occupation" as a draughtsman, and became involved in work on the Mulberry Harbours. When I was small, he told me a lot of funny stories about his time in the Home Guard, and I'm sorry that I can't remember them. He had a gift for storytelling, and I wish he'd applied it to writing fiction, but he didn't think that writers were people like us. When the first episode of Dad's Army was shown, naturally we watched it, and became instantly hooked. He was a big fan of the show, though in his sardonic way, he suggested that the reality was even crazier than the fiction.

All this explains why I was delighted when Seona Ford presented me with a copy of Night Exercise, a 1942 novel by John Rhode, which centres around Home Guard activity in a rural community. The book was called Dead of Night in the US; perhaps the American publishers feared that readers would get the wrong idea of what the book was about. The first part of the book, in fact, gives a detailed (and, by Rhode's standards, absolutely gripping) account of a Home Guard exercise overseen by a Major Ledbury. The detail is very convincing, and I feel sure Rhode must have based it on Home Guard activities he was involved with; Ledbury seems rather like a self-portrait.

Ledbury is plagued by a visiting senior officer, Chalgrove, who is so obnoxious that it is soon clear that he is destined to be murdered. And he does go missing after the exercise - but what, in fact, has really happened to him? Is he dead, or has he vanished for reasons of his own? This is an unusual Rhode book in that Dr Priestley doesn't appear. And indeed, the detective element of the story is pretty slight. If you're after an elaborate whodunit, you'd better look elsewhere. But if you're interested in a highly credible, contemporary snapshot of life in the Home Guard at a time when British people were at risk of conquest by the Nazis, you couldn't do much better than read this one.

Three Cases of Murder - film/DVD review

Three Cases of Murder, a film dating from 1955, was released a while back on DVD. It isn't an especially renowned film, even though Orson Welles appears in it, but it really ought to be. I think it bears comparison with Dead of Night, that classic chiller, which scared me when I was eleven years old, and watched it for the first time. Like Dead of Night, this one is a portmanteau film, comprising three distinct stories (apparently, the origiinal plan was for there to be five stories, but budget pressures forced a cut-back; even so, it's a very watchable film.)

The linking device between the stories is different from that in Dead of Night, and less powerful. In fact, it now seems rather odd. Each story is introduced by, of all people, Eamonn Andrews. Perhaps the film shoudl have been called This is Your Death. I'm afraid Eamoon doesn't add a lot of value; the film succeeds in spite of his presence, rather than thanks to it.

The first of the three stories, "In the Picture", is the most memorable. It's a very macabre story written by Roderick Wilson, yet I've been unable to find out anything about Wilson; does anyone reading this blog know anything about him? The tale begins quite jauntily, with some rather intrusive background music, but soon settles into something different, and disturbing. It's worth watching the movie for this segment alone.

"You Killed Elizabeth" is based on a story by Brett Halliday (real name David Dresser), who was at one time married to the admirable Helen McCloy. It's a short, competent whodunit, featuring John Gregson in his pre-George Gideon days. "Lord Mountdrago", based on a story by Somerset Maugham, stars Welles as a nasty Foreign Secretary who is haunted by his enemy, a Kinnock-esque politician played by the excellent Alan Badel, who also has key roles in the other two segments. The DVD also contains as a bonus an Irish ghost story which again features Welles. I was expecting something okay from this film, but found I was watching something truly enjoyable. Strongly recommended.