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Brian Grafton
Victoria BC Canada
Posts: 4717
Joined: 2004
Len Deighton’s Bomber
8/18/2023 12:42:04 PM
Found this review of Deighton’s classic, Bomber, on the WaPo site this a.m.
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Though this might be a tad overdone, anyone who hasn’t read Bomber but professes an interest in WW2 could do much worse than read this book. My late father-in-law, who flew two complete tours (60 official ops) as an air gunner/master gunner introduced me to it in the mid 1970s, saying simply that it was the most accurate description of what an op was like that he’d ever read.

I have read this novel a number of times, and have yet to be bored with it. Deighton is more than just a craftsman; he consciously invokes the darkness of the ritual that makes war acceptable to so many. He has researched both the German and the British sides of the war at a specific time (June 31, 1943), and has captured a cataclysm.

Gladwell is clearly writing this to hype the new edition of the novel, now being re-issued some 53 years after the original. That being the case, I like his inclusion of Vera Brittain’s comment about the British lack of imagination. Is WaPo ‘taking the piss’ by using the photo of a Halifax in a review of a novel about a squadron of Lancasters, or is it just a lack of imagination?

Cheers
bg
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