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I, James Blunt

di H. V. Morton

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Aggiunto di recente daanzlitlovers, 2wonderY

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As Bill from The Australian Legend remarked just recently, the provenance of second-hand books is sometimes almost as much fun as the contents. I owe my discovery of this rare little booklet by the great travel writer H V Morton (1892-1979) to Niall Taylor from the H V Morton Society...

Members of the society receive regular bulletins from Niall and other contributors, and these are now available online at the HVM blog. It was in January this year that Niall posted a reprint of an article by Kenneth Fields which had originally been circulated as HVM Collectors’ Note No.6, on 22nd April, 2004. The article (which I urge you to read by following that link) was about HVM's role in producing propaganda for the Ministry of Information during WW2. I, James Blunt is a slim novella published in 1942, and it's rare now because it is so fragile, printed under wartime regulations on soft paper and with a very soft cover. I did a search and was lucky to pick up an affordable copy from New Zealand that was advertised via AbeBooks.

The novella is only 56 pages long, but it makes for fascinating reading. It is set in what was in 1942 the very near future: five months after the Capitulation in 1944 with Britain now learning the reality of Nazi Occupation. James Blunt is a veteran of the First World War. He is devastated by Britain's defeat and is very worried about his family. His wife Elsie was killed in the Blitz, and he has a daughter called Marjorie and two grandchildren called George and Ann. While the children are now of an impressionable age and must start in one of the new German primary schools for indoctrination, Marjorie's husband Jack works in a shipyard taken over by the Hermann Göring Company. His record as a trade unionist makes him very vulnerable because they are always the first to disappear. Blunt is also anxious about his sister Elsie, whose imprudent letters put them both at risk now that the Gestapo has complete control of the Post Office.

Along with overt signs of occupation which include removing the word 'Royal' from everything, hanging Swastika flags everywhere and renaming all the places that alluded to British victories (such as Waterloo and Trafalgar) with the names we in our time have come to despise (such as Himmler, Goebbels and of course Hitler), there is now a pervasive climate of fear and suspicion. No one dares express opinions in the pub, reporting on the appalling suicide rate is forbidden, and the presence of German officers demanding identity cards on pain of severe punishment makes any venture away from home perilous. For those of us who have read a bit or seen films or TV series about the Occupation of France, these tyrannies are familiar. What makes it ghastly is that they take place in a country that has always been proudly independent and with which we in Australia identify for historical reasons. Even if you have no love for Britain and her own conquering empire, reading this little novella is a salutary experience, once you realise that every one of Britain's 'possessions' would be have been subject to the same tyranny. (I learned on my recent holiday in New Caledonia that New Caledonia refused to submit to Vichy law and that Australia supported their refusal to acquiesce to fascism. We might not have been able to do that had Britain capitulated...

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2020/02/14/i-james-blunt-by-h-v-morton/ ( )
  anzlitlovers | Feb 13, 2020 |
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