WICKES
08-31-2009, 05:49 AM
Has anyone read anything by this man? (has anyone even heard of him?). He was an English (British) travel writer who was very highly thought of by the leading writers of his time. Graham Greene called him "not just one of the best writers of a particular decade, but one of the best writers of the 20th century " and Martha Gellhorn considered Naples '44 "the best travel book of all time".
His masterpiece is thought to be Naples '44 , about the time he spent in Naples as a British soldier during WW2. He was a deeply compassionate, civilised man and was revolted by the realities of war. He writes unflinchingly of the horrors he saw around him: a pool of fat beneath a burnt out German tank, half starved Italian orphans, the mass rape committed by North African troops under Allied command, the way American and British soldiers took advantage of the poverty of the civilians in return for sex etc. His prose is polished, stylish and word perfect, though he was not from the Oxford/ Cambridge- educated British upper class but from a lower middle class suburban- London background. Personally I think he writes much better than Hemingway about the reality and pity of war and, unlike Hemingway, you really do feel he is simply relating what he saw without boasting or trying to achieve a certain effect.
His masterpiece is thought to be Naples '44 , about the time he spent in Naples as a British soldier during WW2. He was a deeply compassionate, civilised man and was revolted by the realities of war. He writes unflinchingly of the horrors he saw around him: a pool of fat beneath a burnt out German tank, half starved Italian orphans, the mass rape committed by North African troops under Allied command, the way American and British soldiers took advantage of the poverty of the civilians in return for sex etc. His prose is polished, stylish and word perfect, though he was not from the Oxford/ Cambridge- educated British upper class but from a lower middle class suburban- London background. Personally I think he writes much better than Hemingway about the reality and pity of war and, unlike Hemingway, you really do feel he is simply relating what he saw without boasting or trying to achieve a certain effect.