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Time at War

Time at War

by NicholasMosley (Author)

  • Used

    Hardcover 2006

    $4.17
Synopsis

Nicholas Mosley, son of Oswald Mosley and his first wife, is an admired novelist, most famous for ACCIDENT, filmed by Joseph Losey from a Harold Pinter screenplay and starring Dirk Bogarde. Although he has previously published an autobiography, Nicholas Mosley has hitherto avoided writing about his WWII experience, in which his tangled relationship with his father, Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British fascist movement, plays a major part. TIME AT WAR shows Mosley coming of age as a young officer in the forcing house of war and being despatched as part of the Rifle Brigade to join the allies as they fight their way up Italy. At one point he ignominiously loses most of his platoon. Eventually he leads his men to capture a strategic farmhouse not far from Monte Cassino and wins the MC. Mosley gives his account against the backdrop of being the son of Britain's fascist leader who was imprisoned with his second wife (Diana, one of the Mitford sistrs) in Brixton jail not long after the outbreak of war. What would have happened if Nicholas had been captured by the Germans and then identified? In fact at one point in the Italian campaign this happens. How he survives demonstrates that fact can sometimes be more bizarre than fiction. TIME AT WAR is both an absorbing war memoir and intriguing account of a relationship unlike any other in WWII. How do you live your life when Britain is fighting the axis powers when your father is the self-proclaimed British fascist leader?

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
 Pages: 180
 Edition: First Edition - 2nd Printing
 Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Published: 31 Aug 2006
ISBN 10: 029785240X
ISBN 13: 9780297852407
Book Overview: BBC TV (Timewatch) showing interest in documentary WWII memoir with a twist Serial possibilties

Media Reviews
a brief account of his adventures that is not only entertaining and often extremely funny, but tells us about the chaotic nature of war as fought on the ground... a masterly account of what war is really like. -- SUNDAY TIMES JEREMY LEWIS Nicholas Mosley, for over half a century one of our most original and compelling novelists, now tackles the subject from his own point of view of both artist and soldier: and a soldier, furthermore, who was awarded the Miltiary Cross... As a novelist, he has always possessed the exciting ability to extrapolate huge, sometimes overwhelming ideas from very particular events. It is this skill that he uses, over and over again, in his memoir... How lucky we are to have him. -- MAIL ON SUNDAY CRAIG BROWN Mosley's engagingly matter-of-fact memoir gives a perfect flavour of the officer's lot... captures deftly the contradictions of war - of luck and bravery; of farce and fear; of anarchy and meaning. It is a beguiling read. -- NIGEL FARNDALE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH The shadow of his father hangs over this book and his life. There are only a few people who understand how dark it is, and I am one of them -- FRANCIS BECKETT, son of OM's Propaganda Director THE GUARDIAN A brave and engaging book by a brave and engaging man -- DAILY MAIL TOM ROSENTHAL This is a bildungsromanin which, on the one hand, Mosley writes often about the resemblances between close combat and the chasing and capturing games of his childhood and on the other, we find the young hero passionately linking his own war bewilderment with the dilemmas that seem to have found their solution in the high art he encounters durng periods of leave in Italy TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT wonderful and absorbing book... His account of hand to hand fighting in a ruined farmhouse, with Germans holding on at the lower floor, is a high point of the book. LITERARY REVIEW a generous tribute to the friends he made during the war, who helped him to grow up, and to the very British decency of all the soldiers who accepted him for what he was and apparently never gave him a hard time for being who he was>2 -- ANNE CHISHOLM SPECTATOR ...touching and honest. He has written a candid account of an upper-class lieutenant's war years. FINANCIAL TIMES
Author Bio
Nicholas Mosley, born 1923, is the elder son of Sir Oswald Mosley and his first wife, lady Cynthia Curzon. Educated Eton and Balliol. Served in the Rifle Brigade in WWII from 1942 rising to rank of Captain. His novels include Accident (filmed by Joseph Losey from a Harold Pinter script, with Dirk Bogarde), Hopeful Monsters (Whitbread Fiction Prize, 1990).