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Books : Fiction : Contemporary Fiction: 1970 Onwards : Authors A-Z : B : Bragg, Melvyn
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Melvyn Bragg's A Son of War begins where A Soldier's Return ended. The previous novel--a moving account of the struggles, social and psychological, faced by a Burma veteran returning to Cumbrian hometown life with his wife and six-year-old son--picked up the WH Smith 1999 Literary Award. But whereas A Soldier's Return was largely Sam's story, Bragg here gives equal weight to Ellen, with her wide-eyed adoration for a long-lost brother and her high hopes of life on the new edge-of-town estate, cruelly foiled by Sam's dreams of owning a pub. But central is the "son of war", the endearing Joe, torn between being "Sam's lad" and "Ellen's boy", the fledgling boxer or the budding pianist.Bragg evokes well the petty yet momentous discoveries of a young boy, equally fixated on Disney's Snow White and girls doing handstands. While this is very much the personal story of one family, with heavy hints of autobiography, it's also the picture of Britain emerging from the war, throwing off Glenn Miller and Bing Crosby--a new Britain of rationing, the Big Freeze and strikes, talk of nuclear war, socialism, Joe Louis versus Jersey Joe Walcott. Once again, Bragg has succeeded in conjuring an epoch of unprecedented change, and capturing both its joys and its miseries: a worthy successor to The Soldier's Return -- Alan Stewart
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The end of World War Two has to be one of Britain's most dewy-eyed, rose-tinted memories. Yearned for years in advance--Dame Vera Lynn built an entire career on such yearning--it spelled the end of the anguishing waiting, the terrible deprivations overseas and Johnny asleep in his own little bed again. It takes a good novel to make new all the hackneyed emotion of the moment, and a great one to reveal, without sensationalising, the doubts behind the smiles. In that case, this may be a great novel.By the time corporal Sam Richardson returns from Burma to his Cumbrian hometown of Wigton, the bunting's long gone, and Sam, like everybody else, wants to get back to normal. But his plans to return to family life with Ellen and six- year-old son Joe don't run smooth. The war has taken away his old job, while Ellen holds down two; Joe's been raised with other men as father-figures; and Sam struggles to repress what he's witnessed out east. In The Soldier's Return Bragg explores the most unsettling of experiences: returning to a normality that's no longer normal. In Sam, with his undemonstrative reserve and irrational suspicions, he creates a man who cannot heal the mental scars of active service. While Bragg affectingly evokes Cumbria in the 40s, with a sure-footed sense of that time and place's idiom, this is no exercise in nostalgia, but a book whose concerns--how to deal with the happy ending of war--are only too resonant today. --Alan Stewart
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So many of us are blessed--or at least affected--by the fruits of science, yet how many of us really understand how we got them? Scientific creativity, like all other kinds, is a product of its times, but we can learn much from looking at the lives of its greatest practitioners; as a sizable side benefit, these lives are often tremendously entertaining. Author and BBC radio host Melvyn Bragg understands this well, and invited many of the great modern interpreters of science to discuss the lives and work of 12 greats from Archimedes to Watson and Crick, and published the cream in On Giants' Shoulders. These are no dry transcripts, though; Bragg has a genius for selecting the most intriguing quotes and selections from both his guests and his subjects and weaving them into his own engrossing narrative. His many novels have tightened up his prose so well that he can make even a discussion of the genesis of relativity a page-turner. He couldn't have invented better material, either: Newton's notorious snobbery, Darwin's almost-naïve sincerity and Lavoisier's turbulent life and untimely death make for compelling stories indeed (one almost wonders how they had time to change the world). His guests, including luminaries such as Lewis Wolpert, Richard Dawkins, Oliver Sacks and Roger Penrose, consistently cut to the heart of their subjects' importance and tie it all up neatly in the last chapter: "Where Are We Now?" An important question, of course, and one that can be better answered from On Giants' Shoulders. --Rob Lightner
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The end of World War Two has to be one of Britain's most dewy-eyed, rose-tinted memories. Yearned for years in advance--Dame Vera Lynn built an entire career on such yearning--it spelled the end of the anguishing waiting, the terrible deprivations overseas and Johnny asleep in his own little bed again. It takes a good novel to make new all the hackneyed emotion of the moment, and a great one to reveal, without sensationalising, the doubts behind the smiles. In that case, this may be a great novel.By the time corporal Sam Richardson returns from Burma to his Cumbrian hometown of Wigton, the bunting's long gone, and Sam, like everybody else, wants to get back to normal. But his plans to return to family life with Ellen and six- year-old son Joe don't run smooth. The war has taken away his old job, while Ellen holds down two; Joe's been raised with other men as father-figures; and Sam struggles to repress what he's witnessed out east. In The Soldier's Return Bragg explores the most unsettling of experiences: returning to a normality that's no longer normal. In Sam, with his undemonstrative reserve and irrational suspicions, he creates a man who cannot heal the mental scars of active service. While Bragg affectingly evokes Cumbria in the 40s, with a sure-footed sense of that time and place's idiom, this is no exercise in nostalgia, but a book whose concerns--how to deal with the happy ending of war--are only too resonant today. --Alan Stewart
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