Hutchinson, 1960, 205 p

John Gavin was just too late to be involved in the Great War. He has nevertheless managed to learn to fly and after a period barnstorming in the US takes up a post in South America in a nascent air postal service. This book is very good indeed on the practicalities of early aviation, but especially its drawbacks. The rigours and contingencies of operating such a service in a potentially unstable country are also a major consideration. It is James’s relationships with his employer, the locals, his fellow pilots and their wives, which provide much of the substance here though. The characters, even those met briefly, ring true to life.

There are said to be only seven plots in literature. It would not be too much of a spoiler to say that the one deployed here is, “the getting of wisdom.” There is an element too of the Scottish novel’s penchant to lament time past, the something lost, as Gavin realises that the (not quite) carefree ‘knights of the air’ era is coming to an end. “For me, the biplane was part of the dream. It belonged with the free-roaming life of the barnstormer, and, when it went, that free, vagabond life went with it,” and later, “I had taken part in the end of an era, and in that I felt privileged as a man would feel privileged to have sailed in the last of the windjammers. But there was no going back. The freebooting days were gone for ever.”

There is too a recognition, in the form of a missionary storekeeper named Meikle, that the indigenous peoples will not be well-served by civilisation being brought to them.

Wilson could certainly write. I reviewed his Interrupted Journey here. It is a pity that he only ever published two novels. I would like to have read more.

Pedant’s corner:- Guinivere (Guinevere,) a missing quotation mark at the end of a piece of direct speech (x 2.)

Arrow, 1963, 190 p. First published 1958.

A group of soldiers on a more or less routine trip in Cyprus during the “Emergency” is ambushed by EOKA members. The fighting scenes that ensue take up almost half the book and are vividly described with the individual British soldiers’ characters well delineated but in the end only the officer, Captain Giddings, survives the encounter – and that more by luck than judgement. His empathy with and understanding of the Cypriot rebels and their families (amongst whom he finds himself in the skirmish’s aftermath before he makes his final escape) marks this out as a thoughtful exploration of an incident from the retreat from Empire even if he is later instrumental in the arrest of the chief suspect.

The ongoing story is illuminated by Giddings’s memories of his time on Cyprus a decade or so earlier during the Second World War. The dynamics of military life are also well portrayed but these are seen through the lens of Giddings’s lack of true suitability for the role. (He is in truth a bit of a misfit all round.)

Pedant’s corner:- radiator grill (grille,) staunch (stanch,) swop (swap,) “the band were playing” (the band was playing,) “stach away” (nowadays it’s stash away,) waggon (wagon,) “he had been mislead” (misled.)