Fanfare for a Tin Hat

This memoir, published in 1970, is described by the author as “a third essay in autobiography”. In his introductory chapter, he explains what he feels he needs to write in addition to his previous two memoirs, including that he wants to add a little to what he previously wrote of his service in the First World War. He described the war as “a competition in cruelty, a contest of horrors”. In later chapters, he gives an account of his first forays into writing fiction and then traces hid development as a writer. Through the writer Edward Garnett, he met Seán Ó Faoláin, an exact contemporary of his: “I became very fond of Seán” who “was foremost among the young men on whom Garnett was bestowing the avuncular benison of affection and good advice”.

The author, Eric Linklater (born 8 March 1899), though born in Wales, was the son of an Orkney man and grew up in Aberdeen. Prior to studying at the University of Aberdeen, he served as a private in the First World War with the Black Watch and was wounded at the Somme. He worked as a journalist in India from 1925 to 1927, returning to Aberdeen to serve as an assistant to an English literature professor. It was at this point in his career that he wrote his first novel. From 1928 to 1930, he worked at universities in the United States and while there his first published writings appeared. His third novel, Juan in America, was very popular. He went on to write more than 20 novels as well as many works of non-fiction. His children’s novel, The Wind on the Moon, won the Carnegie Medal in 1944.

As well as relating his own experience of the First World War, the author mentions his first cousin. His grandfather, Magnus Linklater, of the West Mainland of Orkney, had four sons. Robert, the third of these was the author’s father but the eldest was John, who due to a dispute with his parents, left home, vowing that they would never see him again. The author explains that they never saw him or heard from him again:
“No word or whisper of him reached Orkney until 1918, when a private soldier in the uniform of a New Zealand rifle regiment — a young man with a dark complexion under a big pinched and pointed khaki hat — arrived in Kirkwall and said he hoped to find some relations. His father’s name was John Linklater.”

Thy Tears Might Cease

This semi-autobiographical novel, published in 1963, is largely set between 1911 and 1921, the key period of transition from an Ireland planning for Home Rule to a country fighting for full independence. The central character, Martin Matthew Reilly, has connections both with the countryside and with Dublin; provincial Ireland speaking to him of conservative tradition while Dublin calls him to radicalism. In 2007, the author Frank Delaney included Thy Tears Might Cease in his Top 10 Irish novels, along with The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen.

The author, Michael Farrell (born 19 September 1899), grew up in Carlow. He was educated in the prestigious Roman Catholic schools of Knockbeg College and Blackrock College. He then began a medicine degree in University College Dublin. His studies were interrupted by imprisonment for subversive activities and he didn't devote his life to medicine. Instead, he focused on writing. His output was largely journalistic but he started writing his one novel at a relatively young age. His friend and fellow writer Monk Gibbon explains that “it is difficult to say when Farrell first began to write the book. It may have been in the early days of his marriage [he married in 1930] but his brother Seán believes that it might have been considerably earlier”. In 1937, with the support of another writer friend, Seán Ó Faoláin, the book was accepted for publication by a London publisher but Farrell refused to release the book and continued to edit and revise his book for many years after that. It was finally published in 1963, the year after his death.

The outbreak of the First World War is described from a provincial Irish viewpoint:
“No one at Keelard had given much thought to it when the newspapers had headlined the murder of an Austrian archduke — whatever an archduke might be — at some unpronounceable place in the Balkans. Even Miss Clare had only seen in it an opportunity to point out that there were still a few corners of the world left which were not wholly civilised. She did not dream that the mask was going to drop from the face of the whole continent. And when it did drop... the general mood in all countries was one of elation rather than despondency. That mood touched Ireland as well as everywhere else. It too resounded with cries of ‘gallant little Belgium’. It too raised its hands in horror at the crime committed against Catholic Louvain. The flags of the Allies appeared on traps and asses’ carts... the British and the Irish flags hung, crossed in amity, in Irish streets.”

Lolita

This novel, published in 1955, is largely set in New England. The central characters are Humbert Humbert, a French academic born in 1910, and Dolores Haze, born in 1935. He encounters this girl (Lolita) in 1947 in the fictional town of Ramsdale and quickly becomes infatuated with her. When her mother is knocked down and killed, he contrives to become her guardian. They travel around the country together, driving all day and staying in motels. After a year of touring the United States, Humbert takes Dolores to settle in the fictional New England town of Beardsley and enrols her in a school. On a second road trip, Dolores abandons Humbert while in a town in Texas.

The author, Vladimir Nabokov (born 22 April 1899), grew up in Saint Petersburg. He was trilingual (reading and speaking English, French and Russian) from a young age. In 1916 his first book (a poetry collection) was published. While still a schoolboy, his family, being quite aristocratic, were forced to flee to Crimea by the October Revolution. From there, they moved to England after the war. Nabokov went to university in Cambridge and graduated in 1922. In the meantime, his parents had relocated to Berlin and Nabokov followed them there after his graduation. He lived there until 1937 when he and his Jewish wife moved to France as refugees from Nazi persecution. From there, they again emigrated in 1940, this time to the United States. He obtained American citizenship in 1945 and established himself in an academic career, teaching Russian and English literature at Cornell from 1948 to 1959. Due to the financial success of Lolita, he was able to move to Switzerland and focus on writing.He died there in 1977 while working on his ninth novel in English. His corpus includes ten novels written in Russian between 1926 and 1939; nine novels in English between 1941 and 1977; numerous poetry collections; and several plays.

Humbert Humbert, the narrator of the novel, has a jealous, rather hypocritical, dislike for the boy who first had sex with Dolores while she was at camp. Several years later, he mentions the boy's activities to a neighbour, mother of Phyllis Chatfield, one of Dolores's friends:
“I remember Phyllis. Phyllis and  Camp Q. Yes, of course. By the way, did she ever tell you how Charlie Holmes debauched there his mother’s little charges?”
Mrs Chatfield’s response was one of horror:
”For shame, for shame, Mr Humbert! The poor boy has just been killed in Korea.”
There must have been thousands of villains killed in the First World War but many of them are remembered as innocent because of their deaths in action.

The Flame of the Forest

This pseudo-autobiographical novel, published in 1955, is largely set in Kolkata. The narrator has left university and is looking for work; among his jobs is contributing to an American-style weekly called Life in Technikolor. At the same time, he's pursuing an interest in Myna, a dancing girl termed ‘the Flame of the Forest’. He is torn between urban modernity with international culture and the rural traditional culture. This traditional India is impersonated by Myna; she attracts him away from Western intellect and towards mystery and myth.

The author, Sudhindra N. Ghose (born 30 July 1899), grew up in West Bengal. After studying at the University of Calcutta, he moved to Europe to study for a doctorate at the University of Strasbourg. He subsequently was a research scholar in universities in England, France, Germany and Switzerland. Alongside his studies, he served as a foreign correspondent for The Hindu newspaper from 1924. In 1931, he joined the information secretariat of the League of Nations. He fled to England with his Jewish partner in 1940 and lived there until 1957. Though he spent his entire writing career outside of India, all of his books were set in his home country. He is best remembered for his tetralogy of autobiographical fiction comprising And Gazelles Leaping (1949), Cradle of the Clouds (1951), The Vermilion Boat (1953) and The Flame of the Forest (1955). R.K. Narayan regarded the quartet as an allegorical work; a “20th-century Pilgrim's Progress”.

Myna, one of the central character's of the novel, believes that “no one dies... save on his own choice and in his own time”. “Only when a man supplicates for death then alone does he receive the visitation of Death’s messenger. And he must call out for his own dissolution not once, nor twice, but three times.“ In her mind, “death... comes to him as a solace, a benediction to him and his relations.” This prompted me to think of wounded soldiers on the battlefield who plead for death.

Children at the Shop

This novel, published in 1967, is set in Kent. Although presented as an autobiography, it is for the most part a fictional memoir. The 'shop' referred to in in the title is the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. Although the author did live near Woolwich for some of her childhood, her depiction of a childhood in this military setting was informed more by her imagination than by experience. The narrator befriends a cadet called Myers, son of a doctor in Salisbury, and she gives an account of his experiences in the First World War: "He survived the perils of the First World War, won the D.S.O. and bar, married a daughter of a rich industrialist, eventually became a brigadier-general, and retired to the south of France." With the exception of that snippet, the account ends in August 1914 with mobilisation interrupting a family seaside vacation.

The author, Ruby Ferguson (née Ashby, born 28 July 1899) was the daughter of a Methodist minister. She grew up in Yorkshire and was educated in Bradford. Her first cousin, Spencer Ashby, of the Middlesex Regiment, was killed in action on 2 July 1916. She studied at Oxford, where she did a degree in English. She started work as a secretary in Manchester but quickly began writing as a sideline. Her first novel was published in 1926; it and most of her early output were in the crime genre. Her ninth book, the 1937 romantic novel, Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary, was her most successful novel for adults. She is best known for her Jill Crewe books, a series of nine pony-riding books primarily written for her step-granddaughters, published between 1949 and 1962.

One of the novel's minor characters is Astrid, a Danish student who lives with them in an arrangement similar to an au pair. She agrees to marry a German and the narrator is horrified:
“Golly, Astrid. Do you have to go and marry a German?”
“That I cannot help. I meet him, we loff, it is fate. He is so nize.”
“When you get married, will you have to go and live in Germany?”
“In Bremen, yes.”
The narrator later mentions that Astrid wrote from Bremen to describe her new home —
“That was in the summer of 1914 and the last we ever heard of Astrid.”