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.”