Bid the Soldiers Shoot

Few people can have passed such a chequered war as John Lodwick, whose novels were selling in increasing numbers until his recent tragic death. This new autobiographical book could well be subtitled "A Record of Prisons"—a record, too, inasmuch as it is possible that he was locked up more times and in more places than any other Englishman during World War II. John Lodwick cheerfully called his book "a record of illusions lost"—a verdict with which the reader may disagree, for, behind bars or at large, the author never lost his appreciative delight in the bobbing humanity which the current of war carried past him. Like the business of war itself, this highly entertaining book is funny and tragic, grim and amusing by turns, full of astonishment and crowded with incident. It is as good as the best of Mr. Lodwick's novels, and has the additional force and strangeness of truth.