Bartimeus (1886–1967)

This little book, the size of a paperback (191 pages but the size of the font will please older readers), was ideal bedtime reading, one short story a night. Most are sketches of an aspect of naval life of the time, a year or two into the Great War such that espionage, battle, injuries and death, and love too, are sometimes in the foreground, sometimes the background, but I really enjoyed this book. Re-call from leave, captain's rounds, shore leave, desertion, a children's party, a ship's show more party (sod's opera) and wardroom entertaining for a 'chummy ship' are all covered, perhaps somewhat sentimentally, but nonetheless accurately. Each shows how much of the Navy I knew, some fifty and more years on, was much the same and how much (or little, sometimes) society, the people, had changed. Easy reading but pleasing too. Wardroom slang of the time is common throughout the book - Indiarubber Man was the officer responsible for physical training (his frame supposedly as flexible as an india rubber), Torps was the torpedo officer and the AP is the Assistant Paymaster (deputy supply officer or captain's secretary in my Navy) and the branch of the author. show less