Paul Ableman (1927–2006)

What an odd idea for a book. This Dad's Army tie-in is presented as a 'real' history book about the Walmington-on-Sea Home Guard. The historian/editor is supposed to be Wilson's nephew (who never knew the man). Having decided to research events during the war, he stumbles across a log kept by Captain Mainwaring as well as many historical documents (most of which it makes no sense for Mainwaring to have, so the supposition is that he went around stealing drafts of personal letters from show more everyone's waste paper bins!). The bulk of the book are the excerpts from Mainwaring's log, which are in fact four episodes of Dad's Army rewritten from the point of view of Mainwaring himself. This means that some of the plot elements are missing because Mainwaring didn't know about them and are filled in either by supposition or the extra documents I mentioned above. I don't really know why someone decided to do this but it actually works really well. I absolutely believe that the narrative voice belongs to Mainwaring, which is a mixture of pompous bluster and heartfelt sincerity. The episodes in question are The Battle of Godfrey's Cottage, which would have still been missing when this book was written, so may have played a part in why it was chosen, Getting the Bird, which is an example of one where there are two subplots going on that Mainwaring doesn't know about, Mum's Army, in which Mainwaring falls in love so an obvious contender for a story written by him and finally My British Buddy, which is used as a 'finale' to the book because Mainwaring gets one over on the ARP warden, but since their animosity has hardly been a main theme of this book it seems like an odd choice. It is also not how things play out in the actual episode, so I don't know whether the reader of this book is supposed to know the Dad's Army episodes so well that there is a second layer of humour going on where you know that Mainwaring is lying, or if the accounts are based on earlier scripts or if this is just an alternate universe. Anyway, it was an entertaining read. show less

Interesting novel - it purports to tell a stream of consciousness story from the point of view of a young schizophrenic, but at times it reads like automatic writing, William S. Burroughs' cut-ups, and perhaps some of Gertrude Stein's more abstract work. It's a very difficult read, but worth the effort.

Just a bizarre book.
Like when you can remember a dream which just jumps from scene to scene with no apparent connection.
The fact it was only 140 pages made me able to complete it.

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