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Table of Contents ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????Nostalgia Publishing
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Reviews
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Feature Articles
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Introducing the Original Dangerous Books for Boys
Nostalgia: Things are what they used to be!
Nostalgia Central: Carlton Books
Elizabeth Chayne's Reading Room
Personalised Noddy Books from Harper Collins
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Stories and Serials
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Phyllis Owen: A Soft White Cloud Chapter Four
Paul Norman: Heraklion ~ Outcast
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Introducing the Original Dangerous Books for Boys!
By Becky Fincham
The covers are illustrated by David Frankland
HEADLINE REVIEW is delighted to announce the publication of a new series of remarkable and compelling true stories from World War Two. Combining the gripping history of wartime adventure with the real emotion and intensity of real-life narrative, HEADLINE REVIEW is to launch the series in September with the simultaneous publication of three landmark titles from the Second World War.
Three landmark books that sold millions of copies when first published last century, but have been out of print for decades, until now:
BOLDNESS BE MY FRIEND by Richard Pape (One of the most enthralling stories of the war - Radio Times), ODETTE by Jerrard Tickell (The real Charlotte Gray, more than half a million copies sold) and THE HONOUR AND THE SHAME by John Keneally (Keneally was praised by Churchill himself).
As ?the demand for tales of adventure and wartime derring-do continues to grow, these beautifully packaged, heart-rending, inspirational real-life tales of danger and courage will bring World War Two to life for the older generation and the next. The books will also include a new section with additional information on the lives of the authors after the war, which aims to include letters and photographs.
This series is the brainchild of Headline non-fiction publisher Jo Roberts-Miller, who says "at a time when people are famous for being famous, we felt it was important to rediscover some real heroes. These books are all incredible, true adventures from WWII and the people who wrote them made a significant difference to all our lives and their heroic deeds deserve to be better known. These are stories and lives that matter and by repackaging them in an accessible and appealing way we are aiming to find a whole new audience".
This, along with the insatiable demand for real-life memoirs, means these books will be a sure-fire success. From the inspirational story of ODETTE, a young French woman in England who, in the Second World War left her ordinary life to become a British agent, and entering a murky and deadly world of espionage, was betrayed and tortured by the Gestapo and the endurance of Ravensbruck concentration camp. Yet she retained a compassion, grace and spiritedness that mystified her captors. To Richard Pape, who was shot down over Berlin in 1941, and whose saga of captivity is a story unmatched in the annals of escape. Four escapes took him across the breadth of German-occupied Europe: to Poland and Czechoslovakia; to Austria and Hungary. Aggressive and impetuous, his adventures sweep the reader along on a torrent of excitement. To John Keneally, who many years after becoming the youngest person ever to be awarded the VC for attacking a company of Panzer Grenadiers on his own - an action that proved a turning point in one of the major battles of the Second World War - made an extraordinary confession. The courageous hero of the Irish Guards was not, in fact, John Keneally at all, but his real name was Leslie Jackson, the illegitimate son of Neville Blond and Gertrude Robinson (a "high-class whore"), who had deserted his former regiment, the Honourable Artillery Company, and reinvented himself.
And so the list will grow, as Headline Review is committed to seeking out and publishing more of these remarkable true stories. There are three more titles planned for 2008, including recent acquisition DOWN IN THE DRINK from Ralph Barker, in which Flight Lieutenant Barker re-creates with vividness eight stories of the "Goldfish Club"; RAF crews, men from all corners of the British Commonwealth who crashed or were shot down into the sea and survived.
Editor's comment: we had these books in the family collection when I was growing up. Back then it was all about heroism, the true heroism of real people. All of us "baby-boomers" had relatives who had (hopefully) survived the second great war, and reading about the sometimes unbelievable exploits of these "ordinary" people was a privilege. It is no less so now - these are the people who, through their extraordinary courage and bravery, paved the way for us to live in freedom and comparative peace. The books are fresh in the sense that they were written not long after the events took place, and all the more enjoyable for that. It's fair to say that they will appeal to a certain generation who have perhaps been waiting for them to be republished. I like the thinking behind marketing them as the "original dangerous books for boys" though I don't believe it will crack the same audience as Dangerous. Also, they need to be seen as a "package" for their true standout on shelf, and with so many fantastic books out or coming out in the run-up to Christmas, it may be that they don't get their fair share of display space in booksellers' windows, which would be a shame. If it were me, I would put them in with the rest of the terrific nostalgia titles (see my feature on Carlton Books) that are available now?. They look stunning. More importantly, the content, the stories, are as readable now as when I first read them in the 1950s. I just hope Headline can get to bring them to the attention of enough people to make the series a success. They deserve it.
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