Book Reviews
The Hero Inside
by Bryn and Emma Parry
ISBN: 978-1-84689-076-5
Quiller Publishing Ltd | £9.99
This book arrived on my desk a few days ago and on first looking through the pages, I was initially attracted to the high standard of the photography. The book has been published to help raise funds in support of Help for Heroes, a cause which I wholeheartedly endorse. It is a soft-back, but beautifully produced and was launched in September at The Guards Museum, Wellington Barracks.
The Hero Inside
Help for Heroes is the charity, founded in 2007, to support servicemen and women wounded in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of whom were present at the book launch. This charity, co-founded by authors Bryn and Emma Parry, has become the fastest growing and most inspirational UK charity in modern times and is fully deserving of support. Originally set up to raise £2 million to aid wounded servicemen and women from Iraq and Afghanistan, it has now caught the public imagination and has, so far, raised a phenomenal figure in excess of £26 million since its inception in October 2007.
Gill Shaw, who took the photographs, is described as a “celebrity photographer”, but she is also a soldier’s mother. Her son, together with the son of Bryn and Emma Parry, serve alongside each other in The Rifles and both have been fighting in Helmand Province. Both of them know what it is like to lose friends and to have other comrades sent home seriously wounded. Gill has been the driving force behind The Hero Inside and has travelled extensively to photograph and record the experiences of wounded troops on the battlefield and at home.
The Hero Inside features the stories of over 35 different wounded servicemen and women, written in their own words, briefly and with such modesty that they are inspirational in their effect. It also includes contributions from many of the people who are working hard to support the charity in their own individual ways, which can be surprising and heart-warming. The charity is also very well supported by “celebrities”, some of whom explain what they are doing for the charity and why. These include Joanna Lumley, Boris Johnson, Sir Chris Hoy, Michael Portillo, Stephen Fry and James May. There are also written contributions from the senior military leaders in support of the charity.
Never boring, sometimes almost producing tears, sometimes laughter – it contains pen-pictures of the sort of characters that still make this country great and give one the feeling of a little optimism for the future. I urge you to read this thought provoking, inspirational and sometimes emotional record of the experiences of these marvellous people, both on the battlefield and at home.
An average of £2 per copy from the sales of the book go to the Help for Heroes campaign.
The Shrew
by Nicholas Gordon
ISBN: 978-1-906561-26-0
Melrose Books | £13.99
I live in Lincolnshire, which is a big shooting county and many people living in rural areas here are quite familiar with the work of gamekeepers, because they are to be found working on most estates either single-handedly, like the one in the book, or sometimes as a beat-keeper under a head-keeper. All of them are usually a breed apart and tend to keep themselves to themselves, living more or less by their own rules. They are usually loners and work some very odd hours. On the very large estates they often all go to the same pub and otherwise have the unnerving habit of keeping fairly invisible, yet they know a great deal more about what is going on locally than anyone might reasonably think.
This book is a novel and I am guessing it is the author’s first one. Very little in the way of background notes came to me with the book, so I was surprised to discover just how much I actually enjoyed it. It is not a long novel and in fact I read it in two days, partly because it was difficult to put down once started. The author obviously writes about a subject he either knows much about, or has researched well, and the story is a good one and well thought through. The book essentially tells about a single-handed gamekeeper on an old estate which has seen much better days and in which the present young owner, after inheriting the estate, has developed other interests and begun to neglect his inheritance. The old story, I suppose, of clogs to clogs in three generations. He being the third.
There are black clouds looming on the horizon and an unsympathetic, non-shooting agent managing the estate on the owner’s behalf does nothing to help make the gamekeeper’s life any easier. Some quite forbidding events occur and the reader is never sure of their source until the last few pages. In this respect, it is much like a Dick Francis novel.
The book is well researched and moves not only about the estate itself (there is a helpful map of the estate provided) but also to South Africa and to South America in an interesting and convincing way. This is a good read and is well written. The characterisation and the plot are excellent, although I have to say that I did find that the eventual explanation of the forbidding events stretched credibility a little. Nevertheless, it left me wanting to read more. I hope other books from this author, an obvious countryman, are forthcoming.
Reviewed by:
David Hindle