This is a brilliant idea. I am quite surprised that some of these books were written as late as the 1950s. Of that list, I have only read one of the books and that is "HMs Ulysses" which I read as a teenager. I believe it was Alistair McLean's debut novel and concerned ships on the Russian conveys during World War Two. It is years since I read this but have to agree that it was an amazing book and totally unlike the other novels he churned out which I loved as a kid until I realised that the goodies were usually baddies and the baddie were usually goodies. The hero always turned out to be a secret agent as opposed to an ordinary person! The list doesn't include any of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels which were also largely written in this decade. I keep meaning to try Nevil Shute. I believe he wrote a novel in the early 1930s which was about Southampton being destroyed in an air raid which foretold the events to come in World War Two. From recollection, he worked in an airfield near Portsmouth Being born in the 1960s, the one book that really sums up this decade for me is Len Deighton's "The Ipcress File." The film is a classic too,.
Yes, it was McLean’s debut and, by far, his best (though “South By Java Head” (about the evacuation of Singapore) was also really good. I was always disappointed that no one made a film of HMS Ulysses, because as a testament to the bravery of the men on the arctic convoys it was second to none. And, yes, you should try Nevil Shute, definitely. I think he did work at Portsmouth airport for Airspeed and 2 roads (“Norway Road” - his full name was Nevil Shute Norway - and Nevil Shute Road) on the site are named after him. ‘I love his books, which, although a little stilted sometimes, are great stories.
Going through that list I was surprised to find how many of those books I have read over the years (even the letiss book) just finished the lord of the rings trilogy. 44 hours of listening..........just over two weeks by all accounts,
I think that "South by Java Head" was an early novel of his and may even have been published under the name of Iain Stuart. The earlier Alistair MacLean books were quite original but he ultimately became repetitive and I moved on to Wilbur Smith. I was reading them when I was about 12-14. The one I remember being pretty clever was "Fear is the key" which was made in to a film with the bloke who played Pettrocelli on TV in it. I polished off lots of them in a matter of years and "HMS Ullysses" always struck me as being totally different from the others. I think the reason it did not get made in to a film because was because it would have been too similar to "The cruel sea." The earlier and more famous titles always seemed to be the better stories and they got a bit ludicrous towards the end. I gave up with him after "Athabasca" as the books he was publishing by that point seemed to have run out of steam. In many cases, the films always seemed better than the books. One film I always like is "Breakheart Pass" which also has a screenplay by him. This was one of his best books too. I suppose that the most successful film based on one of his books was "Where eagles dare." I loved this film as a kid yet when I watch it now it always makes me laugh when Richard Burton and his team jump from the cable car in to the frozen canal and emerge in a bus to make their escape, not only being bone dry but also not shivering from the cold! I think that the girl's hairstyle is not out of place either! When I was a kid, it felt that Alistair MacLean was the next best thing after James Bond. MacLean's books have fallen right out of favour whereas Ian Fleming seems to have been totally re-appraised these days for their lean writing style. I also remember reading Douglas Reeman books about the Royal Navy when I was young but they never really made much of an impression on me. Books about the Navy are interesting although I must admit that I am more fascinated by the earlier ships. The other writer I loved at that time was Wilbur Smith. I must have read a stack of those by the time I was about 18. Like MacLean, the first books were pretty good but he just ended up writing about the same characters time and time again. As a teenager , I could not put his books down yet as an adult I would never want to pick one up. I think the standard of fiction is generally much higher these days and maybe people want something a bit more credible than MacLean. I think that this is true of a lot of popular fiction. I went through a spell of reading a lot of "popular classics" by the likes of Jules Verne and HG. Wells and found them underwhelming. The best one I read was "Frankenstein" which was massively different from my perception. However, the likes of Verne and Wells date just as much as MacLean and Smith in my opinion. The "old" books which did surprise me were the original "Biggles" stories by Capt W.E. Johns. Again, I had read a few as a kid and wasn't impressed but returning to them as a adult with the knowledge that the Biggles stories were actually a composite of genuine events that involved John's colleagues made the stories far more compelling. Knowing this, they struck me as being really good accounts of what it was like to fly biplanes in World War One with the horror and reality hidden behind a string of euphemisms. The early Biggles stories struck me as being harder hitting than I had anticipated once I understood that many of the events described in this fiction were actually genuine. Probably a rare example of books improving with age?
St Godders only has one book to name. The New Testament (I could have been cruel and said the old Testament )
i heard that when St Godders retired he got a part time job in The Garden of Eden, before it got spoilt by two naked people...
Read his autobiography Slide Rule and his book What Happened to the Corbetts which is about a Southampton family in the war.
Just discovered “Round the Horne” on radio 4 extra. Oh my ..... still just as funny now as it was then ......