If the Cat Fits ... : Stories of a Vet's wife by Chrystal Sharp

The first of three collections of animal stories by a Vet's wife, set in the UK, Swaziland, Johannesburg and the Eastern Cape. A very light and enjoyable story, very South African.

Dog in my Footstepsby Chrystal Sharp

The second of three collections of animal stories. Chrystal gets a job. Set in the Eastern Cape

Cockburn Sums Up: an autobiography by Claud Cockburn.

I've never heard of Claude Cockburn before, and I'm not very surprised: I learn from this autobiography that he was a Communist and journalist for the Daily Worker, which would have removed him from my world. He ran a Samizdat press in London before WWII. He later went to live in Ireland and worked freelance.

Newspapers are only useful as long as they don't pretend to give an onbjective opinion.

Recommended to everybody who hate communists.

From Tailhooker to Mudmover: An aviation career in the Royal Naval Fleet Air Arm, United States Navy, and South African Air Force by Dick Lord.

An autobiographical account of Lord's career in military aviation. Of particular interest to me was the inside story of the Oceanos rescue operations, and a description of a rescue of German scientists of Neumayer station by Puma helicopters of the SAAF.

Recommended to everybody interested in military aviation, naval aviation, and South African Military History.

The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett

Another Diskworld novel. As good as the others. The first where Death doesn't make an appearance. Set in a new part of the Discworld, sheep-farming country: a new witch starts her career.

Death's Men: soldiers of the Great War, by Denis Winter

A very good description of what it was like to be a common British soldier or subaltern on the Western Front during the Great War (WW I). Very thorough, it glues together quotations from men who were there, to form a mosaic that shows the whole picture of the personal experience. Particulary interesting to me were the chapters on "Battle" and "After Battle", that activity "which qualified men for the world's most exclusive club." Also refreshing for showing what it was like when not in the trenches.

Recommended to readers interested in the effect of war on people.

One can nevertheless state with certainty that some soldiers undoubtedly did enjoy the war.
Reading through ... the memoirs ... the dominating inpression, however, is that many more men actively hated the war throughout than found pleasure in it. ... For every man who, in writing expressed approval of his war, ten can be found in writing to damn it in every respect.
Even if lovers of war and haters of war are added together, however, their combined numbers fall far short of that majority who were never able to reach a final judgment.

In short, as Chapman noted, 'a man might rave against war but from its myriad faces it could always turn towards him one which was his own'. 'It is a mode of life, a society, a custom, an intercourse, a conviviality, a business, an idleness, a madness, a monotony, a game, a penal servitude, a rebirth, a second nature - all these.'

The Devil's Device: the story of Robert Whitehead, inventor of the torpedo, by Edwyn Gray.

A more accurate subtitle would be The story of the Whitehead torpedo. It is a biography of Robert Whitehead, a simple man and brilliant engineer, and at the same time a biography of his most famous invention, the torpedo. Simply written, it is full of adoration for Whitehead, whose original torpedo design outlived all competitors.

Recommended to readers interested in naval history.

Long-range gunnery came about not by the choice of the gunnery experts but because the threat of the torpedo made close-range figthing too dangerous.