by Mark Simmons | Dec 9, 2024 | Uncategorized
The author Nevil Shute was many things in his varied life other than a much loved writer, who can forget classics like The Far Country or A Town like Alice. Nevil Shute Norway (17 January 1899 – 12 January 1960) was an English novelist and aeronautical...
by Mark Simmons | Dec 7, 2024 | Uncategorized
by Mark Simmons | Nov 6, 2024 | Uncategorized
‘Operation Judgement’. ‘During the attack a hundred thousand rounds were fired at us but only one aircraft was shot down in each wave. I got hit underneath by one half-inch machine gun bullet. It was the pilot’s job to aim the torpedo. Nobody was given a specific...
by Mark Simmons | Sep 15, 2024 | Uncategorized
by Mark Simmons | Aug 13, 2024 | Uncategorized
1 The 39 Steps John Buchan. I think it has to be on everybody’s list written by Buchan while he was ill in bed at the start of the First World War and published in 1915. It has great pace and a riveting plot no wonder the soldiers in the trenches were enthralled, and...
by Mark Simmons | Aug 12, 2024 | Uncategorized
In August 1909, a semi retired, Naval Commander aged fifty, and living on a houseboat near Southampton devising boom defences for rivers and harbours, received an odd written request. The letter was from Rear Admiral Bethell, Director of Naval Intelligence. It advised...
