Low life | 25 October 2018

My reactionary first world war reading jag continues. The literature is vast, but so is my capacity and fascination. I began reading systematically, then went in search of thrills. Typing ‘my top ten first world war books’ into a search engine has also been a wonderfully fruitful source of leads. Space, and probably your boredom threshold, won’t allow me to list mine. I want to stick my neck out, however, and give a cheer for two books by liaison officers: one a Anglophile Frenchman liaising with the British, the other a Francophile Englishman liaising with the French. As one might imagine, both books are tragicomic.

Emile Herzog was the son of a textile tycoon. In the first world war he served as an interpreter, then as a liaison officer. The Silence of Colonel Bramble is a series of fictional sketches set in a British officer’s mess near Ypres. The principal characters are the eponymous and taciturn Colonel, a major, a regimental doctor, a veterinary officer, a padre and a French liaison officer.