A Very English Hero
The Making of Frank Thompson
Published on 2. August 2012
Book
Hardback
432 pages
978-1-4088-0243-4 (ISBN)
Description
Gentle, modest and handsome, a fine poet, proficient in nine languages, eccentric Englishman Frank Thompson made an unlikely soldier. The elder of two sons of a formidable family of writers (his brother would become the radical historian E. P. Thompson), lover of Iris Murdoch, he was an intellectual idealist, a rare combination of brilliant mind and enormous heart.
Despite his mother's best efforts, and the Communist Party line (Iris had herself recruited him), in September 1939 Frank enlisted. Serving first with the Royal Artillery, then Phantom, finally moving to SOE to escape the 'long littleness of life', he documented his wartime experiences. He wrote prodigiously, letters, diaries and poetry, the best of which, the much anthologised 'An Epitaph for my Friends' - for many the landmark poem of the Second World War - gives a taste of what English poetry may have lost when in June 1944, aged twenty-three, Frank was captured, tortured and executed in Litakovo, Bulgaria; a sense of his ability to touch the reader, to speak for his generation, to bear witness to their lost youth. A dictionary he was carrying once stopped an enemy bullet and saved his life; a volume of the great Roman poet Catullus was found on him after his death: Frank fought a 'poet's war'.
Frank's letters still read fresh and alive today, his journals retain a startling intimacy - and it's from these that Peter J. Conradi brings vividly to life a brilliantly attractive and courageous personality, a soldier-poet or scholar-soldier of principle and integrity: a very English hero from a very different era.
Despite his mother's best efforts, and the Communist Party line (Iris had herself recruited him), in September 1939 Frank enlisted. Serving first with the Royal Artillery, then Phantom, finally moving to SOE to escape the 'long littleness of life', he documented his wartime experiences. He wrote prodigiously, letters, diaries and poetry, the best of which, the much anthologised 'An Epitaph for my Friends' - for many the landmark poem of the Second World War - gives a taste of what English poetry may have lost when in June 1944, aged twenty-three, Frank was captured, tortured and executed in Litakovo, Bulgaria; a sense of his ability to touch the reader, to speak for his generation, to bear witness to their lost youth. A dictionary he was carrying once stopped an enemy bullet and saved his life; a volume of the great Roman poet Catullus was found on him after his death: Frank fought a 'poet's war'.
Frank's letters still read fresh and alive today, his journals retain a startling intimacy - and it's from these that Peter J. Conradi brings vividly to life a brilliantly attractive and courageous personality, a soldier-poet or scholar-soldier of principle and integrity: a very English hero from a very different era.
Reviews / Votes
A very moving account of the all-too-brief life of a warrior-poet * <B>Antony Beevor</B> * Intensely absorbing, steeped in human interest and peppered with outlandish characters ... Thomson's niece is quoted as saying that this account of his death unites him more firmly with the common stream of humanity, "where people are still being shot in ditches every day". Conradi's inspiring book persuades us that its unassuming, generous-hearted hero might have agreed * <B><I>The Sunday Times</I></B> * Impeccably researched ... A fine description of the biographer's role, and generous quotations from Frank Thompson's letter and poems recreate his bulky, restless, energetic presence. But it is Conradi's own more subtle presence that locks the reader into the narrative ... A pensive, moving and very personal book * <B>Frances Wilson, <I>Observer</I></B> * An elegy for a lost generation, and a fascinating social and political history of a peculiar period in our recent past ... it's impossible to put down Conradi's impressive and moving account of Thompson's life without a feeling of regret. The figure who emerges from these pages is engaging, passionate and noble ... he was the epitome of a rare and precious type of distinctly English hero **** * <B>Simon Griffith, <I>Mail on Sunday</I></B> * [An] excellent, absorbing biography ... Mr Conradi tells the true story, movingly and well ... He convincingly portrays an attractive, brilliant and courageous personality, an intellectual with a heart who loved laughter, an idealist who merits the title of this book * <B><I>Economist</B></I> * [A] magnificent and tragic biography * <B><I>Jewish Chronicle</I></B> * Moving and gripping, told with great lucidity and sympathy ... a story of heroic times and hopes * <B>Margaret Drabble</B> * He has painted a compelling portrait of a generation that is slipping from memory into history as irreversibly as that which went into the war in 1914 ... a generous and perceptive rescue of a personality and talent that Thompson's friends could never forget ... [a] moving portrait * <B><I>Spectator</B></I> * Inspiring * <B><I>The Sunday Times</I> 'Must Reads'</B> * Excellent * <I><B>Independent</B></I> * Frank Thompson's life is extraordinarily well documented in his voluminous correspondence, poetry and diaries and in those of his family and friends. With his habitual diligence, Peter Conradi creates a vivid image of his world, at home, at Oxford and at war * <B>Jane Shilling, <I>Scotsman</B></I> * Conradi writes well and gives is a judicious and balanced portrait of the age. Frank Thompson would have appreciated that * <I><B>Literary Review</I></B> *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 153 mm
Weight
710 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4088-0243-4 (9781408802434)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
08/2012
1st Edition
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
€18.49
Available for download
Person
Peter J. Conradi became interested in Frank Thompson while researching his critically acclaimed Iris Murdoch: A Life, the authorised biography. He is also the author of The Saint and the Artist, a study of her novels and thought; of critical studies of Dostoevsky, Angus Wilson and John Fowles; and, most recently, Going Buddhist and At the Bright Hem of God. He lives in London and Radnorshire where he gardens, walks, edits the Radnorshire Transactions and chairs the Bleddfa Trust. He was elected FRSL in 2011.
peterjconradi.co.uk
peterjconradi.co.uk