Nicholas Montsarrat

[mikey4444]

Can anybody recommend some unmissable novels by Montsarrat ?

I have read " The Cruel Sea" many times but nothing else.

https://www.fantasticfiction.com/m/nicholas-monsarrat/

[Togo]

Mikey read The Master Mariner book 1 Running Proud, and book 2 Darken Ship (unfinished but alternative endings are available) Very good reading.

[mikey4444]

Thanks Togo !

[shaneystar2]

Mikey I noticed that you like A J Cronin.One of my favourite authors too.
If like AJC you may like the books by Howard Spring especially My Son My Son and Fame is the Spur.Hard to get hold of now but a good read if you can get hold of them.

[mikey4444]

Thanks Shaney !

[Togo]

Mikey I first read both in the first few weeks that they were published. I paid good money for both in hard back with original dustcovers. Alas I loaned both out (to different people) and never got them back. I know that the first one was "misplaced" by a work mate on a sailing trip from Beaumaris to Douglas I.O.M., but hey ho.

[paddywak]

He's been one of my favourite authers since I did The Cruel Sea for my GCE Eng Lit.Togo is right about the Master Mariner but I've always liked the Kapilan of Malta,to be honest though you wont go far wrong with any of his books.

[stuey]

If you want to read hysterically funny, yet true story about the First World read "The Mimi And The Touto Go Forth", by Giles Fonden. I've read it three times, and will do so again in time.
"At the start of World War One, German warships controlled Lake Tanganyika in Central Africa. The British had no naval craft at all upon 'Tanganjikasee', as the Germans called it. This mattered: it was the longest lake in the world and of great strategic advantage. In June 1915, a force of 28 men was despatched from Britain on a vast journey. Their orders were to take control of the lake. To reach it, they had to haul two motorboats with the unlikely names of Mimi and Toutou through the wilds of the Congo.


The 28 were a strange bunch -- one was addicted to Worcester sauce, another was a former racing driver -- but the strangest of all of them was their skirt-wearing, tattoo-covered commander, Geoffrey Spicer-Simson. Whatever it took, even if it meant becoming the god of a local tribe, he was determined to cover himself in glory. But the Germans had a surprise in store for Spicer-Simson, in the shape of their secret 'supership' the Graf von Gotzen . . ."

[mikey4444]

I have an early start on Friday, but I will give my local Library a list for them to find, if they can !

Thanks to everybody !

[stuey]

The HMS Mimi and Toutou operation did actually take place. You could Google it, but don't: It'll spoil the really crazy story for you.

[Samuraisan]

Didn't he write " A Town Called Alice "?

[Togo]

Neville Shute wrote A Town Like Alice, a novel and later a film. The Jam sang A Town called Malice.