Saki: Birds On The Western Front

[vetuste_ennemi]

A recent thread on the Great War reminded of this piece . I'd read it years ago in Penguin's "The Complete Short Stories", but couldn't remember the title, so had to buy myself a fresh copy (gave the former copy to one of my fellow programmers when she returnedto India, good gu that I am).
Anyway, here it is. Here it is:

https://www.annotated-saki.info/birds-western-front/

Or, if you prefer to listen to it, this is from YouTube:

[Mamyalynne]

A fascinating man and not always well received, perhaps understandably but he uses contrast in his words so beautifully.

[Khandro]

Will watch it later v_e, but I know what it is about, (a subject I often think of) and I've been looking today at lots of pictures of Notre Dame on fire, in several you can see dark objects silhouetted against the sky which I first thought were pieces of debris flying up from the heat, but on closer inspection I can now see they are birds, maybe rooks or jackdaws. Imagine, they may have lost their homes, and horror, even young chicks - an added dimension to this terrorist attack. (I had to get that in!)

[vetuste_ennemi]

Love his stories and his characters, Mamya. Of course, he had the usual problems faced by homosexuals in Edwardian England. Read, (or watched?), somewhere, sometime, a biography of Munro: blackmail by rent boys featured.

Here's a story (quite out of character, you might think, knowing his better known stuff, which I found very moving (yup, more proof of shameless sentimentality - hope Khandro's not following this):

http://fullreads.com/literature/the-image-of-the-lost-soul/

[vetuste_ennemi]

Oh dear - hadn't spotted the second post - too busy looking for the story. Damage done now.