Book Review by Norman Fine
Spirit: The Lighter Side of Life In Wartime Britain, Derek French, with watercolor illustrations by Shelagh Armstrong, paperback, 309 pages, $19.95, available at AmazonDerek French, ex-MFH of the Eglinton and Caledon Hounds (ON), was raised during World War II on his family farm just twenty miles south of London in Kent. He emigrated to Canada in the 1950s with his wife, Bobbie, and began foxhunting with Eglinton and Caledon in 1988. He was appointed Master in 2000, and, after a seven-year term, continued to serve the hunt as a road whip and still writes articles for the hunt’s Stirrup Cup magazine, several of which have been republished in Foxhunting Life.
In his recently published, highly readable, and often amusing account of his war years—Spirit: The Lighter Side of Life In Wartime Britain—Derek recounts his boyhood memories as the war unfolded in the skies above the farm and upon the village below. What follows is a brief introduction to Derek, then our review of this wartime memoir as experienced by a normal, active young boy. We recommend this book enthusiastically.
Derek was born to a foxhunting family in Kent, England in 1933. When he reached an appropriate age to begin his hunting career, World War II was breaking out, and he and his pony had to wait until after the Allied victory to begin. In the 1950s, after serving in the Royal Navy, he and his wife Bobbie emigrated to Canada where he earned his degree from the University of Toronto.
As a boy, his home hunt was the West Kent, the country of which was defined largely by the north- and mid-Kent electric railway commuter lines. That third and ‘hot’ live rail had always to be considered when hounds were running!
The pack was hunted by the popular and surely one of the longest-ever serving huntsmen, Stan Luckhurst. Derek had the pleasure of riding up with him again in the 1990s with the Eglinton and Caledon Hounds in Ontario when Luckhurst came to visit his son, Paul, who was huntsman for the Hamilton Hunt (ON).
Over his hunting career, Derek has hunted with the Beaver Meadow Foxhounds (ON), Belle MeadeHunt (GA), Eglinton and Caledon, Hamilton, Meynell Foxhounds (UK), Montreal Hunt (QC), Old Surrey and Burstow (UK), Royal Engineers Drag (UK), Quorn Foxhounds (UK), Toronto and North York Hunt (ON), Wellington Waterloo Hunt (ON), and Whiskey Road Foxhounds (SC).
Spirit: The Lighter Side of Life In Wartime Britain
We give top marks to this memoir of World War II through the eyes of a small boy. Living twenty miles south of London on his busy and productive family farm at the time, Derek French delivers a highly readable and often amusing account of a youngster’s view of world events as they unfold in the skies above, leaving the detritus of their passage upon London and the villages below. One of the lucky boys, he readily admits, who suffered no family tragedy during those uncertain years.
Because of the horrendous U-boat predations on shipping during the early years, and the commitment of virtually all of Britain’s resources to the military conflict, the nation often found itself within just days of running out of food. But, as children do, he easily adjusted to both the tensions—severe rationing (one egg per week per person!), inconveniences, disruptions, air raids, bombings, falling shrapnel, school changes—and the thrills—aerial dogfights, descending parachutes, fallen airmen. He watched German bombers en route to their nearby London targets during the Battle of Britain, later the V1 and V2 flying bombs streaking to fall who-knew-where, and the familiar sights and sounds of Allied bombers flying in the opposite direction.
And the family life, especially the time his father took the day off to take him—just him—eel fishing. Father and son flipping the eels onto the steep bank and, roaring with laughter, scrambling to capture the slimy creatures in their hands before they could slither back to the sea. That special memory concluded with successfully bartering the day’s catch to a village fish merchant for fresh fish more to their gustatory liking.
The other message to be appreciated from Derek’s account was in the many ways the nation’s citizens wasted nothing, no matter how insignificant, that could feed and sustain life. After a harvest, days were set aside for village householders to come to the farm, walk the fields, and pick up the fallen kernels of grain for feeding their chickens. Kitchen leftovers from the table were mixed with a little flour into a hot mash to feed family pets.
Finally, early one morning, June 6, 1944, the familiar Allied bomber sounds amplified a hundred-fold, the youngster runs from his house and sees planes from horizon to horizon, glittering in a sunrise that had not yet reached the ground. And soon after, the rumble of naval bombardment all the way from the shores of Normandy. The Lighter Side of Life in Wartime Britain, as the subtitle of French’s story promises, is a story made all the lighter by boyhood’s natural enthusiasm and the good fortune of growing up on a farm in a time of serious deprivation.
Derek’s book is available at Amazon.
Posted January 17, 2019