The Soldier's Return

This is wonderfully perceptive account of front line warfare that evokes the trauma of military combat and the the mental and psychology damage caused by first hand combat, on the participants. Melvyn Bragg is a superb story teller and his writing gently teases out the damage that a marriage suffers......more

I have read much more regarding WWI than WWII. Most of what I *have* read involves Hitler and the holocaust, not the Far East and Japan. The soldier of the title here has returned from Burma. Throughout the bulk of the novel there are but passing references to the fighting there, so I was somewhat s......more

Not perfect but very enjoyable. The characters really get in your head and there are some emotional moments. I didn’t realise it was a trilogy. This was a discarded book from my time in libraries, but I’ll definitely be hunting down the following book to see what happens to this family next.......more

I struggled a bit with this, but think it's rather better than my fractured enjoyment of it suggested. I remember reading 'Lark Rise to Candleford' when I was at school (compulsory reading, small book, tiny print, story by which I was unriveted), and 'The Soldier's Return' affected me in something of......more

The story for the most part concerns that of a man returning to his wife and son after serving in Burma during WWII. No doubt like many of his generation, the central character feels suffocated by life in small town Wigton (in Cumbria, just out of Carlisle). For mine, Bragg effectively captures the......more