Max Egremont
An Admirable Aristocrat
It Is Bliss Here: Letters Home 1939–1945
By Myles Hildyard (Introduction by Antony Beevor)
Bloomsbury 336pp £17.99 order from our bookshop
In 1939, Myles Hildyard was aged twenty-four, living in London and about to take his Bar finals. There were many aspects to Hildyard that made him unusual: he came from a family of Nottinghamshire landowners, the inheritors of Flintham Hall, a large country house; he spoke fluent German and French, and had been a great sportsman at Eton; his uncle William was the Archbishop of Canterbury; he had intelligence, courage and a thirst for adventure; and he was a homosexual at a time when to practise homosexuality was a crime. For many, if not all, of these reasons, pre-war England must often have been frustrating for him, and one senses, at the start of these letters and diaries, that the war – or at least the prospect of fighting in it – came as a distinct relief. Hildyard joined up immediately, recruited into the Sherwood Rangers, the local Nottinghamshire regiment, by a friend who was the heir to the Duke of Westminster.
Myles Hildyard was a gentleman soldier of a familiar British type: brave, paternalistic, reaching out across class barriers while also preserving them, yet never an absurdly innocent clot like the figures in the haunting ‘Aristocrats’, a poem by his brother officer, Keith Douglas. Parts of this book seem timeless in
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
‘He has become a kind of global guru, public intellectual and consultant to the great. He is the ultimate geopolitical gerontocrat.’
From July 2022: Piers Brendon on Henry Kissinger.
Piers Brendon - Margaret Thatcher As I Knew Her
Piers Brendon: Margaret Thatcher As I Knew Her - Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy by Henry Kissinger
literaryreview.co.uk
‘Even setting to one side the historically neuralgic relationship with ... Ireland, Britain’s insular periphery has from at least the time of the Romans presented difficulties for authorities wishing to centralise.’
Peter Marshall on Britain's islands.
Peter Marshall - Notes from the Atlantic Archipelago
Peter Marshall: Notes from the Atlantic Archipelago - The Britannias: An Island Quest by Alice Albinia
literaryreview.co.uk
Offer ends soon! Take advantage of our best ever Black Friday offer and get a year's subscription for £29.99.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/blackfriday/