Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Calais; Une jeunesse tourmentée par deux guerres | Quelques extraits du livre de Robert Detant

Voici des extraits du livre de Robert Detant un Calaisien dont le père était fabricant de dentelles à Calais. "Une jeunesse tourmentée par deux guerres" de Robert Detant où il raconte sa jeunesse et la vie à Calais durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale de mai 1940 à mai 1945... Suite...



 - En savoir plus.

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Here is film "Wodehouse in Exile" broadcast by BBC4 on 25 March 2013

I viewed the film and confess I found it very good, funny and reflecting the wit and humor of PGW (*). The thread is logical and may appeal to rational thinking. But I am uneasy now with what we wrote with Frederic and Philip which is also true. So I must find with your help means to make the two visions coherent. My cousin Guy gives what he recollects from talking with his father, my uncle Harold. Harold said they had suffered hell at the fortress of Huy in Belgium. At Tost where they spent the most of their internment, he didn't suffer badly exept fot the lack of freedom. He himself spent most of the time reading. When he was liberated in 1945, what broke him was the fact that Allen his son born in 1922, died just after his liberation from Dachau concentration camp, where he had been interned since mid 1944. He and his wife went every day to hotel Lutetia boulevard Raspail to scrutinize the list of men liberated and coming back to Paris. You can imagine their torture.... Suite...

(*) This is my subjective impression on viewing the film; it is loosely related to the reality of war. The film focuses on Wodehouse and his treason, presenting him as a nice and sensitive man, an artist, humourous but naive, manipulated by the Germans to broadcast to the US in order that they not enter the war. The sequences of the film on Tost internment camp are only a small part of the film.

 - More links and reactions on the film.

Sunday, April 14, 2013

BBC News - PG Wodehouse and his French connection

Author PG Wodehouse was born in England and died in the US, but in between he lived for several years in France, a country that looms large in some of his most colourful creations. It is true what they say in the blurb - there honestly is no better antidote to anguish, ennui or general world-weariness than to flick through a few pages of the Master. Plum - as he was known - began living in France in 1934. He chose Le Touquet, on the north coast, because it was a fashionable resort with golf, casino and a beach for the dogs. In July 1940 he was arrested by the Germans and was interned at Tost... Read on...

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

BBC Four: Broadcast of 25 March : "Wodehouse in exile"


 About the BBC Four Broadcast of 25 March 2013 "Wodehouse in exile", see this open letter to the Director of the BBC...
Au sujet de l'émission du 25 mars 2013 de la BBC4 "Wodehouse en exil",

voir cette lettre ouverte au Directeur de la BBC4. Next/Suite...