Treacle Walker by Alan Garner

I am a fan of Alan Garner.

I read Boneland when it was published in 2012. I remember it well thirteen years later, or at least all the elements of Ursula le Guin's review.

In Treacle Walker Garner builds on a theme from the Owl Sevice; the main protagonists are players in a repeating pattern, though perhaps this story promises a progression or even breaking out of the cycle.

Garner goes further than Boneland in his lack of explanation, and linguistic challenge. All of the characters have their own individual dialects, and are only just mutually intelligible.

The dialect portrayed is not known to me so the language of the main protagonist is a hard to grasp as that of the mythic characters.

I find the book memorable, thought provoking, but ultimately annoying; I don 't read to be stirred up but to learn, I am not sure that Alan is trying to teach.

Winston Churchill's Toyshop by Stuart Macrae

At the ACCU conference in 2012 I asked the person from Bletchly Park if they had heard of my grandfather Norman Angier. They passed my enquiry on the fantastic Dr Phil Judkins who, once we sorted out the Angler/Angier transcription problem, sent me a host of details:

He began in the research laboratories of the Gramophone Company (part of EMI), joined the International Broadcasting Corporation in 1938 and then had a very interesting war developing secret weapons for Churchill's private research establishment in Whitchurch; post-war he did indeed join DECCA but as Technical Recording Manager.

Dr Judkins also attached an image from the book Winston Churchill's Toyshop: The Inside Story of Military Intelligence (Research).

Mentions of Dr Norman Douglas Angier CBE

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Soon I was able to hire two very nicely furnished offices at 35 Portland Place and then to induce the IBC Chief Engineer, Norman Angier, to tackle some of our experimental work.

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Norman Angier gained his OBEin January 1944 for work on switch number 9 'L' delay, a lead based delayed action fuse.

I would recommend the book as it is a window on a bygone age. This bunch of driven, amateur, brilliant oddballs really did contribute significantly to the war effort.