Fire and Water. An N.F.S. Anthology. (Lindsay Drummond. los.)
THE N.F.S. offers one of the best solutions for a brave man wishing to continue his art. This book, including descriptions of blitzes, boredom, Dunkirk, fire-fighting in Finland, and the social life of the stations, follows, and I think surpasses the popular exhibitions of firemen's paintings. Spender kicks off with a rather disappointing poem, but retrieves himself brilliantly with " Christmas Day at Station XIY." As rapportage perhaps the most memorable are the dramatis personae of Maurice Richardson's training-school, especially his instructor, James Gordon on the City blitz and the oil-fires at Thameshaven, and the sophisticated simplicities of Henry Green. Clearly the Fire Service, with its civilian and domestic intervals, irons out individuality far less strenuously than the more numbing stretches of military life—many of these " characters " are exuberantly Dickensian. William Sansom, whose terrifying account of a falling wall is reprinted from Horizon, describes some pleasant fire smells—crates of lighted brandy, the savour of a roasting butcher's shop, and the exciting smell of a toffee warehouse. " It was com- forting to find this treasured nostalgia so generously magnified." In a sneaking way the blitz has become many people's treasured nostalgia, and it is comforting to find it so realistically evoked and recorded.
Previous page
