At great risk to themselves children and adults carry food to the visitor, and they have a loyalty to one another that comes from a devotion to freedom, a sense that they are on the same side. In fact, the very first words in Love And War In The Apennines are these: ‘To all those Italians who helped me, and thousands like me, at the risk of their lives, I dedicate this book.

Love and War in the Apennines by Eric Newby | Goodreads

To become a subscriber to Slightly Foxed: The Real Reader’s Quarterly Magazine, please visit our subscriptions page. I don't know how Newby manages to give such a light, sometimes amusing, touch to serious privations, hardship and fear without being annoying. As these two early passages indicate, Newby makes no pretence of being an iron-jawed Alistair MacLean war hero. The binding suffers moderate loosening due to age and wear, but remains secure and in-tact; the pages are clean and unmarked. Newby's style is quite matter of fact, and sprinkled with a lot of humour, but there is no mistaking the danger he was in, and the physical hardships that he had to endure.

Told brilliantly, Eric Newby brings every moment to life, taking you right there into the Italian mountains during the last few years of the war. After the Italian Armistice of 1943, Eric Newby escaped from the prison camp in which he'd been held for a year. Newby fell in love with the Italian girl with whom he shared an exchange of language - she taught him Italian, he taught her English. I enjoyed my re-acquaintance with Eric Newby and now plan to re-read "A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush" and forage further in his work. In enforced isolation, he was sheltered and protected by an informal and highly courageous network of Italian peasants.

Love and War in the Apennines: Books - AbeBooks Love and War in the Apennines: Books - AbeBooks

My brother gave me this book for Xmas with a note: "I know you don't like war books, but this is more about love than war and I think you'll like it".

The independent-minded quarterly magazine that combines good looks, good writing and a personal approach. For several months, he was sheltered and fed by local people, despite their fear of the German army and the scarcity of their own resources. Eric Newby is an English soldier in 1943, captured by the Germans and imprisoned in a former mansion in Italy.

Love and War in the Apennines - Wikipedia Republished // WIKI 2 Love and War in the Apennines - Wikipedia Republished // WIKI 2

Clouds whipped by as I made my way along a narrow path to the iron cross atop the Corno, but not densely enough to obscure the 360-degree view from the top.Recently, in my MA a woman sent me her work to read (a memoir) and I told her frankly that on the most part, I don't enjoy memoirs. This is no Boy’s Own tale of derring-do, but the story of a young man of 22, often frightened, questioning his own motives and strength of character and feeling intense guilt at times at the lengths to which his various hosts go to save him.

Love and war in the Apennines : Newby, Eric : Free Download Love and war in the Apennines : Newby, Eric : Free Download

As it happened, this man was no rabid Nazi, but an enthusiastic butterfly hunter who had, he said, “no intention of spoiling such a splendid day either for you or for myself. Based on Eric Newby's autobiographical story of his wartime experiences in Italy, 'In Love and War' is a tale of how a young English soldier meets and falls in love with a lovely young Italian woman, Wanda, in a small Italian town in the Apennines.Walking in the Italian Dolomites, I am told, can be like trying to navigate a London Underground platform at rush-hour, but here in the Apennines the only living creatures I encountered were several roe deer, a bird of prey that might have been a type of eagle, and a big fat adder sunning itself on the road. There is also interesting insight into the mind of a young man who feels guilty at times about not being in the thick of war, and we know now that they were (unfairly) given the description of “D-Day dodgers” by many.