Search results for ""Author Tom Hickman""

From 1947 to 1963 some 2.3 million men were conscripted to do national service. For some it was to prove the most exciting and terrifying time of their lives, as many were sent to the Korean War or to countries such as Palestine and Kenya where the terrorist threat was ever-present. They faced death and learned about sex. For others, it was a frustrating interference in their lives, made all the more ridiculous by endless hours of square-bashing or painting coal white.Tom Hickman shows just how varied were the experiences of the recruits. By talking to over 80 veterans, he recalls the hilarious and moving stories from those times, and seeks to explain why the subject still causes debate more than 40 years on. Above all, The Call-Up is a portrait of a vanished era that many still feel has something to teach us today.

Read more less

For fans of Darkest Hour and Dunkirk, discover the story of Walter H. Thompson, the man who saved Winston Churchill's life more than once.Walter H. Thompson was Churchill's bodyguard from 1921 until 1945, brought back from retirement at the outbreak of war.Tom Hickman's authorised biography draws heavily on extracts from a manuscript recently discovered by his great-niece, in which Thompson gives a unique insider's account of a number of occasions on which Churchill's life was put seriously at risk and his intervention was needed.After the war, Thompson married one of Churchill's secretaries, and her recollections, as well as those of surviving family members, are interwoven to tell the revelatory inside story of life beside the Greatest Briton.

Read more less