Joe Saward

This is an epic tale of the transition form peace time activity to that of war. William Grover was a British racing driver of the 230s & 30s, the man racing under a pseudonym who won the first Monaco grand prix (he is now remembered in the name of one of its corners). After the outbreak of WW2, he wanted to serve his country, so joined up. After a time acting as a chauffeur to top brass, he ends up co-opted to SOE and sent back to France to set up a resistance network. He chooses to enlist another old racing driver, this time a Frenchman, Robert Benoist. What happens from there is a history of a small section of SOE, focusing very much on the activities of these two men.
I don't think it would be a spoiler to say that it doesn't end well. Of 119 SOE personnel captured by the Germans only 17 survived to the end of the war. What happens thereafter is equally as interesting, with the first race meeting in France after the war being held very swiftly, in 1946. That meeting very much showed the hand over from the pre-war racers to those of the post war generation, with the old cars being dusted off and raced in front of large crowds.
The book was very interesting and informative. However, I feel it suffered a little in terms of style. In some cases the sentences gave the impression that there were missing commas, or the sense was difficult to grasp. At other times, in an effort to add emphasis, there would be a short sentence as a paragraph on its own.
This was a trifle annoying.
The other thing that was somewhat confusing was the large cast of characters, most of whom had aliases, sometimes several of them! On their introduction, frequently there would be a back story provided, so the story didn't always move forward in a linear manner. That made it a bit circuitous, but it's difficult to see how else this could be told.… (meer)