When ordering books by title alone with no description there's always a small chance the book will be not what you intended. Such was the case with "Uniform of Glory: Being a true story of a free Frenchman's Night Out", here I was thinking it would be an obscure non fiction account from the 1940s which would make for interesting reading, but alas, it's actually a fiction book.

Story line is quite simple, Dennis Ducros, French Legionnaire and unsatisfied underling decides to play dress up as the Colonel and proceeds to go out order people around, inspire people, engage in philanthropy and rescue an unfortunately young woman before returning to base and getting away with it all. How does he accomplish this? The real Colonel has a bout of Malaria and he hangs a do not disturb sign on the door.

Printed in 1943 it's quality is standard with books of the era as per the war economy standards so the hard cover isn't particularly hard, however it's still a well bound book by today's standards.

Overall the story is okay but flounders for the first two thirds before becoming a more interesting. I can however see the value it had at the time, simple stories no doubt provided a good escape from reality when the world was at war and life was pretty crap all round. ( )

319. The Uniform of Glory, by Percival Christopher Wren (read 29 Mar 1947) I read this on Mar 29, 1947, and said: "It was awful. Either my taste has risen greatly since August (when I much enjoyed his Soldiers of Misfortune) or (most likely) this book, written in his old age (1940), is far below par. ( )