Great-Uncle Harry
A Tale of War and Empire
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Narrated by:
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Michael Palin
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By:
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Michael Palin
About this listen
Brought to you by Penguin.
Some years ago a stash of family records was handed down to Michael Palin, among which were photos of an enigmatic young man in army uniform, as well as photos of the same young man as a teenager looking uncomfortable at family gatherings. This, Michael learnt, was his Great-Uncle Harry, born in 1884, died in 1916. He had previously had no idea that he had a Great-Uncle Harry, much less that his life was cut short at the age of 32 when he was killed in the Battle of the Somme. The discovery both shocked him and made him want to know much more about him.
The quest that followed involved hundreds of hours of painstaking detective work. Michael dug out every bit of family gossip and correspondence he could. He studied every relevant official document. He tracked down what remained of his great-uncle Harry's diaries and letters, and pored over photographs of First World War battle scenes to see whether Harry appeared in any of them. He walked the route Harry took on that fatal, final day of his life amid the mud of northern France. And as he did so, a life that had previously existed in the shadows was revealed to him.
Great-Uncle Harry is an utterly compelling account of an ordinary man who led an extraordinary life. A blend of biography, history, travelogue and personal memoir this is Michael Palin at his very finest.
©2023 Michael Palin (P)2023 Penguin Audiomoving and fascinating
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Excellent listen
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Quality research to unearth this wonderful story.
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Undistinguished at school and aimless in adolescence, he was packed off to India from where he was eventually dismissed as not intelligent or hard-working enough. He seemed to fare better as a farm hand in New Zealand, but he was still restless. Although he appreciated pretty young women for their appearance, , he made no attempt to get to know any. He was nearly thirty before he proposed to the woman he loved back ‘home’, but his sad one-liner in his diary stated that “she didn’t love me enough to marry me”.
It was from New Zealand that he embarked for action in WW1, feeling at last that here was a worthwhile and exciting venture. He was to survive the shameful tragedy of Gallipoli only to die in the slaughter on the Somme.
Harry’s frankly lifeless diaries would not have been enough to make a book, despite their faithful detailing of everyday life, but Palin had in addition a fabulous archive of letters and other documents which , along with his own narrative skills, analysis and interpretation , have enabled him to make his very ordinary lack lustre uncle hauntingly and movingly real . His recreation from these sources of the Gallipoli months and the long, festering delays waiting for engagement in France are startlingly immediate. Palin has done his very best to give his great uncle a life to be remembered – and he has succeeded brilliantly. Perhaps most movingly, Harry’s life is heart-breaking, representing as it does just one of the millions of men wiped out in the madness of WW1 battlefields.
Hearing Palin’s own voice reading this book much enhances the emotional charge of his writing.
A superb rescue of Great Uncle Harry from oblivion
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What a gift of a book
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