Expedition World

Subtitle

Book review by author David Durkan of Penguins on Everest:
BEST BOOK BUY 2021.
Dad's Army, a popular TV show, showed life in the UK under WW2.
John Pritchard-Jones ‘DADS WAR’ takes a giant leap in “A schoolboy's diaries of the Second World War.”
Totally gob-smacked from the first line:
“Britain declared war on Germany at 11 am on Sunday, Sept 3rd, 1939.
September 4, 1939: “Two air-raid warnings. Athenia was torpedoed and shelled without warning…..”
Followed by nearly 300 pages, in 2 volumes, of details, depth, observations, feelings of horror and despair, tinged with humour, courage and Tommy-style perseverance. Drawings, photos, press clippings and posters - coupled with a clear observational seeking mind, gives us far more than the title suggests.
Crafted by his daughter, Sian, with not a word changed, these schoolboy handwritten diaries give us an insight to times past, times to be honoured, and times to be learnt from. 
Deserving ‘Book of the Year’, as a document to times we should never forget.

Book review by author Kev Reynolds, author of more Cicerone trekking guides than we can count on all our fingers and toes combined!

"I ordered both volumes of Dad's War on Monday; they arrived on Tuesday and by midday Wednesday I was cursing the fact that I had work to do. John Pritchard-Jones may have only been a schoolboy during World War II but he has taught me more about that war from his summary of daily happenings than I ever learned from my own father who was in uniform throughout and was part of the D-Day invasion in 1944. My dad took many years before he could talk about his experiences, but the schoolboy's diaries of John Pritchard-Jones provide us with a history as it happened - the to-ings and fro-ings of British troops and their allies; the uncertainties as well as the moral-boosting successes - illustrated with facsimile maps and photographs which add authenticity. The two handwritten volumes of Dad's War bring with them an immediacy that is missing from most academically written histories - and that's another reason for reading them."