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Private Angelo
by Eric Linklater
ISBN: 9780862413767
Imprint: Canongate Classics
Publication Date: Jun 2008
Format: Paperback
Price: £5.99
Stock Status: in stock
Angelo, a private in Mussolini’s ‘ever-glorious’ Italian army, may possess the virtues of love and an engaging innocence, but he lacks the gift of courage. However, due to circumstances beyond his control, he ends up fighting not only for Italy, but also for the British and German armies. With his patron the Count, the beautiful Lucrezia, the charming Annunziata and the delightful Major Telfer, Angelo’s fellow characters are drawn with humour, insight and sympathy, making the book a wittily satirical comment on the grossness and waste of war. In Private Angelo, Linklater has written a book which demonstrates that honour is not solely the preserve of the brave.
Eric Linklater (1899-1974) was born in Wales and educated in Aberdeen. His father came from the Orkney Islands, and the boy spent much of his childhood there. Linklater served as a private in the Black Watch at the close of the First World War, surviving a nearly fatal head wound to return to Aberdeen to take a degree in English. A spell in Bombay with the Times of India was followed by some university teaching at Aberdeen again, and then a Commonwealth Fellowship which allowed him to travel in America from 1928 to 1930. Linklater’s memories of Orkney and student life informed his first novel, White Maa’s Saga (1929), while the success of Poet’s Pub in the same year persuaded him to take up writing full time. Two novels followed, before he rejoined the army for the Second World War. The compassionate comedy Private Angelo was drawn from this experience. With these any many other books, Linklater enjoyed a long and popular career as a writer.
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