Newly Arrived In My Letterbox!

Yesterday morning I was about to head off with my nephew and niece for a day's outing when I noticed a very fat parcel waiting for me in the flats' entrance. I knew what it was - it came from England and I had been expecting it. It was a copy of Into The Valley Of Death by the delightful Louise Berridge, who insisted on paying extravagant postage so she could personalise it for me and a lovely autograph it was, too, "in memory of (your) father, who was at least as great a hero as any in this book ". Too right he was. And many thanks, Louise!

I couldn't open it or even take it with me, because it's a hardcover and heavy, so had to shove it into my letterbox till I got home last night. Gorgeous book! It's about the Crimean War. I will have to try focusing on the serious theme here, because the last book I read centred around this was a Flashman novel. And those books are, yes, ultimately, serious, but use humour to make their point and they're laugh-out-loud funny!

Stand by for a review further down the track.