A Schoolboy’s Wartime Letters by Geoffrey Iley

 A Schoolboy’s Wartime Letters

by Geoffrey Iley is an enchanting, enchanting book.

The letters in questions, first of all this is an epistolary book of letters sent to the parents and relatives of Geoffrey, were found when Geoffrey a pretty mature man. He was pleasantly surprised to seeing that all the letters sent and received a lot of time ago were still there, waiting for him.

A lonely child, because of work, Geoffrey's family afforded to Birmingham. Years, that ones, where the cold winds of war were whispering always more persisting. We are at the end of the 1930s. Geoffrey, also for preserving him during that horrible phase for Europe was sent in schools distant from that city, for completing the years.

The letters you'll read documents his weekly activities. From the games he loved to play with, the request for his violin, and many times!!! for stamps: the polemic because of censorship, blue pencil!, passing throught the several illnesses he was affected of or were affected his friends: he concluded most of the time reassuring his parents. Food in the first school wasn't great at all, and at first, because of this reason, he fell ill. He also felt melancholy because he had left his home, but in this case after a short time, recovered successfully well.

His parents were also taking in consideration, if Germans would have occupied the UK, of sending him in the USA, an hypothesis later discarded.

At that time correspondence was the only way for receiving news, gifts, postcards from someone distant. Geoffrey asked for books, for games, bycicles, money, everything you can imagine he could ask for, being satisfied all the times, but not only: her mother sent him also delicious fruits and cakes that he consummed in his bedroom!

I also noticed that Geoffrey, in opposite case avide letter-writer, postponed or interrupted his writings  when it was teatime, a sacred moment for everyone in the UK. 

At the end of the school Geoffrey started a first experience as engineer apprentice becoming much more with the time and building a beauty existence. 

But...But...What you will love the most of his character is that, although little, Geoffrey had a solid, strong character, pretty technical and mathematical, being also happy, cheerful ironic and mature at the same time.

It was a great joy reading this book, where we can see a correspondence spanning through all the years of the Second World War.

Highly recommended book.

I thank John Hunt Publishing for the copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori