First published to huge acclaim during the war it describes, Very Ordinary Seaman relates - with humanity, humour and the authority of experience - lower-deck life in the British navy, from basic training to service on a destroyer protecting a convoy to Arctic Russia, a mission which came under heavy attack by air and sea, and from which many did not return.
When Very Ordinary Seaman first appeared in the spring of 1944, V.S. Pritchett of the New Statesman described it as 'One of the best pieces of documentary writing that I have come across during the war.'
Elizabeth Bowen wrote in The Tatler, 'the last chapters of Very Ordinary Seaman did leave me breathless; and also, feeling that we have known too little.'
John Betjeman wrote, 'This is so sincere and truthful, so much both, that you are held all the time... You become part of the community life of the ship, so that despite the dangers, boredom and discomfort you step ashore reluctantly.'
By any standards this was a remarkable performance for a writer who was wearing the uniform of an ordinary seaman and sitting in a busy, overcrowded naval office 'facing a blank wall and typing myself dry.' - from Brian Lavery's Introduction
AUTHOR: Joseph Percival William Mallalieu (known as 'Bill' or 'Curly') was born in 1908, the son of a Liberal Member of Parliament, and educated at public school and Oxford University, where he became president of the Union. He travelled widely during the 1930s and worked as a journalist. He became a supporter of the -Labour Party during the depression and he had already published two books -before joining the navy. When the war began in 1939 he was sceptical about the aims of the Chamberlain government and registered as a conscientious objector.
Then in 1940, 'when Churchill formed the National Government with the full support of the Labour Party and when Germany smashed through Belgium, Holland and France and what remained of the British army escaped through Dunkirk; my own previous attitude to the war seemed irrelevant and possibly wrong-headed.' ... He became a Labour MP in the 1945 General Election and later served as Minister of Defence for the Navy, where he was noted for his sympathy for the lower deck. As Sir William Mallalieu, he died in 1980.
