Published in 1951 this book of short stories gives more of a flavour of life in Britain during the second world war than possibly any other book I have read published in that year and yet many of the stories take place in foreign countries.

Charles Causely was a British poet, school teacher and writer, but most of all he was a Cornishman. His first poems entitled Farewell, Aggie Weston were published in 1951 (now long out of print and hideously expensive secondhand), but he also published some short stories: Hands to Dance in that year. I read the 1983 re-publication which includes Skylark which sets the record straight on the earlier stories, many of which were written in the first person. The short stories tell of the exploits of a Seaman who enlisted in the Royal Navy in 1940 and was trained as a coder, he was demobbed 6 years later, and spent much his service overseas in Gibraltar, Spain, Malta, Italy, Egypt, Australia and Africa. Causely's afterword Skylark makes it clear that his stories were largely fictional; his life as a coder may have been just as dangerous, but the colourful derring-do of some of the exploits were beyond the range of the shy, unpromising physical specimen that was Causely at that time.

Many of the stories take place in dockland areas in British naval bases abroad and are concerned with enemy attacks or more usually with local civilians or fellow seamen that he met during his service. The stories generally play down the danger and their matter of fact re-telling makes one feels that they could only have been written by a circumspect Englishmen. They never fail to emphasise the discomfort of living in digs abroad, or the unrelenting work schedules, or a seaman who never really got over his sea sickness. His short spells on leave place him in another world that of his rural background in a small Cornish town. Interspersed with the exploits of seaman Causely are three or four stories based in Cornwall written in an omnipresent voice and they are so realistically presented that they fit right in with the flavour of the more biographical tales. There are nineteen stories, averaging about 8 pages each, complete in themselves and with a poets eye for detail and a writers eye for colourful characters. There is no drop in quality and a few of the stories are very good indeed, some prefiguring the dangers of war service on the minds of those who survived.

The flavour of Britain in the 1940's is well captured, through the eyes of this Cornishman. The transport arrangements in wartime: for example 6 changes of train to get up to the base on the Scapa Flow, or the life in a small town during wartime, or British serviceman abroad. A fine collection of short stories which capture life in exceptional circumstances and so 4 stars, ( )