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Small Back Room (Unicorn S.)
  
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Small Back Room (Unicorn S.) (Hardcover)

by Nigel Balchin (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 224 pages
  • Publisher: Hutchinson Educ. (Dec 1963)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0090684303
  • ISBN-13: 978-0090684304
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 3,699,038 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Product Description

A true classic of war literature Equally famous as a film 'His theme is of intense and irresistible interest' - New Statesman Filled with underlying tension, which mounts to an almost unbearably dramatic climax --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.


About the Author

Nigel Balchin was born in 1908 and graduated in Natural Science from Cambridge University. During the Second World War he worked as a psychologist in the personnel section of the British War Office, before becoming Deputy Scientific Advisor to the Army Council. He wrote numerous books, including How to Run a Bassoon Factory (under the pseudonym Mark Spade), and Darkness Falls from the Air. He died in 1970. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Customer Reviews

4 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
5.0 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Neglected gem!, 18 Jul 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: The Small Back Room (Cassell Military Paperbacks) (Paperback)
This and Balchin's masterpiece, the shamefully out of print Darkness Falls From The Air constitute two gems of British wartime literature. I won't go into details other than that The Small Back Room tells the story of bomb disposal expert Sammy Rice, his frustrations, failures and occasional triumphs. Balchin is a wonderfully honest writer and his depictions of middle class life in wartime are without equal.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars War-time reality - office politics and real danger, 15 Jan 2006
By Post Mortem Books (Hassocks,Sussex) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Small Back Room (Cassell Military Paperbacks) (Paperback)
A magnificent little volume which brings together the immediate danger of death by falling bombs and the tediousness and intra-office rivalry of Civil Service politics. Sammy Rice is working in a research department (having lost a foot in WW1) working out new methods on such things as anti-tank guns and mortar bombs. But he is also subject to the Civil Service code of ofice politics even in war-time and the story charts the journey of one, honest if flawed man, to a new understanding of himself and where he fits in to the greater scale of things. The scenes involving the bomb dismantling are some of the sweatiest in all war literature. Great novel!
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Magnificent story which ought to be much better known, 31 Jul 2007
By Marshall Lord (Whitehaven, UK) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   
This review is from: The Small Back Room (Paperback)
This excellent 1943 novel tells the story of a boffin in wartime. The tale is told in the first person by Sammy Rice. Having lost a foot between the wars (possibly as a result of a World War one injury though this is never stated), Sammy is spending the second world war working in the small back room of the title, studying possible weapons for the Army and trying to avoid getting sucked into noxious office politics. Because his girlfriend happens also to be his boss's secretary, Sammy has a good idea of all the games being played by his colleagues, but has no idea what to do about them.

After the first part of the book describes the arguments within and between various research groups and bureaucrats within the ministry of defence, Balchin brings the reader in touch with a bump with the reality of the war they are fighting. Sammy has to interview a little boy who is the first surviving eye witness of a new type of Nazi booby-trap; which has just blown his sister to bits.

While his superiors continue to fight their political battles, often with dire results, Sammy and one or two of his friends spend some of their time trying to work out how to protect people from these nasty little booby traps dropped by the Luftwaffe.

And then Sammy and a colleague have a chance to put their theories about the booby traps into practice - by defusing two of them themselves ...

The mine defusing scenes at the climax of the book are gripping and terrifying. The book as a whole is first rate, and you can see why John Betjeman described Nigel Balchin as a "readable writer of genius."

Strongly recommended.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A great tale and an insight into WW2 politics
I picked up a 1944 edition of this book from my father's bookshelves, and started to read it without knowing its pedigree. The further I read the more I was hooked. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Chris Gray

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