A tour de force of imagination and storytelling... I cannot recommend it highly enough
Daily Mail
Thomas has the rare ability to recreate the very sounds and smells and atmosphere of a long-lost world... One of the most satisfying reads in years
Daily Mail
When it comes to telling a thoroughly good tale, dew do it better than former Barnardo boy Leslie Thomas... a surefire winner
Yorkshire Post
Thomas, as ever, tells a cracking yarn
Mail on Sunday
At the start of the war in 1939 James Bevan is a junior officer approaching middle-age, attached to a small anti-aircraft unit on the south coast.
Abandoned by his wife, the soldiers he command are his family: Bairnsfather, whose sexual encounters with his girl friend Muriel take place in an air-raid shelter; Cartwright, trying to keep two women on his gunner's pay of a shilling a day; Hignet, cosily educating himself in the orderly room. It is a rude awakening when they are called upon for the real war.
Hugely absorbing, rich and rewarding, Other Times brims with history and experience, love, sorrow and humour.
At the start of the war in 1939 James Bevan is a junior officer approaching middle-age, attached to a small anti-aircraft unit on the south coast.
Abandoned by his wife, the soldiers he command are his family: Bairnsfather, whose sexual encounters with his girl friend Muriel take place in an air-raid shelter;