Courtney McGrailThe Hiding Place
by Corrie ten Boom, with John and Elizabeth Sherill
(Hodder & Stoughton, £7.99)
This is a famous book, written with two American journalists, first published in 1971, which has already had wide circulation. However, it has been reissued now because it contains a description of life in Ravensbrück, one of the holocaust death camps which were exposed in the last days of the war by the advance of the allies.
The book opens with her recollections of ordinary family life in Holland on the eve of the war, and then spiral down through war, invasion, suppression, arrest and deportation. Her family had committed the offence of sheltering persecuted Jews. They were themselves betrayed and deported as well.
Hers were trials enough for any soul. She reminds us that the National Socialists persecuted many other groups aside from Jews, among them Christians – a fact that should never be forgotten but often is. But in another of her books she recounts that she found after the war that she was able to forgive even one of the cruellest guards at the camp. Those who forgive she found were better able to renew their lives. With the events marking of the end of WWII there has been much commentary on its outcome.
This book, in its way, will be a revelation, and bring a heartening Christian message of great importance to new readers of Corrie ten Boom.
David Gillick’s Kitchen: Good food from the track to the table
by David Gallic
(Mercier Press, €22.99)
Now retired from athletics, renowned star of track and field David Gillick shares with readers some of the secrets of the foods that helped in his remarkable career.
Rather than fill up on all that powdered whey, the health conscious and the sporting will be able to enjoy tasty and well as healthy dishes. Here for once is a properly organised cook book, arranging the dishes according to meals through the course of the day – the only way to do it. Though the book is filled with advice, most of the receipts are certainly attractive, easy and nourishing, in a way which is not always the case with cook books. Personally I was dismayed to find suggestion for kale crisps – the only way to eat the currently fashionable vegetable in my opinion, is finally chopped up with onions in colcannon mash. The book, as is usual these days, is quite over designed and too filled with pretty pictures. With all the good advice and excellent receipes, David Gillick does not need to be presented in this way. Still, it is the style assumed for all celebrity chefs these days.
The Duke Can Go to the Devil
by Erin Knightly
(Piatkus £8.99)
This regency romance, which owes much to both Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer, provides an entertain account of the unlikely romance of sprightly devil-may-care May Bradford and the stiff and duty- bound Duke of Radcliffe, set, of course, in summer time in Bath.
What could provide a more delightful rest from the TV than this!