Lyn Smith

Guest: Author Lyn Smith. Lyn has worked in the Imperial War Museum's sound archive for nearly 30
years as an history interviewer. Using her own important contribution to the public archive, she has
researched and written several books, including 'Forgotten Voices of the Holocaust' and 'Pacifists
in Action'. She is also a lecturer in International Politics and International Affairs, and teaches at Regents College in London and at Webster University in St.Louis, USA.

Lyn Smith's latest 'Young Voices' tells how British children across the globe lived in the days before and during the fighting. For British children the Second World War was a terrifying time of deprivation, uprootings and separation. But many also endured intense air raids or found themselves,shockingly, caught up in the action.
 
Books

Young Voices by Lyn Smith

Meet nine-year-old Jean Greaves, whose father was taken by the Nazis for helping Jewish people;
schoolboy Derek Bech who clung to a raft in heavy seas after his ship was torpedoed; baker's boy
Ron Hurford in occupied Guernsey who stole German flour for his family; teenager and messenger Peter Izard who dodged a falling doodlebug; Manila internee Jacqueline Towell who couldn't walk for
malnutrition; and many others who survived adversity and danger.

Young Voices is also available narrated by actor Tim Pigott-Smith with original voices.  The 6-CD
audio adaptation features excerpts of interviews recorded for the Imperial War Museum sound archives,
interspersed with narration and original music.

Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn One of the great allegorical masterpieces of world literature,Cancer Ward is both a deeply
compassionate study of people facing terminal illness and a brilliant dissection of the 'cancerous'
Soviet police state. Withdrawn from publication in Russia in 1964, it became, along with One Day in
the Life of Ivan Denisovich, a work that awoke the conscience of the world. As Robert Service wrote
of its appeal in the Independent, 'In waging his struggle against Soviet communism, Solzhenitsyn the
novelist preferred the rapier to the cudgel'.

The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East  by Robert FiskThis is an astonishing and timely account of 50 years of bloodshed and tragedy in the Middle East
from one of our finest and most revered journalists. "The Great War for Civilisation" is written
with passion and anger, a reporter's eyewitness account of the Middle East's history. All the most
dangerous men of the past quarter century in the region - from Osama bin Laden to Ayatollah Khomeini,
from Saddam to Ariel Sharon - come alive in these pages. Fisk has met most of them, and even spent
the night out at a guerrilla camp with Bin Laden himself. In a narrative of blood and mass killing, Fisk tells the story of the growing hatred of the West by millions of Muslims, the West's cynical support for the Middle East's most ruthless dictators and America's ever more powerful military presence in the world's most dangerous lands as well as its uncritical, unconditional support for Israel's occupation of Palestinian land. It is also a story of journalists at war, of the rage, humour and frustration of the correspondents who spend their lives reporting the first draft of history, their weaknesses and cowardice, their courage and truth-telling. After reading "The Great War for Civilisation" the reader grasps just why those 19 suicide pilots changed the world on September 11th. Assessing the situation right up to the present day and reporting from the heart of a bombed-out Baghdad, Fisk examines the factors leading up to the coalition forces entering Iraq, and discusses possible outcomes of long-term involvement there.

Woman Who Rode Away by D.H.Lawrence
In 'The Woman who Rode Away' a woman's religious quest in Mexico brings great danger-and astonishing self-discovery.

England, England by Julian Barnes
As every schoolboy knows, you can fit the whole of England on the Isle of White. Grotesque,visionary
tycoon Sir Jack Pitman takes the saying literally and does exactly that.He constructs on the island
'The Project', a vast heritage centre containing everything 'English', from Big Ben to Stonehenge, from Manchester United to the white Cliffs of Dover. The project is monstrous, risky, and vastly successful. In fact, it gradually begins to rival 'Old' England and even threatens to supersede it...One of Barnes' finest and funniest novels, "England, England" calls into question the idea of replicas, truth vs. fiction, reality vs. art, nationhood, myth-making, and self-exploration.

Another World by Pat Barker
Nick's grandfather Geordie lies dying.As Nick watches, Geordie starts to relive the horrors surrounding his brother's death and his own terrible experiences during the First World War. Meanwhile, Nick and his wife Fran are trying to unite their increasingly fractious young family, despite the discovery of an obscene Victorian drawing which reveals the tragic history of their house and casts a terrifying shadow over the family.

Dr.Zhivago by Boris Pasternak"Doctor Zhivago" is the epic novel of Russia in the throes of revolution and one of the greatest love stories ever told. Yuri Zhivago, physician and poet, wrestles with the new order and confronts the changes cruel experience has made in him and the anguish of being torn between the love of two
women.

Coming up next week- Author and broadcaster Hallie Rubenhold.Hallie's most recent book,Lady Worsley's Whim which documents the scandalous marriage of Sir Richard and Lady Worsley was launched on the week of November 3rd.
 
Lady Worsley's Whim was also BBC Radio 4's 'Book of the Week' during the week of Monday the 3rd of
November.