Rating: 5/5
Review:
A delight
I loved Broadsword Calling Danny Boy. It’s funny, affectionate but
knowing and rather insightful in places.
Fairly obviously,
this is written for people who know the film Where Eagles Dare and
preferably who love it – a group which includes most of us who were
teenage boys when it came out in late 1968. I still remember seeing
it for the first time at the cinema, and, for example, the roar of
laughter when Richard Burton announces that he has uncovered a plot
to assassinate the Führer. Geoff Dyer approaches the film in the
same way – loving its absurdities while pointing them out and
relishing the gleeful excitement, dated attitudes and haircuts and so
much else. He made me laugh regularly, while also providing some
genuinely interesting and illuminating background. He perhaps dwells
a little too much on Burton’s drinking and fading-star status, but
otherwise I think he gets the tone just right.
Not all reviewers
agree with me; several don’t share Dyer’s sense of humour, for
example, but I found it a delight, which also has the immense merit
of being under 130 pages long and not over-stretching itself.
Personally, I can recommend this very warmly.
(My thanks to
Penguin Books for an ARC via NetGalley.)
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