THE SILENCE OF
COLONEL BRAMBLE
By ANDRÉ MAUROIS
Second Edition. 5s. net.
Westminster Gazette.—“‘The Silence of Colonel Bramble’ is the best composite character sketch I have seen to show France what the English gentleman at war is like ... much delightful humour.... It is full of good stories.... The translator appears to have done his work wonderfully well.”
Daily Telegraph.—“This book has enjoyed a great success in France, and it will be an extraordinary thing if it is not equally successful here.... Those who do not already know the book in French will lose nothing of its charm in English form. The humours of the mess-room are inimitable.... The whole thing is real, alive, sympathetic; there is not a false touch in all its delicate, glancing wit.... One need not be a Frenchman to appreciate its wisdom and its penetrating truth.”
Star.—“An excellent translation ... a gay and daring translation ... I laughed over its audacious humour.”
Times.—“This admirable French picture of English officers.”
Daily Graphic.—“A triumph of sympathetic observation ... delightful book ... many moving passages.”
Daily Mail.—“So good as to be no less amusing than the original.... This is one of the finest feats of modern translation that I know. The book gives one a better idea of the war than any other book I can recall.... Among many comical disputes the funniest is that about superstitions. That really is, in mess language, ‘A scream.’”
New Statesman.—“The whole is of a piece charmingly harmonious in tone and closely woven together.... The book has a perfect ending.... Few living writers achieve so great a range of sentiment, with so uniformly light and unassuming a manner.”
Observer.—“The flavour of M. Maurois’ humour loses little in this translation.... The admirable verisimilitude of the dialogue.... M. Maurois’ humorous gift is unusually varied.... He tells a good story with great vivacity.”
Holbrook Jackson in the National News.—“The Colonel is an eternal delight.... I put the volume under my arm, started reading it on the way home, and continued reading until I had finished the same evening.... That ought to be sufficient recommendation for any book....”
Times Lit. Supplement.—(Review of French Edition.)—“M. Maurois ... is indeed so good an artist and so excellent an observer that we would not for worlds spoil his hand, or do more than merely introduce to English readers by far the most interesting and amusing group of British officers that we have met in books since the war began.”
Gentlewoman.—“The translation of this book is so splendidly done that it seems impossible that it can be a translation.... One of the very few war books which survive Peace.... This is one of the few war books that will not collect dust on the bookshelf.”
James Milne in the Graphic.—“It is all very wise and very charming.”
Morning Post.—“This gently-humorous little book.... Half-an-hour with Colonel Bramble and his entertaining friends will stop you worrying for a whole day.”
Saturday Review.—“The wittiest book of comment on warfare and our national prejudices that we have yet seen.”