Author:Evelyn Prentis
Desperate circumstances were something Evelyn Prentis had to get very used to when she began her life as a nurse. It was in 1934 that Evelyn left home for the first time to enrol as a trainee at a busy Nottingham hospital in the hope of £25 a year.
A Nurse in Time is Evelyn's affectionate and funny account of those days of dedication and hardship, when never-ending nightshifts, strict Sisters and permanent hunger ruled life, and joy was to be found in a late-night pass and a packet of Woodbines.
The second memoir in this collection is A Nurse in Action. Surprising Matron as well as herself, Evelyn Prentis managed to pass her Finals and become a staff-nurse. Encouraged, she took the brave leap of moving from Nottingham to London - brave not least because war was about to break.
Not only did the nurses have to cope with stray bombs and influxes of patients from as far away Dunkirk, but there were also RAF men stationed nearby - which caused considerable entertainment and disappointment, and a good number of marriages ...
But despite all the disruption to the hospital routine, Evelyn's warm and compelling account of a nurse in action, shows a nurse's life would always revolve around the comforting discomfort of porridge and rissoles, bandages and bedpans.
Perceptive, warm and very funny
—— Sunday TelegraphHighly amusing and entertaining
—— Derby Evening TelegraphWarm and funny ... with her dry humour, eye for life's quirkiness and her charming and self-deprecating manner, Evelyn might not have been a 'born nurse' but she was certainly a born writer. Don't miss her entertaining and often moving story
—— Lancashire Evening PostClose in stature to Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear in his command of the profound art of nonsense
—— GuardianMilligan is the Great God to all of us
—— John CleeseThe Godfather of Alternative Comedy
—— Eddie IzzardThat absolutely glorious way of looking at things differently. A great man
—— Stephen FryManifestly a genius, a comic surrealist genius and had no equal
—— Terry WoganA totally original comedy writer
—— Michael PalinA compelling account of the bloody and deluded last days of the Third Reich ... this is far from being of mere academic interest ... The greatest strength of Kershaw's narrative is that he gives us much more than the view from the top ... Interwoven are insights into German life and death at all levels of society
—— The Times[Kershaw] understands as well as any man alive the complex power structure that existed in Nazi Germany ... Gripping ... arguably the most convincing portrait of Germany's Götterdämmerung we have seen so far
—— Wall Street JournalBritain's most feted and prolific historian of the Third Reich
—— Sunday Times[Kershaw] is among the foremost western scholars of Nazi Germany. Although this book pursues a narrative of events between June 1944 and May 1945, its real business is to explore the psychology of the German people
—— Max Hastings , Sunday TimesAn insightful study of how the Führer held his grip over the German people for so long
—— TelegraphComprehensive ... it generates real power
—— ObserverPulsing with imaginative energy, it displays Morrison’s veteran ability to combine physical and social immediacy with psychological and emotional subtlety. A fine addition to Morrison’s expansive chronicling of black American history, Home is a compact triumph.
—— Sunday TimesA highly fractured tale intended to resemble the crumbling nature of Money’s existence post war. Nothing is over-laboured. Each word resounds with sultry, heat-oppressive Georgia.
—— SpectatorMorrison's writing is so deft that even barely sketched characters leap off the page
—— Sunday TelegraphHome is a powerful reminder of the impact the past plays on the present
—— The TimesMorrison can say more in one word than most novelists manage in an entire book. Superb
—— Glasgow Sunday HeraldBursting with poetic language and horrific events this is a penetrating insight to the African-American experience
—— The LadyIt is a powerful set-up, building suspense and a mounting sense of anxiety
—— GuardianToni Morrison’s mesmerising prose manages to be both elegiac and visceral at the same time
—— Mail on Sunday