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LRB blog

Know Your Guns

Tim Johnson

A vast Tube poster for Anthony Quinn's Half of the Human Race follows the same format for First World War lit as Birdsong, Early One Morning and War Horse; a poignant image of a solitary soldier, somehow not engulfed in a hail of gun fire despite being silhouetted on top of a trench. But the scramble to promote Quinn's book after its endorsement from Channel 4’s TV Book Club perhaps led the publishers to paste in haste from the image library. The blurb yells ‘1914’ and the book is stuffed with cricket, class, war with Germany and tragically repressed romance, but the soldier appears to be holding a modern day M-16 assault rifle and an American GI's helmet.

Comments

  • 11 May 2012 at 2:00pm
    streetsj says:
    a point
  • 11 May 2012 at 2:00pm
    streetsj says:
    (that was French in my mind but doesn't appear so on the screen)
    • 15 May 2012 at 7:04am
      alex says: @ streetsj
      Unless you mean 'medium rare', you might be better off saying 'touché'.
  • 16 May 2012 at 8:02pm
    nickbibby says:
    A spotters badge for you Tim. But it's nothing less than we'd expect from someone described as the LRB's "independent weapons expert".

    Quite frightening that the LRB have one of them to be honest. Still, must be prepared for all eventualities.