The names, whether made up or real, are straight from a Waugh novel – Battery Sergeant-Major ‘Jumbo’ Day for example could easily have been a character in “Men at Arms”. He is famous for his work in The Goon Show, children's poetry and a series of comical autobiographical novels about his experiences serving in the British Army in WWII. It was a little hard to get into at first, given the colloquialisms that Milligan is wont to use, but you get used to it fairly quickly (at least I did, being an American who's an Anglophile at heart).

While there he was given the usual punitive tasks such as shovelling coke into a single pile in pouring rain, but his guards also appreciated his artistic ability, and he was asked to draw Vargas girls for them to hang on the wall. It's like director Norman Cohen was influence by two then recent films, "MASH" and "Oh What A Lovely War", both anti war comic looks at war and what he should have done was a Carry On type of film. His mother is digging the air-raid shelter when Neville Chamberlain announces that Britain is at war with Germany. Spike brings his trademark manic eye to bear on his own experiences as a gunner in World War II and, while some of the events are tragic (obviously) you still barely get a chance to breathe between laughs.

This book is quite different from other soldiers memoirs I've read before (my favorite probably being All the Way to Berlin: A Paratrooper at War in Europe), mostly because it is written in a humorous style. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Their band has been warned by an officer, that if they smuggle their instruments on board, the instruments will be thrown overboard. I really enjoyed this book from the vivid descriptions of war practices to the humorous practical jokes, talkbacks and commentary.

And, a very credible evocation, of the life of a conscript at the start of the war right down to the smelliness of the army uniforms and how nobody got the correct size. He was of Irish descent, but spent most of his childhood in India and lived most of his later life in England, moving to Australia after retirement. Published in 1971, Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall is the first volume of the Spike Milligan's idiosyncratic military memoir. Yes, it's irreverent, yes, it's disrespectful, but laughing in the face of tragedy is how we Brits keep from going insane. And while at times I enjoyed that style, and had to laugh because of what I read, at other points it came across a little forces.In this, the first of Spike Milligan's uproarious recollections of life in the army, our hero takes us from the outbreak of war in 1939 ('it must have been something we said'), through his attempts to avoid enlistment ('time for my appendicitis, I thought') and his gunner training in Bexhill ('There was one drawback. Milligan says in the preface: "All the salient facts are true"; at the end of the preface: "There were the deaths of some of my friends, and therefore, no matter how funny I tried to make this book, that will always be at the back of my mind: but, were they alive today, they would have been the first to join in the laughter, and that laughter was, I'm sure, the key to victory.

The book quotes at length from the regimental war diary, describing an extraordinary day when the War Office (now the Ministry of Defence) was alerted to a sea invasion—in what was intended to be an exercise. That said, Adolf Hitler: My Part in his Downfall ends just as Spike's regiment arrives in Algiers for its first taste of action and, whilst there is some tragedy in this memoir, things will inevitably get more serious from here on in. Most of it is a humorous look at Spikes war experience and it had some serious sides to it along with the humour. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.

In some ways I think Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall, makes for a reasonable follow up to the serious Sword of Honor trilogy by Evelyn Waugh. Yes, that is what some of this book, the first in the series of wartime memoirs by celebrated British comedian Spike Milligan (who was, coincidentally, the inspiration for Monty Python in the first place with his group act 'The Goon Show'), would feel like: hilarious, anarchic, almost brutally sarcastic, bawdy and guaranteed to leave you in splits. This is a re-read for me; I think I read it for the first time in paperback about a decade ago, but when I saw the Scribd e-library had all seven volumes in audiobook format read by the man himself, I couldn't resist reading them again. There is also Bill Maynard as the sargent and fellow recruits Tony Selby and "Keeping Up Appearences" Onslow, Geoffrey Hughes but they don't do much with them Lowe who know's his character well comes off best of the supporting cast and Dale is wonderfully demented as Spike, but the film doesn't take off.

It is refreshing to reflect the changes and progress that has been made by our society now, all due to the atitudes of these brave and fearless mem. It is while playing jazz that he meets his lifelong friend, self-taught pianist Harry Edgington, a man "with moral scruples that would have pleased Jesus". No missing or damaged pages, no creases or tears, no underlining or highlighting of text, and no writing in the margins. About then, in an attempt to impress girls at a gym, he slips a disc, whereupon he's hospitalised to determine whether he's faking. This book has laugh out loud lines on every page, and I would guess all the other volumes will have too.The door flew open and in crashed the master-spy himself, Gruenthaphartz, measuring five rounds gun-fire by inches three, and clad only in a huge fur coat of huge fur, a sou'wester, and two hand-painted barges strapped to his feet for a quick getaway. Abolutely hilarious and well written memoirs of Spike Milligan's time in the service (Part 1 at least).