Stand By Your Beds!

David Findlay Clark served his National Service in the RAF. He describes with wry humour and sometimes with a degree of quiet drama, some of the boring, stressful, whimsical, ludicrous and exciting events that were packed into two eventful years. The subtle changes from resentment to enthusiasm in some who served their time, and the reverse process in others, are pointed up by the recounting of episodes in dramatic detail. David also outlines the setting and nature of National Service between the years of 1948 and 1963 and comments on some of its effects on the two million young men who, reluctantly or otherwise, went through it. National Service is part of our social history which has been dealt with at a fictional level by Arnold Wesker, David Lodge and Leslie Thomas, but prior to the first edition of this book in 2001, relatively little had been written of a factual nature other than Trevor Royle's "The Best Years of their Lives". Subsequently there have been two or three other volumes on related topics, the best of which is Tom Hickman's "The Call-Up" which, like Trevor Royle's own book, deals with all the services. Nevertheless, this new edition of "Stand by your Beds!" with a