Quartered Safe Out Here

click here for more details, find new or used items	George MacDonald Fraser Our price £5.49 (£6.99) New from £3.00 Used from £3.02 Pages: 358 (Paperback) ISBN: 0007105932 Pub: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd Pub date: 2000-10-16 Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 2653

Reader Reviews:

Wonderfully insightful. Moving and very funny. (5/5 people found this helpful)

George MacDonald Fraser is a master with a pen in his hand. He has a knack for sound sense, and he can also be very funny. All three traits are brought gracefully together in this superb book.

I should point out that there is nothing Flashmanesque about Quartered Safe Out Here, but the book is none the poorer for that. The writing is typically fluent, charming, broad, and witty; and the characterisation is, characteristically, splendid. There is also something deeply moving about his exploits in Burma with the XIV Army during The Second World War. As a personal window into 'The Forgotten Army' there can surely be few better examples.

If you are inclined towards 'Political Correctness', you may take issue with some aspects of this work. But then, that's your problem.

Britain is running out of men like George MacDonald Fraser. And it should try and do something about that.

Thank you Mr Fraser.

Yet to read but know the history (5/7 people found this helpful)

I have only just encountered this book this weekend and read a few chapters after being "lent" a hard copy from my partners father whose father in law was one of the chindits who served in Burma. Her grand father also passed my partner a copy of the map he was issued and we visitied Burma last year for 3 weeks to see how close to get to where he served. An incredible regiment. When he told me over Christmas lunch many years ago that "yes, he got it right, thats how the bloody Japanese soap smelled", you know he got it right. 14 out of 19 reports give it a 5/5. This is not a Flashman book, its a guts and all report of a bloody battle and the humour that kept people going in a raw, yet beautiful country.....still to this day.

Essential British heritage (7/7 people found this helpful)

Do you have any idea what it was like to soldier out in Burma in 1945 ? Not the lines on maps or discussions on strategy, but the sheer joy of spotting a cold water tap when you've not seen one for months on end; or the fascination (which overrides the natural instinct of fear) when coming under fire for the first time.
There are diatribes in this book which may only appeal to the author's generation, but for the most part this book is as moving a tribute to the Forgotten Army as you will ever come across. It is historically important and a compelling read at the same time.

Outstanding (8/8 people found this helpful)

What a find - I had read and loved the 3 "fictional" books by GMF on his experiences in the Gordon Highlanders (The General Danced At Dawn, McAuslan in the Rough and The Sheik and The Dustbin). I knew this would be a treat.

This captures the boredom and excitement, the laughs and the serious moments of a private soldier better than anything else I have read. He paints a moving picture of his comrades, his officers and his enemy - and tells it as is really was. One reviewer seemed to find it politically incorrect - and so it may be, but it's a breath of fresh air to find someone who can tell the story of his war so well. The story reeks of truth and many lessons learned about life the hard way.

It's beautifully written: like the McAuslan books, apparently effortlessly.

One of the best books I've read for many a year. Recommended without hesitation.

Miserable (5/51 people found this helpful)

I have been a huge fan of GMF's novels for well over twenty five years. I came to this only recently though. I don't know if I have changed, or if he has. Either way I found this a miserable racist rant, whining endlessly about contemporary culture. It is maudlin. Not for his lost youth perhaps, and a time which looks and sounds like a hoot - rather a set of social values which even in the way he describes them are rubbish. As someone else has said, strictly for daily mail readers over 50, and with the brain in a bucket of gin.

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