Derek Law Bibliography

Full entry text:

BRUNDRETT, Alan. Two Years in Ceylon: The Diary of a Navy Secretariat Member 1944–1946. 501p., illus., index. Lewes: Book Guild, 1996. ISBN: 1857760433.

Brundrett was called up in 1944 and served as a Writer in Ceylon. This is reflected in this huge volume which is his lightly annotated contemporary diary. It in turn was full of his training and lecture notes and everything else which he could set down in his omnivorous desire for knowledge of everything from the trivia of cricket scores to the methods of office practice to the morality of the atomic bomb. There is a very full account of training routines and of the tedium of base life in Ceylon, to which he was posted. The book neither records great events nor represents great writing, but it gives a fascinating insight into the growth from gauche teenager to man and an impression of how the necessary but unglamorous management of the Navy was conducted at the lowest level - and could be a useful vade mecum of naval custom and tradition for those of a younger generation.