Very Far From Here: Dennis Hamley

It is April 1914 and war is only four months away. But it seems very remote from the seaside world of Eddy and Jim as they watch Harold’s Bay Wanderers play football and listen to the conversation of their elders. However, two strangers have arrived in the village: Mr Brown, whose cycle shop is hardly ever open and who speaks with a strange-sounding accent, and Mr Foskett, who gives Eddy a terrible vision of the future, involving treachery, invasion, defeat and destruction. Are there enemy spies in Harold’s Bay? If so, who are they? Eddy and Jim, determined to find out, watch and wait. But time runs out on them as the war in Europe
starts and slices into the life of the village and even their own families.

Dennis Hamley has always been interested in the origins and history of the First World Ware. Very Far From Here, first published by Andre
Deutsch in 1976, was the first of four books he has written about it. The others are Billy Warren: The Diary of a Young Soldier in World War 1 (2001, Franklin Watts), The First World War (2002, Franklin Watts) and Ellen’s People (2006, Walker Books).

The period details of this excellent novel are marvellously convincing, reminiscent at
times of the best of LP Hartley. DAILY TELEGRAPH

This is a book that should fit present-day taste, with its irony and throwaway humour
and its unemotional condemnation of prejudice and mass hysteria. Margery Fisher
in GROWING POINT

I find the book one of the firmest bridges along which the schoolchild’s sensibility can
stride towards mature fiction. Benny Green in THE SPECTATOR

The principal achievement is the writer’s ability to deal with relatively sophisticated
themes and ideas without making one doubt that he has written a book that the younger
reader will enjoy to the full. Gordon Parsons in THE SCHOOL LIBRARIAN