Tony Gould, in his biography of Colin MacInnes - Inside Outsider (reissued by Faber Finds) - is in no doubt, 'the volume of essays, England, Half English, contains the best of his writing.
Lusty sheep farmers and their sensible wives, brainy engineers and over-dressed girls on the make - the whole district loves the parties Helen Bailey throws at Cotamundra station each Saturday. And everyone loves Helen Bailey - everyone, that is, except her husband Walter, who sits alone in the Australian heat, polishing his gun.
Colin MacInnes was a sergeant in a Field Security detachment in the Second World War. In this imaginative record of actual experiences he describes the progress of his detachment through Holland, Germany and Belgium in a rapid succession of incidents, full of humanity, light-heartedness and wit.
Sixteen-year-old June Westley is an ideal daughter - kind, considerate, loving, and far more at ease in the Bush pioneered by her forefathers than her own father, Arthur, who spends his days waxing the Buick in the Australian sun.
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