A Very English Hero: The Making of Frank Thompson - Tapa dura

A very moving account of the all-too-brief life of a warrior-poet (Antony Beevor)

Intensely absorbing, steeped in human interest and peppered with outlandish characters ... Thomson's niece is quoted as saying that this account of his death unites him more firmly with the common stream of humanity, "where people are still being shot in ditches every day". Conradi's inspiring book persuades us that its unassuming, generous-hearted hero might have agreed (The Sunday Times)

Impeccably researched ... A fine description of the biographer's role, and generous quotations from Frank Thompson's letter and poems recreate his bulky, restless, energetic presence. But it is Conradi's own more subtle presence that locks the reader into the narrative ... A pensive, moving and very personal book (Frances Wilson, Observer)

An elegy for a lost generation, and a fascinating social and political history of a peculiar period in our recent past ... it's impossible to put down Conradi's impressive and moving account of Thompson's life without a feeling of regret. The figure who emerges from these pages is engaging, passionate and noble ... he was the epitome of a rare and precious type of distinctly English hero **** (Simon Griffith, Mail on Sunday)

[An] excellent, absorbing biography ... Mr Conradi tells the true story, movingly and well ... He convincingly portrays an attractive, brilliant and courageous personality, an intellectual with a heart who loved laughter, an idealist who merits the title of this book (Economist)

[A] magnificent and tragic biography (Jewish Chronicle)

Moving and gripping, told with great lucidity and sympathy ... a story of heroic times and hopes (Margaret Drabble)

He has painted a compelling portrait of a generation that is slipping from memory into history as irreversibly as that which went into the war in 1914 ... a generous and perceptive rescue of a personality and talent that Thompson's friends could never forget ... [a] moving portrait (Spectator)

Inspiring (The Sunday Times ‘Must Reads’)

Excellent (Independent)