Dadland

I really appreciate having some books on Audible, this being one of them. I love having a book to listen to whilst I'm washing up, tidying the house etc and it really helps me to get on with these not very exciting jobs if I can listen to something at the same time. This was a fascinating book. I'll copy and paste the blurb from Amazon rather than try to explain it badly myself:

Keggie Carew grew up under the spell of an unorthodox, enigmatic father. An undercover guerrilla agent during the Second World War, in peacetime he lived on his wits and dazzling charm. But these were not always enough to sustain a family.

As his memory began to fail, Keggie embarked on a quest to unravel his story once and for all. Dadland is that journey. It takes us into shadowy corners of history, a madcap English childhood, the poignant breakdown of a family, the corridors of dementia and beyond.

I learnt such a lot about certain aspects of  World War II I previously hardly knew anything about such as the resistance movement in occupied France and the Burma campaign. Carew's descriptions of her father's dementia are very moving. (The language can be quite fruity in places and I didn't always feel comfortable with her descriptions of her mother's breakdown and her relationship with her step-mother.)