Just Finished Reading: England Invaded edited by Michael Moorcock (FP: 1977) [245pp] 

I’ve had this collection on my shelves for years – decades even (although not since 1977!). I thought it was about high-time I actually read it. The first thing I found is that the title of the collection was more than a little misleading. I was expecting a collection of classic stories about, well, England being invaded. Surprisingly several stories didn’t even take place in England and only one, the last in the set, actually took place in an invaded England. 

The first story in the set ‘The Uses of Advertisement’ by Tristram Crutchley (1909) was reasonable and revolved around the military applications of heavier than air flying machines. By far the strangest tale was ‘The Monster of Lake Lametrie’ by Wardon Allan Curtis (1899) involving prehistoric monsters and radical brain surgery. By far the worst, which was to be honest barely a story, was ‘The abduction of Alexandra Seine’ by Fred C Smale. Things got better with ‘When the New Zealander Comes’ by Prof Blyde Muddersnook (1911) (hopefully that was a PEN name!) which told of an expedition to the ruins of London in the far future after the Fall of the West.  

This was all very hit and miss, and to be honest mostly miss, until the last story in the set which was by FAR the longest (at 168pp) and by a LONG way the best of the bunch. This was ‘When William Came’ by H H Munro (aka Saki) (1913). It told the story of Murrey Yeovil, an adventurer and hunter who has returned to London after months of recovering from an illness abroad (in Siberia and then Finland to recover his strength) which nearly killed him. Out of the loop for a while he is returning to a country recently defeated in a lightening war by Germany and one undergoing a slow process of occupation and assimilation into the Greater German Empire. I’d heard of ‘Saki’ before but can’t remember reading much of anything by him. That will definitely be changing. His portrayal of a brooding resentful England was quite masterful. Told mostly from Murrey’s PoV (that and his wife's) in the solid upper Middle-Class it was a tale of people mostly keeping their heads down unwilling to rock the boat. There was a persistent feeling of needing to accept the fait accompli (a phrase repeated throughout the text) for everyone’s sake. Some of the characters tried to go on as if nothing had changed – despite the multi-lingual road signs and German newspapers, to say nothing of a creeping café culture – others actively collaborated for advantage, whilst many simply left to restart their lives elsewhere in the Empire. It was VERY well done indeed and must have been what it was like (at least to begin with) in countries actually occupied within a year or two of publication. As you might imagine this no doubt shook up British complacency as it was intended to. 

So, whilst I cannot recommend the book/collection as a whole I can most heartily recommend you read just about anything by H H Munro as I intend to do. Unfortunately, he died, age 45, on the Western Front at the Battle of Ancre.