Following an expensive five minutes at the dentist today, my spirits were lifted by the sight of this in a local charity shop. Regulars will know I am an admirer of the artist Edward Ardizzone and this book details a very important part of the artist’s life and subsequent work.

This is the first UK edition, first published in 1974 by The Bodley Head, and the cover painting was a piece by Ardizzone called ‘Naval Control Post on the Beaches of Normandy, 1944’

This is Ardizzone at his glorious best, wonderful art, 1940s close to the edge humour combined with a very insightful view of wartime life. Ardizzone had a unique style and ability to capture everyday life in both these diaries and his later postwar journals.

In 1940 Ardizzone was already an established artist and a serving second Lieutenant in an anti-aircraft regiment on London’s Clapham Common when he was sent to France to work as an official War Artist. His charge was to produce a series of paintings which were sent back to the War Office in batches and to be later preserved in the imperial War Museum. Ardizzone, who hated drawing and painting in public would often execute a quick sketch and work on it from the comfort of his temporary dwellings. Along with his notes he was very effective at recreating a realistic depiction of every day life for the poor citizens of wartime Europe.

Life was, it seems, a mixture of avoiding German Stuka planes and dining cheaply in Italian restaurants and villas: Tunny fish with a thick sauce much flavoured with bay leaves and various herbs, a kind of cheese with black olives, most delicious. Toast Melba, fruit juice, fresh warm bread, good coffee and a passable wine. What more could one want.

But for all of that, he was often frustrated by both himself and the work he was producing. He makes disparaging remarks about his art throughout and producing art fit for the War Office to promote in such circumstances must have been difficult. Indeed he experienced life for those soldiers on the front line: My foxhole very deep and cold as the grave. A great bombardment from ships and shore batteries and at every detonation a stream of sand on my face and neck. Constantly raided all night too. Final straw when at about 3am a bomb dropped close and half of my foxhole caved win on top of me.

Most of the art are simple sketches to illustrate his diary entries or to set the scene for a later, ‘proper’ painting. One wonderful example is this outline sketch from 1944 of a harbour scene in which he writes out the colours required later..

This is a book that reaches a number of readers; lovers of Ardizzone’s art or art in general, historians and WW2 buffs and for anyone who loves reading diaries. Yes it’s of its time but all the more reason to read it. This was another world completely and his experiences here and his life subsequently continue to live rent free in my head.

Further reading:

Edward Ardizzone by Gabriel White

Indian Diary

Sketches for Friends

The New Windmill Series edition of Huckleberry Finn