Knight Errant

Robert Irwin Knight, bank clerk, left Downpatrick for Army**xA0;service, initially as a sergeant with the British Expeditionary**xA0;Force in France, surviving its chaotic retreat and subsequent**xA0;evacuation from Dunkirk. Thereafter as a**xA0;Commissioned**xA0;Officer he served in the defence of the UK. Finally he took part**xA0;in the Normandy campaign.After retirement from a post-war career as an English teacher at**xA0;Banbridge Academy, he wrote of his war-time service, a memoir**xA0;notable for its wit and self-deprecation. He gives charming,**xA0;penetrating descriptions of his fellow**xA0;officers and men, of the**xA0;people among whom they moved, the liberated and the**xA0;conquered.This humane and intelligent man has written the least**xA0;militaristic account possible of his hopes and fear, his**xA0;exhilaration and anxiety, during six years of service.Written some forty years after the event, the memoir is**xA0;enlivened with literary references, the fruit of his subsequent**xA0;university study and of his teaching; and enlivened too with**xA0;many hilarious anecdotes. No reader is likely ever to**xA0;forget his**xA0;account of the incident at Manchester station.