On First Looking into The Cruel Sea by Julia Jones
The film of The Cruel Sea -- more straightforwardly heroic, less bitter that the book? The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monsarrat was one of the books that was shelved above my father’s desk – but which, after 65 years, I’d still not read. Do you sometimes feel a resistance to a book, a fear that it’s going be too much for you, tell you things you don’t want to hear? It’s time to get over all that, I've decided. My father, George Jones, died aged 65. I read his final Peter Duck log book, I feel for myself how tired he was as he faced the 1982-83 fit-out. I remember the shock of that phone call, June 16 th 1983, when pfft we were told he was gone. He’d a heart attack and died in the Woodbridge branch of Barclays Bank. He’d been staying with me a few days previously. We’d had a row (about something important) but we hadn't stayed angry. He’d written a last letter -- but he couldn’t have known it was his last. I might live another thirty years but, now that I'm aged 6...