Who Will Be Your Judge?
Richard and Billy are two brothers living in the East End of London. When war breaks out, they are sent out to the country as evacuees, ending up in the care of the Sisters of Nazareth convent, where they are bullied and mistreated. Dad, Alfie, has enlisted in the RAF and Mum, Kathryn, faces the daily struggles of life during The Blitz.
Alfie is killed during a bombing raid and Kathryn survives until near the end of the war when she, too, is killed. The boys are orphans and are taken to Dr Barnado’s when the war is over. Richard, the elder and more sensible of the two, is adopted by a lawyer and his family, but Billy is left to fend for himself. He becomes a boxer, but bouts of epilepsy truncate his promising career and he falls into bad company.
The spirit, language, dangers and horrors of The Blitz have all been captured perfectly by the author, as has the aftermath and Billy’s rise in the underworld. The book is written in the present tense, which may not be to everybody’s taste, but in this case it works very well.
However, I have an issue with an incident which occurs near the end of the book and, although it is an important part of the story, I feel that such an occurrence was somewhat implausible for several reasons – believability and factually inaccurate being the main two. My other disappointment was with the length of the book: I felt that much more could have been made of the characters and their lives without spoiling the style or flow of the narrative. These points aside, a very good read.
