Book Review: Last Hope Island by Lynne Olson

I am an admitted, addicted Lynne Olson fan. So much of her writing encompasses arguably the single biggest event of our times, World War II and as it is a time and an era that has always fascinated me (little wonder-my late Daddy was a tank commander who went in at North Africa and Italy), it is no surprise that when I come across something of hers that I haven’t bumped into before, I snatch it up and head for the comfortable corner chair with a good lamp.

Finally finished and released in 2018, it is an unusual work from her standpoint. She has noted that all of her other books take two, maybe three years but this one, LAST HOPE ISLAND, took off and on a bit more than ten years to put together. It was a stop-start-stop sort of march and that approach is surely understandable. Unlike almost all of her other works, this book deals with not one set of stories such as the rise of Churchill and the rowdy back benchers in TROUBLESOME YOUNG MEN or the four or five main characters in CITIZENS OF LONDON but with a myriad scope of the small nations of western Europe, who one by one were consumed by the Nazis and yet with bravery and dash and pluck, they and their leaders gravitated to London.

The research necessary to paint the picture of Norway and Holland and Poland and France among others is prodigious and the anecdotes and stories woven throughout, which surely Olson’s trademark, are multitudinous and entertaining. She covers the gamut, from espionage to the beacon that was the BBC to the incredible bravery of the Poles and the willful, stubborn and ultimately successful of the mulish and sensitive DeGaulle. It is an ambitious effort and of course, she pulls it off.

As the history unfolds, she gathers the various threads of storylines and knits them together and gives a good, plain speaking read as to how the initial British influence was swallowed along the way by the Big Two of the United States and Russia and even brings briskly forward to the enmity between Britain and France. Eventually, after DeGaulle was out of power, France finally deigned to let Britain into the European Union but by then, there was little amity and lots of red tape which all concluded (and is still concluding) with Brexit. (The Brits vote to get out in 2016-was it really that long ago?)

There is much poignant here and much that points to questions about the future. This is another good one with a much broader perspective than seen from Olson before. So, if you want to learn up some more, have at it!