NIKMORTON-AUTHOR

  Stephen E Ambrose’s study of Crazy Horse and Custer was published in 1975. My copy was published in 2003 in light of Ambrose’s success with the TV series Band of Brothers (2001). Ambrose has looked at the parallel lives of the two warriors. There are certain similarities. They were both born about the same time; they were always the first to charge the enemy and the last to retreat. They died within a year of each other. Both became honoured leaders in their early twenties). ‘They met only twice on the battlefield, the first time on the banks of the Yellowstone in 1873, the second time on the banks of the Little Bighorn in 1876. The trail each man followed to the Little Bighorn is the subject of (the book)’ (Introduction). ‘Both were aggressive.   As a hunter Crazy Horse killed for a living; as a soldier, so did Custer. Both found the rush of hot fresh blood exciting’ (p221). Early on, Crazy Horse went on his vision quest, which told him never to wear a war bonnet – he...

Graham Greene’s autobiography A Sort of Life came in two parts; this is part one, sort of, published in 1971. It is evident from his books that he was observant and had a good memory. He reflects upon a photograph of him aged ‘about four, and I wore a pinafore and had fair curls falling around the neck... while I still have the ambiguity of undetermined sex’ (p14). His uncle Graham lived to a ripe age of 92; ‘the first sign of his approaching end was when my old aunts while undressing him removed a toe with his socks’ (p17). He recalled playing Fly Away, Jack, Fly Away, Jill with a piece of sticking-plaster on his father’s finger’ (p19). My father played the same ‘magic’ game, though used Peter and Paul instead of Jack and Jill; I later played it with our grandchildren when they were young. His father died in 1942 while Greene was in Sierra Leone ‘running ineffectually a one-man office of the Secret Service’ (p20). ‘The influence of early books is profound. So much of the futu...