I Will Not Use That Pen/Sword Cliche

One of my favorite professors always recommended the Times Literary Supplement as the best periodical published in the English-speaking world. He and I shared a love of illustrative, unusual anecdotes that could be used to demonstrate the sheer weirdness of a place or a time.

So, via the Times Literary Supplement, a great review of a book   on publishing in England during WWII

These are anecdotes I guarantee you do not know, such as:

When Germany and Britain agreed in 1941 to allow prisoners of war to sit examinations, an international inter-library loan system was organized from the Bodleian Library, using Basil Blackwell’s book-dump in Geneva. Two Oxford dons, C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, devised – and marked – an English Honours degree for “kriegies” behind the wire. In 1945, the Inter-Allied Book Centre, occupying the old Daily Chronicle offices, distributed 1.5 million books to liberated countries and assisted GER, German Educational Reconstruction.