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Alone by Michael Korda: book review



Alone: Britain, Churchill, and Dunkirk: Defeat into Victory (2017) is about the outbreak of the Second World War (1940-1944), and the events that led to Dunkirk – as well as a personal memoir of the author’s life during the wartime events.

Michael Korda is six years old when the Second World War commences, and is evacuated from England to America as a ‘first-class refugee’ when ‘we – the British – found ourselves alone, having misjudged the French Army’s strength’ (when Germany entered France and the Maginot Line fell). His father is film director and producer, Alexander Korda, and his aunt is the Indian-British movie star Merle Oberon (Alexander Korda and Merle Oberon were married from 1939-1945). ‘Keeping calm was seen as a patriotic duty … panic was the enemy.’

Korda writes of the build-up to the declaration of war, Churchill’s radio broadcast announcing it, and the plans for their evacuation. This is juxtaposed the films of Alexander Korda during his rise to prominence – The Lion has Wings; The Thief of Baghdad; Jungle Book; and That Hamilton Woman. He writes of Winston Churchill becoming Prime Minister and his subsequent wartime decisions. Korda also mentions the many Germans in the film industry that moved to Paris, London, or Hollywood after the onset of war.

The descriptions of Dunkirk are among the most interesting in the book, particularly the evacuation over four days of more than 300,000 soldiers from the war zone back to England (almost half were French). But ‘wars are not won by evacuations,’ said Churchill in one of his famous speeches.

Korda writes about the Dunkirk evacation before he recounts Operation Pied Piper, the movement of millions of urban children, and the evacuation of British children from London to the countryside or out of the country completely: ‘the worse things got, the more people wanted to have their children with them, as opposed to being placed in the care of total strangers by the state.’ This included 210,000 applications in two months in 1940 to send children to America.

The photographs and maps are a wonderful addition to the narrative in this extremely fascinating combination of an historical account and a personal memoir.




Michael Korda's parents Merle Oberon and Alexander Korda 

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).


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