This is the early autobiography of the artist Peter Arnold (Collen) written like a novel rather than a diary of events.
It begins in a Children's Home during the 1930's in Nazi Germany. We follow the author from school to work with a plumbing firm in Berlin and thence, just as war is about to break out, to Italy and from there to Palestine. The terrors of Berlin are soon replaced by other dangers but Peter does not dwell on these. He tries to get on with his life and learn from his varied experiences.
In Haifa he contacts someone known to his mother's uncle Richard, who enables him to join the Norwegian Merchant Navy. How he eventually comes to join the British Army and finds himself back in Berlin and what happens there you can discover in this easy to read but richly descriptive story.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Over the years Peter Arnold produced many oil paintings as well as linocuts. His father was also an artist and survived the war after imprisonment in the South of France, managing to return to his home in Belgium for a few years. Sadly Peter did not find this out until his father was already dead.
Both father and son are listed in the well-known German art encyclopaedia Thieme-Becker. Peter is also mentioned in the new Welsh art encyclopaedia Post War to Post Modern - a dictionary of Artists in Wales.
It begins in a Children's Home during the 1930's in Nazi Germany. We follow the author from school to work with a plumbing firm in Berlin and thence, just as war is about to break out, to Italy and from there to Palestine. The terrors of Berlin are soon replaced by other dangers but Peter does not dwell on these. He tries to get on with his life and learn from his varied experiences.
In Haifa he contacts someone known to his mother's uncle Richard, who enables him to join the Norwegian Merchant Navy. How he eventually comes to join the British Army and finds himself back in Berlin and what happens there you can discover in this easy to read but richly descriptive story.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Over the years Peter Arnold produced many oil paintings as well as linocuts. His father was also an artist and survived the war after imprisonment in the South of France, managing to return to his home in Belgium for a few years. Sadly Peter did not find this out until his father was already dead.
Both father and son are listed in the well-known German art encyclopaedia Thieme-Becker. Peter is also mentioned in the new Welsh art encyclopaedia Post War to Post Modern - a dictionary of Artists in Wales.
