"Published in 1942, this marvellously mordant account of the first years of World War II, less known than the wonderful Decline and Fall and A Handful of Dust, is perhaps Waugh's most flawless comic novel. Every word tells."

"This novel, a linked series of strange and acid and darkly comic vignettes on life in Naples at the end of World War II, gets at the material reality of a liberator (the American military) as occupier and at the contradictory and surreal world of Naples. In sum, no one is innocent, not even Malaparte."

"The last movie she saw that made her cry was Hacksaw Ridge, a pretty emotional movie about a soldier in World War II. She revealed that she feels the most creative when she is sad, which explains why she might gravitate toward "depressing things.""

"Carol Reed magnificently evoked the specificities of time and place in post–World War II Vienna. The mood, the sound, the camera work . . . and perhaps, Orson Welles at the top of his acting game. Joseph Cotten might be one of the greatest underrated actors of all time."

"The deepest and most thrilling of all Japanese novels, which embodies the refined sensibility and historical burden of a nation just on the cusp of World War II. The novels of Kawabata, the Nobel prizewinner, are also dear to my heart, especially the Sound of the Mountain."

"This is a wild farce, it’s shocking that he got away with it in the middle of World War II. Betty Hutton gets drunk saying goodbye to soldiers going off to fight, and she gets knocked up. You never know what happened but everyone says let’s get married, because she’s pregnant. She has no idea who the father is. How he got away with this in the middle of the production code in the middle of World War II, I have no idea. Eddie Bracken plays a guy who’s so madly in love with her, he agrees to be the father. It’s a great comedy, really a farce."

"Studs Terkel was a radio host in Chicago who also wrote fantastic oral histories about 20th century America by interviewing regular people about their lives. He covered the Great Depression in Hard Times; World War II in The Good War; and, in this book, what people’s jobs mean to them. His books are invaluable time capsules of how Americans in previous generations spoke and thought about themselves."

". . . which I first viewed at the Imperial War Museum while ensconced in the film archive researching for Overlord. It had a huge effect on me at the time, and I still regard it as one of the most profound films about the holocaust. Particularly in light of the fact that it was made so soon after World War II and was hauntingly structured by Resnais as a documentary."