Edith Cavell by Diana Souhami

[The Scorer]

Like I guess a lot of people, before I read this book I didn't know much about the live of Edith Cavell.

Of course, I knew that she was the nurse executed in Belgium by the Germans during the First World War, and I'd often walked past her statue in Trafalgar Square. I'd even been into the van that was used to take her coffin from Dover to London (it's preserved on the Bluebell Railway) and read a little about her then.

However, this book has certainly improved my knowledge by many degrees, as it is packs a great deal of detail into it's 450+ pages. It was published in 2010, and I have the paperback version, also dated 2010. It was bought almost as an afterthought ("Do I really want this?") in a bookshop in York at Easter, and I'm really glad that I did so.

The book includes a lot of detail about her early life and training, and then goes on to her move to and work in Belgium, of which I knew nothing at all. It emphasises thebasic lack of training, the low esteem that nurses were held in at the time, and the amount of work that they had to do to get accepted.

She was, of course, much more than a nurse in Belgium, being the matron of a new hospital and the designer of it's successor. The story of why she did what she did, and continued to do so even when she could have stopped and got away, is very moving.

The story is a tragedy, but it also shows what people can do when they have the belief that what they're doing is right. I would recommend this to anyone interested in the subject.

[CaroleHope]

I also bought this book on a whim when I saw it displayed at a book fair and was interested to read a full account of the dedicated and brave lady's life.