`Yet there was a quaint dignity about England in those days, the air of an old gentleman taking out his uniform and saying, "Gad, sir, we'll show these foreigners what sabre-fighting is." Of course, twenty years is too short an interval between wars. Twenty years means that everyone who knew what was what or, more important, who was who in the last one, moved easily back into the same offices and took over the files where they had left them. (The Germans unfortunately had a new set of files, not to say a new filing system.)' John Mulgan, on the outbreak of war in 1939<BR><BR>`A brilliant, thoughtful exposition of what war means to a local people, and what peace might offer a post-war world.'- Vincent O'Sullivan, The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature<BR><BR>`In the book we hear an original and individual voice which can still move us with what it tells us about ourselves and our institutions; about the appearance of the world in the thirties as it drifted towards the whirlpool; about the maelstrom itself; and the sunlight that, gleaming beyond it, the writer was never to know.' - Paul Day, John Mulgan<BR><BR>Report on Experience, published posthumously in 1947, is one of the most clear-sighted and moving memoirs to emerge from the Second World War. From reflections on the New Zealand of his youth, John Mulgan moves on to his experiences of the European war and the British army. Barracks life, the battles of El Alamein, and above all his months fighting with partisans in Axis-occupied Greece, are brought to life in this engaging account.<BR><BR>`What he has to say remains fresh, original and worth reflection; if we had had more John Mulgans, we might have had fewer world wars.' - M. R. D. Foot<BR><BR>Report on Experience is a compelling memoir written by a quietly heroic author. This brilliant work provides a window both into the mind of the author and the prevailing attitudes of wartime Britain and Europe. Mulgan traces the Allies' path to the Second World War and the widespread reluctance of the population to accept the reality of hostilities.<BR><BR>Mulgan was a determined man who was appalled by the inaction of his peers and superiors, then by the subsequent limp and unrealistic reactions to aggression. He despaired at the folly of re-employing the same personnel in the same offices that had been used for the First World War and at the promotion of officers whom he considered wholly unfit to command. He describes the camaraderie among troops and the incompetence of those in authority, and also recalls his time serving in Egypt-his first experiences of witnessing death-and his time in Greece hiding out with the partisans.<BR><BR>This is a story told poetically with spirit and insight. First published in an expurgated edition in 1947 and unjustly neglected since, this new edition of Report on Experience is the first to restore the original text, from which Mulgan's most uncompromising criticisms had been deleted. Edited by leading New Zealand literary scholar Peter Whiteford, this edition also contains a preface by the author's son, Richard Mulgan and a foreword by the renowned British military historian Professor M. R. D. Foot.