Some of my favorite quotes from "The Man Who Never Was" by Ewen Montague and the occasional commentary. Warning for spoilers for the book
- so many exclamation marks. Bro is so excited I love him
- "In this respect, there had never been any difference between Sir Bernard and an oyster" (p.27)
- George. Should have called him Tub instead
- "... we heard of someone who had just died from pneumonia..." (P.29). Sureeee buddy
- Permission? What do you mean permission? He is lying through his teeth right now.
- he said the line! He said the line! No one in Spain is as clever as me!!!
- I like the step by step instructions. Very fun.
- Ewen keeps quoting other things
- Here comes the ego stroking. "For many of even the most able and efficient people failed to appreciate what was wanted for this sort of job; for to realize that needed a particular sort of approach and a peculiar sort of mind..." (P.44).
- 1/2 historical explanation, 1/2 Ewen explaining how he's a genius
- "...that to deceive the German High Command was nothing like as difficult as it was to persuade their British opposite numbers that we could do that" (p.51)
- Ewen when he's not allowed to add memes to military letters
- " 'Whats wrong with Monty? He hasn't issued an Order of the Day for at least a week' " (p.58) in reference to General Montgomery
- "However, for reasons that I have never fully fathomed, the Chiefs of Staff banned my joke.... I felt sure that the Germans would study and appreciate any joke of that kind" (p.58)
- "...it is impossible to describe how utterly and hopelessly dead and photographs of the body looked" (p.60)
- the whole picture taking thing is so hilarious. It's unfortunate it had to be cut from the musical
- He just put a random picture of himself in, titled "The author."
- he really wants to tell the Germans a joke
- "We felt that we were in danger of making Major Martin into too great a paragon of all the virtues..." (p.71). Making a Man starts playing
- I love the constant "it was the Germans we're deceiving though!" everytime the team made a choice that doesn't make much sense. Even funnier given the Germans will mess the whole thing up anyways.
- Chapter six: The Creation of a Person. Making a Man but woke
- "That I was not mistaken is evidenced by the fact that, as we learnt later, the Germans even noticed the dates on the two theatre-ticket stubs that we placed in Major Martin's pocket" (p.74). The only thing they noticed.
- The OC creation goes hard. I remain convinced that Ewen would have done numbers on Tumblr
- "(those wartime courtships!)" (p.76). He's so romantic
- "We could, of course, have written them ourselves—most of us knew only you well what a letter about an overdraft looked like, and some of us had made wills or received love letters, but I thought it best to delu on the expert hand so that there could be no possibility of any mistake" (p.77). Flashbacks to "Bill has two 'l's!"
- the Jean erasure goes crazy
- "... for I was sure that no German could resist the "Englishness" of such an addres..." (p.81)
- "Darling, why did we go and meet in the middle of a war, such a silly thing for anyone to do..." (p.83). I'm not crying, you're crying
- Honestly, Pam seems kind of fun
- I can't imagine carrying around this many letters at one time though. It's really so excessive
- "She has grown into a sensible girl though I cannot say that her work for the Land Army has done much to improve her looks. In that respect I am afraid she will take after her father's side of the family" (p.85)
- "...of a man who really was" (p.87)
- "I had thought that I might say that we, who has created him, knew him as a father knows his son—but that would have been inaccurate. We knew him far better than most fathers know their sons..." (p.91)
- The frozen feet!
- "Major Martin was ready to go to war" (p.96)
- that is some atrocious handwriting. I thought mine was bad. The Germans probably couldn't even read that.
- "...what would those people think if we were to stop and say to them, 'Don't bother about the film. We can tell you a much better story—and ours is true. Just look instead this canister'?" (p.97)
- Again, absolute shame the whole driving thing had to be cut. That would have been hilarious to see staged.
- Ewen kept an oar as a souvenir
- The bar crawl is canon! Almost.
- "George and I then invited "Pam" and Jill, the girl who had arranged for the writing of the love letters to "Bill Martin's farewell Party" " (p.103)
- incredibly tempted to just copy the whole of page 103.
- Pam gave Ewen a larger copy of the same photograph with the inscription "Till death do us part. Your loving Pam" which Ewen went on to comment is "a safe inscription as "I" was already "dead""
- he put the photo on his dressing table to prank his mother who sent letters to his wife to come back home as soon as possible. I really do feel bad for Iris
- I would read a whole book just from the crewmate's journalistic description
- "Only reaction was the comment from one of them: 'Isn't it pretty unlucky carrying dead bodies around?' " (p.108)
- I love the casual mention of Watkins. Yeah, an American pilot was also there. No big deal
- "Meanwhile, we must say farewell to Major Martin" (p.115)
- "Mincemeat Swallowed Whole" (p.117)
- "It makes me hope that the Germans did spot the list, as it would be a pity if anything so artistic as that had been wasted" (p.120)
- People questioning Major Martin's death is actually crazy. Wondering where his will is, if he was killed in action.
- " 'Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive' " (p.121)
- "I only "forgot" to mention he was already dead before any of that happened" (p.121)
- Chapter twelve, The German Intelligence Service Plays Its Part
- "...winding up my work, writing records of what had been done, for the guidance of those in future wars who would never have time to read them (or think them worth reading"..." (P.126). So angsty
- Earlier Ewen was like "can't tell you how we could tell the letters had been opened. Top secret info", but proceeds to explain the whole thing only a several pages later.
- "...the artistic effort was not wasted!" (P.135). Sometimes I wonder if he actually wanted to win the war or just play a game
- They included all of the date stuff! The German spies were so bad at their jobs
- "I am not sufficient of a philosopher to work out what can be deduced from this" (p.137). Insane statement. The paragraph that follows is worse. It should be framed, really
- "Anyhow" ????
- very interesting ending. That's character growth for you
