Look Who it Was Random video

Brian Aldiss - My friend Eddie Breeze (10/79)

406 views · Published 24 May 2017 · 1:52 · Indexed 17 October 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2017 · Entertainment

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Writer Brian Aldiss (1925-2017) was best known for his science fiction novels and short stories. 'Non-Stop', his first science fiction novel, was published in 1958. His many award-winning titles include 'Hothouse', 'The Saliva Tree' and 'Helliconia Spring'. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2014]

TRANSCRIPT: [CS] Were you very fond of him – Eddie?

Oh yes. We got on fine - great jokes, great fun. Yes, and since most of the chaps, actually, in that… I suppose platoon would be the word – in the platoon I was being trained, most of them were pretty thick. We'd been to a public school, and whatever else it had done to us, it had made us pretty well alert.

And for instance, there was one guy who had decided he would become friendly with the lance-corporal and the corporal and the sergeant who were in charge of our platoon, thinking that this would get him off lightly. And so – they were bastards actually, they were horrible. That was the Royal Norfolk.

And these guys said, 'Oh yes, come on, come on, Derek, come with us!' And so they took him out and they got him absolutely smashed. And I can remember him. They delivered him at the top of the stairs and then let him drop. And he fell on the stone and spewed all over himself, and that was the way they treated you if you tried to be friendly. And Eddie and I would have none of that. We were used to wickedness after years in a public school. And so, poor old Eddie, he got killed in Italy, but I survived Burma.

And then… then came a whole hiatus.

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