The man on the mantelpiece

the long version

On the first day of World War Two, Jim begins a diary. An ardent eighteen-year-old pacifist, nothing will persuade him to fight. Seventy years later, his daughter discovers his writing. After a month, the entries cease until, two years later, he begins again. Now he is a married man and has volunteered for RAF Bomber Command. Janet has a mystery to solve. Why did he change his mind? What happened to the man she has only known as the young hero in his photo on the mantelpiece? Following in his footsteps throughout his training and first bombing raid, Janet compares the diaries with her own impressions of life then and now. In the twenty-first century when Jim's generation is all but gone, she traces her father's struggle and finds the reason she never knew him ...