Cod Almighty | Postbag

Postbag: missing title

1 December 2010

This letters page offers Grimsby, in literature and in ignorance.

To fill this space, write.

Grimsby in literature

How about Martha Gellhorn, American novelist, travel writer and journalist, third wife of Ernest Hemingway and considered to be one of the greatest war correspondents of the 20th century? There is a short story in her book The Honeyed Peace called 'Week-End at Grimsby', written circa 1945. Published by Penguin, cost half-a-crown.

"If your friends were too broke to come to you, you went to them, even if they lived in Grimsby, Lincs."

"......Grimsby station, which resembled a mine-shaft, except that it was horizontal."

"I had friends who flew Lancasters, and I travelled to Grimsby to spend Christmas with them. You would hardly believe how gay we became on spam and blotting-paper bread and marge and one rationed egg and very little liquor, since liquor was scarce for the working soldiery".

Ah, those real First Division days!

All the best,

from Antony Chapman

BBC blogger eschews pretensions to journalistic standards

Apart from the Grimsbonian gaffe (See the Diary, 26 November), he says "We eventually arrived on the beach in Grimsby at about 1130". So I'm guessing that would be the beach in Cleethorpes then.

from Martin Wyburn

Letters Ed responds: So, to summarise, we don't think Dan Walker is quite in Martha Gellhorn's class.