Books: Their Funniest Hour

OPERATION SEA LION (323 pp.)—Peter Fleming—Simon & Schuster ($5).

Britain's famous Finest Hour, in the happy hindsight of peace, was also one of its funniest.

That the grim period from Dunkirk into the Battle of Britain brought out the most eccentric as well as the best qualities of the British is a major part of the thesis of Writer-Adventurer (Brazil, Tartary, etc.) Peter Fleming. The invasion-threatened British were often funny in the way in which a man, scrambling out of mortal danger, sometimes forgets his pants, and the Germans achieved heights of sinister absurdity. These facts, in focus with Fleming's sharp eye, make...