Ice Cold in Alex
Author Christopher Landon
Publisher Heinemann (this edition Pan Books)
Year 1957 (this edition 1959)
ISBN 9780304366255 (2003 edition)
Language English
Binding Paperback
Pages 192
Size 110x176mm (4.25x7in)
Price £2 (online)
In the 1950s numerous books about the, then, recent conflict were published. In the non-fiction category, many were military history tomes about campaigns but many more were individuals’ accounts of wartime experiences. There was also a range of novels and while, these books’ first editions were often hardback, there were also booming sales of the paperback editions. The illustrated covers from that era have a distinct charm and hint at what is inside.
Ice Cold In Alex is Christopher Landon’s 1957 novel about the desert war after the fall of Tobruk which, arguably, became more famous as a film of the same name. Most people reading this will have seen that 1958 film, about the group who escape across the sands in an Austin K2 ambulance as Tobruk falls.
It is a widely respected film (not least because a woman takes a prominent role, unlike many war films, and it also portrays a German sympathetically) but it takes several liberties; a notable one about the ambulance is that i…
