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August: The Best of Both Worlds
The Best of Both Worlds
Author: Brindley Boon
The Best of Both Worlds is published by World of Brass, an imprint of The Salvation Army Trading Company Limited, and is available, price £9.99 (plus postage and packing), from SP&S (order on-line or through mail_order@sp-s.co.uk) or on-line from Amazon.co.uk. |
I’M prepared to argue about who was/is the best writer The Salvation Army has ever produced, and I’m willing to negotiate over its best poet. But you’ll be wasting your breath if you try to convince me that anyone other than Colonel Brindley Boon was, or is, the Army’s best journalist.
Brindley Boon, promoted to Glory earlier this year at the great age of 95 – just weeks before the publication of his long-awaited book The Best of Both Worlds, was an outstanding reporter, writer, interviewer and editor. He also had a phenomenal memory, an inquiring and perceptive mind, impeccable judgment, warm heart, mischievous sense of humour and boundless love for the Army.
As I say in the foreword I was privileged to be asked to write for this book, no one ever pulled wool over Brindley Boon’s eyes but in recording the movements history he occasionally turned a blind eye for the sake of the Army and the Lord he loved. After a lifetime of taking the closest interest in the minutiae of Salvation Army life he knew a hundred secrets, and took most of them to Heaven with him.
Some, though, can be told, and are to be found in these memoirs, parts of which were previously published in United Kingdom periodicals, but much of which has never previously seen the light of day.
The title The Best of Both Worlds refers to the fact that Brindley’s active officership was divided between editorial and music appointments. These saw him serving as Editor of The War Cry in both Britain and Canada, as Editor of The Musician and the youth magazine Vanguard, and as Editor-in-Chief at International Headquarters at a time when IHQ had responsibility for the weekly publications of the then British Territory, and also as National Secretary for Bands and Songster Brigades in the British Territory.
This music appointment was phenomenally influential in the life of the territory.
As a songwriter and composer, his words and music were heard week by week both in festivals and in regular Sunday worship, as they still are. His classic song of commitment, I Would Be Thy Holy Temple, alone will guarantee him a place forever in the corporate memory of English-speaking Salvationists throughout the world.
The Salvation Army’s mission has been well described as threefold: to save souls, grow saints and serve suffering humanity. But that excellent description doesn’t fully acknowledge the unique nurturing provision the Army makes to those who find their lifelong spiritual home within its ranks, which represents a priceless fourth dimension to its ministry.
Today, Salvationists still make The Salvation Army their spiritual home, but there was a period in the history of the Movement, which might now have passed, when Salvationists joined up hook, line and sinker. The Army was their whole life. It was their family, their social life, their nationality, their identity.
The Best of Both Worlds is about The Salvation Army which was made up of such people, of whom Brindley Boon was the exemplar. When he joined The Salvation Army he became not just a member of it, but an integral, organic part of it. The Best of Both Worlds is more than his memories; it is the story of a Movement from which he was inseparable.
Reviewed by Lieut-Colonel Charles King |