Tames, Richard (2006). London. Oxford Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press. p. 126. ISBN 0-19-530953-7.

Ministry Fear - AbeBooks Ministry Fear - AbeBooks

The next day, a man rents a room in Rowe’s house. As an air-raid starts, the man offers Rowe money for the cake, but Rowe refuses. Then he puts poison into Rowe’s tea, but Rowe recognises the smell and doesn’t drink it. A German bomb explodes, and when Rowe regains consciousness, he finds the house demolished and the man unconscious. The scenes in the mental clinic are to my mind the best in the novel... I think too the atmosphere of the blitz is well conveyed. The three flares which Rowe saw come "sailing slowly, beautifully, down, clusters of spangles off a Christmas tree," I had watched myself, flattened up against the wall of Maple's store on the night of the great raid of April 16, 1941, some months before I left for Africa.

Summary

Stansky, Peter (1994). London's Burning. Stanford: Stanford University Press. pp.85–86. ISBN 0-8047-2340-0.

The Ministry of Fear Book Summary and Study Guide The Ministry of Fear Book Summary and Study Guide

A direct hit on Rowe’s house thwarts an attempt on his life but turns his world not just upside down but every which way: The next morning, Rowe has breakfast in a bomb-damaged A.B.C. [Aerated Bread Company] café in Clapham High Street and, with some help from the third-person narrator, reflects on how the timing and distribution of raids has fragmented London’s sense of identity, thus slightly challenging, or at least complicating, the idea of the Blitz as a force that unified the capital: it wasn’t only evil men who did these things. Courage smashes a cathedral, endurance lets a city starve, pity kills . . . we are trapped and betrayed by our virtues.”Rowe loses his memory and a different novel takes over, where he’s in a hospital that he suspects is not exactly taking good care of him, or its other patients. The characterisation is very well-defined as we see how the loss of memory takes the weight off his mind and allows his cheerful nature to reappear. The major problem is that the spy plot in The Ministry of Fear makes almost no sense at all, relying on coincidences, handwaving and implausibilities. Also, the ‘microfilm of secret plans’ hidden in the cake is a MacGuffin, and the spy plot resolves ridiculously easily. Ministry of Fear is a 1944 American spy thriller film directed by Fritz Lang, and starring Ray Milland and Marjorie Reynolds. Based on the 1943 novel by Graham Greene, the film tells the story of a man just released from a mental asylum who finds himself caught up in an international spy ring and pursued by Nazi agents after inadvertently receiving something they want. The original music for the film was composed by Victor Young. Things have changed in the two months he has been someone else. Not all of his memories have returned so he is not even a complete Arthur Rowe yet. The Twins, remember the twins, well they are not who he thought they were either. Fritz Lang directed a movie of Ministry of Fear in 1944, starring Ray Milland and Marjorie Reynolds, but it’s only loosely based on the novel.