Song for a Tattered Flag

Even such recent history as this may not be part of young readers' memories, but the images of the overthrow of the Ceausescus in Romania are still vivid in my mind and Trease skilfully shows the way fiction can get inside documentary fact in a way that gives it powerful new life. The brooding sense of fear, the enormous bravery of people resisting that fear and then the bullets, is very well conveyed. There's marvellous sense of relief and release as the Ceausescus are removed from power. Hindsight makes the happy ending of fiction seem shallow, but it's an excellent book.