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BLUFF ROAD: THE MALAYA DIARIES 1953-1955

by Steve Hurst

Launch event @ Caper, Oxford, Thursday 5th February: https://square.link/u/ux9gubsV

Portrait of a young artist in an almost forgotten war

IN FEBRUARY 1954 the 21-year-old Private Steve Hurst left the freezing British winter and set sail for Malaya, then in the midst of the ‘Emergency’ – a war in everything but name.

In the follow-up to Drawn From Life (2022), Bluff Road follows Hurst’s progress from the Ruskin School of Drawing in Oxford and out to the Map Room at the Intelligence HQ Kuala Lumpur. Hurst’s skills as a draftsman were utilized to physically plot the ebb and flow of the fighting, updating maps and tracing the movement and bloodshed of the war
 
Journals were forbidden on active service, but the young artist-soldier kept both diary and sketchbooks close at hand, observing and capturing his surroundings with a painter’s eye. Over 70 years later, Bluff Road has emerged, a personal history and a valuable record of an often-overlooked period in the early Cold War-period.

Cover design: Klara Smith – https://www.klarasmith.com/