Alf's Button

The story of how Aladdin's lamp (unwittingly melted down for scrap by the government) transfers its magical properties to a button on the uniform of Private Alf Higgins, 5th Middlesex Fusilliers, in the run-up to the Battle of Arras. 


Author Darlington himself fought and was wounded at Arras, and this is an accurate and vivid portrayal of life in the trenches and in wartime Blighty. Darlington's triumph, though, is to use the Western Front as backdrop for an hilarious comedy about what happens when the smallest cog in the mighty war machine becomes the most powerful man in the world. 


ALF'S BUTTON was the Number 1 bestseller of 1920, and in 1924 became the first British blockbuster "talkie".