Man Overboard

In Man Overboard, Tim Binding tells the story of English war hero Commander Crabb, who disappeared in 1956 amid rumours of his capture by the USSR. Imaginative and funny, this novel is an exploration of Englishness.
Industrious, resilient, fond of his drink, socially awkward and physically fearless, Commander Lionel 'Buster' Crabb was an Englishman who put defence of King and country above all else. In Gibraltar, and later Palestine and Italy, his feats of underwater daring made him the navy's greatest frogman and a legend of the Second World War.
But Crabb's private life was both a struggle to achieve human intimacy and a struggle to find his place in post-war Britain. How could someone whose identity was forged in war, who was the friend of government moles and double agents, reconcile himself to the rewards of an ordinary life? When in April 1956, during a visit to Britain by First Secretary Khrushchev, Commander Crabb disappeared, was it by accident or by design?