Books I Read In December

Well, this year I managed to read 53 books which averages out at just over one per week. However, the pattern across the year has been imbalanced due to the varying length of what I read. This month I read, at 704 pages, the second longest book I read this year so did not get through much else.

Fiction

'Fleshmarket Close' by Ian Rankin

This was the last of the Rebus books I had been given. It is the 15th in the series and 9 others follow it. However, I am unlikely to rush out and buy those. As has been clear in terms of the Rebus books I have reviewed this year, they are not bad, but they are far from gripping. You do feel rather as if you are slipping into an episode of the 'The Bill' (broadcast 1983-2010). Rebus goes about his business as does Siobhan Clarke who by this stage was overdue for equal billing with John Rebus. The book has three components which reflect issues of the time (2005) and indeed now. One is the murder of an immigrant living on a sink estate; there is also human trafficking and modern slavery involved. The attitudes towards immigrants seems unchanged even 18 years on and indeed much of this book, bar some aspects of technology, could be set right now. The other is the disappearance of a young woman depressed at the death of her sister who may be mixed up in prostitution and the other is the finding of skeletons in a pub basement. Rebus and Clarke go through the motions to solve what soon proves to be a tangling of these elements and Rebus might be starting a relationship with another middle aged liberal, artistic woman pretty much a replica for those who have crossed his path in previous novels.

'The Plot Against America' by Philip Roth

This book is probably even more impactful now than when it was published in 2004. It is effectively a fictional memoir written by a Jewish American boy also called Philip Roth who is growing up in New York City in the late 1930s and 1940s. It is an alternate history in that rather than Franklin Roosevelt being re-elected for a third term in 1940, the aviator Charles Lindbergh wins the Presidency and follows the policy of the America First movement. This means that the USA does not enter the Second World War and curtails aid to the Allies. In addition Nazi German and Imperialist Japanese politicians are welcomed at the White House. Anti-Semitism which was an element of the America First approach grows in strength with moves to relocate Jewish people from the cities out to rural areas of the USA.

Roth holds to the style of the boy's perspective, so at times he jumps up and down the chronology rather than progressing neatly. Philip's concerns about his friends, relations with his brother and cousin and with his parents feature as much as concerns about where the USA is going. His cousin joins the Canadian Army and fights in France; his brother becomes part of the Just Folks movement which sends Jewish children to US farms to be apparently more integrated into WASP US society. Given policies that have been adopted at state and federal level in the past decade, it is very educative to see and think about how such discrimination can be advanced subtly but steadily.

The book succeeds in showing how easily it could have been (and remains especially now) for the USA to slide into an authoritarian state. It also reminds us that Germany did this too, not abruptly, but step-by-step eliminating the rights of Jews until within nine years it had reached extermination. The novel is successful in capturing that kind of 'Cider with Rosie' (1959) perspective of a boy recalling his life. I am sure there are US equivalents, though more Scottish and Irish ones pop up in terms of searches.

I think my two main criticisms are that it seems almost entirely to leave out the black population of the USA from the alternative. The black population of Germany was smaller but it did face discrimination under the Nazis. It seems that, at least, Lindbergh would have adopted apartheid policies towards blacks as well as Jews, especially given there was segregation in the military anyway and many states already had segregated buses, schools, cafes, etc. very much like what was coming in South Africa. 

The other thing is that the book has too much of a pat ending. Lindbergh who flies himself around the USA campaigning simply disappears on a flight back to Washington DC. While oppressive policies follow in the wake of his disappearance, including declaration of war on Canada, soon Roosevelt is re-elected as President and the timeline is 'corrected'. It would seem more realistic is some of Lindbergh's coterie would have remained in power and using the the conspiracies that soon develop around the President's disappearance, use it for negative integration, i.e., using it as 'proof' of the threats the USA faces and so ramp up authoritarian policy. A post-war world world with a (semi-)Fascist USA, the USSR in control of an larger slice of Europe and no Marshall Aid to assist post-war recovery in the remaining democracies would be a bleak picture to hint at even if Roth did not paint it.

Non-Fiction

The Social History of Politics' ed. by Georg Iggers

This is a useful book to read alongside Hans-Ulrich Wehler's 'The German Empire, 1871-1918' (1973) which I read in August: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2023/08/books-i-readlistened-to-in-august.html Iggers brings together articles and book extracts published between 1954-1979. These look at slices of German society in the Imperial period and various social developments. It is particularly good with Hans Rosenberg in digging into the Junker class and showing that despite a continuity of interests these large landowners from eastern Germany actually changed in make-up and their sources of income in a way which is very much overlooked in general histories of Germany. There are articles on the evolution of the working and its social contexts as well as the middle classes of Germany. Karin Hausen's renowned piece on the impact of home sewing machines reminds us how easily overlooked the significance of a relatively minor innovation can have on society, especially if it is deemed to fall into the 'realm of women'. That is unfortunately still a factor in so much research even 45 years on from the publication of that article. Overall, a crisp, focused read which provides very useful penetrating background for anyone interested in German history.

'Fifty Amazing Secret Service Dramas' edited by Odhams Press Editors

Initially I thought this book, published in 1937, was a collection of fiction stories. However, in fact it is extracts from various memoirs written by 24 different authors. While some names are changed or substituted with just an initial, the bulk of what is covered if factual. Most of the extracts are about the First World War, including the outbreak of the Russian Revolutions, though some, such as the best known one from Robert Baden Powell, focus on the pre-war era; one is about countering gun-running in South Africa in the 1890s and one is about spying in the USA in 1929. There is some corroboration between different accounts for example about the female doctor who controlled the German network in occupied Belgium and the British spymaster "Evelyn" based in Folkestone.

One interesting aspect is the different perspectives. The memoirs are not simply written by British spies, but Belgians, French, Germans, Russians and Americans too. There is some brief coverage of Japanese spy activity at the time of the Russo-Japanese War 1904-05, but not much. Most of the extracts are about human intelligence, but there is interesting information on the early days of radio intelligence and the use in locating submarines. Aircraft also feature and it is interesting to see how the landing of agents in occupied territory was becoming used before the examples we are familiar with from the Second World War.

Being based on real people and events, it does not baulk from simply outlining how people were executed. Many of those featured in the book end up that way, whether male or female and of all ages. Given death rate that these spy missions were carried out against the backdrop of, I suppose readers would not be sentimental. The cover simply shows a blindfolded man standing against a wall awaiting his execution. It is interesting, however, how many blunders or oversights outlined in these accounts were to be repeated in the next world war. This book would be a really useful source for anyone thinking of writing spy or adventure stories set in the first 20 years of the Twentieth Century. 

'Keynes and After' by Michael Stewart

I read the second edition of this book, published in 1972 when the post-war boom was beginning to come to an end and the concept of floating currencies was becoming widely accepted. This book is very useful in explaining why governments behaved in the way they did during the Depressions which in Britain and to a great extent in Germany, filled the 1920s and 1930s when the problem became global. As you might expect the book gives a good summary of Keynesian principles and how his followers took them beyond what Keynes himself had argued. It also addresses monetarism, which despite President Nixon's abandonment of it, was to become the more popular economic theory of the 1970s and 1980s, even if, as Dell showed in 'The Chancellors' (1997): https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2023/11/books-i-read-in-november.html it was never really put into full effect in Britain.

The style of the book is very much like a lecture and it makes useful of very simple examples to explain economic principles and theories. I feel it really retains value in this regard especially for people operating in an era when many monetarist assumptions have become seen as 'the truth', despite hiccoughs such as the boom of the early 1990s and the 'credit crunch'. of the late 2000s.

While retaining value, Stewart's book now seems rather naive. He states that the problem of mass unemployment, at least in industrialised countries is over. Furthermore he says more than once that UK unemployment above 2.5% would be politically unacceptable. However, by 1984 it was at 11.9%. He is accurate in his warnings of persistent balance of payment difficulties and inflation in Britain but does not see that these, rather than unemployment, would quickly come to be seen as the prime economic challenges. He does note that such unemployment would effectively smash union power and lead to a fall in wages, but did not foresee that legislation would accelerate that process.

Stewart does clearly identify the problems of regional unemployment and the need for retraining in both the UK and USA, challenges which have not been appropriately addressed in either country even 50 years on, hence the persistent unemployment from the 'mismatch' of those without work at a time of a high level of vacancies. However, he makes no reference to immigration which played such an important role in Britain and West Germany in supplying labour when demand was high in the 1950s-60s. Nor does he reference cheap oil which again aided the post-war boom while meaning that inflation, still too high in Stewart's eyes, did not reach the levels it would attain from 1973 onwards.

While of its time, this is a useful book for explaining the two main economic theories influencing governments in the late 20th Century. I found it particularly insightful for explaining why British governments were effectively intellectually paralysed to do anything to reduce the impact of the Depression.

Books I Read In November

 Fiction

'Pariah' by David Jackson

Though set in the early 2010s, this crime novel about a New York detective of Irish heritage, Callum Doyle really feels like the hardboiled fiction of the 1930s and 1940s, especially that sense of existential threat; alienation and indeed isolation whether in the rural or urban space. When two of the police officers working with Doyle are murdered, his precinct is both eager to catch the killer but also increasingly suspicious of the detective, especially as his female police partner at a previous precinct was also killed in a raid gone wrong. It soon becomes apparent that the murderer is looking to isolate Doyle from colleagues and even family, making it too dangerous for anyone even criminals to be in contact with him. At times there are clichéd phrases, but the novel is fast paced and there are some great scenes in which Doyle escapes what his antagonist has woven around him. If you have run out of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler novels or want that tone but in a contemporary setting, then this novel does the job well and I can understand the acclaim it has received. Occasionally it does feel like a first novel, but overall Jackson rises above his lack of experience and I imagine the subsequent books in the series will be more polished.

'Piranesi' by Susanna Clarke

Two years after Clarke's debut novel, 'Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2022/02/books-i-read-in-february.html she was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and while a second book came out in 2006, she was unable to produce anything else until 2019 and this novel was published the following year. While it is much shorter than her debut, this book has the same almost matter-of-fact magic realism about it. The main character is called Piranesi by another and inhabits a vast building with multiple chambers filled with statues and ornate architecture. Parts of it are crumbing and there are often floods caused by various tides coming into the lower chambers. The story is told through Piranesi's journal and he details more of his environment and the remains of others he finds coming into it. Initially only one of these is alive but as the novel progresses, the character and we learn more about the situation, what the vast house is and how he came to be there. If I say much more I will spoil the story which does a great job of unfolding the details bit by bit and showing that it is magic realist rather than fantasy as it might appear (as it did to me) at the outset. The novel reminded me of early work by Christopher Fowler and novels by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (more of which below). The tighter focus of this novel means Clarke's skill in conjuring up fascinating places and intriguing people is put to great effect. I hope that she publishes more.

'The Angel's Game' by Carlos Ruiz Zafón 

This is the second book in Ruiz Zafón's tetralogy but is a prequel to 'The Shadow of the Wind' (2001) which I read last month: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2023/10/books-i-readlistened-to-in-october.html It is again set in Barcelona but this time in the 1920s with an epilogue in 1945. Some of the same characters appear, though younger. The story is very similar to the first book in that it has a very Gothic tone with the protagonist, David Martín, a journalist and subsequently a novelist. There are more scenes in run-down grand houses and backstreets of Barcelona, corrupt police, unrequited love and a visit to the the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. 'The Shadow of the Wind' was a kind of literary detective story with Gothic overtones. This novel centres on a Faustian pact that Martín makes with an elusive, probably supernatural French publisher and the disruption it causes to his life. However, there is also the uncovering of a complex crime focused on the grand house the author buys with profits from a series of Gothic novels, the City of the Damned sequence. As the novel comes closer to the conclusion this becomes clearer as a crime story, with that hardboiled feel, indeed reminding me a little of the movie 'Chinatown' (1974) and the pace steps up into an all-action finale with car crashes and a fight in cable car.

I almost feel that my reading this month unintentionally has been in the same vein. This novel has the kind of fated doom that characterised hardboiled novels and movies but also has aspects of the unearthly, sitting alongside the mundane which characterises magic realism. The trouble for me was that I read this too soon after 'The Shadow of the Wind' whereas originally they were published 7 years apart. Thus, I had had my fill of bleak young men and angelic young women in the shadowy decay of Barcelona. This book was some 69 pages shorter (441 as opposed to 510 in my editions) but still felt rather too long and it would have had more impact if crisper. I am certainly not rushing out to buy the remaining two books in the series but may come to them in some years' time.

Non-Fiction

'The Chancellors' by Edmund Dell

Edmund Dell was someone I used to run into quite a bit in London in the 1990s up to his death in 1999. He had served in various under-secretary of state roles in the late 1960s before becoming Minister of State for Trade and then Employment to 1970. In 1974 he was Paymaster General and then Trade Secretary until 1978. In this book, published in 1996, he reviews the 17 Chancellors of the Exchequer, the British finance ministers, 1945-90.

What is astounding, perhaps unsettling, about this book is that, throughout, Dell makes no attempt as a historian to be objective. He savages every Chancellor on a range of bases for what he sees as sustained incompetence, arrogance, naivety and simply being wrong about almost everything in how the economy was unfolding. It seems a surprise that he was ever a Labour MP let alone in a Labour government. His economic outlook as revealed through his commentary is that in some way Britain needed to shirk off any international role, that defence should have been reduced to a minimum and that it should have had a much smaller state, with very little social welfare or health service. It is a Little Englander attitude in extreme. Saying this, while Dell favours the market, he does not sit with the free marketeers of the Thatcher years seeing them as tinkering too much and deluded in their belief in monetarism or what they thought was monetarism.

Reviews quoted on the book speaking of it being 'severe' (David Butler) and 'merciless' (Peter Hennessy) are accurate. While it can be argued that the criticism is warranted, Dell goes far outside what is taken as the usual historical approach. Many of his comments, even the captions under the photos of all the different chancellors are snide, touching on the juvenile. He occasionally yields a little for Dennis Healey and Nigel Lawson, but generally this book is filled with attack after attack on the men it focuses upon, sometimes descending well away from academic analysis.

Dell did not come across in this way when met in person and it seems apparent he had bottled up a lot of vitriol that he felt compelled to shoot out in this book. I am surprised the editors let him get away with this, especially the stuff which would be embarrassing reading in an 'A' Level essay. I suppose his standing, as seems to be the case with some established historians, made him immune from being edited.

The book does explain the complexities of the first 45 post-war years of the British economy clearly and it has a value in that. However, never have I read a history book which is effectively a personal rant against a string of people. If anything this should have rather appeared as an autobiography rather than masquerading as a genuine history book.

Books I Read/Listened To In October

 Fiction

'The Shadow of the Wind' by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

This is the first part of Ruiz Zafón's renowned tetralogy. It is set in Barcelona, 1945-56. It is a little magic realism, with most elements quite realistic, if Gothic in tone. The Cemetery of Forgotten Books which the protagonist is taken to as a boy and is the home to books that would otherwise be lost has a fantastical element. However, other aspects such as the role of the secret police under the Francoist regime, established right across Spain in 1939, is realistic. Daniel is allowed to pick one book from the cemetery and selects 'The Shadow of the Wind' by Julian Carax an unsuccessful published author from Barcelona who spent much of his life in the inter-war years in Paris. Daniel sets out to discover the story of Carax, especially his subsequent death in Barcelona, and those who knew him that remain. This involves a lot of investigating among deserted buildings of the city and avoiding various nasty characters including the man intent on burning all Carax's work. It is also a coming of age story and Daniel's challenges with the young women he falls for, in part mirror Carax's own.

This book has been immensely successful. It was published in 2001 and translated into English in 2004. I am not sure why I had not come across it before, though possibly as given my reading patterns I typically reach books some 15-20 years after they have been successful and they are common in charity shops. I was interested in the setting, having read quite a lot on the Spanish Civil War, but much less on the period afterwards. The Gothic atmosphere is well rendered. The investigation and the sense of jeopardy were handled effectively. I did feel that it went too far in trying to be twisty in its narrative and its revelations and that my patience with how many times it might loop around or parallels be drawn, was probably exhausted by the three-quarter mark, though I continued to the end. Perhaps the petty, and at times violent, nastiness of characters especially towards their children, becomes tiresome after a while.

I have the second book, in the sequence, 'The Angel's Game' (2008) which is a prequel to read. While it was a labour to finish the first book, I did admire the imagination of the author and his portrayal of the settings so will not abandon reading the second one in due course.

'A Question of Blood' by Ian Rankin

I actually listened to the audio book version of this back in August 2018: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2018/08/books-i-listened-toread-in-august.html Interestingly, this time round, reading it, I felt that it was actually tighter than I felt back then listening to it. There is some travelling about, but compared to some of Rankin's books I have read in recent months, this felt to be necessary. The fact that Rebus and DS Clarke work together rather than separately for much of the book, may be one reason why aspects do not feel superfluous. The story does move on briskly and as I noted before, not being a standard murder mystery in that the killer is known from the outset, does not undermine the investigation and it is interesting that some of the 'red herrings' are put in intentionally by people working to their own agendas. Thus, overall, I was glad I came back to this book as I was much more satisfied with reading this particular entry in the series, the 14th, then I was listening to it five years ago.

'Breakfast in the Ruins' by Michael Moorcock

While I have read a lot of Michael Moorcock books down the years, this was one, published in 1971, that I had not come across before. It is a short novel (174 pages in my edition) which see the protagonist Karl Glogauer dropping into various versions of himself, usually as a boy in various locations from 1871 to 1990. He is projected into these roles, it appears, through having homosexual sex with an unnamed Nigerian man who he meets in the roof garden cafe of the Derry & Tom's department store, a location regularly turning up in many of Moorcock's books.

Aside from the mode of 'transport' and a vignette set in 1990, there is not much science fiction or fantasy, rather they are quick portrayals of different historical settings including Paris under the Commune, 19th Century Brunswick, Capetown, Havana at the time of the Spanish-American War, the east end of London,  (German) Alsace during the First World War, Kiev during the Russian Civil War (a popular context for Moorcock), New York at the time of Wall Street Crash, Shanghai during the 28th January Incident of 1932 (rather than the Japanese invasion of 1937), Berlin in 1935, Auschwitz in 1944, Tel Aviv in 1947 at the end of British mandate, Budapest in 1956, Kenya in 1959 during the Mau Mau Emergency, with US troops in Vietnam in 1968 and the west end of London (notably Ladbroke Grove another venue Moorcock likes to use) with a prediction of rioting and unemployment in the 1980s which was a reasonably accurate prediction. As you can tell all the settings are grim; often violent.

Also in common with his style, Moorcock mixes in excerpts from newspapers and non-fiction books of various periods. He also presents a moral dilemma at the end of each chapter. In many ways he was the precursor of a lot of what goes on in terms of social media these days. At the time the book must have appeared like a lot of his work, as a challenging text in terms of the incidents it focused on, its very format and the engagement with topics such as homosexuality and abuse. Now such are commonplace features on TV and in books thought non-linear, multi-perspective structures are unpopular with readers even if they do feature in movies and TV series. Consequently what a reader in 2023 is likely to pick up on is the quality of the descriptions of the contexts and in one case quite an engaging short story. Aside from that, it does feel at times as if Moorcock was showing off his ability to be non-traditional in his approach which would have jarred/challenged readers in 1971 much, much more than it does 52 years later.

'Walking on Glass' by Iain Banks

I believed that I had not read this book, though given I get through about 50 per year, perhaps it is to be expected that I forget some from a decade or two ago. This was published in 1985 so I would have had ample time to read it in the past 38 years. It was not as if I was entirely familiar with the book and I did not know the ending. It consists of three strands that we move between in turn. Two of them are about men living in London in 1983/84: Graham Park, an art student and Steven Grout, a man who maybe neuro-diverse or mentally disabled. For much of the novel we see them moving around on a particular day, one in which Graham is going to visit a woman called Sara who he is in love with but has been rather toying with his affections and Steven loses his job as a roadworker. I did not recall either of these stories. 

I did recall the third strand which features a man called Quiss and a woman called Ajayi who come from opposing sides of a war on a different planet or time. They are confined to a vast castle in a bleak landscape and have to play out almost impossible games such as one-dimensional chess, open-plan Go, spotless dominoes, Chinese Scrabble and Tunnel. Working out how to play and completing a game allows them one chance to answer the riddle and be released from the castle. In the depths of the castle are rooms in which other prisoners can insert themselves into the lives of others as a distraction from their imprisonment.

This was Banks's second 'contemporary' book and like 'The Wasp Factory' (1984) combines the mundane with the rather outré aspects. It also points to his other stream of writing as Iain M. Banks, as a science fiction author. Overall the book, rather like its predecessor, shows different personal Hells. It shows how we can construct or at least contribute to constructing contexts which distress us mentally and then fall victim to these; often unable to break out of them even if in (large) part we have built them up in the first place. This does say something about neuro-diversity and mental health, explored less sensitively in the 1980s than now. Unfortunately Banks's 'solution' seems to be simply to seek oblivion, whether that is through self-destruction, suffering a severe injury or simply abandoning even our best work. Added to that it makes a strong message that we should never hope and ultimately the nastiest people in our world will always come out best off.

While it might not be perceived this way, as with 'The Wasp Factory' this novel is effectively a low-key horror story and should be approached in that way. It is an unhelpful musing on the mental worlds we construct and its overall message is that anyone finding themselves in such situations should simply give up, whether on their efforts or indeed life itself. As you can imagine, I did not enjoy this book. It is engaging as it goes along but in all three strands ends up being utterly bleak.

Non-Fiction

'The Weimar Republic' by Eberhard Kolb

This was a good book to read after Wehler's 'The German Empire' (1985) which I read in August: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2023/08/books-i-readlistened-to-in-august.html Like Wehler, Kolb provides a brisk but focused analysis of the next period in German history, which eschews being dogmatic down any of the lines which became very ensconced in German history in the 1960s-80s. The first part of the book is an account, which really cuts through the confusion and draws attention to aspects which are overlooked. He makes the notable point that the state's democracy had died by 1930, almost three years before Hitler came to power. Kolb dismisses many of the 'easy' answers that have been put forward for the failure of the Weimar Republic and indeed misconceptions, perhaps even myths, that for so long persisted, regarding the rise of the Nazis. The second half of the book looks at research into different themes of the period as it was when this edition, the first in English was published in 1988. The bibliography was updated from the German first edition four years earlier; there is a 2004 edition in English available too. Thus, this book provides a valuable insight into a period of history which retains interest (e.g. 'Babylon Berlin' TV series, which began in 2017 is still running with a 5th season planned) and a good counter to many of the lazy answers that people continue to wheel out about how the republic fell.

Audio Books

'Prince' by Rory Clements; read by Peter Wickham

Set in 1593, this is the third in Clements's series of spy thrillers featuring John Shakespeare, brother to the more famous William. It is very well done with aspects of what you might expect from a modern spy thriller but clearly set in the late Elizabethan period with rich descriptions of all the sights, sounds and smells of the time. Shakespeare works for Robert Cecil, effectively spymaster for Elizabeth I in the last decade or so of her reign. While his father Cecil acted as her Secretary of State, 1590-96, Robert despite being disabled, carried out a growing part of his work before taking on the position 1596-1612.

John is initially set to investigate terrorist incidents using gunpowder against Dutch refugees from the Eighty Years War who have settled in London. There is much tension around these immigrants though it is soon apparent it is being exploited for a range of purposes. John is later sent to find out about the possibility of an unknown Catholic child of Mary, Queen of Scots who it is believed the Spanish fighting against the Dutch and hostile to Britain, are aiming to set on the Scottish and perhaps the English throne too. Between them John and his assistant Boltfoot Cooper investigate around London and especially into Essex for the conspirators.

Clements handles the story well. There is rivalry between John and his fellow agents which adds interesting points of tension and dynamics to the plot. Clements does not hold off from brutality of the times, with regular reference to tortures and violence even to

 John's loved ones. There are vain people and brutal people involved, so the jeopardy feels genuine and there are blind alleys which John goes down. He is capable but not all-seeing, which allows us to feel an affinity with him. Some of the conspirators are rather larger than life, but throughout Clements does ground them with genuine motives and behaviours appropriate for the late 16th Century. There is an epic climax which is built up to well and does not feel ahistorical.

Overall, there is a lot going on in this book, but it maintained my interest without losing me, right throughout. It runs to almost 13 hours on audio, unabridged. Wickham is called on to do a lot of voices from France, Spain, Scotland and the Netherlands, and most of these are handled well, including the female voices. The only gripe is one of his Dutchmen sounds more Polish, though that only brought home how many parallels there can be felt to be between xenophobia of the the Englands of both Queens Elizabeth. This is part of an 8-book series and I would certainly buy more that I come across whether printed or in audio format.

'End in Tears' by Ruth Rendell; read by Christopher Ravenscroft

I have never read any of Ruth Rendell's novels, though I have seen TV dramatisations of 'A Fatal Inversion' (1987; broadcast on TV 1992) and 'Gallowglass' (1990; broadcast 1992) novels she wrote under the pseudonym Barbara Vine. This novel is the 20th in the Chief Inspector Wexford series and was published in 2005, so after the 48-episode 'The Ruth Rendell Mysteries' TV series (broadcast 1987-2000), which I never saw but was aware on.

The novel is a classic contemporary-set British police procedural novel set in Sussex. A killing of a woman by a lump of concrete being dropped on the car she was travelling in is soon followed by the murder with a brick of a young single mother. This brings Wexford into a complex investigation despite the small range of suspects and it is soon tied up with inheritance, surrogacy and the guardianship of children, with echoes in Wexford's own life. Aside from fewer people having internet access and a lingering discomfort over homosexuality, this book could be set now and Rendell does well in combining modern concerns with a classic crime genre with some tropes, notably the brothers, that would have fitted in earlier decades. It jogs along quite well and the conclusion comes across as believable though perhaps unexpected.

Ravenscroft does reasonably well with the voices, especially as there are a lot of women of differing ages to cover. His Wexford ironically is perhaps his weakest voice and I think this is because he was seeking to emulate the actor George Baker's portrayal of Wexford in the long-running TV series, but at times the deep West County accent wobbles. It would probably have been better for him to deliver his own take on the character's voice.

'Tomorrow Never Dies' by Raymond Benson; read by Simon Vane

As regular readers of this blog will know about five years ago I listened to all of the original Ian Fleming James Bond books in audio format. Since I read 'James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me' (1979) by Christopher Wood, when it came out, I have not read any of the novelisations of the movies until I came across this one. Apparently it is based on an unused version of the movie script. However, in common with what I understand is usual with these novelisations, coming to the book does add quite a lot to the movie. There are back stories to Elliot Carver, Paris, Mr. Stamper and so on which develop these characters. In particular through showing their flaws and their physical traits, the characters especially of Carver and Stamper that we see in the movie, make more sense. There is a whole extra character, a non-binary heir to the Chinese throne who does not even turn up in the movie.

Wai Lin gets more detail too and we see 'behind the scenes' before she encounters Bond. She is, however, portrayed as being 28 (which does seem young to be a Colonel in the Chinese Ministry of State Security) and petite whereas Michelle Yeoh who portrayed her in the movie was 35 at the time and 1.63m (5'4") but shot so she looks little shorter than Pierce Brosnan at 1.86m.

The action scenes are well handled, influenced by the movie, clearly, though in some cases much more practically portrayed and factors such as the need for decompression when coming up from the sunk ship are addressed rather than skipped over as in the movie. Bond also has to use more initiative when aboard the stealth ship than being fully kitted out as he is in the movie. Rather scary is a scene which does not feature in the movie in which Carver outlines the wars he intends to start in the coming years, including a vicious Arab-Israeli conflict, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and an American civil war. Benson, or whoever wrote the script back in 1997, had pretty decent insight into the likely conflicts of a quarter of a century into the future.

Simon Vane does well on the accents, just avoiding sounding too stereotypical with the German and Chinese ones. He is clearly influenced by the movie portrayals and captures Jonathan Pryce's Carver well and indeed even Judi Dench's M decently. I would certainly be interested to see other novelisations of the movies though this is rated to be one of the best. The two I have read/heard do add depth to what is shown in the movies; the background stories and the grittier elements do feel to bring them closer to the Fleming books than mainstream movies probably permit.

'A Murder of Quality' by John Le Carré [David Cornwell]; read by John Le Carré

I read the novel of this some time in the past but had forgotten the plot. It is a murder mystery set at a public school. Le Carré was educated at Sherbourne and taught at Eton. Like George Smiley, the protagonist of the novel, Le Carré had been a spy working for both MI5 and MI6 at different times before becoming a novelist. This novel is set in the 1950s with the overhang of the war not too distant. However, a lot of the attitudes and behaviour shown would be no different if you set it, as many authors do, in a British public school of the 21st Century. I suppose this makes it ironically more accessible to readers (even though only a small minority would ever attend such as school) than if it had been set in a grammar school or a secondary modern school of the time.

The wife of schoolmaster is beaten to death with a coaxial cable. Thus reminding us though the context of the public school is a supposedly genteel setting, in fact the brutality of the war and the cheapness of life continued to impact on the attitudes of many in the following years - you sometimes often spot this in Agatha Christie novels of the time and I instantly think of 'A Murder Is Announced' (1950). This novel has a similar element in that Smiley is drawn in after the victim has sent a message predicting her murder.

The novel is brisk but conjures up a range of characters in this constrained setting, which perhaps while they have become stereotypes in the years since, seem to be nuanced when portrayed by Le Carré. He is particularly adept at showing us characters and then completely undermining our perception of them. Some readers might be riled by this, but the author does remind us that even his protagonist's view of people may be far from perfect and especially coming fresh to the locus, largely judges them through what people say about them.

I can see why this novel has retained its appeal as it is almost an exemplar of writing a 20th Century English murder mystery and you feel that Le Carré did it to put himself into that context and show what he could do in that genre rather than spy fiction. It is not common to have the author read their book on audio. This is only the third book I have listened to where that has been the case. It does take Le Carré a little time to get into his performance, perhaps because it was not something he did habitually. However, he is soon well underway and coming from the class and background he is portraying he proves very capable of portraying characters of both genders from that context well. At just 2 hours 30 minutes in total, this is certainly one to listen to (or indeed read) if you have exhausted your collection of Christie, Marsh and Sayers, but want something clever set in a context they would recognise.

Books I Read/Listened To In September

 Fiction

'Resurrection Men' by Ian Rankin

This is the thirteenth book in the Rebus series and was prize winning. Unlike some of the recent preceding ones, this novel has energy. Rebus is sent back to a training college but is working undercover to find out about corrupt police officers. There is an air of uncertainty especially as the case the retrainees are given to work on is one Rebus knows and her does not know if he is as much under suspicion as the men they are working with. In parallel then overlapping, is the case handled by DS Siobhan Clarke. While not named on the covers in many of these stories she is as much a protagonist as Rebus himself. Rebus is still in his relationship with a curator, though a night-time encounter with her seems rather too convenient to be believable. There is quite a lot of tracking back and forth between the college and Edinburgh and Glasgow. Crime boss Big Ger Cafferty appears yet again though some of the focus is on one of his lieutenants. It gets a bit tiresome that he keeps on turning up. However, this novel is decent in terms of the doubts and self-reflection of Rebus and Clarke and how the different threads of the various stories come together.

'Fool's Errand' by Robin Hobb

This is the first of the Tawny Man Trilogy set in the same world as Hobb's Farseer Trilogy, the first book of which I read some while back: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2021/11/books-i-read-in-november.html Indeed its protagonist is the man who was known as Fitz in that series, but 15 years later when, having renamed himself Tom after all the dramatic adventures of the previous books, is now living a bucolic life with his adopted son and the wolf he is bound to. Hobb's world has two kinds of magic that are genetic inheritances but can be accentuated through training. The Wit allows someone to bind with an animal and communicate with them telepathically. If not handled properly the person can lose themselves in the animal's identity. At the time of this book, the Witted are being persecuted and horribly executed. The other is the Skill which is another form of telepathy allowing sight, i.e. being able to "farsee" and communicate over distances. Tom probably has both abilities. There are also hedge witches with the ability to make charms to achieve low-level magic which actually works.

The first third of the book seems to be going nowhere. We see Tom's quite life while he is visited by various people from his past who know more or less about his history. Most important is the Fool of the title, who had that role at court, but has now reinvented himself as Lord Golden (many nobles names are characteristics such as King Shrewd and Prince Dutiful). He is a kind of alien with unknown abilities but probably a recurring role as a prophet who needs a catalyst in the form of Tom. This section of the novel is effectively a huge recap of the entire Farseer Trilogy which might be a bit tiresome if you have read it, but does mean if you are new from Hobb's work you can get up to (leisurely) speed with her world. Then the rest of the book is a mission into the depths of the country to track down the heir apparent Prince Dutiful who is Witted and has been lured away by a hunting cat.

Hobb has real skill in her writing. Whereas there are some familiar tropes, she has a deftness in turning in ways you do not expect, especially in extracting her protagonists from danger in credible ways. The relationships between the main characters, including Nighteyes the wolf, are handled very well when they are faced with a range of unusual and mundane challenges. In addition to the adventuring with questing and battles, and various bits of magic, it is these relationships which really bare you on in the story. There are no absolutes and even the 'good' characters are grumpy and flawed. I know some readers do not like protagonists who make mistakes, but I feel it means that you can feel you are alongside the characters even though they are existing in a very different world to our own. In addition, despite the fantastical setting there are parallels to our world, notably in suspicion and hostility to those who are seen as 'other' and in turn the negative integration which can make the oppressed become almost fanatical in their defence.

I do not have any more books by Hobb at the present, but if you are looking for well-written fantasy which is credible but not as bleak as grimdark, I can recommend this series.

'Mr. Commitment' by Mike Gayle

This is the second novel by Gayle. I read his first, 'My Legendary Girlfriend' (1998) back in 2016: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-books-i-read-in-may.html Gayle was trumpeted as the male version of Helen Fielding in featuring in a reasonably light way novels looking at relationships in contemporary Britain (largely London). This one features Ben Duffy, known to his friends as 'Duffy' who is an unsuccessful stand-up comedian who aged 28 has been in a relationship with successful advertising executive, Mel for four years. They live at different ends of London and she asks him to move in with her and get married. Duffy spirals into lots of concerns about marriage, not really about commitment but about the trappings that come with marriage, such as consumerism and children. The novel is then a 'will they/won't they' back and forth with other options for both Duffy and Mel appearing. It is very much of the ilk of 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' (1994), though with a lot less humour.

Some reviewers feel Gayle has portrayed the male characters as stereotypically useless men. I would disagree as in fact this is one of the challenges, most of the other men in the book, seem to be fully in control of their lives and doing pretty successfully. Many of these kinds of books have a sort of 'soft' social class portrayal of a kind of middle class and people around the fringes, actually doing better than would be the case given costs and low salaries in London. Duffy flat sharing is a reasonable portrayal. Marriage itself comes over as a middle class activity and it is tightly associated with dinner parties and especially in this book visits to Ikea. This seems to be an inescapable context. Even 'Starstruck' (2021-2023) strays into this territory though it is a lot funnier. I guess this was the focus back in the 1990s and is coming around again after different portrayals like 'The Royle Family' (1998-2012) 'Gavin and Stacey' (2007-2019), and 'Two Doors Down' (2013-2023). I know I am comparing a novel to TV series but it does show how few relationship novels I read.

This was not a bad book though what it features was hardly unexpected. It would have been good to have included more humour. Possibly the best thing is it might make young men - though they are unlikely to read it - actually think beyond their immediate needs to their longer term and see that relationships can be achieved without having to buy into the whole 'kit' of middle class consumerism.

'The Montmartre Investigation' by Claude Izner [Liliane Korb and Laurence Lefèvre]

This is the third book in the Victor Legris series. Legris is a book seller living in Paris in the late 19th Century who is also an amateur detective seeking to solve local crimes before the police do. The two authors, sisters who are both Parisian booksellers, are very knowledgeable about France in the period. The book is lovingly detailed in describing all the different districts, their buildings and the residents. Though set in 1891, the fringes of the French capital do open quickly into farmland and an urban goatherd is an important character. The case starts with the murder of a schoolgirl from a boarding school close to Legris's shop which he co-runs with his aged mentor and step-father, Kenji Mori and their assistant, Joseph, an aspiring crime novelist.

A number of people are murdered through the book and Legris and Joseph, often working alone, wheedle their way into various locations to get to the bottom of these and indeed to see if there is a connection between them and what it might be. The first killing might even be a case of mistaken identity and as a result Mori's goddaughter comes to stay at the bookshop. There is a lot of following people around the streets of Paris. There is also a lot of visiting the nightclubs, notably 'Le Moulin Rouge' and 'Le Chat Noir', where the protagonists happen to run into every famous Parisian artist, writer and composer of the time, which does feel rather artificial. Legris's lover is a painter, Tasha and it is nice to see an amateur detective who is not celibate, even if his relationship is complicated. 

There is a lot of interest in this novel. The details of the settings and the people are fascinating. The murder mystery is pretty clever and not that easily to predict, but avoids deus ex machina being needed to resolve it. The prime drawbacks are that there is a lot of tramping around and the tone seems off. This may be due to it being in translation from French. Despite a series of brutal murders, starting off with a stabbed girl, the tone is persistently light. This is fuelled by quirky customers at the bookshop, Legris having women throwing themselves at him, Joseph's mother' Legris on-off relationship and Tasha's disapproval of his investigating and so on. It may have greater gravity in the original French, but in English, despite points of interest it comes off uncomfortably jarring.

'Half A King' by Joe Abercrombie

This novel is set in a different world from, 'The Blade Itself' (2006) which I read last month: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2023/08/books-i-readlistened-to-in-august.html This one has a more Nordic flavour and focuses on states around the so-called Sundered Sea, a roughly circular sea with rather bleak moors, forests and fens around it and various cities on its shores. It focuses on Yarkvi, the second son of the King of Gettland who was born with a withered arm with only a thumb and one finger on his hand. With his father and elder brother dead, he is called back from training as a Minister - a celibate kind of combined herbalist, diplomat, advisor, order to be king. On a revenge mission to a neighbouring state his uncle attempts to kill him and takes the throne. Yarvi survives but ends up as a galley slave, then later escapes with others from the galley to make the arduous journey back to Gettland to recover his birthright.

Though Abercrombie aimed for this to be a young adult book; a little less 'grimdark', and it is a bit shorter than 'The Blade Itself' and much shorter than later books in that series, it is still pretty much a gritty read, with lots of death and suffering along the way. The book is not high fantasy and at times if someone told you it was set in genuine Nordic history you could almost believe it, including when a One God is put in place over the 409 gods worshipped before. With uncles and a widowed mother in a Nordic realm, there are heavy overtones of 'Hamlet' (1601). The portrayals of this bleak context are well done and the action moves along briskly. The portrayal of the characters is handled well and as Abercrombie notes in an interview at the end of the edition I have the focus on one point of view throughout and a small set of characters at any one time means the character development is rich. Some might foresee the twists at the end, but I found they were well handled.

If I see more books in the series I would certainly pick them up.

Non-Fiction

'What is History?' by E.H. Carr

This is a series of four lectures that Carr gave in 1961. Despite its age it has really stood the test of time (though it does refer to all historians as 'he' and talks about the USSR) in terms of its exploration of perspectives on history. It is a short book (159 pages in my edition) however covers a whole range of issues that still need to be thought about. Examples include whether anything in history is 'inevitable' and how historians are impacted by their attitudes of their own time when looking at attitudes of the past and whether we can ever be really objective. In some ways the book comes to a proto-Post Modernist approach which was to develop in the next thirty years, emphasising the looking at context rather than insisting that our perspective is somehow greater than others without checking this. He also points out how Western-centric so much of history is in the West and how this neglects histories that in the life of humanity have had huge impacts.

Despite its age, this book is very deft and putting questions that historians especially in the period of so much dubious 'history' appearing online, need to keep asking themselves and using to check their work. If you are interested in the study of history, I feel this book remains relevant especially in what it asks.

Audio Book

'The Collectors' by David Baldacci; read by Steven Pacey

This is the second book in Baldacci's Camel Club series. I listened to the third book back in 2020: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2020/03/books-i-listened-toread-in-march.html It is typical of many of the CD audio books that seem to turn up in charity shops. The 'Camel Club' is a collection of misfit middle-aged and elderly men with various backgrounds largely in intelligence or the military who get wrapped up in conspiracies and solving crimes, led by Oliver Stone a former CIA assassin who now lives and tends a cemetery. In this one the gang investigate the killing of a librarian at the Library of Congress where one of them works and the assassination of the Speaker of the House of Representatives. There is a parallel story about a con artist and her gang ripping off an Atlantic City gangster, which overlaps with the main story as she was the former wife of the librarian.

There is a lot of chasing around Washington DC but the solution of what is going on is reasonably well handled.  Some of the technology, especially used in the con, seems dated, even for 2006 when the book came out. Unlike 'Stone Cold' (2007) which I listened to back in 2020, the language is a bit less tough-guy throughout and it is more a gang of quirky sort-of amateurs solving what is going on which turns out to be spying and treason.

Pacey does well with a range of distinctive American voices and is not bad with the few female voices that appear. This is not the sort of book that I would have gone out and bought but it is fine enough for listening to while commuting.

Books I Read/Listened To In August

 Fiction

'Robin Hood Yard' by Mark Sanderson

This is the third book featuring Johnny Steadman an investigative journalist for the fictional 'Daily News' and Matt Turner, who in this book has become a Detective Constable in the City of London police. The book is set in 1938 and much of the action keeps to the City of London, which has its own police force, though with occasional jaunts into other parts of London under the Metropolitan Police. The story is mainly around a series of gruesome, almost 'locked room' murders and anti-Semitic attacks. The prospective Lord Mayor of London seems to be involved and there are other issues around Czechoslovak gold, the City of London being the home of the Bank of England and other financial businesses. 

There is reference back to the previous books in which Steadman and Turner were abducted and photographed in apparently homosexual stances for blackmail by a local criminal. This has ironically stirred some gay interest between the two men though both of them are also attracted to Turner's wife. This is a deft way of getting in some gay and bisexual characters at a time when homosexuality was a crime in Britain.

The book moves at a fast pace though at times feels rather jerky. There is rapid switching between different perspectives which can be a challenge to keep up with. It conjures up the time period and the details of the City of London well, though due to the latter it does feel claustrophobic at times, and rather convenient that so much of the action takes place inside the 'square mile'. The one who turns out ultimately to be the murderer feels a little as if thrust in at the end rather than naturally developing from among the suspects that the reader has seen up to then.

While a well-informed and interesting book, at times it does not come together as smoothly as you might like. This book was published in 2015 and there have been no sequels.

'The Blade Itself' by Joe Abercrombie

Abercrombie is often seen as the godfather of the grimdark genre of fantasy novels. This novel does start of with very gritty text. One of the main characters,  Sand dan Glokta, is a torturer for the Inquisition of the Union, a country in a fantasy world that we only learn about as the book progresses. There is Logen Ninefingers, a large mercenary-cum-bandit from the mountainous northern lands who gets separated from his band early in the book, though we also see their progress at various stages. Then there is Captain Jezal dan Luthar, a nobleman officer in the guard at the capital Adua aiming to win in a fencing championship. I must also mention Ardee West, one of the few female characters in the book, who Jezal falls for. The other woman character is an escaped slave, Ferro Maljinn aided, despite her resistance, by Yulwei the Fourth Mage. Ferro is really eaten up with revenge and is very violent. There is a great fight scene near the end involving her and Logen, which has a really cinematic feel to it.

This first book is effectively 'assembling the team' at the instigation of Magus Bayaz the First Mage who has been living remotely since the establishment of the Union decades before. It is an interesting twist that when he turns up in Adua with Logen, he is disbelieved rather than acclaimed as this great magic user. Magic does feature as Bayaz has both fire-wielding abilities and mentalist ones too. Logen can talk to spirits, though these are dying out. The trigger for the action is an invasion from the north by a leader who Logen previously worked for. Beyond that there are the Shankas, humanoids who are invading behind the northern army, rather reminiscent of the Game of Thrones

The grittiness of the novel, especially early on, does mark it out as grimdark. At times Abercrombie does dodge fantasy tropes. However, as the novel progresses, he rather falls into many of these. The relationship with Ardee seems inevitable, though she is a nicely feisty character. Though we see through the eyes of Ferro, she is all about antagonism. Bayaz's involvement with Jazal also reminds the reader of incidents from the Harry Potter series. This was Abercrombie's first book so maybe we should expect him to be coming out of the fantasy context with what he produced. Still, the book is sufficiently different to take and hold the interest, even if our adventurous band end up sailing off to distant lands at the end as if starting a 'Dungeons & Dragons' scenario. While I am not rushing out to buy the other books in the series, I would certainly pick them up if I saw them for sale.

'The City of Mist' by Carlos Ruiz Zafón'

If the charity shops are anything to go by, Ruiz Zafón is a popular author in my home town. His books, originally in Spanish, sold in the millions. He died in 2020 and seems to have garnered quite a following among English readers too. This is a short collection of short stories, some very short. Some he translated himself. Many feature the town of his birth and early life, Barcelona. In line with the magic realist approach which we often associate with Spanish-language authors, Ruiz Zafón manages to slip between gritty portrayals from across the 16th to 20th centuries. The term 'Gothic' is often appended to them and there are elements of literally fateful deals, of a labyrinth of forgotten books and of ghosts. These are mixed in with very human mysteries and despair. There is certainly a dark tone across the stories, even when this is moderate such as some kind of unknown lost chance for the architect Antoni Gaudí i Cornet or more bleak such as a young woman wasting away from illness.

At times you might be irritated by the brusqueness and as a reader almost feel dismissed by Ruiz Zafón going about his business. However, as is noted in the foreword, the stories tend to grow on you after you have read them. These days I see more books of short stories being published and yet you also encounter opposition almost hostility to them for lacking substance. Thus, how you engage with this book probably depends on how you engage with short stories as these are of the archetype. They work to engage you and unsettle you as the best (magic realist) short stories should, but give them time to achieve that.

Non-Fiction

'The Making of the English Working Class' by E.P. Thompson

First published in 1963, though I read the 1980 edition (955 pages), when I was a student this book was more renowned for existing than actually what it said, apart from the analysis of social class as being not something fixed, but a relational perception (re-)established with every interaction between people. However, while that aspect features at the beginning and I feel remains a valid approach, this book is much more than that. It covers the period roughly 1780-1830. Thompson does assume that the reader is familiar with the radical movements of the mid-17th Century and with the Reform Act of 1832 and the Chartist Movement of 1848. He refers to these quite often, but frustratingly does not really explore them.

I guess that this is Thompson's purpose. He is seeking to shine a light on the aspects of the development of working people, their experiences and their outlooks, that so easily get overlooked. We can see the late 1960s and the 1970s as being at the peak of 'everyday history' and this book certainly is part of that perspective. There is an immense amount of detail as Thompson looks not simply at the economic aspects of how England changed due to the Industrial Revolution, but also the inputs from religion and ideologies, especially coming out of the French Revolution. He draws attention to all the various movements and especially publications of the era which looked to develop or oppose the development of working people. At the outset while there were labourers a lot of working people were artisans. This time period saw the end of many crafts and their replacement by the water- and then steam-powered factory. 

As Thompson shows well the picture was far from being a uniform transition and he picks out clearly how the impacts varied across England. The focus is on England, because as he notes, the impacts, especially of religion, on Scotland, Wales and Ireland did provide a very different context which would deserve books of their own. Saying that when people from those nations came into the English scene he does not neglect them. By taking a nuanced view of what was happening even within England, this allows Thompson to do deep analysis and his digging into the very varied experiences of Luddism show the value of this.

There is a lot going on in this book and all the names, publications and locations can be overwhelming at times. However, Thompson does also write with gusto and while analysing also sweeps the reader along with all the different incidents and voices that the book encompasses. It might look like a hefty tome, but as well as being informative I found myself moving briskly through it carried along by Thompson's energy. Despite its age, I do recommend it as a book that will alert you to things of which you might never have heard but also to show how effective historical analysis does not mean a book has to be a dull read.

'The German Empire, 1871-1918' by Hans-Ulrich Wehler

I have been very fortunate this month to have selected two excellent history books to read. I was struck a few years ago when speaking to a German living in the UK, at the time of the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, that they thought historians had 'got over' what they saw as an inappropriate 'blaming' of Germany for the start of that conflict. I noted at the time that even books written by British historians seemed to have defaulted back to the 1930s explanation that 'everyone' had been to blame for the outbreak. This runs against the perception informed by the work of Fritz Fischer from 1961 onwards which showed how German policy had, if not created the context for war, pushed events towards it in a more active way than had been perceived. That line was the one which informed my university studies of German history, and indeed my teaching of it, but now in the period after the 1980s rows between German historians, to have faded away leaving the blame-everyone perspective to hold the field by default. In this situation, I feel it makes this book even more important now than perhaps when it was published in German in 1973.

Wehler is far from being an ardent Fischerite. Towards the end of the book he emphasises that we must take care to distinguish the aspirations of radical groups in German society, especially in terms of annexations, from the actual policies of politicians and even the military. Wehler is good on making clear that the context which is established sets parameters on what might and can be achieved. While he is seen as a proponent the Sonderweg (special way) interpretation of German history, in fact I would again argue he is not a zealot. In this book he shows how policies developing out of the agrarian revolution which came to Prussia in the 1850s and 1860s became a founding perspective for the German Empire created in 1871. 

Particularly promoted by the capable Imperial Chancellor, 1871-90, Otto von Bismarck these became ingrained in German politics and society. The policies of Bismarck and his successors was to ensure that the attitudes favouring the elites, notably large landowners, but latterly big business too, kept up the primacy of these attitudes to the political and economic detriment of the large parts of German society. It was not only legislation and subsidies, but also the promotion of conservative civil servants especially in the legal profession, the linked lionisation of the state and the use of patriotism and aspirations to the elite that brought the middle classes to support the favoured policies of the elites. The successful wars of 1864-70 and the militarism promoted by policies, education and propaganda, did not guarantee the empire would go to war, but constantly made it seem a feasible step to take to resolve internal social pressures.

Wehler not only looks at these parameters and calmly demonstrates the difficulties that they made for Germany, but also shows convincingly how much danger they stacked up for the future. Given a legal profession and a military that had been filled with men of a particular outlook in an unchallengeable poisition, combined with the use of xenophobia and anti-Semitism as polices to connect people to the state, the reader comes away quite surprised that the Weimar Republic ever got off the ground. The advent of the Nazis was clearly well established as early as 1918 by what had gone before.

Wehler makes a very convincing case based on perceptive analysis. He does not overplay his hand and cautions the reader not to jump to easy assumptions, bringing out the nuances in what was said and done. Despite being 50 years old, I feel this book remains a very valuable analysis of Imperial Germany and indeed feeding into analysis of later periods in the country's history. It seems very apt especially now when issues around the political parameters that elites can establish and maintain speaks to what is happening both in democracies and dictatorships around the world.

Audio Books

I moved house in August so now have a longer commute to work. That means the revival of me listening to audio books as I have a good stash remaining from the mid-2010s when I commute so much.

'Agatha Christie. Three Radio Mysteries. Volume Four' by Agatha Christie; Radio Plays

Keeping with the policy I adopted previously, if the audio book is based on a book, I still review it, even if it is acted out as a play rather than read. This is a rather strange BBC collection from 2003, featuring a range of well-known actors including the late Richard Griffiths, Dervla Kirwin, Adrian Dunbar and the disgraced Chris Langham, who was imprisoned two years after these recordings were made. Though original short stories published by Christie in 1933-34, for the dramatizations they have been updated. Thus in 'The £199 Adventure' it is for a masking substance for performance-enhancing drugs that the character is sent to Milan to retrieve. The £200 he possesses would have been quite a lot back in 1933, at least equivalent to £15,000 today, if not two or three times that, nowadays even in 2003 the amount seems paltry. This first story is rather frantic and almost comical, with lots of charging around and shooting.

The second story, 'The Gypsy' is much more Gothic in tone and is well handled, bringing in questions about premonitions and reincarnation. The use of moorland and the sense of claustrophobia when one is trying to escape from what seems to be fated is well portrayed by the actors. The final drama is 'The Last Séance' which again is successful in terms of hitting the Gothic tone well, though the updating does raise some issues. Dervla Kirwan and Adrian Dunbar are an Irish husband and wife who work for an English noblewoman, as housekeeper and butler, which shows up the origins. The woman who comes to them for a séance, however, is an Afghan refugee, injured by an airstrike and wanting to contact her daughter injured in the attack who died as a result. However, the acting is convincing and it has a chilling edge, especially as Kirwan's character, able to contact the dead, is pregnant.

Overall, a rather strange package of plays, but generally handled reasonably well, if rather over-dramatically at times. Like good short stories, especially the latter two, make you think about them afterwards.

The Books I Read In July

 Fiction

'The Falls' by Ian Rankin

This is the 12th Rebus novel and as I have noted before, the stories by this stage of reading are less like murder mysteries and more like slipping into the next instalment of an ongoing story. Given that much is police procedural it is rather like watching an episode of 'The Bill' (broadcast 1983-2010). The daughter of a wealthy family living outside Edinburgh has disappeared. She seems to have been involved in an online puzzle game which sent her seeking clues around the city as well as further afield. This is quite a common trope these days, but much fresher when this book was published in 2001. Her disappearance may also be connected to the appearance of wooden dolls in coffins, which have been associated with other disappearances/murders over the previous thirty years. Rebus weaves in and out of the main search, though contrary to what Rankin says in the introductory essay DC Siobhan Clarke actually appears quite a bit and collaborating with him as well as other colleagues in trying to solve the issue of the puzzle. Being able to connect to the internet on the go using laptops was a novelty then so it is something Rankin explores.

As usual, Rebus is a bit of a mess (though he does get a half-decent relationship in this one) and gets in trouble for his approach. He goes to interesting places in both Edinburgh and the surrounding countryside and as usual runs up against privileged people obstructing the investigation. There is uncertainty about the perpetrator and that provides some mystery as we see the various suspects. However, as is the case with these later books, it rather goes on too long and so loses the energy that a shorter novel would have had. It is comfortable rather than challenging to be reading a Rebus book of this vintage, as I say, rather like sitting down to watch a random episode of 'The Bill'.

'Book of Days' by Gene Wolfe

This is a very odd bundle of 18 short stories by Wolfe. I knew 'How I Lost the Second World War and Helped Turn Back the German Invasion' which is a reasonable counter-factual story in a world where Hitler has become leader of Germany but there has been no Second World War and Churchill is a journalist. Some others are just odd notably 'St. Brandon' written in a faux-Irish folktale style and seeming unfinished. 'Car Sinister' about mating cars is just weird, but the sort of thing you might expect. 'Forlesen' seems to be about some tedious afterlife and is pretty tedious. 'Paul's Treehouse' and 'Three Million Square Miles' seem to be observing something about US society but I did not get the message if they were. 'How the Whip Came Back' is more effectively disturbing combining a dystopian view of a restoration of slavery with a sexual perversion. 'The Changeling' is more simply an unsettling story. Wolfe clearly expected computer dating to be far more effective than has proven to be the case and while you can see some examples of his prescience, only on occasion within a few of the stories does anything really jump out as striking.

'Lustrum' by Robert Harris

This is the sequel to 'Imperium' (2006) which I read in 2020: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2020/06/books-i-read-in-june.html  It continues the story of Marcus Cicero (106-43 BCE) during his period as Consul and then in the subsequent years when with the rise of Julius Caesar (100-44 BCE) his position and indeed his life comes under increasing threat. It is seen from the perspective of his slave secretary, Tiro (perhaps 103-4 BCE). 

What Harris continues to do as in the previous book, is take actual events and portray them in a very gripping way. He manages very well to communicate the complexities of various political, legal and religious procedures of the Roman Republic. Having it seem by Tiro means we get little pen portraits of the different individuals involved but also a range of details about the houses, the artworks, the clothing of people of the time. Tiro is not an unreliable narrator but he is opinionated which adds a richness to the story.

Harris is also successful in making us feel real jeopardy for the individuals involved and both the impossible positions Cicero was put into and the price he made for his errors. In addition, you do see techniques being employed that are familiar from politics of the 21st Century too. While I have not read every book Harris has written of those I have, six in total now, together 'Imperium' and 'Lustrum' are the best and I found them really engaging. I do recommend them even if they would not normally appeal to you.

The Books I Read In June

 Fiction

'English Passengers' by Matthew Kneale

Writers are sometimes advised against writing multiple points of view in a story, but Kneale ignores this entirely, jumping between a whole host of perspectives, some in different times to the main flow of the action. At least he labels them, but it does make the book feel fragmented and longer than it actually is. The basis of the story is that in the 1850s a group of disparate men launch an expedition to Tasmania which they believe might have been the actual location of Eden. They hire a smuggler's ship to take them there. We see through the eyes of the captain, the various members of the expedition who generally hate each other, an Aborigine whose almost entire life we see in contrast to the other characters and various officials and their wives, based in Tasmania.

In many ways the book is very good at conjuring up the nature of lives in the time period and the perspectives people had, especially in the burgeoning colony. It shows the misery of the Aborigines slaughtered, dying of disease and relocated; even mistreated in death. It also shows the misery of prisoners held on Tasmania. None of the characters is really one you feel affinity with or even sympathy for. They are all hard and/or foolish people that are free with their hatred. As such it is a real task to get through this book and it is the first one I have struggled to finish in a very long time. While I admire the work Kneale has put into the research and the creation of the characters, this is not an enjoyable read at all.

'The Monogram Murders' by Sophie Hannah

This was the first of (so far) four continuation novels featuring Agatha Christie's character, private detective Hercule Poirot. It also introduces a new character, Inspector Edward Catchpool, rather than reusing some of Poirot's other companions. Hannah has experience in writing murder mysteries of her own. However, this book comes over as almost being too self-conscious that it is a Poirot novel. I guess Hannah (or perhaps the publishers) felt compelled to appeal to the audience of Poirot novels and probably especially the TV series. The early phases of the book are almost overly 'cosy' in the way that the Poirot books now tend to be represented rather than how they were viewed when first published.

Another factor is that Hannah seems to have forgotten how short many (most) Agatha Christie novels were, coming in around 65,000 words, much shorter than the 90,000+ words which is common for novels these days. The extra length certainly is apparent in the closing stages of the book when Poirot has assembled all the suspects and those involved, to explain what has been happening. This is far more common in TV productions than in the original book. Hannah puts in so many twists that this section of the book becomes very laboured and lacks the crispness of Christie's original.

The setting is fine as are the details of society in the 1910s and 1920s. Action goes between the Bloxham Hotel in London and a rural village, which while indulging in some stereotypes, does have interesting characters and especially motives. These help provide twists but a lot of the impact is lost in the overly complex timing and carrying out of the various killings. Overall, it is not a bad book, but there is a tension between continuing Christie's work and producing a book which is pitched more at what the expectations of a 21st Century audience are expected to be.

'Rivers of London' by Ben Aaronovitch

Given that this was the first in what is now a sequence of nine novels and nine separate graphic novels, I am surprised that I have not come across more of these before. It is a kind of mix between 'The Sorceror's Apprentice', 'Torchwood', the Bryant & May novels and Neverwhere'. It features police constable Peter Grant who works in London and finds he can see ghosts and is recruited to a special paranormal unit of the Metropolitan Police headed by a wizard. There is an interesting mix between the now common magic-alongside-everyday-society and the details of London that Aaronovitch includes. Grant mixing with the embodiments of the River Thames and its tributaries, is a really interesting aspect. There is a good range of characters and the mix between the fantastical and down-to-Earth relations and police work is well handled. It moves at a good pace and has interesting twists too. Me knowing many of the locations mentioned added something, but you do not need to be familiar with them to follow the story. Certainly if I see any others in the series at local charity shops, I will pick them up. Maybe they do not appeal to people here, now I live so far from London.

'Turbulence' by David Szalay

This is a short (136 pages in my edition) novel, that is a series of linked short stories, or indeed, vignettes, connected by flights. The thread is effectively the 'baton' is passed from the current lead character to someone they meet on their journey. It loops around the world, from London back to London and the first character we see, in a series of hops from airport to airport and into their hinterland. Szalay does show skill in quickly bringing out the different, diverse characters and a range of settings on different continents, showing us something, usually (mildly) startling, from their lives before moving on to the next. However, even more than with a short story collection, we do not really have time to get to know the characters. It was a brisk book that I read in a day, but felt that it was more like an exercise for a writing class than anything more substantial.

Non-Fiction

'Industry and Empire' by E.J. Hobsbawm

Covering the period of British history from 1750 to 1964, this book is about the Industrial Revolution. It is far better than Hobsbawm's Age of series that I have been reading in recent months: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-books-i-read-in-april.html I do not know if it was because this book formed part of The Pelican Economic History of Britain series and so Hobsbawm was kept under more editorial control. It certainly benefited his writing. While he does look out for nascent workers' movements and still believes that economic concerns were the sole motivator of imperialism, he keeps a much tighter focus on his topics. 

The book is very adept at distinguishing the differences, for example in the nature of industries, their different workers and capitalisation and their locations in a way which is often absent from broad sweeping statements some general histories rely on. Hobsbawm is careful to show that the 19th Century was not a continued story of British success and the 'workshop of the world' era was actually short lived. Throughout there are illuminating gems of analysis which despite the age of the book (published 1969) are refreshing and you are surprised seem to have been forgotten by subsequent historians, perhaps thrown out with anything else deemed Marxist in tone. Hobsbawm's perspective is not determinist whether in a Whig or Marxist way, but he is alert to the social impacts in a way that perhaps purely economic historians can otherwise be neglectful.

Hobsbawm published the book while the post-war boom was still going on. However, at the end of the book he does show real prescience in expecting the 1970s and beyond to see greater economic difficulties for Britain due to long-term waves in the economy. As we know from the Age of books despite the misery of the 1980s, he did cling to an optimism that it would not endure in the way it has in so much of Britain. Ironically, the approaches to the economy and society that he highlights in the early 19th Century have come back to become the 'norm' for business behaviour in the 21st Century. Things that Hobsbawn portrays as having been passed, unfortunately now seem common place, especially in the precariousness of employment and the poor quality of life for many workers in Britain.

Despite its age, I do recommend this as an insightful study of the British Industrial Revolution and feel it is a stronger book than some of Hobsbawm's others.

'Bismarck and German Unification' by David Hargreaves

This book is in the Documents and Debates series. It makes use of a range of translated sources at the time to draw attention to facets of the events it outlines. I had expected it to be like 'The Thirty Years War (1987) that I read last month: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-books-i-read-in-may.html However, the actual narration and analysis of history is much less than in that book. Its purpose is really to be read alongside other history books of the period to prepare students to answer questions of what those cover. As a result, while I am familiar with many of the details of the period and the developments, I learnt little new from this book. It did raise points of interest but expects the reader to go to other sources for explanation of these. Thus, while it contains interesting content, notably on the shifting views of Bismarck and the differences between his private and publicly-stated views, plus on the paths down which Austria and the southern German states might have gone, it is a rather frustrating book to read on its own. I have two other books in this series focused on British political and social history, but do not see much to gain from reading them, as I have other books which tell me more, e.g. Hobsbawm's book reviewed above.

While with elements of interest, the nature of my reading does not fit this kind of book which is much more a tool for students at a very particular stage of their studies to use for revision and practice in analysis of documents.

The Books I Read In May

 Fiction

'The Nonborn King' by Julian May

As this was a 2013 re-release I had not realised it was the third book in The Saga of Exiles tetralogy. I had also not realised that like Robin, in the USA, Julian is a woman's name, so had assumed, being British, that the author was a man. I had often come the first book in the series, 'The Many-Colored Land' (1981) but was not tempted to read it at the time. I am glad I did not. This book is almost a stereotype of overblown 1980s fantasy, that I had assumed, due to the portrayal of women, was written by a middle-aged man; May was 52 when it was published in 1983.

It is not really fantasy as it starts as science fiction, with the development of psionic abilities and Earth joining an inter-galactic confederation of species with psionic abilities. However, through a wormhole various people are sent into exile in the Pliocene era 5.3-2.6 million years ago, probably at the start of that era as in this volume we see the Mediterranean basin being reflooded. Travelling back in time, humans from the future meet two branches of the same species of humanoid aliens, the Tanu and the Firvulag that they alternatively combine with or fight

This book is filled with lots of factional battles over 'France', Spain', south-western Germany and parts of the Western Mediterranean and Atlantic seaboard of North America. The reflooding of the Mediterranean is caused by a powerful psionic woman. A powerful human psionic ridiculously called Aiken Drum (as in the song) sets himself up as ruler of 'Brittany' and the book is a rather laboured coming to war of various factions. The psionics like magic and the principalities make it feel like fantasy, though occasional high-tech vehicles and weapons turn up periodically.

Despite being republished in 2013, this book as racist epithets and a generally negative view of women, even down to the myth of the vagina dentata. If I had not known better I would have assumed the book was written by a socially isolated man living in the Mid West living out his pubescent fantasies of time travel and superpowers to secure him women as partners even against their will. I can understand why these books were successful but there was a lot better fantasy around even back in the 1980s, let alone now.

'The Songlines' by Bruce Chatwin

I do not really know if this counts as fiction. Chatwin was a travel writer and it is hard to know if the incidents (there is no plot) that he describes were fictional or real. I guess it counts as 'semi-autobiographical'. Anyway, the book is about an author travelling around central Australia finding out about how Aborigines map the country through songs that allow them to pass on the history and geography of places they move through, the different creatures they identify with, the boundaries between different tribes but also as a shared way of communicating across dialects and languages of the people of the sub-continent. That in itself is interesting. However, the portrayal of the author travelling to various locations to discuss this approach with various people is incredibly seedy. You feel that everything he encounters is worn out and on the verge of collapse, many of the people completely lost in the world, prey to alcoholism or simply the break-down of human impact on such a harsh environment. In the last quarter of the book, Chatwin even gives up on this for a while and simply lists short snippets from various sources trying to portray humans as naturally nomadic rather than settled.

Overall, a very dissatisfying book. I would have preferred to read his analysis of the song lines referring to the people he met and spoke to about them, rather than levering it all in what proves to be a dreary, depressing 'story'.

'Set in Darkness' by Ian Rankin

This is the eleventh book in the Rebus series and I realise I have read so many now, that I no longer look for any of them to be better or worse than the one before, they just are. It is like we periodically drop into John Rebus's life to see how he is getting along. These are increasingly more 'slice of life' novels that happen to be about an unhealthy dysfunctional police officer going about his business in Edinburgh. These sense of the drive of the mystery in these books has entirely faded for me. Three disparate threads and the uncovering of murders involving property developers from the 1970s as a result of the building of the Scottish Parliament (the book was published in 2000), is deftly handled rather than thrilling. There are tropes such as the long-established gangsters and the wealthy family with secrets, so at times, if it were not for the interaction between Rebus and his colleagues, whether friends or opponents, it would feel rather like an episode of a soap opera like 'Dallas'. It is reasonably well woven together and the descriptions of various parts of Edinburgh remain interesting. I still have four more in the series to read of 13 more Rebus novels published since then - there are various short story collections/novellas too. I am content to work through the ones I have but despite copies turning up regularly in charity shops (I now live in Scotland), I am not rushing out to collect them.

'The Ocean at the End of the Lane' by Neil Gaiman

As it explains in an interview in the back of the edition I had, while this superficially seems to be a children's book, featuring a man remembering the fantastical situations that developed when he was living in rural Sussex as a boy. I suppose it counts as magic realism. As noted in the interview some of the horrors have are from an adult perspective which is why I probably found this story far more unsettling than say the Harry Potter stories, even though the protagonist is a 7-year old boy. He falls in with the grandmother, mother and daughter of  a neighbouring house who are a kind of immortal guardians trying to stop misguided rather than evil creatures coming through to cause harm on Earth. It moves along at a pace and for all the fantasy, has a kind of realistic edge. It is set in the late 1960s and I was 7 in 1974, so I can envisage much of 'ordinary' setting and especially the attitudes of adults that are portrayed. It moves along briskly and like all of Gaiman's work is well crafted. I did feel some parallels with 'Good Omens' that Gaiman wrote with Terry Pratchett published in 1990 and 'A Wrinkle in Time' (1962) by Madeleine L'Engle and unsurprisingly it has proven as popular as those two. It has a similar appeal, encompassing the fantastical but rooted in some kind of reality.

Non-Fiction

'The Thirty Years War' by Peter Limm

This is a slim volume which draws on translations of documents of the time to illustrate the points Limm is making. He is no better than anyone else at disentangling the to and fro fighting that raged over western and central Europe in the mid-17th Century. The strength lies in the analysis which follows. There is crisp insight into the impacts of the war, showing how, contrary to many portrayals of it as a real divide in history, it saw many continuities. The war did cause economic harm, but this was actually part of longer trends as were the military developments which it highlighted rather than provoked. Overall this is a perceptive book which certainly, I felt, increased my knowledge of the politics, economy and society of the countries impacted and challenged simplistic assumptions very often seen.

The Books I Read In April

 Fiction

'A Long Night in Paris' by Dov Alfon

This is a contemporary thriller which is split between Israel and Paris. Given the range of perspectives of the various people involved included various members of the Israeli intelligence agencies, French police and assorted Chinese agents it is very choppy. Alfon seems particularly interested in the rivalries between different Israeli agencies, but in contrast to trying to track down the murderers of an Israeli IT specialist and then a former Israeli agent in Paris, lots of details of people posturing in meetings becomes tedious. In addition, the tension is further slackened by how long the processes go on. The killing of the IT specialist is proven to be a case of mistaken identity, but this takes time. There is a lot of posturing between the Israelis and the French too, which is not really engaging. Thus the book falls between two stools. It lacks the intrigue of a murder mystery and yet also lacks the pace of a contemporary political thriller, say something by James Patterson. 

Overall there are some good elements and the explanation for the defection of the agent ends up being feasible. However, too much is jammed in to the book leading to longueurs. In addition the internal inter-agency rivalry is not engaging and is too full of insufferable people. This is a weakness we see in thrillers, e.g. the Bourne novels. People who are interested in/have been involved with such agencies seem to think the average reader will find them fascinating. These days, though, most are familiar with how they work so these scenes just resemble meetings the average office worker attends. A shorter, much tauter book could have brought out the highlights without weighing them down with uninteresting extras.

'Murder in the Museum' by Simon Brett

This is the fourth book in the Fethering series of 'cosy crime' novels by Brett which have now reached 21 books. I read the first back in 2016: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-books-i-read-in-october.html Maybe my age and my relocation within the UK has made me more tolerant of the setting. The novel features two middle-aged women, Carole a former civil servant and her next door neighbour, Jude who is a new age health practitioner. A lot has happened in the two books I have not read. However, as amateurs they still get themselves mixed up in murders. In this case through Carole being a trustee of a local house where (fictional) author and poet Esmond Chadleigh lived and there is discussion about how to raise funds to develop a museum. A skeleton found in a walled garden and later the shooting of a former trustee link past and current deaths.

It is well realised. Brett is excellent at capturing a slice of Home Counties England and the people within it. At times he shades into stereotype, but occasionally surprises the reader. He seems better at showing the novel is genuinely set in the 2000s than was the case with the previous one I read. In addition, Jude's support of an old lover who is gravely ill leavens the cosiness effectively and makes what otherwise could be seen as too whimsical. It is a fine line to walk, but it is done reasonably well here. The conjuring up of fictional poetry and an imagined author's career is done credibly. While I would not rush out to buy more of this series, I enjoyed this one more than 'The Body on the Beach' (2000) when I read it seven years ago. However, I acknowledge that that may be due to changes in my own life rather than in Brett's books.

Non-Fiction

'Age of Extremes. The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991' by Eric Hobsbawm

While Hobsbawm comments himself on the challenges of producing a history book on times through which you have lived, (his life was 1917-2012) he does at times fall victim to that, seeing the groundwork to subsequent developments that he cannot help but identify even if it falls outside the scope of the particular book. Hobsbawm was a Marxist and while he does not laud the Soviet system and in fact identifies flaws in it from the outset that were to ultimately lead to its downfall, he does see the political situation of the 1980s ('the Landslide') with the move to New Right attitudes as a grave catastrophe in a way that probably many historians of the time would see differently. Until the end he does tend to play down the climate change challenges, but that is probably because he was more alert to the more immediate environmental harm caused by pollution. Ironically he ends on an optimistic note, which in fact in the period following has proven to be false and looking at the present news one can see behaviours and conflicts that are so reminiscent of the 1910s, 1930s and 1970s.

Hobsbawm brings a general perspective of realism, though perhaps over-estimates the room for manoeuvre for politicians in the democracies in the inter-war era. He is good on their fear of a repeat of the Great War, but tends to under-estimate how much the fear of the spread of Communism shaped so much of their responses especially to the rise of the Fascist regimes. Though he is better on the reason why the short-lived alliance between the West and the USSR could not be sustained.

Often taking an economic perspective, his writing on the Depression and then the 'Golden Age' of economic prosperity in the West, about 1948-73 is well handled and also why it unravelled. Though he picks up on the Vietnam War and the Iranian Revolution, these are more seen through the lens of the West and there is an absence of seeing things from those countries' perspectives which was a refreshing approach in earlier books in the series. His writing on cultural changes is less well focused and he seems despairing of post-1945 art as lacking the dynamism of the earlier decades.

Overall, there are gems to be picked from this book as there was with the others in the series. I remember reading that the right-wing historian Andrew Roberts picked out Hobsbawm's series as the most over-rated one. I would not go as far as to condemn it in the way he does. I think Hobsbawm had a perspective which is often sorely lacking nowadays especially in era or general history books that is well worth recapturing. The prime challenge is that he seems to have struggled to disengage from those aspects which not simply interested him, but which to him seemed essential. When he touches on those things it distorts his writing and he is a better analyst when less attached to a topic. Consequently, this book like the preceding three are useful for reference. As a sum of the parts, the quality is lesser than individual chapters and analyses and as a result, viewpoints which stand out today and retain real value are liable to lost amongst the mass.