The Loyal Pursuit: The American Forces are more Successful in the War of 1812

The War of 1812 actually ran until 1815. It was about the USA, not yet 50 years old, asserting itself in North America. Researching the conflict led me to feel that it was also effectively a 'rematch' between the Americans and the British who still held vast swathes of North America. Following the British defeat in the American War of Independence (1776-83), thousands of Americans who had remained loyal to the British fled northwards, this included slaves who were granted their freedom. This was despite the fact that slavery persisted in the regions which would become Canada, until 1834. It did mean there was a free black population especially to the eastern side of British North America.

The American invasion of the British territory both overland and across the Great Lakes, did have some successes and secured towns such as Detroit. However, the invasion was undermanned and rather poorly commanded meaning that the impetus soon ran out. With the defeat of Napoleon in 1814 and again in 1815, the British government was able to refocus its efforts away from Europe. In this alternative, the invasion was better planned and supplied and as a result much of the areas settled by Europeans have been overrun by American forces. However, distance and terrain eventually prevent a total conquest of all of the territory under British control at the time. 

It is envisaged that the conquered areas are annexed to the USA either in the extension of existing state and territories or by the creation of the new territories, i.e. the organisation of a region before it becomes a US state. It might be argued that given the rows between states of the USA, especially around the Great Lakes, that there would not have been the extension of existing states. However, given the terrain, especially the land between the lakes, it seemed more feasible than having small fragments of new territories. In this alternative by 1815, the USA would have had greater control around the Great Lakes and along both shores of the St. Lawrence Seaway.

It is assumed that those who could not bear to live under US rule would have fled to the interior of Upper and Lower Canada making use of the trading stations that had been developed to handle the fur trade. Those most likely to have fled would have been those families of Loyalists and the black population especially if their families had found freedom in Canada fleeing the USA after the American War of Independence. It seems feasible that they would have been treated as runaway slaves and hauled back to those deemed their owners in the USA.

The pattern of laws around slavery varied quite considerably from state to state, but the recovery of escaped slaves was permitted at the time even from states which themselves did not have slavery. In addition, it is interesting to note that even as slavery was being eroded in some of the northern states, laws permitting indentured labour continued, notably for former slaves or their children up to a certain age.

Especially given that some leading individuals in the USA at the time wanted to introduce slavery to the Great Lakes region, while they were unsuccessful, I have assumed that they found it easier in the conquered territories taken from British control. Anger at the Loyalists does not seem to have declined much in the thirty years since the end of the American War of Independence so I felt it probable that Loyalists taken in the Canadas - and in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia which had actually received more Loyalist refugees than the other regions - would be punished by being put into indentured labour. I imagined they would be especially sent to aid the development of the new US states. Kentucky had become a state in 1792, Tennessee in 1796, Ohio in 1803 and Louisiana in 1812. 

I particularly became interested in Louisville as a destination for those Canadians captured in this war. In part because Kentucky was more distant from the conquered lands and because Louisville was known very much as a slave trading city and an important link in the trade between the so-called Upper South, i.e. those states south of the Mason-Dixon line but north of the northern borders of the states running east-west from Texas to South Carolina and the Lower/Deep South.

Dealing with the aftermath of the invasion and the selling into slavery and indentured labour of Canadians became the focus of this novel. I decided on using two families - Daniel and Mehitable Jarvis and their children, George and Charlotte and Cyrus and Madeleine Hartwood and their sons Lysander and Pharas. Daniel is a master cabinet maker in York (nowadays Toronto) who employs Cyrus as his journeyman. Both men are part of the York militia so are drawn into the fight against the invading Americans. I found a great resource on the York militia which really helped my story: The War of 1812 Project: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Project:War_of_1812 While Madeleine and the Hartwood children escape northwards into the less populated areas of Upper Canada, Cyrus and the Jarvises are captured, separated and shipped to Kentucky.

It is important to know that the Jarvises are white, Cyrus is black and Madeleine is mixed-race with one black grandparent and three white. At the time much was made of categorising races and there was a plethora of terms for different categories of mixed race people for example mulatto, quadroon and octaroon. On the 'drop of blood' principle even someone with one great-great-grandparent who was black, i.e. a  hexadecaroon, would be considered black and thus could be enslaved even if all their other relatives had been white. It seemed important to explore these aspects and note that while indentured labour was bad, slavery was worse.

Immediately this led me to worry about whether people would say I was not permitted to write black or mixed race characters especially in a story set when slavery was in force. Not to do so would have led to a very distorted story and it would almost have been as if I was ignoring that experience. In addition I reflected that while commentators might say I could not get 'inside the head' of a black person or indeed as a man write two women as main characters. I would argue that the same kind of charges could be laid against anyone in 2024 writing about anyone in 1813, not matter what their own or the characters' race. I do accept that me writing the story especially of Cyrus Hartwood is going to accept some readers and commentators, but the alternative was either to produce a very skewed novel that would have looked to be brushing certain aspects under the carpet or to have abandoned the novel entirely.

Much of the action takes place in the rural areas between the towns and especially in the Canadian sections interaction with the indigenous peoples who had settlements and had established routes that the European settlers made use of. The characters cover a great distance going through terrain from northern Kentucky to the northern shores of Lake Huron and I was keen to make sure that the plants and wildlife they encountered were authentic for each area. It did become apparent, especially for the sections in Kentucky and Ohio, how climate change has already altered this and trees, for example, that in 1813 would only have been found in more southern latitudes in the USA have now crept much further north.

This then is the background of the novel. It rotates between the perspectives of the four adults to show different elements of the conflict and its consequences. As such it is very much an adventure story as each of the characters seek to escape American control and keep their children safe. I have tried to reflect how brutal and cheap life was, and how assiduous Americans were in trying to recapture what they felt was theirs. While my alternate history novels are often adventure stories, it is unusual for me to write family dramas, but I enjoyed writing this one. I hope you will enjoy reading it and looking at your own views of how different North America might have been if this often forgotten war had gone down just a slightly different path.

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Taken In Lycia: The Treaty of Sèvres Enforced Giving Fascist Italy a Zone in Anatolia

 

Of the peace treaties signed following the First World War, one which envisaged some of the greatest changes to the defeated Power was the Treaty of Sèvres imposed on the Ottoman Empire in 1920. While it did not entirely tear apart the empire in the way that happened to Austria-Hungary, it did treat the country more like a colonial territory than a lesser Power. The British, French and Italians had been hacking away at the Ottoman Empire throughout the 19th and early 20th Centuries, depriving it of all its North African territories as well as Cyprus and the Dodecanese Islands closer to Anatolia. Its European borders had been pushed back starting with the independence of Greece and the emergence of Romania, Bulgaria, Albania and an enlarged Serbia out of Ottoman territory. British, French and German companies had become heavily involved in exploiting the Ottoman economy.

The Treaty of Sèvres took this erosion a step further as can be seen in the map below. Britain, France, Italy and Greece received mandates - effectively colonies in all but name - and zones of influence in Anatolia. The Straits between the Mediterranean and Black Seas were internationalised. Remaining non-Turkish territories, i.e. Palestine, Transjordan and Syria largely came under the control of the British and French. Arabia, Kurdistan and Armenia were to be granted independence.

While all the defeated countries railed against the treaties imposed on them, the Turks fought back against the Treaty of Sèvres. Following the war with Greece, there was an exchange of populations. The sultanate was overthrown and the Turkish Republic established. Even the British and French, while able to hold their mandates in the Arab states could not introduce the zones in Turkish areas. Kurdistan has still not been established and Armenia only reappeared and then much farther North, following the collapse of the USSR in the 1990s. Unlike all the other defeated Central Powers, a second treaty, the Treaty of Lausanne was signed in 1923 enabling control of the Turkish Republic over Anatolia.

The leader of the founding of the Turkish Republic and the prevention of the establishment of the zones of control, was Mustafa Kemal Pasha (1881-1938) later known as Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. He served as a Colonel in the Ottoman resistance to the attempt to capture the Gallipoli Peninsula, 1915-16. He went on to lead the forces that opposed the Sultanate and the Greeks. In this novel it is envisaged that he was instead killed while at Gallipoli and consequently those trying to oppose the treaty impositions, the Sultan and the Greeks have remained disunited and as a result have been defeated. Consequently, the Treaty of Sèvres has been enforced in full. There is still a Sultan on the throne but very much as a puppet of the British.

Benito Mussolini came into office as premier in Italy in 1922 and by 1925 had established the Fascist dictatorship which was to persist across the Italy and its colonies into the Second World War. In this alternative the Italian Empire has come to include a large slice of southern Anatolia. It is named 'Lycia' the name given to part of the region during the Roman Empire, a period Mussolini liked to reference in his propaganda.

This novel is set in 1937 when the Governor of the Italian mandate of Lycia is abducted. Lieutenant Colonel Michele Tartaglia, head of the Italian detective squad is assigned to this most challenging case. Tartaglia is from the poor Molise region of Italy and coming the 'backwater' of Lycia has allowed his career to advance and for him to send money back home to his family. He is soon caught up in the internecine conflicts of the Fascist state. Since the 1970s, historians have recognised that rather than being monolithic states, the European dictatorships of the mid-20th Century were in fact more like regimes of rival 'baronies' with different individuals and bodies within the regimes competing for power. Even more than Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy had a range of centres of power, including the Fascist Party, various police and economic bodies, the Army, the King and the Church. This novel looks at the frictions inherent in such a regime as well as the tensions arising in a colony in an era of rising nationalism and sense of national identities across the world.

This book, then, is a novel both featuring a detective story but also one of political conflict within a regime and between a colonial power and its subject peoples. While Italy was never able to establish itself in its Anatolian zone, I have thoroughly researched the way it ran its empire and what groups and individuals were important in that to hopefully give a portrayal of what the running of Lycia would have been like, if it had occurred. I was very fortunate to be able to access the doctoral thesis of Dr. Dih Wang, 'The Judicial System of Fascist Italy' which was submitted at the London School of Economics in June 1939. It is clear that Wang was not only fluent in Italian as well as English, but had managed to gain deep access to the Italian judicial system of the 1930s and so provides possibly unique insight into how it functioned thus giving me a wonderfully solid basis for how it might have been translated into the Anatolian context.

It can be a challenge when writing a protagonist who is a functionary, especially a police officer in a dictatorship. However Philip Kerr with his Bernie Gunther novels, Martin Cruz Smith with Arkady Renko and Josef Škvorecký with Lieutenant Boruvka managed to do this successfully. Tartaglia is not a devoted Fascist but I wanted a protagonist who would not be unfeasible or anachronistic for the context in which he is working. He is devoutly religious and has the prejudices such as misogyny and homophobia that would be common across Europe and the wider world, in the democracies as well as the dictatorships. He is more understand of the Turkish, Greek and Armenian populations of Lycia than many of his colleagues but at best has a paternalistic attitude of a coloniser towards the subject peoples. He does have faith in due process and in a sense of justice, both of which were eroded in the Fascist state, again raising a point of tension and hopefully interest as he seeks to resolve this high profile case.

As always I hope readers will not only enjoy this novel as a detective and political conspiracy novel, but that it will provoke thought on how our history could have gone down this path rather than the one it took and what the implications would have been for the people caught up in this alternative.

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The Books I Read In October

 Fiction

'Dark Matter' by Philip Kerr

This is a standalone crime novel from Kerr, set in London at the end of the 17th Century when scientist Sir Isaac Newton was a leading member of the Mint housed at the Tower of London charged with combating forgery. The story is seen through the eyes of a former soldier, Christopher Ellis who is employed as an assistant-cum-bodyguard as he investigates a number of murders around the Tower and of people connected with it. Newton is very much presented like Sherlock Holmes, which given his polymath abilities, perhaps was not an inaccurate presentation. The novel really conjures up London of the time and the religious tensions as well as those between different staff employed at the Tower which was also an arsenal. The story works well with the perpetrators seeking ways to throw Newton off the scent and different deaths not all being connected to each other. 

The one flaw I see in this book are the sexually explicit scenes. I know Kerr felt a need to include Newton's niece, Catherine Barton, who kept his house at the time and that she 'progressed' in society by becoming the mistress and the wife of a nobleman and a politician, but all of that could have been covered without two scenes that are verging on the pornographic. I understand Kerr wanted to portray 'bawdy' London - a sado-masochist nightclub also features - but it really jars the rest of the novel. Barton is in the book too much to be ignored, but not enough to be developed beyond her sexual proclivities.

'Casablanca' by Michael Moorcock

This is a rather scattergun collection of essays and short stories from Moorcock. They are typical of him and I had read the one about the frozen cardinal in 'Other Edens' (1987). The title story about checking out a potential leader of the Maghreb in the near future is not bad but like most of the stories in the collection does not really go anywhere. 'Goldiggers of 1977' has an interesting premise in that people are using the Sex Pistols as the basis for a revolution in British society. It features Jerry Cornelius, his family and usual related characters so the idea is dissipated by the erratic rhetoric between them largely around locations in London popular in Moorcock books. The essays have reasonable pen portraits of Mervyn Peake, Harlan Ellison, Angus Wilson, Maeve Gilmore and Andrea Dworkin - who actually features a great deal among the other essays. Moorcock tries to chart a path between wanting the exploitation of pornography stopped without falling back on censorship or Puritanism and makes a case, largely launching from Dworkin's views that it can be tackled through a Feminist approach. However, it does not come over as a strong or clear argument.

This whole collection is very patchy and while Moorcock might have felt he was being as challenging and provocative as he was back in the 1970s by the time this was published in 1989, he comes over as grumpy and indeed at times petulant. The whole tone reminded me much of public statements of Alan Moore who never seems happy with anything and gives the air that he believes he can understand things that no-one else is capable of comprehending.

'Familiar Rooms in Darkness' by Caro Fraser

In many ways this is very much a literary family drama, with the compulsory big group scenes at a house in France. However, the questions Fraser asks about who/what a biographer should be loyal to and the question that comes up a lot now about whether we can continue to value someone's work when we learn that the person did nasty/criminal things, raises it a bit above most books of that kind. The story is around the fictional poet, playwright and author Harry Day. Nearing the end of his life he employs a journalist Adam Downing to write his biography. Day dies early in the book and Downing continues working with his family including his wife, his ex-wife and his two children Charlie and Bella. However, increasingly he encounters people that knew Day in the 1960s (the book was published in 2004 and is set contemporaneously) but who were not on the list of people for Downing to interview. Steadily this reveals much darker sides to Day, starting mildly with the question of his children's paternity and his sexuality to much nastier secrets. Downing has to navigate these elements which would make his biography a draw and the stories that the family members have long told themselves are the "truth". Downing falling for Bella simply adds to the confusion as he is increasingly asked to portray the stories the family told rather than what actually occurred. While rather trope-laden and probably referencing people I do not know, it does go a bit further than I had initially expected in questioning the set-up.

'An Illustrated History of the Gestapo' by Rupert Butler

Compared to Butler's 'Gestapo' (1981) which I read in 2022: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2022/04/books-i-read-in-april.html this book is much more toned down and far more respectful. It was released in 1992 in part to raise funds for the preservation of Lidice in Czechia which was levelled and its population massacred following the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague. It a well-informed sober way Butler outlines the growth of the Gestapo and those involved with it. It analyses the different approaches of the organisation in different parts of Europe and looks at what happened after the war to the perpetrators. It includes short biographies of some of those ordinary people affected by the Gestapo's activities. The photographs included do add to what is being told and have been chosen well to inform the reader. Overall while this might appear a brasher book than his earlier one, in fact it is a far better treatment of this grim element of German history and very useful for a general reader seeking to know what that particular arm of the Nazi regime was about.

'A Portrait of Europe 1300-1600: Authority and Challenge' by Donald Lindsay and Mary R. Price

This book was published as a contextual read for students of the time period. It works very well at that in large part rather than trying to progress chronologically through the era, by instead focusing on specific topics or the contexts created by particular individuals. There are very complex topics notably the Reformation and the Catholic Reformation, but the brisk writing really manages to provide detail without bogging you down in it. It is good in presenting the role that Ulrich Zwingli played in Protestantism which tends to be overshadowed by Luther and Calvin. For a book published in Britain it avoids being Anglocentric and it provides useful information on Russia and the Ottoman Empire, both with important roles, but which too often in general texts get left out as being 'peripheral' to Europe. It also does a good job of the complexity of the Netherlands fight for independence. Occasionally strange ideas from the authors break through, e.g. as on the origins of gunpowder, but overall it is a useful book for those wanting the historical background for fiction or dramas set in this time period.

The Books I Read In September

 Fiction

'Metropolis' by Philip Kerr

This is the last of the Bernie Gunther novels, the second published posthumously. Unlike the ones leading up to it, rather than straddling two time periods and going into the 1950s, this one is focused purely on Berlin in 1928. Consequently, despite Gunther encountering a range of celebrities and indeed spurring the development of the movie 'M' (1931) is more of a down-to-Earth detective story, not involving espionage, and all the better for that. Gunther is new to the Murder Commission in the Berlin police and is charged with the murder of four prostitutes and then with the killings of disabled war veterans. The two topics can be seen as quintessential foci for a Weimar Republic novel, something emphasised when Gunther meets both George Grosz and Otto Dix, attends rehearsals for the 'The Threepenny Opera' and spends time among representatives of the criminal rings and the Berlin night clubs. It is almost as if for this final book, Kerr put in every element which a reader might expect for a novel in that context.

I do find the 'name checking' rather tiresome and it rather exposes the 'wiring' of the novel too much. An encounter with one of these famous people of the era would have been sufficient. However, setting this aspect aside this is a decent crime novel and like the best of Kerr's work really gets you into the place and the time while providing a convincing series of events. As the last novel, it is nice that it effectively takes you back to the first in the series, 'March Violets' (1989). While the quality of the Gunther novels varies and his 'conceits' can be irritating, for the large part they are really engaging and much less of the unnecessary tangle that those of Volker Kutscher set in the same context are prone to. I will miss the Bernie Gunther books.

'City of Heavenly Fire' by Cassandra Clare

This is the sixth and final book in Clare's The Mortal Instruments series and like the preceding ones follows on directly from the one before which I read in July: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/07/the-books-i-read-in-july.html  As you might expect this one works to the climax with the protagonists of the novels coming to the final showdown with the heroine Clary's estranged half-brother, Sebastian/Jonathan who is threatening to conquer Idris the home of the Shadowhunters. It requires all the young people to go into a hellish realm to fight him and save all the Shadowhunters especially in stopping them being termed into obedient zombies of Jonathan, and naturally the Earth. It does rather feel like a typical YA story, given the range of abilities, more like the Famous Five, than the Buffy team. Clary and her love of all the books, Jace, have sex, even though I am concerned they are underage - something the TV series was careful to alter - and have holy lava running through them. In many ways especially in the other realm, while they still all have the sassiness of New York teenagers, it is more like a usual fantasy novel quest. While a lot of people get killed, even relatively major characters, there is a satisfying ending for the world and even for Simon, Clary's childhood friend and vampire who is stripped of his powers. 

The series is almost an archetype of YA fantasy coming out from the USA. Perhaps reading it when it came out 2007-14 it would have seemed fresher than now. However, now so much of it is common across a whole host of books. However, credit must be given to Clare for her deft control of her material and knowing what her prime audience are seeking. It does appear as if she is developing characters in this one for a follow-on series, but as yet that has not manifested and perhaps suitably she has gone on to similar, but as far as I understand, not directly connected stories.

'Stonemouth' by Iain Banks

I do not know if I am picking the wrong books to read from Banks's work, but after 'The Crow Road' (1992) I feel I am seeing too much of him writing kind of family epics set in different parts of Scotland. This one is set across a few days in the fictional town of Stonemouth, on the North-East coast of Scotland, north of Aberdeen. It does really pander to stereotypes of Scotland, with bleakness, violence, suicide (mainly from a bridge, one of Banks's obsessions) alcoholism and drug abuse being dominant. In some ways it is also like a Western. Stewart Gilmour now successful in lighting buildings artistically returns to the town to attend the funeral of an elderly man he had known well. The town is divided between two crime families. Historically he fell in love with, Ellie Murston, the daughter of one of these and was engaged to marry her. As the novel unfolds we find out what he did that so angered the woman's brothers who chased him from the town, so I will not give that away. Gilmour has to seek permission from both the families to return to the town even for a matter of days. He does reconnect with old friends both male and female from the place and much is about the different roads they have followed in the years since.

The book feels pretty much like an Ian Rankin novel, with the portrayal of tacky wealthy houses and seedy pubs and clubs in the town. The fact that violence can occur almost in an instant and something that happened five years earlier with harm to a sense of propriety rather than anything else can be sufficient for someone to draw a gun, is chilling and realistic, but you did wonder if we needed to see it again. Rankin, among many others, has this well covered. Ironically Banks brings in another common thread from his novels, that of the rather pathetic man in love with the (almost) unattainable woman, that we saw in 'Walking on Glass' (1985), The Crow Road' and 'Espedair Street' (1987) which I have all read this year. 'Stonemouth' could be seen as a (bleak) romance, not quite a 'Romeo & Juliet' story but certainly about trying to have a relationship when others feel they have a right to police it. I see that the novel was dramatised for television in 2015, but I saw too many episodes of 'Taggart' (broadcast 1985-2010) to want to seek it out.

'Jumping Jenny' by Anthony Berkeley [Anthony Berkeley Cox]

This novel from 1933 is another in the British Library reprint series. Like Cox's other books I have read: 'The Poison Chocolates Case' (1929) - https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/08/the-books-i-read-in-august.html and  'The Murder in the Basement' (1932) - https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-books-i-read-in-march.html in this one, the author seeks to subvert the standard approach to crime writing of the time, something he was familiar with from being the founder of a club for crime fiction authors of the time. The setting is a party at a large country house populated with upper middle class people all dressed as murderers from history. There is a gallows tree on the roof from which hang three mannequins, one female. This proves to be the site of the death of the most obnoxious guest Ena Stratton, a noisy exhibitionist who whines when not the centre of attention. Roger Sheringham, the crime writer and amateur detective is one of the guests. However, in contrast to most crime novels of this ilk, when accused of the murder himself, he goes to great lengths not simply to prove he was not the perpetrator but also to clear the man he thinks was the killer but happens to be a friend of his.

While the setting is a well known one, Cox is deft in his writing and you really engage with the story as Sheringham works hard to persuade the other guests that his account of what has gone on, and that Ena committed suicide, is the correct interpretation, in particular around the location of a specific chair. Once more in Cox is gently critiquing crime novels and how they contort things to make the story work, to a lesser extent than in 'The Poison Chocolates Case' but in a way which is of interest to anyone who has read the classic crime novels of the era. The ending has twist upon twist which simply brings that critique right home.

'Cursed' by Benedict Jacka

Well, as I said when I read the first book in this series, 'Fated' (2012) back in December 2018, https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2018/12/books-i-listened-toread-in-december.html I did come across the next book, this one, and bought it. It is written in the first person as we see Alex Verus, a mage with the ability to see the future, trying to run his business in Camden and train his apprentice Luna to control the unluck curse she has. Quickly he is drawn into attacks on magical creatures that live in modern day London and is particularly concerned for Arachne, his friend who is a giant spider that happens to be a dressmaker living under Hampstead Heath. With the character and the milieu of the Light and Dark mages established in the previous novel, there is less of the info dumping in this one and this means the action can move on more briskly. Jacka maintains the 20-something character of Alex and how he is perhaps too easily trusting and love/lust gets in the way especially when dealing with Luna and Meredith a charmer mage.

In general Jacka steers clear of predictable tropes and manages to world build well both in terms of the magic world and contemporary London (though Hampstead Heath is far less deserted at nighttime than portrayed in the novel, but I can see why he did not reflect that here!). It seems to 'work' both in terms of magic and the magical items. There is some real jeopardy and the betrayals are handled well. The series now stretches to 12 books and Jacka has a blog which he keeps up to date, which provides lots of background information on the books and his other activities: https://benedictjacka.co.uk/  'Taken' (2012) is the next one in the series. Again I will not rush to buy it, but if I see it, I would get it.

'Midwinter' by John Buchan

This novel from 1923 has many of the usual Buchanite traits, notably rich descriptions of the landscape, though in this case of the West Midlands, Peak District and Cumbria rather than anywhere in Scotland. It also has a protagonist being pursued all through these landscapes. However, aside from those aspects the book is a shambles. It is as if Buchan had too many ideas and did not know how to fit them all together. The story focuses on Captain Alistair Maclean who has come to Scotland in 1745 with the Jacobite army led by Prince Charles Edward. Maclean is sent ahead as the army moves from Scotland into England to sound out potential support in the south Midlands and co-ordinate offers of support from Wales.

It becomes apparent that among the English sympathisers someone is intercepting vital messages and betraying the Jacobite cause. Ill-informed the Jacobites advance too slowly and cautiously before retreating from Derby back to Scotland where they are crushed at the Battle of Culloden in 1746. This could be a gripping story but Buchan handles it poorly. Maclean does eventually identify the traitor, but the result is an anti-climax. He falls in love with Claudia Norrey one of the English sympathisers but she is devoted to her slippery if rather guileless husband and Maclean slowly realises he could never win her heart even if he killed that man.

Maclean does face jeopardy most clearly in being held to be thrown into a maelstrom in a pothole. However, much of the novel, he is sick, exhausted and imprisoned while the invasion advances around him. When he meets government supporters and even a general of the government army, they have genial chit-chat and there is no threat, just convoluted genteel conversation. Apart from some short stretches all sense of jeopardy is neglected. In addition there is an deus ex machina, the eponymous Midwinter, a kind of travelling man who has an extensive network of common men able to aid him and his friends at the drop of a hat or in fact the whistling of a tune. They are a neutral force in the conflict but able to rescue Maclean repeatedly.

Samuel Johnson, the dictionary composer appears as the former tutor and mentor of Claudia Norrey and keeps crossing paths with Maclean, ultimately doggedly following him across the country. While Johnson tempers Maclean's reactions to those he feels deserve death he appears more as a point of curiosity as a real life character in a fictional story but at a time when his whereabouts were unknown. He adds little except to drain more of the drama from the book. We do not even get to witness the Battle of Culloden which might have been a suitable climax, instead, Maclean through his tardiness and failures notably his personal obsessions takes on blame for the failure of the invasion.

While the descriptions are good, the life has been taken from this story and it is not a patch on 'John Burnet of Barns' (1898). If you want a decent novel set around the Jacobite invasion I suggest 'The Flight of the Heron' (1925) by D.K. Broster instead.

Non-Fiction

'Akenfield' by Ronald Blythe

When I bought this book, in a Penguin edition published in 1969, I thought it was fiction. However, it turns out to be an oral history of a rural village in eastern Suffolk. Though in reality it has a different name, the stories recounted to the author were all genuine. By interviewing people from a whole range of roles and standings in the community, from those on the bread line to the landowners, and public servants like police, teachers and trade unionists it aims to get the story of the place in the 20th Century and look at the changes the 1960s were bringing, in terms of society, the economy and agriculture, especially the training of new farm labourers. There is some nostalgic charm to it, such as the comments about bell-ringing. However, other parts are as bleak, almost as harrowing, as a book by Studs Turkel. What it alerts you to is while a lot of the focus of the 1930s Depression is on industrial closures, the countryside suffered just as much and in fact a kind of neo-feudalism reasserted itself, with the workers on poverty pay and at risk of losing their tied cottages. It also highlights the migration of Scottish farmers to take up abandoned farms in Suffolk.

For all the gloom of the accounts - and despite the improvements of the post-war era, the future still looks bleak at the time of writing, especially in terms of the fragmentation and segregation of village society - it is fascinating to hear the words of the different people. Sometimes they go off at a tangent which Blythe is happy to keep in. Social and oral history were really seeing a real burst of interest at the time the book was published and you can see why it was acclaimed. These days it is very useful for anyone writing a story set in the English countryside of the time, much less rose-tinted than some portrayals we see. It is also useful especially for that leavening of the story of the Depression which reached far beyond the Jarrow Crusade and South Wales coalminers in terms of its impact.

The Books I Read In August

Fiction
'The Poison Chocolates Case' by Anthony Berkeley [Anthony Berkely Cox]
Like his 'Murder in the Basement' (1932) which I read back in March: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-books-i-read-in-march.html this one from 1929, in many ways fits the writing of the 'golden age' of British detective novels, but also does well in subverting the genre. This one also features author Roger Sheringham and to a lesser extent Chief Inspector Moresby. In real life Cox established a club of detective authors and provides a fictional version of such a club in this novel. The members look into a 'cold case' in which Graham Bendix was given a box of poisoned liqueurs that had been received by an acquaintance of his, the disreputable Sir Eustace Pennefather, who had in turn been sent them at their gentlemen's club. Taking them home, Graham's wife, Joan eats many more of them and dies. In turn the six members of the club provide what sounds like a feasible explanation for the crime, who the intended victim actually was and the motives behind it. While they all bring in additional information, each of the explanations are effectively dismissed by other members of the club. In addition, in 1979 Christinna Brand and then in 2016 the introducer of this edition, Martin Edwards, provided their own chapters with two further explanations.


This novel might frustrate many readers because we never actually find out the 'truth'. In large part this was Cox's intention and it was pointing out to the fans of crime fiction of the era how easily they could be directed, even manipulated, into accepting an explanation which in fact might be no more feasible than any other. In that way it works as a kind of meta-fiction and would be useful for those who are interested in the 'mechanics' of classic crime fiction. The various characters are well drawn and there is a good insight into English middle/upper class society of the time. Cox avoids being smug in showing 'behind the scenes' and does really leave it to the reader, and whilst giving his message does not patronise us with his cleverness.


Some might find the novel repetitive and maybe it should be approached as a well-crafted exercise more than a standard detective story. However, apparently it was enjoyed by Agatha Christie. She had produced the short story 'The Clue of the Chocolate Box' for The Sketch in May 1923; it later appeared in 'Poirot's Early Cases' (1974), but while Cox uses a similar approach and mix-up, he does not seem to be critiquing Christie's story, unless one sees him having a go at detective fiction of the time in general.



'Tuf Voyaging' by George R.R. Martin
This is a collection of 8 short stories published mainly published in Analog magazine (one in Andromeda), 1976-85. They are science fiction and feature an obese, vegetarian, cat loving man called Haviland Tuf. He acquires a derelict 'seed ship', a 30Km long spaceship built to inflict biological warfare on enemies. The opening story is like the movie 'Alien' (1979) raised to a higher power as a group of looters are transported to the ship, 'The Ark' and face a range of horrendous diseases and creatures unleashed by the vessel in its own defence. While the stories were written out of sequence, the order in which they are organised here, works well and if you did not know otherwise you would imagine this had been created as a 'fix-up' book, i.e. a sequence of stories providing an overall novel, from the outset.


Tuf travels around between planets colonised by humans using the power of his ship's facilities to push the different colonies in directions that he prefers. One plagued by over-population needs repeated visits. Others are addicted to arena fights between ferocious animals, one is facing the rapid evolution of super-predators and a further one is suffering from a religious zealot trying to turn the clock back in terms of technology. Tuf is not a likeable character. He is snide in his behaviour and very picky in his language, constantly (sometimes very annoyingly) showing up the lack of logic in people's speech. He is self-righteous, though sometimes you would agree with the approaches he takes. While the smugness of the main character can jar, overall, the book even though it was put together, comes over as well constructed. There are rich portrayals of different colonies, their leaders and their challenges which do seem feasible. The opening story is gory, but it does settle down in the following seven.



'Prester John' by John Buchan
As 'John Burnet of Barns' (1898) which I read last month: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/07/the-books-i-read-in-july.html clearly showed Buchan's engagement with the south Scottish countryside which would feature in later novels, this one published in 1910, brings out his personal connection and interest in South Africa. It features another young Scot, this time David Crawfurd, who is offered employment at a trading post in northern South Africa, following the 2nd Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). While there he re-encounters a black African church minister, John Laputa, he had run into back in Scotland in his youth and suspected, despite his preaching at kirks, that he was into black magic. It soon becomes apparent that Laputa is seeking to bring together various tribes and rise up against British rule, both drawing on the legend of 'Prester John' the mythical 'lost' king in central Africa and authority granted by wearing The Great Snake, a priceless ruby necklace that supposedly belonged to Prester John.


Clearly the book is pro-colonial and as you might expect the characters have a paternalistic, racialist approach not simply to the Africans but also the Portuguese, who at the time ruled neighbouring Mozambique. However, so that Crawfurd does face a real challenge, the rebels are not shown as fools and Crawfurd has a very challenging time trying to defeat Laputa and aid the defeat of the uprising. As is typical for Buchan there is a lot of rushing around the countryside. His portrayal of the landscape and its climate is always a strength of his writing. In addition, in part because of misreading the introductory essay, I had assumed Crawfurd would not survive the novel and the jeopardy, especially the exhaustion and scrambling across the rocky landscape seemed genuine. While very much of its time, you can see why Buchan's books have well outlasted the other 'empire adventures' written at the time.




Non-Fiction
'Fontana British Battlefields: The North' by Philip Warner
This is a 1970s book that appears to have been written in conjunction with the Ordnance Survey, certainly it gives details of which of their maps relate to the battlefield sites and how to reach them. This was the second book in a series covering different regions of Britain. By 'the North' it means England from Nottingham to the Scottish border. It gives crisp summaries of battles from Stamford Bridge in 1066 to Preston in 1648. It is adept at contextualising these in the broader contexts such as the Wars of the Roses and the War of Three Kingdoms and would be useful if visiting these areas. Whether the directions would remain accurate some 50 years on, I do not know. However, as part of the popular local history movement of that era it provides a useful and engaging brisk survey of the various battlefields ably putting them into both the local and wider contexts. I bought this book second hand some 40 years ago and while I see you can buy them second hand online and indeed there was a re-release in the 2010s, I have never myself stumbled across another since.


'Encyclopedia of the Third Reich' by Louis L. Snyder
Though I read it cover-to-cover, as the name indicates, this is an alphabetised reference book on an array of individuals, organisations and other aspects of the Nazi Regime. In fact, it goes back long before 1933 to look at the racialist and anti-Semitic writing and philosophies and the people that produced them, which fed into Nazi ideology. The edition of the book I had was published in 1998 but it is quickly apparent it was not revised from its original 1976 edition, so continues to show a lot of people still alive who were dead by the date of this edition's publication. There are consequently some gaps which would surprise the modern reader such as the fate of Martin Bormann and Josef Mengele. There is nothing more than speculation on the perpetrator of the Bürgerbräukeller assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler in November 1939, whereas we know it was carried out by Georg Elser, a woodworker and clock maker, who was arrested trying to escape across the Swiss border; imprisoned and later executed in April 1945.


Being an American publication, there tend to be lengthy quotations from American journalists and commentators of the time, that are longer than the topic really warrants, for example, on the signing of the armistice between France and Germany at Compiègne in June 1940. Another oddity is that it goes into some detail on particular aircraft or tanks, but does not do this generally. It is most useful if you want to find out about the history and the role of particular individuals in the regime, especially those of the second and third rank and how they interrelated to more senior members and each other. It is also useful for connecting between acronyms and German terms for things such as various organisations and their English translations.


What was most alarming was just how much of the Nazi and nationalist/racialist language which is quoted in this book sounds as if it comes straight from so many speeches and social media of today. It is really chilling when the same terms, the same blaming and excuses are right there.

The Books I Read In July

 Fiction

'The Armageddon Rag' by George R.R. Martin

This book published in 1983 is probably the best I have read by Martin. It has some supernatural elements, but these are handled subtly and are in the background for much of the novel, to the extent that I would classify it as magic realism. The story is about novelist and former music journalist Sandy Blair (a man) who is asked by a magazine editor who he previously worked for, to dig into the murder of music promoter, Jamie Lynch. This soon leads Sandy to reconnect with old friends from the hippie era, across the USA and to track down the former members of rock band The Nazgûl which broke up following the assassination of their lead singer, Patrick Henry 'Hobbit' Hobbins during an open-air concert at West Mesa in 1971. One of the most fantastical elements is that any band would be permitted to use that name, the name of the Ringwraiths in 'The Lord of the Rings' (1954-55) given how assiduous Tolkien's estate is in taking legal action against anyone making use of his legacy, no matter in how minor a way. 'The Armageddon Rag' is a 21-minute long track filling the whole B side of their last album. 

Martin was born in 1948 so was 21 in 1969 at the peak of the hippie movement. In many ways this is a contemplation of that movement. While not explicitly set in the Reagan era, it does reference to business and societal culture of that time as a means of reflecting what 'went wrong' with the hippie movement - various characters express a range of views on this. Steadily Edan Morse begins to reassemble the band and introduces a lookalike to replace their dead lead singer. Morse may have been involved in radical direct action in the 1960s and it increasingly appears he is using supernatural means to get the band back together and to be a success with old and new fans alike, culminating in a performance at the West Mesa venue.

The book is in part a murder mystery, but is it also a paean to hippie culture. The discussion of the fictional band also reminded me of 'Espedair Street' (1987) which I read in April: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/04/the-books-i-read-in-april.html While acclaimed at the time, it did not attract a wide readership and has clearly been re-released on the back of the dramatisation of Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire (1996-2011) series and its prequels. However, I feel the drawing of the range of characters, the representation of the performances, the mystery and the very subtle but credible supernatural perspective is a good mix, perhaps could be seen these days alongside Stephen Leather's Jack Nightingale series. Anyway, it was an engaging read that I enjoyed more than I had anticipated.

'John Burnet of Barns' by John Buchan

This was the first novel that Buchan published, at the age of 23. It is a melodrama set in late 17th Century south-west Scotland and is particularly strong in making use of the geography of that region. You could trace the protagonist, Laird John Burnet, across many of the same landscape features today. Initially this is the story of a young scholarly man's life and his love for a neighbour, Majory Veitch. However, his path crosses with his bullish cousin, Gilbert Burnet. 

Returning to Scotland from the Netherlands, John finds Gilbert has laid false charges against him of being a Covenanter, during the Killing Time (1679-88) when government forces under Charles II and then James II/VII persecuted and executed the Covenanters who favoured presbyterianism over the enforcement of an episcopal church, i.e. one with bishops. There are various adventures with John trying to escape capture by moving around the uplands of the Borders while trying to keep in touch with Marjory. There are lots of dramatic scenes and John is only really saved by the overthrow of King James and his replacement with the Dutch King William III. 

The language is aimed to sound very 17th Century anyway even for being written in the 1890s. The greatest challenge comes from Nicol Plenderleith, a very energetic local who offers himself as man servant to John and accompanies on his adventures. His speech is full of Scots terms and is rendered almost phonetically. Having moved to North-East Scotland (rather than South-West) helped me comprehend what he was saying a little better. Overall, this is a romp very much of its time, but has a richness due to strong portrayals of characters and a real connection to the landscape in which it is set.

'Greeks Bearing Gifts' by Philip Kerr

This was the 13th and penultimate book in Kerr's Bernie Gunther series which was published in 2018 soon after his death. It breaks from many of the others as it does not run in two time periods. Instead, following on from 'Prussian Blue' (2017): https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/06/the-books-i-read-in-june.html it is now 1957 and Gunther is living in Munich and working as a mortuary attendant when he is blackmailed into helping foil a Stasi plan to undermine a new political party in West Germany. This then leads to him being recruited as a loss adjuster for an insurance company and in turn being sent to Greece to investigate the suspicious sinking of a private yacht on an archaeological voyage. Soon, when one of the men involved is murdered, Gunther is compelled by the Greek police to assist and he uncovers a plot to secure gold taken from Jews in Thessaloniki during the war and believed to be aboard a sunken ship offshore. There are a range of suspects each trying to shift the blame on to others and portrayal their role in Germany's occupation of Greece as a minor one.

This novel comes over effectively as a 1950s hard-boiled novel, building well on what Gunther has seen and done. Naturally it asks questions about individuals' complicity in wartime atrocities and the reinvention of West Germany and its people after the war. The plot is suitably twisty and gives a feel of Greece at the time. Unlike with previous novels because we do not see Gunther in the "now" the jeopardy is more genuine than when we know he must have escaped from whatever danger is shown as occurring in the past. His connection to an attractive young female Greek lawyer and her feelings towards him jar. Given his age he is old enough to be her father, if not grandfather. He could have been partnered with a contemporary, but in these latter books Kerr seems to have felt compelled to repeatedly show Gunther as alluring to younger women, when ironically women of his own age, including more than one wife, have left him. Overall, this is a solid crime thriller with a good feel for time and place.

'City of Lost Souls' by Cassandra Clare

This is the fifth book in her Mortal Instruments novels. It feels rather like an episode of 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' with the Lightwood siblings of Shadowhunters: Jace, Alec and Isabelle, notably Jace, who is the protagonist, Clary Fray's love interest; Simon the vampire and his housemate/mentor Jordan the werewolf and his returned love Maia, also a werewolf, as his Clary's soon-to-be stepfather Luke. After the drama at the top of the tower block in the last novel, 'City of Fallen Angels' (2011) Jace has disappeared taken away by Sebastian/Jonathan, Clary's evil brother. The book is basically the assorted "gang" working without the knowledge of the authorities to locate Jace and retrieve him, in various ways.

 Being an uber-YA book there is a lot of romance and kissing. Jace and Clary hold off from having sex, which is a good thing given it is not clear whether they remain underage. In the movie and TV series, they are appropriately portrayed as young adults. However, the stories of the other characters, especially Simon (who is having an on-off relationship with Isabelle). We see more of Sebastian and the scenes in which Clary infiltrates the teleporting flat which he and Jace are using to move around Europe, are interesting. After all the various relationship tensions (including between Alec and his co-habiting boyfriend, immortal warlock, Magnus) there is another big battle, this time in a remote part of Ireland. While the creation of an evil army is thwarted, Sebastian escapes.

These books are almost an archetype of YA fantasy. There is a lot of angst around relationships and parents, and breaking the rules. However, it does move along briskly and after five books, the characters are rounded out. The uncertainties when Jace is shifting back and forth between evil and good(ish) personalities is handled competently. It delivers the kind of action you expect. The portrayals of Venice, Paris and Prague are well done.

'Dead Air' by Iain Banks

I am beginning to wonder if I misjudged the quality of Banks's writing. This was another poor effort, from later in his career, published in 2002. It is set around Kenneth Nott, who is a DJ on a talk radio channel that sounds rather like LBC or the Jeremy Vine Show on Radio 2. The novel opens with the character at a party when they hear about the 11th September 2001 atrocity in the USA. Aside from setting the date, nothing is done with that. From then on it simply wanders. Much of it feels like a Martin Amis wish fulfillment novel as Nott who has an established girlfriend has sex with a range of women who generally go off him after a while. He lives on a boat on the Thames, drinks a lot and goes to night clubs and parties. He talks with his co-presenter and his two close friends and sometimes refers to his early life in Scotland, which does tend to make you feel he is an avatar for Banks, perhaps this is even semi-biographical. He starts having a relationship with Celia, wife of a gangster. There are moments of jeopardy, one where he is kidnapped as the result of a road rage incident, one where he hits a fellow guest on a TV programme and particularly when he crosses paths with the gangster. However, it is only when he is threatened by direct violence that he seems to take anything seriously. For the rest of the time he does not take measure of his behaviour or its consequences.

Reviews on the cover of the book suggest it was intended to be satirical. Given the time that has passed, even though I was living in London at the time and saw and heard the kind of programmes that are shown, I cannot see if it is satirising anyone in particular or a compilation of people. I guess there is enough to satirise in so-called 'shock jocks', but in many ways the book just ends up portraying their behaviour simply in a fictional form rather than based on real people and the situations they got into. For a reader today, the challenges of US President George W. Bush and of global conflicts appear almost as if they could come from the current news, only the names have changed. There is really no character development, so we have simply spent time as audience for this slice of the character's life. It is credible, but by the end you do wonder what the point was. Certainly it does not come close to the kind of book the cover reviews suggest, even taking into account their usual exaggerations.

Non-Fiction

'Hitler's War Directives, 1939-1945' ed. by H.R. [Hugh] Trevor-Roper

This is a translated and commented on collection of a specific set of directives issued by Adolf Hitler throughout the Second World War. Naturally there is a shift in tone from 1943 to a similar but different sort of directive. The book does show what Hitler intended at each stage and some were never issued as events overtook the directive. As Trevor-Roper highlights, there is a mix of very high ambitions and then rather too detailed planning coming from a commander-in-chief. It does highlight some perhaps unexpected views of Hitler. He did seem to believe the British would surrender, but then that they would re-invade Norway when Germany invaded the USSR. He was obsessed with coastal landings throughout the war and gave many directions on protecting these, though ironically such preparations proved inadequate with the Normandy Invasion. He did fear an invasion of Denmark and ordered that as much effort be put into defending it as the Dutch, Belgian and French coastlines. An interesting book which despite its age - published in 1964 - is a useful reminder of things which it seems many mainstream commentators forget about Hitler's intentions when at war.

The Books I Read In June

 Fiction

'Prussian Blue' by Philip Kerr

Like many of the Bernie Gunther stories, this one is set in two time periods, 1956 - following on directly from the events shown in 'The Other Side of Silence' which I read in March: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-books-i-read-in-march.html and the spring of 1939. Gunther is chased out of the French Riviera by Stasi agents and the actions goes between him trying to reach West Germany and get clear of them and when he was sent to Hitler's complex near Berchtesgaden where an official has been shot dead by a sniper. There are reasons to connect the two time periods, but in fact it would have worked if simply the 1939 case had been shown. For this case Gunther is sent by Heydrich but is working to Martin Bormann. He encounters a variety of different forms of corruption not simply around the construction of Hitler's retreat at Obersalzberg but also a local brothel.

The brief coverage of the flight in 1956 only occasionally distracts from the fascinating portrayal of how extensively Obersalzberg was remodelled above and below ground, including evicting numerous local residents and demolishing houses. This provided the basis for motives among very many. This combined with the tradition of hunting in the region makes it a challenge for Gunther to identify the killer especially when dodging around internecine Nazi rivalry. The tightness of focus for the majority of the book on the neighbourhood in southern Bavaria, I feel makes this one of the more effective of the late Gunther books and it was a satisfying crime novel read, whether or not you are familiar with the details of the era.

'City of Fallen Angels' by Cassandra Clare

This is the fourth book in the Mortal Instruments Series series. I ended up with the final three books as well as the preceding three I read a few years back. As I noted having finished 'City of Glass' (2009): https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2021/04/books-i-listened-toread-in-april.html that felt like the end of a trilogy. Thus, this one feels a little like an anti-climax. It occurs all in New York and the leads of the previous novels are generally living lives as young adults with exceptional powers. Simon the vampire features much more in this novel and gets into complicated situations dating both a shadowhunter and a werewolf and slowly a greater threat than the love lives of these teenagers comes to the fore. The latter parts of the novel work well on the basis of a fantasy novel and I am guessing the YA elements of much of the book did not overly appeal as I am certainly not part of that demographic. Saying that the book moves along steadily and despite the fantasy outlook and the particular preoccupations of the young people, the characters and what they do comes over as convincing. For example Simon fearing he might have killed a girl when losing control of his vampire hunger, is well handled.

'The Crow Road' by Iain Banks

After reading 'Espedair Street' (1987) https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/04/the-books-i-read-in-april.html in April and having seen the dramatization of this novel back in 1996 I was optimistic that this would be a good read. Unfortunately, this book is less than the sum of its parts. Banks ranges back and forth in time to feature various members of the McHoan family and their neighbours across the social classes, in south-west Scotland. There are well written scenes, but sometimes you have no idea what time period is featured in the particular slice of text before it jumps on to something else. Featuring many of the same characters at different stages from 1945 to 1990, makes this very difficult. Sometimes the jump from one chunk to the next is only a matter of a few months or years, at other times it can be decades.

The book also suffers from that pretentious approach, which I guess might have seemed exciting or innovative back in the 1980s, of featuring a book in it which has the same title as the novel itself. In fact two embryonic 'Crow Road' novels are featured in the story and one has some of the same text as the one we are reading. None of this helps with clarity. By the end I realised why Banks had adopted this approach and that was because if it had all been written out 'straight' then it simply would have been a family drama across the decades. While there was a legitimate mystery it would still be akin to many other unexceptional novels. Fragmenting it and jumbling up the pieces seems to be aiming to instill a greater sense of mystery and somehow to make it more sophisticated than a Julie Garwood novel.

The portrayal of various locations in Scotland, no matter in what era they are shown in, is handled very well and is a highlight of the book. In addition, the angst of a teenager/young man attracted to various women, is also written well, I imagine from the author's personal recollection.

I must say that unless I had relocated to Scotland in 2021, I would have really struggled to have understood some of the dialogue especially in the early chapters. If you are unfamiliar with mid- to late 20th Century Scottish version of English vernacular, this might prove a real challenge. Overall, though if interested in this story, I suggest you watch the BBC TV series instead.

'Surfeit of Suspects' by George Bellairs [Harold Blundell]

Published in 1964, this is the fortieth book in the Thomas Littlejohn series, by which time the protagonist is a Superintendent. It is set in the fictional Surrey town of Evingden where an explosion kills three directors of a failing joinery company. It soon transpires they were killed with dynamite and Littlejohn and his Inspector Cromwell are drawn into a complex fraud involving three shell companies. As is noted in the introductory essay by Martin Edwards who has this role for these British Library reprints, the outlook of the book even in 1964 was dated. Bellairs first book had been published in 1941 and you could certainly envisage this one being published a decade earlier. However, a lot of the motive for the multiple murders (and a suicide) are around the modernisation of the town including electric street lighting replacing gas lighting; the building of new shopping centres and housing estates leading to an increase in population. Thus, the very fact of the passing of an era forms the basis for the story and shows how the characters themselves are looking to engage with business in the 1960s boom.

The plot becomes increasingly complex and it is no surprise that Bellairs was a bank manager all his life. Perhaps a modern reader will be more familiar with shell companies and insider trading, but even so you have to pay attention, though the author takes you through the increasing layers steadily rather than in a rush. He does conjure up a feasible setting and his characters, none of whom are particularly likeable, come across as believable especially for that time and place. While if writing in 2024 Bellairs would probably be categorised as writing 'cosy' crime novels, the spite and selfishness, let alone their sense of entitlement, of these multiple suspects is well communicated. Even now, let alone when it was published, I feel sure readers can identify people very much like those portrayed.

Non-Fiction

'A History of British Trade Unionism' by Henry Pelling

This is a brisk and accessible account of trade unions in Britain (and indeed their connections to foreign unions) from the late 18th Century 'combinations' through to 1963 just ahead of the return to power of Labour and the final steps in the corporatism into which unions had been drawn during the Second World War. Despite the complexity of the numerous unions in British society, Pelling handles this well without simply focusing on the largest, to give a solid picture of developments at each stage. Both showing how extensive situations like the Taff Vale Judgement of 1901, the 1911 national strikes and the General Strike of 1926 developed and panned out but drawing on examples from across the country to show the range of experiences and indeed the frictions between unions.

I had my attention drawn to Margaret Bondfield, Chair of the TUC Council in 1923 and Minister of Labour, 1929-31, who I have to confess I was ignorant of and there may be others who played important roles in UK industrial relations that tend to have been forgotten. Perhaps most disheartening was recognising the challenges that many workers faced in the mid- to late 19th Century are those plaguing workers in the 2020s. Pelling charts the growth and steady success of trade unions but was oblivious to how much this was to be reversed in 20 years of his book being published.