The Books I Read In July

 Fiction

'The Sword Saint' by C.F. Iggulden

This is the concluding book in the Empire of Salt trilogy and is set two years after 'Shiang' (2018). The city of Darien is under threat once again, this time from a new militaristic state, the Kingdom of Feal, that has arisen to its north and is sweeping through regions conquering them. An embassy is sent to insist on trade and is soon trying to manipulate the negotiations with the city's ruling Twelve Families through bribery and assassination. Ultimately given the cruelty of Feal's ruler was proves unavoidable. Now the major characters from the previous two novels, some of which we have seen nothing of since the end of the first book, 'Darien' (2017) are all brought back together in a kind of Magnificent Seven way to defend the city through a series of commando raids against the advancing Feal forces and defending the city's walls, drawing on the various magical and physical abilities they have.

This trilogy is actually post-apocalyptic, there are occasional hints to it being Earth with some memories of our cultures, but with the magic involved it might as well be fantasy. There is some magically operated machinery, as well as pure machines, notably repeating pistols, and as might be guess from the titles of the cities, it draws on East Asian culture, with mainly Chinese elements blended with some Japanese. This is an adventure story so a lot of it is about action. It is gory at times. The main thing is Iggulden deftly dodges what you might expect to happen next. The fact that the Fagin-like character from the first book, Tellius who looks like he is going to not live long ends up running Darien and having an apparently loving relationship with Lady Sallet, head of one of the leading Darien Twelve Families. It is like if an aged Bronn had married Olenna Tyrell in the A Song of Ice and Fire series. There is something unsatisfying about these books, but in general they are sound fantasy and certainly go down unexpected routes with the story which is a refreshing change from reworking over-used tropes.

'Assassin's Creed: The Secret Crusade' by Oliver Bowden

While down the years I have read novelisations of movies and TV series, this was the first time I had read one of a computer game (though it is a shame no-one ever wrote one of the 'Lords of Midnight' game on the ZX Spectrum). It was also the first time in many years, perhaps decades, since I had bought a book from a supermarket, in this case Lidl. Having long been fascinated by the Crusader States, I got into playing the original 'Assassin's Creed' (2007) which is set across 12th Century Syria and Palestine. I managed to kill 7 of the 9 targets before getting a new computer. If you know the game then the book follows the story of the game, with Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad as protagonist, very closely though Bowden makes efforts that each of the nine killings is portrayed differently, some in retrospect. The decent attention to historical detail and the political scene of the region of the time is brought over from the game to the novel. Bowden manages to pull off a reasonably adventurous story which may appeal more if you have not played the game. 

The book continues as a bass for the extensive series of novels which followed this one. As a result the story continues for years beyond the game with Altaïr travelling to Cyprus and fighting for control the Assassins' society. Elements of the story are told by Niccolò Polo (Marco Polo's father) to his brother, Maffeo Polo, in the late 1250s, so as to provide a link for the spread of the Assassins to permit the successive stories. This section is almost like a second book. Again it has drama (and some romance) but feels a little rushed. Overall, not a bad book but may appeal more if looking for a decent medieval adventure without having experienced it already 'first hand' through playing the game.

'Death on the Riviera' by John Bude [Ernest Elmore]

This book was published in 1952, so 15 years after the last book by Bude that I read, 'The Cheltenham Square Murder' (1937): https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2025/05/the-books-i-read-in-may.html  It features a Chief Inspector Meredith but I cannot find out what relation he is to Superintendent Meredith who appeared in Bude's earlier novels. He might be that man's son. We do find out he was evacuated from Dunkirk in 1940, so it seems likely he was a young man back then, as the average age of soldiers in the Second World War was 26. Anyway, he has much the same manner as his 1930s superior.

We start off seeing this Meredith and Acting Sergeant Freddie Strang trying to navigate their way out of Dunkirk which some 6 or 7 years after the end of the war is still very disrupted by war damage. They quickly motor through France to the area around Menton on the French Riviera (seeing the title and knowing the preceding books' settings I had imagined this one would be set on the English Riviera in Devon). As is typical I imagine in real life even now (and of course in fiction, if you watch 'The Tunnel' (broadcast 2013-17)) neither of the British detectives have anything more than 'schoolboy French' even though they have been sent to liaise with French counterparts seeking to take down a British money counterfeiter operating in southern France.

This case runs parallel with the intrigues at the French property of a wealthy Englishwoman,  Nesta Hedderwick, her niece and her various hangers-on some of whom in various ways are involved with the counterfeiting and have their own rivalries which ultimately lead to murder. They very much remind me of the set-up we see in Agatha Christie's 'The Mystery of the Blue Train' (1928) especially as it was dramatised in the TV series 'Poirot' in 2006. 

As is characteristic for Bude novels, a lot of theories are thrown up and there is satisfaction in following Meredith who aided by a pair of very capable French detectives chases up the various clues and decoys before being drawn into also investigating a killing in the Hedderwick household. That trait that Bude develops so well, is combined with his acute eye for place. In all the books of his I have read, the location is as much a character as the people and so it is here, really conjuring up an assortment of locations along the Riviera very atmospherically.

Naturally the story is of its time and some tropes, such as the speed of the romance would likely to be resisted by a modern author even writing about 1952, the fact that Bude does paint such a rich picture of location and provides such a surfeit of feasible options, means it remains engaging for a modern reader. Unfortunately this was the last of the Bude books that I have. I do still have quite a number of others from the British Library series or crime novel reprints.

'The Peripheral' by William Gibson

I have been reading books by Gibson, one of the 'fathers' of Cyberpunk since the 1990s. Back then while we admired his imagination, I did feel as if his story construction was rather 'clunky' as if you could see all the pieces being moved into place, very conscious of the author at work. This book, published in 2014, is almost at the other extreme and I would have been able to engage with it if there was more clarity and structure. As you would expect, the concepts are sound. 

A woman called Flynne lives in the USA in the early 21st Century but at a time when the economy has decayed so much that the only real rural employment is in synthesising drugs. She lives with her brother, Burton, who has lost lots of his body serving in the Marines and has a meagre pension.  The siblings make money by playing games on behalf of wealthy customers so they can advance without having to put in the grinding time. Flynne takes over one job from Burton and in the game has to fly around a futuristic building keeping miniature paparazzi drones away from a party being held in the building. While doing this she witnesses the murder of a woman guest by a man.

Subsequently Flynne finds out that this was not a game but effectively a portal into things happening in London 70 or so years into the future. People from that time, notably Wilf Netherton a publicist and Ainsley Lowbeer, a police detective, wanting to identify the perpetrator begin to connect to Flynne's time. By manipulating the economy back then they are able to produce equipment which allows Flynne, her brother and others to project themselves into synthetic human avatars (the so-called 'peripherals') in the future London and so interact. The objective is to 'correct' things so that the 'Jackpot' a slow-developing apocalypse does not occur or so severely, so creating a different timeline from the one Netherton and Lowbeer inhabit. In both times people are seeking to kill Flynne and those supporting her, which leads to various action scenes.

Gibson's portrayal of the society and its technology in the two times, is interesting. The sense of projection through a vivid computer scenario reminded me of Christopher Priest's novel 'The Extremes' (1998) and the movie 'Source Code' (2011) but Gibson's approach is fresh. His 'slow' apocalypse is very believable and in fact has become more so as things have steadily unwound in the world in the years since this novel was published. Despite these positives, the book is a nightmare to read. Even when you are familiar with which time the current chapter is focused on (and some are only 1-2 pages long) there are so many characters and then ones from one time slot appearing in the other or communicating surprisingly easy between the two that it is a real challenge to follow where the story is going. 

Gibson is great at thinking up corporations and slang, but often it makes the dialogue really difficult to follow. I suppose he wrote it for multiple readings because once you have finished it, you understand it well enough to start reading it. However, life is too short for such an approach, so what you have is a real mess with the odd gems shining out from it but for a lot of the time the reader is bewildered about what is going on and when. Thus, it is a very frustrating read.

Non-Fiction

'Charlie Brooker's Dawn of the Dumb: Dispatches from the Idiotic Frontline' by Charlie Brooker

I had rather expected an analysis of UK or Western society along the lines of what Michael Moore produces. Instead this is simply a collection of short articles that Brooker wrote for 'The Guardian' newspaper, television review section 2004-07. If you know Brooker's style he has a weirdly amiable but acidic tone and outlines grave violence towards those he despises but in a way that sort of washes over you so you do not really take on board the severity of what he is saying (unless you were a US supporter of President George W. Bush in which case you felt Brooker should be executed). Looking at these articles from 18-21 years later, it is interesting how prescient they were. Brooker even starts mentioning Donald Trump. This book also reminds us how many of the traits we see in the Trump presidencies were already been established under the Bush administration, notably the apparent acceptance that the US President can be proud of his cluelessness.

Brooker spends a lot of time talking about reality TV programmes, which did not originate in this period but were really getting into their stride. Unsurprisingly what he was saying back then has simply continued to manifest, in fact going to greater extremes than he even cautioned in those days. You feel he loves to suggest he hates the people in the reality programmes but actually carries a lot of affection for the formats and at least some of the individuals in them, plus an enduring curiosity about them. The final thing to say about these articles is especially in the more pensive and speculative ones you see Brooker snagging on lots of developments which would go on to form the basis of the 'Black Mirror' (broadcast 2011-14 & 2016-) the dystopian TV series that has now run to 7 seasons with most episodes featuring a unique story/concept. Many of these are clearly grounded in what Brooker was thinking/writing about in the mid-2000s.

The Books I Read In May

Fiction

'Berlin Alexanderplatz' by Alfred Döblin

This is one of the books to add to my list of ones I regret reading. I was drawn to it because it is set in the Weimar period of German history. It focuses on ex-convict Franz Biberkopf who on release for prison for the manslaughter of his girlfriend tries to find work. He ends up various street hawking jobs and falls in with criminals. However, their distrust of him leads to them trying to kill him and him losing his right arm. He seeks revenge on them when they kill one of his girlfriends, he seems surprisingly adept at getting them despite poor prospects. It does have interesting elements about Berlin and its society at the time and goes off at weird tangents about the slaughtering of livestock. The main problem is that it is a stream of consciousness novel with any kind of plot only occasionally peeking through from the flow of text often not clearly punctuated. It feels as if a lot of good ideas are utterly lost in random 'banter' in pubs and on the street that reduce coherence and make it very difficult to engage with. You do really feel it represents a lost opportunity. Published in 1931, I accept Döblin was seeking to be experimental but to a modern reader it is simply tiresome. 

The only good thing was that reviews on the back of this novel likened it to John Dos Passos's trilogy collected as 'U.S.A.' (1930-36) which my father had a copy of and I was considering reading. However, once I saw it likened to this book, I disposed of it to a charity shop immediately. Overall I would recommend you do not waste your life reading either of these books.

'The Cheltenham Square Murder' by John Bude [Ernest Elmore]

This is the fourth of Bude's novels I have read and indeed was the fourth crime novel he published, coming in 1937. Like the previous two, this features Superintendent Meredith, this time away from his usual base of Lewes in Sussex, staying with his crime author Aldous Barnet in Cheltenham, a place where Bude had lived himself for part of his life. This naturally has an urban setting though as in the previous novels Meredith gets to travel back and forth in the surrounding countryside, including working out whether certain suspects could get back to the square for a particular time.

The residents of the square provide Bude with a set list of suspects in the way that a country house murder story might. There is an insight into middle class snobbery and how lower class people can become relatively rich and the middle classes fall on hard times. Some of it does feel rather contrived as the murder is committed using an arrow fired through an open window from elsewhere on the square. Many of the residents are members of the local archery club and some have the skill to kill the victim. However, as is typical with Bude's novels there are a lot of theories which are dismissed and replaced with others and it soon becomes clear that the caddish murder victim may not have been the intended target. Blackmail and an illegal gambling club also get involved, so it does have a real classic 'golden age' melodrama, which perhaps Bude, also a playwright, takes a little too far for us to totally believe in. However, for evocation of time and place and the mores of the era it is an interesting read, though a little less down-to-Earth than the preceding three.

I have one more of his novels to read, but this one is for 1952, so it will be interesting to see how Bude's style had evolved in the intervening 15 years.

'Fight them on the Beaches' ed. by Katherine Foy

I must declare a conflict of interest when reviewing this collection of 11 alternate history short stories and 1 article. The book is published by Sea Lion Press who currently publish 8 of my novels. The stories vary considerably. The basic premise is looking at a German invasion of Britain in 1940/41. However, different divergences mean this is interpreted in a wide range of ways.

'Totalen Krieg' by Paul Hynes, for example, sees a German invasion during the First World War and with London under occupation in 1920 when an assassin is sent against Herman Göring based there. This has no discussion of the feasibility of an invasion at that time and one could easily argue that the Royal Navy in the 1910s would have more easily have beaten off a German invasion fleet than in the 1940s. However, the story is atmospheric. 'The Big Bang' by Ryan Fleming follows a similar line of a female British Resistance assassin but in the 1940s.

'The Last Service' by Tom Black, the owner of Sea Lion Press, sees an even more substantial change with the Spartakist Uprising in Germany having been successful so that it is a Communist Germany rather than Nazi Germany which is going to invade, seeking to make use of the Channel Bridge, something I have not encountered in fiction since The History of the Runestaff tetralogy (1967-69).

Other stories are more what you would expect. 'Fight Them on the Beaches' by Nigel Waite is clever in that it takes the actual history and shows how in fact what we know of it, may have been intentional 'spin' in order to tempt Hitler into planning the abortive Operation Sea Lion. This is a very short but engaging story. 'Nothing Half as Melancholy' by Angelo Barthélmy sees the failure of a German invasion of Britain from the French perspective so opening up questions about how such a situation would have impinged on occupied Europe. 'Tee im Schwarzwald' [Tea in the Black Forest] written in English is traditional about the interviewing of one of the generals who led a failed invasion of Britain and managed to get the farthest in southern England before defeat.

A few of the stories look at the cultural legacy of the invasion. 'Bloom Once More' features a visit to a cemetery for those killed in the brief occupation of parts of Kent including Jews murdered during it.'The Collector's High' by Lena Worwood looks at someone seeking to secure a copy of a text produced by British collaborators during the short-lived German occupation. This provides an interesting angle and touches on the sense that as in other occupied countries, there would have been people willing, perhaps even happy to work with their invaders. I found this an engaging approach.

'Die Seelöwe-Kontroverse' [The Sea Lion Controversy] is also in English and features a Berlin museum which shows the history of the failed Operation Sea Lion. However, it spreads its scope much wider and asks question of prime relevance to today when people question what is the 'proper' history of various events and whether the populist version is close to what actually happened and how much of it is in effect propaganda. I found this story particularly interesting.

'The Most Competitive Sea Lion - in the World' by Andy Cooke is silly. It envisages that continental equivalents living in the 1940s of the three former presenters of 'Top Gear' (in episodes 2002-15) and 'The Grant Tour' (2016-24) are each assigned to find a way to invade Britain for Nazi Germany. It rather sounds like some weird speculation had in a pub and depends on knowing the characters of these three presenters something which will be less familiar to readers as time passes and indeed many would be ignorant of them anyway.

'Article: Operation Sea Lion - the Unmentionable Sea Mammal' is by Andy Cooke drawing on an earlier online article by Alison Brooks and David Flin. Flin makes much of his interaction with the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom and sees it as his mission wherever he can to utterly dismiss any attempts to discuss a German invasion of Britain, in a very smug way. Unsurprisingly Cooke picks up not just Flin's often repeated details, but adopts his tone as well. Yes, it is accurate in terms of the challenges of the invasion and the respective strength. However, coming at the end of a book of stories which see at least some such invasions, it makes the reader feel 'what was the point, then?' of the entire book. This is a challenge that alternate history writing whether analysis or fiction faces a lot of the time anyway and it is bitterly ironic that this book from the leading alternate history publisher should add fuel to that challenge. 

The aversion of Brooks, Cooke and Flin, is very focused on this one incident when it could be applied to many other popular 'what if?'s that feature in books. In addition, it misses the point that fiction authors need to engage readers and sell books and the two most popular alternate history scenarios in numerous books, a victory for Nazi Germany and a victory for the Confederacy, are two of the least likely outcomes to be envisaged. Consequently this article really felt inappropriate for this collection and hammering home a message that many readers would already be tired of hearing.

'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold' by John Le Carré [David Cornwell]

I have read and listened to a few books by Le Carré, but more his murder mysteries rather than his out-and-out spy novels. This one was published in 1963, as Le Carré's third novel and proved to be a global success, being turned into a movie starring Richard Burton, in 1965. I have seen two versions of 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy' (novel 1974, TV series 1979; movie 2011), so knew what to expect in downbeat, desultory atmosphere. The time and place is very important to the writing in part because of the political set-up that fostered the spying her features in his plots.

This one sees British agent Alec Leamas effectively retiring from working for MI6 following the capture or killing of his team operating in East Berlin. The Berlin Wall was built in 1961 so creating what we see as the almost archetypal setting for such novels and movies. Characters still refer to East Germany as 'The Zone' as it had been formed from the Soviet zone of Germany and they did not recognise the state the Soviets constructed as legitimate. Another factor of the time is the character of Liz Gold, a young librarian who is active in her local branch of the Communist Party of Great Britain. So devoted to her politics she is manipulated by the East German authorities and used against Leamas with whom she has had a sexual relationship - that is the least convincing element of the story. I suppose these days the closest equivalent would be a young woman being manipulated to work for Islamic State. 

The other characteristic of the time which really colours the novel, is how desultory everything is. Britain is better off than East Germany, but still both countries, 18 years after the end of the war, still have the wartime austerity and lack of hope, hanging over them. You can see this still in Le Carré's books of the 1970s. For people who lived in the UK in these periods, this seems much more authentic that the glamorous, bloated consumerism that is how the decades tend to be portrayed now, and might explain why the book was so popular at the time. Now it makes it feel like a genuine historical portrayal.

While some things do come over as stretching credibility a little, the central plot, delivered briskly and with focus, very much so when compared to contemporary spy novels, is really engaging. The reader is never certain who is tricking whom and how far Leamas's decline into alcoholism and treachery is real or engineered and the story twists and twists again. Le Carré's skill is taking you along and making these twists without you questioning them. In addition, the ending remains uncertain until you get to it. I can see why the book was acclaimed at the time and while publishers want thicker books these days (my edition was 253 pages of actual story), it is a good example to show writers how to work adeptly with your material. I have gathered in a number of old Le Carré books and now quite look forward to working through them.

Non-Fiction

'Warfare in the Age of Bonaparte' by Michael Glover

This book is split into two unequal sections, on land warfare and on sea warfare. It provides the background to the conflicts right from the French Revolution to Waterloo, but not comprehensively. There are reference to various aspects of weaponry, types of soldiers and vessels, but not in great detail. Rather most of what is discussed is done via looking at a handful of specific battles: Tourcoing, Castiglione, Marengo, Eylau, Salamanca and Waterloo on land then Algerciras at sea. It is well illustrated with contemporary and subsequent artwork and maps when needed. It is particularly strong on some areas overlooked by other books of this kind, such as logistics and the naval warfare scene after the Battle of Trafalgar. It is sound introductory book but there are times when you wanted Glover to give more examples and explore some of the topics in greater detail.

The Books I Read In March

 Fiction

'The Sussex Downs Murder' John Bude [Ernest Elmore]

Published in 1936, this was the third crime novel by John Bude. It is focused on Superintendent Meredith who was promoted at the end of 'The Lake District Murder' (1935) which I read in January: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2025/01/the-books-i-read-in-january.html For some reason he has relocated from Cumberland to East Sussex, being based at Lewes. Conversation with an imprisoned criminal suggests Meredith had been stationed in that region in the 1920s but the reason for his returning there if that was the case, is not explored. The car of a man John Rother is found abandoned on the Downs close to the genuine location of Chanctonbury Ring and not far from the lime-producing business that he and his brother ran. This did take me back to the 1980s when with a friend's family we would be taken to the seaside at Angmering which is mentioned and on the way back the parents would stop at 'The Limeburners' pub which is still at Billingshurst, indicating that industry in the area.

While Rother is believed to have been murdered and that his brother and sister-in-law are suspected at various stages. As in the preceding two books, in a realistic way, a number of theories are put forward only to be dismissed. Matters are complicated by reports of sightings of Rother and a man in a cloak, as well as human bones turning up in the sacks of lime which the Rother company has sold in the region. As with the previous two books there is quite a lot of going back and forth around the area, though this does give Bude an opportunity for his descriptions of what like the other two locations he has featured, are beautiful parts of England. Bude manages to have an 'open' environment for his novel but restricts the suspects in a convincing way. The police procedural work with numerous dead ends is characteristic of his novels and works effectively. Working out which is the true path among them adds to the mystery and the resolution while unexpected is a feasible one. I have a couple more Bude novels to read and look forward to them.

'Feersum Endjinn' by Iain M. Banks

I always prefer Iain M. Banks's books which do not feature the Culture and this is one of them. Instead it is set in the vast spaces of a decaying space elevator - the Fastness - and in the kind of internet, the cryptosphere into which individuals minds can be uploaded when alive but especially when they are dead. Thus the novel is often like 'The Matrix' (1999) as if it started from outside the matrix and went in. This can cause confusion especially as extraordinary machines and creatures exist in the real world as well as the virtual one. There are four characters and we jump between them in turn. Count Alandre Sessine VII is a member of the ruling elite who is killed multiple times - individuals can have eight physical lives and then eight more in the cryptosphere. Sessine has to find out who keeps trying to kill him. Hortis Gadfium III is the leading scientist of the elites but is conspiring to overthrow the regime due to the inadequacies in the rulers response to the approach of an interstellar molecular cloud - a forge for stars - which threatens Earth. Bascule the Teller has an innate ability to go into the cryptosphere to find dead relatives for people. In this novel most of his time is spent trying to locate an intelligent talking ant which has been abducted into the cryptosphere. Asura is a function of the cryptosphere who is 'born' as a woman but without memories and she proves to be a kind of tool for resolving the problems once she can navigate her way around snooty families and people who want to eliminate. The four characters do finally come together to provide a resolution.

I agree with other reviewers who feel this novel is a mess. Banks had been publishing since 1984 and in science fiction since 1987. Though this came in 1994, it does seem like an early novel. It has the flavour of something a teenaged author keen to leverage in every 'cool' idea they can think of to the detriment of the writing. Part of the challenge with this book is that it is difficult to know when the characters are inside or outside the cryptosphere because the Fastness with rooms kilometres across and with exotic vehicles feels as peculiar as any context the cryptosphere throws up. Having four characters does allow Banks to get in so many political and technical aspects, but these are in a very disjointed way. Perhaps this is why in many of his science fiction books, Banks does an info dump. Here, the approach of showing not telling might be commended but makes it very hard work for the reader. On top of this Bascule's experiences are written in phonetic language (as with the novel's title which means 'Fearsome Engine), seeming to mimic how a kind of Artful Dodger character from East London would speak. This further slows up the book as you wrestle with some words that in themselves are esoteric because of the science fiction context.

Overall Banks was probably in the worst of both worlds with this novel. He was still clinging to the conceits that a teenage author would insist on having in their book, but because of his success by 1994, no editor was going to press him hard to make the book flow more effectively or drown the reader in the mass of 'brilliant' ideas he felt compelled to include.

'The Birds and Other Stories' by Daphne Du Maurier

Spoilers do feature in this review.

This is a collection of six short stories published in 1952. They can be characterised as being in a genre like Someone Like You' (1953) and 'Kiss Kiss' (1960) by Roald Dahl, better known summed up by the later anthology title, 'Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected ' (1979). 

Unsurprisingly, the title story, 'The Birds' is nothing like the 1963 movie of the same name. Instead it is a dystopian story set in south-west England where climatic changes lead to all birds becoming suicidally aggressive smashing their way into people's houses and killing people out in the open. The story focuses on a farm labourer and his family and their attempts to survive in the early days of the attacks. It reminds me quite a bit of 'The Day of the Triffids' (1951) by John Wyndham, but Du Maurier manages to get that dystopian context without having to use genetically modified monsters and in so doing reminds us how nature even as we know it can be dangerous. The issue of climate impact also makes it speak to what we see today.

Four of the stories, 'Monte Verità', 'The Apple Tree', 'The Little Photographer' and 'Kiss Me Again, Stranger', show how evil really comes out selfishness, that obsession of the individual for their own interests with no recognition of their impact on others. 

In 'Monte Verità' women disappear into a secretive community on a European mountain top. A man loses his wife to this community and his friend eventually goes to seek her out. The ending is very confused as the place once he finally penetrates seems to have no form of subsisting over the years and not to offer any great reason for the women to remain, though maybe Du Maurier is suggesting departure from the world of men is a reward itself. The women seem immortal but suffer horrifically from disease. I suppose the reader is rather riled that it is neither somewhere otherworldly or an Earthly paradise or at least feasible as a community in the absence of something beyond this world.

'The Apple Tree' is about a very desultory marriage but is very unsettling in that after her death through a sickly apple tree the wife continues to harass the widower as much as she make his life miserable when alive. The device of using the tree as a way to haunt the man is well done. Like a lot of horror, the inability to escape from what has apparently been destined by the malevolent force, adds to how unsettling the story is.

'The Little Photographer' is about a wealthy woman staying on holiday in southern France who begins an affair with a local disabled photographer but tires of him and casts him over before murdering him. She is then blackmailed by his mother. The settings are well portrayed. However, none of the characters are likeable and the three main ones are each out for themselves. I suppose what we see is a battle between the three for dominance and the two women, I suppose, end up with a compromise solution, but which in both cases is unappealing.

Like the other stories, Du Maurier does place them well in their time and place with details of how people went about their lives in the early 1950s and preceding decades. 'Kiss Me Again, Stranger' is about a young man picking up a cinema usherette who while amenable to his advances is unsettling and subsequently turns out to be a serial killer targeting airmen whom she blames for bombing her house during the Second World War.

'The Old Man' is a story of the observation of animosity in a family which leads to a killing. However, the twist in the nature of the family being portrayed. Du Maurier generally plays fair with the reader, though making sure to not give away the final twist.

Overall, while not the kind of stories I enjoy, I could see skill in them and a clear demonstration that horror can come from the relatively mundane as the director Alfred Hitchcock recognised when he used one of Du Marurier's ideas to trigger a very different movie but similarly bringing the unsettling out from what might be deemed everyday.

Non-Fiction

'Crisis, Absolutism, Revolution: Europe: 1648-1789/91' by Raymond Birn

This book was published in 1977 and it is interesting to see how much more engaging it is than 'The Seventeenth Century' (1929/1947) by G.N. Clark which I read in January: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2025/01/the-books-i-read-in-january.html The tone is much lighter and engaging and it does not assume that readers in English will automatically know French and Latin too. While it does come to the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment its prime focus is much more practical and it tends to show the changes in ideas in how they were applied to behaviour, business and industry. It establishes a good basis in terms of the economy and society and works well to distinguish the regional differences across Europe, so Eastern Europe and Scandinavia get less neglected than they can tend to do in survey essay books. Perhaps the most frustrating thing is that the two 'highlights' of the period, i.e. the Thirty Years' War and the French Revolution, are explicitly not covered. However, while this can irritate a little it does mean that this is a useful book for seeing the outcome of the former and the precursors of the latter. As the title suggests it shows how the blend of absolutist rule with various crises, came together to impact on society and economies, to lead to the following quarter-century of warfare across the continent. In that regard it is a useful 'bridging' text that through keeping to its bounds allows appropriate analysis of this 'in-between' period.

The Books Of My Life: Alexander Rooksmoor

As I have noted before, I am regular reader of various features in 'The Guardian' newspaper. I know I am never going to be famous so they would not ask me to respond to these features for real. Still that does not stop me from thinking how I would respond and it is nice to be able to get these thoughts out of my system. Back in 2010, I did this for their 'Tell Us About Yourself' feature: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2010/12/tell-us-about-yourself.html Looking back on that now I would not disagree with many of the responses I gave then, even 15 years on. My fears of that time were well placed as we did lose our house in 2012 and our family was broken up living with wider family members, in rented rooms or B&Bs. We did manage to live back together again in 2015 after I managed to get a job which in total lasted 7 years, the longest one I have ever held.

Today I am going to have a go at the 'The Books Of My Life' feature in 'The Guardian': https://www.theguardian.com/books/series/the-books-of-my-life I accept it is arrogance to think that anyone might consider me a 'leading author'. Back in 2010, though I had written novels over the preceding 22 years, I had none on sale. Self-publishing and then being taken up by Sea Lion Press https://www.sealionpress.co.uk/ enabled me to get my books out there and in turn it really fuelled my writing. I have now written 70 books, most of which are now on sale in e-book format. I might not be a best seller, 2014 was my peak year of sales and as with the marketplace in general there has been a decline since then. It is often said that everybody has at least one book in them, but clearly I have had a lot more than that and I have no idea how many more I will produce before I die. Thus, while I may not be renowned author and certainly am not 'leading', I feel it is reasonably legitimate for me to respond to the sort of questions that might be asked of such people.

Alexander Rooksmoor: 'Some Saturdays I would go through them all before I got out of bed'

My earliest reading memory

I did not learn to read before going to school aged 4 years and 11 months. We had lots of books at home, but I tended to treat them in a visual way, looking at the images rather than the words. I understood the power of the printed word because my parents read so much. Apparently, aged 3, loath to attend playschool picked up a magazine (probably a Sunday supplement) and waved it at my parents insisting that it said that parents should not send their sons to play school. Thus, it was almost like a magic talisman rather than something to engage with myself. In terms of books, like most children of my generation in England, we started with the Peter & Jane books published by Ladybird. I remember the images of the book '1a. Play with Us' (1964 edition) better than I remember the words. I was a very slow reader and like many children of my generation sub-vocalised everything because we read aloud so much.

My favourite book growing up

The first fiction book I remember actually expressing a like for was 'The Grey Apple Tree' (1965) by Vera Cumberlege. However, the books I came back to most regularly was the series by R.J. Unstead about British history. These were published in the early 1970s and I remember us working to collect them all (in the age before online book ordering!). They ran from 'Invaded Island' (1971) from Stone Age to 1066; 'Kings, Barons and Serfs' (1971), 1066-1300; 'Years of the Sword' (1972), 1300-1485; 'Struggle for Power' (1972), 1485-1689; 'Emerging Empire' (1972), 1689-1763; 'Freedom and Revolution' (1972), 1763-1815; 'Age of Machines', (1974), 1815-1901 to the 'Incredible Century' (1974), 1901-1970. Some Saturdays I would go through them all before I got out of bed. They were highly illustrated A4-sized hardbacks which could be found in most school and public libraries but as a history fan, I had my own set. I note that their subtitle is 'A Pictorial History' and I realise now, I did simply look at the pictures rather than read the text.

The book that changed me as a teenager

I remember that in the larger library in the nearest town, they had a children's section and then around the other side of a row of shelves was a single set of shelves for 'older children'. It actually was at the start of the 'adult' bit of the library and I think the librarians had designed it to tempt teenagers to move from the picture and project books and indeed the 'Doctor Who' novelisations, on to something a bit more mature. A lot of the books there were kind of 'kitchen sink' books for teenagers. I first cycled alone to this library (2.5 miles away) aged 11, which these days would probably terrify parents. I was very conscious of not going into age inappropriate areas (I was never someone who would sneak into movies older than for myself or try to drink alcohol underage). I remember one day hesitantly going round the corner to this section and borrowing the novelisation of 'Bugsy Malone' (1976?) not the script or graphic novel that are dominant now. I was struck by the fact it had one chapter that lasted less than a single page. I also remember a book of eyewitness accounts of various events, including the sinking of the 'Titanic'. 

It was the next step which came quicker than I had long realised which really changed me. I discovered the science fiction and fantasy fiction section of the library. I borrowed both 'The Colour of Magic' (1983) and 'The Final Programme' (1968). While I thoroughly enjoyed 'The Colour of Magic', 'The Final Programme' was the first book I had sat up through the night to complete. I had probably been attracted to it by the pop art/graphic novel book cover, but went on to read a lot of Michael Moorcock books in my life (and indeed all of Pratchett's work). For some reason my sixth form college library had the complete works of Moorcock as they were in the mid-1980s. I do not think the current librarian had ever explored the themes, i.e. lots of drugs and sex, that featured in many. I remember, aged 14 checking with my mother whether I should even be reading 'The Final Programme' given it mentioned sex on the cover, but she felt I was mature enough and ultimately it was more about needle guns and hallucinogenic security systems. What I think I learnt from Moorcock was that science fiction need not be all about big spaceships and robots. Furthermore, I went from 'The Final Programme' to 'The Warlord of the Air' (1971) which really sparked my interest in alternate history. My third novel, 'His Majesty's Dictator', which I completed in 1991, was heavily influenced by it.

The book that changed my mind

I have never really read a book that has altered my opinion on big issues. Maybe that reflects a dogmatism on my part. Friends use to often recommend me books that I 'must' read though it later turned out one was just getting rid of books he thought were terrible and wanted disposed of had misunderstood what lending a book to someone usually entailed. A couple of friends insisted I read 'The Bridge Across Forever: A Love Story' (1984) by Richard Bach which I found tedious and fatuous. It was very arrogant in believing his story needed that kind of output. I see now that it was along these lines of annoyance that in 2009 I came to 'Chimera' (1972) by John Barth. I had bought it assuming it was a straightforward fantasy novel. However, it became clear it was simply a vanity project to show off how much cleverer than the reader Barth knows he is. He even says openly that some readers will not 'get' what he is writing as if that is our problem rather than his.

While I had realised that 'in jokes' rarely work and had sought to remove anything that people might not get because it was too personal to me or my culture, Barth made me realise that any author who does not work with the reader is actually failing. We should both not pander to them but also we should not treat them with disdain simply because they cannot crack our own personal code. It also made clear to me that the books that get published are not necessarily 'good' books, they can simply be out one sale because the author has been fortunate and/or has contacts. I was alert from then on of books which were primarily the author parading their 'greatness' when in fact what they tend to produce in such circumstances is the literary equivalent of the Emperor's new clothes. I would put 'Auto da Fé' (1935) by Elias Canetti which I read in 2000, in this category too.

The book that made me want to be a writer

There was no book which did this. Creative writing was an assessed part of the English curriculum from age 5-16, though I got 'let off' early as I sat my English Language 'O' Level a year early, aged 15. Thus, creative writing was something we did almost weekly. We were all writers. As a consequence I was not conscious of being 'a writer' probably until about 2012, some 24 years after I had completed writing my first novel. I guess I had never really registered that other people did not write in their spare time too.

I knew I got good marks for my creative writing and recall two of my stories being put up on the wall when I was in 3rd Year of primary school. One of them was called 'Wings for a Day' and apparently the teacher noted my knowledge (aged 7) of world events as I featured the fall of the Colonels junta in Greece writing 'in Greece there was a war' and mention of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (the Yom Kippur War had been the preceding year and my parents had an illustrated book about it), though unaware of the politics, rather than the simple news coverage of violence. As the 'Not the Nine O'Clock News' team were shown in one of their spin-off books, as children we were obsessed by Moshe Dayan's eyepatch.

While I got good grades for my creative writing, this actually misled me because teachers would focus in their feedback (not called that back then) on my imagination and not the fact that I was screwing up a lot of the punctuation. This seems to have stemmed largely from my 3rd Year Middle School (nowadays Year 6) teacher, Mrs. Simmons, who had a real aversion to pupils using direct speech and would insist we stuck to reported speech. It was only as an adult that I realised I had been punctuating direct speech wrongly. If I had been a poorer writer, I would have been alerted to this sooner. If I had actually looked at what I had been reading then maybe I would have noticed I was not doing it the same way, though, of course, we tended to see what was done in books was not what we were doing in English at school. Many/most of us believed all poetry had to rhyme.

The book I came back to

In fact there are two, though both on a similar theme. 'Great Escape Stories' (1977) by Eric Williams and 'Colditz' (1974), the anthology version combining 'The Colditz Story' (1952) and 'The Latter Days' (1953) by P.R. Reid. I abandoned the Williams book as from daring stories of Second World War escapes by PoWs, it moved into civilians and then the Korean War. While I found the early stories, of the twelve, 'cosy' if it is legitimate to say that - and was especially impressed by the account of Airey Neave escaping Colditz dressed as a German officer - the later ones were much more unsettling. In the 1970s there were lots of people still around who had been adults during the Second World War. There were a lot of books like 'I am David' (1963) by Anne Holm which was read to us and a copy of 'The Diary of Anne Frank' (1947) was in our classroom when in what is now Year 6, not just the school library. You could watch 'Carrie's War' (the 1974 series of the 1973 book by Nina Bawden) after school and 'The World at War' (first broadcast in 1973) on Sunday afternoons so the Second World War was pretty much 'currency' for us much more than the 1950s or 1960s. The headmaster of my school later chided me for abandoning the book but even then, fearful of nightmares, I did not return to until I was an adult, still very certain about my aversion to torture, but having seen and read a lot more.

It is difficult now to remember why I felt so drawn to escape stories at the time, it is not something that seems to have continued after I went to secondary school. I abandoned 'Colditz' because I foolishly looked ahead while reading it on holiday in 1978 and finding that Lieutenant Albert Michael Sinclair (1918-1944) nicknamed the 'Red Fox' was killed on his final escape attempt in 1944. His repeated escapes made him a hero of mine and I had been using the codename 'Red Fox' in various secret clubs we tended to form as adolescents. It was chilling to read he had been killed and not, like Neave, got clear away. I lost all heart in reading the book and only came back to it and also read 'Colditz: The German Story' (1961) by Reinhold Eggers, as an adult in the late 1990s.

The book I could never read again

Aside from 'Chimera' and 'Auto da Fé' I have already mentioned I would add 'The Quincunx' (1989) by Charles Palliser. I had come across the term 'quincunx' when studying Latin (at a non-selective, comprehensive school - it did happen back then and I did want to be a professional historian) at school, meaning a pattern of five-twelfths (though to me it looked like five-ninths) and a design for the layout of trees in a garden (I was later into garden history), so I thought it would be a story about a sort of code perhaps concealed in a garden and to some extent the synopsis sustained that misapprehension. What it is instead is an unrelenting account of a boy and his mother who are tricked out of their relatively meagre middle class wealth in early 19th Century England. They then proceed to be subjected to all the worst privations of the era. The mother, Mary, having lost her house and all her savings due to a scam, after living as a squatter in an abandoned East London building ends up as a prostitute tied to a brothel. The boy, John, in turn is abused at a horrendous school where he has to literally fight for his food, in a mental asylum and as a scavenger in London sewers. Yes, we know that life was bleak and people were abused but the contorted path the two protagonists are taken along so that they can suffer as many different kinds of abuse as possible is perverse, almost ridiculous.

In second place in this category I would add, 'The New Pelican Guide to English Literature 7. From James to Eliot' (1988 edition) ed. by Boris Ford. Why they bothered to assemble 23 writers to comment on an era of writing that all of them appear to believe was much lesser in so many ways to what preceded, I have no idea. It was a real waste of time for them as well as the reader.

The book I discovered later in life

I am now 57 and am constantly discovering books. I imagine this question is about one which I may have read earlier in my life but only came to far later than that. I would point to 'Renaissance Europe 1480-1520' (1971) by J.R. Hale. I have read a lot of 'survey' books of European history but among them Hale's book really stands out. See my review here: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2021/09/books-i-read-in-september.html Hale really is command of the information he has and writes in such an engaging way for a non-fiction historical book. A lot of historians could learn from his approach. I bought this book in the late 1980s but it was over 30 years before I got round to reading it and I wished I had turned to it much sooner rather than leaving it in storage.

The book I am currently reading

'The Sussex Downs Murder' (1936) by John Bude [Ernest Elmore], the third of his novels I have read in the British Library Crime Classics series republication of his books.

My comfort read

While, as back in 2010, I still have a lot of affection for 'The Book of Heroic Failures' (1979) by Stephen Pile, the default book I turn to these days is the 'The Penguin Atlas of World History. Volume 2: From the French Revolution to the Present' (1964/2004). Doing this exercise has rather revealed that I am not really a reader at heart, I am more a looker at books so I guess this is why a book of lots of colourful maps is comforting to me.

The Books I Read In January

 Fiction

'Stasi Child' by David Young

This is a novel set in 1975 featuring Oberleutnant Karin Müller member of the East Berlin Vopo, the East German mainstream police force. The body of a girl is found close to the Berlin Wall with bullet wounds suggesting she had been shot escaping into East Germany. This rather ridiculous premise is soon overturned and the traces of tyre tracks in the snow show quickly that high-level individuals in the East German regime must have been involved. Silently the case is quickly put under the auspices Oberstleutnant Klaus Jäger of the Stasi, the secret police. Naturally Müller have to tread carefully as the case takes them to the island of Rügen and then when a similarly killed body is found, to the Harz Mountains. There are two parallel stories, one of a girl at a cruel borstal on Rügen and that of Müller's husband who has both worked at the borstal as a teacher and is increasingly suspected of working against the East German state, especially through his involvement with Christian groups.

Young does well in portraying the East German regime, though for Western readers this does rather give it the feel of a spy novel set at the time. Given her rank in the police, Müller is shown as an enthusiast for the regime and criticises what she sees of West Germany, for example when she and a colleague are sent into West Berlin to investigate the use of luxury cars hired there. However, the characters are not two-dimensional and Müller as well as her husband and colleagues have flaws. The perspective of the girl from the borstal and her attempts to escape East Germany slowly reveal the other side of the case but also tell us much more about the nature of the regime and how it punished those it perceived as being wrong, even if they had committed no crimes.

Despite the unfamiliar context and what details Young has to include, the novel moves along briskly. On occasion some coincidences seems convenient for the plot, though later it is revealed that many were intentionally arranged as the leading criminal is an old antagonist of Müller's seeking to draw her into a vulnerable position. The breakdown of Müller's marriage is rather mechanical but perhaps that is to emphasise that human relations were controlled by the state as much as everything else. Once her husband is arrested, Müller is obligated to divorce him or be sacked from her job. I have the sequel 'Stasi Wolf' (2017) to read and while I could not say I enjoyed this novel, I was interested by it and it felt to be largely well written.

'Catnip' by J.S. Frankel

This is the first book in a series of five. I am not really sure where to place it. It could come under science fiction but seems to be set in contemporary times, i.e. 2017 when it was published, or given some of the technology referenced, earlier in the 21st Century. However, it features three examples of genetic splicing with humans which even with the advent of CRISPR appears to be something from our future.

It is very much a YA novel and in many ways a wish-fulfillment story. The protagonist is Harry Goldman is a home-schooled, orphaned prodigy who has followed in his father's footsteps in working in genetic modifications in particular trying to use shark genes to try to block cancers of the kind his father died of. For a teenager even a nerd with contacts, he is given very high level access to university laboratories to continue his research. Then a young woman, Anastasia, whose genes have been spliced with those of a cat, bursts into his life. She almost immediately falls in love with Harry and he, being socially awkward and with few friends, let alone a girlfriend, unsurprisingly falls for her.

The FBI come after Harry in part to try to solve the riddle of how she came to be. In addition, she appears to have been altered in a Russian laboratory so is seen as a national security threat. Time is running out as the cat elements are increasingly suppressing Anastasia's human ones. She is also driven back to where she feels she came from, which is located in the Catskills Mountains, so the couple go on the run. This is pushed on by a super-strong man spliced with bear genes and aided by one with dog genes. Though there are sequels this novel comes to a climax with the confrontation with Anastasia's 'Dr. Frankenstein'.

The book is fast moving, though the attacks of the bear-man Ivan do get rather repetitive. Frankel is a Canadian who emigrated to Japan and he does portray almost all the Americans encountered as nasty, self-centred and violent. While that contributes to the plot, it does provide an almost graphic-novel feel to the novel, with broad brushstrokes. I feel that I was too old to read this book and a man 40 years younger than me, especially if a nerd, would really welcome it.

'Sacred Monster' by Donald E. Westlake

I bought this book at the same time as 'Tomorrow's Crimes' (1989) https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/12/the-books-i-read-in-december.html  This novel published the same year was in the science fiction section of the bookshop, but is certainly not science fiction. It is also certainly nowhere near the quality of even the mediocre stories in 'Tomorrow's Crimes' let alone the best of them. It is really a lengthened short story and it does have some 'chapters' no longer than a paragraph. It is about a washed-up Hollywood actor, Jack Pine, some of his career has parallels to that of Jack Nicholson. During the course of an interview following a drugs binge, with him fading in and out as his butler administers antidotes, Pine recounts his life from adolescence to present day in a sequence of flashbacks. 

There is nothing remarkable about the story, in fact it can be seen as a stereotype, with an actually skilled actor with decaying effort, multiple marriages, problems with the production of movies, drug and alcohol abuse and outrageous behaviour in public. Westlake was supposed to also be a writer of humourous novels and I am guessing that this is what this one was supposed to be. I am guessing there are references that meant a lot more to Americans in 1989 than a Briton in 2025 and so this book would have been a satire on the Hollywood industry of the time. The final section is quite clever, a reference to  and comes to a decent denouement. This would have been effective as a short story even now, but stretched to a short novel, you are left wondering 'what was the point?'

'The Lake District Murder' by John Bude [Ernest Carpenter Elmore]

This is the second book that Bude published in 1935, coming after the success of 'The Cornish Coast Murder' (1935) which I read last month: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/12/the-books-i-read-in-december.html It was re-released under the British Library Crime Classics banner. As the title suggests, Bude does not continue with the same detectives, but has a new set, though with the same pattern, i.e. an inspector, in this case Inspector Meredith, a superintendent and a Chief Constable in easy reach. This does accurately reflect how small some British constabularies were in the pre-war period, though in the course of this novel he draws on police officers from across Cumberland (from 1974 part of Cumbria). This time there is no amateur detective involved, just the police.

Bude knew the Lake District well and makes use of its geography throughout, referring to numerous genuine locations. The original Agatha Christie novel 'Dumb Witness' (1937) is actually set in Berkshire, but for some reason for the TV dramatisation as an episode of 'Poirot' broadcast in 1996 is relocated to the Lake District and shows it in a light that might be more expected to emphasise the region's beauty. Much of Bude's story occurs in March and April so the weather is inclement and though he describes various features this is not a 'travelogue' to the area, more it represents the ordinary existence of residents 'out of season'. Though there are middle class characters, much of the focus is on working class people notably men working in the petrol distribution industry.

The speed at which this book was published seems to be apparent, despite all the detail outlined below, in a laziness in picking certain characters names. An old soldier and his wife back from Asia are called Major and Mrs. Rickshaw; the local weights & measures inspector is called Mr. Weymouth and his equivalent for inspecting licenced premises including the whisky they sell is called Mr. Maltman. I am surprised and editor did not pick up on these examples of nominative determinism, which do rather break the suspension of disbelief.

A man is found apparently having asphyxiated himself using car fumes at the small petrol station where he was the owner. As the title of the novel suggests for a number of reasons this is quickly dismissed as being suicide. It soon becomes apparent that the murder must be connected with some fraud which is being carried out involving petrol stations around the region. Though there are elements that are like a detective story, especially with Meredith rushing around on a motorbike to probe in dumps and crawl down tunnels, much of the story is very police procedural with extensive analysis of the loading and unloading of petrol and how it is distributed to petrol stations. In this and a later facet of the anticipated scam, Bude shows a lot of research has been done and we can get a feel without difficulty for how these businesses were run in the mid-1930s, I guess because these details would have been unfamiliar to most readers of the time.

The one common element with 'The Cornish Coast Murder' is that the inspector comes up with a number of feasible explanations to what has happened and explores them thoroughly only subsequently to dismiss them. For some readers, the analysis and probing, might be heavy weather especially as he goes through three overarching explanations before reaching the ultimate one. There is minimal disengagement from the case - everyone seems to go home for lunch - but most of the book is flat out on the case. The final explanation while working does require a bit of suspension of disbelief regarding the numerous underground bases that have been built to enable the fraud but without their construction in numerous places being noticed.

Overall, this is an interesting novel and certainly different from the 'country house' novels so common in this era. I have a number of Bude books to read so it will be interesting to see what he continues and what he alters across these, especially given they are all set in different parts of England and presumably with different detectives.

Non-Fiction

'Society and Democracy in Germany' by Ralf Dahrendorf

When, back in the 1980s, I was studying modern history, particularly of Germany, a lot of store was put in the work of Dahrendorf. I bought this book, published in 1965, back then. Reading it now I realise how much the 1980s were at the peak of New Right/Thatcherite/Reaganite views and as a consequence a book like this, so very libertarian in outlook, would have been seen to espouse 'acceptable' even 'common sense' views. These seem to be back in favour now, much to the alarm of large swathes of the population especially in the UK and USA.

While Dahrendorf may have been a respected sociologist, there are so many errors in this book that I would need to write an entire book myself to challenge them and I am not intending to do that. I imagine there are numerous critiques out there. I will just challenge some of those points which riled me most. Like a lot of Germans, Dahrendorf really over-estimates the impact of the Bismarckian social welfare policies. This provides him with extra 'ammunition' because he makes a basic assumption that all social welfare is an authoritarian shackle on the population so is inconsistent with a liberal democracy. He heavily criticises West Germany, portraying it as almost a Third World state with large chunks of the population despise and excluded, treated inhumanely and children being brought up only quasi-literate. In his eyes West Germany is 'wrong' in so many ways and was unlikely ever to become a liberal democracy.

Throughout Dahrendorf is utterly dismissive of almost all other viewpoints, even denigrating other historians and social scientists whose research supports his own. He takes tiny samples to show apparently how appalling the German grammar school system is, seeming to forget that at the time, the UK almost exclusively had the same system though lacking the technical pathway present in Germany. He speaks about embedded elites and we know well that that was a challenge in Germany. His views on the lack of modernisation of society during the 19th Century is fair as is his recognition that many within Weimar Germany hankered after what had been in place before. However, while he acknowledges that East Germany had a serious shaking up of elites, he fails to recognise that the democracies of Europe and even the USA did now witness a similar change and yet somehow have remained democratic. Ironically he almost verges on praising the Nazi Regime for actually moving towards 'modernising' Germany.

I suppose it is this sense of uniqueness that makes it difficult for him to concede more than occasionally that other democracies have faced similar challenges to West Germany. He seems to see the strength of the family in West Germany as unique, utterly ignoring those countries across Western Europe at the time where the family was even stronger than there, as if for some reason this does not count for him. There is a constant insistence that unless something is not precisely the way he feels it needs to be then it needs to be utterly condemned. 

While there is a natural focus on the period 1933-34, despite all that Dahrendorf has said about authoritarian tendencies running through pre-Nazi Germany, he utterly fails to explore the appearance of the authoritarian period 1930-33 when democracy had already ceased in Germany. I think this is because, due to the emphasis on the modernisation of society by the Nazis, he sees authoritarianism as counter to Nazism, rather than a stepping stone. This also causes him problems when trying to reconcile other forms of Fascism to authoritarian developments in other countries. He is able to fall back on the uniqueness of Germany to avoid this challenge.

Like some other historians of his era, he also ignores or dismisses the resistance in all its formats to the Nazi Regime, totally ignoring all those put in concentration camps before the war even began. He is also dubious of those who resisted, even from centrist or left-wing bases as he feels they hankered too strongly for the authoritarianism of the Imperial period and would have thrown aside the modernisation that the Nazis, in his eyes, had to bring about. Yes, the plotters of the Valkyrie Plot were not suddenly going to usher in a free-wheeling democracy. However, what they would have instituted, Dahrendorf refuses to see is something that bit better than the that of the Nazis, exterminating thousands on a daily basis by that stage of the war. 

Ironically, he then goes on to complain that the power elites of West Germany have both proven to be insufficiently assertive - he keeps referring to them as the 'cartel of anxiety' - though we might be surprised otherwise when West Germany was clearly on the frontline of the nuclear-armed Cold War. While recognising there is a greater diversity of views in post-war politics of West Germany, again he complains because this does not precisely fit his demands as apparently they move in very different social contexts, something they apparently have to overcome, while still maintaining their views as Conservatives, Liberals, Conservatives, let alone as Greens, etc. Again in a rather contradictory attitude, despite this wish for politicians to be operating in the same habitus, he rails against any Grand Coalition which was actually imminent, running 1966-69. This stems, it seems from Dahrendorf's aversion to anything which stunts the free play of conflict as I discuss below.

Dahrendorf also subscribes blithely to the now-discredited Year Zero perspective on post-war Germany, more than once saying it, even in what became West Germany, had been reduced to 'pre-industrial' levels by war damage when we know this is huge exaggeration in terms of what remained standing and working in May 1945 which is an important explanation for the economic miracle soon following. He also makes no mention of Marshall Aid or OEEC/OECD/ECSC/EEC developments which West Germany was at the heart of, largely because it would show benefit for state input into industry which is something he cannot swallow, because such state involvement, a major bad legacy of Prussia, in Dahrendorf's views (too often influenced by Von Hayek) is inherently opposed to liberty and liberal democracy.

I could go on. You really have to sift hard among what he says to find feasible arguments. His point about the authoritarianism of the German judicial system lacking a true adversarial approach and the political rulings of German judges is fair (for East Germany as well). Ironically he saw improvement in that direction in the 1960s which we can argue has not been fulfilled. However, his prime problem is less about the bias of such a system and more because it suppresses the conflicts which he feels are necessary for a healthy liberal democracy. He approaches the challenge of cartelisation in the same way especially when the cartels, ironically were too dependent on state involvement, making a system that in his view was a horrible hybrid, despite its success throughout the 19th, 20th and indeed into the 21st Century.

Elsewhere in the industrial sphere, Dahrendorf complains about trade unions, works councils and co-determination, despite these being industrial aspects often praised in other democracies, as authoritarian because in reducing conflict they too are inherently authoritarian in avoiding conflict rather than properly channelling it - whatever he really means by that. The reader does run up against a peculiar perception of what a healthy society in Dahrendorf's view would look like and at times it seems to verge on being so libertarian as to be anarchic. Of course, since the book was published West Germany has faced challenges, the rise of the NPD, Die Republikaner, AfD on the right and pseudo-extreme left-wing terrorism and yet looks to be surviving even sixty years after he wrote this savage critique. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he under-estimated the chances of reunification of Germany, less than thirty years after he was writing, but that was because while he noted that the East German regime was backed up by Russian 'bayonets' he never foresaw their abrupt withdrawal. While reunification was not trouble-free the assimilation of a country of 17 million people into what was West Germany, does suggest it was much healthier and accommodating than Dahrendorf insisted it was.

This is a very irritating book. In part that is due to its age and the fact that our understanding of German history in the 20th Century has improved since it was written. However, it suffers very much anyway from a 'grand man' of sociology insisting that everything is not only the way he says, with poor reference to the comparators he makes huge assumptions about and an insistence that if a development is not precisely the way he feels it should be, then it is 'wrong' and needs repeated condemnation. It is clear that he loathed West Germany as a society. While he equally despised East Germany and the Nazi Regime, he cannot shake off respect for their steps to 'modernise' German society. I am so glad I never read this book as a student and I do hope that it and the views it espouses are left deep on the bottom of some dusty shelf.

'The Seventeenth Century' by G.N. Clark

I bought a 1960 copy of this book, back in the late 1980s and had not realised actually how old the text was. It was first published in 1929 and while supposedly update in 1947, it makes a major blunder by referring to European dictators without mentioning Adolf Hitler, who was not in power in 1929. Despite that, it is an interesting book looking at what Clark portrays as a transition era from the end of the Renaissance towards the Enlightenment and the Early Modern Era. He does a good job of showing how the foundations for what would follow were laid in this period right across economics especially in commerce. technology, science and philosophy. Indeed much of the book is an intellectual history rather than a political one. There are descriptions of what occurred in the century across Europe but these are more as a basis for Clark's analysis of the much broader developments, notably in trade, demographics and economics. 

About half of the book is devoted to the development of ideas whether in science, philosophy or religion and he goes into detail on these much further than you would find in many general histories of the period, sometimes to a level that the general reader would find esoteric. However, this is a useful background and especially in alerting readers to not muddying developments of the following two centuries with what had been done in the 17th Century. This does then show some developments to be less of a revolution in the 18th Century but based on initial steps in the preceding one.

Overall, while not a stunning book, this does provide insights which a general reader may have missed in other more recent books of this kind. Note, in common with many English-language non-fiction books of the first half of the 20th Century, Clark takes it for granted that the reader is fluent in both Latin and French so provides no translations for sometimes lengthy quotations in these languages.

The Books I Read In December

This year I read 59 books, the shortest being 160 pages and the longest being 634 pages.

P.P. 06/03/2025

I was interested to see where this put me in the survey of UK reading trends. Being a Remain and Labour voter, I do fall into the political category of greatest readers, but am not yet into the highest age bracket (over 65s) for reading. Women read more than men, though men are more likely to read non-fiction than women. Where I stand in terms of middle and working class is very difficult to determine nowadays. I always thought I came from a middle class family and was middle class. However, I have been strongly told that, largely because I am a tenant, do not buy new cars or have holidays, I cannot be middle class, so I do not know if I would boost the 66% of middle class people who said they read recently (there are few days when I do not read) or the 52% of working class people who say the same. I probably hang around outside the traditional class structure with elements from both. I do mourn the fact that the 'Fred Kite'/WEA well-read worker no longer seems to feature, certainly in analysis, maybe not much in society either.

I am in the 40% who have only bought second hand books in the past year, rather than the more than 50% who bought at least one new one. 23% of people pick an 'even' mix of fiction and non-fiction, whereas for me only 1-in-4 books is non-fiction, the other 3 are fiction. Due to commuting changes, I have stopped listening to audio books, so I am in the 61% who read physical books. I do not mind paperback or hardback, it is more what I can get second hand. I am in the only 29% who think listening to audio books is equivalent to reading a book. I am in the 4% of readers who read more than 50 books in the year and in the 24% who own more than 100 books.

Anyway, for these statistics see: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/mar/06/new-poll-finds-40-of-britons-have-not-read-a-book-in-the-past-year

Fiction

'Tomorrow's Crimes' by Donald E. Westlake

Though he wrote across genres, I had not come across Westlake before. This is a science fiction anthology by him of stories published 1961-1984. Some, like 'Girl of My Dreams' are rather pat, more like a tale of the unexpected. 'The Winner' is a very grim dystopian story about future prisons. There is certainly a grittiness to Westlake's stories which I imagine he has brought over from his crime fiction. A couple of stories stand out. 'The Risk Profession' is a story of a loss adjuster going to investigate an asteroid mining camp, almost like in a Western but in space. The other is the novella at the end 'Anarchaos' about a man going to the eponymous planet which is tidally fixed to face its red sun to find out about the murder of his brother. It is very much a story about corporations and prospectors and for all the science fiction setting, also feels at times like a Western. Still, both are effective crime stories and also explore different science fiction concepts well. Again there is violence and suffering that makes the stories darker than you might expect even in a collection from that era. It is clear that there are quite a few books out there by Westlake but if I found one I would check it carefully to see what type it was, but if satisfied I would then give it a try.

'The Confessions of Arsène Lupin by Maurice Leblanc

I imagine like a lot of British readers I was drawn to the original Lupin stories, published 1905-23 (though with loads of follow-ons) by the French TV series, 'Lupin' (2021). That is the way 'Elementary' (2012-19) (and not 'Sherlock') was to the Sherlock Holmes stories, i.e. a modern take influenced by (late 19th Century/)early 20th Century stories. Unlike Holmes, Lupin is a thief, though one who is supposedly renowned even in his own time and loved subsequently as the TV series made clear. The Lupin books actually reference Holmes, but his closest British rival would be A.J. Raffles in stories by  E.W. Hornung (brother-in-law to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle), 1898-1909. There is no indication who translated this particular collection into English.

This book was first published in 1913. The 10 stories show Lupin as amoral, with him as often stealing from other criminals as from ordinary people. Sometimes he comes up against his prime antagonist, Inspector Justin Ganimard of the Sûreté, though in 'The Red Silk Scarf' ends up effectively helping the police. In 'Two Hundred Thousand Francs Reward! ...' he tracks down a murderer and a disappeared woman after he catches sight of signals being flashed in his neighbourhood. He works out various mysteries such as 'The Invisible Prisoner' a thief who seems to have disappeared after raiding a house and for the benefit of others, 'The Sign of the Shadow' in which a strange painting is a sign towards a treasure of diamonds. There are stories which remind us of Conan Doyle's 'The Adventure of the Speckled Band' (1892) though perhaps not quite as bleak, such as 'Lupin's Marriage' with a very long con involved.

Overall the stories are brisk and successful conjure up a feeling of the late 19th Century France. Though there are some grim elements, at times the tone is playful. Certainly with this collection, the reader feels that Lupin is a hero more than a criminal. If I find any of the other Lupin books, especially ones in which he is more straightforwardly carrying crimes I would certainly pick them up.

'The Cornish Coast Murder' by John Bude [Ernest Carpenter Elmore]

This book, one of two that Elmore published in 1935, is another from the British Library Crime Classics series. As Martin Edwards who curates much of the series notes, Bude rooted his novel, his first crime one, in a locale rather than a fictional county, in this case on the Atlantic coast of Cornwall. Saying that, the town of Greystoke which is featured, is fictional as the only Greystoke in England is far further north in Cumbria. Still you really get a real feel for the headlands and coves of northern Cornwall.

An unpopular local magistrate and landlord, Julius Trethgarthan is shot dead standing at the French windows of his living room during a storm. There are few suspects beyond the man's niece, Ruth, an author in the village, Ronald Hardy; a local midwife, Mrs. Mullion, and a local poacher Ned Slater; perhaps Trethgarthan's two servants, Mr. and Mrs. Grouch. The clear clues, especially footprints, restrict the number of suspects but also allow for a range of speculations about how the murder was carried out. The behaviour of Ruth, Ronald and Mr. Grouch all further muddy the waters. Some readers might be irritated by how additional information keeps on shifting the perspective on the crime. However, in some ways, for a 'cosy' crime, it actually feels authentic and with its clear context maybe why it appealed to readers at the time.

There are effectively two detectives, the local uniformed Inspector Bigswell and the vicar Reverend Dodd who lives near the scene of the crime and knows the Trethgarthans well. Dodd along with his friend Dr. Pendrill, are eager consumers of detective fiction, meeting up each month to share novels. There are references to genuine contemporary authors and while a latecomer to the genre (he also wrote science fiction and was theatre producer and director) Elmore was a founder of the Crime Writers' Association. 

Effectively having two detecting protagonists is a bit unusual. Their paths overlap at times and close to the end they are looking for clues in exactly the same place. Again this might irritate some readers, especially in terms of flipping point of view, but in fact it allows the author to bring in different bits of evidence from different places without having a single character having to hare all over the place. Both men also work out explanations which have to be discarded in time and it is quite refreshing for them not to lock on to the correct one quickly. For all its cosiness, the motive for the murder turns out to be as bleak as any in a crime novel.

I have four more Bude books to read set in different parts of England and I am quite looking forward to his slightly quirky approach which rather makes his writing distinct from some of his contemporaries.

'Excession' by Iain M. Banks

As readers of this blog probably know by now, I am not a big fan of Iain M. Banks's Culture novels, rather feeling that their all-powerful civilisation is rather tedious. Perhaps I hoped for something a little different from this one. It features the appearance of an immensely powerful object in space which attracts the attention of Culture spaceships and another squid-like race, the Affront. A lot of the interaction in the book is between sentient spaceships, something Banks seemed to really like doing. However, for many readers, or maybe I am alone, it does seem all a little impersonal, especially given how powerful these vessels are, one literally manufactures a warfleet within itself. The object, the 'Excession', which may allow access to multiple universes, becomes part of a conspiracy by a cabal of spaceships. The novel basically covers a whole assortment of vessels and a few humans and Affront beings sent towards it. A war between the Affront and the Culture breaks out when the Affront seizes a Culture storage asteroid holding many vessels from the last war.

The skipping between the various characters so much, reduces our engagement with each, even the two humans, Dajeil Gelian a woman who has remained in a pregnant state in a replica of a planet she last worked on inside a spaceship for forty years and her former lover, fellow scientist and philanderer Byr Genar-Hofoen who is obsessed with the Affront. The ship holding Gelian wants them to reunite and for the child to be born. On the way, Genar-Hofoen encounters people set up to resemble Gelian, though they like some of the other characters such as Leffid and Gestra Ishmethit, the warden of the storage vessel Pittance for 150 years, seem to serve no purpose.

With so many characters, the narrative is really fragmented and you do feel as if you are going through the motions as the different groups and individuals work their way to the Excession, some directly, some getting very distracted. In fact the portrayal of some of the places along the way are far more interesting than what happens towards the end. As it typical with Banks, there is a lot of info dumping as if he really wants every reader to know everything about the Culture and other species. The ending is a real anti-climax and further reduces the value of what has gone before. There are some engaging scenes but too much of the book reads rather like a flight manifest.

'Hombre' by Elmore Leonard

I realised coming to this, an out-and-out Western that it was a genre that I had not read in since 'All the Pretty Horses' (1992) by Cormac McCarthy who is now in disgrace but was acclaimed at the time. I have read Elmore Leonard books, but more usually his 20th Century crime novels. This edition was produced by Orbit books to make available to people familiar with various movies, the books that they were based on. I assume this was why my late mother, a movie fan as well as an avid reader throughout her life, bought it. The movie 'Hombre' was released in 1967 and starred Paul Newman. The novel was published in 1961. 

It is a very contained story set in 1884. It mentions Florence but that is in South Carolina and the book also mentions Bisbee so seems to be set in Arizona, certainly close to the Mexican border and near to where the Apache tribes had been forced to live. With the rise of railways a stage coach company is being closed down. One employee, Carl Allen, a young man who surprisingly speaks no Spanish, is the narrator of the story. Along with his former boss, Mr. Mendez, as driver, Allen accompanies five other people in a specially hired coach out of the small town of Sweetmary. One of them is the 'Hombre' ['Man' in Spanish], John Russell who is perceived as part-Apache having lived with a tribe as a child and then with a Mexican before becoming part of the Apache Police. The others are Dr. Alexander Favor, an Indian Agent, i.e. liaison between the US government and tribes, his wife Audra; Kathleen McLaren who had recently been released from being captured by the Apaches and Frank Braden who proves to be a criminal.

The coach is held up by confederates of Braden looking to steal the money Favor swindled on supplying food to the Apaches. The rest of the novel is about the passengers trying to get clear without being killed by the bandits. Russell is very much in the mould of the strong, silent, rather cold hero, who always knows what to do that is right. Probably reflecting discussions around civil rights, there is much discussion about whether he should even be allowed to travel in the coach. Different perspectives on the Apaches and their treatment are aired in the tense periods when the passengers are trying to stay clear of the bandits. The book almost becomes philosophical at the end in discussions about what one should risk to help others and what defines a 'man' and a 'hero'. 

Overall, then, this has many of the elements of a classic Western. It really portrays the harsh landscape very well. In some ways it sticks to the archetype of the lone gunman, but in others especially in the discussions between the passengers, looks to engage with broader issues around race and though touched on euphemistically, violence towards women. While different to the other Leonard novels I have read, this one is as equally as engaging as those.

Non-Fiction

'Europe in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries' by Denys Hay

This is another of those Longman General History of Europe books that I have picked up down the years. Unlike the last one I read, by Franklin L. Ford, back in May 2020: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2020/05/books-i-read-in-may.html which covered only 50 years, this one as the name suggests straddles two entire centuries. In general Hay handles it well, starting with social and economic structures which can be referenced no matter which period or region he is focusing upon and this forms a sound basis. Religion, perhaps unsurprisingly gets a lot of attention and he is generally sound on the multiple Papacies and the often forgotten precursors to the Reformation which appeared in the preceding decades. The book is good on Eastern Europe, Russia and the Ottoman Empire which all tend to get neglected in terms of general histories. It is not bad on 'Italy' sensibly breaking this down into separate regions. It struggles a bit more with 'Germany' and really fails to communicate the Hundred Years War any more effectively than any other account I have read. However, the writing is brisk and explains mostly with sufficient detail yet without bewildering the reader with too much which can be the case with such a long time period with many complex especially geopolitical developments.