The Books I Read In September

 Fiction

'The Dark Mile' by D.K. Broster

This is the final book in The Jacobite Trilogy. It should not be confused with the 2017 movie of the same name. Here the name comes from a genuine stretch of the Highland countryside between Loch Arkaig and Loch Lochy which you can walk even today: https://www.komoot.com/highlight/4639016  This website mentions the genuine Cameron of Locheil laird who features in the first book in this trilogy.

While this novel ties up some aspects from the previous book, 'The Gleam in the North' (1927) which I read in July: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2026/07/books-i-read-in-july.html it has a lot less of a political focus and is much more a family drama set in the western Highlands. It is set in 1754/55, so a decade after the defeat of the Jacobites at Culloden, but still with an English occupying force in castles through the Highlands and numerous restrictions, e.g. no Highlander can wear tartan - causing challenge indentifying staff; own a weapon, even for shooting birds or a sword; and the lairds are no longer allowed to be called 'Lord', though Lady Cameron seems to be allowed to keep her title. While we see Ewen Cameron of Ardoy and he plays an important role the greater focus is on his cousin Captain Hector Grant, from the previous book, who has inherited an estate in the Highlands and sees an opportunity to propose marriage to Jacqueline Stewart, a distant relative of the Camerons. 

The other prime protagonist is Ian Stewart, Jacqueline's brother. He inadvertently rescues Olivia Campbell, without knowing she is one of the Campbells of Cairns and her father was commander of the unit with shot Ian's elder brother, Alan, at the Battle of Culloden. While soon the Ian and Olivia are quickly besotted with each other, at a series of encounters, they realise they have to deny their affection for the peace of mind of their families. Ian works hard to try forget Olivia even her willingness to express her affection for him increases. Broster rather bottles it in the writing however. She will not have, despite what is clearly described as an intense passion, love conquer all and instead of the two perhaps bringing peace between the two clans as a result of a marriage, there is a rather contrived work around which I guess some readers, even Scots, might have felt at the time was a missed opportunity.

There is another main point of tension in the book spilling over from the experience of the 1745 uprising and its aftermath. The first is the question of who wrote the letter in the previous book which alerted the English authorities to where Dr. Archibald Cameron, the Jacobite treasurer in Scotland, was hiding out which led to his arrest and ultimate execution. We soon know it to be David Maitland who wanted to see the end to the trouble that Cameron being on the run was causing in terms of the oppression by the English forces, believing it would lead to prosecution rather than execution. However, this is not known to most people at the start of the story. 

One who does come to know is Finlay MacPhair, the new and nasty laird of Glenshian. He was an English agent but left poor by the war, feels he has not received his proper recompense. Ultimately he tries to blackmail Maitland into saying it was he, the laird, who wrote the damning letter, but Maitland, already suicidal, startled at MacPhair's confession of collaboration gets away only to find that Hector has already confronted MacPhair believing himself that the laird was the author of Maitland's letter. MacPhair is a real antagonist. His schemes are to gain money. He fakes the abduction of two of his cattle by Ewen and insists he pay compensation for eighty cattle. He confines Hector in worsening conditions to try to force him to apologise for his accusation, even though ironically he wants Maitland to say it is true. These schemes, despite a dramatic rescue of the suffering Hector, rather fade as the novel progresses. Similarly though Hector has actually fought a duel with Ian, his romance with Jacqueline also drifts off rather unresolved.

This is not a bad book and does very well at conjuring up the times and the dramatic landscape. Broster does seem to get rather tied up in her crossplots, though maybe that was intentional to show how much power had been taken from the Highlanders that even a devious one was unable to win through if the English were not agreeable to what he was striving for. I found this the easiest of the three books to get through though I do not typically read romances and this is full-on in that aspect at times. However, do regret my nostalgia for the 1976 TV dramatisation of the first book, 'The Flight of the Heron' (1925) https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2026/06/the-books-i-read-in-june.html which led me to buy the entire trilogy. I forgot two things: that the versions of stories for children are often shorn of the bleakness and cruelty of the adult versions and that you should never revisit childhood favourites as you will generally find them a disappointment.

Having suffered from it myself on coming to Scotland, I was glad to see though that orophobia especially in the face of Scottish uplands, was recognised as a legitimate condition in a novel, even one from a century ago.

'The Wings of the Sphinx' by Andrea Camilleri

This is a straight forward Montalbano story which starts with the discovery of a dead woman's body found in a dump. The distinguishing mark is a tattoo on her shoulder of a sphinx moth. This then takes Montalbano into the investigation of three other women also from Russia who have been tattooed in the same way. In turn this leads to a religious charity which seeks to get such immigrants out of prostitution or drug dealing into domestic service roles. What is interesting, perhaps clever, is that the quartet, despite coming from the same home town and having similar stories, in fact are different from each other in the paths they choose, with some being honest, others not; some being integrated, others remaining apart. In addition, perhaps unusually, the charity itself is not rotten right through and it finally transpires that only certain members are engaging in criminal activity, while others are innocent.

 Identifying the four women, determining their different characters from more or less biased witnesses, finding who is dead and who is alive, and seeing how the criminality of one bisects with another murder, provides the mystery. Supporters of the charity put pressure for Montalbano to back off, though ultimately he does work out those who should be charged. As is typical for many detective stories set in Italy, there is often a distance between identifying perpetrators and having them arrested, let alone charged. In some ways this is a simple story with the usual 'business' of Montalbano eating various Sicilian dishes, rowing with his girlfriend and speculating on life, but the subtlety between what different individuals are up to is well handled rather than it being a 'blanket' approach of 'they are all bad in that group'.

'Noughts and Crosses' by Malorie Blackman

I was interested in this book because it is an alternate history. It is set on Earth in contemporary times but if Pangaea had never broken up. Historically rather than 'Europeans' colonising Africa, 'Africans' migrated from the south of the super-continent gathering technology such as paper and gunpowder which then allowed them to conquer and subjugate the white population of what appears to be the north-west coastal region. Not much detail is provided, though with a strong sense of parallelism black African inventors who we have in our world also existed in this alternative and are taught about in schools. Clearly Blackman wanted these names which are largely 'forgotten' in Western culture, to be remembered. 

In this world black people are known as 'Crosses' (insulted as 'daggers') and white people as 'Noughts' (insulted as 'blankers'). There is strong racial discrimination and while it appears to be set in the 21st Century, the exclusion of white people from many opportunities and the inherent prejudice against them as ignorant, criminal and violent, seems primarily based on the US South in the 1950s and South Africa of the 1980s, though prejudicial treatment of whites by the police is of course like that currently seen by blacks in many countries. There is mention of mixed-race black/white people but not of any other races in this world. Blackman implies that the legal segregation would have persisted decades longer if black people had been in charge than if white people had been. Concessions are only being made due to pressure from the economic bloc that this 'British' portion of the continent is part of.

The novel itself is a romance between two teenagers Persephone 'Sephy' Hadley and Callum McGregor who is slightly older. Callum's mother, Meggie worked as a nanny then cleaner for Sephy's mother, Jasmine until she failed to back up an alibi of Jasmine's to cover her affair from her husband. While living close to the Hadleys, the McGregors are very poor like most noughts. Sephy's father is Home Secretary and they live in an expensive house close to the beach where the two lovers meet. 

The politics, culture and the language appears to be very British (the swearword 'ruddy' is even used) though with US examples providing the racial system and even public executions. Callum is very intelligent and is one of the small number of noughts first allowed to attend Sephy's school, though this opens him up to more prejudice.

Various incidents lead Callum and his family to be involved with the Liberation Militia, a kind of cross between the IRA and the Black Panthers but for white people. They engage in terrorist activity and this means they face the full force of the law, all bar Meggie going on the run, with tragic circumstances. Throughout Callum tries to keep in contact with Sephy and it is clear as they mature that their love becomes deeper. There is no under-age sex in the book, but Callum does reappear when the two of them are old enough to legally have sex.

It is a very tragic book. It is clearly aimed not at adults but at children so the various messages are laid on very heavily. The point of view switches consistently between Sephy and Callum sometimes with incredibly short chapters. There are points of tension especially in the closing phase of the book, combined with what feels like a genuine romance across the races. However, I think most adult readers would feel the themes are laid on rather too thickly and the story hares along too fast to be an engaging book. I would not buy the other books in the series.

'A Gun for Sale' by Graham Greene

This novel from 1936 continues to show how Greene was the 'king' of sleazy contexts. It shares many of the traits of the other novels by him I have read this year including a small set of characters and coincidences which rather stretch credibility.. It centres on an English assassin called Raven who kills the War Minister of Czechoslovakia and also murders his housekeeper at the same time. Returning to Britain Raven is paid off by a man he knows as Mr. Cholmondeley. Raven is paid £200 (worth about £50-80,000 today) in bank notes which prove to have been recently stolen and the serial numbers on them are known. Raven goes in pursuit of Cholmondeley who returns to his home town of Nottwich in the Midlands. Raven manages to elude police and get after his quarry.

To get out of the station without a ticket in Nottwich, using the silenced pistol he had retained contrary to orders, Raven threatens Anne Crowder, a chorus line singer to provide cover for him. This is where the peculiarities kick in. Crowder is the fiancée of Detective Sergeant Jimmy Mather of the Metropolitan Police who is sent to Nottwich after Raven and co-ordinates the hunt for him in the town. Though she is threatened by Raven, Crowder is soon collaborating with him, leading to grave suspicions of her later, even from Mather. 

They hide out in a show home and then Crowder goes in search of Cholmondeley who, under the name of Davis, rather incredibly, happens to be a backer of the production that she is appearing in, in Nottwich. He also likes to have sex with the performers and takes her to dinner. He however, then tricks her in accompanying him to a bawdy house where rooms are rented by the hour. There he tries to rape her before confining her in the chimney breat. Using intuition Raven tracks her down and releases her. The two hide out in a railway shed with Crowder acting as a decoy so Raven can go after Cholmondeley's employer, a local industrialist who wanted the war minister dead because his policies were reducing armaments spending in Czechoslovakia. Raven is aided by a test-run of a gas attack on Nottwich allowing him to conceal his distinctive hare-lip behind a gas mask. This then leads to a showdown.

While the seediness of all the settings, the sense of not being able to turn anywhere for Raven, is well evoked, too much is rather 'convenient'. Crowder's behaviour in continuing to aid Raven certainly does not come across as realistic. While the gas attack practice reflected the sense of war approaching which is a feature throughout the book - in 1936 Germany remilitarised the Rhineland so breaking one of the precepts of the Treaty of Versailles - it and especially the behaviour of those involved in the test, feels far too much a plot device. Overall the book scores higher for atmosphere than feasibility.

'Castle Skull' by John Dickson Carr

It is clear that someone in my area likes Dickson Carr books as I have found three, including this one, in local charity shops in the past two months. Published in 1931, as can be guessed from the title, it has that 'Gothic' flavour which I noted when reviewing his 'It Walks By Night' (1930) back in January: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2026/01/the-books-i-read-in-january.html though by the end you can see the kind of subtle shift beginning which would get him to his cosy English crime novels of the latter 1930s. Like 'It Walks By Night', this story features the Parisian detective Henri Bencolin and his American friend Jeff Marle who acts as narrator. This one also features a detective from Berlin, Baron von Arnheim. As Martin Edwards notes in the introduction the rivalry between Bencolin and von Arnheim is rather like that between Hercule Poirot and M. Giraud in 'The Murder on the Links' (1923) by Agatha Christie, though von Arnheim is reasonably respectful of Bencolin's skills, perhaps because they are both police detectives rather than one being an amateur. In fact they both bring parts of the solution to the complex case.

Schloss Schädel [Castle Skull] sits on the heights above the River Rhine near to Koblenz. Genuine castles such as Stolzenfels and Ehrenfels are mentioned but this fictional one, built to resemble a skull is particularly Gothic in nature. It has multiple secret passages and someone is chained up in a hidden cell, almost adding in every Gothic trope you might expect, naturally with thunderstorms. The actor Myron Alison lives across the Rhine opposite the castle which he inherited a half share of from his rival stage magician and fan of the occult Maleger who had died many years earlier mysteriously in the Rhine itself. Alison is seen on fire on the castle's battlements. The guests at his house are the suspects and Bencolin and von Arnheim have to disentangle what boats were used when and why there are multiple pairs of muddy boots in the house.

Thus, we do have elements of a standard investigation of the kind Dickson Carr would move on to, but with these Gothic aspects threaded through it constantly especially as more is discovered about the unique castle and then about enduring seeking of revenge. It is worthwhile paying attention to, though the direction Dickson Carr was moving in, does tend to jar with his Gothic emphasis, though he does draw an interesting range of characters and then assembles them for a grand dinner in the castle, including a cake with and icing image of gallows on it.

There is an additional short story ‘The Fourth Suspect’ (1927) for Bencolin and though short, this one is equally complex as the detective is called upon by the French war ministry to resolve a murder in which the wife of one of their spies is implicated, but has an alibi. This one does have the feel of a Sherlock Holmes story.

I currently have two more Dickson Carr novels to read, one from his more Gothic period and one from his later, cosy period. I am looking forward to them.

'Long Story Short' by Jodi Taylor

This is the second (so far) of Taylor's anthologies. Almost all come from the Chronicles of St. Mary's/Time Police 'universe' though there is one from her Frogmorton Farm series too. I have only read 'And the Rest Is History' (2017) which is the eighth book in the St. Mary's series and if only counting the full-length novels there are now six others and one due more due in August 2027. Some of the stories which feature in this collection feature from further on in the sequence than I have read. However, finding out that not only Leon, one of the prime protagonists is still crippled from the stories I have read, his wife the main protagonist throughout is now hospitalised too and their child though ten is still illiterate and socially dysfunctional due to what he was put through as a child put into Victorian times, I am quite pleased to have bailed out before I got any further. Tim Peterson has also had another girlfriend killed. Taylor seems addicted to inflicting the most sadistic approach to characters she creates. That would be acceptable if this was a horror sequence or even thriller novels, but throughout she has this cosy almost jolly tone which clashes terribly with what she portrays.

This collection is not as good as 'The Long and Short of It' (2019) which I read last month: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2026/08/the-books-i-read-in-august.html and some are tiny fragments such as 'Dessicated Water' and 'Markham and the Anal Probing'. However, we do get to see through the eyes of some of the other recurring characters. 'When Did You Last See Your Father' is told from the perspective of Max's husband, Leon Farrell and outlines his sad life in some future period before coming back to 'now', itself in the 2030s and meeting Max who he had encountered briefly in the Cretaceous period. Bolted on the end of this is him sabotaging, with colleagues a visit by Max's abusive father to St. Mary's in an attempt to have Leon and Maxwell's time-anomalous son seized. Leon goes at it with real vindictiveness which I guess we should expect from Taylor, though he does not kill the man though he comes close to it.

'The Steam Pump Jump' was perhaps the story I enjoyed the most. Taylor's writing is always at its best when she is showing historical events and these are why I endured with the books for as long as I did. This one is seen through the eyes of the Head of Security Mr. Markham, primarily because Maxwell is incapacitated. He oversees a visit back to 1641 to see the first demonstration of Thomas Savery's steam-powered water pump. I had never heard of this real incident, though obviously using steam power at this early stage could be a branching point for a lot of alternate history stories, though, naturally, occurring in England it was overshadowed by the English elements of the War of the Three Kingdoms, 1639-53. There is the usual chaos and an attempt to get two of the St. Mary's employees together romantically, but is well handled.

The 'Battersea Barricades' story though seen through Max's eyes focuses on the history of three of the women staff of St. Mary's: Theresa Mack - Head of Catering, Elizabeth Shaw - Personal Assistant to the Director of St. Mary's  and Mavis Enderby - Head of Wardrobe for time-travellers. It outlines the anti-Fascist unrest which occurred in Britain in earlier decades, culminating in the eponymous barricade of Battersea Bridge. All three women were involved in the frontline. It is ironic in the time since Taylor wrote this in 2018, it has possibly become more rather than less likely as is her portrayal of the USA fallen into utter chaos. This is a basic narrative of the trio explaining what they did and how they ended up in central London and does feel like those dystopian dramas which featured often on children's television in the 1970s and indeed a bit like scenes from season 1 of the BBC dramatisation of 'His Dark Materials' (broadcast 2019). Of course, being Taylor, it has tragedy, but is otherwise interesting.

'Christmas Past' fits more neatly with the usual style of the St. Mary's stories. Taylor produces a lot of them around Christmas time. This one sees Max in control and taking her son Matthew back to Victorian London where he was dumped by the prime antagonist Clive Ronan to live as a 'climbing boy', i.e. those children sent up inside chimnies to clean them under a very cruel mistress, Mrs. Scrope, leading him to fear women including his mother. Matthew is keen to take presents to the two other boys he worked with. Max builds a gift package largely of foods and blankets to take to the boys. She also confronts Mrs. Scrope and then at Matthew's pleading goes forward a year to see the outcome of her actions. This naturally has a kind of 'A Christmas Carol' feel, but the historical elements are well done.

The final story is 'Little Donkey' unsurprisingly featuring a rescue donkey from Frogmorton Farm, a contemporary setting though like St. Mary's on the edge of the North Yorkshire Moors. It feels rather like an episode of 'Emmerdale' and is rather overloaded with Christimas tropes, including two births at a nativity play. It is alright if you like this kind of thing. A spectral golden horse that has helped the protagonist Jenny through years of abuse, also turns up briefly. Taylor does seem fixated on largely showing characters who have been through sustained and repeated trauma. I have no idea whether this reflects her own life, but it seems a trait in all her writing that she cannot escape.

Non-Fiction

'The British Party System and Economic Policy, 1945-1983' by A.M. Gamble & S.A. Walkland

This book was published in 1984 and is an interesting look at the shifting, often largely ineffectual, economic policies of the post-war period. They were rather constrained by the fact that the book was in the Studies in Adversary Politics series, because as they show, aside from the rhetoric especially at election time, there has actually been a consistency in economic policies. It becomes apparent that despite all the talk of growth, prosperity and modernisation, in fact the overwhelming driver of British economic policy, no matter who was in power, was defence of the strength of the pound, even though this actually provoked many of the economic problems the UK faced.

Before going on with other decent points in the analysis, I must speak about the tone which Gamble & Walkland adopt. It is highly critical not simply of the governments but of others writing in economics and history. At times it is actually unprofessional. They seem to have no inhibitions in slagging off other writers in this field, feeling they have all proven inadequate, even incompetent. They are riled by the fact that such analysers were typically unwilling to put forward prescriptions for improving the British economy as if that was a compulsory duty for anyone writing on the topic. I understand the early 1980s were an incredibly febrile time but even so this book too often goes beyond the bounds of what is really acceptable in academic writing. 

We could be critical of Gamble & Walkland themselves, especially in their view that there was a possiblity of the Liberal-SDP Alliance as it was in the 1983 election being of any significance in UK political scene, but many commentators of the time, not simply historians, fell for that delusion. They also downplay the divisions which would appear over Europe, though that would have been a challenge given the Conservatives and Labour, for large part, 'swapped sides' on the issue. Of all their proscriptions for the future, the possible path of a Conservative hegemony as enduring as the inter-war one and Labour being obliged to change nature to the new 'consensus' established by Thatcher in order to be permitted to re-enter the political scene was the most accurate.

The strengths of this book are in the detailed analysis of what the nature of the economic policies implemented were. As they show, despite the ever more intense rhetoric between the two main parties, what was done when they came into office often was the opposite of what had been said. Thus, reflation was done most under the Conservatives and deflation under Labour, contrary to what they had said and their rhetoric. They correctly identify that ironically Keynesianism was not needed in 1945-73 when it was the dominant economic theory, because the global boom sustained UK full employment anyway. Then when Keynesianism was needed in the 1970s it had been discredited by its apparent inability to smooth out economic challenges of the preceding two decades, for which it had not designed, notably protecting the strength of the pound.

The authors make a decent case that by 1983, the Conservatives were not actually pursuing a monetarist policy, despite saying they were. I think it is because they still believed that the Thatcher government was aiming to work in the interests of the UK as a whole rather than to the benefit of a slice of the wealthy and not necessarily located in Britain. They found it hard to believe that unemployment could not continue at such heights without civil unrest, though the Miners' Strike and the Poll Tax Riot, appear to be restrained compared to what they imagined would occur.

The book is also good at looking at the various bodies set up to stimulate and/or aid British industry and shows the in/effectiveness of each. They get frustrated when, because of the adversarial rhetoric, relatively success ones like the IRC and NEB were abolished, not due to them failing, but simply to fulfil what the incoming party had said.

While at times pointing to factors outside government which constrained and directed economic policy, the blame tends to fall heavily on the trade unions, then the civil service and least on businesses themselves, except in their obstruction to economic planning, something which has a chapter of its own. Corporatism, collaborating with business and unions is seen as really just a ritual with no genuine impact, though in part it was because no peak organisation really had significant control over their membership. Furthermore as they regularly demonstrate with both parties, plus the Treasury, unable to move from the focus on the pound, UK governments constantly reinforced the strength of those who play the money markets, rather than any large group within the British polity.

Overall, this is an interesting book with useful insights. However, you have to sift carefully as it flip-flops back and forth through the topics and breaks off to be rude to other historians. Added to that, despite showing that the adversarial politics had little impact on the economy, especially beyond the immediate installation of a new government, because of the series it was in, they feel obliged to come back to that topic repeatedly, often muddying the waters in terms of actual political and economic analysis.

'Who Saved Natal?' by Colin Bender

This is a very niche, local history book about the harbour of Durban. As the only feasible port on the south-east coast of Africa, sitting on the western side of Indian Ocean which can be incredibly turbulent, there was a long drive from the 1840s to the 1900s to establish a proper harbour and reduce the numerous shipwrecks along the coast. Unfortunately the nature of the currents meant sand was being constantly being deposited at the mouth of the lagoon on which Durban was built. Ships trying to cross the ever-shifting sand bar often run aground. The issue became greater as the size of shipping increased and Natal became even more important with the gold finds in the interior and the Anglo-Boer Wars.

Through letters, reports and charts from the time, the book shows the constant failure of schemes and the intense hostility between various port engineers and local government about removing the bar. For decads it was believed that by creating longer and longer sea walls the tide as it came out of the lagoon could be strengthened and so scour away the bar. This never worked despite the vast expense and creation of quarries and railways to help with the walls' construction. Eventually dredger technology improved to allow constant dredging even in the rough seas along the coast and this solved the problem finally, allowing Durban to become a major port, though really only effective more than sixty years after it was first needed.

This is a very niche book and is unlikely to be of interest unless you are particularly fascinated by harbour engineering of the past or in the local history of Durban and the rather nasty and foolish, dogmatic men who oversaw the continued failures to successfully provide a safe harbour there. 

The Books I Read In January

Fiction

'It Walks By Night' by John Dickson Carr

I only found this Dickson Carr book recently. It was his first published novel (the British Library version I read also includes a short story he had printed in a college magazine) coming out in 1930. Whereas the books by him that I read last year, 'She Died A Lady' (1943) https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2025/10/the-books-i-read-in-october.html and 'Till Death Do Us Part' (1944) https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-books-i-read-in-december.html were almost exemplars of 'Golden Age' crime novels set in Britain, this has a very different feel. It is set in Paris of the 1920s and features Henri Bencolin, a juge d'instruction, which anyone who watched the 'Spiral' ['Engrenages'] (broadcast 2005-20) knows, rather than the police, play a major role in France in investigations. He featured in five of Dickson Carr's novels. The novel is told, however, from the perspective of Jeff Marle, a young American friend of Bencolin's and he is aided by Austrian psychiatrist Dr. Grafenstein.

Dickson Carr was very much influenced by the work of fellow US author Edgar Allan Poe and his 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' (1841) similarly set in Paris. In fact Poe's influence goes deeper because, as the title suggests, this is not really a detective novel but more a Gothic horror one. This can be seen from the outset as the murder victim, the Duc de Saligny, is killed by being beheaded in a card room of a seedy though expensive Paris night club which is also a front for drug dealing. It is a locked room mystery which was a common approach for Dickson Carr.

 As I have noted before, Dickson Carr was very good at describing the scenes in which his stories were set though in this book it is often to give an air of sinister settings and a feeling of impending doom, which he does well, once you accept this is not a typical detective story. The sense of preordained death and misery is further developed by the fact that Bencolin seems to know what is going to happen in advance and at the end has all the answers yet fails to reveal them as the investigation continues. This seems to have come from the gimmick the publishers introduced in that the final section of the novel was sealed and if they had not broken the seal readers could return their edition for a refund. However, reading right through, it does make you feel: 'why did he not mention this before?', though admittedly the necessary clues are there and sometimes laid on a little thick.

Two further aspects add to the Gothic feel. While the Volstead Act which introduced Prohibition in the USA in 1920 is mentioned, we also pick up on the very strong US opposition to narcotics at the time with legislation in 1909 and 1924. Characters believe that the smoking of marijuana would kill the user within five years and in the meantime permanently distort their sense of self and make them see hallucinations. I am no supporter of even 'soft' drugs, but am aware that the effects are not as severe as shown here. European countries of the time had a much greater tolerance of drug abuse, in part because of the range of narcotics consumed by First World War soldiers. Drugs turn up quite regularly in both Sherlock Holmes stories (which Conan Doyle was publishing as late as 1927) and Agatha Christie novels. In this novel the narcotic abuse is also linked over to the psychoanalytical aspects, especially around questions of identity. Thus we have a context in which characters, especially women, are in a deadly hallucinatory state at times, uncertain of who they and the people around them, are.

This is a different read to other books in the British Library series that I have read. I am not a fan of horror and this is effectively a psychological horror book which seems hemmed in by strong views of the time. The publisher's gimmick also rather distorts the book making it feel even less realistic, but perhaps realism was not what Dickson Carr was seeking, rather this rather nightmare-like context in which no-one can really be certain of anything around them.

Perhaps it is unsurprising that many of these elements are found in the short story at the end, 'The Shadow of the Goat' (1926). This features Bencolin but really comes over very much like an episode of 'Jonathan Creek' (broadcast 1997-2016) in which a supposedly impossible, demonic like disappearance is explained. It is not bad.

'Lies, Damned Lies and History' by Jodi Taylor

It has been more than 45 years since I have abandoned reading a book, but I came very close with this one. It is the seventh book in the Chronicles of St. Mary's time-travelling series and from almost the outset I have found dealing with the erratic tone of the novels, difficult. They go between what I have termed 'jolly hockey sticks' almost humour of a British educational institution with harsh tragedy. This one takes that right up to the limit. I guess Taylor felt that despite all the deaths and life-changing injuries inflicted on her characters she had to raise the jeopardy level as the series continued. However, it is incredibly bleak and exudes immense hopelessness that you quickly want to distance yourself from. Only a convenient deus ex machina stops this book effectively becoming a psychological and even physical horror, given it is dealing with a heavily pregnant woman.

Yes, in this novel, the protagonist, Max is pregnant. This has minimal impact on the dangers she is thrust into. As one character noted a couple of novels back the St. Mary's Institute is largely staffed with incompetent people who put themselves and quite often history as we know it, at risk. While Taylor seems to battle in deciding what kind of novel she is writing, her strength does lie in her portrayals of the historic incidents that her characters visit. The series would have been better if these had formed larger parts of the novels as with them she really shows her abilities and raises fascinating questions about what went on. They, unfortunately, feature as little more than 'episodes'. Yes, it it is legitimate to say that the novels are more about the development of the protagonist as she moves from being a very immature young woman (though her age is not clear in the early books given she already has a doctorate) to a more accomplished, caring but still incompetent woman somewhere in her thirties.

The first visit in this novel is to a hilltop fort in 6th Century Wales where the people, aided by the man who effectively is remembered as King Arthur, fight against Saxon attackers. The location and the risks are well described. The way the male members of the St. Mary's party avoid having to fight and thus risking altering history, is ingenious. The jeopardy is well done and I really thought we were going to see a step-up in these books. The giving of a sword to a local hermit, brings in a mystical element which has not been present before. Coming back to modern times as is typical St. Mary's alerts its parent university, the fictional University of Thirsk so they can locate the sword and 'discover' it. However, this leads to a series of disasters in the area and Max and her friends steal the sword back. This gets them all set back in their careers and Max simply put on mundane duties for much of the book ahead of her maternity leave.

There is another fascinating trip back in time when the disgraced team travel to 1216 to see what they can recover from the crown jewels that King John supposedly lost in the Wash so it can be discovered by Thirsk bringing such wealth and prominence as to restore St. Mary's in its favour. There is a great scene in which we see a tidal surge crashing out of the Wash. Realising they cannot retrieve anything from the chaos it leaves, they go back further to see what they can grab earlier, almost like the 'Time Bandits' (1981).

Eventually restored to some standing within the institute, Max moves steadily to her maternity leave. However, leaving on her final day she is abducted and put into an utterly impossible situation in which she will be compelled to prostitute herself in some barren unknown past or abandon her child. This marks the return of Clive Ronan, the prime antagonist of these novels though he has been quiet for a while. I know Taylor wants to make him see a genuine threat but she goes far too far for what is supposedly packaged as a 'jolly' book and moves into the realm of the torture porn movies like the 'Saw' (2004-23) series. I do really think this book should have carried a warning. I am uncertain now if I will read any more in the series even though I own three more of them.

'Sharpe's Assassin' by Bernard Cornwell

With 'Sharpe's Storm' coming out late last year, this was now the penultimate of the Sharpe novels I had not read. It was published in 2021 and is set in 1815, with Sharpe moving on from the location of the Battle of Waterloo to chase down remnants of Napoleon's forces and then for the majority of the book hunting those seeking to assassinate the Duke of Wellington in Paris while he is part of establishing the occupation and the post-Napoleonic system. This is an interesting period to pick as in the older Sharpe novels, all we had seen of him after becoming a lieutenant colonel for the battle, was set in 1820-21 in 'Sharpe's Devil' (1992) by which time Lucille, his French wife, is dead and the wars in Europe are long over. Chasing after the Fraternity secret society allows Cornwell to show us early 19th Century Paris with all the left-overs from Napoleon's reign and also aspects like the vineyards contained within the city walls one of which proves to be the base of Wellington's would-be assassins.

As usual there are annoying, misguided officers, but Sharpe now in command of a British battalion is able to act on a larger scale. Saying that he does draw on his remaining riflemen and there are some great scenes fighting across Paris and then a confrontation at the vineyard with his final antagonist which did, however, remind me of the duel in 'Rob Roy' (1995). It was also good to see him enjoying time with Lucille. While Teresa Moreno his Spanish wife killed in December 1813 is a wonderful guerilla leader, it is nice we see him enjoying his relationship with Lucille who treats him far better than his uppity British wife Jane Gibbons. As there is no formal divorce and Jane, in theory, lives to 1844 Sharpe's other marriages are bigamous. Overall I enjoyed this book and found it engaging.

This was an interesting development for Sharpe and the book is better handled than 'Sharpe's Command' (2023) which I read in December: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-books-i-read-in-december.html  I do hope that Cornwell's editors took a firmer hand with 'Sharpe's Storm' to avoid the inconsistencies that so weakened Sharpe's Command'. I will have to see once the book reaches a charity shop near me.

'Excursion to Tindari' by Andrea Camilleri

This is the fifth book in the Montalbano series and is a straight forward police procedural. The only hiccough seems to be the inconsistency in the inspector's relationship with his deputy, Mimi Augello. I do not know if this is due to the translation, but whereas in the first three books Montalbano seemed to have contempt for the man and there was often friction between them, by the time of  'The Voice of the Violin' (1997) their relationship appeared to have sharply shifted. This is especially notable as the books follow each other tightly in terms of chronology feeling to cover a matter of weeks at most. Anyway, in this book Motalbano is so enamoured with Augello that he tries to stop his leaving for Sicily to live with his fiancée, a police officer, in Pavia. This is because he cannot envisage diminishing his team. His scheme is not too difficult as Augello is a womaniser and his boss engineers for an attractive young woman he has encountered in this book's cases to become friendly with Augello.

As with a number of the Montalbano books, there are two cases which seem unconnected but ultimately are locked together. One is the disappearance of an insular elderly couple, the Griffos, on the eponymous coach excursion to Tindari. The other is the shooting dead of a young man, a Nenè Sanfilippo, at the entrance to the apartment block where the Griffos lived.  He is into pornography and one of his sexual encounters provides the link between him, the Griffos and a third person.

This novel was written in 2000 and as seen in the previous book, technology is becoming part of police work. Not only is the user of scanners important but the horrendous crime behind the fate of the three victims is permitted by the use of a remote building that is well equipped with phone lines and internet connections. As before, Montalbano tries to navigate his way around the mafia who seem to favour him for their revelations. It appears that an old don is going to give up his fugitive grandson, but naturally it ends the way most things do with the mafia. This aspect, this helplessness in the face of the plans of others is added to by this floundering that Montalbano feels faced with what crimes the new technologies may permit.

There are the usual elements of the inspector eating a wonderful array of Sicilian cuisine, predominantly sea food, his long-distance relationship with Livia and the return of his ambivalent one with Ingrid who tends to act as a dea ex machina. In this novel she happens to know one of the women who features in one of Sanfilippo's videos that provides the final link in the chain. Overall this is a solid police procedural novel which is clever in its mechanics and makes good use of the Sicilian landscape and the food of the island.

'The Hand of Oberon' by Roger Zelanzy

Like I imagine quite a few people of my generation I did not come to Zelanzy's Amber stories through the books but through the Dungeons and Dragons module, 'Dungeon Module X2: Castle Amber (Château d'Amberville)' (1981) by Tom Moldvay. This makes use of the Amber family from Zelanzy's novels, but puts them into the Averoigne world of another author, Clark Ashton Smith. Anyway, this is the fourth book in Zelanzy's series. I read the first one in the series, 'Nine Princes in Amber' (1970), many years ago, so had some idea of that context.

The books of this pentalogy follow Corwin one of the numerous princes and princesses of Amber, a medieval style world that sits alongside our own which Amberites as they are known refer to as Shadow. In Shadow they are able run versions of themselves and they have different abilities to manipulate. There are also other realms they can visit including Rebma a mirror world of Amber under the sea, Tir-na Nog'th a sky city accessible when the Moon is shining on it and the Courts of Chaos. These things probably seemed a bit fresher in the 1970s than the tropes they have hardened into. These worlds are defined by the Pattern a kind of labyrinth that you find in European cathedrals. If someone from Amber is able to walk it they can achieve certain powers, notably attunement with the Jewel of Judgment [sic] which controls weather and has other powers.

In the first book, Corwin awakes in 1960s USA with a memory loss and it takes time for him to find out who are what he is before becoming embroiled in family feuds. The stories focus on the struggle for the throne of King Oberon, the father of all the princes and princesses who had disappeared at the opening of the series. Various siblings form factions to try to seize or protect the throne for others. A lot of this has gone in the preceding three books. Much of this book is about Corwin wandering around trying to untangle the various conspiracies. Chapter 2 also has an extensive info dump that recaps the entirety of the plots of the previous three novels. This feels really levered in. It reminded me of US TV documentaries in which after an advert break you get an extensive recap of everything that had been covered just minutes before.

The first half of the 188-page book is very slow. If you were someone who had read the preceding books then you would not need all this detail, except in a few places where deception had taken place. There is a lot of dialogue but really the book only starts going in the second half when Corwin in league with various of his brothers and a sister, and the neutrality of some, goes in search of his brother Brand who is seeking to erase the Pattern by spilling Amber prince blood on it so he can establish new worlds dominated by him. There are some clever encounters both on the Pattern and in Tir-na Nog'th. The set-up for the final book 'The Courts of Chaos' (1978), which I have a copy of, is soundly made with the revelation of who Oberon has been disguised as.

Overall, there are elements to this book which are decent fantasy and at the time must have seemed fresher still. In some ways Zelanzy (a little like Martin) has tied himself in knots by trying to be very clever with the family feuding. This would be less of a problem if he did not feel obliged to untangle every last thread for the reader before pushing on with the narrative. I think this fourth book suffers more than the others because it is very much a linking book to the the climax.

'Dictator' by Robert Harris

This is the final book in Harris's trilogy which charts the life of the Roman lawyer, orator and politician Cicero. The previous two books were 'Imperium' (2006) https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2020/06/books-i-read-in-june.html and 'Lustrum' (2009) https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-books-i-read-in-july.html This one covers the final decades of Cicero's life in which the Roman Republic he worked so hard to maintain was effectively ended with a civil war and Julius Caesar becoming a corrupt though magnanimous dictator before he was assassinated. This was followed by a second civil war among Caesar's adopted son and close associates of Caesar. Like a lot of people I was probably familiar with Caesar's assassination in isolation without all the context building up to it, let alone what followed before his adopted son took over and became Emperor Augustus, condemning Rome to being a dictatorial empire until its final end, in Western Europe, at least, 400 years later.

This book is told through the eyes of Tiro, Cicero's genuine secretary who was accomplished himself and developed short hand. This perspective allows Roberts to show not only the very complex politics of the times with the rise and fall of a string of politicians and generals, but also the personal side in Cicero's life and the tragedies of his period in exile, collapsing marriage, the mistreatment and early death of his daughter, his ill-advised second marriage and the fluctuating attitudes of his son, brother and nephew, who were supporters of Julius Caesar. He does capable portrayals of leading men like Pompey, Caesar and Octavian who in their different ways relied on Cicero. There are also the less familiar individuals like Clodius who caused so much harm and Milo who saved Cicero at various times. 

Thus, though we know the outcome, Roberts does very well in bringing tension and real drama to the story as it unfolds. He provides ample information on the Roman world and its political churn but using Tiro he is able to put this into a form which the reader can follow without difficulty nor turning it into a history or politics lecture. Tiro's life advances though he keeps close to Cicero. He is freed and given a farm in thanks for all his efforts. We also get to see inside not just the temples and public buildings but a whole range of homes of people of different wealth levels.

Perhaps reading this book in 2026 was the wrong thing to do. At regular points in the slow but steady climb of Julius Caesar to dictatorship you see him and his supporters using tactics to distort and ultimately destroy the semi-democratic process of the Roman Republic which could have come right from current headlines about the USA. The risks those trying to resist the steps he takes, also remain the same, though in fact these days the person is liable to be shot dead rather than sent into exile for some years.

I do heartily recommend the entire trilogy. Some might worry that will be very dry, almost academic in nature, but these books show Harris's skill at its peak, weaving excitement and drama into real life historical events to make what unfolds as tense and engaging as any of the best thrillers. 

Non-Fiction

'Putin's Killers' by Amy Knight

This is an interesting if rather galling account of the political assassinations carried out on the orders of Vladimir Putin. It was published in 2017, but my edition was an updated one from 2019 which had been extended to cover the attempted murder of Sergei Skripal and his daughter using the Novichok nerve chemical in Salisbury in March 2018. They survived but Briton, Dawn Sturgess died as a result of the attempt and her friend, Charlie Rowley suffering severe illness. Knight shows the historical background of Russian political assassinations and looks at Putin's career before going through various cases, perhaps the best known being Alexander Litvinenko also murdered in Britain this time using Polonium-210. 

Knight shows how patterns are repeated with typically Chechens being assigned and/or blamed for the various murders. Putin promises to catch the killers of his opponents, but the Russian legal system is very slow to do anything about the cases and eventually finds scapegoats. Many of those who are employed to do the killings, as the Skripal and Litvinenko cases showed, are incompetent. This demonstrates that the Russian government is not really concerned if their part in the killings is recognised, and in fact it adds to the intimidating factor of carrying them out. Like many semi-dictators, Putin is very petulant and is infuriated by any attacks on his policies notably the brutal war in Chechnya but also of any he feels has betrayed him. Despite the publication of this book, the killings have continued as can be seen in the case of lawyer Alexei Navalny who died in prison in 2024 from maltreatment following a sham trial.

Knight who has written extensively on contemporary Russian politics maintains a quiet optimism throughout this book, that Putin will be overthrown and that those who murdered for him would be brought to justice. However, it is now 9 years since the book first came out and nothing has changed. The approaches she shows here in detail continue and Putin's position appears under no threat. 

Knight's writing style is very brisk with lots of sub-sections. At first I found this a little too speedy a style, but as I progressed I realised given all the names she mentions and the twists of the various assassination set-ups and aftermaths, it helps the reader keep a handle on all the detail without becoming bogged down in it.

'Muddling Through. Power, Politics and the Quality of Government in Postwar Britain' by Peter Hennessy

Similar to 'The Secret State' (2002) which I read in December: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-books-i-read-in-december.html rather than new material, this is a collection of output from Peter Hennessy in other media such as radio programmes and lectures. However, much of it lacks even the linking theme that 'The Secret State' and is rather a 'muddle' to coin the phrase. Some of it is very esoteric. There is a whole chapter which simply recounts a discussion between the MPs Tony Benn and Enoch Powell on their ideas for the royal prerogative in the parliamentary system. Given that this book was first published in 1996 and the issue of the royal prerogative was to feature notably for legislation of the Blair government which came into office the following year, it was a missed opportunity to explore the issue better than simply hearing the views of two opposing old politicians. 

There is some interesting stuff on what might happen in terms of procedure with a hung parliament which was quite expected in the mid-1990s but did not really come about until 2010. There is a peon to the British Civil Service delivered as a lecture at the Civil Service College. Perhaps Hennessy was right to push its importance as though it was abolished in 2012, the National School of Government was established in 2021 with a campus at the former college's Sunningdale site. There is more material about Britain's relationship with nuclear weapons which covers a lot of the ground (sometimes in the same words) as these issues are handled in 'Never Again' (1993) and 'The Secret State'. The section on Britain seeking its role on the global stage and a study of the Suez Conflict of 1956 is better and has some interesting insight.

The best bit of the book are the vignettes of all the post-war Prime Ministers. As is typical for Hennessy he draws a great deal on the comments of those who worked with those people, and in a number of cases the former premiers themselves. Though short, these provide insightful essays of their periods in office and the personal contexts around those. The one on Margaret Thatcher is very rushed and Hennessy shows his distaste for her from the outset. There are no quotes from her colleagues or civil servants who served her. Given he wrote that piece in 1992, soon after she had left office, he probably felt it was too soon to really analyse her 11 years as Prime Minister.

Back in the late 1990s I heard someone very negatively compare Hennessy's work to that of his university colleague Donald Sassoon whose latest book 'Revolutions' came out just in November. Having met both men, I certainly would never say a warm word for Sassoon as a person. However, having read four Hennessy books over the past few months I can see why he is criticised for his historical writing. Yes, he is able to access aspects of British politics which otherwise would be unknown and he is a very good interviewer. Yet it seems that he 'rechews' the good elements he gets so much that unless you are unfamiliar with his body of work you might see them repeated multiple times. I now feel that his work is less than the sum of its parts, though there are 'gems' in those parts. He is also a great radio broadcaster and his programmes, many of which are available via BBC I-Player do show off his particular skills to the best and in a way this book, apart from the prime ministers' sections, does not really do.

The Books I Read In December

This year I read 60 books. In 2024 I read 59 and in 2023, 53 books, but I am getting a feel for the quantity I will get through, a little more than equivalent to one book per week. This year the longest book I read was 851 pages. In fact, it and the next two longest at 764 pages and 682 pages, were all non-fiction and about British politics. The shortest book I read was only 111 pages long but there were three others under 150 pages, one of which I read in a day.

Fiction

'Till Death Do Us Part' by John Dickson Carr

Published under Dickson Carr's real name in 1944, this novel, another in the British Library Classic Crime series, is actually set in an archetypal English village before the war had broken out. Though an American it is clear that Dickson Carr adored rural England. His at times almost poetic descriptions of the sights of the village at different times of the day add a richness to the novel not found in all detective stories of the time. As with 'She Died A Lady' (1943) which I read in October: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2025/10/the-books-i-read-in-october.html the village he conjures up, in this case Six Ashes (perhaps influenced by Sevenoaks?) is an idealised - though feasible - English setting, not only in terms of its geography but also of the local characters, such as the squire at the manor, the doctor, the banker, etc. The only American perspective which stands out is when through a character he has to lecture Britons in general about how practical window screens to keep out insects are, despite their absence in most British houses.

There is a good psychological element to this story. The protagonist is a playwright, Richard Markham,who writes popular mystery plays. He has fallen in love with a newcomer to the village, Lesley Grant and becomes engaged to her. However, at the village fete held in the grounds of Ashe Manor, a fortune teller, apparently in fact criminologist Sir Harvey Gilman reveals to Markham that Grant has killed three men she was in relationships via a locked-room approach employing cyanide. Clearly Markham is torn in considering whether his fiancée is a murderess. Modern readers are likely to fall into thinking we are into 'Black Widow' (1987) movie territory, especially when Cynthia Drew a close friend of Markham's also seems to be antagonistic towards Grant and appears in apparently suspicious locations.

Cleverly Dickson Carr uses our expectations of how different types of individual in such a setting will behave to mislead us. I have to be careful with spoilers, but eventually it becomes apparent that Grant may not be the only one concealing a very different past. This book is the 15th in Dickson Carr's Dr. Gideon Fell series of novels and Fell does turn up quite late in the book. He is obese and you tend to think he is modelled on Ernst Gennat (1880-1939), the prominent (and overweight) Berlin detective active 1925-39. In addition, he seems quite superfluous. We already have Superintendent David Hadley on the scene. The tension between the two and with other professionals perhaps is realistic but at times feels laboured as if the various running around between various houses especially at nighttime. At the end you feel Fell has held back intentionally on providing the solution until the time was right for him to be able to be seen to trump both Markham and Hadley and gain the most kudos.

Overall, for at times challenging expectations, adding the psychological element of a protagonist in love with a perhaps murderer and a beautiful portrayal of an inter-war English village, this is worth a read, but be patient towards the end when things seem to begin to lag unnecessarily. Since reading this novel I have found a copy of Dickson Carr's first crime novel which I aim to read early in the new year.

'What Could Possibly Go Wrong?' by Jodi Taylor

This is the sixth book in the Chronicles of St. Mary's and follows pretty much the same formula as the previous ones. The heroine Max, now married to the Leon Farrell, due to her injuries in previous novels has a job swap to 'lighter duties' training up five new recruits to the institute. It is also revealed that when she was transferred into an alternate timeline from her original one in 'A Second Chance' (2014) https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/04/the-books-i-read-in-april.html and officially renamed 'Lucy' she has come to a world where the USA suddenly became an authoritarian dictatorship and Britons trapped there had to be smuggled out to safety.

The incessant mistakes and tragedies that the staff of St. Mary's suffer does become rather tiresome. As one character increasingly points out, they are actually pretty useless at their jobs and regularly put themselves unnecessarily in harm's way which does lead to deaths. In turn the deaths bring in a jarring element to the 'jolly hockey sticks' tone that otherwise is prominent in the novels, rather the way the torture scenes jar with the overall tone of the Flashman books (1969-2005). The strongest parts are Taylor's portrayals of the historic locations that the crews visit. In this one they go to the Valley of the Kings in 18th dynasty Egypt;  a site of Homo Sapiens - Neanderthal interaction in stone age times; to meet with Ancient Greek historian Herodotus - very different from what is expected - and have a new run-in with the Time Police; to witness the execution of Joan of Arc and the Battle of Bosworth Field. In each location damaging mistakes are made and in one this leads as usually happens in these books, to the death of a crew member, in fact in this one there is an extra death. 

As in other recent books there is also a mystery around who has betrayed the Institute to their antagonists. This again proves to be two people, one very unexpected and the other you might work out early on. This sub-plot and what it reveals about people suspected of treachery, adds an interesting element to the novel. I have two more books in the main series to read and then two short story anthologies. I do hope these move away from the set pattern of the books so far which has never really fully settled down into what it feels it should be doing.

'Sharpe's Escape' by Bernard Cornwell

About 20 years ago I read all of Cornwell's Sharpe books that had been published up until 2003 - 'Sharpe's Havoc' (2003). I read them in chronological order rather than the order in which they had been published, starting in 1981. Recently, however, I realised that I had missed out this one published in 2007. In terms of history, this book is set in 1810 and comes between 'Sharpe's Gold' (1981) and 'Sharpe's Fury' (2007) - one which I have not yet got a copy of. 

Despite publishing the books over what is now a 44-year period ('Sharpe's Storm' is imminently due for publication), Cornwell has been very adept at keeping his character correct for the time period the book is set in. In this one there are callbacks to a grim scene in 'Sharpe's Prey' (2001) set in Copenhagen in 1807. Captain Sharpe and his usual band of riflemen with additional redcoat musketeers are part of the British retreat down Portugal to the refuge behind the Lines of the Torres Vedras. These were the vast defensive structure Wellington set up to defend Lisbon which led to the defeat of the French in Portugal and the slow progress of British and allied forces towards France.

This novel moves along briskly, with all the usual elements you would expect in a Sharpe novel. His very common background leads to friction with upper class officers, but he benefits from Major Hogan and behind him Wellington himself, who ensure that he can weather the behaviour of these men, notably in this novel, the commander of Sharpe's battalion Lieutenant Colonel William Lawford who is trying to bring on his young brother-in-law by effectively putting him into Sharpe's place in command of the Light Company. As it is following a well-told account of the Battle of Bussaco, Sharpe and Sergeant Harper set with the task of finding billets and destroying supplies in Coimbra so they cannot be used by the advancing French. 

There is, as usual, personal tension between Sharpe and a treacherous Portuguese major and his explicitly criminal brother. As the British march on, Sharpe has to escape Coimbra along with Harper, an English governess - who develops greatly in the escape and a Portuguese captain Sharpe has met before when were both were lieutenants taking part in the British retreat from Oporto in 1809 ('Sharpe's Havoc' (2003)). 

Despite the formulaic nature of many of the Sharpe scenarios, Cornwell is successful in making the stories different. Though we know already that Sharpe is alive still in 1821, there is an effective sense of jeopardy as they get clear of Coimbra through ancient sewers and seek a boat to take them downstream to the Lines of Torres Vedras, then to avoid being killed as they come up to them, themselves. I have a couple of other post-2003 Sharpe novels to read but am coming at them in chronological order.

'Sharpe's Command' by Bernard Cornwell

Following a break after 2007, in 2021 Cornwell began publishing a few more Sharpe novels. As with many authors with series these days, these were 'fill-in' books in between books in the series that had been published earlier. This is one of those books being set in May 1812 around the Bridge at Almaraz across the River Tagus in Spain. It sits between 'Sharpe's Company' (1982) at the Siege of Badajoz 'Sharpe's Sword' (1983) set during the Salamanca Campaign.

The error around his rank in this novel has been picked up. In 'Sharpe's Company' he was restored to the rank of captain after being refused that rank permanently in January 1812, earlier in that novel, due to a lack of a captain's vacancy. This was despite him being promoted to the rank locally back in July 1809 ('Sharpe's Eagle' (1981)). He is raised only to brevet major late in 1812 ('Sharpe's Enemy' (1984)) and then only due to the intervention of the Prince Regent. Despite these details and me previously complimenting Cornwell's success at continuity, there is confusion even just within this novel about Sharpe's rank with some calling him captain and some calling him major. At first I thought that was intentional to reflect how other officers saw him but now it seems to have been an error.

The attack on the bridge at Almaraz was an actual raid carried out behind French lines. The novel naturally involves actual people notably General Rowland Hill who commanded it, but also Lieutenant Love an artillery officer who with a team were able to shell the small French fort on the northern bank after the pontoon bridge across it had been broken. The sergeant of the 50th Regiment who killed a French officer with his half-pike also features. Other fictional characters are woven in to make it a Sharpe book. There is a treacherous Spanish partisan who is killed in a brutal duel by Sharpe's second wife, Spanish partisan leader, Teresa Moreno 'La Aguja' who features quite extensively in this novel. The riflemen under Sharpe's command play a leading part not only in the main battle but also in skirmishes leading up to it when they are carrying out correspondence.

The story of this action is complicated even historically with an assortment of forts on both sides of the Tagus to be taken into consideration. Cornwell does his best but it is at times a little bewildering about where everyone is going and in which direction they are firing. There is a map of the region at the start but a closer-in one of the pontoon bridge and the forts defending it would have been really useful. While Cornwell does describe the battles successfully and really keeps up the tension, the fact that twice Sharpe and his band are only saved by mounted charges by partisans suggests he was beginning to run out of ideas. Lieutenant Love's character seems to change sharply from when he first appears in the book to when he reappears at the end, calling on St. Barbara at every possible occasion whereas earlier he had been much more passive. It is always a challenge for authors to fictionalise genuine historical characters that we actually do not know much about, but it is a shame that Cornwell could not maintain consistency with Love.

I have 'Sharpe's Assassin' (2021) to read and given it was published two years before this one, though set three years later, I hope it still shows the complete skill that Cornwell once had or at least he used an editor to call out when he made mistakes or when what he was writing had lost its 'edge'.

'The Voice of the Violin' by Andrea Camilleri

This is the fourth book in the Montabalno series and is a brisk, straight forward detective novel. A woman, Michela Licalzi is found naked following both vaginal and anal sexual intercourse at a remote farmhouse she is having done up. There is no trace of her belongings beside a bath towel and her car which one of Montalbano's staff crashed into. The story follows solid detection work going through Licalzi's husband and her lovers. Ironically the prime clue to the motive is in the title rather than anything sexual. It is to reach this that Montalbano does solid detection, though at times bending the law such as breaking into the dead woman's house before her death has even been reported.

As before, Montalbano is regularly at odds with his colleagues notably his deputy Mimi Augello who in fact is more honorable than much online commentary suggests. The police switchboard operator Officer Catarella is portrayed as a buffoon added to by the translator, Stephen Sartarelli rendering his speech like a comic version of a New York Italian. There are fortunately signs towards the end of the novel, that Catarella is maturing, which is a relief. At times these points of friction seem really laboured so the interactions grate. It feels there is a lack of reason for Montalbano's behaviour especially when he can be charming to others, notably the old woman, Signora Clementina who has featured before and is becoming a kind of civilian assistant to Montalbano, for example, telephoning in tip-offs to the police that the inspector cannot be associated with.

There are the usual regular references to Sicilian food specialities. The inspector never seems to eat anything very plain and if it was not for his regular swimming you could imagine him becoming very overweight. The changes in his personal relationship with Livia from the previous novel 'The Snack Thief' (1996) are not followed up and indeed the 'happy family' expectation of that novel is terminated by François insisting he remains with the family he was fostered with for his own security especially in seeing the boys he is fostered with as his own brothers. I had thought that story line to be an unlikely one, but it also seems very brusque to abandon it this way. There are hints that Montalbano is going to have an affair with Anna, a friend of Michela's living nearby. It does not develop far in this novel and it will have to be seen if it is taken further or not. Montalbano has proven in earlier novels that he can have a platonic relationship even with a beautiful woman. 

Overall, despite this difficulties, the novel is one of the better ones in the series through keeping to a proper detective story rather than going off down more outré paths.

'Science Fiction,The Great Years' ed. by Carol and Frederik Polk

This is a collection published originally in 1973 (my edition is from 1977) which collected together seven US 'pulp' science fiction stories published 1934-53. As you progress through it you see that much of the criteria for selection has been due to the Polks knowing the authors personally and in one case one, 'Wings of the Lightning Land' was written by James MacCreigh, a pseudonym of Frederik Polk himself. With this collection I did note as I did with 'The World of Null-A' (1940) by A.E. Vogt which I read in October https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2025/10/the-books-i-read-in-october.html things that to a science fiction reader in the mid-20th Century would have seemed exciting or thought provoking, now can have a tendency to seem old hat as the points they revolved around have become so assimilated into Western culture in the meantime.

I first started reading this book in 1983 but abandoned it part way through the first story. This is '... And Then There Were None' published in 1951 by Eric Frank Russell is the longest in the book and I can see why I soon tired of it. It is very off-putting, because at 72 pages it is too long, but above all it is painfully smug. A diplomatic spaceship from Earth's extensive empire lands on a colonised planet which has had no visits from the rest of human space in 300 years. They try to find a leader even at a local level to talk to about the planet but keep running up against smug non-compliance from the population. It slowly and painfully transpires after a lot of these irritating encounters that the people feel they follow the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi and thus keep harping on 'I won't' and 'mind your own business', which they believe is an essence of Gandhi's viewpoint. This seems a typically American perspective. 

They settlers have also adopted what we now call a 'gift economy' and as it is used at some local levels nowadays it is not as unusual to the reader as it would in 1951. The American angle comes through them being called 'obs' from 'obligations' which can be 'put' on to people and then shifted from person to person before someone 'kills' them. The self-righteousness of the settlers gets tedious very quickly and the apparent 'twist' of many of the crew deserting the ship to remain on the planet is no surprise. All of this is laid on so heavily, you can see how poorly Russell thought of his readers.

'The Liberation of Earth' (1953) by William Tenn, a pseudonym for an academic of the time, is much crisper and I feel better shows what good science fiction short stories can do. It is narrated by a survivor living on an Earth whose very shape has been distorted by repeated invasions by two warring sides in an alien war. They have used Earth as a base for this conflict with no concern for the impact on the humans (and presumably animals and plants) that live on it, harmed by the constructions and the by-products of their weapons. As well as distorting Earth a lot of its air and water are used up or contaminated. As the Polks comment in the introduction, in the early 1970s it would have been seen as a critique of the Vietnam War but it is easy to see how Tenn thought it up in the context of the legacy of colonialism which was very apparent in the mid-1950s. The portrayal of the alien invasions as different 'liberations', even from the humans' perspective, is a nice touch.

'Old Faithful' (1934) by Raymond Z. Gallun is primarily written from the perspective of an inhabitant of Mars, 774, looking down on Earth and developing signalling with an astronomer there. Condemned to have his life ended to conserve resources on Mars 774 boldly piggy backs on a comet passing close to both Mars and Earth to reach his correspondent. It is nice to see aliens not bent on invasion and colonisation, but like many humans, having an interest in knowing more about their solar system. Gallun does very well in envisaging an alien life form which, for example, does not hear but simply feels vibrations. It is also unlike much on Earth except large worms and this does seem to be a bit of a trend of portraying the alien in science fiction of the time. I guess a worm is also seen as inherently non-threatening. It is a sweet story about the character's endeavours and its hope for its own single offspring. Ironically exploration on Mars in the 21st Century suggests Gallun's portrayal of water on the planet might not have been far from the truth though back many millions of years before humans appeared on Earth.

'Placet is a Crazy Place' (1946) by Frederic Brown has an interesting context. It features a planet that loops around in a binary star system. Light slows down as a result to on the passage people on the planet can see a spectral projection of the planet effectively coming towards them which naturally causes concern. It is also a romance in that the protagonist resigns from his post only to find that a woman he has long been attracted to is just arriving at the base. It is quite a light story but interesting for the astronomical situation it explores.

'Wings of the Lightning Land' (1941) by James MacCreigh [Frederik Polk] is quite a straight forward space adventure when two explorers from a base on the Moon are transported across the universe to an alien planet where they manage to sort out what is going wrong with the deserted city they find there. The jeopardy seems genuine because we have no sense of whether either of them will survive. Added to that the female narrator suffers from hypothyroidism, known as 'cretinism' at the time the story was written which if unmedicated leads to severe decline in the sufferer's mental condition so that they become unable to cope with complex thinking and communication. Perhaps many light years from her medication, the narrator has a deadline to try to get home before her condition overwhelms her. It is still not that common to see disabled people in science fiction and as a Type 1 diabetic reliant on late 20th Century medication to keep me from suffering a painful death as a matter of course, it is something that always come to mind when I read time travel stories or indeed being stranded somewhere remote whether on Earth or elsewhere. The story is pretty good if rather disjointed at times.

'The Little Black Bag' (1950) by C.M. Kornbluth is a time travel story but only a medical kit from the future is sent back to mid-20th Century USA and helps out an alcoholic doctor due to its easy-to-use very advanced equipment. While it allows him to get back into practice and help out numerous people with a variety of conditions, this being the US health system he is soon pushed into doing cosmetic surgery in order to secure large fees to keep his assistant who is blackmailing him, happy. In that way it reminded me of something like an episode from 'The Twilight Zone' (broadcast 1959-64) or 'Tales of the Unexpected' (broadcast 1979-88). Like the best short stories it handily explores a moral issue bisecting with human nature and has a decent twist.

'A Matter of Form' (1938) by H.L. Gold is a bit of a body shock story. It is set in New York of the time where three bodies of catatonic tramps have been found with signs of recent surgery on them. While at times we see from the point of view of a journalist working on this story and his editor, the main protagonist is a down-and-out college graduate called Wood. He is inveigled into a scheme which turns out to be producing the catatonic men as a result of exchanging consciousnesses between animals and humans with the goal of moving those of ailing wealthy people into younger human bodies. Wood soon finds himself in the body of a collie. Much of the story is an adventure about how he escapes the vivisectionists and with his limited canine abilities draws the attention of the newspapermen to the scandal. Naturally we now think of 'Fluke' (1977) by James Herbert or scenes in 'Mars Attacks' (1996). Perhaps we can also see it in line with 'The Monster of Lake LaMetrie' (1899) by Wardon Allan Curtis which features a full brain transplant or .'The Metamorphosis' (1915) by Franz Kafka which looks at such a situation more from psychological rather surgical aspect. Overall, 'A Matter of Form' is an engaging story on topics of how we might communicate as a dog as well as an adventure of Wood being shot at and chased across New York by the surgeon's gangster associates.

Non-Fiction

'The Secret State. Whitehall and the Cold War' by Peter Hennessy

This book published in 2002 has what I am now seeing as the classic Hennessy style. It is very rhetorical as you would expect from a lecture or a radio programme of the kind Hennessy is well known for. There are personal reminiscences mixed in with numerous asides and quotes from people who were at the heart of the matter being covered. While this also went for 'Whitehall' (1988) and 'Never Again' (1993) both of which I read this year, the rhetorical style is probably more the case with this one as it was founded on four lectures that Hennessy gave. It covers the period that Hennessy refers to as the 'high' Cold War which he sees running 1947-69. In part this is to do with when government documents became available.

The UK adopted the 20-year rule in 2013, so from 1968 when the rule was shortened from 50 years, historians had to wait 30 years to see official documents in the archives. Consequently, in 2002 only those from before 1971 would be available. As it is certain documents are kept closed for longer, up to a maximum of 100 years, including ones concerning atomic and nuclear issues. However, a sub-theme of this book is how Hennessy, his assistants and a set of his students were able to reconstruct a lot of discussions and policies from the documents which were available. Some of these are replicated at length in the book.

The four main themes. First how the British assessed the risk of incidents, perhaps even war, with the USSR in the post-war period. Second the difficult development of a British nuclear deterrent and keeping it up to date as nuclear weaponry quickly evolved going from single aircraft dropped atomic bombs in 1945 to inter-continental ballistic missiles carrying thermonuclear warheads by 1957. Third how especially in the wake of the detection of Fuchs in 1950 and the defections of Burgess and Maclean the following year, steps were taken to filter out traitors from becoming part of the Whitehall 'machine'.

The fourth theme builds on the second and looks at assessments of what the impact would be on the UK if a nuclear war broke out and preparations that could be made. This leads into the final section focused on 'Turnstile' the secret underground base in the Cotswolds to which the rump of UK central government would have retreated. Another coup of Hennessy's was that he and two assistants were permitted to visit the base and take some photos. The book ends with a philosophical discussion of unleashing a nuclear holocaust and the revelation that the continued existence of the UK is indicated officially by the broadcasting of the 'Today' programme on Radio 4 at least once in a week.

This is a brisk but well informed book which, as I have noted before, is perhaps best for a general reader wanting to engage with these topics rather than a scholarly one. It is a shame given that in 2013 official documents dating from 1992 and before were opened, so covering the end of the Cold War, that a follow-up book has not been produced showing how the UK government dealt with things like detente, the invasion of Afghanistan, Reagan's alternating 'evil empire' and then peace talks phases plus the collapse of the Soviet Union. Maybe somewhere one of Hennessy's assistants or former students is working on it, given how infirm Lord Hennessy is now.

The Books I Read In October

Fiction

'The Terracotta Dog' by Andrea Camilleri

Rather like the Rebus books of Ian Rankin, with these Inspector Salvo Montalbano novels, you do feel as if the life of the main character is trundling on when a book is not looking at it and what we get is a kind of 'slice of life' of the character. This is only the second book in the Montalbano series, but his background and connections are so extensive that you feel as if you have come late to his story. As I noted with the 'Shape of Water' (1994) which I read in August https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2025/08/the-books-i-read-in-august.html it is difficult to know where Camilleri is going to go next with his novel. In some ways that is refreshing but at times it is rather bewildering.

This novel opens with Montalbano being asked to fake a raid to arrest a mafia leader who wants to retire from the crime business. This leads to the uncovering of a cave used for the storing of weaponry and then a conspiracy involving supermarket deliveries in order to move these weapons. You would think that this provides sufficient 'meat' for a detective novel. However, even with the mounting murders the ending of this business results in, he goes off down a very different part. At the rear of the cave proves a second previously sealed cave in which are the skeletons of a man and a woman, dating back to the mid-1940s, a collection of coins, a jug which held water and a terracotta dog. Much of the novel is about Montalbano working with elderly people in his area and further afield to find out who this young couple were and the circumstances of their killing. This he does, but it means that the novel is more a historical mystery story rather than a crime novel.

I suppose Camilleri was concerned that his books would simply become about mafia murders. Anyone who has read books by Leonardo Sciascia (another Sicilian author) and Michael Dibdin, knows that even in fiction these crimes are largely insoluble. Thus instead, given his focus on the Sicilian locale he features elements from its modern history in which the murders are apparently as commonplace as rainfall. It does allow him to poke at both the media and the lingering Fascist sympathisers which in his context seem to be surprisingly active, though divided and whinging. This is not a bad story but I felt that the connection from a clearly crime aspect to the historical one made it feel rather strung out and as if the protagonist is so reconciled to murder that current crimes feature little in his mind compared to a mystery from the past.

'The World of Null-A' by A.E. Vogt

It is not unusual to find mid-20th Century science fiction having a real philosophical element to it. This book published in 1940 to great success goes fully onboard with that, envisaging a world society some 500 years into the future which has adopted a totally non-Aristotlean approach to life, the Null-A of the title. This leads it, especially in its colony on terraformed Venus, to have a peaceful society, but one which in this novel is under threat from a wider galactic federation especially those belonging to the eponymous Greatest Empire. The protagonist Gilbert Gosseyn turns out to have two brains though one has not yet been fully activated. It is later revealed that he has been cloned more than once and this explains some of the inconsistencies in his memories, an aspect which reminded me of  'Voice of the Whirlwind' (1987) by Walter Jon Williams who I can easily imagine had read this book. 

Gosseyn becomes wrapped up in a conspiracy to invade Venus and to overthrow the government of Earth. The trouble is, he flicks back and forth between Earth and Venus so much and the small cast of characters are never what they seemed five minutes ago, the whole book gets rather in a knot. The final element about who is the 'puppetmaster' behind either the plot or trying to prevent it, is better handled. However, between the philosophising and the constant twists, after a while despite it being a short book (221 pages in my edition) you are glad when it comes to an end. I have read quite a lot of science fiction from the era, but this one tries rather too hard.

'Besieged' by Richard Foreman

This book leads straight on from 'Siege' (2019) which I read last month: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2025/09/the-books-i-read-in-september.html It is only 146 pages long and you feel that these two books could have been combined into a single novel, indeed the who trilogy might have been better off that way. Foreman gallops along in his writing and while the pace is appreciated, taking time on a number of occasions would have benefited the novel.

The forces of the First Crusade have captured the Syrian (now Turkish) city of Antioch but find themselves in turn besieged by the armies of Atabeg Kerbogha of Mosul. The story features many of the same characters from the previous novel and unsurprisingly our two English protagonists Edward Kemp the knight and Thomas the interpreter are at the heart of the various incidents as the siege leads to suffering, the head of the Holy Lance is discovered and the Crusaders successfully sally out.

There are good bits to this novel. Foreman portrays the final battle well. He is also decent in terms of the different leaders of the Crusade, notably Bishop Adhemar. He is not as good in portraying the Turkish side even though as with the Crusaders, the forces were a confederation with different commanders working together under what turns out to be the nominal leadership of Kerboga, an important element in the final battle. Foreman could have done a really interesting 'balancing act' showing that despite their differences the two forces actually faced very similar challenges in particular that they were confederations holding in a range of large egos.

As with the previous book, you feel that with just a little more effort this could have been a good book. A decent editor would certainly have helped. We can excuse the odd typo, even the greatest authors suffer them. However, there are two flaws in the fibre of the book. The first is the jumping in point of view. It is a challenge when writing books with sprawling events, but it can be handled. Yet on some pages we actually have the point of view going through the eyes of multiple characters in the length of a single page. There could have been an all-seeing narrator, but Foreman has instead chosen to keep a more intimate perspective via the characters, yet the way he leaps from one to the other so quickly leaves the reader's head spinning and a sense that engagement with the characters is superficial. 

There is also some inconsistency with Kerbogha, he is portrayed as a skilled chess player but then abruptly as a foolish, reckless commander. The extended references to chess make this dichotomy come out very sharply. A chance is missed. Kerbogha had a victory 'on a plate' but poor judgement as earlier at Edessa throws it away and this could have been a real point of dramatic tension but the chance is wasted.

Foreman continues to use anachronistic metaphors. Twice someone's expression 'sets like concrete'. I know the Romans had concrete but it was long gone by the 11th Century. Saying that someone looks like 'death warmed up' really jars when at other times he goes to so much effort to conjure up the culture and lifestyles of the time. These things could easily have been corrected and would have really strengthened the book. I will read the third book in the series, but do feel this trilogy was a wasted opportunity.

'She Died A Lady' by Carter Dickson [John Dickson Carr]

Though my edition of this book is not from the British Library Classic Crime collection, I do have another by Carr in that set. In a number of ways this book, published in 1943 reminded me of 'The Cornish Coast Murder' (1935) by John Bude which I read in December: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/12/the-books-i-read-in-december.html This novel is set in 1940 on the North coast of Devon - which borders Cornwall - close to the genuine towns of Lynton and Lynmouth. This mystery also involves death on a cliff top. There are good descriptions of the locale and use is made of abandoned properties around the village as is typical of English moor regions.

Though in theory this is a Sir Henry Merrivale investigation, the narrator for much of the book is Dr. Luke Croxley, who with his son, Tom, act as GPs to the village and residents of nearby Exmoor. However, in tone this book is very different. That tone is very erratic as I explain later.

Rita Wainwright at 38 is married to an older husband, Alec in his 60s but has fallen for a young American part-time actor, Barry Sullivan. While Croxley is with Alec, listening to the radio, it appears Rita and Barry have thrown themselves off the cliff in a suicide pact. Of course, as if common with such cases in fact it is a murder and it is down to an assortment of characters, including Merrivale to work out what actually happened. 

In contrast to the typical set-up in these novels, however, the leading police officer, Superintendent Craft will not give way on the suicide theory. Indeed he believes that Croxley removed a pistol from the cliff edge and later that he sunk a car in quicksand on the edge of Exmoor. Craft is so committed to this perspective that he threatens Croxley with a charge of perjury unless her 'admits' to his interfering with the investigation at the forthcoming inquest. This brings a rather Kafkaesque element to the novel.

Ultimately Croxley is unable to attend the inquest, but the finding of suicide and his interference in the case are upheld. Thus, though the reader knows the truth of what happened and who the murderer actually was, officially Craft's story is the one which stands. The subsequent events may be seen as some kind of 'natural' justice, though one reason Croxley's account of the affair is unfinished is that he was killed in a bombing raid, dying still with Craft's black mark against his character unchallenged.

The actual murder has all the classic 'impossible' elements typical of these stories of how the the couple ended up being shot even though there is only a single set of footprints on the cliff edge. Their bodies are later recovered and then some of their luggage, muddying the waters around whether they intended to kill themselves or run away. Further complications arise when the wealth of diamonds are found at the Wainwrights' house rather than having been removed. These are handled cleverly and pretty feasibly which then is even more riling when the 'truth' does not come to light. 

Then we have Sir Henry Merrivale. As some reviewers have commented is a very irritating character, at times a buffoon. In this story for much he is confined to a motorised wheelchair which at various stages he crashes through a pub and almost off the edge of the same cliff. At stages he is dressed as a Roman senator for a portrait being painted by a local artist he is staying with, Paul Ferrars who is accused of the murders himself. Merrivale's slapstick behaviour, his bizarre 'chummy' language really jar with what is a stark crime story with unco-operative authorities set against the background of war. In addition, though he actually solves the mystery he contributes his views far too late to be of any real benefit. It also turns out that unlike Croxley, he has been interfering with the evidence for his own reasons.

Overall, this book is an oddity. The elements while interesting do not really fit together very well. The dogmatism of the police, far beyond what is typical, to the extent of distorting the investigation is a distinctive element as is the fact that the truth of the case is not revealed until after it no longer matters. Dickson Carr clearly loved the Merrivale character and may have seen his presence as a counter-balance to what is in fact a bleak rather than 'cosy' crime novel. He may have felt it necessary in wartime to have an element to lighten the tone at times. However, this does not really work and in fact weakens the novel which could have been much stronger in looking at the challenges of dealing with dogmatic authority especially when its opinions mean concealing rather than revealing the truth.

Non-Fiction

'Whitehall' by Peter Hennessy

This is one of these non-fiction books I have had sitting around for years which I should have read closer to when they were published, in this case 1989. At 851 pages in my edition (including references) it is an extensive book on the British civil service. In fact it is like a sequence of books as the sections are quite different from each other. There is a history of the (English then British) civil service from the 12th Century up until 1979 when Margaret Thatcher became prime minister and initiated a period of notable change, though the ultimate outcome, the Next Steps agencies, though hinted at in her time, were to come subsequently. 

Before becoming an academic Hennessy was a journalist and that experience really shapes especially the first part of the book. It is told very much through the people involved rather than the actual machinery, though that does feature. The history is not strictly chronological and especially in the period when Hennessy was active in newspapers (he was born in 1947) there is a lot of personal reminiscences from him. Throughout the book, indeed, much material is derived from his personal interviews with leading civil servants. The journalist protecting his sources is also very apparent with the references to 'private information', something unusual for an academic history book. 

While the section on the various departments as they stood in the late 1980s does have a reference book feel to it, when he then returns to what Thatcher began and the future, as with many other sections, they are more like having a chat with Hennessy as he recalls incidents he or his interviewees witnessed, so it is better to read it the way I did for leisure, rather than rely on it as a book to refer to for academic study as you will often have to unthread lengthy recounting to get a particular date or fact you are seeking. Hennessy's prescriptions for an effective civil service are quite apparent throughout. I guess this very knowledgeable but personal touch is why his Radio 4 political retrospective programme (broadcast 2013-19), 'Reflections with Peter Hennessy'  https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04fd8md/episodes/player?page=3 worked so well.

This book is ideal for anyone with a general interest in the British civil service, 1853-1989, especially in the people both on the official and ministerial sides, and the challenges they faced. It is challenging to use as a reference book, but is an engaging general non-fiction read.

'Portraits of Power' collated by Jeremy Murray-Brown

This is another book I have had lying around for many years. It was given to me as a present in 1979. It is a collection of biographies written by journalists for 'The New York Times' about famous men (and Elizabeth II) of the mid-20th Century with a particular focus on the ways in which they wielded power. It does have a very US perspective even from the timeframe which they feel defines the era, i.e. from 1914 to 1975 as they see the end of US involvement in Vietnam as marking a significant break, not something I think people in other countries would agree with. In addition, 4 of the 19 people featured are US Presidents: Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, though it is welcome that they acknowledge the short period Kennedy was in office, puncture some of the myths around him and show how he was unlikely to have done much different to Lyndon Johnson, except with less speed and with a diffidence.

The focus on power is an interesting one and makes the sections refreshing compared to typical short biographies. Details are really only included when they allow a reflection on the power aspect rather than slogging through year by year. There are men featured who while important in their time and still with that lingering in some cases through the 1970s would generally be forgotten about these days, notably, Konrad Adenauer, long-time Chancellor of West Germany; Josip Tito leader of Yugoslavia from the 1940s to 1980; Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser, leader of Egypt, short-lived but with global impact; David Ben-Gurion one of the founders of Israel and Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran. 

The others featured are Hitler, Churchill, Mohandras 'Mahatma' Gandhi, Stalin, Emperor Hirohito, General Franco, General Charles De Gaulle, Nikita Khrushchev and Mao Zedong. I am rather surprised Fidel Castro is not included, given his impact was at least as great as Nasser's. In addition there is a real lack of women. I would have expected a chapter on Indira Gandhi, if not Sirimavo Bandaranaike as well; perhaps both Eva and Colonel Juan Perón in terms of how each wielded power. However, these gaps and the apparent need to include Elizabeth II may reflect the US perspective and the fact that Cuba remained a sensitive issue there.

There are interesting nuggets in this book and photographs that I was not familiar with. The focus on the different ways power is wielded is an engaging, refreshing one and does lead to portrayals of some of these people which differ from the 'mainstream' potted biographies that you find online or in typical TV programmes.