The Books I Read In June

Non-Fiction
'Pétain's Crime' by Paul Webster
Just because a book is important it is not guaranteed to be well written and this is the problem with 'Pétain's Crime'. Webster seems to perceive his readership as hostile to the information that he is putting forward, i.e. that the Vichy regime headed by Marshal Pétain, 1940-44 was not only complicit in the German extermination of the Jews but actually led the way in interning and deporting Jews from France. No-one who was hostile to that suggestion would bother picking up the book. Yet because of Webster's attitude the reader feels patronised almost also as if being made to feel guilty about what happened. This constantly jars. A further problem is that the book jumps around a great deal chronologically, geographically and between a focus on events and on individuals. There is a rough chronology but it is constantly broken and the focus not only goes between the Occupied and Unoccupied zones of France but flits between towns within each. Yes, it is important to include biographies of the important individuals involved, but this means Webster keeps breaking the flow of his narrative and this weakens the impact of both elements. This makes it have less impact that a much clearer approach would have done.

There is useful information when his focus is tighter, for example on the Natzweiler death camp, on the role of Fascist Italy in protecting Jews living in its region of France and at times about specific Jewish and other charity groups. However, when Webster is away from his specific focus he makes sweeping statements that are lazy. He dismisses Alsace as a German-speaking region but later outlines how many citizens there emphasised their very 'Frenchness' as a form of resistance. He is very anti-Communist and at times he desire to find wrongs committed by the French Communist Party leads him down very peculiar paths. Portraying the Paris Commune as the model for Communist parties in Europe and neglecting Marxist texts is simply weak. There is also a tendency for him to be repetitive. He tells at least twice that the Cagoulards meant the 'hooded ones' as if only by somehow shocking us does he feel he can force us to sympathise with his line of argument. He is speaking to readers who will never come near this book not those who have bought or borrowed it.

The book was first published in 1990 and did usher in a period of change in France regarding the Vichy period and led to some belated trials of French involved. The edition I read was published in 2001 and the sections updating the story, especially on the involvement of French President François Mitterand in the Vichy Regime and diverting attempts to bring people from that regime to account, are the strongest parts in the book. It certainly appears that in the eleven years between the first and second editions, Webster really honed his skills in writing and it is a shame in 2001 that he did not go back and revise the entire book. Overall this is a very frustrating book. It is important and it is filled with lots of important and interesting pieces of data. However, it is let down by the hostility of the author towards his audience and the weak structure which means it loses much impact through reading like sifting through a box of scraps of paper with various pieces of information on them, some more than once.

'The People's Manifesto' by Mark Thomas

This is a book of proposals for government policies that political comedian Mark Thomas assembled at live shows around the UK that he did for a radio programme in 2010.  Proposals were provided by the audience, debated and then voted on, with the winning one from each show going into the book. Some of the suggestions are flippant, but some make a sound basis for policy.  Indeed one of the proposals, of allowing gay marriage has become UK law since the book was published.  There has been some movement not to close tax havens but certainly pursue people using them, but on too limited a scale.

Some were specific to the time as there were comments about identity cards being considered then and the London Olympics which were anticipated to fail and be very costly.  Many reflect the liberal/left-wing make-up of Thomas's audiences, for example, two demand statements on the front page of the right-wing 'Daily Mail' newspaper about its historic support for Nazism and the specious nature of many of its stories. Another simply demands renationalisation of the railways which was considered towards the end of the Gordon Brown government. Similarly the 'none of the above' box on ballot papers is once more being suggested for real.

Others like an automatic assumption that someone will pass on their organs at death, are being introduced in other countries.  An age of consent for religion I thought was an ingenious idea. A 0.05% tax on currency transactions should be law and could easily be so. The maximum wage of 10 times what the lowest wage is, was something proposed in the 1970s and some countries are looking at it once more. A scheme that anyone buying a second home in Somerset has to provide an equivalent home for local people again highlights how ordinary people feel that the privileged are now ruining lives without feeling any shame.  These go against vested interests and would be resisted vigorously it can be assured.

Many are aimed at politicians such as not paying them salaries but equivalent to student loans which they have to repay when they leave office as they usually end up with very lucrative jobs.  The displaying of logos of companies that sponsor them on their clothes in the way that racing car drivers do was another one which mixed a good idea and humour.  Similarly MPs having to give their second homes to the state when they leave office would also aid a very little with the chronic housing shortage in London.  The sense that MPs exploit their positions comes through strongly.

There is a suggestion, presumably in the light of the Iraq War, that there must be a referendum whenever the government wants to go war.  This was proposed in the USA in the 1930s, though with the caveat that it would only be open to those who could be conscripted or their close family.

The proposal to limit prime ministers to two terms of office is not really necessary.  In the UK a term of government is at maximum 5 years.  The duration was fixed in 2010.  Thatcher lasted 11 years 7 almost 4 months and Blair 10 years & 2 months.  Thus, this rule would have shaved a little off the term in office of these two.  However, typically until 2010, British governments have not lasted as long as 5 years.  This rule would have prevented Harold Wilson becoming prime minister at all in 1974 even though he would have only been in the job for six years by then and Thatcher would have had to go in 1987 even though she only came to power in 1979; similarly Blair would have had to step down in 2005 again having been in power for 8 years.  I imagine this is what the audience would have been thinking of.  Gordon Brown's career certainly would have benefited from that rule.

This is a stimulating and fun book which I suggest taking to the pub with you in case you run out of topics to discuss.  I read it entirely one morning, it is that easy to engage with.

The Books I Read In March

Fiction
'Humility Garden' by Felicity Savage
I read the sequel to this book, 'Delta City' (1995) about three years after it came out, picking it up in a remaindered bookshop in Greenwich, London.  I was intrigued by it but found it difficult to comprehend.  It is clear that I should have read this book first as through it not only are you introduced to the world of Salt, but a language of various species is built up which unless you have followed the staged introduction will be hard to follow.  Savage published the book while still and undergraduate student and it was certainly an incredible debut, painting a really rich but unnerving world that packs a punch.  The world of Salt consists of various continents sitting South of the Equator of a world, where people are known as humans, but in fact are green-furred humanoids.  They are ruled by gods on their planet, from the capital of all the lands, Delta City.  The gods turn out to be mutants from among a species of predator with a range of abilities including teleportation.

The story follows the character Humility Garden (people's first names come from their characters) as her fiance is sent to Delta City to be made into a ghost.  Artists called ghostiers kill people but trap their ghost as a statue, sending their spirits to live as decaying fish in a pool.  The ghosts are shaped into art works that give off emotion.  The ghostiers and many of the elite of Delta City are debauched.  Humility is drawn into the city's and indeed the world's politics rising through the social strata and becoming involved in coups and counter-coups.  Savage does not hold back in being unnerving.  The middle portion of the book, however, could have been trimmed as there is a lot of toing and froing, which does not seem to advance the story much, though the pace picks up towards the end.  It is a very imaginative work of fantasy fiction, but many readers will not like scenes portrayed and some continue to unsettle me now.  I guess that is the mark of a good piece of fiction and I can see why it was acclaimed at the time.  I would recommend the book, but approach with caution and with patience and read them in the correct order to avoid confusion!

Non-Fiction
'Extreme Rambling - Walking the Wall' by Mark Thomas
I tend to only buy Mark Thomas's books when I see him on tour, so there had been a gap between me getting 'As Used on the Famous Nelson Mandela' (2006) which I reviewed in January and this one published in 2011.  I had not read the three books he had published in between, so was immediately pleasantly surprised by the improvement in his writing.  He was always detailed and funny, but this book shows that he has really sharpened those skills, apparent from the first page.  The book recounts his walk in two stages along the barrier which separates Israel and parts of the West Bank from the rest of the West Bank.  He walked it travelling with and meeting an incredible diversity of people.  Though the actual wall is patchy, it has caused immense difficulties for many Palestinians and indeed for some Israelis too.  Thomas is brilliant at exposing the ridiculous nature of authority and crossing back and forth meeting with police, soldiers and politicians, he simply recounts what was said to him, with minimal comment, allowing the reader to make their own judgements on the situations he encounters.  Constructing a snaking fence/wall/defensive zone, which keeps looping to put certain settlements on one side and others on the other side, running through fields and infrastructure is inevitably going to be difficult.  However, for a UK reader the passion of people insisting on things which seem absurd, can at times be humorous, but at others, very uncomfortable, indeed upsetting to read.  This is certainly the case with Thomas's book.  Children in particular seem most hurt by the situation.

Whilst Thomas does not set out to provide an explanation of the situation, he achieves it more effectively than many straightforward political commentators could.  Perhaps an absurd situation needs a comedian to accurately articulate it.  In addition to this being an engaging read which atypically for me I kept coming back to at different times of the day and stayed up to read more, it is a very good book for learning just what is going on in this highly contested region of the world and the human cost of that contest for all the sides involved.  It is not just 'them' and 'us' but 'them' and 'them' and 'them' and 'them' and 'us'.

The Book I Read In January

Non-Fiction
'As Used on the Famous Nelson Mandela' by Mark Thomas
This is another of the books that I should have read closer to the time.  It is now seven years old and given that it is about the exploits the political activist-comedian Mark Thomas got up to expose the extent of the arms trade in the UK and Ireland and to get representatives of dictatorships to confess some of their crimes, it has lost a little of the impact.  It refers to the Blair governments of the time and given their initial commitment to ethical foreign policy the critique is sharper than if he had been talking about the current coalition which utterly lacks ethics.  The book is a serious of episodes in which he embarrasses arms companies, finds out how laws are bent and how easy it is to buy and ship not only arms but also torture equipment, hence the title actually used at a trade fair.  Thomas also meets with the people who have been affected by the selling of such equipment to nefarious regimes.  Some of the best incidents such as having set up a fake PR company at an arms fair Thomas gets representatives of dictatorships to confess to human rights violations, I had seen on his television programme.

I have seen Thomas on stage twice, once when this book came out and again last November.  He produced numerous series on Channel 4 in the 1990s and 2000s.  There is no-one like him in terms of his ability and his sheer energy in producing humour but also lessons from the ways he tries to bring down the all-powerful a peg or two and indeed he seems to have garnered respect certainly from the UK police, a range of politicians and even some of those he has gone up against.  Whilst this book feels dated, its lessons remain important and the forcefulness of Thomas, not in preaching, but in simply driving through incidents which are often absurd and sometimes dangerous, carries you along.  I certainly recommend reading his work and definitely seeing him live.  As I said to him last time I had a book signed, he offers people at least some crumbs of hope that even if we cannot stop people doing these bad things, at least they will be witnessed and challenged.