The Books I Read In June

 Fiction

'Prussian Blue' by Philip Kerr

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

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

'City of Fallen Angels' by Cassandra Clare

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

'The Crow Road' by Iain Banks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Non-Fiction

'A History of British Trade Unionism' by Henry Pelling

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

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

The Books I Read In May

This month travelling (by car, train is too expensive) and reading the Goldhagen book (634 pages) meant I only finished two books.

Fiction

'Pompeii' by Robert Harris

Harris is adept at writing historical novels, e.g. ''Imperium' (2006) and Munich' (2017) in which we know the actual historical outcome (though some reviewers believe he writes just counter-factual outcomes) but he manages to maintain the tension all the same. As he shows in 'Imperium' 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, Harris has a love of and sound knowledge of Roman history. I had expected that this book, published in 2003, would be pretty much like a disaster movie. I was naturally reminded of 'Dante's Peak' (1997) and 'Volcano' (1997), though very sensibly, as in those movies, Harris makes his protagonist a technician.

In this case, it is aquarius Marcus Attilius Primus, responsible for the aqueduct which provided nine towns, including Pompeii, around the Bay of Naples. The book covers a matter of days in which Attilius uncovers problems in the local water supply that eventually signal the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, but also how greed and local corruption in the 'good time' town of Pompeii has led to problems already. Harris's approach really shows you the wonders of water civil engineering in 1st Century Roman lands without providing you with a lecture on it. There are excerpts from various volcanology  books at the start of each chapter, but he deftly communicates the scientific and indeed social and economic aspects well through the flow of the story.

There is a little of the hero being in the right place at the right time to see what is happening without being subsumed by it. However, this does not come over as unrealistic. Tensions between him and the staff he has come to manage, as well as local business community and crossing paths with Pliny the Elder, admiral of the fleet in the region and a genuine victim of the eruption. However, overall the artifice when it appears does not intrude greatly and instead you have a book which is really engaging even when featuring the intricacies of pre-industrial water management and fish farming.

Non-Fiction

'Hitler's Willing Executioners' by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen

This book is about persecution of the Jews under the Nazi regime. It says very important things, for example noting how every piece of anti-Semitic legislation was itself cruel, rendering the Jews 'socially dead' even before moving on to the horrors of the extermination camps. He portrays very acutely how the Jews were seen as inherently evil and so rather than simply be exploited in the way 'subhumans' such as Poles and Russians were, they had to suffer all the way to their deaths. This comes out particularly strongly in the sections on the "work" camps which Goldhagen highlights did not produce anything of value, but instead were about making the Jews do painful, useless work as a punishment for their supposed evil. Similarly the death marches, which along with the police battalions, are an aspect he particularly investigates, were simply about inflicting pain before death on the Jews who were marched around. The in-depth analysis of the ideology of German (he eschews the adjective Nazi) anti-Semitism, the "work" camps, the police battalions and the death marches provide valuable insight not always picked up by other historians, even now some 28 years after this book was publisged.

Especially at the beginning this book is more about psychology than history with Goldhagen seeking an explanation for how such vast numbers of Germans felt that Jews were effectively like a bacillus that needed to be eliminated, but also that they were demonic so needed as much punishment before death as possible. While he does take steps to deny he is saying that Germans have always been so cruel, in fact his evidence is very much to the opposite, especially as he sees the Germans as being unique in their hatred, even though he does mention in passing other nations who have carried out genocides. He shows how anti-Semitism morphed from religion to biological, but this happened in numerous countries. He seems to feel that once the war was over, this hatred ebbed from the German population and yet he gives examples from the post-1945 period himself of people still adhering to such vile views. There are occasions in this book in which Goldhagen insists on points that the evidence he provides himself contradict them.

While the book draws needed attention to the extent of the anti-Semitism in Germany and where its power stretched and how particularly virulent and cruel it was, there are grave weaknesses in it. Despite having extensive references, Goldhagen is dismissive of almost everyone who has researched and written in this area (bar his father). He portrays himself as having unique insight. He is also entirely dismissive of research into other aspects of the Nazi regime aside from anti-Semitism, portraying these as easy to explain, even 'transparent'. My reading over the last few years would oppose that portrayal.

The prime difficulty, as often happens with books written on grave subjects or by well-established academics is the lack of editing. Goldhagen repeats the same point again and again even within a single section, let alone across the book. He keeps hammering home his points with italics as if the reader cannot comprehend the importance of what is being said without it being jabbed repeatedly in their faces. No-one is likely to come to this book ignorant of the Holocaust and while he adds to that knowledge, in contrast to his personal view, he is not operating with a blank slate. 

This book could have been cut by 200 pages and he would have made his arguments, even aired his personal gripes with other historians, far more effectively. Instead, the reader is numbed by incessant repetition and being treated as if they are moronic. For all his insistence, his approach gravely weakens the effectiveness of what he aims to communicate and loses the important details in repeated rhetoric. He does savage reviewers as at best misguided, at worst apologists, but I hope that he is too busy to seek me out to attack my view on his book which has good elements but could have been a lot better.

The Books I Read In April

 Fiction

'A Second Chance' by Jodi Taylor

This is the third book in the Chronicles of St. Mary's series (though with the additional 'between books' added in subsequently, it is now the fifth) about a British university unit which uses time machines. As noted with the previous ones, the tone of these books is uncertain. It opens with the heroine Max having been captured at the Fall of Troy waiting in a line of women who are being raped and then killed or shipped off to slavery. This harrowing scene, more of which appears later, contrasts with the jaunty, sometimes humorous tone of the book. 

The light-heartedness certainly jars when genuine grave decisions are called for and when tragedy hits. I have mentioned before that while Max is an adult, probably in her thirties, with a doctorate, her attitude is very much like a girl half her age. Taylor does take the stories off in unpredictable directions. While there are "rules" she is happy to break them and at the end of this story Max ends up in a parallel universe.

Despite this awkwardness, the stories move along briskly. The portrayal of the various scenes in history is well handled. Poor Sir Isaac Newton gets interfered with (as he did in a recent 'Doctor Who' episode and it seems that without the input of time travellers he would never have achieved anything much except determine the date the world was created. Though grim, the scenes in Troy are done very well and provide an excellent historical interpretation of the various myths around the war. 

I have now got quite a lot of the books in this series second hand so while I have some uncertainties about them, I am liable to be reviewing more over the next couple of years.

'Doing Time' by Jodi Taylor

This is the first book in Taylor's Time Police series. It runs parallel to and sometime bisects with her St. Mary's books. They are all set in some undeclared near future though one where mid-20th Century technology seems still to be in use too. This one is set a couple of decades ahead of the St. Mary's stories and answers some of the glaring questions from those books, notably how come only a small British university unit are the only ones to have time machines. This book is set after the Time Wars in which different nations tried to rewrite history to favour them leading to chaos. The international Time Police have been set up, conveniently for a UK author, based in London and seeming to feature exclusively British staff.

This book is more clearly YA in tone, featuring three young people: Jane, Luke and Matthew who for various reasons have had difficult upbringings. Once we find out who Matthew is, it provides spoilers for the St. Mary's series so I suggest ready well beyond Book 3 in that series before being tempted over to this one. While Taylor's outlook fits well with YA protagonists there is still a jarring between the brutal and the chummy/light-hearted. The Time Police have the authority to execute anyone doing illegal time travel and a brutal murder is also at the heart of this novel. As typical of Taylor's work, the pace and attention to historical details - they go to see the assassination of Julius Caesar - rather carries you over the cracks.

'Espedair Street' by Iain Banks

On the surface, the premise of this novel, published in 1987, about an ageing 1970s rock star living in a converted church in Glasgow reminiscing, seemed unpromising. However, I think it is the best book by Banks that I have read so far. Dan Weir recounts his rise from his early days in Glasgow to being the bassist and lyricist with globally successful Frozen Gold. It alternates between the present when he hangs around with local oddballs and the history of the band. Readers often liken the band to Fleetwood Mac, though in music style more to Pink Floyd. Banks himself has said Dan is rather like Fish from Marillion. However, there are elements such as a tragic death on stage and enraging Christians in the USA that come from the pool of rock myths/legends so seem familiar from the stories of The Beatles and 'This is Spinal Tap'  (1984). There are probably references that I have missed.

I recognise that I have come to this book very late and 37 years ago when it was published it probably seemed fresh, even satirical. Yet, despite the tropes and the familiar situations, I really feel this is where Banks's skill shines through. At times you feel he is over-rated but in this case I could understand where admiration for him shines through. There is a real deftness in the writing of this book which carries you on briskly and makes you genuinely interested in the character.

'The Body in the Dumb River' by George Bellairs [Harold Blundell]

This is another of those forgotten mystery authors - he published fifty books in his life, this is the 35th in his Thomas Littlejohn series - that was featured in the British Library reprint collection. I picked up quite a few more at the weekend so there will be more coming up. This was published in 1961, but set in rural Cambridgeshire and Yorkshire, aside from the reference to council estates and the Second World War, it could easily have been published between the wars. The novel begins during heavy flooding when the body of a man identified locally as James Lane is found in a flooded embanked river. He is known as a man who runs a hoopla stall at travelling fairs across southern and eastern England. However, it is soon revealed that he is in fact James Teasdale a seller of arts supplies from a small town in Yorkshire close to Sheffield.

The book is a very good representation of social class in 20th Century English society. The dead man is entangled with a generally nasty wife and father-in-law who despite their decline in fortunes think very highly of themselves. Teasdale's alternate, somewhat freer life seems to be set in contrast to the more 'respectable' one he had lived, though he was having an adulterous relationship with a younger woman who also worked the fair. The mystery is soon resolved and it becomes more an issue of interlocking personalities. The strengths of the novel are less the mystery and more the portrayal of desultory decaying settings and a range of unpleasant people each with their own myths and drivers.

Non-Fiction

'Industrial Society: Social Sciences in Management' ed. by Denis Pym

It might seem strange to be reading a book published in 1968 about management practices. However, if you look back down the non-fiction books I have reviewed over the past few years you can see that I had an interest in the economic developments of the post-war period 1945-75. This book was published at a time when sociology and psychology and their application to industrial and economic practices was growing. There had been a couple of decades of research since the war, more applied than the theoretical work inter-war, which allowed analysis to be applied. This book takes on a whole host of topics and some seem very dated now, though the expectations of computerisation were prescient. Market research and ergonomics were also becoming commonplace. This such as concerns about restrictive practices and corporatism with trade unions, do feel very historic.

Perhaps the most interesting chapters for a modern reader are the early ones. The fuss about restrictive practices and why they occur is a good reminder from Alan Fox about how different the post-war workplace was. However, Dorothy Wedderburn on redundancy, the Belbins on retraining older workers and in later chapters, D.G. Clark on the industrial manager, P.J. Sadler on executive leadership and Peter B. Smith on training and developing executives, unfortunately have perceptive things to say, that seem to need to be repeated even some 56 years later. Perhaps the two most acute chapters are by the editor himself. Pym has a chapter on the misuse of professional manpower (one thing that dates the book is that all workers and managers are 'he' unless seamstresses or waitresses) and on individual growth and strategies of trust.

Much of what is recommended in this book written over half-a-century ago, would be what we would expect to see in the best functioning, inclusive companies today. The examples of poor management practice, the dismissing of the development of workers and hierarchical behaviours, unfortunately are all too prevalent even in the 2020s. One situation and set of approaches by managers leading to poor outcomes, shown by Pym, is identical to my workplace experience under such a manager, just last year.

I suppose what Pym and his colleagues did not foresee was the rise of the New Right in the mid-1970s and how the Thatcher governments were not simply going to eliminate what were identified here of difficulties with working with unions, but to reassert a very old fashioned, 'Victorian values' approach to the workplace that employers naturally felt liberated to adopt. The authors in this book could not accept that mass unemployment would ever be allowed again, let alone be engineered to return in order to 'discipline' the workforce in the way that was to follow within 12 years of this book being published.

It is interesting to look back to see what people analysing industry, thought. However, it is highly disheartening to realise that the things that they identified as making the British workplace dysfunctional and inefficient, indeed quite toxic to work in, have not just continued largely unchallenged but have been reasserted as the 'only right way' to run capitalist industry.

The Books I Read In March

Fiction

'The Murder in the Basement' by Anthony Berkeley [Anthony Berkeley Cox] 

I have been given quite a lot of the classic crime novels that the British Library has found great success in re-releasing over the past decade. Most are from the 1920s and 1930s (some earlier, some later) and were often good sellers at the time but have been forgotten by subsequent generations. This was the first of those books I had (not by date of publication but by surname of the author) that I have. Berkeley is not well known these days but was actually a founder of the Detection Club which counted renowned crime authors in its membership.

This novel is a classic of the genre, revolving around a corpse found in the basement of a semi-detached London house that a married couple have just moved into which after the body is finally identified, proves to be linked to a small fee-paying preparatory school just north of London. The private school setting is one that turns up often in books of the time, this one was published in 1932; even Hercule Poirot has a case at one. 

Berkeley has two protagonists that he had used in a previous novel Chief Inspector Moresby and author Roger Sheringham who has a connection to the school. The novel is effectively divided into three parts.The first focuses on identifying the corpse. Then the middle part is actually a novel in the novel that Sheringham has written detailing the tensions between various members of staff as a basis for Moresby's further investigation. The third part is tackling the issue of the prime suspect and whether it can be proven that they did and even if they should be the prime suspect.

The first part of the novel can rather lead you to think this is a going-through-the-motions novel. It is very police procedural in identifying the corpse with what was available at the time. However, Berkeley lifts the novel through the conceit of the novel in the novel and then in the third part, disentangling issues around the prime suspect. You come away feeling that it is greater than the sum of its parts.

'The State of the Art' by Iain M. Banks

This is a collection of science fiction short stories by Banks. The fact that at the end of the month in which I read it, I struggle to recall all of the stories, says something as I was not overly impressed. This may be because it was published in 1991 and as a result the 'unfailing inventiveness' which the review from 'The Guardian' states now may seem well established tropes and indeed rather pretentious. There is a sentient plant in 'Odd Attachment' plucking a human apart. 'Descendant' is about the relationship between a crashed spaceship pilot and his intelligent space suit, that actually felt like a story from the 1950s or 1960s as is 'Cleaning Up' about alien technology appearing all over the Earth at random. The concepts they explore are well known now. Perhaps the strongest stories come from Banks's Culture setting. 'The State of the Art' about Culture explorers coming to Earth and getting too involved, while quite commonplace is reasonably well handled as is 'A Gift from the Culture' about a super-powered weapon to be used for an assassination.

In many ways this book shows that Banks was grounded in the science fiction of the preceding decades. He even explores a Moorcockian set-up with fragmented text in 'Scratch'. Thus, if you are new to science fiction this book will be a good introduction that is quickly consumed and highlights many themes that 20th Century science fiction concerned itself with. For me, though, I had been expecting more and so reading it was rather mundane.

'The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard' by Arthur Conan Doyle

This is a collection of 8 short stories featuring a French hussar during the Napoleonic Wars. Many have likened him to Harry Flashman in (1969-2005), Gerard is not as intelligent as Flashman, but certainly has that self-belief. He thinks that he is very successful with the ladies, but in fact we never have anything more than his word for it, probably due to these stories being published in literary magazines at the end of the 19th Century. While they are brisk, Conan Doyle does really show his skill with the short stories, which in fact most of the Sherlock Holmes adventures were as well. There is a good attention to detail as Gerard finds himself in different parts of the war, from what would now be Poland across to Portugal. Conan Doyle brings out the different arms of the forces and nationalities too and these form a sound basis for witty stories. My edition was only 188 pages long so you could get through it in a single sitting. I do recommend it, if this sounds like your kind of thing.

'The Other Side of Silence' by Philip Kerr

This is the 11th Bernie Gunther book and features him working as a hotel concierge on the French Riviera. In contrast to the previous novels, despite for some brief asides to 1937 and 1944/45, most of this one is set in 1956. Set at the height of the Cold War and during the Suez Crisis it is much more of a spy novel than a crime novel. As is typical, Gunther crosses paths with someone from his past, in this case an SS captain, Harald Hennig that he knew in Berlin before the war and then in Königsberg [Kaliningrad] near the end of the war. The story features real people particularly the British author, Somerset Maugham and his nephew both of who lived on the Riviera at the time. Maugham is being blackmailed and is encouraged to use Gunther as a go-between with the blackmailer. It soon is revealed, however, that the scheme is more about getting to the British intelligence agencies as Maugham previously worked for them. Following the defection of Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, there appears to the East Germans and the Soviets a way to embarrass the British especially with their allies the Americans who are increasingly dubious of them.

Compared to the previous novels, this one has little action and much more dialogue, so feels more like a John Le Carré novel. It is a slow burn in terms of determining what is going on with the various blackmailing. The settings in rich houses and hotels on the Riviera in the 1950s is very well portrayed.  The scene which needs to be noted is how Gunther adeptly manages to turn what is being done to set him up, against his antagonists. Given what we know of the character, we know he has the skills, but Kerr renders the scene admirably. Gunther again gets to sleep with a woman young enough to be his daughter, though in contrast to The Woman from Zagreb' (2015), the previous novel in the series where this happens, this one has a more feasible explanation.

Overall, this is different to the other Gunther novels and may appeal more to those looking for a kind of classic spy novel rather than a detective one.

Non-Fiction

'The Pelican Guide to English Literature 1: The Age of Chaucer' ed. by Boris Ford

I read the 7th volume in the revised version of this series, 'The New Pelican Guide to English Literature 7. From James to Eliot' edited by Boris Ford back in August 2021: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2021/08/books-i-listened-toread-in-august.html  The various writers who contributed to that volume were very dismissive of the authors they were asked to comment, without exception judging them as far less competent than authors and poets of previous centuries. In Volume 1, fortunately, the attitude is much more positive. I imagine that is because the contributors were eager to promote medieval literature including the work of Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland but also far less well known authors. The only one who really suffers disapproval is Edmund Spenser who while recognising he was an author in a transitional period, Derek Traversi feels was not as good as he could have been and was too derivative of outdated approaches something he puts down to Spenser's disappointing career in public service.

As Ford notes a lot of these texts are not easily available to the general reader, so entire texts are included in the second part of the book after the critiques of the first part. Thus there is an interesting range of stories and plays, particularly allegorical ones. As there is reference to work from different parts of England and indeed Scotland, you can see the regional variations in English of the time. Especially in 'Sir Gawayne and the Grene Knight' (still attracting attention as the 2021 movie showed) we see specifically north-western English with words that seem drawn from Swedish, Dutch, German and French. A lot of the stories have religious themes which is unsurprising given as contributors note, the importance of miracle plays in culture of the time. In addition, what is shown in this book is simply what has survived and it is certain there were many other works that are now lost.

Thus, this is an interesting book for people who enjoyed Chaucer or Langland or who are interested in having an insight into what concerned medieval people (and what made them laugh) and what they would watch or have read to them. The thing is, while there are numerous footnotes outlining what various words mean and after reading a lot of it, you get a feel for some of the commonly used words, for the most part you are rather wading through Middle English texts and this needs a lot of attention and patience. I think the effort is worth it for what is revealed. However, this is far from being an easy book to read and will take you a lot of time and effort. Ironically the easiest chapter is the incongruous one on medieval architecture, which I am not sure why it was included.

'The Goebbels Diaries, 1939-1941' translated and edited by Fred Taylor

Fuller collections of Goebbels diaries have come to light since this edition was published in 1983. However, this one does provide a slice of them from which we can learn a lot. Josef Goebbels was both the Nazi Minister of Propaganda and Gauleiter of Berlin. As these diaries make clear he was very close to Hitler and indeed murdered his children and wife and committed suicide with Hitler in the bunker at the end of the Second World War when other leading Nazis had fled.

The diaries provide interesting insights into facets of the Nazi regime but reading them at this time, constantly made me hear echoes of populist attitudes and rhetoric which has become so common again in the 2020s. Throughout Goebbels is painfully smug. Any speech he, let alone Hitler gives, as well as their writing is assumed to be the most important thing in not just Germany's but the world's media. Goebbels even believed that this propaganda effectively killed former British prime minister Neville Chamberlain in November 1940 when actually he died of bowel cancer.

Any Nazi event is seen by Goebbels as the biggest and best that has ever been hosted. Goebbels bitterly complains that all claims, especially those by the British are lies that must be vigorously contested and they, especially Churchill, will pay the price for this in the future. Yet, he also outlines all the lies he is pumping into other countries whether neutral or the enemy. This double standard is apparent incessantly and for someone living in 2024 seems very familiar.

Goebbels's attitudes do lead him to make mistake. All through 1940 he keeps expecting the British to surrender. Every bombing raid he insists is lowering the British morale to a point that it is unsustainable for the country to continue fighting and that the Americans are losing faith in the British. In contrast he dismisses the air raids on Germany as almost minimal and insists that German morale will not be harmed by them. You slowly see a change and by 1941 even Goebbels recognises that if the German public can persist under such attacks that there is nothing to say that the British and Soviet publics can too and that imminent surrender is far from likely. However, this initial attitude applied not just to Britain and the USSR but to Yugoslavia and Greece, does remind us that the Germans went into these battles with strong assumptions of quick and easy victories. Goebbels's access to Hitler and his ability to interfere in aspects far outside his assigned portfolios adds to this fact.

The preparations for the invasion of the USSR, Yugoslavia and Greece are interesting. The internecine battles with Nazi officials and other departments become tiresome but do show how chaotic the Nazi regime was. The Foreign Office in particular seems despised by all sides of the regime but retained power and influence. It is hard to swallow Goebbels wittering on about his beloved children, his numerous houses and the art works he is buying. These statements do nothing to humanise the man and it is clear that he finds it difficult to comprehend anything outside his own desires.

I found this book useful to contextualise the ones I have been reading in recent years about the Nazi regime and to show some of the reasons by what often seemed to be irrational policies and behaviour by its staff.

Books I Read In February

 Fiction

'The Lady from Zagreb' by Philip Kerr

I have lined up the last few novels by Kerr (who died in 2018) featuring his German detective of the 1930s-50s, Bernie Gunther. This is the tenth in the series and like many of the others, jumps between wartime and post-war happenings. While it is common for us to know that in almost all detective novels, the detective will live beyond the end of the book, this approach does mean that even when they are facing serious jeopardy, as Gunther does in Switzerland in this novel, we know they have survived the incident largely unharmed.

Living in southern France in 1956, Gunther sees a movie featuring a (fictional) actress, Dalia Dresner, of Croatian extraction, with whom he had a sexual relationship in 1942-43. At first we seeing him dealing with an assignment to investigate the use of a house in Berlin by the SS for the daughter of the man it was taken from. That first case has a real hard boiled feel to it, but tapers off. Still it does provide information and contacts useful for the second case when he is tasked by Dr. Josef Goebbels controller of movie making under the Nazis with finding the actress's father who is in the collaborationist state of Croatia. The action in this novel is broken by Gunther going off to investigate the Katyn Massacre which featured in the previous novel in the series, 'A Man without Breath' (2013) which I read when last going through Gunther novels back in 2016: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-books-i-read-in-february.html

Despite this fragmented nature and the fact that a beautiful actress would fall in love with a grizzled police officer almost twice her age, the story is interesting. Travelling to Croatia and Switzerland allows Kerr to show us different countries' experiences during the war and the inter-play between different nations police forces. His portrayal of the landscape of these two countries, complements that of the luxurious houses in Berlin which feature when he is in Germany. The manipulation of Gunther whether directly or indirectly, is well handled and credible. I was successfully misled in that regard, though other readers may spot this sooner. While at times credibility can be stretched, for the main this is an engaging mystery story, as always with Kerr, effectively grounded in the times and places he is showing.

'The Second Sleep' by Robert Harris

It is certainly challenging to guess what Harris will write next. While he has produced a number of historical novels set during the last days of Republican Rome and before and during the Second World War, he has largely adhered to straight historical fiction. His most famous book, 'Fatherland' (1992) which was an alternate history book featuring a Nazi victory, was really his only one which diverged from historical fiction. In contrast 'The Second Sleep' is a post-apocalyptic novel, set in the 2800s. Society has returned to the industrial level of the mid-18th Century, with water-powered factories being the highest level of sophistication.

We are not told what the apocalypse was but Harris shows concerns about how much knowledge depends on the maintenance of electricity and internet access, very timely given we lost internet access across our district this week and thus could not even contact people to report it. There are also indications of climate change. The novel takes place in Devon in South-West England but parakeets and even birds-of-paradise live wild in the countryside and the county produces bountiful red wine.

A Christian church is largely in control of English society (Scotland is once more a separate state). It has some elements of Catholicism such as clerical celibacy and the use of Latin, but also of the Church of England, i.e. it uses the King James Bible and the head of state is the head of the church rather than this residing with a Pope. Investigation and discussion of the remains of the pre-apocalyptic society are treated as heresy and this is at the heart of the book. Christopher Fairfax is sent to a small Devon village following the death of the local priest and discovers that the dead man had an enduring interest in the preceding society and what might be a refuge of the last of those seeking to maintain an industrial England.

Obviously there are lots of parallels to 'A Canticle for Leibowitz ' (1959) by Walter M. Miller Jr., though, unlike that book which covers many centuries, Harris's is on a much smaller scale, confined to a small village and its neighbouring market town. This helps in him drawing the characters richly and the inter-play between Fairfax, Lady Durston and Captain Hancock, a local industrialist, is well handled. Harris was looking to draw on the work of Thomas Hardy (even naming the post-apocalyptic county, Wessex) and there is also the flavour of Jane Austen novels too. In that he succeeds. However, the book falls down at the last. I have often noted that Harris struggles with endings. This is also notable in 'Fatherland' and 'Enigma' (1995) and in fact the screenplays of these two (1994; 2001 respectively) handle the conclusions better than the novels did. The same happens here, it is almost as if Harris runs out of steam. There is a great revelation and then it just halts where another author would have given something more satisfactory or at least more conclusive.

'Dinner for Two' by Mike Gayle

This is quite an insubstantial novel. It seems in part autobiographical featuring a music journalist then agony uncle (a role Gayle has held), Dave Harding, who like Gayle is black. He lives in London in the early 2000s. Not a great deal happens. His wife Izzy has a miscarriage and Harding is contacted by a 13-year old girl, Nicola, who claims to be his biological daughter as a result of a one-night stand while Harding and her mother were on holiday in Greece. Much of the book is taken up with Harding angsting over whether it is right for a man to want to be a father the way some women yearn to be mothers. Then there is thinking about revealing Nicola to Izzy and being in touch Nicola's mother. Caitlin. It is padded out with mildly witty articles that Dave writes for various publications and his comments to women about what men are thinking. I was surprised Dave does not get more into difficulty as a result of meeting a 13-year old girl, on occasion playing truant from school, for a number of meals and drives in his car. Izzy and Caitlin also seem much too easily accepting of the situation. I have a sense that Gayle has written a book on how he wishes people would behave when 'patchwork' families develop than is actually the case in UK society. In addition all the characters come over as very privileged and not facing any real challenges which makes it all seem like a 'feel good' fantasy. Maybe I should have expected that from Gayle's writing.

Books I Read In January

 Fiction

'My Name is Red' by Orhan Pamuk

It was highlighted that this book translated from Turkish was written very much in a Turkish style. I have to confess I found that hard going. There are multiple points of view and we move between them at random almost like a game of 'tag' rather than in a structured way.  In addition, drawings and even a colour appear as 'characters' in the book. The murderer has two identities that we see through the eyes of at different times.

The book is set in Constantinople in the 1590s and rotates around book illustrators, one of whom is murdered near the start of the book, and their various relatives. It informs you a great deal about the style of book illustration of the time and the stories which were most popular. The style of a particular artist is used in part to determine the killer. There is also the background tension of the traditional approach to illustration inherited from Persia and other regions east of Anatolia and the 'new' more realistic approach coming from western Europe via the Venetians which is a more realistic rendering of people's features and perspective. This then touches on religious questions around the representation of people in Islamic art. 

Though the cast of characters is well drawn, at time the book descends into soap opera territory especially about the wife of a missing soldier husband and whether she can remarry - and who - and whether she should live in her father's house or her in-laws house and so on. While this aspect tells us more about the characters it does become rather laboured, piling an extra layer on top of the murder mystery and all the discussions about art. The investigation itself also goes off into philosophical paths using a formula which I imagine may be familiar for Turkish readers but for Western readers just adds further complications.

There is a lot in this book and it is informative. The characters are believable. However, the very slow pace of the book and constant diversions from one or other of the main threads makes it quite tiresome to read. I admire the work that went into this book but did not enjoy reading it.

'The Vampye and Other Tales of the Macabre' ed. by Robert Morrison and Chris Baldick

This is a collection of stories and articles published in literary magazines, 1819-1838. While following on from the Gothic mania of the previous century, these stories, notably 'The Vampyre' (1819) by John Polidori really developed horror tropes which remain with us even some 200 years later. It was written during the same competition at Villa Diodati near Geneva where Mary Shelley wrote 'Frankenstein' (1818). Indeed when  'The Vampyre' was first published it was attributed to their host Lord Byron rather that Polidori, the doctor of Byron's friend, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Polidori is acknowledged for changing the character of the vampire from being undead peasants to a lord, a man of society. Interestingly, the vampire antagonist, Lord Ruthven as well as drinking blood, also works to ruin decent men and to promote nefarious ones, so you have the sense of his evil beyond the standard vampire diet.

The stories in the collection are written in a style and language of the time, but fortunately the editors provide a lot of background information on each, if the reader is unfamiliar with the context, and translations of archaic terms. In the case of 'Sir Evelyn's Dream' by Horace Smith this is particularly necessary as it is set some 200 years earlier still and he seeks to use language of that time. While many of the stories are supernatural in nature, featuring ghosts, others are more accounts of grim happenings of the time 'Confessions of a Reformed Ribbonman' by William Carelton is simply the account of a vigilante killing in Ireland and 'Some Terrible Letters from Scotland' collected by James Hogg, is largely accounts of the spread of cholera. 'Life in Death' featuring a reanimation potion with only partial effects, in fact can be considered a science fiction story.

Others such as 'Monos and Daimonos' by Edward Buller, 'The Master of Logan' by Allan Cunningham, 'The Curse', 'The Red Man' by Catherine Gore, 'The Bride of Lindorf' by Letitia E. Landon and 'Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess' by the better known Sheridan Le Fanu, are all satisfyingly either supernatural or of a horror nature for the reader looking for short classic Gothic stories. They also remind me of Roald Dahl's 'Tales of the Unexpected' (1979), the sequels and TV series based on them. Overall this was an interesting collection of often forgotten stories which impinge on Gothic and horror writing long after they were published.

Non-Fiction

'The Hare with Amber Eyes' by Edmund De Waal

This is the second time in two months that I have mistaken a non-fiction book for fiction. In fact this was an investigation by the author, a descendant of the incredibly wealthy Ephrussi family. The linking aspect are the 264 intricate netsuke - ornate Japanese ornaments made of wood or ivory, to keep cords in place on someone's clothing in the 19th Century - that he inherited. You have to admire his effort in finding how they first arrived in Europe during the mid-19th Century fad for Japonisme and the context in which they were housed in Paris before moving to Vienna as a wedding present and then to the care of De Waal's uncle who lived in Japan following the Second World War. It is an interesting account of an incredibly wealthy family who were destroyed by the coming of Nazism and the persecution of Jews. Their wealth did allow most to escape into exile. A dedicated servant preserved the netsuke during the Second World War so they could be reunited with the family afterwards. However, vast quantities of artwork sold to help pay for passage into exile or seized by the Nazis are now housed in galleries across the world.

I really admired the hard work De Waal put in digging up the story of his ancestors especially in the turbulent times in which they lived. However, you quickly have had enough of all the details of the vast houses they built and the extensive art collections they assembled. While their wealth did not exempt them from persecution, most of the family came away alive. In addition, it is clear that De Waal is rather unaware of his own privileges. He works as a potter and yet owns a house in London and clearly has the time and the money to fly off across Europe and into Asia, whenever he wishes. While it is an interesting story it is one that left me feeling uneasy, particularly for those Jewish people living in Vienna and Paris who were unable to get away.

'The Hitler State' by Martin Broszat

This is a good supplement to the four volumes on the rise and maintenance of power by Noakes & Pridham that I read in 2022/23, notably Volume 2: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2022/11/the-books-i-read-in-november.html Broszat goes a level deeper and shows just how complicated Germany was under the Nazis. We are familiar with the sense that the regime was chaotic and that Hitler was happy to foster competing organisations often overlapping. This book provides the detail of those and how different bodies ebbed and flowed throughout the period, particularly in the pre-war years. It features many of the second- and third-rank Nazis which tend not to get featured even in specialist books on the regime and shows how different characters and ambitions, and the arguments among them, fuelled the chaos. In particular Broszat addresses the balance between Party and State, contrasting Germany with the USSR in this respect and articulating the contests between authoritarian - due to the persistence of so much from the previous state systems - and totalitarian trends. In the fields of the economy and industry, he shows how the entwining between official positions and private business was 'messy' but in fact allowed the German economy and output to continue. Ironically this mashing together of the private and the official was very much how Britain ran its wartime economy too. Overall this is a detailed account which really demonstrates the every-changing 'machine' of the Nazi regime. However, it does beg the question how much more deadly Nazi Germany would have been to the world if it has been organised effectively or even just on a rational basis.

Books I Read In December

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

Fiction

'Fleshmarket Close' by Ian Rankin

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

'The Plot Against America' by Philip Roth

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

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

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

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

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

Non-Fiction

The Social History of Politics' ed. by Georg Iggers

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

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

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

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

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

'Keynes and After' by Michael Stewart

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

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

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

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

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