Fiction
'A Fool's Alphabet' by Sebastian Faulks
Given that I received this book from the friend of mine who also supplied me with 'Perfume: The Story of a Murderer' (1985) by Patrick Süskind, 'Sophie's World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy' (1991) by Jostein Gaarder and 'Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe' (1991) by Bill Bryson, I should have realised that this book was going to be of that kind - pretentious and lacking entertainment.
'A Fool's Alphabet' has twenty-six chapters set in locations across the world beginning with each of the letters of the alphabet; the chapters are recounted in alphabetical rather than chronological order. They cover incidents in the life of Pietro Russell; a few of his father Raymond Russell and one about his grandfather, between 1914 and 1991 (i.e. in Hobsbawm's 'short 20th century'), though most chapters are set in the 1970s and 1980s. Sometimes the named location is simply the starting point and most of the chapter is actually about somewhere else entirely or, indeed actually about a different year to the one given in that title.
In theory, some mystery of Pietro Russell, a British man with an Italian mother, is supposed to come together as you read through the book and see short incidents from across his life and that of a couple of his relatives. The only mystery is how a man is unhappy who has been sent to a crammer so he can get ahead; travels extensively; has wealthy largely pleasant friends; runs his own business; has a sustained relationship with a beautiful woman that even he recognises is out of his league and then marries, has three healthy children with and cheats on a Belgian woman far less patronising and harsh than most Belgian women.
For part of the time he undergoes psychotherapy, simply because he feels unlovable, nothing more serious than that. Yet, the treatment seems to provide no benefit and he simply cheats on his wife before regretting it. I do not know if Faulks lives in such a privileged existence to imagine that this is a hard life. In fact Pietro should be aware that he has done far better not simply than his father and grandfather who fought (though admittedly survived) the two world wars, let alone many of the other people he encounters. You quickly come to resent this ungrateful man and it is always difficult to enjoy reading incidents through the eyes of a character you come to despise.
The only good thing about this book are the descriptions of the different locations. You get some well crafted vignettes of different locations with real care to detail so that nothing anachronistic appears despite the jumping through the decades. It would have been better if different characters appeared in each, perhaps together providing some overarching 'message' about life. Instead we end up with the fragmented story of a character who is easy to abhor.
'Funeral for Figaro' by Ellis Peters
I can understand why crime authors like the settings of theatre or the opera for their stories. There are often a lots of jealousy and passion; people coming and going through the crime scene; ample opportunity for disguise and yet there is a fixed circle of characters, something which is often required for a crime story. They end up as some of the most tedious or irritating novels the author can produce. Michael Dibdin's, 'Cosi Fan Tutte' (1997) is, in no doubt, his worst book. This one is seen through the eyes of the owner of the theatre who is also director of the operas, Johnny Truscott. He is a bit of a mess and poor, as a widower, raising his 19-year old daughter, called Hero (she is known as 'Butch'; Peters saddles her young female characters with unpleasant nicknames, e.g. 'Tossa' from 'The Piper on the Mountain'), who is bent on marrying one of the singers; this gives away the age of the novel. However, at least Truscott is not as pathetic and unlikeable as Tom Kenyon, the 'narrator' in 'Flight of a Witch' that I read last month.
This Peters story is around a very peculiar repertory opera house run by a man who operated small boats for clandestine Allied missions during the Second World War (the book was published in 1962). Using an assortment of opera singers; technical staff largely left over from his wartime crew and others who he rescued from Occupied Europe, he runs a regular rotation of operas, bringing in better known performers for leading roles. One of these is murdered, apparently by a sword used by another character in the 'The Marriage of Figaro'. Among the small group there are many with reason to kill the man, sometime collaborator in wartime Austria.
The problem with this book, setting aside how unattractive 'luvvie' performers are both in real life and in fiction, is that it is scrappy. Too much of it is about opera; even the detective involved, this time Inspector Musgrave rather than Felse, is an opera fan and spends a lot of time critiquing the performances rather than trying to solve the crime. You need to have a reasonable grasp of opera to comprehend what is going on. However, in general you do not really care about the characters sufficiently and unusually for Peters, except for a surprising car crash, there is no sense of jeopardy. There are some good twists in the closing couple of chapters and unusually for a British crime novel, the detective goes home blaming the wrong person for the crime. Overall, however, except for the closing sections this is a rather dull story which especially in the opening sections is difficult to follow unless you are a fan of Mozart operas.
'Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix' by J.K. Rowling
This is the fifth book in the Harry Potter series and as I have noted in reading the previous ones, as they progress they diverge more and more from the movies. In part this is because they increase in length and to cover all the incidents, sub-plots and characters which feature in the book would need a mini-series. My edition of this book was 766 pages long. The other trend I have noted before, continues and expands in this book. Rowling is more concerned with Harry Potter as a schoolboy than she is with him as an adventurer. The concluding battle is far more complex than it is shown in the movie, but the majority of the book is about summer holidays and school days, especially revising for and taking the OWLS exams, the magic equivalent of GCSEs. This aspect is less interesting to me than the adventure, but as I have noted before, that is probably because I am a man rather than a boy.
Rowling handles the schoolboy aspects well, especially Potter's on-off intimate relationship with Cho Chang, his feelings for and his disappointment about his late parents and his godfather, plus all his doubts about his study. However, covering all these pretty mundane elements at such length saps the book of dynamism which remained apparent especially in the first three books. In part this reflects Rowling's success as publishers are happier to let an author write what they want without editing it down, once they are a sure-fire success as Rowling had become by this stage. This could have been a punchier book if it had been trimmed down; it could have easily have been 200 pages shorter and still have been engaging, perhaps more so. Rowling's writing certainly has improved since the first book and some will find this a rich book to really sink into. However, I think with length much of the excitement, more apparent in earlier books, has been dissipated.
'Bonaparte's Sons' by Richard Howard
This book published in 1997 was the first in a series of six books running to 2002, about Alain Lausard, a fictional soldier in the 5th Dragoon Regiment of Napoleon's Army. I am very surprised that he got this book let alone another five published. I suppose publishers are always looking for new historical series and they guessed that this one would appeal to those who had read Bernard Cornwell's series, published 1981-2007, about Richard Sharpe, a British rifleman in the late 18th century and early 19th century, largely during the Napoleonic Wars. Howard starts with an often neglected part of the period, Napoleon's campaign in northern Italy. His historical detail is fine it is just that the writing is painfully clunky. I suppose these days the art of editing is unaffordable to companies and more relies on the author getting it right. When he wrote this book, it seems Howard lacked such skill. In one description of a battle he says the cannon 'opened up' four times.
Unlike Cornell, for example, Howard is unable to get descriptions of weapons of the time into the story without sounding like a technical manual, e.g.:
'Canister shot consisted of a tin case which ruptured on leaving the barrel, transforming the cannon into a massive shotgun as it released up to eighty one-ounce balls which had been packed tightly within. Heavy case was also used, a more lethal version which could send up to forty three-ounce metal balls to its target in excess of 450 feet per second.'
With the weather, conversely, he becomes very poetic, e.g.:
'The sun itself was a massive burnished orb slipping slowly below the horizon, its dying light the colour of bloodstained bronze. Birds returning to their nests were black arrowheads against the crimson backdrop.'
The story works on a familiar premise about a group of prisoners pressed into service in the army, in this case to defend revolutionary France in 1797. The start is very much like the Second World War movie, 'The Dirty Dozen' (1967), though it uses stereotypes and the poor religious character simply mouths almost identical statements throughout the entire book; the womanizer does little better. Though Lausard is the prime focus this does not stop Howard jumping between the perspectives of different characters sometimes in consecutive sentences; towards the book we get to see the views of newcomers to the unit and even hear conversations held in German, a language spoken by only one of the French soldiers. I have written stories featuring small units of soldiers and it can be difficult to cover battles from just one view and to have sufficient distinction between each of the soldiers in the unit. However, Howard is inefficient in his writing, seeming to thinking that repeating the same statements will provide character to each one rather than just emphasising how shallowly developed they all are.
The battle scenes are fine and dramatic and there is a sense of jeopardy as you are not certain who will be injured or killed. There are extensive descriptions of the wounds various men suffer. The scene in the hospital comes over like a catalogue. I guess Howard wanted it to sound gritty and realistic, but again, repetition does not add anything, indeed it blunts the emotion trying to be communicated. The first book is always tricky as you have to establish the characters and have them trained, etc. Howard seems to feel that he needs an adventure, but because he is wasteful, this seems tacked on, far too briefly at the end; its conclusion is incredibly rushed. He might have done better to start with this and then have Lausard reflecting on what had happened to bring them to this situation and the men showing their various traits by how they act during the escapade - this is something that is done pretty well in 'The Dirty Dozen' especially the rapist portrayed by Telly Savalas whose obsession upsets the whole mission. These days, however, I know that many readers insist on a linear narrative and feel unhappy if you jump around in chronology.
Clearly someone appreciated Howard's work sufficiently to publish six of his novels. Perhaps they improve as they progress. I think Howard certainly needed to become very familiar with the Sharpe novels and see how you can effectively work a story in such a context and from such a perspective.
Non-Fiction
'Fascism' by Noël O' Sullivan
Rather than being a history book this is a political philosophical analysis of Fascism. O'Sullivan does focus on Nazism and Italian Fascism, rather dismissing any other strands, notably monarchical fascism and clerico-fascism as pale imitations of these with nothing original within them. O'Sullivan pays particular attention to the constitution, the Charter, of the short-lived republic of Fiume, the Regency of Carnaro Gabriele D'Annunzio, (1863–1938) established 1919-20. He sees this as the best articulation of a Fascist perspective.
Across the latter three-quarters of the book, he makes a very convincing case that Fascism arose from philosophical and political changes really starting around the time of the French Revolution then strengthening through the 19th century to provide fertile ground for Fascism in the 20th century. He looks at factors such as the redefinition of freedom as something within an individual rather than exterior, the rise of the concept that a better society could only be achieved by the efforts of people, rather than, as for example previous, devotion to God and, the sense that struggle and sacrifice, typically through warfare, were 'good' of themselves as well as paving the way for the desired society. There was also the aspect promoted particularly by Napoleon Bonaparte, that the leader was always right and should be able simply to command utter loyalty in the 'struggle' even if his directions turned out to be contradictory. This provides an engaging case. His attempt to portray Fascism as 'directed activist' in contrast to 'passive activist' let alone 'limited' forms of government works less effectively and given what he says earlier on about the similarities between Fascism and Communism, it then seems artificial as he does later to try to portray them as very different in terms of this degree of activism.
The central problem with this book is in its first part. O'Sullivan is utterly scathing of any previous interpretation of Fascism provided by historians and politicians up to that date (the book was published in 1983). He dismisses them as naive and foolish, seeking to through aside all of the attempts to analyse and synthesise on the political movement. This makes very difficult reading and undermines the faith you have in O'Sullivan. There is a sense that he damages his academic credibility in making sustained attacks on others in the field, with no concession. It also rouses suspicions that he is less confident in his own line than one might expect and so feels he must blow away every last alternative before turning to his thesis. I advise you to avoid Chapter 1 entirely.
Showing posts with label Ellis Peters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ellis Peters. Show all posts
Wednesday, 31 August 2016
Sunday, 31 July 2016
The Books I Read In July
Fiction
'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire'
As I have noted before, I come to read the Harry Potter series from watching the movies more than once each. This book marks a jump in length from its predecessors; my edition had 636 pages. As with the previous volumes I have read, the story largely focuses on Harry's life at school. The adventure element forms a smaller part than in the movies.
The book introduces characters that do not feature in the movie, including magical creatures, additional house elves and members of the Ministry of Magic and of the Weasley family. There is also a sub-plot about Hermione Granger campaigning for the rights of house elves, an enslaved species in the magic world. The gaps between the three trials that Harry has to undertake are longer but the portrayal of the challenges themselves, especially the first one, are far shorter than how they are shown in the movie. This is a shame especially as little Quidditch features in this book. It also includes lengthy exposition especially towards the end.
I like the book because it has these various sub-plots and the reappearance of teachers who largely disappear in the movie. It is also good at seeing the qualms in Harry's mind, both standard teenage concerns and the risks of facing his nemesis, Lord Voldemort who experiences a leap forward in strength in this book. Overall it is not a bad book, but I wanted more of the adventure and less of the vacillations of Potter, but then I guess it is aimed at someone who is 14 and not 48. As yet, however, I have not been put off completing the series.
'Rumpole's Return' by John Mortimer
Though, as I noted last month, Horace Rumpole, unlike the characters around him, never seems to age, in this book he has retired. He has gone to live in Florida where his son is an academic. Interestingly his daughter-in-law is pregnant but continues to smoke. Rumpole soon tires of life in Florida and returns to his old chambers when called upon by a former colleague. The story is pretty much a murder mystery with Rumpole and his son gathering evidence on both sides of the Atlantic to help Horace make a defence in a murder case. The story is alright but is a little unsatisfactory in the comings and goings of Rumpole and the question whether he could really retire and then return. He has not sold his London flat and his wife comes back from Florida after him too. By the end of the book the status quo ante has been re-established. I accept that some of this stems from the fact that these are stories based on what was proving to be a successful television series and so the drivers are those of broadcasting than how an author might work a novel or series of short stories. The notable change especially from the first book in the series, is the lack of humour, the only funny bit is a repeat of a joke told in an earlier book. It passes the time to see Rumpole and the quirky characters around him with the addition of interesting aspects of English law and forensic science, but it lacks the engagement of the first book and I do wonder if it is a case of diminishing returns.
'Flight of A Witch' by Ellis Peters
This is another of Peters's books featuring members of the Felse family. This one was published in 1964 and so George Felse has just been promoted from Detective Sergeant to Detective Inspector and his son Dominic is a sixth former. Both appear in this book, but as is common for Peters, they are supporting rather than leading characters. As in many of her books set in England it is based in the border region with Wales, but unlike in 'City of Gold and Shadows' (1973) by which time George is a Detective Chief Inspector, the region is portrayed very bleakly. The story is centred on an 18-year old girl (the age of majority until 1970 was 21 so people below that age were still considered children though they could have sex at 16, they could not vote), called Annet [sic] Beck. One difference from the mid-1960s compared to today when more people have children in their 40s than their 20s in Britain, a child of a couple who had turned 40, as Annet is, was expected to be 'wrong' in some way. Annet disappears for five days and is connected to a crime committed in Birmingham. The bulk of the story is about finding out what happened to her during those five days and who was the man with her involved with the crime. There are a range of suspects and George Felse aided by Dominic and a friend of his, plus one of Dominic's teachers, Tom Kenyon, seek to eliminate the suspects and force the actual man involved out of cover.
Ellis does jump around between points of view but less often than in some of her other Felse books. The steady investigation and the elimination of a number of seemingly likely suspects is handled well. The main problem is how bleak the book is. This is not simply a result of the dreary setting, but also because so much of the story is seen through the eyes of Tom Kenyon, foolishly besotted with Annet who is the daughter of his landlord and bitter throughout as a result. He comes across as a very pathetic character able to contribute much to developments and in fact spends the bulk of the climax a dumb, incapacitated spectator. The trouble is that you often identify even if only distantly with the perspective of the one showing the story. Looking through the eyes of George or Dominic consistently would have been alright. However, seeing so much through Tom's eyes makes you feel dirty. Unlike Annet he has no form of redemption or even like the criminal, of release. He ends being humiliated by one of his pupils and has any potential for affection spured. As a result you feel that his life is pointless. That is no way to be engaged with a novel.
'Stars and Stripes Forever' by Harry Harrison
I know there is a current tendency for many authors to write 'what if?' novels which accentuate the greatness of the USA or show how it would have benefited from having more of the attitudes of the Confederate States in its make-up. This book published in 1998 can certainly be seen as one of the first such alternate history books. It starts well, looking at the real incident of the stopping of the British ship, the 'Trent', in 1861 which was carrying two representatives of the Confederate States to address Queen Victoria and Emperor Napoleon III, by a Union naval ship. This was violation of Britain's neutrality in the American Civil War and added to British support for the CSA. Due to its military failings, Britain never formally recognised the Confederate States but did build warships for their navy. In this alternative, Queen Victoria is angered and her husband Prince Albert is weakened by the illness that was killing him, slightly earlier than in our world. As a result a strongly worded ultimatum goes to President Lincoln and this leads to Britain entering the war on the side of the Confederates. So far, so feasible. These elements take you to almost half way through the book.
Of course, some people argue that no 'what if?' book is feasible, because it is not what happened. This is despite the fact that in real history it is the least likely thing that happens. In this book, one British naval party makes a mistake in bad weather and so assaults Biloxi, a Confederate town rather than Deer Island which is occupied by Union troops. The British forces go on the rampage for some reason through the town looting and raping. This is seen as sufficient to immediately encourage the Confederate forces to call for a ceasefire from the Union. Within a day of the British mistake, Union and Confederate troops are fighting side-by-side against the British both in the Mississippi and then in New York state. Very quickly President Lincoln meets with Jefferson Davis, President of the CSA and they agree on joint action against the British in 1862, setting aside the two years of civil war and the issues that provoked it, very speedily. The combined forces not only go on to eject the British from the USA, but provoke the French-speaking Lower Canada to break from Britain, then seize the remainder of British territories in North America bar Newfoundland and easily capture all the British Caribbean islands. A Francophone uprising against British rule is probably the most feasible of those steps, there having been one in 1837-38 which had to be put down by the military. Setting that aside, at the same time the CSA Congress agrees to the ending of slavery and then abolishes itself effectively returning all the seceded states to the Union by 1863.
There seems so much which is rushed through in this alternative. Yes, Lincoln wanted to end the war but would not do so at any cost. He did not recognise the CSA as a legitimate state or Jefferson as a proper President. Meeting him in the way he does in this book would suggest to many that the CSA was being treated as a sovereign country. In our history, even after the CSA had been soundly beaten in 1865, many found ways around abolition of slavery and did not roll over easily. Harrison points out that at the end of the war in 1865, combined, the USA and CSA had an army larger than any European country and he believes that this army could have defeated all those armies fighting in unison, let alone just the British armed forces. This overlooks the fact that it took the Union Army until 1865 to defeat the Confederates, even with a comprehensive blockade. Furthermore it overestimates the strength of the Confederate forces, dependent on poor equipment, to fight British regulars and win easily. Somehow, overnight the two sides of the bitter conflict set aside their differences and they are empowered, especially the Confederate troops, with a new vigour and indeed skill.
The other thing is that the British keep making mistakes and the Americans make none. In addition, new equipment and weapons are pressed into service with minimal difficulty and are used appropriately throughout; the ships needed are always in the right place at the right time and do not malfunction when needed for victory. The British, in contrast, cling to old ways. The war portrayed is largely a re-run of the War of 1812, which is a fair estimate of what might have happened. However, everything that could go wrong does so for the British and even the civilian population of Washington D.C. prove to better, more committed fighters than British regulars. The Confederates are shown largely, with a few notable exceptions, as being happy in an instant to stop fighting the very men who drove them to leave the Union and throw over their hard-won allies, the British immediately, making no use of them to leverage any concessions from Lincoln; they simply swallow return to the Union as it was and abolition of slavery just because John Stuart Mill says it is the right thing to do.
Overall the book suggests somehow that the American Civil War was simply an error and the two sides were only fighting half-heartedly for what they believed in, despite their differences being so severe to lead to war in the first place. To Harrison it only needed a rather feeble invasion in a couple of points to overcome these differences in a matter of days and set the USA to be able to severely damage the largest empire of the day with a handful of iron-clad ships, almost always in perfect working order. This book starts well, but then Harrison slips into a jingoist fantasy. He could have reached a similar conclusion much more feasibly, especially given that this is the first book in a trilogy. Yet, for some reason he feels compelled to rush it all through making it highly unrealistic. I can only think this comes from a great deal of arrogance as he writes at the end of the book: 'Events, as depicted in this book, would have happened just as they are written here.' Even an author of a novel about true historical events cannot claim that. In this case many historians and authors would argue that the path this book lays out is far from having been likely even with the British error. This could have been a far better book, but for a fan of alternate history books it will be very frustrating to read.
Non Fiction
'The Economic Impact of the Cold War' by James L. Clayton
This book was published in 1970 so only covers the first half of the Cold War and it is primarily focused on the impact on the US economy. It starts by looking at a range of economic/political perspectives on what defence spending does to an economy. However, its central focus is a very astute analysis of the so-called military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower identified in 1961, i.e. the intimate connections between government departments, especially the Department of Defense and big companies particularly in aeronautics, ordnance and engineering. It shows that despite the USA portraying itself as the home of free enterprise, in fact the billions of dollars in defence contracts from 1941 onwards led to a large chunk of the US economy really being a complicit cartel, a kind of corporatist economy more familiar in Fascist states than democratic ones.
The book draws on a wide range of contemporary sources, putting both sides of the case, both broadly, e.g. on whether defence spending boosted or drained the economy and on specifics such as the Vietnam War and ABMs (Anti-Ballistic Missiles) both of which were controversial at the time. The book is very interesting on how uneven defence spending has been across the USA and shows that the current day prosperity of California and Texas was promoted by vast defence-related spending in these states in the post-war period. It reminds of schemes that have long been forgotten and highlights the waste and poor quality often produced from such expenditure. Thus, the analysis is of the kind which could be applied to governmental spending today as we are familiar with similar stories for example in software developed for the health service and air traffic control. It is also the only book that I have read that presents a negative view of the US efforts to put a man on the Moon and how the money spent on the missions provided little benefit for the country and could have been better spent.
While the book looks at a single country over a particular period of its history, the way it analyses the situation and provides frameworks for this analysis, it is an engaging book which can be taken forward to use as a basis for analysis of state-commercial relations especially on vast schemes the output of which is difficult to measure in tangible terms of success.
'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire'
As I have noted before, I come to read the Harry Potter series from watching the movies more than once each. This book marks a jump in length from its predecessors; my edition had 636 pages. As with the previous volumes I have read, the story largely focuses on Harry's life at school. The adventure element forms a smaller part than in the movies.
The book introduces characters that do not feature in the movie, including magical creatures, additional house elves and members of the Ministry of Magic and of the Weasley family. There is also a sub-plot about Hermione Granger campaigning for the rights of house elves, an enslaved species in the magic world. The gaps between the three trials that Harry has to undertake are longer but the portrayal of the challenges themselves, especially the first one, are far shorter than how they are shown in the movie. This is a shame especially as little Quidditch features in this book. It also includes lengthy exposition especially towards the end.
I like the book because it has these various sub-plots and the reappearance of teachers who largely disappear in the movie. It is also good at seeing the qualms in Harry's mind, both standard teenage concerns and the risks of facing his nemesis, Lord Voldemort who experiences a leap forward in strength in this book. Overall it is not a bad book, but I wanted more of the adventure and less of the vacillations of Potter, but then I guess it is aimed at someone who is 14 and not 48. As yet, however, I have not been put off completing the series.
'Rumpole's Return' by John Mortimer
Though, as I noted last month, Horace Rumpole, unlike the characters around him, never seems to age, in this book he has retired. He has gone to live in Florida where his son is an academic. Interestingly his daughter-in-law is pregnant but continues to smoke. Rumpole soon tires of life in Florida and returns to his old chambers when called upon by a former colleague. The story is pretty much a murder mystery with Rumpole and his son gathering evidence on both sides of the Atlantic to help Horace make a defence in a murder case. The story is alright but is a little unsatisfactory in the comings and goings of Rumpole and the question whether he could really retire and then return. He has not sold his London flat and his wife comes back from Florida after him too. By the end of the book the status quo ante has been re-established. I accept that some of this stems from the fact that these are stories based on what was proving to be a successful television series and so the drivers are those of broadcasting than how an author might work a novel or series of short stories. The notable change especially from the first book in the series, is the lack of humour, the only funny bit is a repeat of a joke told in an earlier book. It passes the time to see Rumpole and the quirky characters around him with the addition of interesting aspects of English law and forensic science, but it lacks the engagement of the first book and I do wonder if it is a case of diminishing returns.
'Flight of A Witch' by Ellis Peters
This is another of Peters's books featuring members of the Felse family. This one was published in 1964 and so George Felse has just been promoted from Detective Sergeant to Detective Inspector and his son Dominic is a sixth former. Both appear in this book, but as is common for Peters, they are supporting rather than leading characters. As in many of her books set in England it is based in the border region with Wales, but unlike in 'City of Gold and Shadows' (1973) by which time George is a Detective Chief Inspector, the region is portrayed very bleakly. The story is centred on an 18-year old girl (the age of majority until 1970 was 21 so people below that age were still considered children though they could have sex at 16, they could not vote), called Annet [sic] Beck. One difference from the mid-1960s compared to today when more people have children in their 40s than their 20s in Britain, a child of a couple who had turned 40, as Annet is, was expected to be 'wrong' in some way. Annet disappears for five days and is connected to a crime committed in Birmingham. The bulk of the story is about finding out what happened to her during those five days and who was the man with her involved with the crime. There are a range of suspects and George Felse aided by Dominic and a friend of his, plus one of Dominic's teachers, Tom Kenyon, seek to eliminate the suspects and force the actual man involved out of cover.
Ellis does jump around between points of view but less often than in some of her other Felse books. The steady investigation and the elimination of a number of seemingly likely suspects is handled well. The main problem is how bleak the book is. This is not simply a result of the dreary setting, but also because so much of the story is seen through the eyes of Tom Kenyon, foolishly besotted with Annet who is the daughter of his landlord and bitter throughout as a result. He comes across as a very pathetic character able to contribute much to developments and in fact spends the bulk of the climax a dumb, incapacitated spectator. The trouble is that you often identify even if only distantly with the perspective of the one showing the story. Looking through the eyes of George or Dominic consistently would have been alright. However, seeing so much through Tom's eyes makes you feel dirty. Unlike Annet he has no form of redemption or even like the criminal, of release. He ends being humiliated by one of his pupils and has any potential for affection spured. As a result you feel that his life is pointless. That is no way to be engaged with a novel.
'Stars and Stripes Forever' by Harry Harrison
I know there is a current tendency for many authors to write 'what if?' novels which accentuate the greatness of the USA or show how it would have benefited from having more of the attitudes of the Confederate States in its make-up. This book published in 1998 can certainly be seen as one of the first such alternate history books. It starts well, looking at the real incident of the stopping of the British ship, the 'Trent', in 1861 which was carrying two representatives of the Confederate States to address Queen Victoria and Emperor Napoleon III, by a Union naval ship. This was violation of Britain's neutrality in the American Civil War and added to British support for the CSA. Due to its military failings, Britain never formally recognised the Confederate States but did build warships for their navy. In this alternative, Queen Victoria is angered and her husband Prince Albert is weakened by the illness that was killing him, slightly earlier than in our world. As a result a strongly worded ultimatum goes to President Lincoln and this leads to Britain entering the war on the side of the Confederates. So far, so feasible. These elements take you to almost half way through the book.
Of course, some people argue that no 'what if?' book is feasible, because it is not what happened. This is despite the fact that in real history it is the least likely thing that happens. In this book, one British naval party makes a mistake in bad weather and so assaults Biloxi, a Confederate town rather than Deer Island which is occupied by Union troops. The British forces go on the rampage for some reason through the town looting and raping. This is seen as sufficient to immediately encourage the Confederate forces to call for a ceasefire from the Union. Within a day of the British mistake, Union and Confederate troops are fighting side-by-side against the British both in the Mississippi and then in New York state. Very quickly President Lincoln meets with Jefferson Davis, President of the CSA and they agree on joint action against the British in 1862, setting aside the two years of civil war and the issues that provoked it, very speedily. The combined forces not only go on to eject the British from the USA, but provoke the French-speaking Lower Canada to break from Britain, then seize the remainder of British territories in North America bar Newfoundland and easily capture all the British Caribbean islands. A Francophone uprising against British rule is probably the most feasible of those steps, there having been one in 1837-38 which had to be put down by the military. Setting that aside, at the same time the CSA Congress agrees to the ending of slavery and then abolishes itself effectively returning all the seceded states to the Union by 1863.
There seems so much which is rushed through in this alternative. Yes, Lincoln wanted to end the war but would not do so at any cost. He did not recognise the CSA as a legitimate state or Jefferson as a proper President. Meeting him in the way he does in this book would suggest to many that the CSA was being treated as a sovereign country. In our history, even after the CSA had been soundly beaten in 1865, many found ways around abolition of slavery and did not roll over easily. Harrison points out that at the end of the war in 1865, combined, the USA and CSA had an army larger than any European country and he believes that this army could have defeated all those armies fighting in unison, let alone just the British armed forces. This overlooks the fact that it took the Union Army until 1865 to defeat the Confederates, even with a comprehensive blockade. Furthermore it overestimates the strength of the Confederate forces, dependent on poor equipment, to fight British regulars and win easily. Somehow, overnight the two sides of the bitter conflict set aside their differences and they are empowered, especially the Confederate troops, with a new vigour and indeed skill.
The other thing is that the British keep making mistakes and the Americans make none. In addition, new equipment and weapons are pressed into service with minimal difficulty and are used appropriately throughout; the ships needed are always in the right place at the right time and do not malfunction when needed for victory. The British, in contrast, cling to old ways. The war portrayed is largely a re-run of the War of 1812, which is a fair estimate of what might have happened. However, everything that could go wrong does so for the British and even the civilian population of Washington D.C. prove to better, more committed fighters than British regulars. The Confederates are shown largely, with a few notable exceptions, as being happy in an instant to stop fighting the very men who drove them to leave the Union and throw over their hard-won allies, the British immediately, making no use of them to leverage any concessions from Lincoln; they simply swallow return to the Union as it was and abolition of slavery just because John Stuart Mill says it is the right thing to do.
Overall the book suggests somehow that the American Civil War was simply an error and the two sides were only fighting half-heartedly for what they believed in, despite their differences being so severe to lead to war in the first place. To Harrison it only needed a rather feeble invasion in a couple of points to overcome these differences in a matter of days and set the USA to be able to severely damage the largest empire of the day with a handful of iron-clad ships, almost always in perfect working order. This book starts well, but then Harrison slips into a jingoist fantasy. He could have reached a similar conclusion much more feasibly, especially given that this is the first book in a trilogy. Yet, for some reason he feels compelled to rush it all through making it highly unrealistic. I can only think this comes from a great deal of arrogance as he writes at the end of the book: 'Events, as depicted in this book, would have happened just as they are written here.' Even an author of a novel about true historical events cannot claim that. In this case many historians and authors would argue that the path this book lays out is far from having been likely even with the British error. This could have been a far better book, but for a fan of alternate history books it will be very frustrating to read.
Non Fiction
'The Economic Impact of the Cold War' by James L. Clayton
This book was published in 1970 so only covers the first half of the Cold War and it is primarily focused on the impact on the US economy. It starts by looking at a range of economic/political perspectives on what defence spending does to an economy. However, its central focus is a very astute analysis of the so-called military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower identified in 1961, i.e. the intimate connections between government departments, especially the Department of Defense and big companies particularly in aeronautics, ordnance and engineering. It shows that despite the USA portraying itself as the home of free enterprise, in fact the billions of dollars in defence contracts from 1941 onwards led to a large chunk of the US economy really being a complicit cartel, a kind of corporatist economy more familiar in Fascist states than democratic ones.
The book draws on a wide range of contemporary sources, putting both sides of the case, both broadly, e.g. on whether defence spending boosted or drained the economy and on specifics such as the Vietnam War and ABMs (Anti-Ballistic Missiles) both of which were controversial at the time. The book is very interesting on how uneven defence spending has been across the USA and shows that the current day prosperity of California and Texas was promoted by vast defence-related spending in these states in the post-war period. It reminds of schemes that have long been forgotten and highlights the waste and poor quality often produced from such expenditure. Thus, the analysis is of the kind which could be applied to governmental spending today as we are familiar with similar stories for example in software developed for the health service and air traffic control. It is also the only book that I have read that presents a negative view of the US efforts to put a man on the Moon and how the money spent on the missions provided little benefit for the country and could have been better spent.
While the book looks at a single country over a particular period of its history, the way it analyses the situation and provides frameworks for this analysis, it is an engaging book which can be taken forward to use as a basis for analysis of state-commercial relations especially on vast schemes the output of which is difficult to measure in tangible terms of success.
Thursday, 30 June 2016
The Books I Read In June
Fiction
'Rumpole of the Bailey' by John Mortimer
This is a collection of short stories, though there are linking threads and ongoing characters connecting them. They are adapted from the television series broadcast in 1978. They are presented as a memoir of Horace Rumpole, a fictional defence barrister, working on cases mainly in the late 1970s, though with regular references to ones in the 1960s and even before that. Rumpole is a quirky character who is more at home mixing with his criminal defendants than with the pompous lawyers and judges he works with. He has very fixed habits including working on crosswords, quoting poetry and drinking claret in Fleet Street. Mortimer has succeeded in drawing up a very rich character who is avuncular and likable even when cranky and does not always win. Through the eyes of Rumpole he is very adept at drawing sketches of all of those he encounters, based on views of the time, but with the Rumpole feel for humanity mixed in.
You might think it is a challenge to write funny stories about criminal court cases (there is also a divorce case), but Mortimer has succeeded and I found myself laughing out loud at a book for the first time in ages. At the same time, you learn a great deal about the British legal system, at least how it function in the mid to late 20th century. There have been many changes, but I am sure modern lawyers would still recognise a lot of what Mortimer writes about. That may not be the case in the future. I particularly noted the reference to Legal Aid, which is now largely dead. It shows how difficult the defence barrister's role is, especially when faced with fixed attitudes from the police and judiciary; often the jury as well. It shows how hard it can be working with a defendant who has an agendum which is different for simply being found not guilty. I came away from the book pleased that Britain has a jury system. I know the German legal system better as a consequence of my crime novels and the use of just a judge even if there are two assessors assisting, seems to fix in stone establishment attitudes. Yes, juries can be bigoted, but there are times when they see beyond the mechanical assumptions of the legal machine. Though dated, this was a surprisingly enjoyable book. I have three other books from Mortimer to read and am now looking forward to them.
'The Trials of Rumpole' by John Mortimer
This book follows on directly from 'Rumpole of the Bailey' and was published a year later and are set in the late 1970s. As others have noted, while the characters in Rumpole's chambers and indeed in the courts, seem to progress and we see one couple go from courting to marriage and having their first child, Horace Rumpole seems never to alter being around 70 forever more. This book has another sequence of cases, which are engaging but lack the laugh out loud humour of the first book. At times the plots against Rumpole, to get him to retire and to emigrate to the USA to live with his son and insufferable daughter-in-law are irritating. The book travels along reasonably pleasantly, but these cases are often more serious, two involving sexual aspects that you cannot treat with a light tone. Revenge also appears as common motive in these stories. Thus, the stories are of interest and indeed of entertainment, but overall have a different, darker tone to those of the preceding book. I have 'The Return of Rumpole' to follow and am not put off reading it.
'Death to the Landlords!' by Ellis Peters
I had not realised how many novels featuring the Felse family Peters wrote. The were 13 published 1951-78 and featured George Felse and other members of his family, including his son Dominic Felse who appears in this novel. This one was published in 1972 and sees Dominic return to India that he first visited in 'Mourning Raga' (1969) which I read last month. However, it turns out there is 'The Knocker on Death's Door' (1970) between the two books, which I do not have a copy of. I was suspicious that I had missed out part of the ongoing story because Theodosia Barber, Dominic Felse's girlfriend, a leading instigator of action in the two Felse books I had read so far, does not appear in this novel. She only gets a couple of mentions towards the end. There are three novels between the first of this series I read, 'The Piper on the Mountain' (1966) and 'Mourning Raga' but I do not know which characters they featured, as the jump between those two books was far less apparent.
Anyway, it is clear in 'Death to the Landlords!' that though Peters had been publishing under various names since 1937, by the early 1970s, she had polished her skills in writing the Felse stories. There is still the challenge of her switching point of view through a number of characters, but this happens less frequently and less abruptly than in the previous two Felse books I had read. This makes the book progress more smoothly. Peters certainly has a skill in these stories in involving amateurs in crime situations and making it feasible for them to be there and drawn in. She is excellent in providing a rich context with very well observed details on the locations where the action takes. This story moves Felse from Delhi down to Kerala and Tamil Nadu in southern India but she describes each place so well, you can really envisage it. This goes for the people too.
For a western writer, at times Peters rather overdoes the 'dignified local', in this book even more than in 'Mourning Raga', but she does create a cast of credible Indian characters that appear to avoid stereotype. Peters also seems alert to the social, sectarian, ethnic and regional divisions of India at the time. This novel features Naxalite terrorists who remain active in India to the present day. Conversely she seems to have no time for westerners bumming around India seeking themselves. Even her 'hero' Dominic Felse who has returned to India after graduating from University of Oxford (Theodosia in the year below him is still there), to work in agricultural development, is shown as a little careless and directionless in his engagement with India.
I found the novel surprisingly engaging when I expected to find it dated and adopting a Eurocentric perspective. The thing is that, with the wonderful portrayals of Indian locations, some of which, yes, are from a tourist perspective, though not all, and with the cast of interesting Indian characters, Dominic Felse almost disappears. If she had written the book in the 1990s, perhaps she would not have felt the need for a Western protagonist or maybe even then she was alert to possible accusations of cultural appropriation. It seems apparent Peters had Indian friends. Felse is not at all necessary to the plot, not really even as a binding thread between the action in different locations and you wonder why he is needed. He is almost a spectral figure in the plot, overshadowed by everyone else whether Indian or European. He even misses out on the climax of the story which has a satisfyingly messy battle, that adds to the realism of the book.
Despite this unusual approach, while I have enjoyed the Cadfael books, these have revealed a different side to Peters. Though there are flaws in these books, notably the shift in point of view, but there is a surprising realism about them. I could easily see the stories being brought up to date for television in the style of the BBC dramatisation of 'The Night Manager' (2016) with no need to alter the stories much and certainly no fear that the portrayal of Indians (and indeed Slovaks) appeared inappropriate for the 21st century.
On the surface this book may seem a 'comfortable' murder mystery of the classic Agatha Christie style, but in fact engages much more with the grittiness of murder, especially using bombs, and provides credible characters that drive the book as much as the plot itself. Certainly if I stumble across another Felse book, especially from the latter period, I would take it up and I have not been able to say that about many series.
'City of Gold and Shadows' by Ellis Peters
Well, clearly I was overly optimistic. This is the 12th book in the Felse family series. It features Dominic Felse's father, Detective Chief Inspector George Felse. Dominic and Theodosia Barber are mentioned in passing. This book was published in 1973 and so their story has advanced. Theodosia has graduated, trained as a nurse (not a graduate profession at the time) and gone to work with her fiancé Dominic aiding the Swami's agricultural programme in India. This book lack all of the engaging elements of 'Death to the Landlords!' and is much more a 'cosy' murder mystery story set in rural England; in the fictitious county of Midshire. It is interesting that in her books set in Czechoslovakia and India she makes great use of real places. In this novel she conjures up an essence of an English county on the border with Wales and refers to a fictitious Roman settlement; to me it sounded very much like what I had seen at St. Albans, though it is supposed to be on a large scale, a 'pleasure city' on the Roman frontier. I am not sure such things existed; I never saw 'Time Team' dig up one. The story involves rather disconnectedly the disappearance of Charlotte Rossignol's great uncle and strange happenings around the Roman ruins. A school boy is killed. Overall the story is very much like an episode of 'Midsomer Murders' (18 series broadcast so far since 1997) with a restricted number of suspects, people involved with the site and police officers.
To me the book marked rather a step backwards for Peters, but maybe she found that these more 'Miss Marple' type stories sold better than ones about people gallivanting around Indian locations that most British readers were unfamiliar with. There is rather a confused situation with the sexual politics of the time (early 1970s). As I noted before the engaged couple have a chaste relationship, though in this book, there is a young woman married to an older man in a sexless relationship and attempts at seduction by her and a young man, Augustus, are rather awkward as if Peters felt they needed to be included but not how to handle them. Another problem I have noted before is that Peters creates ensembles of people well, but then we are not clear who the lead character is supposed to be. It starts of seeming to be Charlotte and at times it is Augustus or George. She does less of the jumping in terms of point of view, but we do seem to flit from one character to another in a rather erratic manner which rather takes the drive out of the novel. She is good at jeopardy, dealing with people fighting for their lives, as in previous books, but because we are uncertain who we are rooting for, there is far less engagement than there should have been. Overall a pretty mediocre book which is a let down after the last one of Peters's that I read.
'Chocky' by John Wyndham
As I noted when reviewing Wyndham's 'The Seeds of Time' last month, one challenge of reading some old science fiction, this book dates from 1968, from a 1963 short story, some of the edge is taken off the story. This is because what might have been puzzling or startling back then, by now has entered the mainstream consciousness that immediately when you begin the story you have a clear idea of what is going on. That is the case with 'Chocky' told through the eyes of David Gore, father of Matthew who has an alien intelligence benignly sharing his mind. Unlike people of the past we do not ponder what is happening, the clues are very clear to us. However, despite the lack of a mystery about what is going on this still stands up as a robust story and I am not surprised it has been repeatedly dramatised - on radio in 1968, 1975 and 1998, as a television series in 1984 and with speculation on a possible movie in 2008. The strength of the book is really in the interaction between Matthew, aged 12, his father and his mother Mary. It comes over as convincing and echoes stories about families coping with a child's terminal illness or kidnapping and indeed more mundane discussions about the future path for any child and the phases they go through on the way.
In this book Wyndham avoids being twee or indeed even sentimental about childhood. The dialogue is convincing and the shifting perceptions of the two parents and the boy himself are credible. Though there are some references that place this in a particular time - prices in shillings, people smoking indoors and comparatively ordinary men dining in clubs, this is less fixed to a time than the short stories I read last month. It much better demonstrates Wyndham's skills as a writer and reminds us why his stories do remain chilling even when read beyond the time they were written. Whilst he is a science fiction writer, his strength lies in his ability to acutely portray ordinary humans dealing with the extraordinary situations that they are presented with.
Non-Fiction
'What Difference Did the War Make?' ed. by Brian Brivati and Harriet Jones
As I have mentioned before a number of books I have on my 'to read' shelf for this year are by people I have met. In this case I met both the authors. I encountered Harriet Jones at an underground station in 1999, she was taking her son to see 'My Favourite Martian' (1999). Though an American she has written extensively on British history. She was effectively trapped in the UK because the British father of her son would not let her take him from the country. I imagined he passed 18 sometime in the 2000s so I doubt this is still the case. Like me, Jones lived in East London, but unlike me in one of those Georgian squares where the houses look like No. 10 Downing Street. Brian Brivati I met a year or so later in Kingston. We got to discussing holidays. While I was always seeking somewhere different to go, he said that he and his family always went back to the same resort each year, I believe in Italy; he asked why, if you enjoy somewhere, would you want to turn your back on it? He also gave me some useful advice on CV writing which was still important in those days, but it came too late and it meant that I certainly (rather than possibly) missed out on a job that would have changed my life.
The book is a collection of ten academic papers which came out of a conference in 1991 by the Institute of Contemporary British History Summer School, basically answering the question in the title, with each historian (ironically not including Brivati and Jones themselves) taking a different facet of political, economic or social history, bracketed by 1929-59, though some see longer term trends. Especially in earlier chapters there is a clear sense that they have come from oral presentations, the opening chapter by Peter Hennessy in particular has a colloquial tone. As the book progresses it settles down into them being more like standard academic articles. Hennessy, Eric Hobsbawm (who I met on two occasions but lacked anything to say) and Geoffrey Warner cover pretty standard views of the post-war era, showing the constraints and false assumptions the British government operated under. Warner is good, however, in tracking the progress of Ernest Bevin's views on foreign policy. Malcolm Smith of changing post-war public views of what the British state involved is reasonable. The one by David Morgan and Mary Evans fails convincingly to make the link between the writing and George Orwell and post-war 'citizenship' but it is good in reminding us not to simply accept standard portrayals of the inter-war period.
Nicholas Owen gives a very comprehensive outline of the challenges that face Britain in handling India in particular, unlike so much writing, through teasing out the rifts among different Indian political groups and divisions within them. Mark Cornwall looking at Britain's relationship with Czechoslovakia is probably most revelatory on the 1930-38 period rather than post-war, clearly showing the derogatory attitude to Czechoslovakia and its people that gained strength rapidly in British government in those years, adding a very important context to British involvement in the Munich Agreement. E.G.H. Pedaliu in looking at relations with Italy brings the book full circle to showing how restricted Britain's options were by the expense of the war.
For me the best two papers are by Penny Summerfield on the impact on women and Bill Osbergy on perceptions of youth. Summerfield makes use of extensive data to show that there was a change for women as a result of the war but it is different to that commonly accepted. Instead of a vast change in the employment of women (it rose by only 20% above the pre-war level) it was in the nature of the industries they worked in and increasingly the nature of women with a great rise in older, married women in the workplace and women marrying younger and often leaving the workforce (even if temporarily) as a result. Osbergy shows how while we may best know the 1950s concerns about delinquent juveniles, this simply repeated trends going back at least to the 1880s. He shows regular peaks of prosperity of young people as a result of shifts in the economy, then matched by an outcry about their dress, culture and behaviour. He also usefully highlights how the teenager was effectively a working class phenomenon until the late 1950s - mid-1960s when the expansion of further and higher education led middle class young people into seeking a culture distinct from their parents.
Overall a wide mixture of approaches, but ones which in large part seek to shake up views of the post-war era in Britain and the wider world and remind us of many aspects which have been smoothed over in the simplification of the story of the times.
'The Welfare State in Britain since 1945' by Rodney Lowe
Rather than been a historical approach Lowe works more on a social science basis. It is a very workerlike book in that largely unemotionally he first takes the theories that have been applied to welfare provision and then looks at all the different facets, e.g. education, housing, health, personal social services, etc. in turn. Eschewing strict chronology he is able to draw appropriate examples from throughout their periods he focuses upon. He also makes suitable comparisons with the USA, France and West Germany. Furthermore, Lowe is adept at highlighting the political pressures that ministers and indeed opposition parties faced that show that welfare policy is not, as often seems to be how it is portrayed, developed in its own world, but in reference to other political trends. Similarly he charts the adoption and then failure of Keynesianism followed by the rise of monetarism and its dire consequences.
The book (I was reading the 1999 edition) is best on what Lowe calls the 'classic' welfare state, from 1945-75, though referencing examples from outside that period when it is beneficial. The aspect on 1976-97 is far weaker and is very rushed. He does summarise what the Thatcherites did and why and also, as he does throughout the book, explodes common myths about the period. However, the book is imbalanced with this section about a seventh of the overall rather than approaching even pro-rata equivalence to the first half. Lowe is excellent in writing plainly (though he overuses brackets to a huge extent) and making telling points. This is a very good book if you wish to know about the first thirty years of welfare in Britain. It highlights things that though considered earlier would only later be adopted, such as working and family tax credits and suggestions for a minimum wage and even a guaranteed income as is being tried in some continental locations now. Living in the 21st century, however, the book would be improved by an update given all that the Thatcherites and the Blairites wrought on the welfare systems.
'Rumpole of the Bailey' by John Mortimer
This is a collection of short stories, though there are linking threads and ongoing characters connecting them. They are adapted from the television series broadcast in 1978. They are presented as a memoir of Horace Rumpole, a fictional defence barrister, working on cases mainly in the late 1970s, though with regular references to ones in the 1960s and even before that. Rumpole is a quirky character who is more at home mixing with his criminal defendants than with the pompous lawyers and judges he works with. He has very fixed habits including working on crosswords, quoting poetry and drinking claret in Fleet Street. Mortimer has succeeded in drawing up a very rich character who is avuncular and likable even when cranky and does not always win. Through the eyes of Rumpole he is very adept at drawing sketches of all of those he encounters, based on views of the time, but with the Rumpole feel for humanity mixed in.
You might think it is a challenge to write funny stories about criminal court cases (there is also a divorce case), but Mortimer has succeeded and I found myself laughing out loud at a book for the first time in ages. At the same time, you learn a great deal about the British legal system, at least how it function in the mid to late 20th century. There have been many changes, but I am sure modern lawyers would still recognise a lot of what Mortimer writes about. That may not be the case in the future. I particularly noted the reference to Legal Aid, which is now largely dead. It shows how difficult the defence barrister's role is, especially when faced with fixed attitudes from the police and judiciary; often the jury as well. It shows how hard it can be working with a defendant who has an agendum which is different for simply being found not guilty. I came away from the book pleased that Britain has a jury system. I know the German legal system better as a consequence of my crime novels and the use of just a judge even if there are two assessors assisting, seems to fix in stone establishment attitudes. Yes, juries can be bigoted, but there are times when they see beyond the mechanical assumptions of the legal machine. Though dated, this was a surprisingly enjoyable book. I have three other books from Mortimer to read and am now looking forward to them.
'The Trials of Rumpole' by John Mortimer
This book follows on directly from 'Rumpole of the Bailey' and was published a year later and are set in the late 1970s. As others have noted, while the characters in Rumpole's chambers and indeed in the courts, seem to progress and we see one couple go from courting to marriage and having their first child, Horace Rumpole seems never to alter being around 70 forever more. This book has another sequence of cases, which are engaging but lack the laugh out loud humour of the first book. At times the plots against Rumpole, to get him to retire and to emigrate to the USA to live with his son and insufferable daughter-in-law are irritating. The book travels along reasonably pleasantly, but these cases are often more serious, two involving sexual aspects that you cannot treat with a light tone. Revenge also appears as common motive in these stories. Thus, the stories are of interest and indeed of entertainment, but overall have a different, darker tone to those of the preceding book. I have 'The Return of Rumpole' to follow and am not put off reading it.
'Death to the Landlords!' by Ellis Peters
I had not realised how many novels featuring the Felse family Peters wrote. The were 13 published 1951-78 and featured George Felse and other members of his family, including his son Dominic Felse who appears in this novel. This one was published in 1972 and sees Dominic return to India that he first visited in 'Mourning Raga' (1969) which I read last month. However, it turns out there is 'The Knocker on Death's Door' (1970) between the two books, which I do not have a copy of. I was suspicious that I had missed out part of the ongoing story because Theodosia Barber, Dominic Felse's girlfriend, a leading instigator of action in the two Felse books I had read so far, does not appear in this novel. She only gets a couple of mentions towards the end. There are three novels between the first of this series I read, 'The Piper on the Mountain' (1966) and 'Mourning Raga' but I do not know which characters they featured, as the jump between those two books was far less apparent.
Anyway, it is clear in 'Death to the Landlords!' that though Peters had been publishing under various names since 1937, by the early 1970s, she had polished her skills in writing the Felse stories. There is still the challenge of her switching point of view through a number of characters, but this happens less frequently and less abruptly than in the previous two Felse books I had read. This makes the book progress more smoothly. Peters certainly has a skill in these stories in involving amateurs in crime situations and making it feasible for them to be there and drawn in. She is excellent in providing a rich context with very well observed details on the locations where the action takes. This story moves Felse from Delhi down to Kerala and Tamil Nadu in southern India but she describes each place so well, you can really envisage it. This goes for the people too.
For a western writer, at times Peters rather overdoes the 'dignified local', in this book even more than in 'Mourning Raga', but she does create a cast of credible Indian characters that appear to avoid stereotype. Peters also seems alert to the social, sectarian, ethnic and regional divisions of India at the time. This novel features Naxalite terrorists who remain active in India to the present day. Conversely she seems to have no time for westerners bumming around India seeking themselves. Even her 'hero' Dominic Felse who has returned to India after graduating from University of Oxford (Theodosia in the year below him is still there), to work in agricultural development, is shown as a little careless and directionless in his engagement with India.
I found the novel surprisingly engaging when I expected to find it dated and adopting a Eurocentric perspective. The thing is that, with the wonderful portrayals of Indian locations, some of which, yes, are from a tourist perspective, though not all, and with the cast of interesting Indian characters, Dominic Felse almost disappears. If she had written the book in the 1990s, perhaps she would not have felt the need for a Western protagonist or maybe even then she was alert to possible accusations of cultural appropriation. It seems apparent Peters had Indian friends. Felse is not at all necessary to the plot, not really even as a binding thread between the action in different locations and you wonder why he is needed. He is almost a spectral figure in the plot, overshadowed by everyone else whether Indian or European. He even misses out on the climax of the story which has a satisfyingly messy battle, that adds to the realism of the book.
Despite this unusual approach, while I have enjoyed the Cadfael books, these have revealed a different side to Peters. Though there are flaws in these books, notably the shift in point of view, but there is a surprising realism about them. I could easily see the stories being brought up to date for television in the style of the BBC dramatisation of 'The Night Manager' (2016) with no need to alter the stories much and certainly no fear that the portrayal of Indians (and indeed Slovaks) appeared inappropriate for the 21st century.
On the surface this book may seem a 'comfortable' murder mystery of the classic Agatha Christie style, but in fact engages much more with the grittiness of murder, especially using bombs, and provides credible characters that drive the book as much as the plot itself. Certainly if I stumble across another Felse book, especially from the latter period, I would take it up and I have not been able to say that about many series.
'City of Gold and Shadows' by Ellis Peters
Well, clearly I was overly optimistic. This is the 12th book in the Felse family series. It features Dominic Felse's father, Detective Chief Inspector George Felse. Dominic and Theodosia Barber are mentioned in passing. This book was published in 1973 and so their story has advanced. Theodosia has graduated, trained as a nurse (not a graduate profession at the time) and gone to work with her fiancé Dominic aiding the Swami's agricultural programme in India. This book lack all of the engaging elements of 'Death to the Landlords!' and is much more a 'cosy' murder mystery story set in rural England; in the fictitious county of Midshire. It is interesting that in her books set in Czechoslovakia and India she makes great use of real places. In this novel she conjures up an essence of an English county on the border with Wales and refers to a fictitious Roman settlement; to me it sounded very much like what I had seen at St. Albans, though it is supposed to be on a large scale, a 'pleasure city' on the Roman frontier. I am not sure such things existed; I never saw 'Time Team' dig up one. The story involves rather disconnectedly the disappearance of Charlotte Rossignol's great uncle and strange happenings around the Roman ruins. A school boy is killed. Overall the story is very much like an episode of 'Midsomer Murders' (18 series broadcast so far since 1997) with a restricted number of suspects, people involved with the site and police officers.
To me the book marked rather a step backwards for Peters, but maybe she found that these more 'Miss Marple' type stories sold better than ones about people gallivanting around Indian locations that most British readers were unfamiliar with. There is rather a confused situation with the sexual politics of the time (early 1970s). As I noted before the engaged couple have a chaste relationship, though in this book, there is a young woman married to an older man in a sexless relationship and attempts at seduction by her and a young man, Augustus, are rather awkward as if Peters felt they needed to be included but not how to handle them. Another problem I have noted before is that Peters creates ensembles of people well, but then we are not clear who the lead character is supposed to be. It starts of seeming to be Charlotte and at times it is Augustus or George. She does less of the jumping in terms of point of view, but we do seem to flit from one character to another in a rather erratic manner which rather takes the drive out of the novel. She is good at jeopardy, dealing with people fighting for their lives, as in previous books, but because we are uncertain who we are rooting for, there is far less engagement than there should have been. Overall a pretty mediocre book which is a let down after the last one of Peters's that I read.
'Chocky' by John Wyndham
As I noted when reviewing Wyndham's 'The Seeds of Time' last month, one challenge of reading some old science fiction, this book dates from 1968, from a 1963 short story, some of the edge is taken off the story. This is because what might have been puzzling or startling back then, by now has entered the mainstream consciousness that immediately when you begin the story you have a clear idea of what is going on. That is the case with 'Chocky' told through the eyes of David Gore, father of Matthew who has an alien intelligence benignly sharing his mind. Unlike people of the past we do not ponder what is happening, the clues are very clear to us. However, despite the lack of a mystery about what is going on this still stands up as a robust story and I am not surprised it has been repeatedly dramatised - on radio in 1968, 1975 and 1998, as a television series in 1984 and with speculation on a possible movie in 2008. The strength of the book is really in the interaction between Matthew, aged 12, his father and his mother Mary. It comes over as convincing and echoes stories about families coping with a child's terminal illness or kidnapping and indeed more mundane discussions about the future path for any child and the phases they go through on the way.
In this book Wyndham avoids being twee or indeed even sentimental about childhood. The dialogue is convincing and the shifting perceptions of the two parents and the boy himself are credible. Though there are some references that place this in a particular time - prices in shillings, people smoking indoors and comparatively ordinary men dining in clubs, this is less fixed to a time than the short stories I read last month. It much better demonstrates Wyndham's skills as a writer and reminds us why his stories do remain chilling even when read beyond the time they were written. Whilst he is a science fiction writer, his strength lies in his ability to acutely portray ordinary humans dealing with the extraordinary situations that they are presented with.
Non-Fiction
'What Difference Did the War Make?' ed. by Brian Brivati and Harriet Jones
As I have mentioned before a number of books I have on my 'to read' shelf for this year are by people I have met. In this case I met both the authors. I encountered Harriet Jones at an underground station in 1999, she was taking her son to see 'My Favourite Martian' (1999). Though an American she has written extensively on British history. She was effectively trapped in the UK because the British father of her son would not let her take him from the country. I imagined he passed 18 sometime in the 2000s so I doubt this is still the case. Like me, Jones lived in East London, but unlike me in one of those Georgian squares where the houses look like No. 10 Downing Street. Brian Brivati I met a year or so later in Kingston. We got to discussing holidays. While I was always seeking somewhere different to go, he said that he and his family always went back to the same resort each year, I believe in Italy; he asked why, if you enjoy somewhere, would you want to turn your back on it? He also gave me some useful advice on CV writing which was still important in those days, but it came too late and it meant that I certainly (rather than possibly) missed out on a job that would have changed my life.
The book is a collection of ten academic papers which came out of a conference in 1991 by the Institute of Contemporary British History Summer School, basically answering the question in the title, with each historian (ironically not including Brivati and Jones themselves) taking a different facet of political, economic or social history, bracketed by 1929-59, though some see longer term trends. Especially in earlier chapters there is a clear sense that they have come from oral presentations, the opening chapter by Peter Hennessy in particular has a colloquial tone. As the book progresses it settles down into them being more like standard academic articles. Hennessy, Eric Hobsbawm (who I met on two occasions but lacked anything to say) and Geoffrey Warner cover pretty standard views of the post-war era, showing the constraints and false assumptions the British government operated under. Warner is good, however, in tracking the progress of Ernest Bevin's views on foreign policy. Malcolm Smith of changing post-war public views of what the British state involved is reasonable. The one by David Morgan and Mary Evans fails convincingly to make the link between the writing and George Orwell and post-war 'citizenship' but it is good in reminding us not to simply accept standard portrayals of the inter-war period.
Nicholas Owen gives a very comprehensive outline of the challenges that face Britain in handling India in particular, unlike so much writing, through teasing out the rifts among different Indian political groups and divisions within them. Mark Cornwall looking at Britain's relationship with Czechoslovakia is probably most revelatory on the 1930-38 period rather than post-war, clearly showing the derogatory attitude to Czechoslovakia and its people that gained strength rapidly in British government in those years, adding a very important context to British involvement in the Munich Agreement. E.G.H. Pedaliu in looking at relations with Italy brings the book full circle to showing how restricted Britain's options were by the expense of the war.
For me the best two papers are by Penny Summerfield on the impact on women and Bill Osbergy on perceptions of youth. Summerfield makes use of extensive data to show that there was a change for women as a result of the war but it is different to that commonly accepted. Instead of a vast change in the employment of women (it rose by only 20% above the pre-war level) it was in the nature of the industries they worked in and increasingly the nature of women with a great rise in older, married women in the workplace and women marrying younger and often leaving the workforce (even if temporarily) as a result. Osbergy shows how while we may best know the 1950s concerns about delinquent juveniles, this simply repeated trends going back at least to the 1880s. He shows regular peaks of prosperity of young people as a result of shifts in the economy, then matched by an outcry about their dress, culture and behaviour. He also usefully highlights how the teenager was effectively a working class phenomenon until the late 1950s - mid-1960s when the expansion of further and higher education led middle class young people into seeking a culture distinct from their parents.
Overall a wide mixture of approaches, but ones which in large part seek to shake up views of the post-war era in Britain and the wider world and remind us of many aspects which have been smoothed over in the simplification of the story of the times.
'The Welfare State in Britain since 1945' by Rodney Lowe
Rather than been a historical approach Lowe works more on a social science basis. It is a very workerlike book in that largely unemotionally he first takes the theories that have been applied to welfare provision and then looks at all the different facets, e.g. education, housing, health, personal social services, etc. in turn. Eschewing strict chronology he is able to draw appropriate examples from throughout their periods he focuses upon. He also makes suitable comparisons with the USA, France and West Germany. Furthermore, Lowe is adept at highlighting the political pressures that ministers and indeed opposition parties faced that show that welfare policy is not, as often seems to be how it is portrayed, developed in its own world, but in reference to other political trends. Similarly he charts the adoption and then failure of Keynesianism followed by the rise of monetarism and its dire consequences.
The book (I was reading the 1999 edition) is best on what Lowe calls the 'classic' welfare state, from 1945-75, though referencing examples from outside that period when it is beneficial. The aspect on 1976-97 is far weaker and is very rushed. He does summarise what the Thatcherites did and why and also, as he does throughout the book, explodes common myths about the period. However, the book is imbalanced with this section about a seventh of the overall rather than approaching even pro-rata equivalence to the first half. Lowe is excellent in writing plainly (though he overuses brackets to a huge extent) and making telling points. This is a very good book if you wish to know about the first thirty years of welfare in Britain. It highlights things that though considered earlier would only later be adopted, such as working and family tax credits and suggestions for a minimum wage and even a guaranteed income as is being tried in some continental locations now. Living in the 21st century, however, the book would be improved by an update given all that the Thatcherites and the Blairites wrought on the welfare systems.
Tuesday, 31 May 2016
The Books I Read In May
Fiction
'The Man Who Would Be King and Other Stories' by Rudyard Kipling
In many ways I should not have been surprised by this book. I know Kipling as an author of stories set in British-ruled India; it was published first in 1888. Though I have not read any of his books before, I have seen movies of 'Kim' (novel 1901; movie 1950) and the movie of the main story in this book released in 1975; I have seen extracts of the cartoon version of 'The Jungle Book' (stories 1894-5; movie 1967 and 2016). Perhaps, as a result I expected more action and even humour from this collection of short stories. The humour that is tried seems very contorted and specific to a very particular time and place. I could imagine it would not have gone down well even with readers of the time who were not associated with colonial rule in India or with the military. Overall in the first part of the book in particular, you get a very narrow focus and a great deal of repetition.
Many of the settings in Simla, the hill town that British officials, officers and their families would retreat to when the plains of India became too hot. They are largely set in the 1880s and the first third of the book features stories primarily about extra-marital affairs rendered in similar ways. They are largely tedious and made inaccessible for a modern reader by a combination of Victorian grammar and slang mixing both English and pseudo-Hindi terms. As the book progresses there is a move to ghost stories which is an improvement, though the first of these, 'The Phantom 'Rickshaw' itself stems from an extra-marital affair.
There is the eponymous story but it is presented very differently to the movie in that we only hear it third hand with one of the heroes recounting it to a British journalist in central India. It has all the elements but so far removed from the action lacks a sense of tension and conversely is rushed. There are three stories about various adventures, misadventures and poor treatment of small boys which may have been Kipling reflecting on his own childhood and probably was an element of him preparing for 'Kim' and 'The Jungle Book Stories' but lacking the charm of those; the confused battle involving two drummer boys, 'The Drums of the Fore and Aft' takes this another step.
You do learn quite a bit about this very small slice of British society abroad and even the geography of Simla and the surrounding area. However, the short stories, even when trying to be humorous say very little. I can contrast them sharply with the short stories of Herman Charles Bosman, best known for 'Mafeking Road and Other Stories' (1947) that my girlfriend is currently reading to me. Now, these were published sixty years after Kipling's collection. However, by focusing on rural Transvaal in the 1900s they provide a similar context of a small society in the latter phase of British imperialism, with a mixture of specific slang, in this case old Afrikaans words. Yet the quality of Bosman's short stories put Kipling's in the shade. Bosman is able to take the small incidents that appear in the restricted context and turn out both humorous and wistful stories that are excellently crafted. Having both books on the go at the same time has shown me the poor quality of this particular collection of Kipling's.
'The Piper on the Mountain' by Ellis Peters
This was one of six novels written by Peters not featuring the 12th century monk Brother Cadfael. The book was published in 1966 and sort of centres on the amateur detective, Dominic Felse. In this story he is a 2nd Year undergraduate English Literature student at the University of Oxford. He gets drawn into the investigation by 1st Year student Theodosia Barber (affectionately known as 'Tossa'!) into the death of her former step-father while walking in the Lower Tatra Mountains of Slovakia, at the time in Communist Czechoslovakia. Though the Cold War was in full flow when the book was written Peters seemed to expect growing detente. The story, while in London and Oxford is perfunctory, there is nothing to really show you the time or the place and it could be any one of a hundred novels of this era. It becomes far better when Dominic and Tossa go on a touring holiday with other students, female/male twins. Peters really conjures up the setting of that area of Slovakia; its wildlife and people, while avoiding stereotypes. She seems far better informed about this rural region than she does about towns in Britain.
Though there is a death and a murder, this is really more like a spy adventure featuring bright young things, charging around. The story effectively becomes a modernised Dornford Yates (1885-1960; published 1914-56) book, especially the Richard Chandos stories (published 1927-49) which were often in Central Europe. Peters does well to produce a sense of jeopardy, which shows how people writing short (it is only 162 pages), adventure stories can do this, something lacking in spy stories I have read recently. The twist is pretty good. In many ways it was an old fashioned story even at the time it was written, but if you are willing to accept it, that is fine.
The main flaw in the early part of the book is that Peters jumps between a number of points of view, sometimes even on a single page. It is only after the halfway point that Felse becomes the clear hero, that this situation settles down. I am surprised an editor did not pick this up at the time. It is not a bad book and the scenes where the heroes are pinned down by a sniper are handled notably well. I do not expect to be stretched by the other five books, but I certainly will not throw them away at this stage.
'Mourning Raga' by Ellis Peters
This is another book by Peters featuring Dominic Felse and Theodosia Barber who are now girlfriend/boyfriend and a further year on at University of Oxford. Being in the mid-sixties (the book was published in 1969, which being three years after the first book they would have finished their studies by now if it was contemporaneous) they do not sleep together. Peters is able to produce a sound reason for sending them to New Delhi to accompany the 14-year old half-American/half-Indian daughter of a movie star back to her father in India. The girl, Anjli, is kidnapped and the bulk of the story is about recovering her. There are numerous big male Indian characters whose personalities dominate the book and push Felse and Barber into the background, it is far less their story than 'The Piper on the Mountain' though perhaps that was intentional to have Indian characters in the lead. While Peters does draw characteristics of different types of Indians, notably contrasting Punjabis and Bengalis, she does seem intent to show India as a modern country. As in the previous novel she clearly knows her location well and gives immense detail of New Dehli, not simply the tourist sites but how it was growing and developing in the 1960s. It is a twisty plot and at times the number of characters can be a little overwhelming. This is not aided by her repeating the tendency from the previous book of abruptly switching points of view often on the same page and you can be uncertain whose eyes you are seeing through, further adding to the two 'lead' characters seeming to be pushed into second place.
Despite the references to fashion of the late 1960s, this feels like a modern book which you could present as a television drama now. I admire the effort Peters puts into the panoply of characters and her largely avoiding taking a Western-tinted view on India. However, this would have been a more pleasant read if she had kept tighter rein on the perspective. I know it can be useful when trying to put twists in the plot, but by the closing chapter you are left rather breathlessly bewildered. I suppose for a mystery writer that is not too bad a thing, but as a reader despite this being a short book (159 pages in my edition) you have to really pay attention.
'Nine Tomorrows' by Isaac Asimov
I have not read any books by Asimov before even though he published tens of them. I think I was put off by expecting them to be very much 'hard' science fiction about pondering the vastness of space in dreary spaceships. This is a collection of short stories originally published 1956-58. They compare favourably with the John Wyndham collection of roughly the same era that I read last month. On occasion there is a feeling that they are dated, especially in referring to miniature film and taped books, though these would have seemed feasible even just twenty years ago. Indeed the development of computers on to molecular processing still seems ahead of its time.
Some of the concepts Asimov covers have become very common in writing since he explored them, but I think it is his skill as an author that keeps them seeming fresh in how he looks at them. He does ponder big issues but without the stories becoming ponderous in the way I feared. 'Profession' looks at young people in a society in which your profession is decided, a theme taken up in many dystopias and indeed had featured in 'Brave New World' (1931) well before this story. Yet Asimov shows the challenges of this approach and what a society might need. 'The Feeling of Power' could easily be produced today and actually echoes something I have experienced in the past two years. With a long-running interplanetary battle reaching stalemate, the humans come up with a new 'invention' that rather than relying on computers to calculate everything humans can be trained to do it, so introducing elements to thwart their opponents and at a cheaper price. A couple of years ago, I was challenged to do some cubed numbers in my head and did them faster than a colleague could type them into their phone, so this kind of issue remains current.
There are a couple of almost science fiction detective mysteries. 'The Dying Night' is clever in that the murderer is detected as a result of the behaviour they exhibit resulting from the planet in the solar system they have been based on. 'I'm in Marsport without Hilda' feels more dated really in the way it shows the investigator having an extra-marital affair rather than how he decides which of the three businessmen is a drugs smuggler. I wonder if there are other such detective/SF crossovers; I can only really think of 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' (1968).
'The Gentle Vultures' with its obsession with nuclear war might seem dated, but it does provide an interesting alien view of Earth, different to those who simply come in peace or those who just want to conquer and is good at getting the alien mindset across. 'The Troubles of the World' turns out to be cleverer than you might first expect. It seems to combine aspects of what would had featured two years before in 'The Minority Report' (short story 1956; movie 2002) with something like the computers in '2001: A Space Odyssey' (novel and movie, 1968) and 'Dark Star' (movie, 1974). 'Spell My Name with an 'S'' again shows its age because of Cold War references but also establishes tropes that now often feature in science fiction about how destined we are to live a certain life, whether out future is predictable and if a small change can bring about a very different outcome; the 'Back to the Future' movie trilogy (1985-90) is just one among many that build on those questions.
'The Last Question' is a bit more of what I expected - big questions about the universe across millennia and a rather trite ending. 'The Ugly Little Boy' about snatching people and objects from the past to study them in the present is another theme which is now common but fresher when this story was written. Towards the end you might expect the outcome but it has a welcome humanity about it.
Overall I was presently surprised by this collection. It was not as heavy or gloomy as I had anticipated and Asimov shows off a skill in short story writing that maybe contributes a great deal to that. Even though the collection is now so old, it still has a lot to say to many of the issues we are facing today as all the best science fiction does. I certainly am more likely to pick up an Isaac Asimov book if I come across one in the future, especially if it has short stories rather than a full novel.
'My Legendary Girlfriend' by Mike Gayle
This book published in 1998 was billed as a male version of 'Bridget Jones's Diary' (1996), There are similarities. One is that it is broken up in chronological chunks, though unlike Helen Fielding's book covering months, Gayle's does it over a matter hours stretching from a Friday afternoon through a weekend to a Monday morning. This is part of the problem with the book and makes it unattractive. It is horribly claustrophobic. The lead character, Will Kelly spends a lot of his time in a shabby flat which he takes no care of, with brief journeys to convenience stores and a pub in the Archway area of London and to Highgate Cemetery with unpleasant or desultory interactions with almost everyone.
A lot of the book, as the title suggests is about relationships. He has lengthy telephone conversations with a range of people, not many of whom are sympathetic characters. The lack of other social media dates the book. Kelly obsesses over the girlfriend who dumped him three years earlier, after three years together; the anniversary of the relationship is on his birthday, the Sunday of the weekend. Though it is a short book (215 pages in the edition I had which has very small type), it drags terribly. You become angry with Will Kelly for being such a slob and being so lazy with his life. Unlike with Bridget Jones, there is very little humour in the situation. Perhaps, Gayle, being a former agony uncle felt unable to raise humour from problems facing many young people in London, notably appalling accommodation at expensive rents and the loneliness especially in Britain in which people are so busy 'networking' that they have no time to be with their 'friends'.
The ending is rushed and has a resolution which seems incongruous given how gloomy the rest of the book has been. You may say I would have enjoyed it more if I had read it when in my 20s, but I think it would have been impossible then to face up to this story which echoed so much of the problems of my own life and without the happy ending that Kelly gets.
'Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban' by J.K. Rowling
By the third book in the Harry Potter series you feel that Rowling has really got into her stride in writing novels and this is very polished, especially if set alongside the first book. For those, like me, who know the Potter stories best from the movies, this one diverges even more than the previous two. The broad outline of events are the same, but many of the details are very different. In some ways I think the movie line is less jerky and makes better use of the time travel aspect. The climax with Harry, Ron and Hermione finding out who is lying is much messier in the book and leaves you rather confused; it is clearer in the movie. The Divination teacher, Sybil Trelawney, gets a far bigger role in the book than the movie and she predicts many things accurately, to some degree putting Hermione in a dimmer light than she otherwise has. Her classroom is also very otherworldly in the books.
Overall, the flavour of this book is darker than the movie version. This gets you ready for the aspects which become increasingly apparent as the book persists. The complexity of adult relationships, notably friendships, is not skirted over. The dark flavour is added to by the fact that the humour of the movie is rather overshadowed in the book and as before, Harry's treatment by the Dursleys, however much light is made of it, still grates as abuse. I suppose this is somewhat of a plot device to make Harry happy to spend more time at his boarding school, even during the holidays. As before in the books, the working of the school seems to be Rowling's central focus, much more than is apparent in the movies. In particular in this story where the climax is a revelation rather than battling a monster, what is the focus on action on screen, is only a small piece of the book and indeed the aftermath continues well after this climax is concluded. I enjoyed the book but am increasingly conscious that I am reading what is primarily a school novel rather than a fantasy novel.
Non-Fiction
'The Knight and the Merchant' by Grant Uden
In my childhood in the 1970s school libraries often had many books written in the 1950s and 1960s which featured great people and great events of history. Some would have a fictional story involving children encountering these people or being present at the events. With an eagerness for history I was often directed to read such books. I remember 'The Grey Apple Tree' by Vera Cumberlege (1965) about the Battle of Hastings and the work of Geoffrey Trease, unsurprising given that he published 113 books in a career stretching from 1934-97. Also numerous were books which lacked the fictional element and were a biography of some famous person's life. However, even in these, the language was often very descriptive and at sometimes bombastic and even a little jingoistic, in a way referencing the sense of 'New Elizabethan' Britain of the 1950s and 1960s, proud of its history but looking to the future too.
My copy of 'The Knight and the Merchant' (1965) certainly fits the latter pattern. I see that it comes from a library and has been cancelled. Where I got it from, I have no idea, perhaps from a jumble sale at a school. The book narrates in rich terms, the lives of Anthony Woodville, 2nd Earl Rivers (1440-83) and William Caxton (1421-91). Woodville was very much involved in the Wars of the Roses and became brother-in-law to King Edward IV (1442-83; ruled 1461-70 and 1471-83). Both men had very interesting careers which is presumably why they were selected. The Woodville family rose from being poor knights to serving the king directly. Anthony was involved in battles of the Wars of the Roses, but was also a keen jouster and later a vigorous pilgrim. Caxton was a successful cloth merchant who lived in Bruges for much of his adult life and became the leading representative of British merchants in the Low Countries. He attracted the attention of the court of the Duke of Burgundy and through this of Anthony Woodville. Caxton changed career at the age of 50, setting himself up as a printer in London and some of his early work was commissioned through Woodville.
Various incidents from the lives of the two men, especially when their paths crossed. Through it we learn a lot about the Wars of the Roses and life among the merchant and noble classes of 15th century England and the near Continent. It does not pull its punches in terms of death and execution. However, it is written in a style that really carries you along. It is reinforced through quotations taken from texts of the time. As a popular history book, despite its age, it works well and very effectively highlighted some facets of late medieval history that I was not overly familiar with. I certainly feel I have a better grasp of the Wars of the Roses and indeed of early printing in England and I guess that was the point of the book.
'The Fire and the Rose' by Arthur Bryant
This is a digest of chapters from a number of history books written by Bryant in the 1960s. This edition published in 1972 was offered as part of a promotion by Shell petrol stations, March-May 1972. It may have come from my grandfather who enjoyed popular history books and getting deals from petrol stations; I still use plates he got through petrol station promotions in the 1980s. Bryant like Uden is part of that mid-20th century tendency to try to interest the general public in history through presenting it as dramatic narrative. Bryant takes less of a patriotic approach than the Shell packaging and seems influenced at least to some extent by the 'everyday history' approach which reached its zenith in the UK in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Despite all the chapters being written by the same man, they vary considerably in quality and interest. The chapter on the escape from Dunkirk by the British and French forces in 1940 is the weakest, saying very little about what happened or why, just going on about the psychological impact which Bryant sees as the basis of the Allied victory. The chapter on the Battle of Crécy and the one on the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 are both good in concisely giving the background, in the first in military developments in the second in terms of socio-economic ones, that allow a good understanding of why the outcome was as it turned out. The narrative carries you along without being melodramatic. The same can be said for the chapter on the 1842 northern uprising a less well known element of British history, but here giving the context of deprivation in factory towns it is comprehensible and the changes Bryant shows it initiated might be unexpected.
The chapter on the escape of King Charles II could have been engaging but really becomes a list of locales he visited. It is interesting to see how far he ranged. The blind obedience to him by Royalists and his minimal concern about the fate they might have faced for aiding him is galling for a modern reader. The fact that he let them kiss his hand as a supposedly fine reward, sums it up. The chapter on the Great Fire of London from Samuel Pepys perspective is alright, though really tells us more about Pepys the philanderer than the course of the fire, though it shows the impact clearly. The Retreat to Corunna chapter is the longest. It raised the perception of the commander Sir John Moore in my eyes. It is highly disparaging of the Spanish and Portuguese being overly obsessed on martial spirit. It portrays the very bleak circumstances of the country and the retreat but detached from how people behaved as a result. The chapter on the Battle of Waterloo is reasonable and brings out how close the British, if not the Prussians, came to losing.
Overall a curious book that would not be produced nowadays and certainly would not be promoted by petrol stations, whether patriotic or not. There is some good historical writing here but on occasion too many of Bryant's hang-ups intrude and weaken significantly chapters that could have been far better.
'The Man Who Would Be King and Other Stories' by Rudyard Kipling
In many ways I should not have been surprised by this book. I know Kipling as an author of stories set in British-ruled India; it was published first in 1888. Though I have not read any of his books before, I have seen movies of 'Kim' (novel 1901; movie 1950) and the movie of the main story in this book released in 1975; I have seen extracts of the cartoon version of 'The Jungle Book' (stories 1894-5; movie 1967 and 2016). Perhaps, as a result I expected more action and even humour from this collection of short stories. The humour that is tried seems very contorted and specific to a very particular time and place. I could imagine it would not have gone down well even with readers of the time who were not associated with colonial rule in India or with the military. Overall in the first part of the book in particular, you get a very narrow focus and a great deal of repetition.
Many of the settings in Simla, the hill town that British officials, officers and their families would retreat to when the plains of India became too hot. They are largely set in the 1880s and the first third of the book features stories primarily about extra-marital affairs rendered in similar ways. They are largely tedious and made inaccessible for a modern reader by a combination of Victorian grammar and slang mixing both English and pseudo-Hindi terms. As the book progresses there is a move to ghost stories which is an improvement, though the first of these, 'The Phantom 'Rickshaw' itself stems from an extra-marital affair.
There is the eponymous story but it is presented very differently to the movie in that we only hear it third hand with one of the heroes recounting it to a British journalist in central India. It has all the elements but so far removed from the action lacks a sense of tension and conversely is rushed. There are three stories about various adventures, misadventures and poor treatment of small boys which may have been Kipling reflecting on his own childhood and probably was an element of him preparing for 'Kim' and 'The Jungle Book Stories' but lacking the charm of those; the confused battle involving two drummer boys, 'The Drums of the Fore and Aft' takes this another step.
You do learn quite a bit about this very small slice of British society abroad and even the geography of Simla and the surrounding area. However, the short stories, even when trying to be humorous say very little. I can contrast them sharply with the short stories of Herman Charles Bosman, best known for 'Mafeking Road and Other Stories' (1947) that my girlfriend is currently reading to me. Now, these were published sixty years after Kipling's collection. However, by focusing on rural Transvaal in the 1900s they provide a similar context of a small society in the latter phase of British imperialism, with a mixture of specific slang, in this case old Afrikaans words. Yet the quality of Bosman's short stories put Kipling's in the shade. Bosman is able to take the small incidents that appear in the restricted context and turn out both humorous and wistful stories that are excellently crafted. Having both books on the go at the same time has shown me the poor quality of this particular collection of Kipling's.
'The Piper on the Mountain' by Ellis Peters
This was one of six novels written by Peters not featuring the 12th century monk Brother Cadfael. The book was published in 1966 and sort of centres on the amateur detective, Dominic Felse. In this story he is a 2nd Year undergraduate English Literature student at the University of Oxford. He gets drawn into the investigation by 1st Year student Theodosia Barber (affectionately known as 'Tossa'!) into the death of her former step-father while walking in the Lower Tatra Mountains of Slovakia, at the time in Communist Czechoslovakia. Though the Cold War was in full flow when the book was written Peters seemed to expect growing detente. The story, while in London and Oxford is perfunctory, there is nothing to really show you the time or the place and it could be any one of a hundred novels of this era. It becomes far better when Dominic and Tossa go on a touring holiday with other students, female/male twins. Peters really conjures up the setting of that area of Slovakia; its wildlife and people, while avoiding stereotypes. She seems far better informed about this rural region than she does about towns in Britain.
Though there is a death and a murder, this is really more like a spy adventure featuring bright young things, charging around. The story effectively becomes a modernised Dornford Yates (1885-1960; published 1914-56) book, especially the Richard Chandos stories (published 1927-49) which were often in Central Europe. Peters does well to produce a sense of jeopardy, which shows how people writing short (it is only 162 pages), adventure stories can do this, something lacking in spy stories I have read recently. The twist is pretty good. In many ways it was an old fashioned story even at the time it was written, but if you are willing to accept it, that is fine.
The main flaw in the early part of the book is that Peters jumps between a number of points of view, sometimes even on a single page. It is only after the halfway point that Felse becomes the clear hero, that this situation settles down. I am surprised an editor did not pick this up at the time. It is not a bad book and the scenes where the heroes are pinned down by a sniper are handled notably well. I do not expect to be stretched by the other five books, but I certainly will not throw them away at this stage.
'Mourning Raga' by Ellis Peters
This is another book by Peters featuring Dominic Felse and Theodosia Barber who are now girlfriend/boyfriend and a further year on at University of Oxford. Being in the mid-sixties (the book was published in 1969, which being three years after the first book they would have finished their studies by now if it was contemporaneous) they do not sleep together. Peters is able to produce a sound reason for sending them to New Delhi to accompany the 14-year old half-American/half-Indian daughter of a movie star back to her father in India. The girl, Anjli, is kidnapped and the bulk of the story is about recovering her. There are numerous big male Indian characters whose personalities dominate the book and push Felse and Barber into the background, it is far less their story than 'The Piper on the Mountain' though perhaps that was intentional to have Indian characters in the lead. While Peters does draw characteristics of different types of Indians, notably contrasting Punjabis and Bengalis, she does seem intent to show India as a modern country. As in the previous novel she clearly knows her location well and gives immense detail of New Dehli, not simply the tourist sites but how it was growing and developing in the 1960s. It is a twisty plot and at times the number of characters can be a little overwhelming. This is not aided by her repeating the tendency from the previous book of abruptly switching points of view often on the same page and you can be uncertain whose eyes you are seeing through, further adding to the two 'lead' characters seeming to be pushed into second place.
Despite the references to fashion of the late 1960s, this feels like a modern book which you could present as a television drama now. I admire the effort Peters puts into the panoply of characters and her largely avoiding taking a Western-tinted view on India. However, this would have been a more pleasant read if she had kept tighter rein on the perspective. I know it can be useful when trying to put twists in the plot, but by the closing chapter you are left rather breathlessly bewildered. I suppose for a mystery writer that is not too bad a thing, but as a reader despite this being a short book (159 pages in my edition) you have to really pay attention.
'Nine Tomorrows' by Isaac Asimov
I have not read any books by Asimov before even though he published tens of them. I think I was put off by expecting them to be very much 'hard' science fiction about pondering the vastness of space in dreary spaceships. This is a collection of short stories originally published 1956-58. They compare favourably with the John Wyndham collection of roughly the same era that I read last month. On occasion there is a feeling that they are dated, especially in referring to miniature film and taped books, though these would have seemed feasible even just twenty years ago. Indeed the development of computers on to molecular processing still seems ahead of its time.
Some of the concepts Asimov covers have become very common in writing since he explored them, but I think it is his skill as an author that keeps them seeming fresh in how he looks at them. He does ponder big issues but without the stories becoming ponderous in the way I feared. 'Profession' looks at young people in a society in which your profession is decided, a theme taken up in many dystopias and indeed had featured in 'Brave New World' (1931) well before this story. Yet Asimov shows the challenges of this approach and what a society might need. 'The Feeling of Power' could easily be produced today and actually echoes something I have experienced in the past two years. With a long-running interplanetary battle reaching stalemate, the humans come up with a new 'invention' that rather than relying on computers to calculate everything humans can be trained to do it, so introducing elements to thwart their opponents and at a cheaper price. A couple of years ago, I was challenged to do some cubed numbers in my head and did them faster than a colleague could type them into their phone, so this kind of issue remains current.
There are a couple of almost science fiction detective mysteries. 'The Dying Night' is clever in that the murderer is detected as a result of the behaviour they exhibit resulting from the planet in the solar system they have been based on. 'I'm in Marsport without Hilda' feels more dated really in the way it shows the investigator having an extra-marital affair rather than how he decides which of the three businessmen is a drugs smuggler. I wonder if there are other such detective/SF crossovers; I can only really think of 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' (1968).
'The Gentle Vultures' with its obsession with nuclear war might seem dated, but it does provide an interesting alien view of Earth, different to those who simply come in peace or those who just want to conquer and is good at getting the alien mindset across. 'The Troubles of the World' turns out to be cleverer than you might first expect. It seems to combine aspects of what would had featured two years before in 'The Minority Report' (short story 1956; movie 2002) with something like the computers in '2001: A Space Odyssey' (novel and movie, 1968) and 'Dark Star' (movie, 1974). 'Spell My Name with an 'S'' again shows its age because of Cold War references but also establishes tropes that now often feature in science fiction about how destined we are to live a certain life, whether out future is predictable and if a small change can bring about a very different outcome; the 'Back to the Future' movie trilogy (1985-90) is just one among many that build on those questions.
'The Last Question' is a bit more of what I expected - big questions about the universe across millennia and a rather trite ending. 'The Ugly Little Boy' about snatching people and objects from the past to study them in the present is another theme which is now common but fresher when this story was written. Towards the end you might expect the outcome but it has a welcome humanity about it.
Overall I was presently surprised by this collection. It was not as heavy or gloomy as I had anticipated and Asimov shows off a skill in short story writing that maybe contributes a great deal to that. Even though the collection is now so old, it still has a lot to say to many of the issues we are facing today as all the best science fiction does. I certainly am more likely to pick up an Isaac Asimov book if I come across one in the future, especially if it has short stories rather than a full novel.
'My Legendary Girlfriend' by Mike Gayle
This book published in 1998 was billed as a male version of 'Bridget Jones's Diary' (1996), There are similarities. One is that it is broken up in chronological chunks, though unlike Helen Fielding's book covering months, Gayle's does it over a matter hours stretching from a Friday afternoon through a weekend to a Monday morning. This is part of the problem with the book and makes it unattractive. It is horribly claustrophobic. The lead character, Will Kelly spends a lot of his time in a shabby flat which he takes no care of, with brief journeys to convenience stores and a pub in the Archway area of London and to Highgate Cemetery with unpleasant or desultory interactions with almost everyone.
A lot of the book, as the title suggests is about relationships. He has lengthy telephone conversations with a range of people, not many of whom are sympathetic characters. The lack of other social media dates the book. Kelly obsesses over the girlfriend who dumped him three years earlier, after three years together; the anniversary of the relationship is on his birthday, the Sunday of the weekend. Though it is a short book (215 pages in the edition I had which has very small type), it drags terribly. You become angry with Will Kelly for being such a slob and being so lazy with his life. Unlike with Bridget Jones, there is very little humour in the situation. Perhaps, Gayle, being a former agony uncle felt unable to raise humour from problems facing many young people in London, notably appalling accommodation at expensive rents and the loneliness especially in Britain in which people are so busy 'networking' that they have no time to be with their 'friends'.
The ending is rushed and has a resolution which seems incongruous given how gloomy the rest of the book has been. You may say I would have enjoyed it more if I had read it when in my 20s, but I think it would have been impossible then to face up to this story which echoed so much of the problems of my own life and without the happy ending that Kelly gets.
'Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban' by J.K. Rowling
By the third book in the Harry Potter series you feel that Rowling has really got into her stride in writing novels and this is very polished, especially if set alongside the first book. For those, like me, who know the Potter stories best from the movies, this one diverges even more than the previous two. The broad outline of events are the same, but many of the details are very different. In some ways I think the movie line is less jerky and makes better use of the time travel aspect. The climax with Harry, Ron and Hermione finding out who is lying is much messier in the book and leaves you rather confused; it is clearer in the movie. The Divination teacher, Sybil Trelawney, gets a far bigger role in the book than the movie and she predicts many things accurately, to some degree putting Hermione in a dimmer light than she otherwise has. Her classroom is also very otherworldly in the books.
Overall, the flavour of this book is darker than the movie version. This gets you ready for the aspects which become increasingly apparent as the book persists. The complexity of adult relationships, notably friendships, is not skirted over. The dark flavour is added to by the fact that the humour of the movie is rather overshadowed in the book and as before, Harry's treatment by the Dursleys, however much light is made of it, still grates as abuse. I suppose this is somewhat of a plot device to make Harry happy to spend more time at his boarding school, even during the holidays. As before in the books, the working of the school seems to be Rowling's central focus, much more than is apparent in the movies. In particular in this story where the climax is a revelation rather than battling a monster, what is the focus on action on screen, is only a small piece of the book and indeed the aftermath continues well after this climax is concluded. I enjoyed the book but am increasingly conscious that I am reading what is primarily a school novel rather than a fantasy novel.
Non-Fiction
'The Knight and the Merchant' by Grant Uden
In my childhood in the 1970s school libraries often had many books written in the 1950s and 1960s which featured great people and great events of history. Some would have a fictional story involving children encountering these people or being present at the events. With an eagerness for history I was often directed to read such books. I remember 'The Grey Apple Tree' by Vera Cumberlege (1965) about the Battle of Hastings and the work of Geoffrey Trease, unsurprising given that he published 113 books in a career stretching from 1934-97. Also numerous were books which lacked the fictional element and were a biography of some famous person's life. However, even in these, the language was often very descriptive and at sometimes bombastic and even a little jingoistic, in a way referencing the sense of 'New Elizabethan' Britain of the 1950s and 1960s, proud of its history but looking to the future too.
My copy of 'The Knight and the Merchant' (1965) certainly fits the latter pattern. I see that it comes from a library and has been cancelled. Where I got it from, I have no idea, perhaps from a jumble sale at a school. The book narrates in rich terms, the lives of Anthony Woodville, 2nd Earl Rivers (1440-83) and William Caxton (1421-91). Woodville was very much involved in the Wars of the Roses and became brother-in-law to King Edward IV (1442-83; ruled 1461-70 and 1471-83). Both men had very interesting careers which is presumably why they were selected. The Woodville family rose from being poor knights to serving the king directly. Anthony was involved in battles of the Wars of the Roses, but was also a keen jouster and later a vigorous pilgrim. Caxton was a successful cloth merchant who lived in Bruges for much of his adult life and became the leading representative of British merchants in the Low Countries. He attracted the attention of the court of the Duke of Burgundy and through this of Anthony Woodville. Caxton changed career at the age of 50, setting himself up as a printer in London and some of his early work was commissioned through Woodville.
Various incidents from the lives of the two men, especially when their paths crossed. Through it we learn a lot about the Wars of the Roses and life among the merchant and noble classes of 15th century England and the near Continent. It does not pull its punches in terms of death and execution. However, it is written in a style that really carries you along. It is reinforced through quotations taken from texts of the time. As a popular history book, despite its age, it works well and very effectively highlighted some facets of late medieval history that I was not overly familiar with. I certainly feel I have a better grasp of the Wars of the Roses and indeed of early printing in England and I guess that was the point of the book.
'The Fire and the Rose' by Arthur Bryant
This is a digest of chapters from a number of history books written by Bryant in the 1960s. This edition published in 1972 was offered as part of a promotion by Shell petrol stations, March-May 1972. It may have come from my grandfather who enjoyed popular history books and getting deals from petrol stations; I still use plates he got through petrol station promotions in the 1980s. Bryant like Uden is part of that mid-20th century tendency to try to interest the general public in history through presenting it as dramatic narrative. Bryant takes less of a patriotic approach than the Shell packaging and seems influenced at least to some extent by the 'everyday history' approach which reached its zenith in the UK in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Despite all the chapters being written by the same man, they vary considerably in quality and interest. The chapter on the escape from Dunkirk by the British and French forces in 1940 is the weakest, saying very little about what happened or why, just going on about the psychological impact which Bryant sees as the basis of the Allied victory. The chapter on the Battle of Crécy and the one on the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 are both good in concisely giving the background, in the first in military developments in the second in terms of socio-economic ones, that allow a good understanding of why the outcome was as it turned out. The narrative carries you along without being melodramatic. The same can be said for the chapter on the 1842 northern uprising a less well known element of British history, but here giving the context of deprivation in factory towns it is comprehensible and the changes Bryant shows it initiated might be unexpected.
The chapter on the escape of King Charles II could have been engaging but really becomes a list of locales he visited. It is interesting to see how far he ranged. The blind obedience to him by Royalists and his minimal concern about the fate they might have faced for aiding him is galling for a modern reader. The fact that he let them kiss his hand as a supposedly fine reward, sums it up. The chapter on the Great Fire of London from Samuel Pepys perspective is alright, though really tells us more about Pepys the philanderer than the course of the fire, though it shows the impact clearly. The Retreat to Corunna chapter is the longest. It raised the perception of the commander Sir John Moore in my eyes. It is highly disparaging of the Spanish and Portuguese being overly obsessed on martial spirit. It portrays the very bleak circumstances of the country and the retreat but detached from how people behaved as a result. The chapter on the Battle of Waterloo is reasonable and brings out how close the British, if not the Prussians, came to losing.
Overall a curious book that would not be produced nowadays and certainly would not be promoted by petrol stations, whether patriotic or not. There is some good historical writing here but on occasion too many of Bryant's hang-ups intrude and weaken significantly chapters that could have been far better.
Thursday, 30 April 2015
The Books I Read In April
Fiction
'A Rare Benedictine' by Ellis Peters
This was the last of the Brother Cadfael books I had to read. It was anomalous, featuring three short stories. The first is set in 1120 when Cadfael is an ageing soldier. The other two are set in the mid- to late 1130s when he is established as a monk. The stories are fine. They show Cadfael solving three crimes even when this means him going up against his employer. They show him using his knowledge of Shrewsbury and supporting the course of true love, all elements that are the backbone of the Cadfael stories. What seems to be missing, contrary to what Peters notes at the start, is a sense of that transformation from warrior to monk. It would have been really beneficial to have had 2-3 other stories set in the 1120s. This would have shown us more of the character's development rather than simply presenting simply some further examples of him behaving in the way regular readers of the series are familiar with. It is not a bad book, but it could have been a great deal more.
'The Winds of Altair' by Ben Bova
Ben Bova was an author I first came across as a teenager and was very impressed by his 'The Dueling Machine' [sic] (1969). However, too many of his novels appeared to be space opera which did not appeal. 'The Winds of Altair' (1984) is about colonists being sent to a remote planet, but is more about issues connected to colonisation and religious fundamentalism. The colonisers make use of mind connection devices to use wolfcats - huge six-legged predators and white apes, to operate machinery on the hostile surface of Altair VI/Windsong to make it habitable for humans. The story largely features those involved in this connection between the creatures and humans. This connecting and the sympathy for the indigenous population are very reminiscent of elements of the movie 'Avatar' (2009) with a religious group instead of the military. The book moves along briskly and handles the big issues well. The casual racism jumps out until you realise that the religions have made Earth suffering with a population of 17 billion, a racially-segregated planet. I enjoyed reading the book but then it ends abruptly as if Bova felt he had got his message across and there was no need for any more or the publishers said that he had reached his page limit. The difficulties of the colonisation, the challenge of the religion and the development of the two romantic relationships are all concluded at speed, though in the case of the relationships, largely unresolved. This abrupt end is a shame for a book which I otherwise enjoyed. I may be tempted to find some more of Bova's books in the future, but hope they will end properly.
Non-Fiction
'The Habsburg Monarchy, 1809-1918' by A.J.P. Taylor
This book was first published in 1941 and the revised edition I read came out in 1947. This is important to note because people would not write a history book this way nowadays. It is important to note that this is not really about the Austrian Empire or Austria-Hungary, but as the title indicates, about the Habsburg monarchy in this period. It is written very much from a constitutional perspective and at times is very dry and complicated when discussing the nuances of political developments at the highest level. The main flaw of the book is that it rushes through all of these elements very quickly with few breaks. This leads the reader easily lost. At times the analysis of the politics seems to be in a vacuum, detached from social and economic developments which form the context. It improves when covering the first decade of the 20th century, but then with the First World War returns to the break-neck speed. A slower pace and more summary would have improved the accessibility of the book greatly.
Taylor writes that he purged his misplaced wistful optimism for Austria-Hungary and what it could have been between the two editions of the book. However, what is painful for a contemporary reader is the retention of his bigotry which too often colours what he is saying and imbalances his judgements. He derides the Austrians and Hungarians perceiving themselves as the superior nations in the empire, with the Poles and to a lesser extent the Italians following on behind. However, then he generally adheres to their hierarchy of the different nationalities. He is painfully patronising when discussing the Slovaks and Ruthenes, even the Croats and Slovenes. He presents a number of these nationalities as if they were infantile and is dismissive of any political or national perspectives they may have. He is also explicitly dismissive of the French despite the importance of their government in successor states to Austria-Hungary. I gather his attitude to the Italians was also shaped by the Second World War. Yet, the problem goes beyond his own time. His attitudes were old fashioned even in 1947. This is emphasised by his disparaging of the term successor states and his constant reference to 'Austria' in inverted commas, even after 1918 when it was a sovereign states. Though Taylor writes in English in this book his perceptions are those of a German living in the late 19th century. This handicaps him in making a fair judgement in terms of the various nationalities and distorts how he articulates what went on depending on which of the 'historic' nations was concerned. The book is comprehensive but is best saved for reference which allows avoidance of its overly-frenetic narrative and the painfully bigoted attitudes towards many of the people being discussed.
'A Rare Benedictine' by Ellis Peters
This was the last of the Brother Cadfael books I had to read. It was anomalous, featuring three short stories. The first is set in 1120 when Cadfael is an ageing soldier. The other two are set in the mid- to late 1130s when he is established as a monk. The stories are fine. They show Cadfael solving three crimes even when this means him going up against his employer. They show him using his knowledge of Shrewsbury and supporting the course of true love, all elements that are the backbone of the Cadfael stories. What seems to be missing, contrary to what Peters notes at the start, is a sense of that transformation from warrior to monk. It would have been really beneficial to have had 2-3 other stories set in the 1120s. This would have shown us more of the character's development rather than simply presenting simply some further examples of him behaving in the way regular readers of the series are familiar with. It is not a bad book, but it could have been a great deal more.
'The Winds of Altair' by Ben Bova
Ben Bova was an author I first came across as a teenager and was very impressed by his 'The Dueling Machine' [sic] (1969). However, too many of his novels appeared to be space opera which did not appeal. 'The Winds of Altair' (1984) is about colonists being sent to a remote planet, but is more about issues connected to colonisation and religious fundamentalism. The colonisers make use of mind connection devices to use wolfcats - huge six-legged predators and white apes, to operate machinery on the hostile surface of Altair VI/Windsong to make it habitable for humans. The story largely features those involved in this connection between the creatures and humans. This connecting and the sympathy for the indigenous population are very reminiscent of elements of the movie 'Avatar' (2009) with a religious group instead of the military. The book moves along briskly and handles the big issues well. The casual racism jumps out until you realise that the religions have made Earth suffering with a population of 17 billion, a racially-segregated planet. I enjoyed reading the book but then it ends abruptly as if Bova felt he had got his message across and there was no need for any more or the publishers said that he had reached his page limit. The difficulties of the colonisation, the challenge of the religion and the development of the two romantic relationships are all concluded at speed, though in the case of the relationships, largely unresolved. This abrupt end is a shame for a book which I otherwise enjoyed. I may be tempted to find some more of Bova's books in the future, but hope they will end properly.
Non-Fiction
'The Habsburg Monarchy, 1809-1918' by A.J.P. Taylor
This book was first published in 1941 and the revised edition I read came out in 1947. This is important to note because people would not write a history book this way nowadays. It is important to note that this is not really about the Austrian Empire or Austria-Hungary, but as the title indicates, about the Habsburg monarchy in this period. It is written very much from a constitutional perspective and at times is very dry and complicated when discussing the nuances of political developments at the highest level. The main flaw of the book is that it rushes through all of these elements very quickly with few breaks. This leads the reader easily lost. At times the analysis of the politics seems to be in a vacuum, detached from social and economic developments which form the context. It improves when covering the first decade of the 20th century, but then with the First World War returns to the break-neck speed. A slower pace and more summary would have improved the accessibility of the book greatly.
Taylor writes that he purged his misplaced wistful optimism for Austria-Hungary and what it could have been between the two editions of the book. However, what is painful for a contemporary reader is the retention of his bigotry which too often colours what he is saying and imbalances his judgements. He derides the Austrians and Hungarians perceiving themselves as the superior nations in the empire, with the Poles and to a lesser extent the Italians following on behind. However, then he generally adheres to their hierarchy of the different nationalities. He is painfully patronising when discussing the Slovaks and Ruthenes, even the Croats and Slovenes. He presents a number of these nationalities as if they were infantile and is dismissive of any political or national perspectives they may have. He is also explicitly dismissive of the French despite the importance of their government in successor states to Austria-Hungary. I gather his attitude to the Italians was also shaped by the Second World War. Yet, the problem goes beyond his own time. His attitudes were old fashioned even in 1947. This is emphasised by his disparaging of the term successor states and his constant reference to 'Austria' in inverted commas, even after 1918 when it was a sovereign states. Though Taylor writes in English in this book his perceptions are those of a German living in the late 19th century. This handicaps him in making a fair judgement in terms of the various nationalities and distorts how he articulates what went on depending on which of the 'historic' nations was concerned. The book is comprehensive but is best saved for reference which allows avoidance of its overly-frenetic narrative and the painfully bigoted attitudes towards many of the people being discussed.
Saturday, 28 February 2015
The Books I Read In February
Fiction
'Brother Cadfael's Penance' by Ellis Peters
In terms of story chronology, this is the final book in the Cadfael series; it is set in the 1145. There is a prequel, 'A Rare Benedictine' (1988) which was the 16th book in terms of publication but is set in 1120. I intend to read it in the coming weeks.
This is not one of the stronger books in the series. Its format is like that of 'The Summer of the Danes' (1991) in that Brother Cadfael is taken away from his monastery at Shrewsbury and is involved on the fringes of high level politics. In this case he goes to the ecclesiastical centre of Coventry where there are abortive peace talks between the two sides of the long-running civil war, Empress Matilda and King Stephen. A murder occurs during the talks and once they break up one of the suspects, a young man, Yves Hugonin, that Cadfael met six years earlier in 'The Virgin in the Ice' (1982), is snatched by relatives of the victim.
Cadfael goes into Gloucestershire to secure Yves's release, so violating the terms of his temporary release from his monastery. He also discovers the whereabouts of his imprisoned illegitimate, half-Syrian son, Olivier de Bretagne that he had met only twice before, in 1139 and 1141. Olivier is a supporter of the Empress and is now in his thirties, expecting his wife, Yves's sister, to give birth.
The story is interesting in a number of aspects. There is much discussion about reconciliation between fathers and their adult sons, not just Cadfael and Olivier but also Philip FitzRobert who imprisons Olivier and Yves and his father, Robert of Gloucester, Matilda's half-brother. The book, seeing the meeting for the final time of Olivier and Cadfael is a suitable ending to the series. The description of a small castle in a rural setting and it coming under siege and assault covers aspects not usually featured in the Cadfael series. However, Peters handles it well giving a good perspective of the hazards within the walls.
The central difficulty with this book as with 'The Summer of the Danes' is that the murder feels very bolted on to what is primarily a story about the political situation. Similarly here the resolution to the murder is delivered very simply without Cadfael having to use his skills to unmask the killer. I suppose Peters felt compelled to include a murder in each of her Cadfael books, but this would have been that bit better if she had left it out and simply stuck to the political machinations and resolving the abduction of two of Matilda's soldiers. Overall the series ends a bit with a whimper but fortunately with the large personal issues for Cadfael resolved.
Non-Fiction
'The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century' by Ian Mortimer
This book shares a characteristic with a couple of history books that I read last year, notably, 'Hidden History. The Secret Origins of the First World War' by Gerry Docherty & Jim MacGregor and 'Pétain's Crime' by Paul Webster in that the authors feel they are putting forward such a radically alternative perspective on the history they are covering that throughout they have to keep insisting that what they are saying is so very different from anything you may have read on the topic before. First, such incessant haranguing becomes very tiresome to the reader. Second, it is probable that the vast majority of the people who have picked up the book are interested in the authors' perspectives and in many cases will already accept their line of argument; they do not have to be persuaded again and again.
Mortimer believes he had created something called 'virtual history'. He uses this in a very different way to Niall Ferguson for whom it represents counter-factual history. Instead Mortimer uses it to refer to what was called in my youth, 'everyday history', i.e. history of a period seen from the viewpoint of ordinary people rather than the rulers and elites. The focus is on day-to-day life rather than battles and political machinations. I know such history was pushed aside in British schools by the introduction of the National Curriculum in 1992, but even so children still get some of it when they have to pretend to be evacuees or Victorian chimney sweeps or increasingly, passengers on the 'Titanic'. Certainly for people of my generation, everyday history was in fact the norm. Mortimer conveniently forgets all the books especially in the 1970s and 1980s which took the same perspective of him. I even remember the Usborne Time Traveller books which still seem to be in circulation. Yes, they were aimed at children but like Mortimer's book involve the perspective of a time traveller on the period featured and focus on ordinary life in the times 'visited'.
Mortimer would have been better off persisting with the conceit of the reader being a time traveller. This is largely forgotten and only pops up occasionally. Instead you feel as if you are being led around by a prissy lecturer who is as eager to show you how foolish you are, as he is to actually engage you with what he is addressing.
Setting aside the patronising tone that pervades the book, it is reasonably well written looking at different aspects such as towns and villages, travel, food, medicine, etc. in turn and viewing them for different social classes. There are new aspects which are revealed notably on crime. The chapter on literature of the time is really different in nature and indicates the motives behind Mortimer's interest in the time and the place. Mortimer has gone on to produce similar books on different time periods. I do not know whether he maintains the patronising tone in these and maybe given their success most people who buy the books do not seem unhappy about it. If you can remember other 'everyday history' books on the Middle Ages you probably have no need for this book. It is a useful reference if you want to set fiction in 14th century England or if you have never read or been taught about how people lived in that context.
'Brother Cadfael's Penance' by Ellis Peters
In terms of story chronology, this is the final book in the Cadfael series; it is set in the 1145. There is a prequel, 'A Rare Benedictine' (1988) which was the 16th book in terms of publication but is set in 1120. I intend to read it in the coming weeks.
This is not one of the stronger books in the series. Its format is like that of 'The Summer of the Danes' (1991) in that Brother Cadfael is taken away from his monastery at Shrewsbury and is involved on the fringes of high level politics. In this case he goes to the ecclesiastical centre of Coventry where there are abortive peace talks between the two sides of the long-running civil war, Empress Matilda and King Stephen. A murder occurs during the talks and once they break up one of the suspects, a young man, Yves Hugonin, that Cadfael met six years earlier in 'The Virgin in the Ice' (1982), is snatched by relatives of the victim.
Cadfael goes into Gloucestershire to secure Yves's release, so violating the terms of his temporary release from his monastery. He also discovers the whereabouts of his imprisoned illegitimate, half-Syrian son, Olivier de Bretagne that he had met only twice before, in 1139 and 1141. Olivier is a supporter of the Empress and is now in his thirties, expecting his wife, Yves's sister, to give birth.
The story is interesting in a number of aspects. There is much discussion about reconciliation between fathers and their adult sons, not just Cadfael and Olivier but also Philip FitzRobert who imprisons Olivier and Yves and his father, Robert of Gloucester, Matilda's half-brother. The book, seeing the meeting for the final time of Olivier and Cadfael is a suitable ending to the series. The description of a small castle in a rural setting and it coming under siege and assault covers aspects not usually featured in the Cadfael series. However, Peters handles it well giving a good perspective of the hazards within the walls.
The central difficulty with this book as with 'The Summer of the Danes' is that the murder feels very bolted on to what is primarily a story about the political situation. Similarly here the resolution to the murder is delivered very simply without Cadfael having to use his skills to unmask the killer. I suppose Peters felt compelled to include a murder in each of her Cadfael books, but this would have been that bit better if she had left it out and simply stuck to the political machinations and resolving the abduction of two of Matilda's soldiers. Overall the series ends a bit with a whimper but fortunately with the large personal issues for Cadfael resolved.
Non-Fiction
'The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century' by Ian Mortimer
This book shares a characteristic with a couple of history books that I read last year, notably, 'Hidden History. The Secret Origins of the First World War' by Gerry Docherty & Jim MacGregor and 'Pétain's Crime' by Paul Webster in that the authors feel they are putting forward such a radically alternative perspective on the history they are covering that throughout they have to keep insisting that what they are saying is so very different from anything you may have read on the topic before. First, such incessant haranguing becomes very tiresome to the reader. Second, it is probable that the vast majority of the people who have picked up the book are interested in the authors' perspectives and in many cases will already accept their line of argument; they do not have to be persuaded again and again.
Mortimer believes he had created something called 'virtual history'. He uses this in a very different way to Niall Ferguson for whom it represents counter-factual history. Instead Mortimer uses it to refer to what was called in my youth, 'everyday history', i.e. history of a period seen from the viewpoint of ordinary people rather than the rulers and elites. The focus is on day-to-day life rather than battles and political machinations. I know such history was pushed aside in British schools by the introduction of the National Curriculum in 1992, but even so children still get some of it when they have to pretend to be evacuees or Victorian chimney sweeps or increasingly, passengers on the 'Titanic'. Certainly for people of my generation, everyday history was in fact the norm. Mortimer conveniently forgets all the books especially in the 1970s and 1980s which took the same perspective of him. I even remember the Usborne Time Traveller books which still seem to be in circulation. Yes, they were aimed at children but like Mortimer's book involve the perspective of a time traveller on the period featured and focus on ordinary life in the times 'visited'.
Mortimer would have been better off persisting with the conceit of the reader being a time traveller. This is largely forgotten and only pops up occasionally. Instead you feel as if you are being led around by a prissy lecturer who is as eager to show you how foolish you are, as he is to actually engage you with what he is addressing.
Setting aside the patronising tone that pervades the book, it is reasonably well written looking at different aspects such as towns and villages, travel, food, medicine, etc. in turn and viewing them for different social classes. There are new aspects which are revealed notably on crime. The chapter on literature of the time is really different in nature and indicates the motives behind Mortimer's interest in the time and the place. Mortimer has gone on to produce similar books on different time periods. I do not know whether he maintains the patronising tone in these and maybe given their success most people who buy the books do not seem unhappy about it. If you can remember other 'everyday history' books on the Middle Ages you probably have no need for this book. It is a useful reference if you want to set fiction in 14th century England or if you have never read or been taught about how people lived in that context.
Wednesday, 31 December 2014
The Books I Read In December
Non-Fiction
'Winston Churchill' by Henry Pelling
This book was first published in 1974 and I read a revised edition from 1982. However, in general it felt even older than that. It has a style that would not have been out of place in 1954. Despite what some reviewers say, it is not a strictly chronological book as chapters step out of the flow of history to look, for example, at his private life or his writing. It gives details that many readers will not encounter in general histories about Churchill as a man and as a writer as opposed to being a leader and it is good on those times when he was not in office. His interest in bricklaying was something I never knew. It also shows him as a constituency MP and this also gives a perspective on local British politics through the period that he was standing for election. It gives a fair appreciation of Churchill's role in the Great Upheaval of 1910-11, a topic of particular interest for myself. What it is particularly poor on, however, is a blind defence of the Dardanelles Campaign during the First World War. It was an utter fiasco and yet Pelling portrays it as not being that bad and somehow finds some value in it. Otherwise he excuses Churchill's involvement due to timing of him being in various roles. This approach really weakens the credibility of the book.
The book is almost purely narrative, with minimal analysis and certainly no efforts to bring out long-term trends in Churchill's politics, this is left down to the reader. What became apparent was Churchill's imperialist mindset, indeed a form of racialism (as opposed to racism) in that he seems to have categorised peoples of the world into a hierarchy. The 'English-speaking peoples' that he wrote of appear to have been at the top in his view and towards others, certainly beyond Western Europe he adopted a patronising attitude. He seemed to be quite content to see the dissolution of Poland and Czechoslovakia by the Germans, but for the fact that this advanced the strength of Nazi Germany as a rival for Britain. This attitude which becomes apparent from connecting points through Pelling's book explains his hostility even to self-government or dominion status for India. It is clear he saw the Indians as a benighted people with weak leaders who were incapable of even approaching democracy. His attitude to African colonies was even more dismissive. This is not surprising of a man of his class and time, but tends to be overlooked and there is sometimes, as seems the case with Pelling, that whilst Churchill was a defender of democracy against dictatorship he also worked tirelessly to deny democracy to many people. Overall this is a worker-like book that is probably best used for reference rather than for getting a rounded picture of the man.
'The Holy Thief' by Ellis Peters
This was one of the Cadfael stories that was televised (in 1998), though there are subtle differences between the book at the teleplay. However, Sub-Prior Herluin is less of a forceful character than the very sharp portrayal of him by George Irving (born 1954) in the television series. The story surrounds representatives coming from another Benedictine monastery at Ramsey in Cambridgeshire which we have seen ravaged in previous books as a result of the continuing upheaval of the civil war between King Stephen and Empress Maud. Shrewsbury where Brother Cadfael is based suffers a bad flood and the reliquary supposedly holding the bones of St Winifred (though readers and a couple of characters know from the incidents seen in the first book of the series 'A Morbid Taste for Bones' (1977) that this is not actually the case) is moved for safety and then is stolen. How it ends up on the lands of a local lord is different to in the television series. However, much is the same, with the involvement of the wayward monk, Brother Tutilo and the musicians/singers Rémy of Pertuis and his slave Daalny. Local characters, the Blounts, who featured in 'The Potter's Field' (1989) also reappear.
This book is stronger for being back in Shrewsbury. It is also good to see the Blount family once more as often in the Cadfael books, bar the reoccurring central characters, often you do not find out about what happened to people wrapped up in earlier cases. The book highlights the issue of slavery which while discouraged was permitted in England at the time and the use of sortes Biblicae, i.e. flicking through the Bible and stopping at a random point to come to decisions about clerical issues. As in a number of stories in the latter half of the sequence, Peters looks at men unsuited to being monks and the female perspective on the choices such men had made. This gives her some room for the romantic element which she likes to include and this story does have elements of a 'courtly love' tale of the kind that troubadours like Rémy sing about. However, it also leavens the very certain and very male perspective of books centred on a monastery. Readers will also be glad to see Brother Jerome, one of the nastiest characters in the books, have some kind of come-uppance. I enjoyed this story and felt in the penultimate novel of the main Cadfael sequence, Peters was back to form.
'Winston Churchill' by Henry Pelling
This book was first published in 1974 and I read a revised edition from 1982. However, in general it felt even older than that. It has a style that would not have been out of place in 1954. Despite what some reviewers say, it is not a strictly chronological book as chapters step out of the flow of history to look, for example, at his private life or his writing. It gives details that many readers will not encounter in general histories about Churchill as a man and as a writer as opposed to being a leader and it is good on those times when he was not in office. His interest in bricklaying was something I never knew. It also shows him as a constituency MP and this also gives a perspective on local British politics through the period that he was standing for election. It gives a fair appreciation of Churchill's role in the Great Upheaval of 1910-11, a topic of particular interest for myself. What it is particularly poor on, however, is a blind defence of the Dardanelles Campaign during the First World War. It was an utter fiasco and yet Pelling portrays it as not being that bad and somehow finds some value in it. Otherwise he excuses Churchill's involvement due to timing of him being in various roles. This approach really weakens the credibility of the book.
The book is almost purely narrative, with minimal analysis and certainly no efforts to bring out long-term trends in Churchill's politics, this is left down to the reader. What became apparent was Churchill's imperialist mindset, indeed a form of racialism (as opposed to racism) in that he seems to have categorised peoples of the world into a hierarchy. The 'English-speaking peoples' that he wrote of appear to have been at the top in his view and towards others, certainly beyond Western Europe he adopted a patronising attitude. He seemed to be quite content to see the dissolution of Poland and Czechoslovakia by the Germans, but for the fact that this advanced the strength of Nazi Germany as a rival for Britain. This attitude which becomes apparent from connecting points through Pelling's book explains his hostility even to self-government or dominion status for India. It is clear he saw the Indians as a benighted people with weak leaders who were incapable of even approaching democracy. His attitude to African colonies was even more dismissive. This is not surprising of a man of his class and time, but tends to be overlooked and there is sometimes, as seems the case with Pelling, that whilst Churchill was a defender of democracy against dictatorship he also worked tirelessly to deny democracy to many people. Overall this is a worker-like book that is probably best used for reference rather than for getting a rounded picture of the man.
'The Holy Thief' by Ellis Peters
This was one of the Cadfael stories that was televised (in 1998), though there are subtle differences between the book at the teleplay. However, Sub-Prior Herluin is less of a forceful character than the very sharp portrayal of him by George Irving (born 1954) in the television series. The story surrounds representatives coming from another Benedictine monastery at Ramsey in Cambridgeshire which we have seen ravaged in previous books as a result of the continuing upheaval of the civil war between King Stephen and Empress Maud. Shrewsbury where Brother Cadfael is based suffers a bad flood and the reliquary supposedly holding the bones of St Winifred (though readers and a couple of characters know from the incidents seen in the first book of the series 'A Morbid Taste for Bones' (1977) that this is not actually the case) is moved for safety and then is stolen. How it ends up on the lands of a local lord is different to in the television series. However, much is the same, with the involvement of the wayward monk, Brother Tutilo and the musicians/singers Rémy of Pertuis and his slave Daalny. Local characters, the Blounts, who featured in 'The Potter's Field' (1989) also reappear.
This book is stronger for being back in Shrewsbury. It is also good to see the Blount family once more as often in the Cadfael books, bar the reoccurring central characters, often you do not find out about what happened to people wrapped up in earlier cases. The book highlights the issue of slavery which while discouraged was permitted in England at the time and the use of sortes Biblicae, i.e. flicking through the Bible and stopping at a random point to come to decisions about clerical issues. As in a number of stories in the latter half of the sequence, Peters looks at men unsuited to being monks and the female perspective on the choices such men had made. This gives her some room for the romantic element which she likes to include and this story does have elements of a 'courtly love' tale of the kind that troubadours like Rémy sing about. However, it also leavens the very certain and very male perspective of books centred on a monastery. Readers will also be glad to see Brother Jerome, one of the nastiest characters in the books, have some kind of come-uppance. I enjoyed this story and felt in the penultimate novel of the main Cadfael sequence, Peters was back to form.
Friday, 31 October 2014
The Books I Read in October
Fiction
'No Peace for the Wicked' by Adrian Magson
I actually bought this book direct from the author back in the 2000s when he visited a writers' group I was a member of then. For some reason I had thought it was about Northern Ireland. It came out under the Creme-de-la-Crime label which aimed to bring on new authors. Some of them seem to have done very well subsequently. This book is very workmanlike. It features a young female journalist, Riley Gavin, investigating the murders of old gangsters. She enlists the help of an aged ex-military police officer turned private detective. Their investigations primarily take place among the expatriate British community in Spain. The unravelling of the conspiracy is competently handled. However, there were only a few moments when I felt that the heroine or her assistant were in real jeopardy. The criminal characters were believable and some had a genuine sinister nature about them. The crimes being committed seemed feasible if a little mundane. Given the action primarily taking place in Spain, only at times did I get a real feel for the context in which they were writing. I know authors are encouraged to keep their writing lean and not over-describe but unfortunately at times this left me feeling that the settings were sterile. Perhaps such polish comes with experience and I should see what Magson is producing now that I imagine he has had much more practice.
'The Summer of the Danes' by Ellis Peters
I am steadily working my way through the Brother Cadfael mysteries written by Ellis Peters. This is the 18th in the series and I can certainly say it is the poorest. As with a number of the ones before it, it takes Cadfael away from his monastery at Shrewsbury. He accompanies a young monk on missions to two bishops in North Wales. Peters is very good in drawing out the differences between England which had been conquered by the Normans some eighty years before the action is set and Wales which had largely remained independent retaining its own language. Cadfael, a Welshman by birth acts as a translator and also to provide information about the differences between Wales and England, such as the lack of convents - religious women are just lone hermits and the late introduction of clerical celibacy. There is a murder as you would expect. However, in contrast to the other books this is largely ignored and the next phase of the book is when it seriously falls down. There is no investigation of the murder and it is only resolved at the end by a deathbed confession as if it is an after thought.
Most of the story is about a stand off between Prince Owen, the ruler of North Wales and his younger brother Cadwaladr who has hired Danish mercenaries from their colony of Dublin to help him seize back lands taken from him by Owen as a result of him being involved in a murder. Cadfael plays a very minimal role, at most as an observer of events he has not control over. Instead there is a very sterile, formal diplomacy between the two sides that seems very mechanical and in fact unrealistic. I imagine Peters was drawing on historical records of the events, but it does mean Owen and the other leaders come across almost of caricatures, doing absolutely everything very precisely to mesh into the outcome. Witnessing such a process is not engaging. As in many of Peters's books there is a romantic element, but with Cadfael on the sidelines, it is painfully slow in coming and again like much of the book resolved in a very pat way without really any genuine emotion. Maybe Peters was running out of steam by this stage.
The length of the book, more than the usual was unnecessary and simply added to the laboured feel. It would have been better to keep Cadfael on the murder case and have the diplomatic turns of events simply reported from a far rather than us witnessing these in every detail and not through Cadfael's eyes. I have two more of the standard sequence to complete and then a prequel. I hope they get back to the form of the earlier books rather than replicating the flaws of this one.
Non-Fiction
'The Hunger Marchers in Britain 1920-1940' by Peter Kingsford
While the so-called 'Jarrow Crusade' of 1936 is the best known of the marches of unemployed workers in the inter-war period, Kingsford shows that it needs to be seen in the context of a much broader movement of such protests that occurred from 1920 until the start of the Second World War. There were five national marches and many more regional or local marches. They came under the umbrella of the National Unemployed Workers Movement (NUWM) and included women as well as men.
The book is largely a record covering the people who marched, what they were campaigning for and the very varied reactions they received along the numerous routes. For any given march it was typical for people to come from a wide range of towns and congregate on London or an important regional city. Their very progress alerted people to the issues facing the unemployed. Unemployment reached historically high peaks in the period but in Britain fell far heavier on particular regions than others.
As the marchers passed through many towns, the book highlights how welfare provision was very much a local concern at the time, almost just an evolution from Victorian approaches. There was as a consequence a wide variety in its application. Throughout the governments, apart for very short periods, were Conservative or dominated by the Conservatives. The Labour Party, forming its first governments in 1924 and 1929-31 was generally unsympathetic to the marchers, not wanting to be seen to be contaminated by their radical approach and the strong Communist influence in the NUWM. The TUC adopted a similar approach. Local labour groups and trade unions, however, took a very different attitude. The government tried to marginalise the marchers portraying them as trying to alter global economic tides that even they had no control over and emphasising to local authorities that the marchers should be treated simply as vagrants. Increasingly the police turned to violence, notably during the 1932 national march when it reached London.
Through the period both the Labour Party and the Middle Classes grew in sympathy for the marchers and Kingsford though focusing largely simply on what happened indicates this steady shift. The marchers won a great deal of respect through their discipline on the road and the physical effort of coming hundreds of miles from as far away as northern Scotland, the South-West and Wales to London often during the winter.
The marches did not lead to an overall change in welfare policy let alone a move to job creation. However, they did roll back the constant attempts to scrimp on benefit payments and to make them harder to win. These aspects are the ones which in the age of the bedroom tax seem the most current. Yet, in a largely apolitical society there seems to be no attempt to contest such policies. Instead, it seems now that protestors agree with the 1920s Conservatives and see the situation as only capable of being addressed at a global scale even if amelioration is provided nationally or even still locally, i.e. dependent on the attitude of local job centre staff.
This is not an exciting history book, but it is an interesting one with contemporary parallels. It is important in alerting people to events that had a national significance eighty to ninety years ago, but these days are simply forgotten with the Jarrow Crusade, a far less political and more constrained march, being seen as the sole representation of a much broader campaign.
'No Peace for the Wicked' by Adrian Magson
I actually bought this book direct from the author back in the 2000s when he visited a writers' group I was a member of then. For some reason I had thought it was about Northern Ireland. It came out under the Creme-de-la-Crime label which aimed to bring on new authors. Some of them seem to have done very well subsequently. This book is very workmanlike. It features a young female journalist, Riley Gavin, investigating the murders of old gangsters. She enlists the help of an aged ex-military police officer turned private detective. Their investigations primarily take place among the expatriate British community in Spain. The unravelling of the conspiracy is competently handled. However, there were only a few moments when I felt that the heroine or her assistant were in real jeopardy. The criminal characters were believable and some had a genuine sinister nature about them. The crimes being committed seemed feasible if a little mundane. Given the action primarily taking place in Spain, only at times did I get a real feel for the context in which they were writing. I know authors are encouraged to keep their writing lean and not over-describe but unfortunately at times this left me feeling that the settings were sterile. Perhaps such polish comes with experience and I should see what Magson is producing now that I imagine he has had much more practice.
'The Summer of the Danes' by Ellis Peters
I am steadily working my way through the Brother Cadfael mysteries written by Ellis Peters. This is the 18th in the series and I can certainly say it is the poorest. As with a number of the ones before it, it takes Cadfael away from his monastery at Shrewsbury. He accompanies a young monk on missions to two bishops in North Wales. Peters is very good in drawing out the differences between England which had been conquered by the Normans some eighty years before the action is set and Wales which had largely remained independent retaining its own language. Cadfael, a Welshman by birth acts as a translator and also to provide information about the differences between Wales and England, such as the lack of convents - religious women are just lone hermits and the late introduction of clerical celibacy. There is a murder as you would expect. However, in contrast to the other books this is largely ignored and the next phase of the book is when it seriously falls down. There is no investigation of the murder and it is only resolved at the end by a deathbed confession as if it is an after thought.
Most of the story is about a stand off between Prince Owen, the ruler of North Wales and his younger brother Cadwaladr who has hired Danish mercenaries from their colony of Dublin to help him seize back lands taken from him by Owen as a result of him being involved in a murder. Cadfael plays a very minimal role, at most as an observer of events he has not control over. Instead there is a very sterile, formal diplomacy between the two sides that seems very mechanical and in fact unrealistic. I imagine Peters was drawing on historical records of the events, but it does mean Owen and the other leaders come across almost of caricatures, doing absolutely everything very precisely to mesh into the outcome. Witnessing such a process is not engaging. As in many of Peters's books there is a romantic element, but with Cadfael on the sidelines, it is painfully slow in coming and again like much of the book resolved in a very pat way without really any genuine emotion. Maybe Peters was running out of steam by this stage.
The length of the book, more than the usual was unnecessary and simply added to the laboured feel. It would have been better to keep Cadfael on the murder case and have the diplomatic turns of events simply reported from a far rather than us witnessing these in every detail and not through Cadfael's eyes. I have two more of the standard sequence to complete and then a prequel. I hope they get back to the form of the earlier books rather than replicating the flaws of this one.
Non-Fiction
'The Hunger Marchers in Britain 1920-1940' by Peter Kingsford
While the so-called 'Jarrow Crusade' of 1936 is the best known of the marches of unemployed workers in the inter-war period, Kingsford shows that it needs to be seen in the context of a much broader movement of such protests that occurred from 1920 until the start of the Second World War. There were five national marches and many more regional or local marches. They came under the umbrella of the National Unemployed Workers Movement (NUWM) and included women as well as men.
The book is largely a record covering the people who marched, what they were campaigning for and the very varied reactions they received along the numerous routes. For any given march it was typical for people to come from a wide range of towns and congregate on London or an important regional city. Their very progress alerted people to the issues facing the unemployed. Unemployment reached historically high peaks in the period but in Britain fell far heavier on particular regions than others.
As the marchers passed through many towns, the book highlights how welfare provision was very much a local concern at the time, almost just an evolution from Victorian approaches. There was as a consequence a wide variety in its application. Throughout the governments, apart for very short periods, were Conservative or dominated by the Conservatives. The Labour Party, forming its first governments in 1924 and 1929-31 was generally unsympathetic to the marchers, not wanting to be seen to be contaminated by their radical approach and the strong Communist influence in the NUWM. The TUC adopted a similar approach. Local labour groups and trade unions, however, took a very different attitude. The government tried to marginalise the marchers portraying them as trying to alter global economic tides that even they had no control over and emphasising to local authorities that the marchers should be treated simply as vagrants. Increasingly the police turned to violence, notably during the 1932 national march when it reached London.
Through the period both the Labour Party and the Middle Classes grew in sympathy for the marchers and Kingsford though focusing largely simply on what happened indicates this steady shift. The marchers won a great deal of respect through their discipline on the road and the physical effort of coming hundreds of miles from as far away as northern Scotland, the South-West and Wales to London often during the winter.
The marches did not lead to an overall change in welfare policy let alone a move to job creation. However, they did roll back the constant attempts to scrimp on benefit payments and to make them harder to win. These aspects are the ones which in the age of the bedroom tax seem the most current. Yet, in a largely apolitical society there seems to be no attempt to contest such policies. Instead, it seems now that protestors agree with the 1920s Conservatives and see the situation as only capable of being addressed at a global scale even if amelioration is provided nationally or even still locally, i.e. dependent on the attitude of local job centre staff.
This is not an exciting history book, but it is an interesting one with contemporary parallels. It is important in alerting people to events that had a national significance eighty to ninety years ago, but these days are simply forgotten with the Jarrow Crusade, a far less political and more constrained march, being seen as the sole representation of a much broader campaign.
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