The Books I Read In February

Fiction

'Murder Underground' by Mavis Doriel Hay

Doriel Hay mainly wrote on rural handicrafts but she did produce three crime novels, I have two of them. This one was published in 1934 and is very much set in the Belsize Park district of North London and neighbouring areas, in particular Hampstead Heath. While the characters in 'Hickory Dickory Dock' (1955) are younger, and it is set post-war (though the dramatization for 'Poirot' (broadcast 1995) took it back to the 1930s) has the same feel with extensive discussions between residents of a single hostel/hotel. This novel mainly features the residents of the Frampton private residential hotel. 

An elderly resident of the hotel, Miss. Euphemia Pongleton is found strangled with the leash of her dog on the steps going down to the platforms at Belsize Park underground station. Her nephew, Basil and his cousin, Beryl have been fluctuating heirs to Aunt 'Phemia but the initial suspect is a worker at the underground station, Bob, who is 'stepping out' with a maid at the hotel and often walks Miss. Pongleton's dog. Another major character, Basil's love interest is called Betty throughout, rather than her full name, so it was clear Doriel Hay was thumbing her nose at the precept for authors against having more than one character with a name starting with the same letter. It is very easy at times to mix up Betty and Beryl as they are very similar in nature.

I think some readers, perhaps me included, will feel rather disgruntled by the approach adopted in this novel. It is certainly different to that typical of most detective novels. Especially in the early phases of the novel, there is simply discussion between various sets of characters and long stretches of dialogue. In fact the police detective, while spoken about is not seen by the reader until very late on in the book.

 Three other characters effectively advance the investigation. They are a resident, Mr. Blend with his convenient archive of newspaper cuttings of various peculiar crimes, prompts Mrs. Daymer, another resident who is bohemian in style and a crime novelist, and Gerry Plasher - Beryl's fiancé - to travel to Coventry to chase up on a similar old crime. This particularly is seen by the police to make Plasher suspicious. Contrary to the advances the trio make, Basil, who was actually in the station where the body was found finds it difficult to keep his story straight, so pulls in numerous others to try to avert suspicion from him. However, trying to conceal a pearl necklace of his aunt's he had pawned just makes it more complex.

Doriel Hay does write a  largely credible crime story though one largely based on dialogue. Aside from Basil, a very Bertie Wooster character, she manages pretty much to avoid stereotypes though slips at time into it as with Mrs. Daymer's clothes and with the hotel's maid, Nellie. It can be frustrating when things twist around so much but I suppose it is a sound portrayal of how the people around the edges of a murder behave and they are often the people left out of crime novels, something the author clearly wanted to redress here.

'Fevre Dream' by George R.R. Martin

Having read 'The Armageddon Rag' (1983) https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/07/the-books-i-read-in-july.html and 'Tuf Voyaging' (1986) https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/08/the-books-i-read-in-august.html?m=0 back in 2024, I got into conversation with the novelist and prolific book reviewer Dr. Laura Tisdall: https://drlauratisdall.wordpress.com/ While she enjoyed 'Tuf Voyaging' she did suggest I turn to this other non-Game of Thrones novel by Martin. While the ending is far too protracted, throughout this novel is well written. Louisiana vampires might now be commonplace but what Martin did with this one, published in 1982, was instead come from the focus of a steamship captain, Abner Marsh, working the upper tributaries of the Mississippi in the late 1850s. The Fevre is an actual river running from Wisconsin to Illinois and feeding into the wider Mississippi network. Even by the end of the novel in 1870, the river has been renamed the River Galena after the town it passes through just before joining the Mississippi.

Having lost four steamships to the previous year's ice flows, Marsh is approached by Joshua York who we steadily find out is a European vampire who relocated to the USA. He pays for Marsh to commission the largest, most opulent, and importantly, fastest, side-wheeled paddle steamer, the eponynmous 'Fevre Dream'. This he does and the two go into business, steadily working southwards until operating on the Lower Mississippi including into New Orleans. York is hunting other vampires operating in the regions they pass through in an attempt to convert them from killing humans to using his concoction instead, a kind of mid-Victorian version of TrueBlood. However, York's mission is not straight forward and once he encounters the old, powerful, cruel 'bloodmaster' Damon Julian and his vicious entourage things deteriorate. Marsh stays loyal and brings the novel, finally to a conclusion.

The whole concept even in the realm of vampire stories, is very refreshing, especially if we see how long ago the novel was written. However, what lifts it higher is Martin's attention to detail. Without having a lecture, along the way you learn so much about the riverboats - they ran on wood (and occasionally lard) in the 1850s, the people who operated them, the landscape and various locations up and down the rivers. The descriptions are really rich and I am sure even for US readers were really engaging. There are very good points of tension and indeed sometimes a sense of hopelessness in the face of power, but as some of the reviews have noted, that is actually what readers once expected from vampire stories rather than the approaches of the 21st Century. I wish Martin had ended the novel more sharply. There was no need to drag it on into the post-American Civil War period, even if he was insistent on the drawn-out climax. If you have the patience then this is a good read, especially in the first five-sixths of the novel.

'Munich Wolf' by Rory Clements

As someone who has written four detective novels set in Munich in the early 1920s I was fascinated to read this one set in that city but in 1935 when the Nazi regime had been established firmly in Germany. A young British woman, Rosie Palmer, one of many rich young Britons, is murdered while in Munich for the summer, learning German, partying and in many cases thoroughly engaging with the Nazi regime. Unity Mitford, genuinely a good friend of Hitler features heavily in the novel, alongside many other people who were part of the regime in and around Munich and Nuremberg, at the time. 

Inspector Sebastian Wolf is assigned to investigate the case. He benefits from the fact that his uncle is a very wealthy local politician. There is demand for a speedy resolution so as not to upset the negotiations around the Anglo-German Naval Treaty. Wolf is quickly handed a convenient suspect in the form of a Jew, Karl Friedlander who had had a relationship with Rosie in Britain that they continued in Germany, much to the disgust of Rosie's family and the racist Britons around them. Friedlander is executed but of course, he was never the murderer and the marks on Rosie's body, despite the disappearance of the photographs, were actually runic rather than Hebrew. To stop that coming to light, a homosexual linguistic's professor, a friend of Wolf, Caius Klammer is also murdered.

Given the context, Wolf faces a lot of obstacles and indeed physical attacks on him as he tries to resolve the case. On paper this sounds like a decent plot. Having read all of the Bernie Gunther (1989-2019) series of books by Philip Kerr which often involve investigations in Nazi Germany, I expected it to be of a similar quality. There are some aspects which are handled well. Clements portrays different parts of Munich effectively. He is also decent in the characterisations of the Britons and some of the Germans. Wolf's relationship with his girlfriend Hexie, his mother and his son, are done pretty well. However, other bits are two-dimensional. 

Wolf is a Murder Commission inspector investigating a high profile murder, but lacks a sergeant until one is transferred from the Political Police division (at the time run by Heinrich Himmler and not yet part of the Prussian Gestapo which was run by Hermann Göring). He seems to have no other detectives that he can command. In addition, he lacks senior officers, there are no superintendents, he simply reports to the deputy president of the Bavarian police. Yes, this man would be involved, but all the layers between him an Wolf, indeed a wider detective force, seems entirely absent.

There is a heavy-handedness. Yes, under the Nazi regime Jews and homosexuals would be blamed when guiltless, but the casual murders on the streets which are so prevalent in this novel, had come to an end with the Night of the Long Knives in 1934. It is improbable at this stage that a police inspector would be sent to the Dachau concentration camp by a lower ranking officer for not showing sufficient respect for Hitler. Wolf seems, despite his rank and standing, appears to have no authority of his own and is simply a catspaw for his uncle. The conversion of his assigned sergeant, Hans Winter, as a result of Wolf blackmailing seems far too abrupt. He starts as almost a comic nasty Nazi and then in an instant is a supportive collaborator with Wolf. Clements could have had similar points of tension made more subtly, more effectively, but really takes a sledgehammer to these aspects which quickly riles on the reader.

Overall, this story could have worked well. Clements shows he can write well, but here only when on the topics which particularly interest him. As he outlines in an essay at the end the whole milieu of rich Britons in Munich at this time, was the thing he was really interested in and as a result, the other aspects, necessary for an actual crime novel are just like theatre sets, not more substantial. At times, they are painful. There was no need to reference at the beginning, a zither player in the cafe or the men in Lederhosen. It seems Clements does not feel he can draw the reader in unless he piles on the Germanic tropes, scraped from 'The Third Man' (1949), 'Cabaret' (1972) and 'The Lady Vanishes' (1979 version). I still have not forgiven Kerr for featuring the Drittemann movie company in 'A German Requiem' (1991). The reader, who will often know and spot these conceits, feels that the illusion is broken. Anyway, I will certainly not be looking out for any more of the promised Sebastian Wolf novels.

'The Scent of the Night' by Andrea Camilleri

This is probably the most straight forward of the Montalbano mysteries. It has a lot of the usual characteristics such as the intermittent relationship with his long-distance girlfriend, the inspector eating high cuisine fish or shellfish dishes every day, deserted houses in the backwaters of Sicily and the - in theory - comic police phone operator. However, this is a neat and tidy story around the disappearance of Emanuele Gargano who was running a Ponzi scheme fraud. Naturally there are a lot of people who have lost money to the scheme would profess to want to kill the man. His middle-aged, besotted secretary waits for his return but then it transpires that Gargano's assistant has also disappeared after trying to lay a false trail buying tickets to various European cities. An unreliable eyewitness who hallucinates, not only leads Montalbano to where one of the bodies has ended up, but ultimately allows him to comprehend where that of Gargano actually is. This, the sixth novel in the series, benefits from being 'dialled down' a little. I have never found these books 'comic' as some describe them and indeed attempts at levity have been laboured and distracting. This one just gets on a does the business in a satisfying way while still encompassing the traits which mark out Montalbano stories.

'The Courts of Chaos' by Roger Zelanzy

This is the concluding book in the Princes of Amber pentalogy. Having discovered that his father, Oberon, has been masquerading as his old comrade, Ganelon, Corwin now has to go on a long journey to carry the Jewel of Judgment [sic] to the final climatic battle outside the Courts of Chaos. His brother Brand's attempt to erase the Pattern of this universe to install one of his own leads to a vast storm sweeping across all the different realms Corwin can pass through. Corwin's journey is I imagine intentionally like those of characters in 'The Faerie Queen' and 'Gawain and the Green Knight'. In addition to attempts by Brand to kill him or at least take the Jewel, there are others along the way who seek to tempt, seduce, harm or kill Corwin. He does seem rather gullible, perhaps because he is weary and concerned about being swept up by the unrelenting storm.

There is the battle outside the Courts of Chaos which leads to victory for the good (or at least amoral as opposed to immoral) side. Corwin is reunited with the son he was unaware he had, Merlin and a replacement king is found for Oberon who had already given his life in trying to prevent the storm destroying this universe. Probably not a spoiler to say that the new king is not Corwin but one of his siblings. There is some pontificating from Corwin at the end about what it all means, but it does not go on too long. There is some of the lengthy dialogue between the siblings - though fortunately less than in the previous novel - to continue to unknot the overly-complex plot Zelanzy had created and you do feel that like George R.R. Martin with his A Song of Ice and Fire, that he made it so knotty that he lost control of it. Fortunately the Amber novels come in at around 150 pages long, rather than 500-800 pages.

While at times the books in this series have been a bit irritating, I recognise that Zelanzy was trying to do something a bit different to what had been in fantasy up to then. The mixing of our world and a whole host of realms was in line with developments of the 1970s but he handles it differently to Moorcock. His usual of modern language and a kind of easy-going attitude that we perhaps associate with mid-1970s USA rather than the kind of quasi-medieval or barbarian tone adopted by so many fantasy novels before. I also have to remind myself that some 50 years on and with a lot of fantasy fiction published since then, some things that now appear hackneyed were fresher back then. The leprechauns trying to tempt Corwin to stay beneath the ground drinking was old hat even back then.

Zelanzy's focus on an extensive family rather than nations, the use of things like the Pattern, a challenging maze that both balances reality but can also present personal benefits or challenges and the Trumps (!) to contact family members and teleport to them, remain quite distinctive. I imagine at the time these aspects must have seemed refreshing even if now they may have lost - for a reader today - some of their spark.

Non-Fiction

'The Nine Lives of Otto Katz' by Jonathan Miles

This is about the Czechoslovak secret agent for the USSR, Otto Katz (1895-1952 executed). He was a successful propagandist and spy in the 1930s-50s. He adopted a string of identities and as Miles shows he was able to adapt his demeanour effectively to be convincing in each. He was involved in theatre and literature right throughout, moving as his Soviet masters required, from Prague to Berlin, Paris, London, civil-war Spain, New York and Hollywood. He was popular among leading celebrities of the movie industry. Katz was strongly anti-Nazi having witnessed the rise of Hitler at first hand in Berlin. He was able to enlist liberals into fund raising and propaganda events such as the 'trial' in London testing what had been put out by the Nazis around the Reichstag Fire. 

As Katz remained loyal to Stalin's regime, taking part of purging the non-Stalinists from the Republican side in Spain and not questioning Stalin's behaviour even when the USSR was in alliance with Nazi Germany 1939-41, Miles feels that any liberal Katz influenced must have either been pro-Soviet or deluded. He is dismissive of any other motive for opposing the Nazis. The author really buys into the McCarthyite attitude that there was really no way to oppose Nazism without being a Communist unless you were hard right-wing. This is despite the fact that he highlights people in Katz's various circles who became suspicious of him and either distanced themselves or cut him off completely. It seems to Miles that one touch is sufficient to contaminate someone entirely. Katz's loyalty did not pay off and he was one of the last to be executed in a purge by Stalin.

The book is academically robust with lots of references to sound sources. While there is lots of interesting detail, almost all of which is absent from Katz's Wikipedia entry, Miles seems obliged to make his story overly dramatic and at times it is not clear if he was meaning to write a thriller rather than a historical analysis. Especially at the beginning of the book there is a lot of jumping around in time and topic when in fact given the complexity of the story and the various aliases there needs to be real clarity. While I learnt some things from this book, Miles's melodramatic approach but above all his inability to see that not all (in fact most) anti-Nazis were not Communist and his repeated insistence on this point makes this an irritating book to read.

'Establishment and Meritocracy' by Peter Hennessy

This was the last, the newest (2014) and the shortest of Hennessy's books that I possessed. It is only 68 pages long. However, given what I have said before about despite his years in universities, Hennessy has not really shaken off the journalistic approach, this format works well for him. As usual he blends in personal memories and outlooks with quotes and input from notable people across the period. He looks at how the British Establishment is defined and how while the old structures like the elite public schools, the military, House of Lords, judiciary, etc. remain, there are new facets to the Establishment especially in terms of those influential or powerful in media and in finance. He looks at how meritocracy rose as a concept, in particular in terms of his beloved civil service, decades before the publication of  'The Rise of the Meritocracy' (1958) by Michael Dunlop Young put it into common parlance.

Reading the book more than a decade after its publication we can see in which facets Hennessy was very prescient. As he notes throughout, both the principles are about establishing hierarchy whether that is simply through birth or through recognition of a greater competency in certain skills. It is still a hierarchy and he cautions about the fate of those deemed to lack 'merit'. He warns of the possibility of a vicious populist backlash which would baulk against meritocracy instead seeking a hierarchy built on other characteristics. He notes wealth would be one of these, but perhaps did not spot that race would be thrust back into such thinking too. He does also pick up on how the 'ladders' that people of his generation were able to climb from relatively humble backgrounds, were liable to be removed or closed off. These things have all come to pass both quietly and in terms of vicious insistence, accompanied by violence, of a racial/wealth hierarchy by the populists and their supporters, even when it is actually detrimental to those supporters themselves. 

Hennessy here was not setting out to be a prophet but given his love of analysing how British society and politics function, he actually highlighted trends that would manifest in the following years in the way that he does tentatively caution about.

The Books I Read In August

Fiction
'The Poison Chocolates Case' by Anthony Berkeley [Anthony Berkely Cox]
Like his 'Murder in the Basement' (1932) which I read back in March: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-books-i-read-in-march.html this one from 1929, in many ways fits the writing of the 'golden age' of British detective novels, but also does well in subverting the genre. This one also features author Roger Sheringham and to a lesser extent Chief Inspector Moresby. In real life Cox established a club of detective authors and provides a fictional version of such a club in this novel. The members look into a 'cold case' in which Graham Bendix was given a box of poisoned liqueurs that had been received by an acquaintance of his, the disreputable Sir Eustace Pennefather, who had in turn been sent them at their gentlemen's club. Taking them home, Graham's wife, Joan eats many more of them and dies. In turn the six members of the club provide what sounds like a feasible explanation for the crime, who the intended victim actually was and the motives behind it. While they all bring in additional information, each of the explanations are effectively dismissed by other members of the club. In addition, in 1979 Christinna Brand and then in 2016 the introducer of this edition, Martin Edwards, provided their own chapters with two further explanations.


This novel might frustrate many readers because we never actually find out the 'truth'. In large part this was Cox's intention and it was pointing out to the fans of crime fiction of the era how easily they could be directed, even manipulated, into accepting an explanation which in fact might be no more feasible than any other. In that way it works as a kind of meta-fiction and would be useful for those who are interested in the 'mechanics' of classic crime fiction. The various characters are well drawn and there is a good insight into English middle/upper class society of the time. Cox avoids being smug in showing 'behind the scenes' and does really leave it to the reader, and whilst giving his message does not patronise us with his cleverness.


Some might find the novel repetitive and maybe it should be approached as a well-crafted exercise more than a standard detective story. However, apparently it was enjoyed by Agatha Christie. She had produced the short story 'The Clue of the Chocolate Box' for The Sketch in May 1923; it later appeared in 'Poirot's Early Cases' (1974), but while Cox uses a similar approach and mix-up, he does not seem to be critiquing Christie's story, unless one sees him having a go at detective fiction of the time in general.



'Tuf Voyaging' by George R.R. Martin
This is a collection of 8 short stories published mainly published in Analog magazine (one in Andromeda), 1976-85. They are science fiction and feature an obese, vegetarian, cat loving man called Haviland Tuf. He acquires a derelict 'seed ship', a 30Km long spaceship built to inflict biological warfare on enemies. The opening story is like the movie 'Alien' (1979) raised to a higher power as a group of looters are transported to the ship, 'The Ark' and face a range of horrendous diseases and creatures unleashed by the vessel in its own defence. While the stories were written out of sequence, the order in which they are organised here, works well and if you did not know otherwise you would imagine this had been created as a 'fix-up' book, i.e. a sequence of stories providing an overall novel, from the outset.


Tuf travels around between planets colonised by humans using the power of his ship's facilities to push the different colonies in directions that he prefers. One plagued by over-population needs repeated visits. Others are addicted to arena fights between ferocious animals, one is facing the rapid evolution of super-predators and a further one is suffering from a religious zealot trying to turn the clock back in terms of technology. Tuf is not a likeable character. He is snide in his behaviour and very picky in his language, constantly (sometimes very annoyingly) showing up the lack of logic in people's speech. He is self-righteous, though sometimes you would agree with the approaches he takes. While the smugness of the main character can jar, overall, the book even though it was put together, comes over as well constructed. There are rich portrayals of different colonies, their leaders and their challenges which do seem feasible. The opening story is gory, but it does settle down in the following seven.



'Prester John' by John Buchan
As 'John Burnet of Barns' (1898) which I read last month: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/07/the-books-i-read-in-july.html clearly showed Buchan's engagement with the south Scottish countryside which would feature in later novels, this one published in 1910, brings out his personal connection and interest in South Africa. It features another young Scot, this time David Crawfurd, who is offered employment at a trading post in northern South Africa, following the 2nd Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). While there he re-encounters a black African church minister, John Laputa, he had run into back in Scotland in his youth and suspected, despite his preaching at kirks, that he was into black magic. It soon becomes apparent that Laputa is seeking to bring together various tribes and rise up against British rule, both drawing on the legend of 'Prester John' the mythical 'lost' king in central Africa and authority granted by wearing The Great Snake, a priceless ruby necklace that supposedly belonged to Prester John.


Clearly the book is pro-colonial and as you might expect the characters have a paternalistic, racialist approach not simply to the Africans but also the Portuguese, who at the time ruled neighbouring Mozambique. However, so that Crawfurd does face a real challenge, the rebels are not shown as fools and Crawfurd has a very challenging time trying to defeat Laputa and aid the defeat of the uprising. As is typical for Buchan there is a lot of rushing around the countryside. His portrayal of the landscape and its climate is always a strength of his writing. In addition, in part because of misreading the introductory essay, I had assumed Crawfurd would not survive the novel and the jeopardy, especially the exhaustion and scrambling across the rocky landscape seemed genuine. While very much of its time, you can see why Buchan's books have well outlasted the other 'empire adventures' written at the time.




Non-Fiction
'Fontana British Battlefields: The North' by Philip Warner
This is a 1970s book that appears to have been written in conjunction with the Ordnance Survey, certainly it gives details of which of their maps relate to the battlefield sites and how to reach them. This was the second book in a series covering different regions of Britain. By 'the North' it means England from Nottingham to the Scottish border. It gives crisp summaries of battles from Stamford Bridge in 1066 to Preston in 1648. It is adept at contextualising these in the broader contexts such as the Wars of the Roses and the War of Three Kingdoms and would be useful if visiting these areas. Whether the directions would remain accurate some 50 years on, I do not know. However, as part of the popular local history movement of that era it provides a useful and engaging brisk survey of the various battlefields ably putting them into both the local and wider contexts. I bought this book second hand some 40 years ago and while I see you can buy them second hand online and indeed there was a re-release in the 2010s, I have never myself stumbled across another since.


'Encyclopedia of the Third Reich' by Louis L. Snyder
Though I read it cover-to-cover, as the name indicates, this is an alphabetised reference book on an array of individuals, organisations and other aspects of the Nazi Regime. In fact, it goes back long before 1933 to look at the racialist and anti-Semitic writing and philosophies and the people that produced them, which fed into Nazi ideology. The edition of the book I had was published in 1998 but it is quickly apparent it was not revised from its original 1976 edition, so continues to show a lot of people still alive who were dead by the date of this edition's publication. There are consequently some gaps which would surprise the modern reader such as the fate of Martin Bormann and Josef Mengele. There is nothing more than speculation on the perpetrator of the Bürgerbräukeller assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler in November 1939, whereas we know it was carried out by Georg Elser, a woodworker and clock maker, who was arrested trying to escape across the Swiss border; imprisoned and later executed in April 1945.


Being an American publication, there tend to be lengthy quotations from American journalists and commentators of the time, that are longer than the topic really warrants, for example, on the signing of the armistice between France and Germany at Compiègne in June 1940. Another oddity is that it goes into some detail on particular aircraft or tanks, but does not do this generally. It is most useful if you want to find out about the history and the role of particular individuals in the regime, especially those of the second and third rank and how they interrelated to more senior members and each other. It is also useful for connecting between acronyms and German terms for things such as various organisations and their English translations.


What was most alarming was just how much of the Nazi and nationalist/racialist language which is quoted in this book sounds as if it comes straight from so many speeches and social media of today. It is really chilling when the same terms, the same blaming and excuses are right there.

The Books I Read In July

 Fiction

'The Armageddon Rag' by George R.R. Martin

This book published in 1983 is probably the best I have read by Martin. It has some supernatural elements, but these are handled subtly and are in the background for much of the novel, to the extent that I would classify it as magic realism. The story is about novelist and former music journalist Sandy Blair (a man) who is asked by a magazine editor who he previously worked for, to dig into the murder of music promoter, Jamie Lynch. This soon leads Sandy to reconnect with old friends from the hippie era, across the USA and to track down the former members of rock band The Nazgûl which broke up following the assassination of their lead singer, Patrick Henry 'Hobbit' Hobbins during an open-air concert at West Mesa in 1971. One of the most fantastical elements is that any band would be permitted to use that name, the name of the Ringwraiths in 'The Lord of the Rings' (1954-55) given how assiduous Tolkien's estate is in taking legal action against anyone making use of his legacy, no matter in how minor a way. 'The Armageddon Rag' is a 21-minute long track filling the whole B side of their last album. 

Martin was born in 1948 so was 21 in 1969 at the peak of the hippie movement. In many ways this is a contemplation of that movement. While not explicitly set in the Reagan era, it does reference to business and societal culture of that time as a means of reflecting what 'went wrong' with the hippie movement - various characters express a range of views on this. Steadily Edan Morse begins to reassemble the band and introduces a lookalike to replace their dead lead singer. Morse may have been involved in radical direct action in the 1960s and it increasingly appears he is using supernatural means to get the band back together and to be a success with old and new fans alike, culminating in a performance at the West Mesa venue.

The book is in part a murder mystery, but is it also a paean to hippie culture. The discussion of the fictional band also reminded me of 'Espedair Street' (1987) which I read in April: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/04/the-books-i-read-in-april.html While acclaimed at the time, it did not attract a wide readership and has clearly been re-released on the back of the dramatisation of Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire (1996-2011) series and its prequels. However, I feel the drawing of the range of characters, the representation of the performances, the mystery and the very subtle but credible supernatural perspective is a good mix, perhaps could be seen these days alongside Stephen Leather's Jack Nightingale series. Anyway, it was an engaging read that I enjoyed more than I had anticipated.

'John Burnet of Barns' by John Buchan

This was the first novel that Buchan published, at the age of 23. It is a melodrama set in late 17th Century south-west Scotland and is particularly strong in making use of the geography of that region. You could trace the protagonist, Laird John Burnet, across many of the same landscape features today. Initially this is the story of a young scholarly man's life and his love for a neighbour, Majory Veitch. However, his path crosses with his bullish cousin, Gilbert Burnet. 

Returning to Scotland from the Netherlands, John finds Gilbert has laid false charges against him of being a Covenanter, during the Killing Time (1679-88) when government forces under Charles II and then James II/VII persecuted and executed the Covenanters who favoured presbyterianism over the enforcement of an episcopal church, i.e. one with bishops. There are various adventures with John trying to escape capture by moving around the uplands of the Borders while trying to keep in touch with Marjory. There are lots of dramatic scenes and John is only really saved by the overthrow of King James and his replacement with the Dutch King William III. 

The language is aimed to sound very 17th Century anyway even for being written in the 1890s. The greatest challenge comes from Nicol Plenderleith, a very energetic local who offers himself as man servant to John and accompanies on his adventures. His speech is full of Scots terms and is rendered almost phonetically. Having moved to North-East Scotland (rather than South-West) helped me comprehend what he was saying a little better. Overall, this is a romp very much of its time, but has a richness due to strong portrayals of characters and a real connection to the landscape in which it is set.

'Greeks Bearing Gifts' by Philip Kerr

This was the 13th and penultimate book in Kerr's Bernie Gunther series which was published in 2018 soon after his death. It breaks from many of the others as it does not run in two time periods. Instead, following on from 'Prussian Blue' (2017): https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/06/the-books-i-read-in-june.html it is now 1957 and Gunther is living in Munich and working as a mortuary attendant when he is blackmailed into helping foil a Stasi plan to undermine a new political party in West Germany. This then leads to him being recruited as a loss adjuster for an insurance company and in turn being sent to Greece to investigate the suspicious sinking of a private yacht on an archaeological voyage. Soon, when one of the men involved is murdered, Gunther is compelled by the Greek police to assist and he uncovers a plot to secure gold taken from Jews in Thessaloniki during the war and believed to be aboard a sunken ship offshore. There are a range of suspects each trying to shift the blame on to others and portrayal their role in Germany's occupation of Greece as a minor one.

This novel comes over effectively as a 1950s hard-boiled novel, building well on what Gunther has seen and done. Naturally it asks questions about individuals' complicity in wartime atrocities and the reinvention of West Germany and its people after the war. The plot is suitably twisty and gives a feel of Greece at the time. Unlike with previous novels because we do not see Gunther in the "now" the jeopardy is more genuine than when we know he must have escaped from whatever danger is shown as occurring in the past. His connection to an attractive young female Greek lawyer and her feelings towards him jar. Given his age he is old enough to be her father, if not grandfather. He could have been partnered with a contemporary, but in these latter books Kerr seems to have felt compelled to repeatedly show Gunther as alluring to younger women, when ironically women of his own age, including more than one wife, have left him. Overall, this is a solid crime thriller with a good feel for time and place.

'City of Lost Souls' by Cassandra Clare

This is the fifth book in her Mortal Instruments novels. It feels rather like an episode of 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' with the Lightwood siblings of Shadowhunters: Jace, Alec and Isabelle, notably Jace, who is the protagonist, Clary Fray's love interest; Simon the vampire and his housemate/mentor Jordan the werewolf and his returned love Maia, also a werewolf, as his Clary's soon-to-be stepfather Luke. After the drama at the top of the tower block in the last novel, 'City of Fallen Angels' (2011) Jace has disappeared taken away by Sebastian/Jonathan, Clary's evil brother. The book is basically the assorted "gang" working without the knowledge of the authorities to locate Jace and retrieve him, in various ways.

 Being an uber-YA book there is a lot of romance and kissing. Jace and Clary hold off from having sex, which is a good thing given it is not clear whether they remain underage. In the movie and TV series, they are appropriately portrayed as young adults. However, the stories of the other characters, especially Simon (who is having an on-off relationship with Isabelle). We see more of Sebastian and the scenes in which Clary infiltrates the teleporting flat which he and Jace are using to move around Europe, are interesting. After all the various relationship tensions (including between Alec and his co-habiting boyfriend, immortal warlock, Magnus) there is another big battle, this time in a remote part of Ireland. While the creation of an evil army is thwarted, Sebastian escapes.

These books are almost an archetype of YA fantasy. There is a lot of angst around relationships and parents, and breaking the rules. However, it does move along briskly and after five books, the characters are rounded out. The uncertainties when Jace is shifting back and forth between evil and good(ish) personalities is handled competently. It delivers the kind of action you expect. The portrayals of Venice, Paris and Prague are well done.

'Dead Air' by Iain Banks

I am beginning to wonder if I misjudged the quality of Banks's writing. This was another poor effort, from later in his career, published in 2002. It is set around Kenneth Nott, who is a DJ on a talk radio channel that sounds rather like LBC or the Jeremy Vine Show on Radio 2. The novel opens with the character at a party when they hear about the 11th September 2001 atrocity in the USA. Aside from setting the date, nothing is done with that. From then on it simply wanders. Much of it feels like a Martin Amis wish fulfillment novel as Nott who has an established girlfriend has sex with a range of women who generally go off him after a while. He lives on a boat on the Thames, drinks a lot and goes to night clubs and parties. He talks with his co-presenter and his two close friends and sometimes refers to his early life in Scotland, which does tend to make you feel he is an avatar for Banks, perhaps this is even semi-biographical. He starts having a relationship with Celia, wife of a gangster. There are moments of jeopardy, one where he is kidnapped as the result of a road rage incident, one where he hits a fellow guest on a TV programme and particularly when he crosses paths with the gangster. However, it is only when he is threatened by direct violence that he seems to take anything seriously. For the rest of the time he does not take measure of his behaviour or its consequences.

Reviews on the cover of the book suggest it was intended to be satirical. Given the time that has passed, even though I was living in London at the time and saw and heard the kind of programmes that are shown, I cannot see if it is satirising anyone in particular or a compilation of people. I guess there is enough to satirise in so-called 'shock jocks', but in many ways the book just ends up portraying their behaviour simply in a fictional form rather than based on real people and the situations they got into. For a reader today, the challenges of US President George W. Bush and of global conflicts appear almost as if they could come from the current news, only the names have changed. There is really no character development, so we have simply spent time as audience for this slice of the character's life. It is credible, but by the end you do wonder what the point was. Certainly it does not come close to the kind of book the cover reviews suggest, even taking into account their usual exaggerations.

Non-Fiction

'Hitler's War Directives, 1939-1945' ed. by H.R. [Hugh] Trevor-Roper

This is a translated and commented on collection of a specific set of directives issued by Adolf Hitler throughout the Second World War. Naturally there is a shift in tone from 1943 to a similar but different sort of directive. The book does show what Hitler intended at each stage and some were never issued as events overtook the directive. As Trevor-Roper highlights, there is a mix of very high ambitions and then rather too detailed planning coming from a commander-in-chief. It does highlight some perhaps unexpected views of Hitler. He did seem to believe the British would surrender, but then that they would re-invade Norway when Germany invaded the USSR. He was obsessed with coastal landings throughout the war and gave many directions on protecting these, though ironically such preparations proved inadequate with the Normandy Invasion. He did fear an invasion of Denmark and ordered that as much effort be put into defending it as the Dutch, Belgian and French coastlines. An interesting book which despite its age - published in 1964 - is a useful reminder of things which it seems many mainstream commentators forget about Hitler's intentions when at war.

Books I Read In March

 Fiction

'Dangerous Women Part I' edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois

This is the first of a trilogy of short story collections. I do not know about the other two volumes, they may improve. This one is largely a disappointment. The largest section is taken up by a 35,000-word story written by Martin set in his world of the Seven Kingdoms, many years before the A Song of Fire and Ice series. 'The Princess and the Queen' is about two women rivalling for the Iron Throne and the war this triggers. The trouble is, Martin approaches the story in the same way as he does with the longer series, i.e. with long lists of titles and locations of individuals. In his huge books there is space for this but in a novella you feel at times you are reading a civil service list. There are some dramatic battles between riders on dragons, but his still really burdens this shorter piece and is there so much any character development is a long way down the list.

Perhaps the best story is 'Raisa Stepanova' by Carrie Vaughn about a Soviet female fighter pilot in the Second World War and not simply the risks to her from aerial combat but from her brother going missing in action as the Soviet regime under Stalin assumed anyone missing had deserted. 'Second Arabesque, Slowly' by Nancy Kress is a not a bad but typical post-apocalyptic story in a New York where when most women have become infertile, tribes have developed scavenging among the ruins and a couple, overseen by the narrator, a nurse, wanting to take up ballet after seeing old footage of it. I read something similar but involving a concert piano, in a short story  'A Song Before Sunset' by David Grigg (1976) which I read back in June: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2021/06/books-i-listened-toread-in-june.html 

'I Know How to Pick 'Em' by Lawrence Black is on in which the woman is a catalyst rather than protagonist. It is contemporary film noir kind of set up about a woman recruiting men to do a murder for her, but is less clever than it feels itself to be. In this collection it also seems wrong to include a woman whose agency is far less than she tries to make it. 'Wrestling Jesus' by Joe R. Lansdale, is similar. It actually features only the story of a woman until the end and it is more about an old wrestler and a young male victim of bullying he is training. To get in this collection is a real contrivance.

'My Heart is Either Broken' by Megan Abbott about an abducted girl and a mother whose story is not believed has that noir feel, but fits better in this book with a female protagonist yet one facing up to the debilitating effects of official disbelief. 'Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell' by Brandon Sanderson is what I had expected from this book. It is a science fiction/fantasy in that it is set in a world colonised by humans but with and old technology, creatures and a whole set of rules as if from a fantasy novel. It works well, both in highlighting the dangers of this world and how the two female protagonists deal with it as well as having that 'otherly' sense.

Overall, then this was rather a disappointment. If Martin had stepped back and simply edited, it would have been better. There are some gems in here, but the criteria for inclusion of stories seems very loose and as such what is in here too often seems wide of the mark.

'Flashman and the Pillar of Light' by George MacDonald Fraser

In the late 1980s, having enjoyed the movie 'Royal Flash' (1975) combining a kind of 'The Prisoner of Zenda' with genuine bits of German history, I read all the Flashman novels which, at the time, had reached 'Flashman and the Dragon' (1985). Subsequently, with this novel in 1990 and three others up to 2005, he added to the canon. MacDonald Fraser had started the series in 1969, expanding the life of a minor character from 'Tom Brown's School Days' (1857) by Thomas Hughes to be a skilled linguist, a cowardly and promiscuous soldier who managed to get involved in many of the great incidents of the 1840s-90s, both in the British Empire and elsewhere in the world. The mix of lots of historical research (there are pages of historical notes), cheeky humour, sex, battles and always a torture scene, made the books winning for over 20 years. I do think though, they are probably not well received now. The books are written in the first person of Harry Flashman who is upper middle class, but pretty crude and certainly imbued with misogynistic and racist attitudes. These fit the character, but I imagine few young people today would wish to read a book which so often features the word 'nigger' and a whole host of derogatory terms towards women and Asian people as this book jams in.

With that caveat, this book fits with the preceding eight. It features Flashman working as a diplomat-cum-agent in the Punjab in the lead up to and during the First Anglo-Sikh War 1845-46 at a time when British India was controlled by the British East India Company. The war in itself was bizarre and MacDonald Fraser, though at times bewildering the reader, does reasonably well in showing how the female regent Jind Kaur for her son Duleep Singh who was to be the last Maharajah of Punjab. Jind Kaur's brother, the preceding Maharajah had been murdered by the Sikh Army which had grown to 80,000 men. Jind Kaur sought to weaken the army in Punjab politics by giving it what it wanted - an invasion of British India, but in a way which would mean its defeat and the clipping of its power. Even this brief summary indicates the complexity of the situation. MacDonald Fraser does well in weaving Flashman into this story, making him the cause of some of the incidents, including ultimately the securing to the Koh-i-Noor diamond, the 'mountain of light' to the British crown jewels. The fact that Jind Kaur was a promiscuous drunkard allows him to include a lot of sex too.

The story moves at a reasonable pace, though not aided by the genuine complexity of what was going on in the region at the time. Added to that, not only does he make extensive use of epithets of the time, but Flashman and others use numerous Punjabi and Hindi terms, sometimes distorted by English usage, which requires a running glossary, though further highlighting the extent of the author's research. Overall, it was not a bad novel, but for the reasons given above it lacked some of the pace of the previous ones in the series. MacDonald Fraser is good a shining a light on parts of history that often get overlooked these days. I was fascinated to see how close the British came to being ejected from the Indian subcontinent at a relatively early stage. However, I would suggest to many modern readers, especially those liable to take offence at any use of colonial era language and attitudes to stay well clear of the book.

'The Elixir of Death' by Bernard Knight

This is the tenth book in the Crowner John series which brings the series up to covering 12 months as the first was set in November 1195 and we are now at November 1196. It is a bit of an oddity and as I have commented before might have benefitted from tightening up the narrative without so much riding back and forth across Devon. There are a series of apparently unconnected murders, from sailors on board a ship from France - including the husband of one of Sir John's mistresses - to a mutilation of a local lord whose head ends up being dumped in Exeter Cathedral. There is also a sub-plot around alchemy in an attempt to create gold for Prince John to fund a renewed uprising against his brother, King Richard. Bits of the story feel rather contrived, especially the involvement of Richard de Revelle, John's brother-in-law and disgraced sheriff; John's wife and one of his mistresses. 

The inclusion of Assassins from Syria, does not seem impossible, but all of these factors together seem like Knight taking it a bit too far in terms of coincidence and leaving out some of his usual cast might have benefited the story. As always the portrayal of medieval Exeter and Devon and references to the Second Crusade, do add a richness which I think aided the popularity of the books. At times I feel Knight tries rather too hard. Maybe he was driven on by an agent or publishers to include things that readers would expect, especially in the period following the success of  'The Da Vinci Code' (2003) and other books by Dan Brown that referenced medieval mysteries. I would rather that he had been guided by the approach of Ellis Peters.

'Against A Dark Background' by Iain M. Banks

I much prefer those of Iain M. Banks's novels which do not feature his galaxy spanning all-powerful Culture. Thus, this one featuring the survivors of a mentally-linked combat team, heading off in a single solar system to recover various rare artefacts, felt to be of the right scope. Indeed there was a lot in this book I enjoyed. The main character, Sharrow, is the female leader of the team, but also an aristocrat in the civilization's hierarchical structure. Due to actions by her parents, she is seen as an obstacle to the coming of the messiah of a particular cult who have just received permission to try for a year and a day to assassinate her. In the meantime, Sharrow seeks to bargain the release of her half-sister Breyguhn from the grim fortress prison of another cult. The team of five, reduced from eight in previous wars head across planets trying to get on the trail first of the book of  'Universal Principles' and with this then follow clues within it to the eighth and final Lazy Gun, a super-powerful weapon, perhaps concealed by Sharrow's father.

Banks presents an incredibly rich culture, with exotic cities built of ships or under and within a vast tree; immense fortresses and a wide variety of landscapes. The societies are diverse and richly described. There are odd, seemingly anachronistic elements such as people writing letters or even cheques and a pillbox hat and so on. You wonder if that was intentional among all the very advanced vehicles and weaponry. The main challenge is that there is so much imaginative stuff. There are so many different organisations, authorities, religions and creatures that it is hard to keep track. Yes the plot twists and twists again, which is great, but it becomes tiresome to follow who is tricking whom. Added to that Banks drops in flashbacks with minimal indication. As many of these involve members of her team as they are in the 'now' you can easily be reading something thinking it is about the current timeline when it is from years in the past. It is a little easier in the scenes with Breyguhn and their male cousin Geis, but not always especially when they feature in the 'now' too. 

It is interesting to see why certain things happen and there are important clues in the 'past' to understand actions in the present. However, sometimes you do wonder do we need to see when the group were last at a bar which is now a book shop. I have commented in the past how Banks's science fiction books often seem under-edited and the good qualities of this book would have been really highlighted if the jumping around in time had been handled far better even if with a tag, e.g. 'Above Nachtel's Ghost, five years ago' or something.

Another challenge is the tone. At times the book seems light-hearted, certainly when the team are trying to steal the the 'Universal Principles' which it turns out the King of Pharpech sits on at his coronation. Pharpech is a low tech society with quaint rituals and at times you feel is created for humour. Sharply different in tone are scenes in the Sea House, the grim prison where Breyguhn is held and certainly the long section where the team struggle against increasing odds along the shore of a fjord to reach the location of the Lazy Gun and suffer more and more at the hands of a competing team of mercenaries. The characters we have come to know well through numerous interactions and their thrilling and entertaining scrapes and now in a bleak existential crisis something like journey of Captain Robert Scott at the Antarctic. The reader is warned of the bleakness from the comments on the book, but they sit uneasily alongside the jokey almost spoof-like section in Pharpech. Added to that, not to spoil it too much but Banks bottles out and a machina ex machina means he steps away from what at times would seem the inevitable outcome, not just once but again and again.

This could have been a brilliant book. There is a rich imagination at work in the book which fascinates you. The story and the twists are engaging. The trouble is, as happens too often, Banks rattles through it unfettered; perhaps uncontrolled, thus you are left scrabbling after him across rapids, uncertain of what he is actually showing you as you hurtle past it. As a result, you cannot really appreciate the details or the plot as much as you should be able to do.

Non-Fiction

'Europe of the Dictators' by Elizabeth Wiskemann

This book, published in 1966, was often recommended to me. I have carried around a very battered copy for about 35 years and finally got around to reading it. Yes, it is dated. Writing such a book today I do not think a historian would speak about regions of Europe as being 'backward' or note every politician she mentions who happens to be Jewish. However, as a general survey of European history 1919-45, it remains incredibly astute. A lot of writers could learn how in a book of 287 pages in my edition she manages to actually get in far more detail than many larger survey books of the period. 

Just minor examples, she outlines the three Austrian banks that collapsed in 1931, outlining the connections between them, whereas most accounts only speak of one. She does not forget to describe what happened to both Slovakia and Ruthenia when Bohemia-Moravia was occupied by the Germans in 1939 and so on. That might seem not major issues, but having read numerous books on this period down the years, I learnt elements of value from this one. She does look at Europe, seeking to include what was happening in countries that are typically neglected, such as down to Luxembourg, let alone the Baltic States, the Nordic states, and so as well as the Powers of the era.

The other strength of this book is the style. It is brisk, almost energetic, and yet never loses that clarity. Even complex situations are explained very crisply. This is one of those history books that you can almost read like a novel. Yet, it is not pure narrative; the analysis built on the foundations of those details is there. Thus, I certainly regret not having come to this book sooner and would say, that despite its age, it remains one of the best survey history books on the developments in Europe at this time that I have read.

Books I Read/Listened To In October

Fiction

'Four Days in June' by Iain Gale

While Gale makes it clear that this book, covering the Battle of Waterloo, is a work of fiction, all the leading people, and many of the minor characters, he features, were real. In addition where possible he puts words into their mouths that they were known to have said or written. The book goes round five individuals: Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte; Marshal Michel Ney, Prince of Moskowa, one of the primary French generals; Colonel Sir William De Lancey, the British Quartermaster General; Lieutenant Colonel James Macdonell of the Coldstream Guards charged with defending the chateau of Hougoumont and Generalleutnant Hans von Ziet(h)en who commanded the Prussian I Corps, the first Prussian unit to reach the battlefield. 

Overall, it is not a bad book, though rather disjointed. Gale says his intention was to focus on the thoughts of these five men and so we rather see the action in a series of vignettes spread rather erratically across the four days. There is a big jump from the abandonment of Quatre Bras to the British and French being at the battlefield in front of Mont St. Jean. Perhaps the book is best when focused on smaller areas such as the battle for Hougoumont and Ney's repeated cavalry charges at the centre of the Allied line. He is certainly good at portraying how messy the battle was and the horror of the assorted injuries and deaths that many tens of thousands suffered. He also picks up on a couple of occasions when uniforms, especially the blue worn by Dutch troops (some of which he refers to anachronistically as Belgian) and troops from the Duchy of Nassau and the Nassau principalities.

As seems to be common these days with published books there are a number of small but annoying errors. Lieutenant Colonel John Fremantle another of Wellington's aides-de-camp is rendered as 'Freemantle'. A Prussian officer is given the rank of 'Oberstlieutenant' mixing in the English rank with the German rank of Oberstleutnant; the Landwehr are referred to as 'Landwher' and on one of the maps, Hanoverian troops are described as 'Hanovarian'. It is as if the book, at times, has been typed up from a dictation by someone unfamiliar with the actual names. Despite saying he has read 300 sources, Gale also misses the fact that one of the reasons why the Guards at Hougoumont suffered from a shortage of ammunition was that they used a different calibre of shot from other British units, something which had been identified as a problem as early as May 1815.

Not a bad book, but trying to cover so much from so many viewpoints means it loses some of its strength and it may have been better for Gale to have a tighter focus as Bernard Cornwell shows works well in books covering this time period and indeed this battle, even if Gale used a real soldier to have this viewpoint.

'The Sanctuary Seeker' by Bernard Knight

This is the first in the Crowner John series of murder mysteries. Knight, apparently his real name, was a professor of pathology and been publishing various crime novels since 1963. This novel opens in 1194 and is set in rural Devon and Exeter where the protagonist of the stories, Sir John de Wolfe, 'Crowner John' has been appointed coroner for the region as part of the legal reforms introduced by King Richard I. He is assisted by Gwyn a bulky Cornishman as his enforcer and Thomas de Peyne, a crippled former priest who works as his clerk. He is married to the sister of the Sheriff of Exeter, often an antagonist and has a mistress who runs a local tavern. In many ways I wondered if Knight was intentionally making his hero as different from the Ellis Peters's Brother Cadfael featuring in novels set some 50 years earlier, though like John, Cadfael had been a crusader.

This story is around the uncovering of a corpse of a returned crusader and later that of his retainer. The deaths have triggered a number of different crimes, but John persists to get to the heart of the matter behind the two murders, in the face of favouritism and out of hand condemnations of people without evidence.

Despite the setting, the book is effectively a police procedural novel rather than a murder mystery. We see a lot of the formal working of coroner and the other legal officers he rubs up against, e.g. recording executions and setting fines on various villages. Being the first book, I can accept some 'info dumping' both on the main characters and the legal context in which they are working, such as the calling of juries, inquests, sanctuary and abjuring. Though some it seems quite modern, we also see superstition still holding sway, as with trials by ordeal to 'demonstrate' guilt or innocence of a suspect. As is typical with so many crime novels, John runs up against official favouritism or prejudice against various individuals based on who they know rather than any level of guilt. There is some action which John, despite being middle aged in our times, and almost old in those, gets involved with.

There is a bit too much tramping around the countryside and it reminded me of criticisms I have heard of police dramas in which you see people driving around too much rather than actually active at the scenes of crimes or in questioning people. I was unaware of the fact that Knight had been writing novels for 35 years when this book came out in 1998 otherwise I might have been less forgiving when it needs tightening up and does too much telling rather than showing. I have eleven more of the books in this series that were given to me and while I hope their writing is that bit tighter, I am not simply donating them to a charity shop until I have read at least a few more.

'A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms' by George R.R. Martin; illustrated by Gary Gianni

This is an odd book. It is set a century before the events featured in Martin's 'A Song of Ice and Fire' series which I read in 2017-18. However, unlike those books which are very 'adult' in nature, featuring brutality and lots of sexual content, this is effectively a children's book. The three stories included are around Ser Duncan the Tall, a squire to a jobbing 'hedge knight' who rides from region to region in the fictional continent of Westeros, seeking short-term mercenary employment and occasionally riding in jousting contests. The book opens with him dying and Duncan trying to make his way as a jouster and hedge knight aided by a 10-year old boy named Egg, who is in fact a royal prince, Aegon. The first story stars very much like the movie, 'A Knight's Tale' (2001), but then develops into a big more complexity at a tournament where typical for Martin's writing there are self-righteous, petulant privileged people who believe in the severest penalties for anything they see as a slight. Smug characters are apparently in at the moment, but it does get tedious reading so many.

The other two stories see Duncan employed by a poor lord in the southern central region of Westeros during a drought, trying to resolve arguments over water supply. The ending though is far too pat and lets down the realistic tensions over old disputes seen throughout the story. The third story sees Duncan further north, taking part in a tournament to celebrate a wedding though it proves to be the background for a conspiracy against the king. We also have two examples of old men marrying much younger women, another unsettling theme in Martin's writing which turns up far too often.

This book will seem very childish to adult and even young adult readers. Basically it is largely pitched at readers of 8-12, who will appreciate the straight forward brisk story-telling. The book is heavily, but well, illustrated by Gary Gianni with line and shading drawings which were so common in historical novels for children of the 1950s-70s that were fed to me. I said this book is largely suitable for children. However, I would include three caveats. One, the type is very small, possibly so that with all the drawings it did not become a very long book. Two, the word 'cunt' features twice and the word 'buggered' once, fitting more with the strong language of Martin's long series.

Third, as is typical of Martin he goes overboard in describing all the various noble houses and their various members. He makes it very hard as so many siblings have names that are only one or more letters different, a Daeron and a Daemon are just one example. As authors we are advised not to have too many characters whose names start with the same letter; Martin goes far further than that and has very, very similar names that can easily sow confusion in the reader's mind. A noble rebellion 16 years before the time when these stories are set and features throughout the background of these stories, especially the third one. Martin seems to have forgotten that while it is fine to spin out various plots and rebellions over many hundreds of pages, packing them into a much shorter story, overwhelms it.

I have the sense that what often happens with very successful authors is that publishers are reluctant to have an editor do a thorough job on their subsequent books. Consequently, it is no surprise that we have ended up with this oddity, a book which is basically written for children, but which includes many of Martin's typical elements that make it hard for even adult readers let alone for younger readers and occasionally including language and behaviour you would want to spare children from until they are old enough to handle it.

'Heretic' by Bernard Cornwell

Though I detected a fall in quality between the first book of Cornwell's 'Holy Grail' trilogy: 'Harlequin' (2000) http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2020/07/books-i-read-in-july.html and the second one, 'Vagabond' (2002): http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2020/09/books-i-read-in-september.html  this final book in the series is far worse by far. I know sometimes, as with his Starbuck tetralogy and in sharp contrast to his Sharpe series, Cornwell loses his way with the story. However, this one is probably the worst of his books I have read and by the end you do wonder why you bothered. In this one, English archer, Thomas of Hookton comes late to the English siege of Calais in August 1347 and sees some of the action there. However, he is then sent to southern France, once a truce is signed, by his lord, the Earl of Northampton to continue his rather erratic search for the Holy Grail. Throughout the series you feel that not on Thomas but Cornwell himself is ambivalent about this MacGuffin and so it is a rather feeble motivator for his character. He travels to the County of Astarac in south-western France which had been part of the Duchy of Aquitaine which had been ruled by the English but was steadily conquered by the French. For some reason he invents the fictional County of Berat whose ruler controls Astarac.

The rest of the novel, bar a short stretch at the end has Thomas and a shifting group of allies and enemies trekking back and forth between Astarac and a fictional castle town Castillon d'Arbizon either trying to control these or seek out the Holy Grail there. Guy Vexille the fictional Count of Astarac (the real one at the time was Centule II) and Thomas's cousin; Robbie Douglas his noble Scottish prisoner and Sir Guillaume d'Evecque, who was part of the raiding party on Hookton and father of one of Thomas's many ill-fated lovers all turn up. The book is then a series of skirmishes and running between the two locations, dealing with Thomas's latest lover, Genevieve a woman accused of being a Beghard, one of the various heretical lay communities in western Europe at the time. Ironically Vexille is in fact a Cathar, another more extensive heresy which had been purged in southern France in the 13th and early 14th centuries, but in a refreshing change from so much fiction set in medieval southern France, they do not take up much of the story.

The fact that Cornwell had to include so many more fictional elements than is usual for his stories, highlights the root of the problems with this book. There seems to be no point to it. There is no epic battle. There is no outright victory for anyone. The grail might still be fiction itself and men fight over simply the box that might have contained it. Almost all the leading characters are killed in skirmishes having switched sides once or twice. Genevieve escapes the fate of Thomas's other women and survives. However, the rapid change in women Thomas is with in the books means each is sketched out poorly and what could have been strong, interesting female characters (which can be a challenge with historical war stories) are not completed and are snuffed out too quickly. The ultimate futility of the book is shown by one incident that I will not reveal as it is a spoiler but even more so by the fact that many of those who survive the monotonous raiding and skirmishes die of the Black Death anyway.

Overall, I am not certain why Cornwell bothered with this book. It appears that having promised a trilogy he felt obliged to provide one rather than it being planned out properly. As a result, he fumbles around for some point to this third book and it would have been better if he had closed the story at the end of 'Vagabond' with some conclusion that seemed to have been worth reading hundreds of pages to reach. This book was very disappointing and I certainly will not bother with the coda volume, '1356' (2012) which is set 8 years after 'Heretic'.

Non-Fiction

'The Pleasures of Peace' by Bryan Appleyard

Despite some flaws, I found this quite an impressive book. It looks at developments in various facets of art in Britain from 1945 up until when it was published in 1990. He does look into the pre-war period and even the 19th Century for ideas and trends that continued after 1945, but as the book progresses, it is the contemporary developments which are dominant. Though Benjamin Britten gets a brief mention, it explicitly does not cover music and in theory does not cover popular culture, though reference to movies and science fiction books are, at time included. The prime focus is on literature, poetry, theatre, painting, sculpture and architecture, breaking the years down into four periods.

Various themes reappear throughout the book such as the tension between a modern world and traditional/nostalgic perspectives and associated with this between the urban and rural. There is discussion of the interplay between art and science, especially the concern that science would overwhelm art or whether art could assimilate scientific aspects. The issue of representation in art whether figuratively or and whether it needs to be seen in order to be art also comes up. There is analysis of language, especially in literature, poetry and plays not just in terms of what is seen as appropriate language and the meanings it communicates, but also in terms of post-modernism of how culture impacts on language and its comprehension. Society and its changes are constantly used as a context for these discussions.

As can be seen just from this brief summary the book powers through a great deal. Comprehension is aided by Appleyard breaking the text into short thematic sections but also making a connection between one and the other, sometimes surprisingly such as going from poetry to architecture and drawing parallels in developments of the 1980s. Appleyard also keeps grounding what he is saying by using examples from the artists he is discussing, typically focusing in particular on one or two pieces of work to illustrate his point. This stops the book being painfully abstract and makes it more accessible to a non-academic reader. 

One challenge is, because he focuses largely on those artists who attracted the most attention in their time, there is a parade of white Englishmen. We do get Iris Murdoch, Sylvia Plath, Germaine Greer, Seamus Heaney, V.S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie and a few others. There is reference to American and French artists and thinkers, but the prime focus is on Englishmen. By the end I did feel that there was almost a parallel book somewhere to this one in which other contributors to the artistic culture of Britain was included. However, if you want to know who were seen as the 'important' artists and movements of the mid-late 20th Century this is an energetic, detailed book which works well not just to introduce them but to explore why it is felt they produced the art they did.

Audio Book

'Prince Caspian' by C.S. Lewis; read by Lynn Redgrave

As I have not been commuting to and from work, I have been listening to far fewer audio books and indeed, though this one only runs to 4 hours, I started it in March and only finished it this month.

This was a children's book that I got in a mixed bag of audio books. I had 'The Magician's Nephew' (1955) read to me when I was a boy and in I saw the movie of  'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' (novel 1950; movie 2005). However, as to the other stories in the Narnia series - though a fictional world, named after a Roman region of Italy - I have just been vaguely aware of them. This story happens in Narnia some centuries after the events of 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe', and animals have generally ceased to be able to speak and the humans have been overtaken by a nation called the Telmarines, who ultimately turn out to be descendants of pirates from Earth. The story centres around Prince Caspian, in line to the throne, but is usurped by his uncle and flees to try to find help to recover his position as king. He both encounters talking animals who aid him in the war against his uncle and summon the four Pevensie children from England of the 1950s where they had returned after ruling as monarchs in Narnia for many years centuries earlier.

As you would expect from English upper middle class fiction of the mid-20th Century it is very 'jolly hockeysticks' with lots of worthy behaviour and exclamations. The Christian overtones, represented by the giant lion, Aslan who also reappears in Narnia and those having doubt or faith in him, run alongside Classical references, notably to Bacchus who turns up with Maenads and leads a drunken orgy and other folklore like a river god. There are arguments between the various animals which make up the armies, but generally a reawakening of nature, especially tree spirits, as the four children aid Caspian to victory. How the lands have changed in the centuries since the children have been away is interesting. More unsettling are the colonial overtones, indicating that only the wise English brought in from outside can resolve tyrants and other difficulties in 'less developed' lands; indeed through bringing faith in Christianity too.

Despite all these themes which may be off putting in various ways, the story is one of sweeping old fashioned heroics tempered occasionally with the weaknesses of children. Ironically it all ends with the Pevensies being sent back to where they left our world at the railway station and the two eldest, Peter and Susan are advised that they are too old ever to return to Narnia, so somehow representing the loss of innocence for children even while pre-adolescent. That may reflect recognition of how the war and the following austerity still hung over England at the time the novel was written. Lynn Redgrave does a wonderful job of voicing all the characters in that very energetic, very English style which fits the novel and she is called upon to voice a whole host of different animals, which she does with great variety, so bringing those characters to life in all their variety.

The Books I Listened To/Read In June

Fiction
'A Dance with Dragons 2: After the Feast' by George R.R. Martin
This is the second part of the fifth, and, so far, final book in Martin's 'A Song of Ice and Fire' series.  It was published in 2011 and, while Martin has promised a sixth book, he has gone off to other projects instead.  This part is slightly better than the first part, but as with that and the previous book, the series has entirely lost momentum.  It is easy to understand why the writers of the television series based on the books, 'A Game of Thrones' have increasingly diverged from the novels, leaving out entire characters, but also introducing a great deal more action.  I would really love to read a novelisation of the series rather than these books.

Opportunities for excitement are avoided.  In the series Stannis Baratheon marches against Winterfell and has to sacrifice his daughter in the hope he will win.  He is defeated in a major battle and is ultimately killed by Brienne of Tarth who has been hunting him to exact vengeance for his magical murder of his brother.  In the book, his siege train simply gets stuck in the snow and dies very slowly without even reaching Winterfell.  Similarly Daenerys Targaryen sits in Mereen for a long time thinking, gets married, and flies off on her dragon.  There is lots of worrying but very little action.  Tyrion Lannister spends his time as an entertainment slave and has very little role in developments. We hear no more of Sansa Stark, in contrast to the series; we hear no more of Brandon Stark or Sam Tarly or happenings in Dorne and so on. 

The writers of the series drive the story on whereas, very frustratingly, Martin just wallows in the vast structure he has created, with no clear sense of where it is going.  You have to admire the world he has crafted but instead of enjoying this book, I laboured through it and am looking to prequels and other output which remembers that an epic story is no story if nothing much happens.

'Conquest' by Stewart Binns
This was a disappointing book.  It focuses on the life of Hereward of Bourne, popularly known as Hereward the Wake, who led a guerrilla war against the Norman occupation of England following the Battle of Hastings in October 1066.  The book follows him from his youth, through the Battles of Stamford Bridge and Hastings - he is at both - to his exile from England following subsequent defeat by King William I at Ely.  The King is portrayed very much as a brutal dictator in this novel.  This was Binns's first novel and there is an air of naivety about it.  Aside from a couple of sex scenes, it feels very much like a book Henry Treece (1911-66) would have written for children in the 1950s.  Everything is very earnest and the good and the bad are painted in stark colours.  There are few moments of real tension, which can be achieved even in historical novels when we know the outcome as seen in 'Munich' by Robert Harris which I listened to last month. 

The book owes a lot to 'The Last English King' (1997) by Julian Rathbone with Hereward even ending up in Byzantine Greece.  However, even more than that book it is a labour and because of the lack of tension, it becomes a depressing book as Hereward steadily moves towards defeat and loses his 'family' the friends he has acquired through the book which have become rather like one of these superhero ensemble movies currently so possible.  Binns also has not learned how to get historical detail into a book without breaking off to give us a mini-lecture on who the person is and who their ancestors are.  We hear about the War of the Three Sanchos (1065-67) in the Iberian Peninsula without this having any real relevance to the story.  Binns was very fortunate to get a publishing contract for this book and certainly needs to work at his craft as a novel writer if he is going to produce satisfying books.

'Knots and Crosses' by Ian Rankin
I have been given a lot of books from Ian Rankin's Rebus detective stories.  This one, set in Edinburgh in 1985 is the first.  In an introduction which was added to this edition, Rankin outlines how this was his first novel and that he knew nothing about police procedure, though he was able to get up to speed liaising with staff from a Leith police station.  At times the book feels like a first novel and I imagine a more experienced author would not have relied so much on coincidence or have a lead character with such an incredible background and then ironically one who is pretty ineffectual.  At first it appears that the 'hero' Detective Sergeant John Rebus is only going to be on the edges of the investigation of a serial killer of children.  However, ultimately it turns out that he is right at the centre and as much a victim as an investigator.  However, Rebus, though seeming rather downbeat and hardly sharp, is not simply a former paratrooper, but also a trained member of an elite sub-unit of the S.A.S. specifically trained to fight in the civil war which had been expected in Northern Ireland in the late 1970s/early 1980s; the legacy of his training comes back to haunt him in all senses of the word.

There are some pretty well drawn characters, though, as Rankin notes himself it does feel all very historical now, especially the bars and the journalists in an age when the mobile phone is uncommon and computers in police stations are handled by a small band of specialists, though Rankin reveals good insight in what was to come.  Rebus's brother, a drug-dealing stage hypnotist appears interesting at the start but soon seems to just be a plot device.  Rebus's ex-wife taking his boss's son as her lover, seems particularly contorted.  The book is quirky enough to keep one's interest and it moves along briskly, describing Edinburgh and people in it well.  It was not as outstanding as I had expected from the acclaim that has been heaped upon it, but it was not sufficiently disappointing that I will throw out the others in the series that I have been given.

'Cartomancy' by Mary Gentle
This is a selection of short stories.  I had been slightly misled by it as 'cartomancy' actually means telling the future using playing cards, but though Gentle does feature some tarot dice in one story in fact she uses it more to mean telling things by using maps.  I read 'Rats and Gargoyles' (1990) many years ago, but this book does not really make much sense and you have to have read a lot of her other books, notably, 'Ash: A Secret History' (2000), 'Grunts!' (1992) and the Orthe trilogy, 1984-2002.  This is because many of the stories are prequels or offcuts from these series.  Most do not stand well as simply short stories without knowing those contexts, which Gentle only tells us about in numerous 'afterwords'.  There are some interesting counter-factuals, such as a Visigoth kingdom in Tunisia and Burgundy being a dominant country in Europe in the late 20th century.  It is interesting to see the female warriors she includes.

There are some which are decent as short stories, 'Kitsune' and how the eponymous character wrecks lives, 'The Harvest of Wolves' set in a 20th century Britain where austerity has become authoritarian, 'The Pits Beneath the World' about a human uncovering lifecycles on an alien planet and 'Cast a Long Shadow' which is a good piece of magic realism set in 20th century Britain. 'Orc's Drift' is really silly. The rest are clearly disconnected parts of novels or prequels and while some have some good ideas, though not satisfactorily developed and because we do not know who these characters become, they lack the import that Gentle tries to instil in the afterwords.  'A Shadow under the Sea' about battling a Kraken is probably the best of these.  'Human Waste' is utterly horrendous.  I know authors have licence and nanobots being able to repair a child in seconds seems to make the impact lesser, but I certainly do not welcome a story of sustained cruelty and physical abuse repeated over the space of some minutes.  I get the point, but regret ever coming near that story.

Overall, then, this is really only a book for dedicated fans of Mary Gentle.  Even then I would advise against reading 'Human Waste'.

Fiction - Audio Books
'From Russia with Love' by Ian Fleming; read by Toby Stephens
The movie (1963) of this novel (1957) is my favourite of the James Bond dramatisations and is one that feels most like a spy movie than a kind of international crime drama.  In the novel, there are continuities with other books.  Bond's relationship with Tiffany Case from 'Diamonds Are Forever' (1956) has just come to an end with her returning to the USA with an American major.  The snagging of Bond's .25 Beretta (the 6.35mm Beretta 418 pistol which was still in production in the 1950s) in this novel leads to him being issued with the Walther PPK in 'Dr. No' (1958).  In the movie, Bond is facing the international crime syndicate SPECTRE whereas in the book he simply continues to battle Smersh, the unit of the Soviet intelligence organisation which carries out torture and executions.  He has crossed them in 'Casino Royale' (1953) and effectively battled their agents of in 'Live and Let Die' (1954); Sir Hugo Drax in 'Moonraker' (1955), in contrast, has been backed by GRU, the Soviet military intelligence body.  However, overall, the books are more clearly Cold War novels in a way that, by the time the movies were made and there was some brief thawing, it was not felt appropriate.

There is much from the book, including specific lines of dialogue which made it into the movie.  The significant characters are the same.  Fleming loves extended descriptions of people, especially the opposition.  We encounter the first female opponent of the novels in Colonel Rosa Klebb, a Smersh torturer with poisoned knitting needles rather than a shoe spike as in the movie, until the very end.  She is rather overwritten, but does come across as a genuinely sinister person especially in the descriptions of her torturing people.  She is what he calls 'neuter', what we would call bisexual now rather than asexual, which is used to add to her sinister nature.  There is Donovan 'Red' Grant, an Irishman in the book, a psychopath who loves killing and Kerim Bey, Bond's larger-than-life contact in Istanbul.  Even as an ebullient ally he is portrayed as having a dark side, having kept a woman chained naked in his house when a young man.  Interestingly, the entire first section of the book does not feature Bond except being discussed in the third person; we see Grant's and Tatiana Romanova's lives inside the USSR and the behaviour of the men controlling them.  At the time I guess this would be something unfamiliar to readers, but it re-emphasised to readers then why the Soviet system needed to be opposed by Bond.

As I have noted with the previous novels, Bond makes mistakes, often serious mistakes.  As Grant notes, throughout this story, the Soviets are able to play on Bond's vanity and curiosity to manoeuvre him almost precisely where they want him.  Only the availability of a 'gadget', the first to appear in the books, a throwing knife concealed in his attaché case, saves Bond from simply being shot and humiliated.  The other elements are there as in the movie, such as watching the Soviet embassy through a periscope; Kerim Bey's sons; shooting a Bulgarian agent as he escapes through a billboard advertising a movie; the fights at the gipsy camp; Bond foolishly allowing himself to be filmed through a two-way mirror in a hotel, even the breakfast he eats.  The climax comes in Paris rather than Venice and Kronsteen, the chess master, has not been killed. In this book, the Lektor of the movie, is called the Spektor and it is booby-trapped.  Bond is shown as complacent to the very end and when the book was published, the cliff-hanger must have been gripping for readers.

Toby Stephens, who appeared in the Bond movie, 'Die Another Day' (2002) is very good at the voices, having to affect a range of Russians.  His Kerim Bey is particularly good and the way he portrays Grant using his own voice and then acting as Nash, is subtly handled.  Overall, this is a quite gripping book especially as we can see how fallible Bond is and how easily he is played.  The Soviets almost manage to pull it off.  There are rich, if highly unpleasant, characters throughout, that stay the right side of being caricatures.  I have already listened to 'Dr. No' so the next one in series for me is 'Goldfinger' (1959).

'A Reconstructed Corpse' by Simon Brett; radio play with narration by Bill Nighy
I met Brett in the 2000s and have read one of his novels in a different series, 'The Body on the Beach' (2000).  This one is the 15th story (of 20 at present), published in 1993, from the Charles Paris series so far published 1975-2018, though with a long break, 1993-2013.  This explains why Paris seems rather anachronistic, regularly referencing 1960s and 1970s pop songs.  This is one of a number of Radio 4 dramatisations of the novels, that are sometimes also available on demand via the BBC I-Player.  It is kind of a hybrid though, because while many scenes are acted, there is a regular first-person narration from the character of Paris, perfectly portrayed by Nighy in his kind of washed up, but positive old actor/rock star approach which he sometimes portrays, e.g. in 'Love Actually' (2003).

It moves along briskly and snatches of pop songs indicate chapters well.  In many ways Paris is an old fashioned character, an (attempted) womaniser and heavy drinker who flits between minor acting roles.  However, Nighy ebullience and contemporary references keep this feeling fresh rather than jaded.  In this book, perhaps unexpectedly, the relationship with Paris's long-suffering wife, Frances, played by Suzanne Burden becomes an interesting reflection on middle-aged relationships and I like how Frances takes the lead in some of the amateur detection, which in this novel focuses on corrupt police and a public information programme called 'Citizen's Arrest'.  These CDs often turn up cheap, and having enjoyed this one, I will look out for others.

'The Book Thief' by Markus Zusak; read by Allan Corduner
I had become vaguely aware of this book, first published in 2006 due to publicity about the DVD of the movie, which I am surprised to find first came out in 2013.  Anyway, this is a very dense book.  Most audio books last 3-4 hours, this one is 14 hours.  It primarily covers the life of a German girl, Liesel Meminger living in a suburb of Munich 1939-43.  The narrator is Death, though more human and tangible yet far less fixed than the usual portrayals of personified death.  The book reminds a great deal of 'Cider with Rosie' (1959) by Laurie Lee, in that it goes into immense detail about the life of a girl.  Thus, beside the events of the war, concealing a Jew and the bombing there is a lot about her life.  For some reason at the age of 10 she is still illiterate, despite having Communist parents.  She is taken to be fostered in Molching when her father is arrested and her mother, we assume is soon taken too.  Her brother dies on the journey to Bavaria and is buried.  Her foster parents have grown-up children and are poor.  They treat her rather erratically, the mother in particular, but with affection.  The story then orbits around her school days, her friends and neighbours in Himmel Street, her participation in the BDM branch of the Hitler Youth and occasionally stealing books, fruit and vegetables.

In some ways I was disheartened to be read another book about wartime Germany with many of the standard tropes.  The characters do lighten it, despite all the tragedies that so many of them face; most of the people we meet do not make it to the end of the book, but that is probably no surprise.  The style with Death narrating, jumping back and forth in time and stopping to give little lectures on his/her existence and interaction with humans, is fine for a bit, but quickly becomes tiresome.  This is the main problem with the book, it is very heavy going.  There is so much to get through at such a slow pace that you are quickly exhausted of all the conceits of the approach.  The messages about escape through reading and authoring and the need for basic humanity, as a result, feel piled on and by the end you lose interest in them.  With this heavyweight approach it would have been fine just to feature a single year in Liesel Meminger's life, rather than four.  By going on so much, with so much passion and so many characters, by the end you have lost a lot of sympathy for anyone featured.  I came out of this book feeling exhausted and rather unhappy that I had ever started on it.

Allan Corduner is excellent as Death with rich and in turns flippant and thoughtful tones for this character.  He is not bad at voicing the children, though better with the adults, especially Liesel's foster father, Hans Hubermann.  His German is good too and listening to the book reminded me of numerous phrases that I had long forgotten from my youth when visiting and living in Germany.  Last time I was there was in 2005 but that was more than 15 years since the previous time.

Non-Fiction
'Crowded Hours. An Autobiography' by Eric Roll
This is another author who I have met, back in the 1990s when working for the Warburg Bank.  He is the only person who I have met who was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  He lived in the Austrian part which is now in Romania, but came to Britain in 1931 and naturalised.  He was an early arrival in the wave of Central European economists who became so important for the British government from the 1940s to the late 1960s.  The book is very brisk, at times listing all the people he encountered in his career; generally viewing them positively.  Roll was involved in numerous international committees including on wartime food supplies, the allocation of Marshall Aid and on Britain's first application to join the EEC in 1961-63.  He was also an academic and worked a lot in the USA before leaving the civil service in the late 1960s to enter finance and private banking.

The book is apt to read at the moment on two grounds.  The first basis are the challenges of international negotiations.  Some of the commentary could have been written about Brexit negotiations now.  However, what is apparent is that the British have utterly lost the skill of working on international bodies to come to a satisfactory, even if not superb, outcome.  Perhaps we have become too dogmatic; maybe we have lost those internationalists of Roll's generation, adept at a range of languages and able to understand the views of others even while disagreeing with them or seeing them as to Britain's disadvantage.

The other useful aspect of this book is that Roll breaks off from the narrative periodically to bring analysis of economic approaches as found in this other, less personal books.  He is a centrist economically and proposes a kind of social market economy of the kind seen in West Germany in the third quarter of the 20th century - this being the 1994 edition of the book.  He certainly points to the unhealthiness of dogmatism, rather hooded criticisms of Thatcherite obsession with monetarism.  Roll seeks the greatest range of tools and criticises the focus just on interest rates for Keynesianism and on the money supply for the Thatcherism that followed.  He also speaks wisely about the changes coming to the City of London and the need for a sensible degree of control.  Some of his fears in this regard were witnessed in 2008.

Roll was very much a man of his time, but his wealth of experience in academia, the civil service and business and his even-handed approach to negotiations and economic approaches means that even now what he wrote provides quite a refreshing view of how things could be being done better, especially in terms of exiting the EU.

Non-Fiction - Audio Books
'Seven Pillars of Wisdom' by T.E.Lawrence; read by Jim Norton
This seems to be a popular book for putting into audio formats as I see there is a version read by Roy McMillan is also on sale.  This is largely a non-fiction book, but I believe it was in 'The Legacy of Lawrence of Arabia' (2010) presented by Rory Stewart that showed he had been a bit liberal with some of the truth, for example shortening journey times he had recorded in his diaries when he produced this book.  The most notable is saying it took him 49 hours to get from Aqaba to the Suez Canal when it took 70 hours as recorded in his diary.

The book covers Lawrence's involvement with the Arab Revolt in 1916-18, up the western coast of what is now Saudi Arabia through present-day Israel to Damascus in Syria, at the time all territories held by the Ottoman Empire, an ally of Germany.  Lawrence's largely self-appointed mission was to bring together the wide diversity of Arabic tribes in the region and carry out a kind of guerrilla war, though securing towns along the Red Sea coast.  Much of his work was in leading raiding parties especially attacking trains, bringing more tribes into the fight and funding and training them.

Lawrence makes an epic story of what he was involved with.  In particular he makes very little mention of his failures beyond acknowledging them.  It would be interesting to know what went wrong on the failed raids as much as we learn about how he helped with the successes.  Sensibly he punctuates the battle scenes with detail of life among Arabs and at various locations on his journey, giving a rich picture of the culture he was moving among and was largely accepted into.  He spends a lot of time describing individual men and their characters (the book features very, very few women) of the tendency of the early-mid 20th Century writing (Fleming does this all the time too) and describes nationalities in a way that many current readers would find patronising if not verging on racist.  This is not confined to the Arabs and Turks as he is highly dismissive of Indian and Australian soldiers.  In contrast he goes overboard in praising General Edmund Allenby (1861-1936), though for a man of the time, the general appreciated the risks of indulging in crusader analogies and the risk of offending the largely Muslim population. 

It is interesting, despite the popularity of the book with politicians and generals of the time, that the assault on the port of Aqaba (now in Jordan) achieved after a lengthy march across the desert that Lawrence recounts in detail, had so little attention paid to it.  His ability to capture the town with a light camel-borne force because the landward side was unprotected in the expectation of any attack coming from the sea, was much paralleled in the fall of British-held Singapore in February 1942 to Japanese troops behaving in a very similar way, because of the lack of landward protection.

Lawrence articulates the guilt he felt throughout his mission, knowing from early on that the British were not going to permit the bulk of the independent Arab states that they were peddling as a way to try to gain support from Arab fighters.  He hoped that an Arab victory would free them from the imperial constraints, but all but Saudi Arabia became part of the British or French Empire following the Paris Peace Treaties.  Thus, while the book comes over as something from the age of high imperialism and with attitudes that would expect from that time, it is, at times, tempered by a different appreciation.

We know that Lawrence was a masochist and was probably homosexual or perhaps bisexual.  Thus, his frankness, especially when he is being anally raped by Turkish soldiers must have been shocking at the time the book was published in 1926.  At times it is unsettling that he seems to revel in physical discomfort and there are graphic descriptions of the hardships of riding for many hours on camels, with the sores and injuries that he sustains.  He seems to relish describing death and decay such as after attacks and in the conditions of the Turkish Hospital in Damascus which he recondition and improved.  It can be argued that he was in harsh conditions and reflected them for a soft audience back home.  However, from the start when talking about slavery in the Arab world, he seems too supportive of these aspects and this trait appears to be borne out by the actions in his life, exposing himself to discomfort and abasing himself.  In that regard, it takes a strong stomach to engage with this book and I was left feeling disturbed by it.  Despite these aspects, the book is brisk if one sided, being focused on his successes.  There are some very dramatic scenes and interesting information on the cultures of the region at the time.

I must say the little booklet which come with the CDs is invaluable for following the progression of the campaign Lawrence was involved with, especially when working beyond more familiar cities like Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem and Damascus, in places that are obscure but were strategically important.  Jim Norton is perfect for the narration of this book.  As it is an autobiography he is not obliged to do voices for a range of characters.  However, he handles the numerous Arabic names of people, tribes and places very well.  He speaks in a way that you feel as if it is Lawrence himself addressing you.  In some ways, however, this brings home the pain and suffering even more sharply than if he sounded like someone telling a story from decades past.