The Books I Read In June

 Fiction

'The Flight of the Heron' by D.K. [Dorothy Kathleen] Broster

The last few weeks of reading have taught me a couple of things. One is not to buy an entire trilogy until I am really familiar with the nature of the books in it. The other is that it is a mistake to return to stories you liked in your childhood. With this book I made both of these errors. Back in 1976 as a 9-year old, watching the BBC dramatisation of this book, published in 1925, I thoroughly enjoyed the story. I read what I thought was the book back in 1991, but now realise it was the 1963 Puffin version (or a reprint of it) and that version of the story had been bowdlerised for children/young adults. The original version was a great deal nastier.

The story about two men, Captain (later Major) Keith Windham of the His Majesty's Royal Regiment of Foot and Ewen Cameron, laird of the fictional Ardoy, liegeman to Donald Cameron of Lochiel (1695-1748) the genuine head of the Cameron clan. A local seer, foster-father to Ewen, foretells that the men will meet five times, the first and last time by water. The heron acts as an omen and a plot device for the story. 

The background is the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 when Prince Charles Stuart, son of the Stuart pretender to the thrones of England and Scotland landed in Scotland. Most of his support came from Highland clans. While Catholic, Charles did receive support from some Protestant clans, the Camerons were Episcopalian, a form of Anglicanism introduced to Scotland by Charles's great-great grandfather, James I/VI. Though the Jacobites were able to advance as far as Derby anticipated wider support was not forthcoming and they were driven back into Scotland, defeated and then suffered a ferocious hunt to bring a scorched earth retribution to them and their families.

Broster acknowledged that she was heavily influenced by 'Flemington' (1911) by Violet Jacob which similarly featured two men on the two sides of the conflict. I do not know if that book is as bleak as this one is. Broster's narrative if fixed on the two men and how they fall in turn into each other's control. It skips over the big events such as the battles of Fontenoy and of Culloden, though we do hear of the outcomes. It features primarily skirmishes between the two sides, but also does not baulk from the atrocities committed by the government forces against the Jacobites in the aftermath of Culloden, including torture and summary execution, the seizing of livestock and the burning of farms and houses. Those rebels actually bought to trial faced being partially hanged, drawn and quartered, the punishment for treason.

Being an Englishman who migrated to Scotland, this was the first time I had read of someone suffering from orophobia (fear of mountains) as I did. Broster counters Cameron's love of the lochside where he lives, hemmed in with mountains, well with Windham's unease, perhaps even fear of these sinister mountains and that was an aspect which spoke to me. Broster does an excellent job in portraying the terrain of the different places the two men go to and conjuring up Edinburgh of the time. She is also decent at making distinctions between the different peoples. She does restrict the Gaelic to particular words or phrases so the Lowlanders speaking in full-on Common Scots can be tricky for an English reader to follow.

Aside from the horrors shown, another thing that jars for a modern reader - well, for me - is the obsessive observation by Windham of a sense of chivalry. Despite all the violence and cruelty, he constantly chafes over what he said to whom and of Cameron's perception of him and his actions. This leads him to largely wreck his career and to put himself at risk of imprisonment. Both men save each other's lives at various stages. Cameron spends a lot of the latter part of the book wounded and imprisoned, threatened with execution and torture that Windham is able to ameliorate/prevent even at risk to himself.

There are references to readers perceiving a homosexual connection between the two men. Cameron marries Alison during the novel, but Windham is unmarried. The fact that he is willing to go to physical and reputational danger sometimes simply so that Cameron thinks well of him, suggests an infatuation with the man, if not an obsession. While Cameron at times seems to feel obliged, even obligated, to Windham, there is much less of that passion, indeed he focuses far more on his duties to his clan chief. Of course, when Broster was writing, homosexuality was illegal even in England and it would remain so even longer in Scotland, so she could not really even drop heavy hints in this direction. However, modern readers are likely to perceive the connection as this rather than the stuff around chivalric behaviour which at times seems laboured, perhaps even artificial.

Overall, despite some admirable traits I did not enjoy this book. It has utterly destroyed the pleasure I had watching the TV series. The ending is different to the versions I had seen and read, which simply made it appear that much crueller. Unfortunately I bought the following two books, 'The Gleam in the North' (1927) and 'The Dark Mile' (1929) at the same time. However, I am now minded to send them to a charity shop. As with N.K. Jemisin's The Broken Earth trilogy, I really need to read a wider range of reviews of books before I buy them, especially if I encounter lots of positive views that may/do not mention the really unpleasant aspects of these books, certainly before I indulge in buying a trilogy in one go.

'The Paper Moon' by Andrea Camilleri

This is a straight forward murder mystery, lower key than some of the other Montalbano novels, of which it is the 9th, with a limited cast of characters. Montalbano has to entangle what led to a man, Angelo Pardo, a sales representative for medication companies being shot in the face in a private terrace room at his apartment and left with his penis hanging out. The two who seem most involved are his sister his doting sister Michela Pardo and his latest lover, a married woman, Elena Sclafani, though other lovers turn up as the investigation unfolds. It seems quickly apparent that Angelo was involved in corrupt practices in supplying medications to doctors and pharmacies, that have enabled him to earn a substantial corrupt income to spend on expensive gifts for Elena. As the investigation continues, it seems latterly he was also involved with the supply of cocaine which has led to the death of a number of notable men. The main task in this novel is for Montalbano to disentangle which aspects both at the apartment and missing from it, provide the explanation for the killing. He is enchanted by both of the women even though Michela is dowdy and it seems had incestuous feelings for her brother even if these were not consummated. Elena is in part very open about her lifestyle but also deceptive. Thus, this is quite an intricate plot especially in the different interviews by the inspector of the two women as more information comes to light. Overall quite a simple but satisfying plot.

'The Obelisk Gate' by N.L. Jemisin

After my experiences reading the first book in the trilogy, 'The Fifth Season' (2015) last month: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2026/05/the-books-i-read-in-may.html I was hesitant with continuing. However, I realised that my autistic outlook was not going to let myself pay for a trilogy only to throw two-thirds of it away. This books is a bit better. We are still seeing a post-apocalyptic world with people struggling to survive and facing all kinds of prejudice, but as is often common with a second book in a trilogy you feel that this book is marking time until the climax in the final book. This one jumps around in time but not as much as the previous one. It shows Essun's progress but also that of her daughter Nassun, who she was separated from just before the apocalypse and endowed with the same magic abilities connected to the Earth, faces similar suffering as she and her father who wants her 'cured' head southwards on the single large continent. We get more of a sense that this planet, though not resembling ours in layout is Earth, but a lot of its problems have stemmed from the lost of the Moon though thrown into an elliptical orbit it is scheduled to return to the planet's vicinity.

The prime problem for me is that Jemisin seems addicted to pain and cruelty. I do not know about her own life but she seems incapable of writing more than a few pages before she has to include intense cruelty or someone suffering pain, often children. I understand she probably wanted to baulk against 'cosy' fantasy novels, but she seems unable to move through the story in any other way except by showing another incident. If she cannot engineer it in the current time then a character remembers something horrendous they suffered or inflicted in the past, and then another and another. It is unremitting and after a while it becomes tiresome and blunts the reader. There is a man, Alabaster turning to stone and being eaten alive, more mutilated each time he appears for pages, but apparently this is not enough for Jemisin and we have to see both Nassun and Essun suffering more, Nassun's mentor, Schaffa remembering all the pain and deaths he dealt out as he himself is tortured by what was implanted in him. There is a lot of mutilation in this book especially with hands and arms cut off, though some are able to be reattached.

You also feel as if you have somehow missed a book in the series as if there was a Volume 1.5. There is so much backstory about Essun when she was still Syenite and had a relationship and a child with Alabaster. That child and another of Alabaster's died tragically, but we only get irregular references back to this, triggered occasionally during interactions between Essun and Alabaster as he dies. At the end Jemisin comments on how she battled writing a trilogy and you have a sense that in fact it was a tetralogy and you have gone from Book 1 to Book 3 in a single bound. The climatic battle to save the underground settlement where Essun is living is rushed but tense and rather wakes you up from the jogging along nature of the rest of the book. The book is not terrible, but I certainly cannot understand why it received rave reviews. It has a lot of strong female characters of a variety of races and it has an interesting form of magic connected to rock and tectonics. However, beyond this the writing is not of an outstanding level and as Jemisin seems to acknowledge herself, she is not always in control of the story she has to tell, something which is common in epic fantasy series as Martin has clearly shown.

'England Made Me' by Graham Greene

This book from 1935 is the third I have read by Greene and I am getting a feel for his style. Like 'Stamboul Train' (1932) and 'It's a Battlefield' (1934) it comes across rather like a play. Greene sets up a handful of characters with various quirks and focuses on the interactions between them. Often the setting is seedy and he seems to insist on having young women who want to have lots of sex, perhaps contrary to what we might expect from a 1930s novel, especially as generally while they have troubles they are not punished for their promiscuity, in this case Lucia 'Loo' who Anthony falls for. There are hints that one character, Ferdinand 'Minty' Minty is homosexual but it is not brought out even as clearly as the lesbianism/bisexualism in 'Stamboul Train'. The story also hints at incest, but never goes as far of this, just highlighting the difficulties of relations between twins when they are so much of each other's lives, especially as children, but are now adults. There are also references to Catholic perspectives which became a theme through much of Greene's work but are only touched on lightly in this book. 

Anthony Farrant is a compulsive liar and feckless wastrel who keeps getting sacked from jobs, so ends up drifting from place to place including India, Singapore and Aden. Back in London, his twin sister Kate offers him a position with her lover/employer, the Swedish magnate, Erik Krogh, who having worked up from humble beginnings now runs companies across the world. However, trying to launch an American company, he begins to commit fraud that both Kate and Anthony, employed as a rather negligent bodyguard, become aware of. Minty is a British journalist working in Stockholm, always looking to get information about Krogh, due to how wealthy he is and how many he employs. Anthony has an ambivalent relationship but even when seeking revenge on Krogh does not tell the journalist everything.

Anthony does get Krogh to lighten up and enjoy himself a bit, something the magnate welcomes, even though he remains anxious about how the newspapers will view it. However, the Englishman draws a line when it becomes clear Krogh set up a union leader so he would be sacked and will not even talk to the man's son, also one of this employees. Krogh in fact does not need Anthony because his success has meant there are a ring of sycophants around him, willing to countenance anything to protect Krogh's good name, especially Fred Hall who comes from Amsterdam to Stockholm for the climax.

The novel has strong characters as you would expect, though Greene does seem to fall back on a range of types which is more obvious when reading a number of the novels. It is an interesting analysis of how the very wealthy become detached from reality and judge everything through what benefits them most easily dismissing any concern with the impact on others.

Non-Fiction

'The Prime Ministers from Robert Walpole to Margaret Thatcher' by George Malcolm Thomson

This book was published in 1980 by Scottish journalist George Malcolm Thomson (1899-1996). It is a series of 'pen portraits' of the British prime ministers up to Thatcher. The style is rather peculiar. I guess this comes from Thomson being a journalist rather than a historian or aiming at the popular history market. Certainly, especially as the book moves through the 20th Century, he allows his strong opinions to increasingly distort what he writes. 

I suppose it is no surprise that he was a hardline Conservative but he did have some odd ideas, for example, in terms of the power of trade unions and the anticipated longevity of the French Fifth Republic, though it was already 22 years old at the time he was writing. He has a grave hostility to what he vaguely terms of 'collective security' in international affairs and this feeds him into being scathing of the United Nations. He also perceives anything more liberal than the Conservative Party of the late 1970s as 'Left' or 'Socialist' which means the Liberals of the inter-war period get labelled 'Left' when few would agree with that. He constantly complains about the threats to Britain from 'Marxists' and wrongly portrays the mainstream of the Labour Party in those terms, even when dealing with party leaders like Callaghan who in fact was really a monetarist and supporter of police authority.

Perhaps the most distorted element is when he is covering the prime ministers of the late 1930s. He keeps hammering on about the need for rearmanent and an armed response to the remilitarisation of the Rhineland. He completely overestimates the strength of the German military from 1935 and utterly overlooks how poorly equipped it was even by 1939-40 when victory came more from how poorly prepared Poland was and how defeatist French commanders were - even though their tanks were far superior to the German ones. Thus, in this phase there is a constant jarring with what the public and politicians wanted and indeed, the actual situation of German strength, even when he was writing at a time when this had become well known. I guess he cannot conceal that as a man in his 30s he was bitter about the policies adopted and even 40+ years later cannot moderate that when writing history.

I certainly do not recommend the sections of the book which cover the period when Thomson was an adult. What was eye-opening to me, having really only studied British politics in detail from the 1860s onward are his portraits of the prime ministers of the 18th Century and early 19th Century. He shows, though often with repetition, how they were often very inter-related noblemen, often in office simply on the whim of the King. Many did not want the job and/or were ineffective in it. It becomes clear why Walpole, Pitts - father and son, Peel and, to some degree, Wellington, are far better known than Shelburne, Portland, Grenville, Addington, Canning or Goderich. Even then too often Thomson's tone is flippant when it could have been far much more analytical. His obsessions with their wives and how many children they had or when they received 'the Garter' are of not much use.

Aside from widening my knowledge on this earlier period, there are some curiosities (though not all unsurprising) that he highlights. Of all the prime ministers he covers 18 attended Eton, 11 not only attended the University of Oxford, but Christ Church college there, 39 prime ministers in total went to either the University of Oxford or the University of Cambridge. Aside from a couple of 19th Century examples, it was only in the 20th Century that a middle class, rather than aristocratic background was the norm. All but 4 were married. Most bizarrely, 16 of them, from the Duke of Grafton (Prime Minister, 1768-70) to Winston Churchill (1940-45; 1951-55), Sir Anthony Eden (1955-57) and Sir Alec Douglas-Home (1963-64) were all related to Sir George Villiers of Brooksby, the Sheriff of Leicester under Queen Elizabeth I and father of George, 1st Duke of Buckingham. While not constantly an oligarchy, it is clear for much of British history prime ministers have come from narrow millieux.

Overall, this is an annoying book that is very much in the latter third overshadowed by the author proving incapable of toning down his strong (and often ill-informed) opinions in order to write a history book. It is of some use if you want a quick summary of more obscure prime ministers of the past, but these days you can probably get better on Wikipedia.

The Books I Read In May

 Fiction

'The Patience of the Spider' by Andrea Camilleri

While having all the usual elements of a Montalbano novel, this one is among the better ones. It is much more taut than some and has none of the James Bond like adventuring that is occasionally seen in the books. Montalbano is just returning prematurely to service after having been shot and is being tended to by his long-suffering girlfriend Livia Burlando. A female student, Susanna Mistretta, from a poor family with a bed-ridden mother is kidnapped. Once it becomes clear that her mother was conned of family wealth by the mother's brother a motive becomes clearer. The various clues such as finding Susanna's scooter, motorcycle helmet, in various locations; the evidence of a blighted egg seller-cum-prostitute; the various calls to news media all confuse matters. The characters of the victim's boyfriend and a doctor who is a family friend are well drawn. Perhaps the reader can work out what is going on and at time Montalbano seems rather blessed with looking in the right place at the right time. However, it is effectively told and alongside the usual cast, the other characters are portrayed convincingly with all their different drives. This is the eighth book in the series and I have a number more to go through, though it is difficult to know what is going to be a stronger or a weaker story in the sequence. This is certainly one of the better ones.

'The Fifth Season' by N.K. Jemisin

I had read very good reviews of Jemisin's writing so when I saw this Broken Earth trilogy - 'The Obelisk Gate' (2016) and 'The Stone Sky' (2017), I snapped up all three books. Foolishly I had not read detailed reviews of each of the books. As the book reviewer active on BlueSky (@runalongwomble.bsky.social) pointed out, if I had done then I would not have had such an unpleasant experience reading this first book. The book opens with the discovery by a middle-aged mother that her 3-year old son has been murdered by his father who has run off with the boy's sister. A young girl, Damyana, with forbidden powers is handed over to authorities to be taken from her family for life and soon has her hand intentionally broken when studying how to master magic is bullied and has to become devious leading to the punishment of other students which we later discover can involve being intentionally paralysed and wired into a machine for life in order to counteract earth tremors. A young woman, Syenite, despite being trained in the magic is simply used to breed with an older, more powerful male magic-user.

So you can see this is a real grimdark book. The concepts behind it are fascinating. It is set on a world with largely one huge continent stretching between the poles which is troubled periodically down the centuries by environmental catastrophes. Certain people are born with the ability to work magic and as in 'The Ninth Rain' (2017) which I read last month: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2026/04/the-books-i-read-in-april.html They are carted off to confinement and training in how to control their powers to benefit those who control them. Jemisin's Damaya does get treated a little better than Williams's Noon. The magic powers come from the very turbulent movements of the planet's surface and can be a source of devastating power or can be ameliorated by the magic users. There are also levitating obelisks which can similarly provide power or be destructive. This approach to magic was a refreshing one even though it also allows the perpetuation of horrors.

We see the story through what quickly becomes apparent are three timelines before and after the latest environmental catastrophe which is smashing up the societies of the continent despite all the laws to make people prepare adequately. It is not long before you realise that the women in the three timelines are actually a single individual at different ages of her life. To some degree that reduces some of the jeopardy of the earlier two as we know she lives to be the middle-aged Essun. However, it is clear Jemisin revels in suffering and though there are brief triumphs, pain and simply prejudiced violence run right through this novel. Given such pervasive nastiness, I am ambivalent about continuing with the trilogy despite having bought the other two books. As I have now been chided, it is advisable to check out a book thoroughly before buying it, let alone splashing out on an entire trilogy!

'It's a Battlefield' by Graham Greene

This novel from 1934 is one of Greene's lesser known ones. It follows a very similar pattern to 'Stamboul Train' (1932) which I read last month. There is a small set of characters who somehow are all interlinked and they interact through the novel in a way, which for all its seriousness, to the modern reader seems rather whimsical. I put this down to some extent to the style of language used 90+ years ago and perhaps Greene wanting the novel not to be too heavy. I am also learning that it was apparently acceptable in the 1930s to show characters with sexual orientations that we more usually associate with the later 20th Century and contemporary times. In this case there is Kay Rimmer who is unapologetically promiscuous seeking single night partners even though she seems to be ambivalently in love with one man, Jules who comes into money and goes off on a bizarre reckless car journey around the countryside outside London in the closing section of the novel.

The connecting issue is the imminent execution of Jim Drover, a bus driver and member of the Communist Party who killed a policeman threatening to beat-up his wife, Milly Drover (née Rimmer), Kay's sister, at a protest/riot in Hyde Park. Milly later goes to see the policeman's widow. Many of the characters are members of the Communist Party, though in Kay's case, more to pick up men rather than through any political convictions. Other characters are a wealthy Communist Mr. Surrogate (a very unconvincing name for a character!) who Kay sleeps with and attempts to work through an influential Communist fellow traveller Caroline Bury to get a commutation Jim's sentence from the police, largely in the form of the unnamed Assistant Commissioner. There is also Jim's brother, Conrad, who is a chief clerk and chafes over what he can do for his brother, becoming increasingly reckless too. There is Conder, a scuzzy journalist who monitors the local Communists and is seeking a human interest story. All these characters dance around each in seedy locations of London.

While it does lay out the various mental turmoils of the different characters you somehow feel there is no real depth. The book does come over, rather like 'Stamboul Train' like a script for a play rather than a novel. It does provide an interesting view into London of the time and actually how 'normal' if unpopular with slice of society, the Communist Party was at that time. Still, Greene does also show how ineffectual, how bound up in procedure it was, so unable to make any impact, let alone represent anything like the kind of threat that was attached to it through much of the 20th Century. The twist is reasonable, but by then despite it being short (202 pages in my edition), you are tired of the characters and are glad that it is all over. I do have many more Greene novels to read and I hope that the writing improved as his career progressed, or at least came closer to what I now realise are the expectations of readers of the late 20th/early 21st centuries.

'Continental Crimes' ed. by Martin Edwards

This is another of the British Library Classic Crime collections edited by Martin Edwards. As the title suggests (at least to British readers) this one features crime stories (not always detective stories) set in (western) continental Europe. The collection is not as good as 'Serpents in Eden' (2016) which I read last month: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2026/04/the-books-i-read-in-april.html but it does have some decent stories.

As is usual the one by Arthur Conan Doyle, 'The New Catacomb' from 1898 again shows the quality of his writing. It is set in Italy and shows the rivalry of two archeaologists. While modern readers are liable to work out what is going to happen it is well written and paced. This is one of the stories in which rather than the detection of the crime, we see its execution. Arnold Bennett is known for his stories of Victorian society. 'A Bracelet in Bruges' is about the loss/robbery of said bracelet. It has a small set of characters, but is well worked through, with sufficient clues for the reader. It also describes Bruges very well and even visitors of today can match up its medieval features with those described by Bennett in 1905.

G.K. Cheserton is better known for writing crime novels, especially the Father Brown stories which have long been popular but have received a new burst of interest with the 13 seasons of the BBC TV series which has been running since 2013. 'The Secret Garden' from 1910, however, is set in France and features the head of the Paris police. I am not sure why all these stories always feature the head rather than an ordinary inspector. Anyway, at the head's house there is an impenetrable garden in which a corpse is found which has been beheaded. This is a locked garden mystery a littl of the style of 'Jonathan Creek' stories and is satisfying for that, but also shows up how strong anti-clerical sentiments were in France of the time.

'The Secret of the Magnifique' published Edward Phillips Oppenheim in 1912, is one of the stories where we see the crime but no-one is brought to account for it. It follows John T. Laxworthy who with two friends sets out to involve himself in any dubious activity especially if it enriches him. He becomes mixed up in attempts to steal naval plans on the Côte d'Azur. His method for dealing with the spies seeking them is an uncommon, refreshing, ending. 'The Ten Franc Counter' by Henry de Vere Stacpoole is set in Monte Carlo, and while there is naturally reference to the casino - which apparently local residents were barred from - the story involves theft in an apartment block and, it turns out an imposter. It is deftly investigated by visiting police detective M. Henri (whose route to the solution comes from the eponymous clue. Not bad.

'Petit Jean' by Ian Hay is unusual in being set behind the frontlines of the Western Front in Belgium during the First World War. .female private detective Solange Fontaine with a French father she travels with and a British mother. Solange's skill is being able to detect evil and this story is more like a Gothic drama about pressure being put on a young woman at a nearby large house in order to get control of her money though intervention by the antagonist's wife muddies the water. Solange and her friend Raymond intervene to help Monique escape from the bigamous marriage let alone being murdered, though as Solange points out philosophically if she had continued in it and yet escaped to South America as planned, she may have lived happily. Joseph Jefferson Farjeon was a playwright and crime novelist. I have a number of his crime novels in the British Library series to read next year. 'The Room in the Tower' set in a German castle on the Rhine is not even really a crime story, but even more a Gothic tale, perhaps unsurprising given the setting, but it features a spectral being who provides clues back to a crime.

'Popeau Intervenes' written by Marie Belloc Lowndes like the fictional Solange, had a French father and British mother. Writing in the 1910s she created the French detective Hercules Popeau who features in this story. Not surprisingly Lowndes was not impressed by Agatha Christie's use of Belgian detective Hercule Poirot who first appeared in 1920 in 'The Mysterious Affair at Styles'. Knowing Poirot stories well, it is clear that he was nothing less than a rip-off of Popeau not simply in name but also in terms of mannerisms and approach, even down to not always having an arrest as a solution, but some other outcome. This story moves from Paris to a southern French hotel where Popeau's suspicions are aroused around the health of a guest especially when he encounters a dubious doctor he has met before when a police detective. Ironically this is a good non-Poirot, Poirot story and could certainly rank alongside any Christie short story.

There is an Agatha Christie short story but one featuring Parker Pyne rather than Poirot. 'Have You Got Everything You Want?' was published in 1933. Pyne is drawn into a jewellery robbery while on the Orient Express. The victim has had prior warning that something is going to befall her but believes it is more likely to be a personal attack. This combined with the layering of the story - blackmail lies behind the theft - means it works effectively. It also incorporates elements that Christie would use again, such as forewarning of a crime and of course featuring the Orient Express, 'Murder on the Orient Express' was published the following year.

Reggie Fortune, Henry Christopher Bailey's doctor who aids the police turned up in 'The Long Barrow' short story in 'Serpents in Eden'. In this story, 'The Long Dinner' from 1935 he goes between southern England and Brittany disentangling not just the disappearance of a man but also the murder of various children over the years. Though Bailey was criticised for dated language - exclamations by various characters seem very peculiar - and a prime clue is identifying what part of France would have dishes like those seen on a particular menu, it has layering and concerns which feel pretty modern. This layering means there is more than one crime to solve. Saying that often Fortune seems more a distraction, despite important connections he can make at times between pieces of information.

The impetuous for 'The Packet Boat Murder' (1951) by Josephine Bell is a young Frenchwoman seeking to elope with a British tourist who who is then murdered on or around a ship to England before it sets sail. Compared to some of the other stories it is a gritty case which might reflect when it was written and the impact of what was done during the war does play a part.

'The Perfect Murder' from 1926 by Stacy Aumonier, better known for contemporary fiction, is set in France and features two brothers seeking to ensure they inherit from a wealthy aunt. There is no detection, just the unfolding of the two brothers' plans and overall it feels like a Chauceresque morality tale. 

'Villa Almirante' was published in 1959 by Michael Gilbert. It is set in Italy and is told from the perspective of a carabineri lieutenant, Lucifero investigating a murder at a villa rented by a British lord and his various friends plus the servants. Maybe it is the age of this one, maybe the angle (maybe I have read too many Montalbano books) but I liked this approach to the typical English manor house set up by an outsider, who is perceptive but calm and unafraid to not only deduct but at times, simply to observe.

'And the Rest is History' by Jodi Taylor

I was rather foolish to read this book. I do not like giving away books that I have not read, but really after the previous, seventh, book in the Chronicles of St. Mary's 'Lies, Damned Lies and History' (2016) which I read in January: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2026/01/the-books-i-read-in-january.html and finding it so nasty, I should have stayed away from this one. Despite Taylor's 'jolly hockeysticks' tone which makes a university institute for time travel have the characteristics of a private school in the 1950s (no-one in a university calls anyone 'Miss. Grey' or 'Mr. Dieter' and Taylor seems to have no idea what a University Chancellor actually does) they are actually stories of bitterness, loss and sorrow. I do not care about giving 'spoilers' here, because I do think these books should come with trigger warnings, something much more than a comment on the back saying simply '... Max and St Mary's find themselves engulfed in tragedies worse than they could ever imagine' though clearly Taylor can imagine them. 

The death rate exceeds that of the average thriller and going beyond this, Taylor uses time travel to inflict particular nastiness on her characters. In this one the protagonist Dr. Madeline Maxwell 'Max' is widowed for the second time in the series from her husband Chief Leon Farrell though he turns up 'after' his death from a previous time travel journey and Max can say nothing to him about his fate due to the ructions in time it would cause.. She has her recently born baby, Matthew Farrell abducted and only returned to her days later, but eight years older malnourished and illiterate, having been abused throughout that time as a chimney sweep in 19th Century. I know authors feel they should put in jeopardy for the main characters, but in these books which often have a comic turn, it really jars as the reader has to keep shifting gear from mildly amusing scenes (such as two amateur time travellers from the future arriving in a giant teapot and mistaking a period tea for arriving in the wrong time) to tragedy that would be horrendous but often impossible without the set-up. There is some protracted, uncertain redemption towards the end of the novel, but it does feel tacked on, perhaps the result of pressure from an editor or a publisher, rather than the ending that Taylor would have wanted to inflict on her characters.

The only really redeeming features of the books, especially as the series continues and the body/abuse count stacks up even faster than before is their descriptions of missions to the past. In this novel, teams follow the stages of Harold Godwinson through being shipwrecked in France and handed over to Duke William, having to swear the oath and then fighting the Battle of Hastings. There is also a good scene towards the end when Max accompanies a Time Police team to Constantinople in 1204 during the rapacious 4th 'Crusade'. I have often commented how Taylor always seems to have battled with getting the right approach to these books. Early in the series Max feels like a 15-year old with a PhD but this settles down as the novels continue. However, Taylor still seems obliged to keep going back to a light, supposedly humorous tone, despite writing horror after horror that really puts these novels into the grimdark category. Be warned.

Non-Fiction

I have been very fortunate this month to have picked two very good history books to read.

'Democratic Socialism and Economic Policy: The Attlee Years 1945–1951' by Jim Tomlinson

It is now 31 years since I met Tomlinson. Back then he impressed me with both his energy and his insight. He was (I imagine he still is as he has not died) a polite man but an incisive one, making effective use of the historical record to challenge lazy or politically-motivated interpretations that seek to twist the history to a particular purpose. In this book, he occasionally sets himself up against his bête noire, Corelli Barnett, but does not allow that disagreement to distort the clear cases he is making.

This was a sensible book to read after 'New Jerusalems' (1985) by Elizabeth Durbin which I read in March: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2026/03/the-books-i-read-in-march.html  Durbin looked at all the intellectual and policy debates which went on among liberal and Labour circles in the 1920s and 1930s on handling the economy. Tomlinson then explores how these were put into action when people like Dalton and Cripps that Durbin discussed, became policy shapers/makers in the post-war Labour governments.

Economic history is a complex field, but what makes this book particularly accessible to the general reader is how Tomlinson has broken it into thematic sections and then sub-divided these into particular issues to explore. Thus, there is a sub-section on the challenges of 1947 and one exploring whether the Welfare State was unaffordable. Thus, while Tomlinson tells a familiar story of great ambitions being hampered by the disrupted post-war global economy, forceful resistance from bigwigs in industry, banking and finance, demands for a world role and to rearm, he brings a great deal of insight. He also shows how too often those who sought to baulk against trends such as maintaining the empire or developing the industrial economy, get overlooked. As they did not succeed this does not mean that the governments should not be dismissed as not engaging at all with these topics as so often appears to be the case in general histories of the period. Topics such as the nature of the working class, the attitude to women especially in the workforce, technical education and the balances in use of steel and concrete are well told and good reminders to the reader.

While the sub-section approach could appear to lead to repetition, for the large part Tomlinson avoids that signposting backwards and forwards through the book. This means it is very usable by scholars or students who wish to engage with a particular aspect rather than wading through lots of text to find it as can be the case with the more narrative, less analytical approach used in many books embracing these topics in that period. Thus, overall, I do recommend this book even 31 years on, for anyone interested in looking at the critical period of British socio-economic history that established so much of what has persisted and what has proven unattainable in the decades since. The debates of 1945-51 remain very much alive in the current political scene. Hopefully, with the Thatcherite spin which was forced on too much commentary on this period at least a little faded, a more acute perspective can be taken on the roots of so much in contemporary UK.

'Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity, Opposition and Racism in Everyday Life' by Detlev J.K. Peukert; translated by Richard Deveson

While regular readers of this blog will know that due to my degree studies I have read quite a lot on Nazi Germany, this book that I have had for many years does stand out. It provided insights into German society during the regime that I have never seen mentioned before, for example, the combing out of working class districts by the authorities in the early months of 1933. Its analysis is very crisp and asks sensible questions throughout showing how complicated the compliance and resistance to Nazism was within individuals, rather than most people simply being 'for' or 'against', and how public compliance might conceal private opposition. 

Another interesting aspect is how, while pushing against the concept of a German Sonderweg ['special way'] he does highlight how the Nazis were able to build on attitudes which had been commonplace in the 19th and earlier 20th centuries and in addition, how these then fed into so much that happened in the German societies after 1945. Peukert died aged only 39 and I have a sense if he had lived he would have produced an excellent book on those continuities which would have put Dahrendorf with his contorted, directive opinions back in his place.

Peukert was a particular specialist on the Nazi impact on youth and this is naturally a strong element of the book. However, he also does very well when looking at other sub-groups within German society, e.g. women, the working classes, gypsies/Roma and indeed the different tiers of the middle classes who provided so much 'fuel' not simply in terms of votes, but also assumptions, that went into the Nazi outlook and behaviour.

Overall, even if you have read lots of books on Nazi Germany, I heartily recommend this one. I feel few will not find something new in terms of its perspectives and even if you do not, the well-focused, brisk writing, backed up by effective use of personal accounts and official reports both from the regime and its opponents, make this a very engaging, fascinating book.

The Books I Read In April

 Fiction

'Rounding the Mark' by Andrea Camilleri

This, the seventh book in the series, is quite a gritty one. Montalbano actually swims into the corpse he then ends up investigating. The victim had been tortured and it transpires they are not alone. Refugees and economic migrants coming into Sicily was as hot a topic back when the novel was written in 2003 as now. Trying to help a boy who is among those brought ashore backfires terribly and further exposes a people trafficking gang making use of illegally built luxury houses. The novel almost then morphs into being like a James Bond novel with the inspector invading one of these homes from the sea where he encounters he base of the activity and where the corpse he found was tortured in an outré way. Fortunately, unlike in all those numerous 'Dad adventure hero' stories, his age, now in his early 50s tells and while he succeeds in uncovering the criminals he pays a high physical price.

Aside from these aspects there are all the usual elements of the inspector eating a wide array of regional seafood dishes, having strange interactions with his staff and an ambivalent relationship with his sometime informant, the Swedish former racing driver, Ingrid Sjöström while his actual girlfriend remains hundreds of miles away and Montalbano remains ambivalent about marrying her, despite their advancing ages. While there are dark elements in many of these stories, this one perhaps is the darkest yet. The action scenes at the end jar a little but at least Camilleri does not portray his protagonist who eats too much, smokes too much and probably drinks too much, as being superhuman, even if he has the recklessness of a much younger man.

'Circumpolar!' by Richard A. Lupoff

While Lupoff wrote lots of books called 'What If?' they turn out to be him simply moaning about books that should have received more prominence in the science fiction awards of the 1950s. This one, though, is an extreme alternate history book. Not only has human history played out differently, so the First World War started in 1912 and ran for only one year, leading to the abdication of the Kaiser and the killing of the Tsar but the continuation of their imperial regimes. The greatest difference is that the Earth is a disc. This book was published in 1984, though the first of Terry Pratchett's novels featuring a disc world (rather than Discworld) was 'Strata' and came out in 1981. Lupoff's disc is different and owes more to the Flat Earth models promoted online today, i.e. the rim of the world is surrounded by ice rather than water tumbling off into space as it does in Pratchett's model. The world is laid out rather the way it is pictured in the symbol for the United Nations, but there is also an axis at the North Pole, which actually goes through the planet to the other side.

The premise of the novel is that in 1925 two teams set out to win a prize by flying to the flip side of the world. There is an American team of Amelia Earhart, Charles Lindbergh and Howard Hughes who go over the ice wall south of South America and competing against them is a German-Russian team of Princess Irina Lvova (daughter of Georgy Lvov, Regent for Tsar Alexei due to his haemophilia), Rittmeister [Cavalry Captain] Manfred Freiherr [Baron] von Richthofen (the 'Red Baron' of our world) and his younger brother Lothar von Richthofen who in our world became baron on his brother's death in 1918 but in this alternative is not but has risen to the rank of Rittmeister instead. They aim to fly through the access hole and so emerge at the northern pole of the flip side.

Some of the criticism of this book you will find online is rather peculiar with complaints about the swearing, sexual innuendo (which is mild even at its strongest - clearly a reviewer very far from the spicy romantasy genre which is currently so popular) and disparaging of Manfred von Richthofen. I know some people dislike parallelism in alternate history, i.e. the inclusion of people from our world in very different circumstances where there is a likelihood they would not have been born, but when you are going for an extreme alternative as here, it is useful to have some familiar points of reference for the reader. The action moves between the two groups and the challenges they face are handled well. The German-Russian team encounter a Viking like civilisation and the Americans a kind of pre-Columban American civilisation, both lots have advanced technology and the visitors from our side are drawn into local conflicts.

The geography of the flip side is very different to our side with lots of islands of varying sizes rather than large continents. Some of the wildlife is also very alien, though some of it appears to be the basis for monsters that feature in legends of our world. Generally if you do not subscribe to the criticisms noted above, this is handled pretty well. Some sections jar as when Lvova goes off with a wizard to his castle in a swamp and there is some creature which appears a threat and the Americans also turn up there. You feel Lupoff lost track of what was going on there. Lvova is not an ideal person to have had along anyway, unlike Earhart, she is highly superstitious and puts down a lot of what she sees to demons. She lacks technical skill beyond being able to wield a rifle. In contrast, Earhart is well represented and uses her abilities to good use. The conspiracy of the support team for the German-Russian effort leads to a tense conclusion and the inclusion of Eugene Bullard a pioneering black US pilot.

Despite its flaws and losing its way at times, the novel is interesting both for the alternatives it suggests, but also for capturing the tension of the 'pulp' story tone and the aviation achievements, of the time, notably the round-the-world voyage of the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin in 1929 which was sponsored by the US media mogul William Randolph Hearst.

'Stamboul Train' by Graham Greene

I have been passed a lot of Graham Greene novels by my father so they will feature quite a lot in the coming months, probably years given the number. This book published in 1932 and was made into a movie in 1934. It features characters on board the Orient Express right from Ostend and while it rather grinds to a halt at Yugoslavia it does finish off in Istanbul following the outcome for some of the characters. While there are tensions and the uncovering of secrets, this is far from a glamorous portrayal of the train service even less so than Agatha Christie's 'Murder on the Orient Express' (1934). Greene is much more interested in his small cast of characters and their interlocking connections.

At times the book has a really seedy feel to it. One of the characters we follow is an Austrian burglar, Josef Grünlich who seduces a lodger in order to gain access to a wealthy man's safe which ends in a murder. He gets swept up in the arrest of Dr. Czinner, a Yugoslav revolutionary who is returning from exile in Britain to take part in an uprising in his home country. He is not only identified by the alcoholic journalist, British but a correspondent in Köln, Mabel Warren who tries to get an exclusive story with him and ends up following the train in a car after her money is stolen by Grünlich.

Warren is a lesbian travelling with her current partner Janet Pardoe who from the story seems to be bisexual. Reaching Istanbul she begins to transfer her affections to the Jewish businessman in the currant business Carleton Myatt, who has also travelled on the same train. Pardoe is the daughter of Stein a business rival/partner of Myatt's. On the journey, in contrast, Myatt has slept with Coral Musker, a chorus line dancer heading to Istanbul for a job who he feels sorry for. However, she is taken off the train with Czinner and Grünlich by Yugoslav authorities only to be rescued by Warren who lines her up to be Pardoe's replacement, if she survives the ordeals she suffered in Yugoslavia. There is also a successful cockney author, Quin Savory.

Written this way it does rather sound like a soap opera. I guess that the interactions between the various characters might seem forced. They are all well drawn and that combined with the description of the various locales across Germany, Austria and into Yugoslavia and Turkey are probably what gained Greene credit for the novel. People note he refers to Istanbul as Constantinople. Its name had only been changed in 1930. Stamboul remained a district of the city. What is striking is how explicit it is in having a lesbian and a bixsexual character. I suppose people could read past the references but surely a woman talking about another woman being in her flat each morning in pyjamas and mixing drinks, would have been misintepreted by few. The challenges Myatt faces as a Jew and the concerns this brings in him and motivations for acts he does, reminds us that him travelling in Europe at the time would have faced various risks, let alone the simple prejudice. That, however, simply adds to the rather seedy tone of the book.

Ultimately the book is about perceptions and people manipulating others through various means. It is intellectually engaging but I could not really get over how bleak it ultimately feels.

'Serpents in Eden' ed. by Martin Edwards

This is a collection of crime short stories in the British Library Classic Crime series, brought together by Martin Edwards who often writes the little essays at the start of the books and is the editor for a number of these collections. This one features stories set in the English countryside. They vary in when they were published and in quality, but this is a nice read with some interesting stories. 

Perhaps the best comes, unsurprisingly from Arthur Conan Doyle. As the title suggests 'The Black Doctor' is about the murder of a doctor who is black. He practices in a small Lancashire village in the 1870s and is engaged to the squire's daughter. The fact that Conan Doyle could feature this character, and while it might be seen as unusual, it is not seen as impossible, is something to shove in the front of those very vocal people online who claim there were no black people in Britain before 1948 and TV programmes are simply being 'woke' to show them. As might be expected from a short story the murder of the doctor is not overly complex, but the timing of when he was seen and where is well handled with a nice twist that perhaps a modern audience might foresee, but overall it is done smoothly.

The Irish crime writer, Matthias McDonnell Bodkin is probably completely forgotten now, despite writing a couple of popular series in the 1890s and into the early 20th Century. The story here, 'Murder by Proxy' features one of his enduring characters Paul Beck who collaborates closely with the police and is one of those with an air of authority that people hurry to aid him. The shooting of of a wealthy man is shot dead in his Dorset manor house and it seems clear who the culprit has been, his nephew. However, though close questioning and observation, Beck is able to overturn the assumptions and prove the identity of the murderer. It is not a locked-room mystery, but having an obvious suspect and overturning that is a nice approach and it is done in a credible way.

G.K. Chesterton is best known for his Father Brown detective stories, but 'The Fad of the Fisherman' but features another now far lesser known detective, Horne Fisher, who in this story mixes with members of the Cabinet at a manor house in the West Country of England. The conceit is that the host is obsessed with fishing and spends his entire day fishing away on a small island in a river running through his land. This does seem a bit contrived but enables a time-shift mystery that the detective works out from the evidence. There is a red herring of a mysterious man in the district, but the killer is actually from among the minister's colleagues. Not as good as it could have been but some lovely portrayals of place.

E.C. Bentley was a friend of Chesterton and followed him as head of the Detection Club of authors, but had only brief success with his crime novels. This one. 'The Genuine Tabard' is actually a question of fraud rather than murder, set in Gloucestershire. How the fraudsters abuse a vicar's generosity to set up convincing confidence tricks is well worked out and credible. This did remind me a little of one of Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected and I am sure fraudulent antiques sales in rural areas remain common even today. You only have to watch 'Bargain Hunt' (2000- ) to see some of them in action. The story is crisp and is largely a revelation of what has been going on.

Herbert Jenkins was a successful publisher as well as an author, though he died in 1923 before many of the novels of the 'Golden Era' were written. 'The Gylston Slander' set in North-West Hampshire features his detective Malcolm Sage who has a successful detection agency and travels to Gylston to deal with poison pen letters which as Edwards notes in his introduction, was a trope of stories of the time. The victim in this case is the vicar's daughter accused of having a tentative affair with a married man. While it is an archetypal story of the dynamics of an English rural village of the era in fact the solution comes from technical details such as analysis of papers and handwriting. Thus, it comes off nicely as a balance between these two facets, though these days the crime itself would probably not be taken as gravely as in back then, unless we see it rather like a modern stalking case.

Henry Christopher Bailey, Edwards tells us, largely wrote short stories rather than novels. 'The Long Barrow' by is centred around an archaeological dig of a Stone Age barrow in Dorset though carried only by an elderly academic and his assistant. Consequently it rememinded me a bit of 'The Dig' (novel 2007; movie 2021) and the 1914 'Treasure'/'Return' section of 'Ulverton' (1992). The detective is a doctor who advises the police, Reggie Fortune. He is called in to investigate threats against the diggers and having dismissed these uncovers a greater conspiracy which involves murder. Edwards observes that Bailey's character was seen as morally old-fashioned so lost popularity in the post-1945 period. However, this is a neat story that modern readers might foresee, though it is played out well and with a good portrayal of the countryside in which it is set, a uniting factor of the stories in this collection.

Richard Austin Freeman apparently wrote stories1907-42.featuring what we would term these days a forensic scientist, Dr. John Thorndyke. 'The Naturalist at Law' sees Thorndyke, through analysis of the flora and forna of two English streams, prove that a civil servant did not drown himself in a Buckinghamshire stream but died at one in Essex. This combined with other clues leads him to the murderers. The focus is on the piece-by-piece analysis of water samples and other physical clues. Thorndyke, initially working for the man's insurers does not follow through the case to trial as he has done his part. I think we tend to think of things like 'Silent Witness' (1996- ) and 'CSI: Crime Scene Investigation' (2001-2015) and its spin-offs, as being modern phenomenon rather than something with a long history.

Unfortunately the entry by Margery Allingham, of the Albert Campion stories, 'A Proper Mystery' is rather silly, seeing the quick resolution of sabotage at an Essex country fair.

Anthony Berkley is one of the authors whose novels in the British Library series I have already read: 

https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-books-i-read-in-march.html

https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/08/the-books-i-read-in-august.html

https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/09/the-books-i-read-in-september.html

Like those novels, his story here, 'Direct Evidence' again featuring his novelist amateur detective Roger Sheringham, subverts expectations. It appears incontrovertable given the number of witnesses that Jimmy Meadows, brother of a tennis champion, shot dead his married lover Mona Greyling in Dorset. Sheringham travels down from London, in part suspicious due to the very public, noisy murder and step by step unravels what has actually occurred. Again, perhaps a modern reader will get to the solution quicker than one of the time, but as with those novels, it is well handled and is a pleasure to see the assumptions overturned by careful detection.

'Inquest' by Leonora Wodehouse - P.G. Wodehouse's step-daughter sees the poisoning of a rich elderly man John Hentish, in Gloucestershire with an overdose. So far, so standard. The real twist is the morality of the story and the motive of the killer which rather subverts the usual expectations of murders for inheritance. I think even today - the author died in 1944, aged 39 - it would draw attention, and likely complaints, if it was dramatised. However, it is nicely refreshing and as Edwards notes it is a shame she died pretty young and was unable to produce more stories. You can imagine her being a rival to Patricia Highsmith.

Ethel Lina White is probably best known for 'The Lady Vanishes' movies based on her novel, 'The Wheel Spins' (1936): https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2012/01/books-i-read-in-2011.html 'The Scarecrow' is a neat psychological mystery of a young woman, Kay, in a rural house being threatened by an escaped criminal who had attacked her three years earlier. The isolated farm house in stormy weather and the growing anxiety are well handled. The detection of the criminal, Waring, however, is very much of its era and would not have been possible today. However, very taut and well executed, reminded me, perhaps unsurprisingly of Daphne Du Maurier's 'The Birds' (1952): https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2025/03/the-books-i-read-in-march.html

The next story is by Leo Bruce [Rupert Croft-Cooke] the pseudonym Croft-Cooke, a mainstream author used for his crime novels. 'Clue in the Mustard' at times feels a little like a spoof. The protagonist is Sergeant Beef and there are characters like Ripton Crackliss. The story is set in 'one of the home counties'. The murder is effectively by overheating the victim. Beef is interesting as he is working class and one of his prime hobbies is gardening which actually helps him in this case. It is a shame this did not have a more serious tone or that he selected a bit less ridiculous names, a Beef resolving a case involving mustard, is unnecessary.

The final story is 'Our Pageant' by Gladys Mitchell best known for Mrs.Bradley novels published 1929-1984 and dramatised in 1998-2000 starring Diana Rigg in the title role. It is a short short story which sees a murder during a Morris dance at said pageant - the location of which, somewhere in England, we do not learn. The motive might seem a bit pathetic but how the identity of the killer is worked out is deftly done. While brief it is satisfying enough.

'The Ninth Rain' by Jen Williams

One of my businesses mean I always have a lot of fantasy novels in stock, though I realised that I was not reading any of them and buying different ones for my own consumption. Last month with 'Clockwork Prince' (2011) I decided to start borrowing some off my sale shelves to read. This is the second. I knew nothing about it before starting it. It is the first in a trilogy and while I found hints of Michael Moorcock and Anne McCaffrey it is a fresh approach to a fantasy story.

It is set on the continent of Sarn. Most inhabitants are humans, though there are also a dwindling number of Eborans, who are very tall, pale spindly people with various abilities. Living in the city of Ebora they were sustained to have lives of centuries by Ygseril a tree which issued a sap. However Sarn is periodically attacked by aliens in very large spaceships known as behemoths. One abandoned one has become a moon of the planet. From these come various horrific creatures which hollow out people to make into drones and others which cover the landscape in an impenetrable deep varnish. Their presence also contaminates the land leading to mutated plant life. Eight times they have been defeated by the 'rain' issuing from Ygseril which drops vast war beasts to fight back. After the eighth rain Ygseril died and the Eborans were compelled to to sustain themselves on human blood though this in turn brought the bloody flux which has been slowly killing them off as well as leading to animosity with the human population.

An Eboran who breaks out from the city is Tormalin. He ends up working for Lady Vincenza 'Vintage' de Grazon, a middle aged adventurer from a farm harvesting mutated grapes, who is keen to understand all about the invaders through exploring the remains they have left behind. These are typically haunted by parasite spirits, highly dangerous part spectral part physical monsters. The two encounter Noon, a fell witch who has escaped from the horrific prison of The Winnowery, where those who show the power of being able to turn energy they drain from others into a powerful green fire are kept imprisoned and exploited to create a rare drug and metals. The novel follows the trio as they explore various sites of behemoth crashes and discover more about their opponents, while dodging various monsters and those sent to try to recapture Noon. There is a lot of action including on a train powered by fire created by witches. Ultimately it comes back to Ebora, where Tormalin's sister, Hestillion has remained, reaching mentally into Ygseril to try to revive it, with unexpected consequences.

The world building is commended and while there are some things you might expect, this is a long way from a Tolkienesque fantasy world. The characters are well drawn and believable. The actions keeps up a good pace and while you expect the trio to survive, you do see nasty outcomes for others. I am not going to rush out and buy the next book in the series, but if you are looking for an interesting fantasy series you can do much worse than this one.

'Flashman on the March' by George MacDonald Fraser

This is the twelfth and final Flashman novel, set in 1867-68. MacDonald Fraser has been very capable at finding out forgotten campaigns of the 19th Century to send his protagonist into as well as the more famous one. This features a genuine British military mission deep into Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) to reclaim British prisoners from the so-called Emperor Theodore of Abyssinia, a mad warlord who had seized and held officials sent to him. Flashman as is typical is sent into this situation, initially to try to recruit another tribe to help in besieging Theodore's fortress of Magdala. The country is in civil war between various Christian (people forget that the Coptic Church is the oldest continuous Christian denomination and it sent black crusaders to fight for the Holy Land) and Muslim factions and rivals for various local thrones.

Of course, Flashman has sex with any woman who is willing that he encounters. For much of the time, he travels with skilled guide Uliba-Wark but the two fall out. Flashman ends up a prisoner of Theodore and witnesses his very erratic behaviour and his cruelty in arbitrarily killing hundreds of people. Due to his character flaws, the British were able to capture his mountain fortress and Theodore took his own life.

There is less torture of Flashman than in the other novels though he is dangled over a great height with a mechanism which could drop him in an instant and we see that fate happen to others. I think to some degree this is because Theodore's tortures and killing in themselves are horrifying. Not since 'Flashman's Lady' (1977) with Queen Ranavalona I of Madgascar carrying out torture en masse do I think we have seen it at such scale.

Anyway, even though we know Flashman is going to live (the books open with his biography showing he 'lived' to 1915) the action is handled well. The portrayal of the terrain of Ethiopia is really interesting let alone all the historical details over this very expensive and now overlooked expedition which had a surprisingly low mortality rate and did not have the British take over the country. Anyway, this means, finally, after 38 years, I have now read all the Flashman novels.

Non-Fiction

'Cruel Crossing' by Edward Stourton

This is an eclectic and at times highly erratic book. Amongst the rambling narrative, however, are important historical details. The book which was tied into a BBC Radio 4 programme looks at the routes taken by people escaping from wartime France across the Pyrenees. Throughout, periodically, Stourton outlines a memorial walk he took along one of these routes. In between he rather randomly mixes in stories from individuals who were aided to escape and those who, or whose families, helped those escapees. He also puts in lots of various bits of wartime history but not in a particulary structured way.

In Britain the escape lines drew particular attention with the broadcasting of the drama series 'Secret Army' (1978-79) which featured a line running from Belgium to Spain, largely for aiding downed Allied airmen to return to Britain. Stourton is scathing of the comedy series that spoofed quite closely that drama, ''Allo, 'Allo' (1982-92) but makes no mention of the earlier, well informed series that shapes many people's perceptions even now of the escape lines. 

While featuring downed airmen and other military personnel, often drawing on their memoirs, Stourton does do a good job of showing they were not the only ones who were got away via these routes and he points to Jews and political dissidents from Europe, then later Frenchmen being compelled to labour in Germany. Another important thing is him highlighting the concentration camps run by the French government before the war broke out largely to hold Republicans fleeing Spain following Franco's victory in the civil war in April 1939 that were then put to use by the Germans when they took over France. There are vignettes of things such as the Red Cross children's home at Château de la Hille and the Central Asian troops sent into the region near the end of the war.

The book naturally has stories of tragedy and betrayal as well of successful escapes. Perhaps the rambling style rather blunts the impact of these horrific stories which may make it readable. The penultimate section is a rather extensive but inconclusive reflection on any sense of guilt or apologism in post-war French society, that a little jars. Then it is back to the travelogue of following the route.

I know it can be hard to make a book from a broadcast series. In addition, Stourton almost had an embarrassment of material though much of it is disconnected, only really in the same vicinity to each other due to the geographical connection. Still, if you have the patience to pick among the disparate pieces there are not simply moving and at times uplifting stories, but also important pieces of history that are not often overlooked.

'Went the Day Well?' Movie (1942)

Like me your probable response to this question on most days is 'no'. However, it gives me an opportunity to talk about another old favourite film, partly as a remedy to all the car and housing problems.


'Went the Day Well?' (1942) (known as 'Forty-Eight Hours' in the USA) was unique among wartime films. It was directed by Alberto Cavalcanti, his first film for the Ealing Studios, based loosely on a short story by the great author, Graham Greene, 'The Lieutenant Died Last' (an unfortunately uninspired title). It is set in a small rural English village called Bramley End, insignificant except that it is near an important communications tower. The film was made rather too late as by 1942 the threat of German invasion of Britain was clearly over, the threat had been genuine through the Summer of 1940 and even into 1941, but was effectively over following the German invasion of the USSR in June 1941 and the outbreak of war between the USA and Germany in December 1941. The movie is sometimes portrayed as a simplistic film of good vs. evil, but as one would expect from something coming initially from Greene who also contributed to the screenplay, it is a lot subtler than that, something many people overlook. Do not read on until you have seen the movie as I give away a lot of the twists.


Uniquely for a wartime movie, the story starts after the war is over, it assumed that Britain has been victorious and an old man shows the audience a war memorial in Bramley End for 40 dead German troops and then takes us back to the incident that led to this. Portraying the war as over in this way was not done in any other film of the time, so this is one unique point. The story we are shown is that German paratroopers land in rural England and working with a local agent, the squire, Oliver Wileford aim to destroy a local communications tower ahead of the general German invasion. The film is filled with stereotypes of English rural life from the poacher to the post mistress to refugee children from London to local farmers and a sailor home on leave, yet a key figure of the village, the main landowner is shown as a traitor. Such division within the community was again not usually portrayed in this way. The German troops kill the local Home Guard platoon and begin to move on the communications tower which is vital to knock out to help the following German forces.


Bit-by-bit people in the village begin to work out something is going on. Most of the German speak perfect English and appear to be a British army unit, but the clever locals work it out. Like many villages across Europe, the villagers are locked up in the church and have to engineer and escape and fight back against the invaders. There are typical wartime scenes indicating that sacrifice can save the community. The poacher along with a London refugee scallywag tries to get a message through to neighbouring village but is shot, the boy gets through ultimately bringing home, showing that he can be redeemed by working for the good of the community. What is striking though is the level of violence and much of it by women, in itself rare for the time. Daisy at the post office, when she realises it is a German rather than an British soldier in her kitchen throws pepper in his eyes and puts a hatchet in his head, then is bayoneted by another soldier. The two Land Girls (women drafted to work on farms - one acted by Thora Hird, the first role in her decade-spanning career) barricaded in the manor house keep score of all the Germans they shoot dead and notably the uptight middle class Nora shoots Oliver who she has had a close relationship with, when she finds out he is a traitor. Mrs. Frazer the local busybody and organiser of housing the refugees grabs a live handgrenade thrown into the big house and runs into another room with it to save the children. None of it is a spot on the violence in the movies today, but it was unusual to have that level of personal violence. Ultimately the Germans' plan is thwarted by the arrival of regular British troops, but a lot of the defence of the village is down to the locals, especially the women.


The story was reused in 'The Eagle Has Landed' (a book by Jack Higgins in 1975 and a movie starring Michael Caine, Donald Sutherland, Jenny Agutter and Larry Hagman in 1976). This time the plot is to assassinate Winston Churchill whilst he is staying in the village of Studley Constable (the village names in both films are typical of ones you find in rural England) with the force led by Oberst Kurt Steiner (Caine) who is being punished for defying the SS on the Eastern Front. Sutherland is an IRA man sympathetic to the Nazis, Liam Devlin, put in place to help, and has a sort of romance with Agutter's character, Molly Prior. As in 'Went the Day Well?' there is a local traitor, a South African woman Joanna Grey (South Africa was supposedly allied to the UK, being part of the British Empire, but many South Africans were sympathetic to Germany) who wants to punish the British for what was done to her family in the British concentration camps during the Boer War. Though ultimately Grey only kills the silly US Colonel Pitt (Hagman). It is interesting that through Devlin and Grey and having Steiner seem very human, there is criticism as much of the UK's history as of Germany's.


What this 'remake' shows, is that the basis of a good story is enduring and that war reduced down to a local level engages with more people than it does on the grand scale (see 'Saving Private Ryan' for another example of this). Even by the 1960s real war stories had been exhausted so the more fantastical ones were being explored (see 'The Guns of Navarone' (1961), 'The Dirty Dozen' (1967) and 'Where Eagles Dare' (1968) in particular). 'Went the Day Well?' was not a success at the time, but its story and characters have endured and it is probably better loved today than in 1942. Well worth watching if you get the chance.