Books I Read In July

Fiction

'Friends in High Places' by Donna Leon

Perhaps it is because she is an American that Leon has an interest in issues around social class. Her protagonist, Guido Brunetti is the son-in-law of a Venetian count. Social standing and protecting it is an element of a number of her books, but becomes very apparent here. By this stage in the series, this is the ninth book, Leon had become very adept at starting with disparate threads, in this case informing us of the rules around construction in the restricted space of Venice and the associated corruption. However, with a bit of a jolt we then find how Brunetti's problems with his own apartment connect into murder. It comes together well and it is a little refreshing to have a different kind of motive which while it appears initially to be more Italian corruption, is one we can believe motivates people even more now twenty years after this book was published. I have the tenth book to read and then some other random ones from the series I have picked up from charity shops. However, I must say, despite sometimes the narrative seeming to jump a little or spend too long on unimportant aspects, these are easy to read crime dramas which come up with often refreshing solutions.

'Kaleidoscope' by Harry Turtledove

This is another collection of Turtledove's short stories, published in 1990 with stories dating back to 1984, it is older than 'Counting Up, Counting Down' which I read in December: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2019/12/books-i-read-in-december.html  'And So to Bed' features an alternate world where earlier versions of humans co-exist with homo sapiens and have found refuge on North America which, as the story is set in 1661, is being opened up by Europeans. The story is told from the perspective of Samuel Pepys and shows how the existence of these other versions of humans allow him to propose evolution some three hundred years earlier. 'Bluff' is an interesting science fiction story set on a planet where humans arrive to find a humanoid species which sees their inner thoughts as being the voice of their gods. This is a fascinating premise and is handled well. It is a good reminder to those writing science fiction that alienness is not simply physical. 'A Difficult Undertaking' is a straightforward story of a siege in Turtledove's Videssos setting, a kind of Byzantine Empire and is pretty entertaining. '

The Weather's Fine' takes an interesting premise that time is like weather and so different parts of North America on different days can be in different 20th Century decades. The protagonist had a good relationship with his girlfriend in the 1960s but not in the 1970s so it is about how they work around this. Time conditioning can keep a building at a certain decade. I think more could have been done with this story and it was a bit depressing that the couple could not work through their issues or separate properly but were condemned to live in fixed behaviours dependent on the decade they were in. 'Crybaby' is a horrible story, a typical demonic child one which really would fit better in a 'Tales of the Unexpected' setting than here. Apparently, Turtledove's wife will not read this story and I can understand why.

'Hindsight' set in the 1950s about a science fiction author who is writing stories before the authors have managed to complete them and is revealed to be a time traveller who is trying to steer the USA down better paths than it followed in our 1960s and 1970s. The story is well handled, not just in terms of the technology, but the different behaviour of someone from the 1980s to those from thirty years' earlier. The blurred line between science fiction and science writing is well done too. A nice story all round. 'Gentlemen of the Shade' is another good one. Turtledove is always sharp when he brings a new spin on vampires as can be seen in his 'Under St. Peters' which is available to read free online now. In this story a club of vampires in late Victorian London hunt down Jack the Ripper who is one of their kind. It is well handled in terms of practicalities and in terms of the atmosphere of the time and place.

'The Boring Beast' is a silly spoof fantasy story which annoyed me. 'The Road Not Taken' is an interesting exercise in looking at how a species might acquire some technology that we see as hyper-advanced but lack technologies that we see as mundane. The encounter with alien invaders equipped for war as if it was the 17th Century is interesting and again reminds writers not to go down easy or lazy paths when portraying alien civilisations. 'The Castle of the Sparrowhawk' is a kind of fairy tale/parable about a challenge in a Middle Eastern land, which did not appeal to me; 'The Summer Garden' is very similar with the protagonist paying a bitter price for their 'victory'. There is a lot less sex in this book than in 'Counting Up, Counting Down' but 'The Girl Who Took Lessons' - it is actually a woman not a girl - is sordid and feels more like a 'joke' a man would tell in a bar. It is a pity it was included in this collection.

'The Last Article' is the other main alternate history story, featuring the German invasion of India in the 1940s, having defeated the British, and coming up against the passive resistance of Gandhi and Nehru. It might be controversial these days to paint British colonial rule as any better than Nazi hegemony, but Turtledove cleverly does highlight the differences and why that would enable the Nazis to defeat Gandhi when the British authorities failed to do so.

Overall an interesting collection with some great highlights. Importantly I would recommend it to science fiction writers to remind them where you can go when portraying aliens similar but different to us.

'Harlequin' by Bernard Cornwell

This is the first in a trilogy set during the early phases of the Hundred Years' War in the 14th Century. It follows an English archer, Thomas of Hookton from fighting a raid by the French on his home village on the south coast of England through battles in Brittany and Normandy coming to a climax at the Battle of Crécy in 1346. As you would expect with Cornwell the portrayal of life at the time and the battles are rendered very well. Unlike some historical authors who cover wars, Cornwell is also good at including a range of interesting female characters with distinct motives. I am concerned though that one who becomes Thomas's 'wife' towards the end of the book is clearly stated to be 15. He might argue it was seen as appropriate at the time but it is uncomfortable to see as a modern reader.

There is a lot of intrigue with lots of people out to kill Thomas, though he also makes friends among the opposite side. This is a strength of Cornwell's writing in that while combat plays an important part he does not skimp on characterisations which make his books that much richer. The sub-plot about seeking the Lance of St. George, let alone the Holy Grail, seems unnecessary and I can only think he included this either as a McGuffin or because publishers asked for it. I have the other two books in the trilogy and am looking forward to seeing what the characters do next.

'Dead Man's Land' by Robert Ryan

This novel features Conan Doyle's Dr. Watson solving a series of murders on and behind the frontline of British forces in Belgium during the First World War. Ryan has done meticulous research but unfortunately at times, especially in the early parts of the book, he tends to 'info dump', given immense detail about the hierarchy of treatment of the wounded rather than revealing it to us. The date when the novel is set is difficult to pin down. The book starts with Watson being commissioned as a major in October 1914, but as the book progresses, with reference to the Gallipoli Campaign (February 1915 - January 1916) and Winston Churchill serving as a lieutenant colonel on the Western Front (November 1915 - May 1916) as well as references to particular gases and aircraft, it is not clear when the action is happening. Given the involvement of Churchill and particular weaponry, notably poison gas, this is important and this uncertainty was an irritant as I was reading.

At times the book feels fragmented, in part because of the serial killing in different parts of the front. Added to that Sherlock Holmes makes odd appearances back in England and these elements are not integrated well into the story. They make him appear even more of a deus ex machina that would be the case anyway. The same can be said for the German sniper. We read about his attempts to assassinate Churchill and his various roles. However, he is not really a full part of the story and his role in the denouement could easily have been filled by an unknown character. The sections covering these two characters feel bolted on. Overall, however, the book improves as it goes on and Ryan provides a good motive for the killings fitting with the time. It could have been a much stronger book if the structure was streamlined and in other places what was happening, when, was made more explicit. The detail of the medical provision, especially the conveyor belt for the wounded, was fascinating especially at times when Ryan shows these things rather than lectures us on them.

'The Long Mars' by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter

There is a comment on the cover of this book from a reviewer at 'SFX' magazine saying '"Pratchett and Baxter ... skipping along their quantum string like giddy schoolboys ...'" That sums up the problem with not just this book but its predecessors http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2020/05/books-i-read-in-may.html and http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2020/06/books-i-read-in-june.html  Pratchett and Baxter seem to have a thousand ideas for alternate versions of worlds and as more of the characters travel into many tens of millions of variants away from our Earth, they get to look at many of them. However, in large part it is like flicking through a catalogue and we only see them briefly. The action when it happens is like a number of vignettes which are only distantly connected to each other. In fact with three characters exploring alternate versions of Mars, even less exciting as most versions are desolate deserts, there is a real detachment between the returning characters. 

As in The Long War when we seem to be building to an important climax, the authors turn away. We just hear reports of them not finding the team they left on an Earth which is a moon of a larger planet; we see nothing of them deciding to bring The Next - a group of arrogant super-humans back to our Earth and minimal detail of how imprisoned Next are got out and get away to some unknown version of Earth. It is as if the most gripping elements of the story have been cut out so as not to distract from the beauty of all the geological, even astronomical variants, the authors could think up. I think they would have done better to have anthologies of short stories in different contexts rather than piling them all into what is supposed to be a single novel.

The other problem that continues from the previous books is how unsympathetic so many of the characters are. In this book smug Russians are added to smug Americans and smug Chinese. Then the Next come along and they are very smug humans who feel it is their right to enslave the 'dim-bulb' population which encompasses the rest of humanity. While it is good to have irritants and antagonists, when even the supposed 'heroes' are not people you could tolerate spending five minutes with because they would constantly patronise you, it is difficult for the reader to get a handle on the story. Again it is like flicking through the brochure or, even, someone else simply flicking through in your sight, expecting you to be invested in something that does nothing really to engage with you.

Non-Fiction

'A History of Modern France. Volume 2: 1799-1871' by Alfred Cobban

As I noted when reviewing Volume 1, for Cobban it seems that Louis XIV was the perfect leader of France and anyone else will struggle to come close to him in ability. I suppose that it is no surprise that a history written in the mid-20th Century focuses has a 'great man' history perspective. However, as Cobban judges so many of the country's leaders harshly, even ridiculing them at times, it really distorts what he is trying to cover. He views Napoleon Bonaparte as a Corsican bandit who could do nothing good for France. He sees Louis XVIII and Louis-Philippe as ineffectual, muddle-headed rulers. He gives a little to Napoleon III but then sees him as ineffective from quite an early period in his reign and as in fact utterly marginalised in the closing years of his rule. Cobban outlines all the political manoeuvring but seems impatient with it as if frustrated that no-one in France could appoint an effective king. 

This level of subjectivity and the repeated derogatory comments on the various rulers and politicians not only makes reading the book irritating, it weakens his accounts of the complex situations of what was happening in this period. The best parts of the book are when he (occasionally) steps away from the peak of the political system and looks at societal and economic aspects. With these he does reasonably well in showing the exceptionalism of France, why it did not modernise the way some neighbouring states did and its population stagnated through the 19th Century when others were growing sharply. Completing the book, I felt I had learnt little especially on the post-1815 period which tends to be neglected in general histories of Europe. Allowing Cobban to judge so much on the basis of his particular animosity to certain men, really undermined this book.

Books I Read In December

Fiction
'American Gods' by Neil Gaiman
I saw that they were televising a series of this book so I thought it might be an idea to read it. Despite being a long book not much happens. The story involves Shadow, an ex-convict who is employed by Odin to aid him in rallying other gods brought to the USA by settlers down the millennia. For much of the time Shadow lives in a small village by a lake when not being employed by Odin and encounters a range of interesting people as well as being bothered by his late wife who he inadvertently raised from the dead and who kills people who threaten him. There is an interesting concept that places and activities are imbued with belief and Gaiman features local attractions which become filled with power because people come to them. The basic concept overlaps with 'The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul' (1988) by Douglas Adams which was published 13 years earlier but relocating to dreary backwater towns in the USA gives Gaiman a chance to add the new twist of old gods against new gods of technology and other facets of contemporary society. While the plot drifts for far too long, there is a decent twist and above all, Gaiman writes interesting characters and portrays unexciting US settings well. Thus, despite the fantastical element there is a real lack of urgency about this book and it is, ironically, best read as a 'slice of life' novel. I cannot imagine this would make exciting watching unless you are a fan of Mike Leigh movies, but I see they are on to the third season of the TV series so I can only imagine they have long ago diverged from the novel.

'Now is the Time' by Melvyn Bragg
I once read an interview with Bragg in which he wished his novels were just a little more successful. He seems to get long listed for awards but very rarely wins. Having read this novel I can understand why. The novel is around the English Peasants' Revolt of 1381. Bragg shows it from various perspectives on both sides of the conflict and certainly you can learn a lot about what went on and who was involved. I particularly found the descriptions of London at the time very interesting. However, it is all written in an unsophisticated way with lots of telling rather than showing and somehow detached from the characters. Even when Wat Tyler's daughter is raped by London criminals released during the revolt, you do not feel the way you should about this. In many ways the book reminded me of novels by Henry Treece (1911-66) who wrote numerous historical novels for children. Thus, though there are points of interest, there is a lack of genuine drama in the novel and at the end you feel like you have read a lesson rather than a novel. Bragg should look to the work of Bernard Cornwell in how to add that dramatic element to scrupulously researched fiction.

'Aqua Alta' by Donna Leon
In this fifth book in the Guido Brunetti series, Leon returns to two characters from the first novel, 'Death at La Fenice' (1992), opera singer Flavia Petrelli and her female partner, archaeologist Brett Lynch. When Lynch is beaten up, Brunetti involves himself in the case which soon turns into one involving murder and faked archaeological artefacts. It is set against the backdrop of both the 'aqua alta', the flooding of Venice caused by high tides and heavy rain and the sense that those in privileged positions continue to get away with their crimes. This applies to Lynch as much as the antique collector. As noted with the previous novel, Leon appears to have got into her stride with these novels and they rise far about the first couple. The book is brisk, provides interesting details about both Venice and archaeology in China as well as setting the story in the amoral context of contemporary Italy that appears so attractive for crime novelists even those writing in English. I have five more of these novels to read. Leon continues churning them out and the 29th comes out in 2020.

'Counting Up, Counting Down' by Harry Turtledove
Around the time this book came out in 2002, I had been thinking of writing a short story about a man who travels back in time to try to improve his own life. Then I heard of the two stories at the start and end of this book, which in fact are the same story seen from the older and younger versions of the same man, Justin Kloster travelling from 2018 to 1999. The ending of these stories turns out was far more positive than the one I planned which would have ended up rather like 'The Butterfly Effect' (2004) movie. It brought home to me that especially if writing in a particular genre it is easy for authors to come up with similar stories of their own accord. The two stories are reasonable if a little frustrating. One interesting things are what Turtledove (originally writing this as a magazine story in the 1990s) got wrong about 2018, i.e. The Rolling Stones are still touring, 'South Park' is still very well known even by teenagers and the fad for body piercing has not waned in the slightest, in fact it has increased.

The rest of the stories in this collection are quite a mixed bag.  Despite what I have been told about my alternate history short story anthologies, there is demand for such collections. Not all of the stories are alternate history, there is some science fiction and fantasy too. There is far more sex than I had expected from reading other books by Turtledove and with religion this is a key theme through the collection. 'Vermin' about a Christian community struggling as settlers on an alien planet is well done and highlights the grave consequences of seeking comfort just for yourself or your community. Other science fiction ones are oddities, 'The Deconstruction Gang' about philosophers discussing breaking up a road, 'The Green Buffalo' about cowboys slipping through a rift in time to kill a triceratops for food and 'The Maltese Elephant', a pastiche of 'The Maltese Falcon' (novel 1930; movie 1941) are alright but not hugely engaging.

'Ils Ne Passeront Pas' conjures up the Verdun front in 1916 very well, but then, for no clear reason, throws creatures from the Biblical apocalypse at French and German soldiers, ultimately without much changing. This like 'In This Season' a magical realist story about a small number of Jews escaping Poland following the German occupation in 1939 with the aid of a golem, again has religious elements that I probably miss out on. 'After the Last Elf is Dead' is more fantastical, but equally grim, seeing a world where the evil Dark Brother has been victorious and showing the challenges even for his loyal staff which reminded me of Stalin's regime and has a very unsettling conclusion which, though, does show the likely outcome if evil does win in a fantasy setting.

Seemingly more light-hearted than those grim stories is 'Honeymouth', a fantasy story about a disreputable rider of a unicorn and while sex features in the other stories it is right at the front in this fantasy one as the title might suggest. 'Miss Manner's Guide to Greek Missology #1: Andromeda and Perseus' is interesting in reversing the roles in the stories, but I always find attempts at humour in these situations is laboured and dates poorly. 'Goddess for a Day' despite sounding like a story title set to primary school children is the best of the fantasy stories, showing the challenges of a woman employed to act as Athena, in an actual event which occurred in the 6th Century CE.

Two reasonable stories focused on religion are set in Turtledove's Videssos fantasy setting, similar to the Byzantine Empire on which he was a scholar. The first, 'The Decoy Duck' about a missionary to a nordic style land will remind readers of a very similar sub-plot in the TV series, 'Vikings' (2013-20) and given it was written long before that may have been an inspiration for it. The second, 'The Seventh Chapter' is unexciting, largely a procedural that primarily tells us more about the world Turtledove has created and religion within it.

Of the alternate histories, 'Must and Shall' set in 1942 but one in which the Union was far harsher on the Confederate States following the shooting of Abraham Lincoln in 1864, is well done as detectives seek the German weapons being sent to southern states to trigger an uprising. 'Ready for the Fatherland' is set in 1979 in Croatia in a world where Field Marshal Manstein assassinated Hitler in 1943, held back the Soviet counter-attacks and crushed the Anglo-American landing in France so a stalemate developed across Europe with the Germans and their puppet states persisting. There is a nice reference to a scene from 'The Guns of Navarone' (1961) movie and a passing one to 'Force 10 from Navarone' (1978). 'The Phantom Tolbutkin' features another similar scenario but with Ukrainian resistance fighters in the occupied USSR and turns a good twist.

Non-Fiction
'Unreliable Witness: Espionage Myths of the Second World War' by Nigel West [Rupert Allason]

This book is probably unnecessary now, but when it came out in 1984 it proved a good corrective to the numerous books that had been appearing in the 1970s and early 1980s about spying during the Second World War. It showed me that 'Bodyguard of Lies' (1975) which I have on my shelf is riddled with errors. It also shows how without care historians can perpetuate mistakes through successive books. West looks at a number of claims in books of the time, among others, that a German spy in Orkney Islands allowed the sinking of HMS 'Royal Oak' when berthed there, that Admiral Canaris, head of German military intelligence provided material to the Allies but had also met Mata Hari, who was behind the Soviet spy ring in Switzerland during the war and whether Churchill had foreknowledge of the bombing of Coventry in November 1940. Most of the cases prove to be less dramatic than historians have made out and often came down to a combination of human, signals and codebreaking intelligence. As time had passed since the war, more identities of spies came out, also allowing corrections of misapprehensions. 

This is another book which would have been better for me to have read when I bought it 30+ years ago. M.R.D. Foot, the historian of S.O.E. (who I met once) was rather sniffy about this book, in part I think because West highlights some mistakes Foot made. Thus, you rather feel this book is a bit of revenge by West against authors who have too easily accepted certain stories without doing the necessary cross-checking. Allason himself is now 68 and Foot died in 2012 at the age of 92, so that element is largely irrelevant now. What I would suggest is that this short book (166 pages) should be given to people starting History degrees to alert them to how easily it is not simply to make errors, especially when based on assumptions, but to perpetuate them. If like me you are working your way through old books on the Second World War, it is also useful to have this as an accompanying corrective especially to the more exciting claims made in those books.

Books I Listened To/Read In January

Fiction
'The Ghosts of Altona' by Craig Russell
Though I have always been interested in crime stories set in Germany, for some reason I had not come across Russell's series though the first came out in 2005.  This book published in 2015 is the seventh, and so far, last book in the series featuring Jan Fabel.  In this book he has risen to the rank of Erster Kriminalhauptkommissar which Russell clumsily renders as 'Principal Chief Commissar' and is even offered the chance to become head of all of Hamburg's detectives.  It is always a challenge with a successful police detective character that they tend to get promoted and so moved away from the heart of crimes.  Ian Rankin has resolved this by trapping John Rebus at Inspector rank for many years.  The rendering of Hamburg police ranks, though not other German titles into English is one thing I do not like about the book. It leaves the reader in confusion about what standing the various police have.

Overall, I felt this book was much like one written by Colin Dexter, added to by the fact that it features a club from a university.  Though at times Morse's investigations on screen felt ponderous (the books are far brisker) this book stretched for far too long (535 pages in my edition).  Though there are some reasonable twists, a bright reader, let alone one who reads crime novels regularly, will have solved the crime well before Fabel does, so it is rather frustrating to find that the detective who is supposedly nationally famous for his skills, is slower than amateurs like us.  It would have been a far better book with 200 fewer pages.  The details about Hamburg and its surrounding districts, plus Fabel's background, his colleagues and family, are fine, but at times feel like padding when we want greater speed.  The murders are well portrayed and the meshing of different cases is reasonably done, though the 'lesson' from one for another seems heavy handed and again suggests that Fabel lacks imagination, even deductive powers.  Fabel could be an interesting character, and maybe he is in the earlier books.  If Russell has decided not to continue with this series, it is probably slightly overdue.  I might check out one of the earlier books if it crosses my path, but while this book was not bad, it was far from brilliant.

'Ruled Britannia' by Harry Turtledove
This was another book that could have benefited from tightening up.  My edition came in at 458 pages but with smaller than standard text size, so probably as wordy as 'The Ghosts of Altona'.  Turtledove is the undisputed king of alternate history fiction and it is disheartening to read quoted on the cover '[n]obody plays the what-if game of alternate history better' in one stroke being complimentary to the author but utterly dismissing his genre as a 'game'.  I notice his latest book will be historical fiction rather than alternate history.

While with my alternate history books, I often get people complaining that the focus is on everyday life in the changed world and that the focus should always be the point of departure, typically a violent one, I am glad that Turtledove takes a different line.  This novel is set in London in 1597, nine years of the victory of the Spanish Armada.  Queen Isabella and Archduke Albert are on the throne of England, with Isabella's father, the ailing King Philip II, still in charge of Spain.  The book focuses primarily on William Shakespeare and the Spanish playwright, Senior Lieutenant Lope de Vega, who is serving with the occupying army.  Other real people appear including the imprisoned Elizabeth I and some of her ministers, Christopher Marlowe, killed 6 years later than in our world, and a range of people connected with the theatre that Shakespeare knew or worked with.  The plot is around Shakespeare being pressured to both write a play celebrating the life of Philip II on behalf of the occupiers and one around the story of Boudicca in an attempt to rouse English resistance to the occupation.

The setting is excellently portrayed.  Turtledove shows acute knowledge of the context and paints it richly in this novel.  He makes use of plays from the time to provide 'what if?' lines and plays for Shakespeare - he has not produced any of his historical plays, but his comedies and tragedies are well liked; he is still active as an actor too.  It takes some time to become comfortable with the Tudor language and terms.  At times you feel Turtledove does not know where to go next and though the book builds to a climax, you feel it wonders and could have been tightened a great deal.  The role of a witch with the ability to hypnotise really riled me and she seemed just to be a very irritating plot device.  There is also far too much sex in the book.  Shakespeare is at it a lot of the time and De Vega has a string of mistresses, some simultaneously.  At times it gives the author a chance to show different facets of the alternate London he has created, notably the bear-baiting, but given the longeurs anyway this just adds more padding.  Thus, while there were points which irritated me, even riled me, I felt this was a very strong alternate history book, well researched and very interesting.  I hope people will remember it when insisting that all alternate history novels must focus on the immediate point of departure and subsequently only on warfare.

'Redcoat' by Bernard Cornwell
This books suffers from a problem that I have noticed in other of Cornwell's books set in North America and many which do not feature Richard Sharpe.  The problem is, that while he creates rich characters with a good attention to attitudes and behaviour of the time, far too few of them elicit any sympathy from the reader.  As a result you wade through nasty people being nasty to other nasty people.  While is it great to have some strong antagonists, if unpleasant people are in the vast majority, it is difficult to be more than a spectator sitting well back from the conflict.  In the Sharpe books, while you had nasty people, you could always fall back on Sharpe and his comrades, who while flawed, were people you could feel sympathy for, even affinity with.  Cornwell seems to have particular problems with sergeants and women.  All the women in this book are self-serving even when professing zealous patriotism, deceptive and really people you would not want to go anywhere near.  There are the fragments of a love story, but even then the woman featured is so hard, she seems to have very little romance in her and is much more concerned about victory for the American side than anything or anyone else.

The book is set in Philadelphia in 1777 during the American War of Independence.  It was the largest city in the Thirteen Colonies at the time and at the start of the book is occupied by British forces.  However, many still loyal to the American side remain in the city and most of the book is really about spying and passing on information, focusing on the British soldiers and American civilians who get mixed up in this which ultimately leads to the British occupation being troubled and costly, ultimately after the book has finished, to end.  I like the fact that Cornwell has focused on a specific location and set of characters rather than ranging all over the place.  He does well in portraying the city in grim weather (to the extent that I would never want to visit it) added to the growing shortages it faces.  As always, Cornwell has good battle scenes, but in this novel they are pretty limited.  For the rest you are effectively watching a dance of unpleasant and/or deluded people in a very grey setting.  Thus, it was quite interesting, but far from engaging.

Audio Books - Fiction
'Lifeless' by Mark Billingham; read by Robert Glenister
This appears to be the fifth of what so far are fifteen books featuring police detective, Tom Thorne, published since 2001.  Again it reminded me of how many books are coming out in genres that interest me, that simply pass me by, for many years at a time, until I stumble over them.  This one sees Thorne go undercover as a rough sleeper on the streets of Central London.  I used to spend a lot of my time in the 1990s and early 2000s in that area and so could really envisage the places Billingham writes about and the kind of people encountered there.  The case involves the murders of rough sleepers.  Billingham cleverly dodges a standard serial killer approach and is very good about sowing distrust about those in authority that Thorne meets.  The case is soon connected to the military - in part because so many rough sleepers are ex-armed forces - and to atrocities committed in Iraq.  I thought Billingham handled the novel very well, especially in terms of the setting and the homeless people that Thorne encounters and develops friendships with.  The plot is reasonably twisted and again, like the setting, very credible.  This might not be the best crime novel I have ever come across, but I was engaged by it and have already bought a couple more audio books of Billingham's novels.  Glenister sounds how you would imagine Thorne to be and that works very well for the story, but he does a pretty decent job with the other characters, including the few women that appear.

'Thunderball' by Ian Fleming; read by Jason Isaacs
This novel has formed the basis for two movies 'Thunderball' (1965) and 'Never Say Never Again' (1983) which stick surprisingly close to features of the book.  It starts with Bond, smoking 60 cigarettes a day and drinking the equivalent of half-a-bottle of whisky a day, being sent to a health retreat where he ends up in a fight with another guest which actually postpones the schemes of SPECTRE - the first time the criminal organisation appears, rather than having Smersh of the USSR involved somewhere even if far in the background.  The story is pretty straight forward, with MI6 and the CIA scrambling to find where one of their atomic bomber aircraft has ended up, Bond is sent to the Bahamas and is fortunate enough, with the aid of his old friend Felix Leiter to find out that Emilio Largo (the deputy head of SPECTRE but in this book number No. 1) has retrieved the bombs and is planning to use them to destroy a US missile testing base in the Caribbean and threaten Miami.  A ransom of £100 million in gold (worth about £5 billion now) is demanded to prevent the attacks.

The book is reasonable.  Fleming returns to some of his favourite themes - the Caribbean and treasure hunting.  Domino Pettachi, the sister of the man who stole the bomber and is kept by Largo, comes over as a flawed character who as in quite a few of these books, is the woman who saves Bond's life when he makes mistakes.  As Isaacs points out in the interview at the end, though Bond and Leiter have clandestine Geiger counters, they are in fact poorly equipped compared to SPECTRE and Bond's intervention to prevent the planting of the first Bond leaves 6 US sailors aiding him, dead.  Bond is certainly not the superhero of the movies, and in fact is very unhealthy.  The book is engaging rather than gripping but also is a slice of history, showing the concerns; the continued hang over from events of the Second World War and even the brands of 1961 and that while they were misogynistic times, Fleming, as in previous books, is content to let a woman win through when Bond proves slow-witted.  Isaacs does the voices very well, including Domino, though as he points out, trying to work out what half-Greek, half-Polish Blofeld, based in Paris, sounded like, was a real challenge.

From Conception To Retail In 3 Days: My Fastest e-Book

As regular readers have known, around two years ago I got into producing e-books. Not only did I self-publish the novels I had been writing over the past thirty years but I also made use of blog postings to create essay collections on alternate history.  These latter were very popular, especially those concerning the Second World War.  However, as time passed they began to be criticised, as is typical for many e-books, on the basis of minute points and people simply disagreeing with the content or the style and labelling it with a one-star review.  The worst being a review that complained that a 1940s pastiche novel was a 1940s pastiche novel and as the review said 'no-one wants that', so the critic felt it was down to him to remove it from circulation.  A one-star review means the book is no longer picked up by search engines and basically sales cease.  I have kept the book on sale for want of knowing what else to do with it.

Self-published e-books have brought other trends beyond the absolute power of a single reviewer to destroy a book.  One that is discussed in 'The Guardian' newspaper last weekend by Philip Hensher: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/01/philip-hensher-why-short-is-sweet  as if it had suddenly just appeared, is that such an approach allows the publication and sale of short stories in a way that has probably not been feasible for a century, maybe even longer.  I think Hensher would be pushed to sell a short story at £2.29 on Amazon as he suggests, but maybe someone like Zadie Smith who he focuses on, has sufficient standing to achieve that price.

Hensher seems to be oblivious to the fact that this trend has been going on for five years or so.  I guess he still reads books he buys in WH Smiths rather than traipsing through the online Kindle listings on Amazon on a Friday afternoon or clicking through from a blog to an author's stories sold on Smashwords.  Certainly he should have been aware of 'Shetl Days' by Harry Turtledove, an established if no literary author, published only online as a short e-book for 99p back in April 2011.  Hensher is write to praise the ability to produce and get out to the public books of very varied lengths.  Ironically, or perhaps logically, on Amazon the best-selling genre of short-story seem to be 4,000-word erotic e-books; I guess because people are not looking for much character or plot development in such stories!

This year with my books being torn apart for representing Finland in the 1940s in a way which people disapproved of, apparently using too many online as opposed to paper sources and having 'too much history' in my alternate history e-books, I took many of them down.  They were not making any money and it was soul-destroying just to be sitting there being slagged off in a whole host of ways.  These days, one minor typographical error is enough to have the entire book condemned as useless.  I guess that is a characteristic of our indignant societies; people are angry that their authors can actually be human and cannot afford to employ editors, even though most publishing houses do not bother with them these days anyway.  Conversely, people I meet want to see my books, but if they even read them, they never bother to include a review, leading me to think I indeed must be so bad and they are simply too embarrassed to say.

Some constructive criticism is what all authors need, such as suggestions on style or level of detail.  In this world it is all or nothing, either the reviewer condemns your work as needing to be removed for causing offence due to minor errors or the person is too embarrassed to say anything about what they did not like in the book.  The former simply want you gone out of the way of the 'proper' authors they admire so much more.  The latter, well, I do not know what they want, perhaps simply proof that when you say you are an author you actually are, maybe they hope to catch you out in confessing you are lying and the evidence simply ruins that game so they have nothing else to say.

Anyway, you get the picture.  However, these set-backs have not doused the ideas that I have bubbling away in my head.  Sometimes I have to simply write a story to get it out of my head otherwise it bubbles around in there getting in the way of other thoughts and indeed preventing me from sleeping.  One reason why the 10th-12th of the Braucher stories were written so fast was that they had been planned some years before but never written and reflecting on them kept me awake, I simply had to get them out and finished to get enough sleep and maintain my health.  This brings me to 'Against the Devil's Men' which is an e-book just under 9,000 words in length that I started writing on the evening of Saturday, 2nd November 2013, as a result of the weather meaning the wireless reception where I am staying was too poor to allow me to continue my game of  'Rome II Total War'.  I wrote the remaining 7,300 words of the book throughout 3rd November.  I edited it after work on 4th November, having created most of the front cover and the synopsis over my lunch break.  I put it up for sale that evening and by the morning of 4th November, had sold one copy. 

Of course, the ideas had been around for a long time.  The book is set in western Normandy in 1272 in an alternate world in which rather than retreating from Europe in the 1240s the Mongols have remained to continue their conquests and destruction.  The ideas go back to me reading 'The Devil's Horsemen' by James Chambers (1979) in 2007, playing 'Medieval II Total War' and subsequently producing a chapter on this blog and then in my e-book of alternate histories of the Middle Ages 'On Other Fields' (2012).  The story is told from the perspective of a cardinal charged with inspecting the frontline in the bocage country of Normandy.  I worry that it is too dense because the cardinal engages in religious thoughts and controversies.  I was also conscious of avoiding anachronisms, so he refers to the Mongols as 'Tartars' a mix up with the Tatars another steppe people; for centuries 'Mongol' meant a group of nomads rather than their ethnicity.  In addition, being seen as coming from the Devil, this was a reference to Tartarus, a hellish region of the underworld in Ancient Greek mythology.  He also refers to the Folban, the German term at the time for the people we now call the Cumans, another nomadic steppe tribe but one which fled in front of the Mongols and converted to Christianity in the 1220s.

My short stories have never sold as well as my longer books.  However, I have enjoyed being able to produce and sell a book within three days.  In the 1930s books on political events were often overtaken by a change in the global situation before they had been published.  In these days not only can you blog about such events but you can get a book out while events are still running; indeed with an e-book you can update as they change.  Perhaps Philip Hensher should catch up with the rest of the world and reflect on that new slant on writing and publishing.

P.P. 01/01/2016
I realised that I should have updated this posting in June 2014.  That month I stopped selling 'Against the Devil's Men' in large part because it was criticised as juvenile for taking the French rather than the Mongol perspective on the Mongol invasion of Europe.  Given how inhumane and brutal the Mongol invaders were to Christians and Muslims alike, destroying many aspects of civilisation where they attacked and killing people in particularly cruel ways, I would be very worried if I could write from the Mongol perspective on these things.  I did include the story in 'Déviation: What If? Stories of the French' (2014) where it seems to have attracted less attention.

The Books I Read In December

Fiction
‘If The Dead Rise Not’ by Philip Kerr
It has been a while since I read a book by Philip Kerr. I was a fan of his original ‘Berlin Noir’ trilogy featuring the Berlin detective, Bernie Gunther, ‘March Violets’ (1989), ‘The Pale Criminal’ (1990) and ‘A German Requiem’ (1991) which despite being in this series, is actually set in post-war Vienna and has an embarrassing conceit in the Drittemann (i.e. Third Man) movie company featured. Since then Kerr has written a whole series of other novels for adults and for children before returning to Gunther with ‘The One From The Other’ (2006).

Before turning to the story itself, there are some problems that stem from the publishers, Quercus. For a start the cover of the book shows Gunther standing in front of the stadium in Berlin used for the 1936 Olympics. The tagline is ‘Berlin 1936. Sport, corruption, and violent death’. Whilst the book is set in Berlin and features all of those elements, it is actually set in 1934, rather than 1936. I had been surprised by the cover because ‘March Violets’ had been set at the time of the 1936 Olympics. It appears that the publishers have not actually read ‘If The Dead Rise Not’. It features corruption connected to Berlin winning the bid to host the Olympics and early construction of the stadium and other infrastructure but ends long before the event takes place; the first part of the novel finishes in 1934.

There are also editorial issues inside the book. I have noted before on this blog how editing even leading novelists has fallen away dramatically as publishing has faced such challenges. In this book there is a switch from ‘Labour’, the UK spelling, to ‘Labor’, the US spelling, when talking about the German Labour Front. I do not mind which is used, I just like consistency. The phrase ‘all right’ is used repeatedly when ‘alright’ is in fact meant. A common error in every book I have read mentioning the German police is that Kripo, i.e. the contraction of the word for the detective division, is written as ‘KRIPO’ and Schupo, i.e. the Prussian uniformed police as ‘SCHUPO’ as if these were acronyms, rather than portmanteau words. Portmanteau words are very popular in German and are created from putting some syllables together from a longer word or series of words. For example, Kripo actually comes from Kriminalpolizei; just as Nazi comes from National Sozialismus; the acronym is NS. However, I have never seen this aspect correct in English-language novels, bar my own, even though it is incredibly easy to find out online or in a history book.

The novel is in two parts, the first, as noted above, set in 1934, with Gunther serving as a hotel detective having left the Berlin Kripo on the Nazis purging the police force in 1933. The second part is set in Cuba in 1952; three of the characters appear in both elements. In the latter, we learn more about Gunther’s war record. The settings are very different and at first I resented the departure from Germany. However, ultimately it works. The book does appear rather fragmented at times and the thread does not feel as if it develops smoothly. The Raymond Chandleresque narration and dialogue is more apparent than in the original trilogy and is applied much more to the section in Germany than that in Cuba. Again this may reflect a lack of editing. Overall, as Kerr has always done with his historical detective stories, he paints a rich picture of the time and its places, especially contrasting rich and poor. He puts his hero into jeopardy and has him survive in a convincing way. There are interesting characters and he avoids making them into caricatures, subverting at times what we might expect for people from the times and places he shows.

Obviously I am biased in favour of stories set in Germany of the past, but this one is good enough to have rearoused my interest in Kerr’s work and to hunt it out. It is a better than fair novel, which if it had been published 10-15 years ago would have received the polish that would have made it a very good novel. I imagine Kerr despaired when he saw the covers and I hope it has been altered for subsequent editions.

‘Alternate Generals III’ ed. by Harry Turtledove & Roland J. Green
This is the best one of this series of alternate history collections. There are some duff stories notably, ‘First Catch Your Elephant’ by Esther Friesner which is a terribly laboured attempt to make comedy regarding Hannibal’s invasion of the Italian peninsula and is incredibly weak and frustrating. I was rather irritated by ‘Murdering Uncle Ho’ by Chris Bunch but that is simply because Bunch accurately writes his story in the style of US Vietnam War memoirs and fiction with emphasis on the military hardware and hard men. Consequently there is a lot of detail regarding the equipment and preparation of the attempt to assassinate Ho Chi Minh. However, behind this aspect there are interesting counter-factuals. President Kennedy was shot at but not killed in 1963 and won the 1964 election. This led to a far quicker escalation of US involvement in Vietnam leading to an invasion of the North in 1965 and occupation of its cities; civil rights legislation in the USA was neglected as a result. At the 1968 election, Republican Nelson Rockefeller was elected President rather than Richard Nixon, who in the story sees himself as a prospective candidate for 1972. In this respect it is a good US counter-factual which fits with my own views of Kennedy.

There are two stories around General MacArthur, ‘Not Fade Away’ is a low key story by William Sanders which sees MacArthur captured by the Japanese when they invade the Philippines. ‘I Shall Return’ by John Mina conversely sees a successful defence of the Philippines largely through sacrificing US air units to sink the Japanese invasion fleet. In this case, MacArthur’s success leads to him being transferred to Europe and Eisenhower remaining in the Philippines. ‘It Isn’t Every Day of the Week’ by Roland J. Green features a number of changes in the War of 1812 which lead to greater British success in the war, aided in part by Napoleon being restricted but not imprisoned at the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1814. Though the British are expelled from Louisiana they have greater success in the North and across the Great Lakes. The story is told in a series of letters from two brothers and also sums up attitudes of the time. ‘East of Appomattox’ by Lee Allred has some good ideas but could have been worked on to be more effective. It features General Robert E. Lee as a plenipotentiary of the Confederate States of America, in London seeking official British recognition for his country. This could have been handled better if Allred avoided the conceits, those little attempts at being too witty that undermine good stories. There is a whole rigmarole around Lee and a young civil servant and then Mycroft Holmes appears, though given the date, he would be a very young man at this time and certainly not the leading government official shown here. Lee is taken on a tour of London to see British opposition to slavery, the factor which is making the British unwilling to recognise the CSA. He is introduced to Abraham Lincoln, in refuge in Britain following his defeat in the American Civil War and then informed that Louisiana is seeking abolish slavery so it can trade with Britain, so putting the CSA to the test regarding the rights of individual states that itself challenged the USA with. This had good ideas but could have been done much better.

There are a couple of unusual stories. One is ‘Measureless to Man’ which envisages Genghis Khan having converted to Judaism and having to fight against Jews from the Diaspora seeking to assert their authority over what has now become the de facto centre of Judaism in Chengdu in China. Conversely, ‘A Good Bag’ is on a much smaller scale, though touching on alternatives that would have a global impact. It revolves around a séance hosted by Francis Younghusband, who in our world effectively enabled Britain to take control of Tibet. In this alternative he was the successful commander in the Tibetan-Chinese War of 1904. His influence and involvement with European racial supremacists is leading to an Anglo-German alliance in 1910 which threatens to unleash a racial war against Jews and other peoples. Moving into the fantasy genre, this was foreseen by the people of Atlantis who seek to warn Younghusband and get history back on to the path our history followed, still experiencing horrendous world wars, but avoiding the greater tragedies of this alternate path. The story has the feel of a Michael Moorcock story rather than standard ‘what if?’ stories. I could see it extended as a graphic novel.

‘The Burning Spear at Twilight’ by Mike Resnick is welcome as one of the rare counter-factual stories in English which features a different outcome for Africa. In this case Jomo Kenyatta is able to pursue a different policy in expelling the British from Kenya in the 1950s. Through manipulation of public relations he is able to get the British to leave sooner and though without bloodshed, with less than was the case in our world. Given that most people will not be familiar with this history and yet it is an issue in British courts at the moment, this is an interesting story. ‘Shock and Awe’ by Harry Turtledove, as the title suggests is another story with contemporary issues despite being set in the past. It envisages Jesus as the proclaimed King of the Jews, using Biblical quotations and leading a guerrilla war against the Roman occupiers who behave like contemporary US forces in Afghanistan. It is an interesting twist on the historical Jesus.

I have left my favourite stories to last. ‘A Key to the Illuminated Heretic’ by A.M. Dellamonica opens the collection. It sees Joan of Arc, rather than having been burnt at the stake, instead coming out of prison after 13 years to lead a heretical Christian army to expel Papal influence from France. Each section is initiated by description of a painting of Joan’s exploits by a young female follower. In this short story we get an interesting slice of factional disputes, Joan’s uncertainty about her mission, her ambivalent view towards the French monarchy and her role as a feminist icon even at the time. This story really impressed me. The remaining two are not as outstanding but are still strong. ‘The Road to Endless Sleep’ by Jim Fiscus, sees Mark Antony having been victorious with Cleopatra at Actium, ruling Rome with her as his empress. The story is told from the perspective of one of his bodyguards as civil unrest bubbles up against the emperor. ‘Over the Sea to Skye’ turns history on its head and sees Flora MacDonald help the Duke of Cumberland escape from Scotland following his defeat. In this world Charles Stuart took the guidance of his advisors and fought at a better location than Culloden, so was able to restore the Stuart dynasty to Scotland with his father becoming King James VIII. Not only is this grounded in an interesting counter-factual, but also is strong in giving a feel for western Scotland and the people there at the time.

Overall this book has a good selection of stories. I hope for future collections, authors can learn from the best and the worst of what is included in this volume and avoid some of the pitfalls that so undermine too many counter-factual stories.

Books I Read In June

As regular readers will be aware, with my work on a number of e-books and being unemployed and facing losing my house for the third time in four years, I have rather been neglecting this blog.  When I am unemployed I also read a lot less than when in work.  However, this time, in contrast to the past, the way I was treated in my last job has left me so mentally and physically ill that I am now sleeping very badly.  Waking in the early hours I have an opportunity to read a bit more than would be typical.  Despite having four job interviews, it has been made clear to me that I am not wanted increasingly in brusque and unpleasant ways that show an anger in that somehow I tricked the employer into interviewing me.  That is my own industry so my attempts to move into some other sector have proven even harder.  Anyway, it seems this situation is unlikely to change for the foreseeable future.


Fiction
'The Perfect Murder' by H.R.F. Keating
This is the first Inspector Ghote story set in India in the 1960s, contemporary to when it was written.  I got it as part of a three-book anthology.  It is an interesting insight into Indian culture and as far as I know about that it appears genuine.  The book is incredibly frustrating because Ghote faces so many unpleasant people, not in the sense of being evil, but because of their arrogance and their wish to obstruct any investigation simply because of their own petty viewpoints and assumptions.  Ghote has to investigate the assault on a personal assistant, the Mr. Perfect of the title (when in the civil service in the UK I handled a case file of a Miss. Perfect and one of a Miss. Innocent).  He has to battle with the obstruction of the wealthy, the government and even his wife plus the ambivalent input of a visiting Swedish criminologist.  In many ways it reminded me of the work of two of my favourite crime authors Leonardo Sciscia and Josef Skvorecky, both of whom write detective stories in settings in which because of the society it is difficult to bring the miscreant to justice.  With Keating's book, I found my tolerance for obstruction was reached, but that may simply reflect me exhausting my reserves dealing with such pettiness and stupidity in my own workplace.  I will see how I feel when I come to the other stories in the anthology.  In terms of conjuring up a time and a place, plus believable if infuriating characters, Keating is a success.


'Alternate Generals II' ed. by Harry Turtledove
This is a better reasonable collection of 'what if?' stories with a more or less military focus. 'American Mandate' by James Fiscus, I have mentioned before.  It features a US mandate in Constantinople following a First World War in which the Ottoman Empire surrendered in September 1918 and the difficulties Pershing faces in dealing with Kemal Ataturk nationalist revolution.  It speaks to issues of American military involvement overseas especially in post-war situations and would be sufficient basis for a full-length novel.  'Southern Strategy' is pretty bizarre, being set in 1950s in southern USA which has been occupied by a peace-keeping force primarily made up of the victorious Central Powers of the First World War.  The force is to counter lynchings of black people and the guerrilla action in response by blacks.  The story is highly depressing especially the failure of Adlai Stevenson to sort out an American solution to the situation and hilariously it appears Richard Nixon is guerilla leader.  'Uncle Alf' by Turtledove himself sees Adolf Hitler in his genuine role as a counter-espionage agent for the German Army but operating in a Belgium which has been occupied by the Germans after they won the First World War.  It is shown in a series of letters to his niece who he was attracted to in our world leading to her suicide.


'Horizon' by Noreen Doyle is about different outcomes in the conflicts between the Ancient Egyptians and the Hittites, but unfortunately I know insufficient about what actually happened to see how different the outcomes in this story were.  'Devil's Bargain' by Judith Tarr is probably the first counter-factual story I have read about the Crusades.  It features King Richard I of England making a deal with the Assassins to win Jerusalem and again could easily bear being made into a full-length novel.  I enjoyed this one.  'George Patton Slept Here' sees a more effective Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943 leading to the capture of more German forces followed by the occupation of Sardinia and Corsica making the war in Italy shorter.  'Tarnished Glory' by Chris Bunch is more extremely counter-factual seeing General Armstrong Custer alive at the time of the Second World War in place of Patton leading to a different outcome to the Battle of the Bulge.  In 'Compadres' by S.M. Stirling and Richard Foss, the border of the USA has been set about 100 miles farther South so that the Mexican provinces of Sonora and Chihuahua have become part of the USA, presumably following the Mexican-American War of 1846-8 and as a consequence, Pancho Villa has fought alongside Theodore Roosevelt and is shown becoming his Vice-President in 1901.  It is an interesting what if? and I would have liked to see more about the outcomes beyond the very personal focus on Roosevelt and then Villa.


'And the Glory of Them' by Susan Shwartz sees a minor change in the capture of the citadel of Antioch in 1098 during the Crusades.  The change seems to be so small as to have minimal impact and the future changes are not really apparent, though it is the second to feature a change during the Crusades.  'Twelve Legions of Angels' by R.M. Meluch features Hugh Dowding deciding to retire and focus on raising a family rather than remaining in the RAF.  Consequently the British adopted a far more aggressive approach leading to defeat in the Battle of Britain and conquest by Nazi Germany.  It is interesting to see how a choice not to sacrifice a particular path to happiness can have vast consequences.  'In the Prison of His Days' by Joel Richards sees W.B. Yeats taking part in the Easter Uprising by Irish Nationalists in 1916 making minimal difference to anyone's life except his own.  'Labor Relations' by Esther M. Friesner is an utterly bizarre counter-factual about an elderly Korean woman ending the phantom pregnancy of Japanese Empress Jingu who was supposed to have lived to 100 years old and invaded Korea in the 3rd century CE; seems a pretty pointless story.  'Empire' by William Sanders, sees Napoleon having emigrated to America in his youth and rising to become Emperor of Lousiania which has expanded to absorb some of the southern states of our world's USA, facing an invasion by the British, presumably in 1815, following a failed attempt by Louisiana to recapture Canada from the British.


'The Wasp Factory' by Iain Banks
This novel which is told from the viewpoint of a murderous 16-year old boy living on a Scottish island, is far better than I had expected.  Whilst it sees the world from the disturbed perspective of the boy, it is not fragmented in the way 'The Tesseract' that I read last month was and shows that you can do weird without being incoherent.  Alex Garland could learn a lot from Banks.  While I could not say I enjoyed this book, it certainly is an engaging novel, which conjures up a place, time and characters though unpleasant are credible.

Books I Read In 2011

This posting follows my annual habit of reviewing the books I have read.  With me being unemployed in the first half of the year I read very little; the second half was a complete contrast with me back in work and living away from home so with ample opportunity to read.  As a consequence, I have much more to comment on that I would have anticipated this time last year, but again pretty much an eclectic mix with a fair share of books I regret wasting time on.  Hopefully by reading this you can be warned off them if you happen to stumble across them in a second-hand bookshop or charity shop and like me, foolishly are tempted to buy them.

Fiction
'The Space Machine' by Christopher Priest
I have said a bit about this in my review of Priest's work.  It was the last published to date book of his that I read.  It was well written mixing 'The Time Machine' and 'The War of the Worlds' into a good action story with nice pastiche of science fiction novels of the late 19th century, though to some degree influenced by the foibles of the 1970s when it was written.  For anyone into steampunk, I suggest reading this.

'Armadillo' by William Boyd
I was given this as a gift in the 1990s.  It is a strange though no unpleasant book, a 'slice of life' story about a man from Transdniester gypsy stock, working as a loss adjuster in London and deciding between how to respond to various incidents, breaking a long-term relationship, having an affair, being threatened by clients and misused by acquaintances.   It is written in a way which draws you along well, but you may be dissatisfied because there is little plot.  It is interesting how date the technology seems, but all the same, it reminded me of some of the good times I had while living in London in the mid to late 1990s.

'Departures' by Harry Turtledove
This is a collection of short stories by the US author known for his numerous alternate history novels.  Saying that, a number of the stories are more purely science fiction for example including a time traveller arriving in the 20th century mistakenly looking for Genghis Khan, a post-apocalyptic shaman using veterinary books he finds in ruins, aliens mistakenly thinking humans have telekinesis and a story about discrimination between aliens that seems to be a parable around the persecution of Jews.  Turtledove does reference his Judaism in a number of the stories from one about a werewolf in 12th century Koeln to one about genetically engineered pig that chews the cud, so making it kosher.  Some of his stories are almost impenetrable to non-Americans, especially difficult are the ones around baseball and the one which turns on the joke that 'oreos' are American biscuits and 'Oreopithecus' was a type of hominid.  The story falls entirely flat and I read it twice before I realised what I was missing. 

All I know about school education in the USA stems from what I have seen from television programmes both documentary and fiction and from movies.  I accept this probably gives a distorted view falling into four categories: nostalgia for how schools were fifty years ago, inner city schools with lots of pupils with economic and social challenges, very Christian schools with a particular take on the world and bland schools where there are minimal challenges and it is interaction between the pupils that makes the story.  What I do not see is programmes whether true or fiction in which the teachers are utterly useless.  The one exception is probably 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off' (1986) and that is a comedy.  However, Turtledove seems convinced that the majority of schoolteachers in the USA are useless and have only gone into the profession as an easy option.  This shows a real disconnect to reality because no-one is deluded enough to think teaching is easy and those who do certainly never survive the initial training.  Yet Turtledove uses his power to not criticise but dismiss a whole class of important worker as useless; he does the same to child minders too.  He may have had a bad personal experience but in his foreword to the story about a society where teachers are lauded is unpleasant.

The better stories are ones on a more alternate history such a number on the basis of Turtledove's 'Agent of Byzantium' that Mohammed became a Christian Orthodox monk rather than finding Islam.  There is a more standard science fiction (published in 1984) about murders on Saturn's moon Mimas during an Olympic event there.  However, it involves a portrayal of the Earth divided into various federations: United Europe, Eastern Europe (which has thrown off Communism), the Anzac Federation (despite the fact that ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps), Japan, the Chinese Empire (which is also free of Communism), a weakened USA, Arab World (which has conquered Israel), Communist Muscovy, Tsarist Siberia and Luna.  Whilst rather weakly worked out, this is of interest.  Overall there are some good parts but it is inconsistent; probably better to read if you are an American.

'The Last of Philip Banter' and 'Devil Take the Blue-Tailed Fly' by John Franklin Bardin
Like 'The Deadly Percheron' by Bardin which I read in 2010, these stories live up to their billing of being unsettling.  All three books were published 1946-8 and conjure up late 1940s New York very well.  They are also strong on the characters they portray.  In 'The Last of Philip Banter', Banter is a philandering, alcoholic advertising executive who finds a typescript apparently predicting the next 24 hours of his life and doing it pretty accurately.  He grapples with his affairs, his relationship with his wife, his colleagues and his father-in-law and as in all three stories, with his sanity too.  If it was not so bleak it could make a Woody Allen movie.  

'Devil Take the Blue-Tailed Fly' steps up these traits (aside from the Woody Allen aspect) another level, focusing on a schizophrenic concert harpsichordist coming out of a mental institution where she has received electro-shock therapy which has damaged her ability to play and the deterioration which happens in her as a result of this, the murder of a former disreputable lover and finding her husband has been unfaithful.  These stories come over as if John Updike had decided to write thrillers and given that I painfully remember battling to get through part of an Updike novel, you can imagine I was not really comfortable working through these, but once I have started I feel duty bound to finish.  I am stunned how bad I am at selecting novels I see for sale.  There must be thousands of better books out there than the dreary ones I seem to select.  Maybe I should not venture beyond a small range of authors I can trust, because I always regret it.  It is much easier for me to compile a list of books I would advise people not to read rather than ones I suggest they do read.

'The Lady Vanishes' by Ethel Lina White
Having seen both the 1938 and the 1976 movies of this story, I was interested to read the original book.  There is less action in the book than in either movie, certainly no gun fights at the end and no appearance of the Charters and Caldicott characters seen in the movies either; their role in the novel seems to be held by the two Misses Flood-Porter.  The basic premise is the same, that a young spoilt Englishwoman, Iris Carr, is travelling home from a holiday in Central-Eastern Europe and meets a kindly old spinster on the train, Miss. Froy.  This woman then proceeds to disappear leaving Iris to try to both find out what has happened to Miss. Froy and in fact if she was ever real or just a figment of Iris's imagination as the other passengers on the train claim or a case of mistaken identity.  Whilst the country in which the story is set is never revealed, given that the train only crosses one border to reach Trieste and the local residents do not speak German, it has to be Yugoslavia.  In the 1938 movie the setting is again not revealed though appears to be Yugoslavia; in the 1976 movie it is more clearly Alpine southern Germany. 

In the novel, Miss. Froy is not a British agent, rather she has simply witnessed a leading politician at his home so breaking his alibi for the murder of a Communist rival.  In the movies, Miss. Froy is a British agent who has to bring a tune carrying secret information to British intelligence.  Despite the dated manners and the very upper class orientated nature, I always enjoyed Dornford Yates stories of Britons on adventures in Central Europe.  The style of the novel is a little like the John Franklin Bardin stories, with much of the narrative focused on Iris's thoughts, her concerns for her sanity and her thinking through how she can interact with the other passengers both British and Yugoslav.  Consequently it has a claustrophobic feel, despite the fact that, unlike the movies, we see Miss. Froy's elderly parents waiting for news of her back in England.  Certainly you feel the frustration and fear that Iris feels and given this focus, written by a female author in 1936 you can see why it made an impact and was taken up by Alfred Hitchcock to be released as a movie two years later, with a great deal of the story intact.

'Thanksgiving' by Michael Dibdin
This is one of Dibdin's stand alone novels.  At 179 pages it is short for a modern novel, but the tightness of the story is a good characteristic.  Dibdin writes some very effectively unpleasant characters (the two most memorable are American) and in this novel as in 'Dirty Tricks' (1999) he conjures up a believably unpleasant antagonist for the hero.  The story revolves a man going to visit his recently killed wife's first husband, a really sordid American man who it is revealed stalked his ex-wife.  The novel is around the consequences of that meeting.  Dibdin experiments with different styles of narrative which come over in an interesting way and do not feel like gimmicks.  He also plays around a little with time and with haunting, rather as he does in 'The Tryst' (1989). 

Dibdin never seemed afraid to flirt with magic realism, ironically giving the novels in which he used it a shareper edge.  Whilst in many ways very bleak and unnerving, the novel comes ultimately to connect you to the title.  Dibdin was married three times and ultimately ended up living in Seattle in the USA where he died in 2007.  I do not know if any of the story was autobiographical, but it has a raw, engaging style which lifts it above many of his Aurelio Zen novels.  I do wonder why he was unable to bring over the strengths in characterisation and style into his more popular series; certainly the criminals in those stories could have benefited from having the nastiness of the antagonist in this story.

'And Then You Die' by Michael Dibdin
I was prompted by, 'Zen' the dramatisation of Dibdin's series of crime novels shown on BBC1 to finally get round to finishing off the final four books in the series.  I read this 174-page novel in a single evening which I think emphasises how it sweeps you a long.  Interestingly it has a very light tone especially when compared to the previous novel in the series 'Blood Rain' (1999) which was set on Sicily.  In fact the plot of this novel leads you and the hero, Aurelio Zen to reinterpret what happened at the end of that previous novel and introduces a man bent on revenge who pursues Zen despite his efforts to hide out at the Italian resort of Versilia and to the town of Lucca, thus allowing Dibdin to explore another region of Italy as he does in each Zen novel, moving up and down the country with every story.  Zen also takes an unscheduled jaunt to Iceland where Dibdin introduces the concept of ' fylgja' an ability in Icelandic folklore which is like a kind of second sight that allows 'gifted' people to see ugly sprite-like people, the 'huldufolk'.  There turns out to be a rational explanation, but you feel that Dibdin would have loved to have produce a novel rather like Christopher Priest's 'The Glamour' (1984).  I prefer Dibdin's grimmer stories over his light ones though perhaps with the deaths in this one it is a little darker, but certainly with a touch which contrasts to the bleaker outlook of 'Blood Rain'.

'Medusa' by Michael Dibdin
As I have noted before, in his Aurelio Zen series, Dibdin tended to alternate between light-hearted and more serious novels.  The more serious ones, by far, are the better.  'Medusa' follows on from 'And Then You Die' but is very different in tone.  Again it has Zen criss-crossing Italy as if Dibdin wants to ensure that every region in the country has been covered.  This novel features both the German-speaking Alto Adige region where a thirty-year old corpse preserved in a tunnel system left over from the Austro-Italian front of the First World War, to the rural areas of the Po Valley and the Italian enclave in Switzerland, Campione d'Italia.  The novel is more in line with much crime fiction written by Italian authors since the late 1920s, with a focus on the tensions between different interest groups within Italian politics and society, views of what was done correctly or wrongly for Italy in the past and an ambivalent conclusion.  It also successfully mixes the motives of individuals with broader societal trends in a clever way, notably with reference to right-wing groups in Italy which sought to bring about or oppose coups in the 1950s-70s.  At times you feel Zen is travelling too much and the final phase might have been better to have been trimmed down, but overall this is an engaging novel even if you have not read any others in the Zen series.

'Back to Bologna' by Michael Dibdin
In line with the pattern seemed to follow with his Zen novels, every other one in the sequence is more light-hearted and so it was time for one certainly less heavy than 'Medusa'.  For the bulk of the novel, unsurprisingly set in Bologna, it is not as light-hearted as I had been led to believe.  The inter-twining of the various characters could seem contrived, but if a darker tone had been adopted then it could have worked.  I guess a lot of the humour in this novel is really satire and because I am not aware of the original people, notably the football club owner, the television chef and the academic that Dibdin is satirising, I miss the jokes and so it comes across as a more straight forward crime novel.  The private detective who features is another light character but primarily because of his own delusions and pretensions around being a 'hard-boiled' detective and again this could have been carried if the overall tone, especially towards the end was more serious.

Given that the novel features the break down of Zen's relationship which developed in 'And Then You Die' and seemed to be going fine in 'Medusa' it probably needed leavening.  In addition, perhaps, like Ian Fleming with James Bond, the fact that this novel was published just two years before Dibdin's own death, the ill-health and bleak outlook of Zen may reflect what was happening in Dibdin's own life.  In contrast to 'Medusa' the ending seems terribly rushed with everything coming together in a single restaurant and Zen effectively stumbling over a reasonably accurate outcome.  It feels as if an editor demanded that the novel be brought to an end at that stage and on an upbeat note.

'End Games' by Michael Dibdin
This was the final Aurelio Zen book and the last book Dibdin published before his death.  Of all his novels, I only now have 'Dark Spectre' a non-Zen book to locate and read.  Dibdin went out neither with a bang nor a whimper.  This novel was not his best nor was it his worst.  Like many of the later Zen novels it is plagued by Dibdin's desire to include satire of particular trends in society both in Italy and elsewhere and to ridicule individuals in the public eye certainly unknown now even if they could be recognised at the time.

This novel, in contrast to the ones that closely preceded it sees Zen located in one town as temporary chief of police of a region in Calabria, on the 'toe' of Italy, investigating the murder of an American lawyer and attempts to locate the treasure of Alaric, king of the Goths who died in the region.  It is reasonably well handled.  Zen has married the girlfriend he met back in 'And Then You Die' and his mood is far better than in 'Back to Bologna' though the woman herself does not really feature.  The story is effectively about Zen battling with Calabrian culture an thwarting the plans of a particularly nasty local gangster.  If he had stopped attempting the satire then this would have been a taut crime thriller with some shocking scenes that jar the reader.  Maybe at this stage in his career, Dibdin could not cope with the darkness.  However, you are left feeling he never actually wrote his best crime novel, never being able to bring across from his non-Zen novels the painfully realistic and genuinely nasty characters.  Of the Zen novels, the first four are the best: 'Ratking' (1988), 'Vendetta' (1990), 'Cabal' (1992) and my favourite 'Dead Lagoon' (1994).  'Cosi Fan Tutti' (1996) was utterly stupid and from then on Dibdin was never able to recapture his former greatness.  Of the latter novels, 'Blood Rain' (1999) and 'Medusa' (2003) are not bad, but the desire for satire and weak humour damaged what could have been far better stories.

'Caravan to Vaccarès' by Alistair Maclean
This is a book I have been carrying around for years on the recommendation of my 'A' level Geography teacher.  She believed in visiting every region that was focused upon in the 'A' level syllabus.  This led her to recount her time in the Rub-al-Khalil, the so-called Empty Quarter, entirely barren region of Saudi Arabia and where you could get the best bacon and eggs on the edge of Kuala Lumpur.  It also meant she had travelled extensively in South-East France, a region featured in the first year of the course.  She seems to have fallen in love with the Carmargue region of historic towns and low-lying lakes with a very distinct culture.  'Caravan to Vaccarès' is probably one of the only novels set in the Camargue (if you discount the post-apocalyptic 'Kamarg' featuring in Michael Moorcock's 'The History of the Runestaff' series), consequently the teacher's encouragement that we read it.

I saw the movie of the same name (1974) about ten years ago and, like with many of the movies of Maclean's novels, its plot is stronger than the original novel.  Basically the story is based on an annual pilgrimage of gypsies from across Eastern Europe to the Camargue for religious ceremonies associated with their patron saint, Saint Sara.  This pilgrimage was permitted even while the Cold War was raging, allowing a unique opportunity for people and things to be smuggled between the East and West.  In addition it provides a colourful setting with the gypsy and Camargue dress and culture, including bull fights which do not end in the death of the bull, though can end in the death of the human participants. 

Though the novel is written in 1969 with an awareness of the Cold War, it almost feels like something that Dornford Yates could have produced in the 1930s, with the protagonists picking up beautiful young ladies that they patronise, banter amiably with and promise to marry; a character who is a duke, charging around in a lime green Rolls Royce (the colour is probably the only concession to the era) and the lead characters dressing up in traditional costume.  Maclean always over-writes everything which I guess was what was favoured at the time to give a kind of air of sophistication, but I find really drags down the narrative.  I guess his old world attitudes, the sense that the individual could still achieve something in the age of superpowers, added to extensive scenes of flight and violence, probably what makes the movies so engaging, really meshed with the audience.  The portrayal of the region is well done. 

'Prime Minister Portillo And Other Things That Never Happened' ed. by Duncan Brack and Iain Dale
Whilst, as the title shows, this is actually a collection of counter-factuals, the approach of many of the authors is more like a non-fiction book of modern history and politics.  Aside from Helen Szamuely's chapter on what would have happened if Lenin had not reached Petrograd in the 'sealed' train in 1917 and Simon Burns's on the survival of John F. Kennedy, the other 19 chapters are about developments in British politics from the 1920s to the 2000s, looking at factors such as a stronger Liberal Party and its entire elimination; the timing of elections notably in 1974 and 1978; resignations by Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher; the survival of Aneuran Bevan and John Smith and different results in the 1964, 1970 and 1983 elections.  Some of them are really like academic articles, not a bad thing, but lacking the spark you expect in counter-factual writing. 

Some  of the contributors write a fiction as if the counter-factual was real, others simply do a historio-political analysis.  Some undermine the proposition they were presumably assigned by the editors.  Robert Waller shows that given the British electoral system the SDP-Liberal Alliance needed vast shifts in support to even make minor gains and Dianne Harper paints a scenario in which even if Tony Benn had beaten Dennis Healey to become deputy leader of the Labour Party there would have effectively been a coup inside the party to emasculate him in that role. Irritatingly, in a similar vein, Sir Bernard Ingham's investigation of Thatcher resigning over the messy but insubstantial Westland Affair, exposes another hagiographical treatment of Thatcher; it reminded me of Simon Heffer looking at the counter-factual assassination of Thatcher in the 1984 Brighton bombing, in 'What Might Have Been: Leading Historians on Twelve 'What Ifs' of History' (2004). These men seem unable to envisage a society without Thatcher, seeing her as somehow vital for all the 'good' that has happened during and since her regime.

I agree with the view that the absence of Lenin would have made a large impact on events in Russia, but continue to contest that John F. Kennedy surviving his assassination or it not occurring would not have seen a significant scaling down of US commitment in Vietnam and would have seen steps taken more slowly in civil rights.  However, I recognise that the latter goes against the 'standard' counter-factual view. John Charmley takes an interesting view on Lord Halifax becoming prime minister in 1940.  I do not believe he would have signed a peace treaty with Germany, but again the standard counter-factual is that he would have done.  Charmley's outcome is different to the usual line in that as a result of this peace treaty, Britain becomes stronger quicker and the war is actually ended sooner than in our world. 

It is heartening to see contributors acknowledging that some alterations would not have led to much change in the long run.  Neil Stockley on what if Roy Jenkins had joined the Liberal Party rather than the SDP is one example.  For Stuart Thomson he has to beg tolerance for the scenario of Paddy Ashdown, Liberal Democrat leader and others from his party becoming members of Tony Blair's government in 1997 still assuming Blair won the huge majority he did; it seems illogical and so the chapter reads uneasily.  Conversely, the Socialist fantasies painted by Robert Taylor seeing 'In Place of Strife' succeeding and Paul Richards with Callaghan going to the polls in October 1978 are nice in these times, but seem too extended.  In terms of political commentary the best is probably James Parry on the Liberals challenging the Conservatives from the right rather than the left in the 1950s and David Mills on Arthur Scargill seeking a ballot ahead of the 1984-5 Miners' Strike are the most acute.  Though, again, Mills might have a rather rosy perception of the outcome.

Overall this is a book which brings forth some less common counter-factual scenarios.  The quality of each chapter varies considerably and many read like a politics text book rather than an entertaining read.  Perhaps it is better to see the questions they set forward and go and discuss your own views of the potential outcomes.

'President Gore and Other Things that Never Happened' ed. by Duncan Brack
This, unsurprisingly is the sequel to the collection above.  However, it is probably the weaker of the two books.  Whilst in the first the British Liberal Party received possibly more prominence than might have been its due if viewed by more objective commentators, this second volume is weakened by being shot through with the views of Liberal partisans who make up the majority of the writers included.  Almost no opportunity seems to be missed to state that the UK would have been better if the Liberals had never been so weak in the 20th century and commonly that things would have been far better if the Labour Party had never risen to prominence.  Some of this is tolerable in things such as 'What if Robert Peel had not gone out riding on 29 June 1850?' [a ride on which he was killed] or 'What if the 1903 Gladstone-MacDonald Pact had never happened?' by Robert Waller. Even 'What if Joseph Chamberlain had married Beatrice Webb?' by David Boyle is tolerable though I feel Boyle over-emphasises Webb's influence on British Socialism. His hatred of Fabianism seems peculiar for a Liberal and his faith that political doctrines that did not include a view of a powerful role for the state stood much chance in the early to mid 20th century, utterly distort what he writes.  However, we see such Liberal partisanship, not handled at all subtly in 'What if Franz Ferdinand's assassin missed in 1914?' by York Membery and even 'What if President Mitterand had imposed first-past-the-post instead of proportional representation in 1986?' by Byron Criddle.

I guess this volume highlights the 'wrong' way of going about counter-factual, the way it is abused as a propagandist tool rather than a historical one.  The authors start with a conclusion that they desire then work back to see how they would make it come about.  Working in this predestined way means that they push aside anything that jars and might send their path away from the intended outcome.  Many of these authors see the current political system in the UK, especially the role of the Labour Party, as unhealthy and so drive through narratives that would have meant it never came about.  To the ones listed above, add 'What if Ramsay MacDonald had lost the 1922 Labour leadership election?' by Jaime Reynolds, which is a fascinating question, especially given how close the election was, but the conclusions are devalued by Reynolds's view of current politics.  'What if the Liberals had formed the government in 1924' by David Hughes, is another feasible question, but you feel the possibilities are ridden roughshod over in the dash to mourn that the UK has not had a series of Liberal governments since 1922.

Rab Houston in 'What if the Scots had voted for devolution in 1979?' presents a similarly distorted view.  Houston is clearly an opponent of any degree of devolution for Scotland and suggests a very dystopian development for the country as if local devolution could have somehow exacerbated the excesses of Thatcherism rather than provided any amelioration as the Scottish government is currently doing in terms of the coalition government's policies.  He portrays a country overrun by American interests and becoming even more impoverished and dysfunctional than even the problems Scotland faced.  He makes no recognition, even if such a state would have developed, that Scots would have become the cheap labour force Thatcher wanted to promote and consequently that if things had become so bad there would have been even greater migration of Scots to British towns than was even the case.  As it is, at any time about 8% of the entire Scottish population is living in England.  In addition, there seems no factors in his counter-factual that would allow the economy of Eire to boom before it did in our world.  Overall, this comes over as a very sour analysis, distorted heavily in the assumption that even the mild devolution proposed in 1979 would have led to utter disaster for Scotland with no redeeming features.

Membery's chapter starts well, but is ultimately wasted.  Whilst he rehearses the different explanations of the causes of the First World War, he ignores what we know of diary accounts of what Kaiser Wilhelm II was saying as early as 1912 about desiring a war, not least to bring about a political shift within Germany; that the most suitable time would be in the summer of 1914 when the Kiel Canal widening was complete and that it would be best caused by an incident in the Balkans.  Yes, it is entirely feasible that Franz Ferdinand would not have been assassinated, in fact it was far more likely that he would not have been than what actually happened.  However, the changing of that incident would have done nothing to divert the progress to war.  Consequently Criddle skips over elements which are fascinating, notably him drawing to attention that even without the war the world would have been hit by the flu epidemic in 1918/19 which killed many millions across the world and what the consequences would have been if the war had still been running by then.

Criddle's chapter probably shows up the worst in counter-factual writing.  He states more than once that Mitterand would have had no desire to introduce the first-past-the-post system to France, and that the electoral system he did introduce avoided having his party almost eliminated in the elections.  Thus, there seems no reason why the counter-factual would ever have come about.  It appears that Criddle is so wedded to the pattern of British politics since 1979, of a single party in power for over a decade (Conservatives 18 years unbroken; Labour 13 years unbroken) that he is intolerant of France which experienced an alternation of the kind the UK saw between 1959-79; and the fact that the President and the government were of differing political complexions at times even though this often happens in the USA.  Consequently Criddle comes down simply to a highly Anglocentric view and one embedded in his time rather than being aware of the past and simply uses this highly unlikely counter-factual to criticise France for basically being insufficiently like the UK.

The most detailed chapter is by Brack himself, 'What If the Alliance had not quarrelled over defence in 1986?', this and the ones that follow, 'What if John Major had become chief whip in 1987?' by B.J. Briand, the one by Simon Buckby and Jon Mendelsohn on Yitzhak Rabin surviving the assassination attempt in 1995 and Michael Howard becoming Conservative leader in 1997 by Mark Garnett are reasonable enough, but as with the previous collection they are almost more use in putting the spotlight on aspects of political history which might have been overlooked.  The Rabin counter-factual ultimately ends up minimally different from what happened in reality and shows that it is a rare situation in which a single person can alter the trends of history.  The title chapter by John Nichols is interesting on how differently the 11th September 2001 terrorist attacks in the USA could have been handled to the benefit of the Democrats.  As with the counter-factual on Tony Benn in the previous volume, this is based on a 'factual' because we know Al Gore won the presidential election, it was just the electoral mechanics that stopped it happening.  The differences of a Gore administration are rather rushed through which is a pity.

The best chapters are Richard S. Grayson's 'What if Gustav Stresemann had lived beyond 1929?'; Helen Szamuely's 'What if Czechoslovakia had fought in 1938?' and John Gittings's 'What if Mao had met Roosevelt?' which not only provides a spotlight on an often overlooked occurrence in the Second World War but also a good quick survey of shifts in historiography on US-Chinese relations.  I am sceptical that a good working relationship would have been possible with Mao and it seems likely he would have come to power using the 'salami technique' used by Communists in East European coalitions in the post-war period if there had been some deal with Chiang Kai-shek to share power in the short term.  However, the concept of a tripolar Cold War world is likely to have appeared in US policy 20 years sooner than it did.  In addition, as Gittings notes, the most likely outcome would have been to prevent Chinese and in turn, possibly US, intervention in the Korean War.

'The Solitaire Mystery' by Jostein Gaarder
This was given to me by the brother of a friend of mine who seems to have a passion for buying what I feel are pretentious books, ones that are the centre of conversation at middle class dinner parties at the time.  Of course, I get to them many years, even decades after they were the height of fashion.  I think I received this book at the same time as he gave me 'Perfume' by Patrick Süskind (1985) which attracted renewed, extensive attention in Britain the late 1990s; probably around 1996 when the English version of 'The Solitaire Mystery' was published in the wake of Gaarder's highly successful guide to philosophy, 'Sophie's World' (in English 1995).  Anyway, as with 'Perfume' I was very dissatisfied reading 'The Solitaire Mystery', both books seem to emphasise style over substance.  This is particularly the case with Gaarder's book which has chapters named after different cards in pack of cards.  The story is very simple, about an eight-year old boy and his father travelling from Norway (Gaarder's home country) to Greece to get their mother/wife back from her modelling career.  On the way the boy is given a book which outlines adventures of his ancestors on a fantastical island inhabited by living playing cards, located in the Bermuda Triangle, so there are two parallel stories.  The book would be fine for an imaginative ten year old, but for adult readers it is curious but never engaging.  There are supposedly references to different philosophies and I am probably at a disadvantage as I am unfamiliar with even standard western philosophical tendencies so cannot tell these references apart from the simple whimsical ones.  This book is presumably interesting if you are a philosophy student (the man who gave it to me had been a sociology student but is now a debt collector) looking for a rest or a pre-pubescent child who can read the book at face value.  I would rather read a Harry Potter novel.

'The Gate of Worlds' by Robert Silverberg
I know little of Silverberg's work so cannot really compare this to other writing by him.  However, it reads like a book aimed at adolescents rather than adults.  It is a good adventure story for a 12-year old and easy to get through if you are older and want something untaxing.  It features a young man in a counter-factual world travelling from England which has broken from the Ottoman Empire sixty years before, travelling to the Aztec kingdom and then adventuring in the southern regions of North America, having journeys over thousands of kilometres and a chaste relationship with the daughter of a tribal chieftain; the indigenous tribes basically untouched except for various Russian trading ports down the West coast of North America.

For me the greatest interest is the counter-factual background.  In this world, three-quarters of the population of Europe rather than a quarter, were killed by the Black Death which basically by-passed the Middle East.  Consequently, the Seljuk Turks have conquered Constantinople in 1420 and by 1490 have conquered England.  Except in England, Islam is the dominant European religion.  Without the West European explorers, the Aztec and Inca empires were unmolested until 1585 when Diogo Lobo discovered the Americas.  Similarly even by 1985, when the book is set, the West African states like Mali and Songhay remain free of European interference.  Russia is the dominant power in Asia, ruling both China and India. Turkish is the lingua franca for Europe and the language Shakespeare wrote in, not only 'Julius Caesar', 'Macbeth' and 'Hamlet' but his historical plays of our world have been replaced by 'Osman the Great', 'Suleiman the Magnificent' and 'The Fall of Constantinople'.  Technology has advanced more slowly and the most advanced vehicles in this 1985 are steam-powered cars; there are no aeroplanes or even airships.

'The Way It Wasn't: Great Science Fiction Stories of Alternate History' compiled by Martin Greenberg
The title is pretty self-explanatory.  These are stories rather than analysis, published by a range of US authors 1968-92.  They vary greatly in quality.  One of the longest is 'Lion Time in Timbuctoo' which is set at the start of the 20th century in the world Silverberg envisages in ' The Gate of Worlds'.  This story is set in the West African kingdom of Songhay at the time of the death of the king.  The British have just broken from the Ottoman Empire rather like Balkans states did 1912-13.  The different balance of the world powers has left the West African empires in existence rather than suppressed by colonial rule by European powers.  It is an interesting story with the tensions between the different powers played out well, though the conclusion is rather too tidy.  Pamela Sargent's 'The Sleeping Serpent' is similarly not bad.  It envisages a Europe in the 17th century (bar England) controlled by the Mongols who have now started developing colonies in North America.  The story involves the expulsion of the English from from the continent but also the Mongols coming to see the indigenous population as cousins.  I have read 'Archetypes' by Harry Turtledove before, it is one of his Basil Agyros stories set in a world where Mohammed became a Christian monk and the Byzantine Empire is still prospering in the 14th century. This is not a bad story either. 

'A Ship Full of Jews' is a very short story by Barry N. Malzberg about Christopher Columbus's voyage being used to deport Jews from Spain in 1492 to dump them in North America.  Unfortunately it goes weirdly metaphysical at the end.  Another story with a mystical/magical element but would bear being longer is 'Through Road No Wither' by Greg Bear about a witch encountering Nazi officers in a contemporary France in which the Germans won the Second World War and then sending them back in time to die in that conflict as a form of revenge.

A number of the stories mean little to non-American readers.  Susan Shwartz's 'Suppose they Gave a Peace ...' envisages that George McGovern rather than Richard Nixon won the 1972 US Presidential election.  The outcome is that the USA withdraws from Vietnam slightly sooner than happened in reality which it seems would have had minimal impact on the situation either for Vietnam or the USA.  The only real difference which is not explored in the story is the fact that Nixon's involvement in Watergate would not have tarnished his standing.  'Ike at the Mike' by Harold Waldrop simply envisages Dwight Eisenhower having become a jazz musician and Elvis Presley having become a senator for Mississippi with minimal repercussions.  'The Winterberry' by Nicholas A. Dichario is told from the perspective of a mentally damaged President John F. Kennedy who survived the assassination attempt against him.  However, given that he is confined to a house and has little grasp of events around him, this seems a real waste as if for Americans, 'wow, JFK survived' is sufficient to make it interesting. 

'All the Myriad Ways' by Larry Niven envisages a world in which travel between alternate versions is possible leading to people to totally devalue life because there will always be somewhere where they survive.  'Over There' by Mike Resnick I have read before too and sees Theodore Roosevelt leading an irregular cavalry unit during the First World War again with minimal impact.  I guess this is simply a device to explore the legacy of such behaviour.  That type of approach is handled incredibly better in 'The Lucky Strike' by Kim Stanley Robinson who looks at the outcome of a different crew flying to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945.  The discussion of the weight on individuals responsible for using atomic weapons reminded me of a number of stories in the 'Astounding' anthology I read last year.  Very well handled.

Two other stories with an American flavour which stand out are 'We Could Do Worse' by Gregory Benford set in a USA in which Robert A. Taft rather than Dwight Eisenhower became the Republican nominee for the 1952 US Presidential election after Richard Nixon (in our world Vice-President under Eisenhower) brought support of the California delegates behind Taft who was on his third attempt to be nominated.  Taft in this story selected Joseph McCarthy as his vice-president.  So, when in 1953, Taft died as he did in our world, McCarthy, the witch-hunter of Communists became President and was re-elected in 1956 with Nixon as his vice-president.  Early in his career Nixon had worked with McCarthy and was seen as having strong anti-Communist credentials.  This precise outcome seems unlikely because of the steps Taft took to rein in McCarthy's behaviour.  What is more feasible is that Nixon would have become Taft's vice-president, become president in 1953 and then had McCarthy as his vice-president in 1956.  The outcome might have delivered the kind of USA shown in the story with a secret police putting Adlai Stevenson the Democrat candidate in 1952 under house arrest and simply snatching other members of Congress as if it was a regime like Germany in 1933.  It would be interesting to see this setting extended to a novel.  However, given that counter-factual writing in the USA is typically used by the right-wing to show how much 'better' the country would be if things had gone differently, it might not find a publisher

Another strong story is 'Catch That Zeppelin!' by Fritz Leiber which is based on a number of minor differences to create an alternate 1939.  Thomas Edison married Marie Sklodowska (better known as Marie Curie in our world) and cheap electric power was developed as a result of their and their son's inventions.  Germany was invaded following the breaking of the Hindenburg Line by the British in November 1918 followed by a thrust by Field Marshal Foch which drove the Germans to the Rhine and led to occupation of Berlin.  The consequence was better relations between the Allies and Germany which became an immediate member of the League of Nations and the USA remained involved in global politics so Nazism never arose.  Helium was made available to Germany and the 'Hindenburg' disaster was avoided; though there were airship crashes, by 1939 airship travel is still common with them docking at the Empire State Building in New York as was considered.  Winston Churchill has become an American as his mother was, but has still written similar books.  The consequence of these factors is a less polluted, more peaceful world.

'Diva' by Delacorta
I enjoyed the 1981 movie of this novel and its sound track.  It is a short novel set in and around Paris featuring a young motorcycle courier Jules, an American opera singer Cynthia, a thirteen-year old girl Alba who shoplifts and the man, Serge, she lives with.  They story revolves around a recording of a performance by the opera singer, the diva of the title and a recording made by the girlfriend of a gangster.  The novel moves quickly, though these days it is difficult to read without feeling very uneasy about the relationship between Alba and Serge or even the one that develops between Alba and Jules. In the movie these relationships plus the one which develops between Jules and Cynthia, are much more clearly platonic than in the novel.

Jules is regularly chased by gangsters and record company representatives for the cassettes he ends up with.  The movie is far more stylish than the novel, for example, in the book Serge drives only a Peugeot saloon, in the movie he drives a Citroen 11.  In addition, in the novel, the police, both corrupt and clean, are much more involved whereas in the movie it is Serge who sorts everything out.  The novel is more brittle and in some ways nastier, especially the fate of the gangster's girlfriend, Karina.  Perhaps this is because it was written in French and first published in 1979 and so it is out of step with a UK reader in 2011.  Despite the twisting plot and the various chases, I would suggest not bothering with the book and simply watching the movie which is far more stylish, clever and wistful.

'The Secret Documents of Sherlock Holmes' by June Thomson
There have been numerous novels published since 1927 that have added to the Sherlock Holmes canon of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  What is interesting about Thomson's work is that unlike most subsequent authors, she has stuck to the short story format, which accounted for all but four of the original Sherlock Holmes stories.  In addition, she has only written stories which are referred to in passing in the original stories.  Conan Doyle included numerous 'off stage' stories that Dr. Watson refers to to give a context or a timing for one of his stories.  Sometimes there are details about the particular cases.  From these crumbs, Thomson has spun a good collection of Sherlock Holmes tales, very loyal to the original, though occasionally frivolous, but still both engaging in their own right and successfully adding to the scope of Holmes stories. 

I thought wrongly that this was the fourth book in a series of such collections.  However, now I have found it was the first and that five others have followed.  The current series is 'The Secret Files of Sherlock Holmes' (1990); 'The Secret Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes' (1992); 'The Secret Journal of Sherlock Holmes' (1993); 'Holmes and Watson : a Study in Friendship' (1995); 'The Secret Documents of Sherlock Holmes' (1999) and 'The secret Notebooks of Sherlock Holmes' (2004); these others I will certainly now look out for.


'Unmaking the West' edited by Philip E. Tetlock, Richard Ned Lebow and Geoffrey Parker
I have commented on the rigorous approach to counter-factual analysis introduced by this book in a recent posting: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2011/12/rigorous-approach-to-counter-factuals.html  Though this book is even more academic in style than those involving Duncan Brack discussed above, if you are a counter-factual enthusiast it is worthwhile persisting with.  Whilst you may not agree with some of the contributors, all of the chapters are strong and stimulate interesting debate.

Many of the chapters look at events for which there was a far greater probability that something other than what happened for real would have occurred.  In Victor Davis Hanson's chapter on the Battle of Salamis in 480 BCE he shows it was far more likely that the Persians would win that battle or even if they had lost, have gone on to defeat the Greeks and so snuff out Classical Greek civilisation, a foundation of our western society.  Even Barry Strauss's response sees the Persians winning, the only difference is that he believes that Greek colonists in southern Italy could have ultimately defeated the Persians and so 'corrected' the history closer back to ours.

Carlos Eire similarly argues that there was a high probability that Jesus would not have been executed but rather imprisoned or banished or gone into exile and lived to die of old age.  This would have meant that Christianity would have developed in a different way without the central element of his death, apparent resurrection and so his divinity.  As it is, Eire points out it could easily have been the case that we ended up with different forms of Christianity to the ones which are dominant in our world.  The key difference is that with Jesus not being seen as largely divine, dictators in Europe could have claimed they were the highest authority and even divine themselves the way the Roman emperors and rules in other parts of the world such as Japan did.  The fact that there was always a higher spiritual authority, Eire feels, provided a focus for those opposed to authoritarian regimes.  Eire goes on to look at a Catholic England brought about by Henry VIII choking to death on a mouthful of venison in 1531 or getting the divorce he wanted from Pope Clement.  In the former case Queen Mary would come to throne 22 years early, marrying sooner and increasing the chance of having an heir probably by a Spanish king.  Eire does seem differences for the development of England, but these are mainly political and he fortunately does not fall into the trap of assuming that Catholicism prevented economic or technological development.

Jack Goldstone sees a Catholic England appearing due to the death of William III and a limit as a result on scientific developments that formed the basis for later industrial revolution.  However, as Carla Gestiana Pestana quickly contests, the death of William may have meant no strong links with the Netherlands and its defeat by Spain, but Protestant Mary II and then Anne would have come to the throne rather their Catholic brother James.  To some degree Eire's view on Catholicism and industrialisation is implicitly supported by Joel Mokyr's essay on alternatives to the industrial revolution.  I was heartened to see that he suggests cultural and physical reasons why industrialisation may not have taken place or stalled at the first phase of water-powered machinery.  He also shows why it was unlikely to take place in other parts of the world.  This is a theme that Kenneth Pomeranz also looks at.  However, Mokyr's work is stronger as he lays down a fascinating almost scientific approach to how knowledge and context need to be at a certain state to allow particular technologies to develop.

Sticking out a little, but still interesting are Robin Yates on a stronger Song Empire in our 13th century, reminding us that many countries outside Europe had a range of paths they could have gone down as a result possibly of simply a different outcome in some battles.  Holger Herwig looks at a Second World War scenario in which the USSR is defeated by October 1941 as a result of the death of Stalin and this leads to a more extensive Holocaust and far more steps in Hitler's plans such as the resettlement of conquered territories and the construction of the architectural behemoths in Berlin that were planned.  However, the Third Reich is overthrown in 1945 by repeated atomic bombings by the USA. 

Interestingly, lacking the Cold War imperatives, Holger sees the USA staying uninvolved in Europe after the war and not providing Marshall Aid.  I think that is an incredibly flawed argument.  Marshall Aid was more about restoring the European economies so that they could buy from the USA in the coming decades and not lead to the over-supply problems which had dogged the US economy after the First World War.  In addition, the USA had to stay in Europe to feed many of its people and without the USSR taking over half of the continent then the USA may have been involved in far more states than it was in our world, notably ravaged Poland.  In addition, in Holger's scenario, Hamburg, Munich, Augsburg, Bremen, Essen, Frankfurt, Hanover and Mannheim (presumably Ludwigshafen too as it lies just over the river) are all destroyed by atomic bombs.  This would have not only destroyed major trade and industrial cities but left large parts of Germany radioactive with a major hazard to neighbouring states too.  This would have created vast quantities of refugees and rendered large parts of Germany uninhabitable.  Unless Germany as willing to tolerate mass starvation not only in Germany but most of Europe, then it would have had to have a sustained humanitarian mission which may have made Marshall Aid look small scale.  If it had turned its back on Europe then the USA would have revived the Depression for itself pretty quickly.

'Girl With A Pearl Earring' by Tracy Chevalier
This is a simple story which imagines that the woman who appears in Johannes Vemeer's (1632-75) painting of the same name was a servant of Vermeer's.  The novel traces the few years she spends as a servant in the Vermeer house and the friction with her family and her employer's wife and one of his daughter's.  It is limited to certain districts of Delft but outlines the period and the city well.  It is a model of how a story can be set in the past without the dialogue becoming cumbersome in an attempt to be 'historical', so having the correct feel and yet not being difficult for modern readers to penetrate.  I suggest it is a model of a historical novel and has a 'clean' style which fits that of Vermeer's paintings which may have been deliberate, but it provides a good example for those thinking of writing historical novels.

Non-Fiction
'Sons of Heaven: A Portrait of the Japanese Monarchy' by Jerrold M. Packard
This does pretty much what the title says.  A friend of mine questioned my motives for buying this when I did from a remaindered bookshop back in the 1990s.  It was mainly better than he expected, detailing the part of Japanese society which tends to get overlooked in favour of the military.  It showed the impotence of the emperors and their slide into poverty as well as the tortuous nature of court society.  However, the last fifth to a quarter of the book was incredibly tedious.  I had forgotten the obsessions of authors about monarchies and that is to explore the minutiae of the court and its personalities, assuming that their audience revels in these things too.  Once he started giving immense detail of Emperor Hirohito's household in the 1980s I should have stopped reading: it was painfully tedious.

'Red Victory: A History of the Russian Civil War' by Bruce Lincoln
This is a very good coverage of an aspect of the post-Russian Revolution period that is often hurried over in general history books and even survey histories of Russia.  In a flowing style which reminded me of William Shirer, Lincoln covers a very complex conflict, not only the battles but behind the frontlines of all the differing factions.  I particularly welcomed the thumbnail sketches of the different protagonists and neglected areas such as the complicated situation in the Ukraine and the Baltic States; the role of cavalry and armoured train forces; the use of terror by all sides; the 'home front' of the different factions especially on aspects such as women and propaganda; the level of anti-Semitism which though not leading me to believe in the supposed 'causal nexus' for Nazism, did highlight what was clearly a context into which the advancing German armies could bring the Holocaust less than 25 years later. 

Like too many historians, particularly Americans, Lincoln loses his focus when discussing the execution of the Tsar and his family.  No-one looks on Louis XVI and his family in that way, so why is there this adherence to the Romanoffs?  It is almost 100 years since they were executed and yet too many people seem to think their deaths somehow erased all that they had inflicted on Russia.  When you read the millions of deaths in the civil war due to conflict and simple persecution, the execution of a handful more, however, illustrious jars with other more important points Lincoln makes.  Certainly reading this book shifted my view of Lenin's use of terror.  Whilst he may have lacked the paranoia of Stalin, it is clear he was utterly, explicitly, ruthless and developed a culture that was fertile ground for Stalin's purges in the following decades.

'The Killing of SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich' by Callum MacDonald
I bought this book in 1993 at the Imperial War Museum and regret not having read it sooner.  My copy is in the Papermac addition and some of their books focused on war history are not that impressive.  However, this is an incredibly well written book which really draws you in.  Whilst focused on the events of the assassination, one of the rare times during the Second World War that such an action was authorised, it is very strong on the background and answers many questions about why Heydrich was singled out, showing that it was not simply because of his abilities but also the politics around the Czech government in exile and its need to demonstrate that the Czechs were fighting back so that the country would not simply be left in the hands of the Germans if a negotiated peace came about.  MacDonald is highly capable at writing the best kind of history which leaves you feeling you have learnt so much without even really being aware of it. 

The book is as gripping as a novel and yet is a historical text.  With his death in 1996 at the age of only 49, we lost a very capable historian.  I will certainly search out the other books he produced especially 'The Lost Battle: Crete 1941' (1993) another location, like the Czech Republic, which for some reason has held an interest for me.  Learning so much about the Czech experience during the Second World War did prompt me to think that I had never read anything on Slovakia which was divided off from Bohemia-Moravia (the Czech lands) in March 1939 and was an ally of Nazi Germany.  Nor indeed have I read much about Hungary or Croatia, other allies of Germany in the period; there seems to be a dearth of English-language books on what went on in these states during the war.

'British Public Opinion and the Abyssininan War 1935-6' by Daniel Waley
This is another history book I wish I had read sooner rather than simply carrying from house to house.  It reads like a published version of a doctoral thesis, though by the time it was published in 1975, Waley was a well-published medieval historian.  There is a tight focus which makes very good use of the resources available.  It is a model of what people doing PhD research should really do.  Interestingly, perhaps given the time it was written, there are no sweeping statements, everything is supported and when elements appear that Waley feels counteract general trends he brings them out rather than ignores them, even though they may marginally weaken his line of argument.  Overall a very interesting study of British society, especially single-issue activism and politics around an element of appeasment that tends to be neglected in general surveys.

'Off the Record.  Political Interviews 1933-1943.  WP Crozier' ed. by A.J.P. Taylor
This is a book I found I had been carrying from house to house for many years as it had my tutor group number from when I was at FE college in the 1980s written in the front.  It is an interesting collection of notes taken by W.P. Crozier, editor of the 'Manchester Guardian' 1932-44 when he died.  The newspaper is what is now 'The Guardian' and even in the 1930s and 1940s despite its regional publication was seen as the leading liberal newspaper.  Crozier visited London and made erratic notes of his interviews with leading politicians and the occasional ambassador. 

It provides interesting evidence for the views of members of the elite in the run-up to the war and through the early stages.  Of course, it highlights errors made by many of these people, especially in terms of the likely actions of Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and the leadership of Japan.  The faith in the reasonableness of these dictators is pretty alarming. In September 1933, Labour MP Arthur Henderson and President of the Disarmament Conference and in November 1933, Norman Davis chief US delegate to that conference, both portrayed Hitler as 'entirely pacific'. In contrast, Ivan Maisky, Soviet ambassador to London 1932-43 in December 1933, warned that Germany was already rearming; he was also aware of the internal politics of Japan and how it had been military commanders rather than the Japanese government who had ordered the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931.   Sir Geoffrey Knox who had been the head of the governing body of the Saar region of Germany 1932-5, as early as May 1935 despaired that the British believed anything Hitler said, he was incredulous at the attitude of 'The Times' newspaper which was staunchly pro-appeasement during the 1930s and was seen overseas as the official newspaper of the British Government.  Ironically whilst under-estimating some fears, these members of the elites over-estimated others.  The fears of Labour peer, Lord Marley in January 1934 that Sir Oswald Mosley had formed a private airforce and planned to bomb London and to pull of a 'March on London' to establish a Fascist regime in the way Mussolini had done was fortunately not feasible.

A number of the mistaken views expressed form the basis of counter-factuals I have looked at on this blog.  Some perceptions, in contrast, were highly astute though not generally accepted at the time.  On a minor issue, Sir Herbert Samuel, MP, Leader of the Liberal Party 1931-5 accurately predicted in November 1933 the outcome of the election in Canada that came in October 1935 and saw Conservative prime minister since 1929 R.B. Bennett swept aside and the Liberals come to power in a reverse of the political situation that had endured for ten years.  Sir Joseph Nall, MP, a Conservative backbencher, as early as February 1935 expected Churchill to become prime minister ‘if there were a big political crisis’, ‘by virtue of his brains and personality’ and because Conservative Party would accept him. This proved to be precisely the case in May 1940, even though many commentators in Crozier's book never expected Churchill to prosper. Another example is Sir Samuel Hoare, at various times foreign secretary, home secretary, first lord of the admiralty and secretary of state for air, predicted in November 1939 that the Germans would use paratroopers to seize control of strategic points in the Netherlands, something that came true in April 1940.  Similarly, as early as November 1933, Rex Leeper, Head of the Foreign Office News Department noted the impossibility of Britain defending Hong Kong from a Japanese invasion.  The territory was captured in 18 days in December 1941.

The information in the book goes through two filters, first the interests of Crozier which sometimes put the focus on issues that now seem less important, especially reshuffles in government and then through the rather heavy handed selection, editing and commentary from Taylor.  Most of the time he sticks to giving background details on the role the individuals being interviewed played but at other times he is very dismissive of statements feeling obliged to tell the reader that they are entirely imaginary statements.  The book was published in 1973 and since then scholarship has moved on and has shown how mistaken Taylor was to be dismissive of some of the statements.  In particular her regularly disparages Eduard Benes, president of Czechoslovakia, especially his views on developments within Nazi Germany.  Now, of course we know that certainly well into 1942 Benes did have regular information fed to him from within the highest levels of the Nazi machine (cf MacDonald's book).  Similarly Taylor dismisses the German resistance movements against Hitler, now making him look foolish for not taking these at all seriously.

Whatever the filters that Crozier and Taylor put on the information, what is apparent is the almost complete lack of talent among leading British politicians in the 1930s.  They seem acutely aware of this deficit themselves, constantly speaking about how inadequate their colleagues and rivals are.  One might blame this on the First World War for eliminating many of the people who otherwise most likely would have risen to prominence in the 1930s.  However, many of those in post were of an older generation anyway.  I guess it has to do with the attractions of business over civic life or of emigration over remaining in Britain; those people with 'get up and go' had gone by the 1930s.  Those people who were left and perception appear to have been kept on the margins and their views dismissed.  Given this context, it is in fact unsurprising that Nall could see as early as 1933 that Churchill would be the only option to run a war; there were so very few people who came close to him in terms of ability.

Another interesting aspect that the book highlights is how paranoid and controlling the government of Neville Chamberlain (1937-40) was.  The movie 'Glorious 39' (2009) directed by Stephen Poliakoff was a fictional account of how Chamberlain's secret forces monitored private statements critical of Chamberlain's regime and stifled criticisms.  However, this fiction is based on actual behaviour.  Notable are the discussion of suppressing the left-wing popular newspaper 'Daily Mirror' and the treatment of Leslie Hore-Belisha, secretary of state for war 1937-40 and a friend of Crozier's.  Even when he was unceremoniously removed from office due to dislike of him by military leaders he found the articles he wrote censored and articles written about him very disparaging.  This may have stemmed from him being Jewish.  Certainly reading this book has reinforced my view that the National Government which in various forms ruled Britain from 1931-40, with its unassailable position in parliament was a watered down version of the dictatorships seen on the continent.  As ineffectual and deluded as he was, Chamberlain seems to have even aped those dictators in his paranoia and use of the secret state to eliminate criticism and this book certainly gives credence to Poliakoff's movie.

'Habsburg & Bourbon Europe 1470-1720' by Roger Lockyer
This is another book I have been carrying around for far too long without reading.  When I bought it second hand in 1988 it was only 4 years old and now it is far older than that and seems rather dated in style.  It does a good job of covering the entirety of Europe (bar the British Isles) and the European colonies around the world that developed in this period.  It covers very complex issues such as the Reformation, the Catholic Reformation, the French Wars of Religion, the Eighty Years War and the Thirty Years War.  It certainly does not neglect the periphery of Europe and there are good sections on Scandinavia, Russia and the Ottoman Empire.  However, as Lockyer covers each phase geographically it does mean he goes back and forth in the chronology and you can find yourself reading about an incident three or four times from different countries' perspectives.  There are maps at the end, but far more place throughout the book would really help clarify what was going on especially with the armies marching all over German states during the Thirty Years War and the constant ebb and flow of the borders of France, the southern Netherlands and the United Provinces.

Lockyer betrays a clear sympathy for an Erasmian humanist form of Catholicism which means that the text comes over as exasperating at how long it took for the Roman Catholic Church to reform itself and a disdain for Protestant sects including Calvinism but particularly the more extreme ones such as the Anabaptists.  This means you feel as if you are reading a partisan account rather than a more objective one appropriate for this kind of general survey book.

'Toplis the Monocled Mutineer' by William Allison and John Fairley
I came to the factual story of Percy Toplis through the BBC television series, 'The Monocled Mutineer' (1986) based on this book.  Toplis was a confidence trickster from the age of 11 and through his life which ended at the age of 23, when he was shot dead by police, he was involved in a string of crimes including theft, fraud, impersonation and murder.  For a man who was adept at changing identities and playing on the social class assumptions of early 20th century Britain, the First World War provided him ample opportunity for crime and simply finding an easier life.  He managed to socialise in high society and regularly trick money from people. Never higher than a private, he would masquerade as everything from a corporal to a colonel whatever the circumstances demanded.  His ability also allowed him to be a very successful womaniser.

What led to the nationwide manhunt for Toplis which led to him being shot by police in Cumbria in June 1920 was his involvement with the Etaples mutiny in September 1917.  Etaples was the location of a number of military hospitals for Allied troops and notably of the Bull Ring training base which new recruits and recovering wounded soldiers were trained in before being sent to the front line.  The regime at the Bull Ring was so brutal that many men begged to be sent to the front line despite the horrific conditions there.  The soldiers were exercised to exhaustion with minimal food and were threatened with barbaric punishments over seen by the loathed military police and trainers.

The situation was exacerbated by the fact that British soldiers were paid 1 shilling per day, a quarter of what soldiers from Dominion countries received.  In addition, rations for Australians were greater and they did not face the death penalty in the way British soldiers did.  The mutiny came at a time of unrest in the French forces and whilst there was reference to the revolutionary activity in Russia much of the demands were around practical things such as pay and leave.  A mutiny among Chinese labourers, paid one penny a day, working some miles from the Etaples camp broke out at the same time.  The soldiers' mutiny was ended through concessions being made, the labourers' mutiny was put down by brute force.  However, after the mutiny, action was taken against ringleaders who were executed.

These mutinies were an embarrassment to the British Army and the government and they were hushed up immediately.  Efforts were taken that no details of the mutinies leaked out.  Toplis had been involved with a gang of deserters at the time and with his charisma and ability appear and disappear at will, became an leading character in the mutiny.  Thus, there was a desire to capture and kill him so that he was not in a position to reveal what had occurred.  In many ways he became a figurehead of the mutiny.  However, given his extensive criminal activities he is not really a hero.  Yet, the abilities he had that allowed him to be a reasonably effective criminal kept him alive for almost three years when there was a desire to kill him.

The desire to conceal the reality of the mutinies has persisted for decades and even Toplis's grave is unmarked despite efforts to rectify this in the 1980s.  This continued desire to hide the truth led both the Conservative government and right-wing newspapers to attack the television series and the book it was based upon.  It was used to give strength to the view that the BBC has a left-wing bias, which I always find laughable because in my view it is a bastion of the Establishment and too often peddles right-wing viewpoints. There are attempts to dismiss the mutinies as exaggerated and to say that Toplis was not involved, a line which is stated on Wikipedia.  Toplis served under different names and never stayed in any army or RAF unit long and flitted between them regularly both in wartime and in peacetime, so to say he could not have been in Etaples because his unit was on its way to India is foolish.

In many ways, there is no need for Toplis to have been involved in the mutiny.  He was a hardened criminal and while he was glamorous, what is more important is that an element of British history has constantly been dismissed as false.  It involved ordinary soldiers sickened by the unnecessarily harsh regime that was imposed on them and the inequity of different treatment given to soldiers fighting alongside each other.  For some reason this still troubles many in Britain.  It is offensive to them to say that for six days in 1917, a few hundred soldiers mutinied.  The files will open at the National Archives in 2018 (archives are opened 30 or 50 or 100 years, etc. from the 31st December of the given year so, in effect on 1st January up to an additional 12 months after the material was generated), but there will be no point searching them out.  Given that there has been an effort to cover up the mutinies from the start, nothing of value will be in them.

The book is an excellent read and is reinforced with the rigour of an academic publication even down to giving the home addresses of the eye-witnesses interviewed in the 1970s.  It touches on interesting elements such as volunteer groups that provided refreshments to soldiers, the inflation that Britain suffered during the war, the differences between Dominion and British troops, the ambivalence towards participation in the war which persisted in the USA through 1917, how ill-equipped the US Army was and how poorly demobilisation was handled in 1918/19 given the concern that Germany would refuse to sign the peace treaty.  An important and interesting book to read.