The Books Of My Life: Alexander Rooksmoor

As I have noted before, I am regular reader of various features in 'The Guardian' newspaper. I know I am never going to be famous so they would not ask me to respond to these features for real. Still that does not stop me from thinking how I would respond and it is nice to be able to get these thoughts out of my system. Back in 2010, I did this for their 'Tell Us About Yourself' feature: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2010/12/tell-us-about-yourself.html Looking back on that now I would not disagree with many of the responses I gave then, even 15 years on. My fears of that time were well placed as we did lose our house in 2012 and our family was broken up living with wider family members, in rented rooms or B&Bs. We did manage to live back together again in 2015 after I managed to get a job which in total lasted 7 years, the longest one I have ever held.

Today I am going to have a go at the 'The Books Of My Life' feature in 'The Guardian': https://www.theguardian.com/books/series/the-books-of-my-life I accept it is arrogance to think that anyone might consider me a 'leading author'. Back in 2010, though I had written novels over the preceding 22 years, I had none on sale. Self-publishing and then being taken up by Sea Lion Press https://www.sealionpress.co.uk/ enabled me to get my books out there and in turn it really fuelled my writing. I have now written 70 books, most of which are now on sale in e-book format. I might not be a best seller, 2014 was my peak year of sales and as with the marketplace in general there has been a decline since then. It is often said that everybody has at least one book in them, but clearly I have had a lot more than that and I have no idea how many more I will produce before I die. Thus, while I may not be renowned author and certainly am not 'leading', I feel it is reasonably legitimate for me to respond to the sort of questions that might be asked of such people.

Alexander Rooksmoor: 'Some Saturdays I would go through them all before I got out of bed'

My earliest reading memory

I did not learn to read before going to school aged 4 years and 11 months. We had lots of books at home, but I tended to treat them in a visual way, looking at the images rather than the words. I understood the power of the printed word because my parents read so much. Apparently, aged 3, loath to attend playschool picked up a magazine (probably a Sunday supplement) and waved it at my parents insisting that it said that parents should not send their sons to play school. Thus, it was almost like a magic talisman rather than something to engage with myself. In terms of books, like most children of my generation in England, we started with the Peter & Jane books published by Ladybird. I remember the images of the book '1a. Play with Us' (1964 edition) better than I remember the words. I was a very slow reader and like many children of my generation sub-vocalised everything because we read aloud so much.

My favourite book growing up

The first fiction book I remember actually expressing a like for was 'The Grey Apple Tree' (1965) by Vera Cumberlege. However, the books I came back to most regularly was the series by R.J. Unstead about British history. These were published in the early 1970s and I remember us working to collect them all (in the age before online book ordering!). They ran from 'Invaded Island' (1971) from Stone Age to 1066; 'Kings, Barons and Serfs' (1971), 1066-1300; 'Years of the Sword' (1972), 1300-1485; 'Struggle for Power' (1972), 1485-1689; 'Emerging Empire' (1972), 1689-1763; 'Freedom and Revolution' (1972), 1763-1815; 'Age of Machines', (1974), 1815-1901 to the 'Incredible Century' (1974), 1901-1970. Some Saturdays I would go through them all before I got out of bed. They were highly illustrated A4-sized hardbacks which could be found in most school and public libraries but as a history fan, I had my own set. I note that their subtitle is 'A Pictorial History' and I realise now, I did simply look at the pictures rather than read the text.

The book that changed me as a teenager

I remember that in the larger library in the nearest town, they had a children's section and then around the other side of a row of shelves was a single set of shelves for 'older children'. It actually was at the start of the 'adult' bit of the library and I think the librarians had designed it to tempt teenagers to move from the picture and project books and indeed the 'Doctor Who' novelisations, on to something a bit more mature. A lot of the books there were kind of 'kitchen sink' books for teenagers. I first cycled alone to this library (2.5 miles away) aged 11, which these days would probably terrify parents. I was very conscious of not going into age inappropriate areas (I was never someone who would sneak into movies older than for myself or try to drink alcohol underage). I remember one day hesitantly going round the corner to this section and borrowing the novelisation of 'Bugsy Malone' (1976?) not the script or graphic novel that are dominant now. I was struck by the fact it had one chapter that lasted less than a single page. I also remember a book of eyewitness accounts of various events, including the sinking of the 'Titanic'. 

It was the next step which came quicker than I had long realised which really changed me. I discovered the science fiction and fantasy fiction section of the library. I borrowed both 'The Colour of Magic' (1983) and 'The Final Programme' (1968). While I thoroughly enjoyed 'The Colour of Magic', 'The Final Programme' was the first book I had sat up through the night to complete. I had probably been attracted to it by the pop art/graphic novel book cover, but went on to read a lot of Michael Moorcock books in my life (and indeed all of Pratchett's work). For some reason my sixth form college library had the complete works of Moorcock as they were in the mid-1980s. I do not think the current librarian had ever explored the themes, i.e. lots of drugs and sex, that featured in many. I remember, aged 14 checking with my mother whether I should even be reading 'The Final Programme' given it mentioned sex on the cover, but she felt I was mature enough and ultimately it was more about needle guns and hallucinogenic security systems. What I think I learnt from Moorcock was that science fiction need not be all about big spaceships and robots. Furthermore, I went from 'The Final Programme' to 'The Warlord of the Air' (1971) which really sparked my interest in alternate history. My third novel, 'His Majesty's Dictator', which I completed in 1991, was heavily influenced by it.

The book that changed my mind

I have never really read a book that has altered my opinion on big issues. Maybe that reflects a dogmatism on my part. Friends use to often recommend me books that I 'must' read though it later turned out one was just getting rid of books he thought were terrible and wanted disposed of had misunderstood what lending a book to someone usually entailed. A couple of friends insisted I read 'The Bridge Across Forever: A Love Story' (1984) by Richard Bach which I found tedious and fatuous. It was very arrogant in believing his story needed that kind of output. I see now that it was along these lines of annoyance that in 2009 I came to 'Chimera' (1972) by John Barth. I had bought it assuming it was a straightforward fantasy novel. However, it became clear it was simply a vanity project to show off how much cleverer than the reader Barth knows he is. He even says openly that some readers will not 'get' what he is writing as if that is our problem rather than his.

While I had realised that 'in jokes' rarely work and had sought to remove anything that people might not get because it was too personal to me or my culture, Barth made me realise that any author who does not work with the reader is actually failing. We should both not pander to them but also we should not treat them with disdain simply because they cannot crack our own personal code. It also made clear to me that the books that get published are not necessarily 'good' books, they can simply be out one sale because the author has been fortunate and/or has contacts. I was alert from then on of books which were primarily the author parading their 'greatness' when in fact what they tend to produce in such circumstances is the literary equivalent of the Emperor's new clothes. I would put 'Auto da Fé' (1935) by Elias Canetti which I read in 2000, in this category too.

The book that made me want to be a writer

There was no book which did this. Creative writing was an assessed part of the English curriculum from age 5-16, though I got 'let off' early as I sat my English Language 'O' Level a year early, aged 15. Thus, creative writing was something we did almost weekly. We were all writers. As a consequence I was not conscious of being 'a writer' probably until about 2012, some 24 years after I had completed writing my first novel. I guess I had never really registered that other people did not write in their spare time too.

I knew I got good marks for my creative writing and recall two of my stories being put up on the wall when I was in 3rd Year of primary school. One of them was called 'Wings for a Day' and apparently the teacher noted my knowledge (aged 7) of world events as I featured the fall of the Colonels junta in Greece writing 'in Greece there was a war' and mention of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (the Yom Kippur War had been the preceding year and my parents had an illustrated book about it), though unaware of the politics, rather than the simple news coverage of violence. As the 'Not the Nine O'Clock News' team were shown in one of their spin-off books, as children we were obsessed by Moshe Dayan's eyepatch.

While I got good grades for my creative writing, this actually misled me because teachers would focus in their feedback (not called that back then) on my imagination and not the fact that I was screwing up a lot of the punctuation. This seems to have stemmed largely from my 3rd Year Middle School (nowadays Year 6) teacher, Mrs. Simmons, who had a real aversion to pupils using direct speech and would insist we stuck to reported speech. It was only as an adult that I realised I had been punctuating direct speech wrongly. If I had been a poorer writer, I would have been alerted to this sooner. If I had actually looked at what I had been reading then maybe I would have noticed I was not doing it the same way, though, of course, we tended to see what was done in books was not what we were doing in English at school. Many/most of us believed all poetry had to rhyme.

The book I came back to

In fact there are two, though both on a similar theme. 'Great Escape Stories' (1977) by Eric Williams and 'Colditz' (1974), the anthology version combining 'The Colditz Story' (1952) and 'The Latter Days' (1953) by P.R. Reid. I abandoned the Williams book as from daring stories of Second World War escapes by PoWs, it moved into civilians and then the Korean War. While I found the early stories, of the twelve, 'cosy' if it is legitimate to say that - and was especially impressed by the account of Airey Neave escaping Colditz dressed as a German officer - the later ones were much more unsettling. In the 1970s there were lots of people still around who had been adults during the Second World War. There were a lot of books like 'I am David' (1963) by Anne Holm which was read to us and a copy of 'The Diary of Anne Frank' (1947) was in our classroom when in what is now Year 6, not just the school library. You could watch 'Carrie's War' (the 1974 series of the 1973 book by Nina Bawden) after school and 'The World at War' (first broadcast in 1973) on Sunday afternoons so the Second World War was pretty much 'currency' for us much more than the 1950s or 1960s. The headmaster of my school later chided me for abandoning the book but even then, fearful of nightmares, I did not return to until I was an adult, still very certain about my aversion to torture, but having seen and read a lot more.

It is difficult now to remember why I felt so drawn to escape stories at the time, it is not something that seems to have continued after I went to secondary school. I abandoned 'Colditz' because I foolishly looked ahead while reading it on holiday in 1978 and finding that Lieutenant Albert Michael Sinclair (1918-1944) nicknamed the 'Red Fox' was killed on his final escape attempt in 1944. His repeated escapes made him a hero of mine and I had been using the codename 'Red Fox' in various secret clubs we tended to form as adolescents. It was chilling to read he had been killed and not, like Neave, got clear away. I lost all heart in reading the book and only came back to it and also read 'Colditz: The German Story' (1961) by Reinhold Eggers, as an adult in the late 1990s.

The book I could never read again

Aside from 'Chimera' and 'Auto da Fé' I have already mentioned I would add 'The Quincunx' (1989) by Charles Palliser. I had come across the term 'quincunx' when studying Latin (at a non-selective, comprehensive school - it did happen back then and I did want to be a professional historian) at school, meaning a pattern of five-twelfths (though to me it looked like five-ninths) and a design for the layout of trees in a garden (I was later into garden history), so I thought it would be a story about a sort of code perhaps concealed in a garden and to some extent the synopsis sustained that misapprehension. What it is instead is an unrelenting account of a boy and his mother who are tricked out of their relatively meagre middle class wealth in early 19th Century England. They then proceed to be subjected to all the worst privations of the era. The mother, Mary, having lost her house and all her savings due to a scam, after living as a squatter in an abandoned East London building ends up as a prostitute tied to a brothel. The boy, John, in turn is abused at a horrendous school where he has to literally fight for his food, in a mental asylum and as a scavenger in London sewers. Yes, we know that life was bleak and people were abused but the contorted path the two protagonists are taken along so that they can suffer as many different kinds of abuse as possible is perverse, almost ridiculous.

In second place in this category I would add, 'The New Pelican Guide to English Literature 7. From James to Eliot' (1988 edition) ed. by Boris Ford. Why they bothered to assemble 23 writers to comment on an era of writing that all of them appear to believe was much lesser in so many ways to what preceded, I have no idea. It was a real waste of time for them as well as the reader.

The book I discovered later in life

I am now 57 and am constantly discovering books. I imagine this question is about one which I may have read earlier in my life but only came to far later than that. I would point to 'Renaissance Europe 1480-1520' (1971) by J.R. Hale. I have read a lot of 'survey' books of European history but among them Hale's book really stands out. See my review here: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2021/09/books-i-read-in-september.html Hale really is command of the information he has and writes in such an engaging way for a non-fiction historical book. A lot of historians could learn from his approach. I bought this book in the late 1980s but it was over 30 years before I got round to reading it and I wished I had turned to it much sooner rather than leaving it in storage.

The book I am currently reading

'The Sussex Downs Murder' (1936) by John Bude [Ernest Elmore], the third of his novels I have read in the British Library Crime Classics series republication of his books.

My comfort read

While, as back in 2010, I still have a lot of affection for 'The Book of Heroic Failures' (1979) by Stephen Pile, the default book I turn to these days is the 'The Penguin Atlas of World History. Volume 2: From the French Revolution to the Present' (1964/2004). Doing this exercise has rather revealed that I am not really a reader at heart, I am more a looker at books so I guess this is why a book of lots of colourful maps is comforting to me.

Books I Read In October

 Fiction

'Fear in the Forest' by Bernard Knight

This is the seventh Crowner John novel and like the fifth, 'The Tinner's Corpse' (2001), Knight takes the opportunity to look at another specific aspect of English law in the late 12th Century. In this novel it is how the 'forests' were regulated. While the legal forests did contain woodland they also encompassed heathland and other landscapes. As the novel shows there was stringent but sometimes unrelated regulation of the forests which were deemed to belong to the King. Taking wood, let alone killing wildlife in them could lead to stringent penalties. This novel is really one about corruption by those who policed the forests and them working with criminals to enforce protection rackets and promote their businesses, e.g. in brewing or woodworking over those of locals. Coroner Sir John De Wolfe's antagonist through the novels, the Sheriff of Devon, his brother-in-law, also seems involved. De Wolfe's mistress, Nesta the landlady is pregnant and his wife goes off to a nunnery.

Overall, because there are a series of crimes, including murder, but also extortion and corruption, this is quite a messy novel. Even De Wolfe's relationship with the two women in his life seems scrappy. I guess clear motives should not be expected from people in such a situation, especially for women without societal agency to do all that they might want to. However, the novel does highlight the complexity of the legal situation that Knight wished to highlight and shows very well the difficulties even for nobles of navigating around laws which largely were about making money for the monarch rather than providing a rational legal system for day-to-day life. There are points of action and these come to a climax of violent action, a little as in some of the previous novels, notably 'Crowner's Quest' (1999) and 'The Awful Secret' (2000), melodramatically. However, I guess that it brings it to conclusion after all the various strands he has sent up during the novel and the inability of De Wolfe to challenge corruption in the church, which reminds me of books by Michael Dibdin and Leonardo Sciascia set in contemporary Italy.

'Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City' by K.J. Parker [Tom Holt]

A novel focused on the siege of a city seems a refreshing way to go in a fantasy context. The location is a Roman/Byzantine city and at times the almost explicit references to Roman culture jar in this fantasy context, even though the main race of the city are blue-skinned. The arena, the colours for different factions in the city, the names, the bronze chain at the harbour, even the use of engineering units, that the protagonist Orhan commands, seem to be lifted without much modification from the Roman setting. Parker does seem obsessed with engineers in his fantasy writing. I guess it makes a change from knights or sorcerers especially in this set-up of him defending a city, 'The City' from foreign invaders who have proven to be very clever strategically and well equipped.

It is an interesting book, as much about dealing with various types of people in society as about the technical issues of feed and arming people; of operation siege weapons, etc. The greatest problem I had was the 'cheeky chappy' style of the language for much of the book. It is written in the first person and quickly the kind of 'Cockney barrow boy' language becomes tiring. The book improves towards the end as this declines. The characters, aside from Orhan, are quite believable. The coincidences, especially who is leading the opponents are a further weakness. The ending is very poor, a complete anti-climax and it seems as if after all the hard work Parker put into the different developments and characters he simply ran out of steam and had no idea how to bring it properly to an end. Consequently the rushed conclusion undermines what had gone before. It is not a bad book and as I said at the start it has some refreshing elements. It certainly would have benefited from a map of the world it features as so much is dependent on people marching through particular terrain or not being able to get through a certain straits; a map of the city would also have helped as Orhan hares around different parts and where he and his helpers are and when is important for the story, but never really being clear about them makes it harder to enjoy.

'Burning Bright' by Tracy Chevalier

This is a 'slice of life' novel. It is set in 1792 and is about the family of a chair maker from an area of Dorset I know reasonably well relocating to south London. The family become connected to a circus located in Lambeth. The children in particular also interact with the neighbours, one of whom includes William Blake, the poet, songwriter, painter, engraver and printer. The family become embroiled in scandals at the circus and the attacks on Blake as a result of his support for the French Revolution. The novel simply documents what they see and do in London and the travails of the family. Women getting pregnant, which happens to three of the characters, one of them a major one, seems to be an important focus for Chevalier. You do wonder at the behaviour of some characters, though I think one point is that motherhood, despite its high risks, was seen as a path that many young women could not avoid and might even welcome. At the end of the novel, the family return to their village in Dorset and that is it. Nothing astounding happens, but I guess that is Chevalier's way.

One does have to admire the research Chevalier did and to get the location and the ordinary people of Georgian London so well observed. Much of the pleasure of the book is simply seeing it through the eyes of her protagonists. Even then, it is not perfect. She refers to 'Queen Elizabeth I', at a time when she would only have been 'Queen Elizabeth' the way that Queen Victoria and Queen Anne remain to us today. Given the suffix 'the First' would suggest the characters could see into the future and know that a second would come. The other thing is she refers to mauve some 65 years before it was famously invented as a colour; 'violet' would have done perfectly well instead.

'Angels Flight' by Michael Connelly

This is the sixth book in the Harry Bosch series by Connelly and is set a year after the previous one, 'Trunk Music' (1997). Bosch's precipitate marriage to Eleanor Wish at the end of that novel has already unravelled. Themes about racial tension in Los Angeles which have come in around the edges throughout the series are ramped up in this novel. It sees the murder of a leading black lawyer who has specialised in prosecuting police misconduct cases, on the Angels Flight funicular railway. This again allows Connelly to bring in the tensions he clearly felt writing at the time and to include more parts of the city in his writing. 

As is common with the Bosch novels, the first possible solutions turn out to not necessarily be false but certainly flawed. Working against the context of rioting adds to the dynamism of the story. We are also very much in that time. Cell phones have appeared as the novels have progressed and in this one we see the internet featuring, including, already, a paedophile dark website.

The story combines a nicely twisty case which highlights how people are judged differently both in terms of race but also wealth and influence. On that basis it works well as a mystery. What works less well is how Bosch relates to female characters, especially those closest to him. The best are those at a distance such as the public lawyer set to make sure when the police are investigating there are no conflicts of interest, but as the characters are closer to Bosch, his commanding lieutenant and a member of his team, they are handled less well. 

Eleanor Wish herself feels very much like a device that is dropped in and pulled out in now three of the novels, without really developing her as a full character. His previous 'love interests', Sylvia Moore and Jasmine Corian in 'The Black Ice' (1993), 'The Concrete Blonde' (1994) and 'The Last Coyote' (1995) were similarly under-developed and similarly whisked out of the story. 

I know Connelly was trying to produce a modern version of the 'hard-boiled' crime novel, but as his engagement with racial and technological issues shows, he has been compelled to recognise the changed times and yet the women close to Bosch are portrayed/treated in a way which may have been acceptable to readers in the 1940s but jarred even in the 1990s, let alone now. Eleanor Wish functioned very well as a de-facto femme fatale in 'The Black Echo' (1992) but when cast into a different role, Connelly seems to be at a loss with what to do with her.

This is the last of the Harry Bosch books I own. However, I have a couple more books from two of Connelly's other two series to read.

Non-Fiction

'War and Society in Renaissance Europe, 1450-1620' by J.R. Hale

Perhaps reflecting its theme, this book lacks the sprightly tone of Hale's 'Renaissance Europe 1480-1520' that I read last month: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2021/09/books-i-read-in-september.html  It also takes a different chronological view of the Renaissance and as Hale makes clear is in fact concerned with the period between the end of the Hundred Years' War in 1453 and the start of the Thirty Years' War in 1618, both conflicts which really defined the nature of warfare, at least in Western Europe. It is important to note that there is this geographical limit and despite some passing references to the Balkans, the focus is no farther East than 'Germany' and 'Italy' as they existed at the time.

Hale is keen as with the other book, however, to adopt a different approach to viewing the history than the ones which were prevalent when the book was published in 1985. He shows how accounts of various campaigns or focused on arms and armour effectively lift warfare out of the context in which it sat. There might be passing references to the politics that provoked, prolonged or ended the wars, but minimal in such histories about the connection to the societies either supplying the soldiers or suffering the consequences of the war, certainly in the pre-20th Century eras. Thus, Hale makes effective use of various examples across the period rather than progressing chronologically. It allows him to view who became soldiers of different kinds and why. It looks at the society of soldiers as being separate but also inter-connected with civilian society. He also looks at the economic and social impact not just of the war but the industries associated with war, especially as gunpowder and artillery played an increasing role through the period the book covers.

While it does lack the particularly engaging tone of the previous book of Hale's I read, it was no less interesting. It is analytical without being dry. The thematic sections are sensible and while covering the same period throughout, avoid repetition. I feel that this book is a very useful one to have alongside any you might read on campaigns and wars of the period to give them depth. It is also, as the other book was, a great resource for authors wanting to set stories in this period. There is a lot of detail here and even stories of different experiences of soldiers and civilians that people can draw from easily if seeking to write something set during the period, even if not explicitly focused on war.

Books I Read In September

Fiction

'Classic Tales of Vampires and Shapeshifters' ed. by Tig Thomas

This is a highly illustrated collection of short stories and novel extracts, primarily of vampire and werewolf stories. It features a range of 19th and 20th Century authors, with the oldest being Frederick Marryat (1792-1848) and the newest being E.F. Benson (1867-1940). Some of the stories are well known. There is the first part of 'Varney the Vampyre' (1847) by James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest which began as a series of penny dreadful weekly episodes published 1845-47 before being novelised at 500,000 words. It established a lot of the 'lore' we tend to associate with vampires.

There are two extracts from Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' (1897) around the vampirisation of Lucy Westenra. there is also a short story, 'Dracula's Guest' which Stoker had intended to be the first chapter of the novel. Set in Munich it shows how Stoker originally envisaged Dracula coming from Styria, part of Austria, rather than Transylvania, at the time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire but now in Romania. This short story has been recorded as a radio play by the BBC. Another well-known story is an abridged version of 'Carmilla' (1872) by (Joseph) Sheridan Le Fanu, which is set in Austria. To a modern reader the same-sex undertones are very clear and one can imagine at the time it was striking for that as for the vampirism portrayed.

The inclusion of these stories/extracts does highlight why they were successful. However, there are a lot of stories in this book which I certainly have never encountered but are of real interest. There are many of the Gothic tropes such as thunderstorms and dark castles that we associate with vampires and werewolves. However, Thomas has done well in selecting stories with different, perhaps unexpected elements. 'The Horror from the Mound' by Robert E. Howard, for example is set in West Texas; 'The Mark of the Beast', a werewolf story by Rudyard Kipling is set in northern India; 'The Cat of Nabéshima' is a Japanese story featuring a cat version of the kitsune fox and mujina badger shapeshifters and 'The Other Side: A Breton Legend' by Count Eric Stenbock, as the title suggests is set in Brittany and features an alien realm bordering ours where werewolves, wolfmen and even flame-eyed owls inhabit. The eponymous 'The Horla' seems to be a Brazilian homunculus creature with an ability to drain energy.

While Count Dracula and Sir France Varney are male vampires and werewolves, female ones probably outnumber them in the book. One that struck me was the 20th Century Mrs. Amsworth who features in E.J. Benson's eponymous story. She is a buxom, middle aged woman who plays piquet and uses the telephone but at night flies around an English village long plagued by vampires but is ultimately struck down by a motor car. Perhaps more classic are 'The Vampire Maid' from Westmorland who entraps a hiker and 'Clarimonde' who successfully seduces a French priest; she drains blood from the arm rather than neck; Carmilla takes it from the chest. The vampire of 'Aylmer Valance and the Vampire' by Alice and Claude Askew, is much less happy with her state. Aylmer Valance is a psychic detective, a early 20th Century precursor of the numerous ghost hunter television programmes of today and not a little influenced by Sherlock Holmes. There are a couple of more standard ghost stories, with E.J. Benson's 'The Room in the Tower' though effectively the ghost may be living dead and is found in a coffin full of blood (that features in a couple of stories and not a trait we tend to see now) and 'The Cold Embrace' by Mary E. Braddon.

The writing does at times strike the modern reader with the earnestness of 19th and early 20th Century authors. Some tropes seem over-used too. The endings of many of the stories, often the destruction of the vampire, is typically rushed; done in a paragraph. This may explain why some such as those written by Stoker, but also authors renowned in other genres, such as Kipling and Saki [Hector Hugh Munro] who writes quite an elegant werewolf story, with tiny glints of his usual humour as in the title of 'Gabriel-Ernest' stand out as delivering similar chills and curiosity but with greater deftness than some of the other authors. Overall I found this an interesting collection with unfamiliar stories, and themes and situations that you wonder why contemporary authors in vampire, werewolf and other supernatural stories do not revive for a fresh look at them.

'Fen' by Daisy Johnson

Though this is a short story collection, there is quite a lot of references in the stories to things that happen in others in the collection, so it is best to read them as a whole rather than, for example, dipping in and out. They are all roughly set in the same context: a very dreary part of rural East Anglia and the coastline a short journey away. Much of the focus is on young women, them having sex and becoming pregnant at a young age. Against these aspects many of the stories are magic realism. The best known sees an anorexic woman turn into an eel. However, there is a woman created of earth; a man raised from the dead whose words cause injuries; birds and foxes that can carry souls; three cannibal women house sharing. This is a modern Gothic and reminded me of novels set in the bleak parts of the southern USA where not only the landscape but the desultory aspects of the modern world add to the chill. It does not really go fully into horror, but certainly reminds you that some of the most cutting aspects of horror come from the sense of being trapped; unable to escape what is happening. I would not say I enjoyed this collection but I was impressed by it.

Non-Fiction

'Renaissance Europe 1480-1520' by J.R. Hale

Having been allocated simply a 40-year slice of the series Fontana History of Europe, Hale made a wonderful decision not to slog through these years outlining the events chronologically. He does have some chronology, especially in Chapter II looking at the politics of Florence, France, Spain, England and Germany. However, for the most part, he studies the history thematically. He apologises for what he feels some readers might see as pretentious. However, in fact he delivers a really lively book that is an excellent source book for anyone interested in or writing about the era, especially how people of the time saw themselves and others.

There are practical aspects about how time was seen and how mobile the populations were; what people ate then moving on to social class, gender, religion, health and death. This book is a real antidote to lazy assumptions about people's behaviour which puts a blanket generalisation over many decades, even centuries. He is excellent on showing how in this crucial period attitudes were changing, importantly influenced by a connection to the Classical world and the wider dissemination of ideas through printing. He also has great sections on the importance of music and drama and how these impacted right across social levels, things often neglected for this era. This is a vibrant, enjoyable and informative book which I recommend for students of this period or simply readers who might be interested in seeing what was happening at this turning point in European (and he does cover from Portugal to Russia in his survey). I would also recommend this book to anyone about to embark on writing a non-fiction book, especially a historical one, to see a style which is both accurate but reaches out to readers whether they are specific or general.