The Books I Read In November

Fiction

'Black and Blue' by Ian Rankin

It is interesting that the editions of Rankin's books I am reading have an introductory essay from the author about where he was in his career when he wrote the particular book. While this is the eighth book in his Rebus series, he still felt he was only just coming to the end of his kind of apprenticeship period. I guess a kind of scrappiness is something that is characteristic of Rankin's writing but though maybe he felt it took him time to get into producing these books, the rough edges do not seem to have put off readers. Perhaps this is because the tone seems to be appropriate for his character and the cases he deals with.

This one has quite a lot of running back and forth and is almost too inter-twined for its own good. A number of disparate cases including a man committing suicide while being tortured prove to be connected and link the drugs trade in Glasgow with that in Aberdeen especially supplying oil rig workers - the book was published in 1997 when the industry still seemed to have a glorious future. There is too much jammed into this book. There are environmental protestors one of whom is missing, maybe murdered. There is a separate element about Rebus being grilled about his involvement with the framing of another killer in the past which leads him having to be accompanied everywhere and leads to him giving up alcohol. There are also corrupt police involved and a parallel story which was not really necessary of a serial killer called Johnny Bible seeking to copy the genuine killer of the late 1960s Bible John. While the latter has never been found, Rankin features him as a character through whose eyes we see.

While there are some interesting elements including seeing a portrayal of 1990s Aberdeen and Shetland as well as Edinburgh, it is very much as if Rankin is trying too hard to get all these themes in when there was sufficient in the parallel plots to provide two, perhaps three novels. It does get rather tedious with all the travelling back and forth even when it shows you different settings. The distinctiveness of each of these is reduced by him putting in so much. Overall, while it has some good elements, it is too ragged, too full to be really engaging.

'Devices and Desires' by K.J. Parker [Tom Holt]

Not to be confused with the books of the same title by P.D. James [Phyllis James/White] or Kate Hubbard. This is another book in which less could have been more. It is a straight forward fantasy in a kind of non-magical late medieval style setting. While there are some nomadic tribes and an exotic 'old country' which provides mercenaries, the story is mainly focused around the city state of the Republic of Mezentine, a kind of Venice-like place which has a monopoly on the most advanced engineering, but is choking itself by barring innovations which go against the established specifications and the internecine fighting of guilds and bureaucracy. The two other states featured are mountain neighbours, with a low level of technological development, the Duchy of Eremia and the Duchy of Valdis which is wealthier due to silver deposits. The chief military engineer from Mezentine, Ziani Vaatzes escapes execution for creating a toy which is not compliant with specifications and finds refuge in Eremia which he equips with some of the Mezentine technology allowing the duchy to hold off invasion.

I have two problems with the novel. One is that we flit among the points of view of a number of different characters often very abruptly, taking us back and forth between Mezentine and the duchies and then within them, so bringing in sub-plots about a sense of duty and correspondence between the Duke of Eremia and Duchess of Vadania. This makes the book which is 706 pages in my edition a slow read as you have to keep reorientating yourself to whose view you are now seeing and then mercenary generals are also thrown into the mix.

The other thing is that it feels that Parker is trying to pull off a satirical, almost whimsical attitude in the vein of Jonathan Swift. He seeks to satirise perhaps fantasy writing or the real world elements that lay behind it. We see him take on bureaucracy, the attitudes of nobility, merchants, the military and engineers - especially tinkerers in their garages. This is done in a kind of affectionate way and yet it jars. It is not deft enough to be Swift or funny enough to be Terry Pratchett. It leaves a bitter taste when Parker describes torture, wounding and death. It would have been a lot better if either more light hearted, or particularly, if Parker had played it straight and put in a real sense of jeopardy and grimness rather than pulling his punches in an attempt to be satirical.

Non-Fiction
'Nazism 1919-1945. 2: State, Economy and Society, 1933-1939', ed. by J. [Jeremy] Noakes and G. [Geoffrey] Pridham

As with volume 1, this book is very useful in reminding you about aspects of the Nazi regime which these days too often get overlooked in general coverage. In its different sections, again drawing on speeches, articles, accounts and reports, it shows you the machinery of the regime and its contradictions. It considers a range of themes such as agriculture, the Nazi party and the state; women and young people. It is particularly strong on the economic aspects showing the growing militarised situation and how this was organised, pretty chaotically. There are also useful sections on public opinion and on anti-Semitism, important contexts ahead of Volume 3.

For me I think the most interesting aspect was simply how much conflict there was within the Nazi regime, aided by Hitler favouring a Social Darwinist approach to the development of the society and so at different times in different locales one of the sides would come out on top but elsewhere at other times another party or state agency would win through. We do see how the 'little Hitlers' were empowered and fought for supremacy often at a small, local level or in one sector. There was conflict within the Nazi party itself as well as outside it. In many ways you end up wondering how it managed to last so long without imploding, in part perhaps due to the efficiency of the civil service caste in Germany that while asserting its authority, did nothing to undermine the Nazi machine as a whole.

I feel this is a useful book for those interested in understanding how a dictatorship might work and showing how the Nazi regime was far from being a monolith, instead a seething mass of individual jealousies and attempts to grab power by men in various sectors and locations in the country and increasingly beyond too.

The Books I Read In October

Fiction

'The Book of Unholy Mischief' by Elle Newmark 

This book possibly should win an award for the most misleading title. I believed it was a fantasy novel. About the closest it comes is, if there had been historical sections of 'The Da Vinci Code' (2003) by Dan Brown or if the book featured in 'Labyrinth' (2005) by Kate Mosse had not had genuine powers. This book is set in late 15th Century Venice and is about a boy, Luciano, who is an street thief taken on as an apprentice by the chef to the Doge. There is a belief across the Italian states that a book which perhaps will allow lead to be turned to gold or to extend life is hidden somewhere. Luciano and at least one of his former street thief friends believes his master might be connected to it. We see how the chef manipulates politics through the use of drugs in his cooking and discover that, while he is part of a secret order, they are only protecting gnostic gospels, which, however, deemed heretical by the Papacy, carry a risk of execution. It turns out very much a YA novel, with Luciano having various frustrated aspirations including running off with a novice nun to America.

The portrayal of Venice at the time and especially the kitchen in which the meals are prepared are well shown. Rather unbelievably, Luciano invents cheesecake. One of the outcomes is particularly unfair and nasty and ultimately Luciano is shown to be selfish. If you take this as a 'coming of age' historical novel set in the Renaissance, then you will be less disappointed than if you think from the title and cover that it is a fantasy novel.

'Witch Light' by Susan Fletcher

This novel is set in the late 17th Century and features Corrag, a young English herbalist who when her mother is executed as a witch, flees to Scotland and settles in Glencoe shortly before the Glencoe Massacre of 1692. Both Corrag and Charles Leslie an Irish Jacobite who comes to visit her when she is herself imprisoned, awaiting execution for witchcraft, are based on real people. The story is told through the accounts Corrag gives in prison to Leslie, supplemented by Leslie's letters to his wife. As in real life, he is interested in finding details of the massacre, seeking evidence of King William III's complicity in it as a way to boost support for King James II, that William replaced, but whom the Jacobites wished to restore.

The story is well told with wonderful detail of the landscapes that Corrag sees, especially when she sets up home in Glencoe. Her ambivalent position of women like her in society of the time, is interestingly explored as is her growing relationship with the MacDonald Clan of Glencoe and the local 'witches'. The premise of the novel might feel bleak but the briskness of the story-telling and the beauty of the pictures Fletcher paints with her words really carry you along. I would not say I enjoyed reading this book, but I am glad that I did read it.

Books I Read In September

 Fiction

'Look to Windward' by Iain M. Banks

I am not a big fan of Banks's Culture-set science fiction stories. The concept of an super-powerful civilisation creating vast structure and seeking to moderate the galaxies always comes across as rather worthy and quite unexciting. Having grown up reading Moorcock and Priest, then the Cyberpunk authors, I am more interested in a closer focus and a lot more grittiness. Having put in that caveat, I must say I enjoyed this book, I think because it is largely around one (admittedly vast) space station and focuses on two Chelgrians, two feline-like humanoids. Mahrai Ziller is a composer who has gone into self-imposed exile on a Culture Orbital (effectively an artificial planet), Masaq' in protest at the Chelgrian caste system. Embittered army officer Major Quilan IV with the personality of a dead senior officer in his head too. The Chelgrians have suffered a civil war, which it has been revealed that, while not started by the Culture was expanded by their intervention. Quilan is ostensibly meeting with Ziller to try to persuade him to return to Chel. In fact Quilan has an ulterior mission which intentionally he only recalls as he progresses on Masaq'. There is a sub-plot about another character discovering the objectives of Quilan's mission. However, typically for Banks that element is not resolved until after the main action has occurred.

There are a couple of Banksian traits that can rile. He loves describing vast structures though with Ziller and Quilan touring Masaq' this is less of an info dump than it can be in later Culture novels. As I noted with 'Matter' (2008): https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2020/01/books-i-readlistened-to-in-january.html he tends to baulk from actually writing the climax of the novel. Instead it fades to black and then we pick up things some while later to see the consequences and that happens in this novel too. However, overall, by keeping focused on two characters (and a supplementary one for part of the time) Banks seems more in control of this novel. He can show his ideas and attitudes without you feeling you are attending a lecture. The characters of Ziller and Quilan to me - and I accept I may not be common among SF readers - are more engaging than descriptions of yet another intelligent spaceship or vast artificial structure.

'Transcription' by Kate Atkinson

The first thing I must say is this is the first book I have read by Atkinson but I would be tempted to try others. She is very deft in her writing and I was really swept along by the prose even when she is describing grim scenes, e.g. a woman strangled and dumped in a coal hole; the problems of killing a woman who has surprised you, using a small calibre pistol. The novel is based on a true operation by MI5 during the Second World War to monitor British Nazi sympathisers who might pass intelligence to the Germans or indeed in the case of an invasion, collaborate with the German forces.

Juliet Armstrong is recruited to transcribe the conversations between the Nazis and an MI5 agent provocateur at a bugged flat in London. However, she is soon drawn into becoming and agent herself, in particular trying to get hold of the 'red book' which has a list of these people. The novel goes between 1940 when she is 18 and 1950 when she is back in London working for the BBC producing Schools radio programmes. She is still temporarily in the employ of MI5 and begins to encounter people from her war years and face threats connected with them. The stories run in parallel so that we discover what is impacting her in 1950 as she recalls and details more from 1940.

The assortment of characters is well drawn. There is a real feel for London in the two time periods. Juliet is a reliable but naïve narrator. The balance between her eagerness for sex and her naïvety are handled well. The only disappointing element I felt with the novel was the twist at the end. It was entirely unnecessary and was really rushed. It did not really add to our understanding of Juliet and seemed to be something that an agent or publisher had pressed for, whereas the book up until that stage had had a real deftness, a good combination of thriller and slice of life, very much embedded in its times and bringing out the differences and similarities between 1940 and 1950 in London better than many authors would have done.

'Freaky Deaky' by Elmore Leonard

I was unsurprised that this 1988 novel had been turned into a movie in 2012, not that I have seen it. However, Leonard's tautness of writing is often commended. Reading this book, you certainly feel that with its restricted number of characters it could be a stage play. Set in Detroit in the late 1980s, it draws on the counter-culture terrorism of the late 1960s, through Robin (a woman) and Skip (a man) who were involved in setting off bombs during that period. It also features Donnell, a former Black Panther who is now a factotum to Woody Ricks a very wealthy man who is losing a grip on reality due to alcohol abuse. Also featuring are Chris Mankowski, a suspended bomb disposal cop and Greta Wyatt, a sometime actress raped by Woody Ricks. Mark Ricks, Woody's brother also turns up. Robin and Skip are looking for revenge on the Ricks brothers who they believe betrayed them to the authorities leading to imprisonment. Donnell is looking for as much money as he can get out of Woody; he knows Robin and Skip from the past. Ultimately all the characters are looking to see what money they can get from Woody as their paths cross and re-cross and there is a lot of double dealing and betrayal.

As you would expect from Leonard, it is gritty and seedy. The characters are believable and the scenes and locations well portrayed. Perhaps he goes a little too far with how intertwined the five main characters are (he effectively lifts Woody out of this by having him clueless) and it begins to grow tiresome as to who is working with or betraying whom, but overall not bad. The movie is portrayed as a kind of comedy. Things do go wrong, especially with the bombs set, but this book is straight without any comedic elements.

Non-Fiction

'The Age of Revolution, 1789-1848' by Eric Hobsbawm

I actually met Hobsbawm on two occasions but embarrassingly was really at a loss as to what questions to ask him. This book was published in 1961 though has been reprinted may times since. Hobsbawm was a Marxist historian and so brings a perspective on to what he describes which is working at the high level, focused on the big trends in society rather than detailed accounts of what happened next. This perspective is now rare even in general survey history books that can, as Hobsbawm eschews, effectively end up as a list of a sequence of events. Even if you do not subscribe to Marxist viewpoints, the approach Hobsbawm adopts in this book is a very useful one that I feel current students can benefit from to balance against the history survey books which in many ways go into too much detail. Maybe historians aside from people like Ferguson, Fukuyama and Hutton do not feel they have the 'right' to draw such sweeping points from the history.

Hobsbawm's premise in this book is of the dual revolution, i.e. the Industrial Revolution initiated in Britain and the French Revolution. These two, he feels, combined shaped the development of societies. He does make some efforts not to neglect the world outside Europe and North America and indeed shows how these revolutions impacted, e.g. the destruction of Indian textile manufacturing by British factories and how Egypt tried to make the industrial leap only to be stymied. Thus, while focusing on the broad sweeps of history, he never goes full Marxist in portraying anything as 'inevitable' and indeed highlights when actions by leaders and business people divert or prevent what otherwise might have 'naturally' happened. 

The book is organised thematically with the trends that happened, not just from the two revolutions but also as a result of peace, nationalism, etc. Then looks at the impact. He is good on belief, whether religious, philosophical or political. He highlights trends in land usage and in the ability to 'get on' in society before looking at the arts and scientific developments. Many of these aspects, particularly on a thematic basis rather than as a sequence of events, are neglected too often. This is why I feel, despite its age, this book is a useful addition for people looking at this period alongside more recent books.

My one gripe is that as a Marxist writing in the period of the Cold War, Hobsbawm is desperate to find any seed of revolution that he can amongst what he is describing. In contrast, a reader living since the Cold War ended and with so much authoritarianism rolling back what any revolution achieved, even in democratic countries, is liable to find such scouring for these 'seeds' as rather pathetic. The groups mentioned are typically tiny and achieved nothing. Going in so tight seeking these things jars with the broad sweeps adopted elsewhere in the book which are its strengths. Almost without recognising it, Hobsbawm shows that for all the revolutionary energy, the different plans of the various stages of the French Revolution were betrayed and monarchy restored. The Industrial Revolution brought gain to very few and suffering for millions more.

It is a shame that more general surveys are not written with Hobsbawn's approach these days and thus, this relatively rare perspective means the book remains of value even more than sixty years later.

Books I Read In August

 Fiction

'Oh, Play That Thing!' by Roddy Doyle

I have read a number of Roddy Doyle books down the years (and watched dramatisations) so am familiar with Doyle's punctuation style, '-' to indicate dialogue and '(-' to indicate dialogue remembered from the past. I had not read 'A Star Called Henry' (1999) which precedes this book. However, as this novel sees the eponymous main character, Henry Smart, relocate from being a terrorist in Ireland to being a man willing to try anything for work in the USA, I thought that would not be a big problem. As it is, Doyle refers back so much to what happened in the previous novel that you can easily pick up the thread. Smart has emigrated in 1924 in large part to stay ahead of those wishing to kill him as a result of his actions during Ireland's battle for independence and the subsequent civil war. 

Smart ends up in New York and gets work as a sandwich board man and seller of illicit alcohol, the Prohibition being on. He hooks up with various women but they are sketchily drawn, often known by sobriquets like the 'the half sister' I imagine to show the shallowness of Smart connection to them. Too many violent men want to prevent Smart developing a business and he is repeatedly forced to flee further West as a kind of con man and odd-job man until he ends up in Chicago as jazz legend Louis Armstrong's minder. Then by a massive coincidence Smart runs into his own wife and daughter. The book, very episodic from the outset steadily unravels from then on, especially after Armstrong lets him go. Smart and his family (they have a son too now) become hoboes during the 1930s but become separated and by the end of the book Smart is somehow in the late 1940s randomly running into movie stars. The last sections of the book become as incoherent as a Hal Duncan or Michael Moorcock novel. It is as if Doyle has no idea how to end it.

The best bits of this book are the settings. Doyle does very well at conjuring up New York, Chicago and some smaller US towns in the 1920s and 1930s very evocatively. There are also great scenes around the performances, not just in jazz clubs and with Armstrong, but also when one of Smart's girlfriends becomes an evangelical demagogue, making use of Smart's connections to Armstrong to make records of her speeches. Doyle is great on performance as we know from 'The Commitments' (1987). There are some great ideas in here, but they are not woven together in a way that really carries the reader onward and instead the book becomes a real slog. Something more narrowly focused, perhaps just around working with Armstrong would have made the strong parts shine rather than be subdued in narrative that really loses the plot.

'Let It Bleed' by Ian Rankin

I guess I have at times accused Rankin of becoming a little directionless in some of his novels too, though never to the scale which Doyle does in 'Oh, Play That Thing! (2004). Perhaps because as in the essay in the front of my edition of this novel, Rankin explains how it was going to be a movie, it is tighter than some of the Rebus stories. It is connected into what has proceeded, though with a bit of an ellipsis as you tend to find, so that Rebus has reconnected with his daughter but has moved out from living with his lover Patience. In this novel, in fact, he gets no sex, but continues with his alcoholism back in his old flat. He is aided by two loyal colleagues, notably DC Siobhan Clarke who plays a growing role in the novels and is almost like the flip-side daughter for Rebus.

Starting with a messed-up kidnapping which ends in dramatic death, this story does connect into a lot of issues facing Edinburgh and indeed Scotland, when it was published, i.e.1995, still under a Conservative government with the dregs of Thatcherite attitudes and with steps towards the resurrection of the Scottish Parliament four years later in the New Labour era. With its scenes of local government corruption, people making use of police and criminal contacts, this novel does feel very much in step with dramas of the 1980s/90s like 'Edge of Darkness' (1985), 'Centrepoint' (1990) 'Natural Lies' (1992) and though more light-hearted, in the same area, 'The Beiderbecke Affair' (1985) and its sequels. 

The sense in the 1980s that anything that created jobs was sacrosanct no matter what compromises had to be made still rings through this novel. There is also that aspect coming out of the 1960s that the wealthy and well-connected would often make use of the criminal class is also here. Rankin handles these well trodden ideas pretty well. He manages to balance the sense that people in power are untouchable no matter how corrupt with Rebus actually making some progress, which is a relief for the reader. There is both gritty violence white collar crime. As always Rankin makes good use of Edinburgh and the surrounding areas; the rich and the poor. Overall this is one of the best Rebus novels I have read and indeed could be read standalone without having to be familiar with the preceding six novels in the series.

Non-Fiction

'Nazism 1919-1945. 1: The Rise to Power, 1919-1934' ed. by J. [Jeremy] Noakes and G. [Geoffrey] Pridham

This is the first of four volumes of document readers on Nazism that began to be published in the mid-1970s but were revised and restructured in the 1980s with the new fourth volume appearing in 1998. What they are is a collection of translated documents illustrating what the Nazis were saying at different stages and what people were saying about them. They are connected by some narrative of events by Noakes and Pridham. Thus, the books differ from a standard history of the Nazi Party or indeed Germany at the time. This approach means that aspects which can sometimes be overlooked in some histories stand out. In this volume, for example, we learn much more about the factionalism and rivalries in the party and about the issues around the SA's part in it especially after Hitler became Chancellor in January 1933. Also interesting are the views of members of the public from diaries about how they viewed the rise of the Nazis and the dilemmas that, for example, the Catholic Centre Party faced in terms of opposing or condoning the Nazis' actions. As is typical by the time the scale of the danger was apparent to many it was too late to stop. Some readers might find issues around tensions in what was an ill-balanced federal state too bureaucratic, but I think it is interesting to see how small states and Bavaria ploughing its own legal furrow were a doorway in for the Nazis. They also remind us that even before Hitler had become Chancellor there had been a coup d'état against the centre-left government of Prussia, the state which covered 3/5ths of Germany.

Despite the age of this book, it remains perceptive and an interesting angle on the rise of the Nazis. It is very accessible to the general reader as well as history students and academics. It is liable to give you insights into what happened and how, even if you feel you know the story pretty well already. I will read the other three volumes in the coming months.

The Blood and The Ghost: Vikings Victorious In England

 

This is my fifth novel published by Sea Lion Press: www.sealionpress.co.uk and is also available for sale via: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blood-Ghost-novel-century-Britain-ebook/dp/B0B88VT8FJ/ref=sr_1_1?qid=1659550575&refinements=p_27%3AAlexander+Rooksmoor&s=digital-text&sr=1-1&text=Alexander+Rooksmoor

Having seen the BBC television series, 'The Last Kingdom' (broadcast 2015-22), I was reminded that at the Battle of Chippenham in 878, King Alfred the Great was defeated by the Danish Army. He had to flee to the unhealthy Somerset Levels to hide out until he was able to rebuild the Anglo-Saxon Army and go on to defeat the Danes, pushing them back from recent gains in Wessex and to begin establishing what would become England under his grandson, even though it took Alfred himself another 21 years of fighting to get to that position. I had already written a short story which features in my anthology, 'Route Diverted' (2015) showing the execution of King Alfred in 879 so I had given some thought to this scenario. I was also very riled by a number of portrayals of various historical characters in the BBC series. I sought to rectify that more in the direction of how I judged those people, and indeed, I must confess, the way they were shown in the programme.

With Alfred dead, even if his supporters notably Odda, Ealdorman of Devon who in our history defeated the Danes at the Battle of Cynwit, had been able to fight on a lot would have gone from the Anglo-Saxon campaign, not just Alfred's victories after Chippenham but also his promotion of scholarship, development of a navy and particularly the development of towns around England into burghs. Burghs were better defended against Danish attack but also reinvigorated various towns that had been in decline since the departure of the Romans. Rather than following on directly from the death of King Alfred I moved forward 25 years to 903 and envisaged his real son, Edward the Elder who in our history succeeded him to be King of Wessex in 899, instead having lived in exile among the Welsh kingdoms, then as a man using Welsh backing to try to seize back his father's throne.

While Edward is defeated, his (second) wife, Ælfflæd and his children both by her and his first wife, escape. The mission to track these heirs to the throne of Wessex is at the heart of the story. I wanted two characters who while not having magic per se might have been perceived as sorcerers by the people of the time, so I created Øfura ‘The Blood’ and her brother Ræf ‘The Ghost’. They might be twins; they might be half-siblings, they do not know. However, while Øfura had brilliant red hair and is covered all over with large freckles, Ræf is an albino. Added to this, they have the ability to envisage a landscape, particularly battlefields as if seeing them from a bird's eye view. They also have very fast reactions - I was thinking of the athlete Jesse Owens and his remarkable ability to respond so fast to the sound of a starting pistol. These are skills that aid them on the battlefield and might appear as magic, but in fact we know people genuinely have these traits. They are assigned, with the help of one of Ælfflæd's servants to track down the would-be monarchs of Wessex.

The chase from Gloucester to Lewes across south-western and southern England, renamed 'Danelagen' in this alternative, presents them with many risks especially as Ælfflæd's bodyguard fight back and supporters of Ælfflæd seek to frustrate the pursuit. As well as providing action - Øfura and Ræf, plus their own band of warriors and assistants get caught up in a raid by Vikings from northern France in what is now Southampton - the journey shows how different England would be after twenty-five years under Danish rule. Towns have changed names. Towns that prospered under Alfred are still left in decline whereas others important to the Danish rulers and settlers have grown up and both locations and many residents now have Danish names and live under Danish laws. Indeed rather than the forced conversions to Christianity seen in our world, the religion of Odin and the Nordic pantheon have made Christianity into a marginal religion in Danelagen almost followed in secret. This creates a greater divide between Danelagen and the assorted Welsh kingdoms that are proud Christian heirs of the last phase of the Roman Empire. It could be argued that the coming of Christianity was inevitable, though we can note that Lithuania only stopped being a Pagan country in 1387, almost 500 years after my novel is set. Perhaps controlling all of what otherwise would have been England would have boosted the Danish adherence to Paganism.

Of course the impact of the shift in history does not all run one way. Controlling a larger kingdom, puts pressure on the Danish kings and jarls in the British Isles to become more bureaucratic; to keep records and make more use of coinage which had been well established much earlier in the British Isles than Scandinavia. Faced with countering Christian priests, rather than having the head of a family officiating as de facto priests, full-time gothi as they were known are beginning to develop. In addition now in control of what had been the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, the rulers face attacks from other Nordic groups that had settled in Ireland, Wales and northern France, just as the Anglo-Saxons had faced Danish Viking raids. Furthermore in the 11th Century the relationship between the heirs of the Vikings would have been very different from the entangled Norman-English relationship which led to the invasion of 1066, though of course, as the rule of King Cnut, showed, it may simply have been replaced by a similar but different entanglement with Scandinavian kingdoms, though interestingly, probably sharing a more similar language.

Overall I hope I have produced an exciting adventure story which shows what I feel is a very feasible alternate route that England could have ended up going down, that would have left a significant legacy most likely down to present day.

As always I did some maps for the book. The first shows how I envisaged the kingdoms of the British Isles existing in 903 and the second what I imagined the names of various English towns would have become under the Danes.

Alternate British Isles in 903 Following Killing of King Alfred the Great in 878

Envisaged Names for an English Towns in 903 Under Danish Rule

Books I Read In July

 Fiction

'Revelation' by Bill Napier

This book is pretty much like 'Nemesis' (1998) by Napier that I read in April: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2022/04/books-i-read-in-april.html It combines heavy duty science, in this case the possibility of deriving power from zero-point energy with a kind of Dan Brown academic-in-an-adventure story. This one has chemical formulae in it. Napier is pretty good at explaining the science but it does leave a very peculiar book. In this one a glacier scientist is brought in to help extract a frozen Soviet aeroplane from a breaking up ice sheet in the Arctic. It seems to hold diaries from Lev Petrosian, an Armenian scientist who worked on the US atomic and hydrogen bomb programmes before suffering persecution by the authorities during the McCarthy era. The hero of the book, Dr. Fred Findhorn, rushes all over the planet along with an translator of Armenian, trying to find out what Petrosian discovered. They face an array of enemies from US intelligence to a Japanese corporation to millennial cult, all seeking to get their hands on what Findhorn has uncovered. We also go back to see what Petrosian suffered and the book is pretty decent on the paranoia of 1950s USA and to some degree how it actually drives Petrosian towards the Soviets.

The book is frenetic, going between Scotland, the USA, Greece, Japan and Switzerland. There is a lot of casual but brutal violence. A scene in a Swiss chalet is particularly violent. As with 'Nemesis' there is a lot of expositionary conversations and Findhorn tracking down specialists at a conference on a small Greek island who are happy to talk about the possibilities of what Petrosian may have found seems very contrived. Findhorn who has a brother with a secure flat and happy to fund flights all over the place; two young translators happy to go along with an older man whose life is constantly in danger also stretches credibility, but I know from many thrillers, not just Brown's but also Ludlum's that these are well established traits. Napier seems to feel obliged to add in tons of science in a way that most thriller authors are not. I guess it is nice to learn something real from fiction, but it does conflict with the frenetic pace he is also seeking, leading to a very 'bitty' feel to the novel. This was the only remaining Napier book I had and while both were curiosities I am certainly not seeking any more of them.

'The Manor of Death' by Bernard Knight

This is the 12th of the 15 books in Knight's Crowner John series. The 15th is a prequel. However, this book really feels like closing the sequence. The novels have not covered a great deal of time, so far running from November 1194 to April 1196. However, at the end of this one a lot of what we have become familiar with in the books is brought to an end. Sir John De Wolfe is to be sent from Devon to work in London. His bitter wife, Matilda has again withdrawn to a convent, but this time probably for good; his Welsh mistress, Nesta, has married a stonemason and returned to Wales, selling up her inn, which is then passed to John's Cornish bodyguard, Gwyn and his family to take over running. Thus, all the things that have been built up over the previous books are no longer as they were. It is naturally rather bittersweet, but I guess by this stage Knight felt he was rather going round all of the old established patterns once more. Given the society of the time, there were few options short of killing off one or more of these characters. As is made clear, John cannot marry Nesta and she is not happy to remain simply a mistress; he cannot divorce his wife even if she becomes a nun.

All of this only comes to fruition towards the end of the novel, though the groundwork is laid throughout. Most of the book focuses on pirates operating from the port of Axmouth which while a small seaside town was a significant port in the Middle Ages. De Wolfe has a very frustrating time trying to get any information on what is happening. With the priory that owns the town and various officials standing on their privileges they constantly rebuff his attempts even when the number of murders of witnesses increases. Ultimately De Wolfe pulls of a 'sting' operation and we finally get through to him dealing out some justice.

I am tempted to seek out the three remaining books to see what happens. However, you could finish the series on this one because it is clear that what follows will be very different from the 'police procedural' with an established 'cast' of characters in and around Exeter.

'Resistance' by Owen Sheers

I saw the 2011 movie of this novel, which had been published in 2007, about ten years ago and was not overly impressed. It is superficially an alternate history story set around the Second World War. In contrast to many using this as a starting point it is not set in 1940/41 with a German invasion then, but rather one coming in 1944 following the defeat of the Normandy landings that June. The biggest change in fact is a one far less explored and that is that by 1944, the Soviets have been pushed beyond the Urals and while they break out during the course of this book, the ability to shift troops from the Eastern Front to France and then Britain has allowed a slow German conquest of the UK.

The novel is set in a small isolated valley in eastern Wales where the Mappa Mundi medieval map from Hereford Cathedral has been concealed. A team of six German soldiers, let by a captain Albrecht Wolfram, who was a scholar of such work in Oxford before the war, are sent to locate the map. This brings them into contact with the women on the handful of farms in the valley who at the start of the novel have been left by their husbands who are all part of the Auxiliary Units, particularly the Special Duty Branch, to act as a guerilla force and as intelligence agents, respectively, in the event of an invasion. We see very little of the men, only a George who lives nearby but was not from the valley and his recruiter 'Tommy Atkins' who is taken by the Gestapo and later killed by Wolfram's unit.

I can see why the movie was very uninspiring because very little happens in the book, so the director, Amit Gupta, had little to work from. The book is a very different thing. Where it shines is not in terms of the alternate history. This is really only required to set up the 'bubble' of the cut off valley populated by women and girls and their interaction with a very small unit of occupiers. Sheers is a poet and the strength of this book is that for much of the time, it is effectively a prose poem describing the valley through the seasons; its plant and animal life, seen through the eyes of various characters. We often jump quite quickly from one to the other and witness things though almost all of them during the course of the book. Even the developing (inevitable) romance between the captain and Sarah Lewis appears very slowly and is rather rushed to the end, rather weakening the choices that both make. Much better are the other interactions between the two sides, notably the modus vivendi that the soldiers develop with Maggie, effectively matriarch of the valley.

In terms of narrative there are many things you might challenge. However, it just about hangs together. The reason why I would recommend this book, though, is not for the story, but for the beautiful images of a particular place from how the light moves through the valley, how the ice and the water moves and changes, how the animals behave, even the buildings and their contents, the nearby ruins. The descriptions are so rich it is a pleasure to read them. It does not make an exciting book and certainly not a great movie, but as something else, much more poetic, it works well to engage you.

Non-Fiction

'Macmillan. A Study in Ambiguity' by Anthony Sampson

It is interesting that while contemporary Conservatives will talk about Margaret Thatcher, Winston Churchill and even Stanley Baldwin, I cannot recall any mentioning Harold Macmillan. This is despite him serving as prime minister for 6½ years during one of the most prosperous periods of modern British history. I guess for many in his party his criticism as Lord Stockton of the first two Thatcher governments has made him a pariah. Certainly with the zealous anti-EU attitude prevalent in the party of the 2020s, him being a link in British European policy between Churchill's attitude into Heath's and a period when collaboration with other capitalist neighbours seemed to be something almost inherently Conservative, can make him seem a 'traitor' not just to the party but even to the country as a whole.

As a consequence, there is now rather an ellipse in how the Conservatives see themselves as if the period probably 1956-1975 has been edited out. It does mean that strands of what would have once been seen as mainstream Conservatism, with actually a modern perspective, is absent from current thinking. Anything that comes even marginally close to anything Macmillan might have pursued is deemed to be 'weak', even 'unpatriotic'. Given how much the party has turned the clock back to attitudes Macmillan would have seen in his youth (he was born in 1894 and fought in the First World War) I imagine if alive today he would have felt even more detached from his party than he did in the 1980s.

Writing in 1967, Sampson measures Macmillan against standards that are far higher than any which we could expect to be applied in the 21st Century. The failures in terms of establishing a superpower summit, difficulties with the EEC and with moving African states to independence would be seen as just everyday foreign policy challenges. The so-called 'Night of the Long Knives', a strong Cabinet reshuffle and even the Profumo Scandal, rather than being isolated incidents analysed to a great extent are often occurrences that can happen in a single week in UK politics today. Given the books towards the end of his life, I am sure he had detected the qualitative deterioration in British political life. Thus, while the tone of Sampson's book is one of disappointment, as much for Macmillan himself in not achieving his goals, the record set against say, the last three Conservative prime ministers actually seems quite decent.

The Conservatives have a lot to be grateful for from Macmillan. In particular Sampson shows how, despite his age or maybe because of it - he was 62 when he first became prime minister, he was able to deftly heal the rifts which had developed over the Suez fiasco which had threatened to rend the party apart. He was then able to get it through two elections so as to cap 13 years in office. Macmillan was also alert to the requirements of modern politics and the uses to which snappy slogans, television and aircraft could aid him not simply in speaking to the electorate but also showing the UK prime minister as still someone notable in the world.

Sampson provides good detail without drowning out the story. I was particularly interested in Macmillan's approach to economics and his engagement with planning which stretched across the political spectrum in the 1930s and 1940s and ironically was an attitude that brought him closer to the French approach of the post-war period than the British one. He did lay the groundwork for Harold Wilson's engagement with planning. It is important to establish this context, to fill in the ellipse not just simply in terms of Conservative policy, but also the wider course of British economic policy which in just over a decade saw a move from boosting Keynesianism via corporatism and planning, to, even under a Labour government, under Callaghan, the winning out of monetarist approaches that then caused so much of the pain of the 1980s and beyond for large chunks of the British (and indeed American) population.

Overall, this was a book of its time in terms of its basis for judgements. It is a useful reminder of a neglected, pretty important component in both Conservative and British history in general. It is also a reminder of the kind of standards politicians were expected to work to, that now, especially in the past 3 years, seem utterly forgotten and even somehow portrayed as not 'truly Conservative'. That sense of responsibility not just to one's personal benefit but to the wider community is utterly absent now in a way which was not the case when Macmillan was in charge.

Books I Read In June

 Fiction

'Who Was David Weiser?' by Pawel Huelle; translated by Antonia Lloyd Jones

If you do not like unreliable narrators then this is certainly a book to avoid. It is set in the summer of 1957 in northern Poland though goes on erratically into the future, probably the 1970s or 1980s. It is written in the first person and dodges around chronologically as the narrator talks about the investigation by teachers, local officials and the police into the disappearance of David Weiser, a Jewish boy at the narrator's school. The activities of the narrator and his various primary-school friends across the summer are recounted at length. It also keeps coming back to their engagement with Weiser and his girlfriend Elka. Weiser is a kind of Svengali character who seeks adoration from the narrator and his friends, largely through his semi-detached engagement with them, making use of munitions left over from the Second World War and perhaps pulling off genuine magic such as flying as well as odd but more down-to-Earth activities like dancing to Elka's pipe and playing football in a disinterested but highly skilled way.

The novel is engaging, richly portraying a particular time and place that does not feature in English-language writing. The characters are well drawn and you do have an interest in what happened to David and indeed Elka, though the outcomes for the two are different. The trouble is that the parameters are so constrained that it soon becomes tedious, going back and forth in time between the events that unfolded, the questioning of the boys and then references to later decades. After a while you feel like you have seen it all multiple times and in the end it felt a lot longer than its 220 pages. The idea and attention to detail are good. In a short story they would have been highly engaging, but everything is stretched far too thin and as a result the charm that the book initially has is soon utterly worn away and you lose interest in what finally happened whether for real or as a result of some magic realism.

'Mortal Causes' by Ian Rankin

In December I retrieved the remaining 10 Rebus books that I had in storage. As a result I came back to the series for the first time since May 2019. This is not a bad story, though as before I feel at times Rankin has lots of ideas that he does not really know how to take forward. There are odd things like Rebus sleeping with a lawyer he encounters even though he is living with his girlfriend. It seemed out of character and did very little to advance the story unless she is going to turn up in subsequent books. The story is a mish-mash of involvement of Northern Irish Loyalist paramilitaries receiving funding from the USA and importing arms via Scotland. The book opens with the scene of a torture and execution and Rebus gets entwined with different elements of the paramilitaries and numerous individuals both on that side and in various police units. Intrigue is fine but at times you do begin to wonder what the point is. I must say, though, that final fifth of the book works far better than the preceding sections and you wish that Rankin had kept tighter control over the variety of characters and various developments to raise the entire book to that quality.

'The Salmon of Doubt' by Douglas Adams

I misunderstood what this book was. In the middle of it are a couple of novelettes one featuring Dirk Gently and one Zaphod Beeblebrox, assembled posthumously from various fragments. However, the rest of the book is made up of various articles and transcripts that Adams made down the years, some are very short. They effectively form a kind of biography of the closing years of his life and the topics that interested him notably conservation of species and technology. In terms of technology Adams was very perceptive and accurately predicted things like texting with your thumbs on phones and the search for a universal charger format. Individual articles featured are interesting enough, but really this is a book for serious Adams fans who want to know a little more about the man they admire, but for the general reader there is little here.

Non-Fiction

'The Black Angels' by Rupert Butler

As I noted when I read Butler's 'Gestapo' (1981) - not to be confused with the subsequent illustrated versions: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2022/04/books-i-read-in-april.html  - Butler was very much part of that populist history for sale in branches of Woolworths and newsagents. This book which focuses on the Waffen SS, though at times touches on other branches of the SS, is less sporadic than 'Gestapo' and the book is a pretty comprehensive study of how the Waffen SS developed and where they served. Butler does feature atrocities committed by the units, especially against Allied soldiers. However, he struggles to avoid slipping into hagiography and so praises the courage and speed of the Waffen SS units. He really downplays the strength of the opposition to them, notably in France, and over-estimates the strength and level of machinery that the German side had. He, also, like many populist historians of the war, sees Blitzkrieg as something carefully planned in advance and used in Poland as much as France rather than largely developing from the behaviour of reckless generals, ignoring orders. The hagiography becomes apparent too when he begins to speak of the East European SS units that were created and you feel that he sees them as a slur on the honour of the SS and to blame for atrocities, not seeming to recognise that his derogatory racial stereotyping was akin to the attitudes of the SS themselves. There are interesting elements in the book in terms of where the SS fought and their contribution to various campaigns, notably the so-called Battle of the Bulge. However, you cannot help by being unsettled by the extent to which Butler is an enthusiast for the SS and sees admirable traits in many of their soldiers, even while outlining the atrocities they committed.