Category Archives: history

Reading in 2024

Posted on by
1

I have managed fifty books this year. That’s a result. Interestingly, the fiftieth book, Simon Sebag-Montefiore’s epic history of the world, took me more than a year – I started this work in December 2023. It was an excellent read, stretching my vocabulary in many respects. All the major swear words were present in plain text along with graphic sex and stomach-churning violence, but the “N word” was beyond him or his editors, which is an interesting comment on modern liberal social mores.

I started the year reading Dan Simmons’ gripping historical fantasy drama “The Terror” about the loss of the Franklin expedition in Arctic Canada. By complete contrast I very much enjoyed W.G Hoskins’s classic “The making of the English landscape”. I do tend to fall back on historical non-fiction, and a recommendation from earlier reading was Charles Spencer’s “The last Cavalier”, a biography of Charles I’s son Prince Rupert. This, in turn, led to something of a season of reading about 17th century England. I followed Prince Rupert in February with Christopher Hill’s biography of Cromwell – “God’s Englishman” and later, in December, by Anna Keay’s delightful “The Restless Republic”, which covered aspects of England in the republican years as seen through the lives of various protagonists. Fairfax the politician; John Bradshaw the lawyer; Marchamont Nedham the journalist; Lady Derby the royalist; Anna Trapnel the prophetess, amongst others. A brilliant and humane piece of work from which I learned much. Cromwell not quite the villain, nor the hero, he has been painted. Successive military coups, army juntas running the country…so much of our past is just not taught in school. At the time, George Monck, the general who engineered the return of King Charles II, wrote: “the army should serve the civilian government, not the reverse.” Amen!!

All of that reading on the 17th century, flowed from reading Peter Newman’s book on the Hudson’s Bay company, which in turn came from recommendations in Bernard de Voto, which in turn was recommended to me by Robert Kaplan. Recommendations are everything. Let your reading go where it will!

I read A. L Poole’s “From Domesday Book to Magna Carta”. Over months I worked my way through Geogina Howell’s biography of Gertrude Bell, the “Queen of the Desert”. My continued interest in American history saw me reading the final instalment of Bernard DeVoto’s masterly trilogy on the westward expansion in America: “The course of Empire”. Also, in that vein, Ray Allen Billington on “The Westward expansion in America”. Railways and America were combined in Dee Brown’s unsettling book on the displeasing and deeply venal American railroad barons, “Hear that lonesome whistle blow”. Also on railways I enjoyed the delightful and prolix O.S Nock on “Railway archaeology”. Very few people can write like that these days. I had a canter through the war at sea with David Fairbank-White’s “Bitter Ocean” and Roskill’s “The Navy at war: 1939-1945”. In that context I also re-read Alistair Maclean’s “HMS Ulysses”, and then I lent a copy of it to a close friend. A book perhaps to save for a time when your mental health is at it’s best. Not for the faint-hearted.  

I did some re-reading – it is always good to go over old ground. Old ground like Keith Laumer’s short stories, which I first read as a schoolboy in the mid 1970’s. One of them is “Special placement test” about the guy who can’t get a job in a massively overpopulated future America, and is faced with submitting himself for a lobotomy. How does he escape? It would make a great film. Or Frank Herbert’s “Hellstrom’s Hive” for which I would love to write a sequel. Also, in light of the new Dune films, I re-read “Dune” and “Dune Messiah”.

I started reading some of Neal Asher’s space operas, getting through three or four of them, but laid off them as they were quite hard on my mental health, being full of quite astonishing levels of violence and nastiness. I read – and this was a good deal more positive – Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The winds Twelve Quarters” and “The Compass Rose”, more encouraging and uplifting space opera set in her “Hainish” universe. Equally uplifting was Anne Leckie’s “Ancillary Sword” although the latter’s refusal to use male pronouns confused me somewhat. I suppose the point is, it doesn’t matter if you’re male or female. Except it does… Other sci-fi included work by Ken Macleod and Alistair Reynolds, and vintage pulp fiction by Poul Anderson (“Flandry of Terra” – “Bond, James Bond” out amongst the stars, written about the same time as Fleming was writing the 007 tales) and E.E Smith (“Lord Tedric: Alien Realms” – pure pulp read in less than a day). I re-read C.S Lewis’ epic “Perelandra”, something I try to do every few years. This retelling of the legend of the Fall, the story of the unfallen planet Venus threatened by evil – but delivered by the actions of one brave person – never fails to grip me. I found time for an “omnibus” trip to Darrowby, with James Herriot – leading my wife into a season of reading him as well. “Agent running in the field” and “A Legacy of spies” were my fix of John le Carre’s work for this year. Must have read most of his stuff by now? Also, Jonathan Nicholas’ “Vermisst” about a German WWII aviator lost in the Soviet Union. Also, two technical books on the Vulcan bomber, and a book by Raymond White on the use of Harriers in the Falklands War.

An outstanding read was Sandra Newman’s “Julia”, being the story of Winston Smith’s eponymous lover in Orwell’s 1984. Very graphic and quite violent in places, she manages to fill in some interesting social detail that would have quite eluded a man like George Orwell. Also, towards the end, she conveys some of the hope that is entirely absent in 1984. I gave the book to my daughter and sent a copy to one of my sisters, so impressed was I. In the context of dystopia I also read Sinclair Lewis’ “It can’t happen here”, a story of America under a dictatorship, written decades before Orwell wrote 1984, and eerily prophetic…I will say no more.

I enjoyed Ben McGrath’s very humane “Riverman”, an account of travels by canoe through the great rivers and backwaters of the continental United States – not really about rivers, but about people. Also about people but not really about ships or the sea, was Horatio Clare’s “Down to the sea in ships”. A man whose writing I love, but who I find can get a bit pompous, is Clive James. I read another of his now quite hard to find memoirs, “Falling towards England”. I can cope with someone with such a high opinion of himself as Clive James, only in small doses. I also read a couple of books on cosmology I’d been recommended to: Brian Clegg’s “The Quantum Age” and Piers Bizony’s “Atom”.

There’s more! The untimely death of Michael Mosley saw me reading my wife’s copy of his “Just one thing” – leading to a few small but positive changes to my lifestyle, which of course is all he would have wanted. Terry Haye, a respected screenwriter, wrote “I am Pilgrim”. His second book “The year of the locust” was not quite as good, and had an odd sci-fi component in the middle, but was eminently readable. I read Christopher Tolkien’s expansion of his late father’s mythos with “The fall of Gondolin”. I confess that the three or so different versions of this story now available do lead me to getting a little confused. Gondolin was a legendary city in Tolkien’s Middle Earth. The beautiful White City of Gondor, as seen in The Lord of the Rings, is held up as a pale reflection of Gondolin’s beauty. As with all of Tolkien, and indeed this is true to a degree of all great writing, the epic tale of the city’s fall is both just story, and yet also a profound lesson for all our lives.

Reading in 2023

Posted on by
Reply

This year we’ve been a little busier, perhaps. “The judges’s scores are in”, as they say on Strictly; I have read fewer books in 2023 than I did in 2022. At the start of this year I was reading two books. One was Nick Hayes’ excellent and inspiring “The Book of Trespass”, an ostensibly scurrilous and subversive work about the countryside and how much if it is not accessible because of the draconian property laws in England. The fact that it is in print at all, and was widely and positively reviewed by various national newspapers representing the Establishment (whatever you conceive that to be) indicates that it is perhaps not quite as subversive as some readers might like to think. The other was “Life in the Far West” by G. F Ruxton. I am a student of the westward expansion of Europeans into the north American continent, and this book is a 19th century travelogue of an Englishman who travelled extensively in the lands that became the western United States.

My wife bought me a copy of W. Heaton Cooper’s “Lakeland Portraits”, completing my set of W. Heaton Cooper’s books. I love his paintings. His writing is delightful, spare and concise, as it must be from someone brought up in more spacious times than ours. There was a time when learning to write good English still mattered in schools. I’m no conservative when I say that that time is long past. To be fair this is not the best of his books – for that I’d look at “The Tarns of Lakeland”.

As noted elsewhere on this blog – reviewed here – I found Alexander Maitland’s “The Life of Wilfred Thesiger” very readable in February. At this point my wife and I moved to the edge of the Peak District. Visiting the local library saw me reading Mark Patterson’s “Roman Derbyshire”, Catherine James “Derbyshire – where writers walked” and Stephen Bailey’s excellent “The old roads of Derbyshire”. Local knowledge – every time. I followed these with Lewis Dartnell’s “Origins” about the origin of humankind, and Ryzard Kapucinsky’s work about travels in Africa, “The Shadow of the sun”. Very entertaining. Of Addis Ababa, he writes, “Bullets were the most valuable commodity in that market place, even more valuable than dollars.” He writes about the fundamental differences in the understanding of time, between Africans and westerners. Years ago working in Nigeria, someone once told me “there is no word in any Nigerian language that conveys the urgency of the Spanish word “Manana“... I also read Kapucinsky’s “The Emperor”, a very informative and warts-and-all account of the reign and fall of the otherwise pretty much untouchable Haile Selassie. Everyone has feet of clay, particularly despots and military dictators.

I had a bumper year indulging my interest in the history of the westward expansion of the United States. I started with two works on the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Bernard de Voto’s eponymous history of that trip, and “These tremendous mountains” by David Freeman Hawke. I went on to read “Wondrous times on the frontier” by Dee Brown, which covered aspects of social history overlooked elsewhere – saloons and bars, what people wore, what they had for supper etc. Later on in the year I read the second book of Bernard de Voto’s three-part series on the westward expansion, “Across the wide Missouri”. This deals solely with the fur trade, with beaver trappers – the “mountain men” of legend. Also I found time for biographies of Kit Carson – “Kit Carson: A Pattern for Heroes” by Thelma Guild and Harvey Lewis Carter, and “Daniel Boone: The Long Hunter” by Lawrence Elliot. Finally, Alan Taylor’s “American Colonies”, another book that is part of a well-received trilogy of historical textbooks.

Janusz Bardach’s “Man is wolf to man”, recommended by Jacek Hugo-Bader, was quite a difficult read. Well written – just rather hard on the mental health to read of such terrible goings on. Another book difficult for similar reasons was my first Neal Asher sci-fi novel, “The voyage of the Sable Keech”. Asher is a prolific science-fiction writer and this work has immortals, viruses, some very dangerous animals, and is full of violence. Nearly as violent as Richard Morgan’s “Altered Carbon” trilogy about Takeshi Kovacs, and that’s saying something! I found Neal Asher’s crab-like aliens, the Prador, with their taste for eating living humans, particularly unpleasant. 

I read an obscure work called “Earthbound Astronauts” by Beirne Lay Jr. This was a singing of the praises of all the engineers, scientists and so forth that helped to build the Saturn V rocket that put man on the moon in 1969. Max Hastings’ account of Operation “Overlord – the story of the Normandy landings” came in August. I review elsewhere Peter C. Newman’s book “The company of Adventurers”, being the early history of the Hudson’s Bay Company (still extant in Canada today as a minor department store chain) from even before its inception, through, if not to the present, then certainly well into the late 19th century.

Then there was a clump of railway reading – the every delightful prose of O.S Nock (see above on the writers of old having such delicacy and skill in written English) firstly “British Locomotives of the 20th C, volume 3” and secondly, a really good historical read, “Steam Locomotive”. This book highlights the fact that we’ve had trains in the UK for nearly two hundred years. Christian Woolmar, a worthy successor to O.S Nock in my view, wrote “Broken rails” about how and why the privatisation of British Rail under the Major government was such a disaster. His work on the London underground, “The subterranean railway”, was also instructive. In all that reading one became aware that the heyday of the railway in Britain was not “before Beeching”, but before the Great War – the railways were at the best in Edwardian England and have been in decline ever since. Other rail-related reading included several of Brian Radford’s works including “Midland through the Peak”.

Stephen Alford’s “The Watchers” about spying in Elizabethan England, went down well, as did Monty Don’s autobiography “Down to earth”. John Lydon’s “Anger is an energy” is reviewed here.

Fiction? I also found time for some re-reads; Heinlein’s “Glory Road” – always a pleasure, Richard Morgan’s violent “Broken Angels”, my very favourite book, Tolkien’s “The Silmarillion”, and Iain M. Banks’ “Surface Detail”. New reading included Le Carre’s “Silverview”, Erin Morgenstern’s “The Starless Sea” and Adrian Tchaikovsky’s “Children of ruin” – all mentioned here. I read my friend Mrs Ruth D’Alessandro’s second very engaging historical police procedural “Calling Detective Crockford”, being a fictionalised account of her mother’s work as the the first female detective in Berkshire. Amor Towles’ top work on the aristocrat in the hotel in Moscow – “A gentleman in Moscow” – is reviewed here.

Also amongst that lot, a short and informative popular science book on graphene, “The graphene revolution” by Brian Clegg. A textbook “Do safety differently” on human and organisational performance (a new way forward in safety) by gurus Sidney Dekker and Todd Conklin. I finished the year with Peter Fleming’s rather weak and largely cribbed account of the never-was Operation Sealion, the German invasion of England in 1940. His other writing is excellent: this is is poor and though interesting and informative in places, it is not his best work.

A review of “Company of Adventurers” by Peter C. Newman

Posted on by
1

Here is adventure indeed. Here is what used to be called a “boys own” account of derring-do in the Arctic wilderness. This excellent work covers the early history of the Hudson’s Bay Company (still extant in Canada today as a minor department store chain) from even before its inception, through, if not to the present, then certainly well into the late 19th century.

To a degree, the story of the Hudson’s Bay Company is the story of Canada, and the author, the occasionally sharp and acerbic Peter C. Newman, is nothing if not a Canadian patriot. The story of the HBC is also the story of winter, of the Arctic, of the very concept of “the North”. It is the story of the wild north woods and the ice-fringed Arctic sea.

I was pointed in the direction of this work by reading Bernard de Voto’s history of the “mountain men” engaged in the American beaver fur trade in the wilderness west of the Missouri – “Beyond the wide Missouri“. Newman does spend some time comparing and contrasting what happened in the lands further south that eventually formed the United States, with what happened in the northern part of the North American continent, the lands which (Alaska excluded) ultimately became Canada. They are very different stories. In the lands that formed the USA, Newman opines, there was a social contract; in Canada – allegiance (to the British Crown). In the thirteen colonies that became the USA, there was revolutionary will; in Canada – tradition. The Americans enshrined in their constitution, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness“. The Canadians valued “peace, order and good government“. In the mostly temperate lands that became the USA, what mattered was individual excellence. In the harsher climate of the Canadian Arctic, what mattered was collective survival. I shall make no public comment on which of these may or may not better.

These differences highlighted by the author do point up the cultural and social differences between Canada and the USA right down to the present day. To me, they also show that the history of the American continent could have been very different. There was nothing inevitable or permanent about the British Empire; there was and indeed is, nothing inevitable or everlasting about the United States.

Where Newman really excels – and this is why I love reading history – is in his looking in between the lines of history, his going off at a tangent, and visiting the less-travelled by-ways of the past. Here is a book two inches thick on Canada and the Hudson’s Bay Company, and there is page after page describing that European aristocrat and warrior Prince Rupert of the Rhine, nephew of the English King Charles I, and notable cavalry general of the English Civil War. I think this form of digression is great: it is found in full measure in the work of the greatest historians. Read Halberstam’s “The Coldest Winter” about the Korean War, and you will learn much about Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency and his early life, and about how the Republican Party has got into the trouble it remains in right up to this day.

Another area I enjoyed is Newman’s dealing with explorer-heroes. Or maybe that ought be hero explorers? He is most helpful in laying out the exploits of a long line of incredibly tough and stalwart adventurers pressing into the Arctic tundra. (Note: I use the word “incredible” in the most literal sense here rather than the modern overused nonsense – that is, to me, it is barely credible that those guys could have been that tough!!)

He covers well the laissez-faire economics of the Hudson’s Bay Company, particularly in the time of the reticent Sir Bibye Lake, and the fundamentally commercial rather than political or cultural purpose of the HBC. This company was not at all the same as the East India Company, although it existed in parallel with the East India Company, and was arguably in some senses similar.

Towards the end, we read the story of the lost Franklin Expedition and of the unravelling of that mystery by the supremely capable but very conceited John Rae. Rae hinted – indeed, as good as proved, that the men of the lost expedition had resorted to cannibalism, but the culture and mores of the British Empire at that time did not permit the idea that British White Men would eat each other in extremis. Rae himself put himself outside the pale of the Establishment of the time by suggesting such things. It would have been quite natural and understandable in the west at that time, far easier for the British public, any public, to feel that the Franklin Expedition had perished at the hands of some terrible cannibal Arctic tribe – Newman notes that the press of that time found the “spectre of an Arctic tribe of man-eaters irresistible“. As a reader of macabre horror, I start to more easily realise how and why writers such as Edgar Allen Poe and even the later H.P Lovecraft, had such a fear of the Arctic and such an inappropriate negative attitude to the Esquimaux.

Reading this, I’ve learned a lot: about Canada, about the Orcadians (the men of the Orkneys whom the HBC hired to do much of the initial work), and about the politics and economics of Stuart and Georgian times. The Orcadians came out to the Hudson Bay and were probably better fed and clothed than they would have been at home in Kirkwall at that time – and they could come back home, if they survived a five year hitch, to five years’ unspent wages! Always interesting to read about prices and profits: some of the initial exploration was conducted by a ketch called “Nonsuch”. It was bought by the Company in 1669 for £290, and sold after the voyage for £125. The Company spent £650 on trade goods outbound, and sold the furs and other cargo after the return voyage, for £1379. And after all that, still made a loss!! But, it was worthwhile “proof of concept” that the Hudson’s Bay Company could trade successfully in the Canadian Arctic. The financial backers, we read, “were pleased” with these figures. It’s a shame that many people look down their noses today at entrepreneurs who have the same energetic attitude to commercial and technical risk.

A review of Pavane, by Keith Roberts

Posted on by
1

A review of Pavane, by Keith Roberts

This is one of the “SF Masterworks” series which has re-issued, over the decades, some absolutely classic titles. Some of them are well-known to me; others, like this one, I had never heard of. You can see the list yourself here. I’ve read 21 of the 73 titles in the softcover list. It is necessarily some editor’s subjective choice, and there is a tendency for Philip K. Dick to appear rather too often in my view.

But this is about Pavane. A pavane, we read, is a kind of Latin dance. This is important. Roberts has written a work with six “measures”; six long chapters, each of them meaningful, each of them drawing us onto an inevitable conclusion. We start in the late 1960’s, and we finish sometime near the end of the 20th century, describing the growth of, the antecedents of, a very English revolution. A humble engine-driver at the beginning, further on has become a rich business man. His niece becomes the mother of a firebrand aristocrat, the Lady of Corfe, whose actions bring the established order down in flames and ruin. Throughout, there is an older hidden England, a faerie England, at work. It is at work for good. It is a concealed spiritual England such as C.S Lewis hints at “That Hideous Strength” – although he speaks rather, of “Logres”, a spiritual Britain.

Pavane is an alternative history. And it is remarkable as such, for it is a work of writing craftsmanship, a finely shaped bow or arc of story from beginning to end. In this alternative history, Good Queen Bess is assassinated in 1588; the Spanish Armada is successful in its conquest of England, and the entire Reformation is brought to a bloody halt, unlikely as it may seem (more on that in a minute.) The Catholic church militant then reigns from Rome, supreme and unchallenged, for centuries down to modern times.

The story starts in the late 1960’s in Dorset. Part of the attraction of the novel for me was the writer’s clear love of and knowledge of Dorset, an area I know and love myself. Most of the action is set between Dorchester and the Isle of Purbeck.

We see how control of innovation can prevent progress: in this alternate 1960’s, steam traction engines haul goods along rough unmade roads, often threatened by bandits in the woods, and subject to the constraints of impending darkness and winter weather. The use of concrete is tightly controlled and even banned – because concrete can be used to create fortifications, and hence foster rebellion against Rome, which is ruthlessly put down by the Church Militant.

There is no electricity; there is no radio or TV. Petrol and diesel engines have been invented, but the church has circumscribed the use of these new-fangled devices by Papal Decree. But in this world, unthinkable rebellion is brewing slowly, in the woods, in the fields, in the quiet villages. It is a world where the strength of England is found in the countryside.

Writing as a believing Christian here, I sense that Keith Roberts perhaps has little time for church or religion – but he never becomes openly anti-Christian, as in the worldview seen in such work as the “His dark materials” trilogy of Philip Pullman. He writes with a light pen of the faeries, the “old people”, of the old religions and the older Gods – Wotan, Thor, Freyr. In this he prefigures – or at least reminds me of – the much later work of Neil Gaiman in his excellent “American Gods”.

Pavane was very readable, very engaging, and full of delightful and evocative language. If I had a criticism of it, it would be of the opening premise – that the assassination of Queen Elizabeth I, and even victory for the Spanish Armada, would have been enough to destroy the Reformation and the protestant energy and faith of north-western Europe.

I’d argue not. I’d argue for a historical inertia; doubtless there are “cusp” points in human history when much can change subsequently because of a single event. But I’d argue that there are far fewer of them than science-fiction authors might like. I’d suggest the assassination of JFK might have been one; I’d certainly argue that the death from disease of Prince Arthur, allowing his younger brother Henry to become Henry VIII, was another.

But I think, rather, that there is a kind of historical inertia. I don’t think it’s quite so easy to change history through the turn of a card or the flap of a butterfly’s wing. I’d suggest that there is considerable cultural and historical momentum, which is preserved and not lightly shifted. Consider: throughout history there have been many times when reactionary forces might have won on the battlefield, but didn’t – would it have made much long-term difference even if they had?

Realistically would England be that different now if Charles I had won in the English Civil War? Would America today be really that different if the thirteen colonies had failed to prevail in their Revolution? And even if the South had won on the battlefield in the American Civil War, as a slave economy competing in a free market it could never have prevailed against the North in the long term. When the conservative, the reactionary and the traditional meets the progressive, the proactive, and the forward-looking, in the long run, there can be no doubt about what the outcome will be. The status quo is never acceptable.

Fifty-two shades of…something better than grey

Posted on by
Reply

Well I’ve done it! I’ve read fifty-two books this year! I think I can be proud of that. Some of them I have even reviewed properly. We’ll not go through them all in excruciating detail here, but we will discuss broadly, my year’s reading. I never set out to read a book a week, but I did set out for sure, to read many dozens of books in the year.

Of the 52, 15 of them were in my Kindle – I can do both paper books and e-reading. Eight of the books were re-reads. A few of those only, will I highlight. Nicholas Monsarrat’s “The Cruel Sea” which I re-read after seeing the film one Sunday afternoon. C.S Lewis’ “The Great Divorce” remains one of my favourite reads, being an account of a man who dreamt of going on a day trip to Heaven – from a certain another place. Another re-read was R.A Heinlein’s “The moon is a harsh mistress”, at one level, a story about a rebellion in a prison colony in 2075: at another, the greatest manifesto for libertarian political views, you will ever read. Eighteen of the 52 books were fiction – an oddly low number, although it just means that my interests have been well satisfied by non-fiction.

I started the year reading Dr J.H. B Bell’s “A progress in mountaineering”. Bell, as a 16-year old in 1910, cycled 47 miles from Newtonmore to the foot of Ben Nevis, and climbed Nevis alone. And then he cycled back 47 miles again: the account does not make it clear if he cycled 90+ miles in hobnail boots, or if he climbed Nevis in plimsolls. What seems clear, is that when compared with our elders, we have become a nation of wuss.

I enjoyed Jonathan Nicholls’ “Kittyhawk down”, a well-researched story about RAF pilots in the Western desert during WWII. In February I also read Murray Rothbard’s short pamphlet “The Anatomy of the State” (Murray Rothbard also wrote “The fatal conceit” about the errors of socialism), and a book called “The road to Mecca” by Muhammed Asad, a Jewish convert to Islam, who later became a senior diplomat for the government of Pakistan. In March I read Robert Winder’s “The hidden springs of Englishness”, and started Neil Sheehan’s “A bright shining lie” reviewed here – if you read one book about Vietnam, make it this one.

My sister sent me an old copy of Rich Roll’s “Finding Ultra” about an overweight man who turned his life around and became one of the fittest ultra-marathon runners in the world. As much for the appendices on plant-based diet, did I find that book interesting. William Wordsworth’s original travel guide to the Lake District proved oddly relevant centuries after it was written. Having tried and failed to source a copy of Varlam Shalamov’s rare Kolyma Tales, instead I read Hugo Jacek-Bader’s excellent “Kolyma diaries” and “White fever”, about travels in Eastern Russia – startling stuff about a very different world.

I read some science-fiction: Amongst others, Paul McAuley (“The war of maps”), Iain M Banks (“The Algrebraist” – again), an old Keith Laumer novel and two works of the modern writer Adrian Tchaikovsky. Also Heinlein – “Glory Road” (is that even sci-fi??) and “Harsh mistress” as already mentioned. Becky Chambers’ “The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet” I review here.

I read three books about India: Shashi Tharoor’s (perhaps understandably) bitter and twisted “Inglorious Empire”, William Dalrymple’s account of the East India Company entitled “The Anarchy”, and finally Katie Hickman’s “She-merchants, buccaneers and gentlewomen: British women in India”. All very informative and enabling one to gain a more accurate perspective of world history. The lesson from Shashi Tharoor’s “Inglorious Empire” is that bitterness and negativity, however arguably justifiable, is deeply unattractive.

I have read much about America: I am a fan of America. I believe in what America stands for, though it seem to be in trouble in these times and full of vice and failings. Robert Kaplan’s “Earning the Rockies: How Geography Shapes America’s Role in the World”, reviewed here, proved very interesting at the start but perhaps a little disingenous towards the end. A great interest of mine is American history, particularly the westward expansion. I read Bernard Devoto’s; “1846: the year of decision” and John Anthony Caruso’s “The Appalachian Frontier” , was well as several of Dee Brown’s books – one on the Fetterman Massacre, the other on women in the wild west. Dee Brown’s greatest and most famous book, all should read: that is “Bury my heart at Wounded Knee”, an account of the destruction of the native American tribes.

Later in the year I read Tim O’Brien’s “The things they carried” – the Vietnam war as seen through the lens of what soldiers carried with them. One soldier carried a pair of his girlfriend’s tights as a neckscarf, and wore them even after she dumped him. Also, I read Stephen Hough’s “The Great War at sea” – most informative – and Alice Roberts’ “Tamed – ten species that changed our world”. Self-explanatory title there, and rather a lot of detailed biology which I had to skip.

I read Ed Husain’s troubling account of journeys in certain cities in the UK – “Among the mosques”. In order to get published, Ed Husain has to be upbeat and positive about what is happening with Islam in the United Kingdom today, but I find that he can’t possibly be as naive as he comes across in his writing. A deeply worrying travelogue.

Tim Butcher wrote “Blood River”. The age of great explorers, opines one of the reviewers, is not dead. Butcher attempts with only partial success to navigate overland by motorcycle and boat, from the eastern Congo through to the Atlantic coast. The Congo is a messed-up place, and it is deeply messed up for a number of very complicated reasons. It will get worse – much worse. Certain important minerals essential for modern Lithium-ion batteries, required for what some people call “the energy transition”, are most easily sourced in the Congo. In the coming decades the extraction of those minerals, to salve the western conscience and enable electric cars, will do as much damage to Africans in the Congo as King Leopold ever did in his extraction of rubber in the early 20th century.

I read a useful and informative biography of Sir William Stanier by the ever-readable and prolific railway author O.S Nock. This one I found in an excellent second-hand bookshop in Bridport. I read Ryzard Kapuchinsky’s “Imperium” about Soviet Russia – including an unforgettable two-page interlude on how to make peach brandy. What drives my reading, is this – not what is in plain view, but what is not. Sometimes something tangential – a fact or anecdote of paramount importance or of deep interest, is almost literally found “in between the lines”.

I ended the year with David Halberstam’s “The Coldest Winter”. This is a brilliant account of the Korean War. Another great Pulitzer prize winning author covering vast sweeps of American culture and history. Though some of the descriptions of battles are a little too detailed for me, what made the book is the wide arc of history, the bigger picture. In a book about Korea, I learned much about the “New Deal” and the life and times of Franklin Roosevelt. I learned about changes to domestic politics in the USA that are still very much of importance today. I learned about McCarthyism, and also about Douglas MacArthur – a horribly fascinating, perhaps deservedly reviled, but nonetheless important 20th century figure. What’s it like to have no self-doubt at all? Lack of self-doubt is not one of my qualities.

Earlier in the year, I chanced across Francis Rossi & Rick Parfitt’s “Just for the record”, being an autobiography of Status Quo. This rock autobiography was a disappointment for me; it was potentially great story written in the most perfunctory manner. You would think that lyricists could write! No, obviously not. One thing I recall though is Rick Parfitt writing of himself as a teenager (when his guitar teacher patronised him) “No-one calls me laddie“. See my point above about lack of self-doubt.

Over Christmas I was given “Rainbow in the dark”, the autobiography of Ronnie James Dio. We learn that as a boy he swore to himself that one day he would headline at Madison Square Garden, in his own name – and he did! A readable enough tale of ambition fulfilled, of the virtues of hard work and persistence, and of some of the other less agreeable habits of rock ‘n roll stars. Reading it, I’d like also to read a biography of the guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, if and when such a book becomes available.

This is for balance, for unfortunately, Dio’s account of those years is somewhat self-serving. It is a shame, for I regard him as a great lyricist, and the distinctive sound of his voice, be it in the heavy metal music of Rainbow, or Black Sabbath, formed a background to my youth.

The full list here:

Chris Anderson The official TED guide to public speaking
Paul McAuley The war of maps
J. H B Bell A Progress in mountaineering
Iain M Banks The Algebraist
Jonathan Nicholls Kittyhawk Down
Murray Rothbard Anatomy of the state
Muhammed Asad The road to Mecca
Robert Winder The Last Wolf: the Hidden Springs of Englishness
Adrian Tchaikovsky Cage of souls
Nicholas Monsarrat The Cruel Sea
C.S Lewis The Great Divorce
Neil Sheehan A bright shining lie
Jacek Hugo-Bader Kolyma Diaries
Rich Roll Finding Ultra
William Wordsworth The Lakes
Keith Laumer Doorstep
Jacek Hugo-Bader White Fever
Shashi Tharoor Inglorious Empire
Robert D. Kaplan Earning the Rockies: How Geography Shapes America’s Role in the World
Ryzard Kapuchinsky Imperium
Dee Brown The Fetterman Massacre
Bernard Werber Empire of the ants
William Smethurst Writing for television
William Dalrymple The Anarchy
Sven Hassel Court Martial
Becky Chambers The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
Bernard DeVoto 1846:The year of decision
Len Deighton Blitzkrieg
Dee Brown The Gentle Tamers: Women of the Old Wild West
John Anthony Caruso The Appalachian Frontier
Larry McMurtry Lonesome dove
Larry McMurtry Dead man’s walk
Larry McMurtry Comanche Moon
Francis Rossi & Rick Parfitt Just for the record – autobiography of Status Quo
Michael Bonavia The birth of British Rail
R.A Heinlein Glory Road
R.A Heinlein The moon is a harsh mistress
O.S Nock William Stanier
Katie Hickman She-merchants, buccaneers and gentlewomen: British women in India
Stephen Longstreet War cries on horseback
George Orwell Animal Farm
Ed Husain Among the mosques
Richard Hough The Great War at sea
Tim O’ Brien The things they carried
Tim Butcher Blood River
C.S Lewis That Hideous Strength
O.S Nock The Settle and Carlisle railway
Adrian Tchaikovsky Children of time
Alice Roberts Tamed – ten species that changed our world
Jeff Long Deeper
David Halberstam The coldest winter: America and the Korean war
Ronnie James Dio Rainbow in the dark

A review of “A bright shining lie”, by Neil Sheehan

Posted on by
2

A review of “A bright shining lie“, by Neil Sheehan

I cannot now recall who recommended this book to me. It might have been John Le Carre, but I think it more likely that it was Max Hastings, in his comprehensive account of the Vietnam War, which I brought after a visit to Ho Chi Minh City in 2019. The copy I bought – from the online Oxfam bookshop was as large and heavy a paperback book as ever I have had, and really could only be read when placed flat on a table or on your lap – too heavy to hold.

It is a biography of an American named John Paul Vann, and an account of the Vietnam War. It is lovely writing, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and very much in the journalistic style of Robert Kaplan, in that there is fascinating detail in the cracks and interstices of his account. One learns much, by literally, reading between the lines. At the start there is page after page just describing the pall-bearers at Vann’s funeral – but these pages contain timeless nuggets of news, gems of information about American political history.

The man who gave John Vann’s eulogy noted of him, “I’ve never known a more unsparingly critical and more uncompromisingly honest man”. Inspiring? We shall see. I personally am neither unsparingly critical nor uncompromisingly honest. Earlier, Sheehan writes of Vann that “he had no physical fear”. Being fearless is not the same as being courageous; being fearless, at least, is no virtue.

Sheehan writes – unsparingly critical perhaps – of the American military machine of those years, that after the victory of WWII, they had forgotten how to lose. And in the forgetting of that important lesson, they assured for themselves, defeat in Vietnam – to say nothing of Korea. The fool says, “I don’t do defeat” or “I don’t do failure”. But it is that very attitude that assures and guarantees failure. True success is found in that person who budgets for, bargains for, allows for and plans and prepares for failure. It’s not the failure that matters – it’s how you recover from it. “I get knocked down – but I get up again…”

In the section on “antecedents to the man” Sheehan provides as good a description of the American South as ever you will read. And in that description, he is describing a lost Britain – or more honestly, a lost Ireland and Scotland. Those who Britain rejected, after the Clearances, in the eighteenth century, went to the southern part of what is now the United States. The weak died on the way, or soon after they got there. The strong remained – and they had a wild streak, the wildness of Britain before the Victorians tamed it. Reading works like J.D Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” and Hampton Sides’ “Blood and Thunder” (about the American west, but describing the life of Davy Crockett) one can see this wildness, this untamed violence, not far beneath the surface.

We read about John Vann’s sexual indiscretions and moral darkness (and the root causes of that in the behaviours of his mother) in respect of his relationship to his wife, his children and to marriage. He kept two mistresses and was a serial philanderer. Yet, he was considered moral by his superiors, and by their – and his – lights, he was a moral man. It is interesting to read about the complete separation of Vann’s moral probity (or at least, ostensible moral probity) in the professional, military, space, from the squalor and degradation of his private life. Looking after your troops properly, dealing honestly and truthfully with your superiors – yet failing to look after your own family and lying to your spouse. It is the nuance, the ambiguity, that i find so fascinating. Particularly in this age, when so often, our leading men and women need to be perfect and seen to be perfect. Nuance and ambiguity seem to be not allowed. This is a pity, for no-one is perfect. All have sinned and fall short of the high standards required of us by the great God in heaven – never mind the double standards imposed by the newspapers and social media.

A remarkable and worthwhile read, though I did skip quite a lot of detail – some of it was tedious, some of it was fascinating. From the Battle of Ap Bac in 1963, through to the catastrophe that was the Tet Offensive and onto the Nixon years, it’s fair to repeat what the blurb says – if you read one book about Vietnam, make it this one. You’ll learn much else besides – about America, France and Vietnam; about WWII and about Korea; about human frailty and sin, and the indomitability of the human spirit. I read these big improving tomes because they inspire and encourage me – and we finish with a tip from a character called Weyand, who was a patron of John Paul Vann. How does a person get on? “Move up, move out, to the cutting edge”.

Reflections on a decade of reading

Posted on by
Reply

To early morning prayers on the first Saturday of this new month, this year, this new decade: outside, squirrels and magpies go about their winter business. As the day dawns, the exquisite light cheapens and becomes more banal, less delicate.

And now a look back at some of my reading over the last ten years. I have – at least according to my own records – read 491 books. Of those books, 349 I read for the first time: the rest, were books I have read before, sometimes once, sometimes more often. Tolkien’s “The Silmarillion” and C.S Lewis’ “Mere Christianity” top the re-read list, followed closely by Tolkien’s “The Children of Hurin” and R.A Heinlein’s “The cat who walks through walls” and “Friday”. Did I re-read any non-fiction? Why yes! I read twice these last ten years, Sebastian Junger’s “War” and Jon E. Lewis’s “The Making of the American West“. Also, Anthony Beevor’s account of the Spanish Civil War, and N.A.M Roger’s history of the Royal Navy, “The Safeguard of the Sea“.

I read two books called “On writing” – one – most excellent work – by Stephen King; the other, by George Orwell. I’ve read every one of Alan Furst’s dozen delicately written European spy novels set generally at the outbreak of World War II.

Alex Scarrow’s “Last light” was an apocalypse based around the end of electricity – how thin is the barrier that keeps the rule of law in place? How quickly could a person – or a society – somehow stumble through that barrier, and find themselves trampled to death by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse coming at a fast gallop in the other direction? In Scarrow’s book – about 48 hours. The Prime Minister fumbles a vital question in a press conference on a Monday morning. Wednesday afternoon, a policeman is shot dead at a motorway roadblock – and so the die-back begins. It was reminiscent of Nevil Shute’s propaganda piece “What happened to the Corbetts“, which was a fictional account written in the late 1930’s, of the bombing and destruction of the city of Southampton by an unknown enemy.

I had a re-read of Antony Beever’s masterful account of the Spanish Civil War – a book I enjoy reading, as he deals very lightly with the grey areas, the nuance and complexity of that conflict. I read a paper copy of the collected short stories of Arthur C. Clarke – always a pleasure to re-read the story of the Master, or the story of Grant and McNeil marooned on their freighter between Earth and Venus – with only enough air for one. I read and re-read Bill Bryson’s book “Mother tongue” about our great language. I was particularly impressed with “The man who went into the west“, being a biography of that sublime and yet oddly disquieting English poet, R.S Thomas. A clergyman who hid from his parishioners, a most peculiar and perhaps unlovable man, and yet, what poetry:

 The priest would come
and pull on the hoarse bell nobody
heard, and enter that place
of darkness, sour with the mould
of the years. And the spider would run
from the chalice, and the wine lie
there for a time, cold and unwanted
by all but he, while the candles
guttered as the wind picked
at the roof.

I read a number of China Mieville novels, and was most impressed by “Embassytown“, a story where the human ambassadors to a race of beings who speak with two mouths, have to be telepathic identical twins trained from birth. A very strange story – but fundamentally, all about language and communication. I read a couple of the memoirs of the late Clive James – what a writer, what a great guy. There are and have been few role models in my life, but God knows I’d regard him as one. Inspiring to me because he came from nothing. In “Unreliable memoirs” he writes of small boys throwing stones at an old lady, and compares it with Kristallnacht, noting that “the difference between mischief and murder is no greater than the law allows“.

I went through a Dennis Wheatley phase, once his material became available on Kindle, and relived some of the stories I first read in my early twenties. Evan Connell’s “Son of the morning star” was a biography of General Custer – and hence, of the development of the American west. That is a particular historical interest of mine. F.A Hayek wrote “The Road to serfdom” – a destruction of the errors of socialism – and perhaps the most influential book I’ve read this last ten years. Though oddly, it did not stand up (or has not yet done so) to re-reading.

I went through a Bond period and re-read much of Fleming’s original 007 stories. Great, spare writing. I also read a good few of Iain Banks space-opera novels, and also his de facto autobiography called “Raw Spirit” which I found encouraging. I read some of Keith Laumer’s science fiction stories, and Lord Moran’s excellent “The anatomy of courage” which every single one of us ought read. I read the journal of the Lewis and Clark expedition- that was long and tedious in places, but rivetting and exciting in others. Neal Stephenson’s work was a blessing to me – particularly “Cryptonomicon” and “The System of the World“. Nevil Shute’s “In the wet” I’d also highly recommend. I’ve mentioned elsewhere the radical and strange voting system he proposes in that story.

Who else is there to mention? Kipling, perhaps. I went through a Kipling phase after one of my daughters spent time at Simla, and later, lived for a year or so near New Delhi. “Plain tales from the hills” demonstrates that astute observer of the human condition in his best form. “Kim” I would put on the list of books everyone ought to read. Two interesting things about Kipling’s “Kim”: 1) it is available extensively in translation throughout India – but it is not available in Urdu and hence not available at all in Pakistan – where much of the story is set. I leave the reader to draw his or her own conclusions about that. 2) It is not so much the startng point of the Scout movement – that would be B.P’s “Scouting for Boys” – as the grandfather or underlying source material for Scouting. You want to understand what Scouting is about? Read “Kim”.

We may add the former astronaut Stephen Baxter. Whilst no crackerjack conspiracy theorist, he suggests that NASA exists not to faciliate human space flight but to prevent it – we could have gone to Mars in the 1980’s. I recommend “Flood” and “Ark” and especially “Moonseed” with a character whose immortal line is – after Arthur’s Seat becomes once again an active volcano – “Edinburgh is Olympus Mons now”. Also the learned Doctor Theodore Dalrymple. Never less than a pleasure – such works as “The politics and culture of decline” and “The Wilder shores of Marx”.

Tom Bingham wrote “The rule of law”, a helpful book on a vital concept. It is a book I bought and read after an oddly encouraging visit to Parliament which my wife and I won in a raffle. Up for re-reading in these interesting times, is that one. The leather-faced explorer the late Wilfred Thesiger was one of a series of Arabist explorers of the last 150 years. He was effectively guilty of opening the flood gates and allowing the desecration by oil companies of the Rub‘ al Khali or Empty Quarter of Arabia. But he writes wonderfully of the (now doubtless long-vanished) desert Bedu. Read his autobiography “My life and travels“. Read “Arabian Sands“.

Much that perhaps ought to be included has been omitted. But I just read a book called “Steal like an artist” by Austin Kleon, and he notes that the future, in the present world where we are swamped by easily available data and information, belongs to those who know what to leave out. It was perhaps ever thus…and on that note, I bid you good day.

Nick Hough <nick@houghlife.com>Fri, 3 Jan, 18:46

Arundel

Posted on by
Reply

We started out with brunch in an Italian cafe. For her, some very sweet waffles. For me, a sausage bap but the sausages were from a boar. Tasty. Then, a short tour round in the summer sunshine. To my eye Arundel resembles Uckfield with its steep main street and pleasant buildings. It’s nearly all cafes and restaurants, though we did find an actual grocer trading on one side-street. And there were antique shops, which is always a good thing when we’re out together.

Thence to Arundel Castle, which I found eye-opening and not entirely refreshing. Whilst it is in superficial appearance a Norman castle, the majority of it is Victorian. It is, rather like Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland, something of a reconstruction, a Victorian ideal of what a Norman castle should be like. That may be a little unfair, but only a little. Both had been “real” castles back in the day. Both, interestingly enough, were reduced during the Civil War. Bamburgh by artillery, Arundel, by siege and thirst. The Parliamentarian besiegers cut off the water supply – game over, as they say. Surprising to find the Royalists held out for so long – for 18 days.

Arundel is a centre of Roman Catholicism. The large and very French looking cathedral church in the town is not Anglican but the seat of the Roman diocese of Arundel. The owner of the castle is the Duke of Arundel, also known as the Duke of Norfolk. I already knew that Norfolk was a Catholic peer, and also the most senior nobleman in England. What I learned today was that the Duke of Norfolk is also the hereditary Earl Marshal of England. It is he to whom would fall the burden of organising the Queen’s funeral and the coronation of her successor. It is fascinating to me that right at the heart of the ceremonial State, right next to the Crown, to a protestant monarch, you find this high Catholic nobleman.

Going round this home of a Catholic peer, this tremendous castle, made me feel very Protestant. I recall a time some years ago when I was sat one lunchtime praying in Westminster Cathedral, and the priest started talking about the uniqueness of the virgin Mary, and I found I had to get up and walk out – I just could not be doing with listening to such stuff. I didn’t realise how deeply Protestant I was until thrown into that Catholic environment. It’s not sectarian hatred – there’s no orange and green with me. It’s just doctrinal differences. I’m aware that in writing this I may set myself up for “POT/KETTLE/BLACK” responses…

The other clear learning from the visit – though I knew it in my heart – is that had I lived in the English Civil War, I would have taken the Roundhead or Parliamentary side – at least in the war itself. But I am no fan of the coup, overthrow of parliament and military dictatorship that followed the Civil War, nor any respecter of Cromwell’s memory. He has so much to answer for in England and Scotland, to say nothing of the lasting damage he did in Ireland. Some years back in less stable parts of the world than ours, there was a spate of politically motivated toppling of statues. I’d nominate the statue of Cromwell in London: not for toppling of course, but perhaps for egging, or some of that horrible string that squirts from a can – or perhaps a student to put a traffic cone on his head.

History has much to teach us; we miss much by forgetting the fact that we are deeply shaped and moulded as a people over centuries. You want to understand the EU? Study the second world war. Where did the Troubles come from? Learn about Cromwell and even further back into Irish history. It’s worth going back and remembering that the Catholic/Protestant divide in the 17th century was as much about who was in charge, about state power, as it was about religion. The superpowers of the day were underpinned by these ideologies, even as in our youth, they were underpinned by Communism and Capitalism. Then, as now, we ask: who is in charge? A leader, a hereditary King, or an elected Parliament? Who should be in charge? And should they who are in charge account for themselves to the common people? Do we follow the status quo and leave things as they were, or do we embrace change? These were and of course are, vital questions. That most of the answers to these questions seem obvious, and come easily to the mind, does not mean that it will always be so. We should take nothing for granted.

A history of violence in England – a review of a book by James Sharpe

Posted on by
Reply

A review of “A fiery and furious people – a history of violence in England”, by James Sharpe

Take that! Blam! And that!! Oww!!

I saw this title a good few years ago and I thought, that’s one for me, that’ll be interesting. Are we English violent? Are we more violent than other races? Is it our Anglo-Saxon or Norse heritage? The Duke of Wellington famously said of his own troops that they were the “scum of the earth”, and it is possible that propensity to violence does make for good soldiers. One feels that crossing the street to avoid soldiers need not be completely unnecessary. The purpose of soldiers, after all, is to visit physical violence on others, hopefully, but not always, other soldiers.

James Sharpe traces the social, cultural and legal history of violence from the Middle Ages to the present. It’s mostly readable, although there were a few sections I had to skip, particularly the section about serial killers. Not because I’m particularly squeamish, but because the work in those places was in danger of being about crime and legislation, rather than violence per se. That said, you can’t today discuss violence without discussing crime and punishment, and that, of itself, is an important finding of the book. What passes for violence has changed through the ages. The degree and type of violence that the common people, the law, and indeed the State, will accept or put up with, and where the line is to be drawn, has changed much over time.

Sharpe has chapters on various themes, as well as moving in a logical way from the past to the present. He covers violence in the middle ages, where he draws in the influence of the Norman French feudal aristocracy and the effect of the concept of “Chivalry”. He covers dueling, and domestic violence, rape and sexual violence, and also serial killers. Of families, he notes: “It was only as feudalism succumbed to capitalism, and a traditional, community-based kinship dominated society started to give way to one in which individuals began to come to the fore, that the family as we understand it today, emerged”

He does note that most (although not all) violence is visited by men, and mostly, to be fair, on other men. It is men who are violent. Aggression plays a part. I’m reminded of Sebastian Junger’s excellent book “War”, about the young men fighting in Afghanistan. Here, we read of the importance, particularly for young men, not of war as such, but of combat. Most men understand this instinctively, even if today, that combat is no longer always physical.

Alas, he does not mention the story quoted I think by Churchill, that the Venetian Ambasssador was so intimidated by the physical presence of Henry VIII that whenever he was in that king’s presence, he never stopped worrying that the king would actually lay hands on him and do him violence.

Several more important conclusions are drawn. We should be careful of the danger of reading too much into crime statistics (or any statistics). Reporting of violent crime is not the same as violent crime. An example of this is the suggestion (reasonable certainty, really) that some police forces today – as in the past – do not have the funding to prosecute as many violent criminals as they otherwise ought – which will affect crime figures. Prosecuting people is expensive. Another: our world and the people in it are very much more complicated than it would appear from social media or from the pages of the Daily Mail. The nature of violence is changing; I don’t think it is getting less, although our tolerance of casual violence is lower than it was – just as it should be.

We come into a world now where social violence – trolling, online bullying etc – may need much more tightly regulating: because who needs a judge and jury when you’ve got Facebook?

From the Gulag to the Killing Fields – notes on Totalitarianism

Posted on by
Reply

A few musings on totalitarianism, brought on by a work-related visit to Vietnam. I have juxtaposed this with a recent re-reading of Orwell’s “1984”. I read a lot of books at once, mind, and I am also ploughing my way through a collection called “From the Gulag to the Killing Fields: Personal Accounts of Political Violence and Repression in Communist States”. It has been put together by an academic called Paul Hollander, himself a victim of the political violence of the Hungarian uprising of 1956. It’s certainly not bedtime reading. It makes uncomfortable reading for me, much less for anyone with remotely left-wing sensibilities. We tend to look at Russia and China as the worst offenders in terms of the sheer volume and quantity of communist political oppression and violence, and this book tends to support that view. But reading books these upsetting personal stories, other places take the record for sheer horror and human tragedy (Cambodia and Vietnam). For the ill-treatment of political prisoners, I’d look at Cuba, where there was a peculiar and toxic mixture of Latin machismo and the malevolent foolishness of Marxism.

It never fails to be a pleasant surprise to me that books like this collection are in print in the UK at all. It is not beyond the bounds of darkest fantasy that a time will come for the UK when having a copy of such a book could put someone at risk of being sent to prison.

It’s always good to pick up a few points from Orwell. His character “Bernstein” who ostensibly writes the “book within the book” plot device allowing Orwell to lecture us on totalitarianism, says that the rise of machines has, “by producing wealth which is sometimes impossible not to distribute”, led to an increase in average living standards. Our standard of living has indeed improved from the early 20th century (earlier really) until now, and should continue to improve all this century. This is not politics, nor economics, but technology – the rise of machines. Orwell notes that “an all-round increase in wealth threatens a hierarchical society” and “A hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance”. Amen. This truth lies at the very heart of “1984”, and at the heart of opposition to technology for it’s own sake. Opposition to “machines taking over men’s jobs” is at heart a desire for order and hierarchy, a vote for the established order, an endorsement of the status quo. And I believe the status quo is almost invariably worth upsetting. Technology and machines, of themselves, create wealth and hence threaten the status quo in hierarchical societies.

A review of “Rocket Fighter”, by Mano Ziegler

Posted on by
Reply

A review of “Rocket Fighter”, by Mano Ziegler

What a remarkable read! Mano Ziegler, a second world war fighter pilot with the Luftwaffe, published, in 1961, “Raketenjaeger 163“. This excellent little book was subsequently published in English as “Rocket Fighter”. It is the very readable story of the development of the Messerschmidt 163 rocket-powered interceptor during WWII. My copy came as a gift from a close friend of mine.

image: Wikipedia

It is wonderfully written. Lovely English – one may ask whether this is because it was well written in the original German (which I find more than likely) or is it an artifact of translation by someone who can write beautiful English? It comes across in waves of easy-to-read, rolling prose.

It’s worth mentioning, at a remove of seventy years since WWII, that the work is completely free of any political rancour or bitterness, and there is little mention of the war itself at all, except toward the end of the book when the onward juggernaut of the Soviets was making its way across eastern Germany. The war is seen always as an effect, a shadow, an influence.

The story here is about the airmen who worked to the best of their abilities to transform this innovative new rocket plane into an actual operational fighter. The heroes are the airmen. They are no different to American airmen, or British airmen. At one point, a pair of Mustangs fly over and strafe the airfield, causing the flyers and a number of their female colleagues (WAAFs of some kind) to fling themselves into a slit trench or ditch for shelter. Emerging from shelter after the raiders had gone, one of the airmen shakes his fist at the retreating Americans: “look at my bloody trousers – straight from the cleaners too!!” These men had an excellent custom of “birthdays”. if something happened to an airman where he ought by rights, to have died – but survives – that day, ever afterwards, becomes a new birthday, with cake and drinks and appropriate celebration.

The heroes are the men that lived and died working on the rocket planes, which were unreliable if amazing when they worked. And these brave men sometimes died hard, literally dissolved by the liquid rocket fuel, which was concentrated Hydrogen Peroxide.

The astonishing technology is the other hidden hero here. History is generally written by the victors: I was brought up in 1970’s Britain, and was taught in school that Frank Whittle invented the jet engine. German aviation technology seems almost like “alternative history” to me. Men like Alexander Lippisch, who pioneered the tail-less “delta” shaped aircraft (so iconic later in the Avro Vulcan) so nearly brought the Germans victory in WWII. To read or watch Philip K Dick’s nightmare vision of a 1960’s where the Nazis won (“The Man in the High Castle“) and see a world spanned by supersonic jets, and a manned mission to Mars, is to shiver. Terribly plausible, at one level, when you consider this frighteningly advanced technology, and the upright, honest and capable men, like Mano Ziegler and others, who were set by the Nazis to develop it and fly it.

Extraordinary complexity

Posted on by
Reply

We live in times of extraordinary complexity. Perhaps it was ever thus: were there ever truly simple and straightforward times? Yet, our willingness and our ability to discern complexity is under attack as never before. It is under attack from social media; it is under attack from the rise in sentimentality we’ve seen over this last twenty years or so, and it is under attack because of the fashion for hyperbole and over-statement.

The deplorable rise of “spin” – the use of language to conceal, obscure or divert people from the facts – has much to answer for.  The use of carefully chosen, politically charged, and nuanced phrasing, has, paradoxically, eroded our capability to discern nuance.

We look back at events like the Great War, and perhaps see simple causes, straightforward effects, obvious and clear protagonists and antagonists.  We view such events through the simple lens of modern thinking.  Cliches such as “senseless slaughter” come to our lips; we take off our hats, and rightly, spend a moment in silence to remember the fallen. 

But it was never that simple: that war was no simple struggle between good and evil, nor even a titanic battle between two great empires, the British and the Austro-Hungarian.  Britain, even the British Empire, was part of an alliance, and not even the senior partner at that.   

And then, consider what else was happening at the same time as the Great War.  The struggle for female emancipation and women’s suffrage.  The Easter Rising and the struggle for independence in Ireland.  The Russian revolution.  The technical innovation happening as a result of the war; the changing relationship between the New World and the Old.  

All of it points to a time of complexity to which we don’t do justice by over-simplifying what happened. It is not less true today.  I’m minded to reflect on our shortening attention span.  My boss wants 3-5 bullet points, size 21 font, one slide in Microsoft PowerPoint – just the salient facts to present to the Board.  In the second war,  Churchill reputedly turned to his underlings and asked them to provide for him a “report on the current state of the Royal Navy – on one side of a sheet of paper”.  As writers we do have a duty to keep things simple, to use short words, sentences and paragraphs, and to cut out unnecessary waffle. There is a case for simplicity – but we have made the case for simplicity our idol. 

How are we going to comment meaningfully and profitably on the hideous complexity through which we are now living? Three bullet points won’t cover Brexit nor explain the reasons for and against it.  One side of a sheet of paper may not cover the reasons for our changing culture.  A few photographs will not explain the balance of power between the West, China and Russia.  The job of the commentator is made doubly difficult by the fact that everyday folk have lost interest in complexity.  Today we have Twitter and Instagram – but think of the walls of text in a Victorian newspaper.  Today we want to see things reduced to three bullet points, the sound bite, the black and white. We want to see the spectacle of wrong and right, of bread and circuses.  Who needs a judge and jury when you’ve got Facebook?

A review of “Walk East Til I die”, by Mike Pinnock

Posted on by
Reply

A review of “Walk East Til I die“, by Mike Pinnock

I like a good outdoorsman’s travelogue, and this falls into the same category as Nicholas Crane’s “Clear Waters Rising” or “Two degrees West”.  An Englishman of a certain age sets himself to do an all-but impossible adventure – what’s not to like? I’m an Englishman of a certain age myself – but Mike is older.  I should admit early on in the interests of transparency that Mike is a relative of mine.   

All that said, I liked the historical accounts in this work better.  There’s only so many pints of lager you vicariously enjoy.  Mike paints an interesting story of Eire today and in the past.  My wife and I visited Kerry on our honeymoon in 1990, and we were told that almost no-one lives within twenty miles of the west coast of Ireland, except for those whose living depends on tourism.  Mike’s account bears that out – there seems to be no-one there.  A far cry from queuing up to walk along Crib Goch in Snowdonia, as you’ll have to do on any fine weekend in summer.  

I learned much of Irlsh history.  You’ll not be learning this kind of thing in English schools, not this last 40-50 years. I’d heard of Michael Collins, of the Easter Rising, and of the Irish Free State, and few would not have heard of Eamon De Valera.  What Mike has done has coloured in the gaps a little, brought to life some of that fascinating past, some of the terrible suffering.  From the medieval saints, through the Norman overlordship, and onto Cromwell’s atrocities, then the Potato Famine and the emergence of Eire, Mike has provided some insights into Irish history without ever being partisan or taking an obvious side.  

A review of “Cool Hand Luke”, by Donn Pearce

Posted on by
Reply

A review of “Cool Hand Luke”, by Donn Pearce

dav

When set against the wider genre of prison literature, “Cool Hand Luke” is perhaps somewhat tame. This isn’t “Papillon” and it certainly isn’t in the same category as anything coming out of the prison-based suffering that took place in the Soviet Union. This story has nothing of the human privation and suffering shared with us by Solzhenitsyn in “The Gulag Archipelago” or “A day in the life of Ivan Denisovich”.

In spite of this book being made into to a classic film about torment and suffering in prison, it doesn’t really deal with the full horror of man’s inhumanity to man in prison.  To learn about that you’d be better off listening to Joan Baez’ wonderful song “Prison Trilogy (Billy Rose)”, and then weeping.

What we do have here, is prison guards and prisoners as real people. We get stories within stories. The author introduces his hero only gradually, delicately, subtly.  Even the narrator doesn’t tell the story but puts it in the mouth of one of his characters, “Dragline”, all of whose teeth were brutally kicked out by Miami detectives. “Dragline” is played in the movie by George Kennedy, in one of his best roles.

The story is an interesting reflection on post-war Florida. It’s difficult to pin down exactly when the story is set.  At one point, the narrator (the prisoner called “Sailor”) uses the term “diesel locomotive” making it clear that this is new and unusual.  He refers to a train called the “Silver Meteor’.  Most of the convicts are under thirty; some seem to have been WWII veterans. In the end, we learn that Luke’s experiences in the war have by no means left him unchanged.

There are hostages to fortune which may offend the modern liberal reader. Twenty-first century sensibilities will not take kindly to the frequent use of certain words describing African Americans. And then there is the passage describing “The Girl” – a schoolgirl of sixteen.

But in the end, this book was a thought-provoking, worthwhile and entertaining read. Have you got your mind right? That deep underlying question can keep some of us awake at night, for there’s a little of Cool Hand Luke in us all.

All the landscape was the mill

Posted on by
2

A crowd of ladies from a faraway land, each dressed in brightly coloured fabrics, would come chattering past the house each day. They would sweep along every morning and evening, their conversations bright, adult, and quite incomprehensible in some unknown language. The little boy asks, who are those ladies? His mother tells him that they all work in the mill at the bottom of the street.

The boy learned a lesson young: who you are and what you are can be seen from where you’re going – and when. The direction you’re walking, and the time of day, tells us something about who you are.

At the bottom of the street, a crossroads. Go left into a quiet lane past the allotments to the edge of town. Go right past a bowling green smooth like a billiard table, to a sweet shop. Straight on, to the park, to school, to Cubs. The crossroads of our lives – turn each way for different lives, different paths. People will know where you are going, when you walk through these streets. Here, brick and tarmac, there, woods and quiet shrubs and grasses. Straight on – for play, and for learning.

The sepia stains of history lie on these streets, or at least it seems so, to the boy and to the man he became. Here, a grandfather swam in an outdoor pool. There, a street where an unsmiling lady stood in a crowd of joy and cheers, struggling to see the good in VE Day. Over there, the flats, and the outlines of vanished streets. The streets are gone, but the memories remain, thick like dust, easy to discern if you’re the right sort. Listen carefully, even today, and you can hear the treble drone of bombers, or the wretched tears of poverty, the grinding life of the urban poor.

He came back to those streets in a kind of pilgrimage, thinking somehow to reconnect with the past, with the feeling of those early days. If he could represent his childhood. all the carefree years of boyhood, as an icon, that icon would be a little image of the mill at the bottom of the street. He walked past that mill every day for years uncounted, it seemed to him when he was young. Endless weeks, he went past that mill, morning, afternoon, evening. And he never went inside it, in all his life.

As a young man, he’d sat with this father watching old Laurel and Hardy movies. They were amusing; there were wry smiles. But even as he watched them, he found that they were just not as funny as they had been when he was a small boy. He’d mentioned this to his father, who’d shook his head with the greybeard wisdom of ages. “The boy who rolled around laughing on the floor at these movies, no longer exists”, he said. The boy became the man, the young man became the older man.

Could these streets ignite a kind of holy nostalgia? Could they form a harbour into which a pilgrim might sail, to sojourn briefly in the past – a visit only. Not to remain. The mill was still there; the streets were still there. The crossroads by the bowling green was unchanged. The municipal lines of alternating plane trees and lime trees in the park – still there, save for a few gaps caused by storms of old.

Walking in past the park, he’d noticed that no single youngster was out playing. It was 4.30pm on a spring weekday afternoon. The roundabouts were siezed and rusted, the swings abandoned, it seemed. Where was everybody? Where were they all? He knew, really. No Marie Celeste mystery here. Just the modern world, risk averse, focussed on itself, with smartphones, tablets and unwillingness to be out of doors.

The mill was the fixed point – all the landscape was the mill. But there was no river of bodies pouring down the street to find work there. That river had dried up long ago. Here had been a future for hands of skill. No longer. That much had changed even in his own youth. What remained now, was clearly foreseeable even back then – if you could read the writing on the wall. What had been a mill making clothes, was now a university department. It was a department covering such matters as textiles and art, so there remained a tenuous connection with what had been. On the river of time, you cannot paddle upstream. That river flows only in one direction.

He walked up the street, remembering the red and blue bricks in the pavement. He recalled cycling down the street on a baking hot day, trying to keep in the shade. The baleful sunlight of reality was upon him now, beating mercilessly on his head. No golden light of evening, nor delicate pink at dawn, but scorching tropical sunshine at noon. A sunshine, as Kipling wrote, that sometimes strikes men dead.

Yet, though saddened, he knew things had to change. There is no going back. There’s no returning to those places of golden childhood. Nostalgia is a hip-flask from which we can allow ourselves no more than a discreet sip, every now and then. If we look back, we must look in thankfulness, not in nostalgia.

Treading his way up what he thought was a dried up riverbed, he noticed that there was a new river of bodies making their way to the mill, young people, people learning. people looking to the future. And reassured somewhat, he left that harbour and sailed away back home.