Ernest Dunlop Swinton - The Defence of Duffer's Drift

Despite being dated this classic military text retains much value both historically and as a work of literature. The author, later Major General Sir Ernest Dunlop Swinton, was a commander in the Boer War and wrote this in order to explain basics of small unit military tactics in an easily accessible style. The book has been repeatedly reprinted and emulated, and as recently as 1989 was republished by the US Marine Corps.

The story centres on Lieutenant Backsight Forethought (BF) a new commander with no battlefield experience who commands a small force of 50 soldiers and NCOs and is ordered to prevent the Boers crossing a shallow river at "Duffer's Drift". Arriving at the drift BF fails to setup a defended base and allows the locals to enter his camp to sell milk and eggs to his men. Thus spied upon, an approaching force easily overwhelms his position with high causalities.

Following this easy defeat, BF awakens to dream the scenario again, this time remembering the lessons of his previous defeat. Six times the dream repeats and it is only on the final occasion that the Boers are defeated and BF's command is relieved.

All twenty-two of BF's lessons learnt can be read on the wikipedia page. Of most interest for those of us unlikely to command a small military force in the near future is two fold. Firstly, in defeating a experienced guerrilla army, BF is forced to deprive his enemy of their local support - imprisoning the local farmers, their families and their (black) workers. Readers should be aware that the author uses language in referring to this latter group that today is consider offensive, though I note that the Marine Corps version fails to comment on this.

Secondly, it is only by throwing the military manual away, ignoring some of his hard learnt lessons from the academy and adopting the tactics of the enemy that BF is successful.

Chiefly of interest for its historical lessons, the book is also remarkable as being an early example of that genre of fiction that focuses on the impact of small decisions and their outcome. For want of a nail...

John Biggins - A Sailor of Austria

John Biggins' A Sailor of Austria is a fine novel that will inevitably be compared with George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman books. But this first volume of a trilogy is actually very different - not least because the hero is neither a coward, nor a racist product of British colonialism. On the other hand KuK Linienschiffsleutnant Ottokar Prohaska is also a unique character who manages to be present at some key moments in a (semi fictional World War One). Prohaska however is doubly unique - he's a U-boot captain for the Austro-Hungarian Empire, though by the end of the book (and the war) the new country, Austria, has no coastline or navy.

Its a simple idea that's humorous and poignant at times. The book is related by the centenarian Prohaska who has ended up in a Welsh old people's home run by an eccentric group of nuns. His many decorations, exploits and stories fascinate the staff who encourage him to record his history. This account, both highly personal and historic is the bulk of the book though it mostly focuses on Prohaska's experience of the gradual defeat of the Empire by its myriad of enemies.

It's unusual to read a book by a British author which focuses on the enemy, and its even more unusual that the character is not German, but Austro-Hungarian. Biggins has a detailed knowledge of the experience of World War One, as well as submarine technology and most importantly the nature of the Empire itself. It makes for a fascinating read.

At times the exploits of Prohaska and his crew are extremely hilarious, as with the story of how they came to bring a camel back to Europe in their submarine, or the tale of the exploding toilet. But the book is at its best when depicting the close solidarity of a crew trapped in a dangerous environment and utterly reliant on each other for survival. It makes the ending even more poignant.

Sadly A Sailor of Austria is very difficult to find as its out of print. I discovered it by accident and I will eagerly hunt out the sequels that are set within the extended time-frame of this book.

John Williams - Stoner

I often devour novels, rushing to find out the ending as quickly as possible. John Williams' Stoner defies this because it gives you the ending on the very first page. The protagonist, William Stoner, dies and this is the story of his undistinguished life. Little noticed at his death, and un-lamented among his family, his name is quickly forgotten. But what Williams shows is that every life, however undistinguished, is one of high-drama - the sort of drama that every human being has as a result of their social networks - their partners, children, colleagues and friends - which is unimportant to most of the rest of humanity, yet is part and parcel of the network of our lives.

Stoner's parents are struggling farmers and manage to send him to agricultural college in the early 20th century. At college he discovers the wonders of English literature and ends up making a career in the university he enters as a young man. He never leaves the town, instead his exploration of the world is through literature. His marriage to Edith is an almost instant failure, marked only by the briefest weeks of passion when she determines to get pregnant.

To the modern reader there is more than the hint of mental health in Edith's life - a situation that is completely unsolvable given the circumstances of 1930s America. Instead the couple muddle along, Edith isolating her and playing games against Stoner, who tries to carry on his career and bring up the daughter he dotes upon. 1930s mores impinge again when Stoner embarks on a beautiful and passionate affair with a young student. The school authorities make it clear that this is unacceptable and she's driven out of the college.

Most reviewers discuss the book in the context of two aspects - the "campus novel" that frames the whole book - Stoner's career and his battles with bureaucracy and his management and it's celebration of literature, explored through William's discovery of books and poetry and his life immersed in the subject. These are absolutely central to the book, but for me this novel was really about alienation - the way that our lives are atomised and decoupled from wider society. Stoner's life is dramatic, but it's isolated and individualised - notably he doesn't serve in either War. His own greatest achievement - the book he authors, and reaches for on his deathbed - is almost completely forgotten by everyone in academia. Yet Stoner is no failure, his personal struggles are ones that he is happy to have made and he can pass away convinced that his life was worthwhile and satisfactory. In writing Stoner's life, John Williams teaches us the importance of every individual within the context of wider society - though he reminds us that society, certainly as it is organised today, doesn't see this importance at all.

It's a beautiful book, neglected during William's own lifetime, and thankfully having had a massive rediscovery since its republication in the 2000s it deserves continued readership. It's likely one of the most poignant I've ever read and I highly recommend it.

George MacDonald Fraser - Flashman

Long standing readers of this blog (I am sure there are some) will know that I have loved the Flashman novels, a collection of outrageous historical fiction that follow the career of the "lovable rogue" Flashman through all the major military events of the 19th century. Some of these I've read and re-read over the years, though I hadn't read the original Flashman book for perhaps 25 years. I picked it up second-hand recently and reading it today I was struck by several things.

The first book which is set immediately after Flashman's fall from grace at university and his enlistment in the army. It follows his accidental and cowardly service in Afghanistan in particular he is at key points in the debacle that leads to the destruction of the entire British Army during the retreat from Kabul. I won't repeat the history here, suffice to say there are several non-fiction books I've reviewed elsewhere on the blog that I recommend listed below and Fraser sticks very close to historical events. I should note, that while reading this I also read Saul David's book Victoria's Wars where he credits the Flashman books as giving him a lifelong fascination with the historical period. I am sure this is true for many readers.

But what struck me on re-reading the first book is how awful Flashman is. In fact he seems far worse than in the later books. His racism is more explicit, his sexism is appalling and in a scene I had forgotten, he rapes a local woman who is betrothed to his arch-enemy. His violence against women isn't limited to Afghans though. In a disturbing scene in England, after he has slept with his father's mistress and been turned down by her another time, he hits her in the face.

I hadn't read the first Flashman novel in almost 20 years and I think Fraser toned things down in later novels - which possibly makes the characterisation far worse in returning to the first book. But I was struck also by Fraser's preface to the new edition. This, the publishers claimed, was found in his study following his death. Fraser gives a potted history of Flashman's origins, and some entertaining stories about those who have analysed the books or believed them to be real. But in responding those who complain that Flashman is a racist Fraser argues "of course he is; why should he be different from the rest of humanity." I was reminded of Fraser's annoying right-wing politics which ruin his memoirs of the Burma conflict.

But most of humanity isn't racist - not in the way that Flashman is or that Fraser seems to think they are.But ost of those who oversaw the British Empire or fought in its wars had appalling views of those they subjugated in this Fraser does manage to capture that about his character, but he plays it for laughs far more than any attempts to expose Flashman's character or the reality of the Empire. In my re-read, Flashman comes out of the book not as the lovable rogue ("coward, scoundrel, toady, lecher and dissembler") that Fraser and many fans imagine, but instead a thoroughly nasty character. In that, at least, he personifies the Empire.

Related Reviews

Fraser - Flashman and the Mountain of Light
Fraser - Flashman and the Tiger
Fraser - Flashman on the March
Fraser - Quartered Safe Out Here
Macrory - Signal Catastrophe; The Story of the Disastrous Retreat from Kabul 1842
Dalrymple - Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan

CJ Sansom - Revelation

The adventures of CJ Sansom's Tudor hero Matthew Shardlake continue in Revelation. Unlike several previous books Revelation is not set around a particular event during Henry VIII's reign. Instead it's context is the confusion in the latter part of Henry's kingship as different forces vie for control - in particular different factions representing different aspects of religious ideas. Henry is increasingly moving towards a return to more tradition religious practice, at the same time others are holding out for a continuation of the Reformation. The religious changes over the last decades have left many ordinary people confused and a large minority are pulled by more extreme religious doctrine.

Shardlake moves through this confusing situation as he attempts to solve a gruesome series of murders. The killer appears to be using the apocalyptic biblical book Revelations as a basis for the murders - torturing victims in grim parodies of chapters taken from the book. One of the early murders is of a close friend of Shardlake which leads to him being pulled into a secretive effort to find the killer. He is up against time as the killer must be found before he concludes the murders as laid out in his reading of Revelations and before the King learns of the crimes that would likely lead to instability and panic in London, a city already close to religious violence.

Revelation deals little with wider issues - though in the background is Henry's courting of Catherine Parr. This means the book is much more like a modern detective story, albeit set in Tudor London, than the earlier books. Nonetheless it's a gripping read and, despite being fiction, like CJ Sansom's earlier books it gives the reader many insights into the Reformation and Henry's rule.

Related Reviews

Sansom - Sovereign
Sansom - Dark Fire
Sansom - Dissolution

Hallgrímur Helgason - The Woman at 1,000 Degrees

This unusual and highly entertaining novel begins with the hero Herra Björnsson, near bedridden and living in a garage in her eighties with nothing but a laptop, her memories and a hand-grenade. It wasn't until I'd finished the book that I'd appreciated that it was based in truth - the story of  Brynhildur Georgía Björnsson whom the author met on the phone when he was telephone canvassing for an election. Brynhildur's father was one of the few Icelanders who fought for the Nazis in World War Two. I have yet to find out precisely how much of the novel is historically accurate, but the books character tells the story of her life interspersed with contemporary events when she is mainly entertaining herself by pretending to be a much younger woman online.

As a young girl Herra is trapped on continental Europe by the outbreak of World War Two. Through a series of misfortunes she finds herself a refugee in various parts of Eastern Europe and Germany itself. Her father is a fanatically follower of Hitler who joined the SS and then loses Herra in a British bombing raid. The book tells of her experiences - both while lost in rural Eastern Germany and while an outsider living among the Germans with her mother. While the book is run through with humour, its also deeply honest about life as a refugee for a young woman in wartime. Rape and murder are part and parcel of Herra's life and on returning to Iceland she cannot cope with peacetime and those around her who've escaped the war's ravages.

The story of how Herra becomes the woman in the bed with the hand-grenade is beautifully written and very poignant. From wartime Germany to Argentinian farms and Iceland's fishing villages it's a story of how we are shaped by the world we are in, and the relationships we have. It's also a story about Iceland's place in the wider world - and how the nation was buffeted by wider imperial interests and the economic world. It's a lovely book - funny, poignant and difficult in places - but well worthwhile.

Julian Rathbone - The Mutiny

There have been plenty of novels set during the Indian "Mutiny" of 1857. In fact, it was a George MacDonald Fraser novel Flashman in the Great Game that first taught me about this seminal moment in British Imperial history. It shouldn't be a surprise that 1857 has had such a hold on accounts, fictional and non-fictional of British history - it was a tremendous shock to colonial arrogance at the time, and accounts of the barbarity were wildly discussed and stoked, in the popular press. How could formally subservient people suddenly rise up and violently assault their benevolent rulers?

Of course, British rule was anything but benevolent, something that Julian Rathbone skilfully shows in this, his final novel. Rathbone was not afraid of being unorthodox in his books and this one uses a combination of fiction, historical factor, letters and author asides to draw a brilliant portrait of British India on the cusp of rebellion and then during the uprising itself. With a cast of hundreds and a viewpoint that jumps rapidly between different locations, people and even times, it's not a book that everyone will enjoy. Rathbone appears to be using the story mostly to tell the history, rather than letting the history be the backdrop. As a result, characters occasionally make rather irrational choices, simply to make sure they are in a particular place.

In the first half of the novel we follow the fortunes of a couple of families of British officers based in Meerut. When the uprising begins the children's' servant takes them away to escape the bloodshed, ending up near Cawnpore where one of the mothers eventually arrives to try and rescue them. It's convoluted but allows Rathbone to describe the reality of a country in complete upheaval and then look at the barbaric reality of the revolt and the British response.

Rathbone doesn't shy away from the violence arguing that brutality took place on both sides. At least he tries to show why the petty racism, day to day humiliation by the British could lead to violent retribution. He also argues that the main spur to revolt was not a desire to kick out the British, but a reaction against attempts to forcibly Christianise the population. He also spends a lot of time on the detail of the violence which some readers have found difficult, but I thought made the tension at the heart of the book much more real. The besieged people on both sides had a lot to lose.

There are few happy endings to any of the story threads here. Rathbone skilfully weaves history and fiction together (helpfully providing a list at the end explaining who is real and who isn't) and thus cannot escape the fact that things did not end well for the majority of those Indians who rose up. His afterword argues that there was a a lot of good about British rule in India post 1857, though this doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. It is a clever book clearly based on a close knowledge of the historical sources, but unafraid to give a fictional spin on real events (there's a couple of clever allusions to Flashman and the characters Flashman - in both the Fraser and Hughes versions - might be based on). I wouldn't describe it as an enjoyable read, but certainly it's a good one. It might even encourage further reading about the reality of British rule in India.

Related Reviews

Farrell - The Siege of Krishnapur
Ward - Our Bones Are Scattered: The Cawnpore Massacres & the Indian Mutiny of 1857
Wagner - Amritsar 1919
Newsinger - The Blood Never Dried

Melissa Harrison - All Among the Barley

*** Warning Spoilers ***

You don't have to read much fiction about the history of the English countryside before you encounter writing that is essentially about a fantasy rural idyll. In it, rural inhabitants live poor, but fulfilling lives, essentially in a balance with both the natural world and their compatriots, rich and poor, in the village. Disagreement - such as the failures of an absentee landlord or, the drunkenness of a labourer - usually resolve themselves through the internal democracy of the community; either that or happy accident. Weirdly these fantasies are nostalgic for something that never existed but are often tremendously popular.

Oddly enough a fair bit of non-fiction writing about the countryside falls into this trap too. Though there are also many exceptions. Ralph Whitlock's 1945 classic Peasant's Heritage mostly avoids the nostalgia trap, but has a telling comment about it's main subject, the agricultural labourer, the "English peasant ... the same man as his forefathers, the men who fought and won Agincourt, the men who made the face of rural England with crude tools and by hard work, and defended as passionately as they worked for it." A bigger problem is that books that are actually quite faithful accounts of working class life in the countryside are often stripped bare of their reality and turned, usually for the TV screen, into pastiches of their content. To choose two cases in point, Laurie Lee's Cider with Rosie is often remembered as a sun-infused coming of age account in a Gloucestershire village, but few people remember the murder that takes place when a rich returnee splashes his cash around and is collectively set upon by the locals. Flora Thompson's wonderful memoir Lark Rise to Candleford is often read for their accounts of life and nature in her home village but she notes the exploitation and oppression at the heart of country life. As I noted in my review of it she writes:

The joy and pleasure of the labourers in their task well done was pathetic, considering their very small share in the gain". Later when discussing the elaborate (and extensive) feast given by the farmer to those who'd laboured on the harvest, a celebration that was even extended to any passing "tramp", Thompson has her father comment that "the farmer paid his men starvation wages all the year and through he made it up to them by giving that one good meal. The farmer did not think so, because he did not think at all, and the men did not think either on that day; they were too busy enjoying the food and the fun."

Life in the English countryside was, as I tried to show in my own book Kill All the Gentlemen, one of constant class struggle against poverty, exploitation and oppression.

I dwell on this because I want to contrast it with Melissa Harrison's wonderful novel All Among The Barley about life in East Anglia in the early 1930s. I did put a spoiler warning at the top of this review, but I want to repeat it. Do not read further if you don't want to have this novel ruined!

Having read a few pages I was ready to lump it in with all the other terrible books about life in the countryside where the sun always shines, and the much needed rain comes during the night. But quite quickly I began to notice that something wasn't quite right. The main character Edie Mather is writing, as an adult, about her childhood, and occasional references to an event that took her from her home village left me with a real sense of foreboding. The story unfolds slowly, framed around the arrival of Constance FitzAllen in the village. Constance is very much the glamorous modern urbanite. She wears trousers, drinks in the pub and is not afraid to impose herself on the rural community. She is writing a series of articles about the countryside and wants to know all about the traditions that make up family and farming life. Here, for me, is the genius of the novel. Harrison has taken that awful trope of countryside nostalgia and inserted one of its proponents into her novel in the act of creating the fantasy itself. Of course Constance finds what she wants to find, though often to the bemusement of the rural community and in the process she begins to transform Edie.

Edie has little to look forward to. She's good at school but there's little chance for her to do anything than become someones wife "pushing out babies" every year or go into service somewhere. So Constance's London glamour entrances her. The reality of hard work, poverty and a prospect of a forced marriage to a man who rapes her, with a background of economic crisis and crop failure, help to push Edie closer to Constance, until in the novel's climax we see what has been increasingly hinted at - Constance is a rather slick fascist, who is writing for a far-right publication and believes that England's farming communities need to be protected and returned to their traditional ways. Fantasies of idyllic rural communities based on traditional values and the family are a favourite of fascists - both in the past and today and Harrison cleverly manipulates this into the story - though it should also be remembered that the left has not been immune from this either - with William Morris a case in point.

But what is really clever is how Harrison shows Constance slowly winning people to her point of view. Slanders against the few local Jews, hostility towards agricultural unions and criticism of big government lead to splits in the community and eventually, an enormous chasm opening up in Edie's family. Frighteningly in 2019 the method will not be unfamiliar as we survey far-right politicians around the world. The novel's ending is brutal (with an implicit critique of Thatcherism) and I had to read it two or three times to fully get its enormity.

Melissa Harrison has written a marvellous book. It turns the genre on its head; skewers the invented history of the countryside and does it at the same time as being a faithful account of life in a poor rural community. But this is certainly my highlight of 2019 and I am not sure I'll read a better novel in the remainder of the year.

Related Reviews

Berger - Pig Earth

Whitlock - Peasant's Heritage
Archer - A Distant Scene

Kerr Cameron - The Ballad and the Plough
Thompson - Lark Rise to Candleford

Derek Robinson - Hornet's Sting

Hornet's Sting is the third novel that I've read recently about the Royal Flying Corps in France in World War One. It is a prequel to the excellent Goshawk Squadron, which I reviewed here. This has many similar themes - though set a year earlier its pilots fly the Bristol F2 flyer and some of the characters from the later book only appear in this one latter on.

The introduction of the Bristol F2 was a disaster - depicted here in a horrific scene where five planes are lost as the pilots and gunners strive to use tactics that are brilliant on paper, but terrible in the air. Flying straight and level the gunners are supposed to knock attacking aircraft from the air, but the technical difficulties of this sort of shooting condemn the crewmen to certain death. Captain Woolley, who is the key figure in Goshawk Squadron turns this on its head and orders his pilots to fly the F2 like the fighter it is intended to be.

Here, Robinson is using themes that are evident from many of his books - the leadership of the RFC and later RAF are unable to allow themselves to learn from those fighting the actual battles and stick hard to outdated tactics. For Robinson the men flying the planes knew best and should have had more freedom to learn them. In particularly his novel argues that the Deep Operating Patrols over enemy territory were dangerous and unproductive.

Either way, the turnover of pilots is shocking. New faces come and go, and few last more than a couple of pages. From their vantage point the pilots know that's its worse on the ground and there's a clever scene when they get to view the water-logged ground ahead of the final Battle of Ypres.

As with all of Derek Robinson's novels in this vein there is brilliant dark humour as the men drink and joke their way through the stress and losses of friends. Hornet's Sting doesn't work as well as te earlier books, and I felt that some of the subplots were a little unbelievable, particularly the one that takes place on the other side of the lines. The depiction of air-combat is believable and the senseless waste of war is a constant theme, that underlines a solid novel that isn't quite up to the excellence of other books by this author.

Related Review

Yeates - Winged Victory
Robinson - Goshawk Squadron
Macdonald - Passchendaele

V. M. Yeates - Winged Victory

Having recently finished Derek Robinson's classic novel of war in the air Goshawk Squadron, I was directed towards V.M. Yeats' book Winged Victory. This, I was told, is the definitive novel about the subject written in the aftermath of World War One by someone who had reached Ace status flying Sopwith Camels on the Western Front.

Winged Victory deserves its accolades. It is a powerful denunciation of that particular war and what it did to the men who fought it. The key figure in the book, Tom Cundall, who we can suppose is a proxy for Yeates himself, begins the novel relatively cynical, but by the end has been destroyed emotionally and psychologically by the deaths of his friends and the strain of combat.

Ironically this is a novel where little happens. The main characters in the story exist against the backdrop of wider conflict, but their space in the war is reduced down to small areas, intense, short lived conflict with enemy planes or horrible periods of dangerous ground strafing. Despite their height above the battlefield the pilots, like the men in the trenches, lack the over-view of the war. Inevitably their is a disconnect - from far behind the lines the squadron is ordered into the air, despite the weather meaning its dangerous to fly and the enemy can't be scene. Pilots die on the whims of commanders, through accident or through enemy action they don't even see. Names come and go, and few pilots last long enough to develop the skills and instincts to survive. Even fewer pilots last the six months that Tom endures; and increasingly he copes through heavy drinking.

Tom and his closest friends try to understand the war. Tom's and some of his friends blame a nebulous group of financiers and capitalists who are making massive profits out of the war - given the book was written in the early 1930s I was struck by occasional references to Jewish people. Tom's closest friend Seddon argues:

Do you think we're fighting for England? In private life I'm a ruddy bank clerk, and it's some of those big bank balances we're fighting for. They're not England: they're what gangs of financiers, Jew and Gentile, get out of England. It's too damn funny the way people think England belongs to them because they've nearly all got the vote, whereas its parceled out among a lot of blasted tradesmen who run it as a business for their own profit.

These ideas are confused. Later Seddon sees the war as originating in "Germanic revolt against the International Jew". It's impossible to know whether Yeates intended Seddon's anti-Semitism here as commentary on the growth of fascism in Europe while he was writing, or whether they reflected real arguments in the mess halls of his squadron in 1918. But they have the ring of truth of the type of debates that take place when people are struggling to understand what is going on around them; and the only source of information is propaganda.

Tom is pulled in different directions. On his leave he sees the green pastures of England from his train window, but also visits the East London slums to try and understand what they are fighting for. But by the end of the novel he no longer sees England as his own. The decline in belief in the war - the rapid erosion of patriotism, or indeed humanity, is a great theme in this microcosm of wider arguments around the conflict.

Furious arguments like these, the occasional fantasy of life after the war, heavy drinking, food and a preoccupation with women are the only things that keep the men going between combat. But even these aren't enough and boredom is the day to day reality.

Some will read Winged Victory for its accounts of combat. But there's much more to this than a tale of flying. This is a detailed account of the way the war ruined lives; it demolishes the myth of Biggles and "knights of the air", replacing it with alienated, scared, confused and drunk young men, desperate to survive but with little hope. It deserves to be read alongside great anti-war novels like All Quiet on the Western Front or Catch-22.

Related Reviews

Robinson - Goshawk Squadron
Macdonald - Passchendaele
Romains - Verdun
Bücher - In the Line 1914-1918

Derek Robinson - Goshawk Squadron

I first read Goshawk Squadron in the 1980s when I found books with aircraft on the cover irresistible. I tended to find World War Two much more exciting than the first global war as the planes were faster, sleeker and had bigger guns. But Goshawk Squadron is the sort  of novel that takes hold of you and shakes you hard. Thirty or so years later I found the book as gripping as the first time, though likely for different reasons.

The novel begins with Squadron Commander Stanley Woolley watching his pilots land their S.E.5 aircraft at a new base. Several of them crash, others barely make it down. He curses them, and later when fresh-faced replacements arrive for dead airman he mocks and belittles their innocence and ideals of chivalry. "The firs Hun you met would cut you in half without even taking the sausage sandwich out of his mouth. You know nothing - nothing." Woolley is angry, violent and a drunkard. But he is also a survivor. Despite being only 23 he looks grizzled and he tries desperately to transfer some of his knowledge and experience to the young men under his command.

Few of them make it. Accidents, inexperience and stupidity finish many off before the better equipped and more experienced enemy even find them. There's a powerful section where a couple of new recruits are shocked at Woolley telling them to shot at the enemy pilots, preferring to think they'd chivalrously aim for the enemy propellers. Withing a few days they're partaking in shooting up unarmed artillery observers.

This is a book full of painful violence - the pilots cope through heavy drinking, and the protection of Woolley. But the German push in early 1918 means everything is thrown into the sky and the whole system reaches breaking point. There are plenty of laugh out loud moments - mostly because the banter of groups of young men getting drunk is funny - which Robinson describes brilliantly. But it is Woolley's story that holds the tale together - he is Goshawk Squadron and the pilots live or die around him. The ending is remarkably poignant.

When it was first published, Goshawk Squadron received great praise. Yet according to an afterword by Derek Robinson, it also received some veterans of World War One's Royal Flying Corp were angered and felt it insulted their former comrades. In his defence Robinson argued that "War is not sport. War is not fair. War in the sky... had to be unusually callous and cold-blooded". He explains that it is based not on imagination, but on reading the "real history" of the war, the letters and diaries of the airmen themselves. Twenty odd years later Churchill would praise the "few" of the RAF for their work in stopping a German invasion. His praise suggested that the myth of knights of the sky continued. Despite being fiction, Goshawk Squadron should be read as an insight into the reality of war.

Sally Magnusson - The Sealwoman’s Gift

*** Spoilers ***

Sally Magnusson's novel The Sealwoman's Gift is one of those stories which seems so unbelievable, it cannot possibly be based on fact, and yet it turns out that the events at the heart of the story, and much of the detail did, actually take place. It seems extraordinary that pirates from the Mediterranean travelled as far north as Iceland and took hundreds of captives back to slavery in north Africa, but they did, and many thousands of coastal inhabitants from the countries of Western Europe were similarly captured. The novel is based on the true account of Travels of Reverend Ólafur Egilsson whose real life capture alongside his wife, children and four hundred, is well attested to. While we don't know the name of Ólafur Egilsson's historical wife, in Magnusson's book she is called Asta, and her independent spirit is not diminished by the horrors of the voyage to Algiers. Instead she becomes emboldened despite seeing her son sold off and her imprisonment in the harem of Cilleby a wealthy merchant and slave trader.

The women in Cilleby's harem are imprisoned, but they don't suffer the violence of that their sons and husbands do as slaves. Instead they are left with menial, women's jobs, except when Cilleby selects them for sex. At the centre of the tale are stories, the Arabic stories of the Arabian Nights, or versions thereof, or the great Icelandic sagas that the women tell each other each night. Stories allow Asta and Cilleby to form a bond, which becomes mutual admiration and then love. While elsewhere Asta's husband, the pastor, desperately tries to get his government to raise the ransom that will return the captives home.

Several reviewers have called this a romance. I didn't get that. For me this is a story of how civilised, and brutal, 17th century European and Mediterranean society was. But also how there was already a continent wide trading and political network that allowed King's in Denmark to ransom slaves in Algiers. Events are beautifully portrayed, but they are heartrending. There is the brutality of separation and the rape and violence that comes with slavery. Despite the claims to civilisation that Cilleby makes, Asta points out, to his intense surprise, that his wealth and power is built on violence. I don't know enough about north African slavery to know whether the central romantic plot used here is even possible. It seemed unlikely, but not impossible.

But the real story is the compromises people make to survive, and stay sane. When rescue comes for Asta and her fellow captives it comes as a doubled edged sword, the solutions to which make this a novel that's a cut above the average.

Neil Rathmell - 1549

This is an unusual novel that deserves to be better known. Neil Rathmell tells the story of Kett's Rebellion of 1549, a major upheaval that shook Norfolk as tens of thousands of peasants revolted against rural poverty and the attacks on their communities. Rathmell tells the story from two perspectives; the first from Robert Kett's rotting corpse who recounts the history of the rising backwards to an audience of rats. Kett has been cruelly executed and his remains hung to remind the population of the folly of rebellion, but after death he celebrates the struggle and the value of resisting inequality and oppression.

In the second interleaved story a Norfolk merchant falls in love with his brothers' wife. From this perspective the rebellion is a disturbance that reflects the upheaval in their lives, but is also distant and remote. It is chiefly noticed for the problems it causes for trade, though the family is more closely involved in the rebellion than either of the major participants initially realises.

Rathmell knows the history of 1549 well though it might not be the best place for someone new to the period to start as the novel's structure means the history is told backwards. Nonetheless, while strange in places, Neil Rathmell tells a good tale with a fascinating backdrop.

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John le Carré - A Legacy of Spies

I was looking forward enormously to A Legacy of Spies and re-read its prequel The Spy Who Came in from the Cold in preparation. That book is a near perfect spy thriller, the dirty, backstabbing reality of Cold War spying in the drab, grey of 1950s England and East Germany. By contrast A Legacy of Spies is set in a world that seems like New Labour - full of steel and glass, opulence and smartly dressed professionals. But its a superficial modernity. The reality for the spies is still one of betrayal and backstabbing, loneliness and violence - but now they are even more scrutinised by a 21st century bureaucracy that pretends to incomprehensibility when faced with the methods of previous decades.

The legacy of the title is the fall out from a long forgotten spy operation undertaken in the first novel, supervised by Control, Smiley and the narrator of Legacy Peter Guillam. Guillam is uncooperative in MI6's investigation into those events which has been sparked by the return of the son of the British agent who died in the operation, who is suing for wrongful death. Guillam is trying to protect both his legacy and that of his friend and mentor George Smiley. Tied up with all of this is the larger betrayal that MI6 experienced in the aftermath of the first book.

The plot is convoluted, though the reality is that little happens. Guillam twists and turns and reveals little, but spends a lot of time thinking through the rights and wrongs of his own past and the Service. Rather than being a novel in itself it felt to me more like the author was tying up some lose ends for his fans by referencing all the events that they've come to cherish. It's not a bad novel, but its not the greatest and I found the ending very flat. It's not Le Carré at his best, but if you're reading it, that wil be because you've read all the others and you'll already know this by the time you open the book.

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John le Carré - The Looking Glass War

By all accounts John le Carré wrote The Looking Glass War disappointed that readers of his best selling The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was taken far to seriously, and not understood as the satire it was intended as. Looking Glass focuses on The Department, a section of British Intelligence that has left its wartime glamour far behind. Now, instead of an essential section of Britain's military machine, it is a poor second cousin to Smiley's Circus. Lacking funding, infrastructure and staff the Department is a spy network without any spies.

Beginning with a botched intelligence job, over some dubious intelligence, the Department is dragged into a dangerous mission in East Germany which senior figures clearly see as a last ditched attempt to regain wartime levels of funding, glory and acceptance in the Intelligence Community. The botched job is followed up by amateurish attempts to retrieve a roll of tape that nearly blows the whole thing open. Despite this, the Department's head Leclerc, a boorish former pilot uses his knowledge of Whitehall's bureaucracy to secure under the table funding to send a spy into East Germany.

The mission is, inevitably, a cock up. But what makes the book is the meticulous way that le Carré depicts the build up. Here are bureaucrats scheming against each other for funding and ministerial approval. Leclerc himself oversees much of the hiring of the Departments new spy, but is keen to keep from him the reality of his organisations eclipse. The former spy, now gone to grass in a second hand car salesroom is repeatedly told that the Department has "got boxes of files" of other operatives. Reality is, of course, exactly the opposite, and readers cannot help but feel that someone is being hung out to dry.

Much of this is presumably based on le Carré's own experiences. Infighting, competition and lies are the staple of government departments and spies. The grim, competing world of the Department and the Circus is a complete contrast to the glamour of James Bond. By the time that The Looking Glass War was finished Ian Fleming had published all of his Bond books. There's no doubt that le Carré was writing to stab that particular image of the intelligence services in the back. When people try to understand how Tony Blair's government could come up with something as crude as the 45 minute dodgy Iraq dossier, it's not hard to imagine some of these self-serving bureaucrats behind the scenes.

As with all the other le Carré novels that I've read, this is tightly written. It's grim and the characters are unlikable. Unusually, the plot matters little. What's really interesting is the tension between individuals and the nasty backstabbing world of the intelligence services.

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John le Carré - The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

Re-reading The Spy Who Came in from the Cold ahead of getting hold of its sequel, I am struck once again how perfectly crafted le Carré's books are. In barely 200 pages the novel takes us from its famous opening scene in the dark night near the border between East and West Berlin, to a thrilling ending after an incredibly complex story. In fact, much of the story is simply people conversing, as former spy controller Alec Leamus changes sides and begins to work for the other side. Needless to say there is a deep and shocking twist, but what really makes the novel is the increasingly scary and intense atmosphere as Leamus is pulled deeper and deeper into enemy territory.

It is, of course, nearly impossible to review this book without giving away plot details. But the atmosphere for dull, grey 1960s London is worth mentioning. Beef tea, tinned chicken and cold single rooms warmed by a weak gas fire...it's not just the interrogations that are chilly. You get a real sense of Britain at the end of it's imperial greatness... it's neighborhoods are dirty, it's airports and bars grim and utilitarian. Even the drinks are bland. Everyone is tired and fed up. Even the activists of the Communist Party groups fake their paper sales figures so they can go home early.

Its a wonderful novel. It's so perfect that when they filmed it they barely seemed to change a scene. By turns punchy and shocking, and ultimately deeply tragic. This is spycraft stripped bare of any glamour - lies and counter lies, bureacracy gone mad, cowardly murders and every sentence uttered mined for information. Its not James Bond, its something far more real.

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Ian Mortimer - Outcasts of Time

Outcasts of Time is a beautiful book. It tells the story of two Devon men caught up in 1348 in the horror of the plaque. John Wrayment is a skilled stonemason who has carved many of the statues in Exeter cathedral, including the faces of his beloved wife Catherine and his brother William Beard. William is more boisterous, interested in wine, women and song. John's attempts to do a good dead for a baby whose mother has died of the plague. His brother chastises him, arguing that it will bring them no good and only delay their perilous journey home. The good dead turns into its opposite, and in horror and anger, John question's God's purpose.

A disembodied voice offers the two brothers a choice. Return home, and die from the plague, or live six more days each day spaced at intervals of 99 years. The brothers take the second option and their journey through Devon's history begins.

It's a wonderful pretext for a novel. It's made better by Ian Mortimer's historical knowledge and eye for detail. There's plenty here on how the villages change, on how the improving fabric of the buildings themselves allow John and William to see that the country is growing wealthier, though neither brother is naive enough to miss the poverty in the backstreets. There are poignant moments, particularly when the brothers return to their home village and see places they know well, but ruined by age and decay.

John in particular, to William's annoyance believes he has a quest to full-fill. His attempts to do good, improve things take various forms - including simply doing a hard days work. But nothing seems to come of it. But the over-arching change, one that John finds particularly difficult, is the way his religion is taken from him and destroyed by the rise of Protestantism. He visits Exeter cathedral after the Reformation and is shocked to have to pay to enter, but even more shocked to see the destruction of the beautiful statues he has made. Later he comes to blame Henry VIII but he keeps his own faith close, despite it putting him and his brother in danger.

Mortimer does this transformation brilliantly. The brothers can understand technology - there's a touching scene in the 19th century when a clergyman explains steam engines - but they are more upset and shocked by the way that their religious framework has been dismantled. John is particularly troubled by this - if he is on a religious journey or quest, then why is his religion destroyed?

A friend of mine who read this said that they'd enjoyed it, but found it too religious. But for most of the last 800 years most people in England would have only understood the world through their religion. Mortimer's description of the transformation of England works so well precisely because he understands that the changes aren't simply technological, or political, but they are about how the whole ideological fabric of the country was remade. And he let's us understand what that might have meant to an ordinary person experiencing part of the changes. It is, after all, why many people took up arms to defend their communities and their faith during the Reformation.

It's a lovely original story, well told and deeply moving. I highly recommend it.

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Mortimer - The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England

J.L.Carr - A Month in the Country

A few years after the end of World War One, Tom Birkin, a survivor of Passchendaele and a victim of shell shock finds himself in the tiny village of Oxgodby with the job of restoring a medieval painting in the church. Tom arrives in Oxgodby in the pouring rain, yet the weeks he spends there turn into a idyllic summer that he can only contrast with the rain and mud of Flanders. The rainy arrival symbolises his transition into a new era of his life, but the story of what takes place in that summer is told in retrospect - Tom himself only understands it long after he leaves.

As he uncovers the painting he gradually understands that its a masterpiece, a painting of the last judgement, with the damned being condemned to hell and the others rising up to join the heavenly host. The symbolism here isn't difficult to spot, but Carr doesn't force it down the reader's throat, instead he uncovers it slowly, like Tom's restoration.

There are surprisingly few main characters, though Tom's close friendship with Moon, and archaeologist on a similar quest to find a lost grave in the churchyard is touching. They are both veterans of the War, though in very different ways. Moon spots, long before Tom does, that his friendship with the vicar's beautiful wife is becoming more than that and if there is any dramatic heart to the story it is what happens to the two of them.

Tom uncovers a painting; Moon finds a grave and everyone else in the village spends the summer getting the harvest in and going to Church or Chapel. While little happens in terms of a narrative, much takes place. There is a hilarious comic set piece in a music shop where the rivalry between Church and Chapel becomes very real. There's also a moment of pure pain when, without giving away the details, Tom is confronted full on with the consequences of the War. His screams of rage into the empty fields are truly tragic.

This is a beautiful novel - every page celebrates humanity with all its strengths and weaknesses. Despite being written in the late 1970s it feels like an autobiographical sketch by a survivor of the War. That it isn't, is a tribute to the author's ability to make the past a living thing.

Ken Follett - The Pillars of the Earth

Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth is, to the surprise of the experts, one of the most popular novels in the UK. Its sweeping story has been made into a TV series, and even board and computer games and spawned two sequels. The plot covers a largely unknown period of English history, the turbulent 12th century when England was engulfed in Civil War following the death of Henry I's only male heir.

Follett's book is primarily centred on the monastery and settlement at the fictional location of Kingsbridge. There's a  complex web of characters most of whom are hard not to emphasis with, and principally the story looks at those involved in building a cathedral at Kingsbridge and those trying to stop them. What makes the novel work is that the personal antagonisms of various characters, including the vile Earl William and the pious Prior Phillip is in the context of feudal relations and Civil War. William's violence and raids on settlements around his castle are a natural part of feudal society, as are the inter-generational feuds. If the novel overly relies on the ideas of good lords and bad lords, it doesn't neglect that all lords relied utterly on the peasantry to survive.

In fact I suspect that this is one of the reasons for the success of the books. Unusually Pillars of the Earth focuses on the lives and struggles of ordinary people - mostly labourers on the cathedrals, but also their partners and families. While the elite have their role in the book it's often peripheral to the main action, and there are far more detailed descriptions of the lives, labour and food of ordinary people. This is actually quite unusual in novels and works well here, particularly a book that has the hard work of the building of a cathedral at the centre of its epic tale.

There are problems of course. To me the book felt like a soap opera in places - each chapter seeming to end on a cliff hanger that was rapidly resolved by the cleverness of one or other of the "good" characters. There are also a few unlikely coincidences and plot points that don't really make sense (would a grieving husband, having just buried his wife, really jump into bed with a complete stranger a couple of hours later, especially given they were both starving in the midst of winter?) I also found the rape scenes unnecessarily detailed - I get that the author is trying to describe the brutality of a particular character, but it was simply too much. I also skipped a three page sex scene, not out of prudity, but mostly because it was utterly peripheral to the plot.

Nevertheless Follett's book is entertaining. He gives an interesting take on key events in the period and the structure of the book keeps the reader engaged. It's also rare that a novel manages to make the transition from Romanesque to Gothic religious architecture an interesting and integral part of its plot, and it shows well how ordinary people were a central part of that movement.

Cormac McCarthy - Blood Meridian

The history of the American West is one that is all to often cleansed of its violence. Even modern "Westerns" frequently sanitise the killing through ritual gunfights - highly choreographed shootings. The reality is, as one recent history book has shown, that the modern US is built on systematic violence, oppression and exploitation. So I was attracted to Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian precisely because it was supposed to subvert the western genre completely.

It is certainly different. The novel follows the life of "the Kid" a young man from Tennessee who flees his home and joins up with a violent group of Indian hunters on the Texas-Mexican border. For weeks he, and his companions, travel through the deserts hunting down groups of Native Americans and brutally murdering them. These scalp hunters are portrayed as bloodthirsty, alienated, racist killers. Their motivation is initially financial though it becomes genocidal, and after the repeated bloodbaths they drown their sorrows in appalling orgies of drink and rape.

A quick google will show that some one has gone to the trouble of plotting this murderous route onto a map of the US. I'm not sure that the author intended the book to be read as such a literal journey (much like the route taken in McCarthy's other famous work The Road doesn't matter to the plot). McCarthy introduces a collection of vile and surreal characters into the story, and there is a desert showdown of sorts between the Kid and his nemesis, the Judge. But I found the novel's plot barely existed in reality - the tale existed to give the violence a backdrop, rather than the other way around.

Blood Meridian is widely considered one of the greatest novels of North American fiction so I approached reading it with some excitement. My initial enthusiasm was quickly tempered as I found the intensity of the first few chapters giving way to boredom - rather to quickly I found myself immune to the murder; simply taking it as another stage of the Kid's travels. It was only when I realised that this was surely the point, that I re-engaged with the book. Though the Kid and his band are desensitised to the violence, not simply because it is nearly continuous, but also because they have "othered" those they hunt. These are no longer Native Americans, they are animals to be killed for sport and profit.

Other reviewers have noted some deeper themes. The character of the Judge, his relationship to the others in the band, and in particular his violent attraction to young men, and his philosophical discussions are fascinating in themselves, though I liked more how McCarthy depicted the murderous band as being fascinated with the Judge's discussions of history, philosophy and science.

It's "based on true events" but its only real historical accuracy is to say that the West was won through brutal, systematic and racialised violence. Is it a good book? I am not sure. I was shocked, bored, and appalled by turns, and finally disappointed by the ending (though it benefits from a re-reading). I can't even say whether I'd recommend it, though McCarthy is certainly talented, but it is certainly an antidote to the anodyne nature of much of what passes for Westerns.

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