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Sunday, March 02, 2025

Louise Erdrich - The Mighty Red

Set in the lonely east of North Dakota, The Mighty Red is an impressive novel that draws out the isolation of small town, rural America and casts it against the swirling realities of capitalist agriculture, ecological degradation and loneliness. Alongside this Louise Erdrich draws out a story of a local tragedy that has left the town's population scarred and desperate for love to heal their collective wounds.

The novel opens with Kismet Poe, named by a whimsical mother, who hopes that hear daughter will escape that confines of small town America. But Kismet is in love with the bookish romantic Hugo, while being heavily courted by the high school sports star, aspirant farmer Gary. Kismet is too kind to refuse Gary's marriage proposal, and the confines of American culture to restrictive for anyone, even the adults, to understand that youngsters don't need to get married to enjoy sex and love for their early years. As Kismet falls into a marriage she knows she doesn't want but cannot say no to, their wedding day is nearly ruined as Kismet's father absconds with the church renovation funds.

Kismet is now trapped, literally, by Gary's family. Stuck on a farm whose topsoil is vanishing before everyone's eyes. The neighbours are trying out new-fangled organic, no drill farming, but they're the weird ones. Preferring to grow food instead of the local sugar beet cash crop. Hugo leaves his bookshop (Erdrich's novels often seem to feature bookshops, presumably like her own in Minnesota) and heads to Williston to make his fortune in ND's gas fields. Fracking is booming.

Kismet has to escape, but doing so means learning what really happened at that town tragedy, whose participants seem to have sworn some sort of pact of silence. The cover-up needs to be uncovered - not for legal reasons, but so that everyone can move on.

Erdrich has constructed a lovely novel of humanity, youngster's trapped by their circumstances and isolation, and the inward looking life of the adults. The drugs, drink, poisoned air and rapacious capitalism that undermine any effort to be different - or indeed normal. Kismet's at the heart of this, her steely character surviving the twin buffeting of her father's betrayal, her new family life and a soulless marriage. Her escape is wonderful, as is her steadfastness. It's a beautiful book. Louise Erdrich has her finger very firmly on the pulse of America. It will be interesting to see what she writes in the coming years.

Related Reviews

Erdrich - The Sentence

Sunday, February 23, 2025

Alexander Rabinowitch - The Bolsheviks Come to Power: The Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd

Alexander Rabinowitch is an interesting historian. From a Russian émigré family, he grew up listening to stories about how the revolutionaries had expelled them. Visitors to his family home in the US included figures as important as Kerensky, the former leader of Russia's Povisional Government during the 1917 revolution. Rabinowitch became a historian, and while a young man, as part of his research he travelled to Russia in the 1960s to research Lenin. Expecting to find evidence that Lenin was a dictator in waiting who brokered no argument, Rabinowitch actually found the opposite. What he discovered was that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were riven by debate and discussion, even in the weeks and days before the revolution, and that far from a monolithic organisation, the Bolshevik Party "was both responsive and open to the masses" in that revolutionary year. In his introduction Rabinowitch writes:

For all the lively debate and spirited give-and-take that I find to have existed within the Bolshevik organisation in 1917, the Bolsheviks were doubtless more unifed than any of their major rivals for power. Certainly this was a key factor in their effectiveness. Nonetheless, my research suggests that the relative flexibility of the party, as well as its responsiveness to the prevailing mass mood, had at least as much to do with the ulimate Bolshevik victory as did revolutionary discipline, organisational unity, or obedience to Lenin.

It is a remarkable conclusion for historian who is not also a Leninist, or at least a revolutionary, and it is to Rabinowitch's credit that he did not allow his own prejudices to block his conclusions.

The book is not an account of 1917, though it does begin with a good overview of the background and the first few months of the revolution. The focus is the "coming to power of the Bolsheviks" and this means Rabinowitch begins with the crucial turning point of the revolution, the summer of 1917. July 1917 saw a mass revolutionary impulse, and how to respond to this caused enormous debate within the Bolsheviks. The author details the various disagreements - which essentially focused on whether or not to call for insurrection and support the Petrograd workers as they demanded a Soviet government. Lenin argued it was premature, though it is clear that not all the Bolsheviks agreed. The confusion over this, and the eventual repression saw the right-wing able to turn their guns on the Bolsheviks. Leading figures like Lenin went into hiding, hundreds of Bolshevik cadre were imprisoned and repression was high. In the aftermath things looked bleak. But the threat of a far-right coup against the revolution, and crucially, also against Kerensky, under the figurehead of the fascist general Kornilov, enabled the Bolsheviks to place themselves at the heart of a mass movement to defend the revolution.

The United Front approach of the Bolsheviks here, allowed them to recover crucial ground and place themselves back in the revolutionary leadership. But as Rabinowitch explains, the success of the revolution from this point onward was not automatic, contrary to the Stalinist myths of the infallibility of Lenin and his party:

The entire history of the party from the February revolution on suggested the potential for programmatic discord and disorganised activity existing within Bolshevik ranks. So that whether the party would somehow find the strength of will, organizational disciple, and sensitivity to the complexities of the fluid and possibly explosive prevailing situation requisite for it to take power, was, at this point, still very much an open question.

But in the aftermath of the attempted coup by Kornilov, what mattered was not simply Lenin winning the rest (or the majority) of the Bolsheviks to his correct position. Lenin himself, as well as the wider Bolsehvik cadre, had to find their way forward. In some of the most fascinating sections Rabinowitch details how Lenin moves towards a position of calling for "All Power to the Soviets". But this "new moderation was not accepted without opposition".

Lenin and the Bolsheviks were uniquely attuned to the way the masses were thinking and moving. It was flexibility around this that gave them their greatest power. Rabinowitch details, for instance, how the Bolsheviks didn't just adapt to the mood, they tried to shape it. As the hour of insurrection draws closely this interrelated process gets more and more intense. Even until the very last moment of the revolution, Lenin is waging war inside the Party to win the argument of revolution. Given that The Bolsheviks Come to Power is a work of non-fiction, readers may be surprised to find themselves a little carried away by the intensity. Here, for instance, is Rabinowitch's account of how the decision to go for insurrection and the overthrow of the Provisional Government immediately before the meeting of the All Russia Congress of Soviets:

There is very little hard evidence regarding the circumstances of this decision. Latsis later wrote that 'towards morning on the famous night when the question of a government was being decided and the Central Committee wavered, Illich [Lenin] ran to the office of the Petersburg Committee with the question: "Fellows, do you have shovels? Will the workers of Piter [Petrograd] go into the trenches at our call?" Latsis recorded that the response was positive, adding that the decisiveness of Lenin and the Petersburg Committee affected the waverers, allowing Lenin to have his way.

While Rabinowitch is supremely sensitive to the way that the Bolsheviks' were linked to the masses, he also understands that Lenin was the key revolutionary thinker. The decision to go for insurrection, Rabinowitch writes, is one of "few modern historical episodes [which] better illustrate the sometimes decisive role of an individual in historical events".

That said, in his close study of these events, it is noticeable how Lenin was not always able to shape events on a hour by hour basis. For instance, I was struck by how, during the Kornilov coup, Lenin was too far away in hiding to have a real impact. Straining at the leash to come to Petrograd from hiding, much of his instructions arrived too late to have a significant impact.

But whatever Lenin's abilities, it was the party he had striven to build that was crucial in October 1917, and revolutionaries today, ought to learn this lesson now. Rabinowitch puts it very well.

That in the space of eight months the Bolsheviks reached a position from which they were able to assume power was due... to the special effort which the party devoted to winning the support of military troops in the rear and at the front; only the Bolsheviks seemed to have perceived the necessary crucial significance of the armed forces in the struggle for power. Perhaps even more fundamentally, the phenomenal Bolshevik success can be attributed in no small meaure to the nature of the party in 1917. Here I have in mind neither Lenin's bold and determined leadership, the immense historical significance of which cannot be denied, not the Bolshevik's proverbial, though vastly exaggerated, organisational unity and discipline. Rather, I would emphasize the party's internally relatively democratic, tolerant and decentralised structure and method of operation, as well as its essentially open and mass character - in striking contrast to the traditional Leninist model.

It was this that enabled Lenin to shift the Party in the crucial moments of 1917, and it was this Party that enabled the revolutionary workers' and their organisations to take power. The alternative would have been fascism and further war.

Alexander Rabinowitch's remarkable book was first published in the early 1970s. It deserves a reading today. Leninists might find things to quibble about. But in its detail of the events of 1917, and its exploration of the arguments at all levels of the Bolshevik Party, even those who have read much about the Russian Revolution will find much of interest. It is a fascinating insight into how a mass revolutionary organisation operated during the only successful workers' revolution in history and its conclusions are even more powerful given they are written by someone who comes from outside the revolutionary tradition.

Tuesday, February 18, 2025

John le Carré - Call for the Dead

Call for the Dead is the first appearance of John le Carré's recurring character, the British intelligence officer George Smiley. Its a very short and puncy novel, dealing with the aftermath of a relatively regular interview that Smiley has with a civil servant Samuel Fennan. Fennan had been in the Communist Party in the 1930s, but that was long ago, and now he's a loyal worker with a decent income and a relatively nice house in the London suburbs. But the following day he is found dead, a suicide note nearby, and Smiley is being blamed for scaring Fennan so much that he felt compelled to kill himself.

But Smiley's recollections of the interview were much more positive. He found Fennan amicable and enjoyed their time together. As he begins to ask questions of Fennan's wife, the local police and probe a bit deeper he finds evidence of a much darker conspiracy.

Call for the Dead is interesting in a number of ways. Truthfully its more of a detective story, and as Carré's first novel, this and the second, A Murder of Quality, suggest that the author was working out his position in the various genres. The book is also of interest because it gives a lot of background to Smiley himself, that really illuminates some of the later stories.

But its a great read. The seediness of suburban life and the grimness of post-war Britain really come out well. Smiley himself, and his collaborators in this book, are part of the grey charm. But it's also a reminder that great thrillers do not always need to be 350 pages in length.

Lev Grossman - The Magicians

Reading The Magicians for a second time, I cannot help but agree with my earlier review from a few years ago. Grossman's book feels, initially like a darker, grittier version of Harry Potter, where violence, sex and death are much more on display than in Rowling's children's fantasy. But re-reading The Magicians in a search for a quick escapist fantasy recently I was struck by how the arc of Quentin Coldwater's story is at odds with more traditional tales. Coldwater goes from naive youth, inexperienced in the world of magic, to a powerful wizard, isolated and cut off from those around him and desirous to learn more even as this leads to him destroying those around him.

In fact, for almost all of the book Quentin's is a deeply unpleasant character, and his eventual exposing as such by his former partner is perhaps the most satisfying moment. The Magicians stands up well to a second read, its nuances (and its cheerful parody of the genre) becoming more apparent, even as the reader might find themselves repelled by the arrogant behaviour of the central protagonists. And of course, the thirst for wealth and power by a tiny class of unproductive, but extremely dangerous individuals has its parallels with the real world.

Tuesday, February 11, 2025

Jonathan Sumption - Cursed Kings: The Hundred Years War IV

Everything that I have written about the first three volumes of Jonathan Sumption's epic history of the Hundred Years War is also true of this, the fourth and penultimate volume. Sumption's account is enormous in scope, with a masterful grasp of the archival material and an eye for interesting detail that enlivens the sheer volume of information. Readers will like me sometimes lose track of the bigger picture, but that's a limitation of the format.

Volume IV however does feel different to the other books, and this is mostly to do with the period it covers. Much of the book is shaped by the descent of France into violent Civil War, as the mentally distressed King Charles VI, becomes increasingly unable to rule for prolonged periods of time. Charles' frequent "absences" mean that the ruling class is riven by internal differences and tensions. To cut a long story short, two men come to represent the different approaches to ruling France as Regent for Louis of Valois, Duke of Orléans and John the Fearless, the Duke of Burgundy. Louis was close to Charles, though by no means a pleasant character. Sumption describes him as "extrovert, self-indulgent and extravagant" but a "politician of exception ability, charming and gracious, politically astute, highly intelligent and articulate in council". While unpleasant, and "addicted to gambling and womanising" he was thus an enormous barrier to the John the Fearless' own ambitions. Within feudal society such rivalries could easily become open warfare, and this is what happened. John has Louis murdered, and the quest for justice and resolution leads to a massive civil war, with both sides courting the English Kings Henry IV and V for assistance in the war.

As with Sumption's early books, there is much detail of various alliances as the hopes of both sides ebb and wane. What makes this period different to earlier work to a great extent, is the involvement of the masses of Paris in this contest. While it would seem like the mass of the population would care little for one wing of the ruling class over another, John the Fearless proved adept at promising reform and change to benefit the lower classes. In particular he promised, and indeed did move, to enact some reforms and sack many corrupt ministers and servants of the crown and civil service. Thus the civil war that followed Louis' murder saw the involvement of ordinary people in a very different capacity to just being soldiers dying on the battlefield. Their protests, insurrection and risings helped drive events forward.

Then, as now, Paris was both the capital of France and its principle city economically. Sumption ably describes the power the masses had in the capital:

The growing power and volatile temper of the Parisian guilds would come to be associated with the most powerful and dangerous of them all, the corporation of the Grande Boucherie. This guild controlled the largest of the Parisian butcheries, occupying a maze of covered alleys west of the Chatelet, beneath the shadow of the church tower of St-Jacques-la-Boucherie... The butchers were a self-contained hereditary clan, much intermarried... their members were not much esteemed. They were 'men of low estate, inhuman, detestable and devoted to their dishonourable trade'... In spite of their low social status the butchers were rich, enjoying the benefits of a tightly controlled monopoly and a growing market for their product. WIth wealth came ambition. Their leaders coveted status and power, they relished their position as kingmakers, once the rivalries of the princely houses spilled out onto the streets. Concentrated in the narrow lanes of their quarters, they could summon up mobs in minutes, calling on hundreds of muscular apprentices and journeymen...

No wonder then, that "fear of revolution in their capital had been an abiding anxiety of the kings of France for many years". This power shapes the ensuing civil war. John's opponents, the Armagnac family, who take power in the aftermath of Louis' death, experience the strength of the Parisian power when up to 5,000 of the Count of Armagnac's followers are killed by them. The war itself is equally brutal, with John's forces rampaging their way across the country repeatedly defeating the Armagnac forces.

One of the fascinating things that Sumption draws out in this, is the relative impoverishment of all those nobles who are fighting, both in the French civil war and their opponent in England. Feudal kings were desperate short of cash to fight battles. Keeping their armies in the fields cost a fortune, and the shortage of money (and consequently food and troops) is a key factor. It also helps explain why the masses of France were so volatile and angry at taxes, and open to the influence of someone who told them it would end.

Into this mess comes Henry V, whose invasion of France in 1415 seems to sweep all before him. The civil war has left France with limited ability to respond, and the massacre of the French nobility at Agincourt hamstrings the French nobility for years. By 1420, with the signing of the Treaty of Troyes (1420), Henry V has captured Normandy and expanded the English state into one of the most important parts of France. Paris itself is threatened and Charles has no option but to sign, making Henry regent and heir to the French throne.

It was a brief moment of success for the English throne, though it does not end the immediate conflict. But the death of both Henry and Charles in 1422, where this book finishes, pushes the war into a new era. While Henry gained fame as the victor of Agincourt and the winner at Troyes, it was built on tenuous grounds. As Sumption points out, the success was:

By its nature impermanent. [Henry's] ambitions depended too much on the slender resources of his English kingdom. His conquests had owed too much ot the extraordinary circumstances of France during his reign: fifteen years of civil war, the backlash provoked by the murder of John the Fearless, the political and military misjudgements of the Dauphin's advisers. And they had owed too much to Henry's personal qualities: his reputation, his military skills and his iron will and energy.

It could not survive Henry's death. The war, and bloodshed, would continue.

Sunday, February 09, 2025

Brett Christophers - The Price is Wrong: Why capitalism won't save the planet

This deep dive into the problems with and limitations of the capitalist energy system is a powerful argument against the free market's role in making renewable energy and sustainable energy systems a reality. I am writing a review of The Price is Wrong for another online journal and will publish a link here when that's online.

In the meantime here's my 2019 review of Brett Christophers The New Enclosure on the privatisation of land.

Friday, February 07, 2025

Adrian Tchaikovsky - Alien Clay

*** Spoilers ***

Adrian Tchaikovsky is known for his big scale science fiction that often has unusual takes on alien planets and lifeforms - intelligent octopuses and city building spiders are just two. But Alien Clay is a novel about first contact with a very different form of alien ecology, and to further interest this reader, it is centred on a group of revolutionaries and radicals, albeit ones who have been captured and exiled to another planet.

The book opens with the arrival of Professor Arton Daghdev on the planet Kiln. He doesn't arrive as an explorerer of scientist ready to study the planet's unusual life, instead he is there as a political prisoner, exiled by the despotic Mandate to an interplanetary gulag. Forced labour on Kiln is brutal, and the environment unforgiving. But the workers are not digging for raw materials, they are aiding the project of unravelling Kiln's ecological and archaeological mysteries.

For Kiln is the site of ancient alien ruins. Among the chaotic and dangerous flora and fauna there remains no sign of the intelligence that surely must have built and inscribed the ruins with mysterious writing. The labourers, including Daghdev are set to clearing the jungle from the ruins and trying to understand the animal life. It is Daghdev's dream, one he is uniquely trained to do as a exo-biology scientist, but one fraught with danger. Some of this comes from the threat formed by the planet itself, but mostly it comes because he has to tackle a difficult contradiction. Mandate orthodoxy states that humans are the pinnacle of a neat evolutionary process. Alien intelligence that goes against this threatens to not just to turn science upsidedown, but to turn the Mandate's ideology inside out. This is why Daghdev had no idea of Kiln's reality before the arrival on the planet.

On the planet life is cheap. The brutal camp commandant whose need to enforce Mandate orthodoxy is only partly tempered by his desperation to understand Kiln as much as his prisoner scientists. He has plenty of scientists, for in a earlier life Daghdev was one of a growing revolutionary underground, and while Daghdev was one of that movement's leaders, he was also part of the intellectuals whose opposition to the Mandate found tiny ways to challenge the "ruling ideas" of society.

These twin strands of alien exploration and revolutionary action intertwine on Kiln and Tchaikovsky does a brilliant job of using his intellectually unorthodox main character to be the eyes and ears of the reader as we ourselves learn about the reality of Kiln. And what revelations await. Even with the spoiler tags at the start of this review I don't want to give too much away, but Tchaikovsky shows how thinking outside of the box is box helpful for both revolutionary leadership and for scientific enquiry. The dawning awareness of what Kiln really is makes for a great story: who is actually doing the "First Contact" between Kiln and humanity. Tchaikovsky unveils this brilliantly.

Unusually, I read this as an audiobook. Normally I prefer physical books, but Alien Clay worked as audio primarily because it is a first person narrative. In places this it is borderline horror, not just because of the alien life's impact on humans, but also because prison worlds and gulags are horror filled places. The commandant knows all too well that rule comes from the barrel of a gun. In his isolated, and numerically weak position, the Mandate's man on the ground, can only rule - ideologically and physically - by mimicking the rule of the state back home on Earth. As such, the novels ending is perhaps a metaphor for wider revolutionary change.

Alien Clay is one of the most unusual science fiction novels I have read in recent years. It could be written by someone prepared to push the boundaries of the science bit in science-fiction. But Adrian Tchaikovsky's obvious sympathy with radicals and rebels means that the revolutionary bits to the story feel remarkably real. As such, this will appeal to science fiction lovers. But it will also be enjoyed by those sitting on revolutionary committees everywhere who need a bit of a break from the actual struggle.

Jane Harper - Force of Nature

This entertaining, if unsatisfying, detective story is the second of Jane Harper's novels featuring the detective Aaron Falk. Unfortunately I haven't read the first, but this did not seem to effect my reading of the book at all. Force of Nature follows the aftermath of a corporate team building exercise gone wrong. Two groups of men and women are sent into the hills outside of Melbourne and expected to make their way to the end point. Despite it being a well managed event by organised guides, when the group of women finally make their way out, one person is missing and others have mysterious injuries.

The story is efficiently told, with Harper jumping back and forth between the investigation led by Falk and the account of the women's trip. She handles the points of view well, and the story of the disintegration of the lost party as personal rivalries undermine the team. There's a real tension with the missing woman Alice Russell, as its not clear whether she is alive or dead.

Unfortunately I struggled to care for any of the corporate types and their motivations felt unlikely. The detectives felt a little one-dimensional at times, and the back story felt squeezed in. All in all its a quick, tense read that lacked the dynamism and pull of Jane Harper's The Lost Man. A good light read but one I fear I will forget rather quickly.

Sunday, February 02, 2025

Michael Scott - Royal Betrayal: The Great Baccarat Scandal of 1890

The Baccarat Scandal of 1890 might seem like a surprising topic of interest to a Marxist like myself. After all it concerns itself with a complex legal case that followed events at a rather dull sounding weekend party at Tranby Croft house in Yorkshire, when Sir William Gordon-Cumming, a distinguished lieutenant colonel in the Scots Guards was accused of cheating during two games of baccarat, where one of his opponents was the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII.

My interest in these events was first piqued when I read Flashman and the Tiger which places Flashman at the dinner party itself. Returning to the real world, or at least history, the 1890 scandal is of interest for the way it exposed, and continues to expose, Victorian ruling class snobbery. The substance of the scandal is relatively simple. Gordon-Cumming was observed by one member of the party to be adding to his stake while playing baccarat in a way that would increase his winnings. Rather than confront Gordon-Cumming, the witness told other party members who then watched the game and Gordon-Cumming more closely the following night. When they thought they had seen him repeat the cheat, he was confronted by the Prince of Wales, and encouraged to sign a paper that swore he would never play cards again. It was essentially a confession, and when the paper became public, Gordon-Cumming faced ruin.

There are, of course, lots of facts that don't add up. Once it became clear that he was now publically accused of cheating Gordon-Cumming had only one option - a very public court case against his accusers. The problem was that while the facts didn't add up, it was difficult to prove anything and, the establishment moved to protect the heir to the throne. The Prince of Wales was a wasteral. He loved gambling, adultery, and parties. He was a man of limited grasp of politics, lacking interest in rule and frequently skirted scandal. It seems that Gordon-Cumming was made to sign the paper to protect the Prince of Wales by those who realised that another public scandal with the heir to the throne playing a forbidden game (it was banned outside of public homes) could well destroy the monarchy. Indeed, so low was the view of the monarchy among the public that many people thought it would die with the death of Queen Victoria.

Michael Scott's book tells the story of the events leading up to the court case, and the case itself. The ending is not a spoiler. Despite enormous popular support in the world at large Gordon-Cumming was found to have cheated and his reputation was destroyed. He was, luckily for him, able to retire to his wealthy landed estate and live his life out in pseudo-Feudal splendour. So it wasn't all bad.

It is clear from Scott's account (and indeed every other discussion) that Gordon-Cumming got no justice - the judge was biased, the legal process flawed and court-room procedure was laughable. But that shouldn't be a surprise. The establishment moved to protect itself was an external threat. Gordon-Cummings was its victim and was a fool for allowing himself to fall into the trap set for him. He probably believed a little more in British "justice" than he should have. It's hard to care much about anyone involved here - though the Prince of Wales was clearly a pig, and Gordon-Cumming's was likely not guilty. No one seems to have asked why the immensely popular and rich soldier would need to cheat, and its clear he was a pro at the game, playing in a style that was unorthodox, but not illegal. This was a situation entirely caused by the idle rich failing to solve a problem, and enjoying the subsequent gossip and shock while plunging headlong into scandal.

What of Michael Scott's book itself? It has all the information, but attempts to draw out new information and details add little to the story itself. Whether Gordon-Cummings was an agent of British Intelligence seems besides the point, and irrelevant. The back story that Scott provides to all the characters is overwhelming and adds little. It simply serves to show the author has read lots. There's a surprising reliance on US newspaper reports of the trial, rather than British acounts - which seems to place it a little third hand. There is also a typographical problem where the extended quotations are not distinguishable from the main text, leaving the reader a little confused between what are Scott's words and those of his sources. This, I suspect, is a problem with print-on demand books.

Ultimately the real meat of the story ought to be a critique of the establishment and its struggle to protect its own. I agree with Scott's conclusion that Gordon-Cummings was probably innocent, but in many ways that's actually irrelevant. I'd have preferred a deeper discussion of what the trial, and scandal, told us about wider Victorian society. That said, at least one journalist of the time quoted by Scott, understood some of what the trial exposed, though Scott just says this is "predictable" from the press on that side of the Atlantic:

No Magistrate thinkgs of arresting him [Prince of Wales] for doing what an ordinary gambler would be sent to prison for doing. When he enters court to give testimony concerning his law breaking, the entire audience rises to receive him, and he is placed on a bench beside the judge as an honoured guest. And when his gambling losses and his other squanderings bring him into trouble, he asks the bread-earners of Great Britain to pay his debts for him. How long are the 'plain people' of Great Britain going to stand the false system which makes of this gambler, debauchee, and idler, teir destined ruler, and exalts him to the headship of both the Church and the State?

How long indeed.

One footnote of interest to those of us more interested in social history of the period. One of the guests at Tranby House was the socialite Daisy Brook, known as "Babbling Brook" for her love of gossip, and mistress of the Prince of Wales. Brook was known as something of a lefty, and when she became Countess of Warwick, was the person who helped the agricultural trade unionist Joseph Arch to publish his memoirs and wrote an introduction to his autobiography.