Iain Fenlon - Piazza San Marco

The heart of Venice, the Piazza San Marco is properly considered one of the most beautiful centres of a city anywhere. Its history is inseparable from the history of Venice - it is here that city leaders met, invading armies occupied, rebellions focused and visitors - pilgrims at first and tourists in more recent times - have gathered in their millions.

For the author though, there is a dangerous tendency to see the Piazza simply as a lovely square surrounded by individual buildings - the Doges' Palace, the Basilica of San Marco and the Campanile tower for instance. Rather, he argues, we should see them as a collective whole that has evolved over time, to encapsulate Venice as a place with a history.

This history is surprisingly complex, though mostly it centers on Venice's unique geographical position that allowed its merchants to become fat on the wealth generated from being a maritime power near the juncture of the West and the East. Its Churches brought in wealth by becoming the focus for pilgrimages to see the extensive collection of relics. Today less than 60,000 people live in the city. The millions of tourists are served by a visiting population, unable to afford to live in the city, but their dollars or Euros are no less sucked up by the city.



In some ways, Venice is remarkably artificial. No more so than in the constant worry that it will sink beneath the lagoon if left to nature. But its history is also unnatural. To justify their wealth and power, the city's rulers had to invent a host of traditions and myths to explain the city. Many of these lasted centuries, even now receiving an echo in tourist guides.

Fenlon shows how the city's decline in the Napoleonic era led to its re-discovery by modern artists and writers, for whom Venice came to symbolise some mythical romantic ideal. The city being "raised from the spoils of the teeming Orient" wrote Disraeli. But for others the city symbolised decadence and decay, perhaps most artfully visualised in Visconti's film of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice.

Today Venice is the ultimate tourist trap. Its history seems oddly remote and immaterial, a backdrop to a ornate decorations and art collections. Iain Fenlon has done a service to bring it to life for the casual reader and for those who would like to visit the city and have some idea of whence it came.

Related Reviews in the Wonders of the World series

Tillotson – Taj Mahal
Goldhill - The Temple of Jerusalem
Gere - The Tomb of Agamemnon
Ray - The Rosetta Stone
Hopkins & Beard - The Colosseum

Tim Butcher - Blood River

When I first looked at this book, I thought that it was a classic case of a journalist with a bit of knowledge about one part of the world, concocting an excuse to write a book about it. However, it does seem, that Tim Butcher's fascination with the Congo river and the country that surrounds it is absolutely genuine. As a journalist on the Daily Telegraph he takes the incredibly dangerous decision to follow in the footsteps of an earlier writer for that journal, Henry Stanley.

Stanley of course, famously found David Livingstone and made his fame bringing the story back to the world of the White European. Slightly less famously, Stanley then set in motion the processes that would allow many of those same white Europeans to take control of, and make fortunes from the people, country and mineral wealth of the Congo.

The Congo suffered greatly when the Europeans finally relinquished control. Butcher tells the story of the countries decline as it's initial post-colonial state was quickly consumed by coups, war and bloodletting. At the heart of much of this was the areas mineral wealth, desired by both superpowers. The Congo never really ceased to be anything but a pawn of outside interests, and the country that Butcher decides to cross is far from safe terrain for outsiders. In places the UN maintain a token presence, as do various NGOs, but this poor, internally divided country is difficult to travel in.

What I like about Tim Butcher's writing is that he starts from the fascinating history of the country and its people. He is openly honest when he views the relics of colonial rule and wonders how it is a country can regress so rapidly. He doesn't fall into the trap of thinking that Colonial rule was necessarily a better time, though he meets many who do think this.

But as he drives across former major roads and finds them little more than paths in the jungle, sees once mighty ships rusting on the shore, or sees railway stations were no train has arrived for years, he finds himself wondering why it is some former colonies threw off their masters and found fortune and others didn't. (I suspect that answer is that places like the Congo never really escaped the era of Colonial Rule and the Imperialism that followed it - the mineral wealth under the ground was too important, then and now).

He recognises though that the Congo had it worst;

"Those sniffy British Colonial types might not like to admit it but the Congo represents the quintessence of the entire continent's colonial experience. It might be extreme and it might be shocking, but what happened in the Congo is nothing but colonialism in its purest basest form."

His journey is full of fascinating people many of whom have little to give, but offer all the help they can. Often they do so with no thought of reward, though most of them clearly think he is insane for attempting the trek. His record of the history of the place, the damage done since independence and the exploitation taking place by major multinationals that leaves no wealth for the inhabitants today is an excellent introduction to this part of the world.

Related Reviews

Pakenham - The Scramble For Africa

Jonathan Swift - Gulliver's Travels

Few readers can have failed to have heard the basic tenets of Gulliver's Travels. Written in the 1700s, it follows the voyages of Lemuel Gulliver as he, through a series of misfortunes, finds himself at a variety of stragen lands, populated by even stranger creature.

Most people will have heard of Lilliput - the first land that Gulliver arrives at, where the inhabitants are tiny - six inches or so - but have built a complex civilisation. Gulliver befriends Lilliput's King and in a series of conversations illuminates both his one country's society and the newley discovered one.

The author of course, uses the differing scale between Gulliver and the inhabitants of Lilliput to great comic effect. Some of this is moral questioning, some of it is humourous. Some of it is simple bawdy slapstick - as in the musings that Gulliver gives to the problem of his excretment for a civilisation of such small people.

Eventually, Gulliver upsets the status quo - society can deal with a giant, but not one who breaks social taboos (even accidently). He is forced to flee Lilliput.

The next destination for Gulliver is much less well-known. His voyage to Brobdingnag - a land of giants, as large to Gulliver as he was to the people of Lilliput, allows for further humour, social discourse and comments on the nature of Gulliver's own society. If the children's version of Gulliver's Travels omit the problems of Gulliver's waste in Lilliput, they surely omit the description of the maids in the royal court of Brobdingnag, who appear to use the naked Gulliver as a type of sex toy.

As Gulliver makes further voyages his becomes less of a proponent of the superior nature of English society with it's class system, laws and religious codes, and becomes more and more cynical about human nature. I won't give away the ending, but by the time that we (and Gulliver) reach the end of his voyages, our traveller has effectively given up all hope for man-kind, as well as any desire to spend time with them.

Jonathan Swift's book has, I suspect, spent too much time being read as a humourous account of fantastic voyages. It is really a powerful social critique of human society. From our petty religious squabbles (mirrored by the Lilliputten wars over which end of an boiled egg to start at) to the incomprehensibility of lawyers and our legal system to a society where lying is unknown, this pokes fun at every aspect of our lives. It entertained hundreds of thousands when it was first published and even now has the power to bring a wry smile to anyone out there who reads it today, in our more enlightened times.

Fitzroy Maclean – Eastern Approaches

I suspect that few boys have read the novels of Rider Haggard through the years and not dreamed that they would one day cross deserts, fight in battles and explore strange countries. The reality of escapist adventure though, is that it is the stuff of dreams, not normal life and the closest most people get to adventure is running for the bus in the morning.

Fitzroy Maclean however was a real life adventurer. His career reads like the mad out-pourings of a Victorian thriller writer, but in the early 1930s he had travels and adventures that seem almost impossible.

Clearly born to the better end of society, Maclean joined the Diplomatic Service with a view to serving the British Empire. In his early twenties, he yearned to visit the Soviet Union, and surprised many by volunteering to work at the embassy in Moscow. It wasn’t a popular destination and he was able to get posted there.

The first pages of the book are his fascinating account of his train journey from Paris to Moscow. Once there, he interspersed his diplomatic work with barely legal trips into the Russian east. He visits Kazakstan, Samarkand, Baku and many other famous (but by then almost impossible destinations). Along the way he dodges the Soviet agents sent to track him down, meets all manner of locals and uses every dodge he can come up with the see parts of the world few westerners could visit.

While in Moscow, during a break from his adventurers, he witnesses the final show trial, at which Stalin consolidated his power. The chapter describing the “Trial of the Twenty-One” is a must for anyone interested in socialist history, describing as it does the great lengths that Stalin was prepared to go to, in order to destroy his opponents, and the manner in which friend became victim. Of the twenty one on trial, Maclean devotes some time to Nikolai Bukharin, once a leading Bolshevik intellectual who capitulated to Stalinism. Maclean describes how Bukharin repeatedly runs rings around the prosecutor's invented stories, but is unable to break out, fearing, Maclean feels, to criticise the Soviet Union even though it had by then strayed far from the orginial socialist vision.

Few were brave enough to believe that Stalin had destroyed genuine socialism, like Trotsky argued. But Maclean shows that even when they had been completely crushed, the old revolutionary spirit could still show itself.

At the outbreak of World War Two Maclean is back in London and discovers he is unable to join the military due to his important foreign office role. Discovering a loop-hole that means he cannot remain in his post if he stands for electoral office, he resigns to fight a seat for the Tories and wins. Soon after becoming an MP he is called up for service and ends up in the Western Deserts of Libya with the SAS and the Long Range Desert Group.

Further “boys own” adventures occur, until he is plucked out of this hell hole and parachuted into Yugoslavia on the personal orders of Winston Churchill to aid and abet the guerilla forces sabotaging the German war effort there.

Maclean quickly becomes indespensible to Tito the Guerilla leader as a conduit for weapons and resources and spends the rest of the war fighting with the partisans against the Germans. He is even present with a British Jeep at the Russian liberation of Belgrade.

Fitzroy Maclean, SAS soldier, Tory MP, friend of Churchill and Tito lead a life full of excitement and adventurer. His book is a fascinating insight into the nuances of an amazing period of history, even if his ideas and politics aren’t something that I can share. I recommend it as a piece of history as well as adventure.

Christina Hardyment - Arthur Ransome and Captain Flint's Trunk

One of the hardest things about loving the novels by Arthur Ransome as a child, was not being able to sail, or even having access to a boat, apart from the occasional rowing trip on the pond in the local park. Novels like Swallows and Amazons, Peter Duck and We Didn't mean to Go to Sea were books to stimulate the imagination and let a young reader dream about sailing across the oceans.

There is no doubt that Ransome would have wanted that - it's clear from the biographical details in this book that he loved children as well as boats and fishing. His novels, we discover are populated with friends and family either as exact duplicates or amalgamations. The fascination of discovering that there really was someone who inspired the Swallows and the Amazons is only tempered by the excitement at the knowledge that Wild Cat island and similar places are real places.

Ransome of course would have enjoyed the fact that the boats and ships that inspired, Swallow, Amazon and Captain Flint's houseboat still exist and in the case of the later, still ply Lake Coniston.

Christina Hardyment has written a book that is nothing less than her Odyssey to find the places that inspired Arthur Ransome. He comes across as a larger than life character, a journalist prepared to suffer for his craft, but one to whom the good things in life are very important. While in Russia during the revolution, he found time to fall in love (and eventually marry) Trotsky's secretary and play chess with Lenin. He got a boat built and sailed it back to England, with adventures along the way. While expressing sympathies with the Russian Revolution, his friends and family clearly came from the well-off members of those that England sent abroad to manage her Empire, and the letters sent to him are full of fascinating details written by those who missed mucking about on boats in the Lake District.

For those who loved the novels Ransome wrote, there is much here to supplement them. Including, for instance, the missing chapter of Peter Duck that explains why the adventure doesn't really fit with the "reality" of the children's lives. The pictures illuminate Ransome's creative process - photos of people mimicking the poses needed to illustrate the books, and I liked the detail that Ransome went to, to ensure that the stories were accurate.

Finally back in print after many years, this is well worth grabbing, particularly if you hope to visit Swallows and Amazon country.


Related Reviews

Chambers - The Last Englishman: The Double Life of Arthur RansomeRansome - We Didn't Mean to go to Sea
Ransome - Missee Lee
Ransome - Peter Duck

Paul Theroux – The Old Patagonian Express

A few months back I reviewed Paul Theroux’s book about travelling from Cairo to Cape town overland – “Dark Star Safari”, since I enjoyed it so much I took this much earlier book of his on holiday with me recently.

Much of what I thought about Theroux’s writing while reading the Africa book is true of this one, though he clearly has developed as a writer and commentator since the 1970s! Indeed, some of the best aspects of Theroux’s commentary is readily evident when describing his travels through central and Southern America – if anything his wit and cynicism were tougher.

The 1970s must have been an interesting time to travel in South America – the region was then, as now, an area of great interest to the USA, and its interventions in places like Chile had led to much blood being spilt. Unsurprisingly, the people that Theroux meets are very much caught up in the debates about democracy and dictatorship and one can’t help thinking that a similar trip today (from Boston in the USA to the tip of Argentina) would allow for even more debates about dictatorship and popular rule – particularly given current events in Brazil, Venuzala and Bolivia.

Sometimes I found Theroux a little to cynical and jaded though – his hated of tourists is there for everyone to see, clearly hating the few conversations he is forced to have. Though occasionally he meets someone he has great respect for. The one thing that I disliked more than anything though, was his disregard for the “locals”. This is not something I remembered from Dark Star Safari, though it seriously jars in this earlier book.

At one point he mocks a fellow traveller (a beef trader in Argentina) for only reading a comic book “Comics are for kids and illiterates” he wants to say. Later he meets a young man (though Theroux patronisingly calls him a “boy”) who has been serving on a merchant ship for two years. They discuss their travels and the sailor describes how much he disliked South Africa.

“Very pretty, but the society there is cruel. You won’t believe me, but they have signs here and there that say ‘Only for whites’ You won’t believe me…. Strange isn’t it And most of the people are black!” He reported this more in wonderment than in outrage, but he added that he did not approve.

Theroux (or rather the Theroux of the late 1970s) is mocking and patronising at this instinctive hated of racism and Apartheid. “I was encouraged that a Patagonian with no education could show such discernment” he writes.

Since racism is irrational and Apartheid was based on lies and violence, I’d be more surprised if a young man didn’t show a dislike for what he’d seen in South Africa, yet Theroux falls into the travellers’ trap of forgetting that a lack of book learning is not necessarily the same as ignorance.

On the whole though, such criticisms aside, Theroux is a good writer and a good companion for travel – his own instinctive dislike of imperialism and cynicism towards big business and governments places him a cut above other travel writers. I’d hate to share a train carriage with him (and no doubt he would resent my own presence) but his books are fine in my rucksack.

Related Reviews

Theroux - Riding the Iron Rooster - By Train through China
Theroux - Dark Star Safarai
Theroux - The Great Railway Baazar

Paul Theroux - Dark Star Safari (*)

One of the amusing things about Theroux’s travels across the continent of Africa by land (and at a couple of boats), is the way that when he reaches South Africa after many weeks of travelling, acquaintances of his introduce him to others with the words “he came from Cairo, by bus!”

This sense of amazement is perhaps natural. Too many people think of Africa as one place – a single country maybe, with a single people. Of course is is anything but, and Theroux’s travels make this clear.

Because Theroux has a history in Africa – he served with the Peace Corps there in the 1960s, in Malawi, he has the language and the confidence to travel in places that many would ignore. But more than that he offers a unique insight into the changes that have taken place in the continent and the things that have remained the same.

Rarely does Theroux express any disgust – except for those charity do-gooders who believe that they can save Africa with more and more aid. He meets many people who point to the bureaucracy and corruption that eat away at donated money. He meets many more people who point the out how simply throwing money around isn’t enough – there has to be a longer term strategy and charity treats the symptoms not the cause.

However, I found the book confusing at times. Not least because Theroux’s writing style is bitty and simple – anecdotes are short and minimal. I was left often wondering what else happened. But perhaps this is a minor complaint about a book that treats the people and environment of Africa honestly, rather than simply viewing the place as somewhere for our sympathy and charity.

(*) Overland from Cairo to Cape Town

Iain Banks - Raw Spirit

There comes a time (or a book) in most author's canon, when devoted readers realise that the author they have loved for a long time isn't perfect. I well remember the moment I realised as a teenager that Robert Heinlein wasn't the amazing visionary I'd thought, but a rather bigoted dirty old man.

Iain Banks will never be described like that. Nor, I hope, will the rest of his literary output sink as low in my opinion as this one.

"Raw Spirit" is a travel book about drink and life. It's subtitled "In search of the perfect dram", and is about Banks' journey around the Scottish distilleries that produce, with centuries old practices and care, his favourite tipple.

Unfortunately, while the book has many interesting points and amusing anecdotes. That's really all it has got. It reads a bit like the conversation a sober person has with a close friend who has drank too much. So Banks' rambling anecdotes are amusing, but only as amusing as those that every group of friends has.

The interesting bits of history of the various glens, towns and distilleries are short and far between. And you have to be a real "petrol-head" to find the overlong eulogies to cars, motorbikes and roads of any real interest.

Banks rightly wears his politics on his sleeve. He's an unreconstructed socialist, and he polemicises against the Iraq war throughout the book (though there is little new here, and at times you feel that Banks was the only one who opposed the conflict).

This opposition is good, but it tends to get on your nerves as he discusses once again how much money he's spent on drink, cars, motorbikes and the like - this is hardly a book for the working-class Glaswegian who likes whiskey and wants to find the perfect dram - I suspect they'll go away feeling slightly worthless.

It's a real shame the book turned out like this, I suspect it was envisaged very different, it's a long way from Iain Banks' novels in style and substance and I can only hope that his latest offering, The Algebraist is a return to form.