Elmore Leonard - Glitz

In some ways this is a fairly bog standard detective thriller, but because it reads so easily, and seems to have avoided some of the cliches, it's better than you might think. According to Wikipedia, Leonard's "two major influences" are Gangsters and the Detroit Tigers baseball team. But the latter is absent totally from the novel, and the former is only there in passing.

In common with many writers in this genre, Leonard seems to avoid complicated character portrayal, except with his hero. Everyone else is either a bad, corrupt flawed person or an innocent waiting to be hurt. Needless to say the good guy prevails.

Unusually for this type of book, there are some memorable scenes. For instance, the moment when the hero, Vincent, takes the ashes of the murdered woman he loved, home to her family...

"Vincent presented the stainless steel urn to the grandmother. She hesitated before taking it and passed it on quickly as she saw her reflection in the polished metal. Each woman in turn looked away to avoid seeing herself in the urn, passing it on and making the sign of the cross"

Sometimes, detective fiction can try to hard to emulate the observational writing style of an author like Raymond Chandler, but at least in this case it doesn't feel too forced.

This book also has the perfect nasty evil bloke. Terry, the murderous rapist, some of who's crimes are a little to detailed here, is out to get his revenge on Vincent, who locked him up years before. The other characters revolve around this central theme like planets around the sun, affecting the courses of the main protagonists, but never really coming into proper sight. It makes for a enjoyable, but ultimately predictable read.

Robert Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land

Recently I briefly mentioned Robert Heinlein in a post, and following on from that and a comment made by Stefanie I decided to re-read "Stranger in a Strange Land" [SIASL] a book that I was very impressed with as a teenager, and certainly, from my later reading of Heinlein, probably his best.

Heinlein uses the story of Michael Valentine Smith in two ways. Firstly he produces the interesting and clever story of the "Man from Mars" visiting Earth and struggling to comprehend human ways and then uses the story to criticise many aspects of society and secondly he uses the characters as a platform to expound his own ideas.

It should be said at this point, that many of Heinlein's criticisms of the role of church, organised religion and the state are ones I share, though I think his solutions and ideas (of rampant individualism, his sexism and his homophobia) are abhorrent to me. However, clearly as he was writing this, his own personal ideologies haven't been fully fleshed out, and this makes SIASL somewhat less heavy going then some of his later novels (Too Sail Beyond the Sunset in particular).

The book is well written, but a bit like struggling through treacle in places (did I really read all the long sermons that Jubal - Heinlein personified - gives in my teenage years?)

The basic story is good and holds up well compared to more modern Sci-Fi, when you clear the junk away in your head, and certainly there is much here that will upset and shock those high-up in the church.

Heinlein predicted the world of huge televised churches and rich super-preachers of today. As an aside, I am surprised by how badly Heinlein predicted the society of the near future. His characters still use faxes, computers receive only a single mention, and any idea of person to person communication, surely one of the easiest things to predict, is absence. Also, the idea that they send humans to Mars, before robot probes made me laugh. But in Heinlein's defence he wasn't writing THAT sort of Sci-Fi.

All in all this is still an interesting read, holding up well compared to Sci-Fi today. It's chief interest though, is as a starting point for Heinlein's political trajectory, which ended with him writing some dreadfully reactionary old tosh. Though there are glimmers of this. This quote by the character Jill shocked me as I didn't remember reading it before. It gives an idea of where Heinlein was heading.

"Nine times out of ten, if a girl gets raped, it's at least partly her own fault"

Angus Calder - The Myth of the Blitz

What springs to mind when you you hear about the Blitz? Probably, if you have lived in Britain for any length of time, you'll imagine chirpy cockneys standing together against the might of Hitler's armies. You might well think of pictures of the contrails caused by the dogfights as Spitfires battled Messerschmitts in glorious sunny skies over Kent.

Even if you don't think of these things, you'll have heard of them, and you will also have heard of the way that the whole of England pulled together and stood united, uncomplaining against the common foe.

Angus Calder's book "The Myth of the Blitz" would no doubt leave many retired colonels spluttering into their Daily Telegraphs, because he seeks to examine the story of the Blitz, as it is normally told, and unsurprisingly he finds that it is not without fault.

First and foremost he demolishes the idea of unity. Firstly the idea of class unity is taken apart - unsurprisingly the workers worked longer and harder, and suffered more (no deep bomb shelters for the East Enders, the tube stations had to be occupied, in a struggle often led by the Communist Party).

Calder examines how the "Myth" was created, even as the battles and bombings were being fought. From the moment Churchill made his speeches (hated by many in the Tory party) he was part of weaving a story, backed up by the media and filmmakers, of plucky little England.

It's interesting for instance, how even shortly after the Battle of Britain, observers describe the lovely summer, even though the weather was unusually bad. This is important, because it shows how quickly particular images and ideas took root in popular consciousness.

Calder uses many little examples to proves his sweeping points (how many fishermen refused to travel to Dunkirk, and how even the ones that did helped little - but that doesn't stop the myth of the small ships being created). He then discusses the idea of "Deep England" as the backbone to the myth, from both the left and the right.

This part is much harder to totally agree with. The theory is that a vision of England as a pastoral, classless country with thatched roofs and small villages is what was created to try and pull the English together. No doubt there is some truth in this, but I think he gives it too much importance. You can read more in the Wikipedia article here.

Either way this is an important book, pulling away as it does the lies and half-truths told about one of the most important periods in recent English history and pointing the way to a better understanding of the social and political forces that ended up shaping the later half of the last century.

Related Reviews

Angus Calder - The People's War: Britain 1939 - 1945

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.

Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird

It is almost true to say that I was embarrassed into reading this book. I got sent one of those lists of "a hundred greatest novels" or something, and when I mentioned I hadn't read this to several people, I was mocked(!) for ignoring one of the greatest pieces of literature ever.

And indeed it is. It's an easy read, but filled with discussion points and great thoughts and ideas - a quick Google search on the title will bring you up dozens of pages discussing it, because it is so often (in Britain at least) picked for English students.

It centres on attitudes to racism, through a rape trial in a small town in the Deep South. What makes it superb, is that the racism, and the attitudes of the townsfolk - racist, liberal or black are described through the naive but hopeful eyes of Scout, an eight year old girl.

Scout's innocence helps emphasise the absurdity and awfulness of racism, and makes the outcome of the trail even more distinct.

Read this novel before you're embarrassed too. Oh, anyone know if it's ever taught in the Deep South today?

Peter Linebaugh & Marcus Rediker - The Many Headed Hydra

As he stood on the scaffold waiting to hang for his part in trying to organise a revolutionary army to seize power in London and declare a republic, in February 1803, Col. Edward Despard made this powerful speech

“Fellow citizens, I come here…after serving my country – faithfully, honourably…for thirty years and upwards to suffer death upon a scaffold for a crime of which I protest I am not guilty. I solemnly declare that I am no more guilty of it that any of you who may be hearing me.

But though his Majesty’s ministers know as well as I do that I am not guilty yet they avail themselves of a legal pretext to destroy a man, because he has been a friend to truth, to liberty and to justice. Because he has been a friend to the poor and the oppressed. But Citizens. I hope and tryst, notwithstanding my fate and the fate of those who no doubt will soon follow me, that the princriples of freedom, of humanity and of justice will finally triumph over falsehood, tyranny and delusion, and every principle inimical to the interests of the human race."

Despard was one in a long line of people who developed and fought for freedom and justice on both sides of the Atlantic. Linebaugh and Rediker’s book documents the forgotten stories of those who, from before the English revolution to the American war of independence and beyond believed that “the poorest man hath has true a title and just right to the land as the richest man”.

One of the most powerful sections in the book is the chapter on piracy – originally encouraged as a way of undermining Spanish power in the west Indies, the sailors of the British ships often realised that piracy was away out of their rotten life – often little more than slavery itself.


The pirates of history are not the stuff of Hollywood legends – rather their revolts produced democratic ships with captains accountable to crews and collective decision making. They also shared the spoils out properly – irrespective of the rank of crewman – or his colour.

This last point is important – many of the revolts, uprising and mutinies involved black, white and Indian standing shoulder to shoulder, at the height of slavery the poor of the world understood the need to stand together long before the Wilberforces of the world had ever thought through the moral rights and wrongs (Despard for instance had a black wife, who was a fellow campaigner and comrade for many years, at a time when many in "polite society" would have considered a black person fit only for servitude).

I can’t recommend this book enough. It is difficult in places – particularly if your knowledge of the English Revolution is limited as mine is to the battles between Parliament and Crown.

This is not surprising because this is how it is taught and the authors are trying to rescue a forgotten history. This is why one thing that may strike progressives today as unusual is the role of religion – the bible is quoted, read and debated time and time again.

But often the radicals of past centuries only had their religion and the bible to interpret the world with, and they searched hard to find the real meaning behind the words.

This is why so much of those who fled to the New World, fearing persecution at home, hoped that they could build a promised land. It wasn’t to be, but their half-forgotten struggles to build a new Jerusalem are brought to life by this excellent book, if only to inspire us to try again.

Related Reviews

Rediker - The Amistad Rebellion
Rediker - The Slave Ship
Rediker - Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
Rediker & Linebaugh - The Many Headed Hydra 

J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

A few days ago, I did a simple piece of original research - to see whether there were now more people reading the latest Harry Potter novel on the London Underground than people reading one of Dan Brown's awful bestsellers. I was pleased to note, that Harry Potter was winning.

Pleased, because I refuse to turn my nose up at Ms Rowling's creation. True, it's not great literature, true it's a children's series read avidly by adults. True, there are lots of things to be said about it's marketing, and I ain't convinced that simply getting more children to read Harry Potter improves their general consumption of books.

But there is no doubt that Harry Potter offers adults and children the thing that everyone needs once in a while - escapism.

These debates have been explored elsewhere, I don't want to repeat what others have said. So...how does the latest book compare and is it worth it? Well, it's fun in the way that the earlier books are. As other reviewers have said it's not as refined as the earlier ones, the themes are perhaps more adult-like (though the characters have now reached 16 and 17, so that's not surprising), in places it reads like it's been written more for the adult audience than younger readers.

But the main criticism I'd have and it's been made elsewhere is that this is a filler novel. It ties up some loose ends (creates a few more) and is all about setting the scene for the final book. Given that the wizarding world (and the human one too - we meet the British Prime Minister in the first couple of chapters) is entering the final showdown between good and evil, it was always going to be unlikely that too much of the novel would be taken up with the day to day goings on at Hogwarts, the wizard school.

So the termtime pattern from the earlier novels (arrival at Hogwarts, various birthdays, Quidditch matches and Christmas) is there more as a backdrop to the main story line. But Rowling has wisely kept this in, after all it's what made the earlier books so original and fascinating to the earlier readers. Some of it though is a little bit clumsey - there are a couple of things added in earlier in the book simply to make the ending work better, whats the old Latin phrase that sounds like a spell? Ah yes. Deux ex machina.

Ultimately of course, anyone who enjoyed the earlier books will read this and it's sequel. But I hope that Ms Rowling and her publisher don't rush the next one out. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince would have benefited from a little more work.

I'm not going to say more. If you like Potter, you'll read it. If you poo-poo it you won't and little I can say will change that.

William J Fishman - East End 1888

1888 was a monumental year for East London. It was the year "Jack the Ripper" brutalised prostitutes and brought the eyes of the world on an impoverished region. It was also the year of the "match girls strike" which ushered in New Unionism and changed forever the battle between employer and employees.

But William J Fishman's excellent work doesn't simply dwell on these famous events, rather he weaves those stories into a well researched and thoughtful account of what life was like in East London. In doing so, he illuminates both the world of Jack the Ripper and his victims and helps us understand why young girls would be employed in matchmaking and why they would strike in their hundreds.

Along the way we meet many famous people. Dr. Thomas Barnardo, William Morris, William Booth, Annie Besant and many others. Some of them deserve to be remembered, but not all. Dr. Barnardo shouldn't be considered a saint for helping children, but a man who would rather rip children from their roots and ship them off to work for a pittance in Canada, rather than attempt to solve the real causes of their poverty.

But the real heros have left precious few words for Fishman to quote. Rarely could the poor of East London read or write, and for his accounts we often have to rely on police and court reports, or statements of officals from the workhouse.

Life in 1888 for someone in East London was short and difficult. Housing was over expensive, crowded and unsuitable. Work was short, badly paid and the hours were long. For those who had no other option, the last choice was often the workhouse - were officials often treated you as the underdeserving poor, rather than the victim of circumstance.

Many people tried to challenge this poverty - some motivated by religious ideals, some by simple humanity, some for political reasons. There were those who campaigned against charity - both from the right and the left - and those who tried desperately to make a difference.

Fishman has to cover a lot of ground and in places you feel that you have only had a glimpse of what he could have said, the chapter on politics feels in my opinion very short. Though in Fishman's defence I should point out that his companion book, that I blogged about elsewhere, covers at least some aspects of this in far greater details.

But Fishman's work brings that year to life. Often what shines through is that the poorest of the poor in East London often had more morals and more solidarity than their "betters". The match girls who collect money to help one who has fallen on even harder times, the bystanders who help an escapee from the workhouse.

I'd recommend anyone interested in the real history of London, not that of Kings and Queens, to read this. After all, for all that has changed in East London, overcrowding, unemployment, poverty and the need for solidarity haven't entirely disappeared.

Related Reviews

Fishman - East End Jewish Radicals

Raymond Chandler - The Long Good-Bye

There are mystery writers and there are mystery writers. As far as I am concerned, you can take your Agatha Christie’s and your Hammett’s and your Elemore Leonard’s. There is only one murder mystery man for me – Raymond Chandler.

Chandler’s work appeals to me for many reasons – not least the resolute cynicism of his heroes, particularly Phillip Marlowe. People like Marlowe don’t have an easy time of it, they live in a world where the cops are all crooked, dames are either murderesses or seducers, and often both. Where rich men kill for money and the little people get trampled in the rush, where no one is any good, except possibly the hero, and he of course, is flawed.

His characters arrive and depart in a whiff of cigarette smoke (indeed I think Chandler spends more time describing the types of cigarettes his characters suck on, than the weather), and most take any opportunity they can to down a large tumbler of spirits.

But what makes Chandler’s work so utterly brilliant, is his writing. This is a long quote from “The Long Good-bye”, I’ve chosen it because it captures in a few paragraphs the essence of the world Chandler’s characters live in and the frantic desperation with which they live their lives.

“The bar was pretty empty. Three booths down a couple of sharpies were selling each other pieces of Twentieth Century Fox, using double arm gestures instead of money. They had a telephone on the table between them and every two or three minutes they would play the match game to see who called Zanuck with a hot idea. They were young, dark, eager, and full of vitality. They put as much muscular activity into a telephone conversation as I would put into carrying a far man up four flights of stairs.

There was a sad fellow over on a bar stool talking to the bartender, who was polishing a glass and listening with that plastic smile people wear when they are trying not to scream. The customer was middle-aged, handsomely dressed, and drunk. He wanted to talk and he couldn’t have stopped even if he hadn’t really wanted to talk. He was polite and friendly and when I heard him he didn’t seem to slur his words much, but you knew that he got up on the bottle and only let go of it when he fell asleep at night. He would be like that for the rest of his life and that was what his life was. You would never know how he got that way because even if he told you wit would not be the truth. At the very best a distorted memory of the truth as he knew it. There is a sad man like that in every quiet bar in the world.”

Anyone who has ever sat in a bar and watched the people in it will know someone like those Marlowe/Chandler is describing. Hell, you might even be one yourself, but I wonder as I re-read it, who the barman is, wearing “that plastic smile people wear when they are trying not to scream”. I don’t know anything about Chandler, but I get the impression that there is a little bit of himself in that barman - watching the world with a jaundiced, cynical eye as he tries not to scream.

"The Long Good-Bye" starts with a friendship, but betrayal follows murder, and is followed suicide. Chandler expertly weaves parallel storylines about and brings them together in a classic ending, which needless to say I won’t ruin for anyone. But ultimately “who dunnit” isn’t the point of novels like this. When you read them, you go along for the ride, not to puzzle it out. Just don’t try and sit at a bar drinking Gimlets as you do, or you’ll end up like a character in a book.

Ian Birchall - A Rebel's Guide to Lenin

I am pretty sure that there used to be a series of collected works by Lenin, called the "Little Lenin Library", though whether this was because of the physical size of the works, or the particular shortness of the articles chosen I have no idea. It certainly wasn't because they were aimed at children.

However, Ian Birchall's introduction to Lenin would certainly fit the description of "little". It's only fifty odd pages long, and a few inches in size. But in its small size, it covers a huge amount of ground and packs a hefty punch. This introduction is aimed at introducing a new layer of radicals to Lenin's thought and practice. Particularly those radicalised by the Stop the War movement and more recently the protests against the G8.

As such, Ian takes up some of the challenges thrown at Lenin within that movement - his supposed authoritarianism for instance. In this it is particularly good (well as good as you can taking up complex arguments in 50 pages). The work can only succeed in this - and at explaining Lenin's thought - by placing him in the context of the times he was active in, something particularly important with Lenin's work as he often wrote for the moment.

Birchall in no way looks at Lenin as some fountain of all knowledge. But nor is this a book full of gossip and slander at Lenin. Ian argues that there is nothing more important than building socialist organisation in the here and now and that Lenin can and must be a guide to this. This is a brilliant introduction to why and how. Don't be put off by its length.

Related Reviews

Bambery - A Rebel's Guide to Gramsci
Choonara - A Rebel's Guide to Trotsky
Orr - A Rebel's Guide to Women's Liberation
Gonzalez - A Rebel's Guide to Marx 

Yvonne Kapp - Eleanor Marx, family Life 1855 - 1883

Yvonne Kapp's two volume biography of Eleanor Marx is probably one of the least well known biographies but it deserves to be on every readers bookshelf, both leftie and not, for the simple reason that it is a fantastic study in the art of biography writing.

Eleanor Marx was Karl's third daughter. Her life was overshadowed by the activities of her father. But she carved an independence that is remembered, celebrated and praised by socialists to this day. Ultimately she became one of the foremost activists of her time, leading strikes and struggles and becoming the head of one of the largest of the "New" unions.

The first part of her life was marked by poverty. It is also inseparable from that of her father and wider family. Yvonne Kapp doesn't shy from explaining why Marx's work and life is more important during the first decade or so of Eleanor's life - not because Eleanor is boring, but because her own life's work was founded on the principles and ideas that her father worked out and outlined.

Indeed Eleanor's early life is amazing. She was intelligent and well educated, a friend to the countless people who passed through the Marx household. At an early age she joined demonstrations and spoke passionately about causes such as Ireland and freedom.

The biography is in two parts. The second half is going to be more exciting in some senses. The period of "New Unionism", William Morris, the Match Girls strike etc. But do not underestimate what you can learn and enjoy from an early life that included sheltering refugees from the Paris Commune and helping Karl Marx work in the British Library.

Ultimately Eleanor Marx will be remembered through this wonderful work. It is to Yvonne Kapp's credit that she keeps the essence alive of what made Eleanor such an incredible woman - her politics. The gossip, fabrications and discussions are there - after all it was snobbish Victorian England. One establishment 'lady' wrote that Eleanor Marx,

"Lives alone, is much connected with the Bradlaugh set, evidently peculiar views on love etc, and should think has somewhat 'natural' relations with me! Should fear that the chances were against her remaining long within the pale of respectable society".

But these details help illuminate the woman, rather than bore us with murky details. After all Eleanor Marx was someone who believed that humans can change the world they live in, and that they must be politically active to do so.

Full title - Eleanor Marx, family Life 1855 - 1883

Related Reviews

Mehring - Karl Marx - The Story of his Life 
Hunt - The Frock Coated Communist; The Revolutionary Life of Frederich Engels 

Daniel Guerin - Fascism and Big Business

The recent film “The Downfall” caused an interesting response from some reviewers. For so long, Hitler had been portrayed as a “monster” or the epitome of “evil”, that to see a film which portrayed the reality of his last days – with him talking, smiling and discussing the war, was unbelievable.

Surely Hitler was a foaming at the mouth madman, whose every word caused the impressionable German people to become Zombies, unable to think for themselves?

What caused this confusion was a misunderstanding amongst the reviewers about the nature of fascism, and the society it created. Daniel Guerin’s classic analysis of Fascism was first published before the war had ended. It looks at the rise of Fascism in both Germany and Italy, analysing the similarities and looking for clues to it’s real nature.

Firstly Guerin has to explain how both the Italian and German fascists conned people into supporting them, but also gathered the support of the big wheels of capitalism, themselves terrified of the consequences of economic devastation and working class revolution.

Fascism offered everything to everyone. To the peasants and small farmers it offered land and an end to the burden of taxes. To the small businessmen and shopkeepers it offered stability and better prices. To the working men it offered jobs and a stable economy. To big business it guaranteed profits and the end of the “class struggle”.

To get the support of the lower classes it had to appear to be challenging the existing status-quo, that is why the speeches of Hitler and Mussolini in the early years of their careers are peppered with promises to end the tyranny of capitalism. But at the same time they promised to make the world even better for the masters of big business.

Guerin shows how once in power, Fascism immediately turns it’s back on the workers, peasants and small business men. Destroying jobs, smashing unions, breaking agreements and giving concessions and tax breaks to large land owners and big businesses. There are some incredible statistics to show just how much wages fell. While it is true that unemployment collapsed, this is partly do to whole sections of workers becoming ineligible for work. But it is also because the regimes started huge building projects (roads, railways etc) to create work, employing people on pittance wages and because of the expansion of the arms industry in both Italy and Germany.

It’s might be surprising to someone whose sole knowledge of Nazi Germany is the holocaust and the massacre of some 10 million people in concentration camps, that Guerin spends little time mentioning this side to the regimes. But this is because Guerin is partly looking at one aspect of those regimes, and partly because he is trying to explain the fundamental nature of Fascism – that it is a ideology directed at stabilising capitalism, using the adherence of large sections of the middle class population to get it’s support. It wins that adherence through racism – towards Jews in the case of 1930s Germany.

This is much clearer in Italy, where the stronger working-class movement and the Capitalist fear of revolution in the early 1920s meant that Fascism was much more explicitly anti-working class, only taking up the mantel of racism much later on.

Guerin’s work is a superb introduction to these regimes. It’s difficult to read at times – there is lots of empirical evidence to plough through, but it’s worth the effort to uncover a frequently ignored aspect to Hitler and Mussolini’s regimes.

Related Reviews

Paxton - The Anatomy of Fascism
Kershaw - To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949

Ed McBain - Long Time No See

Ed McBain stands out as a detective writer - not because of his gigantic output, though that is impressive - he wrote literally dozens of short novels set in the fictitious 87th precinct.

In my opinion McBain stands out because he looks at the world of police work, with the jaundiced eye of someone who has seen the real world, and it's people, and knows that it hurts.

His characters are very often ordinary working class people, living their lives in shitty, dull, boring jobs on the edge of respectability, and sometimes slipping over it. The criminals victims are Vietnam vets, prostitutes, low paid workers and factory fodder.

Of course, being police procedural novels, they concentrate on murder and violent crime. But the characters - mainly the detectives who staff the precincts unresourced and outdated police stations, grow older, marry, fight and complain. This is the real world.

But McBain is at his best when he looks at how crime isn't something special, murder isn't unusual - it's inherent in a society that alienates and atomises the individuals, putting the importance of money above the needs of the individuals, and his policemen pick up the pieces and almost always get their men, but can only rail impotently at the far greater crime going on.

Richard Morgan - Woken Furies

I have to admit that I really like Richard Morgan's SF. This admission is important, because what I am about to say may sound like I hate it.

Apart from the fact that one of his central thesis' seems to me to be so implausible, that no technology of the future can ever make it happen - that a human's consiousness and memories can be stored electronically for retrieval at a latter date - I really like the gritty, dirty, realism of Morgan's futures.

Ok, so the best SF of recent years has shied away from glorious future utopian worlds where robots serve your every whim, and men are men and women beautiful. Morgon does the exact opposite. The future is filled with war, revolution, bloodshed and violence, though his men are still men and the women beautiful.

But his stories. Well, there I have a problem. I just can't seem to follow the plot. It all fairly races along, you meet characters, like them, dislike them, then they are killed and the plot twists and turns like a worm in soapy water. Christ knows what's happening, but it all seems quite fun. Anyhow there it is. I'm sure it's a great SF if you can work out what is going on. But it's riveting none the less.

H. G. Wells - The History of Mr. Polly

When Leon Trotsky described the people who made up the mass backbone of the Fascist movements of Europe in the 1930s, he wrote:

"On the scales of election statistics, one thousand Fascist votes weigh as much as a thousand Communist votes. But on the scales of the revolutionary struggle, a thousand workers in one big factory represent a force a hundred times greater than a thousand petty officials, clerks, their wives and their mothers-in-law. The great bulk of the Fascists consists of human dust."

This "human dust", these clerks and petty officials etc, by and large came from the mass of the middle classes, desenfranchised and ruined by the economic collapse of the early 1930s. The Middle Class, Trotsky went on to argue spends much of it's time economically on the edge. Small changes in the economy can ruin them easily. The very nature of their employment and livelihoods mean they have little collective means to organise - often (as shown in this novel), the small business men and shopkeepers have nothing but contempt for their fellows.

H.G. Wells' novel doesn't deal with the rise of Fascism. Nor even does it deal with economic collapse. Instead, his book about the life of Mr. Polly, is about how empty life can be. How hard you have to work to make a living, and how little satisfaction you gain from it. How difficult it is to break out of your existence, or change the it's direction. How huge and powerful the forces ranged against little you are.

Mr. Polly, eventually does find a way out. He runs away into the idylic English countryside and finds the life he craved. I don't know if Wells' really that men like Mr. Polly were the reality, or that such succesful "escapism" was a route out of alienation or poverty for the majority of people, certainly it seems a perculiarly "English" notion of redemption.

The History of Mr. Polly, was written in 1910. It predates World War One and the rise of Fascism, and World War II. But you can't help but feel that Mr. Polly was really lucky. A few years later, he might well have found himself in the midst of a far bigger malestrom.

Poppy Z. Brite - Swamp Foetus

Some things are best left in the past. When I first read Poppy Z Brite, her books captured that strange fixation of the late 80s and early 90s with vampires, ghosts and the gothic horror, mixed with the emerging internet age. Very exciting. She also wrote about gay sex and a generation of goths probably thought she should be made queen or something.

Two of her novels are absolute gems. Drawing Blood and Lost Souls are by turns erotic, scary and exciting. Swap Foetus is more of the same in short story format, with consequently less character development and less plot.

Most of the stories are readable. Some are violent. Many try to have a twist at the end, but to be honest only the most naive of readers won't see what's coming. So I have to express my disappointment - after reading the two aforementioned novels years back, I pounced on this with glee upon seeing it in a second hand book shelf. I would have preferred to have kept the pleasant memories of her previous novels intact by not reading this.

Robert Graves – Claudius the God

This, the sequel to the magnificent “I Claudius” deserves to be reviewed differently to it’s predecessor. While there is little doubt in my mind that the first is a better novel, this book deals with much bigger issues and given the limits the author found imposed by history and his sources, it does so very well.

Claudius, history tells us, became Emperor of Rome after the justifiable murder of Caligula, and this book explores the realities of that reign through the eyes of Claudius himself. Here is the first contradiction – Claudius (as many emperors before him) is a committed Republican, longing for a return to the golden age of the Roman Republic, but constrained by existing circumstances. His initial plan to refuse the throne, is quickly blocked by reality, as he realises this would result in his own death and civil war for the empire. For British readers, Claudius is also important as the emperor who finally subdued the rebellious people of Britain.

Claudius spends the next 14 years of his reign trying to solve this contradiction – that the absolute power granted in the hands of a monarch cannot be resolved with his belief in democracy and republicanism. Granted, he attempts to be a “good” emperor. He repairs and rebuilds the damage wrought by years of misrule, but he cannot escape the fact that his total power enables him to right personal wrongs and deal his own brand of justice.

Ultimately you feel that Claudius becomes what he despises. An Emperor more concerned with spectacle, rather than honest rule. In that he is nothing more than a victim of his circumstance. Indeed the last months of his rule are marked by the fact that he really doesn’t rule anymore – letting others, freedmen and his fourth wife govern in his name. At the end, you feel that the sympathy you felt for the somewhat unlikely commentator on history from the first book is overshadowed by what he has become. In trying to select his son as his heir rather than the brash individual that became Emperor Nero, Claudius says it rather well

“I knew that Nero is fated to rule as my successor, carrying on the cursed business of monarchy, fated to Plague Rome and earn everlasting hatred, to be the last of the mad Caesars. Yes we are all mad, we Emperors. We begin sanely like Augustus and Tiberius and even Caligula ..... And monarchy turns our wits.”

Claudius (and we must presume Robert Graves) is using the old argument that power corrupts. Since the Roman Republic was never restored, even though many continued to proclaim its importance and necessity, it’s hard to argue anything different. Once again a fantastic novel and a great introduction to a confusing but important period of Roman history.

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Graves - I Claudius

Miroslav Verner - The Pyramids - Their Archaeology and History

For thousands of years people have travelled to Egypt to see the pyramids. Even when first built they must have attracted visitors from far and wide. These gigantic monuments that were thousands of years old when the ancient Greeks and Romans went to Egypt still have an unbelievable power to impress.

It seems that there is no end to the interest that the Pyramids, and ancient Egyptian society can generate - is there ever a day when the History channel doesn't have a programme about their mysteries? How many DVDs, books and films have been made?

Miroslav Verner is at the cutting edge of archaeological research into the Pyramids. For many years he has headed up the Czech research team at Abu Sir, a pyramid site 30 or so kilometres south of Cairo. His book is an attempt to bring together everything that we know about these monuments and the society that built them.

This is a massive task and credit should be due to Verner for making it so readable. Given the limited knowledge we can have about a civilisation that existed 5000 years ago, Verner lets us know precisely what is known, and were there is doubt, he explains the theories and ideas that exist.


While nothing can prepare anyone for the first time they see the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, or the Great Pyramid rising above Cairo's outskirts, Verner certainly creates an exciting read though - even when describing an empty tomb, you can smell the musty air! If there is one criticism of this book, there is too much detail about the number of rooms and corridors in some of the monuments - but this isn't a book aimed at the amateur - this is a text book and that needs to be taken into account by the reader. Saying that, Verner isn't above the odd bit of humour - like when he points out that while previous archaeologists used dynamite and slave labour to enter the tombs, this isn't standard practise these days.

It is unfortunate that Verner has to spend the last chapter of this work dismissing the lunatic ideas and theories that abound about the pyramids - but he does it with the same care and humour that he uses when telling us about burial procedures and discussing the methods that Egyptian builders may have used.

If you ever go to Egypt, take this book with you. There's nothing quite like seeing the Pyramids, except perhaps knowing exactly what you are looking at and there aren't many books that will make you feel as knowledgeable about the pyramids as this one.

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Romer - History of Ancient Egypt vol. 1
Romer - History of Ancient Egypt vol. 2

Dieter Kurth - The Temple of Edfu - A guide by an Ancient Egyptian Priest

The huge ancient Egyptian temple at Edfu in southern Egypt must be one of the best-preserved places of the many impressive buildings that have survived from that ancient civilisation. The temple is dedicated to the god Horus, and took many decades to build.

One of the unique aspects to the building is a long inscription, over 300 metres of hieroglyphics, around the wall of the temple. This inscription, made by an anonymous Egyptian priest are of great importance because they describe the building in great detail. It’s dimensions, it’s shape and layout, the purpose of the rooms.

The text’s language is strange to read, mingling references to kings and gods in an almost poetic way, which requires a detailed understanding of ancient Egyptian beliefs and history to get more than a rudimentary enjoyment and knowledge from it.

But this in itself is fascinating – the way clearly the Egyptians believed that there was a duality between rulers on Earth, and the Gods themselves. Dieter Kurth has done amateur Egyptologists a favour by bringing this fascinating text together with maps and a history of the temple. Kurth’s introduction to the history of Edfu’s exploration by later archaeologists and the role of religion in ancient Egyptian society is also very useful. He also documents and builds on previous attempts to understand the inscriptions.

For anyone trying to get a glimpse into life 2000 years ago, towards the end of the Egyptian civilisations domination of North Africa, this book will give you a start.

But the last word should surely go to that unknown priest who wrote the words for the side of the building that speak down the centuries to us about a monument to a different world.

They [the Gods] protect their beloved son (the king) because of his monument [Edfu] and they allow his image to endure on earth, the image of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt…whose Ka is granted power and strength on the Throne of Horus, at the head of the living, forever.

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Romer - A History of Ancient Egypt vol. 1
Romer - A History of Ancient Egypt vol. 2

Robert Charles Wilson - Darwinia

This 1999 science fiction novel looks at the ideas of alternate realities / universes with a somewhat different approach. Things start out promisingly, albeit with a somewhat unbelievable core idea.

This idea - that Europe vanishes overnight in 1912, being replaced by a continent identical in geography, but with a different natural evolution - has many plot holes. Some of them so big you can drive a very large bus through them. But leaving this aside, we get a promising start to the book.

Obviously Britain has vanished - on the eve of the First World War, still the greatest imperial nation, and one controlling large swaithes of the globe. With it's capital gone, parts of the empire (Egypt is mentioned) gain rapid independece, while the remnants of the British Ruling Class - lead by Lord Kitchener, from Canada, attempt to hang on to India, and the more important bits.

Britain's navy is intact, and this leads to the most exciting ideas in the book - that the vast, untapped natural resources of this new, primerial Europe, are up for grabs - and the US wants to get them. Sparking conflict between the two powers.

So the book centres on an expedition into the new/old continent. At this point, the novel falls apart. Rapidly. We get some sort of alternate-reality, future civilisation, mumbo-jumbo. Different forces at the end of the galaxy are mentioned, who seem to be using the Earth as both a store of the accumulated information over the previous eons and a battlefield. Or something.

Frankly, it's easy not to care. So I didn't. I finished it out of duty, in the hope that something interesting might happen. But when some of the main characters (I say characters, but most of them are little more than names) started to mutate into lizard like creatures with multiple arms, I found that the only reason left to finish the book, was so that I could be horrible about it in this review.