Leon Kuhn, Colin Gill - Topple the Mighty

If, like me, you enjoy walking around the streets of London looking at sites of historic importance, then you will have often raged at the statues to extremely wealthy, reactionary members of the ruling case. Often what distinguishes these people is not their work for the greater good, but their ability (or sometimes inability) to create and defend the immense wealth of the tiny strata at the top of society. Some of them so eager to protect this system of inequality they put tens of thousands of ordinary people to the sword.

This book is a breath of fresh air; the first part looks at the people behind a number of statues in London - war criminals like Bomber Harris and rich wastrels like George IV. The stories are well illustrated by Kuhn’s artwork caricaturing the statues and in the case of Nelson’s column, imagining the crowd that will one day pull down that ugly edifice.

But it’s on the subject of destroying statues and icons that this book really comes into its own. When May Day protesters attacked the statue of Winston Churchill in parliament square, labelling him an anti-Semite and a murderer, they were the latest in a long line of ordinary people, who destroyed the icons of hated monarchs and religious figures.

This little book brings that history alive, through the story of the English revolution and other revolts and in doing so reminds us that history isn’t the story of a few great men, but about working people struggling for justice.

So I hope this book encourages a few alternate historical walks through London. Indeed, I’m off to Holborn viaduct, where there is a statue to the man who killed Wat Tyler during the peasants’ revolt - something that really ought to be removed.

===

More information about some of the statues, and a walk through London with the authors, at Socialist Worker's website here.

Brian Cathcart – The Fly in the Cathedral (*)

The only other book I have read of Brian Cathcart’s is his wonderful, blow by blow account of election night 1997 and the meltdown of the Tories (Were you still up for Portillo?).

This is a completely different book and concentrates on the first experimental and theoretical steps taken by a smallish group of scientists around the famous physicist Ernest Rutherford. It describes the attempts made by physicists to understand the internal structure of the atom and culminates, in what was described in the media of the day as the “splitting of the atom”.

While the books subtitle, in a somewhat jingoistic turn of phrase, argues that it was a small group of Cambridge based scientists who did the work, the actual story is much more one of international co-operation, the exchange and expansion of ideas and theories from around the world, combined with a friendly element of competition to build the apparatus and open up the atomic structure.

Cathcart makes it clear that he doesn’t want to put off non-scientists with complex physics. So his analogies are simple (if a little irksome at times, for those in the know!) but illuminating.

The story races along with more excitement than most physics lecturers I attended, and you are left with an impression of almost bumbling gentlemen stumbling from discovery to discovery. Of course this isn’t true. As Cathcart makes clear, atomic physics could only be discovered because the era of the gentleman scientist, experimenting in his country mansion was over. Instead, this research was driven by government funds and support from industrial giants.

Ultimately, the work these physicists did got them the Nobel prize. As early as the 1930s, it was clear that the processes being unleashed could be used for more sinister purposes. But no one should lay the blame at the door of these men, who really were simply trying to understand the world better.

(*) Full title – The Fly in the Cathedral; How a Small Group of Cambridge Scientists Won the Race to Split the Atom

Terry Pratchett – Going Postal

A truly great satirist can poke fun at things on many levels. Pratchett’s gift is that he can take something like the Postal Service, move it to the fantasy Diskworld, populate the Post Office with Golems and other weird and wonderful characters, and THEN add in spoofs and jokes about hackers, private finance, email and a whole host of other things.

While there perhaps aren’t the belly laughs in this book, as there are in some of the earlier works, there are still some seriously funny moments. Particularly amusing his is discourse on management speak. He describes how innocent words are “mugged, ravished, stripped of all true meaning and decency” but points out that ‘synergistically’ was “probably a whore from the start”.

A quick glance at the inside cover shows this to be the 29th in the Diskworld series. Obviously I hope Mr. Pratchett continues to entertain us long into the future. But one thing erks me a little. For my liking, too many of the latest books have been set in Ankh Morpork and the same characters reappear over and over – the Watch, the Wizards and so on. I miss a little, the earlier characters, Rincewind and the Witches in particular. I hope that the future (and there is at least one novel “Thud”, that I have yet to read) this will change. But even if it doesn’t, I know that the books will continue to be readable.

Related Reviews:
Pratchett - The Colour of Magic
Pratchett - Wintersmith
Pratchett - Thud

Brian Fagan - The Long Summer; How Climate Changed Civilisation

It doesn’t take that scientific a look at human history before you start to see a pattern – the rise and fall of societies, civilisations and cultures. The Roman Empire came and went – it eclipsed the Greeks, before them there was the Egyptians. More recently, South America had the Mayan and Inca city states – powerful societies that dominated that part of the world for hundreds of years. There are numerous other examples.

Brian Fagan’s book is an attempt to explain how and why some of those societies were able to reach such prominence so quickly, and why they often seemed to collapse overnight.

Fagan’s particular basis for this is the weather, or rather climate change. He shows how changes in the earth’s weather – from ice ages, to rainfall patterns – often led to major changes over quite local areas. Places that might have been ideal regions for crops could become arid in the space of a few years.

Fagan shows, though with much less detail than Steven Mithen’s work reviewed previously, how this sometimes leads to changes in society. Climate change he points out, was the motor for the transition from hunter gathering to farming in many parts of the world.

Unfortunately, Fagan’s work suffers slightly from too much journalistic description at times. For instance, I do not believe that we can accurately say that the forest dwellers who lived in the forests which covered Europe 8000 years ago were an “elusive, cautious” people. I doubt whether we can say anything at all about their bravery in fact.

The later part of the book deals with medieval European times and Fagan’s main theme becomes familiar. The more centralised and large a civilisation is, the more threatened it is by slight changes to the climate. His epilogue points out how modern society too lives very close to the edge. A tiny percentage of the population engaged in food production, with the people of many parts of the world living on a knife edge of existence.

It is interesting, that both Fagan and Mithin end their books, which are essentially historical accounts with calls to arms to their readers about the threat of climate change to modern society. Perhaps they are unique in this, but I suspect that there is a growing sense of fear in some areas of academia about the future of the planet and the threat to mankind. Not least because historically environmental changes have had such a tremendous impact.

Related Reviews

Fagan - Floods, Famines and Emperors; El Niño and the Fate of Civilizations
Fagan - The First North Americans

Michael Parenti - The Assassination of Julius Caesar (*)

In the last twelve months I’ve been privileged to read a number of Roman historians and historians of Rome. Some ancient, some modern. While almost all of them have been fascinating, they all left me feeling something was missing. Most Roman history seems to be the tales of great men. Men who were motivated we are told by greed or altruism, madness or intelligence. The figures of Cicero, Caesar, Augustus and many others stride across the pages as men who are often dismissed with a single word – cruel, kind, intelligent or instance.

The beauty of Parenti’s work is that he shows how no one in ancient Rome, and certainly not those in the senate, did anything because of their personal nature. He shows absolutely how everyone was motivated by a much more modern notion.

Until Tony Blair buggered it up, there was a simplistic explanation of what happened in Parliament. The Tories did the work of big business, and the Labour Party did the work of the trade union bureaucracy. The Roman senate was little different – there was the party (or grouping?) of Optimates who considered the needs of the aristocracy, and the Populares, who in some way considered the wants of the poor (except the slaves).

So Parenti tells the story of these groupings, in the run up to Caesar’s time, in the context of the forces at play within the lowest levels of Roman society. Simultaneously he destroys those Roman historians (modern as well as ancient) who have taken for granted the accounts of past history. But his real story is reserved for the lives of the people who made it possible. The slaves and plebeians whose work created the wealth that we see portrayed in the works of Tacitus or Suetonius. Unsurprisingly it is a story of poverty, unemployment, hunger and the occasional rebellion. In particular it is the tale of men and women who were often portrayed as a rabble, but had as much, if not more understanding of politics than those who governed them.

For Parenti, Caesar is a figure to be rescued – a flawed champion of the poor, one of a long line of men who entered the senate with at least some notion of principle, or some belief that the world could be improved for the poorest (except the slaves). Parenti’s Caesar is one who mobilised the poor to challenge the status quo, and paid for it with his life.

But Parenti doesn’t simply put Caesar on a pedestal. He argues that he was a warmonger, a slaver, and a plunderer. But he points out how this didn’t distinguish him from any of those in the Roman senate.

No student, amateur or professional can afford not to consider this work. Even if you are the most conservative or revisionist historians I hope you spend much of your working life refuting some of Parenti’s points. As a taster, I offer this quote from the end of the work. I hope it inspires you all to further reading.

We hear that we must avoid imposing present values upon past experience, and we must immerse ourselves in the historic context under study. But few historians immerse themselves in the grim and embattled social experience of the Roman proletariat. If anything, they see the poor – especially the rebellious poor – through the prism of their own class bias, the same bias shared by ancient historians from Polybius and Cicero to Tacitus and Velleius.

(*) Full title: "The Assassination of Julius Caesar - A People's History of Ancient Rome" By Michael Parenti.

Related reviews
Tacitus - The Histories
Suetonius - The Twelve Caesars
Tom Holland - Rubicon
Beard - SPQR
Beard & Crawford - Rome in the Late Republic

George MacGonald Fraser - Flashman on the March

The arrival of the latest Flashman novel has always been a source of some rejoicing in this reader’s heart. Flashman, as most of you will be aware, is the coward and bully from Tom Brown’s Schooldays who proceeds to become an unwitting hero of Victorian colonialism.

Flashman takes part in most of the glorious failures and momentous victories of that era, both for the British and various other governments. He rides with the Light Brigade, is the only survivor to escape the massacre of Custer’s troops at the Little Big Horn and serves in the Indian Mutiny, at Rorke’s Drift and just about every other engagement you can think of.

The last couple of novels that George McDonald Fraser has written have dealt with some of the smaller and less obscure campaigns of that period. Somewhat frustrating for those of us who are desperate to read about Flashman’s involvement in the US civil war (he fought on both sides) or the first Sikh War.

This one deals with the little remembered expedition that Britain sent to Abyssinia in 1867, to release the British captives of King Theodore.

King Theodore was mostly described by people who came into contact with him as “mad”. But this, as Fraser points out in the short appendix is probably an unfair description. The monarch was a brutal, murderous individual, who was given to flights of fancy, split personalities, drunkenness and massacring people. But whether this is enough to get him certified is a different question.

The expedition that Britain sent out, was a classic example of the mighty forces of Britian (colonial troops did most of the fighting though) crushing an upstart ruler.

Flashman’s role is peripheral to the main fighting (just as he would prefer!), though he has a significant background part.

It’s an enjoyable read, but I fear that the obscure nature of the event itself means that the work isn’t comparable to earlier stories. On the other hand, it’s the sort of novel that will inspire others to read more about this particular period, which in an era of armies being sent abroad to quell rulers who get out of line, is not necessarily a bad thing.

Steven Mithen - After the Ice – A Global Human History 20,000 – 5,000 BC

There are many “M” words to describe this work. Here are a few that I find particularly appropriate; Magnificent, Marvellous, Monumental.

Steven Mithen has created a masterpiece, to use a fourth. His history has a huge scope (and consequently it’s a big work, but it never reads like a cumbersome book, though it often feels like it while commuting around London). Covering the period from 20,000 BC a “time of global economic equality where everyone lived as hunter-gathers in a world of extensive ice-sheets, tundra and desert” to a period where many people lived as farmers, growing sometimes wheat and barley, but just as often rice or other foodstuffs. At the end of the period, not only had farming arrived, but the domestication of animals, trade and permanent towns and villages. What had also arrived of course, was the beginnings of inequality - the next thousands of years of human society would be dominated by class divisions.

But this is beyond the scope of the work. What Mithen does, is to take the reader on an odyssey through different parts of the world – the Middle East, Europe, the Americas, Asia and Africa to show the similarities and the differences of the people who first lived there. His method for doing this, I have seen described in other reviews as “Sci-Fi” like. But this isn’t fair. He transplants a modern traveller into the past, a traveller who can interact with the physical world, yet remains unseen by the people he is sharing time and geography with. This traveller visits the different campsites, caves and villages that have since been found, picks up their tools, helps gather berries and hunt with Polar Bear or Antelope and describes what archaeologists can best imagine life was like.

At times this is tremendously fascinating. Time and again I found myself thinking – “we can’t possibly know that” about some ancient activity, only to find on the next page, Mithen explaining how we do actually know quite a bit about 10,000 year old sandals from a cave in Arizona, or how much archaeologists have found out about the precise methods for making an spear head.

Occasionally though the approach annoyed me – not least because Mithen is unwilling to let his imagination run riot too much, so we often get descriptions of our traveller leaving before finding out exactly how something happens. It seems a strange thing to do – put a traveller back in time to describe the surroundings that we know about, but remove him when we get close to describing something we don’t know about. Such are the perils of the use of time-travel in a serious work of archaeology I suppose!

Nevertheless, I recommend this book unreservedly to anyone with an interest in the far past. You will be surprised to find out exactly how much we do know, and certainly the next time you see a collection of flint knives or spearheads in a dusty cabinet in some musty museum, you’ll be able to imagine a little bit more about the complex people who made them.

Related Reviews


Mithen - The Singing Neanderthals
Mithen - To the Islands

Ian Shaw – Ancient Egypt, a Very Short introduction

The Very Short Introduction series perform exactly what it says on the tin – they are short (this comes to 192 pages including glossary, index and other goodies) but very comprehensive. Shaw’s work has managed to cram a complex subject into a tiny book, but retain both his enthusiasm for the subject together with plenty of fascinating facts and discussions.

Shaw’s avoided trying to tell the story of ancient Egypt and spend endless pages describing pyramids, temples and mummies. Instead he concentrates almost entirely on Egyptology as a subject for Archaeologists and discusses what we know (and how what we know has changed or developed).

So for instance, in his all too brief discussion of the life of the female Pharaoh Hatshepsut he takes on the commonly held belief that she was a “pacifist” queen, pointing out that this has more to do with the perceptions of later-day historians, particularly their sexist attitudes. Similarly Shaw discusses the most famous female monarchs, Cleopatra and Nefertiti, in the context of how their images have been appropriated by everyone from Hollywood filmmakers to Black Nationalists.

So in taking the long view of ancient Egyptian history, Shaw avoids one of the major problems that archaeologists have when studying this period. This is the problem of getting “into” the Egyptian mind. There is no doubt, for instance, that the ancient Egyptians did not have the same separation between “reality” and the “supernatural”. Their world was one where humans and Gods could interact. To understand their religious writings, practices and worship means entering that mindset.

Surprisingly then, by showing how everyone from Roman historians to the Victorians and modern-day archaeologists have viewed the Egyptians, Shaw has illuminated both their world, and ours.
I can best illustrate this by quoting Shaw’s description of the work of the Victorian “enthusiast”, Piazza Smyth, who described the Pyramids using the “pyramid inch” as a unit. Smyth went on to explain that this was also the unit of measurement used by those building Noah’s ark and Moses’ tabernacle.

Shaw writes that “Since the pyramid inch was conveniently virtually the same as the British inch, it was only a small step further to suggest that all this identifies the British as the lost tribe of Israel, which neatly adds rampant Victorian imperialism to Piazzi Smyth’s bundle of influences in his ruminations on pyramids.”

T E Lawrence - Seven Pillars of Wisdom

This famous title “ranks with the greatest books ever written in the English language”, or it is according to the quote from no less a reviewer than Sir Winston Churchill, on the back cover.

I picked it up in one of those rambling second hand bookshops, somewhere near Charing Cross road. Picked it up really, because it’s one of those titles that everyone mentions and few had read. Picked it up, because current events in the Middle East are in part determined by the region’s history and the role of colonial powers like Britain (and in this case Turkey).

So I thought this would be an illuminating read, and give an insight into an important period for the Arabic people and the culture of the tribes that Lawrence worked with. Unfortunately, far from being the book that Churchill promises us, it is little more than a boys’ own adventure story. With Lawrence (carefully using his self-deprecating style) placing himself at the centre of an epic story of pitched battles, camel treks, food shortages, gallant Arabs and a ruthless, but comically inept enemy.

There are many problems with this (not least that it goes on for 600 pages), but Lawrence lies a lot. He lies to his Arab allays about Britain’s future plans after they have kicked out the Turkish invaders. He lies to his superior officers to get his own way and I suspect he stretches the truth to his readers.

So the only real insights from this book are those given to the mindset of your average British Colonial officer. His attitude– neatly summed up near the start of the book – when he says “the lousy rags and festering skins which we knew as Arabs”. His cod philosophising – which is little more than embarrassing, and (perhaps most interesting), his (unusual for the time) acceptance of the homosexuality of many Arabs.

But I don’t want to knock this book any further. I shall leave the last word on the whole matter to Lawrence himself:

“..the falsity of the Arab position had cured me of crude ambition: while it left me my craving for good repute among men….. Here were the Arabs believing me, Allenby and Clayton [his officers] trusting me, my bodyguard dying for me: and I began to wonder if all established reputations were founded, like mine, on fraud”

Dashiell Hammett - The Maltese Falcon

It’s rare that I buy a book on the strength of a film. Maybe this is a unique example of that particular method of choosing literature. But last week in a bookstore, Dashiell Hammett’s famous title leapt out at me – and because I think that Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade is about as good as it gets, it slipped into the proverbial shopping basket.

The cover blurb (again, never a good reason to choose a book) tells me that it is “Possibly the best American detective novel ever written”. Well at least Otto Penzler is quoted as saying so. Given the competition there is for American detective novels, I was ready to be thrilled.

But this isn’t a novel that does it through thrills. This, like I suppose the film and like one of Sam Spade’s roll-ups, is a slow smouldering fire. Hammett doesn’t have the descriptive skill of Chandler, but he makes up for it by building a complex interaction of characters and places. And of course double-crosses follow double-crosses building the sort of story line that draws you into someone else's life.

As I read this book I was disappointed. I’d hoped for another Chandler, but it was only in the final chapter, as it all falls together and Sam Spade wins by sheer grit, determination and his complete inability to be awed by anyone, that I realised what a truly great novel this is.

I’m glad I didn’t remember the ending of the film in detail. Because this is a book that lives by it’s ending. And the sad, poignant final paragraph sums up that these are real men and women, not the cardboard cutouts you normally associated with pulp fiction.

Mike Davis – The Monster at Our Door; The global threat of Avian flu

While reading this book, I wondered how the world will end. Will we drown as the rising tides caused by Climate Change engulf the major cities of the world, or will we die in our millions as an unprepared world is struck by a major flu pandemic.

This is a remarkably timely book – Avian “Bird” flu has been in the headlines frequently, yet few people probably understand either the nature of the disease, or the threat it brings to humanity. A threat it must be said, which is immense. The 1918 flu outbreak killed between 40 and 100 million people (a figure that grows to a horrifying 325 million if extrapolated to the world’s population today). Davis quotes a Sunday Herald article that predicts that 1% of the UK population could die as a result of a serious outbreak.

Davis’ documents recent outbreaks in South-East Asia, showing how governments there were often wholly unprepared (often seeming to stand with fingers in ears singing “la la la” rather than face reality). Luckily, either for natural reasons, or due to prompt action by health officials, these outbreaks have been stemmed, yet the potential remains – 15 million chickens died in Thailand in early 2004.

While governments and politicians around the world ignore this major threat, Davis’ points to the changes in human society that mean that the flu is more likely to “species jump” and to evolve newer and deadlier strains. The massive concentration of food production to larger and larger factories, often with appalling conditions, give the flu virus an evolutionary playground never before seen in history. Increased international travel and the huge concentration of people in gigantic slums around the world mean that when it does break out, the flu could travel around the globe in hours, spreading faster than any government could deliver vaccinations to it’s population.


This last point is Davis’ final concern. Modern pharmaceutical companies aren’t interested in producing vaccinations for diseases like influenza – it’s just not profitable enough in the short term. At the same time as millions of dollars are being injected into finding ways of combating “bio terrorism”, cash is vanishing from health projects that could develop better vaccines for diseases like TB or avian flu. Interestingly, the Pentagon’s plans for dealing with a pandemic involve inoculating the armed forces as a priority.

The US has stockpiled only enough vaccine for 1% of it’s population. Japan, by contrast has covered about a fifth of its citizens. Of course, the countries that will be really ravaged are those in the developing world. Places like Vietnam, Thailand could be devastated, as could sub-Saharan Africa, its population already weakened by HIV.

This book should really be recommended reading for two groups of people – the first is politicians – if only to hope that some of them might get their fingers out of their ears long enough to hear the warnings of the medical profession. But the other group is those of activists and campaigners because huge pressure must be put on governments and drug companies to force them to increase production of the vaccines, invest in more and more studies of diseases and extend this to the rest of the world.

The terrifying reality of the threat of avian-flu is almost too much to think about. But this book is a brilliant introduction too the problems and the solutions. If only we have time to read it.

Related Reviews

Davis - Late Victorian Holocausts
Davis - Planet of Slums
Quammen - Ebola: The Natural and Human History
Zinsser - Rats, Lice and History
Ziegler - The Black Death

Paul Foot - Red Shelley

When campaigning journalist Paul Foot died last year died, many people remarked how much he would be missed. A tireless campaigner for social justice, for freedom, for democracy and for socialism, he had devoted his life to struggling for a better world.

Amongst many Foot’s many qualities, was his ability to popularise odd periods of history or forgotten revolutionaries. At the annual Marxism conference in London, his meetings on the English Revolution, or the Levellers or Democracy were always amongst the most popular.

But many socialists in the UK have a special place in their hearts for his speeches on the poet Shelley.

This book, written in the early 1980s was clearly a result of Foot himself discovering Shelley. The poet he discovered, wasn’t the slightly unusual, lyrical romantic that was often taught in English schools. Rather he was a radical. A revolutionary. A man who believed that the world could and should be better, and that his poetry could be one of the weapons against that injustice.

Shelley had been distorted and ignored after his death. His best and most radical poems, works like “Queen Mab” and “The Mask of Anarchy” weren’t even officially published till long after his death. They existed often only in illegal and underground publications, repeated word for word by groups of workers, oppressed and under the thumb of the reactionary state.

For decades, the rich would gather around dinner tables and recite Shelley’s poetry. But they would ignore the revolutionary, challenging poetry, living almost entirely on the romantic poetry and even then stripping it of its context and his beliefs.

Foot argues that Shelley was one of the first socialists. Immature and isolated he might have been, but he was also a thinker and philosophiser who came up with some new and radical ideas. Ideas that would only become mainstream within the emerging left movement decades later.

Of course, Shelley was also driven by a militant atheism that meant he was ostracised by the rest of the establishment he was from, during his lifetime. But it’s an atheism at the heart of some of his best poetry. This atheism meant that he clashed with all those who believed that the poor deserved to be poor, or were poor because of their own making. So Shelley was driven by a desire to both illuminate the world and change it.

The book ends with Foot arguing that a new generation needs to grow up with Shelley in one hand as they struggle for peace and justice. He would have liked nothing better than to see Tony Blair humiliated in the House of Commons today, and so it’s really only fitting that I finish with one of Shelley’s most famous poems. One that dictators and politicians everywhere could do well to learn:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Related Reviews

Foot - The Vote

Tacitus - The Histories

Anyone who has looked at one of those lists of Roman Emperors and the dates they ruled will have noticed a strange thing. Over the years AD68 to AD 69 no less than five emperors (Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian) began, ended or enjoyed their entire reigns.

This period of civil war, marked the change from the Augustan dynasty to that of the Flavians. It’s a crucial period of Roman rule, and one that the historian Tacitus, writing in about AD 100, documents using I am told, excellent authorities.


Tacitus’ was a Roman historian, thus much of what he wrote assumes a lot of knowledge about Roman custom. Though he does describe a lot of interesting details. If you don’t know much about Roman history (and I’m no expert) some parts of this can be hard work. But if makes up for it in other ways (such as the description of the battles of Cremonia). There are a myriad of details you can learn – Roman soilders were fully armed only when the enemy was almost upon them for instance.)

This is a good book to follow up Suetonius’ Twelve Ceasers, covering similar ground and illuminating the details of some of the events described there. This shouldn’t be the first book on Roman History you read. Certainly not if you have just seen HBO-BBC’s “Rome” and want to know more. But by no means make it the last, as it’s full of details, interest and blood.

Eric Hobsbawm & Terence Ranger(eds) - The Invention of Tradition

How do the rich and powerful justify their position in society to the people who they rule? That question is at the heart of this book. Ruling classes have, since ancient times tried to justify their wealth and privilege by variously proving their links to some great previous ruler, or showing that they play an important role, without which society would be plunged into disarray.

Some of humanity’s oldest written records are “King Lists” – attempts to prove a monarch’s linage back to ancient times (and often the Gods). Julius Caesar for instance claimed the goddess Venus as an ancestor.

This book documents modern attempts by the establishment to both justify the position of the rulers over the ruled (the modern monarchy in England for instance, or colonial rule of India and Africa). It also shows how the same establishment (or individuals with an interest in doing so) create an invented tradition, both to glorify some mythical past, or to create an artificial image of a people or nation.

This last bit, includes for instance, the conscious creation of the myth of the Scottish Highlands (tartan in particular). The chapters dealing with this are very interesting, but where the book really excels is the description of the establishments attempts to turn the monarchy into something both relevant to modern times and to help reinvent the idea of national interest.

Some of this stuff is brilliant. From Victoria’s complete lack of interest in pageantry and her role in state ritual, to the description of Disraeli “obliged to sit on his wife’s lap” at the Prince of Wales’ wedding as the event was so ill prepared.

The chapter continues with a description about how future royal weddings (and funerals) became deeply organised and choreographed to show the monarchy in the best light – the increased involvement of the media was part of this process.

The book finishes with several chapters which look at how other traditions have been invented (including for instance, the less conscious invention of the May Day celebration of the left, and various sports traditions). On the whole, these chapters aren’t as interesting as the chapters on the lengths that the establishment will go to, to try and make us feel part of their family. But it’s all well worth a read.

Peter Biskind - Seeing is Believing (*)

The basic premise of Biskind's trawl through the strange world of 1950s Hollywood films is that at the heart of American society there was a consensus between the liberal and the conservatives - against the extremists (both right and left). There must be some truth in this - the years after World War two were ones of unprecedented boom for the US economy, as Biskind writes early on

the decade [1950s] in which it seemed that the United States had solved most of the basic problems of modern industrial society. The miracle of the economy, the seemingly endless flow of consumer goods, the constant technological innovation, ironically promised to realise Marx's dream of a harmonious classless society.

In this context any threat to the status-quo was something that had to be resisted, and Biskind's book describes in detail how this battle took place in the realm of Hollywood.

If, like me you haven't seen all the films here, much of it will have to be taken on trust. The films I have seen and know well, such as 12 Angry Men, are examined with a particular shrewdness and with an eye for detail that seems unexpected. For instance, I'd often thought of 12 Angry Men as a left-wing film (albeit a flawed one that promotes the idea of justice at the heart of the jury system). Biskind shows how it actually has much more right-wing elements, where the centre, represented by Henry Fonda's character, does everything it can to cancel out the effect of the extremists in the ranks. Criticism of the system is acceptable, but only in limited ways that don't damage the consensus at the heart of things.

If you like films and politics, know a bit about fifties America and perhaps marvelled at Robbie the Robot in Forbidden Planet or rode with The Searchers, thrilled at the Day the Earth Stood Still or laughed at I was a Teenage Werewolf - or even know of these films, you'll probably get something out of this book. But like me, you might not agree with everything he says, particularly if one of the movies is a favourite!

Related Reviews

Biskind - Easy Riders, Raging Bulls
Frankel - High Noon

Suetonius - The Twelve Caesars

It will perhaps be gratifying for many people to know that a book written almost 2000 years ago still contains within it the themes that make a more modern book rise to the top of a best seller list. Suetonius’ famous work has within it all the elements that would make an author of today very very rich. We have palace gossip, mixed with murder, sex and incest combined with politics and history to make a juicy read.

What of course makes this work very interesting, is that it isn’t a novel. Rather it’s a work of biography by a man who lived not many decades after the first of the Roman emperors described and who remembers the later ones from his childhood (his father served in the legions of Emperor Otho.

Suetonius describes the twelve emperors who followed the collapse of the Roman Republic towards the end, of what we would call the first millennium. His writing doesn’t criticise too much, he’s “deadpan” (borrowing a word from the introduction by Michael Grant) and lets his description of the events and activities colour your perception of the particular emperor. In fact it’s easy to fall into a sort of “1066 and all that” attitude – Good Emperor, Bad Emperor etc.

The first thing that strikes you – apart from the readability (a mark of an excellent translation) and the similarities to modern writing – is that Roman life was brutal and brutality was part of life. You may be surprised by the readiness with which life was sacrificed, or with which rape, assault and incest became part of ruling class life, but this surely is the reality of a society based on the economy of slavery. When humans are the base commodity of your social system, life becomes very meaningless.

The second thing that I noticed, was the way that religion and “mysticism” where part of every day life.

Note this turn of phrase here:

“At last, after nearly fourteen years of Nero’s misrule, the earth rid herself of him”

or note how, with every emperor described, Suetonius describes the signs and portents that marked their career. Here is his description of the omens predicting Claudius’ death, they

“included the rise of a long-haired star, known as a comet, lightning that struck his father’s tomb and an unusual mortality among magistrates of all ranks.”

Suetonius is never mocking or critical of these omens. He describes them in as much detail, and with as much importance as the description he gives of the physical characteristics of the emperors or the outcome of their battles. For him, such prophecies are part of reality, and not myth. Reports of an eagle landing when a particular child was born may be for us a myth after years of retelling. For Suetonius it was reality.

If you are looking for the day to day realities of Roman life, you won’t find it here. This is history from above. But Suetonius had access, at least for a while, to some of the most important archives of Imperial Rome. He describes powerful leaders, with unlimited powers of life and death, with followers who hung an their every word, who believed that they had a special connection to the Gods. In this context alone, his writings describe a world that has now disappeared, but which bears an uncanny resemblance to our own.

Peter Carey - True History of the Kelly Gang

I like reading books that “everyone” says you must read years after the craze has died away, but I have to say that I missed out on Peter Carey’s book, which deservedly won the 2001 Booker Prize.

In writing about the outlaw Ned Kelly, Carey has the unenviable task for a writer of historical fiction – the only thing that everyone knows about Ned Kelly is that he was finally captured wearing a home made suit of armour. So Carey deals with this by making it the start of the book and uses the medium of letters from Kelly to his daughter to tell the story of his life.

I was surprised when I looked up Ned Kelly that most of what Carey uses in his story is based on some sort of historical fact, though the daughter didn’t exist, Kelly’s life is certainly well documented. The novel is mostly written in dialect and you can almost believe it’s Ned Kelly’s voice. Of course the other thing that stands out are the injustices suffered by the Kelly family and the careful treatment by the author of the controversial topic – “what makes someone a criminal”. In this case Carey sides very much with the poverty, injustice and brutality answer.

While Kelly probably wasn’t the Robin Hood figure some make him out to be, his name deserves to be remembered, if only because the early history of “white Australia” was one of violence, injustice and brutality. Modern Australia was built on the back of the destruction of Aboriginal life and the sweat and blood of people like Ned Kelly’s family. Carey’s real success with this book is to bring them all alive.

Charles Darwin - The Voyage of the Beagle

I started reading this book because of my own personal disgust at the rise of "intelligent design" in the US education system and I felt that my background in the physical sciences needed supplementing in those of the biological arena. Where better to start arming myself I thought than the work of the grand-father of evolution - Charles Darwin.

Most people know, that Darwin came up with the theory of evolution after years of studying. In particular, he studied the material, notes and theories he had got after an immense five year long round the world trip in the Beagle.

This book is a (presumably transcribed later) set of his notes from that voyage, what he saw in terms of flora, fauna, geology and what he experienced along the way - in particular the peoples and cultures of South America and Australasia.

This isn't an easy book to read - its the journal of a Victorian scientist just about to hit the peak of his career, as such it's peppered with references to other scientists, studies, ideas and contemporary references. I didn't recognise half the place-names in South America, presumably because they have changed as the European powers dominated that place less and less.

It's also more than a scientific narrative. Insights into many aspects of the Victorian world can seen - from the nature of life at sea, to attitudes to animals and people. It's also annoying the continuous lauding of "Englishness" as a way out of poverty, for "uncivilised peoples". Though he can be touching in his innocence for instance he writes of the Tahitians.

They are very tall, broad-shouldered , athletic and well-proportioned. It has been remarked that it requires little habit to make a dark skin more pleasing and natural to eye of a European than his own colour.

But even though he is angered by slavery and the treatment of indigenous peoples, he hasn't shaken off all the racism inherent in the society he lives in. For instance he writes that the Tahitians display "extreme good sense" at one point. Yet a few pages earlier he says that savage man has "reasoning powers only partly developed".

But what strikes the casual reader will be Darwin's immense love for nature and the world around him. Even though this is then tempered by some of his methods for taking samples.

A fox....was sitting on the rocks. He was so intently absorbed in watching the work of the officers that I was able, by quietly walking up behind, to knock him on the head with my geological hammer.

It's difficult to imagine any modern naturalist hunting and killing like this. But that's a reflection on the Victorian desire to fill museums as a method for advancing knowledge I suppose. The book is littered with accounts of shootings of birds and other animals as Darwin gets samples for his research.

Throughout the work and the trip Darwin is clearly grappling with a world and an understanding at odds with established ideas. Time and again he notes how geological formations must have taken aeons to develop. His famous description of the finches in the Galapagos Islands is clearly that of a man on the brink of a new idea. His discussion of the spread of disease towards the end of the book carries both the naive views of the science of that period and the germ of something else.

If you read this, I would recommend having some sort of reference to Darwin's voyage at hand, because it is useful to known what else happens on the voyage - in particular his relationship with the captain, and the sharp arguments they had over slavery.

The understanding of evolution that Darwin was able to unleash on the world was to change the world of science totally. But it would almost certainly have happened without him, though perhaps the explanation would have taken a little longer. Evolutionary thought works precisely because, as this work shows, it is the product of scientific exploration and observation. It is for this reason that it far outstrips any other, baseless idea that some on the religious right would force upon our school children.

Related Reviews

Desmond & Moore - Darwin's Sacred Cause
Jones - Darwin's Island: The Galapagos in the Garden of England
Simons - Darwin Slept Here
Weiner - The Beak of the Finch: Evolution in Real Time
Angus - A Redder Shade of Green: Intersections of Science and Socialism
Foster, Clark & York - Critique of Intelligent Design: Materialism versus Creationism, From Antiquity to the Present

Charles Stross - Singularity Sky

This is a brilliant debut Science Fiction novel. Stross has done something quite special here, as you can see from the tributes on the back of the book. He's come up with a whole new idea, and done it brilliantly.

His concept - that a large area of space is populated by humans (the mechanism of which I won't go into) - where much of that area has achieved a sort of classless, technological society, where concepts of profits etc have been eradicated in the interest of a mutually assisting, forward looking society, is used to challenge preconceptions in the most surprising of ways.

One area of this human space, which behaves in a way more recognisable as our society - a sort of capitalistic region within the larger, better area, is terribly fearful of change and technology.

Now what Stross does that is so brilliant, is that he throws into this contradictory universe, a mechanism so alien, so inhuman, that both types of human society can't quite understand it. But one of the societies is less able to cope than the other.

To the backward, class-ridden, rigid, anti-technological society, comes a fantastic, all powerful, alien system - "The Festival". In exchange for stories and ideas the "the festival" donates unimaginable technological wonders and the machinary to create more such marvels. A goose that lays golden eggs for a poor peasant, exotic weapons for a bank robbers, palatial homes and so on. Within hours society is on its knees.

If you like Science Fiction, I can't recommend this enough. If you're a radical leftie there are enough in-jokes to keep you smiling, but the book is political enough to make you realise that Stross isn't simply taking the piss. He's also making a lot of interesting points.

EDIT: Stross has made his latest novel, Accelerando, available for free download in a variety of formats.

Related Reviews

Iron Sunrise - Charles Stross

H. Rider Haggard - King Solomon's Mines

I read this pretty much concurrent with Charles Darwin's account of his voyages with the Beagle and there are some amazing differences and similarities between the two Victorian tales of travel and adventure. Rider Haggard's novel has been a staple of the boys own adventure genre for many decades now. Its mixture of fighting, exploration and hunting capturing the hearts of many who went on to rule the empire and those that would have liked too.

What is interesting about the book (and its replicated slightly in Darwin's writings, but I'll write more on that when I come to review it) is the casual racism towards the indigenous black people of Africa and South America. Time and again the narrator talks about the inadequacies of black people, their inability to understand civilisation and he despairs at their lifestyles and "simple" ways. Of course this attitude stems from the the ideologies utilised by the Empire builders keen to control the rest of the world. Haggard takes it even further in the sequel when his heroes discover a powerful civilisation in the heart of Africa. The relatively advanced nature of this civilisation has everything to do with the fact that it is a lost tribe of white people.

Furthermore, an amusing side to the explorations is the way everything is hunted and killed. The heroes take time out from their rescue mission to shoot numbers of elephants for ivory, but mostly for sport. Throughout, the characters display a casual indifference to the people, animals and wealth of the country that they are travelling through.

So this book is interesting not in its adventure (though it has all the precursors of an Indiana Jones film) but it the mirror it holds up to a thankfully bygone era when men traveled the world and tried to remake it in the image created by their odd, jaundiced Victorian views.