"Peter of Savoy: The Little Charlemagne" by John Marshall

Pevensey Castle: Barbara van Cleve, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

A biography of the uncle of Eleanor, the Queen of King Henry III of England, who built a palace on the Strand in London where the Savoy hotel now stands.

Henry III had a long but troubled reign. He inherited the throne from his father King John in the middle of a baronial revolt and French invasion. He was forced to re-concede the Magna Carta and, later in his reign, cede absolute rule to a council of barons headed by his arch-enemy and brother-in-law Simon de Montfort. 

Pierre de Savoie, was the younger son of Thomas I, Count of Savoy. His sister's children included four daughters who, at some time, became queens: of France, of England, of the Romans and of Sicily. Pierre spent some of his time in Savoy where he ruled lands that later became the French-speaking cantons of Switzerland, and some time in England, trying to secure the succession of his sister's son, Lord Edward, who would eventually become Edward I of England. He was part of a wave of Savoyards who held offices under Henry III (his brother Boniface became Archbishop of Canterbury) eventually leading to a wave of xenophobia that helped Simon de Montfort gain power over Henry. 

This biography chronicles Pierre's life and traces the far-reaching consequences. 

It is clear that, as is common with biographers, the author hero-worships his subject. Nothing he does is viewed in anything but a positive light. Matthew Paris, the chronicler, a key primary source, is repeatedly castigated as biased and xenophobic. Simon de Montfort, whose influence on English politics can scarcely be denied, is depicted as self-serving and villainous, principally for having the temerity to challenge a king.

But my principal criticism of this book is the number of times I found it confusing. One expects difficulties when records are ambiguous or incomplete and when several people are named the same (for example, both Henry III and his brother Richard of Cornwall had a son called Edmund), but a good historian should resolve these problems. Instead, I found Marshall added to them. For example:

• “In 1229, at Lausanne, Pierre began a career that would lead eventually to being one of a council ruling England and Count of Savoy, under the tutelage of the provost, Conon d’Estavayer” who had been educated at Paris. (p 14). The final part of the sentence doesn't make it clear whether the tutelage was in Lausanne or England. Furthermore, the data of 1229 is contradicted on the next page when he is recorded as a canon in Nov 1226.
• “One of his tasks concerned Englishmen of the locale who had not been to church within the prescribed forty days, something that will no doubt have made him popular.” (pp 26 - 27) But we aren't told what he did nor  nor why this action should have made him popular. Perhaps it's irony.
• On page 41 I became very confused as to exactly where Richmond and its castle were, given that three roads are mentioned and two castles; I resorted to Google Maps.
• On page 45 the author lists the Cinque Ports. He says there are five, he names six. A little research suggested that in Pierre's time there were 7.

There were other examples. I ought to be able to read a history without having to resort to Google and wikipedia to clear things up.

In addition, on page 167 Marshall repeats the description of the London cook shop and London’s trade already quoted on pp 72 - 73. This looks suspiciously like padding. 

There's a great deal of interest in this book; it was a fascinating chapter in the political history of England. But the writing detracted from the reading experience.

Selected quotes:

• “In England the genie was out of the bottle; many had rather liked the idea that the king ruled with the consent of his people.” (Ch 8)

September 2025; 188 pages plus extensive appendices and notes

Published in 2023 by Pen and Sword History

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Another England" by Caroline Lucas

From 2010 until 2024, Caroline Lucas was Britain's first and only Green MP (others were elected in 2024, when she stood down). This book is an attempt to create a blueprint for a better society in England.

But while I agreed with her whenever she analysed the problems we face, I felt her suggested solutions would be unlikely to convince one of her opponents. 

For example, at one stage she discusses alternatives to the nation state: the religious community and the dynastic realm. Neither appeals! The problem, it seems to me, is that we equate a community with its territory. This is why I have started to redefine my ethnic identity. If I am asked my ethnicity from a medical point of view, I understand that they need data about my physical body and so I am prepared to respond 'White British' if that is the appropriate option. But otherwise, for example on the most recent census, I choose the 'other' box and self-define as 'English speaker'. Because for me, the most important thing about being English is the language and the culture.

Furthermore, she states her intention is to consider English literature to show that England is, fundamentally, deep down, the society to which she aspires. But this is window-dressing rather than the focus of her arguments. Furthermore, her choice of authors sometimes seemed to undermine her points.

For example, when she is discussing rural England she makes the point that the countryside is always held up as the ideal environment even though most people live in cities. “The England of roads and railways, urban housing and shipyards ... are relegated to second place, as are the people who live and work there, in all their rich and diverse reality.” (Ch 6) She goes on to criticise the nostalgia implicit in Jane Austen, George Eliot and Anthony Trollope, as well as (more explicitly) George Orwell. Great, I thought. Now she will praise authors who write about the urban environment, and she does indeed mention Zadie Smith's novel NW, as well as Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway (really? it may be set in London but isn't exactly urban). But then she goes on to talk about the profoundly rural William Cowper, Chaucer, Wordsworth and John Clare, as well as the anonymous author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Hasn't she just relegated urban England to second place?

[I acknowledge that it is difficult to find urban authors. James Joyce's Ulysses is Dublin through and through, and the Vernon Subutex trilogy by Virginie Despentes does something similar for Paris but what about England? Suggestions please!]

[When I was writing my third novel Bally and Bro I wanted to depict my protagonist Bally as so much a product of his city environment that he couldn't even think in proverbs such as 'Make hay while the sun shines'. But it is very difficult to find town-based alternatives!]

Equally, when she is discussing the plight of the poor in our society, by her own admission Charles Dickens is a strange choice. The whole point of Oliver Twist, despite its clothing of workhouses and thieves kitchens, is to demonstrate that a well-bred lad would triumph over the naturally lower-class oiks. 

She also references Ruined City by Nevil Shute , a book whose solution to unemployment seems to be to find a bent banker with a conscience and which promulgates the concept that capitalist entrepreneurs are job creators as opposed to parasites living off the sweat of labourers.

There are hard-hitting moments, such as when she shows that the difference in life-expectancy between Kensington and Middlesborough “is comparable to the difference between the UK on the one hand and Guatemala, Iraq and Syria on the other.” (Ch 4). But I was unconvinced that she had the answers.

Selected quotes:

• “The moment Englishness took a political form it became anathema. The English flag was acceptable fluttering from a church tower in a picturesque village, but was instantly interpreted as a form of racism if hanging from someone's window on an estate.” (Preface)
• “The top 1 per cent ... have an average monthly income ... a full twenty times that of the lowest 10 per cent. It is impossible to justify this: though this doesn't stop a surprising number of the better-off from complaining that the poor have made ‘bad decisions’ or ‘lifestyle choices’, or from handing out patronising advice about how to cook on a budget, just as their Victorian predecessors did.” (Ch 4)
• “Work is not in itself a good thing. If it gives people a sense of purpose ... then this is generally very positive. ... But not all jobs provide these things.” (Ch 4)
• “Ours is an age in which the financial rewards of work and the autonomy of the employee have little connection to the demands of the role or the value they provide to society.” (Ch 4)
• “The Thatcherite ideal of a property owning democracy [is based] ... on the nasty implication that if you do not own your own home, you have a lesser stake in society, are more likely to be a burden, and are less committed to your community.” (Ch 5)
• “By any measure - life expectancy, human capital, infrastructure, economic development, democracy ... - the vast majority of England's former colonies are far better off now than they were under the Empire.” (Ch 7)
• “For all the talk of shared values and a common loyalty to the crown ... the empire remained a profoundly racist endeavour. If you were English, you could serve in the administration in Burma or Uganda, but if you were Burmese or Ugandan, you could not do the same in England. The British Empire was unlike the Roman, where if you adopted the language and culture, you could go to Rome and become an official, even a senator, even Emperor.” (Ch 7)
• “When you believe your military commanders should be appointed because they come from the right social class, not on ability, then it is no surprise if you are outfought, as in the Crimea.” (Ch 8)

September 2025; 240 pages

Published by Hutchinson Heinemann in 2024

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"The Good Companions" by J B Priestley

Three unlikely characters join a touring concert party and give vaudeville shows in mostly bleak towns in the Midlands of England. 

Jess Oakroyd is a laconic Yorkshire carpenter who has dreamed of seeing the world; when he is dismissed from his job he takes the opportunity to walk out on his disapproving wife and her darling adult son. Miss Trant, who likes historical romances such as those by Sir Walter Scott,  has looked after her father for twenty years but now he is dead and she has a small private income. Mr Inigo Jollifant, a talented pianist and rather less talented schoolmaster, rows with his principal's wife and is dismissed. Chance brings them together with a bankrupt group of touring artistes, some talented, others less so.

I think Priestley has modelled the book on the Pickwick Papers but democratised it so that, apart from Miss Trant and perhaps Inigo, the characters are all from the ordinary classes. The settings are all deomcratised too, so that we see an England where some towns are virtually bankrupt, full of the unemployed, while others are thriving thanks to new industries. These democratisations bring verisimilitude and act as a nice counterpoint to the insubstantial wonderland of song and dance; there is a message here that although material comforts might depend upon hard work and wage slavery, happiness - and, if you are lucky, wealth - comes from the much more fragile world of the arts. The touring, the slow descent into a linear plot, and the ultimate need for a happy ending all ape Pickwick but in the end it is only an imitation because the caricatures are less extreme, less fun, and the humour is too gentle.

It is written in the past tense and a fundamentally omniscient third person with occasional authorial interjections but mostly from the perspective of whoever is the subject of that chapter. There are moments when the author introduces spoilers (like Anthony Trollope, eg in Phineas Finn) to reassure the reader that some of the characters will find eventual success. It begins ab ovo, so that the first 40% of the novel consists of the back story of the three main characters, explaining how they came to be part of the troupe. This long introduction was a great way of building up their characters but I found it rather wearisome. This was exacerbated by the long-windedness of some of the prose. For example, in a rather heavy-handed attempt at humour, one minor character is described as "a rather down-at-heel senator from one of the remoter states of those that are united." (1.6) Why not just 'United States'? 

E M Forster in Aspects of the Novel points out that we tend to overvalue long books so that we can justify to ourselves the time we have spent reading them. It felt at times that Priestley agreed with this thesis and was overwriting so that his readers would be impressed.

Nevertheless, this prolixity did mean that the three main characters have greater depth than many of those of Dickens. Miss Trant walks a tightrope between enjoying her new-found freedom and seeking security in the life she knows; Jess is doing the same, although he has less to return to; Inigo has yet to find any purpose in life.

The minor characters were less impressive. Susie, Inigo's love interest, didn't seem to justify her importance to the plot. The only minor character who really intrigued me was Jerry Jerningham, the dancer and singer and light comedian and male lead, who is pursued by girls but never responds because, it is said, he is devoted to his craft: "It was his ambition to be the most graceful lounger, the best of all the idle fops of revue and musical comedy, and to achieve these butterfly perfections he trained like an athlete and toiled like a slave." (2.2) But he is also described as an "Antinous in evening dress and dancing slippers" (2.2); this reference to the male lover of the Roman Emperor Hadrian suggests that JJ is gay. Out of the blue, he gets married to an older lady, a widow, an admirer, who becomes his patroness but there are suggestions in the epilogue that the marriage is not a happy one. This mystery is left unsolved; I suppose it had to be since the 1929 publication date was when homosexuality was still a criminal offence in England.

For those who prefer their stories rounded-off with a coda, there is an epilogue which tells you what happened to most of the major characters. 

There are references to 'niggers' and some anti-semitic tropes as is common with English novels of the period.

The book won the 1929 James B Tait Memorial Prize for literature.

Selected quotes:

• "To say that these men paid their shillings to watch twenty-two hirelings kick a ball is merely to say that a violin is wood and catgut, that Hamlet is so much paper and ink." (1.1)
• "She had long regarded him neither as a friend nor as a partner but as a nuisance, somebody who was always coming in to upset the house, always demanding food and drink." (1.1)
• "There is about him the air of one who is ready to fail gloriously at almost anything." (1.3)
• "He had a deep veneration for literature, so deep that he hardly ever made acquaintance with it." (1.3)
• "Mr Oakroyd ... even tried to mumble some words of thanks, an agonizing task to any true Bruddersfordian, who always tried to arrange his life so that he will be spared such appalling scenes." (1.4)
• "Youth, when it is exiled into the kingdoms of the old, at once turns itself into the strongest of secret societies." (1.6)
• "She looked like a knowing and slightly dishevelled doll." (2.1)
• "A woman who had said goodbye to the easy elasticity of youth." (2.1)
• "The last house on the left was detached from the row, but was yet so close to it,so obviously still a part of it,that Miss Trant felt that this house had been just sawn off, as if it were the crust of a long loaf." (2.3)
• "When you saw people you knew acting with amateur dramatic societies they were merely themselves with parts stuck on to them  ... But with these professionals, you lost all sight of their private personalities; they simply came to life on the stage in another sort of way; and as you watched them, you could hardly believe that you really knew them as people." (2.3)
• "The streets were being slashed with cold rain. One minute a pale sun would creep out and set everything glittering, and the next minute the rain would come sweeping down, up would go overcoat collars and umbrellas, and the streets would be full of people running as if for their very lives. A lunatic city.  ... This tea-shop had the air of still being in the hands of charwomen. There were no charwomen to be seen but the place seemed to smell damply and cheerlessly of their labours ... The waitresses looked as if they had not yet recovered from a bitter reveille that had dragged them out of their little bedrooms ... and brought them sniffing in cold buses and trams and tubes to this tea-shop. Every customer, every order, was to them an affront. Their day had not really begun; they had hardly washed themselves yet; and as a protest against being disturbed so early they banged down sugar-basins and cruets on the little damp marble-topped tables. At close range they used the sniff, and at a distance the yawn." (3.3)

An entertainment rather than a great work of literature. July 2024; 618 pages of small print.

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Edward the Elder" by Michael John Kay

 

The River Great Ouse at Bedford was once the frontier between the Saxons and the Vikings. Edward crossed the river to capture Bedford during his reign.

Edward the Elder was the son of Alfred the Great, King of Wessex. Alfred is justly celebrated for resisting Viking incursions into the territory of Wessex, the Anglo-Saxon kingdom that covered most of southern England, and reaching a long-lasting peace treaty with the Vikings, albeit one that recognised a split between the Anglo-Saxon part of England (Wessex and half of Mercia, the kingdom in the Midlands, against the Welsh border) and the Viking part (called the Danelaw). But Edward was the King who, with his sister Aethelflaed who was Queen of Mercia) took the fight to the Vikings, retrieving the Midlands and East Anglia. Edward's son Aethlestan was to continue the fight, liberating almost all of what is now England, and creating the unified country that we now have.

So Edward (called the Elder by later generations to distinguish him from Edward the Confessor) is a very important figure in English history and one who has been unjustly overlooked, overshadowed, perhaps, by his father. This biography puts Edward back in the limelight.

It also tells his story remarkably well. My only quibble is that the writer frequently tells you the same thing twice, for example, when he describes the boundary between Wessex-Mercia and the Danelaw, the second time in slightly more detail. But if this is the price to pay for a complicated tale to be told with clarity, so be it, although it does make the book longer (and the print is quite small so my ageing eyes found it sometimes wearisome).

It is a complicated tale. A patchwork of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms battled against a miscellany of Scandinavian marauders. The situation was rarely coherent. Given that all this happened over a thousand years ago, the sources are often either missing, possibly inaccurate or incomplete. The author does a great job or pinpointing dates and places without being overly nit-picking (for example, he tends to summarise scholarly opinion without going into the details). The result is a readable history for the general reader.

I loved it. So many of the places that appear are places I have known, such as Kingston-on-Thames were Edward (probably) and Aethelstan (definitely) had their coronations, sitting on a block of sarsen stone. And Bedford, a frontier town, whose Viking stronghold on the northern bank of the River Great Ouse surrendered to Edward, at which point he built a neighbouring fortified burh on the southern bank. And London where, the Roman city having been abandoned, the Vikings ruled Lundenwic before the Saxons retook the city moving the centre (around 883) back to the Roman ruins as Lundenburh. 

But it's not all warfare. There are lots of other interesting tales and mysteries, such as: Why did Edward ditch his first wife Ecgwyn and send his son by that relationship to be brought up by his sister in Mercia? Was she a concubine as was hinted? And why did Edward's first heir die only fourteen days after Edward; was he assassinated by his half-brother? And who was the nun abducted from Wimborne Minster by Edward's cousin Aethelwold during his first rebellion; was she Edward's sister Aethelgifu and did Aethelwold marry her and if so was it consensual?

This is the story of a critical period in the founding of the country we now know as England and this great book rescues Edward from the neglect of history.

Selected quotes:

• “The slave trade was part of accepted practice, with slaves bought and sold across markets throughout the known world.” (Ch 16)

January 2024; 263 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"The Magnificent Century" by Thomas B Costain

This history covers the reign of Henry III of England (1216 - 1272), son and heir of King John, father of Edward I. This was a pivotal reign known primarily for the rebellion of Simon de Montfort in his attempts to establish the first English Parliament to which Commoners were called. 

The book is the middle volume in The Pageant of England trilogy. These books were initially written in 1951 and therefore provide a broad sweep of narrative history with little questioning (it repeats the claim that “An Italian named Salvenus de Armat invented spectacles in 1280”; Chap 31 although wikipedia suggests that this claim is untrue: "there was no member of the Armati family with that name" at the time) and no reference to sources although it is clear that the author is widely read. The prejudices and perspectives of 1951 are clearly visible! I am sure that the histories we write will be viewed disdainfully by the historians of 2090; our own obsessions distorting our perspective on the past.

Nevertheless this is a cracking read and I learned lots. The thirteenth century was filled with great characters such as Hubert de Burgh, William Marshall, Robert Grosseteste, Simon de Montfort, Eustace the Monk (a pirate) and many more. It starts in the middle of a civil war and in invasion of England by Prince Louis, son of the French King, it involves another civil war and the capture of the king at Lewes who then becomes a puppet until his son escapes from captivity and destroys the rebel army at Evesham. There is incident aplenty, lots of baddies and a few goodies. 

Some great moments:

• Blanche, wife of Prince Louis demanded of King Philip Augustus of France money for her husband to continue fighting “if he remained obdurate, she would raise the money by pawning her own children.” (Chapter 2)
• “This lumbering, lute-twanging, looby age” (Chapter 26)
• “A live cardinal could do more for you than a dead pope.” (Chapter 28)
• “Those of high station lived in dank stone castles and those of low degree in mean hovels without chimney or window. They clothed their body in dun shoddiness and deemed a man a meacock who wore an embroidered band on his tunic.” (Chapter 29) I thought meacock was a misprint for peacock. I should have known that a meacock is "An uxorious, effeminate, or spiritless man; 

A meek man who dotes on his wife, or is henpecked." according to wiktionary. 

Very enjoyable. August 2020; 370 pages

Other books in the series include

• The Conquering Family
• The Three Edwards

"Watling Street" by John Higgs

Higgs travels from Dover to Anglesey along one of the old roads of England (and Wales, and he does refer to Britain, but most of this book is conserned with England and Englishness). As he goes he muses on the current state of England during the fall-out from the Brexit referendum. He also meets a selection of people including a postman who leaked inside information about the denationalisation of the Post Office,  the internationally renowned Graphic novelist Alan Moore (author of From Hell and V for Vendetta), and a performance poet John Constable. This is a view of England from the post-punk hippy underground gone middle class; there are unashamed socialist, even communist overtones and a heavy undercurrent of psychedelic magical mysticism.

He spends a lot of time in some places and seems to rapidly skip over others. There seems to be a disproportionate number of places further south, as if he had to hurry up towards the end. After Dover comes Canterbury and then London which seems fair enough. He spends a long time in London at a shamanic performance event in memory of the prostitutes buried outside Southwark Cathedral. He then watches a parade in St Albans, discusses highwaymen and shopping centres in Dunstable, visits Bletchley Park and arrives at Northampton where he spends considerable time in the company of Alan Moore, whose presence has already been foreshadowed. He sounds off about public schools in Rugby before sprinting through Wales to Anglesey.

He has some brilliant descriptions (“The seven white turbines of a wind farm stand in a row to the north. Their blades turn out of sync with each other, like infant school children trying to perform a dance.”; Introduction) and he can be very funny at times:

• “Damaging graffiti with graffiti might be something of a legal grey area.” (C 6)
• “The English are supposed to be animal lovers, so representing them with a man who killed an endangered species is an uneasy fit, especially when that animal was as brilliant as a dragon. ... We can say with certainty that the actual number of people hurt by dragons all of history is precisely zero. You can't say that about crusading Roman mercenaries like George.” (C 7)
• “Saints who are depicted carrying their heads ... have been something of a problem for religious artists over the years because of the tricky question of where to paint the halo. They can place the halo either around the bloodied stump of neck or over the head carried in the saint’s armpit, but in both instances it looks like they are being sarcastic.” (C 7)
• “It is often remarked upon that houses in North Wales are frequently squat and ugly, but when the landscape looks like this there is no point in competing on appearance. It is better to give up on visual aesthetics and concentrate on becoming a land of song instead.” (C 13)

He also makes a number of political points:

• “National identity can be manipulative. It can be a mirage used against you, a spell like that of the Pied Piper of Hamlyn [sic] which seduces you into getting in line and marching behind the patriotic tune.” (C 1)
• “If history teaches us anything it is that nationalism never ends well.” (C 1)
• “The idea that the privileged are superior is the central tenet of the public-school reality tunnel. An elaborate, but entirely arbitrary, system of social rules and signifiers is employed in an attempt to support it and make it appear believable.” (C 11)
• “If our history tells us anything it is that Britishness is cultural, not genetic. Aliens from far-off galaxies, if they settled in Ipswich, would be down the pub moaning about the weather in a generation or two.” (C 13)

There are many fine points and things of interest in this book but I admit to finding his selection of what to write about individual.

Selected quotes:

• “Milton Keynes looks like a Canadian airport which has started a new life in the Buckinghamshire countryside.” (Introduction)
• “A tree’s past is not lost with passing years but remains visibly present in its shape. It expands as shoots bud and branches grow, but it always physically contains the younger tree it used to be.” (Introduction)
• “Men and women in the UK are on average 4.3 inches taller than they were a hundred years ago, due to changes in our understanding of health and nutrition.” (C 1)
• “Betteridge’s Law ... states that for any headline that asks a question, the answer is always ‘no’.” (C 1)
• “In Gothic literature, the weight of the past presses down on the present and offers only the certainty of death.” (C 1)
• “It can be hard to imagine this island without the English language, but the actual native tongue of this country was Common Brittanic.” (C 2)
• “London stone is mentioned in mediaeval documents going back to around the year 1100 ... London stone was thought to have the ability to grant political or royal authority in a similar way to the Stone of Scone in Perth, or the Anglo-Saxon coronation stone that gave Kingston upon Thames its name.” (C 6)
• “The rope, shroud and prisoner’s clothes could be sold by the hangman ... In 1447, a reprieve arrived for five men being prepared for hanging and dismemberment after the hangman had already taken their clothes. They attempted to reclaim their clothes from the hangman, but he insisted that they were rightfully his. After much arguing, the reprieved men went home naked” (C 6)
• “When I lived in the north there was a constant, unquestioned level of anti-London sentiment ... the population of this one city is more than the populations of Scotland and Wales combined.” (C 6)
• “Increasing population densities increase the number of connections between people, which in turn increases economic activity. Businesses can find customers, and artists can find audiences. There are more ideas in circulation, and more options.” (C 6)
• “A great deal of the most treasured things in our culture, including weddings, the Olympic torch and the monarchy, are products of magical thinking rather than rationality.” (C 7)
• “What other option did people have to change things? When you're watching television and the program is terrible and you can't watch any longer, you change the channel. You don't know what is on the other side, or whether it will be better or worse. All you know is that it will be something different, so that's what you choose. It’s either that, or turn the TV off.” (C 8)
• “Latin and Greek were viewed as subjects of greater value than science or engineering, because practical subjects like those were associated with work and trade.” (C 9)
• “He was not a man who would bend or compromise for expediency’s sake. He had the mind of a true artist and a terrible politician.” (C 10)
• “Time is not the fourth dimension, but our perception of time is almost like the shadow of the fourth dimension.” (C 10)
• “Titles ... are like human versions of vanity registration plates.” (C 11)
• “Land is occupied when a foreign army takes it, but a person is occupied when they work.” (C 12)
• “It is easy to think of the Celts of a single group of people. They spoke the Celtic group of languages. They had a very distinctive style of ornamental art ... They had a distinctive style of fashion and wore a rigid metal ring around their necks, usually open at the front, called a torc. ... In the biosphere, there was no single type of Celtic people. ... Being Celtic was not the result of blood. It was the result of ideas."(C 13)

An enjoyable, though unusual, travel book. I particularly liked the idea that “Everywhere is special - if you know where to look.” (C 5)

May 2019; 344 pages

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

Other books on travel, exploration and explorers, which are reviewed in this blog, may be found here

"The Conquering Family" by Thomas B Costain

This part of a three volume history entitled The Pageant of England tells the story of the Plantagenet Kings from Henry II (though it starts with the civil war between Stephen and Matilda) up to the death of King John.

Costain was a historical novelist and this book was written in 1949; it is very much of its time. The narrative is told in broad strokes with little of the modern historian's care for close examination of alternative sources. It reminded me of A Child's History of England by Charles Dickens: much of the tales it tells serve either a romantic of a moral purpose. He has affectations: low grade priests are regularly referred to as 'shaven-polls' and he loves giving the correct words for parts of armour. But it is a good read.

A more historical account of these times (and a deeper and more fulfilling need even if it does 300 years in 600 pages) might be found in The Plantagenets by Dan Jones.

May 2015; 344 pages

Other books in this trilogy include

• The Magnificent Century
• The Three Edwards