"Lazarus Rising" by Neil Thomson

 This novel is a cross between The Bourne Identity and the story of the Tichbourne Claimant. It is set during and after the Napoleonic Wars. A man arrives in the Kentish village of Stelling Minnis. He knows no more about his past, or his identity, than that he was pulled alive from a pile of corpses on the battlefield of Waterloo. At the same time the long-lost son of the Lord of the Manor returns to the village to claim his inheritance. But is he who he says he is? And who is the mysterious stranger? The story jumps backwards and forwards in time before racing to the final confrontation.

It is a great premise for a story and the pacing of the tale was perfect with major turning-points placed almost precisely at the 25%, 50% and 75% marks. It's a fairly short book at 180 pages, quick and easy to read. There's plenty of action and the story never flags. There is little moral ambiguity although the main character feels that he is a curse on others which allows the reader to wonder whether the ending will be happy or tragic. 

If you enjoy fast-paced straightforward thrillers, this is the book for you.

Selected quotes:

• "The sun crept up the sky the way ivy grows up a wall, slowly." (first line)
• "The river could mean salvation or death as he could not actually remember if he could swim." (Ch 19)
• "In the end, a person is their memories." (Ch 23)

September 2021

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

"Castlereagh" by John Bew

 A huge and exhaustive scholarly biography of one of Britain's most influential politicians never to become Prime Minister. 

Castlereagh was born into the protestant landed elite of Ireland; his father soon became Lord Londonderry. After a year in Cambridge, the young Viscount became an MP in the Irish parliament; his career there ended when he fostered the Act of Union which abolished it on which he transferred to the UK parliament. As a protege of Pitt he soon rose through the Tory ranks and eventually became Foreign Secretary during the last few years of the Napoleonic Wars and, crucially, at the Congress of Vienna that determined the shape of much of Europe from 1815 until the end of the First World War. Seven years after that triumph he suddenly (in about a fortnight, it seems) became weary, paranoid and he finally committed suicide by cutting his throat.

His reputation, which is probably unfair, then and still, is of a right-wing reactionary. Bew spends a lot of time and amasses what I feel is significant evidence to counter this. 

To be honest, the biography that would have had me riveted was that of Castlereagh's younger brother Charles who, as well as being an aide to Wellington in the Peninsula campaign and sending letters to his brother undermining his boss, was a bit of a ladies man for whom the Congress of Vienna was the perfect opportunity for, well, congress. His conquests included one of Wellington's nieces, a Russian princess and the former mistress of Metternich; he also paid multiple visits to the local brothels, Later, while investigating the infidelities of Princess Caroline so that the Prince Regent could get a divorce (set a thief to catch a thief?) he bought a fake Titian for £1200 and suffered the humiliation of having the small son of his listress tell him that the man they had met in the street "comes to Mama when you go away". The fact that one of his amours turned out to be a spy was almost incidental. Later, back in England, he was ejected from the bedroom of an 18-year-old heiress (he was 38) by her governess, though, to be fair, he did go on to marry her. So much more colourful than his monochrome brother.

As usual I have quibbles about the use of foreign expressions without translation. Castlereagh is more than once described as having "mauvaise honte": it is French for bashfulness. Chapter 15 is entitled "A Lavaterian Eye": this relates to Johann Lavater (1741 - 1801) a Swiss theologian and physiognomist who popularised the belief that a person's character could be read from their face. If I, as a Doctor of Philosophy, need Google to understand a book, then it seems safe to conclude that it is not written for the general reader. The biography of Robert Peel, a younger contemporary of Castlereagh, by Douglas Hurd that I read recently was rather better written. 

There seem to me to be a few mistakes. In Chapter 2.19 Bew says that Spenser Perceval was "gunned down in the chamber of the Commons" when all other sources say it was in the lobby. In Chapter 2.20 he describes the ruler of the Prussians as an Emperor rather than a King. In Chapter 3.10 Castlereagh wears a "Whig".

Selected quotes:

• "All the genius and capacity to be found in the world are produced by that class of men who must study or be starved" (Lord Camden; Ch 1.4)
• "Castlereagh also expressed the view that all revolutions ... had been caused by 'the obstinacy with which government in all countries has opposed itself to every alteration in  the constitution'." (Ch 1,6)
• "Jerusalem Whalley ... had once walked from Dublin to the Holy City to play Eton Fives against the ancient walls for a wager." (Ch 1.17)
• "the most poignant of regrets, the remorse for a crime committed in vain." (Ch 1.17; after Samuel Johnson)

When Castelereagh went to the continent at the end of 1813 to negotiate with the allies he travelled in HMS Erebus, whose own biography I read recently.

Authoritative but lengthy and rather heavy going.

August 2021; 587 pages

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

"The Man who broke Napoleon's codes" by Mark Urban

George Scovell was a man of low birth who, having initially trained as an engraver, joined the British army during the Napoleonic wars. This book traces his career from Captain with Sir John Moore at the time of the evacuation from Corunna to his work as an assistant quarter-master general with Wellington where he was initially responsible for a team of guides to reconnoitre and gather information, then taking on the duties of postmaster, running teams of men carrying messages, and finally as Wellington's code-breaker. The book also tells of the Peninsular campaign and includes the British attacks on the great forts of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz and the great victories of Salamanca and Vitorio; Waterloo and the aftermath of his career are included in a post-script.

This is a well-told (plain and clear, rather like the prose of the Duke of Wellington himself) narrative history and it includes some very useful maps. In an original touch there is a friexe above each chapter heading which shows a quotation written in the Great Chiffre Napoleonic code and which is gradually revealed as the chapters go by.

Some of my favourite lines:

• "Captain George Scovell was a Deputy Assistant Quartermaster General ... the title itself seemed to denote 'insignificance'." (C 1)
• "While Massena had kept his mistress at Headquarters ... Marmont, although reputedly one of the most handsome men in Paris, brought no Venus to the field of Mars." (C 7)
• "Sometimes a column of infantry marching across a dusty Estremaduran plain would see the glint of a telescope on a nearby hillside and then catch sight of a silhouetted figure on horseback." (C 7)
• "An intercepted mail ... was taken by Longa, who killed 400 men who escorted it except 12, who, he says, did not show so strong an inclination to leave their bodies there." (C 17)

May 2019; 288 pages

"All the king's men" by Saul David

This book chronicles "the British redcoat in the era of sword and musket" from the first standing army of Charles II in 1661 to the battle of Waterloo in 1815. It starts with a brilliant prologue describing the (closer than normally accepted) battle of Sedgemoor of 1685 when the irregular rebels of the Duke of Monmouth were defeated by a small royal army that contained the future Duke of Marlborough. It then proceeds through the Glorious Revolution, the anti-Jacobite wars of William of Orange and the War of Spanish Succession culminating in Marlborough's successes at Blenheim etc; the Seven Years War with the Canadian success of James Wolfe; the failures in the American War of Independence; and the triumphs of the Duke of Wellington both in India, the Peninsula, and at Waterloo.

This is an unashamedly 'great man' version of history although there are many moments when the ordinary private is squeezed into the story of the great generals. There are times when David seems uncritical: some of the old stories about Waterloo, for example, are repeated without comment: did Wellington really call Waterloo a 'close-run thing'? But by and large these tactics keep the narrative rattling along; it could easily have been very boring.

I am not really a fan of military histories. I find it incredibly difficult to picture a battlefield and the long descriptions of columns advancing and flanks and wheeling squares leave me hopelessly confused. The maps in this book help little. Some maps of inadequately labelled: I did not realise the idfference between cavalry and infantry on one map until I encountered a better-labelled map later in the book. And I found the campaign maps frustrating: some were on too small a scale so that places mentioned in the text were off the map and others were on too large a scale: one map, for example, showed the entirety of Wellington's Peninsular campaign even though he advanced and retreated over several years.

I always like to pick up trivia. It fascinates me that famous people are often woven in and out of narrative threads that are far apart. Thus the doomed Duke of Monmouth had earlier been exiled for his part in the Rye House plot which had been against his own father. James Wolfe drilled his men in using their bayonets held at the hip rather than the shoulder many years before his martyr's death. William Cobbett 'accidentally' enlisted as a soldier and had to flee England after bringing allegations of corruption against some of his senior officers. The grand old Duke of York who was not much cop as a field commander was a fantastic administrator of the army. And the Duke of Wellington allegedly came up with the name Thomas Atkins (a soldier who had died at Breda against the French in 1794) to go on the specimen page of the Army paybook, thus creating the immortal Tommy.

An enjoyable book with a careful mixture of great men and little. March 2013; 500 pages

"Commander" by Stephen Taylor

This is the biography of "Britain's greatest frigate captain" Sir Edward Pellew. Rising from an ordinary seaman with a particular acrobatic ability in the tops, Pellew's early naval career matched that of his near-contemporary Nelson. Following service fighting Americans in their War of Independence he became captain of a frigate, the Indefatigable, and trained both ship and men to become the most successful prize-winning ship of the time. His later career as captain of a Ship of the Line and later as Rear-Admiral and then Commander-in-Chief in the Indian Ocean kept him away from Trafalgar and led to anti-climax. However, his last fight against the slavers of Algiers restored his reputation.

This is Hornblower stuff. A number of Pellew's exploits (rescuing men from a sinking ship in surf and landing marines at Quiberon Bay) seem to have inspired C. S. Forester. Yet the facts are as compelling as the reading and Taylor has created a brilliant page-turner which encapsulates this brilliant but flawed exponent of the Age of Sail.

Thrilling and fascinating. December 2012; 310 pages