"Outside Looking In" by T C Boyle

 

A novelisation of the story of Timothy Leary and his promotion of LSD.

After a 'Prelude' set in Basel in 1943 in which we learn of the discovery of LSD from the point of view of the discoverers research assistant, we move to Harvard in 1962 where Professor Tim Leary is conducting 'research' into the effects of psilocybin, ostensibly to see whether its hallucinogenic properties could be used in the treatment of mental issue (a debate still very much alive today, with some scientific evidence that it can but other suggestions that it is no better than alternative treatments). 

The psychologist researchers, and their families, start experimenting at parties in Harvard, before spending a couple of summer vacations in Mexico, before being expelled by the authorities and dismissed by Harvard and ending up living in a giant commune in New York State. Sexual boundaries start to dissolve, the children become feral, and the local authorities start to persecute them.

The first and third sections are narrated in the past tense and 3td person from the point of view of Fitz, a graduate student who feels himself on the outside and desperately wants to be part of the inner circle. The middle section is narrated by his wife, Joanie. 

The finish of the book was so sudden that, even though I knew there could not be more than one or two pages, I turned the page looking for the start of the next paragraph. And yet it was a good line to end on.

This novel links to real people and other works of art. Tim Leary was real and his Castalia foundation was named after the sect in Herman Hesse's The Glass Bead Game. The music of the Beatles is mostly despised by the psychologists who adore jazz and Satie's Gymnopedies. One of their heroes is Aldous Huxley; his latest novel Island is mentioned. Another is Ken Kesey, a fellow psychologist whose debut novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is also mentioned. Kesey later appears with his Pranksters in their coach, as documented by Tom Wolfe in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. 

Wolfe's book is so outrageous - consonant with its subject - that it might be thought to overshadow this novel. But the two have different aims. Wolfe is celebrating psychedelia. Boyle is chronicling the damage caused by the hedonistic lifestyle - and it doesn't need to be mind-altering drugs, it could have been alcohol, or sexual promiscuity, or gourmandising, or even unbridled capitalistic consumerism - to the participants. Yes, the 'squares' in society are repressive but the true dangers lie in ignoring real relationships in the obsessive pursuit of elusive dreams. It could equally well apply to writing a novel.

I enjoyed this book. There were some delightful moments and there are some interesting descriptions of the hallucinations caused by taking these drugs, although that was somewhat downplayed compared to the more experimental fiction concerning drug abuse. It is particularly good at portraying the bleak realities of ordinary life, dramatically juxtaposed against the siren promise of chemical liberation.

Selected quotes:

• “Did you see the way the daffodils are pushing up everywhere? I thought somebody'd smeared the whole landscape with butter while we were asleep.” (Prelude)
• “Table legs. the antimacassar on the chair. The end table, the telephone, my shoes! Everything has a life of its own totally independent of us.” (Prelude)
• “This haggard red-faced pathetically ordinary woman who wouldn't have known transcendence if it swooped her up on angels’ wings and sailed her high out of the glittering crest of the universe.” (1.1)
• “Mid-January, bleak as the bottom of a shoe” (1.2)
• “Interiority by its very definition was exclusive, selfish even.” (1.7)
• “The village and its stew of smells.” (2.1)
• “She'd ... watched the full moon scroll its icy script across the face of every wave in existence.” (2.1)
• “They’d gone back to the apartment with the mouse turds, only to find that it too had been taken by somebody whose level of desperation must have been positively Dostoevskian.” (2.3)
• “Worlds collided, glaciers calved, civilizations marched across the landscape erecting temples and tearing them down and starting all over again.” (3.1)
• “Nothing quite fit right, as if the world were a suit of clothes that had shrunk in the dryer and had to be pinched and tugged till it stretched back out again.” (3.2)
• “A June morning, the air heavy as a wet sock and the sun hanging unencumbered overhead.” (3.4)
• “He saw himself as from a distance, a partially dressed great ape with a tube of tobacco in one hand and the concentrated residue of a caffeinated plant in the other.” (3.4)
• “For a long while he sat there on her bed while the sun backed away from him inch by inch across the carpet till it hung suspended in the window and finally dropped out of sight.” (3.6)

July 2026; 385 pages

First published in the US by Ecco Press in 2019
My paperback edition issued in 2020.

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God

"Ivanhoe" by Walter Scott

This is perhaps the most celebrated novel by an author who was a huge best-seller in his time and respected by Jane Austen, George Eliot and Charles Dickens among others.

It belongs to the now-outdated 'gadzooks' style of historical fiction with lots of 'thous', 'haths' and 'yes' etc. I suppose that created verisimilitude in those days but it sounds forced and inauthentic to my ears. Modern historical novelists, such as Ken Follett, in The Pillars of the Earth, avoid this. But you can say for Scott, who was one of the pioneers of historical fiction, that he did it better than some of his later imitators, such as Charles Kingsley in Hereward the Wake.

It is told in the 3rd person omniscient style, past tense, and framed as a story, allowing scope for the author to interject, for example: “His furred cloak and high cap, seen by the wiry and broken light, would have afforded a study for Rembrandt, had that celebrated painter existed at the period.” (Ch 22) He also bids for verisimilitude by citing his sources. For example, in chapter 24 he mentions both the Anglo-Saxon chronicle and the Wardour manuscript as sources. The latter, however, is fictional, Wardour being a character in The Antiquary, published 4 years before Ivanhoe).

He has clearly done a significant amount of historical research. This is displayed as early as  chapter one, when Wamba points out that Saxons talk of swine and oxen because they farm the animals, while the Normans use the words pork and beef when they eat the meat. Given how early this was written, I was impressed with how accurate Scott seemed to be, although there are some discrepancies and inconsistencies, in particular with dynastic relationships, where, for example, great uncles and prescribed and grandfathers and grandfathers as fathers.

In terms of the plot, it is a cracking yarn, a classic adventure story. It includes a jousting and melee tournament with not one, but two, incognito knights who, naturally, defeat all comers. It includes outlaws waylaying travellers in the forest, an attempt at torture in a castle dungeon, the siege of that castle and an ordeal by combat to save the life of one of the heroines who is threatened with being burned as a witch. Robin Hood, Richard the Lionheart, and bad King John make an appearance.

On the other hand, the characters are very one-dimensional. In the main, heroes are goody-goody superheroes and villains are horrid. There are exceptions. The Templar Brian de Bois-Guilbert is initially no more than a rapist but, impressed by Rebecca's spirit, woos her for a mistress and, in the showdown, when selected as champion for the Templars against Rebecca, asks her to elope with him. Similarly, Maurice de Bracy is in two minds about Rowena. 

Is it anti-Semitic? Isaac the Jew, a moneylender, is a major character and is stereotyped as both cowardly and covetous. However, Scott spends considerable length pointing out how the Jews in this period in England were persecuted and terrorised and in this way condemning anti-Semitism. Rebecca, Isaac's daughter, is the principal heroine; she is strong-minded and virtuous.

Is it sexist? Comments such as, “Women are but the toys which amuse our lighter hours.” (Ch 36) make it seem so, although that is spoken by a villain. Again, Scott is keen to create strong heroines. But there is nevertheless a feeling that he is making stereotypical assumptions. Perhaps the best that can be said is that he was enlightened for his time.

Is it racist? There are very few characters of colour and they are in subordinate positions. There are some unpleasant racial epithets.

So what did Jane Austen see in Scott? (She once said she would read no novels other than those by herself, Maria Edgeworth, who wrote Castle Rackrent, and Walter Scott.) Scott reviewed Emma favourably so the respect was mutual. Fundamentally, they wrote in very different genres. Scott compared Austen's style to that of Dutch interior painting: controlled and utterly realistic. He was writing melodrama and deliberately using exaggeration and extravagance to create drama and to excite the reader: very baroque. 

Selected quotes:

• “It is comfort to think that we leave behind us on earth those who shall be wretched as ourselves.” (Ch 24)
• “This damsel has wept enough to extinguish a beacon light. Never was such wringing of hands and such overflowing of eyes ... A water-fiend hath possessed the fair Saxon." (Ch 25)
• “Glory ... is the rusted mail which hangs as a hatchment over the champion's dim and mouldering tomb.” (Ch 30)
• “Even in our own days, when morals are better understood, an execution, a bruising-march, a riot, or a meeting of radical reformers, collects, at considerable hazard to themselves, immense crowds of spectators.” (Ch 43)

It's an entertaining story but somewhat long-winded for modern tastes (every character must be introduced with a long paragraph of description) which I found wearisome. 

There is a full synopsis of the plot (spoiler alert) under my byline.

June 2026; 519 pages

First published in 1819 by Archibald Constable

My paperback edition was issued by Penguin Popular Classics in 1994

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God

Synopsis: spoiler alert

Ivanhoe is set in 1194 when King Richard I, captured returning from the crusades, has been ransomed and is expected back in England soon. Since the 1066 Norman Conquest, almost all of the land is owned by Norman barons who act like warlords, tyrannising the local populations of Saxons.

It starts with a group of Norman knights and church leaders riding through Sherwood Forest, asking directions for Cedric’s manor, hoping to spend the night there. Cedric is one of the few Saxons still in possession of land. He hosts the Normans; the dinner is interrupted by another stranger, Isaac, a Jewish moneylender. The anonymous pilgrim who escorted the Normans to the house wakes early the next morning and, having overheard Templar knight Bois-Guilbert planning to abduct Isaac, warns Isaac; helped by faithful swineherd Gurth, the pair slip away. In gratitude, Isaac lends the man a suit of armour and a warhorse.

A tournament is being held at Ashby Castle in the presence of King John. The first day is jousting. A mysterious knight who calls himself Desdichado (= Disinherited) defeats, one by one, the five champions, including Bois-Gilbert, and is declared champion of the day; he chooses as Queen of the Tournament, Lady Rowena, the beautiful and royal Saxon ward of Cedric, engaged to a Saxon nobleman called Athelstane but in love with Cedric’s son Wilfred of Ivanhoe (who was disinherited by his father for this presumption and has left the country to go on the crusades).

On the second day there is a mock battle between two sides. Desdichado’s side is triumphant but only after another anonymous knight who calls himself Le Noir Faineant (= The Black Sluggard) rides to the rescue of Desdichado. The wounded Desdichado is revealed to be Ivanhoe. Rebecca, Isaac’s daughter, a skilled healer, takes him to her house to treat him.

The tournament ends with an archery competition won by an archer called Locksley. It’s Robin Hood!

Le Roi Faineant has spent the night eating, drinking and singing in the cell of hermit The Holy Clerk of Copmanhurst (Friar Tuck).

Travelling through the forest, Isaac, Rebecca and the wounded Ivanhoe, as well as Cedric, Athelstane and Rowena, are captured by mercenary knight Maurice de Bracy and his companions, who are masquerading as outlaws, and taken to Torquilstone, the castle of Reginald Front-de-Bœuf. Gurth and Wamba, Cedric’s jester, escape only to encounter Locksley, leader of the real outlaws. Le Roi Faineant and the Friar turn up. They go to besiege the castle.

Inside, Front-de-Boeuf tries to extort money from Isaac by torturing him in the dungeons. De Bracy tells Rowena he wants to marry her; she turns him down. Bois-Guilbert tells Rebecca he wants her to be his mistress; she threatens to jump out of the tower window if he lays a hand on her.

The siege starts and the besieged send a message that they will kill their captives. Wamba, disguised as a priest, goes into the castle’to hear Cedric’s confession’ but then changes clothes with Cedric who slips out of his cell. On his way out, Cedric meets withered crone Ulrica, and has a lengthy conversation with her, eliciting her back story as if he has all the time in the world. As Urfiried, she was daughter of the original lord of the castle which Front-de-Bouef usurped, raping her and keeping her imprisoned. In revenge, she sets light to the castle as the besiegers gain entrance. Front-de-Bœuf is killed in the fire. De Bracy is forced to surrender to the Black Knight, who identifies himself as King Richard. Athelstane is wounded and presumed dead. Bois-Guilbert escapes with Rebecca to the local Templar preceptory.

Lucas de Beaumanoir, the Grand Master of the Templars, is in the preceptory to to sharpen it up. Discovering that Bois-Guilbert's girlfriend is a Jew, he accuses her of witchcraft. Prompted secretly by Bois-Guilbery, she demands a trial by combat. She must find a champion in three days to defeat the champion appointed by the Templars or be burned to death. The Grand Master picks Bois-Guilbert as the Templar’s champion. He’s in a dilemma: does he fight for the love of his life, or fight against her champion and thus maintain his chivalric honour.

At his own funeral, Athelstane returns to life, demanding food. He pledges allegiance to King Richard and cedes Rowena to Ivanhoe. Ivanhoe hears about Rebecca’s plight and rides hard to become her champion. He arrives in the nick of time but he’s exhausted. Bois-Guilbert and Ivanhoe ride a joust; both fall. Ivanhoe gets up; Bois-Guilbert stays down. He has had a stroke or a heart attack from the conflict of emotions inspired by loving Rebecca and having to fight against her, and he is dead.

Rebecca goes to Rowena and tells her that she and her father are leaving for Cordoba in Muslim held Spain where the Jews aren’t persecuted. She will become a healer. Rowena wins Ivanhoe.

Other novels by this author

Scott wrote a series of historical novels which were hugely influential at the time. They are known as the Waverley novels after the title of the first (later novels were often published anonymously as 'by the author of Waverley). 

• Waverley (1814) set during the 1745 Jacobite rebellion
• Guy Mannering (1815) set in Scotland
• The Antiquary (1816) set in Scotland
• The Black Dwarf (1816) set in Scotland
• Old Mortality (1816) set in Scotland
• Rob Roy (1818) about a Scottish bandit
• The Heart of Midlothian (1818) set in Scotland after which the Edinburgh football team was named
• The Bride of Lammermoor (1819) set in Scotland which inspired the opera Lucia di Lammermoor by Donnizetti
• A Legend of Montrose (1819) set in Scotland
• Ivanhoe (1819) set in mediaeval England, complete with Robin Hood
• The Monastery (1820) set in Scotland
• The Abbot (1820) set in Scotland
• Kenilworth (1821) set in Tudor England
• The Pirate (1822) set in Shetland and Orkney
• The Fortunes of Nigel (1822) set in Jacobean London
• Peveril of the Peak (1822) set in England
• Quentin Durward (1823) set in mediaeval France and Belgium
• St Ronan's Well (1824) set in Scotland
• Redgauntlet (1824) set in Scotland and northern England
• The Betrothed (1825) set in  Wales
• The Talisman (1825) set in Palestine at the time of the Crusades
• Woodstock (1826) set in England and Brussels during the English civil war
• The Fair Maid of Perth (1828) set in Scotland
• Anne of Geierstein set in Switzerland
• Count Robert of Paris (1831) set in Constantinople in 1097
• Castle Dangerous (1831) set in Scotland

"The Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follett

 

A vast epic of a historical novel told by a superb storyteller.

It is set in the days of the Anarchy, when King Stephen and Empress Maud battled for the English throne, a time of rebellions leading to a full-blown civil war, the entire period lasting for seventeen years during which time parts of England were controlled, an terrorised, by the local warlord. Against this background is set the story of Prior Philip who wants to improve his monastery and a builder who wants to work on a cathedral. The baddies include the local bishop and a wannabe earl; the goodies, beside the prior and the builder include the daughter of the earl who is defeated, usurped and killed, and the talented bastard son of a witch and a hanged jongleur. 

There's plenty of action to keep the reader turning the more than a thousand pages. Conflict rules, whether it be a disputed election of a prior, a mob of outlaws attacking a town, an army of soldiers destroying a castle, rape, murder, cursing witches, plenty of sex ... this is a story that has everything. And at this length, there is even time to develop the characters. True, most of them have little nuance. William the bad earl and Waleran the bad bishop are villains through and through with  no redeeming features whatsoever: they are figures straight from mystery plays or melodramas. But the goodies have a degree of complexity which allows the author to keep posing problems for them which they solve but not entirely so that the solutions can return to haunt them. In the end, this reader hoped and hoped that, despite moments or peril and jeopardy, despite impossible odds, his favourites would survive and prosper till the end. Read on, read on!

If you want a page-turner, you cannot fault this novel. It begins with the line: "The small boys came early to the hanging." which is an incredible hook. After that, a paragraph setting the scene is perfectly in order. The few pages of this Prologue ground the reader thoroughly in the setting but are also full of action so it becomes impossible not to read on.

After this there is plenty to get your teeth into. There's plenty of description telling me more about this period, and cathedral building, than I have learned in many standard history books. But the key to the readability is that you are never more than a few pages away from yet another confrontation. The Battle of Lincoln. The murder of Thomas a Beckett. The collapse of a cathedral. It might be a thousand pages plus, but the pace never flags.

And each of these set pieces, from sex to battle, from court room scene to cathedral killing, is perfectly written. 

A whirlwind of a read.

Selected quotes:

• "He seemed fond of Philip but wary of him, like a father whose son has been away to war and has come home with a sword in hius belt and a slightly dangerous look in his eye." (1.4.1)
• "Pray for miracles, but plant cabbages." (3.12.1)
• "The ducks swallow the worms, and the foxes kill the ducks, and the men shoot the foxes, and the devil hunts the men." (5.16.1)

April 2026; 1080 pages

First published by Macmillan in 1989

My paperback edition was issued by Pan in 2023

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God

"White Sunrise" by John Newton

This sage-style novel is mostly set in East Africa starting in 1902 and continuing past 1920, centring on the war between the British and German settlers. Narrated in the past tense (sometimes slipping into present tense for internal monologue) and 3rd person limited from the perspectives of Adam, Eva, Christy and Kristina. among others, it's a long story which shifts between genres. It starts as an apparently faithful and detailed exposition of the development of a farm from scratch reminded me of A Place Called Winter by Patrick Gale, (although farming all alone in Canada and managing a team of Africans to farm for you in Africa are surely very different experiences). But it then metamorphises into a tale about multiple adulteries, after which it becomes about war - I was reminded of William Boyd's An Ice Cream War (written from the British perspective) which was shortlisted for the 1982 Booker Prize and Afterlives (from the African perspective) by 2021 Nobel Laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah. It then turns into a spy thriller before slipping into the brothel fiction genre. 

Lots happened but I was bored well before the end. For me, a long book has to have some great characters to keep me interested and White Sunrise, being plot-driven, never took sufficient time to develop the characterisation of its cast sufficiently for me to care about any of them or to believe in the reversals within their character arcs. Adam is a good man, Eva and very temptable woman, Kristina the prostitute with a heart of gold (well, money) and Christy the ultimate pantomime villain, a sort of portmanteau of everything nasty, not just a rapist but also a coward. (I did wonder whether there was a metaphorical significance in the names Adam, Eve and Christy but I couldn't decide on the theology intended).

It is problematic to write a book about colonisation without considering whether it is racist. There are certainly comments made by some of the characters which seem to imply that the colonisation project is a 'Good Thing' bringing civilisation to benighted natives:

• “They’re [the indigenous Masai] from the Stone Age and we’re from the future....” (Ch 2)
• “Being good Christians we’ll probably push the blacks into reservations and make them work for all the European settlers Eliot plans to bring in. In no time at all we’ll have the place all sewn up - just like America.” (Ch 4)
• “‘What about land for Africans?’ ‘We’re putting them in locations to the east of town. Out of the way but in easy reach as labour. Brilliant arrangement, don’t you think?” (Ch 5)
• “We settlers must cooperate to build a business and political base and make the British Government realise this is a white man’s country - our country.” (Ch 16)
• “The Government plans to transfer the northern Masai down off the Laikipia Plateau and free more land for white settlers. We’ll reunite the tribe in a big reserve on the Mara plain. Been planning it for years. The Masai are not stupid. They know Laikipia is good cattle land. Last year they took us to court. Who would have thought it? Bloody people may still live in the Stone Age but they’re sharp enough to hire lawyers and take an injunction against the Government to stop the move.” (Ch 17)
• "The sun is rising from the west. A lot more Europeans are on the way to join us. Good British stock. ... Soon we'll have the whole area booming with farms and industry and towns." (Ch 57)

These remarks could be justified on the basis that they are made by racist characters and that they are being used by the author to illustrate the immorality of the colonial project. But there are also moments when the racism seemed to extend to the author, starting with the title (White Sunrise) and a comment in chapter one in which the white protagonist is travelling with a huge retinue of Africans who are carrying for him, labouring for him, serving him and protecting him comes across some other white people and remarks "Good to have company for breakfast. I found it damned lonely out here on my own”. Fundamentally the Africans, even the heroes such as Musa, are there as supporting characters, rather than considered as proper people. It made me wonder whether the author believes that some genes are superior to others. Much later in the book, I found evidence suggesting this might be the case. When tracking down the ancestry of one of the characters. it seemed important that he isn’t low-born but rather the illegitimate son of an aristocrat, as if intelligence and physical prowess are reserved for those with special DNA, a position adopted by eugenicists which underpins racism. This left an umpleasant taste in my mouth.

It was also difficult to read in the literal sense because of the multiple glitches in layout and typography in my kindle version. I found it very distracting to be continually required to decipher words. At one point, chapter 16 seems to be (mostly) repeated which was confusing. These factors certainly didn't help my enjoyment.

But in the other hand, if you enjoy stories with plenty of action, lots of sex and a fair bit of death, war and hunting and excitement, with Churchill and Bela Kun thrown in, then this might be the book for you.

Selected quotes:

• “As the column settled into stride between brilliant white mountain to the west and brilliant gold sun to the east, her mood changed and she almost wept at a barely remembered dream of death.” (Ch 2)
• “We had bubonic plague in the bazaars. Bloody rats everywhere. Only solution was to burn the place. So we did. Hope it works.” (Ch 5)
• “‘You don’t believe in God’ ‘I do when He gets something right.’ said Musa.” (Ch 5)
• “Death nearly got me three times. Will it try again? No one ever talks about four times lucky....” (Ch 29)

March 2026

Originally published in 2013

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God

"Memoirs of Hadrian" by Marguerite Yourcenar

The Pantheon in Rome was built by Hadrian

The fictionalised autobiography of Hadrian, one of the better Roman Emperors. He is old and dying and writes these memoirs of a way of advising Marcus Aurelius, whom he has designated as successor to his designated successor Antoninus Pius.

It is beautifully written, in crisp and elegant prose. There are some wonderful insights into the human condition (see Selected Quotes). But it is not a particularly entertaining example of historical fiction, like Hawker and the King's Jewel by Ethan Bale. This is no sword-and-sandals epic of the Roman Empire, no Gladiator or Ben-Hur or Spartacus. But it is thoughtful and, to the best of my knowledge, thoroughly researched. To that extent it reminded me of I, Claudius by Robert Graves and, like that novel, it suffers in that it has to stick to the history (which is sometimes just one damn thing after another) rather than being able to develop with plot, character and theme, like a novel can.

The chapter headings are in Latin, I have provided my best translations:

• Animula Vagula Blandula = Young soul, wandering, enchanting. This comes from the first line of a poem supposedly written by Hadrian in later life in which he asks the soul where it is going now it is leaving his body; it is a philosophical reflection on life and death.
• Varius Multiplex Multiformis = Varied, manifold and of many forms. This is a quote from the historian Sextus Aurelius Victor, used to describe Hadrian's curiosity and many talents.
• Tellus Stabilita = the firmly established earth. This was a phrase used by Hadrian on some of his coins with a depiction of the earth goddess Tellus, also known as Terra Mater or 'Mother Earth.
• Saeculum Aureum = The Golden Age. In the novel it refers to his time with his lover Antinous.
• Disciplina Augusta = military discipline. It was another phrase used on Hadrian's coins.
• Patientia = patience, endurance or suffering. Yet another legened from Hadrian's coins, these showing the figure of Patience seated and holding a shallow libation bowl and a staff. 

Selected quotes:

• “I have ... reached the age where life, for every man, is accepted defeat. To say that my days are numbered signifies nothing; they always were, and are so for us all. But uncertainty as to the place, the time, and the manner, which keeps us from distinguishing the goal toward which we continually advance, diminishes.” (Animula Vagula Blandula)
• “I recall my childhood races on the dry hills of Spain, and the game played with myself of pressing onto the last gasp, never doubting that the perfect heart and healthy lungs would re-establish their equilibrium.” (Animula Vagula Blandula)
• “An operation which is performed two or three times a day, and the purpose of which is to sustain life, surely merits our care. To eat a fruit is to welcome into oneself a fair living object, which is alien to us but is nourished and protected like us by the earth.” (Animula Vagula Blandula)
• “I shall never believe in the classification of love among the purely physical joys ... until I see a gourmet sobbing with delight over his favourite dish like a lover gasping on a young shoulder.” (Animula Vagula Blandula)
• “The story-tellers and spinners of erotic tales are hardly more than butchers who hang up for sale morsels of meat attractive to flies.” (Animula Vagula Blandula)
• “A part of every life, even a life meriting very little regard, is spent in searching out the reasons for its existence, its starting point, and its source.” (Animula Vagula Blandula)
• “The most benighted of men are not without some glimmerings of the divine: that murderer plays passing well upon the flute; this overseer flaying the backs of his slaves is perhaps a dutiful sun; this simpleton would share with me his last piece of bread.” (Varius Multiplex Multiformis)
• “Different persons ruled me in turn ... I played host successively to the meticulous officer ... the melancholy dreamer ... the lover ... the haughty young lieutenant ... and finally the future statesman.” (Varius Multiplex Multiformis)
• “Morals are a matter of private agreement; decency is of public concern.” (Tellus Stabilita)
• “I have a little faith in laws. If too severe, they are broken, and with good reason. If too complicated, human ingenuity finds means to slip easily between the meshes of this trailing but fragile net. ... Any law too often subject to infraction is bad.” (Tellus Stabilita)
• “All nations which have perished up to this time have done so for lack of generosity; Sparta would have survived longer had she given her Helots some interest in that survival; there is always a day when Atlas ceases to support the weight of the heavens, and his revolt shakes the earth.” (Tellus Stabilita)
• “The condition of women is fixed by strange customs; they are at one and the same time subjected and protected, weak and powerful, too much despised and too much respected. In this chaos of contradictory usage, the practices of society are superimposed upon the fact of nature, but it is not easy to distinguish between the two.” (Tellus Stabilita)
• “From without came the few sounds of that Asiatic night: the whispering of slaves at my door; the soft rustle of a palm, and ... snores behind a curtain; the stamp of a horse's hoof; from farther away, in, the melancholy murmur of a song.” (Tellus Stabilita)
• “On many points, however, the thinking of our philosophers also seemed to be limited and confused, if not sterile. Three-quarters of our intellectual performances are no more than decorations upon a void.” (Disciplina Augusta)

November 2025; 237 pages

First published in French in 1951

I read a Penguin paperback translation into English by Grace Frick 'in collaboration with the author' which was issued in 1959 and reprinted in 1982

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

"Hawker and the King's Jewel" by Ethan Bale

 A classic thriller based in late mediaeval Europe. After the defeat of Richard III in the Battle of Bosworth, Yorkist knight Sir John Hawker has to protect Sir Giles, Richard's bastard son, and deliver a valuable ruby to the Doge of Venice. Together with a motley band of warriors, including at least one who will betray him, Hawker travels across Europe to encounter more duplicity in the city whose streets are canals. 

And whatever happened to the Princes in the Tower?

It's a classic of its kind. The research is obvious, allowing the reader to wallow in authentic reenactment. The scenes of fighting are regularly delivered. There are good characters with whom the reader can identify and hope will survive (Jack the squire and Sir Giles) and there are villains (Dieudonnee). The plot is perfectly paced on the four-part model, even if the final quarter is split in two so that a final twist can be delivered. 

My only complaint? Referring to cheese (I presume) as the "the white stuff" in a too obvious attempt to avoid repeating the word 'cheese'.

Selected quotes:

• "Even an arsehole has its purpose." (Ch 3) 
• "Marriage comes from love as vinegar comes from wine." (Ch 21)
• "You are like the scribe who can see nothing more than the page his nose touches." (Ch 22)

November 2025; 337 pages

Published by Canelo in 2022

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