"Milton" by Anna Beer

This is a rather ponderous biography, evoking the poetry of the famous poet.

Milton was born into a well-to-do family of scriveners and property dealers. He went to St Paul's School (yards from his home) and then Cambridge (a bit further). He was extremely studious: a kind of Stephen Fry of his generation. He had a number of close male friends and rumours of his being a sodomite pursued him through his life. He wrote a little and studied a lot. The government suspended the rule that all publications must be licensed (cleared through the censors) and an explosion of pamphleteering began similar to the blogospheric explosion of our times. Milton was just another pamphleteer until he achieved notoriety with his views on  Divorce (he believed an unhappy marriage was grounds for divorce). This might have been linked to his own first marriage: a wife many years younger than himself who went home after a month although she later returned and bore him at least four children.

He weighed in on the republican side during the English Civil War, later becoming a civil servant with the new Commonwealth government. This made him persona non grata during the Restoration: he had to go into hiding for a while. Meantime he was losing his eyesight.

Blind and unemployed; becoming poor under the Stuarts; he wrote Paradise Lost. This was immediately recognised as a classic; an MP burst into the Commons wielding it and talking about the most marvellous poem ever. Later he wrote Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes ("Eyeless in Gaza") before becoming gout ridden and dying.

Interesting points:

• Samson Agonistes is effectively a poem in praise of terrorism; by pulling down the temple on himself Samson is the classical equivalent of a suicide bomber.
• A Civil War rumour: that "Royalist soldiers arrived in a [Somerset] village and demanded the services of a woman. In fear, the villagers handed over a particular woman who was 'given to them all'. In the morning, the woman was ostracised by the village." (p156) Shades of the disgraceful hosts in both Sodom (Genesis) and Gilead (Judges 19).

A slow moving biography. Sadly, the most interesting bits where when she described what happened to other people during the Civil War.

August 2010; 401 pages

On His Blindness    WHEN I consider how my light is spent     E're half my days, in this dark world and wide,     And that one Talent which is death to hide,     Lodg'd with me useless, though my Soul more bent   To serve therewith my Maker, and present          5   My true account, least he returning chide,     Doth God exact day-labour, light deny'd,     I fondly ask; But patience to prevent   That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need     Either man's work or his own gifts, who best   10   Bear his milde yoak, they serve him best, his State   Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed     And post o're Land and Ocean without rest:     They also serve who only stand and waite.

"One Day" by David Nicholls

Emma and Dexter spend the night after their graduation together in bed (but without having sex) in Edinburgh. The book then revisits their relationship every year for twenty years.Although clearly meant for one another and clearly each in love with the other, they never quite get it together ... but will they by the end. Dexter shags his way through life and becomes a shallow TV presenter; Emma becomes a teacher who wants to write.

Selected quotes:

• "balls of steel that's what you need to be a TV presenter and a mind like a like a well quick thinking anyway"
• "can I just explain something about the telephone? You don't have to shout into it? The phone does that bit for you..."
• And the best bit is when Dexter finds out that Emma has been writing poetry about him. She is very cross with him but he wants to know more: "What rhymes with Dexter?" he asks and she says "Bastard. It's a half-rhyme."

A light weight and slightly predictable comedy of our time, it nevertheless had me weeping before the end.

August 2010; 435 pages

Book of the Year in the British Book Awards 2010

It has been made into a great TV series. David Nicholl also wrote the hilarious Starter For Ten. 

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

"High Life Low Morals; the duel that shook Stuart society" by Victor Stater

This is a history book written like an adventure by a brilliant author. It really made me want to read on...

Baron Mohun (pronounced Moon) and the Duke of Hamilton are engaged in a long running court case over an inheritance that was in the Hamilton family but bequeathed to the Mohuns. Since both families were desperately hard up, the estate was needed for solvency. Since Mohun was a leading Whig politician ( member of the Kit Kat Club) while Hamilton was a Tory on the Jacobite wing there was scope for fantastic dislike. Neither man was a stranger to violence, indeed Mohun had been tried for two murders before their shocking duel.

Set against a colourful background of the Tory Whig politics of the post James II era (including the Ac of Union with Scotland in which Hamilton was the leader of the opposition until he sold out), and the dissolute life of the Stuart nobility this is a brilliantly told history.

A page turner.

August 2010; 289 pages

"Birds without wings" by Louis de Bernieres

Shortlisted for the 2004 Whitbread Novel Award.

This book took me forever to finish. I started it in June, got half way, more or less gave up for over a month, and then started again.

And yet it is delightfully written. It tells the story of a village in south west Turkey. The story starts in about 1900. The Ottomans rule Turkey but the Young Turks are about to take over and Kemal Ataturk is beginning his career. The village is a delightful mixture of Christians and Moslems who share each others' loves and houses and even religious ceremonies. The story is told by the villagers (and Ataturk). We are told from the outset that we will discover about how Iskander the Potter maimed his favourite son and how Philothei the Christian girl who is a legendary beauty died. We also learn about Drousola who appears later in Captain Corelli's Mandolin. The story progresses through the first world war and the birth of modern Turkey when the Armenians and Greeks are ethnically cleansed. The wonderful world of the village is forever destroyed.

There are loads of wonderful characters:

• Iskander the Potter makes up proverbs including 'Man is a bird without winds and a bird is a man without sorrows'. He makes bird whistles for his favourite son Karatavuk (Blackbird) and his son's best friend Mehmetcik (Red Robin).
• Karatavuk who fights at Gallipoli
• Rustum Bey the town's agha who puts aside his first wife for her adultery and takes as a concubine a prostitute called Leyla; they fall in love

The ethnic wars between the Greeks and the Turks and the Armenians and the Russians and the Bulgarians and the Serbians and the ... in short of the peoples who once lived in the Ottoman empire and the ethnic violence that accompanied its slow disintegration is chronicled with brutal effect particularly on pages 286-7

Rustum Bey says "if a war can be holy, then God cannot" on p299

"In the case of the Armenians there was the strong belief that they were the descendants of Noah, and that this made them special. A reasonably attentive reading of the Bible would have revealed the obvious fact that if its account is true, then absolutely everyone is a descendant of Noah." (p303)

I thought it was a boring book but on reflection I think it is a great book. The critics suggest the book is too big. Clearly the attempt has been to include as many characters as possible and when you do that you have to reduce each character's complexities. Obviously I felt in the middle that it was too long and too meandering. But actually there are moments of delight and the complexities of the true character, the village, are beautifully underlined. Many things are idyllic: each house has a song-bird outside it (the bird theme is omnipresent throughout the novel). But there are instances of idyllic violence as well: Rustum Bey kills his wife's adulterous lover and then drags his wife to the village square to be stoned, a father forces his son to kill his sister because of her infidelity. And there are lovely cross-cultural bits as well: because Philothei is so beautiful she is persuaded to wear a veil even though she is a Christian so that she will not distract too many men; this makes veils fashionable because uglier women want to be thought more beautiful. When Rustum's adulterous wife is stoned she is saved by the imam in a clear reference to Jesus.

A long but beautiful book.

Looking back in April 2016, I realise that I think about this book far more than Captain Corelli's Mandolin, the book that made de Bernieres famous. It is a deeper book, with more characters and, perhaps, more bitterness. Perhaps the Nazis are too easy as enemies.

August 2010; 625 pages

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

"Alexander the Great" by Robin Lane Fox

This is, apparently, the book that inspired Oliver Stone to make the biopic. It was first published in 1973. I found it slightly heavy going.

Interesting things

• It starts with the drama of the assassination of Phillip of Macedon; was it organised by Olympias, the wife from whom he had separated or by her son Alexander, his heir but soon to be supplanted by a new born baby to Phillip’s new wife?
• We learn how Alexander tamed Bucephalos, the horse whose head looked like that of an ox, who would be Alexander’s faithful mount almost to the end of the Earth.
• We discover that the Macedonian court, whilst on the fringes of civilised Greek society, attracted the great people of the day: it was probably in Macedonia that Euripides composed his Bacchae.
• Aristotle was Alexander’s tutor and also probably taught Hephaistion, the fellow pupil with whom Alexander had a homosexual relationship which lasted until Hephaistion, now a general, died.
• “’Sex and sleep’, Alexander is said to have remarked, ‘alone make me conscious that I am mortal.’” (p57). Hmm. Sex is what makes feel divine.
• Cleopatra was the daughter of Olympias who was Alexander’s mother. Does this make Cleopatra his sister or his half/step sister? (91)
• The Suez canal was d]created by the Pharaohs (96)
• Alexander followed the Royal Road into Persia, following the route previously written about by Xenophon (103)
• Persians called their gorgeous gardens paradeisoi (103)
• The Babylonians were compliers, the Greeks analysers: the Babylonians recorded the heavens for nearly 2,000 years but it was only after 330 BC and Alexander’s conquest that the Greeks began to develop a theory of the heavens and calculate a more accurate value for the year (248)
• Alexarchus, son of Antipater, Alexander’s regent in Macedonia, followed a faith healer called Menecrates. Alexarchus called himself the Sun and after Alexander died founded a religious community on Mount Athos (446)
• In Babylon, if an astrologer foretold the death of the king, the king chose a substitute who would reign for 100 days. If the king died in the meantime the substitute, even if he was a gardener, would become king (p459)
• Ice-cold water from the river Styx was believed to be poison although the modern Mavroneri falls suggest this is not so (463)
• Alexander’s coffin was carried in a chariot which resembled “the ritual chariot of the god Mithras” (p478)
• The Greeks were responsible for much technological invention when they came to India. “A simple cell for electroplating silver on to copper has been found in Parthian Babylonia and it is natural to credit its invention to a Greek.” (p491)

"The Shadow of the Wind" by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

In 1945, in a Barcelona still devastated by the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, 10 year old Daniel is taken by his widowed father, a bookseller, to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. Told to choose a book to adopt and love, Daniel chooses 'The Shadow of the Wind' by Julian Carax. He is enthralled by reading it and tries to discover more about the author. But someone is trying to acquire all copies of Julian Carax's books so he can burn them. The mysteries deepen and the shadows threaten as Daniel grows to manhood, persecuted by Javier Fumero, a Civil Guard, and assisted by Fermin Romero de Torres, a mad tramp.

This book is structurally so like Don Petro de la Hoz that I wanted to weep. Even some of the plot devices are similar. Yet somehow I was disappointed by it. Although a deep and gothic mystery, somehow the crux of the matter, the book, seems not important enough for all the evil that takes place. And somehow the passionate love affairs seem shallow.

Disappointing but still a good read.

August 2010; 506 pages

"Brixton Beach" by Roma Tearne

I expected little from this book other than a potboiler. I really got rather involved and charmed.

Alice is born in Ceylon to a Tamil father and a Sinhalese mother. The Tamils are beginning to fight for equal rights with the Sinhalese. It is not a good time to be of mixed parentage. Alice's idyllic life with her painter grandfather on a beautiful beach is disturbed by violence and by her imminent emigration to England. This book tells of her life in Ceylon and England and what happens to her family.

An excellent read.

July 2010; 408 pages

"Hilaire Belloc" by A. N. Wilson

I knew Belloc from his poems: Tarantella, Lines to a Don, and the cautionary tale of Matilda. I discovered he was rather more than this. Not only a prolific writer (over 150 books including history and fiction) and a journalist (working for the Edwardian version of Private Eye that spilt the beans on the Marconi scandal involving Lloyd George) but he was also a politician serving as a rather too independent Liberal MP under Asquith.

A fascinating biography.

July 2010; 386 pages

"Fopdoodle and Salmagundi" selected by Edward Allhusen

This is a selection of words and their definitions from Dr Johnson's dictionary. Some of the words are no longer used and some are used rather differently then they are today. Sometimes a surprising definition of a word gives you insight into how we use the word today. For example, knuckle means to submit because of "the custom of striking the under side of the table with the knuckles, in confession of an argumental defeat." Nowadays we say 'knuckle under'.

There were lots of good words of which my favourites are:
above-board: because gamblers used to keep their hands above the table to show they weren't cheating
buxom: obedient
curtain-lecture: a kind of reproof given by a wife to her husband

July 2010: 208 pages

"The dogs of Riga" by Henning Mankell

The second Inspector Wallander mystery.

Two men are discovered drifting in an anonymous life raft. They are embracing. Each is shot through the heart. Their expensive jackets have been added after their death. They have been tortured.

Quickly, Wallander establishes that the corpses come from Riga in Latvia where the Russians are still in control (I think it is 1991). He travels to Riga where he becomes embroiled in political sheenanigans in which one of the two Colonels of Police is involved. Illegal undercover espionage end in a shop top shoot out.

We never get a satisfactory answer to the problem posed in the first pages.

This is much more James Bond than Hercule Poirot. The real mystery is why these books are called mysteries.

June 2010; 340 pages

Tooth and Nail" by Ian Rankin

An Inspector Rebus book.

Rebus comes down from Edinburgh to help the Metropolitan Police investigate a serial killer. There are some brilliant descriptions of police procedure and some naive touristic impressions of London (mostly the traffic jams). There are some nice character descriptions of the tensions between the London and the Scottish policemen and there is some cliched denouements. Rebus, using hunches and very little evidence, eventually gets the killer after a high speed chase which ends in Trafalgar Square.

Poor stuff; extraordinarily disappointing. Rebus is so much better than this.

Other Inspector Rebus books reviewed in this blog include:

• A Question of Blood
• The Naming of the Dead
• Strip Jack
• Tooth and Nail: Rebus in London: poor stuff
• Standing in Another Man's Grave
• In a House of Lies

June 2010; 275 pages.

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

"Faceless killers" by Henning Mankell

Recommended by James.

This is a whodunnit with a touch of the thriller. Inspector Wallander is a Swedish policeman in a reasonable sized town. A farmer and his wife are attacked and killed one cold January night. The attack is blamed on foreigners and there are revenge attacks on the local refugee camp.

The prose style is brutal. The sentences are short. There is little description. There is a lot of action.

In classic whodunnit style the hero's wife has left him and his daughter has left home. His father is going senile. These domestic things add to the burden of his days. He cannot sleep (not that he has time to sleep with round the clock police activity) and he drinks too much. The classic cop.

The other policemen at the stable have their foibles. My favourite is Rydberg who is incredibly methodical and likes to do things by the book.

The story has large amounts of nothing happens routine police work punctuated by boy's own adventure. Wallender is involved is fighting a fire, is beaten up, is shot at, and (on a surveillance) falls from scaffolding and is left hanging by a leg upside down.

It was a massive page turned but I am not sure I enjoted it.

AND on page 11 Wallender sees that the dead farmer's left thigh is shattered. On page 27 the autopsy mentions that the right femur is broken. AHA!!! I think. I'm not sure what this means but it is a massive clue. Somehow this confusion between left and right is the answer to it all. Then on page 269, nearly at the end, Wallender muses: "Somewhere there's something I'm not seeing, he thought. A connection, a detail, which is exacxtly the key I have to turn. But should I turn it to the right or the left?" Obviously this is the thought that will lead Wallender to crack the mystery.

It didn't. The answer to the mystery has NOTHING to do with the left thigh and the right femur. I can only presume that this was a MISTAKE.

A page turner but disappointing at the end.

June 2010; 298 pages

"The file on the Tsar" by Anthony Summers and Tom Mangold

This book tells the story of the killing of the Romanov's in July 1918 in a downstairs room at Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg. Or it tells of the escape of at least the tsarina and her four daughters (the Grand Duchesses; the book is full of meaningless titles and reverence for aristocracy) and their removal to Perm, from where Anastasia escaped and was recaptured, and from where they were again taken never to be seen again. The book inclines to believe the second story.

Throughout there are rumours reported as fact, facts dismissed as rumours, selective choice of what to believe and character assassination of anyone who believed differently from the authors. Enigmatic pronouncements ("I don't have to see [the woman claiming to be Anastasia]; I know") are italicised and treated as statements of incredible historical importance; single discrepancies in witness statements are used to demolish everything else. For example, an odd scrawl on the massacre wall is revealed to b the letters LYS', written in mirror writing, clearly short for LYS'VA, one of the places on the way to Perm, even though the Russian alphabet is different from the English. Th eyewitness statement given by Medvedev is undermined because the witness was a red guard who gave himself up to the whites and then died during interrogation. Another contradictory statement is believed even though it claims to be written by a person who did not exist; the authors leap over this problem by claiming it was written pseudonymously.

Essentially this is a catalogue of evasions, rumours and contradictions through which they weave the path they clearly wanted to travel in the first place.

The third edition, however, deals in a postscript with the bodies that were found in the woods, whose DNA gave a 98.5% probability that they were Romanov. The authors start by dwelling on the possibility that Science has got it wrong; no less a person than a Russian Orthodox priest is quoted in support of this. They even find a scientist who claims that the techniques used only give a 70% chance. Clearly the fact that someone was shot in Ekaterinburg and that bodies were found in a wood nearby where peasants saw soldiers on the night of the alleged massacre and these bodies have been identified as the Romanovs would shoot even 70% chances up well beyond the 90% mark but this is still not enough for Summers & Mangold. They point out that only 9 bodies have been discovered and that the missing ones are the tsarevich and one daughter. They ride of triumphant.

I enjoyed reading the book; it is a real page turner. However, it is nonsense.

June 2010; 368 pages