Bibliography, December 2020

BOTM: N. Cohn, Awopbopaloobop Awopbamboom (1969)

J. Aiken, The wolves of Willoughby Chase (1962)

B. DeVoto, The Hour: a cocktail manifesto (1951)
R. Graves, I, Claudius (1934)*
S. Platt, Imperial twilight (2018)
H. Ranfurly, To war with Whitaker (1994)
A. Ransome, Old Peter's Russian Tales (1916)

I really liked all of these and I'd urge you to read them all. I loved The Countess of Ranfurly's wartime diaries, which are both fascinating, moving (the scene when she and her husband are reunited is genuinely tear inducing), slightly mad, and a splendid example of the formidable British woman, without whom we could not have run a small borough, still less an Empire. I would love to see a cross country comparative analysis of social roles played by women of a certain type before, say, 1950. Even better was Nik Cohn's pioneering, near contemporary, account of the emergence of modern pop. It's cited in every book on the genre, and I can see why. It's brilliantly funny, rooted in deep knowledge, spikeily written, endlessly judgemental, and acute in so many ways. It gets the country roots of Rock and Pop right too. It's a period piece obviously, but it does bring home how what he calls 'superpop' in the 1960s was new, and how unforeseen the next fifty years were.

The Original Tudor

I've been listening - on repeat - to Horrible Histories' magisterial Glam Rock pastiche for Henry VII, the original Tudor. Here it is. 

Obviously, you like best the HH songs that match your preferred genre. This certainly matches mine. Visually and musically, it echoes the early 1970s Glam Top of the Pops performances perfectly. It is therefore amazing. Here are all the things I love about it:

Sound...

• The semi-spoken intro makes the same point about Shakespeare's plays that Thomas Penn did in his outstanding Winter King (2011),  
• It sounds primarily like The Sweet and Jean Genie era Bowie (the title is of course another Bowie nod). 
• Specifically, it voicechecks Steve Priest's falsetto from The Sweet  to give emphasis to the following rhyming couplet: 'The only way to end war and avert further disaster, there's got to be a way to unite York and Lancaster.' I have failed to explain successfully to the children why this is so amusing.
• The Sparks reference (at 1m56s. This town ain't big enough for both of us = this crown ain't big enough... for The Perkin Warbeck / Lambet Simnel)
• The Slade reference (at 2mins exactly, for slayed)
• The Mud reference ('That's right, that's right' is straight out of Tiger Feet - it's at 0m57s)

...and Vision 

• The whole blurred lit up 'graphics' can be pretty specifically dated to the early 70s and look like a) the stone age and b) The Sweet's 1973 Blockbuster Top of the Pops performance 
• The cutaway shots to the drummer and the driving guitars are both staples of performance shots from the same era, I just can't find them. 
• In fact the commitment to the 70s aesthetics is absurdly detailed. Even the audience of girls dancing is much shot for shot of era Top of the Pops.

And, most importantly, it's right. Henry VII is vastly underrated in popular history. Henry VIII, who in my view is a fat, sexually incontinent buffoon, captures much of the real estate of the popular imagination, and much of the rest is taken by the contrarian revisionist faction that supports Richard III (who doesn't deserve condemnation for his political murders, but does deserve it for failing to hold the realm together). Henry VII, with far less of a claim than Richard, succeeds. His political murders work. He's 'the man who closes the Wars of the Roses.' 

Far more of a risk taker than his glamorous son; far more ruthless than even that other master of political murder, Henry I; just as decisive on the battlefield as William I (if less epochally significant); one of a handful of English kings to really grasp royal administration. He's absolutely the best Tudor, and probably my favourite English King, not least because he - and I love this line above, is the one 'returning power to the State.' He is not the one you would want to drink with, but he is definitely the one you would put in charge of, well, anything.

Bibliography, November 2020

BOTM: C. Stevens, Born Brilliant: The Life of Kenneth Williams (2010)

M Lynas, Six degrees (2009)
D. Goulson, A Sting in the Tale: My Adventures with Bumblebees (2013)
S. Mukherjee, The Emperor of maladies (2010)
J. Lewis-Stempel, Meadowland (2014)
F.W. Crofts, The Cask (1920)

I enjoyed almost all of these. Meadowland was a moving evocation of the life and rhythms of a tiny scrap of the world; Goulson's memoir-cum-bumblebee guide was also and unexpectedly charming, as well as fascinating. All were books I'd recommend, though Six degrees was deeply depressing. My favourite though, even if I'm not actually sure it was the best, was Kenneth Williams' biography. 

Having finished it, and checked the reviews, it is clearly flawed. It's a meticulous and well written book, but It does suffer slightly from an author who is clearly a huge fan: part of the narrative suffers from a desire to explain away some of the fairly awful behaviour, and it is also quite long, corresponding to the figure that the author believes he could have been, not necessarily that he was. But, but, but ... Kenneth Williams is iconic, and he's iconic for a reason. He occupies a huge place in popular culture (probably now receding among the under 30s, er 50s?), and I've always loved his work, much of the best of which absolutely stands up. It was thus a great pleasure to read, though not without without sadness. It's hard not to read it wistfully now, wondering if his life could have been different, or would have been different at a different context. Part of me wishes he could have gone to grammar school (he didn't go to as his parents couldn't pay for the uniform) and we could have seen one of the great eccentric dons of our age which the author thinks he could have been. But then we'd have missed the rest; and I wouldn't have wanted that.

Bibliography, October 2020

BOTM:  M. Mengiste, The Shadow King (2019)

B. Carruthers, The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band (2011)
T. Dangarembga, Nervous conditions (1988)
-----------, The Book of Not (2006)
-----------, This Mournable Body (2020)
M. Engle,  A wrinkle in time (1962)
R. Kapuscinski, The Emperor (1978)
P. Lay, Providence lost (2020)
E. Orczy, The scarlet pimpernel (1905)

When the Booker shortlist came out, I agonised over whether to read all of Dangarembga's trilogy (the third was nominated). I'm so glad I did, because the original is overwhelmingly the best, and it's pretty clear that they've given the nod to book three (which is fine, but only fine) because they didn't give it to Nervous conditions. That was excellent, and I'd recommend stopping there. Book two is appallingly structured and while not without good scenes, pretty poor. I spent a bit of time deciding between Dangarembga and Mengiste for BOTM, but in the end I felt that the story in The Shadow King edged it. I am not firm in that conclusion, but it is an excellent book. The narrative flows nicely, the writing tidy and, impressively, simultaneously understated and horrifyingly evocative of the brutality its describing. It's deceptive in its approach, often seeming to be heading one way before shifting focus and direction - the shadow king in question, is a) pretty shadowy in plot and significance terms and b) not mentioned till halfway through the book. I'm going to read more of hers. 

No surprises then, that this is my preferred Booker winner. It was a pretty solid (if not outstanding) list though and I'd be unable to make a strong case for my rankings 2-4. As follows:

1. Mengiste
2. Stuart
3. Cook 
4. Taylor
5. Doshi
6. Dangarembga

I'm pretty uncertain who will win. It may well be Shuggie Bain, but I think they will want to push for a black voice in which case they may like Brian Taylor's Real Life. On balance, I ultimately think it will be The Shadow King, which would be my third in a row.

Bibliography, September 2020

BOTM: J. Gillingham, The Wars of the Roses (1981)

D. Cook, The New Wilderness (2020)
A. Doshi, Burnt Sugar  (2020)

E. John, Me (2019)

N. MacGregor, Germany: memories of a nation (2014) 
M. Morris, A great and terrible king: Edward I and the forging of modern Britain (2010) 
V.T. Nguyen, The refugees (2017)

E. Shafak, How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division  (2020)
D. Stuart, Shuggie Bain (2020)
B. Taylor, Real Life (2020)

Rock solid list (except for Shafak, which was facile). The fiction was no more than solid, but some of the non-fiction was very good indeed. Elton John's autobiography was deliriously enjoyable, and generous in his descriptions of most people in it. MacGregor was elegant and insightful about Germany. 

Elsewhere, I'm catching up on British medieval history, and my favourite this month was from one of my favourite historians. John Gillingham's work on Richard I is pretty much solely responsible for my strong performance in my English medieval history paper in finals, and I'm forever grateful for his deployment of charter statistics to understand Richard's reign. He shows the same trademark ability to count, and brilliance to look for data, in his account of the Wars of the Roses. I found his opening chapters on the nature of the wars, and their peculiar character as battle-seeking campaigns, highly convincing; and I loved his use of city wall-tax rates as evidence. The rest of the book, on the events of the wars themselves, was done well, and made a complicated saga relatively easy to follow. It's also not very long.

Bibliography, August 2020

BOTM: L. Lee, A rose in winter (1955)

N. Alderman, The Power (2016)
J.D. Carr, The Hollow Man (1935)
D. Coyle, GDP: A brief but affectionate history (2014)
B. Duffy, The perils of perception (2018)
G. E. Mitchell, H. P. Schmitz, and T. Bruno-van Vijfeijken, Between power and irrelevance (2019)
V.T. Nguyen, The sympathizer (2016)
D.L. Sayers, Clouds of witness (1926)
D.L. Sayers, Unnatural death (1926)
E. Waugh, The ordeal of Gilbert Penfold (1957)
C. Wolmar, Are trams socialist? (2016)

Let's face it. I'm a sucker for the travel literature of the 1950s (and building on what had gone before). To me, it is the golden age, when encounters with the fringes of the European world were still exotic enough to be interesting (this is Spain, but it could happily be the middle east - the cultural distance was less then), and the writing suffused by the historical and cultural bedrock that we have now lost. This is part of that flowering. I also very much liked Duffy's book on misperception, but it was too long, and The Sympathizer, which I thought was excellent, even if you could see the ending a mile off. But they didn't have passages that begin by suggesting that the hotel was 'as commercial as the cave of Ali Baba.' I'm very fond of Lee generally, and this one was no exception. I accept happily that this will be niche; other people should probably read the Vietnamese Pulitzer winner.

The long dawn of the dukes of England

I read Mantel's trilogy last month, and was immediately struck by the intimacy of the inner circle around the king, and specifically the very presence of the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, the only two adults to hold a title at the top of the peerage. Until I started looking into it, I hadn't realised quite how lonely it was to be a duke. In the 1530s, and in every other point in the history of England before 1663, there were never more than four non-royal dukes. Between the first non-royal dukedom in England (incongruously, Ireland. Created 1386) and the Restoration, only 35 people who weren't royal held a ducal title.

That feels very jarring to me. Partly that's because we're used to so many dukes - there were forty at one point in the eighteenth century. It's also because we think of the Tudors as relatively modern so we don't think about how very un-modern aspects of their peerage and court are. Our, or at least my, historiographical instincts are not friends to our understanding. But it's also because the story of the ducal numbers is counter-intuitive. It took three hundred years of using ducal titles for it it really catch on. I think we can see it in five phases.

The first dukes. Royal dukes come in under Edward III. The dukedom of Cornwall (for the Black Prince) in 1337, then Lancaster (for his male line second cousin Henry, then John of Gaunt) in 1531. I don't know why this happens. I've seen it written than it's in response to the loss of Normandy, but the chronology doesn't work. I suspect it is to do with the wars in France, but exactly how, I'm not sure. Inevitably, title inflation means that Richard II then makes more royal dukes (for his uncles: York, Gloucester) in 1385 and then non-royal dukes for his favourites. But this doesn't last. Of the five are created 1398, one becomes Henry IV, the others are all attainted by Henry IV. By 1400, only royal dukes remain.

Generals. Some of the families raised to ducal status in 1398 do make comebacks. In 1425, the son of the attainted Duke of Norfolk secures his father's title, primarily due to his military and political record; and I gather, critically, this resolves a dispute with the Earl of Warwick over precedence. For a while he is the only one, but in the 1440s, five new dukes are created. Exeter (also a 1398 restoration), Buckingham, Warwick, Suffolk and the royal dukes of Somerset. These are obviously, like under Richard II, rewards in an increasingly unstable political structure, but are also, apart from Warwick, leading figures in the Hundred Years War.

Dynastic imperatives. After the 1440s, there is a retrenchment of ducal titles, though some of the earlier creations endure for a while. Five dukedoms are created between 1450 and 1550 and all are dynastic. 

• Two are created for individuals who are intended to marry royalty: the Duke of Bedford (1470) who never got to enjoy it, and the Duke of Suffolk (1514), who did. 
• Two are for family: Jasper Tudor, Henry VII's uncle (1485) and Edward Seymour, Edward VI's uncle (1547). The purposes are different, but they are clearly aimed at burnishing the royal dynasty they are linked to. 
• One is for the illegitimate son of Henry VIII (1525). The first, but not the last, time a King's bastard is made a duke. In this case, it's a response to the lack of male Tudors.

In all of these, the factional rationale behind the 1390s and the 1440s seems to take second place to royal proximity. At this point, Norfolk is the only surviving older ducal line, and - I suspect - beginning to feel like a category all of its own.

A ducal desert. In 1551, the last ducal creation for seventy years was made. Northumberland's title is clearly factional, though he did try to get his daughter in law (Lady Jane Grey) onto the throne, that post-dates his elevation. Given how that ended, it's hardly surprising that neither Elizabeth and Mary felt no need to add any more. After the execution of the 4th Duke of Norfolk in 1572, there were no extant non-royal dukes in England for fifty years, though James I does makes his sons dukes.

Stuart profligacy. The early Stuarts do bring dukes back, but very slowly. James I makes but no non-royal dukes till the last years of his reign, in 1623, when he makes his second cousin Ludovic Stuart, the only Duke in the peerage of Scotland (of Lennox) also a duke in England (of Richmond). He does so at the same time as he makes George Villiers Duke of Buckingham. Presumably, this is to soften the blow of Buckingham's elevation. But they were both effectively unprecedented in living memory, and we would do well to remember that when we think about Buckingham's reception. Charles I makes no non-royal Dukes, only his children and his nephew. 

Then Charles II makes fourteen; more new ducal titles than have, at that point, ever been created in the entire history of England. He restores some old ducal titles (Norfolk is back!), he makes his allies dukes, he makes his bastard sons dukes, he makes his mistresses dukes. I'm sure much has been written on this, but to me, I think there are two obvious reasons. Firstly, he wanted to emphasise the Restoration. Nothing says monarchy more than titles, especially if you give them to old families as well as new ones. Secondly, I think it's the French. France has had loads of dukes for ages. It certainly wouldn't have been the only thing that Charles II imported from the French court. As a result, after three hundred years of profound ambivalence about ducal titles, Dukes properly enter the peerage and the political landscape of England. I still remain surprised it took them so long.

Bibliography, July 2020

BOTM: H. Mantel, Wolf Hall (2009)*

G.K. Chesterton, The innocence of Father Brown (1911)

E. David, English bread and yeast cookery (1977)

M. Edwards, The golden age of murder (2015)
S. Lewis, It can't happen here (1935)
H. Mantel, Bring up the bodies (2012)

H. Mantel, The mirror and the light (2020)
S. Marai, Embers (1942)
H. Metar, A month in Siena (2019)
C. Slocock, People Like Us (2018)

Lots of very good things in here. I liked Metar and Slocock a lot; and Lewis' 1930s fable of how America can slide into fascism - though it struggled with poor chronology - was compelling. However, their misfortune was to compete with a full read through of the Mantel trilogy which was pretty much as good as it's held to be. I had held back from reading the second in anticipation of reading the three of them. Given the time it has taken for the third to arrive, I could hardly remember the first, so I'm glad I did. On rereading, it was, just, the best, edging out the Mirror and the Light, essentially because I think it had to do the hard work of entering the Tudor world. Thousands of words have been written on all of them and I have nothing to add.

I assume the final volume will win the Booker. I'm not sure the second one should have. I felt Bring up the bodies was the weakest of the three, largely because of its structure, which was tightly built around the fall of Anne Boleyn. As a result, I think that meant we lost the broader immersion, and it had fewer standout passages of writing. Still good, but off a peak.

And so, with a heavy heart, I think that means Will Self should have had the 2012 Booker. My shortlist ranking. It was a fine year, though.

1. Self, Umbrella
2. Mantel, Bring up the Bodies
3. Tan, The Garden of Evening Mists
4. Thayil, Narcopolis
5. Moore, The Lighthouse
6. Levy, Swimming Home

Bibliography, June 2020

BOTM: J. Pope-Hennessy, The quest for Queen Mary, ed. H. Vickers (2018)

D. Adams, Life, the Universe and everything (1982)
R. Garrett, Too many magicians (1966)
--------, Murder and magic (1979)
--------, Lord Darcy investigates (1981)
J. Pope-Hennessy, Queen Mary (1959)
L.E. Major, Social mobility and its enemies (2018)
M. Savage, Class in the 21st century (2015)
P. Kidambi, Cricket country (2019)
D. Tossell, Nobody beats us (2009)

It's fashionable to question whether the gatekeepers of the cannon are right. I read a couple of books about class and social mobility that were interesting on this, but frustrating in their studied relativism. However, I find that reviews and analysis are usually entirely right. Case in point: James Pope-Hennessy's biography has long been held as the gold standard for royal biography, and so it is. Judiciously skipping over the familiar bits, but filling out the rich texture of the Protestant German royalty and the routine lives of royalty, minor and major in the period covered. For those of us who are not nineteenth century specialists, I thought it was a fascinating reach back into an era where the last of the daughters-in-law of George III were still alive, and a highly effective run into the reign of the current monarch. Of course, it was also written two or three generations ago, so it has an additional layer of interest. 

However, outstanding though the biography was, the best thing I read were the edited notes, or really the write ups of selected interviews. These are literary pieces - Pope-Hennessy did write them up with an eye to posterity - but convey the immediacy of the interviews and the emerging pattern of the research. He suggested that they would be published 50 years later. At nearly sixty, the revelations themselves are not shocking (who now cares that Queen Mary had an infatuation before George V), but the trenchant commentary and the detail of the individuals is beautifully done. It is highly amusing, brimming with interest, and nice and short (the biography itself weighs in at over 600 pages). Start here.

Bibliography, May 2020

BOTM: V. Moore, How to Drink (2009)*

T. Ashbridge, The greatest knight (2015)

Lord Dunsany, The King of Elfland's daughter (1924)

S. Hill, Jacob's room is full of books (2017)
N.K. Jemisin, The hundred thousand kingdoms (2010)
N.K. Jemisin, The broken kingdoms  (2010)
N.K. Jemisin, The kingdom of the Gods (2011)
N. Palmer, A cheesemonger's history of the British Isles (2019)

A. Trollope, A. The MacDermotts of Ballycloran (1847)
P.G. Wodehouse, Thank you, Jeeves (1934)

Barely a dud in this whole list. Trollope's debut is weak but the lines of what makes him great are there. I very much struggled to choose a favourite. The non-fiction was better than the fiction, though that's not a reflection on the fiction. I thought Jemisin's first novel sequence was excellent and reading Dunsany was illuminating, if a little wearing.

However, the non-fiction was outstanding. I cried at Ned Palmer's account of the renaissance of British cheese (the last time I did this over a book was reading about the Home Counties' march to save Radio 4 Longwave). In reading Ashbridge's excellent (and close runner up) account of William Marshal, I remembered how absorbing the Angevin kings are. But I loved most of all Victoria Moore's drinking book. I read it at the time, and it seemed pleasant enough, but I dipped into for lockdown and it simply opened up. I learned lots, and not just that Anna and I have different definitions of what 'too strong' means in a cocktail. But I also enjoyed it for the reading alone. It's well paced, nicely informal, and focused on all the right things and the right number of things. In my head, I remembered this as encyclopaedic; it's not at all, and all the better for it. Instead it's highly authored and great fun. And has helped me get rid of my sweet Vermouth that I bought by mistake last year.

Against the heretics (and their enablers)

Preached 4th Sunday of Easter (3rd May ) 2020, St Michael's, Stockwell (remotely)
Video (at 15:00)

Genesis 7
John 10.1-10
Good morning, it’s a great pleasure to speak to you, and this format has the huge advantage that I am not trying to control my children at the same time as give this sermon. On the other hand, it is a sight cruelty to ask me to preach about life, abundantly, as we have in the gospel, at a time when no-one is living life, abundantly.

In fact, by coincidence, yesterday marked forty days of not living it, though some will have had longer. And, much like Noah during his forty days of rain, we have endured forty days of isolation. Unlike Noah, we have access to the shops, in my case the Internet, and – hopefully - not the prospect of 150 more days to go. Noah, on the other hand did not have to, fairly badly, teach my children their maths.

I don’t know when we realised the flood didn’t literally happen, I imagine it was sometime in the nineteenth century. Perhaps doing the maths about the volume of water helped establish that clearly. As it’s a story we know so well though, it is worth thinking again about what it does mean. And listening to whole of Genesis 7 makes it even more obvious: this is about judgement. And it doesn’t get more judgemental than this. Almost all life is blotted out. The survivors number eight people; they alone are righteous. Though right now, I question the reward part of a story that requires you to spend the best part of 200 days with your sons.

Our gospel passage is about judgement too, though the context and the message are very different.

This passage in John follows a section where Jesus heals a blind man, who the Pharisees then question and criticise, saying ‘you were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us.’ And then they drive the blind man out.

Here, Jesus here is attacking them. And one of the great things about this passage is that even Jesus seems to get impatient with his own parables. I am reminded of my second favourite allegory* of the Trinity, which occurs in Gavin and Stacey, where the Welsh vicar attempts to explain the role of the three persons by means of a comparison with sandwiches and fillings. He then shouts furiously at Gavin, the English interloper, who he feels has ruined his metaphor by not understanding the point.

I imagine Jesus here very much like that vicar. Faced with the clear incomprehension of his listeners he tries again, and tries to make it as simple as possible. It’s worth repeating:

I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

This is judgement flipped on its head: it is not the people who are judged and found wanting. They are the ones who did not listen to the false prophets. Nor is it judgement like an inundation or a sifting out of those who have failed, It is a promise: I came that you may have life in abundance. It is hard right now not to think of the sheep as being like us in our current isolation – safe, but hardly living our most fulfilled life. Christ is come to promise something more than the necessity of life: abundance. What is that abundance? It is life with God, in this world and the next. John Chrysostom, the fourth century theologian, when he preached on this exact gospel passage, simply says, what is more than life? it is the Kingdom of Heaven. His commentary on other passages is much longer.

And so to the thieves. Who are they? What are they stealing? In the gospel, they are clearly the Pharisees, but this isn’t just about the false prophets of Israel, or even false prophets generally, though it is about both of them. It’s also about heresy. Talking about heresy is unfashionable, and no-one should be seeking to condemn other Christians over technicalities. But this passage does tell you why it matters: it’s because it’s a waste. There’s no hellfire; no flood; no test to fail. But the nature of our belief matters. That is why we study, and argue, and indeed preach on doctrine – to secure that promise. Heresy takes us away from the gate, away from God, away from abundant life, and robs us of the promise of the Kingdom. Not for nothing do we sing the hymn that ends ‘one church, one faith, one Lord.’

In the Old Testament, the symbol of the promise of God is the rainbow, shown to Noah after the flood subsides. Today, the country is using the same rainbow as a symbol of their hope and their promise of the future – one of a more abundant life than this lockdown. For us today, it is important we remember as Christians that the promise to us is of a more abundant life still, and that Jesus is the gate through which we find it.

* Graham Greene wrote my favourite

Bibliography, April 2020

BOTM: C. de Hamel, Meeting with remarkable manuscripts (2016)

Akala, Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire (2018)
L. Booth (ed.), Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (2020)
C. Brahms & S.J. Don't Me Disraeli (1941)
F. Craddock, The Lormes of Castle Rising (1975). Yes, that Fanny Craddock. It's mad.

B. Cribbens, Bernard who? (2018)

J. Man, Barbarians at the wall (2019)
A. Nafisi, reading Lolita in Tehran (2003)

Before running into the sand on my attempt to read Trollope's mediocre debut, I've had an thoroughly enjoyable reading month despite lockdown removing a number of opportunities to actually read. I'm not convinced they were all exceptional quality; BOTM was.

Christopher de Hamel's book is about medieval manuscripts. Obviously, I loved it, but I think almost anyone. It's brilliantly engaging, written as a conversation, not an analytical monograph. And it makes a persuasive case very lightly for the value of what can be found in books objects, rather than just the words that in them (a tendency to which I am guilty of). I read it on kindle, which I slightly regret as the illustrations in the hardback are meant to be excellent, but even without them, I think this was marvellous. I wouldn't go so far as to say this is the first book on the medieval era you should buy - though now I write that sentence, I can't think what that book is - but it's definitely up there.  

Bibliography, March 2020

BOTM: P. Paphides, Broken Greek (2020)

R. Calasso, The ruin of Kasch (1983)
A. Horne, The terrible year: a history of the Paris commune (1971)
J.H.C. King, Blood and Land (2016)
B. Bishop, The big sort (2008)
D. Defoe, Journal of the plague year (1722)

I've read Defoe before - a decade ago. I'd forgotten that, but I'm glad I reread it; a lot is reminiscent of today. It was however heavy going. Not as heavy going as Calasso, which I thought was vastly overrated once it strayed off Talleyrand, and it wasn't great on him either.

My favourite wasn't heavy going at all. Paphides' book is joyful and brilliant. Billed as a memoir, which is is, just about, its quality lies in its saturation with the music of the time (very specifically about 1975-1982) and his writing about that. That writing that is enhanced by the adult critic adding layers to this childhood insight. It has its fair share of actual memory too, with flashes of acute observation about the nature of his family and their experience. It rattles along, and for me at least those two things hugely complement each other. My memories are also fixed by place and sound. It's a book filled with love: for the music (almost all music) and for the people around him and as such an excellent read for right now, but would be anytime. Right now, it also has the added advantage that it has a long playlist, and you can listen to that without leaving your house.

Bibliography, February 2020

BOTM: J. Child, My life in France (2006)

C. Fraser, Prarie Fires: the American dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder (2017)
A. Huxley, Doors of Perception; Heaven and Hell (1954, 1956)
U.K. Le Guin, The word for world is forest (1972) 
A. Martin, Night trains (2017)
S. Nosrat, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat (2017)

I. Tree, Wilding (2018)

J. Philips, Saladin (2019)

How did the fashionable 50s and 60s happen? How did intelligent, well established, perceptive people fall for this utter tosh? Reading Huxley's book on hallucinogens I'm reminded of the terrible end of A Dance to the Music of Time. I don't think Powell understood the 1960s, but his final incarnation of Widmerpool is reminiscent of Huxley here. It is dreadful to see the decline. The brilliant satirist of 20s society, trenchant and perceptive critic of the utopian dreams of the 30s, is reduced to writing bunkum.

At the same time as this drivel was being written, Julia Child was in France, learning to cook. Her posthumous account of it is everything Huxley's is not. It is engaging where his was ponderous; self-deprecating rather than infused with his own sense of its significance. And it's undergirded with a fierceness of interest that makes his witterings on the transcendent look absurd. Like her masterpiece, it has dated elements (though far less than Huxley), and is, entirely acknowledged, the product of the particular background of the author. Learning this makes my much beloved Mastering the Art of French cooking even more immediate and engaging. At heart though, it's is a romp through post war Paris and the century of French cooking that preceded it. That's no bad thing.

Children, spend more time with classic French sauces and less time on acid, especially if you're reading about them.

Against Millenarians (and for Charles, King and Martyr)

Preached Candlemas (2nd February) 2020, St Michael's, Stockwell.
Family service

Malachi 3.1-5

Psalm 24.1-10

Hebrews 2.14-18

Luke 2.22-40

Good morning; some short words from me, not least because the children were brilliant and the vicar has stolen all my jokes. I will be brief, though – unlike the vicar – I will be covering Charles King and Martyr properly.

Now, as it’s Candlemas, I’d like to ask how many of you took down your Christmas decorations? 150 years ago, you would definitely have kept them up till now, because the whole time running from Christmas was seen a single season, up to when Jesus was presented in the temple, which we read in the gospel.

And it’s today because 40 days after the birth of a child, according to the Jewish law, mothers come to the temple to be purified. And while Mary is there, we read that she also dedicates her firstborn to God. When we talked about waiting earlier, this is one of the most significant – waiting for a child to be born. It certainly was for me, and I imagine for Mary and Joseph. They, overjoyed, give thanks to God and make sacrifices. But their waiting is nothing compared to that of Symeon and Anna. All we know of them is that they are old, exceptionally old for the time. And they have been waiting and hoping for many years. For them, that waiting has been fulfilled in their lifetimes. They have seen the light come into the world.

I want to remember today the years before. Not about the hope fulfilled in their lifetime, but the uncertainty and the years without it. Because for many, the Hollywood ending does not come in our lifetime. That’s the theme of our reading from Malachi. This is the last book of the Old Testament, written in exile, promising that God will come to bring justice, to purify and to refine. These are hopes you write down when you have nothing, not when you have power.

And so to Charles I, King and Martyr. King of England, pious Christian, crowned on Candlemas 395 years ago, the most powerful man in England. Twenty four years later, stripped of all his power, after a sham trial, he was murdered, at the behest of a dictator, backed by the army (other historical interpretations are available). Why is he a saint? Not because he died, plenty of people get killed, especially by military dictators. But because the church holds that he had been offered peace and to be spared if he abandoned his principles, his church and, in his view – and mine – legitimate government. He didn’t take it. My children tell me that he was the worst king ever and really boring, but it’s certainly the case that his actions shaped the Church of England, and it’s certainly the case that he died, alone; his family fled; his supporters in hiding. All he had left is hope.

What did he hope for? Was it fulfilled? He did not receive anything in his lifetime. They cut his head off. Was it for justice or revenge? He had that I suppose. Eleven years later, his son returned, his killers were punished, and their leader’s dead body dug up and his head displayed on a spike as a warning. I hope my sons are listening.

But I don’t think that is what he hoped for. As Christians, we do not hope for impossible, radical transformation in this world. That is millenarianism. Symeon will probably have read Malachi, but he does not live to see judgement, but a baby. He knows the psalms, but he doesn’t see victory in battle, but the light to the gentiles. Our hope is wider and greater, and more certain, than those stories. It’s right there in our reading from Hebrews: Christ will destroy the one who has power over death. Charles knew that. Among his last words we read: ‘I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown’. He was aware of his own weakness, the fallibility of the world and the perfection of heaven.

This is not an excuse for not hoping or acting in the world. I preached on that earlier this year and I wouldn’t want you to think I am inconsistent. But it is the knowledge that in the end we rest our hopes, in the words of the BCP, on ‘the sure and certain hope of the resurrection.’ Whatever the wait, whatever the test, whether or not it is shown to you.

I end with those words in Hebrews: because Christ himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.

Amen.

Bibliography, January 2020

BOTM: T. Salih, Season of migration to the north (1966)

C. Birch, Jamrach's menagerie (2011)

M. Dinshaw, Outlandish Knight: life of Steven Runciman (2016)

E. Edugyan, Half blood blues (2011)

A. Forest, Autumn term (1948)

V. Franklin and A. Johnson, Menus that made history (2019)
S. Kelman, Pigeon English (2011)

J. Mahjoub, A line in the river (2018)

J. Ryle (ed.), The Sudan handbook (2015)

Lots of good stuff here. All of this was worthwhile, Edugyan and Kelman the best of the recent fiction (I'm back to the 2011 Booker shortlist). Two outstanding ones. Minoo Dinshaw's biography of Steven Runciman was absolutely delightful. It's a fantastic immersion into a world now gone, centred on Runciman himself, but illuminated by a vast cast of characters. Some of those are famous; some are now obscure, but deftly realised without losing the thread of Runciman's own life. It's a triumph. It is edged out however, by Tayeb Salih's short novel about the impact British influence had on the Sudanese. That sounds much drier than it is. It's a tight evocative piece looking at both Sudanese village life as it enters post-colonial 'modernity' and the experience of the African in early and mid twentieth century Britain. It also has a pleasing amount of drama and plot. It's a very good use of 169 pages.

And my ranking for the 2011 Booker shortlist is now complete. I think they got this right, though my memory of Barnes is imperfect. The commentators were also right: this was a poor list, with half of them being not really up to par. The top three were good, though not outstanding.

1. Barnes, Sense of an Ending
2. Edugyan, Half blood blues
3. Kelman, Pigeon English
4. Miller, Snowdrops
5.  Birch, Jamrach's menagerie
6. The Sisters Brothers

Bibliography, 2019

Disappointingly, despite a very strong first eight months (averaging just shy of ten books a month), the back third let me down (seven book average) and I ended the year on slightly less reading than last year. And a lot more fiction, which accounted for over half of the reading, though I had pretty poor returns in terms of quality. BOTMs were not reflective of this reading at all. Five were fiction (from 56 fiction books read); six were cultural (from 26) and one lone historical work (from 15).

For this and other reasons, this makes fiction in particular hard to discuss. I found all the fiction listed below worthwhile, and I'd add recommendations for a string of Science fiction and fantasy  Susan Copper's Dark is Rising series, Jemisin's science fiction trilogy, and Addison's The Goblin Emperor also good. So, for the second year running, the monthly system has let me down. Jemisin's opener, The fifth season, was exceptional. Imaginative, different, and fully fleshed out, it took a great premise and executed brilliantly. They are garlanded with multiple awards for a reason.

Also like last year, fiction and non-fiction were from the same month as the non-fiction winner. Here, I had an embarrassment of riches. I would heartily recommend all my non-fiction BOTMs. In fact, I've already bought them for people. But Bob Stanley's Yeah Yeah Yeah was never in doubt. Its scope and range are vast; yet for such a long book it retains a lightness of writing without sacrificing its seriousness. It's a masterpiece.

Finally, as a coda. It's now 2020. So for the decade past:

• This year's non-fiction may be a masterpiece, but it, and others, lose to Eminent Victorians (from 2012). It is fine-tuned for my interests, though I defy anyone not be enthralled by it. 
• For fiction, Gilead (from 2015) is the best book about Calvinism I've ever read. It may be the best novel I have ever read. 

Books of the Month:
January: B.Stanley, Yeah yeah yeah (2013)
February: A. Kurkov, Death and the penguin  (1996)
March: D. Levy, The cost of living (2018)
April: P.G.Wodehouse, Mike and Psmith  (1908)
May: J. Jeffs, Sherry (6th ed) (2016)
June: Y.N. Harari, Sapiens (2011)
July: W. Goldman, Adventures in the screen trade (1983)
August: A.A. Gill, Pour me (2015)
September; A. Maalouf, The rock of Tanios (1993)
October: B. Wilson, The way we eat now (2019)
November: D. Lessing, The grass is singing (1950)
December: W. Self, Umbrella (2012)

Bibliography, December 2019

BOTM: W. Self, Umbrella (2012)

DeWitt, The Sisters Brothers (2011)
A.D. Millers, Snowdrops (2011)
A. Moore, The lighthouse (2012)
A. Munro, The moons of Jupiter (1982)
L. Sciascia, The council of Egypt (1963)
J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy (2016)

I've been reading old Booker shortlists again, and, though mixed, they do reliably throw up quality. Best of them, and I hate saying this, was Umbrella. It's a swirling chaotic novel, but, with the exception of the fourth fifth, tightly done. It is stream of consciousness, but it does it well. Early dispatches from the controversial 2011 shortlist indicate that the criticism is genuine - you wouldn't have seen Self's modernism on the previous year's list - and that's a shame.