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.