Bibliography, November 2023

BOTM: M. Mazower, The Greek Revolution (2021)

J. Crace, eden (2022)
E. Crispin, Holy Disorders (1945)
J. Hamilton-Paterson, Cooking with Fernet Branca (2004)
R. Heinlein, Farmer in the sky (1950)
A. Martine, A desolation called peace (2021)
E. Mittelholzer, My bones and my flute (1951)
R. Sepetys, I must betray you (2022)
C. Spencer, Killers of the King (2014)

Almost all the novels I read were pretty good, though I think eden isn't up to Jim Crace's normal standards. Best of them was probably Mittelholzer, in part because of the distinctiveness of the background. Slightly unfairly, because I think this is a pattern, they all came second to a very done summary on a historical issue I'm interested in to read a full account of, but not enough to read several. I do wonder if I'd have put Mazower top if I'd read lots about the Greek revolution. As I haven't, this was a great book. I think he's a great historian. I would say he's undervalued, but this did win major prizes. Either way, it does a very good job of disentangling the complex background of the Greek revolution, and making clear the contingent nature of its success as well as the complexity of Balkan politics at the time. I'm very glad I read it before the Elgin marbles controversy blew up again.

Against Pelagius (probably)

Preached Remembrance Sunday (12th November) 2023, St Michael's Stockwell

Amos 5.18-24
Psalm 70
1 Thessalonians 4.13–end
Matthew 25.1–13

There is a lot of about justice in the readings today, and in context of today, today’s war, indeed any war, justice is hard to locate:

• Where was the justice on the 7th October when Hamas killed women and children.
• Where was the justice yesterday, and plenty of others, when Israeli forces bombed hospitals where children are under care.
• Where indeed is the justice when this conflict has been on the headline of every bulletin for a month, yet there are twenty other conflicts running that killed over a thousand people last year.

These positions are complex, and murky, and need a better political analysis than I am capable of, or than I am intending to give. They, and every war, are the backdrop to our thinking about justice, and about remembrance. It throws our readings into sharp relief.

And they made me think of two distinctly unbiblical quotations. The first is from the 1970s US comedy MASH, set in the Korean war, where there’s an argument about whether war is hell. No, ‘War is war, and Hell is Hell. And … war is a lot worse.’ Sinners go to Hell, but “There are no innocent bystanders in Hell, but war is chock full of them.” Divine justice is simpler than human justice. You know who the baddies are. And we long for the simplicity of divine justice: here is Paul who tells us that living and dead will receive their reward; here the Psalmist who talks of the coming of the Lord. They are waiting for divine justice.

The other quotation that came to me while I was preparing for today I first encountered in an Agatha Christie murder mystery (Hercule Poirot’s Christmas - an excellent seasonal read). It’s actually 2000 years older, about the time of Jesus: the mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine. That’s the justice people think they they are looking for. In the Second World War, both Churchill and Roosevelt quoted that line when promising retribution for the extermination of the Jews. Divine justice is transmuted into human vengeance.

But they are rather assuming that they, we, will be on the right side. And I think we all should be reading the book of Amos more closely. Amos is one of my favourite prophets. Not that he thinks he is a prophet. He is a shepherd – he tells people this several times in the book. He is an outsider. He stands apart from the establishment.

And he hates everyone: he hates the leadership of Israel, the pre-Christian northern Kingdom, not this one; he hates the priests; he hates the people: 'I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies …. I will not listen to the melody of your harps.' He hates the complacency of the Psalmist: 'Alas for you who desire the day of the Lord! Why do you want the day of the Lord? It is darkness, not light.'  The standard of divine justice may be simpler, but it's much much higher than human justice, and everyone fails.

It’s the same in the gospel. The bridesmaids who fail are not enemies. They do not face the bridegroom across a fortified border. They are part of the wedding party. They’re us. And they have failed. And they are locked out. We long for justice, but we will not be ready when it comes. Slightly annoyingly, the very next verse of Thessalonians is the famous one that says that the ‘the day of the Lord comes like a thief in the night.’ It seems a missed opportunity. We should prepare, we will try to prepare, but we will not be ready. We will fail.

Where does that leave justice? And where does that leave remembrance?

Firstly, this doesn’t negate the striving. There are bridesmaids with flasks of oil. People should and will do the right thing. The Nazis were wrong. We should remember those who faced war and didn’t come back, and those who did and were marked by it forever. Every year, every news headline, I am conscious of my vast privilege of living away from war for my whole life – not the case for everyone here. I honour that. We should not be putting our judgement aside.

But we should also remember the limits of human justice and human action. We should think of those who were just in the wrong place, which at times is everyone. The fourth century heretic Pelagius is felt to have argued that humanity has autonomy enough to choose not to sin. Amos would say otherwise. When we think of war, we must recognise that human justice, however effective, has its limits. People cannot do the right thing all the time. We are remembering people who tried, not people who were perfect. People will fail.

Amos believes in justice. He believes it’s going to come. He just doesn’t think we’re going to pass. But listen to how he describes it: let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. He does not reach for the metaphor of the refiner’s fire – that’s Malachi – but water. Justice is broad, not narrow, replenished, not spent, cleansing, not destructive, and life giving, not deadly. It is not just retribution, but bounty.

So, knowing we will fall short. But also knowing that righteousness will come. We remember. And we hope for the ever-flowing stream of the love of God.

Bibliography, October 2023

BOTM: P. Lynch, Prophet Song (2023)

R. Adams, Trumpets of war (1987)
S. Bernstein, Study for Obedience (2023)

J. Escoffery, If I Survive You (2023)
P. Harding, This Other Eden (2023)
C. Maroo, Western Lane (2023)
P. Murray, The Bee Sting (2023)

J. Shapiro, 1606: the year of Lear (2015)

T. Shaw, The world of Escoffier (1994)

James Shapiro does not repeat the trick in his 1606 Shakespeare book that he did with his superlative one on 1599, but it is still good. I found it disjointed, though very good sections. Elsewhere, mostly Booker nominees, and it's a very frustrating list this year. All Booker debuts and that's probably unwise. Escoffery and especially Murray were just crying out for better endings and structure. In Paul Murray's case, it would have been better if he had just chopped the last quarter off the book entirely. Lynch's book ended well, though I don't think that's the best thing about it. It does require a leap of faith: it's st in an Ireland sliding into dictatorship and civil war, and it does precisely zero work on establishing how that happens. If you just buy that up front, it's a visceral and brutal exploration of how that is experienced and felt. It is not pleasant: it made my skin crawl. It's why I thought it was best. Its well written too.

If I've done the maths right, I've just tipped over the half way mark for all novels ever nominated for the Booker. 164 read; 163 to go. 2023 Booker ranking:

1. Lynch
2. Harding
3. Maroo
4. Escoffery
5. Bernstein
6. Murray

Bibliography, September 2023

BOTM: S. Alexievich, tr. B. Shayevich, Second-hand time (2013)

L. Bracket, Shadow over Mars (1944)
N. Blake [C. Day-Lewis], Thou shell of death (1936)
F. Leiber, Conjure Wife (1943)
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Secret lives and other stories (1975)
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Devil on the cross (1980. English version 1982)
M. Pye, Antwerp (2021)

R.A. Salvatore, Streams of silver (1989)*
R.A. Salvatore, The Halfling's Gem (1990)*
T. Spector, Spoon-fed (2020)

This is what happens when you slightly let yourself succumb to temptation. I wouldn't say that any of the five genre novels I read were terrible, but only Conjure Wife could be said to be of real value. I enjoyed them all though, even if Salvatore's middle Icewind Dale novel has laboured plotting. It shares that defect with almost all the rest of my reading. I'm really liking Ngũgĩ, and his books are very well written, but Devil on the cross could do with digesting its Marxism (the short stories are better).

Even Alexievich's book, though I do think it is the best of the lot, and I think is essentially the one she won the Nobel for, suffers from uncertain narrative flow. Some of its passages are also just a little too long for me. These are niggles though, it is a masterpiece (again) and is a real testament to the historian's ear for source material allied to the ability to edit it to allow those voices to become something bigger. If it doesn't have the precision and pace of The unwomanly face of war, that's an impossibly high bar, and it's still enormously moving, humanising and powerful. 

Bibliography, August 2023

J. Shapiro, 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (2005)

N. Cardus, Autobiography (1947)

I. Colegate, The Shooting Party (1980)
E. Donoghue, Room (2010)
P. Godfrey-Smith, Other minds (2017)
T. Judt, Postwar (2005)

A. Kwei Armah, The beautyful ones are not yet born (1968)
A. Levy, The long song (2010)
T. McCarthy, C (2010)

L. Osborne, The wet and the dry (2013)

I. Pears, The instance of the fingerpost (1998)

This was a great month. Three standout books for me and only one duffer (Tom McCarthy's 2010 Booker nominee isn't as bad as his 2015 nominee, but it is bad). Vastly better, and shamefully not nominated at the time, was The shooting party, a finely etched gem of a book littered with brilliant quotations. It may be my favourite novel of the year so far. It was also better than Tony Judt's great book on post war Britain, which wore its many pages lightly, and held the narrative and the analysis very well till about the mid 1990s, where recency trumped perspective. It's a triumph, though I do wish I had read it on publication. The world has changed.

Best of the lot, and rightly garlanded with the prizes, was, in its conception, a book that also emphasises the importance of time and place. Shapiro is marshalling a lot of academic work by others, and I don't know it well enough to tell where, but he is doing it brilliantly. The focus on a year is inspired and allows those of us not deep in the literary scholarship to anchor our understanding of what drives some of those key plays. This reading of Julius Caesar in the light of the wars of religion will stay with me forever. Despite what may seem from outside to be a narrow focus, this is in fact a hugely accessible book, which says its many things lightly and fluently. It's a pleasure to read.

As a result of this month's reading, I have now read the full 2010 Booker shortlist. It wasn't great. My ranking below, though 3 and 4 were much of a muchness:

1. Donoghue, Room
2. Galgut, In a strange room
3. Levy, The long song
4. Jacobson, The Finckler question 
5. Carey, Parrot and Oliver in America
6. McCarthy, C

Bibliography, July 2023

BOTM: C.T. Powers, In the memory of the forest (1997)

F. Butler - Gallie, Touching cloth (2023)
J. Cocker, Good pop, bad pop (2022)
J. Duindam, Dynasties: a global history of power 1300-1800 (2015)
P.J. Farmer, The alley god (1970)
C. Jarman, River Kings (2021)
L. Kennedy, Trespasses (2022)
A. Rutherford, Control: The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics (2022)
R.A. Salvatore, The crystal shard (1988)
T. Snyder, On Tyranny (2017)

This was not a great month. Many of them were mediocre to poor, though I did find Duindam's survey of dynastic power interesting, if slightly slow going sometimes. At least part of that is around expectations. There is some pompous reviewing of Salvatore's debut novel, the one that launched a thousand sequels. It's obviously far from the best written novel, but it does its job just fine. The mythos holds together, the setting is compelling, the characters have little nuance, but they occupy their place in the plot very well, and it gallops long, and lots of things sound really cool. Thoroughly enjoyable. Adam Rutherford's book, which has much better prose, drove me into an absolute fury with its underlying smugness and lack of precision and honesty. Far from a recommendation.

Powers does all the right things well. It's billed as centring on a murder. It isn't in any way (though there is a murder at the start). It's actually a fascinating novel about a landscape we all know little about, even - as the book is at pains to say - many of the people who live there. We're really bad at the complexity of Eastern European history, and this is a very welcome look at how communities thought and didn't think about their vanished Jewish populations. It's well done, deep and expansively written, and nowhere near as dry as I'm making it sound. It's a resounding success as a novel

Infuriating books: a case study

I am very relaxed about bad books. Some books are bad in ways that are entirely expected. There is no pleasure or value in pointing that out. Some bad books can even be fun. Most are just boring. To be read, thrown our and no longer thought about. 

However, there are two kinds of book that infuriate me and force me to think about them: books that are overpraised despite being bad (this doesn't happen very often - reviewers are usually pretty good at this); and bad books that could have been good books if authors had worked harder. 

Combined, those books end up taking up disproportionate amounts of my thinking, often because I feel so let down by what I actually read. Control, Adam Rutherford's book about eugenics, is one of those books. Here is everything I didn't like about it: 

Structurally, the book is a short history, followed by a short summary of where we are now. Both had good parts, both were bad. 

Part I
This is the better section. Scientists don't automatically make decent historians (though more so than the reverse), but he's done the work, and writes well. It's a good canter through the cast, though I think it would have benefited from a better chronology and a wider geographical scope. As acknowledged, it's US, UK and Germany only. I think that's an issue. There were other major racists. But it's not major. However, it is peppered with historical asides that don't really add anything and are sloppy. Is it true that 'The powerful really only seek one thing, and that is to maintain their power.'? (p.59) I don't think so, though plenty do. It's certainly not true to assert glibly 'Hitler was a man of his time, and was legitimately appointed to the position of German Chancellor in 1933.' (p.141, my italics) ignoring the role of paramilitaries in early 1930s Germany, and also the obvious areas in which Hitler was an outlier.

These aren't needed, but also stand in juxtaposition to his dismissal of any erroneous position as 'pseudoscience.' Sometimes this is justified: I enjoyed his dismissal of the Nordic Theory (northern European are best etc), and its thesis that Nordic men are actually the progenitors of the ancient Romans, Greeks and Egyptians. But, for example, it wasn't an unreasonable hypothesis that there would be single genes for things it turns out there aren't, it's just wrong. All wrong science isn't pseudoscience. Indeed, I'm not even sure eugenics is based on this. Towards the end, Rutherford writes: 'Eugenics is a busted flush, a pseudoscience that cannot deliver on its promise. Maybe that will change in time, as we unpick our genomes ever more precisely.' If the issue is simply that the current science won't bear the weight that this put on it, that's important to know, but hardly fundamentally false.

I found this particularly true given the shortness of the period under discussion. The whole debate happens over pretty much one lifetime. This remains a very 

Part 2

However, my main reservations are for the moral and ethical judgements that permeate the whole book, but especially the current state of play. Rutherford has the standard scientist's confidence about their ability to make judgements. He clearly feels that he and his colleagues should be trusted to make the fine judgements about ethics. Here he is:

'Ethical discussions about research into human embryos and genetics occur in every lab as standard, and are a prerequisite for the work to take place. In my experience, these essential and thoughtful processes are largely unaffected by the intellectual posturing of academics who aren’t really involved, but enjoy a scrap on social media.' (p.200)

I am uncertain if all scientist's processes are unaffected by other academics' work, but in any case, he doesn't rely on scientists anyway. As is clear in the opening of the book, rogue scientists, even Chinese ones, are constrained by the legal framework. He is presumably happy with that framework, though it's hard to see how the law differs in kind if not content from 'Pseudo-philosophical articles' or debates that are 'just semantic arguments about definitions of words.' 

In fact, much of the book is a demonstration that definitions of words do - in fact - matter. Perhaps surprisingly, there isn't an argued definition of eugenics in the book at all. I infer from the argument, and the title, that he believes it is national level coercion and includes both euthanasia, abortion (on such grounds) and sterilisation, 'sculpt[ing] society through selective breeding' (p.13). He is clear though on what it's not: it's most definitely not parental choice terminations of babies with Downs Syndrome, that's fine. Now, I think you probably can a distinction around this, but is going to take work - work that he doesn't put in. It's no good saying 'the decision to terminate a pregnancy because of a pre-natal diagnosis is something that I believe is an absolute personal choice and should be an unstigmatised right for women and parents. To do so is not eugenics.' Personal choice isn't absolute. Everyone knows this. Financial incentives for sterilisations are bad, apparently, but I don't think there's an hard economic distinction between society paying you to be sterilised and not paying for enhanced care and support needed for children with severe conditions. If we invested more resources to care for Downs babies and adults, I'm confident that would reduce the termination rate. I don't have a view on whether we should, but either both are coercion, or neither are. 

If there, he's trying to put a line where I don't believe there is one, he's guilty of an extraordinary lack of sophistication elsewhere by omitting lines where there should be lines. Discussing enforced sterilisation, he notes that the Cheyenne 'claims ... sterilisation, sometimes without their knowledge or understanding, had been performed on more than a quarter of Native American women of child-bearing age. How is that different from the actions of the Nazis? Why is that not attempted genocide?' (p.154) Here, we have a claim of sterilisation of a quarter of a population, sometimes without proper consent. That's a lot of conditional words, but even if they are taken maximally, it simply doesn't measure up to enforced euthanasia of whole populations. It's an obscene comparison. I think it's made in good faith, in revulsion at the actions against the Cheyenne, and a geneticists perspective that draws no distinction between sterilisation or murder - their impact on populations in the long term being identical. But all bad things are not the same, and it's wrong. This inability to do distinction properly hampers the book.

Finally, I think he gets into a mess about heritability. As this is clear on, eugenics was conceived of based on as a theory of genetic determinism. Historical eugenicists believed that they could breed better humans. Rutherford is at pains to show how misguided this is and how much of heritability is environmental. I think he's very good on pointing out the weirdness of putting faith in high risk, high cost, genetic solutions when we have well evidenced social interventions that would work better. However, I think he opens the door without even noticing to a eugenics-adjacent position on heritability, which deserves discussion. It's in several places, for example 'alcohol use disorder or alcohol dependency are contemporary and more precise diagnoses, and we know that they are heritable, because everything is.' (p.174) But if it's heritable, then the cause of that heritability doesn't really seem to me to matter if you are trying to 'sculpt society'. If disease selected abortion is OK - 'they are medical techniques specifically conceived and designed for the alleviation of suffering in individuals.' - then why is behavioural abortion not OK. Why should we condemn children to be born into terrible circumstances if it is behavioural, when we don't if it is disease related? Is it eugenics to sterilise those people who would be terrible parents, who either lack capacity to consent or are unable to discharge basic parental obligation? If the distinction is choice, then the genetics is irrelevant. These are complex issues, which I am sure much has been written on. I don't pretend to have expertise in it, but it needs to be addressed here. 

I did think this last criticism was perhaps unfair. That's policy, not eugenics, but then I read this section at the end, 'If we truly wanted to reduce the sum total of human suffering then we should eradicate the powerful, for wars are fought by people but started by leaders.' (p.251) Leaving aside the quality of this argument, which is low, this is a political book. You have to so some of the political work.

Overall, this is such a missed opportunity; It's an relevant topic. The core content about the science and the scientists is well explained and well discussed. I wanted so much more. It is fatally undermined by lack of definitional work, unnecessary overreach and unexamined political positions that are central to the book as written. It's a bad book.

Bibliography, June 2023

BOTM: C. Townsend, Fifth sun (2019)

S. Alexievich, Last witnesses (1985)
L. Booth (ed.), Wisden Cricketer's Almanack (2023)
R. Guha (ed.), The Picador book of cricket (2001)
C. Isherwood, Goodbye to Berlin (1939)
M. Kosser, How Nashville became Music City USA (2006)
A. Martine, A memory called Empire (2019)
M. O'Farrell, Hamnet (2020)
N. wa Thiong'o, Petals of Blood (1977)

A lot of this was very good. Only a couple were excellent. People should all read Alexievich, but it wasn't as good as her superlative collection of voices from women in the war. It needed a structure. People all have read Hamnet, but I felt that its Shakespearean conceit was pointless, though the writing was supremely moving. Martine has written a space opera heavily influenced by Byzatine cultural asumptions - which I thoroughly enjoyed, but may be niche.

The two best: Guha's collection of cricket writing was superb. The start was slow, but more than made up for it by an outstanding series of essays collected in one place. It was as good as it should have been. Better yet, though, was Townsend's book on the Aztecs, which was revelatory, clear on the what it was telling us (and how to pronounce it - massive surprise). It was a great book and gave me the depth and insight that I wanted in this area. I've always been fascinated by the pre-Columbian American civilisations and I was delighted to discover that there is more source material than I had thought.

Bibliography, May 2023

BOTM: O. Butler, Kindred (1979)

L. Blissett, Q (1999)
L. Borodin, The year of miracle and grief (1984)
F. Butler-Gallie, Priests de la Resistance (2019)

E. Chang, Lust, Caution and other stories (1979)
J. Fforde, The Eyre Affair (2001)
K. Harris, The Queen at the Cricket (2022)
R. Kapuscinski, The shadow of the sun (1998)
K. Rundell, Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne (2022)

G. Taber, The Judgment of Paris: California vs. France (2005)

I liked parts of lots of these a lot. But many were flawed. Q is brilliantly mad (it's about sixteenth century anabaptists), but too long; Rundell's writing is spiky and very enjoyable to read, but I found the focus slightly off. Kapuscinski writes magnificently, but is slightly wincingly dated in some of his descriptions of African society. 

Largely immune from this were Priests de la Resistance which is actually a sneakily affecting book, with rich anecdotes to tell, told well, and forcefully reminding us of the Christian imperative to act. A marvellous book. Best of all was Octavia Butler's time travelling novel of race and America. Tight, clever, impactful and narratively surprising. It's a great novel.

Bibliography, April 2023

BOTM: A. Hochschild, King Leopold's ghost (1999)

R. Adams, The memories of Milo Morai (1986)
J. Aiken, Black hearts in Battersea (1964)
S. Altun, The Sultan of Byzantium (2011)
S. Barnes, A la recherche de cricket perdu (1989)
R. Bassett, Last days of Old Europe (2019)
A. Burgess, The kingdom of the wicked (1985)
N. Gaiman, The Sandman 5: A game of you (1993)
R.N. Lebow, Archduke Franz Ferdinand Lives!: a world without world war I (2014)
T. Pratchett, Soul music (1994)
S. Selvon, The Lonely Londoners (1956)

It gives me no pleasure to report that the Turkish thriller about a secret society based on the last line Byzantine Emperors is terrible; nor that the imagination of a counterfactual world where WW1 does not happen is also extremely poor. They are both books to avoid. By contrast there are three books on here that are excellent. Sam Selvon's novel on the early Caribbean migrants into Britain is both important and a delight to read. It sort of peters out towards the end, but it is well worth immerses yourself in. Of course, my preferred nostalgic past is not the bedsits of the 1950s, but the lost world of late imperial aristocracy, preferably Habsburg. Richard Bassett thinks so too, and his memoir of his Central European career, and his encounters with the flotsam of the Habsburg world as the cold war ended is just marvellous. Yet again, it makes me curse my stupidity in spending time in Zagreb when Trieste was right there, and it it is enthralling, as well as very nicely done. 

However, best of all was the vastly less warm, though vastly awarded, narrative of the horror-show of Belgian colonialism in the Congo. As we all know now, for Belgian, read personal possession of the King of Belgium. It's tight, clear, and very good on the sheer recency of it all. I also very much appreciated the end, where we get both context on other colonial regimes too (a bad reading of it would single out Belgian / Leopoldine methods alone) and on the weak Belgian reckoning with its own history (the infamous Congo museum was a frequent venue for school trips for me). I don't know the story or nineteenth century Africa as well as I should. This is a critical addition to that. And it's told very well.

Bibliography, March 2023

BOTM: N. wa Thiong'o, A grain of wheat (1967)

L. Binet, HhhH (2010)
------ Civilisations (2019)
P. Carey, The fat man in history and other stories (1980)
G. Dangerfield, The strange death of liberal England (1936)
N. Gaiman, The Sandman: The Doll's House (1990)
------ The Sandman: Dream country (1991)
------ The Sandman: Brief lives (1994)
B. Evaristo, The Emperor's Babe (2001)

G. Heyer, An Infamous army (1937)
D. Landy, Playing with Fire (Skulduggery Pleasant #2) (2008)

J. Kenrick, Musical theatre: a history (2008)
R. Mabey, Wild cooking (2008)
S. Tharoor, Inglorious Empire (2017)

For about fifty pages, I thought Dangerfield's classic was going to be my favourite. That section is wickedly well written, sharp and bright. I loved it. The rest is good, and has lots of biting passages, but struggles to contain the narrative that he's writing and lacks tightness. It needed a better chronology, and I think it should have been shorter. It is still a classic.

Several others were excellent. I'm unconvinced by the French vogue for autofiction in general, but I thought Binet's book on Heydrich was very good. And he's right about Littell. I also really liked Evaristo's early work on on Roman London (though it isn't really). It's very good, funny, and poignant too. I have nothing to add to general comment on The Sandman which I obviously read because of the television adaptation, but is none the worse for it. I read about Musical theatre because I love it, and it did its job well too.

However, best of all was Thiong'o. I read it because I wanted to read more African literature (this is Kenyan), but I found it compelling. It does not have a string of memorable quotations, like Dangerfield, but it was compelling, both in structure and plot. The story of the British exit from Kenya is known, though not well known I fear, and this does it well. Where I think it did it excellently, was in the complexity and range of the responses to it. This was his penultimate book in English before he exclusively wrote in Gikuyu afterwards. I can't wait to read them.

Bibliography, February 2023

BOTM: W.M. Ormrod, The reign of Edward III (1990)

R. Adams, Horses of the North (1985)
R. Adams, A man called Milo Morai (1986)
H. Carr, The Red Prince: the life of John of Gaunt (2021)

N. Gaiman et al, Sandman, vol 8: World's end (1994)
N. Gaiman et al, Sandman, vol 9: The kindly ones (1996)
W. Golding, The Spire (1964)
N. Jubber, Epic continent (2019)

T. Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters (1988)

I bought this month's BOTM by complete accident. I tried (twice!) to buy Ormrod's biography of Edward III, as part of my ongoing quest to work through the high middle ages in England. But I ordered this by mistake so might as well have read it. And it was outstanding - it's such pleasure to read proper historical analysis with succinct conclusions. The central framing, that segments Edward III's reign into three phases, is clear and very helpful to any understanding. I'm not going to bother with the biography now. I wish I hadn't bothered with that of John of Gaunt, where the author has simple regurgitated her reading  notes. Sigh.

Bibliography, January 2023

BOTM: P.H. Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire (2016)

P. Ackroyd, Milton in America (1996)
N. Blake (C. Day-Lewis), The beast must die (1938)
J. Bull, The Brexit tapes ( 2023)
J. Clements, The Emperor's Feast (2021)
E. Crispin, The moving toyshop (1946)
H.J. Dyos, Victorian Suburb: Study of the Growth of Camberwell (1961)
M. Green, Historic Clapham (2008)
W.G. Hoskins, Local History in England (1959)

K. Lane, Potosi (2019)
J. Linford, The Missing Ingredient: The Curious Role of Time in Food and Flavour (2018)
A. Piper, A history of Brixton (1996)

I bought Hoskins on a whim in a charity shop in December, but it's sparked a flurry of reading around local history that I've thoroughly enjoyed. I'm definitely going to write the history of the Manor of Stockwell and the Parish of St Andrew's now (i.e., when I retire). I thoroughly enjoyed The Brexit Tapes, even after a delay of a couple of years in turning it into a book. I loved The Emperor's Feast, which is great on the evolution of food in China. I have bought millet in response, sparking less joy in my house. 

My favourite of all was probably the least accessible of all. Every review of Peter Wilson's great tome stresses that this is largely incomprehensible if you don't have a working knowledge of a thousand years of German history. I do have a working knowledge of German history, though with a few gaps, and even I found it required hard work early on. But, having orientated myself through the annexes with my Salians and Luxembourgs, it opened up into a brilliant analysis of a complex, diverse institution that sat at the heard of Europe for a millennium. It was excellent on imperial reform around 1500, and really brought to life the nature of neglected areas like the 'interregnum' of the thirteenth century. It's done thematically and I think that really helps to see the evolution of imperial institutions - and their limits. I will be coming back to it again and again. 

I now feel a real pang of regret that I didn't pursue my first proposed research interest in sixteenth century Austrian Protestantism. Too late now, but it's one of only a handful of books that have ever done that. 

A college sermon (against justification by works)

Preached third Sunday of Epiphany (22nd January) 2023, Balliol chapel, Oxford, Evensong

Ecclesiastes 3.1-11

1 Peter 1.3-12
Psalm 33.1-12

It is a great pleasure to be asked to preach here. I did not go to Balliol while I was at Oxford, but I hold it in great affection. I have lots of good friends at Balliol, through them I met my wife. I’ve visited plenty of times. I have never set foot in this chapel.

I am delighted to rectify this this today, though less delighted with the circumstances. It’s always cold in Oxford, and it’s freezing today. It is also potentially difficult to be doing the sermon in a week where the bishops of the church have failed, once again, to reach the right answer on same sex relationships. And lastly, it is daunting to be asked to preach on one the most famous passages of the Old Testament, though it is now two generation since the Byrds took it to top of the US chart, so the resonance may have faded. As we are in Oxford, one never knows.

Still, no matter what place it occupies in the popular imagination, the Book of Ecclesiastes occupies a strange place in the Bible. Plenty of people have thought it shouldn’t be in the bible, and this is because throughout, instead of the golden thread of God who chooses, judges and redeems, this one doesn’t. The author of Ecclesiastes is resigned; God is remote.

And there appears to be little ambiguity about this. There are sections of the bible where the metaphor clouds the meaning, and the message is obscure. Not here, not least because the superscript literally tell us: ‘There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.’ The message is not subtle one: everything happens, no-one understands God, and then you die. A few verses later we have that the ‘fate of the songs of man and the fate of the beast is a single fate’.

In fact, all our texts lack ambiguity as well, though the others are more upbeat, at least. But, if we can escape the blinding obviousness of the metaphor, the text is less clear. What is the time for? What does the author of Ecclesiastes think we are doing with our lives?

Because despite the opener, every activity under the sun is not listed: there are twenty-eight of them, in fourteen opposed pairs. One of which doesn’t count because you can’t allocate much time to being born or dying. Fairly essential tasks are not included - no eating, no drinking, no sex at all, no studying, no writing, no entertainment, no travel. Some of these do pop up in other parts of the book.

So actually, Ecclesiastes thinks thirteen types of activity are what fill a life:

• Two about violence (fighting, healing war)
• Two are about the getting of things, either the finding or the putting off. This may include another about the gathering of stones.
• Three are about building or making: planting/uprooting, building, mending.
• Five are about feelings: Embracing, speaking, mourning, weeping, love

I’d like to talk about the last two.

What binds all the building and the making is that it’s for the future. Even the negatives. You obviously build a house or plant a seed for the future, but you also don’t tear down a house if there’s no tomorrow, you tear down a house because you don’t want someone in it or you want to put something there.

When we have later that God has put eternity in the human heart, this is what he means. And in the epistle. ‘the prophets … trying to find out the time and circumstances [of the] the sufferings of the Messiah …. they were not serving themselves but you’.

The prophets may have been laying the foundations of heavenly salvation, but throughout the Old and Testament, and again here, the earthly future matters.

And how is that earthly future going?

It may not feel like it, but it’s going pretty well. Several centuries of material progress, dramatic increases in global wealth and global health has meant a vast improvement in lifestyles. The gap between the time to be born and to die has expanded in length and in quality.

In my own field, nearly two billion people have gained access to clean water in the last two decades. Ukraine’s day of national unity, which is today, is just over 100 years old. You can’t tell them it’s not important.

But, just as with Ukraine, that earthly future is being denied to too many people because of the lack of sound foundations. Think of the basics. Think of Ecclesiastes.

• To plant: over 700m people are suffering from hunger, half of the countries in the world have food insecurity
• To build and create: over 600m live in extreme poverty
• I would add my own field, the foundational gift of water, essential for physical and our spiritual life. 800m people still do not have access to clean water nearby

And, right now, those foundations look shaky. Because of COVID those numbers have gotten worse; undermining the huge gains made. And the drumbeat of climate change gets ever louder threatening it all.

Where is God?

Our first instinct is to look for a God who judges. Is this a test we are failing? What works should we do to get this right, to secure salvation?

The Psalm is clear about the greatness of the Lord, but Ecclesiastes reminds us of the fundamental chasm between man and God, the gap only bridged by Christ. And the tolls of that bridge are not a tariff of good works.

The world matters not because we’re commanded to care, but because of those last set of activities in Ecclesiastes. Those feelings. They aren’t inner feelings, but social ones. For example, keeping silent is normal alone, it’s only an act when you’re with someone.

Faced with the vastness of divine power, an unknowable, unreachable, uninfluenceable God, where all is ‘mere breath’, Ecclesiastes points to people, to the crown of God’s creation. Now, this is no blandly pious ‘God is Love’ message, he’s not saying you can’t hate them, just that a full life engages with them in all their complexity, their diversity , and their messiness. It requires us to engage with the world as it is. And it allows for change. Some might say – I would say – that this week’s position from the college of bishops isn’t changing enough. That it’s not engaging with the world as it is.

But the point is that we must do this, not because these works to be done for a test, but because this is life to be lived to its fullness, this is what we have the time for. Ecclesiastes isn’t telling you how; it’s certainly not telling you when, it’s just telling us that creation, not heaven alone is our mission. Nothing can be left to God alone, when we can act ourselves.

Keep your eyes fixed on the heavens, sure, but lay those foundations, plant those seeds. There is a time for everything. Let us act in the world. Eternity is coming, God has placed it in our hearts, but not yet.

Bibliography, 2022

Within touching distance of my target of ten books a month, I finished on 118, with three in progress. Next year, next year... 

Curiously, it was exactly 50% fiction, though with non-fiction more weighted to cultural than historical reading, with a lot of memoir this year. BOTMs were almost the same, with five non-fiction (all from the first five months of the year) and seven fiction (from the remainder of the year). This did not in any way reflect the actual reading volumes.

The fiction is straightforward this year. I read Old Filth on Anna's recommendation and I am so glad I did. The sequels are nowhere near as good, but this is an exceptional, and exceptionally precisely written, book. It deserves to be much more well known than it is. 

Usually, non-fiction is harder to call, and there are several non-fiction works that deserve talking about, including ones that weren't books of the month. However, they are all easily overtopped by The Power Broker. It's reputation preceeds it, and it can't really be better known amongst its target audience, but the consensus is correct. 

Jan: P. Short, Mitterand: a study in ambiguity (2013)
Feb: F. Dunlop, Sharks fin soup and sichuan pepper (2009)
Mar: B. Lenon, Much promise: successful schools in England (2017)
Apr: R. Caro, The power broker (1974)
May: S. Ritchie, Science Fictions: the epidemic of fraud, bias, negligence and hype (2020)
Jun: J. Lahiri, The namesake (2003)
Jul: C. Isherwood, A single man (1964)
Aug: J. Gardam, Old Filth (2004)
Sep: D. Simmons, Hyperion (1989)
Oct: M. Renault, Fire from Heaven (1969)
Nov: K. Miller, Augustown (2016)
Dec: C. Brenchley, Dust up at the crater school (2021)

Bibliography, December 2022

BOTM: C. Brenchley, Dust up at the crater school (2021)

S. Barry, The Secret Scripture (2008)
A. Beam, The rise, fall and curious afterlife of the great books (2008)

A. Coglan, Carols from Kings (2016)

A. Kavan, Ice (1967)
V. Moller, The map of knowledge (2019)
W. Morris, The glittering plain (1890)

A. Proctor, The whole picture: the colonial story of the art in our museums (2020)

M. Reisner, Cadillac Desert (2003)

B. Unsworth, Losing Nelson (1999)

It's been a pretty disappointing reading month. Most of these were mediocre, and a number were plain bad. The only two that I would wholeheartedly recommend were the Reisner on water and the second of the marvellous chalet-school-on-Mars series that I loved so much last Christmas that I saved this one for this Christmas. It was, like it's predecessor, my favourite of the month. It was not as good. Some of the plotting needed more work, but still hugely enjoyable. Cadillac Desert could, perhaps should have, beaten it, but it was a little too long, and too unwieldly in the middle. It was, however, fascinating, and very well told in most of the parts. I would be uneasy as an inhabitant of the American West right now.