Bibliography, March 2021

BOTM: H. Trevor-Roper, The last days of Hitler (1947)

J. Barr, A line in the sand (2012)
J. Erdal, Ghosting (2004)
B. Feirstein, Real men don't eat quiche (1982)
S. Jones, Endless winter (1993)
C. Nichols and P. Hardman, Disrupted (2021)
H. Pearson, The Smith of Smiths (1934)
D. Richards, Outpost: a journey to the wild ends of the earth (2019)
P.G. Wodehouse, Uncle Dynamite (1948)

I am slightly disappointed that I couldn't make yet another book of the month for my favourite Wodehouse character. It was another classic. But I found a few others were outstanding. Surprisingly, Hesketh Pearson's biography of Canon Sydney Smith was not quite there. I loved the character and writings of Smith, but I felt the biography was a little drawn out for my tastes. On the other hand, I properly loved Ghosting. It's obviously an extreme situation, but I thought it trod the balance of substance and frippery very well. If you are at all interested in books and bookmen or 80s and 90s society, it's a fascinating read. 

However, everyone should read The last days of Hitler and I cannot imagine why I wasn't made to at school. It's a masterclass in historical method: the issue is important; the available data is circumscribed, but incomplete; the writing is crisp and clear;  and it's short. I'm baffled why my history teacher at school suggested Oxbridge candidates read War and Peace and not this.* It's also fascinating on both the absolutely fantastical world of the Nazis by the mid-40s and the precise nature and events of the final days. I don't particularly like the place that the Nazis occupy in our historiography - I feel they dominate our understanding in a deeply unhelpful way, but because of this, these details matter. Anyway, it turns out I didn't know that much about this bit or some of the protagonists and it was superb. Note also, it is worth reading a later edition (mine from the 1990s), as the introduction details with the resurfacing of parts of the story which the Russians had initially hidden.

* This is not a comment on W&P. I love W&P and I'm due another reread.

Bibliography, February 2021

BOTM: C. Achebe, Anthills of the savannah (1987)

K. Amis, New maps of hell (1959)

C. Connelly, After the party (2018)

S. Corbett & B. Fikkert, When helping hurts: How to alleviate poverty without hurting the Poor (2014)

C. Criado - Perez, Invisible Women (2019)

I. Hardman, Why we get the wrong politicians (2018)

E. Mitchell, The silver brumby (1958)

D. Mosley, A life of contrasts (1978)

A.J. Symonds, The quest for Corvo (1934)

J. Tey, A daughter of time (1951)

I have lots to day about some of these. Firstly, Diana Mosley's book is astonishing. It was well reviewed and attracted compliments for style, but a) it's not that well written - there are no real moments of standout style and b), really importantly, it's really obviously really Nazi. I don't mean recognising the desperate times and sympathising with the spirit of the era; I mean, Hitler was quite nice really; all those reports about him lied. It's astonishing. Here's my, er, favourite. Remember, this is in 1978:

he truth is that in private life he was exceptionally charming, clever and original, and that he inspired affection. He also inspired fear, perhaps, but he was essentially one of those rare beings who make people want to please them, want to work for them, eager to sacrifice. He identified himself with Germany and this identification was accepted by his countrymen. In his make-up there was both pride and a modesty, even vulnerability, which aroused chivalrous feelings, a very powerful motive force. .... Hitler was the most unselfconscious politician I have ever come across. He never sought to impress, he never bothered to act a part. If he felt morose he was morose. If he was in high spirits he talked brilliantly and sometimes did wonderfully comic imitations.

Second: Josephine Tey. This was voted the best crime novel of all time in 1990. It is not. It is not even a crime novel,but a novelistic wrapper around an argument for the innocence of Richard III. I have simply no idea why it was written. If Tey had wanted to write a defence of Richard III, then she was welcome to, but presumably the footnotes were beyond her so she dressed it up as a novel to allow herself to play fast and loose with medieval reality, and facts about how succession or courts work. And miss out the boring bits. It was stress-inducingly dire.

Everything else was fine. I partly wanted to give this to a reread of one The Silver Brumby, which I read and loved as a pre-teen. I still do, and I was surprised by how much I remembered of it. However, I think it's probably Achebe that was the best. I didn't really enjoy Things fall apart when I read that, despite its reputation. I found it a bit laboured and the historicity didn't quite work, though of course the voice is the key thing. This I thought this was much better. The story excellent, and the writing direct and rich. Good end too.

Bibliography, January 2021 (Full Mitford)

 BOTM: The Mitford sisters, ed. C. Mosley, Letters between six sisters (2007)

T. Gooley, How to read water (2016)
N. Mitford, The Pursuit of Love (1945)
--------, Love in a Cold Climate (1949)
--------, Madame de Pompadour (1954)
--------, Don't tell Alfred (1960)
J. Mitford, Hons and Rebels (1960)
L. Spinney, Pale Rider (2017)
P. Vogler, Scoff: a history of food and class in Britain (2020)

This all got rather out of hand. By coincidence I asked for (and got) Hons and rebels and Madame de Pompadour at Christmas and then it rather snowballed. I've resisted Mitfordania for ages, so I wasn't really expecting to fall into such temptation. I think I'm out now. I'm just reading Diana's memoirs and then I'm done. They were clearly all mad, except possibly for the Duchess of Devonshire, and mostly dreadful to be around, except definitely for the Duchess of Devonshire. The most famous, and best bits, are the early family accounts because the domestic scene are even more bonkers than the rest and have all the family riffing off each other. 

As most of the reading was Nancy, I can confirm that the critical view is right. Her later work does decline fast and by 1960, it's Powellian in its failure to really grasp what it going on. The Pursuit of Love is great though. However, I enjoyed the letters best. They are a slog at over 800 pages, but they give the panorama of the relationships, and are almost merciless in what they reveal about the protagonists. None of them (save, predictably, the Duchess of Devonshire) come out well. With many thanks to K, who recommended them.

Bibliography, 2020

At one point this year, it looked like lockdown was going to deliver a post-baby record level of reading, but Autumn put paid to that, and the last few months have been mediocre, so I finished one behind. Still, I have kept myself at the relatively high level of post-doctoral reading. And a strong mix of reading too; I haven't read this much 'hard' non fiction (History, Philosophy, Politics) since 2010. And I'm glad I did that. Fiction was weak, accounting for only three of my BOTMs; it did mark the first time I read more women than men, though I don't think the two are related. Six other BOTMs were cultural, and three 'hard' non-fiction (all history).

This makes fiction pretty straightforward. I briefly wondered if there was an excellent piece of fiction sitting in other months, but there wasn't. The best two novels I read were both Mantel, and the best one remains Wolf Hall. I don't think it needs any more analysis from me, save that I liked it even more this time than I did first time round. I'd also note that a decade on we sort of take it for granted, and we shouldn't.

Non-fiction was overwhelmingly harder. I could make a case for at least three of these, but with mentions for Pope-Hennessy and Cohn, Meetings with remarkable manuscripts is an absolutely gem of a book. It's stylistically interesting, taking a complex and highly inaccessible subject and making it informal was a stroke of genius. But it's also robust, illuminating (pun intended) and important. I've never really been interested in manuscripts (or physical editions of books at all), but this made me look at the whole thing afresh. And I read it on kindle, when you can't even see the lovely pictures.

Jan: T. Salih, Season of migration to the north (1966)
Feb: J. Child, My life in France (2006)
Mar: P. Paphides, Broken Greek (2020) 
Apr: C. De Hamel, Meetings with remarkable manuscripts (2016)
May: V. Moore, How to Drink (2010)* 
Jun: J. Pope-Hennessy, The Quest for Queen Mary (2018)
Jul: H. Mantel, Wolf Hall (2009)*
Aug: L. Lee, A Rose in Winter (1955) 
Sep:  J. Gillingham, The Wars of the Roses (1981) 
Oct: M. Mengiste, The Shadow King (2020) 
Nov: C. Stevens, Born Brilliant: The Life of Kenneth Williams (2010)
Dec: N. Cohn, Awopbopaloobop Awopbamboom (1969)

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.