C. S. Lewis: Out of the Silent Planet

C. S. Lewis
Out of the Silent Planet (3*)

Between the ages of eleven and fifteen, I read through most of the science fiction section in the local public library. It therefore puzzled me on reading The Chrysalids last month that I couldn’t remember it. Had I completely forgotten or is it one I missed? If I were to re-read something I know I did read at that age, then would I be reassured that my memory still works?

I know I read C. S. Lewis’s space trilogy. I have always been prepared for the still awaited quiz question – What are the titles? Answer: Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra and Return to the Silent Planet. WRONG! The third one was That Hideous Strength. Well, that is not how I remember it.

I went to Faded Page and downloaded Out of the Silent Planet for Kindle. I also managed to find an image of the cover I think our library had.  

As I remembered, it is about a man called Ransom (my mother had a friend with the same surname) who is kidnapped and taken by two crooks to Mars (known as Malacandra) where he escapes and has various adventures. In particular, I was remember being struck by how he first misinterprets the appearance of an alien, and, later, how unusual human beings look when he first encounters them again.

…  it held the shell to its own middle and seemed to be pouring something… . Ransom thought with disgust that it was urinating into the shell. Then he realised that the protuberances on the creature’s belly were not genital organs at all; it was wearing … pouch-like objects, and it was adding a few drops of liquid from one of these to the water in the shell.

Almost exactly as I recall. Strange what you remember. Much later Ransom sees:

…  two creatures which he did not recognize. … They were much shorter than any animal he had yet seen on Malacandra, … bipeds, though the lower limbs were so thick and sausage-like that he hesitated to call them legs. The bodies were a little narrower at the top than at the bottom so as to be very slightly pear-shaped, and the heads were … almost square. They stumped along on heavy-looking feet which they seemed to press into the ground with unnecessary violence. And now their faces were becoming visible as masses of variegated colour fringed in some bristly, dark substance. Suddenly, with an indescribable change of feeling, he realized he was looking at men.

You cannot say C. S. Lewis lacked imagination.

Other aspects came back as I read: the spherical space ship they travel in, that Malacandrans, like the plants and the mountains, tend to be tall and thin because of the lower gravity, that there is breathable air deep down in the canals but not on the higher plains, and that Ransom learns to speak Malacandran because he is a professor of language. Even after more than fifty years, I knew I had read it before. It reassures me that I cannot previously have read ‘The Chrysalids’.

What I did not recall is the moralistic and religious allegory. As a young teenager, I probably didn’t get it. Every planet is ruled an Oyarsa, a kind of space angel, which is ruled by an even higher being called Maledil. They all communicate with each other. However, the Oyarsa ruler of Thulcandra (the Earth) became silent aeons ago (the Silent Planet) and the planet has become a mystery to the others. The Malacandran Oyarsa is astonished to hear what Ransom  “... has to tell them about human history – of war, of slavery and prostitution.”

‘It is because they have no Oyarsa,’ said one of the pupils.
‘It is because every one of them wants to be a little Oyarsa himself’ said Augray.
‘They cannot help it … there must be rule, but how can creatures rule themselves?

The villains who kidnap Ransom are of low moral fibre: one is after the gold that lies in abundance all over Malacandra and the other is a rogue scientist seeking to ensure the long term survival and dominance of the human race without any regard for others. They regard the three species of Malacadrans as primitives, whereas Ransom values their civilisation and appreciates their different but equal talents and qualities. The author being C. S. Lewis, theologian, Fellow at Oxford and Professor at Cambridge, these ideas all have academic and theological precedents which are a mystery to me. Out of the Silent University. 

It sounds like Thought for the Day on the BBC, but it’s an entertaining story. It does not entice me to re-read the other two, though.  

Key to star ratings: 5*** wonderful and hope to read again, 5* wonderful, 4* enjoyed it a lot and would recommend, 3* enjoyable/interesting, 2* didn't enjoy, 1* gave up.

Previous book reviews 

Re-reading Teenage Reading: James Bond

Ian Fleming: From Russia with Love (3*)

Continuing with novels I read in the nineteen-sixties, what would I make of James Bond now? Those books had all the glamour, excitement and adventure missing from the written version of The Saint. The library would not let you have them unless you looked old enough. One school friend was getting away with it a year before me, even though he was younger. Probably because his dad was Italian.

From Russia With Love parades all the comforts of discerning wealth. Why else would you want to read a whole chapter about Bond getting up and having his breakfast? He puts on his dark blue Sea Island cotton shirt, navy blue tropical worsted trousers and black leather sandals and enters his long, big-windowed sitting room for breakfast. The housekeeper brings him a Queen Anne pot of strong coffee from De Bry of New Oxford Street brewed in an American Chemex, a very fresh, speckled brown egg from French Marans hens, yellow Jersey butter and three glass jars containing Tiptree ‘Little Scarlet’ strawberry jam; Cooper’s Vintage Oxford marmalade and Norwegian Heather Honey from Fortnum’s, to eat with whole-wheat toast on his dark blue and gold Minton china.

Meanwhile, Bond’s assassin-to-be is receiving a naked massage from a naked female masseuse beside a swimming pool in a villa on the Russian Riviera. He has a money clip made of a Mexican fifty-dollar piece holding a substantial wad of banknotes, a gold Dunhill cigarette lighter, a gold Fabergé cigarette case and a gold Girard-Perregaux wrist watch.

What is it? Product placement? We get detailed descriptions of how rooms are laid out and furnished. There is a long account of Bond’s flight in a British European Airways turboprop Vickers Viscount from London to Istanbul, landing at Rome and Athens. Oh if only I had the money. I’d fly off to the Orient in my black leather sandals for a naked massage.

Fleming invariably manages to slip a few snippets of plot into these passages: that Bond has gone soft while his intended assassin is a fit, strong, asexual psychopath, and there are detailed facial descriptions which helpfully reflect the underlying personalities of all the characters, naughty or nice. And, of course, the female Russian agent sent to seduce Bond has faultless breasts. 

In essence, the book is complete and utter nonsense: entertaining, but total nonsense (please substitute a word that sounds like molluscs if you must), and Fleming must have known it. Was is a struggle to make it sound so straight-faced and grown-up? 

The longer you persist the faster you turn the pages, right up to bloodthirsty fights on the Orient Express and the capture of the ugly Russian neuter, Comrade Colonel Rosa Klebb, in Paris. She looks like a toad and has breasts like badly-packed sandbags. At the end, we are left to wonder whether Bond has survived, although we now know he came back the following year in Dr. No.

Neuters, breasts, asexuality, spanking, casual misogyny, racism and other predilections and prejudices you might or might not be able to imagine, they are all there. Is that why the library would not lend them to children, or was it just that they mentioned sex? Is there any wonder that Englishmen of a certain generation are so often caught out by issues of social justice and inequality? Perhaps the books should have been restricted to the over-seventies. Then I might have had to wait until now to read them. 

Key to star ratings: 5*** wonderful and hope to read again, 5* wonderful, 4* enjoyed it a lot and would recommend, 3* enjoyable/interesting, 2* didn't enjoy, 1* gave up.

Previous book reviews 

Review - William Golding: Rites of Passage

William Golding: 
Rites of Passage (3*)

Rites of Passage won the 1980 Booker Prize. Three years later the author was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Call me a Philistine, yet I deign to give it only three stars. Why?

A long time ago, possibly in my early teens, I read Lord of the Flies by the same author, about a group of boys who descend into savagery while stranded on a desert island. I thought it unpleasant and am surprised that it often appears in lists of favourite books from school. I find Rites of Passage unpleasant too. Golding seems to specialise in human degradation (albeit not in graphic detail).

The story begins well enough. We are reading the journal of Edmund Talbot on a voyage to Australia in the early nineteenth century. Talbot is an aristocrat bound for a post with the Governor of New South Wales, and is a pompous prig. For example, he would have you believe that just because of his position in life, his understanding of sailing and navigation is equal to that of ship’s officers. He cannot see that others might not regard him so highly. It is clever, entertaining stuff.

So clever that some of the time I was not really sure what was going on. We Northerners tend to say things as we see them, and often have difficulties with those who talk in hints and insinuations. It was too much bother to try to decipher all the nineteenth century subtleties exchanged by passengers and officers.

Then the novel takes a darker turn. Another passenger, the Reverend Colley, whose presence on board is generally resented or at best unwelcome, suffers humiliation during and following an equator-crossing ritual, and subsequently dies. Talbot then gets to read Colley’s journal and realises he might have prevented his downfall. To say more would be to give away too much of the story, but the phrase “rites of passage” would seem to refer to the crossing of the equator, Talbot’s growing self-awareness, and (possibly unanticipated by Golding) ‘passage’ in the smutty sense the camp comedian Julian Clary might use it.

Rites of Passage was originally intended to be a stand-alone novel but was succeeded by two others in what became known as the sea trilogy To The Ends Of The Earth. I won’t be reading them.


Key to star ratings: 5*** wonderful and hope to read again, 5* wonderful, 4* enjoyed it a lot and would recommend, 3* enjoyable/interesting, 2* didn't enjoy, 1* gave up.

Previous book reviews 

Review - Simon W. Golding: Life After Kes

Simon W. Golding
Life After Kes (3*)

I bought this about the making of the 1969 film Kes after reading the novel, A Kestrel For A Knave (earlier review). I got the Kindle version: the first Kindle book I have paid for in eight years of ownership, a very reasonable £2.99. It seems to have first appeared in hardback in 2006, but this Kindle version, dated 2014, contains a lot of additional material, as does presumably the 306-page paperback published in 2016. This gives it at times a somewhat repetitive, cobbled-together nature.

The book tells the story of the making of the film and how it changed the lives of all who participated, both during and after. The author, Simon Golding, sought out and interviewed just about everyone involved, including production staff and those who had minor parts such as the girl who delivered the reading in school assembly and the boy who was unjustly caned by the headmaster. In other words, although fascinating, it tells you far more than you could ever want to know.

The only professional actor in the film was Colin Welland who played teacher Mr. Farthing. Duggie Brown, the milkman, was a professional entertainer. Other characters were played by local people. For many of them it opened eyes, broadened horizons and changed lives. David (Dai) Bradley, the local schoolboy who played Billy, went on to television and theatre roles, notably in Equus. Brian Glover, the sports teacher, a games teacher in real life, became an acclaimed actor and writer, and also a wrestler. Freddie Fletcher who played Billy’s brother Jud, and Lynne Perry (real-life sister of Dougie Brown) who played their mother, also went on to successful acting careers. Even for those who had more ordinary jobs and careers, taking part in the film was a valuable educational experience. I guess that nowadays it would be outside the national curriculum.

Their memories of the film and what subsequent became of them are, at times, fascinating, and there are some amusing anecdotes. For example, Bob Naylor who played the bully, McDowell, remembers Glover as his real-life games teacher being just like he is in the film. He recalls him once showing off his “fantastic” new Adidas ice-white trainers to the boys before a football lesson, and them then trying to scuff them in tackles. Naylor later remembers being mocked at the bakery where he worked every time Kes appeared on television, until he told everyone, untruthfully, that he was paid £200 in royalties every time it was shown.

Life After Kes also has a great deal about director Ken Loach’s scriptless working methods, such as how he set up the football and classroom scenes giving different instructions to different characters. The script supervisor describes both Ken Loach and cinematographer Chris Menges as totally ruthless, very much at odds with their gentle personas. The book is also social history, detailing how northern schools and the town of Barnsley – its economy and community – used to be. It was something of a marathon to get to the end but for anyone captivated by the film Kes and the book on which it is based, it is good value. 


Key to star ratings: 5*** wonderful and hope to read again, 5* wonderful, 4* enjoyed it a lot and would recommend, 3* enjoyable/interesting, 2* didn't enjoy, 1* gave up.

Previous book reviews 

Review - Margaret Forster: Georgy Girl

Margaret Forster
Georgy Girl (3*)

Another nineteen-sixties novel I didn’t read when I should have done, supposedly set in ‘swinging’ London, although the sense of time and place arises mainly out of the social context rather than anything tangible. Such as there being nothing remarkable about cohabiting, the choices available to women and the reactionary views of Georgy’s parents. The story is also framed in sixties popular culture by the Seekers’ hit song (like it or loathe it) and the 1966 ‘X’ certificate film with Lynn Redgrave in the title roll. Other than that, the plot might be from almost any time or place.

Georgy is exuberant and outgoing but thinks of herself as ungainly and unattractive. She shares her London flat with the promiscuous, callous and selfish Meredith who, it is revealed in a masterclass of writing from multiple points of view to show not tell, treats Georgy like a skivvy. Meredith becomes pregnant and exercises her choice by seeing it through, so that her boyfriend, Jos, feels he should move in. He then falls for Georgy and while Meredith is in hospital having the baby (no quick in-and-out stays in those days) they become a couple. Not that Meredith is bothered. She has already exercised her choice again by abandoning the baby for adoption. But Georgy has other ideas and sees herself caring for the child with Jos. However, the baby quickly becomes the main focus of Georgy’s affections, and Jos leaves.

Meanwhile, there is a backstory. Georgy’s parents are employed as live-in servants to the wealthy James who, childless, has funded Georgy’s privileged upbringing and education. She doesn’t seem to need to work much. James has also been trying to persuade Georgy to become his mistress and after his wife dies he proposes marriage. Georgy accepts in order to be able to adopt and bring up the baby. 

A readable fast-paced novel, not as soap-opera-ish as it sounds, which fired up Margaret Forster’s reputation as a respected writer. Great characters, not particularly likeable. It may have seemed progressive and even scandalous at the time, but gives little sense that this is what life was really like in the sixties, if it ever did or was.


Key to star ratings: 5*** wonderful and hope to read again, 5* wonderful, 4* enjoyed it a lot and would recommend, 3* enjoyable/interesting, 2* didn't enjoy, 1* gave up.

Previous book reviews 

Review - Sabine Baring-Gould: Yorkshire Oddities (and other works)

 

The Dead Sister and The Used Up Characters (illustrations by D. Murray Smith)

Sabine Baring-Gould:
Yorkshire Oddities, Incidents and Strange Events (3*)
A Book of Ghosts (3*)
Curiosities of Olden Times (2*)

No, Sabine Baring-Gould was not one of the three wise men (with Baring-Frankincense and Baring-Myrrh) but was no less spiritual. And Yorkshire Oddities is not a dig at certain other bloggers despite what some might think; it was one of his books.

The Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould (1834-1924) is often remembered as author of the strident hymn Onward Christian Soldiers, written as young curate at Horbury Bridge, Yorkshire, in the eighteen-sixties, later set to the equally strident tune, St. Gertrude, by Sir Arthur Sullivan. Baring-Gould also collected myths and legends, folk songs and sermons, and wrote enormous amounts of other stuff. In his day he was considered one of England’s best novelists. He found time to father fifteen children as well. I bet he wasn’t much help with the housework.

I was hoping for a free Kindle version of Yorkshire Oddities but the cheapest on the Kindle store was £2.29, so I downloaded his Curiosities of Olden Times and A Book of Ghosts instead. Well, I am from Yorkshire. Later, I did find a free copy of Yorkshire Oddities on that wonderful resource The Open Library. I have therefore spent several weeks with the writings of an out-of-fashion Victorian clergyman.

The ghost stories are readable and entertaining. They bring the occasional shiver from anthropological relics that go bump in the night and a very scary railway compartment. There is a dead finger that inhabits the narrator’s body bit by bit in the hope of taking it over, a dead sister who lives the life of a living one, and a caution for writers not to base characters on real people because it uses up their souls leaving lifeless shells that follow you around. Not too scary, in fact it might better be described as playful, but not bad if you want something free for Kindle and can put up with the odd moralistic rant. David Murray Smith’s illustrations in some editions capture the gentle mood quite well.

Curiosities of Olden Times and Yorkshire Oddities are collections of the weird, strange and eccentric, in both fact and fiction. Among the olden curiosities we find descriptions of gruesome medieval punishments and are warned not to sit in church porches between the hours of 11.00 p.m. and 01.00 a.m. on St. Mark’s Eve (24th April) unless we wish to see the ghosts of those due to die in the coming year passing into the church. However, much of Curiosities... is concerned with religious myths and legends discussed in a lengthy academic way, which can be rather tedious.

But it was Yorkshire Oddities that started this quest. In effect, it is a kind of social history of the county. It offers brief biographies of oddities such as Blind Jack of Knaresborough (1717-1810) who learnt to navigate the entire county alone on a horse and built around 180 miles of turnpike road, and Peter Barker, the blind joiner (1808-1873), who taught himself to make or mend just about anything. There are accounts of heinous murders including the drowning of an unwanted husband by his wife, her lover and an accomplice at Dawney Bridge near Easingwold in 1623 where the bodies of the executed murderers were hung in chains on what later became known as Gibbet Hill.

I was greatly amused by Baring-Gould’s rendition of the Yorkshire accent. He had plenty of practice because his wife, Grace Taylor, was an ordinary girl from Ripponden, but I doubt he would have spoken of her as he reports an unnamed butcher speaking of his wife:

Shoo’s made a rare good wife. But shoo’s her mawgrums a’ times. But what women ain’t got ‘em ? They’ve all on ‘em maggots i’ their heads or tempers. Tha sees, sir, when a bone were took out o’ t’ side o’ Adam, to mak a wife for ‘m, ‘t were hot weather, an’ a blue-bottle settled on t’ rib. When shoo’s i’ her tantrums ses I to her, ‘Ma dear,’ ses I, ‘I wish thy great-great-grand ancestress hed chanced ta be made i’ winter.’ [p224, fifth edition]

“mawgrums” is one of several words that appear in the book and hardly anywhere else. Another is the name of a hill near Heptonstall called “Tomtitiman”.

But to return to Yorkshire accents, Baring-Gould writes:

[The locals] speak two languages – English and Yorkshire … every village has its own peculiarity of intonation, its own specialities in words. A Horbury man could be distinguished from a man of Dewsbury, and a Thornhill man from one of Batley. The railways have blended these peculiar dialects into one, and taken off the old peculiar edge of provincialism, so that now it is only to be found in its most pronounced and perfect development among the aged. [p110-111, fifth edition]

This was written in 1874 but I always felt you could still detect local differences amongst my grandparents’ generation in my neck of the woods up to a century later. Depending which way you walked, you could hear West Riding tykes, Linkisheere yellowbellies and East Riding woldies all within a ten-mile radius.

I was therefore especially interested in the stories of three ‘Yorkshire Oddities’ from this area:

Nancy Nicholson “the termagant” lived at Drax, Newland and Asselby between 1785 and 1854. She nagged and complained so much as to ruin the lives of her husband, relatives and almost everyone she came into contact with.

Snowden Dunhill (c1766-1838) from Spaldington near Howden, was a notorious thief: the Rob Roy of the East Riding. He was eventually transported to Van Dieman’s Land where he dictated his life story which found its way back to Howden and was printed and published.

Jemmy Hirst of Rawcliffe (1738-1829) became so famous for his eccentricities that King George III invited him to visit his Court in London. He rode a bull and wore eccentric clothing including an outrageously broad hat, although anyone tempted to joke or play a trick at his expense invariably came off worst. He became wealthy dealing in agricultural produce and built himself an enormous wickerwork carriage drawn by Andalusian horses, causing a sensation at Pontefract and Doncaster races. A true Yorkshire oddity but somehow he sounds like Jimmy Savile.

I knew these villages as a child but had never heard of any of these characters until more recently when we all began to take more interest in local history: e.g. there is now a pub at Rawcliffe named after Jemmy Hirst. Among their stories are glimpses of lost landscapes and ways of life: the woods around Rawcliffe, otter hunting in the marshlands, the steam packet that sailed from Langrick (Long Drax) to York, and the emergence of the railways.

There is a lot to fascinate but much to skip over. As in Curiosities..., some chapters are overly long with too much verbatim source material. A good editor would not have been amiss.


Key to star ratings: 5*** wonderful and hope to read again, 5* wonderful, 4* enjoyed it a lot and would recommend, 3* enjoyable/interesting, 2* didn't enjoy, 1* gave up.

Review - Stan Barstow: The Watchers On The Shore and The Right True End

Stan Barstow
The Watchers On The Shore (3*)
The Right True End (3*)

Two sequels that continue Vic Brown’s story from where we left him in A Kind of Loving: trapped in an unfulfilling nineteen-fifties marriage in the Yorkshire mining town where he grew up, and managing a record and electrical shop which the owner had implied would eventually pass to Vic.

The Watchers On The Shore and The Right True End take us into the nineteen-sixties, but whereas A Kind of Loving was rich in the details of time and place which vividly capture what it must have been like coming of age in the young northern working-class ten or fifteen years before my time, these elements are not major parts of the sequels. They do, however, capture something of the changing social context that allowed those like Vic to escape the restricted lives of their parents. 

Vic does not inherit the record shop and must choose between continuing there as an employee of a large company or returning to his previous work as a draughtsman. He chooses the latter, but instead of going back to his earlier employer he moves to a firm in the south of England. The distance strains his marriage to breaking point, especially as Vic’s cultural and intellectual horizons expand through an affair with an actress at the local theatre, although she eventually dumps him.

What was it about local theatre groups as a place for clever nineteen-fifties northern lads to meet classy birds? Were they epitomes of culture? It crops up in John Braine’s Room At The Top, and in real-life I am reminded of the much-liked teacher from school who joined the local amateurs and married one of the lovely Dale Sisters.

In the third book, Vic is a globe-trotting, London-based design and development engineer, having picked up a degree and lots of women. Yet something is missing, which is of course his actress friend with whom he designs and develops a ‘chance’ re-encounter. There is a twist at the end, not difficult to see coming, and all seems certain to be happy ever after.

The stories are brilliantly written and enjoyable page turners so long as you don’t expect the first-person present-historic narrative to be from any viewpoint other than Vic’s, with nineteen-sixties concerns and attitudes: man striving to win ideal woman who is at first out of his league but otherwise rather docile and incompletely drawn as a character. The book covers say it all.

And as Vic Brown finds, the problem with all this expansion of horizons stuff is that it fills your head with ideas and pretensions so that your family and those where you came from no longer understand you and you no longer understand them. Like once when I phoned my aunty on her farm and overheard my uncle say “th’s some posh bugger f’yer on t’phoo-an”, and her saying to him, “Why, it’s no’r anybody posh, it’s owwer Tasker”, and then to me “Ah suppoo-as y‘ave to talk proper like that when yer at wo’k.” Ah suppoo-as they would have thought the same about Vic Brown.

Key to star ratings: 5*** wonderful and hope to read again, 5* wonderful, 4* enjoyed it a lot and would recommend, 3* enjoyable/interesting, 2* didn't enjoy, 1* gave up.

Previous book reviews 

Review - V. S. Pritchett: A Cab At The Door and Midnight Oil

V. S. Pritchett
A Cab At The Door and Midnight Oil (3*)

I first picked up Midnight Oil by chance during a formative period around 1974 and was taken by Victor Pritchett’s determination to become a full-time writer. What would it be like to chuck your job to live in a garret in Paris? Would I dare do that? (Spoiler Alert – No).

V. S. Pritchett (1900-1997) was a British writer and literary critic known particularly for his short stories. He worked in a London leather firm until around 1920 when he took a job as a shop assistant in Paris. He later lived as a writer in Ireland, Spain and America, and was literary editor for The New Statesman.

These two volumes of autobiography tell of his nomadic early life around Edwardian London and Yorkshire (the family moved 18 times before he was 12), his work in the leather trade, struggling to write in Paris, his travels in Spain and his experiences in Ireland and America. He paints vivid, perceptive, meticulously observed character portraits of his larger than life relatives and others he knew over these years, although (possibly my fault) I was not all that interested in some of them.

The old-school prose demands a lot of concentration. Revisiting it again was something of a marathon but anyone interested in what it was like to grow up in the early twentieth century, or life abroad in the twenties and thirties, might find it fascinating.

see also: V. S. Pritchett's obituary in the New York Times


Key to star ratings: 5*** wonderful and hope to read again, 5* wonderful, 4* enjoyed it a lot and would recommend, 3* enjoyable/interesting, 2* didn't enjoy, 1* gave up.

Previous book reviews 

Review - Andrew Davies: A Very Peculiar Practice

Andrew Davies: A Very Peculiar Practice (3*)

Continuing my interest in campus novels, A Very Peculiar Practice was originally a 1986 BBC television comedy series set in the health centre of a fictitious low-ranking university somewhere in central England. It was written by the prominent television writer Andrew Davies, and starred Peter Davison in the leading role as newly appointed young doctor Stephen Daker. I didn’t watch it at the time, but this book is the ‘novelisation’ of the seven-part series, with each chapter corresponding to an episode.

Everything takes place to the background of short-sighted opportunism I recognise from my own university experiences: funding cuts; redundancies; bullying, the introduction of managerialism and business practices; the push for external funding while short changing the students. In other words, changing the nature of universities from being trusted guardians, creators and communicators of knowledge who provide a public service into dubious commercial outfits who rip-off customers and employees alike in order to maximise profits. If it was not for the values and ethos of the staff these things would have gone much further than they already have. 

The book is very much of its time, with nineteen-eighties sexist humour, predictable sitcom plots and stereotypical characters. The head of the practice is a going-to-seed drunken Scot. Another colleague is a self-seeking ruthless advantage seeker. A third is a bisexual feminist sexpot who sees everything from the women’s point of view. We also come across the high-achieving workaholic professor, the scheming vice chancellor and the impossibly perfect girlfriend. The central character feels completely out of his depth, but turns out of course to be far more up to the challenge than his lack of self-belief leads him to expect. Also, in a surrealist twist, there is a creative writer in residence who in discussing and thinking about his writing is actually discussing and thinking about the plot and characters of A Very Peculiar Practice.

But if you can put up with all of this, then it’s an extremely funny book.



Key to star ratings: 5*** wonderful and hope to read again, 5* wonderful, 4* enjoyed it a lot and would recommend, 3* enjoyable/interesting, 2* didn't enjoy, 1* gave up.

Review - The Secret Barrister

The Secret Barrister
Stories of the Law and How It's Broken (3*)

British justice is in a pitiful state: a broken system struggling on its knees; whether because of amateur magistrates for whom ignorance of the law is no barrier to appointment, prosecution and defence barristers given only a few minutes’ sight of the incomplete papers on which a complex case is based, defendants trying to defend themselves because they cannot afford proper representation, hearings postponed at the last minute because witnesses have not been able to get to court on time by public transport (their local court having closed), politicians cutting budgets and meddling with the law for cheap popular appeal, sentencing guidelines too complex for even professional judges to understand, the appallingly inhuman conditions in prisons, … the list goes on and on. 

Did you know, for example, that if you are wrongfully accused of something – perhaps simply because you happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time – you could incur tens or even hundreds of thousands of pounds in legal defence fees, yet receive no financial help whatsoever. It can mean goodbye to your house or your pension, and probably your job and your marriage as well because of the years of anxiety while the case comes to court. Few now qualify for legal aid.

Even worse, you could be like Victor Nealon who spent seventeen years in prison, branded a dangerous sex offender, wrongly convicted on vague and conflicting evidence against which he was poorly defended. And when eventually his conviction was quoshed he received nothing in compensation because the government had changed the rules to make it nigh impossible. The Secretary of State for Justice at the time was Chris Grayling, who in his more recent persona as Secretary of State for Transport introduced generous compensation for passengers whose trains were delayed by more than fifteen minutes, because they should not be inconvenienced by events outside their control. What would they get for the inconvenience of a train delayed by seventeen years?

But we don’t care about these things. The popular press rarely mentions state miscarriages of justice, or appeals that result in reduced sentences, as opposed to the hue and cry with which they report sentences they regard as too light, or the parole of prisoners who have served their time: the recent John Warboys furore for example.

We should care. We should be furious. We should be very disturbed by this book. But no politician ever won votes by promising more money for the justice system or better conditions for prisoners. These things are easy to cut. We proudly believe, as we are told, that British Courts are the best and fairest in the world. 

Relatively few of us will ever encounter the Justice system. For the rest of us the whole thing is just too tedious to bother with. Which is the problem with the book. Despite its brilliant humour, outrage, satire, importance and readability, parts of it are like a legal textbook. You have to persist to get to the end, but it’s eye-openingly worth it.

I hope our Members of Parliament, all of whom received a free crowd-funded copy, do persist to the end and take note. I also hope I never have to face a day in Court, whether as juror, witness or defendant, innocent or guilty.



Key to star ratings: 5*** wonderful and hope to read again, 5* wonderful, 4* enjoyed it a lot and would recommend, 3* enjoyable/interesting, 2* didn't enjoy, 1* gave up.

Previous book reviews 

Review - Chris Bonington: Ascent

Chris Bonington
Ascent: a life spent climbing on the edge (3*)

You could say Chris Bonington was one of my influences. I spent too many nineteen-seventies lunchtimes in Leeds Compton Road Library lost in the heights of I Chose to Climb and The Next Horizon, a tranquil refuge from accountancy. I acted them out on walks in Derbyshire, Scotland, the Yorkshire Pennines, the North York Moors, Iceland, Norway, France and Switzerland, an undue comparison, but I longed to be like him: all that climbing and writing. I bought a minivan, grew a beard, scrambled up mountains and tried to write things.

Ascent is Chris Bonington’s definitive autobiography. Much of the content is covered in his earlier books, but, gosh, what a story! As the cover blurb says, it reads like the pages of an epic saga.

The trouble is, to the non-specialist, one mountaineering expedition sounds much the same as another, even down to the extent of the senseless deaths: John Harlin on the Eiger, Ian Clough on Annapurna, Mick Burke on Everest, Dougal Haston skiing in the Alps, Nick Estcourt on K2, Pete Boardman and Joe Tasker on Everest. Their bodies often remained where they died. Bonington describes encountering Hannelore Schmatz on Everest in 1985, “sitting upright in the snow, sun-bleached hair blowing in the wind, teeth bared in a rictus grin,” where she had died of exhaustion descending from the summit in 1979. A sane person could only conclude that trailblazing mountaineering is an idiotic venture.

Bonington writes in a matter of fact way. His narrative and descriptions are vivid enough, but you would be hard pressed to find a simile or metaphor anywhere in the book. It is autobiography not memoir, an accurate account of places, people and events rather than an impression or reaction to them. He comes across as self-centred. The first person “I” must appear at least 6 times on every page (as on this one!), more than twice that on many. Yet he does not dwell on things. He is like a climbing machine with little time for imagination or self-reflection, even when writing about personal loss. At the end of the day, anyone who manages to climb the Old Man of Hoy at eighty remains an inspiration, but I’m glad I’m not like him at all. 



Key to star ratings: 5*** wonderful and hope to read again, 5* wonderful, 4* enjoyed it a lot and would recommend, 3* enjoyable/interesting, 2* didn't enjoy, 1* gave up.

Reviews: Ray Gosling: Sum Total and Personal Copy

Ray Gosling
Sum Total (3* to 5*)
Personal Copy: a Memoir of the Sixties (3* to 5*)

Ray Gosling was a writer and broadcaster who made television and radio programmes about ordinary people. His autobiographies, ‘Sum Total’ written when he was 21, and ‘Personal Copy’ when he was 40, are of varied consistency (some parts of them are 5*), but at their best are fascinating memoirs of the fifties and sixties. They document how, despite going to grammar school and university, which he left fairly quickly, he rejected any idea of a middle-class professional career and organized and campaigned for working-class causes. He conveys a strong sense of how the times they were a-changin’. His evocative eulogy to the now lost St. Ann's community of Nottingham is extraordinary.

My next post is about his film about Goole.


Key to star ratings: 5*** wonderful and hope to read again, 5* wonderful, 4* enjoyed it a lot and would recommend, 3* enjoyable/interesting, 2* didn't enjoy, 1* gave up.

Previous book reviews 

Review - Steve Humphries, Joanna Mack and Robert Perks: A Century of Childhood

Steve Humphries, Joanna Mack and Robert Perks
A Century of Childhood (3*)

Based on a 1988 Channel 4 television series, this is a fascinating look at the changing nature of childhood over the last hundred years from when, basically, we had no childhood because we had to work as soon as we were able, to the child-centred world of today. It is unlikely any of us would have been writing blogs or the equivalent had we grown up sixty or seventy years earlier.

The book contains wonderful photographs and first-hand accounts. I wondered whether to give it four stars, but the material is probably better on TV than in a book.

Key to star ratings: 5*** wonderful and hope to read again, 5* wonderful, 4* enjoyed it a lot and would recommend, 3* enjoyable/interesting, 2* didn't enjoy, 1* gave up.

Previous book reviews 

Review - Kenneth Clark: Civilisation

Kenneth Clark
Civilisation: A Personal View (3*)

I feel inadequate in giving this only three stars, but I’ve struggled for over a month and cannot say I’ve enjoyed it. Civilisation the book is the word-for-word script of the 1969 television series of the same name. It was considered a towering achievement in its day, and I would agree with that, but reading today I find Clark too taken up with his own knowledge and cleverness, too certain in his opinions. Unlike Bronowski in his series (see earlier blog from March 2016), Clark lacks humility. Perhaps the old programmes are more palatable. I have actually owned the book since 1978, and have struggled with it in the past. No doubt I’ll keep it, but I doubt I’ll read it again. 


Key to star ratings: 5*** wonderful and hope to read again, 5* wonderful, 4* enjoyed it a lot and would recommend, 3* enjoyable/interesting, 2* didn't enjoy, 1* gave up.

Review - H. G. Wells: The World of William Clissold

H. G. Wells
The World of William Clissold (3*)

If H. G. Wells had written a blog, it might have been something like The World of William Clissold. It takes the form of a six-book novel, purportedly the story of how William Clissold and his brother Dickon became rich men of influence connected to just about every influential figure from the early twentieth century. However, by far the majority of the novel consists of didactic diversions into a world view, a “Wellsian philosophy”, which encompasses everything from politics to sociology, economics to education, sexuality to psychoanalysis, all pointing towards the development of a new world order, a corporate “open conspiracy” which gives rise to a self-organising, free-market “World Republic” independent of inward-looking national interests. It showcases the progressive ideas of its time, some of which would still be regarded as progressive today. It requires real perseverance to follow it all the way through, which I managed with a struggle. 

Key to star ratings: 5*** wonderful and hope to read again, 5* wonderful, 4* enjoyed it a lot and would recommend, 3* enjoyable/interesting, 2* didn't enjoy, 1* gave up.

Previous book reviews 

Review - Anne Brontë: Agnes Grey

Anne Brontë:
Agnes Grey (3*)

A couple of recent articles about the 'other' Brontë sister led me to look at this novel for the first time. Anne Brontë's 'governess' story may not have the raw power of Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre but it draws attention to issues of class, the oppression and abuse of women, vanity and callousness as it pulls you along to a happy ending. A good read, free from Kindle.


Key to star ratings: 5*** wonderful and hope to read again, 5* wonderful, 4* enjoyed it a lot and would recommend, 3* enjoyable/interesting, 2* didn't enjoy, 1* gave up.

Reviews - Alistair Cooke: Letter From America and America

Alistair Cooke
Letter From America 1946-2004 (3*)
America (4*)

I used to love Letter from America on Radio 4 at Sunday breakfast, and always said "Good Morning" before Alistair Cooke so it sounded as if he returned the greeting. But despite being intelligent, informative and beautifully phrased, the wordy and soft-focused style belies an intensity of detail. Perhaps these pieces are better heard, or dipped into rather than read all at once. (March 2016)

America is much easier. I acquired this soon after it came out to accompany a BBC television series in 1973, but never got round to reading it. Then someone borrowed and kept it. I now have another copy and what a super book it is. I skipped some of the stuff about the politics of the union, but the story of the explorers, settlers and entrepreneurs is riveting - with some incredible photographs too. (December 2016)

Reviews - David Kynaston's and Dominic Sandbrook's histories of post-war Britain

David Kynaston
Austerity Britain, 1945-1951 (3*)
Family Britain 1951-1957 (3*)
Modernity Britain (Book 2) 1959-1962 (3*)

Dominic Sandbrook
Never had it so good : A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles (4*)
White Heat: A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties 1964-1970 (4*)
State of Emergency: The Way We Were: Britain 1970–1974 (4*)
Seasons in the Sun: The Battle for Britain, 1974-1979 (4*)

I have been reading gradually through the enormous Kynaston and Sandbrook tomes - not to be undertaken lightly as one of them recently took me most of the summer. They are worth the effort though. Having lived through much of their periods, they bring back lots of associations. I find Sandbrook for the most part more entertaining, but Kynaston is arguably the more impressive, especially in the rich tapestries he weaves from disparate events all occurring on the same day. (read 2012-2015) 


Key to star ratings: 5*** wonderful and hope to read again, 5* wonderful, 4* enjoyed it a lot and would recommend, 3* enjoyable/interesting, 2* didn't enjoy, 1* gave up.

Previous book reviews 

Review - P. J. Kavanagh: The Perfect Stranger

P. J. Kavanagh
The Perfect Stranger: A Memoir of Love and Survival (3*)

I felt I should take a look at this acclaimed memoir which was first published in 1966 and then again on no less than three subsequent occasions, latterly this year. It hurtles rapidly through school, Butlin's, post-war Paris, Korea, Oxford, Barcelona and Jakarta, all within a relatively short time span. In places I found it absorbing and moving, but other parts were a slog. Perhaps its aim (as expressed in the 1995 foreword) of sharing the universal facts of love and death is too literary for my quotidian tastes. 


Key to star ratings: 5*** wonderful and hope to read again, 5* wonderful, 4* enjoyed it a lot and would recommend, 3* enjoyable/interesting, 2* didn't enjoy, 1* gave up.

Previous book reviews 

Reviews - Alan Johnson: This Boy and Mr. Postman

Alan Johnson
This Boy: A Memoir of Childhood (4*)
Please, Mr. Postman: a Memoir (3*)

Alan Johnson is well-known as a politician but his memoirs are more social than political, and rather good. I wish we could be confident that someone from his ordinary and actually rather deprived background could still achieve similar things today.


Key to star ratings: 5*** wonderful and hope to read again, 5* wonderful, 4* enjoyed it a lot and would recommend, 3* enjoyable/interesting, 2* didn't enjoy, 1* gave up.

Previous book reviews