A Book Blog 2025 by Books do Furnish a Room

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Lincoln Cathedral: The Biography of a Great Building

Jonathan Foyle seems to have a thing for cathedrals, as he has written about quite a lot of them. He even produced a series of TV programmes about fifteen years ago who he climbed six famous cathedrals (inside and out with the help of a team of riggers): Lincoln was one of them. This is more of an architectural history. I live very close and considering it is one of the greatest buildings in the world (and for a time the tallest) and it’s very easy to walk past it regularly and not really see it. So I read this to learn a little more.

The current Cathedral was started around 1072. It was part of the Norman means of subduing the country. Lincoln and Lincolnshire was outlaw country and Lincoln Cathedral and Castle were ways of bringing order to the area, a means of social control. This is a history of a building, the changes over the centuries. The collapse of a tower following an earthquake, rebuilding. Changes due to dissolution of the monasteries and the Civil War. There are lots of pictures and diagrams and if magnificent architecture is your thing, then you will enjoy this.

7 out of 10

Starting Britons and Anglo-Saxons: Lincolnshire 400-650

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Between the Woods and the Water by Patrick Leigh Fermor

“One longs for news from the buried ruins of some stronghold miraculously untouched since Batu Khan set fire to it, the trove, perhaps, of some Transylvanian forester digging out a fox or a badger and suddenly tumbling through the creepers and the roots into a dry vault full of iron chests abrim with parchments...”

This is the follow up to A Time of Gifts and follows the second stage of Fermor’s journey through Europe in 1933/1934. This one charts Austria, Hungary and the Balkan states, with the Danube being a central part of the journey. Remember Fermor was only nineteen. He remains as captivating a narrator as in the first volume and provides an interesting description of the cultural life of central Europe in the 1930s. It captures a society and way of life that was swept away within a few years. Fermor’s enthusiasm for everything and everyone he encounters follows on in this book from the first.

Fermor was writing later, from memory and diaries. In an introduction he says that he did worry about remembering the chronology of events, but he reflects:

"Then I said to myself that I was not writing a travel guide and that these things don’t matter, and from then on I let the tale unfold."

There’s a good deal of walking, travelling on carts, a few carts and even on horseback over the Hungarian plains. Fermor recounts a great deal of history along the way, and as in the first volume there are plenty of quotes and literary references. He seems to have got along with all classes and as he was travelling through the Balkans on foot, he inevitably met many groups of Romani and spent a good deal of time with them. He clearly started out with some of the usual prejudices, but unlike many of his literary contemporaries (not mentioning Rebecca West), his experiences and time spent with them clearly changed his views. His gregariousness continued into later life. The journalist Allison Pearson recalls when she was sent to Crete to meet him when he was 83 to write an article on him. She expected a frail old man she would have to “look after”. She just about remembers drinking more in 48 hours than she had for the previous 20 years and waking up under a bar. Pearson says that as they walked around Crete she could barely keep up with him and he was very much like he was in the book; observant of nature, breaking into song and poetry periodically and climbing things.

This doesn’t quite match the power of the first volume, but nevertheless Fermor is a captivating companion.

“Live, don't know how long,
And die, don't know when;
Must go, don't know where;
I am astonished I am so cheerful.”

8 out of 10

Starting Maurice by E M Forster

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Ordinary Families by E Arnot Robertson

Another contribution from Virago, this one was published in 1933. It is set in Suffolk in a small village (Pin Mill) on the banks of the River Orwell. The Rush family are the centre of the novel and we see things from the point of view of one of the daughters, Lalage (Lallie). The book covers a number of years and ends with Lallie in her twenties, so there is certainly a coming of age element to it.

The novel is a snapshot of 1920s village life, revolving around three families The Cotterell’s (rather left leaning with a hint of Bloomsbury), The Quest’s (richer and a little stand-offish) and the Rush’s themselves (outdoorsy and very much into sailing). There are also a few members of the lower classes dotted about as well.

The first part of the book, dealing with Lallie’s childhood, involves a lot of sailing and chasing around after wildlife. This actually gave it a bit of a Swallows and Amazons flavour, which I found a little irritating. It was all pretty jolly and given some of the risky sailing processes and procedures, I was amazed none of the kids drowned. However the novel moves on to some of the usual teenage angsts (not necessarily an improvement, trembling of stiff upper lips and so on) and on again to marriage and concerns about what to do with one’s life.

For me, one of the strengths of the novel was some of the more minute observations of nature. She was very popular in her day and her novels were described as middlebrow. Harold Nicholson summed up her “middlebrowness”:

“Miss Arnot Robertson is too interested in bird-life, too contemptuous of aesthetics, too brisk and bouncing to please the high-brow; and the low-brow finds her saying sharp and horrid things about the public school traditions of romance and what not.”

Another plus is the fact that the protagonist, Lallie, is awkward, clumsy and rather prone to saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. She, at least, is endearing. It’s all very middle class English though. Mixed feelings.

6 out of 10

Starting Gallows Court by Martin Edwards

 

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The Voyage Home by Pat Barker

This is the third in Pat Barker’s series about the Trojan Wars, presumably a trilogy, but who knows. It focusses on the women in the situation, on both sides, but mainly on the Trojan side. For me Barker’s Regeneration trilogy is much better, but that isn’t surprising as they are some of my favourite books of all time. These are certainly worth reading though. This part of the series looks at the voyage back from Troy and the return to Greece.

The main characters are Cassandra, King Priam’s daughter and Ritsa her maid (slave). Ritsa is also a concubine to Machaon, Agamemnon’s healer. Cassandra has been given to Agamemnon as part of the spoils of war. On the Greek side there is Clytemnestra, awaiting the return of her husband Agamemnon and plotting revenge on him for sacrificing their daughter Iphigenia to the gods before he departed. The novel encompasses the time period from leaving Troy, the voyage and arriving back in Greece, continuing for some days until the climax of the anticipated events: which you will know if you are familiar with the myths.

This novel looks at the aftermath of war, for the winners and losers. Barker also makes clear that the women on both sides are often losers. There are some vivid descriptive passages and Barker uses, as she generally does some earthy language which puts across some of the hideousness of war, its brutality. Barker is good at this, she did it with the Regeneration trilogy.

As always Barker’s characterisation is good. However Agamemnon did appear rather one dimensional, unlike Achilles in the first book who had a good deal of nuance. One particular problem for me was the ending. It just didn’t seem to fit with the rest of the book and felt like an easy way out. It might possibly mean there’s a fourth book on the way, but as an ending to the three books it just felt rather feeble.

7 out of 10

Starting My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

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Ceremony of Innocence by Madeleine Bunting

This novel was something of a surprise and ended up being much more interesting than I was expecting. The novel moves between the Shah’s Iran, Modern Bahrain, an English Country House and modern London. Bunting seems to move between political thriller, a Country House novel, a love story, decolonisation and the utter ruthlessness of the upper classes. At the centre of it all is the Wilcox-Smith family. Martin Wilcox-Smith in the 1960s decides that instead of working for the Foreign Office in Iran he will work independently in Bahrain, when he effectively becomes an arms dealer and general factotum for the government. He has inherited a Country House and renovates it, along with bhis rather elegant wife Phoebe.

In the modern day his niece Kate, whom is a single mother starts a relationship with an asylum seeker from Bahrain, Hussain, who she has taken in to help pay the rent. Hussein is a doctor who helps other asylum seekers. The plot gradually unwinds as Kate and Hussein discover what her family have really been up to and how dangerous it is to express dissent and wok for justice. The novel starts with the disappearance of Reem, Hussein’s daughter who is doing her PhD on the activities of the company that Martin Wilcox-Smith set up.

This looks at the way empire tails off (or just re-emerges in different ways and is quietly swept under the carpet and ignored in society. Or even these days glorified by the far right. Bunting says this about her intentions:

“The issue which has fascinated me for decades is how Britain has managed to tuck empire out of sight – it’s a history hidden in plain sight, if you like. We grow up knowing a version but it is one which is so thin and crudely edited with so little understanding of the relationships of power and wealth extraction which we developed and from which we still benefit as a country. So yes, this book – along with others now emerging – is a bid to flesh out that history and bring it home, open eyes and prompt questions”

It does all this and was rather a serendipitous find.

9 out of 10

Starting Julia Roseingrave by Marjorie Bowen

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Maurice by E M Forster

“It comes to this then: there always have been people like me and always will be, and generally they have been persecuted.”

E M Forster wrote this in 1913-1914. It was published in 1971 after his death. It is very clearly a novel about being gay, the perils and pitfalls, written in clear Forster style. He showed it to a few friends over the years. He felt it could not be published without prosecution, especially as he had decided that it must have a happy ending:

“A happy ending was imperative. I shouldn’t have bothered to write otherwise. I was determined that in fiction anyway two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows, and in this sense, Maurice and Alec still roam the greenwood.”

Forster felt that he had to show that two gay men could live together and make a life and not be cursed. A bad ending would be expected and might be more easily accepted if it was published (This didn’t work for Radclyffe Hall though with The Well of Loneliness).

The novel itself is pretty straightforward; we follow Maurice Hall from his schooldays, through university to adulthood. It follows his gradually growing awareness of his feelings towards other men and his lack of desire for women: his first love affair at university: finally, a more lasting relationship with Alec. Maurice is clearly upper middle class and Alec is working class and parallels have been drawn with Mellors in Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

Forster’s novel, as is well documented, was inspired by a visit to Edward Carpenter, a gay rights activist and socialist who lived in Derbyshire. He saw there two gay men living together as a couple and this inspired the novel. It was be remembered that Wilde’s trial and treatment was recent history when Forster wrote this.

As one reviewer has written (Jeffrey Round), “conformity is the true “perversion””.

8 out of 10

Starting Travels with my Aunt by Graham Greene

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My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

“It interests me how we find ways to feel superior to another person, another group of people. It happens everywhere, and all the time. Whatever we call it, I think it’s the lowest part of who we are, this need to find someone else to put down.”

The premise is straightforward. Lucy Barton has an extended hospital stay and is quite unwell. Her estranged mother comes and stays at the hospital for some days (they haven’t seen or spoken for some time). The novel (well, novella really) consists of Lucy and her mother talking and a significant number of flashbacks (plus a few flashforwards). We get lots of thoughts about life, family, love and so on. It’s a quiet novel where not a great deal happens and is very reflective. It is also full of quasi-profound quotes like the above: on virtually every page. It is much loved.

“This must be the way most of us manoeuvre through the world, half knowing, half not, visited by memories that can’t possibly be true.”

I am afraid it didn’t do a great deal for me, but it isn’t much of an investment in terms of time.

6 out of 10

Starting Sycamore Gap by L J Ross

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Gallows Court by Martin Edwards

Martin Edwards is a scholar of Golden Age Detective Fiction as well as writer in his own right. This is set in London in 1930 and is the start of a series. This isn’t really a classic detective novel withy clues to follow, it’s more of a thriller. There are two main protagonists and several antagonists. There is also some doubt for at least the first half of the novel as to whether one of the main characters is a protagonist or an antagonist. There is plenty of intrigue and a series of mysterious deaths.

Jacob Flint is a reporter for The Clarion and we follow his slightly clumsy efforts at reporting on the series of murders and seems to be forever in the wrong place at the right time, a mysterious wealthy woman (named Rachel Savernake, the daughter of a judge) seems to be helping him (or is she). Of course, nothing is as it seems. There are plenty of twists, some predictable, but not all.

There is a good deal of period detail and wandering round the back streets of London. Edwards uses a few classic tropes: there is a locked room mystery and some nods to Hammer Horror films. There is also a Grand Guignol feel to it as well.

It is a bit formulaic, but does have a mix of genres. I found it mildly entertaining and not too taxing: ideal for a train journey! 

7 out of 10

Starting The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

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Trespassing by Uzma Aslam Khan

Published in 2003 this novel looks at Pakistan in the late 1980s and 1990s (with a brief trip back to the 1960s). It is a complex novel revolving around two families, the main characters being Dia and Daanish. The main focus is Northern Pakistan and Karachi with Daanish spending a little time in the US.

The environs of Karachi are captured with some vivid characterisation of buses, fishing villages, slums, beaches, brothels, flora and fauna. There are explorations of society: periodic dissatisfaction with and struggles against the government: life and loves: arranged marriage, the perils of; friendships and betrayals with a few twists thrown in. There are strong minor characters. There is a queer thread through this as well. The reader also learns a good deal about the making of silk and the rearing of the caterpillars.

The story is told from five alternating perspectives: Daanish and his mother Anu, Dia and her mother Riffat and Salaamat, whose place in the puzzle takes a little time to work out. The Gulf War is going on, so that backdrop comes into play. There are contrasts between the developed and developing world. There is a sense of a struggle for a sense of nationhood in what is a post-colonial background as well as the erotic thread through it.

There are no easy answers here, just the messiness of complex relationships and this is certainly an interesting novel, by an author previously unknown to me.

7 and a half out of 10

Starting The Dead of Summer edited by Johnny Mains

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Julia Roseingrave by Marjorie Bowen

“"I hear from Mrs Barlow, who is a good gossip, that your mother and your sister are both ill. You must, then, have very little company." "Very little human company," she replied.”

This British Library Tales of the Weird collection consists of a novella (Julia Roseingrave) and six short stories: The Scoured Silk, Dark Ann, Hurry! Hurry!, Sheep’s Head and Babylon, Red Champagne and finally The Sign-Painter and the Crystal Fishes.

Marjorie Bowen (1885-1952) was one of the many (at least seven) pseudonyms of Margaret Gabrielle Vere Long. She had a difficult upbringing in poverty, he father being an alcoholic who died young. She studied at the Slade and wrote from an early age. Her first novel was rejected by many publishers for being too violent and not appropriate for a female writer. It was a bestseller when it was eventually published. She was a prolific writer: many novels (over 150) and short stories. She was also a committed vegetarian, having witnessed the way animals were killed for meat, and often purchased animals in order to release them. She wrote a number of gothic novels and short stories.

The novella in this collection is initially quite effective, the plot and characters are set up well. A wicked aristo returns to his estate to hide away. He turns up dressed as the devil after a masque and scares the locals. The Julia of the title lives with her mother and sister, both of whom have disabilities. She is also close friends with a local wise woman. They devise a plan to ensnare the newly arrived Lord of the Manor. Unfortunately the ending is rather weak and doesn’t work at all.

The short stories are a varied bunch. Dark Ann is probably the best of them, Hurry! Hurry! the worst. On the whole if you like gothic tales with a twist, there’s enough here to make it worth reading. It’s a shame about the novella though, it was almost good!

6 out of 10

Starting The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale

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Britons and Anglo-Saxons Lincolnshire 400-650

One of the myths of British history involves the Romans departing and the Angles and Saxons arriving covering the period of around 400 to 650ish. This is where the Arthurian legends originate from. It sort of assumes that all the Romans promptly departed overnight and left a vacuum. It is, of course more complex than that. Green here focuses on the county of Lincolnshire and how the transition to Anglo-Saxon rule worked here.

It is a detailed historical study using primarily archaeological evidence and some contemporary evidence: the Y Gododin and other Welsh texts (there was a link between the kingdom of Lindsey (part of Lincolnshire) and Wales in terms of language and culture).

Green draws some interesting conclusions. Lincoln was an important Roman city (Lindum Colonia) where legionnaires went when they retired. There is evidence that when the Romans left the area of North Lincolnshire and Lincoln (known as Lindsey, then Lindes) in the early fifth century then the kingdom continued as an independent unit for well over one hundred years.

Green also considers the Arthurian legends and considers an interesting theory about how they begun. It is clear that when the Roman military left, the remaining society coalesced into a series of small kingdoms and groupings. When the Angles and Saxons began to arrive there were some clashes, some assimilation and pretty much everything in between. Green posits that there were a series of minor battles all over the country and most likely a major battle at somewhere called Badon Hill. These were spread over many years and involved various tribes and groupings. In some the Saxons were successful: less often the Britons. Green argues the successes gradually formed a set of myths centred on an Arthur figure. In reality the various incidents collected together happened over a period of a century or so in various parts of the country, but collectively it may well be that this is where the Arthurian myths came from. Green even makes a case for the battle of Badon Hill being in Lincolnshire (to go with the other twenty or so contenders).

By about 650 the Saxons were clearly present in the area, although names of tribal leaders clearly indicate that the Saxons and Britons had assimilated and were living side by side (I’ll avoid the jokes about sleeping with the enemy).

There’s lots of fascinating stuff here related to the ever increasing archaeological evidence.

9 out of 10 

Starting Story of a Murder: the Wives, the Mistress and Dr Crippen

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Great North Road by Peter Hamilton

“The dead hand of society’s inertia and the financial interest of the elite minority hold us back as a species. They govern us so they can continue to govern us.”

This is a hefty science fiction novel, like most of Hamilton’s work, about 1100 pages. There is a massive character list and the novel itself is structured by days mainly in the year 2143. The novel is set partially in Newcastle. This gives Hamilton the opportunity to try his hand at a Geordie accent. The result is rather unfortunate!

The plot revolves around killings twenty years apart. The technology is cleverly set up and as this is Hamilton there are gateways/wormholes to other parts of the galaxy. The action is split between Newcastle and a planet called St Libra. This is a planet that is entirely vegetation, no insect or animal life. It also has something called bio-oil which pretty much powers the economies of the various worlds. Added to this there has been a cloning experiment. The details are too complex to go into, but suffice to say they are integral to the plot. Hamilton Mixes the whole lot together and adds in plenty of flashbacks, so the reader gradually pieces together the jigsaw. As a whole it does work and there is also the trademark dry humour:

“The military do so love shiny new technology, there's always so many ways to abuse it.”

We have a high tech sci-fi noir novel with added aliens. The Gaia part of it was a nice touch as well.

8 out of 10

Starting Lords of Uncreation by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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The Source of the Nile by Richard Burton

This is an account of the 1857-9 expedition to the great lakes in central Africa. The account is written by Richard Burton and he was accompanied by John Hanning Speke. The two famously fell out and in Burton’s account he refuses to use Speke’s name and refers to him as “my companion”

Burton was an interesting character. He was multi-lingual and translated The Perfumed and the Kama Sutra, He was also (allegedly) the first European to travel (in disguise) to Mecca. He had an army career in India and pretty much became an explorer and was very widely travelled. In later life he joined the diplomatic service.

To be honest this is a pretty tedious read with lots of description and detail that might be considered superfluous. Burton also spends a good deal of time complaining about the various servants, hired helps and porters that went along. Some of them were slaves. The route the party took was along the main trading route used by Arab caravans and slave traders from the central regions to the coast at Zanzibar. Burton and Speke may have felt they were intrepid explorers but it was a route traders had been using for centuries.

I don’t want to spend too much time on this. It is detailed and boring, but also the attitudes are as bad as you might imagine:

“Like the generality of barbarous races, The East African are wilful, headstrong, and undisciplinable: in point of stubbornness and restiveness they resemble the lower animals”

There is plenty more like this. After a while it becomes clear from Burton’s descriptions that the lighter the skin, the more civilised Burton finds them.

Don’t waste your time on this.

2 out of 10

Starting The Quest for the NorthWest Passage (Folio Society)

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Travels with my Aunt by Graham Greene

“One's life is more formed, I sometimes think, by books than by human beings: it is out of books one learns about love and pain at second hand. Even if we have the happy chance to fall in love, it is because we have been conditioned by what we have read, and if I had never known love at all, perhaps it was because my father's library had not contained the right books.”

This is what Greene called one of his “entertainments”, lighter, more comedic novels. I have had mixed reactions to Greene, having enjoyed The Power and the Glory and disliked The End of the Affair.

The plot is simple. Henry Pulling is a bank manager who retires in his early 50s when his bank is taken over. He spends his time growing Dahlias and not a great deal else. His mother dies and at her funeral he meets his septuagenarian aunt Agatha whom he has not seen since his childhood. Yes, there are shades of Wodehouse here: strong-willed aunt and weak-willed nephew.

She sort of takes over his life and they travel, to Boulogne, by train to Istanbul and eventually to South America and Paraguay. The setting is the 1960s. They also have a series of adventures on the way and various close calls with the law in its numerous forms.

“I have never planned anything illegal in my life,' Aunt Augusta said. 'How could I plan anything of the kind when I have never read any of the laws and have no idea what they are?”

There are various minor characters, mostly old friends/lovers of Aunt Agatha. She has a valet/lover who swaps Henry’s mothers ashes for marijuana (apparently a good way of moving it) which leads to Henry being arrested. There is a fair amount of humour in this and I suspect Greene enjoyed writing it:

“Switzerland is only bearable covered with snow," Aunt Augusta said, "like some people are only bearable under a sheet.”

“Think how complicated life would be if I had kept in touch with all the men I have known intimately. Some died, some I left, a few have left me. If they were all with me now we would have to take over a whole wing of the Royal Albion.”

There are parts which are clever and funny; the parody of CIA activities in South America, although parody, is not so far off the truth.

However I really did dislike the ending and that tainted the whole thing for me. 

5 out of 10

Starting The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin

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Sycamore Gap by L J Ross

“The past never stays buried for long”

The second in Ross’s series based in Northumbria. The cover picture and title are somewhat poignant now since the tree was illegally felled since the book was written.

It is a straightforward crime novel, rather formulaic. Last thing at night I tend to read something that will send me to sleep rather than wake me up and this sort of thing fits the bill.

It follows on neatly form the first in the series with plotlines that continue and suitably tricksy plot twists and people who are not all they seem. You do have to read the first in the series or this will make no sense.

Not much more to say really, apart from the fact that I seem to find the oddest things soporific.

6 out of 10

Starting Prophecy by S J Parris

[Madeleine]

One of the better books in the series, I actually went to that part of the Wall not long after I read the book and did have a look to see if it was possible to hide a body in there!  

 

Very poignant now, my FB pic is actually of me in front of the tree.

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Michael Palin Diaries 1969-1979

“I am very cautious of people who are absolutely right, especially when they are vehemently so.”

Despite this being over 600 pages of diary, it’s actually surprisingly readable. Palin is quite a genial and likeable companion. I always found him the most likeable of the Python team and this just confirmed it. This volume covers most of the Python years, The Holy Grail and the Life of Brian as well as Palin’s solo projects (Ripping Yarns, a novel, a few plays, occasional adverts and a good deal of script writing). We follow his fathers’ decline and death from Parkinson’s disease and family life, which was very important.

As this is Python there is a generous amount of bizarreness:

From 11^th July 1969, “In the afternoon filmed some very bizarre pieces, including the death of Genghis Khan, and two men carrying a donkey past a Butlin’s redcoat, who later gets hit on the head with a raw chicken by a man from the previous sketch, who borrowed the chicken from a man in a suit of armour. All this we filmed in the eighty degree sunshine, with a small crowd of holidaymakers watching.”

It is easy to forget how famous the Python’s were in the 1970s and inevitably there is a very significant amount of name-dropping. I wasn’t aware that Monty Python and the Holy Grail got funding from two rock bands: Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd and so they pop up periodically, as does George Harrison, who helped with the funding of Life of Brian, when the major film studios got cold feet. Harrison comes across as a decent sort, as does another of Palin’s friends, Keith Moon: although he is clearly a lost soul.

I never realised Palin had guest hosted Saturday Night Live on three occasions, over in New York, working with Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi. As ever he got on well with them all. The bizarre runs through it all (appearing live on stage on Saturday Night live with two cats down his trousers) and there is a description of a game of charades where Mick Jagger has to mime The Sex Pistols. Don’t go there!!

The last part of the volume deals with some of the backlash when The Life of Brian was released including the infamous debate involving John Cleese and Michael Palin. The other side being represented by Malcolm Muggeridge and the Bishop of Southwark, Mervyn Stockwood.

All in all it’s rather an entertaining read and captures the zeitgeist of the 70s well. Palin is rather likeable and funny.

“As I work in the afternoon on committing to paper some of my morning's thoughts, I find myself just about to close on the knotty question of whether or not I believe in God. In fact I am about to type, 'I do not believe in God', when the sky goes black as ink, there is a thunderclap and a huge crash of thunder and a downpour of epic proportions. I never do complete the sentence.”

8 out of 10

Starting 1421: the Year China discovered America

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The Dead of Summer edited by Johnny Mains

A collection of tales from the British Library. These focus on Mayday and Midsummer, the editor is Johnny Mains. In terms of date the earliest is from 1823 and the latest from 2020 and is a Covid ghost story. There is a varied bunch of authors: Caroline Pichler, Ambrose Bierce, J. Meade Faulkner, Walter de la Mare, , F Britten Austin, Robert E Howard, G.G. Pendarves, Nick Joaquin, Joan Aiken, Donald R. Rawe, Mary Williams, Susan Price, Jenn Ashworth and Minagawa Hiroko. As always quality is variable, but it was a good collection to read during a heatwave. It was also assisted by a lively editor who isn’t afraid to drop in the occasional Beyonce reference!

There’s plenty of stuff about the summer solstice and inevitably Stonehenge pops up at least once, as do the moors and tors of Cornwall. There is a straying onto the continent for Walpurgisnacht and a ghost story from Japan, set in the summer, which is the traditional time for ghost stories in Japan.

There are some stand out stories

Aiken’s take on the Brigadoon myth is good as is Hiroko’s ghost story. The pandemic story hits the mark too, although the ending is a little obvious. The Withered Heart by Pendarves (real name Gladys Trenery) is a good and rather gruesome tale. I enjoyed these and they suited the weather.

7 and a half out of 10

Starting The Undying Monster by Jessie Kerruish

 

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The Suspicions of Mr Whicher

“Perhaps this is the purpose of detective investigations, real and fictional -- to transform sensation, horror and grief into a puzzle, and then to solve the puzzle, to make it go away. 'The detective story,' observed Raymond Chandler in 1949, 'is a tragedy with a happy ending.' A storybook detective starts by confronting us with a murder and ends by absolving us of it. He clears us of guilt. He relieves us of uncertainty. He removes us from the presence of death.”

 

This is the story of one of nineteenth century England’s most notorious murders. In 1860 three-year-old Saville Kent was brutally murdered. He came from a middle-class home which added to the shock. The subsequent investigations captured the public attention, and the tabloid press were just as intrusive and speculative as they are today. After two weeks the local police were baffled, and a Scotland Yard detective was called in: Inspector Whicher. Of course, the trail was already cold, so he was working at a great disadvantage. He was also looking at a family who were of a higher social class. The life of the Kent family and its servants were dissected by the press and inevitably scandals were found. The Mrs Kent of 1860 was the second Mrs Kent, the first having died, however she was previously the governess, and Mr Kent had been having an affair with her. There were two sets of children.

Whicher identified Constance Kent (a daughter of the house, who was 16) as the killer. The evidence was circumstantial and she denied it. The case never went to trial and Whicher was widely criticised and ridiculed and the fallout affected his career. Summerscale details all of this and the subsequent developments. In 1865 Constance, having found religion, did confess to the murder and spent twenty years in jail. Interestingly there was no press clamour for the death penalty as there would have been today. Summerscale takes the story to 1944 when Constance (name changed and living in Australia) died.

Summerscale also takes a look at the development of the detective in Victorian literature looking at Poe, Dickens, Collins and James (looking at the parallels with the Turn of the Screw).

At times the narrative doesn’t flow that well and it does go off at tangents. However it is interesting and I did note that the hatred and vitriol that you find online these days was actually worse than in Victorian times. Civilisation has a very thin veneer.

7 and a half out of 10

Starting Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead

[Madeleine]

I found this went off at too many tangents for me, even the slightest witness seemed to need to have their whole story told, and I gave up on it!  I enjoyed the TV version though, which did stick to the main case.

[Books do furnish a room]

I know what you mean Madeleine, it was a bit all over the place.

Prophecy by S J Parris

“If the universe is infinite, as I believe, then it must surely contain an infinite number of possibilities that we have not yet imagined or attempted to harness...”

Second in a series of historical novels based on the real life Giordano Bruno. This is fiction and the series is based on his time in Britain. Set in 1583 it is pretty much a detective/mystery novel and this novel is based on a real life plot against Elizabeth I by supporters of Mary Queen of Scots. Bruno is aiding Walsingham and Philip Sidney and is resident at the home of the French ambassador, nominally there representing Henri of France. Bruno, having been accused of heresy in Italy had a bit of a nomadic life.

The real life Bruno was an interesting figure. He was a mystic, cosmologist, philosopher and much else. He took a Copernican view and argued the universe was infinite and that the stars were distant suns with planets. He annoyed the Church by denying hell, the trinity, the divinity of Christ, Mary’s virginity and transubstantiation. He came quite close to atheism and inevitably they burnt him for it eventually. His case is seen as a landmark in the struggle for freedom of thought.

The plot has lots of twists and turns with plenty of spies, murders, plots, assassination plans, coded letters, all the tropes. I was waiting for the point where Bruno was knocked on the head/taken captive and sure enough… It was fairly routine stuff. There were interesting aspects to this and most of the characters are historical, including John Dee, but this was quite predictable.

6 out of 10

Starting The Cautious Travellers Guide to the Wastelands by Sarah Brooks

[Books do furnish a room]

The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin

The Songlines

“As a general rule of biology, migratory species are less 'aggressive' than sedentary ones.

There is one obvious reason why this should be so. The migration itself, like the pilgrimage, is the hard journey: a 'leveller' on which the 'fit' survive and stragglers fall by the wayside.

The journey thus pre-empts the need for hierarchies and shows of dominance. The 'dictators' of the animal kingdom are those who live in an ambience of plenty. The anarchists, as always, are the 'gentlemen of the road'.”

This is Chatwin’s best known work. I didn’t like In Patagonia and so I thought I would try this one. As always with Chatwin things are complicated. This works centres on Australia and particularly native aboriginal Australians. Chatwin looks at language and the relationship of people to the land, his focus being on nomadic life and the Native Australian relationship to the creatures, features, weather and spirit of the land. He uses his time in Australia as a basis for looking at the nomadic lifestyle in general, in Africa and the Middle East. He also looks at human evolution and draws conclusions such as the quote above.

The book is based on Chatwin spending about two months in Australia in 1983/1984. Many of the characters are based on people he met there. However, he refers to this as fiction and there have been arguments and discussions about this. There is clearly a weaving together of fact and fiction and this is clearly not traditional travel writing. There are sections of the book which are from Chatwin’s notebooks. This is a series of stories re nomads and human history and apposite quotes. There are times when it feels like Chatwin has been ransacking a dictionary of quotations. Chatwin is trying to justify a nomadic style of life and not really making a persuasive case, although he does point out that all this goes back to the Cain and Abel myths in the Bible. Around all of the arguments it is difficult to get away from the realisation that this is actually all about Bruce Chatwin and not really about those he was supposed to be writing about. Maybe it’s me not him, but I really don’t get on with Chatwin.

4 out of 10

Starting The Blue Flower by Penelope Lively

[Books do furnish a room]

Lords of Uncreation by Adrian Tchaikovsky

“Then she thought she’d got it. They were, indeed, seen. The enemy, a tyranny that operated at a universal scale, had been forced to give them this bespoke fate. They were not just another civilization to be ground to dust without even registering. They had mattered, even if it ended here.”

This is the third part of a science fiction trilogy. I’ve actually managed to finish a trilogy, and a space opera at that. I am not going to try and explain the plot because that would mean explaining all three books and life is just too short.

Tchaikovsky is creative in his use of scientific concepts and variety of species and their various ways of living and cultures. He captures well the differing human factions which are quite as you would expect.

As with the previous books there are multiple points of view and Tchaikovsky manages to tie up a fair number of the loose ends and there are the usual twists and turns as you would expect. Over the three books the character development is good and the science is not too over the top or complex. All in all this was entertaining.

8 out of 10

Starting Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb

[Books do furnish a room]

The Undying Monster by Jessie Kerruish

“There is nothing more harrowing than a deadly hush with the feel of a great noise around it”

This volume in the Tales of the Weird series is a novel from the 1920s. The novelist, Jessie Kerruish was deaf and lived with her sister once her parents had died, and they cared for each other. This, I think, is one of the earliest occult detective story to have a female protagonist, in the form of luna Bartendale.

This is actually a fascinating novel. It concerns an upper class family who suffer from a centuries old curse, where periodically family members and sometimes those close to them will die horribly in the local woods at certain times with certain weather conditions. Those who survive often commit suicide. In this generation the family consists of Oliver and his sister Swanhild. The curse runs through the male line.

Kerruish, pretty much throws all of the tropes at this: vampirism, lycanthropy, runes, symbols, ancient burial sites, hidden rooms, clues in Churches, a seventeenth century warlock, codes, old books, buried artifacts, hypnosis, fourth and fifth dimensions and much more. It’s set in Sussex and there are also mentions of Wagner and William Morris. It turns out that the curse goes back to the bronze age and to Scandinavia, so we have lots of old Norse gods as well. Despite all the contents Kerruish manages to pull off keeping the whole thing pretty much in order. This is also an exploration of the sinister side of masculinity and the role of the upper classes/lord of the manor.

This works well on the whole and as you can imagine there is an old black and white film of it somewhere.

7 out of 10

Starting Out of the Past: Tales of Haunting History   

[Books do furnish a room]

Story of a Murder by Hallie Rubenhold

This is Hallie Rubenhold’s follow up to The Five where she examined the lives of the five victims of Jack the Ripper, looking at them rather than at the focuses of the “Ripperologists” She has done the same here for the press sensation of the murder of Belle Elmore by her husband Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen. This is the one where there were messages to a ship crossing the Atlantic via telegraph. Rubenhold takes a lot at all the myths and spin about the case and reconstructs what we do know, with the focus being on what we do know and the women involved: Belle Elmore and Ethel de Neve.

This is historical true crime at its very best. The research is detailed and meticulous. The backstory for each character gives clarity to what occurred and the role of the popular press is examined. As with her previous book Rubenhold challenges the perspective that have been current with a focus on the women who were the “victims” and secondary characters.  There were obstacles and difficulties as Rubenhold points out:

“What of their stories were concocted, omitted or hidden to save face, and how much was embellished by journalists who serialized their interviews, is uncertain. At different times, each family member offers a different set of narratives at variance with what others have said. The Neaves frequently contradict each other and their daughters, while Nina contradicts Ethel and Ethel regularly contradicts herself.”

Rubenhold also looks at all the evidence about the murder and updates the modern findings in relation to DNA etc, with some interesting conclusions.

Belle Elmore, Crippen’s wife is the centre of the book and it is interesting to see how her reputation was besmirched over the years, so that by the 1930s many were saying that she almost deserved to be murdered, with a good deal of sympathy going to Crippen. Dorothy L Sayers described Belle Elmore thus:

“noisy, over-vitalised, animal, seductive and intolerable”

Others wrote in a similar way, it very much felt as though they are arguing that she deserved it! This is a very detailed account with some loose ends left at the end, but as with Rubenhold’s book on Jack the Ripper, it puts the women involved firmly at the centre.

9 out of 10 

Starting The Cuckoo's Lea by Michael Warren