Leo Grex's 'Transatlantic Trouble' 1937

The Crime-Book Society paperback edition No.74 - 1939?

As with so many of these Crime-Book Society inter-war writers, I had never heard of Leo Grex before reading this novel. He was an incredibly prolific wordsmith, writing scores of crime and western fiction and crime non-fiction. Born Leonard Reginald Gribble in February 1908, he also wrote under the pseudonyms of Bruce Sanders, Dexter Muir, Piers Marlow, Louis Grey and Sterry Browning. He used the name Landon Grant for his Westerns. His family came from Barnstaple, Devon and he had his first novel, The Case of the Marsden Rubies, published in 1929. Some of his crime fiction was football based. He married Nancy Mason in 1932 and served in the Press and Censorship Division of the Ministry of Information between 1940 and 1945. After the War, he was a founding member of the Crime Writers Association in 1953. Gribble died in September 1985. His final work, Violent Midnight, was published posthumously in the following year.

I have to admit straightaway that I did not enjoy Transatlantic Trouble. Over half the book was set in a seedy New York, involving minor crime bosses, their unpleasant and thuggish henchmen and some rather unlikeable businessmen. James (Jimmy) Keith is the English half of a two-man Anglo-American Detective Agency. He is the son of a respected Scotland Yard officer, now deceased. The American partner is Carl Hoffman, a man used to dealing with shady crooks in the American capital and not above using shady methods himself. Jimmy is over in New York to drum up business; at the Agency's office he first bumps into Virginia Kelsey, Carl's secretary: who flashed her dark eyes at me as I walked in. She always gave me the impression of being excited at meeting me. The Agency are to meet a Mr. Mitchell Bainbridge, broad-shouldered, full-faced, with heavy brows and thick pink hands, he embodied power. I had met his like in clubs and at parties: men who bludgeoned their way up over the heads of their fellows. However, Bainbridge has a problem - his wayward daughter Marilyn has disappeared. This is but one string, albeit a major one, in the story. Apparently, she has absconded to marry Tony Rossi, a crooner at the Cloven Hoof. Her father had already rescued Marilyn from unwise attachments to two saxophone-players, a Greenwich village airedale, a Pan-American pilot, one pug and a couple of floozies. A real-goer, then.

If the author had just kept to that main story, perhaps I would have enjoyed the tale more. However, we get involved with a small-time, but puffed-up Italian crook called Luigi Spinelli, his side kicks Herman (his body had the willowy line of a dancer's, his neck was as thick as a bull's) and Sweeny Burke (who has a wizened pig's face), and a rather rambling tale about racehorse skulduggery (betting is, of course, involved). On top of this, is another story about a rivalry over oil exploration. Bainbridge's great competitor is Stanley Dorrance, a Britisher who lives in Mexico and who controls Allied Mexican Oil - he is a pain the neck and sundry other places to Bainbridge. I soon rather lost track of who was doing what to who; this didn't really get much clearer once the settings changed to a transatlantic voyage and then London and the Newmarket area. I found I couldn't engage positively with any of the characters, not even the narrator, Jimmy Keith. The dialogue was usually staccato. I suppose a good thing was that the bad people all died or were imprisoned - in England as well as the USA - the two fairly ruthless businessmen made up and Jimmy and Virginia looked likely to become a permanent item. But, frankly, by the end of the novel, I just didn't care!   

Hugh Clevely's 'Death Counterfeit' 1937

 

The Crime-Book Society paperback edition No.71 - 1939?

This is the fourth Hugh Clevely novel which I have read in the Crime-Book Society paperback series. The others are No. 1 The Gang Smasher (Blog 16th July 2025), No. 41 The Wrong Murderer (Blog 28th July 2026), and No. 54 Amateur Crook (Blog 16th August 2026). Floolishly, I have started to collect another of Hutchinson's Pocket Library paperbacks - their "M" Series, and I notice Clevely wrote two of the first 16 (I'm not sure if there were any more). I have one of them, No. 9 Hell To Pay, so something to look forward to. I wrote a brief account of Clevely's life and work in that first Blog, so there is little point in repeating this; just a reiteration of the fact he wrote for the story paper The Thriller in the 1930s, a publication which included stories by Leslie Charteris, John Creasey, Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham and Edgar Wallace.

Death's Counterfeit is a tightly written thriller, concerning skullduggery around aeroplanes. T[erence].M[ichael]. O'Donovan, a well-known and highly-regarded aviator (he broke the Transatlantic record and won the King's Cup race), has to force land, due to his engine misfiring, on a private airfield belonging to The Greenfield Aircraft Company. Three people rush forward to help: a tall, fair young man, clad in a shabby tweed sports coat, a blue, high-necked sweater and grey flannel trousers. Probably a good egg?; a tall, compactly built, neatly dressed man with dark hair, dark, rather intolerant eyes, and a small tooth-brush moustache. Wants watching?; and a girl, there was a certain air of elegance about her. Her small shoes were very neat; there was nothing clumping about them. The stocking enclosing her long, slim legs were of the sheerest silk. Her hands were carefully manicured with the finger-nails tinted a bright pink. Her dark, wavy hair was admirably set. She had lovely eyes, dark, almond shaped, slightly slanting, set under delicately arched eyebrows. Definitely wants watching then. The three are Alan Hamilton, Captain Geoffrey Leacock, and Alan's sister, Stella.

The Greenfield Aircraft Company are in trouble. They have been preparing for the London-Edinburgh-London race, but three of their four of their Hamilton Swallow machines have crashed preparing for it. The three aviators were killed. No wonder the aircraft are being nicknamed 'The Flying Coffin'. Everyone is feeling nervy, especially as there seems to be a 'ghost' plane involved - it has been heard in the night but not seen. Is it linked to a man named Karvell, who had previous landed at the airfield, taken off again and vanished over the sea - now dead? O'Donovan then meets the father of Alan and Stella, and Bobby Trevor, another pilot who has been with old man Hamilton a long time. When Alan also is involved in a crash (watched by O'Donovan and all the others) and ends up in hospital, it looks as if the 'ghost' plane has struck again - is it Karvell's ghost haunting the area? The Greenfield monoplane's control stick had been broken off at the bottom - hardly the sabotage of a ghost. So, what is going on? It transpires that many years ago old Hamilton and Karvell, who had both studied at the same engineering college in California, had fallen out over a woman. Hamilton had married this Jean, but Karvell, far richer than Hamilton, had used his wealth to get the latter sacked from various jobs. Worse, he murdered Jean and got imprisonment for life. For some reason, he was released and also ended up in England. Trouble ahead? Ended by his death?    

It emerges that the airfield had been sold to the Hamiltons by a trickster (known to O'Donovan) called Mallery. A link is established between the latter and the 'dead' Karvell. Have the Hamiltons been 'set up'? O'Donovan goes to London to chase up Mallery - too late - he, too, has been murdered! On to the scene comes Chief-Inspector Williams of Scotland Yard (who has figured in the author's books previously). Between them, they begin to unravel what mystery there is. It centres on one word - revenge. I twigged very early on that Karvell was probably still alive, and that a strange man, with a funny French accent, Monsieur Norville, who lives in a big house between the airfield and the sea is clearly bound up with the nefarious goings-on. But, equally clearly, there is someone within the Hamilton group who is acting as a fifth columnist - is it Bobby or Captain Geoffrey. Again, I sussed that out quite quickly. Notwithstanding my amazing detective work, the tale was still a pretty good one. Shot at by a Westley Richards repeating rifle during a foggy night, nearly blown up by a device placed in his digs in London, O'Donovan is obviously in the 'ghost's' sights as well. But British pluck and skill will carry the day. The 'ghost' planes are explained, Norville is unmasked, and the last Hamilton Swallow wins the London-Edinburgh-London air race, even though it was up against O'Donovan, who came second.

Jeannette Lucraft's 'Katherine Swynford. The History of a Medieval Mistress' 2006

Sutton Publishing first edition - 2006

Although there is a 600 year gap between the last 'biography' I have read (on King Offa, see Blog for 4th October) and this one, there is the same problem of a lack of facts for the respective lives. Only Chapter I Katherine's Life and Family really tries to get to grips with this fascinating, but still obscure, woman. The author quotes Anthony Goodman in her Introduction, saying that his claim is correct: Katherine is enigmatic, famous and controversial. But what else can be said about her? The aim of this book is to reveal more of the real Katherine Swynford. There are obstacles in the way, notably a lack of evidence for her life. Her will is frustratingly, and curiously unavailable...no personal letters or diaries remain for us to use to establish her personality. Her thoughts and feelings are not available....she is the appendage of other notables...I am interested in her as a medieval woman and with what she can tell us about medieval society. So, bluntly, there lies the rub. Such a book will, inevitably, be the Times of rather than the Life of.

The first Chapter (pp.1-37) takes the reader at a canter through what little is known of Katherine.`  The daughter of Gilles or Paon Roet, even Katherine's birthdate is argued over. Conventionally, it is c.1350, making her Paon's youngest child, but it might be earlier than 1348, making her the older sister to Philippa, who married Geoffrey Chaucer. It is from the writings of Froissart that the details of Katherine's early life are known. She grew up within the English court and joined the household of Blanche of Lancaster after the latter's marriage to John of Gaunt in 1359. The earliest public record related to Katherine in in 1365, where she is mentioned in the accounts of Bishop Buckingham as Katherine Swynford, 'ancille' or servant, of Blanche. She is granted permission to hear mass in a private ceremony. She had probably married Hugh Swynford, retainer to Gaunt, c.1363-5. Little is known of that marriage; Hugh's background was not of high estate. They had at least two children - Thomas, born in September 1368,  and Blanche, born either c.1366 or c.1370 (!) Katherine possibly became governess of Gaunt's children, Philippa and Elizabeth, c.1366, taking charge of the ducal household after the death of Blanche of Lancaster in 1368-9. Katherine's husband Hugh died in November 1371 while fighting in Aquitaine under Gaunt. Most historians suggest Katherine's relationship with Gaunt started in the spring of 1372. She appears regularly in Gaunt's registers during the 1370s as nostre tres chere et bien amee. By 1375 the affair was seemingly public knowledge. Gaunt's register includes many instances of gifts to Katherine.

Lucraft then traces what information survives of Katherine's daughter and son by Hugh Swynford; followed by a section on the Chaucer family; before turning to the four illegitimate children sired by Gaunt. They were John (born 1373), Henry (1375), Thomas (1377) and Joan (1379). Gaunt recognised them officially from the first, granted them the name  Beaufort. They were clearly included in the Richardian and Lancastrian worlds. John showed military ability and accompanied his father on campaign in France; he also showed political skill by appearing loyal to both Richard II and Henry IV. He married Margaret Holland and died in March 1410, being buried in Canterbury Cathedral. Thomas also did well under Henry IV and Henry V, the latter making Thomas responsible for Henry VI's upbringing. Kenneth McFarlane, the 15th century Historian, describing Thomas as the most trusted personal friend and minister of Henry V. Joan married as her second husband, Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmorland and had 13 children and worked hard to ensure her children received the lion's share of the Neville inheritance. She died in November 1440. Most politically astute, powerful and wealthy of all of Katherine and John's children was Henry. Bishop of Lincoln, Chancellor of England under Henry IV, then Bishop of Winchester in 1404 and Cardinal in 1426 - and rumours of one day the Papacy. His death in 1447, deprived England of its wisest and most experienced administrator at a time when his guiding hand was sorely needed. Gaunt and Katherine's descendants became the Yorkist kings Edward IV and Richard III; Henry VII; and James I of Scotland - i.e. the royal houses of York, Tudor and Stuart.

Chapter 2, The Historiography of Katherine Swynford, is simply a study of how she was viewed through the Chronicles and Histories of the 15th century and beyond. Her image underwent a revival under the Tudors (Vergil, Rous, Fabyan, Hayward); the 17th century historians followed suit (Weever, Biondi); but in the 18th and 19th centuries a more negative view gained strength (Rapin, Wylie); however, Armitage-Smith in his extensive biography of Gaunt (1904) was more positive. Anya Seton's novel of 1956, (rather like Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time of 1951, for Richard III's reputation) produced the seminal romance which possibly has had more effect than any historian's efforts. Similarly, Chapter 3, Contemporary Opinion just details the works of chroniclers such as Thomas Walsingham (c.1340-c.1422) and Henry Knighton (d.c.1396), where Katherine is seen, above all, as a temptress, the now familiar stereotype of the clerical view of base and lewd women. Lucraft also discusses whether Chaucer portrayed Gaunt and Katherine's affair in his works - The Physician's Tale, The Monk's Tale, Troilus and Creiseyde are all commented upon.

Chapter 4, Katherine's World is on more solid ground. It discusses the art, the fashion, the courtly behaviour of the time, and the importance of books and education - for women as well as men: women were among the more important consumers of vernacular literature. Katherine's Beaufort sons are known to have been highly educated and owners of numerous manuscripts. The last two Chapters - 5 Construction of Identity and 6 Saintly Appropriations, I found less interesting and 'solid', but I understood what the author was trying to do. After discussing the SS collar and Gaunt/Lancaster links, coats of arms and funerary emblems in general, the author focuses on Katherine and her identification with St. Katherine (and her wheel). She argues that this was a desire to create for herself an image of royalty and respectability. The final chapter spends overlong on the story of Margery Kempe (12 pages), which I didn't think advanced the case as a 'biography' of Katherine Swynford. There was also, on more than one occasion, repetition - of whole sections not just a sentence.

There are useful Notes and a decent Bibliography, as well as some photographic illustrations. All in all, a typical Sutton Publishing 'popular history' book which is well worth reading.

Captain A.O. Pollard's 'Rum Alley' 1931

The Crime-Book Society paperback edition No.69 - 1939?

Prior to 1930, when the 38 year-old Captain Pollard had his first novel published, he had already had a vibrant life. Born in Surrey in May  1893, he was educated at St. Olave's Grammar School and Merchant Taylors' School (I did my teaching practice there!); he then worked as a clerk in an Insurance company, before volunteering for the Army on 8th August 1939. Twice wounded while serving on the Western Front, he gained the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) for bravery in Sanctuary Wood (Ypres Salient). Commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in January 1916, he twice earned the Military Cross (MC) and then a VC for courage shown in April 2017 at Gavrelle. He earned the highest and largest number of awards for a soldier in his unit. Not surprisingly (like so many others), he found it hard to settle down after the War. Between 1924 and 1926, he served a short term commission as a Flying Officer in the Royal Air Force. He then turned to writing, both novels and non-fiction. In 1932, he published his autobiography - Fire-Eater: the Memoirs of a VC. He died in December 1960, aged 67, having written more than 60 books.

Rum Alley was only his second book (the first was Pirdale Island, published in 1930) and it is clearly that of an author trying to 'find his feet'. The prose is rather clunky and the dialogue often pedestrian. The story is set in the USA and England, commencing with the major protagonist, William James Inskip, who is out of a job, helping a man who is being pursued by three rogues. Two of the pursuers are dealt with, the third escaping. The grateful recipient of Inskip's aid is a hulk: Timothy O'Halloran, or Scuddy was six foot four in height, with a body to match. His enormous head was thickly covered with red hair. His left eye was missing, which, with a deep scar which ran from the middle of his right cheek to the corner of his mouth, gave his face a look of permanent ferocity. Someone to have on your side, then. Scuddy is sailing for England the following day but will prove to be a reliable and important comrade in the future. On his way to a job, Inskip sees another man lurking on the side-walk, a thin rat-faced little man. He is to figure throughout the story as an unpleasant, dangerous piece of work.

Inskip turns up at his new boss' home in Portland: the door was opened by a girl who almost took his breath away with her dazzling loveliness. Large blue eyes well matched  a dainty mouth and dimpled chin. Her head was crowned with a mass of golden curls. Well, if Inskip can survive the novel's (dangerous) adventures, the reader knows what the outcome will be. She is Elsie, Hiram P. Baker's only child. Baker works for the American government, trying to stamp out the illegal whisky trade/spirit dumping/bootlegging in the State of Maine. Staying with the Bakers is Sir George Bamborough, an English baronet. Inskip and Bamborough fail to hit it off, mainly because they both fancy Elsie. Rigmaroles and shenanigans occur off the coast of Maine; then Inskip is sent to London (closely followed by Baker, his daughter and Sir George) in an attempt to pin down the 'Mr. Big' behind the spirit running; in fact it is worse as there is clearly drugs (mainly cocaine) also involved. 

There are some interesting scenes, which flesh out exactly who are the drug runners and their operators - 'rat-face' (the character never quite 'works' as a realistic individual) is a major figure but clearly only a side-kick; it is Sir George (I give away nothing as this is obvious very early on in the tale) who is the mainspring behind all the chicanery. Scuddy also reappears as someone very much involved in the illicit trading. At one stage, dear Elsie gets abducted, but Inskip quickly proves his metal. The finale takes place off the American coast, involving at least three drug-running boats and two USA destroyers. The English baronet meets the end he deserves - A wild scream. Sir George Bamborough threw up his arms and pitched face downwards on the deck. A bone handle quivered between his shoulders. The novel was an 'easy read' as the narrative bordered on the simplistic and the characters veered towards caricatures. Still, the author obviously had something to say, as he proved this over the next three decades.

Edgar Wallace's ' The Woman from the East' 1934

The Crime-Book Society paperback edition No.65 - 1939?

This collection of short stories was published in 1934, two years after Edgar Wallace's death. Apart from the first one - the title piece, The Woman from the East-  they are short and usually fast-paced. I know what pseuds' corner (aka the Leavises) think of Wallace - Dorothy L. Sayers, Arnold Bennett and George Orwell were not fans, either - but I quite enjoy relaxing with his books and these brief tales were no exception.

The Hutchinson first edition.

In The Woman of the East, Mr John Covent, a director of the company owning the Frivolity Theatre, summons one of the chorus girls, Isabelle Straker, to dine with him at Penniali's Restaurant in London. He has a proposition for her: marriage to an Indian Rajah, His Highness Dal Likar Bahadur, Rajah of Butilata. £2,000 is the bribe for the unwilling girl. But she goes through with it, and marries the Indian on 14th May, 1909. As an early aside, the author's well-known racism rears its head immediately: it is true that he is an Indian, though he would pass for a European...but against his colour and his race there is the fact that he is enormously wealthy. There is also the fact that Isabelle is his eighth wife - this she did not know.

This occurs in the Prologue. The first chapter is set in  in 1919, a decade later. The old man Covent is dead and his son, Martin, and his nephew, Tom Camberley, are running the business. The former has a scheme to use their clients' money for a speculative purpose in Rumania. Tom demurs. By now, the Rajah has also died and  the Ranee (Isabelle) has returned to England to reside at a country house, Churley Grange, near Newbury. Two more women now make their appearance in the tale: Dora Mead and Grace Drew, P.As respectively to Martin and Tom. Grace deals with the Ranee, who is always appears to the office veiled. Tom, still smarting over his cousin's perfidy, sends Dora down to Churley Grange to check things out; in a darkened room, she is overpowered, a cloth thrown over her head and is deposited back in the train for London. She tackles Grace about the Ranee the following morning. Martin loses his temper with Tom over Grace's expedition. It is agreed that Tom should resign from the firm but get a payout. More mystery occurs when he rushes down to the Ranee's car outside the office and glimpses her hand: it was not the hand of a refined Englishwoman or even of a woman who was not refined..."It was the hand of a native". Then Martin's plans for an economic bonanza  in Rumania backfires; the country's government has collapsed. So Plan B is put into action - Martin collects the firm's money (left after Tom had been paid off), and plans to catch the Italian mail from Genoa to Valparaiso.  Grace, who he had secretly planned to marry, goes with him. Much of the 'money' is the Ranee's. The twist at the end I didn't see coming. All good plotting and well wrapped up in just 40 pages.

There are thirteen other, shorter stories. I think I enjoyed them all, even if the plots were occasionally rather similar. The Chopham Affair, is the tale of Archibald Lenton, the most brilliant of prosecuting attorneys. It is the story of spousal affection come good. The baddy meets a just end and Joe Stackett, who Lenton defended on a murder charge, is cleverly used in a frame up. Lenton was a clever, perhaps not totally upright, man. Love of Devil Hampton was perhaps, a little far-fetched in its ending, but Hampton - known as the most expert of bank robbers, a daring and resourceful man is a likeable rogue. He manages to stay one step ahead of various European police forces and he gets his girl, even if it is on the high seas. The Silver Charm, set in London and West Africa allows the author to make yet more disparaging remarks about other races. King O'fwa of Kantee has insolent eyes and is not respected by Angel of Scotland Yard - the last time I met the King he was dining off a relative who had displeased him. The King is later found knifed to death in the royal hut. The story now switches to Liverpool, where Angel is summoned by Sir Peter Saintsbury, the millionaire controller of the Lagos Coastwise Line. Sir Peter was a short, swarthy man with closely cropped grey hair and black, piercing eyes, the years he lived on the Coast have tinted his face a dusky brown. There are people less charitable who ascribe another cause for his copper-coloured skin, people who point to his thick lips and the curious bluish tint of his fingernails. Again, enough said. Three of his ships have mysteriously been shipwrecked off Sierra Leone - is African magic the cause. It means a trip to the dark continent for Angel and the meeting up with a medicine man. The explanation of it all leads to another of Wallace's skilful endings.

In fact, all the other tales are tightly controlled - whether they describe, in Uncle Faraway, the pathos of an elderly businessman revisiting the haunt of his youth where he had fallen for a young American woman, who he pursued across the Atlantic only to be turned down by her, only to find happiness many years later with - her daughter!; or, in The Future Lady Sheltholme, a social climber is given her comeuppance. The Strangeness of Joab Lashmere, is the story of a servant taking over the persona of his master (who had been killed in a car crash) and who is only caught by the detection work of Jack Stafford. In Jimmy and the Doughnut, the reader meets a speed typist Jane Ida Meagh (J.I.M. - hence nicknamed Jimmy) - smoked; she used, at times, strong language...but, worst vice of all, she was frank. As with the previous story, a body is found buried and an imposter is caught out. Wallace could certain spin a yarn and, although I guessed some of the culprits before the end, once or twice he had be foxed.

Rory Naismith's 'King of the Mercians. Offa' 2026

Yale University Press first edition - 2026

I must admit, I have had a personal link with Offa for nearly 50 years - I walked his Dyke. I sped north from Chepstow, with two friends from Marlborough - alas, both subsequently committed suicide, but this was in no way connected with the experiences on the Dyke. We travelled through beautiful countryside; the English-Welsh borderlands are one of my favourite stretches in Britain. So, when another of Yale's excellent English Monarchs Series came out, my copy arrived straightaway. As I read the book, two thoughts were uppermost in my mind: firstly, I realised how little I knew about Offa and his times. This meant it was virgin and fertile soil for me and I learned much as I went along (how much I will retain, is another matter). Secondly, the author admitted straightaway the major problem with such so-called biographies of these early 'monarchs'. Vanishingly little survives that sheds light on [Offa's] early or private life, and what there is has to be interpreted with significant leaps of faith. It may be possible to attempt a personal biography of Offa's contemporary Charlemagne - indeed, many have - but not of Offa himself...no early medieval ruler is an easy subject for a biography, and Offa is more evasive than most. It recalled my reading of Sarah Foot's biography of Athelstan (2011, also in the excellent Yale University's English Monarch Series) nearly six years ago (see my Blog for 24th December, 2020). I requote her: Athelstan the man remains elusive - stating that structuring a coherent biography of a medieval subject...involves from the outset a greater degree of self-conscious construction and manipulation of material to fit artificial categories than might prove necessary for a better-attested person from a modern age. Thus, the story of both men is constructed around charters, grants of land, other administrative records, minting of coins and diplomatic exchanges with foreign kings and princes.

Notwithstanding the above, Naismith has delivered what Levi Roach the author of a Yale biography - Ǣthelread the Unready (2016, but, strangely, not listed in the English Monarchs Series) - states: in this brilliant piece of historical detective work, Rory Naismith restores Offa to his proper dimensions, revealing a hard-nosed but pious ruler. His first Chapter - A Name to conjure with -  the author suggests Offa is probably the most successful king of what is often called the heptarchy, as he imposed himself as king across all the lands and peoples south of the Humber, with the important exception of the Welsh kingdoms and Wessex. His reign represents the apogee of a long period when Mercia and its kings dominated England south of the Humber. Not only was Offa the leading king in Britain, he was a self-consciously European figure. Naismith then lays out his Sources: historical narratives, such as the Chronicle and the great Anglo-Norman historians, such as William of Malmesbury and Matthew Paris; Alcuin's Letters; Charters; Coins; and other Material Sources - especially the great Dyke.

Chapter 2 looks at Offa's close relatives. A useful family tree perhaps perplexes above all else! One branch has Coenwealh, Cundwealh, Centwine, Cynreow, Cuthberht, Ceolwulf, Cuthred, Coenwulf, Cwenthryth and Cynehelm succeeding each other - apart from poor old Bassa somewhere in the middle. Offa's father was Thingfrith, a great name, only surpassed by Cynethryth, Offa's wife. She stands out as one of the most interesting royal women in the whole Anglo-Saxon period. She appears in twenty-five charters and was at the front and centre in the royal entourage in the 770s and 780s. But her exalted position depended on her roles as wife and mother. After Offa's, and her son Ecgfrith's, deaths, she became abbess of Bedford and Cookham in Berkshire. Family was vital to Offa. His children had advantageous marriages to kings in Wessex and Northumbria.

Chapter 3 examines the Midland part of Offa's kingdom, 'old' Mercia. By the time Offa came to power in 757, Mercia had had over a century of on-off supremacy in middle England. A useful map shows the five dioceses of 'Greater Mercia', which stretched from the Humber to Cookham and St. Albans, from Ely to Hereford and Westbury-on-Trym. Lichfield (for a short time a third Archbishopric in Britain), Leicester, Worcester and Hereford were the main religious centres. One of the minsters was Breedon-on-the-Hill, not far from where I am presently typing this. Greater Mercia remained broadly cohesive until it was destroyed by the Viking great army in the 870s. Chapter 4 turns to the king's relationships with other areas of England. What the author calls 'soft hegemony' is applied to Kent, Sussex and parts of East Anglia. The coinage is used in this argument. Wessex was different: it could be battered and subdued, but remained a foe of a different order: one that was never absorbed in the same way as Kent or East Anglia.

The next three Chapters use charters, coins and manuscripts to study how the kingdom worked, how Offa was perceived and understood by his subjects and asses the cultural and early riches of the minsters and the towns. Offa lived on the move, with no fixed capital. Matters of high government took place wherever he and his entourage were. Another map shows the known meeting places of Offa (usually linked to grants of land). They are in two main clusters - what one would now refer to as the West Midlands and London/Kent/Sussex. The former places are a tangible reminder that the Mercian supremacy was grounded there, whilst the London area underlines the importance that that city had taken on - a new power base. After a review of Offa's relationships with the Welsh (especially relating this to the construction of Offa's Dyke, first attributed to the king in the late 9th century by Alfred the Great's biographer Asser, a Welsh monk); Charlemagne and the Pope in Rome; the final chapters look at the end and aftermath of his reign.

Alcuin called Offa the glory of Britain (decus Brittaniae). After reading Professor Naismith's well-researched book, I can concur.

Eden Phillpotts' 'A Close Call' 1936

The Crime-Book Society paperback edition No.64 - 1939?

 I must admit, once or twice I felt a little uncomfortable as I read this 'mystery' novel. Sometimes, it is best not to know too much about an author. Twenty-five year-old John Norton - possessed of talent, but lacking the ambition and endeavour to develop it - is a wastrel artist based at Wellbrook-on-Sea, a fascinating region where mat-grasses cheval the sand-dunes with horrent green, their billows rolling between the sea beaches to southward and the marshes and saltings, amid which Wellbrook river loiters from the north in its wide estuary. Norton, whose weakness had long ago served to stifle such creative talent as he possessed, has recently been handed the very rare experience of a commission. Crafty, cynical and often dissolute, he had courted 18 year-old Sarah Huntsman. She, although knowing his weaknesses, doubted not, that once wedded, she would swiftly lift him to healthier opinions and better self-control. Was it ever thus?

A major problem arises. Her father, Inspector Thomas Huntsman, strongly disapproves of any such union. A widower, Thomas views Norton with more than a little distaste: everything about the youth, including his method of earning a living, was anathema to Huntsman. Moreover, in Sarah's life-long affection and faithful service her father had found happiness and content...it had come as a very painful shock to him that his devoted daughter could find in such a man any object of affection. Unfortunately, Sarah's infatuation for Norton leads to their elopement, a marriage in a registry office and an eventual return to Norton's lodgings at Wellbrook. Huntsman, bitterly shocked, now passes his daughter in the street without visible consciousness of her presence. Months pass. The marriage (inevitably?) crumbles and Sarah plans a divorce; Norton actually concurs as he is 'playing away from home'. Then he goes 'missing'. In fact, he will be found near where he had been engaged in painting for his commission. His body, with all his artist's paraphernalia, is found among the dunes under several feet of sand. The ensuing tale is that of - not so much a who-dunnit - but a finger-pointing at the irascible father-in-law. 

At the very end of the novel, Huntsman (having escaped the noose at the last minute) is walking out one Sunday evening with Sarah; the last line is spoken by her: "Come home, father."

Adelaide Phillpotts (1896-1993)

So far, just a tightly controlled tale by a master story-teller and skilful plot constructor, who had already written 92 novels.  However, forty years after the publication of A Close Call, in 1976, the author's own daughter, Adelaide, was interviewed by James Dayananda for a book he was writing on her father. Adelaide had remained unmarried until the age of 55; in 1951, much against the wishes of her father, she finally got married. Phillpotts not only cut her off but never met her again before his death in 1960, aged ninety-eight. Worse was revealed in the interview. Adelaide stated that their relationship had been incestuous. Her father's 'love' had been obsessive and controlling. He had sexually abused her as far back as when she was seven, and had kept up an intimate relationship until 1929, when he married his second wife. He remained throughout obsessively jealous of any of her relationships with other men. Many of his letters to Adelaide are addressed to My precious love, My sweet love and My dearest love. Two extracts from his letters should suffice:

"Today I had hoped to welcome my precious girl and have my arms around her again." (1914: Adelaide was 18)

"I was not surprised after your first mention of that Jew and his politeness to hear he wanted you. The damned swine saw you were alone. You must not go to a hotel in future where that sort of vermin harbours for he might have been wickeder that he was and have planned to compromise you in some way." (1929: Adelaide was 32).

Enough said. It certainly puts a different light on the all-important relationship between Thomas Huntsman and his daughter Sarah in the novel, although no such impropriety is suggested.

The story charts a fairly straight line after the discovery of Norton's body. Huntsman, well-known locally for his temper and his intense dislike of his son-in-law, is banged up in gaol. Scotland Yard is drafted in and, although his friends and colleagues and, above all, Sarah can't believe he is guilty, all evidence points to him being the murderer (his spade and his pistol are found next to the body and a damning letter, seemingly written by him, is in the dead man's pocket). And so it comes to trial. Chapter XIII Case for the Prosecution, sees Sir Cato Warrender, K.C., a famous advocate, laying out a damning case against Huntsman. It is powerful and, surely, unanswerable. Charles Girtin, advocate for the defence, tries his best. Chapter XIV is, in fact, for a reader in 1936 more fascinating and novel than it is for the reader of today. Building on Freud (and R.L. Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), it addresses the psychological 'fact' of the dual consciousness, the 'double life'. The urge from the primitive is ever tempestuous, furious, volcanic, overbearing; but such paroxysms for the time being poison the conscious and for the time being may be said actually to destroy it...Thomas Huntsman has no recollection whatever of the double life into which he was plunged. In other words, he did the murder, but under the influence of his 'other' persona. Well, it didn't wash for the judge or the jury. 

And then comes the clever denouement. Without spoiling anything for a future reader, Huntsman is cleared. AND I had guessed quite early on in the novel who the actual murderer could be. The author played fair. The individual was not sprung on the reader from nowhere. So, in summary: another well-written tale by a master craftsman; but I wish I hadn't known about the latter's own beyond-the-pale behaviour.