Two more Jarrolds' 'Jackdaw' novels 1926 and 1925

 

'Jackdaw' Library paperback edition - 1937

This is the story of Jim Rickard  - a boy who was fascinated by the power of money from the first. It charts his rise from rags to riches on an amoral path. I have written briefly about Ethel Mannin before (Blog on 6th July 2023). so there is no need to repeat the same material again. What is very clear from this novel is her dislike for both capitalist values and the bohemian/'flapper' times of the 1920s. Sounding Brass (1925) appears to have been her third book, after Martha (1923) and Hunger of the Sea (1924). By her death in December 1984, she had written some hundred fiction and non-fiction books.

Jim starts his career by stealing ten sovereigns from his dying grandma, Mrs Wythers,  Instead of the waste on a funeral, he would use the money wisely; he would buy with it the beginnings of power; it would be the seed sown in the land of opportunity, from which, in the fullness of time, he would reap a golden harvest. So, off he goes, aged 15, to London, away from the family he despised. Getting jobs in the newspaper business, he realises that the advertising world means riches. For him there was only one industry worthy of being spelled in capitals, and that was Advertising. Organised Publicity. Utilising the Power of the Press for Popularizing British Goods. He was interested in Progress and Publicity. The Great War had taken a slice out of his life; now he was raring to go. He sets up Premier Publicity, Ltd with a partner, Michael Murray - whom he also despises. By the mid twenties, he appears to have 'arrived'. Still rather loud and common, he has added weight to his lack of inches. I don't know why, but Arnold Bennett and H.G. Wells hove to in my mind's eye. Surely not a spoof on those two?

Ironically, for a man with no fellow-feelings for anyone, the Jazz girl, Lola, herself out for mercenary reasons, becomes his mistress.  They are caught, by her husband's private detective and Jim's whole world collapses. His wife sues him for divorce. Yet Jim is not prepared to be snuffed out. He would Show Them. They could say what they liked, but they would see that he wasn't a flame that could be extinguished by the first gust of the wind of adversity; he was more than a flame; he was a storehouse of power; an everlasting electric battery. At the very end of the novel - was he ruined? "Ruined be damned! Publicity's publicity!" The car purred on softly down Fleet Street.

There are some cutting character sketches. Miss Pringle was a flaccid creature, so completely colourless that she looked as though milk ran in her veins instead of blood. With vague hair, pale eyes, and a sallow complexion, she was addicted to fawns and greys in the matter of clothes, which were always very good and hopelessly devoid of style. She was that sort of woman. Then there is the girl Jim sees during his honeymoon with Florence Pringle: she was bright as diamonds, and as hard. Her life swung to the rhythm of the saxophone; her soul was Jazz. The pride of the eye and the desire of the flesh, she could afford to be hard...she knew what she wanted...she dragged you, indeed, no further  than the nearest jazz shop, where you could spend money on her. Ensnared, back in London she proves to be Jim's downfall. The irony is that the mousy wife, Florence, comes out of it in a better shape than her husband Jim.

Michael Murray has this to say about Britain in the early 1920s:

We are stuffed full of ready-made ideas - and our ideals are for the most part sentimentality - witness our two minutes' silence on Armistice Day, when we pause to think of the heroic dead, whilst the heroic living sell chocolates or matches in the gutter or play dismal bands on street corners. We are probably the smuggest and most self-satisfied nation in the world. We have no international sense - or sensibility...we are cursed by the unintelligence of unimaginativeness. We are dull, stupid, a race without poetry, or sense of beauty, or of truth...      Is that the author speaking?

'Jackdaw' Library paperback edition - 1937

I have already read Susan Glapsell's 'Fidelity' in the 'Jackdaw' series (see Blog July 6th 2023) and quite enjoyed it; so I was looking forward to reading this novel. It concentrates again on love and devotion. Whereas I felt the main female character in the former book did not quite deserve the steadfast fidelity of her doctor friend, this time - whilst I could understand the laser-like love of a young widow - I found some pages/scenes rather cloying. The Glory of the Conquered (1909) was Glaspell's first published novel; Fidelity (1915) was her third. Those six years, I think, improved her style.

Dr. Karl Hubers, a 39 year-old medical scientist doing great things in the study of cancer, falls madly in love with the much younger Ernestine Stanley, who has studied Art in New York. After a long honeymoon abroad (where Ernestine loses a child), they settle again at the university in Chicago. All is going swimmingly - Karl resumes his groundbreaking work, Ernestine continues with her paintings. 

The gruff old eminent surgeon Dr. Murray Parkman is really the hero of the novel. Himself having had troubles way back with a woman not loving him, he is able to give regular wise counsel to the rather highly strung Ernestine. Parkman was a large man, and all of him seemed to count for force. Something about him made people prefer not to get in his way. It was his hands spoke for his work - superbly the surgeon's hands, that magical union of power and skill, hands for the strongest grip and the lightest touch, lithe, sure, relentless, fairly intuitive. His hands made one believe in him. With Karl it was the eyes told most.

And it was the eyes which destroyed him.

The relationship between Karl and Ernestine is almost too intense. One of their favourite occupations, as the days went on, was as to whether anyone had ever been so happy before. No. Because, no one ever had so many reasons for being happy. Tragedy lay ahead. Karl had a queer little trick with his eyes...he had a way of resting his finger in the corner of his eye when thinking. A mannerism was a queer little way of rubbing his finger in his eye. A very foolish thing to do if one is working with cancer spoors etc. The novel charts his descent into blindness and the attempt by his distraught wife to learn the skills to enable her to be his eyes in his laboratory. To no avail; his constitution weakened, he dies even though his friend Dr. Parkman tries desperately to save his life. Ernestine retreats from Chicago to her home area, into total depression. Parkman manages to wean her back and the novel ends with the exhibition of the best painting she has ever done - of the blind Karl. The last paragraph in the book is this: 

"Karl," she murmured at the last - eyes dim with loving tears, "dear Karl" - dwelling with a long tenderness upon the name - "did I indeed bring you the light?"

I just hope she is not so utterly myopic for the rest of her life. Karl comes across as simply too saint like to be true, and this occasionally grates with the reader.

I wondered whether Huber's cousin, red-headed, freckled, foolish Georgia McCormick was modelled on the author.

Two Jarrolds' 'Jackdaw' novels 1931 and 1933

 

As with the holidays to Greece last Summer and this Spring, I took a batch of Jarrolds' 'Jackdaw' Library paperbacks on holiday - this time to a family villa on the south coast of Spain. I took seven but only managed to read four of them. The weather was too sunny and hot for much of the time (am I complaining?) and relaxing in the pool or simply lying stretched out on a recliner was the most I could do. As for the four books? They were very different from each other, but that's why I like the 'Jackdaw' series. I have now read twelve of the sixteen Crime 'Jackdaws' (I haven't been able to track down the last four yet) and nine of the twenty-two Library series. (I have a further seven on the shelves to read, with only six to find.)

'Jackdaw' Library paperback edition - 1937

The subtitle of this novel is 'A Peace Book' and it is pertinent that George Lansbury, who became Leader of the small group of Labour M.Ps who refused to follow Ramsay MacDonald into the National Government in 1931, wrote the quotation on the front cover: "All who love peace and hate war will welcome this book". Lansbury's pacifism and opposition to rearmament, and rejection at the 1935 Labour Party conference, led to his resignation. He spent his final years travelling through the United States and Europe in the cause of peace and disarmament. As for Bernard Newman himself, he appears to have led a very full life. Born in 1897 and dying in 1968, he wrote over 138 books, both fiction and non-fiction, and was considered an authority on spies. He may even have been one himself! He visited more than 60 countries between the Wars, even meeting Adolf Hitler. Of local interest, he was born in Ibstock to a farmer and cattle dealer and his wife - the village is a mere ten miles from where I type.

The novel is a passionate cry for peace; not unusual since the author had lived through his late teens and early twenties in the Great War. Like so many, he desperately hope it had been the war to end war. His protagonist is born of a momentary liaison between a French girl and a German officer. Her nominal boyfriend, a French officer, is disgusted by her consorting with a swine of a Boche! Eighteen years later Madeline de Montigny tells her son Paul the circumstances of his birth. He forgives her and his education takes him from the college of Rheims and the Paris Sorbonne to London University in 1942. Yes, a novel written in 1931 looks to a future that does not include the Second World War and has no mention of Herr Schicklgruber! Instead, in the early 1940s Churchill - a man almost old in years, but with the eyes of youth - has taken over from Sir Oswald Mosley. There has been a war between Russia and Poland, but it did not spread. Meanwhile, , Paul de Montigny establishes a laboratory in Paris and, by 1950, has demonstrated a new process for the fixation of nitrogen. Overworked, he has a rest holiday in the Pyrenees, where he meets Antoinette ('Toniette'), who is unmasked as the daughter of M. Vierzon, high up in the French government. Notwithstanding the deception , the romance blossoms into marriage.

The author looks back from 1950 to the Armistice of 1918; to President Wilson, with the simplicity of a rustic, the ideals of a Methodist revivalist, and the geographic knowledge of a elementary schoolmistress; to Lloyd George who was suspect; and Clemenceau who may be a hero to France, but to world history he will be judged harshly. He then shows up the League of Nations for the toothless institution it was. It seems incredible that in such an age (1950) of advanced civilisation and material comfort ideas of War still existed. But exist they did...yet it must be admitted that the history of war is the history of the human race...even a dog thinks higher of human nature than does man himself.

To counteract the threat of war, Paul establishes a League of Scientists - a reality, not like the anomaly in Geneva. By a process I couldn't follow (more like science fiction than any reality), the League manages to stop a war between Italy and Turkey by jamming their ships engines etc. The league also speaks to the peoples of the states through controlling the airwaves. It also halts a much more serious potential conflict between France and German over Alsace in 1961. It ends, rather dramatically, with the deaths of the two instigators - the leader of France (Toinette's father) and the leader of Germany (Paul's father). Far fetched? Absolutely; but no more far fetched than the idea War can be stopped. Bernard Newman lived until 1968 - through the Spanish Civil War, Italy's invasion of Abyssinia, the Second World War, the Korean War and the Vietnam  conflagration. 

The end of the novel sees Paul broadcasting - a pallid face with faith shining from its fanatic eyes. They heard a voice, first hesitant and toneless, then becoming finer and resolute. And a message: the death of war; the dawn of peace. The end of an age; the beginning of a new. An entreaty, a summons, a command. Try selling that to Ukrainians. Paul's ideas would never succeed for a simple reason: Human Nature.

'Jackdaw' Library paperback edition - 1937

I dislike disparaging books but I found this simply boring. J. Leslie Mitchell writes under his own name (he used the pen name Lewis Grassic Gibbon). I read on the flysheet of the dust wrapper that Compton Mackenzie thought Spartacus a remarkable achievement. I had thought that the 1960 film, starring Kirk Douglas as Spartacus was derived from Mitchell's book, but it was taken from the 1951 novel by the American writer Howard Fast. He had to self publish it, as he was blacklisted during the McCarthy anti-communist era and no publisher would touch it. Looking at the synopsis of the book online, it appears rather more interesting than Mitchell's.

In the latter's novel the main character is not Spartacus himself, but Kleon, a fictional Greek slave and eunuch. Another important character is Elpinice, a slave woman who helps Spartacus and his comrade gladiators escape from Capua and who becomes Spartacus' lover. The books sticks fair closely to the known facts about the revolt, making use of Plutarch, Appian and Sallust. Perhaps that is its problem - not enough life or character is added and the feeling is one of dry-as-dust.

Two very different novels, both 2022

 

Penguin paperback edition - 2023

Once again, it was due to my daughter's generosity that I had these two novels to read on a lovely relaxing holiday spent at Bamburgh in Northumberland. The area possesses not only splendid castles and wide sandy beaches, but also some pretty awesome sand dunes. I mention these because they occur in Tim Weaver's book as a major clue. Labelled 'The Mystery of Gatton Hill' by the media, David Raker is brought in by the family of one of the 'victims' to work out where the occupants of a black Land Rover Discovery, which had ended up on its roof and a ragged tangle of metal aflame at the bottom of a ravine, have gone. Instead of bodies being turned to ash, there is no-one inside. The erstwhile occupants were Cate and Aiden Gascoigne. There were two witnesses who had arrived just after the car left the road - Zoe Simmons, a young woman,and a 61-year-old retiree called Audrey Calvert. Cate was a photographer, who travelled the country as well as exhibiting at a London gallery. After investigating the site of the crash and the information given by a CCTV camera on the road, Raker realizes they did not leap out of the car before it went of the road; nor could they have escaped without help from the blazing wreck. He soon realises the witnesses were perhaps a key - what if they were lying?

Raker meets up with Georgia, Cate's sister, who tells him the latter was drawn to the tragic and loved writing as well as photography. Recently, Cate had not wanted Georgia to see what she was researching; additionally, Georgia overheard her sister on the telephone to someone and she heard one word: dunes. From then on, the novel twist and turns as Raker uncovers a fiendish plot. It takes him to Northumbria and to the story of girls being found murdered and hidden in the Bamburgh dunes three decades ago. It also brings in the story of Amelia, a girl forced to deal with an unwanted pregnancy, her parents, and the police officer who was an investigator into those murders. The stories thirty years apart are skilfully woven together and this reader for one was genuinely caught out in several of the twists. There is also a sub plot, which involves Healy, a friend from Raker's past (and previous books) which is drawn into the main story, thanks to the evil machinations of one who proves to be the 'baddie'.

However, a feeling gradually came over me (and particularly after I had finished the book) that the author was almost too clever for his characters! I have never thought this before. The main 'baddie' was fiendishly brilliant and, not surprisingly, managed to outwit just about everyone else. Weaver is clearly a master of this kind of suspense novel and one look at the list of books he has written previously - with titles like Vanished, Never Coming Back, I Am Missing and You Were Gone - shows he has carved out a niche with his protagonist and missing person hunter, David Raker. He is to be commended on his ability to keep the reader guessing.

Penguin paperback edition - 2023

This is a very different novel from The Black Bird. It is the story of the manhunt for the killers (those who signed the death warrant) of King Charles I. The author is well-known for the depth of his research, the grasp of his historical feeling and the appealing mixture of both character and landscape based stories. This time it switches between Restoration London, mainly pre-Plague and Fire, and the pre-revolutionary New World. In his Author's Note, he says the novel is an imaginative re-creation of a true story...in particular, the pursuit of Edward Whalley and William Goffe across New England.

The author's 'homework' is particularly apparent when he is describing the environment into which his characters are plunged, particularly with the slum areas of London, pre the Great Fire, and the forbidding wilderness of New England. With the latter he reminds me rather of John Buchan, another author who could give you the 'taste' and 'feel' of the landscape and weather. Harris is good with his description of characters, even if the only totally fictitious one is the Regicide-finder-General, Richard Nayler. The latter's relentless and obsessive pursuit of the regicides is well described, as are the characters of Whalley and Goffe. Harris is good on distinguishing between the various levels of Puritanism, from the tolerant do-gooders to the fanatics. Occasionally the pace slows too much, perhaps the result of the author's determination to put the 'fact' into 'faction'.  The politics, religion, colonial life of the time are well delineated and Harris adds the right amount of the thriller - the propulsion of hunter and prey - to elevate the story above a mere historical plodder. Well worth the read. 

Mark Jenkins' 'To Timbuktu' 1997

 

Robert Hale paperback edition - 2002

I found this book disappointing and I am still trying to work out why. Perhaps it is because it is not long since I read Frank Kryza's 'The Race for Timbuktu'  (see my BLOG for 22nd July), with its story of (often senseless) bravery and death. Those explorers were real men! Mark Jenkins does, in fact, intersperse the account of his own journey with short sections on John Ledyard, Major Daniel Houghton, Mungo Park , Major John Peddie, Major Dixon Denham, Hugh Clapperton and Major Alexander Gordon Laing. It felt a little like a 'scissors and paste' job, though.

 I wonder if the title of James' book changed. Was it originally 'A Journey Down The Niger' with Timbuktu as a subtitle? When I studied the very poor map on page 12, I realised just what a minute length of the river Mark and his best mate Mike Moe travelled down. Okay, they did find one of the, probably many, 'sources' at Tembakounda, hacking through some pretty awful jungle landscape; but they called a halt at Siguiri, just 250 miles or so from the source  - not very much of a 2,600 mile long river. I had more respect - and liking? - for the other two on the expedition,  John Haines and Rick Smith, who appeared much more level-headed and at least made it to the Niger delta in the Gulf of Guinea. Both Mike and Mark left their wives pregnant back in Wyoming and only once the Niger got wider, more crowded and 'boring', did Mike decide he ought to go home. Mark, however, by hitching lifts and purchasing a motor-bike, managed to get to Timbuktu. 

Mark describes the 'grand undertakings' (their long trips abroad) as like falling in love...you're obsessed. Unless the reader has that empathy, the story of their travels becomes more a tale of selfishness. The first of several photographs in the middle of the book is of the bearded Mike Moe - exactly how I imagined him. At the end of the book is a section entitled Coda. It charts not only the birth of Mike and Mark's firstborns, their trip to Tibet (when their wives were again pregnant), but a trip made by Mike, his younger brother Dan and two others, to Baffin Island in August 1995. A whale breached beneath their small motorboat, capsizing it. One by one they succumbed to the near freezing ocean. Only their Inuit Eskimo guide, wearing an insulated survival suit, survived. Strangely, it didn't seem very sad or a tragedy to me. Brave, yes; foolhardy, yes. There is an air of inevitability about people like Mike Moe, dying aged only thirty-seven. 

The book is not particularly well-written. It mixes dialogue - repartee usually - the veracity of which is often suspect, with descriptions of the jungle and the river (the river is two-faced, two-hearted for the next three days. Stretches of pious brown water; then you round the bend.) They meet up with a fascinating Guinea African, Sori Keita, who almost forces himself on them as a guide. The author not only inserts information about the 19th century European explorers, but also pieces about an earlier trip he took with Mike to Morocco and the North African Mediterranean coast. This only serves to confuse the reader and is not particularly interesting.

I did like the perception of one man the author bumped into at Kouroussa. A man with a red face and thinning blond hair, he is with some arm of the United Nations. A German who has lost his accent. Worked all over the world. Thailand, Chad, Burkina Faso. Economic development projects. Silkworms, hybrid rice, farming techniques. Thirty years of it. 'But this is the worst...Africa's fucked. It fucked itself... Asia is better. People work in Asia. Africans...Africans! All they do is fuck off.' Nearly thirty years later, it still hits the nail on the head.

I read To Timbuktu because it was in the cheap remainder section of the Cinema Bookshop in Hay-on-Wye, and as a modern follow-up to the story of the explorers of the nineteenth-century. I took note of the fact that the author wrote/writes for GQ and the Reader's Digest. Enough said.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón's 'The Shadow of the Wind' 2001

 

Carlos Ruiz Zafón (1964-2020)

I must admit I had never heard of this author until my daughter gave me the English translation paperback of his most famous and successful novel La sombra del viento (The Shadow of the Wind). It sold 15 million copies and was the winner of many awards. It was included in the list of the 100 best books in Spanish in the last 25 years; translated by Lucia Graves; it was published in English in 2004, with the paperback version coming out the following year. More than a million copies of the novel have been sold in the UK. Zafón published three other novels in the Cemetery of Forgotten Book series: a prequel El juego del άngel (The Angel's Game) in April 2008; El prisonero del cielo (The Prisoner of Heaven) in 2011; and El laberinto de los esprítus (The Labyrinth of Spirits) in November 2016.  Zafón's works have published in over 45 countries and have been translated into more than 50 languages. He is the most widely published contemporary Spanish writer. 

 Zafón was born in Barcelona and began his working life in advertising. In the 1990s he moved to Los Angeles where he worked briefly in screen writing. He died of colorectal cancer in Lost Angeles on 19th June 2020.

Weidenfeld & Nicolson paperback edition - 2005

At the front of the paperback edition are two pages of quotations from reviews from British newspapers and magazines. It is worth quoting some of the comments. 

Carlos Ruiz Zafón's wonderfully chock-a-block novel  starts with the search for a mysterious author in Barcelona in the aftermath of the Civil War and then packs in as many plots and characters as it does  genres - Gothic melodrama, coming-of-age story, historical thriller and more... (Sunday Telegraph).

This gripping novel has the feel of a gothic ghost story, complete with crumbling, ivy-covered mansions, gargoyles and dank prison cells... (Daily Mail)

A complex and absorbing novel...it is a tribute to Ruiz Zafón's skills as a Hollywood scriptwriter that he can create stunning set pieces and bring to life a host of eccentric figures. (The Spectator).

The novel is not an easy read - not because of any problems with the translation by Lucia Graves (daughter of Robert Graves), as it is superb - but due to the fact that it is crammed with intense atmosphere, captivating characters and gripping menace. Furthermore, it is actually a story within a story.  In the 1940s, the protagonist Daniel Sempere whose father owns an antiquarian/second-hand bookshop in Barcelona, is taken by his father to the Cemetery of Forgotten books - a secret labyrinthine library that houses rare and banned books. He picks on one entitled The Shadow of the Wind by Julian Carfax and takes it home. Not only does Daniel love the story but he also finds out that the author has disappeared and so have all the other copies of the book and most of his other works. It is not long before other collectors hear about his find, including a mysterious stranger named Lain Coubert (the name of the character of the devil in the book) who has a badly burned and disfigured face. 

As the story unfolds more and more characters are drawn into the tale: Don Gustavo  Barceló, friend of both Daniel and his father, who offers to buy the book; his daughter Clara, who is blind and 10 years' older than Daniel, who develops a crush on her; the Aguilar family - Tomάs, fiercely protective of his sister Beatriz. who falls in love with Daniel, who returns the love; and, above, all the brilliantly drawn Fermin Romero de Torres. He is quite the most interesting, striking and eccentric person amongst the large cast. Having been tortured by the Falangists of General Franco, he has ended up a beggar on the streets. He becomes a fast friend of Daniel and his father and is used by them to find out many of the secrets (and people still living) relating to Carfax and his books. Their probing into the murky past unleashes the dark forces of the murderous Inspector Francisco Javier Fumero, one-time schoolmate of Julian Carfax.

The book tos and fros between the present and the events of 30 years previously, occasionally making it hard to follow. The detail is far too complicated to explain for a brief Blog such as this. Suffice it to say, the reader gets more and more drawn into its complexities and manages to unpick how the distant past links up with the present sinister twists and turns. I was particularly drawn to the tragic story of Nuria Monfort, who worked at the publishing house where Julian's books were published and who fell deeply in love with him. Sadly, it was not reciprocated as his heart was lost to the ethereal beauty, Penélope Aldaya. Their affair was doomed and it plays a seminal part in the novel's storyline.

The often black/dark humour is part of the charm of the book:

Molins was a cheerful and self-satisfied individual. His mouth was glued to a half-smoked cigar that seemed to grow out of his moustache. It was hard to tell whether he was asleep or awake, because he breathed like most people snore. His hair was greasy and flattened over his forehead, and he had mischievous piggy eyes. I can picture him now!

'People talk too much. Humans aren't descended from moneys. They come from parrots.'

'Blasphemer. You ought to have your soul cleaned out with hydrochloric acid.'

The neighbours have doped her (Pepita) with shots of brandy, and when I saw her, she had collapsed onto the sofa and was snoring like a boar and letting off farts that bored bullet-holes through the upholstery.

Stephen King is correct to label the book a Gothic Novel - it has suspense, dark arts, underground chambers and cells, creepy, ivy-clad mansions, tongue-in-cheek hyperboles, and very strange characters. Rich fare indeed, but not indigestible. 

A footnote: It was pleasing to read that the extravagant Catalan financier called Salvador Jausà took as his base the Hotel Colón in Barcelona. So did we, when we had a superb week's holiday in the city.

Ian Bradley's 'The Call to Seriousness' 1976

 

Jonathan Cape first edition - 1976

Oh dear! I am very much a fan of the 19th century but this book has given me an unpleasant jolt. Have I had rose-tinted spectacles on? It is the story of Evangelicals, mostly in the Church of England but with strong allies amongst the Non-conformists - Methodists and others. This group of austere and high-minded puritans was the product of the religious revival in 18th century England which had introduced the demanding creed of 'vital religion'. Here the letters S.S. can stand for Sanctimonious Self-righteousness or Smug Self-centredness. Evangelicalism was one of the most important forces at work in shaping the character of the Victorians. The form of Christianity practised and preached by the early Evangelists was intensely emotional and experiential. They themselves described it as 'vital religion'. It centred around the doctrine of salvation of faith in the atoning death of Christ. They were returning to the central teaching of the Reformation and reviving the traditions of 17th century Puritanism in England. Before 1800 the Evangelicals did not have a significant hold either on the Church or on society. After 1860 they declined into a narrow party. Two men dominated the Evangelical world: William Wilberforce, the Yorkshire M.P. from 1800 until c.1830 and central figure in 'the Clapham Sect' or 'the Saints'; and Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury after Wilberforce's death in 1833. The piety, the prudery, the imperialistic sentiments, the philanthropic endeavour, and the obsession with proper conduct - characteristics of the Victorian Age - can all be traced back to their influence.

The starting point of Evangelical theology was the doctrine of the total depravity of man. Eternity is at stake, and I am trifling away the salvation of my soul. My soul asks the question, what shall I do to be saved? The Evangelicals held that a regenerate man could have no pleasure in anything but striving to please his new Lord. Above all else, they were obsessed with the judgement which awaited them at death and the account which they would have to give of the way in which they had spent their lives. It led to a huge degree of introspection, even of egotism. That they might be privileged to live useful lives was their most sincere prayer. The characteristic which was most commonly commented on was their excessive seriousness. Evangelicalism was a puritanical creed, life-denying rather than life-affirming and stressing the negative values of abstinence and self-control rather than the positive values of generosity and altruism. The Evangelicals often seem unnecessarily puritanical in their abstention from worldly pleasure. They could hardly avoid a certain self-righteousness and spiritual pride. Their sense of being an elect group tended to make them behave like a sect. Readiness to reprove any defect which one might observe in others was one of the hallmarks of true Evangelical seriousness.

The two main agencies through which Evangelicalism spread amongst the upper- and middle-classes were in the nursery and at university. St Edmund Hall at Oxford was a fertile breeding ground. Amongst the upper classes, the most important agents were the female members of the families. The main weapon used amongst the lower orders was the cheap tract or broadsheet; it was extensively used by Hannah More and Rowland Hill. When it celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1849, the Religious Tract Society had circulated over 500 million copies of 5,000 separate titles. It proclaimed that, as a result of its activities, sinners have been converted to God; Christians edified and comforted; backsliders mercifully restored; and numerous evils prevented by timely admonitions. The Sunday School was the most successful of the agencies which the Evangelicals devised to convert the working classes. Their one aim in mind in setting up schools for the poor was to convert their souls. The Ragged Schools were the success story in urban areas. The Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA), established in 1844, was another weapon in their hands. Most of the teachers in Sunday schools and Ragged schools were women. Evangelicalism was a religion that appealed essentially to those already anxious and disturbed about their own state - the rapid rise in population, the forced move from rural to urban areas, the effects of the Industrial Revolution all produced fears. The Evangelicals theorised that the country was suffering because it had incurred the anger of God. (Shades of medieval superstition with the Black Death).

William Wilberforce (1759-1833)

Wilberforce wrote in his 1787 Diary, that God had set him two great objects - the suppression of the Slave Trade and the reformation of manners. The Evangelicals had an overwhelming desire to reform the morals of their fellow-men quite independent of their wish to convert them. In 1802 the Society for the Suppression of Vice, or the Vice Society for short, was set up. It employed paid agents who attached themselves to local police stations or went around the country looking for areas particularly steeped in vice. From 1842, they were able to operate their own form of censorship through Mudie's Select Circulating Library and, later, from W.H. Smith's railway station bookstalls. The worst vice was failure to observe the Sabbath. Hannah More and others must have been a bundle of laughs!

Other chapters concentrated on Philanthropy and Paternalism, The Age of Societies, The Cult of Conduct and Serious Callings (commerce, the civil service, the armed forces and politics), but this Blog would be far too long to deal with these, Suffice it that  the penultimate chapter, Home and Family, can ram home the stifling, censorious atmosphere of the mid-19th century. Evangelicalism was above all else the religion of the home. It idealized and sanctified family life. At the centre of life stood the institution of family prayers. These were only one of the many trials which had to be endured by children in Evangelical families.   Children's lives were hedged around on all sides by restrictions and prohibitions. Virtually every enjoyable pastime was forbidden them on the Sabbath. The terrors of Hell were very real to Evangelical children. The experience of being brought up in an Evangelical home could be profoundly depressing and even terrifying. Certainty about the after-life was the corollary of the Evangelicals' obsession with death.

'Family Prayers' by Samuel Butler (1864)

These days the C of E is irrelevant to most people's lives or thoughts. In place of Christ, the cancel culture and narrow thinking of the minority groups, such as Extinction Rebellion, Stop Oil, BLM and Antifa are startlingly close to the self-righteousness of the 19th century Evangelicals. One doesn't have to be a hedonist to feel that Evangelicals' joy in the after-life was a poor substitute for living to the full one's life on earth.