Sarah Hawkswood's 'Too Good to Hang' 2023

 

Allison & Busby first paperback edition - 2023

This is Sarah Hawkswood's eleventh 'Medieval Mystery' involving the tenacious trio Hugh Bradecote, Serjeant Catchpole and Underserjeant Walkelin and the series has settled into a pleasant, readable, if unintellectual, groove. I finished it in two sittings by a roaring fire and was able to get up several times for liquid refreshment before easily picking up the flow of the story. Hawkswood is one of three authors whom I regularly pre-order in paperback - the others being Scott Mariani (two novels a year) and Susanna Gregory (now down to just the Thomas Chaloner series and only one outing every two years). They all, in their different ways, give me the light reading which leavens the more serious biographies, histories and 19th century (mainly Scottish) novels that consume much of my reading and thinking time. Unfortunately, C.J. Sansom's last book in the excellent Matthew Shardlake series was in 2018, with no successor seemingly on the way. The only other 'modern' series I subscribe to is Nicola Upson's 'Josephine Tey' outings. Ten have been published since An Expert in Murder (2008) and the eleventh book, Shot with Crimson, should be on its way to me shortly.

Back to medieval Worcestershire. The intrepid trio travel to the hamlet of Ripple to investigate the murder of one of the local priests, Father Edmund, and the subsequent hanging of a ploughboy, Thorgar. It soon becomes clear that the priest was a lecherous seeker after young girls and generally a nasty piece  of work. Moreover, Thorgar appears to be one of the last persons one would have thought capable of murder. In fact, he was hoping to be accepted into the abbey of Tewkesbury as a novice. There are the usual array of possible culprits, but suspicion increasingly turns to Selewine, the hamlet's Reeve. Does this prove to be correct, or is this another blind alley? All will be revealed, after 286 pages.

The author has now successfully established the characters of Bradecote, Catchpole and Walkelin and, in particular, has allowed the latter to 'develop'. He is now married to his long-time Welsh sweetheart, Eluned, and much of his waking thoughts are devoted to trying to get back to Worcester and the nuptial bed. Bishop Simon of Worcester and William de Beauchamp, Sheriff of Worcester, make fleeting appearances, but Hawkswood is best when describing the peasants and their bovine, repetitive lives in Ripple. They do feel like real people and certainly no caricatures. The book starts and ends

Spring, everyone agreed, had come a little early this year, and the plough-team had made very good progress in the Great Field. Easter would be late in April, and it was thought that nearly all the spring sowing would be complete by Holy Week...

The Ripple folk did not move or speak, as they watched the three riders, with Wilf the Worrier (going to be hanged for killing and then burying his wife in the garden) trailing behind, head towards the Old Road, and only when they were lost to sight did Tofi call them to take up their bags of seed and their tools, and head to the field.

Scott Mariani's 'The Tudor Deception' 2023

HarperNorth first paperback edition - 2023

Well, Scott Mariani has certainly sprung a couple of surprises. First, he has taken Ben Hope back to 2005, before all the other stories in the series. The first, The Alchemist's Secret, started in September 2007 and had his housekeeper Winnie looking after his isolated cottage on the Galway shore. The second, The Domesday Prophesy, commenced in June 2008, still with an Irish homestead. It is only later that year, in The Heretics Treasure -  that Hope has set up his training base at Le Val near Valognes, Normandy.

Secondly, although the storyline is set in his usually fast paced modern times - 2005 - it concerns a mystery that goes right back to 1483! Yes, it involves Richard III and the Missing Princes. I finished the novel yesterday morning and that same evening sat down to watch the Channel 4 documentary, The Princes in the Tower: The New Evidence. Philippa Langley and Judge Robert Rinder, travel to Ireland, France, the Netherlands as well as London and, thanks to the help of other historical sleuths, unearth at least three documents which certainly casts doubt on the official story of a wicked avuncular murder. Well, I have ordered her book, which thanks to Amazon Prime, should arrive today, so I can read in greater and more measured detail their arguments. The three documents uncovered abroad, involving 'Richard, duke of York', the Emperor Maximilian I and the Duchess Margaret of Burgundy, certainly look 'kosher' as Rinder opines, but they merely seems authentic for the period. To prove it was Edward's second son who was really involved is another matter. Were Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck actually Edward V and his younger brother, rather than two Pretenders? I am sure the debate has not ended.

As for Mariani's novel? In his Author's Note at the end, he makes it clear which side of the fence he is on, citing for further reading Matthew Lewis' The Survival of the Princes in the Tower, Annette Carson's The Maligned King, and John Ashdown-Hill's The Mythology of the Princes in the Tower - hardly unbiased source material. Moreover, he gives the Internet links to the Richard III Society and The Missing Princes Project. I should be pleased, being a long-standing member of the Society (in fact I have just notched up half a century), but as an historian in search of the truth, I would wish for some counter arguments to be available. 

The novel starts with its usual Hope gusto - a young lady, niece to his housekeeper Winnie, is blown up in his car. She had hopes of being a  professional ballet dancer. Unlikely now, as the right leg below the knee had to be amputated. Ben was not going to lie down: a resolve that had hardened like forged steel inside his heart. That he was going to devote himself, from this moment onwards, to figuring out who had hurt Aurora. That he was going to track them down. He was going to find them. He was going to punish them. And then he was going to send them all to hell.   Of course, it should have been him in the car. One week earlier, Hope had met Professor Hugh Mortimer in a Dublin hotel, listened to a seemingly cock-and-bull story about a mystery stretching back to 1483 and walked out on him. Now, he wished he hadn't, as Mortimer had subsequently drowned in his private lake the following day. It is quickly apparent his death was not suicide but 'suspicious'.  

This means travelling to Professor Mortimer's home outside York; meeting the latter's wimpy younger brother Lance; hearing an unlikely tale that the Professor thought he was a direct descendant of Perkin Warbeck, one of the two 'Pretenders' to the throne after Richard III's death at Bosworth.  He meets up with Tony Kitson, Chairman of the Yorkshire Branch of the Richard III Society, who fills him in on the background to the 1483-1499 saga, which includes the 'fact' that Perkin and Lady Catherine Huntly - married under the auspices of King James of Scotland -  had a son, one Richard Perkins. From thence came, eventually, the late Professor Mortimer. Kitson is murdered by the same dark-haired, bespectacled man plus other thugs, as he tries to flee his burning cottage with Hope. The quest then leads Hope to Liechtenstein and the island of Sark and, finally, the Borders near Berwick.  

The denouement is complicated not only by having to deal with the man who caused Aurora to lose a leg, the Prof to be drowned and Kitson to be killed - Lord Jasper Lockwood, but also a Saudi Prince Hassan Bin Ibrahim Al Sharif and his thuggish entourage. Being Hope, he escapes from an underground chamber, puts over a dozen baddies out of their misery, and rides off with £4 million to hand over to Aurora for her projected Ballet School. The story is not one of Mariani's best, but it's another interesting 'take' on the mystery of the Ricardian princes and there is enough blood and guts to keep the thriller readers happy.                                                                                                        

Caroline Young's 'Roman Holiday. The Secret Life of Hollywood in Rome 2018

 

The History Press first edition - 2018

Having recently watched Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in that delightful 'Roman Holiday', the cover on this book caught my eye and I purchased it via a remainder online firm.

The author heads each chapter with the single Christian name of the actress (they are all actresses apart from chapters 2 and 18, which are headed Tennessee [Williams] and Richard [Burton]).  I had heard of all of them apart from Anna Magnani, Italy's most enigmatic movie star, providing hope and inspiration through her strong, heartfelt performances at the tail end of the war. In fact, the whole period between 1945 and 1960 seemed to be an attempt at a joyous, almost dreamlike, escape from the horrors of the second great and awful conflict of the first half of the 20th century. Rather like the hedonistic days in the London and Paris after the Great War, the goings-on in the famous Via Veneto were focused on live for the day, with lashings of booze, drugs, tobacco and sex, supported by an almost unimaginable effulgence of wealth. Authors such as Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote and Gore Vidal mixed with the actors and directors

The actresses seem to appear on the pages, and in Rome, on a never-ending conveyor belt. I warmed to a few and recoiled from others. The gamine, fresh-faced Hepburn would still be at the top of my tree, notwithstanding her questionable taste in men - the wooden, controlling Mel Ferrer, the playboy Andrea Dotti. There is something about the earthy Anna Magnani - who was named as Best International Actress at the Venice Film Festival in 1947 - which attracted rather than repelled me. A regular sight on the Via Veneto, speeding along in her green Fiat station wagon, hopping into the bars dressed casually in black slacks, with uncombed hair and accompanied by her white poodle, Pipo, and black German Shepherd, Micia. Ingrid Bergman's life-changing decision to leave her husband for Roberto Rossellini, led her to Rome and Italy. One of Hollywood's biggest stars, she was considered a natural, wholesome actress and a devoted wife and mother. That image came crashing down when she departed Hollywood for Rossellini, another control freak. She became the Scarlet Woman.

A young Italian, Sofia Scicolone, whose mother Romilda regularly took to the Cinecittà gates looking for work as an extra in the movies, finally got the part of a Christian slave girl for one day's filming in Quo Vadis in 1950.  Her name was changed to Sofia Lazzaro, as it was thought to be more exotic. Gracing cover pages of magazines, coming second in the Miss Italy competition in 1950, she caught the eye of the producer Carlo Ponti. From then on her career was assured and she also became the 'wife' of Ponti. By now, she had changed her name yet again - to Sophia Loren. Later chapters tell the stories of Ava Gardner (1966 The Bible, In the Beginning), Anita Ekberg (1960 La Dolce Vita), Brigitte Bardot (1956 Helen of Troy)  and Jane Fonda (1967 Barbarella). Perhaps the most famous couple were Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton and the most [in]famous movie being Cleopatra (1963). The film's production resembled something like a huge thousand-man circus coming to town...there were 90 Americans, 350 Italians and 16 Britons hired on the crew... Burton exuded confidence, personality and sex appeal. Yet, behind this glamour lay an alcoholic, whose drinking became prodigious. Taylor was not that far behind. The best assessment of their tempestuous time together can be summed up as they deserved each other. In some ways, I found them the least attractive of a pretty unattractive bunch.

Apart from Gregory Peck, it is the men who come across as bounders, as hangers-on, as control freaks and, often, less talented than their partners. One has to give Benito Mussolini credit for introducing the first Venice Film Festival in 1932 and opening Cinecittà (cinema city) in 1937. The early films - Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City(1945), Vittorio De Sica's The Bicycle Thief (1948) - were followed by Joseph Mankiewicz's The Barefoot Contessa (1954) and Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960)

Caroline Young is very good at describing the fast-moving, over-the-top luxury times, centred on Rome in the two decades after the War. Her grammar occasionally jars and there are one or two typos which should have been spotted by a more careful editor or proof reader. Her Prologue gives a good summary of Rome in the 1950s, from the point of view of the movie industry and its stars:

So here you would find Ingrid Bergman, under self-imposed exile after coming to Rome for love; Audrey Hepburn, who represented joyful holidays in the city in the early 1950s; Ava Gardner, whose tempestuous love life and appreciation of the nightlife always served for a good photo; Elizabeth Taylor, the queen of Hollywood excess and jet-set lifestyle; and Anita Ekberg, the face and body of la dolce vita. Sophia Loren was the home-grown star who captivated Hollywood and who represented the struggles and dream of young girls who survived the Second World War and lived through Rome's 1950s recovery, and Anna Magnani, the icon of Italian neorealism and one of the most admired, revered women in the country.

All now gone (well, not quite)

DEATHS:

September 1973 - Anna Magnani

August 1982 - Ingrid Bergman

[August 1984 - Richard Burton]

January 1990 - Ava Gardner

January 1993 - Audrey Hepburn

March 2011 - Elizabeth Taylor

January 2015 - Anita Ekberg

Sophia Loren is still alive at the grand age of 89.

I am not sure why Gina Lollobrigida (July 1927 - January 2023) - dubbed 'the most beautiful woman in the world', who died aged 95, was not mentioned in the book. Still alive in 2018, when the book was published, perhaps she forbade her inclusion?

Walter Scott's 'Waverley' 1814

 

Archibald Constable third edition - 1814

At last, I can truly say I have read every volume of Walter Scott's 'Waverley' novels, which stretched from 1814 to 1832. The saying that 'the first shall be last' is proven correct, as reading Waverley brings to an end my marathon journey, which began in January 2020 with Guy Mannering. I read them in chronological order. Why leave Waverley to the end? simply - cost. I now have every single (or triple!) Scott novel in first edition, a few in the original publishers' boards. However, Waverley was the one out of reach of my pocket. I have just looked up the price of first editions on the Internet: there are six copies and they range from £8,251 down to £3,553. I had to settle for a fine third edition, which cost me £206 (including postage).

The novel was probably started in 1808 (Scott gives conflicting versions of the date). He had completed seven chapters but, on showing it to a few friends who unanimously condemned it, he put it aside. When he finally returned to it, he wrote the last two volumes in three weeks. Why had Scott waited so long? Possibly due to the comparatively low prestige of the novel at that time and partly that verse was still regarded the natural medium for narrative. Waverley was a conspicuous success. One reader wrote,

no work that has appeared in my time made such an instant and universal impression...The unexpected newness of the thing, the profusion of original characters, the Scotch language, Scotch men and women, the simplicity of the writing, and the graphic force of the descriptions, all struck us with an electric shock of delight... There was no surprise in its appeal to a reading public becoming bored with Gothic terrors.

The story of the young Edward Waverley, neglected by an ambitious, political father and brought up by a rich, elderly uncle with Jacobite leanings, is that of one drawn to romance through his reading. Although Waverley joins a government regiment in Scotland, he and the novel only really come alive with his visit to his uncle's friend, the Baron of Bradwardine. The latter runs his estate of Tully-Veolan at the foot of the Highlands as a feudal lord, even keeping a Shakespearean fool, Davie Gellatly. Romance follows romance, when Waverley visits the nearby clan Mac-Ivor at Glennaquoich and is dominated by the energy of the patriarchal Fergus and his sister Flora, both fanatically wedded to the Jacobite cause. Bonny Prince Charlie has landed and Fergus, the Baron and others sweep Waverley into the Rebellion.  Waverley knows in his heart the cause is hopeless, but the personal charm of the Prince, the dominating Fergus, his love for Flora, all propel him into the ranks of the Jacobite invasion of England. At Prestonpans he saves the life of an English officer and ensures his paroled release to his sick wife back in England. Luckily, the officer Colonel Talbot is able to return the favour and gains Waverley a pardon. Fergus is executed at Carlisle, Flora enters a French convent, and Waverley marries Rose Bradwardine to live happily ever after. His future was  was accurately prophesied by Flora: a quiet circle of domestic happiness, lettered indolence, and elegant enjoyment of Waverley-Honour, his uncle's estate.

Waverley has all the positive aspects of a Scott novel - character drawing, landscape depiction - with much of the later negative traits kept to a minimum. Two things which personally irritated me throughout the Waverley series, scarcely intrude. Firstly, the placing of (often trite) extracts from others' works, prose or poetic, at the beginning of a chapter, pleasingly does not occur until Chapter XVII (p. 266) of the 3rd Volume - there it is from Shakespeare. This continues until Chapter XXIII. I have felt that often a gobbet from an 'Old Song' or 'Old Tale', have actually been Scott's own material. Secondly, the 'phantom' or 'spirit' of another world only appears to Fergus as the Bodach Glas. The early 19th century is now 200 years gone and the early 21st has very little time for such nonsense, although it is worrying to see Halloween taking over from Guy Fawkes Night these days. I suppose I could add a third positive point - Waverley is blessedly free from the regular infusion of Scott's verse which can so break up the narrative flow in the author's later novels.

Waverley was criticised for its overlong and slow-moving start - the period before Waverley leaves for his regiment. In J.G. Lockhart's Memoirs of Scott, he quotes his father-in-law's claim that he had left the story to flag in the first volume on purpose...to avoid the  usual error of novel writers, whose first volume is usually the best. Scott argued in Waverley that the course of Narrative has the earlier events are studiously dwelt upon, that you, kind reader, may be introduced to the characters rather by narrative, than by the duller medium of direct description; but when the story draws near its close, we hurry over the circumstances, however important, which your imagination must have forestalled, and leave you to suppose those things, which it would be abusing your patience to narrate at length.

In his Preface to the Third Edition, the author rebuts the accusation that his portrayal of Callum Beg (Fergus' rapscallion servant) bore hardily upon the Highlanders' national character. Nothing could be further from his wish or intention. The character of Callum Beg is that of a spirit naturally turned to daring evil, and determined, by the circumstances of his situation, to a particular species of mischief. 

It is perhaps apt to read, on the penultimate page of the last volume, his praise of Elizabeth Hamilton's Glenburnie (her genius is highly creditable to her country), another work roundly criticised for its portrayal of Highland life and people. 

Clare Pettitt's 'Dr Livingstone, I presume? 2007

 

Profile Books first edition - 2007

The meeting, in late 1871, between Henry Morton Stanley and Dr. David Livingstone in what is now Tanzania, in East Africa, is one of the most famous in history. An episode of the TV soap ER is called Dr Carter, I presume? and an episode of Star Trek is entitled Dr Bashir, I presume? Clare Pettitt's book, although rather repetitive on occasions, due to the way she has subdivided it, enables the reader to get a pretty good idea of the characters, warts and all, of the two main protagonists and the forbidding Dark Continent. She is correct in arguing that it was Stanley who ensured Livingstone would be remembered as more than just yet another European explorer. And explorer, rather than missionary, he was.

The book is very much of its time - the early 21st century. One written just fifteen years later would be different again - the past few years have thrown a wholly negative pall over the deeds and very term Empire. The British version seems to have borne the brunt of the hostility as well, notwithstanding worse behaviour from King Leopold of Belgium and other European powers in the same period and the malign, often more skilfully concealed, 'empires' of the USA/China/Russia of today. Behind the very genuine abhorrence felt about many things that occurred under British suzerainty, one feels the economic imperative of Reparations has jostled to the fore.

By the time Stanley 'found' him, Livingstone had spent most of his adult life in Africa. He made several celebrated journeys across the continent, from coast to coast, and up the Zambezi river. He became obsessed with finding the source of the Nile. He was responsible for setting up the Universities' Mission, which sent graduates as missionaries to Africa and which was disastrous, leading so many to their early deaths. Livingstone's rather callous treatment of his wife Mary (daughter of another missionary, Robert Moffatt) is highlighted by the author: he impregnated her constantly...joked about her as 'the Irish Manufactory'...and then dragged her across African deserts... it is arguable, in fact, that many of Livingstone's 'heroic' characteristics - his near-obsessive drive and an optimism that degenerated into self-deceit - eventually drove his long-suffering wife to alcoholic despair (she had to be given large doses of opium to keep her quiet at night and she died of malaria on the banks of the Zambezi in April 1862), and his firstborn son to desperation and an early death in the American Civil War.

H. M. Stanley (1841 - 1904)

Stanley had been born into poverty in North Wales, growing up in a Workhouse then emigrating as a teenager to America. A variety of jobs led to him becoming a reporter in the Civil War. He was employed by James Bennett of the New York Herald and covered the Abyssinian Campaign of 1862. Later, (with G.A. Henty) he reported on the Ashanti campaign on the Gold Coast in 1873. He attended Livingstone's funeral in 1874; crossed the African continent and discovered the source of the river Congo (1874-7); then worked for King Leopold in the 'Belgian' Congo, which thoroughly besmirched his future reputation. He married, in 1890, and settled in England. He toured America, Australia and New Zealand in the 1890s; became an M.P. for the Liberal Unionists in 1895; visited South Africa in 1897; supported the Boer War; attacked Gladstone's 'peace at any price' foreign policies; was knighted by the Tory government in 1899; and died in London in 1904. 

Perhaps the most moving section, entitled 'Faithful to the End', deals with the behaviour of Livingstone's African servants, Wainwright, Susi, Manua Sera and Chuma. They had their master's innards buried under a tree and ensured his well-packed body was transported to Bagamoyo on the East African coast. Susi and Chuma were not invited to the London funeral in Westminster Abbey, but they both visited England - as did Jacob Wainwright - and had their photographs taken, both in African 'costume' and western dress.

David Livingstone (1813 - 1873)

Livingstone's story can also be seen as the story of the growing influence of the press (helped by the newly sunk transatlantic cable) in the second half of the 19th century, and the emergence of a modern notion of celebrity. His portrait circulated widely, his lectures drew huge crowds and his publications sold well. When his mummified body was returned to England, his funeral was a national public event of a kind that had not been seen in London since that of the duke of Wellington in 1852. A funeral bust was completed and set up on the front of the newly opened Foreign and Colonial Office building. What is interesting is that while Livingstone could be seen as an establishment figure and a servant of empire, he could also be claimed as a radical and a hero of the people, and in this double-jointedness we can discern the making of his future life as a remarkably pliable and adaptable icon.