Rudolf Tesnohlidek's 'The Cunning Little Vixen' 1985

First English edition - 1985

Vixen Sharp-Ears was a real fox who had real adventures with a real forester in the 19th century. Rudolf Tesnohlidek's novel is no fairy tale. It presents a world of not-so-innocent animals living out their short lives in brutal harmony alongside a world of longer-lived humans who are no less brutal, scarcely more intelligent, and a good deal less happy. The author, born in 1882, grew up with a father who was a 'knacker', who earned his living by dispatching ailing and unwanted animals, then skinning them and tanning their hides. Rudolph suffered from an eye problem that gave him a strange, almost manic appearance: his eyes would spin around, darting uncontrollably this way and that. He grew up introverted and oversensitive... As a young man, he headed for Prague, studying philosophy and languages at the university. His first publication in print was a collection of resoundingly gloomy verses! In fact, this was very much the style of the time - Prague was drenched in melancholy. In 1902 he met Jindra Kopecka (Kaja) and married her in 1905. Visiting Norway just two months after the wedding, tragedy struck. Kaja accidently shot herself. From then on, Rudolph, always sad, became even more gloomy. His books, poems and plays began to reek with melancholy. In 1910, he married an 18 year-old, but the relationship failed, Married for a third time, he began to rebuild his life, helped along by the popular success of The Cunning Little Vixen, which was serialised in Lidove Noviny in 1920.

The editor of Lidove Noviny, Jaromir John, recalled Rudolph as a man who manufactured sadness on purpose...he was physically and emotionally created for self-flagellation. No wonder his co-workers began avoiding him. On 12 January, 1928, the latter wrote a farewell, phrased in his funniest manner, shaped it to the length of his weekly column, put it on his desk and then shot himself in the office. When his third wife,  Olga, was told, she locked the doors, turned on the gas, and also committed suicide. Rudolph left behind a number of books, poems and plays - many still read in Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) - and his children's books are still read with pleasure; none, though, fired the popular imagination as did The Cunning Little Vixen.  First known as Vixen Sharp-Ears, the story appeared roughly twice a week between 7 April and 23 June 1920. People just went crazy over the story...it was published in book form a year later. It has been in print ever since.

There are three translators - Tatiana Firkusnu and Maritza Morgan are both Czech and they prepared a separate literal translation of the novel. Robert T. Jones, an American, based the final English text on their work. The novel was written in the Moravian dialect of Brno, a patois of immense charm but great difficulty even for Czechs! The translators opted for colloquial English throughout.

As for the story itself - it concerns forester Bartos, a hot tempered man who is a regular at the local pub, where he plays bowls and other games mainly with a Reverend Father and the local schoolmaster. After a typical drinking session, the forester falls asleep on his way home. He needs to find an excuse for his tardiness for his wife and creeps up on a young fox family - close enough to grab spoiled little Sharp-Ears. Home they go. Sharp-Ears meets a human cub: how ugly it was! It had only a handful of hairs on its head...the most hideous part of it was its legs: there was not a single good claw on its hind paws. With the human cub came another small animal - and thus Sharp-Ears meets Catcher, a little dachshund, who becomes the vixen's friend. It wasn't long before Sharp-Ears felt like the mistress of the house. She had realised that Catcher was useless and totally green, afraid of humans and a complete coward. Not surprising, as the forester regularly whipped him.

Inevitably, Sharp-Ears tries to escape back to the wild. Her first effort fails and she is tied to the dog kennel. Interspersed with all this are roosters and hens 'talking', a mosquito soliloquising - which doesn't really 'work' for this reader. Sharp-Ears' second attempt at freedom succeeds. She soon evicts Mr. Badger, an elderly bachelor, officious bureaucrat of the forest realm, now in retirement, from his sett. To describe the rest of the story in any detail is not for this short Blog. Suffice it to say, there are touches of morbid humour - as when the forester mistakenly shoots his only pig, much to the chagrin of his curmudgeonly wife; when the priest staggers home drunk; and the description of the poacher Martinek. There is a strong element of anti-clericalism and the author is clearly on the side of the animals rather than the humans. Sharp-Ears escapes on one occasion by losing her tail in a gin trap. She finds fulfilment when she meets a roguish male fox, Golden-Stripe and, presumably lives happily ever after.

Golden-Stripe probably sums up the author's own views here:

You think that humans aren't just like us when they're in love? They're worse. They do everything for the sake of appearances, to put on a show, but reality they fight and quarrel like starlings when they've had their fill of love.

People are nothing but pride, lies, and deceit. Not one single vixen can be as deceitful as a young girl tossing up her short skirts. No fox is as immoral as a handsome man-about-town. Man...likes to keep running into his victim so he can degrade her, grind her into the mud, and then walk over her.

The lay-out and general production of the book is excellent - by the Bodley Head - with a particularly striking dust wrapper, but I must confess I wasn't keen on some of Maurice Sendak's illustrations. They were bright and often amusing, however they were the original designs and watercolours that the artist created for the New York City Opera production of Janacek's opera, which had its first performance on 9th April 1981. 

The schoolmaster and the little priest

It meant that, amongst some lovely watercolours of woodlands and village life, of genuine animals and people, there were too many of humans 'inhabiting' animal costumes. 

Golden-Stripe

Frances Pitt's 'Toby, My Fox-cub' 1929

 

Arrowsmith first edition - 1929

Another Fox story; in fact, a third one from Frances Pitt, who wrote Tommy White-Tag (see my Blog for 21st February this year) and Scotty. The Adventures of a Highland Fox (my Blog of 24 December 2024). It is Volume Nine in The Library of Animal Friends, which, so far, were stories by Pitt and Cherry Kearton. The book was clearly written for children, above all to encourage them to learn about and respect wild life.

Pitt saved two cubs - the mother and four other cubs had gone where all creatures must go sooner or later. The surviving cubs were but two days old, very small, blind and perfectly helpless. With their snub noses, blunt muzzles, their short, woolly, dark coats, little rat tails, no longer than my little finger, and small ears flat to their heads, they could only be compared to very very young kittens. One of the attractions of the book is the black and white photographs taken by the author; the one opposite the text just quoted shows she had described them accurately.

The author does not really explain why a female cub is called Toby (it looked like the drawing of Toby-dog on the cover of Punch), but does say she was the most mischievous little imp that ever ran on four legs. Unfortunately, her brother Jack did not survive - he refused to suck, and seemed listless. His little nose was dry, instead of soft and damp... Pitt goes into some detail as to how she fed the cubs - at regular three-hours intervals with the warmest, richest cow's milk - and kept them warm next to a hot water bottle. Toby was not interested in eating rabbit, until Pitt gave her a piece with fur attached! Then, there was no stopping her!

The next few chapters follow the cub growing up, in size but not in goodness. She devoured Pitt's father's bootlaces and was a self-contained  little creature, independent, and as disobedient as any spoilt child that ever walked. She had no notion of coming because she was called. She was more like a cat in her ways than a dog. The two pet dogs endured Toby rather than enjoyed her company. She took greatest delight in teasing and annoying them. She loved to be petted, especially by the author's mother. Once her timidity of venturing outside left her, she was everywhere. There was a standoff with the large black-and-white tom cat, Spitfire, who had to be chained to a dog-kennel due to long time misbehaviours! Like all bullies, the latter soon found a mistress who proceeded to tease her remorselessly.

Of course, the inevitable (rightly) happens. In two chapters - The Call of the Wild and Toby in the Wild Woods - the young vixen leaves the comforts of her artificial home for the natural environment of her species. Frances Pitt cleverly uses odd scraps of evidence - half eaten rabbits, foot/paw prints, fox fur on barbed wire fencing, to surmise what and where Toby was up to.  Yes, Toby was handicapped, badly handicapped, by her upbringing, but every moment more and wild impulses welled up within her. The final chapter - Were they Toby's Cubs? - describes the author catching sight of a fox cub: his sandy jacket showed against the greenery, as did his keen, alert little face, delicate muzzle and pricked ears; so like, so exactly like Toby at the same age! Was he indeed Toby's cub? The author certainly wanted to think so; and, we the reader, probably do too.

Nancy Goldstone's 'The Rebel Empresses' 2025

Weidenfeld & Nicolson first edition - 2025

I was delighted when I read about this dual-biography in the 15th March issue of The Spectator, as it concerned two of my favourite 19th century women! Readers - I immediately ordered it. Nancy Goldstone has produced a free-flowing, though detailed, 'popular' account of Eugénie of France and Elisabeth of Austria - although the former was Spanish and the latter Bavarian.

Goldstone's book is more than a dual biography - it is a wonderful gallop through the second half of the 19th century, focussing obviously on the French and Austrian Empires, but also bringing in the whirlwind of ever-changing relationships between the old-established and newly-emerging political entities. We read of how the wily Count Cavour draws Napoleon III into the enticing web of inter-state rivalry in what was to become Italy (ironically the same year that the Emperor lost his throne); of the doomed attempt of the last King of the Two Sicilies, Francis II, and his wife Maria Sophie of Bavaria (younger sister of Elisabeth) to hang on to their throne; the rampaging meteor that was Garibaldi, upsetting everyone's applecart; the so-called mad King Ludwig II of Bavaria (nicknamed the Swan King or Fairy Tale King), Elisabeth's cousin, who apparently took his own life; Count Gyula Andrassy of Hungary, a firm supporter of Elisabeth and both fervent believers in Hungary; Prosper Mérimée, the French dramatist and short story writer and confidant of Eugénie, who died in 1870, the same year the Third Empire collapsed; the wily and ruthless Bismarck and his near-puppet King of Prussia, soon to become Emperor of Germany (proclaimed at Versailles!). All these important figures are brought to life by the author, who shows a sure grasp of her source material. Queen Victoria hovers on the sidelines, ready finally to give refuge to Napoleon III and his family. All three are buried in England. Tragedy looms large throughout: the mad escapade of the Archduke Maximilian, sent to Mexico as Emperor, only to be executed, whilst his wife Charlotte returned to Europe to end her days in an asylum. The tragic episode of Mayerling, where Crown Prince Rudolph first shot his teenage lover, Mary Vetsera, and then himself. It marked the Empress Elisabeth for the rest of her life. The equal devastation for the Empress Eugénie, whose son, the Prince Imperial, was killed in a Zulu ambush in 1879. 

Other biographies of Elisabeth, such as Brigitte Harman's The Reluctant Empress (1982) and Andrew Sinclair's Death by Fame (1998) are more measured in their approach, certainly on occasions more critical. Sinclair argued that the Empress never counted the costs of her caprice...she took for granted the subsidy of everything she wanted to do, even though it flouted the traditions of her paymaster. His forbearance was her good fortune and the condition of her rebellion.  Elisabeth is portrayed as a narcissist, her 'beauty' condemning her to a lifetime of trying to stem the tide of aging. Her self-confidence increased in the 1860s due mainly from the circumstance of her increasingly more striking beauty. It turned her into a worldwide celebrity. At 5' 71/2", she was taller than the Emperor; her weight rarely varied throughout her life - 110 lbs; her waist was an incredibly tiny 191/2". In 1864, the American envoy to Vienna wrote home: The Empress is a wonder of beauty - tall, beautifully formed, with a profusion of bright brown hair, a low Greek forehead, gentle eyes, very red lips, a sweet smile, a low musical voice, a manner partly timid, partly gracious. Of course, this reputation became more burdensome the more it grew and, especially, as she aged.

Elisabeth simply refused to conform (hence Goldstone's title). She did not play the devoted wife; accept the  need for the constant presence of a mother (she must share a portion of blame for her son Rudolph's suicide); nor the role of a principal figurehead in the Austrian Empire. She insisted on her rights as an individual - and she prevailed. That her self-realisation did not make her happy is the tragedy of her life. She was obsessed with her hair and the expense of caring for it huge. It took nearly three hours each day to achieve what she wanted. The older Elisabeth grew, the more strenuous became her struggle to keep her looks. Hours of daily exercise, constant diets; nightly face masks (raw veal, strawberries!) and warm olive-oil baths; damp cloths over her hips to maintain her slenderness; and drinking a mixture of five or six egg whites with salt;  all were used to retain her beauty. She had an exercise room installed wherever she lived. She knew her beauty was her power and she used it to fulfil her wishes. It could not last - she was human!

By the late 1890s, Elisabeth was nearing sixty. Prince Alfons Clary-Aldrington, as a small boy, saw Elisabeth in 1896-7: ...this time the Empress did not open her fan! My sister curtseyed, and I made my best bow; she smiled at us in a friendly way - but I was stunned, for I saw a face full of wrinkles, looking as old as the hills.

A major flaw was her bad teeth. Archduchess Sophie had noted and criticised this defect even before Elisabeth's engagement to her son. Thus, from her first day in Vienna, Elisabeth parted her lips as little as possible and her enunciation was soft and indistinct. The actress Rosa Albach-Retty saw Elisabeth in 1898 in a small country inn in Bad Ischl. She was alone at a table. For seconds Elisabeth stared downward, then with her left hand she took out her dentures, held them sideways over the edge of the table, and rinsed them off by pouring a glass of water over them. Then she put them back in her mouth. All this was done with such graceful nonchalance, but most particularly at such lightning speed, that at first I could not believe my eyes.

On finishing Goldstone's account, I found myself having greater sympathy for the Empress Eugénie - reviled by so many of the French simply because she was Spanish but, by and large, doing her very best for her adopted country and would probably have made a better ruler than her husband. As for the Empress Elisabeth, more of a mixed feeling. She hadn't asked to be caught up in the stultifying atmosphere of the backward-looking Viennese court. Her mother-in-law was an absolute dragoon, controlling her daughter-in-law's children from the first; her rigid husband totally under the influence of that mother. In fact, Elisabeth seemingly would have preferred a Republic to an autocratic Empire.

Sic gloria transit mundi.

Other relevant books in my Library include:

Maurice Paléologue - The Tragic Empress (1928) : Harold Kurz - The Empress Eugénie (1964) : David Duff - Eugénie & Napoleon III (1978) : Desmond Seward - Eugénie. The Empress and her Empire (2004)

Brigitte Harman - The Reluctant Empress (1982) and Andrew Sinclair's Death by Fame (1998)                

ed. David Holmes 'A History of Market Harborough' Volume 2 2024

A History of Market Harborough Vol. 2 - 2024

After the excellent standard set by Volume I (see my review in The Local Historian Vol.52 No.4 October 2022), it was with mild trepidation that I awaited the publication of Volume 2, which brings the history of Market Harborough up to the Present. One need not have worried, as it is a worthy successor. Again, it is salutary to note the involvement of so many contributors: there are fourteen individuals responsible for writing the chapters; others loaned photographs or instigated maps, plans, tables and graphs; the proof reading was first-class as was the typesetter and designer. When one adds the knowledgeable support of the County Records Office staff and members of the Museum Service, it is no surprise that this second volume is such an informative and (also thanks to Biddles, the printer and binder) quality production. The Market Harborough and the Bowdens Charity and the Howard Watson Symington Memorial Charity are again to be saluted for funding the entire project. In fact, along with the Grand Union Canal (1809) – “Canals did not increase the pace of life, rather they broadened the scope of opportunity” – and the LNWR and Midland Railway (1850), the factories of W. Symington and R & W.H. Symington (starting humbly with a grocer’s shop in 1827) were mainstays in the steady growth of the market town.

The sequence of Maps, showing the expansion of the town – from that of Samuel Turner in 1776 which highlighted the recently enclosed fields, through the OS maps of 1885, 1920, 1961 and 1968, to the Google Earth views of 2004 and 2021 – are a clear way of understanding the type of growth as well as its extent. Ribbon development, council houses, infilling and the large housing estates all around the town, highlight where the population of c.2,800 in 1800 had expanded to over 25,000 in the present day.

Chapter I, ‘The Development of Market Harborough since 1800’, is a splendid overview. It describes how a small, compact market town developed, due to the emergence not only of canal and railway linked buildings, but also other industrial units, residential developments and public buildings. It highlights the 1990s, when the whole canal basin was redeveloped and the area of water was doubled in size for leisure purposes, with residential apartments surrounding it. It charts the importance of Samuel Symington, who erected a large four-storey, red-brick factory, now converted to apartments. “Few of the many 19th and 20th century purpose-built industrial buildings remain, but none is still in industrial use, all having been adapted for other uses or demolished.” A salient point is made that, although in 220 years Harborough’s and the Bowdens’ population increased almost tenfold, its area increased a hundredfold. “Its growth reflects that of many small market towns.”

Further chapters concentrate on the growth of retail – most retailers became primarily sellers of goods made by others – and town improvement schemes: the overcrowded residential yards of the early 19th century, which housed many of the working class, were gradually demolished or converted for storage or into workshops; local government and public services; health and educational provision; the religious make-up and buildings of the town (the Congregationalists were the largest non-conformist group); more on the canal and railway effects are added to by addressing the development of the road system – such as the 1992 bypass diverting the busy A6 and the 1994 opening of the A14, which removed much of the east-west traffic. Recreational pursuits are well covered, showing how, from the mid-1840s onwards, cricket, football, tennis, golf, hockey and rugby clubs were established. In 1893 the Market Harborough Choral Society was founded, followed five years later by the Operatic Society.

There are other interesting chapters on ‘Town Life in War Time’, looking at the effect of the Napoleonic, Crimean, Boer and the two World Wars on the town’s life; on ‘Changes in Farming Practice’; and a long account of ‘Industrial Harborough’. The latter goes into some detail on the importance of W. Symington & Co. William Symington opened a business in 1827 from a small warehouse in Adam and Eve Street, selling mainly tea. As the business prospered, he added coffee and groceries; then, in 1850, he purchased land and buildings in Springfield Street in 1850. Here he patented a method of ddrying peas and barley, which was then turned into flour so it could form the basis of a soup. Patents were taken out on ‘Roasting and Treating Coffee’ Buildings were built or extended. In 1882, the company won a Gold Medal at the New Zealand Exhibition. In 1901, the company was commissioned to supply Pea Soup and Pea Flour for Captain Robert Scott’s first expedition to the Antarctic. Around 1919, the company branched out into an important catering business. The 1930s saw the introduction of canned soups and ready meals in a can. However, the company was taken over in 1969 by J. Lyons & Co. and, then in 1980, by Golden Wonder and its sister company HP Foods. The factories in Market Harborough were closed in 1996. There is an equally interesting section on the R. & W.H. Symington & Co business, where the first mechanised corset factory was born. The more casual fashion after the Second World War led to the demise of the corset and by the mid-1960s Symington’s factories were closing. The company finally shut down in 1990. Sic transit gloria mundi. The chapter has some fine colour illustrations.

The final chapter deals with ‘Some Notable People Associated with Harborough’. Living in Melbourne, Derbyshire myself, I was particularly pleased to read the account of Thomas Cook, who was born here in 1808. I hadn’t realised he lived in Harborough between 1832 and 1841. He had a shop in Adam and Eve Street, signing ‘The Pledge’ to forsake alcoholic drink, preaching the benefits of temperance locally. The many tavern owners were not impressed and his shop window was smashed on more than one occasion. He moved to Leicester in September 1841. Another ‘Notable’ is Martin Johnson, who lived in the town from the age of seven and was educated there. Captain of the English Rugby team from 1999, he led them to victory at the World Cup in 2003.

Once again, there is the most useful Time Line – which has a few additions from that of Volume 1 – and detailed Bibliography. This time, there is a separate ‘Sources’ section, which links the list of material such as Primary Sources, Reports, Journals, Directories, Newspapers and Web sites, directly to the relevant chapters. I ended my previous Review, “I look forward to the second volume”. It was well worth the wait. It is noteworthy, but not surprising, that Volume 1 has been reprinted this year.

ed. Len Holden 'A History of Market Harborough' Volume 1 2022

A History of Market Harborough Vol. 1 - 2022

Up until the seventeenth century, Harborough ceded first place to Great Bowden. The latter had grown up as a natural rural community, on the main route from Northampton to Leicester. Unlike Bowden, Harborough is not mentioned in Domesday Book, but was a small part of the Royal Manor of Great Bowden and was established as a ‘new town’ in the 12th century. It did not simply evolve but was the result of a concerted and deliberate action to increase trade. The first reference to Harborough occurs in 1153, where it is recorded as Hauerberg (meaning Oat Hill). Evidence of a market is found in the Pipe Rolls of 1203, whilst information from the 1381 tax returns suggests a population of at least 270 with a poll tax of £7 14s, compared with Great Bowden’s over 330 and £10 7s. By now it was apparent that Great Bowden remained a farming community whilst Harborough was developing trade and commercial occupations.

Some seventy pages and ten chapters deal with Harborough in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It only overtook Great Bowden as the main settlement in the Tudor period. Reference is made to the effect of John Wycliffe and the later Reformation; to the muted continuance of Roman Catholicism in the area; to the emergence of Harborough parish and the local administrators, such as churchwardens, constables and overseers of the highways and the poor; to the effects of enclosure – such as rioting in protest – and other agricultural changes. Meanwhile trade steadily increased, encouraged by markets and fairs. Cutlers, fishmongers, ironmongers, grocers, haberdashers, flaxmen and shoe-makers are all recorded as having attended. The Civil War affected the town, particularly in the prelude to the Battle of Naseby, when a temporary Royalist H.Q. was established at the King’s Head Inn. After the battle, Cromwell stayed a night at The Bell Inn.

Chapter Fourteen rightly pinpoints the mid-18th century as a key turning point for the town. ‘The story of Harborough particularly from the middle of the 18th century is the story of a road…it was the improvements to this road (the old A6) by means of turnpikes that enabled Harborough to grow from a small provincial community into a thriving coaching town with its attendant trades’. Harborough became an important thoroughfare due to the string of market towns between it and Northampton. The following chapter details those vital improvements – the rebuilding of bridges, the lucrative mail service; the importance of the coaching inns in the town, such as the Angel, Three Swans, King’s Head and others. From an estimated population of 720 in 1670, the first national census in 1801 recorded a population of 1716. A further stimulus occurred in 1810, with the coming of the canal, even if it was merely an arm of the main Grand Union. Increasing affluence saw brick, stone and slate gradually replacing the old wooden edifices. A spate of fine Georgian buildings were erected, such as The Manor House, Welland House and Brooke House. The Old Town Hall, built by the Lord of the Manor, dates from 1788. The 18th century also saw the nonconformist churches joining the mainstream of the town’s life, particularly the Baptists and Wesleyan Methodists. John Wesley visited Harborough on several occasions.

A major key to the success of this publication can surely be seen in the List of Contributors. This contains individuals who are keen local historians and researchers who not only ‘know’ the immediate area but are able to place it in the context of the county of Leicestershire and beyond. This has led to a collection of fascinating and well-researched chapters on subjects such as the archaeology of the area, where field walking and excavation continues to inform understanding; there is plenty of evidence of both Iron Age and Roman settlement, but minimal Anglo-Saxon. There is little archaeological evidence from the centre of Harborough itself. The chapter on the later medieval period gives useful information on shires and their personnel and manors. There are some individualistic chapters – Agnes Bowker’s Cat and Witchcraft; Anthony Jenkinson, Tudor merchant Explorer; prominent people in the 18th century, such as the Moore and Allen families, Samuel and Rowland Rouse and Stephen Addington – which add to the narrative. A particularly interesting account is given of the Old Grammar School which, as Bob Hakewill writes, has come to symbolise Harborough’s heritage and history.

Each chapter is well supported by a list of books etc. for those wishing for further study. A very useful Time Line and detailed Bibliography are found at the end of the book. There are some excellent colour and black and white photographs, clear plans and maps which are all enhanced by a clean, very readable text (in 11pt Palatino font). The printing and binding by Biddles of King’s Lynn is first-rate. A considerable part of the research was carried out during the Covid 19 pandemic, which either denied, or severely restricted, access to archives held at the various Country Record Offices and even to Harborough’s own Museum. Thus, the Market Harborough Historical Society should be rightly proud of their achievement; the town should be equally proud of their Historical Society. It is important to note the funding support of the Howard Watson Symington Memorial Charity and the Market Harborough and the Bowdens Charity. Local publications depend on such largesse. I have only visited Market Harborough twice. Reading this book has made me want to go there again. I also look forward to the second volume.

Scott Mariani's 'The Pilgrim's Revenge' 2025

Hodder and Stoughton first paperback edition - 2025

Ricardians may have been some of the first to know about Scott Mariani’s change of direction. After thirty highly successful thrillers about the contemporary ex-SAS hero Ben Hope, the author told the Ricardian Bulletin’s editor, Alec Marsh that “thanks to The Tudor Deception I decided I wanted to become a historical author. And so that’s going to happen next: there’s going to be a new series set entirely in medieval times – a crusading series.” He has chosen a period three hundred years before Richard III’s time, which has fascinated novelists from Sir Walter Scott (The Talisman), through Graham Shelby (The Crusader Knights Cycle Series) to Richard Warren Field (The Swords of Faith) and Stewart Binns (Lionheart). 

Mariani bravely enters a crowded if uneven field, but quality will always succeed. Long ago, in 1845, G.H. Lewes, in an article for the Westminster Review, argued that ‘the conjunction of two such elements as history and fiction may be excellent, provided the history be good and the fiction be good’. Mariani has clearly researched the late 12^th century in some detail – from the power politics of the Age to the weaponry available; from the carnage of siege warfare to the treachery of court politics. He has understood and explained the often unpalatable and myriad of reasons for embarking on the quasi-military expeditions to reclaim the Holy Land. He is equally adept at describing the soldier’s equipment of the day – whether the archer’s or the crossbowman’s; the carnage of siege warfare; and the terrifying experience of travelling in 12^th century ships across the Bay of Biscay and through the often malign Mediterranean.

A skill finely honed with his Ben Hope books, enables Mariani to draw together believable and life-like characters, both good and ill, and envelope them in a variety of realistic landscapes. The hero, the young freeman Will Bowman, who pursues the killers of his young wife and unborn child from Oxfordshire to Southampton, to Sicily and Cyprus, is a born leader, adept at both archery and, increasingly, chess. Around him are gathered several other realistic fellow travellers – such as Gabriel O’Carolon and the huge bear-like Samson - whilst the villains of the tale range from the bulky, red-faced crossbowman Osric to Sir Ranulf of Gisland with his retinue of bloodthirsty knights, four of whom had been responsible for the death of Will’s wife and the destruction of his home and livelihood. There are also shrewd pen portraits of the irascible King Richard, his formidable mother Eleanor of Aquitaine and his young bride-to-be, the delicate but steely Berengaria. The untrustworthy Tancred, ‘Monkey King’ of Sicily, and vainglorious Isaac Comnenus of Cyprus, are both given short shrift by King Richard and the author - Mariani sticks closely to the chronicles of the time.

This is an excellent production by the esteemed publisher Hodder and Stoughton. The slightly larger- sized paperback, with decent margins and the striking Perpetua Std typeset, all make reading Mariani’s novel even more of the usual pleasure.

John Grisham's 'The Last Juror' 2004

 

Penguin paperback edition -2023

Before I started this Review, I did something I rarely do - I looked up the book on Amazon and read the 3* reviews there. I am afraid that they all made more or less the same points - and I find myself in agreement with them! Here are some extracts:

O.K., but not wonderful. Boring after Part 1...went downhill with just rubbish of town and school football matches...found it hard work...over long and rather laboured...got a bit tedious...a very good start but the centre of the story wallows in unnecessary  material...pedestrian story line told without conviction...lost its way...

Oh dear - but I concur. If I was being just negative, I would say this was a pot boiler by an author who was still writing interesting, free-flowing stories with plenty of realistic characters, but on this occasion hadn't plotted very well.  Part One certainly stands up to scrutiny, telling the tale of the gruesome rape and murder of a mother of two very young children by a young man, Danny Padgitt, from a notorious local family engaged in multiple criminal activities. They seemingly have the local law and other officials in their pockets (usually through hefty cash handouts and/or brutal intimidation).  This first part takes the story from page 3 to page 248 - half the book's length - and could even stand alone, with an 'unfinished business' ending. Grisham is on top form here and his cast of characters are thoroughly realistic and the tension is slowly built up in a professional way.

If the reader had then skipped to page 353 (Part Three), which deals with Danny Padgitt's release, after less than ten years served (of a 'life' sentence) - thanks to more behind-the-scenes corruption - then we could have puzzled over yet two more murders and reached the satisfying, if slightly unlikely, twist at the end. That would have cut the novel down to a more manageable and tighter story of just under 400 pages. As it is, the massive 504 pages have palled long before the end. For once, it is not the bread in the sandwich, but the 'meat' in the middle which is the problem.

Part Two simply meanders and one is never quite sure of the point of several of the byways. Does Grisham want to focus on the undoubted horror of the near apartheid behaviour of so many whites in the south of the USA in the 1970s? Does he want to analyse the different dogmas and churches that make up 'Protestantism'? Does he want to concentrate on the few characters surrounding the young newspaper proprietor, Joyner William Traynor (soon to be shorted to 'Willie'), and make it also a psychological appraisal of the latter? Frankly the various strands don't really mesh and one could even argue that much of these hundred pages are 'padding'. A pity, as there is the usual Grisham experienced take on the motives of jurors, corruption in high and middle places, and the power of increasing affection (this time between black and white).

Peter Brent's 'Black Nile. Mungo Park and the Search for the Niger' 1977

 

Gordon Cremonesi first edition -  1977

From the fanaticism of Savonarola to that of Mungo Park - two books about obsessives; but very different in intent. The former was all about the purified soul (which did lead him into political storms), the latter about physical endurance and the desire to 'know'. Park was a Lowland Scot, born on 10th September 1771, the third son and seventh child of an industrious farmer. Schooled at Selkirk Grammar School, he went up in 1789 to Edinburgh University to continue medical studies. He travelled down to London in 1791 and met, through his brother-in-law James Dickson, Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society and the leading light in the African Association. The group's interest came to focus on West Africa - the land mass south of the Sahara and north of the Kalahari remained almost totally mysterious. Stories of imperial organisation and steady trade mingled with rumours of religious sacrifices, cannibalism, feud, revolt, Islamic intransigence and tyrannous cruelties. Above all, there was the mystery of the Niger. Previous explorers, such as Major Houghton, had died trying to solve the river's mystery. On 23rd July 1794, a two-man committee of the African Association passed a resolution: That Mr. Mungo Park having offered his Services to the Association as a Geographical Missionary to the interior countries of Africa; and appearing to the Committee to be well qualified for the Undertaking, his offer be accepted.

On 21st June 1795, Park was on the Endeavour when it dropped anchor in the Gambia estuary. The next six chapters deal with the myriad of trials and tribulations he faced, before he landed back at Falmouth on 22nd December 1797. The author makes a pretty good stab at describing the ordeals that Park faced (using as his main source Park's Journal of a Mission to the Interior Parts of Africa, published in 1815) - hunger, sickness, capture by native kings and often facing potential death, beset by Islamic fundamentalism. The man must have had almost superhuman fortitude. He did get to the Niger - near Segu (I found the frontispiece map virtually useless, the biggest debit concerning the book) - I saw with infinite pleasure the great object of my mission - the long sought for majestic Niger, glittering to the morning sun, as broad as the Thames at Westminster, and flowing slowly to the eastward...I lifted up my fervent thanks in prayer to the Great Ruler of all things, for having thus far crowned my endeavours with success. But he had to turn back, still some 250 miles upriver from Timbuctu, another of his aims. The weather had turned and he had virtually nothing left to keep him going. Hostility surrounded him as he made his return.

On his return, he gave his Report to Banks and the African Association, journeyed to Scotland, where he married Alice (Ailie) Anderson on 2nd August 1799. For two years, Park 'vanishes'. He makes friends with Professor Adam Ferguson, Dugald Stewart and Sir Walter Scott. But he is restless, finding his work as a country doctor monotonous. Banks and others had not given up on their dream and by May 1804, Park was convinced he would be returning to Scotland, notwithstanding a wife and by now three children. This second voyage would be very different from the first. What had been a private venture financed by gentlemen, patriotic certainly, but curious above all, had now become an act of state. The France of Napoleon was considered a danger not just in the Channel but everywhere. Britain must 'win' in West Africa!

On 27th April 1805, Park set off again for the Niger, this time with soldiers and others. Now he travelled like a seigneur, a sort of nobleman, with outriders, guides, servants, guards; an entourage. He came like a plenipotentiary, a representative of power, uniforms and muskets behind him; he came, in fact, like a conqueror. The story is one of death, as the band gradually diminished. Nothing would stop Mungo Park now except his own death; every other man in his company might fall or desert, might buckle and collapse and, sweating, die, but he would continue, inexorably committed to what had become the single, particular purpose of his life.  But, by the time he reached the Niger again, (taking 16 weeks, not the planned six), three-quarters of his soldiers had died. Only five were left to make the attempt to follow the Niger's  course; 44 men had marched, happy, indifferent or drunk, from the Gambia estuary eight months before. And then they were down to two. Was it his single-mindedness that finally destroyed Park? Was it his determination not to stop that aroused legitimate hostility in those who lived, at least in part, off the duty they levied from river traffic? The manner of Park's death is still argued over today; that it happened is the only sure fact. The author suggests he died after jumping into the river from his canoe, to escape the hostile natives on the shore. We simply don't know. The news was received by Banks in 1810.

The two key chapters which convey best the author's attitude to Western (white) imperialism are 6. A Necessary Reappraisal and 13. The Colonial Consequence. Here are some extracts from them.

It seems to me that the story of European exploration, particularly in Africa and Asia, was based on a single monstrous assumption: that reality is limited by the powers of Western observation. What the black man or the brown man may have seen, the native of the country and perfectly clear in his witness, was taken to have no validity. An "explorer" was needed, a white man, a stranger - by no means always trained in the skills and technology of scientific observation - whole verification alone could bring this or that natural phenomenon into the orbit of what truly existed.

It was rarely the explorers (Burton was a major exception, as was Stanley, and the unspeakable Speke) who found the men and women among whom they travelled negligible, certainly not until the senseless patriotism and racial self-satisfaction that afflicted whites in the second half of the nineteenth century.

It was not the simple morality of fire-power that persuaded the Western nations of their right to colonise: it was their collective conviction of racial superiority.

Thus we come back to Mungo Park. For in the great body of Africa he was the first, the earliest of those magnificent travellers who, criss-crossing the continent, put on it the stamp of European ownership. In their wake came the men with Bibles and the men with guns, the traders, the educators, the administrators, the whole gallery of exploiters intent on shaping what they found either in their own image or for their own needs. And, of them all, Mungo Park was the first...it is he who carries with him, who represents, that overwhelming Western passion - the desire to know.

Mungo Park carried with him the whole gallery of ideological arrogance and careless self-indulgence that was to mark so much of Europe's dealings with the world.

Explorers were, of course, not typical at all, but rather eccentric, single-minded almost to madness, their ambition often built upon an implacability so extreme that in almost any other context it must have seemed unbearable. They were a tiny and obsessed group, survivors through diplomacy and toughness, their curiosity both meticulous and insatiable.

There was another element in Mungo Park...a romantic heat deep below the controlled surface...it was in this private element, surely, that the roots of his obsession with the Niger lay. He had, one senses, personalised his struggle with that great river. Its secret was its treasure, its own length the guardian dragon, he the knight who would filch that gold and carry it home. Only death would prevent his success. In the end [that passion] overwhelmed him. It drew him from his wife and children, it hurried him on through sickness and disaster, it drove him out on that river in a patched-up canoe with only the tattered remnants of his party about him. Finally, it killed him.

Mungo Park (1771-1806)

Michael de la Bedoyere's 'The Meddlesome Friar' 1957

Collins first edition - 1957

 I have had this book for more years than I can remember, but never read it until I took it on our trip to Tuscany and Florence ten days ago. Visiting the Chiesa San Marco, where Savonarola often preached, and standing in the Piazza della Signoria near the spot where his Bonfires of the Vanities occurred and where he soon after met his own death, gave added poignancy to my reading.

Half way through the book, I had to look up information about the author, Michael de la Bedoyere (1900-1973). I can't say I was surprised to read that he had been educated at Stonyhurst College, had planned to become a Jesuit priest, became editor of the Catholic Herold (1934-1962) and written a biography of St Francis of Assisi (1962).  In other words, a Roman Catholic to his core. It was mildly worrying that he had supported General Franco during the Spanish Civil War. De la Bedoyere almost bends over backwards to put the best possible angle on both Savonarola and the other extraordinary, and opposing, figure - Pope Alexander (Borgia) VI. In his Introduction, he does posit the questions - Was Alexander Borgia as bad as he has been painted? Was Savonarola justified in his holy defiance of the bad pope, and consequently was he as good as he seems?  My (Protestant skewed) answer is Yes, yes and no! It is almost impossible in this godless 21st century, to understand, let alone sympathise with, the religious fanaticism of the Friar, who hurtled pel mell towards his gruesome death.

Born in the self-governing city of Ferrara in 1452, one of four brothers and two sisters, Girolamo Savonarola was a solitary and melancholy boy. By the age of twenty, the path of his future life was well marked - not only would he seek sanctuary, but the passion within him for it must burst sooner or later into ardent expression. Moved by a sermon he heard, he ran away as a pilgrim to Bologna to join the black and white friars of his beloved Aquinas. Early letters to his mother included phrases such as, God flays his children lest they derive hope from earthly things...give yourself over to solitude, spiritual reading and prayer. Hardly a bundle of laughs in the local inn. His superiors sent him on missions to various towns of Northern Italy. The critical sermon of his life, after mainly failures, was preached at San Gimignano, near Siena. He prophesied that (1) the Church should be scourged; (2) that it should afterwards be renewed; and (3) that this should happen soon. His growing fame led Lorenzo de' Medici, ironically, to write to the General of the Dominicans asking that Savonarola be sent to San Marco in Florence. Little by little his audience grew, until he found it necessary to move to the church of San Marco on 1st August, 1489.

Many began to see him as a heaven-sent prophet. From San Marco he moved to the cathedral itself in the Lent of 1491. "Reflect carefully, those of you who are rich, for your punishment will come. Not Florence shall be the name of this city: it will be called but a den of thieves, of vice, of blood." And still they supported him! In 1491, he was elected Prior of San Marco. Lorenzo died; Ferrante of Naples died; Innocent VIII died. All, apparently prophesied by Savonarola. Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia was elected Alexander VI. The author entitles his Part Two: Clash and Martyrdom. It was inevitable that the increasingly fanatical Friar should clash with the worldly, back-sliding pope.

...whenever I went up into the pulpit again, I was unable to contain myself. I could do no other. To speak the Lord's words has been for me a burning fire within my bones and heart. It was unbearable. I could not but speak. I was on fire. I was alight with the spirit of the Lord... (part of his last Sermon in Florence cathedral). Over the next few years, Savonarola, becoming more powerful from his pulpit in Florence, preached ever more fiery sermons against the Church and, in particular, the state of the papacy and Rome. He was in many ways a precursor of Luther and other Protestant leaders, but the difference was he remained wedded to Roman Catholicism. 

In one of his Lenten sermons, he was more vehement than ever: You (the Church) have become a shameless harlot in your lusts. Once you were ashamed of your sins; now you are shameless...O prostitute Church, you have displayed your foulness to the whole world, and you stink to high heaven...

The Church is chock-full of abominations from the head to the souls of the feet, but you do nothing to cure the evil, being content to worship the cause of the evil which defiles it. The Lord is therefore angry and for some time past has left the Church without a Shepherd. I solemnly declare to you in the word of the Lord that this man, Alexander, is no Pope and cannot be held as such...I affirm that he is not even a Christian and that he does believe God to exist, and this scales the height of all faithlessness. (Letter to Kings of France, England, Spain and Hungary)

Though he avoided working out a theology of his position, his attitude amounted in practice to holding that no authority and power can be legitimate, either in Church or State, in the case of anyone who is not in a state of grace, who has not charity, who is not among the saints. He could not last. De La Bedoyere states that Alexander did not at first wish to destroy the Friar, but his patience finally ran out. In February 1498, Savonarola was excommunicated. Swift penalties followed. With two other friars, Fra Silvestro of Florence and Fra Domenico of Pescia, they were condemned to be hanged by a rope and their bodies burnt, that the soul may be separated from the body, in public in and on the Piazza of their high lordships. On 24th May 1498, this sentence was carried out; some of Savonarola's followers succeeded in cheating the authorities who had ordered the ashes to be thrown into the Arno. They gathered together relics of a prophet and a hero. Alexander Borgia died in Rome five years later, his blackened body, hideously corrupted, with his swollen tongue hanging out of his mouth. Divine justice? The Evil of his damned soul? Or just the result of the dangerous heat of a high Roman summer?

Alec Marsh's 'Cut and Run' 2024

Sharpe Books first paperback edition - 2024

 Alec Marsh's novel - the first in a possible series featuring Frank Champion, an invalided out Great War soldier - is the author's best so far. We first meet Frank on the dried-out waterfront at Wivenhoe - on the Essex coast - where the boats lay askew, their masts and idle rigging a confused bird's nest against the cold white sky. Unloading his meagre catch from his boat, the Nancy, he makes his way to the wall of heat and the drum roll of male voices in the local inn, the Rose and Crown. Catching sight of himself in a broken mirror on the wall, he sees the weary, cold eyes of a stranger staring back. I took another slug of the whisky and felt better...my beard was a disgrace - like the hedge of an abandoned house, and dark fish blood streaked my cheeks. When you add the missing lobe of his scarred left ear and the angry cut on his cheek, then clearly Champion has been in the wars, and 'Downbeat' hardly describes the start of the tale! 

Then, an old acquaintance from East Africa, Nathanial Kennedy, appears as Champion makes his way back to the waterfront. It's not good news. Kennedy, now sporting three pips on his army uniform, has a mission - to persuade Champion to return to France. "A young woman was murdered in Béthune last Monday. She was a prostitute. Her body was left in the bandstand in the town's main park. Her throat had been cut...She was twenty." She had worked in the Blue Lamp (the unofficial name given to the brothel for British Army officers; the Red Lamp was frequented by 'other ranks'), so, by implication, it was a British Army officer who was responsible for her murder. Although the last thing Champion wanted to do was return to France, he caves in: "All right. I'll do it." 

 Thus begins a convoluted tale of sexual depravity and skulduggery in high places, sustained by a cast of well-drawn characters, a vibrant sense of time and place which makes it plain that the author has done considerable research on the milieu of Great War of 1916. He has read Alan Clark's The Donkeys, Robert Graves's Goodbye to All That and Lyn Macdonald's 1915: The Death of Innocence, amongst other captivating source material and has successfully immersed himself in the cataclysmic events of the period. The use of the first person singular - which sometimes inhibits the breadth of the canvas - is here particularly effective, as it ensures the sense of immediacy throughout. We see and feel each unveiling of the tale through Champion's eyes.

We meet, with Champion, Madame Lefebvre, proprietress of the Blue Lamp, whose slight overbite gave the impression that she was endeavouring to retain a large boiled sweet in her mouth; Monsieur Chambord, the shady local Mayor of Béthune, who brought the fragrant smell of roasted meat with him, and whose eyes behind the wire spectacles were far from genial; the harassed Police Inspector Catouillart, whose face was dominated by a broad dark moustache that concluded with points like the curved talons of a bird of prey. The chin was lost to a vast waxed tuft, streaked with white, which could also be seen in the long hair that was swept back from the thick, chalky face. This hard-featured Velazquez conquistador... Excellent!; the Eagle, proprietor of the Red Lamp and whose head was tattooed with an image that changed its attitude constantly as the man ate and the sides of his scalp swelled and contracted with his robust mastication.; Bernard Robecq, owner of the Blue Lamp and a thorough-going bastardo; the French General, a Chevalier of the Order of the Legion of Honour, Maximilian Troyon and the English General Risborough also have major parts to play in the unwrapping of the mystery. More I cannot divulge; suffice it to say that all the characters are believable. 

Before Champion has got to grips with the first death, another prostitute, who he has recently talked to, is murdered; a butcher's wife has been aptly slaughtered with a meat cleaver and her British army officer lover, Captain R. Bradbury, seemingly committed suicide. Meanwhile, another prostitute is missing, apart from her arm, recognisable due to a chopped off finger! Very mucky. Champion's pursuit of the truth sees him travel to the very Front (in fact, a return to the horrors from which he had barely escaped with his life the previous year). The chapter dealing with this contains some of the best writing in the novel.

Champion, to his utmost credit, keeps going in pursuit of the truth, which leads to at least one surprise for this reader. Alec Marsh keeps a tight hold on the narrative and on his characters throughout; his writing is taut but free flowing. He does like his similes!

Stewart Binns' 'Anarchy' 2013

 

Penguin paperback edition - 2013

To read this novel felt somewhat of a 'light relief' after the heavy biography of Lord Macaulay. I was a little perturbed to read on the back cover, though, that the two readers singled out to be quoted as praising the book were Lord Sebastian Coe and Alastair Campbell, neither particularly noted for their insights in the literary world.

It's now five days since I finished this novel and I am finding it difficult to recall what I wanted to say! It proves to me that I must Blog as soon as possible after I put a book down.

Stewart Binns certainly has a vivid imagination, backed up with some pretty impressive research. His 'Glossary' at the end of the novel runs to 26 pages and includes an eclectic range of headings, e.g. Bucentaur, Carucate, Onager, Corselet, Futuwwa, Kipchak Bow, Leine, Pugio, Turcopole. No, I hadn't heard of most of them, either! Using these words in the text does not diminish the fine flow of sentences and paragraphs. The whole book has a pleasing momentum, ensuring that the reader wants to know what happens next.

The slightly unusual format - whereby the real life Gilbert Foliot, in turn Abbot of Gloucester (1139), Bishop of Hereford (1148) and Bishop Of London (1163), sends a series of letters from Fulham Palace in 1186-87 to his long-time friend Thibaud de Vermandois, Abbot of Cluny (1180) and Cardinal Bishop of Ostia e Velletri (1184). In the letters, he relates a long story, told to me by a man who you will find intriguing. I first came across him in late June 1139...this first meeting seemed likely to be the only encounter between us, for he was badly wounded and near to death...miraculously, proving my surgeons wrong, Harold of Hereford not only survived but went on to play a significant part in England's future affairs. Eventually, he  returned - but not for almost forty years, in 1176 in fact - and when he did, it was to make his peace with God...

For the next 470 pages, Harold's extraordinary life is written down by Gilbert's monks, to the bishop's dictation, and then sent off to Italy. Perhaps, the title of the book - Anarchy - is a slight misnomer, as it is not until page 282 that we meet up with the Empress Matilda, daughter and heiress of Henry II, and one half of the combatants in what we now (anachronistically) refer to as the (English) Anarchy.

Harold's grandfather was Hereward of Bourne (we know him in the history books as Hereward the Wake), his father Sweyn of Bourne and his mother, Estrith of Melfi, (who, notwithstanding becoming an abbess, had a healthy sexual appetite. She helped to design the presbytery of Norwich cathedral and was commemorated as one of the gargoyles on its vaulted ceiling's bosses - as the naked strumpet over there, cavorting with the Devil!). Harold's parents formed a brotherhood - the Brethren of the Blood of the Talisman - with Prince Edgar (the Atheling) and Robert of Normandy. A secret society, no less! This mixing of real with fictitious people does not jar. Harold later takes on another guise as Robyn of Hode - the author really likes to upset traditional history!

Harold leaves England on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, but stops off at Venice, where he takes service under the Doge in one of the city's ships, the Domenico Contarini.  He travels throughout the Adriatic and to Tripoli and Alexandria, survives a piratical attack off the Dalmatian coast, when the Venetian ship is sunk and eventually returns to Venice's Arsenale. He meets the Doge, the real life Ordelafo Faliero  (1102-1117), who is so impressed that he is made a Captain in his service  and subsequently excels during fierce fighting against the Dalmatian stronghold of Zadar. A new Doge, Domenico Michele (1117-1130) rewards Harold as a Knight of the Serene Republic of Venice and sends him on commission to take his sister Lady Livia Michele to meet up with her betrothed, Roger of Salerno, Regent of Antioch. Reaching the Anatolian coast, they are shipwrecked, but Harold saves Lady Livia. After landing on a forbidding shore, they eventually make their way to Roger, but only after falling in love with other. Harold chivalrously refuses Lady Livia ardent attempts to seduce him, but Roger turns out to be a very naughty boy. Suffice to say, he is worse than naughty to poor Lady Livia, who, in mental anguish, ends up committing suicide by drowning on the way back to Venice.

Incident follows on incident; the novel is almost too packed with them. Harold meets up with the (to be) famous Hugh de Payens (who proves to be even more of a naughty boy than Roger) and becomes one of the original nine crusaders who formed the Knights Templar. Harold quickly becomes disillusioned with Payens and his authoritarianism and cruelty, and hoofs it back to England. Falling foul of the irascible Henry I (who could not forgive the fact that Harold's grandfather had fought against his father, William I), he flees to Normandy. It is then that he meets up with Matilda/Maud, who is not enamoured with her new toy-boy husband Geoffrey. The biggest flight of fancy in the book now occurs. Not only do Harold and Matilda become lovers, but he is the real father of the future Henry II and his younger brothers, William and Geoffrey. And no one ever guessed!

The details of the Anarchy are well covered and pretty accurate, albeit very much from the viewpoint of Matilda's side (her escape in the snow from Oxford castle is particularly atmospheric). Count Geoffrey, Earl Robert of Gloucester, King David of Scotland, Bishop Roger of Salisbury, Brien FitzCount and several other real life figures are well described and given a judicious role in the events. Moreover, the portrayal of King Stephen, his brother Bishop Henry of Winchester, and their supporters are believable. It ends, as we know, with Matilda's failure to become Queen of England, not just Lady of the English, but with the more important successful crowning of her (and Harold's!) son, as King Henry II in 1154.

Final thoughts? It is a thrilling adventure story; almost too jam-packed with incidents. The author, through his mouth piece Foliot, castigates the scandalous early history of the Knights Templar, and the hypocrisy and immorality of the wicked and duplicitous Hugh de Payens. The portrait of the Empress Matilda is compelling.  The minor characters, who I have not mentioned here, also add to the depth of the story-telling.

Robert E. Sullivan's 'Macaulay. The Tragedy of Power ' 2009

 

Harvard University Press first edition - 2009

This biography is certainly not aimed at the 'general reader' and is not for the faint hearted. In 487 densely-packed erudite pages (and a further 90 of Notes), the reader requires stamina, fortitude and, probably, regular incursions to the spirits decanter. I finished the book feeling that the biggest gap between the 19th century elite (and the author - Associate Professor of History and Associate Vice President at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana) and those of the 21st century, is the study and knowledge of the Latin and Greek, the Classical, world - its languages, its thinkers, philosophers, historians, modus vivendi. A classical education once integrated England's leaders intellectually, socially, and ethically. I studied Latin for several years at school - and Greek for a single year! -  but this certainly did not equip me to understand a sizeable chunk of what Professor Sullivan was referring to. Nowadays, in Britain the two languages are rarely taught outside of the public schools, and are as dead as the proverbial Monty Python parrot. This means that a major aspect of Macaulay, his life-blood really, cannot readily be empathised with, or even understood. Sullivan, in his useful Introduction, suggests much of the English-speaking reading world has demoted him from an Eminent Victorian...to a name known only to liberal-arts graduates of a certain age and to students of nineteenth-century culture.

Sullivan provides a valuable sketch of Macaulay's father, Zachary (1768-1838) - a member of the Clapham Sect (a group of mostly rich evangelical Anglicans living in a pious commune), who wanted to impose their morality on the public by abolishing the slave trade and to strangle slavery throughout the empire. They were nurtured and regulated through Bible-reading and prayer. Zachary insisted that his son's pleasing him was the condition for enjoying God's favour: "Unless you are thus docile and obedient, you cannot expect that Jesus Christ shd. love you or give you his blessing." Try that tone in 2025! The younger Macaulay read incessantly as a youngster - before he was seven he produced a compendium of Universal History. His education marked him for the rest of his life - what he studied and how he studied had more in common with the Renaissance, with late antiquity, than with the early 21st century. Studying the classics was inseparable from classical rhetoric. Sullivan charts the increasing distance between father and son, but a distance often skilfully masked by Macaulay. At Cambridge, the latter became a keen competitor, writing Latin epistles and English declamations. For the rest of his life he was more at home as an orator, rarely taking part in, or enjoying, actual debates. He never forgot  the ancients' timeless lesson that "the object of oratory...is not truth but persuasion".

A brief Blog such as this is not the place to chart Thomas Macaulay's life (1800-1859), in all its vicissitudes, but one can pick out some salient pointers: 

• crucially, his family taught him to be Janus-faced...he succeeded in crafting an intricate and winning public face that often belied him. He believed that "morality should be based solely on regard to the well-being of mankind in the present life, to the exclusion of all considerations drawn from belief in God..."
• His Whiggism was accommodating rather than dogmatic, an attitude that eventually made him a bellwether.
• elected as an M.P., Macaulay soon made his name as a compelling orator. Interestingly, he supported religious toleration, not so much for protecting religious minorities, but as a way of subordinating their diversity to the authority and control of the state.
• Tom was permanently celibate. An area which Professor Sullivan tries to unpick is Macaulay's 'incestuous' feelings for his two youngest sisters, Hanna (10 years younger) and Margaret (12 years his junior). Psychologists would have (and have had) a field day. Even accounting for 19th century sentimentality, his amorous language and clear dependence for emotional satisfaction upon the two girls is disturbing. Margaret's early death left him distraught and his subsequent attachment to Hannah and her daughter was intense. 
• His time in India as a legislator (he sailed with Hannah. who met and married Charles Trevelyan there, caused further emotional distress to her brother) was admired but, from a 21st century  viewpoint, deeply disturbing. Natives were "a nest of blackguards", "beggarly Musselmans", "scare-crows". On the other hand, the "brave, proud, and high-spirited race, unaccustomed to defeat, to shame, or to servitude", the English, were "the greatest and most highly civilised people that the world ever saw". And moreover, "a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia". Macaulay argued that it was clear India could not have a free Government, but could have the next best thing - "a firm and impartial despotism".  Whilst in India he created a regimen of reading Greek and Latin "for three or four hours" every morning before breakfast. Macaulay believed that England's imperial mission was civilizing, not Christian.
• Ireland? to many Englishmen, including Macaulay, the indigenous Irish appeared barbarous, perhaps savage, and hence even lower on the scale of civilization than the Indians. There were shades of an ethic of civilizing and imperial extirpation in his views; his attitude to the awful years of the Irish famine make for very uncomfortable reading. Civilizing and progressive slaughter in history amounted to the secular expropriation of Providence. From projecting the eradication of aborigines' languages and literatures, it was a manageable stretch to recommending the eradication of aborigines who resisted the civilization that would uplift future generations. You cannot have omelettes without breaking eggs.
• England's responsibility to extend its superior civilization made conquest a moral imperative to be rewarded with growing prosperity and power. "all nations, civilised and uncivilised,", should know that "wherever an Englishman may wander, he is followed by the eye and guarded by the power of England" (a view soundly endorsed by Palmerston in his foreign policy).
• Of course, the publication of the Lays of Ancient Rome (1842) brought the imperial idea, dressed in toga and sandals and armed with a sword and shield, alive to Macaulay's countrymen. They taught that Rome's invented traditions inspired its citizens to devotion, slaughter and sacrifice - defining modern "ardent patriotism".
• The History of England from the Accession of James II (1848, 1855) was not to be an objective history. His book was the product of a classically trained orator inspired by the art of Thucydides and the other great ancients. Re-reading the ancients during the late 1840s in dread of democratic revolution convinced him to see the past from their vantage and to look down on ordinary people as "politically too insignificant for history". High politics was his story, and political actors were his characters, More than Walter Scott or even the hero-worshiping Thomas Carlyle, Macaulay depicted the powerful movers of great events as the agents of historical change. For Macaulay, England superseded Christianity as the font of national unity. He also wanted to make history lively. English history was the triumph of reason and the state over barbarism and the church, and the unparalleled greatness of England depended on the Revolution of 1688. William III was "the greatest prince that has ever ruled England". Macaulay's disdain for "the multitude" was huge - "Rabble", "Common People", "the vulgar", "Clowns", "Rustics" and "ignorant populace". There was a permanent underclass threatening respectability, property and order and waiting to assault - "the human vermin".
• other aspects worth noticing -  Macaulay hated the Quakers - the dullest, vilest, most absurd of Christian  sects. The History  was unreliable in its transcription of documents (reminds me of Abbot Gasquet!) For Macaulay, the civilizing imperative was integral to modern England's identity and power. It required establishing "the ascendancy which naturally and properly belongs to intellectual superiority", first over the domestic "mob" or "multitude", then over the Celtic fringes, and finally over a global empire, above all over India.

The History was an immediate triumph. The first print run of 3,000 copies was quickly sold out; volumes one and two went through thirteen printings. To most contemporary readers it told a generally accepted story. It is interesting to read that Macaulay was allergic to criticism. When confronted with indisputable factual errors, he corrected them, but grudgingly and surreptitiously and never for the Quakers! More than ever, he respected domination as the precondition of civilization. England's history was a winner's tale. Democracy would enable the poor to plunder the rich and civilization would perish. The Irish were ill-suited to benefit from England's civilizing and imperial mission. The Scots were fit to be anglicized!

During the 1850s Macaulay pioneered in making belief in "perpetual progress" English public doctrine. The 'Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations' vindicated his vision of progress. The Crystal Palace housed "more than 100,000 exhibits...from Britain, its colonies and dependencies, and numerous other countries". Macaulay saw English nationalism as the exhibition's principal column, the outward and visible sign of England's inner strength and progress. He "could hardly help shedding tears" on his last visit.

Near the end of the biography, Sullivan had this perceptive comment to make about his subject: His indifference to his family's ambitions, desires, and well-being captures his emotional consciousness. Neither a psychiatrist nor psychologist, I am unwilling to inflict incompetent theories on someone long dead. Thomas Babington Macaulay understood my subject: his sensibility. Lifelong patterns in his interactions and words - mostly to himself - reveal him as a powerful and ultimately tragic man. His stunted emotional consciousness caused him to live barely attentive to and mostly unconcerned about the people and places in front of him, while his masterful intelligence empowered him to interpret and help shape the English public mind during his nation's century. Macaulay's sensibility also made his life a tragedy. Blind to the humanity he shared even with the unseen thousands whom he recommended killing, he lived as if riveted to a mirror, contemplating himself hopelessly, and finally alone.

Having read this biography, I got the feeling that Professor Sullivan didn't actually like his subject. Admired, was in awe of - yes. But Macaulay's denigration of nearly every other race apart from the English is so antithetical to the present mindset (at least to the majority of thinkers) that it is hard to 'like' the man. However, always study the 'context' of a person's life and times. Macaulay expressed the predominant view of mid-century Victorian England - a firm belief in History as progressive and in England as a civilising power, even greater than that of the ancient world. After this intellectual blockbuster, I am in need of a brain-rest, so I shall turn to a simpler book next!

Merryn Williams' 'A Preface to Hardy' 1993

 

Pearson Education paperback edition - 1993

Some while back - I haven't checked my Blogs, but it was around the time of the infamous 'lockdown' - I re-read a Thomas Hardy novel. At 'A' level, one of our set books for our English Literature paper entitled 'The Novel' was Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Encouraged to read other works by the chosen authors, I found The Woodlanders in the school library, and remember thinking 'I wish this had been the set book'! Hardy is much more to me than his books; I have had several holidays or short breaks in what is now termed 'Hardy Country' - Dorchester is one of my favourite small country towns; the trail from Stinsford, where his heart lies, to  Higher Bockhampton, where he was born, is still by-and-large timeless, with a reading of the author's Under the Greenwood Tree whisking you back nearly two hundred years. Fortuitously, several cinematic versions - of Tess, The Woodlanders, Far from the Madding Crowd and Under the Greenwood Tree - have been pretty faithful to their literary origins.

 

 

 

After purchasing Merryn Williams' little paperback last year in Derby's Oxfam bookshop, I finally got down to reading it. First published in 1976, she brought out this second edition seventeen years' later, as she felt she had originally given too much attention to Hardy's novels at the expense of the rest of his work. This time, Williams has written a new chapter on the short stories and The Dynasts and greatly expanded the one on the poetry. Notwithstanding this, I found the first Part - The Writer and His Setting - the most interesting; but I have always found biography and the 'context' of someone's life more nutritious. There are three chapters in this first Part. Hardy's Life inevitably trod familiar ground for me, but I did find the comments on his time in London (visiting, for instance, the Great Exhibition of 1862 and the Science Museum); his relationship with his cousin Tryphena Sparks; and the influence of Horace Moule, whom Hardy went to see in Cambridge in June 1873; all well worth recalling. I had forgotten that Hardy was struck off the list of the Architectural Association in 1872 for not having paid his subscription! Merryn Williams deals astutely with Hardy's 'middle years', quoting from The Life of Thomas Hardy (although published under his second wife's imprint, actually mainly written by Hardy himself) which got to the nub of a problem which would remain with him until he gave up novel writing - he perceived that he was 'up against' the position of having to carry on his life not as an emotion, but as a scientific game...that hence he would have to look for material [for his fiction] in manners - in ordinary social and fashionable life as other novelists did. Yet he took no interest in manners, but in the substance of life only.

 When The Mayor of Casterbridge came out, reviewers complained that it was gloomy. There were hostile reviews when Tess was published, but most critics were enthusiastic. However, Jude the Obscure was banned from public libraries, and a bishop said he had burned it. Review headlines included 'Jude the Obscene' and 'Hardy the Degenerate'. Although attitudes mellowed during the 20th century, Hardy retained a reputation for pessimism. Ironically, having endured the 2020s with its mindless and pernicious 'cancellation' of any literature that does not fit the ghastly mindset of a too-important and noisy section of the 'intelligentsia' (more often than not the so-called Zoomer generation), one can have a certain empathy with Hardy's increasing disillusionment. 

I found the next two chapters on Hardy the Countryman and Hardy the Victorian particularly interesting. His deep respect for Dorset's traditions and culture (and language) infuses nearly all his work, particularly encapsulated in the delightful Under the Greenwood Tree. I think Williams is right to suggest that Hardy's use of dialect was considerably more subtle and varied than William Barnes', whom the much younger man often turned to for advice. Many of Hardy's greatest novels also reflect the social realities of Dorset in the 19th century - hiring fairs, child labour, the extension of the railway system and the abolition of the Corn Laws. He bitterly regretted the destruction of the class to which he and his parents had belonged. The skilled craftsmen, the shopkeepers and others were being gradually squeezed out by the landowners and larger farmers, who hated their independence. Hardy was not the typical Victorian (if there ever was such a person). He was an agnostic; in many ways a man of the left; and someone who hated war. Throughout his life he was haunted by the suffering of the innocent, particularly of animals. He was influenced by the ideas of Keats and Shelley, of John Stuart Mill and Swinburne. Hardy was in the central agnostic tradition when he denied that there was any such thing as Providence - a force which made everything in the world work towards good.

Part Two: Critical Survey, focused on the Hardy hero and his predicament, on The Mayor of Casterbridge, and the Short Stories and The Dynasts. From reading the extracts from the latter (I have never read the full poem), I tend to concur with Williams that it is generally agreed that its language, with a few exceptions, is commonplace and uninspiring and that it also looks as if he had no gift for blank verse. Williams calls it 'the great white elephant of Hardy studies', remarking that the author seemed to have thought it was his finest achievement, yet few people have read it, those who have agree that much of it is poor and it is unlikely ever to become popular. Another reason for Hardy's pessimism! I much prefer Prose to Poetry and often find it difficult to understand what the latter is going on about. The present Spectator's contributions usually leave me cold! I know it's my failing, not the poets'.