Further Thoughts on Nuns

 My 'interest' in nuns started long before I read Eileen Power's seminal (seminarial?) work. Unlike male monasteries, not many nunneries/female priories survive to any great extent ((even Lacock Abbey, in Wiltshire, has been 'transformed' into a mansion in the 16th and mid-18th centuries, although the retained cloisters are superb), so my youthful meanderings around Britain was spent amongst the ruins of castles and monkish abodes. My Tudors and Stuarts A Level course similarly concentrated on the monks at the Dissolution (as did David Knowles in his important surveys). However, on 28th October 1969, I bought Josephine Bell's Tudor Pilgrimage in the Fontana paperback edition, published the same year. The story of the nine inmates at the fictional St. Mary's Priory at Silfelde-on-Loddon, and their ejection into the turbulent world of the monstrous Henry VIII, is one that I have gone back to on several occasions. I quote from the back of the paperback: Dame Isobel, accused of treason against the King, finds herself the quarry of a witch-hunt; Dame Margery, mis-shapen and feeble-minded, stumbles upon a band of merciless tormentors; Elynor Snow, a reluctant novice, takes to the road with Thomas, the Priory gardener, posing as his wife; Elizabeth Tylney comes face to face with...a man she loved, desired - and feared. Great story - it captured me! I bought the first edition many years later.

                       

                          Geoffrey Bles - 1967                                Fontana Books - 1969

 

In my 'burst' of collecting and reading Muriel Spark novels, over twenty years ago, I purchased the first edition of her The Abbess of Crewe (1974); when I sold most of them subsequently, I retained the USA edition. I can do no better than quote Good Reads from the Internet: An elegant little fable about intrigue, corruption, and electronic surveillance...[it] is set in an English Benedictine convent. Steely and silky Abbess Alexandra (whose aristocratic tastes run to pâté, English poetry, and carpets of "amorous green") has bugged the convent, and rigged her election. But the cat gets out of the bag, and - plunged into scandal - the serene Abbess faces a Vatican inquiry. Watergate (1972-4) anyone?! I tired of Spark's later books (rather as I did of Iris Murdoch's - though The Bell now springs to mind with its convent) but I have kept this one, as well as her The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

The novel which has cast the greatest spell on me has been Sylvia Townsend Warner's The Corner that held Them (1948). It brilliantly describes the chronicles of Oby, a Benedictine convent in Eastern England in the later 14th century. The detail given to the effects of the Black Death, the fall of the convent spire, the Bishop's Visitation, an absconding nun, the squabbles, jealousies, boredoms and pleasure, is the work of sustained historical imagination. I must, I will, read this masterpiece again.

                         

                   The Viking Press - 1974                                   Chatto & Windus - 1948

Two other novels are well worth reading, even if they are very different. Florence Barclay's The White Ladies of Worcester (1917) - the story of a gallant knight, a beautiful nun and a wise bishop - is very much of a period piece and is, perhaps, not for the palates of 21st century readers; but I liked it. Joanne Harris's Holy Fools  (2003) is set in 17th century France and is a harrowing tale of witch trials, religious frenzy and regicide. Juliette's roller-coaster life, both inside and outside a convent, is graphically described. What is there not to like about a story of passion, secrets and murder - bad habits indeed! Told in the first person, one travels with Juliette along a road of trial and tribulation.

                         

                        G. P. Putnam - 1917                                         Doubleday - 2003

Finally, (so far!) two novels written much earlier. The Abbess of Shaftesbury; or the Days of John of Gaunt by Anonymous (1846), I bought just eighteen months ago. I don't think my critical tastes have declined (if they have, I don't care) but, again, I enjoyed the tale set in Shaftesbury (Shaston Abbey) and then Lyddington, Wiltshire - not far from where I used to live. It is strongly anti Roman Catholic and its superstitious and idolatrous practices and the false arguments and vain quibbles whereby those practices were defended. The heroes are an amiable and enlightened disciple of Wickliffe and illustrious martyrs, such as John Huss and Jerome of Prague. Equally fierce in its condemnation of the celibate life is Denis Diderot's The Nun (La Religieuse, 1796), which tells the story of Suzanne Simonin, forced to take the veil and who, stifled by boredom and claustrophobia, starts a lawsuit to obtain release. She falls victim to a licentious Mother Superior... I have yet to read it; can't wait!

                        

                       F & J Rivington - 1846                                       NEL - 1966

Just to show I am not entirely enslaved by the printed page, I also have a small collection of DVDs on the same topic.

 

             

                                

                              Ingrid Bergman as                                         Deborah Kerr as

                      Sister Mary Benedict - 1945                             Sister Clodagh - 1947

 

            

                              Audrey Hepburn as                                   Lilli Palmer as

                               Sister Luke - 1958                             Mother Katharine - 1960

Although Deborah Kerr and Ingrid Bergman both showed their fine acting talents in their respective films, Audrey Hepburn must always come top for me. Her story is an oft-told one - torn between her vocation and the tug of supporting a cause outside the cloister, she finally chooses the latter.

I pass over my DVDs of Sister Act (I and 2) and Nuns on the Run, to maintain a respectful approach to the cloister. However, I end on downward path. This year, I purchased The Nun (2018), fully expecting it to have some semblance to Diderot's novel. The plastic case should have forewarned me, with its graphic evil nun's face and the fact there was a Special Feature 'A New Horror Icon'. I watched maybe twenty minutes, then had to turn it off. Anyone can make a mistake. 

Eileen Power and Medieval Nunneries

 I recently bought a fine copy of Eileen Power's Medieval People in a first printing Penguin, in its dust wrapper. Published in Pelican Books in 1937 as number A19, it had a very heart-warming quotation from Charles Lamb on the title page: 'I counsel thee, shut not thy heart nor thy library'. I also have a copy of the first hardback edition, published by Methuen & Co. in 1924 (alas, without a dust wrapper).

                             Penguin Books - 1937                      Methuen - 1924

 

There are six chapters, each concentrating on various aspects of social life in the Middle Ages and various classes of historical material. Power takes us on a journey through life on a medieval estate (Bodo the French peasant); Venetian trade with the East (Marco Polo and family); English monastic life (Chaucer's Madame Eglentyne); the English wool trade (Thomas Betson); and the cloth industry in East Anglia (Thomas Paycocke). I found all the stories fascinating, learning much and admiring Power's meticulous research and skilful descriptions. I had already bought and read her excellent series of Ford Lectures, delivered at Oxford University in 1939, only a year before her early death, aged just fifty-one.

Moreover, in 2005, (I can't believe it is so long ago) I purchased Maxine Berg's biography of Power.

                                 O .U.P. - 1955 reprint                  Maxine Berg - 1996

Eileen Power, born in 1889, studied at Girton College, Cambridge, and took a First in both parts of the historical tripos. After further study at the University of Paris and the London School of Economics, she became directory of studies in History at Girton (1913-1921). In 1921, she was appointed lecturer in economic history at the LSE, becoming Reader in 1924 and Professor in 1931. She also became involved in Suffrage politics, increasingly researching women's medieval history as well as world history. Her Medieval People was a social history written to spread a message of internationalism. She associated trade and merchants with international connection and peace. She co-wrote children's history books with her sister Rhoda and together they gave BBC schools history broadcasts. I found reading about her life and work that I increasingly admired both - a magnetic and attractive personality ensured her lectures were extremely popular and I quite understood Maxine's Berg's feeling of irritation (even anger?) that she was wrongly overshadowed by the male historians of the time. I did note, however, when recently flicking through G. M. Trevelyan's English Social History, that he dedicated the book to Power: To the memory of Eileen Power economic and social historian. Power was a feminist, but never an aggressive one and was unfairly sidelined for many years after her death, being dismissed by one historian as a writer of a cosy sort of social history, short on the analytical and strong on the picturesque. Well, others, such as Trevelyan himself, have been accused of this - and of writing 'narrative history'. Give me this type of history - literary, readable and, above all, inspiring, rather than the boring analytical, chart/graph obsessed genre,  with footnotes/endnotes taking up more space than the main text. Ugh!

Eileen Power did not live long enough to publish weighty tomes (Power's oeuvre, for all her hard work, was woefully thin on major monographs) - but she did leave behind one magnum opus: Medieval English Nunneries.

               

                                                Cambridge University Press - 1922

She set out to give a general picture of English nunnery life during a definite period, the three centuries before the Dissolution. She relied heavily on Bishops' Visitations, which, inevitably, led to a charge that the picture drawn militated against the nuns, where blame rather than praise was usual. Rather like OFSTED and schools these days. At least, it eschewed the hagiography of Abbot Gasquet and other Roman Catholic apologists. She also used other sources, such as the Archiepiscopal Registers, individual nunnery Account Rolls, Inventories and Cartularies, Wills and Letters. She,  rightly, paid tribute to the work and support of A. Hamilton Thompson and G. G. Coulton. Her book was in the series Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, for which Coulton was the General Editor. I am a great fan of both men and their writings, particularly Coulton, who did a hatchet job on Gasquet and had a trenchant turn of phrase. I must blog on him one day, as I have several of his books.

However, back to Power's work. I pillaged it for my own little booklet on Grace Dieu Priory (2006; 2nd ed. 2016) and my longer Introduction in Grace Dieu Priory Leicestershire 1414-1418: The Draft Account Book of the Treasuresses (2013) and found it compelling reading. With chapters on the Abbesses and Prioresses and the Novices; financial problems; education, both for the nuns themselves and for children of both sexes; and, especially interesting for a voyeur like me, the accounts of nuns escaping the bounds of the convent - Fish out of Water - and their sexual peccadillos - The Old Daunce. Also of great value is her chapter on The Nun in Medieval Literature: using Ancren Riwle and Myroure of Oure Ladye (Syon Nunnery), as well as Langland, Gower and Chaucer. Power ended her survey, aptly enough, with a long quotation from Chaucer on Madame Eglentyne - a masterpiece of humorous observation, sympathetic without being idealised, gently sarcastic without being bitter.

Eileen Power's early death was a great loss to the History profession. She should be placed in the Pantheon with the other great practitioners of her time. 

From Trollope to Gide II

 

 

                      Penguin 1st printing - 1960                   Penguin 1st printing - 1952

I read The Immoralist (1902) nearly at one sitting in Salisbury. What I knew about Gide was really only the blurb on the back of the Penguin. His dates, 1869 to 1951, took in the Third (1870-1940) and Fourth Republics (1946-1958), with the 'gap' for the Second World War. After an irregular and lonely upbringing, he emerged, by 1917, as a prophet to French youth - his unorthodox views were a source of endless debate and attack. He married his cousin in 1892...  The book apparently sold only 200-odd copies in the first few years after its publication; thus, if there was a 'scandal' about its contents it must have been limited. Gide, in his Preface, says I intended to make this book as little an indictment as an apology and took care to pass no judgement.  However, his protagonist, Michel - who recounts his marriage to Marceline; his suffering from tuberculosis;, his recovery aided by his fascination with young Arab boys' bodies; his wife succumbing to the same illness but dying partly through his own selfish and hedonistic neglect of her - surely has the novelist more on his wavelength than against. 

A 1995 critic argued that the book, it would not be entirely unfair to say, is the story of a man whose discovery that he is a pederast transforms him from a prematurely dried-up bookworm into a passionate lover of life. I found reading the novel compelling but threatening, even repellant, in its totally hedonistic self-centredness. As another critic has written, Michel is trying to seduce and convince us...he doesn't so much challenge us as suggest that we might feel the same.

Strangely, Strait is the Gate (1909, although the first novel he wrote) 'troubled' me more. Set mainly in Normandy, it is the story of cousins Jerome and Alissa who, aged 10 and 12 respectively, make a commitment of undying love for each other. Alissa is witness to her mother's infidelity and develops, through religiosity, a barrier to human love. Perversely, she keeps Jerome 'hanging on' and we are drawn in to a deeply sad, even tragic, story. The title comes from St. Luke's strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto to you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able. Taking Pascal's What is not God cannot satisfy my longing and adding the feeling that their love can only be an impediment to Virtue, Alissa rejects Jerome again and again. Only when she dies at the end, with the reading of sections of her Journal which she allowed to survive, does Jerome fully comprehend her behaviour. I read it is a romantic story of doomed love. I could see little romance in her monstrous virtue and felt less sympathy that I should for her almost self-imposed death. In practice, her behaviour is as self-centred, even as cruel, as Michel's in the previous book. Immoralism versus Moralism! If only, Jerome had turned to the more straightforward love of Alissa's younger sister, Juliette, who clearly still loves him as the story closes - another impossible romance.

Between these two novels I read Gide's The Vatican Cellars (1914).

                                                    Penguin 1st printing - 1959)

In between the previous two books I read Gide's The Vatican Cellars. A plus in my mind was the knowledge that the Roman Catholic Church had banned it (along with Gide's other works in 1952 - 5 years after he had won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Who was right?!). Here, at last, I found some humour; delicious satire targeting religion and society's official mores. First we meet Anthime and his wife, Véronique; he is a combative atheist until, one night after damaging a statue of the Virgin Mary, he has a vision and wakes up cured of a long-standing (pardon the pun) pain in his leg. His subsequent saint-like behaviour annoys his religiously-minded wife and family even more than his atheism did.

The book then charts the story of Anthime's brother-in-law, Julius de Baragliol, and, even more importantly, a previously unknown illegitimate half-brother, Lafcadio Wluiki. We meet Julius's sister, a comtesse, who is taken in by a scam engineered by Protos, a school friend of Lafcadio. Protos is part of a racket to con people out of money to rescue the pope who, allegedly, has been kidnapped. The comtesse's husband, the rather weedy Amédée Fleurissoire, sets off to Rome with a large sum of money to help ransom the pope. On the same train is the now well-off Lafcadio who, instantly disliking Amédée, throws him off the train to his death. Through a convoluted process, it is Protos who is put in gaol for the murder and the book ends with Lafcadio, having just slept with Julius's daughter, deciding to turn himself in...or not.

There is the usual Gide depravity but it is spiced with (often sarcastic) humour. He called the novel a sotie - a short satirical play once common in 15th-16trh century France. Sots were fools. The front of the Penguin paperback (see above) states it is A dramatic novel in which Gide works out his idea of the unmotivated crime. Well, the prototypical nihilist, Lafcadio is the right man to commit it.

I just have Gide's autobiography, If it Die (1924 second, public edition), in French Si Le Grain Ne Meurt, to read. Then I shall return to Albert Camus (who I read again en bloc a couple of years ago) and his La Chute (The Fall) of 1956 - I see my Penguin was bought in October 1973 in Swindon, another wilderness.

From Trollope to Gide I

 I love a good Trollope. Well, let me qualify that. I have gained immense satisfaction from the Trollopes I have read: viz. The Barchester series, all six of them, and Dr. Wortle's School. I re-read all of them, in the correct chronological order of course, last year. More recently, I have been dipping into one of the Trollope Society's excellently produced tomes - Anthony Trollope on Clergyman of the Church of England (others I have include A Guide to Trollope by the Geroulds and Barchester Pilgrimage by Ronald A. Knox).

    

           Ronald Knox - 1935                The Geroulds - 1948              A. Trollope -1866

I finished Trollope's Clergymen during an atmospheric long weekend in Salisbury. Our hotel's lawns ran down to the River Avon and we could see, across a field with a few sheep in, the wonderful spire of the cathedral. A few minutes' stroll brought us into the Close and its surrounding Trollopian buildings - a long dip into the Salisbury Museum's marvellous collection, a sneer as I swiftly walked past the late Ted 'Grocer' Heath's 'chateau' and, then, a slow, slow wander inside the cathedral itself.  Memories of my researches into Walter Hungerford for the Richard III Society's Journal in the late 1970s came flooding back as I ambled past two Hungerford table tombs. 

 

                                 The River Avon                         The Rose and Crown

 

            Walter 1st Lord Hungerford d. 1449          Robert Lord Hungerford d. 1459

Then a pause at a memorial to the episcopal father of Chancellor Christopher Wordsworth (1848-1938) a dear friend of John Meade Falkner; another at Richard Jefferies' (1848-1887) wall-mounted memorial and a third at Gilbert Burnet's (1643-1715), Bishop of Salisbury, the great Scottish philosopher and historian. What a wealth of talent, and probable piety, is remembered in this great building. The refreshments and an original Magna Carta were bonuses.

   

                           Christopher Wordsworth                   Richard Jefferies

Gilbert Burnet

We tore ourselves away from Salisbury on the Sunday, to travel the few miles to Winchester, another great cathedral town. The highlight for me was not the cathedral (rather squat and grey, with nothing like the beauty of its sister); or the ruins of Wolvesey Castle (Bishop's Palace) - base of the famous Bishop Henry, brother of King Stephen. We met no Russians, either.

On the way back from the ruins I passed the rather forlorn-looking last domicile of Jane Austen, where she died in 1817. Chawton appears to be the Mecca. No, the highlight was recalling and then entering the superb, if tiny, second-hand book shop in the cathedral close. For once 'biography' didn't mean the vacuous irrelevance of modern pop-singers, 'celebrities', sports-people and other transient nonentities, but proper in-depth studies of the long-dead and history-making people.  I spent a happy half-hour in there, occasionally surreptitiously lowering my mask  to 'de-steam' my glasses. Two hardbacks (on Henry V and Redcoat: The Phantom Fox) joined two well-preserved first printing orange Penguins - novels by André Gide. I had heard of him but never read anything by him. That evening I started on his The Immoralist...

Susanna Gregory's Matthew Bartholomew series

 I have just finished reading The Sanctuary Murders - Susanna Gregory's twenty-fourth chronicle of Matthew Bartholomew. The first of the series - A Plague on both your Houses - was published way back in 1996, I have them both in their first edition paperbacks; and I have the other twenty-two chronicles, neatly side by side, now taking up nearly a whole shelf in my Library.

 

                 Warner Books - 1996                     Sphere paperback - 2020

For the first time since 1996, there was a two-year gap between the penultimate and last books. Is this a sign of Gregory tiring of her creation, or just taking it easy as the years roll by? It is interesting the Michael Arnold's Stryker series, set in the English Civil War, started at a pace - six books in five years. A hiatus has now lasted four years, with no real sign of the seventh tome appearing.

I trawled through some of the reviews on Amazon and came across this one about the first Matthew Bartholomew story: Although this historical mystery is already 23-years-old, it's still as fresh now as it was then...it's also a story where all the characters come vividly to life and where the historical details are wonderfully worked out,,,and not to forget the delightful picturing of the atmospheric surroundings of Cambridge...you'll find two well-drawn maps of Cambridge and of Michaelhouse... In fact, although the map of Cambridge has remained the same in all the books, the one of Michaelhouse disappeared from then on; a pity, as occasionally it would be useful to reacquaint oneself with the college layout (admittedly an imaginary one). 79% of reviewers gave the book a 5 or 4 star (58% the former). It has clearly 'travelled well'. So far 83% of reviewers have given the latest book a 5*. Not a bad track run!

However, the very first review (a mere 2*) did have this to say: I've been reading the Matthew Bartholomew series for many years and, unfortunately, I think the author has run out of ideas. The book was a turgid trip around 14thc Cambridge with no tension or interest, just a desire to reach the last page. It would help if the hero had some kind of love life, but the author just does not like Matthew's bride-to-be, Matilde. In this book she is away from Cambridge, fetching an elderly aunt. In the last few books she is mentioned but rarely puts in an appearance. Whilst never stooping to the epithet 'turgid', I must say there is a ring of truth here. (I find the same in the Thomas Chaloner series, set in Restoration London - Thomas had already lost one wife before the series took off, marries a shrew who also dies, and seems to prefer time spent with spy-masters, retired and active.)  Matthew, the medical tutor, spends more time as the university's corpse examiner, and in the company of the Benedictine monk, the heavy-boned Michael. Inevitably, the characteristics of the two men, and their relationship, become repetitive and I occasionally wanted them to 'hurry up' with their surmising (and wrong alleyways). Gregory undoubtedly does her research, and alludes to it at the end of most of her books, but she perhaps brings too many characters into play at times - a ploy to keep the reader guessing as to who the culprit[s] is.

Another reviewer suggested:  Susanna needs to bring what has been a most admirable series to a conclusion. I shall miss my Cambridge friends but it is time to draw a line. Many thanks Susanna for all the entertainment. Perhaps the suggestion that Matthew will leave Michaelhouse to marry Matilde will bring the curtain down in a final book?

However, I am on the treadmill as a 'series addict' or serial thriller; so will continue to send off for the next Susanna Gregory (Matthew Bartholomew and Thomas Challoner); Sarah Hawkswood (Bradecote and Catchpoll); Michael Arnold (Stryker - if he returns!); and C. J. Sansom (Matthew Shardlake); as well as the thriller writer stable of Scott Mariani (Ben Hope - number 22 comes out in November!) and others such as Sam Bourne, Raymond Khoury and Chris Kuzneski.

A return to Sarah Hawkwood's Historical Mysteries

It is nearly three weeks since I last posted a Blog - the longest gap yet. There are two reasons. First, I have started on the mammoth task of putting my Library on a database. Cleverly, it not only records the author and title, but also the condition (dust wrapper or not?), edition, number of pages, publisher and, very usefully, a 'tag' system whereby books can be grouped under headings: e.g. the West Indies, The Anarchy, Scottish authors. I have reached 1075 inputs - the database can hold 5,000. I will not be putting my Oxford World's Classics series or most of my paperbacks on, so will not get near my actual total of just over 8,000. Scanning, then inputting onto the database, takes up considerable time; but I am enjoying the process, as it reunites me with/reminds me of so many tomes I had forgotten or not browsed in for some years.

The second reason is that I decided to read the remaining four Bradecote and Catchpoll Historical Mystery novels one after the other.

  

 

The four books range over the period October 1143 to June 1144. Sensibly, the timescale is a short one (like the Susanna Gregory Matthew Bartholomew and Thomas Chaloner series), so Sarah Hawkswood can go on ad infinitum. Gregory is on her 24th and 15th books respectively. Hawkswood calls herself a 'wordsmith' and she certainly has the skills to carry a tale forward, coherently and with pace when needed. She is developing the three main characters - Bradecote, Catchpoll and Walkelin - realistically and brings in a host of supporting players effectively enough (e.g. the lord Sheriff, William de Beauchamp). She also pays attention to the passing of the seasons and the resulting problems the weather throws up (the hard winter and frozen River Severn in Hostage to Fortune, for instance). The actual mysteries are well-knit, even if the 'culprit' is often known or guessed early on. The baddies are suitably 'bad' and get their comeuppance. Hawkswood inserts the occasional nod to the Anarchy's greater mortals, such as King Stephen, Matilda and Robert of Gloucester. Her next book in the series - River of Sins - is due out in November and I am looking forward to reading it.

I find such Historical Mystery series good for relaxing and untaxing on the brain.  Susanna Gregory has already been mentioned and I have loyally bought each Matthew Bartholomew and Thomas Chaloner episode, even if they have inevitably become mildly repetitive. I also enjoyed Shona (S.G.) MacLean's four novels (2008-2013) of Alexander Seaton's exploits, mainly set in Aberdeen in the 1620s and 1630s. She appears to have called this series to a halt, to turn to the Captain Damian Seeker series (5 novels 2015-2020), which I have not as yet read. I much enjoyed Ariana Franklin's (aka Diana Norman) series (2007-2010) featuring Adelia Aguilar (England's first anatomist!) set in King Henry II's reign. Alas, the series of only four books ended all too quickly due to the author's death.  Another writer I collected was Candace Robb, whose Owen Archer series (1993-2008), was set mainly in York from 1363 to 1373. Robb seemed to have ended the tales in 2008 but restarted them in 2016 with The Bone Jar. The most recent, A Choir of Crows, set in 1374, was published only last month. I haven't, so far, read any of these later three books. I mentioned in my earlier Blog that I had collected and read Edward Marston's sixteen-volume Nicholas Bracewell series (1988-2006), set in Elizabethan theatre days. All the above are a pleasant way to while away the hours, whether on a recliner in the garden, on a train or plane journey, or on the beach.

Of course, a much 'meatier' series is that of C. J. Sansom's (2003-2018) with the lawyer Matthew Shardlake battling his way through the dangerous times of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary I's reigns. His first book, Dissolution (set in 1537) was a mere 456 pages; his most recent, Tombland (set in 1549), challenges the reader's concentration with 866 pages; admittedly, it includes an Historical Essay, Endnotes and a Bibliography. I still found the story enthralling!

Helen MacInnes' last novel: 'Ride a Pale Horse'

Well, I've reached and read the last of Helen MacInnes's novels; it did not disappoint. Ride a Pale Horse (1984) leaves Robert Renwick, who had figured in the previous three stories, behind and, instead focuses once more on an 'amateur'. As always, the  hero (this time heroine) is an American having to battle with the typical MacInnes 'baddies' - communists from Russia and anarchists. Karen Cornell, is a US journalist sent to Europe for  the Prague Convocation for Peace. The city, still under Russian supervision, is one of MacInnes's favourite settings, used in several of her previous novels. Whilst there, Cornell agrees to help a high-level Czech bureaucrat escape to the West. But is he all that he seems - well, no! She is told to contact a CIA expert, Peter Bristow, once she returns to Washington.

 

                                   First edition - 1984              Fontana paperback - 1986

From then on, the scene switches to another of MacInnes's favourite cities - Rome. The story involves anarchists, bombing, treachery and, of course, murders (assassinations?) The author clearly knew a considerable amount about the workings of the USA Intelligence services, both at home and abroad. Her late husband had certainly worked for British Intelligence during the Second World War and may well have been employed in low-level spying for a considerable time after. However, it is not just her technical know-how (compared with today, the spy's arsenal was still pretty primitive) that makes her stories so compelling. The plots in nearly all the novels are complex and tight; she is strong on character, whether female or male; and her descriptions of European cities and countryside is as good as any travel writer's. As one reviewer has said, members of ordinary professions...become accidentally involved in an espionage plot and find themselves navigating an ominous new geography of duplicity and danger with the hint of death around every shadowy corner...the books followed a formula, but it was one that MacInnes shrewdly made work for her.

The last time I read a Helen MacInnes novel was in 1986, 34 years' ago. From Message from Malaga onwards, I bought the Fontana paperbacks as they came out. Much later on, I collected the original UK hardbacks and have ended up with all of them except The Unconquerable. I haven't read my paperback version again, preferring to see if I can chase down the Harrap hardback. The other three books which I have decided not to re-read are the ones set entirely in the USA, a country I am not really interested in (except for spy stories!) 

What were my favourites this time around? When one has read so many in such a short time, it leaves you mildly confused as to which was which. However, the ones that stuck in my mind, in date not preference order:

 Assignment in Brittany (1942); Friends and Lovers (1948); North from Rome (1958); Decision at Delphi (1961); Prelude to Terror (1978); The Hidden Target (1980); and Cloak of Darkness (1982). But, really, I enjoyed them all. MacInnes was known as The Queen of Spy Writers. The vibrant sense of place, the suspense, the Iron Curtain paranoia all support the hammering home of her message - a hatred of totalitarianism of any sort. Dated? Yes and no. The events are obviously anchored in the 1940s-1980s, but the message is as relevant today as it was then. Putin's Russia, Xi Jinping's China, Kim Jong-Un's North Korea and Ali Khamenei's Iran are just as evil as their Nazi and Cold War predecessors and MacInnes would surely have gripping stories to write about them.