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4.43
| 2,265
| Jan 1950
| 1950
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it was amazing
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“ . . . the bells of all the churches should be rung” This fourth volume in Churchill’s massive six-volume history of the Second World War covers the p “ . . . the bells of all the churches should be rung” This fourth volume in Churchill’s massive six-volume history of the Second World War covers the period from the beginning of 1942, just after Pearl Harbor, to the middle of 1943, with victory in North Africa secured and plans afoot for the invasion of Europe. It is the period which saw the darkest days of the war with defeat after defeat for the Allies, before the turn that would reverse all fortunes and make final victory a matter of when, not if. The Grand Alliance trembles as Stalin demands but does not get the opening of a second front in Europe to draw German fire away from Russia, but steadies and holds firm in face of the common enemy. Theme of the Volume HOW THE POWER OF THE GRAND ALLIANCE BECAME PREPONDERANT This book is even longer than the preceding volumes, and there is no way I can adequately summarise it in a short review, so I’ll doubtless miss as much as I include. It is the usual mix of detailed military information – strategies, troop movements, battles, naval losses – and political analysis, including the relationships between the major players on the Allied side: Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, along with the leaders of the British Dominions, the various military commanders from all nations, and in the latter stages, the leaders of Vichy France. During this period, Churchill travelled extensively, to Washington, Moscow and North Africa, and as always, when he becomes the “man on the spot”, as he himself calls it, his writing rises beyond the mere factual, giving some idea of why he was so successful in his earlier career as a war correspondent. The first half of the book is deeply depressing and harrowing, as defeat follows defeat and losses mount. In the Pacific, Japan is driving all before her, seemingly unstoppable. The US is still underprepared and scrambling to build and train the forces she will need to beat Japan back. In Malaysia, Churchill admits that he believed Singapore was an impregnable fortress, so was stunned when she fell. In Europe, Russia is staggering under the German assault, being driven back closer to Moscow and calling desperately for aid the Allies cannot get through. In India, as fears grow of Japanese invasion, demands for independence are growing and some factions see Japan as preferable to Britain. In Australia, the Prime Minister, John Curtin, wants to pull back the Australian troops serving under Britain’s command to defend Australia from Japanese invasion – a decision that clearly angers and frustrates Churchill, who believes that the real enemy is Germany and that Japan will fall when Germany is defeated. In Britain, a few politicians are questioning Churchill’s tactics and abilities, and forcing him to repeatedly take time out to reassure them in debates or to deal with votes of no confidence, which he consistently wins by huge margins. Churchill too admits that at this point mistakes were made, some his, some his Allies’, some his commanders’, and is somewhat surprised that he has not been removed from power. The strategic weighing of various options is brilliantly written, bringing clarity to what each proposed operation was hoped to gain, the difficulties of putting them into action, which nations favoured which action, and so on. Churchill discusses the operations that never happened as well as the ones that did, and is honest about the arguments he lost as well as those he won. It is in North Africa that Churchill looks to change the trajectory of the war, and his main aim is to get Roosevelt to agree to this and concentrate American strength and manpower there, keeping just enough force in the Pacific to hold Japan from making further advances. Rommel has had success after success against the Allies in the desert, much to Churchill’s frustration given the massive concentration of precious Allied forces there. He is clearly unhappy with General Auchinleck’s performance in the field, feeling that he is overly cautious and that his delays are allowing Rommel to strengthen his grip and set up supply chains. We hear about the changes in the command structure that ended with General Montgomery taking charge of the Eighth Army – an appointment that would prove to be decisive. And finally the US and Britain agree the final shape of Operation “Torch”, planned for October 1942, designed to break German dominance and drive them from North Africa. In August, Churchill detours to Cairo to inspect the troops. It is here that he first makes mention of the “magnificent” 51st Highland Division – my father’s division – who have just arrived in Egypt and will play a leading role in the battle to come – Alamein. Churchill gives a thrilling blow-by-blow account of the battle, complete with several maps and diagrams. He includes contemporaneous first-hand reports from General Alexander, the man in overall charge. The 51st play a glorious role, alongside especially the Australians Churchill had fought so hard to keep, and New Zealand and Indian troops. Churchill’s sheer delight at victory after so many months of humiliation and defeat is palpable. And the “Torch” is lit. From this point on, final victory is never in doubt. Russia has turned the tide on Germany with a magnificent victory at Stalingrad. Japan’s advance has ground to a halt. Vichy France is realising they may have picked the wrong side and some of their leaders are ready to work with the Allies in Africa. But there are still debates about where the Allies should concentrate their forces next. Churchill and Roosevelt meet in Casablanca with other Allied leaders, de Gaulle of the Free French and Giraud, the Vichy leader in North Africa, to plan for 1943. It is here that the demand for Germany’s ‘unconditional surrender’ is announced, that some felt led to the war going on longer than it might otherwise have done. Churchill explains the background to the decision – a decision that he clearly had some doubts about, though he justifies it. Churchill visits Cairo again, and Tripoli, witnessing the Eighth Army formally entering the retaken city, led by the pipers of the 51st. Soon “Torch” has achieved all its aims and the Germans are driven out of North Africa. For the first time since the beginning of the war, Churchill orders that “the bells of all the churches should be rung” to mark this decisive victory. He finishes the volume with a look ahead to next steps, and includes some correspondence between the three Grand Alliance leaders which show how the mood has lifted following the long-awaited victories. Excellent as always, both in terms of historical fact and in understanding the strains and emotions of those who bore the weight of these momentous decisions that resulted in victory, but also in horrific losses. Churchill may concentrate more on the winning but he never fails to tells us of the ultimate price paid by so many, nor to give full recognition and praise to those who endured so much. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 08, 2024
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Mar 29, 2024
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Feb 08, 2024
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1789147581
| 9781789147582
| 1789147581
| 4.00
| 10
| unknown
| Oct 17, 2023
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it was amazing
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Around the world in several millennia… The fact that the Earth is a globe is something we all take for granted today. Mankind has been circumnavigating Around the world in several millennia… The fact that the Earth is a globe is something we all take for granted today. Mankind has been circumnavigating it by sea for hundreds of years, and most of us, even if we haven’t gone all the way round, have gone far enough at some point that we’ve had to change the time on our watches or had to pack clothes for a different temperature zone. And if none of that is proof enough, we have the pictures – the amazing photos taken by astronauts of our beautiful planet seen from space. In this book, James Hannam starts out by showing that, prior to these developments, the idea of the Earth as a globe was counter-intuitive – the physical world as observed by the earliest societies looked and behaved as if it were flat. He sets out to show the leaps of imagination that led early scientists and philosophers to speculate that the world was in fact round, how over the centuries they found proof for their theories, and how their ideas spread from culture to culture. He has two main aims: to claim the credit for Aristotle for being the first to come up with a coherent (if wrong) theory of the Globe; and to show that the medieval European world, including the Catholic church, were fully aware of the Globe, and were not the ignorant, anti-science society they have been portrayed as. Hannam’s style is excellent for readers unfamiliar with the ideas he discusses. He uses simple sentence structures, entirely free of jargon, and without the complex clauses so often beloved by academic writers, but which often make the very act of understanding the text harder than understanding the ideas they are supposed to be explaining. Hannam brings a clarity that makes even difficult questions of science or philosophy easy for the casual reader to follow, and he uses a straightforward timeline that means readers don’t have to know already who came first, the Greeks or the Romans, the Persians or the Babylonians – at every step Hannam will tell us. He assumes almost no knowledge on behalf of his readers, so that everything needed to understand his arguments is included. It is a rare joy to read a factual book that doesn’t require constant flicking to notes or even googling to explain things the highly educated author has incorrectly assumed everyone knows. Hannam is also excellent at sticking to the point – he tells us what we need to know about, for example, Aristotle’s ideas as they relate to the shape of the Earth, but doesn’t give us an additional hundred pages of everything else Aristotle may have thought on every other subject under the sun. The end result of all this is that the book, while packed full of wide-ranging information and complex ideas, is easy to read, understand and digest. Hannam starts by discussing the world views of early societies and it’s intriguing how similar many of them are. In most cases the world is a disc, (in China, it is square, hence “four corners of the earth”) surrounded by either forests, mountains or ocean, based on what the inhabitants saw as the edge of their own territory. In every case, as far as I gathered, the society in question is based at the centre of the world – hubris seems to be a pretty universal human trait! The home of the gods is nearly always in the sky and the underworld is nearly always a bad place. The planets, sun, moon and stars are often gods and there are elaborate stories in many cultures of how they race back each day to their starting point so that they they’re in the right position to start their daily or nightly traverse of the sky. The earth must be flat because if it were a globe the people on the other side would obviously be upside down and fall off. Aristotle’s great breakthrough was to place the centre of a spherical universe in the centre of a globe-shaped earth, so that, from every other point in the universe, that centre would be “down”. Not correct, obviously, but so much closer to what we now take for granted as the workings of gravity. The many implications of this theory include, firstly, that no society therefore is sited at the centre of the earth (some societies struggled more than others to accept this downgrading of importance); and, secondly, that there might indeed be people and societies “down under”. Hannam writes interestingly on the nature of knowledge, and on how the definition of “truth” in a scientific sense has been defined and redefined over time. Plato described knowledge as ‘true belief accompanied by a rational account’ and it’s on this basis that Hannam claims the honour for the theory of the Globe for Aristotle. Now we accept that truth must be based on proven reality, but Hannam shows that that’s a relatively modern definition – unsurprisingly, since it is only in relatively modern times that we have had the scientific ability to prove or disprove such theories. He is equally interesting when he shows how knowledge was disseminated throughout the early world, sometimes through peaceful travel and study of other cultures, but often through war, conquest and empires. His contention is that educated people have known the world is round since the times of the Greeks and Romans, and that this knowledge was never lost – that medieval society, including the Roman Catholic Church, had long learned to adapt religious beliefs to cohabit comfortably with scientific knowledge. In fact, much of the science of the medieval period was done by churchmen and others were the main source of disseminating knowledge across cultures. As always, it’s impossible to cover everything in a factual book in a short review. I found this a fascinating read not just for the central arguments, but for the overview of world societies and how their ideas influenced each other. In a world where ‘truth’ seems to be becoming a disputed commodity, it was also interesting to learn about the philosophies underpinning knowledge and scientific reality. Highly recommended, and, while it’s primarily aimed at adults, I’d say the clarity of the writing means that it would also be a great book for a young person showing an interest in science or history – maybe from about age 14 up. NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Reaktion Books. www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 18, 2023
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Aug 05, 2023
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Jul 18, 2023
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Hardcover
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B01K9011D0
| 4.40
| 2,921
| 1948
| unknown
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it was amazing
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“The unceasing tumult of war…” This third volume in Churchill’s massive six-volume history of the Second World War covers 1941, a kind of transitional “The unceasing tumult of war…” This third volume in Churchill’s massive six-volume history of the Second World War covers 1941, a kind of transitional period during which Britain begins to go on the offensive, taking the war to Germany in the Mediterranean and North Africa; the Battle of the Atlantic, with the rise of the German U-boat and the convoy system which protects the vital supply chain that is keeping the Allied Forces in Europe fed and supplied; Hitler’s attack on the USSR; and finally, as the year ends, the straw that breaks the back of US procrastination and brings them into the war as a combatant – Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. These events mean that by the end of the year a Grand Alliance has been formed, involving some unlikely bedfellows – Great Britain with its Dominions and territories, the US, the USSR and China. There is no way to summarise the historical content of the book in a short review, so I won’t try. As with the preceding volumes, it is a mix of detail on troop movements and supply of equipment, broad discussions of the strategies of both sides in the various theatres, intimate pictures of Churchill’s relations with major players, from his military officers and fellow parliamentarians to world leaders like Roosevelt, Smuts and Stalin, and wonderfully told depictions of dramatic and often tragic events. Now that we are in the thick of war with theatres spread throughout the world, I found it hard work to keep on top of what was happening where, and who was in charge of what, and felt strongly that the book needs more and better maps, especially for those regions of the world where borders and names have changed, often more than once, since Churchill’s time. Google was an indispensable aid! However, a bit like an impressionist painting, as one steps back the detail merges into a marvellously clear picture of an incredibly complex conflict, and illustrates the relative strategic importance of each manoeuvre and every decision. It left me again astonished at how any one man could possibly have kept control of all the competing requirements and demands and my admiration of Churchill and his colleagues, military and civilian, continues to grow. The stress they lived under for so long must have been quite incredible, and though they sometimes made bad decisions, they never made them lightly or carelessly, though it may not always have seemed so to many of those affected by them at the time. As well as explaining what happened, Churchill also occasionally discusses the what-ifs. For example, he makes it clear that had Hitler persevered with his plans for invading Britain rather than turning his attention to the USSR, Britain would have been in trouble, since we were still in the process of building up our forces. He also gives his opinion on some of the strategically smaller but headline-grabbing events of the time, like the arrival of Rudolph Hess in Britain on a one-man mission to negotiate peace. It’s pretty clear Churchill thought Hess mad, and rather regretted that he was incarcerated as a war criminal. Often, in fact, Churchill shows a degree of sympathy for individuals on the other side, and sees them as acting out of patriotism and loyalty – two qualities that make up such a large part of his own character. His desire to win at all costs isn’t driven by hatred, except perhaps for Hitler himself. Similarly he detours to give a concise and very clear background to the situation with Japan, which shows his admiration for them as a people despite his fear of them as an adversary. He shows how from a mediaeval society just a hundred years earlier, Japan had built up an impressive modern Army and Navy, under the tutelage of, ironically, Britain and Germany. Churchill is clear that the Allies expected Japan to attack British and Dutch holdings in the Pacific, and that he wasn't sure even this would bring the US in. But he didn't think the Japanese were mad or suicidal enough to attack American territories. What makes it such an exceptional history is the writer’s personal involvement in every major decision. When Churchill tells a story, it is as thrilling as any adventure novel: for example, his account of the sinking of the Bismarck, a ship that had inflicted massive damage on the British fleet; or deeply moving, like his dramatic account of the Battle of Crete, explaining the decisions made and the huge toll of losses on both sides. And for the first time in this volume we really see the toll, not just on the troops, but on the senior commanders clearly exhausted and suffering from stress, and driven ever on by the relentless Churchill – high-handed, demanding and, yes, also supportive, but perhaps rather blind to how it must have been to see the deaths rather than read about them in reports. He tends to talk of numbers – pawns, not people. Again, perhaps this ability to insulate oneself mentally from the unfolding tragedies is the secret of being a successful war leader – I leave that to the psychologists to argue over. Churchill’s personal courage and willingness to risk his own life in pursuit of victory cannot be doubted, and in my opinion absolves him for expecting so much from those he commanded. He tells of his two voyages across the Atlantic to try to persuade Roosevelt to do more, and he makes these episodes light and entertaining, downplaying the very real threat of the U-boats patrolling the sea. But it’s during the second visit that we see the first real signs of his age and possible physical frailty, and the toll upon him of constant anxiety, when he strains his heart and is forced to rest. Even then, he jokes about Roosevelt and he, both in pyjamas as Churchill lay in bed and Roosevelt sat beside it, discussing strategy! And then he tells of how he flew home – an entertaining account of what was clearly an immensely hazardous journey, justified only by the gathering of hungry U-boats to hunt him on the voyage home. By the end of 1941, Japan has complete mastery of the Pacific, Germany has driven the USSR back hundreds of miles inside its own territory, and U-boats have weakened British dominance in the Mediterranean. But finally America has declared war on Japan, prompting Germany to declare war on the US. Churchill’s overwhelming feeling is one of relief that at last the US will be an active combatant. He is anxious about impending disasters in ’42 but has confidence that the tide will turn in ’43, and, as always, is unwaveringly certain of eventual victory. www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 22, 2023
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May 30, 2023
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Mar 31, 2023
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Paperback
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000850024X
| 9780008500245
| B0BCHKXYTM
| 3.83
| 568
| Mar 30, 2023
| Mar 30, 2023
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it was amazing
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There’s been a murder! In early modern England, crime was often brutal and so were the punishments. The public were fascinated and enthralled by the se There’s been a murder! In early modern England, crime was often brutal and so were the punishments. The public were fascinated and enthralled by the secrets and scandals behind the crimes and turned up in their thousands to watch the resulting executions. Their appetite for true crime was fed by the cheap news pamphlets that sensationalised the stories and whipped up public anger against individuals or sections of society. In this book, Adams uses examples culled from court and coroner records, news sheets and from letters and journals to examine how crimes were dealt with investigatively and through the criminal justice system, and how victims and criminals were perceived by the public. She argues that this period, 1500-1700, saw the beginnings of a secular, scientific approach to investigation, with increasing reliance on physical evidence, influenced by the cultural changes that accompanied the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. And she shows that, while we may no longer gather to watch gruesome public executions, the public fascination with crime and punishment hasn’t altered much in the intervening centuries. As with all the best true crime, the crimes are merely a starting point. Adams uses each of the nine cases to highlight one or more aspects of the justice system and of the society of day. She has clearly researched the period thoroughly and writes very well, moving me more than once to anger or even tears, and using the scant records available to her to build convincing pictures of the people involved. If I have a criticism, it’s that sometimes I felt she perhaps embellished the bare bones a little to improve the storytelling aspects – I wondered more than once how she could have known what someone’s motivation was or how she could be so sure what had happened when she didn’t cite a specific source. But these moments were rare and I never felt she extrapolated unreasonably – I always felt her assumptions, if that’s what they were, were more likely to be true than not. And certainly her storytelling skills made this a fascinating read, humanising the history in a way that makes it more effective than a dry recounting of facts and statistics ever could. There’s so much packed into each of the nine cases that I’m not even going to try to cover it all here. Instead I’ve picked a few examples to try to give a flavour of how Adams tells each story and uses it to take us deep into the culture of the period. Given that the stories cover 200 years, there’s plenty of scope for her to show us some of the changes that were happening, especially with regards to the change from religious to secular approaches to crime. The first story is of John, a young apprentice murdered by his friend Nathaniel so that Nathaniel could rob the shop of John’s master. Adams tells us about Cheapside and the traders who worked there, specialising in luxury goods like gold and silk. She shows how the street names in the surrounding area originated from the various markets held there – Milk Street, Bread Street, etc. The murder is gruesomely told as it was in the pamphlets of the time, and the investigation seems efficient and surprisingly similar to modern investigations, relying on physical clues, witnesses, background checks on suspects, etc. She takes us beyond Nathaniel's conviction to his time in Newgate, describing the appalling conditions in which prisoners were kept. She explains the need for him to be “converted” to satisfy the prevailing religious agenda, and how this was achieved. As she takes us through his eventual confession, guilt and remorse, and his execution by public hanging, Adams shows how the public, again very similar to today, soon lost interest in John, the victim, and became fixated on Nathaniel, the murderer, even feeling sympathy for him as his remorse was reported in the news sheets. Elizabeth was a young girl sent as a maid to a man who repeatedly raped her then threw her out when she became pregnant. Elizabeth was one of the lucky ones – her mother and sister hid her so she was saved from life on the streets. The baby died at birth and she was tried for infanticide, but found innocent. This story is used as a basis to discuss women's vulnerability to their masters, the horrific misogynistic laws around bastardy and infanticide, and early forensic ways of differentiating between stillbirth and infanticide. Adams shows the importance of midwives as expert witnesses at this time in deciding on how the death of a newborn occurred. I found this story particularly heartbreaking despite the fact that Elizabeth was found innocent. The lack of records means we don't know what happened to her in her future life. A couple of the stories involve suicide, and Adams shows the inhumanity of the laws surrounding this subject. Suicide was considered a crime and those found guilty would have their property forfeited, leaving their families destitute. This led desperate families to try to make suicides look like accident or murder in order to avoid forfeiture, and of course this had to be done immediately while the family was still dealing with shock and grief. Forfeiture was not enough for a harsh religiously-influenced state – the body of the suicide would then be desecrated before being buried in an unconsecrated pit, which of course at that time meant no hope of eternal salvation. Adams shows that suicide then, as today, often arose out of depression and mental illness, but she also gives an example of what was thought of as “honourable suicide”, a hangover from the days of chivalry, when a man who had failed in some way, especially in public life, would take his own life. Adams shows that while in general the public strongly disapproved of suicide, honourable suicide often met with a more sympathetic reaction. Baby farms, political crimes, religious mania – these and many more aspects of crime and justice are also covered in this fascinating book. I found every story interesting and felt Adams got a really great balance between facts and the human traumas behind them. One I heartily recommend both to true crime fans, and to people more generally interested in the social and cultural aspects of the early modern period. NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, 4th Estate, via NetGalley. www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 11, 2023
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Apr 22, 2023
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Mar 22, 2023
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Kindle Edition
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1784707465
| 9781784707460
| 1784707465
| 3.93
| 536
| unknown
| Nov 01, 2018
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it was amazing
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Prudence with a purpose… Gordon Brown is the last giant in British politics, last of a long line of Prime Ministers who sought power not so that they c Prudence with a purpose… Gordon Brown is the last giant in British politics, last of a long line of Prime Ministers who sought power not so that they could make a fortune on the lecture circuit, but so that they could change society for the better. Their opinions of what “better” looked like varied, but they all shared a commitment and a passion to leave Britain stronger than they found it. Churchill, Wilson, Thatcher, Blair – love them or hate them, their periods in office were influential well beyond the narrow political sphere, each changing the social fabric of the UK and playing a major role on the world stage. In this memoir, Brown lays out his philosophy for a fairer, more equal society, accepting globalisation as an incontrovertible fact but looking for ways to make it work for the weak as well as the strong, internationalist, and, above all, with the belief that the highest purpose of any politician or government should be to lift children out of poverty and give them the health and educational opportunities to achieve whatever their potential may be. He discusses the policies he put in place to achieve these aims, first as Chancellor, then as Prime Minister, and is as honest about his failures as his successes. He talks about the events, many of them external to the UK or global in nature, that restricted his ability to go at the speed he wished. And he discusses how the job of Prime Minister has changed in the age of 24-hour news where everyone wants a five-second soundbite rather than a considered debate, and where PMs are expected to be the mouthpiece on every policy decision, rather than Cabinet Ministers having responsibility for their own departments. He recognises that this makes the role more Presidential, a change he clearly rues, and that it means that a PM now has to be first and foremost a communicator, even an entertainer, certainly a celebrity, rather than the Chair of a Cabinet of equals. He is honest about his own failings in that respect. In terms of policy, Brown is the politician I have most admired in my lifetime. It was rare for me ever to disagree with his policies, as Chancellor or PM, and his political priorities are mine too. Not too surprising, perhaps, since we both grew up in the same era, in a Scotland which still valued its place in the Union and which had Calvinism embedded into every aspect of life. Equality through education has been a pillar of Scottish ambition for generations – often mistaken as arising from the country’s socialist tendencies, but in reality more complex than that, rooted more in the Reformation than in revolution. As a son of the Manse, Brown is open about his strong religious beliefs and how they formed his political philosophy and have motivated him throughout his life. He is not, however, a proselytiser – for him, faith is personal but the ideals of faith should be universal. And for Brown, universal means looking beyond borders – he believes that rich countries have a duty to developing nations, especially with regards to ensuring universal access to education for all children. This is a cause to which he still devotes himself long after leaving the main political arena. It was also under Brown that the UK first made a legal commitment to reduce carbon emissions, the first major economy to do so, and which changed the debate from “if” to “when” and “how”. The book is very much a political memoir. A reader hoping for juicy gossip about the Blair/Brown saga or salacious tidbits about scandals in Westminster will be disappointed. He starts with a quick run-through of his childhood and education, just enough to give the reader an understanding of the foundations on which his lifetime of service is built. He talks of the injury in his youth that left him partially sighted, and how it to some extent limited his career options and has always been a difficulty he has had to work to overcome. Entering Parliament in 1983, he is fairly brief about the Thatcher years, discussing them only in so far as they led to Brown and Blair developing the political platform which would come to be known as New Labour, or in Blair’s more mystical phrase, the Third Way – a centrist position that attempts to achieve the aims of socialism within a globalised capitalist system. He talks about the famous “deal” the two men made when the then Labour leader John Smith unexpectedly died, that Brown would not stand against Blair for the job of Labour leader but that Blair would hand over to him at some unspecified and frequently disputed point in the future. But though one can metaphorically hear that his teeth are still grinding a little over what he saw as Blair’s refusal to fulfil his part of the deal, he doesn’t dwell on it. He praises Blair’s achievements and recognises his skills as a communicator. To many of us who had waited too long for a Labour government, it seemed they were the ideal combination – Brown with strong roots in the Labour tradition guiding economic and social policy, Blair with the ability to appeal to people who would never have thought of themselves as left-wing, and thus win elections – a thing the leftist purists would do well to remember is essential. The book left me with the impression that Brown still doesn’t fully understand how frustrating many of us found it that their time in office should be marred by a feud over who should be the alpha male. The bulk of the book, however, is given over to a detailed discussion of the policies he put in place, or tried to, as Chancellor and then as PM. For political geeks (like me), this is fascinating and insightful, although there is not much in it that we didn’t already know. He tells us about the impact of "Events, dear boy, events!", such as the terror attacks that followed the US-led invasion of Iraq, the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease and the later global banking crash, on his ability to fulfil his agenda. And he finishes with a kind of manifesto for the future, not so much on policy, but on how democracy in our suddenly unstable Union, still wobbling from the impact of Brexit, needs to renew and strengthen itself if it is to be fit to face an uncertain future. A serious, thoughtful book from a man who still believes that politics can change the world for the better, if we want it to. Both refreshing and depressing to be reminded of how recent it is that we had people of the calibre of Blair and Brown in power, and perhaps a timely call to arms for us to do a better job of picking our future leaders. www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 08, 2023
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Apr 11, 2023
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Jan 26, 2023
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Paperback
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1909912123
| 9781909912120
| B00E2580YW
| 4.25
| 69
| Aug 01, 2009
| Jul 22, 2013
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it was ok
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Scots Wha Hae… Through interviews and extracts from letters, Daniel Gray sets out to pay homage to the Scots who went to fight for the Republican side Scots Wha Hae… Through interviews and extracts from letters, Daniel Gray sets out to pay homage to the Scots who went to fight for the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, as part of the International Brigades. Gray claims, and I have no reason to doubt him, that more Scots per head of population went than from any other country and sets out to show the strength of the Scottish reaction against Franco and fascism. As a Scot, there are many things about the Scottish psyche that annoy me, but two stand out. The first is the habit of too many Scots to always boast about how we’re the best at whatever we do, and especially that we’re “better than England”. (This always seems like such a pathetic boast to me, even assuming it were true, since it comes inevitably from people who despise England – is it such a great boast to be better than a thing you despise? “I smell better than a skunk.” Wouldn’t it be better to be better than something you admire? “I smell better than a rose.” Anyway...) The second is the habit of many Scots to pretend that Scots are homogeneous in their views and, of course, always in agreement with the view of the person making the claim. So you will hear people say things like “Scotland rejects the Union” when in fact 55% of Scots voted to stay in the Union. Or “Scotland is being dragged out of the EU against our will” when in fact 38% of Scots voted to leave the EU. Daniel Gray commits both of these Scottishisms, repeatedly. There is, I think, no doubt that proportionally more Scots went to Spain than from the other countries in the UK. However, as Gray tells us, the total figure was in fact 549. Not an insignificant number, but hardly a mass movement either. He goes on at length about how “Scotland” was totally behind these men and the Republicans generally, while simultaneously admitting to all the individuals and groups who were pro-Franco or neutral, including not only the UK government and the Tory Party, which at that time was the most popular party in Scotland (with 48.9% of the vote in the general election of 1935), but also the Catholic church and, not least, the Labour Party. He makes it clear that most of the men who went were members of or affiliated with the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), an organisation that never rose to being anything more than a small minority group, even in its stronghold of Red Clydeside (simplistically, industrial Glasgow and its surrounds). He constantly goes on about the men going from “Scotland” while simultaneously showing by his own account that most of them went from the areas of Glasgow where the CPGB had most influence. He talks repeatedly about the German and Italian support of Franco, while doing his best to pretend that the CPGB and the Republicans were mostly independent of influence from the Soviet Union. It’s not that there’s no truth in his account. From what I could tell the facts he gives are evidence-based. It’s that there’s far too much skewing of the narrative for this to count as history. It is hagiography, written by a man who clearly shares the political slant of the men and women who supported the Republicans. I would agree that majority opinion in Scotland would probably have been anti-fascist, and certainly it appears there was a lot of fund-raising for the Republican side as well as the people who actually went to fight. But then as now, Scots were not a homogeneous group, being divided between urban and rural, well-off and poor, Catholic and Protestant, Labour and Tory, etc., etc. Had he written a book about Glasgow’s support for the Republicans it might have felt more accurate, since Glasgow, although also not homogeneous, has for over a century been the major centre of left-wing support in Scotland. Despite this, there is some interest in reading the accounts of the men who fought and the women who fund-raised, nursed, campaigned, etc. The book is not particularly well written and some of the chapters are shaky in their focus, often because Gray is distorting the narrative to suit his bias. But I found I learned quite a lot, though often by reading between the lines and resorting to Google to fact-check. I was hoping for a serious history book that would have done more than tell the individual stories of some of the men who went; that would delve into the rise of Communism in some areas of Scotland and would look in an objective way at how wide-spread this was, and equally how wide-spread or otherwise the support for Franco was. This book makes claims about the near-universality of Scottish support for the Republicans, and that may be true, but it doesn’t provide the evidence needed to back up the claim. One last criticism, of the publisher, Luath Press. This is without exception the worst formatted purchased book I have ever read on Kindle. The font size changes randomly from paragraph to paragraph, the captions of pictures are inserted randomly within surrounding text, there are typos and formatting issues throughout. To actually sell a book in this condition is disgraceful and I’d think long and hard before ever buying another book from this publisher. So overall, interesting enough if what you want are anecdotes about the Scots who went to war, but not a serious contribution to the history of the period, and not in any way comparable to the Orwell book it homages in its title. www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com ...more |
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B003XREM7E
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it was amazing
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All the winds that blew... The second volume in Churchill’s massive, Nobel Prize-winning, six-volume history of the Second World War, this one cover All the winds that blew... The second volume in Churchill’s massive, Nobel Prize-winning, six-volume history of the Second World War, this one covers two distinct stages – the fall of France and the Battle of Britain. Churchill gives each volume a theme, and this one seems particularly pointed towards our so-called allies who sat on their hands while Britain stood alone against the mighty German war machine: HOW THE BRITISH PEOPLE Just as in the first volume, this is a wonderful mix of military detail, including many tables showing troop and equipment statistics, and political manoeuvring, as Churchill continued his patient and immensely frustrating attempts to get the US to stand by its supposed allies with something a bit more useful than warm words. Meantime, the rush was on in Britain to intensify munitions manufacture so that the armed forces and especially the air forces would be able to defend against the expected German invasion. We hear much about the many people who were encouraged to use their inventive technical skills to give us any possible military or intelligence edge, and about the support given by the Dominions and Colonies throughout the Empire.. But what makes Churchill such an outstanding Titan in history is that, despite us being forced to stand alone with France fallen and the US procrastinating, despite the massed armies of Hitler gathering on the French shore looking our way, despite the bombs falling devastatingly on our cities night after night, Churchill never considered that we might be defeated. He worked on the assumption that we would win the coming Battle of Britain despite all odds, and so simultaneously made plans for how, our defensive work still ongoing, Britain should move into the offensive stage that would drive Germany and its major ally Italy back, liberating the countries they had invaded and destroying their military might. While all eyes were on the skies above Britain, his gaze was also directed towards Egypt and N. Africa. While all efforts were made to increase production of planes and train pilots to fight the ongoing Battle of Britain, Churchill was also demanding tanks – “Tanks for Africa!” The prize was worthy of the hazard. The arrival of our vanguard on the sea at Buq Buq or thereabouts would cut the communications of three-quarters of Marshal Graziani's army. Attacked by surprise from the rear, they might well be forced as a result of vigorous fighting into mass surrenders. In this case the Italian front would be irretrievably broken. With all their best troops captured or destroyed, no force would be left capable of withstanding a further onslaught, nor could any organised retreat be made to Tripoli along hundreds of miles of coastal road. It is as thrilling as any adventure story, but so much more than that – his foresight and that of the military men and politicians who worked with him in an attitude of mutual determination didn’t simply save Britain from invasion, but kept hope alive that the spirit of democracy and freedom from tyranny would one day rise again across Europe. By the end of this volume the Battle of Britain has been won, the threat of invasion is over, the Axis advance in North Africa has been halted, and America has finally signed up to lend-lease which, if it will still not put American skin in the game, will at least provide (for a fee that Britain will still be paying back sixty years later) equipment and the necessities of life to those who are doing the fighting. And here, at the end of 1940, the writing is already on the wall for the eventual defeat of the Axis powers, though it would be many years and see many millions of deaths before that defeat was final. And now this Britain, and its far-spread association of states and dependencies, which had seemed on the verge of ruin, whose very heart was about to be pierced, had been for fifteen months concentrated upon the war problem, training its men and devoting all its infinitely-varied vitalities to the struggle. With a gasp of astonishment and relief the smaller neutrals and the subjugated states saw that the stars still shone in the sky. Hope, and within it passion, burned anew in the hearts of hundreds of millions of men. The good cause would triumph. Right would not be trampled down. The flag of Freedom, which in this fateful hour was the Union Jack, would still fly in all the winds that blew. www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com ...more |
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1846140862
| 9781846140860
| 1846140862
| 3.94
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| Oct 01, 2020
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it was amazing
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Port Cities and Globalization in the Age of Steam, 1830-1930 In his preface, Darwin explains that he has chosen to look at port cities in the steam age Port Cities and Globalization in the Age of Steam, 1830-1930 In his preface, Darwin explains that he has chosen to look at port cities in the steam age as a way to examine globalisation, which he suggests is not a new phenomenon but one that has happened in waves throughout history, influencing how various societies developed, rose and fell over time. He concentrates on European-led globalisation, and includes the Americas in that since they were connected to and influenced by Europe. However, since the various European empires claimed territory in so much of the world, the book roams widely over the entire globe, showing that the interconnectedness we sometimes think of as “modern” is in fact merely a continuation of historical trends. Darwin starts with a clear explanation of port cities, what differentiates them and how they first developed far back in history. He is excellent at explaining things simply enough for non-specialists to understand, and uses his early chapters to give the relative newcomer to the subject the background knowledge that will help when, in the later chapters, he discusses specific port cities in more detail. So he explains how some ports developed as entrepôts because of their geographical location, making them convenient places for the exchange of goods, while staple ports grew up to facilitate trade in a specific local produce or manufacture, such as wool, spices and, later, rubber, etc. He explains how shipping operated pre-steam when its reliance on trade winds to a large degree determined routes, and how physical restrictions on moving goods and produce across land meant that the hinterland on which a staple port could rely was restricted in size. This background makes it easier to comprehend how revolutionary steam was, enabling ships to make more direct journeys in shorter times, while on land railroad-building could mean the difference between a port’s rise or fall. He also discusses the impact of the building of the Suez canal on port cities, some of which benefited from the new routes available, while others lost their geographical advantage. Steam power brought its own restrictions – the need for coal and, in the case of trains, a fairly flat accessible landscape. While I found all this background informative and useful, the real interest of the book came for me when Darwin reached “modern” times – from the pre-Columbian years of the 15th century, when the European empires were tentatively beginning to reach out across the globe, discovering new worlds to trade with, and sometimes to conquer. Darwin makes it clear, however, that in many cases conquering wasn’t necessary as a means to develop trade, and that often port cities and their hinterlands remained firmly in the control of local magnates although the Europeans largely controlled the transport of goods. The arrival of steam reduced journey times and therefore the costs of travel and of imports and exports, fuelling the industrial growth of western European nations and expanding their imperial reach and ambitions. Darwin quotes a statistic which, while I’m sure it will be correct, I still find quite unbelievable – that “By 1899 all but 2 per cent of the world’s manufactured exports came from nine Western countries.” The massive inflow of raw materials and outflow of finished products created an immense global economy, where catastrophes in one part of the globe could have an impact half a world away. Speed of journey times also meant that it was easier for people to move around the globe, so that colonisers no longer had to spend most of their lives cut off from their home nation, and there was a huge growth in passenger transport as a result. News, too, could travel more quickly, especially with the development of cable, so that the world economy began to react more quickly to events. The latter two-thirds or so of the book takes us around various of the major port cities of the 19th century, giving a more detailed look at how and why they rose, developed and, where relevant, fell. Darwin starts in North America, for example, discussing New Orleans and its growth on the back of the cotton trade underpinned by the slave trade, and later giving way to New York, which had harbourage more suited to the larger ships of the steam age, and which was an entry point for mass immigration as well as produce. Montreal is an example of a port that initially relied primarily on its local hinterland for its staples – fur and lumber – although it gradually extended into the interior by the ambitious building of transcontinental railroads. From North America, Darwin follows the same format for ports in India, Asia and, of course, in Europe itself. Highlights for me were the ports about which I knew least and which seemed most “exotic” to me – Singapore, Calcutta, Shanghai, etc. In each case, Darwin gives an idea of the power structures and economic features of the port, and the culture of those who lived there. He concentrates less on the politics and more on the practicalities of how empires operated as huge trading enterprises, and how the port cities they used for this also acted as melting pots of ideas and cultures, and often too as spreaders of diseases across the globe. Since length restrictions mean that each port only gets a shortish entry, a lot of information is packed into a few pages, and Darwin often assumes that the reader will be aware of the background history, especially of the various empires which claimed ownership of the territories under discussion. For a newcomer to the subject, I’d highly recommend reading Darwin’s own earlier wonderful history of the British Empire, Unfinished Empire , which provided me with most of the background I needed to fully appreciate this more targetted history. (Bookish aside: I spent a lot of time while reading this thinking back to various books I’ve read – Heart of Darkness, The African Queen, etc. – where steam and empire played a part. It occurred to me that this will be a great book to refer back to any time I’m reading a colonial-era novel set in one of these ports, to remind me of the local culture of the time and the port’s place within the history of empire.) A great read – Darwin has the ability given to few historians of making his books eminently readable by the non-historians among us, bringing his subject to life and explaining the context as well as giving us the facts. The book contains many maps of regions, routes and ports which help to clarify the text, and also has illustrations of some of the ports in the form of photographs or drawings from the time. Highly recommended! NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Allen Lane. www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com ...more |
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0299302148
| 9780299302146
| 0299302148
| 4.18
| 150
| Jan 01, 2014
| Dec 04, 2018
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really liked it
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The pragmatic dictator… In their preface, the authors discuss the bias inherent in most biographies and histories of the Franco period and state that t The pragmatic dictator… In their preface, the authors discuss the bias inherent in most biographies and histories of the Franco period and state that they are trying to give a more balanced account, avoiding both hagiography and denunciation. Stanley G Payne is an American historian of modern Spain and European Fascism and I thoroughly enjoyed his The Spanish Civil War which did seem reasonably balanced, although tending slightly to the right. Jesús Palacios, a Spanish essayist and historian, was at one time a member of the Spanish neo-Nazi group CEDADE, which I didn’t know when I acquired the book and which obviously set all kinds of alarm bells ringing over his likely bias. The book follows a linear path through Franco’s long life, starting with his childhood as a member of a family with long ties to the armed services, although usually the Navy. Franco was an unremarkable child and a very youthful entrant to the military academy where he showed no particular outstanding talent. However, once he became an officer in Spanish Morocco he soon showed the organisation and leadership skills that would take him through a series of earned promotions until he became one of the top generals in the army. The authors suggest that he gained the respect of the men with whom he served rather than their affection – he seems to have held himself aloof from much of the social life partly because he was not wealthy at this time, but mainly because he had strong views on morality, inculcated in him by his devout Catholic mother, and which would influence him all his life. He also seems to have remained aloof from politics in these early years, despite the turmoil in the country. Although a monarchist, a Catholic and a conservative, he saw it as his duty to support the democratic government and when the Republicans took power he held back from open opposition while he felt they were staying within the constitution. As one of the younger and more prominent Generals, the conservatives felt his support would be crucial to the success of any attempt to overthrow the Republican government. Franco insisted he would only agree to a military intervention if the government broke down completely or if a Communist revolution took place. But after the assassination of a prominent figure on the Right, in which the Republican security forces were involved, he finally committed and the insurrection began. It’s in this section that the authors begin to show their support for the Right. They are excoriating about some of the atrocities carried out by the Left against innocent people on the Right. The problem is that their bias leaves me wondering about their analysis – were these people innocent? Was the Left behaving worse than the Right? This is the fundamental question about the causes and progress of the Spanish Civil War, and the more I read, the more I feel that a truly unbiased objective account remains to be written. The coverage of the war is not in-depth – the authors’ focus remains exclusively on Franco, as is appropriate in a biography. They discuss briefly the involvement of foreign powers but mostly in terms of Franco’s relationships with Hitler and Mussolini. During the war Franco consolidated his power, thanks to the (lucky?) deaths of a couple of people who may have rivalled him for the top job. By the end he had morphed from being the leader of the military insurrection into full-scale dictatorship, with the consent of the broad spectrum of the victorious Right. The bulk of the book then goes into considerable detail about Franco’s post-war dictatorship. It reminded me of old history books about the Tudors or Stuarts rather than the more modern style of social history – the focus is entirely on Franco and the powerful people in his court, and I got no feeling for what was happening to the people of Spain or how they felt about Franco’s regime. The authors touch on the fact that there was famine and poverty which gradually receded as the world economies recovered from WW2, and they mention occasional attempts by separatist groups or dissidents living abroad to revive the Civil War. But, in general, they don’t give a picture of how Franco resolved (if he did) the problems that led to the war in the first place, such as land ownership, or what happened to the factories that had been taken over by the syndicalists before the war, and so on. I was left with many unanswered questions. What they do give a better picture of is the growing acceptance by the Western powers of Franco’s regime, largely because by that time the Cold War was fully iced and the main enemy was seen to be Communism rather than Fascism. They also suggest that Franco moved away from Fascism quite early in his dictatorship, towards what they call “Catholic corporatism”. Unfortunately, I never fully understood what they meant by this term, perhaps my fault but a clearer explanation would have been helpful. In their conclusion, they suggest that Franco’s rule provided a break between traditional and modern Spain, a long period that allowed tempers to cool and many of the old civil war combatants to die. A growing economy with wealth more fairly spread and better education created a large middle-class, ready for liberal democracy – not Franco’s plan, but a by-product of his policies. They don’t play down the executions and repressions he carried out in the early days, but they suggest that had the Republicans been victorious they’d have been worse, and they point to many other dictatorships that indeed were worse. This seems like a hollow justification to me – if I only murder three people am I morally better than someone who murders four? However, there seems no doubt that Franco’s pragmatism led him to gradually allow a significant degree of liberalisation and, according to the authors, many Spaniards were genuinely sorry when he died. All-in-all, I learned a lot from this about Franco’s life, personality, politics and the powerful people in his court, but rather less about Spain under his rule than I had expected to. Although I felt sure the book was factually accurate, I found it hard to discount the obvious pro-Franco bias and this made me dubious about some of their interpretations. As I’m finding with everything I read about Spain in this period, I feel I now need to read an account with the opposite bias to rebalance the seesaw. It is interesting though that, nearly a century on, historians still appear unable to write objectively about this complex period – that in itself is one of the uniquenesses of Franco and the Spanish Civil War. 3½ stars for me, so rounded up. www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com ...more |
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B083H148PC
| 4.09
| 64,591
| Apr 25, 1938
| Jan 03, 2020
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it was amazing
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One man’s war… Orwell’s memoir of his time as a participant in the Spanish Civil War has the mix of romanticised idealism and hard-nosed realism that h One man’s war… Orwell’s memoir of his time as a participant in the Spanish Civil War has the mix of romanticised idealism and hard-nosed realism that has become embedded as the received mythology of the war in the popular imagination – in Britain, at least. I assume that’s an indication of how influential this book was on forming British opinion at the time and in the years since. Orwell attached himself to POUM, one of the many factions on the left – a Trotskyite grouping opposed, not only to the right whom they were supposed to be fighting, but also to the USSR-backed Communist faction. This division led to fighting on the streets of Barcelona in May of 1937, as a result of which POUM were driven underground by the ascendant Communists. Orwell was present first when POUM were part of the force fighting Franco’s Fascists, and later during the Barcelona May Days, and gives his personal account of both. In the bulk of the memoir there are surprisingly little polemics – he saves the political analysis for the appendices. This makes it a very readable account regardless of whether one agrees with Orwell’s political standpoint or not. In fact, the book is almost entirely about the left – the Fascists are there in the background as the enemy to be beaten, but the political foreground is taken up by the factional infighting on the Republican side. He starts his account with his experiences as an international recruit, driven by his desire to defeat Fascism. He describes the conditions the recruits faced – ill-equipped, incomplete uniforms, a shortage of guns and ammunition. He suggests that his fellow Spanish recruits were motivated like him by an idealistic belief in their cause, and of course there is truth in that. But he’s also honest enough to recognise that the shortages of necessities, including bread, in civilian life drove many to join up simply as a way of getting food. Mothers, he tells us, sent their sons into the army so that they could smuggle bread out to their families. Orwell was horrified by the youth of many of the recruits – boys as young as fourteen or fifteen, with no real idea what they were fighting for. He describes the filth and squalor within the troop quarters, where there was a basic lack of sanitation and a permanent stench of human waste, and rats – lots of rats. But he contrasts this with his enthusiasm for the principles of equality that pertained at this early stage of the war. There were no Sénors, only comrades. Orders, he suggests, were obeyed because the soldiers agreed to them rather than for fear of punishment. Not so on the Fascist side, he tells us, filled with forced conscripts rather than willing volunteers and desperate to desert given the slightest opportunity. I wonder. I am old and cynical and stopped believing long ago that good and evil are ever quite so clear cut, and I had to keep reminding myself that Orwell was just thirty-three when he arrived in Spain – still young enough for his cynicism to be held at bay by his idealism. He tries to defend the left against claims that their military indiscipline led to their repeated defeats, but he failed to convince me of that. In reality, he saw very little fighting. He was positioned in trenches, facing Fascist forces in their own trenches, but neither advancing. He doesn’t make any effort to explain the military course of the war – that’s not his aim. Rather this is a personal description of what it was like to be there. As such, it adds colour, but doesn’t replace reading an actual history. On the one occasion when he is involved in more than a skirmish, he describes very well the mix of fear and bravery that he felt, although with a little of the gung-ho hubris that often pervades British war memoirs. When his division is sent back to Barcelona, he describes the changes in the six months since he was last there. Then it seemed to him a truly socialist city, everyone equal. Now it is already reverting to normal – the rich able to get anything, the poor living with desperate shortages. He recognises himself as one of the wealthy, eating well, able to buy smuggled American cigarettes, etc. Then the left factions start fighting each other, over nothing much, it seems. Orwell himself seems rather disillusioned by this stage, but still believes anything will be better for the workers than a Franco win, with a return to clericalism and a class-ridden society. He makes it clear that he didn’t really understand what was going on in Barcelona at the time – newspapers were either full of propaganda or heavily censored. Back at the front, he is shot through the neck by a sniper. This allows him to see first hand and describe the medical treatment received by the injured – rather better than I’d have expected in truth, and happily he recovers well. Finally released from hospital, he discovers POUM have been suppressed, and some of his friends have been killed or imprisoned, so again this allows him to see the inhumane conditions of prisons, and the complete lack of any pretence of rule of law. He is forced into hiding until the British Consul can arrange for him and his wife to leave Spain. He writes very well about the atmosphere of suspicion, confusion and betrayal, and I found this account of the failure of his cause and his dreams beautifully and movingly written towards the end. The first appendix gives a good summary of the politics on the left – the split between the anarchists, Trotskyists, Stalinists, et al. He is succinct and fairly clear-eyed about the chaotic nature of the left, and also about the journalistic propaganda being used by every faction. The second appendix is a lengthy discussion of what lay behind the factional infighting in Barcelona. His analysis obviously has to be treated with the caution that any participant account should receive, especially one written long before the fog of war had had time to clear. It’s interestingly done, though, with lots of references as to how it was being reported at the time in the leftist press, especially in England. I enjoyed this much more than I expected. Splitting the politics off into the appendices works very well, preventing the human side of the story from getting bogged down in analysis. I was expecting it to be more propagandistic than it is – his honesty gives a very clear picture of his growing disillusion, not with the theories and ideals underpinning the revolution, but with the realities of it. Although I was glad I knew a bit of the background, I didn’t think it was necessary. It could easily be read on its own – it’s more about the experience of participating in a civil war than it is about the rights or wrongs of the cause. An excellent read. www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com ...more |
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Jan 09, 2021
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Kindle Edition
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0300234821
| 9780300234824
| 0300234821
| 4.06
| 225
| unknown
| Nov 10, 2020
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did not like it
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And the point is…? The basic premise of the book seems to be that China’s claims to a 5,000-year-old civilisation are somehow false – propaganda put ab And the point is…? The basic premise of the book seems to be that China’s claims to a 5,000-year-old civilisation are somehow false – propaganda put about by the Chinese Communist Party. Hayton attempts to prove this by a variety of arguments, starting with the undisputed, I assume, fact that the intellectual underpinning of the idea of a Chinese nation-state was absorbed from European ideas in the 19th century. He suggests that since, prior to this, the region had been ruled over for thousands of years by a series of dynasties not all ethnically Chinese in origin, then modern China can’t count these periods as part of a Chinese history. I am therefore deleting Roman Britain, Viking Britain and Norman Britain from our own history and from now on declaring that any attempt to claim Hadrian’s Wall as part of British heritage is propaganda put about by the British Communist Party. Hayton goes on to look at various different facets of Chinese culture and history to bolster up his argument, but I gave up on the book halfway through, since I found the arguments tenuous, shallow and not particularly well laid-out. And, to be honest, I’m not sure if the point is one that it was worth the effort of making. China is a fascinating nation with many facets, good and bad. It does many things I find objectionable, especially in terms of its human rights abuses. But this effort to deny it its claim to its history seems odd. NB I received a free copy of the book without obligation to review from the publisher, Yale University Press via Amazon Vine UK. www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com ...more |
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0141441720
| 9780141441726
| 0141441720
| 4.40
| 9,304
| Jun 01, 1948
| Jan 01, 2005
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it was amazing
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"If necessary, alone..." The first book in Churchill’s massive six-volume history of the Second World War, this covers the period from the signing of t "If necessary, alone..." The first book in Churchill’s massive six-volume history of the Second World War, this covers the period from the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 to the day when Churchill became Prime Minister in May 1940. The series, among his other writings, won Churchill the Nobel Prize for Literature, although the liberal intellectual snobberati like to suggest that that was out of gratitude for his wartime leadership rather than for its literary merits. The snobberati, as usual, are wrong. This is a superbly written account of the period from one man’s viewpoint – that man happening to be one of the handful of important men who decided the fate of the world for the second half of the twentieth century at least. Despite recent attempts at revisionist history, it is still, I think, generally accepted that the conditions that allowed for the rise of Hitler and the Nazis were seeded in the Treaty of Versailles that formally ended the First World War, and then fertilized by the failures of the Allies, mainly the US, France and Britain, to act at an early stage to prevent Germany from re-arming. Exhausted from WW1 and with no appetite for further war, appeasement seemed the easier option, and the old men who ran the world dithered as Hitler began to forge a massive fighting machine and revived German pride and resentment at their treatment by the victors of the 1914-18 war. Churchill was the main opponent of appeasement, arguing consistently that Germany must be dealt with before they became too powerful for the Allies to control. Alas! How different history may have been if only his views had prevailed in the mid-1930s. Of course, in this book Churchill shows that Churchill thinks Churchill was right all along, but I tend to agree with him about that so his bias in his own favour didn’t become an issue. He is remarkably personally generous to those individuals with whom he disagreed, even as he condemns their weakness and failure to act. He tries to give their side of the arguments as fairly as he can, considering that they were proved wrong time and time again. But he is pretty brutal about failures of the national policies of the WW1 allies, especially the US’s self-interested and isolationist position of neutrality. He points out that the Allies reluctantly agreed to Wilson’s League of Nations after WW1, only for the American government then to refuse to ratify it, immediately making it a toothless tiger. He talks about the damage done, economically and politically, by the reparations forced on Germany, and how the US was unwilling to cancel debt to allow the German economy to recover, not to mention the economies of America’s erstwhile allies. But France and Britain come in for plenty of criticism too, for continuing to attempt to mollify and compromise with Hitler’s Germany long after, in Churchill’s opinion, such attempts were obviously dangerous. He talks in depth about Germany’s open and secret build-up of their army, naval power and, most frighteningly, air force, while Britain and France lagged behind, hoping that somehow war could be avoided. He barely hides his disgust at the Munich agreement and the betrayal of the Allies’ commitment to Czechoslovakia. He shows how he argued forcefully for the Allies to take a military stand before Germany overtook France and Britain in terms of military force, but to no avail. And therefore, when even the appeasers finally agreed that Germany must be stopped, the Germans had built up a huge military advantage; and the British, quickly left alone as one ally, France, was defeated, and the other, the US, sat on its haunches doing nothing, had to try to fend off an invasion long enough to allow for a massive expansion in manpower, munitions, and the vital air power – defensive and offensive – that had been allowed to fall so badly behind. Although the story is told from a personal perspective, with Churchill more than most the personal is political, and so this reads like a formal history far more than a personal memoir. Churchill claims, and I have no reason to doubt him, that he asked other people to rigorously check the facts in the book, so that there is a solid historical foundation below the upper layer of Churchill’s own opinion. One sees his mastery over detail, his ability to look at the full chessboard of war, his willingness to throw away a pawn or two to capture the queen, his courage to be open about the dangers ahead, his inspirational belief in Britain’s eventual ability to prevail which meant so much to the national psyche during the war’s darkest days. We see him pull all the political levers at his command, all the contacts and loyalties he had built up over his already long lifetime in the spotlight on the world’s stage, to bring people and nations round to his views – a long task and often seemingly futile, but he never weakened or turned away, never decided to let his reputation rest on his past achievements as many men of his age may have done. Was he perfect? Absolutely not. Opinionated, demanding, a risk taker, an imperialist to the core – I imagine the people around him found him maddening and exhausting. But he also commanded deep personal loyalty and respect from those who worked closely with him, and was admired and increasingly revered by a large majority of the general public for his steadfastness and patriotism in these early days of the war. He was the right man at the right time, and how often does that happen? I really thought this might be a turgid read, but it’s actually a first-rate history with just enough of the personal to bring out the emotional drama of war. I also realised while reading it how influential it must have been on the early interpretations of the history of the period, since it chimed in almost every particular with what I was taught about the war in school in the 1970s. I will certainly go on to read the other five volumes in the series. www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com ...more |
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Aug 01, 2020
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0008275009
| 9780008275006
| B084DHVWJB
| 3.83
| 1,207
| Jan 11, 2000
| Jun 25, 2020
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it was amazing
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Sex, lies and audiotape… Every detail you ever wanted to know about the whole Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, and several that you didn’t. This is more than Sex, lies and audiotape… Every detail you ever wanted to know about the whole Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, and several that you didn’t. This is more than a salacious recounting of the affair that nearly brought down a President, however. Jeffrey Toobin argues convincingly that politicians on both sides of the aisle had gradually been using the courts more and more to decide political questions, and that the Clinton scandal was a clear indication that the balance of power had shifted, and that the legal system was from now on to be the arbiter of all political questions in the US. He also suggests that it was the beginning of the sordid game beloved by politicians and the media (but not so much by the public, he implies) of dragging political opponents down, not by dissecting their poor performance as politicians, but by pretended moral outrage over their private behaviour. The book was originally published in 2000, so long before the MeToo movement but at a time when questions of sexual abuse in the workplace were being raised by feminist groups. In his introduction, Toobin admits that he may have treated Lewinsky differently had he been writing now, when terms like “power imbalance” are part of the everyday lexicon. To be honest, I’m glad he wrote it when he did then, for two reasons. Firstly, my opinion then (when I was a youngish, ambitious, working woman) and now is that a 22-year-old woman is a grown adult, perfectly capable of making her own decisions, and therefore morally responsible for her own behaviour. There was never a suggestion that Clinton forced himself on Lewinsky – quite the reverse – so while I think he’s a disgusting and rather pathetically inadequate adulterous pig, I’m not willing to see her as his victim. (Her treatment later, by her tape-recording “friend” and the lawyers investigating Clinton, seems to me far more abusive than anything Clinton did to her.) Secondly, because Toobin wrote it in the heat of the moment, more or less, it gives a much clearer picture, I think, of the attitudes prevalent at that time than any later history, trying hard to tell the story through the filter of a 2020 lens, could ever do. Although Toobin is pretty tough on Lewinsky, he also shows no mercy to Clinton, so this is in no way an apologia. Toobin spares us none of the intimate detail, and I fear I learned far more than I wanted or needed to about Clinton’s anatomy and sexual preferences, not to mention Lewinsky’s underwear and performative techniques. (It made me realise that, back in the day, although the case was reported on at extremely boring length over here too, our dear BBC must have decided to leave out the most salacious details, for which I belatedly thank them.) However, in terms of the book I do think it was necessary to include them, because part of Toobin’s argument is exactly that public interest arguments shouldn’t justify this level of intrusion into the minutiae of sex between consenting adults. This case opened the door to the constant diet of sleaze that is now common currency in what we laughably call political debate. Does the public have the right to know their President paid a porn star for her silence about their affair? Probably – it goes to questions of character and vulnerability to blackmail. But do we really need a detailed account of the act complete with anatomical measurements? I think not. The bulk of the book, however, is about the Starr investigation, and how incestuous the whole relationship between the legal and political systems of the US has become, with partisan lawyers and judges acting to down political opponents and circumvent the laws of the land, rather than behaving as impartial administrators of justice. This provides a lot of insight for outsiders, and I expect for many Americans too, on why the most important agenda item for many politicians seems to be to pack the courts with their own appointees. One only has to see the reaction of the left to the appointment of Kavanaugh (who plays a bit part in the Clinton story), or the desperation with which the Democrats are praying that Ginsberg will be able to remain in her role until next January, or the disgust of Republicans that Chief Justice Roberts has “betrayed” the right in a couple of recent judgements to know that this politicisation of the legal system is corrupting even the Supreme Court. Toobin shows us the origins of this, and the collusion of all sides in allowing it to happen. There were several chapters where, had the names been omitted, the book could as easily have been about Trump, Mueller, and the biased and polarised media of today’s America. So despite all the sleazy details, I found this a fascinating and illuminating scrutiny of the modern American political system. It also surprised me that so many of the political players back then are still influential now – Kavanaugh, George Conway, Ann Coulter were all linked to the Starr investigation, while many of the Senators and members of Congress on both sides, mostly not young or junior even back then, were trotting out opposite arguments during the Trump impeachment two decades later. It made me wonder why the US seems to have stuck – these same people have been running it, badly, for decades. Maybe it’s time for a generational shift, though since the major question in this year’s election seems to be which of the candidates is less senile I’m not expecting it to happen soon. Recommended to Americans who want to understand how and why their system fails them, and to Brits and others as a stark warning not to follow them down the road of giving lawyers and judges more power than our elected politicians. 4½ stars for me, so rounded up. NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, William Collins. www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com ...more |
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Jul 03, 2020
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Kindle Edition
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1107431751
| 9781107431751
| 1107431751
| 3.99
| 309
| 1943
| Dec 15, 2014
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it was amazing
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Gerald Brenan explains in his introduction that, having been there at the start of the Spanish Civil War, he wanted to understand what led to it, and
Gerald Brenan explains in his introduction that, having been there at the start of the Spanish Civil War, he wanted to understand what led to it, and preoccupied himself with studying this during the war. This book, first published in 1943, is the result, and is now considered a classic history of the period. My theory is that it takes at least fifty years before historians can tackle any period with the necessary objectivity to produce anything approaching “truth” – a term that will always be disputed in relation to history. Writers who lived through events are generally unable to avoid two flaws: firstly, they assume their readers are familiar with the people and events of the period and therefore often don’t explain them well enough for future generations; and, secondly, the closer to events a writer is, the harder it is to avoid personal bias and opinion from distorting the story. Having said that, Brenan does his best to avoid bias and for the most part does a good job, but sometimes it’s clear that, like most British intellectuals of the time, his sympathies were with the left, and he tends to forgive their excesses more easily than those from the right. A bigger problem for me, as a newcomer to the period, was that he often left me struggling to follow timelines, or to work out the political alignment or even nationality of a particular person – he obviously assumed his contemporary readership would know these things from reading the news. Where Brenan excels is in his detailed breakdown of the background to the conflict, especially his explanation of why the various different regions in Spain developed differing political alignments dependant on local geographical, agricultural and industrial factors. While all were affected by the power plays amongst the monarchy, Church and military, he shows that the impact differed according to the economic and social history of each region. I found that I was gradually developing a map of the country in my mind, one that showed not simply where places were but what people did there – how they lived, were they wealthy or poor, who owned the land, was the land fertile, what were their local industries, and so on. He also shows how parts of Spain looked over the border towards Europe while other parts were still influenced by their Moorish past. This left me with a much better understanding not only of the drivers that led to the Civil War, but also, in fact, of the current demands for independence from some regions which are still part of Spanish politics today. He also delves into the rise of the various factions on the left, explaining why some turned to anarchism while others adopted socialism, etc., again showing how this arose out of local rather than national factors. Syndicalism, a form of trades unionism that was effective in industrialised centres, was less well-suited to rural areas, for example. He explains the Spanish form of anarchism well, making it seem like a reasonable idea rather than the kind of extreme bogeyman philosophy it tends to be seen as now. He does the same for the right, but it wasn’t so divided and so is easier on the whole to understand, and I suspect Brenan was more fascinated by the philosophies underpinning left than right, so he writes about them more deeply and interestingly. He also explains the rise of anti-clericalism, showing how over time the Church ceased to be seen as the champion of the poor and became instead the paid instrument of the rich and powerful, helping them to maintain social control, and thus leading to the hatred that would result in so many atrocities towards clerics. On occasion, he has a tendency to state an opinion as fact without supporting evidence, or to generalise about the “Spanish temperament” or the “Spanish psyche”, as if they were uniform things, which is a bit odd since the whole book is proving that Spain was a deeply fractured society at the time, region against region, philosophy against philosophy. And it’s easy with hindsight to scoff a little at those things he got wrong, as, for instance, when he suggests that Spaniards would never accept a dictatorship and that Franco’s regime would therefore be short-lived. As a right-wing dictator, he seems to see Franco in the same terms as Mussolini or Hitler, but future history would show distinct differences in Franco’s approach, which is probably why he survived into old age. But predicting the future is always difficult, and he doesn’t go too far down that line. In the epilogue, Brenan explains that he is writing too soon to give an account of the war itself. He mentions the atrocities and, while accepting that the left participated too, claims the number of executions carried out by the right were far greater – a claim that I believe is now disputed. Despite the small flaws I’ve mentioned, I found this a fascinating and hugely informative read, that has left me with a much better understanding of what led to the rise of the various factions, and why the drive towards war became seemingly unstoppable. I highly recommend it – its classic status is well deserved. However, I was glad I had already read Stanley G Payne’s The Spanish Civil War first – because it is a more conventional history written much more recently, I had some prior understanding without which I may have found myself floundering too deeply at those points where Brenan assumed existing knowledge. www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com ...more |
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May 08, 2020
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0521174708
| 9780521174701
| 0521174708
| 4.08
| 157
| Jul 16, 2012
| Aug 13, 2012
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it was amazing
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Distilled history... On starting my personal challenge to get an understanding of the Spanish Civil War through history, memoirs and fiction, the first Distilled history... On starting my personal challenge to get an understanding of the Spanish Civil War through history, memoirs and fiction, the first book I wanted was one which basically explained the historical background, laid out the events leading up to the war, introduced the main leaders, explained the factions and tried, at least, to avoid bias. This last point was the hardest – all the best known histories on the subject seem to be pretty overwhelmingly biased towards the Republican side. After a couple of false starts, I settled on this one and feel I couldn’t have made a better decision. Payne has been a historian of Spain and European fascism throughout his career, and this book feels like the sum of all that immense study, distilled down to its pure essence. Every word in its short 286 pages counts, so that there’s far more information in here than in many a waffly 900-page tome I’ve struggled through on other historical periods. Payne’s bias, if he has one, seems slightly to the right, though it’s quite clear he’s no more a fan of the regimes of the far-right than the far-left. He avoids any kind of romanticisation of the left – generally a recurring feature of British and American writing on the SCW, showing how much better the left were at propaganda, if nothing else. Indeed, propaganda and the role of foreign journalists and novelists in its dissemination at the time, and on public perception of the conflict even today, is one of the many subjects he addresses in the book. Payne starts with a brief introduction, putting the SCW into the context of the many civil wars happening in Eastern Europe and around the “periphery” of Europe around that time. He notes that Spain was unique in being the only Western European country to have a civil war in the interwar years, and that, while the political upheavals in other western nations like Germany and Italy rose out of the aftermath of WW1, Spain had remained neutral in that conflict. He continues by giving a concise and clear history of Spain, from the time of the Romans. This is done in a just a few pages, but gives the newcomer to the subject a very clear idea of the development of the social, political and economic conditions in the country just prior to the civil war. He discusses Spain’s failure to modernise at the same rate as other European countries, remaining more rural and socially backward, less literate, poorer. Out of these conditions arose the factions on left and right that would both eventually feel that a limited conflict would give power into their hands. Payne slows down a bit as he discusses the years from around 1930 to the outbreak of war, but it is still a very distilled account – no padding, very few anecdotes or character sketches, but everything very clearly explained. The profusion of factions on both left and right are the main reason I, and I’m sure I’m not alone, find the SCW more confusing than many other conflicts or historical events, and Payne takes the time to explain each in turn – how they arose, their affiliations to outside forces like the USSR or Mussolini’s Italy, their regional power bases within Spain, what they believed in and what kind of government they wanted to create. As he develops the history of events, Payne is excellent at constantly reminding the reader of where each faction stands whenever they are mentioned, so that I rarely found it necessary to turn to the included glossary of all those dreaded acronyms, like POUM and PCE and CEDA. In fact, by the end of the book I actually had a good idea of what all these terms actually meant – a considerable achievement, believe me! Alongside the narration of events, Payne includes themed chapters where he goes more deeply into one aspect of the conflict, such as religion or foreign intervention or propaganda, etc., and it’s in these chapters that he’s more analytical. He debunks some of the commonly held and somewhat romantic myths, explaining their origin, and replaces them with factual analysis, including plenty of statistics, on numbers of executions on both sides, for example, or the brutal atrocities carried out, again by both sides. He is critical of Franco’s skills as a war strategist, suggesting his failure to take decisive actions at crucial moments led to a prolongation of the conflict. But his strongest criticism is directed at the shambolic chaos on the left, with faction fighting faction, and no clear plan of what they were trying to achieve. He compares the conditions in Republican and Nationalist zones, and suggests a major factor in the Nationalists’ success was their economic competence – indeed, their competence generally. The picture he paints is of idealism, factionalism and chaos on the left defeated by planning, pragmatism and organisation on the right. My only caveat, and it’s a small one, would be that a basic understanding of the Russian revolution and of the regimes of Hitler and Mussolini would be helpful, but I think he gives enough information on them in passing to prevent any reader from feeling too lost. So, in conclusion, great as an introduction for the newcomer, but there’s also plenty of analysis in here to interest those with an existing knowledge of events. Highly recommended – the perfect start to my quest! www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com ...more |
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May 02, 2020
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May 25, 2020
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Apr 18, 2020
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9781780224534
| B00913O9L8
| 3.91
| 6,720
| Jun 01, 2006
| Aug 23, 2012
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did not like it
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This is simply the worst written history book it has ever been my misfortune to attempt to read. I can only assume the many people who rate it highly
This is simply the worst written history book it has ever been my misfortune to attempt to read. I can only assume the many people who rate it highly went into it with an already good knowledge of the people and events of the Spanish Civil War. For a beginner, it's appalling. Beevor simply lists names and events with absolutely no analysis of them. Even the major players get no description - physical or biographical. Franco, as just one example, appears as an already existing leader - no background information as to where he came from, how he rose to be a general, why he formed the views he held. Half the time I can't tell if he's talking about a Republican or a Nationalist. He'll say something along the lines of "X went into town Y and shot up the casas del pueblo but then A gave guns to B and X retreated." Fascinating! And the constant use of untranslated Spanish terms is driving this monoglot insane. How hard would it have been to put the translation in brackets after the word or phrase, or at the very least to include a glossary of terms? Any book that makes me resort to Google three times in one paragraph isn't doing its job right. I'd throw this one on the fire except that it's on my Kindle, so I shall have to satisfy myself with pressing the delete button in a marked manner. ...more |
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Jan 10, 2020
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B0713XD8G6
| 4.24
| 906
| Oct 03, 2019
| Oct 03, 2019
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it was amazing
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I blame the parents... Penn starts this history of the three York brothers with the background story of the weak King Henry VI, surrounded by venal lor I blame the parents... Penn starts this history of the three York brothers with the background story of the weak King Henry VI, surrounded by venal lords and constantly threatened by Richard, Duke of York, father of the three brothers, who had a competing claim to the throne through the female line. He then takes us in a linear fashion through the downfall of Henry, and the reigns of Edward IV and Richard III, ending with Richard’s downfall and the rise to power of Henry VII, the first of the Tudors. Penn writes very well, avoiding academic jargon and taking plenty of time to fill in the characters of the people he’s discussing. He assumes no prior knowledge, which as a newcomer to the period I found extremely helpful since it meant I never found myself floundering over unexplained references, as can often happen with history books. The bulk of the book concentrates on the reign of Edward IV, which makes sense since he ruled for over twenty years whereas the middle brother George, Duke of Clarence, never got to be king and the youngest brother, Richard III, managed a mere two years before he lost his crown, and his life along with it. Unfortunately, Richard is by far the more interesting king (in my opinion), so I’d have been happier to spend more time in his company and rather less on Edward’s interminable taxes and squabbles with France and Burgundy. I have a feeling this says far more about my dilettante approach to history than it does about the book, however! But after an excellent start with all the intrigue and fighting leading up to Edward’s final power grab, I found my interest dipped for quite a long period in the middle of the book as Penn laid out the detail of his long reign. It picks up again when Edward finally dies, and the nefarious Richard usurps the throne from his nephew. Richard’s reign might have been short but it’s full of incident and Penn tells it excellently. Intriguingly, although of course he relates the story of the Princes in the Tower, Penn doesn’t tell us his own opinion as to whether Richard was guilty of their murder or not. I suppose this makes sense, since (weirdly) there are still strong factions on either side of that question and he’d have been bound to alienate half his readership whichever position he took. He gives enough detail of the event and the contemporaneous rumours around it for the reader to make up her own mind, if she hasn’t already. (Yes, of course Richard was guilty, if you’re wondering... ;) ) Penn finishes as Richard’s reign comes to its tragic/well-deserved* end, rounding the story off with an uber-quick résumé of Henry VII and the Tudors, explaining how the Yorkist divide gradually diminished over time. Overall, this is an excellent history, plainly but well told. I’d say it’s aimed more at the general reader than an academic audience, and is particularly good as an introduction to the period – I’m not sure that there’s much new in it for people who already have a solid understanding of the time of the York kings. It’s clearly well researched, with plenty of detail, and it covers all the major personalities of the time, not just the brothers. I came out of it feeling much clearer about how all the various well known names – Warwick, Elizabeth Woodville, Margaret of Anjou, etc. – fitted together, and what parts they played in the Yorkist story. I did struggle with the long middle section of Edward’s rather dull reign, but a historian really can’t be expected to make something exciting if it isn’t. But the first and last sections had more than enough treachery, betrayal and general skulduggery to satisfy even me! Recommended. 4½ stars for me, so rounded up. *delete according to preference NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Allen Lane. www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com ...more |
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Jan 08, 2020
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Feb 14, 2020
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Nov 06, 2019
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Kindle Edition
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0198747144
| 9780198747147
| 0198747144
| 3.79
| 24
| 2019
| Oct 01, 2019
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it was amazing
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The politics of decline and nationhood... For my generation, arriving at political awareness in the 1970s, Enoch Powell had already become the chief bo The politics of decline and nationhood... For my generation, arriving at political awareness in the 1970s, Enoch Powell had already become the chief bogeyman for those of us on the left. He is best remembered for his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech of 1968, when he issued dire warnings about the dangers of mass immigration in terms which even in those days were incendiary and which to modern eyes are vilely, shockingly racist. He is still worshipped by the extreme right in Britain, fortunately a tiny proportion of our society, while some on the left still drag his name out whenever they want to present anti-immigrationism and racism as synonymous. However, he is also considered as one of the leading and most influential thinkers of his generation, and for many years I have wondered why such an intelligent man didn’t realise that this speech would blow his career into smithereens on that day in 1968, making him such a pariah to so many that all other aspects of his contribution to political life are hidden under its dark shadow, and also making rational discussion of immigration policies in the UK almost impossible for decades to come – still today, in fact. Paul Corthorn is Senior Lecturer in Modern British History at Queen's University Belfast. In his introduction, he acknowledges that much previous biography of Powell has been strongly pro or anti. In this book, Corthorn is striving to present Powell’s views on a variety of topics and how he came to form them, without judgement. Corthorn shapes his work around the political themes that engaged Powell throughout his political life rather than working to a timeline, and makes clear that this is an examination of Powell’s political thought and contribution rather than a personal biography of his life. Having previously ploughed through a rather nauseating and ultimately unrevealing hagiography of the man, I found this approach refreshing. Corthorn takes much of his arguments from a close analysis of Powell’s speeches, to which Powell gave great thought. Corthorn suggests that the idea of ‘decline’ underpins much of Powell’s thinking, as his generation grappled with the end of the British Empire and sought to redefine nationhood and Britain’s role in the world, facing up to the new reality of American dominance. The five themes Corthorn uses are international relations, economics, immigration, Europe and Northern Ireland. He does an excellent job of showing that each forms part of a coherent whole in terms of Powell’s thinking – that the ideas of decline and of nationhood run through all of his arguments and remain consistent, though his opinions on policy changed over time and sometimes could seem contradictory. (The thing about Powell, as I learned when I reviewed a previous biography on Amazon, is that whatever you say about him he is so divisive that people will call you a fascist racist if you show any admiration for him at all, or a Marxist commie if you refuse to genuflect when mentioning his name. But hey! I reckon if people are calling you both, then you’re probably somewhere in the middle which is where I like to be, so if you’re going to be upset by me praising/criticising him you probably should look away now.) There can be little doubt that Powell was one of the great political thinkers of the mid-twentieth century. He was tackling Britain’s future while most others were still clinging desperately to its past. He foresaw many of the issues we are dealing with today while others were burying their heads in the sand. He saw that American hegemony and the West’s interference in the Middle East would lead to a series of unwinnable wars. He was against devolution for the constituent nations of the UK because he believed that it would weaken identification with the UK as a nation state while never satisfying those who desired full independence. He believed that supranational organisations like the UN and NATO would weaken the ability of nation states to act in their own interests (which he saw as a bad thing). He believed that the then Common Market would progress inexorably towards political union – in his view, an undesirable outcome. And he believed that if governments refused to control immigration, then populism, with all its inherent dangers, would be the eventual outcome. He was totally against allowing the Republic of Ireland to have a say in the administration of Northern Ireland, believing it would leave Northern Ireland always as a sort of semi-detached part of the UK – instead he wanted it be fully integrated into the non-devolved political system he favoured for all four UK nations. He was propounding the main ideas behind the economic theories that would eventually come to be called Thatcherism long before Thatcher. Corthorn finishes with a brief but excellent critical round-up of the preceding chapters and an analysis of why Powell’s reputation and legacy are still matters of dispute. Love or hate him, it is fascinating to read of a politician who gave so much thought to the long-term and who rarely allowed partisanship to sway him into short-term compromise. He changed party affiliation frequently and expected a level of loyalty from others that he rarely was willing to give. This, of course, made him an arrogant maverick with more than a hint of narcissism, and meant that he never gained the power he felt was his due, where a more emollient compromiser may have achieved more. And ultimately it was that arrogance – that failure to accept that those he saw as his intellectual inferiors (i.e., everyone) would not be wowed into agreement by his brilliance – that led him to think that it would be acceptable to speak of immigration in the racist terminology he used in the 1968 speech. An excellent book that gives real and balanced insight into the thinking of this undoubtedly brilliant, undoubtedly deeply flawed man, and along the way casts a lot of thought-provoking light on many of the questions we are still grappling with today. I can’t say I like Powell any better than I did, but I rather wish I believed our present generation of politicians were as deep-thinking and forward-looking. Highly recommended. NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Oxford University Press. www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com ...more |
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Oct 11, 2019
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Oct 29, 2019
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Aug 28, 2019
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Hardcover
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B01M8IHJ1T
| 4.11
| 854
| Oct 06, 2016
| Oct 20, 2016
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really liked it
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Cuddly Uncle Ken... Ken Clarke has been a fixture in the UK Parliament since 1970, so the entire period in which I’ve been politically aware. He has st Cuddly Uncle Ken... Ken Clarke has been a fixture in the UK Parliament since 1970, so the entire period in which I’ve been politically aware. He has stood down at this election, having been thrown out of the party of which he has been a member all these years over his support for remaining in the EU. Not that he will care, I imagine – the personality I’ve spent so long with in this 24 hour audiobook is one who will always believe he is right and everyone else is wrong, and will happily sail off into the sunset with his sense of his innate superiority undented. Long familiarity with a politician can breed a kind of affection, especially when he remains in parliament long after his ministerial days are over. There is a tradition in the UK, not so much of elder statesmen, but of cuddly uncles – men who pepper their speeches with rambling accounts of how things used to be back in the days of Harold Wilson or Margaret Thatcher, like the old relative in the corner at family gatherings who will insist on talking about the war. (I’m not being unconsciously sexist here – it really is a male thing since we haven’t had enough long-serving women MPs for there to be many female octogenarians shuffling around the corridors of power yet... give it another couple of decades.) For older people, like me, who remember Wilson and Thatcher, this gives a curious sense of stability and continuity. Younger people, I imagine, simply roll their eyes and switch off. Over the last couple of decades, Clarke has become one of those cuddly uncles, known for his love of jazz, his cigar-smoking bon viveur personality, his jovial demeanour, and his endearingly crumpled appearance... ...which explains why I’d managed to sort of forget that he was responsible for overseeing some of the most Thatcherite policies of the Thatcher era! As a cabinet minister in those days he served as Health Secretary as the first tentative steps were taken to make the NHS more “efficient” (i.e., cheaper) by introducing the ‘internal market’ - a way of making hospitals compete against each other for patients; for ‘contracting out’ ancillary services – a way of making cleaners, canteen staff and so on work longer for less money and fewer employment rights; and for making GPs ‘fundholders’, taking decisions on where patients should be treated on the basis of budgets rather than quality of care. Then, having destroyed standards and morale in the NHS, he spent a couple of years trying to wreck – I mean, improve – education, in much the same way. So “successful” was he in these roles that Thatcher’s successor, John Major, promoted him to be the Chancellor of the Exchequer. How you rate him in this role really depends on your political leanings. The economy improved under his oversight, but the disparity between rich and poor grew. Unemployment went down, but it could be argued that it was Thatcher’s policies that had made it rise to such alarming rates in the first place. Interest rates, driven through the roof by the government’s mishandling of the whole question of the ERM and the single European currency, came back down to bearable levels. All of this gave him a reputation for competence and I won’t argue with that except to say that every chancellor’s reputation rests to some degree on the competence or otherwise of his predecessor and successor. Clarke succeeded to a shambles – it would have been hard for him to make things worse. The book is well written, full of anecdotes and personality sketches that stop it from being a dry read about policies. I listened to the audiobook version narrated by Clarke himself and he has an attractive speaking voice, making it a pleasant listening experience. But although I listened very hard, I can’t remember him once in the whole 24 hours ever expressing any concern for the weaker or more vulnerable members of our society. I got the distinct impression that to Clarke politics is an intellectual game, with victory being judged by statistics and honours rather than by outcomes for actual people. Even his much vaunted support for the EU, which in recent years has made many Remainers feel that he’s much cuddlier than most Conservatives, really seems to be about the free flow of workers providing a limitless pool of cheap labour from the poorer countries in Europe with which to boost profits for the rich while depressing the pay and conditions of those Brits already at the bottom of the economic ladder. As is often the case with political memoirs, Clarke only really talks about the events in which he was directly involved, which is understandable but often gives a rather patchy view of a period. For instance, there’s barely a mention of the Falklands War, which played a huge role in why the Thatcher government was re-elected. He does talk about the miners’ strike, but again on a purely political level. There is no doubt that the rights and wrongs of the strike are debatable, but most people, I think, have some sympathy for the suffering that the mining communities went through during and after the strike. I didn’t catch a whiff of that from Clarke – to him, it was solely a question of economics and political power. I often find my view of a politician changes when I read their memoirs, which is why I do it. Usually I come out feeling that I may disagree with them politically but that I’ve gained an appreciation of their good intentions. In this case the reverse happened. I rather liked Cuddly Uncle Ken before I listened to this, but now I see him as smug and self-satisfied, a man who throughout his life has been far more interested in his own comfort and reputation than in trying to improve the lives of the people he serves. I was sorry to see him thrown out of his party after a lifetime in it, but now... well, somehow I don’t much care. He says himself frequently that he’s not the type of person who lets anything bother him. I would have liked him to be bothered by inequality, child poverty, the marginalised and the forgotten. Is that too much to ask of a politician? As a book, though, I do recommend it as a well written memoir that casts light on the politics of the last fifty years. www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 20, 2019
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Nov 24, 2019
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Aug 20, 2019
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Audible Audio
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0198783469
| 9780198783466
| 0198783469
| 4.35
| 17
| Sep 11, 2019
| Sep 11, 2019
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it was amazing
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A milestone on the road to democracy... Two hundred years ago, on 16th August, 1819, a huge rally of some 50,000 people gathered in St Peter’s Field in A milestone on the road to democracy... Two hundred years ago, on 16th August, 1819, a huge rally of some 50,000 people gathered in St Peter’s Field in Manchester, to demand greater representation in Parliament. Although the demonstrators were peaceful and unarmed, they were charged by the cavalry and local Yeomanry, riding through the crowd with sabres drawn. Many hundreds were injured and eighteen were killed, either from crush injuries or from sabre wounds. Known as Peterloo, this incident is embedded in the national consciousness as a tragic milestone on the long, long road to democracy. Robert Poole is Professor of History at the University of Central Lancashire. He suggests that 1819 should be seen in the context of the end of the long 18th century following the Glorious Revolution, as much as the beginning of the reforming 19th century. The Napoleonic Wars had ended at last, but for the handloom weavers and mill-workers in and around Manchester, peace brought no dividend. The huge national debt had led to high taxation, usually indirect which then as now hit the poor disproportionately. Wealth inequality, already major, was growing. Government policies such as the Corn Laws favoured landowners and voters (a tiny number of the wealthy) rather than workers. Wages, already low, were falling still further. Starvation was an actuality even for people working long hours in appalling conditions. Poole concentrates most of the book on the period between the end of the Napoleonic Wars (1815) and 1819, with the focus on what led up to the massacre more than on its aftermath. He gives a detailed account of the conditions of the workers, the prevailing economic circumstances, the political environment, and the effect of recent upheavals in France on the establishment’s fear of bloody revolution. The book is clearly the result of immense research, pulled together into a very readable narrative that is accessible to the non-historian without in any way over-simplifying the content. There are maps of the area, and a generous helping of illustrations throughout, which aid in understanding how events were perceived at the time. Although it’s clear Poole is on the “side” of the reformers (who in today’s Britain would disagree with that position?), he nevertheless casts an objective eye on why the authorities behaved as they did, condemning where appropriate, but showing some understanding of the pressures they felt themselves under too. He also shows that, although there was no violence on that day from the reformers’ side, there had been violent incidents before, and it was known that the marchers had been being drilled by ex-soldiers, leading the authorities to fear an armed uprising. Overall I felt that Poole gave as even-handed an account of the background as possible, while not in any way minimising or excusing the atrocity that occurred. Along the way, we learn a lot about the leaders of the Reform movement and their aims, not always uniform. Poole also tells us about the many spies embedded in the movement, reporting every word and action back to the Home Office. We are told about the Government’s use of political power to make it almost impossible for people to protest legally, and about the abuses of the legal system, such as the suspension of habeas corpus, to allow those perceived as ringleaders to be kept in jail for long periods often without trial. Poole tells us about the women who joined the reform movement, not at this early stage demanding votes for themselves, but in support of their men. Despite all the attempts to threaten, bully or otherwise silence them, the people marched, and marched again, and the authorities, local and national, unwilling, perhaps unable, to give in to their demands, felt they had to do something to restore order. As a casual reader, I found the middle section of the book, where Poole describes the many marches and protests prior to the day of Peterloo, harder to plough through, although this is more a criticism of me than the book. For students, historians or people who like an in-depth approach, then the level of detail Poole provides will be appreciated. However, I found the long first section on the political, social and economic background fascinating and written with great clarity, while the description of the event itself at the end is excellent – a clear and balanced account, and by that stage Poole has ensured the reader understands all the various elements that came together to clash so tragically on St Peter’s Field. Poole concludes by examining the numbers of dead and injured, explaining the sources historians have used for determining these figures. He discusses the trials and imprisonments that followed. He takes a very interesting look at the reporting of the day and how public opinion was changed by a few journalists offering eyewitness accounts. He then sets this event as a link in the chain of the longer reform movement, later leading to the 1832 Reform Act and on towards Chartism and eventual achievement of universal manhood suffrage, where every vote counted equally. He compares (as I did while reading) the period 1817/19 to today’s Britain (and I’d add America and several European nations, not omitting the EU itself), with populism rising as a response to an elite who don’t listen to the concerns of the people, or who discount the legitimacy of any democratic vote with which they disagree. I also found myself comparing these events to the ongoing Hong Kong protests, with a chilling sense of foreboding. I was taught about Peterloo by an inspirational history teacher at school and it helped form my long-held opinion that if democracy is to survive, then democracy itself must be accepted by all as more important than any one political issue or partisan affiliation. Democracy is a fragile thing, and this book is an excellent reminder of how hard-fought the battle was to win it. I highly recommend it. NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Oxford University Press. www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com ...more |
Notes are private!
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Sep 02, 2019
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Oct 11, 2019
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Aug 05, 2019
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Hardcover
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4.43
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it was amazing
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Mar 29, 2024
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Feb 08, 2024
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4.00
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it was amazing
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Aug 05, 2023
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4.40
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it was amazing
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May 30, 2023
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3.83
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it was amazing
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3.93
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it was amazing
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Apr 11, 2023
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4.25
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it was ok
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Aug 22, 2022
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Jul 28, 2022
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4.41
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it was amazing
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Apr 28, 2022
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Jan 25, 2022
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3.94
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it was amazing
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Feb 07, 2022
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Dec 26, 2021
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4.18
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really liked it
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May 23, 2021
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Feb 16, 2021
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4.09
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it was amazing
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Jan 28, 2021
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Jan 09, 2021
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4.06
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did not like it
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Jan 16, 2021
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Dec 31, 2020
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4.40
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it was amazing
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Sep 13, 2020
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Aug 01, 2020
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3.83
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it was amazing
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Aug 10, 2020
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Jul 03, 2020
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3.99
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it was amazing
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May 08, 2020
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4.08
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it was amazing
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May 25, 2020
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Apr 18, 2020
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3.91
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did not like it
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not set
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Jan 10, 2020
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4.24
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it was amazing
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Feb 14, 2020
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Nov 06, 2019
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3.79
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it was amazing
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Oct 29, 2019
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Aug 28, 2019
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4.11
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really liked it
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Nov 24, 2019
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Aug 20, 2019
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4.35
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it was amazing
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Oct 11, 2019
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Aug 05, 2019
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