Just Finished Reading: The Future of Geography – How Power and Politics in Space Will Change Our World by Tim Marshall (FP: 2023) [298pp] 

Space is indeed the Final Frontier (unless we invent Time Travel at some point). Space is, effectively, endless even if the boundary of exactly where it begins (either 80 or 100 Kilometres up depending on who you agree with). But this is where things get interesting, human, political. Although a few treaties have been proposed, even signed up to by some nations, the politics of space is... messy, sparse, complicated. So? Why does that matter? Surely space is big enough for everyone, right? Unfortunately, no. 

Part of the problem is what countries use space for. There’s the good stuff like GPS (even with its primary military application) and weather satellites to say nothing of satellites which enable global phone coverage, Internet and TV. Then there’s spy satellites and (probably) a whole host of other military kit up there that ‘they’ don’t want you to know about. Is that OK to be up there? Is it OK for a country to shoot (or even attempt to shoot) ‘enemy’ satellites down in a conflict – or as a pre-emptive strike knowing that the resultant debris could damage other non-combative satellites or space stations? Is it OK to have nukes in space? Who decides? Who monitors and enforces any agreements about this? What about countries that don’t sign up? 

Then there’s the Moon. An old agreement said that countries can, and cannot, do certain things – including basing weapons on Luna. Because of the age of these treaties no one expected that private companies could have interests in mining or other activities on the Moon. So, do the treaties apply to them? Even with the best will in the world who exactly enforces this? A Space Police? Funded by who? Manned by which countries? Based on what authority? Complicated, isn’t it? Mining of asteroids is all very well – indeed is a brilliant idea that could really kick-start the ongoing effort to push out into our Solar System, but can a company own as asteroid and mine it exclusively? What if it accidently pushed it into an orbit that could put it in danger of hitting the Moon, Mars or even Earth? How would things like that be ensured against? 

Although we are still at the VERY early stages of such things, these are subjects that need to be thought about and, as much as possible, solved BEFORE someone pulls a modified AK-74 to defend their bit of the Moon or their space rock from someone else and BEFORE someone blows up a satellite and collaterally brings down a space station. In a nutshell that’s the context of this fascinating continuation of the authors series of Geopolitical books which move ever outward and ever into our (possible) future. This certainly provided me which much to think about and added much information/knowledge to think with. The next 100 years are going to be quite something in Earth orbit, on the Moon and even on Mars if we get there in any numbers. Exactly HOW we deal with things in space will define what benefits we derive from this expansion of the human domain and who exactly gets access to them. Interesting times indeed and most definitely an interesting read. Recommended.  

Just Finished Reading: The Power of Geography – Ten Maps That Reveal the Future of Our World by Tim Marshall (FP: 2021) [364pp] 

This was, essentially, a continuation of the authors previous work on Geopolitics – Prisoners of Geography. Here he is more forward looking although each section still contains a goodly slice of history for the required context. Starting off with Australia (which I remembered him musing over in the previous book) he looks at that continental country in context with its place in the Japan, South Korea, China axis, especially focused on the ongoing problems in the South China Sea. This does look like a potential conflict zone in the years ahead if cooler heads fail to prevail. I doubt if it would take too much pushing to start an actual shooting war – never mind how stupid and pointless that conflict would be. 

Moving onto the ever ‘interesting’ Middle East zone, we looked at both Iran and Saudi Arabia. I’ve read a little (emphasis on little) about Iran, but this author really helped me understand its geography – especially in a strategic sense – much better than I had previously. I can now understand exactly why Iraq had such a hard time invading during their bloody conflict. The section on Saudi looks very much at its economic future as the US in particular slowly removes its reliance on Mid-East oil and its involvement in Mid-East politics. Although this is a good idea in and of itself (for a whole host of reasons) it doesn’t follow that the tensions in that area will diminish greatly never mind vanish overnight. There are certainly enough other ethnic and religious divisions in the region – to say nothing of Israel’s actions – to keep it in the news for decades to come. 

I’ve been aware of the ‘issues’ between Turkey and Greece for a while now, both from my reading about the region and from watching various conflicts (notably Cyprus) play out on my TV. So, it was a real eye-opener to understand exactly why these two countries – NATO allies indeed – are potentially at each other's throats so much. Not only do they have a LONG history of conflict to draw on, but there’s a whole new cause in play right now: the resources of the eastern Mediterranean. How this will play out... is definitely an open question. 

I’d be the first to admit that my knowledge of Africa is practically non-existent. Apart from some knowledge of Ancient Egypt, the North African campaigns of WW2 and a passing knowledge of the Boer War in South Africa I know almost nothing of that great continent. So, it was good to see two sections in this book dedicated to diminishing that oversight. Looking at conditions throughout the Sahel and Ethiopia I now have a much greater appreciation of the area's problems (often caused by those pesky straight borders again) and what they (and, typically, the Chinese) are doing about it. MUCH more on Africa to come! 

Overall, I enjoyed this a great deal and learnt MUCH. This is a valuable addition to his previous work, and I can definitely recommend it to anyone (like me) who is trying to understand why the world is the way it is. More to come.  

Just Finished Reading: Prisoners of Geography – Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics by Tim Marshall (FP: 2015/2019) [300pp] 

I’m sure that I’m not alone in wondering what exactly is going on with the world right now. It seems, at least if you watch the news or spend any time on-line (and especially if you spend any time swimming in the increasingly toxic depths of ‘Social Media’) that things are definitely ‘off’ to say the least. I’d even go so far as to say that it seems, on a good day, that a significant percentage of the humans on this planet have gone (or maybe just have gone public about being) crazy. So, what’s up? I thought reading up on Geopolitics might help – and it did! 

Personally, I’m one of ‘those people’ who just enjoy looking at maps, hunting out strange place names, and wondering what a place is actually like. Studying Geography at school (MANY years ago) I was completely intrigued by the idea that you could understand much about a place by looking at things like navigable rivers (or otherwise), locations and heights of mountains, placement of natural resources, the type of border (natural of the ominous straight-line) and so on. Looking closely the location of major cities, battles, migration paths, agricultural land and much more become ‘obvious’ once you take the physical geography into account. Things like cities are not scattered randomly on a landscape. They exist where they do for practical reasons. So, you can tell, almost at a glance, why some countries are prosperous and others poor. You can see why some countries are often invaded by their neighbours and others seems ‘designed’ for defence. 

Looking across the world, from Russia to the Artic, the author takes 10 locations and shows how their geography shaped their individual histories and how their geography shapes both their present and their futures. But as biology is not destiny neither is geography. A mountain range or a river will often constrain options for any country, but we are rather inventive beings who can literally move mountains, or at least blast holes through them. We can also redirect rivers, build bridges over them, or dam them – sometimes annoying or frightening the governments of countries downstream which could, under the wrong circumstances lead to conflict. 

I did think throughout this very interesting book that there was more than a slight hint of Jared Diamond (not that such is a bad thing), with nods to the direction of river flow and, more importantly, their navigability which gave Europe a head start in development (along with abundant natural resources in the shape of coal. Other zones, notably South America and Africa struggled in this regard coupled with the problems of transporting anything long distances through inhospitable regions (deserts, mountains, jungles etc). The chapter on India/Pakistan was most illuminating especially how India broke apart after the British left and how different ethnic groups ended up where they did – complete (of course) with much suffering and death in the process. I think the chapter I learned most from was that on the Middle East. Despite remembering watching many of the conflicts in that region as well as reading an excellent book on Palestine just recently, I did enjoy discovering much of the background to the wars, displacements and massacres over the decades – caused, in no small part, by the fact that the countries boundaries and indeed the countries themselves are the highly artificial constructs of European Powers after WW1 (I’m looking at YOU Britain and France). We REALLY screwed that region LONG before the present messes play out on our TVs and phones. It’s pretty much a given that wherever you see a straight line on a map you KNOW there’s trouble there!  

As my first dip into Geopolitics for a while I was both impressed and educated by this understandably bestselling book. If, like me, you wonder why conflicts start and persist over time, often in the same place's generation after generation, or have wondered why some countries are rich why others remain poor (often despite being resource rich) this is definitely a source for some answers. Definitely recommended and more to come both on the subject and from the author.  

Just Finished Reading: The Debatable Land – The Lost World Between Scotland and England by Graham Robb (FP: 2018) [239pp] 

I’ve never been to Carlisle but I’ve been through it four times – twice on a train during a school trip to Edinburgh and twice in a car travelling to and from a Queen concert in Newcastle when I was at university in Lancaster. So, it's not exactly an area I know much about despite visiting the near-by Lake District many times and being based in and around Lancaster (around 70 miles to the south) for 5 years or so. The other thing that prompted me to pick this book up is the ongoing mystery of the significant amount of Scottish DNA in each and every cell of my body. I was hoping that this book – about the borderlands – might give me some hints to help resolved that. 

Borders, especially ancient borders, are strange beasts. These days we think of borders as barriers with checkpoints and, sometimes, armed guards whose job it is to prevent people simply crossing back and forth as they please. OLD borders were often much more porous and all too often much less defined, much less agreed upon. The ‘debatable land’ investigated by the author after moving into the area from Oxford is one of those more liminal places where the border between England and Scotland was more of a suggestion rather than anything hard, fast or agreed upon by either country. Despite having a VERY long history neither country really concerned itself with this small patch of land that straddled the border as long as order was, more or less, maintained. Both countries periodically invaded the zone – often in pursuit of raiders or cattle thieves – but neither stayed nor built any commanding structures in the area to control it. It was wasn’t worth the effort. This meant, of course, that the area eventually became controlled by a small number of (often feuding) families who made their living out of raiding and protection rackets whilst keeping, as much as possible, off the radar of either nations high and mighty. 

Despite not really being the book I was expecting – I had assumed that it would be about the whole border rather than a small piece of it – this was a reasonably interesting if rather niche book. I certainly now know a lot more about this zone and it might even give me a few family names to work with if they show up in my ancestry searches. Despite being illegal (if at least technically) there was a lot of cross marriage between Scots and English in this zone which might (possibly) explain where at least some of my DNA came from although as far as I can tell that ‘drift’ happened further East of any debatable real-estate. A reasonable read but only really recommended for anyone interested in the Scottish/English border zone or the history of the Carlisle area itself. 

Just Finished Reading: Shadowlands – A Journey Through Lost Britain by Matthew Green (FP: 2022) [300pp] 

Have you ever looked over an old map and seen places, villages, towns or even cities that you don’t recognise, that you haven’t even heard of before? You wonder exactly what that means. Was the early cartographer mistaken, relying on poor information or maybe making things up, like “here be dragons”? Or maybe they changed their names over time for some reason. Because places don’t just disappear into thin air, right? Well, apparently, they do – kind of. 

It’s easy to look at a modern map and imagine that places have ‘always’ been there. Many towns and cities across the world are at the very least centuries old and some go back millennia. But as places are founded and become settled, other places fail or fall into disuse for a whole host of reasons. These are the places, across Britain, that the author seeks out in this intriguing and well written narrative. Running from ancient times to the present and from the furthest north to the south coast, the author explores the remains of a city abandoned in the early Middle Ages due to shifting power structures, a port city engulfed by the sea, a village abandoned after the Great Plague, a city that literally fell off a cliff, an abandoned island too remote to sustain itself, towns bought up by the Ministry of Defence (or the War Office at the time) and used for live fire Army exercises and a village inundated by a controversial reservoir scheme. 

Although they were all interesting in their own way, I particularly found the Army ranges and the submerged Welsh village of particular interest. The Ministry of Defence owns great swathes of land across Britain and uses some of them – as in the examples within these pages – to recreate parts of Europe (prior to D-Day), parts of Eastern Europe (during the Cold War) and parts of the Middle East (to train for deployment in Afghanistan and Iraq). It must be MOST bizarre to drive around a corner in the English countryside (as the author found out) and be presented with a highly accurate facsimile of downtown Fallujah. The last example in the book of the Welsh village was honestly heart-breaking. A small farming community being essentially removed – with little real opportunity to resist – in order to supply Liverpool with water for its industries and growing population by the building of a dam and the flooding of their valley. 

Overall, this was a fascinating and often very human story of change, decline and abandonment. It shows clearly that things – cities! - thought of as permanent are nothing of the kind. Things change, populations move, decline, cliffs collapse, estuaries change direction or block up with silt, environments become unliveable. Eventually towns fade, from maps and from memories. They enter the shadowlands. Definitely a look at an overlooked part of British history. Definitely recommended. 

Just Finished Reading: Islands of Abandonment – Life in the Post-Human Landscape by Cal Flyn (FP: 2021) [330pp] 

What happens when people leave, when they abandon a place never to return? With abandoned industrial sites, ex-war zones, urban retreat, industrial accidents and much else in mind the author of this intriguing and honestly beautifully written book tries her best to answer that question. 

As we’ve seen before with the emergence of volcanic islands it doesn’t take long before seeds arrive, insects drop out of the sky and nature begins a long and sometimes arduous process of reabsorption. Exactly the same process takes place in environments abandoned, for a whole host of reasons, by humans. Industrial sites – once a veritable hive of activity – can close almost overnight after a much sought after substance is exhausted. Leaving behind infrastructure too expensive to remove, to say nothing of potentially toxic waste areas, nature can take its time coming back. Lichens and plants hardened to extreme conditions arrive first and it isn’t long before other plants, insects and animals arrive. Even in highly toxic environments like around the Chernobyl site nature finds a way.  

Somewhat less toxic, at least in the physical, chemical, sense are areas abandoned after or because of conflict. One such is the zone created between Greek and Turkish occupied Cyprus. Sometimes only a few metres apart, in other places the ‘dead’ zone can be a kilometre or more deep. Fenced off and compete with warning signs this has prevented (most) human occupation since the shooting stopped. With broken windows, open doors and collapsing roofs the area is, slowly, taking on a surreal and other worldly appearance. The city of Detroit has this in spades. Known simply as ‘the Blight’ (a Sci-Fi post-apocalypse phrase if I’ve ever heard one) it is caused by rapid depopulation and the inability of local authorities to ‘pull back’ gracefully from earlier urban expansionism. Whole blocks, as well as the odd house or three, have been abandoned to time and the elements to decay on their own, on natures, schedule. 

One of the most interesting places the author visited, and one I need to find out much more about, is the Zone Rouge around the city of Verdun. When the Great War ended, it was decided to leave much of the devastation to its own devices. SO much explosive had been used and the ground was SO contaminated that it was swiftly agreed that the expense of reclamation wasn’t worth the cost whilst other farming areas could, at least theoretically, recover. It took a long time for nature to come back in this zone and there are still some areas – described in a spooky almost horrific manner – where nothing can live, not even the most extreme of the extremophiles. These ‘dead zones’ are truly awe inspiring for all of the wrong reasons. 

As usual, I picked up this volume because it ‘looked interesting’. I was most definitely not disappointed. Not only does the author write in a beautiful manner (I can’t really describe it otherwise), she’s also brave enough to travel to some of these zones – a few of which would definitely give me second or indeed third thoughts! - and report back what she saw. On top of this there’s a lot of discussion of what exactly we’re doing to our planet, our effects on nature and other life forms, our effect on the climate and how it's going to (inevitably) bite us in the ass and much else besides. She has some interesting guides to some of the zones – the ones she doesn’t ‘invade’ on her own (without official permission) - with their own stories of retreat, decay and regrowth. It is, as you might imagine, a fascinating subject especially when we consider both climate-based mass-migration and the abandonment of areas in the future due to population decline. One particular interesting thing was the fact that SO much agricultural land has been abandoned over the last 50 years that regrowth has actually made a significant impact on the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere thereby slowing down Global Warming. I’ll definitely be picking up her previous book – a completely different topic: tracing her family history back to the original colonisation of Australia. Highly recommended and one of the highlights of the year.   

Just Finished Reading: Off the Map – Lost Spaces, Invisible Cities, Forgotten Islands, Feral Places and What They Tell Us About the World by Alastair Bonnett (FP: 2014) [300pp] 

It is easy to think that, with Google Maps, Street View, surveillance satellites whizzing over our heads and the ever-present buzzing of drones, everywhere has been mapped, catalogued and categorised and that mystery, the unknown and the delightfully naive ‘here be dragons’ motif no longer exists. I have, mostly, believed this to be true although my faith in the modern surveillance society is shaken whenever people, ships or aircraft ‘go missing’ never to be seen again – but cities, islands, borders? Surely such things are real, physical, stationary... Apparently not. 

I picked up this book years ago on a whim (I know, not like ME at all) and it’s been sitting in a pile of random books waiting to be read. As I’ve also picked up a few more books in similar vein (more later) I thought it was about time to take several journeys to points unknown. I think the first thing that struck me about this delightful narrative is the authors ability to find the odd and the overlooked in the everyday and the ordinary, those places that we walk past every day and ignore so much that they effectively become invisible – that patch of grass (usually with a tree or two) just sitting there, disconnected and often difficult to get to, separated by a busy road or fenced off. Lost spaces. They do give off an ‘Urban Fantasy’ vibe, as if they are half-hidden doorways to other realms that hide in plain sight. I’m sure that they’re everywhere if you open your eyes and see them. Not TOO sure about the exploring bit though. I’d take a well packed bag and a change of clothes, just in case! 

Then there are underground installations, bunkers and indeed whole cities (both modern and ancient) that don’t show up on any map but sit there as if waiting for their occupants to arrive and bring them back from the brink. There are islands that appear almost overnight – often through volcanic action – hang around for a while, for weeks, months, sometimes years and they vanish again after a storm or earthquake. One of the most interesting things I discovered here was that not all borders are, well, borders. Some are fractured for weird historical reasons and you might cross them multiple times within the space of a mile or two without even realising it. Then you have national enclaves within another country – with another enclave inside it. It gives a whole other meaning to ‘border dispute’. Then there is territory that exists outside of any national jurisdiction – not just international airspace, or vast ocean areas outside national limits but also Freeports (often at airports) where nation states have no hold and VAST amounts of wealth accumulate in paintings, other works of art, designer cars and much else. My personal favourite is the micro-nation (like Sealand – about which more later) where individuals or companies buy (or simply take) slices of territory not previously claimed by near-by nations.  

This was in many ways a delightful eye-opener to how unregulated, unnoticed or simply misplaced places can be in a supposedly over-regulated over-documented world under constant and pervasive surveillance. Things, it seems are not really like that. The world is less regimented and more ‘enchanted’ than we realise. To get a flavour of such enchanting places I definitely advise you read this book. You’ll probably start noticing things that previously slipped by you. Much more to come on this intriguing topic! 

Just Finished Reading: Divided – Why We’re Living in an Age of Walls by Tim Marshall (FP: 2018) [288pp] 

Walls, be they metaphorical, electronic or physical, seem to be THE topic presently. From the ‘Great Firewall of China’ to the ‘southern Border’ in the US, from the wall separating Israel from the Palestinians to the barriers between India and Pakistan, from the walls being erected on the borders of the European Union and calls for stricter interior controls and the rejection of the free movement of people by the UK in the Brexit vote, talk of walls – the need for more, bigger, wider, deeper – and protests against them has rarely been louder. But why? And why now? 

Walls have a LONG and chequered history. Normally they are built to keep people out, to restrict access to an area or country, to control who comes in. Sometimes they are the opposite – the Berlin Wall being the poster child for this sort of thing – and are designed to keep a population IN. All have failed to one degree or another – although the Berlin Wall was amongst the most successful certainly in modern times. Despite the catalogue of failure, the wall builders rarely give up and instead look for better walls full of gadgets, drones, cameras, and if you’re really serious of keeping people out, men with guns, mines and dogs trained to kill. Yet, people still come, people still get through – or escape. The problem with walls is that there’s often a wall around or through them – be it a ladder, a tunnel, a balloon or simply a bribe at the gate. Most rational wall builders know this. Walls will slow the movement of people, not stop it. Walls are an additional cost – monetary, psychological, emotional – to people looking to relocate. Often the additional cost is worth paying and the cost to be builders to prevent this can be eye-wateringly large. Is it even worth it? 

The issue here, as the author points out, is less practical than emotional. Walls might not make us safe, but they make us feel safer. Or at least that’s the idea. But living inside a wall also makes people feel besieged and under (at least potential) attack. They may feel (at least temporarily) safer but at the cost of increased anxiety. In many ways its completely understandable. We seem to be living in a particularly uncertain time. Ironically, it might have been the falling of one wall – in Berlin – that eventually led to so many of us either cowering behind our new walls or calling for them to be built. The Cold War – however potentially existential it was – provided at least the illusion of stability. Generally speaking, people knew what to expect from their own side and that of the ‘other’. The future, bleak though it might be, was a known quantity. Today we live in a much more complex multi-polar world where the future can be barely imagined (bleak though it is expected to be) much less planned for. The entirely natural instinct is to burrow in, hunker down and protect what you have – in other words, to start building walls or build existing walls all the higher. 

Taking a world tour of wall building – both existing and planned – the author shows (to a surprising extent I thought) the extent to wall building in regional hotspots and along contended and contentious border areas. Most of these walls I’d barely heard of as most talk, at least in the western media is about America’s southern border with Mexico. That is, sadly, not the only one, not the biggest or most expensive or most complex one. With global migration increasing due to conflict, climate pressure and other factors the numbers of people pressing up against walls across the world can only increase. The question for everyone, not just our politicians, is what we can, should, and will do about it. Bigger walls or a more managed and rational process. One way or another we’re going to find out. Definitely recommended, although it might depress you more than a little bit. Much more to come from this author. 

Just Finished Reading: The Border – The Legacy of a Century of Anglo-Irish Politics by Diarmaid Ferriter (FP: 2019) [146pp] 

The border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland is in the news again. When both the UK and the RoI were both in the European Union it was, in effect, invisible. Brexit, of course, changed all that. Naturally with the history of both sides and especially the more recent history of ‘The Troubles’ that particular borders issues are going to be complicated. But these complications go back to the start of its existence with the end of the Irish Civil War and, indeed, in some ways back to the boundaries of the counties created in the 17th and 18th centuries. As I said, complicated. 

Because Ireland was under British rule for centuries prior to the Irish Civil War (28 June 1922 – 24 May 1923) and the subsequent partition the county boundaries were practically meaningless. Borders ran down the center of roads, through parts of villages and between milking sheds and pastures. The Boundary Commision created to settle these issues failed to do so as neither the South nor the North was willing to trade territory for rationality. But being practical people at heart, the Irish either ignored the border or found ways to work (and walk) around it. With so many crossing points and so little surveillance available, smuggling was both rife and highly profitable. Again, this was (mostly) tolerated and largely ignored. There was just no practical way to stop it. Then things turned NASTY with The Troubles and the attempt to stop cross border incidents. Slowly crossing points were reduced, hardened and surveillance increased. The border was still permeable – there wasn’t any way to make it secure without building an Iron Curtain equivalent which no one wanted and would’ve been prohibitively expensive – but at least some control was possible. Then came the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement and the border posts were dismantled, bridges between communities literally re-built and things started moving again. Economic and cross border, cross culture ties increased and people on both sides started to put the bad old days behind them. Then, as we all know, came Brexit. 

Not surprisingly the Northern Irish border was one of THE main sticking points in any negotiations with the EU. But as my friends and I discussed it there was obviously a flaw in the UK’s ‘plan’. Now obviously you can’t have a wide-open border between the UK (in the guise of Northern Ireland) and the EU (in the guise of the Republic of Ireland) once the UK left. At the same time, you couldn’t have a HARD border between the two entities because of the Belfast Agreement and subsequent cross-border processes and organisations. To square that particular circle the UK proposed a ‘frictionless’ border with customs checks taking place automatically with new (as yet to be developed) technology. This magically process was accepted by both sides at the last minute in order to avoid a no-deal Brexit and all of the consequences that would follow from that. Of course, this magical tech has yet to appear (years later) and undoubtedly will never appear because, spoiler alert, it’s MAGIC. 

So, if the Irish border issue has ever caused you to scratch your head and wonder what all the fuss is about, this is definitely the book for you. I learnt a LOT from this short and very well written (and sometimes honestly hilarious) history of a sometimes very contentious line on a map. Definitely more coming on Irish history from this author. 

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Just Finished Reading: The New Silk Roads – The Present and Future of the World by Peter Frankopan (FP: 2018)

China is not a rising power. No, China has risen. That is the overall conclusion of this fascinating study of China’s global reach and China’s future power in the world. How are we responding in the West? - with division, in-fighting, denial and a delusional sense of self-importance. The West has been dominant across the globe for centuries so it’s understandable that we have come to accept this reality as somehow permanent. However, in the recent decades the centre of power in the world – political, financial and, growing in leaps and bounds, military is shifting to the East. The threat (if it’s characterised that way) is real. But the West seems to be incapable of challenging this truly seismic global shift. Even our response is too little, too late, misses the point entirely or simply does not exist. China in particular (along with the other BRIC countries Brazil, Russia and India) in spending billions of dollars across the world on the new Silk Roads which throughout history have wrapped the world in a web of trade in exotic spices, silk and ideas – plus a few nasty diseases. The new roads consist of port installations, actual roads, power stations, dams, oil refineries and much else besides. As it expands China acquires the vast natural resources it needs to grow at (until recently) a truly astonishing rate – lifting a billion people out of poverty – and acquiring the rights to future resources from Africa, Central Asia and South America. The Chinese are either buying or building port facilities in Europe, Malaysia and even the US. Being unburdened by the need to appeal to an electorate the Chinese can plan 10, 20, 50 or 100 years ahead and actually be able to stick to the plan through thick and thin. No democratic country could hope to do that tied as they are to the election cycle and the demands of big business with shareholders to please and short term profits to provide.

The question that all of this raises is how do we in the West respond? As our relative power with China and the other BRICs decline how do we cope in a multi-polar world were we no longer command the wind (or much else for that matter). If we can no longer throw our weight around with impunity how do we respond to Chinese moves in the Pacific or Indian probes on the Moon or Russian troops in Crimea. What do we do when the first man (or woman) on Mars is from Beijing and not Boston? What do we do when most of the world looks to developments in New Delhi rather than New York? What do we do when the most common second language ceases to be English and becomes Mandarin instead? How do we adapt to this new reality.

The most important thing is, naturally, to recognise that this is happening and to stop seeing ourselves as the natural masters of the universe and the inheritors of all we survey. The West, it seems, has had its time in the sun and now the sun sets and rises in the East. We should see it for what it is, accept it and then do our best to be part of the new narrative rather than a historical side note. This book is not a cry in the wilderness and is most certainly not a cry for help of any kind. It is, above all else, a wake-up call showing us what we have by and large ignored. We may, on many scales, still be a force to be reckoned with, we may still indeed be Number One but not for much longer. How we respond to our new place in the world will determine how happy or how miserable future generations of Westerners will be. Some think that war is inevitable – Thucydides Trap – between the rising power of China and the falling power of the US. I don’t believe this. I have never been a great believer in fate or destiny and I’m not going to start now. Working with the multi-polar nature of the future rather than against it would be in everyone’s interests and could usher in a new global age of prosperity. Or we could fight, waste our dwindling resources and, ultimately, lose and beggar our grandchildren who will curse our names. We need to recognise that the future is probably going to be bright. It’s just won’t be our future. This book will help you see that. Highly recommended for anyone interested in how the future is likely to pan out and who want to know what the BRICs are up to across the globe right now. (R)         

Just Finished Reading: The Old Straight Track - Its Mounds, Beacons, Moats, Sites and Mark Stones by Alfred Watkins (FP: 1925)

This book was not at all what I expected. As one of the foundation texts to the New Age movement in the 1970’s and beyond I expected at least a healthy dollop of mysticism, myth and speculation. Whilst speculation did make its way into the narrative, how could it not, it was tempered with reason, logic and a fair bit of scepticism. But I’m running ahead of myself.

The author had a rather strange idea. Although he wasn’t the first to have it he might have been the first to properly systemise it. The strange idea is that prehistoric man, in England and in other places too, produced dead straight paths across the landscape and marked these tracks with stones, mounds (often burial mounds), pools of water and clefts in hillsides which enabled travellers – once on the path – to navigate across great distances with comparative ease. But this is not an idea the author plucked out of the air. Firstly there is the undoubted existence of burial mounds as well as single standing stones (as well as clusters of them) scattered across the English landscape. That can be taken as fact. But the leap the author makes is that these items are not scattered across the landscape in a random fashion – indeed far from it. Using maps extensively throughout the book the author shows that straight lines can be used linking not only two or three such items but four, five and more. Lower numbers might just be coincidental but extended links over miles of the countryside cannot, he maintains be accidental. There are man-made and with a purpose and existed long before the Romans arrived with their straight roads. I was actually very impressed by his logical reasoning. Not only did he discover previously unknown standing stones using his method – Lay Hunting – but he also had very reasonable explanations of oddities like paths that actually go through (rather than around) pools of water – the pools reflect both sunlight and moonlight allowing a walker or rider at ground level to navigate in poor lighting conditions.

One of the things I found particularly fascinating is how both place names and family names reflected the nature of the paths in that area and what they were primarily used for – transporting salt, clay or other items. The men themselves – experts in navigation as well as able managers of the numbers needed to erect the larger stones and arrange them in meaningful ways – gave their profession names to future villages as well as family names (or the bastardised versions that have made it down to us) that still exist today. I do love the meanings and origins of words and it was really interesting to see where names I know well came into existence.

But making his case for Lay Lines was not enough for the author. Although he had discovered many in his home country and in nearby regions he had also collected evidence from other hunters of lay lines far and wide. The field of lay lines was still, in 1925, a new one. To amass the evidence he needed he wanted others – readers of his books – to go out and discover their own lines in their own localities and gave them detailed instructions of how to find them. I imagine, in those far gone days, that it would have been quite an adventure for a local rambling group to spend a day or a weekend looking for prehistoric footpaths long before urbanisation and our incessant road building destroyed them. I suspect that away from civilisation they are still waiting to be found and walked along as they must have been long before the Roman Empire existed. I’m almost tempted to go find one. Who knows where it would lead? An interesting off-the-wall read and unexpectedly evocative of ancient times written by someone with a real passion for his subject. (S)