Category Archives: Book reviews

A Century of the Scottish People 1830-1950 by T.C.Smout

Our view of history over the centuries has inevitably been moulded and formed by the 9780006861416_large_a-century-of-the-scottish-people-1830-1950_haftad[1]victors of battles, by the rich and the powerful, and by those who were able to read and write and, more importantly, use their knowledge of language(s) to form opinions. Seldom do we get to take on the perspectives of the losers in battles, of the weak and poor, and importantly of the illiterate. I see the social historian as someone who helps to bridge that gap.

T.C. Smout’s volume A Century of the Scottish People 1830-1950 is dominated by interpretations of how the ordinary peasants and the factory workers in the cities were subject to the control of the rich and powerful in society.  From the inhumane clearances of the countryside to the appalling and dangerous conditions of the industrial environment, from the cruelty of employing children as young as 6 years of age in the mines and on the looms to the injustices shown to home workers in the textile industry, the story unfolds gradually towards the formation of unions and the establishment of compulsory education for all children.

Scotland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was a tough place to live if you were a member of the majority social class. Child mortality was high, people died young of industrial diseases and accidents, and mothers frequently died in childbirth, not to mention all the other potentially fatal diseases like TB and typhus. There were no comforts, little food, and the living conditions were frankly appalling. By contrast, the succeeding 70 years up to the present time have seen changes that have transformed the lives of the majority to a level that would have seemed impossible in Victorian Britain.

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200 years on two wheels

Re: Cyclists by Michael Hutchinson

Re CyclistsMichael Hutchinson, a former pro-cyclist-turned-journalist, writes an excellent weekly column in The Comic………more accurately known as Cycling Weekly. His style is to combine well-informed commentary on aspects of the world of cycling, mixed with wry humour and critical insights into whatever is current or in fashion. I know some faithful followers of the magazine turn immediately to his column when they open their current edition.

Re: Cyclists, 200 years on two wheels is his take on (basically) the entire history of cycling, from the ‘draisine’ (hobby horse) invented by Baron von Drais in Germany in 1816 to what we know to today, the bicycle in all its configurations. No matter how sophisticated bicycles become, from the technical metal compounds that go into the frames, to the growing subtlety of the accessories that go on the frames, the design of the bicycle has not fundamentally changed over the years. Two hundred years on we are still taking advantage of that leap of imagination that went into building the early machines, and that will probably never change.

His perambulations take him through the history of Cycling Weekly, a magazine that began simply as Cycling in 1891, bang in the era of the penny farthing (perhaps the most dangerous of the velocipedes to ride), through its brief and disastrous flirt with mopeds, when it was renamed in 1957 as Cycling and Mopeds, to its current incarnation, inspired largely by the world of racing.

Although he dedicates the last chapter to the future of cycling (as most similar tomes do) he is challenged to predict any fundamental changes ahead, given that we have already come through 200 years of history and development without any real departures from the original designs.

A good book and worth reading.

 

Lost for words: John Humphrys

Lost for wordsHave you ever passed a mechanic’s workshop that advertised MOT’s while you wait or, worse still, read a piece in a newspaper that said in the 1970’s? Or maybe you have sat through a party political broadcast that used a lot of meaningless psychobabble like we will be tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime or we now have to operate within shifting paradigms? We all now live in an age of information overload, with media that can produce billions of words a second, and the language we use for communication is changing faster than the speed of light…….and much too fast for the likes of John Humphrys, stalwart of the Today programme on Radio 4.

Humphrys has a long-standing reputation (which he likes, by the way) of being the grumpiest of grumpy old men, and his manner of interviewing the great and the good (and I mean that metaphorically, of course) betrays his utter impatience with people who seldom speak plainly or, for that matter, to the question. For that he receives an equal amount of praise and criticism from the general public, but he will never reform his ways. But if you want to encounter Humphrys at his light-hearted best at being grumpy, Lost for Words will be an excellent read.

He is not a linguistic expert, nor someone who has any special academic qualification for commenting on the use of language, but as a journalist for over 50 years, he has been exposed to a lot of abuse of the English language, and the ‘University of life’ has taught him a thing or two. Although whole chapters are dedicated to the misuse of grammar and syntax, and the misunderstanding of basic English words (like disinterested for example) and so on, I found his chapters on the abuse of the powerful emotive force of expressions (which he divides into boo phrases and hurrah phrases) to be the most intriguing. Although this volume was written back in 2004, his reflections of the abuse of language by politicians at that time shows a clear lead through to the kind of language and fake news that is being exploited by today’s ruling classes. Couple that with a general refusal to answer direct questions by substituting tired mantras (remember Theresa May’s strong and stable government mantra), and we should not be surprised with the rise of populist leaders today.

The subtitle to his book is The mangling and manipulating of the English language……..if I had been tasked with the duty of writing his subtitle, I might have been tempted to use the noun manipulation instead of yet another gerund. But then that’s me….

 

The New Elizabethans: James Naughtie

New ElizabethansWhether villains or saints, the generations of the second Elizabethan age have left their footprints on the sands of time. James Naughtie, a well respected radio journalist, has done a survey and produced the names of 60 people who made a difference, for good or ill, and his pen portraits were broadcast on Radio 4 a few years back. The book of the series, The New Elizabethans, is a highly readable and very informative published version of those scripts, ideal for snatched moments of reading on train journeys or just before the bedside light is switched off.

When we think of influential people, we usually picture those who have had a positive impact on the world, people such as Tim Berners-Lee, David Attenborough, Francis Crick or David Hockney. But then there is a much longer list of people who were equally influential but divided public opinion, people such as Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and Simon Cowell. At the negative end of the scale there is a depressingly substantial list of those who inspired resentment and loathing for their ruthlessness and their own self-serving interests: people such as Fred Goodwin and Rupert Murdoch.

But whatever their motives, whether for good or ill, the 60 people who found their way into this series certainly had (and some still have) an authoritative impact of the world, and it came as no surprise that the final episode was reserved for the Queen herself.

Threading a Dream: John Greening

JGreening-Cover-Shot-418x660[1]As an inveterate traveller myself and an inordinate consumer of travel literature, it has been clear to me for many years that there is no such thing as a single genre of ‘travel literature’. Travel comes in many forms (cruising or long-distance walking, for instance), has different durations, connects variously with the people and cultures along the route, stays in one place or flits between several destinations, and many other variations. People who choose to write about their experiences can resort to as many different sub-genres of travel writing, some engaging but, sadly, many not so engaging. Being a traveller does not guarantee any special powers of communication, no matter how fascinating the journey was. Because of the nature of my own travel (long distance on a bicycle) my diet has always been top-heavy with the observations of people who ‘take the road less travelled’ and are not afraid to expend a bit of perspiration on their peregrinations. But travellers of my kind invariably skim the surface of the people we meet and the places we visit.

John Greening, on the other hand, has created a two year narrative from his time in southern Egypt in his recent volume Threading a DreamRather than a ‘moving-on’ experience like the long distance traveller, this is very much a ‘staying-put’ experience with his wife, Jane, as VSO volunteers in the early 80s, with plenty of ‘moving about’ amongst people and places within the country. The nett result is a growing familiarity with his environment, a deeper integration with the people and their way of life, and a burgeoning understanding of where Egypt as a nation has come from, and where it might be heading in the future.

There is something more deeply satisfying about this kind of travel literature compared to the restless meanderings of the independent trekker. John Greening, in fact, can be safely Dewey classified amongst the august body of literary travel writers, but I will make a distinction here between those who travel just to write (like Bill Bryson) and those whose writings have emerged as a result of their travels. Threading a Dream falls into the latter category and earns my respect all the more for it.

For many readers whose travel reading is limited to the Sunday supplements and the occasional ex-pat offering like Driving over lemons, this may not be the kind of book for taking to the beach or reading in snatches before falling asleep. But for those who want to get beneath the skin of a nation, its people and its history as seen by a couple of young inexperienced teachers who were hungry for contact with all around them and, in the case of the author, was also on the cusp of a writing career as a poet, Threading a Dream will be an intriguing read, and well worth the effort.

Stalin’s Children by Owen Matthews

Stalin's childrenWhen I picked up this volume from a library shelf, I never expected the term “children” to refer to the generations of Russian children that had grown up under the repressive regime of Stalin, whom they had referred to as ‘Uncle Stalin’.

The book is the story of the love affair between Owen Matthews’ parents: Mervyn, a failed British academic, and Lyudmila, a Russian lady who had survived 11 years of internment, and had been crippled by TB, in one of Stalin’s many prison camps. They met in the 1960s, during the cold war, when Mervyn was posted as a diplomat in Moscow, but found himself forever in the firing line of the KGB, who ultimately tried to recruit him as a spy. They failed to pierce his British membrane of loyalty, so had him expelled for ‘economic speculation’ (he tried to sell an old suit).

For six years thereafter, Mervyn and Lyudmila kept their relationship alive through love letters, while Mervyn exploited every diplomatic (and non-diplomatic) avenue fighting for Lyudmila’s right of passage out of Russia. Only when an exchange of prisoners, totally unconnected to their case, came about, Lyudmila was added to the deal as an afterthought. Sadly the marriage turned out to be unhappy. The epistolary happiness during the 6 years of separation could never be matched by the real thing.

Matthews, who followed in his father’s footsteps by becoming a Russianist himself, travelling extensively in Russia as a journalist, and marrying a Russian lady, already had the imaginative background to pursue his research to discover some of the details of his parents’ tortured lives, during a period of Russian history when it was a miracle for both of them to survive.

Young Stalin: Simon Sebag Montefiore

YoungStalinThis is a curious biopic of the early life of Stalin. What we know about Stalin now seems to bear little relationship to the man before he became the great dictator and the most notorious mass murderer of the 20th century.

In the early days he was an unlikely mixture of the ravenously hungry information-seeker and studious scholar, petty criminal, bank robber and womanizer. He spent nearly 10 years in Siberian exile, but he had used his time to study and create the network of contacts that would see his sudden rise to power during the Revolution of 1917.

Montefiore beguilingly portrays him as a loveable rogue, who excelled in working behind the scenes to further his espoused causes. His activities lay roughly at the level of minor mafia skirmishes, but he proved to be so useful and reliable to people like Lenin that his place within the party was assured. He had the knack and facility to bridge the gap between the educated bourgeois personalities within the party and the workers. He himself was from peasant stock, so many of his early ‘buddies’ in government came out of his own social network from Georgia.

This volume won the Costa Biography Award in 2007, and deservedly so.

Red Famine by Anne Applebaum

Red famineThis volume by Anne Applebaum (journalist and Soviet historian) fits neatly into the genre of popular history, but is, nevertheless, crowded with citations and archival references, which potentially give it an academic weight that some readers would find off-putting. Its subject matter, however, is still hotly debated and contentious.

Applebaum, who is partly Polish in her heritage, has been at odds for many years with the research and writings of typical western Soviet historians, who have generally ‘bought into’ the Soviet/Russian perspectives on history in order to gain ‘privileged access’ to archives and documentation. Applebaum remained rigorously independent during her formative years, gaining access to the people and the circumstances in which history occurred.

The dreadful famine of 1932-4 that killed an estimated 4.5 million Ukrainians has gone through so many permutations of interpretation that, at times, it has been difficult to know if it ever happened at all. The Soviet/Russian perspective has been dominated by propaganda and ‘fake news’ (according to Applebaum), but the thrust of the recent research (particularly amongst Ukrainians) demonstrates that it was not only real but it was directed and managed by Stalin himself. In other words, famine was used for political ends, in this instance to stamp out Ukrainian nationalism and to harness all the Ukraine’s agricultural produce for export, in order to finance the rampant industrialisation of the USSR.

A tough book to read because of its subject matter, but an important period of Ukrainian history that the Soviets tried to delete completely from the records.

Racing through the dark: David Millar

Racing-Through-the-DarkIn recent times, we have got to know much more about ‘David Millar the man’ through his expert TV commentaries on the grand tours, and he certainly comes across as a fine analyst of the interior mechanisms of the peloton and the tactics of stage racing. But his racing career had been beset by the scandal of doping, and this autobiography is his attempt to come to terms with that, and to communicate his side of the whole sad story.

I am always conscious that an autobiographer has complete control of his/her own material, and is likely to give a monochrome version of the events, as they have seen them from their own perspective. Not a bad thing, perhaps, but subject to all kinds of limitations. Millar, however, was very quick to confess to his crimes when discovered (unlike many of his colleagues in the sport), took his punishments ‘on the chin’, and eventually emerged as the mature experienced rouleur that he was with a very different agenda: to be an ambassador to help clean up the sport.

It is notable throughout his book that he is slow to incriminate others (perhaps a failing on his part), but is blunt and straightforward about holding himself up for scrutiny, and as an example of what happens to those who cheat. He was very fortunate to be given a second chance, and to make a come-back. He never expected the kind of support that came from people as eminent a Jean Marie LeBlanc and Dave Brailsford. He had expected to be treated as the outcast that befitted his crimes, but within a couple of seasons, he had reinstated himself and, ironically, found himself racing much better when ‘clean’ than doped.

If you enjoy confessionary autobiographies, this is a worthy read.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist: Mohsin Hamid

This semi-autobiographical novel has the most unusual structure of being a dramatic monologue, between the protagonist Changez and his non-speaking American listener, whom he met in a Lahore tea house. Changez recounts his own story, that of a Pakistani Reluctant_Fundamentalistfrom an impoverished upper middle class background who goes to the USA to study at Princeton University. His degree takes him on a meteoric career with a company that assesses the marketable value of businesses before they are taken over, but his life comes crashing down in the wake of 9/11, when all American citizens of his skin colour become immediate suspects of being collaborators, and his failed love affair with Erica leaves him in emotional turmoil.

He walks away from his high-flying career and returns to Lahore, where a reassessment of his own loyalties to family and country drives him to reconfigure his own national identity, and begin to look critically at American involvement in his own country’s affairs. At the outset of his career in New York, he was asked by a co-worker where he would like to be in 25 years time, to which he answered: ‘a dictator of a fundamentalist Islamic state’. His answer may have been intended as a joke, but his quiet admiration for what the 9/11 attackers had achieved adds an edge to our assessment of the real character of this apparently pro-American Pakistani.

I suspect readers will be deeply divided about the merits of this type of fiction, but it certainly held my attention throughout, and the fact it has been translated into 25 languages and has been shortlisted for numerous literary prizes (including the Booker prize) is, perhaps, testament to it literary value.

A long walk home: Judith Tebbutt

Long walk homeA truly absorbing and moving first hand account of an idyllic holiday in the Masai Mara that suddenly turned into something of tragic proportions. Judith (Jude) and her husband, David, had spent a perfect week on safari in the Masai Mara in 2013, followed by the anticipation of a relaxing beach holiday just 40km south of the Somali border. The remoteness of this picturesque beach engendered both its beauty and its danger, and Jude felt uneasy about  its deserted tranquillity from the outset. With good reason because, on the first night, they were awoken by intruders, David struggled with one of them, and Jude was roughly dragged off to a skiff, thrown on top of a pile of fuel cans, and taken off on a long journey, to be kept prisoner as a hostage for over six months in Somalia.

What she didn’t know for several weeks was the fate of her husband. She had fondly believed he was still alive and in the process of negotiating her release. She discovered, however, during the first phone call with her son, Ollie, that David had not ‘survived his injuries’. He had, in fact, been shot. What had already been a very difficult experience for Jude turned into something so painful that she wasn’t sure that she could survive.

This memoir is a very well written account of her six months in captivity, of the relationships she struck up with her captors, of her methods of survival, of the notes she kept (which were destroyed by her captors), and of the hourly pacing around her small room to help keep herself physically and mentally fit…….hence the title ‘A long walk home’. A  remarkable lady and a remarkable story.

A journey round the world: David Sore

David SoreDavid Sore came to my attention during a BBC documentary about the Raleigh Cycle company a few weeks ago. I grabbed my phone as I was watching, logged onto my local library service, and found he had written a book about his cycle journey around the world, on his modified Raleigh bicycle, in the 1960s. At the age of 25, he began a journey of nearly four years, riding 35,000 miles through 21 countries, and his volume A journey round the world: a cycling memoir is his record of that journey.

Though it is a very commendable self-published account of a memorable, life-changing experience, and could be an invaluable guide to anyone wanting to dip their toes in the world of long-distance touring, it does suffer from a few flaws. Published 40 years after the experience, it relies heavily on his diary notes and latter-day research, and fails to ‘bristle’ with the liveliness and enthusiasm of a recent experience, a point I noted elsewhere with Patrick Leigh Fermor’s trilogy about his walk to Istanbul in the 1930s.

This ‘chronological detachment’ probably also encouraged a style of narrative that dwells overmuch on the ‘nuts and bolts’ of his journey: food, drink, camping, the gearing on his bike, and the almost mechanical focus on a place-by-place description of everything he encountered. It would have been a much improved narrative had he explored his inner feelings and perceptions more, his reactions to places and, above all, to the people he met. We learn very little of the man himself, what makes him tick, and how people along the way altered his perception of the world.

It is, however, a worthy read, a story that has a beginning, middle and an end and, even through the narrow style of his writing, he does give a flavour of the rigours of the life of the long-distance cyclist.

A brief history of time: Stephen Hawking

HawkingIn a saner moment, I would never choose to pick up a book about cosmology, but then I had recently read the memoir of Jane Hawking Travelling to Infinity, which had led to a second viewing of the film The Theory of everything, so I had to complete the ‘trilogy’ by making an effort to read A brief history of time. It was not the challenge I had expected, even though many of the concepts went straight over my head, but Stephen Hawking very adeptly puts into layman’s language the very complex concepts about time, the universe, black holes and the continuing expansion of the universe.

I never expected to be so engaged, and that probably explains the more than 20 million sales in over 40 languages of a book that would normally be confined to the reading rooms of university research departments. Hawking succeeded in making theoretical physics ‘cool’, even though the vast majority of those who purchased the book (I imagine) have never managed to read it in its entirety, or not at all. Like Shakespeare and the Bible, everyone wanted to have it on their bookshelves, but few have made it a reading priority.

If you have a copy in your bookcase, I would highly recommend re-visiting it. It is certainly worth the effort.

That was the church that was: Andrew Brown & Linda Woodhead

That-Was-the-Church-That-Was.jpgWhen you discover that Bloomsbury pulled back all the review copies of one of its books before publication to pulp them, because something potentially libellous in its text was exciting a few lawyers, you know that the covers are going to be filled with some contentious thinking.

Brown and Woodhead have endeavoured to write an account of the last 30 years of the history of the Anglican Church, exposing what they think have been all the weaknesses and aberrations that have led to the spectacular decline in church attendance, and the end of a history where the Church was formerly accepted as an institution of the establishment. According to them, the Church is no longer the religion of the state, and its interior self destruction is as much to do with its own internal wars as it is with the general changes in society as a whole.

With so much rivalry amongst the different power bases (the charismatics, evangelicals, liberals and Anglo-catholics, to name but a few), and the radically different perspectives of the Church on continents like Africa and North America, it is astonishing that the Church has held together as a single institution.  Then add to that the controversies over the ordination of women and the integration of gay priests and bishops, and you begin to wonder whether now is the time for them to call it a day, and break off into their sundry groups, and seek their own identities.

 

 

Travelling to Infinity by Jane Hawking

Jane HawkingJane Hawking, the first wife of Stephen Hawking, was moved to write her memoirs after Stephen decided to separate from her (and eventually divorce her) after 25 years of marriage.

She married Stephen knowing that he was suffering from a rare form of motor neurone disease, which was a progressive disease that would only grow worse in time, understanding that Stephen might only have a few years to live. She threw herself into the relationship with mind and body, made untold sacrifices to nurture her weakening husband, and do everything she could to support him in his scientific endeavours. In fact, initially, she put her own life on hold for the sake of her husband.

This moving memoir is a very detailed personal account of how she coped (or didn’t, in many instances) with Stephen’s altering physical state, his rapid promotion to the status of a world celebrity, of how she managed the upbringing of the three children she bore, her relationship with both sets of parents, her endeavour to complete her own doctoral thesis in medieval Spanish poetry, and the whole panoply of the ups and downs of the very hectic life they led. It is amazing how she simply survived.

At nearly 500 pages, this is the abridged version of her original memoir written in 1999, Music to move the stars, and became the inspiration for the much acclaimed film The Theory of Everything. The book held my attention unfailingly, and I would highly recommend it.

Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck

travels-with-charley“I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I’ve lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment.”

John Steinbeck’s self-portrait is Hemingway-esque, and the photo on the front cover of the Penguin edition confirms that comparison. Charley is Steinbeck’s large French poodle, who is going to accompany him on his three month circular tour of the USA, starting from his home in Sag Harbour, New York, heading north to New England, then west and down the Californian coast, crossing back to the east coast via the Mojave desert, Texas and New Orleans. His mode of transport is a pick-up truck with a small caravanette fixed on the back pan (which he named Rocinante, after Don Quijote’s horse), theTravels with Charley map. Stacy Innerst illustration motoring equivalent of a one-man tent.

This is the story of a man, now in his early 60s, needing to rediscover the people and places of his own native country and, in Steinbeck’s masterful prose, and through a keen eye for detail and an earnest desire to reconnect with the ‘music of the regional dialects and accents’ before they disappear altogether in the age of mass media, we are treated to an extraordinary narrative of a journey that carries the reader along as a willing guest.

rocinanteI related strongly to his style of travel. Though my mode of transport is the bicycle, Steinbeck chooses the closest equivalent in the world of motoring, and his unpretentious needs and requirements partner the generosity he shows people en route, sharing a cup of coffee or whiskey with others, giving a lift to walking travellers, passing the time of day with lonely people.

His journey is also a time for reflecting and meditating on so many other aspects of his life so, much more than just a mere diary of three months on the road, it also serves as a personal memoir about his own personal thoughts and feelings. A very worthy read.

Historia de una maestra: Josefina Aldecoa

historia-de-una-maestra-de-josefina-aldecoaJosefina Aldecoa comes from a long line of teaching parentage, especially amongst the women-folk. Both her mother and grandmother were teachers and principals of schools before her. In this short novel Historia de una maestra, Aldecoa seems to be writing in biographical mode, the first-person narrator being her mother, and she featuring as the young daughter. But it isn’t exactly biographical because the dates of the narrative don’t precisely match the dates of her own life.

Set in the 1920s and 1930s in rural Spain, the protagonist, Gabriela, qualifies as a teacher, heads off to Equatorial Guinea in her bid to expand the horizons of her limited world, but contracts malaria and has to return to Spain. She finds work in a village school, meets and marries Ezequiel (also a teacher) and, through their growing involvement in rural affairs, become deeply committed to the new Republican government of the 1930s, which promised to bring major changes that would favour the lives of the poor and landless masses. The narrative takes us up to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, when Ezequiel was summarily shot for his involvement with the workers’ movement.

This novel is the first in a trilogy, the other titles being La fuerza del destino and Mujeres de Negro.

Not quite world’s end: John Simpson

john-simpsonHaving worked as a journalist for the BBC for over 40 years, John Simpson has a long history that provides him with the source material for his memoirs. Not quite  world’s end is just one of his memoirs, covering the late 1990s and early 2000s, dovetailing in with his marriage to Dee, and the birth of Rafe (Raphael) their son, when Simpson was 62 years of age.

The whole book is an unruly kaleidoscope of reminiscences, both about his personal experience of world events, as well as the more domestic happenings in his personal life and how they have altered his perspective on the world. From Iraq to Afghanistan, from Russia to South Africa, from Argentina to Bosnia-Herzegovina……  there is hardly a tract of the known world that Simpson hasn’t reported from and, in keeping with the nature of his job, he was nearly always drafted in to report from some of the world’s most dreadful conflicts where, it was not uncommon, he would often put himself and his camera crew in the most compromisingly hazardous situations just to get that key interview or camera shots of the devastation all around him. He talks of such life-threatening situations as if they were just part of the routine of his work…….which, of course, they were.

But the ‘heavy stuff’ is often lightened by personal reflections, the relationships he built up with people, the food and drink he enjoyed, and the fun he had with total strangers. A very good read, and well worth putting it on a short list of books to read if, that is, you enjoy this particular genre of writing.

 

 

Empire: Jeremy Paxman

After all that has been written over the years about the history of the British Empire, you’d scarcely think there was room for one more tome. But here it is, by the inimitable Jeremy Paxman, preceding a television series of the same title which can be played-back on YouTube.

jeremy-paxman-empire-book-coverI fully expected to be reading a highly critical account of Britain’s role as a colonizer of a quarter of the world, but Paxman deftly sails a narrow course between the two opposing views. That doesn’t mean that he is not individually critical of individuals, or actions and policies, he is to devastating effect on many counts. He is not averse to lampooning key figures who ‘got it all wrong’ in their enthusiasm to build the empire, and holding up to scrutiny some of the appalling episodes that became key markers on the empire timeline, such as slave-trading, the opium wars, Amritsar and genocide in Tasmania. But in his desire to create some kind of balance, he also highlights atrocities committed by the colonized, such as the Black Hole of Calcutta, and the institutionalized paedophilia, hand-loppings and floggings that occurred in many less-administered corners of the empire.

Although he needed to give more space to the sub-text of his book: “What ruling the world did to the British”, he cannily leaves us to make up our own minds about the oft-stated claim that if any nation is to be subjected to occupation by a colonizer, Britain was definitely the most benevolent of the bunch. I leave you to make up your own mind.

Infidel: Ayaan Hirsi Ali

It is a long time since a book has kept my attention riveted for 6-8 hours a day, and sometimes awake into the small hours.

infidelAyaan Hirsi Ali, born in Somalia, brought up in Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya, escaped to the Netherlands as a political refugee, eventually becoming a member of the Dutch Parliament, came to prominence when a film producer, Theo van Gogh was murdered in the street by a Muslim extremist, with a knife in his chest affixing a letter addressed to Ms Hirsi Ali. She then embarked on the rest of her life (in 2004) regarded widely as the feminine version of Salman Rushdie, fearing for her life and living with the intense pressure of maximum security.

It is the story of a journey. Not just a physical journey escaping from one country to another, but a psychological and spiritual journey. She had been born into the ‘relaxed’ Muslim society of Somalia which practised excision (genital mutilation), and she describes that experience with painful detail. She joined the Muslim Brotherhood and became evangelical about her faith, but over time, she found many of her questions about the nature of her faith and its treatment of women unanswered. Her father forced her into marrying a distant cousin from Canada whom she’d never met and, on her way via Europe to join him, she made her escape into Holland where she (falsely) claimed status as a political refugee. This chapter of her life was to be the most tumultuous.

Deeply impressed at everything she found in Holland, she gradually lost her faith, became secularized, joined the feminist movement, and began to publicly denounce the practices of the Islamic faith, especially in the area of women’s rights. After the 9/11 attack in the USA, she went on record declaring that terrorism was endemic within the Muslim faith. The murder of Theo van Gogh resulted from a 10 minute film they had made together called Submission, and the letter pinned to his chest called for a fatwa against Ms Hirsi Ali herself, precipitating months and years of isolation and intense security.

In 2005, Time Magazine voted her as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. She is now a naturalized citizen in the United States, has been elected a fellow at the Kennedy Government School at Harvard University, and is now married to Niall Ferguson, the controversial Scottish historian who also teaches at Harvard.

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Bike 5

Five miles or less? Bikes are best!

Kite*Surf*Bike*Rambling

KITESURFING, CYCLING, SUP: ramblings, idiocy and not much more

Cycling Dutch Girl

the only certainty is change

Lifecycle

Brians Blog - life, cycling and ...

4000milestothesea

On a bicycle from coast to coast across the USA

Self Propelled

Self propelled adventures through life; blogging on cycling, touring, micro-adventures, general shenanigans, and environmental news

chrisp666

Cycling across Europe, Cornwall to Munich

The Vicious Cycle

A man searches for meaning...in between leg shavings

2 l o v e c y c l i n g

It's about cycling ... and other travels

There And Back Again

Life at 15 miles per hour

As Easy As Riding A Bike

Well it should be, shouldn't it?

Bike Around Britain

Blog on cycling around the coast of Britain

David Noble's Blog

Life, Loves and Living

weston.front

The Weston Front - the destination of a road less travelled...

The Innocent Bikestander

It can be better

Bike, Banjo & Baby

They go together so well

Something for Kiki and the Pok

the adventures of Christopher Yardin - by plane, bike, through a lens, or the eyes of a child

Bricycling...

Cycling Blog

Richard Tulloch's LIFE ON THE ROAD

Travel adventures on wheels and legs

THE SPORTSWOOL DIARIES

................."Cherry picking the nicest places in the world to cycle"

Gippsland Granny

Musings from Metung

Serendipities of life

Taking the road less travelled

I Do Not Despair

When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. ~H.G. Wells

Tom’s Bike Trip

Adventures and experiments in two-wheeled travel

All Seasons Cyclist

Real World Product Reviews For Avid Cyclists

machacas on wheels

Taking the road less travelled

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