Category Archives: books

books, history, topographical

Book Review: Bomb Damage Maps

Laurence Ward
The London County Council Bomb Damage Maps, 1939-1945
Thames & Hudson, 2015
During WWII the Architects Department of the London County Council (the LCC; then the local authority for what are now the central London boroughs) set about documenting the cumulative bomb damage in the capital city. This was an area from Woolwich in the east to Hammersmith in the west, and from Crystal Palace in the south to Highgate in the north. Detailed maps were produced showing every property, from the smallest cottage to the large factories. Teams of surveyors soured the area to assess any bomb damage to properties. The damage was graded from “total destruction” down to “minor blast damage” and areas marked for clearance. The sites of V1 flying bomb and V2 rocket impacts were also marked.
The task required 110 maps at a scale of 1:2500 (that’s 25 inches to the mile), and each measuring roughly 75x106cm; these were based on the 1916 Ordnance Survey maps, updated to 1940. And they were hand-coloured according to the level of destruction found. Each of the maps is reproduced here at roughly 1/3 size. And boy do they give a vivid picture of the destruction wrought by the Luftwaffe. Every map contains something interesting — just look at the map for the area of the City around Farringdon and Holborn: it is one big swathe of purple, meaning “Damaged beyond Repair”, from the river to Hoxton and from Bank to the west of Blackfriars Bridge. Overall, getting on for 50% of the Square Mile must have been demolished!


This is just a part of the destruction in the City of London.
The map is centred on St Paul’s Cathedral.

The maps are part of the LCC archives, now held by the London Metropolitan Archives. They were first compiled into this book back in 2005 by the LMS in conjunction with the London Topographical Society. And now they’ve been published for everyone.
Given the number of maps, it is no great surprise that this is an enormous tome measuring 37x27x3cm and weighing in at only just under 3kg! Despite the size, it is definitely not a coffee table book; nor is it a book to read front to back, or even back to front. It is a reference for anyone interested in the history and topography of London, and that will include family historians who may wish to research where their ancestors lived. As I say, every map contains something of interest.
In addition there are 30 or more pages of introductory material, documenting the maps, the surveyors and rescue teams, and a detailed listing of all the Luftwaffe raids; and another almost 50 pages of photographs documenting the destruction.
All in all this is an absolutely stunning collection for those interested in London or WWII. Just don’t try reading it in bed!
Overall Rating: ★★★★★

books, topographical

Book Review: Kent Smugglers' Pubs

Terry Townsend
Kent Smugglers’ Pubs
PiXZ Books; 2014
This is not a book you would generally think to read from cover to cover — and I haven’t. It is a guide book which one dips into to find somewhere interesting to visit.
It is a well produced guide book which does what it implies: provides a couple of page of information on some of the most interesting and picturesque Kent pubs which have particular associations with smuggling. As the introduction says, pretty much every pub in the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries would have had some involvement in smuggling, even those which were far inland, as there had to be trade routes for contraband goods from the coast to London.
The book features just over 30 pubs, many (but not all) on the Kent coast, but all of which have well established connections with significant smuggling. Each pub gets 3 or 4 pages of history and description with copious amounts of illustration on good quality, heavy paper. This makes for lots of suggestions for days out, but the book would do this better if there was a map or two.
My only other real complaint is that (like so many books these days) the board covers have very sharp corners, which make reading in bed uncomfortable.
All in all a useful little book which includes a handful of pubs I know.
Overall Rating: ★★★★☆

arts, books

Book Review

1 Comment

Flavio Febbraro
How to Read Erotic Art
Ludion, 2011
I’ve read this book, over many months, by dint of dipping into it from time to time at bedtime. I found it interesting and absorbing although I didn’t really get any “wow factor”. I did find it hard to put down, but also hard to pick up again – if only because it is chunky and not a comfortable bedtime read.
Although the major emphasis is on western art, the book covers painting and sculpture from China and Japan through India and Europe to Meso-America. It also covers the complete timespan from pre-history to the present day. This wide-ranging subject matter demonstrates that neither the ancients, nor other cultures, had any less interest in the erotic than we do – they just had different artistic styles and way of presenting it within their culture and ability.
The erotic is not just mainstream heterosexual; the vast majority of (non-fetish) erotica is included: male, female, heterosexual, homosexual, mythical, fantasy, even some BDSM.
But the book is more than this. As it is organised chronologically it provides a timeline for the development of art from pre-history to the present day – especially useful as it gives the art historically ignorant like me a much better grasp of who was working when, and who were contemporaries.
Most entries in the 380 pages are double page spreads (a few run over 4 pages) depicting a particular painting/sculpture with a short general explanation and one or two even shorter detailed explanations of what one is looking at. Many entries also contain a couple of paragraphs of historical context; these are often highly interesting.
The book is well produced with excellent colour reproduction on heavy art paper; it is between A5 and A4 in size and 3 cm thick; which makes it quite heavy. The cover is soft; somewhere between hardback and paperback with some nastily sharp corners. That plus the weight make it uncomfortable to read in bed.
Finally a word for the unwary. This is a book about erotic art. Do not go to it looking for titillation, because you won’t find it. It is about art, not pornography. It is worth a look if you are interested in art or the development of artistic erotica.
Overall Rating: ★★★☆☆

books, history, topographical

Book Review: London

Julia Skinner (ed)
Did You Know? London: A Miscellany
Francis Frith Collection, 2014
londonThis is a very small book of just 60 pages and under A5 in size, but it is nicely produced in a good hard cover. It is text heavy, which is good, with about 30 B&W photographs of London nearly all from the period 1875 to 1915. It essentially covers “central London”, being the Cities of London and Westminster, although there are mentions of some areas a little outside like Southwark and the docks.
While I found some of the photographs interesting, the text was dull. The writing hurries along, with fact hard upon fact, quite relentlessly and with little change of pace, tone or style — which makes for difficult reading. I wasn’t helped by already knowing most of the contents — but then I’m not the book’s core audience.
Some of the facts are things which many people wouldn’t know. For example, the Eleanor Cross in front of Charing Cross Station is a Victorian replica of the original which stood on the site at the top of Whitehall/south of Trafalgar Square where there is now an equestrian statue of Charles I (but that is a book all on its own).
Near the back of the book is a short quiz of London trivia (most Londoners should get at least 8 out of 10) and a bit about Francis Frith, the “pioneer Victorian photographer” who started the picture archive which still bears his name and who published this book.
Apart from not engaging me, my main gripe would be the lack of a map to show how all the areas discussed fit together. I would have liked this and I feel sure it would be invaluable to anyone using the book as (part of) a tourist guide.
Overall the book contains lots of factlets about London and some fascinating images, so that if you don’t know London (or don’t know its history well) then this would be a good and interesting introduction. It just didn’t really do it for me.
Overall Rating: ★★★☆☆

amusements, books

Book Review: 100 Great Books in Haiku

David Bader
One Hundred Great Books in Haiku
Viking, 2005
I was given this little book as a Christmas stocking filler. In his Foreword the author says:

In the fifteenth century, Gutenberg … revolutionized the world of publishing. Previously, books had been so scarce that it was not uncommon for a library to have only a handful of bound Latin manuscripts, chained to a desk. Beach reading … required furniture movers. After Gutenberg, millions of books … were published … This in turn led to eyestrain, paper cuts, deforestation and adult reading groups.
In Japan, meanwhile, the seventeen-syllable haiku began to emerge. Developed by Zen monks possibly suffering from attention deficit disorder, these poems were packed with keen insights on frogs and cherry blossom yet short enough to be recited in a single breath. Japanese readers could experience and savour the finest haiku of Basho in its entirety (three lines), while Western readers of, say, John Milton’s Paradise Lost (10,000 lines) were still staring at the title page.
This collection attempts to combine these two breakthroughs … The formal requirements of haiku … have, admittedly, made it necessary to cut some things, such as characters, plot, dialogue and descriptive passages. Still, these are small sacrifices in view of the huge savings in time and shelf space.

bader1This is indeed what the author has done — and done rather successfully — to produce an easy read version of his selected books. Although of course one won’t necessarily agree with his entire choice of “great books” (What no Anthony Powell? No Lewis Carroll?)
The book is easy enough reading for those last 10 minutes in bed; in fact I read the whole book in bed in about 30 minutes. But it is something one will be able to dip into once in a while for light amusement. For instance here are three entries which caught my brain …

THE TALE OF GENJI
Lady Murasaki Shikibu
Two wives, ten consorts —
under the wisteria,
many warm futons.
… … …
FINNEGANS WAKE
James Joyce
Riverrun on and
by Jaisus s’dense! Bien alors,
scribbledehobble.
… … …
METAPHYSICS
Aristotle
Substance has essence.
Form adds whatness to thatness.
Whatsits have thinghood.

There’s no real arguing with any of that!
So yes, this book is a quick read, but an amusing one, and a well worthwhile stocking filler.
Overall Rating: ★★★★☆

books, history

Book Review: History of England

Peter Ackroyd
The History of England, Volume 1: Foundation
Macmillan; 2011
FoundationThis is the first in a series by Peter Ackroyd in which he charts the history of England (and he does mean England, not Britain). The already available subsequent two volumes cover the Tudors and the Civil War.
It is a thick tome — running to just shy of 450 pages of text, plus bibliography, index and colour plates — which charts the rise of England from about the year zilch up to the end of the Wars of the Roses and the accession of Henry VII. This is, I think, too much, because in that space it is almost impossible to cover the ground in any great depth — although Ackroyd struggles manfully to do so, and almost pulls it off.
Most of the book is political history: the rise and demise of kings, rebellion, war, parliament and tax; with each period (pretty much each monarch) being given its own, often long chapter. But in between there are short cameos, often just 3 or 4 pages, of social history on subjects such as the rise of the town, the family of a medieval merchant or ancient roads.
Even having read this book, I still struggle with sorting out who was who, who fought who, and why, during medieval times. For me this just does not hang together as a narrative, the sequence of kings is obscure and all the various plots and wars are just too unmemorable. So I found the social history cameos the most interesting parts of the book and wanted more of them and longer.
But that likely says more about me, than about Ackroyd’s writing, for he lays out, often in quite some detail, the machinations surrounding the rule of each of the monarchs from the late Saxons onwards. This is a discursive history which seeks to try to understand — using existing material — how each monarch got to where they were and stayed there (or didn’t); it is not a book of new material, hitherto unknown research, or amazing revelations. It is very much a synthesis of what we already know, perhaps approached from a slightly different angle, and to that extent it is an easy read.
In other ways this is not an easy read. While Ackroyd writes well, and I often found it hard to put the book down, the text is dense and it isn’t always easy to keep track of the dramatis personae. Which Earl of Warwick are we talking about? The one who has just had his head removed? Or his son? Or his father? Which is, I think, why I find this such a difficult period of English history to get a grip on.
So is this a book worth reading? Yes, I think it is if you want a good overview of how England got from the Romans to the beginning of the Tudors, and can manage to keep straight in your head who begat who; who married who; and whose head was removed and why. I was very confused about this period of English history before I started on the book. I’m a little less confused now; but it is still not crystal clear, which I hoped it would be. Which, as I said earlier, probably says more about me than about the book.
Overall Rating: ★★★☆☆

books, environment, history

Book Review: Burlington

Nick Catford
Burlington; The Central Government War Headquarters at Corsham
Folly Books; 2012
book coverThis is a large, coffee table-sized book full of photographs and maps of the now decommissioned and abandoned government bunker under north Wiltshire.
Nick Catford is one of the country’s most expert and specialist historians and investigators of underground Britain, and especially wartime/military and railway infrastructure, with several books to his credit. He is also an excellent photographer and a leading light in Subterranea Britannica (SubBrit). Which means he gets access to places most people wouldn’t and he’s absolutely the right man to write this book.
The first almost 50 pages provide a blow-by-blow history of the Corsham bunker from the mid-1930s through to it’s demise some 10 or so years ago, but majoring on its Cold War incarnations since the mid-1950s. The reminder of the 215 pages are filled with glossy photographs and charts of the layout of the various areas of the bunker, showing how each area would have been allocated and the now abandoned state of the site — complete with stored hardware, furniture, etc.


The photographs give a good idea of the decay that sets in very quickly when a site like this is abandoned. As yet apparently no roof-falls (at least not in the bunker area), but lots of water seepage and thus decaying wood and metal. Hundreds of new, but abandoned, chairs, blankets, packs of copy paper, telex machines, generators, telecoms infrastructure, catering equipment — it’s all there! It just beggars belief that all this can just be abandoned; one would think that at least the metal (and there must be hundreds of tons of it) could be recovered and sold off for scrap and recycling.

It’s the sheer scale of the enterprise, the government’s inability to organise its way out of a paper bag (certainly with any speed) and the scale of waste which for me makes this book so interesting. Plus the horrendous logistics of setting up the whole outfit, keeping it secret (the code name seems to have been changed every 2-3 years!) and maintaining it in a state of readiness. It all just boggles the mind.
If you are interested in what we get up to underground, things governmental and military or the general disorganisation of the way government goes about planning and implementing projects, you’ll likely find this book fascinating. Or you might just want to have your mind blown! If none of those floats your boat then basically, don’t bother.
Overall Rating: ★★★★☆

books, medical, nudism, people, sexuality

Book Review: Bare Reality

Laura Dodsworth
Bare Reality: 100 Women, Their Breasts, Their Stories
Pinter & Martin; 2015
Bare RealityThis is a fascinating book in which 100 women share un-photoshopped photographs of their breasts alongside honest, courageous, powerful and sometimes humorous stories about their breasts and their effect on their lives. The women come from all walks of life: from a Buddhist nun to a burlesque dancer; ages ranging from 19 to 101; everything from a 32AAA to a 36K bust; entirely natural through surgically enhanced and surgically reduced to bilateral radical mastectomy.
The cover blurb suggests the book will make you reconsider how you think and feel about your own body as well as those of the women in your life. And yes, it may for those who have not thought about these things before. Has it for me? I don’t think so, but the jury is still out. But these women’s perspectives and experiences are certainly revealing, intimate and at times moving.
The stories recounted cover the whole range:

  • I hate my breasts — I love my breasts
  • I wish they were bigger — I wish they were smaller
  • They’re totally non-sensitive — they’re so sensitive it’s painful
  • They don’t do anything sexually — they’re my most erogenous feature
  • Breastfeeding is so gross — I love breastfeeding
  • Breastfeeding is what they’re for — sex is what they’re for
  • I love bras — bras are the work of the Devil
  • I hated them, so a had them enhanced; now they’re horrible and I hate them more
  • I could never have them enlarged/reduced — can’t understand why everyone doesn’t have a boob job
  • This is the first time I’ve ever shown them to anyone — I’m nude all the time
  • How is it men never learn what to do with our breasts but my girlfriend just knows?
  • And of course, why are (most) men so fixated on breasts?

Probably everyone would agree there are a small number of real stunners (though we probably wouldn’t agree which ones) and there are an even smaller number of horrors (like one spectacularly bad boob job); but the vast majority are just breasts — normal breasts — just like you’d see on any topless beach; nothing to get hung up about.
Which is all very much as one might expect so I can’t say I was struck by anything at all surprising. Sad; pathetic; moving; joyous. Yes all of those. But no moment of “OMG how did I not know/suspect that?!”. And in a way I found that disappointing. I had expected there would be something profound about women and their breasts that had passed me by, but if so it isn’t revealed here.
That having been said I did find the book both interesting and compulsive reading. Whether you are male or female, if you want an insight into how women view their breasts this is a must read. I would commend the book to everyone, but especially to teenagers — of both genders, but boys especially — as an essential part of learning, understanding, cherishing and being completely comfortable with your, and everyone else’s, body. To which end we could now do with the equivalent books of male and female genitalia.
Oh, and do not expect the book to be titillating. It isn’t.
Overall Rating: ★★★★☆

amusements, books

Oddity of the Week: Cromwell's Head

Marc Hartzman has a new book out: The Embalmed Head of Oliver Cromwell — A Memoir. According to Hartzman:
This historical fiction book follows the real history of Cromwell’s head through 300 years of posthumous journeys across England (1661-1960), all told from the head’s perspective. Imagined anecdotes complement the true historical notes, which include many real historical characters and events, such as the rise of Spiritualism, phrenology, the Elephant Man, surgeon John Hunter, and a lot more.
Not only is it the first memoir of an embalmed head, but it is also, I believe, the first book to come with a theme song. It was written and performed by singer/songwriter/pianist Stephie Coplan, whose song, “Hey Oliver Cromwell!” is now available on iTunes and Spotify.
From Weird Universe.
There’s more on the publisher’s site: CuriousPublications.com.
And the book is available via Amazon (Kindle version only in the UK).

books, personal, ramblings

4 Daily Poems #4

1 Comment

And so to the last of my poem a day for four days challenge.

The Rolling English Road
(GK Chesterton)
Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,
And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;
A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread
The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.
I knew no harm of Bonaparte and plenty of the Squire,
And for to fight the Frenchman I did not much desire;
But I did bash their baggonets because they came arrayed
To straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard made,
Where you and I went down the lane with ale-mugs in our hands,
The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands.
His sins they were forgiven him; or why do flowers run
Behind him; and the hedges all strengthening in the sun?
The wild thing went from left to right and knew not which was which,
But the wild rose was above him when they found him in the ditch.
God pardon us, nor harden us; we did not see so clear
The night we went to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier.
My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage,
Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age,
But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth,
And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death;
For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,
Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.

My final three nominees to perpetuate the meme are: Keeley Schell, Sue Lubkowska and Peter Kislinger.