Category Archives: books

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: ★★★☆☆

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: ★★★★☆

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: ★★★★☆

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).

4 Daily Poems #4

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.

4 Daily Poems #3

And so we come to the third of my four daily poems challenge. Today I thought we’d have a couple of Limericks.


The Limerick packs laughs anatomical
Into space that is quite economical,
But the good ones I’ve seen
So seldom are clean,
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.
There was a young queer of Khartoum
Took a lesbian up to his room,
And they argued all night
As to who had the right
To do what, and with which, and to whom.
To his bride, said the lynx-eyed detective,
“Can it be that my eyesight’s defective?
Or is your east tit the least
Bit the best of the west?
Or is it a trick of perspective?”


And today’s three lucky nominees are: John Potter, Jill Weekes and Kevin Bourne.

4 Daily Poems #2

So for the second of the four daily poems I’ve been challenged to post.


Kubla Khan
(by Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean;
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.


I love the opening of this poem and the “damsel with a dulcimer”.
And today I’ll nominate: John Monaghan, Steve Olle and Laura Jane Stamps.

4 Daily Poems #1

I’ve been tagged by my friend Julia over on Facebook to post a poem for four consecutive days and each day to nominate three others to do likewise. OK, the poems I will do, but I’m not going to promise to nominate people every time. So here is the first poem, which I knew by heart as a kid long before it appeared in a musical.


Skimbleshanks: The Railway Cat
(from TS Eliot’s, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats)
There’s a whisper down the line at 11.39
When the Night Mail’s ready to depart,
Saying ‘Skimble, where is Skimble, has he gone to hunt the thimble?
We must find him or the train can’t start.’
All the guards and all the porters and the stationmaster’s daughters
They are searching high and low,
Saying ‘Skimble, where is Skimble, for unless he’s very nimble
Then the Night Mail just can’t go.’
At 11.42 then the signal’s nearly due
And the passengers are frantic to a man —
Then Skimble will appear and he’ll saunter to the rear:
He’s been busy in the luggage van!
He gives one flash of his glass-green eyes
And the signal goes ‘All Clear!’
And we’re off at last for the northern part
Of the Northern Hemisphere!
You may say that by and large it is Skimble who’s in charge
Of the Sleeping Car Express.
From the driver and the guards to the bagmen playing cards
He will supervise them all, more or less.
Down the corridor he paces and examines all the faces
Of the travellers in the First and in the Third;
He establishes control by a regular patrol
And he’d know at once if anything occurred.
He will watch you without winking and he sees what you are thinking
And it’s certain that he doesn’t approve
Of hilarity and riot, so the folk are very quiet
When Skimble is about and on them move.
You can play no pranks with Skimbleshanks!
He’s a Cat that cannot be ignored;
So nothing goes wrong on the Northern Mail
When Skimbleshanks is aboard.
Oh it’s very pleasant when you have found your little den
With your name written up on the door.
And the berth is very neat with a newly folded sheet
And there’s not a speck of dust on the floor.
There is every sort of light — you can make it dark or bright;
There’s a button that you turn to make a breeze.
There’s a funny little basin you’re supposed to wash your face in
And a crank to shut the window if you sneeze.
Then the guard looks in politely and will ask you very brightly
‘Do you like your morning tea weak or strong?’
But Skimble’s just behind him and was ready to remind him,
For Skimble won’t let anything go wrong.
And when you creep into your cosy berth
And pull up the counterpane,
You are bound to admit that it’s very nice
To know that your won’t be bothered by mice —
You can leave all that to the Railway Cat,
The Cat of the Railway Train!
In the middle of the night he is always fresh and bright;
Every now and then he has a cup of tea
With perhaps a drop of Scotch while he’s keeping on the watch,
Only stopping here and there to catch a flea.
You were fast asleep at Crewe and so you never knew
That he was walking up and down the station;
You were sleeping all the while he was busy at Carlisle,
Where he greets the stationmaster with elation.
But you saw him at Dumfries, where he summons the police
If there’s anything they ought to know about:
When you get to Gallowgate there you do not have to wait —
For Skimbleshanks will help you to get out!
He gives you a wave of his long brown tail
Which says: ‘I’ll see you again!
You’ll meet without fail on the Midnight Mail
The Cat of the Railway Train.’


OK, yes, so I’ll nominate: Katy Wheatley, Robin Bynoe and Gabriella Waldridson

Book Review: 100 Chemical Myths

Lajos Kovács, Dezső Csupor, Gábor Lente, Tamás Gunda
100 Chemical Myths: Misconceptions, Misunderstandings, Explanations
Springer, 2014
This is a science book, but one which should be relatively intelligible to the intelligent layman. It deals with popular, yet largely untrue, misconceptions and misunderstandings about the chemistry in our lives: food, medicine, the environment and industrial process.
The explanations are relatively concise (few are more than three or so pages) and seek to cut through fallacies and urban legends. Because of their concision the explanations are not highly technical, although some basic knowledge of chemistry or basic science will help.
So far, so good. However I found this an intensely irritating read on a number of levels.
Each of the short explanations is self contained, although copiously cross-referenced and with a section of sources and references in the back-matter. Nevertheless the refutations are stated often with little in the way of logical reasoning or explanation; just bald statements which sounded like “we now know that …” or even “we deny it”. Because of this, and the lack of technical detail, I found the explanations often superficial and unsatisfying.
This isn’t helped by the poor illustrations. Although relatively well illustrated the graphics vary between being too small, pointless and lacking helpful captions. The authors do rather assume that one either knows what a chemical structure means, or one is happy to gloss over it, which I find intensely irritating — even as a trained chemist some memory joggers would be helpful.
I also did not find this book a comfortable read. The language is clunky. In a way this isn’t surprising as the authors, and thus the original text, are Hungarian. But the translation doesn’t flow: too often the sentence structure is obtuse; and there are too many instances of just the wrong word being used — it is clear what the meaning is but an inappropriate synonym has been used. In fact the English feels like a machine translation which hasn’t been checked by a native English speaker for flow and sense.
The book was also physically uncomfortable. It isn’t a cheap book and is from a major scientific publishing house; the paper and the binding are good. Nevertheless the production feels like a print on demand product: the board cover has a laminated glossy illustration, rather than a dust jacket, and very sharp corners which made reading in bed rather uncomfortable.
So yes, that’s right, I was not impressed. The book might have been marginally acceptable as a sub-£10 paperback, but for £45 (from Amazon) it is not of the quality — of content or production — expected.
Overall Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

Oddity of the Week: Oddest Book Title

Oddest Title of the Year Award
Every year the Diagram Group offers a prize, via the column of the estimable Horace Bent in the Bookseller magazine, to the person in the trade who comes up with the oddest book title published that year. Many — but not all — of the winning titles are from professional, technical, academic and scientific publishers.
Since the prize was established in 1978, winners have included:

  • Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Nude Mice (1978)
  • The Madam as Entrepreneur: Career Management in House Prostitution (1979)
  • Lesbian Sadomasochism Safety Manual (1990)
  • The Theory of Lengthwise Rolling (1993)
  • Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers (1996)
  • High-Performance Stiffened Structures (2000)
  • Butterworths Corporate Manslaughter Service (2001)
  • Living with Cray Buttocks (2002)
  • The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stones (2003)

Other submissions over the years have included:

  • Access to the Top of Petroleum Tankers
  • An Illustrated History of Dustcarts
  • Bombproof Tour Horse
  • Classic American Funeral Vehicles
  • Cooking with Mud: The Idea of Mess in 19th-century Art and Fiction
  • Did Lewis Carroll Visit Llandudno?
  • Diversity of Sulfate-reducing Bacteria Along a Vertical Oxygen Gradient in a Sediment of Schiermonnikoog
  • Fancy Coffins To Make Yourself
  • Lightweight Sandwich Construction
  • New Caribbean Office Procedures
  • Pet Packaging Technology
  • Principles and Practices of Bioslurping
  • Psoriasis at Tour Fingertips
  • Short Walks at Land’s End
  • Tea Bag Folding
  • The Aesthetics of the Japanese Lunchbox
  • The Anger of Aubergines
  • The Fiat-Footed Flies of Europe
  • The Voodoo Revenge Book: An Anger Management Program You Can Really Stick With
  • Throwing Pots
  • Twenty Beautiful Tears of Bottom Physics
  • What is a Cow?: And Other Questions That Might Occur to Ton When Walking the Thames Path
  • Whose Bottom? A Lift-the-Flap Book
  • Woodcarving with a Chainsaw

From: Ian Crofton, Brewer’s Cabinet of Curiosities