Book review

Book review: Castle Garac by Nicholas Monsarrat

20 July 2023
Edoardo
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Castle Garac by Nicholas Monsarrat

I found this slim novel in a second-hand bookshop (it’s long out of print) and picked it up because I have read Monsarrat’s superb novel of naval warfare during World War II, The Cruel Sea, and was curious to see what the rest of his work was like.

Well, it’s not nearly as good as The Cruel Sea – but then few books are. It’s interesting how some authors have one great book within them, but no more than that. In Monsarrat’s case, it was because in The Cruel Sea he took his wartime experiences and distilled them with his writing craft, making of them a book that endures. But absent such source material, in a book like Castle Garac, and we are left with authorical craft and pure storytelling, but storytelling of its time. It’s interesting how much the simple craft of telling a story is affected by its time and culture, from the rhythm and pace of the prose, through the choice of words, to the subject matter. As such, popular fiction from long ago (this was first published in 1955) is a rather good way of appreciating cultural changes, for good and ill. Far too many people simply go through books like this and pick out things that offend their modern sensibilities without thinking how the sensibilities of the past would be offended in turn.

The story itself is not whodunnit but rather a what-are-they-planning: mysterious rich couple enlist penniless writer for a scheme that’s clearly crooked but the payoff is in learning just how it is crooked. It’s a swift and easy read. If you should see the book, lying neglected in a second-hand book shop, pick it up and read it. You will make an old book very happy.

Book review: The Spanish Inquisition by Henry Kamen

20 July 2023
Edoardo
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Categories: Book review, History
The Spanish Inquisition by Henry Kamen

“No one expects the Spanish Inquisition”… to have been much, much more lenient on people acccused of witchcraft than the secular courts of northern Europe. But one of the things Henry Kamen does, in this seminal work, is show that if you were a woman accused by your neighbours of trafficking with the devil, you would have been much safer to have that accusation levelled at you in Spain than in Germany or England. This is not to say that the Spanish Inquisition was a kind institution but it was much more concerned with the law and the rules of evidence than witch courts elsewhere in Europe. Indeed, as the Inquisition had decided, on theological grounds, that the claims advanced for the powers of witches were spurious, it therefore found that people advancing those claims against their neighbours were, of necessity, either mistaken or slanderers. Almost everyone accused of witchcraft and brought before the Inquisition was found not guilty and released.

One of Kamen’s great achievements in this book, though, is to show how the interweaving of the paranoia of various levels of Spanish society at having their historical rights taken away interweaved with suspicion of the families of converted Jews and Moors to produce the conditions in which the Inquisition flourished as an agent of royal power. It was very much an instrument of the Spanish monarchy, but one whose focus was on the conversos rather than witches and devils.

It’s also clear from Kamen’s book that the larger part of the Inquisition’s sinister reputation is down to the propaganda wars between Protestant and Catholic Europe, with the Protestant kingdoms latching onto the Inquisition as a symbol of all that they detested about Catholic Europe (even while conducting worse witch hunts themselves).

A highlight of the book is the account of the visitation of Inquisitor Alonso de Salazar Frias to a city where fifty plus people had been accused of witchcraft, with some already executed. Appalled by the lack of care shown for the laws of evidence, Alonso had all the reports and evidence brought before him, considered it all, freed all the surviving accused and put the chief prosecutor on trial himself. Not what one would expect from an Inquisitor!

For anyone interested in the Inquisition and Spain, this is a key book. Highly recommended.

Book review: Royal Navy versus the Slave Traders by Bernard Edwards

13 July 2023
Edoardo
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Royal Navy versus the Slave Traders by Bernard Edwards

Slavery has been as endemic in human history as warfare. Whole societies have been built on slavery and, for most of history, the practice was taken completely for granted as simply part of the cultural fabric, as unfortunate but as inevitable as death and illness. There’s only been two places and times in the world where it has been outlawed: firstly, in Christian Europe in the early Middle Ages and then again in the fractured Europe of early modern era. Having outlawed slavery for Christians, the more enlightened men of the Englightenment reinstituted it on the basis of dubious sounding but scientifically dressed up theories of racial superiority (much of Voltaire’s wealth was earned from the slave trade and he defended the trade on the basis of his belief in a racial hierarchy where white people “are superior to Negroes, just like Negroes are superior to monkeys”).

Against the likes of Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau were set a bunch of mostly British religious nut cases, or so they were depicted at the time, who insisted on putting principle before the passive acceptance of a lot of people getting quietly rich. The abolitionists, in the teeth of well-funded opposition, managed to drive the abolition of slavery through Parliament and, in the face of even more opposition, succeeded in enlisting the Royal Navy to police this abolition upon the oceans of the world.

This book tells the story of the squadrons of ships given the task of patrolling the seas where the slave traders ran. It was one of the most difficult stations for any ship: fever-ridden coasts where many a sailor met his end in sweat and agony, to be consigned to a grave in the ocean. So when you read about people agitating for restitution, it’s worth asking what of the men who gave their lives to stop the slave trade? Should not their relatives get restitution too, for they died that others might live free of the shadow of slavery.

Book review: Aelfred’s Britain by Max Adams

11 July 2023
Edoardo
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Aelfred’s Britain by Max Adams

While the blurb suggests that this is a history of Alfred and his times, it would be better to think of it as an archaeological interrogation of the historical evidence. Working from very different evidence bases, archaeology and history often come to quite different conclusions about what happened, with scholars in each discipline naturally tending to favour their own speciality. As such, Aelfred’s Britain is a helpful read for a historian, as it challenges many of the assumptions that historians have made about Alfred’s era based upon sources that King Alfred largely ensured told the story that he wanted told. Admittedly, historians have been aware for quite some time of this potential bias but an awareness of the bias does not help, on its own, to rectify it, without evidence from other sources.

Adams, and a generation of archaeologists, have been busily searching for this evidence, although it comes with its own set of inherent biases. In particular, archaeology is site specific: it tells you about what happened in a particular place. As we can’t dig everywhere, this inevitably skews our evidence to the sites that have been excavated, which in no wise constitute a random sample.

As such, Aelfred’s Britain is a valuable addition to the Alfredian literature, although by the book’s design it’s somewhat bitty: it took me a long time to finish as it’s a book that almost asks to be put aside for a while and then picked up again.

Book review: Rocks and Shoals by Chris Durbin

8 July 2023
Edoardo
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Rocks and Shoals by Chris Durbin

With Lieutenant Holbrooke’s promotion, the two lead characters, Carlisle and Holbrooke, have been separated, their adventures occupying alternating books: for Rocks and Shoals, the focus is Captain Carlisle, American captain of a ship of the Royal Navy, navigating the treacherous waters of the St Lawrence River as part of the expeditionary force of General Wolfe against the French in Canada. So the novel exchanges the broad expanses of the ocean for the narrow passages of inland waterways, and ships acting as floating gun batteries alongside infantry assaults: it’s a fascinating insight into an earlier version of combined arms warfare, with the engaging Captain Carlisle as our guide. As enjoyable as the earlier novels in the series.

Book review: Perilous Shore by Chris Durbin

8 July 2023
Edoardo
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Perilous Shore by Chris Durbin

If you’re read the previous five books in this series about Captain Carlisle and Lieutenant Holbrooke, officers in the Royal Navy during the Seven Years’ War, then you’ll know what to expect in the sixth instalment: convincing naval action (the author was naval officer), just enough interpersonal intrigue to keep matters interesting without anything getting too out of hand, and a cast of characters that are, generally, thoroughly good eggs, although with sufficent personal quirks to render them individuals. It’s not challenging historical fiction but it is extremely good historical fiction: perhaps one step down from the top rate but story shape and read worthy.

Book review: The Reverie by Peter Fehervari

8 July 2023
Edoardo
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The Reverie by Peter Fehervari

You don’t normally read 40k for dense, allusive prose that carry echoes of some of the great prose stylists of the 20th century, but with Peter Fehervari’s 40k work this is exactly what you get. The Reverie is a fascinating take on the grim dark of the far future, one that repays lingering over the words as well as paying attention to the plot (in fact, I lingered so long over the words that I got a little lost in what was actually happening). It’s as close to a philosophical 40k novel as has been written, a novel-length investigation into the corruption that turns to canker all the best intentions of even the best characters within this universe. So if your preference in 40k skews towards creeping dread and the long, slow dissolution of the few citadels of hope in that universe rather than bolter porn, then this is the story for you.

Book review: The Ghost and Mrs Muir by R.A. Dick

7 July 2023
Edoardo
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The Ghost and Mrs Muir by R.A. Dick

The fact that the author, Josephine Leslie, chose R.A. Dick as her pseudonym does illustrate rather well that, despite six years of war, 1945 was a more innocent time than now (I know slang changes but it meant the same thing when I was a child and that was much closer to 1945 than it is to today).

The story itself is charming: a young widow moves with her children to a seaside cottage to get away from her overbearing in-laws, only to find the house already inhabited, by the ghost of Captain Gregg. The Captain saves her from various potential disasters along the way, including a nearly disastrous liaison with a poet and writer (that was always going to end badly), and it all ends happily ever after. A slight story but perfectly told.

Book review: Travels in England 1782 by Karl Philipp Moritz

7 July 2023
Edoardo
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Travels in England 1782 by Karl Philipp Moritz

It’s not often that an essay on what I did in my holidays makes a good book, but Moritz’s account of his travels in England is truly charming. In part, it’s because Moritz comes across as such a wonderful traveller: he accepts almost everything in good spirit and with a cheerful optimism. In part, it’s because Moritz visits England because of his Anglophilia and proceeds to confirm, to himself at least, his love affair with a country that, until then, he had only read about.

For the present-day reader, the writer’s companionship is enlivened by his descriptions of England in 1782. Because Moritz preferred to walk, innkeepers thought he was a tramp and treated him abominably, but he remains good humoured throughout. He visited the House of Commons and saw Pitt and Fox debating, as well as a Member asleep on a bench in the House (some things don’t change), writes of rowdy theatre goers chucking orange peel at the stage and the propensity of English schoolboys to get into fights. A fascinating contemporary account.

Book review: Our Lady of the Artilects by Andrew Gillsmith

7 July 2023
Edoardo
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Our Lady of the Artilects by Andrew Gillsmith

While wrapped up in a dressing of modern-day notions of AI (transplanted a couple of hundred years into the future) this debut novel is in fact something of a throw back to such Golden Age SF stories as James Blish’s A Case of Conscience, Walter Miller’s Canticle of Leibowitz and Anthony Boucher’s The Quest for Saint Aquin, being a novel of ideas about faith, reason, science and consciousness. While the ideas are fascinating, the writing does not really reach the levels of its prototypes (although as these are among the greatest SF stories ever written, that’s not so surprising). It’s been a while since I read the book and, to be honest, not that much has stuck in memory but I do remember being disappointed that the single most interesting character in the novel, the android Thierry, spends almost all the novel off page. However, the world building, proposing a future world centred more upon Africa and Asia, was an enjoyable corrective to the usual American/European bias.

While not wholly successful as a novel, what is impressive is Gillsmith’s willingness to take up these grand themes. I think he might well become a notable writer of ideas – something the distinctly lacklustre field of SF needs at the moment.