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Book review: Squadron Airborne by Elleston Trevor

8 November 2024
Edoardo
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Squadron Airborne by Elleston Trevor

If the characteristic art of World War I was the poem, that of World War II was the novel. Perhaps it reached its highest form in Evelyn Waugh’s incomparable Sword of Honour trilogy, but there were many other fine novels reflecting on the war, such as The Cruel Sea, Schindler’s Ark and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.

This isn’t quite one of them. Elleston Trevor went on to write the successful Quiller spy series under the pseudonym Adam Hall. Squadron Airborne is formed from personal experience during the war; it largely follows a single squadron through a few weeks of the Battle of Britain, looking equally at pilots and ground crew, the point of view changing frequently. He does a good job of showing the importance of the ground crew to the whole battle but, presumably because the language was so second nature to him, he uses air force terminology so liberally throughout the book that it’s often hard to understand what exactly is going on: I still don’t know what a mag drop is and why it’s important.

Read for an insight into how all the members of a squadron played a vital role in getting and keeping the planes airborne.

Book review: To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini

8 November 2024
Edoardo
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To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini

It’s been a long, long time since I enjoyed a bad book so much! OK, that’s a little unfair. To Sleep in a Sea of Stars isn’t really a bad book: it doesn’t push propaganda or advocate for any of the usual nihilistic philosophies that you find undergirding most of modern literary fiction. It just sets out to tell a story, a relatively old-fashioned story at that: a space opera. Galaxy spanning, bouncing planets, a go big story dialled up to the nth power. There were a lot of these in the early days of science fiction but it’s been years since I read anything like this and, yes, I had a blast: sentient symbiotic body suits, evil aliens, FTL drives, battles in space, all the classic tropes of space opera.

It’s great fun to read a story where the writer commits so completely to going BIG with not the slightest consideration of probability. So our heroes can cross the galaxy and arrive at an unknown star to find not only the baddies arriving there too, but previous characters, likewise left thousands of light years away, turning up too. The book is delightfully full of unlikely meetings, a nearly perfect heroine with an unfortunate tendency to accidentally kill the people closest to her, and aliens both evil and ugly.

Objectively, the book breaks many of the fiction writing rules you find in how-to-write-your-novel books, from telling rather than showing through Mary Sue characters to the aforementioned coincidental meetings so by those measures it ought to be terrible. But it isn’t. The sheer enjoyment of the writing carries it through.

Book review: The Crusades by Christopher Tyerman

1 November 2024
Edoardo
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The Crusades by Christopher Tyerman

It’s not easy to cram four hundred years of military, religious and political endeavour into less than 50,000 words but Christopher Tyerman does stirling work. In particular, he works hard to disabuse the reader of many of the false ideas about the Crusades that have become common currency: that they were a land grab by European nobility, that they should be viewed through contemporary political lenses and that the Crusaders were uniquely barbaric.

The main problem with writing about the Crusades is that Steven Runciman casts a long shadow. His books became the source of almost all popular views of the Crusades and it’s only now that his legacy is slowly being unpicked.

Tyerman acknowledges that he is not the writer that Steven Runciman was, but he sets out to gently correct many of the myths that Runciman promulgated about the Crusades. Unfortunately, Runciman was a writer with an eye for the telling detail and no compunction about employing these details to bolster his own rhetoric. Tyerman is nowhere near his equal as a writer, but he is a much better historian.

So read this book for a more staid, but more truthful, account of the Crusades.

Book review: The Cold War by Robert J. McMahon

1 November 2024
Edoardo
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The Cold War by Robert J. McMahon

Growing up in the 1970s and ’80s, the shadow of war hung over us in a way that it’s very difficult for people born after 1990 to understand. There really was a constant sense that the missiles might start flying, whether by intent or mistake made little difference, and the world, well, end. With the vast nuclear arsenals both sides had, that really would have been it.

But then, it was all over. I remember watching it on TV. Solidarity in Poland. Glasnost. Then, marvel of marvels, the Berlin Wall being pulled down, brick by brick, on live TV. The old Soviet order vanished with barely a whimper and hardly any lives lost and… it was over. The confrontation that had defined the half century since the end of World War II was done, basically without a shot being fired.

Or so it seemed. In reality, there had been a series of proxy wars, low-level conflicts, and ideological confrontation throughout the Cold War and, in this book Robert McMahon does a fabulous job of lifting those perilous times out of the memory hole into which we seem determined to cast them.

I don’t really know why that is the case. Looking back, it still seems little less than miraculous that we got away with it. Indeed, so miraculous was the escape that it seems to me that we have almost deliberately forgotten about it, as if to really remember those times would be in some way to acknowledge the irruption of the totally unexpected in human affairs. In most cases when this happens it’s a catastrophe but this was, as Tolkien termed it, a eucatastrophe, the unexpected turn where everything turned out all right. We humans, we are uncomfortable in the presence of the miraculous; we turn away from it. In this case, we have turned away from the history of those years.

McMahon’s short book does a great job of bringing those years back into focus, maintaining the consistent excellence of these Oxford Very Short Introductions. An excellent book.

Book review: A Willingness to Die by Brian Kingcome

31 October 2024
Edoardo
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A Willingness to Die by Brian Kingcome

This was not really what I expected. Having read Geoffrey Wellum’s peerless First Light, and knowing that Kingcome was a member of the same squadron, I had expected something similar. However, reading the introduction, it’s clear that Kingcome died having written only a first draft of the book. It was then polished for publication but Kingcome’s death prevented him adding further material.

As a result, the book is actually much more a memoir of Kingcome’s life than an account of the Battle of Britain, or indeed the Second World War. In fact, there’s surprisingly little on the battle and not too much more on the war. However, Kingcome’s life was fascinating, and the insight into the training and preparations for the war are well worth reading.

There are places where the book suggests it might have become one of the great memoirs of a pilot’s life if Kingcome had been given more time to work on it. As it stands, it’s a valuable insight into the milieu of the sort of man who ended up flying planes in the Second War, and a tribute to a fine man, but it’s not the book it might have been.

Blood Feud

28 October 2024
Edoardo
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Categories: History

The assassination of Oswine was not just business though: Oswine was related to Oswiu’s wife, Eanflæd. This produced something of a dilemma for the queen: as a blood relative to Oswine, it was her duty to seek vengeance on his killer: her husband.

Rather than do so, Eanflæd prevailed upon her husband to provide lands for a monastery to be established where the monks would pray for the repose of the soul of her cousin and for the forgiveness of the sins of her husband. Gilling Abbey appears not to have long outlived the king the monks prayed for, being abandoned in 669 following an outbreak of plague.

It was the best solution to a difficult problem – and one that showed how the new religion was able to unpick some of the chains of blood vengeance that bedevilled Anglo-Saxon society.

Taking Care of Business

28 October 2024
Edoardo
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Categories: History

Oswiu’s reign started, and continued, under great pressure.

Such was the power ascribed to Oswald’s mortal remains that his younger brother essayed a dangerous raid deep into the heart of Mercian territory to reclaim them. Oswiu must have ridden fast and hard, faster than the news of his passage, to Oswestry in Shropshire, passing through much Mercian territory, where he found Oswald’s arms and head impaled upon stakes before the tree that became known as Oswald’s tree (hence Oswestry).

Riding even faster north, Oswiu and his band of riders made their escape back to Northumbria, carrying his brother’s remains with them.

The kingdom had split back into its two constituent parts, with a son of the Deiran royal house, Oswine, ruling from York. To bolster his claims to Northumbria, Oswiu took as wife Eanflæd, the daughter of King Edwin, no doubt hoping that that would give him greater claim over the southern half of the kingdom. It didn’t.

In the end, Oswiu reunited his kingdom by treachery and assassination. He raised an army to confront Oswine who, seeing that his own forces were seriously outnumbered, withdrew and dispersed his army, deciding not to seek confrontation. But Oswine made the mistake of taking shelter in the hall of a man he had hitherto seen as his most trusted lieutenant, only to be betrayed and killed. Although Bede was appalled by the treachery, it is perhaps not so surprising from the viewpoint of the man who betrayed Oswine. The lord he had sworn service to had backed down in the face of aggression; it was not hard to see which way the winds of power were blowing. In such a case, it would be easy for the friend to think himself betrayed by his own lord, thus giving his conscience clearance to present his new king with the head of his enemy and curry his favour.

Miraculous Revival

28 October 2024
Edoardo
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Categories: History

Modern historians tend to skip over the bits in Bede where he records miracles. But for Bede, the miracles are a major part of why he wrote his history in the first place. Miracles are signs of divine favour: they’re signposts towards the truth.

Therefore, when Oswald’s mortal remains became the locus of miracles, it was a further sign that the apparent disaster of his defeat by Penda was no defeat at all but partook of the paradoxical victory of the cross.

 Death was no longer defeat. Oswald’s kingdom survived him.

The cult of Oswald became a rallying centre for Northumbria and the church that Oswald had sponsored in his kingdom. Stories of the miraculous associated with Oswald’s relics lent them even greater power.

There is no reason not to think that Oswald’s cult was genuine and sincere – but it was also immensely useful for his younger brother. Oswiu’s reign started, and continued, under great pressure.

Victory From Death

28 October 2024
Edoardo
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Categories: History

When Oswald died, not everything fell apart.

Although Northumbria fell victim to its fissiparous tendencies, splitting back into the separate kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira, Oswald’s younger brother, Oswiu, assumed the throne in Bernicia, helped in large part by his alliance with the monks of Lindisfarne.

For their part, the monks at Lindisfarne had already established a church network in Northumbria and that carried on, largely unhindered by Oswald’s defeat. Penda, pagan though he was, was no holy warrior: he appeared to care little who his subjects worshipped so long as they deferred to him as their king.

But not only did the monks provide continuity in the wake of Oswald’s death, they also provided a reason for it: by their telling, Oswald died a martyr. Thus they turned his death from a defeat for the new religion into a victory, for martyrdom was the apotheosis of Christianity. Its founder had died a martyr and so had its greatest saints, including all but one of the Apostles. At a stroke, they had confounded the old religious metric that measured a god’s potency by his aid in securing victory. The new god was paradoxical and so was his religion. He himself was simultaneously God and man – and that was God in the upper case, unique and unequal. The God/man had achieved victory through his apparent, worldly, defeat. The entire logic of the Roman Empire rested upon the crucifix: enemies raised up to a public death on a cross were beaten, defeated utterly, their public humiliation and long-drawn out dying a statement of the power of the Empire and the folly of crossing it.

 But the new religion took that death and, in a stroke of the paradoxical genius that made the religion something truly new, made it central to its proclamation.            

So when Oswald died, losing in battle against Penda, it wasn’t a demonstration that the new god was weaker than the old gods because Oswald’s death recapitulated the death of his god. Rather, it became the basis of his ultimate triumph.

Kingdom Building

28 October 2024
Edoardo
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Categories: History
By David Rowan, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

Kingdom building in 7th-century Britain depended upon the skill at arms and reputation of each king. Success in battle raised his profile, attracting young warriors to his side as well as providing the booty that he needed to give as gifts in the open-handed manner demanded of a king. The giving of gold was one way to tie a warrior to you through the obligations accepted when a gift was received. The glories revealed by the Staffordshire Hoard show just how rich those gifts could be.

A successful king with a growing warband could demand, or take, greater riches from neighbouring kingdoms, drawing further warriors to his side for the promise of wealth and the less tangible but no less important consideration of battle luck. He would then strengthen the kingdom through marriage alliances both for himself and for his children.

But all of these carefully assembled blocks took their strength and direction from the man at the centre, the king. Remove him, and everything else collapsed.

That was what happened when Edwin died. It was what happened in many other kingdoms when a powerful king faced nemesis on the battlefield. All the scattered pieces then had to be slowly reassembled by whoever fought his way to the throne after the dead king.