This may be the best front cover I’ve ever seen: it certainly tells the story of what the book is about, possibly even better than the book does itself. The question is: are there doors or is this all there is? Peter Kreeft, a notably clear philosopher, uses this slim book more as a meditation than an exposition, visiting many of the themes he has explored in his previous books – in particular, that beauty is not subjective but the clearest presence in this world of that which lies beyond it. In that sense, the book is not rigorous. As an argument, it will convince no one who does not already think this way. But as a sign… that it might. For, sometimes, people know, without being able to put into words, that there is more, that they are being sold a dud when told to limit themselves to the cares and concerns of this world. They sense it, from the corner of the eye, from intimations of things glimpsed and sensed and felt. This book is about some of these intimations. If you have felt them, then you will know there are doors in the walls of the world. But of course, the only way to know for sure is to pass through the final door, and face death’s blank denial, and see then whatever we see.
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Adventures in Bookland: The Provincial Letters by Blaise Pascal
It’s unusual to read a contentious book where one agrees wholly with the arguments the author is making, finds his irony biting and his jokes (written 350 years ago!) still funny, and yet remain glad that while the writer undoubtedly won the literary battle, he lost the theological war. For Blaise Pascal wrote in defence of the rigour of his spiritual brother at Port-Royal, the Jansenist school and convent that, following an Augustinian view of the depravity of human nature, produced as the sculptural expression of their theological view versions of the crucifix where Jesus’ arms are raised above his head, the hands almost touching, to indicate the narrow way to salvation and that few shall walk that narrow path. But, significantly, around the same time as Pascal was writing and the Jansenist controversy was at its height, St Mary Margaret Alacocque, also in France, had visions of Jesus in which he told her to spread the devotion to his sacred heart. The pictures and statues – perhaps the most typical of popular Catholicism – show Jesus with his arms spread wide, open to all. So while Blaise Pascal had by far the best of his argument with the lax-minded Jesuits and their tendency to write off sins – and by way of a side effect, inventing French lettres and paving the way for Montaigne – God answered personally against the Jansenist tendency to restrict the Divine Mercy. But then, God did speak to Blaise Pascal, in fire and light, and answered for him as well, in the Sacred Heart.
Adventures in Bookland: Europe’s Lost World by Vincent Gaffney, Simon Fitch and David Smith
It’s there. Under the dark water. Beneath the cold surface. A lost Mesolithic world that once connected Britain to Europe and jutted far up into the North Sea. A low-lying land of rivers and marshes and shallow hills, with a great inland lake. Doggerland, it is rather unromantically called, after the Dogger Bank, which once would have been hills but are now fishing grounds. But unlike other lost lands, it seems to have left nothing at all behind in the way of folk memories, myths or legends. There are no tales of the North Sea flood, nor of the great wave that was unleashed by the Storegga Slide, no cuneiform tablets awaiting excavation that tell a northern version of the Epic of Gilgamesh. The land vanished beneath the sea and took its history with it, into the silence there. This book is the, slightly technical, account of the archaeologists who are trying to bring it back from the dark and the surprising amount of detail they can find of the geography of Doggerland. A fascinating book, but probably best suited for those with a working knowledge of archaeology.
Adventures in Bookland: The Return of Christendom by Steve Turley
Growing up in the 1970s, I remember well the proposed doomsday scenarios that haunted the world then. Apart from the obvious fear of all-out thermonuclear war between Nato and the Warsaw Pact, there were confident predictions of a coming ice age and even more confident predictions of world wide famine as population outstripped food supply in a doomsday Malthusian scenario. None of them happened. So I remain somewhat sceptical of confident predictions about the future, even when the prediction is for something I would hope for, as in Steve Turley’s book. The point he is making is straightforward and one that has been taken up by quite a few demographers. To put it simply, religioius couples have significantly more children than non-religious couples, and children tend to follow the religioius persuasion of their parents. So, in a truly ironic example of Darwinian selection, according to this model the religious shall inherit the earth since the irreligious aren’t sufficiently invested in the non-personal future to produce the children that will affect it. The argument is sound, and is also reflected in what appears to be a normal shelf life of an officially atheistic culture of between 70 and 100 years. But as with all such arguments, it depends on current trends continuing on into the future, and… well, events, dear boy, events. Things don’t normally turn out the way we had predicted. So while I hope that Christnedom will return, I treat these predictions as nothing more than signs to a possible future.
End of the Line 5: Wimbledon to Richmond
That a walk so near to the heart of London can summon such variety is a wonder, to be ascribed to the fight to save common land, which led to Wimbledon and Putney Commons being protected by Act of Parliament in 1871, and through the creation by Charles I of a deer park away from plague pits of 17th-century London. The walk from Wimbledon tube station up Wimbledon Hill Road to the Common takes the walker past any number of designer fashion outlets and delis, so the Common itself comes as a relief to the booted and anoraked. And what a relief. Despite the name, Wimbledon Common is more wood than heath; walking through it, trees receding into the distance, it is easy to think that you could spend a lifetime walking it and never penetrate its mystery. Maybe that is what inspired the Wombles.
Following the Capital Ring from the western side of the Common takes the walker into Richmond Park which, with its expanse of deer-grazed grasslands and flocks of ring-necked parakeets, seems almost savannah like in contrast to the deep green depths of Wimbledon.
The deer, sufficiently blasé about people to allow walkers to pass quite close to them, are magnificent, particularly in the autumn when the stags carry their full set of antlers. The last part of the walk provides great views over the Thames, a section along the Thames and even more opportunity to window shop high-end designer outlets.
Walk here: Turning right out of Wimbledon station, head up Wimbledon Hill Road and the High Street to first part of Wimbledon Common. Take one of the westerly paths through the common (wood, really) to join the Beverly Brook Walk, then head west on the Capital Ring Walk into Richmond Park. Follow the Capital Ring Walk through and out of the park and on to the Thames Path, then head downstream to Richmond for its tube station.
Being Dad
Sometimes (quite often, actually) there is simply nothing better than being a father.
Adventures in Bookland: Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne Du Maurier
Let’s be honest now: this is romantic nonsense. Beautifully written and well plotted with all Daphne Du Maurier’s gifts for bringing the Cornish countryside and coasts to vivid life on the page, but the story… Beautiful, headstrong woman caught in loveless marriage with upper-class boor (a marriage entered into on a passing whim), develops major-league crush on rakish (and for almost all the book unnamed) French pirate and then, probably, elopes with him at the end. It’s the female version of James Bond – a wish-fulfilment fantasy to fill a few empty hours.
My New Book
This is me, proudly holding the proof copy of my new book, Warrior: the biography of a man with no name. It’s due out in September, published by Granta. More news to follow…
Adventures in Bookland: In Search of the Trojan War by Michael Wood
Life deals out its cards skew whiff. Some people struggle, burdened with debts personal and afflictions public. Others get given the full house. Witness: Michael Wood. Not only was he blessed with the sorts of looks that historians, historically, were denied – compare him to Eric Hobsbawn for example – but Wood was also gifted the ability to write with a clarity and enthusiasm that matched his on-screen persona. In Search of the Trojan War is a good example: a scholarly account of the archaeological history of the search for Troy good enough, in its grasp of the sources, to stand comparison with the best specialist work, but Wood also writes it in a way that makes the technicalities accessible to the layman. But then of course, good Hector, prince of Troy and all round decent bloke, also realised, as he coughed out his life’s blood on the plains of Ilium with that peacock psychopath Achilles strutting victory above him, that life doesn’t play fair. Take advanatage of that: read this book.
Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam
A friend received a spam email, ostensibly from me, that read simply, “I own and operate a ferocious ego.” I am really rather proud of that! I think I shall make it my byeline.