Zed

Penola is in Coonawarra country, home to terra rossa soil—soil that has produced some of the finest Cabernet Sauvignons this reviewer has ever tasted.

Set in 1964, Robbie Burns lives the typical life of a 14-year-old in Penola, a small country town, where cultural opportunities are limited. Everyone knows everyone, and the highlight of the week is Saturday footy. Not much else happens. A certain Miss Pamela Peach arrives as a teacher at the local school—a sophisticated city woman whose artistic ways and modernism captivates Robbie. He has a vivid sci-fi imagination, and his new teacher encourages him. Soon, Robbie becomes obsessed with her, and his youthful fantasies lead to unintended and terrible consequences.

Towns such as Penola in 1964 were traditionally rural and isolated, it was then, suddenly forced to grapple with an outsider whose ideas were decidedly modernist. And that begs the question—why would a young, progressive teacher, with a changing big-city world at her feet, move to an isolated town uncertain about embracing change?

This novel explores these themes along with early teenage innocence and desire. Told through Robbie’s first-person narrative, the novel challenges the reader to read between the lines to understand Pamela Peach’s motivations. To reveal the tragic consequences of events would be too much of a spoiler. This reviewer entered the book with no prior knowledge of the story and was glad to experience it without expectations.

Author Peter Goldsworthy shifts seamlessly between humour and tragedy, making this a compelling read. And while there are moments when Robbie’s narration feels slightly awkward, it’s hard not to be challenged by the novel’s exploration of coming-of-age innocence in this unsettling, small-town Australian story.

Another nod to the neighborhood swap libraries I often visit. This one was a battered 1975 release that I picked up while heading out on my daily commute to work. Unlike a few I pick up and put in the TBR pile, I read a few pages and was hooked. I knew the author from The French Lieutenant's Woman, I had seen the film but had never read the book. The blurb of The Magus gave nothing away, not a single clue as to what it was about. To say it has been an eventful read would be an understatement.

Nicholas Urfe, a young Englishman, takes a teaching job on a Greek island, and life gets weird. So weird that I had no idea what was really happening up until the end—and even then? Does that make for an exceptional read, personally—the not knowing, the wanting to know? Yes.

Told in the first person, the character of Nicholas Urfe is not particularly likeable, but then neither are many of the characters that make up the cast in what, to me, was a book about an existential crisis Nick was having.

Even after the final sentence, I found myself wondering about all the characters in the book, what part they had played in Urfe’s crisis and what his awareness was of what he had been put through. Psychological manipulations? Illusion?

For a novel set in the 1950s, it has certainly stood the test of time for the modern reader.

Highly recommended for those who like their minds played with.

Weird, socially awkward, and suffering from severe class angst, Frederick Clegg, a butterfly collector, wins the pools and kidnaps Miranda Grey, an art student he has obsessively admired from afar, believing he can make her love him. A psychological struggle unfolds between them.

I took advantage of audiobook time to read this while also immersing myself in the outstanding The Magus by John Fowles. The Collector is Fowles’ debut, and what a book it is. After reading these two novels in quick succession, I am convinced that he was an extraordinarily gifted writer and storyteller. As with The Magus, the psychological depth of The Collector is profound, with class dynamics at the forefront.

The audiobook, narrated in the first person for both male and female perspectives by Daniel Rigby and Hannah Murray, featured a strangely monotone delivery that was perfect for this listen/read.

The kidnapping in London at the very beginning of the novel is particularly interesting, given today’s ubiquitous CCTV surveillance, such an event would be virtually impossible. But in the early ’60s, it made sense. If the same premise were written today, where could the kidnapping plausibly take place? A minor question really as the narration covers the mind of both protagonists, that was what made compulsive reading.

Highly recommended.

I wanted something light to read, so I started this popular dystopian sci-fi novel. It turned out to be more gripping than I expected, definitely a page-turner. There are plenty of reviews on Goodreads that provide a more in-depth analysis than I intend to do.

I recommend reading this one from Charles.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I particularly liked the question Charles posed:

"Finally, where did the 'rough paper' come from to print that first newspaper indicating the return of modern civilisation? Large-scale papermaking is a non-trivial manufacturing process."

Having spent nearly my entire working life in the printing industry, I found myself thinking about this as I read the part where a newspaper appeared to the delight of the end of the world as we know it survivors, and recall Charles' question from his review. My best guess is that flat sheets of paper were salvaged from abandoned print shops. Additionally, it’s probable that old-style type from specialist letterpress printers was repurposed as was, say, an old pre electric letterpress that can sometimes be found. Some commercial printers have retained this traditional technology even in todays lithographic/digital age of print.

For example, letterpress printing, once considered obsolete, has seen a resurgence, particularly for high-end projects like wedding invitations. These are often printed on acid-free cotton paper, which lasts for decades longer than standard newsprint.

As for "rough paper," it generally refers to uncoated paper with a textured surface. Unlike coated paper, which has a smooth finish for sharp ink absorption, rough paper retains a natural feel, making it ideal for artistic prints, speciality packaging, and letterpress work. It’s somewhat similar to the standard paper used in personal printers but with more pronounced texture.

Anyway, a good dystopian read and recommended to those that like that kind of read.

David Malouf’s Johnno, chosen in 2004 by the Brisbane City Council as a winner of the short-lived "One Book One Brisbane" initiative, had long been on my radar. Released in 1975 as Malouf’s debut novel, it is seemingly semi-biographical, based on his friendship with an old schoolmate.

I’m going to group Johnno with two other Brisbane novels that explore life “on the streets”: The Delinquents by Criena Rohan. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

and Praise by Andrew McGahan https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Johnno delves into Brisbane’s streets during the earlier period of the 1940s through to the 1950s, preceding Rohan’s 1950s in The Delinquents and McGahan’s gritty 1980s in Praise. For a Brisbane reader, these three books provide a fascinating comparison: from Johnno’s defiance against the conservatism of the 1940s, to the rebellious bodgie and widgie couple in The Delinquents, and finally the alienation and disconnection of Gordon in McGahan’s modern world. The descriptions of place in all three novels vividly mirror my early memories of Brisbane in the mid-1960s—dirt roads, no sewage system, the 6 o’clock swill, and the sight of every old bloke sporting a Trilby. Today, Brisbane has transformed into yet another modern metropolis, but at the street level, these books capture the city's evolving identity. Interestingly, The Delinquents wasn’t a bestseller upon its release and only gained recognition after its film adaptation in the 1980s.

In Johnno, Malouf’s narrator Dante recounts meeting Johnno as schoolboys, seemingly from well-to-do, middle-class families. Dante describes Johnno as an outsider and prankster, intelligent and well-read in the classics. It was Johnno who gave Dante his lifelong nickname. As Johnno grew older, his wanderlust led him to Brisbane’s pubs and post-war brothels. Many of the places mentioned in the book—the street names and even a few pubs—are familiar to me. When I was an apprentice in the mid-1970s, near-retirement tradesmen often shared stories of the brothels and gambling dens that were once prolific in the city centre. The Brisbane of their youth for the most parts was isolated culturally and academically, it was very inwards looking and wary of those perceived as outsiders. For that generation, this lifestyle was as good as it got outside the dullness and sectarianism of those times. What sets this book apart is its bold depiction of a middle-class boy/young man stirring up trouble on Brisbane’s streets before deciding to get on a boat and head to Europe—a relatively novel concept in Brisbane literature at the time. Even into the mid-1970s, the idea of going ‘overseas’ carried an almost exotic allure.

Brisbane's identity shifted rapidly, shedding its big-country-town conservatism as global connectivity grew. Nowadays, street grit in Brisbane isn’t much different from the world portrayed in McGahan’s Praise. As for traveling abroad, all it takes is a plane fare, a visa to work (if you're from a Commonwealth country), and the right mindset to embrace the adventure.

Yet another great Brisbane novel. Highly recommended.

Read for a future book club meet. This was a nice read without reaching great heights. Pity really as the subject is one, I can relate to. I am a watcher of Australian Rules Football and as this is a very recent release, many of the players of the AFL team that the author Helen Garner follows, The Western Bulldogs, are familiar to me.

Helen claimed to know not much about Aussie Rules, and began to take a greater interest when her 16-year-old Grandson was playing Colts. This was written as a dairy like homage to the season and the young boys that played in the team.

Certain passages are worth considering in a modern context, as the fact that Helen is 80 years old and by her own admission is of a past era.

At one point she writes of being “reproached” by her grandchildren for having a picture on her phone of 3 under 10s as she “…admired..” their bravery. She was “…furious…” at the reproach. The parents told her she would not like her picture on a stranger's phone, and she pretended to agree with them. I am not sure that 80-year-old Helen got the point as she tried to compare having the captain of the Western Bulldogs on the phone as well.

Helen mentions briefly concussion. This reminded me of working with a then State of Origin Rugby League player, early 1980s, who when I asked how his weekend was told me he had no idea as he got concussed in the game on Saturday and had no recall of the weekend at all. Concussion in body contact is now a serious issue for those controlling sport. Helen does not particular cover this in any meaningful way other than to iterate others, as the book is basically about her relationship with her grandson. I personally required more depth on the subject. Her Grandson may be a future AFL player after all. She is at one time offered information about institutional sexual abuse of young boys at football clubs but rejects the offer as the book is about her Grandson. She defends not discussing this as the book is about her relationship with her Grandson and “a record of a season we are spending together before he turns into a man and I die”

There are a couple of grammatical issues that caught my attention. The use of the word “versing”. It was always “verses” in any football circle I have engaged in. I am informed that a younger generation is using “versing” so I presume that Helen used it throughout as that is what she was hearing from her Grandson and his peer groups. Language changes over time, I except that, but I did not enjoy reading it. Helen also wrote that her team was “demolished by 2 points” at one point. Is this a typo? This is the 2nd lowest losing score possible.

Not for those looking for deep and meaningful discussions on the sport itself, more for those that want a pleasant read about (mostly) a Grandmother and her relationship and observations of her Grandson playing sport.

A.N. Wilson has written an overview of the years of Elizabeth I that covers the more famous events of her reign, as well as far few forays into social history. Not having read too much on the Elizabethan era in any great since depth for very a long time, it was interesting to read again on the likes of Drake and Raleigh and others. I did want more social history.

Released in 2012 Wilson writes his first sentence in the preface as follows:-

We have lived to see the Elizabethan world come to an end. This makes now a very interesting time to be reconsidering the Elizabethans, but it also makes for some difficulties. As human societies and civilisations change, it is natural for them to suppose that what they do, what they think, what they eat and drink and believe is superior to what went before. While the Elizabethan world was still going on and in some respects it was still continuing, in modified form, until the Second World War British and American historians were able to see the reign of Queen Elizabeth I as a glory age. This was how the Elizabethans saw themselves.

If one is comfortable that that age from the crowning of Elizabeth I to 2012 was a ‘glory age’ then I would suggest that history has moved on rapidly in the last decade in my opinion. Glory years these are not.

Wilson has written a history of the Elizabeth I era that is not influenced by hagiography, as some Tudor writers are prone to be. He has had no issue pointing out the failures of Elizabeth I even with what is seen by many as a Golden Age in English history. For example, the Irish issues are covered with balance and those so-called swashbuckling mariners of those times are given the respect they deserve within the norms of those times.

Wilson is strongest in the social history areas that he covers, the literature and theatre of the times, the promiscuous sex lives that seemed to hardly bother anyone. I wanted more in this area. I was interested to read Chapter 21 London and the Theatres.

English migrants to London fell into two broad categories. There were those who came driven by ambition, and there were those who came driven by hunger. 'In London we find rich wives, spruce mistress pleasant houses, good diet, rare wines, neat servants, fashionable furniture, pleasures and profits the best of all sort', as one such ambition young man wrote.

On the other hand, there were those who had been driven off the land for the simple Malthusian reason that existent crops could not sustain country produced land an increased workforce. Population growth in the country produced land shortage, reduced the size of smallholdings and led to a fivefold increase in food prices. In the course of the sixteenth century the real value of wages halved. The poor became poorer. Living-in servants, apprentices and day-labourers were the lucky ones. Many simply drifted towards London with the vague hope that it would provide them with some form of livelihood. The number of homeless beggars was vast.

In 1581 Elizabeth was riding by Aldersgate Bars towards the fields of Islington when she found herself surrounded by a crowd of beggars, ‘which gave the queen much disturbance'. That evening, William Fleetwood, the Recorder, arrested seventy-four of them who had dispersed in the fields, where they lived in a kind of shanty-town. Eight years later, a mob of some 500 beggars threatened to disrupt Bartholomew Fair. They had formed their own collective and were trying to sell stolen goods at a fair of their own - Durrest Fair.

Yet it was a fluid underclass, never a settled one. No state-sponsored social-welfare system existed. In the absence of religious houses, there was nowhere for the indigent or the starving to find charity. The beggars took what they could, and then found work or moved on. It all had a cruel effectiveness. The authorities, ever anxious about the double dangers of plague and insurrection, kept a merciless eye on the swarming hordes.

Wilson has end noted his research throughout, and Durrest Fair is noted from Peter Ackroyd’s London – The Biography. Curiosity got me and I can find nothing on the www about Durrest Fair though plenty on Bartholomew Fair. I have only read one Ackroyd book and was not that sure on his research in Foundation his first volume of his history of England.

Wilson has supplied plenty of endnotes as stated and I will have to trust most of them. He has supplied an extensive bibliography that would be useful to anyone that is keen to read further on Elizabeth I and her times, and any also of his references to other events he discussed. I have found his style of delivery frustrating at times but others ideal. The occasional reference to modern culture and topical comparisons to the time of writing is not generally my style, but the first paragraph I have quoted above gave him opportunities to use historical comparisons.

Be all that as it may, this is a worthy read for those that have an interest in the subject, and they should enjoy this telling of the Elizabethan era.

Nice short story that had me reading it after realising that Ann Funders short story The Girl with the Dogs was influenced by this one.

Are books such as this any use in this day and age of sat nav on the phone etc? Would one stick a book in a backpack for the walk, or leave it in the car? Would I trust the phone to not drop out? I don’t know. I found this in the local neighbour swap library, so someone has, I guess, gone to the phone option (or had a clean out)

Be those short musings as they may be, this is a good book for anyone wanting to do a day walk in Tasmania as it does a fine job of pointing out the fine places to go for bush walks be they easy, medium or hard, be they good for the season and also much much more that would be useful. Each walk has a map and a distance marker on that map, lets one know where to start, where to park and also much much more. Each walk has some nice pics to give the future walker a hint of what they might see.

Fern Tree to Mt Wellington looks like one I might have attempted back in my far fitter youth, but nowadays, I would take the bus.

The final in a very good trilogy on the three phases of China under Mao.

I turned 17 when Mao died. After his death I recall the trials of the Gang of Four even receiving coverage on the very limited news services in Brisbane Australia. It was very exotic (for want of a better word) and in a faraway country I had not really given any thought to at the time. It seemed such an odd name. Gang of Four! One had images of four young hoodlums holding up old ladies for the small change in their purses. It was a name I associated as an insult by the new regime. Nope! On page 306 of this fascinating read it says that it was coined by Mao himself. “Mao was playing one faction off against the other in the hope that none would be strong enough to challenge him” the author write. And that was the politics of The Cultural Revolution. Mao playing one faction off against another. To the detriment of the population at large.

This review hardly needs to explain the Cultural Revolution, there are plenty of resources out there. But books such as this do throw up events and individuals that play minor roles in the narrative but are nonetheless part of the complex history told. Damansky Island incident in March 1969 for example. In chapter 16 Preparing For War the author discusses the usual political machination and propaganda that Mao used in pursuit of his domestic goals. The USSR and China had disputed the island previously but now Chinese troops eventually shot at a border post. Two weeks later the clashes involved thousands of troops. Soon after Mao called a halt. “He had achieved his aim, which was to put the Soviet Union on notice.....” and as soon as the confrontation was over the internal propaganda came to the fore. “Prepare for War” became the new slogan. All this to control the outcome of the Ninth Party Congress that was due two weeks later. The only problem was the USSR took all this very seriously as one would expect and a few months later the USSR actually asked the USA how it would feel if they took out a Chinese nuclear facility. The US ignored the question. Then Pravda began a campaign against the Chinese and appealed to the world to understand the threat the Chinese had become. “The chairman was stunned.” wrote the author. This was after all a border dispute, useful for the Machiavellian politics of Mao, not an all-out war with a vastly superior opponent. China agreed to talk and concessions were made. But Mao, ever the paranoid leader put the country on a war footing nonetheless with both the USSR and the USA at the end of the internal propaganda.

My one fault with the book for me is a big one and marks it down from outstanding. During the narrative the author uses the term Mao's Great Famine to describe the terrible years of the Great Leap Forward. This is the title of his excellent book of the same name. I had no issue with the use of that in that book but not in this one. It reeks of self-promotion when there was no need. I have also put the term in search engine and each search comes to his book. For the trilogy to be considered a definitive history of China under Mao there was no need for such promotion. A small quibble some may say.

In the end though I have come out of the trilogy repeating what I have said before. Why read fantasy when there is the history of China. To think I know so little and have so much more to read.


https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/956365172

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1136459316?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1

I had little to no knowledge of Venice other than the fact it was a major tourist destination. That has all changed. Horodowich has written a superb easy to read short history that will be of great use to those that like things short, sharp and concise. It covers not only the history but also makes good comment on various modern issues such as the huge problems of rising water levels, tourism and Venice's place in the modern world while attempting to retain the history and charms of it's past. This is an excellent Brief History.

My knowledge of China is limited to a primer I read recently and the appetite was certainly whetted. This “a Brief History” has no less whetted the interest and China is now a subject I will read with anticipation. There is, obviously, 3 millennia of history to cover and if I have a little bit of criticism of the book it tends to struggle to cover the dynasties themselves. Be that as it may what could the book have been called??? The coverage is therefore limited and so discusses specific historical events more known to the westerner. Confucianism and the Boxer rebellion for example. But for those such as me who knew little as to why the Chinese have writen characters through to the repulsive binding of women's feet this brief history imparted knowledge is ideal to whet the appetite. Another good read in the “A Brief History” serious.

This is an exceptional book. Very academic in tone so for those readers that have a deep interest in pre Conquest England. Not recommended to those that are after popular history.

The author has delved into every source available to give a thorough coverage of Æthelstan and his reign. No stone has been left unturned to cover areas from his early life, an area very bereft of information through to his modern legacy.

There are 8 chapters and an epilogue covering debates as to Æthelstan place in English history, coverage of his family, his role in the church, his kingdom and wars. The epilogue made wonderful reading on his initial popular memory to the disappearance of such as time went by.

On finishing this book I looked at 2 popular history's of England that I have at hand, Seaman's A New History of England from 1981 and the recent Foundation by Ackroyd. Seaman makes reference to Æthelstan on page 22 calling him “one of the most successful Kings” based on his overlordship of other British kings via the Battle of Brunanburh. This is covered by all of a scant paragraph. Æthelstan receives a short mention in relation to laws on page 38. Ackroyd does better with coverage from page 69 to 72. Ackroyd says that Æthelstan was “revered for centuries” and covers the meaning of his name, Noble Stone, his lineage through to the precedents he set as to lordship and landownership. Considering the scope of Foundation Ackroyd seemingly does a fine job considering the limitations of his subject.

With that I came away considering that Sarah Foot has produced one of the most important biographies from Anglo Saxon England. My 2 popular histories are fairly scant on the subject but do both make mention of Æthelstan's importance to English history. This is why this book by Sarah Foot is of such importance. Her research of the source's is superb, they lack any form hyperbole with interpretation, she makes it abundantly clear as to their limitations and with that brings us up to date with what little information is available. Her footnotes and bibliography are of the highest quality. Highly recommended.

An excellent oral record of the Queensland 2/10 Field Regiment.

A fine beginners guide.

“The best work of modern history I have ever read” says A N Wilson on the cover. The cover praise is gushing as we get “masterpiece” from Oliver Kamm and “at last the story can be told” by Orlando Figes. I have to say that I have come out of this book extremely disappointed and for many reasons.

The best work of modern history is as ridiculous a comment and as to Masterpiece? Evans Reich trilogy just kills this book for the sheer brilliance of the telling of the subject as opposed to a limited focus on 3 nations and a constant dose of wide eyed polemic mixed in. As to the story being finaly being told the story has been told countless times and if it was all new why the extensive bibliography?

There is no denying the appalling struggles with totalitarian communist regimes that the masses were forced to endure in the eastern parts of Europe after the fall of Nazi Germany. The vast humanity that had endured Nazi suffering deserved better but that does not make this book with its wide eyed and bushy tailed presentation any better.
Lets take the chapter on Ethnic Cleansing as an example. Russian soldiers treated the German civilians appallingly no doubt but the author seems shocked at times. Why? Had not the Germans just committed atrocity after atrocity on Russian civilians, not only with the gun but by starvation and many other means? Did the author expect some charity? How naive!

The many examples of badly written prose is for me rather astonishing. Lets take this statement about travel. “According to the Interior Ministry statistics, only 9360 crossed the border for any reason in 1951, of whom only 1980 were travelling to capitalist countries” Well yes. We are reading about a country ravished by WW2 that not too far forward is a poverty stricken totalitarian regime with controls over the populace. But what we get a couple of aghast “only”s as if the then Polish government was going to conform to modern western freedom of travel.

The final chapter, Revolutions, finishes with a polemic on everyone being wrong. This is not a writing on history at all and is out of place as to what the chapter should have been about. And as to the Epilogue I just wonder the point. I want history, not another polemic aimed at a modern reader who still seems to think that there is a red menace out there. I mean do others who have praised this book really in their heart feel that the eastern European countries were particularly liberal prior to Nazi and Communist takeovers after 1939 as implied by the author? Free trade does not by itself make Poland, to use as an example, a liberal nation prior to 1939.

This book is as big a failure as I have read in a long time. The gushing praise just had me salivating but I am left very wanting. There must be better books on this subject than this, a book that to me is just a journalistic pursuit aimed at making a western audience reading the Murdoch Press and watching Fox News somehow think that their very way of life is till under attack.

A very enjoyable popular history and hard to be too critical. As the cover blub says “action packed...” Be that as it may there are a couple of spelling mistakes, hardly the authors fault, and the lack of footnotes make me find this style of history less enjoyable than it might have been.

A pity really as there is a magnificent Further Reading chapter at the end and the Conclusion was also a good read. In the end though I just find it hard to go past a chapter starting with a sentence that starts with “Coventry buzzed with excitement” Really? Who said? How do you know?

Charles Carlton finishes this wonderful and easy to read book with a final sentence that says “Here I have tried my best to get it into a book by telling the story—as much as possible in their own words—of how during the early modern period war affected the people and nations of the British Isles. In doing so, I hope that I have shown how profoundly the hand of war has shaped this Seat of Mars.” I would be interested indeed to find a better book than this on the subject.

This is the 2nd book I have read by Carlton, the other being the brilliant Going to the Wars: The Experience of the British Civil Wars, 1638-1651. Going to the Wars is one of the best books I have read and I was intrigued to see if this one would be as good. Well maybe not but only by the width of half a hair.

Carlton may just be one the preeminent historian in early modern British warfare and I can do no more than say that anyone interested in this period of British history do worse than read this wonderful historian.

A very good review from http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=34480

The very interesting Battle for Crete is covered from an Australasian point of view. Written in a populist style this starts with 170 pages covering the Greek campaign and even Tobruk before getting into the subject at hand. A well researched book, very good maps, footnotes galore and an excellent bibliography. Written in chronological order this is recommended for anyone interested in the subject. Stylistically the author is not my type but none the less the general reader with no previous reading on the subject should enjoy.

Not my style of history. I would have preferred this to be a touch more academic than the Popular/Populist delivery that this book is. Author Paul Ham has let his disgust and anger at just about everybody involved, other than the Australian soldiers, get in the way of the narrative to the point that it made the book far too long.

An example of this was the ridiculous populist overkill such as the first two pages of Chapter 34 “Australian Viet Cong” when he listed a plethora of persons and cultural events over 2 very long pages and then wrote that this was a “Tumble of people, pop and paraphernalia providing the stuffing of the social revolution in Australia in the 1960's; these were some of the voices, sounds and influences that heralded the over throw of the established order”. He then writes “In retrospect, the decade seems rather to have left a faint indent on time's shifting sands, blown on the wind like other youthful fads and ideals, the pale faced prelude to a long, adult hangover of dazed disillusionment.”

The actual narrative of events was constantly scattered with strange thought bubbles such as the above, use of slang and vernacular, historical inaccuracies, and intermittent use of endnotes. One thought bubble that caught my attention was that the author was not keen on elections being held after the French left and glad that they were not as the wrong side might have won. The occasional use of slang such as “daft” “Sheila” “yanks” to name a few. The constant analogies and vernacular used in the body of the narrative seemed out of place for me for what was a serious subject. A couple of noteworthy mistakes also come to mind. Gough Whitlam is quoted a few times and endnoted in Hansard but one controversial comment Ham has cited has no date against the Hansard extract. All other Hansard extracts do. Black American soldiers refused entry to Australia during World War II due to the White Australia Policy he states at one point. I can find no reference to the truth of this anywhere. The author writes that Nixon was impeached. Was he? I thought he resigned before impeachment could occur.

As usual there is a lot to learn from books such as this so I do recommend it to anyone that has an interest in the subject. I am just not keen on populist history.

This is the first Lawrence Durrell book I have read and he is certainly a superb writer. A description of his time spent in Cyprus during “Enosis”, Greek Cypriots demand for union with mainland Greece, this made fascinating reading. I had spent a week in Cyprus in 2000 and his description of the people and places had me recalling a pleasant week time.

For all my enjoyment of this very fine read I suspect that like another author I admire, Patrick Leigh Fermor, I may not be in agreement with a few of his views. He writes early that he was not going to make political observations. Well he did; “As a conservative, I fully understand, namely; ‘If you have an Empire, you just can't give away bits of it as soon as asked.'” he states at one point. He is clearly a colonialist of the higher order and yes he loved the locals but to me there was a fair bit of paternalism that could be at times condescending. At one point wrote that he thought the locals were cowards! And then “I knew at once that the Empire was all right by the animation of three African dignitaries”. Good grief.

In the end though it is a very good read, at times wonderfully descriptive and very interesting. It has also made me realise that I should read some Cypriot history as I had decided to do many years back but never had.

A very interesting read. The author, Greg Bak, has written a well researched book on the now obscure life and times (crimes) of pirate/corsair John Ward, infamous enemy of the Christian trading states of the early 17th Century.

Bak has put together a fairly sympathetic portrait of Ward and his fellow English pirates/corsairs with the premise being that due to lack of employment after the cessation of the Spanish English Wars of the Elizabethan times and with the peace that followed in the reign of James I that the mostly illiterate seafaring class had little else to do other than plunder if they were to make a reasonable living. Ward, among others, took to this life with gusto. He became incredibly rich and with that wealth was even able to bribe the admiralty, much to the chagrin of the Venetians, to the point that a pardon was being discussed. In the end, though, he made the even more infamous decision to convert to Islam.

Recommended to those that like true pirate stories.

This “....account is a warning to any country that would talk itself into a foolish war” it says on the back of my copy of this fascinating and frustrating read on the folly of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. That comment by The Seattle Times has a point. I am still always surprised at how easy the powers that be, no matter their political persuasion, make astonishingly poor calls on going to war.

Author Eri Hotta fleetingly covers the Meiji Reformation with more depth added to the latter years of the 1930s and into 1941, up to the last meeting of the Japanese ambassador with the US secretary just after the surprise attack.

So why did Japan make this decision to attack Pearl Harbour when everything pointed to it being an unmitigated disaster? The author states it was a gamble as they knew they could not win, the Japanese people had had enough of perceived cultural torment by the west she adds further and also covers several other events such as the war in China and the invasion of French Indochina. It was all an inexplicable mix that sent the Japanese nation into a destructive war based on..............all of those things and others!

Prince Konoe Fumimaro, many times Prime Minister in his career, came in for much criticism but really just about all the players could have been lumped into the same box of foolishness and that includes the emperor who at a crucial meeting of the Imperial Council reads a poem that fooled both the pro and antiwar factions into thinking he was with them all the way! Add the lack of ability by the top echelon to articulate their thoughts profoundly, this all had a ruinous effect as the pro war party gained an upper hand even though they themselves knew there was no hope of winning a long term war against the US. I have read WW2 history all my life but have to admit that the reasoning of Japan diving into an abyss of its own making has always left me bemused. Even with a 300-page in-depth history such as this, I can hardly put a finger on the reasons this all happened, and feel none the wiser as to why they took the course they did. Knowing their own logistical deficiencies and the industrial might of the USA they lived a slight dream that the US might, just might want negotiated peace. This is not a gamble, it is idiocy.


The author to all intents and purposes has researched her subject very well, but there is no bibliography and what seem to me at least to be at best perfunctory end notes. There is a Major Character list and a Selected Events in Japanese History Prior to April 1941 that are useful, but it was very easy to get lost in the huge amount of players in the narrative. Nonetheless, anyone wishing to read up on the many possibilities that lead to maybe one of the stupidest military actions in modern history will learn something.

Recommended to those interested in an in depth study of the (so called) Japanese elites gambling the very future and lives of their peoples on a venture that was no chance of succeeding.

I enjoyed this. Well written but am not that sure it had that much to say that was new. The British Empire being a good thing is not that new an idea is it? The Penguin edition is very cheap and worth the few dollars alone.

Enjoyable but in my opinion has not stood the test of time and seems a touch lightweight by today's more forceful standards.