Horrible Histories

Nero’s Killing Machine by Stephen Dando-Collins

I’d heard of the glory of Rome but after reading this I now understand that there was no such thing; only enough slaughter, slavery, greed, assassination and suicide to shake you to the core. Such a horrible people in such horrible times!

This is a history of Rome’s XIIII^th legion (take note, not XIV^th). Founded by no lesser celebrity than Julius Caesar in 58 BCE, we follow it through victory and defeat (but mostly terror and horror) for about 500 years until Rome finally gets its just desserts.

I found the book tedious at times, stuffed as it is with long lists of the bit players and the postings of the legions hither and thither across Europe. However, to contradict that assessment, I also found it fascinating that we know so much about them, right down to the bit players. The book is, I think, intended to entertain us, so we are not smothered in references but I expect that it is an honest rendering of what the sources say; of course the objectivity of the sources is probably suspect, many of them being Roman citizens. I found myself frequently disbelieving the metrics of how many participated in battles and how many were killed. I also couldn’t believe the constant assurances that the legionaries were keen to go to battle. One message I got from the suicides was that it was by far the least frightful way to die.

It engaged me enough to stick with it to the end and indeed to start me wondering what my next Roman history book will be.

Papillion for Fenians

The Catalpa Rescue by Peter FitzSimons

Back in the 1860’s a gang of Irishmen under the leadership of James Stephens were rounded up for plotting a Rising and sentenced to penal servitude in Western Australia. Some were pardoned after a number of years but those who had been members of the British army were considered particularly despicable and expected to rot in Freemantle jail.

This rip-roaring tale is presented as real history and despite the partisan writing I believe it to be true enough. It presents a band of Irish patriots, including John Devoy, who decide the gesture of rescuing these men is worth the danger of being caught themselves and the outrageous cost involved in buying a ship and sailing to the other side of the planet. One lunatic who wanted to be in the mission, but was rejected, even gets there under his own steam!  Their plan is naive but it works and their exploit is celebrated in America, Australia and Ireland to the chagrin of the Brits. It is mystifying and deeply heart-warming to read how much personal risk ordinary men with no stake in the affair were prepared to take.

The writing style is, to say the least, tabloid but I couldn’t help enjoying it just the same. I’d say it’s perfect lockdown reading.

The Right Stuff / Tom Wolfe

space race

If you haven’t read Tom Wolfe before,  he’s not to everybody’s taste – he’s opinionated, colourful language and a leading proponent of “New Journalism”.

The Right Stuff is, I suppose, a history book of sorts in that it deals with the beginnings of “The Space Race” but it’s mostly about the personalities involved and the (cold war) mindset of the times.  I found it a rattling good read (actually reread) ,  a little like “A Voyage for Madmen” in that it probes why the hell (male) people do the extraordinary things they do at the edges of human behaviour.  Why would a man compete ruthlessly to put himself sitting helplessly (they had no control,  the first US “astronauts” were actually chimpanzees) on top of an unstable and highly explosive (most US rockets had a lamentable record of exploding on the launchpad at that time) rocket?

And, of course, it was always a man – a (very) male red-blooded (!) man.  But what of the non-males – the females?  Because you’d never be selected to be an astronaut unless you were a “family man”.  Family man,  but with considerable licence because you were also considered hotter than a rock star with all the erm,  benefits. And it’s also the story of the wives.

This is not high literature,  it’s just a damn good read (well,  he’s a bit repetitive).

If you like it and you’ve ever wondered why there is so much crap architecture around ,  you might also also enjoy Tom Wolfe’s “From Our House To Our House”

Que l’humanité se débrouille sans moi

Review: Scum of the Earth by Arthur Koestler

By the end of his flight across Europe, Koestler had coined this rather telling (and desperate) motto: Let humanity get by without my help.

This is a staggering book about his experiences in France during the first year of WWII as he was pushed around by bureaucrats, interned and generally made to understand he was the scum of the earth. His first book in English, I’d give anything to write with his mastery. Born into wealth in Hungary, he lived through Hell both before and after the war, chalking up among his experiences a death sentence during Spanish Civil War. This amazing book (despite chapter titles such as Agony, Purgatory and Apocalypse) manages to convey stoic-ness (is that a word?) and even humour. The book is dedicated to comrades of his ilk (intellectuals, authors and idealists) who for the most part did not manage to endure their conditions and succumbed to suicide.

And the cleverness of the title: who are the scum of the earth? The idealists who fled from fascist Europe to expected safety in France or the French authorities and their minions who betrayed them?

Unputdownable. Much of the book had me reflecting on the experience of refugees in Ireland in this 21st century, whose experiences must at least reflect his to some degree.

 

 

Misery Porn?

Review: The Outlaw Ocean by Ian Urbina

I picked this one up because I always examine books about the sea. The author is an investigative journalist working for The New York Times who writes clearly and modestly about his brave intervention in dangerous places. He wrote a series of articles about crime on the high seas and this is the book that emerged from it.

Like many in his profession he wants to change the world and misery porn is his own term where he expresses his fear that he is merely titillating us with stories about suffering rather than highlighting offences that need action. I think he can be assured this is not porn.

It is nevertheless a book which describes the lurid underbelly of a region which makes up two thirds of the planet. The topics addressed are diverse and truly shocking. I could hardly believe some of the things going on in the 21st century: fishermen as indentured slaves; piracy; thefts, reflagging and repossession of ships the size of skyscrapers; declarations of offshore independant states; gun-running platforms; illegal fishing and dumping; eco-warriors; state indifference and state corruption. The list goes on and on and on. Sometimes it felt like he was on the set of a Mad Max movie.

Well worth reading, it’s made me think about what we can do to reduce our impact on the planet and especially how we can contribute to reducing misery and exploitation.

 

 

 

Darkest Africa

Review: Exterminate All the Brutes by Sven Lindqvist

What a great read! I was well prepared for this book. I’ve read Conrad‘s Heart of Darkness, H.G.Wells’ War of the Worlds and Adam Hochschild‘s King Leopold’s Ghost. Sometimes I knew what I was reading, sometimes the deeper message eluded me.

Translated from the Swedish, Lindqvist writes a sort of journal of a trip in Saharan Africa where he reflects as he goes on the very dark history of European conquest there. The underlying theme is that the Holocaust is perceived as a Nazi invention but that its pedigree is perfectly European.  (Watching the news this evening on the white supremacist terrorist assault in New Zealand, and the journalist’s remark that it was the worst ever in the country, I couldn’t help smiling wryly at her innocence (or disingenuousness?) when I recalled that wholesale slaughter of the Maori people by British colonists in the 19th century which far exceeded this event). He describes how Germany was late to the field and how early German writers criticised their neighbours’ conquests while later ones then tried to modify the tone as Germany joined the race for territory.

The title is taken from Heart of Darkness.  If you haven’t read it, recall Apocalypse Now which was Francis Ford Coppola’s loose transfer of the book from the African Congo to Vietnam. Conrad was showing his disgust and his book pales in comparison to what was actually perpetrated by the British, the French and the Belgians. I hadn’t realised that Wells‘ War of the Worlds was another commentary on colonialism, the martians representing invaders with a technology unimaginably superior to ours. Lindqvist points out that the only defence the African’s had was malaria (just as the martians succumbed to bacteria).

The eugenics movement and the influence of Darwin is a disturbing theme.

The message of the book is not that we should open our eyes but that we know exactly what they (we!) did and we need to fix it.

Apart from being a very moving commentary, this book is written by a very fine writer who I could describe as almost poetic.

Robert, Charles, … et al

Review: This Thing of Darkness by Harry Thompson

I don’t go in much for celebrities or hero worship though I’ll admit a few scientists and mathematicians have earned my grudging regard. However, Captain Robert Fitzroy of HMS Beagle has now joined my personal Pantheon.

This delightful book claims to be an honest, fictionalised telling of his life and its intersection with the life of Charles Darwin and a whole host of mesmerising people including the first (Tierra del) Fuegians to arrive in Britain and Argentina’s first dictator. Apart from skippering the Beagle, Fitzroy was Governor of New Zealand and the creator of the British Meteorological Service. I’m cynical enough to feel that the author loved his subject too much to display all the warts but trusting enough to feel the truth is nevertheless there in his work. Darwin is painted more critically and comes across as very smart but also very vain and somewhat cowardly.

Promoted to his own ‘boat’ at 23, Fitzroy eventually makes it to rear-admiral, but his career and life are a series of failures (at least in his eyes). A dutiful man, he is burdened with a humanism that brings him into regular opposition with the world. When his superiors don’t ‘do the right thing’, he does, at his own expense, and so eventually bankrupts himself. He chose Darwin as a companion and though bright enough to share Darwin’s insights, he could not reconcile them with his religious beliefs. He sea-trialed the Beaufort scale for his friend Admiral Beaufort. A scientist in his own right, he produced charts of Patagonia, Chile, Tierra del Fuego and the Falklands and studied weather patterns, believing that weather could be forecasted.

This is a stunning adventure novel, which happens to be true. It will take pride of place beside Childer’s Riddle of the Sands on my bookshelf.

 

Treasure Island

Review: Ireland’s Pirate Trail by Des Ekin

What an eye-opener!  It should be obvious, but I never thought about it. Ireland’s geographic position between Britain and the New World make it an obvious location for rogues to set up shop and prey on shipping. And it seems we did, and caused chaos across the centuries.

Des Ekin takes us on a clockwise tour of the coast, recounting in a jocular, chatty manner the various scoundrels that plagued shipping since the 12th century. The light-hearted style belies the very serious research attested to by the copious endnotes provided.

He visits everywhere he describes and paints a picture of an Ireland that I’d want to visit if I didn’t live here already.

To cap it all, this little book from O’Brien Press is a small masterpiece, with beautiful readable typography and marvellous illustrations including hand-drawn maps.

Dante’s Inferno

Review: Naples ’44 by Norman Lewis

This one may be a candidate for Asynchronist’s Book of the Year because it is being passed through the group from hand to hand.

It’s an astonishing piece of work in the form of a diary running from October ’43 to October ’44 and recording the experience of Lewis as an NCO in the Field Security Service (a branch of the Intelligence Corps) just after the arrival of the American and British in Italy. Lewis is clearly a humanist and is appalled and sickened by the ineptitude, cowardice, corruption, poverty and indifference he encounters everywhere. Italy comes across as another planet, with extraordinary superstitions and religious fervour living side by side with vendettas, omertà and injustice. The old, the poor and most of all, the women, suffered unimaginable outrages.

I had the strongest feeling that any basically honest person would have died in the first few weeks. Humanist though he clearly was, Lewis carried out his role in spite of the views he expressed and I felt his expressed feelings were somewhat cheapened by this. Nevertheless, as a document of the atrocity that was the Liberation of Italy, I found it to be more authentic than Curzio Malaparte’s Kaputt (also 1944). Lewis writes very well and the diary approach is not at all tainted by repetition; he has new things to report every time he turns the page. Most astonishingly, the wonder that is Italy shines through the grime, and on every page I saw images from great Italian cinema.

Birth, Suffering and Decline

Review: Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991 by Orlando Figes.

Rating:  Top marks for conciseness; a century of history in about 300 pages!

This is how I want to read history, getting the big picture without too much effort, leaving me to decide where I want to use a microscope.  I’ll accept the pitfalls that go with leaving out the details.

The book splits into three parts: the gestation and execution of the Revolution, the Stalin years and the decline of the regime. I would say that the first section was pitched at about the right level for me but that the writer overindulged himself somewhat in spelling out the horror of the Stalin years, very much at the expense of the final section which, insofar as it went, I found newest and most appealing. Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev and Yeltsin all get crammed into a few (very interesting) pages where I’d have like to have heard more. He quotes Alexis de Tocqueville (1856):

“the most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform … Patiently enduring so long as it seemed beyond redress, a grievance becomes to appear intolerable once the possibility of removing it crosses men’s minds.”

A philosophical final chapter discusses guilt and blame, truth and reconciliation and I would have enjoyed some expansion of these matters.

Whether Figes is that right person to do this expansion is moot as his distaste for the regime is an obvious if reasonably well contained feature of the book.