Monthly Archives: June 2020

June 2020 Books

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Non-fiction: 6 (YTD 32)
The Beiderbecke Affair, by William Gallagher
The Queen's Agent: Sir Francis Walsingham and the Rise of Espionage in Elizabethan England, by John Cooper
The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within, by Stephen Fry
Modern China: A Very Short Introduction, by Rana Mitter
From A Clear Blue Sky, by Timothy Knatchbull
The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, by John Bolton

Fiction (non-sf): 3 (YTD 15)
Local Hero, by David Benedictus
The Ghost of Lily Painter by Caitlin Davies
Laatste schooldag, by Jan Siebelink (did not finish)

sf (non-Who): 5 (YTD 70)
The Sleeper Awakes, by H.G. Wells
Heaven's War by David S Goyer and Michael Cassutt (did not finish)
Dreaming In Smoke, by Tricia Sullivan
The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov
The Extremes, by Christopher Priest

Comics: 6 (YTD 21)
The Wicked + The Divine vol 2: Fandemonium, by Kieron Gillen etc
The Wicked + The Divine vol 3: Commercial Suicide, by Kieron Gillen etc
The Wicked + The Divine vol 4: Rising Action, by Kieron Gillen etc
De dag waarop de bus zonder haar vertrok, by BeKa, Marko and Maëla Cosson
The Wicked + The Divine vol 5: Imperial Phase Part 1, by Kieron Gillen etc
De dag waarop ze haar vlucht nam, by BeKa, Marko, and Maëla Cosson

5,000 pages (YTD 38,500)
4/20 (YTD 47/144) by women (Davie, Sullivan, 2x Ka of BeKa and Cosson)
1/20 (YTD 17/144) by PoC (Mitter)
1/20 reread (YTD 17/144) – The Sleeper Awakes

Current
The Complete Secret Army: An Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to the Classic TV Drama Series by Andy Priestner
Our Mutual Friend, by Charles Dickens
The Wicked + The Divine vol 6: Imperial Phase Part 2, by Kieron Gillen etc
The Overstory, by Richard Powers
Tooth & Claw, by Jo Walton
City of Lies, by Sam Hawke

Coming soon (perhaps)
EU Lobbying Handbook, by Andreas Geiger
Gaze of the Medusa, by Gordon Rennie, Emma Beeby and Brian Williamson

TOR: Assassin Hunter, by Billy Bob Buttons
Guban, by Abdi Latif Ega
“Houston, Houston, do you read?” by James Tiptree Jr

George Eliot, by Tim Dolin
Yugoslavia's Implosion: The Fatal Attraction of Serbian Nationalism, by Sonja Biserko
Listen to the Moon by Michael Morpurgo

Jerusalem, by Alan Moore
The Mirror and the Light, by Hilary Mantel
East West Street, by Philippe Sands
Beren and Luthien, by J.R.R. Tolkien
Darwin's Island: The Galapagos in the Garden of England, by Steve Jones

Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos, by M. Mitchell Waldrop
Survivants, Tome 3, by Leo
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values, by Robert M. Pirsig
The Conqueror's Child, by Suzy McKee Charnas
The Inside of the Cup, by Winston S. Churchill
SS-GB, by Len Deighton
Tono-Bungay, by H. G. Wells
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January 2007 books

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Momentous times as I started my new job and new office. My first visitor was former Labour MP Dick Leonard, who will turn 90 this December, all being well. I travelled to London in the first week of January to meet new colleagues, and to Kosovo and Cyprus later in the month for business. Despite only just starting one new job, I interviewed for another when a long-dormant application came to life; I did not get it. I also had the miserable experience of having a laptop stolen at the Gare du Nord in Brussels.

Young F delighted us with this piece of fan art (which I still use for Doctor Who related posts here).

Now that I had started commuting largely by train, my reading rate shot up and I read the following books in January 2007:

Non-fiction 7
The Art of War, by Sun Tzu
Actors of the Century: a Play-Lover's Gleanings From Theatrical Annals, by Frederic Whyte
About Time: The Unauthorised Guide to Doctor Who, 1963-1966, by Tat Wood and Lawrence Miles
Machiavelli in Brussels: The Art of Lobbying the EU, by Rinus van Schendelen
Who on Earth is Tom Baker?
To Engineer is Human, by Henry Petroski
From Behind a Closed Door: Secret Court Martial Records of the 1916 Easter Rising, by Brian Barton

Non-genre 4
The Sexual Life of Catherine M., by Catherine Millet
The Mill on the Floss, by George Eliot
The Book of Proper Names, by Amélie Nothomb
Starter for Ten, by David Nicholls

SF 7
A Clash of Kings, by George R.R. Martin
Sourcery, by Terry Pratchett
The Secret Visitors, by James White
The Sharing Knife: Beguilement, by Lois McMaster Bujold
Variable Star, by Robert A Heinlein and Spider Robinson
The Tin Drum, by Günter Grass
Tau Zero, by Poul Anderson

Doctor Who 1
The Eight Doctors, by Terrance Dicks

Comics 2
Preacher [#3]: Proud Americans, by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon
Caricature, by Daniel Clowes

6,500 pages
4/21 by women
1/21 by a PoC

The best new reads here were the first of the Wood and Miles Doctor Who volumes, which you can get here, and the first of Bujold's Sharing Knife series, which you can get here. The worst was Rinus van Schendelen's incomprehensible guide to EU lobbying; you can get the revised (and possibly improved) edition here.


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From A Clear Blue Sky: Surviving the Mountbatten Bomb, by Timothy Knatchbull

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

During my grandmother Edwina’s childhood, the family used it primarily as a shooting lodge. It was lit by candles and oil lamps and had just one bath. Water from a well was carried a quarter of a mile uphill by donkey. The sandy beaches on which the children played rolled into dunes and fields. Seal colonies lived nearby and birdlife abounded. The Gaelic language and culture were still strong, relative informality was the norm, and the tempo of life was gentle.

This is quite a gruelling read. In August 1979, 14-year-old Timothy Knatchbull was seriously injured when the IRA blew up his grandfather’s boat; his parents were also seriously injured, but survived; his maternal grandfather, his paternal grandmother, a teenage boy who was helping out on the boat, and also Timothy’s twin brother Nicholas were all killed. This would be a shocking enough event no matter who the victims were, but the boys’ grandfather was Lord Mountbatten, the last viceroy of India, whose nephew Philip was and is the husband of Queen Elizabeth II. It was a direct attack by the IRA on the British royal family, and it succeeded.

That same day, eighteen British soldiers were killed in two bomb attacks at Narrow Water Castle, County Down, and their colleagues mistakenly shot and killed a civilian in the belief that they were returning fire. It was one of the worst days of the Troubles, with the biggest single loss of life for the British army. Of the two events on 27 August 1979, the Narrow Water attack hit much closer for me. Roger Hall, whose family still owns the castle, was a close friend of my father’s, and their sisters, Moira Hall and my aunt Ursula, shared a house in London for many years where we were always welcome.

But everyone has their own story, and Timothy Knatchbull tells his very eloquently. Many people have suffered violent bereavement, but very few lose an identical twin, and Timothy carefully unpacks the nature of his relationship with Nicholas, and his adaptation to life without him. Getting closure was a long process; Timothy was too badly injured to attend the funerals, and only years later did he uncover the post-mortem reports and photographs of his brother’s body being recovered from the sea, which were crucial for his coming to terms with the past.

As one might expect, Knatchbull’s relationship with Ireland is very complex. It was a magical place of childhood holiday memories, which turned to horror in an instant. He is fulsome in his tributes to the people who rescued him and his parents, and the Sligo medical team who saved their lives. Most of the Irish people who he quotes deplored the attack on his family. But not all. He looks in detail at the Garda investigation and subsequent trial – Thomas MacMahon, who was convicted of planting the bomb, had actually been arrested two hours before it exploded, which rather clearly indicates that he was not the only person involved. There is a tangible suspicion that not every stone was left unturned. Knatchbull twice quotes a senior Irish politician to the effect that this was the biggest crime in the history of the State. (Actually I would dispute that on behalf of Kevin O’Higgins, whose killers were never arrested, even though it is now well known who they were.)

Mountbatten was clearly capable of inspiring devotion as a father and grandfather. I still can’t warm to him; he flirted with the overthrow of British democracy in 1968, and his botching of the partition of India killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions. Oddly enough the latter experience made him more personally sympathetic to Irish nationalism. In any case, the IRA did not kill him because of his colonial and military record, still less his political views; they killed him, and two children and an old woman, purely because of who his nephew had married. The effect in the short term was to harden the positions of both the British and Irish governments against the IRA, and in the medium and long term to deepen suspicion and make peace and reconciliation more difficult. This was not a win in any way. (And today’s Sinn Féin supporters need to own that this act of murder was celebrated by SF at the time.)

Knatchbull has found his equilibrium, and welcomes the peace process which has (largely) brought an end to traumas like his. (I don’t think I have ever met him, but his last year in Cambridge as an undergraduate at Christ’s was my first year at Clare, so we may well have been in the same room on occasion.) He has found a way of making sense of the terrible thing that was done to his family. Many other victims of the Troubles have not been able to do that. A book like this is important as a demonstration that a personal reconciliation with the past is in the end possible, although the necessary resources (time, space and often money) are not equally available to everyone. You can get the book here.

I bought the book because it won the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Prize for 2009-10, but it took me years to get around to it and eventually it was the non-fiction book that had lingered longest on my shelves. Next on that pile is Yugoslavia’s Implosion, by Sonja Biserko.

Ewart-Biggs Prize winners: Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, by Frank McGuinness | From A Clear Blue Sky: Surviving the Mountbatten Bomb, by Timothy Knatchbull | Setting the Truth Free: The Inside Story of the Bloody Sunday Campaign, by Julieann Campbell | The Republic: The Fight for Irish Independence, 1918-1923, by Charles Townshend | The Whole and Rain-Domed Universe, by Colette Bryce | The Sun is Open, by Gail McConnell

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The Ghost of Lily Painter by Caitlin Davies

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

The keeping of a journal will also, I trust, provide an opportunity to note down observations relating to my work, although I have no intention of producing anything resembling the sort of police memoir so popular these days. I find such publications devoid of personal interest, containing as they do a series of anecdotes written for no other purpose than that of self-aggrandisement. What is missing, one feels, is the reflections of an ordinary police inspector doing an extraordinary job. For the role of the police officer today is no longer confined to the prevention of crime, rather we are expected to fulfil the role of social inspector. Be there bonfire or smoke, traffic accidents or tardy dust contractors, abandoned children or missing dogs, then a person's first port of call is a police officer. Divisions differ of course: an inspector at Kensington is likely to be inundated with elderly ladies reporting the loss of a cat or a purse, while an inspector at Tottenham Court Road will find himself in a veritable hot bed of crime. When it comes to Upper Holloway, barely a day passes without one sergeant or another bringing in a drunk or a thief. And then there are the children, particularly around the Seven Sisters Road, who quite deliberately get themselves 'lost' and report as much to the beat constable in the hope of being taken to the station for a slice of bread and jam. Divisional Superintendent Dyball has let it be known that this practice is to cease forthwith. Instead, any stray children with homes to go to are to be given a good clip round the ear and told to make their way whence they came.

One of those novels I had picked up years ago on a whim; Annie Sweet, recently separated from her husband in 2008, becomes obsessed with tracking down the story of Lily Painter, a teenage music hall performer who lived in the same house in 1901. I'm afraid that I worked out what the twist ending was going to be about half way through, and I was also annoyed by the policeman character who seems to have very little grasp of police procedure and writes implausible diary entries. But it's told with a certain amount of emotional force, and if I were in a less cynical mood at the moment it might well have worked better for me. You can get it here.

This was the non-genre fiction book that had lingered longest unread on my shelves. Next on that list is The Inside of the Cup, by the other Winston Churchill. But it will have to wait until I have finished all the books I acquired in 2013 (I'm getting through them fairly rapidly).

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Modern China: A Very Short Introduction, by Rana Mitter

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Decades after the deaths of Mao and Chiang, it is possible not only to look at those two major figures with some perspective, but also to pay more attention to the context around them. There is an alternative to regarding the early 20th century as a clash of the two Chinese giants: instead we can treat the period from the establishment of Chiang’s Nationalist government in 1928 to the present day as one long modernizing project by two parties that agreed as well as disagreed. Both the Nationalists and the Communists wished to establish a strong centralized state, remove imperialist power from China, reduce rural poverty, maintain a one-party state, and create a powerful industrialized infrastructure in China. Both parties launched powerful campaigns against ‘superstition’, believing that ‘backward’ spiritual beliefs were preventing China from reaching modernity. The major ideological difference was that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) believed that none of these goals, especially rural reform, was possible without major class warfare. The Nationalists opposed this, in part because it was captive to forces that opposed economic redistribution. This division led to a deadly falling-out by the mid-1920s, which was resolved only by the Communist victory in 1949. Ironically, though, by the end of the century, the CCP had also abandoned class war, although only after decades of factional, often highly destructive, conflict between classes.

Rana Mitter was a friend in Cambridge days, now Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China at the Department of Politics and International Relations at Oxford University, and after renewing contact with him a couple of years ago (and also conscious of the growing dominance of China in the world) I decided to get this book as a starter. (I've previously bounced off a couple of histories of China.)

It's a good readable, brief and almost breezy introduction to China as it has developed in the last century or so. By taking modern China as his subject, he more of less starts with the 1911 revolution (with occasional contextualising from the past) and argues for a relatively linear development from Sun Yat-Sen to Chiang Kai-Shek to Mao to Deng, Jiang, Hu and Xi; many things changed, but there is a lot of continuity too. The history section is only half of the book; he also looks at society as a whole, the Chinese economy and Chinese culture, this last of course extending well beyond the People's Republic. The second edition was published in 2016, when it was already clear that Xi was heading in a less liberal direction; now of course we are seeing the vicious crackdown on Hong Kong (which is very sad but surely not surprising), and the appalling treatment of the Uighurs, both clearly directed from the top. But Mitter seems to think that this can't last forever, and that there will be an inevitable pressure for liberalisation which Xi, or possibly his successor, will have to deal with; millions of Chinese live in democratic and open countries, most locally in Taiwan, and we should not underestimate the flexibility that already exists. It's a good book and you can get it here.

Another friend, Peter Martin, is about to leave Beijing after a couple of years there with Bloomberg; I will miss his regular reporting. I have signed up for the POLITICO weekly briefing but it's a bit US-focused. Open to advice for a regular update that I can skim on a weekly basis.

This was top of my pile of unread books by non-white writers. Next in that list is Guban, by Abdi Latif Ega.

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A hundred days after lockdown

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Not sure how much longer I will keep up this series of posts every ten days. The numbers of hospitalisations, deaths, etc in Belgium are now back to where they were before lockdown, which basically means that it's barely distinguishable from background noise in the statistics. The government has announced further relaxation of the restrictions from 1 July (ie next Wednesday) including reopening cinemas and theatres, and allowing events of up to 200 people indoors and 400 outdoors, to double in August all being well.

And I'm inclined to think that all probably will be well. I have a slightly heretically optimistic take: I suspect that very few people were infected after the lockdown, except probably in care homes (which have been a disaster), and the numbers we have seen since then have largely been the outworkings of the pool of active and latent infection that existed in late March, and the very few people who came into contact with that pool. In that case, the first wave will have left a population that is still vulnerable to future infection, but hopefully very few infectious people; and a future outbreak will be much easier to contain, because we are prepared. So I am cautiously positive about the way things are heading.

I think this does justify the severity of the lockdown in the first place, but it's quite possible that it could have been relaxed sooner, provided that we kept to social distancing and hygiene rules (as we will continue to do). And it's certain that if the lockdown had been imposed a week earlier, about two thousand lives would have been saved.

For us, the major development of the last ten days was that we were finally able to see B, on her 23rd birthday. We had to wear masks and gloves, and were accompanied at all times by two of the carers from the Stichting, but she was clearly pleased to see us as we were to see her.

Little U will come home tomorrow, for the first time since March, and will stay with us for ten days or so. She has apparently understood that something big is happening tomorrow and has been a bit nervous. We were not able to see her last week because she would certainly have wanted to come home with us immediately.

Also as previously noted I went to church last Sunday, the doors open for business at last.

I went to work by train yesterday, again for the first time since 13 March. I treated myself to a first-class ticket, which was silly because there were so few fellow passengers that there was no real difference in comfort level. I took the train rather than driving because we had an internal social event in the office yesterday evening, after which I went to the Place de Londres with some colleagues for a drink, just like one might in normal times. We're doing drinks again tomorrow evening for a departing colleague, al fresco in the park. The forecast is that it will be very sunny and warm. I think the good weather has played its part in lifting everyone's spirits, but the main thing is the gradual resumption of normal social life, and a feeling that the trajectory is firmly upward.

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Thursday reading

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Current
The Complete Secret Army: An Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to the Classic TV Drama Series by Andy Priestner
Our Mutual Friend, by Charles Dickens
The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov
The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, by John Bolton
The Wicked + The Divine vol 6: Imperial Phase Part 2, by Kieron Gillen etc
De dag waarop ze haar vlucht nam, by Beka, Marko, and Maëla Cosson

Last books finished
The Wicked + The Divine vol 4: Rising Action, by Kieron Gillen etc
De dag waarop de bus zonder haar vertrok, by Beka, Marko, and Maëla Cosson
Dreaming In Smoke, by Tricia Sullivan
The Wicked + The Divine vol 5: Imperial Phase Part 1, by Kieron Gillen etc

Next books
The Overstory, by Richard Powers
Tooth & Claw, by Jo Walton

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The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within, by Stephen Fry

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Second paragraph of first chapter:

Why not indeed. Here's a list of the most likely possibilities:

1 Beat — Monometer
He bangs
The drum.

2 Beats — Dimeter
His drumming noise
Awakes the boys.

3 Beats — Trimeter
His drumming makes a noise.
And wakes the sleeping boys.

4 Beats — Tetrameter
He bangs the drum and makes a noise,
It shakes the roof and wakes the boys.

5 Beats — Pentameter
He bangs the drum and makes a dreadful noise,
It shakes the roof and wakes the sleeping boys.

6 Beats – Hexameter
He bangs the drum and makes the most appalling noise,
It shakes the very roof and wakes the sleeping boys.

7 Beats — Heptameter
He bangs the wretched drum and makes the most appalling noise,
Its racket shakes the very roof and wakes the sleeping boys.

8 Beats — Octameter
He starts to bang the wretched drum and make the most appalling noise,
Its dreadful racket shakes the very roof and wakes the sleeping boys.

An enjoyable book by Stephen Fry about how poetry works and how to write it. There are a lot of exercises inviting the reader to try their own; I did about half of them and then ran out of energy. I'm not as much into poetry as some people, but this was a nice re-introduction to enjoying it. You can get it here.

This was my top unread non-fiction book. Next on that pile is Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos, by M. Mitchell Waldrop.

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December 2006 books and 2006 books roundup

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My final Crisis Group publication was a briefing on Kosovo. In my four years and eight months there, I had overseen the publication of 46 reports, 16 briefings and ten op-eds (in the last case, just counting those published under my own name; I was ghost-writer for a few more). Meanwhile I chose my new office, a serviced arrangement on Rond Point Schuman. In Belgium the big news was a hoax TV news programme announcing that Flanders had unilaterally declared independence. Gerald Ford died just after Christmas.

Anne's sister joined us again for Christmas, which was just as well when one of the household had to be taken to casualty on Christmas Day itself (naming no names). The kids enjoyed themselves, though B's behaviour was getting more and more difficult to manage:

I don't appear to have travelled this month. My overnights tally for the year was 25 places in 18 countries.

Thanks to my sudden conversion to commuting by train, I read 20 books in December 2006:

Non-fiction 8 (2006 total 70)
This Was Not Our War: Bosnian Women Reclaiming the Peace, by Swanee Hunt
The Great English Pilgrimage, by Christopher Donaldson
Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West, by Dee Brown (did not finish)
The Elusive Quest: Reconciliation in Northern Ireland, by Norman Porter
Ockham's Razor: A Search for Wonder In An Age of Doubt, by Wade Rowland
Notes from a Small Island, by Bill Bryson
An Intimate History of Humanity, by Theodore Zeldin (did not finish)
Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism, by Marina Warner

Non-genre 7 (2006 total 35)
The Reader, by Bernhard Schlink
White Eagles over Serbia, by Lawrence Durrell
The Crying of Lot 49, by Thomas Pynchon
Perfume, by Patrick Süskind
Crooked Little Heart, by Anne Lamott
Lord Jim, by Joseph Conrad
Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming

SF (non-Who) 3 (2006 total 68)
Thunderbird Falls, by C.E. Murphy
Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett
Unfinished Tales, by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien

Doctor Who 2 (2006 total 28)
Timewyrm: Apocalypse, by Nigel Robinson
Timewyrm: Revelation, by Paul Cornell

Comics 0 (2006 total 6)

7,400 pages (YTD 61,600)
4/20 (34/207) by women
None (8/207) by PoC

For once I'm going to highlight one book I liked and two I didn't, rather than the other way around. Norman Porter's exploration of how to achieve reconciliation in Northern Ireland is very good and a partial recantation of his earlier views; you can get it here. I could not finish either Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee or Zeldin's An Intimate History of Humanity. You can get them here and here.


2006 books roundup

This was the first year that I did a proper book roundup at the time. Reformatting that post to my current system:

Non-fiction 70 (34% – highest of any year I have on record)
Best of 2006: Lost Lives: The stories of the men, women and children who died as a result of the Northern Ireland troubles, by David McKittrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney, Chris Thornton and David McVea; The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-First Century, by Robert Cooper
The one you haven't heard of: Indefensible: One Lawyer's Journey into the Inferno of American Justice, by David Feige
Worst of 2006: An International Relations Debacle: The UN Secretary-General's Mission of Good Offices in Cyprus 1999-2004, by Claire Palley

SF 68 (33% – same as last year, about average)
Best of 2006 (not including rereads): The Wreck of The River of Stars, by Michael Flynn; Thud!, by Terry Pratchett
The one you haven't heard of: Impossible Stories, by Zoran Živković
Worst of 2006: Galactic Patrol, by E.E. "Doc" Smith

Non-genre 35 (17% – about average)
Best of 2006:  The Warden's Niece by Gillian Avery; The File on H, by Ismail Kadarë.
The one you haven't heard of: A Game With Sharpened Knives, by Neil Belton
Worst of 2006: Ivanhoe, by Sir Walter Scott

Doctor Who 28 (14% – same as last year; this number got bigger in between)
Best of 2006: Evolution, by John Peel; Doctor Who – The Rescue, by Ian Marter
Worst of 2006: (The Companions of) Doctor Who – Harry Sullivan's War, by Ian Marter

Comics 6 (3% – lowest of any year I have on record)
Best of 2005: The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation, by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon
Worst of 2006: Ghost World, by Daniel Clowes (second year in a row that one of his books occupied this spot)

Book of the year 2006: Lost Lives: The stories of the men, women and children who died as a result of the Northern Ireland troubles, by David McKittrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney, Chris Thornton and David McVea

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The Queen’s Agent: Francis Walsingham & the Rise of Espionage in Elizabethan England, John Cooper

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

It had all looked so different earlier that same summer. The signing of the treaty of Blois was commemorated in a group portrait of the English royal family now known as the Allegory of the Tudor Succession. According to its inscription, the painting was presented by Queen Elizabeth to Francis Walsingham as a 'mark of her people's and her own content'. The artist didn't sign his name but was probably Lucas de Heere, a Flemish Protestant who fled to England with his family in the 1560s. He later acted as an envoy between Walsingham and William of Orange. Like so many images of the time, the Allegory was intended to be decoded as well as admired. The setting is a throne room in one of the royal palaces. Henry VIII presides under the Tudor coat of arms, surrounded by his three children. Edward VI kneels beside his father, accepting the sword of justice, but it is Elizabeth who dominates the foreground of the painting. She is pictured entering the chamber hand in hand with Peace, a goddess with an olive branch. Weapons are trampled and burst into flames, while Plenty follows behind with her cornucopia. To the rear of the royal dais stand Queen Mary and Philip of Spain attended by Mars, god of war.

My Tudor research is somewhat on hold at the moment, but I'm keeping my interest ticking over, and this rose to the top of one of my piles (books acquired in 2015; next is Darwin's Island: The Galapagos in the Garden of England, by Steve Jones). It's an interesting survey of Walsingham's career, starting with how his views of Catholicism vs Protestantism were hardened by the experience of being the English ambassador in France at the time of the St Bartholomew's Eve Massacre (see also Christopher Marlowe, and Doctor Who). And in particular, Cooper conveys very effectively the fragility of the Elizabethan regime as directly experienced by those who were running it. One of the biggest mental adjustments I've had to make as I get into the period is to realise that the people living through it had no idea that Elizabeth would live to 1603 – crowned heads were tumbling at the drop of a hat across Europe, and the heir to Elizabeth's throne was literally imprisoned in England and actively plotting against her. It's also clearly and sympathetically put that Walsingham and Cecil were more hardline in their religion than the queen was; and they saw their job as preserving the realm even against her whims if the latter should be potentially destructive. Ireland doesn't loom as large here as I had expected it might; perhaps the informal demarcation of responsibilities between Walsingham and Cecil left it more in the latter's domain. But there is lots of useful stuff, helping me to form a better picture of the complex environment of the time. You can get it here. (The American edition has a different title, The Queen's Spymaster.)

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Local Hero, by David Benedictus

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

'What are you thinking about?' he asked Danny. What the hell did the guy think about?

Back in the olden days, there were no DVD players or streaming services, and if you saw a film or some TV that you liked, the only way to experience again at a time and place of your own convenience was to read the novelisation. And if you loved the film Local Hero, as I do, you had to buy this slim book by David Benedictus from Bill Forsyth's original screenplay.

I can't pretend that it's great literature. The book inevitably misses the superb visuals and the soundscape provided by Dire Straits, and the performances of the good members of the cast, including a young Peter Capaldi. (On the other hand, Peter Riegert's boredom in the supposedly central role is less painfully obvious on the page than on the screen.) And as I said, it's short and easily digestible. You can get it here.

This was the shortest book acquired in 2013 on my unread shelf. Next (if I can find it) is Exiled to Nowhere: Burma's Rohingya, by Greg Constantine.

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I went to church this morning

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I went to church this morning, for the first time in several years; you may remember I reported from the churchyard in the first of my lockdown videos, and now that the lockdown is easing, I wanted to see how the community is putting itself back together.

Well, it's still not religion as we knew it before. No hymn singing allowed by the congregation, just a cantor intoning from the back; no communion for anyone except the priest; only every third seat in every second row was available to sit in.

But it was still an important celebration. The service was centred around the Paschal candle which should normally have been lit at Easter, two months ago. The gospel was Matthew 10:26-33, whose tagline is "Be not afraid". And the first time that the congregation as a whole spoke was to jointly profess the Creed – one of the special Belgian ones:

Ik geloof in God, die liefde is
en ons de wereld schenkt.
Ik geloof ook dat God ons roept en zendt
om van deze wereld een thuis te maken:
een wereld zonder honger,
zonder oorlog, zonder haat,
een wereld vol goedheid,
rechtvaardigheid en vrede.

Ik geloof in Jezus Christus,
die geroepen en gezonden
werd om lief en leed met ons te delen
om, geborgen in Gods liefde,
zich te geven aan de mensen.
Ik geloof ook dat de Heer ons roept en zendt
om lief en leed te delen in liefde met elkaar.

Ik geloof dat de Heer zijn Geest van liefde
schenkt aan alle mensen.
Ik geloof ook dat de Heer ons roept en zendt
om van zijn blijde boodschap te getuigen
in woord en daad;
opdat alle mensen van de wereld
broers en zusters zouden worden
in de kerk van zijn liefde,
op weg naar zijn rijk van vrede
en vriendschap voor altijd.
Amen.

 . I believe in God, who is love
and gives us the world.
I also believe that God calls and sends us
to make this world a home:
a world without hunger,
without war, without hate,
a world full of goodness,
justice and peace.

I believe in Jesus Christ,
who was called and sent
to share our joys and sorrows
to give himself to the people,
hidden in God's love.
I also believe that the Lord calls and sends us
to share love and sorrow in love with one another.

I believe that the Lord gives His Spirit of love
to all people.
I also believe that the Lord calls and sends us
to bear wtiness to his joyful message
in word and deed;
that all the people of the world
might become brothers and sisters
in the church of his love,
towards his kingdom of peace
and friendship forever.
Amen.

I’m not sure that I will go back very often. But it was important to go today.

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The Beiderbecke Affair

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The Beiderbecke Affair is the story of two middle-aged teachers in love, in Leeds, at the height of Thatcherism. If you don't know it, just go and get hold of it somehow. It will be five well-spent hours of your time. At present all six episodes are available on Dailymotion:

I fell in love with it at first sight when it was first shown in 1985, the combination of quirky humour, lovng detailed camera work, and upbeat jazz. Here's the first scene after the credits, which introduces us to James Bolam and Barbara Flynn as the protagonists, and Dudley Sutton as their colleague.

There is a plot, as it turns out, but it's kind of marginal to the experience of watching Jill and Trevor exploring their world and their affection for each other, and the beautiful sequences of them and other people simply walking or driving around Leeds to the soundtrack composed by Frank Ricotti. The script is crackling, the actors are electric and the whole thing is a delight.

I was very glad to discover that the show is deemed culturally significant enough to have the British Film Institute publish a book about it, by Bill Gallagher who has also written four Doctor Who audios for Big Finish (all of which I enjoyed). The second paragraph of the book's third chapter (quoting Alan Plater) is:

I said, 'What about Jimmy Bolam?' I'd known Jimmy a long time, socially, and we had worked together in radio. So then we had Jimmy and we got Barbara Flynn. We didn't continue with Bridget Turner because I think there was a feeling that we wanted to go for a new team throughout, and try a new character. I think we've been kind of vindicated in that.

It's a lovely detailed analysis, including the fascinating information that the show was originally intended to continue the story of an earlier Plater series, Get Lost!, but had to be reimagined when Alun Armstrong was no loner available. Somehow it all came together.

I do have to note that there isn't a single non-white speaking part, and very few non-speaking parts either. Leeds is not the most diverse of British cities, but it's not completely white either, nor was it in 1985.

It was funny to come to this at the same time as reading Charles Stross's The Nightmare Stacks, also set in Leeds but from a very different angle.

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Who was both oldest former US President and oldest former Vice-President, but not at the same time?

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Last week I posed a wee question on social media: Who was both the oldest former President of the United States, and the oldest former Vice-President, but not at the same time?

Lots of people scratched their heads over this, which was gratifying, and the answer is admittedly a bit obscure.

Below is the full list of people who were the oldest former President of the United States, and the oldest former Vice-President, at all times since the terms of the first holders of both offices ended on 4 March 1797. I have put in bold the cases where a President or Veep who was older than all their living predecessors (if any) left office at the end of their term. In all other cases, the distinction is transmitted through mortality.

You'll see that since 1797, there have been five intervals when there were no living former Presidents, and two when there were no living former Vice-Presidents. There were no living ex-Presidents 1) between the death of Washington and the end of John Adams' term; 2) between the death of Andrew Johnson and the end of Grant's term; 3) between the death of Cleveland and the end of Theodore Roosevelt's term; 4) between the death of Coolidge and the end of Hoover's term; and 5) between the death of Lyndon Johnson and Nixon's resignation.

More obscurely, there were no living Vice-Presidents between 1) the death of Hannibal Hamlin and the end of Levi P. Morton's term, and 2) between the death of Levi P. Morton and the end of Thomas R. Marshall's term.

John Adams, Martin Van Buren, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and the elder George Bush were all both the oldest former President of the United States, and the oldest former Vice-President, at the same time. (In all cases except Nixon, they held both distinctions at the time of their deaths.)

John Quincy Adams, William Howard Taft and Charles G.Dawes all appear twice in their respective columns, having been succeeded in their offices by older men who they then outlived.

The otherwise rather obscure Levi P. Morton outlived six younger successors as Vice-President. I think that is a record.

And the answer to the question, "Who was both the oldest former President of the United States, and the oldest former Vice-President, but not at the same time?"

It's Calvin Coolidge.

He was elected Vice-President on the same ticket as Warren Harding in 1920, and took office in 1921. When Harding died in 1923, Coolidge became president and the only other living former vice-president was his immediate predecessor Thomas R. Marshall, who was older than him. Marshall died in 1925, making Coolidge not just the oldest living former vice-president but the only one. Coolidge's own vice-president, Charles G. Dawes, was older than him, so when their term ended in 1929, Dawes took over the mantle of oldest former Vice-President from him.

At that point the only living former presidents were Coolidge himself and William Howard Taft. When Taft died in 1930, Coolidge became the oldest former president until his own death in 1933, after which there were no living former presidents until Herbert Hoover's term ended two months later. (Hoover lived another thirty years.)

If you spot any mistakes below, please yell.

Oldest Living
Ex-President
Date range
Oldest Living
Ex-Vice President
Date range
George Washington 4 March 1797 – 14 December 1799 . John Adams 4 March 1797 – 4 July 1826
No living ex-Presidents 14 December 1799 – 4 March 1801 .
John Adams 4 March 1801 – 4 July 1826 .
James Madison 4 July 1826 – 28 June 1836 . Aaron Burr 4 July 1826 – 14 September 1836
John Quincy Adams 28 June 1836 – 4 March 1837 .
. John C. Calhoun September 14, 1836 – 4 March 1841
Andrew Jackson 4 March 1837 – 8 June 1845 .
. Richard Mentor Johnson 4 March 1841 – 19 November 1850
John Quincy Adams 8 June 1845 – 23 February 1848 .
Martin Van Buren 23 February 1848 – 24 July 1862 .
. Martin Van Buren 19 November 1850 – 24 July 1862
James Buchanan 24 July 1862 – 1 June 1868 . George Dallas 24 July 1862 – 31 December 1864
. Millard Fillmore 31 December 1864 – 8 March 1874
Millard Fillmore 1 June 1868 – 8 March 1874 .
Andrew Johnson . 8 March 1874 – 31 July 1875
No living ex-Presidents 31 July 1875 – 4 March 1877 . Hannibal Hamlin 31 July 1875 – 4 July 1891
Ulysses S. Grant 4 March 1877 – 23 July 1885 .
Rutherford B. Hayes 23 July 1885 – 17 January 1893 .
. No living ex-Veeps 4 July 1891 – 4 March 1893
Grover Cleveland 17 January 1893 – 4 March 1893 .
Benjamin Harrison 4 March 1893 – 13 March 1901 . Levi P. Morton 4 March 1893 – 16 May 1920
Grover Cleveland 13 March 1901 – 24 June 1908 .
No living ex-Presidents 24 June 1908 – 4 March 1909 .
Theodore Roosevelt 4 March 1909 – 4 March 1913 .
William Howard Taft 4 March 1913 ​– 4 March 1921 .
. No living ex-Veeps 16 May 1920 – 4 March 1921
Woodrow Wilson 4 March 1921 – 3 February 1924 . Thomas R. Marshall 4 March 1921 – 1 June 1925
William Howard Taft 3 February 1924 – 8 March 1930 .
. Calvin Coolidge 1 June 1925 – 4 March 1929
. Charles G. Dawes 4 March 1929 ​– 4 March 1933
Calvin Coolidge 8 March 1930 – 5 January 1933 .
No living ex-Presidents 5 January 1933 – 4 March 1933 .
Herbert Hoover 4 March 1933 – 20 October 1964 . Charles Curtis 4 March 1933 – 8 February 1936
. Charles G. Dawes 8 February 1936 – 23 April 1951
. John Nance Garner 23 April 1951 – 7 November 1967
Harry S. Truman 20 October 1964 – 26 December 1972 .
. Harry S. Truman 7 November 1967 – 26 December 1972
Lyndon B. Johnson . 26 December 1972 – 22 January 1973
No living ex-Presidents 22 January 1973 – 9 August 1974 . Hubert Humphrey 22 January 1973 – 20 January 1977
Richard Nixon 9 August 1974 – 20 January 1989 .
. Nelson Rockefeller 20 January 1977 – 26 January 1979
. Richard Nixon 26 January 1979 – 22 April 1994
Ronald Reagan 20 January 1989 – 5 June 2004 .
. Gerald Ford 22 April 1994 – 26 December 2006
Gerald Ford 5 June 2004 – 26 December 2006 .
George H. W. Bush . 26 December 2006 – 30 November 2018
Jimmy Carter Since 30 November 2018 . Walter Mondale Since 30 November 2018
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Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist – Goodreads/LibraryThing stats

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The Clarke Award shortlist is out. Although (as I well know) it's a juried award, the leader on this table has won the award four years out of the last six. (2019, 2017, 2015 and 2014, but not 2018 or 2016.)

Goodreads LibraryThing
owners av rating owners av rating
A Memory Called Empire, by Arkady Martine 52359 4.17 564 4.11
The City in the Middle of the Night, by Charlie Jane Anders 41307 3.56 481 3.77
The Old Drift, Namwali Serpell 24802 3.76 227 3.61
The Light Brigade, Kameron Hurley 19034 3.97 265 3.86
The Last Astronaut, David Wellington 6044 3.6 72 3.63
Cage of Souls, Adrian Tchaikovsky 5761 4.12 64 4

A clear leader in all four columns… (Also my personal favourite, of the three I have read.)

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Thursday reading

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Current
The Complete Secret Army: An Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to the Classic TV Drama Series by Andy Priestner
Our Mutual Friend, by Charles Dickens
The Wicked + The Divine vol 4: Rising Action, by Kieron Gillen etc
The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Afanasevich Bulgakov
Dreaming In Smoke, by Tricia Sullivan

Last books finished
The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within, by Stephen Fry
Modern China: A Very Short Introduction, by Rana Mitter
Heaven's War by David S Goyer and Michael Cassutt (did not finish)
The Ghost of Lily Painter by Caitlin Davies
Laatste schooldag, by Jan Siebelink (did not finish)
From A Clear Blue Sky, by Timothy Knatchbull

Next books
De dag waarop de bus zonder haar vertrok, by Beka
The Overstory, by Richard Powers

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November 2006 books

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As previously mentioned, we started the month with a half-term break at my sister's in Burgundy. Cluny is a remarkable town with a ruined abbey which dominates the urban landscape.

I moved my personal website to http://www.nicholaswhyte.info – I should start updating it a bit more often… I also visited London for orientation with the new job, and drove to the depths of the Ardennes for my last Crisis Group retreat. We got reports out on Serbia, Kosovo and Georgia, as my time with the organisation wound down.

The month ended dramatically. I had a work trip to Berlin which included, rather unusually, a meeting in the Defence Ministry (normally I end up farther east, between the Bundestag/Kanzleramt and foreign ministry). On my way out I asked the silver-haired colonel who I was meeting about the building's history. He told me that it had originally been the headquarters of the German Navy from 1911, and was then the territorial army headquarters; and then became the centre of resistance to Hitler within the armed forces, in particular under Claus von Stauffenberg. "So after 20 July 1944, von Stauffenberg was shot in one of the courtyards," indicating which one with a nod.

That wasn't the really dramatic part. The really dramatic part was after I landed back in Brussels on an early morning flight and started driving the family car to the office. As I went through the Montgomery tunnel, I felt a sudden KCHUNK, and the car coasted to a halt on the uphill stretch. Phone calls to Touring, long wait while traffic pooled around me in one of the prime choke-points of Brussels suburbia, finally the Touring guy arrived and towed me to a nearby layby, more long wait while he fiddled with the distributor cap before shaking his head in bafflement and calling a pickup truck, more long wait for the pickup truck, which then couldn't find the garage, probably because its driver was too busy talking to his girlfriend on his mobile phone to look for it properly, and eventually walked from the garage to my office with all my luggage from Berlin. The garage looked at the car for a few days and then confirmed that fixing it would cost more than we had paid for it, so since then I have largely commuted to Brussels by public transport.

In my office, my Macedonian intern E was doing handover to her successor, Belgian S. E now works for the European Commission, a few blocks from my current workplace, at least in normal times. S now lives in Geneva, where he married a Quebecoise; their children's French must be very interesting to hear. Here's a picture of the three of us at a conference in the European Parliament where I was speaking that week, E on the left, S on the right and me sitting down. (And a bearded chap, who I don't recognise, talking to us.)

I managed to read 27 books in November 2006, more than half of which were short Doctor Who books, mostly by Ian Marter.

November 2006 books

Non-fiction 9 (YTD 62)
The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-First Century, by Robert Cooper
A Bachelor's London: Memories of the Day before Yesterday, 1889-1914, by Frederic Whyte
An International Relations Debacle: The UN Secretary-General's Mission of Good Offices in Cyprus 1999-2004, by Claire Palley (did not finish)
Disaccord on Cyprus: The UN Plan and after, by Clement Dodd
Everything is about Cyprus, by Hasan Erçakica
Skeletons on the Zahara, by Dean King
Western Sahara: The Roots of a Desert War, by Tony Hodges
Endgame in the Western Sahara, by Toby Shelley
Western Sahara: Anatomy of a Stalemate, by Erik Jensen

SF 3 (YTD 65)
Fantasy: The Best of the Year, 2006 edition, edited by Rich Horton
Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, 2006 edition, edited by Rich Horton
A Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin

Doctor Who 14 (YTD 26)
The Clockwise Man, by Justin Richards
The Monsters Inside, by Stephen Cole
Doctor Who and the Ark in Space, by Ian Marter
Doctor Who and the Sontaran Experiment, by Ian Marter
Doctor Who and the Ribos Operation, by Ian Marter
Doctor Who and the Enemy of the World, by Ian Marter
Doctor Who – Earthshock, by Ian Marter
Doctor Who – The Dominators, by Ian Marter
Doctor Who – The Invasion, by Ian Marter
Harry Sullivan's War, by Ian Marter
Doctor Who – The Reign of Terror, by Ian Marter
Doctor Who – The Rescue, by Ian Marter
Evolution, by John Peel
The Stealers of Dreams, by Steve Lyons

Comics 1 (2006 total 6)
Preacher: Until the End of the World, by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon

6,000 pages (YTD 54,200)
1/27 (YTD 30/187) by a woman
None (YTD 8/187) by PoC

Robert Cooper's The Breaking of Nations was the best of these; you can get it here. Close behind is Skeletons on the Zahara, a tale of shipwrecked sailors sold into slavery; you can get it here. Claire Palley's book on Cyprus is awful, but you can get it here. (I didn't pay for it – a friend had been gifted a copy and passed it on to me.)


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