February 2007 books

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February 2007 was the historic month that I joined Facebook. The travel highlight was a trip to the USA, taking in New York and Washington DC as usual, and finishing in very snowy Rockport, Maine, where I spoke at the annual Camden Conference:

Also more Doctor Who fan art from young F, this time a crossover with Spongebob – what if he partly changed his house into the Tardis?

Transatlantic travel and uninterrupted commuting by train allowed me to read quite a lot of books:

Non-fiction 9 (YTD 16)
A Soldier in Time: The Nicholas Courtney Memoirs, by Nicholas Courtney
About Time: The Unauthorised Guide to Doctor Who, 1966-1969, by Tat Wood and Lawrence Miles
Endgame in the Balkans: Regime Change, European Style, by Elizabeth Pond
The Three Yugoslavias, by Sabrina P. Ramet
Why Don't Penguins' Feet Freeze? And 114 Other Questions, edited by Mick O'Hare
James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, by Julie Phillips
The Iraq Study Group Report, co-chairs James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, Executive Director Daniel Serwer
William Howard Taft: A Conservative's Conception of the Presidency, by Donald F. Anderson
1912: Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft and Debs – the Election That Changed the Country, by James Chace

Non-genre 2 (YTD 6)
The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
Murder at the Worldcon, by J.D. Crayne

sf 6 (YTD 13)
Idolon, by Mark Budz
Mindscape, by Andrea Hairston
Carnival, by Elizabeth Bear
Spin State, by Chris Moriarty
Recursion, by Tony Ballantyne
Catalyst, by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

Doctor Who 4 (YTD 5)
Salvation, by Steve Lyons
Bunker Soldiers, by Martin Day
The Man in the Velvet Mask, by Daniel O'Mahony
Who Killed Kennedy?, by James Stevens and David Bishop

Comics 3 (YTD 5)
Preacher [#4]: Ancient History, by Garth Ennis
The Invisibles [#1]: Say You want A Revolution, by Grant Morrison
100%, by Paul Pope

7,900 pages (YTD 14,400)
8/24 (YTD 12/45) by women
1/24 (YTD 2/45) by PoC

Best:

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Whoniversaries 5 July

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i) births and deaths

5 July 1934: birth of Philip Madoc, who is Brockley in Daleks – Invasion Earth 2150 AD (Movie 1966), Eelek in The Krotons (Second Doctor, 1968-9), the War Lord in The War Games (Second Doctor, 1969), Solon in The Brain of Morbius (Fourth Doctor, 1976), and Fenner in The Power of Kroll (Fourth Doctor, 1978-9).

5 July 1970: birth of Toby Whitehouse, who wrote School Reunion (Tenth Doctor, 2006); Greeks Bearing Gifts (Torchwood, 2006); The Vampires of Venice (Eleventh Doctor, 2010); The God Complex (Eleventh Doctor, 2011); A Town Called Mercy (Eleventh Doctor, 2012); Under the Lake / Before the Flood (Twelfth Doctor, 2015); and The Lie of the Land (Twelfth Doctor, 2017)

ii) broadcast anniversary

5 July 2008: broadcast of Journey's End, the last episode of Season 4 of New Who, with two Tenth Doctors, Donna Noble, Jack Harkness, Rose and Jackie Tyler, Sarah Jane Smith, Martha Jones, Mickey, Gwen, Ianto, Luke, K9 and the Daleks and Davros. After the brilliant cliff-hanger of the previous week, when it looked as if Ten was about to regenerate, I was really disappointed by this, though we had had fair warning that RTD couldn't really manage his own finales the previous year. The bit that worked best for me was the dramatic and tragic end to Donna's story, though I know others are more attracted to Handy and Rose heading off together into the sunset.

iii) date specified in-universe

There is a street in Buenos Aires called "5 de Julio", visible on a map shown to CIA officers in the last 2011 Torchwood episode, The Blood Line. (It's the day that an invading British force was defeated in 1807. The street map shown here bears only a loose resemblance to the real map of Buenos Aires, though there is a real street called 5 de Julio.)

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The Godfather II (1974)

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The Godfather II won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1974, and picked up another five – Best Director (Francis Ford Coppola), Best Supporting Actor (Robert De Niro, beating Michael V Gazzo and Lee Strasberg for their roles in the film), Best Adapted Screenplay (Francis Ford Coppola, Mario Puzo) Best Art Direction, and Best Original Dramatic Score. Al Pacino last Best Actor and Talia Shire lost Best Supporting Actress. Is five nominations in the acting categories a record?

The other nominees for Best Picture were Chinatown, The Conversation, Lenny and The Towering Inferno. I have only seen the last of these. IMDB users rate The Godfather II top of both rankings for the year. The other 1974 films I have seen are mostly sf or thrillers: The Man with the Golden Gun (James Bond), Young Frankenstein (Hugo and Nebula winner), Death Wish, The Towering Inferno (as mentioned), Zardoz and Dark Star. I have an unfashionable affection for the last two of these. Here’s a trailer for The Godfather II. (Warning: the first minute of four is spent telling you how good the film is before showing you any of it.)

I had seen it once before, long ago, and I have to say I liked it more the first time. Of course, I have been distracted over the last few weeks by the very welcome relaxation of the quarantine rules here in Belgium, and partly for that reason I found myself watching it in several chunks rather than all the way through, which may have impacted my concentration. And it’s a long film – the fourth longest to have won Best Picture. (I have already seen the three longest – Gone with the Wind, Lawrence of Arabia and Ben-Hur. Next in length is The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.) My judgement is that I’m putting it a bit more than half-way down my list, below In the Heat of the Night but above On The Waterfront.

This being a sequel, there are a number of repeat performances from the first film. Al Pacino is sort-of in the title role as Michael (except that there are two Godfathers here, Michael and Young Vito):

John Cazale returns as his brother Fredo:

Talia Shire as their sister Connie:

Robert Duvall as consigliere Tom Hagen:

Richard Bright as hitman Al Neri:

And most of all Diane Keaton, who reprises her role as Kay having meantime been Luna in last year’s Hugo-winner, Sleeper.

Michael V. Gazzo, playing Pentangeli here, was an extra in On The Waterfront, but I can’t be bothered to find him now.

The Godfather II is both sequel and prequel to The Godfather, with Al Pacino taking the story of Michael Corleone and his family forward as he attempts to move his business out of New York and into Nevada, and at the same time we get in flashback the story of Vito Corleone, played by Robert de Niro, arriving in New York from Siciliy and clawing his way up to the top. (Apparently Marlon Brando and Robert de Niro were the first and arguably the only actors to win separate Oscars for playing the same role.)

My usual note: no speaking parts and very few non-speaking parts for actors of colour. It’s a story about a father and a son, with the women (and other men) in their lives orbiting around them.

I have to say that I was really not gripped by the 1950s-1960s sections. Michael is a fundamentally unpleasant character, and it’s difficult to sympathise with him. Kay, his wife, tries to break away but in the end she loses. There are some good set-pieces – the Cuban revolution is particularly memorable – but a lot of the rest is people running around and shouting or shooting at each other. The Senate hearing scenes are particularly lacking in oomph.

The 1917-1920s segments (which are very loosely based on the relevant parts of the original book) work much better for me. There’s a clear narrative drive and we see Vito changing and being changed by his circumstances. The cinematography is done very well, and convincingly conveys the period. De Niro is really impressive in that almost all of his dialogue is in Sicilian, which he apparently had to learn specially. Where Michael evokes awful fascination in the parts set later, Vito generates some empathy from the viewer despite the violence that he wreaks on others.

The music remains fantastic, and this time it did win the Oscar it deserved last time.

Well, sorry that this did not grab me as much as I expected. Next up is One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which will not be cheerful viewing. I’ll do the 1974 Hugo and Nebula winner Young Frankenstein first.

1920s: Wings (1927-28) | The Broadway Melody (1928-29)
1930s: All Quiet on the Western Front (1929-30) | Cimarron (1930-31) | Grand Hotel (1931-32) | Cavalcade (1932-33) | It Happened One Night (1934) | Mutiny on the Bounty (1935, and books) | The Great Ziegfeld (1936) | The Life of Emile Zola (1937) | You Can’t Take It with You (1938) | Gone with the Wind (1939, and book)
1940s: Rebecca (1940) | How Green Was My Valley (1941) | Mrs. Miniver (1942) | Casablanca (1943) | Going My Way (1944) | The Lost Weekend (1945) | The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) | Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) | Hamlet (1948) | All the King’s Men (1949)
1950s: All About Eve (1950) | An American in Paris (1951) | The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) | From Here to Eternity (1953) | On The Waterfront (1954, and book) | Marty (1955) | Around the World in Eighty Days (1956) | The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) | Gigi (1958) | Ben-Hur (1959)
1960s: The Apartment (1960) | West Side Story (1961) | Lawrence of Arabia (1962) | Tom Jones (1963) | My Fair Lady (1964) | The Sound of Music (1965) | A Man for All Seasons (1966) | In the Heat of the Night (1967) | Oliver! (1968) | Midnight Cowboy (1969)
1970s: Patton (1970) | The French Connection (1971) | The Godfather (1972) | The Sting (1973) | The Godfather, Part II (1974) | One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) | Rocky (1976) | Annie Hall (1977) | The Deer Hunter (1978) | Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)
1980s: Ordinary People (1980) | Chariots of Fire (1981) | Gandhi (1982) | Terms of Endearment (1983) | Amadeus (1984) | Out of Africa (1985) | Platoon (1986) | The Last Emperor (1987) | Rain Man (1988) | Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
1990s: Dances With Wolves (1990) | The Silence of the Lambs (1991) | Unforgiven (1992) | Schindler’s List (1993) | Forrest Gump (1994) | Braveheart (1995) | The English Patient (1996) | Titanic (1997) | Shakespeare in Love (1998) | American Beauty (1999)
21st century: Gladiator (2000) | A Beautiful Mind (2001) | Chicago (2002) | The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) | Million Dollar Baby (2004, and book) | Crash (2005) | The Departed (2006) | No Country for Old Men (2007) | Slumdog Millionaire (2008) | The Hurt Locker (2009)

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Whoniversaries 4 July

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i) births and deaths

4 July 1928: birth of Paddy Russell, who directed The Massacre (First Doctor, 1966), Invasion of the Dinosaurs (Third Doctor, 1974), Pyramids of Mars (Fourth Doctor, 1975) and Horror of Fang Rock (Fourth Doctor, 1977) – a pretty good record.

4 July 1973: birth of Marcus Wilson, producer and series producer for Series Six and Seven of New Who featuring the Eleventh Doctor.

ii) broadcast anniversaries

4 July 1964: non-broadcast of 'Hidden Danger', the fourth episode of the story we now know as The Sensorites, because of the gripping events at the third test match of the 1964 Ashes series (if you're interested, Australia took five wickets in the course of the day, and another five when the second innings resumed on Sunday; England were unable to make up the difference and so lost the Ashes as per usual), also the Wimbledon women's final between Maria Bueno and Margaret Smith (later Margaret Court) which Bueno won 6–4 7–9 6–3 (Smith having defeated 19-year-old Billie-Jean Moffitt, later Billie-Jean King, in the semi-final – revenge for their match two years earlier having gone the other way when Smith was the world's #1 seed). Aren't you glad I told you that?

iii) dates specified in-universe

4 July 1927: in a flashback in the 2011 Torchwood episode Immortal Sins, Jack Harkness goes back to New York and has sex with Angelo Colasanto.

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Staged

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Much lighter than Picard, we also watched the six episodes of Staged, a comedy starring David Tennant and Michael Sheen as two actors called David Tennant and Michael Sheen, with their wives Georgia and Anna playing fictionalised versions of themselves, and writer/director Simon Evans and his sister Anna playing fictional versions of themselves too. There are also cameo appearances from a couple of very big names as themselves, and Nina Sosanya plays the funder of a theatrical production of a play that David and Michael have signed up for. Here’s the BBC trailer:

It’s not deep, but it is funny and we hugely enjoyed it; Tennant and Sheen allow their Scottish and Welsh selves to emerge a bit more than sometimes happens when they are playing English characters, and the weird working environment of lockdown is captured rather recognisably for all of us who are in that situation. The banter between the two is very funny and seems utterly spontaneous, which is always the sign of good production. Recommended.

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Whoniversaries 3 July

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i) births and deaths

3 July 2001: death of Delia Derbyshire who arranged Ron Grainer's theme tune to make it as we knew it from 1963 to 1979.

ii) broadcast anniversaries

3 July 1965: broadcast of 'The Watcher', the first episode of the series we now know as The Time Meddler, with newly acquired companion Steven fainting on the Tardis floor and then refusing to believe that they are in 1066. Features the First Doctor picking up a Viking headpiece and asking, "What do you think this is? A space helmet for a cow?" One of the great episode endings as the Doctor discovers that the chanting monks are actually on a gramophone record and is then imprisoned by a set of bars descending from the ceiling. The Monk is the first fellow member of the Doctor's race we have met since Susan.

3 July 2009: broadcast of Torchwood: The Dead Line, the audio play where Jack spends most of the story unconscious (which is just as well since Barrowman is not a natural at audios) and Ianto gets to tell us how much he loves him; while Gwen and Rhys get cuddly too.

iii) dates specified in-universe

3 July 1999: Much of Keith Topping's 2000 Fifth Doctor novel, The King of Terror, is set on this date.

3 July 2379: The date on which the Sixth Doctor story Mindwarp is set, ending with Peri's brain being destroyed – or so we are led to believe. (1986)

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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 Overstory, by Richard Powers
Tooth & Claw, by Jo Walton
City of Lies, by Sam Hawke

Last books finished
The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov
De dag waarop ze haar vlucht nam, by Beka, Marko, and Maëla Cosson
The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, by John Bolton
The Extremes, by Christopher Priest
The Wicked + The Divine vol 6: Imperial Phase Part 2, by Kieron Gillen etc
The Wicked + The Divine vol 7: Mothering Invention, by Kieron Gillen etc
Doctor Who Annual 2020

Next books
EU Lobbying Handbook, by Andreas Geiger
Gaze of the Medusa, by Gordon Rennie, Emma Beeby and Brian Williamson

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Whoniversaries 2 July

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i) births and deaths

2 July 1973: birth of Peter Kay, guest star on Love and Monsters (2006).

2 July 1991: death of Don Houghton, who wrote Inferno (1970) and The Mind of Evil (1971).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

2 July 1966: broadcast of the second episode of The War Machines, in which poor Dodo Chaplet is unceremoniously written out of the programme. Starts with WOTAN demanding the presence of "Doctor Who". Ends with Ben being trapped by a newly activated War Machine.

2 July 2009: broadcast of Torchwood: The Golden Age, a somewhat bonkers radio play which brings Jack, Gwen and Ianto to India to meet an old flame of Jack's.

iii) date specified in-universe

2 July 1462: end of the 2007 Big Finish Fifth Doctor story, Son of the Dragon.

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Top tweets 2020 H1

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My four top tweets from the first half of this year:

4) Bitter commentary on the UK media.

3) Commentary on Northern Irish election stuff.

2) News of how the pandemic was hitting our own family:

And 1) commentary on the levelling effect of the pandemic:

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Picard

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As the lockdown eased, we sat down and watched the ten episodes of Picard, the latest in the Star Trek franchise, with 79-year-old Sir Patrick Stewart returning to his most iconic role. In case you don’t know much about it, here’s the official trailer:

I have actually seen only a very few episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but it was enough to help me locate all of the returning characters in Picard. Our hero is moved to come out of retirement to right a historic wrong; Starfleet won’t give him a ship, so he acquires one of his own with a motley crew, led by Michelle Hurd’s Raffi Musiker, another one of Picard’s former first officers who comes with baggage from their past. But old friends return as well. The ghost of Data haunts the entire story, Seven of Nine makes an appearance or three, and the emotional peak is in the seventh episode, “Nepenthe”, where we are reunited with William Riker and Deanna Troi (I would be very surprised not to see that episode on the Hugo ballot next year).

The core plotline is about the rights of synthetic life-forms in the Federation, and Isa Briones plays the cutest of a number of cute anthropomorphic robots. My wife reasonably chided me for enjoying the show despite my well-chronicled dislike of stories about cute anthropomorphic robots. I realise that actually I hate them much more in prose than on the screen, for whatever deep psychological reason. The Robots of Death is a great Doctor Who story, after all. But in any case, the synths in Picard are not funny metal machines trying to be human; they are a vulnerable minority who are being othered and whose rights are under attack, so it’s a whole different trope being explored.

The pace is slow, but my concentration is not so good these days and I appreciated it. The one annoying glitch is that the showmakers forgot to give closure for the good-looking Romulan agent Narek in the final episode, which otherwise is also pretty good on the emotional intensity front. Well worth watching.

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Whoniversaries 1 July

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In 2010-11, I did a series of daily posts on anniversaries in Doctor Who history, covering i) real-world anniversaries of the births and deaths of people important to the history of the programme; ii) anniversaries of the first broadcast of Who stories on TV and radio (which get a bit thin over the summer, so we are starting gently); and iii) dates which are specified in broadcast stories or spinoff literature (of which there are surprisingly few). Ten years on, there is more material to work with, so let’s do it again.

i) Births and Deaths

NB: I include producers, writers, directors, regular cast and actors who have appeared in more than one story here.

1 July 1934: birth of Jean Marsh, who played the great Sara Kingdom in The Daleks' Master Plan (1965-6). She also appeared as Princess Joanna in The Crusade (1965) and as Morgaine in Battlefield (1989). She has done ten audios for Big Finish, nine as Sara Kingdom. (She was also married to Jon Pertwee, before either was on Doctor Who.)

Also born on 1 July: Daphne Dare (1929), costumer for much of the black and white era; Sonny Caldinez (1932), four-time Ice Warrior who appeared as Kemal the Turk in earlier episodes of Evil of the DaleksThe Movie (1996).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

NB I concentrate on TV releases here, with occasional exceptions.

1 July 1967: broadcast of the seventh and final episode of Evil of the Daleks, Skaro collapsing in flames as the malignant pepperpots battle each other in civil war, and the Second Doctor, Jamie and new companion Victoria flee the ruins as Season Four comes to an end. Sadly, one of the lost episodes.

1 July 2006: broadcast of Army of Ghosts, which starts with that creepy voiceover by Billie Piper about how she died, and then goes on to feature celebrity cameos and Jackie's great line "If we end up on Mars, I'm gonna kill you." Then we get into serious business with Torchwood and the Cybermen, and finally, in the best reveal in the whole of New Who, the Daleks emerge. from the Genesis Ark.

Also 1 July 2006: release of Tardisode 13, a prequel for next week's TV episode, Doomsday.

1 July 2009: broadcast of Torchwood: Asylum, the first of the three radio plays leading up to Children of EarthThe Doctor Falls, last of the tenth season of New Who and the last with Bill and Nardole (and probably with the Gomez and Simm Masters). Poor Bill gets transformed into a Cyberman; the Masters fight each other to the death; and the Doctor starts to regenerate, only to be confronted by a very familiar face at the end.

iii) dates specified in-universe

(Mostly in broadcast stories, with some exceptions as in the first case below)

1 Juy 1997: last day of setting of the 2003 Big Finish audio Sympathy for the Devil, starring David Warner as an alternate-history Doctor, Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart, and someone called David Tennant as Colonel Brimmicombe-Wood; I wonder what happened to him?

1 July 2058: Date of establishment of Bowie Base One on Mars, as seen in The Waters of Mars (2009).

Plenty more to come.

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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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