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Since 2007 I’ve been the Northern Ireland arm of the analysis of UK parliamentary constituency changes by Michael Thrasher and Colin Rallings. The latest version, taking into account the new boundaries that will take effect from the next election (be it Westminster or Assembly) was published a few weeks ago; it’s been a busy period for me, but I have now taken the time to write up the changes to each of the 18 Northern Ireland seats.
Media coverage coverage of the changes focussed on the effects in England, Scotland and Wales, and frankly that was the right call; the changes in Northern Ireland are the least dramatic since the 1970s. The 1983 review added five new constituencies, taking the total from 12 to 17; the 1996 review added another, making a total of 18; and the 2007 review expanded the Belfast seats outwards with knock-on effects all around the map.
There were also two failed reviews, one in 2013 which fell victim to the internal politics of the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition, and one in 2018-20 which was quashed by the Belfast courts for failing to adequately consider public opinion at the final stage of revision (and the whole thing was then killed off by Boris Johnson).
So this is the first change to the Westminster constituencies for 17 years, the longest gap since the 1950-70 period. In Northern Ireland the Westminster boundaries are also used for Assembly elections, and indeed in 1973 and 1996, regional level elections used the new boundaries first. Personally I think that the Assembly constituencies should be linked to the Local Government Districts rather than the Westminster seats, but that’s for another day.
Every seat is changed this time, but few of the changes are drastic. In the list below, I’m going from the most changed to the least changes constituency, showing my working for each of them. Notional votes are a bit of a mug’s game, but I’m confident that these numbers correspond closely to whatever the reality might have been if the 2019 general election votes had been cast on the 2024 boundaries.
The maps are all screenshotted from the Guardian’s excellent site, which you should consult.
South Belfast and Mid Down (SBMD)
Going from most to least changed, the biggest effect is on the constituency where I grew up, South Belfast, now renamed to South Belfast and Mid Down. It loses 10% of its electorate to East Belfast, but gains a bit more than that from Strangford and Lagan Valley, and a few scrapings from West Belfast. (By the way, I have an idiosyncracy of calling the Belfast constituencies “X Belfast” rather than “Belfast X”. It seems to me that “South Belfast and Mid Down” sounds better than “Belfast South and Mid Down.)
Projecting the 2019 election onto the new boundaries, I see about 850 more Unionist votes, 550 more for Alliance and 1650 fewer for the SDLP, with another 250 Nationalist votes coming in from West Belfast. Claire Hanna won the seat with a majority of over 15,000 in 2019; this would be reduced by 2,000, but the SDLP still win more than half of the votes in the constituency.
| Roll | DUP | UUP | Con | APNI | Gr | PBP | SDLP | SF | Aontu | ||
| 70134 | 11678 | 1259 | 6786 | 27079 | 550 | ||||||
| From | To | 24.7% | 2.7% | 14.3% | 57.2% | 1.2% | |||||
| SB | SBMD | 63029 | 9786 | 1055 | 6028 | 25136 | 550 | ||||
| SB | EB | -7096 | -1890 | -204 | -758 | -1939 | |||||
| SB | WB | -9 | -1 | -3 | -1 | ||||||
| Str | SBMD | 6078 | 1634 | 372 | 136 | 981 | 73 | 207 | |||
| LV | SBMD | 2161 | 611 | 276 | 31 | 320 | 34 | 22 | |||
| WB | SBMD | 710 | 56 | 20 | 67 | 32 | 225 | 18 | |||
| Total | 71978 | 12087 | 1703 | 167 | 7348 | 73 | 67 | 25409 | 247 | 568 | |
| 25.4% | 3.6% | 0.3% | 15.4% | 0.2% | 0.1% | 53.3% | 0.5% | 1.2% | |||
| Change | +0.7% | +0.9% | +0.3% | +1.1% | +0.2% | +0.1% | -3.9% | +0.5% | – | ||
| DUP | UUP | Con | APNI | Gr | PBP | SDLP | SF | Aontu |
Sinn Fein did not contest the 2019 Westminster election, but they could take almost half of the SDLP vote and Claire Hanna would still win the seat. She bantered with me on social media about looking forward to the challenge.
At Assembly level, Unionists combined were just short of 2 quotas in South Belfast in 2022, and these numbers would put them just about in position to regain the second seat lost in 2017.
Strangford
Neighbouring Strangford loses 6,000 voters, mainly in Saintfield, to the new Belfast South and Mid Down, but gains 9,000 around Downpatrick from South Down.
This results in the biggest shift in party support in any constituency.
| Roll | DUP | UUP | UKIP | Cons | APNI | Gr | SDLP | SF | Aontu | ||
| 66990 | 17705 | 4023 | 308 | 1476 | 10634 | 790 | 1994 | 555 | |||
| From | To | 47.2% | 10.7% | 0.8% | 3.9% | 28.4% | 2.1% | 5.3% | 1.5% | 0.0% | |
| Str | Str | 60899 | 16068 | 3651 | 308 | 1340 | 9651 | 717 | 1787 | 555 | |
| Str | SBMD | -6078 | -1634 | -372 | -136 | -981 | -73 | -207 | |||
| Str | ND | -10 | -3 | -1 | -2 | ||||||
| Str | S | -3 | -1 | ||||||||
| SD | Str | 9171 | 60 | 26 | 800 | 2215 | 2462 | 193 | |||
| Total | 16128 | 3677 | 308 | 1340 | 10451 | 717 | 4002 | 3017 | 193 | ||
| 40.5% | 9.2% | 0.8% | 3.4% | 26.2% | 1.8% | 10.0% | 7.6% | 0.5% | |||
| -6.7% | -1.5% | 0.0% | -0.6% | -2.1% | -0.3% | +4.7% | +6.1% | +0.5% | |||
| DUP | UUP | UKIP | Cons | APNI | Gr | SDLP | SF | Aontu |
The DUP majority over Alliance here is reduced from 7,000 to 5,700, and if you squint you could just about see a unified non-Unionist candidate defeating a split opposition at a Westminster election; but it’s not very likely. From the Assembly point of view, the Nationalist vote increases by more than 10% and is now over a quota. At every Assembly election since 1998, the SDLP have been runners-up here; whichever of the Nationalist parties can get ahead of the other now has a good chance of gaining a seat here.
South Down
Staying in the neighbourhood, the calculations for South Down were much the most complex. It swaps bits of territory with three of its neighbours, most notably donating the voters around Downpatrick to Strangford, and also makes a gain from Upper Bann (my ancient homeland of Loughbrickland).
Although the shifts are geographically complex, the electoral impact is muted.
| Roll | DUP | UUP | Cons | Alliance | SDLP | SF | Aontu | ||
| 79295 | 7619 | 3307 | 6916 | 14517 | 16137 | 1266 | |||
| From | To | 15.3% | 6.6% | 0.0% | 13.9% | 29.2% | 32.4% | 2.5% | |
| SD | SD | 68646 | 7417 | 3219 | 5987 | 12032 | 13374 | 1049 | |
| SD | Str | -9171 | -60 | -26 | -800 | -2215 | -2462 | -193 | |
| SD | N&A | -1458 | -140 | -61 | -127 | -267 | -297 | -23 | |
| SD | LV | -20 | -2 | -1 | -2 | -4 | –4 | ||
| UB | SD | 1960 | 574 | 174 | 152 | 83 | 221 | ||
| N&A | SD | 1058 | 143 | 55 | 55 | 123 | 264 | 21 | |
| LV | SD | 105 | 27 | 12 | 1 | 18 | 2 | 2 | |
| Str | SD | 3 | 1 | ||||||
| Total | 71,772 | 8162 | 3460 | 1 | 6212 | 12240 | 13861 | 1070 | |
| 18.1% | 7.7% | – | 13.8% | 27.2% | 30.8% | 2.4% | |||
| +2.8% | +1.0% | – | -0.1% | -2.0% | -1.6% | -0.2% | |||
| DUP | UUP | Cons | APNI | SDLP | SF | Aontu |
SF won this seat with a 1300 majority in 2019, and I don’t see much change to that in my notional result. The overall Nationalist vote share decreases by 3.8% and the overall Unionist share increases by the same amount. This is still not enough to put Unionists in play for a second Assembly seat.
Lagan Valley
Rounding off the middle of County Down, Lagan Valley loses Drumbo to South Belfast and Mid Down, and more significantly Dunmurry to West Belfast, while gaining the eastern fringes of Lurgan from Upper Bann.
Again, it looks bigger on the map than it actually is.
| Roll | DUP | UUP | UKIP | Cons | APNI | SDLP | SF | ||
| 75884 | 19586 | 8606 | 315 | 955 | 13087 | 1758 | 1098 | ||
| From | To | 43.1% | 19.0% | 0.7% | 2.1% | 28.8% | 3.9% | 2.4% | |
| LV | LV | 68948 | 18020 | 7910 | 315 | 878 | 11793 | 1441 | 900 |
| LV | WB | -4330 | -840 | -370 | 0 | -41 | -898 | -272 | -170 |
| LV | SBMD | -2161 | -611 | -276 | 0 | -31 | -320 | -34 | -22 |
| LV | SA | -340 | -88 | -39 | 0 | -4 | -59 | -8 | -5 |
| LV | SD | -105 | -27 | -12 | 0 | -1 | -18 | -2 | -2 |
| UB | LV | 7364 | 1818 | 550 | 0 | 0 | 571 | 410 | 1090 |
| SD | LV | 20 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 4 | 4 |
| Total | 76,332 | 19840 | 8460 | 315 | 878 | 12365 | 1855 | 1994 | |
| 43.4% | 18.5% | 0.7% | 1.9% | 27.1% | 4.1% | 4.4% | |||
| +0.3% | -0.4% | +0.0% | -0.2% | -1.8% | +0.2% | +1.9% |
The DUP’s 6,500 majority over Alliance in 2019 increase to 7,500 (what you might call the Dunmurry effect), and the total non-Unionist vote upticks very slightly. At Assembly level, Nationalists were able to win a seat in Lagan Valley in a good year, and these changes make good years more likely, though Alliance would still have a good chance of holding their second seat.
West Belfast
Looking north of Lagan Valley, West Belfast loses a few nibbles around the edges but gains 9,000 voters from Dunmurry at one end and the Shankill at the other.
Neither of the newly added patches of territory is great for SF, but they are pretty far ahead anyway.
| Roll | DUP | UUP | Cons | APNI | PBP | SDLP | SF | Aontu | ||
| 65761 | 5220 | 1882 | 6194 | 2985 | 20866 | 1635 | ||||
| From | To | 13.5% | 4.9% | 16.0% | 7.7% | 53.8% | 4.2% | |||
| WB | WB | 62538 | 4084 | 1813 | 6058 | 2919 | 20408 | 1599 | ||
| WB | NB | -2393 | -1071 | -45 | -57 | -28 | -195 | -16 | ||
| WB | SBMD | -710 | -56 | -20 | -67 | -32 | -225 | -18 | ||
| WB | SA | -120 | -10 | -3 | -11 | -5 | -38 | -3 | ||
| NB | WB | 5044 | 2,863 | 348 | – | – | 208 | – | ||
| LV | WB | 4330 | 840 | 370 | 41 | 898 | – | 272 | 170 | – |
| SB | WB | 9 | 1 | 1 | – | 3 | – | 0 | ||
| Total | 71921 | 7789 | 370 | 41 | 3060 | 6058 | 3195 | 20786 | 1599 | |
| 18.2% | 0.9% | 0.1% | 7.1% | 14.1% | 7.4% | 48.5% | 3.7% | |||
| +4.7% | +0.9% | +0.1% | +2.3% | -1.8% | -0.2% | -5.3% | -0.5% | |||
| DUP | UUP | Cons | Alliance | PBP | SDLP | SF | Aontu |
This is the second biggest shift of party support in any constituency, but I don’t think SF will be awfully troubled by the prospect of their 14000 majority over PBP at Westminster being reduced to a 12000 majority over the DUP; the seat is safe as houses anyway. Unionist candidates were runners-up here in every assembly election since 1998, with the exception of 2003 when Diane Dodds actually won. There is now a clear prospect of a safe(ish) Unionist seat at the next Assembly election.
Upper Bann
As noted already, Upper Bann loses Loughbrickland to South Down and its eastern fringes to Lagan Valley, but gains parts of the apple country of North Armagh. It was the most bloated constituency on the old boundaries.
The result looks big on the map but has little net electoral impact.
| Roll | DUP | UUP | Alliance | SDLP | SF | Aontu | ||
| 83028 | 20501 | 6197 | 6433 | 4623 | 12291 | |||
| From | To | 41.0% | 12.4% | 12.9% | 9.2% | 24.6% | ||
| UB | UB | 73704 | 18109 | 5474 | 5711 | 4130 | 10980 | |
| UB | LV | -7364 | -1818 | -550 | -571 | -410 | -1090 | |
| UB | SD | -1960 | -574 | -174 | -152 | -83 | -221 | |
| N&A | UB | 3265 | 822 | 314 | 169 | 221 | 474 | 38 |
| Total | 76969 | 18931 | 5788 | 5880 | 4351 | 11454 | 38 | |
| 40.8% | 12.5% | 12.7% | 9.4% | 24.7% | 0.1% | |||
| -0.2% | 0.1% | -0.2% | 0.1% | 0.1% | 0.1% | |||
| DUP | UUP | Alliance | SDLP | SF | Aontu |
The DUP majority at Westminster drops from just over 8000 to just under 8000. The last Assembly seat here in 2022 was won by Alliance with a 376 vote margin over SF; that would look vulnerable under these changes.
East Belfast
This is very straightforward, with a loss to North Down in one direction and gains from South Belfast in the other.
This does bring in notional South Belfast SDLP votes (the SDLP did not stand in East belfast in 2019).
| Roll | DUP | UUP | Alliance | SDLP | ||
| 66273 | 20874 | 2516 | 19055 | |||
| From | To | 49.2% | 5.9% | 44.9% | 0.0% | |
| EB | EB | 62980 | 19726 | 2378 | 18232 | |
| EB | ND | -3293 | -1148 | -138 | -823 | |
| SB | EB | 7096 | 1890 | 204 | 758 | 1939 |
| Total | 70076 | 21616 | 2581 | 18990 | 1939 | |
| 47.9% | 5.7% | 42.1% | 4.3% | |||
| -1.3% | -0.2% | -2.8% | 4.3% | |||
| DUP | UUP | Alliance | SDLP |
The DUP’s majority in 2019 was 1800, and the changes expand that to 2600. But those 1939 notional SDLP votes could go a long way to making up the difference in one of the tightest results. I don’t see any direct impact on Assembly representation; there is still nowhere near a Nationalist quota.
North Belfast
Jumping across the river now, we have some tinkering around the margins of North Belfast; the biggest changes are the smallest on the map, to West Belfast on the Shankill and to and from South and East Antrim in Newtownabbey.
These changes basically don’t help the DUP to regain the seat lost in 2019.
| DUP | UUP | Cons | Alliance | PBP | SDLP | SF | Aontu | |||
| 21135 | 4824 | 23078 | ||||||||
| From | To | 72332 | 43.1% | 9.8% | 47.1% | |||||
| NB | NB | 66711 | 18103 | 4437 | 22686 | |||||
| NB | WB | -5044 | -2863 | -348 | -208 | |||||
| NB | SA | -577 | -169 | -38 | -184 | |||||
| WB | NB | 2393 | 1071 | 45 | 57 | 28 | 195 | 16 | ||
| SA | NB | 1926 | 157 | 132 | 563 | 192 | 267 | 0 | ||
| EA | NB | 342 | 89 | 29 | 5 | 54 | 5 | 11 | 0 | |
| Total | 71372 | 19419 | 161 | 5 | 5099 | 57 | 225 | 23158 | 16 | |
| 40.3% | 0.3% | 0.0% | 10.6% | 0.1% | 0.5% | 48.1% | 0.0% | |||
| -2.8% | 0.3% | 0.0% | 0.8% | 0.1% | 0.5% | 1.0% | 0.0% | |||
| DUP | UUP | Cons | Alliance | PBP | SDLP | SF | Aontu |
SF’s 1900 majority in 2019 expands to 3700. And it’s difficult to see any change in Assembly representation either.
East Antrim
Continuing up the coast, we reach East Antrim which swaps large but sparsely populated territory with North Antrim.
It doesn’t make a lot of difference to the results though.
| Roll | DUP | UUP | Cons | Alliance | Green | SDLP | SF | ||
| 64907 | 16871 | 5475 | 1043 | 10165 | 685 | 902 | 2120 | ||
| From | To | 45.3% | 14.7% | 2.8% | 27.3% | 1.8% | 2.4% | 5.7% | |
| EA | EA | 62640 | 16282 | 5284 | 1007 | 9810 | 685 | 870 | 2046 |
| EA | NA | -1045 | -272 | -88 | -17 | -164 | 0 | -15 | -34 |
| EA | SA | -880 | -229 | -74 | -14 | -138 | 0 | -12 | -29 |
| EA | NB | -342 | -89 | -29 | -5 | -54 | 0 | -5 | -11 |
| NA | EA | 7036 | 482 | 1342 | 0 | 583 | 0 | 553 | 1057 |
| SA | EA | 260 | 55 | 45 | 0 | 30 | 0 | 8 | 18 |
| Total | 69936 | 16818 | 6671 | 1007 | 10423 | 685 | 1432 | 3120 | |
| 41.9% | 16.6% | 2.5% | 26.0% | 1.7% | 3.6% | 7.8% | |||
| -3.4% | +1.9% | -0.3% | -1.3% | -0.1% | +1.1% | +2.1% |
The DUP’s actual majority of 6700 over Alliance is reduced to a notional 6400, which won’t cause sleepless nights. There are clearly two non-Unionist quotas for the Assembly, and equally clearly Nationalists will struggle to get one of them.
Newry and Armagh
Back to the south of Northern Ireland again, where Newry and Armagh, the second most bloated seat under the old boundaries, loses most of the apple country to Upper Bann and Fermanagh-South Tyrone, and tidies up its eastern boundary.
The territory lost is at the more Unionist end of the constituency.
| DUP | UUP | Alliance | SDLP | SF | Aontu | |||
| 11000 | 4204 | 4211 | 9449 | 20287 | 1628 | |||
| From | To | 81329 | 21.7% | 8.3% | 8.3% | 18.6% | 40.0% | 3.2% |
| N&A | N&A | 73,127 | 9275 | 3545 | 3786 | 8753 | 18792 | 1508 |
| N&A | FST | -3879 | -760 | -290 | -201 | -353 | -757 | -61 |
| N&A | UB | -3265 | -822 | -314 | -169 | -221 | -474 | -38 |
| N&A | SD | -1058 | -143 | -55 | -55 | -123 | -264 | -21 |
| SD | N&A | 1458 | 140 | 61 | 127 | 267 | 297 | 23 |
| Total | 74585 | 9415 | 3605 | 3913 | 9019 | 19088 | 1531 | |
| 20.2% | 7.7% | 8.4% | 19.4% | 41.0% | 3.3% | |||
| -1.4% | -0.5% | 0.1% | 0.8% | 1.0% | 0.1% |
SF’s 2019 majority increases from almost 9300 to over 9600. For the Assembly, a second Unionist seat slips a little further away.
North Antrim
Back up to the north again as North Antrim swaps territory with East Antrim and comes out a bit smaller.
Changes that look big on the map don’t always have much effect on the ground.
| DUP | UUP | Cons | Alliance | Ind | SDLP | SF | |||
| 77156 | 20860 | 8139 | 6231 | 246 | 2943 | 5632 | |||
| 47.4% | 18.5% | 0.0% | 14.1% | 0.6% | 6.7% | 12.8% | |||
| NA | NA | 70120 | 20378 | 6797 | 5648 | 246 | 2390 | 4575 | |
| NA | EA | 7036 | -482 | -1342 | -583 | -553 | -1057 | ||
| EA | NA | 1045 | 272 | 88 | 17 | 164 | 15 | 34 | |
| Total | 71165 | 20650 | 6885 | 17 | 5811 | 246 | 2404 | 4609 | |
| 50.8% | 16.9% | 0.0% | 14.3% | 0.6% | 5.9% | 11.3% | |||
| 3.5% | -1.5% | 0.0% | 0.2% | 0.0% | -0.8% | -1.4% | |||
| DUP | UUP | Cons | Alliance | Ind | SDLP | SF |
I see the DUP’s notional majority here increasing slightly from 12,000 to 13,000. From three quotas they should notionally get three Assembly seats, but Jim Allister was not a candidate in 2019.
Fermanagh and South Tyrone
Out West now, where the maths is fairly simple but the politics complicated. Fermanagh and South Tyrone was pretty close to the required size, but because of other changes must gain some net territory from Newry and Armagh, and lose a bit to Mid Ulster.
On paper, the differences are not huge.
| Roll | DUP | UUP | Alliance | Ind | SDLP | SF | Aontu | ||
| 72945 | 21929 | 2650 | 751 | 3446 | 21986 | ||||
| 0.0% | 43.2% | 5.2% | 1.5% | 6.8% | 43.3% | 0.0% | |||
| FST | FST | 69887 | 22722 | 2761 | 751 | 3608 | 23017 | ||
| FST | MU | -3058 | -793 | -111 | -162 | -1031 | |||
| N&A | FST | 3879 | 760 | 290 | 201 | 353 | 757 | 61 | |
| MU | FST | 877 | 136 | 32 | 44 | 79 | 255 | ||
| Total | 74643 | 896 | 21458 | 2784 | 751 | 3717 | 21968 | 61 | |
| 1.7% | 41.6% | 5.4% | 1.5% | 7.2% | 42.5% | 0.1% | |||
| 1.7% | -1.6% | 0.2% | 0.0% | 0.4% | -0.8% | 0.1% | |||
| DUP | UUP | Alliance | Ind | SDLP | SF | Aontu |
But this was the tightest result in Northern Ireland in 2019, SF beating the UUP by a mere 57 votes. The notional majority is now 510; but there are 896 notional DUP votes in the mix. So Northern Ireland’s closest race may actually have got a bit closer.
Mid Ulster
This was one boundary change that I called completely incorrectly. I had expected that Mid Ulster would stretch north towards Dungiven, as had been the case in the previous quashed proposals. But in fact it takes a chunk of Coalisland from Femanagh and South Tyrone, which losing a large but sparsely populated chunk to West Tyrone.
It doesn’t make a lot of difference.
| Roll | DUP | UUP | Alliance | Ind | SDLP | SF | ||
| 70501 | 10936 | 2611 | 3526 | 690 | 6384 | 20473 | ||
| 24.5% | 5.9% | 7.9% | 1.5% | 14.3% | 45.9% | |||
| MU | MU | 67036 | 10566 | 2523 | 3284 | 690 | 6031 | 19342 |
| MU | WT | -2588 | -234 | -56 | -198 | -273 | 877 | |
| MU | FST | -877 | -136 | -32 | -44 | -79 | 255 | |
| FST | MU | 3058 | 793 | 111 | 162 | 1031 | ||
| Total | 70094 | 10566 | 3316 | 3395 | 690 | 6193 | 20372 | |
| 23.7% | 7.4% | 7.6% | 1.5% | 13.9% | 45.7% | |||
| -0.8% | 1.6% | -0.3% | 0.0% | -0.4% | -0.1% | |||
| DUP | UUP | Alliance | Ind | SDLP | SF |
SF’s 9,500 majority extends to a notional 9,800, and the needle is not really moved for the Assembly seats.
Foyle
A little trimming at the edges to East Londonderry and West Tyrone.
The changes are minor, and although more Nationalist than Unionist voters are moved, the Unionist vote share is hit worse.
| Roll | DUP | UUP | Alliance | PBP | SDLP | SF | Aontu | ||
| 74431 | 4773 | 1088 | 1267 | 1332 | 26881 | 9771 | 2032 | ||
| From | To | 10.1% | 2.3% | 2.7% | 2.8% | 57.0% | 20.7% | 4.3% | |
| Foyle | Foyle | 69890 | 3852 | 878 | 1189 | 1251 | 25785 | 9372 | 1949 |
| Foyle | ELy | -2854 | -691 | -157 | -49 | -51 | -591 | -215 | -45 |
| Foyle | WT | -1687 | -230 | -53 | -29 | -30 | -505 | -184 | -38 |
| 69890 | 3,852 | 878 | 1,189 | 1251 | 25785 | 9372 | 1,949 | ||
| 8.7% | 2.0% | 2.7% | 2.8% | 58.2% | 21.2% | 4.4% | |||
| -1.4% | -0.3% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 1.2% | 0.4% | 0.1% | |||
| DUP | UUP | Alliance | PBP | SDLP | SF | Aontu |
The SDLP’s 17,100 majority in 2019 is reduced to a mere 16,400 which I don’t think will trouble them unduly. The DUP won the last Assembly seat here by a margin of 95 votes over the UUP, the closest result of the 2022 election, and on the above swing it would be vulnerable, but the picture is very much blurred by tactical voting.
West Tyrone
Simply takes in adjacent chunks from Mid Ulster and Foyle.
These are small territories, sparsely populated, and don’t make a lot of difference.
| Roll | DUP | UUP | Alliance | Green | PBP | SDLP | SF | Aontu | ||
| 66339 | 9066 | 2774 | 3979 | 521 | 0 | 7330 | 16544 | 972 | ||
| 22.0% | 6.7% | 9.7% | 1.3% | 0.0% | 17.8% | 40.2% | 2.4% | |||
| WT | WT | 66339 | 9066 | 2774 | 3979 | 521 | 0 | 7330 | 16544 | 972 |
| MU | WT | 2588 | 234 | 56 | 198 | 0 | 0 | 273 | 877 | 0 |
| Foy | WT | 1687 | 230 | 53 | 29 | 0 | 30 | 505 | 184 | 38 |
| Total | 70614 | 9530 | 2882 | 4206 | 521 | 30 | 8108 | 17604 | 1010 | |
| 21.7% | 6.6% | 9.6% | 1.2% | 0.1% | 18.5% | 40.1% | 2.3% | |||
| -0.3% | -0.2% | -0.1% | -0.1% | +0.1% | +0.7% | -0.1% | -0.1% | |||
| DUP | UUP | Alliance | Green | PBP | SDLP | SF | Aontu |
The SF notional majority increases from almost 7500 to almost 8100. No impact on the Assembly result.
South Antrim
Getting near the end now, with South Antrim by far the most annoying to calculate: lots of little changes that don’t add up to anything much, the biggest being chunks of Glengormley going to North Belfast.
A real pain to work out these very small notionals!
| Roll | DUP | UUP | Cons | Alliance | PBP | SDLP | SF | Aontu | ||
| 71915 | 15149 | 12460 | 8190 | 2288 | 4887 | |||||
| 35.3% | 29.0% | 19.1% | 5.3% | 11.4% | ||||||
| SA | SA | 69729 | 14937 | 12283 | 7597 | 2088 | 4603 | |||
| SA | NB | 1926 | -157 | -132 | -563 | -192 | -267 | |||
| SA | EA | 260 | -55 | -45 | -30 | -8 | -18 | |||
| EA | SA | 880 | 229 | 74 | 14 | 138 | 12 | 29 | ||
| NB | SA | 577 | 169 | 38 | 184 | |||||
| LV | SA | 340 | 88 | 39 | 4 | 59 | 8 | 5 | ||
| WB | SA | 120 | 10 | 3 | 11 | 5 | 38 | 3 | ||
| Total | 71646 | 15432 | 12396 | 18 | 7836 | 11 | 2113 | 4858 | 3 | |
| 36.2% | 29.1% | 0.0% | 18.4% | 0.0% | 5.0% | 11.4% | 0.0% | |||
| +0.9% | +0.1% | – | -0.7% | – | -0.4% | – | – | |||
| DUP | UUP | Cons | Alliance | PBP | SDLP | SF | Aontu |
In a good year, the UUP could overtake the DUP here, and in a much much better year the same is true for Alliance. But the boundary changes have little impact on the Westminster or Assembly outcomes.
North Down
Takes in a small sliver of Strangford and a larger sliver of East Belfast.
The Alliance Party’s strongest seat takes in 3000 voters from the Alliance Party’s second strongest seat.
| DUP | UUP | Cons | Alliance | |||
| 15390 | 4936 | 1959 | 18358 | |||
| 67,109 | 37.9% | 12.1% | 4.8% | 45.2% | ||
| ND | ND | 67,109 | 15390 | 4936 | 1959 | 18358 |
| EB | ND | 3,293 | 1148 | 138 | 0 | 823 |
| Str | ND | 10 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| Total | 70,412 | 16541 | 5075 | 1959 | 19182 | |
| 38.7% | 11.9% | 4.6% | 44.9% | |||
| 0.8% | -0.3% | -0.2% | -0.3% | |||
| DUP | UUP | Cons | Alliance |
Alliance’s Westminster majority is reduced from almost 3000 to just over 2600, so the seat remains competitive but they are starting ahead. The shifts are so small that it’s difficult to see much impact on the Assembly.
East Londonderry
Gains a ward from Foyle.
Small numbers make for small differences.
| DUP | UUP | Alliance | PBP | SDLP | SF | Aontu | |||
| 69359 | 15765 | 3599 | 5921 | 6158 | 6128 | 1731 | |||
| 40.1% | 9.2% | 15.1% | 15.7% | 15.6% | 4.4% | ||||
| ELy | ELy | 69359 | 15765 | 3599 | 5921 | 6158 | 6128 | 1731 | |
| Foy | ELy | 2854 | 691 | 157 | 49 | 51 | 591 | 215 | 45 |
| Total | 72213 | 16456 | 3756 | 5970 | 51 | 6749 | 6343 | 1776 | |
| 40.0% | 9.1% | 14.5% | 0.1% | 16.4% | 15.4% | 4.3% | |||
| -0.1% | -0.5% | +0.1% | +0.8% | -0.2% | -0.1% | ||||
| DUP | UUP | Alliance | PBP | SDLP | SF | Aontu |
The DUP’s Westminster majority is unchanged. It’s difficult to see much impact on the Assembly election, especially if independent MLA Claire Sugden remains active.
So there you have it. A Westminster election is likely before the end of the year. It may well see some changes of seats, but the new boundaries are unlikely to make the difference.
A grim question for the next time you are setting a general knowledge quiz: How many European Commissioners have died in office?
The answer is three, in 1958, 1981 and 1987.
Michel Rasquin was the very first European Commissioner for Transport and the first Commissioner from Luxembourg, appointed to the Walter Hallstein Commission in 1958. He lasted less than four months, dying on 27 April aged 58. Born in 1899, he was a journalist before the Second World War and the first leader of the Luxembourg Socialist Workers’ Party after the war. He was Luxembourg’s minister for the economy from 1951 until he became a European Commissioner.
Finn Olav Gundelach was the very first Danish Commissioner, appointed in 1973 under François-Xavier Ortoli as Commissioner for the Internal Market and the Customs Union, re-appointed as Vice-President for Agriculture and Fisheries in the Roy Jenkins Commission, and demoted to mere Commissioner for Agriculture under Gaston Thorn. However he lived only a week into his third term, dying aged 55 on 13 January 1981. Born in 1925, he was a career diplomat who had served as Danish ambassador to the UN and the EU, and also vice-president of GATT.
Finally (and let’s hope it stays that way), Alois Pfeiffer was appointed as Commissioner for Economic Affairs and Employment in the first Jacques Delors Commission in 1985, as one of the two German commissioners. He died on 1 August 1987 aged 62. Born in 1924, he was a forester and then a trade unionist, and was nominated by the SPD. He never held elected public office, and was seen by some in Germany as a bit too European and not sufficiently German.
All three of them were simply replaced by nomination by their home government. These days a new Commissioner has to go through hearings in the European Parliament as well. (We’ve had four resignations out of 27 from the current crew, all replaced in that way.)
There is a much more recent case with some similarities: the most recent President of the European Parliament, David Sassoli, died a week before the end of his term in January 2022 aged 65. Born in 1956, he was a print and TV journalist in Italy until becoming an MEP for the centre-left Democratic Party in 2009. When he emerged as a front-runner to head the Parliament in 2019, there was a lot of head-scratching. He performed perfectly well in office, however, until falling ill in 2021. His immediate successor in an acting capacity was the First Vice-President, Roberta Metsola, who was then elected to the job at the scheduled election a week later, and is still there until the elections this summer. Presumably if a vacancy occurs a bit earlier in the term, there would need to be a full election process, but it was hardly worth it for seven days.
Second paragraph of third chapter:
Mrs. Kelsey was settling into her house at Alwiyah, and I was glad to be able to take a few things off her shoulders.
This came up in conversation a couple of weeks ago, and I realised that I have it in my vast store of unread Agatha Christies, and pulled it out to see for myself. It was not one of the Christies that I had consumed as a teenager. It’s mainly remembered for the story behind the story; the first murder victim is based strongly on the real-life Lady Katherine Woolley, wife of Sir Leonard Woolley who led the 1930s excavation at Ur where Agatha Christie met her second husband, Sir Max Mallowan.
Massive spoilers: The various European and American characters in the book are vividly drawn. But the murder part of the plot is frankly ridiculous. It requires the first victim to have forgotten crucial details of her own previous marriage, and also requires that she remains strangely silent at the crucial moment of being murdered. The second murder is very poorly planned and could easily have failed. The murderer is very lucky that they actually off their victims. They are unlucky that Poirot is there to catch them out.
Despite my frustrations with the narrative, I found the context really fascinating. It’s a thoroughly racist book – Iraq was basically under British military occupation at the time, and the Arabs get barely a mention – and certainly not a positive one – in the narrative.
It was the workmen that made me laugh. You never saw such a lot of scarecrows – all in long petticoats and rags, and their heads tied up as though they had toothache. And every now and then, as they went to and fro carrying away baskets of earth, they began to sing – at least I suppose it was meant to be singing – a queer sort of monotonous chant that went on and on over and over again. I noticed that most of their eyes were terrible – all covered with discharge, and one or two looked half blind. I was just thinking what a miserable lot they were when Dr. Leidner said, “Rather a fine-looking lot of men, aren’t they?”
I was struck by a couple of other points too. The narrator’s name is Amy Leatheran; that surname simply doesn’t exist in real life. (She pops up again in the 1970 Agatha Christie novel Passenger to Frankfurt, nursing the narrator’s great-aunt, but does not appear to have aged 35 years in the meantime.) I’m wondering what significance the name has. If you swap “leather” for “mallow”, you get A. Mallowan, which was Agatha Christie’s married name, but maybe that’s stretching a bit.
I love lists of books, and here Poirot looks at the victim’s bookshelves and draws some drastic conclusions:
“In her bedroom I noticed the following books on a shelf: Who Were the Greeks? Introduction to Relativity, Life of Lady Hester Stanhope, Back to Methuselah, Linda Condon, Crewe Train.
“She had, to begin with, an interest in culture and in modern science – that is, a distinct intellectual side. Of the novels Linda Condon, and in a lesser degree Crewe Train, seemed to show that [the victim] had a sympathy and interest in the independent woman – unencumbered or entrapped by man. She was also obviously interested by the personality of Lady Hester Stanhope. Linda Condon is an exquisite study of the worship of her own beauty by a woman. Crewe Train is a study of a passionate individualist. Back to Methuselah is in sympathy with the intellectual rather than the emotional attitude to life. I felt that I was beginning to understand the dead woman.”
I thought it worth seeing which of these books, familiar to a fictional 1930s Belgian detective, has stood the test of time, and apply my usual test of Goodreads and LibraryThing users. It turns out to be about half and half. (I’m assuming that Max Born’s book on relativity is meant, rather than any other.)
| Title | Author | GR raters | LT owners |
| Back to Methuselah | George Bernard Shaw | 291 | 352 |
| Crewe Train | Rose Macaulay | 323 | 216 |
| Einstein’s Theory of Relativity | Max Born | 157 | 308 |
| Linda Condon | Joseph Hergesheimer | 7 | 16 |
| Who Were the Greeks? | Sir John Linton Myres | 2 | 3 |
| Life and Letters of Lady Hester Stanhope | The Duchess of Cleveland | 1 | 1 |
Anyway, it’s a book of its time and you can get it here.
Bechdel pass – the narrator is a woman and has been hired to look after a woman, and their first conversation is mainly about the latter’s health (the husband is mentioned a couple of times but he is not the main subject).
Agatha Christie:
The Mysterious Affair at Styles | The Secret Adversary | The Murder on the Links | The Man in the Brown Suit | The Murder of Roger Ackroyd | The Big Four | The Mystery of the Blue Train | The Murder at the Vicarage | Murder on the Orient Express | The A.B.C. Murders | Murder in Mesopotamia | Cards on the Table | Death on the Nile | Appointment With Death | Hercule Poirot’s Christmas | And Then There Were None | Evil Under the Sun | The Body in the Library | Five Little Pigs | A Murder Is Announced | 4.50 from Paddington | Hallowe’en Party
Second paragraph of third chapter:
Hear me out.
This is a grim and also funny book about the lifestyle of a bestselling author. The protagonist, June Hayward, watches her successful writer friend Athena Liu die in an accident in the first chapter, then takes her unpublished manuscript and successfully sells it as her own. June makes some awful decisions and is repeatedly confronted with the consequences of her actions; there’s also some wickedly vicious commentary on the perception of Chinese culture and especially Chinese history in today’s America (and I don’t think that other Western countries would be very different). It’s a short but compulsive read; you can’t quite believe that June has got herself into a position where her career success depends on a gruesome lie, but you can absolutely believe the contortions that follow. You can get it here.
For some bizarre reason this book was on the BSFA Long List for Best Novel. It has no sfnal content. June thinks that she sees Athena a couple of times after her death, but I don’t think we are meant to think that it is “really” her. If it is on the BSFA short list, I will not vote for it, even though I think it is a brillliant book.
Easy Bechdel pass – in the very first chapter, before Athena dies, she and June are talking to each other about their writing and men are barely mentioned.
This was my top unread non-genre book. Next on that pile, on a rather different level, is Moonraker’s Bride by Madeleine Brent.
Second paragraph of third chapter:
—My mother, who was sitting by, look’d up,—but she knew no more than her backside what my father meant,—but my uncle, Mr. Toby Shandy, who had been often informed of the affair,—understood him very well.
So, my local interest in Tristram Shandy is this. (Actually, it’s very respectful to the spirit of the book to start my review in the middle, as it were. The whole point is not to get to the point too quickly.) My daughters live close to the small village of Neerwinden, which is the site of the battle usually known as the Battle of Landen which took place in 1693. Tristram Shandy’s Uncle Toby’s manservant, Corporal Trim (pay attention there in the back) was wounded in the knee at that battle and exclaims in Chapter 19 of Book 8:
Your honour remembers with concern, said the corporal, the total rout and confusion of our camp and army at the affair of Landen; every one was left to shift for himself; and if it had not been for the regiments of Wyndham, Lumley, and Galway, which covered the retreat over the bridge Neerspeeken, the king himself could scarce have gained it – he was press’d hard, as your honour knows, on every side of him.
Neerspeken is obviously a mistake for Neerhespen, which I often drive through when I take my oldest back from a visit to the Beemden nature reserve in Landen. We usually stop off at the Chapel of the Holy Cross. (In the spirit of Tristram Shandy, I should record that I usually go to Landen by the more southern route via Eliksem and Laar.)
I first read Tristram Shandy when I was 23, more than thirty years ago, and still have the slightly mildewed paperback that I picked up off a Cambridge bookstall one day in late 1990. I can’t honestly tell you what happens in it; I can’t find any particular lines that resonate or are very quotable; the most memorable moment is when our hero’s penis gets caught in the windowframe in Book 5 Chapter 17. (Sorry for the spoiler.)
And yet somehow I love it. It’s rambling, self-indulgent, full of references to things I know nothing about; and at the same time the stream-of-consciousness narrative, the refusal to make many concessions to the reader who wants to know what is actually going on, are part of the charm. It’s clearly an inspiration for Joyce, Woolf, and lots of the modernist writers who I really like; but it’s a book of its own time, requiring friendly engagement and repaying that engagement with warmth and humour. You can get it here.
Total Bechdel fail. The most prominent female character, Tristram’s mother, spends most of the book giving birth to him, so her conversation is necessarily about her motherhood. The other women are all defined by their relationships with the male characters.
This was my top book acquired last year; next on that pile is Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey.
Second paragraph of third chapter:
“Tanis and Sera are due back on the ship in another day,” she said. “Their negotiations with Scipio are over, we’re preparing to leave the Bosporus system.”
I think I bought this by accident. It is the fifth book in a series of thirteen, and I found it impossible to get into the space opera plot. I put it down after 60 pages. You can get it here.
Easy Bechdel pass, as the very first chapter has two women characters debating the politics of the empire with each other.
This was the sf book that had lingered longest unread on my shelves. Next on that pile is SFerics 2017, edited by Roz Clarke.
Second paragraph of third chapter:
As the show itself was transforming on screen so the exhibition began to blossom as a tourist attraction. Peripheral events such as the switching on of the illuminations in 1975 and the Blackpool Centenary celebrations in 1976 helped to cement the exhibition’s place as an exciting and worthwhile visitor destination.
A 600-page sequel to the Blackpool Remembered volume, also going back to memories of the Doctor Who exhibition in Blackpool which ran from 1974 to 1984, but this time also with material on the Doctor Who museum that was open in the same town from 2004 to 2009, and an account of some of the spinoff merchandise that was available to fans in the Good Old Days.
Like the previous volume, it’s a beautifully assembled set of photos with literate commentary. Every corner of both the earlier exhibition (again) and David Boyle’s Doctor Who Museum is described in loving detail. There is a feature on Boyle’s life and career, including some very sad photos from his final years of ill health. He was also the maker of the Dapol models which were the authorised miniatures of characters from the TV series. Short sections also look at Jon Pertwee’s Whomobile, and at Maginty, the Blackpool double of the Doctor’s car Bessie. Again, the perspective is very male and white, which is unfortunate; but it’s a labour of love, and there’s a lot of love here. You can download it for free from here (600 pages, 140ish MB).
Current
Notes from the Burning Age, by Claire North
Lizard Radio, by Pat Schmatz
The Unsettled Dust, by Robert Aickman
Last books finished
The Dawnhounds, by Sasha Stronach
Tintin au Pays de l’Or Noir, by Hergé
The Odyssey, by Homer, tr Emily Wilson
After Life, by Al Ewing et al
The Fire Starters, by Jan Carson
A Life in Questions, by Jeremy Paxman
Next books
David Whitaker in an Exciting Adventure with Television, by Simon Guerrier
Sferics 2017, ed. Roz Clarke
Short Fiction of Flann O’Brien
Lost of good stuff to choose from, but my longlist votes go to:
Julia Lloyd, cover of Descendant Machine
Leo Nickolls, cover of The Surviving Sky
Raphael Lecoste, cover of The Terraformers
Elena Betti, cover of Danged Black Thing.
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Full list here.
Like many of you, I was very sad to learn this morning that Christopher Priest has died at the age of 80. I first met him on the printed page, as a teenager in Belfast, where his novels were one of my main escape routes from the Northern Ireland of the day. Inverted World and Fugue for a Darkening Island were favourites then, and the former is a favourite still. Later, when I first started bookblogging, The Separation was the best of the books that I read in the closing months of 2003. I very much enjoyed his Guest of Honour speech and other presentations at Interaction, the 2005 Worldcon in Glasgow. Nineteen years on, we are preparing another Glasgow Worldcon and we’ll be thinking of him.
In 2007, we became friends. We met in person at the 2007 Beneluxcon which was conveniently for me in Leuven, and started a correspondence which continued for a decade and a half. He filled me in on the story of how he didn’t write for Doctor Who, and we reflected on Brexit and other political disasters together. And I continued to enjoy his writing, both new and old.
In August 2016 I happened to be passing through Devon, and we met up in Burrington, where he and Nina Allan were living at the time, and went for a very pleasant lunch in The Grove Inn, the only pub in the area, in the next door village of Kings Nympton. He and Nina loaded me with books to take away. (They subsequently moved to Scotland.)
The last time we saw each other was at Novacon in Buxton in 2021, where as it turned out I contracted COVID (but he fortunately did not). Fanboyishly (if that is a word) I brought over a small part of my Chris Priest collection, and he signed them all for me after breakfast. (He had already signed the ones he gave me in 2016.)
He was funny, passionate, incisive and (I have to be honest) not always kind. He was hugely entertaining to spend time with and I felt that my teenage enthusiasm for a writer I never expected to meet was ripely repaid a quarter to a third of a century later. Paul Kincaid’s brilliant book, The Unstable Realities of Christopher Priest, will give you a very good idea of what he was like and what he was trying to achieve as a writer. I feel privileged that I knew him as a person as well. My condolences to Nina, and to the rest of their families.
Second paragraph of third chapter:
From the upper windows of the Golden Court, Brunhild saw not just the river Moselle and the bridge spanning it. She could also see straight down into a small amphitheatre inside the city walls. Gladiator games had long been outlawed, but exotic animal hunts and bear baiting were still held there. These, sadly, seemed to be the main entertainment. The new queen quickly discovered that even what luxuries the Merovingian courts offered left something to be desired. There were mimes and actors in residence for instance – predecessors of the minstrels and jesters later found in medieval courts – but mostly, these performers recited long-winded national epics.
This is a book about two queens of the sixth century, both probably born in the early 540s: Fredegund of Neustria (died 597) and Brunhilda of Austrasia (died 613). You may not have heard of Neustria or Austrasia; these were old kingdoms of the pre-Charlemagne era, the tail end of the Merovingian dynasty founded by Clovis, King of the Franks, in the late 5th century. This is a period which we learned nothing at all about at school in Belfast, and if your native language is not French, Dutch or German, you’re probably in the same boat. My previous exposure to it amounted to a 2021 exhibition of Merovingian metalwork in Mariemont, off to the south of Belgium.
Neither of the two queens was in fact a Merovingian by birth, but they married two brothers, grandsons of Clovis, who ruled between them large chunks of what are now northern France, central Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and parts of the Netherlands, with Burgundy also in the mix at various times.
Brunhilda was a Visigothic princess from Spain, who married Sigebert of Austrasia (the eastern bit) in 567. He was murdered, probably on her orders, in 575 and she ruled in Metz off and on, in her own right and as regent for the next generation, for four decades. Fredegund was a slave girl from the western chunk, Neustria, ruled from Soissons; she caught the eye of Chilperic, the local overlord, and replaced his wife (Brunhilda’s sister) as queen.
Brunhilda and Fredegund feuded bitterly until Fredegund’s death in 597, but eventually in 613 Chilperic and Fredegund’s son Clotaire managed to conquer both kingdoms, and Brunhilda (who must have been well into her 60s at this point) was executed by a gruesome method which remains obscure but definitely involved horses.
Both women have been largely written out of history. Clotaire emphasised his own legitimate descent from Clovis, not his usurping aunt or indeed his low-born mother. No men wanted to commemorate women who had survived and ruled for many years. The major contemporary witness, Gregory of Tours, is very partisan and clearly incomplete. Fredegund’s tomb has an image of her whose face has been erased. Brunhilda’s tomb has been lost, apart from two chunks of marble.
Shelley Puhak has done an entertaining job of pulling together the threads of history and legend to tell the story of the two women. She occasionally falters under the weight of detail, and at other times is forced to adopt a very chatty style to compensate for the absence of reliable sources, but one feels that she has done her best with what is available. I got what I wanted from The Dark Queens; you can get it here.
The largest menhir in Belgium is known as the Pierre Brunehaut; I visited it in February 2021. It is near to one of the many old roads known as chaussées Brunehaut in northern France and southern Belgium.
Some speculate that the chaussées Brunehaut are the paths supposedly taken by the horses participating in her execution, but there are too many roads for that; I prefer to think that in her many years as queen, she dedicated state resources to the upkeep of the transport infrastructure, and (rather like Mussolini making the trains run on time) this has been dimly remembered by local lore. There are worse possible memorials.
Second paragraph of third chapter:
[Chris] Whitty had reason to be worried. Some months earlier a highly infectious disease called Ebola had started to sweep through Britain’s former colony of Sierra Leone and neighboring Liberia and Guinea. Groups such as the World Health Organization and Medecins Sans Frontieres had rushed to halt the contagion. So had the UK, French, and American governments, Barack Obama’s American administration had even sent four thousand troops to Liberia. The world’s best medical experts at places such as Harvard were hunting for a vaccine, and computer scientists were using Big Data tools to track it.
Gillian Tett and I were contemporaries as undergraduates at Clare College, Cambridge, in the 1980s; she studied archaeology and anthropology, and I studied natural sciences (specialising in astrophysics in the end). We did not know each other well, though we lived on the same staircase in our first year. I’ve seen her precisely twice since then, when she gave a presentation on the causes of the 2008 crisis in Brussels in 2009 and when we caught up at a college reunion in 2022 and found we had both been working on Ukraine. She is now the Provost of King’s College, next door.
Before becoming a Financial Times journalist, Tett was an anthropology student whose doctorate examined Islam and Communism in rural Tajikistan. I came to anthropology a bit later in my life – for bureaucratic reasons, my PhD, which was in the history of science, was administered in the Social Anthropology department at the Queen’s University of Belfast. I developed a deep respect for that discipline, and I’ve written about this here in the context of the House of Lords and, er, England. In my day job as a public affairs consultant in Brussels, it seems to me that I get a much better understanding of what is going on and what is likely to happen by applying anthropological analysis of human behaviour and organisational culture than by the traditional methods of political science, let alone philosophy.
Tett doesn’t make quite such grand claims for her discipline in her book Anthro-Vision. She argues merely that it would be good to take an anthropological perspective into account in making important decisions, as well as the legal, economic, political etc points of view that already are well represented around the table. Among the topics she examines are the response to the 2013-14 Ebola outbreak in West Africa; the failure of bankers to spot the risks in their own behaviour that caused the 2008 financial crisis; the appeal of Donald Trump; the difference between remote and office working; and the intriguing rise of environmental, social, and corporate governance as a serious concern in the top boardrooms of the private sector.
I think that she undersells the case for anthropology. As I said above, I think it is actually superior as an analytical framework, perhaps precisely because it is insufficiently used. On the other hand, she also frames herself as a feminist outsider who has a healthy scepticism about the claims of capitalists; but can a Financial Times journalist truly be a mere observer of the world of high finance? With that slight pinch of salt, I strongly recommend the book as a refreshingly different look at what is really going on in the world, and how important (and often bad) decisions get made. You can get it here.
Third chapter, in full:
The first person she met, was the Viscount of——a young Man, no less celebrated for his Accomplishments & Virtues, than for his Elegance & Beauty. She curtseyed & walked on.
There’s not really much here!
Bechdel pass (if being generous) in the very last chapter (it is specifically stated that she does not have a conversation with either of two women characters mentioned earlier):
She entered it & was pressed to her Mother’s bosom by that worthy Woman. Cassandra smiled & whispered to herself ‘This is a day well spent.’
This was the shortest of the unread books that I had acquired in 2018. Next on that list is SFerics 2017, edited by Roz Clarke.
Non-fiction 7
Fatal Path, by Ronan Fanning
Rule of Law: A Memoir, by Glynnis Breytenbach
Anthro-Vision, by Gillian Tett
The Dark Queens, by Shelley Puhak
Blackpool Revisited, by John Collier
Vincent and the Doctor, by Paul Driscoll
The Talons of Weng-Chiang, by Dale Smith
Non-genre 4
The Beautifull Cassandra, by Jane Austen
Tristram Shandy, by Laurence Sterne
Yellowface, by R.F. Kuang
Murder in Mesopotamia, by Agatha Christie
Plays 2
The Talons of Weng-Chiang, by Robert Holmes, edited by John McElroy
Three Plays, by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart
SF 5
The Future, by Naomi Alderman
Attack on Thebes, by M.D. Cooper (did not finish)
Babel, by R.F. Kuang
“The New Mother”, by Eugene Fischer
“Georgia on my Mind”, by Charles Sheffield
Doctor Who 1
Doctor Who and the Talons of Weng-Chiang, by Terrance Dicks
Comics 2
A Fairytale Life, by Lilah Sturges et al
Strawberry and the Soul Reapers, by Tite Kubo
5,600 pages
9/21 by non-male writers (Breytenbach, Tett, Puhak, Austen, Christie, Alderman, Cooper, Kuang, Sturges)
3/21 by a non-white writer (Kuang x2, Kubo)
5/21 rereads (Tristram Shandy, The Talons of Weng-Chiang (script), “The New Mother”, “Georgia on my Mind”, Doctor Who and the Talons of Weng-Chiang)
305 books currently tagged unread, down 7 from last month
Reading now
The Dawnhounds, by Sasha Stronach
The Odyssey, by Homer, tr Emily Wilson
A Life in Questions, by Jeremy Paxman
Tintin au Pays de l’Or Noir, by Hergé
Coming soon (perhaps)
After Life, by Al Ewing et al
David Whitaker in an Exciting Adventure with Television, by Simon Guerrier
Kill the Moon, by Darren Mooney
Doctor Who and the Sunmakers, by Terrance Dicks
The Sunmakers, by Lewis Baston
The Unsettled Dust, by Robert Aickman
Sferics 2017, ed. Roz Clarke
The Smile on the Face of the Tiger, by Douglas Hurd and Andrew Osmond
Bletchley Park Brainteasers, by Sinclair McKay
Notes from the Burning Age, by Claire North
Short Fiction of Flann O’Brien
The Wheels of Chance, by H.G. Wells
Confusion, by Elizabeth Jane Howard
Moonraker’s Bride, by Madeleine Brent
Parable of the Sower, by Octavia E. Butler
When the Moon Was Ours, by Anna-Marie McLemore
How Democracies Die, by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
Foxglove Summer, by Ben Aaronovitch
The Pragmatic Programmer, by David Thomas and Andrew Hunt
The Unsettled Dust, by Robert Aickman
Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett
Doctor Zhivago, by Boris Pasternak
Land of the Blind, by Scott Gray
L’Affaire Tournesol, by Hergé
The Sol Majestic, by Ferrett Steinmetz
Second paragraph of third chapter:
My parents had limited opportunities when they were young. Neither of them went to university. They weren’t stupid, but their frame of reference was very limited. They didn’t read particularly widely or well. Their lives were work, home, television. My dad played tennis, too, before he retired. They weren’t very well educated, and they hadn’t travelled either. Their horizons were quite narrow and neither was particularly adventurous. When I travelled, they really didn’t get it. They thought it was marvellous that I could go to Greece, but it never occurred to them that they could have gone too. The first time they ever went overseas was in 1996 or 1997, when I sent them on a holiday.
I was encouraged to get this book, then newly published, when I visited South Africa in 2017 as a guest of the Democratic Alliance. Breytenbach is a former state prosecutor who is now one of the DA’s parliamentary stars. Her autobiography is a frank account of service to the judicial system of South Africa, punctuated by politically motivated interference (a disciplinary procedure and a criminal prosecution, both of which exonerated her). The story is told in 27 beathless chapters, full of picturesque South African slang (I am still not sure if “oke” is pejorative), punctuated also by comments from friends and colleagues.
To be honest, it is not a brilliant book. It is assumed that the reader is already super-familiar with South Africa and also with the high points of its recent criminal and judicial history. Many pages are devoted to the evils of Jacob Zuma, who was then the president of the country; in fact he was forced out of office six months after this book was published, so those sections became instantly out of date. One gets the sense that Breytenbach makes few concessions in her professional life; that’s certainly also true of her approach to her readers here. For South Africanists only, I think, but you can get it here.
This was the very last book acquired in 2017 that I got around to reading, five months after I finished the last book that I acquired in 2016.
Last book acquired in 2017, read in January 2024 (Rule of Law: A Memoir)
Last book acquired in 2016, read in August 2023 (Autism Spectrum Disorders Through the Lifespan)
Last book acquired in 2015, read in November 2022 (Rauf Denktaş, a Private Portrait)
Last books acquired in 2014, read in October 2021 (The Empire of Time and Crashland)
Last book acquired in 2013, read in October 2020 (Helen Waddell)
Last book acquired in 2012, read in May 2020 (A Sacred Cause: The Inter-Congolese dialogue 2000-2003)
Last book acquired in 2011, read in October 2019 (Luck and the Irish)
Last book acquired in 2010, read in January 2019 (Heartspell)
Last book acquired in 2009, read in December 2016 (Last Exit to Babylon)
The 2018 pile is not so big and I am confident that I’ll get through it in a few months too, starting with:
Current
The Dawnhounds, by Sasha Stronach
The Odyssey, by Homer, tr Emily Wilson
A Life in Questions, by Jeremy Paxman
Tintin au Pays de l’Or Noir, by Hergé
Last books finished
Three Plays, by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart
“Georgia on my Mind”, by Charles Sheffield
Next books
After Life, by Al Ewing et al
The Unsettled Dust, by Robert Aickman
Notes from the Burning Age, by Claire North
The initial results are in, and it looks very much as if Alexander Stubb will be elected the next President of Finland in the second round of voting in two weeks’ time.
I’ve known him since he was a member of the European Parliament, and for complex reasons ended up hosting an official meeting for him and the Turkish Cypriot leadership in my office in December 2008. Back in 2018 I went to Helsinki to help him campaign for the EPP nomination for the Presidency of the European Comission.
Finland’s biggest newspaper ran a story not so much about him but about me being there:
More recently I have taken cooking advice from him:
This evening’s results indicate that he will face off against the Green candidate Pekka Haavisto, who lost the two previous elections in 2018 and 2012. I don’t have any problem with Haavisto, and the really good news is that the extremist candidate finished a poor third, but I’ll be cheering for Alex on 11 February.
I am in Glasgow for a preparatory meeting for this summer’s Worldcon, and for complex reasons arrived on Thursday evening and did my day job from the hotel yesterday. I took a long lunch break though for a cultural excursion in two parts.
First stop was the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, a splendid structure abut 15-20 minutes’ walk from the conference centre.
The big draw was an organ recital – the Kelvingrove organ is massive (and therefore open to much double entendre) and the sound fills the main hall well. I particularly liked the video feed of the organist’s hands and feet.
The art gallery is rather special too; the painting that particularly spoke to me was a Belgian refugee from the first world war, painted by Norah Neilson Gray. (I took my own photo but this is the official gallery one.)
The second leg of the trip was to te end of the Roman Empire. When I watched the Oscar-winning film Gladiator back in 2021, it transpired that the Antonine Wall has a bit of a marketing problem, at least among my Facebook friends (click through for vigorous discussion):
The Antonine Wall ran from what’s now northern Glasgow to northern Edinburgh. It was made of turf rather than stone, unlike the much better known Hadrian’s Wall, so almost nothing survives of the actual structure. It wasn’t actually the northernmost limit of the empire: there were the Gask Ridge Forts north of Edinburgh, and also the mysterious temple-like structure near Falkirk (which gave its name to Stenhousemuir), known as Arthur’s O’on and destroyed in 1743.
In Bearsden, now a northern suburb of Glasgow, the foundations of a Roman fort were found in 1973, and the excavated foundations of the bathhouse are visible in a little park by the road (whose name is “Roman Road”). It’s 15-20 minutes by car from the convention centre in normal traffic.
Often these sites amount to little more than a big pile of stones, but there are several decent interpretative signboards featuring manly men using the facilities.
You can imagine how the Gaulish soldiers, after a hard day’s patrolling in the rain, would have loved to settle down in the heated room and hang out with their mates. The flags and underfloor channels behind which heated air circulated have also been well preserved.
I was educated by nuns in Belfast, and although the school itself was a modern building, the convent (which we spilled into occasionally) had been built in 1874 by an engineering magnate who installed the first central heating system in any house in Ireland. A century later, it was very noisy and probably unsafe – I hope it has been replaced by now! The Roman system looks very attractive.
The Baptist church across the road is on the site of the main section of the camp, and boasts a “Roman sound garden” and a large wooden statue of a legionary.
Edward Gibbon, in one of his eloquent but inaccurate and prejudiced passages, wrote of the Antonine Wall in the context of Agricola:
Before his departure, the prudent general had provided for security as well as for dominion. He had observed that the island is almost divided into two unequal parts by the opposite gulfs, or, as they are now called, the Firths of Scotland. Across the narrow interval of about forty miles, he had drawn a line of military stations, which was afterwards fortified in the reign of Antoninus Pius, by a turf rampart erected on foundations of stone. This wall of Antoninus, at a small distance beyond the modern cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, was fixed as the limit of the Roman province. The native Caledonians preserved in the northern extremity of the island their wild independence, for which they were not less indebted to their poverty than to their valour. Their incursions were frequently repelled and chastised; but their country was never subdued. The masters of the fairest and most wealthy climates of the globe turned with contempt from gloomy hills assailed by the winter tempest, from lakes concealed in a blue mist, and from cold and lonely heaths, over which the deer of the forest were chased by a troop of naked barbarians.
The Romans did of course press quite far north of the Antonine Wall before they gave up on what is now Scotland, and the source given for the last sentence is Appian, who actually says: “Crossing the Northern ocean to Britain, a continent in itself, they took possession of the better and larger part, not caring for the remainder. Indeed, the part they do hold is not of much use to them.” That last barb about southern Britain is somehow omitted by Gibbon.
Second paragraph of third chapter:
Balfour’s Irish experience was rooted in his years as chief secretary for Ireland from 1887 to 1891 when his repressive policies had earned him the nickname of ‘Bloody Balfour’ among Irish nationalists. His deep-seated Unionism was the rock on which the efforts to establish a bipartisan policy on the Irish problem had foundered in 191o. In 1920 Balfour was the cabinet minister arguing most forcefully for Ulster’s right to remain a fully integrated part of the United Kingdom. In November 1921 he remained so sceptical of negotiating with Irish republicans in the aftermath of the truce that ended the Irish war of independence that Lloyd George sent him to head the British delegation at the Washington Naval Conference lest his presence in London disrupt the negotiations that led to the establishment of the Irish Free State. Arthur Balfour was at once the most cultivated, the most cynical and the most cerebral of prime ministers. The trouble with Arthur, a colleague observed, is that he knows there has been one Ice Age and he thinks there’s going to be another. Who better, then, to share Balfour’s enjoyment at Shaw’s lampooning of the conduct of well-meaning English liberals in Ireland than the two Liberal leaders who were to follow him into 10 Downing Street?
I did not know Ronan Fanning well; we met a few times and I certainly admired his work. Although this book came late in his life, published in 2013, four years before he died, big chunks are apparently taken from his PhD thesis of 1968. I guess history doesn’t necessarily change that much.
The subject is Westminster attitudes to Ireland at the time of independence, focussing especially on the two Prime Ministers, Asquith and Lloyd George, and also on the leading Conservative politicians and the other Liberals, Winston Churchill in particular. My own PhD thesis concentrated on almost exactly the same period, and I thought I had done a pretty exhaustive dive into the last two decades of British administration in Ireland. So I was pleasantly surprised by just how much I learned from this book. Fanning concentrates on policy rather than administration, and on the debate in London rather than what was happening on the ground in Ireland – the Easter Rising, for instance, gets barely a page, but the British response gets most of a chapter. This is not a criticism – Fanning was entitled to write the book he wanted to write, and he was entirely correct to see a huge gap in the historiography of the period.
Things that I learned, roughly in order:
The Liberals from 1905 until the House of Lords crisis in 1909-10 were not just apathetic to Irish Home Rule, the leadership were actively hostile to the concept, and would not have ever legislated for it if they had not been backed into a corner by John Redmond and the Irish Nationalists (one of the latter’s few strategic successes).
At the same time, the Liberal government in 1912-14 knew that Home Rule could not be implemented in large parts of Ulster. Lloyd George and Churchill proposed excluding Ulster from home rule as early as February 1912. This was copper-fastened by the disloyal and treacherous actions of senior army officers, in particular Sir Henry Wilson and the brothers Hubert and Johnnie Gough, who undermined the elected government by conspiring with the opposition and with the military garrison in Ireland to provoke the Curragh mutiny in March 1914.
Therefore the counterfactual idea that, if there had been no 1916 Rising or War of Independence, a Home Rule Ireland would have eventually evolved into a Dominion-like status, is wrong. The only decisive factor affecting British policy, apart from the personal prejudices of political leaders, was violence or the threat of violence. The British folded on Ulster in 1914, and on independence for the rest of the island in 1921, purely because of the balance of coercive force. The British government’s own use of coercive force was poorly planned and disastrously implemented.
When it came to the Treaty negotiations on 1921, the British got entirely what they expected (apart from a late concession on tariffs). The Irish delegation were thoroughly unprepared, particularly on the issue of partition. Michael Collins then planned to destabilise and attempt to take control of Northern Ireland, but was distracted by the Civil War, and after that he was dead. London did nothing to protect Catholics in the North in the 1922-25 period (or for that matter Protestants in the South, though they were in less danger). The Boundary Commission, to which Fanning devotes an interesting epilogue, was designed to achieve nothing, and did so.
In general, both Asquith and Lloyd George were motivated (on Ireland at least) not by ideology but by the need to stay in power by satisfying their coalition partners, successively the Irish Nationalists and then the Conservatives. (Also Asquith was fundamentally a procrastinator who did not want to actually do anything.) The Conservatives were more ideologically Unionist than the Liberals; so too was the fledgling Labour party. Andrew Bonar Law, who actually became Prime Minister briefly in 1922-3, was Canadian by birth but an Ulster Presbyterian by background; however, once he came to power his first decision was to get the last stages of the Treaty enacted, just to get it over with.
There’s not a lot about women here, but a key figure is Frances Stevenson, Lloyd George’s secretary and lover. The smartest officials, notably General Macready who was the person who advised the British in 1921 that the military campaign in Ireland was lost, knew that Lloyd George never read his own paperwork and wrote to Stevenson instead. Not everyone knew this trick. Lloyd George and his key male adviser, Tom Jones, often had crucial conversations in Welsh, which nobody else in Downing Street understood.
The whole thing is eloquently written. It’s not short (361 pages) and it’s not for beginners (knowledge of the broad thrust of events is assumed) but it’s really interesting.
I found the account of the bitterly divided 1912-14 government, publicly committed to a policy goal that had been wished on it from outside, and that few of its leaders really believed in, very reminiscent of the Brexit period. But the wider lesson, that most British prime ministers spend most of their political energy on simple day-to-day survival, has much broader relevance, and not just in the UK.
Anyway, this was a tremendously good read. You can get it here.
Second frame of third part:
Having finished the IDW Tenth Doctor comics last month, I’m into the Eleventh Doctor run; and rather than start at the beginning of a long narrative, I picked up this one-shot album from 2011 for a sample. The author, Lilah Sturges, is best known for collaboration with Bill Willingham on the Fables series and spinoffs; I was really into that, ten years ago or so, but drifted off once the main narrative ended.
This is an enjoyable enough fantasy-world-actually-a-theme-park story, with the Doctor and Amy liberating the oppressed. The art by Kelly Yates is seriously below par though, with Amy much more freckled than the real Karen Gillan and the Doctor often looking like someone else entirely. This was early in the Eleventh Doctor era, so perhaps the lead characters’ images were not well communicated to the artist, but it’s a barrier to enjoyment. There are some nice covers by Bill Willingham though. You can get it here.
Bechdel pass: Amy and Aurelia battle an evil robot together on page 48, and then review progress on page 56.
Second paragraph of third chapter:
Will, her late husband, sat in the wooden chair facing the lake view, watching her. He said: Tough decision?
I’m a fan of Alderman’s previous novels (The Power, Disobedience and a Doctor Who book, Borrowed Time), so was looking forward to this, a story of tech zillionnaires, apocalypse and survival. To be honest I was a little disappointed; I’m not especially interested in the cults of personality around Musk, Zuckerberg, etc, and a large part of the story evolves around equivalent characters and their entourages. There’s also an AI that is just smart enough to carry the plot forward, and a rather silly dénouement. But there are also some vivid character moments and strong descriptions of setting. So it’s entertaining, if not quite up to Alderman’s previous work. You can get it here.
Definite Bechdel pass, as two of the main characters are women in an on-off relationship with each other.
This was the very first book that I finished this year! So this is my first review to have the ‘bookblog 2024’ tag.
Second paragraph of third chapter:
In order to ensure that you adopt the most effective strategy, it is therefore critical to understand and master the EU legislative process. It is part of your 3Ps (People-Power-Procedures) and I have known several brilliant lobbying strategies failing because the intricacies of procedure were poorly addressed.
This is a book about lobbying in Brussels, published in 2010. As such it is somewhat out of date; the institutional rules have not changed much in that time, but the way things really operate has moved on a bit; and about a quarter of the book is dedicated to kindly explaining that social media actually matters and giving guidance on how you might dip your toe into it. Those were innocent days, in retrospect! (My good friend Jon Worth is mentioned, in the context of the doomed Citzalia project.)
I’m not sure why I got it when I did; I once had aspirations to write such a book myself, but I must say that seeing how quickly such a project could be overcome by events is a bit of a disincentive. Still, the description of the legislative and policy-making process is accurate and useful, and made me realise how much of it I have internalised in my 25 years working here. You can still get the book here.
This was the shorter of the two remaining books on my shelves acquired in 2017. Next is the last of those books, Rule of Law: A Memoir, by Glynnis Breytenbach. This was also the last book that I finished in 2023, so I’m two and a half weeks behind at the moment.
Current
Three Plays, by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart
The Dawnhounds, by Sasha Stronach
Last books finished
The Talons of Weng-Chiang, by Robert Holmes, edited by John McElroy
Murder in Mesopotamia, by Agatha Christie
Doctor Who and the Talons of Weng-Chiang, by Terrance Dicks
Strawberry and the Soul Reapers, by Tite Kubo
Babel, by R.F. Kuang
The Talons of Weng-Chiang, by Dale Smith
“The New Mother”, by Eugene Fischer
Next books
A Life in Questions, by Jeremy Paxman
“Georgia on my Mind”, by Charles Sheffield
Tintin au Pays de l’Or Noir, by Hergé
I signed off yesterday’s post saying that I hope to post analysis of the 2023 Hugo nomination statistics, which indeed went live within minutes of my making the post.
However, it’s clear from the published results and from the volume of commentary elsewhere that I can’t add anything helpful or useful to the discussion. I don’t have any more information than anyone else, and I need to concentrate on my responsibilities as WSFS DH for Glasgow 2024 and Hugo Administrator for Seattle in 2025.
So no comment it is.
The Long Lists for this year’s BSFA Awards are out, and provide much food for thought. We have a whole load of new categories this year, listed in a somewhat eccentric order on the official page (maybe that’s the constitutional order, I don’t know). As ever, I’ve run them through LibraryThing and Goodreads, to see how many people own each book on the former platform and have rated it on the latter; and I rank each section by the geometric average of the two ratings.
One thing I haven’t done this year is to look at the average ratings of each book on each system. This is simply because my time is limited; I’ve looked at around 200 books here, and am satisfied that the raw measure of penetration of the two systems gives a fair idea of how far they have percolated into the community and the wider public.
I didn’t look at Best Artwork, Best Short Fiction or Best Short Non-Fiction for this exercise; I assumed that none of the nominees in those categories would have been separately registered on LT or GR.
In the Best Audiobook category (strictly, Best Original Audio Fiction), there are 11 works on the longlist. Only one of them (The Downloaded, by Robert J. Sawyer) is owned by anyone of LibraryThing, and only two (The Downloaded, again, and The Dex Legacy by Emily Inkpen) have been rated by anyone on Goodreads. This is less than I would have expected; audiobook listeners are as assiduous about logging their consumption as are print or screen readers. I’m also disappointed not to see any of Big Finish’s output here; I can’t believe that I’m the only Big Finish fan who is also a BSFA voter (but I must admit that I myself did not actually get around to nominating).
The Best Fiction for Younger Readers long list has only 8 nominees, which is not very long. This is a bit surprising as that list has been reasonably well populated in the past. The 8 nominees, and the LT / GR rankings, are:
| Title | Author | LT | GR |
| Spellbound | F.T. Lukens | 177 | 5312 |
| The Library of Broken Worlds | Alaya Dawn Johnson | 60 | 134 |
| A Song of Salvation | Alechia Dow | 23 | 216 |
| Mindbreaker | Kate Dylan | 12 | 194 |
| City of Vicious Night | Claire Winn | 6 | 176 |
| We Who Are Forged In Fire | Kate Murray | 2 | 50 |
| The Inn at the Amethyst Lantern | J Dianne Dotson | 1 | 15 |
| Vivi Conway and the Sword of Legend | Lizzie Huxley Jones | 0 | 59 |
There’s obviously a strong leader here. Also, I am really puzzled as to how the last book on the list has managed to pick up as many as 59 Goodreads ratings, without a single LibraryThing user acquiring it. It also seems to be selling well enough on Amazon. It may be that the author has made a bit of a push on GR, but I’m not sure if it’s such a good platform for YA marketing.
There are 29 long-listees for Best Shorter Fiction (there are 30 works on the official long list itself, but one has been listed twice). Five of them have not been published in standalone format and so the comparison with LT/GR stats isn’t really fair, but I list them below for completeness.
| Title | Author | LT | GR |
| The Scourge Between Stars | Ness Brown | 130 | 2836 |
| Rose/House | Arkady Martine | 82 | 1366 |
| And Put Away Childish Things | Adrian Tchakovsky | 44 | 1068 |
| Emergent Properties | Aimee Ogden | 53 | 527 |
| The Navigating Fox | Christopher Rowe | 42 | 458 |
| Hamlet – Prince of Robots | M. Darusha Wehm | 18 | 144 |
| The Iron Children | Rebecca Fraimow | 12 | 79 |
| Pluralities | Avi Silver | 7 | 83 |
| I am AI | Ai Jiang | 3 | 161 |
| The Midas Rain | Adam Roberts | 5 | 51 |
| A Necessary Chaos | Brent Lambert | 6 | 34 |
| The Book of Gaheris | Kari Sperring | 15 | 10 |
| To The Woman in the Pink Hat | LaToya Jordan | 4 | 27 |
| Europa | Allen Stroud | 2 | 36 |
| Miasma | Jess Hyslop | 2 | 27 |
| Telling the Bees | Emma Leadey | 6 | 6 |
| Broken Paradise | Eugen Bacon | 3 | 5 |
| Hero’s Choice | Merc Fenn Wolfmoor | 2 | 6 |
| Off Time Jive | A.Z. Louise | 2 | 1 |
| The Panharmonion Chronicles | Henry Chebaane | 0 | 26 |
| A Feast for Flies | Leigh Harlen | 0 | 8 |
| The Lies We Tell Ourselves | L K Kitney | 0 | 6 |
| Little Nothing | Dee Holloway | 0 | 5 |
| Where the God-Knives Tread | A.L. Goldfuss | 1 | 0 |
| Axiom of Dreams | Arula Ratnakar | ||
| Defective | Peter Watts | ||
| Land of The Awaiting Birth | Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki & Joshua Uchenna Omenga. | ||
| The Window in the Forest | Seán Padraic Birnie | ||
| Undulation | Stephen Embleton | ||
Again some strong leaders, one in particular, but the figures here are probably less meaningful than in the other categories because of the difference in place of publication.
There are 24 long-listees for Best Non-Fiction (Long).
| Title | Author | LT | GR |
| A City on Mars | Kelly and Zach Weinersmith | 160 | 1116 |
| Wish I Was Here | M John Harrison | 41 | 117 |
| I Am the Law | Michael Molcher | 12 | 109 |
| We’re Falling Through Space | J. David Reed | 2 | 83 |
| Realms of Imagination: Essays from the Wide Worlds of Fantasy | Tanya Kirk and Matthew Sangster | 13 | 6 |
| Spec Fic for Newbies: A Beginner’s Guide to Writing Subgenres of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror | Tiffani Angus and Val Nolan | 7 | 11 |
| The Weird Tales Boys | Stephen Jones | 8 | 9 |
| Selected Nonfiction 1962-2007 J.G.. Ballard | Editor Mark Blacklock | 8 | 5 |
| David Whitaker in an Exciting Adventure in Television | Simon Guerrier | 4 | 5 |
| All These Worlds | Niall Harrison | 4 | 4 |
| A Traveller in Time: The Critical Practice of Maureen Kincaid Speller | Nina Allan, editor | 2 | 6 |
| Science Fiction Cinema in the Twenty-First Century: Transnational Futures | Cosmopolitan Concerns | 3 | 3 |
| Writing the Future edited | Dan Coxon and Richard V. Hirst | 4 | 2 |
| Ex Marginalia: Essays on Writing Speculative Fiction by Persons of Color | Chinelo Onwualu | 1 | 7 |
| An Introduction to Fantasy | Matthew Sangster | 2 | 2 |
| Fear of Seeing: A Poetics of Chinese Science Fiction | Mingwei Song | 1 | 1 |
| The Expanse Expanded | Jamie Woodcock | 1 | 1 |
| Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea | Timothy S Miller | 1 | 1 |
| Destination Time Travel | Steve Nallon & Dick Fiddy | 0 | 3 |
| The Historical Dictionary of Fantasy Literature | Allen Stroud | 0 | 1 |
| Follow Me: Religion in Fantasy and Science Fiction | Francesca T Barbini | 1 | 0 |
| Blake’s 7 Production Diary Series A | Jonathan Helm | 0 | 0 |
| Corroding the Now: Poetry + Science|SF | Francis Gene Rowe, Stephen Mooney, Richard Parker | 0 | 0 |
| The Female Man: Eastercon talk | Farah Mendlesohn | ||
Once again, a very clear leader, but it’s striking how little penetration a lot of these have had. One of them is a lecture, so not surprisingly it has no owners on LT or GR. One has nobody rating it on GR, two have no owners on LT, and two more draw a blank on both. I guess that most SF fans read much more fiction rather than critique; I know I do.
I also think it would be helpful to know to what extent the administration of the awards is kept separate from the BSFA Committee; the Hugos make an explicit statement on this.
I feel the most uncomfortable about the Best Collection category, which is new this year. There are 51 nominees and 14 of them, more than a quarter, have no LibraryThing owners at all; four of those have nobody rating them on Goodreads either.
| Title | Author/Editor | LT | GR |
| Never Whistle at Night | Shane Hawk, Theodore C Van Alst Jr | 236 | 4591 |
| Hit Parade of Tears | Izumi Suzuki | 60 | 888 |
| Ten Planets | Yuri Herrera | 46 | 550 |
| No One Will Come Back For Us | Premee Mohamed | 38 | 255 |
| Drinking From Graveyard Wells | Yvette Ndlovu | 20 | 159 |
| Jewel Box | E. Lily Yu | 17 | 135 |
| New Suns 2 | Nisi Shawl | 29 | 72 |
| The Inconsolables | Michael Wehunt | 11 | 139 |
| Multiverses: An Anthology of Alternate Realities | Preston Grassman | 16 | 86 |
| A Taste of Darkness | Various | 6 | 160 |
| Gunflower | Laura Jean McKay | 10 | 75 |
| Jackal, Jackal | Tobi Ogundiran | 9 | 69 |
| You Are My Sunshine | Octavia Cade | 11 | 51 |
| The Dead Man and Other Stories | Gene Wolf | 19 | 27 |
| The Wolfe at the Door | Gene Wolfe | 13 | 34 |
| Worlds Long Lost | Christopher Ruocchio | 6 | 51 |
| Promise | Christi Nogle | 7 | 43 |
| Best of British Science Fiction 2022 | Donna Scott | 19 | 15 |
| The Skin Thief | Suzan Palumbo | 4 | 50 |
| The Shadow Galaxy | J Dianne Dotson | 3 | 34 |
| Caged Ocean Dub | Dare Segun Falowo | 8 | 11 |
| Read, Scream, Repeat | Jennifer Killick | 1 | 71 |
| Between Dystopias: The Road to Afropantheology | Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, Joshua Uchenna Omenga | 3 | 23 |
| Like Smoke Like Light | Yukimi Ogawa | 4 | 16 |
| Strange Attractors | Jaine Fenn | 10 | 4 |
| Judge Dredd: The Darkest Judge (graphic novel – collection of linked strips) | Various | 1 | 27 |
| Luminescent Machinations | Rhiannon Rasmussen and dave ring | 3 | 9 |
| Bioluminescent: A Lunarpunk Anthology | Justine Norton-Kerston | 2 | 10 |
| Rosalind’s Siblings: Fiction and Poetry Celebrating Scientists of Marginalized Genders | Bogi Takács | 3 | 6 |
| Embroidered Worlds | Valya Dudycz Lupescu, Olha Brylova, and Iryna Pasko | 12 | 1 |
| Eclectic Dreams: A Milford Anthology | Various | 2 | 5 |
| Infinite Constellations: An Anthology of Identity Culture and Speculative Conjunctions | Khadijah Queen and Kiini Ibura Salaam | 2 | 4 |
| Writing the Future | Dan Coxon and Richard V. Hirst | 4 | 2 |
| Where Rivers Go To Die | Dilman Dila | 1 | 5 |
| Michael Butterworth – Complete Poems 1965-2020 | Michael Butterworth | 2 | 2 |
| Rhapsody of the Spheres | Juliana Rew | 2 | 2 |
| Mothersound: The Sauútiverse Anthology | Edited by Wole Talabi | 2 | 1 |
| Have You Seen the Moon Tonight? & Other Rumors | Jonathan Louis Duckworth | 0 | 11 |
| Best of World SF: Volume 3 | Lavie Tidhar | 0 | 6 |
| Extracting Humanity | Stephen Oram | 0 | 5 |
| Fighting for the Future: Cyberpunk and Solarpunk Tales | Phoebe Wagner | 0 | 5 |
| Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction 2022 | Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, Eugen Bacon, Milton Davis | 0 | 4 |
| Twelve All in Dread: The Twelfth Witch and Other Stories | Juliana Rew | 0 | 4 |
| Wolves and Girls | Maria Haskins | 0 | 4 |
| Languages of Water | Editor, Eugen Bacon | 0 | 3 |
| Indie YA Bites | Various | 0 | 2 |
| Guerrilla Mural of A Siren Song | Ernest Hogan | 0 | 1 |
| Beyond Between | David Viner | 0 | 0 |
| Corroding the Now | Francis Gene-Rowe, Stephen Mooney and Richard Parker | 0 | 0 |
| Dark Stars: Sci-Fi Horror Drabbles | Eric Fomley | 0 | 0 |
| Simultaneous Times Vol.3 | Jean-Paul L. Garnier | 0 | 0 |
I don’t really know how useful a long-list of such length can be, when it includes so many candidates who have little traction. I appreciate that awards can call attention to otherwise overlooked work, but a) I’m not convinced that an award decided by popular vote, as the BSFA and Hugo Awards are, is the best vehicle for doing that and b) this is best done with a short list, not a long list!
Also a little surprised to note a couple of crossovers with Best Collection, but maybe the shortlisting process will sort that out.
Finally, Best Novel. This long list is very long, at 65 nominees. Only two have slipped past LibraryThing users, and all of them have been rated by at least a couple of Goodreads users. So it’s relatively robust, though with a couple of crossovers with Best Shorter Fiction which again presumably the shortlisting will sort out. There’s certainly some attractive titles here, and indeed two books that I have actually read, unlike any of the other categories. 65 is shorter than last year’s 68, or the previous year’s 74; it’s still very long though.
| Title | Author | LT | GR |
| Yellowface | R.F. Kuang | 1571 | 306112 |
| Starling House | Alix E Harrow | 797 | 46020 |
| The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi | Shannon Chakraborty | 969 | 32188 |
| Starter Villain | John Scalzi | 604 | 24312 |
| Witch King | Martha Wells | 786 | 12949 |
| Translation State | Ann Leckie | 385 | 7137 |
| The Narrow Road Between Desires | Patrick Rothfuss | 254 | 9817 |
| Some Desperate Glory | Emily Tesh | 412 | 5807 |
| The Sinister Booksellers of Bath | Garth Nix | 302 | 4476 |
| The Future | Naomi Alderman | 208 | 6112 |
| Lords of Uncreation | Adrian Tchaikovsky | 154 | 7437 |
| Mimicking of Known Successes | Malka Older | 260 | 4082 |
| Bridge | Lauren Beukes | 86 | 11231 |
| Titanium Noir | Nick Harkaway | 200 | 4319 |
| Infinity Gate | M.R. Carey | 184 | 3429 |
| In Ascension | Martin MacInnes | 155 | 3022 |
| Dragonfall | L R Lam | 183 | 2314 |
| Sleep No More | Seanan McGuire | 122 | 2525 |
| The First Bright Thing | R. Dawson | 151 | 2031 |
| Malevolent Seven | Sebastien de Castell | 102 | 2855 |
| The Water Outlaws | S.L. Huang | 168 | 1393 |
| Julia | Sandra Newman | 122 | 1717 |
| Perilous Times | Thomas D Lee | 142 | 1438 |
| The Surviving Sky | Kritika H. Rao | 111 | 1266 |
| Season of Skulls | Charles Stross | 101 | 1324 |
| The Archive Undying | Emma Mieko Camden | 126 | 1011 |
| The Saint of Bright Doors | Vajra Chandrasekera | 136 | 931 |
| Rose/House | Arkady Martine | 82 | 1366 |
| Gods of the Wyrdwood | R J Barker | 82 | 1035 |
| The Death I Gave Him | Em X. Liu | 68 | 1142 |
| The Space Between Us | Doug Johnstone | 40 | 1729 |
| These Burning Stars | Bethany Jacobs | 75 | 755 |
| Orbital | Samantha Harvey | 61 | 790 |
| A Market of Dreams and Destiny | Trip Gailey | 48 | 523 |
| The Valkyrie | Kate Heartfield | 41 | 595 |
| Hopeland | Ian McDonald | 68 | 319 |
| More Perfect | Temi Oh | 47 | 383 |
| Descendant Machine | Gareth L. Powell | 29 | 591 |
| The Fractured Dark | Megan E. O’Keefe | 26 | 644 |
| Shigidi And The Brass Head Of Obalufon | Wole Talabi | 49 | 329 |
| The Circumference of the World | Lavie Tidhar | 40 | 284 |
| Frontier | Grace Curtis | 13 | 835 |
| Cahokia Jazz | Frances Spufford | 46 | 226 |
| The Infinite | Ada Hoffmann | 20 | 232 |
| The Master of Samar | Melissa Scott | 23 | 164 |
| Talonsister | Jen Williams | 17 | 202 |
| Airside | Christopher Priest | 22 | 128 |
| Conquest | Nina Allan | 24 | 114 |
| Hel’s Eight | Stark Holborn | 17 | 148 |
| The Green Man’s Quarry | Juliet McKenna | 11 | 157 |
| HIM | Geoff Ryman | 18 | 89 |
| A Woman of the Sword | Anna Smith Spark | 14 | 114 |
| Creation Node | Stephen Baxter | 13 | 119 |
| Warrior of the Wind | Suyi Davies Okungbowa | 11 | 120 |
| A Second Chance For Yesterday | R.A. Sinn | 10 | 113 |
| One | Eve Smith | 3 | 212 |
| Refractions | MV Melcer | 7 | 89 |
| Lamb | Matt Hill | 3 | 73 |
| Mother Sea | Lorraine Wilson | 1 | 46 |
| The Pollutant Speaks | Alex Cochran | 3 | 11 |
| All the Hollow of the Sky | Kit Whitfield | 2 | 15 |
| The Disinformation War | SJ Groenewegen | 2 | 5 |
| Inkbloom | E.D.E. Bell | 3 | 2 |
| Prompt Excursion | Lewis S Kingston | 0 | 11 |
| The Red Hairband | Catherine Greene | 0 | 3 |
One of the two books I have read from this list is Yellowface by R.F. Kuang, which is way out in front of the field with more Goodreads ratings than the other 64 combined and a smaller but still substantial lead on LibraryThing. I really don’t think that Yellowface is SF; it’s very much rooted in the present day, with no innovations of technology or weird magical stuff (the narrator has a couple of visions of a dead friend, but puts them down to stress). It’s not even about SF; the narrator writes a fantasy novel, but it’s a less important thread of the plot. I think that the BSFA Awards have missed a trick by not nominating Kuang previously; I think that she’s a great writer; and I think that Yellowface is an excellent book. But if it does get shortlisted, I won’t be voting for it, because I think that the BSFA Award for Best Novel should go to a work of SF.
(The other book I’ve read is The Future, by Naomi Alderman, which I also enjoyed.)
Doing all of this has been displacement activity as I eagerly anticipate the release of the nomination stats from last year’s Chengdu Worldcon; however I have to go out shortly for the rest of the evening, so my usual analysis will be tomorrow at the earliest.
Second paragraph of third chapter (a very long ‘un):
‘Look after Zoë for me,’ he had said the night before he went, which really was a funny way round. After all, who was the stepmother? But sh couldn’t imagine him saying, ‘Look after Clary for me.’ She rather doubted whether Zoe had ever been asked to look after anybody. It might be a good idea to give an only medium-demanding animal for her next birthday to get her started on looking after something – or else her baby was in for a rather rotten time. (Of course, it was Ellen who really looked after all of them.) At Sports Day at his school, Neville had even pretended he hardly knew her. ‘You’ve hurt her feelings, you fool,’ Clary had hissed at Neville when they were meant to be getting plates of strawberries for the grown-ups in the tea tent. ‘Well, she hurt mine wearing that silly fur fox round her neck. If you ak me, that’s what feelings are for,’ he added while he skilfully transferred some better strawberries to the plate he had chosen. He had grown a lot, but his front teeth looked far too large for him and he had spent a lot of the Christmas holidays up trees that Lydia was afraid to climb. He didn’t seem to make any great friends at his school and he loathed games. His asthma was much better, but the night before Dad went, he quarrelled with everyone, drank what Emily said was the best part of her bottle of cooking sherry, unpacked his father’s suitcase, threw everything into the bath and turned on both taps. Dad found him and they had a sort of fight but in the end he was crying so much that Dad just carried him off to his room and they spent a long time alone together. He had asthma all that night, and Ellen stayed up with him because Dad had to be with Zoë because she was so upset. took after Nev, won’t you,’ he’d said to Clary next morning. ‘He kept saying last night that now he’d have nobody, and I kept telling him he had you.’ He’d looked so grey and tired, that she couldn’t say how much she minded his going, couldn’t say, ‘And who do you think I’ll have?’ or anything selfish like that because she could see that some kinds of love simply wore him out, so she just made her face smile and said ‘Yes, I will.’ He smiled back at her and said, ‘That’s my Clary,’ and asked her to come to the station with him. ‘Zoë doesn’t feel up to it,’ he said. Neville had gone to school as usual, and Tonbridge had driven them to Battle; she’d waited on the platform with Dad with nothing left to say and the train coming in was a relief. ‘Don’t wear any of those wet vests,’ she’d said as the most grown-up thing she could think of, at the end. ‘No, no. I’ll make His Majesty dry them for me personally,’ he’d said, bent to kiss her and got onto the train. He waved until he was out of sight and she’d walked slowly back to the car where Tonbridge was waiting, and got into the back and sat stiffly upright. Once, she saw Tonbridge looking at her in the driving mirror, and in Battle he stopped and went into a shop and came out with a bar of milk chocolate which he gave her, and although she loathed milk chocolate, this was a considerable kindness. She started to thank him and then had to pretend that she had a bad cough. He drove her back to Home Place without talking, but when she got out of the car, he said, ‘You’re a little soldier, you are,’ and smiled, so that she could see his black tooth next to his gold one.
I’m very much enjoying Howard’s Cazalet books, so much so that I’ve promoted them into a to-read list of their own for the New Year. Marking Time is the second of the series, set a year after the first, and concentrating very much on three teenage Cazalet girls, whose fathers are brothers. But it’s now war time – the book starts in September 1939 and ends with Pearl Harbour in December 1941, so it covers a long and crucial period of the girls’ lives; Louise, an aspiring actress, whose father is abusive; Clary, an aspiring writer, whose father goes missing after Dunkirk; and sensitive Polly, whose mother is very ill though nobody will admit it. Between the lines (and not only there) is a thoughtful reflection on the roles of women in English society of the time.
The cast of characters is huge – the family tree at the start lists eighteen living Cazalet relatives, and there are a half dozen more who get at least some viewpoint time – lovers, servants, in-laws. But Howard keeps them all under control, and although we know that parts of this are based on her own life, it doesn’t come across didactically. There is a minor twist at the end of the book which made me gasp, but in any case I would have been impatient for the next instalment; some very tempting plot lines have been set up. I’ll get to it soon enough! Meanwhile you can get Marking Time here.
I should say also that I am hugely enjoying the BBC Radio 4 dramatisation from 2012-2014, narrated by Penelope Wilton (Prime Minister Harriet Jones in Doctor Who). But annoyingly when I clicked through to the relevant page on the BBC website I got a couple of big spoilers for later volumes in the series, so I should have stuck with the audiobook on its own. You can get all twelve and a half hours here.
This was my top unread book by a woman and my top unread non-genre book. Both of those lists have now been drastically inflated by Christmas presents, and the next on each are Babel, by R.F. Huang, and Yellowface, also by R.F. Huang. But I’ve split off the Cazalets into their own stream.
Second paragraph of third chapter:
Even in retreat. Chased by the chuff and crack of a line of French muskets.
This is an Eighth Doctor novel which I read back in 2015, at a time when I was slacking on my bookblogging and didn’t get around to writing it up. I came back to it last month because part of it is set in the year 2024 in Russia, where the Doctor’s companion Fitz Kreiner finds himself isolated while the Doctor and the other companion Trix McMillan zoom off to the year 5000 and to 1812 respectively. To be honest there is little here to differentiate the Russia of 2024 from the Russia of 2002 when the book was written, and if it weren’t for the back cover explicitly mentioning 2024 you would tend to think it was set in or very soon after the year of publication. I’m afraid I was not terribly excited by the plot, with a McGuffin and a time-travelling entity looking for it, but there are some pleasing references to Magnus Greel from The Talons of Weng-Chiang. You can get it here.
Second paragraph of third chapter:
School became a large part of the world to me, absorbing my time and interest, and I never acquired that detailed and intimate knowledge of Penge and the hilly villadom round about, that I have of the town and outskirts of Bromstead.
I’m gradually working my way through the novels of H.G. Wells, from the most famous to the most obscure, and am now about half-way. This is one of his longer works, whose protagonist emerges from the heart of the middle classes to a Cambridge education, election as a young Liberal MP in the 1906 landslide, and then defects to the Conservatives as a radical new thinker, and also abandons his long-suffering wife for a younger and keener admirer. That last bit, if not the rest, is very clearly drawn from Wells’ own experience, and the emotional passages are poignantly drawn, even if we can’t always sympathise much with the choices made by Wells’ hero.
The political parts, however, are crashingly dull in places; the world has moved on a lot from the hot topics of political debate in 1910, and I can’t believe that Wells’ writing on this was a really attractive feature of the book when it first came out. Of the political issues that we do remember from that time, the suffragette movement is mentioned only as background colour, and Ireland not at all. Wells may perhaps have been hoping to shift the political debate with his fiction, but contemporary reaction seems to have concentrated on the scandalous sex in this novel. (Which as usual is discreetly off-stage.) There’s also a frankly nasty portrait of Beatrice and Sydney Webb, which must have annoyed their many mutual friends.
You can get it here. Next in my sequence of Wells reading is The Wheels of Chance.
Second paragraph of third section:
‘Nila? Nila!’
A very short story submitted to the 2020 Hugo packet by Jonathan Strahan as part of his contribution for Best Editor, Short Form. A vivid vignette of a soldier defending her position, protecting exiled AI’s on Titan. I guess my only complaint is that it is very short indeed. It’s a pity that Tidhar has not written any more in this setting. (So far.) But you can get it here.
