Second paragraph of third chapter:

On arriving I had switched out the lights, lit the sconces over the bed-sofa—that little dark Eros and Psyche between them— and taken two more candles to the chimneypiece across the room. There came a time in the exchange of certainty that was our conversation when this even penumbra grew unsettled, began to shake and curiously brighten. A flame on the mantelpiece, burning low, had arrived at the corner of a sheet of paper, which evidently had fallen forward against the wax. It was the drawing of a temple I had designed, and now a ripple of fire was flowing unevenly downwards across it—in the first surprise it was as if the room had quietly ignited of its own accord. The drawing had become symbolic of the hour, and for a moment I hesitated between saving the symbol, and letting it consume away like our misery.

I came across this book in rather an odd way. One of the distant cousins who I have got to know through my genealogical research told me that there is a family connection to actor and poet Jill Furse, whose marriage to glass engraver and writer Lawrence Whistler is the subject of this book. There is indeed a connection but it is pretty convoluted; her grandfather‘s second wife‘s first husband‘s first cousin married my great-aunt.

It’s a beautiful portrait of a relationship, cut short by her death five years into their marriage, at the age of 29, shortly after the birth of their second child. Her health was generally weak – Whistler thinks in retrospect that she had lupus, which was much more dangerous in the 1940s than it is today – but even so her death was sudden and unexpected. In their time together they had shared the delights of parenthood, but also the tragedy of a house fire in which they lost most of their possessions. At the end he was separated from her by the war, and several of their close friends (including Lawrence’s brother Rex) died in the conflict. All bereavements are tragic, and this is an eloquent description of a couple who expected many years together, but had only a few.

This was the shortest book that I had acquired in 2022 and not yet read (apart from Doctor Who comics). Next on that pile is Science Fiction: Voyage to the Edge of Imagination, edited by Glyn Morgan. You can get The Initials in the Heart here.

Second paragraph of third essay (“Command of Kosovo Force 1999” by Mike [sic] Jackson):

In early 1997 I found myself commanding the Allied Command Europe Rapid Reaction Corps, or ARRC, in Reindahlen, Germany. Its headquarters is under operational command of the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR), and I therefore reported directly to General Wesley ‘Wes’ Clark. In May 1998, at SACEUR’s annual conference, Clark told his key subordinates: ‘things are beginning to hot up in Kosovo, NATO may have to intervene.’

A provocative title for an interesting book, a series of essays by senior British military officers and historians, partly about recent (in 2013) campaigns, but also reflecting on the place of knowledge and knowledge management in military structures and strategy. I have an odd connection with one of the editors, Sir Hew Strachan, which is that back in 1991, when his wife Pamela was a candidate for Cambridge City Council, I was her election agent. They have since moved to Scotland, and she has got ordained.

There is one frankly terrible essay here, but the other twenty-five are at least interesting and some are fascinating. For me personally the most interesting single piece was the second, by Sir Alistair Irwin, reflecting on the British Army’s role in Northern Ireland: “at no stage from start to finish was there anything that recognisably had the features of a campaign plan. I confess that I went through a stage of believing that this was a fatal and incompetent omission. Now I begin to believe that the circumstances were such that it was never possible to have one.”

All of the essays reflect on the importance of the political dimension of military operations, both in terms of political guidance from Whitehall which is clear without micro-managing, and also in terms of sensitivity to the facts on the ground and managing relations with local populations. I found it a lot more grown-up than some of the American analysis that I have been looking at recently. The military (or at least these military writers) recognise that the deployment of troops is normally only a part of solving a wider political problem, which will need to be solved by political means.

More than a third of the essays are about the Basra campaign in Iraq, where the consensus of the contributors is very defensive of the alleged successes of the Brits on the ground (the Chilcot report was a lot more damning). I must say that after reading a fourth essay how the British were really not humiliated by the locals, I was less rather than more convinced. About a quarter of the essays were similarly about the Helmand campaign in Afghanistan, which was obviously failing by 2013 though had not yet come to its catastrophic conclusion, and there even the most optimistic writers found it difficult to be upbeat. But the point made in both cases is that the problems faced by the military on the ground stemmed from political direction (or lack of it) given from London.

There is also some more cheerful analysis of Kosovo and Sierra Leone – the latter generally forgotten now because it was a short and successful operation. But the end of the book comes back to reflect on the British military’s approach to knowledge and learning, as well as its relationship to politics, in a much more reflective mode than I would have (perhaps unfairly) expected.

One of the more interesting works of military analysis that I have read recently, honest about the fact that there are shortcomings, if not always completely clear about what they are.

You can get British Generals in Blair’s Wars here (for a price).

Second paragraph of third chapter:

‘Does it involve rubbish?’ Lamb asked.

We thoroughly binged all of the TV series of Slow Horses at the end of last year, and I managed to score the complete set of books off eBay for a decent price and am now getting into them (having finished Rivers of London, another unusual Thamesbank-set law enforcement sequence).

The first novel is the one about far right goons who threaten to behead an Asian British kid live on the internet; our heroes, the rejects of the British secret service, are at the forefront of the battle to find the kidnappers and recuse the kid before it is all too late.

The TV show was pretty faithful to the book, which is tense and taut, with some fantastic characterisation, particularly of Jackson Lamb, played so memorably by Gary Oldman. Some of the plot twists are slightly different between page and screen, but the story is very recognisable, and some minor points are explained – for instance, why do Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas always meet at that bench by the canal?

Well worth getting hold of, even (especially?) if you haven’t seen the show. You can get Slow Horses here.

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Novels had ruined me by the age of sixteen, when Maman invited me into her salon and told me in a hushed and solemn manner, as if she were imparting to me my catechism, that she was arranging for me a mariage de raison with a wealthy sugar merchant from Tours. Instead of thanking her and being blushingly excited, as was proper, I merely said that I was honored by her consideration, but I would wait. I was waiting for true love, you see, for my novels had told me that it existed, somewhere. They had also given me a suspicion that maman’s arrangement had more to do with money and position and less to do with love—in fact, she hadn’t even used that word when she outlined for me my future happiness. My novels had also told me that true love rarely had an auspicious ending, but that seemed of little importance to me at the time.

For some reason, my post about William Wordsworth, Annette Vallon and their daughter Caroline is one of the most popular of this entire blog, regularly picking up more hits than anything of my more recent entries. I assume that it has hit some popular special interest resource and spiralled from there.

The facts about Annette Vallon’s life after she bore Wordsworth’s daughter are patchy, and leave a lot of room for imagination. Tipton has put together an exciting tale where she not only helps her Royalist family escape murderous revolutionaries, but she becomes a chouanne, one of the guerillas waging armed resistance against the Republic in the northwest of France, and has many exciting adventure and narrow escapes.

I am sure that this is wishful thinking. I also suspect that when Wordsworth finally met up with her and their daughter Caroline in 1802, Annette already knew that Wordsworth was planning to marry Mary Hutchinson a few weeks later, but Tipton has used story-teller’s privilege to make it as dramatic as necessary for the narrative he wants to tell.

Still, a charming enough combination of wishful thinking with historical events. You can get Annette Vallon here.

This was my top book acquired in 2023 and the non-genre novel that had lingered longest on my unread selves. Next in those sequences are Last Exit, by Max Gladstone, and The Bonfire of the Vanities, by Tom Wolfe. The latter will have to wait until I have completed my 2023 pile (and I have not yet finished 2022).

Second paragraph of third chapter:

All day he stood by the priest while the flames were fed on the altars, in the midst of the respectful army, and Menelaus stood beside him–the two kings without a rival, now that Achilles was gone. At dusk they let the offerings burn down and smoulder, the soldiers kindled supper-fires, and the priest said the omens so far were good.

This was the best-selling book in the USA in 1926, a hundred years ago, so I got hold of it and read it (as previously for the best-selling books of 1909, 1910, 1911, 1912, 1913, 1916, 1917, 1921, and 1925). It’s a bit of a gem – almost entirely told in dialogue, with very little description of the scenery, Helen has nonchalantly returned home with Menelaus after the war and is confronted with the emotional resentment of their daughter Hermione, who sees her mother’s scandalous behaviour as the root of all her problems, but incidentally is in love with her cousin Orestes, who starts killing people (notably his mother, Helen’s sister Clytemnestra) in the last part of the book.

Despite the grim storyline, it’s actually rather funny, with Helen bringing 1920s sensibilities to a dark mythic past. It’s anachronistic, but one can totally see her quipping to her relatives and associates over her cigarette-holder. And her message is one of empowerment: she is unashamed of her love affair with Paris; it didn’t work out, so she is back with Menelaus. She is then challenged to apply the same standards to Hermione, and to another young woman in her household who becomes pregnant, but in the end succeeds in doing so, and we cheer for her. Menelaus (and his doorkeeper Eteoneus who provides an alternative old-fashioned viewpoint) are left confused by her confidence. Rather an interesting find.

You can buy The Private Life of Helen of Troy here, but I got it from Project Gutenberg Australia.