april-may 2024 books…

Maigret Stonewalled (Georges Simenon): I like the Maigret character – although I think this is only the fourth Maigret mystery I’ve read (first published in 1931). On the face of it, it appears to be a simple enough case… a commercial traveller killed in a hotel bedroom on the Loire and yet Maigret senses that things aren’t quite as they appear. It transpires that, for the best part of 18 years, the victim had led an elaborate double life… until a man emerges demanding money. The plot is quite complicated (I lost my way a few times!) and involves, among other things, a reversal of identity and much ingenuity. An enjoyable, entertaining read.
Big Caesars and Little Caesars (Ferdinand Mount): For two years, Mount was head of Margaret Thatcher’s think-tank/Number 10’s Policy Unit… so I took on this book with somewhat mixed feelings. But the preface immediately reassured me: “The world seems to be full of self-proclaimed Strong Men strutting their stuff, or waiting in the wings… How can these uncouth figures with their funny hair, their rude manners and their bad jokes take such a hold on the popular imagination?”. It’s a fascinating, intelligent, “wry field guide to autocrats” (as The Guardian’s Rachael Cooke puts it) covering a whole host of ‘Caesars’ – from Julius Caesar, Oliver Cromwell, Napoleon, Bolivar, Mussolini, Salazar, De Gaulle, Indira Gandhi to the likes of Trump and Johnson. He’s particularly damning about Trump and Johnson - although he doesn’t regard them as being so exceptional as we might imagine. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I found these sections the most interesting (but also pretty alarming… especially the likely prospect of a Trump second term). Mount leaves the reader with a sense that although Johnson has gone (we think), we need to keep our eyes peeled for others just like him already waiting in the wings. It’s a sobering book from a very experienced and knowledgeable political journalist. I found it quite compelling.  
A Postillion Struck By Lightning (Dirk Bogarde): This is the first volume of Bogarde’s autography (first published in 1977). I first read this book in 1990 and went on to read volumes 2+3… I enjoyed them all enormously and thought it was about time I re-visited it (after 34 years!!). It’s a beautifully-written book, full of funny, sad anecdotes and charm… evoking his idyllic Sussex childhood, his tough and lonely initiation into the harsher realities at a Glasgow technical school and the early days as an aspiring artist (the book contains a lot of his ‘scribbles’) and then as an actor up until he goes to Hollywood. Second time around, I found it a rather lovely, funny and nostalgic read… (although I admit to getting a little bored by some his early childhood recollections). I think I need to re-read volume 2+3 again.
The State Of Us (Jon Snow): Jon Snow is something of a hero of mine (AND he and I gathered coal together from the coal cellar each morning in 1990 when we were both staying in apartments at Ardtornish in the western highlands! I KNOW!!)(somewhat ridiculously, I noticed that I’d added a note in the Bogarde book explaining that I read it while on holiday at Ardtornish!!). This is a book of his reflections on the life of the nation over the past five decades. I found it a rather wonderful, honest book. His father was a bishop and he had a public school education at a choral school (he’s somewhat embarrassed by this and highly critical of what he regards the “privileged arrogance” arising from a public school background). Remarkably, he admits to not knowing anybody who was state-educated until he went to Scarborough Tech (and from there he went on to a short-lived degree experience at Liverpool Uni – he was kicked out for demonstrating against Apartheid). He admits to being far from academic (his A-Level grades were C, D and E) and clearly had some ‘good breaks’ early in his journalistic career. He’s passionate about inequality and multi-culturalism… and these passions extend to the appalling background to the Grenfell Tower tragedy, Brexit, unfairness and injustice and the beauty of Iran. In his time, he interviewed every prime minister since Thatcher (about whom, perhaps surprisingly, he is complimentary – unlike the likes of Mr Johnson!). I found it a really compelling, encouraging and optimistic story about our society. I highly recommend it to you!
The Queen's Gambit (Walter Tevis): This book, first published in 1983, is our next Storysmith bookgroup book… based on a sporting theme (chess was selected!). We used to play chess at the end of term at school and other pupils were always keen to play me – essentially because they knew they could beat me! Essentially, it’s about an 8-year-old American girl in an orphanage who is taught to play chess by the school’s janitor and ends up (spoiler alert: with some ‘issues’ on the way!) forging a new life for herself by progressing to the top of the US chess rankings… and beyond. A novel about chess is not my ideal kind of book (although I’m now something of an expert on opening playing strategies – Albion Counter Gambit, Queen’s Gambit, Sicilian etc etc!)… and yet I found this to be something of a compelling page-turner. My only real reservations relate to the somewhat too-good-to-be-true, rags-to-riches fantasy of it all. An enjoyable read nevertheless.

that they may face the rising sun…

I went along to the Watershed again this afternoon to watch Pat Collins’ film “That They May Face The Rising Sun”… based on John McGahern’s final novel (which I’ve yet to read – but I HAVE read and loved four of McGahern’s other books).
The film captures a year in the life of a rural, lakeside community in late 1970s Ireland.
Joe (Barry Ward) and Kate (Anna Bederke) have returned from London to live and work in a small, close-knit community in a remote lakeside setting in rural Ireland, close to where Joe grew up. He’s a writer and she’s an artist who retains part ownership of a London gallery. Can the harsh, simple farming life (shoehorned into their writer/artist lives) sustain them?
The film rather beautifully explores their lives (and those of their neighbours) and the rituals of work, play, community bonds and the passing seasons.
The Irish scenery is stunning (of course) and I loved the accompanying simple piano music/sounds of nature. The additional characters – Lalor Roddy (Patrick), Sean McGinley (Johnny), Phillip Dolan (Jamesie), Ruth McCabe (Mary), John Olohan (The Shah) and Brandan Conroy (Bill) are all rather wonderfully played.
I very much enjoyed the film – I thought the pace was beautifully apt… and somewhat similar to my experiences of reading McGahern’s impressive books.

polling day: ID required (and other political devices)...

I’m currently reading Ferdinand Mount’s book “Big Caesars and Little Caesars” (“how they rise and fall – from Julius Caesar to Boris Johnson”). As a former editor of ‘The Spectator’ and head of Margaret Thatcher’s think-tank, rest assured that he’s no liberal-lefty!!
It’s a fascinating book and well worth reading if you are ‘politically inclined’(!)…
But, with local elections taking place tomorrow (2 May), I thought his comments about the need for the electorate to produce photographic ID at the polling stations in order to cast their votes were timely reminders of one of the ways we’re being manipulated by the Conservative government - just one of five measures* he highlights (apologies for quoting at such length, but I think it’s important):
“Voter suppression:  
But of course in order to exercise power in this exuberant style, the Tories have to acquire power and hang on to it. The first priority is to win the upcoming general election, and prepare for the election after that. What is the best method of improving your chances? First, to adjust the boundaries of the constituencies to maximise the impact of your votes... Then, not only to encourage your voters to turn out by every possible means, but also to discourage the potential voters for the other side, either by preventing them from registering on the electoral roll or to make it difficult for them to cast their votes – so-called ‘voter suppression’. Thirdly, most flagrantly, by stuffing the ballot boxes with votes by people who don’t exist or have already voted or are not qualified to vote…
British general elections… have been remarkably free and fair for a long time – ever since voter personation and other dodges were finally eliminated in Northern Ireland. There has been no substantial evidence of fraud at any recent general elections. Yet the Tories’ 2019 election manifesto included this pledge: ‘We will protect the integrity of our democracy by introducing voter identification to vote at polling stations, stopping postal vote harvesting and measures to prevent any foreign interference with elections’.
All this, now contained in the Elections Act, is an egregious solution to a non-existent problem. It can have one purpose only: to suppress the votes of the poorer and less organised voters who are less likely to possess photo ID. When voter ID was made mandatory in Northern Ireland in 2002, the number of voters on the new register dropped by 120,000 or 10 per cent. This suspicion is confirmed by a second pledge, to make it easier for British expats to vote in parliamentary elections, expiates being plausibly thought far more likely to vote Tory, just as the worst off are more likely to vote Labour. Thus one set of voters whose fortunes do not depend on the actions of the UK is to be encouraged, while a far larger number of voters who do depend – often desperately – on what the British government does or does not do for them is to be discouraged. It is hard to imagine a more flagrant strategy to rig the result. It may be that as holding voter ID becomes more universal over the years, the adverse effect will diminish. But what is clear is that the MOTIVE behind the Elections Bill is to secure party advantage under the cloak of fairness.”
Believe me, I COULD have quoted far more extensively on this and other related subjects (eg. Trump and Johnson don’t emerge in Mount’s book in anything like a ‘good light’!).
Be afraid. Be very afraid!
PS: * The other measures Mount refers to (arising out of the Conservative manifesto for the  2019 general election) relate to the following: ‘Dissolving Parliament’; ‘Sacking MPs’; ‘Sacking civil servants’ and ‘Taming the judges’.