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.