1000 Years of Annoying The French by Stephen Clarke

 Reviewed by Susan Price

I came across this book in the bathroom of my esteemed colleague

1000 Years of Annoying The French - Clarke

and fellow Author Electric, Karen Bush, while I was staying with her and the whippets.          I dipped into it and found it so amusing and interesting that I bought my own e-copy.

We have been, we are, and I trust we always will be, detested by the French. - Duke of Wellington.

          It is full of hints and tips on how to annoy the French - and some account of how they have succeeded in annoying us.

The English, by nature, always want to fight their neighbours for no reason... From the Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris, written during the Hundred Years War.

          The thousand years begins, of course, with 1066, the only memorable date in English history, as any fule kno. Stephen Clarke immediately destroys the French's sad illusion that they were the last foreigner to successfully invade us. They weren't - and anyway, the Normans weren't French, they were Vikings, and we already had plenty of them.
          For a thousand years, Stephen Clarke is always amusing and very often surprising - I had no idea that French Canadians had such a long history of oppression, mostly by the French. Nor that the Cajuns of the American South are descended from those same troubled French Canadians, who it seems were never allowed to rest in any place very long.
          I was also enlightened on the matter of De Gaulle and why he seemed to be so heartily disliked by all my relatives who had lived through the war. I've never taken much interest in the war that immediately preceded my lifetime and had supposed that De Gaulle was disliked simply because he was French and pursued France's interests - as was his business. Clarke's book made me think that there may have been other reasons. For one, the man was an idiot. (That should be annoying.)
          Clarke's also keen to tell us that champagne and the guillotine were both invented by the English, and that all French wine is, in fact, American.
          Clarke is obviously fluent in French and knowledgable about their customs and history, but I did sometimes get the impression - whether he intended it or not - that he genuinely disliked them and was happy to encourage us to annoy them.
          I'm sure I'm wrong on this.
          But I'm happy to recommend this book - it's a good read and you end by knowing a lot more about Anglo-French history that you thought you were going to learn.

1000 Years of Annoying the French by Stephen Clarke

          Susan Price is the award winning writer of The Ghost Drum and The Sterkarm Handshake.
          Her website is here.
          Her latest book is The Drover's Dogs

It’s a long way home — from East to West across Scotland’s mountains and lochs.

      Sandy’s mother is desperate for money. So she ‘bonds’ ten-year-old Sandy to a wealthy farmer until he’s twenty-one.
      Sandy is miserable — bullied, ill-fed and beaten. He runs home, and is heart-broken when his mother makes him return, to another beating.
      So Sandy runs away, though he fears he will be caught and hung for breaking his bond. Alone, on the road, he longs for a safe, loving home.
      Then he falls in with friends: two drover dogs, making their way home, by themselves, to a distant croft.
Sandy decides to follow the dogs to wherever they belong. He dreams there will be a place by the fire for him too…

But when the dogs reach home, will Sandy be left outside, alone again?

         

My Heart is My Own: The Life of Mary Queen of Scots, by John Guy

Centuries after her execution, Mary Queen of Scots remains one of the most divisive and enigmatic figures in British history. Was she manipulated and betrayed by those around her? Or was she conniving, untrustworthy, and perhaps even a party to the murder of her own husband?

Those wanting to find out the truth (insofar as “the truth” can be recovered after so much time) could do far worse than to read John Guy’s scholarly, masterful biography. Guy presents Mary as a sympathetic, generous woman who was actually – for a short period, at least – also rather a shrewd political leader. The Scotland of which she was Queen was a divided place, torn apart by competing religious, political and familial factions. She lacked the support of a loyal nobility (one of the considerable advantages possessed by Queen Elizabeth, who is, of necessity, also a major presence in the book). She perhaps did well to hold the country together for as long as she did.

Where did it all go wrong for Mary? Perhaps it all began with her marriage to Darnley – a good husband from the vantage point of a monarch who wanted to bolster her claim to the English throne, but a disastrous one from a personal perspective. Darnley was selfish, scheming, and an inveterate plotter, and while Mary almost certainly had no direct involvement in his assassination – she actually stood to lose a great deal from his death – she could hardly have been expected to mourn the passing of a man who had proved such a disappointment to her.

It was, though, with her marriage to Bothwell that Mary’s tottering reign began to utterly crumble. Bothwell himself is presented as a more rounded figure than is usual – both rough and smooth, he could boast a French education and was charming when it suited him, but he also placed personal ambition far above his feelings for Mary. By marrying him, Mary hoped to unite her factious nobles; in fact, she just exacerbated the country’s internal divisions, and probably sealed her own doom.

Whatever Mary’s flaws and mistakes, however, she ultimately comes across as a warm-hearted, well-rounded woman who might – had things been just slightly different – have been a uniting, rather than a dividing, force. Her accomplishments are not glossed over: despite her personal commitment to Catholicism, she was tolerant of differing views (the same cannot always be said of her opponents, most notably the Protestant preacher John Knox). During her brief reign, she could on occasion be every bit as astute a politician as Elizabeth, which counters her usual image as a woman ruled by her heart rather than her head. Ultimately, though, this was a woman destroyed by in-fighting, political machinations, and the misogyny of her own times. Well worth a read for anyone interested in this most charismatic of monarchs, or in Scottish or British history in general.

Mad Sir Uchtred of the Hills reviewed by Cally Phillips

S.R.Crockett the 'Vanity Fair' celebrity 

Tomorrow  as you will most likely be completely unaware, is the 100^th anniversary of the death of author S.R.Crockett.  Some of us will be at the Laurieston memorial for 11am and then going off on a walk/picnic/outdoor ‘reading’ of his work – and those who survive will make their way further west to Wigtown for the publication ‘launch’ of The Galloway Collection, which brings Crockett’s Galloway based fiction (all 32 volumes) back into print in a commemorative edition.

So it seemed fitting to put up a review.  I’ve selected Volume 30 which is actually two of his shorter works;  ‘Mad Sir Uchtred of the Hills’ and  ‘The Play Actress.’  

Crockett was a prolific writer (the Galloway Collection only touches about half of his published output) and these two ‘shorts’ which were originally published in serial format and then as novellas, offer something of an insight into the variety of his work. Of course when someone has published over a 30 year career it can be hard to typify their work. With Crockett the underlying elements are History, Adventure and Romance (in various combinations).  You’d think that offered something for everyone then, but why is he no longer read?

Well, in order to be read it helps if your books are in print and people know you ever existed.  And if a weeks a long time in politics, a hundred years is a long time in publishing. Times change. Fashions change. Marketing strategies change.  Writers, yes, even great writers, fall by the wayside. And this is what has happened with Crockett.

Crockett was quite a ‘celebrity’ in the 1890’s – bursting onto the ‘scene’ in 1893 with ‘The Stickit Minister’ ( a collection of short stories from the previous 10 years he’d spent writing for magazines)  This was published by T.Fisher Unwin who was a champion of ‘new’ writers in the 1890’s.  Something obviously clicked, because in 1894 T.Fisher Unwin published Crockett a further 3 times.  ‘The Raiders’ is a smuggling/adventure/romance very much in the vein of R.L.Stevenson (who died in 1894 and who had a friendship by correspondence with S.R.Crockett) and is the one novel anyone who has heard of Crockett might have read.  But T.Fisher Unwin did what all publishers worth their salt do when they put their money behind a ‘new talent’ and in the same year published both ‘Mad Sir Uchtred’ and ‘The Playactress’ in separate editions – talk about flooding the market?! Crockett had already 'proved' himself in the popular magazine market but T.Fisher Unwin gave him the step up to the 6 shilling novel.  In 1894, Crockett was everywhere in the public consciousness – he was the ‘next best thing’  of the late 1890’s. It meant he could get out of a ‘safe’ but somewhat restrictive career as a minister and become a full time writer. Living the dream? He certainly had his day in the sun, but that sun has long set. A hundred years on I think it's time for a new dawn. And like T.Fisher Unwin, I've put my money (and more importantly my time) where my mouth is. 

Writers reading this will appreciate the years that go into becoming an overnight success and will not be surprised that a writer could turn out 4 books in one year. Remember Ian Banks/ Iain M.Banks? And there are numbers of other writers who use pseudonyms when their output is either prodigious or cross genre.  So Crockett’s ‘stats’ are not that unusual. It is true that Crockett was a prolific writer and in the 20 years from his first success in 1894 to his death in 1914 he managed on average 2-3 publications a year.  He loved to write, was a natural storyteller and he of course had bills to pay. He generally wrote one Galloway (or Scottish) based novel (or collection/short stories) a year and one ‘European’ based novel.  His output might seem prodigious but it’s worth remembering that he had a ‘bank’ of writing from the 1880’s to draw from. Yes he worked hard, and yes he worked fast. And yes he wrote to order – he got his ‘break’ and he made the most of it – and yes he wrote in a style that is not ‘fashionable’ today but none of these are reasons NOT to read him.  I come to praise Crockett, not to bury him.

I believe there are a huge number of people who will enjoy reading Crockett’s fiction and the difficulty is in trying to find a place for them to start.  I won’t say that ‘Mad Sir Uchtred of the Hills’ or ‘The Play Actress’ are paradigm examples of his work but they offer a view of the range and, since they are early career works, the promise of what was to come. As such, they are a good place to ‘dip a toe’ into the Crockett stream.

Without more ado:

‘Mad Sir Uchtred of the Hills’ is short and shocking. Originally serialised in a popular magazine in 3 episodes it offers, in its thirteen chapters, a Gothic style story set in Covenanting Times. This in itself is intriguing.  The basic story is of Sir Uchtred who is cursed by a Covenanting Minister (Alexander Renfield.) We are swiftly taken into a world of allegory and symbolism (though you can ignore all this and simply read the fast paced and gruesome story) The curse is that of King Nebuchadnezzar  - which sees him cast out as a beast on the hills.  Crockett’s great strength in writing was his power of natural description and ‘Mad Sir Uchtred’ opens our eyes to this in an immediate fashion but the heavily laden symbolism of the popinjay and the wounded white mountain hare, ensure that for those who want to read a little deeper than the blood and guts and madness, there is much food for thought.

In Crockett’s day there was a furore about his title character’s name. And charges of plagiarism. For the T.Fisher Unwin edition he offers an ‘advertisement’ which points out that the character is not based on William McDowall of Garthland.  It is fiction not fact. The contemporary ‘dispute’ illustrates something that was to dog Crockett all his career – arguments over the nature of ‘historical fiction.’  It was a relatively ‘new’ thing in the 1890’s and Crockett could certainly be credited with an involvement in the emerging ‘genre’ of historical fiction.  Thus reading Crockett is of great interest both to  those who like historical fiction and those who are interested in the development of historical fiction. 

Crockett stated that he wrote ‘Mad Sir Uchtred’ complete in one sitting, on waking from a dream, and it certainly has that nightmare, chaotic quality one would expect from such a work.  Shades perhaps of Coleridge’s ‘dream’ poem Kubla Khan – but in prose form.  While not thoroughly typical of Crockett’s historical or adventure writing, it is a good place to start an exploration of the writer – if you like to be gripped and hurled along a story from beginning to end.

The new Collection, published April 16.

In ‘The Galloway Collection’ edition ‘Mad Sir Uchtred’ is followed by the other ‘short’ work published in 1894 by Unwin’ ‘The Play Actress.’  This is on the surface a completely different kettle of fish.  The obvious  biblical analogy it is that of the prodigal son (daughter or even grand-daughter in this case) but it is a contemporary story which travels between the rural world of Galloway and the urban poverty of London.  As  an author, Crockett writes about social history but is also himself a part of a social history. Another good reason to read him. 

Gilbert Rutherford is preaching locally and at the end of the service a woman dressed in black brings him a grand-daughter (Ailie) he never knew of. This is the child of his now deceased son which Bessie (the child’s aunt) has taken from her dissolute mother (the dead son’s wish)and brought to be reared by his grandfather.  This presents Gilbert with all sorts of emotional and practical challenges.  He does not shirk his duty but he also determines to challenge his prejudices and, once Ailie is set up happily in Galloway, he travels to London to find out what is behind this ‘story’  and deal with the family issues. He is drawn into what he has always believed is the immoral world of the theatre and finds himself both facing the reality of urban poverty, and challenging his views of ‘goodness.’   This is an urban reality we might recognise from a Dickens novel and is every bit as good.  Crockett developed this story theme several times in his later work (most notably in ‘The Moss Troopers’ where he considers the ‘evils’ of London and in ‘Sandy’s Love’ where he delves into ‘the theatre’ and London life once again.)

So, with ‘Mad Sir Uchtred’ and ‘The Playactress’ the reader has the opportunity to see Crockett’s take on history, adventure and romance and hopefully the two short stories will whet the modern  reader’s appetite for more. The good news is that now there are plenty of Crockett novels to choose from in ebook and paperback format.

You can buy The Galloway Collection ebooks direct from the publisher HERE and paperbacks (as well as Kindle ebooks) are available from Amazon.   If you want to find out more about S.R.Crockett (and why wouldn’t you?) you can join The Galloway Raiders – a free online society founded  on the 100^th anniversary of his death to bring him back to life at least in the only form of immortality currently available – fiction.  If you join The Galloway Raiders this week there are special deals on ebooks and you could have read ‘Mad Sir Uchtred’ and ‘the Playactress’ by the time everyone is gathered at the memorial to pay their own tribute.  You may become a fan. You’ll certainly have found a whole new library of books to read. Let’s hope it’s a long, hot summer. 

Reviews of Wolf Hall and Bring Out The Bodies: Hilary Mantel

Reviewed by Susan Price

'Wolf Hall' by Hilary Mantel

          ‘Wolf Hall’ and 'Bring Up The Bodies', by Hilary Mantel hardly need my tin whistle to pipe their praise; but I’m going to toot anyway - and at greater than usual length - because at the time of writing there are no other books I want to praise so much.

          I downloaded Wolf Hall to my kindle and there it sat, for two months.  I’d heard rumours that it was good, but, well – it was about Tudor politics and Anne Boleyn.  I’d been there before.  Besides, wasn’t it written in the present tense?  I’d read other things in that tense and been dismayed by their clumsiness.

          But from the moment I started Wolf Hall, I was away with Thomas Cromwell.

          Now, I’m a hardened reader.  This makes me difficult to please.  I realise that most of the time I read with a commentary going on at the back of my mind: ‘I’d change that word; I’d cut that; I’d rewrite that sentence; I don’t think that character would do that…’

          I realise this because, while I engulfed Wolf Hall, this commentary was silent.  Mantel’s writing is effortless, beautiful, expert.  I questioned nothing.

          I experienced that pleasure which is quite rare for me these days – the hankering for a book and its world.  I was always eager to get back to it.  I often clicked back a few pages to read a passage again, simply because it was so beautiful. When I saw from the bar at the bottom of the kindle page that the end was close, I rationed my reading, to make it last.

          The moment I finished Wolf Hall, I clicked through to the kindle store and downloaded Bring Up The Bodies.  It was every bit as good.

          We are promised a third book – at the end of which Cromwell, presumably, will get it in the neck.  I bite my nails.  Why didn’t I wait until the third was published, and then I could have read all of them, one after another?

Thomas Cromwell

          When I think of Mantel’s achievement with these books, I am awed.  First, the research.  I faint in coils at the thought of the reading necessary to amass such detail of social manners, clothing, furnishing, politics, religious schisms, climate, and the hullaballoo of daily life in the early 1500s.

          But then, to pluck from all that only the few details she needs: and nothing more.

          A biography would have taken no more research – and Mantel goes beyond that.  She fictionalises it all: which means she dresses in the facts, goes inside them and recreates Cromwell from the inside – and every scene he takes part in.  Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, Thomas Moore, Cramner – we see, hear and understand all of them as Thomas Cromwell sees, hears and understands them.  We see the countryside, feel its cold and damp, its warm summer days.  We smell the stinks of the streets, the perfume of spices, we witness executions… It is all completely convincing and absorbing, and the amount of thought, concentration, imagining, rewriting and sheer hard work this represents is heroic.

          But more still.  The prose is beautiful.  Its cadences slide through your mind like silk, until some sharp point purposely sticks you like a hidden needle.  Words are worked.  Why is the book called Wolf Hall? Because the family seat of Jane Seymour is called ‘Wolf Hall.’   Not a single scene is set there, but we are directed, ironically, to Anne Boleyn’s downfall even at the time of her greatest triumph.

          Also, ‘men are wolves to men’, and these aristocrats, within whose orbit Cromwell finds himself, are those very wolves: murdering for their own political advantage and selling their daughters.

          Bring Up The Bodies famously opens with Cromwell hunting, with birds named after his own, dead, daughters.  ‘His children are falling from the sky… each with a blood-filled gaze… Her breast is gore-streaked and flesh clings to her claws…These dead women, their bones long sunk in London clay, are now transmigrated.  Weightless, they glide on the upper currents of the air.  They pity no one… When they look down they see nothing but their prey… they see a flittering, flinching universe, a universe filled with their dinner.’

          This reminds us of the family Cromwell mourns: but is also the world-view of the people for whom he works.  It is possibly the view of Cromwell himself.  It’s even, possibly, the view of the dead, and of God, who has gathered them to Himself.  (And although I have severely trimmed the above quote, the beauty of the prose, its lovely rhythms, survives.)

          The book is far from what I half-feared: another trot through Tudor history, as made familiar by many romantic novels and television series. This Anne Boleyn is no romantic heroine, no damsel in distress: she is sharp as a knife, intelligent, relentlessly calculating and self-interested.  After all, look at the family she came from and her upbringing. 

'Bring Up The Bodies' by Hilary Mantel

          Her brother, George, is a spoiled, self-regarding, nasty little ****.  Mantel even suggests that the incest charge may not have been the trumpery most accounts assume it was.  Anne and George Boleyn were reared apart, hardly meeting before adulthood, and siblings today who meet only as adults often feel a powerful erotic attraction.  And Anne was desperate for a son, the only thing that would maintain her position, while George was desperate to maintain his position as the king's brother-in-law.

          Mantel’s Thomas Moore is not saintly, but a vain, self-centred man who makes a pet of one daughter, while routinely insulting the others and his wife.  His urbane manner masks a furious hatred of anyone who dares to understand God other than as Moore does.  The only good Protestant is a dead, burned one.

          It's Cromwell who is usually portrayed as ruthless and brutal, even if intelligent and talented.  Mantel makes him a humorous, compassionate man, whose wide-ranging life and enquiring intelligence have given him vast experience and knowledge, together with a sharp insight into the nature and motives of others.  This enables him to outplay them in the Tudor court’s lethal political chess games.

          His violent, neglectful childhood has made him sympathetic to the poor and abandoned.  Large numbers of the poor are fed from his kitchens every day while his house is full of orphans and apprentices, who flourish in his care.  Mantel gives him a dry, dead-pan wit, and makes him loveable.

          He is also ruthless, when required, and vengeful.  He sees himself as a man who has a job to do, with the tools available.  Politics as the art of the possible.

          But if he can spare somebody’s life, he will; and he considers that, despite his deep dislike of the man, he gave Moore every chance to evade the death sentence.  It was Moore’s own obstinate insistence on being right that saw him executed.

           If it’s not possible to do the job without a death, then Cromwell will ensure that the scaffold is erected in time and the straw spread to soak up the blood, before returning to his loving household and dogs.

          Is this a truthful representation of Cromwell, or of the other historical personages?  Who knows?  Mantel herself says that she offers her books as one possible interpretation of the facts.  The books read almost as an illustration of the truth that we can never fully understand other people.  We can observe what they do, and what they say, but when we try to deduce, from these observations, their thoughts and emotions, all we can do is make an interpretation, filtered through our own emotions, thoughts and experience.  It may be accurate, or wildly inaccurate, but we will never know which.

          And people change.  It may be that the books offer Cromwell’s own interpretation of himself – a good guy really, despite all he’s done.  We all put the best possible spin on ourselves.  I think there are hints, towards the end of Bring Up The Bodies that Cromwell’s good-guy self-image is faltering – another reason why I look forward keenly to the third book.

          I read one review of Wolf Hall which began, ‘I hesitate to use the word ‘masterpiece’…’
          Well, I refuse to use the word, ‘masterpiece.’  These books are by a Mistress: in short, works ‘in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language."
____________________________________________________

Susan Price

Susan Price is the award winning author of 'The Ghost Drum' and 'The Sterkarm Handshake.'

Her website is here
Her blog can be found here
She is also a member of the Authors Electric blog.

Review of 'The Fool's Girl' by Celia Rees

'The Fool's Girl' by Celia Rees

          ‘Have you seen a country under sack?  Have you seen what happens there?  Have you seen the blood, heard the screaming, smelt the smoke on the wind?... I saw the red flash of the guns, the white smoke, felt walls shudder.  I saw tall galleys spew fire that spread over the decks in a blazing carpet, turning men into torches…’

                   From ‘The Fool’s Girl’ by Celia Rees

          Celia Rees, has long had a reputation for writing the best ‘girls’ own adventure stories’ around.  I highly recommend her ‘Witch Child,’ and its sequel, ‘Sorceress’; her exciting ‘Pirates!’  and ‘Sovay’.

          When I heard that her latest, ‘The Fool’s Girl’, was set during Elizabeth I’s reign, I was keen to read it.  That’s the opening passage above.  I was under its spell from the first line.

Celia Rees

          Like ‘Pirates’, like ‘Sovay’, and her other books, it’s an exciting adventure – such a page-turner that you hardly notice how firmly it’s based on solid research, and how deftly that research is used in creating a sense of place and atmosphere without ever distracting you from the story.  I much admired, for instance, the way journey the players make from London to Stratford was handled – the villages passed through that are now merely names of stations on the tube, the sights mentioned – the ford, the old bridge.  But, while this reminds us how much our country has changed, and makes us see the countryside of the 16^th century, it’s also entirely natural that the characters would notice these things.  They’re making their way without road-signs or maps or sat-navs  – they have to find their way by travelling from landmark to landmark.

          And the book has writing like this: 

          ‘I would see the great ship founder… I saw bodies floating, arms outstretched, hands and faces livid in the blackness. My mother was among them… her dress billowing, her hair flowing about her, moving like the weed in the harbour.  She hung there, suspended between brightness and darkness… Then she pushed upwards, making for the shifting glimmer above her, her head breaking the surface like a sleek seal…

          She rose from the water… coming out of the waves like some mysterious mer-creature… Behind her, day had become night.  The storm raged and between sky and water there was no margin, only inky blackness.  Then a single flash of lightening forked from the firmament, stitching heaven and earth together, and she stood illuminated by the sudden violent brightness…’

          This beautiful image of floating between brightness and darkness, of rising from the depths, reoccurs through the book, like the lapping of waves on a shore.  There are other echoes too, from many of Shakespeare’s plays: from The Tempest, Macbeth, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Henry IV, and doubtless many I didn’t spot.

          But what particularly charmed me about this book is that it isn’t, I don’t think, the historical novel I supposed it to be.  Or, not simply an historical novel.  It’s alternative history.  Or, perhaps, fantasy history.

          The heroine, Violetta, is the daughter of Viola, of Twelfth Night: the duchess of that land which, famously, didn’t have a sea-coast for her mother to be shipwrecked on.  Yet, in The Fool’s Girl, it does, and Viola existed outside the play.  As did Orsino, Malvolio, Feste and all the rest.

          The book is a lovely conceit, wherein witches are matter-of-factly known to light fires and celebrate pagan festivals on the Warwickshire hills, and Shakespeare can ensure Violetta’s safety by handing her over to his own village’s black and midnight hags, with whom he’s on first-name terms.

          Not content with that, Celia Rees’ imagination takes another, bolder leap – the witches hide Violetta by taking her to a place that all lovers of folk-lore will recognise as Elf-Land, or Tir-nan-Og.

          In fact, it’s just possible that the whole book takes place in Shakespeare’s head: diving in and out of the seething muddle of images, plots, snatches of dialogue and half-dreams that exist in many writers’ heads.

          I was also quite delighted to find a swashbuckling character named after my grandfather – George Price – though Granddad never buckled a swash in his life.  But even without Granddad, this would still be a gripping, romantic (in all senses) and beautifully written book.