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Sunday, December 20, 2020

Review: The Princess Spy by Larry Loftis

Synopsis: When Aline Griffith was born in a quiet suburban New York hamlet, no one had any idea that she would go on to live “a life of glamour and danger that Ingrid Bergman only played at in Notorious” (Time). 

As the US enters the Second World War, the young college graduate is desperate to aid in the war effort, but no one is interested in a bright-eyed young woman whose only career experience is modeling clothes.

Aline’s life changes when, at a dinner party, she meets a man named Frank Ryan and reveals how desperately she wants to do her part for her country. Within a few weeks, he helps her join the Office of Strategic Services—forerunner of the CIA. With a code name and expert training under her belt, she is sent to Spain to be a coder, but is soon given the additional assignment of infiltrating the upper echelons of society, mingling with high-ranking officials, diplomats, and titled Europeans, any of whom could be an enemy agent. Against this glamorous backdrop of galas and dinner parties, she recruits sub-agents and engages in deep-cover espionage to counter Nazi tactics in Madrid.

Even after marrying the Count of Romanones, one of the wealthiest men in Spain, Aline secretly continues her covert activities, being given special assignments when abroad that would benefit from her impeccable pedigree and social connections.

Filled with twists, romance, and plenty of white-knuckled adventures fit for a James Bond film, The Princess Spy brings to vivid life the dazzling adventures of a remarkable American woman who risked everything to serve her country. 



For me, this was cosy-espionage, a new term I am applying to works on espionage where there is not really a lot of espionage substance.

One cannot take away from Aline that work that she did for the USA whilst she was based in neutral Spain - she was a coder and a field agent of sorts; she underwent the training before being handed a cover story and assigned a task.  Yes, anyone caught spying in Spain was at risk of being arrested, imprisoned and deported - but all, including the Nazi, were on the same playing field. However, the risks associated with her work are a far cry from those who were air-dropped behind enemy lines and were at risk of being captured by the Nazi and executed.

Much of Aline's "work" was social - meeting and mingling with society notables to gain access to any information that might come her way.  The odd bits of derring-do come in the form of being tailed by "associates" of a jealous boyfriend (a bull-fighter of renown) and a short spell of imprisonment.  Her work was carried out in the last year or so of the war in Europe - and with the surrender of the Germans, her work - for all intents and purposes - was over.


By this time, she was more or less ensconced in Spanish society and being courted by a Spanish prince.  Though she claims she wants to do her part, one finds that Aline was more interested in the social aspects that this covert work provided her - so much so she quits to marry her prince.

We are only told that during her marriage that she was working for the CIA - but there are no details that are indeed forthcoming to really give credence to this theory.  Her latter years could be taken from the covers of the gossip columns.

" ... Aline had perfected the art of gathering and keeping friends, weaving them together in a tapestry that spanned from Madrid to Paris to New York to Hollywood ..."

The author himself lets us know quite early on that even he was unsure if her story was even true, and that numerous events in her memoirs are indeed highly imagined. The constant adjustments to her narrative in her own books did not help matters in her favour.  

I would not class her as a war heroine along the lines of say a Nancy Wake, Odette Sansom, Noor Inayat Khan or even Violette Szabo, but one cannot discount that fact that she did serve her country in some capacity (more of a Bletchley Park type role).  I did appreciate the wrap up of the main characters at the end - it is always to see where they ended up after the war.

This is a very readable story of a small town girl, who went from model to spy to novelist to celebrity all in one incredible lifetime.

Review: the Rise and Fall of a Medieval Family: The Despensers by Kathryn Warner

Synopsis: The Despensers were a baronial English family who rose to great prominence in the reign of Edward II (1307-27) when Hugh Despenser the Younger became the king's chamberlain, favourite and perhaps lover. He and his father Hugh the Elder wielded great influence, and Hugh the Younger's greed and tyranny brought down a king for the first time in English history and almost destroyed his own family. 
Rise and Fall tells the story of the ups and downs of this fascinating family from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, when three Despenser lords were beheaded and two fell in battle. We begin with Hugh the Justiciar, who died rebelling against King Henry III and his son in 1265, and end with Thomas Despenser, summarily beheaded in 1400 after attempting to free a deposed Richard II, and Thomas's posthumous daughter Isabella, a countess twice over and the grandmother of Richard III's queen.

From the medieval version of Prime Ministers to the (possible) lovers of monarchs, the aristocratic Despenser family wielded great power in medieval England. Drawing on the popular intrigue and infamy of the Despenser clan, Kathryn Warner's book traces the lives of the most notorious, powerful and influential members of this patrician family over a 200 year span.


This for me is a hard review to write and I have literally left it unwritten for sometime after reading this book.

On the one hand, writing about one of England's most despised medieval families, in a favourable light, but still warts and all, is no simple task. Documenting the families' politically activities over a mere 200 years again is no walk in the park.

What I took away from this book was that the Despencers were always closely connected with the reigning royal family of the day - and they maintained their support of the royal line through thick and thin. They did not shy away from political or military service, and gladly served their monarch. The Despencers were also, I think a rather closely knit familial group - for the most part, barring a few renegade members from lesser branches. They supported each other - they had each others' backs. And they accumulated wealth - great wealth, some of it centralised in the hands of a few, but from my understanding, even the lesser branches were doing much better than some of the more powerful nobles of the day.

This is obviously a very well researched and documented book - Warner is noted for her focus on the reign of Edward II and all that which is associated with it. And she is at ease her with her subject matter. Which brings up my next point.

For me, this felt like a genealogical dump. So much was focused on who married who, who inherited what, who took what from whom, that the narrative of the "rise and fall" was somewhat lost - its thin threads are in there but they are quite fragile. In fact, after looking at some of the reviews, I was worried I was the only one who felt the story was lost amid the overwhelming amount of genealogical data. 

When composing this review, what I did, in essence, was put myself in the shoes of someone who was maybe just starting out their own journey of discovery of the era. I imagine them looking at the spine of the book on the shelf, picking up the book, admiring the cover, reading the blurb, maybe reading the intro. What worries me is if they skip the intro and dive right in to be confronted by page after page of whom begat whom (which I can get chapter and verse from Genesis). Then, the book is quietly returned to the shelf and passed by for something more user-friendly.

Writing a two hundred year history of an important family and binding it all together with the contemporaneous events is no slight feat. It is hard to know what to include but more importantly, what to exclude. Just because you have all of this information to hand, doesn't mean it has to be included. Whilst the book does include family trees and a list of who's who for each chapter, I think the focus should have been more concentrated on those (few) who were responsible for the rise and the ultimate fall of this great family.  Afterall, in the great scheme of things, political power and influence was only held by a few. I just wanted a bit more meat on the bone - a bit more of an analysis of events and the impact of the actions undertaken by certain members.  

Alternately, it could have be written in two parts - maybe the first part concentrating on the political history, and then the second part on the more detailed genealogical discussion (for the purist). Anyone is is avidly interested in this period and has done their due diligence will certainly pick this up for their own collection. 

Friday, December 18, 2020

Review: The Viking Woman of Birka by David K Mullaly

Synopsis: Asa was a young woman who avenged a personal assault, was forced to become a warrior and leader during her family’s travels, and ultimately became responsible for defending Birka, one of the great Viking trade centers. This actual Norse woman made her mark during a violent time.

A Viking burial found on the Swedish island of Birka, identified as Bj.581, contained what was recently identified as the remains of a woman warrior and leader. What was found there confirmed that she was female and presented herself as such. Testing also suggested that she traveled a lot when she was young. What we cannot know for sure is how she grew into the role which typically was filled by men in the Norse culture.

This story is a riveting but plausible reconstruction of her life during a turbulent time in European and human history. It provides a realistic context based on our limited knowledge of the period, and creates a sequence of events which could have led to her becoming the extraordinary woman that she surely came to be.

Fans of the fiction of Bernard Cornwell, Robert Low, and James L. Nelson will appreciate this historical novel. Mullaly’s first two novels deal with a later period of Viking history.



Warrior Bj:581
In 2017, a research paper made waves by claiming that the remains of a supposed professional warrior found in a 10th-century grave in Birka, Sweden, could be female. The remains, originally unearthed in the 1880s by archaeologist Hjalmar Stolpe, had been long presumed to be those of a male warrior, due to their burial with weapons and other status symbols (a bag of gaming pieces (possibly to represent military command) and two horses, one bridled for riding). In the 1970s, an anatomical analysis of the bones suggested that they belonged to a female, and a 2016 analysis suggested the same thing (see: The Birka Warrior : the material culture of a martial society by Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson). 


Credit: Drawing by Þórhallur Þráinsson
Copyright Antiquity Publications Ltd

Despite (or in spite of) the intense scrutiny that this discovery was subjected to, genetic analysis in 2017 confirmed the warrior was indeed biologically female. Up until this point, the warrior interpretation was never challenged until the deceased was revealed to be a woman, the researchers noted. However, as one great (fictional) detective was wont to say: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?

And in fact, our lady from Birka is not the only known female warrior, as attested by the find of a grave in Solor, Norway (source: Viking Shield Maiden). 


About Birka
In the mid-700’s, a city was born on Björkö in Lake Mälaren named Birka, a location, which is commonly called Sweden’s first town. It is believed that it was the Swedish King who took the initiative to form the city as part of a desire to control the trade in northern Scandinavia, both politically and economically.

The Swedish King himself was living a few kilometers away , at a place called Hovgården on Adelsö. At that time it was the King’s duty to keep order in the city and protect it from being looted. - at the time of our story, this was King Ring, who was in turn succeeded by his sons Eric and Emund. He is also a bit of a shady character in that not much is know about him except from the sparse writings of Adam of Breman.

In its early medieval day, Birka was a thriving city and Sweden’s most important place for trade throughout northern Europe. The city had a perfect location because it was not only centrally located, but also well protected in the Baltic Sea. There is strong archaeological evidence to support the evidence of Birka's importance as a mercantile city. However, after only a few hundred years of existence, the settlement was abandoned. No one knows exactly why Birka, but it is posited that this was based either on political decisions or that Birka lost its strategic and easily accessible location through the land rise - no maritime access, no trade.


The author covers off some fascinating (and well researched) themes throughout the novel, including the focus on trade, for which the Vikings were also noted. In this instance, it is the journey to legendary Micklagard, that large and wealthy city, know today as Constantinople or Istanbul. The journey there was fraught with challenges and danger, which our characters experience. We also have the introduction of another great trading city, that of Dublin or as it would have been known, Dubh Linn the history of which is remarkable in it own telling.

Dubh Linn was - for our purposes - under the control of one Olaf Guthfrithson, who having succeeded his father as King of Dublin in 934,  a few years later allied with Constantine II of Scotland in an attempt to reclaim the Kingdom of Northumbria. The forces of Olaf and Constantine were defeated by the English led by Æthelstan at the legendary Battle of Brunanburh in 937.


What can I say about "The Viking Woman of Birka" by David Mullaly except that I literally could not put it down! It demands to be read in one sitting. Like Lagertha, Asa - the warrior woman of Birka - provides a different and unique look at the role of women in the Viking world, one which challenges the norms of both Viking society and our own. David certainly knows his stuff as his previous books will attest, and this well researched fictional account of the warrior found in Bj:581 certainly does her justice. 

Highly recommended.


Read more here @
Cambridge Journals - Viking warrior women? Reassessing Birka chamber grave Bj.581
Wiley Online Library - A female Viking warrior confirmed by genomics

Monday, December 14, 2020

The great era for spy novels ends with the death of John le Carre

‘‘When you enter the secret world and you are engaged in the intensive examination of your enemy, your opponent, you in a sense begin to know him and think about him not just as an opponent but some kind of secret sharer.’’

That was John le Carre, who has died at the age of 89, talking to The Age in 2001 about his own experiences with the British secret service before he embarked on his long and more successful career as a spy novelist and fierce critic of the hypocrisy and moral and political decline of his country – and, indeed, the west. He died of pneumonia on Sunday morning (Australian time) just as the British government was stumbling towards the final deadline for Brexit, a development he loathed.


In a sense how he defined his experience running agents in East Germany for MI6 determined the nature of his novels and particularly the three great Cold War novels featuring his best-known protagonist, George Smiley: there was a lot of talk, a lot of thought and a lot of smart people trying to get a handle on what the Soviet Union and its spymaster, Karla, were up to, and then outwit them. And, of course, they were frequently hindered by a traitor - a mole - in their midst.


read more here from The Sydney Morning Herald and John le Carre

Saturday, December 12, 2020

New book tells the story of a hardworking people in West Offaly

From the Offaly Express:
Veteran writer and local historian Brendan Ryan has just received the copies of his 12th book from the printers.  The book is called "On Gallen Green - The Story of a West Offaly Townland".

Brendan says the book had a modest beginning but then ballooned. "I started by writing an article on a townland that straddles both Ferbane and Cloghan parishes, for Offaly Heritage, but it grew legs and ended as a more than 200 page book." 

Brendan has written several very popular local history books over the last 35 years.  His first book was "The Green Fields - A History of Ferbane GAA", which was massively popular. His next book, printed in 1991, shone a light on the life and poetry of local man John M Doyle. The book was called "Where the Brosna Flows". In 1994 he published "A Land by the River of God - A History of Ferbane Parish". Last year he co-authored a book about Shannonbridge.

"On Gallen Green" is the story of a small townland (Gallen) in West Offaly, a townland that straddles two parishes, Cloghan and Ferbane. For the past three hundred years its economy was based on a thriving brickmaking industry, a labour-intensive enterprise, probably brought to the area by Cromwellian soldiers. The Grand Canal forms a focal point in the social life of the community.  "It is the story of a hard-working people," says Brendan, "a people who also know how to enjoy their recreations of football, dancing, music, singing and games."

Gallen has a Community School and the artifacts of a Celtic monastery and of a medieval Augustinian Priory. The book tells many interesting stories including how the Lord Lieutenant in Dublin Castle happened to send a silver snuff box to the parish priest of Ferbane in 1831; how two successive clerks of the Petty Sessions for King's County happened to live in Gallen View; and the times when the travelling theatres put on their shows in two local Gallen halls.

Brendan grew up in Dublin's north inner city. After graduating from UCG he taught for many years in Ferbane parish. Brendan is married to Cecilia MacNerney from Dromard, Longford and they have seven children.

A limited number of signed hardback copies of 'On Gallen Green' will be available, priced €20, in O’Callaghan’s Centra, Ferbane; Ferbane Post Office; Spar, Ferbane; Spar Express, Cloghan; and Offaly History Shop, Bury Quay, Tullamore. 

Copies of the book can also be ordered from the author at brendanryan@yahoo.com.

Fife professor's project to write first history of medieval Scots literature a 'dream come true'

A university professor from Fife is to write the first full-length history of medieval Scots literature as it developed in the then-independent kingdom of Scotland more than 600 years ago.

Professor Rhiannon Purdie, of the School of English at St Andrews University, has described the opportunity as “the dream come true” after being one of three academics to receive major research fellowships totalling almost £320,000 from the Leverhulme Trust.


The two-year appointment allow the professor to write the first concise history on the subject.

It will also involve her teaming up with Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) to reintroduce Older Scots poetry to the Higher and Advanced Higher English curriculum, in a project informally dubbed ‘Older Scots for Modern Scots’.

read more here @ The Courier

Wednesday, December 9, 2020

Review: A Time For Swords by Matthew Harrfy

Synopsis: Lindisfarne, AD793. There had been portents – famine, whirlwinds, lightning from clear skies, serpents seen flying through the air. But when the raiders came, no one was prepared. They came from the North, their dragon-prowed longships gliding out of the dawn mist as they descended on the kingdom's most sacred site.

It is 8th June AD793, and with the pillage of the monastery on Lindisfarne, the Viking Age has begun.  While his fellow monks flee before the Norse onslaught, one young novice stands his ground. He has been taught to turn the other cheek, but faced with the slaughter of his brothers and the pagan desecration of his church, forgiveness is impossible.

Hunlaf soon learns that there is a time for faith and prayer... and there is a time for swords.



Anglo Saxon England
Germanic tribal migrations into Britain began about the middle of the 5th century, and according to the 6th-century British writer Gildas, were invited by a British king to defend his kingdom against the Picts and Scots. Archaeology, however, suggests a more complex picture showing many tribal elements, contacts, revolts, use of mercenaries and local resistance.  By the end of the 7th century though divided into several kingdoms, there was a sense of "unity" that was eventually strengthened when all kingdoms south of the Humber acknowledged the overlordship of a single ruler, known as a bretwalda, a word first recorded in the 9th century.  The Christian Church provided another unifying influence, overriding political divisions, although it was not until 669 that the church in England acknowledged a single head.


Anglo Saxon Religion
The word pagan is a Latin term that was used by Christians in Anglo-Saxon England to designate non-Christians. There is no evidence that anyone living in Anglo-Saxon England ever described themselves as a "pagan" or understood there to be a singular religion, "paganism", that stood as a monolithic alternative to Christianity.  There was no neat, formalised account of Anglo-Saxon pagan system of worship, which focused around a belief in deities and  a variety of other supernatural entities which inhabited the landscape; and that there was clear diversity even among the pre-Christian belief systems.  Martin Carver stressed that in Anglo-Saxon England, neither paganism nor Christianity represented "homogenous intellectual positions or canons and practice"; instead, there was "considerable interdigitation" between the two.


Celtic Christianity
This was a term which broadly referred to certain features of Christianity that were common, or held to be common, across the Celtic-speaking world during the Early Middle Ages. Some writers have described a distinct Celtic Church uniting the Celtic peoples (of Cornwall,Man, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, northern England) and distinguishing them from the Roman Church, while others have classified it as simply a set of distinctive practices occurring in those areas ..... such practices being a distinctive system for determining the dating of Easter, a style of monastic tonsure, a unique system of penance, and the popularity of going into "exile for Christ".


Kingdom of Northumbria
The Anglo-Saxon countries of Bernicia and Deira were often in conflict before their eventual semi-permanent unification in 654. Political power in Deira was concentrated in the East Riding of Yorkshire, which included York, the North York Moors, and the Vale of York. The political heartlands of Bernicia were the areas around Bamburgh and Lindisfarne, Monkwearmouth and Jarrow, and in Cumbria, west of the Pennines in the area around Carlisle. The name that these two countries eventually united under, Northumbria, may have been coined by Bede and made popular through his Ecclesiastical History of the English People.

Æthelred I was the king of Northumbria from 774 to 779 and again from 790 until he was murdered in 796. His reigns were noted for the fierce rivalry for the throne, and the relative ease in which reigning monarchs has no compunction about removing rivals ... permanently. When Lindisfarne was sacked by the Vikings, Alcuin wrote letters to Æthelred, blaming the event on the sins of Æthelred and his nobility.


Lindisfarne Monastery
The Holy Island of Lindisfarne, commonly known as either Holy Island[ or Lindisfarne, is a tidal island off the northeast coast of England, which constitutes the civil parish of Holy Island in Northumberland. Holy Island has a recorded history from the 6th century AD; it was an important centre of Celtic Christianity under Saints Aidan of Lindisfarne, Cuthbert, Eadfrith of Lindisfarne and Eadberht of Lindisfarne.   Lindisfarne was also the home of the famous Gospels, thought to have been the work of Bishop Eadfrith (dc.721), and belived produced in honour of the great northern saint, Cuthbert.  In 875, after enduring eight decades of repeated Viking raids, the monks fled Lindisfarne, carrying the relics of Saint Cuthbert with them. It was post Norman conquest of England, that a priory was reestablished.


Raid on Lidisfarne
The earliest recorded planned Viking raid on Lindisfarne occurred  6 January 793 (source is the Anglo Saxon Chronicle):
A.D. 793. This year came dreadful fore-warnings over the land of the Northumbrians, terrifying the people most woefully: these were immense sheets of light rushing through the air, and whirlwinds, and fiery, dragons flying across the firmament. These tremendous tokens were soon followed by a great famine: and not long after, on the sixth day before the ides of January in the same year, the harrowing inroads of heathen men made lamentable havoc in the church of God in Holy-island, by rapine and slaughter. 

According to the 12th-century Anglo-Norman chronicler Symeon of Durham, the raiders killed the resident monks or threw them into the sea to drown or carried them away as slaves – along with some of the church treasures.
A.D. 794. ...... Ethelred, king of the Northumbrians, was slain by his own people ...... In the meantime, the heathen armies spread devastation among the Northumbrians, and plundered the monastery of King Everth at the mouth of the Wear [Jarrow]. There, however, some of their leaders were slain; and some of their ships also were shattered to pieces by the violence of the weather; many of the crew were drowned; and some, who escaped alive to the shore, were soon dispatched at the mouth of the river.
This represented one of the last raids on England for about 40 years. The Vikings focused instead on Ireland and Scotland.



This then is the world in which this coming of age / hero's journey adventure is set - 8th Century England or rather, Northumbria as the idea of a united England was still to come.  In this version of the hero's quest, a young monk, Hunlaf, struggles with his identity in the face of Viking incursions - is he " ... a warrior in the clothes of a monk ... ".  He even begins to question his religion, asking "... where was God when his flock had been violated and murdered? ...".

This is the first in a series, which the author himself says, pays homage to that great underdog film "The Magnificent Seven". Here we have a motley crew of warriors drawn from all corners of the Anglo-Saxon and Celtic world, who must pit themselves against the might of the Vikings.  Again, as in "The Magnificent Seven", each warrior much prove themselves worthy to join by feats of skill with the weapon of choice. And throughout, we follow the transition of the young, naive monk into a stout warrior.

The narrative is told in the first person of Hunlaf, who is looking back over his life, whilst penning what will become known as the Annals of Hunlaf of Ubbanford.

The Anglo-Saxon period is well known to Harffy, whose "Bernicia Chronicle" series is set in this time, so there is no doubt that he had on hand a dearth of information from which to craft his tale.

I am sure that readers of Bernard Cornwell, Edoardo Albert, Robert Low, Giles Kristian, Tim Hodkinson would enjoy this. And quite possibly fans of Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" or Umberto Eco's "Name of the Rose".


Tuesday, December 8, 2020

Review: The Second Life of Inspector Canessa by Roberto Perrone

Synopsis: Family secrets, terrorist plots and the return of a legendary cop: a ferociously paced noir thriller from one of Italy’s top crime writers, and the second book in Pushkin Press’s collaboration with Walter Presents.

Annibale Canessa didn’t want to go back to his old life. When everything went wrong in 1984, he traded his brutal, exciting career in the Carabinieri for paradise in San Fruttuoso. He started swimming in the bay at dawn and helping his elderly aunt run a small restaurant. His life was calm.

But some shattering news pulls him back in - his estranged brother has been found dead; lying beside him, the body of an ex-terrorist, a man Canessa himself caught. Back in Milan, Canessa must pursue old connections and unsolved crimes, which draw him ever deeper into the underworld he thought he’d left behind…



Loved it!

I am really getting into crime /detective /  thriller / noir fiction set outside of the standard locations of the UK and USA.  And this one by Perrone is no exception to the great books I have been reading.

The synopsis covers it all: retired cop returns to avenge the killing of his estranged brother and work out the link with acts of terrorism from thirty years previous, and hence the back and forth with the timeline.

We are introduced to a number of characters early on, and it is only as we slowly progress, does their relevance to the narrative become apparent (I kept a list to keep track!).  Many of these are not nice folks - and that is the aim of the author, I think, to provide varying shades of good and bad (and some downright evil), with which to demonstrate the blurred lines and vagaries of what is right and what is just.  Even Canessa himself reminds me of "Dirty Harry" - a no-nonsense, ultimately good guy, who believes that if you shake the tree hard enough, the rotten fruit will eventually fall.

As I mentioned, I loved it. For me, it had all the required elements: crime, mystery, history, passion, power, corruption, secrets, revenge, intriguing characters, action, resolution.


Review: The Battle of Hastings by Jim Bradbury

The Battle of Hastings: The Fall of the Anglo-Saxons and the Rise of the NormansSynopsis: The effects of the Battle of Hastings were deeply felt at the time, causing a lasting shift in British cultural identity and national pride. Jim Bradbury explores the full military background of the battle and investigates both what actually happened on that fateful day in 1066 and the role that the battle plays in the British national myth.

The Battle of Hastings starts by looking at the Normans-who they were, where they came from-and the career of William the Conqueror before 1066. Next, the narrative turns to the Saxons in England, and to Harold Godwineson, successor to Edward the Confessor, and his attempts to create unity in the divided kingdom. This provides the background to an examination of the military development of the two sides up to 1066, detailing differences in tactics, arms, and armor.

The core of the book is a move-by-move reconstruction of the battle itself, including the advance planning, the site, the composition of the two armies, and the use of archers, feigned retreats, and the death of Harold Godwineson.

In looking at the consequences of the battle, Jim Bradbury deals with the conquest of England and the ongoing resistance to the Normans. The effects of the conquest are also seen in the creation of castles and developments in feudalism, and in links with Normandy that revealed themselves particularly in church appointments.

This is the first time a military historian has attempted to make accessible to the general reader all that is known about the Battle of Hastings and to present as detailed a reconstruction as is possible. 


I have a couple of Jim Bradbury's books already - The Capetians: Kings of France 987-1328 and Stephen and Matilda: The Civil War of 1139-53 - so it was not hard for me to pick up this soon to be released new edition of his book, originally published back in 1998.

The synopsis really does cover off the narrative quite well so I won't go over that again. Suffice to say that much of the social and political scene of both pre-Conquest Normandy and Anglo-Saxon England is covered off; the composition of both armies discussed; and the sources for the battle analysed before we reach a very detailed chapter on the battle itself. Bradbury follows up with a look at the aftermath and consequences of the Norman victory for the people and nation of England.

I personally find his writing style to be clear and clean, the narrative consistent, whilst providing readers with a balanced understanding of events through the use of contemporary evidence. I would suggest that this would be a very good starting point for those just beginning their own journey into the Norman Conquest period - those of us who have read extensively on this subject may feel like they are experiencing deja vu.  However, I believe a keen student will always read widely on their chosen field - you never know what little nuggets may be thrown up.

What the reader will appreciate is the inclusion of maps and diagrams, and the accompanying genealogical trees of the main familial lines under discussion.

A great starting point which covers things off succinctly, whilst leaving the reader with some great resources to follow up on for their own journey.


Review: Hermine: An Empress In Exile by Moniek Bloks

Hermine: An Empress in Exile: The Untold Story of the Kaiser's Second Wife
Synopsis: Hermine Reuss of Greiz is perhaps better known as the second wife of the Kaiser (Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany) whom she married shortly after the death of his first wife Auguste Viktoria and while he was in exile in the Netherlands. She was by then a widow herself with young children. She was known to be ambitious about wanting to return to power, and her husband insisted on her being called 'Empress'. To achieve her goal, she turned to the most powerful man in Germany at the time, Adolf Hitler. Unfortunately, her dream was not realised as Hitler refused to restore the monarchy and with the death of Wilhelm in 1941, Hermine was forced to return to her first husband's lands. She was arrested shortly after the end of the Second World War and would die under mysterious circumstances while under house arrest by the Red Army. 



This was a nice little introductory biography of a woman posibly not known to many.  Despite my love of seeking out the "lost" women of history, for me, this was someone not on my radar - more so as my purview lies within the ancient and medieval period. As such, I found myself not overly engaged - as I mentioned, this was just out of my remit.

What I did do was find myself comparing Hermine with Wallace Simpson - both married to royal men who were directly descended from Queen Victoria, and both gained notoriety for their support of Herr Hitler.

Not having read anything else on Hermine with which to compare this to, I still found it to be an informative and not overly complicated biography nonetheless. 

Saturday, December 5, 2020

Why reviews are so important (although not for the reasons you might think), by Dougie Brimson

Over the last decade, it cannot have escaped your attention that ebooks have changed the world of publishing significantly. This is especially true for mid-list authors such as myself.

No longer always under the control of editors or publishers, we are now free to go it alone to write what we like and publish it when we like. Trust me, for all kinds of reasons that freedom is liberating!

For the reader, it has been equally revolutionary. Who would have thought ten years ago that not only would there be a genuine alternative to good old paper but that there would be books available to download for free at the touch of a button.

However, the rise of the ebook has added a new and very important element to the reading process and it is one that not everyone seems to have grasped. It is the power to review. Be it on Amazon, iTunes, Goodreads or any of the numerous reader websites, if you enjoy or even dislike a book you are now able to tell the world. That, my friends, is power, real power. And I will tell you why.

read more from Dougie Brimson here @ The CRA

Wednesday, December 2, 2020

Review: Cathedral by Ben Hopkins

Cathedral

Synopsis: A thoroughly immersive read and a remarkable feat of imagination, Cathedral tells a sweeping story about obsession, mysticism, art, and earthly desire in gripping prose. It deftly combines historical fiction and a tale of adventure and intrigue.

At the center of this story is the Cathedral. Its design and construction in the 12th and 13th centuries in the town of Hagenburg unites a vast array of unforgettable characters whose fortunes are inseparable from the shifting political factions and economic interests vying for supremacy. Around this narrative center, Ben Hopkins has constructed his own monumental edifice, a novel that is rich with the vicissitudes of mercantilism, politics, religion, and human enterprise.



Ben Hopkins' "Cathedral" is definitely one for readers of The Pillars of the Earth and Cathedral of the Sea, both of which I have and love, so it's a no-brainer that this tome will be joining them on my book shelves. Like those two tomes mentioned, Hopkins' "Cathedral" has a carefully constructed and engaging narrative, a mix of first and third person, of the citizens of Hagenberg and is told against the backdrop of the construction of the city's Cathedral, their lives intersecting across the pages as the years progress. And like the two aforementioned tomes, "Cathedral" may also be worthy of a mini-series of its own

Hopkins' "Cathedral" deftly taps into the psyche of the people associated with its construction - the masters, the guilds, the merchants, the Church, the nobles, whilst exploring the complexity of the mores and prejudices, the political and religious discord of the time. Many of the cathedral workforce was itinerant, moving from one job to another, and so new social elements or social / religious groups would be introduced into these often small, insular communities. 

When I read historical fiction I love to know if events were based on real people, places and events - and to that end I go in search of the "back story". I am now going to touch on some of the themes within the narrative that fascinated me. 


Medieval Cathedral Building 
The building of monumental cathedrals in the middle ages was a reflection of faith and the channel for much of the creative energy of medieval European society. As cathedrals took decades, and often even centuries to complete, few people who worked on them expected to see them finished during their lifetimes. Being involved in the construction of a cathedral, even as the building patron, required a willingness to be part of a process that was larger than oneself. As architectural technology developed further, greater expanses of glass became possible. This led to stained glass becoming an important decorative medium in religious buildings

The most obvious starting point was for an architect to be found who would design a cathedral. An architect would also know who were the best master craftsmen to employ – and many highly skilled men were needed. Each master of his own trade ran a workshop for his own particular trade - these were skilled men and they would not do any labouring – unskilled labourers who lived near to where a cathedral was being built would do this. Many of the skilled workers relied on other trades to keep them at work.

It was typically the Cathedral Chapter that determined how much money could be spent on what. It was the Chapter that would decide on the final design of the cathedral – and it was the Chapter that would instruct the architect on just what they wanted. The cost of these buildings was vast – but the money to pay for these huge buildings came from the people via the many payments they had to make to the Roman Catholic Church in Medieval times.


Holy Roman Empire & Habsburgs
Alsace and Strasbourg have been the object of rival claims by France and Germany up until the very recent past and have experienced multiple changes of possession. Alsace experienced great prosperity during the 12th and 13th centuries under Hohenstaufen emperors. Frederick I set up Alsace as a province to be ruled by ministeriales, a non-noble class of civil servants. The idea was that such men would be more tractable and less likely to alienate the fief from the crown out of their own greed. The province had a single provincial court and a central administration. The Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II designated the Bishop of Strasbourg to administer Alsace, but the authority of the bishop was challenged by Count Rudolf of Habsburg, who received his rights from Frederick II's son Conrad IV


Cathedral of Hagenberg or Strasbourg
Unlike the actual city of Hagenberg (located in Austria), our fictional city is located along the Rhine, and - to my mind anyway - the fictional Cathedral of Our Lady of Hagenberg seems to have much in common with the Strasbourg's Notre Dame Cathedral (or Cathedral of Our Lady). 

The Cathedral of Strasbourg was founded in 1015 on the remains of a previous cathedral. This wooden structure burnt down in 1176-177 and was replaced by a new, Gothic stone building was being built from 1220. Its construction was financed by the free city of Strasbourg , a rich merchant and financial republic. It is also one of two contemporary structures that made use of architectural drawings.

Strasbourg began to grow to become the most populous and commercially important town in the region. Until 1200, the development was limited to the island, which was covered with a grid of narrow streets and lanes.  As the economy flourished, the original medieval city began expanding. 

France and Germany had a long history of "warrior bishops". These bishops in medieval Germany were born into aristocratic or knightly families which prided themselves upon their proficiency in war­fare. It appears that Hopkins tapped into this as inspiration for one of the components of his nove1.  The city of Strasburg rose in defence of its rights against the new bishop, Walter of Hohengeroldseck (r. 1260 - 1263), in 1261. Benjamin Arnold as written a fascinating piece on this phenomenon entitled "German Bishops and their Military Retinues in the Medieval Empire" as has Nicholas Friend in his thesis entitled "Holy Warriors and Bellicose Bishops: The Church and Warfare in Early Medieval Germany".  After this long struggle, its citizens gained the status of a free imperial city in 1262. 


Church & Inquisition in Germany
In 13th cent Germany & France, the Inquisition was alive and well. Their focus was on the Waldensians and Albigensians or Cathars. Conrad of Marpurg, Inquisitor General over Germany sought them out with impugnity in the 1230s, after Pope Gregory IX began to commission Dominicans and Franciscans in Germany, France,Spain and Italy as delegated judges tasked with the prosecution of heresy in 1231.

The bishops were, by default, responsible for the purity of faith in their dioceses. The de-cretal Ad abolendam of Lucius III (1184) ordered that bishops and archbishops, acting either in their own person or through their archdeacon, should conduct an inquiry once or twice a year within those parishes in which any form of heresy had begun to circulate, If there was an indication of heresy, the suspects were to be called to the bishop or to the archdeacon to exculpate themselves through oath. Those who might defy oath-taking,fail to exculpate themselves, or relapse into heresy after purgation, were to be judged by the bishop and handed over to the secular arm. (source: Bishops and the inquisition of heresy in late medieval Germany by Reima Välimäki in Dominus Episcopus Medieval Bishops between Diocese and Court).


Cathars
The Cathars were largely local, Western European/Latin Christian phenomena, springing up in the Rhineland cities (particularly Cologne) in the mid-12th century, northern France around the same time, and particularly the Languedoc—and the northern Italian cities in the mid-late 12th century. 

The Inquisition was established in 1233 to uproot the remaining Cathars. Repentant lay believers were punished, but their lives were spared as long as they did not relapse. Having recanted, they were obliged to sew yellow crosses onto their outdoor clothing and to live apart from other Catholics, at least for a while. Those Cathars who refused to recant or relapsed were hanged, or burnt at the stake. Hunted by the Inquisition and deserted by the once supportive nobles of their districts, the Cathars became elusive, scattered fugitives. 

In the Languedoc and northern Italy, the Cathars attained their greatest popularity, surviving in the Languedoc, in much reduced form, up to around 1325 and in the Italian cities until the Inquisitions of the 14th century finally extirpated them.


Medieval Jewish Community
Into our small fictional community, many arrive looking for work - as do our main characters of Rettich and Emmle Schaffer. The arrival of new transient groups also exposes the community to new thoughts and ideas - and different religious beliefs (see above for the Cathars). 

Early on we are introduced to the resident Jewish population, and the role assigned to them by the dictates of the day - finance. Because pre-modern Christianity did not permit money-lending for interest and because Jews generally could not own land, they played a vital role as money-lenders and traders.  As European commerce grew in the late Middle Ages, some Jews became prominent in trade, banking, and moneylending, and Jews’ economic and cultural successes tended to arouse the envy of the populace.

Jews were denied citizenship and its rights, barred from holding posts in government and the military, and excluded from membership in guilds and the professions.  However, where they were permitted to participate in the larger society or were merely tolerated, Jews thrived. 

The history of the Jews in Alsace is assumed to dates back to around the year 1000. Although Jewish life in Alsace was often disrupted by outbreaks of pogroms, at least during the Middle Ages, and reined in by harsh restrictions on business and movement, it has had a continuous existence ever since it was first recorded. The city-dwelling Jews of the Middle Ages, lived in walled-up, segregated ghetto districts, which naturally aroused suspicion. Jews were subsequently forbidden to settle in the town and were reminded every evening at 10 o'clock by a Cathedral bell and a municipal herald blowing the "Grüselhorn" to leave. 

The outbreak of plague became the trigger for Black Death persecutions. in 1349, Jews of Alsace were wrongfully accused of poisoning the wells with plague. On February 14, Saint Valentine's day, several hundred Jews were massacred during the Strasbourg pogrom - either burned at the stake, or rounded up in synagogues and private houses that were then set aflame. This mass slaughter of German Jews saw them flee in large numbers to Poland. You can read more about this in "Jews in the Medieval German Kingdom" by Alfred Haverkamp


The Characters
The medieval bishops of Hagenberg are, to my mind, based on the medieval Bishops of Strasbourg, specifically: Berthold I von Teck (r.1223 – 1244); Heinrich III von Stahleck (r.1243 - 1260); Walter von Geroldseck (r. 1260 - 1263) - see above; and Heinrich IV von Geroldseck (r. 1263 – 1273).  I am also thinking that one Arnold von Uissigheim (ex. 1336), a medieval German highwayman, bandit, and renegade knight, is possibly the basis of the character of the Count von Schwanenstein.  Baron von Kronthal is surely named from the area located twenty-one kilometres west of Strasbourg. And could the cathedral architect Achim von Esinbach be based on Erwin von Steinbach, architect of the Cathedral of Strasbourg master mason and architect (1277-1318)?  


Throughout Hopkins' complex narrative of political and religious discord, the fictional characters develop as the story and the cathedral building progresses. All are linked by money which sees personal ambitions and fortunes rise and fall, as the city of Hagenberg expands and becomes possibly a distorted image of that which originally aspired to be.


Verdict: Immense, immersive, imaginative, indelible, impressive.



Tuesday, December 1, 2020

Yukio Mishima: The strange tale of Japan’s infamous novelist

The theatrical life and death 50 years ago of one of Japan’s most celebrated and controversial authors created an enduring – but troubling myth, writes Thomas Graham.

Standing on a balcony, as if on stage, the small, immaculate figure appeals to the army assembled below. The figure is Yukio Mishima, real name Kimitake Hiraoka. He was Japan’s most famous living novelist when, on 25 November 1970, he went to an army base in Tokyo, kidnapped the commander, had him assemble the garrison, then tried to start a coup. He railed against the US-backed state and constitution, berated the soldiers for their submissiveness and challenged them to return the Emperor to his pre-war position as living god and national leader. The audience, at first politely quiet, or just stunned into silence, soon drowned him out with jeers. Mishima stepped back inside and said: “I don’t think they heard me.” Then he knelt down and killed himself by seppuku, the Samurai’s ritual suicide.

Mishima’s death shocked the Japanese public. He was a literary celebrity, a macho and provocative but also rather ridiculous character, perhaps akin to Norman Mailer in the US, or Michel Houellebecq in today’s France. But what had seemed to be posturing had suddenly become very real. It was the morning of the opening of the 64th session of the Diet, Japan’s parliament, and the Emperor himself was present. The prime minister’s speech on the government agenda for the coming year was somewhat overshadowed. No one had died by seppuku since the last days of World War Two.

read more here @ BBC Culture

Wednesday, November 25, 2020

Rescuing Australia’s lost literary treasures

Have you ever gone looking for a particular book and discovered it can’t be found for love nor money?

If so, that’s no surprise. Most Australian books written are now out-of-print and unavailable to readers.

When books go out of print, authors usually have the right to reclaim their copyrights. But what then? Digitising books is expensive, and authors who make that investment and start selling them online (via Amazon, for example) often find that they sink without a trace.

And they can’t make them available in libraries, because those licensing arrangements are all built to go through publishers.

In a new collaboration between authors, libraries and researchers, we’re setting out to change all that.



Untapped: the Australian Literary Heritage Project is creating the infrastructure necessary to rescue Australia’s lost literary treasures and bring them properly back to life.

Working with a national team of library collections experts, we’re building a list of culturally-important lost books, then working with authors to digitise them, license them into libraries, and make them available for sale.



Saturday, November 21, 2020

The Long and Terrifying History of the Blood Libel

From The Nation - review by David Nirenberg:
Among the more unpleasant mythemes that one group of humans has devised about another is the blood libel: the claim that Jews murder Christian children, often around Easter, and use their blood in Passover rituals. Bits and pieces of this myth date back to ancient times. 

But the specific ingredients of the blood libel—innocent children murdered by conspiratorial Jews for blood rituals—were not baked into narrative until a child’s corpse was discovered in 12th century England and an enterprising monk accused the local Jewish community of murder. That first accusation sputtered out, but others soon followed in France and Germany that sometimes resulted in the execution of entire communities. With the invention of the printing press, the myth spread even more widely, throughout Eastern Europe and, with colonialism, into the Middle East and beyond. 

Magda Teter’s terrifying and learned new book, Blood Libel: On the Trail of an Antisemitic Myth, examines some of the long history of this pernicious idea. Her focus is firmly on the past and especially on the death in 1473 of one toddler, Simon of Trent. Teter sets out to document how the information about Simon’s death circulated during and after the trial and how it eventually flowed into Eastern Europe, where the myth put down some of its deepest and cruelest roots. She certainly succeeds in that historical task. While her claims are specific and circumspect, her book can be read more broadly as an allegory for our age, a story about how technological change, religious beliefs, struggles for power, and a politics of demonization can produce memes capable of transmitting the potential for violence across vast amounts of time and space.


read more here @ The Nation

Medieval mystery unlocked: The Light of Ages by Seb Falk

From Express:
THE MEDIEVAL knack for stories and myths has created some of the world's most sought after mysteries, pushing scores of the Middle Ages' most groundbreaking scientific achievements from the history books, an historian told Express.

Religious myths adorn the Medieval period. Things like the Shroud of Turin have captured the imaginations and speculation of academics, religious figures and history buffs the world over. Yet, it is so-called mysteries like the Shroud that, in fact, have quickly overshadowed the true pioneering discoveries that were characteristic of the Middle Ages, according to Dr Seb Falk, a Medieval historian at the University of Cambridge. Science boomed in the period that is generally accepted to run from the 5th to the 15th century.  There was a whole slew of inventions that we still use today.



From the Publisher:
A spellbinding journey through the life of an English monk, an age of discovery and the mysteries of the medieval mind

The Middle Ages were a time of wonder. They gave us the first universities, the first eyeglasses and the first mechanical clocks as medieval thinkers sought to understand the world around them, from the passing of the seasons to the stars in the sky. In this book, we walk the path of medieval science with a real-life guide, a fourteenth-century monk named John of Westwyk - inventor, astrologer, crusader - who was educated in England's grandest monastery and exiled to a clifftop priory. Following the traces of his life, we learn to see the natural world through Brother John's eyes: navigating by the stars, multiplying Roman numerals, curing disease and telling the time with an astrolabe. We travel the length and breadth of England, from Saint Albans to Tynemouth, and venture far beyond the shores of Britain. On our way, we encounter a remarkable cast of characters: the clock-building English abbot with leprosy, the French craftsman-turned-spy and the Persian polymath who founded the world's most advanced observatory.An enthralling story of the struggles and successes of an ordinary man and an extraordinary time, The Light Ages conjures up a vivid picture of the medieval world as we have never seen it before. 


Thursday, November 19, 2020

Revew: The Quarant by Graham Bullen

The Quarant

Synopsis: January, 1348. They say bad things come in threes...

The day after an earthquake and tsunami have ravaged Venice, Malin Le Cordier, a successful English maritime trader, sails into the city with plans to mature a coup on behalf of Edward III and Genoa. His time? Short. His guilt? Strong. Keeping the coup a secret from those he loves most weighs heavy on his soul. But Venice is a place with secrets and revenge flows through the city like its canals. For his sake and those he is bound to, it is best he learn to navigate it. And quickly.

Unbeknownst to Malin, there is someone powerful in the city who seeks revenge on Edward III on behalf of his family. Well-situated, he operates under covert circumstances, monitoring Malin’s every move - and playing his own long game, merely waiting for the perfect time to strike.

Combining greed and guilt, revenge and undeclared love, this is one trip that Malin may not live to regret.



Venice to the 14th Century. 
From the time of her 5th century foundation on Torcello, Venice has been unique - a small self-governing community of refugees, growing rich on its own audacious merits. In an attempt to preserve its republican identity, reforms were put in place to ensure that the position of the doge (who holds office until death) does not devolve into a hereditary signore. From the 11th century, the government of Venice and its colonies is removed from the sole personal responsibility of the doge and is transferred into the hands of powerful councils. The supreme body is the Great Council of 45 members, with ultimate responsibility for state affairs. On day-to-day matters an executive Minor Council of six members is appointed to guide the doge. Over the years Venice's councils grow and proliferate.

During the 13th century the Great Council expands from 45 members to 60 and then 100. A new Council of Forty is added at some time before 1223, followed by another body of 60 members with special responsibility for financial affairs; this is the Consiglio dei Rogati, known also as the Senate. A Council of Ten is added in 1310, to check on everybody else.  Though richly attired and publicly honoured, the Doge is essentially a powerless figurehead. The system is brilliantly devised to preserve the status quo in two ways - preventing the present doge's family from acquiring power and preventing the wider group of patrician families from losing it.


The doge is not allowed to engage in trade or any financial activity. No member of his family may hold office in government or serve on the councils. Safeguards are in place to prevent an election being rigged (the final group of electors is chosen by lot). Similarly stringent measures are introduced to prevent outsiders getting in. Between 1290 and 1300 the so-called 'closing of the Great Council' limits membership to those families which have provided members in the past. Oligarchy is thus enshrined, in a system which survived until the French Revolution. 

With a greater increase in trade, travel and pilgrimage to the eastern Mediterranean, Venice had the skills to provide the transport and already established trade concessions.  However, there is soon a strong rivalry from two other great maritime communes, Genoa and Pisa.  Both cities subsequently develop extensive trade in the western Mediterranean. Genoa also plays a large part in the crusades, establishing strong trading links in the eastern Mediterranean and coming into direct competition with Venice. Warfare between these two Italian city states is long and intermittent, with Venice by no means always the stronger - until the issue is finally resolved in 1380 at Chioggia when Venice finally defeats Genoa and becomes the undisputed maritime power in eastern waters.


The Black Death.
Plague was reportedly first introduced to Europe via Genoese traders from their port city of Kaffa in the Crimea in 1347. As the disease took hold, Genoese traders fled across the Black Sea to Constantinople, Carried by twelve Genoese galleys, plague arrived by ship in Sicily in October 1347; the disease spread rapidly all over the island. Galleys from Kaffa reached Genoa and Venice in January 1348 with devasting effect, spreading across Europe and into Scandinavia by 1350, and finally Russia in 1351. The disease spread so rapidly that before any physicians or government authorities had time to reflect upon its origins, about a third of the European population had already perished. Within two years (1348-1439), plague had spread throughout the Islamic world, from Arabia across North Africa.



Review
A merchant ship from Dieppe arrives in Venice after a devastating earthquake and tsunami have struck the city.  On board, a man with an agenda known only to a few.  We follow this merchant, Malin Le Cordier, as he and his associates play a deadly political game with La Serenissima - the price of failure being exceedingly high, the chance of betrayal overwhelming. 

The story evolves over a period of forty days - the Quarant - or the period of time a merchant vessel arriving in Venice will spend in quarantine. We accompany the main characters through the highs and lows of their conspiracy, which culminates in the final, thrilling betrayal. 

Bullen's attention to detail in describing both the physical and political landscape is superb, and we experience the sense of urgency as the characters do as we are propelled towards zero hour. 

The characters represent the medieval melting-pot that was Venice.  We have Malin and Symon, Bourchier and Mainard from England (and Scotland); the native Venetians; Florentine spies, and German mercenaries. Yet it is with Malin that the reader will find themselves centred.  The conspirators are akin to the spoked wheel - Malin is the hub from which all others - the radiating rods - are connected.

The roles and motivations of those involved in the conspiracy is gradually revealed, as plans coalesce, and the danger of discovery becomes greater every day.  The reader finds their own pulse racing as events take a turn, this way and that.

Venice is a city run on secrets - and I have provided some links below for further exploration into England's dealings with Venice, espionage and diplomatic relations, and well as some other themes that are running through the narrative.

This is period of history is one in which I am fairly well read and it was highly enjoyable to read a thrilling (fictional) account set in medieval Venice, with quite a decent dose of authenticity.


further reading:
- The Economic History of Venice
- Secret Venice: The Council of Ten and Medieval Espionage
- Calendar of State Papers Relating To English Affairs in the Archives of Venice, Volume 1, 1202-1509
- Hanseatic League
- Venice & Its Minorities
- Battle of Dupplin Moor
- Plague In Venice