Austerity Britain - David Kynaston

David Kynaston – Austerity Britain, 1945-51 (2009)
History – 640 pages – my copy (paperback) a present from the true gentleman, Mr Mooney, Xmas 2009
- 4 nods

‘A marvel’, notes the Sunday Telegraph; ‘Exemplary’, says the Mail of Sunday; whilst the Guardian has no bones about hailing it as ‘a classic’. All hail the historian David Kynaston indeed! Austerity Britain is the culmination of tremendous devotion and a great deal of research – two books sandwiched together – to create this mammoth read for the delight of any layman and student interest in post-war politics.

Why all the praise? Quite simply, it leaves no stone un-turned. The period 1945-51 is well noted for being the first majority Labour government: the time of Attlee and of Bevin; of the rise of the NHS and of Keynes; of fiscal tightening and the rebirth of modern Britain. Kynaston notes of all of this, but also so much more: housing gripes, the rise of multi-media, writers and scoundrels, sport and communism.

Kynaston’s range of sources is simply breathtaking, earning many compliments from the Book Worm. However, this praise is also its chief failing. Kynaston commits to all and sundry, leaving the reader to trawl through page after page of housing policy, both unrelenting and never ending.

Whilst the second notable flaw of Austerity Britain is its lack of analysis. Kynaston is great at throwing quote after quote and reference after reference upon the reader, a seeming orgy of the statistic. Yet what of the rolling up the sleeves, of adding his own comment, of perhaps, staking his flag upon the ground. Of course, Mr Kynaston could be saving such energy for later books – he has been commissioned a whole series to conclude at the accession of Thatcher in 1979 – however, after surmounting over six hundred pages, the reader feels a little cheated at having to continue onwards to Family Britain, a cliff-hanger for our eyes.

The Worm highly recommends this book to all who want to know what it was actually like in this changing period. Britain had won the war, yet it had a battle in order to win the peace. A battle that rages to today. The Worm will continue on with Kynaston’s series, a sequence for all serious history buffs and fans alike. Hail Mr Kynaston, indeed – but the prince has yet to show himself a true king.

Green Hopes - Alan Lipietz

Alan Lipietz – Green Hopes (1993)
Politics – 160 pages – my copy (paperback) bought for 50p from Plymouth Library, late 2009
- 3 nods

The subtitle of Green Hopes – The Future of Political Ecology – interests the reader of 2010 primarily due to the book’s age. Written in 1993, detailing the events of the late 1980s and early 1990s, the reader of 2010 can look back on the past two decades to see if Lipietz’s predictions have come true. The early 1990s was a different world in so many ways: before Blair, before 9/11, before the spin and the scandal. Yet one thing remains true, the Greens in politics remain a small, yet committed group, predicting their eventual flowering.

Translated from French, Lipietz’s book is one for all European Greens. It notes the then high point of Green feeling, before its dip later in the 1990s, calling itself a ‘New Political Force’. So much of the print resounds today: not enough people listen to the Green viewpoint, too few people worrying about the planet’s future. For the failure of the Rio Conference, we have the modern Copenhagen setting; for the fears of the Maastricht treaty, today we have the Lisbon agreement.

Lipeitz constantly refers to the old Left – the Reds – in an attempt to reconcile those disillusioned into the new Green movement. Political Ecology, he states, is the future of the Left, as are its values: Solidarity, Autonomy, Ecological Responsibility and Democracy. The writer forever drums in the message that ‘the environment is other people!’ (p.8), and although much is inspirational, there is also much within these pages that is stilted, some of its comparisons and references grown old and grey with age.

The Green reader of today will find much of the reading tough going – so much failure and unfulfilled hope. But the Green marches, or perhaps, struggles onwards – waiting for the day when the march will have its accompanying trumpets and fanfare. As Lipietz concludes himself: ‘Political ecology – the modesty of reason, the ambition of will’ (p.151).

X Marks The Box: Daniel Blythe

Daniel Blythe - X Marks The Box (2010)

Politics - 180 pages - my copy (paperback) bought for £7.99 from Waterstones, March 2010

- 2 nods

In light of the British political expenses scandal, a flood of books upon the disillusionment and dejection in modern society have washed upon the shelves of all good - and some bad - bookshops. Daniel Blythe's X Marks The Box is one of them.

The book is a quick read and stomp around the current electoral scene; a scene heating up with the impending General Election. Always jovial, Blythe takes the reader on a tour of political lingo (speaking of floating voters), of the parties and background on leaders (stretching back to the 1960s) as well as decisive elections in past decades; thus adding to the wide held belief that 2010 is also a decisive year.

Throughout all, Blythe adds many facts - both humourous and needless - which suggests a lack of actual material for the book rather than the intention of informing the reader. The majority of the text deals with scandal and betrayal, thus cementing the mood of ill feeling towards all politicians.

Never threatening for one moment to become too involving or stimulating, X Marks The Box book is a suitable book for anyone who wishes to reaquaint themselves in the British political scene.

Short Cuts: Raymond Carver

Raymond Carver – Short Cuts (1993)
Short Stories – 160 pages – my copy (paperback) taken from Starbucks, Armada Way February 2010
- 3 nods

A man who dresses in his neighbour’s blouse whilst looking after the home; a husband who on finding a dead female body, proceeds to enjoy a fishing trip before informing the authorities; an aggressive and vengeful baker and parents of a coma boy: welcome to the world of Raymond Carver.

Short Cuts is a collection of various short stories from Carver, taken as the basis of Robert Altman’s film of the early nineties. Excelling at the short story form, Carver’s work is critically noted as being about nothing in particular. These are snapshots of larger stories, snippets of the longer lives of his characters.

The writer forever strives to keep things simple – lots of he said, she said – and in so doing, he allows the thoughts and the actions of his characters do the talking. Rarely is the climatic enlightenment of the story’s bigger picture – a Joyceian revelation – ever realised. Carver has plumped for something else: not an unveiling of his characters, but rather life’s sinister moments and coincidences for his readers. Altman, the default editor of this collection, puts it aptly when writing: ‘I look at all of Carver’s work as just one story, for his stories are all occurrences, all about things that just happen to people and cause their lives to take a turn.’

Despite being the driving force of this project, Altman has not chosen the strongest of Carver’s stories. For that, the concerned reader must venture to his collections, particularly What We Talk About When We Talk about Love. The highlights of Short Cuts are So Much Water So Close to Home, in which a relationship is eroded due to a husband’s careless consideration of a dead body; and the death of a boy in A Small, Good Thing. There is much humour throughout, mostly coming in the form of the characters hopeless, dark situations, as well as much pointlessness (as shown in Collectors).

Throughout all, Carver speaks for the average American. Nothing spectacular happens in his pages; but throughout all, he manages to point out human qualities, both full of joy and full of sorrow, both destructive and positive.

A Life Like Other People’s: Alan Bennett

Alan Bennett – A Life Like Other People’s (2009)
Autobiography – 240 pages – my copy (hardback; 2009) a 2009 Xmas present
- 3 nods

As the years have gone by, Alan Bennett has cemented himself as one of the premier writers in Britain: there have been his plays, such as the recently successful The History Boys; screenplays such as The Madness of King George (that’s King George III for us on this Isle!); as well as many other pieces for the page and for the screen, such as the critical success that was Talking Heads.

This volume, gleamed from the larger autobiographical work Untold Stories, concerns itself with Bennett’s childhood, his family and his eventual parting with those around him. He recounts his mother’s insanity, the closely held secret of his grandfather’s death, his own father’s passing, as well as those of his boisterous aunts. As expected with a book full of death, much is mournful: yet Bennett’s purpose here is to breathe life back into his family members. An aim in which he wonderfully succeeds.

In tackling these memories, Bennett is tackling the pain, the angst and the embarrassment of former times. His mother’s bouts of insanity coupled with the saner moments when she strived to be like everyone else; his parents intense dislike of ‘making a fuss’, taking I to the extreme of becoming married without telling those around them and with his father heading straight for work after the ceremony; his mother’s eventual demise in a nursing home, no longer his Ma but rather an empty stranger.

Throughout all, Bennett is able to look back as a person removed from these scenes, yet one who is intrinsically linked. His humour is apparent throughout all, but also evident is his love of his parents. Yes, those same parents who he admits he felt so embarrassed of when younger, their parochial views and ways. Though not a full blown celebration, A Life Like Other People’s is Bennett’s refutation of the discomfited youth he once was. A read for anyone who has had growing pains; a read for anyone who misses those have parted.

The Making of Modern Britain: Andrew Marr

Andrew Marr – The Making of Modern Britain (2009)
History – 430 pages – my copy (hardback; 2009) bought from Waterstones for reduced price of £8.99
- 4 nods

Since leaving his post as the BBC’s political chief, Andrew Marr has notched up a career as the historian and commentator of modern Britain. First came his book upon the post-war decades, from victory days of Churchill to the slump days of Brown. Fast following in its success is The Making of Modern Britain; from the death of Queen Victoria to the end of the Second World War.

It is a period heavily covered by historians and writers alike. The big challenge is in adding something new to a historical landscape that is hard to shift about: there are two world wars that, obviously, dominate any book on the period. So, it is with Marr’s history. Though the author pulls back from heavy detail, warning the reader on the opening parts of both wars that his is not an analytical, event by event study; rather a portrait of an age with quick snapshots of the regular, the irregular and the outstandingly strange.

But although his pulling up of interesting and forgotten facts keeps the book fresh, Marr never goes for the jugular in defining the age. His continuing theme is to make the connection with the reader that although the times were indeed different, it was in these decades that our own conception of Britain was forged. Yet apart from this, Marr is bereft of adding anything new as to our perception of the early twentieth century; something his predecessor book did achieve (notably in his critique of our consumerist shopping culture lording it in the modern age).

Marr’s The Making of Modern Britain is a book recommended to those not acquainted with the period in question; for those looking for a light to shine on decades that appear remote and confined to black and white.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1963)
Novella – 140 pages – my copy (Penguin paperback) bought for £1.50 from the wonderful BookStore in Truro, Cornwall around Xmas 2009
- 4 nods

A story so popular that its author was lauded as a hero in the contrasting worlds of Soviet Russia and the capitalist Western countries. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was one of the first stories in print to expose the brutality of life in the Russian gulag: of hard labour, of the blistering cold, of sanctions and of wasted years of life. ‘The days rolled by in the camp – they were over before you could say "knife". But the years, they never rolled by: they never moved by a second’ (p.56)

Writing with authority – having done ‘hard-time’ himself – Solzhenitsyn writes of Ivan Denisovich (known to all as Shukhov) and his struggle in Siberia. On first reading, one might expect Shukhov to do something spectacular, to rebel, to become the hero, to regain his long forgotten freedom. None of this happens; and it is what makes this story unique and special. Shukhov is a run of the mill prisoner, an ordinary Joe Bloggs in his home village; his heroic exploits include the hiding of his daily ration bread and of surviving the cold, icy weather outside during his working day.

This day, then, is one of life’s small battles. But also, of the struggle to keep what remained of the life one had before, with a prisoner’s humanity being chipped away, bit by bit. As the author writes: ‘During his years in prisons and camps he’d lost the habit of planning for the next day, for a year ahead, for supporting his family. The authorities did his thinking for him about everything – it was somehow easier that way’ (p.38).

The book is a condemnation of the thousands who were wrongly imprisoned in Soviet Russia, especially under Stalin’s iron rule. One of the most spectacular facts is that the book actually got published; arriving in a moment of a political ‘thaw’. Of course, Solzhenitsyn’s popularity in both camps would not last, being used a political pin-ball by the divided camps of the Cold War. Yet, this book, continues as a gold-standard of modern fiction.

The War of the Worlds: H.G. Wells

H.G. Wells – The War of the Worlds (1898)
Novel – 140 pages – my copy (1988; hardback) borrowed from my parents bookshelf
- 4 nods

Mr Wells is regarded, and perhaps rightly so, as one of the top science fiction novelists; indeed, it was Mr Wells himself who put the genre in the limelight, ensuring its success throughout the twentieth century: from the book to radio, from the big screen to the TV. The War of the Worlds is a prime example of a story that has spellbound audiences across several mediums: Orson Welles captivated his audience in the late 1930s, with many supposedly believing an actual alien invasion was underway; while more recently, Spielberg and Cruise made their own Hollywood adaptation.

The War of the Worlds is a short novel, written from the perspective of a middle class writer based in the greenbelt area around London. Perceptive and at first alarmingly casual about many things (though written from a later viewpoint), he documents the landing of the Martians and their eventual destruction of all around them and their march into London, then ‘the greatest city on earth’.

Of course, everyone is well versed in the eventual outcome of the story: the Martians are defeated not by human willpower, technological prowess or ingenuity, but rather by the bacteria on our planet. It is natural force over the human brain; a bold statement made by Wells at a time when man believed he had conquered science.

And here lies Wells’ ultimate vision: that humankind survives despite the struggle, despite the tears, despite the blood; more humbled and more respecting of life. It is a vision the story’s imitators have failed to grasp, with later versions focusing on the glory of defeating the invading alien. Such a difference has been neatly summarised by various commentators in being the difference between British and American values, with many British Sci-Fi being cut in the Wells mould. And, if we look further into the twentieth century, much of Wells’ vision is found in the British psyche, nowhere more clearly than in the resistance to the Nazi bombs in the Blitz. Further applause, then, to Wells: not only the novelist, but the great anticipator of the future.

All Because of Him: Klara Andersen

Klara Andersen – All Because of Him (1995)
Memoir – 210 pages – my copy (paperback; 1995) borrowed & enjoyed
- 3 nods

Klara Andersen is the pen name of a German born woman who reached maturity under the Nazis, survived the Second World War and Soviet occupied territory; all before travelling to England, setting up home in Cornwall. All Because of Him, her first memoir, is her life from Hitler’s coming to power to 1933 to her escape from Communists in 1948.

She speaks of the enforced rules of Nazi life, of the pending threat of war, of her home being bombed, of not knowing whether or not her husband will ever return to her. Yet the most frightening moments of the book come after Hitler’s suicide, when the Russians have taken over Eastern Germany. In search of her mother, the young woman travels to the eastern sector, survives possible imprisonment and near rape, before abandoning her husband to return to the west to be with her family.

So much of the adventure found in All Because of Him is the dream of Hollywood movie-makers. Usually, the form that such memoirs take are fantastic experiences, yet the inability of the person to put pen to paper effectively. This is not a flaw known to Andersen (the name picked due to sharing a link with the great story teller, Hans Christian Andersen). Furthermore, her talent strikes further with her numerous sketchings illustrating the pages.

However, despite an obvious skill of story telling, the book suffers from lack of editing: both from minor mistakes as well as shaping the memories into a tighter, more satisfying read. For instance, much is omitted: her sister’s death and the coming of war. As such, All Because of Him, is 3 nodder book; filled with fantastic and genuine 5 nodder memories.

Down Under: Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson – Down Under (2000)
Travel – 400 pages – my copy (paperback; 2001) bought for £3 from the Book Cupboard in Plymouth
- 4 nods

Bill Bryson made his name as an author of travel fiction; an odd thing for a man who initally wrote books and articles on the English language, admitting his reluctance and pains as a traveller. From the lost continent of America, to zigzagging across Europe to our own small island, right up to the end of the twentieth century Bryson made his readers laugh and then cry….with more laughter.

Down Under is his take on the land of Australia; his impressions formed from several visits to the country in a short space of time. He travels across the railway from Sydney to Perth, he visits the major cities in the south-eastern corner, he sees the coral reef, Alice Springs and the large rock named Uluru. Throughout all, the reader has a convivial, funny and insightful host. As always, Bryson is a fan of the forgotten fact, of the quirks and eccentrics in history; of which, Australia has many. Such as adventurers liked Robert O'Hara Burke who tried to find a route across the desert contintent (and failed); as well one of his 'minor heroes', a geologist named Reginald Sprigg who found rocks that linked us to our pre-historic past. He continually comments on the vast amount of ways in which a person could be killed (spiders, large bugs, sharks, tidal waves), whilst being blown away by the richness of the fauna as well as disheartened by the plight of the Aborigine.

Down Under is not a full blooded travel book, as in the vein of Paul Theroux. Bryson doesn't hike with his back pack, away for months on end: travel is strictly upon his own terms, both enjoyable and hilarious. And to be more exact, it is not 100% "travel", with Bryson writing about history, about society and about his own views (the bibliography confirms his vast background reading). His observations are a delight to read (such as those on the sport of cricket, p.145); including his view on being alone in a cafe in Australia:

‘It always amazes me how seldom visitors bother with local papers. Personally, I can think of nothing more exciting – certainly nothing you could do in a public place with a cup of coffee – than to read newspapers from a part of the world you know almost nothing about. What a comfort it is to find a nation preoccupied by matters of no possible consequence to oneself. I love reading about scandals involving ministers of whom I have never heard, murder hunts in communities whose names sound dusty and remote, features on revered artists and thinkers whose achievements have never reached my ears…’ (p.99)

Always convivial, always a laugh: this is Bryson near his damned best. Don't miss it.