Author: bookramblings142

The Stainless Steel Rat – Harry Harrison

On By bookramblings142In Reviews2 Comments

A few weeks back I featured a book written by Harry Harrison ghost writing as Leslie Charteris in the first ‘Saint’ book written by someone other than Charteris and that prompted me to look on the shelves for something where Harry Harrison was properly credited. That led me to a series of books I bought, and probably last read, back in the mid 1980’s and Harrison’s most famous creation The Stainless Steel Rat. There are a dozen books in the series and this was the first, it is based on a couple of short stories originally published in Astounding magazine in 1957 and 1960 which were linked and expanded to make the novel in 1961. The best way of introducing the character of Slippery Jim diGriz, alias The Stainless Steel Rat is to read the opening page of this book.

I like the way it is only revealed that the policeman is a robot after the safe is dropped on him, in fact The Stainless Steel Rat is proud of the fact that for all his criminal escapades he has never killed anyone. The stories are set in the distant future and on various planets far from our own, this is pure science fiction fantasy with a heavy dose of humour mixed in for good measure. As is stated in the page shown DiGriz is a career criminal, something of a rarity in this version of the future where children are scanned for any tendency to not be upright law abiding citizens and ‘corrected’ before adulthood. The crime he was committing at the beginning of the book was a simple one, rent a warehouse next to a government storage site, which is full of food but intended for emergencies so rarely visited, cut a hole in the wall and help himself to the goods, relabelling everything so it isn’t obvious it has come from the next door building. Using robots to do the work meant he could keep the money rolling in 24 hours a day without having to do any menial work himself.

Escaping from the police raid using a carefully planned route DiGriz soon starts another caper, this time the theft of an armoured car carrying the takings from a large department store, this is done in quite an ingenious way but this time someone was out thinking him every step of the way and he finds himself trapped. This is his first encounter with Special Corps, an interstellar police service headed by Harold Inskipp, who was a legendary criminal before DiGriz turned to crime and was assumed to be locked up somewhere as he hadn’t been heard of for years, instead he had been recruited to run Special Corps and now he wants DiGriz to add his special talents to the organisation.

I won’t go into too many details of the plot, it’s quite a short book, just over 150 pages, and can be read quite quickly, suffice to say that in the course of the novel DiGriz meets his future wife and mother of his twin sons although this won’t happen until the next book ‘The Stainless Steel Rat’s Revenge’, I have half of the Stainless Steel Rat books along with several other books by Harrison including one of his few books not to funny, Make Room! Make Room! which would be loosely adapted into the superb dystopian 1973 film Soylent Green, a very early warning on the dangers of the greenhouse effect and overpopulation. I have to admit that I prefer Harrison as a comedic writer with a strong streak of anti-authoritarianism thrown in.

Collection du Vieux Chamois

On By bookramblings142In Book Tales, Sets and Series1 Comment

I have recently managed to complete my collection of these sixteen children’s books, most of which were printed in 1947 in cooperation between Penguin Books in England and Fernand Nathan in France. The last two titles VC15 and VC16 are translations of books that originally came out in England in December 1947 and August 1948 respectively so presumably the French versions were later. After the war Penguin were keen to restart their international publications and came up with the plan of altering the text for a small number of Puffin Picture Books into French and printing them in England to avoid having to ship the lithographic plates abroad. This would still require a considerable amount of work to blank out the existing English text and replace it with a translation as the whole page is printed as one unit. This would therefore have been difficult enough but there were also some illustrations altered, some of which were done for obvious reasons others are more obscure.

The books were printed in editions of 20,000 copies per book and none appear to have been reprinted. In the intervening, almost eighty, years this relatively small production number along with the fragility of books consisting of eight folded sheets stapled down the centre making a thirty two page book meant that few have survived to the present day. Although they are a reasonably practical series of children’s books to collect and it has only taken me around five or six years to accumulate them all mainly from French second hand book dealers online. Interestingly none of the books mention who did the translation, presumably somebody at Fernand Nathan, or who made the alterations to the pictures, possibly the original artists. It is also somewhat ironic that the French translations were created, as one of the original inspirations for the Puffin Picture Book series was the French series ‘Albums du Pere Castor’.

I am indebted to the Penguin Collectors Society for their invaluable Checklist of Puffin Picture Books which includes a full listing of these books so that I could check each one as I obtained it, and the checklist is the source of a lot of the information in this blog. Whilst this book lists most of the differences between the English and French illustrations it doesn’t show the variations, so below I will do so as I think it is interesting to see just what cultural differences were picked up in the changes. Firstly let’s list the seven books where it is simply a text translation difference and as you will quickly spot there are several obvious title changes:

  • VC2 – Les Animaux de notre hémisphère – originally PP7 Animals of the Countryside
  • VC5 – Vacances a la Campagne – originally PP33 Country Holiday
  • VC7 – Les Abres de mon pays – originally PP31 Trees in Britain
  • VC9 – Merveilles de la Vie Animale – originally PP44 Wonders of Animal Life
  • VC10 – Comment Vivent les Plantes – originally PP58 The Story of Plant Life
  • VC13 – Les Chiens – originally PP56 Dogs
  • VC16 – La Péche et les Poissons – originally PP53 Fish and Fishing

Now let’s look at the ones with illustration changes which will also give you a chance to see how lovely this series of books are, either in the original 119 titles in English or these 16 in French:

VC1 – Les Oiseaux du village – originally PP20 Birds of the Village

This one is a mistake rather than a deliberate change, but page eight has a number of birds each identified in the adjacent text by a number. However in the French version the numbers within the illustration have been removed which makes the text meaningless. The alteration is omitted from the checklist which regards this book as a translation only.

VC3 – Les Insectes – originally PP5 A Book of Insects

Two pages within this book are completely changed with totally new designs. The first one makes sense to change as the French text appears to be significantly longer than the English and therefore difficult to fit into the circular gap. The second one is less obvious why it was altered to a much more scientific form.

VC4 – Jolis Papillons – originally PP29 Butterflies in Britain

The change for this book is perfectly understandable as it is simply the table on the last page and changing all the text and replicating the original format is probably unnecessary. The deformation of the left hand side of the English text is simply because I didn’t want to force the page flat and possibly loosen the staples. This lack of formatting is not mentioned in the checklist which again regards this book as a translation only.

VC6 – A la Ferme – originally PP4 On the Farm

The biggest difference before the two versions is on the first page where the British farmer is replaced by a man more obviously at work.

The other change is not included in the checklist and it is the amendment to the sign on the side of the lorry on the page dealing with going to the market, where the English text has simply been blurred out.

VC8 – La Natation – originally PP48 A Book of Swimming

Strangely this change isn’t in the checklist either although it is a pretty significant alteration, with the front and rear covers being transposed.

VC11 – L’Auto et son Moteur – originally PP38 About a Motor Car

The two small changes to this book are so small that they were ignored by the checklist, the first one is quite amusing and is a text alteration on the middle page spread where in the English version after the word chassis it points out that this is a French word, quite rightly the French edition doesn’t bother with this explanation. The other change is shown below and is an amendment to the text on the gauges.

VC12 – Les Bateaux – originally PP11 A Book of Ships

Now we get to the book with the most changes between the two versions, all of which are included in the checklist and we start on page three with a new drawing of a Chinese Junk.

The very next page has the British naval flag, the Red Ensign, altered to be unrecognisable in the French version. This also occurs on page 24 but I’ve just included the one example here.

Next comes a change of headgear between two sailors

We then get a change that needed to be made from the original British edition, which was printed in June 1942, when the German flag would logically appear, to 1947 when it wouldn’t, or at least not in that form. The British book would be completely redesigned when it was reprinted in 1952 and no swastikas appear in that either.

Finally we come to page 27 where the illustration at the top of the page is reversed and indeed looks like it was completely redrawn.

VC14 – Les Merveilles du Charbon – originally PP49 The Magic of Coal

With this book only the front cover is amended to change both the helmet, the French version is more rounded and doesn’t have a lamp, and also the miner’s tattoo on his chest. This goes from St George and the dragon on the British miner to the symbol of France, the Gallic Rooster, in the French version. Whilst compiling this list I also realised for the first time that this book is slightly, but noticeably, larger than most of the other Puffin Picture Books or indeed the Vieux Chamois.

VC15 – Le Théatre – originally PP75 The Theatre at Work

The final set of changes involve a couple of uniforms at the theatre both of which are in the checklist, firstly the doorman.

and finally the fireman who looks more prepared for disaster in the French version

That brings us to an end of this overview of the Vieux Chamois series, I’d love to know why they were called Old Chamois but I doubt that I’ll ever find out.

The Rule of Benedict

On By bookramblings142In Reviews1 Comment

Another book on my shelves simply because I bought all 127 titles in the Little Black Classics series by Penguin Books and it is only now when I decided to take it off the shelf and have a look at what I had that I realised the importance of the work I had in my hands. Somewhat enigmatically entitled The Rule of Benedict this turns out to be the set of rules written down by St Benedict for the correct running of the monasteries in the order he founded, The Benedictines, and was originally written in Latin around 540AD. A book of rules doesn’t sound like a good read but surprisingly I really enjoyed it and the insights it gives into the life of what were for all their ‘simple’ lives actually the most educated of the populace in early medieval times. A monk after all was expected to be able to read the bible and give readings during the various services of the day and very few people at the time could read they were also expected to be able to perform various duties within the monastery which was intended to be as self sufficient as possible so there would be the obvious gardeners, cooks, herbalists for medicine but also tailors, carpenters and furniture makers to maintain the clothes for the monks along with the contents of the monastery. Each monk would be allowed a minimum of ‘personal’ items such as a knife, needle and thread for running repairs, and two habits and a pair of shoes from the communal stock, they were assigned underwear only if they were sent on a journey away from the monastery of more than a day.

The first example I have selected from this set of rules is part of the instructions on humility which actually run to twelve steps. This gives a good overview of the structure of the rules regularly quoting from scripture to back up the instructions:

There is also guidance as to the structure of the hierarchies within the monastery with suggestions on how deans, priors and even the abbot should be appointed and in the case of deans and priors how they should be regulated and punished if they stray from the righteous life expected of them. I hadn’t realised before reading this book that a dean was responsible for ten monks under them with a prior being considerably more senior as they would normally only be one although also under the abbot however Benedict warns specifically about priors becoming self important due to their seniority.

Other people mentioned specifically are monks that become priests, these again should be watched to make sure they don’t fall into the sin of pride and also the porter of the monastery who should be as follows ‘A wise old man should be placed at the monastery gate, who will know how to take a message and give a reply and whose age means they will not be tempted to wander about’.

The rules are very much of their time as can be seen below, particularly the final sentence, this punishment is several times stipulated for children, although not exclusively for the young depending on the severity of the offence, It is preferred to one of the various levels of excommunication that could be extended to the adults in the community as children as assumed to not be sufficiently conscious of their religious obligations to be able to understand the punishment of excommunication.

The book also includes instructions for the induction of a new monk into the community which explains that they should be initially turned away and if they persist then subjected to ‘harsh treatment’. If they continue to try to join then they may be admitted, but only into the guest house for a few days where they will be watched over by a senior monk to make sure they are really seeking God. If they continue in their wish to become a monk then they can then enter the novices centre and after two months they should have this full set of rules read to them and told if they will abide by all of it then they can stay otherwise they can leave. If they stay there is a further period of six months during which ‘their patience should be tested’ and then the rules read to them again to accept or not. There then follows another four months of effective probation after which the rules are read to them again and only after they accept the rules for the third time can they be finally admitted as a monk and from that day not permitted to leave the monastery for any reason unless instructed by the abbot. Frankly I’m amazed they had anyone join.

This serendipitous purchase has proved to be a fascinating read which I wouldn’t have had if I hadn’t bought the full set of books, along with other ones from this collection that I have reviewed earlier which you can find using the tag ‘Little Black Classics’ below.

The Thursday Murder Club – Richard Osman

On By bookramblings142In Reviews2 Comments

Whilst browsing the shelves of the local charity shop I spotted this book and picked it up immediately as I had been told several times that I would like it and the various people who recommended it were quite correct as I read the 377 pages over the space of two evenings. I probably would have read it in one go but there is a natural break point at page 172 and I decided to follow the structure of the book and reflect on what we had been told so far and the latest surprise murder that had just occurred.

Richard Osman himself helpfully summarised the four members of The Thursday Murder Club and what the club is all about in his notes for American reading clubs:

I am writing to you from England, home of Agatha Christie, Hugh Grant, and books about being murdered in quaint country villages.
Welcome to ‘The Thursday Murder Club,’ a group of very unlikely friends in their mid 70s. There is Joyce, a quiet but formidable former nurse; Ron, a retired Labour activist, still on the look out for trouble; Ibrahim, a psychiatrist and peacemaker, and Elizabeth, a . . . well no one is quite sure what Elizabeth used to do, but she seems to have contacts in very high places.
Once a week our four unlikely friends, all residents in a luxury retirement community, meet up to investigate old unsolved police cases—usually accompanied by friendly arguments and many bottles of wine.
One day the peace of their community is shattered by a real-life killing, and ‘The Thursday Murder Club’ decide they are just the people to solve the case.

For a murder mystery it’s quite funny with the interaction between the various characters being beautifully written as an example there is one murder where the victim was injected with Fentanyl whilst in close proximity to sixty odd residents of the retirement village and Joyce says ‘It would have to be someone with access to needles and drugs’ only to be told ‘That’s everyone here’ by Elizabeth, simply pointing out that due to age a lot of the residents are self medicating for diabetes amongst other conditions and what would normally be seen as a clue in this case definitely isn’t. But there is a lot of wisdom and experience in our team of self appointed detectives and with Elizabeth’s range of contacts all over the place they can do things the Police can’t either because they would be too obviously looking into things or because it would be either illegal or nearly so. Chris and Donna, the police officers assigned to the original murder gradually come to respect the Thursday Murder Club and their effective, if unorthodox, methods of getting information. The clues range from decades old gangland killings to links with Cypriot criminal families and always the club members are at least one step ahead of the police. I don’t want to say more in case I accidentally say too much but I heartily recommend The Thursday Murder Club and I suspect that recommendation would also apply to the subsequent novels that Osman has written about them.

This was Osman’s first novel, which he wrote over ten months whilst keeping the fact he was writing it a secret from most of the people who know him. But when he revealed its existence to publishers there was such a bidding war that he had a seven figure advance from Penguin Random House to get the book for their Viking imprint. Until the smash hit of his Thursday Murder Club series of books Osman was better known as a television producer, initially for Hat Trick Productions and then as Creative Director of Endemol. During which time he created the TV quiz Pointless for which he ended up the other side of the camera for the first time as the co-presenter after taking the role in the demonstration version for the B.B.C. and then worked with Alexander Armstrong on the programme for twenty seven series before quitting to concentrate on writing.

The Nutmeg Tree – Margery Sharp

On By bookramblings142In Reviews1 Comment

If Margery Sharp is known at all nowadays it is of the creator of The Rescuers in a series of nine children’s books started in 1959, although a lot of people familiar with the two Disney animations of her stories about heroic mice may well not even know of the original books. The Nutmeg Tree precedes these by over twenty years, being first published in 1937 when Sharp was a well known author of novels for adults and this one is a romantic comedy. The story starts with the rather surreal position of Julia singing in her bath but without the usual reverberations, as it turns out that she is sharing the bathroom with most of her movable furniture, up to and including a grandfather clock, so she is somewhat disappointed with the acoustics. Now the reason she is in there with the furniture, and intends to be there for some time, is that bailiffs are in the living room, the other side of the door, and are looking for items to seize that could be sold to recover the money she owes as she is completely broke. Julia ultimately persuades the bailiffs to fetch the man running the pawnbrokers down the street and agrees to sell him the furniture in the bathroom sight unseen leaving her with a few pounds after clearing her debts. She needs the money as she has had a letter from her daughter, Susan, whom she hasn’t seen for years and is now living in France with her grandmother inviting her over in order to hopefully approve of her choice of husband.

Julia’s own first husband, and the father of Susan, had been killed during the first world war and after Susan was born they both lived with his parents for a while until the call of the stage and her old life drew Julia back to London and away from the frankly dull country life she was living. She left Susan with her grandparents as she would undoubtedly have a much better life with them as they were quite rich. They gave her the enormous sum of £7,000 in government stock (around £400,000 in today’s money) to set herself up as an independent woman and her first task on arriving in France is not to let on that she had frittered it away. Her various adventures in trying to hide the fact that she is now penniless and the interactions with Susan, Mrs Packett and Bryan (Susan’s intended) are where most of the comedic elements ensue as Julia recognises in Bryan a bit of herself and therefore is determined that he is not suitable for Susan. To add to the general confusion Julia had met a troupe of trapeze artists on the boat over to France and the senior brother had rather fallen for Julia and had asked her to marry him so was writing to her and then ultimately arriving at the house in France so she needed to explain him as well.

The book was adapted into a play in 1940 and then a film in 1948, which changed the title to Julia Misbehaves and altered the story quite a lot. The film starred Greer Garson as Julia and Walter Pidgeon as her now separated rather than dead husband and the young Elizabeth Taylor (aged 16) as Susan.

This edition was published by Collins in 1946 with a portrait of Margery Sharp on the cover as part of their short lived White Circle paperback range and is particularly notable as it is from the roughly 160 titles in this series also published as a Services Edition as explained on the rear cover, below. Most of the paperback printers during WWII printed Services Editions of books in their normal range, partly for patriotic reasons but also because doing so gave them access to more paper which was in short supply. None of them could be resold and should, in theory, be returned to the central book depot or passed on amongst the troops, as a consequence Services Editions are much sought after by collectors and when they are found are usually in fairly poor condition.

Vendetta for The Saint – Leslie Charteris

On By bookramblings142In Reviews1 Comment

I reviewed the second ‘Saint’ book back in January 2019 and in that explained who Leslie Charteris really was, a Singaporean called Leslie Charles Bowyer-Yin, and said I’d keep reading the thirty books I had about The Saint and only review one if it strikes me as interesting and here it is. I explained six years ago that Charteris stopped writing the books after thirty six years, starting in 1928, and they were instead ghost written by various authors, well this is the first of these ghost written books from 1964, and as you can see by the cover it clearly claims that it is a work by Charteris indeed there is no mention that he didn’t produce it anywhere in the book and neither is there any mention of the real author, in this case American science fiction writer Harry Harrison. It may seem odd that Harrison wrote a Saint novel, and this is the only one he did, but he had been writing the American comic strip adaptation of The Saint for several years before he was let loose on a full blown work. In theory Charteris was now solely the editor of all the future Saint books and he said that he did a lot of work on them, but Harrison claimed he had minimal effect on this final work. I’m inclined to believe Harrison in this as the novel, despite being published by a UK company, Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, it is full of Americanisms which I’m sure Charteris would have replaced if he had actually done a proper editing job. The Saint is quintessentially English and certainly wouldn’t have referred to the fender or hood of a car or described driving down the pavement rather than the road as occurs in this book, just to give a few examples.

Quibbles regarding language aside this is actually a pretty good Saint story and the first one for many years that is a full length novel rather than a collection of shorter stories. The Saint is on holiday in Naples when he witnesses a violent altercation at a nearby table in a restaurant, stepping in to prevent further injury to the surprised English tourist, Mr Euston, who had simply greeted the person at the table as an old friend, although they claim he has made a mistake. The next morning he reads in the newspaper that Euston has been found dead and The Saint finds himself unwittingly caught up with the Mafia because the person Euston apparently recognised is a senior mafioso and they are determined to put him off following up Euston’s murder. Now The Saint isn’t about to be told what he can and cannot do and his holiday needed some excitement so this only increases his interest in trying to find out what is going on. and being a somewhat Robin Hood type character he isn’t above using criminal means to do so. I really enjoyed the story, which bowls along at quite a rapid pace with The Saint caught between the Mafia and the local Police Forces and it all comes to quite a satisfying end.

Incidentally when the book came to be filmed as part of the TV series starring Roger Moore it was made in Malta as the TV company thought filming a defeat of the Mafia story in Naples or Palermo wouldn’t have been a wise decision.

Siddhartha – Hermann Hesse

On By bookramblings142In Reviews1 Comment

At first sight this is an odd book for a German author, who as a young man had sufficiently strong callings to the priesthood that he briefly attended a seminary. But in 1911, in his mid 30’s, Hesse visited India and was introduced to Hindu mysticism and this has undoubtedly influenced this novel written in 1922. The story is set in ancient India, around 2500 years ago, it follows Siddhartha, and to a lesser extent his friend Govinda, in their quest for spiritual enlightenment. At first this leads them as young men to abandon their family homes and all their belongings and live in the forests as ascetic samanas, training their bodies to need nothing, using extended fasting and lack of clothes apart from a loincloth to preserve decency. This was a life of meditation and a severe deprivation of the body. A sample of the thoughts of Siddhartha are shown below and give a flavour of the sometimes difficult to follow text as Hesse can get caught up in the tautological expressions that he uses to try to explain Siddhartha thought processes for pages as a time.

Siddhartha and Govinda live with other samanas for a long time, occasionally begging for scraps of food as the bare minimum to stay alive but eventually they hear of a great teacher called Gautama (Buddha) and decide to travel to hear him teach. They eventually reach Gautama and hear him speak but whilst Govinda immediately resolves to follow the Buddha, Siddhartha instead explains that he feels that such enlightenment cannot be taught but must be individually gained through experiences and solitary meditation so the two friends part company. Leaving Govinda, Siddhartha travels until he reaches a river and there meets a ferryman who will become a significant character later in the book but for now he simply gets him to the other side whereupon he walks on to the next town. It is here that Hesse completely threw me as I thought I understood the path to enlightenment that Siddhartha was going to follow, but instead, on entering the town he sees a wealthy courtesan and is filled with desire. She however is not interested in the half starved gaunt and long haired ascetic standing in front of her and tells him that if he wants to know her better he has to be wealthy, clean and well dressed and he duly throws over his calling, gets his hair cut and body cleaned and perfumed, becomes a merchant and eventually earns a place in her bed. Definitely not what I had expected.

I admit I was somewhat daunted when beginning the book, not helped by Hesse’s undeserved reputation as a not very approachable writer, but as I read on I got more engrossed by the story and by the time of Siddhartha’s sudden change in direction I was highly intrigued as to where the novel was going and loved the ultimate resolution. It’s probably not a book for everyone, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. This is another of the Penguin Drop Caps series and eventually I will read all twenty six of these books, an explanation of the concept can be found on my my blog introducing the series here where I am also including links to each of the books as I review them.

Crusader Castles – T E Lawrence

On By bookramblings142In Reviews1 Comment

Originally written as Lawrence’s thesis for his Bachelor of Arts degree in Modern History at Oxford University in 1910 this was his first time in the Middle East, a part of the world that would become forever linked to him during the First World War as he became famous as Lawrence of Arabia. It doesn’t only deal with Crusader castles however as the year before he had cycled extensively in France exploring the castles there and this is also made use of in his paper. The basis of the thesis is exploring the differences and similarities of European castles with those constructed in the Middle East as part of the Crusades to determine if the castle builders in the East took their inspiration from Byzantine castles they found there, as was the belief of scholars at the time, or if they were more heavily influenced by the western European castles they had left behind. Lawrence was firmly of the opinion that the European castles drove the design of the Crusader castles and his thesis was instrumental in changing the opinion of academics in the subject as it was so well researched and full of examples making his case, most of which hadn’t been studied first hand before, that it ultimately resulted in his First Class degree. This sounds like it could be quite a dry subject but actually it is surprisingly well written and one of his tutors encouraged him to get it published soon after it was submitted, however the sheer number of photographs and drawings, none of which could sensibly left out, would have made such a project financially unviable in the 1910’s.

One interesting feature of the book is the addition of Lawrence’s notes alongside the text from his planned revisions in the 1930’s, these sometimes add to the text but quite often are almost his thought processes regarding what he has written. The section of the book reproduced below, which is discussing the fortifications at Carcassonne in France shows both these types.

Sometimes the notes are somewhat ironic, where he either no longer agrees with what he wrote or how he wrote it, or even the references he cites. I have long had an interest in castles and architecture mainly from having been taken to most of the extant castles in Wales as a young boy with my family. I do love the chance to visit castles I haven’t been to before and a trip to the Levant in 1996 allowed me to follow, if only briefly, in Lawrence’s footsteps.

Below is one of my photographs of Krak des Chevaliers in Syria, described by Lawrence “as a finished example of the style of the Order (The Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, commonly known as the Knights Hospitaller) and perhaps the best preserved and most wholly admirable castle in the world”. This castle is truly enormous, as can be appreciated from the barely visible person standing on top of the Warden’s Tower, a place I had been an hour or so earlier. Lawrence dedicates many pages to this castle in the thesis with extensive descriptions, plans, photographs and drawings, the result of spending five days intensively studying the castle.

The book concludes with several of the letters Lawrence wrote during his travels in the UK and Europe, almost exclusively to his mother but dealing more with the architecture and military history he was learning about. These were originally published, with a foreword by his mother, as the second volume of the Golden Cockerel first edition of this work printed in 1936, a year after Lawrence’s untimely death in a motorcycle accident. But nowadays they are normally included with the main text in one volume as in this lovely Folio Society edition from 2010.

The Poems of Robert Burns

On By bookramblings142In ReviewsLeave a comment

There is one name that comes to mind immediately when you think of New Years Eve and that is Robert Burns due to the international fame of Auld Lang Syne (Old Long Since) a song about a couple of friends enjoying a drink and reminiscing about things they have done in the past. But there is a lot more to Burns than a song that most people know the first verse and chorus to, even if they don’t know any more or what it means and this edition of The Penguin Poets from 1946 is a great introduction. The collection consists of forty three poems and fifty six songs and helpfully for those of us that struggle with the Scots language and dialect there is a single page glossary of common words and translations of lots of others alongside the lines where they occur.

I first came across Burns at school where he was introduced as one of the pioneers of the romantic movement in poetry although we didn’t do much more than the really famous ones including, ‘To a Mouse’, ‘To a Haggis’, ‘A Red, Red Rose’ and the comedic rage expressed in ‘To a Louse’ where Burns gets so annoyed when he sees a louse on a lady’s bonnet in church, all of which are of course in this collection. I really fell in love with the musicality of Burns’ verse however when I was lucky enough to be at The Scotch Malt Whisky Society in Edinburgh for Burns Night and to hear the poems recited with the correct accent made for a wonderful evening which of course included ‘To a Haggis’ and the appropriate, for the venue, ‘Scotch Drink’, the first verse of which (after the initial quote from Solomon’s Proverbs) goes as follows…

Let other Poets raise a fracas
‘Bout vines, an’ wines, an’ drucken Bacchus,
An’ crabbit names an’ stories wrack us,
An’ grate our lug:
I sing the juice Scotch bear can mak us,
In glass or jug.

Scotch bear is barley and Burns is of course talking about whisky, the full twenty one verses of the poem can be read here, let no-one say that Burns wasn’t keen to celebrate his national drink. When I first started to read this book for this blog I did have some problems with the unfamiliar Scots dialect but as I progressed through the works I gradually found it easier to understand and found I needed to refer back to the glossary less and less. Interestingly when I have heard Burns recited I have often had far fewer issues with understanding, I guess this is similar to the way I find reading Middle English easier if I read it aloud and it then seems to make more sense than just reading silently.

So let’s finish where we started with Auld Lang Syne. This is the original version from 1788, in 1795 he changed the first line of the chorus to ‘For auld lang syne, my dear’

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne?

(Chorus)
For auld lang syne, my jo,
For auld lang syne,
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

And surely ye’ll be your pint-stowp!
And surely I’ll be mine!
And we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

We twa hae run about the braes
And pu’d the gowans fine;
But we’ve wander’d mony a weary foot
Sin auld lang syne.

We twa hae paidl’d i’ the burn,
Frae mornin’ sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
Sin auld lang syne.

And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere!
And gie’s a hand o’ thine!
And we’ll tak a right guid willy waught,
For auld lang syne.

Happy new year

The Gospel As Recorded by St. Mark

On By bookramblings142In ReviewsLeave a comment

As this blog is being published on Christmas eve, I have taken the opportunity to review another of the privately printed Christmas books given by Alan and Richard Lane as gifts, in this case the book for Christmas 1951. I’m not going to attempt to review the gospel itself, this blog is concerned with the new translation, this edition of the translation and this book in particular. Penguin were to publish a new translation of The Four Gospels by E V Rieu a year later in November 1952 so this was a first view of this very readable new translation. It was a little odd to select the gospel of Mark as a Christmas gift as only Matthew and Luke include the birth of Jesus, which you would have thought would have been a consideration, but as you can see below Mark starts with the adult Christ being baptised by John in the River Jordan.

Mark is one of the three synoptic gospels where the same stories are told in much the same sequence and in similar words, indeed three quarters of Mark’s gospel also appears in those of Matthew and Luke whilst the gospel of St John is quite different both in style and content. As I said earlier the big difference is the lack of a nativity story in Mark but you also don’t get the Sermon on the Mount or several parables amongst other items in Mark which is quite a bit shorter than the other three gospels.

Looking at the first page as translated by Dr. Rieu it is clear that it is written as much more of story than the classic King James translation which I grew up with, which for all its magnificent prose can be a little daunting to approach, particularly for a modern reader. By way of contrast this is the same passage in the King James version.

1:1 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God;

1:2 As it is written in the prophets, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.

1:3 The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.

1:4 John did baptize in the wilderness, and preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.

1:5 And there went out unto him all the land of Judaea, and they of Jerusalem, and were all baptized of him in the river of Jordan, confessing their sins.

1:6 And John was clothed with camel’s hair, and with a girdle of a skin about his loins; and he did eat locusts and wild honey;

1:7 And preached, saying, There cometh one mightier than I after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose.

1:8 I indeed have baptised you with water: but he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost.

1:9 And it came to pass in those days, that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized of John in Jordan.

1:10 And straightway coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him:

1:11 And there came a voice from heaven, saying, Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

It is almost forty years since I first read E V Rieu’s translation of the four gospels. I took it, along with a couple of others from the Penguin Classics series, as my in flight reading for the first time I crossed the Atlantic in February 1986. I’m not remotely religious although I did go to a Church of England primary school for my education between the ages of four and eleven, but the way the gospels are presented in this translation means you can read them more like a collection of four novellas and enjoy the stories as they are told. This edition is really beautifully produced with canvas covered boards and terracotta cloth labels blocked in gold. The pages are a lovely grey and compliment the overall design by Hans Schmoller well. The lion design by Reynolds Stone is different to the one, also engraved by him, used for the Penguin Classic when it was finally published.

My copy was given to typographer Ruari McLean (it has his bookplate inside) who had joined Penguin Books in 1946 with specific responsibility for Puffin books and was instrumental in introducing Jan Tschichold to Penguin. By 1949 he had moved on and was working with Rev. Marcus Morris on the design of a new comic for boys he had devised called Eagle, which would go on to massive success in the 1950’s and 60’s. Tschichold would radically redesign Penguin books in the late 1940’s and came up with The Penguin Composition Rules.