Ariel – André Maurois

On August 5, 2025July 20, 2025 By bookramblings142In ReviewsLeave a comment

30th July 1935 was a very important date in the history of publishing, as that is when the first ten Penguin books made their appearance. Ninety years later these books in their first editions are somewhat fragile and definitely difficult to find, especially the crime titles. I do have all ten and seven of them still have their elusive dust wrappers as can be seen below, the wrappers have the 6d (six pence) price on the front cover. For August I’m going to be reading the first four, one a week, and the plan is to read five of the remaining six during the rest of the year, one has already been a subject of a blog so this will be linked to when its turn comes, I will probably re-read this one as well just to say I’ve read the set in a run. As the books are so delicate, and valuable, this is not something I have done before but it only seems appropriate as a means to celebrate Penguin’s 90th birthday. The books are colour coded with blue indicating biography, orange fiction and green crime, other colours would be introduced as time goes on. This was a concept started by Albatross Press in Germany, see my blog on those books for more details and the similarities between them and Penguin.

Before talking about ‘Ariel’ the book there is one other thing that needs to be mentioned regarding these first ten books and that is an error on the back of the very first versions of all of them. Book two, ‘A Farewell to Arms’, is missing its first word in the list of titles on the rear. This was noticed quite quickly but not in time to prevent the first batch of titles going out with this incorrect list. Subsequent batches of books from the first editions of all ten books were corrected and the full title appears, however another error happened with ‘Ariel’and this is clear on the front cover at the top of this log entry. The authors first name is André not Andre and this led to a third cover being produced for the remainder of the first edition run of this title, not a great start to a new publishing enterprise. The first edition is therefore available in three variants:

Farewell to Arms on the rear and Andre on the front
A Farewell to Arms on the rear and Andre on the front
A Farewell to Arms on the rear and André on the front

All three versions are shown below, the first book being the rear of the one used at the top of the page with the missing accent, the second book is also missing the accent on the front cover.

Another thing to add, as it is clearer at the base of the rear covers above, is that Penguin Books when it began was simply a paperback imprint of the publisher John Lane The Bodley Head which explains why all the books say THE BODLEY HEAD on their front covers. This would be the case for over a year with Penguin Books finally becoming a separate entity and references to The Bodley Head no longer appearing from the batch of books numbered 81 to 90 published in March 1937.

When reading ‘Ariel’ it becomes clear that its subtitle ‘A Shelley Romance’ is particularly appropriate, as whilst it reads as a biography of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley it is at least partially a novel with a lot of clearly invented dialogue with no documentary evidence behind it, rather than what we would regard as a properly researched scholarly work today. That said the general thrust of the book and the sequence of events is accurate and it is impossible to examine the extent of Maurois’ actual research due to the lack of notes, citations or even an index in the book. Maurois is clearly more interested in getting a feel for his subject and portraying him in a way that gives an impression of what it would have been like to know him rather than providing a definitive biography, but it is very readable and still in print, both in this translation by Ella D’Arcy and other more modern versions.

We follow Shelley from his time being badly bullied at Eton, going on to Oxford where he lasted just a few months before being expelled from the university along with his friend and fellow student Thomas Jefferson Hogg over the authorship of a pamphlet entitled ‘The Necessity of Atheism’ which he had mailed to the bishops in the area and the heads of all the Colleges. Whilst at Oxford he had met Harriet Westbrook, a sixteen year old school friend of his sisters whom shortly after his nineteenth birthday he eloped to Edinburgh with. This led to their considerable financial difficulties as both sets of parents were outraged and stopped their allowances. Shelley had two children with Harriet, the second born after he had run away to France with the sixteen year old daughter of William Godwin and her sister whilst believing Harriet had begun an affair. Mary of course became famous as the author of Frankenstein which was published and went on to write several other novels after Shelley’s death but Maurois completely ignores this side of her portraying her as a dedicated wife, they married just days after after Harriet’s suicide, but also covering domestic arguments mainly between her and whichever other people (usually other women) were living with them at the time. The lack of acknowledgement of Mary’s literary talents is possibly the greatest failure of this biography. During the coverage of Shelley’s extended time in Italy, until his death there at just twenty nine, the quality of the biography improves markedly with letters included and far more evidence provided for what Maurois states happened.

Sadly Shelley never enjoyed the fruits of his poetic labours, as at his death he was still barely read and his life too coloured by his socialist and atheist reputation to make him acceptable reading for anyone likely to see his works in print, which is ironic bearing in mind his status as one of the great Romantic Poets nowadays. By all means read this book by Maurois as a general overview of the life of Shelley, but if you are really interested in the poet I have to recommend ‘Shelley: The Pursuit’ by Richard Holmes, first published in 1974 but still the definitive work.

Tragically I was an Only Twin – The Complete Peter Cook

On March 25, 2025February 28, 2025 By bookramblings142In ReviewsLeave a comment

When I decided to review a book about Peter Cook this week I was faced with a dilemma, should it be ‘Something like Fire’ edited by his widow Lin Cook, or ‘Tragically I was an Only Twin’ edited by William Cook who is apparently not related to the great comic. Both books are wonderful tributes to Peter Cook who sadly died thirty years ago (9th January 1995) at the far too young age of just fifty seven. In the end I chose the second not because ‘Something Like Fire’ is the lesser book, it is a compendium of reminiscences and through that you learn a little more about what it was like to be with Peter Cook and it is of course extremely funny. But this book is a collection of his works, many transcribed from recordings as either there aren’t scripts existing anymore or in several cases there weren’t scripts in the first place, Peter’s genius lay in extemporisation. What this book definitely isn’t as a complete Peter Cook, that would be multiple volumes, but what is here is representative and whilst reading it I can hear Peter’s voice, especially in his guises of E L Whisty and Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling or memorably with Dudley Moore as Pete and Dud.

The performances between Cook and Moore worked mainly because they rarely had a script or rather there was the basis of one which Dudley Moore would learn but Peter Cook wouldn’t despite having dictated it into his ever present tape recorder, relying instead on headlines to keep the performance going in the right direction. Cook would invent a lot during the double act which gave spontaneity to the shows and would often lead to Moore struggling to keep a straight face as some new brilliant line would strike Cook as a better alternative to what he should have been saying. That Dudley Moore could continue regardless is a mark of his acting abilities but it also left William Cook with a dilemma whilst compiling this book as there would be several different versions of a lot of the sketches so he had to choose which one should be included. There is a lot more to Peter Cook than his work on stage or on television and his writing for newspapers and the satirical magazine Private Eye, which he ran for many years, is also featured in this collection.

Sadly Cook did most of his best work in the 1960’s and 70’s only occasionally appearing after then and then only when he wanted to but when he did it was invariably superb. The one legged Tarzan sketch seen in the link is a classic and was originally performed in 1964 but this is a version from one of the Secret Policeman’s Balls in the 1980’s to raise money for Amnesty International. The real tragedy of this book is it highlights how much of the early material no longer exists, a lot of the 1960’s performances for the BBC were wiped when the BBC decided to re-use the master tapes so only records and tapes still exist and almost all of those are no longer available to purchase so this book is invaluable in preserving the work one of the great comic geniuses. Sadly I never heard his alter-ego Sven the Norwegian who would call in to a late night local radio show and would be so strange whilst talking about the Norwegian obsession for fish which had driven him from his home country without the radio host, at least at first, having any idea he was actually talking to Peter Cook. I did see the wonderful Clive Anderson interviews from December 1993, also included here, where Clive apparently interviewed four different, and distinctly odd, people in one show all played by Peter including a biscuit quality controller who had been abducted by aliens, a judge who shot a defendant in court, a football manager and an ageing rock star. Peter Cook’s performance in these was entirely unscripted and this was probably his last great appearance.

For those inspired to approach Cook’s work after reading this blog I feel I should warn about the language used in Peter Cook and Dudley Moore’s last collaboration, that of Derek and Clive. These sketches are deliberately littered with profanities and the two performers are often inebriated whilst coming out with this stream of consciousness. The coarseness of the language and the, at times, unpleasantness from Cook to Moore, who at the time (late 1970’s) was becoming successful in Hollywood just as Cook’s career was struggling sometimes makes these a difficult read but they are nevertheless very funny.

A.S.B. Glover – Tim Graham

On December 26, 2023December 24, 2023 By bookramblings142In Reviews1 Comment

Subtitled ‘The Unacknowledged Genius of Penguin’ this is part biography and part a collection of correspondence and it is the letters both to and from Glover that give the clearest picture of the character of the man. For those people not familiar with the name A.S.B. Glover, which I suspect is most of the people reading this blog, he was responsible for proof reading and editing several series for Penguin Books over a period of sixteen years especially the factual Pelicans as well as editing various books for other publishers. This was a role that ideally suited this remarkably erudite man who could read and write in multiple languages including Ancient Greek, Latin and Sanskrit and was also a renowned scholar in religious texts and the saints of the various Christian denominations and yet left school with no qualifications. Biographical details regarding Glover are difficult to find, he was born in 1895 as Alan McDougall and changed his name sometime in the 1920’s possibly due to his regular imprisonment during World War I as a conscientious objector under his original name. One thing that I definitely didn’t know about him that Tim mentions is that his body was covered in tattoos, including his face, although these facial ones were later removed leaving some scarring and that he may have earned a living for a time as a tattooed man in circuses. Tim cannot find any evidence of a McDougall or Glover working in such a role but it is entirely possible that he had yet another name that he worked under at the time.

He first came to the attention of the publishing world by sending numerous letters containing corrections to books they had recently published to the extent that Penguin realised that it would probably be cheaper to employ Glover to catch mistakes before they went to print rather than amend books for subsequent publication. I’ve mentioned before that you see more of Glover in his letters and the following example dealing with a matter close to his heart after his years in prison is a case in point.

The book by Trevor Gibbens never saw light of day despite Glover’s repeated attempts to get the author to finish it.

This book however is published in a limited run of just 600 copies by The Penguin Collectors Society and designed to look like a Pelican from the period Glover was in charge. At the time of writing this review it is available from the society for £12 plus postage, follow this link if interested. All in all it is an really good book about a fascinating man, who although he didn’t get on all the time with his colleagues and particularly not his boss, Allan Lane, was nevertheless essential to the accuracy and therefore the authority that Pelican Books established under his control.

Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes – Rob Wilkins

On January 3, 2023January 1, 2023 By bookramblings142In ReviewsLeave a comment

I was given this book for Christmas and picked it up to read a few chapters at 4pm that day, ten and a half hours, and most of a bottle of wine, later at 2:30am on Boxing Day I finished the last of the 429 pages. I just kept thinking I’ll read another chapter and then by one o’clock in the morning it was a case of, well I may as well finish it then. Yes I knew a lot of the story already but Rob’s writing draws you in, he is surprisingly good with a turn of phrase although I suppose he was taught by a master. Rob Wilkins, for those who don’t know, was Terry’s PA and later business manager from December 2000 until his death. He now runs Narrativia (a production company looking after Terry’s works) and Terry’s literary estate alongside Rhianna Pratchett, Terry’s daughter. It is this that gives him a unique oversight of Terry’s life and works.

Terry had started to compile notes for an autobiography before he died in 2015 but by then had only produced around 24,000 words and reached 1979, still way before he wrote his first Discworld novel. At that point he had had only two novels published, ‘The Carpet People’ and ‘Dark Side of the Sun’ along with a handful of short stories. Rob has used these notes extensively but there needed to be a lot more research, not just to fill in gaps but also to do some fact checking. Not everything was, or even could, be checked and some of these fell into the category, referred to several times in the book as Too Good To Check, invariably abbreviated as TGTC. Terry was diagnosed with Posterior cortical atrophy, a variety of Alzheimer’s disease in 2007 and as Rob points out, just how reliable were his memories especially near the end so a lot of checking was needed, fortunately Lyn (Terry’s wife for more that forty years) and Rhianna were always available along with numerous other people so the book has to be described as pretty accurate, except possibly where it is TGTC.

The book does indeed cover Terry’s life, rather unlike a lot of biographies which tend to rush to the point at which the person being written about has done something significant that brought them to the public’s attention. As I said at the beginning there are 429 pages and it is only as we approach page 200 that the first book in the Discworld series is being written. Before that we have his schooldays and his initial somewhat ambivalent attitude to reading. His first job, in a library, and leaving school before his A levels to become an apprentice journalist on his local newspaper. Journalism was where Terry learnt to write and love words and especially books. One paragraph in the book really spoke to me and my love of books.

You know how it goes. You start out just borrowing a few books from the library, or your grandmother, and thinking you’ve got it under control and that you can handle it – they’re just loans, after all, so what’s the fuss about? And the next thing you know you’re moving on to the harder stuff -second-hand books from second-hand bookshops, and actually paying for them with your own money and taking them home with you to own, putting them on a shelf in your bedroom, even. And at that point, most likely, it’s all over and you’ll be on to brand new books before you realise it, and almost certainly an addict for the rest of your life.
Chapter three

In June 2011 Terry and Rob appeared in their second TV documentary ‘Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die’, an incredibly difficult programme to watch about assisted suicide which was something Terry was considering for himself as his condition worsened and was actively campaigning for a change in the law in the UK so that people wouldn’t have to go to Switzerland which was the only place in Europe where it was legal. Throughout the programme you can see Terry getting more enthusiastic and Rob getting more and more distressed as the reality of what they were talking about hit hard. The next day after the broadcast I happened to be talking to Rob on the phone about something else and he asked me what I had thought of the programme and I told him that I had cried at times, much as I did nearing the end of this book eleven years later, and that it was his reactions that I had most been drawn to. I wish he had mentioned something that appears in this book as he sat watching the programme himself and was scrolling through the twitter feed to try to gauge peoples reactions to the documentary when he randomly paused his scrolling to read “Terry Pratchett’s Assistant is a Right Knob”. Years later at the 2016 Discworld convention, the first one after Terry’s death, he had clearly embraced this sentiment.

Rob Wilkins on stage at the 2016 Discworld Convention at Kenilworth near Warwick, England on 26th August, photo taken by me.

It was a great read Rob, and no you’re not a Right Knob.

The Life and Times of the Real Winnie-the-Pooh – Shirley Harrison

On July 12, 2022July 13, 2022 By bookramblings142In ReviewsLeave a comment

This week my book choice is a most unusual biography, because although the subject is internationally famous a lot of people don’t know that there is a real Winnie-the-Pooh who was actually owned by Christopher Robin. He has led a very interesting ‘life’ culminating in his retirement along with some of his friends in the Children’s Library in New York and the story is very well told in this entertaining volume. I have to say that I knew some of this story but there was still a lot of material that was new to me. I’ve been a teddy bear collector for over twenty years and a book collector most of my life, now combining both of these interests by occasionally purchasing books signed by A A Milne, E H Shepard, Christopher Robin Milne and even H Fraser-Simson (of which more later).

The bear on the cover is the real Winnie-the-Pooh originally made by probably the finest teddy bear maker in the UK, Farnell, and purchased from Harrods for Christopher Robin’s first birthday in 1921. Over the years he was joined by a cuddly pig named Poglet and later the smaller and easier to carry version named Piglet, Eeyore, Tigger, Kanga and Roo all arrived too in fairly quick succession. Rabbit and Owl who also appear in the books were additions by A A Milne, they were never actual toys owned by Christopher Robin. Those people who have visited Pooh in his retirement home are often surprised that not only doesn’t he look like the Disney version but he also is very different to the one drawn by E H Shepard. In fact the model for the bear in the books is Shepard’s daughters teddy which was probably a Steiff.

New York Children’s Library has Pooh, Eeyore, Tigger, Piglet and Kanga, sadly Roo was lost at the family home of Cotchford Farm well before the toys made their crossing to America in 1947, originally for a short visit which turned into a permanent stay. They were originally held at the offices of Milne’s USA publishers E P Dutton but transferred to the library in 1987. During their time at Dutton they travelled all over America and Pooh even came back to England for three brief visits, including once flying on Concorde when Pooh was invited onto the flight deck to meet the Captain, he really was an international celebrity.

The rear of the book has some of the lovely photos selected to illustrate the story, several of which I hadn’t seen before including top left Christopher Robin starting school alongside his childhood friend Anne and below that an eight or nine year old Christopher Robin with some of the toys, Pooh and Eeyore are on the floor with Tigger under his left arm and Poglet in his right. Piglet is only three inches (7½cm) tall so this is definitely Poglet. In the middle is the original Winnie Bear with his owner Lieutenant Colebourn before he was donated to London Zoo early in WWI, which is where Christopher Robin met him and the then four year old Edward Bear was renamed Winnie in his honour. To the right of that image is the bridge in Ashdown forest where the game Pooh-sticks was played and named. At the bottom of the page is Christopher Robin’s first school bag from when he went to boarding school at the age of nine and marks the end of his time with Pooh as his constant companion. The fact that his father had used his real name in the books led to Christopher Robin being bullied at school and he built up a resentment to the books that he held for a large part of his adult life, only becoming reconciled with the characters and his and their ever growing fame much later on.

The book not only follows Winnie-the-Pooh on his journeys but also summarises the lives of the Milne family including the somewhat surprising decision by the naturally reclusive Christopher Robin to open The Harbour Bookshop in Dartmouth, although he did keep a fairly low profile about his links to the toy animals of his childhood and the books they led to. I do have a complete set of the paperbacks signed by him though which presumably originally came from his bookshop.

Above is Winnie-the-Pooh as drawn by E H Shepard for comparison with the actual cuddly teddy bear show on the front cover.

Winnie-the-Pooh continues to have massive fame around the world, considerably helped by the Disney version which with films and merchandising generates billions of pounds every year, A A Milne in his will left money to his family but also to set up The Milne Trust which uses his royalties from the characters for charitable causes and Disney, to be fair, also donates significant sums to charities. The book ends with a summary of the main beneficiaries. As for H Fraser-Simson, he was a composer who lived near the Milne’s London home and it was he that set several of the poems from ‘When We Were Very Young’ and ‘Now We Are Six’ to music with the tunes that I learnt as a child. At 102 years old Winnie-the-Pooh has now outlived all his compatriots and looks to just becoming more famous as the years go on and this tribute to a much loved bear was a really good read.

Cochrane the Dauntless – David Cordingly

On March 29, 2022 By bookramblings142In ReviewsLeave a comment

Lord Thomas Cochrane was the real life basis of two of the most swashbuckling characters in fiction, both C S Forester’s Horatio Hornblower (12 book series) and Patrick O’Brien’s Jack Aubrey (20 book series) take a lot from the actual exploits of this now largely forgotten British naval hero. Amazingly they probably had to tone it down in the fictional versions for some of the actual exploits of Cochrane are so unbelievable that they are beyond what even a fictional hero would attempt. Examples such as the attack of the HMS Speedy against a much larger Spanish vessel where Cochrane reasoned that if he sailed right up alongside the Spanish vessel its guns would fire harmlessly over the top of his own ship whilst he could issue broadside after broadside into its lower decks. As the Spanish sailors abandoned their guns and tried to board the Speedy he sailed away a few yards, then as they went back to their guns he came alongside and started firing again. Eventually the Spanish ship surrendered and was sailed away to a British held port by a portion of the crew of the Speedy. Lord Cochrane was a consummate sailor and during his time on board had learnt a lot of the skills of his men, this ability to muck in if needed alongside leading from the front with boarding parties earned him considerable respect from his crew a lot of whom followed him from ship to ship as he progressed from the tiny Speedy to much larger frigates.

In spite of his seamanship and skill as a coastal raider, both for taking enemy ships and destroying fortifications Cochrane himself never made it higher than Captain in the British navy and this was largely due to his inability to stay silent when faced with any real or perceived affront to his position. He continually annoyed his superior officers, even pressing for the Admiral he was ultimately responsible to during one battle to be court martialed, and also during his years in parliament as MP for Westminster annoyed most of the other parliamentarians with his continual pressing of causes that he had already lost and outspoken speeches condemning his naval commanders. His autobiography, written in his eighties, reopened a lot of the wounds he had dealt in his twenties and thirties and left him even fewer friends amongst the great and the good. Cochrane however always believed he was right and everyone else was wrong.

David Cordingley has produced a splendid book about this complex character using not only Cochrane’s, somewhat biased, autobiography but offsetting this with admiralty reports, letters, ships logs and other evidence such as the diary and correspondence of Captain Marryat who served as a junior officer under Cochrane before becoming famous as a novelist. The book is comprehensive with numerous maps, pictures, cutaway drawings of two of Cochrane’s ships, bibliography, index and most importantly a glossary of naval terms for those of us less familiar with them. At 362 pages, excluding all the extra items detailed previously, Cordingly gave himself space to explore his subject and it is a fascinating read. From rising naval star to disgraced prisoner (after being implicated in a stock market fraud that he probably wasn’t actually involved in but which his superiors used as a convenient way of getting rid of a noisy thorn in their side), to signing up to be admiral of the separatist navy under the Chilean independence leader Bernardo O’Higgins and helping force the Spanish out of South America Cochrane led an exciting life and the book reflects that. Cordingly isn’t shy about documenting Cochrane’s faults as well, worst of which was his impetuous nature which got him into more problems than was necessary.

Amazingly after his success as a South American mercenary captain helping to gain independence for not only Chile but Peru and Brazil as well he arrived back in Britain where his various sins were forgiven and he was promoted to Rear Admiral and eventually died, aged eighty four, as a full Admiral. I heartily recommend this biography of a supreme sailor and complex character who is sadly barely known today despite his influence on writers as diverse as Arthur Conan Doyle and Bernard Cornwell. His adventures are as exciting as any fictional character and Cordingly’s descriptions are very well written.

Typhoid Mary – Anthony Bourdain

On February 1, 2022January 31, 2022 By bookramblings142In ReviewsLeave a comment

First published by Bloomsbury in America in 2001, this is the 2005 UK edition, why we had to wait four years for the book to come out in the UK is a mystery, maybe they thought Typhoid Mary, or Mary Mallon to give her her proper name wasn’t that well known over this side of the Atlantic. The author is Anthony Bourdain a celebrity chef in his native America who morphed into a travel presenter on TV whilst also writing several books of which this is the most unusual as it is the only one not based on his own career. Initially he seems drawn to Mary as a fellow cook and this is by far the most sympathetic telling of her life that I have read, emphasising the stresses of working in a kitchen and her total disbelief that the typhoid cases happening around her had anything to do with her as she was so healthy. In fact she was the first ever identified asymptomatic carrier of a disease so she remained perfectly well but everything she touched became infected. This would probably be OK if all the food she prepared for her various wealthy patrons had been cooked but there would be salads, ice-creams etc all of which could have been lethal.

Mary is known to have infected fifty three people with typhoid of which three died but to the end of her days never seemed to have grasped that she was a carrier. She was employed by various rich families between 1900 and 1907 and must have been a good cook to be able to deal with the demands of such a job where her employers would have expected new and interesting dishes almost every day especially whilst entertaining their friends. This is the basis of Bourdain’s interest in her, his own descriptions of life in a professional kitchen where those people outside the four walls of the hot and busy kitchen are largely treated with contempt by those inside as nothing else matters apart from getting the food out are somewhat worrying and I’m glad I never had an opportunity to eat anywhere he was cooking.

In 1907 after being identified by George Soper as the probable source of the infections she was forcibly incarcerated on North Brother Island off the coast of New York but not until after Soper had made several cack handed attempts to obtain blood and stool samples even at his first go confronting her in the kitchen of current employer and demanding samples there and then. Needless to say Mary saw him off with a carving fork she had to hand. Ultimately she was detained by five policemen and a female doctor who ended up sitting on Mary as she tried to escape from the ambulance. Bourdain has nothing but contempt for Soper, not just from the inappropriate ways he confronted Mary Mallon but also for his constant self promotion as the person who stopped Typhoid Mary. The cover of the book is based on an illustration used in one of the articles in the New York American which reported on her detention in 1909.

She was to spend three years on North Brother Island before a press campaign managed to get her released in 1910 on condition that she regularly reported to the Department of Health and stopped cooking. It may seem surprising that such a campaign was started but it must be understood that Mary had not been convicted of anything and was simply being held under health statutes without trial or any possibility of a trial. However being a cook was the one thing she was good at and soon after she had started work as a laundress she went back to cooking although no longer in smart houses but in mass canteens, finally detained again five years later whilst working at the Sloane Hospital for Women and it is at this point that Bourdain finally moves his position from being sympathetic to her plight to some condemnation that she was working supplying food to neonatal wards. This time there would be no release and she remained on North Brother Island for the final twenty three years of her life. Despite being clearly unhappy about the danger she was potentially causing to new borns at the end of her cooking career Bourdain still has a regard for her and at the end of the book describes visiting her grave almost as a pilgrimage.

The book is very well written and I found myself reading it at one sitting as I was drawn into the sad story of Mary Mallon’s life. Bourdain was a well known user of narcotics, mainly cocaine and heroin especially in his early career, possibly as a coping mechanism for the stress in his job, and committed suicide in 2018 whilst filming his travel/cookery programme in France.

Shackleton – Ranulph Fiennes

On November 30, 2021November 29, 2021 By bookramblings142In Reviews1 Comment

This fascinating biography of Sir Ernest Shackleton is written by Sir Ranulph Fiennes both knighted for their services to exploration and it is particularly interesting that Fiennes is able to add his own experiences of polar expeditions to accounts of Shackleton’s. He has previously written a biography of Sir Robert Scott, Shackleton’s original polar commander and then major rival in attempts to reach the South Pole and he treats each man fairly unlike the earlier biographies of Scott and Shackleton by Roland Huntford who was very much against Scott and pro Shackleton.

At 375 pages plus extensive index, appendix and bibliography this book could well be seen as the definitive biography of one of the foremost polar explorers of the so called ‘Heroic Age’, i.e. the early 20th century even though he never actually made it to the South Pole. The closest he got was one hundred miles away from it, setting at the time the record for furthest south on 6th January 1909 along with Jameson Boyd Adams, Eric Marshall and Frank Wild. This record would not be beaten until Roald Amundsen actually reached the pole on 14th December 1911. Fiennes makes the point that if he had been on his own Shackleton would probably have risked another 6 to 10 days march to the actual pole but concern for his men made him turn back due to the low level of rations still available to them. This for me is one of the defining differences between Scott and Shackleton, the disappointment on not achieving his goal was considerably offset by the fact that they all made it home safely, unlike Scott who two years later chose to press on and ultimately this cost not only his own life but that of his team members. Fiennes at this point is able, through his own experiences, to give an excellent account of just what happens to the body in the extreme cold pulling sledges as the daily rations have to be reduced in order to complete a goal. He never got as extreme as Shackleton but the explanations as to just how tough the going must have been are given extra colour by having this happen to himself and his team mate Mike Stroud.

Shackleton is however probably most famous for his third expedition, which turned into his biggest disaster as his ship, Endurance, was torn apart by the ice and he was forced to lead a completely different expedition to that intended as he rescued all his men from what seemed like certain death including the amazing crossing of the Weddell Sea in a tiny boat, less than 23 feet long. Here Fiennes’s descriptive powers really come into their own giving a fuller understanding of just what Shackleton and his five compatriots went through, including Tom Crean who I wrote about back in March 2019. Fiennes has also crossed the ocean in a small boat as part of his five year Trans Globe expedition which visited both poles travelling over land and sea although not the extremely hazardous 800 mile trip from Elephant Island to South Georgia undertaken by Shackleton and his men to get help for those left behind.

Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes, to give him his full name, has written twenty five books mainly about his expeditions or biographies of fellow explorers and is an excellent story teller, really involving the reader in the hardships and triumphs of global exploration whilst seeking to rediscover the men behind the stories. He is frank about Shackleton’s appalling business sense which left him always short of funds and never as fully equipped as he should have been for any of his expeditions whilst making the point that the Royal Geographic Society, which could have been a potential major backer was very much committed to Scott so were positively against any support for Shackleton. His dalliances with other women outside of his marriage are also conjectured, along with the never ending support of his long suffering wife with a husband who was rarely even in the same country never mind at home. This is not a painted over all goody goody biography and is all the better for show all aspects of Shackleton’s character. The book was published by Michael Joseph at the beginning of the month and I have a signed copy.

I’d like to finish this review exactly as Fiennes does with a quote from another polar explorer and geologist from the ‘heroic age’ Sir Raymond Priestley who was part of expeditions by both Shackleton and Scott which I think perfectly sums up why I have a lifelong admiration for Shackleton.

For scientific leadership, give me Scott. For swift and efficient travel, Amundsen. But when you are in a hopeless situation, when there seems to be no way out, get on your knees and pray for Shackleton.

Kierkegaard’s Cupboard – Marianne Burton

On July 13, 2021June 14, 2021 By bookramblings142In ReviewsLeave a comment

A collection of poems inspired by the life and works of Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard, what an unusual idea and so it had to be bought and read if only for the concept. What I didn’t expect was just how readable Burton’s poetry is, and how difficult to put the book down proved to be. It is only a slim volume but I read it within a couple of hours of purchasing, this was helped by the fact that each poem is a variation on the sonnet form and at least retains the limit of fourteen lines even if Burton doesn’t keep to iambic pentameter and certainly not to the normal eight line, six line stanzas structure. This made it an ideal book to have with lunch as I could read a poem then have a bite of lunch or a swig of beer whilst thinking about it before diving back in to the next poem; which made for a very enjoyable, and enlightening, hour and a half in a very good pub.

The book is split into six sections, ‘Childhood’, ‘Regine’, ‘Writings’, ‘After the Corsair’, ‘The Moment’, ‘Death’ and there are fifty poems spread through these sections along with one extra right at the front entitled ‘How To Write A Preface’. As stated above all the poems have just fourteen lines but Burton manages to pack a lot into her self imposed constraint and each section has a short biographical note which introduces the poems to come and places their significance in the life of Kierkegaard. ‘Childhood’, ‘Writings’ and ‘Death’ are pretty self explanatory but the others need explaining if, like me, you don’t know much about Kierkegaard. Regine Olson was an eighteen year old whom Kierkegaard was briefly engaged to but he called the engagement off when he realised that marriage was not for him and he could only make her unhappy trapped in a relationship with him. He never got over the loss of her though and had a cupboard which contained all the letters and mementos of their year together and that is what gave this book its title. The Corsair was a Danish satirical magazine which lampooned Kierkegaard not just for his writings and beliefs but also his appearance and the lost relationship with Regine and the resultant publicity made him a figure of fun for a while. ‘The Moment’ refers to a series of tracts by Kierkegaard criticising the Danish Lutheran church. It should be noted here that in the only factual error I have found in the book Burton states that Regine was seventeen when she was engaged to Søren but she was born in January 1822 and they became engaged in September 1840 so she was definitely eighteen, Søren by the way was twenty seven at the time.

A lot of the poems are written in the first person so the book reads as though Kierkegaard himself is talking to us through the medium of verse. Three particularly intriguing poems all have the same title ‘It was Early Morning. Abraham Rose’, these are in ‘The Writings’ section of the book and tell three very different versions of the biblical story of Abraham preparing to sacrifice his son Isaac one after another. Kierkegaard had a strong personal religious belief but an often fractious relationship with the dominant church in Denmark and some of the strongest works in this collection are in ‘The Moment’ where Burton takes on his mantle in a critique of the state run religion and its materialistic clergy. I must look out for Burton’s first collection of poems ‘She Inserts the Key’ as this collection has whetted my appetite for more.

I purchased the book last month during a trip to the small Shropshire town of Bishop’s Castle where there is a quirky shop called Poetry Pharmacy, which mainly sells poetry but also has other interesting books and a small children’s section along with a coffee shop, it’s definitely worth a visit if you ever find yourself deep in rural Shropshire.

Chekhov: A Life in Letters – edited by Gordon McVay

On May 4, 2021 By bookramblings142In Reviews1 Comment

Rather than produce a standard biography, Gordon McVay has translated and edited a selection of letters from Anton Chekhov which give a wide view of his interests and career development from starting medical school in Moscow in 1879 through to his final letter in June 1904 written the day of his heart attack which would ultimately prove fatal four days later. There are extensive notes that put the letters into context and this has proved to be an excellent use of the material as Chekhov is a lively letter writer and travelled extensively so his correspondence is full of detailed descriptions of his experiences both good and bad. My copy is the Folio Society 1994 edition bound in black buckram and embossed with Chekhov’s signature across both covers. The book is currently available as a Penguin Classics edition. To give a feel for the letters I’ll selected a few extracts and will add them between paragraphs in this blog.

That this represents just a tiny fraction of Chekhov’s letters is proven by the regular mention in the notes of a thirty volume Soviet edition and even that is not complete because it can only include those letters that were kept by the recipients. The Soviet edition is also censored to remove things they didn’t feel appropriate, such as his dalliance with a Japanese woman on his trip to Sakhalin, and anything judged not politically sound. The edition I have has 365 pages dedicated to the letters along with a useful 22 page introduction and an excellent index which made going back to find things I wanted to refer to very easy. That the Soviet edition is censored is actually quite appropriate as Chekhov complains many times about what the censors in his own time had done to his stories and plays, some of which he regarded as particularly badly damaged so that the sense of the play is lost.

In Siberia on his way to the island of Sakhalin 1890

In 1890 Chekhov travelled to the penal colony of Sakhalin to survey the conditions and interview prisoners for what he explains in various letters is a payback to medicine. It eventually took him three years to write up his findings to appear in ten parts in one of the serious journals and then more work to produce a somewhat longer book. Presumably he wrote letters from his months on Sakhalin but none of them are included in this collection however there are quite a few describing his massive journey by horse drawn carriages and river boats right across Russia as Sakhalin is as far east as it is possible to go and he started in Moscow. The extract above highlights that even then Siberia was a place of exile for people that had offended the state in someway but his observation that now they can say what they like as where else would they be sent is to the point. On Sakhalin he was only allowed to interview a small number of the political prisoners but he still produced a comprehensive report and oddly his health, which was never very good appeared to improve during his time away from Moscow and St Petersburg. Although he was a doctor he seemed to have a blind spot regarding his own tuberculosis which he suffered from for decades, describing many occasions of ‘blood spitting’ although he was never formally diagnosed until 1897.

The letters are also often quite humorous which lightens the tone overall against some of the more serious pieces or times when things are just plain going wrong like his descriptions of the disastrous first performance of The Seagull in 1896 or when his health issues cause significant problems which was quite often. One of the more interesting features is the continuation of his career as a doctor even as his fame as a playwright and story writer grew dramatically. As can be seen below this devotion to medicine had serious implications in his ability to write of travel to oversee productions of plays and talk to his various publishers. By the early 1890’s he had purchased an estate in Melikhovo and become the local doctor in preference to renting a home in Moscow which he had done since arriving there to study as a doctor.

By the mid 1890’s however he had started travelling extensively in Europe and correspondence from various Italian, French and German cities amongst other countries he passed through bring a different outlook to the letters, some places he loved others he was glad to see the back of. There is also a lot of letters to women throughout the book some of which he probably came close to marrying but in fact he was a confirmed bachelor until just three years before he died when he finally married an actress he had come to know from her performances in his plays. Oddly his letters to women, even the ones he was particularly close to, are rarely romantic and quite often have some slight barb to them. The ones to his future wife, Olga, are mainly about her performances rather than anything else even though they actually lived almost 1000 miles apart most of their married lives as she was in Moscow and he was in Yalta to get a better climate for his tuberculosis. Chekhov was much happier on his own, hence his long time avoidance of marriage and indeed living apart suited him well.

The letters are great fun to read and show much more of Chekhov’s character than would be found in a biography. I don’t think I could cope with the full thirty volumes, even assuming they were available in English, but this selection made an excellent way to pass a few evenings this week.