Book Reviews March 2006

MARCH NONFICTION BOOK OF THE MONTH

NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE MONTH!

Synopsis: Recent surveys have shown that, as a nation, our knowledge of British history is sketchy at best. A 2001 poll found that 30 per cent of 11-18 year olds thought that Oliver Cromwell fought at the Battle of Hastings and a similar number had no idea in which century the First World War occurred. And the rest of us are no better. Many of us remember important dates and events only if there is a handy rhyme - 'In 1492 Colombus sailed the ocean blue' - or a charming folk story to accompany them. As a result Henry VIII is remembered for his wives rather than the Reformation and Charles I, who was publicly executed during the Civil War, is famous for climbing a tree! Here, in "What Happened When", Tim Taylor and the expert archaeologists and historians behind the hit Channel 4 series "Time Team" will set us straight. Each member of the team will select the events they believe had a major impact on our society and set out to justify their choices. Sixty key events will be discussed with 15 given 'star status'. Key technologies will be featured, together with photographs from Chris Bennett and illustrations from "Time Team's" own Victor Ambrus. So, whether you want a quick foray into the past or a definitive guide to British history, this book will give you and your family an accurate chronology of the events that shaped our society and a clear picture of exactly what happened when. This book is at least three things: it's the best ever in the TIME TEAM series of books - and I've read them all; secondly, it's a coffee-table book on a subject that more and more people find fascinating, archaeology; and thirdly, most importatly, it's one of the best history books of modern times. The scope is enormous, from the earliest pre-history to the back end of the last century. But it's set out so logically, so perfectly, you can use it as a reading book, a work of reference, orindeed, a work of reverence. The illustrations are chosen spectacularly well, the writing is second-to-none in terms of readability, and those fantastic watercolours of Victor Ambrus's are just too good to be true. This is a book that should have been published in time for Christmas - a masterpiece - a tour-de-force - a triumph. Full marks for everyone involved, including the Time Team experts themselves, the orchestrator of it all, Tim Taylor, and the team at Transworld for producing such a staggeringly beautiful volume. Magnificent!

Synopsis: Acorna and Aari are taking their daughter, Khorii to meet some relatives at Maganos Moonbase. With them in the spaceship Condor, are their android son Elviiz, Captain Becker, Maak and the Makahomian Temple cats RK and Khiindi. En route, they receive a distress call, a deadly plague is spreading throughout the star system. As Linyaari, both Acorna and Aari are able to heal the sick, they are asked to go to the stricken planet of Paloduro to help the plague victims. They drop Khorii, Elviiz and Khiindi off at the moonbase first. The plague continues to spread and when a supply vessel sends the moonbase a distress call Khorii is determined to go and help, as she is a Linyaari healer too. Khorii, Elviiz, Khiindi and their friends Hap, Asha and Sesseli take a shuttle to the ship. However, by the time they get there only the young daughter of the Captain, Jaya, is left alive. They are forbidden to return to the moonbase in case they have become infected with the plague. They are then contacted by people from a nearby planet asking for help, where Khorii discovers that if she purifies the water it heals anyone in it. Meanwhile, Acorna and Aari have exhausted themselves trying to eradicate the plague, worse they have contracted a strain of the plague themselves and although it cannot make them ill they infect Becker and RK and are too weak to heal them. They send out an urgent distress call and Khorii arrives just in time to save Becker and RK. The plague is contained and Acorna and Aari are put into quarantine, while Khorri and her friends come to the realisation that someone has deliberately created the plague. They set out on a mission to search for the creator of the plague, and to find a way to destroy it. Review: Anne McCaffrey is a legend in science fiction, and rightly so - this is in the mould of Isaac Asimov and Arthur C Clarke in terms of scope, though I found the characters slightly less believable and the plot more contrived than with those other two legends of pioneering SF. Highly enjoyable read, though - one for the train or the plane, I think.

Synopsis: Christmas 1826 finds Matthew Hervey of the 6th Light Dragoons alone and a prisoner. Captured by the Spanish, he is locked up in the notorious fortress of Badajoz, with little means of outside communication, his Prayer Book his only mental sustenance. He must escape, but as he lays his plans his thoughts return to 1812, when as a young cornet he was here with Wellington's Peninsular Army. Having survived the terrible retreat to Corunna, Hervey and the Sixth had gone on to endure three more years of fighting - only to be stalled at Badajoz...Badajoz: a fortress of huge strategic importance, where two sieges had already failed, and where French resistance was at its bloodiest. No one - from the Duke of Wellington to the most lowly cornet - was in any doubt that in order to defeat Napoleon they must carry the day. As the young Hervey and his comrades prepared for the third and final attack on the fortress, the only options left were victory...or death. What Hervey cannot know, as he paces his prison cell fourteen years later, is that in Lisbon, his close friends - including the beautiful Isabella Delgado - are rushing to his aid. The escape they plan is audacious in the extreme. Review: A bit disappointing - I was hoping for something akin to Sharpe or Flashman, but I found Mallinson paying too much attention to detail and minutiae, and not enough action for my taste. His knowledge of the period is excellent, but I don't believe he was born to be an author like Bernard Cornwell was - I get the impression Mallinson was an officer who decided to write after leaving the army, which is a slightly different thing. Also published this month:Synopsis: All looks set fair Major Matthew Hervey: news of a handsome legacy should allow him to purchase command of his beloved regiment, the 6th Light Dragoons. He is resolved to marry, and, rather to his surprise, the object of his affections - the widow of the late Sir Ivo Lankester - has readily consented. But he has reckoned without the opportunism of a fellow officer with ready cash to hand; and before too long, Hervey is on the look-out for a new posting. Hervey has always been well served by old and loyal friends, however, and Eyre Somervile comes to his aid with the means of promotion: there is need of a man to help reorganise the local forces at the Cape Colony, and in particular to form a new body of horse. At the Cape, Hervey is at once thrown into frontier skirmishers with the Xhosa and Bushmen, but it is Eyre Somervile's instruction to range deep across the frontier, into the territory of the Zulus, that is his greatest test. Accompanied by the charming, cultured, but dissipated Edward Fairbrother, a black captain from the disbanded Royal African Corps and bastard son of a Jamaican planter, he makes contact with the legendary King Shaka, and thereafter warns Somervile of the danger that the expanding Zulu nation poses to the Cape Colony. The climax of the novel is the battle of Umtata River (August 1828), in which Hervey has to fight as he has never fought before, and in so doing saves the life of the nephew of one of the Duke of Wellington's closest friends.

Books Quarterly
'A spectacular conclusion to a highly enjoyable quartet of historical novels.’ Book Description: Set against Rome's attempted destruction of the Celtic civilisation, Dreaming the Serpent Spear, the final novel in the bestselling Boudica quartet, focuses on the action of the Boudica revolt and its devastating consequences. Review: The story of Boudica's revolt against the Romans following the abuse of her and her daughters is well documented and has been tackled before, but Manda Scott brings a different dimension to this excellent and inspiring tale. DREAMING THE SERPENT SPEAR is dark and brooding. You can almost smell the protagonists, you can breathe in the smoke, feel the heat and the terror of the battles. Boudica was always going to lose, of cousre - you can't alter history. But it's the characterisation that matters in this book, and Manda takes it down to the last detail. Brilliantly compelling, a slice of history that completes our knowledge of that great warrior, the Boudica. Also published this month, the third in this gripping four-part serialisation:Book Description: Set in Iron-Age Britain, the third magnificent story in the life of the world’s most famous warrior queen. Synopsis: This story is set in AD 57. Much of Britannia has been under Roman occupation for over ten years, with key areas in the south and east administered as vassal states, where the tribes pay costly tithes to the Emperor in return for the right to continue living on their own lands. On the sacred isle of Mona, the Boudica or Bringer of Victory as Breaca has long been hailed, now knows for certain that her lover, Caradoc - betrayed, captured and kept hostage in Rome - will never return to her. She decides to leave Mona where she and her warriors have been waging a guerilla war, and to take the fight to the Eceni heartland where it is needed most. With her are her children, Cunomar and Grainne, and her best friend from childhood, ex-lover and dreamer, Airmid. But the once proud Eceni are a downtrodden and defeated people who are forbidden on pain of death to worship their old gods, and now scrape a living from the once fertile land. Across the sea in Hibernia, Breaca's half-brother Ban, is struggling to make peace with his fractured past. Soon, provoked by Roman aggression, he will sail to Britain to protect Mona, and from there he will go to Camulodinum, unite with his sister he and Breaca will face down the might of Rome in the bloodiest revolt the western world has ever known.

Lycett Green’s father was the poet John Betjeman, but when she was about 10, the centre of her life, in the remote Oxfordshire hamlet of Farnborough, was the village gang to which she and her best friend June belonged. This enchanting memoir describes the year 1949, in which they roamed the fields, spun romances based on films they saw, and tried to understand the adult world. Across the valley lurked sinister Harwell power station, which they thought “radiated ” girls and stopped them having babies. Lycett Green makes the beautiful countryside throughout the seasons as real as the robust villagers. The book finishes when electricity comes belatedly to Farnborough. Deaths and revelations mark an end to the innocence of childhood, in which everything stays the same. Review: This is a must-read for people interested in how we lived in the last century - it's as important a memoir as Cider With Rosie, and for me, more personal. Candida Lycett Green, daughter of poet laureate Betjeman, one of my personal heroes, doesn't mention her father hardly at all, yet the story rattles along with a delicious sense of "them and us", a rites of passage where children pick up bits of knowledge from their peers and it somehow passes into their lore until someone disproves it with a personal experience. Life in a post-war Oxfordshire village was very similar to life in my own Gloucestershire village - Candida even tells us what people listened to on the radio, and I found these memories both personal and personable. Thoroughly enjoyable - my first excursion in Candida's company, and certain not to be the last.

Based on a true story, this novel paints the portrait of a woman who, through love and loss, found a cause. Known throughout the country as the Widow of the South, Carrie McGavock gave her heart first to a stranger, then to a track of hallowed ground, becoming in the process a symbol of a nation's soul. Review: Not on the same scale as GONE WITH THE WIND, and certainly not as enjoyable a read, Hicks nevertheless brings to life the true story of Carrie McGavock, who dragged herself from the pit of despair to make a difference to the lives of the men and women affected by the futile but inevitable civil war. Thoroughly enjoyable.