The Hut Six Story – Gordon Welchman

More second world war and more spying: this time the British cracking the Enigma codes at Bletchley Park.

The book was first published in 1982 and was updated after Welchman died to include some papers he also wrote.

Before the war Gordon Welchman was a mathematics lecturer at Sidney Sussex College Cambridge. At the outbreak of war he was drafted into the team at Bletchley to help find ways of cracking the Enigma codes.

It’s important to know that Welchman was a mathematician if you’re thinking of reading this book! There were several occasions when he says he is explaining something in layman’s terms and yet it went completely over my head. This was a difficult book to read and to understand the technical aspects of Enigma machines and the Bombes that helped to decode their messages.

The most interesting parts of the book, for me, were when the author was explaining how Bletchley operated and some of the insights/guessing games that paid off and helped the teams crack the codes.

There were some digressions into people’s characters but this is mainly a book about processes and machines.

Once again it is a book that seems to write women out of history except as wives and secretaries!

I’m pleased I finished the book but if I’d known it was going to be so technical and written by a mathematician I probably wouldn’t have bought it!

Children of England: The heirs of Henry VIII – Alison Weir

This is one of Alison Weir’s earlier books telling the stories of Edward VI, Lady Jane Grey, Mary I and Elizabeth I from the time of Henry’s death to the accession of Elizabeth to the throne.

I enjoyed finding out more about the lives of these monarchs; their education, their religion and their outlook on life. It was also good to set their lives in the context of their time and to understand the political and economic challenges they faced as well as the way they tried to impose their religious views on their subjects.

I feel I understand more about Edward and Jane as human beings rather than the cyphers they can sometimes appear in more general histories. I knew both were fervent Protestants but hadn’t realised just how important their religion was to them. I also didn’t realise what a horrible upbringing Jane had as the daughter of 2 very ambitious parents

It was also interesting to find out more about the kinder side of Mary’s nature; we are too used to her being presented as Bloody Mary who would burn anyone who didn’t reconvert to Catholicism. It was also interesting to find out more about her marriage to Philip of Spain. Whilst I might deplore her intolerance in matters of faith I ended up feeling sorry for her; she had a pretty crappy life.

The person I learned least about was Elizabeth. Her sections of the book didn’t contain much that I hadn’t already read elsewhere.

I enjoyed the book; like all Alison Weir’s books I found it easy to read and it captured my interest. Unlike her books about the various medieval queens though this one feels a bit superficial and I wasn’t left with a real feeling of knowing more about the period.

I would categorise it a way of starting to get to know the later Tudor period rather than a book that adds significantly to what you already know.

That said, I would always recommend reading books by Alison Weir.

My Lord John – Georgette Heyer

Most people, if they know Georgette Heyer at all, know the author for either her detective novels or the Regency romances she wrote. I first came across her through both of these genres when I wasn’t quite old enough for adult books but had definitely outgrown children’s books.

I read my way through any books I could get my hands on as they came into the second-hand bookshop in the local market and eventually landed this one.

The Lord John of the title is John of Lancaster, third son of Henry of Bolingbroke, later King Henry IV. It starts when he is around 6 and finishes just as his oldest brother Henry is starting to take up some of the reins of government due to his father’s ill-health. The book ends abruptly as Heyer had to put it to one side to complete more popular books to pay her tax bill! She intended this book to be the first of a trilogy about the House of Lancaster during through the Wars of the Roses.

As I remembered it, from 40 years ago, this book had a different feel to it and, to an extent, it awakened my interest in the Wars of the Roses; I live in Yorkshire in what would have been a Lancastrian supporting area.

Rereading the book as a “proper grown-up” with more knowledge of the history of the period this book wasn’t as interesting as I remembered it being. It was a chore getting through to the end feels as though it needs a good edit to lop out some of the boring bits.

It did remind though that I always wanted to know more about John of Lancaster and what he did with his life. If anyone can recommend a book I’d be grateful.

 

Gulag: a history of the Soviet camps – Anne Applebaum

Someone at work was laughing at me reading this book one lunchtime! “Another of your happy books” he said. I don’t actually see these types of books as unhappy but as satisfying and fuelling my thirst for knowledge about the way other people and regimes treat their fellow human beings.

I’ve had this book on my shelf for a long time, waiting to read it. So long in fact that I’d forgotten I had it and bought another copy! I really must have a sort out.

Anyway, to the book.

I chose to read this because I found Applebaum’s previous book interesting and a very digestible read. When I looked back I found the book I thought she’d written was actually written by someone else. Which explains, perhaps, why I found this book a bit…chewy

The book covers the Soviet gulags from the 1920s, through the Great Terror of the 1930s and up to the camps for dissidents from the 1960s to the end of the Soviet Union in the 1980s. It looks at the origins of the camps, life and work in them and finally the fall of the camp industrial complex.

The research behind the book comes from a variety of sources including official OGPU/ NKVD/ KGB archives and memories and memoirs from those who were there. The memoirs and memories come from workers and guards as well as from prisoners, which gives an interesting perspective on some of the descriptions.

The different perspectives was the main thing I enjoyed about the book. It wasn’t just a misery memoir it was also an attempt, as far as possible with the resources available, to understand the whys and wherefores of the camps. It gave me a broader understanding of the gulag outside of the history of the Great Terror, Solzhenitsyn and the biographies of Anna Larina and Nadezhda Mandelstam.

The downside of having the different perspectives was that it is a very factual book. there are some stories and anecdotes but not that many. Which is why I’d categorise it as a chewy book. I like a bit of personal perspective to leven the facts.

I’m glad I read it. It has definitely widened my knowledge. If I was starting to read it again I might read a memoir or two at the same time to give it some balance.

Memoirs I’d recommend are:

Hope against Hope – Nadezhda Mandelstam

Click here to find out more about Nadezhda Mandelstam

This I cannot forget – Anna Larina

Click here to find out more about Anna Larina

One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich – Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Click here to find out more about Solzhenitsyn

Queens of the Conquest – Alison Weir

From one Conquest to another! This one has elicited much less of a rant than Robert Conquest did, you may be pleased to know.

This book is about the 5 Queens of the Norman England, all of whom have extraordinary stories but, in the words of Alison Weir, not enough is discoverable about them to fill a book each.

The book starts with Matilda of Flanders, wife of William the Conqueror. I know a little about her and it is one of my claims to fame that I won a quiz for my team because I was the only person in the room who knew what William’s Queen was called! This Matilda gets quite a long section of the book to herself.

The next Queen is Matilda of Scotland who was married to Henry I. There are a lot of Matildas in this book and it’s quite difficult keeping up with who is who! It’s even more confusing that Matilda of Scotland was also known as Edith in her early life. This was one of those books where it is useful to be able to keep referring back to the family tree at the beginning.

I found Matilda of Scotland’s life to be one of the most interesting sections of the book. I didn’t know anything about her before and she had an interesting and varied life.

The only non-Matilda in the book is Adeliza of Louvain, Henry I’s second wife who only gets a short section to herself. As a Queen she isn’t particularly interesting although, through her second marriage after Henry’s death, she plays a significant part in the civil war that broke out between Stephen, Henry I’s nephew, and Matilda, Henry’s daughter, over who should wear the crown of England.

King Stephen was married to Matilda of Boulogne, the third Matilda of this book. She shares part 4 of the book with Queen Matilda, her husband’s rival claimant. For the purposes of the book Queen Matilda is referred to as Empress Maud. Her first marriage was to Heinrich V, Roman Emperor, and throughout mainland Europe Matilda seems to have been known as Maud.

This, for me, was one of the most enlightening parts of the book. I have only a confused understanding of the civil wat between Stephen and Maud. I didn’t really understand what the dispute was about and the rights and wrongs of the two parties. Having read this section of the book I’m clearer about why they were fighting, clear that neither was an ideal monarch and still a bit confused over who was who and why they chose the side they did.

The final part of the book is about Empress Maud after Stephen died and her son by Geoffrey Plantagenet became King Henry II.

The book is written in Alison Weir’s usual readable style and she evokes a sense of who these women were and a sense of empathy with the difficult situations most of them found themselves in at one time or another.

I feel as though I leaned a lot from reading the book although I wish the European aristocracy of the 12th and 13th centuries had been a bit more imaginative about naming their girl children!

A useful addition to the literature on medieval women.

 

The Dragons of Expectation – Robert Conquest

What a strange, mish-mash of a jumbled up book this is! I liked it, hated it, looked forward to reading it and wanted to throw it at the wall, sometimes all at the same time.

It was like looking at one of those paintings that are disturbing but you can’t not go back for another look!

And I also enjoyed watching Michael, my partner, go through the torture of reading it too!

The book doesn’t have a single theme, which is one of the things that makes it so frustrating to read. Some parts of it were interesting, intellectually stimulating and absorbing. Other bits were a diatribe about something, a piece of academic snobbery or politically very annoying.

The themes covered in the book are the decline of academic rigour, political ideologies and why they are outdated, USSR and Stalinism, how academia has destroyed our appreciation of Art and how the EU should be replaced by an Anglosphere. A random book! And written in 2005 so the bits about the EU have a bit of historic interest too.

I found the first few chapters about academic rigour really difficult to read but intellectually stimulating, which is what kept me going. It isn’t very often that I need to refer to a dictionary to find out the meaning of a word but I did with this book.

The bits about political ideology I found interesting. The fact that we, as a society, tend to cling onto ideas even when they have outlived their usefulness or proved themselves to be a hindrance. I don’t think it is useful to hark back to a past where “politics was about doing the right thing” but my view is that too much of modern politics is negative, about doing down the opposition and personal slurs. I want to know about what collaboration is happening cross-parties as well as their differences.

It almost goes without saying that I really enjoyed the sections about USSR and Stalinism. I’m interested in the Russian dictatorships and added to my knowledge.

The section on art really made me think. Conquest talked about how, by laying down rules of appreciation, we create an obfuscated view of it and so destroy any true appreciation. His example is of the person who commissioned a painting by one of what we call the “Old Masters”. The person who commissioned the painting did so because they liked the style of the painter and they liked the subject matter. They didn’t look at it hanging in their house and think “the brush stroke used to paint the leaf on that tree is…” they looked at it and though “that’s beautiful” or “I wish I could be at that place”. He also talks about books and poetry in the same way. It made me realise that I’m guilty of a level of book snobbery; I have books that I talk about and the larger number of, mainly, detective novels that I don’t. I would like to think that I mainly talk about the more serious books I read because it helps me to process what I have learned from them but, if I’m honest, there is also part of me who wants to be seen as intelligent and I don’t think detective novels necessarily add to that image!

The final part of the book, the creation of an Anglosphere, I can’t write about. It annoyed me far too much and I think Conquest was deluded and deluding himself!

Overall, I wouldn’t recommend this book unless you like being annoyed, like a challenge and have nothing better to read. But in some, small way I quite enjoyed it.

Click here to find out more about Robert Conquest

The Rival Queens – Nancy Gladstone

Another dip into history and 16th century, France this time though.

This is a history of the infamous Catherine de Medici and her daughter Marguerite de Valois. I already knew a little about them, although in fictionalised version; my mother encouraged me to read the Jean Plaidy historical novels when I was at that awkward age of being too old for children’s books and not quite old enough for adult ones.

I enjoyed finding out more about Catherine’s early life, particularly the early days of her marriage and I think it helped me to understand why she was so desperate to hang onto power through he sons reigns. It also helped me to understand why she was so manipulative and played at “realpolitik” so often. She lived in turbulent times but with a bit more firm purpose and subtlety her/her sons Courts could have been less turbulent than they were.

Marguerite seems to have spent most of her life being used as a pawn by the various members of her family. The major event in he life was being married to the protestant King of Navarre, who later became Henri IV of France. They were incompatible and, apart from one of two moments when it was expedient to help one another, lived largely apart. Henry didn’t trust Marguerite and Marguerite trusted too many people she shouldn’t have. Eventually, once they had divorced and Henry became King of France, they settled into friendship.

One of the problems of reading about 16th century women in the 21st century is that we live in a very different culture –  one of more equality for women, more religious tolerance etc – so it is hard to understand the limitations placed on these two women who were in a position where they could wield influence if not power. It was frustrating to read about their tactics and actions knowing, through experience and hindsight, they were doing the wrong thing. At times I wanted to shout “what are you doing!!!” at the book, which probably wouldn’t have gone down very well with my fellow commuters on the bus!

Overall. it was good to have a factual, evidence-based book about these women and I enjoyed reading it. It is a very readable book although there were some horrible American expressions thrown in unnecessarily.

If you are interested in European history, women’s history or the clashes between Catholicism and Protestantism in Europe you will find this book interesting, informative and a good read.

Click to find out more about Nancy Goldstone’s books

Atalanta: Women as Racing Drivers -S.C.H. Davis

I’m not quite sure how to describe this book, or more specifically the author and his writing style.

SCH Davis was a racing driver, motor racing journalist, an advocate of women racing, co-founder of the Veteran Car Club and, clearly a man of taste, he owned a Frogeye. On the downside he shows himself to be very much a man of his era when he describes the women he is writing about as “attractive, little bundles of fun” and the like! It grates on my 21st century sensibilities to read this sort of sentence that patronises these incredibly determined, fiercesome women.

That said, it is an interesting book written by someone who actually knew some of the drivers he is writing about, which means there are a number of anecdotes that bring the characters of the drivers alive. It was nice to read about the drivers human side rather than just about their racing skills.

Most of the chapters are about drivers I already know something about. The best of these was about Margaret Allan, a member of the 1935 MG Le Mans team, Bletchley Park code-breaker and Vogue motoring correspondent.

The best of the chapters about people who were new to me are Madam Juneck, a Czech driver who came 5th in  the Targa Florio, and Sheila Van Damm, a driver in the 1950s.

Overall, I would describe this book as an interesting period piece written by an interesting period piece!

Kingmaker: Winter Pilgrims – Toby Clements

It isn’t often I review the “story books” I read but I really enjoyed this one and wanted to share my thoughts.

The book is set during the War of the Roses, an era of history I find interesting. The main protagonists are Thomas and Katherine and we follow their journey from rural calm to the middle of the action at the Battle of Towton.

When we first meet them Thomas is monk whose role is to write and illustrate texts. Katherine is an oblate at the nunnery next to the monastery. Katherine, at the nearby river washing is attacked by a band of horseman and Thomas comes to her rescue. Both end up fleeing religious life and the book follows their adventure to Calais, Wales, Northampton and, finally, Towton.

I enjoyed reading this book; I liked the setting, both time and places and I liked the characters, wanting to know more about Katherine’s mysterious past and what happens next. The ending is definitely calculated to make you buy the next in the series and I’m pleased I picked up this series when all 4 books are published; it would have been frustrating to have to wait for the next book to come out!

It is interesting to read the descriptions of the battles and to have a glimmer of an idea about what it must have been like to be in the thick of the action at Towton. It will be interesting to go back to the site of the battle with this imagery in my head; nowadays it is peaceful, rural, agricultural scene. (The picture at the top is of Towton)

I can’t, at the moment, think of anything I didn’t enjoy about this book. It was a good page turner, set in a period I know a little about and would like to know more of, with likable, interesting characters. Clearly, with this type of book, you need to suspend disbelief to some extent – these characters would almost certainly not have had all these adventures – but it’s a good story.

If you like historical adventure stories I’d recommend it.

Click here to find out more about the Battle of Towton

 

Four Sisters: the lost lives of the Romanov Grand Duchesses – Helen Rappaport

The subtitle of this book should really be “but mainly about their mother Tsaritsa Alexandra Feodorovna” as it isn’t as much about the Grand Duchesses as I would have like it to have been.

The children of the last Russian Tsar are somewhat shadowy figures, their personalities overshadowed by the tragedy of their murders during the revolution.  It turns out, that because of the way they were brought, up away from Court and out of the public eye, they were also shadowy figures to the people of Russia too.

I think that is why this is, on the whole, a frustrating book.

The book needs to explain the Tsar and Tsaritsa; their personalities and their preference for remaining away from the gaze of the public and not wanting to be constantly on show at Court.  I understand that.  However, I feel this could have been accomplished in a shorter way, giving more space and time to Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia, who never really come to life.

For a book about four girls growing up in 20th century this was like reading a biography of medieval women with their personalities and lives being inferred from a few fragmentary sources.  I understand that a lot of those who were close to the family perished in the revolution and that their papers were mainly burnt but there must be some way to piece together what is available to bring them alive.

I don’t feel as though I have added anything to what I already knew about the Grand Duchesses from reading other sources, which is a bit frustrating when this book purports to focus on them and their lives.