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  Book 3 of the Raj Quartet So, after already reading about 1,000 pages about two assaults on English women during the uprising of the Indian people in Mayapore in 1942, you may wonder what more the author Paul Scott can possibly have to say on the matter.  Well, this time the main focus falls on Miss Barbara (Barbie) Bachelor, who was a teacher in one of the Mission schools in Mayapore, but moved to the British army station at Pankot on her retirement.  She moved in 1939, so was not living in Mayapore at the time of the assaults, but took a very keen interest in any news relating to them as the elderly lady who had been beaten by a mob was a friend of hers from the Mission school. On retirement, Barbie lost the right to live in her accommodation but, just ahead of her final day at the school, she noticed an advertisment in the Ranpur Gazette placed by another older lady seeking a companion to share her bungalow.  The arrangement seemed heaven sent so Barbie wasted n...

Book 2 of the Raj Quartet   There are a couple of phrases that I would bet the author, Paul Scott, has never had occasion to use: 'to cut a long story short.....' and 'let me cut to the chase....'  Never one to keep an answer to a question to a few short lines when three pages will do, and it seems every character in the book has the capacity to talk at length on any given topic.  No thought is spared consideration and everyone is an amateur psychiatrist.  However, it somehow works and I was captivated for another 530 pages. The book is set in India in 1942 in the immediate aftermath of the events described in The Jewel in the Crown.  A young English woman, Daphne Manners, was raped by a gang of men on the night of a civil uprising, and by the start of Book 2, a group of young men have been arrested and sent to prison without trial.  The arrested men included Hari Kumar, who had been in a relationship with Miss Manners but she has persuaded him to say nothi...

 Book one of the Raj Quartet This is a novel that you have to commit to concentrating on because the level of detail is outstanding and every word counts.  It's over five hundred pages of finely typed print, so that high level of concentration has to be sustained over quite a few days.  I usually read a book in a week, but it took me two to read this one and it is just one of the four books that make up the Raj Quartet. It's set in India, 1942, which is right in the middle of the Second World War, and the country has been unsettled by the continued occupation by the British, and the idea of self-rule is gaining supporters.  The police and military are struggling to keep control of the population and British people are setting up contingency plans to establish places of safety in the event of an uprising. In late summer when the heavy rains began, two events happened in Mayapore that shook the British to their core.  The population had been gathering in numbers a...

  Aaah!  How annoying!  I got to the end of the book before I found out that this is book three of a trilogy and it's a Lars Mytting!! I hate reading a series of books out of sequence, and now I'm not even sure if I will want to read the other two books as now I know how it all ends up.  Fortunately, the book works very well as a stand alone and I enjoyed it a lot, but why can't publishers state in big writing on the front 'Book One of trilogy' etc so readers don't get caught out. Oh well, too late now.  Lars Mytting is worth reading, even out of sequence, and this a translation from Norwegian, although that never detracts from the pace of the text, in fact the translation by Deborah Dawkin is brilliantly done.  The book begins in 1613 when a farmer comes across a dying ewe in the deep snow of the mountains, and she has used the last of her strength to protect her young lamb form the biting cold and snow piled up all around them.  Eirik Hekne carries b...

  Another winner from the books recommended by my local library.  This time it's an historical novel set in the Second World War but this account is set in the Vatican City sitting as a neutral space in the centre of occupied Rome. The book is about the true story of Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty and the Rome Escape Line, but as the author is quick to point out, it is largely a work of fiction with its inspiration taken from real events. Nevertheless, it captures the very real dangers involved in trying to get escaped allied prisoners of war back to a place of safety. The Monsignor was Irish by birth, and he's a big man with an interest in boxing so he has the physical strength to carry out one of the most daring missions carried out during the war.  In September 1943 the German forces occupied Rome and the feared member of the Gestapo, Paul Hauptmann, was tasked to put a stop to escaped prisoners using the neutral Vatican City as a means to escaping back to their home countr...

Some books take a while to get into, but this one had me gripped right from the start.  This is a true story based on the Loray Mill Strike in a North Carolina mill in 1929.  The mill workers were barely earning enough to keep their families alive, and without a strike, nothing was ever going to change. The book follows one of the mill workers, Ella May Wiggins, who has no choice but to leave her children alone at night as she goes out to the mill to put in her 14 hour shift.  Her useless husband has left her to cope on her own, and things don't get much better when she finds another man who can't hold down a job.   Ella is a poor white woman from the mountains, and she is living in a shack where all her neighbours are all black, and this is unusual during the time of racial segregation but she sees all the mill workers as equal in their struggle to get by.  One day she finds a leaflet advertising a union rally for the workers that is taking place in the ne...

Last week we visited the National Trust property in Hinton Ampner and saw all sorts of decorations and ornaments made from a purplish stone that looked a little like spotty marble.  I asked the steward what it was called and he very kindly gave me a very detailed answer.  The stone is porphyry which comes from just one single mountain in Egypt, and it was very popular in Regency England for interior decoration.  The name is also linked to the medical condition porphyria which turns the urine of sufferers a reddish purple.  George III is thought to have suffered from this condition and it would also have been responsible for his episodes of 'madness'. Stay with me, I am getting to the point.  So, when I got home that evening I started this book, and by coincidence it was related to the inherited condition of porphyry and how it came into our royal family via the German House of Hanover. Set in the mid 18th century, it is also the time of the portrait artist Thoma...

I was completely absorbed in this book and read through it quickly.  The larger part of the book is set in the period just before the Second World War, and tells the story of an upper middle class family who are a solid part of the establishment. Everything changes for Hugh and Phyllis Forrester when they return to England after years abroad and they move to Sussex to be near Phyllis's sisters.  One sister, Patricia, has married a very weathy man and they live in a substantial house; while the other sister, Nina, has married a man who is in business and runs a garage, so not really the kind of man her parents envisaged for her.  Hugh's social status falls somewhere in between, but the family are still very comfortably off and fit in easily with Patricia's circle of friends. Nina and her husband Eric have become very active in a political movement and they help organise local talks and summer camps to allow people to come and find out more for themselves.  As Phyllis ...

  An historical novel where the story takes place in the Spitalfields district of London in the second half of the 1700s.  At that time, Spitalfields was known for its silk weaving and the population was made up mostly of journeymen weavers and silk merchants.  In the years leading up to this time the silk they produced was considered to be some of the best in the world and commanded a very high price, but suddenly cheaper fabrics such as calico became available and many of the silk weavers were struggling to find work. The story follows a young woman called Sara who has been sent to London by her mother in the hopes that she will meet up with a cousin and make a good life for herself.  As Sara steps down from the cart that bought her in from the country, she is clearly alone and lost in the unfamiliar streets, and it isn't long before she is lured away by an older woman who claims she will look after her. Sonia Velton has done a good job of conjuring up the mix of e...

When I started reading this I thought it was a translation because there was something about the writing style that reminded me of translated books by Isabel Allende.  Turns out the author is American, and when I think about it, the first name 'Dave' is probably not a traditional Spanish or Basque name so maybe that should have given me a clue. There are great swathes of history that I know nothing about, so the title Guernica meant nothing to me, although many of you may be aware that the Spanish town in the Basque region was heavily bombed by Hitler's German Air Force acting in support of General Franco in 1937.  There was no specific military purpose for destroying the town and many innocent civilians lost their lives during the prolonged raid. The Spanish artist Picasso (who I have heard of) was outraged by the bombing and within the same year produced a large mural as an anti-war statement.  Picasso and his painting 'Guernica' are mentioned many times and a rev...

  If you write an historical fiction novel that has praise from Hilary Mantel on the front cover, then I think you can be safe in the knowledge that you have done a good job. Katherine J. Chen certainly has done a good job, and right from the start, the writing draws the reader in, and Joan of Arc becomes a living person and not just a stylised portrait from the history books. The author tells us at the end of the book that she created a version of Joan who was personal to her, and not everything in the book actually happened, but true historical events are there as the backbone and certainly the lives of the people of the time are well researched. It's easy to forget how young Joan was when she strode into battle and even when she was put to death in 1431, she was still only nineteen.  France had been at war with England since 1337 and both countries laid claim to the French throne.  This series of armed conflicts became known as the Hundred Years War and the English had...

  Forgive the state of the cover on this much borrowed library book, but it should be no surprise to find it in this condition as it's almost too heavy to hold.  There are almost 900 pages to wade through, and it took me the full three weeks of library loan time to get through it, but it was certainly worth it. This is the third and last of the books Mantel wrote on the life of Thomas Cromwell, and begins at the time of the execution of Henry VIII's second wife Anne Boleyn, and runs through to the King's divorce from his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves.  All through that period, Thomas Cromwell continued to rise through the ranks of parliament and the royal court until he became so great he was even seen as a threat to Henry's throne.  After five hundred years, it is hardly a spoiler to say that things didn't end well for him and the book ends as Cromwell is executed for treason. Hilary Mantel conveys every detail of life in the court of Henry VIII, and although many of...