This novella is the follow-up to John Boyne’s recent book, Water, although can certainly be read and enjoyed by anyone, regardless of whether they have read the earlier book (which I’d also recommend) or not. Without wishing to give too much away, the story revolves around a scandal within the world of professional football and the trial that follows. A soccer player has been accused of rape, while one of his teammates has apparently recorded the whole thing on his phone. Both men now stand accused. But are they truly guilty? What exactly happened that night? Boyne keeps the reader guessing almost right up to the very end. As in Water, the issue of social media rears its ugly head.. Then there is the unnamed remote island off the coast of the Irish Republic. In Water, the island served as a welcome place to escape a major scandal erupting on the mainland. In Earth, it is the island itself which the main character is determined to escape from. In short, this is a compelling read which leaves the reader wondering what the prolific Boyne will produce next.
There is a charming Edwardian photo on the wrap-around cover of Alwyn Turner’s latest book. The picture was apparently taken at the St Giles Street Fair in Oxford around the time the period covered in this book came to an end, i.e. around 1910, the year in which King Edward VII died. It is essentially a busy crowd scene. The rear of the shot is filled with dozens of heads disappearing into the distance but the people in the foreground are clearly visible. Some are clearly aware of the camera and are smiling or looking self-consciously at it. A few of them would be clearly identifiable to anyone who knew them well. It’s unlikely of course, but if you knew anyone living in Oxford at the time, you might spot someone you recognise. The parents, grandparents or great-grandparents of anyone reading this might well be standing there.
Virtually everyone in the picture is wearing a hat of some sort. Most of the males are wearing cloth caps, although a few are wearing boaters or the odd bowler. Although there are one or two hatless boys visible, there are no women without hats at all. To me, the picture evokes memories of films set in the era such as Mary Poppins or The Railway Children. Both those films were made in the Sixties, when the Edwardian era was as much within living memory as the Sixties are to us today. Given that the oldest person living in Britain at the time of writing was born in 1909, we can be certain that everyone in the picture is now dead, in most cases probably for a long time. Some will have died in the world wars, some in the 1918 Influenza pandemic. Some will have lived to witness Neil Armstrong stepping on the moon on TV in 1969. None would have expected to be on the cover of a book, published in the year 2024.
This book is their story. Not their story specifically, but the story of the people of the Edwardian era (1901-10), which can be extended up to 1914. Author Alwyn Turner has most covered the more recent decades in his latest books but here he explores a period tantalisingly beyond the reach of living memory. He focuses heavily on many of the more colourful figures of the time such as the murderer Dt. Crippen (pictured above) and the Liberal MP and fraudster, Horatio Bottomley, who inspired Kenneth Grahame to create the character of Mr Toad. We learn that Edward VII owned a golf bag made entirely from the skin of an elephant’s penis. Filled with lots of surprising nuggets of trivia about the details of Edwardian life, this is never less than an enjoyable and entertaining read.
Book review: Little Englanders: Britain in the Edwardian Era., by Alwyn Turner. Published by: Profile Books
The story of the General Election of 2024 or 2025 is still largely unwritten. Even the date of it is still unknown although we do know it can be no later than January 2025. Are the opinion polls right in predicting a victory for Keir Starmer’s Labour Party or will Rishi Sunak pull off an unexpected Conservative victory? Will the result be a landslide as it was for New Labour in 1997 and 2001 or a Hung Parliament as occurred in 2010 and 2017? Will the SNP vote collapse? Will Reform UK split the Tory vote? Will the Liberal Democrats make a comeback? Only time will tell.
This book takes us through the last fifty British General Elections starting just before the Great Reform Act of 1832 to Boris Johnson shattering the Labour “Red Wall” in December 2019. Each election is covered in an essay by a different author. Michael Crick covers Edward Heath’s unexpected 1970 victory, Peter Snow discusses Margaret Thatcher’s post-Falklands 1983 landslide and so on.
As we generally have never had fixed term parliaments, sometimes elections have become frequent, especially when things are unstable. In 1910 and 1974, there were two General Elections within the space of a year. There were five during the politically turbulent 1830s and four apiece during the uncertainties of the 1920s, 1970s and 2010s. On the other hand, Prime Ministers also went to the country four times during the 1950s, a period usually remembered as being relatively placid. And there were no elections at all between 1935 and 1945 as a result of the Second World War. The 1945 contest saw many thirty-year-olds, having survived six years of war, getting the opportunity to vote in a national elections for the very first time.
Turnout has varied, peaking at 86.8% in January 1910 (at the height of the furore over David Lloyd George’s “People’s Budget”) but reaching a low of 53.4% in 1847. No election has enjoyed a turnout of more than 80% since the Churchill comeback election of 1951. No election has received a 70% turnout since the year of Tony Blair’s first great landslide in 1997. None of the General Elections held in the 20th century ever saw turnout ever drop below 70%. Thus far all six of the elections held in the 21st century have done so. Only 59.4% turned out to ensure Tony Blair beat William Hague in 2001. 68.8% voted in the election which saw Theresa May beat Jeremy Corbyn in 2017.
No party has ever won a majority of votes cast in any of these General Elections except for the Conservatives in 1886 (51.4%),1900 (50.2%) 1931 (55%) and the Liberals (previously known as the Whigs) in eleven elections between 1832 and 1880, a period during which they dominated a political environment in which there was only one other political party. Seats wise, the Tories peaked, winning 412 seats in the 1924 vote which defeated the first ever Labour government but won the least seats (157) in the year of the 1906 Liberal landslide. The Liberals, in contrast, won the most MPs they ever won in the first ever election in which statistics are available: 441 in 1832. They won just six MPs three times during the lows of the 1950s and achieved that number again in 1970. The newly formed Labour Party, meanwhile, won just two seats in the first election of the 20th century (1900) before hitting their highest ever figure of 419 in the very last one (1997).
In the first 22 of these 50 General Elections, no women were allowed to vote at all.
Statistics aside, some elections have had very surprising outcomes: few predicted Attlee’s Labour landslide in 1945, Ted Heath’s win in 1970, Harold Wilson’s return in early 1974 or John Major’s victory in 1992. Few observers expected Cameron to win a majority in 2015 or that Theresa May would lose it again in 2017.
In the TV age, some politicians have thrived under the glare of the cameras, see Harold Macmillan, Harold Wilson, Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair. Some conspicuously haven’t: see Edward Heath, Michael Foot, Gordon Brown or Ed Miliband. The 2010 election remains the only contest to be significantly enlivened by a round of televised leadership debates. At the time, these greatly boosted the profile of Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg. Yet ultimately the brief wave of “Cleggmania” seemed to yield his party no electoral advantage whatsoever.
Some campaigns have seen our leaders laid low: Churchill’s “Gestapo” speech. Thatcher’s wobbly Thursday. The Prescott punch. Gordon Brown’s “bigoted woman.” Some have threatened to be blown off course by random unexpected factors: the Zinoviev Letter. Enoch Powell’s last minute defection. The War of Jennifer’s Ear. The Foot and Mouth outbreak. The Icelandic volcanic ash cloud.
Some elections end up being defined by memorable slogans: Safety First. Let Us Face The Future Together. Labour Isn’t Working. Get Brexit Done.
What will define the coming contest? We will soon find out. In the meantime, this volume offers plenty of fresh insights into the battles of the past.
Book review: British General Election campaigns, 1830-2019: The 50 General Election campaigns that shaped our modern politics. Edited by Iain Dale. Published by Biteback. March 26th 2024.
What would you do if your son suddenly turned into a Tory? This is the crisis which confronts middle-aged Hastings couple, Eddie and Emma, in this, John O’Farrell’s first new novel since 2015. For Eddie and Emma are both ardent, lifelong card-carrying Labour Party members. Eddie even harbours ambitions of office: he is already on the local candidate’s list and has high hopes of running for parliament. The news that their son, Dylan, has returned from university, a sudden and enthusiastic convert to the party which brought us austerity, Brexit and the disastrous but mercifully brief premiership of Liz Truss, thus comes as something of a shock to them. O’Farrell made his name writing the hilarious comic memoir, Things Can Only Get Better and I suspect Tory supporters (currently something of a minority breed) may enjoy this book rather less than the rest of us. But the novel is fairly even-handed and O’Farrell is happy to poke fun at Eddie and Emma’s Labour-supporting ways too. Otherwise, with the General Election looming, this is a funny, good-natured book, full of solid jokes and with an underlying message emphasising the importance of recognising the importance of tolerance and learning to live with people who have political views different to our own.
Arthur Dent is having a very bad day for three reasons. First, he has learned that his house is to be demolished to make way for a bypass. Second, he has learned that his best friend, who goes by the name ‘Ford Prefect’ is not, in fact, from Guildford but is an alien from somewhere in the vicinity of star of Betelgeuse. Thirdly, and most worryingly, he learns that the Earth itself is also out to be demolished by a small-minded poetry-loving alien race called the Vogons. In fact, Ford’s alien status proves very useful as he is able to help Arthur escape the Earth before it explodes. The duo thus begin a series of adventures which see them encounter such wonders as the Infinite Improbability Drive, Marvin the Paranoid Android, the two-headed galactic president, Zaphod Beeblebrox and the electronic book, Ford is a researcher for. This book has the same name as the overall story: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Douglas Adams’ tale was actually a radio series before it was a book, but while the radio show was a perfect vehicle for Adams’ clever ideas, the story (though rather meandering) does work very well in book form. Sentences like ‘The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t,’ “Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so” and “Reality is frequently inaccurate,” really do benefit from being written down and appreciated. Adams wrote five books in the series between 1979 and 2002 while Eoin Colfer has since written a sixth one. You’ll either be very familiar with concepts such as the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, the computer Deep Thought and the resonance of the number ‘42’ or you won’t be. If you are not, why not give it a try? Life, the universe and, indeed, everything will seem better once you do.
With the first two novels already a huge success, the Hitchhiker’s Guide… arrived on TV as a six-part BBC series in 1981. The TV version is not without flaws: the story was then incomplete and so rather fizzles out in the final episode. The special effects now look dated while some, such as Zaphod’s second head never looked good in the first place. I will always love the series though, partly because it is the format in which I first encountered the story. And, also, I would argue because much of it genuinely is great. Even the theme music is brilliant. The casting is excellent, and the late Peter Jones did a brilliant job of narrating and providing the voice of the Book. The explanation concerning the existence of the Babel Fish is particularly marvellously realised with sublime visual effects accompanying the hilarious narrative.
Douglas Adams was a genius: years ahead of his time. Sadly, he died in 2001 before the film project he had worked towards for so long could be realised. It seems likely more input from him might have helped as the resulting 2005 film directed by Garth Jennings while not a complete disaster, certainly disappointed many. The cast was good although more star-studded than in 1981: Stephen Fry (in fact, one of Adams’ old friends) voiced the Book and Martin Freeman played the dressing gowned hero, Arthur Dent. But the whole thing felt a bit rushed: the ingenious concept of the Restaurant at the End of the Universe was dispensed with in one throwaway line. And the issue of Zaphod’s extra head – actually only mentioned once in the radio series and a joke which has been taken a bit too seriously by adaptors – was again mishandled.
More recently, it has been revealed a new TV version of Adams’ saga is planned. This might well prove to be a better medium for Adams’ creation than cinema was.
The year is 1979. In London, Margaret Thatcher has taken office as Britain’s new Prime Minister. Meanwhile, in northern England, a whole county lives in a state of fear as the Yorkshire Ripper continues his horrendous killing spree. It is against this backdrop that we meet Miv, an ordinary 12-year-old schoolgirl who is as appalled and fascinated by the news of the murders as anyone else. But Miv has her own problems too. Without warning, her mother has collapsed in on herself following some form of mental breakdown. With her father seemingly unable to cope and spending more and more time down the pub, Miv’s Aunty Jean (not an easy person) moves in to help out. But much to Miv’s alarm, there is soon talk of the family moving away from Yorkshire entirely and going ‘down south’. This is when Miv persuades her friend, Sharon to help her launch their own investigation into the Ripper case.. Soon everyone become a potential suspect, as the two girls uncover a wealth of dark secrets about their local area, which it emerges is a hotbed of unhappy marriages, domestic violence and simmering racial tensions. But as things get more and more serious for the girls, it soon becomes clear, this is not a game any more. This impressive debut novel from Jennie Godfrey is an endlessly compelling read.
Imagine the worst hangover you’ve ever had. Now multiply it by ten. That’s the situation that confronts Molly at the start of Katy Brent’s winning new comedy thriller. Not only is Molly suffering from the usual consequences which typically follow a night of alcoholic excess, but she soon discovers her apparent involvement in a very public sex act has left her plastered all over the harsh and unforgiving world of social media. Bad as this is, worse is to come: Molly’s flatmate is dead. What happened to her? Why aren’t the police more interested in uncovering the truth? Who is ultimately responsible for her death? Katy Brent’s new novel is every bit as funny, clever and spellbinding as her first book, the brilliant How To Kill Men and Get Away With It.
One hundred years ago, the news that the first ever Labour government had come to power, rather put the wind up some people. In fact, they needn’t have worried. Whereas some feared the “wild men” of the new regime who they feared might lead Britain towards the same brand of Soviet-style Bolshevism which had engulfed Russia seven years before, in fact, the Labour administration of 1924, was a minority government reliant on the Liberal Party for support, which only held power for eight months. Even King George V found most of the new Labour cabinet to be reasonable chaps. In this fascinating book, David Torrance subjects both the key members and events of 1924 to vigorous scrutiny. How did Ramsay MacDonald cope with being Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary simultaneously? Was Philip Snowdon’s reputation as “Iron Chancellor” deserved? Ultimately, the success of the first ever Labour government may be judged by the fact Labour have returned to power five times in the century since. By the end of 2024, they may very well be back again. The NHS, comprehensive schools, the Winter of Discontent, the Good Friday Agreement: it all started here.
Adrian Edmondson was born in January 1957 and is thus now nearly 67 years old. He has spent around fifteen weeks of his life playing Vyvyan from The Young Ones, much less than 0.5% of his life so far. He enjoyed The Young Ones and remains proud of it, but has not really watched it for forty years. He was embarrassed when, working with Richard Briers around a decade later, the older actor on their first meeting repeated to him, Vyvyan’s famous tirade about the “SO BLOODY NICE” Good Life starring “FELICITY “TREACLE” KENDALL AND RICHARD “SUGAR-FLAVOURED SNOT” BRIERS” from The Young Ones virtually verbatim. They got on alright after that.
He thus discusses his most famous role slightly reluctantly. The book’s chapter on The Young Ones reads simply: “Surely enough’s been said about this over the years.” However, this is immediately followed by a second chapter (in fact, the longest in the book) discussing his memories of the sitcom in detail.
But there are many other things to enjoy in this well-written autobiography. For starters, there’s Ade’s dislike of his own name. The moniker, “Adrian Edmondson” has never exactly tripped easily off the tongue and is awkward to spell. Just as his friend and comedy partner Richard Mayall became “Rik,” Ade planned to change his name to the similar sounding but catchier “Eddie Monsoon” but he missed the paperwork deadline and Adrian (or “Ade”) he remains. “Edina Monsoon” was, of course, the name chosen for his wife Jennifer Saunders’s most famous creation in Absolutely Fabulous.
There is actually very little about Jennifer (in fact, Ade’s second wife who he married in 1985) or their three daughters here. This is fair enough. The couple have long agreed not to discuss each other much in public and besides, she has written her autobiography already (2013’s Bonkers: My Life in Laughs).
We do, however, learn about his childhood spent in Bradford and in many other international trouble-spots, his sometimes strained relationship with his often difficult father, his brief run-ins with corporal punishment at school and less formalised violence on the mean streets of Bradford, his early joyous days with Rik both at Manchester Uni and during his comedy career on The Young Ones, The Comic Strip and Bottom.
He also talks a little about his occasional mental health struggles and about the eventual souring of his relationship with Mayall in the decade before his death, his music career (of less interest to me) and the somewhat higgledy-piggledy nature of his work in the last two decades (Celebrity Masterchef, some music, some drama: Twelfth Night on stage, War and Peace on TV and some comedy: a supporting role in comedy drama, Back To Life).
He may not be a young one anymore, but this remains a good read about a fascinating life and career.
Who was the most powerful British woman in 20th century British politics?
This should be an easy one. As the first and only female Prime Minister during those years, Margaret Thatcher is really the only possible answer. An unusually influential leader by any measure, love her or hate her, ‘the Iron Lady’ undoubtedly wielded and exercised considerable power during her eleven years in Downing Street.
But who would be come second on that century’s female British power list? The late Queen Elizabeth II reigned throughout most of the second half of the century. But as a constitutional monarch, how much power did she really have? Queen Victoria may have been more powerful in her heyday. But she died in January 1901.
A case could perhaps be made for pioneering women cabinet ministers such as Barbara Castle, Shirley Williams or Mo Mowlam (while it is true Labour has not yet produced a woman prime minister, they have always had a much stronger reputation for creating strong, decent woman cabinet ministers than the Tories have had). But really the argument presented by Linda McDougall in this new biography is overwhelming. Neither elected or royal, Marcia Williams, later known as Baroness Falkender practically ran Britain jointly with Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson between 1964 and 1970 and again between 1974 and 1976. She was Wilson’s personal secretary, then his political secretary, then the head of his political office. She was undoubtedly the most powerful woman in politics during the Wilson era.
The book is very welcome as until now Marcia Williams has had a rather odd political reputation. For one thing, although she only died in 2019, at the age of eighty-six, she remains largely unknown to most people under fifty. I myself, who was born in the same year she and Wilson left Downing Street (1976) knew little of her growing up and despite always being interested in politics, have no clear memories of ever seeing any footage of her speaking on TV.
Those who did know her have often sought to cast her in a negative light. Unsurprisingly, the familiar forces of sexism and snobbery have played a big part in forging public perceptions of her, something this book fights hard to redress. Some have argued she exerted undue influence on Wilson. It is now no longer really disputed that she was very influential, although the extent to which it was “undue” now seems more questionable. It has also suggested she was a malevolent presence who prevented Wilson from reaching his full potential. Neither of these charges stand up to scrutiny. Nor does the claim made by some that she was merely a stupid, jumped-up typist. She was clearly very intelligent.
She first met Wilson in 1956 around the time of the Khruschev’s visit to Britain. The visit included a disastrous dinner held between Soviet leader and various senior Labour Party figures including George Brown which soon descended into a row. Marcia was then in her early twenties, a bright young university graduate and secretary who was convinced Wilson, then forty and frustrated in opposition represented the future of the party. McDougall is in no doubt at all that the two had a sexual relationship with Wilson at this time. She is also certain this ended early. During the next twenty years, they would form a formidable political partnership which saw Wilson lead Labour to four General Election victories.
Her life was not free of scandal. After the failure of her marriage, she had an affair with the married political editor of the Daily Mail, Walter Terry. Two sons resulted from this affair although Terry later returned to his wife. Marcia fought hard to keep both her pregnancies and the existence of the children out of the public eye. This was easier in those days when the press was far less intrusive than it is today. On the downside, illegitimacy was considered far more scandalous than it is today, when more than half of children are born out of wedlock and even the term “out of wedlock” sounds very old-fashioned. There was always an underlying concern that people might wrongly assume her sons were Wilson’s.
She will always be associated with the “Lavender List” controversy which marred the end of Wilson’s premiership. Her later career was also blighted by her addiction to purple hearts and tranquilisers, a very common problem at the time. Her career really ended too early: she was only forty-four when Wilson left office in 1976. Her later years were undermined by ill-health.
Linda McDougall has produced a fine biography here which sheds valuable light on an important and neglected figure of post-war British political history.
Doon Mackichan is one of Britain’s finest comedy actresses. You might have seen her playing Cathy, the neighbour from hell in the sitcom, Two Doors Down or as Jane Plough, the long-suffering agent of Matt Berry’s wayward actor in Toast of London. She’s also been in Roman-era sitcom, Plebs, I’m Alan Partridge and far too many other things to detail here.
There is more to the title of the book, than simply a suggestive innuendo. Throughout this very readable memoir, each chapter begins with a short character description of the sort an actor might see when considering taking a particular role. In this case, they each sum up a particular “part” which Doon has been forced to adopt at different stages of her life e.g. The Angry Young Feminist, The Stupid Tart, The Deranged Mother and so on.
Her life has had its share of ups and downs. Highs have included her three series on seminal Channel 4 sketch show, Smack The Pony (1999-2003) with Sally Phillips and Fiona Allen, which was one of the most satisfactory experiences of her working life. She also swam the English Channel. Lows have included illness, divorce and one particularly intense family crisis.
A recurrent theme of the book has been the persistent sexism she has encountered throughout her life and career. Boys have treated her badly from the playground onwards. In this, she is certainly sadly anything but unique, although she is refreshingly frank in speaking up about it. The sexism has extended from the inadequate childcare provisions laid on during times when she has had young children to severe restrictions being placed on the types of role she has been allowed to play. Her own Mary Whitehouse Experience was an unpleasant one with the four stars, particularly David Baddiel treating her with arrogance and disdain. A pre-fame Ricky Gervais also comes out of the book badly, making a pushy attempt to land himself a starring role in the all-female Smack The Pony while a famous, dress-wearing male British artist (hmmm…who could that be?) is amongst those who have made inappropriate comments to her. As one of the most prominent women appearing on the brilliant Brass Eye ‘Paedegeddon’ Special, she was demonised by the tabloid press in 2001
Overall, this is an engaging book from a talented actress who one feels could have been bigger than she has been. Doon Mackichan seems angry occasionally. She is right to be so and is certainly angry about the right things.
My Lady Parts, by Doon Mackichan. Published by: Canongate.
It is sometimes said of the nineteen sixties: if you can remember them, you weren’t really there. Oddly, reading the latest volume in David Kynaston’s epic Tales of a New Jerusalem series on post-war British life left me with much the same feeling. Kynaston’s 600-page book goes into so much painstaking detail about every aspect of British life during that period, that I almost feel as if I really do remember being there. Yet in reality, I wasn’t there at all. I’m not even old enough to remember the seventies.
The book doesn’t cover the whole decade, of course, merely the 27-month period between October 1962 and January 1965. The month of October 1962 was in itself hugely significant culturally. As John Higgs has discussed in his book, Love and Let Die, the same day, Saturday 6th October 1962 witnessed the simultaneous release of both the first Beatles’ single, Love Me Do and the very first cinema release for the very first James Bond film, Dr. No starring Sean Connery. It was also the month during which, thanks to the Cuban Missile Crisis, humanity came closer to wiping itself our than at any time before or since.
In truth, this entire two-year timespan, may well down as the most eventful in Britain’s peacetime history. The book’s title doubtless refers to the conditions which precipitated the Big Freeze of 1962-63, one of the coldest winters ever recorded, which strikes early in the book, but also the northern character of many of the changes wrought during this time such as the coming of The Beatles and the arrival of Yorkshireman, Harold Wilson into Downing Street in October 1964.
The year 1963 saw the government of Harold “Supermac” Macmillan dealt with a severe dose of Kryptonite, by the eruption of the Profumo Affair which shook British society to its foundations. By October 1963, Macmillan, who was approaching seventy had lost all appetite for the job and used the excuse of a perfectly treatable bout of prostate cancer to make a sharp exit from Downing Street (he went on to live until 1986). With no formal arrangements to elect Tory leaders yet in place, the subsequent “contest” to succeed the old man quickly turned into a farce, the skeletal Sir Alec Douglas-Home somehow emerging as leader, despite still being in the House of Lords at the time of his appointment.
Home should, in theory, have been easy meat for a Labour Party revitalised after more than a decade in opposition, by the election of the youthful Harold Wilson as leader earlier in the year. Today, a politician who always wore a raincoat and smoked a pipe would risk seeming like an odd ball. But in 1963, these things when added to the new leader’s heady, intoxicating, arguably slightly meaningless talk of the “white heat of revolution” helped make Wilson seem like the harbinger of a new, exciting, more technological and meritocratic new age. Wilson’s period as leader between March 1963 and October 1964, is still seen by many as the perfect template for any Opposition leader. Despite this, he only just managed to knock the stiff, untelegenic Sir Alec off his perch, leading Labour to victory with a single figure majority.
But it’s not all about politics. Far from it. Instead, we get a unique insight into almost all aspects of British life through the TV they watched, the newspapers and magazines they read, the music, the sport and the thoughts and feelings of people both famous and ordinary through their letters and diaries. It is a reminder that history is not always what we remember it to be and that people’s perceptions and attitudes back then might not be now exactly what we would now expect them to be.
For example, as some reflected idly on the return of Dixon of Dock Green (“like an old friend coming into the house every Saturday”), others discussed the possible implications of the contraceptive pill (“this is not a subject which a woman will discuss over morning coffee – even with her closest friends,” wrote Jean Rook in the Yorkshire Post). The Beeching Report was published. The Great Train Robbery happened. On the night of President Kennedy’s assassination, Beatles fans went to see the Fab Four perform at the Globe Theatre on Stockton-on-Tees. Mods and Rockers fought on Brighton’s beaches. The first episode of Top of the Pops went out. Some took an instant dislike to its first ever host: “What an odd-looking individual…like something from Dr Who…Mutton dressed as lamb.” Sometimes the effect is similar to reading a Twitter feed. The host on that occasion was the 37-year-old disc jockey, Jimmy Savile.
In Smethwick, the Conservative candidate, Peter Griffiths won the seat after fighting a blatantly racist campaign using the slogan, “if you want a n—– for a neighbour, vote Labour.” His election provoked huge controversy. On TV, however, despite some grumbling, The Black and White Minstrels Show continued to air and would do for many years. News stories like the unfolding Profumo Affair provoked mixed reactions ranging from sympathy for Macmillan, often hypocritical disgust, outrage over the nature of the media coverage and undisguised lust towards Christine Keeler from the future comedy writer, Laurence Marks, then a teenaged boy.
There is more detailed analysis too. With the perspective of sixty years, David Kynaston examines the impact of the Beeching cuts to the railways and also takes a thorough look at the condition of the welfare state as his epic series of books reaches its half way point, midway between the landmark 20th century General Elections of 1945 and 1979. Elsewhere, we are reminded that sport did not stop even on the day of Sir Winston Churchill’s state funeral with Peterborough United beating Arsenal that very afternoon. The Britain of January 1965 was undeniably massively different from the land the great war leader had been born into ninety years before. But it was also, as this superb book consistently reminds us, very different from the Britain of today.
Book review: A Northern Wind, Britain 1962-65, by David Kynaston. Published by: Bloomsbury.
It has always been something of a mystery how someone as intelligent and accomplished as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ended his days being duped by a couple of Yorkshire schoolgirls into believing a number of clearly bogus pictures of fairies were real. By any measure, Conan Doyle was a very talented and successful man: a prolific author of fiction and non-fiction, a legal advocate, a qualified doctor, a political campaigner who played both football and cricket professionally and who also boxed, played golf and billiards very well. His towering achievement was, of course, the creation of great fictional Baker Street supersleuth, Sherlock Holmes. Although he was embarrassed by the levels of success this character achieved (Conan Doyle soon found he could come with the stories fairly easily), he can now justifiably described as the father of all modern detective fiction. Holmes’s famous rule of thumb was always, “once you have eliminated the impossible then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the answer.” although he added, ” I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.”
Sadly, in later life, an increasingly superstitious Conan Doyle grew increasingly reluctant to eliminate the impossible too. This short biography helps to explain why.
British politics is in trouble. Lots of our MPs are (contrary to legend) hard-working and decent. But some are not. As an MP himself, Chris Bryant has witnessed many of the negative elements of British parliamentary life first-hand . He was there, for example, on the shameful day, the Boris Johnson government attempted to allow an unprecedented rule change to allow former minister, Owen Paterson to get away with breaking Commons rules. He has seen (as we all have) the now disgraced Prime Minister Johnson lying and lying and lying again in the Commons and numerous MPs from all parties bending and breaking the rules to protect themselves and achieve personal advantage. Reform is clearly sorely needed. At the very least, the rule that no member should be able to accuse another member of lying within the House of Commons chamber is surely long overdue for change? Chris Bryant knows what he’s talking about and clearly has many great ideas on how to change things for the better. It is surely time we ejected the current ruling band of corrupt, incompetent miscreants from power and elected a Labour government imbued with the very real appetite and energy to implement these long overdue and urgently needed reforms was elected in its place.
Alex is a drifter, a permanent guest in other people’s lives. She lives a dangerous, hand-to-mouth existence, moving from place to place, using people to get what she needs, sometimes stealing small amounts, always on the lookout for the next opportunity, the next free beer or ice cream or the next place to charge her phone. She is socially adept, skilled at assimilating herself within a party before anyone realises they don’t actually know who she is. Although let down by an overly abrupt ending, this is a compelling read from Emma Cline, the author of the excellent The Girls.
Half a century after the Watergate scandal which precipitated his downfall and nearly thirty years after his death, the 37th president retains a strong hold on the popular imagination. Ultimately, most people would probably agree that while he undoubtedly had many good qualities, he was also deeply flawed. The same may unfortunately be said of this new biography of the man.
It’s a shame really that author, Paul Carter didn’t end this volume with Nixon’s first election to congress in 1946. For the chapters on Nixon’s early life, growing up poor in California are easily the best in the book. Although I admit I am something of a Nixon geek, I must admit there was much here I didn’t know. I didn’t know that there had been a small earthquake in the Nixon’s town on the day after one of his young brothers died. I also hadn’t really appreciated how much stage acting the young Nixon did. It’s fascinating stuff (to me, anyway).
“Just as Wicked redefined The Wizard of Oz, Richard Nixon: California’s Native Son boldly challenges common conceptions,” Carter argues, early on. “It is not political. It is nothing more than a straightforward biography that reveals an incredible life.” But this is a problem. Why shouldn’t the book be political? It is, after all, the life story of a politician.
It’s not true anyway. The book definitely is political. Although it rather skips over the most important phase of his life, the presidency (dealt with in just 24 of the book’s 292 pages), the previous 150 or so pages cover his earlier political career: his run for congress, the Hiss case, the notorious Pink Lady senate campaign, the Checkers speech, the vice presidency, his 1960 presidential campaign and defeat, his 1962 run for Governor of California and defeat – in impressive detail.
But the real problem with the book is that it deliberately avoids mentioning anything that will make it’s subject sound bad. This is unfortunate as these failings are some of the most interesting things about him. It’s even more unfortunate as it means, that apart from the first few chapters, this isn’t a hell of a lot of use as a history book. It presents a largely false impression of the man whose life it is describing.
“Nixon was not flawed, humorless, insecure or evil,” Carter writes. I would agree that he was not evil, although even then, some might argue his invading Cambodia might put him in that category. But flawed? Well, yes. It is no accident that he is the only one of the USA’s presidents thus far to have resigned. Insecure? Again, yes. He secretly bugged his own White House and authorised an illegal campaign of dirty tricks against his opponents, in an election he was sure to win anyway. And now you mention it: no, I can’t remember him ever saying anything particularly funny. Aside from “sock it to me” on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In. And, I suspect, he didn’t come up with that line himself.
The book thus glosses over the fact that Nixon’s persistent ‘Pink Lady’ insinuation during his 1950 senate campaign was completely groundless. His opponent, actress Helen Gahagan Douglas was a New Deal Democrat. Despite Nixon’s notorious misogynistic claim (omitted in the book) that she was “pink right down to her underwear,” she was no more a Communist sympathiser than he was.
The 1960 presidential campaign is also presented misleadingly, Nixon’s decision to visit all fifty states is treated as if it was some sort of triumph. In reality, it was a rash promise which threw his entire campaign off course in an attempt to fulfil it. Nixon was also damaged by President Eisenhower’s response to a reporter’s question about useful ideas which Nixon contributed to the administration during his eight years as vice president. “If you give me a week, I might think of one. I don’t remember,” Ike said. Again, this isn’t mentioned in the book. Much is made of Nixon’s apparent integrity in choosing not to contest the election over alleged voting irregularities in Chicago. But, in truth, with Kennedy leading Nixon by a margin of 83 electoral college votes, Nixon challenging the result was never a realistic prospect anyway.
As mentioned, the details of the 1968 campaign and Nixon presidency, both skipped over, neither the best nor the worse aspects are discussed. Watergate is summarised thus: “Nixon attempted to cover-up any White House involvement in order to protect those closest to him.” A more accurate account would point out Nixon subjected the entire nation to an unnecessary trauma in a bid to save his own skin.
We all remember the quote, “there will be no whitewash at the White House.” It is the most famous thing Richard Nixon ever said. We remember it because it was so comprehensively proven to be a lie. There was a whitewash at the White House: Nixon made sure there was a cover-up. But you won’t find this quote anywhere in this book which itself attempts to whitewash the truth about Nixon and who he really was.
Book review: Richard Nixon: California’s Native Son, by Paul Carter. Published by: Potamic Books.
If you were a cool kid in the 1980s, you’ll have listened to R.E.M.
You’ll have impressed people by playing their cheerfully apocalyptic It’s The End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) and other songs like Exhuming McCarthy from Document, their fifth and most political studio album. It was not all politics though. Their next album, Green (1988), featured the single, Stand which contains the line:: “Your feet are going to be on the ground, Your head is there to move you around,” which I think we can all agree, is genuinely very helpful information.
As the 1990s began, their next two albums, Out of Time and Automatic For The People (both 1991) helped make them become one of the most successful groups on Earth. This was the era of peak R.E.M. with songs which even old people know like Shiny Happy People, Man on the Moon, Everybody Hurts and Losing My Religion. Michael Stipe went from being all shy and hairy to all bald and cool like Doctor Manhattan from Watchman (although not blue).
The inevitable backlash came with their next album, Monster (1994) which had a scary orange cover with a weird dog on it. It had tracks like What’s The Frequency, Kenneth? and Crush With Eyeliner on. It was certainly different. Some people thought they were trying to sound like Nirvana. 29 years on, it doesn’t sound anything like Nirvana and holds up pretty well.
R.E.M. continued producing interesting music into the 21st century. Their 2001 album, Reveal featuring Imitation of Life and All the Way to Reno (You’re Gonna Be a Star) remains a high point. They split up in 2011.
This book isn’t really an ‘album by album’ guide at all. But it is a comprehensive history of one of the best American bands ever, so well worth reading.
REM: Album by Album, by Max Pilley. Published by: Pen & Sword.
Before there was J.K Rowling, indeed, before even Roald Dahl, there was Enid Blyton, the most successful children’s author of the 20th century.
Few writers have been as popular or as prolific. Emerging from a childhood marred by her beloved father’s decision to leave her mother for another woman, Enid, born in 1897, wrote an astonishing number of books between the early 1920s until she developed dementia in the 1960s, The Famous Five, Secret Seven and Noddy series amongst them. Not everything went smoothly for her. Her first marriage failed and she has been accused of treating her own children coldly and her books have been accused of being variously racist, sexist and formulaic. This fine book tells the whole story, Big Ears, naked tennis matches, lashings of ginger beer and all.
The Real Enid Blyton, by Nadia Cohen. Published by: Pen & Sword History. Available: now.
Badgeland: Memoir of a Labour Party Young Socialist in 1980s Britain, by Steve Rayson. Published: 7th February 2023
Steve Rayson has worn a few badges in his time.
The 1980s was a time when badges were often worn to convey political slogans, at least by those on the Left. Slogans like: ‘Coal not Dole’, ‘Nuclear Power, No Thanks’, ‘Rock Against Racism’, ‘Jobs not Bombs’, ‘Tories Out’, ‘Free Nelson Mandela’, ‘Tony Benn for Deputy’, and ‘Keep GLC working for London’.
The book opens in Swindon in the late 1970s, at the exact point that Steve’s teenage preoccupations with football, fishing and females start to give way to a wider interest in promoting the Labour Party and socialism. It is a cause that will dominate the next decade of his life.
Opposition to his newfound idealism can be found everywhere. The old lady on the bus who refuses to accept that his ‘Anti Nazi League’ badge is not somehow intended to promote Nazism. The friend who rubs his hands with glee at the thought of helping his mother buy her own council house under the ‘Right to Buy’ scheme. The short-lived French girlfriend who proclaims, “I really admire Margaret Thatcher.” The man who concludes, ”I wouldn’t trust Labour with my money…Red Ken would just give it all to black lesbians.” Worst of all is the cool indifference of his working-class father who just seems embarrassed by his son’s frequent left-wing outbursts.
Over time, Steve sees his hometown and his country transformed. Indeed, he is transformed himself, never betraying his principles but forced to make compromises as he attempts to find his place in a rapidly changing new Thatcherite world. The book covers similar territory to other political memoirs by people of a similar age such as Mark Steel’s Reasons to be Cheerful or John O’Farrell’s Things Can Only Get Better. Steve Rayson lacks the comedy background of either of these two fairly well-known figures: until now, he has been best known for his more sober analysis of the reasons behind Labour’s 2019 General Election defeat, The Fall of the Red Wall (2020).
But this is, overall, a very readable, engaging and sometimes funny account of one young man’s decade-long campaign to attempt to halt and ideally reverse the nation’s gradual transformation into a new, crueller, harsher new Thatcherite reality.
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