Stream of conciousness

I love chalkstreams. They are so clear that you can see every fish, every plant, every movement and eddy of aquatic life. They are the nearest you can get in the great outdoors to staring at a tropical fish tank.

Until I read Simon Cooper's Life of a Chalkstream I didn't realise how lucky I was to live in such a rare environment (they are confined to a small corner of where I currently live in England plus a few in Normandy and one, as far as I can tell unsubstantiated report, in New Zealand. Please put me right if this isn't the case as it would be nice to find out they are more common.

Cooper's account is also gin-clear in its prose and evocation of this landscape, steeped in deep and intimate knowledge of its annual ecosystem. It probably helps to read this book if you like fly fishing (by the fictional JR Hartley or anyone else). But I'm no angler, and have no desire to become one. I just appreciate the tranquil flow of the river in quiet contemplation of a more relaxing pace of life. Then the sudden splash of ducks landing, the alarm of a coot dispute, or the gentle gnawing of a grassy snack by a water vole or, very occasionally, the brilliant flash of a kingfisher adds to the sparkle of the sun reflecting on the crystal water and my day is complete.

Oh you brute!

I'm not sure whether to start this with a Frankie Howard style paraphrase of 'Et Tu Brute?' or Monty Python's "What have the Romans ever done for us?"

The Greeks gave us democracy and the Romans gave us Dictatorship.

Of course that isn't really true as many Romans struggled to keep the Senate functioning and resist tyrants like Caesar.

Robert Harris' excellent trilogy on Cicero ending with Dictator is a racy novelisation of history. He portrays the vanity and flaws of his hero but also the bravery and stubborn principles on which political life should be based. He also doesn't shirk from the role that colonisation and conflict played in financing an Empire that we call civilisation.

The big problem with democracy is that it's run by the people for the people and what the people really want, when it comes down to it, is cash for food and entertainment. If anyone can provide that they can subvert the democratic process. Why is it - cue age old rhetorical question - that we never learn from history? Coz we never read abaht it I s'pose!

Memories are real

Philip K Dick is a smart sassy writer and his short stories are ideal for film. But book versus film is always going to be a futile question. They are different. Get over it. They can both be great. Both be bad. One great and one bad.
What interests me is how your anticipation or retrospective memory are slightly different for each of these forms. How we feel about the experience is important to whether we react positively or not. It is the same with memories. If we had a bad experience with something we are unlikely to want to repeat it and yet the facts of the experience may or may not support whether it was good or not. So, TripAdvisors, how do you rate your trip to Mars? Was it a good holiday, a nightmare or a bit of both? Can you trust your memory? Are you Arnold Schwarzenegger or Colin Farrell? Are you both and someone has tampered with your memory? We Can Remember It For You Wholesale.

The war is over but the battle repeats

HG Wells' stories continue to inspire film, theatre, music and art high and low.

It's not hard to work out why as he was a rattling good story teller. He had imaginative plots, lots of action and some good twists. Whether you get to know the characters in depth and can overcome some of the jarring historical references (servants and stuff) is another matter.

Some of his tales, and War of the Worlds is definitely one of them, do fare better with reinterpretation and I'm not talking Tom Cruise here. Still it's refreshing now and then to get back to the source.

Fishing for compliments

I had some difficulty enjoying this book. I had no problem with the cultural location - a family in Nigeria to which I'd had some remote exposure through studies, friends and colleagues - and liked the expression and some great turns of phrase. What I struggled with was something much more familiar to readers of generational literature from the UK south west. This was the Thomas Hardy fateful doom that is obvious and inevitable as these youngsters grow up and come of age. But don't let me put you off. There is even a happy ending. I just didn't like the "something bad is going to happen" and then surprise, surprise it does.

Mountain madness

Simon Ingram manifests all the classic symptoms of a man possessed by the completely irrational desire to walk and climb up mountains in all weathers, at all times of the day and night and try to explain himself to rational humans, Between the Sunset and the Sea is a poetically titled book that eloquently captures the moods of the mountains and their tiny assailants. But he still can't convince me that staying overnight with midges, ticks and storm conditions are all part of the fun or that obsession with brands of cagoule is healthy in a grown man. But I can see the sense of self-worth and tranquillity that cresting that summit in beautiful light brings and how dangerously addictive it can become.

People, places and plants

Roy Lancaster's memory is phenomenal. I know the secret. He carries around a small A5 notebook in his jacket at all times. Within it are the people, places and plants he has visited. Some of them anyway as his travels have been prodigious and he has had at least 80 years to amass an incredible volume(s) of friendships and stories. I was lucky enough to obtain a dedicated copy of his autobiography 'My life with plants' and to walk around Hilliers garden along with a few others to listen to him recount the memories that each plant reveals. Not only could he remember where in the world a particular plant was collected, and the species taxonomy, he could remember the time of day, date, who he was with and probably give you their family history as well. He says that he could shut his eyes on a train and imagine all the places he has been and people he has met. He clearly doesn't need an MP3 player or iPad to keep him entertained. But the best thing - which has come across in all his TV, radio and personal appearances - is his infectious enthusiasm for all things natural. It's a mistake to think of him as a gardener. He isn't one for topical tips and double digging. He is, at core, a natural historian in the very best and encyclopedic sense of that noble and somewhat neglected professional term. Happy days all round. 

The road less travelled but most busy

 

We see history and culture through a very localised lens but what Peter Frankopan's The Silk Roads teaches us is that the lens is a kaleidoscope of rich images that have often travelled further than we think.
There are many things that surprised me about the contents of this book. Like many people in my locale I was brought up with a Eurocentric view of history that there were a few Kings and Queens and then we had a couple of World Wars. I don't suppose it is that different in the States or in some parts of Africa for that matter.
The publishers have given this book a rather pretentious claim to be "A New History of the World". It is. As long as you recognise that it is still going to be one view (although curiously echoed by Sam Willis' excellent BBC documentary The Silk Road) then The Silk Roads gives a welcome, refreshing and fascinating view from the Asian end of the road and in particular the "stans" and other partially lost cultures, nations and religions of the vast lands above India between Turkey and China. These nations and people became partially eclipsed by conquest but their mineral wealth will probably bring them (or at least their oligarchs) back into view as the Silk Roads remain open for business.

Reach the Border and climb upside down

Jeff Vandermeer's Annihilation is speculative fiction at its best. I hesitate to call it science fiction because the genre carries such a weight of comic book action heroes. There is some shooting and running about but character and description are the core of this story which forms the first part of the Southern Reach series of books. The lead character is a biologist who is sent across the border into alien territory where very little is known about the inhabitants and their world. What she encounters there challenges her understanding and, at times, the description of the author. That is what I like about it - that Vandermeer tries to describe something which is indescribable. That trope used to be the mainstay of horror: that there was something lurking in the dark rather some psycho with a chainsaw in the full glare of light. So it is with this genre that the speculation about alien ecosystems is so alien that we struggle to describe it. Even the architecture is strangely symbiotic and contradictory as we have a lighthouse tower but the main tower in the story is really an underground tunnel. The only thing I didn't like was the fact that we were so obviously setting up a sequel and maybe even a prequel. I felt that all the stories in any sequence should be able to stand alone as self-contained. Publishers disagree. They want the repeat of the familiar but that isn't what this kind of fiction is about.

Patterns

There are no straight lines in my body nor most people I know. So why do we live in square boxes? Do you know how difficult it is to get a builder to do a bendy wall with curvy bricks?
The problem is we like patterns. We like to organise the visual world into lines, dots and symmetrical squiggles because it helps us interpret it as data. 1s and 0s.
I received a V&A Pattern book based on Sanderson 1954-74. You've probably guessed by now it's not a bodice-ripping best seller but it is very pleasing to the eye.
This illustration is not Trio (Triad1) which I would have liked to have used because I don't trust the Trustees not to enforce  copyright restrictions even though the book comes with a handy CD of beautiful images. So this is my sketch interpretation of a field boundary marked by an old hedgerow tree that didn't get grubbed out when the farmer decided he wanted to draw the plough lines up to the edge.

Not just a penguin

The Invention of Nature by A. Wulf. I just love it when somebody does something appropriate to their name. It seems to happen more often than you think. I used to think Humboldt was just a penguin. Of course I knew the penguin had probably been a person's name. I didn't think Humboldt was an adjective. But I knew nothing about him. It's odd that some people get all the credit for breakthrough discoveries when in fact an idea often builds amongst great men and women over many decades.
Andrea Wulf's excellent biography is subtitled The Lost Hero of Science and it's unfortunately down to a bit of anti-German feeling post two world wars that seem to have obscured this Prussian polymath from wider recognition. I think it's also difficult to classify someone like Humboldt when we are used to being able to say someone is a naturalist or a botanist or an astronomer or an explorer. Humboldt's strength is his description of people and places that brings his data and analysis to life and his ability to think about connected environmental systems where geology, geography and evolution are integrated. He sits fair and square in the centre of a continuous rope of thought that connects Goethe, Thomas Jefferson, Simon Bolivar, Charles Darwin, Henry David Thoreau and John Muir (who persuaded the US President Roosevelt to effectively found the National Parks movement). Just a shame the British East India Company persistently prevented him from exploring India so his observations were restricted to South America and the Russian end of Asia. Not that it really dented his global vision and his legacy.

Skin

Sarah Hilary's Someone Else's Skin is a perfectly good novel.

I liked the way she skittered over your preconceptions about gender and race to tell an otherwise routine detective tale of murder and mayhem.

The world she conjured up is largely nocturnal, urban, claustrophobic and full of mistrust. It's not my world but I recognise its appeal both in book and TV worlds. I longed for more description of place (set in Bath ideally), not just people, and a little less violence.

But I know I'm in a minority so I wish DI Marnie Rome well.

If only he had understood the variety of sausages available on the continent

The reinvention of Ladybird books with adult satirical content has been a brief but enjoyable fashion. The best are full of cracking one liners that go well with the artists' pastiches of original content.
Less successful, I think, is the attempt at longer form writing with little Enid Blyton-style stories...or maybe it's just this one: Five on Brexit Island by Bruno Vincent. Perhaps it's still too painful or, you could take the opposing view, that the reality is far funnier and involves bigger buffoons than you could possibly make up.

In the Kingdom of the Blind Eye the Optician is King

Like many journalists Emma Jane Kirby has highlighted the plight of migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean to a largely indifferent European public.
Occasionally a small child being washed ashore might get attention. The overall statistics of deaths and drownings at the hands of unscrupulous criminals are not enough to shock us. It's only when you follow an individual story that makes it easier to relate. Once such tale is of The Optician of Lampedusa - someone who goes out fishing in a small boat and catches 47 human beings. The boat was designed for 10 people and already had 8 on board. 368 people died and the most shocking thing was that there were other boats that didn't stop.
By putting this story into book form Kirby has raised the stakes once again in terms of the role of the journalist as moral optician helping us to see more clearly. Thankfully the trade can still aspire to more than tabloid tunnel vision.

A man with two heads is very unique

Everybody is unique but some people are more unique than others. At the danger of being labelled an oxymoron I wish to pay brief homage to the totally unknown pop act that is John Greaves and Peter Blegvad. John is a bassist and pianist who has played with Henry Cow and National Health and has an unhealthy obsession with the French poet Paul Verlaine. Peter is a wordsmith and cartoonist (the Independent's Leviathan) who also doubles as a musician and has performed as part of Slapp Happy. Their two headed collaborative album Kew.Rhone is a classic and thankfully impossible to categorise. You could write a book about it - with contributions from Jonathan Coe, Carla Bley and Robert Wyatt - and you would know a great deal more about palindromes, numinosity, proverbs and even perverbs so Peter Blegvad has done just that. Like this painting 'Exhuming the First American Mastodon' by CW Peale you would get to dig (ie understand and appreciate) a little more about the author and his chum but it would still leave you with a poetically playful sense of awe and wonder at how such a beast could have lived and now go unrecognised.

Dun and Dusty

The Rural Life in the Dun Valley 1066-1900 is a bit of a specialist volume. Like the author, Margaret Baskerville, I've had to resort to illustrations from the Weald and Downland Museum in the next county as there is not a lot of material to go on. But that's the point. I think some of the source material such as receipt of tithes, probates and inventories are presented without a lot of colour or comment but nonetheless it gives a fascinating insight into how people lived. There are unexpected events (such as the Swing Riots organised by the fictitious Captain Swing of the scythe gangs) and you can imagine the lives and times of the agricultural labourers that just don't get told in our chocolate box National Trust view of rural estates. Overall it is difficult to put a swift narrative flow to such a wide period of time but the narrow geographical focus is well set in Britain's social history.

Annoyingly talented

I saw Bill Bailey on tour last year. Like everyone else I'd seen him in various guises on quiz shows and doing stand up. I knew he could play music pretty well but, even so, wasn't prepared for how prodigiously talented he was on so many instruments in so many genres. I guess his problem as a musician is that no-one will take him seriously as you expect satire all the time.
As a naturalist he has the same problem...when to drop the humour and when to just enjoy his enthusiasm for the natural environment. I don't think it really matters. I can't bear anyone who takes themselves too seriously anyway and twitchers are the worst.
Bill's Remarkable Guide to British Birds is a rubbish guide but is full of surreal little cartoons, off the wall information and anecdotes. This is how it should be. It's just a shame he is so remarkably and annoyingly talented. A bit like the Herring Gull which he describes as the "Gimlet-eyed snaffler of a million battered sausages."

No Sussex please, we're Hampshire

Timothy Mowl has produced an outstandingly researched set of volumes on historic gardens within England. Often it is most revealing what has gone as much as what is familiar. For 2016's Hampshire he has taken on one of his former students - Jane Whitaker - to help with the 'volume' of the volumes. I learned a lot about places I thought a knew a lot about already.
Just a few minor niggles as this kind of factual book brings out the anorak in me. For example Petersfield is a significant Hampshire town so to place it in Sussex in this sort of geographical review is a bit sloppy and results in missing out the modern recreation of a 17th Century-style "physic garden". Secondly I don't think that Capability Brown's work at Warnford is more than a tenuous stylistic link through contemporary knowledge and not necessarily carried out under contract by him. Thirdly there were a few too many "but they wouldn't let us look around"... in the case of Westbury it was full of patients with serious crash injuries so I'm not surprised the authors got a refusal but you can still see all you need by visiting the ruined chapel by the roadside and walking up the public footpath that goes through the grounds past the old kitchen garden walls. But I guess I'm guilty of being pernickity-picky as I have more time to find my way around these places. Illustration by the way is Mottisfont Abbey where Graham Stuart Thomas' famous rose garden goes unmentioned along with other admittedly contemporary features like a grove of gold painted upside down tree trunks.

Just looking at the pictures

I hesitate to include picture books in this blog because I've nothing useful to say about them and I can't show you any pictures because photographers and publishers get very prickly about copyright. So just a brief note of Landscape Photographer of the Year Collection 10 and the Lonely Planet's Beautiful World. Both do exactly what they say on the tin as the former are beautifully reproduced mostly British landscapes and the latter more stunning global subjects but less well photographed and reproduced. Both have a role to play but don't bother with the text and don't bother writing or reading a blog about them unless you are prepared to license pictures for non-commercial reuse.

All White

Bear with me as I tell you of Edmund de Waal's Journey Into Obsession along The White Road. On the face of it a book about the history of porcelain is not going to excite anyone outside of a geriatric antiques daytime TV game show but de Waal's obsession is altogether more poetic and, frankly, a little off the wall. What he, and clearly others, have found is the depth of passion that the art and science of the highly prized individually thrown art objects, and equally a lot of mass produced humble domestic utilitarian objects, has inspired.
It starts in China, of course, but in the middle of this road is central Europe (in Germany and France particularly) and he then travels to the mining county of Cornwall via America. Fresh research and the perspective of a minimalist potter make this pretty much his own genre. A suitable sequel to the Hare with Amber Eyes.