29/11/2018 “THE LONG SHADOW” by DAVID REYNOLDS

Introducing “The Long Shadow” (2013), the proposer said that, as our meeting fell in the month of the centenary of the Armistice, he felt we should mark the occasion with a book about the impact of World War One on the century that followed. The David Reynolds book was the only serious candidate of which he was aware.

David Reynolds is a British historian who is Professor of International History at Cambridge. He specialises in the two World Wars  (although until now most of his book output has been about the Second) and the Cold War. He served as Chairman of the History Faculty at Cambridge for the academic years 2013–14 and 2014–15. A short TV series narrated by Reynolds accompanied the launch of the book, and he also lectured at the Edinburgh Festival.

In his introduction Reynolds quotes George Kennan, who characterised the First World as “the great seminal catastrophe of this century”. Kennan was struck by the “overwhelming extent” to which communism, Nazism and the Second World War were all “the products of that first great holocaust of 1914-18.”

Although the book was long, it was written with unusual clarity and incision. Reynolds was able to simplify complex ideas across a whole range of subjects with admirable brevity. If it sometimes made you pause, or was challenging, it was only because the wealth of ideas successively described left you giddy – a sort of intellectual fairground ride. The book was in many respects the history of the last century.

The general – and very enjoyable – discussion that opened up reflected the vastness of the subject matter covered by the book. It cannot be covered in a blog of acceptable length, but here are some highlights.

It was very unusual to get a writer so comfortable in writing across such a wide range of subjects. He covered military history, political history, economics, painting, poetry, literature, general culture and more. He did this across a time span of a century. And, although his major focus was Britain, he wrote very cogently about developments in Germany, France, Russia, Ireland and America. Reynolds was inclined to give both sides of an argument without overtly stating his own position, but that gave the book a welcome feel of objectivity and absence of a personal agenda.

A “terrific book” was the general view, “very enjoyable”, “enlightening and absorbing”.

But there were some notes of reservation. “At times too much detail for my taste….I would have preferred more focus on what is the shadow….I think his writing is too diffuse, and in the end I wasn’t sure what he was trying to say”.

‘Could we define “the shadow”? Was it loss of life, anguish, the rise of fascism, the spread of communism, the Great Depression, World War Two, the ongoing crisis in the Middle East?’  The consensus was that it was all of these and more. He had been wise in using the evocative concept of the “shadow” rather than in striving to demonstrate causation, always very difficult in considering history. He was talking about impact in a general sense. And the word “shadow” – for which 16 meanings are given in the OED! - is not necessarily pejorative.

Another reservation was that “the structure was a bit confusing (Part One ‘Legacies’; Part Two ‘Refractions’), and it led to a degree of repetition”. But for most the structure was fine.

Irritatingly we found Reynolds hardly put a foot wrong in his grasp of the bewildering array of subjects he covered, whether on concept or on detail. For a book of history to deprive us of the satisfying opportunity to pick nits is rare indeed. Finally, however, our resident statistician claimed to have nailed him – Reynolds had asserted that German South West Africa (today Namibia) was roughly the same area as England and Wales combined, whereas we reckoned it was 6 times bigger!

Occasional shafts of ironic humour brighten the narrative, such as:

“A year after the Armistice, Sir Henry Wilson, chief of the imperial general staff, fumed ‘We have between 20 and 30 wars raging in different parts of the world’, which he blamed on political leaders who were ‘totally unfit and unable to govern’. Wilson’s deputy, Gen. Sir Philip Chetwode, warned colourfully that ‘the habit of interfering with other people’s business, and of making what is euphoniously called ‘peace’, is like ‘buggery’; once you take to it you cannot stop.”

The financial dimension of the War was one of the few that Reynolds did not discuss in depth. We noted the heavy financial impact on Britain of the two German wars. Britain had not been entitled to reparations after the First War, having declared war and not having been invaded, but found herself in substantial debt to the US, as it did also after WW2. British WW2 Lend Lease debts to the US were not fully repaid until the end of 2006. War bonds raised from the British public for WW1 (and earlier wars) were not repaid until 2015.

We debated the impact of World War One on religion, again one of the few subjects not tackled in the book. Had the War accelerated the decline in religious belief, which could be traced back to Darwin and beyond? We could not resolve this, noting that many in the forces and amongst the bereaved had found religion a great comfort during the War, but accepting that later reflection on the appalling violence and subsequent brutalisation might have shaken the belief of many.

An interesting fact unearthed by one of our members was that the Armistice would have been at 2.30pm on the 11^th of November if Lloyd George had got his way. For Lloyd George, with characteristic egotism, wanted to announce it at 2.30 when he stood up for PM’s Questions. Sir Rosslyn Wemyss, the senior Forces member of the British Delegation, had to appeal to the King to overturn Lloyd George’s order and change it to 11am. Thereby Wemyss saved hundreds of lives, and thereby he incurred the vindictive fury of Lloyd George.

We noted that Reynolds heads a whole chapter “Evil”, which is devoted to genocide in the Nazi concentration camps. But, leaving aside that as unquestionable evil, could the Allies claim the moral high ground given some of their behaviour in other aspects of the Second World War, such as the hundreds of thousands of European citizens killed by RAF bombing, the use of flamethrowers and thermite grenades, and the use of nuclear bombs? The defence is that such tactics were necessary to win – or shorten – the War, but not all of us accepted that argument.

Reynolds is particularly strong on tracing the changing perspectives on the War in Britain, and clear-sighted on the ways in which the facts had become distorted. However, the head of the Imperial War Museum recently said that he had hoped that the commemorative efforts for the centenary of the War would lead to the popular view and the historians’ view of WW1 moving into alignment, but that they had failed to achieve that.

In conclusion, we agreed for our part with the historian John Horne’s view, quoted by Reynolds, that the Great War was “the seminal event in the cycle of violence and ideological extremism that marked the twentieth century.”

25/10/18 “THE REMAINS OF THE DAY” by KAZUO ISHIGURO

We were informed by our host that he often reads books by prizewinning authors. It was for this reason that he had acquired “The Remains of the Day”, by the Nobel Prizewinner (2017) Kazuo Ishiguro.

While this was a credible explanation for his choice no one was fooled.

The host had originally nominated “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” by Milan Kundera but had forgotten that he had previously nominated this book in 2015 when it had been discussed and reviewed by the Group!

His embarrassment led him to reflect on the cause of this memory lapse and he concluded that like Stevens, the butler and narrator of “ The Remains of the Day”, his forgetfulness was age-related.

The appropriateness of his choice became apparent as we read the novel.

It was perhaps some conciliation to the host that the only member to spot the not-so-deliberate mistake was our youngest member.

Our host provided a brief overview of the Kazuo Ishiguro’s family background and literary career. Born in Nagasaki, Japan on 8^th November 1954 his family moved to the UK in 1960. Ishiguro attended the University of Kent in 1974 and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in English and Philosophy in 1978 and in 1980 he gained a Master of Arts in creative writing from the University of East Anglia. He became a British citizen in 1983 and he and his wife and daughter live in London.

Ishiguro’s writings have been hugely successful. He has written eight works of fiction and his books have been translated into over 50 languages. Some, including “The Remains of the Day” have been made into lucrative films.

He also writes screenplays and song lyrics. They are successful too. Our host played us a snatch of Ishiguro’s friend and jazz artist Tracey Kent, singing his melancholy song ‘Bullet Train’ :

Tokyo to Nagoya
Nagoya to Berlin
Sometime I feel I lose track
Of just which hemisphere we’re in….

He has received many awards for his work, including the Man Booker prize in 1989 for “The Remains of the Day”, the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2017 and most recently, in 2018, he was Knighted for his services to Literature.

There was general agreement that this is a beautifully crafted novel. To those who had not read any of Ishiguro’s work it was a great surprise. They had not anticipated such sophisticated use of language from a Japanese author, not realising that he had been raised and educated in Britain.

The novel impressively establishes the character of Stevens, the butler and narrator of the story. His stiff manner of speech exposes Stevens’s limitations as he struggles to find the language to deal with emotion, to converse with his peers or to adjust to the need to engage with the new American owner of Darlington Hall with a much less formal relationship, and especially the “banter”.  Thereafter, Stevens becomes a student of “banter”, taking every opportunity to hone his skills, often without success.

The Group considered the novel “technically brilliant”.

It manages to present an unpromising tale about the life of a man who lived exclusively in the service of others in an interesting and compelling way.

Stevens was the butler in a distinguished English country house, Darlington Hall. Lord Darlington to whom Stevens had devoted his long life of service had died and Mr Farraday, a jovial American who is the new owner of the Hall encourages Stevens to make use of his vintage car to take a short motoring holiday to the West Country.

As this journey unfolds Stevens describes his understanding of the role of the butler in a stately home and he identifies the essential characteristics required of those butlers who aspire to be regarded as a  “great” butler.

Much is made of “dignity”, devotion and unquestioning loyalty all exemplified through vignettes drawn from life at Darlington Hall.

The story reveals the fragility of Stevens’s circumstances.  His need to “inhabit” his professional role requires him to set aside any thoughts of questioning what he is told by Lord Darlington. The dismissal of the Jewish housemaids at Darlington Hall who were well liked and who performed their duties to a good standard illustrates the absolute authority exercised by Lord Darlington.

As the journey progresses, more and more about Lord Darlington’s involvement in political manoeuvrings in the lead up to the Second World War is related. His attempt to broker rapprochement through engaging with Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German Foreign Minister and Ambassador to Great Britain is referred to as is his post war troubles with his reputation ruined through a failed libel action. These reflections cause Stevens to adopt an increasingly protective/defensive attitude towards Lord Darlington, “He wasn’t a bad man at all”

Stevens is unable to deal with emotion. This disability manifests itself in his relationship with Miss Kenton who tries to elicit a reciprocal response to her affection, and also in his account of his relationship with his father and in particular his troubling behaviour at the time of his father’s death.

The motoring holiday draws to a close with Stevens facing up to reality. His reflections enable him to recognize his mistakes and to ponder, “what might have been” . However he continues to show the irrepressible spirit upon which his self worth is dependent. He continues to rationalize and excuse his actions. Finally, he plans to find ways of improving his “bantering” skills in order to commit to a new way of life embracing the changes needed to enable him to satisfy his new American master.

While most of the group found themselves feeling a bit sorry for Stevens as the victim of the anachronistic social system, moulded by his upbringing and the culture of the day, one member suggested that he was dishonest and manipulative. He questioned Stevens’s sexuality and considered him devious in allowing the villagers to believe that he was an upper class gentleman.

These comments apart the novel was unanimously admired, both for its technical excellence but also as a cameo on growing old and the expression of quintessential ‘Englishness’.

Reference was made to the film of ”Remains of the Day” and to the portrayal of the English butler in other well known works; Jeeves, as gentleman’s gentleman to Wooster, Hudson in Upstairs, Downstairs and Downton Abbey all portraying life “below stairs”.

It was remarked that interest in this is a peculiarly English fascination linked to what made the country “great” (a superiority complex born of the fact that Great Britain is the only country undefeated in Europe).

It was also suggested that the virtues of unwavering loyalty and dedication to his master extolled by Stevens were still alive and kicking and could be seen in the behaviour of Civil Servants today. We were reliably informed that no senior Civil Servant voted for Brexit but that their professional duty was to set aside their personal views and to work towards delivering the best outcome.

There followed a discussion on the failure of our politicians to seek to establish “common purpose” on such an important matter. One of our group, who has occasion to visit China in the course of his work, explained the contrasting singularity of purpose in China, where, for example, there are weekly Party meetings in the university departments that must be attended.

It was suggested that the novel is not so much about “ what the butler saw” but what the butler did not see or was unable to see until it was too late.

Stevens’ reflections resulted in his having to confront things he had done or said and with hindsight had regretted or was embarrassed about.

We sympathized with him, recognizing that most of us would admit to having these feelings from time to time.

In Stevens’ case his reflections attack the ideas upon which he has built his life. They test his ability to keep a lid on his emotions and to retain the “dignity” with which he has tried to live his life.

The novel succeeds in exposing the man behind the butler in a clever and powerful way. It struck a chord with many members of the group and this added greatly to their enjoyment. It provoked unanimous approval.

Our host was congratulated on his choice of novel and for being able to remember that an important theme of the “Remains of the Day” is the effect of age on memory.

27/9/18 “HOMO DEUS” by YUVAL NOAH HARARI

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A select company of three met to discuss this month’s book, "Homo Deus: a Brief History of Tomorrow" by Yuval Noah Harari. This is a follow-up to our look at Harari's previous work, "Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind".

Since we did not wish to diminish the scope of our discussion by 33.3%, we did not have a blogger for the evening.  Hence the notes that follow are a brief (briefer anyway than Yuval Noah Harari’s definition of the word) summary of the proposer’s preparatory notes.

The proposer felt that this is a book that invites discussion and debate.  Like ‘Sapiens’, it stimulated him to  run its ideas past whoever happened to be nearby when he was reading it.  It also stimulated reflection on his own life decisions.  The text is engagingly written, and frequently provokes the reader to interact with it, weighing the plausibility of the various arguments presented.

The first part of the book is to some extent a re-run of the content of ‘Sapiens’ – perhaps a necessary exercise in order to set a context for Harari’s account of the new projects of mankind.  He defines these new projects as immortality, happiness and divinity, and argues that famine, plague and war are largely problems whose solution now lies in our own hands, rather than being beyond our control.  These assertions, deliberately provocative, stimulated much discussion on the evening.

The writing throws up some great metaphors and similes.  For example: “terrorists are like a fly that tries to destroy a china shop’ (they have to enrage a bull), or the illustrative use of the history of lawns.

Harari also uses catchy section headings that provide a memorable framework for his ideas – for example ‘Organisms are Algorithms’ and ‘Why Bankers are different from Vampires’.  The proposer also enjoyed the snippets of history and accounts of scientific experiments with which the writer illustrated his themes.  For example the Pharoahs’ creation of a huge artificial lake and the city of ‘Crocodilopolis’, and the experiment with rats placed in flasks of water (not so enjoyable for the rats, of course).

The cover of the paperback edition was not great in terms of graphic design, but the little thumbprint/electronic circuit image was a clever interpretation of one of the book’s important themes.  We noted too that it hinted at the shape of an acorn, also appropriate.  The use of images in the book itself, while sparing, is very effective.  The proposer particularly enjoyed the ‘Humanism in Five Images’ pages.

In conclusion, the proposer found the book somewhat overwhelming, in that each proposition opens up numerous new lines of enquiry.  However, by identifying the quests for immortality, happiness and divinity as themes for investigation, Harari provides a useful framework to combat passive or heedless acceptance of ‘the way things are going’.

30/8/18 "THE DIARY OF A BOOKSELLER” by SHAUN BYTHELL

Our evening commenced with one of our members, an emeritus professor, recounting his stressful day when he had lost his four-year-old grandchild whilst collecting his seven-year-old sibling from school. Fortunately, the “lollipop lady” had found him but our professor had been quite traumatised. Severely rebuked by his wife, he wished to talk. So we listened sympathetically and after a respectable time moved on to the evening’s main activity.

The proposer had chosen this book to give us some light summer reading. It had been recommended by a friend, as an amusing, short and easy holiday read.

He didn’t know too much about the author, as he hadn’t found too much about him “on line”.  However the book tells us that he had been brought up in Wigtown, the son of a farmer, had been sent way to public school. (Interestingly, four of our last five authors have strong Scottish connections.) Bythell remembered the bookshop opening in the 1980’s when he was 18 and thinking it wouldn’t survive a year. After attending Trinity College and leaving without his intended degree in law, he bummed about for a while, returning to Wigtown in 2001, aged 31, with no definite plans. He happened to visit the shop looking for a copy of Three Fevers. He confessed to the owner that he was struggling to find a job he enjoyed. The owner, who was keen to retire, persuaded Shaun to purchase it for £150,000. He regrets not reading George Orwell’s Bookshop Memories, which dispels the myth that selling second hand books is not the idyll many people think. Orwell’s comments “many of the people who came to us were of the kind who would be a nuisance anywhere but have special opportunities in a bookshop.”

Wigtown, during the author’s childhood, had been a thriving county town with imposing County Buildings and a population of under a thousand folk, despite being isolated in the rural peninsula of the Machars, in southwest Scotland. A creamery and a whisky distillery had sustained the economy. With their closure around 1990, the economy of the town suffered greatly. However, in recent years, Wigtown had reinvented itself, with the establishment of a community of bookshops, small businesses, the reopening of the distillery and a successful book festival. It is now known as Scotland’s official Booktown. The Bookshop, the subject of the diaries, had grown to be the largest second hand bookshop in Scotland with 100,000 books spread over a mile of shelving. A few of the group had visited Wigtown, the book festival and the writer’s premises. One, having read the book, was keen to visit.

Those who worked in the shop commented that customer interactions produced ample material for a book. He started jotting down incidents as they happened and so his aide memoire became a diary.

The author provides an insight into the trials and tribulations of the second hand bookselling business. From his idiosyncratic Jehovah’s Witness assistant, Nicky, to a huge cast of eccentric customers, his buying trips to old houses and his insight into the workings of Amazon, the book is full of interest and amusement.

We all enjoyed his facetious, sarcastic and almost downright rude descriptions of staff and customers. The book, although in diary format, was easy to dip in and out of. It didn’t have a continuous narrative, like Arthur Gould Lee’s diary “No Parachute: A Fighter Pilot in World War I” we had recently read.

The author’s rudeness worked both ways with him giving as much as he received. He didn’t suffer fools gladly. Some of our group felt that his discourtesy compared favourably with the late proprietor of a renowned hostelry in the south of Edinburgh. Others observed that he seemed less offensive about identifiable Wigtown locals than he was to anonymous visitors. Perhaps he didn’t wish to offend too many residents.

He ranked his customers accordingly:

• The dream customer is the collector who buys £200 worth of illustrated poetry books.
• A good customer is someone who buys even a single book without attempting to haggle the price down.
• A bad customer doesn’t buy anything.
• And a really bad customer gets their laptop out and shamelessly checks the bookshop’s prices against those listed on Amazon.
• Then there are the customers who aren’t really customers – those waiting for the chemist up the road to fill their prescription, or for the garage to finish their car’s MOT.

The book is packed with amusing anecdotes, fascinating characters and insights into the second hand book business. The proposer’s friend who runs a second-hand furniture and book business in Kingussie knows many of the regular customers and they are real!

His Jehovah’s Witness assistant, Nicky, with a penchant for wearing home-stitched tabards or a black ski-suit, arriving late, stealing food from skips, sloppily eating her breakfast whilst driving her car, misfiling books and creating a mess in the shop, came in for a lot of stick. Despite this, he was totally reliant on her so that he could go off fishing, swimming and buying books. She was also of “value beyond measure” with her amusing remarks. When a customer asked if they had a “rest room” she replied “there’s a comfy seat by the fire if you need a rest”.

Some of the regular characters are Bum Bag Dave who carries at least two bum bags and various beeping electronic devices. Smelly Kelly who reeks of Brut 33 and relentlessly woos Nicky, Sandy, a pagan and the most tattooed man in Scotland who makes walking sticks for sale in the shop, and Mr Deacon, who doesn’t wear his well cut clothes well. “It appears as though someone has loaded his clothes into a cannon and fired them at him, and however they have landed upon him they have stuck”. Mrs Philips starts her phone calls with “ I am ninety three years old and blind, you know.” And of course we have the cats, his own black cat, “Captain” and a stray cat which was an unwelcome visitor and subsequently “had had his balls chopped off” by the Cats Protection League, much to his owners displeasure.

We enjoyed his brutally honest job reference he wrote for a former employee, Sara, following her discourteous request. This inevitably led the group to discuss the value of written references. References seem to be written differently depending on their country of origin, some being pretty bland whilst others are pretty frank. Telephone discussions seem more truthful.

One member questioned his annoyance at customers haggling. But “he’s in the haggling business”. Others were amazed by the amount of travelling he did.

One of our email contributors had thoroughly enjoyed the book and its different format. The portrayal of all the weird and wonderful characters he is surrounded by, both staff and customers, was most amusing and kept the book ticking along. The constant fight with online giants, particularly Amazon, gave the book bite and a bit of anger and it was good to see him kicking back. Witness “The best thing that could happen to Kindle”. Interestingly, of the six members attending this evening, only three had read a hard copy of the book. Two had read it on Kindle and one had listened to it on Audible. No one had shot their Kindle!

One member had considered opening a second hand bookshop but hadn’t taken it any further. He had also bought a book at a local Church of Scotland jumble sale “The Story of O” which he later discovered was all about sexual bondage. He was intrigued about the reading material of the congregation but felt his purchase had been excellent value at 10p! Others were less enthusiastic about running a second hand bookshop. Another found that some books could give off an unpleasant odour that he didn’t fancy. And yet another argued that he preferred books for their reading content and not their presentation or value. He didn’t see the point of having a first edition or a signed copy.

There was discussion of the author’s concern about his shop’s rating on social media. How accurate was it? One member had been a regular reviewer on TripAdvisor but had become sceptical of its value and had stopped contributing. He however felt that household equipment was now much more reliable thanks to customer feedback and consumer pressure. Another was concerned about the dominance of Amazon and had stopped using them, preferring to support local businesses. Another felt that time was our most valuable resource and Amazon allowed him speedy searching and purchasing.

Discussion moved onto the success of book festivals, the tourist invasion of Edinburgh, the proposal to have a tourist tax and even the shocking suggestion that Scottish football might move from Hampden to Murrayfield.

As our discussions drew to a close, our emeritus professor, still reeling from his earlier trauma, mentioned that on the journey home from the state primary school, the seven year old saw a sign outside a large educational building saying “Private School”. What does this mean? The trauma of the day was too much for our professor “Things will become clearer when you get older…”

Time to depart after thanking the host for providing some delicious home made brownie cakes.