25 JULY 2007 “BEOWULF” AND “SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT”

Opening the discussion, the proposer said that he had read Beowulf in his teens, and it seemed appropriate to revisit it at a time when Beowulf was being performed at the Edinburgh Festival and was also being made into a film. His university had not, however, been one of those that made Beowulf a compulsory text for students of English.

It used to be firmly believed that Beowulf had been written in the eighth century, but nowadays scholars would only state that it was written sometime between the 7th and 10th centuries. It was written in Anglo-Saxon (or “Old English”), a language largely inaccessible to the non-scholar. It was a “heroic” work, about a warrior in a Scandinavian warrior culture, where fame and honour are sought. The Christian elements of the poem did not seem integral to the imagination at work, and had possibly been added by a later hand.

Beowulf was an epic, of which there were few examples in English literature, and it was sometimes referred to as “the English epic”. However, Beowulf was not part of the canon, as it was not printed until 1815, and not translated into English until 1837. It was therefore not part of the intellectual furniture of the majority of the great English authors in the way that the Iliad, Odyssey and Aeneid were, nor was it of the same stature.

Beowulf was written in poetry, and “poetry is what gets lost in translation”. Having first read Beowulf in Wright’s prose version, he had enjoyed it very much more in Seamus Heaney’s verse translation, which he thought brilliant. It had taken time to adjust to the rhythms being used, a watered-down version of the original alliterative form. It was only once one emphasised the mid-line pause (the “caesura”) that the pattern of stresses worked as verse, although occasionally it lapsed into straight prose. It very seldom fell into bathos, compared to the prose version. The use of alliteration was restrained and subtle. The diction was muscular and direct (although the same could not be said of Heaney’s overblown critical introduction to the poem).

In the Heaney poem the monsters now seemed less prominent than the sense of foreboding, melancholy and fate. The digressions into history and legend illuminated man’s predisposition to argument and war. The measured rhythm of the poetry gave a gravitas, balance and sense of inevitability to the work. The end of the poem was particularly moving, as it became clear that all of Beowulf’s achievements as a king would quickly be reversed on his death.

In discussion, members said they had enjoyed the insight into an earlier society, and exposure to a work earlier than Chaucer. The main incidents were portrayed brilliantly.

One of the interesting facets of the poem was the tension between the primitive, violent society on the one hand, and the Christian religious sentiments imposed on to it. It was not brutally done – it was an Old Testament God – but it felt artificial. The consensus in discussion was that a later hand had added the Christian elements. It seemed quite plausible that a monk had written down an epic poem originally passed on in oral tradition. He would have kept it in Anglo-Saxon rather than translating it into Latin in order to retain the poetry of the original, but might well have added some Christian elements in keeping with his background. Was it possible that the original contained references to Scandinavian gods that had been replaced by Christian references?

Not everyone liked the Heaney translation. For one it was rather clumsy; and another gave up on it as poetry. However, another felt there was great beauty in some of the passages, such as the burial, and going off to sea. Despite the official line that rhyme was not used in the original, one had found the suggestion of some rhyme in looking at the Anglo-Saxon, and felt this might have helped the translation. We wondered whether 5 different translators would come up with 5 different versions of the Beowulf story – a quick comparison of the Wright version and the Heaney version had showed substantial differences.

A feature of the poem was that it offered advice to kings on how to conduct themselves – in the way that Machiavelli’s “The Prince” did, even if the advice was less cynical. We wondered if there were originally a political patron who was to be influenced or flattered by what was said about the good behaviour of rulers.

The poem attached a lot of importance to the gold objects that Beowulf received as a reward. Yet at the end, in the final battle with the dragon, all the gold in the dragon’s lair is tarnished, and it is buried with Beowulf. Is this an allegory of Beowulf’s life? Is the pursuit of gold not a good idea? Is it a misplaced philosophy? Heaney suggests this is evidence of Christian influence. On the other hand, Beowulf does not pursue gold as an objective, even if he does seem to value it very highly when he receives it.

The various asides about history and legend disrupted the flow of the narrative. But we wondered how familiar the original audience were with this history – what were their reference points? Was Wright correct in suggesting that the history of the Swedish/Danish wars would be as familiar to the audience as the Napoleonic wars to us? In any event, the purpose of the history sections did seem to be educational, bringing out the flaws of bad leaders, and the poet’s bleak world-view in which violence begets more violence in a never-ending cycle.

Turning to “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”, the proposer said that as with Beowulf he had first read it in his teens, but in this case he had gone on to study it at university. It had made a lasting impact on his imagination. It had real mythic power, and he found it haunting and resonant.

Again the poem had come down to us in just one manuscript, which had nearly been burnt, showing the fragility of great art. As with Beowulf it had not formed part of the traditional canon, first being published in 1839, although obviously Arthurian myth in general was part of the literary heritage. The story of Gawain and the Green Knight also existed in a rhyming version by another writer.

The poem was written in Middle English, which was easier for the modern reader to tackle than Anglo-Saxon. There had been a remarkable flowering of medieval English literature in the late fourteenth century. The best known example was Chaucer, who had written in the East Midlands dialect which went on to form the basis of modern English. The Gawain poet (who may also have written the remarkable “Pearl”) had written in West Midlands dialect (also used in the north). He and other poets of the time from that region (such as William Langland, who wrote the superb “Piers Plowman”) had resurrected the Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse form, and also used old-fashioned vocabulary.

The poem had various sources – the beheading myth, and the temptations story, both of which can be found in Irish and Welsh fables; the chivalric tradition and courtly love, of which adultery was an accepted part; and Christianity, which was opposed to adultery. The poem fused together all these elements in the context of Arthurian legend to create a remarkable whole.

Reacting to the poem, one member had thought it wonderful, with graphic, toe-curling imagery. The descriptions of nature were particularly fine. It would make a great film. It had more layers of meaning and was richer than Beowulf. For another it was a great narrative that pulled you along. Another admired the very disciplined, cohesive structure, which was only as long as was necessary to get all the layers in. There was coruscating tension throughout the poem.

One found it difficult to judge such a historical relic. It had taken time to get into, but proved more readable than expected. The descriptions of nature were more convincing for him than those of courtly love.

Unfortunately, most members of the Book Group had been unable to track down a modern version which reproduced the original text in legible form (in the way that Heaney’s edition did for Beowulf). Tolkein’s translation was found to be fairly unsatisfactory, often lapsing into bathos, suggesting Tolkein was a better writer of prose than poetry. In fairness to him though, he had not authorised his translation for publication. Simon Armitage’s 2007 translation into poetry was much more successful.

The alliteration in the original could produce very powerful effects, such as, in describing winter:

“Ther as claterande fro the crest the cold borne rennes,
And hanged heghe over his hede in hard ysse-ikkles”

Or in describing misty weather:

“Mist mugged on the mor, malt on the mountes,
Uch hille had a hatte, a myst hakel [cloak] huge.”

Yet the alliterative verse could also achieve subtlety in describing interpersonal relations, particularly between Gawain and the Lord’s wife.

What were the themes of the poem? On the face of it, the main theme is that of moral testing. Gawain is naïve enough to think that moral perfection – the symmetry of the pentangle – is possible, whereas the poem shows it is not. He fails, and is shamed, but is given a second chance. But deeper, troubling themes are also present – such as the archetypal fear that sex will lead to death, and the male fear of the power of women and their capacity for deceit.

Symbolism ran throughout the poem. For example the use of the colour green –the Green Knight appearing at dead of winter echoed the green man of fertility symbolism. The pentangle on Gawain’s shield was an important symbol, which the poet suggests derived from Solomon and symbolised loyalty, virtue and kindness.

Why was so much weight given to the hunting scenes, and so much detail given on the butchering of the bodies? The hunting scenes are interspersed with, and echo, the seduction scenes. The butchery increased the fear of the impending beheading, but perhaps there was also a fear of women and a fear of the carnality of sex reflected in their juxtaposition with the seduction scenes. The hunting of the deer, boar, and then fox could also be seen as hunting for food, hunting requiring bravery, and hunting requiring intelligence – thus reflecting three sides of man. And the poem was carefully constructed in threes – three sections, three temptations, and so on.

Whereas Beowulf was about war, this could be seen as being about the leisure pursuits of the upper classes. Gawain takes up the challenge for his own personal satisfaction. Yet the poem did not seek to give a picture of society of the day - it was more of a fairy tale or a fantasy, moving with dream logic. And most literature was about how we should behave, and both Beowulf and Gawain fell into this category.

There was undoubtedly rashness and naivety in the way Gawain took up the challenge. Yet Arthur and his court came out worse, with Arthur easily being wound up by the Green Knight to accept an unnecessary challenge, yet equally easily letting Gawain accept the challenge on his behalf. And at the end of the poem Arthur and his court emerge as superficial in the light-hearted way they treat the tale of Gawain’s ordeal.

Both Beowulf and Gawain reflected a pessimistic view of the world. Beowulf lived in a world beset by monsters, and for all Beowulf’s virtues as a king, man’s natural predisposition to violence was set to undo all his good work as soon as he died, and even the gold that he cherished was tarnished. Gawain moved through a harsh natural environment, populated with deceitful women and a knight with unnatural power, and found that his ideal of perfect moral behaviour – his pentangle - was impossible to maintain.

The (by now) well-lubricated discussion then wandered more broadly. Weren’t the epics of Homer closer to the world of Gawain than to Beowulf? Why were there monsters in myth but not in the Bible? Where did monsters come from - as archetypes from the unconsciousness? …And what might have happened if Gawain had succumbed to the temptation of his host’s wife?



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27.6.2007 ARTHUR AND GEORGE by JULIAN BARNES


Introducing the book, the proposer said it had been a difficult read for him, and at one stage he had doubted whether he would finish it. One reason for the difficulty in getting to grips with the book had been the feeling of incredulity at the character of George, and the unbelievable injustice which had happened to him. Only when 2/3rds through did the structure of the book make sense and where it was going become clearer. He was struck by the strong similarities of the challenges facing Arthur and George - e.g. their outsider status, moral dilemmas and how their behaviour appeared to wider society. He had been impressed by Julian Barnes’ fluent style and in the end had much enjoyed the book.

During wider discussion, the consensus was that Julian Barnes had produced a very fine novel. He had a fluent, low key, easy writing style. The structure - while somewhat challenging - made sense in the end.

There was much discussion of how close to what had actually happened the book was. Some of those present were aware of, or had researched, the background and confirmed the general accuracy. One member, with Home Office experience, commented on the background of chief constables and judges in the early 20th century, the role of the Home Office in wrongful conviction cases, and Conan Doyle’s achievement in getting the Court of Appeal set up in England in 1908 following the cases of George and also Oscar Slater. There was some discussion of the effect on the reader of knowing the book was a broadly true story.

Other issues raised in discussion were the nature of the trial (the account of which some found disproportionate to the rest of the book) and the police role in “evidence” gathering. The racism of the police and wider local society was commented upon, in particular George’s somewhat naïve refusal to see racism as a factor in his treatment. Arthur was particularly non-racist for his time. A parallel was drawn between George’s view of how society viewed him and Arthur’s in the matter of his relations with Jean Leckie.



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30.5.07 "THE SECRET RIVER' by KATE GRENVILLE

Introducing the book, the proposer said that he had come across it when looking for Australian books to take with him on a journey to Australia. His initial choice – Tom Keneally’s “A Commonwealth of Thieves” – was a hardback that was too heavy for travel, and hence he had turned to Kate Grenville’s 2005 book. “Secret River” had been short-listed for the Booker prize, and by 2006 had won seven prizes, including the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.

Kate Grenville was born in Sydney in 1950, and after various jobs, including in the film industry, took an MBA in creative writing in 1980. Since then she had published six novels and various other books.

She had taken five years to write the book, and had published a memoir about the process “Searching for the Secret River”. She had started off by doing family research, and the novel had grown out of her interest in her great, great, great grandfather. Much of the work was based on him. (He had made a lot of money in the early days of Australia, and had been buried in top hat and tails with sovereigns in his mouth. However, the next generation had squandered all the wealth). Some of the phrases given as speech to characters in the novel are taken verbatim from historical records. In her research she had found out a lot about the convicts, but there were very few historical records dealing with the aborigines.

The proposer had liked the book, finding it an easy read (if occasionally long-winded) with a solid central character in William Thornhill. He liked the human side of Thornhill, and the depiction of his relationship with his wife. The book explored moral issues for Australia – what is a crime, how should you treat criminals, is land ownership a right or a privilege, and can you defend your land?

Another recent visitor to Australia had also liked the book, finding it had a lot of resonance. It dealt with two big themes of Australian literature – how to come to terms with their convict past, and how to come to terms with the Aborigines. Australians were only now coming to terms with episodes such as the slaughter of Aborigines depicted in the book.

Another member, forwarding views with difficulty from a leftish quarter of Naples, also liked the book. Although it started “like a girly novel”, and was too “well-written” and lacking in mystery, it ended powerfully. It was rich in themes: love, race, class, ownership, and colonialism. These were all great themes, and all explored in one novel. Like Germans, the Australians have started to confront their murky past. Did they really use arsenic to wipe out the natives? However, the novel had a happy ending, at least on the surface, which might make it more acceptable to the Australian reader.

Others agreed on the literary qualities of the book, and could see how it would hit a nerve with the Australians. On the other hand, it did not seriously examine the Aborigines – it only looked at them as they were perceived by the convicts. Bruce Chatwin’s “The Songlines” by contrast had been a serious engagement with the Aborigines several years previously.

The writer was not a political novelist – she was interested in the human drama and the human reactions to the events. The book worked at two levels. At one level it was a rattling good yarn of a man making his way in the world, and reaching a decisive moment in the conflict with the Aborigines, which shaped him and his relationship with his wife. At a deeper level, it was about who you are, what it is to be human, and what property is – deep themes indeed.

Was Thornhill a hero or a villain? The whole book was seen through his eyes, even when he steals. Once he gains a position above other convicts, the convicts call him “Mr Thornhill”, and he accepts the name without demur. Indeed he accepts the whole value system which once had him at the bottom of the heap. He is almost an anti-hero. Admittedly he was reluctant to attack the Aborigines, and one does sympathise with him, but he had no right to do what he did. And he is shown to be left with a feeling of hollowness at the end. He is both hero and villain. Perhaps the character of Blackwood – who gets closest to the Aborigines – was the real hero.

On the other hand, it was a harsh environment, and surely it was not appropriate to apply our moral standards? Admittedly there was the Dickensian portrayal of London in the early part of the book (which some, but not all, found rather false - the emphasis was on everything that was different, not on what was the same). But Thornhill seemed to be portrayed with a twentieth century morality and conscience. He feels awkward in his dealings with Blackwood, and feels guilt at hitting an Aborigine. And Blackwood seems to be a very twentieth century figure, who echoes Mr Kurtz of “Heart of Darkness” in some of his actions (but not in the judgement made of him).

Another reader felt that the book was written as a sort of moral thesis – how do you reconcile the historical fact of theft and murder with the fact that it was your ancestor who did it? It seemed to be an attempt to prove that to know all is to forgive all – to show that any reasonable man might have behaved the same way in the difficult circumstances of the time. Even without knowing the personal background to Grenville’s novel, that sense of “un roman à thèse” came through.

And the novel failed to convince that Thornhill’s behaviour was always reasonable. It seemed to exaggerate in suggesting that the choice in London for the lower orders was starvation or theft – the theft of a cargo of valuable timber (which apparently was what her ancestor was convicted of) was more venal than simply fending off starvation. However, the treatment of the aborigine murder was subtler, with the hero himself feeling his happiness was tainted at the end. The author towards the end subtly – and maybe unconsciously - distanced herself from her protagonist. For example, he was shown to manipulate his wife’s wish to go home. In a sense the persona of the author was an “unreliable narrator”.

Some felt that several characters were caricatures. On the other hand, “Smasher”, the most evil of the characters, had a grotesque energy that was reminiscent of Dickens at his best.

A lot of our discussion focussed on the rights and wrongs of the behaviour of the different characters in the lead up to the Aborigine massacre, which was the moral crux of the novel. The detail is not recorded here, but the interest showed how this scene had gripped the imagination.

There was some mystery in the book in the behaviour of the Aborigines. Why did the normally nomadic group decide to stay for six months? Was there a seasonal pattern to their movements? Was it related to ceremonies that had to be carried out? However, the book did not convey a strong sense of the passage of time.

While it was fairly obvious that the opening section of the book set in London was the work of a female author, that was not true of the subsequent section set in Australia. She handled convincingly the description of violence, and the psychology of the mob.

We felt that the novel compared well with “The Colour” by Rose Tremaine, another popular recent book set in New Zealand with a similar theme, which had been criticised in New Zealand for its poor research. Other Australian books which members recommended were “Death of a River Guide” and “The Sound of One Hand Clapping” by the Tasmanian Richard Flanigan, and “The Fatal Shore” by Robert Hughes. The forthcoming Australian film festival at the Filmhouse was recommended, and in particular a superb Aboriginal film “Ten Canoes”.

The novel provoked wide-ranging discussion of related issues. Modern Australians tended to glory in – and perhaps sentimentalise – their convict past. This was reflected in the novel’s portrayal of life in London at that time as one of theft or starvation.

Australians also liked to link their “larrikin” culture to the convicts. However, in this case the novel correctly showed that the ex-convicts had sought respectability rather than glorying in their past. The anti-English chippiness of modern Australian culture could more plausibly be traced to large-scale Irish immigration than to the legacy of the convicts.

A feature of the novel was Thornhill’s wife’s obsession with returning home. However, in practice few convicts were allowed to make the long journey. There are a few examples of such returning convicts in literature – Magwitch in “Great Expectations”, and a couple of Sherlock Holmes characters.

The Aborigines had been beyond comprehension for the early settlers. They were hunter-gatherers, unlike the Maoris, who were farmers. It had been easier to deal with the Maoris, who had chiefs, and a treaty had been signed with the Maoris but not with the Aborigines. There had been hundreds of Aboriginal languages, whereas the Maoris had only had one, and had been able to communicate with Polynesians.

Traditionally Australian history had presented Australia as a largely empty land – only now was evidence emerging, as suggested in the novel, of large scale Aborigine resistance and large scale murder. Tragically this was a common pattern in colonial development.

An important development was the landmark “Mabo” court decision in 1992 that the Aborigines should be said to have title to land. One recent visitor had been surprised by how seriously Aboriginal rights were being taken, with for example a lot of land being set aside in the Perth area. On the other hand throughout history one people had displaced another, and there was not normally an attempt at restitution.

The Aborigines wished to preserve their traditional way of life, and were thus often seen as “skivers” judged by the values of white Australia. Like the Japanese they were unable to metabolise alcohol, and often appeared drunk. A good example of such cultural misunderstanding between the two communities followed a few days after the Book Group discussion, with the withdrawal of aboriginal rights by the Australian government based on a different view of the appropriate age of consent and on the behaviour of Aborigines under the influence of alcohol.



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25.4.07. “ALMOST LIKE A WHALE’ STEVE JONES

"Almost Like A Whale" is an updating of the "The Origin of Species" by Charles Darwin published in 1859. Introducing the book, the proposer said that Steve Jones was Professor of Genetics at University College London. According to his website, he had been on the BBC some 200 times. He had first heard of him on “Desert Island Discs”, where he had amused him by sending up the programme, selecting biology- linked songs such as “The Flight of the Bumble Bee”, and choosing as the object to take with him a stuffed effigy of Ken Clarke, for his services to Education.

Browsing through the book when it came out, he had been struck by such facts as that half the population of the world, including 100m Americans, think that the world is made in God’s image. Having purchased it he found it an engrossing read, with many striking facts. The initial section on AIDS had been excellent, and he had galloped through the book. He had read it at a time of terrorist attacks, which had heightened his awareness of the impact of religious systems. However, on re-reading the book now, he had found he had to wade through it. The novelty of the facts had worn off, and revealed the tediousness of the style, the fragmentation and the way he kept repeating himself.

On the other hand, there were plenty of good books that could not stand up to a second reading. In favour of the book was that it contained many striking facts about the natural world, and was for the most part engrossing and stimulating. It was an excellent concept to rewrite Darwin from a modern perspective. The title “Almost like a Whale”, drawn from Darwin’s book, won general approval, and was better than the American version “Darwin’s Ghost”.

The book had a particularly gripping beginning in its sections on the AIDS virus, and on the domestication of animals. Another striking story was that concerning the 5,000 cattle ranch abandoned by the Jesuits that grew into a swarm. The most moving section was that in which he examined how the relics of different species vanish over time, just as the relics of the First World War were already disappearing. This brought into perspective the insignificance of human life “sub specie aeternitatis”.

However, the structure of the book was disappointing. There were lots of holes, and great leaps between subjects. Although it started strongly, it soon became disjointed. The details were indeed striking, but were often not related to the conclusions. The book lacked the rigour of the scientific approach. We noted with amusement one reviewer’s conclusion that, of the books that rewrote great books, this was the best – surely damning it with faint praise given the paucity of books in that category. And a minor detail was irritating – the use of estuary English in the heading of the introduction “An Historical Sketch”.

Some wondered if following Darwin’s original had acted as a straitjacket, which explained some of the structural weaknesses, given the difference of contemporary interests and issues from the nineteenth century. On the other hand, it was clear from the muddled and repetitive introduction that Jones could not write in a logical sequence. Perhaps it was his awareness of this weakness that had attracted him to following a predetermined structure. But, while Jones seemed incapable of developing an argument, the sections of the original quoted showed that Darwin was much more effective.

The author’s smart, glib persona was all-pervasive, and – suitable as it might be for television - was not attractive in this context. The egotism displayed in the introduction - "To rewrite 'The Origin of the Species' is more than most biologists would dare" - hit the wrong note right at the outset. There was a lot of flag-waving in the book, and enjoying showing how clever he was. For example he devoted two pages to the size of the penis, which was an irrelevance to the argument and merely an attempt to entertain. Jones was famous a populariser of science, but he seemed to be an attention-seeker, a showman.

Given the book’s avowed objective of convincing creationists they were wrong, we debated if it would be effective in this role, and concluded it would not. Partly this was because it was very difficult to overturn such deeply held beliefs by argument - intelligent design was a seductive metaphor. But more it was because we did not feel the book was enough of a polemic, of a sustained argument, to be fit for purpose. The book also raised some of the objections to natural selection theory – such as the question of how such a complex organ as an eye could evolve -without satisfactorily disposing of them.

We debated whether Jones would have done better to write a different book on the subject that did not follow Darwin’s structure. He might have written a serious book on creationism from the point of view of science. One starting point might have been the Human Genome Project. But we still felt he would be let down by his weakness in structuring an argument.

The discussion then ranged wider. One issue we debated was that – if you are trying to communicate – was it not essential to be entertaining? These days many historians, scientists and philosophers were turning into showmen – was this necessarily a bad thing? It depended on whether they could communicate in this way without distorting the ideas they were dealing with. Scientists were now meant to be able to communicate – e.g. to talk to schools, or policy-makers – and few were good at it. They were by nature interested in the nature of things, whereas the artists were interested in feelings, people and ideas.

Bill Bryson’s “ A Short History of Everything” was a good example of getting the balance right between entertainment and factual communication. In Jones’ case he did well with his sections on AIDS and the domestication of animals, but
then the book went downhill.

An issue not covered by Jones was the impact of modern medicine on heredity. Would modern medicine and better diet mean we would not die of the same hereditary defects as our ancestors? And what were the implications for the process of natural selection of the intervention of modern drugs?

We picked up on Darwin’s statement that animals were descended from at most only four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or lesser number. One member drew attention to Bryan Sykes’ book “The Seven Daughters of Eve”, which explains the theory of human mitochondrial genetics. Sykes explains how modern humans can be classified into seven mitochondrial groups, descended from seven specific prehistoric women or “clan mothers”. All seven of these shared a common maternal ancestor, the “Mitochondrial Eve”.

The member also drew attention to an entertaining article by Sean Nee in the journal “Nature” and its accompanying evolutionary tree. This modern version of the evolutionary tree shows how plants and Animals are but small twigs on an immense tree, dominated by microscopic forms of life. Nee states:

“We are still at the very beginning of a golden age of biodiversity discovery, driven largely by the advances in molecular biology and a new open-mindedness about where life might be found. But for this golden age to be as widely appreciated as it should, our view of the natural world must change.... For all of the marvels in biodiversity’s new bestiary are invisible.”

Jones’ book might not have found great favour with the Monthly Book Group, but it was certainly stimulating debate, which now ranged into the dangerous areas of politics, religion and sex.

We decided it was important to stick up for Darwin’s theories in the modern world, and with the chilling potential impact on foreign policies of believers in theories of creationism or Armageddon.

We also noted that religious belief and evolution were not necessarily incompatible, and that the last Pope had been said to be sympathetic to the theory of evolution. Indeed Darwin had continued to belief in religion for some years after conceiving his theory, but had lost all faith after the death of his daughter in 1851. He had of course been reluctant to publish because of the accusations of heresy that might follow.

We discussed how Victorian intellectuals wrestled with loss of faith, and that few were willing to renounce their faith publicly in the way George Eliot did. However, only 50% of people had attended Church in 1850 (a figure which had shocked the Victorians) – perhaps church going had predominantly been a middle-class activity. A. N. Wilson’s book “The Victorians” was recommended.

And would Darwin consider himself an intellectual? Probably not – he would see himself as a working scientist. And for the British the term “intellectual” or “intelligentsia” has a pejorative connotation in a way it does not have abroad.

The discussion then ranged on to the impact of sexual selection on steatopygy amongst women in Africa, at which point your scribe put down his pen, and focussed on the excellent home baking which had just arrived.



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28.3.07 “BERLIOZ: VOL 1:THE MAKING OF AN ARTIST” – DAVID CAIRNS

Introducing the book, the proposer said that he had re-read it with some trepidation about its appropriateness, given the length of the book and the fact that his passion was as much for the music as for the book. Would the book appeal to someone not interested in the music? He had first read it at a time when he had been very enthused about Berlioz by some outstanding performances of his music, and had gone on to read the second volume of the biography and the Memoirs.

Berlioz was a very interesting man, both obsessed and self-obsessed. His music was grandiose rather than subtle. Much of the attraction of the book lay in its account of the creative process, and his struggles throughout his life to get his music performed and to finance himself. The book was very well written, and gave an engaging account of the times as much as of the man. The picture of the rigidities of French bureaucracy –by reputation still formidable – was extraordinary. It was ironic that his parents never heard his music played, and that as his career developed he became better appreciated in Germany and Russia than in France, despite being one of France’s greatest composers.

The reaction to the book of those who were not devotees of classical music was in fact very positive.

Much of the book had the quality of an early nineteenth century French novel, although from time to time it broke off from novel mode and went into musicology. It was also a portrait of a creative person. The roominess of the book was enjoyable, as one relived in detail a bygone era. It shed interesting light on Romanticism, and also had considerable historical interest, in its portrayal of revolutions (and the disillusion that followed them) and the post-Napoleonic era. All felt it was, in the main, very well written. For example, it brought alive rural life in La Cote St Andre and in Italy, student life in Paris, his relations with friends, family and lovers, and the incredibly negative and conservative French establishment.

It was a formidable work of scholarship to produce such an exhaustive study, nearly forty years after the only other major biography, and the author had left no stone unturned in examining sources and contemporary writings. He displayed a deep knowledge of literature as well as music. Even to the non-musical expert, it was intriguing to read of how musical form had changed with Romanticism, and how it had been commonplace in France to adapt foreign works to local taste. He was also very perceptive in how he deduced people’s psychology from his source material – for example in working out the reasons for Berlioz’ father’s opposition to his musical career.

The biography was very stimulating and whetted the appetite for the non-expert reader, and a number planned purchases of Berlioz’ work (the proposer had kindly already compiled a CD of highlights for members).

But did the book need to be so long? Although in some places he belaboured points unnecessarily, we concluded that the author had given priority to writing a major academic study rather than a novel, and therefore had been right to go into exhaustive detail. Similarly he would sometimes for analytical purposes reveal what happened later in the drama of Berlioz’ love life, rather than maintain suspense.

Some also had a few quibbles with his style. He assumed the reader already had a comprehensive knowledge of Romantic composers and writers, as well as of several languages, and could have usefully provided more context. Perhaps this was because, as a newspaper music critic by background, he felt he should adopt a high academic tone. On the other hand, the book was much better written than most academic theses. He was also prone, particularly early on, to sentences of excessive length. It was rather irritating that references were relegated to an appendix, although admittedly they would have made the text even longer. And there was the odd infelicity – “anomalousness” instead of “anomaly”, and “desolateness” instead of “desolation”.

Cairns’ use of sources was interesting. He did rely heavily on Berlioz’ Memoirs (although they were not totally reliable) but he also used a mass of other material, including letters, his father’s accounts book, and the Institute’s competition records. The many letters were striking in their elegance and intimacy – for example the letters of his sister Nancy were very open and candid - and it was remarkable that so many had been kept. Cairns’ detective work on his sources such as the accounts book was fascinating.

We noted gloomily that the biographer in the age of the E-mail, telephone, memory stick and internet will have much less in the way of evidence. Electronic data is perishable, with the memory in a hard disc decaying within twenty years. We were not going to leave much of a footprint on the world.

We were not sure we would have liked to meet Berlioz (although despite the mass of evidence in the book, it was difficult to be quite certain what he was really like). He clearly was very moody and self-absorbed, but obviously also had charm when he wished to use it, and was a natural leader. The moods must have been very difficult to live with.

The quotations from Berlioz’ writing, however, showed him to be a remarkably engaging, incisive and witty writer. It was intriguing that he was quite an Anglophile (and indeed Scottophile) in his liking for Scott, Ossian, Shakespeare, and Moore, and in his idealisation of Harriet Smithson. Scott’s popularity on the continent at this time was well-known, but less well-known was the immense impact of Shakespeare on French Romanticism which Cairns brought out.

His love-life was fascinating, with his obsessive idealization of successive women. Indeed his behaviour in trying to catch glimpses of Harriet would nowadays be classed as stalking. In the second volume there was a remarkable moment when Estelle sent him a picture of herself to show that she was no longer the beauty he had idealized in his youth. And his reaction to being jilted by Camille Moke – a planned triple murder and suicide – was extreme and obsessive.

We wondered if Berlioz were depressive or bipolar, but concluded we could not tell, and Cairns deliberately does not pursue psychoanalytical speculation. Perhaps most composers – or at least most great composers – were very highly strung? On the other hand, such traits were particularly common amongst the Romantics. We wondered if they were a product of Romantic ideas of individual expression and the cult of the suffering artist – and therefore perhaps largely a form of self-indulgence.

This led us to debate the nature of Romanticism in music and more generally. We noted that earlier composers had sought to please their audience directly, whereas the Romantics had sought to express themselves and then persuade an audience it was worth listening to their music. There was a similar movement in the change from Neo-classical to Romantic poetry, with formal, balanced verse of decorum giving way to the much more expressive, emotional and individualistic. Although Romanticism was a clearly identifiable zeitgeist across the arts, it was unwise to attempt to define it in the sense of identifying a common set of elements – rather, there was a set of family resemblances.

Nevertheless we relished Cairns’ quote from Scott’s introduction to “Waverley”, saying that, if his title page had said it was “ a Romance from the German”:

“what head so obtuse as not to image forth a profligate abbot, an oppressive duke, a secret and mysterious association of Rosycrucians and Illuminati, with all their properties of black cowls, caverns, daggers, electrical machines, trapdoors, and dark lanterns?”

The book brought out well how Berlioz’ early experiences had affected his music; this contrasted with Dylan’s “Chronicles Vol. 1”, which we read in 2006, where the formative influences seemed to be other music rather than experiences. Berlioz had done well from an unpromising start, with little musical background or encouragement. It was surprising that the level of musical achievement in France seemed so low, with Beethoven not being known for a long time and Romanticism in music coming much later to France than to Germany or Russia. The technical level of instrument playing in France emerged as fairly poor (though even worse in Italy). It was also surprising that the French musical establishment was so reactionary and obstructive to new work, given that the Revolution might have been expected to make them more progressive. Why had composers in Germany or Russia - or indeed painters in France - not faced similar barriers?

We speculated that the culture of the French establishment was unusually controlling, noting similar traits to this day in its resistance to foreign takeovers of businesses and foreign words being imported to the language. It must have been much easier for the innovatory painter or writer of the day to make their work known than the innovatory composer, who needed to finance an orchestra and an auditorium, or indeed a whole opera, which was considered the pinnacle of music in Berlioz’ youth.

Berlioz’ music even now had a cutting edge quality to it – he was never one for compromises. Even so, it was difficult to grasp how many in his contemporary audience could not understand his music. One had to make an effort of imagination to realise how they were not used to music of this kind. It had been the orchestra players who had been the first enthusiasts for Berlioz’ work, perhaps because they would have gained most familiarity through rehearsals.

It also required an effort of imagination to realise how little orchestral music people of the day would have heard, in the complete absence of radio, television, records, tapes, CDs and iPods. Perhaps nowadays we suffered from the opposite problem, with over-familiarity with music, and a surfeit of opportunities to hear it, breeding contempt.

28.2.07 'IN COLD BLOOD' CAPOTE and 'NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN' McCARTHY

The proposer put forward two American books: “In Cold Blood” by Truman Capote (1966) and “No Country for Old Men” (2005) by Cormac McCarthy. Introducing the books he said that, when recently reading the McCarthy book for the first time, he was forcibly struck by its resemblance to “In Cold Blood”, specifically in the theme of cold-blooded killing. This had made him re-read “In Cold Blood” for the first time since the Eighties.

Cormac McCarthy was an award-winning novelist born in 1933 - intriguingly only nine years after Capote. McCarthy was famous for “Blood Meridian” and for his “Border Trilogy ”, which included “All the Pretty Horses”. That trilogy had focussed lovingly on horses, but in recent times he had focussed mainly on “post-modern” westerns, and in this story the lovingly described pick-up truck had replaced the horse. This book had received mixed reviews, and would probably be judged as a minor work compared to the former, or indeed “The Road”, also published in 2005.

However, “No Country for Old Men” had gripped the proposer from the outset, and he had found it impossible to put it down. The plot fizzed right from the start, and there was a constant curiosity - and dread - about the evolution of events. The main characters – Llewlyn Moss, Sheriff Bell, Carson Wells and Anton Chigurh, were entwined in a death ritual.

An important theme was that of pre-destiny and fate, and particularly significant were the two scenes where Chigurh asked his victim to toss a coin to determine life or death. Another example was at the defining moment where Moss found the drug money, and sees his life sitting in front of him:

“His whole life was sitting there in front of him. Day after day from dawn till dark until he was dead. All of it cooked down into forty pounds of paper in a satchel”

Alliteration helped give the passage its impact.

McCarthy had been noted earlier in his career for an ornate writing style (“wisteria-like prose” or “battered ormolu” as described by two critics) yet this book was written in an exceptionally sparse, staccato, minimalist style. The plot is dialogue-driven. This striking new style had attracted very mixed responses, but such a transformation in style was remarkable for a novelist in his seventies.

The novel was a moral lament for the loss of the old West and the current moral degradation of America. This emerged in the monologues of the Sheriff, who had spent his whole life trying to make up for sacrificing his buddies in the war.

Chigurh was an astonishing character – an extreme psychopath whose cold-blooded killing links to the Capote book. There was an element of the angel of death about him. Intriguingly he said to Carla Jean that “Most people don’t recognise I exist” which raised the question of whether he was a real character.

Truman Capote (1924-1984) was an American writer whose non-fiction, stories, novels and plays were recognised literary classics. He remains a major literary figure, best known for “In Cold Blood” (1965) and for the novella “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1958). At least 20 films and TV dramas have been produced from his works.

The book was such a classic that it required less by way of introduction. Re-reading it he had wondered if the Clutter family had been overly idealized. There were similarities between the two books in the innocent towns affected by the killings, and in the characters of the policemen, Dewey and Bell, neither of who had seen anything as degraded and vicious before. However, Dewey was a more successful Sheriff than Bell, and did not give up. The moral degradation theme of “No Country for Old Men” is picked up by Dewey:

“I’ve seen some bad things, I sure as hell have. But nothing as vicious as this.”

The questions of motive were also different: in “In Cold Blood” motive was a very big issue. It was a “whydunnit” rather than a “whodunnit”. Capote tries to build up an understanding of the killers, their backgrounds and their meeting, and to establish a motive, or cause, for their actions – were the killings the product of nature or nurture? While there is an ostensible motive – the supposed safe – the killings according to the confessions seem to result from a loss of control when trying to extract the location of the safe from Clutter, and then the next three killings are to prevent them being identified. Capote is very slow and painstaking in describing the factual events from several perspectives – this creates an illusion of scientific truth, of verisimilitude, which may or may not be true. Capote’s leisurely style, as he tries to draw you inside the minds of the murderers, is in sharp contrast to McCarthy.

By contrast McCarthy seems to say you do not need a motive other than logic and fate. There is a drugs plot in his book, but it seems almost incidental.

The bulk of the discussion focussed on “No Country for Old Men”, with three issues dominating: McCarthy’s style, the plot structure, and the significance of the character Chigurh.

McCarthy’s pared-down style provoked very different responses. For some, the short sentences and the lack of quotation marks or conventional introductions to sections of speech heightened the tautness and suspense of the narrative. He effectively conveyed the sense of emptiness of the Mexican border landscape, although his prose lacked fluidity. Even if it were sometimes confusing to work out who was speaking or who the “he” was who was acting, the reader was kept on his toes in trying to figure out what was going on.

Others, by contrast, found his style irritating – a pretentious gesture in the direction of modernism. The lack of quotation marks and the lack of direction as to who “he” was simply confusing, affected and a failure in the writer’s basic task of communication. For example, it took quite a while to work out who was giving the monologues. The novel lost rather than gained from such a lack of narrative clarity.

We had some discussion about influences on McCarthy, suggesting Hemingway for the succinct type of description that influenced so many, and Elmore Leonard for some of the pared-down style. James Hadley Chase frequently used the plot motif of the small-time player finding a cache of criminal money. We noted that the title came from Yeats’ “Sailing to Byzantium” (“That is no country for old men. The young/ in one another’s arms, birds in the trees/ - Those dying generations – at their song, ….”). To quote from the later Yeats is suggestive, given that Yeats’ style had undergone a transformation from the adjectival, aesthetic style of his fin de siecle period to the much tauter and sparser style of his later books such as “The Tower” (1928), from which this poem is taken. We also noted that the book sometimes read like a film script, and that the number of killings rivalled a Tarantino film such as “Pulp Fiction” (although lacking the Tarantino sense of humour).

The plot structure was unusual: instead of good triumphing over evil as in the traditional Western or crime thriller, the sheriff reverted to his war-time pattern by deciding to cut and run, leaving the field to the evil Chigurh. You were denied the comfortable moral conclusion that you expected in a novel concerned with crime. While many killings took centre stage, the protagonist Moss was strangely killed off stage, while even Chigurh disappeared for the last section of the novel.

Even in a tragedy there is normally something asserted about human life which is uplifting, but here one was left with a sense of emptiness, with the only possible positives being the good nature of the sheriff and his relationship with his wife Loretta. It was a profoundly pessimistic, indeed nihilist book. Some felt that there was always danger in a writer thus departing from the traditional narrative forms and sense of an ending, such was their archetypal force. On the other hand, the downbeat ending and the unconventional structure signalled clearly that the novel was not intended to be a conventional thriller.

So what was it about? The evil of Chigurh and the modern world of drug-running, guns and senseless murder was counterpointed against the traditional values of the West, as espoused by the sheriff (the old man of the title) and expounded by him in the folksy monologues that were interspersed with the narrative.

The moral focus of the book was to be found in the sheriff’s monologues. To a left wing woman who says she wants the future America to allow her daughter to have an abortion, he observes:

“The way the country is headed…I don’t have much doubt that…not only will she be able to have an abortion, she’ll be able to have you put to sleep.”

Moreover, “someone the other morning asked me if I believed in Satan…I guess as a boy I did. Come the middle years my belief I reckon had waned somewhat. Now I’m startin to lean back the other way…” .

However, for one who disliked the book because he did not know who was doing what to whom, the Sheriff’s monologues were a contrived and clumsy superstructure, which could have been removed without loss. Others also felt that there was a dissonance between the moral message as expounded by the Sheriff and the undisguised relish, and excessive detail, with which the author describes killings and guns. All the dramatic energy goes into the description of evil.

We had different ideas about the significance of Chigurh, although we all agreed that he was central to the book. Knowing that McCarthy likes to play with the names he gives characters, we sought the significance of the unusual name “Chigurh” (e.g.was it an anagram of the type “Britney Spears” = “Presbyterian”?) but could not find it. We learn little about him as a character, except that, surprisingly, he is interested in art. Most of us felt, however, that he was more the personification of a force of nature than a character as such. Was he an immoral, or perhaps an amoral, force? Did he characterise the forces of fate? Did he represent the lack of reason and justice in the world – the force of suffering? Or did he represent the force of the US Government (at one point the book suggests that the drug-smuggling is so profitable that the Mexican Government is likely to move in)? Was he a Satan figure as hinted at by the Sheriff?

For many of us, he was the personification of the type of radical evil that takes a sadistic pleasure in killing, as shown in the coin-tossing scene, where he relishes trying to persuade Carla Jean that her death is inevitable. This was the type of wanton “in cold blood” killing that Capote explored, that had manifested itself in the Nazi concentration camps, and that evolutionary scientists found difficult to explain in terms of contributing anything constructive to evolution. In literary terms it was also the type of killing found in “A Clockwork Orange”.

It was common in Britain to view us as dominated by the past whereas the US was dominated by the future. However, in fact it was common to find twentieth century American literature idealising the recent past, such as the West of the sheriff’s youth, or, in other books, baseball. Indeed most old people idealize their youth. On the other hand, it was the novelist’s legitimate role to mythologize, to imbue recent developments with emotions, as Dickens had done with urban development in Britain. But despite the elegiac title, the problem here was that much of the mythologizing, the loving emotion, was focussed on killing and on guns.

Although we therefore had a number of different perspectives on “No Country for Old Men”, it proved a very stimulating and provocative choice. We felt it could best be assessed in context of the work of a writer nearing the end of his career, and as such it was an interesting coda to the discussion of Marquez’ late book “Memories of My Melancholy Whores”, which we discussed in October 2006. We looked forward to seeing the forthcoming Coen Brothers film of the McCarthy book.

By contrast “In Cold Blood” met with more uniform approval, but less debate. Here was a fully realised work of art, which was Capote’s masterpiece. It was superb, and fully merited its classic status. It was of a different and higher order of achievement than “No Country for Old Men”. The book was a delight.

His prose style was a “Rolls Royce” of writing ability, which had manifested itself in his earliest published work at the age of 19. It was very easy to read, effortlessly fluent and evocative, yet very precise. The beginning of the book lyrically captured the Kansas plains and their seasonal rhythm, and the cadences of the prose marked it out immediately as being of a very high order (although for some the passage was rather self-consciously crafted, and perhaps not quite appropriate for the subject matter to follow).

There was a burning intensity of effort, a great imaginative pressure, to establish the full and precise truth of what had happened, and the personal history and psychology of the murderers, which might explain why. He showed the skill of journalism at its best, and the empathetic novel at its best, in even-handedly viewing the events from the perspective of the murdered family and the murderers, and indeed from the wider perspective of the whole local community. Was to understand all to forgive all?

The book was structured with well-concealed skill, so that suspense and interest were maintained as the personal histories of the protagonists were woven seamlessly into the narrative. The only structural weakness came at the end, where the book lost its flow by diverting from its main theme and characters into giving the personal histories of the Death Row convicts, and for the first time revealed something of a personal agenda in opposing “in cold blood” judicial executions.

The book was a remarkable change of tack for Capote well into his career, and we debated whether there were any real precedents for the book. The American detective novel had just reached its high point in the work of Raymond Chandler, but his works were not psychological studies of this kind. The “Notable Scottish Trials” series (with later English and British versions) had publicised and analysed famous murders in the early part of the century, but did not create the novel-like quality of Capote’s work. Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms” did turn events that were largely factual into a novel, but we concluded that, to the best of our knowledge, Capote’s work was a major innovation. There had of course been plenty of imitations afterwards, up to and including recent “faction” such as the film “The Queen”, and it had also become more common to write biographies of ordinary people.

Given that Capote lived for another 19 years, it was surprising that he did not try another book in the same genre. The reason must be the intensity of the emotional and imaginative effort in researching and writing the book. He said to his biographer that:

“No-one will ever know what “In Cold Blood” took out of me. It scraped me right down to the marrow of my bones. It nearly killed me…” .

Indeed it has been argued it led to his alcoholism and death.

We took the view that “In Cold Blood” needed to be taken on its own terms and assessed on its own merits as a book, without straying too far into the question of the process of the writing of the book, an issue that has preoccupied other writers and two recent films. We did, however, note that Capote became very friendly with Perry Smith, and, rightly or wrongly, presented him as the almost innocent victim of events, with Hickock as the real villain. Capote might have identified with Smith because of a shared personal history involving suicide and alcoholism. Intriguingly the gay Capote was coy on the subject of Smith’s sexuality, other than to bring out a psychiatrist’s suggestion that sexual inhibition was a common trait of “motiveless” murderers.

On re-reading the book the proposer had found it implausible that the murders had been triggered in the meaningless way described. Perhaps if Hicock and Smith had found a safe filled with money the murders would never have happened: a more plausible supposition for him was that Smith had been enraged into murder by Hickock’s sexual advances to Nancy Clutter, given a prior homosexual relationship with Hickock in prison.

We also thought that Kenneth Tynan’s accusation – that Capote needed an execution to round off the book, and had not done all he might have to prevent the execution – seemed far-fetched. Nevertheless, Capote was certainly guilty on some occasions of exploiting friendships for literary purposes – he had made many friends in high society, as shown by the remarkable guest list at the launch party of this book, but he had used these friends to write an exposure of the high society he had fed off. As a result he had been blacked and died friendless.

Both books were products of a culture dominated by guns and cars. They were exploring what kinds of events were possible in a country of great distances - where people could appear out of nowhere in the middle of the night, commit random murder, then disappear again - and in a society where everyone owned a gun.



See also the Monthly Book Group's new web-site at: http://www.monthlybookgroup.com/

31/1/2007 "A Short History of Nearly Everything" Bill Bryson

The proposer introduced Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything". He said that it was an excellent book for non-scientists to get a general grasp of recent developments across a broad range of sciences. It was a great mixture of hard science and amusing anecdotes about scientific pioneers.

There was general agreement about the amazing nature of the book and a recognition that it required a non-scientist to have written it to make it comprehensible to the general reader. It was an important contribution to the cause of rational scientific analysis at a time when it was under attack from religious fundamentalism on the one hand and relativism on the other. The book brought out well the fragility of mankind's continued existence from the risk of catastrophes including volcanoes, earthquakes, asteroids, and general climate change.

One member indicated he had some negative reaction to the anecdotes - but found himself in a minority - and thought some diagrams would have been helpful. Nonetheless he acknowledged that he had been generally impressed by the book, in particular by the sections on areas of science he knew least well.

There was less discussion of the book than usual, partly because of the absence of some members at a sporting event, and partly because there was general agreement on the excellence of the book, both in terms of writing and content.

Not perhaps surprisingly discussion moved on to some of the issues raised by the book, in particular climate change. There was praise for Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth", which was playing a similar role to Bryson's book in educating the public about current scientific thinking and the need for action on climate change.



See also the Monthly Book Group's new web-site at: http://www.monthlybookgroup.com/

30/11/ 2006 : “Barbarossa” by Alan Clark

The proposer introduced the book by saying it was one of the first two books on military history he had read, intriguing him so much that he had gone on a seven year long military history jag, culminating in organising military history tours. The book was the classic account of the Germany/Russia conflict in the Second Word War - a massive, underpublicized subject.

For him, the book had three dimensions, all excellent. There was firstly the military history itself; secondly the background history to the conflict such as the analysis of the psychology of Hitler and his Generals; and thirdly the work of an artist: the narrative, drama, suspense, tragedy and epic of the story. On the last dimension it was interesting that Clark in his introduction referred to its heroes belonging to the classical tradition rather than the modern Western tradition of “good” and “bad”. The imaginative power of the book - the epic feel of the greatest war in history, the tantalising closeness to Moscow, the mythic echoes of Napoleon’s campaign - was such that it transcended the military history genre. It was also amusing that Clark the self-opinionated, outspoken libertine peeked out from time to time from under the mask of the serious historian.

However, the book needed better editing. The occasional sentence was incomprehensible; particularly early on, he went into too much tactical detail on the battles; the maps and the text did not coincide; and in the 2001 paperback edition there was even an appendix with source numbers that were not reproduced in the text.

Clark lived from 1928-1999, and was the son of Kenneth Clark the art historian, by whom he felt overshadowed. As a boy Hitler had fascinated him. Clark was very rich, allowing him to be outspoken. He read history and had trained for the bar, but instead became a military historian. He then went into politics. He had come to prominence with his controversial 1961 book “The Donkeys”, castigating the British First World War Generals, which had inspired “Oh What a Lovely War”. The book had been revisionist in its day, but its opinions were now in turn being revised. Following a book on the Fall of Crete, Clark had published “Barbarossa” in 1965. Reading more recent books around the subject of “Barbarossa” had, however, added more detail rather than new perspectives, except for the strange story of Stalin’s collapse at the outset of the invasion.

Another member of the Group had now read the book twice, and found it fascinating again. It was a terrific book. Not just was it beautifully written, but, given that the Nazis were essentially defeated on the Eastern Front, it was an important counterweight to the normal British-dominated perspective of the Second World as taught at school. For example, he had recently looked at a book on the Second World War by Alan Brooke, which said almost nothing about Russia. The book helped to explain how the Russians viewed the world after the Second World War, and felt they needed to occupy countries that had fought against them. It explained the importance of the Russian-Japanese war, which was generally unheard of in Britain. It also gave a wider insight into the twentieth century as essentially the struggle between Germany and Russia. The book was beautifully written, had great photos, and a compelling selection of quotations.

The other members of the Group came new to the book, and generally new to the military history genre. In summary they found a lot more positive than negative in the book.

One felt that people should be encouraged to read it, because it opened one’s eyes to the appalling Nazi atrocities, and the precise, systematic way they were carried out. Clark conveyed this very effectively, not labouring it to excess, but with just two or three chilling lines from time to time. The horrors of the war recounted in the book certainly reinforced the case for setting up the EU!

However, he felt Clark showed some naivety in expressing surprise at Hitler’s inability to control his Generals, and their bureaucratic jostling for position. Someone with wider experience of working in big organisations would have known how commonplace this was, and this suggested a youthful lack of experience in the author, which tended to undermine some of his judgments. (An alternative view expressed was that the sort of confusion evinced between the roles of OKW and OKH, while it might be common in most big organisations, was rare in German ones, particularly the military where clarity of function and demarcation of roles was central to their way of operating).

Another member was attracted by the way the book brought out the office politics dimension of the campaign. The top Generals were busy vying for influence, and totally distanced from the atrocities at the front. The horror of it was that sense of distance. In a similar way people working in defence industries saw war as a matter of logistics, quite divorced from the reality. Unlike most members of the group, he liked the considerable tactical detail in the book, as he liked the war game feel of it, although he was therefore all the more frustrated by the poor maps. But - compared to a war novel, which would remain his preference - the chess-like description of battle did not bring out the fog and confusion of war. (However, others felt that the quotations - e.g. in describing the snipers, and the use of grenades, in Stalingrad - did a lot to convey the grimness of the actual experience). The book was also good in correcting misconceptions. It made the personality and role of Hitler much clearer. It dealt with the misconception that the Germans had had the best tanks and armour, and the Russians had simply won through weight of numbers. The lack of logistic skill on the German side was surprising, with for example the wide variety of tanks and guns, partly because of Hitler’s interference.

For another member, it was a very good book, but he would not have said so after the first hundred or so pages because he disliked the excessive detail. However, as the book went on it gathered momentum. The writer got caught up in the story he was telling and he himself seemed to lose interest in the detail. It demonstrated the sacrifice of the Russian people, and was a reminder of how horrendous the Nazis had been in the Second World War, and how chillingly bureaucratic they had been in anything they did. It made the war in the West seem like a sideshow. A minor irritation was that he found too much "Alan Clark" in the book, in the sense of the self-opinionated public figure he later became.

Another member had approached the book expecting to find it dull, but instead had found it gripping, enthralling and stimulating. He had been unable to put it down. It had awakened a new interest - opened a door. His interest had been such that he had broken with conventional wisdom and asked a German colleague about his knowledge of the Eastern Front. He had been intrigued to hear about his colleague’s father’s experiences of fighting there, and had been surprised to learn that Clark’s book was well known in Germany.

The subsequent discussion of the book and the issues it provoked ranged very widely. It was suggested that Clark could have brought out the relative scale of the Russian front by some comparative information about the weight of the different armies in different theatres – all he did was list the generals and armies involved. It would have been telling, for example, to note that there were seven German Field Marshals on the Eastern front, but only one in North Africa. Similarly, some felt that he assumed a lot of background knowledge of the Second World War on the part of the reader. Against that, it could be argued that he had an enormously complex subject to master, and that he would have lost focus and grasp if he had digressed into events in other theatres. For such a big subject it was a relatively small book. And towards the end of the book he did make clear the trade-offs that had to be made between Western and Eastern fronts. Other surprising omissions were much on the siege of Leningrad, and on the Nazi use of airpower in the campaign.

An intriguing judgement by Clark (p18, 2001 ppbk) was that the German General staff had been responsible during the First World War for “the single most catastrophic action of the century” in despatching Lenin and his colleagues to Russia in the famous “sealed train”. Is this Clark making a political judgment on the action, because in military terms the action successfully ensured Russia’s exit from the War? Or, in context, is he simply saying what Hitler thought?

Another subject of debate was why the German people supported Hitler in his wars. Was it a flaw in the German character? Or would other countries have responded in the same way to a leader like Hitler? After all, there were plenty of other examples of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and treating other races as inferior, including the Hutus and the Tutus, the slave trade, and the Balkans, not to mention dubious behaviour in the British Empire.

In the case of the Nazis, the role of Goebbels and media propaganda was suggested to be crucial. For example, before the invasions of Czechoslovakia and Poland, Goebbels had spread false stories of German nationals being maltreated in these countries, to the extent that reasonable people might well feel invasion was justified. More generally there were many examples – including topical ones – of an idée fixe taking over in the media of particular countries which could lead to war, especially in societies with a military culture, a political leadership drawn from the military, or a dominant military industrial/ political nexus. The Nazis’ pseudo-scientific racial theories (in particular the concept of “untermenschen” explained by Clark) had also given moral license to the unbelievable brutality and extermination in the East, which was noticeably worse than that in the West.

Opinions differed on Clark’s self-confident habit of occasionally making sweeping generalisations. The most controversial were about the peoples of Europe, notoriously that the French were too fond of wine and adultery to put up much of a defence in 1940, or that the innate sadism in the German character was shown in their behaviour in Russia. For some, such ex-cathedra statements were arrogant and self-indulgent, and distracted from the book as a serious work. Others felt that they enlivened the book, and that Clark (once said to be opposed to political correctness before the term was invented) was courageous in offering broad judgements in a way that no modern writer would dare. For example, did the description of the Polish nation - “that strange, gifted and romantic people, doomed forever to be crushed between the callous monoliths of Germany and Russia” – not hit the mark precisely?

This led to a debate about how serious a military historian Clark was, and some wondered if the book were derivative. However, the consensus was that he had made much good use of primary sources, and that the book was a substantial, if in some respects unconventional, contribution to military history, remaining as it did the classic account of the campaign over forty years later. In addition it was unusually illuminating about the personalities involved. By contrast, one member felt Anthony Beavor’s later books about Stalingrad and Berlin were less well-written, lacked organisation and strategic focus, and used new research mainly to indulge a relish in the gruesome.

One member had been sufficiently intrigued by the question of why Hitler had undertaken this fatal invasion of Russia (which on the face of it was quite illogical, given the historic aversion of Germany to fighting on two fronts, and the foreboding precedent of Napoleon) to do further research into the issue. Reading of a more recent text, Kershaw’s massive study of Hitler, produced the same answers that Clark had sketched in: Hitler’s dominant motivation, bizarrely, was the idea that invasion of Russia would force Britain to the negotiating table. Less important were his longstanding opposition to Communism and prediction of a showdown between Germany and Russia as set out in Mein Kampf, his conviction that he alone was a great enough leader to win such a showdown, his fear that his mortality meant time was running out, the need to keep German public opinion buoyant with a string of victories, and his autarkic economic theory about the need to subsume more resources. The German military, which at one time would have violently opposed such a plan, had been ground into submission by seeing its opposition to earlier invasions being falsified by events.

On the other hand, it was suggested, there was some substance for the German view that the British could be brought round to be on their side, with a substantial segment of the British upper class being keen on Hitler. Hitler’s view that a blitzkrieg would have the campaign finished before winter did not seem so unreasonable given the astonishing successes of his earlier campaigns - above all with France falling in six weeks, in defiance of conventional military wisdom. However, like Napoleon Hitler had found his supply lines too long. Another factor might be that Hitler recognised his similarity to Stalin, and therefore feared the possibility of Stalin striking first. It should also be remembered that Germany in 1938 had territory much further east, with places such as Koningsberg, which are now part of Russia. Perhaps the nearest analogy for the Germany/Russia war was that between Rome and Carthage: similarly epic, with a desire to obliterate the other side, and similarly pointless as they did not need the territory they coveted.



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25/10/06 “Memories of My Melancholy Whores” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The proposer of the book had first read Marquez when in South America. He had been amazed by "A Hundred years of Solitude", the most celebrated work of Marquez. Born and raised in Colombia, Marquez had worked as a foreign correspondent, allowing him to travel extensively in Europe. He was also a political activist, and a friend of Castro's, and had become very disenchanted with Colombia and South America. He now lived mainly in Mexico and the USA. His acceptance speech for his Nobel prize in 1982 had scorned South America for its dysfunctionality, in particular the tendency of its countries to get involved in wars.

Marquez was now 78, and had suffered from lymphatic cancer in recent years. This new book, published in 2004, might therefore be his last work of fiction, although a three volume autobiography was in preparation. The book picked up some characteristic Marquez themes, notably small South American towns, an obsession with death, and love gone wrong (but unusually did not include a military officer).

The Group responded very positively to the book. It had a beguiling simplicity, lyricism and beauty in its language, and the story was well told. The book was poised and poetic, and the central character - the old man of ninety - was very sympathetically drawn. The story was engaging and life-affirming - it did not end with the old man's death as might have been expected.

Despite its brevity and simplicity, the novella was rich in the complexity of its meanings. Much more emerged on a second reading. There were teasing statements such as that “morality was only a question of time” and that “in the end it is impossible not to become what others think you are”. What was the meaning of the lipstick-scrawled message on Delgadina’s mirror that “the tiger does not eat far away”? The madam suggested that someone dying might have written it. Was the tiger the grim reaper? And there was the intriguing introduction of the angora cat. Was that there only to illustrate the narrator’s difficulties in forming relationships, and to counterpoint the aging issue - or did it have some wider symbolic meaning?

There was the all-too-human humour - as when the narrator in a fit of sexual jealousy denounces Delgadina as a whore, whereas he would never have met her if she had not been. The richness of the descriptions - both of place and of age - stood out, for example the heightened lucidity of detail as the narrator expectantly and nervously made his way to his first appointment with Delgadina. (We debated in this context whether, as one ages and the senses deteriorate, patterns and colours make a correspondingly greater impact. And was life easier at ninety than at, say, seventy, because you worried less and were less easily shocked?)

Was this an erotic book? Only to a limited extent. The title seemed rather misleading, given the actual tenor of the book, and might be even more so in Spanish with the harsher words "putas tristes" for “melancholy whores”. Were we shocked by the book? No, although there might have been a public fuss if a similar story had been produced by a venerable Nobel Prize winning British author at the age of 78. We also understood that South American attitudes to prostitution were more tolerant than in Europe.

And was it "magic realism"? Marquez certainly used this approach in "A Hundred Years of Solitude", picking up his grandmother's habit of telling tall tales with a straight face. We noted that the practitioners of “magic realism” were quite disparate in their approach, and that Marquez did not go in for the distortion of the natural order that could be found in the work of Borges or Julio Cortazar. But after some debate we concluded that "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" was not really written in the “magic realism” mode.

The book contained echoes of many other works. It reminded one reader of "No-one writes to the Colonel" by Marquez himself, which had a similar simplicity and beauty (in both English and Spanish versions). For him, Marquez was at his best in his novellas and short stories, not in his more ambitious longer works. The opening quotation is taken from “House of the Sleeping Beauties”, by the Japanese author Kawabata, a story about an old man who has paid to spend a night, chaste but lecherous, in bed with a young woman drugged into insensibility. Others were reminded of "Any Human Heart" by William Boyd, with its hero Logan Mountstuart living in every decade of the twentieth century, and having a considerable interest in whores. Both books seemed partly inspired by the millennium, although the Marquez book had a timeless feel to its setting. Others thought of "Earthly Powers" by Anthony Burgess, with its notorious opening sentence. A quite different analogy - picking up a moral fable involving an old man redeemed by a child - was George Eliot‘s "Silas Marner", and another - picking up the idea of an adult fairy tale and the Kawabata title- might be “Sleeping Beauty”.

But what was the book really about? At the obvious level, it was a story about a man discovering love, as opposed to sex, for the first time in his old age. He had previously lived two separate lives in parallel - one of culture and journalism, and the other in brothels, where he had been “client of the year”. He had “never gone to bed with a woman he did not pay, and the few that were not in the profession I persuaded by argument or force to take money…” yet now he was “mad for love”. But it was not as simple as that. His relationships prior to Delgadina were not completely limited to sexual relationships. He had maintained good relationships with two former mistresses, and with Rosa Cabarcas, although he had not found a partner as such. And the love he had now found was hardly that of a rounded loving relationship: he was only able to relate to Delgadina when she was asleep, or possibly drugged. (We thought drugging might be apposite, given the Kawabata reference). He flees from the idea that he might live with Delgadina. This is a fairly dysfunctional, obsessive type of love.

Someone had described the book as “an elegy on aging”, but we felt the book was hardly elegiac in tone - that was too negative. The narrator is re-animated by his relationship with Delgadina - he gains new celebrity as a writer, and he starts to face up to the future with optimism. His ninetieth birthday column was “not the usual lament, but glorification of old age..”. One attractive theme of the book was that, even at a great age, it was possible to discover new things about oneself : “Thanks to her, I confronted my inner self for the first time as my ninetieth year went by”. Age was shown to be irrelevant to life. We were drawn into a lengthy discussion on the character of the unnamed ninety year old narrator, although we had to remind ourselves that Marquez was not necessarily aiming for great psychological realism in his characters, as they are essentially literary constructs allowing him to explore his themes.

More broadly, we noted that a number of great artists, if a minority, have been fortunate enough to produce a work at the end of their career which fittingly rounds off their life’s work. For example, Shakespeare’s “Final Plays” fall into that category, with their magical and uplifting exploration of issues of love and time. Thomas Hardy’s “The Well-Beloved”, at the end of his career as a novelist, gives his characteristically quirky take on the themes of love and time. We felt that in “Memories of my Melancholy Whores” - probably his last work of fiction - Marquez had produced his own meditation on time, aging and love. It was a deceptively slight but richly complex novella, which was a very worthy finale to the career of a great South American novelist.



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27/9/06 Dorian Gray (Wilde); Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Stevenson)


The proposer of "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde had first encountered the book in France, when he had been so mesmerised that he had sought to translate it into French (and emulate it in lifestyle). Re-reading it many years later he found it more tedious. Whereas the language and wit had once entranced him, it now seemed heavier. Wilde could not resist being clever, and, although the epigrams still brought a smile, they conveyed little of substance, and distracted from the rest of the book. The lack of convincing characterisation was also a weakness

Nevertheless, it was an interesting comedy of manners, with some Gothic elements, which reflected Wilde's aesthetic philosophy of art and life. It was his only novel, his first serious work, and was first published in 1890. In the light of public controversy about its immorality, it was re-published in 1891 with an introduction, six new chapters and many other amendments. Amongst other things these changes eliminated nearly all the homosexual connotations, and introduced the James Vane character. Within five years Wilde would be in prison, and within ten years dead. Some critics had argued that the novel reflected Wilde's affair with Lord Alfred Douglas, but that must be wrong, as that affair did not start until 1891.

Others who were re-reading the novel also found it had paled compared to reading it in their youth. Perhaps it was a young man’s book. It no longer seemed sophisticated. It was florid, and not as tight as Jekyll and Hyde – for example, in its endless descriptions of the jewels Gray had bought. But it was enlivened by the melodrama, for example getting rid of the body of Campbell and the opium-den scene.

By contrast, those reading “Dorian Gray” for the first time found plenty of interest and intrigue to commend it. It was deeply original, and had an enjoyable freshness. It was essentially a fable, a myth. Its central Faustian story - of the picture which took on Gray's sins and age - had great vividness and archetypal resonance. It had a film-like power, with real tension surrounding Dorian’s fear of his painting being discovered. It also had an excellent ending, with the crescendo of the knife being plunged into the painting. The enduring popularity of the book was shown by the fact that it had proved impossible to obtain the book in a second-hand hardback copy, and, indeed, one member of the group had resorted to reading the book on-line.

However, the novel's three elements - wit, decadence, and gothic melodrama - were not fully unified. Wilde was less interested in the secondary characters as people than in them as vehicles for his views (in the absence of an authorial voice). The book was also misogynist.

Which of the characters was based on Wilde himself? An obvious candidate was Lord Henry, with his cynical wit and his love for Gray. However, one of us had gone on to read Wilde's "De Profundis", and had noted the similarity between Wilde's recriminations to Bosie (Lord Douglas) and those of Basil (the artist) towards Gray in the latter part of the novel. Basil therefore reflected Wilde’s personality too (though we were unconvinced by a critic who saw the novel as a meditation on the relationship between the artist and life, and gave the epigrams of the introduction more philosophical weight than they could bear). Dorian's hedonism also reflected part of Wilde's outlook, and we concluded that different aspects of Wilde's personality were reflected in all three characters.

We debated whether it was a “moral” novel. The ostensible moral - that happiness could not be gained without virtue - reminded the proposer of Diderot. Some of us felt that Wilde had put this moral into the story for the benefit of his Victorian audience, and was more attracted by pure hedonism than the plot by itself suggested. The novel’s world was one of decadence where beauty excused all. Gray was able to live in great wealth without any purposeful activity. In this context it would have been interesting to read the novel in its original “less moral” version, and it was surprising that no publisher seemed to have republished the original text. Some felt that "Dorian Gray" suffered from the Victorian constraints on actually describing any of the debauchery that was central to the plot. On the other hand, the lack of any such restraint was arguably a flaw in "The Line of Beauty" by Alan Hollinghurst, a contemporary treatment of the theme of gay hedonistic pursuit of beauty.

We read "The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" by Robert Louis Stevenson alongside Dorian Gray for purposes of comparison (and indeed they had been the subject of comparison after first publication).

Jekyll and Hyde was published five years earlier in 1885, prior to the publication of “Kidnapped” and Stevenson’s other best-known works. The proposer of Jekyll and Hyde pointed out that the first version of the story (which Stevenson said had come to him in a dream) had been thrown into the fire after his wife had been invited to give her criticism. She had encouraged him to bring out the "dualism" theme more clearly, which he does in a very explicit, rather didactic passage. It was interesting that Jekyll and Hyde were not completely different characters, as Jekyll admits he was already conscious of feelings and desires for the vices that Hyde indulged in.

He re-wrote the story in just three days, which may help to explain its pace and the unrelentingly oppressive, gothic atmosphere of the London setting – there was no beauty in this story. The atmosphere was such that it was unsurprising that the book was written just three years before the first of the Jack the Ripper murders. The description of London was partly based on Edinburgh, and Stevenson, despite his respectable background, had consorted with the working classes and prostitutes in his early Edinburgh days. Conan Doyle had also used his experience of Edinburgh in writing the Sherlock Holmes stories set in London. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had been the great era of the short story, and it was intriguing that Stevenson, in particular with Jekyll and Hyde, and Doyle, were amongst the few still widely read today.

Jekyll and Hyde and Dorian Gray had much in common. They shared the Faustian theme and the gothic approach. Both stories involved having an objective correlative for moral turpitude - an alter ego in one case, and a degrading picture in the other. Both stories were sufficiently powerful for their titles to have entered the language as metaphors.

However, the plot of Jekyll turned on science, whereas Gray turned on magic. Jekyll was tauter and better structured, but was less moving and had less depth. Dorian Gray went beyond the Faustian myth in a way that Jekyll did not. The former was a novella, but the latter a short story. Stevenson, like Wilde but even more so, seemed constrained by Victorian mores to give no description of the debauchery that Hyde is enjoying. (However, we were quite unconvinced by the attempt of one critic to find homosexuality hinted at in Jekyll and Hyde).

It was impossible for a modern reader to approach the story of Jekyll and Hyde without knowing the ending because the title had become a metaphor, and therefore you could miss the fact that the story had been a real page-turner for the original audience. Despite that, we felt the story was not so exceptionally good that it had become a byword in the language simply because of its intrinsic quality as a story. Rather, it had become the most famous short story in the English language because it was the perfect metaphor to express the fact that everyone has a darker side - a Hyde - within them. Jekyll and Hyde had also been filmed many times, although an advantage of the original story format was the marvellous vagueness about what Mr Hyde actually looked like. (However, it was odd that Hyde was described as smaller than Jekyll – would you not expect the evil version to be bigger?)

Noting Stevenson’s interest in science, we wondered if he had been influenced by any contemporary medical descriptions of bipolarity or schizophrenia. A more obvious source of his interest in dualism was his personal experience of revelling in Edinburgh low life. The dualism of man was also a theme in literature and ideas which went back as far as Plato – and included Calvinism. The story of Edinburgh's Deacon Brodie, which Stevenson wrote up separately, was another source, although the Deacon Brodie tale was not extraordinary –a “strange case” - in the way that Jekyll and Hyde was.

Finally, we discussed the fact that both books had originally disturbed their audiences, but were no longer disturbing today. Was this because of the Victorian language, or because post-Freud we now all accepted we had a Hyde within us, or because homosexuality was now so openly discussed? Another factor was that there was in Victorian times a moral consensus, based on religion, which did not apply in today's plural society. Dorian Gray’s hedonism was not going to disturb a contemporary audience, half of whom might readily subscribe to hedonism as a philosophy. Moreover, in today's society the visual media of film and television had taken over from the printed word much of the role of shocking and disturbing people.



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30/8/06: "The City of Djinns" by William Dalrymple

“The City of Djinns” is a travel book about Delhi. The proposer of the book had always been interested in India, partly because of ancestors serving there in the army. As background to the discussion of the book he showed us a century-old album of photographs of Delhi, which we were able to contrast with a modern day album of Delhi photos taken by another member of the group.

William Dalrymple was born in Scotland and brought up on the shores of the Firth of Forth. He wrote the award-winning “In Xanadu” when he was twenty-two. In 1989 Dalrymple moved to Delhi where he lived for six years researching the “City of Djinns”, his second book, which won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award and the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award. The book therefore ante-dated the recent surge in Indian economic growth. More recently he has published “White Mughals” to critical acclaim. He and his wife now divide their time between London and Delhi.

The majority found this book a beautifully observed and sympathetic portrait of the city, full of fascinating detail and eccentric characters. It proved the pleasure of exploring a limited area in depth rather than a wider area superficially. They liked the relaxed, affectionate, entertaining style, and the wealth of easily assimilated historical detail. It was also amusing (though not really funny in the Bryson manner). Some of his descriptions - we picked out those of rivers as goddesses (echoing Kim), of conversations, and of the death of Norah Nicholson - were particularly effective.

A minority took a different view - they found the style irritating, the view of India and its characters rose-tinted, and the structure lacking in proper background and context.

The structure of the book was unusual. Starting with a range of mildly comic characters whom Dalrymple and his wife met, and occasionally returning to them, the writer would start to delve into the history either of individuals or more commonly of buildings. The different historical layers of Delhi and wider Indian history would emerge, but they would not be recounted in a simple linear fashion : rather, he would circle round stories such as the Mutiny and Partition before covering them in detail. Perhaps he overdid the history somewhat, by the end grinding the reader down with the story of yet another civilization. The book was closer to a history book than a travel book (although all travel books contain an element of history), but was really sui generis.

For most of us, a particularly powerful technique was to find the remnants of the past in the present - whether in the buildings, or in characters washed up by the passage of time, such as Anglo-Indians betrayed by Partition, or someone who had known Lutyens when he worked in Delhi. His search for such living relics of history - such as his search for remaining eunuchs - brought the urgency of the detective adventure to the book. The cumulative effect of this technique was very powerful, revealing the city in four dimensions. For a minority, however, this anecdotal approach was irritating and self-indulgent, particularly if one did not start with any particular knowledge of India and its history.

For the most part, we found the book well-written and his style very easy to read. Some felt he sometimes tried too hard to use Indian imagery in his descriptions of the seasons - to say that the sun was as blonde as clarified butter, for example, was strained and jarring. We did not all find his portraits of local “characters” (as opposed to his historical portraits) satisfactory. Some thought they were unrealistic - for example in using quaint English such as “tip-top”, which Indian students in this country do not use. Those who have visited India, however, felt that this was accurate for the generation of Indians portrayed. A minority felt that the characters - whether Indian or British - were portrayed in a rather patronising way. Another criticism was that nothing of the poverty and disease of India was portrayed, and little said about the untouchables - however, India was a vast subject to deal with.

We moved on finally to a discussion of the wider historical issues raised by the book.
We noted, for example, that the Scots and Irish (there were large numbers in the East India Company) tended to be portrayed more sympathetically - as more open-minded and tolerant towards the Indians - than the English. Was this a bias in the writer? On balance we felt not. He was not anti-English, but was opposed to a certain type of Englishman - evangelical, xenophobic and bigoted. The book showed the British in India in the eighteenth century acting much more generously to native Indians than in the evangelical nineteenth century.

We also discussed whether the writer acknowledged the deaths caused by the British in India, and here most felt he faced up squarely to the issue, notably in relation to the Mutiny. Was the Mutiny the first plea for independence, or just a mutiny? We felt it was the latter, compounded by an unfortunate combination of circumstances and an incompetent military. Finally, it was suggested that Partition, because of the massive population shifts and slaughter that followed, was the greatest disaster of the British Empire.



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