Month: October 2023

The Gilded Age (Season 2) – Sky Atlantic

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  It was good to have this back, on a dark and wet Monday night, but I wish they’d started with a quick recap of the previous series.  I couldn’t actually remember what some of the characters’ names were!   However, I soon got into it again, and the first episode of the new series included an interesting range of storylines.  We had the fat cats, both anciens riches and nouveaux riches, worrying about the rise of trade unionism, Peggy grieving for the loss of the son who was taken away from her, and Marian making a small bid for freedom by teaching art at a girls’ school – much to the horror of her aunts.   We also had the social-climbing Mrs Russell bidding for acceptance in the holiday resort of Newport, and the establishment of the new New York Metropolitan Opera as a rival to the New York Academy of Music.  The opening of the Metropolitan put us in 1883, which fitted in very well with the rise of the trade unions.  Meanwhile, the van Rhijns’ gay son continued to court the Russells’ unsuspecting daughter.

The clothes and the houses alike were super-glamorous, and it all made for an enjoyable 70 minutes’ viewing – escapism, but with that mention of the unions, together with a few scenes involving the servants, reminding us that the vast majority of people in New York City in the 1880s most definitely weren’t living in the lap of luxury.  A promising start!

Alexander Cordell’s Novels of Wales

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Well, three of them anyway.   This is a three-in-one book, incorporating Fire People, Land of My Fathers and This Sweet and Bitter Earth.  I’ve read quite a few of Alexander Cordell’s books before, and these were all along the same lines – very interesting historically, but so flaming miserable.   Most people end up being killed in mining accidents, being murdered, or dying young of illness.

The first book covers the Merthyr Rising of 1831, and a lot of the characters are real historical figures.   The second book’s set in Amlwch and Dowlais, and is set against a background of Chartism.  The third book’s about a young man who works in the Llechwedd slate mines, the Blaenavon coal mines and the Merthyr ironworks, and also covers the Tonypandy Riots.  They all give an excellent portrayal of the lives of the working classes in industrial Wales in the times in which they’re set, but it would just be nice if they weren’t all so miserable.  Nothing good ever seems to happen to anyone!

Rosamund Heads The Chalet School by Lisa Townsend

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  The late Swiss era isn’t my favourite part of the Chalet School series, but I really enjoyed this fill-in.   Whilst I think that the number of fill-ins is getting a bit high and am glad to see that the next new book to be published by GGBP will be a “Lorna” book rather than a “Chalet” book, there was definitely room for this one, because poor Rosamund Lilley barely gets a look-in during her term as Head Girl, and isn’t even given a proper exit storyline.  She just disappears!    The logical explanation is the one that Lisa’s given here, that Rosamund was “needed at home” due to illness in the family.

Lisa’s also written that Dorothy, Rosamund’s eldest sister, was jealous of the fact that she got a scholarship to the Chalet School.  I’m not keen on that idea because the Lilleys seemed like such a lovely, close family, but I can see that it had to be written that way to explain why Rosamund was expected to leave school early to care for her mother, even though she had two older sisters.   Lisa also shows us how the rest of the school might have reacted to the bizarre goings on in Redheads, the “canon” book about this term, which sees Val Gardiner kidnapped and a gunman breaking into Miss Annersley’s study!

She also explains that Len Maynard wasn’t made Head Girl at this point because of her age, and because Joey and Jack Maynard were reluctant for her to be given too much responsibility too young, which again seems logical, and also refers to the fact that having too many “family” members as Had Girl in succession might have raised eyebrows.   Poor Ros really did get totally overshadowed by Len, though!   Julie Lucy, Betsy Lucy and Elinor Pennell all, to some extent, had their time as Head Girl overshadowed by the author’s preference for Mary-Lou Trelawney, but not to this extent.  Ros hardly features in Redheads.  And her disappearance is just odd.  Loveday Perowne is clearly only made Head Girl to avoid Bride Bettany directly succeeding her sister Peggy, but at least Loveday’s sudden departure is explained.

Rosamund deserved to have a book written about her time as Head Girl, so I’m very glad that Lisa’s written this.  And it does read very much like a “canon” Chalet School book, with scenes involving the staff as well as the girls – although it’s missing the over-long descriptions of plays which get a bit much some time!   There are numerous references to Len being the real leader amongst “that crowd”: I’m never overly convinced with the idea of Len as a leader, but I accept that readers are supposed to see her as such.

All in all, this was a lovely read for Chalet School fans.   It’s just a shame that the books don’t reach a wider audience.

 

Black Rain by Masuji Ibuse

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  This is set in the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima.  Shigematsu Shizuma is trying to find a husband for his niece, Yasuko, but young men are in short supply and Yasuko’s value on the marriage market is diminished by the fact that she was working near Hiroshima when the bomb dropped, meaning that she and any children she might have could be affected by radiation sickness.   We follow Shigematsu through his own and Yasuko’s recollections and diaries, as he tries to prove that she couldn’t have been affected because her workplace wasn’t that close to the city.

Sadly, it proves that either it was close enough for her to have been affected, or that she was affected by the radiation in the atmosphere and the ashes whilst walking through the city afterwards.   Yasuko becomes seriously ill, and her uncle and aunt hope that she’ll make a full recovery, but know that, realistically, it’s unlikely.  We also meet many of their friends and acquaintances, and learn in quite graphic detail about the physical and mental effects of radiation sickness, and about the loss of so many lives.

It’s hardly ever political: it just tells about about the effects on the civilian population of Hiroshima, and does so very powerfully.   We’ll never know whether or not the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified, because we’ll never know what would have happened otherwise, but this tells us a lot about how horrific it was for the people on the ground.  It’s not an enjoyable read, but it’s an interesting one.

The Master of Geneva by Gladys H Barr

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This book, about the life of John Calvin, was hard going, but then it was always going to be.  The Calvinist Reformation in Geneva was pretty boring.  There were no love triangles, no massacres at weddings and no princes’ revolts.  No-one even chucked a stool at a minister’s head.  And the book just went on and on about sola fide.  Well, it never actually used the Latin phrase, but never mind.  It sounds better in Latin!  Nothing about drunken debaucheries in Rome, dastardly doings in monasteries or fake relics being sold by pedlars.  I suppose Luther had cornered the market on that already.   Also, there were some very weird spelling mistakes.

The history was pretty accurate, to be fair.  Calvin was born in France, and studied philosophy and later law.  He became a Protestant at some point in the mid-1530s, but no-one really knows how or why, and the book didn’t really attempt to go into it in too much detail.  After a row over Protestant publications, he fled to Basle, spent a bit of time in Ferrara, went back to France, and then ended up in Geneva, where Protestantism had become popular – after a lot of religious clashes and the decision to break away from rule by Savoy.  However, he did everyone’s heads in so much that he was kicked out, and moved to Strasbourg.  Geneva then asked him back, and, despite the opposition of the “Libertines”, the city arguably became a theocracy, known as “the Protestant Rome”.  He then continued to do everyone’s heads in, by closing gambling houses and exiling anyone deemed immoral.  Needless to say, it was generally women who got the blame for “immorality”.

I’d got it in my head that people were banned from singing outside church in Calvinist Geneva, but the book never mentioned it.  Maybe I’ve imagined it.  Or got it mixed up with The Sound of Music.  Ah –  Google says that an 18th century writer called Charles Burney claimed that no instrumental music was allowed in Geneva for one hundred years after the Reformation, and that all music, except for psalm singing, was banned.  Oh good, it’s nice to know that I haven’t imagined it.  I suppose at least Calvin didn’t ban mince pies, but I don’t think they have mince pies in Switzerland.

The author did seem to be quite sympathetic towards Calvin, but I suppose most people who write novels about historical figures do so because they find something sympathetic about their subject.   I think she did her best with him, but, as I said, the Calvinist Reformation in Geneva was pretty boring.  Not even a chucked stool …

 

 

A Song for Summer by Eva Ibbotson

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  Eva Ibbotson’s style of writing can be a bit odd, as if the book’s poking fun at itself, but this was an unusual story and I quite enjoyed it.  In 1937, Ellen Carr, daughter of a former suffragette and intended for a high-flying career, having dropped out of Cambridge, takes a job as a housemother and cook at a British-owned school in Austria.  However, this definitely isn’t the Chalet School.  They do plays about abbatoirs, music teachers wander about naked, and everyone is weirdly obsessed with a tortoise.  And there’s a lot of talk about eurythmics – which is always spelt like that, without an h between the r and the t.  As an ’80s child, “eurhythmics” always looks totally wrong to me, but, technically “eurythmics” is an incorrect spelling!

Ellen becomes involved with Marek, the gardener … whom it turns out is actually a famous musician, helping people to escape from the Nazis.   However, when his parents’ home is burnt down, Marek pushes Ellen away.  She returns home as it becomes clear that war is looming, and marries a long-time suitor … but then Marek turns up in England, Ellen’s marriage is annulled, and they live happily ever after.   The ending’s a bit contrived, but generally it’s not bad at all.

Daughters of Sparta by Claire Heywood

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  There are a whole load of books around at the moment which retell ancient Greek myths/legends/epics from the viewpoint of one or more of the women involved.   This one, as the title suggests, is about Helen of Troy and her sister Clytemnestra, and it’s very readable: I enjoyed it.

The language is quite simplistic, to the extent that it sometimes feels more like a book for older children than a book for adults.  Also, the author’s decided to use spellings which she feels more accurately reflect Greek – I take her point, but everyone’s used to the names Clytemnestra, Aeneas, Menelaus, etc, and it’s a bit confusing to see them spelt differently.   And it’s quite a short book: it leaves long gaps in the story and then starts again with “X years later ….”.

OK, moaning over!   As I said, I enjoyed it.

There are umpteen different versions of many parts of the sisters’ story.  In this book, Clytemnestra, Castor and Pollux are all the children of Tyndareus and Leda, but Helen’s the daughter of Zeus.  Other than that, the gods don’t really feature – the bit with Paris judging the goddesses’ beauty isn’t mentioned at all.   Both sisters are young and unmarried when Agamemnon’s first mentioned.   And Helen chooses to go off with Paris.   There are a couple of sub-plots which I assume are the author’s own invention – one involves Agamemnon forcing the sister of Calchas to become his concubine, and the other involves Helen not wanting to have any more children after a difficult birth with Hermione.   Both sisters come across as being very human, and we don’t really blame Helen for leaving a marriage that hasn’t really worked out, or even blame Clytemnestra for killing a cruel husband who sacrificed their daughter and forced young women into concubinage.

The Trojan women do blame Helen, but we sympathise with them too.   The person who comes across as being the big baddie is Agamemnon – the author really doesn’t like him.  He’s shown as being actually rather pleased that Helen’s run off with Paris, because it gives him an excuse to start a war and try to extend his control over both the other Greek kingdoms and the city and hinterland of Troy.   Paris is portrayed as being a fop and a coward, and Helen ends up wondering what she ever saw in him.  The bit about Helen pleading with Oenone to help heal Paris’s wounds is omitted, and Deiphobus is shown as trying to rape Helen but being stopped by Menelaus.

All in all, it’s a very enjoyable book, despite the rather simplistic language.  Worth a go.  I’m reading another of the current plethora of books about Ancient Greece at the moment, and it’s not a patch on this one!  Oh, and does anyone fancy writing an alternative version of Book IV of the Aeneid which shows Dido realising that Aeneas is actually a total wuss and not worthy of her love, and gets on with ruling Carthage instead of killing herself?  Just a thought!

 

Loser Takes All by Grahame Greene

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  This was my October “reading challenge ” book.  It was actually more of a novella than a novel: I hadn’t realised how short it was.  Assistant accountant Mr Bertram and his fiancee were planning a quiet wedding when his boss decided that they should get married in Monte Carlo and honeymoon there on his private yacht.  However, the boss didn’t turn up, so they had to go to a hotel.  They started gambling in order to try to pay the bills.   Why didn’t they just go home?!   Mr Bertram had a run of good luck and got more and more obsessed with gambling, but his new wife wasn’t impressed and contemplated running off with someone else.  Then the boss turned up and said that he just forgot.  Mr and Mrs Bertram were reunited, but Mr Bertram lost all his money.   Er, and that was about it.   It was entertaining enough, I suppose!

The Great Escaper

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This was lovely, although I wish they’d stuck to what actually happened rather than adding in unnecessary sub-plots.   And it was poignant because the number of Second World War veterans still alive is dwindling.  There are events planned to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day next year, but it’s hard to think that more than a handful of people who actually served in the war will be there.

As people may remember, back in June 2004, large scale events took place in Normandy to commemorate the D-Day Landings 70 years earlier.   Naval veteran Bernie Jordan somehow didn’t get booked on any of the official trips, but decided to go by himself.   There was consternation when he was found to be missing from the care home where he and his wife Rene (Reenie) lived, and the story grabbed everyone’s attention and made international headlines.

The film makers invented a story about Bernie and another veteran giving their tickets for the official event to two German veterans, and going to the British war cemetery at Bayeux instead, complete with a back story for the fictional friend.  And they invented another sub-plot about someone who’d served in Afghanistan and was struggling to cope.  Bernie’s story was fascinating.  It didn’t need to be messed with.

However, the flashbacks to the war, both to the actual D-Day landings and to Bernie’s romance with Rene, worked well.  So did the scenes showing all the veterans from different countries being feted in Norman cafes.  And then, just before the end, there was a wonderful scene in which Rene, played by the late Glenda Jackson in her last film role, told Bernie, played by Michael Caine, not to feel survivor guilt, because it had all just been a matter of luck … and that theirs had been lives well lived, together.

Bernie died six months after his visit to France, and Rene died a week later.  Since 2014, my last surviving great-uncle and great-aunt, the last of the “elders” on both sides of the family, have died, and so have the Queen and Prince Philip.   There aren’t many of that generation left.  This is a lovely film about two who’ve now gone, and one of those stories which just bring everyone together.

All Creatures Great and Small (series 4) – Channel 5

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It’s so good to have this back.  It seems daft to say that something set in 1940 is a relaxing escape from the stresses of the present day, but a) it’s still in the “phony war” stage at the moment and b) apart from Tristan’s absence, the war doesn’t really seem to have impinged on Darrowby as yet.   Everyone was far more concerned about Helen ordering too much gauze and Siegfriend being grumpy because he’d given up smoking for Lent.   There was also a storyline about James helping a boy from a poor family whose dog was ill.   And there were lots of scenic shots of the Dales.

I gather that things are going to become more serious as James and Helen wonder whether wartime is the right time to consider having children, and we’ve also got the issue of Mrs Hall seeking a divorce at a time when divorced people weren’t considered quite respectable, but, generally, everything in this programme is gentle and caring and just basically nice.   And that is very, very welcome!