Category Archives: Books

The Black Friar by S.G. MacLean

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The Black Friar by S.G. MacLean was published in 2016 and it’s the second book in the author’s Damian Seeker series which begins with The Seeker.

The date is January 1655, the seventh year of Oliver Cromwell’s ‘reign’ and the people are discontented because for ordinary folks things are no better than they had been under the rule of the Stuarts. Seeker is having to deal with rebellious Royalist plots from abroad and disgruntled one time supporters of Cromwell.

Fanatical religious sects are springing up, most of them are based on the book of Daniel and they’re all more than a bit strange. It seems like desperation to me, but it is all very authentic and historically correct.

When a perfectly preserved body in the clothing of a Dominican friar is found to have been bricked up in the crumbling Blackfriars Monastery some people think it’s some kind of miracle, but Damian Seeker knows better. He recognises the body as  a man who had been working for him, and the reason the victim’s body is still fairly fresh is because he hasn’t been dead long, so it’s no miracle.

Some children have been disappearing from the streets of London, is it something to do with the murdered man? As Captain of Cromwell’s Guard Damian Seeker is kept very busy in this one, he’s well able to see that most of the ordinary people are actually worse off under Cromwell, or certainly no better off.

Shona (S.G.) MacLean has a PhD in 16th and 17th century history so presumably she gets the details correct. It’s interesting to see that women could have a prominent/ leading position as preachers in religious sects, something that seems to have gone backwards in more recent times.  If I’m nit-picking I find it unlikely that so many poorer women in these books are able to read and write, but often it’s necessary for the plot so I’m willing to suspend my disbelief.  I’m really enjoying this series and I think I’m learning quite a lot about the era.

 

 

 

 

Forest Silver by E.M. Ward – British Library

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Forest Silver by E.M. Ward (Edith Marjorie) was first published in 1941 but it has just been reprinted by British Library as part of their British Library Women Writers series. I was sent a copy of the book by British Library for review.

The setting for the book is the Lake District, around the Grasmere area, quite early on in World War 2. The area has a lot of new people in it now as the bombing in cities has led to people looking for a safer place to live. But Wing-Commander Richard Blunt is there because he has been invalided out of the R.A.F. He had been badly wounded in an incident which had gained him the Victoria Cross, but had been left with a weak heart and a limp after his convalesence. He immerses himself in the history of the estate.

Corys de Bainriggs is now the owner of her family estate since the death of her grandfather. He had decided to skip a generation when writing his will, presumably he didn’t trust his daughter and wife with the running of the estate. Bonfire Hall is the name of the ‘big house’ and Corys loves every bit of the land surrounding it. She has been offered a lot of money by two of the new inhabitants, they each want a plot of her land to build a house on, but she’s determined to see off all such temptations. But when one of the old houses is burnt down the old man who had lived in it takes to sleeping outdoors Corys is so worried about him she makes a decision she comes to regret bitterly.

This is a great read, I hadn’t even heard of E.M. Ward before being sent this book. Her writing is lovely, she obviously loved the Lake District deeply, but her prose just lands on the right side of being purple. Corys is a bit of a tomboy, she’s described as being a bit immature because she wears shorts and doesn’t care about her looks, she even has brown skin at a time when having a tan wasn’t fashionable. When Corys rather fancies the looks of one of the male evacuees she begins to smarten up her appearance to try to attract his attention, she’s copying the behaviour of some of the young female evacuees, it all makes her seem authentic. An ungrateful old man is particularly recognisable.

Luckily I do know the Grasmere area, and for me that always adds to the enjoyment of a book, when I can see the landscape.

Thank you to British Library for providing me with a copy of the book. I hope that some more of her novels will be reprinted in the future.

 

Toby’s Room by Pat Barker

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Toby’s Room by Pat Barker was published in 2012, but the book begins in 1912 at the affluent home of Toby and Elinor, a very (too) close brother and sister. They have an older sister Rachel, she’s the one who has done everything that her parents expected of her. Elinor has a difficult relationship with her rather self-centred mother, but she does manage to get to the Slade Art School, where she also studies human dissection to help with her drawing of the human body. This is all very ground-breaking for a young woman. She also rubs shoulders with some of the people in the Bloomsbury Group as well as men who became War Artists.

When World War I breaks out Toby joins up, he is of course an officer, but it seems that he doesn’t treat the men underneath him well, he risks their lives in unnecessary tasks, and lends them out to other units when what they really need is a rest. In 1917 when his family gets a telegram saying he is Missing, Believed Killed his mother is bereft, but Elinor can’t believe it, she has to get to the bottom of it.

Pat Barker never disappoints. I’m usually not a fan of writers who use actual people as characters in their books but with small name changes for some of them and no changes for others such as Rupert Brooke who was already dead by that time, I didn’t find it offensive at all for Barker to use them in her tale.

If you want to read the review of this book in The Independent you can do so here.

 

Somebody at the Door by Raymond Postgate

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Somebody at the Door by Raymond Postgate was first published in 1943 but British Library has reprinted it in 2017 in their Crime Classics series. He also founded The Good Food Guide.

The setting is the south of England, Winter 1942.

Councillor Grayling gets on the train at Euston, it’s a really busy train and his carriage is full, some of the people he knows, but doesn’t particularly like. He has £120 in his briefcase and he’s a bit worried about carrying so much money. When he gets off the train he walks the short distance from the station to his home, through the snow covered streets, but when he reaches his home he falls through the door as his wife answers it, in no time he’s dead. His briefcase is missing.

Inspector Holly investigates, looking into the backgrounds of all Grayling’s fellow passengers, apart from two young workmen who can’t be traced. It seems a lot of them have good reasons for not liking Grayling.

For this reason the story seems to go off at strange tangents, but it all makes sense eventually and I didn’t guess what was going on.

Raymond Postgate was the father of Oliver Postgate, who created Bagpuss, The Clangers, Noggin the Nog, and Ivor the Engine. Not many people remember Noggin the Nog, it was before my time on children’s TV but it’s a favourite with Jack. Peter Firmin was also involved in making that one. I was more of a Bagpuss fan. Sorry, that’s me going off at a tangent now.

 

 

The Lie by Helen Dunmore

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The Lie by Helen Dunmore was published in 2014.

The setting is Cornwall 1920, but the story often slips back to the World War 1 experiences of Daniel and  Frederick, and their childhood together.  Frederick and his sister Felicia are the children of a man who had made money in Australian mines, as Daniel’s mother had been the cleaner for the family she had become close to their mother, when the mother died Daniel’s mother helped with bringing up the children.  But Frederick and Felicia go to private schools, Frederick isn’t interested in learning. It’s Daniel who is the clever one, but he knows he’s never going to be able to stay on at the village school, or have the opportunities that Frederick will have. But they still manage to have a close frienship. When war breaks out they find themselves in the same unit, but of course Frederick is an officer and Daniel isn’t. Only one of them comes back from the war.

I’ve read quite a lot of books which feature WW1 but I think this one depicts the horror of it more than most, and the lack of gratitude and sympathy that those not involved at the front had for the survivors.

This is a great read if you are interested in that era as Helen Dunmore obviously was as she wrote a few books which feature WW1. She was a talented writer, what a sad loss her death was.

 

 

The House on the Hill by Eileen Dunlop

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The House on the Hill by Eileen Dunlop was published in 1987 and the setting is Glasgow.

Philip is an only child and his father has died recently, his mother is having to leave their home to take up a nursing course so that she can support them both in the future. Although Philip’s parents hadn’t had anything to do with old Aunt Jane who lives nearby his mother has decided that she will have to swallow her pride and ask old Aunt Jane to look after Philip for the duration. Aunt Jane hadn’t even bothered to go to Philip’s father’s funeral and that really rankles, but Aunt Jane agrees to look after Philip, she already has another young relative staying with her. Susan is close to Philip in age, but her father is in Kenya, he’s well-off but uncaring, she goes to a posh private school in Glasgow.

The Mount in Wisteria Avenue is a large mansion, but is very much down at heel as Jane doesn’t have the money or energy to refurbish it, or tackle the rampant garden. It’s a big change for Philip and Susan and although they dislike each other to begin with they warm to each other and start to investigate the old house and its strange quirks. It’s all a bit spooky. At times the past is all too present.

Aunt Jane has had a sad life at the hands of her over-bearing father and until Susan and Philip arrived she was stuck in his ways, but a more rosy future beckons for her.

This was another enjoyable read from this Scottish author who apparently taught at Dollar Academy, near Stirling.

 

The Wild Coast by Lin Anderson

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The Wild Coast by Lin Anderson was published in 2023. It’s the first book I’ve read by the author, but she has written lots which feature Rhona MacLeod as a forensic scientist.

It begins in Arisaig, an idyllic setting in the North-West Highlands of Scotland, a very remote area. A young woman has driven there in her camper van and it transpires that she has taken the chance to leave her violent partner while he is out of the country. She has the bruises to show for it, but is attempting to cover them up with make-up. Stopping at a small camp site which is mainly used by just a few wild campers she’s reticent about communicating with the few other campers around, so when she disappears overnight nobody even knows what her name was.

But just before that happens a shallow grave has been found in the machar (grassland) on the edge of the camp. It’s the body of a young woman and bizarrely there’s a figure of a stick man alongside her in the grave. There’s also a stick man figure in the campervan, but the grave is around two months old, so it’s not the missing woman from the campervan. Rhona MacLeod is called in to dig up the body in the grave and gather as much forensic evidence as possible.

The setting changes to Glasgow where there are rumours of corrupt police officers sexually assaulting young students and it looks like Rhona’s close colleague McNab is involved – or is he?

Most of the male characters in this book are truly obnoxious and at one point I wondered if it would ever feature any men who weren’t monsters, although if I’m recalling correctly the reader is never actually in the room when women are being physically abused.

As ever I enjoyed the Scottish setting and it was good to have so many mentions of my old stomping ground of Glasgow’s west end. I’ll definitely read more in this series, but I imagine that if you have suffered from abusive and coercive men in the past then you probably won’t want to read this one.

 

The Twelfth Day of July by Joan Lingard

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The Twelfth Day of July by Joan Lingard was first published in 1970, so it was probably written just as ‘The Troubles’ of Northern Ireland started to become really serious.

The book begins on the 7th of July, just five more days to go until the Glorious 12th,  in the Jackson’s Belfast  home they’re all counting the days until the members of the Orange Lodge bands will be marching wearing their smart purple and orange uniforms and playing their instruments, it’s the highlight of their year, commemorating the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne. This year Sadie is taking part for the first time.

But the night before the big day the huge mural of King Billy on his white horse which is painted on the gable end of the Jackson’s house is daubed with green paint by some  Catholic youngsters who live in a nearby neighbourhood.  Sadie and her brother Tommy are incensed, and so begins a tit for tat battle between them and the boys they know to be the culprits. The youngsters are able to move quite easily between the two areas, something which was stopped by building a massive wall between them, to keep the two factions apart. It was still there when I visited Belfast in the mid 1990s, I suspect it might still be there.

Sadie Jackson is a great character and Kevin is obviously an admirer. This is the beginning of a series featuring them as a couple who are caught up in the religious sectarianism of the divided and violent Northern Ireland. I’m looking forward to reading the others.

Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart

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Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart was published in 2022. Previously I have read Shuggie Bain by the same author, he won the Booker Prize in 2020 for that one.

To begin with I had my doubts about reading this one because I wasn’t totally enamoured with the premise which is the awakening of gay sexuality between the main character Mungo and his friend James. But there’s an awful lot more to the book than that. I really liked it, my only quibble is that it is very similar to Shuggie Bain in that it features a family of two young boys and a sister, with a totally out of control alcoholic mother. Jodie the sister is the smart one, she wants to make something of herself, and thinks that Mungo could too, if he gets away from the family.

The setting is mainly Dennistoun in Glasgow’s east end (where I was born – it has changed a lot since then!)

Mungo is the youngest in the family, but they’re all very close in age. Hamish is a bit of a wee hardman, he’s a small time drug dealer and general bad lad, incredibly violent and a proud and bigotted Protestant. He wants Mungo to be just like him, part of a family firm. Mungo really isn’t interested in the violence and mayhem that surrounds Hamish, but Hamish makes him take part in an attack on the Fenians, the Roman Catholic lads in a nearby neighbourhood.

Mungo is much happier spending time with James at his racing pigeon doocot/dovecot, but James is a Catholic. Hamish isn’t going to let that relationship flourish.

Meanwhile Mo-Maw as they call their mother is steeped in self pity and like all addicts the only really important thing to her is alcohol, so she’s often absent from home for weeks at a time. From time to time she goes to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and it’s there that she meets two men who she happily hands Mungo over to so they can all go on a fishing holiday to the Highlands, with the idea that they will help Mungo to ‘man up’.  Mungo just wants to be with James.

I ended up enjoying this one a lot more than I thought I would, but I hope that the next book by the author has moved away from a three child family with an alcoholic mother.

 

Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane

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Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane is one of those books which increases your wish list of books to read as he makes so many of the books that he mentions sound so interesting.

As the author says on page one, it’s a book about the power of language and each chapter ends with several pages of glossary, descriptive words for natural landmarks, sounds, plants, beasties, weather and more which are local to places all over the UK, and sometimes having roots further afield.

I’ll just mention some of the people who appear in this book: Nan Shepherd, Roger Deakin, John Muir, Richard Jefferies, Kenneth Allsop, J.G. Ballard, John Ruskin, Jacquetta Hawkes, Clarence Ellis and many more.

Chapter 11 is titled Childish and Macfarlane writes about the lack of experience that the children of today have of playing outdoors in nature. Their play worlds have shrunk to their garden (if they’re lucky enough to have one) and a bit of pavement. When they do get the chance to sprachle about in the wild it unleashes their imaginations and they enter another world entirely. I can completely empathise  with that feeling as I was born in a city flat and moved out to ‘the country’ when I was five years old, for the first time I had a garden that I could just daunder out into via the back door and poke around in, and see sheep in the distance whenever I felt like it. I can clearly remember that feeling of freedom, and not too many years later I was able to walk in those not too distant fields on my own. Such was life for children in the 1960s and 70s.

At the end of the paperback edition of the book Robert Macfarlane writes that people from all over the world have written to him to tell him of words that are still used in their locale to describe weather, landmarks and such. I won’t write to him but the word that I love is Xirimiri,  which the way it was pronounced sounded like smirimiri.) I’m not sure if that is how it should be spelled because it was just given to me by a tour guide when I was visiting the Basque country in Spain. Anyway, I love it because it’s so close to the Scots word smirr and they both mean that very fine rain which you can barely see but soaks you through to the skin. The word must surely have a Celtic background, as the Basques and Scots share that heritage.