"The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World" by Peter Frankopan - audiobook review

This is a sequel to The Silk Roads - an extended epilogue - focusing on contemporary economic and military developments in China, Asia, and the Middle East up to 2018. Much of the focus is on China's Belt and Road Initiative: a series of infrastructure projects designed to improve trade and access to natural resources. On the surface, these plans seem like a good thing: helping to improve the economies of under-developed countries and join them together to share resources. But Frankopan acknowledges that sometimes the huge loans cause fiscal problems in the recipient countries and the projects don't live up to their initial promise. (What also goes unsaid is the impact that this exploitation of fossil fuels will have on climate change.) In the beginning of the book, Frankopan argues that economic power has shifted to the east, which becomes strikingly obvious when he lists the foreign owners of English Premier League football clubs. The military build-up is also alarming. I'm admittedly not a regular consumer of the news, but much of these developments were new to me: I don't think our western media pays enough attention. These two books together have changed how I see the world.

"Crampton Hodnet" by Barbara Pym - book review

Published posthumously in 1985, this was one of Pym's first novels, drafted in 1939 and tweaked in the 1950s before it was put aside. It's a wry story about North Oxford: a tutor falling in love with his pretty female student; an older woman and her plain younger companion fussing over a new curate; nosy gossip and busybodies; afternoon tea; a garden party interrupted by rain; an indiscretion in the British Museum reading room; seeing people you know in tea rooms; broken relationships and rejected proposals. Although it's not as polished as Excellent Women or Less Than Angels (not surprising because it was never worked up for publication), it's still a delightful and amusing read - particularly being set in a city that I know and love. The title, incidentally, is not unlike Wilde's concept of Bunburying: an invented parish to get the curate, Mr Latimer, out of a sticky situation. It doesn't have quite the high-wire act of a P. G. Wodehouse story, but it shares some of the same sorts of comic characters - particularly the formidable and interfering aunt, the eligible young folk, and the feckless men.

"The Silk Roads: A New History of the World" by Peter Frankopan - audiobook review

I read this book with some trepidation. The last time I read Peter Frankopan (The Earth Transformed), my big brother Gregory died and I didn't want to feel responsible. Thankfully, my father-in-law Tom's scan didn't live up to my worst fears. My reading got lighter after that! As with The Earth Transformed, it took me a while to get into this as Frankopan worked his way through ancient history towards the present. I let the rise and fall of empires and civilizations wash over me. As we approached the early modern period, I became more familiar with the outline of the histories being told. It really is a fantastic book: refocusing the history of human life on earth around the Middle East and Asia and the network of "silk roads" that map its trading patterns, migrations, and networks of knowledge. As the documentation grows, the pace slows. It really put things into perspective: the British empire was just one of many, no better or worse than those that came before: all of them brutal, selfish, short-sighted, exploitative, and finite. But Frankopan is nevertheless excoriating about the incompetence and venality of British diplomacy.

Frankopan does a few interesting things that I think will stay with me. He argues that the motivation behind the First and Second World Wars was really about oil in the Middle East: the fuel of modern empires and their armies. Most of the problems in that region today stem from the meddlings of our government and their rivals for the black gold. I was also startled at the insight that one of the reasons for the Holocaust was a lack of food, caused by Germany's rapid over-expansion and its invasion of Russia. With too many mouths to feed, the Nazis chose to let the Jewish and Russian people starve and then proceeded to mass slaughter. The Final Solution in this light is less premeditated than I had thought; it was more a tactic of war and resource scarcity. But no less of an atrocity.

I wish all our political leaders read this book to get more perspective on the conflicts and interrelations between people, land, and sea. It also makes me realize the myopic nature of our media that focuses on Western Europe and the US. The power (and natural resource wealth) has shifted east.

"Less Than Angels" by Barbara Pym - book review

I really enjoy spending time in the world of Barbara Pym. This novel deliciously overlaps with Excellent Women. We find out what happened to Mildred and Everard Bone. There are also a few other minor characters that appear in both novels. Less Than Angels is about a group of anthropologists in London: undergraduates and more senior academics, and their wider families. I read this alongside Peter Frankopan's The Silk Roads. They cross-pollinated: the end of the British empire; problematic attitudes towards Africa and its people; the slow shift of power. It also made me think of Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook and the different variety of relationships women and men have; suburban life and women's place in it. I really loved this book and want to keep reading more Pym. It doesn't matter that it's just a window into people's lives: there is still intrigue and joy to be found in the everyday and domestic; the awkwardness of a visitor sitting in the wrong pew in church, which "belongs" to a regular family; the politics of afternoon tea; the way women treat each other in a love triangle; the fecklessness of most of the men. I love that you sometimes catch sight of something major in passing, through another character's eyes, rather than directly through the people it's happening to (field notes on a bonfire). There's also something brutally comic about how one character reaches the end. More, please!

"Some Experiences of an Irish R.M." by Edith Œnone Somerville and Martin Ross - book review

This was recommended to me by my father-in-law, Tom, last summer, on the eve of our holiday to the west of Ireland. Only just got round to reading it. It's a bit like an Irish P. G. Wodehouse: an English Resident Magistrate (a former soldier) tells of his life in rural Ireland: the servants, the dilapidated houses, the horses, the hunts, the sports days, the sailing trips, the dances, the rivalries and spats. I never really laughed out loud, but it was amusing and there's a nice turn of phrase from time to time, including a deliciously intoned Irish brogue. It feels quite modern even though it was published in 1899: I guess it has the same register as Three Men in a Boat: we're definitely not in the Victorian era anymore, but it's still a time of the British Empire and patrician attitudes towards the subjugated colonies. The Irish (although often foolish) don't suffer fools gladly, and often take advantage of their English lords. There's a lot of stuff about horses and hunting with hounds, which gives a good insight into the thrills of the chase. Apart from that, it's good-natured fun. Interested to learn that this was written by two women. Not sure yet if I'll continue to read the sequel: Further Experiences of an Irish R.M. (1908). I feel like another Pym.

"Solitaire" by Alice Oseman - book review

Solitaire is Alice Oseman's first book, written in 2012 when she was 17. Its narrator is Tori Spring, the older sister of Charlie from Heartstopper. She is one of my favourite characters from the Netflix TV series because she would suddenly appear silently like a ghost and had an incredibly dry sense of humour. She is a very loving and caring older sister to Charlie. I was also intrigued when her friend, Michael Holden, appeared in Season 3 of the Netflix series. They were great together (excellent casting), as if she'd found her soulmate.

I read this book wanting to spend more time with Tori and get to know her. It's fascinating seeing some familiar characters (Charlie, Nick, Ben, Michael, Charlie and Tori's parents) from Tori's perspective. She's anti-social, depressive, sometimes erratic, a bit of a misanthrope, insomniac, self-loathing. Michael calls her a “manically depressed psychopath”. But she's really likeable and I found myself rooting for her and Michael.

The overall plot is a bit silly and unsatisfying. A myserious blogger called Solitaire orchestrates a series of stunts and pranks at Tori's school, which get increasingly violent and dangerous. Who is behind it and why?

I was more interested in Tori and Michael's weird and abortive friendship and the glimpses of Charlie and Nick. It was compelling and I read it quickly. It's at its most juvenile in the climax of the Solitaire plot (which I won't spoil), but that shouldn't stop you reading this book if you're interested in Heartstopper. It's also an interesting insight into teenage culture from that era (a generation after mine). I missed out on those sixth-form years in a normal mixed comprehensive because I went to an all-boys boarding school for my final two years. But I did find myself picturing it at my old school, Belmont Academy, imagining it as if I'd stayed on, living vicariously. I wonder what I would have been like.

"Bookish: How Reading Shapes Our Lives" by Lucy Mangan - audiobook review

A lovely audiobook about books, read by the author. It follows on from Bookworm, her book about childhood reading and goes through her adolescence with young adult fiction, set texts at GCSE and A-level, her English degree at Cambridge, and her adult reading. It's touching and insipring just how much Lucy Mangan loves reading. I found the last few chapters really moving, when she writes about building her own library in her second home in Norfolk during the pandemic; and her dad's death. It makes me want to read more.