Memoirs of a British Agent by R H Bruce Lockhart

Memoirs of a British Agent 

Brought on same abortive advent calendar hunt as Operation SeaLion 

This is a really engaging book written by someone with a fascinating story to tell.
It paints a vivid picture of the diplomatic world in the early years of the last century and then uses that as the backdrop for the account of the Russia Revolution and the folly of British military intervention.

It reveals the significant part played by the personality and personal relations of national representatives in relationships between nations - true then but I suspect equally true today. It also shows the revolution populated with a colourful array of people acting often to different ends which is a useful insight as we tend to view the Soviet Russia as monochrome.

There are one of two things that are less prasie worthy in particular the way that a point is made of telling us whenever someone is Jewish which I am not quiet sure how to process - the book is 80 years old and so we need to reading with a view to its own time and place and there is nothing explicitly anti-Semitic, an example being his description of the Central Executive Committee as "a motley gathering of about on hundred and fifty intellectuals with a strong predominance of Jews." so at one level it is a just a statement of fact but somehow you feel that you are meant to read something more in it, which makes me a little uncomfortable.

Joint Liturgical Studies 70 - Two Early Egyptain Liturgical Papyri by Alistair C. Strewart

Received by virtue of membership of  the Acluin Club 

This is one of the more esoteric of the Joint Liturgical Studies series - what interested me about it was not some much the precise content of the two texts examined but the consideration of it as a case study of the type of 'archaeological' liturgical research which during the twentieth century had a profound impact in the revision of the liturgy across almost all denominations.

The examination here serves to challenge some assumptions about the development of the liturgy in Egypt in the first few centuries of the Church, and the alarming thing that this shows is how shaky the foundations of those assumptions are.

The common revision of the liturgy, in the Roman Catholic Church through Vatican II and in the Church of England in the experimental liturgies that lead to the ASB, was sold as a purification of the liturgy which took us back to a liturgical structure (and even words and phrases) that would have been recognised by the Apostles.  However more recent research shows that there was greater diversity at this early period and that some key elements of liturgical reform are based on some very idiosyncratic readings of early texts in order to fit them within the personal liturgical preferences of the reformers.

One Prefect Rose by Dorothy Parker

found in New Poems on the Underground

A single flow'r he sent me, since we met.
All tenderly his messenger he chose;
Deep-hearted, prue, with scented dew still wet -
One perfect rose.

I knew the language of the floweret;
"My fragile leaves," it said, "his heart enclose."
Love long has taken for his amulet
One prefect rose.

Why is it no one ever sent me yet
One perfect limousine, do you suppose?
Ah no, it's always just my luck to get
One perfect rose

The Burning Ashes of Time by Patricia Aithie

The Burning Ashes of Time: From Steamer Point to Tiger Bay on the Trail of the Seafaring Arabs

This is yet another book read due to a review in Planet.

This book is an interesting exploration of global connections which date back well before the processes that we tend to refer to as 'globalisation'.  It gives a positive view of the legacy of the British in Aden, and suggest that most of Yemen's problems started after the British left, and focuses on warm and enduring friendship for the British within the older Yemeni generation.  This is perhaps a selective view - but it is one person's journey and one person's story and we should respect it as telling an important part of the a shared history and a present relationship.  We should also note that the journey recounted here took place in 1992 - and so the interval of time between us and the events in the book is now almost equal to the interval between the end of British rule in Aden and the events.  It is good to hear this part of the story at a time when Yemen most enters our Western consciousness only in the context of a breeding ground for terrorism.  One of the things most useful things that the book does is highlight the important part that Yemeni seaman played in the successful functioning on the British Empire, particularly during the 2 World Wars, and so when we do attribute a positive legacy to the Empire credit needs to be given to a wide diversity of people and not just plummy voice men in pith helmets. 

Ode: Intimations of Immortality (lines 1-18) By William Wordsworth

found in New Poems on the Underground

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell'd in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;-
Turn wheresoe'vr I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The Rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the Rose,
The Moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth.

Hunt for the Southern Continent by James Cook

Hunt for the Southern Continent (Penguin Great Journeys)

I found these extracts from Cook's journals rather dry and to be honest dull.

While I was able to put the  perfunctory notes on the weather and sea conditions into a maritime context they gave little sense of adventure and the the descriptions of the islands and islanders also lack the depth to really engage you.

What you did get was Cook's sesne of self-assured superiority over the native populations but without a feeling for the rounded character of Cook which might, on balance, redeemed him from attitudes we no longer have sympathy with.

Canticle by John F. Deane

found in New Poems on the Underground

Sometimes when you walk down to the red gate
hearing the scrape-music of your shoes across the gravel,
a yellow moon will lift over the hill;
you swing the gate shut and lean on the topmost bar
as if something has been acomplished in the world;
a night wind mistles through the poplar leaves
and all the noise of the universe stills
to an oboe hum, the given note of a perfect
music; there is a vast sky wholly dedicated
to the stars and you know, with certainty,
that all the dead are out, up there, in one
holiday flotilla, and that they celebrate
the fact of a red gate and a yellow moon
that tunes their instruments with you to the symphony

Content by Kate Clanchy

found in New Poems on the Underground

Like walking in fog, in fog and mud,
do you remember, love? We kept,
for once, to the tourist path, boxed in mist,
conscious of just our feet and breath,
and at the peak, sat hand in hand, and let
the cliffs we'd climbed and cliffs to come
reveal themselves and be veiled again
quietly, with the prevailling wind.

Operation Sea Lion by Peter Fleming

Operation Sea Lion - An account of the German preparations and the British counter-measures

Picked this up from Oxfam Books the other day while in search of a Divine Advert Calendar - which btw they didn't have :(

This book had 2 layers of interest - first the raw subject matter and second, as it was first published 1957, the presentation of the events to a very different generation and audience then the contemporary reader.  I do find that reading, what I call, 'historical histories' a particularly enjoyable way to access accounts of the past.  How is the retelling of the events influenced by the time it was written within - for example the majority of those who must have read this account when first published would have lived through the summer of 1940 that it recalls and so would to greater or lesser extents have been involved.

Also it is no great 'myth buster' of a history - which seems to be the only way to get historical subject matter published today (if there isn't a scandal and a reputation to be trasted the contemporary reader is we must assume not interested) - and it gently builds the small details into a narrative that explains not just the outcome of that phase of the war but of the whole war.

I am sure that many of the details firmly asserted by Fleming will now be subject to question or outright rejection as greater access to documents that would have still be classified in the 1950s has been possible, and few writers today would give such a strong part to the differing national characters for fear of straying to racial stereotyping - but as long as you read it as one account rather than the account these thingss do no fatal harm to the integrity of a book that gives an accessible and entertaining insight to a period of time that deserves our attention given that it is so widely hailed as our finest hour.

The Long War by Laurie Lee

found in New Poems on the Underground

Less passionate the long war throws
its burning thorn about all men,
caught in one grief, we share one wonund,
and cry one dialect of pain.

We have forgot who fired the house,
whose easy mischief spilt first blood,
under one raging roof we lie
the fault no longer undrdstood.

But as our twisted arms embrace
the desert where our cities stood,
death's family likeness in each face
must show, at last, our brotherhood.

Melog by Mihangel Morgan (Translated by Christophe Meredith)

Melog

Another book read following a review in Planet

The blurb on the back says the novel is about "political oppression, literature, loneliness and friendship" which makes it seem like a very grand project - however in my view it has very little to say about political oppression and not much more to say about literature (although I accept that read in the original Welsh these sub plos might have had greater resonance), this is a book almost entirely about the interplay of loneliness and friendship - but as that in itself is a massive theme to tackle it makes for a novel of substance.

 While the book takes the character Melog as its namesake it is really Dr Jones who is the center of the story, it is the story of ripples and waves that are created by the entry of Melog into Dr Jones' life (and Melog's repeated departures and returns).  Melog is on many levels a character that should prompt an almost instance dislike, he is selfish and lack any kind of self-awareness, yet you understand completely why Dr Jones is attracted to him and why despite being let down time and again by Melog he fails to wash his hands of the friendship - it is easy to identify similar characters in your own life (and if you can't then, I would suggest, that the likelihood is that you are Melog to all your friends!).

Melog is a character full of fantasy, and you are almost certain that somebody is suffering a major delusion, however you can not quite work out who. Is it Dr Jones? Is it Melog? Or is it the entirely of the human race except Melog? All of them are plausible, and for much of the time it is the latter that seems the most likely - and it is that puzzle that makes it a fanscinating read that draws you onward through the novel.  

Empire Marketing Board Posters by Manchester Art Gallery

Empire Marketing Board Posters: Manchester Art Gallery (4-Fold Series)

This is a very interesting booklet about the work of the Empire Marketing Board (EMB) which produced posters in the 1920s and 1930s encouraging Britons to "buy British" or "buy Empire".

What is interesting is the long view the booklet is able to take on the EMB's work.  There is a lot in common with the highly acclaimed posters produced in the same period for London Underground, with striking images created by leading artists.  However the messages in the EMB's posters are more difficult to relate to than London Underground's fairly uncontroversial desire to see more people tavel by tube.

The booklet asks the questions about how we value the artistic merit of the posters when the messages they are trying to convey are often racist.  The racism of the EMB is not a hate filled racism, but it is no less powerful or damaging. In a strange way the EMB's racism is based on a sort of  idea of "love" - in the posters it paints a picture of the Empire as a family in which Britain as the parents and the Colonies as the children.  While the parents are in charge, parents also have responsibilities to the childern, and the posters tell the British consumer that they can play the part of the good parent by buying goods from the Colonies and so help the children to grow.  What in most troubling about the posters is in fact how successful they are, they are subtle and attractive and so it is hard to spot the powerful propaganda message they contain.

One of the posters in the booklet has been used for the cover of a collection of George Orwell's Essays  and not knowing the origin of the image I assumed it came from some socialist background, it has the feel of a lot of Soviet art work, and that seemed to sort of fit - although not quite - with Orwell.  Now finding it is a detail of an EMB poster it seem rather less appropriate and while the book cover does credit the image to the EMB as well as the artist I wonder how much the person who selected the image knew of the background of its creation?

Venus as a Boy by Luke Sutherland

Venus as a Boy

I have been meaning to read this book for about 5 years having read a review in the Gay Times shortly after it was first published - and it has been lurching in a dark corner of my Amazon account until a few weeks ago when I finally brought it to take with me on holiday.

As after all that time the weight of expectation was heavy - and I am glad to report that the book did not disappoint.

It is a fable, a modern fairy tale, and in a complex way the ending is a happy one. Like that best fairy tales, through its fantasy and otherness the story manages to bring into sharp focus some truths about life and yourselves.  There is a lot of darkness in the story but there is light too and the interplay between the two is the centre of how believable the story - these are extraordinary yet immensely authentic characters.

I loved this book but I also had a weird sense of de ja vu as though I knew the story even before it unfolded - since getting home I have googled it and while there was a play adapted from the book I am pretty sure I never saw it so I am at a lost to explain that feeling - maybe that is just a sign of brilliant writing. 

To Babel and Back by Robert Minhinnick

To Babel and Back

Another book read following a review in Planet

I found this quiet a challenging book and I think that if I hadn't taken it on holiday with me I would have probably given up on it well before half way.  However I am very glad to have carried on and overall I enjoyed reading it.

What was difficult about the book was working out exactly what you were reading, there seem to be an undercurrent of political comment and I spent a good deal of time trying to grasp what the big message of the book was.  However about half way through I gave up on that and by letting go of that search and just allowing myself to wallow in the words I found the experience so much more enjoyable.

If you feel the need for a pigeon hole for the book that it fits best into the category of a collection of poems, as while the sections are connected and there are echos of theme from one to another the linkage is fairly loose.  The writing has the quality of a dream and to quote the book "crossing sleep's border we would find ourselves in two places at once, because two places are what the god of sleep allows..." much of the book exists in two, three, four, or more places at once - and therein is the richness and the challenge.

As a bit of an aside to the main theme of the book I enjoyed the rant about Bill Bryson that occurs near the start of the book which centre on the contrast to another writer Kerouac "Whereas Kerouac didn't give a damn for his reader. If he had he might have been a better writer.  But at least Kerouac has soul, even if that soul has shat its pants, is tormented, damned ... Meanwhile ... Bryson travels to Maine. He finds nothing of interest. So he tell us there is nothing of interest in Maine in prose that contains nothing of interest..."

Our Sound is Our Wound by Lucy Winkett

Our Sound is Our Wound: Contemplative Listening to a Noisy World - The Archbishop of Canterbury's Lent Book 2010

I heard Lucy Winkett at Greenbelt earlier in the year giving a talk based on this book and the it was good to follow that up by reading the book and allowing some of the ideas to be explained in greater depth and to have the time to reflect on them more fully.

The major insight of the book is that we live in a noisy world and that sound is never neutral - there is always a meaning being imparted along with it.  Given that the sounds of our contemporary world are mostly encountered involuntarily it is of even greater importance for us to be attentive to the meaning that are being forced upon us.


Within this umbrella of an idea the book is wide ranging and eclectic and is best understood as a series loosely related essays rather than a single developed thesis, but that is no bad thing.  The book is littered with powerful illustrative examples and the force of the argument that Lucy is putting forward is really driven by these examples - its truthfulness is encountered by having life those experiences yourself.

The chapter on the Sound of the Angels was for me the most interesting - and the idea that it is more important to love Angels than to believe in them seem to be a profoundly important message to our Post-Modern world - and one that it equally applicable to God as to Angels.

I would definitely recommend this book as it is highly readable and yet still manages to prompt lots of 'big' questions.

In The Dark by Beryl Stafford Williams

In the Dark

Another book read following a review in Planet 

To echo the Planet review it would be a mistake to assume that because the protagonists of this story are children that the book is in anyway childish.  The story is really captivating, and while the basic plot is straight out of the Famous Five, even this Blyton fan will admit that there is a really powerful depth of characterization here that is absence in the one dimensional thrills of Blyton’s work.

One of the strengths of the book is that you are transported into the Second World War atmosphere in which “careless talk costs lives” and so it is completely believable that the lead character 60 years on has only a partial understanding of the events that unfolded around her – and then even the space of decades does not allow every question to be answered – in fact in the final pages of the book new questions enter the frame just where you expected there to be a tying up of the loose ends.

The back drop of the drama is the evacuation of the National Gallery to a quarry in the mountains of Wales – this was an evocative symbol of the British war effort, a token perhaps to prove that we the British were fighting for civilization in the face of the brutal and inhumane Nazis. The book nods in the direction of these grand themes but thankfully avoids getting bogged down in them – it would have been an easy trap to fall into by inserting a long and clunky essay on the state of the humanity into the mouth of one of the rural teenagers.  

Sold as a Slave by Olaudah Equiano

Sold as a Slave (Penguin Great Journeys)

Part of the Penguin Great Journeys series this was an interesting read giving a rare view of slavery from the inside.  What is most telling is the way in which we can see that the system of slavery, particularly as it was found in the West Indies, allowed otherwise normal and 'civilised' people to carry out acts of immense cruelty without a second thought - the parallels to the Holocaust are self evident.  But what makes the life story of Olaudah Equiano most shocking and so powerful an indictment against slavery is the fact that isn't an unrelenting tale of woe. Alongside the moments of gross inhumanity there are moments of joy born out of humanity at its best - and these serve to make the cruelty all the more real.

The Lion and the Unicorn by George Orwell

The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius

 I was prompted to read this due the numerous references to it in Billy Bragg's Progressive Patriot in particularly as he pointed out that this is the source of the "old maids biking to Holy Communion through the mists of the autumn morning" which is such a vivid and oft used image that I was keen to see it in its original context.

It is always really interesting to read a piece of writing that is of its moment, and this is one such text, written early in the Second World War in the midst of the dark days of the Battle of Britain and the Blitz, days that have been commemorated all over our TVs in the last few weeks. Orwell is writing here with a very explicit political agenda and the skill he displays here made his argument a persuasive one.

But rather than go on and on about how wonderful Orwell was as a writer, as I am a big fan, I think what is more interesting is to search for what this work might say to us today.

In many ways we can see the establishment of the Welfare State, the wave of nationalisations, and the dismantlement of the Empire, after the War as the fulfilment of  Orwell's vision yet since 1979 we have, as a nation, turned our back on that vision.  But now the Thatcherite and Blairite projects are over, does the current financial crisis merit a reassessment of Orwell's socialist future?.

The first thing to acknowledge is Orwell's method, he is very clear in making the first part of the book, "England Your England", a review of the current situation because to talk about the future you need to understand the present - and we are not in the England of 1940 and so we need to be careful because the answer to the problem that Orwell saw in 1940 is unlikely to be the same as the answer we need today (although it might perhaps be similar).

The second thing to acknowledge is that Orwell clearly sees that the radical change he is advocating was only becoming possible because the threat posed by Hitler was psychologically so massive that it had a unifying effect on the country and allowed vested interests to be cast aside in favour of the common good.  However, for better or worse, the current crisis is not (or not yet) of the psychological magnitude to have the required galvanising effect to allow radical change.  That said if we look at Climate Change I think that we can begin to see signs of that kind of movement. 

And so, a little disappointedly, I find my self concluding (unlike Billy Bragg) that it probably doesn't have that much to say directly to our present times. That does not devalue it, it is still fascinating to read, bittersweet at those moments we see that Orwell is right that England will always be England - with the good and bad points of national character that he holds up just as strong today, and it can form an inspiration and a template to those trying to formulate a better future for us all.

Non-return by Dai Vaughan

Non-Return

I read this book following a review in Planet  "The International Magazine for Wales" which is a major source of my reading alongside the book reviews in the Church Times (these two plus Amazon do a lot of damage to my bank balance!).

The structure of the book adds to the interest - with every other chapter breaking away from the main narrative and being at one level a short story in itself and at another overlaping with some aspect of the that main narrative.  These chapters' alternative voices give relief to the otherwise rather self absorbed emotional drama of the main narrator (relief both in the sense of as a rest from it and also by adding depth to it).  

The narrator begins as an apprentice draughtsman in the 50s and the descriptions of the drawing office leave you, even a child of the 80s like me, with a vivid sense of nostalgia for a lost and dimly remembered analogue age, when he muses that "that's always to a degree the magic of railway travel where... you can't be reached on the telephone" you could almost be tempted to weep for what we have losted even in the 'quiet' coach (and, yes, I do see the irony in blogging nostalgically about the analogue past!).

He begins wrestling with the youthful search for identity and yet, as we journey with him through the decades, we discover that the search goes on and at the end of the book, in retirement, we find that he is still wrestling with that same search for identity.  This could be disheartening and yet here it is somehow life affirming - it give us all permission to go on searching - and it avoids the trap of offering a tidy ending.  Another interesting aspect of his journey comes when his wife joins the Greenham Women's Camp, and how he negoiates a relationship with that cause (the content of the cause is not important - it could be any deeply held conviction of a partner).  He is always going to be an outsider from that part of her life and yet he searches for ways to be a part of it, to show support and yet reconciling himself to the role of an outsider as it becomes clear that it is only from this position that you can genuinely share in someone's passion without trampling on it and making it yours not their. This all makes for a very absorbing and enjoyable read.

Let a place be made by Yves Bonnefoy (translated by Anthony Rudolf)

found in New Poems on the Underground

Let a place be made for the one who draws near,
The one who is cold, deprived of any home,

Tempted by the sound of a lamp, by the lit
Threshold of a solitary house.

And if he is still exhausted, full of anguish,
Say again for him those words that heal.

What does this heart which once was silence need
If not those words which are both sign and prayer,

Like a fire caught sight of in the sudden night,
Like the table glimpsed in a poor house?

What the Ladybird Heard by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Lydia Monks

What The Ladybird Heard

As I read this book today I best review it rather than screening it out and giving the impression that I only read learned tombs!

This is a bright colourful book with the promise on the cover of a glittery Ladybird on every page so I couldn't resist.

I am sure children will enjoy following the story with its rhymes and plenty of animal noises to join in with, and while the pictures are simple and 2D they are full of charm and character which allow the imagination to start to make up other stories about life in the farm yard.

I like it, even though it came nowhere near replacing The Bad-tempered Ladybird as my favourite Ladybird based picture book!  

Autumn Journal by Louis MacNeice

found in Collected Poems

I have to admit that I don't  normally read poems it they longer that a single page and so this one at over 60 pages was for me an epic - however I was inspired to seek it out after it had been referred to by Theo Hobson in his book Faith and I am pleased that I made the effort as it is a really thought provoking piece.

MacNeice is writing as the world was been sucked, seemly inevitably, into the Second World War, and within the poem you encounter, and journey with the poet through, waves of doubt as an educated and 'cultured' man questions what value that culture, millennia of civilisation, has when it is clearly powerless to arrest the forces of evil that seem to grip the world.

Yet the poem end on a deliberately defiant note, with the choice to go on and go on with hope even when what is hope for seems implausible:
"Sleep, the past, and wake, the future,
And walk out promptly through the open door;
But you, my coward doubts, may go on sleeping,
You need not wake again - not any more."

It is this choice that interested Hobson - the rejection of a purely rational assessment of the world, which is inherent in religious faith, but also would appear to be essential to all human life if it is not to be overcome the negativity of the world around us.  Hobson was questioning how it is possible to be a hopeful atheist as it would appear that it is only by a leap of faith that we can hope for an irrationally better future.

Letters from an Extreme Pilgrim by Peter Owen Jones

Letters from an Extreme Pilgrim

I was a little bit suspicious of whether a 'celebrity' vicar writing a book as a spin off of a TV programme would be able to offer anything of spiritual depth and integrity - but in this book Peter Owen Jones manages both depth and integrity in spades.

The book is made up of Letters written to those very close to Peter and those (I assume) he has never meet, to those still living and to those who have departed this life. This format allows you to have very intimate insight into Peter's life, his relationships, and his loves and loses, without it becoming voyeuristic. His articulation of his angst around identity and relationships holds up a powerful mirror to the experience of some many of us in our so called 'post-modern' age.

I have been reading this book over the last couple of month a letter or two at a time - and this is the approach that I would recommend.  The letters have an intensity which means that they are best encountered like this - as I think that if you sat and read the book cover to cover you would be overwhelmed and it was therefore lose its impact.


The book is also in its own way highly political - in the sense that the criticism of our individualistic and materialistic society is a call for radical change.  If we are to overcome these faults, that Peter finds within himself as much as anyone else, then we will be living very different lives and the seemly essential glue of unending consumption would be removed from society.  But maybe it is worth the risk of finding out if everything would really fall apart without it.

The Worship Mall by Bryan D. Spinks

The Worship Mall: Contemporary responses to contemporary culture

I enjoyed this which book sets out to give an overview of worship movements that make up the 'contemporary' scene, and it provides a very useful introduction to the major components from alt.worship to mainstream Roman Catholic, from Amish to mega-church.

In order to cover the breadth of the contemporary scene the chapters are unable to going into any great depth - however with its generous references to other writers and researchers it makes a very useful resource for  those embarking on study of 'worship' or one of the particular expression discussed.

A significant amount of the book is given over to descriptions of the different expressions of worship  but the analysis and comment that is there, although fairly concise, is given greater impact by the feeling that it is grounded in the observations of the actual practices. Spinks comments as a 'neutral' outsider and while some of the analysis is fairly cutting when it comes to some of the rhetoric and self-understanding of the different churches he provides this without undermining the value of the churches as site of integrity and potential locations for the encounter with God.

For example in the chapter "What is Celtic about contemporary Celtic worship?" Spinks' answer is in no uncertain terms very little, claiming that "Comtemporary 'Celtic' worship services seem as much Celtic as... Taco Bell fast food is Mexican." but he goes on that "It is what stirs the heart, soul and spirit ... not whether it is rational or historically authentic" that is the significant issue in their success.

The are also some moments that within the deadpan delivery of an academic work which made me laugh out loud, such as the discussion of the sexualised nature references to the believer's relationship with Jesus within many charismatic churches - which includes the quote from a spontaneous song "I can feel your love swelling, swelling and growing inside me/swelling and growing deeper and wider inside me"

It was also personally very pleasing when he points out that some of the 'hippest' innovators of alt.worship etc are in substances only doing things that have been around since the 1960s just with a few added lasers.

This is an excellent book and it merely wets the appetite to find out more about the weird and wonderful things that are going on out there under the banner of Christian Worship.

Under the Stairs by Caitlin McLeod

I am in the middle of a book so here is something from New Poems on the Underground to keep you going

She has a small shop under the stairs
where I buy black beads and velvet cloth
and the little pleasures of a shiny green apple sticker.

But I am older now and I act as if I don't
remember what it was like to pretend
because she is my sister and I am alone.

The blue airplane has no wheels.
The bucket filled with yellow stars
has no handle. The pinwheel does not turn.

I like those best because they are like me.

The Progressive Patriot by Billy Bragg

The Progressive Patriot

I didn't have high hopes for this book - having decided to read it after it was referred to a couple of times in other things.

I felt you could have got rid of a couple of chapters and the book would still have made its point, also the way that Billy jumped backwards and forwards in time was unhelpful. This jumbling of the chronology did not seem to add anything to the argument and did not appear to be an intentional juxtaposing of eras, and even if it was intentional for me it was mostly irritating.

What was worse than this however was the way the Billy without any apparent self-awareness decided to have his cake and eat it by showing simultaneously that the working class radicalism that he delights in was both a major break from the old political order that gave us Magna Carta and the Great Reform Act and also the natural heir to that tradition.

Also it is important to note his idealisation of the working class and vilification of the rest of us - which through the force of argument he tries to leave as unchallengeable. However as someone without a working class family tree this move is unhelpful.

Yet while my forebears have enjoyed relative wealth I don't think them spent as much of their time trampling the poor as Billy seems to make out and you are left with the sense that the book will embrace everyone as English except those of the traditional upper and middle classes.

While the historical narrative might have some merit and the anecdotes of Bragg family life down the ages of some interest, the programme he puts forward for consolidating the values of England are laughable.

He think we need a written constitution the core principles of which will be summed up in a few bullet points that can be printed on the bad of our ID cares as a constant reminder of both our rights and responsibilities.
This constitution will be written via a nationwide network of local meetings feeding their ideas into a central drafting committee and adopted by popular vote.
With this as the 'answer' and hopes that the book might be a useful contribution to the civic life of the nation are well and truly dashed.

Faith by Theo Hobson

Faith by Theo Hobson

This book starts well with the introduction giving us a clear roadmap for the journey that Theo wants to take us on - he is going to show "Whether one likes it or not, the strength of the word [faith], its ability to mean really determined optimism, is due to its religious history."

He moves on with an opening chapter 'Against Faith' on the critics of faith - militant atheists - who have made a renewed and forceful attack on the place of faith in society over the last few years, and he is able to show some of the flaws within their own arguments.

However in the rest of the book he seem to fail to make a compelling case for faith.  This is in part because while critics of faith can make a general attack on faith for the advocate the general condition of faith does not exist.  The faith you have is particular to a religion, and Theo while exclusively talking about Christian faith he tries to maintain that he is giving a general account and this contradiction is his undoing.

The general defence faith as a positive contributor to society has to ignore the major point that a religious faith is for the believer faith in something that is true.  We struggle in a multi-faith society - where there is general recognition that all faith communities are good are providing support and stability - to deal with the issue that faith in the truth of one religion is at some level an absence in faith in the truth of another religion.

What we are left with, as this book shows, is the assertation that it doesn't matter what you believe because the aspect of faith that is good for you and for society is not the content of your beliefs but the warm and fussy feeling that believing in something - anything - gives.  And for me that is a disappointment.

Introduction

I have decided to start this blog to share with the world what I think about the books that I have been reading.
It is a fairly simple idea - and the content will, of course, be dictated by the eclectic mix of things that I happen to have read.

I will be including links to Amazon where use can buy the books - and through the Amazon Associates scheme part of the price that you pay will go towards the Small Pilgrim Places Network www.smallpilgrimplaces.org