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.