Sunday, 30 March 2025

My review of Missus, by Ruth Park

Missus

by Ruth Park

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Like all exceptional novelists, the late Ruth Park employed a simplistic yet captivating insight of the human condition. This set her work apart from the workaday potboiler that simply churns out juicy formulaic plotlines. Her work is purely character driven, their storylines organic by-products of characters' endearing quirks and peculiar choices. 

This is what made her a literary writer, rather than a fast fiction or romance machine of the Barbara Cartland ilk. Her characters are blessed and burdened with the virtues, shortcomings and consequent dilemmas of ourselves and our loved ones, universal qualities and quandaries that resonate with our inner philosopher. 

Her settings, whether city slum or outback dustbowl, are vivid, poignant and glorious. Her understated period detail is delicious in the many flashbacks. So completely does she transport us to other times and places, we feel that gratifying sense of escape that we read for. This raw literary talent shines across all three novels in the series.

This third and final instalment in Park's prestigious trilogy, the prequel, Missus, begins in the 1920s. Our beloved established characters become less central presences, absentee players for much of the novel, contemplated and discussed by others. 

I would have liked more focus on our familiar people, less on their multitudinous forebears and offsiders. I was interested in the trajectory of Hughie and Margaret's pairing, prior to their Sydney transfer and offspring that form the next two novels. 

I appreciated this necessity of new protagonists. What I had not envisaged was their persistent dominance and high numbers, many being arguably quite extraneous. Though some were absorbing, this matrix of 'others' pushes aside our special people. 

Whilst feeling compensated with certain of Park's other characters, I skimmed many of their scenes, picking out my own characters' episodes, tying in their histories. Though this perhaps typifies prequels, it was also as if Park became uneasy staying with these characters from previous instalments, or just too bored with them to give them the space I wanted for them.

Or maybe we're meant to approach this as a standalone piece. If so, then the publisher's pitching becomes questionable.   

None of the above issues affect the quality of prose, as rich, even richer in parts, than in the other two The Harp in the South books, perhaps because by this book she was nearly forty years more practised than with the first two. 

Missus, like its sibling novels, transcends family saga into a wider social critique, an intimate study of human emotion. Its stylistic supremacy is evident from the opening lines, hence my four stars despite my other misgivings covered here. 

This is interwar regional Australia, its ethos, its people, its places, told by one of the finest.

My review of Hard Road: The Life and Times of Stevie Wright, by Glenn Goldsmith

Hard Road: The Life and Times of Stevie Wright

by Glenn Goldsmith

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

It was the '60s. I was a boy growing up in the UK. Pop groups were our idols, their sounds our mantras. The Easybeats sound was no less impactful than that of the Beatles, The Stones, The Who, The Kinks, The Animals or any other such band of the hour. 

Their front man, Stevie Wright, was among those immortals whose every crackly radio lyric we hung onto, whose spot lit forms we gazed at in wonder on our snowy black and white TV screens. Their voices we emulated at play, spun round our heads as we fell asleep at night and, as with everything else we internalised, remains in our heads 50-plus years on. 

Wright was a remarkable performance talent who sprang from nowhere at the right moment, then paid his industry dues in reaching the top. Like the mythical Icarus who burnt his wings flying too close to the sun, or the cat with its nine lives, Wright would survive the seemingly impossible for way, way longer than fathomable. Others have gone the same way, of course, while an ever-shrinking handful of his contemporaries, incredibly, live on. 

So many of this generation walked similar paths to this hard living music industry legend, if minus his fame or notoriety. Few had as far to fall as Stevie Wright. But the sex, drugs and rock were the cultural, generational binder. We were all components of the counterculture revolution, some infamous, most unheard of.   

I searched high and low for this book, albeit thirteen years after its release (to say I have a long reading list is a mild understatement!). After awaiting its arrival, on tenterhooks, I took it to bed at 7 and 8 p.m., like a jealous, obsessive teenager, for the best part of a week until closing the last page.

Far from the tacky kiss-and-tell performance of some like it, this impeccably documented account of an icon's darker side is penned with compassion, respect and integrity. One of those rare, classy efforts readers so often hope for but are only sometimes delivered. 

A heartwarming trip down Nostalgia Street for the first half, hysterically tragicomic for the second, by turns almost unreadably heart wrenching, devastating as it nears conclusion.   

I laughed, I cried, I nearly bought a round.

Full marks to author Glenn Goldsmith who, besides having a musical career of his own, was Stevie Wright's Musical Director and Tour Manager in the late '80s. 

Pure class, Mr. Goldsmith. You've done Stevie proud.


My review of After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie, by Jean Rhys

After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie

by Jean Rhys

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

This is the delectable Jean Rhys at her very best. She has our central character deliciously sussed out. We know her shortcomings and want to help her out - it's a tough life out there for Julia Martin. Hell, it's a goddam jungle.

Some of this underdog protagonist's wry observations are as bluntly incisive as Rhys's narrative observation of her:

'Of course she had some pathetic illusions about herself or she would not be able to go on living.'

'It's so easy to make a person who hasn't got anything seem wrong.'

'If all good, respectable people had one face, I'd spit in it.' 

And so on.

Released in 1931, three years after Quartet, this was Rhys's second published novel, which she wrote and had published when she was 41. One reviewer called this material from her early period 'sordid'. It would be another 36 years before the starchy literary establishment acknowledged her with the 1967 WH Smith Literary Award, of which she said only, in that characteristic understated way she had with irony and words: 'It has come too late.'

I laugh out loud and cry a little whenever I read Mackenzie, just as I so often do when reading any of this formidable author's work.

This novel should, like all her others of this period, have been far more successful than it was in its day, just as its Jean Rhys should have been given far greater recognition, far sooner, for her extraordinary talent. She was a proud pariah though and swallowed down her lot, along with a rather lot of gin and who could blame her?

It would be criminal for any serious reader or writer to let this, or any other Jean Rhys novel escape their attention. Treat yourself to this fabulously rocky, rollercoaster ride down the gurgler in silk stockings - you deserve it.

Then read it again and see what you missed.


My review of The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye

by J.D. Salinger

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

This was the first book I read as a young adult. An inexperienced reader, I had been too busy living and suddenly felt I was missing out on books, so had asked around for something to help get me into reading.

I glanced casually through the pages on a two-month coach trip around Australia's red centre. Then I reread it more closely, then again intensely, and a breakthrough occurred for me. It was the perfect beginning of a long and winding reading road for me.

I related closely to narrator Holden Caulfield, empathising with his internal frictions and dilemmas as I gazed from my coach window at the wilderness rush by. This book deals with those complex yet universal issues of personal identity, belonging, connection and alienation.

Providing a journey within my journey, J. D. Salinger became a close, early travel buddy I'll never forget and will remain ever thankful to.

An instant hit when published in 1951, The Catcher in the Rye has been translated into almost every language and still sells around 250,000 annually, totalling around 65 million books, its protagonist becoming an icon for teenage rebellion and attracting extremist Conservative criticism.

Through the 1960s & '70s it was the most censored book in American high schools and libraries. By 1978 it was banned in Issaquah, Washington, high schools, as being part of an 'overall communist plot.' As late as 1981 it was America's most censored yet most taught book in public schools. The American Library Association called it the 1990s' tenth most frequently challenged book.

Those alarmist challenges, by hysterical right-wing zealots, surrounded Holden's characteristic teenage vulgar language, sexual references, blasphemy, alleged undermining of family values and moral codes, being a poor role model, encouragement of rebellion, and promotion of drinking, smoking, lying and promiscuity. Typically, the challengers have been unfamiliar with the plot.

Numerous shootings have even been associated with the novel, including an assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan. John Lennon's assassin was arrested with a copy of the book he had purchased that day.

As its critics have expired, however, the book has survived, becoming a timeless, fondly preserved classic. Stale, overblown controversies aside, I can't imagine anyone not adoring this gorgeous ride.

Read it and tell me I'm wrong.

My review of The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Faith in 1605, by Antonia Fraser

The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Faith in 1605

by Antonia Fraser 

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Whatever Lady Antonia Fraser wrote about - I'm sure I could read her shopping lists and be entertained - would be worth reading. The lady is perhaps my favourite mistress of this genre. Not simply erudite, eloquent and formidably well educated, she's genuinely talented. Such is the key to her success and longevity.

It came as no surprise, therefore, that what has to me been one of the most excruciatingly boring episodes in history to glean facts from, was here made gripping material that refused to be put down. Why couldn't we have had such reading at school? People can't help learning when drinking up such words.

It's unnecessary to outline here what the failed Gunpowder Plot was, with Guy Fawkes night such a culturally ingrained institution. What makes Fraser's history of its advent so coherent is, as always, her elaboration of the characters, their background, their motives, etc.

Just her broader insight into James I & VI's kingship was enough for this reader. His was never a time that resonated for me in other reading, yet here he is given life I had previously begged for in other works to gain just basic insight.

Callously indifferent to his mother's cruel fate, displaying not an ounce of filial loyalty, this maternally disdainful overly precious self-serving brat spent his Scottish days awaiting Elizabeth I's death. Baring a nauseatingly acquiescent grin from afar he anchored her favour as heir.

As if dancing, satin-shoed, on Gloriana's grave, he then minced brashly around her crumbling English palaces whose days of pomp and finery were gone before she lay cold. Ostentatiously bejewelled, in dusty ermine, swirling velvet, fluttering cloth of gold and ermine, he flirted audaciously with male favourites, in an unfathomable Scottish brogue. He stank. Behind him trailed a grubby, uncouth imported entourage that echoed his foreign tongue, stank just as badly and collectively got up everyone's nose. Yet James was impervious to the resulting courtly consternation. Not entirely facile, he was icily shrewd, calculating like his great great grandfather Henry VII. He also sponsored translation of the Bible named after him: the Authorised King James Version.

I still didn't warm to him though, but didn't need to.

It's astonishing that any son of so fascinating a legend as my favourite tragedienne, the martyred Mary, Queen of Scots, could have turned out so drab to eke out depth or meaning from! He would surely have been so reviled for his boringness alone; that in itself would justify the hatching of any plot. (In fact, this plot targeted the House of Lords rather than the king specifically. James's rule and its incidentals personified that target though.)

Contrasting with his predecessor Elizabeth I, her sister 'Bloody' Mary I and father Henry VIII, slithery James I lacked fire, conviction, had a spinelessness, a wateriness I find hard to get my teeth into. Yet Lady Fraser overrides this obstacle with all of her usual panache.

Guy Fawkes himself was little more interesting than King James, yet here we have all we need on him, fleshed out via 'that' satisfying Fraseresque treatment she is renowned and revered for.

The politics around the plot are, by any other account I've read, dry, monotonous and interminably convoluted, particularly for those not instinctively drawn to the Jacobean era. Not a patch on all things Tudor despite being immediately adjoined to its timeframe. Yet these politics, too, are here given context, explained patiently and meticulously. On this I knew I would be able to rely, having relished other such Fraser books. Like a child in a hearth I sat, glued, welcoming the magic of this storyteller's voice.

Like I said at the start, it wouldn't have mattered what it was about, it was always going to be special. It was, it is. I was finally able to learn things I didn't know about this fiasco, minus that dreaded textbook tedium that creeps into other accounts (oh woe, oh woe!).  

Recommended especially to those who, like this reader, need more than a dry old listing of dates and names to get through this done-to-death tale to broaden their knowledge.

(Would have given it 5 stars but knocked off a half for my undying dislike of all things James I & VI - give me his neurotic mother any day, or even his sleazy grandson Charles II - and another half for whoever chose that ludicrous e-cover art.)


My review of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

by Maya Angelou

My rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Maya Angelou's recollection of her first seventeen years had me spellbound on first reading. In the world's mourning fortnight after her passing, I meditatively reread this first and most highly acclaimed of her seven autobiographies.

Here was one master storyteller, a formidable intellect with a heart of pure, solid gold. Caged Bird catapulted Angelou to international fame and critical acclaim in 1969, launching a literary career that brought her dozens of awards and 30-odd honorary doctoral degrees.

While the conservative literary commentariat labelled this 'autobiographical fiction' because of Angelou's use of thematic development and other techniques common to fiction, the overruling consensus recognises it as true autobiography, but a genre she critiqued, changed and expanded.

Her use of understatement, self-mockery, humour and irony won hearts globally, despite right-wing objections to her depictions of lesbianism, premarital cohabitation, pornography and violence.

Though her graphic depictions of childhood rape, racism, and sexuality saw this book banned from many school curricula and library shelves, more have stuck loyally with it.

Her humour, drawn from Black folklore, sent strength to not only her ethnic tribal survivors of racism and oppression, it reached out to all, resonating especially for women of all shades and minority group readers of each conceivable kind. In parts so intimately told it was like sitting in her parlour, listening to her over coffee and cookies.

Her famously incisive take on society glows succinctly through each chapter and verse. I felt honoured to have been let in on her astonishing life.

Thank you, Maya Angelou, you were one gutsy, mindful saint who told it like it was with unparalleled grace and candour. You were a rare and precious role model for all who strive to express themselves through the written word. You lent spirit to generations and will continue to.

My review of Two Queens in One Isle: The Deadly Relationship of Elizabeth I & Mary Queen of Scots, by Alison Plowden

Two Queens in One Isle: The Deadly Relationship of Elizabeth I & Mary Queen of Scots

by Alison Plowden

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Alison Plowden's history of these cousin queens, Protestant Elizabeth I of England and Catholic Mary of Scots, is enthralling.

It is near impossible, after reading material such as this, to side with one queen or the other. Each was arguably at fault and justified in her treatment of the other. Mary came off the worst to lioness Bess.

The backstory is that the teenaged Mary, when queen consort of France, had once claimed the so called 'illegitimate' Elizabeth's throne as her own and was considered the legitimate sovereign of England by many English Catholics.

Mary became widowed young in France, returning to Scotland where she had not lived since her infancy. She was not embraced for long by her Protestant Scottish subjects or Lords who had other plans for Scotland's rulership than allowing a woman and Catholic reign. 

After the suspicious murder of Mary's despised second husband, Elizabeth's cousin Darnley, abruptly followed by her remarriage to Darnley's suspected assassin, Bothwell, Mary was overthrown and imprisoned. After several failed attempts she escaped, fleeing south to England, seeking Elizabeth's support and protection. Dishevelled, Mary was taken aback when, rather than being led to the anticipated hospitality of Elizabeth's court, she was taken into 'protective custody' by English officials.

Mary expected Elizabeth to help her regain her throne, but wily Elizabeth characteristically prevaricated, instead holding Mary 'temporarily' captive. This was officially for Mary's protection while Elizabeth ordered inquiries into the conduct of Mary's rebels. She also, however, ordered inquiries into Mary's alleged complicity in Darnley's murder plot, ostensibly so as to clear Mary's name in making way for her proposed reinstatement to Scottish rulership.

Without direct royal heirs and seeing the younger, more beautiful and fecund Mary as a threat if released, the perpetually unmarried Elizabeth kept Mary confined in English castles and manor houses for almost nineteen years.

After understandably conspiring towards her liberty, at whatever cost, desperate and isolated Mary was made a figurehead for numerous Catholic conspiracies to dethrone Elizabeth. Deemed by Elizabeth's councillors too dangerous to live, Mary was entrapped. On somewhat trumped-up charges, she was convicted for plotting Elizabeth's assassination. Executed, Mary became martyrised throughout Catholic Christendom.

Mary's unprecedented royal execution was one official rationale behind Catholic Phillip II of Spain's failed invasion of England with his Armada. Elizabeth was branded a heretic by the pope, who sanctioned Phillip's Armanda, calling for Elizabeth's dethronement. With the English Channel's stormy weather on Elizabeth's side, the English fleet, under vice admiral Francis Drake, famously saw them off.

The two queens are adjacently entombed in Westminster Abbey, Mary's being the grander piece commissioned by her son, King James VI & I of Scotland and England, who had Mary reinterred from her original, less salubrious resting place of Elizabeth's approval.

Ultimately, everyone makes up their own mind over which was the heroine and which the villainess - there's a little of each in both queens.

A fascinating and informative read.

My review of Billy Liar, by Keith Waterhouse

Billy Liar

by Keith Waterhouse 

My rating: 3 out of 5 stars

This popular 1959 novel was adapted into a successful three act West End play starring Albert Finney, which enjoyed enough success to then tour globally. The acclaimed 1963 film starred Tom Courtenay and Julie Christie, featuring the marvellous veteran Mona Washbourne, legendary comic Wilfred Pickles and an early big screen appearance by funny man Leonard Rossiter, who would later become a household name in TV's hilarious Rising Damp. A 1973 London Weekend Television series followed, before a blockbuster West End musical at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. The latter (1974) ran for 904 performance and starred Michael Crawford, featuring a practically unheard-of Elaine Paige.

Poor naïve young Billy's a bit of a lad but a good, honest one, learning keenly and clumsily about the opposite sex and forever daydreaming of his own personal fantasy world not so that unlike his real one, neither place being all that flash.

His daydreams are attempts at escaping the tedium and isolation of his very ordinary work and home life. His girlfriends are difficult, foreign creatures. His workmates and bosses can be scoundrels. His comical family is ever-present but seldom really there for him.

This amusing journey is a snapshot in time. Nothing magnificent, fancy or complex, just an honest, straight forward read, maybe for those in need of a simplistic diversion from heavier stuff.

It somehow dug itself a special place in my literary memories. And that's saying something for such a light-hearted read.


My review of She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth, by Helen Castor

She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth

by Helen Castor

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

This quality writing explores a stimulating proposition which, as a seasoned Tudor reader, I had long pondered: why all the fuss over Princess Mary Tudor (later 'Bloody' Queen Mary I) in her youth, being a female heir? Why did her father Henry VIII go to such extremes as discarding his marriage, splitting with the church of Rome etc., in his panic to get a male heir, when women had already long since led the nation?

Similarly, why all the further despair when Elizabeth I succeeded Mary? And why, during Elizabeth's long reign, was there so much angst over her most obvious heir, Mary of Scots, possibly succeeding (the latter's religion and controversies aside)? This chauvinistic, perhaps ill-informed generation of statesmen seemingly underestimated that female leadership was not new ground.

I loved, as always, reading about the fabulously fierce Margaret of Anjou, who no one would want to cross.

Ferocious Matilda is also always a great character to revisit. She really set the bar for others – unless we go back much further to Boudica who, while never ruling the entire nation, put up one hell of a fight against the invading Romans consolidated tribal kingdoms such as hers and ruled the land, successfully annexing most of Britain as a colony of their Empire.

Isabella of France, too, is always great reading value. This 'don't mess with me' queen never fails to make me grin for ear to ear with admiration.

Austere Eleanor of Aquitaine is perhaps my least favourite subject here, her period being my least favourite. It would have been improper to exclude her though. Her history I find too dragged out, by all her biographers. I'd have liked to have seen the proportion of this book given to Eleanor allocated instead to Mary I, but that's my ingrained Tudor fanaticism for you.

I like Helen Castor's more formal, unsentimental style. She meanders less than some on more personal details, which perhaps makes for a more remote study of each queen. This, combined with the requisitely compact nature of this lofty work, left me less intimately acquainted with each subject than I have through other biographers of the same queens. These others have the advantage of space to delve into the 'popular history' realms of emotional motive, leisurely interests, wardrobe preferences, dietary quirks, etc.

I find Castor closer to David Starkey or Eric Ives than Antonia Fraser or Alison Weir. A curiously masculine narrative by a woman on what is such a feministic endeavour. This factor offers balance, saving the work from degeneration into what might have become just another medieval Girl Power rant.

A good solid read, if more academically styled than my usual choices. I was not disappointed.

My review of Mildred Pierce, by James M. Cain

Mildred Pierce

by James M. Cain 

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars


I relished James M. Cain's 1941 classic from which two great screen adaptations of the same title have emerged: Joan Crawford's first starring Warner Bros role after leaving MGM, winning her the 1945 Best Actress Academy Award, with Eve Arden, Ann Blyth, Jack Carson and Zachary Scott. And Director-Screenwriter Todd Haynes's 2011 multi-Award-winning five-part miniseries, starring Kate Winslet, Guy Pearce and Evan Rachel Wood. Far truer to the novel than the movie was, the miniseries is an almost scene-for-scene dramatization, including Cain's original dialogue.

Set in 1930s Glendale, California, the plot follows middle-class housewife Mildred, whose money was lost in the Great Depression. An overprotective, self-sacrificing mother, after separating from her unemployed husband Bert, Mildred sets out to support herself and two daughters. After much door knocking, she finds waitressing work but worries that her spoilt older daughter, Veda, will think her new job demeaning. 

Desperate to retain Veda's approval, Mildred, still waitressing her fingers to the bone, starts a home baked pie sideline, partly to make ends meet but mostly to keep Veda in the style to which she's become accustomed. Her pies a surprise hit, Mildred opens a restaurant. She also falls for handsome Monty Beragon, a younger man whose great family wealth had similarly evaporated in the Great Depression.

A successful businesswoman, Mildred opens a second restaurant, then a third. Though initially enjoying her mother's newfound success, Veda remains contemptuous of the working classes which, to her, includes self-made traders like her mother. Veda becomes increasingly ungrateful, demanding more and more from Mildred while openly sneering at her. Soon, no measure of money or gifts will keep the disdainful Veda onside. Compounding Mildred's turmoil, Veda's younger sister, Moire (nicknamed 'Ray'), falls suddenly ill and dies. But plucky Mildred keeps going.

Uncovering Veda's plot to blackmail a wealthy family with a fake pregnancy is the final straw, and Mildred kicks her out. Having had extensive opera training, financed by Mildred's hard-earned dollars, Veda lands on her feet, but Mildred perversely yearns for her estranged ungrateful daughter. She convinces Monty, now her husband, to sell her his family estate, luring Veda back into her life with wealth. 

Discovering that Mildred's extravagance has eaten into company profits, her business partner Wally faces her down, threatening a corporate overthrow. Revisiting ex-husband Bert, she confesses to systematically syphoning money from her own company in a desperate, ongoing quest to rebuy Veda's affection.

Seeking the now successful Veda's financial help to rebalance the books – and protectively concerned Wally may target Veda's assets – Mildred goes to face her, only to find her in bed with Monty. He announces he's leaving Mildred for Veda, who sneers that this was their plan from the outset. Pushed to despair, Mildred tries to throttle her daughter who, as a result, loses her singing voice and therefore her job.

Compelled to forfeit her business empire, Mildred transfers it to former company assistant and longtime friend Ida. She then relocates to Reno, Nevada, where the law allows her a rapid divorce from Monty. Ex husband Bert moves out to visit and, with Mildred's divorce settlement finalised, proposes remarriage.

With Veda's singing career in tatters after her loss of voice, her reputation is also tarnished from having slept with stepfather Monty. In professional damage control she arrives on Mildred's doorstep with a press entourage, to publicly reconcile with her mother. Mildred gullibly takes her in, only to realise months later she's been had when Veda callously announces her ruthless new plans.

Finally waving Veda farewell from the doorstep, a Mildred says 'to hell' with Veda and heads indoors to 'get stinko' with stalwart twice-over husband Bert.

Oh, Mildred, Mildred, Mildred, whatta gal! I was frequently urged to kiss her and slap her into sense. So sucked in was I that I reread it - a second time, then a third. This is something special, with its poignant, noir-tinged stylistic treatment.

I never wanted this to end. Can't imagine any reader of any age or group not devouring this iconic tale of a great and endearing woman and her forgivably anomalous weaknesses.


My review of Angela’s Ashes, by Frank McCourt

Angela’s Ashes 

by Frank McCourt

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

One of my all-time favourite reads, this Pulitzer Prize-winner is far from your typical memoir format (whatever that is), reading instead more like a great classic novel. It won the 1996 National Book Critics Circle Award (Biography), and the 1997 Boeke Prize. The vivid, multi award nominated big screen adaptation, starring Emily Watson and Robert Carlyle, won Watson the London Film Critics Circle Best Actress award and Alan Parker the Vary International Film Festival award for Best Director, despite some box office disappointment.

Angela's Ashes chronicles author Frank McCourt's childhood after his family must return from the USA to their native Ireland, due to financial strife and domestic complexities surrounding his father's drunkenness. We follow young Frank's challenging life in 1930s and 1940s Limerick, Ireland, and his gruelling quest of slowly earning his way back to America.

Despite being written first person, never was I distracted into thinking the narrator a biased story participant, only a remote, observant storyteller. He somehow distances himself from the immediacy he describes, omitting any hint of self-pity or cry for reader sympathy - no small feat for anyone recalling themselves or loved ones in such dire straits. That love wins out, over entrenched impoverishment, is a constant unstated subtext.

Frank McCourt's rich, filmic scenes cover the many subtle and dramatic shades of Irish slum life in years gone by. His characters are there, in the room talking to you as you read them, so intensely real are they you could smell them, reach out and hug them. You truly love or dislike many of them.

Like many tragic depictions of life and the human condition, this rides on a wry, quirky humour to assist the reader (and characters) through the trauma of human deprivation, working to stunning effect.

I was not depressed by this poignant tale which, penned without a note of self-indulgence or bare sentimentality, kept me eagerly turning the pages and concludes optimistically and philosophically.

Mesmerised throughout, I was left feeling humbled by this high calibre read and privileged to be told Frank McCourt's early life tales.

My review of Death and The Virgin: Elizabeth, Dudley and the Mysterious Fate of Amy Robsart, by Chris Skidmore

Death and The Virgin: Elizabeth, Dudley and the Mysterious Fate of Amy Robsart

by Chris Skidmore 

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Having consumed many Elizabeth I biographies I was not disappointed with this addition to my shelf.

This book focusses on the lead up to, circumstances surrounding and long-term consequences of one event quite early into a long reign: the suspicious death of Amy Dudley, wife of the queen's favourite.

There are so many other factors and events defining Elizabeth I's long reign than this one unsolved mystery. But for those seeking elaboration on why Elizabeth remained the 'Virgin Queen', married only to England, this, while by no means a sole explanation, is important reading.

Here is an episode marred by an absence of hard facts, gaps which too many historians have glossed over, filled in with flimsy theory and conjecture. Someone needed to address it as Chris Skidmore has. There have been flimsier attempts, but this is the most thorough I have encountered.

Skidmore frames his case as he wants it viewed. That's fair and understandable. Like others, he has his own takes on this mystery, cherry picking his points from a range of possibilities. So, in some respects this is little more soundly conclusive than any other such works. Even so, this is admirably exhaustive, effectively eliminating some views while arguing Skidmore's theories well.

Without unearthing some more conclusive, less circumstantial evidence (a growing possibility as methodology becomes more sophisticated), we can never know for certain. There will always be reasonable doubt, hence the intrigue and the lure to explore.

It's only natural that Elizabeth's detractors will place her at the centre of this death. It's likewise forgivable that her apologists will debate towards her innocence. I think she was too intelligent be so rash, too calculating and cautious to incriminate herself so.

My leaning has always been that William Cecil or some close affiliate of his was involved, to frame Dudley, create the discomfort it did and rule out all feasibility of Elizabeth marrying Dudley, as this romance was immensely troublesome to her fractious inner ministerial circle, some of whom lobbied for a princely marriage, others pushing other options.

Suicide has never seemed plausible, there being too few stairs involved in Amy's apparently fatal fall.

I won't disclose Skidmore's well-reasoned conclusions here; you'll have to read them for yourselves. I do think that this work transcends the far-fetched conspiracy theory standards of others.

Tuesday, 25 February 2025

My review of Room at the Top, by John Braine

Room at the Top

by John Braine

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

This good old (1957) nostalgic late-night read had me gripped from start to finish. John Braine's gritty post-war British characters are astonishingly true, their strengths believable, their defects authentic, their dialogue the real McCoy.

After studying accountancy as a Prisoner of War, ex-serviceman Joe Lampton leaves his northern English hometown of Dufton, where he grew up a poor orphan after his parents were killed in an air raid. 

Chasing a new life, Joe arrives in nearby Warley to commence his promising new job at the Municipal Treasury. Ambitious to break the archetypal working-class mould, Joe runs with the fast-changing times and sets his sights high, driven by visions of white-collar advancement.

He rents a room from the middle-class Thompson's, a couple in Warley's well-to-do quarter 'The Top' (t'top, in native dialectic terms). Joe Lampton's 'room at the top' is a metaphor for his drive to leave behind the blue-collar 'zombies' of his old life and native town.

The kindly Thompsons, deprived of a son who died at war, take Joe under their wing and treat him like family. They introduce him to their amateur dramatic society where, at weekly evening rehearsals, he befriends childlike Susan Brown, the sole daughter of an influential Warley businessman. Though betrothed to flash Jack Wales, heir to a local family fortune, Susan also quietly succumbs to Joe's pushy wooing. She remains naïve of his motive being partly frivolous opportunism, in his ruthless quest for social elevation, and partly blokey one upmanship against the self-important Jack Wales.

At these same weekly rehearsals, Joe also becomes acquainted with the older, married Alice Aisgill, who usually gets the company's leading lady roles. Though she initially plays the ice queen, Alice and Joe soon find mutual stimulation in intelligent conversation, away from the others, after rehearsals, in the nearby pub. They begin a covert sexual relationship, enacted mostly in the borrowed flat of one of Alice's actress girlfriends. One secret weekend, at a country cottage, smooth talking Joe convinces Alice this is more than physical. She is won over.

Though Joe does love Alice more passionately, he has also, meanwhile, successfully seduced the wide-eyed and willing young Susan Brown, who falls pregnant. 

As rumour erupts of Joe's adulterous affair with Alice, his reputation is compromised, threatening his prospects in Warley. His only option of keeping Alice would be elopement with her, away from her husband and Warley, leaving behind Susan and his career opportunities. 

Meanwhile with scandal looming, Susan's father, concerned for his family reputation, summonses Joe to a private business meeting. He presses Joe do the decent thing by marrying the pregnant Susan, adding, for incentive, a job offer worth a thousand a pounds year. The one stipulation is that Joe sever all ties with Alice Aisgill.

Forced to choose between love and money, Joe must sacrifice one relationship to retain the other. The outcome for the devastated woman he doesn't choose is tragic. Guilt ridden and remorseful, Joe turns to drink in a rage of self-loathing.

Room at the Top's hero intermittently morphs into anti-hero throughout, via the twists and turns of his wrestling conscience and ego. Empathising with him, we also recognise his shortcomings too. His older lover, Alice Aisgill, is entrancing, enigmatic and breathtakingly believable. She was immortalised on the big screen by the wonderful Simon Signoret, whose smouldering portrayal earned her an Academy Ward (1959), then again on the small screen by the fabulous Maxine Peake (2012), that miniseries winning a BAFTA. 

In the same period bundle as Stan Barstow's A Kind of Loving and Nell Dunn's Up the Junction (both similarly cinematised), this was a genre that gained swift popularity then achieved a sort of cult status as it just as rapidly dated. The post-war era, one of rapidly altering morals and class boundaries, is superbly captured in these then controversial novels. This is one of the best.

No great classic, in my opinion, but a broody, meaty read with a granite edge that leaves an indelible impression.

Quite unforgettable.

My review of Lost Empires, by J.B. Priestley

Lost Empires

by J.B. Priestley

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

I love this 1965 J. B. Priestley novel so much I've read it four times. A young man's peep into a smoke-swirling, footlit world as he verges on adulthood, this is classy, intriguing and sad to put down when finished.

In the last months of peace before World War I, ambitious young painter-cum-clerk Richard Herncastle's mother's dies. Not yet of age, he is taken under the wing of his maternal uncle Nick Ollanton, known publicly as 'Ganga Dun, the greatest conjurer on the English stage'. 

Leaving his dull office job to join Uncle Nick's act, Richard meets his team and the other touring 'artistes' on the bill, a boozy, nomadic troupe comprised of dancers, comedians, jugglers and so on. They tour Britain performing on the legendary soon-to-vanish Empire variety theatre circuit.

Good looking young Herncastle sees all of life from backstage in music hall variety, just as his uncle has promised. He learns the ropes of stagecraft, falls in love with a depraved beauty, sees a long-lost Britain in a way future generations will only hear about and even becomes privy to an intriguing murder investigation. Richard comes of age in 1914, just as the greatest disappearing act of all is looming: society as it would never again be known.

This fictional old man's fond retelling of his remarkable youth never fails to satisfy, no matter how many times I return to it, if only to flick through and browse my favourite episodes. The haunting smell of greasepaint emanates from the pages of an evocative tale about a special time and profession.

The multi award nominated 1986 miniseries featured Sir Laurence Olivier's penultimate screen performance as brilliant comedian-in-decay Harry Burrard, with an early romantic lead casting of chirpy, fresh faced Colin Firth alongside Pamela Stephenson.

Proud Yorkshire man Priestley famously snubbed the offer of becoming a lord the year Lost Empires was published. He gladly accepted his hometown, the city of Bradford, granting him Freedom of the City in 1973. He was also honoured by the universities of Bradford and Birmingham. Priestley eventually became a member of the Order of Merit in 1977 and served as a British delegate to UNESCO conferences.

I highly recommend this rare literary jewel, especially for lovers of theatre, history, nostalgia, vintage whodunnits or just die-hard J. B. Priestley fans.

My review of Elizabeth: The Life of Elizabeth Taylor, by Alexander Walker

Elizabeth: The Life of Elizabeth Taylor

by Alexander Walker

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars


Having picked up, opened, then flung aside many a sensationalised book on this woman, I was relieved to come across this very readable one.

Elizabeth was loved by not just her public but within the entertainment industry too. She earned her respect and survived much harsh press throughout her life. Such professional longevity is a rare and special thing in this game.

Of course, no biography would be complete without the obligatory affairs and broken marriages, but Walker at least tries to focus on Taylor's career (putting her relationships into context with that).

Here was a great star, tagged the world's most beautiful woman (how many people have worn it?) which is always tough to live up to after a while, when yet another 'the world's most beautiful woman' steps into the spotlight and winks at you to stand aside. Then everyone scribbles furiously about you in the tabloids when you try to get the odd, discrete chin tuck or eye lift.

When self-preservation became more than just being about looking gorgeous, Taylor's gruelling work ethic extended to her addiction rehabilitation efforts. Here she nobly led the way for many a diva. The Betty Ford must have benefited immeasurably.

Her earlier life, heyday and many media controversies gradually turned her into a more private person, as if compensating for the over exposure. She nevertheless remained a generous soul, one who cared deeply for friends and gave of herself freely when she saw fit.

From a young age, Elizabeth developed a devil-may-care streak. She had the capacity to shock and impress simultaneously. She made remarkably few enemies - ultimately, not even Debbie Reynolds. Her later off-screen work was admirable, as she balanced her perfumery juggernaut with needy, worthy causes few of her contemporaries would touch.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this and would consider almost any Alexander Walker book well worth a go.

My review of Tales of the Wide Caribbean, by Jean Rhys

Tales of the Wide Caribbean

by Jean Rhys

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars


Published six years after her death, when she was still highly acclaimed for her award-winning Wide Sargasso Sea (1969), this collection focuses, as its title states, on the same part of the world, her Caribbean homeland. 

Some of the material had only been published in the better literary journals and newspapers, some of it had cropped up in earlier collections and some had never seen the light of day.

Those who read Jean's posthumously published unfinished autobiography Smile Please will recognise fictionalised glimpses of her formative years in these short stories (many have insisted that all of her fiction was in fact her memoirs encrypted).

Regardless of whether the sources were autobiographical, her storytelling is hypnotic, enthralling. We are there, on her late-Victorian/early Edwardian Dominica, feeling the sun, smelling the ocean and exotic flora, hearing echoes of the island's inhabitants, empathising with this soul-baring raconteur. This is probably an old Jean Rhys remembering an extraordinary girlhood. Her characterisations are mesmerising, her words and sentences haunting.

Those unacquainted with Rhys' wider body of work may find less meaning in these stories than do her fans. But for this devotee, these almost filmic tales are priceless for their realism and authenticity.

As meticulously penned as all her material and painstakingly compiled in her wake, this is truly the icing on the cake for any Jean Rhys reader.

My review of Blood Sisters: The Women Behind The Wars Of The Roses, by Sarah Gristwood

Blood Sisters: The Women Behind The Wars Of The Roses

by Sarah Gristwood

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars


Framing this period as a female saga has become a popular theme. This example, conceptually sharp and intriguing, stands higher than some of recent years.

My usual history reading centres on the pre- and post- Tudor periods, which offers context for the popular, multidimensional Tudor period itself. My usual history reading also often centres on the female players, invariably more humanly depicted than the stick-like male players and so more accessible.

Women in non-fiction and fiction alike make for better drama (e.g. who is the more fascinating, Henry VIII or his six wives?). We hear not of 'drama kings' only drama queens. They make for more fascinating studies than their men. Their social positioning at that time necessitated limitations both subtle and severe in formal power structures, creating complex tensions.

This typically narrowed the women's options: to politically scheming, under the guise of marital and maternal dutifulness. With notable exceptions, this usually required more silent anguish, patience, sagacity and prolonged focus, with little or no outside counsel, than most men could muster. (We thankfully also encounter the token termagants here and there, to fire things up). Survival often required them to become devious, thick-skinned creatures.

Sarah Gristwood's take on these murky politics, times and events is presented in a more studious, less 'popular' style than others it sits amongst. (I relish both styles, having fun and frivolity with the latter.) Gristwood prioritises erudition over sensation, without becoming overtly dry. Though I have read both more entertaining and more impenetrable versions of these events, this one strikes an attractive chord of balance.

The Cousins' War, or Wars of the Roses, is a tangled web that has left many put off by its hefty timeframe and complexity. Many a lay historian has skimmed over it, drawn to the more popular Tudors, only to end up devoid of vital context. Such works as this help address that issue.

Here we enjoy candid close ups of, for example, the proud and tempestuous Cecily Neville, wife of Richard 3rd Duke of York, who narrowly lost her grand opportunity of becoming queen when her husband died at the Battle of Wakefield. Cecily's illustrious Plantagenet brood included not only King Edward IV, but usurping Shakespearian villain Richard III whose fall at the Battle of Bosworth Field made way for the Tudors. Cecily's ill-fated third son was the ill-fated Duke of Clarence, whose 'private execution' was long rumoured to have involved drowning in a butt of Malmsey wine.

Juxtaposed against hard bitten Yorkist matriarch Cecily is her notably less aristocratic new daughter-in-law, the legendary beauty and romantic figurehead Elizabeth Woodville. Already widowed with children, Elizabeth married Cecily's eldest son Edward IV in secret, becoming his queen consort to Cecily's chagrin and widespread courtly disapproval. Accused by her adversaries of bewitching Edward into marriage, it was from this great-grandmother that Queen Elizabeth I got her name and her fiery red hair.

Then there's the pious, erudite and parentally ambitious Lady Margaret Beaufort, of impeccable ancient stock and mother of Henry Tudor (Henry VII). Her web of machinations probably included wooing her husband Lord Stanley, previously a Yorkist player, to side ultimately with the Lancastrians, ensuring Henry VII's victory. With her son's rise to monarchy Lady Margaret became England's first lady, outranking even her daughter-in-law queen consort Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville.

Shadowed, as always, by her fellow central female characters is Cecily Neville's grandniece Anne Neville, daughter of Warwick 'the Kingmaker', tossed from suitor to suitor, from the Lancastrian to the Yorkist sides, then dead at twenty-eight. As wife of the deposed King Henry VI's Lancastrian heir, Edward of Westminster, Anne became Princess of Wales and daughter-in-law to the fierce Margaret of Anjou. Widowed young when Prince Edward died at the Battle of Tewkesbury, Anne later became the Yorkist Duchess of Gloucester and then Queen of England as the wife of King Richard III who, it was rumoured, poisoned Anne in preparation to marry his niece Elizabeth of York - a marriage which never eventuated due to Richard's fall in battle to Henry Tudor, who would marry Elizabeth himself, ending the thirty year conflict between his house of Lancaster and hers of York. Traditionally downplayed by historians due to a lack of material, Anne is sadly once more presented in a ghostly light, though Gristwood no doubt suffered the same drawbacks as others, faced with the dearth of personal detail about Anne to draw from.

After the immense popularity of the dramatised 'White Queen' TV series, based on Philippa Gregory's series of novels about this same circle of women, any keen reader of this period would be seriously missing out by excluding 'Blood Sisters' from their non-fiction.  

Highly recommend this important book, especially to those seeking to distinguish the hard facts from the syrupy folklore of this complex episode of English history without becoming numbed by the convoluted series of dates and battles that fill so many non-fictional accounts.


My review of Audrey: Her Real Story, by Alexander Walker

Audrey: Her Real Story

by Alexander Walker

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

 

Another great job by Alexander Walker, this story covers the life an intriguing, beautiful and talented woman.

Not the easiest of subjects for anyone to document, Ms. Hepburn had something almost indescribable - I disagree that she broke through on acting ability alone, but then few of her calibre have. She was breathtakingly beautiful and had a rare persona of innocence, naivety and sincerity that moviegoers found jawdroppingly enigmatic.

Audrey had many lingering demons to live with and held them off admirably and modestly throughout her great career.

Born in Brussels, she grew up in Belgium, England, the Netherlands, including German-occupied Arnhem, in WWII. She studied ballet in Amsterdam, moving to London in 1948 to continue her ballet training and appeared in the chorus of West End musical theatre shows. Here she paid her dues, learned the ropes and worked her way into the industry, in a typically honest, hardworking, decent Audrey Hepburn-like way. So came her well-deserved, if lucky, break.

We remember her most for her enchanting performances in 'Gigi', 'Roman Holiday', 'Sabrina', 'The Nun's Story', 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' 'Charade', 'My Fair Lady' and 'Wait Until Dark'. She deservingly won Academy, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony and BAFTA wards for her fine and unforgettable work.

After gently, gracefully backing away from her glittering film career she became a notable philanthropist and humanitarian, doing many greater and what she considered more important things than movies, resulting in her Presidential Medal of Freedom for her work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.

Like other great celluloid goddesses, she died not terribly old, ending her days in Switzerland.

This is a good biography about an unusual woman who we end up liking and respecting for far more than her movie work.

My review of Fabulous Nobodies, by Lee Tulloch

Fabulous Nobodies

by Lee Tulloch

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

This hysterical read had me giggling like a schoolgirl, quite some years ago. Laugh? I nearly bought a round. Fabulous Nobodies is described as 'a lighthearted yet devastatingly accurate social satire about the hip young fashion slaves of New York City's East Village in 1983'. 

The screen adaptation was recently optioned, to be directed by R.J. Cutler, acclaimed director of the fashion documentary The September Issue, featuring Anna Wintour

I happened across the paperback as I sifted through pre-loved fashion in my local op shop one melancholy morning and was instinctively drawn to the cover. Snatched it up for a song, took it under my wing and whisked it off home in the rain. It was ravenously devoured with a bottle of wine and a funny cigarette.

In retrospect I clearly turned to it for remedial purposes when events in my life were so intensely gloomy that my more serious reading material (particularly my edge worn Jean Rhys collection) was a definite no-no.

For years I worked and partied with real people like Really, nightclub 'door bitches' who thought they ruled the world and had a duty to keep naffly attired trash out.

Might have been imagining things, maybe it was my 'medication', but seem to recall Really's fabulous little frocks having some rather camp, ongoing daily dialogue with each other in their closet (?)

Silly, silly, silly, but there's nothing wrong with that occasionally. Laughter is good for the soul - but, as Really would no doubt caution us, watch out for those laugh lines!

Once you 'get' the intent of the silliness you begin to see through it into witty, intelligent, well written satire ahead of is time.

People have called it pre-chick lit chick lit but I beg to differ - far from some of the churned out formulaic pulp that ended up in the chick lit pile, this is original, clever and unique.

I flicked through it again just recently when rummaging through my cupboard and mused to myself that it had not dated. Lee Tulloch is a smart, entertaining writer who seemingly saw no need to linger in this genre once she had worked this little gem out of her system.

I'll be at the movie with bells on. Bravo! Encore!

My review of A Gambling Man: Charles II's Restoration Game, by Jenny Uglow

A Gambling Man: Charles II's Restoration Game

by Jenny Uglow

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Restoration monarch Charles II I had long procrastinated reading on, until this splendid book appeared before me. At once admiring this elegant product, its cover art and back page snippets, I was compelled to take it home.

This great grandson of the executed Mary, Queen of Scots and son of the executed Charles I was invited to take the throne following the Interregnum.

Known as the Merry Monarch, his court was a den of hedonism, his subjects loving his looseness after the puritan Cromwellian protectorate, or de facto Republic. He sired a dozen acknowledged bastards by seven mistresses.

Charles II was not merely the most infamous royal sleazebag of them all, he was a respected patron of the arts and sciences and had his work cut out in restoring England's shaky monarchy and seeing his kingdom through several great disasters. 

His watch saw London's Great Plague eliminate approximately 100,000 people, thinning the capital's population. Also the Great Fire of London, famously ignited in Pudding Lane and destroying over 13,000 houses, 80-odd churches and old St. Paul's Cathedral. The fire's aftermath saw Sir Christopher Wren add his splendid architectural mark to London's rebuilding, initiated by Chares II.

Charles also reinstated the theatre, initiating two acting companies and legalising acting for women, after a long puritanical spell wherein theatre was considered frivolous and banned altogether.

Leaving no legitimate heir, he was succeeded by his brother, the less popular, more zealously Catholic James II, whose short reign reached an abrupt halt when he was overthrown for producing a Catholic heir and suspected of aiming to steer then staunchly Protestant England religiously backwards.

I enjoyed studying this lovable, decadent, cultured rogue, whose mistresses included legendary orange-seller-turned-actress Nell Gwynn and notorious Barbara Villiers who bore five of his royal bastards.

While the Restoration is still not one of my favourite periods, Jenny Uglow lured me in, guided me well and made it accessible in a way no other has.

Recommended reading.

My review of Edward VI: The Lost King of England, by Chris Skidmore

Edward VI: The Lost King of England

by Chris Skidmore

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Chris Skidmore makes courageous choices addressing topics challenging due to limited popular appeal (his later book, Death and The Virgin, I thoroughly enjoyed). Edward VI's reign we see more through the prism of important religious development than being drawn to the boy king's persona. That's understandable, this being a short reign.

The obvious question is why this short reign is so eclipsed by 'Bloody' Mary I's even shorter one immediately following it? Answer: Mary was the first queen regnant, a mature and tormented woman with a dramatic personal history, a Catholic zealot who burnt heretics - for better or worse, a more colourful character to grasp.

Edward might have become a fascinating figure, but his meagre measure of life allowed little opportunity for noteworthy character building. Formidably well educated, he was also the first English monarch raised a Protestant. Intensely conscious of his status as God's anointed, he was pompous for his years, even castigating his much older intransigent half-sister Mary for flaunting her staunch Catholicism. 

He conversely favoured his other half-sister Elizabeth, Mary's junior, who soundly rejected Catholicism.

He was similarly fond of his widowed stepmother Queen Catherine Parr, herself a keener reformist than her husband Henry VIII had been and who, in her early widowhood, married Edward's uncle Thomas Seymour, scheming brother of Lord Protector Somerset. This would have perplexed the boy, leaving him split around personal and official approval, family loyalty and royal favour.

Family rumour and scandal were persistently laid at Edward's feet, often intended to agitate the boy and tug at him to side with these incestuous court factions.

Touches of his tyrannical father glinted hopelessly through Edward's pasty adolescent veneer. He then became famously frail and sickly, confined and bedbound, more than ever under the spell of his scheming counsellors.

He expressed frustration by his powerlessness as a minor whose governing was done by a Regency Council while he, whose personal seal was required, felt personally responsible for so much. This primarily involved overseeing contentious religiopolitical completions his devout father had shied away from: despite his severance from Rome and Dissolution of Monasteries, Henry VIII had balked at extending his Church of England into one signifying a fully-fledged Protestant state. Responsibility fell into Edwards hands to add imperative final touches like abolition of the Mass and clerical celibacy, imposing compulsory services in English, etc.

These factors explain why Edward's reign is characterised and remembered through his advisors who steered such legislation, especially his Seymour uncle Edward, Duke of Somerset and then John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. Orbiting him like vultures was a fractious cast of royals and nobles far more memorable than Edward himself because of their longer and more complex and sensational lives.

In his frailty, conscious of his own mortality, he became increasingly malleable and vulnerable to diplomatic pressure. From his deathbed he was easily persuaded to sign over his kingdom to his Protestant cousin Lady Jane Grey, daughter-in-law of Edward's de facto regent, the dynastically ambitious Protestant John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland whose persuasion centred on Edward keeping his 'bastard' half-sisters Mary and Elizabeth from ruling, the eldest especially, being herself Catholic. Regardless how easily persuaded, Edward would again have felt torn by family loyalty, religion and kingly duty in this final act, preparing to meet his maker. 

It's a pity to then have him eclipsed in history by the 'nine days queen' episode of Jane Grey who usurped Mary only to be overthrown herself. Edward becomes almost forgotten due to Mary's 'bloody' reign and religious reversion to Roman Catholicism, her marriage to Philip of Spain, her persecution of her half-sister Elizabeth who was sent to the Tower and almost never lived let alone ruled. Mary's humiliating phantom pregnancy adds to her infamy, as does her begrudging bequeath of the crown to Protestant half-sister Elizabeth in the absence of offspring. The latter's subsequent eponymous golden age again hold's poor Edward's place back in the Tudor shadows, forever outshone by his mighty father and legendary siblings.

Not everyone's favourite reign to read on, this is important history to understand, contextually. Chris Skidmore has my greatest respect for taking on projects his more popular contemporaries veer away from to stay safely within the established bounds of popular reading.

This, like Skidmore's other above-mentioned book, is well researched, written and documented. I'd like to see more of his clever biographical ideas materialise.

My review of Possessed: The Life of Joan Crawford, by Donald Spoto

Possessed: The Life of Joan Crawford

by Donald Spoto

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Donald Spoto is one of my favourite Hollywood biographers. I've read five Crawford biographies and find it impossible to rate one higher than the others. Inescapably, many details are rehashed across all of them. This one I liked slightly more than the others I've read. If I were recommending which ones to include in your coverage (there are so many), this would be near the top of my list.

Joan became such a contentious biographical topic in the aftermath of 'Mommie Dearest' that her apologists closed ranks and, understandably, became hyper-defensive, rallying to restore her good name - to such an extent that they sounded at times to collectively lose objectivity. 

That's fine, any intelligent reader can see past this, we feel the passion of the authors which makes for good reading in itself.

I like to make my own mind up about the subjects of biographies and usually can. 

That Joan Crawford was no saint becomes clear enough after covering a few biographies, that she was no monster either is also clear. She was a fascinating woman and a great, great star.

My review of Dark Victory: The Life of Bette Davis, by Ed Sikov

Dark Victory: The Life of Bette Davis

by Ed Sikov

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars


As a woman she was renowned for being earthier than her professional nemesis Joan Crawford and boasted of that, making her perhaps the more arrogant of the two yet no less adorable. 

I've read five Bette Davis biographies and find it impossible to rate one higher than the others. Inescapably, many details are rehashed across all of them. This one I liked, not much more or less than the others I've read. However, if I were recommending which ones to include in your coverage (there are so many), this would make my list.

All the fabulous comical caricatures have redefined our memories of this wonderful actress. Just watch her actual films, though, and you'll rediscover that she was nowhere near as over the top as you might have recalled, she had far greater dramatic subtlety and nuance than her impersonators have led us to believe.

I like to make my own mind up about the subjects of biographies and usually can. 

That Bette Davis was no saint becomes clear enough after covering a few biographies; that she was no monster either is also clear. She was a fascinating woman and a great, great star.

My review of The Heir Apparent: A Life of Edward VII, the Playboy Prince, by Jane Ridley

The Heir Apparent: A Life of Edward VII, the Playboy Prince

by Jane Ridley

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

One of the most readable 'Bertie' biographies I've found.

Although the title suggests this may focus largely on his love life, this tasteful biography is something far from that. Even so, while he admired and deeply respected his publicly adored and stone-deaf queen consort, Alexandra, he did intimately liaise with over 50 other women, his most famous mistresses being actresses Lillie Langtry and Sarah Bernhardt, Lady Randolph Churchill, mother of Winston Churchill, and Alice 'Mrs' Keppel. These affairs are soundly documented by Jane Ridley, who never resorts to sensationalism.

Not an academically minded youth, he was prone to schoolroom tantrums, being such a fish out of water. His derisive, perpetually disappointed mother, Queen Victoria, wished he was more like his father, Prince Albert, for whom she famously mourned for much of her long reign. So determinedly did she keep Bertie out of her royal business that he had little but leisure to occupy himself with throughout his protracted princely years. He learnt statecraft from the wings, having it down pat by the time of his late succession.

It was a rapidly changing world over which Edward came to preside, and he excelled in mediating between clashing expansionist powers, becoming nicknamed 'the Peacemaker'. Through his parents, his wife, his eight siblings' dynastic marriages and those of his six offspring, he was related to virtually every branch of European royalty.

His epoch is one which lingers in the collective living memory, with seniors still cherishing faded family pictures along with anecdotes verbally passed down through parents from grandparents and great grandparents - this was Queen Elizabeth II's great grandfather. His demise marked the end of an era though. Society would change abruptly, dramatically and irreversibly as WWI loomed.

A fine biography on an interesting king who got to the throne late in life yet whose decade there remains a distinct one.


My review of The First Queen of England: The Myth of "Bloody Mary", by Linda Porter

The First Queen of England: The Myth of "Bloody Mary"

by Linda Porter

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

'Bloody Mary' Tudor was for centuries maligned from all sides. A focus of anti-Catholic prejudice, she was reviled for her Marian persecutions which saw 280 martyred Protestant 'heretics' burned at the stake. 

This was unremarkable in an age that saw religious persecution from both sides sweep reformation Europe. Mary's father before her, sister after her and Habsburg cousins alongside her oversaw similar barbaric acts of state, each in no short measure yet over many more years on their thrones - centring on comparably more diluted pictures of what might today be tagged 'tyranny'. 

Particularly notable was the rate at which Mary's victims fell in the few short years she reigned. 

Her detractors have argued that, had she lived and ruled longer, burning religious dissenters at that same rabid rate, her record could have become outstanding on the basis of numbers alone. Yet hypothetical estimates, no matter how oft reiterated by anti-Catholic commentators, can never translate into historical fact. 

Her apologists have maintained that, steering such horrific policies were lawmakers, ministers and parliamentarians rather than any sole monarch - especially not the staid Mary Tudor who, as England's first anointed female ruler, had no predecessors to follow the example of, relying girlishly upon her male decision makers.

Yet rulers of Mary's time held the final authority to accept or reject any policy.

Perhaps the bottom line is that, regardless how classically feminine or modest her regal persona, she had throughout her life displayed such superlative survival instincts and bravery as to well match her majestic pedigree, culminating in the sheer hardiness of successfully fighting for her throne against all odds.

And whatever her perceived passive nature, her victims still burned, at that notoriously high rate. 

This book sets out to rationalise Mary's deeds and foibles by examining her tragic personal background and those challenging events, personal and political, influencing her reign. 

As England's first queen regnant (excluding the disputed reigns of Lady Jane Grey and the Empress Matilda), she endured the 16th century chauvinism of her ministers and chroniclers, with their sexist attitudes continuing down the centuries by her many male biographers.

Outshone in posterity by her Protestant younger half-sister Elizabeth I, this monarch of only five years, brought down to us as dour, standoffish and neurotic, has stood little chance of a fair hearing to modern generations – until now. 

The fourth and penultimate Tudor monarch, remembered for her restoration of Roman Catholicism after the short-lived Protestant reign of her half-brother Edward VI, Mary famously married Philip of Spain against considerable diplomatic advice to the contrary and despite public opposition to a foreign king consort.

Though many years his senior and initially against marrying at all, Mary adored and devoted herself to Philip, who showed little more than contempt towards her, remaining mostly oversees on business. In this loveless marriage she remained childless, dying young and alone after a series of phantom pregnancies.

Elizabeth I devotees will forever know Mary as her younger sister's jailer, as they read of young Princess Elizabeth's time in the Tower of London following her unproven links to various failed rebellions to overthrow Mary and replace her with Elizabeth.   

Linda Porter demonstrates, at least in this book's first two-thirds to three-quarters, what a talented biographer she is. Her work sparkles for much of the piece. Her empathic approach, her commendable eye for detail, bring the milieu and its inhabitants beautifully to life, transporting the reader there to judge for ourselves. 

The sense of being 'guided' through whom, what and why we ought to judge, is apparent throughout, though at first seemingly benign. Porter is protective of Queen Mary like a lioness of her cubs, with only the scantest, tokenistic acknowledgement of her shortcomings. 

This partisanship, whilst ever endearing, develops to the point of conspicuity in parts, raising the fundamental question of balance. 

Not the first sympathetic take on Mary Tudor I have read, this is one of the most benevolent, verging on sounding agenda driven.  Though I enjoyed it immensely, I have two criticisms:

Firstly, the book's last quarter or even third lost its momentum, with those dull patches inevitable to such detailed books extending to drawn out passages penned seemingly just for the sake of listing, rather than wasting, every last ounce of miscellaneous detail researched. 

This becomes exasperating towards the book's conclusion, countering an otherwise brilliant telling. This flaw, however, is not uncommon in this increasingly popular genre, with each author competing to cram in the most arbitrary detail, often haphazardly in patches.

My other criticism is that I felt that the author, as a strident apologist of Bloody Mary and her destructive religion in that era, overstated her case throughout. There is a point to this – to counteract the literary destructiveness for so long piled upon this poor queen, who clearly had her good side. The second half of book's title, The Myth of "Bloody Mary", indicates this as being the book's semi raison d'être. 

This was, after all, the only daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon and a granddaughter of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. She had to have had some inherent greatness and indeed this was seen in her oratory prowess and her bravery in claiming the throne by force after it being so unjustly snatched from her by hostile forces driven by the politics of religion. 

She was also an irrefutably kind and merciful figure – except when it came to religious dissent. Even most of her worst detractors she pardoned on assuming her throne.

We read about her torturous youth, bastardized and disinherited from the line of succession after her parents' history making divorce. About her enforced estrangement from her only close ally, her demoted and ostracized mother Queen Catherine of Aragon, under King Henry's cruel orders. We understand how this was all because of her half-sister Elizabeth's mother, Anne Boleyn. How Mary, in adulthood, saw Anne Boleyn in Elizabeth.

Her many psychosomatic illnesses are well documented and explained. She was indeed a melancholy younger figure before ultimately transcending her sorrows to triumph and take rule. Yet even then, her brief time in power was marred by heartache, right down to the loss of Calais to France, from which she was said to never recover.

Few, on true reflection, could not feel for Mary Tudor the woman, whatever her faults as a queen. Such is the compassionate footing of this biography, which aims to kill off the unjust legend of that bitter religious extremist so long portrayed in books like this. (Other recent biographers too have become kinder in their treatment of this queen).

Yet the overall effect of Linda Porter's unabashedly biased approach is to sound almost unbalanced. The reader becomes wary of being spun a propagandist commentary rather than the more rounded picture we expect from well-formed biographies.

That said, it should be noted that history's most noteworthy commentators, those from the opposing side of this classic propagandist divide, are equally guilty of this transgression. 

There is no such thing as an impartial account in this genre – any such dispassionate efforts, so dry and soulless, can only be relegated to school textbook shelves. What makes any such work so heartfelt and gripping is not its indifference but the passion with which it is presented. Such is the key ingredient of an entertaining read, whether fiction or fact.

Despite its glaring subjectivity, which I see as standard in good historic biography, I loved this book. 

Recommended reading.