THE SEA by John Banville (Man Booker Prize 2005)

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An effete old geezer, art historian no-less, after the death of his wife from cancer goes back to visit scenes from his adolescent life. He rents a room with Miss Vavassar and copes with the jealousy of the other lodger, a retired major, wouldn't you guess? Our lonely old widower relives in his mind the longeurs of teenage holidays and his obsession with the family of  Mr and Mrs Grace, twins Chloe and Myles plus Rose, the nanny. He is now lodging in the house this family used to rent for the summer.

In that past of glorious summers by the sea

The Leviathan by Paul Auster (1992) Viking Press

A strange, frustrating style at first which takes some perseverance. It ended up more rewarding than I had begun to fear. Reported speech from characters with lots to say! The main character is such a precise, moral person that he eventually finds he has murderered somebody - but in mitigating circumstances! When he finds out more about the man he has killed, he feels that he had much in common with his victim. So there it is; the lesson for us all.


The book probably owes its theme to Thomas Hobbes

Daughter of the Desert by Georgina Howell. Pan Books, 2006

The title's 'daughter of the desert' was Gertrude Bell, an ironmaster's daughter from the North-East of England. The book itself was a birthday present from my daughter, Pippa. We are both interested in Gertrude's life and achievements having first met her in a novel based around the Cairo Conference, 1921 when she met with Churchill, T.E. Lawrence and others to negotiate the governance of Mesopotamia, the region we now refer to as Iraq. The origins of present-day Syria, Jordan, Israel, and Palestine also come into Gertrude Bell's story.

What was Gertrude doing there? Well, it is a great story. She explored the Arab areas and made friends with the sheikhs and other Arabs who worked for her on her expeditions.  Remarkable, given attitudes towards women in this region. She learned Arabic and several dialects. She respected and loved their culture and became a major source of information about it.

She came from a very close family and before she went to the Middle East she had been the first woman to gain a double first at Oxford - not many women even got to university then. She became an intrepid mountaineer known to and respected by the male guides and climbers of her day. The climbing episodes I personally found a bit boring but the account of her life as an expert on the Arab world throws a great light on why and what the military are doing there now. The British and French, for example, last century, as allies fought a war in the area against the Turks. Oil for the British Navy was a strong interest. At the time of the First World War 1914-18, the Turkish Empire which controlled the area, was gradually being eased out by force and politics.



Gertrude Bell would have been horrified

Frederick Forsyth

The memorable film 'The Day of the Jackal' was based on one of his books of the same title. This article reminded me of it. Would anyone like to write a review of this famous 'non-new book'? And send it to halvenon@englishwordhelp.com directly or through the pages of the NON-NEW BOOK REVIEW blog.

con referencia a: Frederick Forsyth: 'I lost £2.2m in a share fraud' - Telegraph (ver en Google Sidewiki)

Richard II by Wm Shakespeare and Framed by Tonino Benacquista

Richard II pub. Bliss, Sands & Co, MDCCCXCVIII (1898)
Richard II banishes two nobles: Mowbray, the Duke of Gloucester and Bolingbroke, son of his uncle, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. They have been bickering and accusing each other of treason. While Bolingbroke is in exile, his father John of Gaunt dies and Richard II tries to take over Gaunt's estates.

It is John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, dying, but waiting to see his King and in the company of the Duke of York, who reflects on his admired country and its noble kings (but not the current one) in Act II, scene 1.
The speech often set for schoolboys to learn begins:
"This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars..."

Gaunt's son, Bolingbroke, returns to England and it turns out that most of the nobles support him against the King, who only has the Duke of York and the Bishop of Carlisle on his side. Bolingbroke therefore prevails, deposes Richard and becomes King while one of his fans overdoes things. There is always one, right! Saying that Bolingbroke had wished the King was dead, this ONE sets off and does the deed, thus starting a slow fuse to the scattered bush fires known as the Wars of the Roses.

There is more duplicity in the average episode of a 'soap' like East Enders