I had previously read Alison Weir’s most excellent book specifically on Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine many years ago so the author was familiar to me. I chanced upon this title in my local library (Caldicot) and thought I’d give it a go. It covers the lives of several British Queens, or rather the historical period in England during which they lived. The period is one of the most interesting periods, in my opinion, in British History. During the early Plantagenet monarchs, the revolutionary changes of the early Norman invaders to our country had settled down and stability in government and the rule of these Isles meant that this period was most fruitful in terms of British power at home and abroad and may foundations were laid for the future greatness of the British Empire and the basis of our country’s modern, developed, civilised society.
The book does indeed contain a revisit of Weir’s previous work and the first part is dedicated to Eleanor of Aquitaine who was the wife of King Henry II. There are four other queens in the book, three of whom are ‘Eleanors’. Alienor of Provence, Queen of King Henry III and also Eleanor of Castile, Queen of King Edward I. The other two queens are Berengaria of Navarre, Queen of Richard I and Isabelle of Angoulême, Queen of King John. As you can see from the exotic titles of all five queens, the Plantagenets were keen on extending their ties to European Royal bloodlines.
The whole period was rich in historic events. As the title suggests, this was the time of the crusades and many of the Kings went on crusade, most notably Richard I ‘The Lionheart’, who probably spent more time abroad during his reign, than at home in England. Wives were taken on crusade and although they were often kept safe in castles, sometimes danger could ensue, in particular during the arduous journeys to the Holy Land, usually by sea, where all sorts of perils arose.
This was a period were British dominions extended into continental Europe. One of the reasons why Eleanor of Aquitaine is one of my most favourite Queens is that during here reign, Britain was at its height in terms of land. Indeed the British crown held more territory in mainland France than the French King did. In addition to Normandy and Brittany the whole of the rich south western part of France that is Aquitaine became an integral part of our nation. Often the rulers had to spend a lot of time on the continent to deal with unruly tenants. Indeed the continental territories required more attention and management than the calmer more settled British Isles . As time passed these European dominions reverted back to French control. War, finance, marriages and deaths contributed to the erosion of British territory abroad. King John was known as ‘Lackland’ when he lost most of the European lands.
There were some very important occurrences during the Crusades period. King John was forced to acquiesce to his barons and sign Magna Carta in 1215. Magna Carta is one of the most quintessential pieces of legislation and is the cornerstone of constitutional rights in many modern Western societies, including the USA.
Some of the relationships between Kings and Queens were very lasting and very romantic. I particular King Edward I and Eleanor of Castile had a very close relationship that produced an amazing 18 children, most of whom unfortunately didn’t survive infancy. King Edward I constructed a series of huge crosses across the country to commemorate his beloved queen after her parting from this life. Religion played a crucial role in society, often the Pope was called upon to intervene in a lot of Royal matters, be it consanguinity in marriage, to taking the Cross for crusade or just settling land disputes with barons. A position in the Church was much sought after and we cross paths in the book with Geraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales) who was an ever-present in the Royal Courts and Vatican, on his ceaseless quest to obtain the hallowed Archbishopric of St. David’s in Wales.
In the later stages of the book I couldn’t believe encountering my little Welsh border home town in the text. Caldicot doesn’t get many mentions in any literature, although it does have a wonderful Castle which dates to around this period. King Edward I was very active beating back the Welsh who wouldn’t accept overlordship from London. Llywellyn ap Gruffydd, Prince of Wales, fought hard to preserve Welsh independence but ultimately died in battle against King Edward’s forces. King Edward established Caernarfon as his base in Wales with the castle there that he erected being modelled on the ancient walls of Constantinople. The Royal couple passed through Caldicot during one of the ‘progresses’ they made, visiting different parts of the country.
‘On 26 November (1284) the royal couple visited St. David’s. the Welsh capital, as guests of Bishop Thomas Bek, and attended a service in the cathedral. Then it was on to Cardiff, Caldicot and Chepstow.’ [Weir 2020:379]
I randomly found this book on the shelves of Caldicot library. I read a lot of books on U.K. Intelligence services: MI5, MI6 and GCHQ. During the war…. Mt grandfather (GaGa) was in 618 Squadron RAF and 143 Coastal Command. He didn’t really speak to me much about World War 2 itself until quite late on in his life. Typical of an Armed Forces Officer, though, he kept a pristine home and in part of this home, in his back garden, where he had erected a wigwam, at the top of his garden, lay a treasure trove of WW2 memorabilia. The lost fascinating of items to me as a kid were all his ‘secret’ gadgets. He had all these sort of special James Bond Q-like military aids, secret maps, secret compartments. The most fascinating of all his possessions for me was his ‘trick’ compass which was a normal RAF uniform button, which unscrewed to reveal a miniature, fully-working compass. Whenever I visited him I forced him to show me it God knows how many times – with the full story of how, if he was shot down by the Luftwaffe, behind enemy lines, this little compass would help him to escape and evade capture and get home safe and sound. Of course, he was lucky and although he saw a lot of action, he never got downed in Nazi Occupied Europe or in the later stages of the war in Japanese held South East Asia. He always mentioned this secret intelligence service MI9 which was much more powerful and effective and secret than MI5 or MI6 or any others and was the ‘real’ secret’ service but that you wouldn’t read about them in any newspapers etc. I didn’t really pay much attention, just enjoyed the idea of British ingenuity and secret gadgets. Old Gaga retained a fascinat6ion with all gadgets for the rest of his life, and any Xmas or Birthday presents usually involved some sort of novelty gadget style fun toy that would keep him amused for a bit.
Fast forward to the actual book review now. I have read this and appreciate that MI9 did exist ad that everything he said was basically completely true and indeed the book documents the full lists of gadgets handed out to RAF pilots and others who faced the potential of capture on foreign shores. Indeed James Bond, creator Sir Ian Fleming was connected to MI9 along other (less fêted) famous espionage figures such as Kim Philby. MI9 were the par excellence intelligence service of World War 2 for Britain – It encompassed Room 900 and also IS9. Their mission was focussed on ‘Escape and Evasion’. Whereas services such as SOE, MI6 and GCHQ (Bletchley Park – Alan Turing, Enigma Code, computers etc) did exist and indeed were often established due to WW2, MI9 was so clandestine that very little information has ever been released and much is still locked away in the archives. This book therefore was well-researched. It does tell the most remarkable tales, one of the most exciting collection of narratives I have encountered in studying WW2 history.
MI9 did indeed liaise and work with the collaboration of the other intelligence agencies, although frictions andEscape andEvasion, rivalries did exist. We look at its formation at the start of the book.
It was created specifically to deal with the issue of servicemen who were ‘behind enemy lines’. In addition to ‘Escape and Evasion ‘ which was the main goal, it also was a direct intelligence-gathering operation with any repatriated personnel being debriefed for vital intelligence about enemy movements and other critical information related to the enemy and the situation of other allies in hostile territory. They set up training programmes for all personnel such as RAF pilots, and D-Day Landing soldiers, who were at risk of enemy capture.
The book contains lots of detail of the escape routes set up, often run by families of resistance Europeans, many young women, who were dissatisfied with Nazi occupation and felt compelled to actively engage the enemy by assisting allied servicemen in any way possible, often very much putting their own lives and the lives of their families and loved ones directly on the line. Indeed if an allied soldier was caught by the Nazis he would often be interred in a POW camp but as unpleasant as the experience was, he would survive. The brave European citizens risking all for the ‘rat-lines’ would have no such luxury. If they were betrayed or captured by the Nazis they were simply shot – Indeed for every successful repatriation, there was an estimated one dead European civilian in the analysis of post war statistics. These people often did it all at their own expense and it is to the credit of I9 that as the war ended and in the aftermath one of the main mission focuses was to provide good financial renumeration for these European heroes and heroines.. The Comet Line was probably the most famous of the escape routes and an obvious lead character was the remarkable young Dédée. Rat Lines were operational in Paris, in Belgium, in Holland, in Italy and indeed in Germany itself and also in South East Asia, in the jungles where the attitude to prisoners by Japanese soldiers was entirely different and Pyrenees and Alpine mountain passes were replaced by tropical rainforest jungle. We hear of the Naga Queen in the Naga Hills of Burma.
Famous stories such as ‘Escape from Colditz’ were based on reality as indeed was ‘Escape to Victory’. I was amazed at the ingenuity of prisoner escapes and just how well organized and versatile and creative the allied POWs were. They used to get smuggled board games from home sent in, secretly containing all the necessary gadgets and escape materials.
MI9 was disbanded after World War 2 and to my knowledge doesn’t exist today. It makes James Bond even look dull. It is such an exciting really war time adventure story and the truth is we are probably only just scraping the surface of the reality of what actually happened in MI9. It’s like ‘Allo Allo’ just without the faux-pas comedy and some real bravery and action. In an age of #brexit it is worth noting just how much the Europeans put on the line for our troops and the real heros of the story are not the POWs or the MI9 officers, but the simple young women and families who went that extra mile to defeat Nazism and win World War 2 for the allied cause.
#centuryofgaga My grandad was Flight Lieutenant William Gordon Gerrard (26.05.1923-14.02.2015). sadly he didn’t make it to celebrate his 100th Birthday (today: 26.05.2023) but I’m most certainly raising a glass to him up in the surly bonds, and this book review is part of the tribute I pay to him to continue his legacy and that of his fellow patriotic countrymen who served us so well during World War 2 and who must be pretty thin on the ground nowadays as we lose aa wise generation who understood what a a genuine global conflagration consisted of. In this tense hostile global atmosphere where it’s pretty much boiling over militarily into World War 3, it makes the study of the history of the previous world wars that much a critical pursuit or paramount importance and therefore I’d encourage you to go out and read Helen Fry’s book on MI9, perhaps.
This is just another one of the many books I’ve read on the security services / spies / intelligence agencies in general. I guess I have a morbid fascination. Non-fiction throws up some pretty weird stuff – Life itself is a lot stranger than fiction. This tale from a turncoat ex MI5 employee David Shayler, comes from a time of great change in the world, Security Services in general and it interests me in particular as I was living down in London at that specific time and had what I believe to be my own brush with Shayler’s employers. It was at a time (in history) when people still bought and read daily newspapers and not just get all their news information off Donald Trump’s twitter feed. I can distinctly remember all the controversial headlines about the whole affair.
The book is written by some Daily Mail journalists, a sort of hive for some of the smelliest sort of flies that the tabloid journalist industry attracts so automatically I was on my guard as to the agenda and the sort of bias, provocation, and fascist ideology of the book. Also, let’s get one thing straight. David Shayler is not a hero like they might try to portray him as, he’s not even an anti-hero. He’s just a sort of bo standard below-average MI5 officer, a disgruntled employee, a whistleblower. He knows what he’s signed up to by applying for the job in the first place, by successfully passing the vetting and by being offered a position. I think the Official Secrets Act as much as anyone may find it repulsive and disagree with it is pretty clear and explicit in what it states. Basically Shayler is a criminal and this book is evidence of his crime. He’s broken the Official Secrets Act, he’s also clearly committed treason and although he perhaps lacks the glamour of those that have gone before him such a Kim Philby, he’s certainly nothing more than traitor scum acting against the interests of this country which is exactly what MI5 or their employees are not supposed to be doing. Mi5 is their to protect the nation and yes, the job is difficult but I think the outset that Shayler has failed totally to appreciate the patriotic element of the work. It may have changed since the cold War and be [perhaps a little more boring, but it will adapt like many other industries and indeed since the time of publication MI5 has adapted, facing a new enemy is Islamic terror and the end of the Cold War has proven only really to be a brief ceasefire as the Russians are now back on the scene added to which a growing threat from China makes MI5 an even more critiical organization in the contemporary (and future) world.
I hold the whole message that Shayler and the writers are trying to present as completely invalid and very easy to discount. Zero sympathy for him. Nobody should be reading his revelations. Yes maybe a private letter to the MI5 boss would have been OK. But selling your story to the Daily Mail and anyone else with a chequebook? At least Kim Philby was sort of driven by ideology and is therefore it’s much more easy to identify with him. Shayler just basically wanted a nice comfy hug payout so he didn’t have to worry about his mortgage. Selfish capitalist. Thatcherist, blinkered self-aggrandisement and totally free of ethics and morality. About as close as we get to James Bond his little escape to France where his greed catches up with him and he eventually gets raided and arrested by the French authorities He was probably given a nice comfie bed and a constant supply of fresh croissants out there, just in case and It wasn’t corruption or anything like injustice. He was a serious wanted criminal and that is what INTERPOL etc is set up to sort out. Cheered me up when he finally got to Belmarsh. I’m tempted to look up his wiki but to see where he is now but it will just annoy me further.
He’s an anonymous dot in a big blob and the secrecy of the work, yes it’s underpaid, difficult and the whole system and organization is frankly sh*t but so is everything else in #brokenbritain and has been for a long time. It’s reality. You don’t get to cut corners in life. Just a buy a lottery ticket like anyone else – I’m glad the sort of celebrity tabloid culture has removed a lot of power from the redtops with their lottery payout bribes to corrupt people and deliver huge sales. The British Press is by far the biggest threat to National Security we have. Greed and capitalism has turned them into the most sinister devious body of enemies ever produced on this island. They will stop at nothing to subvert Britain, the Commonwealth or the Empire. Just examining a tiny of fraction of Prince Harry’s valiant quest against them seeking justice is total proof of their treachery. Shame Murdoch didn’t holiday with Maxwell and the rest really as Davy Jones’ locker seems the best place for them all.
Well, looking directly at the book, Shayler claims MI5 cocked up IRA city of London attacks, He claims through word-of-mouth secondary information about an assassination plot by the British government on Colonel Gaddafi – Yes, well, Mr Shayler, Gadaffi (now dead of course), may have certain human rights etc but after Lockerbie he’s pretty much clear as an enemy of the British people and State. That’s who MI5 and MI6 and GCHQ are supposed to be targeting really. I was gutted that you didn’t take the offer by the Libyan intelligence service to clear off to Tripoli, would have made a much more exciting tale, one way or the other.
It’s no recruitment manual for MI5, further justification that the actual job is absolutely nothing at all like a James Bond film. The appendix 2 of Shayler’s recommendations for organizational change, probably the most boring tract of text I’ve ever read, but is great in clarifying just what a hideous corporate body of bureaucratic bungling the MI5 security service is. I can see why MI5 officers can be so deadly effective and dangerous if they are spending 23 and half hours chained up to a desk under a pile of paperwork and government forms then I guess that for the half hour allocated break where they get to do the glamorous work in high speed car chases, staking the State’s budget on roulette spins and copping off with foreign birds etc, they are going to be so angry and wound up and pissed off that they’ll pretty much take out all their frustrations on any target and cause serious destructive damage.
Some of the revelations were significant like how much financial wastage there is. An example is the £25 million spent on an amateur computer system that didn’t work and that they had to go out and buy an off the shelf version of Microsoft Windows 95 to sort out the IT in this critical department of National Security shows clearly that mismanagement is very possible and real.
I think that it does clarify the need for change and that there are serious inadequacies and probably worse than a standard government civil service department I think that we could maybe look to other countries and the way they handle their intelligence services. The CIA and Mossad, for example, are vastly different. In many ways they have more liberty and power and more open and more effective. Our secrecy laws are a bit archaic. There is most certainly a lack of balances and checks in place for our intelligence services that would limit abuses, enable necessary change and improve efficiency and productivity and better achieve the desired goal of national security. I think that for this country James Bond is quite a double-edged sword. Whereas on the one hand it is a very positive and successful (fictional) brand, I would argue it is the very epitome of global espionage propaganda achievement, par excellence. Equally it is quite old now and it must entangle the intelligence services in manacles really and be very frustrating. Deception works to a point but needs to be balanced a bit with reality, openness and honesty.
I think looking back that even though it was pretty damned boring, that Dame Stella Rimington, as head of MI5 who released a boo, that this book was actually a watershed moment and an historic change in methodology for MI5. Yes, Ok we end up with the sort of Shayler trash a s a result. But is signals that change is happening.
I feel like a nosey idiot myself for contributing to the obvious treason of Shayler et all by purchasing the book. But it is an interesting read and I think might, if used properly, be useful to enact change. It must be a very popular text out in the Kremlin in Moscow or Pyongyang or Beijing or the Afghan Cave complex. It demonstrates weakness to our enemies, possible exploits and perhaps encourages hostile attacks on out nation. But it’s subject an idiot who I highly doubt had much access at all to any form of high-level security information. Vetting system is broken obviously. What to do about it aside from the recommended changes – well, really push the death penalty for treason to properly discourage future Shaylers – Hanging, drawing and quartering must have a value aside from public entertainment. I discount most of the so-called scandal and I’m pretty confident that although there have been mishaps and errors that MI5 in fact do actually run an effective security service with regard to domestic issues. The lack of serious security incidents on British soil is testament to their work being efficient.
I think everyone that has ever heard of Boris Johnson associates him with lies. Oborne, who is an established veteran political journalist, in this relatively brief text, exposes the extent of the former Conservative Prime Minister’s almost total aversion to the truth. He reckons Johnson has told over thousands of lies and although the scope of the book is not to document every single lie and prove it is a lie, it just gives a brief overview of some of the worst and most notorious of these lies, especially those told in Parliament. Oborne believes and I think quite justly that by undermining the integrity of Parliament where under the Ministerial Code of Conduct it clearly states the rules with regard to any false information being given by an MP to be a serious breach. The problem of policing this is brought into question and the lack of proper discipline seems to have only encouraged Johnson to continue to bring the whole institution of government into disrepute.
In an act of political neutrality Oborne compares Boris’ lies with those told my Tony Blair, especially regarding the second Iraq war. He also mentions that Bill Clinton was a proven liar. Angela Merkel fairs more favourably with her poor East German background, hard-working ethics, and scientific rigour contrasting with Johnson’s privileged, elitist Etonian, comedy gaff brush-offs and aloofness. Donald Trump is seen as a mentor and the Atlantic relationship seems to have been convenient for both in their endless quest for omnipotent control of media and disregard for traditional political values, even those values inherent in their own parties. Oborne acknowledges the extremism of Trump but equates Boris’ vile lies to be on a par, if somewhat disguised within the bounds of British society.
When illustrating an example of a lie, Oborne is careful with regard to defamation laws, to provide footnote examples and often internet links with proof of the lie. He often refers to his own extensive website that documents more fully the comprehensive voluminous curriculum vitae of Boris Johnson’s lies.
I won’t spoil the book for the reader in this review to give examples of the many lies. Suffice it to say there are the obvious ones you probably know already plus some that escaped the radar of many including me. I don’t think it’s anything for Boris to be proud of and it will most probably be a long time before the integrity of Parliament and trust of the voting public is regained. A shameful legacy for a Prime Minister.
Thomas Paine is an important writer at an important time that bequeaths us in his ‘Rights of Man’ a fundamental shakeup of what our democratic rights as citizens should be, drawing especially on the French Revolution and also American Revolution and the fundamental rights that their new revolutionary societies produced for their citizens. Paine delivers during the Enlightenment a wake up call to those in countries that are yet to adapt to revolutions, where traditional Royal power and political representation in not so clear democratic institutions abide. Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his ‘Social Contract’ fanned the flames of the French Revolution of 1789 and his words rang in the ears of revolutionaries right down the the last blood spilt buy the Guillotine. It was a period of political pamphleteering and Paine was no stranger to this. He was in essence the Rousseau of the English-speaking world. The thinking behind his work and through other similar political philosophers of the Enlightenment was that the American and French revolutions were no anomalies and that they were just the precursor of more to come and that like dominoes, the Monarchies of Europe were destined to topple and follow suit, paving the way for more liberty and Bills of Rights and written constitutions that would empower the masses across the globe in the dawn of a new age. It is indeed quite bizarre that the predictions of Paine et al never actually materialised. Indeed one of his main target audiences, here in the U.K., has remained almost identical politically to the present with a dual chamber of elected representatives and hereditary peers behind an historical monarch as head of state. Paine explores the rights for citizens as laid out by the French and also details the new American constitution and what it means to the general citizen. The points he makes and the evidence truly is eye-opening and remarkable and it does seem appealing. He directly contrasts the new legal rights in these revolutionary societies with the lack of actual rights we have in places like Britain. Paine elucidates a very powerful argument against hereditary political empowerment, reaching up to the King or Queen themselves. He often attacks his rival Edmund Burke who in his own literary offerings, is critical of both revolutions and defends the merits of the British system. Indeed his obsession with Mr Burke somewhat detracts from some of the points about the Rights of Man that Paine is attempting to transmit. When weighed up it isn’t as crystal clear as an obviously biased Pain might suggest and indeed he, is his complete acceptance and as
a disciple of the new systems, almost suffered some of the more bloodies and brutal aspects of the new revolutionary societies as he only escaped being guillotined in Paris by the skin of his teeth during the height of The Terror. I am surprised that Paine managed to write this in the first place at such a tumultuous period of history. Indeed in his native Britain his work must have been viewed by the authorities with treasonous contempt. It is a controversial and powerful book to readers today and I can see why it is celebrated as a cornerstone work for human rights and politics. I dread to think just how controversial and revolutionary it must have been to the many readers of the ‘Rights of Man’ during the period from whence it sprung.
This book is quite old, first published in 1951, it dates from a period when the totalitarian reality of Hitler and Stalin were very much fresh in the mind. Hannah Arendt was a German Jew and this work is both philosophical, enlightening and gives a valuable educated insight into the dark political reality of totalitarianism. It’s a relatively modern political phenomenon and the in depth analysis of the German Nazi regime under Adolf Hitler in addition to the Communist Soviet regime under Josef Stalin demonstrates how totalitarianism can come from the political extreme of either side of the left-right axis of politics.
The first part of the book looks at the origins of anti-semitism. This was a focus of the rise of the totalitarianist states under both Hitler and Stalin, with both leaders showing similar anti-Jew tendencies, Hitler going to the extreme measures of the Holocauust which killed 6 million Jews during World War 2 and indeed his whole philiosophy, rooted in Mein Kempf was aimed at the total destruction of the Jewish Race. Arendt as a Jew does not give a based one way account of anti-semitism. It is such a controversial thing, a bête-noire to this day with the likes of Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbot just recent examples of modern British politicians flagged for it. Arendt, surprisingly, gives a 50-50 reasoned account of its origins, blaming not just the extreme racist political drives to promote it, but looking at the Jews themselves and allocating some of the blame for anti-semitism with them. The failure to adapt to mainstream societies and to remain a state within a state and also very markedly she decries the role of court Jew that was so prominent in European aristocratic circles to have been a major factor in provoking the anger of the likes of Hitler who in Mein Kampf made a targeted attack on the Jews of Vienna.
The second part of the book looks at Imperialism and the rise of nationalism in the European Nation States and a general shift in politics. This paves the way for the later emergence of Hitler and Stalin to live out the realities of the inevitable totalitarian extremism that all along was at the end of the pathway that was being carefully paved out for them to step into.
On to Part 3 where we have a detailed analysis of both Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler and the Communist Soviet Union with Stalin as dictator. Totalitarianism transcends the mere extreme Fascist politics of other dictators that one might have thought would enter into the category. General Franco or Benito Mussolini were fascists aligned with the far right Nazis but there whole societies still maintained certain elements of democracy and therefore they do not slip into the category of totalitarianIsm proper. Also, Post Revolution Russia, under Lenin, was not as extreme and centred around a one man dictatorship that the extremes of Josef Stalin brought to the table in the Kremlin.
The characteristics of totalitarianism involve a deep web of deceit and propaganda and the truth is constantly subject to change. Control by the State of every aspect of the individual in private, public life is total. Any form of dissidence meets with the most brutal of punishment. All is at the whim of the absolute leader without whom the whole of the state and society cannot survive. It’s extreme insanity and it seems unbelievable how it manifested into reality but the truth is there for all to see in the history books. Indeed one could argue that since Arendt we have seen more totalitarianism in the Communist China and North Korea, one could argue that Boris Johnson’ Britain has many totalitarian characteristics.
The ultimate tool of the totalitarian dictators was the concentration camps under Hitler and the Gulag under Stalin. These are discussed and are obviously horrific. Also, both dictators weren’t averse top meting out capital punishment to any sign of internal or external enemies. Purges and liquidations feature as a core part of totalitarian societies.
Orwell has been one of the most significant authors to have famously demonstrated totalitarianism. The likes of “Animal Farm’ and ‘1984’ are cornerstones of modern literature. But they are works of fiction. What Arendt achieves is an academic study of the realities of totalitarianism as it has manifested in recent twentieth century history. She looks at the facts on the ground, the reality, rather than a dystopia from the imagination. The stark reality of totalitarianism is far worse than any author can imagine.
I’ve had a 26 year war against the British State, being a victim of the Mental Health Act 1983 and a revolving door patient within State Psychiatric hospitals with the local NHS being totally backed up by an excessively violent local police force. I feel that none of my democratic rights have been upheld. For years I have wondered about whether or not a text exists that can explain the deep feelings that I have, knowing the extreme feeling of injustice, absolute helplessness and an often invasive imprisonment in horrific surroundings. Having discovered Arendt, I have now found this book – she puts into words that which I have experienced and her shocking academic study of totalitarianism is indeed a factual reality in the U.K. even if it is well hidden and may seem like a delusional claim.
“Their real secret, the concentration camps, those laboratories in the experiment of total domination, is shielded by the totalitarian regimes from the eyes of their own people as well as from all others.
For a considerable length of time the normality of the normal world is the most efficient protection against disclosure of totalitarian mass crimes. ‘Normal men don’t know that everything is possible’, refuse to believe their eyes and ears in the face of the monstruous, just as the mass men did not trust theirs in the face of a normal reality in which no place was left for them. The reason why the totalitarian regimes can get so far forward realizing a fictitious, topsy-turvy world is that the outside nontotalitarian world, which always comprises a great part of the population of the totalitarian country itself, indulges also in wishful thinking and shirks reality in the face of real insanity just as much as the masses do in the face of the normal world. This common-sense disinclination to believe the monstruous is constantly strengthened by the totalitarian ruler himself, who makes sure that no reliable statistics, no controllable facts and figures are ever published, so that there are only subjective, uncontrollable, and unreliable reports about the places of the living dead.” (Arendt, H. 1951:571-2)
This book is genuinely one of the best literary works that I have ever studied and I will refer back to it. It is a dark subject but equally an important one and it is an important work and should be read widely as it provides the necessary warnings about the dangers that extreme politics can produce in our world.
Under the premiership of Nikita Khrushchev there was a post-Stalin easing of oppression emerging from the Kremlin and a Cold War ‘Victorian’ Ice Age thaw for writers allowed this remarkable, unique, little tale to unbelievably evade the censor and make it into the real world, even traversing the fixed barriers of the Iron Curtain. It was common, particularly during the purges of Uncle Joe, to send the masses off to gulags in Siberia. It didn’t take much of an excuse for the NKVD to send any form of dissident or suspected dissident on a long holiday to pretty much a concentration camp where forced labour and a strict military-controlled regime was used to assist in the growth and development of the Soviet Union. Alexander Solzhenitsyn openly admitted he had spent a long time out in the harsh icy Siberian environment, a gulag survivor, with a story to tell. ‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich’ is the product of this internment. Although strictly a work of fiction, the book would not be possible without direct experience of life in the gulag. It’s tale which isn’t particularly long in length but in its minute detail of a day in the life of our political prisoner, Ivan, we get a real rare and accurate and quite disturbing account of the gulag, a system which was notorious in its terror propaganda value and this is a story which literally affected many many Russian citizens and their families as such vast numbers of people ended up being relocated to gulags, whether justly or more likely as innocent victims of the regime.
I read a lot of literature about sadistic internments and prison camps etc in wacky political extreme environments as I totally empathise with the stories of condemned political prisoners after my own 25 year career as an incarcerated mental patient in Wales, a prisoner of the government here in the United Kingdom. It’s dark material and often sad and disturbing but I find that I can relate a lot more in my daily life to Ivan Denisovich than I can perhaps relate to stories on the BBC News or in newspapers or chats in pub or coffee shop etc. Try a bit of gulag-living and it sure changes your outlook on life. The drudgery of Solzhenitsyn’s tale is only set over the course of a day. Most prisoners had at least ten years of day like this, some as many as 25 or more. The what, where and why you got there is immaterial really. The fact is you aren’t getting out. You are forced to live within your community and have to accept you fellow inmates and you are set against the strict discipline of quite brutal guards and are totally powerless to resist them, to think of escape or top hope for some miraculous form of justice arriving to end your misery. It’s keep your nose down, take joy in the littlest of pleasures available, don’t dream of hope, and crack on with your work. Yes, Ivan may have to stitch stale bread crusts into his dirty mattress but this treasure of nutrition will keep him alive in the dark winter days of permafrost. If one can scrounge and extra helping of watery cabbage soup through a bit of corruption and skulduggery then it is a bonus. The joy of seeing a bird or the emergence of a single sprig of a spring flower amidst the snow. Take pride in your work, work as a team, improvise and focus on anything that eases the slow, painful passing of incomprehensible time. The psychology of fellow inmates and the psychology of the omnipotent guard detail. Harsh punishments and death awaiting in every nook and cranny and corner of your existence. To survive the day is to survive the year and to survive the whole sentence.
This book is a unique story and one that must be told and it documents one of the darker elements of twentieth century history and the Cold War. It is testament to the author that it is in our hands in the West and in the modern world. Life is a struggle and sometimes in our decadent comfort we can fail to recognise that some people on this planet really do have a tough time of it and for all material niceties and life essentials we take for guaranteed it would do us no harm to learn from Ivan and to appreciate the simplest of things and joys in life and this is evolution and natural selection in its most brutal form.
If you were a hermit living in a remote cave then I expect that even you would be well aware that Prince Harry and his wife have been in the news recently quite a lot. Initially I decided I was going to avoid the mass hysteria and not tune into the Netflix documentary and certainly not partake in the reading of the controversial autobiography but I kind of got drawn into it all, so here we are. Firstly, the Netflix was pretty damned good. I felt that Harry and Meghan came out smelling of roses really. I was a big fan of Megan, the pretty legal secretary from ‘Suits’ before she even met Harry. Regarding Prince Harry, it’s been hard not to notice his life as he has lived it in the media spotlight. If anything, one of the most tainting effects of the media story of Prince Harry was the images of him in a full Nazi uniform at a fancy dress party in the redtops back in the day. This did, to be honest disgust me and I feel like I’ve been holding it against him every since, perhaps?
After watching the Netflix, seeing the media hate against them both and the reaction of his family and, having fully digested the book, I can honestly say that I am now a fully-fledged ‘Harryist’ and he’s one of my most favourite Royals. I think it’s all a big storm in a teacup and that he’s actually well in the right and I can see the overwhelming reasons for the Netflix and autobiography and I think anyone who continues to attack and denigrate and upset the balance of the life of Harry and his wife and children are plain and simple out of order. At the time of writing this review, we are in a week where the news of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in America and it is a sour footnote that apparently this collapse has swallowed up all of the profits Harry and Meghan have made from their ventures, which undoubtedly have attracted a lot of attention in the public worldwide. Since the release of the autobiography #SparePrinceHarry has hardly left ‘trending topics’ on twitter and every Tom, Dick and Harry has his opinion on the Prince’s affairs. Well, here’s my verdict, for what it’s worth:
Firstly I must comment that, and I make this claim being an avid reader of a wide variety of different texts so I think it is a qualified claim – ‘Spare’ is a very well-written and eminently readable text. This surprised me a lot. I never thought Harry was the brightest tool in the box. Even he admits he sort of struggled academically in school. Royal by fate of birth is indeed a unique phenomenon that Harry philosophizes about. However, I don’t think one can doubt the wisdom of ‘granny’ or Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II who has guided country and Commonwealth for longer than any previous monarch in history and was very successful in this. The high quality reputation of education at Eton is justified in the literacy and accessibility of the autobiography and Harry as much as he might try to be a ‘cool skiver’ was certainly not fully dormant during his Latin and Greek classes in school. A bit of a downer was learning that the book is in fact ghost-written, but even so, the very best ghost-writer, requires substance and a lot of input from the subject and we know when we read ‘Spare’ that it is coming straight from the horse’s mouth. It is a rare historical document in the sense that it is coming directly from a member of the Royal Family. As perhaps unimportant as the ‘Spare may be in relation to the ‘Heir’ or the King and Queen Consort, Prince Harry is a senior and very visible member of the Royal Household, carrying for many the light of his late mother, Princess Diana, as a public figure who is adored worldwide.
Harry openly discusses the sad loss of his mother and his inner torment is laid bare for the reader. He cannot get closure and even the journey through counselling doesn’t seem to aid in his quest. To lose one’s mother is such tragedy one can only dread to imagine and I don’t think anyone who suffered such a loss could ever get over it regardless. I think Diana would be proud of her son and Harry still feels her presence and refers often to little signs that the People’s Princess is smiling down on him and his new life and family. The media scrummage that he grew up in was hated by his mother and Harry’s own war with the media just seems totally farcical and unacceptable. Intrusion is an understatement. To hear Harry’s own words about some of the sick vile things he has had to tolerate from the most scummiest red-top journalists and photographers ion a daily basis throughout his whole life is stark and revealing. It’s just unbelievable. I often look at celebrities like David Beckham and their wealth and think to myself I’d hate to have to put up with all the intrusion into my life despite the many millions and billions. It’s not a fair trade off in many ways. It all goes up a notch for royalty and this hasn’t traditionally always been the case and is a recent development really spiralling out of control during the lifetime of Harry’s mother and seemingly ongoing and getting worse in his case. It’s high time to revert to tradition and on the plus side I can’t see a rosy future for newspapers and Murdoch dominions in the digital age of the future. Social Media and the internet bring doom to tabloids. Every day that passes where people spend on wifi and not on newspapers heralds a new age and reduced power for the sort of pondlife that these press institutions foster.
Harry’s life contains and inherent duality. His Royal Blood on the one hand and on the other his desire to be just a normal human being. We can see his struggle and in the modern world where life for everyone changes so rapidly, this duality is a curse in many ways. People question the funding and very existence of the Royal family, new technologies can make the media more intrusive, a more globalised society, changing values and continuing his mother’s legacy. I remember at Prince Charles and Lady Diana’s wedding the big question was whether to allow a ‘commoner’ into the royal lineage. Harry carries dual genes and the loss of his mother drives him on in life to further the sort of goals that would make her proud. Charity work, resisting press intrusion, an affinity with the general public and using your status to benefit the most needy in the most neediest of places, Diana’s flame very much lives on in ‘Spare’. Some issues such as the removal of his security detail after later flare ups are unbelievable and when Harry says he’s only every used the London Underground a couple of times in his life it puts into perspective just how sheltered an existence living in the Royal ‘fishbowl’ actually is. I think that the best Harry can hope for is to recognise his uniqueness as an asset and not to regard it as inhibitive in any way. Don’t feel the need to apologise for blue blood but celebrate it. I think in many ways this is what Netflix and ‘Spare’ are for Harry and the public, be they fans of his or trolling haters….
I wasn’t keen on hearing juicy gossip and witnessing a publicly aired family feud really and having watched the documentary and reads the book I think that Harry is actually pretty light on the whole saga and comes out shining really as pretty much an innocent victim of unjustified decisions against him where he isn’t at fault, has done very little wrong and he doesn’t seem to harbour grudges and isn’t particularly scathing or vindictive against the other sides of the alleged war. The closeness between Prince William and him as they are growing up, especially in the way they cope with their dear mother’s passing, shows a very close brotherly bond and Prince Harry describes King Charles very much differently to how perhaps the media have portrayed him. King Charles comes across as really nice man and a good father. We get a glimpse behind the scenes. Yes, we know Charles is eccentric but I was quite touched by the intimacy and care he and love that he has for Harry. The whole burden of the Crown and governance of nation and Commonwealth is alluded to by Harry and he has enough distance as ‘Spare’ yet proximity to understand the actual benefits and drawbacks of hereditary birth. As news unfolds regarding the forthcoming coronation and the results of Netflix and ‘Spare’ I just hope that this family which are sacred to the British people can iron out their difficulties. I think it may take moves from both sides to diffuse the situation but equally I do not see it impossible for them to achieve a harmonious future for the good of all. Yes, the Royal Family, like any other family, has its ups and downs, but to me it’s not really that dysfunctional. My own close family life is an awful to more dysfunctional than Harry’s has ever been – this in one reason I really enjoyed the book and nothing is beyond hope. War and Peace and peace is the preferred path.
Harry is a bit of partier that is for sure. He is overly frank and candid regarding the use of illegal drugs. Cannabis is just part of his daily life and he mentions cocaine use too. It is a different era and a new generation where values have changed and I guess that living in the USA where cannabis is legal helps a bit for the ‘Stoned Ginger’ Prince. He should calm down a bit really though as it is a bit excessive and perhaps something he should be a bit more responsible about.
The army stuff was great and I felt him discovering his freedom and normality during this period. It blew my head away really seeing the actual inner story of his military work. Yes, he may have been blasted for Taliban kill claims and I’ve spoken to military veterans who are disgusted by this and say it’s wrong. But I like to hear that a member of our inner core of The Royal Family is directly fighting Islamic terrorism directly. 50 kills would be better than the 25 or so mentioned in my opinion. – there was about 4000 innocents dead in the Twin Towers terrorist attack. 25 armed jihadists, totally opposed to Western life and Western values is but a drop in the ocean. If Harry’s book can inspire the end of Islamic terror and its eradication for future generations in any way then all the better.
And on to the Meghan romance and family. Harry’s situation has left him with difficulties with the practicalities of serious romantic relationships. In Meghan, I think he has found a genuine Princess, a new ‘Diana’ a people’s princess. Firstly I’m not even going to illuminate anything regarding ‘racism’ – It’s just outmoded, outdated, irrelevant and not worth talking about. Their story is a beautiful story of true love and in an age where values are eroding and families falling apart it brings light to see them making their way in life with a good solid nucleus. I hope that one day their children will grow up being able to be proud of both their parents for what they have done in documenting their own lives and feelings in the Netflix documentary and also in Harry’s autobiography.
I hope that this is not the final time we will hear from Harry direct in print. I hope things work out for the Coronation and in the future for Harry, Princess Megan and their children. I’m more of a fan after reading and offer as much support as I can. I encourage people to actually go out and buy the book and read it because you will enjoy it and gain from the experience.
Good luck Prince Harry – remember that a ‘Spare’ in bowling is actually quite a good score.
Graham Greene delivers here a classic espionage novel, fiction, set in Cuba around the time of the revolution, Greene writes in his knowledgeable subject area of expertise a comedy account of a chance vacuum salesman being recruited by Mi6 as their ‘Man in Havana.’ Struggling lone parent Wormold runs a little enterprising vacuum franchise and looks after his blooming teenage daughter, Milly. It is his spoiling her with a horse that he kind of seizes on the opportunity of becoming a spy, reasoning with himself solely really that he is in it for the extra cash. Hawthorne is the Mi6 officer who recruits Wormold and he is to and for between Cuba, Jamaica and London head office reporting on the growing successful mission of Our Man in Havana. Wormold delivers in what he sees as the safest way possible a series of critical intelligence to the British government. He has photographs of military installations in the Cuban Sierra (not dissimilar to the Russian / Soviet military installations of the later Cuban Missile Crisis), a string of local agents infiltrating and influencing critical areas of Cuban society. He is creating much excitement and hover in London they are well pleased. He collects his enhanced expenses and the bosses decide to expand the operation and send out an assistant and also the lovely young spy/secretary, Beatrice. Wormold’s secret, however, is that he’s actually fabricating all the intelligence with a keen imagination. The military installations are just a state of the art vacuum cleaner that’s been taken apart. The agents are fictitious people or people he has never even met. Yet the reports seduce the bigwigs back in Blighty. The farce grows more and more out of control until it actually becomes a real spy adventure with mishaps including the assassination of his German drinking buddy and best friend, Dr Hasselbacher and he is under a lot of scrutiny by the dirty old corrupt abusive brutal police chief, Captain Segura. Captain Segura wants the freshfaced teen Milly to be his bride and isa a bit lenient on our man, Wormold, as result of seeking the bride’s hand in marriage. Things get totally FUBAR and Wormold ends up shooting a suspected enemy agent and is forced to finally flee the Caribbean Island and head back to the safety of the United Kingdom. His charade is exposed but incredibly despite all the fake evidence, the actual real spy stuff that he accidentally does and to avoid embarrassment leads to him being retained by the intelligence service and ultimately he cops off with secretary Beatrice in a pleasant romantic twist to a wild old tale of Cold War era espionage gambits.
I love Apocalypse Now. It is one of my most favourite films. I learnt that apparently, Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’ is the literary work that provides the basic narrative of the film. Apocalypse Now, however is set in war torn Vietnam, with the US Military hunting down an insane, erratic, murderous, rogue officer in the interior, deep in the Vietnamese jungle. Marlon Brando plays Kurtz and it is a totally gripping and disturbing performance. Conrad sets his work in nineteenth century Congo. The narrator, Marlow is sailing a British ship up the Congo river, into the interior, his mission to locate the important ivory trader, Kurtz, who none of the government officials have heard from for a while. This is the peak of Victorian British Imperialism, an Age of Empire, a time when the colonies offered all men a chance to enrich themselves and seek out adventures in wild, untamed, unknown lands. Marlow is on this quest himself. Kurtz has set out and established himself and apparently is making a good name for himself and delivering huge quantities of profitable ivory. The trade of ivory in itself is obviously ethically and environmentally questionable, but this is a different age. Also, when reading the book from a post-colonial politically correct, almost apologetic modern sense, the reader can discover often brutal and quite simply plainly racist terminology which recognises the African as quite a lesser human being than his Caucasian Western counterparts. Racist terminology is throughout the narrative and the value of the lives or the work of Africans, be they pilots of the ship or part of Kurtz’s native crew, is seen in very typical Victorian fashion. Civilisations were of course vastly different. Although the book may seem to contain a lot of prejudice, it does, however, offer an enlightened view of a different, exotic world and the way in which the Other is described in this novel may have had a transformative effect on the views of its contemporary readers. Although elements of an exotic, tropical, vast untouched African interior are well described in the story, on the whole it is the ‘darkness’ element of the ‘dark’ continent which forms the rather moody, melancholic, quite frankly intimidating atmosphere of the journey. We encounter a brutal world where traditional values have evaporated. It is a savage world. Kurtz has embraced the native and is wild and quite frankly, although recognised as very intelligent and does seem to make a lot of sense, he is also, prior to his tragic demise, clearly quite disturbed, even verging on insanity. His ivory jaunts with the natives into the deeper interior from his river Congo base have scarred him and de-Europeanised his ways. When Marlow’s steamer arrives natives greet the boat with a flurry of poisoned arrows, killing his undervalued African ship pilot. On the way, a starving African crew are seen by the Western travellers on board as totally alien and their open confessions to cannibalism is quite frightening. The whole novel is, very much like Apocalypse Now, memorably disturbing and although clues to divine salvation are mentioned the whole nature of the evil of mankind is central to the book’s winding theme. Conrad is originally Polish and although based in London and writing in the English language, he has quite a difficult style. His sentences are extensively long and sometimes a bit confusing and also he peppers the account with quite a wide range of difficult vocabulary not use in common vernacular. It is only a short work but is and, one can tell from its popularity and praise as a classic, a key piece of literature from the Imperial Age.
Wez G Books 
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