Material Witness

REVIEW: The Royal Secret by Andrew Taylor

The palace intrigues of the Royal Courts of Europe provide the most fertile ground for historical novelists. In the daily shifts in power and influence of noblemen, priests, financiers and courtiers there lies enormous opportunities, for fortunes to be made and position to be one, as well as tremendous danger. One failure, one indiscretion, one misjudgment can be fatal. 

In the hands of a skillful novelist, one with an eye for period detail, a desire to bring history to life and a flair for story-telling, it's a blank canvas with endless potential. Those of us enjoy our history delivered with a slice of mystery are living in gilded times with a rich choice of novels and series. 

One of those is Andrew Taylor's James Marwood / Cat Lovett series, set in the Restoration on the fringes of the court of King Charles II. A series started in The Ashes of London in the wake of the Great Fire of 1666, has now reached its fifth instalment in 1670. James Marwood has continued his steady ascent in the branch of government stemming from the powerful Secretary of State, Lord Arlington. With the trust of Arlington and the King, Marwood's employ frequently extends beyond his dreary administrative duties to a role that regularly covers detective and spy. Cat Lovett is forging her own reputation as an architect, gradually overcoming the obstacles applied to a woman in 17th Century society. 

Marwood is drawn into a new mystery when another of Arlington's men is murdered, possibly as a result of sensitive documents illicitly in his possession, and he is asked to investigate. At the same time, her burgeoning professional reputation draws the attention of the King, who asks her to design a poultry house for his beloved sister who is married to the brother of the Sun King, Louis XIV.

An intricate plot operates at first on a slow burn - Marwood, like the reader, is not given full insight into what he's looking into, and it's not clear how a number of different incidents fit together. What is clear is that the situation is both urgent and delicate, and it places Marwood and those close to him in new danger. 

This is a series that is always replete with historical detail that reveals much about the politics and social conditions of the age. Like other great series, such as CJ Sansom's Shardlake books, it is also enriched by the presence of important historical characters whose machinations are often right at the centre of the mystery, even if the narrative itself moves in the wings of that history. What you get then is a great mystery novel that also delivers a digestible slice of history - as well as the tension of the "will they / won´t they" relationship between Marwood and Lovett.

It's a series that I believe has grown with age and I think this is perhaps the best so far: a dramatic thriller deeply immersed in the political and diplomatic skullduggery of its time. Let's hope there's a lot more to come. 

REVIEW: The Shadows of London by Andrew Taylor

Andrew Taylor's fine historical fiction has been a favourite of this blog over a number of years. Taylor has always been capable of delivering the critical detail and atmosphere to wrap around his strong narratives and memorable characters. His writing is evocative, thoughtful and exciting.

In recent years Taylor has taken us back to the Restoration with his Marwood and Lovett (lately Hakesby) series that takes place after the Great Fire of 1666 and in a terrific series - this is the sixth and apparently final installment in the series - he has done for the Restoration what CJ Sansom did for the Tudors, bringing finely-tuned mystery into the heart of the court, and over-layering it with political and personal drama.

The Restoration is a time pregnant with possibility for historical fiction as social upheaval, foreign subterfuge and scientific advancement gripped. As the monarchy reasserts its power, led by a popular and charismatic King - last seen up close in The Royal Secret - there is plenty of scope for high court intrigue and low behaviour. Marwood, as an administrator to Secretary of State Lord Arlington, whose responsibilities were said to include management of royal mistresses, has ample opportunity to find trouble, and it's never far away. Like Shardlake, he becomes a reluctant investigator and often unwilling tool of the state. 

In The Shadows of London, Marwood is drawn into another investigation when a corpse is discovered on the site of an alms house construction being managed by Cat Hakesby. The lack of face on the cadaver hinders the intitial investigation, but eventually and inevitably, it points towards the royal court. 

Marwood, despite his position in the employ of one of England's most powerful men, remains vulnerable to the machinations of other important courtiers and it isn't long before he is drawn back into the orbit of his implacable enemy the Duke of Buckingham and his attack dog, Roger Durrell. 

Bubbling away in the background as ever, is the "will they won't they" tension between the two main characters, a storyline that provides an anchor to the series but it never overdone. 

One of the joys of historical fiction is being brought face to face with the notable characters of the day. In the past we have been introduced to Sir Christopher Wren and King Charles himself, and here the celebrated diarist and courtier John Evelyn makes a cameo appearance.

I'm sorry to see this series go, but Taylor leaves it on fine form with a pacy and absorbing story full of drama and incident. Surely this most prolific of writers will be back soon with something different and I look forward to the next turn. Books such as Bleeding Heart Square, a personal favourite, and  The Anatomy of Ghosts, has shown that no era is safe from his formidable imagination and impeccable research. 

REVIEW: The Close by Jane Casey

Will they or won't they? That's the question, the golden thread of tension that's been keeping Jane Casey's reader guessing since she first introduced the fatal attraction between DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent.

The relationship has played out over the course of nine police procedural novels where it has acted as an emotional mooring for the series, never too far from the surface but never dominant. 

In this tenth instlament, however, Casey blows the format sky high moving Kerrigan and Derwent out of London and into the highly fertile territory of the domestic thriller. The two Met detectives are sent undercover at the behest of a senior aide to the London Mayor to try to discover how her brother-in-law ended up dead. They leave London for the deceptive tranquility of semi rural England where, posing as a couple, they spy on their new neighbours in a Ramsey Streetesque cul de sac.

Never mind that the set up is more than a little contrived, it doesn't matter a bit as it allows Casey's talent free reign to deliver a tense and intriguing thriller and put the "question" front and centre. It works an absolute treat. Forced to play the happy couple to, the detectives test their commitment to their professionalism to destruction as their circumstances force them closer together than ever.

And the rest of the story roars along too. Casey populates The Close with an entertaining and disturbing cast of busybodies, gossips, loners, narcissistic lycra-clad bike bros and yummy mummies. Kerrigan and Derwent have been  sent to observe just one house, but after a couple of weeks see threats and potential murderers behind every closed door and net curtained window.

Casey's just very very good at this. Besides the question and the primary investigation, she keeps several threads alive, including an ongoing investigation back in London that Kerrigan is managing through Zoom calls. She explores important difficult issues such as domestic abuse and the exploitation of vulnerable adults. And it's all done at a pace that never feels hurried but keeps a good momentum up towards a dramatic conclusion. It's another fine episode in the series, which I reviewed here a couple of years ago. 

 

 

 

REVIEW: The Motive and the Cue at the National Theatre

Sir John Gielgud played Hamlet for the first time in 1929. There can surely be nobody left alive who saw it. Gielgud directed Richard Burton as Hamlet in 1964. There should be a few folk around who saw that, but not too many, and not for long. There is a grainy film of that Broadway performance available on YouTube. It is not quite the same as being there... 

Theatre is transitory. Each performance is unique, 'writ in water', preserved temporarily in the memory of those who were there, and imperfectly in the handful of reviews published. To me this makes every performance precious, every moment in the theatre a small part of a shared history and breeds a sense of community and belonging it's difficult to find elsewhere. You can feel it in the buzz of anticipation in the lobby and bars before a show starts and in the whispered critiques during the interval and as the audience filters out into the street afterwards.

 

This love, respect and reverence of the medium is just one of the multitude of things to enjoy and admire about The Motive and The Cue, the National Theatre's triumphant production of Jack Thorne's new play that explores Gielgud and Burton's troubled cooperation. Burton, the global silver screen superstar, is desperate to leave his mark on the history of the most challenging and mythical role of them all, under the eye of perhaps the greatest to play the role. Gielgud's proprietorial love of the role clashes dramatically with Burton's hotheaded, whisky-fuelled insecurity.

 

In this transitory world, we are lucky to have so much of Burton's Hamlet left. Not only the movie, but also the memoirs of Richard Sterne and William Redfield, who left detailed behind-the-scenes exposés. Sterne even hid under a table to record a private rehearsal between Burton and Gielgud. Thorne's golden pen turns this material into an intimate and captivating journey through an artistic process featuring two very different men at odds with each other, themselves and the world.  

 

The drama takes place over 25 days leading up to the production in the rehearsal room and in the honeymoon suite Burton shares with his new wife, Elizabeth Taylor. As the clock ticks down and the differences between the two men emerge the tension and drama rises. In the room with them is Hamlet, over-bearing in his complexity and elusiveness. Thorne cleverly weaves the Prince of Denmark into the play, his own indecision and doubt mirroring Burton's and mocking Gielgud. 

 

An ensemble cast is fabulous throughout, polished and composed on just their second preview night. There are performances of note from Allan Corduner as Hume Cronyn, Janie Dee as Eileen Herlie and Aysha Kala as Gielgud's young and inisghtful assistant. 

 

And then there are the three leads: Mark Gatiss as Sir John Gielgud, Johnny Flynn as Richard Burton and Tuppence Middleton as Elizabeth Taylor. 

 

Middleton spends relatively little time on stage but illuminates every scene, imbuing Taylor not just with a powerful and ravenous sexuality but also an unexpected gravity and wisdom as she emerges as peacemaker, helping the two men to understand each other and edge towards an accommodation. In other hands the role could be overpowered by the Burton and Gielgud, but this is a star turn, memorable and entirely compelling. 

 

Flynn has the toughest challenge of the three, as Burton himself seems unsure why he is there and presents all his doubt and uncertainty. He is, by turns, charming and loquacious and then drunk, angry and lost. As anyone who's watched his silver screen turns will know, Flynn has something of Burton's raffish charm about him and physically he was a good fit for the role. So early in what will certainly be a successful run, it felt somewhat like he was still finding his way into a complex and difficult character, but as the night wore on I became more and more intrigued and impressed by his performance and how well he captured Burton.

 

Finally, Mark Gatiss, who delivered a bravura performance as Sir John Gielgud at a low ebb in his career, and stole the night. He delivered all of Gielgud's fierce theatre intelligence, his love of "Uncle Will" Shakespeare and Hamlet as well as his charm, vulnerability and occasional venomous bite. He was spell-binding from start to finish, utterly convincing. 

 

The key to unlocking Thorne's great script is taking the audience to the heart of the fractious dynamic between the two men as they tried to find Burton's Hamlet. And in this they - and director Sam Mendes - are very successful. The night I attended, you could hear how engaged the audience was: a sharp intake of breath here, a collective gasp there... The tension was palpable. And so too was the history. It took me all the way back to 1989 when my love affair with Shakespeare began with another troubled Hamlet, that of Daniel Day-Lewis that I saw in the same auditorium, the Olivier.

 

The last play I saw twice was Jez Butterworth's Jerusalem, but that was over a period of more than a decade. I would go back and see The Motive and the Cue next week if I could, as there's just so much to unpick and enjoy and I suspect it would be even better on second viewing.

 

The National Theatre has another massive hit on its hands, on a par with The Lehman Trilogy. It runs until July and is going to play to packed houses. Beg, borrow or steal a ticket. Just don't miss it. 

 

My favourite books of 2022: Part 2, non-fiction

My reading resolutions for 2022 included reading more non-fiction, and it's been a hugely rewarding experience. The 11 - up from two last year! - all opened new worlds, from the 17th Century English Republic to the Moorish history of Spain - and all showed that story-telling isn't just for novelists.

The 2022 reading was turbo-charged in the summer when a friend was appointed to the non-fiction Bailie-Gifford Prize judging panel and I started picking books out of the long and short lists, which proved to be an absolute treasure trove.   

Invisible Child by Andrea Elliott

Meet Dasani Coates, the unforgettable protagonist of Andrea Elliott's extraordinary journey into the hidden shame of New York City, where poverty, violence and narcotics blight countless lives.  NYT journalist first encounters Dasani as an 11-year-old child living with her mother and partner, and her seven siblings, step- and half- siblings in a single room in a Brooklyn homeless shelter. Dasani is strong and smart and resilient and she needs every ounce of her inner will because what follows is an extraordinary journey through an adolescent life that would likely smash all hope and lifefrom most. With parents in and out of rehab, stuck in a system that often seems designed to compound rather than address their problems, Dasani fights to stay above water and find a route, through education, out of the poverty that has afflicted her family. It's a spell-binding story, at times unbelievable but all too real. It speaks about love and courage and the crsuhing oppression of systemic poverty as experienced by black people in the world's richest and most glamorous city. Elliott deservedly won a Pulitzer for her work.   

The Escape Artist by Jonathan Freedland

No matter how much I read about the Holocaust, such is the scale of the evil and horror that every time I read something new about it, it always has the emotional intensity of reading about it for the first time. This incredible story brings that intensity over and over again as it recounts the tale of Rudolf Vrba, who in 1944 became the first Jewish inmate to escape Auschwitz, alongside his friend Fred Wetzler. Vrba's intimacy with the Auschwitz killing machine helps to deliver a detailed description of life within the camp, as he uses the Nazis predictability and adherence to order to help to plot his escape. This is thrillingly told - it's non-fiction written as a novel - and the aftermath, when Vrba and Wetzler struggle to persuade the world outside to accept the truth of the camps and to act, is quite extraordinary.    

Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe

For anyone who enjoyed Dopesick - either Beth Macy's brilliant book, or the television adaptation - Empire of Pain is mandatory reading. Radden Keefe's meticulous, detailed but thrilling history of the dastardly Sackler family and their destructive influence on US society through the opioid epidemic is magnificent and every bit as compelling as any novel I read this year. The story starts with the migration of Isaac Sackler from the Ukraine to New York in the early 20th Century and finishes with the law suits against his descendants' company for its role in the misery, chaos and death caused by the painkiller OxyContin. The middle is an astonishing story of the rise and fall of an American dream. It's brilliant and deservedly earned Radden-Keefe the 2021 Bailie-Gifford prize. 

Restless Republic by Anna Keay

Just as the new Carolean age began in September of this year, I was cast into this history of the events that separated his two eponymous predecessors. England's only period without a monarch in a millennium. The history I was taught in school covered a handful of key Civil War battles, a regicide and the Restoration, with very little detail of what happened in between. Anna Keay fills this gap with a very human history of the English Republic that artfully builds a story around the activities of a handful of influential and extraordinary figures. These range from William Petty, the doctor who surveyed Ireland for Cromwell, to Charlotte Stanley, Countess of Derby, who led one of the last holdouts against the new regime on the Isle of Man. It's brilliantly constructed book, full of vivid detail that brings the story to life as well as sharp insights into the political and social turmoil of the Republic. 

España by Giles Tremlett 

The closer we get to leaving Spain, the more urgent my need to make better sense of all we've seen and experienced here. This concise story of the country provides fascinating insight into how both its history and geography has shaped modern Spain. It's a country apart, separated from Europe by the Mediterranean and the Pyrenees and with long and profound influence from the Moors to the South and Hispano America to the west. Tremlett covers everything from Trajan to Velazquez and Colón to Franco in a successful quest to bring insight and context to the story of this beguiling and elusive country. I also thoroughly enjoyed Spain by Jan Morris, a travelogue first published in the 1960s. 

A Beer in the Loire by Tommy Barnes

For a complete change of pace, this funny and enjoyable tale of a disillusioned London marketing exec packing it all in and reinventing himself as a craft brewer in the Loire is great fun. Barnes documents his often disastrous attempts to bring great beer to wine country with a charming self-deprecating humour, all the while testing the patience of his wife, his neighbours and his murderous dog Kurt. 

 

 

 

My favourite books of 2022: Part One, fiction

What a year it's been. Great books everywhere, and for once some time to read! This post usually comes at the end of December, but seeing as everyone's out there buying Christmas presents now, this seems to be the moment for the best of list. 

With a month to go, I've read (or listened to) 79 books, and probably with more variety than many previous years. This blog is nominally still dedicated to crime fiction, and there's still quite a bit of that, but also a lot more non-fiction than usual, historical fiction, spies, thrillers and literary fiction, whatever that is. And about 50/50 between men and women. Most of the books listed here were published recently, but I've still enjoyed dipping back into time. 

Still Life by Sarah Winman 

There is something incedibly special about this book, and I've been recommending and buying it for loads of people. Back in January, it transported me straight to the Piazza Santo Spirito in Florence, and if I'm honest I didn't really want to come back. As I wrote then in this review, "I cannot recall the last occasion a novel held me so spellbound and was so successful at evoking a time and a place, creating a canvas so vivid. I wish I could read it again for the first time". Simply magical and if you haven't discovered it yet, I envy you. I also delved into Winman's back catalogue and thoroughly enjoyed both Tin Man and A Year of Marvellous Ways. And as the year closes, I'm now listening to Winman's own reading of the book, and it's captured me entirely once again.

Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson

A new novel from Kate Atkinson is always a cause for celebration, and she never disappoints. This rollicking tale of the roaring twenties, of night clubs and gangsters, of coppers and dancers, is marvellous. Atkinson has a particular gift for writing wonderful female characters, and here is one of her best, Gwendolen Kelling, a courageous, smart and straight-talking librarian turned sleuth who goes to London from Yorkshire in search of a pair of missing girls. She finds herself mixed up with the after-party empire of club owner Nellie Coker and her fabulously dysfunctional family. Atkinson creates a vivid, sparkling London with a seedy underbelly and a cast of characters to match. Great fun and with the beautiful linguistic flourish you come to expect from her.

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

There is hope for all of us aging aspiring novelists in the triumphant form of Bonnie Garmus who has delivered a shining and memorable debut with this effervescent tale of Elizabeth Zott, aspiring scientist turned television cookery phenomenon.  In August's review I found Lessons in Chemistry, "so well conceived, so beautifully written, so charming, clever, funny and moving that the hesitancy (to review it for fear of not being able to do it justice) was overcome by an urgent need to tell everyone to read it. Read it!" Apparently Apple has a dramatization in the works, and I can't wait. 

The Overstory by Richard Powers

This is something very different, but very powerful, hugely moving and important. A tale of trees, and their power and their central role in vital ecosystems, but also their vulnerability and expendability in the face of capitalism's destructive logic. I found The Overstory, which is a story of eco activism, strangely mesmeric, with its slightly off beat rhythm and unconventional approach to its story. It packs a massive punch, delivering its message of our hopeless inaction in the face of the climate and biodiversity crises. Reading this book makes it much easier to understand how people gravitate to groups like Extinction Rebellion. 

Flashman at the Charge by George MacDonald Fraser

This is my third time round the Flashman novels, and they're no less entertaining with each reading. Here the newly minted Colonel Flashman, toady, coward and cheat, finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time yet again, participating in the famous Charge of the Light Brigade in Balaklava during the Crimean War. Flashman's colourful and no holds barred account doesn't spare the lash from the army's hapless commanders and MacDonald Fraser's combination of history, satire and adventure delivers as ever. 

Garnethill by Denise Mina 

I worry sometimes that Denise Mina is unfairly overlooked in the pantheon of great modern crime writers, because I see less buzz about her than so many others. Maybe it's because the books are rarely straightforward and ask the reader to enter a world of moral ambiguity when it's so much more comfortable to see things in black and white. So it is here in a 1998 novel that I have somehow overlooked (I know, I know) that takes us into an uncompromising story in an uncompromising city, Glasgow. Maureen O'Donnell, abuse survivor, isn't easy to love. After she finds her boyfriend dead in her flat and herself the prime suspect she embarks on a quest for a combination of vengeance and justice that upsets plenty of carts along the way. There's a rawness and honesty to the writing that I really admire and feel drawn to. And for those who don't recognise the name, I also recommend Mina's Alex Morrow detective series, one of the most underrated in the genre. 

Queen High by CJ Carey

October, the month after burying one Queen, was a good time to read about another and think more about the purpose and direction of our monarchy. Queen High is CJ Carey's follow-up to the brilliant Widowland, set in her meticulously crafted alternate world in which Britain is a vassal state of Nazi Germany. It's 1955 and Wallis Simpson has been installed on the throne by the de facto occupying power - although sold to a weary and downtrodden nation as an alliance. Where there is hope it lies in the form of the absent Princess Elizabeth, who may or may not be alive. Too much to say about this book here, so you'd best read the review of "a terrific thriller, taut with tension and drama throughout. It's a feminist novel with important messages about the role of women in society. It also has much to say about literature and poetry and their roles in our private and public affairs".  

V for Victory by Lissa Evans

This is a world we know better: London in the late stages of the war, with the same weary populace driven to distraction by the murderous lottery of the V2 rockets raining death and destruction on their battered city. Lissa Evans brings an originality to the scene with a novel that draws a series of intimate portraits of Londoners trying to survive the onslaught. V might represent the rocket, or perhaps Vera, the north London landlady bringing up the precocious and sensitive Noel, a 15-year-old she is passing off as a nephew. It is around Vera's dinner table, where her tenants pick at the meagre offerings, that much of the story takes shape. There and in the home defence command centre where Winnie, short of stature but huge of heart, takes control of her wardens. The story is told with charm and a great deal of wit and wisdom, and the writing and characterisation is sharp and incisive. It's rare I read out full paragraphs to those in earshot, but this wonderful novel demanded it on numerous occasions. I later discovered it is the third part of a "loose trilogy". Good news. 

A Killing in November by Simon Mason

All the while I was reading A Killing in November, I was thinking, this shouldn't work, and wondering how much anxiety it brought its writer, Simon Mason. But it does work, and spectacularly, this odd couple Oxford police procedural featuring one Balliol-educated high flier and a shabby barely-even-working-class detective from the wrong side of the tracks. And if you're thinking of Thames Valley Police's more celebrated odd couple, well so was I when I wrote this review, and frankly comparisons that start there should end well. 

Bad Actors by Mick Herron 

It's a joy to have Gary Oldman back on the screen in Season Two of Slow Horses, his Jackson Lamb helping to full the long gao before Mick Herron's next novel appears. Keeping fresh a series that has been as consistently excellent as this one can't be easy, but Herron has been helped to a degree by the sheer 'you couldn't make it up' awfulness of the current shambles of a government in the UK. In this, the eighth installment of the series, Downing Street has been all but taken over by the Prime Minister's special advisor who relies on the wisdom of a superforecaster - really what could go wrong? The writing is as biting and acidic as ever, and so what if the targets are now too easy, Herron hitting them dead centre is as satisfying as ever. 

I could have included a dozen more books here, but the line needs drawing somewhere. I also resisted going back over the Bailie

To play the King - a week with Macbeth

It is Act One, Scene Four, in the royal castle. The battle is done. King Duncan’s forces have triumphed. The monarch, overwhelmed by relief and happiness, greets and thanks his greatest generals Macbeth and Banquo, before moving on to succession planning.

It is Act One, Scene Four but this time in an impressively equipped school theatre in Chamberí. Duncan has triumphed. He greets Macbeth. And then Banquo. And then his mind goes blank. He wonders regally about the stage, trying desperately to remember the next line, but it’s no use. He might as well be thinking about his Deliveroo order or why the World Cup shouldn’t be in Qatar.

For the second time that day, Banquo rescues Duncan, teeing him up for what is a pivotal speech, naming Malcolm his successor and pushing Macbeth over the edge towards regicide.

 

I knew the line, of course. “Let me enfold thee, and hold thee to my heart’. I’ve delivered it a dozen times before. I have also written it out from memory every day for three weeks. But if I learned one thing from the opening two shows of the English Theatre Madrid’s Macbeth it is that writing out lines in the peace and tranquillity of my desk is not the same as speaking them in the full glare of LED lighting and under the eye of a fabulous cast in whose company I am not entirely sure I belong.

So what is going through my head, when it should be the cue to embrace Banquo, is mostly, “what the hell are you doing here?”

It is a good question. The last time I trod the boards was in 1989 as the clock was running down on my school days in Somerset. My last show was a mediocre (at best) production of a pretty bad musical called Lock Up Your Daughters, an adaptation of an 18^th Century comedy called Rape Upon Rape – just the thing, I’m sure you’ll agree, for a co-educational boarding school. In that production I played a drunk called Mr Sotmore, and was sufficiently bad that my only solo was withdrawn after one performance on account of not being able to sing. A relief for one and all.

Since 1989, theatre has become one of my passions, and I have learned to love Shakespeare in particular. I’ve been lucky with it, seeing Daniel Day-Lewis and Mark Rylance play Hamlet, the latter also as Iago. The late great Alan Rickman with Juliet Stevenson in Anthony and Cleopatra. Derek Jacobi, Eric Porter and, memorably, Glenda Jackson as King Lear. One of the highlights of this year was the National Theatre’s joyous and exuberant Much Ado About Nothing.

People ask me if there’s anything I miss about England. Theatre is always the response. Friends, family and theatre.

In Madrid, where our pigeon Spanish isn’t nearly good enough for theatre en español, we’ve gravitated to opera and the occasional productions from the two English theatre companies here. And for a while I’ve played with the idea that perhaps one day, maybe, I might participate rather than watch.

So in the summer, when I suddenly found myself with a lot of time on my hands, I responded to a Facebook call for an audition for a winter production of Macbeth. I took myself, along with Polonius’s advice to his departing son Laertes, to a studio in Lavapies. After stumbling through “Neither a borrower nor a lender be”, surrounded by infinitely more talented folk, I was handed a piece of Act 4, whenthe Thane of Ross arrives in England to tell MacDuff that his entire family has been murdered by the tyrant.

And something very odd happened. I started reading with a Scottish accent I didn't know I had - in front of two actual Scots who are part of the English Theatre Madrid triumvirate running the show. The only explanation I can give for this is that when reading Shakespeare's words, in my head I heard them in a Scottish accent. And so that’s how I spoke them, as if I was Bill McLaren or Ian Robertson commentating at Murrayfield.

The high point of the whole business was a fellow cast member telling me that until the week of the show he’d actually thought I was Scottish.

And so I was cast as Duncan, the King of Scotland. A good role for a first dip back into theatrical waters. He's only there a little while, doesn't have too many lines, and therefore not too many opportunities to screw up. 

Macbeth is not my favourite Shakespearean tragedy. It lacks the emotional depth and complexity of those mentioned earlier. That said, it has pace, intensity and intrigue and when staged imaginatively and with flair can be hugely compelling.

So it was here. Our very talented producers created a Macbeth set in a dystopian punk Scotland two centuries hence, and our artistic director realised their vision with great costume and set design.

And they found a brilliant cast to bring it to life, including a number of professionals. Such was the quality of those around me that from the beginning my main motivation, as a long-term sufferer of imposter syndrome, was not to let them down.

So when I was wondering around the stage on Thursday evening without a useful thought in my head, I thought my worst fears had been realised. Perhaps the effort it had taken to sound like an Edinburgh accountant was so great that there was no room left in my brain for anything else?

But there is true, worthy Banquo pointing out that if the King had some important announcement to make about this son, this would be a good time for it. And off I went, blood pressure 165 over 120, and didn’t look back for the rest of a five show run that about 800 people came to see.

And if all the words didn’t quite come out in the right order, I’m not sure any of them noticed. And the longer the run went on, the less I had to think about the words and the more I could just enjoy the experience and be King of Scotland for 15 minutes per night until Macbeth’s treacherous blade fell and I could leave stage right pursued only by my demons.

And it was a hoot. Throughout, I felt immensely privileged to share the experience and space with so many brilliantly talented people. In the absence of an opportunity at an awards ceremony in which to thank them all publicly, I do so here. Thank you for your companionship, for your patience, your guidance and friendship. It was a marvellous production and a tremendous pleasure to be involved. 

And that’s that itch scratched and only I have this left to say: if there’s something you’ve longed to do, go ahead and do it, after all "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players, They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts." 

REVIEW: Queen High by C.J. Carey

There is a powerful and telling moment late in C.J. Carey's Queen High, a brilliant and evocative follow up to the alternate history novel Widowland, in which the story's heroine Rose Ransom recalls a line from Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey: "Everyone in English society is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies." 

This is the reality of life in Britain in 1955, when the country remains subjugated by the Nazis in the Anglo-Saxon Alliance. Every individual is subject to the scrutiny and snitching of strangers, neighbours, friends and even family in a regime that dictates that the only loyalty that matters is to the state.

It's a key moment for two reasons, firstly because it encapsulates so clearly the oppressive reality of life in the Alliance. It also explicitly asks every reader the question most have probably already been considering throughout both books: whether modern Britain would be any different. Would we turn on each other?

Queen High, like Widowland before it, is a triumph because Carey so successfully builds that atmosphere of suspicion, fear and claustrophobia against a backdrop that is at once both familiar and alien. London is still the City of the Thames, Spitalfields and Rules restaurant but also of Heydrich Square and the Amnesia Institute, both occupying familiar landmarks. 

It's not just the sense of place that is crafted with such detail and diligence but an entire ideology that is complex, chilling and credible. That ideology is based sqaurely on the suppression of the spirit, voices, identities and lives of Britain's women, each of whom is allocated to a caste that dicates everything from her job potential to her calories intake and clothing. 

Rose is a 'Geli', a member of the highest caste, destined for a life ultimately dedicated to providing new life of the highest genetic order for the Alliance. At the other end of the scale are the 'Friedas', older unvalued women cursed to live in poverty in  the Widowlands. Unclassified, apparently, but an important feature of the political landscape is the widowed Queen, Wallis. 

And while the action is set in a warped facsimile of London, it does so against a more familiar historical backdrop, the beginning of the Cold War and the division of Europe into allies of the US and the Soviet Union. The event at the heart of Queen High is a visit to London from President Eisenhower, in search of a pact with Germany. Rose, still working at the Culture Ministry sanitising literature for Alliance sensitivities, is inevitably drawn into the intrigue. She is a heroince for the ages: strong, courageous and smart but also fraught with doubt and moral dilemma. And she's just one of a number of well-drawn and empathetic characters. There are no cartoon Nazis or Boys Own heroes here, but real people living challenging lives. 

Queen High is often labelled a dystopian novel, and that is core to its instant appeal, but this multi-layered novel is so much more than that. First and foremost it's a terrific thriller, taut with tension and drama throughout. It's a feminist novel with important messages about the role of women in society. It also has much to say about literature and poetry and their roles in our private and public affairs. And it also holds a mirror up to modern society, not least in its discussion of Austen's 'neighbourhood of voluntary spies' and the way in which we trust and treat each other in society. 

During that conversation Rose's companion recalls life in Berlin at the start of the Nazi regime. "I thought it could never happen here, in Britain."   Given what we've witnessed here in the past decade, could any one of us believe that again?

This is a rich and compelling novel, and one that, like Widowland, demands a sequel. The impatient wait has begun again. 

50 Books #10 - Flashman by George MacDonald Fraser

If writing funny was easy, there would be far more comic novels on the shelves of your local book shop than there are. Compare and contrast the average daily television schedule with those fiction shelves. Television is stacked with stand-up, sitcoms and romantic comedies. Books, not so much. If you don't believe me, try a Google search for 'best humorous novels'. It's thin pickings. 

Through my own years of reading I can think of very few novelists who have done it for me. Sue Townsend and Douglas Adams, when I was young, and Tom Sharpe, whose books seemed almost subversive. Evelyn Waugh falls into the category, and Wodehouse, of course. Later in life I came across the great American satirist Carl Hiaasen. 

 

And then there is George MacDonald Fraser and Flashman, the bully he ripped from the pages of Tom Brown's Schooldays and made an unwilling participant in just about every major conflagration of the Victorian age, from the Charge of the Light Brigade to Indian Mutiny and much much more besides. 

Flashman, "unregenerate blaggard, bully and coward" according to the writer, is a creation of the very greatest comic genius. MacDonald Fraser picks him up on his expulsion from Rugby School for drunkenness in the 1830s. His father, minor gentry in Leicestershire, buys Harry a commission in the 11th Light Dragoons and one of the most disgraceful, eventful and yet decorated careers in British military history is launched. 

Flashman is a charming, handsome, philandering coward with the luck of the devil and the knack of forever being in the wrong place at the wrong time but somehow with the right outcome. Just about his only saving grace - besides his humour - is that Flashman is aware of, and acknowledges, all his faults: the cowardice, mendacity, lechery, cheating and disloyalty.  

MacDonald Fraser, a veteran of the Burma campaign in the Second World War and subsequently a journalist and screenwriter, guides Flashman through 12 campaigns, during which he meets Wellington, Bismarck, Queen Victoria ("she always fancied me"), Lincoln, Grant and a host of other statesmen, warriors and characters. And just as remarkable as the consistently well delivered humour is the telling of history. 

It's one of my great regrets that I stopped formal study of history at 13. As a result Flashman has been an important source of historical knowledge and the books are renowned for their historical accuracy, even if they are told from a peculiar perspective, and notwithstanding that Flashman obviously wasn't there. And none more so than the first Afghan war and the disastrous retreat from Kabul, detailed in the first novel and which is where Flashman earns his first undeserved laurels, when the usual combination of cowardice and sheer blind luck leaves him the only survivor of the massacre at Piper's Fort. There he is found by the relieving force clutching the flag (in reality trying to surrender it) and is hailed a hero as none of the witnesses of his appalling behaviour is alive to tell the real tale.

And so it goes, in the Crimea with Cardigan and the 600; bound to a cannon at the Siege of Cawnpore; with Custer at the Battle of Little Big Horn; fighting pirates with James Brooke in Borneo and holed up in Harper's Ferry with John Brown. Each story is richly told, full of fabulous characters both fictional and historical and with Flashman in the middle, up to no good.

While there are so many moments that are laugh out loud funny, it also was in the first Flashman that I came to appreciate MacDonald Fraser's knack for telling history stories but also the brilliance and fluency of the commentary on the evolving catastrophe, told in the inimitable style of our cowardly hero. The following dissection of the leadership of General Elphinstone (Elphy Bey) in Kabul stood out from the very first:

"I still state unhesitatingly, that for pure, vacillating stupidity, for superb incompetence to command, for ignorance combined with bad judgment - in short, for the true talent for catastrophe - Elphy Bey stood alone. Others abide our question, but Elphy outshines them all as the greatest military idiot of our own or any other day. Only he could have permitted the First Afghan War and let it develop to such ruinous defeat. It was not easy: he started with a good army, a secure position, some excellent officers, a disorganized enemy, and repeated opportunities to save the situation. But Elphy, with the touch of true genius, swept aside these obstacles with unerring precision, and out of order wrought complete chaos. We shall not, with luck, look upon his like again.”

That writing takes some beating. And there are 12 books full of it. They are funny, entertaining, fast-paced and enlightening - and I loved them so much I named a dog for them. There is really nothing like them. 

 

 

 

50 Books #9 - Every Dead Thing by John Connolly

They say you should never judge a book by its cover, but had I not, I might never have come across John Connolly and Charlie Parker. 

On one of my frequent visits to the excellent Murder One bookshop on the Charing Cross Road, I came acros Every Dead Thing, the first of a series that has now been successfully running for more than two decades. The cover was hard to ignore with its striking anatomical image, that might be called "distress in death". With it came the strapline, "The most terrifying thriller since Silence Of The Lambs". 

That was more than enough for me, and I left Murder One, which sadly closed its doors in 2009, with one more book than I had gone in for, as I always seemed to. 

In 1999, I was a couple of years into my obsession with crime fiction and reading everything that James Lee Burke, Michael Connelly, Ian Rankin and countless others were publishing. Connolly offered something different. While the supernatural elements to the Charlie Parker books has become increasingly influential as the series has developed, there was something other-worldly and different about the PI and his stories from the start.

Parker, his life detached from its moorings by the murder of his wife and daughter, inhabits a dark, dangerous and violent world, one where the ghosts of the past haunt the living. That darkness is evident not just in his investigations but in both his adversaries and his allies, and the exploration of the dubious and complex moral trajectories of all are a key feature of the novels. 

Complex and detailed characterisation is an important attraction of the series as Connolly takes the time and trouble to develop the stories even of peripheral characters. This contributes to novels that are longer than average - Every Dead Thing comes in 480 pages - but there's never a sense of needless digression.  Connolly writes rich and multi-dimensional stories that explore the boundaries between the living and the dead, the thin line that often separates good and evil and the fragility of our lives. The books also have a profound sense of place, particularly in Parker's home state of Maine, where the great forests of the north hide mystery and danger.  

Since 1999 he has published 19 more Parker novels (and other work besides) and the series has never lost any of that edge I first encountereed 23 years ago. In 2018, I listened to the entire series again in a matter of a few months, hoping that this would help reveal some of the secrets and threads of the stories that my memory inevitably lost over two decades of annually dipping into Parker's world. I wasn't disappointed. Each book has its own story and structure but taken as a whole, this is an epic and compelling journey with layers and layers to uncover. And as the supernatural has infused the books more and more, they've opened an entirely new dimension and become even more compelling. 

My first edition of Every Dead Thing is one of my prized books, and I was grateful that Connolly signed it for me on a visit to Madrid a few years back. He's also been generous with his time, giving me this interview in 2014, in which he explored his influences, his doubts and the fact that he regards the Parker stories as "hopeful", rather than "dark or bleak". Parker and other are on a journey of redemption. 

“As a Catholic the word redemption comes with a certain spiritual and supernatural baggage has resonance,” he said.  “It seemed appropriate I could explore the implications of redemption through novels and that’s why the supernatural  elements become more pronounced. It’s about the possibility and the cost of redemption as redemption costs sacrifice and sacrifice is painful.”

Parker has certainly endured his share of pain. Over the past 23 years I don't think there's a writer I've read more, of and certainly reviewed more, and a selection of those are linked below. It's been a spritual and emotional journey and long may it continue. 

A Game of Ghosts 2017

A Time of Torment 2016

A Song of Shadows 2015 

The Wolf in Winter 2014

The Whisperers 2010

The Lovers 2009

The Reapers 2008

 

 

REVIEW: A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende

After the collapse of Republican resistance to Franco's nationalist forces in 1939, hundreds of thousands of Spaniards fled the country and the violent repression that was to follow. Many eventually found their way from Europe to Latin America, a natural place of refuge for Spanish speakers seeking a new life. 

Some of those found their way to Chile,  the "long petal of sea and white and snow" as beautifully described by Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, and the inspiration for the title of Isabel Allende's magnificant novel of love, suffering, survival and political upheaval. 

Neruda plays a small but pivotal role in the novel, which depicts his involvement in the organization of the refugee ship SS Winnipeg, which took Spanish refugees from Bordeaux to Chile in September 1939. A Long Petal of the Sea tells the story of two Catalans among those 2,200 refugees: war widow Roser and her army doctor brother, Victor Dalmau. Allende charts first their war story and then their attempts to rebuild their lives in Santiago and through to the 1973 coup that deposed the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende (the author's uncle) and unleashed a wave of repression, killings and disappearances similar to that of Franco's Spain. 

This is vintage Allende, and for me her most captivating novel since The House of the Spirits, published in another lifetime in 1982. As in that book, Allende captures the sweeping drama of family life with verve, empathy and sometimes painful honesty as she details the inner lives of her characters, their hopes and fears, with intensity and emotion. And as she does so, she also intertwines the personal with the public illustrating the impact - both good and bad - that political change has on our lives, often leaving us at the mercy of events we have no control over. 

The summer of 2022 feels like a good time to read a novel that shows history repeating itself in the space of just a handful of decades. It emphasizes how fragile our democracies and our taken-for-granted freedoms really are. Victor Dalmau, a man who dedicates his life to serving others, twice pays a devastating price for being in the wrong place at the wrong time - and on the wrong side. 

A Long Petal of the Sea is hugely enjoyable and very sobering at the same time. While it celebrates the endurance of the human spirit and the power of love, it also highlights our capacity for inflicting chaos and pain on ourselves and others. A truly magnificent novel by an important and beautiful writer.