Category: Review (Page 101 of 133)

Row for Freedom: Crossing an Ocean in Search of Hope by Julia Immonen
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Men and women have stood on top of the highest mountain on the planet, crossed deserts, flown continents and even stood on the moon, but those who have been foolhardy enough to row across oceans are few and far between. To cross an ocean in a vessel that is only a forty or so feet long is at the mercy of the worst weather that an ocean can throw at it is a high-risk challenge.

Julia Immonen was joined by four other women for their attempt to row three thousand miles across the Atlantic from the Canaries to Barbados. Even in perfect conditions, this would be a gruelling trip, a monumental effort to power their way across an ocean by hand. But Julia saw it as more than that, she was looking for a way of raising the profile of the thirty million people that are suffering under the modern day slave trade. It was to be a trip with moments of danger, minor and major setbacks and challenges caused by the strong personalities on the boat. To add to it, they were in a race against a number of other teams.

Whilst it was quite an achievement rowing across the Atlantic and it was a row that would set records I found the prose was quite dry and often uninspiring. What was more interesting was her work with those that were victims of modern slavery and the telling of their stories and the small but significant successes that they people have had after their release. Not bad, but not entirely what I thought it was going to be.

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Where the Wild Winds Are: Walking Europe’s Winds from the Pennines to Provence by Nick Hunt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

Living on the south coast we have got used to the wind now. It blows across the Atlantic, up the channel and can vary from a pleasant breeze to a howling gale. Whilst it is a constant feature of life in Dorset, there are a lot of winds around the world that are such a part of the landscape that they have gained a certain amount of notoriety and their own name. Most have heard of the Mistral, the wind that scours the French Provencal landscape as it sweeps down to the Mediterranean, but around Europe that have evocative names such as Sirocco, the Levanter and the Meltemi.

These extremely strong winds, in some cases reaching 200mph, that are caused by a unique combination of natural phenomena; the makeup of the landscape allows a build-up of atmospheric pressure in the high regions that at certain points break free and sweep across a landscape causing damage to property, trees affecting the local population and playing a fundamental part of the myths and legends that make up the culture.

We even have our own named wind that blows across the Pennines called the Helm and it is here that Nick Hunt begins his walks across the European landscapes seeking these winds. Local give him pointers as to where to walk and the atmospheric details to look for so he can experience it for himself. Next is the Bora; this is a wind that blows from Trieste across Slovenia and down the Croatian coast. He climbs the Alps in search of the Fohen, a wind that can blow north and south through the Alps. His final wind is the famous Mistral, walking towards the coast with the wind behind him along an ancient pilgrimage path.

I really liked this original and interesting book from Nick Hunt, like his first book Walking the Woods and the Water he has a refreshing way of writing about the places he is walking through and the people he encounters on his way. The writing is interesting and he has managed to successfully mix the historical with the metrological whilst still maintaining his self-depreciating humour. It is another really good book from Nick, but if there was one tiny flaw, I would have liked to have heard about the other winds shown on the map at the beginning. I am hoping that is for another book.

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Joan: The Remarkable Life of Joan Leigh Fermor by Simon Fenwick
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

Patrick Leigh Fermor has been described as one of our greatest travel writers. His walk across Europe in 1933 from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople as well as his books on Greece and the Caribbean have rightly become classics. Apart from the most fleeting of mentions, what was missing from his books though was his companion of almost 60 years, Joan.

Joan Eyres Monsell was a member of the lower aristocracy and second daughter to Viscount Monsell who in his time was an MP and First Lord of the Admiralty. Their family home was Dumbleton in Worcestershire. She grew up as most of her contemporaries did at the time, became a debutante and moved in privileged circles and mixed with the 1930s bohemian set. Even though her family were wealthy and well-connected, she differed from those around her because she earned her own living as a photographer. This was to take her America and Russia, earning her more column inches in the gossip columns.

She first came across Paddy, as he called himself, in 1944 during the Second World War when she was working as a cypher clerk in Cario, where he was lauded for his success in kidnapping General Kreipe. At this moment in time, she was still married to John Rayner, but the marriage by that point had hit the rocks. They were to fall deeply in love with each other. They travelled widely together and separately and spent a fair amount of time back in her family home of Dumbleton, but they were to put down deep roots and make their home together in a house that PLF designed in the village of Kardamyli, southern Greece. It was a place that drew others for parties, discussions, companionship and where Paddy and others were to write books that have now become classics.

It is a revealing biography of a bold and confident woman who never stood in the shadow of Leigh Fermor, but was his soul mate and closest confident until her death in 2003. Her income supported them both as he became better known as a writer and it was her inheritance that enabled them to build their dream home. Fenwick has managed to draw material from her archive to give us a sense of her character, her fears, the society that she was born into and her desire of wanting a family and to settle down with the man that she loved. Even though we know more than ever about Joan, she still manages to defy categorisation and still remains a little aura of mystique. Excellent biography of Joan Leigh Fermor, a woman no longer unknown. 4.5 stars

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Dashing for the Post: The Letters of Patrick Leigh Fermor by Patrick Leigh Fermor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Patrick Leigh Fermor rightly lays a claim to be one of our greatest travel writers. He is most famous for his walk across Europe in 1933 from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. It was distilled down to three books; A Time of Gifts, Between the Woods and the Water and then the final volume published after his death, The Broken Road and tell the story of a Europe now lost and the beginning rumbles of war and tension across the continent. Other travel books that he wrote were about the country that he fell head over heels in love with, Greece and of his travels around the Caribbean.

He was also a great writer of letters; this was a pre-internet day, and international phone calls were problematic, to say the least, so this was his way of keeping in touch with his wide circle of friends and acquaintances. Adam Sisman has spent hours pouring over the material from the National Library of Scotland and private collections of Patrick Leigh Fermor’s letters to bring us this fine collection and insight into his character and passions.

Leigh Fermor writes to all manner of people in this collection, but there are several names that crop up regularly, Xan Fielding, Lawrence Durrell, John Betjeman and his wife Joan. There are letters to lovers, including Balasha Cantacuzène, a Romanian princess and a large number of apologetic letters to the publisher John Murray as another deadline for a book sailed by. He used them to inform people of the latest projects he was working on, to develop ideas, to sort out his social life and organise the steady stream of visitors to his Greek home.

This is the second collection of letters by Fermor, the other is In Tearing Haste written from the Duchess of Devonshire which I haven’t read yet. But this collection of letters written from 1940 to 2010 by a master of prose is really quite special. They have a different style of writing to his books, probably as he never anticipated them being published, but they are entertaining, amusing and demonstrate just how gregarious and full of fun and life he was. I didn’t realise that he used to frequently stay just outside Wimborne and these letters show just how he could mix with the great and the good as well as the local peasants and be accepted by all of them. Definitely one for the fan of Leigh Fermor, but also would appeal to those that want to learn about the character of a fascinating man.

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The Mysterium: Unexplained and extraordinary stories for a post-Nessie generation by David Bramwell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

People are drawn to the strange and the unknown, those stories that even after a second time of hearing make little sense. Some of these are deeply rooted in our oldest legends, but there are a number of mysteries and contemporary folklore that still managed to defy explanation in our modern, always connected, internet age.

In the Mysterium, we will encounter mysteries that have been around for years like the number stations, tragic deaths that no expert has been able to explain such as when a girl was found in the water tank of a hotel after CCTV showed some very peculiar behaviour when she was in the lift. There are entities that have slipped from the virtual domain to become the elements of our nightmares and words that appear embedded in the road. We will learn from those that hear a hum in the place that they live, and of dunes that sing, You may have heard of the darknet, a place where various nefarious activities take place but have you have ever heard of the Deep Web? Me neither.

Some of the stories that David Bramwell and Jo Keeling have collected are seriously creepy and they have managed a fascinating sum up of the current raft of mysteries and what can now be considered modern folklore. It is nicely written as they take care to explain the background to the story. I particularly like the way that they have given pointers to other things that you go and read or watch if a specific tale interests you. A great little collection of the truly bizarre.

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Belonging: The Story of the Jews 1492–1900 by Simon Schama
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This second volume of Simon Schama’s history of the Jewish people begins in the ghettos of Venice where the Jews of the Iberian peninsula had ended up after being expelled. Those that had not escaped were forced to convert and even then were still persecuted. This search for safety and somewhere to live where they could carry on with their lives in peace had been a pressing concern; and as this book explains in some detail, the theme of moving, settling, suffering and moving again, would keep repeating for the next few hundred years.

The story that Schama tells is as epic in scope as it is global. We travel with him all around Europe, into the cold of Russia, across the Atlantic to the New World of America and venture into the privileged upper-class world of the English aristocracy. He tells of those that lost children as they were conscripted into the army, those that found peace before the winds of change in Europe blew through once again, those that suffered for their faith and those that fought back. Even though this is a sweeping history of a people, he concentrates on individuals and specific events to explain the wider history the Jews.

This is a huge book, at around 800 odd pages long and Schama goes into huge amounts of detail as he tells his stories of the Jewish people. Some of it is fascinating, but there were times when I felt like I was wading through it as he expanded on the minutia as the events unfolded. It is one that I feel some sort of accomplishment having read it now.

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The Curious Bird Lover’s Handbook by Niall Edworthy
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Most people have fleeting glimpses of wildlife every day, occasionally mammals, but most frequently birds. You will see them out of your office windows, or hear them singing and if you have a bird table they will frequent your garden too. But even though we encounter them fairly often, most people know very little about them, their habits and just how we have ended up with such a diverse range of different types.

In this book Niall Edworthy aims to enlighten us to the facts, figures of the 10,000 different species of birds and how they have evolved, how they survive and other fascinating aspects of their lives. We will find out what bird lives the longest, the number of heartbeats per minutes, why some eat grit and if they are intelligent or not.

It is full of facts, poems sketches and irreverent details on our feathered friends, but I think this is more of a book for the general reader rather than the dedicated birder. There were some factual errors, such as peregrine speed claimed to be 180km/h then elsewhere as 180mph when they have been clocked much faster. Ok overall really.

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Question Time: A Journey Round Britain’s Quizzes by Mark Mason
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

Mark Mason is better known for his travel books, but he is also a huge fan of quizzes. He did not take a lot of persuading to combine both interests and travel back and forwards across the UK to find the best quizzes in the country. It was also a quest to see if he could find that most perfect thing, the essential elements of the perfect quiz question.

Which comic strip took its title from the names of a French theologian and an English political philosopher?

People have been known to actually earn a living from quizzing, either by participating in the plethora of TV shows or by travelling from pub to pub answering the questions on the quiz machines. He meets quizzers old and new, those that frequent the TV circuits and those are happy sitting in a pub calling out the questions. He joins journalists fighting for prestige and credibility by winning the annual parliamentary quiz, travels to the Beaulieu in the New Forest to see the Quizfest UK and attends a corporate quiz in heart of England.

Who is the only person ever to receive an Oscar Nomination for acting in a Star Wars film?

I do love a good quiz, ideally, one that has a balance of straightforward questions and some that really make you think, but I don’t want to sit down to one of those where you struggle to comprehend what the question actually is, let alone what it is asking. Mason is obviously a big quiz addict, something that is very obvious when you read this. Being a talented writer he has woven together the art of quizzing with a social and contemporary history of the parts of the country he visits. It was quite a lot of fun, my head is now even more crammed with random facts than normal and it was a pleasure to read. And if you want to know what the answers to the two questions posed are then you’ll need to read the book!

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Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Slum by Katherine Boo
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

India is the second most populous country in the world, with around 1.2 billion people living there. Around 20% of the population live in poverty, scraping an existence well below the minimum living wage recommended by the UN. It is a country of growth too, with over 5% increase in GDP per year, which has lifted around 20% of people out of poverty. This growth is very obvious around certain cities; the skyline of Mumbai has changed dramatically over the past few years. Modern hotels and skyscrapers have pierced the skyline as the areas around the airport have increased in prosperity. The jarring juxtaposition though is the slum area that butts up against these oases of luxury, of which Annawadi is one.

To understand this place, and to try to get a handle of the vast chasm between the very poorest and richest that live alongside each other, the Pulitzer Prize-winner Katherine Boo spent three years in the slum to get the best understanding of how the people there lived. She saw how Abdul would take life-risking chances to collect the scraps of plastic in the hope that they may make a little money. She also tells the story Kalu, a fifteen-year-old who is trying to make a living stealing scrap metal and Asha who has concluded that if she cannot beat the system then she is better of joining it. She is there when a petty argument erupts into a death and a court case, when terrorists attack one of the luxury hotels, killing a number of the rich guests and of how the city suffers in the modern global economy.

Katherine Boo has written a brutally honest account of the hazards and trials of life in a Mumbai slum; she doesn’t hold back on the reporting about the squalor that the people live there suffer with whilst they look onto the rich and privileged as they live out their lives in comfort. Her prose is measured and written with a level of balance as she describes what she sees, but she is not scared to write about the reality for these people at the bottom of the caste system in India. An eye-opening book of a side of India that we know but rarely hear about and worth reading. 3.5 stars.

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The Last of the Light: About Twilight by Peter Davidson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

Twilight is that moment when the sun is below the horizon, but the light from our star is still illuminating the lower atmosphere. That moment between light and dark, the gloaming, has been split into three twilights by scientists, civil, nautical, and astronomical before either dawn or dusk. This moment as the world turns inexorably on has fascinated people for millennia and has provided inspiration for writers and artists to explore something that is not quite daytime and not yet night.

Watching through the windows the wastes of evening / The flare of foundries at the fall of the year

In this meticulously researched book, Davidson takes us through the twilight zone into the world of poetry and fine art that is the response to those beautiful sunsets. But is more than those moments, as he expands on the meaning behind the poems, critiques fine art portraits and contemplates foggy autumn days in photographs of a London past. With him, we will discover the extra depth to famous paintings, writers both well known and forgotten and some of the finest prose ever written on the melancholic events of dusk. It is printed on a fine glossy paper to ensure that the reproductions of the art are top notch. It is a book for all those that love the art of all forms and their responses to twilight and one to dip into again and again.

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