Category: Review (Page 18 of 133)

4 out of 5 stars

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

In 1716 Mary Wortley Montagu travelled across Europe to Istanbul. She was there as the wife of the British ambassador along with a sizeable entourage to represent Britain’s interests in Turkey. This position that she held meant that she could get to meet people in positions that normal travellers would not be able to entertain, such as empresses and sultans.

This book is a collection of her letters that were sent to a variety of people and were subsequently collected together to make this book up. I don’t know the name of the people that were the recipients of these letters, but I can guess with the number of nobility scattered amongst the names that these were the great and the good of the society of the time.

The thing that I liked most about the letters is the incredible detail of the places and people that she encounters on the way there and in court life. There are details of her seeing whirling dervishes for the first time, the description of a dress that was dripping in gems and diamonds as well as the mundane and the most recent gossip she is gathering and passing on to her friends.

I thought that this was a well-written insight into life at the beginning of the 1700s. She is an astute observer of life in the court as well as shining a light on the almost unknown lives of Turkish women at the time. Her views on life are refreshing too, given the time this was written, though she does carry the deeply held views of similar members of her class in society of the time. The afterword by the late great Dervla Murphy adds context to just who this lady was. Well worth reading, not just for its historical importance, but as a unique travel book of its time.

3.5 out of 5 stars

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

Even though I have read bits and pieces about Hampstead Heath, a couple of books on the people that head to the ponds on a regular or daily basis to take a dip and it has come up in books on spies, both fictional and real-life examples. My mum and dad are both Londoners and I have been there many many times. But I have never been there.

Located four miles from the centre of London it is eight hundred acres of green space. It is not manicured by legions of gardeners, rather it is a place that most Londoners can get to on a tube that feels like the countryside. There are hills and lakes, rolling grasslands and wild parts (well for London anyway).

It is a place that Hunter Davies has known for a very long time. He was born in Scotland, but his home for the past six decades has been within walking distance of the Heath. This book, set over a year of life on the Heath and during the pandemic, is both a love letter and a eulogy to the place that he loves deeply.

Each chapter takes us to a specific place beginning of course with the swimming ponds. We meet some of the characters on the heath from the dog walkers to the rich and famous and the hippies that are using the space for their own particular ends. There are several visits to the pubs, he wanders along the pergola, a generally unknown spot as well as visits to the sheep that are making an appearance now.

I must admit I did think that this would be more natural history focused than it is, but that said I found this as informative as I did entertaining. Quite a pleasant surprise. It is a part of London that I know very little about so every page had some anecdote or snippet of information that I had not come across before. I liked the way that he explored different parts of the heath rather than just his regular haunts, but it is the places that he visits every day that you come to understand why he loves the place so much. If I had one minor gripe, I thought that the name-dropping did get a little tiresome.

3 out of 5 stars

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

It has been a long time since I fished but the last time I did so was on the shores of Loch Lochy. Didn’t catch a huge amount, but we did have to odd success. It never really caught (sorry) my attention enough to carry on, but I can see why some people fall for it.

Andrew Douglas-Home has been in a fortunate enough position to have been able to fish some of Scotland’s best salmon rivers, in particular the Tweed. He would spend all day fishing as a child from the land that his father owned. When not fishing there, he would be able to cast his line at other places around Scotland that other family members owned. He did take it all for granted, especially the fish that he could land back in the 1960s in numbers that have never really been seen since.

This book is a series of short essays about his life spent fishing in all manner of places, but primarily on the rivers of Scotland. Woven into these short stories of a life spent thigh-deep in water is a glimpse into his family life from a child who would visit 10 Downing Street to see his uncle who just happened to be Prime Minister at the time. We learn a little about his wife and sons including the tragic loss of one of them as well as some of the insights that he has learnt from life.

He comes across as a good custodian of the land that he owns. There are a number of essays about the decline of the salmon and wildlife in general and has come to realise that the things that we have been doing to the environment are having a huge effect on the livelihood of the salmon. Some of his points made sense, but I did completely disagree with him about the introduction of beavers.

I quite liked this overall. He is not too bad an author and this is a fairly easy read. He is in a very privileged position, he knows it but does try to play it down in the prose. I think that he is slightly obsessed with his chosen sport. If you are not heavily into fishing with a sprinkling of hunting then this might not be for you.

4 out of 5 stars

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

Back in 2020, the world reached one of its pivotal moments in history. As the novel coronavirus swept around the world from China, countries dealt with the pandemic as it breached borders. In March of that year, the UK was put into lockdown and a plethora of rules and restrictions were put into place.

People coped with it in different ways, but one of the most noticeable benefits was that people began to notice the natural world once again. Matthew Yeomans was one of those who was discovering the natural world again. It was on one of his permitted walks that he had walked from a housing estate into a woodland. The beauty of it overwhelmed him and it was at that point that he decided that he wanted to write about the trees and woodlands of Wales.

But what was he going to write about? An idea formed; he would walk through the ancient and modern forests of his home country and write about them. He began to plan a route that in the end would take him on a series of routes from the border in England in the south, along the spine of the country to the west coast before heading inland and north. The route he chooses takes him past and through the history of the country from the ancient druid that the Romans feared, to the decays remanets of the industrial past.

He is joined by friends on some of the walks, old friends who provide good company and drinking partners. On others, he undertakes them alone which gives him time to think about his and our relationship with the natural world. A relationship that is under threat more than ever before.

The only way to save the world is to fall in love with it again – Brian Eno

Yeomans has a subtle and dry humour in his prose and has written an entertaining book that I really liked. His lockdown project to walk through the ancient and modern forests of Wales was something that gave him a sense of purpose, but he is also aware of the benefits that he gets from walking through these woods. This book calls for you to do the same and wallow in the peace that comes from being in a woodland or forest.

4 out of 5 stars

This book is a good reminder that the past is a foreign country. Even though she was born and grew up there, she has Saro-Wira has lived most of her life in the UK. Whilst she returned regularly after her father was murdered, she hadn’t returned for a long time.

Returning there became safe after a change of government and this would be the opportunity to see her home country through adult eyes and see if she could find the things that her late father loved so much about the place.

It is a place that is full of life and people and noise and smells and brings the memories flooding back. Growing up there she was not allowed the freedoms that she now had to travel all over the country and find family members and speak to all manner of people. Having lived away from Nigeria for a while gave her an insight into the pulse of the country and its foibles and strengths.

She comes to realise what her father loved and hated in equal measure about the country. The corruption is rife, from the very top to the bottom and even though the politics is cleaner than it was, there is still a dark undercurrent. I really liked this book, the writing shows the passion that she has for Nigeria still and she is a great describer of the characters that she meets, both family and the people in the street. Even though this was published nearly 10 years ago, this is still worth reading for an insider’s view of Nigeria.

3 out of 5 stars

Following the tragic loss of his wife, Theo Byrne has to bring up their son, Robin alone. He is not a normal child by any means, he has an intensity about him that he channels into whatever project he is interested in at the time. Because he is unconventional, he doesn’t really fit in with school either and when events come to a head, they make the decision to home school.

This will be a tough call as Byre is a promising young astrobiologist who has found a way to search for life on other planets. As a way of distracting his son from the destruction that the human race is wreaking on this planet, he takes Robin to these other worlds where they try to imagine where life is so very different. He is offered treatment for Robin, which involves using psychoactive drugs and the memory patterns of his late mother. It is a risky decision, but he decides to proceed. Robin blooms under the treatment, but neither of them comprehends the implications of a decision Theo makes…

This is the first book by Richard Powers that I have read. Whilst I have heard lots of good things about him, primarily about his book, The Overstory, I had no idea what to expect. Mostly I liked it, he has a way with words that made this an easy book to read, even though you are reading about complex ideas, emotions and thoughts. I thought the plot was pretty good too, but I had a problem with a couple of elements of it that I will not elaborate on as they will involve spoilers. I am definitely going to read The Overstory based on what I have read here.

4 out of 5 stars

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

The Po is Italy’s longest river. At a smidgeon over 400 miles, it is almost twice as long as the Thames. In Italy, it is as iconic as our river too. It passes through 13 provinces as it flows from its source in the Alps to the delta in the Adriatic Sea. It has been a place that has witnessed a lot of history too, and the delta is the second largest in the Mediterranean.

It is this delta that he begins his journey from the sea to the source. He is bobbing around in a small boat trying to determine what is land and what is the sea. He passes little islands, called bonelli, that are formed and reformed by the sea and river each day. It used t be inhabited, there are buildings on the shorelines, but these are just shells now. All he can hear is the splash of fish and the calls of birds as he heads. This melding of sea and shore will set the tone of his travels upriver.

He is expecting a clearly defined river with banks that cut through the landscapes of Northern Italy. But he doesn’t find that. Instead, the same blurring of land and riverscape comes to define his journey. Finally making it out of the delta with its many tributaries he arrives in the region known as Polesine. Here the river is finally one channel, but it is still discombobulating as the banks are higher than the land around and he has to climb to see the water flow by.

He works his way upstream talking to the locals and teasing out the stories that this river has held onto and still has to tell. These stories have left traces in the culture and the people like the river itself have changed course in the landscape. We will learn about the amber that came down the river from the Baltic, to be worked on by Bronze age artisans and the puppeteers of the La Bassa Reggiana region. He is shown where to look to see the remains of old settlements and see the castle and fortresses where battles once took place.

I really liked this. Jones is a writer who is passionate and interested in the place that he has chosen to make his home. He doesn’t look at the places he travels to with rose-tinted glasses, rather he has that objective insight that you can only get from being an outsider. There are too many travel books out there that are mostly history and I think that he has got the balance of travel, anecdote and historical background about right too, he uses it to set the context of where he is. If you want a book about north Italy that is not about Venice then this is a great book to read.

4 out of 5 stars

Covid disrupted life for millions of people around the world. Those that were in care homes were affected in particular, not only did they have greater restrictions, but to keep them safe family members were not permitted to visit at all. Reuben Coe was one of those in a home where they were supposedly providing specialist care for his Downs Syndrome. But they weren’t. For months he had been non-verbal and had become withdrawn from the other residents. He was at his lowest ebb when he decided to send his elder brother a text message:

brother. do. you. love. me.

As Manni read this message he knew that he had to be there for Reuben. He made the decision to leave his home and partner in Spain and travel back to the UK to withdraw his younger from the care home that he was in. It was then he realised just how much he had closed himself off from all social contact. He moved him into a cottage deep in the Dorset countryside.

The process of drawing Reuben out would be a long and painful one. But a routine of walking a short distance each day and allowing him the time that he needed to realise that he was in an environment where he was loved started to work. Every day Ruben would take his favourite felt tip pens and some paper and begin to draw pictures of things that still had meaning for him.

As the darker nights of winter ebb away, Reuben recovers in his own time. Him and Manni build their relationship as friends and brothers once again. But Manni has decisions to make that mean change once again for Reuben and he has to draw on the love and support of his partner, family and friends to help him make the right decision for Reuben.

Why are we always striving to make Reuben more normal? Shouldn’t we be encouraging him to be himself?

This is a genuinely heartwarming story of one brother doing everything in his capacity to look after another brother. He writes about how he brings his brother back from the self-consumed shell he had become and there is no tempering of his feelings or emotions. The bond that they once had takes time to rekindle, but it is there and it needs time to be strong once again. I liked this book because it shows what can be achieved should we want to build relationships and how that caring for someone is good for both. Even though this is a book that I think Manni wrote most of, he couldn’t have written it without Reuben and the inclusion of his bright and bold drawings adds to this. If you want a feel-good memoir then this is as good a place as any to start.

4 out of 5 stars

For those with FOMO, the thought of not having a presence in the new social network, The This, is too much for some people. But to sign up involves more than submitting an email address and a promise to read all the targeted advertising they will through at you. For this you need a small implant injected into the roof of your mouth.

The device will then grow into your brain and allow you to connect to everyone on the network instantaneously. It is marketed as hands-free, but it seems to be consuming those that have signed up for it. Adan has heard of it, but he is quite happy with his life and the erotic female companion that comes with his Elergy phone. He is asked to write an article about The This and after that, he keeps being approached by the company to join.

He is reluctant to join, but the attention that the company are paying him has been noticed by the government. They want him to sign up and take something with him into the network…

I liked almost all of this a lot. The premise was well thought through and the plot zipped along at a fair old pace. The characters didn’t really develop that much, they were there as the pieces on the frankly terrifying social media network that is The This. The one flaw that I felt it had was that the ending was not resolved as I thought and hoped that it might be.

4 out of 5 stars

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

Modern transport is amazing. I can climb in my car, drive to an airport, and board a plane that can take me halfway around the world. But there is very little pleasure in travelling this way, it is clinical and impersonal, you don’t connect with the places and people that you are passing by and you barely have time to think.

Ironically the original way that we had of travelling, walking, is still the best way of forging those connections with people and the inner recesses of my mind. Others find similar comfort in taking a walk, and in this book, Duncan Minshull has collected together 20 essays from a variety of different authors who each bring a perspective on the act of placing one foot in front of the other.

In his essay, Richard Ford contemplates the decision process he goes through when choosing to go for a walk for the sake of it rather than for a specific purpose. Ingrid Persaud writes about the act of pilgrimage on a walk to Santiago when she has not undertaken any training. She suffers, but in the end knows why she did it as she places her hands on the walls of the cathedral at the end.

Walking a route that Sally Bayley used to do many years ago as a child brings back countless memories both happy and sad. Taking a dog for a walk is something that many people do each day, and for Irenosen Okojie, this is a daily ritual. In her essay, her dog, Gogo slips the lead and vanishes in the distance causing her to panic.

I liked almost every essay in this book, apart from one, which while it was well written, didn’t really fit the brief in my eyes. The variety of authors and the specific subjects they write about just goes to show that each and every walk can present a moment to discover something new about the world around us. I’d recommend this, especially if you read a little then take a walk to think about it.

Favourite Essays:
Grain … Again – Will Self
Following Others – Tim Parks
Around Deer’s Slope – Pico Iyer
A Record (Rain) – Jessica J. Lee