Category: Review (Page 72 of 132)

The Sea by Isobel Carlson

11/06/2019 / Paul / 0 Comments

3 out of 5 stars

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

We are fortunate in the UK to have a close association with the coast and the sea. A day spent by the seaside can do wonders for our wellbeing. It doesn’t matter whether you have gone for a walk along the shore, sat on a beach eating fish and chips or been brave enough to take a dip in our cold seas, it has a way of restoring something deep inside us.

This charming little book from Isobel Carlson is a celebration of the coasts, coves bays and open oceans that cover our world. In here she has snippets about the creatures that inhabit the sea, spectacular coastlines that we should try and see and things to do when you do make it to the sea. The lovely photos make this a nicely presented gift book all about the sea and coast. However, I did feel that it was missing a bibliography for those that are finding more out about a subject and it would have been good to see more than three pages on environmental and plastic concerns. I thought it could have had more on the perilous state our oceans are in.

Rough Magic by Lara Prior-Palmer

10/06/2019 / Paul / 4 Comments

Welcome to Halfman, Halfbook for my stop on the Blog Tour for Rough Magic by Lara Prior-Palmer and published by Ebury.

About the Book

The Mongol Derby is the world’s toughest horse race. An outrageous feat of endurance across the vast Mongolian plains once traversed by the army of Genghis Khan, the Derby sees competitors ride 25 horses across 1000km, and it’s rare that more than half of the riders make it to the finish line.

In 2013 Lara Prior-Palmer – nineteen, wildly underprepared and in search of the great unknown – decided to enter the race. Finding on the wild Mongolian steppe strength and self-knowledge she didn’t know she possessed, even whilst caught in biblical storms and lost in the mountains, Lara tore through the field with her motley crew of horses. She didn’t just complete the race: in one of the Derby’s most unexpected results, she won, becoming the youngest-ever competitor to conquer the course.

A tale of endurance, adventure and man’s struggle to tame the wild, Rough Magic is the extraordinary story of one woman’s quest to find herself in one of the most remote and challenging landscapes on earth.

About the Author

Lara Prior-Palmer was born in London in 1994. Her aunt is Lucinda Green, a legendary rider and one of the UK’s best-ever equestrians. Lara studied conceptual history and Persian at Stanford University. In 2013, she competed in the 1000 kilometre Mongol Derby in Mongolia, sometimes described as the world’s toughest and longest horse race. Rough Magic is her first book.

My Review

The Mongol Derby is the world hardest horse race. The aim is to ride 600s mile across the Mongolian plains, that was once the home of the army of Genghis Khan. The ride takes 10 days and they are restricted in the time they can ride each day and how hard they can push their horses too. The riders swap horses at regular intervals, transferring saddles onto a new horse that they have seen before at each urtuu they stop at.

Her race began in 2009, and there are around 30 to 40 entries each year to travel across this beautiful landscape and they will travel across lush valleys, woodlands, rivers, mountains and the steppe that this part of the world is famous for. Riding for that distance takes its toll on the competitors and the race will be lucky to see half of the starters actually complete it. On a whim Lara Prior-Palmer decided to enter the race and sent off her application, secretly hoping that she wouldn’t get in. They accepted and even knocked down the entry fee when they realised that her aunt was the Lucinda Green of Badminton Trails fame.

Prior-Palmer was totally unprepared and being a late entry meant that she had missed all the preparation that the organisers recommend for the race. On top of that, she would be one of the youngest competitors at the age of 19. The disclaimer on the website is fairly blunt:

We want to point out how dangerous the Mongol Derby is. By taking part in this race you are greatly increasing your risk of severe physical injury or even death.

She’d missed that originally and it was too late to cancel or take any of her vaccinations. However, it was time to catch a plane and head around the world to the city of Ulaanbaatar to meet the other competitors and have the pre-race briefing. It was slowly dawning on her just what she’d taken on. Next, they were heading out onto the steppe to acclimatize and final prep for the race. Then before she knew it, it was time to start, there was a blessing from the Lama and they were off.

So she begins 10 days of racing against the other competitors, the landscape and herself. Even though it is the first person past the finishing line who will win, there are time penalties for pushing your horse too hard and disqualification is certain cases. They have to navigate using the maps and GPS to each of the urtuu’s where they swap to their next pony after the vets have examined their previous one. The pony you choose next can make or break that leg. The landscape is endlessly challenging with marmot holes to trip horse and rider. At the end of the first day she is second to last.

Riding for that amount of time would be tough enough on a seasoned rider who knew the horse, but for each leg , they choose an animal that they have never seen before, let alone ridden. By the start of the third day, her legs felt like lead. Only seven more days to go… The leader of the Derby was a girl from Texas, called Devan, and she didn’t seem to want to be relinquishing the lead any time soon. Some drop out of the race and slowly she start to catch the leader, even setting a record for the highest number of legs completed in one day. She never thought she’d finish but she might be in with a chance at this.

I like horses but have only been brave enough to go on one once. At first glance, this wouldn’t normally my sort of thing, but this is a good example of taking a chance on a book because sometime you can be surprised. This account of the frantic dash across the Mongolian steppe is nicely balanced between a personal account of the race and a memoir of her life with a light dusting of travel writing. She is quite naive, forgetting all manner of things, does almost zero preparation and makes other errors that would cost someone else the race. What she does have though is grit and determination as well as a desire, not necessarily to win, but to upset the applecart and defy all expectations. Even though I knew what the result was from the blurb, I still turned the final pages in a frantic rush as both competitors head into the final stages of the race. It is what good non-fiction should be, a strong narrative about a subject that you may not know about with a personal angle. Well worth reading.

Don’t forget to visit the other blogs on the blog tour

Buy this at your local independent bookshop. If you’re not sure where your nearest is then you can find one here

My thanks to Ebury and Anne Cater from Random Things Tours for the copy of the book to read.

The Unlikeliest Backpacker by Kathryn Barnes

08/06/2019 / Paul / 0 Comments

3.5 out of 5 stars

Some people are happy with routine in their lives and have found a balance between working and relaxing that suits them. Kathryn Barnes and her husband, Conrad weren’t those people though. Something didn’t feel right they had travelled in the past for fairly big chunks of time, and the call to see more of the world was beckoning again. A germ of an idea grew larger and before they knew it they had quit their jobs and booked a flight to the West Coast of America to walk 1000 miles along the Pacific Crest Trail or PCT as it is normally known

There was one tiny issue though, they hadn’t got any experience of hiking. Or camping. Inexperienced would be an understatement, they are city birds and have barely walked anywhere unless they could help it. This wouldn’t be the whole route though, they were just going to walk the section from northern California, through Oregon and Washington and just over the Canadian border. Not only would they have to carry everything on their backs, but the route they were walking was known for mountain lions and bears.

Even though they were departing in June they knew as soon as they got to the higher altitudes there would be snow, it was going to be a steep learning curve in more ways that one. Starting off with small daily mileages as their stamina and experience grew they were able to build the distance they could travel over the course of the trek. The views were spectacular, and so were the midges… They encountered all sorts of characters on their walk, from the warm and generous people that helped them out when they needed it with spare kit and lifts to the very occasional sinister individual. One person though who pops up most days is Dan as they seem to roughly keep pace with him.

I did like this book, as it had a certain charm to it. Barnes is quite honest in her writing and is prepared to tell it how it is, from the highs of standing at the top of the passes, drinking in the views and letting the peace of the woods soak into their psyche to the very low points when they squabbled over the most trivial of things. Even though they didn’t walk the entire trail, it has made her reconsider all her priorities. Some of what they learnt as a couple she shares at the end of the book, especially the essential tip to appreciate it as you pass through. There are practical details and links for those wanting to undertake a similar experience. It has made them think about their relationship with the wider world, and seriously think about leaving London. I did feel that the book was missing photos of their walk, they obviously took lots as it is mentioned fairly often in the text. There are some on her website though: https://alifetowander.com/category/pacific-crest-trail/

The White Darkness by David Grann

07/06/2019 / Paul / 0 Comments

4.5 out of 5 Stars

The line between focus and obsession is very thin. Henry Worsley was one of those who crossed backwards and forwards over the line. He was a devoted husband and father and when serving in the special forces, was decorated for bravery. One Worsley‘sobsessions though was Ernest Shackleton. This explorer tried to become the first person to reach the South Pole and even attempted to cross the frozen continent on foot. Sadly he never succeeded in these adventures, but his leadership skills meant that he kept his men from dying.

It was those leadership skills that Worsley used when commanding his own men. There was another link too, Frank Worsley, one of Shackleton’s men, was a relation. He began to collect some of the items from the expeditions across the ice. He began to feel the call of the ice and started to plan his own expedition there. In 2008 he arrived there with two other descendants from Shackleton’s team. Nothing is easy in Antarctica and they fought against the landscape and the place to reach their goal. However, it did not get it out of his system. Antarctica became a place that he felt at home and seven years later, he was back there; this time to walk alone on a 1000 mile journey across the whole continent. He was going to have to pull all his supplies on a sled as he was not dependent on supply drops. It was a high-risk journey that was fraught with danger.

This is a short and intense book that is very moving. I had never read any of Grann’s books before but I thought that his writing is excellent. The descriptions of Worsley’s trips to Antarctica are sparse and yet full of presence. Not only is the story in this book quite something, but the photos taken from Worsley’s and the Shackleton collection are stunning. Can highly recommend this for anyone who has a fascination with the southern ice and about an amazing guy who was so driven to the ultimate limit.

Trading in War by Margarette Lincoln

05/06/2019 / Paul / 2 Comments

Welcome to Halfman, Halfbook for my stop on the Blog Tour for Trading in War by Margarette Lincoln and published by Yale Books.

About the Book

A vivid account of the forgotten citizens of maritime London who sustained Britain during the Revolutionary Wars

In the half-century before the Battle of Trafalgar the port of London became the commercial nexus of a global empire and launch pad of Britain’s military campaigns in North America and Napoleonic Europe. The unruly riverside parishes east of the Tower seethed with life, a crowded, cosmopolitan, and incendiary mix of sailors, soldiers, traders, and the network of ordinary citizens that served them. Harnessing little-known archival and archaeological sources, Lincoln recovers a forgotten maritime world. Her gripping narrative highlights the pervasive impact of war, which brought violence, smuggling, pilfering from ships on the river, and a susceptibility to subversive political ideas. It also commemorates the working maritime community: shipwrights and those who built London’s first docks, wives who coped while husbands were at sea, and early trade unions. This meticulously researched work reveals the lives of ordinary Londoners behind the unstoppable rise of Britain’s sea power and its eventual defeat of Napoleon.

About the Author

Dr Margarette Lincoln was director of research and collections and, from 2001, deputy director of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. She is now a visiting fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London. She lives in London.

My Review

The Port of London has always been significant, but in the fifty or so years before the Battle of Trafalgar, it grew and grew in importance becoming the commercial hub of what was rapidly becoming a global empire. The docks were east of the Tower of London and centred in the Parishes of Rotherhithe, Deptford, Greenwich and Wapping. Other parishes around supplied materials and people into the riverside shipwrights and victualler that kept the vast machine that was the Navy, fed.

On top of all the industry, there was a seething mass of humanity, dockers, sailors, shipwrights, traders, cooks, crooks and Navy wives who lived in the area. This place was changing rapidly as it expanded to meet the demands of the crown. The dynamics though meant that it was a place that brought in people who had a different view on the rule of law. Not only were there criminals and thieves but with a revolution in the air over the channel in France, then there was an undercurrent of subversion and open challenges to the authority of the monarch.

It is a vivid story of life in the London docks. Just some of the details that Lincoln has uncovered in the excellent social history are quite staggering. For example, bakers made 6500kg of biscuits a day to keep the navy supplied, a constant supply of livestock that was being slaughtered for food for the ships. Women who took over from their late husbands and continued to supply the navy for years after. Most campaigns could not have been undertaken without the tonnes of material that flowed into the docks and headed out onto the world’s oceans and as the area became more important more businesses appeared to ensure that they could become suppliers to the docks and shipbuilders. There were chemical factories producing sulphuric acid in huge vats, as well as a never-ending stream of felled trees to build the ships being launched fairly frequently.

If you have any interest in the history of London, maritime events or social history then I can highly recommend this. This is crammed with detail, the narrative takes you from musings on the political changes of the time to personal stories of the people that lived, worked, sailed from the port right up to global events that affected the ebb and flow of life in the area. I liked the way that the chapters are split into broad themes. Lincoln writes with clarity, ensuring that this really complex story of London does not read like an academic text.

Don’t forget to visit the other blogs on the blog tour

About the Wolfson History Prize

First awarded by the Wolfson Foundation in 1972, the Wolfson History Prize remains a beacon of the best historical writing being produced in the UK, reflecting qualities of both readability for a general audience and excellence in writing and research. The most valuable non-fiction writing prize in the UK, the Wolfson History Prize is awarded annually, with the winner receiving £40,000, and the shortlisted authors receiving £4,000 each. Over £1.1 million has been awarded to more than 100 historians in the prize’s 47-year history. Previous winners include Mary Beard, Simon Schama, Eric J. Hobsbawm, Amanda Vickery, Antony Beevor, Christopher Bayly, and Antonia Fraser.

To be eligible for consideration, authors must be resident in the UK in the year of the book’s publication (the preceding year of the award), must not be a previous winner of the Prize and must have written a book which is scholarly, accessible and well written.

To learn more about the Wolfson History Prize please visit www.wolfsonhistoryprize.org.uk, or connect on Twitter via @WolfsonHistory / #WolfsonHistoryPrize.

About the Wolfson History Prize Judges

David Cannadine is an historian of modern British history from 1800 to 2000 and a trustee of the Wolfson Foundation. He is Dodge Professor of History at Princeton University, a Visiting Professor of History at the University of Oxford, the editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and became President of the British Academy in July 2017. He has previously taught at the University of Cambridge and Columbia University, New York. He was Director and Professor of History at the Institute of Historical Research from 1998-2003. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, the Royal Society of Literature, the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Historical Society. In 2009 he was awarded a knighthood for services to scholarship. His publications include Margaret Thatcher: A Life And Legacy (2017), The Undivided Past: Humanity Beyond our Differences (2012), Mellon: An American Life (2006), Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire (2001), Class in Britain (1998), and The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (1990). He has contributed to many national bodies in heritage and the arts, including the National Portrait Gallery, English Heritage, Westminster Abbey, the Victorian Society, Royal Academy Trust and the Library of Birmingham Trust.

Richard Evans is Provost of Gresham College in the City of London and Regius Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of numerous books on modern German and European History, including A Death in Hamburg: Society and Politics in the Cholera Years 1830-1910, which won the Wolfson History Prize in 1989. His most recent books are The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815-1914, a volume in the Penguin History of Europe, and Eric Hobsbawm: A Life in History, published in February 2019. From 2010 to 2017 he was President of Wolfson College, Cambridge. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and was knighted in 2012 for services to scholarship.

Carole Hillenbrand has been Professor Emerita of Islamic History at the University of Edinburgh since 2008 and Professorial Fellow (Islamic History), at the University of St Andrews since 2013. Studied Modern and Medieval Languages at the University of Cambridge, Arabic and Turkish at the University of Oxford, and wrote a PhD on Islamic history at the University of Edinburgh. She has held Visiting Fellowships in America and Holland. She was elected an Honorary Life Fellow at Somerville College, Oxford in 2010 and a Corresponding Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America in 2012. She was awarded the King Faisal International Prize in Islamic Studies in 2005 and the British Academy/ Nayef Al Rodhan Prize for Transcultural Understanding in 2016. She is a Fellow of the British Academy, the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Royal Historical Society. In 2009 she was awarded an OBE for services to Higher Education and in 2018 she was awarded a CBE for services to the understanding of Islamic history.

Diarmaid MacCulloch is a Fellow of Saint Cross College and Professor of the History of the Church at the University of Oxford. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, the Royal Historical Society and of the Society of Antiquaries of London; he co-edited the Journal of Ecclesiastical History for twenty years. He was ordained deacon in the Church of England in 1987 and in 2012 was knighted for services to scholarship. His chosen research field has been Tudor England (including a biography of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer and a study of the Reformation under Edward VI); he has also written on the wider history of the European Reformation and on world Christianity generally. His History of Christianity: the first three thousand years (winner of the 2010 Hessell-Tiltman Prize and the 2010 Cundill History Prize, Montreal) was followed by the BBC series A History of Christianity (given the Radio Times Readers’ Award, May 2010). Further television work has included How God made the English, 2012, Henry VIII’s Fixer: the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell, 2013, and Sex and the Church, 2015. His biography of Thomas Cromwell was published in September 2018. He won the Wolfson History Prize in 2004 for Reformation: Europe’s House Divided 1490-1700.

About the Wolfson Foundation

The Wolfson Foundation (www.wolfson.org.uk) is an independent grant-making charity that aims to promote the civic health of society by supporting excellence in the arts & humanities, education, science and health. Since 1955, almost £900 million (£1.9 billion in real terms) has been awarded to nearly 11,000 projects and individuals across the UK, all on the basis of expert peer review. The Wolfson Foundation is committed to supporting history and the humanities more broadly. Since 2012, awards across the UK of more than £10.7 million have been made for Postgraduate Scholarships to support research in the humanities at universities, and some £11 million to museums and galleries, as well as numerous awards for historic buildings. You can connect via twitter @wolfsonfdn.

Buy this and all of the others on the shortlist at your local independent bookshop. If you’re not sure where your nearest is then you can find one here

My thanks to Ben at Midas PR for the copy of the book to read.

You Are What You Read by Jodie Jackson

04/06/2019 / Paul / 6 Comments

Welcome to Halfman, Halfbook for my stop on the Blog Tour for You Are What You Read by Jodie Jackson and published by Unbound.

About the Book

Do you ever feel overwhelmed and powerless after watching the news? Does it make you feel sad about the world, without much hope for its future? Take a breath – the world is not as bad as the headlines would have you believe.

In You Are What You Read, campaigner and researcher Jodie Jackson helps us understand how our current twenty-four-hour news cycle is produced, who decides what stories are selected, why the news is mostly negative and what effect this has on us as individuals and as a society.

Combining the latest research from psychology, sociology and the media, she builds a powerful case for including solutions into our news narrative as an antidote to the negativity bias.

You Are What You Read is not just a book, it is a manifesto for a movement: it is not a call for us to ignore the negative but rather a call to not ignore the positive. It asks us to change the way we consume the news and shows us how, through our choices, we have the power to improve our media diet, our mental health and just possibly the world.

About the Author

Jodie Jackson is an author, researcher and campaigner. She holds a Master’s Degree in Applied Positive Psychology from the University of East London (UK) where she investigated the psychological impact of the news.

As she discovered evidence of the beneficial effects of solutions focused news on our wellbeing, she grew convinced of the need to spread consumer awareness. She is a regular speaker at media conferences and universities. Jodie is also a qualified yoga teacher and life coach.

My Review

When did you last see a good news story? We seem to have a diet of really bad news that never stops. Even when the presenter is talking about the latest disaster there is a ticker tape of sub-stories that expand to fill the vacuum of the entire day. It is just draining listening to or reading the stories that flood out of our media. I stopped watching a while ago now, and even though I buy the weekend papers, I tend to read the supplements rather than the main section. Thankfully though, there could be another way and campaigner and researcher Jodie Jackson wants to show us it.

First, though, you have to understand that psychology of why the media outlets produce the material that they do, Jackson goes into the details behind the headlines, why bad news rather than good news sells and the cumulative effect that this has on our mental well being. She addresses points on fake news, and churnalism, where journalists take a very liberal view of the truth in the speed to get the articles written for the ever hungry news machine.

She says that we don’t need to stop seeing bad news, being informed about significant world events is necessary, however, we need to limit our intake of it. What Jackson is advocating though is looking for alternative sources for your news, places that have taken time to do the proper research about a topic, can write with a balanced view and are seeking to inform rather than just go for the sensational headline. Seeking solution focused news sources that concentrate on innovation, initiative peacebuilding and positive responses to social issues need to make up a significant proportion of our media diet.

There are various methods and suggestions in the book that are very sensible. Stop reading the dirge from the media outlets that want sensational headlines and find those that have a more considered and balanced approach. Avoid the tabloids they are preaching to a base level of readers as well as trying to dictate the political agenda in a lot of cases. Read from different perspectives on the same story. Don’t forget though, we as the consumers of this actually hold the power, if we stop buying and watching the worst news channels then they will change as they will lose customers and then income. Jackson writes with a positive clarity about a subject that most people find unpalatable these days, but more than that there are things that you can do to change your media intake and make you a better-informed person.

Don’t forget to visit the other blogs on the blog tour

Buy this at your local independent bookshop. If you’re not sure where your nearest is then you can find one here

My thanks to Anne Cater from Random Thing Tours for the copy of the book to read.

I Went for a Walk by Gabriel Stewart

03/06/2019 / Paul / 0 Comments

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

In early 2016, Gabriel Stewart set out to walk 1000 miles around the UK exploring the towns and countryside. Of course, there would have to be a charity element to it, most people expect these days that you are doing these sorts of things for others and not just yourself. Carrying only a tent, stove, food and a camera it was going to be a challenge. Especially when you take into account that he had almost no experience of camping by himself, nor had undertaken much training. Perhaps challenge would be an understatement.

Starting with a couple of easier walks alone, home in London to Brighton and then from Stratford to Folkstone. Next up was a longer walk to Norwich with a friend, Sam and the joys of camping in a bivvie bag. However, a niggling problem that he had had was getting worse and it suddenly became apparent that the searing pain in his ankles wasn’t going to go away…

This honest account of an attempt to walk 1000 miles is amusing at times. He often gets very very wet. Stewart has fiercely independent opinions on all matter of subjects and this book is sometimes as much about those as the walks. He realises that these challenges that you set yourself can also be a shared experience, but it is a part of life’s rich learning experience. It goes to prove that you need to put the training in as that builds the experience and resilience, however, his medical issues with his tendons meant that every step was agony on some f the walks. Not a bad book, but I didn’t fully click with him as a writer, probably because the target audience is his peers, who would understand more of the humour and language than I did.

Chasing the Sun by Linda Geddes

01/06/2019 / Paul / 0 Comments

3.5 out of 5 stars

The sun rises every single day and has done so for the past few billion years. This source of energy has played a pivotal part in the development of life on Earth and not unsurprising, it has been a focus of our collective attention for time immemorial. Many cultures have worshipped it or have tracked its regular path through the heavens and tried to elucidate meaning from it.

As the sun has been a central part of almost all the Earth’s inhabitants, lots of creatures have evolved in tandem with it, including us. Research has shown that the sun is key to our mental well being, sleep, immune systems and circadian rhythms. Too much sun is bad for us as it can cause skin cancers but then so is too little, those that rarely see the sun do not generate enough vitamin D that is essential for their health.

One of the biggest disrupters to our health in the modern day is artificial light. Ever since the light bulb was invented, cheap affordable light has been available to all so we have retreated indoors turning pallid in the glow of the modern screens. Office lighting is a good example. The output from the ceilings lights is fairly poor, you only get a fraction of light, around 200 to 300 lux, which is nothing when you compare it to the amount light on a bright day which can reach around 100,000 lux. All of these effects are cumulative, and if you live in northern Europe, then you are much worse off in winter because of the very short days.

I liked this book a lot, it does what a good popular science book should do, gives you a good overview of the subject and touches on lots of different subjects without becoming too academic. On certain elements, for example, on our body clocks and how to improve lighting for those on shift work, in particular, Geddes explores them in a little more depth. Worth reading

Gatecrashing Paradise by Tom Chesshyre

31/05/2019 / Paul / 0 Comments

3.5 out of 5 stars

If you were to mention the Maldives to most people they would conjure up images of pristine beaches and luxury hotels. This champagne lifestyle comes at a price though, not only is it expensive to go there, the Beckhams were rumoured to have spent £250k on one holiday alone, but there has been a human cost to this lifestyle for the residents and workers of the island. On top of that, the Maldives is in a perilous position. It is the lowest country in the world, only nudging a few meters above the waves and will be affected by climate change as sea levels rise.

Having previously had a strong Buddhist influence, the country is a Muslim country that is not as strict as others, for example, alcohol was allowed in certain places, but it still could be quite draconian at times. The country was run by a Maumoon Abdul Gayoom for 30 years after he won six consecutive elections without opposition. It was the only country in the world not to have a political party, even China has one political party. For most visitors, all that they would have been able to see was the luxury resorts and a little of the islands they were designated to holiday on. Most would be blissfully unaware of the history of the place. This was because islands in the archipelago that were not designated ‘tourist resorts’ were off limits to any outsiders. The rules have been relaxed now and this means that Tom Chessyre had the opportunity to see what real life was like there for residents and immigrants.

Travelling between the various islands on cargo boats and other craft is a good way to meet the locals and the people that work in the resorts. He does end up in a couple of the luxury resort for the odd night or two, but most of the time he is staying in guesthouses run by the locals. It makes it much easier to tease out the stories that they have of their country. Given how draconian the regime is, some were reluctant to speak, or if they did then they have been anonymised by Chessyre. We hear of their fears and hope for the country as well as he is prepared to let people confide in him. A lot of people were affected by the 2004 tsunami, and the atolls are very vulnerable given their height; there is no high land to retreat to when the waves sweep in and the future seems bleak for some residents. I thought this was really good, insightful reportage and travel writing of the other side of an island paradise.

Life at Walnut Tree Farm by Rufus Deakin and Titus Rowlandson

30/05/2019 / Paul / 0 Comments

5 out of 5 stars

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

Almost half a century ago Roger Deakin had made the decision to move out of London and bought a very dilapidated farmhouse called Walnut Tree Farm. If it had been left any longer it would have become a ruin, the wood had rotted through in a lot of places and the thatch was so bad it had no protection against the elements. To add to the charm, the downstairs had been used to keep animal in and was full of their detritus. This Elizabethan building was located on the edge of Mellis Green, deep in the countryside of northern Suffolk.

This building was to change Deakin’s life and be the seed for books that would become classics in the natural history genre. Before that, he had to get the structure to a point where it was safe and he could start living in it. It involved stripping the entire building back to the oak frame, repairing and replacing wood to add strength back into it and rebuilding it to a habitable home. As with all projects like this, it took much longer than expected but when finished it became a much-loved home until he died in 2006 alongside the fire.

Where it was located was one of the largest common grazing areas in the UK at the time. Deakin slowly changed the landscape, planting trees, draining and clearing the moat, and letting the land be used in a sustainable way. He had the odd run-in with neighbours, in particular over Cowpasture Lane, but this place was to motivate him in many ways. His regular swims in the moat became the book Waterlog, the love of the landscape around was key to the creation of Common Ground and because of his work in the environmental business meant that he had a light touch on the land around his home.

This book is a wonderful celebration of Deakin’s life and works seen through the prism of the place that he made his home. The photos of the work of the strip down, restoration and rebuilding of Walnut Tree Farm as it progressed and the extracts from the notebooks and diaries as the works were progressing really make this book special. Most of these have never been seen before. The personal insight from Deakin’s son Rufus and the current custodian, Titus Rowlandson add depth to the story of his life. Deakin was intrinsically linked to this place and in its time it became a place of pilgrimage to lovers of the natural world and still holds a place in their hearts. If you have ever read, Waterlog, Wildwood or Notes from Walnut Tree Farm then this in one for your bookshelf.