4.5 out of 5 stars

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

Following on from his journey down the great Mississippi, Jonathan Raban decided to explore his homeland from the see. He acquired a small boat and filled it with personal effects and a lot of books, some relevant to his research and some just for the pleasure of having them nearby. He set off in 1982 to see if we were still a nation that loved the sea.

His journey would be back through the pages of our history, a semi nostalgic look back at his own childhood and a contemporary take on the state of our nation under the rule of Thatcher in the early 1980’s and the effect that the outbreak of war with Argentina over the Falklands Islands would have on our outlook as a people. However, this was all a backdrop to the seascapes that he travels through, the looking cliffs, fast races and eddy’s, sandbanks and other much larger boats that would challenge him every day of the journey.

He has a slightly tense meeting with Paul Theroux in Brighton who is heading around the UK in the opposite direction and also in the process of writing his book, The Kingdom by the Sea. Raban joins the miners on the picket lines to see what real political action is like and takes the views from the locals on their opinions of the Falklands War. There is often a vast gulf between the rabid right-wing press and their attitude to the war and the indifference of the general populace.

I didn’t think this was quite as good as Old Glory, but I don’t think it is as easy for an author to understand their home country as sometimes it is for an outsider to do. That said, it was written just as the country had begun an enormous political change, was at war and in the middle of a enormous strike by the miners. This means that he could easily see the differences and splits that were very visible in society at large. There is something about Raban’s writing that is beguiling and very readable too, he is a stickler for the details that he drops into the narrative when meeting people like Philip Larkin or talking to the owners of trawlers in Lyme Regis but also has that ability to present you the seascape; you sense the rock of the boat and the wind on your cheek as you bob along with him, in sparse lyrical prose.

3 out of 5 stars

This is an eye-opening personal history of a girl who grew up in a convent on Sicily after her mother realised that she couldn’t afford to bring her and sister, Angela up after their father passed on so they were passed to the orphanage, Istituto San Carlo. Sicily at the time was just beginning a slow recovery after the war and life there was tough, people scratched a living and there was a high rate of mortality too.

In this place, she learnt the secrets of the sweets that were prepared for the numerous religious festivals. They would rise before dawn to begin the day’s work and spend hours each day beating a rolling the sugar and almond mix to make the exquisite pastries. These would be sold to the general public through a small grille in the wall of San Carlo.

The skills that she learnt whilst there were to stand her in good stead when she emerged at the age of 22. She set up her own shop selling these pastries as well as cakes, biscotti and lots of other sweet delights. The reputation of the pasticceria grew and people flocked to buy the wares. Mary Taylor Simeti was one of those customers and as they became friends she realised that Maria Grammatico had a unique story to tell

She has a hard but simple life and this is an insight into a Sicily that was long gone. As a plus, half of the book is a wonderful collection of recipes too which made me very hungry reading them. I am off to Sicily soon and whilst we might not make it here, I am hoping to try some of the wonderful things found in a pasticceria.

4 out of 5 stars

I can still vividly remember the time we in the West first heard about a nuclear accident behind the Iron Curtain. Reports were appearing about a massive rise in radiation with denials from European states and a collective finger pointing to an accidental release somewhere in the USSR. At the height of the cold war, very little was confirmed on denied by the Soviets, but pressure built on the Kremlin and they began to reveal details of just what had happened in the Ukraine. It wasn’t an accidental release of a small amount of radiation that flowed across northern Europe, rather it was the aftermath of a reactor exploding at the Chernobyl nuclear plant.

And it could have been so much worse.

What exactly happened on that fateful night of 26 April 1986 when at 1.23am the reactor exploded has never been fully known. The Soviets didn’t even release any details for a few days until pressure from around the world with the overwhelming evidence meant that they couldn’t do anything else but reveal the problem. Even then details were still sketchy and cold hard facts were very rare, not helped by the endemic secrecy and paranoia of the USSR. Slowly though, the facts surfaced and it was realised just how close we were to a European wide environmental catastrophe.

What actually happened all those years ago though? Thankfully Serhii Plokhy has been trawling the recently opened archives in search of the truth, finding out who was blamed and who actually was a fault for the disaster. He covers the flaws in the design or the reactor and the powerplay between the Kremlin and KGB as some scientists tried to tell the truth to the world. We hear the stories of those who gave their lives to stop it getting any worse and about the families who had almost no notice before they were told to leave the rapidly created exclusion zone.

At times it reads like a thriller, in particular, the event of that night and the schemes that they were using to contain the radiation and stop further explosions. Other time the narrative slows as you follow the convoluted and inept officials who seem more concerned with ensuring their arses were covered. He takes a wider look at the history of the region too, linking the events here to the eventual collapse of the  Soviet state and the splintering into separate Eastern block countries and how the Ukrainians have been behind the eco movement in the former block. Occasionally I got a little bogged down with all the people involved but apart from that this is an excellent modern history of a nuclear disaster.

3.5 out of 5 stars

I have been following Jen Campbell on various social media channels for years. On those channels, she has been a massive advocate for poetry, regular showing the slim volumes that she gets from publishers and buys herself. She has also presented videos on  where to start amongst many others

Even though she has been published before, this is her first full collection. It is full of poems that have personal elements and things that matter to her that she seeks to wrestle into a linguistic framework of a poem. All of them are full of whimsy and the poems swirl with light and dark elements depending on the subject.

I always wondered why a lass would stand on a hillside

With her arms spread wide like she’s reaching for the world

I have read her three bookshop based books which were are all brilliant, and thought I would give this a go as the library had a copy and I am trying to read more poetry. Overall I liked this, the mix of styles and formats worked well and I liked the use of poems written in the Geordie dialect. I didn’t get everyone though and had some that I liked much more than others.

Three favourite Poems:

Movement

Swimmin

Birdlasses

5 out of 5 stars

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

Thirty-eight years ago a guy called Pete Carter organised a protest march. Called the People’s March for Jobs, there were around 300 people who walked from Liverpool to London to protest about the Tory government policies pushed through by Thatcher and that had devastated the industrial heartlands of the north. Carter was a communist and fantastic orator and he could inspire the people that joined him on the march. Mike was 17 at the time and had left school and Pete, his father has asked him if he wanted to join them. He didn’t because of the history between them, rather he chose his own direction in life.

It was after Pete had died and they were sorting through his effects, he found a mug that commemorated the march in a box with letters and other things. Realising it was approaching 35 years since it had taken place he booked time off work and decided to walk the same route. Partly it was to see if he could understand his dad and partly to take the pulse of the country just before the 2016 referendum. He would see if he could find some of those that walked the march the first time too. He booked his one-way train ticket to Liverpool.

His walk would take him from there to Warrington, onto Manchester and then to Macclesfield. Other towns he walks through include Stoke-on-Trent, Birmingham, Coventry and then through the northern Home Counties. He stops to talk to as many people as he can, explaining the reasons why he is following the same route as the original marchers 35 years ago. He tells those who will listen to him, why he is doing it and asks how people are going to be voting in the up and coming referendum. He notes that the price of a pint seems to rise a penny each mile he gets nearer to London. It is also a walk back through his past too, as he revisits his tempestuous relationship that he and his sister had with his father. Some of the people he meets up with on his walk knew his father and were with him on the original march. They had a very different view of the man than he did.

The answers to his questions are quite eye-opening, not only in the way that people were intending on voting but also as a damming indictment of decades of Tory policy that left people in the former industrial heartlands without jobs or a future. Almost all of the reasons that his father originally organised the march in 1981 were still valid today. The only thing missing now is hope, as these people have been the casualties of the neo-liberal policies. All of this injustice makes Carter seethe with fury and that comes across as he pours his frustrations and passion into the writing of this book. He is open and honest about the problems that he had with his father throughout out his life and tries to understand what drove his father to be the person he was and goes some way to reconciliation with the memories that he had of him. All of these things combined are what make this such a good book and an essential read on the political health of our country.

4 out of 5 stars

I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member. – Groucho Marx.

Becoming a member of a club has benefits, exclusive access to people and ideas, acknowledgement of a certain point in your life. With that though comes an inside knowledge too. This is also replicated with professions too, that if you become a cabbie, or a barista or undertaker that you learn the tricks of the trade and most importantly the language too.

In this exploration of the language of tribes, Dent has spent hours interviewing people from a complete variety of professions, from the armed forces and police, butchers, bankers, cabin crew and even some of the most secretive the masons and the spooks. But there are others too, so we will learn how the meaning of the words that skateboarders use, how to sound like you know what you are talking about when you’re at a rave, or if you prefer your dancing to be a little more leisurely the terms that you will need to use when Morris Dancing.

In this book, Dent uncovers all sorts of words and phrases that you wouldn’t normally hear in day to day life and if you did hear them, you wouldn’t get the meaning. There are some great insults in here too, so if you want to know what a camper, funt or a who an organ donor is, then you need to read this book.