No comments about Florence Nightingale: Library Edition.

No comments about Sir Walter Raleigh.

3 comments about The Life of Nelson: The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain.

1. What, no reviews! Every once in a while you come across a book on a subject you love, and you realize that you have come across the definitive book in the area, and a literary gem, to boot, as well as a book for the ages. This is one of those books. And if you think I say this about many books, alas there are too few of them. I think of Boswell's Johnson, or Sobel's Longitude, or Grant's Memoirs.
   
   I'd been reading and reading about Nelson and naval warfare in the age of sail. I read Mahan's Seapower. Then this book. In it all the details of Nelson's life that had been boring in other books took on meaning as they were weighed and sifted and given significance by the great judicial mind of Mahan, who sits as it were on the high bench and delivers his judgements on Nelson. And these judgements seem carved in oak or stone, so solid do they appear. So that as I read or peruse other tomes on Nelson, of which there are of course so many, Mahan seems already to have defused the controversy by having got there first, thought more intelligently, sifted more evidence, and delivered saner judgements.
   
   It is truly one of the great books, beautifully written. If you want to understand Nelson, read this book. There is no other. And if you don't want to understand Nelson, read it as you might read Grant's Memoirs, because Edmund Wilson and Gertrude Stein thought it one of the great exemplars in our literature of the plain style. That is not to say that there are not a myriad books on Nelson and related topics that the avid enthusiast would want to read. Read them all! Just don't miss this one, too.



2. This book is hard to equal, and maybe impossible to beat, in terms of Nelson biographies. It's one century old but as fresh and relevant and accurate as if it had been written by a modern scholar with the vast array of Nelson papers to aid him or her. Mahan is Nelson's champion; no-one can doubt that. But he's not dishonest when presenting Nelson's strengths and weaknesses. Our admiral had both; which makes him understandable in a very human way. This is a fine book.



3. This is one of the classics on Nelson works. It has not been available for many years. It was good to have such easy access to this facsimile reprint to be able to add it to my library on Nelson.

No comments about Doctor in the XIV Army: Burma 1944-1945.

4 comments about The Singing Line: Tracking the Australian Adventures of My Intrepid Victorian Ancestors.

1. An interesting effort by a distant, if not vague relation to an historically insignificant figure, albeit one from whom myths form with their customary accuracy. What bits of research and experience are fairly presented are harmed, in my view to no benefit, by gratuitous asides regarding her apparently long-suffering companion, family and (soon to be former?) friends. One must wonder what would have been the book had the author not worked for a newspaper, which one might suspect arranged its serialization gratis. The photos beg for the book guillotine.



2. I was fortunate enough to have the chance to live in Melbourne Australia for more than three years. I have experienced large parts of the journey Alice and her husband undertake in their quest to better understand her ancestor's experiences in creating the first telegraph line across Australia.

   I found the book to be very Alice Thomson-centric. She seems to glorify all aspects of her journey while continually placing Charles Todd higher and higher upon his pedestal. I was hoping she would rekindle some of my own memories of the Australia outback. However, Ms. Thomson invariably spends paragraph after paragraph describing her husband's illness or her own tiny adventures driving the Land Cruiser or walking around Coober Pedy. Her descriptions of the local towns and environs is terse, quick, and dull. I do not recommend this book to anyone except Alice Thomson and her immediate family.




3. I bought this book because I am interested in the early explorers and travellers in to the Australian hinterland and because I was about to travel to some of the same areas the author had visited. I found the bits about Todd, the man who came to Australia to look at the stars and ended up connecting Australia to the outside world by a telegraph wire, quite interesting. Although I thought perhaps Alice Thomson was a bit confused as to whether the story was about Alice Todd (the great grandmother for whom she was named) or Charles Todd who laid the line. And I could see where she was coming from in trying to relate the story of her own travels with her husband in the same area and the Todds adventures. But again I'm not sure she pulled it off exactly. By exaggerating her own hardships, she underplayed the genuine difficulties the Todds endured and both stories lost credibility - for me, anyway. But what I really disliked about this book was its horrid comments about Australians and the way they live, in these so-called remote areas. She makes it sound as though one hour out of Adelaide she was alone in the world with people almost unrecognisable as human beings. Spare us the "don't come the raw prawn", "strewth cobber" cliches (which are always only used by the English, anyway). And I hope she feels ashamed at the way she treated people who went out of their way to help her, for a few cheap laughs. In great frustration (it was so nearly a good book) I eventually threw it on the campfire, unfinished, at Lake Eyre, halfway along the Singing Line.



4. This was truly an amazing book. The author involves you in the very foundations that build up the Australian telegraph system - you become part of the history as she takes you through the life of her great-great-grandmother and grandfather. It reveals, once again, how many people gave up so much so that we can have a secure foundation in our society. Well worth owning.

1 comments about J.R.R. Tolkien: A Beginner's Guide.

1. Very short and one of the better beginner's guides to Tolkien around, though that doesn't make it very good. It's written in such an elementary and stiff manner that one wonders if the beginner of the title is the author. The organization is good, and the plot summaries are not over-detailed. But though the prose is competent, it's horribly dull, and slides clumsily over Tolkien's themes. A full chapter details arguments against Tolkien without allowing a real defense of his principles. Bullet-point summaries, and definitions of a few tough words (like "philology" and "feudalism") are provided.

1 comments about Flight to the Sun: The Story of the Holiday Revolution.

1. Memoirs written by Vladimir Raitz who organized the first U.K. charter flights to the Mediterranean, interwoven with a factual history of holiday tourism written by Roger Bray. An interesting, informative and enjoyable combination offers the best way to learn how mass tourism started in the 1950s. Undoubtedly, this is a very useful book for the younger generation of tourism professionals and travelers alike. As for the contemporaries of the events in question, the book may stir up a lot of their emotions and sweet memories.

No comments about The Lives Of The Lord Chancellors And Keepers Of The Great Seal Of England From The Earliest Times Till The Reign Of King George IV V4.

2 comments about Burke's Peerage and Baronetage (106th ed).

1. This latest edition of the famous bible of the British aristocracy takes a robust attitude to such touchy subjects as money, illegitimacy and snobbery.

   Those requiring remotely useful information on the who, what and where of British society will be obliged to update their now dog-eared 1970s vintage editions - this new volume, while bemoaning the vanishing English Country House, has scores of entries for the would-bes, might-bes and has-beens of showbusiness.

   No expense has been spared in researching the sons, daughters, lovers and sisters-of-cousins of the rich, the titled and the famous.

   For some entries, the claim to fame is merely to have been born of the right seed (with, or without, benefit of clergy). Elsewhere, a meritocratic approach is evident, with the likes of Jamie Lee Curtis and some hundreds of other screen sirens, British and American, finding their way in. However, a Bourke's tradition is maddeningly maintained in appearing to favour some achievers over others, with little apparent regard for talent, longevity or importance. If nothing else, this gives us all a stick with which to beat the book, and adds to the general sense of the surreal and the dotty which characterises this distinctly British, and quite obviously insane work. Read it with relish.

   A superb party game involves reading part of an entry, and challenging your guests as to whether the person concerned entered the Peerage on merit or thanks to an accident of birth. Skilled players edit their extracts to gull the susceptible. Enjoy.




2. Few books have caused such anxiety as this one. It brands some people as socially unworthy (basically, if you're not in it!), and raises others to great worth. If you read VANITY FAIR (the novel, not the magazine) by William Makepeace Thackery, you'll see the characters rush home after a party to consult BURKE'S PEERAGE to see if those they've just met are of proper lineage. Arianna Huffington (who is Greek) recently said that, when she got to America, she was relieved she could make social progress there. She went there from London, where she said, "You had to be in BURKE'S PEERAGE to make it socially." Imagine a book having such social influence in both the 19th and 20th Centuries!!

No comments about Queen Victoria in Switzerland.