1 comments about Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands (Penguin Classics).

1. Mary Seacole's reputation after the Crimean War certainly rivalled that of her counterpart Florence Nightingale but for a very long time she was a forgotten footnote in history, and this probably had a lot to do with the fact she was not a white middle class woman, but was instead the offspring of two races, that of a Scottish father and a black Jamaican mother.
   
   She was a born healer and a woman of tremendous energy, she overcame official indifference and racial prejudice as she strove to prove her worth as a Nurse on par with Nightingale herself.
   
   Seacole got herself out to the war by her own efforts and at her own expense, she risked her life to bring comfort to the wounded and dying soldiers; and became one of the first black woman to make a mark on British public life.
   
   But while Florence Nightingale has gone down in history, Mary Seacole was relegated to obscurity until very recently.
   
   This book tells her story in her own words, of her travels, her experiences, her life as a woman in colour living in a time of bigotry, prejudice and racial hatred.
   
   It's a fantastic book and brings to life in its many pages a woman of courage and moral conviction that what she was doing with her life was the right thing to do. To me Mary Seacole optimises the Crimean War in a way that Nightingale never can. A book worthy to be read in schools in the way that Anne Frank is read even now in the 21st century.

2 comments about A Brief History of the Crimean War: History's Most Unnecessary Struggle.

1. This book is excellent for someone looking to learn the basics of the Crimean war.It is beautiful in its ability to bring to life the economic, political and military circumstances which lead to this war, its also critical of their failures and successes.
   
   
   Very good book, I highly recommend it to anyone who is a military history buff but knows little about the Crimean war & wish to find a book to "jump start" their further reading into this unique and fascinating conflict of Victorian Era warfare.



2. This volume spends half of its already slim 300 pages just leading up to the conflict. Given inconsistencies in the remainder of the material however I question the veracity of the seemingly excellent introductory material. For instance, in discussing the Baltic naval campaign, first the author mentions that the French were only able to contribute one ship to begin with as they were otherwise entirely tied up in the Mediterranean. Mere pages later however there is mention of an entire French fleet. Furthermore, in discussing the intended landing on the Crimean peninsula, first the author mentions the mouth of Katcha river, but later says the landing is set for Eupatoria much further up Kalamita Bay, and indeed the site of the actual landing. At least there is a map showing the detail of the Crimean coast; the only other map is of the entire Black Sea, though the author continually points out the other theaters of the war, such as the Baltic naval engagements alluded to above, for which a map would have been very useful.

1 comments about Attack on the Redan: Sergeant Jack Crossman and the Battle for Sebastopol.

1. I read the Winter Soldiers and throughly enjoyed the characters so I thought that I would give this book a try.I liked the character of Fancy Jack Crossman (who is the Bastard son of a nobleman/Major in the British Army) and his band of 19th Century SF types who play merry hell with the Russians during the siege of Sebastopol.This group has a wide range of characters from a Turkish irregular to a female sniper.All in all if you like adventure and action then I would recommend this book to you.The reason for the four star rating is that the book does drag at times.But all in all a good read.

No comments about Florence Nightingale: Letters from the Crimea.

No comments about The Cause (Morland Dynasty).

3 comments about Victors and Lords (Alexander Sheridan Adventures) (v. 1).

1. This book has strong elements of a Victorian romance novel mixed with military elements. There is as much attention to the officer's women as to soldiers. The story takes place during the amateurish British campaign (after 40 years of peace) west around the Black Sea to the Crimea in support of the Ottoman Turks against the Russians. Alexander Sheridan is a disdained but competent English officer. It's hard to like him much, for he's a bit wooden. He's been a bit of a fool in love and gotten himself cashiered from the regular army and fled to India. He's in love with one or the other of the two beautiful Mowbray sisters who suddenly appear in his battle zone. The sentimentality and reticence seen in the relations between the genders may be true to the period (1854), and overlays a still hard world. The main thread is the forlorn lost love between Capt. Sheridan and Charlotte, rather than the fierce personal and battle emotions when he joins the Light Brigade (yes, THAT infamous brigade, so yu know what must happen...). Alex and the girls' eight years together in India are entirely skipped, so tight is the focus on the romantic triangle of the moment. Dialogue is restricted to proper Victorian discreetness. We are spared battlefield carnage, as military affairs are kept in the distance. The author, a WW II British lieutenant herself, foregrounded the suffering of women surrounded by men at war, trying to survive and nurse cholera victims in appalling filth and disorder, and striving to keep or get an officer husband while crazed with fear or jealousy.

   The Crimean battles are mostly described in offialese from the generals' and units' perspectives, with no overview of the strategy. There's nothing of the personal fear and shock of raw troops, or the novelistic here. At least until the inadvertant Charge of the Light Cavalry Brigade, when we get to see through Sheridan's eyes the confusion and horror of that affair, when "cannon volleyed and thundered...someone had blundered" (Tennyson). Amid the filth it lift's one's heart to see Emmy Mobray open the way for Florence Nighingale to begin the army nursing profession. The presentation is good and includes two vintage maps.




2. Probably the worst historical novel I have ever read. One half of the book consists of a syrupy faux-Victorian love story between cardboard characters, the other sounds as if it was lifted verbatim from one of the duller pre-World War I military textbooks. It would seem hard to make the Charge of the Light Brigade sound as exciting as the daily Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, but that is exactly what Ms. Stuart's does. Obviously the publisher is trying to cash in on the current vogue in 18th and 19th century soldier and sailor yarns by republishing this dud, but you'd do better to save your money and re-read the Sharpe series instead.



3. I agree with Tim Cole - the Sheridan series is pretty weak. V.A. Stuart is no Bernard Cornwell. The author knows her history well enough, but the main character isn't very interesting, nor does he really do anything interesting, despite being involved in the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny. On the whole, I was glad I got these from the library rather than buying them.

5 comments about God's Handmaiden.

1. This is a wonderful book with a SURPRISE! ending. Anyone will enjoy this book about a young woman who nurses soldiers in the Crimean War.



2. This has to be the best book I have ever read! I could not put this book down and read it in two days. I wish I could give this book 10 stars. This is the first book I've read of Gilbert Morris and will definately not be the last.



3. Young Gervase Howard is a sheltered girl when she enters the Wingate household and meets Davis Wingate. After Davis marries the selfish Roberta, Gervase leaves the Wingate household and goes to work for Florence Nightingale and Gervase follows her to the Crimean where Gervase meets Davis again. But following an accident Gervase is once back to Wingate Hall to take care of Davis.
   I enjoyed this book, I really liked the parts about Florence Nightingale, This was really good book that should not be missed.



4. This is the most interesting historical fiction romance type story I've ever read. I couldn't put it down. I checked it out from the library but half way through the book I decided that I would buy it so I can read it again. And again. And again. I highly recommend it!



5. I got this book because some of the story centered on experiences with Florence Nightengale. Since I am a former nurse, I thought that would be interesting. The book is readable and has a fairly good story. But for me it was a bit sappy - reminded me of a Hallmark movie.

5 comments about Blood and Ice.

1. Robert Masello came up with an interesting variation on that most overused of paranormal creatures in fiction today, vampires, and then proceeded to all but ruin it in the execution. Interestingly, unlike some reviewers I applaud Mr. Masello for avoiding the obvious cliche of following in the footsteps of The Thing; I just wish he had managed to tell his story better! Instead he gives us a clinic on how NOT to write a thriller
   
   THE BACK STORY: It is tough to write a thriller without providing some back story to set up the premise, but 200+ pages, almost half the book is insane! Even if you make it interesting, that's asking a lot of your readers, and Mr. Masello for the most part fails to make it interesting. Unlike some reviewers I actually preferred the shorter 19th Century sections. True, they are little more than boilerplate historical romance novel riffs, but at least they made me like the characters, which is more than the longer and far more tedious modern sections did. Compared with the saga of a photojournalist still wallowing in grief and (undeserved IMHO) guilt for the tragedy that claimed his lover, an arrogant paranoiac of a smart aleck scientist, and a dedicated and caring African-American female doctor with no more depth than a piece of cardboard, a couple of Victorian escapees from Harlequin seemed positively fascinating, and I found myself simply enduring the modern storyline while I waited impatiently to get back to the romance novel. Oddly enough this flipped around towards the end of the back story. The discovery of the mysterious ice block finally started to make the present day storyline interesting while the 19th Century storyline bogged down amidst the waste and stupidity of Crimea.
   
   THE LITERARY PRETENSIONS: Robert Masello is by no means the first author to lard up his work with references to The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, but he may have outdone everyone else in sheer scale. No occasional quote to pique the interest here, Mr. Masello wallows in it from start to finish. Not satisfied with cramming quotes in at every opportunity, he shoves an albatross in our faces every chance he gets, including a grotesque freak accident on the Coast Guard cutter, which serves no story purpose whatsoever.
   
   This might have been less offensive if Mr. Masello hadn't managed to miss a major point of the poem: the ancient mariner is cursed for consciously and deliberately (not to mention pointlessly) killing an albatross and his crew members are condemned for approving of his crime after appearing to benefit from it. In contrast NONE of the allegedly cursed characters in this novel were cursed for any wrongdoing of their own; rather, they are all victims of cruel fate or the actions of others. Now Coleridge can be (and has been) criticized for a story that details a punishment all out of proportion to the crime committed, but it is not an improvement to repeatedly reference this poem in a story detailing the punishment of the innocent.
   
   THE AXE GRINDING: An additional annoyance is that Mr. Masello takes the opportunity to express politically correct opinions on a number of only marginally related topics for which he seems to believe he is entitled to credit. For example he bravely comes out against whaling. (Ooh, that took some guts.) For another he boldly contends that war is terrible. (If only someone had this epiphany earlier in human history, how the world could have been changed for the better.) I'm only surprised he missed the opportunity to courageously come out against slavery while he was at it, but thanks to a couple of characters transported straight out of the 1850's, he DOES get the opportunity to condemn racism and sexism. (Hats off to a real hero.)
   
   To my surprised relief there was relatively little crisis mongering about the hoax of global warming. Perhaps the decade plus of actual global COOLING is starting to sink in; more likely, unfortunately, is that the author is so ill informed that he thinks the question has been settled. In another pointless aside the author seems to favor pulling the plug on the persistently vegetative. Well, fine if he's talking about himself; that's what living wills are for, but why condemn those who prefer to waste their hope (and their money) waiting for a miracle? If you honestly believe, as the in the author's clear opinion more praiseworthy characters do, that such a person has truly "gone on", then who cares if others want to keep trying futilely to resurrect the dead? It is no skin off your nose or the "dead" person's.
   
   Finally, other reviewers have accused the author of what amounts to anti-Christian bigotry, and as someone arguably overly sensitive to the topic, I made a point of keeping an eye out for it. However, while I concede that the charge has merit, I don't consider the author guilty of it. IMHO the trouble is that with a single exception all of the major characters are either atheists or lapsed believers of one kind or another, but that sole exception must be acknowledged. A fairer accusation might be that because of his presumed own lack of any real religious belief, the author has no clue how to portray it; the one allegedly supernatural incident in the entire book reeks of ignorance of the basic tenets of Christianity.
   
   THE SWITCH ENDING: My objection is less with the (only somewhat) unexpected final twist, but rather with the fact that this twist makes a couple of likable characters entirely superfluous. One who has literally been phoning it in for most of the book is discarded rather easily, but the other presents a real obstacle to this ending so the author removes him. Mr. Masello tries to make what he does to this character more palatable to the reader (who has no doubt grown to like him) by having him suddenly (and with little justification) start behaving badly, but it comes off as a betrayal, not to mention several unresolved problems short of a satisfying ending.
   
   Too bad, it was a good idea poorly executed. Given the popularity of vampires perhaps some future author will take up the premise and do it justice.



2. Blood and Ice is a well written adventure novel. It was an enjoyable way to learn more about the South Pole. However the story doesn't really have an engaging plot beyond the typical white-male-redemption theme. The novel bounces between a present day writer sent on assignment to the South Pole, and a 19th century couple tragically thrown overboard in the Antarctic. Normally I loath stories within a story - but this one actually worked. The plot centers around the discovery of the couple's bodies beneath the ice- however there really isn't much interesting in my opinion about the discovery. The novel needed more than the dead couple's tragedy to compel the plot.



3. In 1856 the HM Brig Coventry, tossing in a wild maelstrom is thought to be cursed by two unwanted passengers. When an unusual bottle of wine is found by one of the crew members, the captain is hailed and warned that Mr. and Mrs. Copley are of evil nature. To save the ship from plummeting down to Davy Jones Locker, Sinclair and Eleanor Copley are bound in iron chains and with their sea chest of strange wine bottles, are tossed overboard to drown in icy seas.
   
   In present day Antarctica young wilderness photographer Michael Wilde is on location to shoot some underwater photographs for Eco Travel magazine. He has a two month pass to work with researchers and scientists assisting with various projects of weather, wildlife and the natural habitat conditions at the South Pole.
   
   While diving beneath the polar ice cap with high hopes of stunning photographs, Michael unearths an antique bottle of what appears to be Madeira. Putting the old bottle in his scavenger sack and swimming further, he finds an entire sea chest of them, and nearby, within a sunken iceberg, the haunting face of a beautiful woman. Thinking his oxygen level must be affecting his coherency, he resurfaces topside to inform the crew of what he thinks he saw. Armed with ice cutting equipment and additional oxygen, Michael and another researcher dive again beneath the frigid waters and uncover the find of a lifetime. Two people, a man and a woman, frozen in time, enchained together in a block of ice for centuries. Cutting them free, hauling them above to safety, has the Antarctic team in awe and bewilderment at what they have found. Secrets are kept from the outside world, and decisions are made after careful contemplation on the best way to thaw these icy specters from the past without decomposition. The Victorian lovers are placed in a saltwater bath for what should be a slow and carefully timed melting process. But....while Michael and the team patiently wait, and do some lab tests on the wine bottle contents, Sinclair and Eleanor Copley not only defrost, but come...alive!
   
   Robert Masello has penned a phenomenal suspense horror novel that I doubt any reader could contemplate putting down for one minute. His talent to slowly build the tension as he alternates the story from the Victorian past with Sinclair as a soldier in the 17th Lancers Division during the Crimean War, and with Eleanor as a nurse working side by side with Florence Nightingale mending wounded soldiers, to the shocking and violent events in the present as the researchers at the South Pole are under attack and fight one nightmarish battle after another, shows proficient and accomplished story telling. As the famous Charge of the Light Brigade serves up a battlefield of dead and bloodied soldiers, a sinister entity feeds on the flesh and turn Eleanor and Sinclair into thirsty immortals damned for all eternity.
   
   Two entwining stories chained together for a future revelation offer up a superb blend of history, romance, science, and horror. The way this story unravels, is not what you may think, it does not follow the usual rule of thumb, and what I really loved was that the author took an age old story we've all read before and spun a really cool new twist that ended in a most unique way. Robert Masello gives us a well written complex plot, wonderful endearing characters fully developed, and a suspenseful horror novel blended with a surprising integration of love and tenderness amidst the horrors of war and amongst the philosophies of what it means to be human. Where the dividing line between man and monster lies, is brilliantly found between the pages of Blood and Ice.
   
   I LOVED this book !!!!



4. This is, first of all, a well written book. If your preference is for scientifically based fiction ala Michael Crichton or Robin Cook, will feel comfortable with the story. Bear in mind, it also has a bit of Anne Rice at her vampire-loving best, but it is neither a "vampire book" nor science fiction.
   
   The past and present are interwoven and relate well to each other. The author is equally at home with Antarctica scientists and Victorian gentlemen, and tells a good story in each.
   
   The weakest part of the book is the fantasy that is necessary to get us from present-day Antarctica to the Crimean War. If you can suspend your disbelief, you will find this an entertaining and worthwhile book.



5. I almost put this book down around page 100. The plot hadn't developed, the writing style was dry and was overly detailed about technical aspects of living at the south pole. Around page 140 the plot finally began to unfold. Other than the action scenes the writing style continued to be very dry and technical. As the book came to a conclusion the 'cure' and the side effects of that cure were ridiculous. Even though this is fiction and revolves around the story of a legendary creature, the cure and side effect didn't have any roots in modern science. The writer is obviously trying to tie science into the story like Michael Crichton did but it is clear he lacks the scientific background to do it. I loved Bestiary and Vigil. But I do not like this book.

5 comments about Crimea: The Great Crimean War, 1854-1856.

1. As a reader already observed, this book is, to begin with, very anglo centered as it happens with boring regularity with almost every anglosaxon historian, no matter the issue. French partner in this war appears, of course, how it could be otherwise, but always as if from a side, as a distant guy that by chance was there. I think the subjet is the Crimean war or should be so, not England in-war-in-Crimea.
   From a sheer military point of view the book lacks too much. Battles are more or less described, but maps are a joke and the equipment of both sides scarcely mentioned and poorly defined. A reader of this kind of books want to know more: want to know details about personal weapons, artillery, technical innovations, uniforms, etc. It is the more so as the author himself recognizes this was the first modern war, an intermediate step between Waterloo and the slaughters of I World War. There is some of all of it, but prone to be poor and cursorily explained. Even more, the autor makes a serious mistake confusing the innnovation of the Minie bullet -to be used with muskets already in use- with a supposedly new "Minie rifle" that never existed.
   Nevertheless, the political side of the war -french again appearing as a guest and often under a disdainful light- is well developped and informative. Same with many personalities, including, this time, french officers.
   Last but not least, the quality of the paper in this paperback edition is the worst I have ever seen in this kind of binding. I doubt it will resist more than 10 years in a shell. For the same reason the discrete number of photos available -not acceptable in a book about the first photographed war in history- are a miserable account of bad quality and neglect.



2. This is a very interesting book about an incredibly influential war. Despite the fact that the Crimean War was quite short and almost no great swaths of territory changed hands, this short, bloody little conflict had a huge impact on the formation of modern Europe. Trevor Royle's account of the war is a wonderful read. He covers the causes of the war (interesting enough, despite all the real politik, it was about a set of keys and a silver star in a church), the war itself and the aftermath. The details are wonderful and don't override the flow of the story. The only shortcoming comes during the presentation of the battles. Since there are so few, you'd think we'd get more details, but unfortunately the battles are somewhat glossed over. This doesn't so much detract from the book as, instead, it leaves you hungry for more. I found the natural links drawn by the author of Crimea as a progression from the Napoleonic style of war to the more modern American Civil War, which lead right into the mechanistic nightmare of World War I to ring true in more ways than simply because of the dates involved. Time to dig back through old issues of Military History Quarterly to find some articles on the battles so I can enjoy a much more thorough context for the war, thanks to this book.



3. Were it not for Tennyson's The Charge of the Light Brigade, it is arguable whether the Crimean War would have much notoriety. It wasn't overly long, there were very few set-piece battles and no individual heroes of note. It was, among european wars of history, a middling confrontation. How much better, then, is Trevor Royle's treatment with the excitement he brings to it.
   
   Sensing Ottoman dissolution, tsarist Russia makes a play to position itself for benefit. Alarmingly, this could include access to the Mediterranean through the Dardanelles. Having none of it, Britain and France combine to contest Russia's territorial ambitions. Negotiations rapidly break down and Sevastapol is invested. What follows is a story of British incompetence, French duplicity, and Russia's teetering access to military means.
   
   Royle weaves throughout the event the high intrigue behind the scenes where unilateral diplomacy, oneupmanship, and the perfidious maneuvering of supposed allies rules the day. On the war front, he portrays the sad lot of the British soldier. In stark contrast to the French, the British military was grossly underfunded, medical care was appallingly poor, conditions were squalid, and soldiers died of disease in droves. The comparatively healthy ones simply starved.
   
   With Sevastapol fallen, Russia was compelled to consider armistice while conniving diplomats in Paris, St. Petersburg, Vienna and London brokered an inadequate peace. Accordingly, the relatively minor Crimean conflict set the table for future hostilities and presaged the disintegration of the Ottoman empire. Indeed, it was in a corner of the splintered Ottoman empire that a single shot rang out to begin a world war. Trevor Royle does an exemplary job in bringing Crimea to us and, in so doing, prepares the inquisitive reader for the explosive century to come. 4+ stars.



4. The Crimean war shattered the peace of Europe that had been established since Napoleon and set the course for World War 1. The disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the advances of Russia are prominent in the war. The famed charge of the light brigade occurred during this war and the trench warfare of World War 1 can be seen. This was really fought over a very small amount of land and in hellish terrain. The book is very well written and does an excellent job of discussing how the war progressed. Overall an excellent book and one that I would recommend.



5. The prime players are Russia, Turkey, Britain, France. The issue is world power, or at least a strategic piece of the world's power puzzle. At issue in disguise were the holy prizes, masked in Russia's need to save '' the Christians '' in a Muslim ruled Turkey. It was a land within the Ottoman Empire in decline. ( a sick old man was the phrase of the time). With the battlefield looking like it should be Turkey, the Russian Crimean peninsula and actually the city of Sevastopol becomes the scene of the siege. There was an air of arrogance and possibly hubris amongst the European powers specifically amongst the people at large. Hubris spilled over into the leadership of each country as they were actually giving considerable thought to their strategic interest. England had concerns over an encroachment of influence immediately on their Indian colony. Russia was in search of a warm water port in the Mediterranean. France...well its not quite clear what she wanted outside of an influence in the Middle East as other than the Christian prizes there were no outside strategic interests. The one possible rationale for the French may have been the mood of the French where a convincing victory would remove the 1815 international shackles.
   
   The Affair at Sinope is history's lesson in poetic justice. Russia took advantage of their naval supremacy over Turkey. In proactive reaction to ward off the deployment of additional Turkish troops in Maldivian front, Russian ships sank the Turkish ships while still in harbor. They annihilated the fleet with a first in the use of solid shells. The burning fleet caught the harbor on fire. Turkey's loss of 2000 soldiers and as many sailors. It gave the impression of a massacre to the rest of the world. Up to this point the world leaders were not anxious to war with Russia. That all changed as England and France took notice.
   
   So one can look at the power strategic of military victory versus the power of the free press and ask which is most effective in terms of winning the long lasting minds of men.
   
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2 comments about Florence Nightingale: The Making of an Icon.

1. Florence Nightingale was homeschooled to be a Victorian lady but chose instead to become a nurse - then an unsuitable profession for her class. Despite her widespread actions it's surprising to note this is the first major biography of Florence Nightingale in more than fifty years - and it uses much previously unpublished material to explore her world, from family papers to journals. A vivid biography of her life and times makes for a top pick for any lending library strong in either health history or biography.



2. Not for the fainthearted, the 647 pages of Florence Nightengale by Mark Bostridge is a detailed account of the life and times of the heroine.
   Florence herself can take the credit, or blame, for the size of the book because she left behind more than 200 volumes of her writings, including drafts, letters, reports and even scraps of papers. More is known about Florence than any other woman from the Victorian era.
   
   Read this book and be inspired. Nurses are special people.
   
   The era in the 1800's is landscaped by Bosteridge, drawing on the influences of religion, family life, culture and economic influences, many of which are mirrored in the financial meltdown of 2008. They had bank failures back in the 1800's; crop failures, and the poor struggling to exist. It is in this backdrop that Florence first moved to help those in need.
   
   Florence is best known by the public for her Lady of the Lamp reputation earned in the Crimean War and while this defines her, that war experience was for a brief period of her 90 years life, 1854 to 1856. One third of the book deals with the Crimean action, the rest deals with an outstanding woman in troublemsome times. Florence was intelligent, well travelled, musically talented, forceful, determined and caring.
   
   Bosteridge draws out her character and leaves us in no doubt we are dealing with an exceptional lady with the stamp of leadership.
   
   On the subject of Florence's sexuality, the author is a little disappointing. Towards the end of his book he notes the several works about Florence, with the more modern views suggesting that she was lesbian. Her celibacy obviously drew attention and caused writers to wonder or assert.
   While Bostridge mentions that these assertions are unfounded, we need to look to Gillian Gill's "Nightingales Florence and Her Family" for a more determined rejection of the lesbian suggestions.
   
   Gill points out that the commencement of sexual innuendo commenced in 1940 when a prominent biographer insinuated that Florence had lesbian proclivities. Others, including American academics, and some film makers, marched to the sound of that drum. Gill maintains that there is just no evidence that Florence engaged in sexual activity with women (or men!) and the huge weight of documentation about her life defends that view.
   Gill puts the record straight.
   
   Florence lived to 90 years of age, a spinster. She was an attractive young lady and sought after, turning down offers of marriage. In her early days she wanted freedom. Her attitudes are recorded. Marriage interfered with her view of freedom so she avoided it. After Crimea she sought privacy and seclusion, beset by long standing ill health.
   
   In 2010 there will be world wide acknowlegements of the centenary of her death. There will be some who will point out that nursing, and the views of Florence, have changed in 100 years but there will be no escaping that our world is a better place for her life. In any event there are signs that modern nursing preparation and training are unlikely to stand the 100 year test.
   She struggled when women were powerless. Nursing was mostly an ugly profession outside the Religious Orders, and certainly in England nurses were primarily engaged in washing, cooking and bed making. Bosteridge shows nurses to have been drunks on duty, with night nurses prone to drinking and spending time in bed with their patients. No wonder the well-off Nightingale family tried to discourage Florence reaching out to those in need, even in the local community.
   
   And the soldiers looked after by Florence and her 38 nurses in Crimea were low in the Army food chain. Their plight was revealed by newspaper correspondents and caring people, including Florence. The army left them to die of disease and was in denial until they were subjected to the wrath of the British public showing interest in the welfare of 30,000 of their men.
   
   The Florence Nightingale book by Bosteridge belongs in your libary. You will wish to return to it to review the facts and engage again in the life of Florence for inspiration.
   
   Richard Glenister B.A (hons)