RugbyRebels

Graham Greene's The Confidential Agent. A thriller in the 39 Steps mold, this novel is set in England in 1938 and follows the clandestine attempts of an (What I assume to be Spanish) 'agent' to secure the coal needed to see the Republic through the winter. Greene wrote this 'entertainment' in the mornings of 6 amphetamine-fueled weeks in order to earn a bit of cash while struggling to complete his seminal The Power and the Glory. I didn't think much of it and while there is some of Greene's hallmark storytelling within it, I found that what there was tended to be hollow. I have read more of Greene's work than I have read of any other author but I recognise his flaws; they are all too visible in The Confidential Agent.

SerjeantWildgoose wrote:

OptimisticJock wrote:Downloaded an Ordinary Soldier for my night shift tonight. I'm off to a wee county station so hopefully plenty of time to wire into it.

Probably fishing in the dark as I know that once you get north of the Trossacks there's no guarantee of electricity let alone tinterweb, but how you getting on with Dougie's book?

Finally got it finished when people getting ill and being a STAB didn't get in the way.

I'm not sure how much more of a description I can add to what you have above. It was a very genuine and honest account of a rough few weeks. It was also slightly surreal reading about places I've been and on occasion fought over too. I don't think I've read a book where I can accurately picture the area from memory rather that photos.

Without wanting to start an argument I disagree with your assessment (to a degree certainly) that I wouldn't get much out if it as I didn't know him. A lot of the questions, feelings and emotions he spoke about I've asked myself or felt. I completely understand his reaction to going back out too. Well worth a read particularly if you're a civvy with even a passing interest.

No argument here. I think I said you wouldn't get as much out of it if you didn't know how much it took out of him; if you've been there, you know.

Fair enough. Can't believe his JTAC got fuck all.

OptimisticJock wrote:Fair enough. Can't believe his JTAC got fuck all.

Maybe if he had been a FAC he might have.

I do this every year, all six Booker nominated for £39.99 inc postage.

Often some are crap but occasionally some absolute belters.

When I've finished reading them, or not as the case may be, I donate them to my local library.

https://www.thebookpeople.co.uk/webapp/ ... reId=10001

Alaa al Aswany's The Yacoubian Building. Written in 2002 and set in Cairo at the outset of the First Gulf War, The Yacoubian Building is an international bestseller that garnered a bucket of awards when first published. It tells the often intertwined stories of the various occupants of a single building and on the way has a hefty dig at the ruling NDP. It was widely acclaimed for its frank exploration of sexuality, though it can hardly stand as an endorsement of Egyptian free lovin'. The male characters tend, with one notable exception, to be flabby old sexual predators while the two main female leads are cast as a bit of a vacuous slapper in one case and a scheming money-grabber on the other.

Not a bad read, but not one I'd be keeping on my shelves to read again.

welshsaint wrote:Geraint Jones, Blood Forest. Roman fiction written by a modern day veteran. Check it out on Amazon. Written by a family friend and I loved it. Most like.....Bernard Cornwell.

I'd seen this pop up on Facebook months ago and finally got round to reading it. If I hadn't known he was a vet I'd have guessed by the way it was written, some modern military language and slang used (that's not a criticism), a proper sense of camaraderie and a great insight into a struggling soldiers mind. I love these types of books and think from a soldiering point of view it's the best I've read. No other book has given me the same sense of things I've mentioned above, perhaps because he's been and done it, perhaps because I'm biased and like to see squaddies do well.

Nick Lloyd's Passchendaele: A New History. Published earlier this year and in time to mark (Or exploit, if you prefer) the centenary of Third Ypres the cover of Lloyd's book carries a ringing endorsement from Richard Dannatt who regards it as, 'a masterpiece.' I wouldn't go quite so far, but having tucked it into my baggage for a moving visit to Ypres and the Flanders battlefields last week, I would recommend it as an extremely readable single volume history of the campaign that became known as Third Ypres, but is more firmly fixed in the Great War mythology by the name of one of its later battles.

Lloyd, a reader in military history at KCL and based at the Command and Staff College at Shrivenham offers some new insights into the campaign, including a particularly valuable focus on the German perspective. He levels justified criticism at Gough, commander of the 5th Army and architect of the early battles of the campaign, offers a well-reasoned explanation as to why Plumer's 2nd Army enjoyed greater success with so-called 'Bite-and-Hold' operations in the middle phase, but does not do so well in arguing his case that the latter stages, which culminated in the misery of Passchendaele, were down to Haig's "throwing good money after bad" (pp 252). Lloyd refers to Haig as a 'compulsive gambler' on a number of occasions in the book and while this argument may (ought to) have been explored in greater depth, it was not; indeed, Lloyd even goes on to provide a compelling case (from the German perspective) why Haig was right to continue to take the fight to the Germans in Flanders in the Autumn of 1917.

I don't feel that Lloyd has engaged sufficiently with the controversy that subsequently embroiled Haig, Lloyd George and Robertson (CIGS) and this is a major omission and substantially devalues the book. It is redeemed by being superbly written in a style that encompasses diplomatic, political and strategic decision-making, while never losing sight of the fact that war is a human endeavour. There was a short passage that focused on a Field Artillery battery during one of the middle phases of the campaign and as I read it, I realised that I was learning what it must have been like for my grandfather who served in the Salient with the RFA.

I disagree with General Dannatt. It is not a masterpiece; that has yet to be written. It is, however, well worth a read in this, the centenary year of the battles.

OptimisticJock wrote:

welshsaint wrote:Geraint Jones, Blood Forest. Roman fiction written by a modern day veteran. Check it out on Amazon. Written by a family friend and I loved it. Most like.....Bernard Cornwell.

I'd seen this pop up on Facebook months ago and finally got round to reading it. If I hadn't known he was a vet I'd have guessed by the way it was written, some modern military language and slang used (that's not a criticism), a proper sense of camaraderie and a great insight into a struggling soldiers mind. I love these types of books and think from a soldiering point of view it's the best I've read. No other book has given me the same sense of things I've mentioned above, perhaps because he's been and done it, perhaps because I'm biased and like to see squaddies do well.

Thanks for that, I'll pass it on.

Henry Williamson The Wet Flanders Plain. Making the trek down to Dublin for the game yesterday offered 4 hours stuck on the Enterprise to read and I filled it with Williamson's recollections of his pilgrimage back to the battlefields of Picardy and Flanders in 1927; he had fought as an officer on the Somme and at Third Ypres.

Better known for his writings on wildlife (Tarka the Otter, remains his most famous work), Williamson's reputation took a deserved battering as a result of his anti-semitism and enthusiastic support of fascism and the Nazis; the circulation of his military writings would appear to have suffered as a result. This is a shame as he clearly had a very human perspective on the horrors of war that only one who suffered them could know - and he writes beautifully.

The Wet Flanders Plain is neither history nor memoire, but it still provides a wonderful insight into the experiences and mindset of those who fought on the Western Front during the Great War.

Just given up on "The Longest Kill" about the, then, longest sniper kill. Got about a third of the way through but the guy sounds like a bullshitter. I'm sure the shot he took is genuine but the padding around it sounds overly inflated.

Graham Greene The Man Within. This was Greene's first novel, written when he was 21 and first published in 1929. It reads decidedly Dickensian and has little evidence of the simple style that makes Greene's later work so compelling for me. While it is difficult to pin down when it was set, I get more of a feel of Moonfleet than Brighton Rock. An interesting book for anyone who is interested in Greene, otherwise I'd leave it alone.

In 1981 Alasdair Gray had Lanark published, and it was met with critical acclaim at the time. A couple of years after, my then girlfriend raved about it, and I thought that one day I'd get round to reading it. Almost 35 years later, I've ticked the box.

Wished I hadn't bothered. It took me 6 weeks of dipping in and out, and while in parts it is engaging, and it is quite imaginative in some respects, overall I found it dismal and not very entertaining.

Glad now I didn't marry her, although it was a close run thing.

Just finished The Power of One, by Bryce Courtenay.

It was first published in 1989, but a little like Stoner, has belatedly become popular.

This is a longish book but I sailed through it on my Kindle. I have also bought the paperback version to give as a present and it weighs in at 629 pages, so maybe long not longish.

I highly recommend this although the 'hero' is remarkably heroic.

Here is a review that you can check out.

https://book-reviews.wonderhowto.com/ne ... y-0135392/

If anyone has read it or anything by Bryce Courtenay it would be interesting to hear from you.

Cheers.

Best book Bryce Courtenay ever wrote. In fact, I'm not a big fan of his, although I did enjoy this particular book. As I recall (it's been a couple of decades) it provided a fairly good overview of South African history in the 20th century, without going into great depth - which is not the role of a novel - and also provided some insight into the nation's complex racial issues. Courtenay is originally South African, of course, and I think this novel was his magnum opus.

Colm McCann Songdogs. My Masters is taking up most of my reading time, but I am pretty chuffed to have fit in my annual 'Judge a Book by its Cover' exercise. Once a year I will pick up a book that I have not heard of or would not otherwise have read had it not been for something on the cover that caught my attention. This has taken me along an unprepared pathway to some superb fiction. McCann has continued this trend with Songdogs, the story of a peripatetic photographer as seen through the eyes of his son. It is very much a father and son story, and much like Cormac McCarthy's The Road, appeals to me all the more because of it.

I had not heard of Dublin-born/New York-based McCann, but the book caught my eye in No Alibis (Belfast's wonderful independent bookstore) and led me into a conversation with the proprietor that sent me home impatient to start the book. It is beautifully written, takes in the Spanish Civil War, Mexico, California and Wyoming, New York and ends up along the banks of a river in County Mayo polluted with the effluent from the local abattoir. The story revolves around a book of risque photographs but, with the exception of one brief flirtation with finger-tip lesbianism, this is not a sexual story.

Well worth sneaking this one onto your last-minute stocking filler list.

That has truly whet my appetite, Frankie. Might drop a hint and see if it sneaks under the tree.

SerjeantWildgoose wrote:That has truly whet my appetite, Frankie. Might drop a hint and see if it sneaks under the tree.

...and I'm tempted to find another historian's point of view of Indian Independence, particularly concerning Kashmir, that was not exactly handled well by Mountbatten during the partitioning, with Jinnah and the muslims being extremely pissed off that it wasn't made part of Pakistan, as Jinnah had wanted. Kashmir was in fact the "K" in the name Pakistan (Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh &nd Baluchistan)
Even today Kashmir has administration split between Pakistan, India and China.

Anyway, if you've dropped a hint to Mrs WG, you'll possibly find the book in your stocking!

Indian Summer didn't make it into my stocking, but have just finished Ian Kershaw's To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949, which was in last year's sock.

This is history the way it should be written, with a magnificent spectrum of view points stretching across the continent and from the highest powers to the lowest workers. Brilliant stuff.

The Ode Less Traveled by Stephen Fry. I en joyed poetry when I was a youngster, but it rather gets beaten out of you as you age. This is a useful guide on getting back to writing prose. Smutty limericks included.

SerjeantWildgoose wrote:Indian Summer didn't make it into my stocking, but have just finished Ian Kershaw's To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949, which was in last year's sock.

This is history the way it should be written, with a magnificent spectrum of view points stretching across the continent and from the highest powers to the lowest workers. Brilliant stuff.

Will look out for it.

Just finished Armageddon by Max Hastings. Excellent book about the last eight months of the war, taking a long look at why the war lasted as long as it did when everyone knew Hitlers Reich was finished. While much of the book discusses high level personalities, the generals and politicians of all sides, most of it is written from the perspective of the common soldier, the prisoners and the civilians caught up in it all, again taking notes from all sides and perspectives. Hastings puts his own conclusions forward, but not without explaining the conclusions of others and how he agrees or not. Its an engrossing story in which there are no heroes or villains (totalitarian dictators aside), just ordinary people reacting to extraordinary events.

Sent from my HUAWEI VNS-L31 using Tapatalk

Hastings is a cracking writer. I think I have read just about everything he has published. If you liked Armageddon (I read it during a pretty cold winter in Sarajevo in 2004/5) you should give Nemesis a look; he gives the Japanese the same treatment.

Shooting Ghosts

Written by a former US Marine (TJ Brennan) and a war photographer(Finbar Reilly) who met when the latter was embedded with TJs unit in Afghan it tells their stories of the mental ill health issues they both endure after 3 tours and a couple of decades at war. Fins story was, ironically, more interesting to me as I can never get my head round how someone can photograph someone in their worst moments in all good conscience, fin discusses this and his struggle. A decent read if you're interested in the after effects of war.