Elizabeth – The Forgotten Years by John Guy

Myths are best served exploded, otherwise they can over-inflate and thus hide the substance of any dish. And if that dish be the national consciousness or identity of a nation, then such over-egging must be avoided, lest it become the over-elaborated norm.

In recent times the Tudors have become entertainment currency, and not only in British media. From television series to historical novels to feature films, we have seen a plethora of offerings, mainly stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth, it has to be said. These often degenerate into costume dramas or whodunits of political intrigue, where accuracy is smoothed out of the history to create the kind of simplistic cliché of plot that mass markets are deemed to demand. “Based on a true story”, that overworked and internally contradictory byline, is now so overworked that it would be better omitted. “Fabricated around historical names” would be better. And though there is nothing wrong with fiction, since it often allows interpretations that challenge received wisdom, there are real difficulties when that fiction is transferred into myth whose acceptance becomes so widespread that it may not be challenged. It could be argued that connotations associated with terms such as Good Queen Bess, Golden Age or even simply Elizabethan are in danger of relying more on fiction than fact. Or perhaps these are nostalgic labels for contemporary ideal states that are thought to be lacking in our own times.

And so what an absolute delight it is to come upon a book such as Elizabeth - The Forgotten Years by John Guy. This is a book that really is based on true stories, since this academic historian of Clare College, Cambridge references and describes any sources that the reader may need to back up any point. Timescales are not stretched, statement is supported by facts and mystery is only allowed to obscure fact when evidence does not exist.

The forgotten years of John Guy’s title refer to the latter part of Elizabeth's reign. The earlier years, before the Armada in 1588 are those that form the backdrop for most of the fictions, with their multiple plots, proposals, match-makings and conspiracies. These later years were characterized by war, economic difficulties and political intrigue. They were perhaps dominated by considerations of succession, since Elizabeth, of course, had no heir. It is worth noting here, however, that John Guy, by virtue of a discursive style that deals with issues rather than a mixture of events arranged chronologically, does offer as context much background material relating to the years before 1588. This picture that is purportedly a selective encounter with the later years of Elizabeth's reign thus contains much rounded and detailed description of her entire reign.

John Guy states several assumptions that must guide our understanding of the period. In the sixteenth century, he says, status did not trump gender. Elizabeth was a woman, and that meant that many of the males at court had little or no respect for her apart from their recognition of her birthright. And, because her mother was Anne Boleyn, whom her father married after his denied divorce, even that was questioned by many, especially those of the old faith, who would also have wanted to do more than merely undermine this Protestant queen. The author, incidentally, is not implying that gender issues are or were different in other centuries. As a professional historian, he is simply defining the scope of relevance that is to be ascribed to his comment. Secondly, because Elizabeth was a single woman, the issue of succession had to dominate her reign. In the earlier years this meant various scrambles to find her a husband in the hope that a male heir might materialize. But later on, in the period that John Guy's book covers, Elizabeth was too old to bear children anyway. Discussion on succession, therefore, shifted from matchmaking into more strategic and political territory.

In Elizabeth - The Forgotten Years, the queen is portrayed as a fundamentally medieval monarch. She saw herself as descended from God, the assured kin of all others who shared this enthroned proximity to the Almighty. Hence, she could not bring herself to sign the death warrant for Mary Queen of Scots, believing that a decision to kill a royal by anyone would legitimize the practice, and who then might be next to get it in the neck? And since this by definition was a direct attack on God, it also carried damnation as a consequence. Hence Elizabeth's duplicity in letting it be known she wanted Mary disposed of whilst at the same time denying any responsibility for the act, thus requiring the person who enacted her wishes to be hauled up for treason. These medieval royals were above reason, it seems, as well as above the law. And messengers, it seems, have always been fair game.

This unwillingness to sign a death warrant was not a weakness that affected Elizabeth very often. It seems that the mere whiff of a plot or conspiracy quickly resulted in all smells being masked by the odor of fresh ink forming her signature on an invitation to the Tower. John Guy’s book regularly takes us to the gallows with these condemned people - usually men, of course - and offers detail of their fate. A particularly memorable sentence, specifically suggested by the queen, had one condemned man hanged for just one swing of the rope, so he could then be cut down and, still alive and still conscious, witness his own guts and beating heart being placed on the ground beside him. In an age that still believed in the resurrection of the mortal body, these treasonous felons had to be dismembered and their parts separated to ensure they would never have their souls saved. It may have been God’s will, but it certainly was that of His reigning representative on earth.

This Good Queen Bess, incidentally, was in the habit of handing down similar fates quite regularly. She also refused to pay salaries to soldiers and sailors who fought for her, dressed herself in finery while her war wounded received no assistance or pension and were forced to sleep rough. She turned two blind eyes to disease and epidemic that ravaged her forces and population. Elizabeth the patriotic hero also and perhaps duplicitously sued for peace with Spain, offering Philip II near surrender terms if she and he could agree to carve up the economic interests between them.

She handed out monopolies to her courtiers and lobbyists in exchange for a cut of the earnings. A real strength of John Guy’s book is the insistence on translating Elizabethan era values into present day terms. The resulting multiplication by a thousand brings into sharp focus the extent to which national finances were carved up by elites. While parsimonious when others were due to receive, Elizabeth for herself demanded only the finest and most expensive treatment. It was, after all, her Right.

Elizabeth also countenanced an English economy that raised theft on the high seas to a strategic goal. And her courtiers treated the expeditions as capitalist enterprises, with ministers and the like taking shares in the ventures in exchange for a share of the swag. And much of this would be stolen before it was declared or as it was being landed by handlers or mere thieves who clearly learned their morals and behavior from the so-called betters. The market was free, apparently, but those who operated it were always at risk of incarceration.

Thus, Elizabeth - The Forgotten Years will be a complete eye-opener for anyone who has absorbed popular culture’s portrayal of this age. John Guy’s book identifies the very human traits displayed by this Godly queen and posits them absurdly alongside the attitude of her contemporaries that she was a mere worthless woman.

There are not many figures in John Guy’s wonderful book who come out unscathed, either in reputation or body. Neither does he set out to destroy anyone’s reputation. As an historian, he presents evidence, assesses it and then offers an informed and balanced opinion. This, however, is healthy, for in the current climate populism is too often allowed to merge its own version of history into its message. It does so to achieve some control of a contemporary agenda via the creation of myth, and Tudor melodramas are not exceptions to this rule. Elizabeth - The Forgotten Years demands we remember our real past accurately in all its folly, and in so doing explode many dangerous myths.

Imaginings of Sand by André Brink - masterpiece

Imaginings of Sand by André Brink is, simply put, a masterpiece. Not only does it bring convincing characters to life, flesh out the history of a people, portray the fortunes of a family coping with imposed and unwanted change, it also addresses one of the main political events of the late twentieth century. And André Brink´s novel does all this without the slightest recourse to polemic or posturing. Its themes and statements emerge from the shared lives of its characters. This is subtle authorship at its most accomplished. How many novels might aspire even to one of these achievements?

We are, as in many works by André Brink, not only in South Africa, but also within the Afrikaner community.  We see things through the eyes of Kristien, who is clearly named after her grandmother, the dying Ouma, who is called Kistina. The difference between the names is both slight and significant. They may be separated by time and by political difference, but by the time history has had a chance to view them both, they may be much more similar than first sight might suggest. They are undoubtedly cast in different landscapes, not only in time, but also in terms of the landmarks that might endow their individual sense of permanence. Not only do their values seem different, surely they conflict, given their different politics and ages. Mid-thirties Kristien, of course, has been politically active, while her grandmother has lived on an Afrikaner farm all her life.

Imaginings of Sand begins with Kristien being summoned back to South Africa, because her grandmother is dying. In London, Kristien has had ties with the African National Congress and has campaigned against Apartheid. Her family, with roots stretching back to the original Voortrekkers are, on the face of things, conventional Afrikaner farmers, complete with black servants and employees alongside attitudes that accept without question the supremacy of the Dutch Reform Church, allied to supreme white skin and thus Apartheid.

The message to Kristien in London arrives as South Africa faces change, just before its first multi-radial elections. Apartheid is already a thing of the past, but not yet officially. Political transition is feared by the Afrikaners and there has been much talk of feared violence, even of bloodbath. Kristien´s family house has been attacked and set on fire. Ouma was very old and perhaps frailer than she liked to admit, but now trauma has taken her close to death. Her doctors expect it to be just a few days hence. Her granddaughter insists she should die at home. She has the place cleaned up and made habitable enough for herself and her grandmother, plus, of course, the servant family.

Once home, Ouma Kristina begins to tell her granddaughter the family history and her own life story. How much of it is truth neither Kristien nor we will ever know. Whatever racial or cultural purity the family in theory might claim, Ouma´s history of their ancestry identifies the inevitable complexity. But a thread that runs throughout is the central vulnerability of women. Sweet children, then playthings and finally enforced child-bearers seems to be the repeated and indeed only pattern. Any deviation assumes a break from both culture and identity, but it is a break that anyone from an Afrikaner community finds almost impossible to accomplish. Publicly condemned for any expression of independence, women are equally damned for any sign of disloyalty to community or family or husband, no matter how inconsiderate, lascivious or even violent he may be. For the first time, Kristien comes to terms with the life her own mother led before she died all too young.

History seems to have repeated itself a number of times. Anna, Kristien´s sister, seems to be respectably but unhappily married to Casper, who is both Boer and boor. When he is not chasing a woman´s tail, he is busy organising what can only be described as a vigilante force to anticipate problems of majority rule. They seem determined to get their retaliation in first.

And so the tale of family and national history unfolds. The politics of state, community, family and sex develop and intertwine. Race, gender and class play their roles as well. But yet this novel never descends into polemic. It is never less than credible, never less than real. Its style, indeed, in often an African variety of magical realism that both amplifies and enlivens the already fantastical stories of Ouma Kristina. The plot always surprises, even to the very end, but none of these events, however, bizarre, is anything less than credible, From the start, it is a masterpiece.

History, Myth. Fact, Fiction – Several Points Of View: A Review Of Innocent Traitor by Alison Weir

Reviews often begin by warning of spoilers. Neither excuse nor warning here for saying that Alison Weir’s book, Innocent Traitor, recounts the public and political life of Lady Jane Grey. She was sixteen years old and married by agreement when, in 1554, she was beheaded upon the order of Queen Mary of England, after being convicted of treason. Mary, you see, was a Roman Catholic and Lady Jane Grey was a Protestant. The young lady had been elevated to the throne by interested parties and had herself been Queen of England for just nine days after the death of the juvenile, and himself manipulated, Edward The Sixth. Jane Grey’s elevation to the throne had been nothing more than a blatant plot to hold on to power by a group led by the dead King’s Proetctor, if that be the word to use. The plot, which had not involved Lady Jane herself, was a ploy to maintain the Protestant identity of the English crown. Mary, Henry The Eighth’s daughter by Spanish Catholic Katherine of Aragon perhaps had the greater claim to the throne. She was the old king’s daughter, but she had been born of an annulled marriage to a queen who had also formerly been married to Henry’s brother, a fact that in some eyes rendered the marriage to Henry illegal from the start. Opinion was determined by which side of the religious divide was asked. But, as ever, pragmatism surfaced and interests ruled. But no-one can hold on to usurped power without support. And when what you have ebbs away, you get it in the neck. Here endeth the spoilers.

Innocent Traitor is an historical novel. It sticks to the facts, embroidering them only when records are scant. This is not Hollywood, and so reality cannot be edited. And we all know the facts, so it is neither cliché nor spoiler to re-state that “she dies in the end”. What is crucial to Alison Weir’s scheme, however, is how things happen, how motives and allegiances shift and coalesce to create what eventually feels like an inevitable fate for Lady Jane, who became the only remaining and unwilling pawn in a vast power play. And, in describing these events, motives, allegiances and deceits, Alison Weir creates a rich tapestry of fact, embroidered with minimal invention, depicting how fate unfolds to take the life of Lady Jane. If you did not already understand the history, then by the end of Innocent Traitor, you will. If you did already have a grasp on events, then by the end of the book you will see them clearer.

The story is told through the eyes and thoughts of several characters. Lady Jane Grey herself is to the fore, but her scheming and unloving parents, Frances Brandon and Henry Grey make crucial contributions. We also meet several queens, Jane Seymour, Katherine Howard, Katherine Parr and Mary. We meet Elizabeth almost in passing, but her tricks spice the tale throughout. The book appears to concentrate on the women, which is interesting in itself, but then males appear, such as the inevitable John Dudley and the flighty Henry Fitzalan. All of these characters – and more! – relate their tales in the first person and the present tense.

Now here is the great shortcoming of Innocent Traitor, since each of these people ought to have a different perspective, a different point of view and might even use different types of language. They would certainly have brought different assumptions into focus, given their disparate backgrounds. Innocent Traitor, however, requires them to deliver facts to the reader, and they all do this efficiently, and in rather similar style. And yet we, the readers, are taken into the first person, present tense thoughts of a woman in childbirth, a person being executed, a maid dressing her mistress, and then, almost in the next breath, we are plotting potential treason, intrigue, or merely justifying religious difference. As such, these characters rather lose their identities and emerge as mere vehicles for delivering the plot of historical events.

But despite the required and rather lengthy suspension of disbelief that is required by the novel’s form, the complexity and jaw-sagging duplicity, recalcitrance and utter selfishness of these people make Innocent Traitor an absolutely riveting read. By the end, one wonders why it is that that these people, and probably others like them, who populated the centres of power throughout history are not today described simply as the two-faced, lying murderers they were.

And by the end we are also left with a certain emptiness of the stomach when we realise that all this scheming was all prompted by these people’s adherence or not to merely different versions of obvious myth. If we have to suspend belief to accommodate unlikely points of view, then we might also want to admit defeat in order to appreciate the fact that these people, and many thousands of others, were persecuted, executed or merely fell in war as a result of an argument about a largely mythical man who defied gravity and rose bodily into the skies, and an institution that maintains bread changes into flesh and wine into blood – and does it daily!

Innocent Traitor, despite faults generated by its form, is a highly successful book. It captures the motives very accurately and leads the reader into complete sympathy with the plight of Lady Jane Grey who, at just sixteen years of age when the axe severed her neck, just wanted to be left alone with her books. These, it seems, were the wrong books.

Perfect Hostage – A Life of Aung San Suu Kyi by Justin Wintle

Justin Wintle’s Perfect Hostage – A Life of Aung San Suu Kyi is not a book with a particularly perfect title. It sounds like it will be a simply a biography, and perhaps a rather fawning one, of a Nobel Peace Prize Winner, perhaps erring on the side of hero worship.

In fact Justin Wintle’s book presents much more than this. It does document the life, examine the politics and describe the actions of its dedicatee. But it also traces her background, both personal and public, and considers the status of her family in Burmese national consciousness. It describes in some detail the life of her legendary father, General Aung San. But Perfect Hostage is even more again. The book provides a wonderful account of Burma’s recent history, examining the politics, the role of the military and popular movements and then in more recent times the responses of the dictatorship in precise and informative detail. Passages that describe Burma’s participation in the Second World War are particularly illuminating, especially when juxtaposed with the course of later events.

From this account of her life, Aung San Suu Kyi emerges as a rather paradoxical figure. She is cast as both assertive in her commitment to do something for her country, and simultaneously ponderous in her apparent unwillingness to grasp opportunities when they arise. Again paradoxically we appreciate her determination to seek change, alongside her reluctance to destabilise. Her ultimate aim appears to be unification, but this may be in itself unachievable, since the diversity of interests at play may prove irreconcilable.

Throughout, via Justin Wintle’s admirably constructed work, we appreciate the contribution of Aung San Suu Kyi’s husband, Michael Aris, to his wife’s achievement. Together they shared personal, intellectual and political interests in Burma, interests that eventually led to action. This joint desire to act may have eventually have led to a separation, but that separation was merely corporal, since the couple’s joint motivation continued to thrive. And, via its consideration of Michael Aris’s role in events, Perfect Hostage eventually presents a wonderfully rounded and complete account of the personal, family and public life that Aung San Suu Kyi has led.

The book is surprising in its scope, its depth and its scholarship, but only because its title suggest something rather less than comprehensive. An example of the detail the book presents will illustrate. Justin Wintle relates some of the personal proclivities of Ne Win, Burma’s military ruler for many years. “If he travelled outside the capital, he did so in a flight of helicopters, his staff having made sure that all stray dogs in the vicinity – especially those with crooked tails – had been rounded up and slaughtered. For Ne Win was fearful of stray dogs – especially those with crooked tails...” Following on from this, we are told that when Ne Win was warned of an impending assassination attempt, he would trample in his bedroom on the entrails of a dog or in a bowl of pig’s blood and then “he would raise his revolver... and shoot himself in the mirror.” You just cannot make this up.

Human history, it seems, is full of such ridiculous detail. But it is also full of honesty, endeavour and idealism. Justin Wintle’s portrayal of Aung San Suu Kyi is replete with all of these qualities.

Capital In The Twenty First Century by Thomas Picketty

A review of Capital In The Twenty First Century would itself have to be a book, so let this be a mere reflection on some of Thomas Picketty’s wealth of material. And there is no better place to start than his startling demonstration of how little changes in the structure of the ownership of wealth, unless war intervenes. Furthermore, his demonstration that things are getting back to ‘normal’ after the twin conflict shocks of the twentieth century’s World Wars could, unless tempered by resigned realism, easily provoke depression in the reader. Thomas Picketty’s book ought to be required reading for anyone – certainly anyone who happens tp be British – who benefitted from the social mobility available in the 1950s to 1970s. We have tended to blame the 1944 Education Act for providing the abnormal conditions that led to a measurable, albeit temporary, decrease in inequality. But Thomas Picketty sets the record straight by clarifying that it was merely a result of the aberrations of war, which for a few decades weakened the power of capital. Normal service has since been resumed.

Picketty desribes how unevenly capital is distributed, especially in the developed societies. Typically, half of the population owns nothing, while the top ten per cent has about half of the wealth. For Picketty, capital means fixed assets that could potentially be traded, whose ownership can be bought and sold. It includes fixed assets, property, equity or cash, and excludes all forms of human capital, which may be an asset and may have value, but, he argues, its ownership can only be traded in slave societies, which now do not exist. He considers capital distribution and income distributions separately, however, so at least an element of human capital is represented in the latter. He observes that income is always more evenly distributed than fixed capital, with the top ten per cent receiving just 25 to 30 per cent of total incomes. As a consequence, if there has been any shift in the identity of the capital-owning elite in recent decades, then this has come about at least in large part as a result of the very highly remuneration available to certain professions at the very top of the income ladder. The phenomenon has also resulted in an increase in inequality observed in developed societies during recent decades, especially in the USA and United Kingdom. Inequality continues to increase.

One of Picketty’s fundamental laws is that capital always grows faster than the wider economy. Thus success via earning power inevitably leads to a graduation into the rentier class, a transformation that is needed if newly acquired status is to be consolidated. Furthermore, if the inequality stating that capital growth is greater than economic growth holds true, it implies that even the advantages of growth in the general economy will also eventually accrue to the owners of capital.

Historically, economic growth has been strongly associated with increasing population. Without the demographic element, economies have consistently attained no more than around two per cent growth. Two per cent is still a significant rate if maintained. But spurts in growth come with spurts in population. The opposite is also likely to be true, which in itself allows some facets of the current world economy to be seen in more informative light. Population surges produce economic surges, however, and this comes as no surprise. What does surprise a little is Picketty’s assertion, perhaps assumption, that since France experienced population growth before other developed societies, then we must all look to France as the setter of the international economic agenda, the historic standard, if you like, that others followed.

Another historical reality that shows up very clearly in his data is the effect of foreign earnings throughout the nineteenth century and through World War One. These “invisibles”, as they have sometimes been labelled, were simply the profits from colonialism and slavery. They financed deficits, borrowing and consumption at the heart of the empires from which they were drawn. In the modern world, he points out, there is perhaps a greater degree of foreign ownership of capital than ever before, but the benefits and capital transfers are two-way, as are the benefits, and thus net transfers are small.

This history is illustrated in economic data. He cites a number of cases where an imperial power, having amassed large debts after periods of conflict or downturn, managed to earn five per cent or more of its national income from invisibles, thus allowing the country in question to service debts that otherwise would have been crippling. In the modern world, crucially, this get-out-of-jail card is perhaps no longer available.

One aspect of Picketty’s analysis does surprise us. Throughout the book he uses fiction as a source of illustration, a source that will cause many an academic reader of the text to pause and wonder. Picketty often cites examples from Balzac, Austen and others to illustrate general points about the behaviour of capital. The process, though highly selective and, it must be said, apocryphal, does eventually convince, but it is the novelists that eventually shine through, not the economic model. His argument, which he claims is illustrated so clearly in nineteenth century fiction, is that it is always more likely that capital will be inherited or indeed married rather than earned. The endless machinations associated with finding a suitable marriage partner for eligible females in nineteenth century fiction are mere recognition that it is easier to marry money than earn it, capital growth being always lower than economic growth.

If Capital In The Twenty First Century can be criticised, then it is in its rather scant, even dismissive coverage of human capital. Yes, this becomes absorbed into income data. But the author does maintain that  “democratic modernity is founded on the belief that inequalities based on individual talent and effort are more justified than other inequalities – or at least we hope to be moving in that direction.” He contrasts this belief with a Balzac character who foregoes the chance of studying law in order to seek marriage to a fortune, and then asks who would do such a thing today?

Now if credentials as well as skills obtained by participants in education do develop human capital, even if this is only reflected in increased earnings, then access to high quality education is needed before these skills and credentials are attainable. It might even be argued that now the educational experience is not only sufficient for capital advancement but also necessary, since even the opportunity to wed capital may hinge on the attainment or not of educational levels that are preconditions for entering that particular market.

And so if education has become just another commodity offered via a market, then the cost of accessing the most highly developed and effective delivery systems will rise, since these are the most effective means of securing access to capital, whether via earnings or marriage. Such costs will also rise since, having become a market, educational demand will be highest from those with a need to protect their existing ownership of capital, and they have the resources to pay for what they need. Education thus becomes a means of confirming and re-asserting wealth, rather than a potential avenue for social mobility. Perhaps today it is still easier to marry wealth than earn it. Except that today the option of marriage may be determined by an educational credential that can most effectively be secured by existing access to wealth.

This argument, it seems, closes the loop and illustrates how, even in a materialistic society, capital will always grow faster than the economy as a whole and why inequality will not only persist, but increase.

No book review should concentrate on what a book is not. So as a final note let me describe Thomas Picketty’s book as essential reading for anyone with a brain. If you can disprove its analysis empirically, rather than merely deny its significance on ideological grounds, then please present your data. If you can’t, then join the call for policies that will attempt to address the destructive imbalances that result in growing inequality. It must be remembered that, underpinning Capital In The Twenty First Century is a need to examine whether a certain text called Capital in the nineteenth century contained a grain of truth in asserting that eventually the capitalist system would collapse under pressure of its own inevitable imbalances. The conclusion appears to have been demonstrated, and the case for re-reading that other book is thus made.

Machiavelli And Renaissance Italy by J. R. Hale

J. R. Hale’s Machiavelli And Renaissance Italy was originally part of a Teach Yourself History series, published by Penguin Books in the 1960s. A twenty-first century reader will first of all be impressed by the book’s size, since it appears to be short, and by its laudable aim of opening up otherwise specialised knowledge to a wider audience. The same reader, however, is also going to be surprised, because this is no small sketch to expand an icon into a mere outline. On the contrary, this text deals admirably with its subject and in some detail. It is, in the end, actually quite a long read because of the book’s intensity and the level of detail presented. The picture that it paints of its subject, however, will appear doubly surprising for anyone who can associate Niccolo Machiavelli only with The Prince.

J.R.Hale’s book is a biography first and a history second. By its end, we have a thoroughly rounded portrait of Machiavelli, who turns out to be a rather complex, somewhat vulnerable, if also self-confident conservative. He is best known for a treatise on cut-throat politics, presenting a prescription that many others have dissected and some have tried to follow, believing it to provide a recipe for success. Machiavelli the politician, however, was only partially successful in the pursuit of his own career, and spent much of his life sidelined by the higher and mightier, often frantically trying to prise himself through any crack that might lead back inside the power structure. The creative or academic side of Niccolo Machiavelli’s genius, however, seems to be largely unknown to modern audiences, but Hale’s book deals admirably with all of Machiavelli’s achievements.

Machiavelli was an historian. Indeed, he was commissioned to write a history or Florence. He was also a linguist of sorts, a bit of a pedant in the area, if truth be told. Like all such types, he was right, sometimes. What is less obvious from our distance in time is that he was also a poet and a playwright, with some of his stage works being quite well known to contemporary audiences, since they received numerous performances.

But it is the political polemic that is The Prince for which we know Niccolo Machiavelli. He wrote the work after analysing the habits, achievements and tactics of one Cesare Borgia, with whom he served during the prince’s more successful times. Now Cesare was not noted for his negotiating skills. He was indeed a man of action. He was usually up for a fight, in fact whenever the opportunity arose. For him, it seems a quick war held the same kind of space in his life as his next meal. Machiavelli‘s own account of a conversation with Cesare relates that: “(Lucca) was a rich city, and a fine morsel for a gourmand”. Then, commenting on Cesare’s methods, Machiavelli records that a certain Messer Ramiro had been cut in two and left in the piazza at Cesena so everyone could see the handiwork. His death “was the pleasure of the prince, who shows us that he can make and unmake men according to their deserts”. So Cesare ate cities as snacks and half people for dessert. He was moderately successful for a while, it has to be said, and so it is no surprise that Machiavelli should incorporate his policies and practices as prescriptive method in his own manual on statecraft.

But the methods never did transfer easily. To survive, he tells us, states need money, since states are only respected if they have armies. Likewise, political power, it seems, can only accrue via wealth and the ability to buy force. And it was money that eventually deserted Machiavelli when paid employment as a diplomat dried up to nought. The Medicis did not trust him, even though his own role had always been that of a pen-pusher, a statesman of sorts, a civil servant. And so, when the work in politics dried up, he turned his hand to history

Not, of course, that he had ever been separated from it. Machiavelli lived in an age of princes and emperors. Two of the latter invaded the Italian peninsula from the north during his lifetime, one French and the other a variety of Hapsburg. Medicis came and went and came back again. Popes did the same, but not in the same identity, since they came from different families, or indeed with even the same goals, except the advancement of the family interests they represented. In Machiavelli’s day popes behaved like the emperors they are and every war was self-evidently just, as long as there was profit to be had. And just to underline the fact that times have hardly changed, Machiavelli saw a religious fundamentalist capture the popular imagination via a puritanical message, only to be destroyed by that same popular imagination when it moved on. At the turn of the sixteenth century, it seems that austerity fuelled by a guilt complex had only temporary caché.

J.R. Hale’s book is thus a brilliant reminder that within every icon there is a story, and that history is populated by real people, characters who drive events and create the future. These real people sometimes become eternalised as icons, fixed in their own times, but able to be transferred to any other to serve the needs of whoever needs their support. If only such iconic figures had known that at the time, then they might have behaved differently. When the icons are again reduced to mere people, however, they once again become interesting, full, engaging individuals, and this is what we discover via Hale’s book on Niccolo Machiavelli.

And if we feel that Machiavelli has nothing to say about the politics of today, then reflect on these words of his: “From some time past I have never said what I believe, nor believe what I say, and if I do happen to speak the truth, I wrap it up in so many lies that it is difficult to get at it”.

Joseph Hanlon, Mozambique: The Revolution Under Fire.

Why might anyone want to read a book describing contemporary politics and international relations some thirty years after its publication? Surely a more recent history or overview would be preferable. Memoirs can always evoke recollections of the writer or the context in which the memorabilia were created. Overviews and analyses do retain their relevance, if sometimes not their accuracy when revisited some decades on from the events they describe. But a work of on-going contemporary commentary of a specific political issue, whose particularities perhaps no longer even apply to our times - why should anyone now read such a book?

It’s a question that was worth asking at the start of Joseph Hanlon’s 1984 work, Mozambique: The Revolution Under Fire. Written less than a decade after Frelimo had assumed power as the colonial Portuguese fled the country, this book is very much a snapshot of where Mozambique found itself in the early 1980s. At the time, most issues still remained unresolved. Most challenges facing the Frelimo government had still not been addressed, let alone overcome. As a consequence, events were moving fast and the regional situation remained fluid, to say the least. Thus it might be argued that such a work as Joseph Hanlon’s book barely retained its relevance on the day of its original publication, let alone some thirty years hence. But now it is the contemporary snapshots the book presents that make it all the more worthwhile a read.

Joseph Hanlon’s text summarises the history of Frelimo’s rise to power. He considers progress made or, indeed, not made in the nation’s healthcare, agriculture, education and general political restructuring. He considers Mozambique’s relations with its neighbours and its position in international politics and trade.

And it is here that we find real interest in Mozambique: The Revolution Under Fire. First, the book is couched firmly within the Cold War paradigm that was simply inescapable at the time. In the twenty-first century it is easy to forget that in the second half of the twentieth century it was impossible to write anything about international relations without framing it in the East versus West, Communism versus Capitalism struggle. Mozambique, of course, because of its professedly left-wing government was perceived to be in the Communist camp, but Joseph Hanlon regularly reminds us that, though this was inevitable, given the ideological leanings of Frelimo, in practice this did not necessarily mean that socialist policies were followed, or that assistance from the Soviet Union was received. It did mean that the country’s economy and its society was destabilised by external forces, ultimately backed by the United States. At the time, it was not the only nation in poverty whose internal privation was exacerbated by external aggression.

Secondly, reading Mozambique: The Revolution Under Fire, we are reminded of just how much change has been effected in the last thirty years. At time of writing, Zimbabwe was newly independent, while South Africa remained a determinedly apartheid state. The South African Development Coordination Conference was in only fledgling state, and still driven by the optimism that greeted its brief to promote economic integration amongst those nations primarily dependent on South Africa.

Thirdly, and perhaps paradoxically, the book reminds us of how little even revolutionary governments often manage to change via their own policies and actions. Nowhere is ever inherited as a blank slate, and existing practices, interests and structures inevitably have to be considered and accommodated. They can also be challenged, but again Joseph Hanlon’s book illustrates how difficult a task this always proves to be.

Fourthly, the book’s quite stunning appendix serves to illustrate just how complicated apparently simple problems can be. At a time when crops had failed as a result of drought and other had withered as a consequence of the disruption caused by war, Mozambique could not feed itself. Joseph Hanlon offers the intriguing analysis that under the conditions that pertained at the time, promoting agricultural development might have been both more costly and less effective that merely buying food in the open market.

So, rather than being a text which is relevant only to its own time, Joseph Hanlon’s Mozambique: The Revolution Under Fire now presents ideas and descriptions which challenge us to reinterpret the region as we now see it. The book reminds us that what we today assume to be the dominant paradigm through which we must interpret current events may be utterly inappropriate in a decade or two. Joseph Hanlon’s book was written to describe a quickly changing scenario in the 1980s, but it now reminds us that no matter how permanent some ideas may appear, they in fact represent no more than merely transient assumptions.

Doves Of War by Paul Preston

Writers of fiction are often accused of forcing their characters to jump through ever more fanciful hoops to satisfy a presumed need for engaging plot. The fact that reality often amplifies the unlikely to the near incredible regularly reminds any reader that considered fiction rarely overstates any issue that derives from our usually random human recklessness. Rarely, for instance, when dealing with war, does fiction place women in the front line. And equally uncommon is the recognition that women are also often in the front lines of politics, even when they might continue to be under-represented amongst the professional practitioners of the art.

And so we often need the kind of reality check that a balanced historical account can provide. Paul Preston’s Doves Of War is precisely the kind of book that can provide comment on all these themes and thus bring us back to earth with an eye-opening bump.

Doves Of War presents contrasting biographies of four women who were directly involved in the hostilities of the Spanish Civil War. Priscilla Scott-Ellis is born of the English upper crust and supports the Nationalists. Nan Green is also English, but motivated by a commitment to left-wing politics. She lines up with the Republic. Mercedes Sanz-Bachiller, a Spaniard, marries into the political life of Vallolid. Margarita Nelken, Spanish-speaking and Spanish-born, but Jewish and branded a foreigner by her enemies, becomes a significant actor on the political left. And so we follow the lives of four women, two on the left and two on the right, two outsiders and two insiders, two who celebrated victory and two berated in defeat. Their stories thus contrast.

It is much to the author’s credit that these lives are presented in a fair and unbiased way. Paul Preston’s personal take on the history of Spain’s war is well known. But in Doves Of War he consistently ducks opportunities to make points about the politics of the struggle, except when the politics are lived out in the lives of his subjects. Committed readers on either side of the argument might feel frustrated at this, but the overall result in that Doves Of War avoids polemic and lets the detail of these four women’s stories demand the reader’s uncomplicated attention. The first subject, for instance, was born into privilege and wealth, thus making political points easy to score. The second is very much the nineteen-thirties pro-Soviet apologist and activist, and caricature might thus beckon. The third is a long-suffering wife dragged into the limelight and the fourth is the driven polymath intellectual. In some way or other, all four could be presented as caricatures or used as vehicles to score other associated historical and political points. Aspects of all four lives could be stressed to demolish them as people or belittle their contribution and commitment. But the author always shies away from cheap shots, even consciously avoiding them, always preferring to analyse rather than judge.

What happens to these four women is the meat of Doves Of War, so this review will avoid reference to the detail of the individual stories. What the review can do, however, is note that each of these lives presents a series of events that is stranger, more heroic, more tragic, more convoluted, more complicated and much more profound than anything a writer of fiction might implausibly create to impose on a character. The twists and turns of these lives, each one pummelled by events and scarred by war leave the reader breathless just trying to keep up.

The style, however, is not easy. Paul Preston is an historian, not a sensationalist or indeed a sentimentalist, and these tales, as presented here, are more documentary than Hollywood. Their content may be stranger than fiction, but the material is considered, discussed, referenced, sourced and checked. Nothing is ever over-stated. Doves Of War displays immense scholarship and, whatever the author’s obvious sympathies, he offers tremendous respect for these four differing women who, in their different ways, gave their lives to the causes they supported.

Philip Spires website

A Mad World, My Masters by John Simpson

In A Mad World, My Masters John Simpson presents a set of observations and anecdotes drawn from a near lifetime of reporting for television news. Over a career spanning decades, John Simpson has worked on many of the major stories of recent history. He has covered conflicts, such as the Gulf War and the Balkans, general interest stories, such as Hong Kong’s transfer and the new millennium, and more general issues such as such as the drugs and arms trades. But it is John Simpson’s contact with political leaders and heads of state that adds real spice to these memoirs, some of his contacts proving decidedly surreal, all of them offering unusual insight. The book is organised around themes, such as journeys, villains, spies, bombing and absurdities. This allows the presentation of similar kinds of experience derived from different trips. It does also facilitate the reading of the book via casual dips. A consequence is that the whole experience becomes rather episodic. 

Apart from the sometimes tenuous theme, there is little attempt to create a consistent, general narrative. Again this facilitates the casual read, but it might antagonise a reader who wants a tad more reflection from the author. The thematic arrangement also means that on several occasions the reader re-visits a trip, leading to some inevitable repetition of material. This, however, is kept to a minimum and does not detract from the overall experience if an occasional feeling of impatience is ignored.

Thus far this review has sounded like a lukewarm reception, but this would be far from the truth of the experience. The book’s subject matter alone is thought-provoking, stimulating and enlightening. In addition, John Simpson’s own observations are quite wonderful. And this mix is persuasive. The reader feels that the book “takes you there” rather than “tells us what it’s like”. It is the vividness of John Simpson’s recollections and related experience that brings so much of the subject matter completely to life that we feel we might have smelled Gaddafi’s flatulence, sensed a Peruvian mayor’s danger or felt an Iraqi Kurd’s bitterness. Anyone familiar with John Simpson’s exemplary reporting for the BBC will expect these anecdotes to contain more than trivia or merely personal experience, and, thus, will not be disappointed. But it is when the author deals with the mechanics and technicalities of news gathering that some of the more vivid experiences appear. We often forget that the process is dangerous, tiring and relentless if the product is to contain even a grain of interest. Throughout, John Simpson acknowledges the difficulties, but he also always recognises the contributions of others to the teamwork that is clearly essential to the process.

This book has much to offer to anyone interested in recent history or current affairs. Even those who are unfamiliar with the author’s broadcasting work will discover engaging and arresting perspectives on many issues and, in some cases, there will be analyses that will question some generally accepted positions. The book may be a little too long, but its consistent high quality ensures that this is barely an issue.

Fools Of Fortune by William Trevor

Generally, genre thrillers are books without thrills. Someone gets killed. Turn the page and it happens again to someone else. There’s a chase, a near miss; da capo al fine; repeat. There are never consequences. Characters seem to exist – they never come to life – in an eternal present devoid of either thought or reflection. Plot is a series of events, while characters are mere fashionably dressed acts. William Trevor’s beautiful novel, Fools Of Fortune is, in many ways, a whodunit – or better who done what – thriller. But it transcends genre because it is the consequences of the actions and their motives that feature large, that provide plot and ultimately a credible, if tragic humanity.

Fools Of Fortune is a novel that presents tragedy not merely as a vehicle for portraying raw emotion, but rather as a means of illustrating the depth of ensuing consequence, both historical and personal. In conflict it is easy to list events, quote numbers, suggest outcome, but it is rare to have a feel of how momentous events can have life-long consequences for those involved, consequences that even protagonists cannot envisage, consequences that can affect the lives of those not even involved.

William Trevor’s book is set in Ireland. Its story spans decades, but the crucial elements of the plot are placed in the second decade of the twentieth century. They do involve the First World War, but really as a sideshow to the issue of Home Rule for Ireland. The Quinton family are Protestants living in an old house called Kinleagh in County Cork. Willie Quinton is a child, initially home schooled by a priest called Kilgarriff, who has a highly personal view of the world. We see many of the events through Willie’s child eyes, including a surreptitious meeting between Willie’s father and a famous man who visits on a motorbike. The family owns a flour mill. They are quite well off, a fact that is clearly appreciated by some and resented by others. Crucially, it is this availability of finance that leads to a downfall, events that lead to deaths, destruction and calls for revenge. Willie’s life is transformed for ever.

Over the water, the Woodcombes of Woodcombe Park, Dorset, have a daughter called Marianne. The Woodcombes and the Quintons are related. Marianne is Willie’s cousin. On a visit to Kinleagh she falls in love with Willie. She is a small, delicate girl. She has experience of a Swiss finishing school, a stay that brings exposure to practices that are not wholly educational. Marianne returns to Kinleagh to find Willie. She has important news, but finds that devastation has hit the Quinton household, a culmination of events beyond the control of any individual. No-one wants to talk about what might have happened, and no-one admits to the whereabouts of Willie. Marianne stays to wait for his return. It proves to be a long wait.

There is vengeance in the air, and unforeseen consequences for a child who apparently played no part in any of the events. She was blameless, a mere recipient of the consequences of others’ actions, of others’ grief. William Trevor tells the tale of Fools Of Fortune as serial memoirs of those involved, primarily Willie and Marianne. Some of the school experiences that form a significant part of the story are comic, and offer some relief to the pressure of unfolding tragedy. But central to the book’s non-linear discovery of motive and consequence is the fact that events can dictate the content of lives, and sometimes individuals appear as no more than powerless pawns in games dictated by others. We are all participants, but not always on our own terms.

A Division of the Spoils by Paul Scott

Start with two major religions, Islam and Hinduism. To a history of one ruling the other, add the complication of a determinedly, in part evangelical Christian colonial administration that lords it over both and in recent memory has massacred innocents. Calls for independence are frequent, but the detail of “from what” remains negotiable. There is civil disobedience in a state whose imperial government can only function by virtue of local cooperation. But should independence lead to a unitary state, religiously mixed, or should it divide along ethnic lines in an attempt to avoid conflict of interest?

Then there’s a World War against an invading Japanese army to be coped with. And when a new kind of independence is called for, one that not only politically rejects the colonial masters but also wages war against them, new complications emerge. Those who deserted to fight alongside the enemy risk courts-martial and death sentences for treason, despite their being viewed locally as freedom fighters by those who desire independence at any cost, whilst remaining traitors in the eyes of anyone seeking any form of accommodation with the status quo.

This is India in the 1940s, and as yet there has been no mention yet of the princely states, each with its Nawab or Maharajah at its head, ostensibly independent but land-locked in their geographical and political dependency, surrounded by colonialism that, if anything, has nurtured them. Which way would these august gentlemen lean?

A Division Of The Spoils by Paul Scott is the last novel in his Raj Quartet. It is set against this backdrop of complex social, political, military, even geo-political considerations, all of which interact and thus influence one another. The novel’s story features a group of British colonials, perhaps locked in time, adherents of assumptions that no longer apply, who have to cope not only with all the complications of war and changing India, but also of their own lives, their forcibly limited aspirations and their enforced change of identity.

A Division Of The Spoils is such a vast project that a reader might suspect that the pace might flag somewhere within its six hundred or so pages. The reader would be wrong. By shifting the focus from one character to another, by changing the narrative’s point of view, the book not only enthrals from first to last, it also brings to life the dilemmas that face these people, often tragically, but never without compassion or empathy.

Paul Scott has not written a novel that reaches, or even tries to offer solutions or analyses. The only end products are history, itself, and the deaths of some of the characters, whom, when deceased, we realise we may not have known very well at any time. Perhaps they themselves did not really know who they were, why they were playing the role of the ruler, acting out superiority whenever a suitable minion or perhaps target might be identified. They might have been sure what disgusted them, but they were never sure of their own motives, or their motivations, even when these ran to an overtly paternalistic, perhaps patronising attitude towards the ruled.

Yet, through all the confusion of politics, war and change, people must live their lives. Hopefully, they are the subjects of this change because, if they are its objects, they are in danger. Just ask Ahmed Kasim, who was never very political, or even very Islamic. Ask Susan Layton, then Bingham, then Merrick. Ask those who stay on or those who leave, those who sign away their independence and power, or those who manipulate events to their advantage. And finally, if you ask me, I would conclude that The Division Of The Spoils, and the Raj Quartet as a whole, represent an achievement in writing through the medium of fiction that has certainly never been surpassed. When piles appear, look for this one at the top.

An evaluation framework - Economic Policy and Human Rights by Radhika Balakrishnan and Diane Elson

Economic Policy and Human Rights by Radhika Balakrishnan and Diane Elson apparently declares an intention to compare and contrast fiscal and monetary policy, public expenditure consequences, taxation, trade policy and pension reform in Mexico and the United States of America. The choice of countries is justified on several levels: they are of comparable size, differ in level of development, contrast in governmental approaches and, crucially, are both signatories of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement which, itself, suggests a commonality in certain policy areas. At the outset, the authors declare that the neoliberal economic assumptions that have dominated policy choice for thirty years have not worked, ostensibly because their main result has been the current crisis. The authors thus attempt to illustrate this claim by examining a range of social, employment and economic indicators to assess the impact of the current paradigm on particular groups within both Mexico and the United States.

But Balakrishnan and Elson also declare the intention of doing much more than this, in claiming that the framework they adopt could become transferable to other places and contexts. Their choice of framework appears to achieve exactly what they intend, and it does so quite spectacularly. And it is a position that could have benefited my own work a couple of decades ago, if only it had then existed. My own research on education’s role in Philippine development found that increased use of market forces and privatisation in an education system already heavily reliant on the private sector produced distortions that undermined some of education’s potential and desired objectives.

After the debt decade of the 1980s, increased reliance on market forces in Philippine education placed most high quality educational experience beyond the reach of anyone but the economic elite. And yet, declared policy stated that the promotion greater equality was one of the education system’s explicit goals. In the future, work intending to identify such contradiction will benefit from employing the universal reference point of the transferable framework identified in Balakrishnan and Elson’s superb study. The authors begin with a short discussion of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. Importantly, the rather general goals that this advises have been rendered more specific by subsequent declarations. And, by signing up to these, governments – presumably – declare their desire to see the declared goals achieved, both at home and abroad. Such general aims have thus become more specifically objectified via the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Covenant on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Thus policy objectives, if not timetables for their achievement, in the areas of race, gender, employment and several other areas can be specifically identified as having been espoused by governments because they have willingly signed up to these treaties, even though that might have been prompted more by political expediency than commitment.

Using these objectives as a framework for evaluation, the book’s individual papers conduct a near-forensic examination of a range of Mexico’s and the USA’s recent economic and social policies in the specified areas in order to examine whether the agreed objectives have been furthered or hindered. Almost without exception, neoliberal policy conformity is shown to undermine these agreed objectives and often to impact differently from their declared intent on specific and identifiable target groups within the population. This evidence makes a strong case for greater and more active accountability of government action and thus also questions declared commitment to previously agreed – and politically convenient – principles. In more than one area, there is strong evidence to suggest that policies are mere populist window-dressing in that their stated objectives are in line with identified and desired goals whilst their implementation can only undermine their own stated intent. Economic Policy and Human Rights thus provides much more than an examination of particular policy prescription in Mexico and the United States. Indeed it may even present an evaluative framework that could be applied by progressive analysts to any state or region that has adopted the objectives of these quite specific treaties. As such it will surely provide an important and enduring contribution to any debate on social and economic policy.