Europe Since Napoleon by David Thomson

 

Some time ago and in relation to a different book, I wrote a review that in essence began, “Occasionally, just occasionally, one comes across a book so impressive, so scholarly and so communicative that it leaves a reader both in awe of its achievement and completely rewarded by the experience of reading it.” I did not expect to encounter another book in the near future to which that description might also apply. I have done just that, and my life is immeasurably richer as a result.

The title, Europe Since Napoleon, communicates what the book addresses. This is not a history of the United States, Asia, China, South America or Africa. Europe is the focus, but the vision is in no sense myopic. During the period in question, history of course documents that some European powers were imperial powers, claiming ownership and rule of colonies across the globe, indeed on every continent. There was also the detail of two World Wars, which have been granted that title because the conflict was near global in scale. Hence Europe Since Napoleon addresses many aspects of history, politics and economics that relate to the global interests of the European nations and, as such, this book, at least in the opinion of this reader, becomes more of a Eurocentric view of world history, rather than a narrower discussion of a specific continent. And it must also be added that any Eurocentrism arises nearly out of the focus, and not from any form of bias or sense of superiority.

There is a problem with the book’s title, however. Europe Since Napoleon implies that it might begin at the end of the French Imperial era, but Europe Since Napoleon begins by analyzing the circumstances and events that allowed Napoleon to assume power. We start, therefore, with the discussion of pre-revolutionary France and the revolution, itself, because it was out of these events that the arose the opportunity for Napoleon to assume power.

The Napoleonic Wars, the peace, reform, revolution, socialism, labor, economy, Russian expansion, nationalism, the creation of Italy and Germany, the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune all pass by and we have yet to complete half of the book’s two centuries of coverage. Of course, there follows the Berlin Conference, the partition of Africa, the lording it over the rest of the world to shape it into European advantage zones, the Great War, another revolution, boom, depression, strike, greater war, atomic bombs, the Iron Curtain, the suggestion of international cooperation, the rise of science, the nuclear age and the molecular age.

Of course, Europe Since Napoleon, like any summary work cannot even address the claim of being comprehensive. But in his book, David Thomson regularly illustrates how the big issues of the day re-drew the map, forged new alliances, created opportunity and transformed people’s lives. The author wrote over 400,000 words spanning almost 1000 pages and at the end provides a thorough bibliography of works he has no doubt read to provide greater depth across most of the issues covered in the book.

But the real strength of Europe Since Napoleon is not its coverage, nor its description of the events it lists, but its narrative. Throughout David Thompson resists the temptation merely to list facts, opting instead for a fluid, narrative style that does, it has to be said, assume a modicum of prior knowledge. But what if the reader gains from this apparently stylistic ploy is quite brilliant contextualization, synthesis and thereby understanding. This is a thousand-page history book that is simply a joy to read, from page one to page 946, to be precise, not counting the appendices.

And, if the foregoing were not enough praise, the author’s final observations, written in the 1960s are ostensibly predictions of where the human race may go over the following decades and it is nothing less than revelatory. Not only does David Thompson have a bigger view of history, but he also demonstrates a true intellectual vision that is both breathtaking in its scope and exciting in its optimism. Reading this vision sixty years on, one can only ask the question, how on Earth did this happen, how on earth did we end up here? And, after reading this book, the one thing that history has taught us repeatedly, is that we may catalogue, describe and understand, but also that we should not predict, and we should not take anything for granted. History is a guide, but never repeats itself, never returns us to the familiar. That is how it happened. What a superb book!

English Bread And Yeast Cookery by Elizabeth David

 

At almost 500 pages, Elizabeth David‘s English Bread And Yeast Cookery is quite a read. It’s also quite mis-titled, but more of that later. But it is a cookbook, so why would one want to read it from cover to cover? Surely reference is its prime function? The answer simply is that this cookbook is written by Elizabeth David and the writing is exquisite, the erudition thoroughly impressive and the advice probably faultless. This last point has to be qualified with “probably”, since it is highly unlikely that anyone except Elizabeth David herself might put every one of these recipes to any sort of practical test. Even she did not do all of them, but when she has not already tried out a recipe, she actually tells the reader in her text and admits she is speculating.

This is a text littered with items grabbed from historical cookbooks where the writer has merely copied what went before, sometimes despite its advice being demonstrably nonsensical. It is also littered with gems of verbosity from the past, where writers might offer such advice as “agitate the receptacle aggressively” rather than “beat it”. And some of the older recipes seemed to have been designed for armies, so great are the quantities and might start with and instruction such as “take a bushel of flour”.

Written in the 1970s, this text was obviously already familiar with supermarkets, but not with fast food in quantities as it currently surrounds us. This allows a contemporary reader to reflect on just how much the average diet might have changed in the last fifty years. Elizabeth David is, for example, not fond of restaurant pizza, which she seems to judge as having the same qualities as hardboard panelling. Precisely what she would have made of O’Muffins or Macbuns or similar I have no idea, but I bet I could guess.

But pizza recipes in the book on English bread? Well, this is part of the problem with the book’s title because not only does it regularly visit Scotland, Wales or Ireland, it also gets on a ferry to France, Austria, Italy or even Russia or the United States and elsewhere. It seems that the 1970s was more willing than now to admit international influences and sharing, without ever once using vacuous and meaningless terms like “fusion” or “world food”. If it’s not from the world, where on earth is it from? And as for “fusion”, this particular reviewer regards much of it as a con, leading to confusion.

The author spends much time in space explaining the details, even the intricacies of flours, grains, milling, grinding and sifting. There is a superb historical section that dips into the techniques, technology and technicalities of breadmaking. And in doing so, Elizabeth David explodes many myths which have remained mythical until today. She points out that much of brown bread on sale is coloured with molasses, not whole wheat grain, and that many recipes that specify whole grains often extract the germ and pre-cook it before adding it back to the flour. She also describes how commercial bread was in her time often aerated or pumped with extra water or even chalk to add volume, bulk and profit. Here Elizabeth David looks in immense detail at conventional yeast risen bread, flat breads, sweet breads, (not one word!), muffins, pikelets, crumpets, fermented butter cakes, griddle breads, sourdough, soda bread and many other delectable concoctions of flour, water and rising agent.

In the process, she dispels many myths, such as the oft quoted need to throw away half of a sourdough starter, advice I have read many times, many times indeed. Personally, I have in the past tried to follow such recipes, but when it came to “divide it into two and throw half away”, I was always stumped into inaction, because I never knew which half should be discarded. If it’s the case that the sourdough starter’s volume would be too big otherwise, then “make less” ought to be the instruction. Isn’t it obvious?

But then there are a lot of myths, many of them sourced in religion about bread. Man may not live by bread alone, but maybe it is all right for women. Bread of heaven, but not from my oven… There are many more, some of which made it into these pages. But with breadmaking, there is room for myth, since the process is often wholly unpredictable, so quantity, so temperature, or so procedurally sensitive that it is impossible to predict the results which will be produced even by following exactly the same recipe, a point that Elizabeth David regularly makes throughout the text.

And, of course, that is precisely why the mass-produced loaf was baked on an industrial scale, in order to try to achieve the regularity and uniformity that the modern consumer sees to crave. But no two vegetables are exactly the same shape and the shape has nothing to with the taste. Elizabeth David’s English Bread And Yeast Cookery offers the perfect cure to this disease of expected uniformity. Mix it, wait, cook it and see. Do it again, and it will probably be different. Now isn’t that a recipe for an interesting life! It is most certainly an interesting book, but don’t try to eat it all at once.

Cakes And Ale by W Somerset Maugham

 

Cakes And Ale by W Somerset Maugham is a profoundly surprising book. Written in 1930, the novel begins its story in the Edwardian age prior to the First World War. It comes, therefore, with the inevitable expectation that it will depict English society as a rather stuffy, perhaps dusty entity, full of flock wallpaper and aspidistras, tired after so many years of Victoria, but not yet woken up to the new world that the war so painfully introduced. But this is precisely where expectations could be wrong. In fact Cakes And Ale takes a rather liberated view of British society’s values, pokes fun at stiff convention and generally offers no moral judgment where other writers would surely lay on the presumption.

Cakes And Ale carries the subtitle The Skeleton In The Cupboard, without being absolutely clear whose skeleton is described, while the book certainly does not list many cupboards. One must presume that what is being referred to is the relationship between the privileged character William Ashenden and Mrs. Rosie Driffield, the wife of a novelist. Their time together begins when Ashenden is a boy, at least in his own eyes, and concludes many years later by which time both characters have reinvented themselves several times. It is a relationship that starts in platonic fascination, graduates to physical adulthood and concludes in seeming admiration at distance.

But overall, this relationship is allowed to blossom without the judgment on might expect it to receive, so skeletons remain hard to justify or identify. Equally, it could be Mrs. Driffield‘s long-standing obsession with a certain Lord George, but eventually this turns out to be sincere and long lasting. Mrs. Driffield certainly liaised with enough men to create several skeletons, but they would not have been in cupboards.

We follow William Ashenden from a self-identified childhood through adolescence and into adulthood. He too wants to become a writer and at least initially it is Mr. Driffield the novelist who interests him. At one stage, Ashenden laments the burden of having to describe his own experience in the first person. All writers, one supposes, love to inhabit that special heaven which allows convenient detachment and can put words into anyone’s mouth and feelings into anyone’s experience. Being merely oneself can be utterly restricting.

We first encounter this life while he is visiting his uncle on the south coast, in Kent to be precise, where Driffield the writer and his wife Rosie have moved in and are in the process of causing quite a local stir. General opinion is that Mrs. Driffield is rather common, a bar maid or of that ilk, and the suggestions are that she does not need classes in anatomy.

The moral indignation of the chattering classes is apparently unanimous. Mrs. Driffield puts herself about, especially in the direction of Lord George who is no lord, and the judgment is that anything in trousers is deemed of interest to her. And the indignation is not related to class, since the servants of the household where Ashenden stays are as vehement in their opinions as the boss, until they meet the sad Rosie, that is, and then their tone changes, for some reason.

Maugham has such a lower-class people drop their aitches and modify their vowels to such an extent that one wonders how they manage to say so many apostrophes. But Rosie Driffield thoroughly captivates the young lad. He becomes infatuated with her though he doesn’t realize it at first. For him, it’s merely growing up.

But the relationship changes from one of curiosity and interest to one of physicality and sex, but never does Somerset Maugham have either Ashington or Rosie regret what they are doing. Guilt seems not to be a destination in the London where they meet. They are merely human beings being human. And this is what is so surprising about the book.

Rosie eventually runs off with Lord George to the United States, where he makes a fortune and she becomes as respectable as she can possibly be first in New York and then in Yonkers, atop a significant fortune, which all goes to show something at least.

Though it is not explicitly stated, the United States is portrayed in the book as a land where moralizing attitudes and gossip have no place. Both Lord George and Rosie have moved there and have lived their lives unaffected by social judgment. Back home in England, where one expects judgment to be available by the stone, physical life continues to be denied, but not in Cakes And Ale. The fact is that Rosie has risen above criticism, but one must assume that she can only continue in that life out of Albion. Perhaps it was her skeleton after all.

 

Orchestra La Scala Milan under Riccardo Chailly in Alicante's ADDA

 A program juxtaposing two first symphonies has to invite comparison. When those first symphonies are those of Ludwig van Beethoven and Gustav Mahler, arguably at either end of the nineteenth century German Romantic tradition, then that comparison must include considerations of what happened to the style, if indeed it ever existed as an identifiable entity.

The orchestra, La Scala, Milan under its conductor Riccardo Chailly, has a tradition with Mahler symphonies, and this is very much the tradition of its conductor. Ricardo Chailly, the program noted, has over 150 recordings to his name and he also has recorded a complete Mahler symphony cycle with the Leipzig Gewandhaus. ADDA’s audience thus expected a lot from the evening. There was no disappointment.

Beethoven’s First Symphony was premiered in 1800. Stylistically, it is rooted in the tradition that Haydn and Mozart had created in the previous century, but from its opening, Beethoven’s first is different. While we now label the earlier era as classical, Beethoven’s first surely heralded the era of Romanticism, where the expression of individual emotions rather than structural integrity was to be the focus of artistic intentions.

The structure is there from the previous classical era. Sonata form is evident in the first movement and elsewhere. The fast, slow, minuet and finale format is preserved, but the principal keys, which still dominate the work, arrive more by suggestion than by statement and the minuet is barely danceable because its character is that of the modern scherzo. The very word implies a musical joke, perhaps a piece of trivia included to express personal feelings and reflections.

This is thus a work that represents a revolution of symphonic thinking, but this revolution was not a break with the past, more its extension and amplification into new territory. And though Beethoven’s orchestra was large for its era, it still comprised only double winds and no trombones or tuba. What characterizes the music, however, as so often in Beethoven, is the possibility that the inspiration came from the composer’s memory of dance tunes and popular music, reworked and remodelled into “serious” form.

And so to the link. At the end of that nineteenth century, Gustav Mahler announced another stylistic revolution with his first symphony, whose most noticeable difference from the Beethoven was immediately the size of the orchestra employed. There are four movements again. But now the movements pay only lip service to the formal structures of sonata form, which, like Beethoven’s introduction of the tonic, is via suggestion rather than statement. The placing of the slow movement third rather than second began with Beethoven, so this was nothing new.

But what Mahler did that was revolutionary was to incorporate folk-like melodies into the symphonic argument and render that argument largely textural. Here, the composer seems to want to explore the range of sonorities that these large forces could generate. But despite the composer’s reputation for deploying large forces, these sonorities are only rarely loud or brash. These contrasts are textural and coloristic, clearly intended to convey to the listener the quality of an experience, rather than its narrative.

A contemporary listener can only imagine what an audience in central Europe made of a slow movement that juxtaposed a funeral march based on a French children’s song with passages that derived from Jewish Klezmer dance music.

Perhaps the finale is a little too meandering and perhaps its triumphal end is overblown. But who cares? And this performance, under the watchful eye of Ricardo Chailly, was wonderfully detailed. Here we heard all the sonorities and all the dynamic changes in intricate and vivid detail. Everything seemed to make sense, even those passages where the composer seemed to delight in the tangential. The use of rubato was obvious, but never overdone. Everything made musical sense to the extent that during the first movement this listener heard the progress as a walk through scenic countryside! It is a work I have heard many times before but with Riccardo Chailly’s vision and supremely masterful reading, I now can’t wait for the next performance.

And what about the comparison, Beethoven to Mahler, mentioned at the start? Beethoven arguably invented the individual’s experiential centrality in the symphony. No longer was the form a rigid frame that had to contain certain elements. In his first symphony, Beethoven had not yet fully divested himself of the need to conform, but the innovations he introduced were well developed in Mahler’s time. By the end of that nineteenth century, the individual’s emotions and feelings had become the point of the exercise, not mere suggestion and in Mahler’s first, we meet the composer, not the structure. In fact, the whim of the composer’s intention was about to prompt others, following the current extension of harmonic complexity, to call again for the imposition of structure. There was a tradition, but perhaps by the century’s end, there was nowhere else for the style to go. And, if we were to accept popular tunes into the symphony, why not make folk culture central to the argument? A new era dawned.

Franck, Walton and Rachmaninov to open ADDA's new season

 The first concert of a new season prompts an air of expectation. A cursory glance of the program suggested nothing particularly special, excepting, of course, the anticipated and always delivered excellence of this orchestra, conductor and auditorium. Billed were a nineteenth century tone poem by an often-overlooked genius, a viola concerto, perhaps the best known in the repertoire and an ultra-late Romantic symphony in all but name, all pieces where familiarity, at least of style, suggested few surprises. How wrong can a concert goer be?

Cesar Franck’s Le Chasseur Maudit is, put simply, a painting in sound. Or perhaps it is film music without the film. It’s a tone poem, that abstract form that the nineteenth century invented to allow a composer to display aural emotional interpretation to project onto the scenes of a story. The very idea of the tone poem is Romanticism enshrined. Cesar Franck’s pictures are painted with broad, free brushstrokes, but in heavy paint which texture is the surface. The thick orchestration adds drama to the musical story, which was always vivid and clear, if a tad literal.

William Walton’s Viola Concerto followed with Joaquin Riquelme as soloist. Here the textures were light, the musical language suggestive of emotion, rather than the painting of pictures. In a beautifully reflective first movement, the soloist apparently is reading from a personal diary while the orchestra, here and there, adds its comment. The compositional skill is so great that this really is a conversation between soloist and orchestra, their contributions equal, their weights different.

There’s a real burlesque of a scherzo to follow and then perhaps an over-long finale that sometimes reaches for the grandiose, but memories of the first movement’s vulnerabilities always keep the music’s feet on the ground, while its upturned face searches for clouds.

Joaquin Riquelme’s playing was both virtuosic and quietly spectacular throughout. His sympathetic and informed interpretation of the substance of the piece was matched perfectly by Josep Vicent and the ADDA orchestra. At times, it seemed that the soloist was engaged in conversation with the orchestra, but it remained a conversation that was completely intelligible and never dominated by either party. The viola’s understated presence is very easily drowned by orchestral intrusions that are too loud and, apart from a couple of woodwind passages in the first movement, this trap was consistently and skilfully avoided. The audience reception was beyond rapturous. Joaquin Riquelme offered a contrasting encore, being an allemande from a Bach suite.

And then we met Sergei Rachmaninov, but the Rachmaninov from late in his life, at a time when he no longer needed to write music the merely pleased an audience. Not that he ever did! But his Symphonic Dances stand out from the rest of his orchestral writing in that they are more abstract, less prone to indulge in sugary sweetness.

On this occasion, the piece came across as autobiographical. Perhaps the intense rhythmic sound of the opening pages is a reference to the first symphony? This would explain why the rhythm disappears from view. There were passages that were reminiscent of the second piano concerto. There were others those seemed lifted from the second symphony. And, with such a big and varied orchestra, why did the composer include a solo piano part? Certainly, it was not to fill out the harmonies. Surely this is self-referential? And there was another section where the piccolo featured above percussion. Surely this was a memory of Petrushka? And what superb orchestral playing this was, coupled with precise and insightful interpretation that imbued every section of the peace with sense and meaning.

There were two encores, one unexpected, one almost the Adda signature tune. The slow movement from Dvorak’s New World is an unusual encore. but it did provide a superb contrast to the big sound that had preceded it. The Danzon number two by Marquez is now so familiar to the Adda audience that it is almost included de rigueur. But superbly so. Two lollipops of quite different flavours.

But without doubt, the Walton Viola Concerto and Joaquin Riquelme’s stunning performance will live long in this concert-goer’s memory.  

Contemporary music in ADDA

 

As a prelude to their forthcoming season of orchestral concerts, the ADDA orchestra of Alicante under their inspired and clearly inspiring conductor and artistic director, Josep Vicent, offered a programme of contemporary music free of charge to its subscribers. Perhaps this might have been a chance for the players to loosen their fingers, lips and hands before embarking on their new season. If that were the case, one wonders how many other orchestras in this world would rise to such a curtain raiser if it involved learning a full programme of complex pieces unfamiliar to them, some of which they might never play again!

And so we were presented with four works, three of which were composed recently, and a fourth that was premiered in the 1950s. Here we had four composers, all of whom presented their own, very personal and mutually contrasting musical languages. Just like the label “classical music” is useless as an indicator of style, given that it apparently spans close on a thousand years of art from Leonin to Lim, one must also insist that “contemporary music” is about as much use, being nil. There are clearly almost as many styles of contemporary music as there are composers of it. And the idea was illustrated beautifully in this programme, which seemed to take its audience on a journey from a strange place back to their musical and physical home. The term “brilliantly conceived” certainly applies to the choice of programme.

We began with Metastasis by Yannis Xenakis. In theory, this is a representation of the mathematics of architecture as music. It is a piece where dynamic, texture and line are conceived to illustrate an emotional response to the parabolas of Le Corbusier’s Phillips Pavilion, a building that has no straight lines, no right angles and thus an inner space that surely disorientated. Al least until you got used to it… which is a useful phrase for anyone who might feel “frightened” or “dismissive” of contemporary music.   

Xenakis used sketches of the building’s form to create a musical score, drawings whose shape determined the notes to be played. Like the building, the musical representation might take some a while to appreciate, its glissandi and sustained space-creating string murmurings punctuated by flashes of percussion and eyerolls of woodwind. But familiarity with the piece, at least for this listener, mimics what I feel looking up towards the ceiling of any great building. How far does it go? Is what I see mere illusion, or is it stone, concrete or glass? Xenakis, by the way, was the civil engineer on Le Corbusier’s project. In the 1950s. he was the bloke with the slide rule.

Second on the bill was Mosaicos de Arena Errante by José Javier Peña Aguayo, a graduate of both the Julliard in New York and Valencia University. In form, this world premiere was the evening’s ground breaker. It was an orchestral piece featuring, concerto-like, a brass quintet, a Puerto Rican bomba group and a dancer. The brass quintet was Spanish Brass, no less, the bomba group comprised Marina Molina, Daniela Torres, Ambar Rosado and the dancer-choreographer was Isadora López Pagán. I mention these names in recognition of the massive contribution they all made in the realisation of this piece and, indeed, making it a convincing musical and theatrical experience.

I will ignore the programme notes and try to describe what I took from the piece. For me it was a narrative which told of the realisation of identity. Oppressed by history, slavery and colonialism, the people who formed the central idea of the piece fund themselves disorientated in a new place. They could not make sense of their role, their lack of status or their surroundings. Memories of their African origin regularly surfaced, but these were broken by the oppression of circumstance and strangeness of surroundings. This was depicted by broken lines, irregular harmony and techniques such as the brass players blowing through the instruments rather than making notes. The dancer, meanwhile, presented angular contortions that mirrored distortions of sound and, presumably, pain of suffering.

Gradually, however, memories of past grew stronger, perhaps more relevant, and identity is rediscovered. The rhythms of an African past begin to dominate. The rhythms take over and impose their needs on the sound, prompting the dancer to become both more expressive and more animated, but also celebratory. The culmination was a glorious, complex, but utterly accessible rejoicing in rhythm. A people had found themselves again.

David Moliner’s Figuratio I - Mein logos came next. This was a percussion concerto performed by its composer. The soloist also contributed vocally to emphasise particular aspects of the music. Essentially, this came across as a fast, slow, fast structure, where the percussion was virtuoso in style throughout. There were some wonderful moments in the quieter sections when thin mallets made sounds of distant bells, thus creating landscape. The orchestral percussion players were heavily involved as well, at one point to the extent that string players holding a tremolo could not be heard above three percussion players combined. But this is a minor criticism of a work that banged with vitality.

The evening’s second world premiere was the symphonic poem, Alí y Cántara by Oscar Navarro. At times, stylistically, this music could have been written in the late nineteenth century, at least in its harmonies. But there were Middle Eastern shapes here too, just the right side of cliché to avoid evoking images from Hollywood’s technicolour Panavision era of spectaculars.

The piece followed a narrative provided by the story of Ali and Cántara, ancient lovers who, according to the legend, combined to name the city of Alicante. The piece’s sections described episodes of the story impressionistically, but also vividly. And what developed was something remarkably familiar to the audience and yet expressed in a new language. Festivals in this part of the world often involve the re-enactment of legendary battles and rulers. Moors and Christians are what they are called and the musical language of Alí y Cántara increasingly evoked the sounds of street festivals, but in a more subtly nuanced form provided by the orchestral textures. But by the end, the musical statement was noticeably located in the wind instruments and percussion, and, for a while, this orchestra sounded like a symphonic band. It was musically the most conventional work of the evening, and also provided the most direct, accessible narrative. And it worked beautifully.

Rapturous applause prompted Josep Vicent to offer two encores. John Williams’s Theme from Schindler’s List was followed by a local favourite, Danzon No2 by Arturo Marquez. Out of six composers represented, five are still alive, Xenakis have died in 1997. His music, as with everything else in this wonderful evening, is very much alive.

 

Anglo Saxon Attitudes by Angus Wilson

 

This particular reviewer rarely writes a negative review. If it didn’t communicate with me, there’s no need to assume that it will not communicate to you. A positive review has to concentrate on what was communicated, whereas a negative review must live in what was not felt, and that list is infinitely long, so where to start? “I liked it” or indeed “I didn’t like it” say nothing about the work in question, only about the reviewer, and this unknown person, often hiding behind an alias, should never be at the centre of the review.

So when it comes to Anglo-Saxon Attitudes by Angus Wilson, why should I begin with “I didn’t like it”? Well at least it gets the opinion out of the way, because in the case of this particular book, it needs to be said. Anglo Saxon Attitudes felt like the longest book I have ever read. It wasn’t, but it did feel that way for most of its duration. But the reason for my opinion is complex and, I suggested earlier, has more to do with me than the work.

Details of the book’s plot are available elsewhere. Suffice it to say that the important element is the fraudulent planting of a pagan erotic sculpture into the grave of a Dark Ages Anglo-Saxon bishop that was excavated decades ago. The apparent authenticity of the find had to be catalogued, described, interpreted. For half a century this practical joke at least influenced thinking, at least amongst interested academics, on the cultural and religious origins of the race that now inhabits the country we now call England. Hence the book’s title, rooted both in the historical relics of the Anglo-Saxons, for whom “England” would have been an unknown label, and for the modern British for whom both the concept of “Anglo-Saxon” and “England” are both reconstructed myths.

Amid the need to keep alive the myth of national identity and culture, a certain person who was involved in the original discovery finds he hast to continue to perpetuate the lie. He has personal and professional reasons. He also might even believe it was true. To some extent he has built his career on the existence of the find and, equally, he built half of his life by shacking up with the girlfriend of the person who played the original practical joke on his father by planting the object in the tomb and then claiming its authenticity. Decades have come and gone. Lives have been lived. Relationships have been severed, remade and broken by death and estrangement. Gerald, who knows the truth about several things, has lived with the deception, but dismissed it as possibly false, gives given the character of the person who admitted carrying it out. Gerald now has decided it is time to come clean and tell the story.

But to whom should he tell it? And how? Reputations are at stake. Water under the bridge won’t flow back the other way. People have moved on. Or have they? Anglo Saxon Attitudes thus inhabits a society with what could be described as a rarefied atmosphere. These people are of a certain social class, attend gentlemen’s clubs, regularly drift into French, for some reason, when English is just not good enough. A single paragraph of the thoughts might refer explicitly but opaquely to five or six of the book’s characters, any of whom might have been encountered during the fifty-year span of these memories. For anyone living outside donnish society of the public school, Oxbridge or academe, these people are barely recognizable as English, as archaeological, perhaps, as something dug up from long, long ago. And yet they are the mouthpieces via which the concepts of contemporary identity and culture are lengthily examined.

A strand that figures vividly in every character’s mind, if not explicitly in the English culture being examined, is sex. The erotic nature of the apparently pagan idol in the Anglo-Saxon tomb places a large ellipsis after every mention of the word sex in the book. We have characters who are openly homosexual in a society that has laws against the practice. We encounter respectable men who put themselves around a bit, and women who express their desires via euphemism. And also some who do not. And there’s a lot more besides. Perhaps too much. Perhaps… For this reader…

Anglo Saxon Attitudes is a complex and ambitious novel. For this reviewer it falls short of all its implied goals because it concentrates too heavily on a narrow, unrepresentative section of the nation, was consistently patronizing to working class attitudes and featured characters who spent most of the time living myths. Perhaps that was the point… Perhaps… Why not read it and see what you think?