Category Archives: it told me about lives lived

The Plantagenets: The Kings Who Made Britain by Dan Jones

May 7, 2015 By in Book Reports, Factual, it told me about lives lived, it took me to another time and place, Non-Fiction Adventure Tags: 9 Comments

This is a very big book and it holds: eight generations of Kings and Queens from 1120 to 1399; a period choc full of events, history and change. It says much for Dan Jones’ ability to marshal his facts and theories and his ability to spin a compelling (true) story that I flew threw the pages.

I knew the names, I had read many of the stories; but much of what I knew came from historical fiction, and I wanted a book that would help me to put things in the right order and fill in the gaps. This was definitely the right book for the job.

The narrative opens in the year 1120, with a drunken party aboard The White Ship. Amongst those present was William the Aetherling, grandson of William the Conqueror and the only legitimate son of Henry 1st. It had been intended that the ship would race from France to to England, but drunkenness had spread to the crew and the ship hit a rock and was wrecked. It was a catastrophe, there were few survivors, and William the Aetherling was not among them.

Henry I named his daughter, Matilda, as his heir, and took care to marry her to a strong and strategically positioned consort, Geoffrey of Anjou. But when the King died many of England’s nobles were unwilling to accept a Queen Regnant, making it easy for Matilda’s cousin Stephan of Blois, one of the few survivors of The White Ship, to seize the crown while Matilda was overseas, tied to her husband’s lands, awaiting the birth of a child.

the-plantagenetsThat began a long, dark and difficult period of English history that would be known as The Anarchy; a civil war with the country divided between supporters of two claimants to the throne. That conflict was only ended when, after the death of his only son, Stephen agreed to name Matilda and Geoffrey’s son, Henry as his heir.

He, as Henry II, would be England’s first Plantagenet King; inheriting the name from his father, Geoffrey, on whom it had been bestowed because he habitually wore a spring of yellow broom blossom (planta genista).

That story – from the sinking of the white ship to the accession of Henry II – is told ‘Age of Shipwreck’, the first of seven acts. It’s full of drama and colour, as are the six acts that follow.

‘Age of Empire’ charts Henry’s conquests, his troubled – and ultimately catastrophic – relationship with Thomas a Becket, and his struggles with his wife – Eleanor of Aquitaine – and their troublesome children who history would label the ‘Devil’s Brood’. And it continues with the story of Richard the Lionheart, who came to the throne in the age of the crusades and would spend his life defending and expanding the empire he inherited from his father. An empire that his youngest brother, King John, would lose.

After that ‘Age of Opposition’ follows the conflicts that led to those loses, the conflicts with King John’s nobles and churchmen that led to history’s most famous failed peace treaty – ‘Magna Carta’ It continues into the story of John’s son, Henry III, a very different King who would also be opposed by his nobles, chief among them Simon de Monfort.

The next inheritor of the throne – Edward I – changed things, casting himself as the inheritor of King Arthur; the story of his reign, his quest to steady his kingdom and rebuild an empire, and to establish the rights and obligations of Kings is told in the ‘Age of Arthur’.

‘Age of Violence’ tells of how all of that would be undone by his son – the notorious King Edward II – who seemingly failed to understand any of those obligations or any of the consequences of his actions, playing favourite with Piers Gaveston and Hugh Despenser, and setting into motion a chain of consequence that would send his wife, Queen Isabella, into the arms of rebel Roger Mortimer, and would end with them putting his son, the young Edward III on the throne in his place, as a puppet king.

The story of how Edward III broke free, brought stability to England and re-established the country as a military power with victories on land and at sea at the start of what would become The Hundred Years War is told in ‘Age of Glory’. It tells of his sons, who included his heir Edward, The Black Prince, and John of Gaunt.

The Black Prince’s early death signalled a change in England’s fortunes. The final act – ‘Age of Revolution’ charts that decline, the accession of the Black Prince’s son, Richard II, a boy King thrown into a difficult situation without any real understanding of his rights and responsibilities. That was disastrous, and his story would end when he was usurped by his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke.

That’s where this story ends. Not with the last Plantagenet King, but with a significant shift. You might say that it was the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end for The Plantagenets. It was the right place to break the story; good though it was this book was long enough.

There were so many stories, all well told, with enough colour and detail to make them live. I was left with some striking images, and their was more than enough to keep my intention through the few quieter period.

The author stated that his intention was to track how the government and the role of monarchy changed over the years, and he did that very well indeed. I was fascinated to learn much more that I’d known before about Magna Carta and to learn about acts and treaties and settlements I’d known little or nothing about. That may sound dry but it really isn’t; it grows quite naturally out of the changes and conflicts of the human drama that was being told.

But the human story was what I missed in this book. Even on a book this long you can’t have everything, but I wish there had been a little more room for many of England’s Queens and to understand a little more of what made England’s Kings the men that they were.

I could see that the author had favourites, and that there were other he had little time for. That’s understandable, but I was disappointed that there were times when there was room for different interpretation of events that wasn’t mentioned. I accept that space was a factor, but a little space could – should – have been made to allow that there are shades of grey, not just black and white.

That leave me a little worried about picking up the story in ‘The Hollow Crown’ – because their are definitely different views to be taken on the War of the Roses. But I will because there were so many more things about this book that I did appreciate.

I took what I wanted from this book; I’ve filled gaps and I have my Kings in order; it’s a starting point not an end, and it has me enthused about reading more to fill out the human stories and build my understanding of the history.

Girl in the Dark by Anna Lyndsey

March 3, 2015 By in Book Reports, Factual, it told me about lives lived, Non-Fiction Adventure Tags: 25 Comments

This might be the most astonishing, the most beautifully written memoir that I have ever read.

Anna Lyndsey was a civil servant when light began to affect her. What began as irritation when she worked in front of a computer screen grew into a condition where she had to live in darkness, in a room completely and utterly blacked out, wrapped in dense, heavy clothing, because even the faintest hint of light – natural or artificial – would cause her agonising pain.

As her sensitivity increased she tried different things – an indoor job as a piano teacher, any number of therapies – but the progress of her condition was inexorable.

And so you should take the title of this book very, very literally.

It really is the story of a girl who lived in the dark.

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She skitters backwards and forwards thorough time because, writing about different aspects of her life in the dark, catching different moods and emotions. It’s very effective, and, though sometimes it’s dislocating, maybe that’s the point.

That means that this is a veritable treasure chest of a book:

There is gorgeous literary writing about what it is like to live without light, and about how that changed her perception of so many things.

“I sit in the dark and listen to the storm. I hear the bitter clatter of rain against my walls, and the low book of the wind, a strange unsettling frequency that makes the bones in my skull vibrate.

My ears exult in the glorious accumulating noise, my blood foams with the energy of the storm. The world outside is trying to reach me, roused from its usual indifference. It drags its claws along the bars of my cage. It puts its mouth to my wall, and roars.

My body has learned to sit quietly in my room. It has learned not to scream or sob or writhe. But my spirit swirls lie the wind, surges lie the rain. The wildness outside calls to the wildness within.

‘I hear you,’ I cry out in my mind. ‘I’m here, keep going, don’t stop’

There is advice for how to manage life in the dark. Audiobooks would prove to be a lifeline, but music had to be approached with care because it could stir too many emotions. Word games – for one, or for two when her husband, friends or family were with her – provided both entertainment and mental exercise. And of course there are more basic and more fundamental points: how to find things in the dark; how to keep fit, how to, somehow, keep going.

There are firm words for medics and local governments, caught up in bureaucracy, and lacking the flexibility that is so very necessary for dealing with extraordinary circumstances. The relationships, the support that they might have given came instead from the few others who were loving with similar conditions.

And there are quietly appreciative words for her family and for friends who put themselves out to do whatever they can for her.

“People make me tidy up my psyche, as one might order the magazines on the coffee table before a visitor arrives, and afterwards, for a while, they will stay that way, before entropy reasserts its hold.

People remind me of my true shape, the particular bent of my mind, the curve of my wit; that I have substance, though I move wraithlike among shadows, that the years before the darkness laid down rich sediment which has not been washed away.”

The way that her husband rose to deal with the challenges of her condition, to deal with living a life very different to the one they had planned was wonderful

Above all this is one woman’s testament; it catches her memories, her hopes, her dreams, her fears; it catches the full range of her emotions, from the humour that she finds in many things to the suicidal impulses that she struggles to keep at bay.

Her words feel honest, and her life – extraordinary though it is – feels real. She is wonderfully eloquent, and  her story speaks profoundly about the human condition.

Though there would be periods of remission – periods where she could, after her husband had prepared the house, venture downstairs; periods when she could even step outside the house at dusk – the dark would always pull her back. She would find no answers to questions about what caused her condition or to questions about what the future might hold.

That was frightening, but it also allowed a little glimmer of hope into a blacked-out world.

This is a wonderfully readable book; I found it hard to put down, and I know that it will stay in my head and in my heart.