What are you reading now?

[Richard Tarleton]

Just up my street, Pet

Did you get round to Max Hastings' The Secret War, or is that on your "retirement" pile ?

I'm reading and greatly enjoying David Gilmour's The British in India - putting three generations of Tarleton ancestors in context

[Petrushka]

Just up my street, Pet

Did you get round to Max Hastings' The Secret War, or is that on your "retirement" pile ?

I'm reading and greatly enjoying David Gilmour's The British in India - putting three generations of Tarleton ancestors in context

You should read the other Ashdown book as well, about the famous Cockleshell Heroes raid. Both of these are meticulously researched and thrillingly written. Quite superb.

I think I've got about four Max Hastings books yet to read as well as a mountain of other books so they have, perforce, ended up in the 'retirement pile'. It could be some retirement!

[Richard Tarleton]

Will do. I've also just bought Hastings' Vietnam, hot on the heels of the Ken Burns documentary series on TV. The backdrop to my student years in the late 60s, not that I was a protestor, just that it was ever-present. And we had no idea how terrible it was. About the first glimpse of that was Michael Herr's Dispatches, published in 1977, another book (cf the Ben Macintyre) to receive the John Le Carré seal of approval (JLC having done some serious on-the-ground research for The Honourable Schoolboy a year or two earlier).

[Bella Kemp]

I've just finished The Zoo by Christopher Wilson - a wonderful and genuinely funny satire on the last days of Stalin.

[Conchis]

Lie Down In Darkness by William Styron.

[Tevot]

Will do. I've also just bought Hastings' Vietnam, hot on the heels of the Ken Burns documentary series on TV. The backdrop to my student years in the late 60s, not that I was a protestor, just that it was ever-present. And we had no idea how terrible it was. About the first glimpse of that was Michael Herr's Dispatches, published in 1977, another book (cf the Ben Macintyre) to receive the John Le Carré seal of approval (JLC having done some serious on-the-ground research for The Honourable Schoolboy a year or two earlier).

Hello there,

The Max Hastings books that I have read I have enjoyed and found informative. Standouts for me include Bomber Command, Overlord; Das Reich and Armageddon.
Will look for his book on Vietnam keenly.

I found Ken Burns' documentary on Vietnam cleverly and adroitly executed - casting fresh light and perspective to what I had thought was a familiar subject. It moved me deeply.

Best wishes,

Tevot

[LMcD]

For me, the series on the Vietnam war was one of the television highlights of the year, and I plan to read Max Hastings's book (which I'm hoping might manifest itself chez nous on my forthcoming birthday...) Did you, like me, see the abridged version of the Ken Burns on the BBC or what I assume was a fuller version on PBS America?
On the subject of military history, I'm a huge admirer of Antony Beevor's work, and plan to read his latest book, on Arnhem, in the near future.
On a lighter note.....
May I recommend Mick Herron's witty, fast-paced and beautifully written 'Jackson Lamb' spy thrillers? I'm currently chortling my way through the fifth, 'London Rules', but they're best read in order of publication, starting with 'Slow Horses'.
I'm not sure how it's come about, but I find that - despite having hundred of CDs and DVDs and access to umpteen TV and streaming channels, I seem to be reading more books than ever - without neglecting the garden and other domestic duties.

[Richard Tarleton]

For me, the series on the Vietnam war was one of the television highlights of the year, and I plan to read Max Hastings's book (which I'm hoping might manifest itself chez nous on my forthcoming birthday...) Did you, like me, see the abridged version of the Ken Burns on the BBC or what I assume was a fuller version on PBS America?

I saw it on BBC - I don't think I realised it was abridged, there was a lot of it....

On the subject of military history, I'm a huge admirer of Antony Beevor's work, and plan to read his latest book, on Arnhem, in the near future.

We are indeed fortunate to have two such outstanding historians of 20th century conflict writing in our time. My education was a lot closer to the events in question, and a lot of what they write about simply wasn't known then, but nothing I read as an undergraduate approaches the authoritive sweep as well as mastery of detail that these two bring. Although they both till the same soil (their big books on WW2 even came out around the same time) they have distinctive voices. Hugely respectful of each other's work, and doubtless friends, both excel at rendering huge military campaigns comprehensible (Stalingrad, Berlin, D-Day, the war in the Pacific and indeed WW2 itself). They even share a Russian researcher, Dr Lyuba Vinogradova. Hastings excels at the human dimension - his book on The Secret War (Spies, Codes and Guerillas 1939-1945) is often harrowing. Beevor's book on the Spanish Civil War, The Battle for Spain (2006), is also superb - a complete re-working of an earlier book begun in 1976 and published in 1982, again in a field where vast amounts of new information has come to light. Here too he makes use of German and Russian archives. Not sure I have the strength for Arnhem, though..... But yes, to both!

[LMcD]

The full running time of the Vietnam war series appears to be something over 17 hours - I believe more than 1 edited version was released for non-US viewers.
I've recently finished, and greatly enjoyed, 'The British In India'. Like Antony Beevor, Mr. Gilmour skilfully interweaves the personal and the global.
I've just picked up, for the proverbial song, Ben Macintyre's 'Operation Mincemeat', of which I have read good things.

[Richard Tarleton]

I've recently finished, and greatly enjoyed, 'The British In India'. Like Antony Beevor, Mr. Gilmour skilfully interweaves the personal and the global.

Greatly enjoying this - giving context to my various Anglo-Indian relations, who included a Boxwallah , an officer in an Indian regiment, a member of the fishing fleet (successful, too, she escaped the ignominy of becoming a "returned empty" ) and various others - though the most successful of them escapes ready classification and inclusion in the book.

I've just picked up, for the proverbial song, Ben Macintyre's 'Operation Mincemeat', of which I have read good things.

An excellent yarn. The author of the original "The Man Who Never Was", who was one of the team, was severely restricted by the Official Secrets Act.

[french frank]

Expanding my eurocentricity: Kálmán Mikszáth's The Good People of Palocz and Saint Peter's Umbrella.

My local Hungarian café has Palócleves on the menu this week which started a discussion as to what Palóc meant. As far as the soup was concerned, it involved in some way the writer Mikszáth who was a native of the region (there's a connection with Polovtsian somewhere) which spurred me on to discover what he wrote (online courtesy of Gutenberg). It's twee-ishly 'irrelevant' in the way 19th fiction can seem nowadays, and as the commonplaces of, say, modern spy fiction may come to seem in a century or two. But as a reflection of the peasant life and culture of the time, it's interesting enough (and the soup is excellent).

[muzzer]

The second volume of Zachary Leader’s biog of Saul Bellow, which he kindly signed for me last night. When all is said and done, the prose will endure above all else.

[Bella Kemp]

The second volume of Zachary Leader’s biog of Saul Bellow, which he kindly signed for me last night. When all is said and done, the prose will endure above all else.

Yes,Mr Bellow doesn't come across as very pleasant in this biog, but his novels are superb.

[Richard Tarleton]

I'm a short way into Alan Walker's new biog of Chopin ("Fryderyk Chopin - A Life and Times") - it will sit alongside his great 3-vol biog of Liszt.

Interesting thought in the Prologue, where the question of TB is first raised - it was rampant in Poland in the early 19thC, and during Chopin's lifetime a fifth of the population of Central Europe succumbed to it. But how many of Chopin's pupils did he infect by coughing during their lessons, a question first raised by Esmond Long, an American expert in pulmonary diseases? At least 2 were carried off by galloping consumption....yet some people in Chopin's family, and George Sand and family, seem to have been immune. Queen Victoria's physician, who was Chopin's consultant in 1848, didn't realise it was contagious. The doctors on Mallorca in 1838 did, his bedding was burned, his furniture destroyed and he was nearly quarantined.....

My only complaint about the book is that, while it has a lovely cloth back, it has a ridiculous 3/4 length dust jacket (with picture of Chopin, exposing the title on the cloth cover below) - bad idea, faber & faber.

[Beef Oven!]

Noam Chomsky - Understanding Power (2013)

An excellent read, such a brilliant mind.