The Maias by Eca de Querioz

  This was literally a case of not judging a book by its cover.  The cover was awful!   The book was actually rather good.  The Maias are a gentry family living in mid-19th century Portugal, with money and position, but only one heir.  The heir marries a rather unsuitable woman, who presents him with a son and a daughter.  She then runs off with another man, taking the daughter with her.  Her abandoned husband shoots himself.  The baby son is brought up by his grandfather, and given the education of an English gentleman, this being the thing in upper class Portuguese circles at the time.   He becomes a doctor … which seems an odd choice, but he does.  However, he and his best mate go off the rails a bit, chasing around after married women.  And then it turns out that his latest mistress is actually his long-lost sister … which is a bit tasteless, but the book *was* pretty good other than that.

Considering that it was over 600 pages long, not much actually happened, but it was a good read!

Two books by Jose Saramago …

… and I don’t think I’ll be bothering with a third.  Does anyone else feel guilty when they read books by prize-winning authors and just don’t get what the big deal is?   It’s like the emperor’s new clothes: you feel as if you should agree with everyone else or you’ll look stupid.

The first one, Baltasar & Blimunda, wasn’t *too* bad.  It was set just after the War of the Spanish Succession, which was a good start because that’s a pet topic of mine.  Baltasar had lost an arm fighting for Portugal in the war.  Blimunda was on her own because her mother had been transported to Angola for alleged heresy.   They got together and … er, got mixed up with a priest, who was apparently a real person, who wanted to invent a flying machine.  I’m not quite sure what the point of it all was, but at least it was genuine historical stuff, with a lot of references to the Royal Family and the building of the Convent of Mafra.  Even if there was a lack of punctuation, and some of the paragraphs went on for several pages.

The second one, The History of the Siege of Lisbon, sounded as if it should be set in 1147.  Only it wasn’t.  It was set in the 1980s, and was about a Portuguese proof-reader who inserted the word “not” into a book about the Siege of Lisbon, to change the meaning.   I have no idea why.  Well, I think it was something to do with history only being what we think it is.  But we know what happened at the Siege of Lisbon, so it was all a bit pointless.  The “not” bit made it read as if crusaders from other countries didn’t join in.   But they did.  One of them was Henry II’s illegitimate son, William Longsword, who features in some of Elizabeth Chadwick’s books.  Then he (the proof-reader, not William) got together with an attractive doctor.  And he ate a lot of tins of tuna.   Ditto the point about long paragraphs and lack of punctuation.

It’s the same with the Oscars.  Sometimes they go to films which we are apparently meant to think are wonderful, but which some of us just don’t get.  And then you wonder whether you’re genuinely missing something, or whether the people who give the awards are just being pretentious …

 

A Court of Betrayal by Anne O’Brien

There’s been a lot of interest in the reign and deposition of Edward II in recent years.   What was the exact nature of the relationships between Edward and first Piers Gaveston and then Hugh le Despenser?   Was Edward as bad a king as he’s made out to be?  Was Isabella really a “She Wolf”?  Did Isabella and Mortimer have a child?   Is it possible that Edward wasn’t murdered, but lived out his years in Italy?  In all of this, I’m sorry to say that, until now, I’ve never considered how awful it must all have been for Roger Mortimer’s wronged wife, Johane de Geneville, the heroine of this book (told in the first person).   Anne O’Brien’s done an excellent job of telling her story.   I don’t know why she’s abandoned her Paston series, but hopefully she’ll get back to it.  In the meantime, this was really good.

The book began with teenage Johane, a wealthy Marcher heiress, being told by her ambitious grandfather that her two sisters would be forced to become nuns, so that the family inheritance wouldn’t be subdivided, and that she was to marry Roger Mortimer.  We were given a portrayal of a happy marriage – which was probably quite true, given that they had twelve children together.  We saw Roger gain power and position … although we didn’t really hear much about the Ordinances and the disaster at Bannockburn, because all that Johane and Roger were really doing at that point was having lots of children.

Then came the Despenser War.  I hadn’t actually realised that there was a personal element to this, in that a Mortimer had killed a Despenser at Evesham.  The book, being told from Johane’s viewpoint, obviously took the side of Mortimer and his allies, but we were told that Mortimer had admired Edward when he first met him.   Edward does often get portrayed as being weak and useless, but that wasn’t entirely how he came across here.  And Johane was shown as feeling sympathetic towards Isabella, at first.  We can’t know that, but it does ring true.  I think that a lot of people would have felt some sympathy for Isabella.   It was  made pretty clear that everyone thinks that Gaveston and Despenser were Edward’s lovers – which, again, was probably true

Then on to Edward’s imprisonment and escape to France – and Johane being taken into custody in retaliation.  Her elder daughters were sent to convents, her sons were imprisoned, and she and her younger daughters were held under house arrest, first in Hampshire and then under harsh conditions – probably harsher than the book showed – at Skipton Castle, and later Pontefract Castle.  We can’t be sure whether or not she knew that her husband had begun an affair with Isabella, but, as the book suggested, she probably did.  The poor woman.

Once Mortimer and Isabella had deposed Edward and taken power for themselves, Johane was freed, but the book showed Mortimer humiliating her by parading his affair with Isabella publicly, even bringing her to Johane’s home.

The book suggested that Isabella did indeed have Mortimer’s child, but that the child died in infancy.   It also said that Edward wasn’t murdered, but was kept as a prisoner at Corfe Castle.  I prefer the version where he went to Italy: it’s more exciting!   But I don’t actually believe either of them.  In medieval times, it was considered too dangerous to keep deposed kings alive.  Henry IV had Richard II murdered.  Richard III had Edward V murdered.  Isabella and Mortimer had Edward II murdered.  Surely.  The red hot poker bit’s probably an exaggeration, but I find it hard to believe that they let him live.

Then Edward III overthrew his mother and her lover, and had Mortimer executed.  The book suggested that Johane pleaded for his life.  Who knows?  And poor Johane was imprisoned again – but was eventually granted a full pardon, and had all her lands restored to her.  And, of course, the Mortimers were the ancestors of the House of York, and thus of the present Royal Family.

I don’t know why I’d never considered how Johane must have felt about the goings-on with Roger Mortimer and Isabella.   How she suffered for the actions of a husband with whom she’d probably once been happy.  This was a very well-written book – although I would have appreciated an afterword explaining that no-one really knows what happened to Edward II, and am surprised at Anne O’Brien for not including one – and thoroughly enjoyable.

 

The Tattooist of Auschwitz – Sky Atlantic

  There’s been a lot of moaning in certain quarters about this series, on the grounds that the Holocaust shouldn’t be used as “entertainment”.  I beg to differ.  Yes, there are now dozens of Holocaust novels and numerous films, and I think that it’s all getting a bit much and arguably a bit exploitative; but the book on which this is based was one of the first, and it’s telling a true story.   As for “entertainment”, that’s the wrong word.  What it’s doing is rehumanising people whom the concentration camps dehumanised.

A few years back, someone moaned that Anne Frank shouldn’t be seen as the “face” of the Holocaust because most of her diary was trivial stuff about arguing with her family, finding Mr Dussel annoying and fancying Peter van Daan.   Of course she should, and of course it was.  That’s the sort of thing that teenage girls write about.  She was just an ordinary teenage girl, and Lale Sokolov (formerly Eisenberg), the main character in this story, was just an ordinary young man.  Who fell in love.  With an ordinary young woman.   In the most horrific circumstances in human history.  Because they were still human.   So, yes, it’s OK to have a love story set at Auschwitz.  It’s proving that, even after people were stripped, shaved, and tattooed with a number instead of their name, they were still human.

Yes, there are errors in the book.  The number tattooed on the arm of Gisela “Gita” Fuhrmannova, Lale’s future wife, is wrong.  There’s a reference to penicillin, long before it was widely available.  Some of what’s said about Josef Mengele doesn’t agree with other sources.   It’s obviously not great that there are errors; but it was written from an elderly man’s memories of what happened over half a century earlier, not as a textbook.

There’s also been some moaning about the casting in the TV adaptation.  Jonah Hauer-King, as the young Lale, speaks RP English.  Harvey Keitel, as the older Lale, speaks English with an Eastern European accent.  Er, folks, the young Lale would have been speaking his mother tongue (presumably Slovak?), not English.  So he wouldn’t have been speaking with a foreign accent, would he?!   There’s even been moaning because CGI was used to “reconstruct” an Auschwitz set, rather than filming at the real site.  How on earth could they have built the set at the real site?

The story’s quite well-known now.   In Bratislava, it’s demanded that one person from each Jewish household “volunteer” to “help the war effort”.  Lale goes, and finds himself being transported to Auschwitz, where he becomes one of those tattooing numbers on the arms of new prisoners.  One of the prisoners is Gita.  At the end of the war, they’re separated, but meet in Bratislava, marry, and later move to Australia.   Decades later, after Gita’s death, Lale tells his story to Heather Morris, who writes a book about it.

I’m not sure how well the decision to show the story as flashbacks worked.   We were shown Lale and Heather, and then flashbacks to Auschwitz; and jumping backwards and forwards between timelines never works that well.   We also saw the older Lale being haunted by visions of friends who’d been murdered, and by an SS office with whom he’d had a lot of interaction, which was also a bit confusing.  But I think that the programme did a reasonably good job of trying to depict the horrors of the camp, even showing black smoke coming out of the gas chambers, and Lale witnessing people being shot dead at random.  It tried.  It’s a very sensitive topic, and any book or film or TV series about it is always going to be controversial.  Sky have really done their best to *be* sensitive, with the series being directed by the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor.

A week after the Holocaust memorial in Hyde Park was covered up because of fears that it was at risk of vandalism, and two days after Poland’s main synagogue was firebombed, watch this.  And just watch it.  Don’t drive yourself mad worrying about accents or exact numbers.  Just watch it, and take it in.

 

 

 

 

Changing Ends – ITV

  On the plus side, this series about Alan Carr’s childhood is set in the 1980s.  Alan’s very close in age to me, so this is very much my era.  The ’80s music makes a brilliant soundtrack, even though it’s a bit bonkers that songs from all parts of the decade are all being used in a programme set in 1986; and Alan’s parents, headmaster and sadistic PE teacher are all very well portrayed.

On the minus side, the adult Alan Carr “narrates” the programme, which is really annoying.   Instead of just letting the characters get on with it, he keeps butting in.  And the sole theme of the programme, which is that young Alan is not interested in football and prefers acting, wears a bit thin after a while.  Incidentally, I never knew that Alan Carr’s dad was the manager of Northampton Town!

It’s not bad, but a few jokes about something *other* than young Alan not being interested in football would be greatly appreciated.   Three episodes of the same jokes get a bit much!   But it’s worth watching for the ’80s soundtrack.

Belmonte by John Bradley

  This book was quite good once it got going, but what an odd start!   It was supposed to be about four men emigrating from 16th century Portugal to the New World, and, yes, it *was* about that, once it got going … but the early part was totally bizarre, with Endovelico (an ancient Portuguese god) turning two of the boys into falcons, so that they could visit Joseph (of amazong technicolour dreamcoat fame) in ancient Egypt and then late 15th century Portuguese explorers travelling to Ethiopia.   The Ethiopia bit was interesting, because it’s an aspect of the “Voyages of Discovery” which gets overlooked, but I’m not sure why it had to be shown via an ancient god turning people into falcons.  And I’ve no idea what Joseph had to do with any of it!

Once we got back to normality, there was a lot of “mystical” talk about a) the Portuguese interest in the Templars, b) the legend of Prester John and c) the Kabbalah, but that was fair enough for a book set in 16th century Portugal.   And we got two main stories – that of Ruy and Davide, two young Jewish friends who went to study at the University of Coimbra but were forced to flee by the Inquisition, and that of Juancinto, a Spanish gitano who accidentally killed someone and was transported (I’m not sure that transportation was a thing in 16th century Spain, but never mind) to the New World.   There was a fourth man, Daniele, son of a Moorish father and Jewish mother, but he appeared at the beginning and didn’t reappear until the end, by which time I’d forgotten about him!

I was a bit uneasy about some of the talk concerning secret organisations, which just seemed a bit too close to international conspiracy theories for comfort, but generally it was an interesting book, and I’m hoping to read the sequel if I ever get my TBR pile down to manageable levels!

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

This was my “reading challenge” book for April.  Eight people were invited to an island off the coast of Devon, where they were met by the supposed hosts’ butler and housekeeper.   Then they all got murdered, in (extremely unlikely) ways which tied in with “Ten Little Soldier Boys” – the original title of the book having been changed in more recent editions.   And it turned out that one of them had murdered the others, because he thought they’d all got away with crimes.   Er, and that’s all I’ve got to say about that.   Murder mysteries aren’t really my thing!

Philippa of Lancaster by Isabel Stilwell

  It is stupidly hard to find books in English about Portuguese royals!   There are quite a few available about French, Austrian, Russian and Castilian royals, but pretty much nothing about Portuguese royals.  However, we do have the English translations of Isabel Stilwell’s books, although the paper copies are prohibitively expensive and even the Kindle versions aren’t cheap.  Philippa of Lancaster was, of course, actually an English royal – the eldest daughter of John of Gaunt and eldest sister of Henry IV – who married Joao I, the first Avis king of Portugal, sealing the Anglo-Portuguese alliance, which is the longest bilateral alliance still in existence 🙂 .   So we are eternal friends with the land of Bruno Fernandes, Diogo Dalot and pasteis de nata.

It has to be said that there are quite a few oddities in translation, and also that there are some errors relating to English titles and to the spelling of personal names and place names.   However, those aside, this is a fascinating book.

John of Gaunt himself doesn’t feature that much, and even Joao isn’t that significant.  Most of the emphasis is on the women.  Apart from Philippa herself, the main characters are her sister Elizabeth, the eponymous heroine of Anne O’Brien’s The King’s Sister, and John of Gaunt’s mistress, Katherine Swynford.  Thanks to Anya Seton, everyone sees Katherine as a romantic heroine, and that’s how she comes across in this book – she and Philippa do seem to have been quite close.   Funny how the modern view of Katherine is pretty much entirely based on that book!   And, for centuries, the view of Henry IV has been based on Shakespeare’s version of him: he comes across more positively in this book.   Philippa’s stepmother, Costanza of Castile (whose name is spelt “Constanza” in this) and half-sister Catilina, by contrast, don’t come across well at all.  And Ines de Castro, Joao’s father’s mistress, who’s romanticised in Portugal, doesn’t come across very well either – although she’d died before Philippa got to Portugal.

So – Philippa’s story.  She was the eldest child of John of Gaunt and the much-loved Blanche of Lancaster, but was largely brough up by Katherine Swynford after Blanche’s death.   For various reasons, no marriage was arranged for her until she was 27, which was pretty much on the shelf for a princess.   However, her marriage to Joao was successful, and they had six surviving children, known as the “Illustrious Generation” in Portugal; and Philippa seems to have been a very intelligent and also generally very nice woman.    Chaucer, Katherine’s brother-in-law, also features a lot in the book, as Philippa’s friend and mentor.

She comes across very well in the book, and we see crucial times in both England, with the Peasants’ Revolt and then Richard II’s deposition by Henry IV, and Portugal, as the Anglo-Portuguese forces defeated Joao’s Castilian rivals and ended a period of anarchy.  The book ends just before Portugal’s conquest of Ceuta, which came a month after Philippa’s death from the plague, and arguably kicked off the “Age of Discovery”.

All in all, it’s a fascinating book.  I’d love to read more of Isabel Stilwell’s books, but the few which have been translated into English are just *so* expensive … er, and my Portuguese isn’t up to much more than ordering a pastel de nata …

Andreas Hofer by Luise Muhlbach

I really enjoyed this book, published in 1868.   As the title indicates, it’s about the Tyrolean Rebellion during the Napoleonic Wars, when France defeated Austria and put Tyrol under Bavarian rule.   OK, it depicts Hofer as a great hero, and doesn’t go into the issue of his being something of a religious bigot; but he *is* very much venerated as a folk hero in Tyrol.

It depicts the historical events pretty much accurately, but the main character isn’t actually Hofer, but a (presumably fictitious?) young woman called Eliza Wallner.   Eliza is a peasant girl who is friends with an aristocratic girl, confusingly called Elsa, whose family have lived in Tyrol for many years but are originally from Bavaria.  Both Eliza and Elsa are in love with Elsa’s cousin, a Bavarian soldier – who initially says that, although he loves Eliza, he can’t marry her because of the difference in their social status, but later changes his mind.   Eliza knows that his family won’t accept her, and self-sacrificingly arranges for him to marry Elsa.  She also saves his life, and carries out all manner of other heroics during the course of the war, and is generally a long way removed from most Victorian heroines!

It really is a very entertaining book, and very easy to read.   Recommended!

Katherine of Aragon by Alison Weir

This is a really good read, even if it’s an unoriginal take on an unoriginal topic.   It’s told from the viewpoint of Katherine (the author uses the K spelling) of Aragon, so it’s very much #TeamKatherine and blames Anne Boleyn for everything under the sun – but, fair enough, that’s doing what it says on the tin.   I think the author sometimes struggles a bit to get across the religious feelings of the time and how horrified Katherine must have felt, annulment (the term “divorce” is used, but “annulment” would be more accurate) aside, about Henry’s decision to break with Rome, but it *is* very hard to get that across in today’s secular world.

It’s a shame that the book didn’t show anything of Katherine’s childhood in Castile, but it does an excellent job of showing her marriage to Arthur, the horrible time she had afterwards, and then the ups and downs of her marriage to Henry, including the tragic loss of so many babies.

Henry very much comes across as a tyrant by the time of Katherine’s death – which is fair enough.   And the book takes the traditional view that the marriage of Katherine and Arthur was never consummated, and that Arthur was in poor health even before they married.   I’m very much inclined to agree about the former.   We just don’t know about the latter – some people think he had TB, others think that he was healthy and was just unlucky enough to catch something like the sweating sickness.

There’s a suggestion that Katherine thinks her first marriage is cursed, because it was brought about in blood.   I did wonder if that was going to be a load of Ricardian drivel (sorry, Ricardians!) blaming Henry for the death of the Princes in the Tower, but it seemed instead to refer to the execution of the Earl of Warwick.   Margaret Pole features prominently in the book, as too does Maud Parr – a reminder of the connection between Katherine of Aragon and Katherine Parr.    Most things are pretty accurate, albeit pretty biased, and the book’s well-written, as Alison Weir’s books always are, and generally a joy to read.  I got her book about Henry VIII on a 99p Kindle download a few months back, but, given that I’ve got eleventy billion books waiting to be read and it’s over 700 pages long, it’s having to wait for now!   I’ve got the Anne Boleyn book, though, and look forward to seeing that tell the story from a very different angle.