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 …

 

Back Into The Sunshine – TNT Sports 2

  The best moment of this was at the end, hearing Clive Tyldesley yelling “Manchester United have reached the Promised Land”.   How on earth was that 25 years ago?   And will we ever stop wandering in the Wilderness and get there again?   Anyway, after a slow start with too much waffle, the whole programme was very interesting, and brought back a lot of memories.   It started in 1985 – the year of The Ban.

Let’s just go back to 14 months prior to Heysel.  March 1984.  United v Barcelona in the Cup Winners’ Cup.   I wasn’t allowed to go because I’d only just turned 9 and was deemed too young to be out late on a school night.  So I missed one of the greatest United performances of all time!   Most European matches before the finals weren’t televised then, although I think that that one was on the radio.   I moaned so much that, when United qualified for the UEFA Cup for the following season, I was allowed to go.  Hooray!   November 1984, United v PSV Eindhoven, there I was.  The match went to extra time, and goodness knows what time we got home, but I must have got up for school the next day because I was allowed to go to the next two European matches.   First up, Dundee United.  Then Videoton.  But we lost to Videoton after penalties at the end of the away leg.  The away leg wasn’t even on the radio: we had to watch the shoot-out on Ceefax.  And thus ended my first season of European nights.  But we won the Cup!   And so we were in the 85/86 Cup Winners’ Cup.

But then we weren’t.

The programme began with The Ban.   The various contributors didn’t argue with the ban, but they did say just how rotten it was for everyone.  It was rotten for us, but it was even worse for Everton, who’d just won the league and seemed to stand a very good chance of winning the European Cup.  (Steaua Bucharest won it instead.   Everton would have made mincemeat of them.)  Instead, we got something called the “Super Cup”.  As the programme said, no-one had the slightest bit of interest in it.   Then there was the “Full Members’ Cup”, which I vaguely remember one of the papers nicknaming the “Fool Members’ Cup”.    United never even entered it.    For some reason, the programme never mentioned Channel 4 showing Italian football, but they talked a lot about English players going to Rangers.

Then, in 1990, the ban was lifted!   United and Villa were back in Europe.  Our first match was against Pecsi Munkas.  I think you pronounce it “Peshki Munkas”.  “Pesh” for short.  And we won the Cup Winners’ Cup!   English clubs were back in business!

Er, yes.  Then it all went a bit pear-shaped.   In 1993, back in the European Cup, by then “the Champions League” but still only for champions, we lost to Galatasaray, in the infamous “Welcome to hell” match.  The programme took Paul Parker (why Paul Parker?) back to Istanbul, for a reunion with some of the Galatasaray players from that night.  And I’d forgotten about Blackburn losing to Trelleborgs, the Swedish part-timers whose players included a rat catcher, but there was that too.   And there was Forest losing 5-1 at home to Bayern in 1996.   After English clubs had dominated Europe in the first half of the ’80s, we’d fallen behind and it was a long way back.

But we did it!   That wonderful night in 1999.  “Manchester United have reached the Promised Land”.  And, since then, English clubs have won the Champions League six times more.  Spanish clubs ten, times, Italian clubs three times, German clubs (well, club) three times and Portuguese clubs once.   So we’re not doing badly.   The ban seems a long time ago now, but it was a difficult time.  And this programme brought back a lot of memories.   It was just rather depressing when one of the presenters said that he wasn’t even born at the time!

Unbelievably, it’s 25 years since the Treble.  That’s the one that sticks in the mind, partly because it *was* the Treble and partly because of the incredible finish, 1-0 down with seconds to go and then winning 2-1.   But how I wish I could relive those wonderful couple of months in 2008, when United won the league and the Champions League, and Rafa won the French Open and then Wimbledon … that amazing final, arguably the best tennis match ever.   Happy days …

 

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.

 

 

 

 

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!

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.

 

Letters from Yellowstone by Diane Smith

I enjoyed this a lot more than I expected to.  It’s about a female medical student whose real interest is botany, and who is accepted to join a field study in Yellowstone National Park, in 1898, by a team who mistakenly think she’s a man.   Once they’ve got used to the idea that she’s a woman, her gender isn’t a big deal, and the story- told, as the title suggests, through letters from various characters to relatives and friends – focuses on the plantlife within the park – which sounds boring, but it actually isn’t – and the issues arising from the increase in development, especially railways, and irresponsible tourism there, and also the relationships between the various members of the team.   It’s quite a short book, but it’s a good read, about something a bit different.

Royal Kill List – Sky Showcase

  It’s always good to see historical programmes on Sky Showcase, and they did very well to get Joseph Fiennes to be one of the narrators for this one.   Could we just lose the constant swearing, though?   It’s very tiresome.  Having said which, Charles II probably *did* swear a lot, if only to prove that he wasn’t a Puritan!

The theme of this series is the quest to hunt down the regicides, i.e. the people involved in the trial and execution of Charles I, who were excluded from the general pardon given at the time of the Restoration.  Those already dead, including Oliver Cromwell, were dug up and executed posthumously.   Several others were executed, and others were sentenced to life imprisonment.  Some were pardoned, and a few escaped.

It’s not talked about very much, possibly because it doesn’t fit with Charles II’s image as “the Merry Monarch” – lover of many women, father of many illegitimate children, frequent visitor to the theatre and to Newmarket, etc etc.   The fact that he was engaged in secret deals with the French gets overlooked, as well.  I suppose we’re all willing to forgive him anything because the Restoration got rid of the horrendous rule of the Cromwells.   Why Oliver Cromwell so often scores so highly in “greatest ever Englishmen” polls is beyond me.   The man banned Sunday football.  And mince pies.   And closed the theatres.  He also fined people for swearing, so everyone involved in historical programmes on Sky TV would have been very poor if they’d been around in his time.   No wonder that Charles II’s reign is fondly remembered!

But Charles really did go after the regicides, which I suppose is understandable, and this was an interesting take on things.  It also showed the future James II doing a lot of moaning at his brother, and getting very narky about the influence of the infamous Barbara Villiers.   The reign of Charles, like the reign of his grandfather, tends to be overlooked, sandwiched in between the Civil War/Interregnum and the Glorious Revolution.   Despite the fact that half the aristocratic families in the country are descended from his various offspring by his various mistresses!

This went a a bit OTT for a docu-drama, but it was always entertaining – and, unlike the irritating stuff that the BBC churn out these days, made no references to current political events and didn’t include a load of woke drivel.   It was certainly colourful!   But I do think that it was a bit hard on Charles.  It made him look very bloodthirsty, whereas his actions were really quite mild under the circumstances.   Sky’s history programmes often seem designed more to shock than to do anything else.  But, hey, at least they don’t lecture you like the BBC’s do …