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Wow!

I finished this last night. When I say ‘finished’, what I actually mean is that I read up to the Conclusion. There’s a huge amount of additional material – chronology, notes to the main text, glossary, lists of ships – that I haven’t read in full.*

It’s my personal view that it’d be churlish to give this any less than five stars. It’s an astonishing feat, at least to my mind. I’m no expert on naval history of any kind. But it’s clear that the two volumes I’ve so far read – by accident I came to volume two, The Command of The Ocean, first – are the product of immense research and sharp perceptive intelligence.

And to write such weighty tomes on a specialist subject in such a way as to engage the lay reader, such as myself, is in itself no mean feat. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed volumes one and two. Such that I can’t wait for volume three; The Cost of Victory, due out very soon, this Autumn, 2024.

In these works, Rodger gives us an astonishingly formidable synthesising history of the many threads that combine to tell the fascinating naval tales of these isles.

I believe I detect more than a faint whiff of modern day(-ish) Conservatism, in Rodger’s accounts of British politics. But that’s fine. Indeed, in my experience the vast majority of what one might broadly refer to as ‘military history’ seems the preserve, by and large, of right leaning types (think Andrew Roberts, for example).

As I grow older I find it harder and harder to position myself, politically. As nothing out there accords with my own personal pot-pourri of views. I say views rather than beliefs deliberately. Both can and should change, as we learn more. But views are, perhaps, more easily changed than beliefs. Anyway, I digress.

I needn’t entirely concur with the authors’ own politics – and as far as I can judge this is an admirably balanced account – to enjoy and benefit from his erudition and insight. And I’ve found reading volumes II and I – I put it that way ’cause that’s the order in which I read them – hugely enjoyable, and very informative.

Both books use a form of treatment that I ought to be able to recapitulate easily, but – I’m currently both ill with a cold and recovering from a bout of depression – find myself a little foggy on. What I’m alluding to is how he organises the vast inchoate masses of information he must necessarily marshal.

It’s kind of cyclic, but not rigidly formulaic: he usually commences with ‘operations’, the action (this is the largest category, I reckon); sometimes he’ll address the technology, in ‘ships’; then there’s ‘admin’, the Pepysian dimension; and lastly, ‘social history’.

The way Rodger uses these organising categories is, in my view, exemplary. They help him arrange and convey the necessary information. But he uses them in varied and fluid form; not slavishly, but rather in accordance with the shifting shoals of his subject. It really is masterfully done.

And he’s an excellent writer. In the fields (seas and skies) of military history writing – and Rodger’s monumental work is far more than purely military/naval – there are many authors who either have very obvious axes to grind, or whose specialist knowledge is impressive, but whose general writing skills are less so. Happily, Rodger’s prose is lucid, cogent, and engaging.

Inevitably, given the huge scope of these works, there’s repetition, or perhaps what feels like repetition, as he returns to how different players reprise the constant but evolving themes of sea-power. That he keeps it all fresh enough to make a vivacious and engaging read is, even if these works boasted just that one accomplishment, frankly astonishing.

But it’s far better than that. The enormous sweep of it all – it has to take in everything, touching on politics, agriculture, industry, war, peace, individuals, society, you name it, and not just within the British Isles, but also all those nations and peoples the seas have connected us to, through time – is constantly leavened and enlivened, by character observations and anecdotes, keeping the whole story warmly human.

For all these reasons and more, both this and volume two are very much five star fare.

And I haven’t even really discussed the specific content, yet. And frankly, I don’t think that’s even entirely necessary. Suffice to say that he chooses to start in 660, and work his way to 1649, during the ECW. So, covering here a period just shy of a millennia.

We witness an ebb and flow that is neither regular nor inevitable, as – and I’ll let him say it, as he does so so very eloquently and succinctly – ‘the peoples of the British Isles learnt, relearnt, or did not learn at all how to use the sea for their own defence.’

I’m very lucky, in that I have a beautiful Folio edition of this brilliant author’s earlier work, The Wooden World, which I can now read, whilst I eagerly await publication of the third volume of his truly awesome trilogy.

Can’t recommend these books highly enough.

*I often referred to the notes and glossary, and occasionally perused random bits of the other sections.

I just finished Nicolas Rodger’s epic first volume of naval history, Safeguard of the Sea. I’ve posted about the book itself elsewhere. But it finishes with the end of the ECW, and the advent of the Rump Parliament.

I’ve been getting interested in the ECW, or rather Wars, for some time, of late. Partly from a potential wargaming perspective. But more so from an interest in the politics of the era.

As Rodger points out, much of the politics of those years aligned with differing varieties of Christian ‘faith’. Broadly speaking the ‘Arminian’ High Anglicanism of the King was (and still is!) barely distinguishable from Catholicism, whereas Protestantism was (and still is), an, ahem… very broad and fractious church, wherein we find many troublesome and uppity agitators.

I’ve been intending to watch the Mollo/Brownlow film Winstanley for absolutely ages. I really ought to do so, ASAP. My only issue is that I’ll prob’ have to pay to watch it. So, do I just buy it, on DVD?

I have neither read this, nor seen it enacted. Maybe I should? Can anyone recommend a staging, or adaptation?

Rather like art, culture, history, music and my many other interests, sex is frequently on my mind. And consequently sex in art and culture kind of triple-whammies things.

One thing I find kind of odd and irritating is that there’s not much that sits in my own idea of the Goldilocks zone, when it comes to sex. The way sex is treated is, all too often – unless absent altogether – either too tame or too extreme.

[NB: The above gallery uses very poor quality images, borrowed from the gutenberg.com online version of this work.]

By way of explaining what I mean, you go from the ubiquity of tits n’ ass – usually but not always clothed – in mainstream movie culture, to stuff like Pasoloni’s Salo.

I’m leaving the whole sticky area of porn to one side, as that’s essentially a masturbatory aid, rather than art or ‘culture’.*

In literary terms I guess you could equate this with a spectrum that ranges from the frisson of sex that smatters (or should that be splatters?) popular fiction – from Mills & Boon to Shades of Grey – to stuff that’s truly outside the pale, like de Sade’s deliberately ‘sacrilegious’ extremism.

In the end the kind of innocent yet knowing, or what I want to call ‘liberated’ handling (chortle) of sex quite often winds up being expressed at the level of folk art.

In jokes, bawdy songs, strange efflorescences of varied artefacts, from phallic devotional objects/totems, to mosaics and wall paintings, or decorating earthenware, jewellery, and whatnot. I wonder why this might be?

As Neil MacGregor discusses, in the brilliant History of the World in 100 Objects, when considering the Warren Cup, what was once shocking and taboo can become commonplace. What once, allegedly, threatened to shake polite society to its very foundations suddenly passes unnoticed.

The softer more titillating treatment of sex is almost always the more commonplace (superabundant these days), at least relative to the darker side. But even that relationship can shift over time. It wasn’t long ago, in myth if not in real life, that gods and beasts were frequently copping off with humans, or vice (pun intended) versa.

I think David Lee Roth put it quite well, when he described erotica as a feather, and porn as the whole plucked chicken.

Oscar Wilde, the author of Salome, was, as we all ought to know, jailed for two years for being gay. Or ‘gross indecency’, as it was then styled.

Homosexuality in England remained a ‘crime’ til 1967. In America this didn’t happen til 2003! And, unbelievably, in 2003 (under Blair) ‘The Sexual Offences Act 2003 made it illegal for more than two men to engage in consensual sexual activity in private.’ I’m shocked at that.

Voltaire once said ‘I don’t think there was ever any civilized nation that enacted laws against mores.’ Which, given how he was himself persecuted, seems unbelievably naive. But at the same time it shows that some societies 300-400 years ago might actually have been more liberal/tolerant than our supposedly permissive modern day ones. Even those that pride themselves on being ‘democratic’ and ‘free’!

To my eyes, Beardsley’s Salome illustrations appear tame. But if we are to believe some folk, they were at the time highly scandalous, just like the author of the work, Wilde. It’s hard for the modern liberally minded humanist to see how or why.

But there have always been hawkish prudes, eager to burn whoever is the witch of the hour. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there are as many such now as there ever were.

*Of course there is crossover. You get artistic porn, and pornograohic art. And every conceivable shade or combination between and beyond. But that’s not what I’m touching on (titter) here.

** I believe I/we once had some Beardsley coasters, sporting this image. I wonder what became of them?

I’ve been enjoying BBC R4’s In Our Time podcasts, whilst convalescing. The latest one I listened to addresses the ‘War of 1812.’ Not Napoleon’s disastrous Franco-Russian one, but ‘the other one’; Britain vs The USA.

This post isn’t about what I think about that podcast. It’s just an image gallery on the subject. Something to whet the appetite for poss’ further exploration.

After that evocative gallery of colourful pictures, here are some black or white (or near monotone) images:

And next, some more overtly propagandist type stuff; mostly (but not all) satirical prints.

And of course there was a very large naval aspect to this conflict…

And then there are the many books on the subject:

For Britain and America it was, it would seem, a largely very pointless coda – changing very little – to the AWI. Perhaps just sealing some kind closure, re America’s cutting of the umbilical cord with Europe, in general, and Britain in particular?

Whereas, for the indigenous peoples of the continent, it was an unmitigated disaster.

It’s definitely a topic I’d like learn more about. Speaking of which, one might start here, with the NAM…

Wow! I love this. I stumbled upon it today. And I’ve watched three episodes in one sitting. I don’t know, for sure, but it appears that’s the whole lot?

In the first episode he marches along Happisburgh beach in Norfolk, discusses ancient footprints (the earliest archaeological evidence of humans in British records, to date) with a local expert, and sets out an overall timeline.

It’s a little evolutionary tale in miniature. The finding, recording and synthesis of such evidence – e.g. the transience of rapid erosion on soft sediments vs the likelihood of near ‘accidental’ stumblings upon that archaeological evidence – make for a fascinating subject in themselves.

In each episode he makes something. In episode one he knaps flint, making an almond-shaped axe-head. Describing, as he does so, how these things also signal not just a new ‘technology’, but the advent of art; the pursuit of aesthetic beauty as well pure functionality.

In the second episode Ray crafts a flint-tipped arrow, and we encounter the revolution that is farming. I want to make a bow like the one he’s using in the picture above.

One of the things that struck me most forcibly in this episode was his comment, whilst making the wooden shaft for his arrow, sat by a fire, about time. And how these elder days folk had a lot of it. For all our vaunted knowledge and tech, we – certainly personally speaking – never have enough time.

It’s ironic that the cumulative effect of all our technologies, at least as they manifest in such societies as ours, in contemporary England, rather than liberating us, seem to have made us more frantic. Such that nowadays almost nobody has time for anything meaningful, such as connecting with nature.

In episode three Mears covers sudden accelerations of technology, and corresponding increases in the complexity of society. Humanity in Britain has shifted from hunter gathering to the settled life of agriculture, and moved from the Stone to the Iron Age.

He observes that this shift, which enables more complex society and culture, wasn’t – from the point of view of the health of the individual – a step forward. But a step backwards. Early farmers had worse diets and suffered more disease and earlier deaths than their hunter-gatherer forbears.

He doesn’t examine that thread further, here. But it’s interesting to me, inasmuch as it shows that evolutionary development doesn’t necessarily equate with the idea of ‘progress’ as a path to perfection. Certainly not from the viewpoint of any given organism.

Whether we call it simply change, or the more freighted development, whilst evolutionary paths are necessarily constrained, they most definitely not developing according to human ideas of attaining perfection.

Fascinating stuff, in that old school BBC style, think Reith or Attenborough; intelligent, educational. Happy to take its time.

I’d love to learn more about foraging for wild food. For many reasons, including the infernal expense of food shopping! Here are some of the plants he talks about: Golden Saxifrage, the Poly Poly fern (Polystichum Polyblepharum), and the Linden or lime tree.

A great if rather scant series. Simple, modest, unpretentious. Not earth-shattering. But deeply fascinating. And conducive to promoting further fascination.

‘It’s so mysterious. I just wish we knew more,’ he says. Agreed!

Listening to this, in which Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss The 100 Days. What fun!

Bragg’s guests are: Michael Rowe (Reader in European History at Kings College, London), Katherine Astbury (Professor of French Studies at the University of Warwick) and Zack White (Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the University of Portsmouth).

They give a very good account of the events, from Napoleon’s near miraculous ‘flight of the Eagle’ (not that they refer to his return using that phrase) – his return from Elban exile – through to the four battles of the Waterloo campaign, and the aftermath.

It’s interesting to hear Katherine Astbury describe how Napoleon’s constitutional changes survive his downfall. And the discussion on the legacy of the Napoleonic Wars as a whole is, as ever, endlessly fascinating.

Interestingly, when asked who benefited most from the outcome of Waterloo, our three experts all give different answers. I like Michael Rowe’s best. He says just look in the gift shop at the Waterloo battlefield Visitor Centre, and on that basis: ‘I would choose Napoleon.’

[Pictured above: a very expensive edition of Hardy’s ‘unstageable play’. Asking $1,250! *

This echoes something Thomas Hardy put into the mouth of an unusual character (to us, the modern reader), in his epic poetic-play, The Dynasts:

SPIRIT SINISTER

Well; be it so. My argument is that War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading. So I back Bonaparte for the reason that he will give pleasure to posterity.

*I bought a small hardback edition on our most recent holiday.

An interesting little coda to this podcast is included, as a bonus, when the guests are asked; What did they not get time to mention?

Watched this again yesterday. We watched it as an afternoon matinee. Great old fashioned fun. They don’t make ‘em like they used to. And more’s the pity.

It’s just past midnight. I’m sitting upright-ish, in bed. Not able, currently, to sleep. I hate insomnia with the deep-seated hatred of bitter experience.

Sadly, a common cold, or a nights’ disrupted sleep, can be life-threatening for me these days. Why? Because I’ve been ground down by adversity and suffering – and no doubt being a right tit – for sooooooooooooooooo fucking long.

As I lie/sit here, awake. I wish only for oblivion. The cessation of suffering. Or just plain cessation. And such feelings hardly seem hysterical or unreasonable to me.

But I durs’nt act on them. Because that would be cowardly and selfish. Say The Living. To me it would be bold and decisive. A positive move, to bring about a state devoutly wished for.

Ho fucking hum… it’s cowardly selfishness and laziness, and brute in-built survival instincts, that keep me going. What a sorry carry on.

I’m currently listening to this (an In Our Time podcast on Voltaire’s Candide). Which lead me to start reading his Letters on England.

Many moons ago, a friend recommended Candide, so I bought the edition pictured below, and read it. Frankly? I hated it!

This was a major disappointment, as practically everything I’d heard about Voltaire up till that point had predisposed me to loving both him and his writings.

If one is at all literary or culturally minded, in a European context, Voltaire’s going to figure. I’d encountered references to him countless times. But it wasn’t until we watched an episode of Kenneth Clarke’s Civilisation, in which he featured prominently, that I decided to take a keener interest.

I think I’ll have to revisit Candide, at some point. Maybe it needs a contemporary rewrite? Perhaps even a graphic novel treatment? I’m usually horrified by the mere idea of such ‘re-boots’. But, as written – at least in the translation I read – Candide was an unenjoyable unfunny slog.

At this point I returned to the podcast. About midway through. One of the pundits is saying ‘The narrative structure is an attack on Leibniz.’ By which he means two things (as the fuller context makes clear): one is the attack on the Optimism, of the subtitle, and two is chaos vs order.

The narrative of Candide feels like utter chaos. A constant series of unrelated episodes. Leibniz, by contrast, suggests that all is actually ordered to a Divine plan. It may look shitty to us. But from a Gods’ eye view all is exactly as it ought to be. It’s ordered and good.

This is interesting. For numerous reasons. On the level of pure reading, the near total lack of narrative structure reduces Candide to a bewildering – and seemingly pointless – maelstrom of apparently random stuff.

For a contemporary analogue, imagine the most self-indulgent of late 1960s film (see above), or – for an even more lobotomised equivalent – something like Kentucky Fried Movie. I’m not equating these films with Voltaire’s ideas or intent, but the rather the viewer/reader experience. How they feel.

What strikes me, as I listen to the podcast, is how philosophy, or what I’ll call intellectualism, seems to result, very often, in rather gloomy results. Perhaps deep thinking can and is often overdone? Does that mean Voltaire is saying thought/philosophy is (worse than) useless? That’s certainly a view one could take from a passage near the end of the novel:

“Let us work,” said Martin, “without disputing; it is the only way to render life tolerable.”

Buddhism is another cultural efflorescence of such a ‘mindful’ or thoughtful/philosophical approach, and, rather as with the 17th C. Encyclopaedist Bayle (mentioned here as an antecedent to Voltaire’s ideas), the conclusions often reached are… that life is suffering. Buddhism goes even further; it’s all suffering, and it’s all illusory anyway!

These are, on the face of things, extremely bleak outlooks or philosophies.

Going back to Voltaire. I find the way folk discuss him, his writings, life and ideas, is what – thus far – I find most compelling. Not Voltaire’s writing itself. This reminds me of hearing critics discuss Christopher Nolan films. The talk sounds interesting. But the films are, I find, unwatchable.

Back to the podcast, and Candide. Bragg presciently observes that, in many ways, the book seems both chaotic and dashed off, as if in response to recent calamities (like the Lisbon earthquake, of 1775). Are there any underlying generalised messages?

One is the already alluded to attack on Liebniz-ian optimism. And the response to that seems to be despair at our impotence. The second, and the only sliver of hope – fannily emuff it’s exactly the conclusion I’ve already come to in my own ‘real’ life – is that one might, perhaps (if one is fortunate enough) carve out a little personal shangri-la somewhere, and there shelter from the madness of the world.

In truth, then, for all that I find Candide a very unenjoyable headache-inducing mess, in essence I agree with the author’s intent. I just don’t much like the execution.

Regarding the latter, perhaps rather like me – albeit I do so to virtually no audience (and the wrong ones at that) – Voltaire’s totally hung up on constantly displaying his wit and erudition.

Anyway… I finally finished the In Our Time podcast. And it’s interesting that the novel ends with what can and often is taken to be a Voltaire-ian admonition; ‘We must cultivate our garden.’

Once again I find myself in broad (if not total?) agreement with Voltaire, if this is indeed his own view, and not just another layer of ironic lampoon.

S’funny, how things work out. Some pretty awful shit has happened in my life, particularly in the last couple of years.

But, viewed from the right perspective, even the bad stuff can (possibly?) be ‘made good’. Not in and of itself. But dint of the overall picture.

I’d been wanting to stop teaching for years. And now I have. The way my teaching career ended was most emphatically not the way I wanted it to. But the overall outcome, in part at least, was.

On a whole other lesser level, yet equally fundamental – pardon the pun – the recent breaking of our toilet, by a pal/regular guest… (further poor punning alert), well… that didn’t pan out as we’d wanted it to, either. But in the end; we’d long needed a new toilet. Now we have one.

I mention these two things, one that very nearly destroyed my whole life, and another that, whilst much more mundane, was still of great importance, to bring in a third topic.

Work and health, right now.

When we took our recent break, a short while back, I could often be heard saying – to anyone who’d listen – that whilst one week was very nice, what I really needed was at least six months time out.

Well, once again, I’m being forced to do what I both want and need to do, not out of choice, but circumstance. On returning from our hols I couldn’t work. My driving license had expired. That lead to the one week off expanding to three weeks.

And now, having only just resumed work, I’ve come down with a cold, flu, or something. Today, Sunday, if I manage to summon the energy to read for half an hour, it knocks me out completely, such that I then sleep an hour or so!

I certainly won’t make my minimum £300 a week, in this, my first week back at work. Indeed, I’ll be lucky if I make £200. But I’m being forced to take time off work just to survive.

It’s as if mind, body, even the goddamn indifferent universe, are conspiring to force my hand.

I’m not quite there yet – or mayhap I am? – with Voltaire’s Pangloss: ‘all being created for an end, all is necessarily for the best end.’ But I guess I’m fishing in the same lake?

What is Optimism?” asked Cacambo
‘Alas!’ said Candide, ‘it is the mania for insisting that all is well when all is by no means well.’ And he wept…

I guess I’m trying pull something from the fire? I’ve been to Hell, in gasoline pants (thanks, Tom), and I’m not dead yet.