Seb Palmer

Partial Annals of the rise of Rome.

In this Oxford World Classics edition of books 6-10 of Livy’s chronicle of the rise of Rome we learn much about an interesting time: fighting constant wars with her neighbours, whilst also undergoing continual class struggle at home (between the plebs and the patricians), Rome’s military might somehow transcends the vagaries of the Republican system – dictators in this era were appointed, and would resign once their work (the particular task for which they were appointed) was done: a very different conception from the modern dictator! – allowing Rome to dominate and gradually unify Italy under her rule.

The annalistic style makes, at times, for repetitive and rather dry reading, with regular lists of who was consul, dictator, or ‘master of horse’. Although there’s a strong temptation to skip all this naming, the formula has, for me at any rate, the unexpected humour value of throwing up some rather entertaining names: there are a number of amusing individual names, such as Furius, Manlius, & Postumius, and occasionally even a prize pairing, as in Spurius Furius!  No doubt an awareness of such nominal nonsense inspired Python’s infamous ‘Biggus Dickus’ scene in life of Brian. The constant conflicts can perhaps likewise lose their edge through sheer exhaustion, something Livy tacitly concedes himself in places.

Even though the practice of history has evolved a lot, one sees with writers like Livy (and Arrian, Tacitus, etc.) the desire to relate history as faithfully as they are able. So Livy often gives several variant accounts, expressing his reasons for favouring one particular version over another. Two things, however, that date this relative to someone more modern, even someone as far back as Gibbon, for example, are that firstly, Livy already looks back to former times as being better than the present: the old ‘golden age fallacy’ again! One doesn’t even have to read between Livy’s own lines to see that, in our view (well, mine, at any rate) this was hardly a idyllic period: quite apart from the constant wars, they were a very superstitious and fickle lot! 

Superstition is the second dating factor: for superstition, there’s such things as the auguries, the ‘hammering in of a nail’ ceremony, and at one point what sounds suspiciously like a witch hunt. For early Roman fickleness, try the fate of Marcus Manlius Capitolinus: once hailed as Rome’s protector, his championing of the plebs finds him recast as seditious, leading to a grisly end. Livy even notes at one point, showing that there was an awareness of such things even at the time, that religion was kept within the patrician class as a means of controlling the ignorant masses: ‘mainly so they could use superstition to keep the mind of the common people in check’ (p. 4). Some things don’t change!

All in all, very interesting in giving a picture, in part contemporaneous with Alexander the Great (about whom he makes a digression to consider how Rome would have fared against him) of the rise of republican Rome. But it does suffer from a certain dryness and repetition, mostly due to the annalistic form adopted.

Superb!

In telling the story of A. Lincoln, Ronald C White, (Jr!) has given us a beautifully drawn if rather reverential rendering of a fascinating man. A man whose life manages to be almost prismatic, telescoping hundreds of years of cultural history into one short lifespan. A lifespan tragically shortened, at that.

The story begins with roots: Lincoln himself, though fascinated by his family history, was unable to trace it back far, and saw himself as descended from ‘undistinguished’ stock. White’s fuller picture reveals the Lincoln family odyssey, from fleeing England to seek religious and economic freedom, to Abe’s eventual sojourn in the Executive Mansion (as the Whitehouse was then known), to be a fascinating microcosm of the much larger American experience.

Lincoln’s limited rural childhood education didn’t stop this ambitious autodidact from achieving a dizzying ascent. His critics often chided him for his slow progress. But, as he himself said, though he walked slowly, he never walked backwards!

It’s perhaps a sad reflection of the political disillusionment of our times, but I’d generally actively avoid contemporary political biography, expecting it to be deadly dull. Lincoln’s path to power, via the worlds of law and politics, two fields of human endeavour which remain relatively obscure and cold to me, is, fortunately, sufficiently interesting to maintain our avid attention. And in his legal career seeds of Lincoln’s future presidential skills can be seen growing. The images that White conjures, of Lincoln riding the legal circuit, as a ‘Prairie Lawyer’, are also highly evocative.

As politics takes over from law we get a portrait not just of Lincoln the man, but of how American politics was itself evolving. Initially a Whig (whatever that is; one of the few quibbles I have with this book is that White doesn’t define this, assuming his readership will know*), Lincoln became a Republican. Rather strangely, to some modern readers, perhaps, the differences and similarities between Republicans and Democrats have evolved somewhat: in our time we’ve had a Democrat president of African American heritage; back in Lincoln’s days Republican ‘radicals’ were more frequently abolitionists, with Democrats more often the reactionary conservatives (or, to put it more bluntly, racists).

White skilfully tells the potentially dull tale of how Lincoln finally gets into power, not as the clear favourite, but at a time of muddled, fractious sectionalism, with enough verve to make it compelling. Once in power, it may surprise some readers – I think it surprised me – how cautiously Lincoln initially proceeded, clearly feeling his want of education and political office-holding experience. As he grows in experience in power, White shows Lincoln as becoming more confident of his own shrewd judgments: Lincoln’s inner moral compass – a pet theme of White’s – is already well developed. His faith that it will win the day takes time to grow.

Another favoured theme of White’s is Lincoln’s religious evolution (White has written other titles on more overtly religious subjects). I was fascinated by this aspect of the biography, despite coming at it – I’m guessing – from a really quite different perspective. Certainly it’s a very valid and important aspect of the portrait, Lincoln, like so many in America at that time (and even now, perhaps?), being thoroughly soused in a deeply Christian culture. 

It could probably be argued – by those who know more on the subject than I do – that White’s portrait of Lincoln is perhaps hagiographic. Certainly it’s a work written by an author who clearly loves his subject. That might not be all good, in that it may contribute to an over-idealised portrait. But from the viewpoint of supplying a cracking good read, the author’s passion for his subject is a clear boon.

I come to this primarily via an interest in the ACW (American Civil War). As a prime player in that epic drama, one can’t help but be drawn to Lincoln’s part in it all. Seeing Spielberg’s Lincoln only added to the desire to know more. First I bought a slim Penguin volume, which I can recommend, which collates some of Lincoln’s famously sonorous and memorable speeches and letters, etc. Good as that is, the hunger for more and deeper knowledge of this fascinating man ultimately lead me here. 

And I’m glad it did. This is an excellent book, about an uncommonly inspiring man. Lincoln’s facility with language and ideas is remarkable. And one of his many attractive qualities, both as lawyer and politician, and that despite presiding over a terrible civil war (assuredly not of his making), is his sagaciously conciliatory approach. Napoleon was said to have had great charisma. Lincoln appears to have had it also. But of an entirely different sort. One quickly loses count of the number of times one reads in this book of people coming to Lincoln, dead set against him, and seeking to alter both his outward course and inner mind – they arrive contentious, as enemies – only to depart with their minds changed, as admirers. 

I found this book fascinating, informative, occasionally thrilling, and often – esp. when reading Lincoln’s masterfully crafted words – moving. A study of Lincoln’s life and times remains salutary. And I’m grateful to White for supplying us with a highly readable account of an inspiring American president.

* And in case you don’t know either, here’s Wikipedia’s definition: Whiggism.

I came to this odd little gem via Carl Sagan’s Cosmos TV series. In an episode of that superb series Sagan uses an apple – gleefully slicing and printing circular sections, rather poorly, with it – to illustrate Abbot’s ideas on how one might begin to think extra-dimensionally.

A clergyman and teacher, Abbot’s Flatland is a modern philosophical/religious parable. As an atheist, I felt that I might find this troublesome. But, to my mind at least, Abbot’s ideas tap deeper roots than mere allegories for Christian religion (such as C. S. Lewis’ Narnia series, which don’t). As a philosophical nugget, this tiny book packs a powerful punch, reminding us – like Hume’s Dialogue & History of Natural Religion that – if we take ourselves as the measure of everything, we’re likely to severely miscalculate in many important areas. I’m not sure what Abbott would make of my reading of his work, but I find it stimulates my mind rather towards scientific paradigm shifts, like the cosmological re-orderings of Copernicus and Galileo, or Darwin’s fundamental rewriting of the history of life on earth, than religious ones.

It’s tricky territory, and, rather like the pervasive fogs that fill Flatland, it can be hard to keep the bigger philosophical ideas that lurk here in focus. On one level (which of Abbot’s levels this might correspond to I can’t be sure) this can be read as a Victorian appeal to retain a religious sense of ‘our place’ in ‘creation’, but on another, and to my mind deeper (or more dimensional) level, it’s also a thought experiment concerning how humans are stuck in the matrix of their own physical/mental modes of perception, and that’s an exciting area for thought.

There’s a point in the book (the pun’s unavoidable), where the Sphere shows the Square a view of Pointland, where there are no dimensions, in which a single consciousness buzzes continuously to itself: able only to perceive itself, all else is merely an aspect of it’s self. The square and the sphere are horrified by the introspective solipsism of the point*, the Sphere sternly declaiming, somewhat contradictorily: “Behold yon miserable creature… mark his perfect self-contentment, and hence learn this lesson… to be self-contented is to be vile and ignorant… to aspire is better than to be blindly and impotently happy”. This passage puts contemporary aspirations to contentment, which most if not all of us no doubt pursue in much of our lives, however ineffectually, in an interesting light. 

A very short but stimulating and pleasurable read, highly recommended.

* to misuse an art historical term, such pointillism brings to mind the horrific cognitive aberration that is that is Postodernism (‘there is nothing outside the text’!), a mode of ‘thinking’ that is ultimately, irony of ironies, utterly pointless.

Lost on the quest? Lost in translation? Either way… lost.

I first reviewed this, for Amazon UK, in 2010. This is a complete rewrite, or different review, however (same star rating, though).

This is my first taste of Peter Ackroyd’s writing, and, I must confess, it was a slog getting through this book.

Ackroyd mentions trying to retain the “plangent and sonorous” language of Malory’s original – although from what I can tell this was in itself a somewhat patchy synthesis of older tales – but this is an aspect that, for me at any rate, is lost in translation.

The stories making up this book feel like small tales from an oral tradition, one in which any one of the many small adventures described might plausibly be little gems, when taken individually. Or perhaps they were simply tall tales told to pass a cold night huddled round the fire? Sometimes with a moral, sometimes just for the thrill of the adventure.

The trouble is that in this version, the sense of homogeneity is not one of an overarching larger story, or even the charismatic voice of one particular storyteller, but rather a patchwork of oft-repeated formulae – a hunt, a jousting tournament, the discovery of a chapel/hermit – which I found dull rather than exciting.

And there are times when different narrative voices seem to intrude, with no real consistency, such as when the narrator momentarily refers to the reader’s potential doubts regarding a particular miraculous occurence. Such a note really jars, as almost nowhere else are the many such occurrences in any way questioned. A similar but different moment is a reflection on the bizarre theme of courtly love, that does run like a thread throughout these tales: again, out of the blue, the narrator suddenly addresses the reader, and again, it jars somewhat.

Ackroyd may well be right in thinking that some modern readers (perhaps some of the people he had in mind are more watchers than readers?) might not have the palate for Malory’s version. But, in this age of visual recycling – I’m thinking of all the cinema and TV remakes of older books/films and so on – this smacks somewhat of a literary equivalent, so I think the dumbing-down charge made elsewhere, by other reviewers (e.g. on Amazon’s UK website, where I first posted a version of this review), rings true.

It’s been said that Tennyson’s version of this material, The Idylls of The King, says more about Victorian England than it does about the times from which the mytho-poetic subject allegedly springs. I think perhaps the same could be said of this version, and, sadly, it reflects rather poorly on our times, as lacking in either depth or a grand vision. Dare I even suggest that this may have been a project motivated more by a desire for profit from an ever popular subject, than the pure love of it?

By way of contrast, I’d like to refer the potential reader of this book to Tolkein’s fabulous book The Legend of Sigurd And Gudrun. Arising from Professor Tolkein’s work as an academic philologist, this posthumous publication is, by contrast, very clearly a work driven by a deep and abiding love of his subject, a subject ostensibly similar or parallel to Arthurian legend (the Celtic and Nordic myths even connecting at points, through characters such as Tristan and Isolde), including similar aspects of storytelling: warring clans, betrayal, revenge, shifting alliances, feats of arms, love and honour, portents, omens, charms and potions.

But where Ackroyd loses the magic, Tolkien succeeds in retaining it, perhaps even enhancing it, so that the story remains compelling and exciting, as opposed to the rambling hotch-potch on offer here.

I couldn’t, in all honesty, recommend this.

I first reviewed this on Amazon UK, a decade ago. This rewritten review is a similar age.

Betjeman’s original book covered twice as many churches (approximately 5000). This new shiny hardback coffee table version is lavishly illustrated, and as a result cuts the number of churches covered in half, at roughly 2,500… still plenty!

First I’d like to point out before going any further that I’m not Christian. I am, using A. C. Grayling’s pithy phrase, a naturalist and free-thinker. Nonetheless, I, like this country and our culture, am steeped in the ever-evolving Christian tradition. I was brought up Christian, and went to several churches, none of which were deemed beautiful enough for inclusion here!

And the legacy on our landscape, and in our lives, from our language to the sights and sounds we deem typically English, are all bound up with the history of Christianity. And, regardless of all this, some churches are just very beautiful. I’ve often liked stopping at a random church and wondering around inside, connecting in my own quiet, personal and meditative way, with all that life and history. So this book was a must.

I confess I know little about Betjeman outside this book, except that he was a poet, and indeed poet Laureate for a while. When reading his introductory essay, it struck me that Betjeman chooses to spell the word ‘show’ using the rather archaic British variant ‘shew’, which is fittingly antiquarian, but irritates me mildly, as I feel, and indeed my brain is wired, through learning commonplace English, to think that it should be pronounced to rhyme with shrew, stew, brew or few, of for that matter pew: that’s how it looks!

In light of this I was not initially sure I go with the TLS quote on the cover which effusively describes Betjeman’s introductory essay as ‘pure gold’. In fact at first I found it more crabbily and fustily conservative (rather like some of the church wardens you may bump into when visiting churches using this book), if very erudite and occasionally quite funny, as for example: “If the path leading… wealthy unbelievers … key from there.” (p23) Well, that’s certainly priceless, but not necessarily because it’s ‘pure gold’!

He also, as well as making some very prescient remarks, says a few things, which, to my mind at least, are a little odd, such as “It must be admitted that spirituality and aesthetics rarely go together.” I guess this depends on you how you define spirituality, a nebulous term at the best of times. But many admirers of culture, including eminent scholars of religion, for example Diarmid MCulloch, stress the great contribution religion makes to our aesthetic culture. Quite apart from own mainly Christian heritage ( which has plenty in it that’s clearly pagan), one need only think of the incredible non-figurative arts of Islam, the rich iconography of Buddhist mandalas, or the great traditions of religious music, to wonder if perhaps Betjeman has made a mistake with this particular pronouncement. In the context where he makes it, it is more plausible – he’s lamenting the restorations and addition to a church that are, by and large “practical and unattractive”, and begs that we remember “however much we deplore it … [these ugly things] have been saved up for by some devout and penurious communicant.’

Whilst this sonorous phrasing has an appeal, its rendering of the ‘spiritual’ is open to debate. And the quote that follows is dour Puritanism, and despite England’s break with Rome, I don’t think that Christianity, or humanity, for that matter, was suddenly and totally bereft of aesthetic awareness. Indeed, that’s more than half the attraction of this book: these churches are frequently very interesting, and often, in part or in whole, quite beautiful.

It is true, there are some horribly oppressive Christian buildings across these islands, and even some of the churches we’ve visited using this book belong in that category, but fortunately they’re in a minority. however, when he follows his line of thought to the conclusion that “Conservatism is innate in ecclesiastical arrangement” I can’t disagree. But perhaps this pinpoints the difference between religion and spirituality?

“Who has heard a muffled peal and remained unmoved?” Well, ironically part of the appeal of hearing church bells to folk like me, nowadays, is the comparative rarity with which you hear the sound. In the times where I’ve lived close by a regular ringers church what has annoyed me is not that “they are reminders of Eternity” (in the whole I get along well with Eternity and any reminded I get of her), buy that I’m being reminded of a belief which I don’t share, and a belief whose omnipresence, and even perhaps omnipotence, is, thankfully, receding.

One little criticism is that the photos which illustrate points being made in the introductory text give only the village/town name, and then the church name, but not the county. This could very easily been included, and would have been very useful in determining if the church shown is within easy reach. So, for example ‘EAST SHEFFORD: ST THOMAS’, which happens to be on the page I was on when this shortcoming struck me, could so very easily have been ‘EAST SHEFFORD: ST THOMAS (Berkshire)’.

Jazz Cat in a Rock n Roll Circus

Oh dear, another legend shuffles off…

It was only a very short while back that Charlie Watts announced he’d be sitting out the upcoming Stones tour, and letting Steve Jordan take his place. He’d be back as soon as he recovered.

But now, like so many before him, he’s gone. At least he leaves behind a musical legacy. Most of us will pass through this vale of tears mostly unnoticed, leaving precious little trace once we’re gone.

Not so Charlie Watts. I won’t bother lionising him, here and now, nor even analysing his part in The Stones. I’ll just share a few pics and tracks, and get back into listening to the music more.

In truth, Charlie Watts’ death is, for me, the trigger to finally dive deep into The Stones. Something I’ve always been slightly resistant to, for some obscure reason.

So, anyway, despite a total absence of funds, I’ve managed to get hold of a bunch of Stones’ albums, namely: Satanic, Beggars, Bleed, Sticky and Goat’s Head… plus I already had Exile. So that’s a solid run of their albums, from ‘67-‘72, probably their best ‘streak’?

In the longer term I’ll probably get more; a few earlier ones, to see where they were coming from, and poss’ even some later ones (Goat’s Head Soup might already be on its way?), some of which – Undercover, Dirty Work, for example – I heard as a kid at home.

Like Charlie, I’m a keen jazzbo. Obviously he grew up closer to all the stuff that he loved/influenced him. And my route into and through jazz has been much later and very different. But, to a certain degree, like Watts I feel like my heart is in jazzville, whilst my body is in a rock n roll, or, (poss’ much worse!?) pop land.

Well… so long, Chuck!

The Man Who Recorded The World

More from ye archives. This one’s a biog’. Szwed has also written about Sun Ra, Miles (I’ve read that one, as well) and Billie Holiday.

Alan Lomax lead a manically busy life, and he did so on the margins of academia and popular culture, carving out his own path, and forging his own ideas along the way.

A collector, recorder, performer, promoter and general svengali, he was best known as a ‘folklorist’, travelling first America and then the world, recording (and also filming and photographing) first music, and then also dance and speech.

In Alan Lomax, The Man Who Recorded The World, academic music historian John Szwed tells his fascinating story.

As I’ve found with many stories concerning a passion for musical culture, it’s the early chapters that sizzle with energy and excitement – a time of discovery and optimism – with later chapters tending, by comparison, to fizzle somewhat, with a melancholy sense of youthful enthusiasms being blunted, over time, by the world’s indifference.

Lomax, like many of his subjects, is in danger of disappearing in the maelstrom of our commercially lead culture. I share Lomax’s views that ‘art emerges from deeply encoded but virtually nonconscious behaviour’.

I also share Szwed’s view that Lomax’s influence and legacy are massive, if often unknown or unacknowledged. I know that a lot of stuff I like, in culture as a whole, and musical culture more particularly, is, in various ways, related to his passions, echoes of which can be encountered in all manner of places, both obvious and obscure (from the soundtrack of Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou, to Joni Mitchell’s use of Burundi drumming in her song ‘The Jungle Line’).

This book was a fascinating read, and very hard to put down. It leaves me wanting to access as much of Lomax’s legacy as I can, in particular the films he made about folksy music scenes in America, and enrich myself via access to his ideas, enthusiasm, and the huge archives he compiled.

Much of his enormous body of work – from records and films, to books and compilations of songs, etc. – is out of print. But some of it can be found, via such resources as the Association For Cultural Equity, on labels like Rounder Records, and even on YouTube.

I’ve already watched some of his American Patchwork films, such as Appalachian Journey, and found them fascinating and enjoyable. So I’ll be seeking out more in due course.

Szwed’s book on Lomax is both a testimony to the man’s manic energy, and wide-ranging interests, and a fascinating account of a modern maverick. Highly recommended.

Above is Appalachian Journey, from a 1991 series called American Patchwork.

PS – Lomax’s archives are huge, and legendary. Some have found their way into institutions, but most haven’t. Here’s an interesting link to an NPR (National Public Radio, the US equivalent of BBC Radio) article about how a load of his archives are being made available to the public:

Alan Lomax archives go online.

Whilst it’s the follow up to The Seven Crystal Balls, Prisoners of the Sun is quite different. Whereas Balls is very much a European affair, with lots of comedy and interpersonal drama, Prisoners is an exotic Peruvian travelogue.

The artwork is fabulous, beautifully evoking everything from the flora and fauna to the varied landscapes. And in this quintessentially adventurous album, nature in its many guises – mountains, forests, rivers – and exotic peoples and animals, a as ll play their part.

Hergé loved National Geographic magazine, and Prisoners is a kind of Boys Own Adventure version of NG, on steroids. The hokum of the Inca sacrilege thread is pure ‘McGuffin’, by which I mean plot driving yet immaterial.

By this stage, Hergé had come a long way from the anti-Soviet and colonialist roots of the first two albums (Soviets and Congo). And yet whilst Tintin is proud to appear to respect the Inca and stand up for natives bullied by ‘foreigners’, neither he nor Hergé have entirely escaped the white man’s burden of condescension, witness the ‘playing’ of Western scientific knowledge against native superstition.

But it’s great that we can still enjoy this classic serving of Tintin in-Bowdlerised; beautifully rendered if still laden with the assumptions of its times. It’s a cracking good adventure. A as of a great deal of fun. Love it!

The thirteenth of the ‘official’ albums, and the third of four double-bill type adventures in the series overall, The Seven Crystal Balls is pure classic Tintin.

A Peruvian expedition gets a brief mention as Tintin travels by steam train to Marlinspike Hall, after which a lengthy episode develops around Captain Haddock’s efforts to replicate a music-hall magic trick in which a conjuror turns water into whisky.

There’s much hilarity and some beautifully rendered comic pratfalls as Tintin and the now wealthy Haddock (see The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham’s Treasure) – trying out being the monocled country gent – follow this zany thread.

But Hergé also cleverly interweaves this slapstick stuff with the unfolding of the adventures more serious plot, using General Alcazar – now the knife-throwing ‘Ramon Zarate’ – and his Inca assistant, plus an Indian mind-reading duo (and a Castafiore cameo, for good measure), to link back to the Peruvian expedition, and the foretold fate of the ‘meddling foreigners’, who dare loot sacred Inca stuff!

As the plot thickens, the seven members of the Sanders-Hardiman Peruvian team are knobbled, one by one, via the titular seven crystal balls. Thompson and Thomson, Tintin, Snowy, Haddock and Cuthbert Calculus are all trying to protect the explorers, without success.

Calculus’ old pal Prof. Tarragon is the last explorer to fall foul of the Inca prophesy/curse. The sequel, Prisoners of the Sun, is set up not only by the need to rescue the seven explorers from their cursed comas, but because dear old Cuthbert gets himself abducted (and not for the last time, either!), which brings the old and true Haddock back.

I absolutely love this double-bill. The Tintin project is at its peak: a great story, beautifully drawn (and coloured!), filled with equal parts humour and drama, all adding up to huge amounts of fun.

A blunt ineffectual instrument.

More from the archives.

At one point in this book Overy describes strategic bombing as ‘the western front of the war’. By invoking the massive and largely wasteful carnage of the trench warfare of WWI this brief description from Overy delivers a judgement he elsewhere steps gingerly around. For us living on an island where for several hundred years the civilian population has been largely insulated from the vicissitudes of European war, bombing quite literally brought home what Overy aptly describes as an ‘unprecedented violation of British domestic life’, with 43,000 civilians killed. Overall though, for me, this book was more about exposition than judgement. Overy sets the facts before us. We have to decide what we make of them.

With a deft authorial touch Overy’s epic study of death from the air in the new era of ‘total war’ starts and ends in Bulgaria. I won’t spoil it by telling you how exactly. Confining himself to Europe, Overy shines a light on some areas less well examined, such as the bombing of Russia, Italy and occupied Europe (the latter in the well-titled ‘Bombing Friends Bombing Enemies’ chapter) and others much more widely debated, such as the Battle of Britain, the Blitz, and the Battle for Germany. The first thing to make clear is that, whilst numerous other aspects of aerial conflict are mentioned, this is about the ‘strategic’ heavy-bombing war, in which the home front became a new front line, and a major theme of the book has to do with ‘those [non-combatants] caught in the crossfire of war’.

Having begun WWII weaned on a diet of dystopian inter-war prophecy all nations and their air forces were slow, despite all the speculation, to adjust to the reality of this new modern form of conflict. Once combat is joined Overy notes a number of emerging paradoxes: the use of cutting edge science and technology to deliver what transpired to be a very blunt instrument; the rapid volte-face from the condemnation of any bombing where civilians might be killed (and attendant hollow promises not to resort to it) followed not only by the conscious embracing of killing an enemy’s civil population, but also by a seemingly inevitable escalation in doing so, as bombing changed from illegal barbarism to default weapon; and, perhaps especially, the mismatch between expectations and results.

In this last lie at least two further paradoxes: the first has to do with the ‘absolute nature’ of perceived threats leading to the necessary ‘moral relativism’ requisite to embracing strategic bombing; whilst the second concerns the ‘wide gap … between claims and results’. What emerged in this gap was not what the inter-war projections had suggested, i.e. the very quick and complete collapse of bombed societies, but a new aerial theatre of war, soaking up massive amounts of money, technology and blood, most often ending up in long, protracted campaigns. Whilst exact figures in such a history are hard to be certain of, for a host of reasons which Overy discusses, he tends to favour lesser but better substantiated (or estimated) figures, citing 600,000 civilian dead in Europe as a result of the bombing war.

Overy is very good on complexity and multiplicity: whilst acknowledging the enduring clichés and the propaganda of the time, he tries to sift the evidence (and the degree of research and detail is impressive bordering on mind-numbing) to provide more nuanced accounts. In places the statistics make for a dry account, but they are balanced with enough human interest to sustain the demanding level of detail. Whilst Overy more or less occludes his own views, a judgement seeps through from the bare facts: the so called strategic heavy bombing war was ‘inadequate in its own terms … [&] morally compromised’. And what have we learned? ‘The principal lesson learned from the bombing campaigns of the Second World War was the need for even greater and more indiscriminate destruction of the enemy if ever World War III materialised.’ Chilling stuff!

Perhaps a brutal editor could have helped trim this enormous tome a little, and I’d have almost certainly found it easier going if it had been broken up a bit more (sections and chapters err on the huge side). But the subject merits this in-depth treatment, and Overy delivers a compelling narrative with great aplomb. My proof copy lacked photos, map and index, all of which will doubtless enhance an already rich experience. Whilst I’d love to recommend this book to the widest possible readership, I think the scale and level of detail will mean it’s not read by as many as perhaps it ought to be. A model of scholarly research, lucid prose and balanced exposition, I just hope the books size doesn’t limit it’s readership. I suspect it will.

Nevertheless, very highly recommended.