nwhyte's reviews
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Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion by Charles Townshend

http://nhw.livejournal.com/601659.html[return][return]I guess most people reading this will at least be aware of what I was brought up to call the Easter Rising (Townshend prefers "rebellion", for reasons which are well argued), most memorably portrayed in the opening section of Neil Jordan's film about Michael Collins (where you may remember that Dev has mysteriously been transported to the GPO from the other side of the river, and the building appears to face south rather than east). A few hundred rebels seized control of central Dublin on Easter Monday, 1916, and eventually were shelled out by the British as they retook the city; while most of the leaders were shot by firing squad, the survivors became the nucleus of the political movement that fought for and then ruled the independent Irish state that emerged in 1921. It is generally regarded as one of the turning points in Irish history; and while Townshend tries to cast some doubt on that assessment, he doesn't really succeed, carried away as he is by the drama of the topic. There's lots of detail here, and some very interesting analysis as well.[return][return]The most extraordinary finding for me was the true extent of British repression in the run-up to 1916: specifically, that there was so little of it. MI5 employed 1453 people as postal censors in England, Scotland and Wales by the end of 1915. In Ireland there were precisely ten people doing the job, five in Belfast and five in Dublin. Of course, the Post Office, as it turns out, was pretty heavily infiltrated by militant nationalists anyway, so it might not have done any good; but they simply were not trying. (The fact that the GPO was the headquarters at Easter 1916 is not especially relevant here.) The government had no intelligence capability - or rather, there were a number of intelligence-gathering agencies, but they don't seem to have been reporting to anyone, and no effort appears to have been made to find out who exactly was in control of the various armed militias parading around the place, let alone what their political agenda and concrete plans might be. Even the Pope had been told that an Easter rebellion was planned, but the British were caught completely by surprise. The authorities had given up trying to enforce even the limited extra wartime repressive measures offered by the Defence of the Realm Act within six months of the war breaking out. No wonder that they were caught napping (or, to be more accurate, out at the races) when the rebellion began on Easter Monday. Townshend feels that the liberal character of British legal culture, even in its weaker Irish reflection, was too heavily engrained; I'm inclined to just put it down to sheer incompetence.[return][return]The legal theme continues through and after the rebellion. The Lord Lieutenant, desperately swigging brandy (like his first cousin Winston Churchill), declared martial law on the Monday, without any clear idea of what this would mean. This was then the justification for the most memorable and transformational episode of the entire affair - the execution in Dublin after secret court-martial of 14 of the rebels, including almost all the leadership. While this was by far the most drastic measure taken by the British state to defend itself, there were others, combining over-zealous repression with legal tail-spin: the internment without trial, on dubious grounds, of 1600 Irish prisoners (over a thousand of whom were then released because, essentially, there was no evidence against them); the authorities' refusal to publish the official records of the courts-martial at which prisoners had been condemned to death; the cabinet's repeated discussions of Roger Casement's pending execution - Townshend quotes Roy Jenkins, "There can be few other examples of a Cabinet devoting large parts of four separate meetings to considering an individual sentence - and then arriving at the wrong decision." (Townshend then notes that Jenkins was wrong - the Cabinet discussed the matter at least five times.)[return][return]Turning to the other side of the story, I also found very impressive Townshend's reconstruction, practically from the historiographical equivalent of trace fossils, of why Easter 1916 was planned as it was. Since all the people who actually knew what was going on had been executed within a few days of the end of the rebellion, and almost all the documentation, if it ever existed, had been lost, this was not an easy task. But he does a good job - significantly, many of the survivors among the rebels had been (or at least later claimed to have been) proponents of the guerilla warfare model that indeed was successful between 1919 and 1921, rather than the urban seizure which Pearse, fascinated as he was by Robert Emmett's 1803 adventure, had fixated on early in his career. Emmett, of course, didn't even manage to lead his rebels to the end of Thomas Street; but for Pearse, and for Joseph Mary Plunkett, who actually wrote the plan for 1916 (such as it was), that was hardly the point. William Irwin Thompson's The Imagination of an Insurrection argues that the entire Rising makes sense considered as a work of heroic literature to waken the country rather than as a military act, and if considered in those terms it must be considered a success. There is a certain desperate poetry in the only document of Plunkett's relating to the Rising that does survive, a notebook found lying in the street after it was all over, which ends with the scribbled notes:[return][return]"Food to Arnotts[return]"Order to remain all posts unless surrounded[return]"Barricades in front[return]"Henry St[return]"Food"[return][return]He's also very good on the actual events leading up to and surrounding the outbreak of the rebellion. There had been a scare from a leaked Dublin Castle document apparently planning for repressive measures to be taken in the event of introducing conscription. This led to the ramping up of tension and expectation, and seemed to offer an excuse to start the rebellion on Easter Sunday. Eoin MacNeill, of course, countermanded the orders; but as things turned out, he was not fully in control, and the rebellion went ahead, though on a smaller scale, on Easter Monday instead. A strength of the book is his description of what happened outside Dublin - more than is usually recounted, including relatively successful operations in Louth and Meath, and a dignified surrender with no lives (or even weapons) lost in Cork, for which both the British forces and the Cork rebels were duly chastised by their colleagues.[return][return]One of Townshend's more irritating habits is to describe the various military tactics pursued by the 1916 rebels, point out why they were flawed on any serious military analysis, and then wonder aloud why the rebels took this course. OK, so some decisions were indeed blindingly stupid - why the GPO, for heaven's sake (whatever Peter Berresford Ellis may say), rather than Dublin Castle, or the actual phone exchanges in Crown Alley and Store Street? Why St Stephen's Green, surrounded by tall buildings, rather than the citadel of Trinity College? Above all, why was no provision made for, well, provisions, so that by the end of the week the surviving rebels surrendered as much due to starvation as due to military defeat? But the answer, to me anyway, is pretty obvious: military victory was not, in fact, their chief goal. They did have a vague hope that they might hold out until the Germans came to rescue them, but no real evidence for this - indeed, Roger Casement was actually arrested on his way to tell the leadership explicitly that no German help would be forthcoming. (It's not entirely clear why the socialist radical James Connolly chose to unite his Irish Citizens Army with the larger nationalist - but not socialist group. He obviously wanted an armed revolution himself; did he imagine that a) the rebellion would succeed, and b) he would gain control of a post-revolutionary government? But of course he was also deluded enough to believe that the capitalists would not use heavy artillery against commercial property.)[return][return]Moving back a bit, I was very interested in the argument in an early chapter that Redmond and the Irish Party had irretrievably lost their credibility as early as 1915. Redmond, as leader of the Irish Nationalists, had taken a huge gamble by committing them to the service of the British during the first world war. He was comprehensively screwed over by two factors. First, the British army (Lord Kitchener in particular) decided not to incorporate the existing Irish Nationalist paramilitary structures into the army, with symbols and regimental identity etc, as was done for the Ulster Volunteers. The Commander of the 10th Division (in which my own grandfather fought) was "described in the divisional history as 'an Irishman without politics', but of course this meant he was a Protestant and an unthinking, not to say pig-headed conservative." Second, the war lasted a lot longer than people expected, which meant that Home Rule was now put off for far longer than the few months originally anticipated and that Redmond's main political role collapsed into being a British recruiting sergeant. Meanwhile the war was not going well. The only news most people were getting from the Western front was the telegram telling them their sons were dead. And while wages were frozen but prices rising all over the United Kingdom, it was in Ireland that wages were lowest and fewest jobs were created on foot of the war effort. In November 1915, Redmond was condemned in unprecedented terms by a Catholic bishop, who declared of the potential Irish recruits heading to America to escape any potential conscription, "Their blood is not stirred by memories of Kossovo, and they have no burning desire to die for Serbia."[return][return]It's an interesting and even slightly attractive argument, which goes completely against the orthodoxy that British repression following Easter 1916 turned Sinn Fein into a more credible political force than the tired Redmondites, but that up until then the older political party's position might have been salvageable. Rather to my surprise, after outlining his (to me) revolutionary and innovative analysis of the 1914-16 period, Townshend appears to retreat back into that orthodoxy in later chapters dealing with the 1916-18 period, which made me wonder if he really believed his own argument. He returns to it to speculate that, had there been no rebellion, there would have been a fatal crisis in 1918 anyway over conscription, leading to a political victory for more extreme nationalist forces, as Alvin Jackson seems to suggest in one of those alternate history books. Hmm.[return][return]A few other historiographical points. Townshend clearly sees himself as in the "revisionist" camp of Irish history, and will no doubt have been duly delighted by the republican rants against his book that I mentioned earlier. It's all a load of nonsense. Anyone interested in Irish history, of whatever political views, should be grateful to him for pulling this material together and in particular for the wealth of detail about the precise military facts of what happened. Havig said that, I was a bit unsatisfied on a couple of historical points. I was left unclear as to why Townshend believes that Bulmer Hobson was written out of the history of the Rising, in that he doesn't give examples of earlier accounts which omit or minimise him, and my own reading has tended to be from the more recent end of things anyway which counts him in. Likewise I was a little baffled by his defensiveness of the heads of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, W.V. Harrel and Sir John Ross of Bladensburgh (whose botanical correspondence I once riffled through, in a different life), who on any reasonable reading of the facts bore at least some responsibility for the Bachelor's Walk shootings in July 1914.[return][return]Three other peculiar little things noted here for completeness. Sean T. O'Kelly believed he had been appointed "Civil Administrator of the Government of the Republic". Almost thirty years later, he was elected President of the real thing. De Valera's surrender in Jacob's biscuit factory - Owen Dudley Edwards suggested that Dev was in the end over-ruled by his officers, but Townshend has him in control right the way through. And he quotes from an account of the defence of Trinity College, published anonymously, though I happen to know that the author was the TCD physicist John Joly.[return][return]Anyway, an excellent book. Though I would like to know more about the revolutionary implications of the bicycle.

Mc Sweeney's Mammoth Treasury Of Thrilling Tales by Michael Chabon, Dave Eggers

http://nhw.livejournal.com/882610.html[return][return]Decent collection of new stories in various genres; the editor's introduction makes it clear that he is trying to make some kind of point, but it is less clear what that point actually is. I particularly liked "Weaving the Dark" by Laurie King.

The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman

http://nhw.livejournal.com/145852.html[return][return]It really is fantastic. Art Spiegelman persuades his elderly, cranky father to recount the experience of the Holocaust, in a series of graphic novels originally published between 1980 and 1991. The Jews are mice; the Germans are cats; the Poles are pigs; one French character is a frog. Which at first sounds as if he's going for the worst stereotyping but in fact the moral comes out more as being to stress the shared humanity of all the participants. (At a couple of points Spiegelman interrupts the plot to reflect on the metaphor, but it still works.)[return][return]It's a grim story, of course, enlivened by shafts of unexpected wit and individual moments of heroism. For me one of the grimmest aspects was to reflect that the last issue of Maus was published the year before Milosevic started down precisely the same road in Croatia and Bosnia. Strongly recommended.

George And Sam by Charlotte Moore

http://nhw.livejournal.com/896760.html[return][return]This is a brilliant book about living with autism in your family. I found myself experiencing painful shocks of recognition every few pages, from the experience of the more neurotypical sibling, to the necessity of keeping important things (such as sugar and toothpaste) locked up, to the unintentional unkindnesses of friends and relatives. Our two girls are very different from Moore s two boys, and all four are of course very different from each other neither of ours can talk, while both of hers can; she has had more success with toilet training than we have; her boys apparently get along well with each other, while our four-year-old U is somewhat frightened of her ten-year-old sister B (who normally blithely ignores U, but has occasionally pulled her hair). Also, of course, she has managed to keep both of hers at home so far, whereas we are now expecting B to move out to full-time residential care in the next couple of months. Another extremely important difference is that my wife and I are still together. (Incidentally, I also realized that I know Moore s father through liberal politics.) There are many good lines in the book, but I ll just take this one from near the end as a good summary of the common ground I found with her:[return][return]"These mysterious, impossible, enchanting beings will always be among us, unwitting yardsticks for our own moral behaviour, uncomprehending challengers of our definition of what it means to be human."[return][return]You couldn t take this book as an essential medical text on autism. Nick Hornby in his introduction makes parallels with Wild Swans and Claire Tomalin s life of Pepys, but I think that s a mistake: both of those are deeply factual books which we should take as serious academic contributions to the histories of China and of seventeenth-century England. (For instance, Moore writes about experiments with diet as a way of improving her children s condition, but her account should be taken as a personal history rather than a medical recommendation; we ve tried that and it made no difference apart from making B grumpy because there was no cheese.) I think a better parallel is with Rebecca West s amazing Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, which is misleading and possibly even dangerous if taken as a factual history of Yugoslavia, but if read correctly as a human response to the experience of the Balkans is one of the great books of the twentieth century. Anyway, this is a great account of an important part of my world by someone who shares it.

Pattern Recognition by William Gibson

http://nhw.livejournal.com/54732.html[return][return]I've bought every William Gibson novel, though only for the writing style; I find the plot and characters completely forgettable (I know I've read Neuromancer five times, but can't remember a single thing that happens in it). But Pattern Recognition is different, and much, much better. The central character leans an unrooted, cosmopolitan, thoroughly wired existence, as she tracks down the reality behind a mysterious set of internet postings. The settings of London, Japan and Russia are brilliantly and convincingly depicted. There is nothing sfnal in it; no stretching of the social and technical reality of 2002 when it was written. But it feels like science fiction,will be bought largely by sf readers, and is of course by a celebrated sf author. Recommended.

Not Quite the Diplomat: Home Truths About World Affairs by Chris Patten

http://nhw.livejournal.com/922824.html[return][return]Patten's book is a joy to read, just as Patten himself is usually a joy to listen to. Americans may well get a lot more out of it than Europeans. I may be wrong; part of the problem is that I know Patten well enough that I don't find any of the views he expresses here surprising, and in fact I already agree with most of them. He is eloquent and specific on how the British Conservative government screwed up its relationship with Europe (though his assertion that this only really happened after he was kicked out of Parliament in 1992 is at variance with my memory). He is brilliant on the need for the EU to develop a sensible approach to the rest of the world, especially the rising powers of India and China, but also in its own neighbourhood, by integrating the Balkans and Turkey through the prospect of membership. He is also brilliant on the US - writing as a passionate admirer of the American project, but one who is deeply dismayed by the Rumsfeld/Cheney domination of foreign policy.

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, Walker Percy

Hilarious - the central character just monstrous enough to be interesting, not quite monstrous enough to be alienating!

The Trial by Franz Kafka

http://nhw.livejournal.com/417592.html[return][return]The most difficult thing about getting into it was the very long paragraphs, but after I'd found the right gear I found it a very quick read - only 177 pages, and even though you know pretty much what is going to happen, you keep turning to find out how it is going to happen. I was really struck by the main theme, and also by a couple of details illustrating it. I waited to read the introduction of my Penguin Classics edition until after I'd finished the main text, however was pleased to find it contained no spoilers, but rather a good explanation of what was going on in Kafka's life at the time he was writing the book.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

http://nhw.livejournal.com/744051.html[return][return]Somewhat grim reading, but at least very short. It is basically the history of a single day in a Soviet labour camp in 1951. The prisoners are mostly there for no good reason (Ivan Denisovich himself is imprisoned on a trumped-up charge of espionage, after escaping German capture at the front ten years earlier). Conditions are brutal, but unfortunately I have read of much worse, more recently and elsewhere. The most memorable part of the book for me was the portrayal of Tiurin as manager of the squad of prisoners including the protagonist, balancing the brutality of the system against a desire to do his best for himself and his team.

The Search for Roots: A Personal Anthology by Italo Calvino, Primo Levi

http://nhw.livejournal.com/834919.html[return][return]A series of extracts ranging from one page to six of thirty favourite pieces of reading. I only knew four of them (The Book of Job, Gulliver's Travels, Moby-Dick and Murder in the Cathedral) and some of the others I think lose rather in translation (the Italian vernacular poetry of Giuseppe Belli) but there were a few pieces here from authors I would like to follow up for myself some time (Thomas Mann, Rabelais).