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nwhyte's reviews
4413 reviews
Political Animal: An Anatomy by Jeremy Paxman
http://nhw.livejournal.com/158270.html[return][return]I met Jeremy Paxman, one of Britain's leading political journalists, twice in 1994, in my capacity as the captain of the Queen's University of Belfast's team in University Challenge (the British TV show where teams from different universities take each other on in a general knowledge quiz). He was as acerbic and funny is person as he is on the screen. I remember him growling at me to hurry up and answer a particular question, "Come on, some of us have got homes to go to!" He revealed to us that his least favourite person in the then failing Major government was health secretary Virginia Bottomley. "She never says anything when I interview her." She was probably as frightened of him as we were. He says in the first chapter,[return][return]"I have met literally hundreds of politicians. Some I have come to like, others to respect, and one or two I have learned must be handled as if they are radioactive. I know that the last feeling is reciprocated by some, but there is - or ought to be - a natural tension between reporters and politicians, and I am not close to any of them. It is easier that way."[return][return]This book is no mere pot-boiler. I get the sense that Paxman is genuinely puzzled by what makes politicians tick; why they subject themselves to humiliation by constituency selection committees, fellow MPs, party leaders, and Paxman and his own colleagues in the press, and why, as Enoch Powell observed, all political careers end in failure. He doesn't come up with a systematic reply but does have a lot of amusing anecdotes and one or two good observations - 24 out of the UK's 51 prime ministers lost their fathers before the age of 21, for instance. He talks to one of the two people in England with a personal subscription to Hansard, the official record of parliamentary debates, and asks him, why? And gets the charming answer, "I'm very old, you know. I'm over ninety. And I think I'm pretty mad."[return][return]To those who know me it's no big secret that I am attracted to the idea of being a politician. I've stood for election twice, in 1990 and 1996, though did pretty dismally both times. One striking thing is that the very academically gifted tend not to do very well in politics. Only one American president, and as far as I know no British prime minister, has gained a PhD. Paxman points out that the three prime ministers of the twentieth century with the best academic qualifications by far were Asquith, Eden and Wilson, none of them howling successes. He has obviously benefited from a long chat with my former mentor John Alderdice, who I always felt was far too intelligent to be at the heart of politics. A political consultant, quoted by Paxman, is told that political parties ought to try and attract "low-fliers" (perhaps not quite the same thing as the academically ungifted).[return][return]Paxman spends a lot of time lambasting the primitive set-up of the British political system, especially the entire architecture and procedure of the Westminster parliament. But the only modest reform he supports is to allow ministers who are MPs to be allowed to speak in relevant debates in the House of Lords, and vice versa. Quite apart from the questions one should ask about the composition of the House of Lords, this misses one of the biggest blind spots in the British constitutional tradition - the requirement that ministers must be members of one or other house, carried through slavishly to the Oireachtas and the unicameral chambers in Stormont, Edinburgh and Cardiff. Surely if most of Europe and the U.S. can manage by separating the legislative and executive, the UK and Ireland could consider this too? I need to work up a proper rant about this for publication somewhere.[return][return]It ends up a bit scrappy but there are a lot of things to like about this book. Paxman retains a certain affection for, and understanding of, Northern Ireland, which he mentions several times (indeed I think he give us proportionally more attention than Wales of Scotland). The bibliography cites a huge number of political memoirs - I estimate roughly a hundred autobiographies and about the same number of biographical studies - but almost all British, with a very few Americans and no continentals (or even Irish).
Chance Witness: An Outsider's Life in Politics by Matthew Parris
http://nhw.livejournal.com/71616.html[return][return]I have a certain sense of loyalty to Clare College, Cambridge, where I spent five mostly happy years between 1986 and 1991, and part of that includes following the careers of my fellow alumni not just from my own year but those who attended after I left (like the sf writer China Mi
Lucky Dip by Geraldine Spence, Ruth Ainsworth
http://nhw.livejournal.com/160332.html[return][return]Lovely little collection of stories for the under-fives. Could never sell today as it doesn't have enough pictures.
The Guardians by John Christopher
http://nhw.livejournal.com/907874.html[return][return]Rather an interesting book. The narrator, Rob Randall, is brought up in the Conurb, the massive urban settlement in the future south-eastern England; he flees a grim boarding school to the County, the rural area where the rich people live, and manages to get adopted by a gentry family. But some among the younger generation believe that the system is rotten and must be smashed.[return][return]It must be twenty years since I read any of Christopher's books, and I'd forgotten how good he is. Three-quarters of the way through I began wondering when the actual plot was going to start; and then within a few pages I realised that it had been unfolding all around me without being obtrusive; that the description of the society and how it is controlled actually is the plot, as much in the telling as in what we are being told. Likewise, his understated prose leaves us to infer the narrator's feelings about the deaths of his parents, and his divided loyalties to his new family in the County, but also leaves us in little doubt about either.
Back Home by Michelle Magorian
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1291181.html[return][return]A slightly grim tale of 12-year-old Virginia, known as Rusty, who returns to her family in England in 1945 after five years in America, and finds huge difficulty in settling in (to her mother's distress, she refers to America as "back home"n hence the title) and then faces further trauma of a repressive boarding school and her parents' disintegrating marriage. Oddly paced in places, but has the courage of its convictions.
The Hounds Of The Mórrígan by Pat O'Shea
http://nhw.livejournal.com/65055.html[return][return]On my web page of Irish sf and fantasy I have catalogued a large number of Celtic legends retold for adults, some of which I have actually bought if I found them in cheap enough second hand paperback editions. They are all really crap. I don't think I've read a good retelling of Cuchulainn since Rosemary Sutcliff, or in fairness Lady Gregory. And the efforts of non-Irish writiers to paint a realistic portrait of Ireland in any era, heroic or present day, are usually just embarrassing.[return][return]The Hounds of the Morrigan is several orders of magnitude better than any of these. The genre of children swept into a parallel world where they will make a crucial contribution in the supernatural battle between good and evil is an honorable and occasionally cliched one (I'm thinking especially of E. Nesbit and Alan Garner here). But O'Shea catches the voice of Ireland accurately and sympathetically, and as well as the main story, which depends completely on the structures of Celtic mythology, I caught references to James Stephens' The Crock of Gold, Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman and rather to my surprise (perhaps I was imagining it) Eric Cross' banned classic The Tailor and Ansty.[return][return]The book is perhaps a bit longer than it needed to be, and as with many quest narratives one does end up wondering why they had to go the long way around (the most recent Harry Potter is a particularly good example of this). But I'd have thought any literate and patient eight-year-old would find it very rewarding. I certainly did.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
It is over 25 years since I last read this book; it was one of our set texts for Eng Lit O-level, so I remembered it as a source of material for essay-writing rather than as an actual reading pleasure. I had forgotten quite a lot of it:[return][return]* that little Ad
Fortunata and Jacinta by Benito Pérez Galdós
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1162077...[return][return]It took me a long time to get around to reading it, and also a long time to read it - it is over 800 pages. But it is rather good. [return][return]Fortunata and Jacinta are two women in 1870s Madrid who both love Juanito Santa Cruz, the scion of a dynasty of clothing magnates; Fortunata is working class and bears him a child; Jacinta, his cousin, marries him by a family arrangement which becomes largely a love match. Most of the book is about Fortunata's ups and downs as she bounces from man to man, Santa Cruz always in the background, and Jacinta vaguely and uneasily aware of her rival.[return][return]P
The Aeneid by Virgil
Stirring stuff but one does find the mind-set just a little difficult to grasp.