Ruined City - Nevil Shute

Henry Warren is an unhappy man. In his early 40s, he's a merchant banker, running his family firm. He travels constantly, his marriage is miserable & he feels disconnected from life. When he discovers that his wife is having an affair with an Arab prince, he gives her an ultimatum. Leave the prince, leave London & the meaningless social life she enjoys so much, & move to the country to give their marriage one more chance. She refuses & Warren decides to start divorce proceedings. He makes plans to close up his London house &, on an impulse, sets off for the north of England for a walking holiday. His health is suffering, he has insomnia & feels that vigorous exercise will cure him. He sends his chauffeur home when they reach the North & plans to walk in the Borders for a week or so. However, he's taken ill on the road & a lorry driver takes him to a hospital in the town of Sharples.

Sharples was once a thriving industrial town. Five years before, the ship building company closed down, the factories closed & most of the adult population has been out of work ever since. As Warren recovers in hospital from a twisted gut, he learns about the long term effects that the Depression has had on the people & the town. When he is admitted to hospital, unshaven after several days on the road & with no money after his wallet is stolen, he's assumed to be a tramp looking for work. He allows this deception, telling the nurses that he's been in America & been sent back to Glasgow after losing his job. It's a common story & easily believed. He is horrified to realise that many of the other patients in the ward are unable to survive relatively routine operations because of malnutrition after years of just surviving on the dole. He begins to investigate the town as he recovers & an idea to rejuvenate Sharples begins to take shape.

He becomes friends with the Almoner of the hospital, Alice McMahon. A young woman of about 30, she has lived in Sharples all her life. She studied law at Durham but returned to Sharples when the Depression hit, unwilling to get on with her own life & career while her home town was suffering. The hospital barely survives on charitable donations as the patients can't afford to pay for their care. Alice is angry that her community is suffering & falling into despair because of economic conditions they can do nothing about. She worries about the future of towns like Sharples & the families she knows there if ship building never revives & nothing else takes its place.

Warren buys the shipyard & uses his contacts with a Balkan government (which includes some spectacular bribery in the form of a jewelled green silk umbrella) to get a contract to build oil tankers. His plans don't run smoothly though, with the workers malnourished & not able to work at full capacity for some time. He also has to engage in some questionable behaviour to get the company up & running, a decision that comes back to haunt him later. What I found interesting was that Warren, who has been a banker all his life, working in the family firm, has no qualms about his actions, even when the consequences are personally devastating. It's an interesting moral question. How far is it permissible to go to achieve a greater good? The change in Sharples once the shipyard is operational again is overwhelmingly positive but a little dodgy dealing is needed to make it happen.

The story takes place from 1934-37. The Depression is at its height & there's no sign of WWII on the horizon as yet although there is talk of totalitarian regimes & Chamberlain is Chancellor of the Exchequer. Warren is 43 at the start of the book & he served in the Great War so I imagine he was born in around 1892.

Ruined City was published in 1938 & I'm so glad I had a chance to read another Nevil Shute for the 1938 Club. He's one of my favourite authors, I find his writing quite plodding & pedestrian at times but compelling for all that. I think it's the accumulation of detail which some might find boring but I enjoy. Warren meticulously works out his plans for the ship building business, calculating percentages & interest rates. He goes to Latavia in the Balkans & spends his time losing money at cards to corrupt politicians & dancing with a Corsican girl called Pepita whose connections are integral to the success of the deal Warren needs to get an order for the oil tankers. His moral compass is thoroughly shaken up but the interest in his project turns his life around & gets him through the depression he'd fallen into after his illness & the divorce from his wife. Warren's relationship with Alice McMahon is also very delicately done. It's her passion for Sharples that inspires Warren's plans & the relationship that began as that of hospital almoner & indigent patient becomes one of friendship & partnership in the plan to reopen the shipyard.

Warren reminded me of another Shute hero, Donald Ross, in An Old Captivity, & his work as a seaplane pilot. Actually, I think all Shute's heroes have this trait of meticulousness in their work. Tom Cutter in Round the Bend was just the same. I've decided that Shute's men obsessing about business or their planes is the equivalent of women in novels being careful housekeepers. The image that often comes into my mind when I read Shute is of Jane Eyre refurbishing the Rivers' home when she comes into her inheritance. It's the domesticity & detail that I love, whether it's at home or at work.

I listened to Ruined City on audio, read by Gareth Armstrong. I enjoy his reading style very much. His reading of A N Wilson's Victoria was one of my highlights of last year.

An Old Captivity - Nevil Shute

This is such an unusual book, a mixture of exploration of the far north, the minutiae of flying a seaplane & a possible reincarnation experience reaching back to the Vikings & the time of the Icelandic sagas.

An Old Captivity (cover picture from here) is the story of an archaeological expedition to Greenland. Pilot Donald Ross has spent time flying seaplanes in the far north of Canada. When he returns to England, he is offered a job flying a seaplane on a survey commissioned by Oxford don, Professor Lockwood. Lockwood's industrialist brother finances the expedition & Ross, once approved by the Lockwoods, is given carte blanche to order a plane & organize everything they'll need. He sees this job as a great opportunity, a stepping stone to more lucrative work. Professor Lockwood's prickly daughter Alix, is not so impressed with Ross. She suspects him of inflating the cost of the expedition & taking advantage of her unworldly father's enthusiasm for surveying the remote location. Ross is equally unimpressed with Alix & is disconcerted when Lockwood announces that his daughter will be accompanying them on the trip. A photographer, Jameson, will meet them at Greenland but, until then, Ross has to do all the work involved with flying & maintaining the plane.

The Lockwoods soon realise just how much work Ross has to do & regret that they hadn't insisted on an engineer taking Alix's place. The testy relationship between Ross & Alix gradually thaws as she begins to appreciate Ross's abilities & begins to help him as much as she can. After adventures including an unexpected night at a native settlement, they reach the town from which they'll set off on the survey to discover that Jameson has a broken leg & can't make the trip. Ross & Alix quickly learn to operate the camera & take the survey photographs.

Ross is a conscientious & methodical man. His constant worry about the work he has to do & the responsibility of the plane interfere with his sleep. He's given a bottle of sleeping tablets by a chemist in Reykjavik & he soon finds he can't sleep comfortably without them. On reaching the settlement in Greenland, they make camp at a location where earlier settlements had long since vanished. Their native workmen refuse to sleep at the camp & move to another place a mile away. All they will say is that they're afraid to sleep where the old people once lived. The survey work goes well, the weather is in their favour & Ross & Alix become closer as Ross realizes that he's fallen in love.

One night, Ross falls asleep after taking three sleeping tablets & falls into a coma that lasts 36 hours. Spooked by the tales of the old people, the Lockwoods manage to move Ross to the other camp &, gradually, he regains consciousness. He tells an amazing story about a dream he'd had while he was unconscious, a dream where he was a young Scotsman, Haki, taken as a slave by Viking raiders. He becomes a member of Leif Erickson's expedition to Greenland & then on to Vinland, the almost mythical settlement on the coast of North America. The dream is so vivid that Ross is constantly thinking of it. In the dream, he's accompanied by a young girl, Hekia, whom he equates with Alix. On the final leg of their journey home, they cross the Atlantic to Canada & then, down the coast of Massachusetts towards New York. Ross is suddenly convinced that he's found the place the Vikings called Wondersward &, when they land to have a look, he recognizes everything, including a place that was special to Haki & Hekia. Alix begins to wonder whether Ross's experience was just a dream or something more uncanny.

The story begins with one of Shute's framing stories, a device he often used. Ross is on a stranded train in Europe & tells his story to a fellow traveller, a psychologist. Shute must have forgotten how he began the story because we never return to the stranded train & the viewpoint of the story isn't just Ross's which it should be if he's telling his story as he experienced it. However, that didn't bother me too much. I enjoyed the story very much - the early scenes in Oxford with Ross & Alix irritating each other while Lockwood is completely focussed on his research without any idea of what such a trip entails. I love novels set in the 1930s, with all the assumptions about class & privilege. Alix Lockwood looks down on Ross & her middle class assumptions about him & his abilities were typical of the period. It certainly sets up the combative relationship between Alix & Ross very well & contrasts with the slow dawning of respect that she feels for him when she realises how naive she & her father had been. I also loved Donald's Aunt Janet, who had brought him up on her meagre earnings as a teacher. As always, Nevil Shute writes about the work of pilots & engineers with authority. Sometimes, I admit, the endless detail about fitting out a seaplane, filling the engine, changing the plugs, became a little mind-numbing, but the story was fascinating.

The scenes in the north reminded me a little of Michelle Paver's Dark Matter, a terrific ghost story that I listened to on audio read by Jeremy Northam. A young man is left as the only member of a scientific expedition to a remote station where something horrible happened in the past, something so dreadful that it left an enduring impression on the landscape & the atmosphere of the place. It was a story that left me with such a feeling of dread, I don't think I could have read (or listened) to it at night.  I listened to An Old Captivity on audio too, read by Cameron Stewart. He did a good job narrating the story & his male voices were fine but Alix's voice was dreadful. Still, the lure of the story kept me listening & I'm keen to go on reading more of Nevil Shute's novels.

Top 10 Books of 2014

Happy New Year everyone. Here's to another year full of health, happiness & lots of reading time.

This time last year, I was looking at this pile of books on my desk & vowing to read at least some of them in 2014. Well, I read five of them - that's it, only five. So, the other day, I had a clearing of the decks & shelved what was left (there were another two piles of books behind these that I was going to read "next" but of course, I didn't). I also shelved the pile of books & magazines sitting on the table beside my reading chair. This year I'm going to have only the books & magazines I'm currently reading on that table. It was a wonderful feeling to see my desk almost clear, apart from library books. It also gave me time to listen to two episodes of In Our Time (on Tennyson's In Memoriam & the Restoration of Charles II) with Melvyn & guests as it took me ages to rejig the overflowing tbr shelves to fit them in to their appropriate places. See this post here if you'd like to see how I organise the tbr shelves).

Looking at that post of reading resolutions from last year I did manage to read more from the tbr shelves, including those middlebrow authors I love. I read fewer books though than I have for years - only 95 & only 3 rereads. I think I've been rereading less because I still feel I need to post regularly & I don't usually review a book if I've already written about it. I bought 181 books last year (another useful, or scary, aspect of Library Thing is that I can see when I added books) & I've read 42 of them. This sounds quite good until I confess that some of the books I bought were duplicate copies of books I already own (for the justification for that little habit, read this post). I also added 56 books to my Kindle, quite a few of them were free downloads & that doesn't include the books I bought from elsewhere such as Delphi Classics.

So, finally, here it is, my Top 10 list for 2014. It wasn't difficult to come up with the list, I knew as soon as I read most of these books that they would be on my Top 10 for the year. The books are in no particular order & the links are to my reviews.

The Far Country - Nevil Shute. As Thomas from My Porch says, Shute is D E Stevenson for boys. I loved this story of a refugee doctor who emigrates to Australia after WWII & the new life he makes for himself here.

Kirkham's Find - Mary Gaunt. A book I'd had on the tbr shelves since 1988. Another Australian story about an independent woman overcoming the disapproval of her family to make a life for herself.

The Prime Minister & The Duke's Children - Anthony Trollope. I'm going to cheat with two of my choices because I read pairs of books that go together. I finally got around to reading the last two Palliser novels this year as I watched the wonderful BBC TV series. You can't beat Trollope for an absorbing story & I loved reading about the lives of Plantagenet Palliser, Glencora & Phineas Finn, their families & friends.

Campaigning for the Vote : Kate Parry Frye's Suffrage Diary & Kate Parry Frye : the Long Life of an Edwardian Actress and Suffragette - Elizabeth Crawford. My other cheat involves the two books I read about Kate Parry Frye. I think Kate was the person I enjoyed meeting the most this year through her diary & through the excellent biography by Elizabeth Crawford. I was so moved by Kate's long life, the challenges she overcame & her courage in her later years, caring for her husband, John.

The English Air - D E Stevenson. I read 9 books by DES this year, spurred on by discovering Open Library & by the reprints of her work that seem to be coming thick & fast. The English Air was reprinted by Greyladies a couple of months ago. This was my favourite, set during WWII it's the story of a young German who visits English relatives in the years leading up to the war & experiences a new way of life that changes all his ideas.

Invisible - Christine Poulson. I haven't read many mysteries or thrillers this year at all but I did love this one. The story of a man who has secrets in his past & the woman who loves him & is drawn into danger when he disappears. I read the last half in one sitting, I just couldn't put it down.

One of Ours - Willa Cather. Another author I read when I was young is Willa Cather. I rediscovered her this year & look forward to reading more of her books & the Selected Letters in 2015. I loved the story of Claude Wheeler, his life on the family farm in Nebraska & his search for something to give his life meaning. The Great War gives him his opportunity to make a difference.

Four Sisters - Helen Rappaport. I couldn't have a Top 10 list without a couple of history books. The story of the daughters of the last Tsar was beautifully told by Helen Rappaport with such sensitivity. I especially enjoyed reading about the Grand Duchesses work as nurses in the Great War & the discovery of previously unknown letters from Anastasia to a friend when the family were in exile. A tragic story well told.

A Lifelong Passion - ed Andrei Maylunas & Sergei Mironenko. Leading on from Four Sisters, this is the story of the last Romanovs told through their letters, diaries & memoirs. Fascinating to read the story in their own words & to read the many familiar extracts & quotes in context.

Moby-Dick or, the Whale - Herman Melville. My last book of the year was one of the best. I listened to it on audio & the wonderful performance by William Hootkins made this one of the most memorable books I've ever read.

There it is, my Top 10. I'm looking forward to reading other lists from my favourite bloggers or just leave a list in the Comments.

Round the Bend - Nevil Shute

Tom Cutter wants to fly. As a young boy in Southampton, he leaves his job in a garage to hang around a flying circus. From this first job, picking up paper & cleaning the planes, he eventually becomes part of one of the clown acts & meets Constantine Shaklin, a boy of his own age of Russian-Chinese parentage. Connie is an unusual boy with his mixed parentage & experience of living all over the world. His religious curiosity also makes him different. He goes to church, synagogue & mosque, as if he's searching for something or just exploring any idea that comes his way. Tom is intrigued but accepting of his friend's eccentricities. Eventually the circus moves on & Tom moves on with it, working on the planes in the winter, learning all he can. After a few years, the circus is wound up & Tom finds a job with an aircraft company while he waits to be old enough to train as a ground engineer. Connie goes out to live with his mother in the United States & the boys lose touch.

During the War, Tom stays with Airspace as an engineer but also takes advantage of cheap flying lessons for employees & qualifies as a test pilot. He spends part of the war in Egypt, repairing crashed aircraft. At the end of the war, Tom returns to Southampton to consider his future. A brief wartime marriage had ended in tragedy &, although he's offered an excellent job, he realises he can't face staying in Southampton with the sad memories of his wife, Beryl. With his experiences in the Middle East, he decides to start a charter freight business for companies operating in Bahrain.

From humble beginnings with just one old plane, Tom builds the business up through sheer hard work & rigid economy. He has no racial prejudices & employs local Arab & Asian pilots & engineers, giving them responsibility & trust. He also knows that local staff are cheaper to employ than Europeans. The change in Tom's fortunes & his life comes when he meets Connie Shaklin again. Connie is an engineer who had spent the war in Canada servicing aircraft. As a British citizen he joins up but insists that he won't fight as his beliefs do not permit him to kill. His other skills are utilised instead & after the war he went out to Bangkok & worked for Siamese Airways. Connie agrees to work for Tom & takes over the engineering side of the business.

From the beginning, Connie exercises a remarkable influence over the other men. He begins an evening prayer session at which all religious groups are welcome. Connie's own beliefs are never spelled out but he begins to be seen as a prophet, even a messiah by the locals. Tom is bemused but happy to let Connie continue as his workshop has never been better run & it's obvious that his influence is good. The business grows as Tom buys more aircraft, negotiates better deals & expands operations into South East Asia. Connie's religious mission also seems to be growing in popularity until there are hundreds of people gathering at the airfield each evening for prayers. This causes some friction with the local British authorities, already a little suspicious of Tom's willingness to work with the locals & stay outside the establishment. eventually, tom is told that Connie must leave.

On a trip to Burma, Tom meets an Englishman, Colonel Maurice Spencer, who has become a Buddhist monk who has heard of Connie & is keen to learn more. He speaks of Connie & his mission in a very mystical way,

We must look for the new Teacher. One day the Power that rules the Universe will send us a new Teacher, who will lead us back to Truth and help us to regain the Way. There have been four Buddhas in the history of this world, of whom Guatama was the last. One day a fifth will come to aid us, if we will attend to Him. Here in Burma we earnestly await His coming, for He is the Hope of the World.

Connie's religious mission continues alongside Tom's more prosaic story of his business. Connie's sister, Nadezna, comes out to Bahrain to work as Tom's secretary; the business continues to expand & it becomes obvious that Connie's mission is drawing to a climax.

Round the Bend is an unusual novel with a mixture of the practical & the mystical. The story of Tom's business is remarkably detailed; Nevil Shute's books all have this quality of building up the layers of detail, very practical & methodical, detailing all his decisions & contrivances. I found all this fascinating & Shute's own background in engineering is obvious. On the other hand, there's the ephemeral nature of Connie & his mission. Connie himself is modest, self-effacing but remote, rejecting all human relationships apart from his love for his sister & friendship with Tom. He seems to do very little but his influence on those around him is profound. The Christian overtones are sometimes a little too obvious, as when Tom denies that he thinks Connie has any divine qualities three times, but generally, Connie's influence is seen as a general force for good without beating a drum for any one kind of religious experience.

I found that the two aspects of the story worked well together. The Middle Eastern & Asian setting helped with this, I think, as Westerners still see the East as mysterious & this plays in to our perceptions as readers, as we identify with Tom. Round the Bend is a compelling book & I found it very hard to put down. Shute's style is so matter of fact, almost prosaic, that the religious elements seem quite ordinary within the charmed circle of Tom & his company. Tom himself just accepts Connie for who he is, without prejudice, as if he has been just as affected by Connie's magnetism as the workmen who believe that he is a prophet. The reactions of others, usually Europeans, just point the difference between two vastly different ways of looking at the world. I have several other Nevil Shutes on the tbr shelves & I'm looking forward to the next one very much.

The Far Country - Nevil Shute

This is a story about old & new countries, about starting a new life, either forced by circumstance or as a free choice. The Far Country (picture from here) is set in Australia & Britain in the early 1950s.

Jane Dorman scandalised her family in 1918 by marrying an Australian soldier & coming out to Australia to start a new life. Only her Aunt Ethel supported her. Now, in the years after WWII, Jane & Jack Dorman have made a success of their sheep farm near Merrijig, in the High Country of Victoria, near Mt Buller. Jane has become concerned about Aunt Ethel, who is surviving on a widow's pension from her husband's Indian Civil Service career. After the Dormans receive a substantial wool cheque, Jane sends her aunt £500. The money arrives as the old lady is dying of malnutrition, too proud to ask her daughter for help when her pension stops. She's been surviving by selling her furniture & eating the dried fruit in the parcels Jane has been sending her but finally she collapses in the street & her family is notified.

Ethel's granddaughter, Jennifer Morton, is working in London, having left her parents' home in Leicester. She's called in to look after her grandmother & Ethel gives her the money, telling her to go out to Australia & visit the Dormans. Life in England is grey & gloomy, with rationing still in place & the costs of everything rising. Jenny decides to go & she is warmly welcomed by the Dormans. Australia is a revelation to her. The abundance of food, the kindness of the people & the beauty of the country around Lenora homestead are such a contrast to her mundane life in London.

Carl Zlinter has emigrated to Australia from Europe after the war. He was a doctor in Czechoslovakia but he is not allowed to practice in Australia without undertaking further training. Carl was an Army doctor during the War & ended up in a displaced persons camp as he didn't want to return to a Communist Czechoslovakia. He must work for two years at a lumber camp near Mt Buller before he can make his own way. Carl is a quiet man in his early thirties. He enjoys the outdoor work, the country reminds him of the Bohemian forests of his home, & he can go fishing at the weekends. He is also the unofficial doctor at the camp. The manager allows him to treat the men's minor injuries & keeps him supplied with medications & bandages.

Carl meets Jenny & the Dormans when an accident at the timber yard leaves two men seriously injured. Jenny helps him to perform the operations & Carl is invited to visit Lenora. As they get to know each other, Jenny & Carl grow close. Carl discovers that a relation of his with the same name, Charlie Zlinter, was a bullock driver at a small gold rush town in the mountains fifty years before. He finds Charlie's grave while on a fishing trip & tries to find out more about him. He realises that he will not be able to afford to retrain as a doctor when his two years is over & decides that he will keep working at the timber mill & build himself a hut on the site of Charlie's house from so long ago. However, Carl & Jenny's relationship faces challenges when Jenny's mother dies & she decides to return to England.

I loved The Far Country. I've read several Nevil Shute novels but I have more on the tbr shelves & can't wait to read them. Shute's love of Australia is evident in every line. He has some very harsh things to say about post-war Britain & the National Health Service in particular & the contrast between the old & new countries is very stark. The plenty of the Dormans with their prosperous farm & the rising price of wool promising more in future years is starkly contrasted with the poverty of those back Home in England. I enjoyed the picture of Melbourne in the 50s when the Dormans visit to spend their wool cheque & Jane's search for the right picture to put on her wall now that she has the money to afford it. At the centre of the story though is the tender relationship between Carl & Jenny. The days that they spend exploring the high country are so beautifully described, the peace & beauty of the bush is the perfect background to their discovery of each other & of the possibility of a new way of life & a new home.

Carl's experience as a New Australian (which is one of the more polite names the post-war European immigrants were called) could be reflected in many more stories of that time. Australia became a multicultural country thanks to the migrants who left Europe in the 1950s. They were grateful for the chance of a new life & we were grateful to have the labour. In some ways, the novel shows a rose-coloured view of the migrant experience. There were lots of cases of exploitation as well as stories of friendship & support. I don't want to get too political but I wish our current government could emulate this more humane refugee policy.

I listened to The Far Country on audio, read by Julie Maisey. She did a good job with the Australian accent, supposedly one of the most difficult accents to do, & I enjoyed it very much. I chose the lovely cover photo of the first Heinemann edition because it's so beautiful, but the cover image I remember best is this one from the edition that was reprinted for the1980s mini series with Sigrid Thornton & Michael York. Although, having read the synopsis of the TV series & a couple of reviews, I'm glad I have no memory of the series! It seems to have been sensationalised & to have very little relation to the novel.

Just bought

Here's the confession I promised the other day. I've had a bit of a splurge on books this month & this is the result. Penguin have been publishing their $9.95 Popular Penguins for a few years now. This is the latest idea, 50 crime classics in the distinctive green covers. I think these are only available in Australia. Hopefully I'm wrong but if anyone overseas is interested, you may want to look at the whole list here & maybe consider buying them from Readings, one of our best independent bookshops.

As you can see, Lucky decided to have a look at my new acquisitions as well so here's another picture showing the titles more clearly. It's a great list of old & new authors. I'd read about half of the list so these are the ones I chose, all vintage authors which won't surprise anyone, I'm sure. Julian Symons, C P Snow (I didn't know he'd written any crime fiction), Michael Gilbert, Dorothy Dunnett & Dornford Yates who was recently recommended on my online book group.

Apart from classic crime, I've also bought this little lot. Again, Lucky was right there when I was taking the photo.

So, here's a close-up of the books. The Matriarch by G B Stern. First published in 1955 but set in Edwardian London. The story of a Jewish family & the domineering Anastasia, the matriarch of the title.  
Mrs Miles's Diary, edited by S V Partington, the diary of a Surrey housewife during WWII. 
The Morgesons by Elizabeth Stoddard. A forgotten American classic, first published in the 1860s. Agricola & Germany by Tacitus. I've been reading about Roman Britain & the Anglo-Saxons lately & feel it's about time I started reading some of the sources. Tacitus is one of the main sources for Boudicca's rebellion in AD60.
Rumer Godden by Anne Chisholm. I'm sure I read this biography when it was first published but I want to read it again now that Virago have started reprinting her novels.
Two more novels by Nevil Shute, Most Secret & No Highway (coincidentally just reviewed by Thomas at My Porch). I've enjoyed the Shute novels I've read & now that Vintage have republished more titles with their lovely covers, I couldn't resist a couple more. I love Thomas's description of Shute as "D E Stevenson for boys (or engineers)" in the sense that he's a great comfort read & you know exactly what's in store.
The nineteenth century sensation novel by Lyn Pykett. This is an updated edition of Pykett's 1994 book, The sensation novel from The Woman in White to The Moonstone. I've just read Henry Dunbar by M E Braddon so I was pleased to find this as I'm a fan of mid-Victorian sensation.
The Heart of the Family by Elizabeth Goudge. I'm still collecting Goudge rather than reading her. This is the third novel in the Damerosehay Trilogy.
Crown of Thistles : the fatal inheritance of Mary, Queen of Scots by Linda Porter. This is more than a biography of Mary, Queen of Scots, it's an exploration of the rivalry between the Stewarts & the Tudors from 1485 to 1568. With the 500th anniversary of the Battle of Flodden this year, I'm keen to learn more about Anglo-Scottish relations before Elizabeth & Mary.

I also have quite a few books on pre-order & I've been tempted to pre-order even more by the news that Virago are continuing their Angela Thirkell list with three more books to be published next May. I've already pre-ordered Pomfret Towers & Christmas at High Rising (uncollected short stories) & now I'm tempted by The Brandons, Summer Half & August Folly as well. I haven't read the Thirkells I already own but that won't stop me buying more.
Virago are also reprinting the Emily books by L M Montgomery. I've only read Anne of Green Gables but I like the sound of these, Emily of New Moon, Emily Climbs & Emily's Quest.

 Where will it end? My friends in my online bookgroup laughed when I said that I counted my pre-orders instead of sheep when I couldn't get to sleep at night but it's a very soothing way to drop off. I don't think I've ever got to the end of the list before falling asleep. Maybe I'll post a list of all my pre-orders for any insomniacs who need some help?

Pastoral - Nevil Shute

I was so happy to discover a couple of years ago that Vintage were reprinting all of Nevil Shute's books. Four of them were reprinted with lovely new covers & the rest in POD with these generic red covers. Nevil Shute is always popular with the borrowers at my library service & most of the copies we had were ancient Uniform Editions or the more recent House of Stratus reprints. There were several titles we didn't have at all so I rushed to buy up the complete set. I plan to read my way through the lot eventually!

Pastoral is set on an air field in Oxfordshire during WWII. Peter Marshall is a young pilot on his second tour of duty. He's one of the lucky ones. He has survived nearly 50 bombing raids over Germany & his crew is now a tight-knit unit. Gunnar Franck is Danish, a medical student who ended up in England & is Marshall's second pilot & navigator. Rear gunner Sergeant Phillips from York is the other member of the crew & it's Phillips who introduces Marshall to the delights of fishing. All the crew become enthusiastic fishermen in their off-duty hours & the shared hobby keeps them occupied & binds them together as friends.

On a beautiful autumn afternoon, Marshall catches an enormous pike. He's proud of his achievement but when he gets back to base, no-one seems especially interested. The fish is a great, ugly thing & no one thinks it will make good eating. Section Officer Gervase Robertson, a young woman just transferred to Hartley, takes pity on him & asks to see the fish. She even agrees to eat some of it for dinner. This is the beginning of their friendship, which for Peter, quickly turns to love. Gervase is not so sure. She was brought up in Thirsk, in the North Riding of Yorkshire. She's only 19 & feels unhappy & out of place at Hartley. The WAAF officers are supposed to stay aloof from the pilots & aircrew so Peter & Gervase's relationship begins with a few clandestine walks & bicycle rides in the country.

Peter proposes marriage after only a few meetings, but Gervase has other plans for her future. She wants to work & travel for some years before she settles down. She'd have to leave the WAAF if she married & she enjoys doing her job & doing it well. She's a Section Officer, taking down & transmitting wireless messages from the crews when they're on raids. When Gervase turns Peter down, his disappointment & misery start to impact on his work. He becomes morose & snappish with his crew &, on a bombing raid over Germany, makes a mistake that could have had serious consequences for them all. The commanding officers take a dim view of the relationship & decide to encourage Gervase to ask for a transfer to another base. Gervase has another idea. She realises that her feelings for Peter are stronger than she first thought & also that his unhappiness is causing friction among his crew as well as endangering their lives. Her solution is simple but very effective & it allows her to get to know Peter & make some decisions about their future.

Pastoral may seem an odd title for a novel about bomber pilots in WWII. Pastoral implies a novel about the country with rustic yokels & shepherdesses falling in & out of love in the green countryside. However, it's not as odd as it first seems. The Oxfordshire countryside plays a crucial role in the story. It provides the respite from the war that everyone at the base needs. Peter & his crew enjoy fishing until the season ends & they then find themselves at loose ends, snapping at each other & bored. The camaraderie so vital for their effectiveness as a crew is compromised by this lack of a common interest. Peter & Gervase's romance develops during country walks, bicycle rides, fishing expeditions & a pigeon shoot as well as the odd visit to the cinema or a dance. These outings provide a counterpoint to the dangerous reality of their daily lives.

Bomber crews spent days or even weeks in idleness, repairing their planes, practising new manoeuvres & waiting for the next mission. Taking their minds off the inevitability of danger & preventing boredom was crucial, especially when every raid resulted in at least some crews being shot down & the men killed or captured. The two bombing raids that Peter's crew undertake are described in nail-biting detail. The first raid shows just how dangerous it can be if the crew are unhappy & their officer lets them down. The second is so tense I almost stopped breathing at one point!

Pastoral was published in 1944 & it has the immediacy of being written at the time of the events described.  Shute was an aeronautical engineer & his experience shows in the detail of the work of the bomber crew. There are so many beautifully observed scenes. I especially liked Gervase's visit to Mrs Carter-Hayes, the owner of an estate near the base & the day Peter & Gervase spend in London. They go to the theatre & it's the first time Peter has seen Gervase in civilian dress. There's emotion but no sentimentality in Nevil Shute's writing & it's all the more moving for it.  Pastoral is an absorbing book & I'm looking forward to reading more of Nevil Shute's novels.