There's a wonderful sense of the familiar on picking up a Paul Magrs back. Not the type of familiarity that induces contempt, but he familiarity of pleasure, the cosiness of sinking into the comfort of your favourite chair or your own bed after returning from holiday. It's partly to do with his reuse of familiar characters and concepts,(though never in quite the same way), and partly to do with his reassuring though slightly querulous, wonderfully Northern voice.
Enter Wildthyme is another pleasure. Most of what we see here is familiar, particularly if you've been keeping up with Magrs' Doctor Who work or his Iris adventures. There's a return visit to the Great Big Book Exchange originally seen in Exchange, a return to Valcea last heard of in The Blue Angel, Hyspero from The Scarlet Empress (as well as an appearance by a Scarlet Empress), Brenda the sentient vending maching who originally appeared in Sick Building, a cameo from Horror of Glam Rock's Tomorrow Twins, the transdimensional Blithe Pinking Shears from Mad Dogs and Englishmen... and probably more that I could go on with all day. Combined with the obvious presence of Iris and her faithful Panda and it looks like the Magrs equivalent of The Five Doctors, one big party with everyone he knows invited and the emphasis on fun rather than story. And there's a certain amount of truth in that, with the screwball plot involving the chasing of a relic halfway round the universe. But that would be to miss the point completely. Like the aforementioned The Five Doctors this is meant to be fun (one of the back quotes delights in describing it as a sci-fi pantomime, which'd no doubt bring a smile to those of us who remember how 'pantomime' was turned into an insult for Doctor Who stories of that era). It's the key element for me that Russell T Davies remembered that was lost to the show sometime around 1980 and only returned towards the end of the original run. There's a generous spirit here, the author having fun but also remembering to make it just as much fun for his readers. All that's not to say there's not some quite lovely concepts introduced - the sentient wardrobes who... ah, no spoilers. But they're a melding of three or four separate idea that work because they fit perfectly with Iris' universe.
Iris, is of course as splendid/irritating (delete as applicable) as ever, the character's voice equally clear whether Katy Manning's speaking or if Magrs is simply bringing her to life with words.
If there's ever a point to climb aboard the No 22 to Putney Common this is it, accessible enough that references to previous stories anren't essential and quite obviously intended to be the first in a series. And above all that, it's the perfect gateway to Magrs' ever growing body of work.
Sunday, 7 August 2011
A Good Walk Redeemed - The Clicking of Cuthbert by PG Wodehouse
I confess in my time to having disgraced the game of golf with my feeble attempts to bash a white ball more than a hundred yards in a straight line. The addiction's obvious to me, at my level the majority of shots will dispirit and darken my soul but just once or twice per round there's a shot that makes you think that there's a glimmer of hope in keeping at the game after all. It's sporting crack, and just as ruinously expensive if you're capable of losing as many games as I. It's always good to know one of your favourite authors was a fellow sufferer, and if he never picked up a club in his life, The Clicking of Cuthbert demonstrates PG Wodehouse had the invaluable quality in a writer of being a convincing fibber.
It's near pointless describing what I love about Wodehouse, mostly because it's liable to be much the same as everyone else does. I could bore for hours on his genius at constructing literary farce with an incredible lightness of touch. I could say how it's the construction and maintenance of a perfectly realised little world with laws bordering on the inevitability of physics relating to how things will turn out, particularly when aunts are involved. An England that probably never existed, but along with early Waugh, seems the default image of the English inter-war years. And even his willingness to take a chance on writing for Mills & Boon. No matter the characters - Psmith, the inhabitants of Blanding or Jeeves and Wooster - you know roughly what you're going to get. A perfectly constructed story from a man whose style defines literary elegance.
Wodehouse's golf tales do benefit from a certain knowledge of the sport, but it's not absolutely essential, particularly when the golfing slang he uses here had changed so much over a century. Golf is merely the backdrop to the usual sort of story Wodehouse wants to tell, uniting couples against unlikely social odds in the titular story and The Rough Stuff, providing a solid chap with a triumph over a blackguard in Ordeal By Golf and an upstart getting his comeuppance in The Heel of Achilles. Only the last story, The Coming of Gowff, varies from Wodehouse's usual themes, telling a golf story in the style of the Arabian Nights.
It wouldn't do to fail to mention the Oldest Member here, who narrates all but that last story. He's undoubtedly a stereotype of the type of old member who'll happily bore fellow members over a snifter in the bar, but in Wodehouse's hands he's another well rounded comic gem, albeit not as likable as Wodehouse's better known characters thanks to his garrulous nature. Like listening to the Oldest Member then, it'll pass some hours but it's hardly essential and best left until you've exhausted Wodehouse's better known works.
It's near pointless describing what I love about Wodehouse, mostly because it's liable to be much the same as everyone else does. I could bore for hours on his genius at constructing literary farce with an incredible lightness of touch. I could say how it's the construction and maintenance of a perfectly realised little world with laws bordering on the inevitability of physics relating to how things will turn out, particularly when aunts are involved. An England that probably never existed, but along with early Waugh, seems the default image of the English inter-war years. And even his willingness to take a chance on writing for Mills & Boon. No matter the characters - Psmith, the inhabitants of Blanding or Jeeves and Wooster - you know roughly what you're going to get. A perfectly constructed story from a man whose style defines literary elegance.
Wodehouse's golf tales do benefit from a certain knowledge of the sport, but it's not absolutely essential, particularly when the golfing slang he uses here had changed so much over a century. Golf is merely the backdrop to the usual sort of story Wodehouse wants to tell, uniting couples against unlikely social odds in the titular story and The Rough Stuff, providing a solid chap with a triumph over a blackguard in Ordeal By Golf and an upstart getting his comeuppance in The Heel of Achilles. Only the last story, The Coming of Gowff, varies from Wodehouse's usual themes, telling a golf story in the style of the Arabian Nights.
It wouldn't do to fail to mention the Oldest Member here, who narrates all but that last story. He's undoubtedly a stereotype of the type of old member who'll happily bore fellow members over a snifter in the bar, but in Wodehouse's hands he's another well rounded comic gem, albeit not as likable as Wodehouse's better known characters thanks to his garrulous nature. Like listening to the Oldest Member then, it'll pass some hours but it's hardly essential and best left until you've exhausted Wodehouse's better known works.
Building The Perfect Beast - The Genius by David Harris & The Catch by Gary Myers
It all started for me at what's generally considered the nadir of American Football coverage in the UK, in 1987. Back then we were fed a mere half hour per week of highlights during the regular season (I remember it as a half hour, if it was an hour I apologise), and one dreary Tuesday night I came across a strange looking sport played on a field that looked like a knitting pattern. And the teams I saw in the main highlights played in some seriously good looking uniforms, one in gold and black, the other in white, red and gold. I didn't understand a second of it, but big athletes hitting the crap out of each other looked like fun. Unfortunately this was halfway through a season and Channel 4 were using the comedy duo The Vicious Boys to present, neither of whom offered any insight as to what the hell I was watching. I had to figure it out myself. But it intrigued me enough so that I was back the next week, and every week until I couldn't watch the Superbowl as it was a school night and we didn't actually own a video recorder. But with the help of the estimable Ken Thomas' Touchdown magazine I educated myself. Unlike The Vicious Boys I was back for the start of the 1988 season and the beginning of Channel 4 expanding its coverage with British former NFL player Mick Luckhurst and Gary Imlach, who enlivened the live reporting from the US with an unfailingly dry wit.
And thanks to that first game I'd found my team, chosen simply on the basis that they'd won that first game. I was insanely lucky, thanks to Channel 4's choice of game I'd lucked into supporting one of the all time great teams, in the middle of an NFL record number of winning seasons. It was the Team that Walsh Built, a side that ended up redefining how NFL offences played, a team rich in talent and (unknown to me at the time) rich enough to pay for the best. Montana, Rice, Craig, Lott... they were thrilling to watch and never knew when they were beaten. I'd love to claim discernment, but no, sneaking a two point win in Louisiana was my entire criteria for unconditional support.
With the lack of information available to me, I knew very little about my chosen team, except that they'd won a couple of Super Bowls, and were one of the powers of the conference along with the teams who'd succeeded them in winning the big game, the Bears and Giants, with their fearsome defences, and the Redskins. Midway through the season I'd found a short book in the school bookshop which detailed the Super Bowls themselves, so I acquainted myself with the great names like Lombardi, Namath and the fabled Steel Curtain. Being young, and thousands of miles away they had mythlike status, heroes performing great deeds in the name of sport. It's always good to have heroes at that age, before awareness of the complexities of real life creep in. And I found out how Walsh had built his team, toppling the Cowboys, the NFC's then dominant team and then going 15-1 and beating the favoured Dolphins and their big armed QB Dan Marino in the Super Bowl. But at that point they weren't the dynasty, only one of that host of NFC teams, any one of whom was capable of forging a reputation as the team of the decade. They hadn't become the Team of the Eighties yet.
The first book here is the story of the game in January 1982 that went such a long way to establishing Walsh's team as contenders. It's really an insane story. Walsh had taken over a team rock bottom of the conference, handicapped in the draft by a duff deal for the by then knackered out OJ Simpson, had two losing seasons and gone into the season with three rookies in his secondary.
Yeah. Sometimes fairy tale endings happen.
But no-one believed in the 49ers until they played the Cowboys in the Championship game in 1982. They turned the ball over to the opposition six times, and yet were good enough to keep themselves in the game with one last drive left. And with two plays left before the Cowboys got the ball b Joe Montana, yet to acquire the aura of the finest quarterback every to throw a pass, threw it so high only his receiver, at the limits of his jumping and stretching ability cold catch it. The 49ers defence barely held the Cowboys and they went on to beat the Bengals in the Super Bowl. The Catch isn't specifically about the 49ers, instead it's a fascinating portrait of how one spectacular play meant one team was on the rise and one team went into a tailspin that lasted a decade. Author Gary Myers was a reporter for the Dallas Evening News at the time of the game, so you'd expect the Cowboys to receive their fair share of coverage. It's beautifully structured, each chapter detailing a play, or sequence of plays before focusing on the key men involved in those plays and what happened to them since. Naturally it tends towards a melancholic streak for the Cowboys entries - how effectively it sent the careers of quarterback Danny White and coach Tom Landry on a downward slope from which they never recovered. And then there are genuine heartbreakers, Drew Pearson's involvement in a fatal car accident which killed his brother and Everson Walls' noble but ultimately doomed donation of a kidney to ex-teammate Ron Springs. And in two chapters at the end it covers the career of head coach Bill Walsh and how the 49ers dynasty rose thanks to The Catch.
The Genius covers Bill Walsh's life in more detail, specifically the time he was in charge of the 49ers. It covers his background, including his time in Cincinnatti which came to a bitter end and in college football at Stanford. David Harris isn't afraid to explore his subject's flaws and the often fiery relationship he had with owner Eddie DeBartolo Jnr. Harris does his subject the credit of not trying to simplify him, instead presenting him as a complex, insecure character initially capable of fooling around to attempt to relax his players before their first Super Bowl but who became tighter and more nervous as they attempted to repeat their successes, again in part due to their impatient owner. And how he was capable of misjudgement and indecision, mainly seen in the QB controversy of his last season when he had two Hall of Fame QBs in Young and Montana. It essentially shows how he burned himself out over ten years trying to prove himself the best, but even regretting his decision to leave the 49ers once he'd retired. Walsh comes across as less and less likable the longer he's in the 49ers job, but what Harris effectively conveyed is the intolerable pressure that comes with having to maintain a successful sporting team. carrying the dreams of millions. It's easy to say it doesn't matter in the light of wars, diseases or other life or death situations, but then carrying the dreams of passionate millions brings its own pressure. Whilst Walsh might have been a genius to the point of revolutionising the way the game was played, he was only human. I don't tend to enjoy too many books dedicated to specific sporting personalities these days, but this is an exception, a sympathetic but clear eyed portrait of probably the most influential coach of the modern NFL era. And I got to witness that Walsh team, and the legacy he left from a distance - that dull Tuesday night in October 1987 I got very lucky indeed.
And thanks to that first game I'd found my team, chosen simply on the basis that they'd won that first game. I was insanely lucky, thanks to Channel 4's choice of game I'd lucked into supporting one of the all time great teams, in the middle of an NFL record number of winning seasons. It was the Team that Walsh Built, a side that ended up redefining how NFL offences played, a team rich in talent and (unknown to me at the time) rich enough to pay for the best. Montana, Rice, Craig, Lott... they were thrilling to watch and never knew when they were beaten. I'd love to claim discernment, but no, sneaking a two point win in Louisiana was my entire criteria for unconditional support.
With the lack of information available to me, I knew very little about my chosen team, except that they'd won a couple of Super Bowls, and were one of the powers of the conference along with the teams who'd succeeded them in winning the big game, the Bears and Giants, with their fearsome defences, and the Redskins. Midway through the season I'd found a short book in the school bookshop which detailed the Super Bowls themselves, so I acquainted myself with the great names like Lombardi, Namath and the fabled Steel Curtain. Being young, and thousands of miles away they had mythlike status, heroes performing great deeds in the name of sport. It's always good to have heroes at that age, before awareness of the complexities of real life creep in. And I found out how Walsh had built his team, toppling the Cowboys, the NFC's then dominant team and then going 15-1 and beating the favoured Dolphins and their big armed QB Dan Marino in the Super Bowl. But at that point they weren't the dynasty, only one of that host of NFC teams, any one of whom was capable of forging a reputation as the team of the decade. They hadn't become the Team of the Eighties yet.
The first book here is the story of the game in January 1982 that went such a long way to establishing Walsh's team as contenders. It's really an insane story. Walsh had taken over a team rock bottom of the conference, handicapped in the draft by a duff deal for the by then knackered out OJ Simpson, had two losing seasons and gone into the season with three rookies in his secondary.
Yeah. Sometimes fairy tale endings happen.
But no-one believed in the 49ers until they played the Cowboys in the Championship game in 1982. They turned the ball over to the opposition six times, and yet were good enough to keep themselves in the game with one last drive left. And with two plays left before the Cowboys got the ball b Joe Montana, yet to acquire the aura of the finest quarterback every to throw a pass, threw it so high only his receiver, at the limits of his jumping and stretching ability cold catch it. The 49ers defence barely held the Cowboys and they went on to beat the Bengals in the Super Bowl. The Catch isn't specifically about the 49ers, instead it's a fascinating portrait of how one spectacular play meant one team was on the rise and one team went into a tailspin that lasted a decade. Author Gary Myers was a reporter for the Dallas Evening News at the time of the game, so you'd expect the Cowboys to receive their fair share of coverage. It's beautifully structured, each chapter detailing a play, or sequence of plays before focusing on the key men involved in those plays and what happened to them since. Naturally it tends towards a melancholic streak for the Cowboys entries - how effectively it sent the careers of quarterback Danny White and coach Tom Landry on a downward slope from which they never recovered. And then there are genuine heartbreakers, Drew Pearson's involvement in a fatal car accident which killed his brother and Everson Walls' noble but ultimately doomed donation of a kidney to ex-teammate Ron Springs. And in two chapters at the end it covers the career of head coach Bill Walsh and how the 49ers dynasty rose thanks to The Catch.
The Genius covers Bill Walsh's life in more detail, specifically the time he was in charge of the 49ers. It covers his background, including his time in Cincinnatti which came to a bitter end and in college football at Stanford. David Harris isn't afraid to explore his subject's flaws and the often fiery relationship he had with owner Eddie DeBartolo Jnr. Harris does his subject the credit of not trying to simplify him, instead presenting him as a complex, insecure character initially capable of fooling around to attempt to relax his players before their first Super Bowl but who became tighter and more nervous as they attempted to repeat their successes, again in part due to their impatient owner. And how he was capable of misjudgement and indecision, mainly seen in the QB controversy of his last season when he had two Hall of Fame QBs in Young and Montana. It essentially shows how he burned himself out over ten years trying to prove himself the best, but even regretting his decision to leave the 49ers once he'd retired. Walsh comes across as less and less likable the longer he's in the 49ers job, but what Harris effectively conveyed is the intolerable pressure that comes with having to maintain a successful sporting team. carrying the dreams of millions. It's easy to say it doesn't matter in the light of wars, diseases or other life or death situations, but then carrying the dreams of passionate millions brings its own pressure. Whilst Walsh might have been a genius to the point of revolutionising the way the game was played, he was only human. I don't tend to enjoy too many books dedicated to specific sporting personalities these days, but this is an exception, a sympathetic but clear eyed portrait of probably the most influential coach of the modern NFL era. And I got to witness that Walsh team, and the legacy he left from a distance - that dull Tuesday night in October 1987 I got very lucky indeed.
Everything Picture #5 Time Lord Redux
Once more unto the breach in my tragically completist quest to own all the Doctor Who novels... these are the third batch to feature Matt Smith's Doctor and his companions.
James Goss proved himself thoroughly on the Torchwood novel series before being allowed a go at the parent series. He's responsible for my favourite books in the series, making Torchwood in print as witty and thrilling as it only rarely is on screen. Dead of Winter is his second published Doctor Who story after an entry in one of Big Finish's Short Trips collection, Snapshots. It's set off the beaten historical track and, to a degree, prefigures the Gangers two parter from the 2011 season. The humour's only slightly toned down, but it's as clever a tale as you'd expect from Goss with what initially seems like mischaracterisation being a deftly executed plot point. And it also has a heartbreaking twist in relation to one of the narrators along with some wonderfully spooky imagery. Early spoiler - it's my favourite of the batch.
Una McCormack returns with her second Who book, The Way Through The Woods, following last year's The King's Dragon. It was a promising debut, with a fine premise perhaps only falling apart slightly when explanations were needed. The same problem rears its head here - the set up is fabulous, with inexplicable disappearances linked to an area everyone mysteriously avoids. The scenes with the Doctor in the police station are beautifully executed, as perfect a depiction of Matt Smith as you'll find in print. The trouble is whilst they're funny, they only serve to stop the Doctor from getting to the heart of the trouble early as it'd be a much shorter book if he wasn't somehow held back from the action. Again though, it's the prosaic SF explanation for what's going on that lets things down a little. That aside, it's another good, if not quite outstanding, effort from McCormack.
Hunter's Moon is the sort of Doctor Who adventure I don't tend to have much time for. Doctor Who can do pure SF, much as it can do historical drama, loves stories, high fantasy and pretty much anything else. It just tends to fall down when writers interpret the show as straight SF. I've not heard Finch's other Doctor Who story, an adaptation of his father's unmade script Leviathan, so I don't know if it's a misconception that dogs other stories. Hunter's Moon is certainly competently executed and exciting enough (though personally I think it would've been more effective had the prologue and first chapter been swapped round), with effective bad guys who might well have been memorable on TV if cast well. As I say though, it's a type of Doctor Who story I don't find overly engaging, having little to mark it out from other stories set on Earthlike colonies. But if you do like Who as an out and out SF show, it's perfect for you.
Overall then, a nicely balanced set of books covering historical, contemporary and SF settings and maintaining a good standard for Eleveth Doctor books. Trouble is, the next batch are a mere two months away after this release, so there's little time to savour them. Unless, of course, you've got a time machine.
James Goss proved himself thoroughly on the Torchwood novel series before being allowed a go at the parent series. He's responsible for my favourite books in the series, making Torchwood in print as witty and thrilling as it only rarely is on screen. Dead of Winter is his second published Doctor Who story after an entry in one of Big Finish's Short Trips collection, Snapshots. It's set off the beaten historical track and, to a degree, prefigures the Gangers two parter from the 2011 season. The humour's only slightly toned down, but it's as clever a tale as you'd expect from Goss with what initially seems like mischaracterisation being a deftly executed plot point. And it also has a heartbreaking twist in relation to one of the narrators along with some wonderfully spooky imagery. Early spoiler - it's my favourite of the batch.
Una McCormack returns with her second Who book, The Way Through The Woods, following last year's The King's Dragon. It was a promising debut, with a fine premise perhaps only falling apart slightly when explanations were needed. The same problem rears its head here - the set up is fabulous, with inexplicable disappearances linked to an area everyone mysteriously avoids. The scenes with the Doctor in the police station are beautifully executed, as perfect a depiction of Matt Smith as you'll find in print. The trouble is whilst they're funny, they only serve to stop the Doctor from getting to the heart of the trouble early as it'd be a much shorter book if he wasn't somehow held back from the action. Again though, it's the prosaic SF explanation for what's going on that lets things down a little. That aside, it's another good, if not quite outstanding, effort from McCormack.
Hunter's Moon is the sort of Doctor Who adventure I don't tend to have much time for. Doctor Who can do pure SF, much as it can do historical drama, loves stories, high fantasy and pretty much anything else. It just tends to fall down when writers interpret the show as straight SF. I've not heard Finch's other Doctor Who story, an adaptation of his father's unmade script Leviathan, so I don't know if it's a misconception that dogs other stories. Hunter's Moon is certainly competently executed and exciting enough (though personally I think it would've been more effective had the prologue and first chapter been swapped round), with effective bad guys who might well have been memorable on TV if cast well. As I say though, it's a type of Doctor Who story I don't find overly engaging, having little to mark it out from other stories set on Earthlike colonies. But if you do like Who as an out and out SF show, it's perfect for you.
Overall then, a nicely balanced set of books covering historical, contemporary and SF settings and maintaining a good standard for Eleveth Doctor books. Trouble is, the next batch are a mere two months away after this release, so there's little time to savour them. Unless, of course, you've got a time machine.
American Idiots - An Epic Swindle by Brian Reade
If you've paid the slightest bit of attention to English football over the past five years it's liable you'll know about the ownership problems at Liverpool. Sold by David Moores, whose family funded the club's rise under Shankly, to a pair of American businessmen, because he could no longer fund Liverpool's attempts to match the inordinately wealthy likes of implacable foes Manchester United and arriviste upstarts Chelsea. And as the credit crunch struck, those businessmen, whose fortune was built on debt became not only unable to finance Liverpool as Moores had been, but unable to finance them at all, crippling the club to the point that they dived from a perennial top four club who were regulars at the business end of the world's more lucrative competition to seventh place also rans. The club hadn't finished so low since Graeme Souness tried to rebuild an aging side too fast and with entirely the wrong players. The better players had begun to depart already and the quality of players was gradually falling. Fan attitudes declined from a warm welcome, through unease and eventually, into open revolt and protest. A club who'd prided themselves on doing things behind closed doors turned on itself, sinking so low as to hire a PR company to badmouth their own manager.
An Epic Swindle is the story of those four and a half years Liverpool suffered at the hands of Tom Hicks and George Gillett. It's unashamedly partisan, casting Hicks and Gillett as the sort of evil hearted, black hatted bad guys you rarely get outside fantasy film franchises. And speaking as a Liverpool fan I can't say I disagree too much with that - I'd argue for a little fairness in that whatever their original intentions, they were caught out by the credit crunch so had their plans irretrievably disrupted early on. It's their actions subsequent to that which destroy and benefit of doubt though, and those are thoroughly chronicled here. Not only are they shown to be only interested in the money they can make out of the club, they demonstrate an astonishing ignorance which they don't have the wit to correct by hiring people who did know what they're doing. There was a reason they were bottom of a list of American sports owners compiled in 2009. The book's essentially a forensic dissection of their actions during their ownership and repeatedly it finds them wanting against standards set at Liverpool over the previous fifty years, let alone the standards of what ethics might remain in business. Gillett comes out of it marginally better than Hicks, but only by virtue of coming across as bumbling and incompetent where Hicks is tenacious and malicious. Hicks is shown as continually undermining the club in private whilst putting on a down home, doin' mah best for the club image out in public. And in that process he alienates everyone involved with the club not related to him.
Elsewhere Brian Reade writes with a commendably fair attitude. Fans who do their best to oust the owners are obviously praised, but the book really shines when discussing the major figures in the dramas at Anfield. Reade admits to past antipathy with Moore, one that even got the mild mannered former chairman riled enough to yell at him across a packed room, but gives him a fair hearing for his aims and actions after selling the club, though rightfully skewers him for putting Liverpool way behind Manchester United in exploiting commercial opportunities at a crucial time and the lack of research done into Hicks in particular. Rick Parry, former chief executive and a man repeatedly criticised by the writer and fans alike in the past, is another who is given sympathy thanks to the almost impossible workload his post imposed upon him. It does give rise to the one positive point Reade has to make, the bringing in of Ian Ayre to exploit commercial opportunities for the club (which had already begun to pay dividends before the October 2010 court date which forced Hicks and Gillett out). Even Christian Purslow, a man reviled by a large number of fans for his part in undermining Rafa Benitez, bringing in the out of his depth successor Roy Hodgson and buying and selling players without consultation of the manager, isn't condemned outright but has his sins weighted against his role in removing the owners. And finally there's Benitez himself, presented neither as the angel operating against the owners not the incompetent fool of polarised debate on Liverpool messageboards. Instead he comes over a good manager with a weakness for club politics who became too embroiled in the club's dirty business to do his main job to the best of his ability, particularly when the squad was being thinned by Hicks and Gillett's need to bring money in to attempt to pay off their loans.
Really this book should be the account of a footballing tragedy, one of the great institutions of British sport being immolated in an attempt to bridge the gap money was bringing about in the Premier League. But it didn't quite work out like that, like all the best stories it ends with heroes victorious, the villains vanquished with all plans in ruins and the club looking to the future, going from the 19th place in a 20 team league and most embarrassing Anfield defeat in club history to sixth place, new owners making the sort of signings Hicks and Gillett were supposed to make and possibly the only man who could unite the club after all the in-fighting in the manager's chair. What it ends up as is a tale of people power, the tale of Spirit of Shankly . It proves the wisdom of Joe Hill's old song There Is A Power In A Union. And in the words of a more famous song now indelibly associated with Anfield that at the end of the storm, there's a golden sky.
An Epic Swindle is the story of those four and a half years Liverpool suffered at the hands of Tom Hicks and George Gillett. It's unashamedly partisan, casting Hicks and Gillett as the sort of evil hearted, black hatted bad guys you rarely get outside fantasy film franchises. And speaking as a Liverpool fan I can't say I disagree too much with that - I'd argue for a little fairness in that whatever their original intentions, they were caught out by the credit crunch so had their plans irretrievably disrupted early on. It's their actions subsequent to that which destroy and benefit of doubt though, and those are thoroughly chronicled here. Not only are they shown to be only interested in the money they can make out of the club, they demonstrate an astonishing ignorance which they don't have the wit to correct by hiring people who did know what they're doing. There was a reason they were bottom of a list of American sports owners compiled in 2009. The book's essentially a forensic dissection of their actions during their ownership and repeatedly it finds them wanting against standards set at Liverpool over the previous fifty years, let alone the standards of what ethics might remain in business. Gillett comes out of it marginally better than Hicks, but only by virtue of coming across as bumbling and incompetent where Hicks is tenacious and malicious. Hicks is shown as continually undermining the club in private whilst putting on a down home, doin' mah best for the club image out in public. And in that process he alienates everyone involved with the club not related to him.
Elsewhere Brian Reade writes with a commendably fair attitude. Fans who do their best to oust the owners are obviously praised, but the book really shines when discussing the major figures in the dramas at Anfield. Reade admits to past antipathy with Moore, one that even got the mild mannered former chairman riled enough to yell at him across a packed room, but gives him a fair hearing for his aims and actions after selling the club, though rightfully skewers him for putting Liverpool way behind Manchester United in exploiting commercial opportunities at a crucial time and the lack of research done into Hicks in particular. Rick Parry, former chief executive and a man repeatedly criticised by the writer and fans alike in the past, is another who is given sympathy thanks to the almost impossible workload his post imposed upon him. It does give rise to the one positive point Reade has to make, the bringing in of Ian Ayre to exploit commercial opportunities for the club (which had already begun to pay dividends before the October 2010 court date which forced Hicks and Gillett out). Even Christian Purslow, a man reviled by a large number of fans for his part in undermining Rafa Benitez, bringing in the out of his depth successor Roy Hodgson and buying and selling players without consultation of the manager, isn't condemned outright but has his sins weighted against his role in removing the owners. And finally there's Benitez himself, presented neither as the angel operating against the owners not the incompetent fool of polarised debate on Liverpool messageboards. Instead he comes over a good manager with a weakness for club politics who became too embroiled in the club's dirty business to do his main job to the best of his ability, particularly when the squad was being thinned by Hicks and Gillett's need to bring money in to attempt to pay off their loans.
Really this book should be the account of a footballing tragedy, one of the great institutions of British sport being immolated in an attempt to bridge the gap money was bringing about in the Premier League. But it didn't quite work out like that, like all the best stories it ends with heroes victorious, the villains vanquished with all plans in ruins and the club looking to the future, going from the 19th place in a 20 team league and most embarrassing Anfield defeat in club history to sixth place, new owners making the sort of signings Hicks and Gillett were supposed to make and possibly the only man who could unite the club after all the in-fighting in the manager's chair. What it ends up as is a tale of people power, the tale of Spirit of Shankly . It proves the wisdom of Joe Hill's old song There Is A Power In A Union. And in the words of a more famous song now indelibly associated with Anfield that at the end of the storm, there's a golden sky.
Not A Number: Patrick McGoohan - A Life by Rupert Booth
You have to applaud the bravery of anyone attempting a biography of Patrick McGoohan. Leaving aside the impossibility of interviewing him for the book - he died just over two years before this was published - he preferred not make to many interviews, and to make as few public appearances as possible. It's thin material to attempt to fashion a biography from, inevitably reliant as it will be on research and interviewing those who worked with him who are still alive and happy to go on record.
First off, a declaration - I've known the author for ten years or so, to the extent that I had a cameo in what was planned to be the first in a line of Prisoner novels. On the plus side it means I can declare he's got an exceptional knowledge of The Prisoner, not only that he's highly eloquent on the themes and ideas of the show. And he's also well versed in archive television, having a large and wide ranging collection of shows. In terms of knowledge of the context in which McGoohan's star rose in the late 50s and early 60s, he's well suited to the task in hand. And McGoohan's career is excellently researched, from his time on a farm, through rep in Sheffield, through career highlights Danger Man and The Prisoner to his subsequent flight to Hollywood. It's only natural that the largest section of the book is dedicated to The Prisoner. Booth captures McGoohan's obsessive nature here very well. It's a theme that runs through the book but is most evident here where he's got almost carte blanche from Lew Grade.
Where it falls down a little is the speculation Booth's often forced to make to explain McGoohan's decisions. It's informed by extrapolations of what we know about McGoohan, and other career choices, but it's still speculation nonetheless. Although it might be said to be in keeping with the themes of The Prisoner, with the way society imposes perceptions on the individual...
Booth though is scrupulously fair in his portrayal of his subject. Whilst it's always evident that he's an admirer of McGoohan, he doesn't shy away from mentioning the flaws that obsession brought on. Whilst there's no womanising or 'my drugs hell' secrets to come out, the penalties of having drive and obsession aren't shirked from, nor is McGoohan's propensity for heavy drinking.
There was a remake of The Prisoner a couple of years ago. They even got a lot right, updating some themes to reflect today's society and maintaining relevant ones. Where they went wrong was that as good an actor as Jim Calviezel might be, he's got nothing of McGoohan's cryptic intensity; nothing of the driven investiture McGoohan had in his own project. It's almost inconceivable that anyone in modern times would give the freedom to McGoohan that Grade did - that's why The Prisoner ended up an idiosyncratic, compelling modern fairy tale; an allegory for McGoohan's view of society. The modern version smoothed the edges that made the original so fascinating away and lacked the engine McGoohan provided to the original. What this biography gets so right is to show what a fascinating, complex character McGoohan was. In the end that's probably all you can ask of any biography.
First off, a declaration - I've known the author for ten years or so, to the extent that I had a cameo in what was planned to be the first in a line of Prisoner novels. On the plus side it means I can declare he's got an exceptional knowledge of The Prisoner, not only that he's highly eloquent on the themes and ideas of the show. And he's also well versed in archive television, having a large and wide ranging collection of shows. In terms of knowledge of the context in which McGoohan's star rose in the late 50s and early 60s, he's well suited to the task in hand. And McGoohan's career is excellently researched, from his time on a farm, through rep in Sheffield, through career highlights Danger Man and The Prisoner to his subsequent flight to Hollywood. It's only natural that the largest section of the book is dedicated to The Prisoner. Booth captures McGoohan's obsessive nature here very well. It's a theme that runs through the book but is most evident here where he's got almost carte blanche from Lew Grade.
Where it falls down a little is the speculation Booth's often forced to make to explain McGoohan's decisions. It's informed by extrapolations of what we know about McGoohan, and other career choices, but it's still speculation nonetheless. Although it might be said to be in keeping with the themes of The Prisoner, with the way society imposes perceptions on the individual...
Booth though is scrupulously fair in his portrayal of his subject. Whilst it's always evident that he's an admirer of McGoohan, he doesn't shy away from mentioning the flaws that obsession brought on. Whilst there's no womanising or 'my drugs hell' secrets to come out, the penalties of having drive and obsession aren't shirked from, nor is McGoohan's propensity for heavy drinking.
There was a remake of The Prisoner a couple of years ago. They even got a lot right, updating some themes to reflect today's society and maintaining relevant ones. Where they went wrong was that as good an actor as Jim Calviezel might be, he's got nothing of McGoohan's cryptic intensity; nothing of the driven investiture McGoohan had in his own project. It's almost inconceivable that anyone in modern times would give the freedom to McGoohan that Grade did - that's why The Prisoner ended up an idiosyncratic, compelling modern fairy tale; an allegory for McGoohan's view of society. The modern version smoothed the edges that made the original so fascinating away and lacked the engine McGoohan provided to the original. What this biography gets so right is to show what a fascinating, complex character McGoohan was. In the end that's probably all you can ask of any biography.
The Revolutions Will Be Recorded - 33 Revolutions Per Minute by Dorian Lynskey
There are two ways to write about rock music. The first is the easy way, buying into and reinforcing the self perpetuating myths about musicians. That way lies anecdotes of TVs through windows, groupies and red snappers and Rolls Royces in swimming pools, the music of The Dirt and Hammer of the Gods. With the PR machines of record companies becoming ever more controlling it's the way the majority of rock journalism in the country seems to be heading, even if the ever more intense gaze of tabloids and internet bystanders makes it harder for personal foibles and excesses to be hidden. Entertainers and musicians become deities to be places on pedestals rather than human beings who find ways to communicate on a mass level; miracle workers performing sonic alchemy rather than simply humans doing something anyone could do to a remarkable standard. This way lies the likes of heritage rock magazines and Q's slack-jawed admiration,complete with fawning reviews.
And then there's the type of writing that understands how preposterous it all us, and reminds us there's a fallible human element in the middle of it all. No matter if they've achieved on the levels of the Beatles, Bowie or Bob Marley they can still be questioned, criticised and mocked. Mockery is the cheap way of doing that, one that only really works when the writer doing it also loves the art form - reminding you at the same time that it's all simultaneously brilliant and utterly ridiculous. It's best exemplified in the likes of Danny Baker, the casually brilliant swagger of Smash Hits and its alumni or Alex Petridis in The Guardian. It's a wonderful art form, at its best it has the effervescence and sparkle of sunlight catching bubbles in champagne. But even that art form comes with the great writing safety net that you can get yourself out of trouble with a decent joke. And that humour can allow musicians protection, a couple of witty lines allowing themselves to demonstrate that they're human whilst avoiding too much troublesome soul baring. The other, more difficult way of demythologising music and musicians is ultimately the more rewarding one - analysis and deconstruction, pinning the butterfly to the wheel. This way lies the very best writing about music - Ian Penman, Ian McDonald's Revolution in the Head, Simon Reynolds' Energy Flash or (especially) Rip It Up And Start Again, Nick Kent's The Dark Stuff or Greil Marcus' Lipstick Traces. It's even there, albeit with a breathtaking lightness of touch which merges the highbrow and Smash Hits approaches, in Caitlin Moran's account of her meeting with Lady Gaga in The Times. There's little recourse to humour and no myth for subjects to hide behind here. The seriousness of the approach jars somewhat with the way music's sold by the industry in Britain so it tends to be confined to books and the magazines aimed at the older music fan. It's to this school of writing that 33 Revolutions Per Minute belongs, an almost academic attempt to study the use of popular music as a form of protest.
It's almost deceptive to call 33 RPM a book about music. Instead it's a Trojan Horse, sneaking a book about popular protest in the twentieth and early twentieth centuries using music as the hook. There's a brief contextualisation with an appendix covering previous forms of protest music but Dorian Lynskey's focus doesn't lie with the spirituals of slaves and left wing songbooks but rather how the advent of a mass market for music meant that one voice could now make itself widely heard - radio and records meaning a message could be spread far more easily than in previous years, and direct from the originator rather than via pamphlet or third hand through the performances of others. The point where there's no process of chinese whispers diluting or bowdlerising the message.
Probably the only obvious choice Lynskey makes is in where he starts. There's probably never been a protest song as startlingly effective as Billie Holliday's Strange Fruit; even today it retains an eerie power, long after the specific issues it highlights are... well, not dead by any means, but certainly somewhat defused. Lynskey's long term background as a politically engaged music writer means he's eloquently able to explain what gave the song such effect, both in terms of the music itself and also in the context in which it was released. It summarises the approach he takes throughout the book in that the song the chapter is ostensibly about is merely a point by which he engages with the issues the song raises. In that way this is really a work of popular history via music. Where the approach gets more interesting is at the point the protest song becomes more popular, around the rise of the folk movement eventually headed by Dylan in the late 1950s and early 1960. Lynskey doesn't stick to the point of view presented by his chosen song but more often contrasts it with other works on the same thing - contrasting Dylan and his actions with Phil Ochs for instance, or presenting James Brown's Say It Loud, I'm Back and I'm Proud coming in the context of the approaches of Martin Luther King and the Black Panthers. As a result it's a much more rounded and informative work than a book than a book which concentrated simply on the songs in question, bringing both sides of an argument. For example Country Joe and the Fish's I Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die Rag (and the whole peace movement) makes a lot more sense when it's understood against more conventional and patriotic songs of the late 60s such as The Ballad of the Green Berets.
That's not to say that individuals get lost in the great sweep of history - it'd be an interesting but repetitive experience if this was all political movements and ideology. Lynskey never loses sight of the human element at the heart of the work, where this is really strong is how it presents the songs as an understandable human reaction to conflicting political pressures. One of the themes that recurrently emerges throughout is the price of sticking to political ideals - ranging from tragedies such as those of Phil Ochs and Victor Jara to the frustrated idealism of Crass. It's that latter chapter that's probably the most affecting in the entire book, with their growing realisation that their music can't change the world, swept away in the capitalist tidal wave of Thatcherism. I genuinely wouldn't have thought it possible that a chapter on a relatively politically extreme band could come across as such a tragedy that could make me simultaneously angry and sad.
All this wouldn't matter though if Lynskey was simply presenting essays on thirty three different songs and thirty three different movements. There are a few songs which don't conform to a simplistic timeline of cause, effect or influence, but Lynskey's able to justify the 'history' in the subtitle by finding common threads and influences - no small task given he's ambitious enough to attempt to cover not only a divergent range of music including gospel, folk, funk, rock, rap, ska, country, disco, pop and punk but also a range of political movements as well as bringing in a more global context. Relating the protest music of Jara and Fela Kuti to the more obvious American and British movements is no mean feat, but it never feels gratuitous and gives the book a better global context.
There's no way anything short enough to be contained in a book - even a book such as this which runs to 800 pages including appendices and indices could be comprehensive but that's a problem Lynskey is clever enough to know and deal with. Not only does he deal with it in his approach to the book - essentially history via a series of thirty-three snapshots which are then contextualised, but in then providing room for further investigation. There's the already mentioned pre-history of the protest song as we understand it, a list of the songs included in the text, however peripherally, and a hundred further songs which didn't fit into the overall story. The sign of an intelligent author is that he's not arrogant enough to think of himself as a definitive authority on a subject, more a far-better informed expert. The leaving open of further avenues for investigation, and active encouragement to explore them, is entirely to the author's credit. I guess that my favourite type of rock writing is one which encourages the reader to share the author's passions by demonstrating (not explicitly explaining) what's so great about them. Revolution in the Head encouraged me to go back to listen to The Beatles with fresh thinking, Rip It Up And Start Again sent me careening through the dark corners of post-punk I didn't know about and encouraged me to return to the familiar areas I knew about. 33 Revolutions Per Minute? Let's just say that my hard drive is much fuller than it was before I started. And so was my mind.
And then there's the type of writing that understands how preposterous it all us, and reminds us there's a fallible human element in the middle of it all. No matter if they've achieved on the levels of the Beatles, Bowie or Bob Marley they can still be questioned, criticised and mocked. Mockery is the cheap way of doing that, one that only really works when the writer doing it also loves the art form - reminding you at the same time that it's all simultaneously brilliant and utterly ridiculous. It's best exemplified in the likes of Danny Baker, the casually brilliant swagger of Smash Hits and its alumni or Alex Petridis in The Guardian. It's a wonderful art form, at its best it has the effervescence and sparkle of sunlight catching bubbles in champagne. But even that art form comes with the great writing safety net that you can get yourself out of trouble with a decent joke. And that humour can allow musicians protection, a couple of witty lines allowing themselves to demonstrate that they're human whilst avoiding too much troublesome soul baring. The other, more difficult way of demythologising music and musicians is ultimately the more rewarding one - analysis and deconstruction, pinning the butterfly to the wheel. This way lies the very best writing about music - Ian Penman, Ian McDonald's Revolution in the Head, Simon Reynolds' Energy Flash or (especially) Rip It Up And Start Again, Nick Kent's The Dark Stuff or Greil Marcus' Lipstick Traces. It's even there, albeit with a breathtaking lightness of touch which merges the highbrow and Smash Hits approaches, in Caitlin Moran's account of her meeting with Lady Gaga in The Times. There's little recourse to humour and no myth for subjects to hide behind here. The seriousness of the approach jars somewhat with the way music's sold by the industry in Britain so it tends to be confined to books and the magazines aimed at the older music fan. It's to this school of writing that 33 Revolutions Per Minute belongs, an almost academic attempt to study the use of popular music as a form of protest.
It's almost deceptive to call 33 RPM a book about music. Instead it's a Trojan Horse, sneaking a book about popular protest in the twentieth and early twentieth centuries using music as the hook. There's a brief contextualisation with an appendix covering previous forms of protest music but Dorian Lynskey's focus doesn't lie with the spirituals of slaves and left wing songbooks but rather how the advent of a mass market for music meant that one voice could now make itself widely heard - radio and records meaning a message could be spread far more easily than in previous years, and direct from the originator rather than via pamphlet or third hand through the performances of others. The point where there's no process of chinese whispers diluting or bowdlerising the message.
Probably the only obvious choice Lynskey makes is in where he starts. There's probably never been a protest song as startlingly effective as Billie Holliday's Strange Fruit; even today it retains an eerie power, long after the specific issues it highlights are... well, not dead by any means, but certainly somewhat defused. Lynskey's long term background as a politically engaged music writer means he's eloquently able to explain what gave the song such effect, both in terms of the music itself and also in the context in which it was released. It summarises the approach he takes throughout the book in that the song the chapter is ostensibly about is merely a point by which he engages with the issues the song raises. In that way this is really a work of popular history via music. Where the approach gets more interesting is at the point the protest song becomes more popular, around the rise of the folk movement eventually headed by Dylan in the late 1950s and early 1960. Lynskey doesn't stick to the point of view presented by his chosen song but more often contrasts it with other works on the same thing - contrasting Dylan and his actions with Phil Ochs for instance, or presenting James Brown's Say It Loud, I'm Back and I'm Proud coming in the context of the approaches of Martin Luther King and the Black Panthers. As a result it's a much more rounded and informative work than a book than a book which concentrated simply on the songs in question, bringing both sides of an argument. For example Country Joe and the Fish's I Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die Rag (and the whole peace movement) makes a lot more sense when it's understood against more conventional and patriotic songs of the late 60s such as The Ballad of the Green Berets.
That's not to say that individuals get lost in the great sweep of history - it'd be an interesting but repetitive experience if this was all political movements and ideology. Lynskey never loses sight of the human element at the heart of the work, where this is really strong is how it presents the songs as an understandable human reaction to conflicting political pressures. One of the themes that recurrently emerges throughout is the price of sticking to political ideals - ranging from tragedies such as those of Phil Ochs and Victor Jara to the frustrated idealism of Crass. It's that latter chapter that's probably the most affecting in the entire book, with their growing realisation that their music can't change the world, swept away in the capitalist tidal wave of Thatcherism. I genuinely wouldn't have thought it possible that a chapter on a relatively politically extreme band could come across as such a tragedy that could make me simultaneously angry and sad.
All this wouldn't matter though if Lynskey was simply presenting essays on thirty three different songs and thirty three different movements. There are a few songs which don't conform to a simplistic timeline of cause, effect or influence, but Lynskey's able to justify the 'history' in the subtitle by finding common threads and influences - no small task given he's ambitious enough to attempt to cover not only a divergent range of music including gospel, folk, funk, rock, rap, ska, country, disco, pop and punk but also a range of political movements as well as bringing in a more global context. Relating the protest music of Jara and Fela Kuti to the more obvious American and British movements is no mean feat, but it never feels gratuitous and gives the book a better global context.
There's no way anything short enough to be contained in a book - even a book such as this which runs to 800 pages including appendices and indices could be comprehensive but that's a problem Lynskey is clever enough to know and deal with. Not only does he deal with it in his approach to the book - essentially history via a series of thirty-three snapshots which are then contextualised, but in then providing room for further investigation. There's the already mentioned pre-history of the protest song as we understand it, a list of the songs included in the text, however peripherally, and a hundred further songs which didn't fit into the overall story. The sign of an intelligent author is that he's not arrogant enough to think of himself as a definitive authority on a subject, more a far-better informed expert. The leaving open of further avenues for investigation, and active encouragement to explore them, is entirely to the author's credit. I guess that my favourite type of rock writing is one which encourages the reader to share the author's passions by demonstrating (not explicitly explaining) what's so great about them. Revolution in the Head encouraged me to go back to listen to The Beatles with fresh thinking, Rip It Up And Start Again sent me careening through the dark corners of post-punk I didn't know about and encouraged me to return to the familiar areas I knew about. 33 Revolutions Per Minute? Let's just say that my hard drive is much fuller than it was before I started. And so was my mind.
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