The Boy From The Sea by Garret Carr

 

You can buy The Boy From The Sea...Here

You can find out more about the author...Here

Our Rating 3⭐s

• The Blurb...

In 1973 on the west coast of Ireland, a baby is found abandoned on the beach. Who is he? Where is he from?

Ambrose a local fisherman, is far more interested in who he will become and – with a curious community looking on – takes the baby home and adopts him. But for Declan, the baby’s new brother, this arrival is surely bad news. Rivalries can be decades in the making . . .

Set over twenty years, The Boy from the Sea is about a restless boy trying to find his place, in a town caught in the storm of a rapidly changing world.

• Our Review...

The Boy From The Sea (TBFTS) tells the story of Brendan a new born baby washed ashore in half barrel to the shores of the West of Ireland. Taken under the wing of the village as something akin to a spiritual gift from the Sea Gods. He swiftly ends up being ensconced in the Bonnar household with kindly, hardworking dad Ambrose, caring and nuturing mum Christine and jealous as hell older natural born brother Declan.

We follow their adventures over the following decades through the trauma of Christine's fathers illness, the self sacrifice of her sister Phyllis, the ups and downs of the fishing industry and the slow depressing grind of Donegal catching up with the late 20th century and all that it brings. The main relationships feel like a battle. Always fighting repression, resentment and economic erosion. Will the adoptive brothers ever treat each other with love? Will Phyllis and Christine come to terms with the roles that they have slipped into? Will his family ever give Ambrose the peace he is looking for? The questions are well set but the answers, if they are answered at all, aren't what we desire. 

 The enduring after taste is one of sadness and depression. It took an unexpected left turn when of the main characters dies, and not just dies but dies off screen, so to speak. We only get to hear about it via a letter from a family member, which just felt odd. There doesn't seem to be a resolution to any of the conflicts raised between the family members, The plot doesn't feel like a plot, more just an unending soap opera with an Irish setting . It's ending just sort of drifts and doesn't actually end. Is there a message? if there is it must be that life is an awful grind so be prepared.

This wasn't my cup of tea, it took me almost a month to get through.  This is probably down to my foibles and subjectivity although on the plus side I have discovered though that family saga novels may not be for me. I have no doubt that anyone who enjoys this genre may well give this 5 stars instead of the 3 stars that I gave it. 

That's not to say this novel is without merit. On the contrary the author does an excellent job of evoking the West of Ireland in the 70s and 80s. Laced through out the narrative are occasions of Irish charm and and whimsy but overall it left me feeling a little bit sad.

• Selected Quotes...

The tide brought the child in,’ he said, ‘he was laid in a barrel.’ Attempts were made to get sense out of him. ‘Who’s he belonging to?’ asked Justine O’Donnell. ‘He’s a gift from the sea,’

this was before contraception so things were simpler, so simple some of us went a year or two unsure if we were technically virgins or not.

By making it clear he wanted to impress her, Ambrose had handed Christine the role of being hard to impress, and therefore put her in command. She decided to keep hold of this position.

fundamentally, every child comes in from the sea, washes up against the ankles of their parents, arms outstretched, ready to be shaped by them but with some disposition already in place, deep-set and never quite knowable.

When Ambrose was young, shortage still looked like it did in history books: poor people had no electricity, no bank account, no teeth, but they didn’t have debt either; they lived outside money, in inherited cottages and supported by relatives and the community. But those people were gone, everyone had money now, just not enough. Shortage had become pernicious and harder to recognize. It crept into your brain and gave you no peace, keeping you at every moment aware of your home’s easy crushability. And it was almost impossible to talk about. Many families were this way, but you still felt alone with it, so alone.

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Still Life by Sarah Winman

  

Our Rating 4.5⭐s

You can buy "Still Life"...here

You can find out about the author...here

• The Blurb...

1944, Italy. As bombs fall around them, two strangers meet in the ruined wine cellar of a Tuscan villa and share an extraordinary evening.

Ulysses Temper is a young British soldier, Evelyn Skinner a 64-year-old art historian living life on her own terms. She has come to salvage paintings from the wreckage of war and relive memories of her youth when her heart was stolen by an Italian maid in a particular room with a view. Ulysses’ chance encounter with Evelyn will transform his life – and all those who love him back home in London – forever.

Uplifting, sweeping and full of unforgettable characters, Still Life is a novel about beauty, love, family and friendship.

• Our Review...

This is a very different book for me to read, totally not of my usual fare. I normally go in for twisty plots, thrilling chase to a climatic end and a denouement of the arch villain. This book isn't like that. It is akin to a family saga (although the protagonists are mostly unrelated) that covers roughly 75 years from about 1900 on. It does so in two stages 1945 to 75ish and the last part of the book relates to Evelyn remembering her early twenties.

Evelyn and Ulysses cross paths during the war and the story follows them as they weave their way through the subsequent years until they both end up where they first met in Florence, birth place of the Renaissance. Indeed Florence is as much a presence in this book as any of the characters. It and its art and its architecture and its soul are intertwined in every chapter. You would do well to keep a phone or PC next to you when reading this book to look up the numerous works of art and areas of the city that are constantly mentioned throughout. I only did this towards the end of the novel and wished I had started doing so earlier.

So the author clearly has a huge passion for both Florence and the appreciation of art. The love of art in this narrative is borderline obsessive with a sprinkle of pretentiousness. hence the 4.5 instead of 5 stars. Maybe I am a bit too basic in my outlook. I think art is a pleasure in life, this novel puts art on a level with love as being one of the vital drivers of life which is a little bit of a reach for me. I suppose the pursuit of art becomes more of a priority if you don't have to think about where your next meal, or the payment for the roof over your head is coming from. This is not a criticism, it is just my lived experience. 

The decades long soap opera of a story follows the working class found family of Ulysses in London's East End and the life and loves of Evelyn a teacher and art lover from a very privileged background, who comes across many famous artists and authors including a young E.M. Forster. The cast is wide and deep including a very wise old man, who doesn't really know how wise he is, a love interest who is hard as nails and a heartbreaker and the most intelligent and linguistically gifted parrot in the whole of literature. Life happens to them all. Lifelong unrequited love, coming of age, loss, friendship, good luck, bad luck and serendipity. Fortunes are never too good nor too bad but a little of both and at often at the same time. From the book I think the lesson is it matters not what tribulations may come it is how we face them that is of more importance. And the best way to do this is with friends and above all kindness. What can I say, I like books with a moral compass.

However, where this book towers above the herd is how the author delivers the big poignant moments in life. You don't read this book, you feel it. It'll make you double cry, tears of both happiness and despair.  There are times in life e.g. when your father passes away or when you hold your grandchild in your arms for the first time, when time stops, and you connect with...with well everything and the author conveys these many moments in this novel. The sweet sadness of life and the sad sweetness of death tear on the threads in your emotions. It feels as if you are living the opening scene of Disney's "Up" or that scene from Jon Voight's "The Champ." It is amazing to think that just looking at words in a book can induce such wild emotions in the reader. It really is a kind of magic or legal drug dealing. Sarah Winman should change her name to Houdini Escobar. Wow.. just wow.

• Selected Quotes...

The man was a dreamer, he said. Had a loser’s luck and a winning smile and was never happy unless he had a churn in his guts that denoted money riding on an outcome. A feeling he often equated to love.

We like beauty, don’t we? Something good on the eye cheers us. Does something to us on a cellular level, makes us feel alive and enriched. Beautiful art opens our eyes to the beauty of the world, Ulysses. It repositions our sight and judgement. Captures forever that which is fleeting.

She’s gone up in the world. Typist. Sixty words a minute and that’s just her gob.

You’re a good mum, Peg. No I’m not but it’s good of you to say. Your mum was a good mum, Temps. That’s what a good mum is. Mine was competition.

Her beauty had been her currency. Always had been. No one talked about when the bank ran dry as it inevitably would.

We shall be at war one day with your European brothers, as you call them, Mr Collins. It’s inevitable, said Mr Lugg. They’re not like us. But they want what we have. And do we not want what they have, Mr Lugg? Michelangelo? Dante? Beauty? Wine on a sun-drenched terrace? Villas nestled in the hills going for a song? Mr Lugg ignored Mr Collins and reached for a plate of stinking goat’s cheese. Yes, but will you fight? said the reverend, bringing the conversation back to British imperialism. It’s a simple question. For what cause? said Mr Collins. Cause is irrelevant. Cause is not irrelevant. To teach another nation a lesson, then, said the reverend. A nation is not a person. And so I will not.

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      Sarah Winman author of Still Life

Claudius The God by Robert Graves

 

Rating 4.5 ⭐s

488 pages

You can buy Claudius The God....Here

• The Blurb...

Continuing the saga begun in I, Claudius, Robert Graves's Claudius the God is a compelling fictional autobiography of the Roman emperor, published with an introduction by Barry Unsworth in Penguin Modern Classics.

Claudius has survived the murderous intrigues of his predecessors to become, reluctantly, Emperor of Rome. Here he recounts his surprisingly successful reign: how he cultivates the loyalty of the army and the common people to repair the damage caused by Caligula; his relations with the Jewish King Herod Agrippa; and his invasion of Britain. But the growing paranoia of absolute power and the infidelity of his promiscuous young wife Messalina mean that his good fortune will not last forever. In this second part of Robert Graves's fictionalised autobiography, Claudius - wry, rueful, always inquisitive - brings to life some of the most scandalous and violent times in history.

• Our Review...

There are some spoilers in this review.

Regular readers of our website (if there are any! Give us a shout!) will know that "I Claudius" if one of our favourite novels and Robert Graves autobiography " Goodbye To All That" is probably our favourite autobiography. So it will come as no surprise that we loved this novel. These novels are very accurate in that they get the factual historical points dates, battles, speeches etc correct but the beauty of these tales lies in the colour of the human stories that the author uses to complete the historical outline. It is a potent combination.

Claudius the God is the sequel to I Claudius. In I Claudius we learned the story of how half cripple half idiot fell by luck into firstly surviving the assassination riddled arena of Roman politics and subsequently becoming Emperor of Rome.  In the sequel we follow his tenure as the supreme leader. If anything his life becomes more difficult. The disguise is now lost, those once oblivious to him are now very aware that he is not an incompetent fool. He is now literally a target. In spite of this Claudius tries his best to give good governance and stable leadership to Rome. 

This book is told with such clarity it could be ripped from today's headlines. Any great historical fiction shares the same traits be it Wolf Hall, I Claudius, The Godfather et al the historical contrast is important but not as important as human nature and interaction. The love of power, influence, sex and money are universal through out time. They may be historical novels but are (and always will be) contemporary.

There are three main sections within the book. The story of his friend the loveable rogue Herod Agrippa, his conquest of Britain and his betrayal by his young wife Messalina (who turns out to be a bit of a strumpet.) These threads are set against the back ground of his constant attempts to be a benevolent ruler.

One of the interesting aspects of this book is the first person narrative. Claudius tells his own story in his own words. He is our guide but is he trustworthy. Its his side of history and his story. All his actions seem to be arrived at sensibly and without malice but there is a constant small niggle in the back of your mind as you read. Is he telling the truth? He does seem to have an awful lot of people executed. In addition he yearns to return Rome to a democracy but there is always a reason it cannot be done just yet and he must continue to rule. Is this really the case or is it political spin. 

As every star rises so it falls and Claudius is no exception. Herod Agrippa warns him to trust no one but Claudius has one blind spot his young bride Messalina who has many sexual partners without his knowledge and eventually tries to overthrow him. Claudius is besotted with her and his court is afraid to inform him of her escapades. Eventually he discovers her treachery and avoids the insurrection but the betrayal breaks him in his soul and is left a shell of his former self. He goes within himself and allows others to take the reins of power and eventually comes to sad end. 

I love these books and they constantly remind me of "The Godfather" 

• Selected Quotes...

Herod himself always insisted that he was congenitally a rogue. To which I would reply, ‘No, you are a fundamentally virtuous man wearing the mask of roguery.

there are fools who pretend to be wise men and wise men who pretend to be fools, but you are the first case I have encountered of a fool pretending to be a fool.

There’s truth in wine

one learns more about a man from ten words which he speaks himself on his own behalf than from a ten-hour eulogy by a friend. It does not matter so much what he says in those ten words: what really counts is the way in which he says them.

reminds me of what you said when we had that mystical idiot John the Baptist beheaded – ‘Religious fanaticism is the most dangerous form of insanity.’

You Romans aim at extending your sway over all mankind, but it does not follow that all mankind will immediately accept that sway. I cannot understand, my Lords, how as rulers of a City as glorious as this is, with its houses like marble cliffs, its shops like royal treasuries, its temples like the dreams that our Druids report when they return from magical visits to the Kingdom of the Dead, you can ever find it in your hearts to covet the possession of our poor island huts.

• If You Liked This Then You May Like...

The Silver Pigs by Lindsay Davis

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• About The Author

Robert Graves (1895-1985) was an English poet, translator, and novelist, one of the leading English men of letters in the twentieth century. He fought in World War I and won international acclaim in 1929 with the publication of his memoir of the First World War, Good-bye to All That. After the war, he was granted a classical scholarship at Oxford and subsequently went to Egypt as the first professor of English at the University of Cairo. He is most noted for his series of novels about the Roman emperor Claudius and his works on mythology, such as The White Goddess.

I Claudius by Robert Graves

 

Rating 5⭐s

416 pages

First published 1934

You can buy I, Claudius...here

You can find out more about Robert Graves...here

• The Blurb...

Despised for his weakness and regarded by his family as little more than a stammering fool, the nobleman Claudius quietly survives the bloody purges and mounting cruelty of the imperial Roman dynasties. In I, Claudius he watches from the sidelines to record the reigns of its emperors: from the wise Augustus and his villainous wife Livia to the sadistic Tiberius and the insane excesses of Caligula. Written in the form of Claudius' autobiography, this is the first part of Robert Graves's brilliant account of the madness and debauchery of ancient Rome.

With an introduction by Barry Unsworth

• Our Review...

Claudius was born into a great family. A descendant of both Julius Caeser and Mark Anthony but alas he was lame, partially deaf and with a stammer. However his curse was also his blessing. Because of his failings he was never seen as a potential contender for the title of Roman Emperor, however due to his family connections he was always in the room. His calling was to be an historian, which puts him in the perfect position for the author to choose him to be our "unreliable" author. The historical record is correct, the names, dates and battles are correct. The only point of conjecture is what the characters thought and felt, and the author conjures up the characters with such tone and personality as to become very real to the reader.

Thus we learn all the court intrigues through three generations of Roman Emperors. Augustus the practical one, Tiberius the depraved one and Caligula the absolutely bonkers one.

We see through Claudius's eyes the life and times of Imperial Rome. There are orgies, and gladiators and plots and depravity. The body count is huge and all through the decades Its feels like we are being given all the gossip from the most powerful family in the world by our mate who is telling us all this over a pint at the pub. 

My favourite character is Livia, Claudius's scheming grandmother. From now on whenever I see a debate about the most evil female character in literary fiction on social media, I am going to throw Livia's hat into the ring. She is the ultimate wrong 'un. For me she takes the crown from Cruella Deville by knock out in the first round. No spoilers, I will let you uncover her wicked ways for yourself.

I must mention the BBC adaption for TV in the 1970s, with a stellar cast of Derek Jacobi, Sian Phillips, John Hurt, Patrick Stewart, Bernard Hill, Peter Bowles, Kevin McInally. It was a wonderful production. I'm afraid that the BBC couldn't do something similar today. But no matter how good the TV show, the book was still better. 

Yes it is 2000 year old history and there are some instances where it is very apparent that this is a very, very different society to todays. However for the vast majority of the tale, the reader feels very "in the moment." Imagine a Tory government cabinet member from in 2010 and the glorious rise to power to the scandal riddled collapse and chaos of 2024. Now imagine this intelligent and eloquent but non descript cabinet member telling you everything that went on from the affairs, scandals and powers grabs. All this from someone who was actually in the room when the big stuff happened. That's how up to date this still feels. Human emotions never get outdated they are timeless.

If you look at the "If you liked this, then you may like..." section you will see that I have recommended Wolf Hall set in the Tudor area of England and The Godfather set in the 1950s of New York. Not very much like Rome AD34 you say? Yes but the politics of family, time, dynasty, power, money and death are very much the same.  There is a reason why Hilary Mantel loves this book. It is basically Wolf Hall set 1500 years earlier.

I first read this book as a 16 yr old studying for my Classical Studies O level. Yes I am that old. This book along with The Iliad and to a lesser extent the Odyssey fired my passion for reading in general and the classical period in particular.

Loved it then. Love it still.

• Selected Quotes...

I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus this-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles), who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as ‘Claudius the Idiot’, or ‘That Claudius’, or ‘Claudius the Stammerer’, or ‘Clau-Clau-Claudius’, or at best as ‘Poor Uncle Claudius’, A.D. 41 am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting from my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the ‘golden predicament’ from which I have never since become disentangled.

Augustus ruled the world, but Livia ruled Augustus.

Most women are inclined to set a modest limit to their ambitions; a few rare ones set a bold limit. But Livia was unique in setting no limit at all to hers,

The gift of independence once granted cannot be lightly taken away again.

He was always boasting of his ancestors, as stupid people do who are aware that they have done nothing themselves to boast about.

To use the majesty of the law for revenging any petty act of private spite is to make a public confession of weakness, cowardice, and an ignoble spirit.

• If You Liked This, Then You May Like...

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantell

Imperium by Robert Harris

The Godfather by Mario Puzo

• About The Author...

Robert Graves (1895-1985) was an English poet, translator, and novelist, one of the leading English men of letters in the twentieth century. He fought in World War I and won international acclaim in 1929 with the publication of his memoir of the First World War, Good-bye to All That. After the war, he was granted a classical scholarship at Oxford and subsequently went to Egypt as the first professor of English at the University of Cairo. He is most noted for his series of novels about the Roman emperor Claudius and his works on mythology, such as The White Goddess.

The Gathering Storm by Alan Jones

 

Rating 5⭐s

You can buy The Gathering Storm..here

You can find out more about Alan Jones...here

The Blurb...

The Gathering Storm: Book 1 in the Sturmtaucher Trilogy, a powerful and compelling story of two families torn apart by evil.

Kiel, Northern Germany, 1933. A naval city, the base for the German Baltic fleet, and the centre for German sailing, the venue for the upcoming Olympic regatta in 1936.

The Kästners, a prominent Military family, are part of the fabric of the city, and its social, naval and yachting circles. The Nussbaums are the second generation of their family to be in service with the Kästners as domestic staff, but the two households have a closer bond than most.

As Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist Party claw their way to power in 1933, life has never looked better for families like the Kästners. There is only one problem.

The Nussbaums are Jews.

The Sturmtaucher Trilogy documents the devastating effect on both families of the Nazis’ hateful ideology and the insidious erosion of the rights of Germany's Jews.

When Germany descends ever deeper into dictatorship, General Erich Kästner tries desperately to protect his employees, and to spirit them to safety.

As the country tears itself apart, the darkness which envelops a nation threatens not only to destroy two families, but to plunge an entire continent into war.’

Our Review...

This is a heart rending cautionary tale of politics gone wrong. It tells the tale of Eric (played in my head by Curt Jurgens!) and Yosef. Childhood friends who saw out the first world war in action together. Now Erich is a General working for German military intelligence and Yosef is his domestic help/driver. However its 1933 in Kiel. Yosef and his family are jewish but not fervently so. This is the first part of a trilogy that encompasses 1933-1945 in total.

We meet both sets of families. Erich's two sons progress from the compulsory Hitler Youth into the Army. Franz honourable and thoughtful like his father, Johann a womanising hot head. We also meet Erich's wife Maria, desperate to be a leading socialite and accepted by the aristocracy. To this end she is seeking a high society match for her oldest daughter.

Yosef's family is less aspirational. His wife is the Kastner's cook. They along with their children live with them in a small servants house on the Kastner's estate.

So now the scene is set we follow the slow, inexorable rising tide of the nazi party.  With each new law, diktat and convention the pressure builds a little more. Step by small step the tension continually ramps up. until it is unbearable. Yosef's family's freedoms and rights are eroded, the thugs both in brown/black shirts and in civilian garb get a little louder and a little closer. How can Yosef protect them without being taken to the camps as a criminal. What can Erich do with being denounced as a traitor. 

This is in part a epistolary novel. The writer is very clever in using telegrams between military intelligence departments and letters between Jewish friends to increase the temperature without telling you that he is increasing the temperature dial. 

Often you see two questions posed about WW2 and the nazis. 

1. How did the German people just go along with the race hatred policies of the nazis?

2. Why didn't the Jewish population do something about it?

If you read this book, it transfers into you by osmosis into the feel of the time and place, you will understand how both these situations occurred. And it is truly horrific and a scenario that one can see playing out around us in populist politics today. 

Any negative things about this book? It felt heavy, serious and important. Although given the subject matter there was no way around this. It was never going to be rainbows and lollipops although perhaps it could have been a little shorter.

However this does not deflect from an excellent book. You really feel for the characters and it's heartbreaking that you now whats coming while they don't.

Like being with a friend who you know has a terminal illness but he is oblivious to it.. This book should be studied in schools in History or English classes to see how media manipulation can lead to societal control. Read this as history and then read 1984 to see the next evolution. 

The research is amazing and the reader would do well to read the appendages to appreciate this mammoth 5 year undertaking.

This is a tour de force and I can give it no higher praise than to say it could be a "Schindler's List" prequel.

Selected Quotes...

The thing is, Yosef, people are disillusioned. Unemployment is soaring, living conditions are worse than ever and our politicians are indecisive and do nothing but bicker and prevaricate. We are being bled dry and treated as pariahs by the rest of the world and our armed forces are emasculated. Is it any wonder that people see him as some sort of saviour?’

We went from a democracy to a dictatorship in a few short months, without so much as a whimper.’ ‘Because deep down, the German people don’t really like us, and if we’re the price they pay for putting Germany back on the world stage, they’ll give him anything.’

He paused again, looking around at the faces of people desperate for guidance, both temporal and spiritual. ‘I am leaving Germany with reluctance because, until recently, I regarded myself as German, and I loved this country. If it were just our leaders who were trying to impose their anti-Semitic views on the nation, I could live with that. But the German people; not all of them, but a significant proportion of them, are embracing those views and, in my view, it can only get worse.’

She gave him a worried smile. ‘You too? It’s getting to the stage when I think everyone is looking at me.’ ‘Maybe we’re just overthinking it all. Surely everyone hasn’t become Jew-haters overnight?’ ‘Maybe they’ve always hated us, but only now do they feel they can show it.’

the alcohol slowly glued the group together, and loosened their tongues,

wasn’t the National Socialists or the government who threw the bricks and lit the fires of Kristallnacht, although they stood back and let it happen. It was the German people who smashed and burned our homes, shops and synagogues.’

Memo: Geh.KdoS. ABW 31/08/39 CAC0842.1 For Attention Only: General Erich Kästner, Abwehr, Kiel office, Abwehr. From: Vice Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, Chef der Abwer

The British fleet has mobilised; all leave has been cancelled and all naval ships have been made ready to go to sea. [END]

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Living With The Enemy by Jack Higgins

About the author...

Alan Jones is a Scottish author with three gritty crime stories to his name, the first two set in Glasgow, the third one based in London. He has now switched genres, and his WW2 trilogy was published in the second half of 2021. It is a Holocaust story set in Northern Germany.

He is married with four grown up children and six wonderful grandchildren.

He retired in 2020 as a mixed-practice vet in a small Scottish coastal town in Ayrshire and is one of the RNLI volunteer coxswains on the local lifeboat. He makes furniture in his spare time, and maintains and sails a 45-year-old yacht in the Irish Sea and on the beautiful west coast of Scotland. He loves reading, watching films and cooking. He still plays football despite being just the wrong side of sixty.

His crime novels are not for the faint-hearted, with some strong language, violence, and various degrees of sexual content. The first two books also contain a fair smattering of Glasgow slang.

He is one of the few self-published authors to be given a panel at Bloody Scotland and has done two pop-up book launches at the festival in Stirling.

He spent five years researching and writing the Sturmtaucher Trilogy.

The Citadel by AJ Cronin

 

You can buy The Citadel...Here

• The Blurb...

When newly qualified doctor Andrew Manson takes up his first post in a Welsh mining community, the young Scot brings with him a bagful of idealism and enthusiasm. Both are soon strained to the limit as Andrew discovers the reality of performing operations on a kitchen table and washing in a scullery, of unspeakable sanitation, of common infantile cholera and systemic corruption. There are no X-rays, no ambulances – nothing to combat the disease and poverty.

It isn’t long before Andrew’s outspoken manner wins him both friends and enemies, but he risks losing his idealism when the fashionable, greedy world of London medicine claims him, with its private clinics, wealthy, spoilt patients and huge rewards.

• Our Review..

Very timely in that it is set exactly 100years ago.

I must confess a great affinity for this book, for two reasons. Firstly it was famous as an influence in setting the NHS, which I believe is the UKs greatest acheivement. It was based on a model that was run by the miners of Tredegar, South Wales. Secondly, because I was born in Tredegar in StJames Hospital (formerly the old workhouse) and that is where Cronin went to work after qualifying as a doctor.

The book is of its time and today would seem to some to be mysoginistic (see selected quotes.)  In addition its everyday language may seem a little archaic.

This two minor gripes not withstanding, this is great read.

There are two main parts. Firstly the morality tale. If you read the "about the author" section you will see that the Citadel is basically an autobiography. Set in a time before the NHS. A young, keen, newly qualified doctor full of vim and vigour comes to the South Wales valleys in 1924. He battles through adversity, finds himself a wife. Slowly but surely the way of the world grinds him down. His lofty ideals wither against the elements. He gradually sells out his soul for money. He turns on his wife and becomes one of the many corrupt sharks feeding on those that can afford to pay for healthcare. A catastrophe occurs, something akin to Ebeneezer Scrooge in a Christmas Carol, and he decides to mend his ways, but is it too late? Will karma play its part.

Second is the cautionary tale. I think to myself look how far we have come since medicine and health became free at the point of contact. Since the inception of the NHS. The medical system (or lack of it) Cronin portays is horryfing. If you're poor you die, if you're rich you've got a chance but it'll cost you. The whole system was there to benefit only the corrupt money guzzling companies, politicians and doctors who parasite off it. But dont feel too good about our progress. We appear to be heading back to that system and that is truly terrifying. 

The version I read had a very enjoyable introduction by Adam Kay author This is going to hurt.

The characters are not one dimensional. Doctor Manson has a huge charcater arc. He goes from brave, idealisitic and keen through to jaded and money driven. He treats his wife poorly when young and worse when older. Is this how Cronin saw himself I wonder?To make the main protaganist so unlikable at times must have been a bit of a gamble.

I found this to be an excellent reading experience, deftly entwinning real human lives in the social-medical history of the times. A very difficult book to put into a genre but sad and heartwarming at the same time. Yet more than anything this is a warning from history not to repeat the mistakes of the past with our health care system.

• Selected Quotes...

Andrew had known Urquhart, for instance, when a patient of Oxborrow’s transferred his card to him, take the half-finished bottle of medicine from the man’s hand in the surgery, uncork it, smell it with contempt, and explode: ‘So this is what Oxborrow’s been givin’ ye! Damn it to hell! He’s been slowly poisonin’ ye!’

She also permitted him to shout, gesticulate, and, as his nerves grew more ragged, to hurl abuse at her. At eleven o’clock as she brought him fresh coffee he became liable to snarl: ‘Why can’t you leave me alone? What’s this slush for anyway? Caffeine – it’s only a rotten drug. You know I’m killing myself, don’t you. And it’s all for you. You’re hard! You’re damnably hard. You’re like a female turnkey, marching in and out with skilly!

He told her they might be in Provence, or some place like that, in a great castle by a lake. He told her she was a sweet, exquisite child. He told her he had been a brute to her but that for the rest of his life he would be a carpet – not red, since she interjected her objection to that colour – on which she might tread. He told her much more than that. By the end of the week he was telling her to fetch his slippers.

Up, up they shot, out of the depths. The keen bite of the wind met them, as they stepped out of the cage. With a kind of ecstasy Andrew drew a long breath. He stood at the foot of the steps holding on to the guard rail. It was still dark, but in the mine yard they had hung a big naphtha flare which hissed and leaped with many tongues. Around the flare he saw a small crowd of waiting figures. There were women amongst them, with shawls about their heads.

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• About The Author...

Cronin was born in Cardross, Scotland in 1896. His father was of Irish descent and Catholic; his mother’s family was Protestant. Cronin’s father died when he was 7, forcing Cronin and his mother to move in with her parents. Cronin excelled academically and at sports, and won a Carnegie Foundation Scholarship to study medicine at Glasgow University, where he graduated in 1919. He subsequently worked as a GP in South Wales, moving then to London, where he established a successful private practice. In his mid-30s, he experienced some form of crisis – ascribed to peptic ulcer in his autobiography3 – and sold his practice, with plans to write a novel. This he duly did, and the resulting book, Hatter’s Castle, was accepted by the first publisher he sent it to – Victor Gollancz – and was an immediate best-seller. He never returned to medical practice. The 1930s were his most productive and successful years; following the success of Hatter’s Castle, he wrote two more best-sellers, The Stars Look Down, and The Citadel. His novels were successfully adapted for film, and Cronin became a wealthy man. He spent much of the subsequent war years in America, and eventually settled permanently in Switzerland. Although he published several more novels until the early 70s, he never repeated the success of the 1930s.

Cronin’s novels have common themes: the struggle of poor catholic scholarship boys to overcome sectarian bigotry and make their way in the world, usually through academic achievement; idealistic young men (usually doctors or priests) losing their moral compass through the temptations of money and sex; Catholic themes of sin, guilt and redemption. He re-cycled these themes and plots in his less successful later novels. He is probably best known to the television generation as the author of the Adventures of a Black Bag stories, whose characters formed the basis for the hugely popular Dr Finlay’s Casebook TV series which ran from 1962 to 1971.