Reading the World - Blog

READING THE WORLD - THE FINAL CHAPTER

3/9/2020

Well, after 10 years and 10 months, over 270 countries and 316 books my Reading the World journey has come full circle and to an end... I have just finished the final entry of my trip - 'Perfidious Albion' by Sam Byers, a return to a very different England to the one I left over a decade ago. My heartfelt thanks to all who came along and joined me on my journey, especially those who took the time to comment and suggest books - you have, in supporting me, demonstrating that reading need not be a solitary activity.

Whilst this trip is ended I will of course, continue to explore new boundaries through books and new media. All the best and keep reading!

“A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.”
[William Styron, Conversations with William Styron]

Draft cover for the unpublished 'Volume 3' of "Reading the World."

This Septic Isle: England’s Unattainable Past, Uncomfortable Present and Uncertain Future.

3/9/2020

“Perfidious signifies one who does not keep their faith or word (from the Latin word perfidia), while Albion is an ancient and now poetic name for Great Britain”.
[Schmidt, H. D. (1953). "The Idea and Slogan of 'Perfidious Albion'". Journal of the History of Ideas. 14 (4): 604–616.]

As the UK trembles endlessly on the long drawn-out brink of Brexit, Sam Byers’ new novel Perfidious Albion imagines what might come after. His well-observed contemporary/near-future satire is set partly in the fictional English everytown of Edmundsbury (Bury St Edmunds perhaps?), and partly in the digital world, from the shallows of Twitter to the murky depths of multinational tech companies. It’s both a biting farce of political exhaustion and social collapse, and a subtle investigation into the slippery, ever-evolving relationship between words and deeds.

Sleepy Edmundsbury is under pressure from outside forces: global tech giant Green is quietly insinuating itself into the town’s infrastructure, while building company Downton is strong-arming the last remaining residents out of the crumbling Larchwood housing estate with an eye on redevelopment. And then a van draws up in the market square, and masked men calling themselves 'the Griefers' – a sort of atrophied Wikileaks - stage a happening that appears to hold residents to digital ransom, displaying tantalisingly compromising screenshots with the slogan “What don’t you want to share?” As a demonstration that “the cosy little box we’ve all fashioned to pour our IDs into isn’t as secure as we thought”, they ask that one person from the town step forward to offer up their web history, or victims will be exposed at random.

Apart from frail, elderly Darkin, stubbornly clinging on to his squalid Larchwood flat, every character has online secrets – and even the increasingly baffled Darkin becomes a pawn in their online games. Many are drawn from the chatterati for whom “leaving London was the new moving to London”, including Robert, an opportunistic blogger who finds himself making the traditionally decades-long journey from left to right on the political spectrum with dizzying speed, and his researcher girlfriend Jess. Jess and her friend Deepa both work – or perhaps play – “at the blurry interstice between the real and the virtual”, Jess creating free-floating online personas and Deepa searching out the real women behind the anonymous images “folded into the scenery and libidinal economy” of the web.

Then there’s bumbling rightwing columnist Hugo Bennington (a thinly veiled Nigel Farage) and his ridiculous political adviser, productivity guru Teddy. They are hoping to bag the seat of Edmundsbury for UKIP-alike party England Always while struggling to keep the emerging fascist militia Brute Force under control for fear that it “makes the ‘proper’ right look bad”.

At the heart of the tightly sprung plot is Trina, who lives on the Larchwood estate and works at Green managing 'microtaskers': insecure home workers whose labour is so atomised they have no hope of unionising or even knowing what they are working on. In a cast mainly made up of scathingly ventriloquised grotesques, Trina has the virtue of being, as one 2D tech-bro admiringly remarks, “a fully functioning human being”. But as a black woman who responds to Bennington’s claim that white men are being sidelined with the unwise tweet “#whitemalegenocide.Lol”, she makes a lot of angry white men even angrier. Her tweet is weaponised by those with a vested interest in real-world conflict, and real-life consequences ensue.

Though there are fleeting references to “street-level violence and creeping intimidation”, Byers is not so much projecting a specific post-Brexit future for the UK as exploring, with a cold and horrified eye, what we are only starting to discover about the reach and control of global tech companies, and the political and individual effects of internet saturation. The novel is horribly pertinent in the light of the Cambridge Analytica revelations, as well as online misogyny and #MeToo.

Throughout the book, Byers highlights the hollowing out of public discourse. “Hatred equals hate-clicks, so, you know, win,” says Robert’s obnoxious editor Silas when Robert angsts about the abuse he’s getting below the line. “Like, dislike. What’s the difference?” Byers also delights in writing the kind of sentence that would have been gobbledegook a decade ago – “Jess popped to the toilet to tweet”; “I’m calling a huddle”; “their maps had failed to update” – as well as spotlighting the contemporary euphemisms of real-life domination and control: kettling, decanting – a sort of modern day tech ‘Newspeak’ (and the Orwellian reference is unlikely to be coincidental here).

The Griefers invite one scapegoat to digitally submit their online records: when the mob chooses Trina, and surrounds her house screaming “submit”, the word regains its ancient analogue menace. The logic and language of the digital realm leak, inevitably, into the physical world, and characters waver with queasy alienation between the two: the East Anglian woodland Jess drives past appears to her “not so much as nature but as a glitch in her optical experience of nature - a screen-smear”.

Byers is interested in the intimacies of relationships as well as in broader social satire. Jess and Robert are living through the death of love, unable these days to argue or to look each other in the eye. Having channelled her negativity towards him into an online persona, at home Jess is guiltily sweet: the donning of a digital veil leads to real-life disguise. The fatal loss of authenticity between them is a mirror of the book’s wider world. As Byers himself states elsewhere, they are “slipping into the digital world at the expense of the human.”

The comic elements can be familiar – reminiscent of the hipsters of Nathan Barley, the corporate insanities of W1A, Black Mirror – but Byers ramps up the stakes with expert control. The novel is extremely funny at times, yet it’s also a careful exploration of the contemporary dichotomy between self and interconnectedness. The way social media put each of us at the centre of our own personal web (for Robert “the world was his world only. Everything else was just context”) is set against the deeper truth that everything bleeds into everything else in an endless chain of consequence – there is no decision as simple as yes/no, leave/remain.

Byers dedicates a great deal of time to pricking the self-regarding pretensions of the commentariat, still babbling away when, as Jess puts it, “all the while, outside, in the world they claimed both to consider and depict, events were occurring that shrunk their fears to irrelevance”. They are an easy target, but perhaps that’s the point.

In this brave new online world, we are in uncharted territory – a point made in the slightly frustrating conclusion of Byers’ novel. No-one knows what is coming next, or indeed if anyone else knows or cares. In a sense that is the point of this book, for this is the level at which Brexit infects the book: as a nebulous anxiety about the approaching future, “so rapid in its occurrence and uncertain in its shape”.

A pertinent, telling and bittersweet book to end on then. Ten years ago I left a diverse, vibrant country coming to terms with its past and taking real steps to forge its own identity in an increasingly global world. The England I return to is one which has looked outside itself and rejected what it sees; retreating into a faux nostalgia, a sense of superiority for a world that never truly was. Ironically, as it pulls up the drawbridge of physical borders, it continues to open its doors to international technology companies that are doing far more to erode any sense of culture than an imagined ‘foreign invasion’ (even the US has drawn the line at opening its citizens’ data up to Chinese data and surveillance company Huawei, whilst the UK has opened its arms to a deal embedding their technology in its 5G broadband network).
And so my journey ends, somewhat fittingly, at a time where the very notion of country is being challenged by isolationists and threatened by the online global web. Perhaps in another ten years the very idea of travelling between physical countries will be irrelevant.

For myself, born in the 1970s, it’s a sad thought, but that’s how nostalgia works – we instinctively reject change and see it as a negative. But there is much to be embraced and much potential for good in an interconnected world; it depends how the dice fall and whether the citizens of the world are willing to seek ownership of this direction or remain as bystanders and consumers.

As for me – with a sense of satisfaction, optimism, pessimism, relief, sadness and hopefully a little more insight - it’s time to close the book on this particular narrative (or rather, a sign of the times, to switch off my smartphone’s reading app!)

I truly hope the unknown turns out for the better for the next generation; and that – amidst all the media chatter, Netflix bingeing, instagramming, torrents, tweeting, consumer messaging, facetime and WhatsApps – they still find the time to read a book.

“The problem with books is that they end.” [Caroline Kepnes, You]

Happy World Book Day!

3/5/2020

https://www.worldbookday.com/

Sealand: from a Castle in the Sky to a Stronghold at Sea. Holding the Fort in the World’s Smallest Nation

2/25/2020

The Principality of Sealand, commonly known as Sealand, is a micronation that claims Roughs Tower, an offshore platform in the North Sea approximately 12 kilometres (7.5 miles) off the coast of Suffolk, as its territory. Roughs Tower is a disused Maunsell Sea Fort, originally called HM Fort Roughs, built as an anti-aircraft gun platform by the British during World War II.

Since 1967, the decommissioned HM Fort Roughs has been occupied by family and associates of Paddy Roy Bates, who claim it as an independent sovereign state. Bates seized it from a group of pirate radio broadcasters in 1967 with the intention of setting up his own station at the site. He later attempted to establish Sealand as a nation state in 1975 with the writing of a national constitution and establishment of other national symbols, such a coinage, stamps, titles of nobility and (now withdrawn) passports.

While it has been described as the world's smallest country, Sealand is contentious in not being officially recognised by any established sovereign state despite of Sealand's government's claim that it has been de facto recognised by the United Kingdom and Germany.

The story of Sealand, Holding the Fort by Prince Michael Bates, commences with the history of maverick British Army Major Paddy Bates, Michael’s father and ruler of Sealand – and indeed the story of the Principality of Sealand is intertwined with the story of this larger than life character…

During the Second World War, the British government built several Fortress islands in the North Sea to defend its coasts from German invaders. Some of these forts were built illegally in international waters.

One of these illegal Fortresses, consisting of concrete and steel construction, was the famous Fort Roughs Tower, situated slightly north of the estuary region of the River Thames, on the east coast of the United Kingdom. In contrast to the original plan to locate the tower within the sovereign territory of the UK, this fortress was situated at approximately seven nautical miles from the coast. This is more than double the then applicable three-mile range of territorial waters. To put it briefly, this island was situated in the international waters of the North Sea.

The forts were abandoned in the early 1950s and, due to their illegal construction in international waters in a time of world crisis, they should have been destroyed, to comply with international law and except for Fort Roughs Tower the neighbouring fortresses were indeed pulled down. The result of this was the portentous uniqueness of the remaining fortress. Fort Roughs Tower, situated on the high seas, had been deserted and abandoned, res derelicta and terra nullius. From a legal point of view, it therefore constituted extra-national territory.

In the early 60s, Roy Bates, a Major in the British army, established a radio station, situated offshore on the abandoned ex naval fort “Knock John”. The theory behind this location was an attempt to bypass the draconian broadcasting restrictions of the time, which permitted little more than formal broadcasting by the BBC. Roy’s station, “Radio Essex”, and others like it, were known affectionately by the media as “Pirate” radio stations, and were much loved by the British public, as they supplied everything that the BBC did not at the time, Pop music and amusing presenters.

In the years that ensued, Roy fought an unsuccessful legal battle with the UK government, which questioned the legality of his occupation of said fort. It was ruled that “Knock John” fell under UK jurisdiction. Smarting from his setback, Roy weighed his options. Another abandoned fortress, Roughs Tower, identical in construction to the Knock John existed further offshore, and crucially, outside of the three-mile limit to which the UK jurisdiction extended. Roy proceeded to occupy Roughs Tower, on Christmas eve 1966, with the intention of revitalising his dormant radio station. This was until he conjured a different plan entirely. After consulting his lawyers, Roy decided to declare this fortress island the independent state of “Sealand”, Claiming “Jus Gentium” (“Law of Nations”) over a part of the globe that was “Terra Nullius” (Uninhabited Land).

On the 2nd of September 1967, accompanied by his wife Joan on her birthday, his son Michael (14), daughter Penelope (16) and several friends and followers, Roy declared the Principality of Sealand. The founding of this country was marked by the raising of a newly designed flag, and in an extremely romantic birthday gesture, the bestowing of a new title on his beloved wife, to be know from that moment on as “Princess Joan”.

It was not long before the British Government decided they could not have what ministers described as a possible “Cuba off the east coast of England”. The military were promptly dispatched to destroy all other remaining forts located in international waters. The Bates family looked on as huge explosions sent the massive structures hurtling hundreds of feet in the air and twisted and buckled debris floated past Sealand for days.

Helicopters that had carried the explosives buzzed menacingly above, and the navy tug carrying the demolition crew passed close by our fortress home and shouted, “You’re next!” with an angry waving of arms. A while later a government vessel steamed to within fifty feet of Sealand, its boisterous crew shouting threatening obscenities at Michael, and his sixteen-year-old sister. Warning shots were promptly fired across the bow of the boat by Prince Michael, causing it to hastily turn and race away towards the UK, amongst a large cloud of black engine smoke.

Since Roy was still a British citizen, a summons was issued under the UK ”firearms act”. On the 25th of November 1968, Roy and Michael found themselves in the dock of the Crown court of Chelmsford assizes in Essex. There was much argument, and laws dating back to the 17th century were called upon. The judge concluded that “This is a swash buckling incident perhaps more akin to the time of Sir Francis Drake, but it is my judgment is that the UK courts have no jurisdiction.” This was Sealand’s first de facto recognition.

HRH Prince Michael – Paddy Bates’ son and current ruler of Sealand - has documented this picaresque story of the establishment and maintenance of Sealand in a detailed historical and autobiographical account Holding the Fort. If this were not a true and autobiographical account, Holding the Fort would make an action-packed, if hard-to-believe, thriller.

The book is fascinating in a providing a first-hand account of the establishment of Sealand, along with numerous photos of the Principality and Royal family throughout its history so far – including the taking hostage of Michael by German mercenaries and subsequent retaking of Sealand by helicopter; causing a diplomatic incident with Germany as Paddy Bates held the would-be mercenaries on treason charges…

In August 1978, Alexander Achenbach, who described himself as the Prime Minister of Sealand, hired several German and Dutch mercenaries to lead an attack on Sealand while Bates and his wife were in England. Achenbach had disagreed with Bates over plans to turn Sealand into a luxury hotel and casino with fellow German and Dutch businessmen. They stormed the platform with speedboats, Jet Skis and helicopters, and took Bates's son Michael hostage.

Michael was able to retake Sealand and capture Achenbach and the mercenaries using weapons stashed on the platform. Achenbach, a German lawyer who held a Sealand passport, was charged with treason against Sealand and was held unless he paid DM 75,000 (more than US$35,000 or £23,000). Germany then sent a diplomat from its London embassy to Sealand to negotiate for Achenbach's release. Roy Bates relented after several weeks of negotiations and subsequently claimed that the diplomat's visit constituted further de facto recognition of Sealand, this time by Germany.

Bates moved to the mainland when he became elderly, naming his son, Michael, as regent. Bates died in October 2012 at the age of 91. Michael lives in Suffolk, where he and his sons run a family fishing business called Fruits of the Sea. The end of this account of the larger-than-life Paddy Bates has not signalled the end of the Principality however – a severe fire in 2006 led to major renovations, and Sealand also publishes an online newspaper, Sealand News. In addition, a number of amateur athletes have represented Sealand in sporting events, including unconventional events like the World Egg Throwing Championship, which the Sealand team won in 2008, and more mainstream events such as skateboarding, marathon running and, recently, a national football team.

And of course the curious micronation of Sealand retains its claims as a sovereign state to this day, with a website at www.sealandgov.org. Amongst history, updates and a shop an online comic (Sealand Comic) can also be found; by renowned artist Matteo Farinella. This depicts a brief but highly engaging potted history of Sealand … https://www.sealandgov.org/sealand-comic-by-matteo-farinella/ although whilst forming an accessible introduction to the island, HRH Prince Michael Bates’ first-hand account is destined to become the definitive book about the Principality of Sealand. (key historical background in this review © Copyright 2012 - 2018 Principality of Sealand. All rights reserved).

“E MARE LIBERTAS”

And so, I turn the page and the final chapter in my global journey around the world is at hand. After nearly 11 years, over 250 countries and nations, and 315 books I finally set out for the end of my voyage, the place my travels began – indeed being born here, the place that I began – England. There is a sense of irony that my final trip is from one of the newest and tiniest nations of Sealand to one which formed the hub of an Empire, and later a Commonwealth, covering at one point nearly a quarter of the world’s population (including my new home of Australia) with a national heritage going back centuries.

Much has changed even in the relatively short period since my first book on my travels… (Salaam Brick Lane by Tarquin Hall) – a love letter to London in all of its multicultural glory, a place based on centuries of immigrants from the far corners of the world; to my final stop courtesy of Perfidious Albion by Sam Byers, a ‘Brave New World’ satire set in Edmundsbury, a small town in England, sometime in the recent future...

Brexit has happened and is real. Fear and loathing are on the rise. Grass-roots right-wing political party England Always are fomenting hatred. The residents of a failing housing estate are being cleared from their homes. A multinational tech company is making inroads into the infrastructure. Just as the climate seems at its most pressured, masked men begin a series of 'disruptions', threatening to make internet histories public, asking the townspeople what don't you want to share? As tensions mount, lives begin to unravel.

But enough of this book until next time, first I need to re-take my bumpy journey by boat from Sealand to the port of Hastings, famous for the Norman invasion of 1066 and the start of the Royal Family line. I walk to the train station from the sea front in a chilly morning dew and board the train to Ashford International, 44 minutes later I am on the connecting train to Stratford International arriving after another 30 minutes.

I grab a sandwich as I jog the 700 metres to catch the train from Stratford (London) to Ipswich (another hour trip), then from Ipswich the final leg brings me to my destination of a small Eastern town on Bury St Edmunds (the actual novel location is named Edmundsbury but is a thinly disguised fiction version of Bury, which resides in the actual Diocese of Edmundsbury).

So, four hours and $200 later (a timescale and cost that could have taken me halfway across Africa earlier in my journey!), I come full circle to this Blessed Isle, this happy breed, this green and pleasant land, perfidious Albion… England.

Sun and Shadow: Searching for Truth from Jersey to Jerusalem

2/24/2020

Along with the Isle of Man and the Bailiwick of Guernsey, the Bailiwick of Jersey forms one of three island British Crown Dependencies off the coast of the UK (though the Channel Islands are geographically closer to France). The bailiwick consists of the island of Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands, along with surrounding uninhabited islands and rocks collectively named Les Dirouilles, Les Écréhous, Les Minquiers, Les Pierres de Lecq and other reefs. Jersey has a separate relationship to the Crown from the other Crown dependencies of Guernsey and the Isle of Man, although all are held by the monarch of the United Kingdom.

Jersey is a self-governing parliamentary democracy under a constitutional monarchy, with its own financial, legal and judicial systems, and the power of self-determination. The Lieutenant Governor on the island is the personal representative of the Queen.

You’ll be relieved to hear that Jersey is not part of the United Kingdom, furthermore Jersey is not fully part of the European Union but has a special relationship with it – so no Brexit shenanigans for now (that will come in a couple of books time!). For more on this status, just don’t forget to (re)watch the ‘UK Explained’ video I posted earlier in the Isle of Man review…

And so onto one of the final novels of my global journey…one that explores this area of natural beauty and biodiversity along with its dubious reputation as a tax haven by some organisations.

This thriller of angels, demons, and corporate espionage could, at first glance, be seen as yet another formulaic Da Vinci Code clone; but it is anything but that… What I Tell You in the Dark is an intelligent, unsettling story of impotent omnipotence, mayhem, capitalism, mental illness and corruption.

Not bad for a debut novel (by John Samuel, nom de plume of Sam Le Quesne – a travel editor and communications adviser – who currently lives with in Jersey).

This book, for all its tales of corporate greed and secretive Vatican machinations, is at its core a character study of a nameless angel who has been out of God’s favour since things went wrong with his last mission, two thousand years ago. He has spent the intervening millennia watching the humanity he so loves fall into moral disrepair – a consumerist ‘greed is good’ malaise. Lately, he’s been watching Will, a London businessman attempting to expose his company’s dark dealings to the press. But Will’s campaign is not going well.

In a moment of weakness and bravado, the angel decides to spiritually take Will over— “jumping in” as he did as he did with Jesus of Nazareth, seeing in Will's struggles an opportunity to make amends for the devastating consequences that his last act wreaked on the western world. But as the angel comes up against demonic forces fighting to maintain the status quo, Will increasingly loses his grip on himself. As he soon remembers, being human - with all our potential, our insecurities and all our weaknesses - is not easy. As Will begins to lose his grip on himself and his mission, the reader is forced to question exactly whose reckoning this is: Are these the delusions of a man who has lost his grip on reality? Or the illusion of an angel desperate to right our wrongs?

The novel is a page turner with brains, a soul and a healthy dose of pathos and black humour. The wider plot concerning this corporate whistle blower who may or may not be possessed by an avenging angel, and his attempts to unmask an international conspiracy that links the Vatican with a major pharmaceutical company could lead to over-exposition. Instead the book offers a slick and sympathetic portrait of a man falling apart in the modern world, a rich commentary on religious mania and a moving portrayal of the possible effects of mental illness. It's engagingly written throughout - sometimes shocking, often funny, occasionally very sad, but always enthralling, and with a central character that works his way into your heart over the course of the book.

That is not to say that the author does not portray a sense of place and location here – whilst the Vatican remains a shadowy background cult having forsaken God for gold, London is well invoked as the faceless, morally bankrupt landscape of mankind’s disrepair – from the shining corporate edifices to the rat-infested drug havens of forgotten council flats just a stone’s throw away.

Jersey itself plays an interesting part here; a place of natural beauty where the hidden gold assets flow from shady investment fund to shady fund, oblivious to the wonder of the world it traverses. Even more interesting this is the rural idyll of Will's former Physics professor, a discipline which Will chose over Theology (much to his priest father’s sadness) and then similarly abandoned. Yet the search for gold, the unattainable promise of a sun’s new dawn after the dark, touches even here with its relentless drive to find the building blocks, the base elements that the universe must surely be made of?

And finally, mirroring this rural stereotype, Will’s home, his concerned family, the disappointment of his well-meaning but misguided father; the perfect nuclear family symbolised by the eternal gold band of the wedding ring and made imperfect by Will’s ‘episodes’. Another failure to get the real point across as Will sees it, that he was making two millennia ago... enjoy what there is, life is precious, make that enough and don’t waste it on striving for a golden eternity of heaven and baubles of commerce, live your life now, whilst you can. It’s enough.

In a sense these four locations form the four interlinking points that come together in a narrative cross – the story is as much of Fall as Redemption; and from an ‘Angel’ who cried out “my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” on the cross at Calvary the ending is especially poignant.

Now, you may think from the above that What I Tell You in the Dark is a hugely sacrilegious and complex read, but you can rest assured – the humour is well balanced, and the references to God, Heaven, and Angels are equally balanced with the improbable vagaries of quantum physics and the rise of consumerism and rapid technological growth. It helps that Will is rather an unreliable narrator – as one continues through the book, it fast becomes unclear to the reader whether Will really is possessed by an Angel, or simply in the grips of mental illness. Neither the religion or the mental illness are taken particularly lightly, despite the humour of this book, and John Samuel’s writing ability is such that one really starts to care about the characters and events.

A climactic ending combined with revelations as to the true nature of Will and his celestial passenger, are particularly affecting, and will mean something fundamentally different to each reader, for we all have our own individual sense of meaning. And perhaps that is the point of this thought-provoking and very human novel.

Thus, I set out on my penultimate trip to the Principality of Sealand – a tiny micronation that, fittingly, raises questions over the very notion of what constitutes a country…

As you might imagine going from one of the world’s tiniest states to an even tinier one (0.0015 square miles in size) is not a simple task…

So, if you’re interested – I take the two-hour Condor Ferries ‘Commodore Clipper’ back to Guernsey for £20 unallocated seating, then connect with the once-daily ferry to Poole ($70 for a three-hour crossing). After a half hour walk, I arrive at Poole station for the regular 2h 9min train to London Waterloo (an eye-watering $190). Once there it’s a brief rediscovery of the joys of the tube (21 minutes on the Jubilee line) to Stratford Station and yet another hour and a half on the train to Harwich (changing at Manningtree) an eastern port town on the North Sea where I can, barely in the sea spray, see my destination of the Principally of Sealand, aka former UK military fort Roughs Tower. As I peer through the mist, I put any thoughts of my trip to Jersey aside and steel myself for the next leg…

For this is no journey’s end. This tiny state does not welcome visitors openly (shots have previously been fired at British Naval Vessels that have strayed too close) and I am fortunate to use my status as an official Knight of the Sovereign Military Order of Sealand to gain access with the agreement of Prince Michel Bates.

This involved a stomach-churning trip over choppy, cold grey water in an inflatable rig piloted by a genial but taciturn fellow who doubles as maintenance man and sole Sealand inhabitant during Prince Michael’s periods on shore. A quick clamber up decidedly precarious iron steps and I stand atop the main deck of the tiniest and possibly most disputed of my destinations: the Principality of Sealand.

Chukwuemeka Ike: The Nigerian king who served Toads for Supper

2/11/2020

Click image below for more...

Books pulled over 'literary blackface' accusations

2/7/2020

Diverse Editions - well-intentioned I'm sure, but a pretty daft idea IMHO. Sticking a black character on a cover with no context of the content of an existing book makes about as much sense as putting a white guy on the cover of The Famished Road. We need more systemic support to encourage, recognise and facilitate diversity in literature and publishing; not easy token gestures like this that hold themselves up to ridicule...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51399355

Summer’s End: Beauty and Sadness in the Setting Sun on Sark

2/1/2020

Some debut novels are unexceptional coming-of age-stories, others show talent and flair. Fortunately, The Last Kings of Sark, Rosa Rankin-Gee's taut, shimmering novel falls into the latter category. Its primary action, which takes place over a few transformative summer weeks in the lives of three young people on the remote Channel island of Sark, holds a quirky, yet irresistible tension.

The narrative commences with one of the triumvirate, a 21-year-old graduate, being flown in a merchant banker's private plane for a short season of tutoring his teenage son, Pip, on Sark.

Rankin-Gee invests her characters with ambiguity from the start, and the book opens on a gentle Shakespearean gender mix-up which will shade the whole story with paradoxical quirks: "My name is Jude. And because of Law, Hey and the Obscure, they thought I was a boy. Not even a boy. A young man …," says the female tutor in her opening lines.

Jude's reluctant charge is Pip, a nervous, fantastically bright 16-year-old who won't meet her eye. His, father Eddy is a florid public-school bore; and French mother Esmé is rarely glimpsed, silently inhabiting the upper reaches of the house like an elusive, birdlike, Miss Havisham or Bertha Rochester. Eddy and Esmé are only children who have produced an only child; this coincidence includes Jude, and the other person who will make up a fiercely intense trio with her and Pip: Sofi, the hired cook. "Polish," states Eddy dismissively. "Ealing," insists Sofi.

Sofi is the focal point, their unacknowledged leader – "after her stories, ours seemed drawn in the dimmest pencil" – despite her lower status in the pecking order of the household. As staff, she and Jude live out, sharing a basic twin-bedded room in a forlorn establishment that barely passes muster as a hotel. Sofi's frankness, adroit malapropisms and filthy epithets make Jude, the elder by two years, feel immature and awkward, as do the younger woman's unabashed sexuality and boldness: "dirty blonde, dirty tan, denim-blue eyes". The first night Sofi undresses like an unspoken challenge: "She whipped off her top mid-sentence and sat on the edge of the bed, legs open, in a black lace bra."

Rankin-Gee lavishes as much attention on her descriptions of Sark as she does on the golden protegonists. It's an intriguing setting for a novel, this tiny island, rising "out of the sea like a souffle" – the last feudal state in Europe, just two square miles in area, with a population of around 600, where cars are banned and the content of meals depends on what erratically delivered supplies appear in the local store.

The recently-departed feudalism is less than subtly present in Eddy's domain; sharp-witted Sofi's initial disdain for Jude is due to the fact that "I [Jude] was wearing a suit and using the voice I saved for my parents' friends." Sofi uses bravado to cover her lack of formal education, but Jude is something of a fraudulent tutor who doesn't know her Borges from her Hemingway. When Eddy leaves for a business trip, the summer slides into recklessness. Lessons are abandoned, scallop trawled for illegally with Czech casual workers, rosé drunk at noon and rickety bike rides taken in the dark, with Jude always following Sofi's "red bindi" of a backlight. The idyll and the close-knit relationship of the three ends explosively, but also with extreme tenderness, an unforgettable finale to those sun-drenched, prelapsarian weeks – at once spiritual, physical and emotional; a moment never to be recaptured….

Personally, I feel Rankin-Gee should have left the narrative there – a frozen moment in time, unsullied by the future á la John Fowles’ The Magus.

Instead, the novel's extended coda shows Sofi, Pip and Jude at separate moments of their lives two, five and many years later. Sark dwindles or enlarges by turn to become a symbol of rueful remembrance, as the story resumes in a rough Normandy bar, the heart of Paris and, later, in England. Reality shows its inevitable face in random deaths and alliances.

This section seems tacked on, reading almost like an unfinished treatment for an unnecessary sequel… and even the language becomes jarring. Lyrical descriptions of inner awakenings and the outer beauty of Sark, give way to dead-end plotlines and frankly unlikable characters spouting awkward dialogue…

“What are you thinking?”
“What about?”
“Anything, everything, I don’t know”
“I don’t know either. What are you thinking?”
“I don’t know”

Sorry, that’s just irritating. If the author was trying to depict how the past can never be recaptured and life must inevitably move forward, fair enough: I just wish she hadn’t done it in such an anticlimactic way… Still, a very entertaining and at times poignant read, only dropping to 3 stars from 4 for the final 100-page slog.

As I mentioned in my last blog post/Guernsey review, the book selected for the neighbouring Bailiwick of Jersey was still winging its way around the globe to my home in Australia from my native UK (quite appropriate for a book whose main character is an angel!).

I am pleased to say that this has now arrived and am grateful to Matt Fiott, Executive Director of Arts Jersey, whose organisation not only demonstrated that Jersey has a thriving contemporary arts scene, but also kindly responded to my query by suggesting a modern day novel set predominantly in Jersey that sounds fascinating (What I Tell You In The Dark by John Samuel).

So, it's back to the sea...sadly the handy Sark to Jersey "Manche Iles Express" ferry only runs in summer - whilst only 20 pounds and 1 hour 10 minutes, I am not minded to wait until April to leave, so it's back on the Sark Shipping Company ferry to Guernsey, a 45 minute trip.Condor Ferries go to Jersey's St Helier port hourly, so I have chance for a pleasant lunch before boarding the 'Condor Liberation' ferry for A$54 arriving at my next destination an hour later (be aware - the 'Condor Clipper' ferry takes an hour longer at the same price).

Paper Planes and Growing Pains on the Island of Guernsey

1/18/2020

[NB: Having already gone into the national status and some history of the Bailiwick of Guernsey in the conclusion to my previous blog review of ‘Broken Ghost, set in Wales, I shall jump straight into the book on this stopover]

As a reader whose school days are well behind him (though not too far from the 1990s when the book is set) and with the wrong set of chromosomes for the presumed audience; I approached Paper Aeroplanes by Dawn O’Porter a little warily…

The basic premise: it's the mid-1990s, and fifteen-year-old Guernsey schoolgirls, Renée and Flo, are not really meant to be friends. Thoughtful, introspective and studious Flo couldn't be more different to ambitious, extroverted and sexually curious Renée. But Renée and Flo are united by loneliness, loss and their dysfunctional families, and an intense bond is formed. Although there are obstacles to their friendship (namely Flo's jealous ex-best friend and Renée's growing infatuation with Flo's brother), fifteen is an age where anything can happen, where life stretches out before you, and when every betrayal feels like the end of the world. For Renée and Flo it is the defining the time of their lives.

As it happens, I needn’t have been wary - from the very first few pages, the author had me absolutely hooked on Renée and Flo’s stories, told from alternating viewpoints within the chapters. This isn’t some rose-tinted school days nostalgia-fest, and Renée and Flo are both flawed characters, but I completely bought into their friendship - I was rooting for them to get together and mentally booed every time Flo’s borderline psychotic ‘friend’ Sally came onto the scene.

The thing is, with a few obvious differences, this book is relevant to all age groups, and anyone who has ever been a teenager… The concerns are broadly the same: familial isolation, obsession – generally ending in disaster - with losing virginity, low-self-esteem, teachers as the enemy or as parent substitutes, bodily awkwardness and the need to be ‘in’ at any cost. This book is certainly as relevant to boys as girls and especially so for the ‘Grange Hill’ generation; where nostalgia was to be found, if not rose-tinted!

Dawn O’Porter is not one to gloss over the realities of her female protagonists bumpy journey to womanhood – the confusion, anxiety and downright inconvenience of periods are regularly depicted (as a content warning, this book has more graphic blood scenes than your average Stephen King novel..,). These elements are by no means gratuitous or intended to challenge, they are simply told matter-of-factly with various tones of humour and occasional embarrassment (including a particularly excruciating scene cautioning against wearing white jeans!). Sex gets the same treatment – at once mysterious and sought after yet generally awkward and anticlimactic for the first time (the inconvenience of spilt semen is not romanticised here!!).

But that is not to say the main issue, as it were, of this novel is bodily fluids… this is an engaging emotional rollercoaster I really wasn’t expecting. Nostalgia is a funny old emotion, and this book is full to the brim of it. I was at times transported back to my own teenage years (which are much further back than I realised) and every raw emotion of love, lust, jealousy, sadness and extreme happiness as the memories attached to them came back to me. If you want to laugh out loud, feel sad, remember the good and the bad times of this unique time of life, then Paper Aeroplanes is a book worth reading.

Downsides? Not really, though O’Porter’s writing is simple and without any mannered linguistic flair, this is clearly a deliberate move and her conversational / diary-like style suits the genre perfectly.

My only gripe is that things wrap up a bit too neatly at the end and felt a bit rushed because of it. There is now, however, a sequel published (Goose), which will hopefully elaborate on how things have panned out. The fact that I am keen to catch up on the misadventures of Renée and Flo (and evil Sally!) in later life is testament to the charm of this book and its characters.

Next up was due to be an excursion to the neighbouring Channel Island, the Bailiwick of Jersey. However, sadly, the literature of this location tends to be largely based around the German Occupation of the Islands in WW2; an event which seems as embedded in the national psyche as the gun emplacements that remain dotted across the landscape. As such, novels tend to be set in the 1940s and a mix of action/romance for the most part.

Therefore, I am grateful to Matt Fiott, Executive Director of Arts Jersey, whose organisation not only demonstrated that Jersey has a thriving contemporary arts scene, but also kindly responded to my query by suggesting a modern day novel set predominantly in Jersey that sounds fascinating (What I Tell You In The Dark by John Samuel). Sadly, the book in question is not in print here in Australia and proved beyond the means of Amazon Australia or other booksellers down under; so I am currently waiting for it the travel around the globe itself, from an online bookseller in the UK.

However, this presents me with a chance for an unscheduled visit to the Isle of Sark, a royal fief which is separate from the UK and which forms part of the Channel Islands under the jurisdiction of the Bailiwick of Guernsey. It is probably one of the most unusual places on my entire journey - having a population of just 500 (including the nearby island of Brecqhou) and an area of just 2.10 square miles (5.44 km2).

Sark is one of the few remaining places in the world where cars are banned from roads and only tractors and horse-drawn vehicles are allowed… even the Sark Ambulance Service operates via two tractor-drawn ambulances.

Until reforms in 2008, Sark was the last feudal state in Europe. The Seigneur of Sark was, before the constitutional reforms of 2008, the head of the feudal government (in the case of a woman, the title was Dame). Many of the laws, particularly those related to inheritance and the rule of the Seigneur, had changed little since they were enacted in 1565 under Queen Elizabeth I. Whilst passing over a number of powers to the Crown in 2008, the Seigneur still retains the sole right on the island to keep pigeons and is the only person allowed to keep an unspayed dog!

Whilst Sark has, as you might guess, no airport it does have a regular ferry link with the neighbouring island of Guernsey. The Isle of Sark Shipping Company departs St Peter Port Harbour in Guernsey at 9.30am and arrives 9 miles and 55 minutes later at Sark’s Maseline Harbour for just £13.75 one-way.

Given Sark’s tiny population one might imagine finding a suitable book to be even more difficult; however I struck lucky with this and found a book which is already starting to draw me in – The Last Kings of Sark, by Rosa Rankin-Gee, of which more soon….

Broken Ghost: A Visionary Tale of Welsh Myth and Modernity

1/9/2020

Niall Griffiths’ latest novel Broken Ghost begins at dawn, three people simultaneously see a vision on a Welsh hillside – the shape of a woman briefly suspended in the sky. One of the witnesses, Emma, hears the words: “dig”, “bridge”, “wild”. For days afterwards, Emma, Cowley and Adam experience powerful sensations of wellbeing and contentment, despite their troubled lives.

Adam is a recovering addict, precariously clean after time in a rural rehab facility (which is about to be axed by austerity cuts). Emma has spells of anxiety and is addicted to bouts of promiscuity, escaping into the crush of anonymous bodies; she is also a loving if flawed single mother to Tomos. Cowley is a violent, volatile building-site labourer with a sideline in bare-knuckle boxing who is barely able to read. His trauma and bitterness are empathetically portrayed and connected to the sexual abuse he suffered in childhood. Griffiths memorably conveys these main characters and others through an energetic, immersive mix of vernacular inner thought and long flights of contrasting lyricism by the author.

We sweep through the charged days of a broiling post-Brexit Welsh summer. Emma’s casual online posts about the collective vision prompt a massive and unintended internet response; the news goes viral, and a mighty gathering of people - in search of meaning or God or some sort of high - begins to assemble on the slopes where it occurred. All three main characters are slowly drawn back there. This is a subversive, compelling concept that easily carries the momentum of the novel to a menacing climax. One of the many trolls who respond online writes: “Yes, these are our witnesses; a slut and a junkie and a thug … these three are our Lucia and Jacinta and Francisco. Our innocent peasants.”

By drawing a clear parallel with the Fátima visions, in which three young Portuguese shepherds claimed to see an apparition of the Virgin Mary in 1917, Griffiths taps into an interesting myth. If a Biblical event were to come, would it not be – as before – to the troubled and downtrodden? What makes the recipient of a vision worthy of it? By exploring such a theme – though never in an exclusively Christian way, there is more allusion to ancient Welsh mythology here – Griffiths has forged a complex piece of radical fiction, a Blake-like reverie on the possibility (or not) of spiritual regeneration in our time.

Though we never wholly grasp the fundamental sources of Emma and Adam’s existential crises, poverty and addiction are enough to account for their behaviour. Adam reminds us that “temptation isn’t so much everywhere as everything”. They are both dependent on benefits, risking eviction from their rented homes as their initial experiences of post-vision wellbeing fade and they unravel into self-destruction. Emma drinks gin and tonic in pubs, night after night on her solo sexual manoeuvres. A relapsed Adam accompanies his mate Brownie to Wolverhampton for a doomed drug deal, but before they have even scored any money they are buying alcohol from the train trolley.

Mundanity aside, what triumphs in Broken Ghost is the sheer vibrance of its lyrical flights. Griffiths’ prose can explode into myth and fantasy despite the grim normality of the setting– it is a pantheistic celebration, a Dionysian prayer to organic life and decay. As well as a wry observer of human frailty, Griffiths is a nature writer with a matchless eye for metaphor, whether he is looking at a dying sheep or a feeding dragonfly. So we find here, among all the extremes of human behaviour, the measuredness of an author who can communicate great beauty: “the hills remaking themselves within the gauzy mist … the land itself reaching towards self-awareness and flicking out from itself flecks of life that sing and that fly”. River eddies are “smudged under gnats and syrupy in their coilings”. Scents include “the vanilla of gorse, the pine’s turpentine”.

This important novel comes from a tradition: from the green eulogies of Dylan Thomas and Caradoc Evans, to the harsh urban grit of Irvine Welsh. The result, though, is something new, a passionate response to nature and to the countryside, which is rarely encountered in contemporary British fiction anymore. In its singular and unfashionable way, Broken Ghost is also a question without an clear answer – the fundamental matter of whether the vision was real, and whether that even matters, whether salvation can come from within as well as without, is ultimately the concern of this brilliant and rare novel. An equally rare 5 stars from me.

NB: In respect to the novel’s title, you might be interested to look up the term ‘Brocken Spectre’ – though I’d advise waiting until finishing the novel to avoid a possible spoiler, of sorts.

Reinvigorated by this novel, and the clear mountain air, I take leave of the UK once more and head to the island of Guernsey in the Bailiwick of Guernsey in the Channel Islands.

Along with the Isle of Man and the Bailiwick of Jersey, this forms one of three island British Crown Dependencies off the coast of the UK (though the Channel Islands are geographically closer to France). The Bailiwick of Guernsey comprises the jurisdictions of Guernsey, Sark and Alderney; each with its own parliament, legislature and currency. It is a monarchy under the ‘Duke of Normandy’ (aka Queen Elizabeth II) with an appointed nominal Lieutenant Governor, and a UK Government representative (currently the MP for North East Hertfordshire!).

Had enough? Me too – just don’t forget to (re)watch the ‘UK Explained’ video I posted earlier…

Given the ridiculous permutations, cost and time involved in getting a coach, train, then car ferry to Guernsey I opt for a three hour twenty minute train to Birmingham New Street (hello again, England), then take the one hour ten minute domestic flight from Birmingham to Guernsey Airport… it comes in at less than $200 and I make a mental note to make a contribution to carbon offsetting with the savings…

The Channel Islands were the only part of the British Isles to be occupied by the German Army during World War II and the scars remain – not just in the concrete bunkers and gun emplacements that dot the landscape; but in the very psyche of the Islanders…along with the small population this has made finding a local novel that is contemporary, rather than a war-time memoir, or action-packed WWII potboiler, difficult.

I was therefore, delighted to come across the recent Paper Aeroplanes by Dawn O’Porter – with not a Nazi in sight! The publisher blurb goes thus:

“It's the mid-1990s, and fifteen-year-old Guernsey schoolgirls, Renee and Flo, are not really meant to be friends. Thoughtful, introspective and studious Flo couldn't be more different to ambitious, extroverted and sexually curious Renee. But Renee and Flo are united by loneliness and their dysfunctional families, and an intense bond is formed. Although there are obstacles to their friendship (namely Flo's jealous ex-best friend and Renee's growing infatuation with Flo's brother), fifteen is an age where anything can happen, where life stretches out before you, and when every betrayal feels like the end of the world. Paper Aeroplanes is a gritty, poignant, often laugh-out-loud funny and powerful novel. It is an unforgettable snapshot of small-town adolescence and the heart-stopping power of female friendship.”

Not being quite the target audience, I was a little wary - but reading it just made me realise how universal the wonderful, awkward and terrifying years of teenage-hood are to everyone – regardless of gender, background or decade…I really enjoyed this book and will eulogise about it in my next post 😉