It took a long time to read.   This is partly because when  a  libray book that I have requested becomes available,  I drop this book and go for the library book which I need to finish before the return date.
Bill Bryson is recognised as a travel writer of sorts but a pretty successful one.  When we attended his lecture at the Festival of Perth a member of the audience asked him if he would write a travel book about India.  He said that he would not.  The reason he gave was that it is part of his style to poke fun or ridicule the societies of countries like the US, UK and Australia.  To do the same at India, a country where there are people living in poverty just would not be right. On this occasion he was promoting the book that I have just read.

To write a history of the universe for the layman is a pretty tall order but I think he has been able to do this in a way that leaves the reader at least knowing a bit more about the diverse subjects than he did before.
The book devotes quite a bit of attention to the origin of  the universe and then goes on to consider the origin of the species: our species.  Of course "The Origin of the Species" is also the title of a book by Charles Darwin to whom the author devotes quite a it of space.

As he points out, Darwin failed as a medical student and failed as a law student but he eventually managed to get a degree in divinity which would have prepared him for a life as a minister of religion.  This is very ironical because it was Darwin's discovery that overturned the teachings of the Church for the last 2,000 years, namely,  that God created the Earth in seven days.  Darwin's "Theory of Evolution" told quite a different story.

Five years of Darwin's early life were spent as the gentleman companion to the captain of HMS Beagle.  In this role it gave Darwin the opportunity to  visit other parts of the world  to study and collect their flora.

One would have thought that such a discovery  would have created an immediate sensation  but apparently not.  The  "Theory"  was presented to scientific bodies  but caused no immediate sensation.  in fact it passed almost  unnoticed.  Although  Darwin acknowledge the work of others  that  lcontributed to his discovery, an unacknowwledged Scottish gardener claimed that he had discovered the same theory twenty years earlier.

What Bryson writed about the origin of our species is truly fascinating.  He points out that but for a qirk of nature, an astronomical accident, such as a large meteor hitting the Earth, the dynosaurs would not have been wiped out; and we would have been eaten.

One modern theory is that our ancestors came out of Africa little more than 20,000 years ago.  This dose not explain why human remains have been found in Australia that are 60,000 years old.  That is more supportive of a parrallel development in different parts of the world simultaneously.  Similarly, it came as a great surprise to 19th century explorers to find natives in Papua New Guinea cooking and living on sweet potatoes; a plant that is native to South America.
Bryson comes to the conclusion with which I agree, that there is still an awful lot that we do not know about where we came from.  We really havn't a clue.

I would call this an autobiography of the author and his family.  what particularly interested me is that the author is roughly my contemporarey and he is from a part of Scotland that I know well.
people do write about their families in their autobiographies.  It is quite understandable as one's family is so much a part of one's life.  I wonder how often one's family is upset at what is written about them, or what is not written about them.  In this book, so much is written about the grandfather from the Orkneys that it is almost his biography than an autobiography of the author. 
I found particularly interesting the discussion about obsolete farmining practices, how they worked with horses, and how they made hay.
The grandfather seems to have done particularly well in his rented smallholding farm in the years after the Second World War.  He had acquired a larger farm which he and his son, the author's uncle, worked for a few years.  They sold that and bought 400 acres on the edge of the Edinburgh suburbs tha would become very valuable as building land. for housing.
The grandfather and son had a parting of ways and the son went to work the rented smallholding.  Eventually the grandmother died leaving the grandfather in the hands of a succession  of  housekeepers.   They tended to leave his employ when the old man became frisky with them.   However,  there was one  lady who recognised her chances and married grandfather.
Eventually, grandfather himself fell ill and became hospitalised.  His new wife got him to change his will in her favour before he discharged himself from hospital.  After the discharge from hospital he did not live more than a few days.  On his death the farming property passed to the second wife.  She had gone into the family with noting and left with the family's most valuable asset.  It happens all the time!

This is a factual account of the author's participation in the Spanish Civil War on the Aragon front in the foothills of the Pyrenees.

 

I have some difficulty understanding why a 33 year old married man would want to put his life at risk by participating in someone else's civil war.  He said that it was only by first hand experience that, as a journalist, he could write about the war convincingly.

Life on the front is tough.  Being winter, it is extremely cold and difficult to get any sleep in the trenches.  Although the camaraderie is great the militia is extremely poorly equipped.  There are hardly enough rifles to go around and those that they have are in such poor condition that they are dangerous.  There are no changes of clothing so there is a lice infestation.  Much of the militia is made up of children and teenagers.  Military training is almost non-existent.  Machine guns are very scarce and they have no mortars.  They have a few grenades but generally the ammunition is insufficient for a lengthy engagement with the enemy.  In spite of all this, morale is quite good.  However, in the proletarian society, the officers could not actually give orders.  The author spent several months at the front.  There was only sporadic engagement with the Fascist enemy.  Although bullets flew, they were mostly wide of the target. 

 

As the weather became warmer, the author returned to Barcelona on leave.  It was here that he became involved in street battles between the different political factions.  Something like a thousand people were killed and this more than anything else must have lead to the demise of the Spanish republic at the hands of General Franco's Fascist forces.  The political factions on the republican side were the Communists, the Marxists, and the Anarchists.  The Marxists were declared to be Fascist spies and its members were thrown into gaol whenever they were found.  The camaraderie existing at the front contrasted with the suspicion found in Barcelona.

 

The author returns to the front.  Just after sunrise he is shot through the neck.  He gives a detailed description of what it is like to be shot.  He said that he felt no immediate pain on impact but that it was rather like the jolt of an electric shock.  Then he felt his knees crumbling and he hit his head as he fell.  His mouth filled with blood but there was still no pain until his arm became excruciatingly painful.  It is unclear whether he injured his arm on falling or whether the pain was caused by nerves being severed by the passage of the bullet through his neck.  The author is evacuated to hospital and rather surprisingly survives the ordeal.

 

Although the detail description of the political situation in Barcelona is heavy going, it is probably a more accurate account than foreign newspapers were able to gave their readers.

 

After returning to Barcelona the second time, the author was in danger of being arrested as having fought for an outlawed organisation as were some of his comrades.  He showed great generosity of spirit, something he commends the Spanish for, in running the risk of capture by approaching the army to obtain the release of his Belgian commanding officer in the militia by delivering a letter.  After this, the author and his wife again risked capture at the border on crossing into France.

 

An English comrade who served on the Aragon front with the author has written an introduction.  He maintains that although the author died of tuberculosis ten years later, the bullet wound was a contributing factor to his death.

I was looking for another book by George Orwell but this was all that the library had.  However, it turned out to be a lucky find as I have not enjoyed a novel as much for a long time.

 

The hero of our story, George, is a 45 year old man who is married with two children and who is rather overweight.  He is a typical suburban Englishman of 1939 and he is about everything that the author was not. 

 

He finds himself in the position of having a day off work and seventeen pounds in his pocket that his wife does not know about.  He then reminisces about his life, his childhood at the turn of the century and his youth just before the First World War.  Although he did not know it at the time, it was an idyllic life in the countryside just outside London.  His father had been a reasonably prosperous corn merchant.  Horses were the principal means of transport at the time.  He later recalls how his father was saved from bankruptcy by death as his business gradually declined as the horse was replaced by the motor car and motor lorries.

 

Then we go forward again to 1939.  George, our hero has devised a malicious scheme.  He has managed to procure a whole week off work.  He tells his wife he is being sent to Birmingham for a week to sell insurance.  He arranges for a colleague in Birmingham to telephone his wife just to lay a false trail.

 

George takes his car and head for the village where he used to live with his parents. 

As George drives over the hill, he cannot believe his eyes.  Where his village once was are houses as far as the eye can see.

 

George takes a room at the local pub.  Its interior decor has changed to a medieval theme.  George's parents, their relative, friends, and neighbours, have all passed away.  Their headstones are in the churchyard.  Their businesses have been replaced by new businesses.  The old world has gone and George does not like what he sees.  While he was gone, he did not realise that this place has changed just like everywhere else.

 

George just manages to catch the emergency message over the radio requesting George to return home as his wife has been taken seriously ill.  George decides to act as if he did not hear the message as he suspects that it is just a ploy by his wife to get him to go home.

 

In the street he spots a woman who he vaguely recognises.  It is a woman with whom he had an affair.  She has change so much that she is barely recognisable.  George is shocked.  He follows her into a shop; her own shop.  George pretends to be interested in buying a pipe.  George does not let on.  George is even more shocked that the woman does not recognise him for he has changed even more than she has.

 

At the end of the week it is time for George to return home.  He has spent his seventeen pounds and has nothing to show for it except a few extra pounds in weight. from drinking at the bar.  Now he is worried about his wife.  What if she really is seriously ill?  When George enters the house there is no sign of his wife.  Now George really is worried.   I will leave the rest for the reader.

The author was born in India but comes to England as a child to go to school.  He does not go to university but goes to Burma where he becomes a policeman in the colonial regime.  Burma is the setting for his first novel, "Burmese Days".  He becomes disillusioned with colonialism.  He goes on to write more works of fiction and non-fiction until his premature death in 1950 from tuberculosis at the age of 47.  It was his last book, "Nineteen Eighty-Four that was to become his most famous.  In it he warns us of the totalitarian society we are heading for.  I don't think that by 1984 we had the society that Orwell predicted, but we are still heading towards it. 

 

 

 

 

 

  This is another excellent novel from this contemporary writer.  It may not be quite as believable as her first novel but it is still quite believable.

 

Seeing a television documentary on Robert Capa who was a war photographer during the Spanish Civil War prompted me to read "For Whom the Bell Tools".  This novel is a twentieth century classic but I am no fan of Ernest Hemingway.

The language used in the dialogue is quaint using "thou" instead of "you".   It could be that the Spanish counterpart of the use of "tu" instead of "vous" in French used as a term of endearment.   It seems to have been part of the language of the Spanish Republic which also used "comrade" as in the Soviet Union.

The description of the battle scenes were interesting except that I had to read three hundred pages of not so interesting stuff to get to them.  It is the story of an American volunteer who is sent to join a band of Loyalists in the hills and to blow up a bridge. 

The author also writes of the atrocities committed on both sides.  Air power features prominently.  I guess that it was in the Spanish Civil War that for the first time the civilian population was bombed in their own homes by the same German bombers that would bomb London a few years later.

The Spanish Civil War was the first confrontation between the forces of Fascism
and the forces of Socialism.  It was the first opportunity to check the spread of Fascism. However, the changes brought about by the Spanish Republic were equally as abrupt as the change brought by Fascism.

It has intrigued me that France's refusal of any assistance to the Spanish Republic led to the fall of the Spanish Republic to the Fascist dictatorship which, in turn, assisted Hitler in his invasion of France in 1940.

Getting back to Hemingway's novel, I guess its reputation preceded it.  At least, the ending was unpredictable.  It did not end as I expected.

His work is truly inspirational as he seems to be able to make a dramatic picture out of the otherwise mundane. He is not only a photographer but also a printer; something that I have tended to regard as a bit of a chore. He sepia tones many of his prints and then adds soft focus under the enlarger and has some beautiful results. He is a landscape photographer which is a subject that generally fails to inspire me. Yes, there are some exotic locations like Venice, Tuscany, Marrakech and Rannoch Moor in Scotland. He has also made much of less exotic locations like Northumberland. Many of the photographs are taken with a 35 millimetre Hasselblad panoramic camera. They are a plastic Japanese-made camera with very fine optics but the earlier models were somewhat troublesome. This camera is often used with an orange filter to darken a blue sky. In many instances a red filter is used for an even deeper sky. Obviously, much magic is performed in the darkroom adding that extra dimension to the photography. Personally, I have had mixed results with sepia toning wasting both chemicals and paper. It is easier to do a sepia print with the aid of one's computer and printer. What makes his photographs interesting is that he is an artist rather than a technical perfectionist. It is promising in the digital age to see such virtuosity in black and white photography. Although he is not a portrait photographer, his portrait of the Berber in Marrakech is exquisite. It is all very well having the opportunity to photograph in exotic locations. My own experience of holiday photography is that you arrive at the exotic location at a time of day when the light is not particularly inspiring, the crowds are blocking your view, or the world's wonder is under scaffolding for repairs. But you take your shot anyway in case you do not get the chance to pass this way again. The way to operate may be to turn local locations into exotic locations by capturing unusual lighting conditions and camera angles. I have made a list out of this book of my favourites that I will try to reproduce locally; for instance, the shot of Redcar, Yorkshire. It is not an exotic location but the lighting and composition make a great photo.

I enjoyed this. It is written in the first person and it reads like an autobiography. The events are entirely credible. It has an air of reality. The story commences in 1942, in Japanese-occupied Singapore with the birth of the narrator's mother. She is rejected by her mother and brought up by an aunt until the aunt has her own child and the narrator's mother is sent back to her own natural mother. At this point the narrator describes her mother's growing up in a Singaporean Chinese family. The males of the family are worshipped and given the best of everything. The females get what is left over. The narrator's mother grows up and marries a dental student. She also goes to university but gives up her course when she falls pregnant. The young family move to Kuala Lumpur and set up a dentistry practice. However, the riots of 13 May 1969 give them a nasty shock and when the opportunity to emigrate to Australia comes up, they take it. The father and the children adapt well to life in Sydney but the mother does not fit in. Life in Sydney is beset with problems and the family goes from crisis to crisis. It may be a first novel and, I suspect it may be at least semi-autobiographical as it has an air of reality.

It could only happen in India - a resurrection. And why not - in a country who's inhabitants beleive in reincarnation. The action takes place near Dhakka, now in Bangladesh, but in India in 1910. Three brothers and their sisters have inherited a large estate. The story concerns the second eldest of the three brothers. He has been married for a couple of years but there are no children. He goes to Darjeeling for a holiday and this is where the trouble starts. He is taken ill; seriously. In spite of having medical attention he dies. His body is carried to the crematorium but, before the cremation can take place there is a severe storm and the funeral party leave the body and flee for shelter. Presently, the squall subsides and the funeral party return to where they left the body. But the body is nowhere to be seen. Some twelve years later a group of wandering sanyasis turn up at the Kumar's former residence in Dhakka. One of the claims to be the missing Kumar. Although he is very much changed from the Kumar that they remember, his local knowledge is indisputable. Some of his close family members, notably his mother, acknowledge him. However, the Kumar's wife has inherited the Kumar's share of the estate and its revenues. The sanyasi now wants his share. The matter was taken to the court in Calcutta. The court considered the circumstances of the Kumar's "death". Evidence was presented that the Kumar passed "blood stools" before he died and that this was a symptom of poisoning by arsenic. The doctors testified that they had administered minute quantities of arsenic as part of the treatment. It is not uncommon that substances used in small quantities can be beneficial for the treatment of certain conditions that would be lethal in larger amounts. No conclusion was reached on whether the Kumar had been poisoned all those years ago - and no autopsy was carried out at the time. The decision of the single judge was that the sanyasi was the Kumar and was entitled to the restoration of his share of the estate. The Kumar's wife, advised by her brother, appealed the decision of the single judge to a full court consisting of three judges. On this occasion the court could not be persuaded and the decision of the single judge at first instance was overturned. However, one of the three judges dissented. The matter now had two judges for the plaintiff and two against. An appeal was lodged with the Privy Council in London. The proceeding were interupted by the Second World War. The Privy Council was loathe to upset the decision of the Full ourt in Calcutta and brought the matter to a conclusion in favour of the Kumar's wife. The author's conclusion was that the sanyasi was most likely a well schooled impostor. He thought that the most likely explanation of the sanyasi's intimate knowledge of the Kumar's family was that he was a distant relative or a person who had been a servant on the estate who had been put forward in an attempt to disinherit the Kumar's wife and her scheming brother.

Taken after sunset at a free show in the park at Subiaco