Book Reviews Archive - Page 6 of 10 - Bristol Radical History Group

Owen Glendower

By John Cowper Powys

Are all the events in the great world… so different from what the historians say? Although it’s a contradiction in terms, it seems accurate to say that John Cowper Powys is a novelist who has more than a single magnum opus, maybe even several. For me The Glastonbury Romance is his great work among the Wessex novels but it is difficult to think of Wolf Solent, Maiden Castle or Weymouth Sands as in any way lesser works. The vast and panoramic Owen Glendower looks and reads like his magnum opus […]

Troubles

By J.G. Farrell

Set in 1919-21, years of conflict when the struggle for Irish independence raged, Troubles is the first in J.G. Farrell’s 1970’s trilogy of historical novels dealing with the decline of empire. Troubles follows the fortunes of Major Brendan Archer who, traumaticised and lacking purpose after serving in the First World War, crosses the Irish Sea to the fictional town of Kilnalough to meet with his fiancé, Angela Spencer, to whom he’d almost unwittingly become engaged following a brief, scarcely […]

Partisanas

Women in the Armed Resistance to Fascism and German Occupation (1936–1945)

By Ingrid Strobl

This book examines the parts played by women in the struggle against fascism across Europe. Strobl acknowledges the importance of so-called “passive” resistance such as hiding people, distributing leaflets and listening for information on radio Moscow and the BBC, which is perceived as the traditional role of women in the resistance. However this book looks as the women who broke away from this traditional role and took part in the armed struggle against fascism. As someone who didn’t know very […]

The Body Economic

Why Austerity Kills

By David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu

This book and one of its authors briefly hit BBC radio in the summer of 2013 and luckily one afternoon I caught one of the interviews. What stuck in my mind was the almost unbelievable statement made by David Stuckler that ‘ten million Russian men disappeared in the early 1990s’ as a result the transition from so-called ‘Communism’ to ‘Capitalism’. Ten million! Surely this must have made world news? How had I not heard about this biblical scale disaster? It must be left wing lies….mustn’t it? […]

The True History of the Kelley Gang

By Peter Carey

The best book to give a full historical account of Ned Kelley’s life is Ian Jones's excellent 1995 biography. Jones tells us that Kelly was a heroic man maddened by injustice and driven to become an outlaw as a result of his struggle against oppression. However if you want to find out what it may have really felt like to be Ned Kelley read The True History of the Kelley Gang. Carey succeeds in giving this extraordinary man a voice and makes him achingly real. His life story is narrated […]

The Instance of the Fingerpost

By Ian Pears

This novel is set in Oxford during the restoration in the 1660s, a time of complex intellectual, scientific, religious and political ferment and uses a mix of both real and fictitious historical figures. The murder of Dr Robert Grove, a fellow of New College, and the events surrounding it are narrated from four significantly different points of view. Marco da Cola, a Venetian Catholic doctor newly arrived in Britain; Jack Prescott, son of a Royalist traitor and desperate to clear his father’s […]

The Blood Never Dried

A People's History of the British Empire

By John Newsinger

This year is seeing a veritable frenzy of spectaculars encouraging the sad old supremecist idea that Being British is something to be jolly well/fucking proud of, what with all our institutions and history and achievements. Our diversity in particular has been cited as a significant reason we got lumbered with the Olympics and the French didn't. Anybody wishing to read something that presents a less uncritical evaluation of these ideas and an unsanitised history of some of the "achievements" […]

Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power

Community Organising in Radical Times

By Amy Sonnie and James Tracey

The history of radical 'White' activism in the 1960s and 70s in the USA is dominated by the the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a large organisation which was very influential in the creation of what is known as the 'New Left'. Much has been written about their activities in the Universities particularly around resistance to the Vietnam War and their eventual split which led to urban armed groups such as the Weather Underground. However, this interesting book uncovers the hidden history […]

Havoc In Its Third Year

By Ronan Bennett

Havoc in its Third Year is Bennett’s third novel. It is set the 1630s in the period leading up to the English civil wara town in northern England which had recently removed a corrupt and tyrannical local aristocrat, only then to be ruled by a new repressive puritanical regime. Bennett is a writer of deep political conviction and this novel deals with universal themes, in particular the corrupting forces of power, fear of the outsider and the destitute and the nature of moral and political […]

Pure

By Andrew Miller

Bristol writer Andrew Miller’s sixth novel and deservedly won the 2011 Costa Book of the Year. It is 1785 and France is on the brink of revolution as the old order is about to be swept away. Jean-Baptiste Baratte, a young engineer of humble background, is ordered to exhume the vast and ancient cemetery of Les Innocents in the poor Parisian quarter of Les Halles and demolish its church. Baratte, ambitious and forward thinking, “a disciple of Voltaire,” dreams of building utopias and as a man of […]