The Rose Field, by Philip Pullman

What bittersweet pleasure it has been to immerse myself in this last volume in The Book of Dust trilogy, and perhaps the last ever visit to the world(s) of His Dark Materials. 

As with La Belle Sauvage and The Secret Commonwealth before this, it’s a rich, compelling adventure story in which we follow various flawed heroes and villains through a world not quite like our own. These various factions are heading for the mysterious “red building”, located somewhere east of the Caspian Sea, which seems to the source of the precious, rare commodity rosewater, which is in turn linked somehow to the properties of Dust. 

Lyra and her daemon Pan, the protagonists of these stories, suspect the red building is a window to another world, like the ones in His Dark Materials. And, of course, they were told at the end of that trilogy that such windows imperilled the world and had to be sealed for ever. Is that really true?

Along the way, there are battles, explosions, a riot, murders, the loss of the alethiometer and some revelations about Malcolm Polstead’s sex life. It is an enthralling read, difficult to put down — as with the second volume, I rattled through all 600+ pages in just a few days. 

But it’s also much more than a rollicking adventure, with plenty to say — or at least worry at — about the nature of imagination, the importance of personal connection, and the destructive effect of capital on creative life. As before it’s good on the pernicious way authoritarianism takes hold. Interviewed In that sense, it’s an angry book, or despairing — a novel about another world or worlds, that is directly about our own as it is now.

Brilliantly for a book about the imagination, it doesn’t tie things up too neatly at the end, leaving some questions hanging and a sense of much more possible beyond the last page. In fact, with 100 pages to go I thought I was pretty much on top of the myriad characters, motives and plot threads. And then, on p. 532, a new character is introduced. Tamar Sharadze is a catalyst for change, leading innovations in the way trade is conducted — simply with the introduction of paper money. Pullman has deftly, without clunkiness, shared with us the mechanics of trade up to this point, so that we can see the enormous change coming as a result of this innovation. I hoped to learn more about her and the changes wrought — but that can all play out in my head, along with other thoughts about who gets together with whom, and what happens next.

And yet by the end of this novel the big plot threads are concluded, there’s a definite sense of an ending, at least of this particular story. We learn why Lyra and Pan had their split at the beginning of the previous book, and the forces — or ways of being — at play. We even gain a sense of what Dust is, and its interplay with the Secret Commonwealth and Rose Field.

It’s hard to say more without spoiling things, but my heart was in my mouth for the last few pages, fearful of some last, brutal act. But the closing moments are entirely fitting: despite everything that has gone on before, two people make a connection. It’s a satisfying conclusion; my only disappointment is that I yearn for more.

Barry Cryer Same Time Tomorrow, by Bob Cryer

This is a lovely, funny and often moving biography of the comedian Barry Cryer (1935-2022) written by his youngest son. Each chapter is preceded by one of Cryer’s well-worn jokes, which I could easily hear in his distinctive, warm gravel tones. There are more great jokes peppered through the text, as well of bits of showbiz history and gossip. 

There are, too, some shocking moments such as the time Cryer tried to end his own life and was saved by his neighbour Douglas Camfield — then assistant floor manager on TV shows such as Garry Halliday and later a celebrated director on Doctor Who and other drama. But really this is a history of a hardworking, professional writer and performer plugging away at his trade as the entertainment world changed around him.

In early 1961, while still relatively green, Cryer and his friend Ted Dicks (no relation to Terrance, though their credits sometimes get muddled up) began writing for revue show This is Your Night Life. The show was headed by Danny La Rue, who we’re told described himself as a “female impersonator” rather than “drag artist”, and it was performed at Winston’s nightclub in London where La Rue had been in residence for some years. 

“Shows usually started at 12.45 am, meaning they often finished around 3 am. Almost all the performers, including Danny, had jobs in other West End shows and came to Winston’s afterwards” (p. 108)

The cast of This is Your Night Life included Terry Donovan, who Cryer married in 1962. Their son describes them cycling from their home in Maida Vale to rehearsals for Danny La Rue during the day. Terry would then cycle to her evening show in the West End and her husband would be off to a stand-up gig at the Players’ Theatre. They’d then head to Winston’s for 11 pm for their next performance, get home in the not-so-small hours and then do it all again, night after night after night. It’s exhausting and thrilling and mad. You can smell the cigarette smoke and tiredness.

Cryer Jnr says his dad was an almost perfect match for revue shows of this kind, given the OED’s definition of revue as “a light theatrical entertainment consisting of a series of short sketches, songs, and dances, typically dealing satirically with topical issues.” The fit was almost perfect because, “to my knowledge Strictly Come Dancing never called” (p. 78). 

To Cryer Jnr, that’s because revue matched his father’s love of “professional amateurism”, that mix of spontaneity and chaos where it seems as if the wheels might come off at any moment. I know exactly what he means, having grown up on Cryer Snr’s work with Kenny Everett on TV and hearing him on I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue on the radio. In fact, Cryer Jnr is good on why the late-night revue show on stage morphed into the panel show on radio and TV.

“The Theatres Act of 1968 meant that the Lord Chamberlain no longer had the power to censor the West End and a new kind of liberated and more confrontational voice was now being heard. Innuendo, that great staple of cabaret and Danny’s nightclub shows, not to mention one of Dad’s great weapons (if you pardon the, ahem, innuendo), was now seen as quite quaint.” (p. 174) 

The panel show, and Kenny Everett, allowed the informal, wheels-coming-off to continue in new guise.

Given Cryer Snr’s prolific career, of the many shows in different media mentioned in the book there’s a single, brief reference on p. 182 to Better Late…, a revue show broadcast over nine weeks on BBC Radio 4 in the summer of 1970, filling the gap while Any Answers? was on holiday. 

By Cryer Jnr’s reckoning of revue shows as given above, that mean it was a bit quaint, though BBC audience research reports from the time suggests that listeners were still uncomfortable — even outraged — to hear politicians being very lightly mocked.

Cryer didn’t write for the series; he was one of the performers led by Peter Reeves. Reeves also co-wrote the scripts with his friend Terrance Dicks — NB not, this time, Ted.

So, here’s some of what I can add about this long-forgotten revue show:

Better Late… was a kind of summer holiday for Terrance, who’d just completed work as script editor on Jon Pertwee’s first series as Doctor Who — the final episode of closing story Inferno, directed by Douglas Camfield (and, uncredited, by Barry Letts) was recorded on 29 May and went out on 20 June. Terrance duly commissioned scripts for the next series of Doctor Who and must have co-written this revue show while waiting for those scripts to come in. 

On Tuesday 7 July, Robert Holmes delivered his scripts for what was then called The Spray of Death, the debut story of Doctor Who’s 1971 series. The following day, Reeves, Cryer, Elizabeth Morgan and Bill Wallis, with producer John Dyas and I assume co-writer Terrance, rehearsed the first episode of Better Late… ahead of recording in the Paris studio at BBC Broadcasting House that evening, accompanied by the Max Harris Group and announcer David Dunhill. The show went out at 7.30 pm the following evening.

The pattern was basically the same for the next eight weeks.

Sadly, Better Late… no longer survives in audio form but the scripts are (mostly) held by the BBC’s Written Archives Centre. Since the revue show was topical, a lot of the material must have been written the week of recording and transmission, and skips in page numbering on surviving script pages suggests that a lot more material was written than used. The scripts also include many handwritten rewrites — refinements and rephrasings, whole jokes added or cut, the swapping of roles between performers. The sense is of a lot of work, right up to the last possible moment.

Terrance formally accepted draft scripts from Don Houghton for what was then called The Pandora Machine — the second story of the 1971 run of Doctor Who — on 2 September, the same day he was in rehearsals on the ninth and final episode of Better Late… The following week, finished on Better Late..., he completed edits on the scripts for The Spray of Death so it could go into production, received a storyline from Malcolm Hulke for the third story in the run, and commissioned Bob Baker and Dave Martin to write scripts for the fourth story.

So, he finished work on the 1970 series of Doctor Who, which had been something of an ordeal, plunged into this demanding radio series and then went straight back to Doctor Who. Exhausting, thrilling, mad! 

Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion by Terrance Dicks

“In this, the first adventure of his third ‘incarnation’, DOCTOR WHO, Liz Shaw, and the Brigadier grapple with the nightmarish invasion of the AUTONS — living, giant-sized plastic-modelled ‘humans’ with no hair and sightless eyes; waxwork replicas and tailors’ dummies whose murderous behaviour is directed by the NESTENE CONSCIOUSNESS — a malignant, squid-like monster of cosmic proportions and indescribably hideous appearance.”

John Grindrod’s excellent talk at the Target Book Club event last month made me revisit the blurb on the back of this novelisation, the first* of more than 200 books by Terrance Dicks, originally published simultaneously in hardback and paperback on 17 January 1974. That blurb, a single, thrilling sentence chock full of adjectives, was probably written by commissioning editor Richard Henwood.

Heywood’s brilliant instincts for what would appeal directly to his readership of 11-14 year-olds also included changing the titles of stories to focus on the monsters. The TV story Spearhead from Space thus became Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion. 

Published on the same day was Malcolm Hulke’s novelisation of his own TV story, Doctor Who and the Silurians. This already had a monster-focused title but “Silurian” is a technical word referring to a specific period of geological time. Henwood went for something simpler and more vivid, a title to immediately conjure a mental image: Doctor Who and the Cave-Monsters (with hyphen). The cover, by Chris Achilleos, promises monsters plural: a T-rex and a Silurian.

Of course, these new titles also fitted with those of the first three Target novelisations, published on 2 May 1973 and all reissued versions of books originally published in the 1960s. Two were originally published with snappy, simple titles focused on the antagonists: Doctor Who and the Zarbi and Doctor Who and the Crusaders. Henwood changed Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks to Doctor Who and the Daleks to match (though only on the front cover; it retains its original title inside).

As John Grindrod pointed out in his talk, these three Target reissues were published as part of the wider “Target Adventure Series”. The inside cover of each lists the other two Doctor Who books and also a non-Doctor Who adventure story called The Nightmare Rally. Written by Pierre Castex, this was again a reissue of a book originally published in the 1960s, which the new cover proclaimed was “Now an exciting Walt Disney film, Diamonds on Wheels”; the reissue was published ahead of the film being released in cinemas later that year.

Also listed as part of the Target Adventure Series in these first Doctor Who books was a non-fiction title, Wings of Glory — written by Graeme Cook and about the history of war in the air. Another non-fiction title, None but the Valiant, about war at sea, was,

“to be published in Target Books, September 1973”.

Note that there was no mention here of further Doctor Who books as “in preparation” — a feature of later Doctor Who novelisations. Henwood had written to the BBC on 3 November 1972 expressing a wish to novelise further Doctor Who stories beyond the three reissues but it seems he and the team at Target waited to see how those sold before formally committing to more.

They sold extremely well: The Target Book by David J Howe with Tim Neal, which is essential reading on this stuff, estimates an initial print run of 20,000 copies per title, a reprint within six months (October/November 1973), and again three months later (January/February 1974). One of the books, Doctor Who and the Daleks, reached no. 6 in the WH Smith top 10 on 20 July 1973. 

By this point, with the books clearly a success, six new Doctor Who titles had been commissioned. As well as Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion and Doctor Who and the Cave-Monsters, there were to be novelisations of the following TV stories:

• Day of the Daleks (published as Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks by Terrance Dicks on 18 March 1974)
• Colony in Space (published as Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon by Malcolm Hulke the same day)
• The Daemons (published as Doctor Who and the Daemons by Barry Letts on 17 October 1974)
• The Sea Devils (published as Doctor Who and the Sea-Devils, with hyphen, by Malcolm Hulke the same day)

At this stage, Mac Hulke was the backbone of the Target range, writing half of the new books — all based on his own TV serials. To begin with, all his books were to be renamed with punchier titles: Doctor Who and the Sea-Devils was originally going to be put out as Doctor Who and the Sea-Monsters (as per the “in preparation” list in the first editions of Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks and Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon). The changed title and hyphen were surely to help indicate that this was a direct sequel to Doctor Who and the Cave-Monsters. 

My guess is that the title was changed back to Doctor Who and the Sea-Devils following the last-minute decision to repeat the omnibus version of The Sea Devils on TV on 27 May 1974, a few months ahead of publication. Perhaps it was also to ensure the title matched the list of all Doctor Who TV serials given in the Radio Times special marking 10 years of Doctor Who, published in November 1973. Another title listed as “in preparation” in March 1974, Doctor Who and the Yeti, was also changed back to its TV title and published as Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen.

However, before Target abandoned this policy of changing titles to make them more simple, vivid and monster-focused, this approach seems to have had a profound effect on Hulke and others working on the TV show. On 2 July 1973 — around the same time that these first six new novelisations were confirmed — Hulke was also commissioned to write the scripts for a new six-part Doctor Who story on TV called Timescoop. By early August, that name had been changed to Invasion of the Dinosaurs. TV story Death to the Daleks, commissioned the same day, already had this kind of title but Return to Peladon, commissioned on 12 July from writer Brian Hayles, became The Monster of Peladon (Hayles was also soon commissioned by Target to novelise his first Peladon story). 

Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts had originally planned to end the 1974 TV series of Doctor Who by killing off the Master, as played by Roger Delgado, in a story to be called The Final Game. When Delgado died and then star Jon Pertwee decided to leave Doctor Who, the finale became a story to kill-off the Third Doctor, now with a monster-focused title: Planet of the Spiders. In the following season of TV adventures, the titles of all but one story — The Ark in Space — include the name of the monster.

The books introduced other stuff that found its way into the TV show, too. The Making of Doctor Who (1972) by Hulke and Dicks revealed that Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart’s first name is “Alastair”. This fact is given again in Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion, published months before studio recording of the name’s first use on screen in Part One of Planet of the Spiders.

Then there’s this, from the climax of the Auton invasion book, as one of the monstrous shop-window dummies is caught in the blast of a grenade.

“An Auton arm blown clear from the body continued to lash wildly around the room, spitting energy bolts like a demented snake.” (p. 146)

It’s surely the inspiration for what happens in the TV episode Rose (2005).

(ETA clever Nicholas Pegg points out what goes through the mind of the policeman facing, in the novelisation, the Auton invasion of Oxford Street:

"Students, he thought vaguely. They'd gone too far this time. That thought was also his last." (p. 134)

Rose's response to encountering the Autons for the first time, in a department store in "central London", is that they must be students...)

I’ve much more to say about what Terrance does and doesn’t do in his first novelisation, but I’ll save it for my forthcoming biography of him...

* Terrance was credited as co-writer of The Making of Doctor Who (Piccolo, 1972), but Mac Hulke did the bulk - probably all - of the actual writing, and took 75% of the royalties. "The Auton Invasion was the first book of any kind I'd written," Terrance told the authors of the Target Book (p. 19). Years later, he alone carried out the rewrites on the updated edition of The Making of..., published by Target in 1976, but reused some of the material originally written by Hulke.

Further reading:

• Me on Terrance's next book, Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks
• Richard Benson, "Mark Gatiss, the boy that Dr Who books made", in the Bee - this new interview includes the influence on Mark of Spearhead from Space on TV and Terrance's novelisation of The Three Doctors
• Matthew Michael on Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion
• Jim Sangster on Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion
• More by me on Terrance Dicks

Doctor Who Magazine #620

The new issue of the official Doctor Who Magazine is out today and includes After Image by me, in which I look again at recent TV episodes Lucky Day, The Story & the Engine, The Interstellar Song Contest, Wish World and The Reality War.

I, in turn, get reviewed, with Jamie Lenman casting his critical eye over Smith and Sullivan: Reunited, of which I wrote one episode. He says Blood Type is "complex and nuanced", which is nice.

There are lots of other goodies this issue, not least Gary Gillatt's lovely piece about the war service of the actors who played the first three Doctors Who. 

Anyway. I'm on deadlines so must dash. Will write up notes on some recent books read and post them here asap.

Stone & Sky, by Ben Aaronovitch

This is the tenth full-length novel in the Rivers of London series about a London copper who is also a wizard, and it is a delight. I bought it for the Dr when she was feeling a bit low and it worked its magic.

Peter Grant and his extended family are in Scotland on holiday and to look into alleged sightings of a huge panther - or, melanistic leopard to be precise. As well as liaising with the local police to investigate this “weird bollocks”, Peter must also wrangle his parents, his toddler twins, his river goddess partner, and apprentice Abigail — who tells half of this story herself.

It’s smart and funny, and kept be guessing to the end. As always, I’m in awe of Ben’s ability to create such a vast range of rich characters, and how he grounds the fantastic elements in the mundane. The details — from the stone which built Aberdeen to the differences in police procedure and legislation once you cross the Border, are exemplary. I’ve been learning lots about scuba diving over the last year (as the Lord of Chaos is doing a course in it) and so found the threat at the end particularly tense. 

There are loads of nerdy references, the Doctor Who ones including Daleks (p. 26), Peter’s explanation of his job,

“I deal with the odd, the unexplained, anything on earth…” (p. 108).

and what might be a reference to one of Ben’s own Doctor Who stories, in using the word “obstreperous” (p. 153). I wonder, too, if there’s an echo of Doctor Who and the Sea Devils by Malcolm Hulke in some of what goes on here.

It’s fun to pick up on this stuff and the other nerdery (such as Abigail working out the physics of mermaids). And it’s fun following character’s personal lives — the impact on Peter of being a dad, the love lives of Abigail and of Indigo the fox, the hints we get about Dr Abdul Walid’s early, wild years.

So many detectives have terrible personal lives and rub people up the wrong way. Peter is a charmer (literally!) and peacemaker, and it makes him and his world very engaging company. 

Rivers of London novels I've also blogged about:

• Lies Sleeping
• False Value
• Amongst Our Weapons

Rivers of London novellas:

• What Abigail Did That Summer
• The October Man
• The Masquerades of Spring

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon

I first read this an age ago, before I had children or that much knowledge of autism. It's been a strange thing to revisit now I have more experience. 

This audio version is largely narrated by Ben Tibber as 15 year-old protagonist Christopher Boone from Swindon, but with a full cast playing the other characters. That works very well. We see (or hear) events as Christopher understands them. He has an eye for and takes satisfaction in detail, and we often get raw, unembellished facts, whether about his own anxieties and bodily functions or grown-ups' sex lives, swearing and violence. 

His hyper-focus on particular things - prime numbers, colours, smells - and his bluntness are often funny. I've seen some readers object to this, feeling that we are led to laugh at Christopher. But I think something else is going on; we laugh because we understand the way he sees the world. It comes about through empathy.

That, I think, plays off against the more disturbing stuff. The world is a scary place. A whole load of things terrify Christopher (noises, strangers, things that are brown) and sometimes leave him unable to speak (except to us). There are also a whole load of things that he doesn't quite comprehend - but we do as readers. 

Reading the book again now, what strikes me is how many of the characters are cross, impatient, at the end of their tether and sometimes downright cruel. That's in direct contrast to us as readers, comprehending of and amused by this boy. We embrace the ways he thinks differently; they just lose their tempers.

Christopher can certainly be exasperating and exhausting, and the grown-ups are fallible, flawed people. There are things here I recognised as the parent of an autistic child. But the over-riding sense, I think, is one of sadness because Christopher is not exactly surrounded by kindness. There's a lot of chaos and argument (which I can empathise with) but not a lot of joy. As a result, I think we judge his parents, his neighbours, his teachers, the police... The empathy for him is not extended to them. And I think that's an an issue given that some of their bad behaviour is rather contrived.

I keep picking over a key element of the plot. As Christopher determinedly investigates the murder of his neighbour's dog, he unravels an audacious falsehood that has been told to him and others for some time. Yes, I can see how Christopher would be duped because he takes what he's told at face value. But that doesn't apply to anyone else: have they really not questioned or checked what has been said about something so fundamental? When the lie is exposed, is there no consequence for the liar? The school, the police, the neighbours... no one seems very bothered.

At the end, Christopher seems liberated by a number of things that have happened over the course of the story: his schoolwork, his trip to London, his unravelling of the mystery. He's written this account - this book - and feels he can achieve anything. I'd like to believe so but I'm not sure surviving an ordeal is the same as learning from it. What will he and those around him do differently to avoid another crisis, or deal with it better when it comes?

But I'm not sure if that's a criticism of the book or a sign of how much it got under my skin.

Earthrise, by Robert Poole

I read an earlier version of this book more than a decade ago as prep for The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who, and it's never really left my imagination. Poole, who is emeritus professor of history at the University of Central Lancashire (where I was an undergraduate, though I don't think we've ever met) recounts how the space programme affected our sense of ourselves by focusing on the famous "Earthrise" photograph, snapped by William Anders on Christmas Eve, 1968 while on Apollo 8 - the first crewed mission to the Moon.

To place this in context, we begin with the history of conceptions of what the Earth would look like seen from space from before we could take pictures from orbit. The same characteristics recur in old pictures and descriptions: the prominence of landmasses, the lack of cloud, the theory that there would be blinding glare from reflected sunlight in the sea. As I said in Scientific Secrets, we're familiar with this kind of vision of the Earth in the logo of Universal Pictures, with rich green and brown land forms dominant over oceans of deep blue. A fixed shape and structures with no sign of change other than the globe slowly turns.

Instead, with Earthrise and subsequent images, we now know a bright, white-blue world with swirling, active clouds. No two pictures of the Earth from space are ever the same because those clouds are constantly moving, and - as Poole delineates - because the planet is in flux. More of that in a moment.

Before getting to Earthrise, Poole details the efforts to get the first cameras into space, and the perhaps greater challenge of doing something counter-intuitive and pointing them back towards the Earth. The politics or scientific merit of that is just one issue. Poole also explains the complex physical and chemical processes involved in ensuring a camera can survive spaceflight, and a picture can be taken and developed - in the days before digital - and then communicated back to Earth's surface. Thanks to him, a blurry, streaked image of cloud becomes an object of wonder when we understand how miraculous it was to capture any image at all.

How fascinating to learn that there is no consensus on the first photograph to show the curvature of the Earth. As Poole says, the round Earth was known to the ancients. It's an observable phenomenon by watching boats on the sea: masts appear first over the horizon, then the hulls, rather than the whole boat appearing at once in the distance as it would if the sea were flat. I remember standing at Logan's Rock in Cornwall as a kid, looking down on the seaward horizon, and holding up a ruler to better see the curve of that line of sea. Are there really no early photographs of such vistas?

According to Poole, though, "the first photograph clearly to show the curvature of the Earth" (p. 34) was taken by the aeronauts on board Explorer II on 11 November 1935, which launched from the "Stratobowl" in the Black Hills of South Dakota and reached an altitude of 13.6 miles (22 km). The photograph they took was published in National Geographic the following year.

Another notable early effort was took place on 24 October 1946, when a V-2 rocket launched from the army's White Sands proving ground in New Mexico was fitted with a 35mm movie camera. The resulting images, from some 65 miles up, made the papers and newsreels. 

I thought this might be the footage used in the opening moments of The Quatermass Experiment (1953), but checking Toby Hadoke's book reveals this was from a later V-2 launched at the same site on 17 February 1950 (see Hadoke, p. 133).

A set of photographs taken by a V-2 camera on 26 July 1948 were stitched together to create two panoramas of the curving Earth, released to the press on 19 October. Poole says that this, "was accepted in the press and the archives as 'man's first view of the curvature of the Earth', an official position it has held ever since" (p. 37). But, as he continues, the fact that there's any doubt at all is evidence that these different images, for all they were published to some acclaim, didn't quite catch on as later images did.

Various factors explain why the Earthrise image had the impact it did. It's a good quality, high resolution image, for one thing, which reproduces well. While there's no "up" or "down" in space, it's usually presented with the lunar landscape in the lower part of the frame, creation a boggling inversion of our usual view of the Moon in the sky above our own horizon. There's also the juxtaposition of the bright, coloured Earth with its whirling, active cloud and the grey, desolate Moon. 

But Apollo 8 as a whole made people sit up and take notice. As James Burke recalled in Our Man on the Moon, suddenly people realised, "Hey, they're really going to land on the Moon!" Burke was swiftly told to swot up on rocket science so that he could present the BBC coverage. So I think Earthrise was also emblematic of the Moon landings becoming, well, real.

Poole then charts the impact that Earthrise had on Earth, galvanising the environmental and ecological movements and having a direct influence on the first Earth Day, held in 1970, and conceptions of Earth as either spaceship or mother-Gaia. This is the stuff I really remember from reading this last time and - as I argued in Scientific Secrets - is all over the Doctor Who of this period. In fact, the first Doctor Who story shown after the Moon landing, and ushering in a new era of the series, begins with a view of the whole Earth from space, the first to appear in the series, and in colour, too. That's made me think about the mechanics of replication: how much the impact of Earthrise owes to good quality colour print in newspaper supplements and magazines, and the spread of colour TV.  

All in all, this book presents a fascinating, wide-reaching history, full of tenacious characters, not all of them heroes. I didn't know, for example, that Fred Hoyle was an anti-environmentalist who even accused Friends of the Earth of operating on behalf of "their Russian paymasters" to deprive the west of energy (p. 4); he had to withdraw the allegation. 

It's a self-published book, and there are typos and artefacts littered through the text. Perhaps a judicious editor might also have questioned the description of those suggesting that the Moon landings might have been faked as "fuckwit denialism" (p. 76) - though I can imagine other science writers putting it in similar terms. Really, all I mean is that this compelling book deserves another, more polished edition, perhaps including colour plates of the images under discussion.

Last time, what hit me about this book was the way leaving Earth - and looking back at what we left - transformed our sense of and relationship to our planet. That's still here, updated to include William Shatner's response to his own real-life trek into orbit in 2021. He was profoundly moved, and saddened, by the fragility of Earth in a universe of cold, dark nothing. What hits me reading this edition is the same profound sense of loss. The images of Earth from space taken since Earthrise show the damage we have inflicted in the intervening years: the melting ice caps, the loss of vegetation on vast scales, the ferocity of the weather we once never even thought of in our conceptualisations of Earth.

"Humankind now appears to be both the product and the custodian of the only island of intelligent life in the universe that we will ever encounter. Whether that vision has been timely enough, and powerful enough, for homo sapiens, the most successful of all invasive species, to reverse its own devouring impact on the Earth, will be known soon. Perhaps we know already." (p. 177)

More space stuff by me:

• Carrying the Fire, the autobiography of astronaut Michael Collins 
• On 2007 documentary In the Shadow of the Moon
• Moondust, by Andrew Smith
• Apollo, by Fitch, Baker and Collins
• Orbital, by Samantha Harvey
• Ad Astra, by Dallas Campbell
• My trip to Kennedy Space Center
• On Yuri Gagarin's autograph in Croydon

The New Forest Murders, by Matthew Sweet

The wife and children were generous with my annual appraised (or "Father's Day"). I got a lie in, a badge of a smiley fried egg, a copy of my friend Matthew Sweet's new novel and - best of all - the chance to sit and read it. What joy.

"There is a village in England that all us know, even if we have never set foot there. The village that comes to our minds when we think of cricket on the green on a Sunday in July; when we see a honeysuckled cottage painted on the lid of a tin of biscuits; when we put our hands together and say, 'Here's the church and here's the steeple.'

"It really exists." (p. 125)

This village is in the New Forest, near where I grew up. Characters speak of the bright lights and bustle of Southampton, where I went to school. But this particular village is familiar from a whole load of other sources, too - Larkwhistle here in 1944 owes something to Bramley End in Went the Day Well (a film released in 1942 but set after the end of the Second World War, so told to us from the future). Meanwhile, local pub the Fleur-de-Lys is straight out of Doctor Who and the Android Invasion (1975), in which the real-life East Hagbourne doubled for fictional Devesham.

It's a mix of spy story, murder mystery and romance, neatly acknowledging its sources from the dog called Wimsey after Dorothy L Sayers's detective to more than one Sherlock Holmes reference. 

"That's a bit dog-that-didn't bark, isn't it?" (p. 154)

The blurb of the book says it is "perfect for fans of Agatha Christie's Partners in Crime". The church of St Cedd surely owes something to Dirk Gentley's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams, and at one point there's a joke from Doctor Who and the State of Decay; I think the author of that story, Terrance Dicks, would have loved this. 

As for the plot: it's 1944 and Normandy has been invaded, the last act of the war under way. But Jill Metcalfe and her father then receive bad news from a rather good-looking American officer, Jack Strafford. While they're reeling from the shock, word comes of a dead body under a tree. It's not just any body, or just any tree - and soon Jack and Jill are working together to solve a murder and to catch a spy, which may or may not be related...

The book rattles along - I finished it in a day - by turns funny and real and harrowing. You feel the loss, and the great depths of emotion in this apparently quiet, conventional setting. Oh, and the back-flap tells us what is surely another influence on this: Matthew's forthcoming book The Great Dictator (haha!) is a biography of Barbara Cartland.

The Quatermass Experiment, by Toby Hadoke

This comprehensive plunge into the sci-fi horror TV serial from 1953 has been a joy to read. I should declare right away that it’s written by my mate, with whom I’ve just made a documentary for the forthcoming deluxe Blu-ray of the film version of the same story, out next month. But then the reason Toby fronts the documentary is that he’s the go-to guy for this stuff.

The book is him sharing what he knows, the facts gleaned from decades of research and some shrewd deductions, plus his analysis based on long years of consideration. I especially like how good he is at probing sources: he says when he thinks an anecdote has been embellished; he also says when he isn’t sure what to conclude.

There’s lots of factual information here that I didn’t know and there are lots of fresh insights that open up this old TV show. It’s also very engaging — for example in Toby’s increasing exasperation with the Daily Mail’s TV journalist of the time, Peter Black. (By chance, I once gave Toby a copy of Black’s book, The Mirror in the Corner; I wonder what he made of it.) 

The serial was broadcast live in six episodes. The first two episodes were recorded and survive; the rest went out once and were then lost to the ether. What hadn’t occurred to me before I read Toby’s book is that at least some of episodes 3 to 6 were recorded — even if those recordings have now been lost. They each featured a small amount of pre-filmed material, detailed by Toby. It also seems that producer Rudolph Cartier filmed a little of each instalment up to episode 5 to act as a “trailer” or story-so-far at the start of the subsequent episode (pp. 168-9). 

The chances of this material having survived are next to zero, but sometimes — just sometimes — this kind of thing turns up. 

Indeed, Toby has turned up a load of archive material never seen before, including a roll of film from studio rehearsals on episodes 1 to 5, the images in very good condition and presented beautifully here. Reader, I have pored over these thrilling, vivid glimpses of what is otherwise lost to us. I should also like an illustrated version of the script - or even a whole comic strip - done by Robert Hack, whose artwork features here.

Toby has also gathered a wealth of sources to tell a detailed story. What we learn is set nicely in context — how this serial compared to other TV productions of the time, how people watched and engaged with it, and where it sits in the history of science-fiction and horror. Much is made of the fact that nothing like this had been seen on television preciously. That meant I was struck by the line at the end of Episode 1, when a reporter responds to the sight of astronaut Victor Caroon emerging from his rocket,

“That suit they wear, it is like the comic magazines after all,” (p. 70).

That is surely a reference to the Eagle and Dan Dare, pilot of the future, who dons a kind of diving gear in space. His comic strip adventures launched in 1950 but he perfectly exemplifies the kind of “New Elizabethan” hero referred to and then undercut in the serial. Quatermass is, I think, a kind of anti-Dan Dare.

Later, Toby notes that in L’esperimento Quatermass (Mondadori, 1978) — an Italian translation of the script book of the serial — a small change was made to the spoof, 3D sci-fi film playing in the cinema visited by Victor. 

“The Space Girl (Ragazza Spaziale) doesn’t call the Lieutenant ‘Chuck’ as in the UK version, but ‘Jim’,” (p. 269).

That’s a random change, I thought. Unless it’s a reference to the well-known Jim Kirk from Star Trek, updating the allusion to (what was seen as) a contemporary example of hokey sci-fi.

Toby is especially good at keeping the focus on the people involved, the contributions made by cast and crew to both the original production and recounting how it was made. A last section, detailing what they all went on to do after Quatermass, is compelling — like the serial itself, Toby gives them a last bow.

But what I was most taken by, I think, was what the leading man — the first Quatermass — brought to the role in particular.

Toby tells us that Reginald Tate made his TV debut in March 1937, which was less than six months after the start of the BBC’s regular TV service. He appeared in an exact from the stage version of Jane Eyre in which he was appearing at the time in London’s West End. Tate played Mr Rochester, a role he’d had since the stage production began in Malvern the previous year. Toby tells us he played Rochester again on stage in Leeds in 1946 (p. 65) and on TV in 1948 (p. 66). He then performed as Rochester once more, for BBC Radio, at the same time as he was in production on The Quatermass Experiment. He told the Evening Standard at the time that, 

“The transition [between the two roles] is not very great. The two seem to have characters in common” (p. 70).

Toby describes Quatermass as a troubled, guilt-ridden figure, trying to put right what he got terribly wrong — in this case, sending three men into space to devastating effect that now imperils the whole Earth. I don’t think writer Nigel Kneale had any thought of Mr Rochester when he wrote it; but that’s what Tate brought to his performance.

It’s another example of how the leading man of this new kind of TV drama — a pilot of the future, in his own way — is anchored in the past. The ideas are new but the emotional heft of the serial is an echo from the past…

• Buy The Quatermass Experiment, by Toby Hadoke, from Ten Acre Films

Doppelganger, by Naomi Klein

“It’s all so unbearable. No wonder we work so hard to look away. No wonder we erect those walls, literal and psychological. No  wonder we would rather gaze at our reflections, or get lost in our avatars, than confront our shadows.” (p. 323)

This is a compelling, sometimes difficult read and I’ve had to stop and start a few times to process some of what it says. Naomi Klein, the author of No Logo and The Shock Doctrine, keeps being mistaken for the conspiracy theorist Naomi Wolf, and becomes obsessed with trying to understand her double, the journey she has taken in the past few years and what it can all mean. In the process, she grapples with Covid, the history of anti-Semitism, the situation in Gaza and a whole load besides.

I’m haunted by the radio interview with Wolf, which I heard go out live on the evening of 21 May 2019. Presenter Matthew Sweet (my mate!) asked her to explain the thesis of her new book, Outrages: Sex, Censorship and the Criminalisation of Love, and then, at 21:20, said words to chill the blood of any writer.

“I don’t think you’re right about this.”

What follows is polite, curt and utterly devastating. When Matthew then turns to the next item in the programme, and another guest, you can hear their nervousness. You can still hear the whole programme, if you dare.

Klein charts how Wolf got there and what happened next, but really this is a book about how we respond to extremism of one kind and another without becoming extremists ourselves. That entails some self-examination and scrutiny of the structures we so often take for granted — Klein has a lot to say about capitalism as a whole.

Much of this will linger with me. I was especially taken with what she says about the response from John Berger to her previous book, The Shock Doctrine, where he said shock can make us lose our identity and footing. Berger concluded that, “Hence calm is a form of resistance.”

“I think about those words often. Calm is not a replacement for righteous rage or fury at injustice, both of which are powerful drivers for necessary change. But calm is the precondition for focus, for the capacity to prioritize. If shock included a loss of identity, then calm is the condition under which we return to ourselves. Berger helped me to see that the search for calm is why I write: to tame the chaos in my surroundings, in my own mind, and—I hope—in the minds of my readers as well. The information [of the sort she reports on] is always distressing and, to many, shocking—but in my view, the goal should never be to put readers into a state of shock. It should be to pull them out of it.” (p. 227)

At the end, we’re told Klein invited Wolf to respond, to have a conversation, but never got an answer. One question Klein wanted to ask was whether Wolf might remember her from the one time they met, when Klein was still a student and Wolf was promoting The Beauty Myth. Klein admits she was dazzled by Wolf, was probably influenced by her as she started as a writer — in effect, she might be the doppelgänger, not the other way round.

But there’s another devastating sentence, on p. 345, when Klein repeats the first thing Wolf ever said to her. I felt that, in just those few words, it unlocked so much about her.

Brat Farrar, by Josephine Tey

We know from the off that Bartholomew “Brat” Farrar is a crook. He’s a young American hustler, sometimes working as a groom or blacksmith, or anything else to get by. Importantly, he’s also got good manners, thanks to having been brought up in a better kind of orphanage. 

A nefarious friend thinks Brat looks rather like Simon Ashby, the heir to a great estate in England who is just about to come into his inheritance at the age of 21. Simon was a twin, but his slightly older brother Patrick disappeared at 13, apparently taking his own life soon after the tragic death of the twins’ parents in a plane crash. The nefarious friend knew this family and — for a fee — provides Brat with all he knows about them, meaning Brat can pretend to be the long lost, prodigal heir.

Some people believe at once that Patrick has walked back into their lives. Others don’t and are hostile. Several people aren’t sure. As Brat inveigles himself into the family, he convinces at least some of the doubters — but also starts to form attachments with these likeable people. Can he go through with defrauding them? 

It’s all brilliantly suspenseful, even before an attempt is made on Brat’s life. And then he starts to suspect a dark secret at the heart of this respectable family, a longstanding injustice that he alone can uncover. Only he can’t do that without exposing the truth about himself…

Its ingenious and effective, making a compelling protagonist out of the most unscrupulous rogue. Unlike Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley the interloper here is not a monster. There’s something more nuanced and interesting going on, and we’re rooting for Brat all the way.

The characters (expertly realised in this audio version by Carole Boyd) and their world are vividly realised: Brat (and we) must negotiate the complex web of connections between this rich family, their staff and the local community. There’s a lot about horses, on which the estate’s fortune depends. It’s quite a trick to make this so utterly compelling to a reader who has never been in the saddle. The different personalities of horses, the psychology of getting them to do what the rider wants and the thrill of competition are all used to great effect. And in the understanding of horses, we come to understand these people — and uncover the long hidden secret.

Tey tells us from the start that Brat is not Patrick Ashby but towards the end she withholds key information to keep us in suspense. It’s cheating, I think, but of the best kind — like a conjuring trick. At the start, there’s little chance of a happy ending. Things then build and build until that prospect is impossible. 

And yet, with a flourish, the last pages neatly tie it all up. It’s a thrilling story, arrestingly told, and we leave it wholly satisfied.

One more thought: I wonder if this was an influence on Saltburn. 

See also:

• Me on The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey

Death at the White Hart, by Chris Chibnall

This is ideal holiday reading, a fast-moving, relatively concise murder mystery from the creator of Broadchurch and in a similar style. It begins with a man driving back home into Dorset at 2 am discovering a body on the road. This body is striking: a naked man in an old sack, trussed to a wooden chair with antlers fixed to his head. 

The discovery is made on page 3 but it's not until page 42 that we discover who has been murdered. The effect is to make us lean in, to read more carefully for clues about who this might be. We interrogate all that happens in the meantime as we meet a wealth of different characters from Fleetcombe and nearby Bredy - including a beleagured delivery driver, a trans barber and a refuge from Ukraine who has married one of the locals. As Russell T Davies says in his back-cover blurb, it "feels like it's set right now."

Detective Sergeant Nicola Bridge has her own secrets to be uncovered over the course of the story. Of course, she already knows them but we don't - another effective bit of suspense. Her relationship with eager-to-please young Detective Constable Harry Ward is immediately endearing. I suspect it's probably quite easy to write world-weary detectives with difficult home lives but it's quite a skill to write them with such warmth.

In fact, Chibnall is great on all these different characters - immediately real and distinct, and liable to clash. Often, people turn out to be more than they appear: the last person we'd expect turns out to have been having an affair with the victim, while another character who initially seems lazy turns out to be proactive in a particular way, greatly aiding the enquiry.

It's not exactly a cosy crime novel given the constant sense of threat in this quiet community, such as organised crime, domestic violence or when a convicted criminal catches up with a grass. One thread to the story is a century-old crime and gross act of injustice, but really the focus here is on what happens next, such as whether a relationship can survive or a character stay in their home. There's a constant, uneasy feeling of things about to kick-off.

Then there's the reasoning behind the murder itself, which is relayed over more than one chapter to give it full, devastating effect. I was completely blind-sided by the identity of the murderer and yet it all makes perfect, awful sense. In people's tragedies, in their friendships, in the bittersweet final pages, Chibnall is really good with people.

My one note is that what this lacks of the "right now" is any mention of the weather, so much part of daily conversation in real life and requiring last-minute changes of plan. How different things might have been for characters sneaking out at night and/or starting fires if there were torrential rain. Without enough rain, setting fires could quickly spread - as we've seen in recent days. I'm acutely conscious of this having read the book on holiday in Rhodes, where unseasonably cold, wet weather meant less time to enjoy this on the beach. I finished it in the dark on the flight home late last night, its effect very different out of the sunshine.

The Martian Conspiracy, by Mary Robinette Kowal

Hello from the island of Rhodes, where we are having a short break, retreading the footsteps that the Dr and I took 25 years ago on our first ever holiday together, and also tracing the path of Mary and Charles Newton, the artist and archaeologist who were here in 1863, as detailed in the Dr's exhibition.

I shall post a bit more about what we've been up to but the weather has been odd. We left bright, warm sunshine in Macclesfield (!) to find it grey and rainy here. It's raining again as I write this but he sun has been out pretty solidly, if often accompanied by an icy breeze. The guy serving us in the nice restaurant we went to last night pointed out the snow-topped mountains across the water in Turkey. Until a couple of years ago, he said, that would have been unthinkable in April. Now it seems to be normal, and the locals and the tourist trade are adjusting.

That chimes with this 'ere book that I bought specially for the holiday, the fourth instalment in the Lady Astronaut series I have avidly followed from the start (see my posts on The Calculating Stars, The Fated Sky and The Relentless Moon). In the first of these, in 1952, a meteor strikes Earth and obliterates Washington DC. In this new book, we've reached 1970 where there is ever more evidence of massive, devastating change to the climate as a direct result of the blast and all the material thrown into the atmosphere. A powerful lobby tries to downplay the evidence and just continue as before.

This is all in the background as the new novel is set on Mars - and in Martian orbit - with the now 48 year-old Dr Elma York and her husband Nathanial part of the crew working to establish the first permanent settlement in time for more arrivals.

A lot of the story here is about the logistics of the operation - the priority list of tasks that need doing, ensuring people get fed when there are limited resources. There are also the interpersonal politics of lots of gifted, ambitious people from different countries and cultures. Elma must navigate one character's odd, awkward sense of humour, another's preferred pronouns and the objections of some fellow crewmembers to being referred to as "colonists" given the precedent set on Earth. There are competing egos, and the issue of how much independence they all have from their supposed line of command back home - if Earth even is home any more.

There's also an ongoing mystery about what exactly happened on the First Expedition to Mars, involving some of the people Elma lives and works with who really don't want to talk about it. As Elma worries at that, there are plenty of new challenges: her period is late, then a change of leadership on Earth wants all  female crewmembers to leave the Martian surface, then there's a serious incident that risks lots of people's lives...

It's largely another engaging, emotional and thrilling read. What a delight to be back in Elma's company again and catch up with her various friends and colleagues. I was fascinated, too, by the notes at the end explaining what the fiction owes to fact, in both real space history and ideas about future missions to Mars.

It's interesting, too, to revisit this alternate history of the space programme in the light of the TV series For All Mankind, which does a number of similar things, such as giving real people from our own timeline more to do in space. I think the big difference is that the Martian residents here comprise a lot of married, heterosexual couples. In all the discussions of birth control and non-penetrative sex due to limited numbers of condoms, there's very little about what crewmembers might get up to if they're not married or don't have their spouse with them in space. What if someone is gay or has an extra-martial hook-up? The crew are diverse but the sex, apparently, isn't. 

Now, Elma - who narrates the story and provides our frame of reference - admits to being a bit naive about some stuff relating to sex. Indeed, her advice to other couples turns out to be medically wrong and causes something of a crisis. So the absence - the blindness - is in character for the narrator. I can also see it being addressed in subsequent instalments, as more and more people reach Mars. 

At least, I hope it is. Because with Earth facing catastrophe, it's not just a question of who is deemed fit - and by who - to go to Mars. It's about who gets to have a future.

Cinema Limbo: Observe and Report

I'm the guest on the latest Cinema Limbo podcast, this time - for my many sins - to discuss the 2009 black comedy Observe and Report, starring Seth Rogen and Ray Liotta. 

Spoiler: this is not exactly my cup of tea.

• Cinema Limbo: Observe and Report (2009)

You can also listen to the previous episodes I've been on:

• Cinema Limbo: The Last Wave (1977)
• Cinema Limbo: Give My Regards to Broad Street (1984)
• Cinema Limbo: The Wicker Man (2006)
• Cinema Limbo: Smoke (1995)
• Cinema Limbo: King Kong (1976)
• Cinema Limbo: Ryan's Daughter (1970)
• Cinema Limbo: Highlander II - The Quickening (1991)

Green for Danger, by Christianna Brand

"'If this were a detective story, he'd be the murderer for a certainty, though,' said Barnes. 'They always pick on the benevolent elderly gent, because you'll never think it could be him!'

'Ah, but nowadays they're more subtle; they know that the reader's wise to that trick and the older and more benevolent a character is, the more he'll be suspected.'

'Perhaps it's gone all the way round and come back full cycle,' suggested Barnes, laughing; 'and elderly gents and paralytics in bath chairs are suspects number one all over again because the reader doesn't think the author would be so obvious. Anyway, this isn't a detective story, and it certainly wasn't old Moon.'

'So that leaves you and me and the three girls,' said Eden, grinning sardonically. 'A charming alternative.'" (p. 216)

My good friend Father Christmas added this to my Mum's stocking based on the blurb, thinking it a suitable present for a former nurse who likes a murder mystery. My Mum's first reaction was, "Oh, I knew her." In 1971-72, my late Dad was a joint junior registrar at Mount Vernon and Middlesex hospitals, working under Brand's husband, the surgeon Roland Lewis.

First published in 1944, Green for Danger involves victims of air raids in 1943 being brought into a military hospital in Kent, where someone bumps off a number of patients and staff. A film version was released in 1946, directed by Sidney Gilliat and starring Alistair Sim as Inspector Cockrill, with action moved forward a year to 1944 and the V-1 offensive, presumably for greater cinematic impact.

The book begins with postman Joseph Higgins pushing his old, red bicycle towards the new Heron's Park hospital to deliver seven letters. They're all from new members of staff and we get a quick glimpse of each character before being told that one of them will, a year later, murder this poor postman.

In Chapter II, we jump forward a year and are quickly caught up in the bustling, bantering hospital on the night of an air raid. The local ARP centre and a pub have been hit, so lots of patients are coming in, wounded and grimy and scared. At the same time, we get more details of stuff going on under the surface - the staff's love affairs and unrequited passions, their terror of the air raids, the people they've already lost. 

Higgins is brought in with a fractured femur, the sole survivor of the ARP Centre. The doctors decide to operate. Higgins and his wife are both nervous but are assured it's a routine procedure. In he goes to theatre, our seven suspects all on duty. By the end of Chapter III he is dead.

At first it seems that no one is to blame - sometimes these things just happen in theatre. Inspector Cockrill is called in as a matter of routine. But he starts to suspect that something more sinister has gone on and then someone else is murdered...

It all moves along breathlessly and the different characters are well drawn, with some suspenseful moments such as when another man goes into theatre with the same suspects on duty, plus the Inspector watching them. The air raids and murder make for a tense setting anyway, and there's something a bit naughty in the staff's complex romantic intrigues, their efforts to solve the mystery for themselves and the games they play with the police officers assigned to watch them. 

Cockrill deduces who the killer is fairly early on but requires more evidence before he can confront them, which is effectively a challenge to the reader to work out what he has spotted from the clues given so far. On more than one occasion, things don't go as he expects - putting lives in danger.

Brand keeps us guessing skilfully. There are some fantastic twists at we rattle towards the conclusion - one section ends with a character springing forward to attack and we think they are the killer exposed. In the next, brief section, the Inspector intercedes to stop this person and then arrests someone else. "Oh, it's them!" we respond to the sudden attack. And then, almost immediately, "Oh, no, it's them!"

In the closing chapter, the survivors compare notes and look towards the future. There are still further twists in the tale. One character seems to be proposing to another - and then it's clear that they aren't. The other character, hopes dashed, 

"stuck our her chin, made a little joke, and nobody knew there was anything wrong at all." (p. 255)

We leave them, laughing and talking, for all we are haunted by the trouble we know lies just under the surface.

Death at the Sign of the Rook, by Kate Atkinson

Jackson Brodie, ex-soldier, ex-copper and stalwart private detective, is an unlikely participant in a murder-mystery evening put on by some hammy actors at a stately home. Having established he is there, we track back to follow the line of enquiries and coincidences that lead him to Burton Makepeace, family home of Lady Milton, that particularly dark and snow-stormy night.

Lady Milton was, some years previously, the victim of an outrageous theft, when a painting by Turner was stolen almost out from under her nose by a young woman she employed. Brodie is hired by a completely unrelated family to trace the theft of a completely unrelated painting... by a young woman who is not what she seemed.

I thought the previous outing for Brodie, Big Sky, took a while to get going and was a bit unsubtle about its targets. This is much better at getting things going from the off, while many of the characters here and their motivations are not what they first appear.

Brodie is now in his 60s and a grandfather, but still the sardonic tough-guy of previous outings. The returning characters include Reggie Chase, the teenage orphan introduced in the third Brodie novel, When Will There Be Good News? and now a serving police officer - who takes pride in being mistaken for Brodie's daughter. New characters include a troubled vicar, Simon, who has lost his voice and his belief in God. There's also a beekeeper called Ben, who lost his leg to an IED while on active duty and is now a bit lost himself.

It's a funny and wry, and kept me guessing until the end. The final act, which involves the murder mystery evening where there's also a real dead body and an escaped convict with a gun, is tense and suspenseful while also a glorious farce. The mix of comedy and pathos gives some heft to what might otherwise by a daft runaround. The result is a very satisfying joy.

See also me on the five previous Jackson Brodie novels: Case Histories; One Good Turn; When Will There Be Good News?; Started Early, Took My Dog; Big Sky. And me on Kate Atkinson's other novels: Transcription; Shrines of Gaiety.

An Independent Woman, The Autobiography of Edith Guerrier

An archivist pal asked if I was any relation of Edith Guerrier (1870-1958), the subject of Tirzah Frank’s fascinating “The ‘Boston Marriage’ of Edith Guerrier and Edith Brown”.

I’d not heard of her before but, looking up details, Edith’s great-grandfather was George Guerrier (1771-1824), my direct ancestor — my grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather. My grandfather’s grandfather, William George Guerrier (1827-1920) was the cousin of Edith’s father, George.

Edith wrote an autobiography under the title A Little Woman of New England, which was published as An Independent Woman in 1992. It’s about how, from modest beginnings, she set up  a series of clubs for girls, largely from Italian and Jewish immigrant families. That leads to a long career with Boston Library, included a nine-year campaign to get a Bill passed into law. She meets various famous people such as Louisa May Alcott (hence the original title of this autobiography) and some US politicians who would later be president. It’s an evocative story and full of great historical detail. 

There’s not a lot of detail about her 40-year relationship with Edith Brown, though a couple of things, I think, are telling.

The first meeting with Edith Brown and their setting up home together are described in a chapter titled “A Single Woman”. They’re clearly a close partnership from the off, a duo. In that sense, at least, Edith Guerrier isn’t single. The title is consciously ironic.

Then there’s the following comment towards the end of the book, where Edith Guerrier speaks of her retirement from Boston City Library, mandated when she turns 70:

“In looking ahead, all my plans had been made with regard to the things my dearly beloved comrade and I would do together, but before time came Edith had passed into the next life. After nearly forty years of closest companionship I was left to face retirement alone, never doubting, however, that she still lived vitally and radiantly beyond this bourne of Time and Place.” (p. 127)

Otherwise, there’s not much on the Ediths’ relationship. We hear of their holidays — to Italy, to Amsterdam and Switzerland, an evocative trip to post-war Ypres in 1922 and then England. We learn how these trips inspired their work back in the US, such as in setting up a pottery. But Edith Brown, who went on these trips and led some of the work that followed, is an almost ghostly presence in the text. 

Edith Guerrier names lots of different people: her various relatives, the famous people she encountered, a range of people she worked with or who supported her work. But she is discreet about Edith Brown. And she also, notably I think, doesn’t name the female school friends she went to stay with in her teens, or the cowgirl she once ran away with on a “marauding expedition”.

“I had practically no companions and I longed to become acquainted with a girl about my own age who bought our milk from her father’s ranch several miles out on the high prairie … I had made up my mind that it would be a good thing to see the cowgirl’s ranch and I wished nothing to interfere with the plan.” (p. 45)

It is all, I think, suggestive.

Edith Guerrier is much more interested in demonstrating the impact of a little time and investment on those who don’t have much. We see the impact on her of earning six dollars a week rather than three, and of the $300 she is somehow awarded as compensation for the loss of her great-great grandfather’s ship in the War of 1812 (p. 75). Inheritance, patronage and government grants have a transformative impact on her and her community. 

There’s something, too, about the indirect impact of this kind of initiative. They hoped, for example, that the pottery would make some money. However,

“We learned many useful facts about pottery making and became convinced that the leisurely product of a studio demands rather than provides a steady income.” (p. 96)

But that doesn’t mean it failed.

Annoyingly for my purposes, editor Mary Matson says in her preface,

“I have made excisions. I have omitted her discursively genealogical ‘Part 1’ on the history of her forbears, while making liberal use of the material in my own introduction.” (p. xx)

According to a written account by Edith’s father, the Guerriers are "of Huguenot descent, one of a body settling on the banks of the Thames about 1685.” (p. xxviii). That matches what I’d learned elsewhere, with the first Guerrier, Jean, arriving at the Huguenot church on Threadneedle Street in London on 6 December 1677.

Again according to Edith’s father, her great-grandfather George (my direct ancestor).

 “was a farmer on the Isle of Dogs, and when he died he left considerable property, but [his son, Edith’s grandfather] Samuel Guerrier’s portion of the inheritance was swallowed up in an unsuccessful book publishing enterprise. He pursued clerical occupations, having but a precarious subsistence through many years and finally died in the care of my half-brother Will Guerrier at an advanced age.” (Ibid).

This Will Guerrier (1795-1850) is another of my direct ancestors.

Samuel’s son George (1837-1911), had been a freight clerk when he visited a panorama (presumably in London) showing a rather fanciful view of Mississippi, complete with monkeys. This inspired him to emigrate to the US at the age of 19, in 1856 (pp. 33-35). During the Civil War, he was Second Lieutenant of Coloured Infantry, and fought at Yorktown and the siege of Fort Wagner, and was,

“wounded at Gaines Mill and captured. For six weeks he had lain in Libby Prison, an experience he refused to talk about.” (p. 81)

Edith is sure that this, and other aspects of his war service, ruined his health. Even so, on 2 September 1867, he married Emma Ricketson, the daughter of an abolitionist, who died of tuberculosis when their daughter Edith was three.

Edith says her father was keen that she learn French (but that she never had much success). 

“It may have been because of our French ancestry, and because our name, which according to the family legend was given by a French king to a distant ancestor for prowess on the battlefield.” (p. 59)

I’d like to read more about Edith and her father’s accounts of their — and my — family history. And I wonder if, when the two Ediths were in London in 1922, they looked up some of her relatives there. Her father’s cousin, William George Guerrier, died in 1920, but his son and nine year-old grandson were there. 

That grandson was my grandfather. And I wonder if, just possibly, that man I knew once met Edith.

In the Wet, by Nevil Shute

This is an odd and very racist novel, first published in 1953 but largely set 30 years later. The reprint I read is from 1982, with cover art by George Sharp that conveys a scene in the opening pages but doesn’t really give a sense of this peculiar book at all.

How racist can it be, you ask, given that I often delve into old books (and films and TV shows) that can contain unwitting and/or witting prejudice. In fact, I came to this by chance having read a bunch of books from the same year: Farewell Crown and Good-bye King by Margot Bennett, Hackenfeller’s Ape, by Brigid Brophy and, less recently, Casino Royale by Ian Fleming.

Well, In the Wet features a fair amount of casual racism littered through its pages - more, I think, than those other novels. But on top of that, of the novel’s two protagonists, one insists that his friends, employers and love interest address him by a nickname, which is a word beginning with N.

His (white) love interest, Rosemarie Long, is initially wary of using this nickname. “It’s pretty mean to call you that,” she says. “Not many people do that, do they?”

“Everybody,” responds the man born David Anderson, the name that I’ll use here. “I rather like it.” 

David’s grandmother, we learn, was an Australian aborigine from the Kanyu tribe, who “ruled the Cape York Peninsula before Captain Cook was born or thought of.” David is proud of being a “quadroon”, and would rather people called him by the nickname and so acknowledge the colour of his skin, “than that they went creeping round the subject trying to avoid it.” (All quotations from p. 82) Better, it seems, to address the thing head on, in a plain-speaking, no-nonsense way.

Except that one of the first people to refer to David’s skin colour doesn’t realise he is not white. 

“You don’t look coloured. You look a bit tanned, that’s all.” (p. 70) 

That may account for why David has experienced little in the way of racism in is life, saying that just once, aged 18 and in Sydney, he experienced, “waiters being rude in restaurants, people refusing to sit at table … But it could still happen at any time” (ibid).

We don’t witness racism towards David — in fact, many white characters insist to him that his colour and background are not an issue. But he has internalised prejudice, I think. Now aged 30, he remains unmarried because “the colour makes that a bit difficult” (p. 71). He also assumes that it will bar him from working as a pilot for the Queen. David’s boss, Group Captain Frank Cox, counters that,

“As for the colour, you can put that out of your mind [as] we aren’t asking you to marry into the Royal Family” (ibid).

Which would be, it seems, unthinkable.

The upshot is that the only prejudiced person we meet is the character of mixed heritage, who insists on being addressed by the N-word. That word therefore features frequently, more often than I think I’ve ever seen in one book, in a novel written by a white emigrant to Australia, lecturing us on race and democracy and a whole lot besides. 

Shute does this through parable or satire, in rather the style of News from Nowhere by William Morris (in which a character from 1890 traipses into the 21st century). The mechanism Shute uses to jump 30 years into the future from his own time is quite peculiar.

The novel opens from the perspective of our first protagonist, 63 year-old Father Roger Hargreaves (no, not him from the Mr Men), who was born in Portsmouth in 1890, ordained in 1912 and has been in Australia on and off since just after the First World War. He’s a no-nonsense vicar, living a meagre existence in a town in the midst of nowhere, North Queensland, tending to lost souls. When an old drunk abuses him, Hargreaves offers the man his own modest home for a wash and shave, and then buys him a drink.

This old drunk is “Stevie”, who lives an even more remote existence with a man called Liang Shih, who grows vegetables for the community and shares his opium with Stevie. One day, Liang Shih comes into town to report that Stevie is seriously ill. Hargreaves joins local nurse Sister Finlay in heading out to see the patient. It’s a perilous journey through rain and flood, and Hargreaves is anyway suffering the after-effects of malaria. They find Stevie on death’s door and, unable to do anything themselves for his pain, let Liang Shih feed him a pipe. A feverish, smoke-addled Hargreaves sits with the dying man in the dark and listens to him murmur something about his life…

We segue, seamlessly, from Hargreaves telling this story on page 60 to the third person account of David Anderson, the man who likes to be known as N—. Hargreaves thinks this is Stevie’s real name. But we are gifted clues over the next 15 pages that something else is going on, before on page 75 there’s a reference to a coin dated 1982. This is all a vision of things to come.

It’s an odd future, one in which the Labour government have been in power in the UK continuously since the end of the Second World War. All buildings are government owned and many houses stand empty because there has been so much emigration to Australia, Canada and other parts of the world, much of it after the stock market crash of 1970.

David Anderson is a pilot with the Royal Australian Air Force who, while stopped off in the UK, is asked to take a posting to fly the royal family wherever they might want to go. It turns out that the RAAF and Australian government are picking up the tab for the Queen’s air transport because the UK’s mean-spirited Labour lot won’t pay. We come to realise the nightmare prospect — has there every been anything so horrific in all fiction? — that the Queen and her family might be happier living abroad (following the example of the author, who emigrated to Australia in 1950).

The whole thing is a very strange right-wing fantasy of grievances against the left, blaming Labour for post-war austerity — and not, er, the Nazis. Rationing is still in place in this 1983, so English people are amazed by David’s access to ham or pineapple, which he gets via airline connections. And yet in this bleak dystopia, posh grocer’s Fortnum and Mason is still open (p. 203), which is convenient when David wants to buy his love interest a treat. By which he means South Australian sherry.

This imagined austerity is all the odder because Shute must have known while writing this that rationing would soon end in the UK. In fact, bread came off the ration in 1948, clothes in 1949, sweets and sugar in 1953, the year In the Wet was published. All other rationing was ended on 4 July 1954, but it had been a pledge of the Conservatives in the 1950 and 1951 general elections — the latter returning them to power.

When In the Wet was published, Labour had been out of office for two years. That this novel is railing against a demonstrably unfounded fear is fascinating in the context of having just read How They Broke Britain by James O’Brien, and its account of scaremongering by media and certain politicians in the lead up to the referendum on leaving the EU.

There’s something, too, in the fear of a population of hard-working, aspirational Brits being dogged by the edicts — whims! — of the civil service. I can see echoes of that fear in things being said in the US at the moment as a reason for cutting public services, that idea of government as something that gums up rather than lubricates the workings of the economy. Somehow, despite this, British engineering, radio and TV are still the envy of the world (p. 75), the latter presumably still being made by the bureaucracy of the BBC.

The Labour government seen here, largely in the person of Prime Minister Iorweth Jones, MP for South Cardiff and a former miner, are variously petty, parochial and paranoid. For all they have, for decades, imposed their dreary ideology on the poor people of the UK, they also don’t stand for anything. We’re told that since,

“Communism was no longer politically expedient in England since the Russian war” (p. 93),

the Prime Minister and his party have abandoned it.

His bureaucrats ensure that one flight David pilots — with the Queen on board — is redirected from her usual airport at White Waltham to one in Yorkshire because they don’t have quite the right papers. The monarch suffers the indignity of being sent to the north and then having to catch a train home.

The Queen — newly crowned when the novel came out — is stoical and modest throughout. Among the privations suffered over the years, she has given up Balmoral and Sandringham to the Labour regime (p. 101). This is all in sharp contrast to the accommodating Canadians and Australians who indulge her every need. When her plane stops to refuel on Christmas Island, she admires the single large house there and arrangements are quickly made to build her one of her own. (Christmas Island, we’re told, transferred, along with all Line Islands, to Australia in 1961 (p. 154).)

The “Prince Consort” (p. 113 — and never the “Duke of Edinburgh”, though given that title in 1947) is blond, practical and itching for independent adventure, envious of David’s life and background. When David replies that he was “born in a ditch”, the Prince Consort responds:

“I still say you were born lucky [because] you could choose your life, and make it what you wanted it to be.” (p. 133)

The Prince of Wales — confirmed as “Charles” on p. 115 — is, like his father, a practical sort, an expert on planes and a veteran of the world war against Russia. He’s married with two boys (p. 124), not a bad prediction for 1953. The Princess Royal is married to the “Duke of Havant” and they have a daughter, “little Alexandra” (p. 124).

David and love interest Rosemarie, both working for the royals, repeatedly tell each other that they won’t gossip or talk politics — but do little else. From this, we glean that Australia is thriving thanks to a modified system of voting where citizens can qualify for as many as seven votes.

First there’s the basic vote for everyone at age 21. There’s a second vote for anyone with a university degree, for solicitors, doctors and commissioned officers. A third vote can be claimed by working outside Australia for two years, presumably acquiring a wider outlook in the process. A fourth vote can be won by raising two children to the age 14 without getting divorced. There’s a vote awarded for anyone earning an income above £5,000 a year, and a vote for officials of the recognised Christian church including wardens — we’re not told which denominations, and it doesn’t seem to include leaders from other religions. Lastly, the Queen can grant an extra vote, rather like an honour.

David is a three-vote man when we meet him and earns a fourth while in service (guess which one he gets). He insists that this system is far superior to that in the UK (not that he ever talks politics), ensuring a better class of MP — “real men in charge” (p. 89), with less influence from trades unions. The result is a society in which, “everybody’s got the chance to make a fortune and spend it” (p. 72), but there’s no safety net. David says proudly of enterprising souls that might come from England to Australia, “if he fails he may be much worse off” (p. 100).

Whatever the fate of such failures, this is all presented as a great success story — a utopia. Did that really seem viable in 1953? There’s not much of the usual trappings of science-fiction in this future but technology, briefly, gets a mention to magically solve the issues of overpopulation.

“When I was a boy people were still saying that twenty-five million [people in Australia] was the limit. But in my lifetime the Snowy irrigation scheme has been completed, and the Burdekin, and half a dozen others, and now they’ve got this nuclear distillation of sea water in the North, around Rum Jungle, and that’s getting cheaper and cheaper.” (p. 220)

If only we leave things to the engineers...

At the end of the book, the Queen appoints a governor-general of England, a move that so horrifies the British public — who still love the royal family really — that the long Labour government is at last overthrown. It is, paradoxically, a revolution in which the status quo is confirmed. It looks as if the UK will adopt the Australian system of voting, too. David is delighted:

“This is the end of something that began in 1867, when a lot of generous idealists gave one vote to every man.” (p. 229)

So this awful dystopia is not just the fault of the post-war Labour government but stretches back almost a century further to the Second Reform Act which extended the right to vote from 1 million to 2 million of the estimated 7 million working men in the country. Too much, too soon, and the wrong sort of chap getting a say in things, plainly. (But I'm reminded of similar anti-democratic feeling in Goldfinger, by Ian Fleming (1958), in which we learn that giving women the vote has, er, made them gay.)

Anyway, the result is that Rosemarie is no longer rushed off her feet with official duties so can no longer put off David’s advances… Jut as things get going between them, on p. 261 we segue back to Roger Hargreaves and dying Stevie.

Over the next 20 pages, Hargreaves comes to realise what seems so obvious: that Stevie died and was born again, and had a vision of his next life. Hargreaves is then called out to baptise a baby born in a ditch, one David Anderson… 

We were told that David has been known by his nickname since he was a boy. So I’m left wondering if stoical, practical Father Roger Hargreaves is the one who first furnishes him with it.