Books finished, January 2010

I've nicked this from a chap called Roo Reynolds, whose own blog I stalk. Here are the books I've finished this month:

"The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart" by Jesse Bullington
Reviewed this for Vector, so I'll blog that later this year. But spectacularly not my cup of tea and I struggled to find anything nice to say. Sorry, Jesse. Amazon's reviewers clearly like it.

"The Story of Parliament in the Palace of Westminster" by John Field
A rather dry, worthy and partisan history of the buildings most people refer to as the "Houses of Parliament" - you can tell Field was a teacher. Some periods in history are lavished in detail, others barely get a mention. For example, Field abruptly jumps from the Second World War to the end of the 20th Century, with a rant about democracy now and our place within it.

Yet there's plenty of fascinating top facts and insights. There's the appalling comedy-of-errors as bureaucracy and petty politics, committees, inquiries and an ever-changing brief hamper the building of Pugin and Barry's new palace in the mid-Nineteenth Century - and killed off both those men. The frescoes of radiant British history famously came out too dark because of the inclement British weather, while the over-large statues of major British figures were quietly moved elsewhere. It leaves you amazed that we ever had an Empire. You can almost believe the old argument that we took Africa and India more by accident than design.

I was also fascinated by subtle changes wrought on the constitution during the brief reign of Edward VI. His dad, remember, had broken off from the Catholic church so as to get a new wife (which is why anyone from the Church of England who speaks against divorce and remarriage should be beheaded for Treason). During Edward's reign (with my emphasis in bold),

"The 1548 Parliament passed the First Act of Uniformity, which introduced an English prayer book, imposed penalties for non-observance, and ordered the suppression of both images and Latin primers. It was the first occasion when religious practice had been proscribed by a secular authority. The Second Act of Uniformity followed in the 1552 Parliament which required every subject to attend church on Sunday, at one of the rechristened services of morning prayer, evening prayer, or the Lord's supper. This Act was the beginning of 'keeping Sunday special'. It was accompanied, appropriately by an Act for the control of alehouses by Justices of the Peace, when liquor began for the first time to be licensed."

John Field, "The Story of Parliament in the Palace of Westminster", p. 79.

So "keeping Sunday special" was a specifically anti-Catholic measure, not our version of the Sabbath. It's also worth noting that Edward VI did not so much rule himself as governed through helpful "uncle" figures and Parliament - nearly a century before Oliver Cromwell, let alone the constitutional monarchy of William and Mary.

It's packed with stuff like this. Another favourite is in 1842, when the non-parliamentary Royal Fine Arts Commission held a competition for the interior decoration of the new palace, with two notable firsts:

"Cartoons were invited, either of subjects from British history, of of scenes from the works of Spenser, Shakespeare and Milton. The exhibition [of these] was the occasion for Punch to appropriate the word 'cartoon' and apply it for the first time to comic subjects, the magazine's own spoof entries. It was the first time that state patronage had been offered to artists."

Ibid., p. 191.

Field is right that the palace today still feels like a gentleman's club, with arcane rules and traditions deliberately aimed at tripping up the newcomer. He's also good on Lords reform, and the value of individuals of experience and with ostensibly less party allegiance to the scrutiny of Bills. So plenty of valuable research and insight, but the phrasing and grammar could be better, and there are odd concentrations of focus which mean the book loses a few marks.

"Matilda" by Roald Dahl

"It's a funny thing about mothers and fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is wonderful."

Roald Dahl, "Matilda", p.1.

I've long meant to remedy the Dr's ignorance of the works of Roald Dahl. This was a perfect place to start, with a small, bespectacled and earnest girl who was reading newspapers at the works of Charles Dickens at the age of five. She was quite enthralled.

It's odd for me reading it again how thrilling and vivid it is, with Dahl simply and elegantly drawing us in to the adventure. It struck not only how black and white his characters are - villains like Matilda's parents and Miss Trunchball are 100 per cent villainous - but that this reflects a child-like view of grown-ups. There's no sense of these adults having once been children themselves - Miss Trunchball denies that very thing - or of their characters and outlooks developing. What, I wondered, went so wrong to turn Miss Trunchball into such a monster?

It also seems of its time, with Dahl sniffy about television and Matilda's dad a brash, conscience-less small businessman, reaping the boon of the Eighties. The plot is about a young girl taking charge of her life and reclaiming a stolen inheritance - just like the Victorian novels that Matilda reads. But it's also about the pernicious greed of its age.

It also seems odd now that Dahl recommends Hemmingway and, "Brighton Rock" to the children readers, and quotes from Dylan Thomas' haunting, "In Country Sleep". And I'm delighted this edition includes writing tips from Dahl, which includes his "constant unholy terror of boring the reader". We're already working our way through more of Dahl, so will blog some more on him soon.

"Family Britain 1951-57" by David Kynaston
I loved "Austerity Britain", which I read last year and singularly failed to blog. This picks up the story, a whopping, fat mash of diary extracts, political journals, news, sport and current affairs, building up an impression of the era. It's utterly compelling and covers such enormous ground. Kynaston's got an eye for details which inform or reflect the worries of our own age - the terror of "coshing" from teenage boys, the fury of the tabloid press, the floods and train disasters and the impact of invading - in this case, Suez - without a UN mandate. The truth is just starting to come out as the book closes, with Prime Minister Eden's explicit lie to the Commons about there having been no secret plot with Israel.

Kynaston's also good at explaining the effect of such moments, such as this quotation from the Daily Mirror on 5 November 1956, explaining why everyone must abide by international law if it's to have any meaning:

"'Once British bombs fell on Egypt the fate of Hungary was sealed,' asserted its leader. 'The last chance of asserting moral pressure on Russia was lost when Eden defied the United Nations over Suez.' Almost certainly Khruschev would have acted as he did anyway, sooner rather than later, but undeniably Suez provide opportune cover."

David Kynaston, "Family Britain 1951-57", p. 688.

The struggles of the British Communist Party to reconcile themselves to the fate of Budapest - and to revelations about all Stalin had been up to - seem another world, as are the worries about coal fires and rationing, or the assigned roles for men and women. It's the world we live in and another planet - something you can experience with this incredible, haunting slideshow of photographs of the 1950s.

Three choice moments from the book to whet your need to read it: in 1952 in Oxford,

"a thrusting Australian undergraduate had stood for secretary of the University Labour Club and, in defiance of the rule against open canvassing, had campaigned on the slogan, 'Rooting for Rupert'. Complaints were made to the club's chairman, Gerald Kaufman, who initiated a tribunal. The outcome was that young Rupert Murdoch was not allowed to stand for office."

Ibid., p.102.

That same year, the forthcoming White Paper about ending the BBC's monopoly on television - allowing the creation of ITV - led to "agitated correspondence" in the Times:

"'This is the age of the common man, whose influences towards the deterioration of standards of culture are formidable in all spheres,' warned Lord Brand. 'It is discouraging to find that it is in the Conservative Party which one would have thought would be by tradition the party pledged to maintain such standards, that many members in their desire to end anything like a monopoly, seem ready to support measures which will inevitably degrade them.' Violet Bonham Carter agreed: 'We are often told the B.B.C. should "give the people what they want". But who are "the people"? The people are all the people - including minorities. Broadcasting by the B.B.C. has no aim but good broadcasting. Broadcasting by sponsoring has no other motive but to sell goods."

Ibid., p. 106.

Just as today, hacking flesh from the BBC might let other people make money - some of them Tory grandees - but does it mean any improvement in telly? There's an argument now that ITV has suffered not because it's up against the BBC, but because commerical television can only flourish and not dilute the quality of its material while it has a monopoly, too.

And though I don't agree with the sentiment, I loved Churchill's masterful analogy for the political divide at the 1955 General Election:

"'Queuetopia remained Churchill's central metaphor for socialism in action - a term designed specifically to appeal to housewives. 'We are for the ladder,' he declared in his election broadcast. 'Let all try their best to climb. They are for the queue. Let each wait in his place till his turn comes.'"

Ibid., p. 33.

In all the book is a window into an age so much like and so different from our own - an expert piece of world-building, to use the science-fiction term. Interspersed with the names of films and performers, brands of cigarette and clothes, sportsmen and commentators and etc., the impression builds into a vivid portrait. It's a place of green smog that stings the throat like pepper and shrouds the stage from an opera-going audience, of "National butter", of the slow, slow end of rationing and the first shifts in public opinion on the medieval laws on homosexuality and on capital punishment. A glorious book and enthralling. I eagerly await the next volume.

Both cutting the cake and eating it

Neal Stephenson's Anathem is a typically robust brick of a novel, 937 pages packed with action, maths and top facts. It was a Christmas present, though the weight of thing put me off starting it until my long flight out to Florida.

At first, I thought it was running along the same lines as my great favourites A Canticle for Leibowitz and Riddley Walker: the people of a post-apocalyptic Earth struggling to put the world back together, making sense and science from the fragments left of the past. For the first 200 pages that's exactly what it is, detailing young Erasmus' life in a Concent, caught up in chores and philosophical discourse, and cut off from the world and his family outside.

But there's quickly hints of something going on in that external world which will will affect the young scholars – and might even lead to a fourth great Sack of the concents. Erasmus is soon on a peregrination into the dangerous exterior, trying to make unravel what's happening.

Without giving too much away, the quest and mystery are suitably thrilling, while allowing much discussion of Big Ideas. A lot of that discussion – on mathematical proofs, on etymology, on perception – is engrossing.

Admittedly, one chapter is more than 100 pages of one great conversation over dinner. It's broken up with trips to the kitchen (where people comment on the conversation), and notes on the food, but it left this reader rather weary. Especially since it's right in the midst of some very exciting stuff involving explosions and – hooray! – unexpected ninjas.

But generally, what makes this – and Stephenson's work as a whole – so compelling is the deft mix of the action and theory. There's the dizzying wheeze that our brains, by being able to imagine other worlds and circumstances, work at the level of quantum uncertainty – that we flicker between possible Narratives and even physically rewrite the past.

(See also the Telegraph's recent list of the top 10 weirdest bits of physics.)

There's a nice idea on page 102 that becomes integral to the plot: there are no new ideas, and the order's job is not to invent new philosophies but to tend, nurture and preserve the wisdom and insight (“upsight” in the book) of the past, like gardeners.

I also thought Stephenson's invented lexicon – the glossary lasts for 19 pages – might lose its appeal pretty quickly, but it's nicely woven through the story. Usually, we learn the meaning of a word just in time for it to become pertinent, so that the invented etymology is a kind of foreshadowing, adding layers and depth to the plot.

It's a gripping adventure, and there's loads I'm still picking over – the plot, its ramifications, even just some of the top facts. It's a geeky, lively, often funny book, full of great characters and moments. And it's got the best, most satisfying end of any of Stephenson's novels.

It's just a bit too long, with a wearying intensity that means it sometimes feels like homework – or, perhaps, as if we're part of the Concent ourselves. But then Stephenson's recent Baroque Cycle – which I loved – also demands a great deal of effort from the reader. This is not an author for the faint of heart; but he's also massively rewarding.

(See also Stephenson's lecture on the geeks inheriting the Earth and my thoughts on his novel, Cobweb.)

No second chances

As I type these words, I'm listening to the first episode of a 1989 radio series. It's on radio and it's 20 years later, but the series is called “Last Chance to See...” Even more ironically, the BBC are also showing a new TV version, retracing the steps of the radio series and which I've been eagerly anticipating since I first heard mention of it in January.

As I said then,

“The Observer sent [Douglas Adams] and a zoologist, Mark Carwardine, to Madagascar to write a Sunday supplement feature of the endangered aye-aye. Adams had such a nice time that (when he'd finished his commitments to Dirk Gently) he and Cawardine then swanned off round the world writing up other endangered species. There was a Radio 4 series, apparently a CD-rom and a book - my favourite of all Adams' efforts.”

Stephen Fry takes the tall, wordy, clumsy place of the late Douglas Adams. Nicely, he was living in Adams' house while Adams made the original trip.

Adams almost drowned slipping off an island in the original version, and Fry doesn't manage much better. But it manages to mix the new style of documentary on TV, where some Know-Nothing Celeb goes out to Discover Something, with the old-skool method (looked down upon by idiots) where the presenter is a bit of an expert already and has Something to Tell Us.

Carwardine is a dryly funny, enthusiastic native guide and there's a nice bit of intercutting of our two presenters' video diaries where they both worry the other will think them stupid. Between them, it's like a day-trip with two nerdy boys, teasing each other about urban myths and practicalities, and what happens if you pee in a particular lake.

The radio version had wry footnotes read by Peter Jones, as he'd done in Adams' Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In the TV version we get Stephen Fry (who took Jones' part in the movie of Hitch-Hiker) and some graphics that suggest the ecosystem is all made of clockwork. The diddle-ow(g)! chord that precedes these bits sounds a bit like the diddle-ow(g)! from the Eagles' “Journey of the Sorcerer”, also the theme tune to Hitch-Hiker.

But more than that, Hitch-Hiker delighted in skewering our perspectives of our relative unimportance and ignorance about the universe around us. “Last Chance to See...” does something similar, but it counts the awful cost of our stupidity – and it's all real. It is, as I said before,

“amiably, compellingly harrowing. There aren't many other books like that.”

As with the original, the joy is not just in them poking their noses at rare species, but in what they spot along the way. Adams has a superb way with analogy that can wholly change how you see how things work. This, too, has asides where Carwardine goes to look at a snake in a tree or warns of vampire bats. In just making the practicalities of getting to see the creatures part of the story, it suggests a complexity of territory, teeming with competing interests and needs. Man and animals and economics and everything co-mingle, spin off each other, a rich density of co-dependent stuff.

It's also got a serious message about the industrial scale destruction of habitat and whole species, and I'm interested to see what the series will say about What Can Be Done. But, one episode in, this is superb.

I'm also dead excited about the start of Derren Brown's new set of events, which begins later this evening with him predicting the Lottery numbers. I've been hooked by Brown's antics since earlier this year, and blogged about his book.

And, speaking of documentaries, I also really enjoyed A Portrait of Scotland, in which Peter Capaldi traced the particular Scottishness of the history of portraiture and the particular portraitness of the history of Scotland. Not really a subject I knew much about before, which is what made the programme so appealing.

It covered a lot of ground at a steady, even pace, full of detail and insight. It also gave a nice portrait of its presenter – losing his glasses, discussing his own past and asking smart questions about the paintings. Capaldi's passion for the subject and his technical skill in drawing and the techniques involved in painting took me completely by surprise – I thought he'd be one of these Know-Nothing Celebs but he turned out to have Something to Tell Us.

This unexpected second skill is what the French refer to us Le Violon d'Ingres – because the great painter was also a mean fiddler, which seems very unfair to us ordinary mortals. I'd like to think that there was some kind of trick to it, that perhaps it's all down to Capaldi having appeared in two things written by my chum James Moran.

Perhaps I, too, could seem all clever if I'd only acted for James....

Stones of London

While everyone else in the world was watching events in Washington yesterday, I was in a posh hotel room working on something that’s as-yet unannounced. From room 641 you get a nice view of BBC Broadcasting House. I love it when work gets me through doors and to see stuff I’d never normally be allowed.

The Victorian magnificence of the Langham hotel is being refurbished in even grander style; our cabs were much confused by having to drop off / pick up from the makeshift entrance round the south. The place has a fascinating history, though I’m most excited by its time as extended offices for the BBC.

“The ballroom became the BBC record library and programs [sic] such as The Goon Show were recorded there.”

Wikipedia, Langham Hotel, London, as of 21 January 2009.

It’s also where those first early meetings were held to create some silly old TV show.

Portland Place, on which these two buildings stand, gets its name from the white stone from Jurassic-era Dorset that’s so prevalent in London’s buildings. The subject of my efforts yesterday was impressed I knew why it’s so prevalent.

“In the years following the Industrial Revolution, the acid rain, resulting from the heavy burning of coal in cities had the effect of continuously (slightly) dissolving the surface of Portland stone ashlar on buildings. This had the interesting effect of keeping exposed and rain-washed surfaces white as opposed to other (non calcareous) stones which quickly discoloured to black in the smoky atmospheres. This self-cleaning property also helped to enhance the popularity of Portland stone in London.”

Mark Godden, “Portland's Quarries and its Stone”, Mark Godden’s Little Bit of Cyberspace Mk II, 2007.

Well, I say “impressed”; he didn’t run out of the room screaming.

Velociraptor

Amazon have the cover of my Primeval novel up now:

It obviously features Andrew Lee Potts as Connor Temple and a cheery-looking Velociraptor. The Velociraptor - meaning "swift hunter" - was about 2 metres or 6.5 feet long from nose to tip of tail, so would stand to about the height of my elbow. As my indispensable textbook says,

"The Velociraptors depicted in the film Jurassic Park were well over twice the size of the real animal."

Tim Haines and Paul Chambers, The Complete Guide to Prehistoric Life, p.127.

Put him in the curry

With the Dr away in the Darkest North at the moment – apparently teasing her Dad about his becoming a Writer – I made tea for a few chums last night.

I learnt my famous curry recipe while in Spain in 1996 visiting my senior brother. I assumed he was working to some carefully ordained plan, but apparently he'd just made it up there and then. I took careful note and when I got to home to Preston (where I was a student) tried to recreate it.

However, there's a translation error in the raw equipment. Preston's fine supermarkets didn't seem to do certain basic Spanish fare such as tins of tomato frito – now so beloved of Delia. So I improvised. And as a result found a magic ingredient.

No, it's not cough syrup ( a clever reference to the Simpsons).

Last night's pore-opening extravaganza also needed to be without meat or mushrooms if it were going to please my guests. So it consisted of: an onion; a small potato; an aubergine (cut up, salted, washed); two courgettes; red pepper; green pepper; broccoli; one tin of kidney beans; one tin of plum tomatoes; garlic; a dash of chilli; garam masala...

And a large tin of Heinz Cream of Tomato Soup. Yes, that's what gives the thing its sumptuous, plush delight. Bwah ha ha, etc.

I was also much complimented on my fluffy rice. The trick is to let it have loads of time, and lots and lots of water. In fact, I have a full kettle on standby to keep topping it up.

M. also brought pudding so we didn't even touch the ice cream. I am now off to hit the machines to work off some of this feasting.

"A lion covered in bees!!"

Watched some of the spectacular Olympic Games opening ceremony while smashing my limbs against the machines in the gym. Say what you like about despotic tyrannies, they know how to put on a show.

The gym has four flat-screen tellies lined up together, and the Chinese movement and dance effort, symbolic of world peace and love, played out next to footage of the tanks rolling into South Ossetia. Do you think they did that on purpose?

Incidentally, we're not supposed to refer to "the Olympics" as to "the Olympic Games". I know because I once had someone ring up from the IOC brand Stasi to yell at me about it. Only afterwards did it occur to me that they should really be the IOGC.

The new issue of the DFC marks the occasion with their own Olympics - including a million-mile marathon and a "beard of bees contest", which Brian Blessed wins. It's an absolute delight of a strip, with top gags in every panel. And there's even a bit of politics, in there...

"A small insignificant town somewhere foreign-sounding has been flattened ... A huge mega-lo-sport-o-domeo had been constructed on the site... And the greatest athletes in the world have been forcibly rounded up..."

Jamie Smart, The DFC Olympics, The DFC #11 (Friday 8 August 2008), p. 3.

Speaking of sports, my current toilet reading informs me of the fantastic fact that the England football team was founded in 1870 and played it's first international (against Scotland) in 1872.

"They did not lose at home against a European team until they were beaten 6-3 by Hungary in 1953 - eighty-one years after their first international. England lost the return match in Budapest the following year 7-1, the team's heaviest defeat to this day."

Nicholas Hobbes, England - 1000 Things You Need To Know, p.426.

It's also the Hugo Awards this evening. Best of luck to Paul and Steven.

The Guardian - the only paper I'm aware of that even knows what Hugos are - says Paul is "hotly tipped". I hope that means they think he's going to win. But perhaps they know him more intimately than I do.

Atlatl and Jodrell Bank

The Dr came home from work last night with a fun top fact. Woomera - the Australian home to the British rocketships during the 1950s and 60s, and famous for looking right through the Vogan demolition fleet in the first episode of Hitchhiker - is named after device the Eora people there used for lobbing things.

How marvellous. It's like called Cape Canaveral "Trebuchet" or "Firework".

Comforting when worn close to the skin

Nimbos got me two books for my birthday in June, a proper reading book and one for the toilet.

The latter, Nicholas Hobbes's England - 1000 Things You Need To Know is a whole mash up of facts and figures, and quite a lot of lists. The lists - of English Nobel prize-winners or bridges by Brunel - are a bit... lacking in excitement. But there's plenty of top facts and insights along the way, too.

For example, I already knew that wool had been such a major part of the English economy that the Lord Speaker of the House of Lords sits on a comfy woolsack. These days the woolsack is stuffed with wool from all across the Commonwealth.

But I didn't know this little gem:

"Under a statute of 1556, anyone caught 'owling' - smuggling wool to France in the night - would have their left hand cut off and nailed up on display in a public place. Under George I, in the eighteenth century, this was changed to seven years' transportation."

Nicholas Hobbes, England - 1000 Things You Need To Know, p. 355.

Annoyingly, sources for this stuff are rarely given, and I'd also have liked some kind of "Further Reading" section, to help follow up on my favourite morsels. But it's a great toilet book, just as Nimbos thought it might be. And full of top facts I can pinch for my own writing.

I've set myself the target of writing a complete first draft of a short story today. It currently consists of several pages of notes in my notebook, so I should probably get on with it now...

Ándale! Ándale! Arriba!

The gringo who so often harangues me for not updating this thing has started his very own blog. Keep up with his adventures as he explores the dark continent and its pretty girls. And pester him for new posts.

I’m going to be here sporadically until I jet off to LA in the small hours of 13 February. So much work stuff to deliver before I go, and just two weeks’ sand left to drool through the narrow bit of the timer.

“How the Doctor Changed my Life” is about four-fifths signed-off and done. The 25 first-time authors have been doing themselves proud with conscientious rewrites. Most have argued with at least some of my suggestions, though no one has done any shouting. It’s been a really good process all told, and well worth all the effort. Trying to fathom the running order, I’m delighted how strong a collection this will be. Hooray!

Cover to come sometime soonish, I think. Plus news of the book’s bonus features.

Meanwhile, Bernice Summerfield – The Wake is just out, ending my run on 15 consecutive Bennies. A few nice people have said nice things, though I was a bit surprised by two people who thought What Happens to Doggles just comes out of nowhere. I thought I’d nicely set this up in his dinner date with Benny, and earlier in The End of the World’s final scene. Ah well…

I’m also well into writing something that cannot be spoken of, have begun something else that cannot be spoken of, have three short scripts to write up for Codename Moose, a script about carrots to be written by August for John S Drew, and have bought the book about something else top secret which I can pitch for when I’m back from my holiday.

Well, I say holiday; the plan is to take with me my funky new laptop and break the back of the standalone novel I’ve been meaning to write for some years. Have scooped up plenty of useful details for this from some recent reading: coal fires, smoking compartments and something for headaches called venganin…

Spent the weekend at what m’colleague M has described rather well as “a two-day pub quiz”. On Saturday night I thought my all-out blaspheming had led to a strange hallucination. No, apparently, Matt Lucas was not an apparition and saw me and Nimbos "hilariously" breaking some rules… Not sure this is actually better than the thought that my brain had invented him.

Also learnt how to eat hot-cross buns quickly; stuffing them into your mouth leads to dried-out gagging. The trick is to tear off small pieces, which can be swallowed more quickly. You get this top tip for free.

Cloud Atlas

The last few days I have been a Simon Head-in-Air. If I remember rightly, this means I’m due to fall into a canal and drown. And the reason for this is Gavin Pretor-Pinney’s The Cloudspotter’s Guide. (For those who’ve not been keeping up, here’s what I thought of the novel Cloud Atlas.)

As you’d expect, it explains how to identify the main kinds of clouds. And reading it is like an epiphany – I find I’m looking up on the way to work, or while waiting for buses and trains. As Pretor-Pinney says, it’s a hobby you can take part in anywhere, and for as long or as little as you wish.

The nebulous nature of clouds means several share characteristics or even bits of the same name – alto, cirro, cumulo, nimbo, strato. I got even more list over which combinations merge into which other combinations, and then there’s the huge number of sub-species, features and effects. It’s no wonder the book comes complete with a cloudspotter’s diploma. (There are also copious plugs for the Cloud Appreciation Society, which the author founded.)

Mixed in with the scientific explanations and Latin etymology are a wealth of top facts. For example, I now know where the phrases “cloud nine” and “cloud cuckooland” come from. Yet, as well as the top facts, there’s far too many terrible jokes and asides which can get a little grating. Part of me wonders how much that stuff just pads it out, and how much the author or his editors feared scaring punters off with too much technicalia. The clutter of tangents and silly bits makes it harder to remember the clues to diagnosis. Of course, this is a book to carry with you and refer back to, but I’m a bit annoyed I don’t remember more as I went along.

The penultimate chapter is perhaps the most interesting, as it covers man-made clouds. First there’s the militaro-cloud technologies, as worked on by sci-fi writer Kurt Vonnegut’s brother Bernard. In the movie of the book I imagine him played by Andre Morrell (or his modern equivalent, which would be Ian McKellen). Anyway, back in the 1940s and 50s, Bernard K (not Bernard Kay. See, these asides are annoying!) studied how clouds formed, and that led to seeing if they could be influenced or controlled.

Soon the US Naval Weapons Center took over the funding of this research. According to Pretor-Pinney, this was because it was believed that the Russians were also investigating the same area – though he gives no evidence for this belief. I can’t help feeling it’s a good excuse to do stuff you want to do anyway. Can’t get permission to build atomic bombs, rocket to the moon or stock your museum with other people’s statues? Hell, just say, “But if we don’t, some foreigners will…”.

So what was the result of the militaro-clouds?

“Operational cloud seeding commenced on 20 May 1967 and continued for six years over parts of Laos, North Vietnam, South Vietnam and Cambodia, at an estimated annual cost of around $3.6 million a year. It is impossible to say whether it was really successful in increasing rainfall, since no systematic assessment of precipitation was made after the initial test phase, which itself could not be considered to be statistically rigorous.”

Gavin Pretor-Pinney, The Cloudspotter’s Guide, p. 264.

Still, once the story got out that clouds were being developed as weapons, there was a bit of a rumpus. Some laws were passed to technically stamp out any further such projects. But, amazingly enough, the US has wriggled around its own legislation and Pretor-Pinney lists some unsettling developments.

More unsettling, though, is the second part of the same chapter, which addresses the clouds produced by plans. Condensation trails (or “contrails” if you wanna get with the lingo) have been the hot topic of debate for cloudies recently. There’d been some discussion anyway about how they influenced weather systems – affecting other clouds’ formation. And then, when US airplanes were grounded after 11 September 2001, eagle-eyed observers noticed that this pause seemed to have an affect on ground temperatures. Since then, it’s been shown that contrails “reduced ground temperatures during the day and raised them at night” (p. 274) – by as much a whole degree centigrade.

(Yes, that’s quite a lot.)

Pretor-Pinney is good at covering the different possible outcomes of this – it could add to global warming, it could lower temperatures – and also of the problems in trying to tackle it. Getting planes to fly lower would stop contrails forming, but would make them use up more fuel. So whichever way, the environment is shagged.

A little ironically, the final chapter sees Pretor-Pinney jetting off to the other side of the planet to see a cloud formation that’s also been seen over the English Channel. The “Morning Glory” is a miles-long tube of cloud that can clearly be seen cutting across the north of Australia in a wowing satellite image. Turns out that the place Pretor-Pinney goes to see it is Burketown, one of the dusty, ramshackle stop-offs on my brother’s trek across the outback.

Yes, he tells me, everyone talked about the “Morning Glory”. No, he admits, he wasn’t there at the right time to see it.

We all fall down

Just back from a weekend in Sheffield with family to find plenty of actual and potential offers of that there scribbling in by inbox. Which is good as on Thursday I learnt that the three-month gig that’s lasted nearly three whole years is finally coming to an end. At the same time, I’m well into my final production and editorial duties for Big Finish.

Spent Saturday and Sunday afternoons trekking up and down different bits of the Burbage valley and its environs, trampling bracken and weasling through the huge rocks. Nattered and climbed trees and braved a strange ginger cake called Parkin, and discovered we were just a short drive from the village of Eyam (pronounced “Eem”), which I’d been reading about on the train up.

Year of Wonders is based on the events in Eyam of 1665-6. When the first cases of bubonic plague are detected in the village, the local vicar Mompellion convinces the population not to flee. Instead of spreading the disease even further, they will wait it out. Those who agree to this are slowly picked off by the horrific symptoms – two thirds of them are to die. But for Anna Frith, young widow and household help to Mompellion, this terrible suffering and loss will also transform her life…

It’s a gripping page-turner, and Geraldine Brooks is good at supplying enough detail that readers can follow the development and spread of the disease through flea-infested clothing, while the characters never quite make that same connection. Like watching Casualty, we’re glued to finding out which of the characters we’ve just met are to meet grisly ends. Like Casualty, for all there’s a moral dimension to the suffering and social breakdown, there’s also a horrid randomness to the infection and death, which spares neither good nor innocents.

As well as the plague, there’s witch-hunts and the perils of lead-mining, as well as a gravedigger who starts burying those as yet not dead. This packing-in of incident can make the book feel overly contrived at times. And for all Brooks draws strong and memorable characters, and deftly convinces us of the intrigues and scandals of a small community, the cowardly toffs who flee for their lives are too obvious and uncomplicated villains.

Also felt the final section, after the plague, a little too extraordinary, with sudden revelations and reversals that didn’t really fit the cosy, claustrophobic catastrophe of the main part. “This book is a work of fiction inspired by the true story,” begins the author’s afterword, and I felt the novel maybe changed too much of the wondrous-enough reality to fit the convenience and structure of its plot. It’s an absorbing and well-constructed read, but less successful the more it is not true.

We visited the Church of St Lawrence, whose plague display inspired the novel, and passed the cottages that tell you which families lived in them and how many of them died. We poked our fingers into the round holes of the boundary stone, once filled with coin to pay for food from those beyond the quarantine line, the holes filled with vinegar to kill the plague seed that might be attached to the coin.

Home on the 2.27 today, passing the wonky, twisty spire at Chesterfield on the way back to the nearly-done space-age refit of St Pancras Station. Having swapped a plethora of top facts with cousin A. all weekend, was pleased to hear a fellow passenger explain to their spawn how Queen Boudicca and her Iceni pals had bitch-slapped the Romans right where we was shlepping.