Books read during 2011

There are few upsides to commuting by train, but one of them is that, after many years driving around the UK, I am now able to read and travel at the same time.

As a consequence, I have read more books this year than I have for many years. This is what I’ve been reading in 2011.

Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Centre of the World by Roger Crowley

Comment: This account of the battles between rival Christian and Islamic empires is littered with atrocities, enslavement and cruelty. Barbarossa makes Osama Bin Laden look like a pussycat! Tom lent me this book. It’s compelling stuff and gives a real insight into an aspect of history that isn’t taught in the UK curriculum. The whole of the Mediterranean was very nearly Islamic and the impact that would have had on history is massive. The book covers the siege of Rhodes, the expulsion of the Knights of St John to Malta, the conquest of Cyprus by the Turks, the siege of Malta and finally the defeat of the Turks at Lepanto by Spanish, Italian and Venetian ships.

Rifles by Mark Urban

Comment: Some interesting new perspectives on the rifle brigade and how they helped alter the tactics of warfare. Quite a gritty account of the Peninsula War with lots of personal accounts from those taking part. Max bought me this book for Christmas. I thought I’d read all I wanted to on Wellington and the Peninsula War, but this brought new insights and told it from a different perspective. As a result, I bought quite a few more books, all personal accounts by soldiers (although I haven’t got around to reading them until just recently).

The Autobiography Of Lieutenant-General Sir Harry Smith, Baronet Of Aliwal On The Sutlej by Harry Smith, George C. M. Smith

Comment: One for serious Harry Smith fans! His first hand account (although written many years later) of the Peninsula War, Battle of New Orleans and the end of Napolean makes fascinating reading. He had one hell of a life. Sadly the book doesn't cover his actions in South Africa or India. It was interesting to read Smith’s perspective on the campaign. He’s engaged in historic epic battles (including Waterloo), but most of the time, he’s more concerned about accommodation, food and hunting.

Nelson's Trafalgar: The Battle That Changed the World by Roy Adkins

Comment: Roy Adkins is a terrific narrative historian with his text coloured by contemporary accounts from sailors and officers. Trafalgar was a great victory, but to win it took training, individual initiative, radical tactics and immense bravery. To break the French and Spanish lines, the smaller British force exposed themselves to gunfire for many hours as they closed slowly on the line and there was devastating close quarter fighting and point-blank broadsides. Nelson was unlucky that the Victory broke the line and engaged a French ship where the crew had been drilled in sniping onto the open deck of the British ships with the express intention of killing the officers who could not show cowardice by seeking cover.

Unjustifiable Risk? The Story of British Climbing by Simon Thompson

Comment: Fascinating history of climbing even if (like me) you have no head for heights. Much of it is social history as climbing has moved from a pursuit of aristocrats, through the middle classes to the working class. I bought this book for Max and then decided to read it after talking about it with him. You don’t have to be a climber to find it interesting.

Genghis Khan: Life, Death, and Resurrection by John Man

Comment: Contains an interesting recipe for braised marmot - a favourite for Sunday lunch among the Mongol hordes! I read John Man’s book on Attila the Hun last year and bought this book on Genghis Khan on the back of that. I like the fact that he makes a point of visiting the places where battles were fought, where these people lived and that often gives a really different slant and, sometimes, a better insight and understanding. Genghis Khan was an amazing figure; his empire dwarfed that of the Romans and Alexander and his descendants were still ruling part of it until the Russian revolution. Why isn’t he on the history curriculum?

Kublai Khan by John Man

Comment: Fascinating account of the mediaeval leader, grandson of Genghis Khan, whose actions have had (and are still having) such a profound effect on today's world. For example, China's claim to Tibet is based largely on the fact that Kublai conquered Tibet and then China, incorporating them into a single empire. He was an amazing conqueror, but we only know of him (in truth) because of an opium fuelled poem (now recognised as one of the greatest works in English romantic poetry) by Coleridge, who had presumably read about Kublai Khan and his summer palace Xanadu from the work of Marco Polo.

Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World by Justin Marozzi

Comment: I’m getting through my central Asian mediaeval history! Temur the Lame made Genghis Khan look a bit Lib-Dem. Countries and regions he ravished, including chunks of Afghanistan still haven't recovered to this day. His tactics in Afghanistan were very effective, although they did involve building towers of skulls, so are unlikely to be adopted by NATO. In many ways, Tamerlane was a better general than Genghis Khan, but like him (and Alexander) the lack of a successor who had the ability to step into his shoes, meant the empire was relatively short-lived.

The White Spider by Heinrich Harrer

Comment: Harrer is an amazing guy and this is an amazing climb. I've seen the north face and it's unbelievable to me that anyone could climb it. Indeed, for a long time, that was the considered view. Heinrich Harrer was one of the four-man team who climbed it for the first time in 1938 and it wasn't until 1947 that it was climbed again. Chris Bonington and Ian Clough were the first Brits to make the climb (the 31st ascent) in 1962. Bonington had to abandon his attempt the previous year to help rescue another climber. The account of Harrer's ascent is gripping, as are many of the early climbs (successful and unsuccessful), but the book does tail off into something of a log book of Eiger activity. It also stops in 1964 and therefore misses some of the new direct routes.

K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain by Ed Viesturs and David Roberts

Comment: Unbelievable bravery, endurance, pain and sorrow. Climbing 8000-metre peaks is clearly no picnic but this book gives you an insight into just how difficult it is. You need massive fitness, endurance, skill, judgment, bravery and luck. Having been gasping around this winter at 9000ft carrying ski boots and skis, I've tremendous respect for high-altitude climbers. The author has climbed all 14 of the 8000-metre peaks and he's a good writer as well as an accomplished mountaineer. American spelling and phrases grate for a while, but the subject matter is so compelling, you soon forget that.

The Beckoning Silence by Joe Simpson

Comment: Joe Simpson is a really good writer. His account of the challenge of climbing the north face of the Eiger (one last mountaineering challenge for him) is gripping. The book is also an examination of what drives climbers and why Joe has lost his drive to carry on climbing. I guess I should have read Touching the Void before I read this – ho-hum.

No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks by Ed Viesturs and David Roberts

Comment: To climb the world's 14 peaks over 8000 metres is an amazing feat of endurance, but also massively dangerous. Ed Viesturs did all 14 peaks without oxygen, which is incredible. The book tells you how he did it, which is a remarkable story of commitment. It contains some scary descriptions of what happens to the human body above 25,000 ft and how mountaineers take a dump with all that kit on; essential to know as getting the runs is a consequence of high altitude living for many climbers. I bought this after reading his book on K2.

K2: Triumph and Tragedy by Jim Curran

Comment: I am getting into my mountain disaster books – and there are a lot of them about. For every major mountain disaster, there’s a foot or so of bookshelf devoted to it. Jim Curran’s account of the 1986 season on K2 when 13 climbers died is both a success and also fails by the fact that he was not a climber accomplished enough to undertake a summit challenge, he was a photographer and film cameraman who became base camp manager and a helpless witness to the tragic events thousands of feet above. That perspective both gives it a different slant, but also misses something as a result. Really good book.

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

Comment: I said I was getting into my mountain disaster books! This account is of the 1996 disaster when a dozen people were killed attempting Everest, including the New Zealand guide John Hall and the American guide Scott Fischer. Hall’s death was particularly poignant because he was able to talk to his heavily pregnant wife by satellite phone as he froze to death high on the south ridge. The author, Jon Krakauer, is a journalist writing for mountaineering journals in the US and he writes with a journalistic style and skill; although he made some serious factual errors in the first edition of his book concerning who had died and where. It pretty obvious now that the account has flaws, but it’s still an amazing account by a man who was there and was almost a victim himself.

Annapurna: The First Conquest of an 8,000-Meter Peak by Maurice Herzog

Comment: This is the book that inspired the young Joe Simpson to take up mountaineering. It is Herzog’s story of how they climbed Annapurna – one of the smaller 8000m peaks, but also one of the most difficult (and dangerous) – a year before Everest was climbed. It made them heroes in France, it proved that man could climb that high and live, but the team suffered dreadful consequences. They were caught in a storm on the way down and were severely frostbitten. They then suffered a truly awful return journey in great pain, running low on supplies and having fingers and toes amputated without anaesthetic as they went. It’s incredible that only 60 years ago, a large part of this region was pretty well unmapped. The expedition found valleys that were not marked and ridges where they expected valleys. Just getting to Annapurna, let alone climbing it, was a real adventure.

A Day to Die for: The Untold True Story Behind Everest's Worst Disaster - Anno Domini, 1996 by Graham Ratcliffe

Comment: After reading Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, I thought that I had read everything there was to know about the 1996 disaster, but I was wrong. There must be a dozen books on the events of that year, but Ratcliffe finds a new angle. The book is sometimes ponderous, but in the end triumphs. Ratcliffe was the first British climber to summit Everest from the north and south sides. He’s an amateur climber, financing his expeditions largely from his own pocket with bits of sponsorship here and there. His team was camped on the South Col when the storm struck and the book seeks to analyse why Hall and Fischer attempted the summit when the weather was clearly deteriorating and whether they had been given accurate weather forecasts. The prevailing view of 1996 is that Hall and Fischer were unlucky to have been hit by a massive and unexpected storm while they were high on the mountain. Ratcliffe, with typical northern tenacity and bluntness, manages to prove that they not only knew that the storm was coming, but they also manoeuvred to get themselves a day when they thought they would have a narrow time window to get down before the storm struck. Ratcliffe’s conclusion is that it was a reckless gamble, taken due to commercial pressures on their business of guiding skilled, but amateur climbers up Everest. Both teams had journalists among their clients and the team that had the reports of getting the most people to the top successfully was likely to get to most business next year. There was even more pressure on Hall as a New Zealander because the American Fischer had a “home advantage” when it came to attracting clients who were, in the main, rich Americans. Read Jon Krakauer first and then Graham Ratcliffe – a fascinating contrast and one that Krakauer (as a journalist) must be smarting about because it shows him up to be a very poor journalist indeed.

Touching the Void: The True Story of One Man's Miraculous Survival by Joe Simpson

Comment: This is an incredible story and one that’s very different from most of the mountaineering horror stories that I have been reading in that it is told mainly in the first person, with contemporaneous accounts from the perspective of Simpson’s climbing partner, Simon Yates. The two men set off to climb Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes in 1985 – a really difficult climb. They made it to the top but were hit by bad weather on the way down and Simpson broke a leg in a fall. Instead of leaving him to die, Yates, helped him down from the ridge, a feat they undertook by lowering Simpson down the steep ice slope on a narrow rope. They had almost reached the glacier when, in the darkness and a blizzard, Simpson was lowered over a cliff and left dangling helplessly. Yates didn’t know what happened and was being pulled off the mountain by Simpson’s weight. He had no other choice than to cut the rope. Yates thought Simpson was dead and managed to get back to his base camp in a pretty bad way himself. Simpson had fallen into a crevasse in the glacier, but managed to get himself out and crawl back to base camp. It is an amazing story and Simpson is such a good writer that the book is a real stand-out piece of work.

Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer

Comment: This is considered one of the great travel books of all time and it is an incredible story. Harrer, one of the team of mountaineers who climbed the Eigerwand for the first time, was part of a German expedition to Nanga Parbat in 1939. When the Second World War broke out, he was interned in India as a German citizen. He escaped and fled into Tibet, where he evaded capture and managed to reach the capital Lhasa. Here, he lived for some three or four years until the Chinese invaded, seized the country and expelled the Dali Llama. His account of the country in the 1940s and life in free Tibet before the Chinese arrived is incredible.

Rifleman Costello: The adventures of a soldier of the 95th (rifles) in the Peninsular & Waterloo Campaigns of the Napoleonic Wars by E Costello

Comment:  After the victory over Napoleon, the Peninsula War and Waterloo, there was a real thirst among the public for accounts of battles and general derring do. Edward Costello fought with the rifle brigade right through the Peninsula and at Waterloo. The book was his pension. It’s a narrative account, uncontroversial (it makes no criticism of the army or commanders) but it is fascinating to get into the mind of an ordinary soldier of this period. Like Harry Smith, he’s more concerned about food and shelter than he is about the bigger picture. He makes light of the hardships, but he does say that many men were so miserable and tired of life that they welcomed death in battle as something of a relief.


Also see the Post: Books Read in 2012