Books I Have Read in 2020

 

This has been a very strange year. We have spent many months in lockdown, unable to travel, sometimes unable to leave our homes, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. One thing it has done is allow me more time to read. I have read more books this past year than I have in the previous decade!

This is what I have been reading.

Un Hombre Fascinante – Juan Fernandez

Here’s one from my Spanish classes with Peterborough U3A. We did this one with the intermediate class.

Juan Fernandez is a Spanish teacher in London and his books are pretty good. Quite repetitive, which is helpful for students, but there’s always a decent narrative and he does cover some adult themes – they’re not for kids.

Hola Lola – Juan Fernandez

Another Spanish language book by Juan Fernandez. We did this with the U3A Basic Spanish class and it’s a good starter book with simple language, very repetitive but with some characterisation and a sensible narrative.

The Big Show – Pierre Clostermann

I have read quite a few books on the Second World War this year. I discovered a podcast by Al Murray and James Holland called We Have Ways of Making You Talk. It’s all about WW2 and it’s very interesting, entertaining and easy listening – ideal for lockdown.

This is one book which was referred to in the podcast. Pierre Clostermann was a French pilot who volunteered to fight in the RAF and this is his story of the war.

It’s grim reading at times (he lost lots of good friends and his nerves were shot by the late stages of the war) but his experiences are gripping. I particularly liked it because he seems to have a very good mechanical understanding of aircraft and aero engines, which comes through in his writing.

He starts out flying Spitfires, then moves onto the Typhoon in a ground-attack role and, finally, the Hawker Tempest (a beast of an aircraft which sounded terrifying to fly).

The Places In Between – Rory Stewart

Rory Stewart may have been the last decent Tory politician. He was against Brexit, but pragmatic enough to agree that the Leave campaign had won the referendum and that we should leave the EU.

He stood for the leadership of the party after the resignation of Theresa May and we’d surely be in a much better place now had he won.

His career has included the military, diplomatic roles, working with NGOs and charity organisations. He probably also had some kind of role in intelligence. He was a Tory MP (briefly) and was planning to run for London mayor as an independent, but Covid caused the election to be postponed and he has dropped out.

The Places In Between is an account of a journey across Afghanistan in 2002 just as the US were getting involved. Stewart had already trekked across Turkey and Iran and wanted to walk across northern Afghanistan following a mountain route taken by the Mogul emperor Babur The Great.

Travel books and modern history are my two books of choice and Stewart is a great travel writer. The journey, however, is unremittingly grim. The weather is cold, the people are poor, distrustful and sometimes unwelcoming and the country has been absolutely wrecked by warlords, religious fanatics and interfering outside powers – from Tamburlain and Babur, through to the British, Russians, Taliban and Americans – have basically wrecked the country. No-one properly understands Afghanistan, but everyone seems to think they can sort it out. Read Rory’s book and leave the place well alone.

Big Week – James Holland

I read three books by James Holland and this was my first. Big Week refers to one week in 1944 when the USAF and the RAF undertook a massive bombing campaign against Germany in the Second World War. The aim was to destroy the Luftwaffe by targeting aircraft factories, ball-bearing factories, oil plants and (by the employment of long-range fighters such as the Mustang and Thunderbolt) shooting them out of the sky.

Both American and British bomber forces suffered massive losses, unsustainable losses at various points, but the Germans were suffering equally. Big Week didn’t destroy German resistance, but it was a step towards gaining air supremacy and paving the way for the invasion and liberation of France.

Big Week follows (I now realise) the James Holland formula of choosing a battle or campaign, looking for some established opinions he can knock down and also using lots of eyewitness accounts to add colour and drama. It does make for easy-to-consume history, very readable and a serious study in spite of its popularist target.

The Fens - Francis Prior

Francis Prior is the only author that I’ve met among the collection of books read this year. I met him a couple of times when I was working on newspapers in Peterborough and he was excavating the Flag Fen prehistoric site.

This book covers his life’s work as an archaeologist in the Cambridgeshire Fens and it is amazing what a rich history this part of the world has had. You’d think the Fens were waterlogged bog until the drainage campaigns from the 17^th Century onwards, but not so. Neolithic farmers would have enjoyed firm ground under their feet across much of the land even as sea levels started to rise and, as the land began to suffer flooding, amazing structures like the log causeway across the fen from Peterborough to Whittlesey were built.

It’s staggering what lies under our feet.

And No Birds Sang – Farley Mowat

Farley Mowat was a Canadian who volunteered to fight in the Second World War. This is his account of his wartime experiences.

He signed up for his father’s old outfit, the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment (known as the Hasty Ps) and found himself entering the war at the invasion of Sicily. The book covers his experiences during the conquest of Sicily and, later, in Italy.

Two things make this personal account of the Second World War stand out. There are many such books, and all offer a personal insight, but few are written as well as this and few have such astonishing feats in battle.

One section includes an assault on a German strongpoint in Sicily which is sited in an old Norman castle which has never been captured in all its history. The Hasty Ps climb a cliff in darkness carrying all their kit and take the garrison by surprise. They manage to capture the place and hold it until advancing, supporting troops arrive.

During the battle, Mowat witnesses a German sniper shooting a donkey. Sadistically shooting the animal in each leg for no good reason, the animal is then left to die a slow death until one of the Canadians puts it out of its misery. The incident clearly horrified Mowat and, in Normandy, my dad seemed more horrified (or more able to talk about his horror) when seeing hundreds of dead horses and cattle. He never talked about dead bodies.

One Man’s Window – Denis Barnham

This book was also published under the title Malta Spitfire Pilot. The author, Denis Barnham was an artist pre-war, who found himself in the RAF flying Spitfires. This book is an account of the time he spent in Malta as a part of one of the first Spitfire squadrons to be sent to the besieged island. Malta, which had great strategic importance to both Axis and Allied powers, was being attacked by Italian and German aircraft and was the most bombed piece of land anywhere during the Second World War.

It was defended by outclassed Hurricanes, which couldn’t climb quickly enough to be above bombers and fighters and so were ineffective in defence and suffering undue losses. Finally, Spitfires were sent – taken to the Mediterranean by aircraft carrier and then flown hundreds of miles across the sea to reach Malta.

Barnham is a sensitive man (he really only wants to be back with his new, and very pretty, wife and to paint and draw), he’s a self-confessed lousy shot, but a brave and tenacious pilot. Apart from bombs, bullets and no letters from his wife, the worse thing about his experience is the “Malta dog” … dysentery – which everyone suffers from.

This isn’t a glorious tale of tough battle and eventual triumph; it’s a carefully observed window in amazing detail of a horrific battle that went on and on. Barnham is eventually invalided out, which probably saves his life. He’s wracked by dysentery and his nerve has gone. If you think flying Spitfires would have been a glamorous thing, this book will set the record straight. Barnham doesn’t complain about his lot, he gets on with it and he tells it like it was.

The Good Shepherd – C S Forester

This is fiction, not fact, but Forester’s book might be better classed as a docu-drama in today’s media-speak. It has also recently been made into a film, starring Tom Hanks (who else?) as the captain of a US destroyer escorting an Atlantic convoy.

I read the book before I watched the film and the book, in my opinion, is much better. It captures the massive tension of being on a ship hunted by an invisible enemy and suffering from intense fatigue. And the book is set at a time of the war when the Allies had the benefit of improved radar and sonar to help alert them of the presence of submarines and to become the hunters.

It must have been absolute hell in the early days of the war, when escort ships were held back to guard against a possible invasion and when technology hadn’t swung against the submarines.

Quartered Safe out Here – George MacDonald Fraser

George MacDonald Fraser is a well-known author, famous for writing the Flashman books (Flashman being the bully from Tom Brown’s Schooldays, re-imagined in adult life as a cad and cowardly army officer). He also wrote the screenplay for the James Bond film Octopussy.

Quartered Safe Out Here is a different kettle of fish, it’s MacDonald Fraser’s account of his time in Burma fighting with the Border Regiment, a group of Cumbrians from the Carlisle area.

They are an experienced group of men and George is the new man. He joins the war when the tide has turned against the Japanese in Burma and, perhaps, his war experience is not as terrible as those of his comrades.

There is a battle narrative to the book, but the most interesting aspect is the relationships between the different soldiers (an odd mix) and how they get along. Sometimes they don’t and this leads to some extremely sad and angry recollections, even tragedy. MacDonald Fraser is different from the others, he’s middle class, and is promoted to corporal (a job he does well) and eventually lifted out of the war for officer training.

Burma and the Far East campaign was essentially a colonial battle. Britain had colonised India, Burma and Malaya and the Japanese wanted to run them instead. The people of those countries being fought over were perhaps the real victims of this conflict (and they are mentioned with sympathy). Having fought to keep our colonies and won, the UK had to grant them all independence within a few years.

In Burma’s case it was 1948. Various elements of the population, divided by ethnicity and religion, fought for the British and Japanese, so it was no surprise that, after the war, factional fighting and assassination preceded independence. This year (2021) there has been yet another military coup and that after a decade of “ethnic cleansing” carried out against Muslim Rohingya people. It’s yet another post-colonial mess we’ve left behind.

By Tank D to VE Day – Ken Tout

Once lockdown is over and if we ever get on top of Covid-19, I want to properly research the wartime experiences of my mother and father, also Margaret’s dad. Both fathers were involved in the Battle for Normandy and fought in France, Belgium, Holland and Germany. I can’t undertake any research right now, so I’ve been reading quite a lot of history around the latter phases of the Second World War in order to gain a better understanding of what it was like and also to put other people’s experiences against place names and battles.

Ken Tout, as the name of his wartime memoir suggests, fought in a tank regiment – the Northamptonshire Yeomanry as a gunner. His job was to aim, fire and maintain the main gun. The Northamptonshire Yeomanry, as the name suggests, were a territorial group and called into the army as soon as war was declared. Like several other similar regiments (notably the Sherwood Rangers) they were converted to tanks and Tout fought (mainly in Shermans) from D-Day to October 1944 when he was invalided home due to bursitis in his left knee, possibly caused by repetitive-strain injury from stamping on the gun’s firing mechanism.

Tout was unlucky, but also lucky, as his injury took him out from the war and back to the UK. His book continues in his absence, chronicling the Yeomanry’s war until VE Day. It has a detailed account of the Rhine crossing using Buffalo amphibious tank and infantry carriers. My dad’s Rhine crossing was in a Buffalo. He told me about it when I was making an Airfix model of one. Like many other war memories from dad – bren carriers, 25lb field guns, Churchill and Sherman tanks - they were prompted by Airfix modelling. When (and if) I ever get around to writing an account of Eric Rayner’s war, I’ll certainly draw on the account of the Rhine crossing by Ken Tout’s former comrades.

Burma ’44 – James Holland

After reading Quartered Safe Out Here by George MacDonald Fraser, I was tempted to read a little more about the war in the Arakan and James Holland wrote this book about the Japanese offensive of 1944 and the Allied response. It takes a broad view of the Burma campaign to date and enters the battle at a time when the Allies were planning to go on the offensive. The Japanese have the same idea and launch their attack just before ours. It prompts a number of strategically important desperate stands by Allied army units, but also marks the turning point of the war in Burma and India.

Holland’s book centres on the Battle of the Admin Box in February 1944, just before the desperate battles of Imphal and Kohima when the Japanese were turned back just within India. It was significant as the first time the Japanese army had been defeated and also helped develop and test new tactics involving supply by air and holding ground rather than retreating to avoid being cut off.

The defence of the Admin Box, admin centre of the Indian Army’s 7^th Division, was desperate and close-run. The Japanese successfully infiltrated the area on a number of occasions, including one where the hospital was captured and doctors and patients murdered. This war crime stiffened the resolve of the defenders, and the Japanese, who had gambled on a quick victory, began to run out of food and ammunition.

Critical to the successful defence of the position were a number of Lee tanks and the use of Spitfires, which were able to gain air superiority over the area and allow the defenders to be resupplied by air-drops. I’ve enjoyed a number of James Holland books this year. This was a hard read due to my lack of background knowledge, also a string of hard-to-pronounce names such as the Ngakyedauk Pass. The temptation is to “bleep over” them all, but then you soon lose track of what’s what.

Serenade to the Big Bird – Bert Stiles

Bert Stiles flew Flying Fortress bombers from English air-bases during the great bombing offensive on Germany during 1943 and 1944.

They suffered horrendous losses in the early stages before long-ranger fighter escorts could be provided. The book gives an insight into the physical difficulties of flying one of these large bombers in close formation (something Stiles found very taxing), but also the massive psychological strain of mission after mission when the losses were so high. Perhaps some people could adopt an if-it-happens-it-happens attitude, but most would have taken off in the knowledge that, statistically, there was a chance that they would not be returning.

Stiles completed his tour but chose to convert to fighters and was killed later in the war.

Stalin’s Nose – Rory MacLean

I do like a good travel book. This one was a little left field in its construct. The author has a great aunt of semi-aristocratic Austrian descent, who lived with her husband (a Soviet espionage officer) in East Berlin. The Berlin Wall former part of the boundary to their garden and when it was pulled down, all their livestock escaped.

The aunt is widowed and persuades her nephew to take her with him on a journey into eastern Europe (only recently freed from Soviet control). Travelling in a two-stroke Trabant and taking his aunt’s pet pig with them, they journey across Austria, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Poland and Russia. They meet people scarred by the Second World War and by Soviet rule.

One wouldn’t have wanted to be caught between Stalin and Hitler but, of course, millions were. MacLean finds small cameos of lives destroyed, people surviving, scars still healing … It would be a very hard read, except for the comedy elements of the pig and his aunt, but it’s clear that, in eastern Europe, there are a lot of historical issues to resolve.

The Ship – C S Forester

After reading the Good Shepherd, about a destroyer escorting an Atlantic convoy, I decided to read The Ship, which is about a cruiser escorting a Malta convoy.

The Good Shepherd’s charges are threatened by U-boats, but in the Mediterranean, the threat comes from Italian aircraft and surface vessels.

The Royal Navy was an exceptionally well-trained and professional outfit during the Second World War. Sure, they had their setbacks and cock-ups, but compared to the Army, they were streets ahead. There might still have been an old-boys network thwarting promotion purely on merit, but at least the navy’s “old boys” had been trained and blooded.

Forester paints a propaganda-like image of the skill and daring, but it’s entirely believable and quite gripping.

The escort cruisers and destroyers have just beaten off an Italian air-raid, but now face the threat of attack by more powerful Italian battleships planning to intercept the convoy. Their defensive strategy and battle tactics are fascinating. It’s a great read and, in spite of its glowing admiration for the Royal Navy, it’s certainly highly accurate.

Normandy 44 - James Holland

This was the modern history book I most wanted to read in the context of understanding my father’s war.

Like other books by James Holland, it is a mixture of historical facts, a re-examination of events and commonly held views, with a large number of personal stories (from both sides).

It has added massively to my knowledge of the Battle of Normandy and has increased my desire to properly research the wartime experiences of my father and father-in-law. I just need life to return to some normality.

Crimen en Barcleona – Paco Ardit

I’m some way short of being able to call myself a polyglot, but I have read a number of Spanish-language books.

This is the latest – a B1-level novel about murder, investigation and family intrigue, set within an airline business in Barcelona.

The language is fairly simple (being lower intermediate level), but the story and plot twists are quite complex and adult.