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Battle of Britain 1940
Douglas C. Dildy 2018 (Osprey 2018)



"In August 1940, the Luftwaffe began an operation to destroy or neutralize RAF Fighter Command, and enable Hitler to invade Britain that autumn. It was a new type of air warfare: the first ever offensive counter-air campaign against an integrated air defence system. Powerful, combat-proven and previously all-conquering, the German air force had the means to win the Battle of Britain. Yet it did not. This book is an original, rigorous campaign study of the Luftwaffe's Operation Adlerangriff, researched in Germany's World War II archives and using the most accurate data available. Doug Dildy explains the capabilities of both sides, sets the campaign in context, and argues persuasively that it was the Luftwaffe's own mistakes and failures that led to its defeat, and kept alive the Allies' chance to ultimately defeat Nazi Germany." (Blackwells)

Dildy writes that the germans could have won if they had concentrated on accurate low level bombing attacks on the radars and Fighter Command sector stations instead of trying to win a war of attrition in the air. Britain was knocking out spitfires and hurricanes much faster than the enemy were producing 109s so their strategy could never have worked. But even if they had won the air battle could Sealion have worked given that the Royal Navy was still intact? Most commentators say no but then nobody thought the French could be defeated in six weeks.
This is the first in Osprey's Air Campaign series. They make a point of how their "3-D" maps show the air battles with more clarity but they don't actually work, not in this book anyway.

Bad Brains
Kathe Koja 1992 (Dell 1992)



"Austen was still staggering from his divorce from Emily. First he couldn’t paint anymore. Then he took a pratfall in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven. The beer bottles broke. Brain damage. In the hospital they said, “Don’t stop taking your medication”. Then the visions began.
An oily silver sheen, chrome cascades of blood and tears…from the corner of his eye he sees the head of a mucous serpent, reaching out for him…And in his pain and horror, all he can think to say is, “Emily! Emily!
His obsessed mind has mutinied. His madness has launched him on a cross country odyssey of debauchery and more pain. Searching for Emily and love lost; searching for a cure, finding Dr. Quiet – healer or demon? Dr. Quiet will cure Austen. Painting will cure Austen. Death will cure Austen.
Here is what waits at the end of the silvery road of shimmering madness: the blood of the one you love…" (publisher's blurb)

I was very disappointed by this book. I had little interest in or sympathy for the Austen character. Are the visions just hallucinations or are they a supernatural presence? It turns out it's the latter when somebody tells Austen in a phone call that his paintings are changing in appearence but that's all we are told. What is the nature of the presence that infects him? Again we are never told. Something to do with the link between art and madness? I don't know and by the end I didn't really care.

The Collieries of Durham - Volume 2
David Temple 1994 (TUPS 1004)



The author, who was a pitman himself, looks at another six collieries out of the hundreds that once existed in the Durham coalfield. There's no allowance made for readers who are not familiar with the mining industry but you still get a feel for the technicalities of coalmining and the hardships endured by the miners and their communities.
Temple doesn't mention the conveyors which dumped the waste from coastal pits onto the beaches such as the one at Blackhall colliery made famous by the scene in "Get Carter" with Michael Caine and Ian Hendry.

Saucers Over the Moor
Malcolm Saville 1955 (Girls Gone By 2009)



Set mostly on Dartmoor where there have been sightings of flying saucers and rumours of a secret research station which isn't on any map. The bad guys, including the obligatory birdwatcher, are spies, and not as I was hoping, androids from the planet Zarg. Jon the bookish, budding scientist thinks the saucers are real. The girlies are scared and think mankind should not meddle with things we don't understand. It turns out unexpectedly that the saucers are real and are the work of pipe smoking British boffins wearing tweed jackets with patches on their elbows. If it sounds daft it's because it is, but I still enjoyed it. Most of the settings are real and on a map and Saville is good at describing the landscapes. I always finish the book feeling that I'd like to hitch up the old Bailey and have a mosey round the settings.
I've just read that one of the Lone Piner's names "Penny Warrender" was the name of the Jan Francis character in the 80s sitcom "Just Good Friends". The characters are similar in personality so it looks like John "Only Fools and Horses" Sullivan was a Saville fan.

Cnut
Ryan Lavelle 2017 (Penguin 2021)



"Cnut, or Canute, is one of the great 'what ifs' of English history. The Dane who became King of England after a long period of Viking attacks and settlement, his reign could have permanently shifted eleventh-century England's rule to Scandinavia. Stretching his authority across the North Sea to become king of Denmark and Norway, and with close links to Ireland and an overlordship of Scotland, this formidable figure created a Viking Empire at least as plausible as the Anglo-Norman Empire that would emerge in 1066.
Ryan Lavelle's illuminating book cuts through myths and misconceptions to explore this fascinating and powerful man in detail. Cnut is most popularly known now for the story of the king who tried to command the waves, relegated to a bit part in the medieval story, but as this biography shows, he was a conqueror, political player, law maker and empire builder on the grandest scale, one whose reign tells us much about the contingent nature of history."

I was a bit disappointed with this one. There's not much contemporary documentation but that's also the case for other kings of the era. I just didn't get a feel for the man or his times.
Cnut's sons held the English throne for a few years before the crown was restored to the House of Wessex with Edward the Confessor.

Nebula Awards 21
George Zebrowski (editor) 1987 (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1987)



This book is meant to showcase the short fiction nominees for the 1986 Nebula Awards. It only contains seven stories with over a third of the 330 pages taken up with overviews, essays, a spoof article by Arthur C. Clarke and even a couple of examples of that most ghastly of literary genres: science fiction poetry.
The book covers the same year (1985) as the Terry Carr anthology that I looked at recently but the two books have only one story in common, the excellent Sailing to Byzantium by Robert Silverberg. Most of the other stories are pretty good except for one tiresome example of contemporary fantasy/magic realism.
Zebrowski edited three of these anthologies in a row but in this one he got the balance all wrong - too much gasbagging and not enough fiction.

Prince Caspian
C. S. Lewis 1951 (HarperCollins 1994)



"Prince Caspian was the second (written order) or fourth (chronological) book in The Chronicles of Narnia and tells the story of Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy's second trip to Narnia where they discover that the usurper Miraz has taken control. This evil ruler has tried to kill off the magical creatures of Narnia and is unaware of the many Narnians hiding in the remote corners of the land. The Pevensie children help the young Telmarine Prince Caspian organize his army of Talking Beasts and, with the help of the great Lion Aslan, Narnia is once again freed. Due to the anomalies found between Earth time and Narnian, this story takes place in Narnian-year 2303 and Earth year 1941." (Chronicles of Narnia wiki)

If you try and think too deeply about this book you might begin to get a bit annoyed with Aslan. He keeps taking his eye off the ball and allowing Narnia to be taken over by baddies at regular intervals. Then you might dwell on how christians and members of other religious cults tie themselves in knots in explaining why an omnipotent and supremely good deity would allow evil to exist and conscious beings to suffer brutality, torture, pestilence etc. Best to ignore all that, accept that the story is aimed at ten year olds and enjoy the fantasy.
Next up is number 3 (or 5) "The Voyage of the Dawn treader"

The Dangers of Intelligence
Isaac Asimov 1986 (Houghton Miflin 1986)



This is the second volume of short essays written for American Airlines in-flight magazine in the early 1980s. There seem to be more on the cutting edge of hard science and fewer predicting the future of technology and society than previously which makes for a more interesting read. It also means that some of it can become outdated quite quickly and this is illustrated by the articles on the mass extinction 65 million years ago which did for the dinosaurs.
The first book reported the iridium rich layer in the sediments which mark the time when the extinction occurred and it was surmised that the sun had some sort of eruption which caused the extinction and deposited the iridium. An article in this book then says that the consensus has moved towards the theory that a large asteroid smash was the cause. A later article then says that because the crater hadn't been found, and because mass extictions seem to occur every 26 million years, that it was because the sun has a dim companion star on a 26 million year orbit which deflects comets as it passes through the oort cloud which then come swinging in to the inner solar system and occasionally crash into Earth. A few years after the book came out the crater of the impact was found in Mexico and it's now generally accepted that a 10km asteroid was the culprit.
This is often how science works. Remember that the asteroid impact theory was rubbished by the geology/palaentology establishment when it was first published (partly because physicists were the authors) and now that the consensus is in it's favour, alternative theories and their proponents are the ones who are being denigrated. Something to bear in mind when you see the claims of the climate change scientists and their politically motivated media propagandists.

After the Funeral
Agatha Christie 1953 (Fontana 1961)



"Hercule Poirot now lives contentedly in retirement, and only in the most exceptional circumstance can he be lured back into the field of detection where once he reined supreme-Master of his Art, as he (who shouldn’t) would say.
When his old friend Richard Abernethie died, the circumstances appeared to be anything but exceptional-“Suddenly at his residence” the papers said. But someone started asking awkward questions and received a hatchet in the head by way of reply.
This was too much for Poirot, who could not resist the challenge to his very special talents. At the top of his form, he unravels a particularly baffling and ugly case of murder."

My second Christie and first Poirot and probably my first classical whodunnit. I enjoyed it, constantly playing the game of attempting to guess the murderer (I failed). Old Aggie is a much better writer than I'd assumed having read some sniffy articles by the literati who turn their noses up at popular fiction.
I like these old fontana paperbacks from the sixties and they can usually be picked up in decent condition fairly cheaply. With recent reprints you are always running the risk of bowdlerisation or censorship by publishers who are intolerant of previous generations' "wrongthink".

The Weathermonger
Peter Dickinson 1968 (Collins 2003)



"Sixteen-year-old Geoffrey is the town weathermonger. He can make it storm, freeze or shine, but even this position of power doesn't protect him from his neighbour's outrage when they discover him meddling with machines. Condemned as witches, Geoffrey and his sister Sally flee to France - where they discover a land unaffected by the changes.
Armed with new knowledge, they return to England on a secret mission, determined to discover why the country is under this mysterious spell. If they can identify the source of this deadly magic, then perhaps they can find a way to free the people from it's destructive influence." (publisher's blurb)

I enjoyed this fantasy for children that reads more like science fiction. This was the final part of a trilogy written in reverse chronological order. The final book to be published was a runner up for the 1970 Carnegie award and I decided to read them in the order they were written starting with this one. I'd never heard of Dickinson who was a well regarded writer of children's SF (he's one of a few writers to win two Carnegie medals) and adult mysteries and I'm looking forward to reading some more of his output.
The Changes books were adapted as a ten part series by the BBC in 1975.