Flashman at the Charge by George MacDonald Fraser

 I’ve never been interested in the Crimean war, much: a war fought by two relatively modern colonial powers, it lacks the all-important element of exoticism or orientalism that I enjoy in most colonial-era history. Nevertheless, in Flashman at the Charge, Fraser rather predictably paints mid 19^th-century Russia as a backwards, barbaric and thoroughly alien place, and whether or not this is true to any sort of historical reality, it keeps things interesting enough for me to pay attention. And he even sticks in some Arabian Nights-type scenarios in central Asian locations towards the end too, to ramp up the exoticism.

Charge is one of the volumes where we get to learn a little bit about what Flash’s civilian home life is like, which I find rather interesting. It’s the upper-class version of Dickens’ London: Flash plays billiards in Piccadilly, goes whoring in St John’s Wood and gets ‘roaring tight’ just about everywhere. I do wish there had been a little bit more of this stuff; with the amount of time Flash spends moaning about the barbaric places he gets shanghaied into soldiering in and the idiots and hypocrites he’s forced to schmooze with, it’s interesting to see just what kind of things he does approve of, and to see how he behaves when he’s in his element (he claims in this book that he really is ‘all for a quiet life for everyone’). Predictably enough, he acts like a complete cad, and the reader is glad of it!

At the beginning of the book, Flash’s troubles start when he unwittingly makes the acquaintance of a cousin of Prince Albert’s while out prowling the pool halls with his cronies. When the army decides that young Willy will require a mentor to accompany him into military action in the Crimea, Flash realises that it’s him who they’ve got in mind, and as usual is incapable of wriggling out of the job.

The reasons the Crimean war broke out are not easily explained, and Fraser doesn’t try much. Flashman gives us a lot of background about how much the British public and the papers were spoiling for a fight, though, and sometimes that matters just as much as any solid military reasoning. He humorously points out that once the British had decided to make war on Russia, they were somewhat stumped on exactly how to do it. It is a pretty big place, after all. In the end, they settled on making a start on the Crimean Peninsula, and so that’s where Flashy gets packed off to first.

Once there, Flashman becomes involved, despite himself, in all the major battles of the campaign, including the infamous Charge of the Light Brigade. I often find military engagements tedious and difficult to follow in novels; no matter how hard I try, I just can’t keep up with all the terminology and troop movements. Military writers so often expect us to know what redoubts, jemadars and fusillades are without the benefit of a glossary. The battles in Chargeare no exception; they were complex and convoluted affairs in real life, and Fraser does his best to stick to the historical record. Overall, it’s the small touches that work better than the sweeping vistas here- soldiers swearing, horses bleeding, that kind of thing. Fraser’s attempt to depict the bungled communication that caused the suicidal charge is probably about as confusing as the real thing was- he makes it clear that nobody had any idea what was going on at the time, and neither do I now.

Following the charge, Flash is taken as a prisoner, and from there he undergoes a convoluted odyssey across Russia and eventually, central Asia, where he meets up with Tajik warlords who are opposing the Russians. Again, Fraser has identified a historical period that is rich and fascinating, but rarely explored in media: Russian military expansion in Central Asia. An ardent colonialist, Fraser whines in the endnotes that while the Western powers are now endlessly derided for their empires, the brutal Russian land-grabbing of the 19^th Century is all but forgotten, even though most of the countries involved remained tied to Russia right up until the end of the 20^th century. The political intrigue between Britain and Russia in Central Asia was known as the Great Game, and it’s an amazing background for storytelling. Thousands of tribes rose against the Russians, famous and exotic silk road cities like Bukhara and Samarkand were the scene of attacks, escapes and sieges, secret agents travelled incognito, buttering up local leaders and collecting intelligence for their respective powers: we need more books and movies set against this scenario! Admittedly, the connection to the first 2/3 of the book feels slightly stretched. I do get the feeling that Fraser just wanted to get Flash back somewhere where he could be a hero again, amongst the kind of wild tribes that adored him in the first book, and jam in a bit of orientalism too. Fraser mentions Stoddard and Connelly, and once again comes dangerously close to mentioning my all-time favourite colonial story, the journey of Joseph Wolff to Bukhara.

 Charge is a short book in which rather a lot happens- it’s expansive in terms of action as well as geography- though it never feels rushed or forced. Each chapter follows more-or-less naturally on from the one before, and it’s only when you finish the book that you think ‘wow, actually, Flash must have travelled about a thousand miles in only four pages.’ But it never feels like this when you’re reading it, and that’s down to Fraser’s amazing prose. I recommend Flashman at the Charge as one of the most entertaining of the old lecher’s memoirs.

The Species Seekers by Richard Conniff

You are to imagine, ever-constant reader, that I type surrounded by towering columns of books, some mouldering, eldritch tomes (first editions of Haggard and Doyle, no doubt); some gharish and wrinkled (trashy, sensationalist page-turners from the 70s and 80s); some bright and shiny with embossed silver font (modern bestsellers dealing out contemporary thrills while pretending to concern themselves with the Empire of yesteryear).

You are to imagine, too, that beside me as I sip bourbon and clack the keys on my automated type-writing engine is my to-read pile. It is enormous, of course. Figuratively and literally, I will never defeat it. Try as I might to make a dent into it, I know that I will someday have to throw in the towel and admit that my literary eyes are bigger than my belly (I am speaking metaphorically of course. I don’t recommend consuming books with your belly).

A book which has recently been exhumed from the depths of this Babelian tower of unread works is The Species Seekers. It was gifted to me at the end of my stint in the jungles of Panama by an employer who obviously took note of my enjoyment of her copy of The Lost City of Z. Here’s a chap who appreciates a good tale about explorers and naturalists getting themselves killed in far-off lands, she must have thought. And she was right, though I didn’t get around to realising just how right she was until almost two years later.

The Species Seekers concerns itself with tales about individual enthusiasts from the so-called ‘age of discovery’. See, up until the mid-eighteenth century, according to the author, mankind had developed no sensible, systematic approach to cataloguing the wonders of the natural world. He admits that various non-European cultures did have a tremendous knowledge of their native flora and fauna, as well as the uses to which it could be put, but none of them had anything approaching a rational, scientific classification system, ‘though it is no longer fashionable to say so.’ Conniff, however, is far from pro-Imperial, and largely I feel that his interpretation is correct. I may disagree with how the native peoples were treated during the age of colonialism, but I still appreciate the scientific benefits that accrued during this same period.

All this changed, of course, with the ideas of Carolus Linnaeus, who invented the binomial classification system, an updated version of which we still use today. In terms of his influence, Linnaeus is undoubtedly one of the most important biologists who ever lived. Alongside a few other luminaries such as Darwin, Linnaeus helped knock modern biology into the shape in which we know it now. All in all, he’s a big hero in the scientific world, and he’s featured early on in The Species Seekers… but not quite to the extent to which you might expect.

See, Richard Conniff’s interest lies with the underdogs. He focuses instead on Linnaeus’s nemesis, a Frenchman named Buffon, who you’ve probably never heard of. Despite being a big-shot in his day, Buffon wasn’t quite on the money and his considerable contributions to our modern understanding of classification have been largely forgotten, while Linnaeus still enjoys a rosy reputation. There are some genuinely laugh-out-loud moments early on in the book as the two butt horns in a typically eighteenth-century fashion, naming reprehensible species after one another, the knowledge of Buffon’s eventual historical obliteration lending the feud a somewhat poignant air.

From there, Conniff goes on to show how the collecting and identification of species became a sort of mania within certain European countries. And he uses this mania as a starting-off point to explore Victorian attitudes towards colonialism, race and class, and many other fascinating aspects of the period. He really gives a feel for the time; as he pokes into the lives of these many forgotten heroes and lunatics, the reader comes to understand the very different ideas and expectations that controlled their lives. Class is a huge issue, of course: the difference between Darwin’s privileged upper-class world of great armchair scientists and politicians and Wallace’s grim work-house existence make it a wonder that the two could ever have contributed so much to the same field. It makes us understand too, how Wallace could have genuinely felt nothing but thankfulness that the well-connected Darwin would include him as essentially the lesser partner in a joint presentation that would bring the idea of natural selection to the world at large. As a low-class Victorian, Wallace appreciated that even thought he had stumbled upon the idea independently, and begun talking about it first, he would have been nothing without Darwin’s connections.

Attention is paid too to the men who helped prepare the world for the Darwin/Wallace bombshell through their earlier, preliminary thinking on evolution. Conniff impresses upon the reader that the idea of a sudden, momentous discovery is usually never so simple, and that the road to the theory of evolution was a long and rocky one. Many thinkers had proposed various systems that bordered on common descent, and the idea was very much in the public eye, though of course it was still highly contentious.

Any student of Victoriana will be well-rewarded, as old friends consistently appear alongside Conniff’s forgotten heroes. Super-hero geologists Hutton and Lyle are brought masterfully to life, ‘Dinosaur-creator’ Richard Owen’s low-down conniving merits several mentions, Chambers of the Edinburgh Journal proves that he had other things to print besides gonzo articles about spiritualism, and Charles Kingsley makes several appearances just to prove once again that he was a big ‘ol racist.

The book is a treasure trove of amazing stories. Other subjects touched upon include the remarkably late discovery of such large ‘charismatic’ mammals as the gorilla and the giant panda, the consistent attempts to justify racist delusions using ‘science’, and the link between biology and the destruction of various tropical diseases. It’s been a long time since a book so well reminded me that biology is an adventure. It quite convinced me to once again don my pith helmet and head out into the wilds, with only my wits (God help me) and a copy of Insects of Western Europe to protect me.

Storytrails by Allen Sharp

The Storytrails gamebooks are to Fighting Fantasy what a French arthouse film is to a dumb Hollywood blockbuster: by comparison, they’re weird, hard-to-find, and deeply unmarketable.

Let’s examine the differences here.

Tai-Pan by James Clavell

Forget your invasions, your battles and sieges: the most exciting theme to come out of the entire back-catalogue of Empire fiction is TRADE! Tea, silks, spices and of course opium were what kept the Empire ticking over, providing shedloads of cash to fuel the growing worldwide British conquests of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Military takeovers, after all, are expensive, messy affairs that are of little use on their own, and of course the British engaged in these only when they absolutely had to (though they proved extraordinarily good at it, over and over again…). But when TRADE was involved, well roll up your red-sleeves, private, because you’re going to be sent in to sort out those fuzzy-wuzzies and teach them how to make some economic use of their land… at the point of a bayonet, of course.

If ever a book will make you believe (even for the span of a mere 700 pages) that stock markets and tea prices can be as exciting as battles and wars, it’s Tai-Pan.

I’ve always been suspicious of these chunky, doorstop historical novels that promise ‘epic, sweeping’ tales that follow the fortunes a cast of characters more numerous than the medals on a tinpot dictator’s chest. Partly it’s because they usually fall into the ‘airport novel’ category for me, what with their authors’ names embossed in gold text larger than the title. I know this is largely down to literary snobbery on my part; the thought that the idea of a book should always take precedent over, y’know, telling an entertaining story. And if a book is marketed towards people who care more about who the author is than what the book is about (cough cough James Patterson), than the idea can’t be up to much.

I’ve always been haunted by this anecdote from my brother’s bookshop-working days:

Customer: I’m looking for something by James Patterson. I love him.

Brother: No problem. His books are over here. Which ones have you read already?

Customer: (looking at books) Eh… I’m not sure. I can’t remember.

Partly too, my suspicion down to the books’ enormous length. I usually admire conciseness in writing and storytelling, and the whole Victorian-author-being-paid-by-the-word style has never struck me as a good way to produce literary quality. Of course, their insane length is what allows these books to be epic and sweeping, as they claim to be. Still, why they have to be heavier than a bad date at an arthouse cinema is still somewhat mystifying to me.

James Clavell does not come to me without some baggage, either. As a kid, I was enthralled and saddened by his weirdo cod-Japanese fantasy Thrump-O-Moto, an insane picture-book fable about an Australian girl on crutches who hangs out with a tiny Japanese wizard-in-training. If I recall, it has a leprechaun in it, and a villain with the hilarious name of Nurk-U The Bad.

While in university, I tried really hard to read Shogun, which is probably the novel that most people know him for (it was made into a successful TV miniseries in 1980). The book promised an ‘epic, sweeping’ tale of Japan in the 1600s, but despite being based heavily on the fascinating real-life story of William Adams, the ‘English Samurai’, I found it an interminable snoozefest. I can proudly say that it remains unfinished by me to this day.

So is it any wonder that Tai-Pan sat on my shelf for close to six months (albeit inclusive of two moves of house)?

Well I’m sure glad I gave Clavell another shot, because Tai-Pan is one of the most enjoyable doorstops I’ve ever spend a month of my life with.

The setting is China in early 1841. The British have just wound up the first Opium War, ensuring themselves many more years of merrily providing the Chinese with the killer, life-destroying drug. As part of the reparations (how darethe Orientals try to outlaw the importation of such a product!), Britain has acquired the barren, uninhabited island of Hong Kong. While some see little merit in this, its deep natural harbours and closeness to the mainland are seen as a blessing by others, in particular the giant Scottish trader Dirk Struan, Tai-Pan (or boss) of the Noble House trading company.

Struan is a mountain of a man, in body, personality and influence. The many plots in the book revolve around him, and the book twists history into making it seem as if Struan deliberately manipulated the Chinese and British into going to war, as part of a deliberate scheme to acquire Hong Kong. The cast of characters mostly stems from Struan: his mistresses, sons (legitimate and illegitimate), his business partners, rivals and enemies. This is Empire-building as seen from the point of view of the businessman rather than the soldier, though Struan has long-term plans for the company that might one-day affect the entire practise of colonialism.

The most fascinating aspect of Tai-Pan is its world-building. I’m hard-pressed to think of another work which so well conjures-up the detail and minutia of a forgotten time. Absolutely nothing about the lives of the Europeans in 1840s China seems familiar; not the way they talk, think or act. It’s almost impossible to imagine how Clavell would have acquired enough information to build this fictional society from research- unless of course, he’s making it all up. The nuances of contemporary trade and politics are entered into in more detail than in most similar works. The characters rarely feel like thinly-disguised 20^th-century people in period grab, partly because the book was written in 1966, before the uber-PC standards that we’re now used to came about. As a result, Tai-Panfeels like a genuinely different world, full of characters whose morals and mindsets are utterly alien to us.

Even the length of the book didn’t bother me too much; it rarely becomes dull. It’s true that the much-maligned ‘who-will-be-best-dressed-at-the-ball’ subplot drags on for what seems like hundreds of pages, but it rarely dominates the other, better material. There’s so much good stuff going on- pirates, suspicious Russians, Chinese secret societies- that there’s always something to keep you reading. I would have appreciated some more strong Chinese characters, mind.

Clavell has a whole pile of other books that follow the fortunes of the Noble House over the next 150 years. It probably won’t be anytime soon, but I might one day be persuaded to take on another such behemoth again.

The Last Templar by Raymond Khoury

Never remind readers of your book of another, better book, and especially never remind them of Foucault's Pendulum, the book that destroyed all future silly historical conspiracy thrillers, particularly if your book is a silly historical conspiracy thriller.

But not long into The Last Templar, a minor character  quotes the above tome by saying that you can always tell a lunatic because '...sooner or later he always brings up the Templars.'

Bigging Themselves Up: The Culture and Consider Phlebas

Memory can be a strange thing. 

As a kid in school, Consider Phlebas, the first of the Culture novels by the Scottish Iain M. Banks, seemed quite a daunting read to me. I found it in the library at school amongst several of Banks’ other books; perhaps the blessed doing of the same unknown but thoughtful soul who stocked our book-depository with the many Sandman novels. I like to think that some well-meaning menial member of staff had sneakily inserted these books among the ranks of the Jaquiline Wilsons in an effort to prove that teenagers are capable of enjoying the more complex entertainments if given the opportunity.

Madam Crowl's Ghost by Sheridan Le Fanu

Bringing up the Irish contingent in the Victorian ghost story sub-genre is Sheridan Le Fanu. He's a well-known writer of early spook stories, and was much-respected by the later greats such as M. R. James.


However, he suffers from having been over-influential. Today, virtually all of his plots and situations will be over-familliar to pretty much any reader, and the stories seem tiresome and hackneyed as a result. Perhaps in his day he was able to send shivers down spines, but after  a few stories I really couldn't take another formulaic yarn about evil deeds done in creaky old houses.

Le Fanu does set a couple of his stories in Ireland, and it is interesting to hear his take on the rural accent... some things about it seem not to have changed even over one hundred and fifty years. For the most part, however, even his Dublin-set stories are interchangeable with the standard London-based horror fiction of the Victorian period. Le Fanu did occasionally make use of Irish folklore as part of his story-telling, but not in this volume.

I can't really recommend this book except as a curiosity, or to anyone who is tracing the evolution of Victorian fantastic fiction, and even then it isn't very interesting.

Sorry Le Fanu, I really did want to like your work! You being from the ol' sod, and all. Ah well.