The singing sands

After recently spending a week in Leicester where some of the time was spent exploring sites relating to Richard III I am currently rereading Daughter of Time, the book which originally got me interested in Richard III. However on the return flight to Australia from a visit to Hawaii I read another Josephine Tey novel, The Singing Sands.

Alan Grant is taking enforced leave from the police force due to his suffering from claustrophobia as part of a nervous breakdown. He travels by train to spend time with his cousin and her family in Scotland but as he leaves the train a body is discovered by the porter. Grant tells the porter to call the police and as he leaves he accidently picks up a newspaper owned by the dead man. Looking at the paper some time later he discovers part of a poem written in pencil, probably by the man in compartment B7. The poem refers to 'the beasts that stalk, the streams that stand, the stones that walk, the singing sand ...that guard the way to Paradise'.

Grant spends the next few weeks recuperating, enjoying Scotland and spending much of his time fishing, often with his cousin's young son. However he cannot forget the young man in the carriage and starts to investigate the death from afar. His investigations take him to the islands, the location of singing sands, and it is during his time there that his health greatly improves. An advertisement in the paper for information about the lines of poetry he discovered brings him in contact with a friend of the dead man and they continue the investigation together.

This was Josephine Tey's last novel and it was published in 1952 after her death. As usual the mystery is secondary to her study of people and places and the examination of why people act the way they do. However the the threads of the mystery and its investigation are gradually revealed and resolved.

The availability of Josephine Tey's books in public libraries may be limited to a couple of titles though some provide access to e-books for some of her works. However the University of Adelaide has made digitised copies of many of Josephine Tey's works freely available for download. Some other titles are available via Project Gutenberg Australia.

Wicked charms

Back home after having spent the past couple of months exploring parts of the UK I thought I would start reading again with something light. Wicked charms is the third title in the Lizzy and Diesel series and Janet Evanovich has co-written the book with Phoef Sutton. Lizzy Tucker and the mysterious Diesel once again team up this time to locate the Stone of Avarice one of the seven Stones of Power that they have been enlisted to retrieve.

Lizzy would rather lead a quiet life making cakes in the local bakery but as she is an Unmentionable with a special power for finding things she has been enlisted by Diesel as his assistant. The story starts when a body is found at the pirate museum and the hunt is then on to locate the stone, a treasure map and the coin that will assist in the reading of the map. Chaos then follows as Lizzy and Diesel attempt to keep ahead of others who are also looking for the Stone of Avarice for their own projects. They are assisted by Glo who also works in the bakery and experiments with magic and Clara who owns the bakery. As you would expect in a Janet Evanovich book there is a cast of of strange characters, not to mention Diesel's monkey, Carl, plus plenty of fast paced madcap action, supernatural elements as well as sexual tension. And there will be more to come.

The First Dismissal

In this essay by Luke Slattery he examines how political and social unrest in England affected events in New South Wales. After the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 many soldiers returned to England to discover the country in recession and jobs disappearing due to the industrial and agrarian revolutions.As unemployment rose, so did political unrest.

In New South Wales the colony was governed by Lachlan Macquarie who 'aimed to rule for all of New South Wales without favour or prejudice'. (p7) To the horror of some of the colonists, this applied to the convicts and emancipist as well as the exclusives. Luke Slattery provides the following example on pages 13 & 14:

Former convicts such as Simeon Lord, the town's richest merchant, and Andrew Thompson, a landowner and prominent figure along the Hawkesbury River, did not owe their wealth to Macquarie. But it was to him that they owed their rising social status. Macquarie appointed them magistrates of their districts and put them in charge of his first infrastructure project: the Sydney-Hawkesbury turnpike road. He befriended them, invited them to his table, and encouraged officers in the military to do the same. Men who would never have amounted to much at home - in separate incidents Lord and Thompson had been convicted of stealing small amounts of cloth- rose to the status of gentlemen in the colony.

Macquarie set out to build a civilised town and employed the services of the convict, Francis Greenway, as architect for his projects. Much of the essay concerns the relationship between Macquarie and Greenway in transforming the appearance of the colony. However New South Wales was meant primarily to be a penal colony and many people in the colony and in England disapproved of Macquarie's actions in turning the colony into a place where people might like to live. The result was the Bigge enquiry when John Thomas Bigge arrived in the colony to make an official report for the government in England.

After more than ten years as Governor, Lachlan Macquarie decided to resign his position and return to the United Kingdom leaving the colony, whether the authorities liked it or not, as a much more livable place. Although many saw Macquarie's departure as expulsion, he had decided to leave some years previously. However if he had not made that decision, no doubt he would have been asked to leave once Bigge's report reached England. Back in England in 1822 Macquarie had to justify his actions to Parliament.

[The author has also written the historical fiction novel, Mrs M, based on this period of Australian history.]

A Forgers Progress: the life of Francis Greenway

Francis Greenway was transported to the colony of New South Wales in 1814. Originally he had received the death penalty for forgery but this was changed to fourteen years transportation. Francis was fortunate as he arrived in the new colony when Lachlan Macquarie was Governor and was attempting to turn the prison settlement of Sydney Cove into a more civilised town. He also believed in trying to give the settlers, emancipists, convicts and exclusives a fair opportunity so when he saw some of the architectural drawings that Francis had brought with him Francis Greenway was chosen as architect for the colony building many fine buildings, some of which remain today.

Alasdair McGregor provides a chronicle of the life of Francis Greenway including his life in England, his trial and journey to Australia, a description of the colony ruled by Macquarie, the work of Greenway and the demise of his later years. He died in 1837, a forgotten man. A series of plates in the centre of the book show illustrations of some of the Greenway designed buildings.

The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England

Ian Mortimer uses this book to take the reader into the world of Medieval England, a period of great change in English history. The reader is introduced to life in the cities and towns as well as the changing life of the countryside. We meet the people and learn about the different occupations. The medieval character is examined including sense of humour, education and knowledge of the wider world. Use of language, measuring time, units of measurement, manners and politeness including how to greet people, shopping and money are described. Clothes you might wear, types of transport available, housing, health and hygiene, legal system and the courts are other topics. The final chapter looks at things people in the Middle Ages could do for entertainment including music and dancing, attending plays, jousting, playing games, partaking in pilgrimages. There is also a section on the literature and poetry of the time. In short this book is a good introduction to how people lived in England, particularly during the fourteenth century.

Station X the codebreakers of Bletchley Park

Michael Smith, who has worked in the intelligence service, published this book in 1998 on the activities of Bletchley Park during the Second World War. A number of other books on this topic have been published recently but it is interesting to read this account of the contribution of the codebreakers to the British war effort. Like other books on Bletchley Park quotes from people who worked at this secret establishment are used to tell the story.

The book looks at the attempts to break codes created by the many German devices used by different branches of the military. It also explores the relationship between those working at Bletchley Park and other sections of the intelligence service and particularly members of the military hierarchy, many of whom were reluctant to use the information gathered by the codebreakers. The way information gathered, when accepted, affected military battles is also described. It is stressed throughout the book the importance of ensuring that the Germans were never aware that their codes had been broken by the Allies.

Being interested in the Battle of Crete it was interesting to read how the British were able to warn the military leaders on the island of the coming invasion. Although the Allies were defeated they were able to able to delay their defeat and the number of paratrooper casualties dissuaded the Germans from repeating a similar operation elsewhere.

See also
Turing's Cathedral
Secret Life of Bletchley Park

Return to Gallipoli: walking the battlefields of the Great War

This study by Bruce Scates investigates why so many Australians make the pilgrimage to Gallipoli and the Western Front and what the experience of the journey means to them. From the 1920s and 1930s Australians and New Zealanders have made the pilgrimage to war cemeteries and battlefields. In some cases it is family members who want to see where their loved ones fought and possibly died. In some cases it was former soldiers who felt the need to return. The thoughts of these people about the long journey can only be gleaned from newspaper accounts or possibly diaries. As more people, especially young people, make the trip to these sites it was decided to survey a selection of these travellers about their experiences. Seven hundred surveys were collected to provide some of the responses for this book.

The book therefore is an investigation of the idea of commemoration, memorials, of mourning and of grief.  The first chapter also looks at the creation of the large cemeteries and memorials to the war dead. The other three chapters investigate family pilgrimages since the war, the return of service people to these sites and finally why so many young people today make the journey especially to attend the Dawn Service at Gallipoli on Anzac Day. To some these journeys are almost a right of passage. To others they are an exploration of the making of Australia and New Zealand as individual countries, weakening their dependency on Britain.

The conclusion with the subtitle Journey's end begins with the search by parents for information about the death of their son, George Roy Irwin. Twelve years after George was reported missing in 1915 his parents made the journey to the Lone Pine Cemetery where they had a brass rubbing taken of their missing son's  memorial plaque. The basis of this story (with a number of changes) was used by Bruce Scates as one of the threads in his novel, On dangerous ground.