Bonus discipulus

Dame Jean Iris Murdoch (15 July 1919 – 8 February 1999) was an Irish novelist and philosopher, best known for her novels about good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. Her first published novel, Under the Net, was selected in 1998 as one of Modern Library's 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.  In 2008, The Times ranked Murdoch twelfth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

During the 70s, 80s, and 90s I read several of Murdoch's novels and then I found new authors and moved on.  It is only with my self-appointed challenge to read the entire Booker Shortlist that some titles unread by me have come to my attention.  The Good Apprentice, her 22nd novel published in 1985,  is one such.

Edward Baltram, a college student living in London, gives his best friend Mark a sandwich laced with a hallucinogenic drug for a joke. After Mark, still high, falls to his death from a window, Edward is wracked with guilt and depression — worsened by daily letters from Mark's mother cursing him as a murderer.  All this action takes place in the first chapter and is a memorable  opening.  I am reminded of the opening chapter in Enduring Love where a devastating and irrevocable event changes the course of personal histories.

In search of his father, Jesse, Edward sets off for Seegard, the family home, away from the harsh reality of London. As Edward progresses through the novel, he revives somewhat, thanks to the love of his eccentric father and his extended family of supportive women. He eventually finds, however, that he must come to terms with Mark's death.

Meanwhile, Edward's stepbrother Stuart Cuno decides to give up his studies and goes in search of the "pure" life of an aesthete, to his family's bewilderment.   He abandons a promising academic career and takes up celibacy and chastity.  Interfering friends and relations question his sincerity, his sanity and his motives.  Stuart has a close bond with thirteen-year-old Meredith, the son of Thomas and Midge McCaskerville.

While Edward in order to become Good seeks redemption and sometimes contemplates suicide, Stuart seeks salvation, and Midge is having an affair with her husband's best friend, Harry Cuno - stepfather to Edward and father to Stuart. Her passionate love affair comes to a head after two years when she is disgraced publicly and falls unexpectedly in love with Stuart. Left with a difficult decision, Midge turns to Edward for support.

A convoluted web of complicated family relationships.  This is the stuff of Murdoch. 

An Officer and a Spy

Paris, 1895: an army officer, Georges Picquart, watches a convicted spy, Alfred Dreyfus, being publicly humiliated in front of a baying crowd.

Dreyfus is exiled for life to Devil's Island; Picquart is promoted to run the intelligence unit that tracked him down.

But when Picquart discovers that secrets are still being handed over to the Germans, he is drawn into a dangerous labyrinth of deceit and corruption that threatens not just his honour but his life...

"The Dreyfus Affair constitutes one of those moments of history that a lot people know of rather than much about."  How true, I have heard The Dreyfus Affair referred to over the years but never really known what it concerned.  Because even among well educated people, amongst which I am fortunate to count myself,  there's often little more than a headline understanding of the issues of anti-Semitism that it embodies and a French miscarriage of justice, Devil's Island and Emile Zola's famous attack on the French establishment's conspiracy against the Jewish army officer, Alfred Dreyfus: J'accuse.

But the real story is like something from the imagination of Alexandre Dumas, full of intrigue, wrongful imprisonment and heroic effort to establish the truth. In other words, it's a thriller and there is no more deft hand at work in that genre than Robert Harris. However unlike previous Harris thrillers, An Officer and a Spy is not a hypothetical historical account, but, save for a few small fictional details, an almost documentary-like assemblage of what actually took place.

Dreyfus was convicted of passing secrets to the Germans in 1895 and sent to solitary confinement on Devil's Island, where he was forbidden even to speak to his guards. But he was an innocent fall guy, fingered by the military and the government because he was conveniently Jewish, while the real culprit was allowed to continue at dissolute liberty to avoid the embarrassment of the public knowledge that there was a non-Jewish – ie authentic French – spy in the army.

          
The hero of the piece, however, is not Dreyfus, who despite his dreadful suffering, is a minor and not particularly sympathetic character. Instead, Harris unearths the tale of Georges Picquart, the French officer who initially played a part in Dreyfus's arrest, only to be struck by a growing suspicion that the wrong man had been sent away. Although not without his own flaws, including a glint of antisemitism, Picquart is a man who can't let anything lie – even when it is beneficial to him. After Dreyfus's incarceration he is made head of a secret intelligence unit called the "statistical section". But he finds himself a victim of a sinister campaign when he begins to ask uncomfortable questions.
While finely attuned to modern resonances of surveillance, cultural identity and patriotic loyalty, Harris stays true to the atmosphere and morals of the period. He has crafted a compelling narrative of state corruption and individual principle, and a memorable whistleblower whose stubborn call can still be heard more than a century later.

Reading this in these post-EU-Referendum days, and in the immediate aftermath of the election of Trump to the White House and the stomach-churning images of Farage cosying up to the President-elect, the cover-up that the French military and secret service exacted makes me think of the turmoil within and outside our own Parliament over the result of the vote, the apparent determination of the Prime Minister and her immediate entourage to railroad Brexit through and most disturbing of all for me is the unprincipled stepping into line of all those MPs in the Tory Party and Labour who are trotting out the lame expressions 'the people have spoken' and 'respecting the will of the British people'.  It makes my blood boil.  That they put the power of their political parties before the good of the country is incredible.  "But that's politics" someone said to me the other day.  The dark side of politics...........

Tenebrae criminibus

Five titles which reveal the emphasis I have placed on choosing crime reading.  When my life is taken up with a rolling programme of visitors and visiting, with all the supporting fielding activities that such a life entails, in order not to lose my personal plot, crime and detective novels which necessitate sustained reading sessions where the urge to page-turn is strong are welcome opportunities to switch off from all the practicalities of life and relax with an engaging read.  And, often,  to fall asleep...........

Let's start in the frozen North.  Snowblind (Dark Iceland Series) by Ragnar Jonasson is set in Siglufjorour: an idyllically quiet fishing village in Northern Iceland, accessible only via a small mountain tunnel, is where no one locks their doors. Snowblind is an impressive debut from a new talent.

Enter Ari Thor Arason: a rookie policeman on his first posting, far from his girlfriend in Reykjavik - with a past that he's unable to leave behind. When a young woman is found lying half-naked in the snow, bleeding and unconscious, and a highly esteemed, elderly writer falls to his death in the local theatre, Ari is dragged straight into the heart of a community where he can trust no one, and secrets and lies are a way of life. An avalanche and unremitting snowstorms close the mountain pass, and the 24-hour darkness threatens to push Ari over the edge, as curtains begin to twitch, and his investigation becomes increasingly complex, chilling and personal. Past plays tag with the present and the claustrophobic tension mounts, while Ari is thrust ever deeper into his own darkness - blinded by snow, and with a killer on the loose. Taut and gripping,

I listened to Snowblind on Audible and it was read by an Icelandic actor, Thor Kristjansson.  Whilst using a native affords verisimilitude to a reading of the novel, I found the heavy Icelandic accent often distorted the pronunciation of the English translation and was a distraction to concentration.

In contrast I read Arctic Chill (Reykjavik Murder Mysteries) by Arnaldur Indridason in hard copy.  A dark-skinned young boy is found dead, frozen to the ground in a pool of his own blood.

The boy's Thai half-brother is missing; is he implicated, or simply afraid for his own life? While fears increase that the murder could have been racially motivated, the police receive reports that a suspected paedophile has been spotted in the area.  Detective Erlendur's investigation soon unearths the tension simmering beneath the surface of Iceland's outwardly liberal, multi-cultural society while the murder forces Erlendur to confront the tragedy in his own past. 

Racial tension was to me a surprising theme to crop up in an Icelandic crime novel.  Preoccupied, as we are in the UK, with the extreme racism as well as xenophobia which has manifested since the result of the EU referendum, and aware these are issues that prevail in our immediate European neighbours such as France, I had not expected that this sociopolitical problem had extended its nasty tendrils as far as an apparently tolerant and liberal nation such as Iceland.

Freeze Frame (The Enzo Files) by Peter May implies another novel set in the chilly North.  In fact, the setting for this novel in the Enzo Macleod series is a small island off the Breton coast.  A promise made to a dying man leads Enzo Macleod, a Scot forensic expert who's been teaching in France for many years, to the study which the man's heir has preserved for nearly twenty years.

The dead man left several clues for his son there, designed to reveal the killer's identity but ironically the son died soon after the father. This opens the fourth of seven cold cases which have been written up in a bestselling book by Parisian journalist Roger Raffin.  Enzo has rashly boasted that he could solve these cold cases and he has been successful with the first three.

On the tiny Breton island Enzo must confront the hostility of locals who have no desire to see the infamous murder back in the headlines. There are possible suspects and the crime scene is frozen in time.  A dangerous hell hole (Trou d'Enfer) up on the cliffs and a collection of enigmatic messages as clues, add to the gripping narrative.  There are red herrings along the way, the solution is satisfying and it makes for an enjoyable read.  .

Mo Hayder can always be expected to grip her reader and turn out a crime thriller which breaks out of the traditional mould of plotting. As a crime writer she is fast-paced and addictive; Hanging Hill centres around a pair of estranged sisters—one a cop, one a coddled wife fallen on hard times—and the gruesome homicide of a teenage beauty, which exposes the nightmares that lurk at the edges of our safe domestic lives.

One morning in picture-perfect Bath, England, a teenage girl’s body is found on the towpath of a canal. Hanging Hill is a much better than average thriller with a masterful twist in the ending.  Always a bonus.

Why was she on the towpath alone late at night? Zoe Benedict—Harley-riding police detective, independent to a fault—is convinced the department head needs to look beyond the usual domestic motives to solve the case, but no one wants to hear it. Meanwhile, Zoe’s sister, Sally—recently divorced and in dire financial straits, supporting a daughter who was friends with the dead girl—has begun working as a housekeeper for a rich entrepreneur who seems less eccentric and more repugnant, and possibly dangerous. When Zoe’s investigation turns up evidence that the teenage girl's attempts to break into modeling had delivered her into the world of webcam girls and amateur porn, a crippling secret from Zoe’s emerges.  All roads seem to be leading to one conclusion: there’s something very wrong at the house on Hanging Hill. But will Zoe and Sally put their differences aside and fit all the pieces together before it’s too late?

Often one saves the best till last.  Not in this case though.  I was given a copy of Silken Prey (John Sandford) by an American friend who found he had two copies.

  All hell has broken loose in the Washington. An influential state senator has been caught with something very, very nasty on his office computer. The governor find this incredible.  In his view the senator is too smart to be caught out like that. It does not make sense.  As Davenport investigates, the trail leads to a political fixer who has disappeared, then—troublingly—to the Minneapolis police department itself, and most unsettling of all, to a woman who could give Machiavelli lessons in manipulation. She has very definite ideas about the way the world should work—along with the money, ruthlessness, and cold-blooded will to make it happen.

This is one in the Lucas Davenport series and the author is talked up as a writer with "trademark razor-sharp plotting and some of the best characters in suspense fiction."  I didn't find that a convincing opinion.  There are more than twenty titles in the 'Prey' series but I am not tempted to tackle another.

Cold War Themes

Utz by Bruce Chatwin

Charles Bruce Chatwin (13 May 1940 – 18 January 1989) was an English travel writer, novelist, and journalist. His first book, In Patagonia (1977), established Chatwin as a travel writer, although he considered himself instead a storyteller, interested in bringing to light unusual tales. He won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel On the Black Hill (1982) and his novel Utz (1988) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. In 2008 The Times named Chatwin no. 46 on their list of "50 Greatest British Writers Since 1945."

Chatwin was born near Sheffield, England. At 18 he went to work at  Sotheby's in London, where he gained an extensive knowledge of art and eventually ran the auction house’s Antiquities and Impressionist Art departments. In 1966 he left Sotheby’s to read archeaology at the University of Edinburgh, but he abandoned his studies after two years to pursue a career as a writer.

The Sunday Times Magazine hired Chatwin in 1972. He travelled the world for work and interviewed figures such as the politicians Indira Gandhi and André Malraux. He left the magazine in 1974 to visit Patagonia, which resulted in his first book. His work is credited with reviving the genre of travel writing, and his works influenced other writers.  Married and bisexual, Chatwin was one of the first prominent men in Great Britain known to have contracted HIV and to have died of an AIDS-related illness, although he hid the details. Following his death, the gay community criticised Chatwin for keeping his diagnosis secret.

Utz follows the fortunes of Kaspar Utz who lives in Czechoslovakia during the Cold War. Utz is a collector of Meissen porcelain and finds a way to travel outside the eastern bloc to acquire new pieces. Whilst in the West, Utz often considers defecting but he would be unable to take his collection with him and so, a prisoner of his collection, he is unable to leave.

Continuing with the Cold War theme, in The Noise of Time Julian Barnes gives a short fictional account of the life of the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich. It is a narrative in which nothing much happens: a man waits for a lift; a man sits on a plane; a man sits in a car. All the action takes place in Shostakovich’s head; in each of these three sections we find him at a moment of reflection amid a larger crisis, the “skittering” of his mind represented by short bursts of text that flit between memories and the present.

Crisis Number One is the Great Terror. The story begins with Shostakovich on the landing of his apartment block in the middle of the night waiting for the lift that will bring the secret police. This is 1936 and Stalin’s great purge is under way. Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk has met with Stalin’s personal disfavour and the composer has been denounced in the press: a clear sign that the cogs of murderous bureaucracy have been set to grind. It can only end one way: in an interrogation cell in which a “confession” awaits a signature, and a bullet the back of a neck.

As Shostakovich waits, he thinks of his childhood, of past lovers and, compulsively, of the train of circumstances that led to his fall. He remembers the disaster of the debut of his First Symphony at an open-air venue in Kharkov, when the music had set the local dogs barking. The louder they played, the more dogs barked. “Now his music has set bigger dogs barking,” Barnes writes. “History was repeating itself: the first time as farce, the second time as tragedy.”

Waiting for the lift, Shostakovich recalls being summoned to “the Big House” where he is interrogated by an agent called Zakrevsky. They want to know about his relationship with his patron Marshal Tukhachevsky, who stands accused of plotting to assassinate Stalin. Shostakovich realises that he is a dead man. But even during the Great Terror you can get lucky; Zakrevsky is himself purged, leaving Shostakovich reprieved, for a while at least.

Shostakovich’s next crisis – his second “conversation with Power” – occurs 12 years later, in 1948, when he is blackmailed into attending a Soviet-funded Peace Conference at the Waldorf Hotel in New York. As the star of the Russian delegation, he is a target for the anti-communist intellectuals who have infiltrated the conference, specifically Nicolas Nabokov (the novelist’s cousin), an exiled Russian composer who humiliates Shostakovich by asking questions that expose how obediently he is forced to follow the party line.

The third crisis occurs after a gap of another 12 years, in 1960, by which time things have loosened up a little under Khrushchev. Shostakovich no longer fears for his life but faces a new attack on his integrity. It has been decided that he must join the Communist Party as an endorsement of the new direction taken by the Soviet Union. He had avoided joining the party while Stalin was alive but now, try as he might, he cannot escape what has been ordained.

In writing his account of Shostakovich's life Barnes does know what he is talking about. While Barnes is known for his Francophilia, he also studied Russian at school and university. Soviet Communism was a subject of frequent debate among his famous Friday lunch club. In the late Seventies a group of ambitious young writers assembled for boozy lunches at a Turkish-Cypriot kebab house on the fringes of Bloomsbury distinguished by its proximity to the offices of The New Statesman. The literary editor of that magazine, Martin Amis, was by all accounts the star of a show that included James Fenton, Christopher Hitchens, Clive James and Ian McEwan.

Barnes, for his part, had first-hand experience of what life was like in the Soviet Union, having taken a road trip through Eastern Europe to Leningrad in 1965. He continued to visit the Warsaw Pact states in the following decades.  

In The Noise of Time, Shostakovich is forced to reconcile his own fragmented memories of his life with the story the state wants to tell about him. He is forced to participate in the degradation of his public self, as his family and his music are held hostage, and is tormented by his own complicity and duplicity. He clings to his music, hoping it will drown out the noise around him.

Towards the end, Shostakovich realises “he had lived long enough to be dismayed by himself”.This was often the way with artists,” Barnes writes, “either they succumbed to vanity, thinking themselves greater than they were, or else to disappointment… The self-doubt of the young is nothing compared to the self-doubt of the old.”

De silva

The Wood for the Trees by Richard Fortey

Renowned natural historian Richard Fortey bought four acres of beech and bluebell wood and began a deep investigation into its fauna and flora. His enthusiasm for his new wonderland is infectious

From a detailed review in the Guardian: "It is hard to think of a more treasured aspect of the British landscape than woodland, which is surprising when you consider how far we seem to have wandered from the trees. We have lower levels of woodland cover (13%) than our EU neighbours yet the forest continues to thrive in the national psyche, as demonstrated by the outcry in 2011 that halted government plans to privatise England’s state-owned woods and forests.  We love the off-the-lead freedom to wander these ever-changing yet timeless spaces, to briefly decentralise ourselves from the world and experience nature’s otherness in counterpoint to day-to-day life. Public outrage at the proposed sell-off wasn’t just about the effect it would have on a favourite view or psychological retreat, however – the very character of the country seemed under threat. In its defence, protestors evoked everyone from Robin Hood to Winnie the Pooh.  

                          

So our connection to woodland is deep-rooted. It is historical, cultural and personal, ingrained from millennia of habitation, dependency and usage. The Wood for the Trees, follows Fortey as he focuses on our woodland connections and affections, using one small wood to capture a wider story of the British landscape.

 

In 2011, after retiring from his role as a senior palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum, and following a windfall from presenting a TV series, Fortey purchased four acres of prime beech and bluebell wood. Located in the Chiltern Hills, a mile from his hometown of Henley-on-Thames, Grim’s Dyke Wood is the very patch that had John Stuart Mill so enraptured two centuries ago. Though it has changed in the intervening years, it is still a glorious spot – Fortey’s initial intention was to use the wood as a way to “escape into the open air”, to record a rich ecology of living wildlife following a career locked away in dusty museums studying dead things. His particular sphere of expertise whilst at the NHM was the extinct marine arthropod class of Trilobites.  He soon realised, however, that any portrait of the place would be incomplete without its human histories, too.

“I needed to explore the development of the English countryside,” he writes. “I was moved by a compulsion to understand half-forgotten crafts …plans were made to fell timber, to follow the journey from tree to furniture … in short, the wood became a project.”

What follows then is, in one sense, an expanded diary of this project over the arc of a year, except Fortey is not just any retiree keeping notes on a new hobby. His remarkable scientific knowledge, intense curiosity and love of nature mean entries erupt with the same richness and variety as the woods they describe.

Because of his scientific background he is able to draw on the full range of expertise from within the biological and archaeological disciplines.  From recipes for ground elder soup to musings on bumblebee varieties or gruesome tales of murder, Fortey’s enthusiasm for his new wonderland is infectious and illuminating. His style echoes the Selborne naturalist Gilbert White and his approach is proudly old school. He makes clear his distaste for “fuzzy” romanticism and the intruding emotions of the observer, but he too is romantic at times, not least in his resolve to collect things found in, or created from, his patch of wood. Mouse-gnawed cherry stones, glass made from flint, fallen birds’ eggs are among the things he preserves in a cabinet made from his own timber. 

Of course, collections are the trade of scientists and curators too, and it’s clear old habits die hard. With some help from colleagues at the Natural History Museum Fortey begins a deep analysis of the wood and its inhabitants – trees, insects, animals, plants and minerals. He starts with the substrate, slicing buried flint and putting it under a microscope to identify its origins, and ends up on a cherry picker in the canopy, all in the name of cataloguing the wood’s many mice, moths, bats, beetles, butterflies, crane flies, spiders, parasitic wasps, orchids, centipedes, millipedes and weird and wonderful fungi. On a personal note,  I found the section on truffles astonishingly enlightening.  He made truffle-hunting seem so straightforward and far less hitty-missy than I had come to believe.  Fortey has a talent for imagery:  Flat-backed millipedes “look as if they were assembled from some kind of kit that clicks together to make miniature armoured trains”; the Lithobius variegatus centipede’s striped legs stick out “like oars from a Viking ship, bent on pillage”.


Interwoven with these records are peripatetic investigations into human stories, from this patch’s iron age incarnation through Henley’s boom as a thriving river town supplying timber to the capital, up to the recent snapping up and fencing off of surrounding land by oligarchs and bankers. Along the way, Fortey unearths his wood’s changing fortunes and its significant ties to local estates, country houses and notable families. Taking a broader view of British history, he reveals how its survival and ecological richness have been due to its usefulness in providing the things we need – food, fuel, coppice, charcoal, chair legs, tent pegs and brushes.

And therein lies the conundrum. The future of British woodlands and their wildlife is precariously balanced, threatened by everything from climate change to the consumer preference for cheap imported woods. In this deep and interesting book, Fortey warns that without a return to hands-on management, a renewed sense of value and increased human engagement, our native woods are doomed to become empty “rural decoration” left “to age to a kind of senility that would benefit only wood-eating beetles”. Young trees need to replace the old, he writes; “new light needs to flood in”. Not only do we still need the trees, but they need us, too. 

Qui filii sunt victimas

When The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini came out it received wide attention and I read it, along with my Book Group companions.  It became a bestseller after being printed in paperback and was popularized in book clubs. It was a number one New York Times bestseller for over two years,^[4] with over 7,000,000 copies being sold in the US.   Reviews were generally positive, though parts of the plot drew, understandably, significant controversy in Afghanistan. A number of adaptations were created following publication, including a 2007 feature film, several stage performances, and a graphic novel. It tells the story of Amir, a young boy from Kabul whose closest friend is Hassan, his father's young servant.

The story is set against a backdrop of tumultuous events, from the fall of Afghanistan's monarchy through Soviet military intervention, the exodus of refugees to Pakistan and the United States, and the rise of the Taliban regime.  Apart from tackling a thoroughly engrossing human story, here was an opportunity to learn much about recent Afghan history

Hosseini has commented that he considers The Kite Runner to be a father–son story, emphasizing the familial aspects of the narrative, an element that he continued to use in his later works.  Themes of guilt and redemption feature prominently in the novel, with a pivotal scene depicting an act of violence against Hassan that Amir fails to prevent. The latter half of the book centres on Amir's attempts to atone for this transgression by rescuing Hassan's son over two decades later.

And the Mountains Echoed is the third novel by Khaled Hosseini.  It deviates from Hosseini's style in his first two works through his choice to avoid focusing on any one character. Rather, the book is written similarly to a collection of short stories, with each of the nine chapters being told from the perspective of a different character.

The book's foundation is built on the relationship between ten-year-old Abdullah and his three-year-old sister Pari and their father's decision to sell her to a childless couple in Kabul, an event that ties the various narratives together.

I found And the Mountains Echoed less engaging than its predecessors.  I am a fan of the short story although many people have never really taken to them.  However a classic book of short stories is often an eclectic mix of narratives and is all the more enjoyable for that.  Nevertheless Hosseini writes well and gets to the heart of human issues.   It deals with its characters movingly and is testament to the unbreakable bonds of love.

The North Water by Ian Macquire was Longlisted for the Man Booker 2016.

  In 1859 a man joins a whaling ship bound for the Arctic Circle. Having left the services, his reputation in tatters, Patrick Sumner has little option but to accept the position of ship's surgeon on this ill-fated voyage.
But when, deep into the journey, a boy is discovered brutally killed, Sumner finds himself becoming a reluctant detective. Soon he will face an evil even greater than that he had encountered at the siege of Delhi, in the shape of Henry Drax: harpooner, murderer, monster.   As the true purpose of the ship’s expedition becomes clear and despair descends upon the crew, the confrontation between Sumner and Drax will play out in the terrible darkness of the Arctic winter . . .

A theme that links The North Water and the writings of Khaled Hosseini is the way children are vulnerable and can so easily become victims to the predations of malign adults. 

De ecclesiis,

Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd and A Month in the Country by J L Carr

Two novels, each written by a Booker award-winning author.  The former title failed to receive a nomination although it seems every bit as good as Chatterton which did get picked in 1987.  Peter Ackroyd was born in London in 1949. A novelist, biographer and historian, he has been the literary editor of The Spectator and chief book reviewer for the The Times, as well as writing several highly acclaimed books including a biography of Dickens and London: The Biography. He lives in London.

'There is no Light without Darknesse
and no Substance without Shaddowe'
So proclaims the architect, Nicholas Dyer, assistant to Sir Christopher Wren and the man with a commission to build seven London churches to stand as beacons of the enlightenment.

Set in the early 18th century, Dyer is progressing work on the churches which are all set in London's East End. He is, however, involved in Satanic practices (something inculcated in him as an orphan), a fact which he must keep secret from all his associates, including his supervisor Sir Christopher Wren.  This is all the more challenging since he indulges in human sacrifice as part of the construction of the buildings. Dyer's simmering contempt for Wren is brought closest to the surface in discussions they have concerning rationalism versus Dyer's own carefully disguised brand of mysticism. 

In the 20th century, a detective,  Nicholas Hawksmoor is called in to investigate a bizarre series of murders by strangulation that have occurred in and around the churches designed by Dyer. The murders are all the more mystifying since the murderer appeared to have left no identifying traces, not even fingerprints on the victims' necks.  However the area is stalked by mysterious shadows, and it becomes clear that not only the weight of the investigation, but unseen forces from the past come to bear on Hawksmoor in a powerful, destructive manner.

'Chillingly brilliant . . . sinister and stunningly well executed' Independent on Sunday

A Month in the Country  by J L Carr was nominated in 1980 for the Booker Prize.  The plot concerns Tom Birkin, a WWI veteran employed to uncover a mural, that was thought to exist under coats of whitewash,  in a village church. A Month in the Country is tentative, aware of its temporality. When he arrives in Oxgodby, Birkin knows very well life is not all ease and intimacy, long summer days with "winter always loitering around the corner." He has experienced emotional cruelty in his failed marriage. As a soldier, he witnessed death: destruction and unending mud.  It transpires that many of the incidents in the novel are based on real events in Carr's own life, and some of the characters are modelled on his own Methodist family

 At the same time another veteran is employed to look for a grave beyond the churchyard walls. Though Birkin is an atheist there is prevalent religious symbolism throughout the book, mainly dealing with judgment. The novel explores themes of England's loss of spirituality after the war, and of happiness, melancholy and nostalgia as Birkin recalls the summer uncovering the mural, when he healed from his wartime experiences and a broken marriage. The happiness depicted in A Month in the Country is tentative, aware of its temporality. When he arrives in Oxgodby, Birkin knows very well life is not all ease and intimacy, long summer days with "winter always loitering around the corner." He has experienced emotional cruelty in his failed marriage. As a soldier, he witnessed death: destruction and unending mud.............  Many of the incidents in the novel are based on real events in Carr's own life, and some of the characters are modelled on his own Methodist family.