Summer Reading Round-up 6

I have invited some bloggers to nominate a couple of books they have enjoyed recently and write a few sentences about each. 

You are welcome to send me your own choices. I suggest you nominate one political and one non-political book, but I don’t insist on that.

You can read Round-up 1, Round-up 2, Round-up 3, Round-up 4 and Round-up 5 on this blog.

Simon McGrath

The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson Volume 4 by Robert A. Caro

The best political book I have read recently is the fourth volume of Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson. Anyone interested in politics, and in the use of power, should read these books which show political life in the raw. You will not read a better description of an election campaign than the second volume in the series which shows how LBJ was elected to the Senate in 1946 by 87 (stolen) votes after a campaign of legendary brilliance and dishonesty.

The fourth volume 'The Passage to Power' concerns his period as Vice President and then the period as President up to 1964. LBJ was immensely unhappy as VP, treated contemptuously by the Kennedys and their court, who failed to achieve anything of substance , partly because they ignored LBJs advice on how to deal with the Senate. Then came the assassination and LBJ became President , something his whole career had been aimed at but which he could have achieved no other way ( the Northern democrats would never have selected a Southerner as candidate) . The climax of the book is Johnson breaking the power of the Southern Senators and passing the Civil Rights Act , something only he, with his mastery of Senate rules and genius at manipulating people could have done.

The parodox of LBJ is that in most ways he was a deeply unpleasant man, willing to do more or less anything to get on. But he was also the most effective liberal President since Roosevelt - willing ultimately to damage his own Party ( he knew that civil rights would mean the end of the South as a Democratic stronghold) to get them passed - and of course to secure his reputation. The next, and final volume will cover the Great Society that other liberal triumph, as well as Vietnam, where his reputation was destroyed but without Vietnam he would be spoken of in the same way as Lincoln and Roosevelt - great American presidents.

The Game of Thrones by George Martin

I never read books like this but happened to pick this up in my son's room and was instantly addicted. The extraordinarily complicated and clever plot, the brilliantly described characters, a world which is familiar but ingeniously different make this utterly absorbing. This is a world with few moral certainties, good people get killed, bad people prosper ( at least for a bit) and you never know what will happen next. Yes there are dragons, yes there is (a small amount) of magic but ignore all of that. Once you read 20 pages you will be hooked. Then you realise there are another six volumes to read. Bliss.

Simon McGrath does not blog but is on Facebook - "The largest Lib Dem Facebook page apart from the official party one." Follow him on Twitter.

Andrew Brown

I first read Raymond Briggs' When the Winds Blows as a child or teenager and always preferred it to its more famous sibling, The Snowman. Set in the early 1980s, it's the powerful story of Jim and Hilda, an elderly couple in rural England in the lead up to and immediately after a nuclear strike on Britain.

Of course, in many ways the book is dated; people would now rely on the internet for information on how to prepare, not the official leaflets from local and national government (which would treated with a great deal more cynicism and less trust than Jim shows in them). The power of the book, though, is in the contrast of a nuclear strike with conventional warfare, with the characters making constant references and comparisons with the War. Naive thoughts that the "blitz spirit" would see them through are thrown into sharp relief by the realities of a nuclear winter.

At a time when it's easy to forget quite how real the threat of nuclear war was (and the publication this week of an address prepared for the Queen in an exercise envisioning such an eventuality is a reminder of how close we came), When The Wind Blows still serves as a warning of the fallout, in all senses of the word, from a nuclear strike.

Whilst it's taken me far longer to read than it should have done, Iain Banks' last novel, The Quarry, is his best book for many years (with the exception of his science fiction work as Iain M. Banks, and 2009's Transition). 

Told from the perspective of Kit, an 18 year with some degree of autism, it relates the events of a weekend towards the end of his father Guy's life. Guy is in the final stages of a debilitating cancer but has organised a reunion of his former University housemates, ostensibly to search for a missing, but potentially embarrassing, video cassette. As the tale unfolds, old tensions are laid bare and scores settled, secrets explored, lies spun and unspun and a few home truths are spoken.

Its darkly comic take on the end of a life that had previously been hedonistic in outlook has been given an added poignancy with the very public suffering of the author himself. Although mostly written before his own cancer diagnosis, the announcement of that - and his death just two weeks before a publication date that had been brought forward specially - inevitably make one read the book through an additional filter: where are the tweaks and details inserted after he knew his own situation?

Ultimately, though, similarities between Banks and his protagonist are limited; aside, perhaps, from their political viewpoints. Certainly the outpouring of affection by his peers and readers far outstrips the send-off he gives Guy. That, of course, is how it should be: his books were so often gritty, grim and dark - the antithesis of a man of warmth, wit and humility. This reader, for one, will greatly miss him.

Andrew Brown blogs at The Widow's World. Follow him on Twitter.

Summer Reading Round-Up 5

I have invited some bloggers to nominate a couple of books they have enjoyed recently and write a few sentences about each. 

You are welcome to send me your own choices. I suggest you nominate one political and one non-political book, but I don’t insist on that.

You can read Round-up 1, Round-up 2, Round-up 3 and Round-up 4 on this blog.

Alex Marsh

The New Few: Or a Very British Oligarchy by Ferdinand Mount

One of the most interesting books I've read recently. Much of the critical commentary on the changing nature of British society originates with the political left. Mount is very clearly a man of the right, having been closely aligned with the Thatcher administration, and yet he expresses grave concerns about the way in which our political economy is being transformed.

He is as exercised by increasing income inequality and the rise of an increasingly unaccountable corporate elite as any member of the Occupy movement. He sees this as signifying a corrosion of capitalism – undermining the characteristics that made capitalism socially beneficial in the first place. He is similarly concerned about the erosion of democracy.

In particular he highlights the concentration of power at the centre. This leads to an increasingly detached and homogenous political class and an increasingly disengaged population who feel they have little influence over what happens to them.

Mount’s diagnosis of the maladies afflicting us could be seen as a counsel of despair, but there is a strand of optimism in his thinking. He argues that the move to oligarchy is not inevitable or irreversible. But we need to wake up and recognise that our social order is being challenged at a very profound level.

The Chill by Ross MacDonald

I am a great fan of American hard-boiled mysteries of the mid-twentieth century. The absolute master of the genre is Ross MacDonald. He moves beyond earlier writers like Raymond Chandler to develop more psychologically complicated characters and more sophisticated plots.

I’m currently reading The Chill from 1963. As is often the case with MacDonald, the story starts with a missing person and family breakdown, as a young newly-wed goes missing and MacDonald’s detective – Lew Archer – is hired by her distraught husband to find her. What follows is a gradual unpicking of a web of murderous events over the previous two decades.

One of the advantages of having read many of these classic American mysteries is that it helps appreciate the achievements of Malcolm Pryce in his ongoing series of Aberystwyth noir novels. Not only do they manage to capture key aspects of Welsh life and character with humour, but they also do a good job of pastiching the hard-boiled genre.

Alex Marsh blogs at Alex’s Archives. Follow him on Twitter.

Jennie Rigg

My political book is a classic: John Stuart Mill's The Subjection of Women - available free on Kindle so no excuses. Those in the know about Mill are familiar with the idea that he was a feminist, partly due to his respect for and collaborations with his wife Harriet, whose intellect he saw as equal to his own. Anyone who does not believe feminism is intrinsic to Liberalism should read this clear and and forensic deconstruction of the second-class status of women.

My non-political book is Terra by Mitch Benn, which is a quirky and warm-hearted sci-fi tale, and impressively well-written for a debut novel. The lead character is adorable and there is some wry observational stuff about how we run things on this little planet. If you want to sample the first chapter there's a bunch of famous people reading it here.

Bonus recommendation: if you like audio books and share my soft spot for horror, I run a spotify playlist called Christopher Lee reads stuff, which is full of genre classics and I find very soothing when I have a migraine, such as I have had today, and can't bear to have the light on but want a bit of fiction.

Jennie Rigg blogs at Automated Attack Monkeys, Scalpel Mines, & Acid. Follow her on Twitter.


Caron Lindsay

Just Russell: The collected speeches of Sir Russell Johnston MP, Leader of the Scottish Liberal Party, 1979-1986

This second collection of Russell’s conference speeches coincides with the time when I became politically aware, so it’s good to read as an adult the sort of things that fuelled the idealism and liberalism I embraced as a teenager. It’s rejuvenating and inspiring to hear his often poetic, emotional yet intellectually coherent and consistent. Much of what he says could still apply today, although perhaps Robert Mugabe may not be quoted so readily. There are also some messages for us about how we should conduct ourselves in political debate that I think might be useful for both leadership and critics to apply. Find out which journalist walked out during one speech  - and which can’t be fully reproduced because the hand-written draft was lost. It’s a must-read commentary on the politics of the 1980s covering Thatcherism, the Labour Party falling apart and, crucially, the fate of the Alliance.

Moranthology by Caitlin Moran

This is little more than a slightly augmented collection of her Times columns but well worth reading or re-reading. From tales from her holidays, to compelling arguments for maintaining libraries to outlining the effects of welfare reform to interviews with rock stars and visits to the sets of Sherlock and Doctor Who, there’s a diversity of quick-witted writing which will make you laugh, cry and, occasionally, want to chuck the book across the room – although, as mine was an e-book, I managed to resist that temptation.

Caron Lindsay blogs at Caron's Musings. Follow her on Twitter.

Summer Reading Round-Up 4

I have invited some bloggers to nominate a couple of books they have enjoyed recently and write a few sentences about each. 

You are welcome to send me your own choices. I suggest you nominate one political and one non-political book, but I don’t insist on that.

You can read Round-up 1, Round-up 2 and Round-up 3 on this blog.


Mary Reid

People Power: A User’s Guide to Democracy by Dan Jellinek (Bantam)

A few weeks ago Dan Jellinek sent me a proof copy of his book. I intend to review it for Lib Dem Voice, but real democracy, in the form of a challenging by-election, has erupted in my patch, so I need to finish reading it very soon.

Dan is one of the movers and shakers in online democracy, although he carefully treads a non-partisan path in all his activities. His book is an ambitious everyman’s guide to democratic systems in the UK, comprehensively researched and written in an engaging style. He did interview me about policy making in the Lib Dems, but if you doze for a moment while reading the book you will probably miss it.

A Small Town Affair by Rosie Wallace (Headline)

I headed up to Orkney for a holiday earlier this year, so it seemed appropriate to take with me the first novel written by the wife of the former MP for Orkney and Shetland. Perhaps not surprisingly, the plot centres on the wife of a new Lib Dem MP, as she becomes the focus of gossip on the town’s grapevine, through a series of beautifully written comic scenes that made me laugh out loud.

This is perfect light holiday reading, especially for Lib Dem activists, who are gently but affectionately caricatured within. I’m sure you all have a Minty Oliver in your local party – an elderly and eccentric activist who manages to untangle all the complicated situations that the rest get themselves into.

The question is: which of these two books is my political choice?

Mary Reid writes a blog.


Andrew Hickey

My political choice is Conrad Russell's An Intelligent Person's Guide To Liberalism, which I recently read at the prodding of Alex Wilcock, and wished I'd read years earlier. A wonderful, insightful book, it manages to express in its 122 pages everything that distinguishes Liberalism both as a set of principles and as a specifically historical movement linked to the Liberal and Liberal Democrat parties in the UK. It's absolutely essential for all Liberals, in and out of the party. It's out of print, but second-hand copies can be picked up for ten pounds or so.

Favourite quote: "I can still remember, when I was five, looking at William Lord Russell’s portrait on the wall, and asking my father what he did. My father replied; “Oh, he was a very good man. The King cut his head off." The distrust of unfettered power implicit in that remark is very deep in the Liberal inheritance, and very deep in the current Liberal Democrat concern with constitutional reform."

As for my other choice, I think readers of this blog would be likely to enjoy Shell-Shocked, the autobiography of Howard Kaylan. While it concentrates too much on the sex and drugs and not enough on the rock and roll, there are still plenty of wonderful details about recording music in the 1960s and 70s. Kaylan started out as the lead singer of The Turtles, but has performed in some capacity or other with almost every great musical figure of the 60s and 70s, whether by having Ray Davies produce a Turtles album, being lead singer for Frank Zappa for three years, backing John Lennon at an impromptu appearance, singing backing vocals on all T-Rex's hits or singing on Springsteen's Hungry Heart.

And where else are you going to find out Tom Jones' pet name for his penis?

Andrew Hickey blogs at Sci-Ence! Justice Leak! Follow him on Twitter.


Paul Walter

A Swim-on Part in the Goldfish Bowl by Carol Thatcher

A very absorbing book. It didn't make me feel all that enamoured of Carol Thatcher but I enjoyed reading all the little anecdotes. The book appears to be largely (and rather outrageously) the basis for the Oscar winning film The Iron Lady. So it is worth reading for that reason alone.

Crying with Laughter: My life story by Bob Monkhouse

A bit of an old one, but a fascinating story of an extraordinary man. Worth reading alone for the amusing story of the early days of The Golden Shot. Little known trivia fact: Bob Monkhouse bequeathed the largest known collection of Butlin's whisky glasses. He did shedloads of stand-up for Butlin's in the 70s and 80s. Before each performance they would give him a glass of whisky. Once drunk he put the glass in his brief case and took it home. Then he kept them all along with his vast collection of (annotated) TV Times and TV programmes recorded on video. He owned the UK's first privately owned video recorder. It cost him almost as much as house cost at the time.

Paul Walter blogs at Liberal Burblings. Follow him on Twitter.

Summer Reading Round-up 3

I have invited some bloggers to nominate a couple of books they have enjoyed recently and write a few sentences about each. 

You are welcome to send me your own choices. I suggest you nominate one political and one non-political book, but I don’t insist on that.

You can read Round-up 1 and Round-up 2 on this blog.

Nick Barlow

1688: The First Modern Revolution by Steve Pincus

I've always thought that the Glorious Revolution and all the events that surrounded it are one of the most fascinating parts of British and world history, yet it's a period of history that's consistently ignored in our culture. There are plenty of novels, TV series and films covering the numerous Plantagenets and Tudors, but the struggle for the throne after the death of Charles II is relatively ignored.

Pincus's book is an attempt to place the events of 1688 in their proper context as a true revolution, comparable in scale to the events of the Civil Wars half a century earlier, or the tumultuous events in America and France that followed a century later. The traditional interpretation of 1688 is as an orderly event, where the nation chose one monarch over another, but Pincus explains not just how unlikely and unpredictable the chain of events that set William and Mary on the throne were, but how what happened in Britain and Ireland was intimately linked to the greater struggle for power in Europe, as an array of nations set out to check the power of Louis XIV.

It's a reminder that British history isn't the sedate progression of monarchs and battles that some like to present it as, but something much looser, wilder and part of a wider history, whose outcomes weren't inevitable. It's not just a good introduction to the history of the period, but a book that will make you look on our history differently.

Halting State and Rule 34 by Charles Stross

Some of the most interesting takes on our contemporary society are coming from modern British science fiction, and Stross has become one of the leading writers in that genre. These two books are near-future crime thrillers, sharing a setting and some characters, extrapolating some of our current technological and social trends a decade or so into the future. Stross looks at what it would be like to investigate a crime in a society where surveillance has become all pervasive, and everything a police office does is recorded through Google Glass-like technology. More importantly, he speculates on just what crime will become in a world that's increasingly globalised and virtual - how does a local police force investigate a crime that's taken place in a game world?

Stross' future is one that feels both plausible and strange, where elements recognisable to us sit alongside technologies that are currently bleeding edge, but have become commonplace by the time the books are set. He's a writer who loves to speculate - see his blog for much more - but knows how to place that speculation within the lives of real characters.

Both books use the interesting technique of being narrated in the second person across multiple characters, but Stross has the talent to make it work and the style works perfectly with the subject of the books. Computer games are often narrated in the same tone, so why shouldn't a book in which they're central to the plot be narrated the same way? Stross creates novels that entertain you with their plot, but also make you think about just where we're heading and whether we can do anything about it.

Nick Barlow blogs at What You Can Get Away With. Follow him on Twitter.

Iain Brodie Browne

A note has arrived from Bonkers Hall: what am I reading this summer?

Our Victorian forebears marketed Southport as being on the Lancashire Rivera and for once it is living up to their billing. It is hot. If I were off to Birkdale beach cycling along Snuttering Lane what would be stuffed into my saddlebag today? In truth there would be nothing too demanding. Jonathan suggested I choose two books one political and one not.

First up is David Erdal's "Beyond the Corporation: Humanity Working". This book is a passionate, committed work advocating workers' ownership. It challenges traditional models of ownership and lays out the experience of those who, like Erdal himself, took the road less travelled by. His own family firm -a paper mill in Fife-was transferred to employee ownership and it has flourished in contrast to a similar company which  took the usual route recommended by banks and business advisers and was sold off to venture capitalists. Erdal takes a hard look at those who insist, in the teeth of the evidence, that shared ownership will never work - a sorry tale, he argues, of prejudice masquerading as economic thinking. Here are other case studies of firms familiar to Liberals: Scott Bader, John Lewis and the mighty Mondargon co-ops.

Jo Grimond visited Mondargon along with journalist, and sometime Liberal candidate, Robert Oakeshott . On their return they established, what is today, the Employee Ownership Association. Jo was particularly enamoured with the local workers mutual bank that the co-ops established. It attracted savings from the region and has financed a network of worker owned enterprises which now have 100,00 employees. As one reviewer observed that the greatest success of this approach was ' the sheer happiness employees experience in working together in businesses that they own together, sharing the wealth that they create'. 

You can hear an audio clip of Erdal talking about the book online.

 It is Sunday, the shadows are lengthening, and the evening has come, the busy world is hushed, the fever of life is over, and our work done. The worshipers at St Asquith's are hurrying home after Evensong. Revd Hughes has detained them far too long preaching on Martha and Mary and the systemic effects of patriarchal stereotyping (in a sermon he pinched off the internet).  The strains of King Charles I's Evening hymn  linger more lastingly in their memory. Why do they rush home? It is because Sunday is the day that the next instalment of Acts and Omissions comes online.

Let me explain. Catherine Fox has been blogging a novel, one chapter a week, rather like Dickens or Wilkie Collins, since the turn of the year, and believe me the cliff hangers at the end of some chapters rival the fate of Little Nell. Every Sunday night they enter the diocese of Lindchester, a world as completely imagined as Bonkers Hall. There they meet the outrageous Freddie May with his gorgeous tenor voice who is unsettling the conscience of the evangelical Bishop Paul -and not just because of what he has painted above Father Wendy's new curate, Miss Virginia Farrow-Ball’s bed…. Bishop Paul will be please to see Freddie take up his choral scholarship at Barchester Cathedral, although I'm not so sure the elderly spinster Miss Barbara Blatherwick will be so relieved. This is a place where clerics drank champagne to celebrate the passing of the Equal Marriage Act but where Gene, the Dean's husband, is not prepared to deviate from the law that you don’t waste vintage champagne on evangelicals. 

It is a glorious, exuberant romp of a novel. Whether you identify with the militantly lapsed Dr Jane Rossiter or the tortured soul of Father Dominic, by the time chapter 52 arrives and Freddie has takes his last scandalous risk the recollection of the heat wave will have faded and I shall be most likely be cycling along Snuttering Lane in the snow.

Iain Brodie Browne blogs at Birkdale Focus. Follow him on Twitter.

Tim Holyoake

Nick Hornby's protagonist in "High Fidelity" is asked by a reporter to name his five favourite records of all time and then spends days agonising about his choices. As I appear to have many of the same personality quirks, I've found it just as difficult to pick out just two books from my summer reading list. I've also been worrying that the ones I've chosen might somehow be the wrong ones!

Anyway, neatly straddling my interest in politics and psychology is Steve Reicher and Cliff Stott's e-book "Mad Mobs and Englishmen?" This examines the 2011 riots and questions many of instant explanations provided by politicians of all parties at the time. Reicher and Stott argue that the only way to prevent future riots is to go beyond the easy consensus of the cause being feral youth out of control. It’s a challenging read and has, unusually for an academic work of this type, been dramatised by the Worklight Theatre Company.

 My second choice is J.G. Farrell’s "A Girl in the Head". The action unfolds around a rather dismal English seaside town over an August Bank Holiday weekend, which sees anti-hero Boris Slattery wondering whether his life has just been “a meaningless detail rapidly receding into a mass of other meaningless details”. It’s a funny, touching and ultimately tragic novel which shows glimpses of the genius Farrell was becoming prior to writing his Booker Prize winning novel "The Siege of Krishnapur".

Tim Holyoake blogs at Just One More Ten Pence Piece. Follow him on Twitter.

Summer Reading Round-up 2

This is the second of these round-ups - no.1 is here. I have invited some bloggers to nominate a couple of books they have enjoyed recently and write a few sentences about each. You are welcome to send me your own choices. I suggest you nominate one political and one non-political book, but I don’t insist on that.

Iain Dale

Dominion by C.J. Sansom

If you are a fan of counterfactual history and you wonder what might have happened in May 1940 had Lord Halifax become prime minister rather than Winston Churchill, you will love this book. The author, C J Sansom, is a strange cove. He rose to prominence with a highly successful series of novels set in the reign of Henry VIII, all about the life of a lawyer, Matthew Shardlake. He then wrote a spy novel, 'Winter in Madrid', and hit the headlines recently when he donated £160,000 to the Better Together campaign. He literally hates the SNP, which is evident at various points in the plot of 'Dominion'. This is his first counterfactual novel, but I suspect it won’t be his last. It's long at 592 pages, which include a long explanatory note at the end justifying the approach he took to the book. It's all quite convincing, because had Halifax put up a fight, there's little doubt that he would indeed have become prime minister and I suspect sued for peace with Germany within a very short time.

The plot of 'Dominion' involves a slightly quixotic scientist who learns that America has developed the atom bomb. The year is 1952. Queen Elizabeth is on the throne (still unmarried) and Lord Beaverbrook is the Nazi sympathising prime minister. Somewhat bizarrely Enoch Powell is in the Quisling-esque Cabinet as Secretary of State for India. Powell’s wife Pam was understandably furious with Sansom for portraying her late husband in this manner, and I suspect Jonathan Aitken is none too pleased at the portrayal of Beaverbrook. Churchill is the renegade leader of the resistance, but doesn't feature much in the book until the end, when Hitler’s death is announced. I really enjoyed the book as a whole and wanted more. It's a good holiday read and I can’t imagine anyone would get to the end and wish they hadn't bothered.

Gaffer by Neil Warnock

I am a great devourer of football biographies and autobiographies. When I saw Neil Warnock had written his autobiography I thought it would be a sure fire winner. And it is. Sort of. It’s not a conventional autobiography in that it doesn't tell Warnock’s story chronologically. The book is themed around different aspects of football management and although at first I wasn't very sure that this approach worked, by the end I thought it had been a thoroughly good idea. The book concentrates quite heavily on Warnock's time at QPR and Leeds and very entertaining it is too. But I found it very odd that the whole Carlos Tevez saga was dismissed in little more than a page. Being a West Ham fan I am supposed to dislike Warnock, but I have always had a sneaking admiration for him. He is a mould breaker. He fights the establishment, and that’s what has led to him never really being given a chance with one of the top teams. Warnock knows how to put together a proper team. He’s got a reputation as a long ball merchant, but that is unfair. Given the right players he is capable of producing a very entertaining team. He says he has now retired. I am not convinced. I suspect he will be back on the managerial merry-go-round before too long.

Iain Dale writes a blog. Follow him on Twitter.


Mark Pack

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

For much of the book the picture it paints of Steve Jobs is of such a flawed, rude, wasteful, divisive figure that it's easy to forget this is the biography of an amazing success, not a dreadful failure. That makes the story it tells all the more interesting, and emphasises the value of having a simple, clear idea (in Jobs's case, high quality design for mass market products). Jobs's obsessive focus on that idea led him to all sorts of absurdities - and also to his greatness.

The Alamut Ambush by Anthony Price

Winner of many awards for his espionage novels, Anthony Price never quite made it as a really famous author thanks to the TV adaptation of several of his books in the early 1980s having only modest success. However, the books are still in print and have recently started appearing in audio book too. I love the way Price deals with the artificial conventions of novels in plausible ways. This book is particularly fine at using the sort of plot coincidences that are so useful to generating tension and intrigue - yet giving them a plausible explanation within a carefully crafted plot. [You can find a longer review by Mark online.]

Mark Pack writes a blog. Follow him on Twitter.


Iain Sharpe

When God Took Sides: Religion and Identity in Ireland by Marianne Elliott

This is the best political book I have read recently. It is based on Professor Marianne Elliott's 2005 Ford lectures, and while the title may sound dry and academic it is a wise, humane and highly readable book. Often drawing on personal experience and anecdotes, Professor Elliott dissects the reasons behind historic enmities between Protestant and Catholic communities in Ireland. These include such things as Protestant stereotypes of Catholics being dictated to by priests rather than thinking for themselves and Catholics doubting whether Protestants could be properly Irish. As Liberals we can often find it difficult to deal with the dynamics of religious/national conflict and anyone reading this book will emerge with a much greater understanding. An honourable mention should go to Alvin Jackson's 'The Two Unions' a comparative study of Scottish and Irish experience of Union within the United Kingdom.

The Laidlaw Trilogy by William McIlvanney

I welcome Alex Salmond's recent praise of this trilogy: Laidlaw, The Papers of Tony Veitch and Strange Loyalties. For me these knock spots off the better-known Ian Rankin, whose novels always seem to me formulaic and unconvincing. By contrast McIlvanney's Laidlaw books genuinely read like novels about a detective rather than detective fiction. There are no far-fetched solutions, or bizarre conspiracies, but there is genuine suspense and a real warm humanity suffusing the narrative. McIlvanney deserves to be better known
than he is. I disagree with the Scottish first minister's politics but I'm happy to endorse his taste in fiction.

Iain Sharpe used to blog at Eaten by Missionaries. 

Summer Reading Round-up 1

I have invited some bloggers to nominate a couple of books they have enjoyed recently and write a few sentences about each. Readers are welcome to send me their own choices. I suggested one political and one non-political book, but (as you will see) I don’t insist on that. Just send me an email with your choices.


Alan Wyburn-Powell

Bringing the House Down by David Profumo (John Murray)

Before I read this book, I thought that it had a lot going against it. The son of a famous politician trying to cash in on a scandal which happened 50 years ago and which has been discussed so many times that everyone thinks they know all about it already.  How wrong I was. David Profumo manages a delicate balancing act and comes across as very fair to his father, Jack Profumo. That David emerged as a rounded individual, able to undertake the task of writing this book, is further testament to Jack Profumo’s character and that of his wife, Valerie Hobson. This book is very engagingly written and really does give new insights into the events around the Profumo scandal and its aftermath. The words of Jack Profumo, who lived into his 90s, ‘You know, I have enjoyed my life’, should give encouragement to us all, if things do not always go according to plan.

The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal (Vintage Books)

I enjoyed this book from the start, but initially it was difficult to work out what was so good about it. In many ways it is to writing what David Gower was to cricket or Miranda Hart is to comedy – just a very elegantly executed version of something which other practitioners do with much greater fuss. As an historian, I enjoyed the insights into the research process which led to the book. It is well worth reading for the pleasure of the prose and as a painless way of sipping on European and Japanese history and the world of ceramics without really noticing you are imbibing. We can also thank Edmund de Waal for introducing the concept of the flaneur to otherwise-idle British saunterers.

Dr Alun Wyburn-Powell writes a blog on Liberal history. Follow him on Twitter.


Linda Jack

My political book has to be 'The Political Brain' by Drew Western - it is so absorbing it unusually, for a political book, makes great summer reading! In fact, if there was a reading list for Lib Dem activists it would be compulsory for me.

Understanding how we respond to political messaging, the fact that while the electorate say they hate dirty campaigning they actually love it. The advice that we have to respond to attacks immediately and that ignoring an issue is political suicide. Best example is how the NRA in the States progressed because gun regulation became a shield issue for the Democrats and they shied away from talking about it.

My usual summer reading has to be pretty light stuff. Would recommend anything by Barbara Pym if like me you are a bit nostalgic for the 50's and like reading about anthropologists and vicars.... Also anything by Maggie O'Farrell if you love jigsaw puzzles. I am currently reading 'Instructions for a Heatwave' (appropriately enough!) set in London in 1976 about an Irish family whose father suddenly disappears for no apparent reason, as the story unfolds so do the secrets - perhaps leading to the whereabouts of Dad, perhaps not? I can't tell you because I'm still only two-thirds of the way through.

But if you like to laugh while lounging on the beach - Lucy Kellaway's 'Who Moved my Blackberry' is a must, especially if you own, or have ever owned one. The book is a series emails between Martin Lukes, his wife and colleagues - but you really only get to read his emails and the odd one from his life coach Pandora.....you get the picture. Not only is it hilarious it also has a nifty sting in the tail.

Linda Jack blogs at Lindylooz Muze. Follow her on Twitter.


Gareth Epps

I have finally almost got around to finishing 'Bread of Heaven' by Jasper Rees.  A story of a Welshman born and bred the wrong side of the border, but brought up supporting that great rugby team of Edwards, Bennett, JPR, the Pontypool Front Row and the rest, it rings uncannily true.  It has also made me consider joining a male voice choir, though I'm not sure about birthing a sheep.

The other book I've been reading is the excellent biography of lost music legend Arthur Lee, 'Forever Changes' by John Einarsson. Phenomenally influential with the band Love in the 1960s and the albums Da Capo and Forever Changes before a long, slow slide, the real story of Lee was never really covered, even after his renaissance after several lost decades culminating in a 1990s jail stint.  This book shows the very human contradictions of a flawed genius.

Next off is an expedition into the writings of 'Rory the Tory' - as one of constituents described him to me recently: Rory Stewart.

Gareth Epps writes a blog. He does not like Twitter.