The White Ship and In the Midst of Winter

 Two More Books finished, and still in the first week of the New Year! Awesome progress.

This one is  history book, set in the reign of Henry I, but reads like a very exciting blockbuster.

There are some great female characters in the history too, almost all of them called Matilda.

Matilda, wife of William the Conqueror, is the mother of Henry I, who was her youngest son.  She had nine children, four of them sons.  Two died in hunting accidents. One of these was the second son, Richard, the other the third son, William II of England. The third and fourth sons became William II and Henry I.

Robert Curthose - short trousers - (the eldest son) tried to become King of England, as one might expect, him being the eldest.  However, the Norman rules of succession were slightly different, and so it was accepted when the Conqueror's third son, William Rufus, succeeded as King of England.  After causing a lot of trouble in Normandy (where he was the legitimate heir under Norman rules of succession), Robert was finally captured and imprisoned by Henry I and kept imprisoned for the rest of his exceptionally long life.

 

The next Matilda was the first wife of Henry I - she was previously called Edith but renamed after marriage because Edith was an Anglo-Saxon name. 

A third was Matilda of Anjou, betrothed to Henry I's only legitimate son, (on whom the plot turns) - he was drowned in the White Ship in 1120, thus leaving Henry without an heir.  The kingdom was plunged into anarchy, literally, "The Anarchy" as it was referred to by contemporary historians, following the death of Henry I.  

A fourth Matilda, "the Empress"(a title gained on her first marriage to Henry V  of Germany), was the daughter of Henry I. She was his only other legitimate child (he had 22 illegitimate ones). She was named his heir and he intended her to inherit, but as she was a woman, her cousin Stephen took the throne instead, supported by the nobles who didn't want a woman on the throne.  Stephen, a likeable but weak character, was married to yet another Matilda, the fifth in this list. She was a strong and interesting woman, without whose support Stephen's reign would have ended much earlier than it did.

I feel that the field is wide open for a wonderful historical novel, possibly called "The Two Matildas", in which Henry's daughter and his nephew's wife battle it out over the next fifteen years after Henry's death.

I followed "The White Ship" as an audio book, which is a great way to consume more works while multi-tasking. 

A fascinating interview with the author, Charles Spencer (famously brother of Princess Diana), is available FREE.  You do have to log in and register, but after that, it's all free.

My next book is as follows:

I studiously avoided Isabel Allende for most of my life, having noted that her blockbuster "The House of the Spirits" seemed to be about things that wouldn't interest me.  I did watch a rerun on TV of the film, and found it better than I expected.  I remained a bit snobbish about blockbusters however, for some further years.

The real breakthrough came when I picked up a copy of her autobiographical work "Paula" in a charity shop. It's about the sad illness and death (at 29) of her beautiful, clever, successful and much adored only daughter, combined with a history of her own life intertwined with the twentieth century history of Chile, Allende's birthplace.  

After this, I would read anything by this author (always excepting The House of the Spirits).  

"In the Midst of Winter" seemed apt, and was available in the library on the shelf, so I took it home.

It would appear to me (I'm not accusing Jeanine Cummins of plagiarism), that the recent bestseller "American Dirt" may have been inspired by this book.  "Winter" concerns three characters, two of whom have been refugees from South American countries ravaged by appalling political and gang violence.  The younger escapes from Guatemala much as some of the younger characters in "American Dirt" did. The older,  being obviously modelled on the author, escaped from Chile in 1973 when a right-wing military coup overthrew the legitimately elected democratic left wing government headed by the author's cousin, Salvador Allende.

There is a bit of a lightweight mystery plot, (who killed the body in the boot? ) and a frankly fantasist love story between the two sixty something academics, but the real meat of the book is the refugee experience, from 1973 and then in 2008, including later references to Trump's border policy which was already being trumpeted (sorry) in 2015 when the book was being written. Also, because Isabel Allende has been married three times, and, at the time of writing was still very close to her 96 year old mother, the book is about women's lives, women as mothers, as daughters, as grand-daughters and as victims.  This is timeless. In both the two main female characters, an absent and/or feckless father has no part in their upbringing, which is carried out by the grandmother in one case, the mother in the other, devotedly, and with huge love which is reciprocated.

Just a couple of quotes -  a third, lesser character, an American white woman grossly abused by her husband, sees a psychiatrist.  Almost as an aside, the author notes that this woman "had confessed to her psychiatrist that she longed to be a widow. He had listened without showing the least surprise, having heard the same from other patients ...[who wished] their spouse dead.  His waiting room was filled with repressed, furious women."

Lucia, the Chilean exile, felt that "the hardest part had been her mother's death, which had affected her more than [her] divorce or cancer".  

Being the mother of two daughters,  I lapped this up.  I have always wondered why the standard romantic trope (or tripe, as you will), depicts a weak and needy woman searching for a strong handsome man to take care of them for ever.  The reality is much more likely to be as depicted here - flaky, or useless, or violent men ( or men who combine all of these characteristics), who leave, either physically or emotionally.  One husband was a bigamist, one left his wife when she got breast cancer because he couldn't cope (this exact situation happened to the fifty-something daughter of my neighbour).  A third was a violent and abusive human trafficker.  Two youths were killed in gang violence.  

 

It's no wonder I just don't believe in the sweet romance between the two sixty-somethings.

I probably sound like an embittered old bag.  Having been in the same relationship for 44 years, I do feel that there is a lot wrong with the traditional romantic stereotype.  My mother-in-law, whom I have thus known for 44 years, has just died.  I sometimes feel that she understood me better than my husband does.   She is much missed.

The Anglo Saxons by Marc Morris

 

I finished this book yesterday, and have already ordered a copy of "The Norman Conquest", by the same author, since it will pick up the story at the exact moment this book leaves off.

That sounds like unqualified praise, but in fact I found the book quite hard to read, which surprised me. I own the author's "Edward I, A Great and Terrible King", a book I found extremely easy to follow.

My difficulties may have something to do with the very distance of the past in the case of the Anglo-Saxons.  One is used to following history in terms of: 

a) Personalities.  Problem - in this period there are no personalities at all.  Even the great King Alfred fails to impress as a person.  (The story of the cakes is fiction, apparently).

b) Castles, churches, stately homes.  Problem - as the author points out, almost no buildings from this period have survived.  The Saxon churches in Northamptonshire, at Brixworth and Earls Barton, are notable exceptions, shown in the colour photograph sections. The Normans introduced the Castle system. Stately homes?  Not a trace, although the author points out that the mead hall as depicted in "Beowulf" is the nearest we get to a picture of actual living conditions in the lord's hall.

c) Family trees and successions, marriages, identifiable descents and interlinking of families. Problem - there is so little on record. Only one family tree is shown in the book, (it is spread over two pages but is one tree).  It starts with King Egbert - (who was he?) reigned 802 to 839, and ends with the line linking Edward the Confessor (ruled 1042 to 1066) and his brother-in-law Harold who was killed at the Battle of Hastings. Before 802, the individual are difficult to distinguish. Churchmen, who kept written records, are clearer characters in these early chapters.

d) Maps.  Ah, now here we are on to something.  The maps in this book are an invaluable guide to the period covered by the narrative.  Each chapter starts with a map, which depicts the towns, the regions, and the rivers which are significant in that chapter.  I found the maps a more helpful indication of what was going on than anything else. My only criticism is that the maps are undated.  Each would have benefited, in my opinion, from a title, giving the approximate period covered.

I do have some criticisms of the book.

1) I would not recommend anyone read this book on a Kindle.  The colour pictures and the maps are clear in hardback, but even in this, the top-quality of all formats, the black and white photographs inserted in the text are very unclear, being too dark, and in some cases totally useless as a portrayal of anything. 

2)Another problem is the family tree.  In my experience with Kindle, a family tree has to be magnified each time it is consulted. In this case, the diagram needs to be consulted almost constantly once one gets past King Alfred.  There are just far too many people called Aethelwold, Aethelbald, Aethelberht, Aethelred, Aethelweard, Aelfweard, Aethelflaed, Aelfgifu, and Aethelstan. There is really nothing to distinguish them, because their birthdates are not recorded and there are no personalities to peg them. 

3) There is no list of personae.  An alphabetical list of all those names, with at least an approximation of the years in which they were active, would have helped enormously as the author rips through the 600 years covered in the book. It became quite exhausting trying to identify them, as a lay person. For a trained historian, of course, it would be easy because there is nothing so easy and satisfying as reading a newly published version of things you already know.

4) Another criticism, is the author's apparent lack of interest in female characters in the story.

I already knew that Aethelflaed, daughter of King Alfred, was titled "The Lady of the Mercians" and famously constructed fortified towns ("burghs")around Western Mercia, but had I not known this, I would have been none the wiser after reading the very brief reference to her in this book.  I was disappointed that she was dismissed so briefly, and not even the specific burghs she constructed were named.  A new statue of her was recently unveiled, to commemorate the anniversary of her death in 918.  There was already a very impressive statue in Tamworth, to commemorate her achievements. 

St Hild of Whitby does get a mention, but only in the context of the epic ecclesiastical row about when Easter should be celebrated.

No mention at all of these other significant ladies- Coenburga (Quenburga) (died c.735). She co-founded a double monastery at Winburnan (Wimborne, Dorset) with her sister Cuthburga.

The name echoes that of Kyneburgha (a hundred years earlier, mid 7th century), who likewise founded a monastery with her sister, Kyneswitha. These women were something, before the days of feminism, but utterly absent from the book.

The book succeeds as a political history, showing how the warring factions of the early tribes fresh off their boats from across the North Sea, were forced, by centuries of constant battles and punishments, into the shape of one kingdom, the England we know today.

In other ways it is a disappointment.

Hasn't stopped me, though, in my quest to learn more, hence I've ordered "The Norman Conquest".