Warren Loveridge

Between the immediacy of Moss's largely unreconstructed diary entries and frequent reference to Google Images, I was transported almost complete to wartime Crete, my own grandfather's WW2 stomping ground. By the time the book was done, I felt like I'd marched the trails with Moss and General Kreipe. This, I think, is the greatest praise I can offer this excellent true adventure story.

I think I will give this book a full five stars. I would never claim it is perfect, but it meets my criteria, at least, of “it was amazing”. Perhaps “I loved it” would be a better measure of five stars here on Goodreads. If your aim is to provide a reader with a rich, rewarding, readable and fabulously illustrated introduction to early China, from the early Shang kings to the Tang Dynasty of the 7th to 9th centuries A.D., I cannot conceive any better way of achieving it.

I've probably expressed it elsewhere, but it bears repeating. We are a poorer world for the loss of Time-Life books.

Not to Attenborough's usual standard. The prose is rushed and the proof-reading poor. I suspect a rush-job made under a tight deadline, for TV tie-in purposes.

When an author publishes around 80 novels over the course of his career, it might be expected that quality lies somewhat in quantity's shadow. However Robert Standish provides a pleasant surprise, with a well written, tightly constructed novel that explores the divide between East and West in Republican China. I won't kid you, he's not Graham Greene. His dialogue can clunk a little at times, and he's not given to descriptive passages, which tends to limit his ability to evoke time and place. He expounds on his central theme just a little too much. Nevertheless, Standish turns in a thoughtful and entertaining novel which was a pleasure to read.

Occasionally dry and perhaps a little too obsessed with the sexual peccadilloes of the Greeks and Romans, Lane Fox still manages to furnish us with a magnificent overview of the two greatest civilisations of the ancient world. His own opinions and conclusions colour the book to a degree, but the subject is both infinite and infinitely debatable anyway, and Lane Fox, with his focus on themes of liberty, luxury and justice, is an expert guide on a single route into a vast territory.

Some of these early stories by Wells really show their age; others are the product of a yet unpolished talent. But sprinkled throughout are enough of excellence to make the effort worthwhile.

I cannot rate this book. I swung like a pendulum between thinking it the best novel I've ever read, and by far the worst. Certainly the most difficult and dense, but equally the most rewarding. I'm very pleased I did read it; I was also relieved when it was over. Some parts seared themselves into my brain, others I skimmed uncomprehendingly. But by the end of it I felt that I had come to know the extraordinary, mercurial El Supremo, and I glimmered with a tiny understanding of Paraguay. These have to be worth something...

Twain's incredible wit and imagination is always present, but sometimes The American Claimant descends into plain silliness, and this mars the novel for me.

I enjoyed this story of Whittle, but I felt that it was unfairly biased. There's no denying the trials and tribulations Whittle endured, and the opposition he overcame, to get his engine in the air. But the authors (Golley and Bill Gunston) have a tendency to paint everybody else as villains determined to stand in Whittle's way, undermine him, appropriate his inventions, and deny him any sort of success or recognition. It is essential to read other works on this critical period of aviation history in order to get a better sense of balance. Sir Stanley Hooker's “Not Much Of An Engineer” provided me with another perspective; and my son has directed me to other, less partisan works that I intend to read.

Another reviewer somewhere around here accuses this book of “deadly prose”. I think he/she nails it nicely. In order to squeeze the enormous scope of this subject into just 211 reading pages, of which considerable acreage is taken up by illustrations, Professor Hatton (whose authority and immense knowledge cannot be questioned) hurls bare facts at us like a hailstorm. The section on the War of the Spanish Succession might be the single most stultifying account of anything I've ever read! It was a real chew. But nevertheless, as a handy reference this book has its place, and the illustrations are comprehensive and, er, illuminating.

An extraordinary accomplishment.

This is really an essay rather than a biography. Chesterton's conversion to, and enthusiasm for, Catholicism somewhat taints his judgement, to the detriment of his usual excellent sense, but he writes superbly as always, and one comes away with new insights and plenty of food for thought.

I kept dipping into this book over a period of 3 years before finally finishing it. Unless you're already at least generally familiar with the entire period of decline, Gibbon is best read in conjunction with other material. He is frequently dense, and often vague, and to read him directly without preparation can be an exercise in frustration. The Decline And Fall is not a text book. It is Gibbon's great tale. He can be oblique, almost impenetrable at times, but if you are not fettered by having to decipher his references, or the effort of keeping up with the flood of his thoughts, he suddenly comes alive in the most magical way. You can't put him down. You discover that you're caught in the spell of a master of entertainment, comment, critique and dry wit.

Low's masterful abridgement concentrates on removing sections rather than condensing Gibbon's extraordinary prose. As a primer for full fat Gibbon, I don't believe it has been bettered.

This is not a normal autobiography, and of this Jung warns us at the very outset. The external facts of his long life are given scant attention, if any, and he instead recounts his physical and spiritual development, his internal journey. So forewarned, you will find this a fascinating book by a remarkable man. Only the last section, “Late Thoughts”, in which Jung describes some ideas he felt should be taken into account by any future biographers, proved too dense for me, but the problem lies at my doorstep, not Jung's.

I have to admit that I was disappointed to discover that Bollingen was just a small, stubby, vaguely tower-like house. I'd always imagined it like a great, soaring structure of stone in which Jung lived high above the earth, close to heaven and the mysteries of the universe, a holy man of science and the spirit. Well, Bollingen may have descended a little closer to the earth, but in no way has Carl Jung.

I've been reading the Hornblower series in chronological order and, having completed “Lord Hornblower”, I've only “Hornblower In The West Indies” left (a handful of short stories excepted). This close to the end, it is “Lord Hornblower” that I have enjoyed the least of all. Hornblower is a complex, faulty character, admirable and unlikable in equal turns, drawn by Forester with great depth, skill and insight. Each book takes us deep into his extraordinary head.

But in Lord Hornblower we perhaps get a little too much of Hornblower's psyche, and not enough story. And Hornblower's psyche can wear a little thin. I can't decide at this point whether I like him or not. He veers too far into self-analysis, and emerges in self-pity. His infidelity with Marie discomforts me enormously. Perhaps because by this point I have come to greatly admire Barbara, Lady Hornblower. Perhaps because I'm reluctantly aware of my own weaknesses, and Hornblower reflects them more than I really care to admit. Perhaps it's the way Forester moves quickly on from Hornblower's grief following the deaths of Bush and Marie. Hornblower is made to seem a little colder and more detached than usual, although I consider this Forester's doing more than Hornblower's.

It's difficult, I'm not analytical enough to pin it down completely, but I wasn't transported so completely into this book as the others in the series. Nevertheless, even Forester's worst Hornblower novel is a fine read, and if you've got this far you've no choice. But be prepared for a little disappointment.

Mostly to the very high standard of all The Seafarers series, but one thing perplexes me: Amerigo Vespucci is reduced to a very brief passing mention. It almost feels as if he was wilfully glossed over, whilst the author clearly worshipped Magellan. For what I perceive as imbalance I have to take a star off.

This selection of narratives from Richard Hakluyt's epochal “The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffics and Discoveries of the English Nation” (1582) is veering rather close to primary source material, so it presents a challenging read. Payne's editing is minimal, restricted mostly to modernising the spelling, substituting a handful of (possibly offensive) terms, and removing some of the more superfluous passages. We are presented with lightly reconstituted first person accounts, with all their imperfections and juddering narrative flow. The value is, of course, in the wealth of first hand detail. But don't expect an easy read. It can be in turns tedious, difficult to follow, virtually unintelligible, or downright fascinating. The notes are useful, but the major faults of this particular volume include a lack of maps of any detail, or a supplementary timeline.

Whilst interesting, and at times entertaining, I couldn't help but feel that this small book, which essentially charts Maugham's senile decline, was a prurient and opportunistic attempt by Robin Maugham to cash in on his uncle.

In this I am reminded of Robin's notorious and successful attempt to blackmail the elder Maugham in 1962. Having informed his uncle that the American publisher Victor Weybright had offered him an advance of $50,000 to write Maugham's biography, Robin pointed out that he couldn't afford to turn down such a good offer. Maugham saw the writing on the wall, Robin having been privy to his erotic and emotional involvements with other men since he was a teenager, and so he responded by sending Robin a check for the equivalent amount. Robin then gave his word that he would never write a biography of Maugham. “I'm really awfully shy about all this, but I'm also very ­grateful,” he said.

This book is by no means a biography. But it does represent a breaking of Robin's word, and ultimately it is an own-goal. By the end I had a developed a far greater regard for the waspish, senile Maugham than for his duplicitous nephew.

A life as long and full as Winston Churchill's cannot be captured adequately in one volume. Mr Guedalla reviews events up to 1941, when the world was gripped by peak Winston, and the story still had a quarter of a century to run. Necessarily, he omits a great deal of detail, at times glancing superficially over events and even entire periods. But detail is replaced with insightful depth, an occasional enlightening flash of the biographer's colours, and a great deal of dry, even acerbic, wit. As an introduction to the extraordinary life of Winston Churchill, up to the opening minutes of his finest hour, I do not think a more entertaining book exists.

I found this book provided a greater insight into Churchill the man than any biography I've read. Chapters are contributed by everybody from Churchill's secretary to President Eisenhower, and even Adolf Hitler gets a say (by means of excerpts from his speeches). The accounts are personal, intimate and wide-ranging. A remarkable picture of a remarkable human being emerges. For anybody with an interest in Winston Churchill, or the period which he defined, this book is essential reading.

The Third Man:

Broken postwar Vienna is translocated to a cold and barren winter in the heart of Greeneland in this short, pithy novella, a rare example of the book and the movie being equally great. I only knock a star off due to the occasional clumsiness of the first-person narrative device. Sometimes it confuses, and Greene frequently falls into the trap of allowing Calloway to provide far more detail than he could possibly know about situations he is relating secondhand. But even an imperfect Greene is better than most writers' best. He remains, for me, the master.

An interesting true tale, unfortunately rendered a little tedious by this sometimes muddled book.

I can't truthfully say I enjoyed this book, despite my love of Graham Greene. Being Greene, the writing soars at times, but for the most part I struggled with the tedium, which may simply reflect the tedium of the journey itself. Clearly Greene himself struggles with it. He makes vague claims about casting off civilised sophistication and searching for the primitive self, but I do struggle with his motivations for undertaking such a miserable trek. Hundreds of miles of monotonous jungle, village after festering village, will-sapping heat, mosquitos, jiggers, an endless fight to keep the hired native carriers in line, and the ever-present risk of running out of whiskey. Perhaps it all seemed like a good idea at the time? I remember once thinking the same thing about a holiday on the Gold Coast...

For reasons known only to Greene, he chooses to dispense of the female cousin who accompanied him with just the occasional mention, and in the end we know next to nothing of her, or her journey. And it's hard to not notice Greene's fascination with black breasts. One wonders whether he was aware of it as he wrote, or whether it infected the manuscript in cod-Freudian fashion. Perhaps it was simply the novelty of exposed boobs? They weren't common in post-Victorian England, as we all know.

Anyway, by the time Greene made the beach at Monrovia, I was only too glad to climb into the surf boat with him and board the steamer that whisked us away from 1930s Liberia. He'd had enough. So had I.

Moll Flanders is an engaging character. I lost count of the number of husbands she accumulated, and the children she abandoned, but even as she lies, deceives, connives and steals her way through life, I cannot help liking her. It is her frankness, her complete awareness of her own failings and, ironically, her honesty.

Defoe provides us not only with one of literature's greatest characters, but also an exceptional account of the social conditions and thinking that prevailed in late 17th/early 18th century England. For all of its faults, and they're there to be found, “Moll Flanders” is a fascinating book, an essential read.

I suspect that, were I to look back through my Goodreads reviews, I'd find other instances where I've proclaimed a work to the be the greatest novel ever written. I may win no awards for consistency, but at the time of writing the sentiment was very genuine. And Herman Wouk managed to invoke it strongly. The Caine Mutiny, astonishing in its detail and its tight and flawless construction, may actually be very far from the best novel ever written, but by the time I reluctantly turned the last page I was sure, while the afterglow lasted, that it was unbeatable.