A Review By Keith Smith

No doubt you will be familiar with the tv series in which we follow Michael Portillo’s train journeys around the country using his Bradshaw. It was amazing to us that no-one had planned to re-print it before now. When the first series was shown we were inundated with requests for it. Anyhow here it is, and fascinating reading it makes too. Mind you, Bradshaw doesn’t make too much of Warwick…” a dull town..”. However he does go on to give a detailed account of the castle..”one of the finest specimens in the kingdom of the ancient residences of our feudal ancestors”. Leamington is his preference…”fifty years since (it) was an obscure and humble village..(and) is now, though still rural and picturesque, become a large and handsome town…and is proverbial for being better paved, lighted, and regulated, than any other town of its size in the kingdom.”

Whatever his particular views, it remains an utterly absorbing guide as to how the town and country looked in 1863. You can’t help but dip in, and follow his routes across the ever-widening rail network, and compare then with now. A ‘must-have’ book.

A Review By Keith Smith

Greece in the age of Heroes as the jacket says. We follow the intertwined lives of Patroclus, a teenage prince exiled to Phthia, and his hero Achilles. They become friends and then lovers and then kinsmen set for war…the Trojan War. What is startlingly original about this book is that not only do we follow Achilles and Patroclus through all their trials and tribulations (and homo-erotic love which plays a large part in proceedings), but we follow the Greek Gods as real beings whose interplay with humans is an accepted fact of life. And it does work well. We accept the Gods, and their characterization, without concession as they are so convincing.
The Trojan War comes to dominate proceedings of course, and we become embroiled in all the machinations governing events. Fascinating stuff, exciting and full of interest. I really enjoyed the book and for those who want to learn something of those times a great read…..

A Review By Keith Smith
David who lives in Warwick is well-known to most of you particularly if you attend Warwick Words. He has written more than a handful of local books but now has set down in writing what is one of his favourite topics for the many talks he gives himself…PMs from the Midlands and PMs associated, however slightly with the Midlands. Although well-researched, this is not an ultra-serious booklet but something to be enjoyed and dip into. I love some of the stories he tells particularly of times when the House was very important in itself and the place to be. There was Lord North PM and representative of Banbury on the front bench during a lengthy stint when an honourable member opposite accused him of being asleep. He did indeed have his eyes closed, but immediately opened one eye and said
“I wish to God I were!”
Once upon waking from a doze during a protracted speech by Lord Grenville he interjected
“Zounds! You have waked me a hundred years too soon”
But that’s Lord North…you’ll be amazed who else you find in here as David covers might-have-beens too. Everyone from the Chamberlains to George Brown. No wonder the material is good!

A Review By The Rev’d David R. Boulton.
This is the second part of Robert Graves’ two-part masterpiece about Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus Britannicus, the fifth of the six Caesars, the first part being I Claudius, which tells the long story of his accession to power, having survived Augusts, Tiberius, and the mad Gaius Caligula. Some see it as a sequal to the first part, but for me it is the first part that is merely a prelude, and Claudius the God which is the meat of the story.

Claudius was considered a pitiful idiot, but his reign as reluctant Emperor (he wished nothing more than to restore the ancient Republic), which included the conquest of Britain, proves him to have been anything but. He was sustained by the common people and the soldiery in his efforts to repair the damage caused by the reign of his nephew, Gaius Caligula. His downfall was brought about by his unwise marriage to the very beautiful but totally corrupt and sexually licentious Messalina, who could and did, twist him round her little finger. When his eyes were finally opened to Messalina’s foul iniquities and treachery, his vengance was swift and terrible, but he never got over his love for Messalina and never recovered his equanimity. Thereafter, he actively promoted Lucius Domitius (Nero), the son of the dreadful Agrippina whom he now married, as his heir in order that Rome might be compelled to learn necessary Republican wisdom from the terrible experiences that Claudius knew Nero’s reign would bring.

Claudius the God is a brilliant and masterful faux historical reconstruction, cast in the form of Claudius’ own memoirs. But it is more than an historical tour de force, becuase in the lame and stammering Claudius, Robert Graves has created a literary masterpiece, a character to compare with any of Dickens’ gallery of memorable creations; or indeed with Shakespeare’s Sir John Falstaff. Older readers will not be able to forget the remarkable performances of Sir Dereck Jacobbi in the role of Claudius, Brian Blessed as Augustus, Stanley Baker as Tiberius and John Hurt as the damaged Caligula, in the nineteen-seventies BBC TV production of this remarkable work.

This was my third or forth reading, and I find something new in it every time.

A Review By Zoe Boulton

This is another novel that I have been intending to read since it was published. As it is a ghost story, and Christmas always seems like a good time to read a ghost story, I read it over the holiday period a couple of weeks ago.

Set in an old Warwickshire country mansion after WW2, down country lanes not far from here, The Little Stranger sees country GP, Dr. Faraday becoming entangled with the troubled lives of the Ayres family who live at Hundreds Hall. Dr. Faraday was fascinated by the house as a small boy, his mother had worked there as a servant, and one bright summer’s afternoon he defaced the beautiful plaster border decorating the hallway by removing an ornamental acorn with his pocket knife. Thirty years later, he arrived back at the house to treat an unhappy servant, and is shocked at the tumble-down state of the building, and the genteel poverty of the remaining family. He becomes ever more involved with their lives as terrifying and inexplicible things begin to happen.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, I couldn’t put it down. I love that it is set in Warwickshire, I went to school in a former regency era house, which was filled with plaster ceiling decorations, marble fireplaces, old call bells, and quite a bit of mould sprouting behind the wallpaper. It wasn’t difficult to imagine myself walking around Hundreds Hall. The story itself slowly builds up to become chilling, and intertwines class divides, obsession, changing social attitudes with a traditional style ghost story. It is brilliant, perfect for reading on wintery afternoons.