Paul Strathern (2011)

A well-paced and diverse account of a critical piece of European political and intellectual history.

The subject of the book is the clash of ideas between modernism and fundamentalism, as respectively represented by Lorenzo de’ Medici and Girolamo Savonarola. Florence and Italy more widely provide a stage set with a range of characters, both those intent on their own betterment and those devoted to higher causes. The book manages to navigate a path between the ideas in play and the sometimes squalid and violent means with which these ends were pursued.

There are enormous ironies in these ends, too. Savonarola was a fundamentalist who wanted to introduce more democratic forms, and which gave rise to many modern ideas of governance – but abhorred the freedoms that such democratic ideas brought with them. Lorenzo kept tight political control but allowed great freedoms to the citizens, whilst being unable to distinguish between what was good for Florence and what was good for the Medici – and recalled Savonarola to Florence to be both a moral force and an ornament to the city’s greatness, laying the foundations for the end of Medici rule.

As in his other book on Mediaeval Italy, The Artist, the Philosopher, and the Warrior: The Intersecting Lives of Da Vinci, Machiavelli, and Borgia and the World They Shaped, Strathern shows an well-balanced sense of character and an ability to juggle a range of sources of variable trustworthiness. He also has a keen eye for anecdotes: my two favourites are the shock that the arrival of French armies trained in full-on Northern European warfare caused for Italian armies used to a far more civilised form of warfare in which few people er actually got killed; and how the phrase esperimento del fuoco (trial by fire) gave rise to the word “experiment”, a trial to which some facet of the world was subjected. He deftly manages the difficult task of making clear the bewildering changes of political alliances that were characteristic of Italian politics of the period. And he sets the clash of ideas into the broader context of the Renaissance, the Reformation, and both Luther’s debt to Savonarola and the fact that Savonarola would have hated all Luther stood for: another paradox in a complex man.

It’s easy to see the parallels with the modern world and the struggle between democracy and fundamentalist religion, but Strathern is too goo a historian to avoid the complexities that history beings to this comparison. Savonarola the fundamentalist was also Savonarola the democrat; Lorenzo the autocrat was also a committed and in many ways conservative religious figure. The modern concepts and dualities don’t translate back to the fifteenth century, much as many might like them to, and this book is an important guide to the ways in which ideas mutate over time.

5/5. Finished Saturday 30 May, 2015.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

Morrissey (2013)

Not a charming man.

I’m a Smiths fan, which at some level makes me a Morrissey fan ipso facto. And some of the poetic writing in this book is sublime, full of insight and inspiration. But the person looking out of the pages is the most ungracious, self-indulgent version of himself it’s possible to imagine. From the mean streets of Manchester, through the roller-coaster ride of the Smiths, and then to court and a solo career, few people emerge unscathed, thanked, or even broadly acknowledged as helpers or influences.

I grew up not far away from Morrissey, in space and time, and I recognise a lot of his criticisms of Northern England in the 70’s and 80’s: he and I actually met once on the streets of Gorton in the mid 80’s. But there’s something compellingly surreal about his self-image as a tortured and mis-understood artist whose project is repeatedly sabotaged. None of the Smiths’ records seem to be mixed to his tastes, although he was there and exercised at least a measure of control; no interviews went well, although they were more co-ordinated than spontaneous. He seems to see his solo career as a zenith, although I suspect most of his fans are waiting more or less impatiently for Smiths riffs and flashes of past insights. And I think he may know that at some level: there are lines from Smiths lyrics thrown in at strategic points of the story, as jewels for those in the know.

2/5. Finished Friday 22 May, 2015.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

Ian V. Hogg (1999)

A somewhat-more-technical-than-expected look at Nazi secret weapons programmes. Having said that, it does give some surprising insights into topics that most people (and definitely me) won’t have thought of before, like different designs for fuses. I suspect most people will find the chapter on the V-weapons the most interesting, but for me it was run to a close second my the chapter on artillery, which ranges from rail guns for attacking fixed fortification, through long-range bombardment cannons, to taper-bore light anti-tank weapons. Not exactly light reading, but informative about topics most histories treat as unimportant.

3/5. Finished Saturday 9 May, 2015.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

Piers Paul Read (2012)

An excellent telling of one of the strangest, most influential, and least remembered judicial-political scandals of the 19th century. Read deftly navigates the twists and turns of “The Affair”, as it became known, with its cast of shady characters, officers, politicians, forgers, and spies.

It’s an anti-Semitism that comes across most shockingly, letters-to-the-editor type abuses of Jews that would be unsurprising in a history of Nazi Germany but are unexpectedly vehement in a history of France. It serves as a reminder that anti-Semitism was a force across the continent in the early years of the 20th century, and Read traces many of the effects that it had on the conduct of both World Wars. Altogether a fascinating read.

4/5. Finished Wednesday 29 April, 2015.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)