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Harrier 809
Rowland White 2020 (Penguin 2021)



"April 1982. Argentina invades the Falkland Islands.
In response, Britain despatches a naval Task Force. Eight thousand miles from home, its fate hinges on just twenty Sea Harriers against the two hundred-strong might of the Argentine Air Force.
The odds against them are overwhelming.
The MoD’s own estimates suggest that half the Harriers will be lost within a week. Against this background, 809 Naval Air Squadron is reformed, trained and sent south to fight.
Not since WWII had so much been expected of such a small band of pilots.
Combining groundbreaking research with the pace of a thriller, Rowland White reveals the full story of the fleet’s knife-edge fight for
survival for the first time, and shows how the little jump jet went from airshow novelty to sealing its reputation as an icon of British aviation, alongside the Spitfire and the Hurricane"

It can be a little difficult to keep track of all the personnel and its packed with military acronyms (a glossary is provided) but it's still an exciting read.
The Ukraine war has highlighted how our forces have been bled dry by politicians and civil servants who would much rather appease the scum media by spunking another ten billion on a third rate socialist health bureaucracy rather than adequately defend the country, and it was no different forty years ago. If the Argies had waited a couple of years the carriers would have been sold off and retaking the islands would have been impossible. Jeremy Cunt and Sir Humphrey Blairite in the treasury should take note.

Ozma of Oz
L. Frank Baum 1907 (Puffin 1985)



"A thrilling adventure is in store for Dorothy and her new friends, Tik-Tok the copper man and Billina the talking hen, when they meet the beautiful Princess Ozma, ruler of the Emerald City. Ozma has travelled to the Land of Ev to free the Queen and her ten royal children from a life of imprisonment in the powerful Nome King's dank underground world. Among the members of Ozma's magnificent procession, marching to the rescue, are Dorothy's beloved friends from Oz, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman and the Cowardly Lion."

Another fun little adventure from the bizarre imagination of L. Frank Baum. I don't know what he was smoking but it was good shit.
Tik-Tok is, according to wikipedia, only the second robot to appear in literature (before the word robot was invented). The clockwork automaton always seems to wind down at crucial moments and commentators claim that it is a design flaw that he is unable to wind himself up. Surely though, if he could do that then he would be a perpetual motion machine - which just goes to show that Baum knew that the Laws of Thermodynamics also apply in Oz.

I Got References
Gerald Kersh 1939 (Michael Joseph 1939)



"I Got References takes a form not commonly represented in publishers' lists. It contains a bit of my life, a bit of other people's lives, and a bit of autobiography and biography in a fictionalised form. The result , I fear, is neither fish nor fowl nor good red herring. But I think it forms a whole. And if that whole makes for entertainment, then the book will have achieved its object."

These tales may be fact, fiction or a mixture of the two but they're all very enjoyable. So far I've only read Kersh's short stories and I fancy having a go at his novels if I can get hold of them at a reasonable price. That might be difficult given how expensive some of the long out of print collections are.

Culloden 1746
Peter Harrington 1991 (Osprey 1991)



"Culloden marks the end of the last and greatest of the Jacobite adventures - the '45 Rebellion. After two stunning victories over government troops and an epic march into England, the Jacobite army was finally brought to bay on the windswept landscape of Culloden Moor. Peter Harrington details this campaign and its cataclysmic end"

We booted the Stuarts out in 1688 because we wanted Kings to be answerable to parliament, but a bunch of feudalistic Caledonian tribesmen decided to try and reimpose an absolute monarchy on England, just because the Stuarts were Scottish. After a couple of debacles at Prestonpans and Falkirk they got their richly deserved comeuppance at Culloden. Cumberland was a competent general, well liked by his men (half of whom were Scottish). Charles less so, and it wasn't so much a battle as a rout.
As for "butcher" Cumberland, the Jacobites were despatched quickly on the battlefield or running away from it instead of being dragged down to Edinburgh to be drawn and quartered, the usual punishment for treason.

Another good entry in the Campaign series sliphtly marred by the author's mild sympathy for the Jacobites.

Just William Through the Ages
Mary Cadogan 1994 (Macmillan 1995)



"The Browns' house started as a mansion with stables and summer house, finally shrinking to a suburban semi. The cook, housemaid and gardener of the twenties are replaced by a daily. The war years take there toll: Monster Humbug sweets shoot up in price and decline in suckability. Then the air-raid warden is pensioned off and television begins to take over from vicarage tea parties... Mary Cadogan has provided a lively survey of the changing times of the home counties tearaway."

William is my favourite character in children's fiction. First published in 1919, a year after the Great War and ending in 1970, a year after the moon landing, society underwent big changes during this time but William apparently stayed aggressively obstreperous to the end.
Most of the books were last published over twenty years ago and given that the big publishers have been captured by woke censors and bedwetting bowdlerisers, they probably won't see print again although it would be fun to see their attempts at sanitisation given the risibly moronic Dahl rewrites published recently by Penguin.

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
James Hogg 1824 (Penguin 2006)



"James Hogg's Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824) has been called 'the greatest novel of Scotland'. Robert Wringhim's family is composed of a father and brother, a pious mother, and a rival father in the person of a fanatical Calvinist minister. He comes to believe that he is one of the Elect, predestined to be saved, while others are damned. Sure of his freedom from the dictates of morality, he embarks on a series of crimes in the company of a new friend Gil Martin, a man of many likenesses who can be mistaken for Robert, and who explains that they are as one in the holy work of purifying the world. Who or what is this double? Is he the Devil? The divided self that appears in the literature of Romanticism is nowhere more powerfully imagined. It also contains two of Hogg's most interesting stories, Marion's Jock and John Gray o' Middleholm." (blurb)

The story is told twice by a narrator in the third person and then as the first person memoir of the "justified sinner". The first part provides "evidence" that Gil Martin is a demonic presence and that's the way I read it. The story illustrates a phenomenon which still blights us today, which is how religious nutters are often willing to kill in support of their idiotic beliefs.
The two short stories are much lighter in tone and quite amusing once you tune in to the scots dialect.
Listed in "1001 Books..." and "Horror: The 100 Best Books"

Science Fiction The 101 Best Novels 1985-2010
Damien Broderick & Paul Di Filippo 2012 (Nonstop Press 2012)



The David Pringle book ended in 1984 and this one makes a selection from the next 25 years.
I've read 13 of the first 32 to 1992 and none from later except for "The Time Travellers Wife" from the Mills and Boon SF range which was pushed on me as a kind of book club read. Why nothing after 1992? One of the selections is C. J. Cherryh's "Cyteen" which Is interminably long and dull and not only put me off science fiction but put me off fiction full stop. The fact that the 101 includes books like this and the Niffenegger but omits Dan Simmons' Hyperion books does not bode well but I'm determined to give them my best shot. If any more Cyteens turn up I won't hestitate give them the Clive Barker treatment and boot them into touch.

The Quantum Thief
Hannu Rajaniemi 2010 (Gollancz 2011)



"Centuries in the future, Jean le Flambeur is a master thief, imprisoned in a virtual-reality jail: every day he makes choices, and dies, and is reborn. Until he’s freed by a violent woman named Mieli from the edge of the solar system, and taken to Mars. There, he must regain old memories he locked away from all possible recovery when he was literally a far different person than he is now. A youthful detective, hi-tech superheroes, and posthuman intelligences are waiting to complicate his task, which seems to have ramifications on an interplanetary scale." (Black Gate)

In the Sf pulp era stories would often explain their futuristic plot elements and technologies using a conversation between characters. This was often a laughably clunky technique but at least the reader knew what was going on. Today the opposite approach of not explaining anything and leaving the reader bewildered seems to be fashionable. I was clueless about what was going on in this book and even looking it up on wikipedia didn't help much. One critic thinks that makes me a "lazy reader" whereas I think that Guardian chap is an "arrogant reviewer".
My first read and most recent entry in "101 Best 1985-2010". Not a good start.

World History
Philip Parker 2010 (Doring Kindersley 2012)



The whole of world history in bite sized chunks. If you're like me and totally ignorant about most eras of history in most of parts the world it will give you a feel for it. As it recounts the events of more recent times the information is more familiar and less useful. Published in 2010 so the final entries are on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which were still ongoing. There's also a nice little reference section at the back with lists of battles and inventions through the ages.
Just the ticket for the 10-minute read before bye-byes.

The Drummer Boy
Leon Garfield 1970 (Peacock 1973)



The book starts with a British defeat on the battlefield. The name and year of the battle are not mentioned but one old man mentions he fought with Marlborough, which was the first decade of the 18th century and so it's likely to be the War of the Austrian succession or the Seven Years War in the 1740s or 50s. The survivors have a two day walk, or about 50 miles, to the French coast and Fontenoy in 1745 seems to be the best fit. Cumberland was the commander at Fontenoy and while praised for his courage, was criticised for his generalship. After Fontenoy the army was withdrawn back home to deal with the Jacobite rebellion where he did a much better job.

As for the book, Charlie Samson is the drummer boy who survives the battle and the book follows his adventures as he falls in with some scavenging rogues from his own side and promises to deliver a dying soldier's message to his sweetheart. A good read from the days before the censors and thought police had captured the world of children's publishing.

The author won the Carnegie Medal in 1970 and also received a nomination for this book in the same year.