ACT OF OBLIVION - book review

 

Robert Harris’s 2022 novel Act of Oblivion is yet another bestseller, and justifiably so.

It begins in 1660, after Charles II has been proclaimed king (the Restoration). In the new regime those involved in the trial and execution of Charles I are hunted by the regicide committee of the Privy Council and ‘brought to justice’, charged with regicide. A small number of individuals have fled to the Continent; two, however, have sought sanctuary in the other direction, the American colonies: Colonel Edward (Ned) Whalley and his son-in-law Colonel William Goffe.

Richard Nayler, secretary of the regicide committee has his personal reasons to hound Whalley and Goffe. The majority of individuals in the novel existed; Nayler is an exception, though it’s highly likely somebody like him did exist. ‘… a most useful shadow; a shadow who causes things to happen’ (p41).

The Act of Oblivion of 1660 effectively pardoned everyone who had committed crimes during the English Civil War (1642-1649) with a few heinous exceptions, particularly those individuals named in the actual death of Charles I. The Interregnum was to be legally forgotten. Unfortunately, ‘There is no end to it. Only four men were to die for murdering the King. Then we found records of the trial… and the four became eight, then twelve and now there are dozens of them’ (p44).

The story and much of the hunt takes place in Massachusetts, New Haven, Connecticut, Germany, France, and London. Harris conveys the period with deft visual word-strokes that put the reader in the scene, amidst the squalor of London and the strangely beguiling New World, as well as the sinister dark panelled recesses of powerful men.

‘The destitute of London, mere bundles of rags, crouched in the shadows of the walls. Wounded veterans, missing limbs and hobbling on crutches, swung themselves between the graves. A fearful, horrid place, it seemed to him, more a prison than a hospital. It reminded him of his long period of sickness after Naseby, and the gaol where he was kept after his wife had died’ (p80).

Harris does not flinch from showing the appalling graphic beastliness of the time, notably when Nayler is tasked by the Lord Chancellor Hyde with exhuming the corpse of Cromwell. Nayler is not keen on the ‘foul work’: ‘Since when did that deter you? The idea is certainly not mine, believe me. But Parliament commands it, and really, Mr Nayler, if you cannot find any more living regicides to bring to justice, you might as well at least employ yourself in hanging the dead’ (p121). On 30 January Cromwell’s body and two others were hanged in view of thousands of witnesses and towards the day’s end decapitated, their heads impaled on poles above Westminster Hall, the trunks tipped into a common grave.

There are many instances where Harris’s descriptions put the reader in the scene. ‘No sun tempered the iron frost, just the occasional flurry of snow and a grey sky so heavy it seemed to press all the colour from the buildings. Time itself felt frozen’ (p17). And of course much of their time in hiding would be like that, empty days blending together…

 ‘… stood in the water, inhaling the peace of the wood, the scent of the pine resin, the cooing of the pigeons, the gentle splash of the flow over the stones. Midges swirled above the surface, like dust thrown into a shaft of sunlight; occasionally a fish rose to a mayfly’ (p226). [Though he couldn’t inhale cooing and splashing of water; a semi-colon missing, perhaps].

‘The waves breaking on the shore made a sound no louder than an intake of breath, followed by a long withdrawing sigh’ (p313).

During his investigations in Holland, Nayler encounters ‘the Blackamoor, a ship of the Royal Africa Company, owned by the Duke of York, that lay moored in Rotterdam’ (p273). A topical reminder concerning the slave trade of the period. One regicide, Sir John Lisle, was living under the pseudonym of Mr Field in Switzerland. [Coincidentally, a character in recently reviewed Michael Connelly’s The Black Echo, Billy Meadows, used the pseudonym Fields!] Nayler’s thirst for vengeance acknowledged no obstacles…

This was the time when New Amsterdam was taken from the Dutch and became New York (pp323, 357) which would mean war between the two nations.

During their lengthy periods of hiding the two fugitive regicides dwell on the past, in particular their association with Cromwell: ‘One could never be sure with Oliver. Ambition and godliness, self-interest and the higher cause, the base metal entwined with the gold’ (p342).

Also covered in the story are the terrible Black Death and the Great Fire of London; both well realised.

This is a gripping book about an unrelenting manhunt right up to the last two pages.

Excellent writing and storytelling!

Editorial comment

A minor quibble, which I appreciate as a writer: the book is in four parts – Hunt, 1660; Chase, 1661; Hide, 1662; and Kill, 1674. Yet (inevitably) those dates are exceeded by the storyline; for example on p308 (Hide) it is 1664, and of course the Plague and Fire were in 1666; perhaps inclusive dates would have been more appropriate.

Part vs Book. I’m pleased to see that as the book is broken into parts, the chapter numbering continues. In some books, when instead of Part, the divisions are referred to as Books , in some of these cases the chapter numbering still continues. Logically, in my view, if a book is broken into Parts, the chapter numbering continues; if it is broken into Books, then each Book begins with a chapter one.

History lesson for POTUS Biden:

The two principal New York boroughs were King’s (for King Charles) and Queen’s (for Queen Catherine); while the first is now Brooklyn, the second has retained its English royal name. The Duke of York granted control of the land between the Hudson and Delaware rivers to John, Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret. They named the land ‘New Jersey’ after the island of Jersey in the English Channel where Carteret was born. Shortly after the Restoration Charles II granted a wide tract of North America to a group of nobles who founded the colony of Carolina (from the Latin form of their monarch’s name) and its capital was Charlestown.

FFB - Perfect Cover

It seemed that Perfect Cover, co-authored by Linda Chase and Joyce St George, published in 1994, promised to be the first in a series, but that didn’t happen.

The events in this book are inspired by actual experiences and cases that Joyce St. George encountered during her six years as the first female special investigator for the Special State Prosecutor, an arm of the NY State Attorney General’s office: to investigate and prosecute cases of corruption and brutality within the criminal justice system of New York city. An interesting mix of third and first person narratives is deployed so we can get inside other characters’ heads as well as that of tough sexy half-Puerto Rican Tina Paris.

Tina is trying to nail a nasty piece of work, police officer Calvert, while a nameless psycho picks up young women and plays Russian roulette with a revolver while raping them… Inevitably, a woman is killed.

The in-depth description of Tina’s work undercover, the frustrations of police duty, the prevarications of witnesses frightened for their lives, and the dedication of many NY cops, add to a fast-paced story where many threads come together in a suspense-filled denouement.

 

FFB - Expressway

Elleston Trevor (1920-1995) wrote Expressway as Howard North (1973). This version was released under his own name, 1975 (he changed his name from Trevor Dudley-Smith); he was British, lived in France and Spain and finally settled in Arizona. 

Trevor used quite a variety of pennames – see this site for a listing - http://bookitinc.com/checklists/EllestonTrevor.shtml - such as Adam Hall, Simon Rattray, Roger Fitzalan, Mansell Black, Trevor Burgess, Warwick Scott, Caesar Smith and Lesley Stone.

 

Expressway is a documentary novel in the same vein as Arthur Hailey’s Airport and Hotel, as the cover of my version says. Mainly omniscient in point of view, it still works in a strong cinematic sense. The story is about the holiday weekend of 3-5 July on and around the New York - New Jersey Parkway, early 1970s.

It’s about those who drive and ride in vehicles and it’s also about the cars themselves. In the pearl-finish Cougar, Walt and Carol Amberton can’t talk about the alcohol that’s destroying them. In the black Cadillac, the sinister Mr Solo is ‘cruising, searching, waiting to see at first-hand a fatal accident’. In the Buick Riviera, Dr Brett Hagen is trying to find his teenage daughter, Tracy, and her companion, a man old enough to be her father. In the Chrysler Newport, Rod Gould and Nat Renatus ‘start the weekend with murder and bring death along with them.’ Then there’s the married couple, Floyd and Sue, expecting their first baby any week now; and Erica, running away from her husband Craig, and highway cop Lieutenant Frank Ingram and his paramedic wife Debby, whose lives are not improved by the officious unhelpful interference of Captain Darrow… Suspense, tension and action in a jam-packed holiday weekend.

Figures are now out of date, naturally, but the carnage is still shocking. ‘… on the Fourth of July holiday last year the national figures for death on the road reached a new peak at 917, while more than 36,000 persons were injured…’ It begins with an overview of the area and homes in on Patrolman Nolan who is due to complete his shift – until he stumbles upon a couple of drug-dealers (Rod and Nat) and he’s killed by Nat; Rod is wounded by Nolan. A neat little framing device is the young boy Jimmy, who is a car-spotter, munching on an apple.

Trevor has a good eye for detail. And in certain scenes we can discern the fast pace of his alter ego Adam Hall (Quiller books), viz: ‘Only when something goes wrong are you brought to realize how fast you are moving at a mile per minute but there’s no time to think about what you are learning too quickly and too late, because there’s a rocking motion and the scene dips as the brakes bite and then the world goes wild and great forces rise to hurl you bodily through tumult and you know that this is not you any longer, the you to whom nothing could happen, nothing terrible, nothing so unimaginably terrible as this.’ Breathless, yet powerful and so indelibly true.

Jimmy’s apple is one subtle leitmotif; another is the Venus 1000 car – advertised ‘as lithe, compliant, trembling under your touch’. Walt is the salesman who thought up that sexist spiel, before he succumbed to liquor. And another is the moths in the night air… when, a page later, after Carol worries about her alcoholic husband Walt: ‘For some reason they always go faster the nearer they go to the flame, spinning faster and faster till they touch; but what about self-preservation, aren’t all living creatures supposed to know when they’re in danger? Can’t they feel the heat growing as they circle closer? Surely they do. Then why can’t they stop?’ And of course her allusion relates to Walt’s alcoholic descent, not the moths. Later, she’s in the car knowing Walt has imbibed and ‘can only sit here feeling the refined brand of fear that is experienced by the trapped animal.’ This is an excellent devastating exposal of alcoholism, right up there with Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano.

Cop-killer Nat got a piece of grit in his eye and it troubled him. This symbolizes the irritation of guilt and fear. A little later, ‘Rod watched his friend, his thin and dangerous friend, whose nerve had gone because he’d done it before but never to a city cop. Nat was finished. He’d never get his style back, even if he beat this rap and set up somewhere safe, because the Nolan killing had changed everything and a bit of it had spun off and got inside Nat, just like Nolan’s bullet had got inside Rod himself.

‘ “It’s out,” Nat said, “I got it out.” [Referring to the grit].

‘No, Rod thought, you never will.’

Although I enjoyed Arthur Hailey’s books Hotel, Wheels, Airport and Overload etc, I find it baffling that they are still in print while this fine writer’s Expressway isn’t.

 

[If you're interested in the insight into a writer, you might try a memoire about Elleston Trevor by his wife, Bury Him Among Kings. Intimate Glimpses into the Life and Work of Elleston Trevor by Chaille Trevor (2012). It's a worthwhile e-book.]

 

 

Boxing Day

If anyone had told me a year ago that I’d be writing a story about boxing, I’d have thought they were punch drunk. Still, I was asked to contribute to an anthology of boxing stories and have written a boxing tale set in Chicago that should appear in the Fight Card series early in the new year. I was inspired by reading this book by Terrence McCauley, writing as Jack Tunney (a house name for the Fight Card series, inspired by Paul Bishop and Mel Odom).

AGAINST THE ROPES

 

New York, 1925. Terry Quinn is another orphan protégé of Father Frawley from the Gym at St. Vincent’s, Chicago. He’s close to the big fight against Jack Dempsey. Just two more fights, maybe… Genet was tough, but he managed. Next in line was Whitowski, a big bull of a contender. And the Tammany boys wanted Quinn to take a dive, let Whitowski win. A lot of money was riding on that. No way. Trouble was, ‘no way’ meant ‘no exit’ for Terry and his trainer, Augie…

The Tammany boys included Corcoran and Doyle: ‘If Manhattan was an island surrounded on all sides by an ocean of dirty money, Fatty Corcoran was Moses, able to part the dirty waters and make them go any way he wanted.’ Whereas Doyle ‘had a growing bootleg booze operation that almost took in half the city… Doyle was tougher than he looked and he looked plenty tough already.’

This short novel provides all of the atmosphere, the ambiance and the thrills of the 1920s. Combine that with the stupidity of Prohibition, the rackets and the fight game and this becomes a bout of heart-pounding excitement where the audience is rooting for the good guy Quinn, yet realising that the odds are severely stacked against him. The dialogue is as sharp as a toothpick, as foreboding as the next incoming storm of punches, and full of character. By the end, I was punch-drunk, the fight sequences were so gruelling and realistic. Great stuff. You can get it here

McCauley is a writer to watch. He can certainly capture the period. You might want to try his 1930s style novel Prohibition, also.

PROHIBITION

The year is 1930 and New York is a city on the edge. The Roaring '20s ended with the Stock Market Crash and the Great Depression is only beginning. Banks are failing. Companies are closing their doors. Breadlines grow longer by the day. The only market making money is the black market: racketeering, rum running, and speakeasies. But when even those vices begin to weaken, the most powerful gangster on the Eastern Sea-board, Archie Doyle, sees the writing on the wall. He launches a bold scheme that, if successful, will secure his empire’s future beyond Prohibition. Beyond even the Great Depression.

But when a mysterious rival attempts to kill Doyle’s right hand man, a dangerous turf war begins to brew. With his empire under attack, Doyle turns to his best gun, former boxer Terry Quinn, for answers. Quinn must use his brains as well as his brawn to uncover who is behind the violence and why before Doyle’s empire comes crashing down.

Terrence McCauley whips up a fast paced pulp thriller ripe with Tommy-gun blasting hoods, corrupt cops and deadly dames in this original novel reminiscent of the classic gangster movies of old. Brilliantly illustrated by Rob Moran with designs by Rob Davis, PROHIBITION is a tough-guy blow to the literary gut readers will not soon forget. You can get this here

 

Blog guest - Michela O'Brien - a strong sense of place

Today, my guest is Michela O’Brien. She is the author of Playing on Cotton Clouds (2012) and A Summer of Love (2013), both published by Crooked Cat Publishing.

Michela was born in Milan, Italy, in... well, let's say some time in the last third of the 20th century. In Milan she grew up, studied, worked as a teacher, made friends and wrote, commending thoughts to page, imagining plots and characters, recording events in her life, noting observations about the world: stories, diaries, letters... In an era before personal computers, Internet, blogs and social networks, it was pen and paper and she still carries a notebook and a pencil with her to sketch ideas on the spot. She moved to England in 1994 and lives at the edge of the beautiful National Park of the New Forest with her husband and two sons.

Her greatest inspirations are ordinary people and real life stories, and her novels and short stories centre on themes of friendship, love, coming of age and self-discovery, human emotions and experiences everyone can relate to. Michela is a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association.

Playing on Cotton Clouds

When arty Livy falls for her sister's boyfriend, she knows her dreams are unlikely to come true... Sensitive Seth thinks he has hit the jackpot when the girl of his dreams finally looks his way... While laidback Aidan is every girl's hero.

Fast forward twenty-five years as carefree youth turns into adulthood responsibilities, relationships begin and end, music and fashion change, and life moves on with its successes, failures and heartaches. As the friends grow up, they discover life rarely turns out the way you imagined it at fifteen. The rites of passage through years are eerily familiar to every 1980s teenager in this moving, heartfelt novel.

 

A Summer of Love

Successful artist Jonah Briggs is a man who has made mistakes. Aged just eighteen, he was sent to prison for two years, leaving his family shattered and his first love, Sally, to wait for his return. But at eighteen, two years seem like a lifetime, and some promises are hard to keep. 

When Jonah reappears in her life, Sally finds herself torn between him and Ewan, the young Cornish farmer she has married, divided between loyalty and passion, duty and love. 

Over the course of almost two decades, through meetings and partings, secrets and revelations, and two momentous summers, Jonah will have to confront his past and heal old wounds, while Sally will face the consequences of her choices – whether to follow her conscience or her heart.

My review of Playing on Cotton Clouds

In this superb book about friendship and relationship, we travel with the main characters from 1983 through to 2008, with a poignant flashback to 1980. What's interesting is that the author was born and lived in Italy until 1994, when she moved to England; yet she captures the period prior to her arrival very well indeed.

There are three teenage friends, Aidan, Livy (Olivia) and Seth who meet up at the bridge that crossed the town's river. Even when they move away into the big wide world, the bridge has significance, sometimes in their memories, sometimes when they visit the town again. It links them, it seems. Added to the mix is Livy's sister, Tara. First fumbling with sex and alcohol are depicted, inevitably, with humour and a core of truth. Indeed, truth shines through this book - we believe these people lived, we live with them for the duration of the novel, getting anxious in moments of crisis, becoming pleased in moments of happiness. Life isn't tidy, there are false paths to take, wrong turns to make, and they drift apart, yet return after years, an invisible thread connecting them. `Can you fall in love at thirteen, one rainy afternoon, in an old faded café, and find yourself at twenty-nine, sitting in the fragrant summer sun, feeling as you did then?' The answer, of course, is `yes'. That's the human condition.

Aidan isn't too bright, but he's attractive to women, which is his downfall, yet as one conquest says, `People can't stop loving you, even when they think they have.'

Seth is a little self-centred, wrapped up in his writing, early on suffering from depression (`... in the small hours of the morning, when he felt himself slowly falling and darkness seemed to chase him with cold, invisible fingers'), but with the help of his friends he defeats the Black Dog, though he's always going to be a `half-empty pint' kind of man: `I wasn't interested in collecting stamps, so I went for rejection letters. Fascinating. Some can be perversely creative.' (I have to agree with his praise for Philip K. Dick).

Livy is in love with Seth, but (fool that he is) he's infatuated with her sister, Tara. `Carefully tucked away feelings were scattered around Livy's mind, leaving her with the painful task of picking them up and hiding them again... contemplating old memories as they lay on the floor of her recollection.'

The narrative is from the perspective of these three, and at every stage there's a depth of character and an emotional resonance that rings true. Emotion in a relationship novel has to be felt by the reader, not simply observed - show, not tell, and Michela O'Brien does that brilliantly: she could have written `Livy felt hurt by him' or something similar; instead, she gives us `Her heart had taken a dive into her stomach and she briefly held her breath to fish it out and put it back in its place.' There are several clever allusions, to springs in beds and Jack-in-the-box and feelings like thorns, imbedded in the body, making themselves felt after time, which `he could not tear out without maiming himself.'

There is a birth and a death, both handled with exquisite restraint and all the more powerful and moving for that. This debut novel is excellent, the writing controlled and a delight.

Q&A

Michela, your debut novel has picked up an enviable number of high-scoring reviews on Amazon. How does that feel?

It feels great! I’m still taken aback by the praises the book received. I’m especially moved when people say they loved the characters and that they felt like “real people” and “friends”.

What was the initial inspiration for the book?

The initial idea was to write about a male friendship. I started out with Seth and Aidan and their relationship. It was interesting to explore, as I was doing it from a female perspective, obviously. I then added another element with a male-female friendship between Seth and Livy, another theme that interests me.

Do you find that your characters – say, Livy, Aidan and Seth - have become real people, that you remember them as such? Or are they brief acquaintances who’ve drifted apart since you’ve moved on to meet new characters?

They are definitely very real to me. I feel like they are friends I have come to know well. Both my books span several years and I got to see the characters grow and change from youth into adulthood. I sometimes think it would be nice to revisit them and find out what they’ve been up to. I might very well do so, in the future.

Most debut novels take a long time to gestate. How long did you work on Playing on Cotton Clouds?

If we are talking about the actual writing, it didn’t take very long. About six months. If we are talking about “gestation” and how the story came together… well, I subliminally wrote this novel since I was 19 – and that’s a long time ago! I love choral stories, with different threads and subplots, and wanted to write about a group of friends, how they start together as a unit, and how then life splits their paths. Sometimes they run parallel, sometimes they meet and part and meet again. I actually started this novel many times and never finished it. Finally, I managed to get to the end.

In many ways, second novels are easier, because you’ve learned a lot from the first. (Some feel cursed by the expectations implicit in a second novel after a successful first one). At what stage did you begin A Summer of Love?

Funnily enough, I wrote A Summer of Love first. I sent it out to a few agents and publishers with no joy, so I shelved it and moved to another project, what became Playing on Cotton Clouds. After the latter had been published, I got back to the first novel and edited it, cutting a big bulk of the first draft and rewriting entire sections, until it was in the current form, which led to it being published too.

Excellent approach, to rewrite and rewrite, rather than just send out the MS! Now that you’ve got your second book published, are you writing another novel at present – and if so, can you tell us a little about it?

Yes, the third novel is almost finished and ready for editing. It has the working title of “Finding Paige” and it’s another story focusing on relationships, with an exploration of “timing”, meeting the right person at the wrong time and making what could be the wrong choice.

When you’ve finished your books, do you feel you’d like to see where the characters go next, or do you leave them alone to get on with their lives without your input?

Normally when I reach the end, I’m satisfied with the journey my characters have taken and happy to leave them where they have arrived. So, yes, I tend to let them “get on” on their own. Plus, I’m always thinking about a new project, a new idea. But you never know, one day I might like to revisit some of my characters and take them on a new journey.

How long have you been writing? 

Forever! I started writing stories as soon as I was able to, at about six. More seriously, though, with a look at being published, about 12 years.

What influenced you to start writing?

As I said, it was something I started doing very early on. I just love stories. Hearing stories, reading stories, watching stories… so I started to create my own.

You obviously know Italy well. Do you bring in other foreign places into your fiction?

Yes, I have done. In Playing On Cotton Clouds the actions move between the UK, Italy, Amsterdam and New York. A Summer of Love is based in the UK, switching between London and Cornwall, a county I know well and love. My new novel moves between London, Devon, the South of France and Northern Italy. Some settings like Cornwall, London and Italy, are very familiar to me, others I make up – for example the Midlands town the characters in Playing on Cotton Clouds come from, or the Cornish village to which Jonah belongs in A Summer of Love, are fictitious amalgams of similar towns and villages – and others I get to explore through research using the internet and even Street View! I did that when describing places in New York, a city I never visited.

New York is like you describe in Clouds, like being in a film, it's so familiar! I believe that a sense of place is important in fiction; how do you achieve that?

I share in your belief and as a reader I love books that have a strong sense of place. I treat the settings almost as another character, describing not just its appearance, but the feel it conveys and the influence it has on the characters. Roots and belonging versus a sense of adventure is a recurrent theme in my stories.

How do your family/friends feel about your writing?

They are very proud of what I have achieved, though writing takes a big chunk of my time and that is not always easy on family life.

Do you intend to stick with the personal relationship genre or switch to other genres?

Writing about relationships and emotions is what I like best and I will probably continue in this genre. But I have a few ideas for more “topical” stories and I’d love to dab into historical fiction as well.

A tall order, I know, but what is your favourite book? And why?

That is a hard question to answer! The first novel that made a huge impression on me was Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, which I read when I was about 13. It encapsulates everything my writing is about: relationships, families, everyday life against big political and social changes, ordinary people dealing with small and big issues. Jo March was more than a heroine, she became a role model. An independent woman, aspiring to be a writer, who also happened to become a teacher – which I am too. I don’t know if it’s my “favourite” book, but it certainly occupies a special place in my affections.

Other books that made a big impact on me were Joy in the Morning by Betty Smith and Rosso di Sera by Brunella Gasperini, an Italian writer, journalist and feminist that shaped a great deal of the way I write and view the world.

Where do you hope to be in 5 years?

Mainly alive and in good health! I’d like to take my writing career forward and hopefully have my books in more homes!

You’re generous with giving space and time to other authors on your blog. Can you tell us how this came about?

To be honest, they do me a favour writing for my blog as I’m always stuck for ideas! And I’ve had some truly interesting and fascinating entries. How it came about? I just asked “would you like to write a piece for my blog?”

Where can readers find you?

I’m on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pages/Michela-Sacchi-OBrien/16450121895

Twitter https://twitter.com/michela_obrien

Goodreads http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5822651.Michela_O_Brien

and, as you mentioned, on my blog  http://words-in-a-jar.blogspot.co.uk

My books can be found on Amazon

Playing on Cotton Clouds http://www.amazon.co.uk/Playing-on-Cotton-Clouds-ebook/dp/B007WFK3B2

A Summer of Love http://www.amazon.co.uk/A-Summer-of-Love-ebook/dp/B00B3MKEQ4

Make a Date

Some time ago I published a regular monthly column linking a set selection of dates in history. The series was popular. I'm busy coordinating the articles into book form. As today is 24 September, here are a number of linked events for that date plus three other September dates. To avoid repetition, I've simply indicated the relevant date in brackets. The four dates for this article are:

 

2, 13, 24 and 28 September

Being late to adopt fresh ideas isn’t new for the UK. Long before the Euro there was the Gregorian Calendar, which we adopted in 1752, nearly two hundred years later than most of western Europe (2).

That great European and Roman, Pompey the Great was assassinated in 48BC on the orders of King Ptolemy of Egypt (28). In 1898 British and Egyptian troops led by Kitchener defeated Khalifa Abdulla al-Taashi’s Sudanese tribesmen (2), which resulted in British dominance in the Sudan for many years. Twenty-six days later in 1396 the Ottoman Emperor Byazid I defeated a Christian army at Nicopolis (28). And on the same day in 1970 Egypt’s first president Gamal Abdal Nasser died, thirty years and fifteen days after Italy’s Mussolini invaded Egypt.

 

Another notable invasion was William the Conqueror’s, in 1066 and all that (28). Since then the British Isles haven’t been successfully invaded, though a few battles have inevitably been lost – such as the airborne’s defeat at Arnhem in 1944 which happened to be on the same day too.

As the Second World War lasted six years, it’s logical there’ll be many note-worthy days in that conflict. Last month Anne Frank’s final diary entry was commemorated; in 1944 she and her family were put on the last transport train to Auschwitz (2) in 1941...

German bombs damaged (13) Buckingham Palace in 1940 but this was nothing compared to the ten thousand buildings destroyed during the Great Fire of London of 1666 which started at a baker’s in Pudding Lane (2).

The Second World War ended officially with the surrender of Japan in 1945, accepted by General MacArthur and Admiral Nimitz (2). Twenty-two days later in 1564 English navigator and Japanese samurai William Adams was born. And in 1988 the cartoonist Charles Addams died (28) but will forever be known as the creator of the Addams Family.

Coincidences between names or events crop up from time to time, such as the battle of Marathon which supposedly began in 490 BC and on the same day a mere 2,460 years later the first New York City Marathon took place (13). Interestingly, this month in 1937 saw the death (2) of Pierre de Coubertin, the French founder of the modern Olympic Games.

While discussing New York, the Netherlands surrendered New Amsterdam to England (24) in 1664; and on the same day (24) in 1493 Columbus set out on his second expedition to the New World.

It’s doubtful if anyone involved in the first airplane flight in Europe (13) in 1906 would have realised how advanced and commonplace flight between countries would become. A year earlier aviator, inventor, film producer and eccentric millionaire Howard Hughes was born (24). Indeed, this was only fifty-five years after the first airship was displayed (24), and on the same day in 1908 the first Ford Model-T was built. Forty years later, the Honda Motor Company was founded (24). Forty-six years after that, the Ulysses spacecraft passed the sun’s south-pole (13). Such is progress.

Advances in technology haven’t always gone hand-in-hand with advances in human relationships. In 1871 Brazil passed a law freeing future children of slaves (28), yet there are thousands of children used as slave labour round the globe, not only in South America. Children’s author Dr Seuss died in 1991 (24) a year before Roald Dahl - who was born (13) in 1916 – the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which has just been released starring Johnny Depp; in 1857 Milton S Hershey was born and became a chocolate entrepreneur and founded the Hershey Chocolate Company (13). In 1936 children’s entertainer Jim Henson was born; he was the creator of The Muppets (24) – a surreal menagerie of creatures!

 

Author of the famous novel about whales and whaling, Moby Dick, Herman Melville died (28) in 1891; and on the same day animal-rights activist and one-time sex-goddess actress Brigitte Bardot was born in 1934, ten years later to the day as that heart-throb Marcello Mastroianni.

As mentioned before, history is riddled with battles. The Battle of Actium during the Roman Civil War in 31 BC saw the defeat by Octavian of Mark Antony and Cleopatra (2). Eleven days later in 1759 British General James Wolfe beat the French on the Plains of Abraham and died the same day (13). Amazingly, some modern-day schoolchildren thought the Battle of Britain referred to the fight of Helm’s Deep from The Lord of the Rings. In 1973 that book’s author, J.R.R. Tolkien died (2).

History and Time are fascinating subjects. Two favourite plays by J B Priestley are Time and the Conways and An Inspector Calls. Both shift time for the audience to reveal inner truths and strong messages. Priestley was born (13) in 1894 and his output was varied and prodigious.