We are on undramatic ground with The Perfect Nazi.  Martin Davidson’s maternal grandfather, Bruno Langbehn was an SS officer but did not rise to great prominence, his only significance perhaps being that he was committed to the Nazi party from its inception.  ”Bruno”, as the author refers to him throughout the book, was far from being a glamorous figure, being an artisan dentist by profession, and fairly clueless about his work for the SS.  Indeed, the final chapters of the book quote an official document which, the author tells us, provides little more than “a damning portrait of Bruno’s incompetence, his manifest self-importance and his blindness to the futility of the work itself”. It is therefore obvious from the start that this book is not going to provide any great new insights into the operation of the SS or the inner workings of the Nazi Party.

This book is not without its problems, the main one being the paucity of the source material. Davidson has some teenage memories of his grandfather. His grandmother and her sister seemed to be reluctant to talk about the war and events leading up to it, and it was only Bruno’s second wife who seemed able to provide useful personal reminiscences. The documentation of Bruno’s life seems very scant, consisting of a list of names from an SS directory containing a one line entry for Bruno, and also a set of twenty-five pages of personnel records, most of it badly burned and virtually illegible. The most significant find was a bundle of documents connected to Bruno’s application to join the SS, including Bruno’s lebenslauf (a hand-written CV), which sought to persuade the SS to take him on.

With so little original material to go on, Davidson is forced to make much of very little.  For example, when his cousin gives him a 1942 Berlin telephone directory, containing a one-line entry for Bruno, he writes,

The documents sheer ordinariness made it oddly compelling.  By their very nature phone books are as utilitarian as it is possible for a book to be. And yet how much information they contain.  Bruno’s entry shares the same elements as all the others – name, job title, area he lived in, address and phone numbers. What is so striking reading the page is how pristine, modern and untouched by war Berlin seems to be. A crisp list of names, addresses and telephone numbers depicts a city completely at odds with the burned out husk destroyed by three years of bombing and Russian artillery shells.

This “meditation on a phone book” may be significant for Martin Davidson but it makes for dull reading and is perhaps symptomatic of the smallness of this story.

With such a small amount of material to go on, Davidson falls back on recounting the rise of the Nazi Party under Adolf Hitler and making assumptions that Bruno took a full part in the many events that supported it.  For example, when dealing with the suppression of political opposition in the years 1933-37, Davidson goes to great lengths to describe the street-fighting and brawling that took place, but writes, “There are no records to tell us what role Bruno specifically played in all this . . . but as horrible as it was for me to picture Bruno in one of those cellars, holding somebody down or wielding a truncheon, it was entirely consistent with what I now knew about SA activities in Berlin”.

The bulk of this book could be summarised as a German history during the 20th century.  This is well-trodden ground and Davidson works hard to place his grandfather at its centre -

• “Shortly after Goebbels arrival in November 1926, Bruno, alongside Berlin’s few hundred other Nazis, found themselves summoned to Party headquarters to be harangued by their new city boss”.
• “Bruno was part of a drunken, seething crowd that had been worked up to a frenzy before Goebbels took to the stage”
• “For Bruno, the Great Depression was the miracle that the Nazis had been looking for”
• “.  . . in spring 1931 it erupted in the single biggest rebellion Hitler ever faced, and Bruno was caught up in the middle of it”
• “(Heinrich Kuhr) had a prickly and agressive streak that made him deeply unpopular with his men, Bruno included”
• “Bruno the political Nazi was busy as Bruno the storm-trooper, elaborating strategy, attending meetings, distributing leaflets and tirelessly hectoring potential voters.”

These statements, and countless others may well be true, but one would expect them to be backed up by a diary entry or other documentation rather than “because he could have, he probably did”.  This simply isn’t good enough for a work that purports to be history.

Sometimes, Davidson quotes a real source and places it so close to Bruno’s name that it at first you almost think that he is quoting his grandfather.  There are many examples of this, even in the footnotes. For example, we read on page 281, note 46:

The SA were, needless to say, in the thick of it, as described by one driven to a state of elated exhaustion, outlining what for Bruno must have become a regular experience: “prior to the elections we did not get to see our beds for two weeks.  Every night we put up posters and guarded them and tore off those of the enemies . . .

It is only a dozen or so lines later that we read “Quoted by Merkl, Political Violence” and realise that once more, these are not actually the words of Bruno but of an anonymous other.

This tactic which is used to beef up a very thin account of his grandfather’s part in the Nazi party becomes quite wearing.  Davidson so often quotes genuine sources in juxtaposition to references to Bruno that I kept having to remind myself that this is NOT Bruno at all, but someone else.

Davidson sometimes takes off into greater flights of fancy, such as imagining his grandfather attending the premiere of Leni Riefenstahl’s film Triumph of the Now -

As Bruno was a senior party member and had actually attended the rally, it is safe to assume there was little chance he missed seeing the film.  As the lights dimmed he knew he was about to savour the greatest cinema experience of his Nazi life . . . I can only imagine with what kind of exultant swagger Bruno left the cinema.  Of course, as exhilarating as he found the film , it merely symbolised all he already knew.

There is so much of this stuff -

“Bruno had been a vociferous and energetic participant in the Nazi struggle for eight long years. His every effort had been directed towards this outcome and he had never flinched from the agresson and sacrifices it had demanded”.

When I read about Bruno’s part in Kristallnacht I wanted to call out to the author, MAYBE, but you don’t KNOW this.  Its all surmise and assumption.  This is not history unless you can document it!  Its really not good enough to say:

It is hard to suppose that Bruno, now an SS officer, hadn’t been drinking with his Kameraden in the familiar Sturmlokal, the Zur Aldstadt, or that he later consciously boycotted the night’s actions, when so many of those had had known, and fought with for over a decade, poured out of the pubs, armed with sledgehammers and cans of petrol.  I will never know whether he chose this of all nights to stay at home and break the habit of a lifetime by refraining from participating in the largest outbreak of anti-Semitism.

Really, this isn’t history at all.  Its mere surmise and I wonder what the point is of writing it, when there are so many first hand accounts of the events of the night which do not rely on assuming that someone participated in it.  Heck, for all we know Bruno was out of action on Kristallnacht attending an SS officer’s dental emergency.  It may be a good exercise in creative writing to imagine what Bruno got up to on that night but it doesn’t shed any new light on the real events that took place.

I am going to have to draw this review to a close.  I see very little merit is rehashing the history of Nazism in Germany and inserting the name of a relative at all the key points. No doubt this is fascinating history for Martin Davidson and his relatives but I can’t see that it would have much interest beyond the confines of his family.  I agree with Martin Davidson that his grandfather probably took part in many of the events described but I would prefer to read the many genuine, first hand accounts. And for a history of the times, there are so many better books its hard to see what the point is in this one.

Note:  In the same month, Penguin also published Bomber County by Daniel Swift, another book about the wartime experiences of a grandfather.  I highly recommended this book in my review.  For a completely different take on Nazi experiences I would recommend My Friend the Enemy by Paul Briscoe, about an English boy who was stranded in German on the outbreak of war and was adopted by a German family.  Now, that’s a real story to tell.

Other reviews

The Herald (Scotland)

Life as A Literary Device, is partly biographical, partly reportage, and partly miscellaneous musing on life.  The book consists of  ”seemingly disjointed snippets of real life, they connect by association alone – the random pieces of coloured glass that from themselves into a pattern if viewed through that wonderful children’s toy, the kaleidoscope”.

Early in the book he writes of being influenced by the Russian writer Valentin Kataev, the founder of a literary style which he called “mauvism” – “a literary device consisting of the complete negation of all literary devices”.  The term mauvism comes from the French word “mauvais” meaning “bad”, and as Kataev himself wrote, “I am the founder of the latest literary school, the mauvistes,  the essence of which is that since everyone nowadays writes very well, you must write badly, as badly as possible, then you will attract attention”.

I am pleased to say that Vitaliev does not write badly – far from it in fact, but he has certainly held to the principle of mauvism in writing a book for the Internet age where  ”one website routinely carries links to many others.  You open a link in a story that you are reading and it takes you away to another story loosely connected to the first one yet years and/or miles away from it;  you then close the link and return to the story you were reading in the first place”.

The result is a book which holds the interest throughout as Vitaliev describes his travels in various parts of the globe, muses on countless contemporary themes and journals his way through marital breakup, unemployment and temporary states of depression.  I am sure that there are hundreds of topics and themes covered in this substantial, 565 page volume, but the book does not seem to be particularly long when you are reading it.

Its very difficult to describe this book, a vast potpourri of thoughts, impressions, reminiscences so perhaps the best way in to describing it is to give a few examples of the topics covered.

The plight of asylum-seekers sent to live in almost uninhabitable blocks of flats in Sighthill, Glasgow:

Covered with graffiti – like the body of a hardened criminal with tattoos – Sighthill was far from a pretty sight.  What struck me most however, was neither dust and litter flying in my face, nor frozen spittle in the lifts or putrid puddles of dubious origin under my feet, but the behaviour of some of its Scottish residents.  Whereas foreigners  were invariably civil, neatly dressed and polite, the “locals”, particularly teenagers, were – with very few exceptions – foul-mouthed, agressive, uncouth and either tipsy or dead-drunk (or stoned).  They corresponded to the image of would-be terrorists better than any of the asylum-seekers of Sighthill.

The growth of “book towns” such as Hay on Wye and Wigtown:

In the tiny picturesque Ardennes village of Redu in Belgium, there are now as many bookshops – twenty four – as there are children and the trade is drawing in 350,000 visitors every year.  Interestingly, before bookshops appeared in its centre, the village was experiencing the same economic woes as Hay on Wye.  Bredevort in the Netherlands also copied the magic “Hay forumula” and now boasts 300,000 visitors a year.

Vitaliev’s love for old guidebooks:

I am proud to have discovered my own way of time-travelling – Baedekers, Murrays, Bradshaws, Cooks – of all of which I am a passionate collector.  To me these pocket-size tattered volumes are full of time travel magic, especially when I find an old London Tube map (with a curtailed pink “Northern line” ending at Highgate), a faded landing card, or just a dried out hundred year old flower in between their tattered pages.  Touching such books is like touching eternity itself, for bygone realities and small practicalities of a distant past come to life in their estranged, meticulous and matter of fact style.  In this respect old guide-books are preferable to fiction:  they provide me with an ossified time carcass, which I am free to fill with the contents of today’s reality.

Not that there aren’t major themes running through the book.  The core experience Vitaliev was going through in the years he compiled this material was separation from wife and family and unemployment.  During this period he was offered at cheap rent, a small cottage in the run-down South Coast town of Folkestone.  Folkestone proved to be a dispiriting place for Vitaliev and he captures the sense of down-at-heel decay which has afflicted the harbour area of the town now that the ferry services have largely departed the town.  The place matched his mood only too well, and having had a similar time of isolation in a small town myself in my early twenties I could relate all too well to these sections of the book while giving thanks that I have never had to endure such a time again.

Each of the book’s countless sections is complete in itself but they all offer interest, for Vitaliev has an enquiring mind which leads him into meandering reflections on most things around him.

This book is going to be a great travel-companion when its released in paper-back.   You can dip in and out of it and not need to remember what went before.

As to the “mauvism” – this theme keeps coming up in the book – and Vitaliev like to categories his own work as following in the style of his Russian mentor.  One of his own descriptions of his work is, “the Badlands of literature” which is true only insofar as he covers a vast miscellany of messy subjects somehow synthesising them into this quite unique volume which is by no mean “stylish” in the usual sense but certainly kept my interest throughout.

The World of Yesterday is the final book Zweig handed to his publisher before he and his wife committed suicide in 1942, despairing at the destruction of European culture resulting from by the rise of fascism.  Having a bit of a completist tendency with my favourite authors, it was hard to resist another book by Zweig, particularly one which is both autobiography and memoir, describing literary Vienna’s golden age, and its sad decline through the first half of the 20th century.

Let me say at the start of this review, that despite the adulatory reception this volume had when published by Pushkin Press last year, I found it a very difficult book to read.  This is not conventional autobiography in the sense of describing the relationships and events which formed the subject’s life.  It is really a cultural history, in which philosophical development (and decline) is given greater prominence than the life described.  I found it to be a heavy read, with page after page of solid text unrelieved by any touch of human drama or even humour to lighten it.   When I look at the appreciative reviews elsewhere I feel rather embarrassed to report that I didn’t actually enjoy this book.  I found it not at all difficult to see this book in the context of Zweigs imminent suicide, for it has an air of gloom and failure about it which, while not detracting from its value to those with an interest in the era, on the whole makes it an unhappy and depressing read.

The sense of oppression began for me with Zweig’s description of his school-days.

. . . my entire school career was nothing but a constant surfeit of tedium, inreased only by my impatience to escape this treadmill.  I don’t recall ever having felt either happy or blissful during that monotonous, heartless, dismal schooling, which thoroughly spoilt the happiest days of our lives . . . as soon as we entered the hated school we had to keep our heads down, so to speak, to avoid coming up against the the invisible yoke of servitude.  Schook to us meant compulsion, dreary boredom . . .

There are several pages of this which describe in largely abstract language, Zweig’s dismal experience of those years, without actually mentioning any friendships, family events  or happier times which might lighten the description, leaving this reader at least very pleased when finally the author graduated to university (which alas turns out to be a not much pleasanter experience).

Another chapter describes the sterile and stultifying condition of relationships between men and women in the Vienna of the early twentieth century.  A  rigid formality goverened communications between the sexes, with women placed on a pedestal so ethereal that it was unthinkable that they could have even an inkling of sexual desire.  Men on the other hand were allowed to “sow their wild oats” among a vast army of prostitutes who serviced their sexual needs, receiving money and gifts while returning incurable infections to their unhappy clients.

By this time I was beginning to wonder whether this unremitting gloom would come to an end and was pleased to discover that at about page 150, Zweig leaves university and escapes to Paris, London and other great European cities.  Unfortunately we read little to lighten these journeys, for Zweig discusses his cultural development to the detriment of any sense of his actual experiences in these cities.  We read of his discovery in London of William Blake and his quest to own even a single page of his work, his admiration for the poet Rainer Maria Rilke who he got to know in Paris, and countless other writers and artists, many of whom are now largely forgotten.  While these chapters are of interest, they again lack that human touch which might bring them to life, with too many diversions into self analysis, the title of the chapter, “Digressions on the Way to Myself” perhaps saying it all.

Zweig was deemed unfit for active service in the First World War and was appointed an archivist for the Imperial Government, a role which occasionally required him to travel to the Front using a hospital train or even open artillery carriages as transport.  The years after the war saw Zweig enjoy literary success, but with the advent of Adolf Hitler, his works soon became politically unacceptable, containing as they did, critiques of militarism and nationalism quite opposed to the thrust towards rearmament.  Zweig describes how Hitler arose almost unnoticed:

It is an iron law of history that those who will be caught up in the great movements determining the course of their own times always fail to recognise them in their early stages.  So I cannot remember when I first heard the name Adolf HItler, one that for years now we have been bound to speak or call to mind in some connection every day, almost every second.

Despite the gangs of young men roaming the streets in support of Hitler, Zweig tells how cultured people simply didn’t take Hitler seriously, laughing at his pompous prose style and soothed by the national newspapers and their assurances that National Socialism must soon collapse.  Of course, the Nazis rose with unstoppable momentum and when Austria was seceded to Germany, in no time at all life was intolerable for Zweig and, after his house was searched in 1934, he and his wife decided they had to live abroad.

The book ends with Zweig in the English city of Bath, with

. . . the sunlight full and strong.  As I walked home, I suddenly saw my own shadow going ahead of me, just as I had seen the shadow of the last war behind this one.  That shadow has never left me all this time, it lay over my mind day and night.  Perhaps its dark outline also lies over the pages of this book.

While this book is undoubtedly important both as a personal record of Zweig’s life, and also as his account of the fall of the “old” European culture, I fear that it is too imbued with Zweig’s despair at the decline of so much he held dear and his pessimism about the future.  He is absorbed in his story, but it is a story which, in the way he describes it, can only go downhill and this makes for a depressing time for its readers.  I feel sure that if Zweig had been able to live for a few more years this would have been a very different book with perhaps a wider perspective on the events he describes.  As it is, its value is not disputed but anyone expecting to find something along the lines of his other published works may be disappointed.

Newspaper Reviews

Nicholas Lezard in The Guardian
Lewis Jones in The Daily Telegraph
Michael Hoffman in the London Review of Books

Book Blogger reviews

Dove Grey Reader
Just William’s Luck

Hans Magnus Enzensburger is considered to be Germany’s most important modern poet and is a highly regarded publisher and essayist. But he is little known in Britain, or presumably other English speaking nations.

His book, The Silences of Hammerstein is difficult to categorise, being in parts biographical, fictional and critical. One of its features is the way Enzensburger intersperses his narrative with imagined conversations with the main characters in his book in which he asks them pertinent questions and records the answers he thinks they would give. The book ranges far and wide, and reminds me a little of W G Sebald’s books in the way photographs are insterspersed among the pages, providing enigmatic insights into the narrative.

The Silences of Hammerstein, chronicles the life of a German General and his family as they lived their lives through the 1930s and 40s largely while being largely opposed to the rise of Nazism.

When Adolf Hitler seized power in Berlin, Kurt von Hammerstein was head of the German Defence Forces, and tried (unsuccessfully) to derail Hitler’s rise to Chancellorship. During the days of the Weimar Republic, Hammerstein had collaborated with the Russian military, who were able to supply Germany with weaponry despite the proscriptions of the Treaty of Versailles which prevented Germany from re-arming to any great degree.

Hammerstein was above all intelligent, and understood the dangers of Nazism from a military perspective and he judged Hitler to be insane, a jumped-up Private, who could lead Germany to destruction. However, when Hitler was assassinating those who opposed him, Hammerstein escaped death, partly because his opposition to Hitler was largely something he kept discretely to himself (thus the book’s title).

His silence however did not mean that his opposition was ineffective. It enabled him to retain connections throughout the German military and his home was a meeting place for various people who sought to depose Hitler and indeed his whole family in one way or another actively opposed the regime, particularly his daughters who were communist or at least sympathisers with the cause. Hammerstein was never arrested for his lack of commitment to Nazism and was allowed to retire and possibly his ill-health caused the Gestapo to feel that he was little danger to them (he died in 1943).

Enzensburger enjoys describing the contradictions of the Nazi years, how the utmost horror coexisted with the banalities of everyday life. In a section entitled, “On the scandal of synchronicity” he describes how Hollywood style comedies played in cinemas next door to apartment blocks which were emptying because of arrests. New schools were being built, while black vans transported the newly arrested to torture and death.

In the summer, the beaches were crowded, bee-keepers devoted themselves to bee-keeping, football was played, postage stamps collected, amateur sailors went sailing. As re-armament proceeded apace, holiday trips and cruises were organised for “workers with hand and brain” under a slogan “Strength Through Joy” that would make any present-day advertisers turn pale with envy.

It is apparent that for most people, at least during the 1930s, Nazism brought improvements to their lives and a sense of purpose, but Enzensburger brings out the deep contradictions in people’s lives, for it is certain for everyone who’s opposition to the regime was clear-cut their were many who were disturbed by what was going on while also benefiting from improving economic conditions and a revived sense of national pride. In some ways, Enezenburger’s “silence” was a powerful response, because someone in his position would have been expected to demostrate whole-hearted support of the Nazis. His failure to do so was perhaps statement enough.

This book has been very well-received in Germany and while I enjoyed it, I think its appeal will not be quite so great in other countries. While it is an interesting read, the history of the period is well-known and the book does not contain any dramatic new insights into the times. Hammerstein is not an appealing personality, being dour and serious and I got little sense of a personality with any appeal. I think the purpose of the book would be to help Germans understand the depths of opposition to the regime, and the book is successful in this. Opposition meant death sooner or later, and co-existence could only be maintained by keeping silent.

Silence is not however an attractive stance in terms of literature, it being difficult to read courage or passion into it. Hammerstein comes across as a military man who could never betray his country and who was therefore incapable of any creative response in opposition to Hitler. While the book is very well researched and presented and makes for a fascinating read, it could be said to lack a vital spark due to the lack of constructive action by its main character.

Oliver was born in 1925 to North London parents of a socialist inclination.  Brought up in Hendon, Oliver was exposed to a wide range of people who had a degree of influence in forming the early Labour movement, not least his maternal grandfather, George Lansbury, one-time leader of the Labour Party.

The family were well-connected in Labour circles, and often spent weekends at the house of Francis and Vera Meynell, affectionately known as Bloomsbury-on-the-Marsh, where people came and went among scenes of music, debate and al fresco eating, with people such as H G Wells and Bertrand Russell in attendance.

Oliver’s family were also adventurous and in 1938 his parents, Ray and Daisy, decided to take their family on a cycling tour of France, conscious that war-clouds were looming and such a tour may not be possible in years to come.  Oliver’s description of this tour is evocative of pre-war France, the family meandering across rivers and through the gates of mediaeval towns, with picnic lunches being eaten on the green banks of shady streams.

When war came the next year, the family soon found their Hendon home at risk of bombing and so Oliver and his older brother John were sent down to Devon to the progressive school, Dartington Hall.  Like so many children of that era the boys had to be self-reliant in ways today’s parents would struggle with – the two boys (13 and 17 years old), were given a lift to Cirencester with their bicycles, then despatched together for the rest of the journey by bike, staying at bed and breakfast accommodation on the way.

By November 1943, Oliver was back living with his parents and studying at Kingston College of Art, when his call-up papers came.  Oliver’s father Raymond had been a conscientious objector in the First World War and Oliver decided that this was the only position for himself in the Second.  He was advised to turn up at the barracks and then refuse to put on the uniform, so he nervously took the train to Windsor, wondering what awaited him when he arrived at the Household Cavalry’s Combermere Barracks.  Oliver found himself in the hands of an army completely unprepared for his arrival, uncomprehending of his status, but quite benign.  Within a few days he was court-marshalled and sent to Feltham Juvenile Prison where he was kept in the company of other conscientious objectors.  After a week in Wandsworth Prison, he was sent back to the army, who wisely sent him on extended leave.

After the war Oliver first went to war-torn Germany as a driver for a relief team, then returned to England to do agricultural work but eventually ending up back in London to develop his creative talents.  After a stint as a stage manager at the BBC he decided he could do better at producing childrens’ films than the material he saw at the time, and invented an animation table.  Alexander The Mouse was born and Oliver was able to sell 20 episodes to the BBC, and as they say, the rest is history.

Oliver’s biography, the facts of his life, and his stories of early television production are fascinating, but it is the sheer warmth of his personality which appeals.  The story is fascinating, but it is the person behind the stories that shines out, the way he handled the human-stuff of life, finding his way step by step through marriage, family, work while constantly also being fed by a hugely creative brain which inspired him in so many directions.

He married Prue, a mother already of three children, with whom he had three more sons.  The story of their marriage is inspiring, but as with all autobiographies written by people in their late seventies, death must put in an appearance here and there.  Oliver and Prue’s journey through her cancer was full of challenges but also with bright periods when their journey was suffused with meaning.

In later life Oliver became tremendously worried by the threat of nuclear war and became a powerful campaigner, not by joining protest marches but by writing pamphlets and working to influence politicians and world-leaders, something he did quite successfully, attending meetings in New York, Geneva and other international centres.

Towards the end of his life, after a serious operation, he had a vast and overwhelming experience, which some would call “spiritual” but which he was never really able to explain.  Let us say that love overtook him, and turned his life upside down.  He writes movingly about this time, and it these chapters are an important source of information about these experiences which researchers say are experienced by 30% of us.

I love the ending to this book.  Oliver had retired to Broadstairs to live in a flat underneath another flat owned by his working partner and friend Naomi.  They have a staircase put between the floors and share breakfast together.  Oliver goes out to the seafront at lunchtime to watch the ships and eat a baguette while Naomi whizzes around town on her mobility scooter.  This is a snapshot from the end of a fulfilled life, the final task of which was the writing of the autobiography before us.

Oliver died last year, and the tributes flowed into to someone who not only delighted countless children with his films and stories, but also touched everyone he met with the inspiration of his personality.  This is a very well-written, heart-warming (but not sentimental) book, which would be an excellent gift for almost any category of reader.  It is hard to think of anyone who would not be pleased to receive this on Christmas Day.

Victoria Coren has been playing poker for 15 years and unlike most gamblers, has won quite a nice sum of money, not least in 2006 when she won $1m in the European Poker Championships.  The subtitle of her book, “A Love Affair with Poker” hits it on the nail, but this is a love affair with no happy ending, just a roller-coaster ride of ups and downs, complete ecstasy when things go well and misery when they don’t.

You have to admire her persistence.  She joined the world of poker when it meant mixing with disreputable people in dingy clubs, the lure of the cards overcoming the distaste for her surroundings.  The book, For Richer For Poorer, chronicles her journey from playing her big brother Giles and his friends for pennies, through to the time when she carries a fat roll of bank-notes around with her.

You’d expect the daughter of humorist Alan Coren to be witty, and For Richer For Poorer is certainly light-hearted enough.  Victoria can laugh at herself, and her self-deprecating, almost confessional tone makes the reader warm to her.  The book is autobiographical throughout, starting with stories of her childhood and ending with the sad death of her father, the much loved writer and broadcaster.

Victoria hated school with a passion and as someone who had a similarly unhappy time at school, I found much resonance with her feelings for that time of her life.  While it was bad enough being unhappy at a boy’s school, Victoria suffered equally or more among girls, her liking for her members of her own sex being somewhat thin!

Boys show off and tell jokes and shout when they’re angry.  They don’t smile and ask personal questions, then bitch behind your back, and share your secrets with the class.   They don’t write diaries, all sweetly floral and girlish on the outside, for you to be unable to resist flicking through at break-time, which say things like, “I hope Vicky leaves school soon, we all hate her, the fat cow”, and then smile at you across the tuck shop and offer you a Highland Toffee.

Soon enough she is freed from school and develops a stand-up comedy act and travels around America before going to University to study English Literature.  On leaving she commences her career as a journalist and begins serious poker playing at the Victoria Sporting Club (the “Vic”) in Edgware Road and at the Stakis in Russell Square.  It seems difficult for a woman to get accepted into these poker playing circles, but Victoria persists and before long is mixing with people with strange names and starting to win small amounts of money.

Around this time (the year 2000), the game of poker is being transformed by television, with Late Night Poker on Channel 4 being well known and attracting large audiences.  Victoria finds herself playing with Martin Amis, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Fry, and as online poker develops, she finds more opportunities and also sponsorship (gambling with other people’s money certainly makes life less stressful!).

The autobiographical sections are interleaved throughout the book with a running account of the tournament which led to Victoria’s big win – the £500,000 prize accompanying her award of European Champion (I am not spoiling the book here as its very obvious from the first chapter what this is all about).  These sections tend to be a little technical but provide great insight into the calculations you need to make and the sheer wads of experience you need in order to win.  While playing poker with friends at home for small stakes may be fun, to play competitively for big money you need an obsessive streak which will keep you at the card tables for most of your spare time.

I don’t play poker, and there isn’t much in this book which would make me want to start (but then I’ve invested quite a bit of time in becoming a reasonable backgammon player).  Gambling for money is just not something that appeals to me, but Victoria lets her readers understand the drive towards the big win which keep people coming back to the tables.

Victoria is obviously very good at poker, and prepared to spend the time and intelligence to think about her playing strategies.  There are some sad stories about lesser people who have a large win and immediately leave the poker tables to lose all they’ve won on blackjack or roulette.  At one point in the book, Victoria is set up on a radio programme to discuss gambling with Gamblers Anonymous and this is a sad affair with neither side communicating effectively.

I wouldn’t want this review to appear at all judgemental – this is a very entertaining book and allowed me to learn what motivates poker players and to understand the world they inhabit.  One can’t help but warm to Victoria, whose remarkable candour makes this a fascinating read.  She speaks frankly about her broken-heart when love affairs fail, and also about the resulting depression which affected her for months afterwards.

There was a fierce bidding war for this book and I would imagine that Canongate will find it money well-spent as I’m sure it will be read for years to come as both a history of poker over the last 20 years or so and as an insider’s view on the rather seamy world hidden by the glamorous image presented by the high-rollers.

While Helen Rappaport gives plenty of human interest in this book, I found an underlying tone of horror (in myself, not the book), as I read of Lenin’s unfailing fanaticism and utter ruthlessness in dealing with family, friends and revolutionary colleagues.  Fanatical hardly covers it:  this man was possessed of a unique energy which compelled him to work unceasingly to eliminate compromise or dissimulation in the Commuist movement.  He was prepared to drive those who loved him into the ground in order to get what he wanted.  At one point in the book when the author tells us that Lenin could have faced the death penalty when he was arrested in Poland, I found myself inwardly crying, “if only” when I thought ahead to the years of terror which followed the implementation of his strategies in his homeland (and how fearsome to read of Lenin’s “wonderful Georgian”, Josef Stalin who stayed with Lenin and his wife in Poland).

Nobody could doubt Lenin’s immense talent.  To become and to remain the acknowledged leader of the Communist movement while in exile was a huge achievement.  His constant stream of publications were taken into Russia by every means possible and his flow of articles was unceasing.  He arranged several conferences in London, Paris, Brussels and other cities and managed to dominate them by a fierce and ruthless attack on anyone who stood in opposition. Perhaps his greatest ire was reserved for those who sought to soften the revolutionary line, particularly those who saw a future in a blending of Marxism with philosophy or even spirituality.  Marxism was above all scientific, and it was this principle which Lenin was prepared to defend like a she-wolf over her cubs.  Few could withstand, and it is only surprising that people put up with his long-winded diatribes and general nastiness.

In one revealing passage, Lenin and Nadya are visited by Ariadna Tyrkova, an old friend of Nadya from teaching days.  On their last evening Nadya asked Lenin to accompany Ariadna to the tram-stop and . . .

. . .en route, Lenin berated her for her liberalism and for being a bourgois.  Ariadna gave as good as she got, attacking the Marxists for their lack of understanding of human nature and their desire to drive people like a military machine.  Lenin lashed her with his sharp tongue, his words deeply sarcastic and his eyes glittering in a way that Ariadna found disturbing.  Then as the tram came into view, he turned and looked her straight in the eye:  “Just you wait”, he said with a smile as she boarded the tram, “soon we will be hanging people like you from the lamp-posts”.

It was amusing to read of the British tolerance of Lenin and his comrades.  In 1907, London hosted a congress of Russian revolutionaries, after which a public expression of thanks was made to the British people for the freedom the delegates had been accorded.  In response the government responded that they were, “proud to state that throughout the duration it had not interfered with the political freedom of the delegates who had like other political refugees enjoyed the protection of the British flag”.

As with other revolutionaries, Lenin made great use of the British Library, saying that, “Its a wonderful institution”, declaring that “it was the best library in the world to work in”.  He found it very comfortable to work there and particularly commended the Help Desk.  Rappaport writes that Lenin was always “unfailingly polite” to the staff and many years later one of the curators was to report that “Mr Ulyanov was a “very nicely-spoken gentleman”.

Lenin’s relationship with women was both romantic and exploitative.  Rappaport gives her readers a fascinating portrait of one of Lenin’s closest followers, Inessa Armand, who was at times his mistress but also one of his hardest workers.  Inessa was clearly deeply in love with Lenin and spent much time with him, but his letters to her show that while he was capable of affection, he frequently bullied her into taking on tasks which at times felt far too much for her.  On one occasion, on finding out that a conference in Brussels was going to reprimand Lenin for his aggressive and divisive behaviour, he sent Inessa in his place to be his “sacrificial lamb”.  “The Cause” was all, and human feeling was always subjugated to it.

This is a fascinating book, providing more insight into Lenin the man than anything else I have read.  In those years of exile Lenin depended on his wits to avoid capture or assassination and his work to exercise his possibly over-agile mind.  One wonders if he had not been so isolated from life in Russia during those years whether he would have had the time to develop such extreme theories.  His fanaticism was of the same order of Adolf Hitler and he was the personification of single-mindedness.  There is nothing in this book which would warm the reader to Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, but it goes a long way to explain his later history after 1917 when the fruits of his work would be worked out for the following seventy years.

Rick is not the first person to write his life story in the context of the books he’s read, but this one is as good as any and was a read both amusing and informative.  I’ll quote from the publisher’s website to list some of the books covered:

Dr. Seuss, Horton Hatches the Egg;
Magnus Hirschfeld Sexual Anomalies and Perversions;
Allen Ginsberg, Howl;
J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye;
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land;
Descartes, Meditations;
David Hume, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding;
W.B. Yeats, The Collected Poems;
F.R. Leavis, The Common Pursuit;
Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy;
Tom Wolfe,The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test;
Ludwig Wittgenstein,Philosophical Investigations;
R.D. Laing, The Divided Self;
Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch;
D.H. Lawrence,Women in Love;
A.S. Neill, Summerhill;
Roald Dahl, Matilda;
Alice Miller, Pictures of a Childhood;
A.J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic;
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams;
Carl Hiaasen, Double Whammy;
Peter Wright,Spycatcher; and
Rick Gekoski, Staying Up.

And there was a good enough mix of the familiar and the new to keep my interest throughout.  Rick is basically an academic (ex-lecturer in English at Warwick University) turned rare book dealer, and has many contacts in the world of literature.  And oh yes, he’s been a judge on the Man Booker Prize.  So, as far as literature is concerned I guess he’s qualified to write about books, which he does eruditely, knowledgeably and perhaps above all, humorously.

Rick’s book is not just about books of course, but also about himself, and I have to say, his life has been interesting.  He writes about his childhood in a way which explains his love of reading, and like so many avid readers, their literary imagaination seems to have come alive through gaining access to an adult library at an early age.  I remember at age 14 being able to graduate from the junior public library to the adult library, and finding riches there beyond belief.  My own interest seems to have been in humour (Patrick Campbell, Georges Mikes, Leo Rosten, Stephen Potter), whereas Rick Gekoski seems to have got his rocks off by exploring his parents extensive library of psycho-sexual literature, whether Psychopathia Sexualis by Krafft-Ebing, or Sexual Anomalies and Perversions by Magunus Hirschfield.

Thankfully this stage seems not to have lasted too long and in no time Rick was deep in Holden Caulfield’s life in Catcher in The Rye (ah, EVERYONE I knew back then seemed to read Catcher, but how many young people know it today?).

And then Rick read T S Eliot, The Waste Land, and I just have to agree with his choice and the influence it had on him.  I read it when I was about fifteen and remember spending whole evenings trying to decode is mysteries and to grasp hold of the word pictures it presented to me.  It inspired me to write, and what greater commendation is there than that?  Wonderful stuff: –  and then to discover so much more in Four Quartets, which I soon found was recorded on LP records by Alex Guiness whose rich, actorial voice so enhanced my understanding of Little Gidding.

Isn’t the pleasure of reading a book like Outside of a Dog so much to do with discovering shared experiences, that sense of inwardly saying, “Ah yes”, when the writer enthuses about one’s own literary loves?

Rick progresses through some fairly esoteric stuff on his journey to Silence of the Lambs (and yes, I agree, even Robert Harris deserves a place in the canon because of his creation of Hannibal Lecter, a character so real he must jump off any page that contains a mention of him).  But to reach Lecter we progress through R D Laing, Germaine Greer (this is a very 60s list at this point), and even touches on Hume, Descartes and A J Eyer.

I was quite pleased to see Carl Hiassen in Rick’s list, for we must all have some lighter reads to keep us going (I confess to reading every Lee Child book as it is released), but it was fascinating to read Rick’s encounters with the Cambridge spies – Kim Philby etc, and Rick actually travelled to Moscow to meet Mrs Philby.

This is a very interesting book which must keep any avid reader interested throughout its 300 pages.  I reached the end and could have done with more, and what greater tribute to a book is there than that?   Its a great book to dip into, and also one to read from cover to cover in a couple of days.  I am sure it will remain on my shelves as a regular reference point and I’m pleased I bought it.