Book Notes: 50 Shades of Hillwalking by Ralph Storer

Despite the rather dubious title, this is a great little book. Ralph Storer has written a lot of mountain related books, some of which are his excellent route guides such as "100 Best Routes on Scottish Mountains", others memoirs and reflections on days and adventures in the hills such as "The Joy of Hillwalking." This book is one of the latter type, a series of stories, reflections and recollections from a lifetime spent exploring mountains all around the world.

As the title suggests there are fifty little chapters to this entertaining little volume. Some  focus on new places, and strange adventures (such as trekking the Grand Canyon), or exploring the Tatra Mountains. Other chapters are more thematic, looking at things such as peak 'bagging' or the creation of iron-runged walkways through the hills, which open extreme scenery to ordinary walkers. Still further chapters focus on friends and companions with whom Storer has shared days and nights in the mountains, or potholes of the world. Two of these are memorials to climbing partners who have perished in the hills, one in middle-age; the other a girl with whom he was very close at university.

Like me, Storer is an Englishman who has lived all his adult life in Scotland, a country which he loves and has learned to call home. My mountain expeditions and experience is tiny compared to Storer's epic explorations of the Rockies, the Alps and Reunion, however. I can only marvel at some of his exploits and wonder how he managed to have so much time and money to spend his life travelling, climbing and writing.

It's a delightful little book, full of real appreciation for the hills; and quite a few unorthodox views about some of the current debates about access and preservation too. I have to say that I'm rather grumpy reading it though, and that's not the book's fault. I sprained my ankle badly just over a month ago and currently can't walk far or cycle at all. I read this book whilst marooned at home on what should have been a weekend away in the far North of Scotland in the hills.

Book Notes: White Mughals by William Dalrymple

In "White Mughals", William Dalrymple once more delves into the history of India, his adopted home, and place he clearly loves deeply. He has spent decades exploring the cultural, religious, economic, political and military history of that vast and infinitely complex country. I say "once more", in that I have previously written here about the way that Dalrymple's books have been a gateway for me into the unknown world of Indian history, in books such as The Last Mughal. However White Mughals was written before most of the Dalrymple books I have reviewed on this blog.

Dalrymple sets out in this book to celebrate a lost world of pluralism and tolerance, in which the people of India, and the incoming waves of British settlers, intermingled, intermarried and moved freely between cultures, religions, languages, dress, customs and so forth. This book is set in the late 18th Century, when attitudes were yet to harden into the sort of religious and cultural fundamentalisms which later divided India. India itself in this period was not a united country, but a series of 'kingdoms', which jostled for power. Alongside this, were foreign armies, such as the French vying for colonial influence, along with "the Company". The Company in question, of course, was The East India Company, one of the strangest organisations ever to pass through the pages of history. While formally a private company, it had tradesmen, diplomats, governors, and standing armies through which it negotiated with governments and acted more like a state than a business. From Calcutta to Hyderabad, the cities were ruled by two authorities, the King and the "resident", the Company chief, in a governmental palace. 

The central story in this enormous book is of the romance between the company resident in Hyderabad, Major James Kilpatrick and Khair un-Nissa, a teenage beauty, reputedly a direct descendant of Mohammad. Dalrymple goes to inordinate length to set the political and cultural scene before he gets to this main storyline. At times, in the opening chapters, the detail becomes overwhelming, with little structure to hang it on. I pressed on with reading it on the strength of his other books, and was glad I did, because it gets better as it progresses.

The Kilpatrick-affair was a major scandal at the time, because while many British people in India lived their whole lives there, and took on facets of culture; Kilpatrick seemed to reject many aspects of his heritage and thoroughly embrace Indian life. He was accused of seducing, of even raping the girl; charges of which he was cleared; the truth is that he so loved her that he actually risked his entire career in order to marry her; even formally converting to Islam in order for the wedding to go ahead. 

While the Kilpatrick family are the central spine running through the book, across several generations; the narrative exposes and explores an amazing array of facets of Indian and British life in this period such as; relations between the sexes, religious views, festivals and practices, trade, travel and transport, politics and colonialism, health, medicine, agriculture, architecture and language. Of course, as it comes from the meticulous research and wonderful writing of William Dalrymple, all this serves as a remarkable window into another world.

The story of the children of Kilpatrick and Khair un-Nissa is traced through a remarkable archive trail of letters and documents in England where they grew up and lived, married and flourished. This intergenerational story, full of heartbreaks and tragedies, is a remarkable one worth telling. The book though ends with a lament for the lost age of tolerance in which English settlers would learn the languages, smoke the hookah's, ride elephants and keep harems of local women (!). By 1860, says Dalrymple, harder forms of trade, colonial aggression, and closed cultures would drive wedges between cultures, races, religions and people which would set a trajectory which would culminate in the violence of the post-Colonial partition of India.

Of all Dalrymple's book, I think this one might be the one I have enjoyed least. It's still a very, very good book from which I have learnt huge amounts. However, it isn't as gripping as The Return of The King or The Last Mughal, and does get bogged down in unmanageable detail in the first few chapters. Wading though that is worth it, though, for the hugely insightful wealth of things which follow. I am very much looking forward to Dalrymple's forthcoming history of the East India Company, which he is currently researching.

Book Notes: C.S. Lewis - A Life by Alister McGrath

Alister McGrath, is the latest of a long line of both admirers and critics of Clive Staples Lewis, to have write a biography of the writer, scholar and eccentric. McGrath notes early on that he has some similarities to Lewis, in that he is Irish, came to Oxford to pursue a successful academic career, converted to Christianity in part due to his academic interests, and as a result has written both academic tomes, and popular Christian books. There the similarities end, McGrath is a scientist-theologian and Lewis was scholar of medieval literature; yet their worlds overlap again in the field of Christian apologetics.

McGrath has produced a meticulously well-researched, and fluently written biography, which covers all aspects of Lewis' rather odd life. He positions himself as a friendly critic of Lewis, seeking to avoid some of the first generation of biographies which were from friends and admirers, or hatchet jobs by later critics. Intriguingly, A.N. Wilson describes McGrath's as the best biography yet, which is surprising as Wilson penned a particularly scathing one several years ago (his varying assessments perhaps saying as much about his varying personal convictions at these two times, as about the books!). 

McGrath guides the reader through the early life of Lewis, the loss of his mother, and the series of hated boarding schools which Lewis railed against in his autobiography Surprised by Joy. The advent of the First World War, and Lewis' participation in trench warfare on The Western Front is documented, along his battle injury which led to discharge from the forces. The fact that Lewis barely mentions this either in his autobiography, subsequent writings or correspondence is one of the more surprising things that McGrath relates. He points out that Lewis spends much more time denouncing the evils of failing boarding schools, than the murderous brutality of  machine gun fire which killed most of his pre-war friends. Such compartmentalism is clearly not a normal or healthy response, and quite the opposite of the war poets who processed their grief in ink - something Lewis wouldn't do until he was widowed in 1960.

Lewis's academic career and credentials are mapped out next, along with his eccentric private life in the 1920s. McGrath takes a careful line, in that while he neither avoids the question of Lewis unconventional relationship with Mrs Janie Moore, he doesn't take an excessively prurient interest in the details either. Of more interest to this biographer is Lewis progress in languages, philosophy and literary criticism; the field in which he would eventually become an Oxford tutor and then Cambridge professor.

McGrath writes more sympathetically then some biographers about Lewis' celebrated conversion to Christianity at Oxford. Although McGrath takes great pains to point out that he doesn't accept Lewis' own chronology of these events - he does accept the substance of them; presumably partly because McGrath himself also moved from atheism to theism to Christianity while at Oxford! 

Lewis' writings are all assessed here, from his academic works on literature, through to his first forays into Christian popular works. McGrath weighs and assesses them all from his early Pilgrim's Regress all the way to A Grief Observed, via Mere Christianity, Narnia and the rest. Again McGrath writes not as a 'groupie' or someone out to destroy a reputation, but offers a good guide to Lewis varied output. He finds, for example, Lewis' treatment of the Problem of Pain or the Argument from Desire, far more compelling that his famous Christological Trilemma, which he finds, somewhat hurried, poorly developed and lacking.

The Inklings, and Lewis' other literary companions (most famously Tolkein) are considered, along with the decline of Lewis as an apologist, and his later carer as a writer of fiction. McGrath is very careful to debunk the myth that Lewis abandoned the quest for a rational exploration of questions of faith, after a bruising debate with Elizabeth Anscombe at The Socratic Club in 1948. Rather he points out that the two agreed on much of the substance of natural theology, and that Lewis went on to rework his arguments in the light of the debate. The spiritual, intellectual and cultural environment from which both Narnia and Middle Earth sprung is nicely explored.

Lewis' later life, including his unusual marriage to Joy Davidman, his move to Cambridge, estrangement from Tolkein and his bereavement and crisis are all well examined towards the end of the book - along with his decline and death (on the same day as JFK) on 1963. A Grief Observed, is of course a controversial book in the Lewis canon. McGrath lines it up alongside The Problem of Pain as an obvious contrast. While The Problem of Pain presents a rational case for understanding human suffering in the face of suffering, in McGrath's view is that it seems distant and clinical compared to the raw emotion of A Grief Observed, Lewis' grief-stricken account of losing his wife Joy to cancer in 1960. Yet McGrath offers a careful rebuttal to those who have suggested that grief made Lewis into an agnostic. He shows the way in which Lewis probes every possible avenue including atheism and agnosticism, before finally settling into a Christian faith which was profoundly altered by the experience.

McGrath has produced a highly readable, wonderfully researched biography which is clearly deeply embedded in the primary sources (a principle which Lewis embodied in his study of medieval literature). He leaves the reader in no doubt as to Lewis' gifts, sincerity, joys, struggles and successes as well as his legacy. He also lets the reader see something of the extent to which he was also a rather odd chap, who's life contained great strains, loyalties, and sadnesess too. If like me, you were transfixed by The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, The Voyage of The Dawn Treader, or Prince Caspian, this is a great place to explore their origins. It's a highly enjoyable, and at times rather moving read.

Sunset

Wasps

Something strangely beautiful about a wasps' nest, although tbh I'd rather it wasn't in my bathroom.

A4 at Invergowrie

82 years of history, streaking past Invergowrie. 

Book Notes: The Last Wilderness by Neil Ansell

Neil Ansell's "The Last Wilderness" is simply a charming and rather wonderful book. There isn't really any kind of plot, there aren't any characters other than himself, and there aren't any pictures (not that you'd notice that). The premise is simply that Ansell took five trips to North West Scotland during a year, and walked through the landscape, recording his impressions of the landscape, the wildlife, the vegetation, the weather and his responses to all these various stimuli.

It is in reading books like this, or Jim Crumley, or Nan Shepherd that I realise that although I love long days spent in the Scottish Highlands, I hurry too much. My tendency is to plan a route, and demolish the miles to and from a goal, and as a result I often miss the richer experiences that are available. This is the sort of book in which the author describes picking his way slowly along an unpathed lochside, enjoying the shape of the trees, resting quietly, until otters tumble out from the rocks and scamper around him.

Ansell clearly has had a lifelong love of nature, and describes being the odd-one-out at school where team sports were the prevailing obsession. He, it seems, was happier wandering in the woods, watching, listening and learning. Writing in middle-age, that lifetime of absorbing knowledge is gently unpacked to the reader as he shares his insights into geology, conservation, history and the changing landscape. From time-to-time he wanders off into reminiscence, and tells whimsical and improbable stories from a lifetime of exploring landscapes all over the world, before resuming his narrative of trudging little-known backwaters around Loch Morar.

I was a little saddened when he threw in the comment about environmental harm, "It is a rather biblical outlook; to see the world solely as a resource placed there for our own benefit" (p83). While it is often assumed that the 'subdue the earth' text in Genesis and Peter's meat-feast vision suggest that the earth exists solely for human pillaging; this is a serious misreading of the text. In biblical terms the earth exists primarily to display the glory, generosity, and goodness of God to his whole creation of which we are a special part. The story starts with God making it, and ends with God renewing it. So, unless we are to suggest that the way to honour an artist is to destroy his art; this is a sorry slur on the bible's view of our environmental responsibility. (For more on this see arocha.org)

I especially loved the chapters about landscapes that I know, or have been in. As I said, I have marched through them too quickly, but his descriptions of places I know were especially pleasing. I found that I needed to read the book with a map in hand, to trace his routes and see where he had diverted from the busy, 'trade-routes' and just wandered. Like me, he usually walks in the remote parts of Scotland alone and positively enjoys this. Not that he is anti-social, he documents some lovely days spent with girlfriends, fellow-walkers and people he meets in Bothies or in the wilds. Rather, the landscape is the point of his adventures, not merely the context for a social activity. He is certainly a more courageous walker than I am, in terms of isolated wanderings when in ill health, far from help or rescue. While I would walk with a sniffly cold, Ansell was happy enough to wander far from home while awaiting heart-surgery!

It was only when I was about three-quarters of the way through the book that I realised that it was picture-less. That is a tribute to the wonderfully rich, and vivid prose which paints pictures in the mind, rather like the old adage about radio having better pictures than TV.

One of the most moving threads running through the book is Ansell's reflections on his declining hearing. He is aware that certain ranges of sounds are becoming lost to him, as time progresses, and that some of the bird-songs he has loved since childhood are now lost to him - in all but long-held memories. His adjustment to this sadness, as his world becomes progressively quieter is a beautifully observed lament, which partly explains the subtitle of the book: A Journey Into Silence.

This is the kind of book that makes me yearn to be in the hills. Sadly, I sprained my ankle rather badly on Sunday, and won't be there for some time. Thankfully though, even at home on a dreich grey night in May, with a dram in one hand and Ansell's book in the other, I am transported there in my mind.