Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams

 

Watching the start of a News Agent’s podcast with Emily Matlis on screen, I was shocked to hear her say:

 “I'm going to ask you to leave. I'm going to ask you to leave the studio because you cannot be present for the conversation that we now need to have.

The guest who she asked to leave was Sarah Wynn-Williams the author of  “Careless People”, a book that tells the story of her time as a Facebook employee and why she left the company, and a book that is subject to a lawsuit brought by Meta and which she is not allowed to promote in any way.

Back in 2009, Sarah Wynn-Williams was a young New Zealand diplomat working in its embassy in Washington. This was still the early days of Facebook after it had changed access to its App from university and school students to anyone with an email address. Wynn- Williams in her idealism, could see there was enormous potential for Facebook to change the world. She says in her book it was obvious politics would happen on Facebook and in turn politicians and governments of every opinion would not only use the platform to communicate but also to manipulate opinion. She saw the need for  Facebook to forge relationships with governments round the world.

She joined the company and soon became involved in Facebook’s international outreach eventually becoming Director of Global Public Policy.

Careless People tracks the change from her naïve expectation that by connecting people Facebook would be a force for good in the world, to the growing realisation that the driving force behind Mark Zuckerberg and his inner circle, was how Facebook could generate vast amounts of money by expanding into more and more countries, provided of course they didn’t have pay out vast amounts of tax.

There was a slow accumulation of wake-up moments for Wynn-Williams which eventually led to her resignation from the company. One such was Facebook’s use by the military in Myanmar to monitor and coerce its own citizens, and even more significant was the relationship with China where it was clear the Chinese government would only give Facebook access to their vast market if they in turn had access to all the Chinese users' personal data.

Then there was the clear evidence from the 2016 US election that Trump had won the presidency against the odds by his campaign’s ruthless use of Facebook to bombard voters with posts that had little regard for the truth. Also the manipulation of the algorithms to target vulnerable people such as teenage girls, anxious about their body image, with adverts and information tapping into those anxieties.

Careless People is a fly on the wall account of personalities, discussions, and disputes played out in meetings and on the international stage. We witness Facebook factions fighting for their stake in the enterprise and Mark Zuckerberg, guru, obsessive, growing richer by the minute and seemingly unable to see that this child of his Havard days was becoming an out-of-control raging monster creating havoc across the globe.

The book is a compelling read. It’s short chapters are full of humour that race along but while you enjoy the pace of the ride at the same time you are shocked and deeply concerned to see so much power, wielded by so few and with so little concern.

Meta Response to the News Agent's Podcast

"This former employee is trying to use the legal process to sell books, which an arbitrator already ruled broke the agreement she signed with a company when she accepted a large severance payment years ago. Her book is divorced from reality, disparaging and riddled with false claims."

To watch that episode of the News Agents click this image, which shows Sarah Wynn-Williams receiving The Freedom To Publish Prize at the British Book Awards - awarded jointly to Sarah Wynn-Williams and posthumously to Virginia Giuffre for Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice, which recounts the abuse she said she suffered at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and others.

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Wlliam Allingham Diaries

William Allingham (1824–1889) was an Irish poet, diarist, and editor, best known for his lyrical poetry and his connections with the literary figures of the Victorian era. 

Allingham’s education was informal, though he was an avid reader from a young age. After his father’s death, he took up a job as a customs officer in Lymington to support himself, a position he held for much of his early career. However, his true passion was poetry, and he began writing and publishing verses in periodicals.

His literary career brought him into contact with some of the most prominent writers and artists of the time, including Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Thomas Carlyle, and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, particularly Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Rossetti illustrated Allingham's Day and Night Songs, and the two maintained a strong friendship. Allingham was also influenced by William Wordsworth and Robert Browning.

Marriage
In 1874, he married the artist Helen Paterson, later known as Helen Allingham, who became a well-regarded watercolorist, famous for her romanticised paintings of Victorian rural life.

Diaries
These were published posthumously in 1907 edited by his wife, and provide a rich and insightful account of Victorian literary and artistic life.

The Great & The Good & The Changing World

Allingham was well-connected in the literary world, and his diaries record meetings with prominent writers such as Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Thomas Carlyle, Robert Browning, and members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti. His observations offer intimate portrayals of these figures, providing details about their personalities, habits, and creative processes.

Allingham comments on social and political events of the Victorian era. There are passing references to Darwin and his theory of evolution (referred to as Darwinism), belief in God, and spiritualism which was then all the vogue. His comments capture the attitudes and concerns of the period, including debates on art, science. religion, and nationalism.

Death
On Sunday the 17th Nov 1889 it was evident that the end was very ear. When asked if he had any requests to make, he said ' No, my mind is at rest ' : then to his wife

'And so, to where I wait, come gently on." 

' I thank you (to Mr. Buckston Browne) — I thank every one.'

After this he lay in a kind of trance, and died peace-fully about two o'clock in the afternoon of the next day, November the 18th.

Once that morning he said, ' I am seeing things that you know nothing of.'

The cremation, which was by his special wish, took place at Woking. A few friends and relations only were present. There was no service : Mr. F. G. Stephens, the oldest of the friends there gathered together, read aloud

 

Allingham's own Poet's Epitaph : —

Body to purifying flame,

Soul to the Great Deep whence it came.

Leaving a song on earth below,

An urn of ashes white as snow.

The urn was buried in the churchyard at Bally-shannon.

No funeral gloom, my dears, when I am gone,

Corpse-gazings, tears, black raiment, grave-yard grimness ;

Think of me as withdrawn into the dimness,

Yours still, you mine, remember all the best

Of our past moments, and forget the rest ;

And so, to where I wait, come gently on.

(from: "My Native Land" by Lydia Maria Child.)

Quotes from The Diaries

God

Thursday 14th May `1877: Thomas Carlisle - I know nothing whatever of God except what I find within myself - the feeling of the eternal difference between right and wrong.

William Allingham talking to Tennyson. In 1884.

As we turned down Packhorse Lane, Tennyson spoke of Eternal punishment as an obsolete belief.
I said, At Whitley Station, hangs on the wall, a large book of Bible texts, one page for each day of the month. Today I read. All the dead shall arise, the righteous to eternal life, the wicked to everlasting damnation.
Tennyson. It's not a right translation.
Allingham. But it's the authoritative teaching of the Church.
Tennyson. Have you read Farrah's book?
Allingham. I never read such books.
Tennyson. Oh, but here he proves from original sources that no such doctrine existed in the early days of Christianity.
I told Tennyson that Bishop Wilberforce was very proud of having saved the Athanasian Creed when the Archbishop of Canterbury was for giving it up. Which interested him.
Did he? My father. (I think it was his father) would never read the Athanasian creed.
As we entered the back wicket and went along the shady little walk to the house, Tennyson said. You're not orthodox. And I can't call myself orthodox. Two things, however, I've always firmly convinced of – God - and that death will not end my existence.
Allingham. So I believe.
Tennyson. Stopping and turning round. Do you hold these?
Allingham. I do.

Lincolnshire - Tennyson's reminiscences

Preachers : ' Coom in your rags, coom in your filth, Jesus'll take ye, Jesus won't refuse ye.' 'Time has two ends, and the Law cooms down wi' a bang ! ' 'Glory’ a very favourite word.

Lincolnshire manners. ' One of my brothers met a man in the lane near our house and said in a friendly voice, "Good-night ! " to which the man replied, "Good night — and dom you ! " I asked a man one day, " Do you know what o'clock it is? " he answered, " Noa ! and I don't want to." '

Tennyson tells of old Lincolnshire farmer near his father's. He said to him one day civilly, Mr _____, so why don't you mend your fences? The old fellow stooped down and tied his shoelace carefully, then straightened himself and said, I've never mended a fence, and I never will.

Tennyson had a story of a Lincolnshire farmer who said, when he came out of church — ' burned for ever and for ever! I can't believe that : no constitution could stand it

Charles Darwin & Russell Wallace - Evolution & Spiritualism

Tennyson now took Barnes and me to his top room. Darwinism — 'Man from ape — would that really make any difference '.

Friday May 2. — Bright and mild. To Carlyle 3.15. We walk, Kensington Gardens. Carlyle. said, 'Here is May, poor May! not forward with her work this time — Tyndall has not come near me lately; I must touch him up. O yes, he's very fond of me — but perhaps he was vexed by an outburst of mine against Darwinism. I find no one who has the deep abhorrence of it that I have in my heart of hearts ! Science, falsely so called. Tyndall is Irish, but not an accurate Irishman. He is jocular, and not without a touch of blarney. Has Huxley (defender of Darwin) indigestion .? — lucky not to have had experience of it sooner. Huxley attacks Herbert Spencer, with many polite bows and recognitions.'

Carlyle. spoke of Darwinism. ' I don't care three ha'pence for the Darwinian Theory.' By and by he said, ' It is impossible to believe otherwise than that this world is the work of an Intelligent Mind, The Power which has formed us — He (or It — if that appears to any one more suitable) has known how to put into the human soul an ineradicable love of justice and truth. The best bit for me in Kant is that saying of his, " Two things strike me dumb with astonishment — the Starry Heavens and the Sense of Right and Wrong in the Human Soul." 

[Actual quote: "Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and the more steadily reflection is occupied with them: the starry heaven above me and the moral law within me," in his Critique of Practical Reason.]

William. Allingham. — 'It might be taken as a foreshadowing of Darwinism — the origin of man in an amphibious lepidosyren.'

August 11. — To Freshwater ; engage bedroom over little shop, and to the Darwins. Dr. Hooker in lower room writing away at his Address ; going to put ' Peter Bell's ' primrose into it and wants the exact words. Upstairs Mrs. Darwin, Miss D. and Mr. Charles Darwin himself, — tall, yellow, sickly, very quiet. He has his meals at his own times, sees people or not as he chooses, has invalid's privileges in full, a great help to a studious man.

Charles Darwin expected, but comes not. Has been himself called ' The Missing Link.' Luncheon. Then T. and I walk into croquet -ground, talking of Christianity.

February 22. — Drove with Carlyle. — Darwin and Haeckel. C. : ' For Darwin personally I have great respect ; but all that of " Origin of Species," etc., is of little interest to me. What we desire to know is, who is the Maker? and what is to come to us when we have shuffled off this mortal coil. Whoever looks into himself must be aware that at the centre of things is a mysterious Demiurgus — who is God, and who cannot in the least be adequately spoken of in any human words.'

Friday, November 6. — Fine, walked from Sandhills to Aldworth, through Haslemere, muddy roads, yellow russet woods. The Bucktons there, T. and Mr. B. on Natural History. T. asks ' How can Evolution account for the ant : 'Mr. B. says the theory presents many difficulties. He is studying the English cicadae. We go to hall door to see the B.'s off, then Tennyson and I take a short walk. He asks me to stay the night, and I accept.

I told him about Alfred Wallace, (Worked in the tropics & came up with the theory of evolution independently of Darwin) whom we visited last Saturday, and Spiritualism. Wallace a thorough-going believer — but has had no experiences himself. Also, he never visualises his thoughts. I suggested that to such a man the mere visualising power of some other minds might appear supernatural, he having nothing like it in his experience.

At luncheon, talk about the tropic woods : Wallace said you would find one kind of tree in flower for about a week, and at another time another kind of tree in flower for a short time, but you might come again and again and find no flowers at all ; there were never in the Tropics such masses of floral colour as in an English Spring.

To the Study. Wallace gave details of table-rapping, table-prancing, and so forth, his own experiences and other people's. He never doubts any statement whatever in favour of ' Spiritualism,' and has an answer to every objection. ' Maskelyne and Cooke do wonderful things.' — * Yes, partly by the help of mediumship.'

Discussion on Spiritualism and table rapping

Wallace said it was absurd to suppose that Matter could move itself. I ventured to remark that Matter, so far as we can penetrate, does move itself, indeed is perpetually in motion. He rejoined that in table rapping, etc. The phenomena were manifestly governed by an intelligences like our own. The means of communication between the unseen world and ours were few and difficult.

Here, Tennyson said, “A great ocean, pressing round us on every side and only leaking in by a few chinks, which Wallace took no notice. But went on to describe instances of Spirit writing on slates by Slade and others.

I fear my tone all through was hardly respectful to the spirits.

Somehow or other a sudden digression was made to politics, and W. came out with a strong opinion of the worthlessness of the House of Lords and the absurdity of the hereditary principle.

Tennyson referred with praise to Wallace book Tropical Nature and remarked, You have said something very bold about matter. I think matter more mysterious than spirit. I can conceive in a way what spirit is, but not matter.

Wallace. — ' I conceive Matter not as a substance at all, but as points of energy^ and that if these were withdrawn Matter would disappear.'

Wallace— ' So far from a material atom being indestructible, I believe that all the Matter in existence might be immediately destroyed by the withdrawal of the sustaining Force.'

Tennyson said. Is a very strange thing that according to Wallace, none of the spirits that communicate with men ever mentioned God or Christ.

I said I always felt that The Diety was infinitely above us. Another step will bring us no nearer.

Tennyson. Wallace says the system he believes in is a far finer than Christianity. It is Eternal Progress. I've always felt that there must be somewhere, someone who knows, that is God. But I am in hopes that I shall find something human in Him too.

Then we talked a little about Darwin, B. (Browning) saying that, whatever his merits as investigator, his philosophy was of little or no importance.

I told him of our neighbour Alfred Wallace, and how he had arrived, as it were, at the opposite goal from Darwin in what are called ' Supernatural questions ' ; Darwin at last believing almost nothing, Wallace almost anything

The Sacredness of Human Life?

Allingham and his wife Helen. Visit. Lord and Lady Wolesley.

Sunday 5th of June. 1887. I must not forget that at tea Lord Wolesley said, in his usual easy, cheerful way, that it was a great modern absurdity to value human life too highly. People have made idols of first one thing and then another, and now their idol was human life.

I said. Surely the notion of the Mystic sacredness of human life is very old, there’s Cain and Abel.

Lord Wolesley allowed this instance, but with a twinkle of the eye, went on. But look at the Lord God, how he slew thousands upon thousands, smote them hip and thigh. 

Helen put in. That was a long time ago. And we all smiled.

I said: A man I knew, Dr Bodichon of Algiers, had a serious theory for improving the world in the shortest possible time by the painless extinction of all useless human beings. He would have juries, including a large proportion of men of science, to decide on the fitness of this person or that to live.

Lord Wolseley. I entirely agree with your Algerian friend. I would have supplies of chloroform for gaols and hospitals for cripples, and so forth, and the world would be, débarrassé  (got rid of) of much trouble and expense.

I argued that this would lead to many abuses and that the general level of morality would be lowered. But Lord W maintained that we have nowadays an absurd and superstitious respect for human life and seemed to mean it. To lighten off the discussion, I repeated to Lady W. That Madam Bodichon had said to me in the midst of one of her husband’s discourses on scientific homicide. “He wouldn't himself drown a kitten.”

While Helen went in with the ladies for her parasol before starting. Lord W and I stood at the old porch looking at a hive of bees among the Ivy. Then he pointed at Lady W’s Pug. There's an absurd creature, it has a tail and it's alive, that's all you can say. I'm fond of dogs, but such a thing as that is good for no purpose.

Pugs would come under the chloroform act, I suggested.

Every one of them, he said.

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Super Infinite - The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell

 

“The power of John Donne’s words nearly killed a man”. Katherine Rundell’s Super Infinite starts with a bang. Will this biography be a bit dry, a bit academic? Not a bit of it. She says: This is both a biography of Donne and an act of evangelism. She is passionate about Donne and looking for converts. Her enthusiasm, illustrated with multiple quotes of his poetry and prose, and her own use of telling imagery, enliven every chapter.

Donne was born into a Catholic family 1572 in the reign of Elizabeth I, lived through the reign of James I and died in 1631 as Dean of St Pauls, with Charles I on the throne. This was a time when scholars, priests and courtiers, anyone in the public eye, had to tread a careful path of conformity to church and state or risk imprisonment or worse. Donne had his share of troubles and was imprisoned when he married a teenager, Anne Moore, without her father's permission. Katherine Rundell documents the many ups and downs of Donne's life, but it is his poetry, writings and sermons that are her passion.

She claims that Donne is the greatest writer of desire in the English language, that he belongs alongside Shakespeare at the peak of English literature, and, she says,  to let him fall out of common consciousness would be as foolish as discarding a kidney or a lung.

She is fascinated by Donne’s complexity. He was incapable of being just one thing. She writes “he was poet, lover, essayist, lawyer, pirate, recusant, preacher, satirist, politician, courtier, chaplain to the King (Charles I) and dean of the finest cathedral in London.

At no point in his life did Donne come to an end of himself.

She delights in Donne’s originality which broke with convention and did not sit well with his contemporaries. She has plenty of originality of her own. Here are more quotes:

He wanted to wear his wit like a knife in his shoe; he wanted it to flash out at unexpected moments.

To read the full text of a Donne sermon is a little like mounting a horse only to discover that it is an elephant, large and unfamiliar.

The pleasure of reading a Donne poem is akin to that of cracking a locked safe, and he meant it to be so. He demanded hugely of us, and the demands of his poetry are a mirror to that demanding. The poetry stands to ask: why should everything be easy, rhythmical, pleasant?

To read his verse is to hear him insist, across the gap of hundreds of years: for God’s sake, will you listen.

To write about death in the way he did – to send a suction pump down into the gap between what we know and what we fear – was to risk chaos. Donne knew it and did it anyway.

There’s a kind of imaginative ferocity to Donne’s writing about death and it grows overtime as he loses more and more of the people he loves and their ghosts pile up around him….. He becomes a peddler of the grotesque, a forensic scholar of the entropy of the body….The body is in its essentials a very, very slow one man horror show: a slowly decaying piece of meatish fallibility in clothes over the sensations of which we have very little control. Donne looked at it, saw it and did not blink. He walked straight at it, no explanation, justification, no cheerful sallies. There was just a clear-eyed acknowledgement of the precise anatomy and scale, the look and feel, the reality of ruin. It was his superpower that unflinching quality. It allowed him clarity and vision.

….he was the kind of man who demanded of pain that it shunt you closer to Infinity.

He was a man constantly transforming. He was a one-man procession: John Donne, the persecuted, the rake, the lawyer, the bereaved, the lover, the jailbird, the desperate, the striver, the pious, John Donne the almost dead and reporting from the frontline of the grave.

He’s one whose work, if allowed under your skin, can offer joy so violent it kicks the metal out of your knees and sorrow large enough to eat you. 

Katherine Rundell spent 10 years researching and writing this life of John Donne. She calls herself an evangelist; she has another convert. I'm going to read John Donne, crack open the safe and open my mind to infinity.

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Pretty Girl In Crimson Rose (8) by Sandy Balfour

53 years ago, when TV’s were B&W and a teacher’s monthly salary was £59 – I still have a pay slip! – a friend invited me on a Scottish walking/climbing holiday, him, me and five girls. Perfect! Cometh the hour, I arrived at our meetup in York to find not five girls but just one, his girlfriend! The thought of discretely looking the other way for two whole weeks took all the shine off any glories the Highlands might have to offer. The girl friend had an idea, she phoned a friend, who agreed to join us in Fort William. Problem solved, second girl on her way. During the hours of sitting together in a Morris 1100 travelling up the Scottish west coast, the four of us battled our way through the Guardian cryptic crossword. No. 12,111 – I still have that too. Clue 22A was very apposite, “Time soon modifies feelings” (8) Ans: “Emotions” (can you see why?). My feelings were soon modified, emotions kicked in and Reader, I married her.

Which brings me to “Pretty Girl in Crimson Rose (8)”, by Sandy Balfour. – a memoir of love, identity, and crosswords. He tells the story of how he and his girlfriend hitchhiked from South Africa to England in 1983 and of his subsequent life as a filmmaker and journalist. It is also a love letter to the art of the cryptic crossword which he and his girlfriend discovered together. Don’t let the thought of “difficult” crosswords put you off reading this short, delightful book. Yes, we meet lots of clues (answers all given, either in the text or appendix) and we learn how the cryptic clue works and the inside stories of some of the setters, but there is far more to the book than this. Sandy Balfour takes us on his very personal journey with anecdote, humour and a lightness of touch that carries the reader along. Here is a sample:

“New Year's Day 1990. My girlfriend and I have taken the first steps towards creating a home in London by buying part of a house near Arsenal Football Club. She is attempting to teach me the basics of crosswords. "Take 'Pretty girl in crimson rose'," she says. "Eight letters. What does it mean?" "It means," she continues, "that we have a pretty girl and she is wearing something red, or pink. She is wearing something that suits her prettiness. Prettiness, girls, roses - they all go together." I nod. "Got it," I say. "It means," says my girlfriend, "nothing of the sort." I nod again and smile encouragingly. I am keeping up. "That" she says, "is what they want you to think it means. What it actually means is either the first word or the last word. What it actually means is 'rose'."

If you like word play and the idiosyncrasies of the English language and are intrigued by or take delight in cryptic crosswords, you will enjoy keeping company with Sandy and his wife, always endearingly referred to as his girlfriend, as he takes you on their personal journey, and his life as a film maker in the turbulent 80’s and 90’s.

'An extraordinary memoir... a positive page turner... A mesh of journeys and destinations, politics and romance, it touches what is beyond words.' Sophie Ratcliffe, The Times

My girlfriend and I still do crosswords together, not always solving them but always taking delight in clever clues. Here are a few:

a.      Picture of girl kept by her parents (8)

b.     Group fixed stage scenery to mount sequence of songs (3) The answer is clued five times by a word that has 364 different meanings and takes most pages to define in the OED

c.      Potty train (4)

d.      Two girls one on each knee (8) - Title of another book about crosswords. By Alan Connor

 Answers:

Title: rebelled. Red is crimson. Pretty girl is belle and it is IN red. Rebelled means rose as in, the people rose up in protest.

Emotions is an anagram of “time soon”

a. Panorama b. Set – It can mean, group, fixed, scenery, to mount, sequence of songs 

c. Loco, d. Patella

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If Only They Didn't Speak English by Jon Sopel & Educated by Tara Westover

 

Bill Bryson claimed he didn’t understand the UK despite living here for 30 years. Well, Bill, the feeling is mutual. When I look across the pond at the USA, I am totally baffled, which is why I needed If Only They Didn't Speak English by Jon Sopel.

Take these conundrums for starters:

How could a man who openly lied, insulted his opponents, and ignored shocking revelations about his personal life, be elected President of The United States? How could a country in which 65% of the adults identify as Christian not change its gun laws after the killing of 20 children at Sandy Hook? How could a country that is a bastion of democracy see a violent mob try and overturn by force the result of a democratic election.

This book by the BBC’s North American editor goes a long way to explaining the enigma that is the United States. Bill Bryson says of the book: "Jon Sopel may be the sanest man in America. He is certainly one of the most insightful. . .".

In the introduction Jon Sopel says: “Through music, literature, film and TV and even through the food we eat and the clothes we wear, we have all a highly developed sense of what America is; ….but America in the election year of 2016 and its extraordinary aftermath felt about as foreign a country as you could imagine.”

The book is divided into ten chapters, beginning with “Anger” and ending with “Chaos”, neat bookends to all that lies between, God, Patriotism, Race, Truth, etc. As you might expect from an experienced journalist the book is highly readable with anecdotes, humour and telling phrases to whisk you along. “Donald J Trump played by the Queensbury Rules in reverse. There was no belt below which he would not punch, no line he would not cross.” But, he also finds a lot to admire in America: “ ….. the odds are much higher [than being shot] that you are going to be blown away by civility, decency and courtesy.”, and “the work ethic of young people is off the charts”

So, if you want to get under the skin of the foreign country that is the United States then this is the book for you.

If politics is not your thing and you much prefer to immerse yourself in a country by reading about its people then try Educated by Tara Westover.  This is the best-selling, coming of age memoir of a young girl, growing up in a strict Mormon family in Idaho. Tara’s Father was a survivalist who believed we are living in the biblical end-times - as do many of Donald Trump’s supporters. In 1992 there was a tragic siege of a family in Ruby Ridge, also in Idaho, that resulted in the death of the wife and son. This reinforced her Father’s belief that his family should be prepared to withstand a siege, be self-sufficient and have nothing to do with any government agencies such as medical care or education. Tara’s mother treated all their illnesses and injuries, some very serious, and learned midwifery from a friend. Tara had no formal education until she was seventeen but with a desire to free herself from her family’s influence and her obvious talent, she entered Brigham Young University, and eventually completed a PhD in Cambridge. “Educated” has been recommended by no less than Barak Obama and Bill Gates so need I say more. It has sold over 6 million copies, so you’ve probably already read it.

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Reading the Russians - the Anna Karenina Fix by Viv Groskop

Viv Groskop is an author, columnist, playwright, broadcaster and comedian. She become obsessed in her teens by all things Russian after reading Anna Karenina and believing the name Groskop was of Russian origin. This led her to two Russian degrees and to living and working in Russia. Eventually she discovered her family originated from Poland and her name means “Fat-head” but this has not diminished her love of Russia and its literature.

The Anna Karenina Fix is a lively, witty overview of the Russian classics and sets out to show they are not deep, difficult and intimidating but can be enjoyed by everyone. The 11 short chapters feature 10 of the great Russian authors, Turgenev, Pasternak, Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky etc with her hero Tolstoy starting and finishing the book with chapters on Anna Karenina and War & Peace.

The chapter titles give a flavour of Viv Groskop’s light-hearted style. Chapter four for example is titled: 

“How to Survive Unrequited Love” – A month in the Country by Ivan Turgenev – (Or: Don’t fall in love with your best friend’s wife).

The introduction deals with the vexed issue of Russian names, including the exasperating problem of diminutives. How do you keep up when Alexandra is referred to as “Sasha”? Her own name Viv, became “Vivka” (Little Viv) which was misheard by her Russian landlady as “Veepka” (Little VIP) which in turn mutated to “Vipulenka” (Dearest Teeny, Tiny Little VIP).

The book is a vibrant mixture of humour, insight and anecdote, with incidents from her own life in Russia thrown into the mix. It is a very enjoyable, page-turning read and at the end of it you will have had the door flung open on what for too many of us is the closed world of Russian literature. She makes clear in her introduction that the book is not intended to be an academic thesis, but instead:

“It's an exploration of the answers these writers found to life's questions big and small and it's a love letter to some favourite books which at one point helped me to find my identity and buoyed me up when I lost it again.”

Until a few years ago One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch was the only Russian novel I’d read – see chapter 8 in The Anna Karenina Fix. Written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in 1962 the novel is set in a labour camp in Stalin’s Russia. Despite the harrowing setting, the story is full of humanity and wisdom, and is often included in lists of the world’s great novels. At just 209 pages it is an easy place to dip your toe in the water of the Russian classics.

Three things propelled me deeper: the first was a visit to St Petersburg where my daughter, Anna was doing a prelim course in Russian prior to studying for a year at the university in Novosibirsk, the capital of Siberia – she always wanted to live where there was plenty of snow! Surrounded by all things Russian made me want to get to know the country through its literature. The second was our book group choice of First Love by Turgenev which was a short, easy read and prompted me go on to read his Fathers and Sons. The third was the BBC adaptation of War & Peace in January 2016. I’d had a three-volume edition of the novel sitting on my shelves for years and knew if I watched it on TV I’d probably never read it. So, I decided it was now or never and finished it in 20 days. It was such a marvellous read that I went on and read Anna Karenina too.

If you’ve been put off reading the Russians then Viv Groskop will hopefully inspire you to give them a go and if nothing else you will have read a very stimulating introduction to some great literature. As the Telegraph review states; “Explored with dancing wit, affection and brilliance. Passionate, hilarious, joyful”.

 

 

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A Woman In Berlin

This is a compelling, heart-rending read. It is a diary kept by a young German woman in Berlin in the Spring of 1945. The diary was published anonymously in the 1950's and caused a great stir and a lot of hostility. It was re-published in the 1970's and a film was made in 2009. After her death the author was revealed as Marta Herta, a journalist.
She is unsparing about the fate of so many women, including herself who were raped by Russian soldiers. As a calculated means of survival she deliberately sought to attract Russian officers who would protect her from other soldiers and also supply her with food.
"Tuesday 24th April Around Noon. No news. We're completly cut off. Some gas but no water. Looking out of the window I see throngs of people outside the stores. They're still fighting over the rancid butter...."
Monday 28th May: "The future weighs on us like lead. All I can do is brace myself for what's to come and try to keep my inner flame alive. But why? What for? What task awaits me? I feel so hopelessly alone."
Wednesday 6th June: All I know is that we Germans are finished. We’re nothing but a colony, subject to their (The Allies) whims. I can't change any of that I just have to swallow it. All I want to do is steer my little ship through the shoals as best I can. That means hard work and short rations, but the old sun is still in the sky and maybe my heart will speak to me once more. One thing's for sure my life has certainly been full - all too full.
Simon Garfield, Observer Review: Reading A Woman in Berlin in one afternoon is an unnerving sensory experience: the walls close in, the air thickens, shrieks from children playing nearby adopt a sinister air. This is an all-enveloping book, a lyrical personal journal …. it leaves a deep scar.
The book brought home to me yet again, how ordinary people are powerless against the powerful. Powerless against those who are able to create mass movements of ideology, fed by propaganda, in order to bring about their own grandiose designs. Yet ordinary people are the ones who suffer most.

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Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading by Lucy Mangan

I bought this book on the strength of watching Christmas University Challenge. Lucy Magan was captain of the Trinity Hall team and was introduced as a writer for the Guardian and Stylist magazine and as the author of Bookworm. This sounded to be my kind of book so I ordered it and read it over just 3 days.

Lucy Mangan is a very witty writer and the book just carries you along, as annecdote follows annecdote from her reading life, often including her Father (a reader & thinker), her Mother (a doer and talker) and her younger sister (child lego fanatic and computer nerd). Here's a sample:

A few years ago I mentioned to my sister that I was planning to visit Penhurst Place in Kent for the first time. ‘Oh yes’, she said. ‘Dad and I went there once when I was little’.

‘Without me?’ I said, ever alert to potential acts of favouritism and not about to let an intervening three decades dampen my outrage.

‘Yes, of course’, she said, looking baffled. ‘We used to go every weekend.'

‘Penhurst Place?’ I said, equally baffled in my turn.

My sister is not known for love of either Philip Sidney , Renaissance poetry or Elizabethan architecture. She likes computers, dogs and Mythbusters on Discovery Channel.

‘No, turd,’ she said - she has never shown me the full measure respect I feel is due to elder sisters – ‘different places on the Magan Magical Mystery tour’.

It transpired that she and Dad used to set off in the car every Saturday and take it in turns to choose whether to go left or right at each junction and see where they ended up.

‘And where was I?’ I asked.

‘Where do you think you were?’ She said. ‘You were at home. Reading. We told you we were going every time and you never broke eye contact with your stupid books. Sometimes you'd wave goodbye as you turned a page.’

During the course of this highly entertaining memoir Lucy Mangan ranges over 250 books from nursery pre-reading days when her Dad would buy books and read them to her, through to her own voracious reading of primary and secondary school. There is a cornucopia of information about the books, their authors and illustrators, so Bookworm is also a potted history of writing for children from earliest days to the near present. She tells how different books affected her and of her likes and dislikes. 

She says "I had a strict and enduring rule against books in which animals - especially talking animals - were a predominant feature" and then goes on to say how this caused her to miss out on Peter Rabbit, The Wind in The Willows, Tarka The Otter and other animal-centric stories. Eventually she realises this is simply a mindless predjudice and comments, "What. An. Idiot."

She is obviously a bookworm at the top end of the scale, bordering on insanity and seems to have copies of almost all the books she has ever read with over 10,000 in her house. Though when a book dealer came to view them she says, "He came. He saw. He left."  There were no pristine collectors' items but simply well-worn readers' copies. She had, he said, what looked like a jumble sale hoisted on the walls.

As an adult reader she still needs her daily reading "fix" but now does not get absorbed as easily or as fully. Daily life and her critical faculties are more in play and it needs a powerful page to be able to banish them from her mind. Something that all life-long bookworms can relate to - I certainly do.

My early reading was the 50's and 60's so there is little overlap for me in the books, no Biggles, no Jennings, and no cowboy books and I've no idea of the teenage joy to be had from Sweet Valley High or Judy Blume, but this is essentially a book about the joy of childhood reading and this bookworm enjoyed every page.

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A Legacy of Spies and Red Notice

A Legacy of Spies by John LeCarré

For fans of "The Spy Who Came in From The Cold", and arch spymaster, George Smiley, this is a return to familiar and much-loved territory. We are again plunged into a world where our intelligence is stretched to the limit by crpytic jargon, non-linear narrative, and jigsaw pieces of truth that scatter as soon as we begin to piece them together. It is modern day and children of victims of "Windfall", a failed covert operation from cold-ward days, intend to sue the British intelligence services for the deaths of their parents. The fall guy is Peter Guillam who is called back from his retirement on a Breton farm and subject to interrogation. All the past files, including those kept by the Stasi, are put before Guillam and Le LeCarré uses this novel as a re-run of "The Spy..." and the hunt for the traitor in British intelligence. It's a very good, page-turning read but, to me does not have a good ending.

Red Notice by Bill Browder

This is the second book about the corruption at the heart of the Russian state that I've read this year. Bill Browder tells the story of how he became involved in making money for investors by buying into new capitalist enterprises, first in Eastern Europe and then in Russia. Just like the first book, "Nothing is True and Everything is Possible" by Peter Pomerantsev, modern Russia is revealed as an alien world to those of us living under democratic systems. Although our society has many ills, we are nowhere near the state controlled gangsterism, corruption of the police and judiciary, or state control of the media and electoral system that prevail in Russia.

The tragic heart of this book is a young Russian lawyer, Sergie Magnitsky, who was beaten to death by eight Russian police officers after exposing the theft of $230 million of taxes by Russian government officials. Eventually this led to the USA passing a Magnitsky Law that enabled the seizing of assets of Russian criminal oligarchs who are using the West to launder the millions made from their nefarious enterprises.

As Lee Child says on the cover of the book, "Reads like a classic thriller..", and I read it it in 5 days.

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The Good Immigrant edited by Nikesh Shulka

How does it feel to be constantly regarded as a potential threat, strip-searched at every airport?

Or be told that, as an actress, the part you’re most fitted to play is ‘wife of a terrorist’? How does it feel to have words from your native language misused, misappropriated and used aggressively towards you? How does it feel to hear a child of colour say in a classroom that stories can only be about white people? How does it feel to go ‘home’ to India when your home is really London? What is it like to feel you always have to be an ambassador for your race? How does it feel to always tick ‘Other’?

Bringing together 21 exciting black, Asian and minority ethnic voices emerging in Britain today, The Good Immigrant explores why immigrants come to the UK, why they stay and what it means to be ‘other’ in a country that doesn’t seem to want you, doesn’t truly accept you – however many generations you’ve been here – but still needs you for its diversity monitoring forms.

Inspired by discussion around why society appears to deem people of colour as bad immigrants – job stealers, benefit scroungers, undeserving refugees – until, by winning Olympic races or baking good cakes, or being conscientious doctors, they cross over and become good immigrants, editor Nikesh Shukla has compiled a collection of essays that are poignant, challenging, angry, humorous, heartbreaking, polemic, weary and – most importantly – real.

Salena Godden is a British poet, performer and author living in London. 

Here is how she finishes her essay “Shade” - it absolutely sums up my view of my humanity and the world I want future generations to live in.

“Human colour is the colour I’m truly interested in, the colour of your humanity. May the size of your heart and the depth of your soul be your currency. Welcome aboard my Good Ship. Let us sail to the colourful island of mixed identity. You can eat from the cooking pot of mixed culture and bathe in the cool shade of being mixed-race. There is no need for a passport. There are no borders. We are all citizens of the world. Whatever shade you are, bring your light, bring your colour, bring your music and your books, your stories and your histories, and climb aboard. United as a people we are a million majestic colours, together we are a glorious stained-glass window. We are building a cathedral of otherness, brick by brick and book by book. Raise your glass of Rum, let’s toast to the minorities who are the majority. There is no stopping time, nor the blurring of lines or the blending of shades. With a spirit of hope I leave you now. I drink to our sameness and to our unique differences. This is the 21st century and we share this, we live here, in the future. It is a beautiful morning, it is the first light on the time of being other, so get out from that shade and feel the warmth of being outside.”

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