Tag Archives: Book review

Arts, Books, Environment, Nature

Book Review: Hedgelands

LITERARY REVIEW

Intro: Hedges are humble habitats that are a lively host to much wildlife – a secret safari providing a plethora of environmental benefits

THE humble and often-neglected British hedge, is described by author Christopher Hart as “an incredibly porous and self-sustaining feature of our countryside . . . one of the happiest accidents in human history.” It hums with bees and butterflies, is a rich haven for insects, birds, hedgehogs, shrews, voles, and bats, and also acts as a windbreak, stock fence, flood defence system, and an environmental barrier against soil erosion. The RSPB agrees; its research shows that hedges may be supporting up to four-fifths of our woodland birds, half of our wild mammals, and a third of our butterflies.

Hedges have been a feature of the British landscape since the Stone Age. The original ones were “dead hedges”, made from piles of branches and brushwood collected from cleared areas of woodland.

As the wood rotted, it was swiftly colonised by fungi and insects. Passing birds excreted seeds from trees and shrubs – such as hazel, oak, ash, hawthorn, dog rose, blackthorn, and bramble – which soon started sprouting in among the dead wood. From there, a living hedge was born. (A hedgerow, if you were wondering, is a hedge that includes features such as banks, trees, walls, fences, or gates.)

Our ancestors soon learned the best way to deal with an unruly hedge: by cutting half-way through a rising trunk and then to lay it back into the hedge sideways. In time, this creates a barrier so dense and tough that it can even hold back an amorous bull trying to get into a field of cows.

Yet as Hart rightly points out, these ancient hedges are much more than just a physical barrier. They mitigate flooding and soil erosion and give many animals an invaluable source of shelter from precipitous conditions. A hedge will protect smaller birds and mammals from predators like crows, magpies, sparrowhawks, and foxes – a dense hedge is difficult for predators to access and manoeuvre. This “narrow but incredibly complex ecosystem” is also an abundant source of food for wildlife, providing hips, haws, sloes, and blackberries for them to feast on.

Many of the countryside hedges we see today pre-date the Georgian era, some even being Anglo-Saxon. In a county like Devon, where the land is suited to sheep and cattle and less likely to be ploughed, at least a quarter of the hedges date back to Norman times.

TWO

THERE are strong regional variations in Britain’s hedges. In the Midlands, traditionally cattle country, hedges tend to be mainly hawthorn, which is an excellent barrier to bullocks. The high rainfall in Wales and Ireland is just the thing for blackthorn, which happens to be a handy plant for snagging and restraining sheep.

The Somerset Levels typically have hedges made of osier, a small willow tree, while in Kent and Worcestershire you’ll find hedges of beech, poplar, and elder which tend to grow tall to protect prized orchards from the wind.

By 1820, there were 700,000 kilometres of hedges in England (and many more in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland). Today the figure is 400,000 which still sounds impressive, but many of these hedges are so degraded that they have become “little more than a blunt, dwarfish lined of scarred and wind-scoured stumps”, as Hart writes despairingly.

On arable land, hedges are often seen as an obstacle for tractors, while on pastureland, farmers find it easier to put up a barbed wire fence than have a hedge separating livestock. Hart is sympathetic to farmers, who are not “the cartoonish villains of the countryside but, rather, hard-pressed food producers just trying to stay in business”.

But there’s no denying that replacing a bountiful hedge with barbed wire is a disaster for wildlife, which results in “no wild foods, berries, nuts, wild greens, or herbs . . . no shelter or habitat for birds and mammals, [nor] beneficial pollinators and insect predators.”

THREE

MOST of the damage to the country’s hedges was done from the 1960s onwards when, incredibly, government actually offered subsidies for their removal. After 1973, the EU’s damaging Common Agricultural Policy was even more zealous in paying farmers to destroy ancient hedges.

If all this sounds depressing to anyone who cares about the countryside and its wildlife, Hart offers some practical solutions. Many hedges in private gardens are a single variety, like privet or beech; the author suggests that you rewild yours, by weaving honeysuckle and brambles through your hedge, making it far more attractive to insects.

And if you leave a little verge around the bottom of your hedge, all sorts of wildflowers might pop up, from orchids and buttercups to cow parsley and bluebells.

Above all, we are urged to cherish our existing hedges. Instead of spending a fortune on planting millions of new trees, which Hart says are “of low ecological value”, he would like the Government to allocate a fraction of that money to restoring hedgerows.

With better management of hedges, “we might not need to worry so much about insects disappearing, bird numbers falling or our targets for carbon capture. Our lovely native hedgerows would do much of the work for us, if we only look after them.”

Hart has his own 300 yards of “beautiful, unkempt, pullulating hedgerow” at his home in Wiltshire, and he has seen for himself how endangered birds such as redwings and fieldfares will eagerly flock to a hedge which provides nutritious wild berries for them.

Christopher Hart has written an eye-opening and inspiring book which will leave the reader with a deep appreciation of these wonderful habitats – and perhaps a desire to create their very own hedge. As he says: “You don’t need to go to the Serengeti to see amazing animals. You just need a good thick hedge.”

– Hedgelands by Christopher Hart is published by Chelsea Green, 208pp

Standard
Arts, Books, History, Literature, Scotland

Scottish author says Shakespeare got Macbeth wrong

SHAKESPEARIAN TRAGEGY

AS generations of pupils learned in English classes, Lady Macbeth, the cold-hearted, scheming villain who casts her dark shadow over one of literature’s most famous plays, and driven by a lust for power, persuaded her weak-willed husband to commit murder most foul.

Yet, according to one of Scotland’s illustrious top crime writers, Shakespeare got the tragedy of Macbeth all wrong.

Novelist Val McDermid – with a helping hand from former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon – has written a book exploring the real story of the woman who became Queen Macbeth, first Queen of Scotland.

And part of her aim, she says, is “setting Shakespeare straight”.

According to the Bard of Avon, the Macbeths are motivated by merciless ambition which ultimately leads to their downfall. Their tragedy stems from their decision to seize the throne by killing King Duncan while he is asleep.

But McDermid, whose novels have sold more than 19 million copies and been translated into more than 40 languages, recasts the tale in a feminist light – as a historical romance seen from the perspective of a strong and determined woman fighting for life and love.

As befits a crime writer, the book contains a major plot twist. But in a departure from the gritty “tartan noir” genre for which she is highly acclaimed, McDermid also ventures into the realm of erotic fiction.

In the author’s notes at the start of the book, she claims the Macbeths were “not the power-hungry bloody tyrants that Shakespeare wrote of in his Scottish play”.

And in highlighting other inaccuracies, she says: “For a start, Macbeth wasn’t even his name – it was Macbethad. His wife wasn’t Lady Macbeth – she was Gruoch. If he couldn’t get their names right, how can we trust anything else he tells us?”

She also claims the Elizabethan playwright made an error about the death of King Duncan. “Yes, Macbeth did kill Duncan, but it was on the field of battle, not in the dead of night when Duncan was a guest in his castle.”

Queen Macbeth, to be released shortly, tells the fictionalised life-story of Gruoch Ingen Boite, who is forced into a loveless arranged marriage, but finds true love with a nobleman called Macbeth. In the acknowledgements, the author thanks her friend and fellow book lover Ms Sturgeon, “whose animated dinner conversation resolved an awkward plot point for me”. She added: “It’s amazing how a few glasses of red wine release the imagination…”

The novel contains echoes of Shakespeare but imagined from a feminist perspective. The witches who prophesy Macbeth’s doom are replaced by three women – a healer, weaver, and a seer – whose powers make the men of mediaeval Scotland deeply suspicious.

The tale starts with Gruoch and her companions fleeing from plotters who believe she stands in the way of their ambition for power.

As the narrative develops, Gruoch recalls the stirrings of her love for Macbeth, including a racy description of their first moment of intimacy, saying: “Where our bodies touched it was like a lick of flame running through me.”

Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth encourages her husband to commit murder, but McDermid’s version urges caution when Macbeth considers revenge against a rival, saying: “Better to be slow than to shed innocent blood, surely?”

The book is part of Polygon’s Darkland Tales – dramatic retellings of key moments from Scottish history, myth, and legend.

Pre-publication publicity promises McDermid will reveal “a new Lady Macbeth, bringing a schemer in the shadows out into the light and exposing the patriarchal prejudices of history.”

Standard
Arts, Books, History, NATO, Society, United States

Book review: Deterring Armageddon

LITERARY REVIEW: A BIOGRAPHY OF NATO

Intro: NATO’s modus operandi is centred around the pledge that an attack on one member is an attack on all. In a provocative new book, however, the author asks: would any nation today really put itself in the firing line to protect another?

DURING the depths of the Cold War, 40 years ago, there were undoubtedly gullible victims in Britain of Moscow propaganda.

Paradoxically, many of these people have now become warmongering Blairites, keen advocates in bombing distant countries. But back in the 1980s, they detested NATO with every human fibre. Houses were plastered with peacenik posters; many camped out at the U.S. Air Force base at Greenham Common, protesting against the presence of American cruise missiles; others still chained themselves to fences and blocked roads leading into the Naval base at Faslane; the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) was rampant among the militants who were disruptive in their aims and actions.

Many of these people were perceived as being deluded as they actively wanted the former Soviet Union to dominate all of Europe. They failed, yes, but actually, only by a narrow margin.

They failed because NATO held together under very great pressure from the Kremlin and from the European Left. The Communist Empire had exhausted itself in one last failed attempt to destroy the Free West, and the Soviet Union sickened and eventually perished.

Many things contributed to that demise, but many military commentators and analysts believe that the battle over cruise missiles, and the resolve of NATO, were decisive.

The NATO alliance, set up in 1949 specifically to prevent a Soviet takeover of Western Europe, still exists almost 33 years after the collapse of the Soviet empire. Yet, an oddity is at play. The alliance was created to deal with that particular menace, which still exists long after that threat melted away.

Even more surprising, NATO has actually got bigger since its arch enemy vanished. An explanation is more than overdue.

We should therefore be very grateful to Peter Apps, a British Army reservist, and Reuters columnist, for writing a comprehensive and full history of NATO since its inception in 1949 to today.

The workings of this book started life under the rather exalted working title “Sacred Obligation”. But are we looking at an organisation that has become the world’s most successful bluff?

Mr Apps spends a great deal of his time chronicling the endless unresolved tension between the mighty, rich, and powerful U.S., NATO’s backbone and muscle, and Europe, its vulnerable and pitifully weak underbelly. It was of course this tension which the USSR ceaselessly sought to exploit.

NATO’s historic and famous promise, that an attack on one would be an attack on all, was and remains a very precarious gamble. History features sad examples of security pacts being called out and exposed as bluffs.

The normally pugnacious Lord Palmerston wriggled out of Britain’s 1860s pledge to defend Denmark against Prussia – when he realised it would get us into a war we would lose.

Neville Chamberlain’s 1939 guarantee to protect Poland from Germany failed to deter Hitler from invading. Even worse, when the invasion came, Britain did nothing.

And we shouldn’t forget, either, how fiercely determined America was in 1939, and for years afterwards, in staying out of European quarrels. Donald Trump means what he says, too.

Washington only went to war against Berlin after Hitler declared war on America, not the other way round. Any careful and studious reader of this book will begin to wonder whether NATO, far from being an enshrined promise of aid in time of trouble, is in fact a good way of avoiding any real obligation to fight.

The much-touted Article 5 of NATO’s charter is not quite the magnificent guarantee of armed support from the strong to the weak that it appears to be. Members of the alliance pledge to assist an attacked nation “by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force”.

Read carefully. This means that if a NATO member does not “deem” armed force to be necessary, it can send a note of protest instead, or make a fierce and angry speech at the United Nations.

America would never have signed or ratified a treaty which obliged it to go to war, which is why the clause is so weak.

All the small, poor ill-armed countries on NATO’s eastern edge would be well advised to take note of that. During its 40-year life cycle, NATO has shown how cautious, limited, and risk-averse it has been. Its recent reinvention as a kind of mini-United Nations task force has been mainly outside its original operational area, in former Yugoslavia, Libya, and Afghanistan.

Its founding membership was carefully restricted to countries already well outside the Soviet sphere of influence.

It stood aside when Russian tanks crushed the 1953 East Berlin rising, the 1956 Budapest revolt, and the 1968 Prague Spring.

It did precious little when Moscow ordered Poland’s Communist rulers to curtail a democratic and Christian rebellion by imposing brutal martial law there from 1981 to 1983.

Where the West did stand up to Soviet power in Europe, mainly in West Berlin, it tended to be the U.S. which did most of the heavy lifting. We should suspect it is still much the same. In an enlightening passage, Apps describes a recent scene at NATO’s Joint Force Command in the Dutch town of Brunssum.  

He writes: “Officials in its 24-hour operations room described their main role as stopping the Ukraine war spreading to alliance territory”. Well, quite. For who knows what stress would be placed on NATO if, thanks to some rash incursion or off-course missile, it faced a direct war with Russia?

As it happens, the task of avoiding the spread of war into NATO territory would be much easier if NATO had not expanded so far east in the past 30 years. Its leaders had been warned.

In 1997, the greatest and toughest anti-Soviet U.S. diplomat of modern times, George Kennan, said shortly before he died: “Expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era.”

Recalling his generation’s successful handling of Soviet power, he sighed: “This has been my life, and it pains me to see it so screwed up in the end.”

– Deterring Armageddon: A Biography of NATO by Peter Apps is published by Wildfire, 624pp

Standard