Tag Archives: Book review

Arts, Books, History, Maritime

Book Review: A History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks

LITERARY REVIEW

STARING across the Solent in 1545, Henry VIII was appalled when he witnessed the sinking of his warship, the Mary Rose.

The Holy Roman Emperor’s ambassador of Charles V wrote: “Through misfortune and carelessness… the ship foundered, and all hands-on-board, to the number of about 500, were drowned, with the exception of about five and twenty or thirty servants, sailors and the like.”

More than 400 years later, the Mary Rose was raised from the seas. Its resurrection is one of the most significant achievements of maritime archaeology that is celebrated in this engrossing book by David Gibbins.

Gibbins is the ideal person to tell the story of shipwrecks. He is a distinguished underwater archaeologist, veteran of thousands of dives, and a best-selling novelist whose narrative skills are more harnessed to fact rather than fiction.

His earliest wreck is the Bronze Age boat discovered in 1992, its timbers miraculously preserved in the oxygen-free mud at the bed of the river that ran through Dover in prehistoric times. The Dover Boat was probably constructed some time between 1575 and 1520 BC. It would have been able to cross the Channel and make extended coastal journeys, possibly as far as the Baltic Sea northwards and the Bay of Biscay to the south.

The most recent wreck is the SS Gairsoppa, sunk by a U-boat during the Battle of the Atlantic in 1941. It had been carrying 17 tons of silver bullion. Some of this was recovered and the Royal Mint garnered some 20,000 coins from it.

Between the Dover Boat and the Gairsoppa, Gibbins highlights ten other wrecks. The Bronze Age ship found off the Turkish coast in 1982 was carrying an “astonishing diversity” of goods, from pottery to weaponry. It also had enough metal on board to make 5,000 swords. Another, more unorthodox find, was a folding writing tablet which some history scholars have described as “the world’s oldest book”.

A Greek ship from the 5th century BC, also located off the coast of Turkey, had a cargo that consisted mainly of wine. Letters stamped on the amphoras, huge jars, showed that it came from Erythrae, a place renowned for drink.

A scalpel handle found on a 2nd century AD Roman wreck revealed the probable presence of a skilled eye surgeon on board. It was most likely used in cataract operations.

What wrecks often show are patterns of trade. The discovery of a 9th century ship off an Indonesian island provided evidence of goods passing between Tang dynasty China and Persia. The huge cargo included more than 50,000 bowls, candlesticks, incense burners, and mirrors.  One of the items was already an antique when it sank beneath the waves.

More recently discovered wrecks have shed light on British and global history of the past 300 years. The Royal Anne Galley went down off the Cornish coast in 1721. Only three out of the 210 individuals on board survived.

Among those drowned was Lord Belhaven, sailing to Barbados to serve as the colony’s governor. Reportedly, the day before its departure, he was warned of his fate by “a mysterious woman in a mantle and hood”, but misguidedly chose to ignore her. Had the ship made it to the West Indies, it would have ben used to hunt down the buccaneer “Black Bart Roberts”.

Gibbins is a careful and sensitive narrator; he never loses sight of the reality that wrecks represent the tragic loss of human lives. However, he also knows they can open up “many fascinating byways of history to those willing to be fully immersed”.

– A History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks by David Gibbins is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 304pp

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Arts, Books, History, Science

Book Review: Our Moon

LITERARY REVIEW

ACCORDING to astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the moon is mostly composed of greyish dust that smells of extinguished pyrotechnics which makes your eyes water.

Hardly an attractive environment, but we shouldn’t be fooled by first impressions. Were it not for the Moon, there would be no planet Earth. Or to be more precise, we wouldn’t even exist.

In exact and poetic prose, science writer and journalist Rebecca Boyle explains how many millennia ago – the timescale is still approximate – just how the Moon was formed from the same cosmic debris that made our world. Due to its gravitational impact, the Moon was responsible for pulling early fish-like creatures out of the Earth’s oceans and on to the shore.

It was from these that every creeping, crawling thing that inhabits our planet, including ourselves, developed. It is enough to give most of us nightmares.

The Moon is also Earth’s timekeeper. It continues to give us not only our days, but our months, seasons, and years. You may have thought that the Sun was in charge but, as the author explains, it is the pull of the Moon’s gravity on the Earth that holds our planet in place.

Without the Moon stabilising our tilt, at 23.4 degrees, we would wobble wildly and erratically, dramatically affecting our seasons and climate. In such a scenario, our planet would move from no tilt (meaning no seasons) to a large tilt (extreme weather and even ice ages). It is thanks to the Moon that the Earth remains a place that is more or less habitable – at least for now.

Prehistoric people weren’t aware of what went on in outer space, but they had worked out that the lunar cycle – the length of time it takes for the Moon to circle the Earth – governed not only their days but the seasons, too.

One of the most exciting passages in Rebecca Boyle’s book concerns the fairly recent discovery of 10,000-year-old pits dug near Crathes Castle, Aberdeenshire, in Scotland.

They are a sort of inverted or upside-down version of Stonehenge (but 5,000 years older), a Mesolithic lunar timepiece that allowed hunter-gatherers to work out which week in any year the salmon would be leaping in the River Dee, or when red deer might trot over the horizon.

And that’s not forgetting the influence on the regular arrival of new Mesolithic babies to be nurtured into a new generation of hunter-gatherers. Though more research needs to be done, it also looks that where there was not much natural daylight in communities in Northern Scotland, women tended to begin their menstrual cycles at the Full Moon.

This meant that they were most fertile at the New Moon, that dark time of the month when early man was less likely to be out hunting and gathering, and more likely to be at home making Stone Age love.

For those interested in testing this phenomenon, it just so happens that yesterday was a New Moon. Even now, in our age of electric light pollution, there is some evidence to suggest that women are still more likely to begin their monthly cycle at the Full Moon.

Boyle also investigates the old story about the links between the full moon and madness – the so-called “lunatic” effect. It turns out there is something in it: a 1990s survey reported that 81 per cent of mental health practitioners have observed a direct correlation between odd behaviour and certain times of the month.

At the very least, many of us find it hard to sleep when there is a full moon, which may well result in the kind of risky behaviour – driving too fast, drinking too much, yelling at annoying strangers – that lands many of us in A & E.

There is also emerging evidence that aneurysms are more likely to pop at either the Full or new Moon, thanks to the fact that it is at these points in its 29-day cycle that the Moon is most closely aligned with the Sun, which means that it exerts its strongest gravitational pull.

Given the extraordinary power that the Moon has on our everyday experience here on Earth, it is no wonder that earlier civilisations treated it not as a “withered, sun-seared peach pit”, to quote one early Apollo astronaut who orbited without landing, but as nothing less than a full-blown deity.

Particularly fascinating is the tale of Enheduanna, the Bronze Age high priestess, who used hymns to the Moon gods to bind the city-states of Sumeria into the world’s first empire.

There have been many books written about the Moon, but Rebecca Boyle’s feels especially timely. As the geo-political balance of our world shifts, the “space race” is being re-run with new players including Japan and India. This time around, however, the aim is not so much patriotic flag planting on the lunar surface, but economic advantage.

The Moon’s soil contains oxygen, silicon, aluminium, and iron, all of which can be refined into valuable things such as fuel, building materials and, ironically, solar panels.

Whichever nation manages to extract and exploit these first, will hold the balance of power in what is shaping up to be the next Cold War.

– Our Moon: A Human History by Rebecca Boyle is published by Sceptre, 336pp

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Arts, Books, Psychology

Book Review: ‘How We Break’

LITERARY REVIEW

Intro: How to survive when you’re at breaking point

THERE are various idioms containing the word break. One friend moans, “I feel just broken”, meaning she’s very tired. Another says, “It’s heart-breaking,” which is referring to something rather sad.

We can “break even”, where neither profit or loss is made and is seen as good practice, but when lovers “break up” it’s bad emotionally for all concerned. When the waves break on the shore, the meaning is not in question: they smash down and are changed. Similarly, a truly “broken-hearted” person will feel – in body, mind, and spirit – that life can never be the same again. And they are right.

And, so, what of the journey towards the breaking point? What stress must be applied to an elastic band, say, before it will snap?

In How We Break, health psychologist Vincent Deary suggests some answers for “navigating the wear and tear of living”. He shows how social circumstances can combine with individual genetics and unexpected external shifts to make each individual’s experience of stress unique.

Nobody – not even the most confident and strong among us – should think of themselves as invulnerable or immune. Events can combine to overwhelm you. A sudden shock can make almost anyone teeter on the edge and then fall.

How We Break is the second in a proposed trilogy series: How To Live. The first volume, How We Are, was published a decade ago. For publishing, that’s an unusual and significant gap: for the author himself suffered a sort of breakdown during the writing of this volume.

Since his subject matter is exhaustion, the physiology of stress and how so many of us seem to be permanently set in “fight or flight” mode, it should come as no surprise that Deary’s writing style becomes increasingly fraught as the book progresses.

There are times during the second part of the narrative when it becomes unclear whether he is writing “shrink-speak” for professional colleagues or providing information for the general reader. There is no doubt, though, depths of pain are quietly plumbed within these pages.

How We Are was about the acute difficulty of facing change, and the first part of How We Break continues the analysis of how “allostatis” can put such a strain on our minds, bodies, and spirits, that we face “trembling” before the point of “breaking”. Allostatis refers to the work of maintaining stability in the face of change. Parts one and two of this book explores the territories of what happens when we are pushed past our limits.

Deary draws on his extensive experience in an NHS clinic specialising in fatigue and uses case studies to show how people can suddenly be pushed over the edge.

We are introduced to “Sami”, a young care assistant (who also used to be his partner); “Anna”, a middle-aged woman who suddenly ceases to make sense of her life; and his own mother, Isobelle, whose emotional strength was eroded and sapped by frustration, bitterness, and regret.

Throughout, Deary provides an open invitation for the reader to ask questions about his or her own life. Yet, at times, he also seems to warn against overthinking – when we can “become hard work for ourselves”. There is convolution in the argument.

For his mother, listening to a ruinous inner “chorus” of recrimination and doubt proved disastrous. Rumination and withdrawal contributed to her depression, the downward negative spiral amplifying the other, in a process that increasingly had a momentum and a mind of its own. More rumination and withdrawal followed. The downward pressure was relentless.

That process – of plunging depression – can happen to anybody. Alarmingly, Deary points out that there are a staggering 16,400 accepted profiles “that qualify for a diagnosis of [a] major depressive disorder”. No wonder, then, that “thinking has become its own self-perpetuating problem”.

The author is painfully honest about his own psychological struggles as an effeminate child growing up in a working-class area on the west coast of Scotland. He was mercilessly teased at his comprehensive school, mocked for his appearance, turned into a “misfit”, and easily frightened as a child.

Such essential self-exploration and introspection underlines the deeply human plea which is the heartbeat of the book: more self-compassion is needed.

There is a depth of wisdom in Deary’s regret that society has neglected the idea of convalescence. Rest and recuperation are essential, yet increasingly (it seems), withheld. No time is allowed for the recovery of strength after childbirth, illness, family problems, and so on.

For all the modern emphasis on “mental health”, not enough is really known about the points at which people “tremble” then “break” (to use Deary’s own terms).

Some fortunate, and better-adapted souls are resilient and can cope, but others fall apart, at great cost to themselves, their families, and society. Our fast-moving, hyper-active, over-connected, multi-platform, anxious way of life and existence cuts people no slack.

What we can do about all this will be the subject of the third and final book in this series, How We Mend. Until then, Deary offers some pointers: “Beware mirrors. Which is to say, beware of becoming too entranced with your own opinions, stories, and concerns.

“Beware of becoming too preoccupied with yourself to the exclusion of the world. To prepare for life by looking in a mirror is to lose sight of who we really are and what we are preparing for.”

– How We Break by Vincent Deary is published by Allen Lane, 304pp

 

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