Just Finished Reading: The Forever War – America's Unending Conflict With Itself by Nick Bryant (FP: 2024) [326pp] 

The one word that kept coming up time and again during Trump's first Presidency was "unprecedented". If I had a penny for every time I heard it mentioned, well, I'd have a LOT of pennies. To be honest the only other President that came to mind in comparison was Nixon but only in part – the 'enemies list' and the dodgy political manoeuvres - and I thought that American journalists presumably knew more about American political history than I did, so... unprecedented it was. Except that they were, according to the author (who is a BBC journalist) simply wrong. 

Since its mythologised Founding, America has had its fair share of racist Presidents, imperial Presidents and countless corrupt politicians of all shades and levels. It's also had its fair share of incompetence – including staggering incompetence – along with concentration camps, sex scandals, blatant nepotism, military adventures (manufactured or otherwise), policy being influenced by super-rich oligarchs, restrictions of the Press and Free Speech, fear mongering about the 'Left' and the "Communist threat" to bring out the vote and, naturally, voter suppression and other devious anti-democratic activity. All of this isn't just a recent phenomenon though. You'll find elements of all of this, sometimes on its own and sometimes in various combinations from the very start. So... unprecedented? Not so much it seems. 

As usual I'll be open about my ignorance of much of American history. I've read a number of books on the subject (though I need to read a few good general histories to get a decent foundation before I focus in on separate events, topics or people) but nowhere near enough to even have a rough understanding of things. This quite fascinating book has given me a LOT of pointers, and I fully intend to chase some rabbits down their holes in the forthcoming year or two. I have been toying with looking at the Dark Side of American History for a while now and I think this will be a good foundational text to work up from. I knew, or knew of, some of the events/people the author referenced but only really at a superficial level. It looks like if I dig just a little deeper, a little further into the facade and beyond the propaganda created image the world is familiar with it looks like I'm going to find something quite interesting. I'm looking forward to the quest! 

This was definitely a very different slant and a very different look at American political history which, as is often the case, needed a well-informed outsider to identify some of the strangeness and the faults in the system that insiders take for granted as just 'the way we do things here'. A definite recommended read for anyone who wonders why the USA is the way it is and why things seem (and are) so messed up right now.   

Happy Birthday: Simon Scarrow (born 3 October 1962) is a British writer. Scarrow completed a master's degree at the University of East Anglia after working at the Inland Revenue, and then went into teaching as a lecturer, firstly at East Norfolk Sixth Form College, then at City College Norwich.

He is best known for his Eagles of the Empire series of Roman military fiction set in the territories of the Roman Empire, covering the second invasion of Britain and the subsequent prolonged campaign undertaken by the rump of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. As of 2025, there are 23 books in the series; the latest, Tyrant of Rome, was published in 2025.

He has written another series, Revolution, focussing on Wellington and Napoleon, the first title of which, Young Bloods, was published in 2006. The second volume, The Generals, was published on 31 May 2007 and the third volume, Fire and Sword, in January 2009. The fourth and final novel of the series was published in June 2010 and is called The Fields of Death. He began publishing a new series in 2011, entitled Gladiator.

In 2021, Scarrow authored an audiovisual walking tour for the Roman Colosseum entitled Blood and Sand on the BARDEUM mobile app.

Just finished re-Reading: The Forever War by Joe Haldeman (FP: 1974) [236pp] 

In the late 1990's mankind is at war. A decade before a way of crossing vast distances had been discovered – collapsars that allowed ships dropped into them to emerge lightyears away apparently instantaneously. The whole Galaxy was open for exploration and exploitation. With an increasing fleet out exploring a troubling fact could no longer be ignored – not all of the survey or colony vessels came back or reached their targets. The military insisted on arming the ships just in time to meet the aliens. It was war! Private William Mandella has been conscripted into a new UN force to fight back. Highly educated, young and physically fit he is part of a small elite force tasked with securing the jump points to allow the fleet to find, contain and eventually destroy the alien menace. But... there's ALWAYS a but... there's a few problems to overcome. First no one has any idea what the aliens look like or what they want. Second there's the small issue of time dilation. Each mission might last a few weeks or even a few months but because of the distances involved and the time spent near light-speed time passes very differently on Earth. A mission could take a decade or two relative to the home base or, in the worst case, centuries. How do you cope with the fact that everyone you knew could be dead when you're back from deployment and everyone living speaks a different language and has no idea there's a war on? 

I read this not long after it came out – so around 50 years ago. I was impressed by how it still stood up to a read. The author certainly used his experience as a Vietnam vet to good effect. The military side of things was very well done – especially the first mission where they couldn't distinguish between the local wildlife and the aliens they were supposed to be fighting! The rest hasn't aged quite so well. The speed of change – both technological and social – was WILDLY optimistic and I did chuckle more than once at the idea of interstellar travel in the early 21st century. Equally amusing was the idea that around 25% of the global population would be homosexual by mid-century to cut down on population problems!  

This is still worth a read though. Its famous and much talked about for a reason. The use of the physics of time dilation to isolate the war fighters from the general population is a great idea and I know it wowed me back in my teens. I had forgotten just how much sex the story contained though – although almost all non-explicit and almost all 'off page'. But it WAS written in the early 70's so... Worth a read especially if you're relatively new to SF or want to hit the classics. More iconic SF to come.  

Welcome to October, we made it! As Halloween will be approaching faster than appreciated (as always) SaLT will, as usual, be dedicated to all things Monster & Horror related this month. ONE good thing about the present Timeline is that there's plenty of material to choose from....

I was listening to a radio prog (yes, I'm old...) and they were talking about what music people would bring to a desert island (I think it was Classic FM). Finally they asked what 'special item' people would take with them. One guy said he'd bring a satellite phone - presumably to use after a few weeks/months when he was super chill but fancied a pizza.......

Just Finished Reading: Trial By Battle by David Piper (FP: 1959) [160pp] 

India, October 1941. 21-year-old Cadet officer Alan Mart is learning the ropes of command. Assigned under overbearing acting captain Sam Hall he can't seem to do anything right or satisfy a man who oscillates between being drunk, cynical or just plain self-destructive. Offered a cushy job teaching German to a bunch of commando-types he surprises himself by turning it down in favour of continuing to be abused by Hall. With the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Japanese attacks across the Far East, Mart finds himself leading a section of Indian soldiers in the jungles of Malaysia (with trucks painted in desert camouflage for their original assignment in the Middle East) against the Japanese onslaught. Initially unsure if he could be responsible for the death of another person – friendly or enemy – he quickly finds himself adapting to confusion, lack of sleep and random death. But that was before the full force of the Japanese advance falls on his section of the frontline. From then on there is only one reality – withdrawal, confusion and loss. 

I've been meaning to continue working through my small stack of Imperial War Museum Classics for a while now. I'm reading them (mostly) in narrative chronological order which makes sense to me. I've said before that my knowledge (and to be honest interest) in the Far East campaign is... limited. For some reason I'm for more focused on the conflict in Europe, Russia and North Africa that in the jungles of East Asia. So, it was 'nice (in an interesting way) to see things at ground level from the view of a young British officer thrown in at the deep end. I think that the biggest thing that struck me was that, despite being two years into the war, the British in India seemed both very laid back and VERY ill-prepared for any kind of attack. I suppose that they thought themselves well out of a European war (with the possibility of being assigned to North Africa still in mind) rather than anywhere closer – despite the fact that Japan and Germany where ALLIES! Which meant that, much like in England in 1939, soldiers and their equipment had to be hastily thrown together using whatever man and material came to hand. It was definitely a "learning on the job" mentality – which is often OK, expect where a single mistake (or just a spot of bad luck) could get you (and your men) killed. 

I did find the first half of the book (in India) rather slow and plodding but this may have been deliberate to emphasise the slow process of the British getting their act together. Once the action (or should I say chaos) moves to the jungle the pace certainly increases and the whole thing becomes more entertaining. Told very much from Alan Mart's PoV (and based on the authors wartime experiences) this was at times a visceral read that managed to get under my skin more than once. Looking forward I think I'll give that side of the war more attention in future. I think it deserves it. Reasonable.      

The Last 10 Books (I added to my Wish List) - September 2026 

Another month, another stack of books added to my Wish List. This month its mostly political (in part at least prompted by Stephen over @ Reading Freely plus a recent politics book I was impressed with) and technological with SO much talk these days about the dangers of AI and surveillance. When my musing goes existential my instinct is to look for (more) books. So.... 

The Paranoid Style in American Politics by Richard Hofstadter 

Hail to the Chief: The Making and Unmaking of American Presidents by Robert Dallek 

All the Presidents’ Wars: Twenty-Five Years of America’s War on Terror by Peter Bergen 

When America Stopped Being Great: A History of the Present by Nick Bryant 

Conquistador: Hernan Cortes, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs by Buddy Levy 

Age of Security: The Rise of a Global Obsession by Ruben Andersson 

The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State by Jill Lepore 

End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor 

Rivals in the Storm: How Lloyd George Seized Power, Won the War and Lost his Government by Damian Collins 

The Cancelled Prime Minister: The Extraordinary Rise and Tragic Fall of Ramsay MacDonald by Walter Reid 

Lots of easy/casual reading as usual! Politics might even start to edge out History as my main 'go to' subject. Maybe I can compromise by reading political history... [muses] 

Happy Birthday: Mary Du Caurroy Russell, Duchess of Bedford, DBE, ARRC, DStJ, FLS (née Tribe; 26 September 1865 – ca. 22 March 1937) was a British aviator and ornithologist. She was honoured for her work in founding hospitals and working in them during the First World War. She later financed and took part in record breaking flights to Karachi and Cape Town.

During the early 1900s she became one of the first Western women to study the Japanese martial art of jujutsu, and she was featured in a series of instructional photographs for the book "The Fine Art of Jujutsu" (1905), written by Emily Diana Watts.

A major area of organisation and work for the Duchess was in founding four hospitals in Woburn and in the grounds of Woburn Abbey. The principal establishment was the Abbey Hospital that she financed and built in 1914, and where she worked as a nurse and radiographer through to the 1930s.

She was a member of the Women's Tax Resistance League, a group associated with the Women's Social and Political Union that used tax resistance to protest the disenfranchisement of women during the British women's suffrage movement.

Late in life at age 63, the Duchess became interested in aviation, that she claimed gave her some relief from her constant tinnitus, although she eventually became totally deaf. In 1928 a large country house, Wispers, near Midhurst in West Sussex, and its estate were bought by the Bedford Estate for Russell. She used Wispers as a weekend retreat: she was a keen aviator and flew her plane from the family seat at Woburn Abbey to Wispers, where she had a hangar constructed in the 1930s at the same time as the large eastern wing was being added to the house. She used a nearby field as a landing strip.

On 2 August 1929, she departed on a record-breaking flight of 10,000 miles from Lympne Airport to Karachi (then in India) and return to Croydon Airport in eight days. She was accompanied in her single-engined Fokker F.VII (G-EBTS, Princess Xenia, which she renamed "The Spider" for its tenacity) by her personal pilot Captain C. D. Barnard and mechanic Robert (Bob) Little. On 8 April 1930 she made her first solo flight, in her DH.60G Moth (G-AAAO). On 10 April 1930 she embarked on a record-breaking flight from Lympne Airport to Cape Town, in "The Spider", flying 9,000 miles in 91 hours and twenty minutes over 10 days, again with Barnard and Little.

In 1934 and again in 1935, with co-pilot F/Lt R. C. Preston in de Havilland Puss Moth G-ABOC, the Duchess made extensive flights from Britain to the Western Sahara and Northern Nigeria.

The duchess died aged 71, in March 1937, three months before Amelia Earhart's death, after leaving Woburn Abbey in a DH.60GIII Moth Major (G-ACUR), that crashed into the North Sea off Great Yarmouth; her body was never recovered.

[Colour me IMPRESSED. What a fascinating life!]

There should be a half buried anvil near-by.... 

Just Finished Reading: Operation Biting – The 1942 Parachute Assault to Capture Hitler's Radar by Max Hastings (FP: 2024) [268pp] 

By the end of 1941 with the Battle of Britain won and the threat of invasion consigned to history Britain was looking for ways to strike back at the Axis Powers in Europe. Bomber Command was doing what it could with the aircraft it had available, but more needed to be done - especially as bomber losses, even at night, were increasing. Partially informed by a mixture of pride and arrogance it was long, too long, believed that either Germany did not use RADAR or that their technology was primitive in comparison to the British achievement. But the growing air losses, electronic signals from the Continent, ENIGMA traffic and strange reconnaissance photographs suggested otherwise. One location in particular intrigued the British war planners. It was an isolated facility in Normandy near the village of Bruneval. It looked ideal for an assault from the air, something the British armed forces had never tried before. On hearing of the idea Churchill, always up for an example of exotic warfare, agreed that it should be planned and executed as soon as possible, not only to show to the public that the British bulldog still had teeth but also to show the Americans that Britain was still very much in the fight. 

I'd heard of the famous Bruneval raid before but had never read anything much about it before. I think the thing that surprised me more than anything else reading this excellent study of the event was how much planning went into it and just how many people were involved. It was an early example of true combined arms warfare involving ground troops being dropped from the air – in hastily modified and totally unsuitable obsolete bombers - who fought a ground action and were later picked up by Naval forces from the French beach. Of course, being the first time anything like this had been attempted (and despite extensive if patchy training) the co-ordination between Services was... less than stellar. Not only were some of the paratroopers dropped FAR from their landing zones (a glider assault would have been a much better idea, but not suitable gliders had yet been built and tested) but the Navy failed to pick up any of the troop's signals when they needed rescue until some hours had passed. Only a fair amount of luck and a very lacklustre response from the local German forces prevented the operation becoming a failure. 

Unfortunately, despite the ultimate success of the mission, many of the wrong lessons had been learnt and, rather inevitably, a number of significantly upscaled missions followed – notably the attacks on Saint-Nazaire and catastrophically the assault on Dieppe [more on both missions later] provided little in the way of positive results but did result in very heavy casualties on the Allied side. The disaster of Dieppe did, fortunately, have an upside as it prompted the Allies to plan the later invasion of 'fortress Europe' to a much greater degree and provide it with overwhelming force to achieve its aims. This was a small unit action that has largely faded into the background of larger actions in WW2 which is a shame. Full of 'interesting' and 'exotic' characters in the British Special Forces (again something very new at the time) this was a valuable look at an operation that influenced many aspects of fighting later in the war. Definitely worth a read if this is in your scope of interest. Much more from the author to come. 

Yup.... Pretty much.... 

Just Finished Reading: American Sherlocks – Stories from the Golden Age of the American Detective edited by Nick Rennison (FP: 2021) [332pp] 

With the popularity of Sherlock Holmes both in his own country and across Europe, it should come as no surprise that he was both applauded and duplicated in the United States especially in the new media of daily newspapers and periodic magazines. This collection of 15 short stories dating from 1890 to 1920 shows off the range of results. 

As with all collections the quality of tale – both in its execution and narrative style – was variable. In fact, the first half of the book didn't impress me very much at all. Only when I reached the second half did I actually start enjoying the experience. I'm not sure if this was the result of stories improving or whether, as the moved deeper into the early 20th century, they simply became both more modern and more familiar.  

The first story, The Doomdorf Mystery by Melville Davisson Post (creator of 'Uncle Abner') was a locked room mystery that (unfortunately for my enjoyment) I solved instantly once a single 'off-hand' clue was provided. The 'mystery' rested on the readers (and a secondary character's) ignorance of basic physics that everyone these days should be familiar with – even if you haven't watched/read endless detective stories. 

Likewise other stories depended on the detectives 'sleight of hand' or rather dubious deductive reasoning. There was certainly very little in the way of forensic evidence or, rather surprisingly, police involvement at any point! Having read the previous non-fiction on early US crime scene forensics I now appreciate just why the police flayed about so much and built their cases on precious little actual evidence. My advice to criminals of that age – both fictional and real – was to claim they're innocent, go to trial and cause so much doubt about the prosecution case that they'd walk free more often than not. 

After the halfway mark things did get more interesting. One thing I did find surprising was the few female detectives. I think that the thing that struck me most strongly was that not only did they exist but that they were respected both inside the stories and by the reading public (who would've been predominantly male at that point I'm guessing. A case in point (pun not intended this time) was the amateur detective Elinor Frost in Christabel's Crystal (1905) that read very much like an English country house drama. More to my taste was professional female detective Clare Kendall in The Mystery of the Stolen Da Vinci by Arthur B Reeve (1913) where she uses all the technology of the period – the telephone, telegraph, fast cars and an intriguing recording device - to solve the crime. 

A few general observations are worth noting. Most of the crimes – not ALL murders! - seemed to take place in the upper echelons of society. I'm guessing that the 'mean streets' narratives of the 1930's – 1950's was a reaction to this. Very few of the stories involve the police at all – even once the crime or mystery is solved. Then there was the surprising number of suicides – by the caught criminal – sprinkled throughout the collection. I'm (very much) guessing that this was considered swift justice and cut out any messy court case – although handing the miscreant over to the authorities and either leaving it at that or adding a few lines on sentencing would have sufficed. Overall, this was worth the read if slightly disappointing. More Sherlock's to come. Reasonable.  

"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet, that did not commit suicide."

John Adams, 1814.

Happy Birthday: Emil Zátopek (19 September 1922 – 21 November 2000) was a Czech long-distance runner who won three gold medals at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. He came first in the 5,000 metres and 10,000 metres runs before he decided at the last minute to compete in the first marathon of his life, which he also won. Zátopek was nicknamed the "Czech Locomotive".

In 1954, Zátopek was the first runner to break the 29-minute barrier in the 10,000 metres. Three years earlier in 1951, he had broken the hour for running 20 km. He was considered one of the greatest runners of the 20th century and was also known for his brutally tough training methods. He popularised interval training after World War II.

Zátopek is the only person to win the 5,000 metres (24 July 1952), 10,000 metres (20 July 1952) and marathon (27 July 1952) in the same Olympic Games. In February 2013, the editors at Runner's World selected him as the greatest runner ever.