HOLIDAY READING

Back from a wonderful two weeks in France - they have sun over there you know.

I didn't get as much read while away as I had planned. For some reason my children seemed to think I should entertain them, and four hours of live Tour de France coverage each afternoon was somewhat distracting. Unlike my 11-year-old daughter who can get through a 400 page book in the space of three hours my page turning happens at a more leisurely rate. So just three volumes to report on...

Up Till Now by William Shatner

If you think the Americans have no sense of irony you should read this; and you will discover that Shatner is a Canadian.

While he will forever be Captain James T. Kirk of the star ship Enterprise, Shatner has performed an extraordinary number of roles, and this memoir is really the story of always waiting for the next phone call and always taking whatever job it offered. The son of Jewish immigrants in Montreal, the theatre was an unlikely career choice for Shatner, and one which for many years only just kept the wolf from his door. It was not until many years after Star Trek had been made that Shatner started to reap the financial and other rewards of starring in the series, as the world wide trekkie phenomenon developed.

This story of always aiming simply to have “more than eighteen-hundred dollars in the bank” is told with considerable panache and a great deal of humour. There are some real laugh out loud moments here. There is also poignancy and sorrow. Shatner does not do well in his relationships, and the most tragic part of the story is when he finds his alcoholic wife Nerine dead at the bottom of their swimming pool; an incident related on the track What Have You Done from the surprisingly brilliant Has Been album. If you haven’t got this album, you really must. Available from all the normal outlets, and also, along with a vast array of Shatnerbilia, from williamshatner.com

To get a sense of Shatner at his perplexing, ironic best, his classic rendition of Rocketman has to be seen...



D-Day: The Battle for Normandy by Antony Beevor

Beevor, our premier recorder of the history of war, achieves an equivalent success to his earlier accounts of the battles for Stalingrad and Berlin in this epic account of the fight for France.

Somehow Beevor manages to cram every page with detail but keep the narrative storming on. It is difficult to keep all the geography and characters and timing together in ones mind, but this doesn’t seem to matter – the writing is so compelling. Ten years since reading Stalingrad the thing that sticks in my memory is the sheer bloody horror of the Soviet and German armies grinding themselves into the dirt in the rubble of that ruined city. From Berlin it is the horrific use of rape as a weapon of war by the Soviet army advancing into Germany. And from D-Day I think it will be the shocking destruction of Normandy by the Allies as they forced their way through dogged German resistance. The Allies killed 70,000 French civilians during the course of the war, more than the total number of British who died as a result of German bombing.

On the way to our holiday we crossed from Poole to Cherbourg, and drove past some of the Allied cemeteries in Normandy. The human cost of this war was unimaginable, and Normandy became the sacrificial lamb that the rest of France might be spared. Accounts of soldiers falling to pieces mentally under the terror of artillery bombardment is sobering, as is the brutality on both sides, with prisoners of war being killed in cold blood. There were also moments of incredible chivalry though, when enemies treated each other with unusual respect.

War brings out both the best and the worst in men. No other area of human experience allows men to act with such selfless courage and boldness, and with such hideous brutality. Both the best and worst were on full display in Normandy. Beevor brilliantly captures the terrifying chaos of the first airborne landings behind enemy lines and the bloodbath of the assault on Omaha beech. This is Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers in full detail.

And of course, running through one’s head is the question, “Would I have fought bravely, or been one of those cowering in terror in a foxhole crying for my mother?”

The logistics behind the landings and subsequent advance beggar belief. A quartermaster in the 3rd Armoured Division calculated that it took 125,000 gallons of fuel for the whole division to move just 100 yards. In this the incredible resources of America are evident. The British had bankrupted themselves fighting the war, but the US was able to keep pouring in more and more resources, and it was this apparently limitless supply that really did for the German forces, whose own supplies became increasingly sparse. The Allies achieved almost complete air supremacy and were able to bomb German supply chains into oblivion. America became ever stronger, Britain weaker, and thus was set the path of Western politics up to the present day.

One other aspect of the conflict that stands out is the incredible ego of the commanders involved. Fighting a war is hardly the domain for shrinking violets, but it is striking how the Allied Generals competed amongst themselves. As Field Marshall Sir Alan Brooke put it, “It is astonishing how petty and small men can be in connection with questions of command.” One of the challenges of preaching the gospel in contemporary culture is trying to explain the concept of ‘glory’. It is largely a foreign notion to us – glimpsed only fleetingly and meanly in major sporting events – but it is the end towards which all Christians are directed, as we will share with Christ in his glory. But the pursuit of glory is what drives the Generals. As General Patton recorded when he was waiting to be sent to France, “It is Hell to be on the side lines and all the glory eluding me.”

It is the desire for glory that enables the greatest deeds to be done, but it is also the root of man’s self-destruction. It was Satan’s seeking of his own glory that led to his downfall, and all the sin of the world since has been a seeking after a glory other than that of God’s. Too many of the commanders fell prey to this intoxicating desire. De Gaulle was insufferably arrogant (in a uniquely French way). Montgomery was too – to such an extent that Eisenhower described him as ‘a psychopath’, unable to ever admit a mistake. Patton, the most driven and most successful of the Generals wrote at the end of the campaign, “I am convinced that the best end for an officer is the last bullet of the war.” After commanding the fates of thousands of men, indeed of whole nations, what could compare? Where would the glory be? And of course, at the centre of it all was Hitler, whose lust for glory was unsurpassed.

Therein lies the lesson – and the warning – of the battle for Normandy.

Jeeves Omnibus, No. 4 by PG Wodehouse

For me. Wodehouse is quintessential holiday reading - nothing is more relaxing. This omnibus contains three stories about Bertie Wooster and his valet Jeeves. All are basically the same story, with the characters and plot somewhat rearranged. But the continuity of these characters and stories adds to their charm. Reading Wodehouse you know that, as Jeeves would say, the lark is on the wing, the snail on the thorn and God in his heaven.