Last Wednesday, I enjoyed my inaugural visit to the esteemed pork pie producers Edwards of Conwy, as part of a week’s holiday in the environs of Llandudno. This break (and the staycation that followed) also gave me some extra opportunities to dip into my TBR pile. So, here’s a roundup of my four favourite holiday reads.
Midnight in Chernobyl
This week saw the death of the last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev. One of the defining moments of his tenure was the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which he once described as “an historic turning point” and “perhaps the real cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union.” As the disaster happened a few years before my birth, my understanding of it has been somewhat fragmentary. I decided to fill in the gaps with Adam Higginbotham’s Midnight in Chernobyl (Simon & Schuster, 2019), which I got for free last year at Book Stop in Tavistock.
Higginbotham offers a comprehensive account of the Chernobyl disaster, covering the political background, the building of the plant and Pripyat, the nuclear accident, the cleanup operations, and the personal and political fallout. It is meticulously researched, drawing on interviews conducted with over 80 people, as well as many other sources. Higginbotham successfully turns this deep research into a very readable and engaging account. And he remains focussed on the personal element, rather than abstract political or technical questions — telling the story of the victims, those who shared responsibility for what happened, and those who were a mixture of the two. It's a tragic account of cover-ups, secrecy, and scapegoating in the pursuit of personal and national glory. An exceptionally good book.
Blitz Spirit
“Despite the pounding every night, the rationing, the loss of life, they pulled together in one gigantic national effort. Today our generation is facing its own test, fighting a very real and new disease.” Such were the words of then-health secretary Matt Hancock in 2020, as he exhorted the public to imitate the “Blitz Spirit” in the battle against Covid-19. A stirring address, but Mr Hancock was peddling a myth — even in wartime, humans are still humans, and respond to tragedy in a remarkable variety of conflicting ways. There was no single unifying “Blitz Spirit”.
This variety of experiences can be sampled in Becky Brown’s edited collection of diary entries from the Mass-Observation Archive, entitled Blitz Spirit (Hodder & Stoughton, 2020). In these pages, you’ll find a wonderful juxtaposition of global concerns and personal trivialities, of hopeful optimism and bleak despair, of longings for peace and dreams of new swimsuits, of wartime horrors and complaints about bin collections, of faithful patriotism and self-justified lawbreaking (or “naughtiness” as one housewife termed it). The book was partly compiled during the pandemic, and the parallels are striking — but not always for the reasons Matt Hancock would have wanted. This is a fascinating, compelling and often entertaining record of humans attempting to get by in a time of war.
Malice Aforethought
Francis Iles’ Malice Aforethought (1931) is a pivotal book in the development of crime fiction; Peter Lovesey described it as marking the creation of “the modern crime novel.” The author had previously written a series of excellent and innovative whodunnits under the name Anthony Berkeley, but departed from the classic formula with this book, in which the identity of the murderer and victim is revealed in the opening sentence. This concept of an “inverted” mystery was not entirely new, but Malice Aforethought offered something different by focussing on the psychology of the murderer, rather than the intellectual puzzle of detection.
The plot is loosely inspired by the true story of the "Hay Poisoner", Herbert Rowse Armstrong, who was found guilty of murdering his wife in 1922. In this case, the guilty party is Dr Bickleigh, who plans to dispose of his wife — although things don't go entirely to plan. The narrative mostly follows the mind of Dr Bickleigh, which is a fascinating place to be, especially as his misplaced arrogance becomes more obvious. The writing shows Berkeley’s typical wit and is well-paced. And it ends in one of the most interesting courtroom scenes I have read, with Dr Bickleigh oscillating in his mind between thoughts of acquittal and condemnation. And the final verdict is... well, you'll have to read it to find out.
More Love
I first came across the name Elizabeth Prentiss when I was reading Aging with Grace by Sharon Betters and Susan Hunt (Crossway, 2021), and was struck by a quote of hers: “I'm ever so glad that I'm growing old every day and so becoming better fitted to be the dear and loving friend to young people I want to be.” What a great countercultural perspective! I decided to pick up a short biography of her by Claire Williams, More Love (Christian Focus, 2019). This is part of the Trailblazers series, aimed at 8-14 year-olds, so ideal as a lighter counterpoint to detailed books about Chernobyl and the Blitz.
Elizabeth Prentiss was a 19th-century American writer of hymns, poems, letters and novels. Her God-given gifts were shaped in the context of suffering, as she experienced ill-health and the death of two children. Through all these experiences, she found comfort in the Lord’s wise providence and in her heavenly hope — a hope that led her on one occasion to write of how “disappointed” she was to recover from her illness, when she had prepared herself for the prospect of imminent glory! In her writings and practical service, she longed for others to learn similar lessons in times of difficulty, that they would know Christ better too. As well as being an encouraging light holiday read, this would definitely be a good book to look at with 8-11s, with helpful discussion questions at the back to draw lessons from the life of Elizabeth Prentiss and her knowledge of the Lord.
Shopping list
More Love is available from 10ofThose, Evangelical Bookshop, or wherever you get your Christian books.
The other books are all available to order from your local bookshop, which will probably have a difficult winter because of energy costs. Support them!