The Civil War In Dublin 1916

The book I read to research this post was A Walk Through Rebel Dublin 1916 by Mick O’Farrell which is a very good book that I bought from kindle. The book is about the Civil War which erupted in Ireland in 1916. It mostly centres around Dublin and especially O’Connell Street which is one of the main roads. There is lots of interesting almost anecdotal stories. This war resulted because Ireland became independent without without what would become Northern Ireland which remained under British rule. The problem was the south was predominantly catholic while the north was mostly protestant. Many in the north are of Scottish descent and presbyterian as a result. There was a conflict between those who thought they had to accept this limited home rule and those against. It was the kind of conflict where brother fought brother and father fought son quite literally. The British did stir things up by doing things like letting rebels raid stores without preventing them. The people supporting limited home rule won but the British did just want the country to collapse into chaos so they would accept British rule. There had been a terrorist campaign for independence and many people often due to cruel sanctions by the British were literally forced to fight for home rule. Many of these people were literally starving or had no way of selling their crops and making money. Catholics couldn’t even vote or own land.

The D-Day Invasion From The German Point Of View

The book I read to research this post was D-Day Through German Eyes by Holger Eckhertz which is a very good book that I bought from kindle. This book is around 200 pages so is fairly long. I did quite enjoy reading it and do recommend it. This book is about the D-Day landings by the Allies from the German perspective and as experienced by their men. The germans called it the invasion of France and didn’t see it from the perspective they were liberating Europe under their occupation.  I think D-Day from the German perspective was much worse than for the Allies because of the overwhelming onslaught by the Americans and their huge resources. Apparently Germans were astonished when after the Pearl Harbour bombings by the Japanese and Hitler declaring war a mere 48 hours later. The Germans were already pre-occupied with the war with Russia and an invasion by the Canadians and British alone would probably have been impossible. Many of the Germans became POW’s in the invasion and were classified in groups according to the codenames according to the beaches invaded like Omaha and had the various codenames. A lot of the reason the invasion went so well was the superior firepower of the Americans and the overwhelming numbers of sherman tanks that were far inferior to the better Tiger tanks of the Germans.

Marco Polo’s Journey

The book I read to research this post was Tracking Marco Polo by Tim Severin which is a very good book that I downloaded for free from kindle. This book traces the route travelled by the explorer Marco Polo that is travelled by a group of people mostly on motorbikes and partly by air although parts of it were closed. The parts that were closed were mostly China although this now is more open to tourists since and there were parts in Afghanistan and Iran that were open at that time but have since become less accessible to tourists. They used varous cheap old motorbikes for much of the route and their budget was limited. They travelled from London where as Marco travelled from Venice. More than half of the route was with in China and they tried to compare his notes with conditions on the present route. In some places the locals didn’t take to kindly to them. In other places they were chased by semi-wild dogs. This book is around 220 pages so is a decent length. I did enjoy this book and do recommend it.

Battleship Yamato

The book I read to research this post was Requiem For Battleship Yamato which is a very good book that I bought from a car boot sale. This book is about a battle towards the end of World War 2 off Okinawa, Japan that culminated in the sinking of the Battleship Yamato. One person recalls how the shells onboard exploded as she sank and there was a giant whirlpool created. The shells weighed more than a car and could be fired 30 miles. The book itself reads like a diary with much of the text being a bit superfluous. The Yamato was an absolutely huge battleship being even bigger than the American aircraft carriers. I think this made it somewhat cumbersome allowing it to be picked off. In many of these battles sharks were a serious problem if a ship sunk and could detect a drop of blood in the water from a huge distance and would also go into a feeding frenzy. There had also recently been another battle The Battle of The Midway where the vast majority of the Japanese Navy were sunk. Perhaps more so than in other navies the captain was expected to go down with his ship. The book is around 150 pages so is a decent length. I did quite enjoy this book and do recommend it.

David Blunkett

The biography I am reviewing is David Blunkett by Stephen Pollard which is a very good book that I bought from a local secondhand shop. This book is around 330 pages so is a decent length. I did enjoy it and do recommend it. David Blunkett was the Home Secretary among other jobs in the Labour Government in the late 90’s and early 2000’s in Britain. This is astonishing becuse he was blind and had to have a guide dog much of the time for this. He also had a photographic memory and once astonished a friend by bring up a minor point raised some 3 weeks before in a report sent to him. He was also Minister For Education and in both jobs saw far reaching reforms. In this country he was certainly a high profile minister. There were a couple of scandals and after the first he temporarily retired to the backbenches. After the second which I think centred around an inappropriate relationship he was retired from a ministerial position for good. I think think there was a scandal to do with exam results when he was Education Minister. I think his appointment was partly to show trhat despite having a disability if someone works hard they can reach a high status in government. The Labour Party embraced something called New Labour which despite showing promise and doing some good didn’t live upto expectations.

Property Crime Offences

The book I read to research this post was Dealing With Property Crime Offences by Andrew Dasher which is a very good book that I read at Kindle Unlimited. This book is about how the police deal with crimes against people’s possessions. There is a great risk of people who commit these offences committing the same or similar crimes again. Due to this there is a disproportionally high rate of these offenders in prison. Often people committing these offences the first time will get a softer sentence like a conditional discharge for example and may go to prison for breaking the law later. Police officers and others who deal with these have to, to a certain extent understand how to deal with these crooks. This is quite an interesting book that I do recommend. It is around 40 pages so is quite short. This is an interesting book on this subject but only covers the subject in a brief way.

The Krays

The book I read to ressearch this post was A Man Apart by Roberta Kray which is a very good book that I bought from a car boot sale. This is a biography of the gangster Reggie Kray who was in jail for many years and was a notorious gangster in East End London told by his 2nd wife Roberta. He had a wife before that but she committed suicide. Roberta married him a few years before his death and this book focuses on those years. He did die of cancer and had advanced heart disease requiring oxygen and various drugs. He let out of prison on compassionate grounds not long before his death. Roberta nowadays is a successful novelist. She first worked with as part of an agency doing work with him. His 2 brothers were also in prison most notable Ronnie who was held at Broadmoor. Reggie himself was on Trifluoperazine a tranquilizer. He later got classed as well and taken off it.He had psychological problems earlier in his sentence. Some of the prison also had obviously quite an unsettling effect on him especially Long Larton. Lifers were frequently moved around and there numbers in any one prison strictly limited to prevent trouble. Years later he would be allowed to visit his brother in Long Larton. It brought back a lot of bad memories. This book is around 320 pages so is a decent length. I did enjoy it and do recommend it. It presents a realistic portrait of Reggie  which is probably what he would have wanted. He wouldn’t want to be portrayed as an angel or devil.

Cathedrals

The book I read to research this post was Guided By A Stone-Mason by Thomas Maude which is a very good book that I bought from a book store. This book is around 170 pages so is a reasonable length. It is about cathedrals in Britain from Norman times onwards and the different styles like gothic etc. At that time they were starting to build cathedrals from stone instead of wood. Many cathedrals like Worcester and Durham were built in this period. Many due to the longevity of stone are still standing. This book also looks at the interesting features and challenges of building these. Many of these stone-masons came from Europe and were very skilled creating intricate carvings from the stone. Often rock quarried locally would be used. Hence we have sandstone for example being used to build Lichfield cathedral. The church was very rich and powerful until Henry the 8th started the Protestants. Vaulting was used to create the archways which were typical of these. This idea of creating an archway with a centre stone was first used in Roman times. There were also many terms like groynes used to define the different parts of a cathedral. I did enjoy this book and do recommend it.

The Guv’nor

The book I read to research this post was The Guv’nor by Lenny McLean which is a very good book that I bought from a car boot sale. Lenny did appear in several films most notably The Fifth Element as a police chief. Prior to that he had been a streetfighter and was unable to be a boxer due probably having a criminal record. He did grow up in a troubled home where his stepdad beat him. The stepdad was the only person in his entire life he lost a fight to. He did end up in the borstals and approved schools used to deal with juvenile crime. He also went to prison where he was charged with murder but ended up getting done for a lesser charge of grevious bodily harm. This book was published in 1998 and is around 220 pages so is a reasonable length. Apparently the mafia got him to fight their top streetfighter and he won in less than 3 minutes. It is certainly an interesting account of life in the East End of London in the gangster era. I enjoyed reading this book and do recommend it. It is worth mentioning he get duped into paying loads of money for a screenplay for a film allegedly from this book. It was charlatans trying to make money and there was little he could do about it. The fraudsters just got an injunction when he wanted his money back. Apparently there are a lot of these outfits trying to make money from supposed films.

The Bismarck

The book I read to research this post was The Discography Of The Bismarck by Robert D Ballard which is a very good book that I bought from a car boot sale. This book is a companion piece to one on the Titanic discovered by the same team. It’s around 250 pages so a decent length. This ship was the pride of the German navy and sunk in a massive operation for the sinking of HMS Hood the Royal Navy flagship. A huge assortment of vessels were used at one stage it looked like the King Georde V was likely to run out of fuel but told to continue despite a chance it might need towing and be vulnerable to U-boat attack. Blitzkrieg was named after the german chancellor often called the Iron Duke and sunk in over 4,700 metres of water in the Atlantic. Finding it was a huge job involving searching over 100 square miles. It was a huge chase and fearsome battle to sink. The potential damage the Bismarck could do to a convoy was huge. Churchill ordered it siunk at all costs. This is an interesting book I do recommend. The Titanic was recovered in similar circumstances deep in the Atlantic. One shell went straight threw the Bismarck with waves coming through it although it was above the waterline. Another shell hit the torpedo stores and started a fire.