Bernard Donoughue & GW Jones, Herbert Morrison; Portrait of a Politician, Dodie Smith, I Capture The Castle, Philip Mansel, Constantinople: City of the World's Desire 1453-1924, Rose Macaulay, The Towers of Trebizond, William Dalrymple, Return of a King; The Battle For Afghanistan

Leaving aside the first book, there's been some themes running through recent reading. 'I Capture The Castle' and 'The Towers of Trebizond' are written by authors with similar backgrounds writing at similar times about fictionalised younger versions of themselves. Both were wonderful, both were so funny and so arch. There's something very romantic about the remnants of the english ruling class in poverty/in search of a role after the Great War upset the natural order of things. How wonderfully quixotic to live in a castle with absolutely no income or means of providing for one selves other than relying on the goodwill of faithful retainers (I Capture The Castle) or attempting to convert the Turk to Anglicanism as the British Empire collapses and Ataturk's secular society is modernising Anatolia (Towers of Trebizond). The latter links in neatly with Mansel's History of Ottoman Constantinople, the most eye-opening part of the narrative being his convincing distinction between 'Ottoman' and 'Turk', both meaning very different things rather than the synonyms we often take them to be. 'Ottoman' meaning above nationality, multi-ethnic, cosmopolitan but very much Islamic, with 'Turk' as a national term, heterogeneous, defined as against Greek, Albanian, Kurd, Armenian,etc and suspicious of Constantinople as un-Turkish, unlike Ankara and Anatolia. This was particularly true with the ascent of Ataturk and the moving of the capital. Mansel also wrote 'Levant' which I read recently, and both read as laments for the lost, cosmopolitan, multilingual, tolerant societies of the Near East. Surely it can’t have been as wonderful as he suggests, and certainly the ethnic, religious and linguistic tensions have always been simmering away in the Levant.

Dalrymple's book on Afghanistan concentrates on the First Afghan War, rather than events since, and it's hard to read without picturing good old Flashman. It's probably fair to sum the whole thing up with that cracking line from The Princess Bride 'Never get involved in a land war in Asia.'

Since the last update Libby has had her 2nd birthday and now owns a scooter too. She loves it and insists on travelling on it everywhere, despite being unable to steer or stop. The long trip home has become even more interesting as a result. Fred is very good and patiently waits, but he's such a proficient scooterer now he glides through town looking very elegant, and there's always the worry he'll scoot off out of sight while I'm trying to wrestle Libby into the buggy, or juggle her, her scooter, the bags, the buggy and the food shopping.