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.
