The Prow Beast, by Robert Low. Book review

Fourth in the Oathsworn series, following The Whale Road (reviewed here earlier), The Wolf Sea (reviewed here earlier) and The White Raven (reviewed here earlier), The Prow Beast is set in Scandinavia and what is now Poland in 975-976. Olaf Tryggvason (Crowbone), later King of Norway, Queen Sigrith of Sweden and Styrbjorn, nephew of King Erik of Sweden, are historical (or at least, saga) figures. All the main characters are fictional.

After their quest for the cursed treasure of Attila’s tomb (recounted in the first three books, particularly The Whale Road and The White Raven), Orm and the Oathsworn have achieved fame across the Norse world. Orm has married and is now a man of consequence, presiding over his jarl’s hall and lands at Hestreng in newly unified Sweden. Orm is entrusted with fostering Koll, the young son of Jarl Brand, and also with escorting Queen Sigrith, wife of King Erik the Victorious of Sweden, home to Uppsala. But although fame is the dream of every Norse warrior, it is the gift of Odin and carries a characteristically bitter price. When old enemies come to Hestreng with fire and sword, Orm and the Oathsworn must take ship again, following the ‘prow beast’ to revenge, violence and heartbreak.

Like its three predecessors, The Prow Beast is a larger-than-life tale, “a saga to be told around the fire against the closing dark”, as the author puts it. Like the others, it captures some of the grim grandeur of the Norse sagas (not an easy feat), with men who recognise their harsh fate and go out to meet it with courage and black humour. The series has been getting steadily darker in tone since the first book, no doubt reflecting Orm’s development from youth to battle-hardened jarl, and The Prow Beast is darker yet. The Oathsworn have always been hard and ruthless men; in The Prow Beast their savagery reaches a new depth. Orm himself has become a doom-laden, brooding figure, reminiscent of the fearsome Einar the Black in The Whale Road (and reminding me of Skarp-Hedin as his fate closes around him in Njal’s Saga). There is a tremendous sense of authenticity about the pagan Norse culture, not just the gods and rituals but also the world-view of inescapable fate and ‘fair fame’, that gives the Oathsworn series a feeling of depth underlying the adventures. The writing style reinforces this, with some of the laconic style of the sagas and liberally sprinkled with vivid imagery reminiscent of Norse kennings.

Characterisation is as vivid as ever, and readers will be pleased to see the return of old friends from the previous books, such as Finn Horsehead from Skane who fears nothing (in The Prow Beast the reader finds out why), giant Botolf who can be alternately genial and ferocious, Red Njal with his granny’s endless store of proverbial wisdom (I can’t help thinking that Red Njal’s granny could have written most of the Havamal [‘Sayings of the High One’]), and young Olaf Crowbone with his uncanny insights and fund of sharp stories. Not everyone will make it to the end (though any reader familiar with the previous three books will already have guessed this). The ending itself has a satisfying bleakness that fits well with what has gone before. Whether this really is the end or whether there is scope for further adventures for the remaining Oathsworn is hard to tell – certainly Olaf Crowbone’s story has much further to run to catch up with his historical career.

A useful map at the front helps readers unfamiliar with the geography of the Baltic and eastern Europe to follow the Oathsworn’s journey, and a historical note at the back sets out some of the underlying history. I have a nagging feeling that I have read something very similar to the episode of Queen Sigrith and Botolf somewhere before, so maybe that also occurs in one of the sagas, although it isn’t explicitly identified as such in the historical note.

Dark, gripping adventure with a strong sense of pagan Norse culture, following the adventures of a Norse warrior band in the tenth century.

May recipe: Victoria sandwich cake

This classic sponge cake is simple to make and ideal for sunny spring days. You can fill it with any jam of your choice, together with whipped cream or buttercream if liked. This variant uses jam and vanilla buttercream.

Victoria sandwich cake

For the sponge cake:
4 oz (approx 100 g) butter
4 oz (approx 100 g) light brown soft sugar
2 eggs
4 oz (approx 100 g) self-raising flour

For the vanilla buttercream:
1.5 oz (approx 40 g) butter
3 oz (approx 80 g) icing sugar
1 teaspoon (1 x 5 ml spoon) vanilla essence


To make the sponge cakes:
Grease two sandwich cake tins about 7” (approx 18 cm) diameter and line with greaseproof paper.
Cream the butter and sugar for the sponge cake until light and fluffy.
Beat in the eggs.
Stir in the self-raising flour and mix until smooth.
Divide the mixture between the two sandwich cake tins and level the surface.
Bake at about 180 C for about 20 minutes. The cakes are done when they are light golden brown, shrinking away from the sides of the tins, and spring back when pressed lightly with a finger.
Turn out and cool on a wire rack.

To make the buttercream:
Sieve the icing sugar into a mixing bowl.
Cream the icing sugar and butter together until smooth.
Beat in the vanilla essence.

To assemble the cake:
Spread one sponge cake with the vanilla buttercream.
Spread the other with 3-4 large spoonfuls of jam of your choice.
Sandwich the cakes together with the buttercream and jam as filling.
Serve cut in slices. I expect to get about 12 slices out of this quantity, but it depends how big a slice you like.

The finished cake will keep in an airtight tin for about a week. The plain sponge cakes can be frozen; when you want to use them, thaw them out and sandwich together with jam and/or buttercream as above. I’ve never tried freezing the finished cake.

Dissolution, by CJ Sansom. Book review

Pan, 2007. ISBN 978-0-330-45079-9. 443 pages.

Dissolution is a murder mystery set in London and the fictional monastery of Scarnsea on the south coast of England in 1537-1538, against the background of the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. Thomas Cromwell is an important secondary character, and historical figures including Anne Boleyn and her supposed lover Mark Smeaton are important in the background. All the main characters are fictional.

Matthew Shardlake is a lawyer who occasionally undertakes commissions for Thomas Cromwell, the powerful and ruthless chief minister of Henry VIII. A keen reformer, Shardlake believes the monasteries are corrupt and supports Cromwell’s attempts to force the large monasteries into ‘voluntary’ surrender. When one of Cromwell’s commissioners, a brutal thug called Robin Singleton, is violently murdered while investigating the monastery of Scarnsea on the Sussex coast, Cromwell sends Shardlake to investigate. Snowbound in the isolated monastery, Shardlake finds that nothing is what it seems, and the threads of murder extend far beyond the monastery to encompass some of the highest in the land.

Dissolution is both a clever murder mystery and a vivid portrayal of the upheavals of the English Reformation. Inevitably, a murder set in an enclosed monastery is going to evoke The Name of the Rose – and unless I am much mistaken there’s a sly Name of the Rose joke in the text – but Dissolution is much more of a classic whodunit. Clues and red herrings abound to keep the reader guessing, and the solution is not obvious in advance, or at least it was not to me.

As well as the mystery puzzle, the sequence of subsequent events combine to produce a steadily building sense of menace, echoed by Shardlake’s increasing disquiet about the worth of the cause he is serving. This for me was one of the best features of the novel, its strong period sense. The upheavals in English society resulting from Henry VIII’s break with Rome and his marital entanglements are more than just a dramatic background, they are intrinsic to solving the mystery. Furthermore, the intellectual and social background is more than just atmosphere. Conflicts arise between the reformers’ view of the Catholic church as corrupt and the role of the Church as an international institution, a custodian of knowledge, a provider of education, a route of social mobility for intelligent men from modest backgrounds, and a social institution providing a degree of help for the destitute. Class conflicts also play a part, as far-reaching changes in the social order resulting in part from the Reformation bring a new type of opportunist to the fore. The overall tone is dark, derived not just from the violent events inherent in a murder mystery but also from a pervasive sense of fear and insecurity. If Cromwell and the King are ruthless enough and powerful enough to bring down the monasteries, with hundreds of years of accumulated tradition and wealth behind them, what hope for anyone?

Shardlake is a fully realised character, a very human mix of good and bad, attractive and unattractive qualities. He is intelligent and humane, a rational thinker, a follower of Erasmus and a keen reformer, believing that religious reform will improve the human condition. Yet he also unquestioningly accepts the class distinctions of his time and defends the resulting injustices, he is quick to take offence at any real or imagined reference to his disability (Shardlake has a hunchback), and it seems his zeal for reforming the monasteries may owe something to unpleasant childhood experiences in a cathedral school as well as to Erasmus’ ideals. Nevertheless, Shardlake is driven mainly by a search for truth and justice, and his disillusion as he is forced to recognise that many ‘reformers’ are more concerned with ego, greed, vanity and abuse of power, is both convincing and poignant. The other characters are clearly portrayed as individuals, though none has the depth of Shardlake. I will be interested to see how (if?) Shardlake and his principles manage to navigate the rest of Henry VIII’s increasingly tyrannical reign as it unfolds.

The novel is narrated throughout in first person by Shardlake, in straightforward modern prose (with a refreshing absence of expletives). It has something of a lawyer’s measured tones, and the pace is best described as stately. The tale is more of an intellectual puzzle against a menacing background than an action-packed thriller, and indeed Shardlake’s disability rather limits his opportunity to play the action hero (though I have to admire the author’s nerve for the Quasimodo scene!).

A map at the front of the book explains the layout of the monastery at Scarnsea, and will be helpful for readers who like to work out how the buildings connect to each other and who could have got to where. The senior monks are also listed at the front of the book, which may help readers keep track of the names as they are introduced, although I found I did not need to refer to it. A short and helpful Historical Note at the back summarises some of the underlying history.

Intelligent, dark murder mystery set against the well-realised historical background of Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries.

Red deer stags

Never let anyone tell you a mountain is ‘dull’ or ‘boring’. The big south-east corrie of Slioch may not be the most photogenic of areas, being short on dramatic crags and long on tussocks and bog. But as we were crossing the corrie on the way down from Slioch and Sgurr an Tuill Bhan on an early evening in spring, a red deer stag trotted up over the lip of the corrie...

... soon followed by a friend...

They took a good look at us ...

... then evidently decided we were harmless, and settled down in a sheltered hollow among the rocks and heather to chew cud and admire the view.

I’ve seen deer come quite close like this before, having obviously seen us and presumably decided there was no need to be alarmed. Either deer know the shooting season doesn’t extend to the spring, or they can tell that certain sorts of humans are unlikely to be dangerous.

Lion of the Sun, by Harry Sidebottom. Book review

Penguin 2011. ISBN 978-0-141-03231-3. 409 pages

Set in 260-261 AD, mainly in modern Turkey and Syria with a couple of short interludes in northern Italy and the Alps, Lion of the Sun is the third in the Ballista series, following Fire in the East (reviewed here earlier) and King of Kings (reviewed here earlier). Historical figures include Emperor Valerian, Shapur of Persia, Odenathus of Palmyra, Macrianus the Lame and his sons Macrianus and Quietus. Ballista is based on a historical figure about whom little is known. Other main characters are fictional.

Captured along with Emperor Valerian and many senior Imperial officials after betrayal led to a disastrous defeat (recounted in King of Kings), Ballista is a prisoner of the Persians. He has two desires: to return to his beloved wife and sons, and to take vengeance on the Roman usurpers who betrayed Valerian’s army to the Persians, Macrianus the Lame and his two sons. Far away to the west in Italy, Valerian’s son Emperor Gallienus has his hands full dealing with a barbarian invasion and another crop of would-be emperors, and cannot come to the rescue. Closer at hand, Odenathus Lord of Tadmor (Palmyra), known as the Lion of the Sun, holds the balance of power in the East. Will he declare for Persia, for the tyrants Macrianus and Quietus, or for the Romans who remain loyal to Gallienus? As war, murder and destruction stalk the East, the fate of the Roman Empire hangs in the balance – and Ballista, bound by oaths to all three sides, faces a terrible choice.

Lion of the Sun picks up immediately after the end of the previous book, King of Kings, with Ballista in captivity and his freedmen Maximus, Demetrius and Calgacus in the middle of a desperate flight through enemy territory back to Ballista’s family in Antioch. The action starts immediately, and barely pauses for breath for the next 400 pages. Like its predecessors, Lion of the Sun is primarily a military adventure, full of battle, chase, skirmishes, hair’s-breadth escapes (or not, for some unlucky characters) and graphic violence. Also like its predecessors, particularly King of Kings, it has a firm depth of politics and intrigue underpinning the violence, so the reader gets an impression of how Ballista’s adventures fit into the wider picture. The political element seems to be getting stronger as the series develops, perhaps because Ballista’s position in high command places him at the centre of political events as well as on the military front line. There is a strong sense of the different cultures and religions of the time, giving the novel a feeling of authenticity.

Ballista’s character remains an attractive feature of the series. An outsider in the Imperial court, he knows he is also now a stranger to his childhood homeland in Angeln in the far north. His devotion to his beloved wife and two young sons is both a source of strength and a vulnerability, as his reaction when he believes a broken oath has brought disaster on his family shows. Julia, Ballista’s wife, is another clearly defined character, intelligent, calm and capable. She plays more of a role in Lion of the Sun than in the previous book, and I look forward to seeing more of her. Most of the secondary characters are also developed as individuals, especially Ballista’s freedmen Maximus, Calgacus and Demetrius. Bathshiba and Haddudad from Fire in the East also make a welcome reappearance. The villains have a cartoon-like quality, particularly Quietus, a deranged tyrant in the mould of Caligula or Nero but without the style.

The writing style is mainly straightforward modern prose, liberally sprinkled with modern expletives (readers who find four-letter words offensive should consider themselves warned), and with archaic Latin terms. There is a glossary at the back explaining the Latin terms, though I found most of them could be worked out at least approximately from context. Two maps at the front show the Roman Empire and the Roman Near/Middle East, and are very useful for following the action. A list of characters at the back may be useful for keeping track of who is who, though I never needed to refer to it and only found it after I finished reading. A detailed Historical Afterword at the back summarises some of the underlying history (what there is of it; the Third-Century Crisis is poorly documented) and suggests further reading. Continuing the tradition of the previous books in the series, Lion of the Sun does not end so much as pause briefly before Ballista’s adventures continue in the next instalment.

Action-packed military adventure with political depth and a strong sense of authenticity, set against the turmoil of the Third-Century Crisis in the east of the Roman Empire.

April recipe: Mulligatawny soup

This spicy soup is simple to make, and its warming taste and bright colour help to cheer up a cold, wet day – which can be useful in chancy spring weather. You can vary the spices according to taste and availability, or use curry powder if you prefer.

Like chutney and kedgeree, the unusual name ‘mulligatawny’ is a legacy of empire, an Anglo-Indian dish whose name derives from the Tamil word ‘milagutannir’, translation ‘pepper-water’.

There are many variations. I have seen mulligatawny made with chicken or lamb, sometimes with rice. This is a vegetarian (vegan if you use vegetable oil instead of butter) version based on red lentils. It freezes well, so you can make a double quantity and freeze half for later use. The recipe below serves two as a main meal with bread, or four as a first course.

Mulligatawny soup
1 onion
Half a red pepper
2 cloves garlic
1 oz (approx 25 g) butter
0.5 teaspoon (0.5 x 5 ml spoon) ground ginger
0.5 teaspoon (0.5 x 5 ml spoon) cumin
0.5 teaspoon (0.5 x 5 ml spoon) coriander
0.5 teaspoon (0.5 x 5 ml spoon) turmeric
2 teaspoons (2 x 5 ml spoons) tomato puree
Approx 6oz (approx 150 g) tinned tomatoes
4 oz (approx 100 g) split red lentils
1 oz (approx 25 g) raisins
0.5 teaspoon (0.5 x 5 ml spoon) demerara sugar
1 pint (approx 500 ml) vegetable stock or water


Peel and chop the onion. Wash the red pepper, remove the seeds and chop into pieces about 0.5 inch (approx 1 cm) square. Peel and crush the garlic.
Melt the butter in a medium-sized saucepan. Fry the onion, red pepper and garlic gently in the butter for a few minutes until softened and starting to colour.
Stir in the ginger, cumin, coriander, turmeric, tomato puree and tinned tomatoes. Cook gently for a minute or two.
Add the lentils and raisins and stir well so that the lentils are coated in the tomato and spice mixture. Add the stock and sugar and bring to the boil.
Season with salt, turn the heat down to low, and simmer over a low heat for approximately 45 minutes to 1 hour until the lentils are soft.
Serve hot with bread.
Can be frozen.

Birdsong, by Sebastian Faulks. Book review

First published 1993. Edition reviewed, Vintage 2011, ISBN 978-0-099-52838-8. 503 pages.

Birdsong is set in Amiens, northern France, in 1910, on the battleground of the Somme in the First World War in 1916-1919, and in London in 1978-1979. All the main characters are fictional.

In 1910, Stephen Wraysford comes to Amiens to learn about the French textile industry. Staying with a local factory owner, he falls in love with his host’s unhappy wife Isabelle, and they begin an illicit love affair. Six years later, Stephen is a British infantry officer serving in the trenches, and strikes up an unlikely friendship with the men of a tunnelling unit working in his sector of the line. It is early summer in 1916, and the campaign that will become notorious in history as the Battle of the Somme is just about to start. Amid the unimaginable slaughter of industrial warfare, Stephen will find out if he has a reason to keep on living, or if his spirit has been crushed beyond all endurance.

The First World War left an indelible mark on Europe’s history. In England, even a small village will have its war memorial, with the roll-call of the dead from the First World War almost always exceeding that from the Second. Often the names come in heartbreaking clusters of identical surnames where brothers, sons or cousins all fell together, shattering families and communities. Travel through Northern France and the sheer scale of the military cemeteries, accentuated by their stark grandeur, is overwhelming. The Great War, as it was known, is a traumatic background in many a novel written in the decades following, even those that have nothing whatever to do with the war – aristocratic detective Lord Peter Wimsey was traumatised from serving in the trenches, and the Dead Marshes of Lord of the Rings are another incarnation of the flooded shell-holes of the Western Front. And then there are the war poets, whose lines echo down the years to touch the soul.

So I approached Birdsong with some trepidation, hoping it would do justice to such a convulsive event. One reason why it has taken me so long to get around to reading it; I finally thought I should give it a try, since everyone else has. The war sections were the strongest aspect of the novel for me, especially the description of the first day of the Battle of the Somme and the account of the tunnellers, who fought their own private war deep beneath no-man’s land, attempting to drive mines and counter-mines under the opposing trenches. Occasional glimpses of civilian life back in England when the soldiers go home on leave make a powerful contrast with the appalling conditions at the front. Birdsong also gives a strong sense of the ghastly combination of terror and boredom in trench warfare. The book is well worth reading for the war sections alone.

I found the other two strands of the narrative - Stephen’s affair with Isabelle and his grand-daughter Elizabeth searching for information about the war and conducting her own love affair with a married man - less compelling. There are a great many references to ‘flesh and blood’ throughout the novel (it feels like every page), and perhaps these two strands are supposed to form some sort of symbolic parallel between sex (Stephen’s affair), death (the war scenes) and childbirth (Elizabeth’s baby). If so, it seems rather laboured, and may explain why neither of these two plotlines really came alive for me. Another reason may be the characterisation. Stephen is emotionally stunted, having never had anyone to love him as a child, and this gives him a cold, remote quality (even in the middle of a torrid sex scene). His relationship with Isabelle seems to be based on lust rather than love, and Isabelle’s side of the affair is not really explored. Stephen’s later relationship with Isabelle’s sister Jeanne, which is potentially much more interesting, is hardly touched on at all.

Elizabeth is a warmer character than Stephen, although still emotionally detached – she reflects at one point that she may have chosen a married man to fall in love with because she will not be expected to settle down with him and lose her independence. She is so far removed from the other two strands of the novel that it’s difficult to relate her to them, other than perhaps to provide some near-contemporary ‘relevance’ for readers to identify with. (As if readers cannot be expected to be interested in the experience of another time and place for its own sake?).

The writing style reinforces the impression of emotional detachment. It seems consciously ‘literary’, with lots of incidental detail and some nice turns of phrase. The sheer amount of detail makes the book very long; each detail may be telling in itself, but collectively I found they tended to act as a barrier. I always felt I was watching the characters, rather than being drawn into their experiences. This distant style is effective in the war scenes, where the events are moving in their own right. I found it less effective in the love scenes, where it made all the relationships seem distant. Possibly this is another reason why I found the two love narratives less compelling than the war sections.

Powerful description of the human cost of trench and tunnel warfare in the First World War, mixed with two rather less powerful love stories.