A terrific account of the early life of Annie Besant, making an excellent case for why she should be remembered, celebrated, and statue-ised as a BritA terrific account of the early life of Annie Besant, making an excellent case for why she should be remembered, celebrated, and statue-ised as a British feminist pioneer. Probably she isn't because a) she lost her marbles re Theosophy and b) she spent much of the latter part of her life in India, where she was a fighter for education and independence and Congress's first female leader, but fell out with Gandhi. She did have a real knack for supporting men who did awfully well from her support and then soared on, leaving her behind: see also Charles Bradlaugh, the first atheist MP. (This book is primarily about Besant and Bradlaugh and birth control; her adventures with Theosophy and India are briefly summarised at the end.)
Besant survived a weird religious upbringing and a vile abusive husband to fight for women's rights to control their fertility and to take pleasure in sex. As such she published a guide to bodies, sex and contraception that saw her and Bradlaugh prosecuted for obscenity in a groundbreaking trial that, among other things, Streisand-effected the book into wide public knowledge. She was an amazing public speaker and a woman of spectacular determination, and pretty much her whole life was a string of men using her, abusing her, directing her, profiting from her, doing well thanks to her, letting her down, taking away what she worked for. Very much one of those women who proves that sexuality isn't a choice, because her life would have been immeasurably improved by the absence of men from it.
An excellent and highly readable account, slightly marred by the bizarre and inconsistent use of tense and including a simple future (so instead of "He was to die three years later" it's "He will die three years later" and thus the same character is more than once referred to in the past, present and future tense *in the same paragraph*. I assume this is part of the effort at immediacy that also gives us updates on the day's crime or political news as the prosecution progresses, but that's useful context whereas the tense stuff is IMO just distracting. But that's a small quibble; this is a good book and very useful on an unjustly forgotten radical. ...more
Very good indeed. A history of the runn up to WW1 themed around the monarchs of Britain, Russia and Germany, culminating in the cousin King, Tsar, andVery good indeed. A history of the runn up to WW1 themed around the monarchs of Britain, Russia and Germany, culminating in the cousin King, Tsar, and Kaiser who presided over the mess. This is the opposite of a Great Men of History book: it's more a demolition of the concept of monarchy by demonstrating how these untalented, unimaginative, self-centred charisma voids didn't even make the best of their limited capacities.
Wilhelm is probably the worst, being not entirely sane, uttterly unreliable, ego-crazed, profoundly damaged by terrible parenting, and an absolute shocker at administration. Nicholas would probably have been harmless if he hadn't been born into a position to do an incredible amount of harm by a combination of insane self regard and horrendous inaction. George comes out relatively sympathetic if only because he did occasionally get over himself long enough to try to do a decent job.
It's terrifically written with deadpan humour and some actual laugh out loud moments, and it conveys the complex family structures and wildly shifting politics extremely well. Highly recommended. ...more
1870s historical fiction set in the world of seances and mediums. Sapphic.
This book should have been so far up my street--ladies investigate a dodgy 1870s historical fiction set in the world of seances and mediums. Sapphic.
This book should have been so far up my street--ladies investigate a dodgy society of mediums!--but oof. The depiction of spiritualism and seances in 1870s London--the way the seances are conducted, the way the club works--just doesn't ring true (it's a bit of a specialist subject of mine hence I was looking forward to this). The dialogue is tooth-grindingly American, with no effort at sounding British. Why not set it in New York or whatever if you're not going to use British English, or have it be plausibly Britain? Then again the women are consistently addressed as Ms, *in the 1870s*. Wow.
I got to about 66% with increasing annoyance, then came across the single most blatant piece of plot manipulation via ludicrously improbable character behavior I've seen in years, spent several minutes ranting about it to my husband, and binned out in a huff. DNF....more
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