The Page Count

Tag: Non-Fiction

  • Led Zeppelin: When Giants Walked the Earth 

    Mick Wall, 2008

    Orion, 2009, 534 pages

    Read June–July 2026 

    Non-fiction, Music, Biography 

    A more journalistic, less bombastic biography of Led Zeppelin than the recently reviewed Hammer of the Gods. There is less of the latter’s ‘Apollian versus Dionysiac’ stuff, and although Hammer of the Gods possessed detail (with Mick Wall even crediting it here), where When Giants Walked the Earth distinguishes itself is in its better structured documentation of the rise and fall of the band. 

    Rock journalist Wall gives a good sense of how the giddy heights that they attained made it seem that they were a monolith which would never come off the rails – but also that the reality was that they were four highly talented, very well-guided musicians who ended up seduced by the power that they attained. 

    Manager Peter Grant is credited as enabling guitarist and band leader Jimmy Page’s vision, and Led Zep’s consequent success, through his refusal to accept industry norms (particularly when it came to splitting money) and his ability to harness them as workhorses (four North America tours in 1969 alone, slotted between UK and European dates). It’s made clear that Led Zeppelin was a carefully managed business set up, and that this was what allowed them to become the biggest band in the world – as well as their ability to combine light and dark, ‘synthesise’ (read: sometimes steal) ideas and work very quickly when they needed to (although the mixing and mastering of each album always ended up rushed). 

    Wall also makes it clear that this was aided and abetted, of course, by the singular luck of all great bands: the right musicians finding each other. This is complemented by fictional first-person interludes from the perspectives of the band members and Grant. Jumping from a narrative about the biggest band in the world to these assumed first-person perspectives, delving into the minds of five singular people, made for interesting counterpoints. Page, in particular, retained a great deal of control over their music (it was also interesting to read how there was always some distance between Page and vocalist Robert Plant).  

    Where these first-person interludes fall short is that even as their story progresses and Messrs. Page, Plant, Bonham and Jones develop from jobbing musicians to the biggest band in the world, they continue to take place in their pre- or initial Led Zep days. By the time it reaches the 1979 writing sessions for In Through the Out Door, it feels odd to jump back to moments like John Paul Jones’ perspective of his first meeting and practice with John Bonham in 1968. 

    Wall also arguably spends a bit too much time on Page’s Satanism, with a whole chapter (29 pages) on black magic(k) and Alastair Crowley, even entertaining the idea that Kenneth Anger placed a curse on Jimmy Page in 1976. 

    However, as stated, Wall maps out the rise and fall of the band clearly, and that the second half of their career went from disaster to disaster. They reached their pinnacle circa 1974: 

    If the first four years in the life of Led Zeppelin had been about empire-building, the next four – from 1972 to ‘75 – would find them overseeing their kingdom with all the splendid pomp and inherent arrogance of Pharaohs.

    He goes into the drugs problems that plagued the band towards the end – in particular, how Page’s heroin addiction caught up with his playing, Bonham’s behaviour made him dangerous to be around (‘La Bête Noire’), how their 1979 Knebworth shows, set up as their big UK comeback, were a disaster, with manager Peter Grant devolving from a sharp-elbowed, astute businessman into a paranoid bully. Wall also contends that the second of these two shows – which undersold to the point of financial disaster – signalled that rock music had moved on while Led Zep had been recuperating from various issues during the latter half of the 1970s. He even goes to the extent of arguing that the band was figuratively dying for a long time before Bonham literally did. Wall also makes it clearer than Davis that the band had their off nights, and has very little time for In Through the Out Door  in particular.

    He spends a fair bit of time on the 2007 reunion (verdict: good but safe) and why it didn’t last past that one show: post-1980, Led Zeppelin very much remained Page’s baby, with Plant having moved on into a solid solo career and Jonesy having become a friar. 

    In comparison to Hammer of the Gods, Wall is better at holding the band to account: he rightly goes into the ugly details of the Grant, Bonham, Bindon and Cole assault on a security guard, is critical of Led Zeppelin’s failure to credit the original songwriters (I particularly enjoyed the interview with Bert Jansch) and how the band let Bonham get away with his Jekyll and Hyde act (additional acts of assault and attempted rape) because it didn’t affect his drumming and allowed him to bear the commitments of touring and living away from his family. Whilst fittingly critical of Bonham’s errant behaviour, I would have appreciated Wall taking a more strident approach to Page’s relationship with a fourteen-year old. 

    Worth reading? Yes.

    Worth re-reading? Yes – a good story told well. 

    If you are interested, you might like…

    Hammer of the Gods –  Stephen Davis

    Led Zeppelin by Led Zeppelin

  • Last Rites

    Ozzy Osbourne with Chris Ayres, 2025 

    Sphere, 2025, 351 pages 

    Read July – August 2026 

    Non-fiction, Autobiography, Music 

    Black Sabbath’s (first) vocalist; the animal-chomping rock star; the ageing media personality: Ozzy Osbourne had several looks over the years.1 

    Last Rites is the ageing media personality looking back on his animal-chomping rock-star days, and bits of being a forming member of Sabbath, while dealing with a litany of concurrent health issues. The book hinges upon these maladies and moves back and forth from there. The tone is conversational and it certainly sounds like Ozzy.2 Besides the erraticism of the shifting chronology, it also jumps from subject matter to subject matter (often concluding with ‘Anyway, [proceeds to get back to the original point]), rather than forming a chronological account of his life. Initially this feels a bit haphazard and clunky (as does his phonetic spelling-out of riffs), especially if you aren’t familiar with Ozzy’s mannerisms. However, he was nothing if not entertaining, and this comes across in the writing style (on surviving consecutive surgeries and health scares: ‘I celebrated by getting pneumonia again’). Not only does this carry the non-sequiturs, but given Ozzy’s characterful manner, with time it even comes to feel fitting.3

    With that said, Last Rites is at its most interesting when covering Black Sabbath’s music, Ozzy’s upbringing and his post-Sabbath musical career. Fair enough, drink, drugs and the attendant mishaps are part of the Ozzy story, and he recounts them in an entertaining manner, but these are common to many a rockstar’s autobiography/biography, so these sections are OK, but nothing you won’t have read elsewhere about flights of self-destruction (‘Lemmy was the one guy I just could not keep up with’). 

    Although geriatric complaints don’t sound like particularly compelling reading, the health issues – Parkinsons, staph infections, a backbone seemingly consisting of apple crumble (there’s a lot of back surgery) – form an interesting counterpart to a lifetime of hard living – as well as a look into the more mundane, poignant reality of just getting old. The No More Tours II, er, tour, endlessly delayed because of these issues, becomes Ozzy’s white whale, and in his pursuit of this, what really comes across is his love of performing and singing. For all of the above set-up of Ozzy as a larger-than-life personality first and a musician second, he really comes alive when talking about music and his love of performing, as well as his love of the fans.4

    It is called Last Rites, and it does cover his last gig, only 17 days before his death. This must have left co-writer Chris Ayres with a careful decision to make – acknowledge this, or write as though he’s still alive and cursing away? In the end, the only acknowledgement, besides the title, is on the dust jacket. Otherwise, the tone (and that it’s told in the first person) means that, should you not know of Ozzy, you wouldn’t know that this is posthumous. While he often talks of having well and truly used up his nine lives and how he could head off to the great gig in the sky tomorrow, he also talks about all of the things he still wanted to do and the people he wanted to see. This makes for several poignant moments as the end approaches.

    I would have liked more on his time in Black Sabbath, album by album. He does remark upon Sabbath wanting to be heavier than anything that had come before, Geezer Butler’s lyrics, the influence of jazz on Bill’s Ward’s drumming, and the songwriting process, or lack thereof. He admits that Tony Iommi was the unofficial leader and does touch upon the sound of Black Sabbath and what they set out to create. There is some mention of Sabbath’s fractious nature, and how Bill Ward was left behind in the making of their reunion album 13, but again, I would have liked more detail on this – was it always the case; did it develop with time; did the mountains of cocaine have anything to do with it? Likewise, I would have liked more on songwriting post-Black Sabbath; he worked with an array of great guitarists, but the songwriting process isn’t covered in any detail.5

    However, the discursive nature of the writing does allow for many a digression into unrelated subjects – driving in the UK versus the US, modern dating, social media, how Birmingham has changed, modern recording techniques, addiction, the legalisation of weed, guns, the Blitz, the Concorde, Guinness (‘I dream about Guinness almost every night. I fucking love the stuff, it’s like drinking a glass of pudding.’) Normally this wouldn’t be that interesting, but as stated, Ozzy’s voice is inimitable and entertaining (on eating up to 12 apples a day: ‘It’s a wonder I didn’t wake up one day with an apple tree sprouting out of my arse’.)

     

    That first note of ‘Iron Man’ gets me every time, man. You feel it in your bowels. Your teeth. Our bones. It’s like the gates of hell grinding open. Like the groan of Heinkel bombers as they dipped below the clouds to try to take out the Castle Bromwich Spitfire factory, night after night. Like the thunder of the heavy machinery out fathers used to operate. And their fathers before them.

    Worth reading? If you are already interested in Ozzy, yes. 

    Worth re-reading? No. I think this time would be better spent reading a Black Sabbath biography or a more comprehensive Ozzy biography.

    If you are interested, also read listen to: 

    Black Sabbath – hear heavy metal being created. 

    Paranoid – their best album.  

    The Blizzard of Oz – Ozzy’s first solo album. It has a very different, more modern sound than Sabbath, arguably closer to rock than metal, aided and abetted by Randy Rhoads’ shredding. 

     

    1. Shortly after Lemmy died, I observed on my music blog that ‘Motörhead + past tense = strange’. Same here.

    2. I normally refer to authors and their characters by surname only upon subsequent mentions, but Ozzy has earned his demonym and will be referred to as such.

    3. A personal favourite is Ozzy recording a promo for the Radio 1 Rock Show, in which he mispronounces his own name as ‘Blozzy Osbourne’. Apparently, no one thought he had a better take in him and that’s how it stayed. 

    4. Lest we forget, he also helped to invent heavy metal.

    5. There are at least two Ozzy autobiographies: I’m not sure what the difference is between this and I Am Ozzy, published in 2010. Or maybe the latter covers the subject areas I thought lacking herein. Maybe they form a series?

  • In Cold Blood

    Truman Capote, 1965

    Penguin Modern Classics, 2000, 336 pages 

    Non-fiction, Murder Mystery, Police Procedural  

    Read August 2026 

    *Spoilers* 

    The crux of In Cold Blood is that an unprovoked, violent crime is committed, investigated and judged. But this story is much more than just that; starting with the Kansan village of Holcomb, it establishes the character of the town, the townsfolk, the victims, the perpetrators, the crime and those who must look into it. Rather than just the details of the event, it details the life of the victims and the life of the murderers. 

    Highly detailed and meticulous, this book is in part journalistic and in part a police procedural. Besides its deliberately broad scope, which made me think of journalistic long reads like Into the Wild and The Fight, a point of interest is the combination of non-fictional content with a narrative form closer to fiction, such as including dialogue between the perpetrators to which no one else would have been present. It is structured so that the details of the murder as it happened aren’t revealed to the reader before they revealed to the inhabitants of the book. 

    Truman Capote gives the personalities of the perpetrators a lot of time, fleshing them out and showing how one of them, in addition to many poor choices, was dealt a poor hand in life. The murderers aren’t accustomed killers – if anything, they are banal. 

    That said, it’s not really a murder mystery, as it is very strongly implied who did it (a ‘suspicion’ which is later confirmed). Whether Capote meant to or not, this touches upon how authorial choices can choose to privilege readers with information unbeknownst to the inhabitants of that universe. 

    Worth reading? Yes – an interesting story. 

    Worth re-reading? Yes – an interesting way of telling the story. 

    If you liked this, you might like…

    The Sixteenth Round, Ruben ‘Hurricane’ Carter 

    We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lionel Shriver 

    Into the Wild, Jon Krakuer 

    The Fight, Norman Mailer 

  • Hammer of the Gods

    Stephen Davis, 1985 

    Pan Books, 1995, 350 pages 

    Non-fiction, Music, Biography 

    Read: 2004, re-read April–May 2026 

    It is telling that the introduction (or ‘Overture’, as author Stephen Davis would have it) of Hammer of the Gods starts with allegations of the band’s sexual exploits, then moves straight onto Satanism. Circling back to Led Zeppelin’s bread and butter – y’know, music – the problem with this strong focus on their mythos is that, again, circling back to that primary means of assessing a band – y’know, listening to their music – some of their songs but certainly not all of them support this. This sets the over-the-top tone and an understanding that this is music fandom as much as music journalist (on one Led Zep concert: ‘Gradually Zeppelin’s avowed Apollian intent reverted to a Dionysiac bawdiness’). Hammer of the Gods is at its best when it does discuss their music, mythos-driven or not. 

    Starting with the four members’ backgrounds, and how half of the band were middle-class, experienced session musicians, and the other half labouring, working-class white bluesmen, with each album Davis provides a song-by-song breakdown. These are some of the best sections of the book and his observations are astute. 

    Besides Jimmy Page as the session guitarist, it also examines him as the producer and as the businessman. Davis also spends a good deal of time on the importance of Led Zep live: the details of their hectic touring schedules; how much they improvised live, particularly on their big US tours in the early ’70s; what the live experience was like; and how their early choice to focus on the US was driven by the hostile British press (and later on, the tax breaks).

    Hammer of the Gods is also strong when referring to quantifiable achievements – ticket sales, number of shows, records sold, records charted. What could have been just a list of numbers is written in a way that shows just how big they became and how they, with the help of manager Peter Grant, upended (disrupted?) the music industry. It also provides a good sense of how the band did most of their work in the first half of their 12-year career, and were less active after 1975, with fewer tours, and a decline to match their rise, somewhat of a squander fuelled by drink and drugs. 

    A bit more insight into the band hierarchy would have been interesting. Although it makes it clear that Page was the leader, internal power struggles within the band are referred to but not properly explored. Page is the visionary; Robert Plant is the coolest; John Bonham, when away from a drum kit, has to be carefully managed; bassist John Paul Jones remains in the background as the band’s the secret weapon.* We are left none the wiser as to whether there were there ever any creative differences. 

    The narrative does sometimes read as a list of events, mostly so when they are debauched tales from tours of the US. Sure, this is part of the Led Zeppelin story, but what does it all mean?  A bigger problem is that, although he mentions them, Davis doesn’t give the band’s most problematic aspects the insight that they merit. It would have been nice, for lack of a better word, if Davis expressed stronger feelings about the predatory behaviour that Page practised towards girls. Page’s alleged Satanism is brought up and discussed plenty enough, but the coverage of his relationship (read: grooming and kidnapping) of a fourteen year-old feel cursory. 

    Additionally, when drunk, John Bonham was truly awful. In separate incidents, he attempted to sexually assault the journalist Ellen Saunder (who states that another unspecified band associate was also involved), rape an air stewardess, punched a woman in the face for no reason, and assaulted (read: tortured) a security guard. Besides tour manager Richard Cole and Grant enabling great success, they also enabled some of this unforgivable behaviour. Frequently depicting them with pirate imagery, at one point Davis describes them as ‘gangsterish’, but otherwise leaves it there. 

    Also problematic is the band’s (which translates to Page’s and Plant’s) penchant, particularly in their early days, to lift vocal lines and other melodies from other artists, particularly blues artists, freely and without credit. Having listened to a lot of these originals, they are adaptions and launching points rather than covers, but the lifting of ideas is still clear (Davis also drops the n-word out of nowhere when discussing one of Zeppelin’s bluesy intros – there’s no other signs of racism, but whatever point he was trying to make, it’s highly jarring.) 

    Some of this book is just bullshit – such as the front row of a crowd headbanging against the edge of the stage – and more broadly has been reported to be an unreliable source. As the title states, this biography is unauthorised and the band have stated that Davis spent a very limited amount of time with them. Cole, who had his own disputes with the band and Grant, is a primary source. 

    Wow. This has been a bit of a negative review. Did I enjoy reading it? Well, Led Zeppelin were my favourite band growing up, and this was essential reading for me as I got into them. Re-reading Hammer of the Gods – and in particular, Davis’s great descriptions of their music and the power therein – did encourage me to relisten, rewatch (to The Song Remains the Same and the self-titled 2003 live DVD), but also to read around (the 2018 self-titled photo book) and to reappraise them. On the merit of his music and his drumming, Bonham’s death is a sad ending – a talent enabled by success to act without compunction. 

    So yes, I enjoyed it. It’s just that it read as a piece of musical fandom, rather than a piece of journalism upon music and musicians. 

    This review is a compare and contrast with Mick Wall’s When Giants Walked the Earth: A biography of Led Zeppelin, soon to be reviewed. 

    *Yes, I play bass. 

    If you liked this, you might like…

    When Giants Walked the Earth, Mick Wall

    Led Zeppelin (photo book), Led Zeppelin

  • The Second World War 

    Antony Beevor 

    950 pages  

    Published 2012 

    Weidenfeld & Nicolson 

    Read from October 2025 – March 2026 

    History 

    Some historians focus on the minutiae of history: what is the history of the dice? Why did the shape of ringpulls on tinned food change? What role did shoelaces play in the Mongol Empire? Not Antony Beevor.  

    ‘Antony, what are you writing about next?’ 

    ‘The Second World War.’ 

    ‘Which bit-?’ 

     ‘ALL OF IT.’ 

    In reviewing non-fiction, and history books in particular, it can be tempting to list all of the information gleaned, and it is testament to the quality of this book that in writing this review it was tempting to list many, many things. Initially daunted by its length, once I got going the 950 pages were a pleasure to read. Narrative-driven but analytically insightful, The Second World War is well-paced and conveys the overall story of World War Two in a balanced manner. Despite being so long, there is a slight trade-off between scope and depth, with scope winning out. This isn’t to say that Beevor doesn’t have an eye for detail; he knows what to include while keeping the story moving, and given how long it would have been otherwise, this is a minor and sensible compromise and remains a highly educational read.* Beevor also makes just the right amount of space for the human element of the war and the interest that this generates is a good starting point for further, more specific, reading.   

    The national stories of the Second World War obviously vary, but Beevor – a British historian – makes efforts to cover all theatres. Besides the well-known events (from a British perspective) – the Blitzkrieg (which Beevor contends was improvised in the moment and on the ground rather than premeditated), the Battle of Britain, the Blitz, the North Africa campaign, the Eastern Front, D-Day – it covers lesser-known domains, such as the Winter War, the Italian invasion of Greece and the German invasion of the Balkans, and in particular, the Sino-Japanese theatre. 

    Beevor shows a particular focus, unsurprisingly, on military matters – particularly the distribution and movement of forces by commanders – and analysis of leaders, which in this war featured a lot of big personalities. Beevor doesn’t delve into the great man of history theory directly, but he does make it clear how important these particular people were, from Hitler’s uncompromising vision and interfering manner, to Stalin’s paranoia and ruthless obstinacy. I was also surprised at how badly world leaders, leaders-in-exile, military commanders and resistance-movement leaders, ostensibly on the same side, seemed to get along most of the time and how much politicking they engaged in. Many had post-war visions of their country or empire in mind and wanted to make sure that, come the cessation of hostilities, they would either be in charge or be able to pre-empt any civil war. 

    As with his analysis of citizens being caught between systems, Beevor also dispels the ‘good solider’ myth, and how it was more a case of people trying to survive the commanded action (whether combatant or civilian). His criticism is also balanced without producing any false equivalences. In particular, he looks at how British and American ‘targeted’ bombing was so inaccurate that it was more fitting to think of it as area bombing, and criticises this as morally indefensible. 

    Besides Beevor’s own analysis, his insights enable self-made analysis. One example, I already had some understanding of how poor Hitler was as a war-time leader, but didn’t appreciate the extent to which he interfered in command, believed in his own propaganda and refused to even consider strategic withdrawals. Both he and Stalin maintained hold of their subordinates through divide and rule in order to have direct control over all parts of their armed forces. 

    There are a couple of minor niggles: the front cover states that the war left no life untouched, but Latin America is barely mentioned and Sub-Saharan Africa is similarly limited. It would have been nice to have more on the end of the fighting in Italy, and overall, although it includes some post-war analysis, it ends a bit suddenly, although it’s fair to counter that a line had to be drawn somewhere as World War Two became the Cold War (‘Greece was another example of the Second World War merging into a latent third world war’). One point I would have liked Beevor to share his thoughts upon was if Hitler hadn’t believed in labensraum and the triumph of the will so stubbornly, and had been a more pragmatic military commander, would the Axis powers have won? There are several maps, but even so, a few more would have made it much easier to understand the progress of battles and how frontlines moved. Likewise, it would be useful to know what a division, battalion, army etc. consisted of, given that these varied from country to country. 

    However, befitting the title, Beevor does a good job of tying it all together, stating:  

    The Second World War, with its global ramifications, was the greatest man-made disaster in history. 

    Worth reading? Yes.

    Worth re-reading? Yes, although an alternative would be to read around the subjects that you find particularly interesting.

    *Winston Churchill’s history of the Second World War consists of six volumes if you really want what I assume to be a particularly splenetic account of the conflict. 

    ** It was interesting to contrast Beevor’s hyper-detailed Stalingrad with The Second World War and how Germany’s Russia campaign fitted into the wider story of the Second World War, particularly how it influenced the fighting in China and North Africa. 

  • Homage to Catalonia

    George Orwell, 1938 

    Re-read December 2024–January 2025* 

    269 pages 

    Vintage Classics, 2021

    Non-fiction, Memoir

    Bill Bryson once described George Orwell as a middle-class milksop who changed his name for street cred (maybe not word-for-word, but it’s something along those lines).** Bill: I rate you, I like you, and oh how we’ve laughed, but here, you’re wrong. Originally travelling to Spain to report on its civil war, within a week Orwell had joined the republican forces to fight Franco’s fascist forces, considering it ‘the only conceivable thing to do’. When it came to standing up for democratic ideals, Orwell walked the walk as much as he, er, wrote the words, eventually taking a bullet in the neck for his troubles. 

    Homage to Catalonia is Orwell’s resulting, retrospective account of his time in Spain from late 1936 to the summer of 1937, commencing in media res in December 1936 when Orwell joined the POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista – the Worker’s Party of Marxist Unification) – a socialist, anti-Stalinist militia. It covers his time fighting in trenches in various spots around Aragon, the rupture between anarchist/socialist and Stalinist factions, the internecine street fighting that erupted while he was ‘on leave’ in Barcelona and the following atmosphere of suspicion and denunciation.   

    There are two key components – Orwell’s observations and analysis of revolutionary politics and society, and descriptions of war. These elements often overlap, although in this edition the two chapters originally dedicated to purely political analysis have been turned into appendixes. Orwell manages the romantic clichés of revolution carefully, avoiding idealisation. Towns are described as shabby and in disrepair, there is rationing and shortages, and this is before he even reaches the trenches. Once he does arrive on the frontlines (‘the gaunt trains full of shabby soldiers creeping to the front, the grey war-stricken towns further up the line, the muddy, ice-cold trenches in the mountain’), he is surrounded by used food tins and excrement, with the biggest challenges not being fascist bullets and mortars, but the mud, the lice, finding firewood to stay warm in the mountains of Aragon during winter, and getting hold of a working weapon: 

    I remember the desolate look of everything, the morasses of mud, the weeping of poplar trees, the yellow water in the trench-bottoms; and men’s exhausted faces, unshaven, streaked with mud and blackened to the eye with smoke. 

    However, while Orwell does cover how the militias were disorganised, barely armed and sometimes a bit rudderless, he also affirms their importance in holding the line while the regular army was brought up to scratch, and how, for a brief window of time, the revolution achieved its aim of people feeling to be and acting as equals, both in the trenches and in civilian life.  

    He writes on behalf of socialism, but not blindly so: the journalist in him is ever present.*** He describes in detail how the fight against Franco’s fascists is undermined by left-wing infighting (or rather, the betrayal of the cause by Stalinist elements), and he makes his loathing of Stalin clear. He also expresses how he wishes he could have been of more use to his chosen cause somehow, and that he could’ve prevented it from becoming a losing battle. This is paired with a clear idealism: 

     If you had asked me why I had joined the militia I should have answered: “To fight against Fascism”, and if you had asked me what I was fighting for, I should have answered: “Common decency”. 

    Although never a particularly ornate writer even in his fiction, here Orwell writes in an even more straightforward manner, and through it is able to both discuss Spanish politics and make apparent the muddle of war. This is not to say there are no great descriptive moments, such as when he describes a night-time raid on a fascist trench. Being a retrospective account, Orwell often makes it clear how vivid these memories – both good and bad – remained to him and expresses an appreciation for their intensity.   

    Worth reading? Yes – a fitting tribute to those who fought against Franco. 

    Worth re-reading? Yes – ninety years on, it’s unfortunate that the end once again feels prescient: 

    [S]outhern England, probably the sleekest landscape in the world. It is difficult when you pass that way […] to believe that anything is really happening anywhere. Earthquakes in Japan, famines in China, revolutions in Mexico? Don’t worry, the milk will still be on the doorstep tomorrow morning, the New Statesman will come out on Friday […] Down here it was still the England I had known in my childhood […] all sleeping the deep, deep sleep of England, from which I sometimes fear that we shall never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs. 

    *A watch of Ken Loach’s Land and Freedom, a close film adaptation of Homage to Catalonia, motivated me to re-read this from the summer of 2013. 

    **Notes From a Small Island, I think. 

    *** For anyone in doubt: in 1946, Orwell wrote ‘Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism’. 

  • Grey Skies, Green Waves

    Tom Anderson

    Read: October 2025, re-read December 2025–January 2026 

    Edition read: Summersdale Publishers, 2010, 270 pages 

    Travel writing 

    Living in southeast England, friends, family and well-wishers in general (you’d be surprised) are often alarmed when I mention that you can surf in the British Isles. Isn’t it cold? they ask. Yes, I say. Bring a wetsuit. Embrace the pain. The truth of the matter is that there is a lot of surf to be had; it’s just very much a geography-determined past-time. However, wherever you do go to catch a wave, they will be right about one thing: it will be cold. 

    As such – although only partially for this reason – surfing in the British Isles is sometimes seen as the poor cousin of what’s to be had internationally. And thus, the premise of Grey Skies, Green Waves is partially set up: our narrator and author, Tom Anderson, has come to realise that he doesn’t really like surfing in the British Isles anymore, given how much warmer, sunnier and, er, wavier, the rest of world is. He has fallen into a slump of surfing locally only half-heartedly. 

    The other part of the premise – and actually, given that Anderon grew up with the niche but all-consuming hobby of surfing, the more important part – is that he has hit a slump of entering surf competitions, only to drastically underperform. He sets out to remedy this case of ‘I don’t like the things I use to’ by taking more opportunities to surf in more domestic locales, and herein he accounts several surfing trips around the British Isles, extending from south to north Wales (including a secret spot in Cardiff), Devon, Cornwall, John O’Groats, the Outer Hebrides, the River Severn and County Clare. 

    Anderson is clearly a Good Surfer (surfing triple overheaders near John O’Groats is not for beginners, nor for improvers), and at points he captures the various sensations of being in the water vividly (‘A thick slop of heavy, cold, dark water is the surfing equivalent of several feet of powder on a snowboard, or a big, smooth tarmac slope to a skater […] To bury your board onto its edge and then throw all your weight through an arcing turn, knowing the water below will bear everything you throw at it, it a feeling of at-oneness with the ocean that rivals any tube ride.’) As a surfer’s lexicon will attest, a wave is not just a wave: it has speed, height, depth, shape, direction and length. Anderson does this well, although certain passages merit a bit of secondary reading (for example, what is a ‘wedge’?). It is at its most engaging when describing being in the water in good conditions, and the more enthused about that particular session he is, the better that Anderson writes about it. As the book goes on, the stoke improves, and as such, the last quarter of the book is the best. 

    The other element of this book is back on dry (well, damp) land, capturing the ennui that accompanies not just surfing, but many outdoor pursuits, in the British Isles: early (cold) mornings, waiting in (cold) carparks for the right conditions to materialise (if they do), drinking away (cold) afternoons in pubs, disappointing competition results and late (cold) night drives home. Whilst overall I appreciate the inclusion of this other side of surfing, there were a few non-surfing sections that did not exactly make for compelling reading, such as the passage where he retells someone else’s story about accidentally trapping someone in an automatically cleaning French toilet. 

    It is written in the first person, which while fitting for a piece of travel writing, could have included fewer conversations recounted word for word via direct speech. Although sometimes this does place you in the moment, at other times it could have been a bit terser and not lost anything. Sharing the same past-time, it would be remiss not to mention William Finnegan’s Barbarian Days as a simultaneously accompanying and contrasting read, but given their different focus. 

    Worth reading? Yes – persevere through the discouraging sections. 

    Worth re-reading? Yes, for the passages in the water in particular. 

  • Leviathan or, The Whale

    Philip Hoare, 2008 

    Edition read: Fourth Estate, 2009, 421 pages 

    Read: August 2025 

    With a somewhat freeform approach, it is not immediately clear which category Leviathan falls into. At times possessing the discursiveness of a long essay, it reveals itself to be a mix of memoir and history, documenting both the relationship between humanity and whales and the author’s ambivalent perception of the sea. Besides being highly informative on the natural history of whales, the book takes on a confessional tone, with Hoare exploring universal themes such as loss and loneliness. It is poetic without losing grip of the subject at hand and in its broadness draws upon that lodestone of cetacean-related literature, Moby Dick*, as a cultural and literary reference point. As a book upon a naturalist interest projected outwards, it fits alongside titles like The Old Ways and H is for Hawk. As a book of obsession, it will certainly interest you in whales. 

    Worth reading? Yes 

    Worth re-reading? Yes 

    *I wouldn’t say a review is forthcoming per se, but I do intend to reread it at some point, with a particular focus on the chapter that is 100% about chum. 

  • The Fixer

    Joe Sacco, 2004 

    Read: June 2025 (bought in Edinburgh) 

    Edition read: Jonathan Cape, 2004, 106 pages 

    Graphic Novel, black and white 

    *Spoilers* 

    The Fixer starts with Sacco’s return to Bosnia – specifically, Sarajevo – in 2001, having been there before during 1995 and 1996,* to continue his – now retrospective – reporting on the Bosnian War. 

    A major theme, constant across Sacco’s oeuvre, is conflicting narratives. Here, the narrative that receives (or demands?) the most (although not entirely uncritical) attention is that of the titular ‘fixer’, Neven. Sacco’s story morphs from that of the Bosnian War to that of Neven. He is a metonym for the whole of the Balkan conflict, as Sacco astutely identifies in his telling of this story, and his understanding of the value of Neven to him as a journalist. A Serb who fought on the side of the Bosnians, Neven is multi-faceted and contradictory. He makes his post-war living by helping journalists, with Sacco constantly unsure whether he is getting a deal or being fleeced, or if Neven is somehow a victim. 

    Sacco has a good sense of story and pace for what could be a morass of details and isn’t afraid to show himself as occasionally clueless and sweating over his own perceived amorality. His black and white crosshatching is as detailed as ever, eschewing exaggerated features in favour of a more restrained, serious style. 

    Worth reading? Yes. 

    Worth re-reading? Yes. 

    *Besides Sarajevo, Sacco also spend time reporting from the Bosnian enclave of Goražde, which resulted in Safe Area Goražde. 

  • March: Book One

    John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell, 2013

    Read: March 2025

    Edition read: Top Shelf Productions, 121 pages

    Non-fiction graphic novel

    Part 1 of 3

    I read this – the opening volume of an autobiographical graphic novel of the American civil-rights activist John Lewis – a coincidental 60 years after the Selma to Montgomery march.

    It moves between the two narratives of Lewis’s day on 20 January 2009, and his life as a child on a sharecropper farmer in Alabama, establishing how one man’s story transformed into history.

    In a style best described as sober (although it is not without creativity – the panes change shape, with content often spilling over outside of them), it has the feel of a documentary (the black and white shading further adds to this), to tell Lewis’s story, including how the civil-rights movement largely worked not in rivers but in drops. The US civil-rights movement – at least in the UK – can sometimes be told in a reductive manner that is reduced to just Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, with Lewis not a particularly well-known figure (‘Big Six’ was not a term I was familiar with), so this was an educational read. As much as March tells Lewis’s story, it’s also about the story of the civil-rights movement, combining the personal with history, making it as much a memoir as a history book. As volume one of three, it ends with the story and struggle still very much in motion. 

    So – why a graphic novel, especially given that Lewis already has a couple of published memoirs? The dramatic devices, such as the contrast between opening with the civil-rights activists beginning to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge on 7 March 1965 and Lewis waking up in Washington D.C. on 20 January 2009, as well as the aforementioned black-and-white feel, are powerful, but the references by Lewis and his co-authors to the 1958 comic book Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story are instructive; where we were, where we are, and where we might be in another 60 years.

     

    Worth reading? Yes.

    Worth re-reading? Yes.