at the end of the day 28 woden

My local Borders often serves me well. My latest find is Bernard Cornwell’s most recent book The Burning Land now on sale at half the published price. It’s a bargain. It’s more than a bargain. It has that special touch about it which brings the story to life.

It’s an historical novel set in proto Englaland as King Alfred is growing old and the Danes are trying their luck in Mercia and in Wessex. The battle scenes are excellent. The first person narrative and dialogue thoroughly convincing. The paganism up front.

I had never read Bernard Cornwell before though I knew his name and something of his reputation. I shall go in search of his previously published Saxon stories.

francis cameron, oxford, 28 october 2009

this morning

tuesday 27 october 2009

I am reading Andrew Marr’s latest The Making of Modern Britain. It’s about our country in the years from the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 to the end of the European war in 1945. It’s neatly divided into four chapters, which almost define themselves : 1901 to 1914; the Great War; 1918 to 1939; the War (cont’d).

My readings of Andrew Marr overlap with the writing of my own story. I am very much aware of influences on my formative years and how devastating was the impact of my fieldwork on the island called Aoba in the early 1970s and the burning necessity to engage with Anthropology as a consequence. It remains clear to me that many of the premises of my boyhood’s education were utterly and completely false. The Country and the Empire were simply not as they were presented to me in the late 1930s. We were fed the pap of false illusion.

The penalty I pay for this epiphany is to find myself out of step with the illusions still sprinkled on us from on high. Notice is taken only of events which it is convenient to notice. The lessons of history remain unlearnt, apparently because they are not being taught.

I had two uncles and a father-in-law who fought in the trenches on the Western Front while a generation was lost. What a terrible waste. And sometimes it seem too obvious that the mores of the 19th century still have too much influence in the wrong sort of quarters.

The sins of the fathers are visited upon their children even unto the third and fourth generations.

francis cameron, oxford