Another Entertaining Historical Read

SOME books have such cumbersome titles, and come with such an unprepossessing cover, that it is a wonder any copies are sold at all.
Such could easily be said of A Journey To The Tea Countries Of China Including Sung-Lo And The Bohea Hills; With A Short Notice Of The East India Company's Tea Plantations In The Himalaya Mountains.
Written by a Scottish botanist, Robert Fortune, it was originally published in 1852.
My copy is a facsimile by Miami-based HardPress, who "are offering thousands of classic and hard to find books."
The title sums up the contents very well and, apart from rather too much detail about the plants he discovered, I found it a fascinating read of a journey, most of which he had to take in disguise to avoid detection by the Chinese authorities, through a bygone culture.
I certainly intend buying his earlier book, Three Years Wanderings In The Northern Provinces Of China.

Great Read

TODAY I finished reading a remarkable book that combines two of my favourite interests, history and travel.

Mary Kingsley, niece of Water Babies author Charles Kingsley, was a Victorian explorer who travelled extensively in west Africa in the 1890s.

Most of the time she was the only white person for miles around, managing an ever-changing team of native porters and pathfinders.

The book, Travels In West Africa, is little-known today outside specialist circles, and I doubt if you will find it in a bookshop (I ordered a reprint online via Amazon).

"The notable success of Travels In West Africa was due in no small part to the vigour and droll humour of writing ... in the guise of a ripping yarn," states her entry in Wikipedia.
The encyclopaedia continues: "Kingsley's tales and opinions of life in Africa helped draw attention to British imperial agendas abroad and the native customs of African people that were previously little discussed and (were) misunderstood by the European people.

"The Fair Commerce Party formed soon after her death, pressuring for improved conditions for the natives of British colonies.

"Various reform associations were formed in her honour and helped facilitate governmental change. The Liverpool School Of Tropical Medicine founded an honorary medal in her name."

Mary Kingsley died in South Africa in 1900 aged 37 from suspected typhoid.

Good - But Could Be So Much Better

I BOUGHT the September issue of Wargames Illustrated because it came with a free set of rules for fighting "big skirmishes and small battles" in the Wars Of The Roses,

The rules are professionally laid out with liberal use of colour.

Colourful ... but there's something missing

The magazine backs this up with a two-page article on designer's notes, a six-page article on small clashes from the wars, a six-page painting guide, a six-page beginners' introduction to the wars and another four-page painting guide.

What's missing? A play-through of the rules!

How could anyone devote 24 pages to what is little more than waffle, much of it obtainable on the internet, and not have anything on how the rules work in practice?

Toy Soldier Collector August/September 2020

ISSUE 95 of Toy Soldier Collector had nothing in it I especially wanted to read, but loads of gorgeous photos of old and new toy soldiers.

TSC95 - full of colour

Leisurely From Leisure Games

GOT on the Northern Line again today and returned to Finchley at a time when I knew Leisure Games would be open.
The last time I was in the shop, which was a good few years ago, I bought the boardgame Empires In America.
Not much has changed at Leisure Games, which is certainly not meant as a criticism, except that the shop seems to no longer stock magazines.
I guess this is largely down to the internet, although the Orcs (sic) Nest in Seven Dials still has a reasonably diverse magazine rack.
I did not buy anything at Leisure Games, but my trip gave me an excuse to spend much of the rest of the day walking back to Spitalfields.
This time, however, on reaching the North London Circular, instead of continuing south, I turned east on to the Dollis Valley Greenwalk - the signpost indicating that it went through Little Wood and Big Wood was a big attraction.
Parts of the walk were picturesque indeed, and even the urban bits were interesting.
I ended up at the Hampstead Heath Extension and eventually found my way to Hampstead Heath proper.
On leaving the heath I headed south, but then turned left towards Hampstead tube station and made my way home via a familiar route through Camden, stopping on the way for a late lunch-early dinner at a Portuguese restaurant called O Tino.
All in all a thoroughly enjoyable day, with plenty of scenic bits along the way.

Entertaining - But Off The Marc

I CAN recommend Laurence Bergreen's Marco Polo: From Venice To Xanadu as an entertaining read, even though the author at times will not use one word when 10 will do.
I have read Polo's account of his travels from Italy to the far side of China, but Bergreen does a good job of adding interesting historical background.
Unfortunately not all of it is, to say the least, reliable.
Take this digression on silk: "It is possible that the Roman legions first encountered actual silk at the Battle of Carrhae, near the Euphrates River, in 53BC.
"It was said that the Parthians' vivid silk banners unfurling in the wind startled the Roman troops, who promptly fled the battlefield."
This is pure fantasy.
Or this vignette from a battle between Mongols and the King of Burma: "The two sides took each other's measure for several days, while Mongol military intelligence went to work.
"Mongol spies learned the length of the arrows used by the enemy, and made sure that their own warriors' arrows were shorter, so as to be incompatible with the enemy's in battle.
"This way, the enemy would be unable to reuse them in bows designed for a longer weapon."
More nonsense  - if the Mongols' changed the length of their arrows in the days before a battle, where did they get the bows needed to fire the new-length arrows?
And then there is this: "It is difficult to imagine the Renaissance - or, for that matter, the modern world - without the benefit of Marco Polo's example of cultural transmission between East and West."
I could mention other sections that cry out for a good editor - a merely competent one would do - and I worry how much other nonsense I missed because my background knowledge on some subjects was not good enough to spot them.
And yet, despite these problems, I enjoyed the book and am glad I spent £14.99 on it.

Curate's egg

North & South

MODEL and toy soldiers have been on the back-burner with me for some time, although I have been doing a fair bit of historical and wargaming reading.
Yesterday, for a change of pace, I walked to Moorgate tube station and caught the first Northern Line train that came along heading north.
I got off at West Finchley and, using the position of the sun as my main guide, headed home to Spitalfields.
The distance is 8.7 miles, according to Google Maps, but I certainly did not take the direct route, not least because I wanted to see if the Leisure Games shop is still open in central Finchley.
It is, but I was too early, so I had a coffee and continued south.
Along the way, just before the North Circular. I came across this somewhat saucy-looking statue, whose official name turns out to be La Délivrance.

La Délivrance - known locally as The Naked Lady

A nearby plaque states, apparently incorrectly, that it is a copy of an original made to commemorate victory over the Germans at the Battle of the Marne in 1914.
In fact it seems this is the original statue - bought by Daily Mail owner Viscount Rothermere in 1920 and donated to Finchley Council as a memorial for World War One.
The plaque, with its claim of this being a copy, can be seen below.

The plaque

Nearby is a more sombre and very understated commemoration of children killed in the Nazi holocaust.

Small, like many of the Germans' victims

When?

SEE if you can put an approximate date on the following paragraph from a book I am reading.

"A great deal of nonsense has been written about missionaries. When they have not been described as the servants of imperialists or commercial exploiters, they have been regarded as sexually abnormal types who are trying to convert a simple happy pagan people to a European religion and stunt them with European repressions. It seems to be forgotten that Christianity is an Eastern religion to which Western pagans have been quite successfully converted. Missionaries are not even given credit for logic, for if one believes in Christianity at all, one must believe in its universal validity. A Christian cannot believe in one God for Europe and another God for Africa: the importance of Semitic religion was that it did not recognize one God for the East and another for the West. The new paganism of the West, which prides itself on being scientific, is often peculiarly neurotic. Only a neurosis explains its sentimental lack of consistency, the acceptance of the historic duty of the Mohammedan to spread his faith by the sword and the failure to accept the duty of a Christian to spread his faith by teaching."

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To me it comes across as very modern, but is from Graham Greene's 1936 book Journey Without Maps.
I guess there are three clues that the writing is not modern:
a) using 'Mohammedan' rather than 'Muslim',
b) using 'recognize' rather than the modern UK English 'recognise',
c) defending Christianity rather than attacking it.

A Few More Historic Pix From Biel

A Knight To Remember

I BROUGHT a history book with me for my trip to Biel/Bienne: The Greatest Knight - The Remarkable Life Of William Marshal The Power Behind Five English Thrones.

Thomas Asbridge's The Greatest Knight

Without doubt it is one of the best books I have read in a long time - an exciting read made all the better by my almost complete ignorance of Marshal's life.
To describe him as The Greatest Knight might sound like hyperbole, but his life story really does seem like something out of an Arthurian romance, only better!
I will not give away details of what he achieved as I do not want to spoil the fun of reading the book for anyone who might follow my recommendation.
But, apart from a few minor quibbles I had from time to time as I raced through the almost-450 pages, I am very pleased I bought it.