Book Reviews Archives - Page 4 of 19

The Swinging Detective

27/08/2017 By ACOMSDave Leave a Comment

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The Swinging Detective

Henry McDonald

Gibson Square

ISBN 97817833441177

This is a ’prentice effort for Henry McDonald ( The Swinging Detective), at least in writing a sustained, 330-odd pages, of a fairly complex novel. The Swinging Detective - Henry McDonald It is in the form of, essentially, a ‘thriller’ (fair enough ‘thriller’ is not up there with bildungsroman or novella as a literary form, but it has some formal attributes – bear with me). The biographical ‘blurb’ on the book’s back-cover claims McDonald “has a deep knowledge of Marxism” and “the German punk scene”. Which means Henry was once the rising star of the Workers’ Party of Ireland (formerly ‘Official’ Sinn Féin / the Republican Clubs) in its glazed-eyed Muscovite days. But the element of ‘inside knowledge’ is quite lightly handled, and while Martin Peters, the central figure of the tale is a useful ‘outsider’ he knows Berlin intimately.

That is because he was a British ‘spook’ in the days before the Wall came down – Belfast also comes into the matter. Peters (the similarity of the moniker to the England ‘World cup’ team member is acknowledged – so far as England soccer fans are concerned there is only one World Cup worth consideration – that of 1966). Peters is haunted by the killing of (an exotically-named, female Loyalist assassin) the description of the actual killing of this unlikely person fits that of an actual UVF operative, Brian Robinson. He was a pillion passenger on a motorbike, and was shot dead by Brit (or possibly RUC) spooks. He and his driver were on an Ardoyne (north Belfast) ‘Fenian’-killing expedition.

The Swinging Detective - Thailand and Sri Lanka The book itself is largely about the killing of ‘paedophiles’ – men convicted of sexually molesting children in Thailand and Sri Lanka. There are very good descriptions of the social reaction to this series of events. The police have the problem of having to offer some sort of protection to men who are at the bottom of just about anybody’s list of worthy citizens; complicated by the fact that these men are simultaneously in dire need of protection on a 24 / 7 basis – and don’t want to draw attention to themselves. The attention comes in the form of an ad-hoc Mothers Against Paedophiles group, led by a loud, publicity-grabbing ‘targe’ of a woman. And an assassin who specialises in killing these men in increasingly imaginative ways. The tabloid press joins in the whipping up of social hysteria about ‘paedophiles’ (the numbers of whom, in society are, as ever, hugely over-inflated).

The killing of these people – generally deemed to be socially worthless (human, if that, garbage), leads to all sorts of complications – the chief one being the bullying of entirely innocent elderly men, and the stretching of police resource, human and otherwise to breaking point. Peters eventually tracks down ‘St Christopher’, the executioner of the men who had gone abroad to molest, mostly elementary school age boys. We are spared descriptions of the ‘interaction’ with the children in the Third World, but the results of such things are obvious – destroyed socialisation and driving into drugs (including alcohol).

The killer of these men turns out not to be a ‘moralistic’ avenger. His motivation is anti-imperialist, this is just the dirtiest element in the over-all exploitation of these boys (it is implied very strongly, that girls and young women are victims too). This is a well-written and – arresting – is the only word, novel.

It is well worth some hours of your time.

External links for further information:

Wikipedia – Henry McDonald

THE COLD COLD GROUND

12/08/2017 By ACOMSDave Leave a Comment

THE COLD COLD GROUND

Adrian McKinty

Serpent’s Tail

ISBN978 1 84668 823 2

The Cold Cold Ground, involves an RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary – now PSNI, the Police Service of Northern Ireland) criminal detective Sean (sic) Duffy. His position as a (Northern Ireland) Catholic in an overwhelmingly ‘Protestant’ environment is lightly handled. A colleague in an armoured personnel carrier apologises for using ‘sectarian’ language when patrolling a ‘Taig’ area of Carrickfergus, the south Antrim port of which Duffy is a native.

Adrian McKinty is a native of that place too, which makes the descriptions of the town and its layout ring true, though no doubt some things have been ‘moved around’ to keep the story uncluttered. The story involves a number of disparate killings that Duffy, an under-promoted Detective Sergeant (he has “solved six murders prior to this”) feels are connected. He dismisses involvement by the UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force) or the UDA (Ulster Defence Association – including its (‘killing wing’ covers most eventualities), the UFF (Ulster Freedom Fighters). A ‘drug scene’ was only a gleam in south Belfast Hoods’ eyes at this juncture (the UDA has probably ousted them, but the UVF, while tolerating low level drug taking takes a pretty hard line against the trade. The looser UDA is characteristically all over the place about ‘drugs’, especially as most working class areas in Northern Ireland function on a cocktail of cheap booze and prescription tranquilisers.

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Duffy has all sorts of adventures in this narrative, he is part of a riot squad mobilised to police the Falls Road / Andersonstown areas of west Belfast the evening of the day of Bobby Sands’ death. That seems unlikely, as there were already hordes of police and army on standby. He does make the point that his team witnessed the clashes from Knockagh ‘mountain’. I wondered if this was a hint to some readers that some elements in this book were insisted on by the publishers. Knockagh was where various ‘Loyalist’ paramilitary’s dumped ‘enemies of Ulster’ they had killed. They were to a person (some women were killed too), entirely innocent Catholic shift workers, drunks, or those just on the streets at the ‘wrong’ time.

Back to the book; this is a well-written thriller with a number of sub-themes, the statutory ‘love interest’ (a sexy surgeon), the nosy ‘spook[s]’, military as well as police, even nosey neighbours (Duffy, perforce, lives in a heavy-duty Loyalist area – a divorcé, he can’t afford to live in a police ghetto in pricey north Down) which brings him into daily, unpleasant proximity with real, and would-be, Loyalist hard-boys. There are some oddities here Duffy joins the RUC as a result of an encounter with the nasty realities of life in 1970 Belfast. It would much more likely to have driven him into the IRA (the given reasons are off-hand and unlikely; nasty Catholics being beastly to police personnel). Given that the police were, in part anyway, a gendarmerie better-armed than the average Brit squaddie, and enthusiastically beating any sign of political dissent, much less violence, in Taig / Catholic areas, it is out of time – but then there would not have been a story.

Intertwined among the bodies and bullies is the killing of Gay men by a ‘moral’ avenger. This, like a number of other matters in this book, seems to be based on actuality. There were a (largish) number of killings of queer men in Belfast in the 1980s. Some, that of Anthony (Tony) McCleave, being particularly brutal (he was impaled by the throat from the spikes on the railings around the Albert Memorial (clock – Belfast’s ‘leaning tower’). The killer probably worked on the assumption that a mere queer’s family would be too embarrassed to push for a thorough police enquiry. He (it is extremely unlikely that it was a ‘she’) got the McCleave family wrong. They demanded and got a full inquiry, but it ran into the ground, there were no witnesses to the encounter between Tony and his killer, much less the actual killing.

Sinn Féin and the IRA appear here as groups without a history or ‘hinterland’, such an approach strained my credulity. It is possible the author, or his editors, thought the ‘RA was embedded in the reading public’s consciousness alongside the Nazis or Pol Pot. The attitude of the public in Great Britain to the “men [and women] of violence” is complex and changes over the years – and not always in ways the ‘political class’ and their media would approve.

This book is well worth reading; just remember it is a ‘police procedural’ cum thriller, not a documentary.

Seán McGouran

The Cold Cold Ground - Carrickfergus

Furthjer reading or viewing:

Adrian McKinty’s Blog

Forrest Reid – the magician

23/07/2017 By ACOMSDave Leave a Comment

Forrest Reid - the magician Forrest Reid was born on (Saturday, as it happens) June 24, 1876, at 20 Mount Charles, Belfast it was (still is) a ‘private road’, a volume of Reid’s autobiography is entitled Private Road (the other being Apostate). Reid’s father died when he was a child. He had invested in foolish speculation, and his death left the family in dire straits. His mother, an Englishwoman with exotic, aristocratic ancestors, including Katherine Parr, Henry VIII’s last wife, refused to ‘down-size’ and the family survived on a very basic diet – mostly rice pudding

Reid attended Belfast’s ‘Inst’ (the Royal Belfast Academical Institute) and was a good student – particularly of English, but he went to work in Musgrave’stea firm – the Musgrave family were entrepreneurs – the greater part of their fortune being made in metal industrial and domestic heating devices.

Reid’s frugality may be a reason why he was able to attend Christ’s Church College in Cambridge in 1905. He was, at 29, a ‘mature student, of ancient (Greek) and modern languages. He regarded his sojourn in Cambridge as a “rather blank” period – he had no friends from his sojourn there.

He did meet EM Forster, who became a life-long friend, and whom Reid visited every year. He travelled to England as an (apparently ferociously competitive) croquet player and stayed with Forster in his Cambridge rooms. He must have made the acquaintance of Forster’s circle. Benjamin Britten was part of that circle until his expulsion (BB had made it clear that the composer had the last word on texts to be set. He had been given increasing complex texts by WH Auden in the 1930s and early ’40s. Post Peter Grimes, his first major opera, he felt self confident dealing with authors. Forster became the Great Old Man of English Letters and tried to brow-beat BB, who turned to more amenable librettists).

Reid had a great love of Italian opera and a huge record collection – with which he ‘entertained’ his neighbours in Ormiston Avenue off Castlereagh Road (the Castlereagh Hills were not built over until the 1960s) often late in the evening. Many of Reid’s books are set in the unnamed, but clearly obvious County Down – the county ‘proper’ begins with the Castlereagh Hills. His other favoured landscape was that of Donegal.

Reid produced a critical study of WB Yeats in 1915 (he did not note the Great War in progress at the time – WW2 was beneath his notice too), as was the decade of political violence in Ireland. He produced a book about British book illustrators of the 1870s and a not-very-critical study of Walter de la Mare (now even more thoroughly forgotten than Reid himself).

Reid’s novels have been reprinted by Valancourt Books of Richmond, Virginia over the past decade.

Valancourt Books

PO Box 17642

Richmond VA [Virginia]

USA

Comics and Harvey Milk

29/06/2017 By ACOMSDave Leave a Comment

I thought I would pass along this news on the development of a Harvey Milk graphic comic novel:
Reprinted from email sent by milehighcomics.comNew Harvey Milk Graphic Novel Art – More Scarce Comics ArriveHowdy!
It is already well known that our Jason St. Mega-Store is an amazing Mecca of comics. What is not common knowledge is that we also are offered an unbelievable number of collections at Jason St. on a daily basis. Never, in my entire 47 years of selling comics, have I seen a single location act as a magnet for so much great material! In great measure, that is why our New-In-Stock and Premium New-In-Stock links have been so diverse of late…

Array #1 of Comics Instock Now!
I mention these collections for a couple of different reasons. First, I typically travel a great deal during this time of year, and had intended to spend a considerable amount of time this winter buying back issues at comics shops and smaller comics shows on the East Coast. We are receiving so much material at Jason St., however, that we are still trying to catch up on our processing of the semi-trailer filled with comics that I picked up in California and Las Vegas last November. Until we can sort through those 100,000 comics, it makes no sense for me to travel to purchase more.

Nicole the Great, Queen Mother of the Americas
The good news is that my not traveling eastward means that I can instead fly to San Diego this weekend, to present a business plan on my proposed Harvey Milk graphic novel to Nicole the Great, Queen Mother of the Americas. In case you missed it in my convention newsletter, as the titular head of our entire 68-chapter International Court System, Nicole met with me at last year’s San Diego Comic-Conabout issues that had arisen with my local organization, the Imperial Court of the Rocky Mountain Empire. After spending a couple of hours chatting about ICRME issues, Nicole took a walk with me around the convention. She became very excited, and suggested that I try to put together a graphic novel about martyred LGBTQ activist, Harvey Milk. The sketches you see below by the incredibly talented Thomas Haller Buchanan, are the direct result of that conversation.

Harvey Milk Sketch by Thomas Haller Buchanan

Harvey Milk Sketch by Thomas Haller Buchanan

Harvey Milk Sketch by Thomas Haller Buchanan

Harvey Milk Sketch by Thomas Haller Buchanan

Harvey Milk Sketches by Thomas Haller Buchanan
So you know, I have already received about a dozen very encouraging responses to my request for feedback about my Harvey Milk project. I thank each and every one of you who sent me feedback at chuckrozanski@gmail.com. There are quite a few major obstacles that need to be overcome before this project can come to fruition, however, not the least of which is approval by the Harvey Milk Foundation. Before I can even reach that point, however, I first need to gain approval this weekend from Nicole, and the ICS Board of Directors. Wish me luck!

What Thomas Haller Buchanan finished work looks like
As an aside, I think it is time to bring some clarity to my efforts with the ICRME. As a quick glance at ICRME-Denver.org will easily reveal, theImperial Court of the Rocky Mountain Empire is primarily an LGBTQ organization. It was founded 44 years ago to help validate the benefit to our communities of those who choose to perform in public venues in outfits outside of their birth gender. Simply put, drag queens (men who perform as women) and drag kings (women who perform as men). Our umbrella organization, the International Court System, consists of 30,000 members in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. ICRME itself is now a registered 501-C3 charity, and contributes upwards of $100,000 per year from our performances to those in need in our Denver community.

Chuck with the officers of ICRME Reign 42
So you know, I am a bit of an odd duck in ICRME, as I am the only straight man in an otherwise primarily gay organization. That having been said, after six years of hard work I have been accepted by most of ICRME’s members, and was allowed to serve last year in the #2 leadership position, as Prince Royale. It was also through my ICRME position that I first became aware of the awesome work being done by Jim Scharper’s “Feeding Denver’s Hungry” charity. That awareness, in turn, has changed my entire life. I now spend a goodly portion if my time each week working with “Feeding Denver’s Hungry,” seeking to help the poor.

Chuck, Jim, and some of the volunteers of Feeding Denver’s Hungry
All of the above having been said, the core of my life remains Mile High Comics. Serving your needs by seeking out the very best comics that I can possibly find, and then offering them to you at the least cost, is still why I get up and go to the office each day. I will be turning 62 in a couple of weeks, however, and I am quite aware that the time is upon me when I need to give back to my community. While joining forces with an organization like ICRME may seem rather out of the ordinary, I can assure you that my friends in the drag community are among the nicest and most giving people that I have ever been blessed to meet. I am honored to work with them every day to try to make Denver a better place for us all.
Happy collecting!
Chuck Rozanski,
Prince Royale 42
Imperial Court the Rocky Mountain Empire
January 30, 2017
P.S. Below are some arrays of comics that we were blessed to be able to purchase last Friday. All can be purchased at a full 30% off when you utilize our NEWHOPE! Codeword. Only new issues, a few variants, and our CGC’s are excluded.

Array #2 of Comics Instock Now!

Array #3 of Comics Instock Now!

Array #4 of Comics Instock Now!

Array #5 of Comics Instock Now!

Array #6 of Comics Instock Now!

Array of some of the MAD Magazines that will be Instock Tomorrow!
http://www.milehighcomics.com

Texas Twins: The Story of Morgan and Nash

15/08/2016 By ACOMSDave Leave a Comment

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EVERYTHING BETTER (if not, necessarily BIGGER) IN TEXAS (?)

Texas Twins: The Story Of Morgan & Nash
Howard Roffman
Bruno Gmünder
ISBN 9 763861 878582

The ‘story’ element in this publication is not very prominent, the “text” takes up less than one of the – square – pages. Morgan and Nash, who seem not to have a surname, were born in Louisiana, brought up in Texas and Hawaii, and moved to San Francisco. In SF a former clergyman gave them shelter and put them in touch with, among others, Howard Roffman, the photographer.
This charming book is a result of their convergence. Morgan, the Gay one is “grounded and eager to please” (and any red-blooded bull-root would be exquisitely happy to have him ‘please’ them… or them attempt to please him). Nash is “straight” (drat! drat!! & triple drat…!!!), he is also “impetuous and a rebel”.
They are very identical identical twins, though Nash (I think) has dimples, and wears a baby chin-beard in some shots. The twins, I’m glad to report, don’t wear much else in most pics., of two very handsome, well built (‘swimmer’s bodies’, rather than muscle-bound) blokes, the nude shots are sweet and rather innocent. You won’t tug your langer off viewing them (let’s not be too precious this is genuinely artistic, but it is classy porn – which can be artistic) but you would have a very slow pulse not to feel the odd stirring…
Having said, or rather, written, that, the boys (they are late teens / early twenties) have large – but not gross membra virile – and genuinely beautiful butts. They, said glutei, are not fantastically muscular but smooth and probably pleasant to run one’s fingers over. (I must have a cup of tea, or possibly something stronger, at this point…). You will enjoy this book, it shows two very attractive people at play at the beach, in deep snow, and – apparently – at work, or at least working on sledges.
On a purely personal note, I wouldn’t mind a book of Black, Brown and Beige (it’s the name of a orchestral suite by Duke Ellington, if you are racially sensitive), twins. Or ‘Oriental’ persons or persons from the South Asian Subcontinent (including Iran). Yes, this has gone too far. My Id is attempting to escape my skull.
Seán McGouran
Links:

Amazon.co.uk – Texas Twins: The Story of Morgan and Nash

Bianchi: Outpost by Tom Bianchi

15/08/2016 By ACOMSDave Leave a Comment

ISBN is: 9780312142834 / 0312142838

Bianchi: Outpost

by Tom Bianchi

Publisher:St. Martin’s Press, 1996

Edition:Hardcover

Language:English

This (very short) small-format book by Tom Bianchi, seems to be a spin-off from a larger project, based on using a Hollywood swimming pool as a back-drop. This was for images of two (or pairs of) handsome, largely naked, men. They are smooth, ‘built’, but not overly muscled men, mostly Aryans. Nothing wrong with that: but the setting is southern California, specifically Los Angeles / Hollywood; probably the greatest concentration of glowingly beautiful males of every ‘race’ on the planet

Said males in the pics don’t do anything particularly ‘interesting’ – just the sort of thing anyone does near a large swimming pool, not excluding swimming. There is one lovely image of two quite mature, naked, men kissing, in a kindly, not passionate, and not slaveringly sexy sort of way. Not that ‘passion’ and / or ‘slaveringly sexy’ would have been in any way unpleasing.

Other images are of, mostly couples, in intimate poses; lips hover very close to crotches, and it isn’t hard to guess what will happen shortly after the various images have been shot. It’s interesting to speculate what the photographer, Tom Bianchi, would be doing, would he remain a disinterested spectator?
Or…?

For me, the most sexually… stimulating… image is the last one; a fine set of legs, a sculpted butt, and – interestingly – the upper body swathed in a loose shirt. The chap’s head is missing, well… it is cropped out of the image, but with an elegant arse like the one on show, it isn’t really a loss. Though it is, no, doubt, very attractive.

Richard Lyttle

Currently this book does seem to be available on Amazon.co.uk, however with a little research and by using Bookfinder.com, I have found 27 stockists at various prices.

FLETCHER CHRISTIAN CONFESSES – The Grave Tattoo by Val McDermid

08/08/2016 By ACOMSDave Leave a Comment

FLETCHER CHRISTIAN CONFESSES

The Grave Tattoo

ISBN 978-0-00-782552-3

Val McDermid

The conceit in this thriller is that William Wordsworth encountered a fugitive Fletcher Christian (hero / villain of the the mutiny against Captain William Bligh of HMS Bounty. Bligh, while captain of the ship was, confusingly, a Lieutenant by actual rank). Fletcher, a Cumbrian, wants to get his side of the events recorded. The account given here of his adventures on Pitcairn Island, and in places as far-flung as Valparaiso, the Carolinas, and the Isle of Man from where he trades as a smuggler to the gentry of Cumbria; (something of an anachronism), ‘Cumbria’ was invented in 1972. Prior to that it had been the ancient counties of Cumberland and (landlocked) Westmoreland, a large bit of Lancashire (the Furness peninsula) and a small bit of Yorkshire).

This epic poem and letters about it are alleged to have been given on the death (of the now entirely non-revolutionary Wordsworth) to the care of his maidservant Dorcas Mason (also known as ‘Mayson’ – claimed here, to be because of ignorance on the part of clerks, even clergy, but English spelling didn’t settle-down until work on the Oxford English Dictionary began. And the notional introduction of universal education in Great Britain in the early 1870s. It only became genuinely universal at the turn of the 19th / 20th century. Jane Gresham, a native of the English Lakelands and a Wordsworth scholar, lives in a south London sink estate, has to serve in a [booze-]bar in the evenings to make ends meet. She is a part-time Lecturer, simultaneously attempting to do heavy-duty research on Our William, while keeping an eye on the single-parented wild-child Tenille. She doesn’t like school, but does like reading in general and poetry in particular.

Jane Gresham travels to her home territory in search of the, possibly non-existent, Wordsworth documents. As this is a (quite thrilling) thriller a villain is also on the case. And on her trail. In fact the tranquil Lake District is crowded with villains. Some of them are false friends. One of the falsest being a Gay man with whom Jane went to the local primary school. Her jealous, sulky, elder brother is headmaster of said school. He turns out not be be a jealous as Jane thinks (it’s that sort of book). That is not a sneer, this is an absorbing tale, but possibly too complex (or, more than conceivably, one is too thick to keep up… (you are allowed to disagree with this judgement)).

My one (slightly treasonable) problem with the narrative was that it must have struck somebody in the course of two centuries that making a transcript of the Great Man’s work would have been a good idea. The reasoning will have to be withheld as the sting in the tail of the tale will be wasted. After all, a ‘Pencil Museum’ is mentioned in the course of this narrative, quills were definitely available, the metal nib and the typewriter were invented relatively shortly after Wordsworth turned his toes up.

This is an interesting and pleasurable read (lots of elderly corpses, though) and should while away some hours of the (currently grisly) weather, or that beach-wait, before the cute Latinos / Latinas happen along.

Seán McGouran

Novel Ideas – Roger Casement

29/07/2016 By ACOMSDave Leave a Comment

Jeffrey Edward Anthony “Jeff” Dudgeon MBE is a Northern Irish politician, historian (his books on Roger Casement are extremely well researched and very readable) and gay political activist. He currently sits as a Ulster Unionist Party councillor for the Balmoral area of Belfast City Council. He is best known for bringing a case to the European Court of Human Rights which successfully challenged Northern Ireland’s laws criminalising consensual sexual acts between men in private. He is currently one of three openly gay politicians elected to the City Council along with Mary Ellen Campbell of Sinn Féin and Julie-Anne Corr of the Progressive Unionist Party

The following extract from an interview in The Irish Times, gives an insight into Jeffrey, who he is and what he has become…

“I’ve always been a reformer. A rebel and a radical, yes, but I wasn’t a revolutionary,” Dudgeon says, looking back on his 1981 victory in the European Court of Human Rights, which decriminalised homosexuality in Northern Ireland.

What was life like, as a young gay man, before the Strasbourg win? Dudgeon sums it up in one word: isolation.

“I knew all about homosexuality, and by my midteens I had ascertained that fact about myself. But I just didn’t know how to meet other people, and I was petrified at the thought of it. You just couldn’t say the words to anyone.”…

the-diaries Dev-at-the-re-Burial-of-Roger-Casement-in-Glasnevin.-I-believe-it-was-a-bitter-cold-day-and-Dev-who-was-very-sick-at-the-time-went-against-his-doctors-advice.-300x240 3_1_Sir_Roger_Casement

Unknown Roger Casement letter 6208307701_1f5a8d9937_b Roger Casement Diaries

In the video below Ciarán Ó Brolcháin discusses with author Jeffrey Dudgeon and Dr. Margaret O’Callaghan the book – “Roger Casement: The Black Diaries” which explores the life of Roger Casement – a study of his social background, political life and his contribution to Irish political life.

ROGER CASEMENT’S GERMAN DIARY

25/07/2016 By ACOMSDave Leave a Comment

ROGER CASEMENT’S GERMAN DIARY
1914-1916
Including ‘A Last Page’ and associated correspondence
Edited by Jeffrey Dudgeon
Belfast Press
Published July 2016

Roger Casement Diaries
Link to Amazon Paperback Edition £13.88
Link to Kindle Edition £7.31
This is the definitive version of Roger Casement’s German Diary covering the years 1914 to 1916 when, after the war started, he went to Berlin seeking support for Irish independence. The book has 370 pages in over 150,000 words with 45 illustrations.

This is a companion volume to the 2^nd edition of Roger Casement: The Black Diaries – with a Study of his Background, Sexuality, and Irish Political Life which was published in February 2016:
[Paperback, http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/095392873X; Kindle http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01AXB9754]
The German Diary consists of another, and the last surviving, Casement diary, and deals with that most interesting, dramatic and penultimate period of his life in Germany and Berlin prior to his departure to Ireland for the Easter Rising.
It was not a private diary in any sense as Casement left instructions for its future publication. Much of what he wrote was designed to provide a record justifying his time in Germany. He was of an age to have his eye on history while knowing the accusations of treason he had, and would, face, Casement was desperate to have his actions understood. A secondary prompt in the last months was to indicate just how disgraceful and intransigent he felt the behaviour of the Germans had become and how the decision to start the rebellion in Ireland was something he did not agree with for tactical reasons, being an event he hoped to prevent or at least postpone. The final section describes his frantic attempts both to get sufficient arms shipped to the separatist Irish Volunteers and to travel by submarine to Kerry with a view to getting the Easter Rising called off.
The diary and many linked letters give a vivid impression of a man under stress in an alien environment who still manages to observe, describe and appreciate what he sees around him. He writes as an outsider of a nation at war with England and France. His growing frustrations however come to the point where his own mental health is destabilised.
There is a cast of the usual characters that Casement mixed with, political, often aristocratic, although also frequently military men. There were to be none of the street people or lovers that his earlier, more sexual, diaries detailed. In Germany, probably for security reasons and lacking the language, he chose not to go out at night or to cruise for sex. He was also getting on. His Norwegian companion and betrayer, Adler Christensen, looms large, tricking and twisting his way round Germany and America, while draining much of Casement’s time and common sense.
The text is laid out in as close a way as possible as the actual manuscripts to provide an impression of the original. The appendices include correspondence and newspaper articles from the time, while bringing the reader up to date with recent articles in relation to Casement in Germany, the Easter Rising and the role of British and German Intelligence, as well as the ongoing Black Diaries authenticity debate which is, if anything, accelerating. That controversy tells of a still contested issue in modern-day Ireland, despite the immense strides made towards gay equality and emancipation, most recently in the Republic.
The diary was in two notebooks in the National Library of Ireland and essentially covers the eight months from July 1914 to February 1915. Itbegins being written on 7 November 1914 and takes Casement retrospectively from England, to the US and to Germany and then includes a tour of war-torn Belgium. It effectively concludes on 11 February 1915 with him in a sanatorium. At the end, however, there is a brief account dated 28 March 1916 of events later in 1915. Separately, ‘A Last Page’ picks up the narrative on 17 March 1916 running it to Casement’s final days in Berlin.
Casement, a man who wrote too much, drafted many hundreds of other letters and memos when in Germany of which a number of the more significant, particularly those related to the arrangements for his departure to Ireland, are reprinted along with the full, unabridged diary where another writer Angus Mitchell has edited out nearly a quarter of the original text in his book sub-titled The Berlin Diary. Those cuts are at times from the most sensitive of areas, including the behaviour of the German Army in Belgium and Casement’s increasing disillusionment with the Kaiser’s Imperial Government and Prussian militarism. Being complete in its narrative, makes it vastly more readable and comprehensible.
3_1_Sir_Roger_Casement

Unknown Roger Casement letter ireland-1966-roger-casement-set-fine-used-20090-p 6208307701_1f5a8d9937_b

Maggie & Me

21/02/2016 By ACOMSDave Leave a Comment

“UNEMBARRASSED (PLASTIC?) HALF-JOCK”
Maggie & Me
Damian Barr
Bloomsbury
ISBN 978-1-4088-3809-9

This is a sort-of autobiography of a man in his mid-thirties, of (religiously) mixed parents in industrial Scotland. Such things matter in the central belt of Scotland, but it is more a matter of ethnic origin than religious feeling. The vast majority of RCs in Scotland are of Irish origin, and that mark (of Cain?) can stretch well beyond the fifth generation. Damian Barr’s ‘Catholic’ parent was his mother who was religiously indifferent, if not somewhat hostile to the church, on the grounds that she was divorced. ‘Damian’ is definitely a ‘Catholic’ name, it became popular in the twentieth century due to a Belgian priest who ministered to lepers in Molokai a south Pacific island. He (Mr. Barr) may, given his age, have been named for the central character in a Hollywood horror movie. Given that that character was the Devil, no less, in disguise, that notion may be inaccurate. But there were an awful lot of ‘Damian’s’ so named in the late 1970s an early ’80s. The Belgian missionary’s surname was rendered ‘Damien’.

Damian Barr was sent to State schools rather than semi-independent Catholic ones. Despite the ‘Taig’ name he wasn’t given too much hassle. That, in ever-increasing quantities, was brought on by the fact that he was deemed to be queer quite early in his schooldays. ‘Gay Barr’, ‘Gaymian’ and other more brutal nicknames followed him from primary to secondary school. That he was very tall and willowy from his very early teens didn’t help, nor that he was the smartest in his class. His first encounter with genuine disappointment was not getting a big prize in his secondary (the Scottish equivalent of a Grammar) school for being an all-round brilliant pupil. He was half way out of his seat before another boy’s name was called, and he was surprised at how angry and disappointed he was. Despite that, he tended to win every other prize worth having, including one to study in Cambridge. He had been expecting to go to Strathclyde. He wasn’t snooty about that eventuality, but Cambridge was a usefully long way away from prying family, neighbours and ‘friends’.

It really isn’t much of a ‘story’ but it is very well written and he tells us about his intimate friendship with a handsome fair haired boy, “Mark”, who decides in their very early teens that there is something wrong with the relationship. He (Mark) become heavily involved with girls, a large plurality of them. He doesn’t get forced into marriage because the girls, mostly, insist on condoms being used. Mark acknowledges Damian when the latter returns to the isolated housing estate (called ‘schemes’ in Scotland) on the periphery of Glasgow they lived in. Some ‘schemes’ are enormous, the ‘planners’ forgot to include amenities, like shops, much less social spaces like club premises; churches and church halls weren’t even an afterthought. Public transport was heavily used for shopping (women had to travel into Glasgow, up to twenty miles away, to get basics. Entrepreneurship in these matters was entirely in Indian hands. The grocer’s son encountered in school was called ‘Ahmed’.

Damian eventually discovers the deeply closeted Gay life of his school, his scheme, and later the ‘Gay Scene’ in central Glasgow where he had happy times in the pubs and discos. He was earning money working part time and weekends in shops mostly, and had something like genuine privacy because none of his elders were particularly interested in him, or his younger sister. They were quite enthusiastic about pointing out that she was more masculine than he was. This tomboy eventually settled down, and trained as a nurse, after Damian made good his escape to Cambridge, then London. (His family were quite proud of the fact that he got to university, especially one of the few they could name.)

This is a fairly well-trodden path in terms of queer autobiography, except for its straightforward approach to his sexuality. He writes at one point “I was gay” a simple, slightly relieved, acknowledgement of a fact. There are no dramatics, melo-, or otherwise. There are a number of comic interludes in this narrative from his schooldays to disastrous job interviews. Towering over teachers, school bullies, and interviewers isn’t always useful, it can provoke some into pointless aggression, Pointless, because Damian Barr could probably pick such people up and give them a good shake. He also encounters men he has made contact with through advertisements in a magazine made up of adverts for, mostly, unwanted hardware. They are mostly middle-aged and not quite the Adonai they implied in their ads.

Most readers will probably enjoy this well-told tale, and find an awful lot of points in common with his progress through his adolescence. And if you try the internet you might get this treat for pennies (not that one begrudges Damian a good return on the work he put into this text).

Seán McGouran

PS Thatcher doesn’t loom large, or small, in this text – quotes from the good Lady preface each chapter – in the manner of uplifting Victorian books.

EVERYTHING BETTER (if not, necessarily BIGGER) IN TEXAS (?)

Texas Twins: The Story Of Morgan & Nash Howard Roffman Bruno Gmünder ISBN 9 763861 878582

Texas Twins: The Story Of Morgan & Nash
Howard Roffman
Bruno Gmünder
ISBN 9 763861 878582