"From Drawing Board to Chequered Flag", Tony Southgate

For someone who first started to be interested in motor racing in 1982 Tony Southgate was consistently present in the background of the races I watched. It helped of course that he was associated with underdogs at that stage; teams like Theodore and Osella were never going to win anything, but with the latter in particular, they were doing something  different, that appealed to me. There was also the real attraction of an attempt to do something with extraordinarily limited resources, which is an ethos that appeals to this day.

In this light Tony Southgate's autobiography has been a long time comings, and it doesn't disappoint. Told in a concise and to the point manner the true richness of Southgate's career, which has involved winning the Indianapolis 500 with Eagle, the Monaco Grand Prix with BRM, and Le Mans with Jaguar and Audi, is revealed.

This is a story that strips away a lot of the glamour that is often associated with motor racing. The red in tooth and claw nature of the sport in the 1960s and 1970s, when death was common occurrence is exposed, but so too is the gritty unrewarded hard graft that working in the industry entailed. The frankly unpleasant birth of Arrows was before my day, but this is told clearly by one of the participants, who has managed to lose a lot of the rancour with the perspective of distance. Back in the 1980s Southgate would refuse to refer to Arrows, instead calling it Arrow (the team name was built up from letters of the founders Alan Rees, Jackie Oliver, Dave Wass, and Tony Southgate), feeling he wanted nothing to do with them. Reading now of his abrupt dismissal and the borderline fraud that valued his 10% of the company at £5,000 you can understand the level of bitterness felt, especially when put in the context of the court battle with Shadow and the supreme efforts in producing a string of cars in Arrows' early years.

The core message here is that while there's a lot of money sloshing around the sport, it says something that Southgate had to work all the way to 2000 to ensure financial security. This is the story of a career where as he put it "I had always been paid well, but there is a difference between living well and having excess money to save for a rainy day" (p.170). You do however wonder if Southgate would have wanted it any different way? He's clear that the excesses of motorsport hold no appeal to him, and in being compelled to work later into his career he got the opportunity to work on some marvelous machinery and make him a figure who neatly spans the era when an individual could have an impact on every aspect of car design to the present, when the complexity of design means that the nature of the beast means cars are now inherently designed by committee.

As well as being a genuinely good read, right up there with recent classics from Vic Elford and John Horsman, "From Drawing Board to Chequered Flag" brings some real new insight for the student of motor racing. In 1982 then Osella designer, Herve Guilpin quit in disgust at the Caesar's Palace Grand Prix, being fulsome in his criticism of Enzo Osella's approach including choice words such as "The reason is always lack of money. The result is the FA1D [Osella's 1982 car] is and always has been a potential public menace" and questions about resource allocation, such as questioning the building of a test track at the Osella factory. For those who want to know more, the full story is told on page 45 in the 1982 Caesar's Palace edition of Grand Prix International magazine.

Tony Southgate brings a different perspective. When he visited the Osella facility at Volpiano to discuss the project for fitting an Alfa Romeo V12 engine to the FA1E, not long after Guilpin's outburst, he was clearly pleasantly surprised. Summing it up he states "Compared with the likes of Arrows and Shadow, Osella looked very impressive. Where teams allocate their money is always a case of individual priorities, and in Osella's case he obviously spent a lot of it on the factory." (p.126). Different observers, different perspectives, and different circumstances, but it all clearly shows how primary sources can be so contradictory.

"From Drawing Board to Chequered Flag" is beautifully put together and tells a fascinating story. It deserves to be read by anyone with a real passion and interest in motor racing in the latter part of the 20th century.

"Payback", James Barrington

Since an idle purchase of "Foxbat" at the Eurotunnel crossing in the autumn of 2007, I've enjoyed James Barrington. It's nonsense, requires a significant suspension of disbelief, but as a fried, leafing through the first pages of "Payback" in The Rake one evening this week commented, for nonsense, it's pretty well written.

Throughout Barrington's work it is possible to discern a steady reigning in of his protagonist, Paul Richter. In "Payback" he's a more straightforward character. He's an individualistic and unorthodox intelligence officer, not necessarily anything unusual in a spy thriller, but now there's no merging in of him being a Royal Navy fighter pilot. This, on balance, is a good thing. Barrington can undeniably write both spy fiction and techno-thrillers, but when the genres were fused quite so firmly it somehow didn't quite work.

"Payback" is thus a tighter story, and has a tight geographic focus on Dubai. Here we can see a clear example of how real world events can undermine an author. The Dubai here is a super-rich Sheikhdom basking in opulence, and it is almost certainly an accurate representation of what it was like while Barrington was writing. Sadly by mid-2010 the financial collapse of Dubai has transformed people's perception, and somehow the idea of the Dubai government blithely paying off terrorists with billions of dollars doesn't ring quite so true. Other little niggles, such as Dubai airport's Terminal 3 being described as "soon to open" when it's been working since 2008 are more easily glossed over, but still illustrate how hard it is for an author to achieve complete veracity.

In truth though, there are some aspects of a thriller such as this where accuracy is needed. Getting the technical details wrong, or just making them up, will jar with the seasoned reader of such material, and Barrington doesn't miss a step here. Other aspects of background, such as the issues with Dubai or the riding roughshod over the finer details of intelligence process can be seen as areas where it's unfair to criticise a work for being unrealistic; the function of a book like "Payback" is not to inform, it is to entertain. The end product is a highly readable and enjoyable book. As with everything else Barrington has written, it's not great literature, but doesn't seek to be. It's summer, people will be flocking through airports, "Payback" is the sort of book to readily keep you distracted while cooped up on a long haul flight.

Furst in a hot climate

I find myself on the horns of a dilemma.

My marvellous small local bookshop in Beckenham had a copy of Alan Furst's "Spies of the Balkans" in stock on day of release. I've read the first few pages, and it's clearly a Furst; there's something about his use of place and language that as many others have said, manage to convince the reader you're in 1940s Europe - I'd always thought that this was just smoke and mirrors convincing me as a Gen-Xer that he was convincing until I gave my mother a copy of "Night Soliders". Mum is going to be 81 this year, and lived through World War II, and even though she did so as a child, the fact that she thinks Alan Furst captures what the period was like works for me.

So where's the problem? I would appear to have a new, unread, Alan Furst in my possession; why am I debating whether I should start it now?

Before answering this, let's rewind briefly. Alan Furst was introduced to me by Salon Magazine (read on AvantGo on a Conpaq Ipaq) back in 2001. Prompted by this I picked up "The World at Night" and was captivated. This was a February, and I was commuting listening to Sara Ayers (very obscure I accept) and some of her songs such as "The Waiting Room" - the combination of Furst's brilliance, wintery rain battering against old slam-door South London rolling stock, and Ms Ayre's cold ambient music made for something magical. There's even something about the covers from his works then, which were, and still are, works of art.

This defines Furst. He talks of a world at night, where moral equivalency imposes a darkness on peoples' souls, and where stinging rain slants into the faces of doomed protagonists. He does this brilliantly, and as a reader in fitting surroundings you're physically propelled into his world.

Rewind.

It's a hot June in the UK. I'm about to go to India for a week. It's hot.

I've tried reading Furst in a warm climate before. I got "Blood of Victory" on day of release and treasured it, saving it for a long laconic holiday we'd scheduled for late September 2002 in Umbria. A bucolic quiet surrounding should have been perfect, but it wasn't. Leaving aside that Furst is best talking about cities, it didn't quite work when sitting beside a pool in Italy's late summer warmth. I loved it as a book, but it didn't worm itself into my soul as other Fursts have.

So. I have "Spies of the Balkans" in my hands. On Sunday I do the long multi-leg flight to Chennai for a week working with my development team, and will want many books as support (quod vide) for business hotel bound nights. 

It should be a no-brainer. 

I have a new Alan Furst to read. 

...It doesn't work.

Chennai in Southern India is hot. Rain or shine next week is going to be a very hot week. I'm going to crave moments of quiet when I can savour condensation on the side of a glass to try and cool me down. This isn't Furst terrain. Even although "Spies of the Balkans" is set in Greece, it starts on a rainy winter night in Salonika. This isn't material for a hot climate.

Alan Furst is being left at home.

I'm desperate to read "Spies of the Balkans". For all that I wish he'd return to the sprawling narratives of "Night Soldiers" and "Dark Star" anything he writes is still an immediate candidate for Desert Island Book. Somehow however I know I'm missing something when the environment isn't there. "Spies of the Balkans" is going to go onto the TBR shelf and I'm going to avoid reviews of it. It's going to stay at behind when I go to Chennai and wait for us to be reacquainted in the European autumn. 

Maybe I can swing a Eurostar run to Brussels in November. Whipping through Northern France with sleet stinging against the window is when you should read Alan Furst. He paints a magnificent picture of Europe before and during the fall of man; reading him deserves an appropriate backdrop.

It's late, and I'm writing on my small sitting room netbook. I may well revisit this entry and put in some imagery and hyperlink it so that I can really set this in context, but I liked writing this, and a blog should reflect freshness of thinking.  Goodnight.

"Divided Houses, The Hundred Years War III ", Jonathan Sumption

British QC Jonathan Sumption has been writing his monumental history of the Hundred Years War for over 20 years now, and there's still probably another couple of volumes to go, which at his current rate of writing, will see us through to 2030 or so, a writing project that will have taken almost as long as its subject matter to complete.

The first volume was a surprising gift from a friend's father in 1990 - I'd been the beneficiary of his generosity in the past, as he disbursed the books he accumulated in a career at Irish broadcaster RTE, but I remember being struck that this was a rather more impressive gift than usual. Sadly it remained largely unread through university years - somewhat ironic given the courses in medieval history I took, only picked up when working life and exigencies of a commute impelled me to raid the large unread pile that a decade in higher education can leave you with, and the publication of the 2nd volume reminded me of the first's existence.

Size makes these books daunting, but right from the start, with the lavish description of the funeral of Charles IV in 1328 you realise that this is something deserving of your time. Reading weighty hardback tomes isn't easy on South London commuter trains, especially when you're also trying to juggle a cup of coffee, but some efforts are worth it.

The work is rooted in a traditional highly narrative form of history. As such it may not be scholastic, and academics may legitimately question whether it says much that's genuinely new, but it's probably better for it. Much in the same way as I prefer Runciman's somewhat discredited history of the crusades to more modern interpretations of the Latin East, Sumption's treatment is capable of immersing the reader in the 14th century world, and sweeping you a long with the period's inherent drama.

In terms of location it reminds you that France really is very big, but also that through much of the terrain familiar to British visitors to the continent there runs a rich vein of history when France and England were inextricably linked. It's also a timely reminder that the Hundred Years War was not just a Franco-British affair but in reality a much wider European conflict dragging in the low countries, Spain, and Italy and serving to shape the continent in many ways.

It does also reinforce some key points. Medieval warfare was not perpetual combat - financial realities meant it couldn't be so, and for those whose familiarity with the period is driven by the (admittedly rather good) Medieval Total War computer game or the more elaborate battle scenes in "Kingdom of Heaven", it comes as a surprise to be reminded that warfare was not conducted with a cast of thousands, instead small handfuls of fighting men would in the main shape the course of battle - cataclysmic confrontations such as Crecy or Agincourt (the latter still far from being covered in Sumption's work) very much the exception.

Despite this, it's probably not popular history - it's far too weighty for that, and this is a real shame. History such as this, talking about Kings, Queens, and battles, isn't trendy today, but it's the sort of story that can get people interested and excited. The French to their credit have grasped this with the magnificent visitor centre now at Azincourt, one can only wish that more of this would percolate through in Britain.

“A Deadly Trade”, Michael Stanley

Crime writing set in Africa can take a number of forms. Robert Wilson's quartet of novels set in Benin paint pictures of West Africa that actively convince you that you would pay a lot of money to never go there. By contrast, the Botswana depicted in Michael Stanley's Detective Kubu novels is an altogether more appealing prospect.

This shouldn't come as too much of a surprise; in contrast to its neighbours, Botswana largely avoided the post-colonial political chaos endured by the likes of Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Angola, and unusually also managed to do something sensible with its mineral wealth. Obviously it's not without its issues, in particular rampant HIV infection rates, but in the main it feels like somewhere that could be a credible destination and indeed one with no small appeal. In this light, the centrality of tourist camps in the bush to the plot of “A Deadly Trade” is firmly within the bounds of plausability.

The core premise of multiple murders at the remote Jackalberry lodge camp, builds what ultimately feels like a somewhat overcomplicated plotline. It transpires that everyone at the camp on the night in question has some form of suspicious background and possible motivation. As narrative devices go this ends up feeling a little tired and redolent of the worst excesses of Agatha Christie, and in this case you're left with the distinct impression that there would have been a benefit to at least one of the plot's thread being unpicked in the editorial process.

What more than saves the work however is the persona of Detective Kubu. Here we find a marvellously appealing central character. The rotund detective, enormously food oriented, manages to strike just the right balance between crime fiction's obligatory level of insubordination and a credible level of effectiveness. At times too, he displays a reassuring level of 'crapness' that succeeds, in a very endearing way, of making him very human. In short, he's the sort of policeman you really wouldn't object to having as a neighbour.

My initial reaction was to be sceptical of “A Deadly Trade”, and it took its time to work its way to the head of the 'to-be-read' pile, but a combination of a well executed opening scene and an extremely accomplished sense of place managed to capture attention. For all the exasperation at some of the plot devices, it does engender a distinct curiousity about what's actually going to happen, and it passes the 'does it keep you up at night' test with flying colours. Great literature it probably isn't, but it's well worth a read.

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book as a review copy from Hodder Headline

"In Office Hours", Lucy Kellaway

Through ten odd years of my current working incarnation, when most of the time I'm supposed to be responsible adult doing grown up things, Lucy Kellaway, through her FT column, has done her bit to keep me sane and sensible.

She came into her own when the subversive in me delighted in goading my then training and development manager with her challenge for companies to concede that the sole reason to go open plan was to squeeze more desks in, one of many points in her writing on business nonsense that was all too applicable to modern working life.

It's impossible too to separate Lucy Kellaway from her wonderfully ridiculous yet true-to-life creation, Martin Lukes, who consistently succeeds in removing the cork from the excesses of C-Suite absurdity that most of us are painfully aware of.

For someone used to Kellaway's general no-nonsense and deeply humorous approach, "In Office Hours" will feel arrestingly different. Telling the story of two corporate women who embark on self destructive affairs within the company they work for, this bears scant relation to the levity that otherwise characterises Kellaway's writing.

Make no mistake however, this doesn't mean that this isn't a good book; it is. In fact, it teeters on the brink of brilliance. It's well observed, feels real, and it is impossible not to be moved by the raw tearing emotion felt by the characters. The fact that the relationships that lie at the heart of the book are doomed is clear from the start, just like any dispassionate observer to an illicit liaison can see the folly of the participants, but as in reality, there is a grim compulsion to seeing the car wreck unfold in front of us.

"In Office Hours" is not a happy book. There is a conspicuous absence of joie de vivre, with the initial exuberence Stella and Bella feel when corresponding with their ... what's the right word, men? boyfriends?  counterparts? ... rapidly subsumed by the feeling of being trapped by an illicit relationship, which comes across as being no fun whatsoever. Doomed love does nonetheless make for affecting reading, in this way Kellaway is following in the steps of Faulks' "On Green Dolphin Street" or Hollinghurst's "The Line of Beauty" in writing something that I suspect will stay with you for a while.

An old friend of mine used to say of office romances that one should never piss on one's own doorstep. He's now happily married to a woman he met at work. Indeed Lucy Kellaway herself makes no bones about the fact that she met her husband at work. This however doesn't alter the core message of "In Office Hours", that our colleagues are people that understand us, and that we have a huge amount in common with, but ultimately crossing the line from friendship to intimacy is a step that isn't likely to make us happy in the long term.

"In Office Hours" is a very good, possibly brilliant, book. Having finished it I'm pretty sure I won't read it again; one read through is enough. It will make me read Lucy's column in Monday morning's FT with an awful lot more respect though. I always knew she was good, reading this I now know she's really good.

"Accused", Mark Gimenez

As mentioned previously on this blog, I picked up Mark Gimenez's latest legal thriller when passing through Heathrow a couple of weeks ago. There's something fitting about this, I first encountered Gimenez at the same location, at Terminal 5, two years ago, when a touch frustrated at not being able to find an airport edition of Stuart MacBride's "Flesh House", I instead made do with "The Perk", so beginning my engagement with his own brand of Texan legal fiction.

Oft derided as being derivative of John Grisham, there are undeniable similarities between the two authors. They both deal with lawyers, they both predominantly write about the Southern United States, and deep down they're telling stories that are courtroom dramas. That said, I've recently found myself lacking some enthusiasm for Grisham, while "Accused", just like "The Perk" two years ago, was started on the short flight out, and finished by the time the BA Airbus pushed back for the flight home the following day.

Somehow Gimenez paints a picture that feels deeper than that we get with Grisham. The characters are more appealing, the locations spark more questions, and critically I find the stories grip me more. That this is more a reflection of a certain jadedness with Grisham and the relative newness of Gimenez is possible, but right now a new Gimenez has me reaching for the shelf much more than a Grisham does.

So, what's "Accused" really like? Set predominantly in Galveston it revisits the career of Gimenez's first protagonist, A. Scott Fenney from 2006's "The Colour of Law", tackling the intriguing prospect of defending his estranged wife for the murder of the professional golfer she left him for. It's a convoluted premise, and results in a convoluted plot, but it's told with aplomb, and really importantly holds its nerve and retains its ability to surprise.

One key historic area of weakness is his writing has been addressed. Children always feature strongly in Gimenez's writing and "Accused" is no different, however this time around he's managed to write them appropriately. They still have opinions, but these now are those that are credible for their age rather than strangely offering advice and opinion a long way beyond their years. This is a small point, but important, in a book like this you need to be carried along by the pace of the story and any moment where a character jars can lose critical momentum; in previous works the questions raised by the preternaturally mature children broke this flow, now they sit much more fittingly within the novel.

Thinking about "Accused" with the benefit of what hindsight a couple of weeks post reading grants me, I'm coming round to the idea that this might be his best book to date. "The Perk" may have had a more complete plotline and somehow more appealing setting, but there are times when "Accused" teeters on the brink of almost being "12 Angry Men". It's absorbing, not ridiculously far fetched, and by the end does leave you nodding sagely in almost grudging admiration at having been played.

It's probably telling that I enjoyMark  Gimenez's books most when I'm on the road. 'Airport novel' has become a pejorative term, but they serve a purpose that I for one am really grateful for, and I think "Accused" transgresses this classification into something a good bit more thought provoking.

Yes, I'd still choose him over Grisham when presented with the two of them on the shelf.