Good Reads 2019 (not really)

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Despite having moved to a new house that was for the most part a success, 2019 was one of the most disappointing years in my lifetime. The time I wasted watching the spectacle of Brexit unfold was a curse in so many ways and the election of a populist far right government was the final straw.

After 37 years of regular running, I struggled to find the drive or local routes to keep going and recorded my lowest annual mileage since 1982, when running was just a 2 or 3 mile activity once a week to keep fit for football. Similarly my 14 days on the hills was the lowest since 1988, although the dreadful weather during the summer months did not help. My exercise was largely confined to gardening and I gave up counting after I had shifted 500 barrowloads of topsoil from adjacent fields into the garden to lay lawns, create flower beds and fill raised beds. It was also the first time in my life that I did not visit my home town to visit relatives and friends. All of this should have meant more time for reading but I also read fewer books, and there were few of particular note.

I was persuaded by book reviews to read Sally Rooney's two books, Conversations with Friends failed to ignite any great enthusiasm. I did enjoy Normal People, it awakened fading memories of youth and was more of a page-turner. To overcome what had become a reader's block, I indulged myself with 3 or 4 of Lee Child's books, it is amazing how a bloke from Coventry can reach and re-interpret the American Dream as the behaviour of its many alienated citizens deepens the mire of Trumpian fake optimism.

I found my old Left Book Club edition of Road to Wigan Pier in a box of books when unpacking at the new house and decided to reread it. I found the meticulous presentation of 1930's life in the industrial north of England, which according to George Orwell begins in the Potteries,  fascinating but deeply disturbing. Orwell explains how a third of the population are living on Unemployment Assistance for six months and thereafter are dependent on local Public Assistance Committees  (PACs). This is the factual reporting but what follows is a shot across the bows of the governing classes. "First you condemn a family to live on thirty shillings a week, and then you have the damned impertinence to tell them how they are to spend their money". PACs seemed almost as disrespectful of their clients as Universal Credit manages today but without the preening justification of Ian Duncan-Smith.

I was also taken by Orwell's take on Sheffield, a place I know well and regard as one of the UK's better cities. "But even Wigan is beautiful compared with Sheffield. Sheffield, I suppose, could justly be called the ugliest town in the Old World. And the stench! If at rare moments you stop smelling sulphur it is because you have begun smelling gas. Even the shallow river (Don) is usually bright yellow with some chemical or other." Sheffield has been transformed since the 1930's into a modern city but I remember having to get a typhoid jag in 1967 after punting down the river Don during Rag week.

I read a couple of books about the history of Puglia in southern Italy whilst on holiday. They depicted the familiar story of wealthy landowners exploiting workers whist the owners moved their wealth to the more civilised cities of the north. Nowadays the affluent lawyers and bankers from the northern cities are acquiring and renovating the worker's cottages as holiday homes.

I would only recommend two books that I read. Jonathan Coe's book, Middle England, that parodies the descent into Brexit from 2010 with a cast of whimsical characters living in the West Midlands. There are many memorable references to the populist and bizarre political shenanigans during the period. This was only topped by Fintan O'Toole's insightful examination of Brexit through Irish eyes. Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain cross references British history as it dissembles the justification for Brexit as a form of retro imperialism by the English establishment. It has never ceased to amaze me how articulate and well informed the senior Irish politicians and commentators have been during the Brexit debate. Unlike the UK ministers who seldom have a rational argument or a clue as to what happens next, they seem to understand the wider cultural and historical context that has led to Brexit. They also show a strong desire to reach agreements that will minimise the damage to citizens and businesses.