The Dive

Hi folks

I’m trying something out, and I’d love your ideas. What topics, questions, books or ideas would you like me to do a dive on?

I’m thinking about expanding what I use this space for a little, beyond just having it as a notepad for my random thoughts. One of the things I’d like to explore is having a little more interaction, and seeing if there are particular things people are interested in. So, here’s my idea. Tell me what you’re interested in, and I’ll do a dive on it.

It’s something I really enjoy doing – taking a new topic that I know nothing about, doing a bunch of reading, pulling out the different ideas and connections, synthesising and aggregating, and then spitting out a neat summary.

So, hit me up with your questions, queries and curiosities, and I’ll pick the ones I like. Drop ’em into the comments and we’ll go from there.

QP.

These books explain a lot of things

A while ago I read a book titled This Explains Everything: Deep, Beautiful, and Elegant Theories of How the World Works. Edited by John Brockman, it was a collection of responses from a range of thinkers on their favourite theories or ideas, that had significant explanatory power.

In a related way, I wanted to try and start a list here of books that I’ve read that I thought had interesting or important ideas, in understanding different aspects of people / society / the universe. I think explaining everything is a tall order, so this is just a list of books that I found interesting on a range of topics. In a way it’s also a useful list for me, of keeping track of books that I think cover or explain useful or interesting theories. Obviously, a mention here isn’t an endorsement of the book or the author, etc.

I’ll try to keep it updated as I come across other interesting pieces. But in the meantime, tell me what you think: What are the books that explain essential, profound or important ideas? What have I missed on this list?

Science

It’s been years since I read it (and please be aware this isn’t an endorsement of the author), but reading The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins was a useful introduction to evolutionary theory. Interestingly enough, evolutionary theory is one of the ideas that cropped up quite frequently in This Explains Everything as a powerful idea.

James Gleick’s books on information theory (The information: A history, a theory, a flood) and chaos theory (Chaos: Making a new science) are fascinating, approachable introductions to very important branches of mathematics.

It’s been a long time since I read it, but I found a book on Popperian hypothesis testing and falsifiability useful (unfortunately I can’t remember the title).

Philosophy and ethics

There are a few books that I found interesting here – but it’s a complex area, and not one that I have a deep understanding of.

• The Intentional Stance by Daniel Dennett was an interesting read; I think particularly in how to think about people and intentionality from a materialistic viewpoint. If I can paraphrase, Dennett essentially argues that intentionality is a model that we have of behaviour in the world, so that we conceptualise other people as agents, with goals and mental models.
• Elbow Room by Daniel Dennett was also an interesting set of ideas, in how to reconcile a materialist viewpoint with questions about free will and ethical responsibility. Essentially, (if I can paraphrase many years after reading it), Dennett is arguing that traditional debates about free will and determinism define things in the wrong way; that if we think meaningfully about what free will means, we can have a useful form of free will, in a deterministic universe. Having said that, I think there is something to this webcomic sending up his approach – that it may feel a little too much like a glib redefinition.
• Reason and Morality by Alan Gewirth was a difficult book. It took me several months to wade through, when I had the time to read in-depth. But I think meta-ethics is an interesting and important philosophical topic, and this is one of the more satisfying reads I’ve found. To very loosely paraphrase, Gewirth argued that for any agent that acts towards desired goals, there are implicit assumptions that, if logically carried to their conclusion, necessitate valuing the agency of others.
• Beautiful souls by Eyal Press isn’t a particularly deep theoretical book. But I think it’s valuable to think about the factors that lead us to make courageous decisions, and for that reason this is well worth a read, as Press examines four ordinary people making courageous choices.

Psychology

• The Ego Tunnel by Thomas Metzinger wasn’t an easy read, but an interesting one. He argues that consciousness is our experience of transparent self-model, as part of our mental model of the world we move through.
• Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahnemann is an excellent read, and a tribute to the work he’s done, particularly in conjunction with his former collaborator, Amos Tversky. Thinking Fast and Slow explains two systems of thought – the rapid, intuitive and error-prone, and the slow, deliberate and logical, and how biases can arise from our thought processes. It’s an excellent book built on years of excellent research.
• It’s been years since I read the book, so I unfortunately can’t remember the title, but I found a book on Theory of Mind helpful in unpacking an interesting and important theory. Interestingly, Dennett appears to have been one of the philosophers to first suggest the practical outlines of how to test for ToM.

Story-telling

Perhaps because I read a bit of fiction, story-telling is one of those things that fascinates me. What makes a good story? Why do we find some stories gripping, and others dull?

• Story by Robert McKee is an interesting read. It’s not foolproof, but it works to break down the key components of what McKee thinks makes for a good story: difficult choices and unexpected consequences.

Politics

There are a lot in this category – perhaps because I’ve been reading quite a few since the blog started, where as other categories I read more of before I was taking notes.

• The Dance of Legislation by Eric Redman is a fascinating first-hand account of a set of power struggles involved in the passage of legislation. It’s useful as an insightful account of the role chance and relationships can play in day-to-day political outcomes.
• Collapse by Jared Diamond and The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter both deal with how a society collapses. Diamond’s thesis rests on five key factors:  environmental damage, natural climate change, war, weakened allies, and the ways societies choose to respond to these pressures. It’s a compellingly detailed historical account that societies can collapse because of poor responses to external pressures. Tainter’s thesis centres around diminishing marginal returns to complexity.
• The Master Switch by Tim Wu is an excellent account of how media empires rise and fall. It’s particularly valuable because it identifies cycles over time, rather than analysing a static moment. He argues that as new technologies emerge, the field is fragmented between many contenders, before it gradually merges into a smaller number of firms. Given that media can influence political outcomes, these cycles are important.
• The Company by John Micklethwait and Adrian Woolridge is an excellent outline of something that’s so ubiquitous it’s almost invisible – when did companies emerge? They make the compelling case that the legal structure of a company has a significant influence in our society.
• Democracy for realists: Why elections do not produce responsive government by Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels is an important read. They argue that our ideas of how democracies work are wrong, and set out a strong evidence base of how a range of voter behaviour theories are contradicted by particular pieces of evidence. It raises interesting and important questions.
• The rise and decline of nations by Mancur Olson an analyses of why some nations succeed, and why others fail. He sheds powerful light by focussing on the relationships within a society, and how particular groups can have an incentive to take action that is detrimental to the society overall. Interestingly, it seems that since publication, his thesis has held up reasonably well.
• Manufacturing consent by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky is an interesting read, and one of the few pieces I’ve read that focuses on the structural relationships between media entities and government. Have you come across any other good ones?
• Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates is a powerful reflection on race in America.
• The origins of political order by Francis Fukuyama is an impressive attempt to tell a unified, theoretically grounded story of how political frameworks emerge. I may not agree with all of his conclusions, but I wish there were more books tackling questions like this on this scale. He writes about the historical emergence of the state, the rule of law, and democratic accountability. [EDIT 2019/03/30]. Also long but well worth reading is Political decline and political decay, which covers a different time period, and extends the ideas of the first book.
• Economic Justice by Stephen Nathanson sets out, very simply, a set of ideas about how resources should be distributed in society. For all that it’s very simple, it’s actually quite useful: there’s real value in a clear, simple exposition of basic ideas.
• While not explaining deep theories, I wanted to quickly mention both Neil Chenoweth’s Murdoch’s Pirates, and Jane Mayer’s Dark Money, because they’re both well researched pieces that set out in some detail the mechanics of how particular entities interact with the political / media system, in ways that aren’t always obvious.

Economics

Paper promises by Philip Coggan isn’t an excellent book, but it is a starting point on an interesting question – what is money? How does it function? Essentially, it’s a store of value, a unit of exchange, and a unit of measurement. But fundamentally, money works because we expect that we can trade it with other people for something. This is, on some level, obvious, but occasionally easy to forget.

Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs: Unconventional Warfare in the Ancient World by Adrienne Mayor

Mayor has picked a fascinating topic for her book, Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs: Unconventional Warfare in the Ancient World. It examines the strange but rich history of unconventional warfare in ancient history, including poisoned arrows, honey made by bees eating from hallucinogenic (and poisonous) flowers, greek fire, and more.

Mayor has done deep research, and it holds up. The writing felt a little patchy at points – at times the book felt more like a laundry list than a deep narrative. But if you’re interested in the history, this is a deep piece on a rarely covered topic – well worth it if that’s what you’re after.

Quotes

Preface

Page 11

the intention to send carriers of disease into enemy territory is recorded on cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia; Assyrian reliefs illustrate the use of naphtha firepots; ancient arrowheads tipped with crystallized venom in museum collections were found to be viable; and archaeologists have now discovered remnants of chemical fireballs hurled at Alexander the Great’s army in Pakistan and medieval naphtha grenades in Egypt.

Page 12

Sasanian attackers deliberately created a deadly sulfur dioxide gas to suffocate Romans in a tunnel, in AD 256. The skeletons of twenty victims and residue of sulfur crystals and pitch burned in braziers seem to confirm the hypothesis.

1. Heracles and the Hydra: The Invention of Biological Weapons

Page 74

Odysseus had once come here to consult the pallid, embittered ghosts of the Underworld. Three centuries after Homer, in the fifth century BC, the ancient Greek historian Herodotus described a renowned necromanteon, an Oracle of the Dead, at Ephyra. Archaeologists have discovered the substantial ruins of an underground labyrinth, whose features match Homer’s description of the Halls of Hades in the Odyssey. Scholars believe that local hallucinogenic plants were used in the ancient rites of the Oracle of the Dead at Ephyra.

Page 78

In 1943, for instance, in the worst Allied seaport disaster since Pearl Harbor, thousands of American soldiers and Italian townspeople in Bari, Italy, were killed by exposure to poison gas when a US ship secretly carrying two thousand chemical bombs was shelled in the harbor by German aircraft. A more recent example is the cluster of health problems suffered by US troops who destroyed Iraq’s biochemical munitions in the Gulf War of 1991. In 2003 it transpired that many of the biological agents used to create those weapons had come from the United States during the 1980s.

3. Poison Waters, Deadly Vapors

Page 130

In an ancient forerunner to the 1924 Geneva Convention (in response to the bioterror of gassing in World War I), after the battle of Kirrha the defenders of the sacred site of Delphi agreed that poisoning water was unacceptable in a religious war, and among the allies of Delphi should they ever find themselves at war with one another. According to the Amphictionic League’s new rule of war, articulated by the Athenian orator Aeschines, contaminating drinking water was to be forbidden in conflicts of a special, sacred, nature.

Page 133

According to Frontinus, Semiramis conquered Babylon with a brilliant water trick. The Euphrates River flowed through the city, dividing it in two. Semiramis, who undertook many waterworks projects during her reign, had her engineers divert the river, so that her army could march right into the city in the dry riverbed.

4. A Casket of Plague in the Temple of Babylon

Page 179

In India, where all manner of toxic substances could be had, poisoning was a favored method of political assassination in myth and history. One of the most ingenious methods described in Sanskrit literature was to send an irresistible gift in the form of a so- called Poison Maiden (Visha Kanya). In the Katha Sarit Sagara, a collection of Indian lore compiled by the poet Somadeva (about AD 1050), King Brahmadatta “sent poison damsels as dancing- girls among the enemy’s host.” In an ancient twist on the modern idea of “sleepers”— undetected, lurking assassins or terrorists who await orders to kill— Poison Maidens were carefully “prepared” and dispatched as secret weapons. A touch, a kiss, or sexual intercourse with one of these ravishing but deadly damsels brought sure death.

Page 181

The Spanish not only poisoned French wine with contaminated blood, but, according to the medical writer Gabriele Falloppia, they also “intentionally chased beautiful, infectious prostitutes into the French army camp.”

5. Sweet Sabotage

Page 202

in the 1980s South African government agents poisoned beer, whiskey, cigarettes, chocolates, sugar, and peppermints to murder antiapartheid dissidents.

Page 207

Then, in 1965– 67, during experiments with LSD- like agents, the Pentagon secretly released on US citizens in Hawaii a hallucinogen that was being developed as a chemical weapon.

6. Animal Allies

Page 215

Bees’- nest bombs were probably among the first projectile weapons, and the scholar of Mesopotamian history Edward Neufeld surmises that hornets’ nests were lobbed at enemies hiding in caves as early as Neolithic times (fig. 22). Bees have figured in warfare in different cultures of many eras. The sacred text of the Maya in Central America, the Popol Vuh, for example, describes an ingenious bee booby trap used to repel besiegers: dummy warriors outfitted in cloaks, spears, and shields were posted along the walls of the citadel. War bonnets were placed on the heads, which were actually large gourds filled with bees, wasps, and flies. As the assailants scaled the walls, the gourds were smashed. The furious insects homed in on the warriors, who were soon “dazed by the yellow jackets and wasps [and were sent] stumbling and falling down the mountainside.”

Page 219

Another method was to set up hives with trip wires along the enemy’s route, a method used by both sides in Europe in World War I.

Page 222

Holed up inside their fortified city, King Barsamia and the citizens of Hatra prepared strong defense plans as the Roman legions advanced over the desert. One of their defenses was biological. Anticipating by seventeen hundred years the bombs of fragile porcelain filled with noxious insects that the Japanese dropped on China in World War II, the Hatreni filled clay- pot bombs with live “poisonous insects” and sealed them up, ready to hurl down at the attackers.

Page 232

This time, the Egyptian defense was very well- organized, holding off the Persians with batteries of artillery that shot stones, bolts, and fire. Cambyses responded by placing a unique zoological shield before his ranks: a phalanx of yowling cats, bleating sheep, barking dogs, and mute ibexes. All these animals were worshipped by the Egyptians, and just as Cambyses hoped, the warriors halted their fire to avoid harming any sacred creatures. Pelusium fell and the Persians conquered Egypt.

Page 248

the last recorded use of a pig against a war elephant was said to have occurred at the siege of Edessa, held by the Romans in the time of the emperor Justinian (sixth century AD). Chosroes, king of the Persians, stormed the city, sending his biggest elephant with many soldiers on top right up to the circuit wall. Just as the Persians were about to clamber over the wall and capture the city, the quick- witted Romans grabbed up a pig and suspended it directly in the face of the startled elephant. The dry- witted historian Procopius writes, “As the pig was hanging there, he very naturally gave vent to sundry squeals, and this angered the elephant so that he got out of control.” Confusion swept back in waves through the entire Persian army, and, panic- stricken, they fled in great disorder.

7. Infernal Fire

Page 275

Another celebrated weapon invented by Archimedes was essentially a heat ray used against the Roman navy commanded by Claudius Marcellus. According to ancient accounts, Archimedes had soldiers polish the concave surfaces of their bronze shields to a mirror finish. Then he assembled them to stand in a parabola shape and tip their shields to create a huge reflective surface to focus the sun’s rays onto the Roman ships’ riggings. Just as paper or matchsticks can be burned with a magnifying glass, the intense heat of the concentrated rays caused the sails and wooden masts to catch fire instantaneously. Marcellus’s fleet was reduced to ashes. The Roman commander gave up the naval blockade and finally captured Syracuse “by thirst.”

Page 276

Since the Enlightenment, many scientists have undertaken complex calculations and experiments to learn whether Archimedes’s method could have worked.

Page 276

The first series of experiments, by Count Buffon of the Paris Museum of Natural History in 1747, used mirrors to ignite a pine plank 150 feet away. A more recent test was carried out in 1975 by a Greek scientist, Dr. I. Sakkas. He lined up sixty Greek sailors each holding a mirror shaped like an oblong shield. In concert, they tilted the mirrors to direct the sun’s rays at a wooden ship 160 feet away. It caught fire immediately. A similarly successful re- creation was enacted in 2005 for the popular TV show MythBusters, when Dr. David Wallace of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used mirrors to ignite a 1924 wooden fishing boat in San Francisco Bay.

Page 280

ancient claims that vinegar and fire could destroy walls and the story of Hannibal’s feat were long ridiculed as legends, until scientific experiments in 1992 proved that rocks heated to high temperatures will indeed fracture if a considerable quantity of acidic vinegar is splashed on the hot stone. Further experiments with sour red wine (the source of vinegar in antiquity) produced even more violent results, as the hot rocks sizzled and cracked apart. The scientists found that the chemical reaction worked best on limestone and marble, which happened to be the favorite building stone for ancient fortification walls.

Page 291

Sulfur, quicklime, and other substances were combined to make what was known in Latin as pyr automaton, “automatic or self- lighting fire.” The combination was first used to produce pyrotechnic tricks staged by priests and magicians. In 186 BC, for example, the historian Livy reported that during a religious ceremony, torches drenched in sulfur, tar, and quicklime continued to burn after being plunged into the Tiber River. Other Latin authors provided recipes for pyr automaton in which sulfur, pitch, quicklime, and naphtha were tightly sealed in containers and then ignited with a single drop of water. Naphtha is the highly flammable light fraction of petroleum, an extremely volatile, strong- smelling vaporous or gaseous liquid common in oil deposits of the Near East. It was the quicklime that caused the mixture to ignite with a drop of water.

Page 295

The method of gathering this combustible substance was cloaked in fable, probably created to keep it a state secret. Only the king of India was allowed to possess the special oil that derived from giant “worms” lurking in the Indus River, reported Ctesias. The power of the oil was marvelous: “If you want to burn up a man or an animal, just pour some oil over him and at once he is set on fire.” With this weapon, Ctesias heard, the Indian king captures cities without the use of battering rams or siege engines. He simply fills clay vessels with the oil, seals them up, and slings them against the city gates. Upon impact, the oil oozes down and fire pours over the doors. The miraculous oil consumes enemy siege machines and covers the fighting men with fire. Water cannot put it out; the only hope is to smother the flames with dirt.

Page 303

In AD 813, Baghdad, the Islamic capital, was totally destroyed by a new type of special forces to wield petroleum weaponry. Naphtha troops called naffatun manned hundreds of mangonels catapulting thousands of barrels of liquid fire. By AD 850, every Islamic army maintained regular naffatun units, and they were now protected by special fireproof uniforms and padding. Their gear was woven of the mysterious substance they called hajar al- fatila, asbestos, the fibrous rock impervious to flame discovered by Muslims in Tajikistan in the 800s. The invention of the fireproof uniforms led to a novel form of Islamic psychological warfare that brought Alexander’s legendary naphtha- filled iron horses and riders to life. In an innovation worthy of today’s Hollywood stuntmen on fire, Muslim riders and horses were covered with asbestos padding and then doused in naphtha and set afire to terrify the enemy cavalry. Spectacular “burning men on horseback” feats are now featured in the World Nomad Games.

Page 305

Remarkable archaeological evidence of the destruction of Cairo in AD 1167– 68 by its own chemical weapons came to light in 1916. French and Egyptian archaeologists uncovered troves of the ceramic, fist- sized naphtha pots in the ruins of the old city. The grenades were of astonishing sophistication: they had been filled with volatile jellied naphtha (similar to napalm) and a crude gunpowder made of nitrates and sulfur.

Page 306

Naphtha bombs were especially difficult to aim and control, as the Umayyad Muslims learned during their siege of the holy city of Mecca in AD 683. In that battle, as they catapulted naphtha projectiles into the city, they tried to avoid the Ka’aba, the sanctuary of the Black Stone worshipped by Muslims. But the covering was struck and caught fire. The intense heat split the sacred Black Stone of Mecca into three pieces.

Page 307

Greek Fire’s origin is surrounded by fable. According to one legend, an angel whispered the formula to Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor, in AD 300. But Greek Fire did not suddenly burst on the scene out of nowhere. Centuries of observations, insights, discoveries, and experiments with combustible sulfur, quicklime, and naphtha, under various names (liquid fire, maltha, pyr automaton or automatic, artificial, or prepared fire, sea fire, wild fire, flying fire, oleum incendiarium, fierce fire oil, water- white, naft abyad, and so on), ultimately led to the invention of the naval incendiary that was dubbed “Greek Fire” by the Crusaders in the 1200s. Naphtha had been a tool of siege craft since Assyrian times. With mangonels and naffatun, naphtha weaponry reached its peak performance in land engagements, but inventions in Syria and Constantinople (modern Istanbul) perfected naphtha armaments for battles at sea. According to what survives in Islamic and Byzantine chronicles, it was the development of effective distillation and siphon pump technologies that enabled a flammable petroleum mixture to be stored and then propelled under pressure from boats, thus introducing the deployment of “something new, dreadful, launchable, and flammable,” in the words of the historian Alfred Crosby.

Page 308

Basically, Greek Fire was a weapon system for blasting ships in naval engagements. The complex weapon consisted of a refined chemical ammunition and an ingenious delivery system of cauldrons, siphons, tubes, and pumps.

Page 308

The main ingredient of the ammunition was naphtha, originally used as an incendiary poured over or hurled in pots at besiegers in Mesopotamia, and later in firebombs catapulted by mangonels invented in Damascus and used by Muslims to bombard fortifications, as described above. The Byzantines had used small siphons and syringes to squirt petroleum incendiaries as early as AD 513. But the new technology of pumping pressurized, distilled naphtha through bronze tubes at ships was achieved through brilliant chemical engineering by a Greek “petroleum consultant” named Kallinikos. Fleeing the Muslim occupation of Syria, Kallinikos sought refuge in Constantinople in about AD 668 and taught the Byzantines his invention. Greek Fire was first used to break the Muslim navy’s seven- year siege of Constantinople begun in AD 673, and the weapon saved the city again from the Muslim fleet in AD 718.77 The exact details of Kallinikos’s formula and delivery system are lost to modern science, and historians and chemists who try to reconstruct how the device worked disagree on the exact composition of the naphtha ammunition and the system design.

Page 309

The precise formula of the ammunition matters less than the amazing delivery system, which was capable of shooting liquid fire from swiveling nozzles mounted on small boats without the benefit of modern thermometers, safety valves, and pressure gauges (see plate 10). 78

Page 309

Partington, a historian of Greek Fire, compared the ancient reaction of horror to the modern dread of the atomic bomb. In 1139, the Second Lateran Council, following ideas of chivalry and honorable war, decreed that Greek Fire or similar burning weapons were “too murderous” to be used in Europe. The council’s decision was respected for some centuries, but the issue may have been moot since the formula for Greek Fire seems to have already been lost by then. The recipe was rekindled in a treatise published for Napoleon, with the chilling title Weapons for the Burning of Armies.

Afterword. The Many-Headed Hydra

Page 322

Take, for instance, the anthrax, bubonic plague, smallpox, and other supergerms created, tested, and dumped at the world’s largest bioweapons laboratory, established in 1948 on Vozrozhdeniya Island in the Aral Sea. The lab was one of eighteen weaponized pathogen Biopreparat centers scattered around the former Soviet Union. At the time, the Aral Sea was the fourth largest lake in the world. But by 2014, the Aral Sea had almost completely dried up and is now called the Aralkum Desert. The pathogenic weapons thought to be confined to the island have poisoned the air and water of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Of the environmental disasters in the region that have been made public, the sudden death of five hundred thousand steppe antelopes in just one hour in 1988 is striking, and the Aral Smallpox Incident of 1971, affecting humans in the region, came to public notice only in 2002. That same year, ten of Vozrozhdeniya’s anthrax dumps were reportedly decontaminated. But animals and humans could still contract and spread the hypervirulent plagues buried in what was once an island.

Page 324

A geologic solution on a massive scale was proposed in 2002, when plans were developed to bury a huge cache of radioactive material deep under Yucca Mountain in Nevada, in the desert about a hundred miles northwest of Las Vegas. The seventy thousand tons of nuclear material (requiring forty miles of tunnels) are expected to remain dangerously radioactive for one hundred thousand years. The idea was to make the toxic sepulcher impregnable for at least ten thousand years, until the year AD 12,000.

Albanese: Telling it straight by Karen Middleton

Albanese: Telling it straight by Karen Middleton is a fascinating read. It’s a biography of a Prime Minister written well before he was Prime Minister. It came out in 2017, before Albanese had even become opposition leader, when he was still a senior figure in the ALP left faction, but not yet on a clear trajectory to leading the country. It tells Albanese’s story from a young age, through student politics and an extended period spent in the federal Parliament; and of someone who is a master politician, a veteran of innumerable battles.

One fascinating part of the historical story is the role that Albanese played as an advisor to senior Labor left figures who were very publicly critical of the Labor-right dominated government of the time, with very public critique by Cabinet ministers of the Keating budgets – see for example some of the quotes below.

One aspect that fell a little short for me, is that Middleton’s biography is perhaps a little uncritical on the author’s own role or perspective as biographer, in the way that Margaret Simmons managed to do in her biography of Wong. It felt notable that despite playing a role in the local council machinations that featured in ‘Rats in the Ranks‘, Albanese was wise enough, even at that early stage, to stay entirely off screen when playing a party role. For all that it’s an in-depth, and well researched piece on Australia’s current Prime Minister. For anyone interested in contemporary Australian politics, it’s well worth a read.

CHAPTER 3: Family

Page 42

Police Sergeant Roy Munro told the court that he’d gone to the printing shop in William Street one March afternoon after a tip- off that George Ellery was printing horse cards and a search revealed them. Sergeant Munro said the printer denied responsibility but couldn’t explain how they got there.

CHAPTER 5: Housos and Reffos

Page 89

It all activated a sense in Anthony Albanese that life wasn’t designed to be easy, you had to fight for what you believed was right and nothing much ever came for free.

CHAPTER 8: Liberty Street

Page 140

In fact, he refused to join any part of the Left for quite a while. Asked why, he laughs as he answers for his teenage self: ‘Because I’d met them.’

CHAPTER 9: Father Figure

Page 146

It was also his first time on a plane. Upon arrival in the national capital, he was whisked off to the white wedding cake of a Parliament– the original one– with its view across the lake to the War Memorial, the line of sight arranged by Walter Burley Griffin’s prize- winning design. Anthony was dazzled by the grandness and importance of it all and struggled to focus on the job he’d been brought there to do.

Page 154

he had come to the conclusion that you had to fight faction with faction.

CHAPTER 11: To the Barricades

Page 193

Those were days when the Labor Left would be at least as outspoken in attacking the Hawke Government’s policy moves as the conservative Opposition parties. ‘After Keating brought down a budget, it was Bruce Childs who would hold a press conference and condemn the Government,’ Mal says. Bruce Childs and fellow Left convenor Gerry Hand would blast their own government’s budget measures, using briefing notes prepared for them by young Left staffers, including a certain research officer working for Tom Uren. The advisers would begin combing through the budget as soon as it was handed down. ‘We would stay up all night– literally all night,’ Anthony says. Young Labor would also launch critiques of its own government, if with slightly more youthful brashness. ‘Much of Young Labor’s activity in that time was condemning the Hawke Government for horror budgets cutting government spending and welfare and the introduction of HECS,’ Mal says, of the then- controversial Higher Education Contribution Scheme. At the ALP’s NSW state conference ahead of Paul Keating’s 1985 tax summit, Young Labor delegates seated in the galleries above the Sydney Town Hall stage listened carefully as the Treasurer explained his reasoning for proposing to pay for income tax cuts with a consumption tax– option C among a list of tax options the Government was considering. As soon as he uttered the words ‘option C’, the air in the hall filled with fluttering paper money, collected from personal Monopoly sets and tossed down by protesting activists above. ‘That was one of the actions that didn’t endear Young Labor to the party leadership,’ Anthony says, chuckling.

Page 194

The Left and Centre- Left factions joined forces against the policy and in a significant defeat for the Prime Minister, it was overturned at the July conference which Anthony attended after his faction’s successful manoeuvring back at Easter. The Right- led Federal Government was regularly frustrated that the Left was not more supportive of its own party in government. The Left was unrepentant. In fact, after policy victories like the one at the 1986 conference, it was jubilant.

Page 197

Anthony became a lot like that. An emotional young man, prone to tears but taught that it wasn’t anything shameful, he also learned how to ruthlessly avenge a perceived political wrong. He was a bloke with a soft side, climbing the ranks of the so- called hard left.

CHAPTER 12: The Long Game

Page 213

‘I had never held a position on the machinery committee, credentials committee, disputes committee– nothing,’ he says. ‘Unless you were part of the inner circle of the group around Martin Ferguson then you just didn’t get a look in.’ Decades later, as he marked his 20th anniversary in Federal Parliament, some of his critics within the Labor Party would make the same complaint privately about him.

CHAPTER 13: On the Numbers

Page 225

He made good use of both the files and the photocopier, copying the entire membership list. ‘I mean, why shouldn’t I? I was the elected Assistant Secretary and I had a right to know who the membership was.’ A couple of factional allies then typed up the data offsite so the Left could mail out direct to the whole membership, just as the Right did. But he needed to ensure his right- wing colleagues didn’t find out. ‘I had to keep complaining about not getting access to anything,’ he says. ‘Long after I had a key.’

Page 226

Johno furnished his right- wing colleagues with a warning that they weren’t to cooperate with the lone lefty. ‘I said, “Oh, I haven’t even got a seconder,”’ Anthony recalls. ‘And Johno said, “If anyone seconds any of his motions, you’re expelled.”’ It was a joke– more or less. The first item of business was endorsing the minutes of the previous meeting. The defiant young left- winger was fast. ‘Moved!’ It took a moment for the rest to realise they’d been snookered. No seconder, no proceedings. They had to laugh. Score one to the young smart- arse.

Page 228

In 2016, George declines to speak about Anthony. Once a close associate– George was one of the few federal colleagues who attended Anthony’s wedding in 2000– a decade and a half on, the two are no longer friends.

Page 229

‘Political power is defined by its use.’

Page 231

The Warren branch’s reputation was that its written membership lists did not always match the identities of actual human beings who had joined of their own volition.

Page 231

‘I had a view that if they brought 100, I’d bring 150,’ Anthony says. ‘It was exhausting.’

CHAPTER 14: Moving On Up

Page 250

The concurrent but different outcomes in Ashfield and Liverpool demonstrated a core principle of NSW Labor politics: that in the hierarchy of protecting interests, both Left and Right and the sub- groups within will identify their primary interests and preserve and advance them first. Circumstances determine the best way to do that. Whether those interests always align with the party’s broader interests or even the national interest is sometimes a matter of debate.

CHAPTER 15: Making a Name

Page 267

Rats in the Ranks would spend 14 months in pre- production and its release would come three months after Anthony’s election to Federal Parliament. Soon after the film’s release, Larry Hand told Fairfax journalist Ben Hills that it was naïve for people to suggest elected representatives should pay more attention to policy- making than politicking.

Page 273

The No Aircraft Noise Party launched candidates in the 1995 local government elections, securing council seats in Marrickville and the mayoralties of Leichhardt, Hunters Hill and Ashfield. At the state election the same year, they won the seat of Ashfield. Some of the party’s prominent members would go on to join the Greens. Separately and together, these two political forces would become Anthony’s nemeses for the next two decades, challenging him repeatedly to fight for his electoral life.

Page 278

Out of nowhere, the ex- Labor deputy mayor of Leichhardt and chief ‘rat’ Kate Butler, whose Machiavellian moves before the mayoral elections had been captured on film in Rats in the Ranks, had decided to run as an ‘independent’. She’d had no burning desire to be mayor but suddenly wanted to sit in Federal Parliament. The colour of her campaign material was remarkably similar to that of No Aircraft Noise. The chances of some of NAN’s would- be voters becoming confused and accidentally voting for her instead seemed fairly high. Anthony denies any involvement in Kate Butler’s candidacy. ‘It was her idea, clearly,’ he says. ‘She decided to run. Spontaneously.’

CHAPTER 17: Fact and Faction

Page 313

By 1998, Kim felt the Left’s transition from internal critic to constructively engaged participant was all but complete. ‘In Hawke’s day they were self- consciously an internal opposition,’ he says, naming former Deputy Prime Minister Brian Howe as the exception. ‘By 1996 they were committed to winning elections. You wanted to use such commitment.’

CHAPTER 20: At Last

Page 385

Anthony took seriously the role of using Parliament to undermine the Government politically. He kept a board in his office that he would mark after every Question Time. ‘Who won the day,’ he says of the board’s purpose, insisting the Opposition was increasingly winning, tactically. Why bother marking it up? ‘A discipline thing.’

CHAPTER 21: Going Back

Page 413

Anthony says he wasn’t part of the discussions which led to the subsequent decision to shelve the emissions trading scheme for at least three years– a move which caused a sharp downturn in Kevin’s public- approval rating.

Page 419

As the federal budget loomed on the second Tuesday in May, Kevin was working on a strategy for making the decision public with minimal political damage, when a leak to The Sydney Morning Herald’s correspondent Lenore Taylor pre- empted him spectacularly, splashed across the front page on 27 April. Kevin Rudd has said since that he believed it was a deliberate move on the part of persons unnamed to destabilise his leadership.

Page 422

Kevin’s door was closed and his status was ‘do not disturb’. Anthony ignored the protests of staff and burst through the door. Inside were Kevin, Julia and John Faulkner engaged in this surreal negotiation. They didn’t have a television on. They had no idea of the meltdown going on outside. ‘He [Anthony] was agitated, personally agitated,’ Julia Gillard recalls of his entry into the office where she and Kevin were meeting. ‘And because we were in this bubble of stillness not with Sky TV or anything else on– the fact that it was all breaking minute by minute on the news– neither of us knew that. So Albo was personally agitated and the content of what he had to relay… was quite startling to us as well.’

Page 423

When the meeting between Kevin, Julia and John Faulkner eventually ended and Julia left, Kevin told Anthony that they had reached agreement about a succession and there would be no challenge. So that’s what he told others.

Page 428

There were times when staying in government was a day- today and even hour- by- hour proposition. ‘There were days when we didn’t know whether we’d make it to the other end of the day,’ says then government whip, Joel Fitzgibbon. ‘There were votes we didn’t know whether we’d win, literally when we walked into the chamber or even when we sat in the chamber waiting for the bells to stop ringing and waiting for everyone to come in. So it was an extraordinary effort on his part.’

Page 441

Some in a position to know variously describe his role as ranging from ‘pretty ignorant’ to ‘massive’, but never overt. He never attended any of the meetings of those described subsequently as ‘the cardinals’, but his critics dubbed him the ‘silent cardinal’, alleging his private advice to Kevin was extremely influential. There are those in the Labor Party who will never forgive him for favouring– and, they allege, therefore facilitating– Kevin’s return. Some did not realise at the time just how close to the former Prime Minister Anthony was and feel like they were betrayed. Some of those who strenuously opposed Kevin’s return felt that closeness clouded his judgement.

Page 443

Julia believes Anthony had conflicted loyalties. ‘I don’t have any sense of umbrage about it,’ she says. ‘It got to a stage where it was really not possible for him to be completely trans parent and truthful with me, as well as playing the role for Kevin that Kevin wanted him to play.’ Some others don’t accept Anthony’s version of events, believing he was fully engaged with Kevin and fully aware of his plans. He denies that.

Victoria: The Woman who Made the Modern World by Julia Baird

Victoria is an interesting piece. It’s written by journalist Julia Baird (whose sibling, incidentally, is Mike Baird, former premier of NSW – which perhaps explains why she was able to get the governor-general of Australia to advocate on her behalf for archive access). While the majority of Baird’s career and writing is as a journalist, she has a PhD in history, and it shows – this is a substantial biography. Having said that, it’s not too heavy – Baird does an excellent job of making it readable, moving through an entire lifetime at a pace that both examines the key issues, but does so without getting bogged down in detail. It’s an impressive book.

Baird deliberately sets out to write a piece about Victoria the person – as part of that, she examines her relationships, her growth and change, her challenges (being both monarch and a woman in a deeply patriarchal society, among others), her relationships (with both John Brown and Abdul Karim, amongst others), and her impacts and legacy. But it’s less a piece about Victorian politics and power – which is understandable, and out of scope given what Baird is interested in.

As someone who wanted to read more about Victorian politics, this is an interesting and accessible entrypoint, and if you’re interested in the history (but don’t yet have your PhD in it), this is well worth a read.

Quotes

THE TEENAGE QUEEN

CHAPTER 7  The Coronation: “A Dream out of The Arabian Nights” > Page 124

Down below in Hyde Park, actors impersonating the queen and her entourage tried to enact the scene exactly the same way at the same time, as the beer- swilling audience shouted encouragement.

CHAPTER 8  Learning to Rule > Page 131

Lord Melbourne was an unlikely leader, made prime minister for the second time two years before Victoria became queen largely because he was the least offensive candidate. He was not passionate about politics and couldn’t muster sufficient energy to care about social ills, let alone combat them. At times, when reformers visited him to put the case for improvements such as narrowing the death penalty or introducing compulsory education, he would pull feathers out of a pillow, toss them up in the air, and blow them across the top of his desk as they spoke.

CHAPTER 8  Learning to Rule > Page 132

Just a few years into their marriage, William Lamb began receiving anonymous letters telling him of his wife’s adultery. Caroline’s best- known lover was the glamorous poet Lord Byron, who was being feted by London after the publication of his adventures began in 1812, in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Caroline read it immediately and, after insisting they meet, declared him to be, in a phrase that has been immortalized since, “mad, bad and dangerous to know.”

CHAPTER 8  Learning to Rule > Page 132

They wrote reams of love letters— to one, lying in a folder in the archives of the British Library, Caroline attached a bloodied clipping of her own pubic hair— and attempted to elope (some still believe they were married in secret).

CHAPTER 8  Learning to Rule > Page 135

The irony was that Melbourne was a Whig. Previous Whig PMs, most notably Lord Grey between 1830 and 1834, had enacted welfare laws, ended slavery, and expanded the vote. But Melbourne even once told Archbishop Whately that he would have done “nothing at all” about slavery.

CHAPTER 9  A Scandal in the Palace > Page 145

The fact that it had been considered necessary to establish, crudely, that Lady Flora was still a virgin, in a virgin queen’s court, was a gross violation of her dignity and honor. When Lady Flora’s brother, the Marquess of Hastings, heard, he rushed to London to determine who was to blame, to insist on reparation, and to defend his family’s honor. He saw Lord Melbourne and baldly told Victoria she had received bad advice and needed to find out who the originator of the slander was so that they might be brought to punishment.

CHAPTER 9  A Scandal in the Palace > Page 146

Lady Flora’s mother decided to appeal to the queen. On March 7, the Dowager Marchioness of Hastings wrote a strong letter to Victoria— through the Duchess of Kent— seeking her help. She asked her to refute “the slanders” with an act designed to show her indignation, and ended: “To a female sovereign especially, women of all ranks in Britain look with confidence for protection and (notwithstanding the difference of their rank) for sympathy.” But Victoria had no sympathy; she decided the letter was foolish and, provocatively, sent it back to her mother without a word. This error of judgment would incite the beginning of a relentless, vitriolic, and public campaign by the Hastings family to expose the royal court and demand accountability. The dowager, who was unwell and mortified by what had happened to her daughter, then wrote to Lord Melbourne, asking for the removal of Dr. Clark. Melbourne responded that her demand was “so unprecedented and objectionable” that he would not reply to it, only deigning to confirm receipt of her letter. Next the Hastings family went to the press. On March 24, Lady Flora’s uncle sent the Examiner an account of the affair based on a letter his niece had sent him; it was published in full. Lady Flora blamed the Whig ladies- in- waiting, as well as “a certain foreign lady, whose hatred to the Duchess is no secret.”

CHAPTER 9  A Scandal in the Palace > Page 148

The problem was also political: the queen and her prime minister were Whigs and Lady Flora was a Tory. The paranoia of the Tories was fueled, and many Whigs believed this scandal was used as political leverage to cast aspersions on an unmarried queen and her ladies, as well as on the prime minister.

CHAPTER 9  A Scandal in the Palace > Page 148

Three days earlier, on May 6, Lord Melbourne’s political career had been dealt a fatal blow; his government won by only five votes a vote on a bill that would have enforced antislavery legislation in the Jamaican sugar trade. (The slenderness of the majority was enough to undermine his leadership.) Since then, it had been clear that Peel was the obvious choice for PM— and that he did not have the full support of his queen. No, she said to him, she would not remove any of the Whig ladies in her bedchamber simply because he was now prime minister.

CHAPTER 9  A Scandal in the Palace > Page 151

She refused Peel’s suggestion of changing only the senior ladies— the Mistress of the Robes had precedence over the other ladies— arguing that this had never been done before. Could it be right that her household attendants be plucked from her grasp simply because the government had changed? Her ladies were hardly politicians. (She repeatedly said that this had not happened to a queen before; Peel insisted it was different because she was queen regnant. He was right— there had been no woman as sovereign since 1714— but no queen has been asked to do the same since.)

CHAPTER 9  A Scandal in the Palace > Page 152

Peel then bluntly told Victoria that if she did not agree to remove some of her ladies, who were married to some of his most vehement enemies, he could not form a government. Victoria, pleased by the prospect of Lord Melbourne returning, told Peel her mind was made up and she would write to him in a few hours or in the morning to give him her final decision.

CHAPTER 9  A Scandal in the Palace > Page 153

The campaign by the Hastings family had been successful; public sympathy was clearly with Lady Flora, who kept appearing in public so that people would not think she was pregnant. The distressed Duchess of Kent was convinced that Lady Flora was going to die, but even in June, Victoria was still dismissing Lady Flora’s condition as a “bilious attack.”

CHAPTER 9  A Scandal in the Palace > Page 155

Lady Flora made her last wish as her weeping family surrounded her: that a postmortem be conducted on her body that would finally, thoroughly prove her innocence. There were still rumblings in the court about a stillborn child. Even on the morning of her death, a protester wrote on a placard that Lady Flora died of a botched abortion. But the autopsy report, which Victoria waited anxiously for all day, showed Lady Flora had a grossly enlarged liver, which was pressing on her stomach. It also reported that “the uterus and its appendages presented the usual appearances of the healthy virgin state.” Even in death, her chastity was probed. Public fury was revived by the news; Victoria and Melbourne were hissed at in public, hats stayed on when the queen’s carriage wheeled past in a gesture of disrespect, and voices stayed quiet when the royal toast was given amid whispers of murder.

CHAPTER 9  A Scandal in the Palace > Page 155

The queen had not been thinking of her subjects. For the first time in her life, she had been part of a clique, and it was a powerful one; and the pull of scandal, revenge, and bitchy gossip had been too great.

ALBERT: THE MAN SOME CALLED KING

CHAPTER 10  Virago in Love > Page 178

After the pro- Catholic King James II was hurled off the throne in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and replaced by the Protestant William III, an act was passed that prohibited any English monarch from being a Catholic, or marrying one. This is still the case today. Albert was a strict Lutheran with a strong personal faith, but Catholics dominated his family. Suspicions were raised when Victoria’s address to the Privy Council did not have the word “Protestant” in it. (Foolishly, given the intense anti- Catholicism in the country and Victoria’s crucial position as Defender of the Faith, Melbourne had advised taking it out.) After the Duke of Wellington raised the matter in Parliament, and the Tory papers made snide remarks, it was reinserted in the official version.

CHAPTER 10  Virago in Love > Page 183

She must not forget to tell Albert, she thought, as the seamstress pinned ivory folds to her now- slender torso, that he should not shave for the wedding. If there was one thing she would insist upon, it would be that he keep the thin mustache he had when she met him. She was so impressed by it that she told Lord Melbourne that all the cavalry should be made to grow one, which Melbourne “saw no objection to.” She wanted it to be part of an official uniform. It is a curious image: rows of uniformed men on horseback, all wearing identical narrow mustaches because of an infatuated young queen.

CHAPTER 11  The Bride: “I Never, Never Spent Such an Evening” > Page 189

Victoria had chosen to wear white mostly because it was the perfect color to highlight the delicate lace— it was not then a conventional color for brides. Before bleaching techniques were mastered, white was a rare and expensive color, more a symbol of wealth than purity. Victoria was not the first to wear it, but she made it popular by example.

CHAPTER 11  The Bride: “I Never, Never Spent Such an Evening” > Page 190

Victoria had a clutch of farcical, fixated stalkers, some of whom grew quite distressed by the upcoming nuptials. Several were committed. One devoted man stationed himself outside the gates of Kensington Palace and followed her carriage when it appeared each day. Another, Ned Hayward, sent a torrent of letters to the Home Office desperately seeking to propose to Victoria. He finally tried to stop her horse to hand a letter to her himself, but was arrested. Another gentleman, believing that he was the rightful king and that Victoria would be an excellent housekeeper, climbed over the Windsor Castle gate and declared, “I demand entrance into the castle as the king of England.”

CHAPTER 13  The Palace Intruders > Page 228

They found an archaic and extraordinarily inefficient structure, with responsibility split between the Lord Chamberlain and Lord Steward, with some input from the Master of the Horse and the Office of Woods and Works. Lamps in Buckingham Palace were provided by the Lord Chamberlain’s office, cleaned by the Lord Steward’s office, and, mostly, lit by the Master of the Horse. The windows were always dirty, as the inside and outside were never cleaned at the same time: while the Lord Chamberlain’s office was responsible for the interior of the palace, the Office of Woods and Works was in charge of the exterior. The Lord Steward’s staff prepared and laid the fires, while the Lord Chamberlain’s lit them. Broken windows and cupboards were unattended to for months because before fixing them, the chief cook had to prepare and sign a requisition, which then needed to be signed by the Master of the Household, authorized by the Lord Chamberlain’s Office, and given to the Clerk of the Works, under the Office of Woods and Forests.

CHAPTER 13  The Palace Intruders > Page 229

Albert identified a series of scams and perks that servants had abused for decades: people outside the palace often forged the signatures of the queen’s ladies when ordering carriages, charging the cost of their ride to the royal household; fresh candles were put out each day while the footmen pocketed the previous day’s, many unlit; and expensive staff dinners were offered to those with only tenuous connections to the royal court. Albert slashed salaries, sometimes by as much as two- thirds, to account for the fact that many servants worked in the palace for only half the year.

CHAPTER 13  The Palace Intruders > Page 232

In June, when Melbourne’s government lost a debate on foreign sugar duties, Peel forced a vote of no confidence and Parliament was dissolved.

CHAPTER 13  The Palace Intruders > Page 233

Victoria overtly displayed her bias by visiting influential Whig houses during the elections, but to little effect. The Conservatives returned with a large majority on August 19. For the first time, the queen did not go to the opening session.

CHAPTER 13  The Palace Intruders > Page 237

Baroness Lehzen and Albert clashed repeatedly as she tried to protect her territory and he tried to expand his. Stockmar told Lord Granville that Lehzen was “foolish” to contest Albert’s influence, and not to recognize that her position was different now that Victoria was married. Even Leopold, once a friend, described her as a “great future danger” for Albert.

CHAPTER 13  The Palace Intruders > Page 238

When she neglected to tell Albert that Captain Childers, one of the queen’s courtiers, had fallen in love with the queen, he accused her of incompetence. Lehzen insisted she had told the Lord Chamberlain instead of Albert only because Albert had been so rude to her that it was impossible to talk to him. When a woman like Lehzen threatened Albert’s authority, he became unusually nasty. She was generally viewed, as Albert’s biographer Roger Fulford put it, as a “spinster gremlin.” Albert referred to her as die Blaste— the hag— in letters to his brother. When she got jaundice that Christmas, he called her “the Yellow lady.” Albert blamed her for Victoria’s shortcomings: what he believed to be a substandard education— even though she was a better linguist, fluent in English, German, and French, with some Italian— and her anxiety about conversations with scholars and politicians much older than she. He was particularly critical of Victoria in the months before Lehzen left, but once she was gone, Albert described her to his brother as “the most perfect companion a man could wish for.”

CHAPTER 13  The Palace Intruders > Page 241

Albert was infuriated and appalled by such a public scene. Muttering “I must have patience,” he returned to his rooms and refused to talk to Victoria for days. Stockmar acted as an intermediary. Victoria wrote to him that same day, immediately contrite, saying the argument was like a bad dream.

CHAPTER 14  King to All Intents: “Like a Vulture into His Prey” > Page 250

It was approaching 4: 30 P.M. Police had lined the street since one o’clock, holding back the dense crowd, who noisily cheered any member of Parliament who opposed the Corn Laws. Inside Westminster, Peel walked into the House of Commons, bowed gracefully to the Speaker, and walked to the center of the Treasury Bench.

CHAPTER 14  King to All Intents: “Like a Vulture into His Prey” > Page 250

A hush descended when Prince Albert entered the Strangers’ Gallery. Lord George Bentinck, a Tory with a passion for horse racing, rolled his eyes: Did this German prince really think he could bring royal favor into the debate? First it was the queen with Melbourne; now, Albert with Peel? It seemed highly irregular, and wrong, to have this interference from the monarchy.

CHAPTER 14  King to All Intents: “Like a Vulture into His Prey” > Page 252

(Repeal was not, it should be noted, an individual achievement. The Anti– Corn Law League, which came largely from the middle class, was a polished, well- funded, and unified political group. The group’s leaders were clever orators and effective in placing aristocrats on the defensive by castigating them as wealthy landowners, inert politicians, and morally bankrupt leaders. Middle- class opinion was marshaled and aristocrats were criticized in a way they never had been before; it was a significant political shift.)

CHAPTER 14  King to All Intents: “Like a Vulture into His Prey” > Page 254

In the 1840s, political attention was turning, in general, to the way the working class lived and worked. In May 1842, the first parliamentary report on the employment of children was accompanied by shocking illustrations of six- year- olds chained to coal carts. According to the report, the youngest children employed were responsible for ventilating the mines, keeping the trapdoors shut until a coal car needed to pass through, then opening and shutting them correctly. These children, called trappers, were aged between four and ten. The Examiner reported that what they hated most was the dark in the dungeons: they used to beg colliers for candle stubs. Women and older children were put to use drawing the coal carts along passageways too narrow for grown men. They crawled along the ground like animals through puddles and piles of rocks. The girls sometimes worked stripped to the waist like the boys, men often went naked in the intense heat, and rape and sexual assault were common in the mines and pits. There were concerns that women who worked there would no longer be suitable for marriage.

CHAPTER 14  King to All Intents: “Like a Vulture into His Prey” > Page 257

While Albert labored over plans to lift people out of poverty and to improve the housing of the working class, Victoria needed more visual, immediate, individual prompting.

CHAPTER 14  King to All Intents: “Like a Vulture into His Prey” > Page 262

When the couple traveled on a train for the first time, a short trip from Slough to London in 1843, Albert suffered motion sickness and was unsettled by the speed of forty- four miles per hour. Victoria loved it: “I find the motion so very easy, far more so than a carriage and cannot understand how any one can suffer from it.”

CHAPTER 14  King to All Intents: “Like a Vulture into His Prey” > Page 263

It would be wrong to assume, as some have, that Albert’s efforts and opinions obliterated Victoria’s. When it came to matters such as religious tolerance, for example, Victoria had firm opinions from an early age. When Robert Peel wanted to improve tertiary education for Catholics and provide more funding for the Catholic Maynooth training college for priests, Victoria supported him despite the surge of protest in England. She was remarkably progressive about religion: “I blush for the form of religion we profess, that it should be so void of all right feeling, & so wanting in Charity. Are we to drive these 700,000 Roman Catholics, who are badly educated, to desperation & violence?” Victoria praised Peel for standing up against a “tide of bigotry, and blind fanaticism.”

CHAPTER 14  King to All Intents: “Like a Vulture into His Prey” > Page 264

Peel’s Corn Law triumph cost him his career. On June 25, the prime minister lost an important vote in the House of Commons, partly because the protectionists had combined to vote against him. He resigned and retired, and the Whigs came to power once more. The queen, who had grown fond of Peel, told him she and the prince considered him “a kind and true friend.”

CHAPTER 16  Annus Mirabilis: The Revolutionary Year > Page 285

The royal family retreated to the woods of Osborne, where they awaited news from London with some trepidation.

CHAPTER 16  Annus Mirabilis: The Revolutionary Year > Page 285

The hero- worshipped, elderly Duke of Wellington was placed in charge of the army once again, for the last time. The government seized control of the telegraphic system to ensure that revolutionaries could not broadcast false information, and a Removal of Aliens Act was rushed through Parliament to give the home secretary powers to remove any foreign citizen against whom allegations had been made. The Chartists boasted of a petition bearing five million names, so enormous it was rolled up like a large bundle of hay and pulled by four horses. They hoped for revolution, but at the very least they planned to wring some compromises out of Parliament. On April 10, under a bright blue sky, the Chartists trekked to four meeting points around London, holding banners that read LIVE AND LET LIVE. A phalanx of four thousand Metropolitan Police surrounded Kennington Common— formerly used for public executions and cricket matches— and a further eight thousand regular troops were hidden at various points around London. Four batteries of artillery were installed along bridges, and armed ships were anchored at key points along the Thames. Armed men lined the Mall to prevent access to Buckingham Palace. Prime Minister Lord John Russell lined his windows with parliamentary papers, and his pregnant wife accompanied him to the safety of Downing Street for fear the sound of cannons firing would trigger early labor. In the empty government buildings, which were barricaded with boxes of papers, men with guns hid behind pillars and curtains, peering out every few minutes to see if the rioting had begun. The troops were told to fire if necessary.

CHAPTER 16  Annus Mirabilis: The Revolutionary Year > Page 286

He could have ordered the Chartists to attack, in the hope that troops and police would crumble and defect as they had in many European countries, but his instincts told him this was futile. On the day of the protest, his fears were confirmed: only twenty- three thousand turned up, just one- tenth the number hoped for.

CHAPTER 16  Annus Mirabilis: The Revolutionary Year > Page 289

The foreign secretary at this time was Lord Palmerston, a man who had an unshakable belief in his own diplomatic skills. Known as Lord Cupid because he had charmed women as a bachelor, in 1848 he was still a good- looking fifty- four- year- old, now married to Lord Melbourne’s clever sister Emily. The queen had found him pleasant when she was a teenager, but now she and Albert were suspicious of him. One winter’s night in 1839, he was found in the bedrooms of one of the ladies- in- waiting, allegedly forcing himself upon her before screams rang through the corridors and he fled the room. Palmerston insisted he was merely lost; in truth, he was simply letting himself into a room he thought was occupied by Lady Emily Lamb, to whom he was then engaged. Albert remained uncertain, though, and used the story to argue against Palmerston a decade later.

CHAPTER 16  Annus Mirabilis: The Revolutionary Year > Page 290

On August 20, 1848, Victoria wrote a reprimanding letter to Palmerston after discovering that a “private letter” addressed to her had been “cut open at the Foreign Office.” She reproached him again a few days later for failing to update her on the feud between Austria and Sardinia. A series of high- minded, dictatorial dispatches by Palmerston to Spain and then Portugal— which ignored the advice of the prime minister, the man who was his superior— also infuriated the queen. Palmerston was eager to help pry Italy away from Austria and make Venice a republic, which Victoria thought abominable: Why help these foreign rebels when they were wrestling with their own rebels in Ireland?

CHAPTER 16  Annus Mirabilis: The Revolutionary Year > Page 293

For Victoria, hierarchy was divine: men were the heads of their households, and the sovereign was the head of state. She believed that peace in both her marriage and her country required obedience— even though her own was rarely forthcoming. A strong strain of liberal sympathy had emerged in Europe, but for now, her country was safe, and little had changed.

CHAPTER 16  Annus Mirabilis: The Revolutionary Year > Page 293

In Ireland, the 1848 potato crop had again failed and people on the streets of Dublin were crying for food. The British Parliament was so nervous about the possibility of rebellion that they suspended habeas corpus so that people in Ireland could be arrested without a warrant. The subterranean anger in the impoverished country threatened only to get worse. In 1848, made nervous by events in Europe, Victoria was of the firm belief that any restive Irish should be “crushed” and taught a lesson. Even then, her views were considered strident.

CHAPTER 16  Annus Mirabilis: The Revolutionary Year > Page 295

He was known for his dislike of the aristocracy, and he was clear about the purpose of his work: “The unequal division of property, and the dangers of poverty and envy arising therefrom, is the principal evil. Means must necessarily be found, not for diminishing riches (as the communists wish), but to make facilities for the poor. But there is the rub.” Such remarks show that Albert was grappling with the questions raised by the European revolutions— and hoping to stem local unrest by addressing them.

CHAPTER 16  Annus Mirabilis: The Revolutionary Year > Page 297

Britain avoided revolution for several reasons: a loyal middle class who loved their queen, a government that applied force ruthlessly when needed, and canny politicians like Peel who introduced laws lowering the cost of food. Plus, by transporting the most radical dissenters to far- off colonies such as Australia, the government was able to siphon off some of the greatest political leaders of the Irish independence and Chartist movements.

CHAPTER 17  What Albert Did: The Great Exhibition of 1851 > Page 303

Henry Cole, an energetic civil servant famed for making the first Christmas card and helping to launch the penny post.

CHAPTER 18  The Crimea: “This Unsatisfactory War” > Page 316

The Crimean War was, in many respects, an unnecessary one. “God forbid!” Victoria had cried, when she first mentioned the possibility of conflict. Few could fathom why Britain should rush to defend Turkey against Russia— they had little in common with either country and there had been peace in Europe for forty years, since the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. But the Russian czar Nicholas I— a despot who ruled over a backward country populated by more than twenty- two million serfs— was now eyeing the weakening Ottoman Empire to his south. Over the past few decades, the Ottoman— or Turkish— Empire had stagnated economically, had been slow to modernize, and had endured a series of ineffective governments that too readily capitulated to the demands of European countries. Czar Nicholas called it the “sick man of Europe” and wanted to carve it up and distribute the spoils. It was a geographically crucial region: Constantinople linked Europe with Asia by land and sea; it was there that the Black Sea met the Mediterranean. If Russia were to edge south into Turkey, it could potentially block crucial chains of supply— especially Britain’s route to India— and expand its sea power through its naval base at Sevastopol.

CHAPTER 18  The Crimea: “This Unsatisfactory War” > Page 318

Victoria fretted about leaving London for Scotland at the end of the summer of 1853 while talk of war simmered, but she was assured by Lord Aberdeen— who had been made prime minister in 1852— that she would not be excluded from crucial decisions. She was outraged, then, to discover in October that Lord Palmerston had persuaded the prime minister to send troops to the Black Sea in a defensive position of war, without seeking her consent. Albert was also urgently concerned about a drift toward conflict. He wanted the four neutral powers— Britain, France, Prussia, and Austria— to act in concert to avoid it. He also worried about the precariousness of an exclusive alliance with France. The couple left Balmoral immediately and returned to Windsor to demand an explanation from Lord Aberdeen.

CHAPTER 18  The Crimea: “This Unsatisfactory War” > Page 318

Victoria was increasingly concerned that England was assuming the risks of a European war, offering support to Turkey without having bound it to any conditions. She furiously lobbied her ministers, but she was unable to slow the momentum to fight.

CHAPTER 18  The Crimea: “This Unsatisfactory War” > Page 319

With defter diplomacy, the involvement of Britain and France could easily have been avoided. But public opinion had been whipped into a frenzy.

CHAPTER 18  The Crimea: “This Unsatisfactory War” > Page 324

Victoria’s wartime diary reveals how frequently those around her spun even the worst news into something positive, how eager the generals were to assure her that their men did not mind suffering for their country. Sir John McNeill, who had been sent to investigate the Crimean hospitals as a sanitary commissioner, gave Victoria “most interesting, gratifying, & comforting accounts of the state of the brave Army” and downplayed the newspaper reports. He described the army camp as a kind of Eden: “The Camp was one of the happiest imaginable; singing, dancing, playing games went on, & there was an incredible disregard of danger: ‘the soldiers no more minded shot & bullets, than apples & pears.’ . . . There is not ‘one man in that Army, who would not gladly give up his life to prove his devotion to Yr Majesty.’”

CHAPTER 18  The Crimea: “This Unsatisfactory War” > Page 333

In 1857, Albert was at last made Prince Consort, to Victoria’s great satisfaction.

CHAPTER 18  The Crimea: “This Unsatisfactory War” > Page 335

An inevitable part of being a queen at a time of national crisis is incongruity. As the violence and bloodshed continued in the Crimea, Victoria wrote about the moonlight on the sea, the snow, blooms, blue skies, and the “peculiar and soothing effect” of a sunny week at Osborne. As soldiers sailed for the East and shivered on hillsides without tents or warm clothes, Victoria was hunting for Easter eggs with the children, playing with stuffed mice, and hiding quietly in the heather as Albert hunted deer.

CHAPTER 18  The Crimea: “This Unsatisfactory War” > Page 336

Victoria’s mother, the Duchess of Kent, was now a doting grandmother and a crucial part of the family, their estrangement long forgotten. Both mother and daughter looked back on the conflict caused by Conroy with regret. The duchess wrote to Victoria that the death of Conroy in 1854 grieved her: “[ He] has been of great use to me, but unfortunately has also done great harm.” She went on to ask her daughter not to dwell on the past, when “passions of those who stood between us” had sparked mistrust. A wiser Victoria reassured her mother that those days were long gone.

CHAPTER 19  Royal Parents and the Dragon of Dissatisfaction > Page 339

So- called mud larks, usually children of seven or eight, collected rubbish from the river, roaming the banks and pipe ends with kettles and baskets dangling from their arms, hunting for pieces of coal or wood, copper nails, or any salable rubbish.

CHAPTER 19  Royal Parents and the Dragon of Dissatisfaction > Page 349

On January 27, 1859, Victoria became a grandmother. She ran along the castle corridors to tell Albert about the birth of Vicky’s first child, Frederick William Victor Albert, the future Kaiser Wilhelm II. Victoria then sent out a flurry of telegrams as bells rang in the town below Windsor Castle and illuminations flared. She had at first been horrified to discover her daughter had become pregnant so quickly; she called it “horrid news.” Vicky, sounding like her father’s daughter, responded that she was proud to create an immortal soul. Victoria rolled her eyes at the suggestion that birth was some kind of spiritual endeavor: “I think much more of our being like a cow or a dog at such moments; when our poor nature becomes so very animal and unecstatic.”

CHAPTER 19  Royal Parents and the Dragon of Dissatisfaction > Page 350

It was only when Vicky came to visit in May 1859 that Victoria learned that her grandson’s left arm had been injured at birth and hung weakly from its socket, paralyzed. When Victoria finally met little Willy in 1860 on a trip to Germany, she described him as a “fine fat child, with a beautiful white soft skin.” Victoria was an adoring grandmother, who believed her children’s offspring to be “the best children I ever saw.”

CHAPTER 19  Royal Parents and the Dragon of Dissatisfaction > Page 352

The abstract, philosophical nature of Prince Albert’s brain is illustrated in his letters to Vicky. When she said she was homesick, for example, her mother warmly assured her she was missed. But her father wrote an analysis of the condition of homesickness. Assuring her it was a natural state, he explained it was “a painful yearning, which might exist quite independently of, and simultaneously with, complete contentment and complete happiness.” It was a dualism, he said, in which “the new I” cannot disconnect from “the I which has been”: “Hence, the painful struggle, I might almost say, spasm of the soul.”

CHAPTER 19  Royal Parents and the Dragon of Dissatisfaction > Page 361

On Victoria’s forty- second birthday, in 1861, she asked that no music be played outside her window. She wanted only to relish Albert’s “tender love and affection,” in what had become an intimate birthday ritual.

THE WIDOW OF WINDSOR

CHAPTER 20  “There Is No One to Call Me Victoria Now” > Page 367

“Fast women” were increasingly common in the 1860s, a decade of a forgotten but determined progress toward emancipation. Single women began to rebel in greater numbers: smoking, flirting openly, mixing freely with unmarried men. Books of that era are peppered with complaints about the looseness of the younger generations. Some young women even embraced the term “fast,” which was astonishing to polite society. One novelist wrote: “Oh, that any British maiden should unblushingly, nay, and without the slightest feeling of shame, even glory in such a title! But so it is, in the year 1861.” Even in 1868, while traveling in Switzerland, Victoria noticed among a crowd who gathered to see her “independent young English ladies, specimens of the present most objectionable ‘fast young lady.’” She added: “Some were no doubt American.”

CHAPTER 21  “The Whole House Seems Like Pompeii” > Page 389

Victoria hung his photo above his side of the bed. Each day, servants carefully laid out his ironed shirts and pants in the Blue Room and provided clean towels and hot water for shaving, which grew cold as his clock ticked and blotting paper sat unmarked.

CHAPTER 21  “The Whole House Seems Like Pompeii” > Page 396

Lord Palmerston once quipped that there were only three people who understood the Schleswig- Holstein conflict: the Prince Consort, who was now dead; a German professor who had gone mad; and himself, who had now forgotten it.

CHAPTER 22  Resuscitating the Widow of Windsor > Page 406

John Bright, the radical leader of the Reform League that sought an expansion of the suffrage, spoke at mass meetings across England. In 1867, the Second Reform Bill— which doubled the number of men who could vote in England and Wales from one to two million— was passed in Parliament. Victoria was wary of democratization, but she strongly supported the bill once it was evident that it had majority support in the House of Commons.

CHAPTER 22  Resuscitating the Widow of Windsor > Page 407

She frequently resisted hosting foreign dignitaries and asked the British government to pay if she did. In 1867, for example, the Earl of Derby, a Whig who had replaced Lord Palmerston as prime minister, begged the queen to postpone a trip to Osborne for three days so she could meet the sultan of Turkey for ten minutes at Buckingham Palace. Her response was scorching: “The word distasteful is hardly applicable to the subject; it would be rather nearer the mark to say extremely inconvenient and disadvantageous for the Queen’s health.” Still, she agreed to postpone her trip for two days, asked the sultan to come a day earlier, and dispatched her doctor to Lord Derby so he might relay the fragile state of her nerves, thus emphasizing again how great the burden was. She threatened again a “complete breakdown,” saying she refused to be bullied or dictated to.

CHAPTER 22  Resuscitating the Widow of Windsor > Page 411

Between 1871 and 1874, eighty- five Republican Clubs were founded in Britain, protesting, among other things, the “expensiveness and uselessness of the monarchy” and Bertie’s “immoral example.”

CHAPTER 22  Resuscitating the Widow of Windsor > Page 411

One of the greatest threats to public safety came from the Fenian Brotherhood, which was founded in America in 1858 with the aim of overthrowing British control of Ireland and establishing an Irish republic. In 1866, the Brotherhood unsuccessfully tried to invade Canada from America. In 1867, they began a campaign of terror in Britain, blowing up a prison wall and killing a policeman. Three members were executed in reprisal and became martyrs.

CHAPTER 23  The Queen’s Stallion > Page 419

She refused to defer trips to Balmoral, even when needed to open Parliament or manage a ministerial crisis. Sir Thomas Biddulph, the Keeper of the Privy Purse, said, “The Queen will talk as if she were Mrs. Jones and might live just where she liked.”

CHAPTER 24  The Faery Queen Awakes > Page 443

By Victoria’s rationale, the British Empire’s prestige would be upheld if Britain made it clear to Russia that they would protect Turkey’s interests if the Russians invaded Constantinople. Her Cabinet was divided on the subject, but Disraeli agreed; together they acted secretly to communicate this to the Russians in August 1877, an extraordinary act especially given that not even the foreign minister was aware of it.

REGINA IMPERATRIX

CHAPTER 25  Enough to Kill Any Man > Page 458

She had already given Ponsonby an extraordinary list of instructions for Gladstone— that he must not change the foreign policy, nor the British rule in India, cut projected spending, or bring in “democratic leaning.” Still, wrote Gladstone after his awkward meeting with the monarch, “All things considered, I was much pleased.”

CHAPTER 25  Enough to Kill Any Man > Page 459

Gladstone had also waged a staggering, unprecedented campaign strategy. In what became known as the Midlothian campaign, he pioneered American- style electioneering in Scotland, directly addressing crowds of thousands in a series of mass public meetings. He spoke in rousing, thunderous oratory, attacking Disraeli, focusing particularly on his “pestilent” foreign policy, which he saw as stamping on the rights of small countries to determine their fate. Ten thousand Zulus in Africa had been killed, Gladstone thundered, “for no other offence than their attempt to defend against your artillery with their naked bodies, their hearths and homes, their wives and families.” He also spoke of “the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan.” Gladstone argued for virtue in foreign policy— meaning less intervention— and thereby tapped into the mood of fatigue among the electorate.

CHAPTER 25  Enough to Kill Any Man > Page 462

In January 1881, Victoria objected to words contained in her Speech from the Throne— text that had been given to her to read aloud, by Gladstone’s office— that declared British soldiers would leave Kandahar. She would not deliver the speech with those words contained in it; her ministers would not present it without them. After a heated Cabinet meeting at Osborne, several ministers threatened to resign. A furious Victoria said she had not been treated with “such want of respect” in all her years as queen. She glared stonily at her Cabinet, recording how they “nearly tumbled over each other going out.” The subject of the dispute was an important one— whom did the queen speak for when she opened Parliament?

CHAPTER 25  Enough to Kill Any Man > Page 466

By 1864, almost a third of all British troops were admitted to the hospital for syphilis or gonorrhea. Because it was not the soldiers who were blamed but the women they slept with, the solution decided upon was simple: the army and navy needed clean prostitutes. In 1864, the first of the Contagious Diseases Acts introduced official brothels for the military.

CHAPTER 25  Enough to Kill Any Man > Page 468

Yet, as one sex worker said after being imprisoned, “It did seem hard, ma’am, that the Magistrate on the bench who gave the casting vote for my imprisonment had paid me several shillings a day or two before, in the street, to go with him.”

CHAPTER 26  “Two Ironclads Colliding”: The Queen and Mr. Gladstone > Page 484

sometimes Victoria did intervene successfully. In 1884, for example, Parliament was in gridlock over the Third Reform Bill, which extended the vote to agricultural workers. Victoria generally favored electoral reform, but she disliked the disruption it caused. She was sanguine about this bill but horrified by the calls of some Liberals for the abolition of the House of Lords. She called on Gladstone to restrain “some of his wild colleagues and followers,” and argued that the position of monarch would be “utterly untenable” if there was no balance of power left. Victoria had insisted the Liberals meet with the Tories, who were adamant they would pass the Reform Bill only if a redistribution bill was introduced at the same time. The meeting resulted in the House of Lords agreeing to pass the Reform Bill as a freshly negotiated redistribution bill was introduced into the lower house. Lord Granville praised the queen’s “powerful influence,” and Henry Ponsonby credited her for “incessant hammering at both sides to be moderate and insisting on their meeting.”

CHAPTER 26  “Two Ironclads Colliding”: The Queen and Mr. Gladstone > Page 488

The government was defeated on a minor matter— a proposal to increase beer duty— but it had struggled with legitimacy ever since the death of General Gordon. The government was also deeply divided on the boiling question of Irish independence. Parliament was dissolved, and the Tory Lord Salisbury became prime minister— a role he would fulfill three times.

CHAPTER 26  “Two Ironclads Colliding”: The Queen and Mr. Gladstone > Page 488

Salisbury was also the first of Victoria’s prime ministers to be younger than she was, and the last of the aristocratic politicians to lead the British government from the House of Lords.

CHAPTER 26  “Two Ironclads Colliding”: The Queen and Mr. Gladstone > Page 490

Victoria’s intervention was extraordinary: she did not disguise her antipathy to Gladstone, she tried to push— and keep— him out of power, she actively sought to form other coalitions and governments, and she expected to have a pivotal say in who was selected for the Cabinet.

CHAPTER 26  “Two Ironclads Colliding”: The Queen and Mr. Gladstone > Page 491

By the 1880s, the Irish Question dominated the British Parliament. Ireland was suffering from a protracted agricultural depression, ruinous bouts of famine, and relentless bursts of violence. Support for the Irish republican Fenians was growing. Even as early as the 1840s, before the potato famine, Gladstone had viewed Ireland as a “coming storm.”

CHAPTER 26  “Two Ironclads Colliding”: The Queen and Mr. Gladstone > Page 494

But the moment went. On June 8, the bill was defeated, 341 to 311. The Liberals split, with 93 voting against. The Liberal Unionists separated from the Liberal Party and aligned with Conservatives in their opposition to Home Rule until 1914. Gladstone’s foresight was greater than his political skill, and he struggled to corral a sufficient number of colleagues.

CHAPTER 26  “Two Ironclads Colliding”: The Queen and Mr. Gladstone > Page 494

Gladstone did not give up, even after he had resigned. In 1887, he wrote in his diary: “One prayer absorbs all others: Ireland, Ireland, Ireland.” He went on to fight for Home Rule again in the 1892 election, and managed to push through a watered- down bill in 1893: a version that was quickly, soundly rejected by the House of Lords. Gladstone’s commitment to Irish self- government was fascinating: principled yet politically impossible. The House of Lords would never have supported him. Instead of bringing unity to the Isles, he had split his party, and he would be blamed for keeping Liberals out of office for the better part of two decades.

CHAPTER 26  “Two Ironclads Colliding”: The Queen and Mr. Gladstone > Page 495

The extent of her interference in politics— and the audacity of her reach— did not become apparent until the 1920s and 1930s, when the letters of the final years of her reign were published.

CHAPTER 26  “Two Ironclads Colliding”: The Queen and Mr. Gladstone > Page 498

It is clear Victoria also believed she had the power to dismiss a prime minister, and ministry, though this was never exercised. When the king of Greece sacked his entire Cabinet in 1892 for “leading the country to bankruptcy,” Victoria thought he was entitled to do so: “but whether it is wise to exercise this right must depend on circumstances.”

CHAPTER 26  “Two Ironclads Colliding”: The Queen and Mr. Gladstone > Page 500

It is quite possible Victoria was jealous of Gladstone, as his secretary, Edward Hamilton, concluded, especially of his extraordinary hold over her subjects. She frequently cautioned him from campaigning as he had done in the Midlothian campaign. She told him to mind his words, treating him much like a teenager requiring perpetual monitoring, even though he was a decade older than she. She sent him notes before he was due to give big speeches: in 1881 she told him to be “very cautious,” in 1883 to be “very guarded in his language.”

CHAPTER 27  The Monarch in a Bonnet > Page 507

Wilhelm was a proud, often cruel, and talentless man who harbored a particular kind of hatred for his mother. The painful breech birth Vicky had suffered meant he had to be wrenched from her womb, causing partial paralysis of his left arm due to nerve damage (this is now known as Erb’s palsy). This made his left arm fifteen centimeters shorter than his right, something he tried to disguise for years by resting it on swords or other props. The medical establishment was ill equipped to deal with such a disability, which was considered shameful at the time. The treatments used to try to repair his arm were horrific. One such treatment, first applied when he was a few months old, was “animal baths.” Twice a week, a hare was killed and sliced open; Wilhelm’s limp arm was slid inside the still- warm body in the hope that some of its life force would magically transfer to the baby boy. Willy was also jolted with electric shocks and strapped into a metal contraption that forced his head upright. He blamed his mother for his shame, and for his years of unsuccessful, painful treatments: he would never forgive her.

CHAPTER 27  The Monarch in a Bonnet > Page 508

Even Chancellor Bismarck recognized Willy was too immature to rule, that he was impetuous, “susceptible to flattery and could plunge Germany into war without foreseeing or wishing it.” It turned out to be a matter of character, though, not maturity, for this was precisely what happened years later, when Wilhelm’s eagerness for war would far outstrip his competence at waging it.

CHAPTER 27  The Monarch in a Bonnet > Page 509

Fritz knew he was already dismissed as dead; the hurt only deepened when Wilhelm’s siblings, Charlotte and Henry, switched to support their brother. Vicky complained to Victoria: “People in general consider us a mere passing shadow soon to be replaced by reality in the shape of William!” It seemed painfully unfair to Vicky that her own husband was so ill when he stood ready to inherit the throne; the emperor was now ninety, and sure to die soon. She was certain her husband would be a great, humane leader of Prussia, and a forceful advocate for parliamentary democracy.

CHAPTER 27  The Monarch in a Bonnet > Page 510

Vicky was isolated and misunderstood; her British origins had made her deeply unpopular. Her private letters were leaked to the press and published in full. All three of her children also attacked her, accusing her of causing her father’s illness or of ensuring that his medical treatment was poor. Even when Vicky smiled, it was pointed to as evidence of callousness.

CHAPTER 27  The Monarch in a Bonnet > Page 511

When Victoria walked into Fritz’s room, he handed her a nosegay; it would be the last time she would see him. She then saw Bismarck in her rooms at Charlottenburg Palace. (Lord Salisbury urged her to bring a minister with her, but she refused.) It is unclear exactly what happened during the forty- five minutes they spent alone together, but Bismarck wiped a handkerchief across his brow when he walked out. Shortly afterward, he declared, “Mein Gott! That was a woman! One could do business with her!” A man to whom the concept of female authority was anathema, Bismarck later amended his remarks to sound more patronizing: “Grandmama behaved quite sensibly at Charlottenburg.”

CHAPTER 27  The Monarch in a Bonnet > Page 512

The nationalistic new kaiser was deeply ambivalent about Britain, which marked a significant shift in British- German relations. He dressed in British uniform when visiting his grandmother, whom he loved, and he enthusiastically raced yachts around the Isle of Wight. But he also felt a deep rivalry, focusing on building up Prussia’s navy to try to compete with Britain’s. He would end up warring with his mother’s family, leading them to change the royal family’s name from Saxe- Coburg- Gotha to Windsor in the First World War, when Britain was fighting Germany.

CHAPTER 27  The Monarch in a Bonnet > Page 513

What would have happened if Fritz’s cancerous throat had not prematurely ended his life? Germany would have been under the rule of a liberal, compassionate emperor, a leader who wanted to improve the lives of the working class and who especially despised the anti- Semitic movement. “As a modern civilized man, as a Christian and a gentleman, he found it abhorrent,” wrote Vicky; he tried to counter it where he could. His son Wilhelm was the opposite, stirring up and championing anti- Semitism,

CHAPTER 27  The Monarch in a Bonnet > Page 513

Democracy made no sense, Victoria declared, when it only resulted in the reelection of a man like William Gladstone. He became prime minister again in 1892, the third time in a dozen years. It was, she wrote, “a defect in our much- famed Constitution to have to part with an admirable Govt like Ld Salisbury’s for no question of any importance, or any particular reason, merely on account of the number of votes.”

CHAPTER 28  The “Poor Munshi” > Page 532

Gladstone’s death was, very oddly, not noted in the Court Circular. Victoria later told the prime minister, Lord Salisbury, that this had been “entirely an oversight.”

CHAPTER 29  The Diamond Empire > Page 537

Since Victoria ascended to the throne in 1837, the lives of people in her country and around the world had been transformed by the invention of the railway, steamship, telegraph, telephone, sewing machine, electric light, typewriter, camera, and more.

CHAPTER 29  The Diamond Empire > Page 541

A life of sycophancy and lack of questioning meant that her every desire was indulged, and yet she still yearned for what she could not command: love and companionship.

CHAPTER 29  The Diamond Empire > Page 548

But her accounts of what she was told make it clear that Victoria was receiving spin and lies about the war effort, doubtless in part to lift her spirits, as well as to impress upon her the stoicism of her commanders. She was regularly told the men had done their best when they were lying dead in fields; she was told that they didn’t mind the bother of the war and were jolly well glad to be there and fight.

CHAPTER 29  The Diamond Empire > Page 552

fever. By 1902, twenty- eight thousand whites and fourteen thousand black Africans had died in these horrific grounds, almost double the number of British men who died fighting. The queen had no idea of the atrocities occurring at British hands in these camps; the details only emerged, to great controversy, after her death. She would have been mortified.

CHAPTER 30  The End of the Victorian Age: “The Streets Were Indeed a Strange Sight” > Page 562

The world shuddered at the news of the queen’s death. Thousands of telegrams flew to Osborne. In London, actors walked off stages halfway through plays. Traffic stopped. In New York, the stock market closed for a day. In New Guinea, tribes remembered the divine, holy Mother who had loomed over them. In South Africa, Australia, Canada, and India and the farthest reaches of the vast English Empire, people stopped and prayed.

CHAPTER 30  The End of the Victorian Age: “The Streets Were Indeed a Strange Sight” > Page 563

Emily Davison, who became the first martyr of the suffragette movement in 1913 when she was fatally injured under the hooves of the king’s horse at the Derby, wrote a letter to The Times arguing that Victoria demonstrated there should be no such thing as “women’s work”: Victoria had read every document, made her own decisions, and was in no way a “mere figurehead.” Without having ever read the queen’s diary or studied her correspondence, Davison was right.

CHAPTER 30  The End of the Victorian Age: “The Streets Were Indeed a Strange Sight” > Page 567

her faults: her capriciousness, her temper, her domineering way with her children, her sharp eye, her tendency to self- pity, her unchecked selfishness, her conviction that she was always right. But they also knew of her kindness, her loyalty, her humor, her devotion to her work, her faith, her lack of pretension or prejudice, and her resilience.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

CHAPTER 30  The End of the Victorian Age: “The Streets Were Indeed a Strange Sight” > Page 569

But it was not until mid- 2013, after the governor general of Australia, Quentin Bryce, and her secretary, Stephen Brady, lobbied the queen’s secretary on my behalf— vouching for my character— that I was allowed entry. I was thrilled, if discombobulated, by the fact that neither my project nor the nature of my qualifications had changed; it was only the status of my advocate that had pushed open the doors.

Bulldozed by Nikki Savva

As a member of the general public, Nikki Savva comes across as someone with incredible sources within the Liberal Party and ecosystem. So when Bulldozed came out I devoured it. It’s a fascinating read. It’s easier, now, with the benefit of distance, to see the Morrison years as distant and fargone. But this book (which I read fresh, soon after the 2022 election, from memory), captures so much of it -the chaos, the spin, the sense from the press gallery of a leader who prioritised imagery over substance. To her credit, when so many journalists feel a need to ‘both-sides’ an issue, Savva is unequivocal in her conclusions about the Morrison administration. If you’re a political tragic, it’s worth a read.

1 Victory and Damnation

Page 29

Assessing, rightly, that the end could be nigh, that he now had no choice except to delay the election until May, after the budget— although he had sought advice to see if he could extend beyond that by citing Covid— Morrison told colleagues in early 2022: ‘What’s happening here is existential.’

Page 38

Chester told Joyce’s office that Joyce would not be welcome in his electorate during the campaign. He believed Joyce would cost the Nationals votes in every seat south of the Murray. He also told the Nationals’ state director in Victoria, Matt Harris, that Joyce should not visit the state at all during the campaign, and he certainly should not visit his seat of Gippsland.

Page 40

In a desperate, calculated move, he thrust the complex, sensitive issue of transgender athletes and sport into the centre of the election campaign, using a woman with an extensive history of transphobic, offensive material on social media, ignoring the impact it would have on his moderate MPs, including Frydenberg, who were under threat from independents.

Page 40

Deves did something else. She confirmed and exposed the great divide in the Liberal Party between its moderate base and the religious right that Morrison courted and fostered, who contacted MPs and campaign headquarters to insist she be supported. Moderates were also not speaking with one voice— Jason Falinski endorsed her before and during the campaign.

Page 48

With his old finance minister’s hat on, Minchin says: ‘One of the upsides of the campaign was it demonstrated rampant pork- barrelling is not going to save a dying government. ‘You can’t win by throwing money around like Santa Claus.’

Page 49

there were three policies agreed to by Morrison’s Expenditure Review Committee ahead of the budget that might have helped dispel some of that and to set up points of difference with Labor. The first was to expand the cashless debit card; the second, to allow pensioners to work and earn more while retaining their pension; and the third, to allow people to access their superannuation for housing. There was a fourth if you included Robert’s skills package.

Page 50

Among his detractors, and there were plenty, Morrison was regarded as the worst prime minister since Billy McMahon. After news of his secret ministries emerged, they revised that to say he was worse than McMahon. Worse even than Tony Abbott, who lasted a scant two years in the job, whose chief accomplishments were that he destroyed Julia Gillard and then himself, and then, aided and abetted by Dutton and Morrison, destroyed Turnbull.

2 Straight to Hawaii

Page 54

Andrew Carswell, one of his closest advisers, who regrets he did not try to talk his boss out of going to Hawaii, and wishes he had not lied to journalists about where he had gone. With the benefit of hindsight, Morrison’s chief of staff, John Kunkel, says of course it was a bad decision for Morrison to go to Hawaii, but failing to advise him not to go is not at the top of his list of regrets.

Page 55

Word seeped out he was in Honolulu while the bushfires were engulfing the country, thanks to the detective work of Greens MP David Shoebridge, who had followed a tip- off.

Page 56

Hawke said. ‘When you become prime minister, the sacrifices are, you have to give up your life.’

Page 61

That night, after Shoebridge’s tweet appeared, Samantha Maiden posted her first story for The New Daily, quoting Morrison’s office as saying it was ‘wrong’ to say he was in Hawaii. His office also denied it to other journalists, then cited ‘national security’ as a reason for not divulging his whereabouts.

Page 64

‘He should have been back here,’ Andrews said. ‘The optics were awful.’ She agreed that everyone deserved a holiday but added: ‘If you are in the top job, you are giving up your personal life.’

5 Clusterf..k Alert

Page 125

Morrison had tried to recruit a number of celebrity candidates— the former deputy chief medical officer, Dr Nick Coatsworth, and Erin Molan, daughter of Jim, a former TV sports presenter, and now a Sky After Dark host. Both refused.

6 Jenny Says

Page 138

The photo was taken on the phone of an ABC journalist by a public servant said to have a deep interest in matters of national security. He had just been talking to the journalist about the recently departed Labor senator Sam Dastyari, who had been forced to quit over dodgy Chinese connections, when he spotted Porter with the woman. Concerned by what he believed to be inappropriate behaviour by Porter, and to show how easily people can be caught in potentially compromising situations, the public servant grabbed the journalist’s smartphone and took a photo.

7 I Am the Prime Minister (and you are a fuckwit)

Page 154

Repeated attempts were made by the New South Wales state director, Chris Stone, directly to Morrison or to his office, to appoint someone other than Hawke to sit on the vetting body, the Nominations Review Committee. Previously, Morrison had allowed Paul Fletcher to act on his behalf. Morrison refused to nominate someone other than Hawke. Party rules decree that all four members of the NRC or their representatives must attend— there has to be a full complement, not just a simple quorum— which include the prime minister or his delegate. It was always open to Morrison to allow someone else to attend on his behalf if Hawke was indeed too busy.

Page 158

He wore everyone down, and won the internal battles. Then he lost the war.

8 Listen to the Voices of the Women

Page 176

McGowan organised another Zoom meeting in August 2022 called ‘Next Steps’. There were 450 people who registered, from 103 electorates around the country. The enthusiasm was unabated. All six new independents took part, and Holmes à Court also dialled in.

10 Rebels with Causes

Page 196

Bragg’s threat was known at the time, and on its own was enough to kill the bill; however, not so well known is that three other Coalition senators were prepared to cross the floor with him. They were Perin Davey, who was voted in as deputy National Party leader after the election; Andrew McLachlan, a Liberal from South Australia; and Susan McDonald, from the Liberal National Party of Queensland.

Page 197

Morrison would have known that the Senate vote would have been as humiliating as the one in the House of Representatives. And yet Morrison had stubbornly wanted to keep going, to put the bill up in the Senate in order to overturn the changes made in the House. He was forced to confront reality— that he would have faced further embarrassment— and eventually withdrew the bill. It was a rare thing.

Page 198

On 1 December, with the approval of the prime minister’s office, Sharma, Fiona Martin, Angie Bell, and Katie Allen put out a press release welcoming ‘proposed amendments to the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 that will remove the right of religious schools to discriminate against students on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Page 199

Once the implications of what he had done were explained to Morrison, he is said to have responded by saying: ‘I didn’t mean that, that’s not what I had in mind.’ One MP paraphrased his excuse thus: ‘He stuffed up, but couldn’t bring himself to say it.’ Everyone felt dudded. The moderates were furious; the conservatives were incredulous.

Page 203

Throughout the night and morning, while the leadership and staff were exerting pressure to stop the backbenchers crossing the floor, the backbenchers were talking to one another, trying to stay strong. Archer spoke to Martin inside the chamber and in the annex. It was around 3.00 or 4.00 am. Archer said that Martin was stressed, in pieces, but holding firm. Martin kept saying to her: ‘I have to protect kids. I have to do this.’ Martin felt it was not only morally and ethically right to oppose the bill, but that her professional reputation was at stake.

Page 204

At 8.30 am, at the usual leadership meeting with Morrison, Birmingham told the prime minister that the bill would not make it through the Senate with the House’s amendment removed, because Coalition senators would not support it. Morrison persisted for a while, and then realised around mid- morning that he had been defeated.

12 Trans-gressions

Page 230

It was quintessential Morrison. Refuse to admit a mistake, stick with it, and turn it into an even bigger one. Allow a problem to become a crisis before mishandling it.

Page 231

However, she did confirm that Morrison had contacted her. ‘I heard directly from the prime minister to encourage me to keep going,’ she said.

Page 232

Usually in campaigns, candidates have to clear each and every media interview in advance with campaign headquarters. Deves did not clear any of hers, including the most controversial one with Sky in the dying days of the campaign, when she retracted her apology. The first that the campaign team in New South Wales knew of any of her interviews was when they appeared.

Page 234

If re- elected, we will pursue passage of the Religious Discrimination Bill as stand- alone legislation in the next Parliament and will not accept any attempts to make changes to other laws that undermine protections for religious institutions.

Page 235

According to one well- connected Liberal, Deves’ Sky interview recanting her apology was set up deliberately to revive the issue with the prime minister, knowing he would be asked about it at his press conference the next morning. Which he was.

Page 239

The ACL campaigned against Liberals in key seats, including Reid and Bass. As well as fielding complaints from moderate Liberals, campaign headquarters was getting calls from branch members saying that Morrison should go in harder on the transgender issues.

13 The Best of Days, the Worst of Days

Page 276

However, in the run- up to the 2022 budget and the election campaign, the Expenditure Review Committee of cabinet ticked off on the super- for- housing idea. It was decided not to include it in the budget, but to wait until a few weeks later to announce it.

Page 276

The other two options ticked off by the ERC were an expansion of the cashless debit card, and allowing pensioners to earn more while still keeping their pension.

14 JoshKeeper

Page 290

In 2018, Holmes à Court had written an article criticising the Coalition’s energy policies, which Frydenberg as energy minister was running. A day later, Holmes à Court got a message from Kooyong 200, Frydenberg’s fabulously successful fundraising vehicle, saying that his membership was being declined, and that he would be refunded the fees plus a four- figure donation he had made. When Holmes à Court tackled Frydenberg about this subsequently, Frydenberg said that Kooyong 200 was only for ‘unconditional supporters’. Holmes à Court’s money was refunded in April 2018.

Page 290

In March 2019, in the run- up to the election, Holmes à Court was invited by a friend to accompany her to a meet- and- greet with Frydenberg at a local hotel. Frydenberg was working the room. He got to them, it was all hail- fellow- well- met, there was no sign of tension or aggro, and Frydenberg moved on to the next group. But Frydenberg saw their presence as a deliberately provocative act, given that Holmes à Court was supporting Yates. Soon after Frydenberg had moved away from them, Holmes à Court and his friend were approached by the woman hosting the event, and were asked to leave. When they asked why, the woman said it was because Frydenberg had asked that they be told to leave. They did. That night, Holmes à Court pretty much conceived Climate 200, the fundraising vehicle that in 2022 raised $ 13 million, helped win six seats from the Liberals, gutted the party, and thwarted Frydenberg’s political career.

Page 297

While Cathy McGowan is right to say that you don’t have to have the balance of power to have influence, or even to be seen to have influence, Albanese’s challenge is to ensure that the crossbench remains relevant and therefore a continuing threat to the Liberals— but, as with the Greens, not too powerful. He needs to be seen to be consultative, conciliatory, and all the while in control.

15 Google It, Mate

Page 300

The planning and activity that went into delivering three seats in the House of Representatives, making it four in the lower house, including Bandt’s, and another three senators, taking the party’s representation in the upper house to 12, was meticulous and slightly mindboggling. It was a mixture of old- style politics with a clever use of social media, including TikTok and Instagram, featuring characters from The Simpsons, The Lion King, and a giant green Shrek straddling Parliament House.

16 Team Albanese

Page 310

The next day, Clare was at his office at 6.00 am. The usual conference call between the leadership group- plus and campaign headquarters was at 6.15 to go through the news of the day and to work out responses. If the government had announced a policy or briefed one to the papers, they would have sorted Labor’s position by 6.30 so that he or one of the shadow ministers could announce it on breakfast TV. Usually, to close off debate, they would adopt the government’s policy.

Page 311

It didn’t help that Payne was participating, even if in a low- key way, in the election campaign. She had appeared with Morrison in Parramatta, and word had filtered out that she had a fundraiser scheduled precisely when Seselja was sent to the Solomons. Her office denied that, saying she had a ‘business dinner’.

Page 312

Joyce was to Liberal voters what Roundup was to weeds, to which many serving and former Nationals would reply: ‘Not our problem. It’s not our job to win Liberals’ seats for them.’

Page 314

After the 2019 election loss, Wong had had enough. She had decided to quit politics altogether. Then Albanese decided he would run for the leadership. She changed her mind. She came out in support of him, then she had to stay to help him win the leadership, and then win government. ‘I had loyalty to him, and he had always backed me,’ she said.

Page 318

If members of the media wanted to know what Labor would do, he would say: ‘We are not the government.’

Page 320

There was barely a peep when Andrew Charlton was parachuted into Parramatta— except from Liberals who grunted about a wealthy top- of- towner shifting from Bellevue Hill to western Sydney. Charlton was an exceptional candidate, a self- made millionaire with economic expertise— again, the kind of candidate that the Liberals would at one time have killed to recruit. Unless his name was Turnbull.

17 Rocking Boats

Page 332

A senior staffer who was with Morrison that day did not dispute later that the prime minister had liaised with campaign headquarters for the text message to be dispatched. He described it as a ‘quite normal and reasonable’ thing to do in a campaign, especially as the matter was already public.

18 Over and Out

Page 350

Morrison delayed submitting his resignation to the governor- general, and there was concern that the swearing- in would have to be delayed. Fearing that Albanese’s departure for Tokyo would be delayed, Government House had to give Morrison a hurry- up.

19 The Best of Friends

Page 374

A few disillusioned small- l Liberals believe the time has come for the party to be honest and to start calling itself the Conservative Party, with a capital C. Morrison’s solution for the once- broad church that was the Liberal Party was a schism. He told people after the election that the Liberals and Nationals should unite Australia- wide along the lines of the Liberal National Party of Queensland, to create a nationwide conservative party. Then the moderates could form a separate party to appeal to electors in all the old heartland seats. Under this Morrison scenario, they could both then come together to form a Coalition and live together happily ever after. Or not.

Acknowledgements

Page 391

He was the worst prime minister I have covered, and I have been writing about all of them since Gough Whitlam. He simply wasn’t up to the job.

The Library: A Fragile History by Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen

The Library: A Fragile History is a beautiful piece. It’s an in-depth, thoughtful history of libraries, in the broadest sense. And as someone who perhaps wasn’t expecting too much when I started it, it was fascinating to see how what we take for granted as a ‘library’ in our current usage (an older, slightly boring place that’s quieter, and publicly funded) is just one iteration in a long lineage that’s shifted significantly over time. Unsurprisingly, what constituted a library (and who had access) was bound up with questions of power and authority in a society, and what reading was for (entertainment? Education? Empowerment?), and who had access to it.

From early examples (the Library of Ashurbanipal, Alexandria), through medieval monasteries, the growing print collections as the printing press revolutionised things, through to the philanthropy that contributed to modern institutions, it’s a surprisingly fascinating read. Granted, not everyone would think a history of the Library is worth it – but if you find the idea interesting, this book absolutely lives up to that premise – it’s well worth it.

Quotes

Part 1 – Inception and Survival

1. A Confusion of Scrolls > Page 21

We will never really know how many texts were accumulated by this library: scholars have spoken of 200,000 or even half a million scrolls. Whatever figure we choose, this was a library of a size that would never again be achieved until the nineteenth century. A collection of this magnitude necessarily required careful organisation. Scrolls were stored in recessed alcoves, where they could be stacked in organised groups. The sheer size of the Alexandrian library demanded far more systematic cataloguing, with books split between many different chambers. The texts were stored alphabetically, though presumably also organised by genre, the leading principle of classification in every institutional library thereafter.

1. A Confusion of Scrolls > Page 23

By far the most prominent and visible libraries in Rome were those established by the emperors, beginning with Augustus. This built on a scheme first conceived by Julius Caesar, thwarted by his assassination, to include libraries in his plan for ‘adorning and building up’ the city of Rome, a phrase which hints at the true purpose of these collections.

1. A Confusion of Scrolls > Page 24

According to the waspish Lucian of Samosata, in the second century many politicians acquired a library purely to win the favour of Marcus Aurelius, a notably bookish emperor.

1. A Confusion of Scrolls > Page 26

The flexibility of the compilation, the ability to create bespoke texts from segments of other works, was one of the key features distinguishing the manuscript book world from the age of print, where the order and nature of texts was established before they came into the hands of the purchaser.

2. Sanctuary > Page 35

the fall of the Roman Empire disrupted significantly the supply of papyrus throughout the Mediterranean world; parchment became the standard replacement. As the material of the book changed, so did the form. The codex, sheets or tablets laid on top of one another and sewn or stitched together at one edge, was also an older medium. Codices were available in ancient Rome but used almost exclusively as notebooks or as exercise boards in schools. At some time in the third century, codices began to replace scrolls as the normative way to preserve a body of text; it was clear that this transformation was tied up with the Christian movement, whose early texts were almost universally produced as codices. By the sixth century, the codex was triumphant and remained the standard form of the book until the present day.

2. Sanctuary > Page 46

the chained library proved remarkably enduring in cathedral, church and college collections. Fresh chains were still being purchased in some libraries as late as the middle of the eighteenth century. Merton College, Oxford, did not unchain its books until 1792.

3. Little Monkeys and Letters of Gold > Page 53

The mass production of manuscript books in urban scriptoria did not lead to a sea of indistinguishable products. On the contrary, it was in the century before printing that books attained their greatest status as objects of aesthetic brilliance, customised to the wishes of the owner. Beautiful books, lavishly rubricated with vermilion, lapis lazuli and verdigris, decorated with gold leaf and bound in bejewelled covers, had been a mainstay of the libraries of European monasteries and courts since the age of Charlemagne. Yet it was in the workshops of Paris, Bruges and Florence that the art of bookmaking reached its apogee, driven by specialisation, the division of labour and the deep pockets of the nobility. Some workshops employed illuminators who were masters of their art, famous painters who could charge exorbitant fees. This was a brief age in which books were an expression of the highest form of visual art, and where the price of a book might match or even outstrip the value of other possessions in the home.

3. Little Monkeys and Letters of Gold > Page 56

Creating a courtly library was a public act; not necessarily because the books were on permanent display or for public use, but because the acts involved in creating books, composition, copying, illumination and presentation, all took place under the patronage of the ruler and their family.

3. Little Monkeys and Letters of Gold > Page 71

That Buddhist monasteries could amass extraordinary collections was confirmed in the early twentieth century, when a ‘library cave’ was discovered in Dunhuang, western China, as part of a vast underground monastic complex. Sealed since the eleventh century, the cave held around 40,000 manuscripts, most of them Buddhist texts, but also a rich variety of works in other genres, from Greek classical philology to medicine, revealing the scholarship and intellectual curiosity of this monastic community strategically located at a crucial junction of the Silk Road.

Part 2 – The Crisis of Print

4. The Infernal Press > Page 77

The invention of printing also upset the traditional rhythms of trade in the book world. A scribe would ordinarily have a customer in mind when producing a book; indeed, most scribes would have been commissioned directly by a client. When the book was finished, the scribe could be paid and the transaction was concluded. The printer, although he may have had a few customers in mind, had to speculate how many buyers might be found for 300, 500 or 1,000 copies, and where those buyers might be.

4. The Infernal Press > Page 78

Johann Luschner, invited to take up printing in the Benedictine monastery at Montserrat in Catalonia, produced 190,000 indulgence certificates on behalf of his patrons.

5. Coming of Age > Page 92

Abecedarium, an alphabetical list of the authors and titles of books in his collection.

5. Coming of Age > Page 93

In addition to the Abecedarium, Colon found time for a separate cataloguing enterprise, offering a detailed note on each of his purchases, including where it was printed, where he had bought it and how much he paid. This detailed record allows us a view of the workings of the international book market of unprecedented subtlety.

5. Coming of Age > Page 98

Colon was ensuring that his primary aim should be accomplished, that the library should encompass ‘all books, in all languages, and on all subjects, which can be found within Christendom and without’. 11 This was very radical: well into the eighteenth century, libraries, personal and institutional, would continue to privilege books in Latin and the other scholarly languages. Some actually banned books in the common tongue: most books in the local language were destined for reading and disposal, rather than collection. Here, especially, Colon was a man ahead of his time.

5. Coming of Age > Page 100

This, as it turned out, would be an everyday story of library history. One man’s passion project would be nothing but a burden to those to whom the responsibility of curation was passed on. At least in the age of print, no failure was ever final. Libraries abandoned or dispersed, burned down or looted, could be regenerated with astonishing speed. That was the miracle of print: the ever- accumulating mountain of books was available, sometimes at knockdown prices, for anyone with the energy and determination to build libraries. For the moment this would be largely private citizens rather than institutional collections. For the next two hundred years, the fate of the library would lie in the hands of generations of scholars, civil servants, lawyers, physicians and merchants, who collected books for work, and increasingly for pleasure. This was the age of the professionals; and it was they who would shape the future of the library.

6. Reformations > Page 102

The Reformation gradually changed the nature of the book: it became cheaper, shorter and less scholarly. This transformation encouraged many people who were not habitual buyers of books to build their own collections. Once individuals became used to visiting bookshops and reading pamphlets, they would often return for more, and soon they too had small libraries, stacked with as many German texts as traditional Latin tomes.

6. Reformations > Page 105

The insurgents saw the opportunity to destroy institutions whose ruthlessness as landlords accorded so poorly with the life of contemplative prayer to which monks had ostensibly devoted themselves. Their libraries often contained the monasteries’ collections of charters and deeds that gave proof of their rights to property and feudal service. At Weisenburg, the peasants celebrated by burning a wagon of archival papers at the market square, whereas those at Reinhardsbrunn ensured that all fragments were consumed by the flames in a bonfire held in the cloister’s court. In Bamberg, when the peasants attacked the episcopal palace, ‘they tore up books, registers and letters, especially those of the fiscal office [along with] many judicial acts and registers’. 7 The deliberate destruction of archival documents helps explain why the peasant bands also targeted the much smaller personal libraries of noblemen, or abbots and bishops, which contained many legal papers. In Bamberg alone, twenty- six noble families made claims for damages to their libraries.

6. Reformations > Page 108

The dissolution of the monasteries instigated the largest transfer of land in England since the Norman Conquest of 1066. This was a massive undertaking, spearheaded by royal commissioners who toured the monastic houses and the administrators who kept the books at the Court of Augmentations, the financial institution founded to administer all dissolved property.

6. Reformations > Page 115

Bookshops were raided and stock inspected, especially for books that clearly revealed their origins in dangerous Protestant printing centres like Wittenberg. To circumvent this, printers took to falsifying the place of publication on the title pages of their books, or anonymising them altogether. Over time, the hardening of religious fault lines ensured that books from suspect printing centres would be anathema in other markets.

Part 3 – The New Collectors

7. The Professionals > Page 130

Booksellers had initially not welcomed the new book auctions, until they realised how much opportunity it provided for them to make money. Booksellers assessed collections, compiled the catalogues and sold them in their shops, taking 5– 15 per cent commission on sales. They even, less creditably, infiltrated some of their own slow- moving stock into the sale, where it could be passed off as part of the distinguished library going under the hammer. This process was widely deplored, frequently prohibited, but thought to be ubiquitous.

7. The Professionals > Page 141

Fire, neglect, assault by pirates, ungrateful heirs, careless nephews: the transition of a library from working tool to intellectual monument was strewn with so many pitfalls that it is no wonder that few collections survived to memorialise a stratum of collecting that was, at the time, essential to the history of the library.

8. Idle Books and Riff Raff > Page 145

Oxford’s blanket ban on lending was maintained after Bodley’s death and upheld even in the face of requests to borrow books from both King Charles I and the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell. Bodley also insisted that the Bodleian Library should welcome readers, and not only those from Oxford. This was perhaps the most significant aspect of Bodley’s vision. Thus far, university or college libraries had largely been for the use only of the scholars employed at that institution. Some distinguished visitors might be granted access, but always by invitation only. Bodley inverted this rule, and although he cautioned against letting new undergraduate students into the library, visiting scholars were welcome to use the library’s resources.

8. Idle Books and Riff Raff > Page 147

A more lasting principle that Bodley introduced was a rule of silence– perhaps the first modern instance of this, and very different from the noisy conviviality of the Renaissance court libraries. By 1711 the rule of silence had been adopted more generally, most fervently in Amsterdam, where the user of the library was greeted by this severe warning in verse: You learned sir, who enter among books, don’t slam the door with your tumultuous hand; nor let your rowdy foot create a bang, a nuisance to the Muse. Then, if you see someone seated within, greet him by bowing, and with a silent nod: nor waffle gossip: here it’s the dead who speak to them who work. 7

8. Idle Books and Riff Raff > Page 147

The strict embargo on kindling ‘any fire or flame’ (still recited aloud by new readers to this day), made work conditions gruelling in winter, and probably contributed to the deaths of some of the more determined readers; but it did save the Bodleian from destruction by fire, a fate common to many libraries in northern Europe (and later Harvard, in North America).

8. Idle Books and Riff Raff > Page 147

Thomas Bodley was only the first of many powerful personalities associated with the library: his first librarian, the theologian Thomas James, was almost as influential. James had taken on the assignment as Bodley’s librarian in order to conduct his own research on patristic texts, but he seriously underestimated Bodley’s ambition, as much as the incessant demands with which he tormented his librarian. 9 The large number of visitors and the endless flow of new books left James little time for his own work. He was also responsible for the first comprehensive catalogues of the collection, an aspect of the librarian’s work in which he excelled. The two catalogues that he produced appeared in print in 1605 and 1620. Although they were not the first printed catalogues of library collections in Europe, those of the Bodleian would resonate through the European book world, influencing the contents of libraries throughout the continent for the next two centuries.

9. Mission Fields > Page 166

A well- ordered library also required a capable librarian, and here Loyola was rather ahead of his time. In many universities, the position of librarian was regarded as a sinecure, an acceptable salaried position to enjoy while one waited for something better. Jesuit librarians, in contrast, were kept busy ordering and cataloguing, managing loans and creating bibliographical registers: it was an important and respected vocation.

9. Mission Fields > Page 177

Henry Garnet, the English Jesuit Superior, was among those executed in 1606 in the wake of the failed attempt to blow up the king and the Houses of Parliament. Despite this, in the course of the seventeenth century the Jesuit mission in England built a most remarkable network of clandestine libraries. The library at Cwm in Herefordshire held 336 volumes, drawn from the major centres of European Catholic printing. The library at Holbeck Woodhouse in Nottinghamshire was twice as large. 36 Both were confiscated in the wave of anti- Catholic hysteria at the time of the alleged Popish Plot to kill King Charles II in 1678, although presumably the existence of both had been known to the authorities well before this.

Part 4 – Between Public and Private

10. Grand Designs > Page 181

Kirkwood was unusual, however, in that his energies went not into building his own private place of solace, but a grand plan for bringing enlightenment and learning to all parts of his native Scotland by planting a public library in every parish.

10. Grand Designs > Page 184

One community that did manage to develop a popular town library was the large, rich and fiercely independent port city of Hamburg. Here the municipal library flourished, thanks to relatively generous conditions of access. From 1651 onwards, it was open for four hours each day, and fifty years later it even allowed citizens of the city to borrow books. The collection grew from 25,000 volumes in 1704 to 100,000 volumes by the end of the eighteenth century.

10. Grand Designs > Page 186

The desperate librarian at one point tried to cement up the door of the library, but he found that this was no serious obstacle to soldiers on a quest for the gilded clasps that adorned the bindings in the collection.

10. Grand Designs > Page 191

It seems that many library builders prioritised their own desire– to leave a monumental presence in their community– over careful consideration of the future users of their bequest. Collectors always find it difficult to conceive that what they have curated, at great expense and effort, may hold little value to others.

11. Cardinal Errors > Page 201

Shortly before his death, Cardinal Richelieu had recalled from Italy a fellow Frenchman, Gabriel Naudé, to organise and expand his book collection. Naudé was a man very much in demand, the living epitome of the new professional librarian, employed by the great to establish or build a library.

11. Cardinal Errors > Page 218

In the most ambitious architectural schemes, no expense was too much to achieve the desired effect: at Seitenstetten, all books in the library were rebound in white leather to harmonise with the new marble. The process took thirty years. 31

12. The Antiquarians > Page 224

In 1622, Sixtinus had broken into the house of Janus Gruter, a distinguished humanist scholar and professor at Heidelberg. Gruter’s library was his pride and joy, as well as his chief source of fame, but he had been forced to flee town before the anticipated onslaught of Habsburg troops.

12. The Antiquarians > Page 239

Bibliomania, frantic competitive bidding for the best and rarest copies of early printed books, left a lasting impression on the most opulent eighteenth and nineteenth- century personal libraries. It was denounced as a moral disease, a siren call to young aristocrats who might squander the family’s estate on fifteenth- century books that they could not even read. The seemingly mindless purchase of old books was deemed the very height of ostentatious consumerism. Bibliomania peaked in the infamous Roxburghe auction of 1812, which saw some books from the library of the Duke of Roxburghe sell for exorbitant prices. The duke’s copy of the editio princeps of Boccaccio’s Decameron of 1471 was sold for £ 2,260, a lifetime’s wages for a skilled tradesman. The press was indignant: that noblemen spent money on hunting and gambling was accepted fact, but books! In comparison, when the statesman Charles James Fox sold two of his racehorses for £ 2,330 each, this passed without a murmur. 43 The prices paid at the Roxburghe auction proved to be the tipping point. The value of antiquarian books had become absurdly inflated and would fall back significantly over the next half- century.

12. The Antiquarians > Page 240

A bookbroker and bibliographer to the rich, Dibdin provided some of the intellectual firepower to share the activities of bibliophiles and their passions with a broader public. He published an extensive guide to rare classical editions, as well as two discourses on bibliography, the Bibliomania: or Book- Madness (1809) and the Bibliographical Decameron (1821). These lavishly produced publications further enhanced the air of eccentricity surrounding the Roxburghe Club, but Dibdin can also be credited for stoking more general interest in the value of old books.

Part 5 – Fictions

13. Orderly Minds > Page 245

They were bound together by enquiring minds and a restless desire for self- improvement, and this was especially true of the man who was the driving force behind their common endeavour, Benjamin Franklin. 1 Franklin suggested they should pool their books into a single collection, so they would be freely available to all. By 1731, Franklin was prepared to go a step further and open this society to a larger group of Philadelphia citizens: each would pay a joining fee and annual subscription to allow the creation of a library for their mutual use. Thus was born the Library Company of Philadelphia, the world’s first subscription library. Unlike many such ventures, the Library Company flourishes to this day.

13. Orderly Minds > Page 246

The new reading classes were largely shut out of the comfortable middle- class sociability of the subscription libraries. They relied instead on a new tier of commercial circulating libraries that served up fiction and escapist literature for readers to while away their precious hours of leisure away from the loom or the factory floor. These new, more democratic, circulating libraries were initially run by booksellers and functioned as an adjunct to their regular business.

13. Orderly Minds > Page 246

It was only with the arrival of the circulating libraries that the reading public could fully indulge their taste for the books they read for leisure. This preference was overwhelmingly for fiction: novels, detective stories and romance, with a few true- life travel adventures thrown in. 2

13. Orderly Minds > Page 250

To many, the main attraction of membership of social libraries was their provision of congenial space in which to read newspapers and meet other of the town’s leading citizens. This easy sociability would be disrupted by the furious political contention of the Jacksonian era, when, for instance, the Democratic faction in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, opened their own reading room in competition to the Portsmouth Athenaeum. 8 The presence of more than one social library in many New England towns by 1850 facilitated this sort of partisan separation.

13. Orderly Minds > Page 251

That subscription libraries were rather slower to take off in England may partly be attributed to a rich hinterland of alternative institutions. Coffee houses, which became all the rage in the early eighteenth century, offered a wide range of newspapers but some also accumulated substantial libraries. These consisted largely of pamphlets and verse satires on contemporary political issues, precisely the sort of reading material that would appeal to the news- savvy clientele that gathered in the London coffee houses clustered around the Inns of Court or the City. They were open to regular users for a subscription as little as one shilling, but they could also be available to drop- in customers. This James Boswell experienced to his delight when, disappointed in his hope of finding one of his own publications at his publisher’s, he was directed round to the Chapter Coffee House where he located it with ease.

13. Orderly Minds > Page 251

These book clubs have largely disappeared from the library story, but there seem to have been many hundreds if not thousands of them in Georgian England. 12 The book clubs flourished especially in smaller towns where local readers felt starved of the intellectual intercourse they imagined would be theirs in large cities or the county town. Book clubs generally consisted of between six and twelve friends, who met either in each other’s homes or in a local tavern. The books purchased with the subscription funds were disposed of at the end of the year: there was no intention to build a permanent collection. The book clubs were also far more welcoming to female participants than the coffee houses.

13. Orderly Minds > Page 254

Subscription libraries in England went through a difficult period at the end of the eighteenth century, and again during the radical agitation at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Fear that the contagion of radicalism might spread to England from France cast membership of private associations under suspicion, and this seems also to have embraced book clubs and libraries. Many prudently resigned their membership, though numbers revived in the 1820s. However, libraries were not made the object of any special measures, and the rigorous scrutiny of the book selection sub- committee was generally thought sufficient proof against revolutionary sentiment.

13. Orderly Minds > Page 263

the Stationers’ Company, the association of London publishers who had acted as the industry’s regulatory body in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,

13. Orderly Minds > Page 265

The years between 1780 and 1830 had seen a steady increase in the price of new fiction, exacerbated by the pressure on the industry caused by the French Revolutionary Wars, and the post- war depression. The extraordinary popularity of the historical fiction of Sir Walter Scott allowed prices to reach new heights. New novels by Scott came to the market at a guinea and a half (31s 6d), a price that placed them outside the range of all but the wealthiest customers. Furnishing these new works to customers unwilling to wait a year for a 6- shilling reprint became the staple of the circulating libraries, which by the 1840s could charge 4 to 6 guineas for an annual subscription. Mudie boldly joined this market offering an annual subscription of only one guinea, which allowed him to gather new subscribers very rapidly. In 1864, Mudie’s became a public company, financing further growth. By this point Mudie was in the position to make his own terms with publishers, insisting that he would only take novels in the traditional three- volume format, for which the cover price remained 31s 6d, even for authors far less lustrous than Sir Walter Scott. This was an arrangement that brought benefits to all parties. Readers got for their guinea- a- year as many books as they could read for less than the price of one new novel, and publishers secured a guaranteed sale, since Mudie would take the bulk of the first edition.

13. Orderly Minds > Page 266

In effect, Mudie had secured himself a national monopoly on the publication of new fiction. What he chose not to take would not be published.

13. Orderly Minds > Page 266

Mudie’s insistence on the three- volume format was undoubtedly responsible for the verbosity of many nineteenth- century novels, as authors went to extraordinary efforts to pad their texts to the required length. While a seasoned professional like Anthony Trollope mastered the required skill, writing his daily quota of words before work, many struggled to maintain inspiration and dramatic tension for the required 200,000 words, 66,000 words per volume. If we wonder why so many nineteenth- century novels lose themselves in a convoluted (though chaste) love story between two marginal characters in the novel’s middle passage, we should blame Charles Edward Mudie: this was the problem of the difficult second volume.

14. Building Empires > Page 286

The alphabetical catalogue was first proposed in 1834, when it was thought that the project would take five or six years to complete. By 1880, a year after Panizzi’s death, it was still unfinished, with 160,000 entries requiring revision. Printing nevertheless went forward, and in 1905, there was a complete catalogue, of 397 parts and 44 supplements with some 4.5 million entries and cross- references. 53 For some readers, this came far too late, not least those who had abandoned the library to establish their own subscription library, the London Library, where they could be assured of more satisfactory provision.

14. Building Empires > Page 286

the Russian minister of education ordered him to produce an alphabetical catalogue. 54 For ten years, the staff of the library laboured away, until the minister was replaced and the whole venture was quietly dropped.

14. Building Empires > Page 286

the Bavarian theologian Alois Pichler (1833– 74), who was employed as extraordinary librarian at the imperial library in St Petersburg. 55 Between August 1869 and March 1871, Pichler removed some 4,500 books and manuscripts from the library. His method, as suspicious as it was efficient, was to hide them in his bulky overcoat, which he never removed. When caught, and placed on trial, he admitted that a scholar in Munich had shown him how to construct a cloth sack to attach to the inside of his coat.

14. Building Empires > Page 287

When it moved to Washington DC in 1800, Congress acquired a library of some 3,000 volumes, mostly works on jurisprudence and politics, to serve congressmen in their work. This library was torched by British troops in 1814, while its replacement, which included Thomas Jefferson’s personal collection, was partially destroyed in 1851 by fire. These setbacks were exacerbated by the insistence that the library, because it served Congress, must remain bipartisan, and therefore could not build up a comprehensive selection of books and periodicals, including the great number devoted to the debate on slavery.

15. Reading on the Job > Page 306

The consequences of this passion for recreation were laid bare to leaders of the socialist movement in 1918, when the collapse of the German monarchy offered the opportunity to build a socialist state. Yet the workers did not grasp this. According to one jaded intellectual, ‘The overwhelming majority of the German workers could not imagine life clearly in a socialist state, in spite of the fifty years’ existence of German Social Democracy’; and, one might add, the existence of fifty years of workers’ libraries.

15. Reading on the Job > Page 312

Towns grew rapidly, and without much regard for planning. The town elites soon identified a library as a necessary civilising influence. The problem of social control featured frequently in correspondence with James Bertram, Carnegie’s secretary, and by now the driving force behind the library plan: ‘the fact that this is a railroad center… brings to the city a large number of unmarried men who desire good books to read and a place in which to read them’. 30 None of these letters promoted the library as an intellectual force: a Carnegie library was a symbol of the community’s coming of age.

15. Reading on the Job > Page 315

almost every generation of library development had fought to exclude the pernicious instruments of light entertainment likely to turn heads and addle brains: Sir Thomas Bodley’s ‘idle books and riffe raffes’. It was not that critics could present tangible evidence of fiction’s noxious impact, although some tried. In 1840, the New York Lyceum circulated a pamphlet claiming that the reading of novels was ‘one of the standing causes of insanity’ citing ‘reports of some French hospitals for lunatics’. 33 This, it must be said, was a weak source of authority, particularly when used, as here, as part of an advertising campaign for a library that would exclude all works of fiction ‘except those of a religious or moral character’.

15. Reading on the Job > Page 318

At the outbreak of the First World War, 85 per cent of the staff employed in American libraries were women, whereas in England the proportions were exactly reversed. It is certainly true that many women were employed in subordinate positions (and were paid less than men), but not always: the public library in Los Angeles was presided over by a remarkable sequence of seven female librarians between 1880 and 1905. When the last of these, Mary Letitia Jones, the first librarian of Los Angeles to have graduated from library school, was ordered to resign to make way for a man, she refused. Her case brought national support and a demonstration by the women of Los Angeles. The impasse was broken only when Jones left to become librarian at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania.

Part 6 – The War on Books

16. Surviving the Twentieth Century > Page 323

Pro- German titles were discreetly withdrawn from circulation, as a general assault unfolded on German language, literature and even foodstuffs: sauerkraut became liberty cabbage, Frankfurters, liberty sausage.

16. Surviving the Twentieth Century > Page 326

Whereas at the beginning of the wars, patrons sought out works of history, by 1943 German librarians were noting an overwhelming demand for light fiction, ‘books with cheerful content’. As the bombs rained down, books were a means of escape from current woes, a desperate means to banish care, if only for a brief interval before being forced once again to confront reality. The heightened emotions of war brought peaks of elation, triumph, horror and catastrophe.

16. Surviving the Twentieth Century > Page 329

In 1914, the Germans had blamed a Belgian sniper for provoking the artillery barrage that destroyed the library: ninety- three prominent German scientists, artists and intellectuals were cajoled into signing a letter supporting this and endorsing Germany’s right of reprisal.

17. Wrestling with Modernity > Page 351

From the first days of radio and then cinema these were real competitors, not just for much- valued leisure time, but also for possession of the imaginative world once shaped primarily by print. This, rather than the fascination for new technology that characterised Europe and North America throughout this century, was probably the most potent challenge to the supremacy of the book and thus to the long- term viability of the library. Treasured library books could populate the waking mind, and dreams, with distant worlds and adventures. But with radio you could hear the voices, and at the movies you could see King Kong’s massive bulk. These were multimedia experiences. The addition of a skilful soundtrack trained the regular radio listener or moviegoer to a whole range of emotional responses; a vastly more appealing audioscape than the noise of squabbling siblings jolting you back from Mandalay when curled up for evening reading.

18. Libraries, Books and Politics > Page 383

If these proud Victorians patriarchs thought they had earned the lasting gratitude of the citizens of Chicago, they had reckoned without Big Bill Thompson. A vehement critic of prohibition and proud friend of the gangster Al Capone, Big Bill blazed an eccentric trail through Chicago politics as the city’s mayor. Forced out of office once, in 1927 Big Bill planned his comeback with a novel rallying cry. Should the King of England visit Chicago, he pledged, Big Bill would punch him on the nose. The inoffensive George V had no plans to visit the United States, so the threat was somewhat moot, but the pledge struck a sufficient chord with Chicago’s electorate and Big Bill returned triumphant to City Hall. 5 King George’s nose remained intact, but Mayor Thompson’s one- sided feud was not over. He now announced that the city library must be purged of pro- British literature. Since the mayor was simultaneously engaged on hounding out of office the supervisor of schools, this task was delegated to one of his appointees, Urbine ‘Sport’ Herrmann. The director of the public library, Carl Roden, offered only tepid resistance. Noting that identifying all books expressing anti- American sentiment would be a huge task, he offered instead to remove them from general circulation to the safety of the library’s closed reserve. In the event, the books were saved by Herrmann’s indolence. Having checked out four books flagged up by the Patriots League, he found the task of locating the offensive passages beyond his capacities, and tamely returned them the following day.

18. Libraries, Books and Politics > Page 384

This and subsequent attempts to purge the Chicago library collection emphasised the need for a more robust statement of the library’s commitment to free speech. 6 The result was a terse document, drafted by the American Library Association, rather sententiously titled the Library Bill of Rights, affirming first and foremost the librarian’s inalienable right to choose what books should enter the collection. Published in 1939, as storm clouds gathered over Europe, and revised frequently since, it offered a fragile defence for the idea that libraries should be the sanctuary for literature representing all strands of opinion.

18. Libraries, Books and Politics > Page 398

Despite a sustained effort to offer universal provision, by the 1970s there was a clear sense that libraries were losing their way. Prime Minister Gough Whitlam asked a commission of enquiry, headed by the respected librarian Allan Horton, to come up with solutions, which he did in the endearingly titled report, ‘Libraries are great mate!’ But they could be greater.

Postscript: Reading Without Books

18. Libraries, Books and Politics > Page 403

Most of all, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina serves as a symbol: of a worldwide commitment to the value of education as a means of empowerment, and the place of information at its heart. It also acts as a powerful manifestation of the place of the global south in the future history and development of the library.

18. Libraries, Books and Politics > Page 406

Sometimes books are stolen, particularly from the larger collections where the sheer quantity of books poses serious security problems. One patron of the Los Angeles collection ran a successful second- hand business for forty years exclusively with books stolen from the library.

18. Libraries, Books and Politics > Page 407

the director of the Girolamini Library in Naples was convicted of presiding over the systematic plunder of his own collection, feeding up to 4,000 rare and precious books into the market through a range of crooked book dealers.

18. Libraries, Books and Politics > Page 409

Most of all, by empowering the digital revolution, librarians have given up the one unique selling point which they defended so tenaciously for almost as long as we have had libraries: the right to apply their knowledge, taste and discrimination to assisting the choice of their patrons. This has been the key to understanding so much in this book: the first booksellers’ catalogues, Gabriel Naudé’s manifesto, the ALA guide to a model library collection, the book club: the idea that in an age of plenty there will always be helpmates to assist readers in making the right choice of book.

The Green Bone saga by Fonda Lee

I loved the Green Bone sage. It was excellent. So much to love. A fascinating world building concept (jade with magical properties, accessible only to some, who use it to refine their powers till they become terrifying martial artists). A fascinating context – the island of Kekon, dominated by clans (with two dominant ones in particular serving as a focal point); perhaps in some ways drawing on Taiwan, or Hong Kong contexts. Incredibly well done politics – the clans weave themselves through all of jade mining, commerce, politics, criminal activity education, and daily life on the island, in a way that would be difficult to capture, but Fonda Lee does it beautifully. And great characters – you see heartbreak and growth over the cycle of three books that follows a generation assuming power in the clan, then growing older together. They make hard choices, and sacrifices, and see the world change around them. Through it all is woven the history of the island, including ancient myths that link jade to religious beliefs and ceremonies, and the WW II parallel invasion that sets the stage for the current era, including some of the bad blood between clans going back generations. Best of all, it’s an easy read that draws you in. Oh – and the clans are also serious criminal enterprises – so amidst it all, there’s an element of Godfather / mafia type criminal competition that’s gripping. Seriously, it’s great.

Jade City is the one that introduces the siblings of the Kaul family, key characters in the trilogy – a young, brash brother, the older, more serious brother, and the estranged sister. I don’t want to give spoilers, but their life arcs are fascinating and often times unexpected, and there’s a real tension between their commitment to the clan, and their individual hopes, dreams and fears.

I forget which of the two sequels it is, Jade War or Jade Legacy, that sets up characters in what we might think of as mainland America – but I was struck there too, by how well Fonda creates a new context, a new set of challenges and a new set of very believable and relatable characters. The final book, Jade Legacy, does an unusual series of time skips, in that it follows characters to the conclusions of their arcs, which means jumping over years at times – it can feel a bit disjointed at times, but is ultimately profoundly satisfying.

One thing I also really enjoyed was the way Fonda creates what feels like a very deep, and rich, depiction of a society built around deep community relationships (see for example some of the quotes below). It adds a huge amount of depth to the story.

Fonda Lee herself has a black belt in multiple martial arts, and an MBA in corporate strategy. It shows. This is a series where the hand-to-hand combat and the deep political and corporate strategy are both compelling and gripping. Do yourself a favour, and if you enjoy good fantasy, get a hold of these.

Jade War quotes

Chapter 5: Every Advantage

The stocky, gray- haired Lantern Man wore a disgruntled frown, and though he was careful to keep his voice respectful, the glower he fixed on Shae from under his bushy eyebrows was indignant. “My company has been the leading commercial real estate developer in Janloon for over a decade. I’ve been a Lantern Man of No Peak for twenty- five years and my family has always paid clan tribute. Two of my sons are Green Bones; one is a Fist who followed your brother when he was Horn and now answers directly to Maik Kehn. How could this contract go to a smaller firm, one that has barely any history with the clan and is not even fully Kekonese?” “The other company’s bid promised earlier completion at a lower cost,” Shae said from across her desk. “The clan values the loyalty and friendship of our long- standing Lantern Men, but the contract was awarded on the basis of merit.” Mr. Enke made a sputtering sound of disbelief. Slightly behind and to her left and right, Shae could sense Hami Tumashon and Woon Papidonwa shifting uncomfortably at her words. “I’m not sure how you define merit, Kaul- jen,” said Mr. Enke in a temper now, “but I ask: What is the purpose of the clan if it does not look out for the interests of its most loyal members? Can the friendship of the No Peak clan be so easily broken by unreliable numbers on a piece of paper? Are we not Kekonese anymore, but Espenians, selling ourselves to the lowest bidder?”

Chapter 11: Port Massy

The clans were enmeshed in every aspect of society; failing to pay reasonable tribute meant losing the clan’s patronage, which would make life difficult in a myriad of ways. An unreliable Lantern Man might find it hard to open a bank account, buy a house, or put his children in school. There was no need to threaten or injure him.

Chapter 13: After the Show

One thing he knew for certain was that stalemates and compromises always broke down. Lasting peace came from unequivocal victory.

Chapter 18: The White Lantern Club

“Clans in Kekon have a tradition,” she said at last. “When an outsider has done something for us out of respect and goodwill, we give them a gift. It must be an item that’s green, marked with the symbol of the clan. It means that we’re grateful for their friendship, and if there’s any way we can help them in the future, we’ll do so.” Deiller shifted in his chair; Mendoff coughed. The idea of favors and indebtedness clearly made them uncomfortable. The ambassador said skeptically, “That’s what you’d like in exchange for information of military importance?” Shae smiled. “No, no, that isn’t your custom, so of course I wouldn’t expect you to follow it. The whole point of the gift is that there is no specific date or value tied to it. It’s meant to symbolize appreciation and trust. But I don’t need a symbolic token, and I wouldn’t expect you to accept an exchange that’s so undefined. I only bring it up because I would like this to be an opportunity for us to improve the bond between our countries. We are allies, as you say, but because of what’s happening now, the relationship is strained. If we build bridges— profitable bridges— it would go a long way in strengthening our alliance and public perception of Espenia.”

Chapter 22: The Grudge Hall

All evening, Anden had found the grudge hall strange and a little overwhelming, and now he understood why: The place was like a distillate of Kekonese culture— the food and hoji, the cockfighting and gambling, the social life, the tradition of clean- bladed dueling, and the celebration of jade abilities— all crammed together under one roof in one evening. It gave Anden the oddest feeling. It was both acutely Kekonese and not Kekonese at all.

Chapter 29: Opening and Closing Doors

Moneylending was one of the most common activities on the business side of the clan. Of course, Mr. Enke could go to an independent bank to ask for a loan, but banks were purely financial institutions, operating within a limited scope. A relationship with the clan meant that Mr. Enke had access to innumerable business connections throughout Kekon and beyond it, the assurance that Green Bones would protect his properties from criminals and rivals, and preferential interest rates that reflected the fact that he had two Academy- trained sons who wore jade and served the clan as Fists. He would resort to the open market if No Peak did not give him as much as he hoped for, but like most Lantern Men of standing, he went first to the clan.

The Girl with Ghost Eyes by M.H. Boroson

There’s a lot of potential in The Girl with the Ghost Eyes. A fascinating context (nineteenth century San Fransisco Chinatown), a fascinating premise (Chinese magic is real, and a daughter must use it to save her father), and a strong lead. Sadly, the writing really lets this one down. It all felt weird, and disjointed; I struggled through to the end, but wouldn’t recommend this to anyone after good fantasy.

Quotes

Fools are the only people I trust. Someone who values loyalty over money is a fool. And fools make the best bodyguards. Only fools are willing to sacrifice their lives to protect someone.

‘Orconomics’ and ‘Son of a Liche’ by J Zachary Pike

Orconomics and Son of a Liche (I see there now appears to be a sequel, which I haven’t read yet – Dragonfired) are books by J Zachary Pike. They’re gentle, parodies, a little bit in the style of Terry Pratchett (although no, no one is as good as Pratchett), telling stories set in a world that appears like a fantasy world, but where things a bit more mundane like economics and sociology have an impact. Orconomics, in particular, tells how despite the bravery and courage of individual heroes, a system of economic power and wealth systematises and exploits their acts, turning heroism into a set of chains of exploitation that individuals find difficult to escape. They’re not the best books in the world, but they’re fun, and worth a read if you’re after something lighter.

Quotes from Orconomics

Chapter 1

Page 17

Of course, a monster’s killers aren’t the only ones with claims on its loot. A quest- giver, be it a simple shepherd or an entire city, could lay claim to nine- tenths of a hoard, minus the heroes’ fee. And quest- givers could often capitalize on those claims by selling shares of the hoard, even before the foe in possession of the loot had been slain. The speculators who bought those shares often bundled them into plunder funds, which were then divided up and sold to other companies, who were owned by other companies, and beyond that… well, it hurt Scroot’s head to think about who owned what.

Chapter 8

Page 123

There was a time when he once thought heroes could set out from home with little more than a walking stick and a plucky attitude and return a few short years later stronger, wiser, and rich enough to bleed silver. Back then, he thought character and perseverance brought a hero through a quest, rather than flaming weapons or enchanted armor. But those dreams died quickly in the world of professional heroics, as did the adventurers who held on to such ideals too tightly.

Chapter 11

Page 192

Adventurers who lost their heads in a figurative sense often lost their heads in a more literal manner shortly thereafter.

Chapter 18

Page 315

All of his work, all of his efforts, had gained him nothing and had cost his friends everything; no, he’d cost an entire people their lives. He’d always known the system was rigged; he’d have told anyone the system was rigged a few months ago. Yet all they had to do was wave a pardon and some gold in his face, and he’d jumped in feet- first. The guild had used him, because he’d let them.

Brian Staveley’s Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne

I really enjoyed Brian Staveley’s Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne series. They’re dense, rich books, in a completely new fantasy setting, with gripping action and believable characters. What’s not to love?

The first in the series is the The Emperor’s Blade, which sets the scene with three imperial siblings, all trapped in their own way, all fighting to get free of the machinations against them.

• Valyn trains with a group of warriors who use giant birds (Kettral) effectively as helicopters, enabling procedures and manoeuvres unavailable to other warriors.
• Kaden trains in a profoundly ascetic way with monks in a remote valley – when suddenly danger and intrigue come to him.
• Adare navigates the imperial politics, trying to hold a crumbling empire together when her father is assassinated.

In subsequent books, including The Providence of Fire, The Last Mortal Bond, and The Empire’s Ruin, we see the world unfold. Valyn goes from being a fresh recruit to a battle-hardened veteran – in the process of defending the kingdom he becomes involved with factions within an invading northern horde, and a bitter, hollow shell of himself.

Kaden flees from assassins, and eventually returns to the capital, where Adare has had a profoundly religious experience, connecting with something beyond. Throughout, the three siblings (and other characters who join them) discover that their world still hosts remaining figures from two ancient races. The Csestriim are an ancient, calculating race with no emotion, and a deep knowledge of hidden skills (later books indicate fairly strongly that there’s technology as well as magic). They, in turn, have almost eradicated a separate ancient race (the name is escaping me), who embody ancient, primitive joy in pure emotion. There are gods, strange science, and lots of intrigue.

And Staveley does excellent world-building – demonstrated also by the prequel Skullsworn, which follows a priestess in an ancient death cult (who often function as assassins), launching into the series of final trials that will mark the end of her training.

Well worth a read.

Quotes

The Emperor’s Blade

As Hendran wrote, Your ideals die, or you do.

The Providence of Fire

Valyn stared at the leach, the pieces falling into place. Sanlitun’s political foes had often termed his policy with the Urghul appeasement. Since il Torna’s elevation to kenerag, however, Annur had begun to take a harder position, fortifying the northern border, building new forts, even allowing strategic incursions over the White River. It was hard to say precisely why il Torna would want to antagonize the Urghul, but history furnished a few examples. Maybe he was angling for more coin in the coffers of the Ministry of War. Maybe he was looking to expand the upper ranks of the army, to justify the promotion of a few confederates. Or maybe he wanted an open war. Valyn forced himself to consider that last option. It made a certain mad sense, especially if the kenerang aspierd to the Unhewn Throne itself. A sufficiently violent conflict would terrify the people of Annur, maybe terrify them enough that they would accept a seasoned warrior on the throne and overlook the fact that il Torna lacked Intarra’s burning eyes.

“I won’t drape myself in a lie and call it glory.” “Oh for ‘Shael’s sweet sake, girl, you think you can rule an empire without lying? You think your father didn’t lie? Or his father? or any of your goldy-eyed great-great-founders of Annur? It’s built into the job. Bakers have flour, fishermen have nets, and leaders have lies.”

It was obvious he had already lost, and the protestations, for all their difference, were all the same: a litany, the power of which he had long ago forgotten, a desperate string of syllables stronger than any prayer, the ancient, ineluctable chant of humanity itself: I want … I want … I want …

The Last Mortal Bond

The Emperor’s power was an illusion. It always had been. There was the palace, and the palace guard, the Aedolians sworn to guard the royal family, and the legions, and of course Intarra’s blazing eyes, all militating for the divine right of the Malkeenian line. None of it mattered. Not really.

That was the mystery at the heart of all power. Power appeared to be something that a ruler had, that she held, that she had taken from the people. The appearance was false. Power was something people gave, gave willingly, even if they didn’t know it, even if they resented it. The wealthy merchant who paid a tax on every bolt of cloth, the slave who lived day after day under the yoke, the sailors who allowed their boats to be searched by crown officials, the soldiers who refused to break ranks even when their orders were ridiculous, insane – it was these people who gave a ruler her power, offered it up like a sacrifice.

Skullsworn

It takes work to keep the world whole. A simple thing like a cup needs to be cleaned each day, placed carefully back on the shelf, not dropped. A city, in its own way, is every bnit as delicate. People move over the causeways, ply the canals with their oars, go between their markets and their homes, buy and barter, swindle and sell, and all the while, mostly unknowingly, they are holding that city together. Each civil word is a stitch knitting it tight. Every law observed, willingly or grudgingly, helps to bind the whole. Every traditions, every social more, every act of neighbourly goodwill is a stay against the chaos. So many souls, so much effort, so difficult to create and so simple to shatter.

… history is as ubiquitous as water, as rot.

… those stories are their only weapon, and stories are only weapons if you repeat them.

The crocs, for all their ungainly weight on the shore, moved through the water fast as spilled shadow, great jaws opening silently, closing around an arm, a leg, then dragging the unstruggling body down.

Robert Peel: A biography by Douglas Hurd

Robert Peel: A biography by Douglas Hurd is an interesting biography. It’s interesting in that it’s written by a former Cabinet Minister – one who therefore has an appreciation for the day to day cut and thrust of politics that some academics may miss. It’s about a fascinating character – one who was willing to split his party on a principle, and made significant reforms. It’s almost too easy to imagine him as the leader that Malcolm Turnbull might have been, if he’d had more courage or luck. Hurd also captures – in his own way – some of their political thinking, the ‘what-ifs’ that might have animated the thinking of Peel and others, even though some aspects may never have come to pass.

Fascinatingly, 1834 also captures the point at which an English monarch dismisses a government on their own volition for the final time; and the point at which the Duke of Wellington turns down the role of Prime Minister, telling the King that the role should be based in the House of Commons.

This was an interesting read; a slightly niche topic, but worth it if you’re interested in Victorian-era politics.

Quotes

… the shadow of the French Revolution. That threat to lives, to the Church, to property, to the rule of law, to the whole familiar structure of society dominate Tory ideas and instincts. The fear lingered on long after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo. Napoleon had been a threat to Britain, like Philip II and Louis XIV before him and Hitler and Stalin after. Napoleon, like Stalin, had embodied not just a military danger but also the threat of revolution. True, these two rulers were heirs of revolution rather than revolutionaries themselves, but they had been brought to power on a surge of ideas which, once let loose in Britain, could lead to disaster.

We tend to believe in a self-satisfied way that reforms must inevitably have been pressing towards the state of affairs which we enjoy today, namely a reasonably liberal criminal justice system plus a professional police force. But the reformers of the 1820s did not instinctively think that way. They wanted to move towards greater freedom, in trade, in the currency, in speech, even in the organisation of trade unions. To them it was a backward step to create a police force, which they saw essentially as an instrument of government designed to watch the citizen and curb his freedom. A standing army was bad enough, and had to be reviewed every year by Act of Parliament.

[A fascinating story of Peel’s role in providing patronage for his old tutor from Oxford] … the climate of Dr Lloyd’s clerical career approach. He was now regius Professor of Divinity, but wanted desperately to be Bishop of Oxford. The present Bishop was dying but not dead. Lloyd sent Peel frequent bulletins … it seemed sensible for Lloyd to draft a letter which Peel, should the sad event occur, might send to the Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, recommending Lloyd as the next bishop … Peel sent the letter to Lord Liverpool, and commented to Lloyd, ‘this is the only letter of an applicant nature which I ever addressed to him in my life – he will not misunderstand it’. In an age where politics and patronage went hand in hand, Peel’s abstinence from the pell-mell of job pushing is extraordinary … [after another figure seems likely to be appointed, and some back and forth between Lloyd and Peel] … Peel stayed calm … It turned out that the King was behind the manoeuvre. By promoting Dr Gray he wanted to free his stall at Durham, probably for some clerical friend of Lady Conyngham. The King’s whim evaporated. Peel worked behind the scenes for his respectable and well qualified friend. On 9 February Peel wrote to tell Lloyd that the Prime Minister had changed his mind and that Lloyd was to be bishop after all.

[In relation to the appointment of the Prime Ministership after an election] The King twisted and turned to avoid Canning. He played with several alternatives … The King suggested that the Cabinet should choose the Prime Minister, but Wellington, Peel and Canning all told him that this was a task for the King alone. The King could reasonably wonder about the nature of his authority when he was able neither to delegate this responsibility of choosing a Prime Minister nor exercise it in the way he wanted. The monarchy was entering a twilight zone, moving away from the age when the Prime Minister was, in fact as well as theory, the King’s Minister, towards the present position of, in effect, an elected Prime Minister. [Peel chose not to serve under Canning, despite the King’s request that he do so, because he felt he couldn’t advocate for a position on ‘the Catholic question’ which was at odds with his own leader and half the Parliament, whilst also serving as the Home Secretary].

The Conservative Party will always include Ultras within its ranks. These are men and women who instinctively resist change and pine for a golden age that never was. Every Conservative Association has always contained such individuals, some as its most energetic supporters. But the Ultras divide into two distinct types. There are those whose nostalgia is part of their charm. There is nothing ungenerous in their affection for the past; their backward looking is warm-hearted, even delightful … The second and smaller group of Ultras are the sour right. There is nothing warm or nostalgic about their politics. Most of them are intelligent and sincere; but their appeal is to the prejudices and cruelty which are part of human nature. The foreigner, the immigrant, the down and out, the Roman Catholic, the Jew, the Muslim – all of these have at different times become the focus of their sourness. The difficulty of the Ultras, whether charming or sour, is that they cannot win and know it … a Conservative leader has to coax them towards reality … An Ultra Tory government would be ‘supported by very warm friends no doubt, but the warm friends, being prosperous country gentlemen, fox-hunters etc. etc, most excellent men, who will attend one night, but will not leave their favourite pursuits to sit up till two or three o’clock fighting questions of detail on which, however, a government must have a majority’. This notion of squires more reliable on the hunting field than in the division lobby, more concerned with their dinner than with the clauses of a Bill, became a staple of Peel’s political correspondence.

Peel skillfully used the fear of crime as the main justification for his measure [introducing a national police force]. Public opinion, then as now, was sure that crimes against individuals were increasing and that the authorities were handling them with the utmost feebleness and incompetence. Affection for the ancient watchmen and traditional rights of parishes evaporated when tested against this concern. But there was another aspect of the creation of a large London police force. As we have seen, the main concern of the Home Office had traditionally been not individual crime, but public disorder. It was after all only eight years since London had been virtually in the hands of a mob stirred by sympathy for the absurd Queen Caroline; and that was just the last of a whole series of dangerous movements. Now there was to be a disciplined civilian force under direction of a senior Government Minister empowered to give orders to the Commissioners whom he had appointed. This was a huge increase in the physical power of government at the centre of the political system … In 1848, when thrones tottered across Europe and the Charterists marched on London, there were many reasons for the peaceful and orderly outcome in Britain; one was the existence of the Metropolitan Police.

The ambiguous phrases of politicians, sometimes described as weasel words, give the profession a lot of trouble. They are taken as signs of deviousness and a will to deceive – or at best proof of a feeble will. This is not necessarily true. A sincere and intelligent man may need time to make up his mind, or even more time to change it. While he is uncertain or moving from one opinion to another, he remains as silent as possible. But silence is not an option if he is daily in the public gaze, as Peel was in 1828. He constantly has to explain his views in private and public life. It is natural, and pardonable, that in these circumstances, he should look for words which form a bridge between his past and future positions. Such uncertain words are unlikely to impress his audience or historians; but they may well work better than an unqualified statement of a view he no longer holds or a premature announcement of a conclusion he has not yet reached.

The motives of politicians are neither more nor less straightforward than those of other human beings. We all operate on a compound of motives; the analysis is often impossible. Peel went through a double conversion, first to accept Catholic Emancipation, second to recognise that he would have to take it through the Commons himself. But mixed up in that genuine conversion was Peel’s belief in Peel. The very heat of the upcoming fire gave satisfaction. He was singled out for exceptional because he alone was capable of the necessary service to his country. Peel was preparing to taste for the first but not the last time the pleasure as well as the pain of martyrdom.

The qualification for voting [in Ireland] was raised to £10, namely to a level which would leave the vote with the kind of prosperous tenant or town dweller who had voted for Fitzgerald in County Clare while excluding most of those who had voted for O’Connell. Eighty thousand Catholic voters lost the vote in Ireland under the measure which enabled Catholics to sit in Parliament.

[After Peel gained a reputation as a rat for shifting his position on Catholic Emancipation, Croker writes in Croker Correspondence, Vol II, p. 15] ‘Some joker let loose a live rate in the House of Lords during one of their debates’.

Catholic Emancipation remains one of the great reforms of British history – because of its effect not just in Ireland but on the politics of the nation. For the first time a pressure group from outside Parliament had forced Parliament to alter the Constitution. The Catholic Association had achieved this not by violence but by the peaceful and shrewd use of a legal power, the right of the forty-shilling freeholder in Ireland to vote. The next example of such pressure would reach its successful climax four years later with the abolition of slavery in the colonies. That was a triumph over a powerful economic interest; Catholic Emancipation was an assault on the very institutions of the state. If such pressure could alter the sacred 1688 Constitution, could persuade Peel and defeat the Duke of Wellington, then other movements could gather strength for other purposes, and use that strength to besiege and convince Parliament. Within months the movement for parliamentary reform was under way.

The general election of 1826 had made matters worse. Local misdeeds were more notorious than ever. At Northampton the corporation’s candidate was shown to have been paid £1,000 out of the corporation funds. At Leicester the Tories in control of the corporation enrolled 800 new freemen with the right to vote, and paid one of their candidates £7,000 for election expenses. The town’s charitable funds were reserved almost exclusively for voters of sound views.

… the Duke of Newcastle who in October 1829 was reproached for evicting tenants who had voted against one of his candidates. The Duke retorted ‘[i]s it presumed then that I am not to do what I will with my own?’ This particular Duke was indirectly responsible for lighting the fuse which exposed one outstanding scandal of the system. The borough of East Retford in Nottinghamshire had through many elections continued a comfortable system by which the freemen were paid twenty guineas for each of their votes by the two borough Members. Forty guineas was a sizeable sum for the freemen. Both patrons, candidates and freemen, preferred this arrangement to the uncertainty of a contest, and the seat was peacefully divided between the nominees of the Whig Lord Fitzwilliam and a group based on the corporation. This agreement came adrift in 1826. The Duke of Newcastle, who had an interest which he had allowed to go to sleep, woke up and put forward a third candidate of his own. The fierce contest which followed exposed the corruption of East Retford so conclusively that almost everyone, including Peel, agreed that the borough should lose its franchise.

There was no Parliamentary corruption in nearby Birmingham because there was no seat to buy or sell. Birmingham was entirely unrepresented … It was Thomas Atwood who led the charge, the public-spirited Birmingham banker who was well known to the Peels, father and son, because of his opposition to a tight monetary policy and the return to gold … [Atwood wanted a more representative Parliament, in hopes that it would lead to looser monetary policy] … In December 1829 he founded in Birmingham ‘a general political union between the lower and middle classes’ to work for Parliamentary reform. After a slow start the political union’s membership reached 6,000. It was no longer disreputable for businessmen to join tradesmen in a pressure group to influence Parliament from the outside.

The immense popularity of the Bill in its different versions [which would become the Reform Act of 1832] became from that point the determining factor in its success. The great majority of those who at different stages mustered petitions, illuminated buildings, gathered crowds, shouted, threw stones and broke windows in support of the Bill would have no vote in the reformed Parliament. Some indeed in big constituencies like Westminster would lose the vote they now had, once Lord John’s standard threshold of £10 households was established. The Great Reform Bill would leave the propertied classes firmly in control of the political system. It only increased the electorate by about 45 per cent, from 3.2 to 4.7 per cent of the population. But the symbolism of the struggle was different. The middle and working classes were showing by different methods their rejection of the present way their country was run.

Britain was nearer to a violent outburst of popular feeling in these famous Days of May than at any time in the last three centuries. The middle and working classes were in general commotion. Meetings, processions and petitions were organised across the nations; factories and shops closed; there was a run on the banks; citizens declared they would withhold taxes; the King was hissed; men of the Scots Grey in Birmingham said they would not act against a constitutional protest.

… it is hard now to conceive how much effort and passion during the 1830s went into debating the established Protestant Church of Ireland. The number of Irish bishops, the collecting of Irish tithes, the allocation of Irish church revenues are questions so distant from us today that it is easy for us to turn the pages wearily until we reach a more congenial, comprehensible topic. Yet this was the subject which at that time preoccupied the King, his Ministers and the Tory Party – and which provided the pressures which held Peel and Wellington together. The fundamentals were clear. Out of eight million Irishmen, less than a million belonged to the established Church of Ireland, which was in structure and doctrine a weak sister of the Church of England. The Church of Ireland maintained 1,385 benefices across the country and twenty-two bishops and archbishops. But this imposing superstructure was not mainly paid for by the members of the Church. The tithe system meant that the Catholic peasant, often in addition to supporting his own priest, had to pay much of the income of the local Anglican parson.

These were high years for political dinners. For the two political parties they were an ideal means of building local support with the new middle-class electorate … Whatever the King might wish the split between parties was not temporary, but from now on a permanent and necessary part of the political system. Political dinners with their many speeches and toasts were a useful way of defining party differences. The local newspaper relished them, particularly in the autumn when Parliament was not sitting and political news was scarce … Parties measured their political progress by the size of their dinners … In some places the organisers linked the dinners with the new process of registering to vote.

On 18 May 1841 the Government was badly beaten on the sugar duties after a discussion lasting eight days … They pushed forward as if nothing had happened, and rain straight into a challenge of no confidence from Peel. The debate lasted from 27 May until 4 June, with an interruption for the Whitsun holidays. Peel renewed his attack. The result was unpredictable. Whigs who had voted against the Government on sugar would return to cast loyal votes against a motion of no confidence on the Government. The Whips on both sides exerted themselves with full force. The Whigs carried through the lobby Lord Hallyburton, the Member for Forfar, who was unconscious and said to be out of his mind. Every single Conservative either voted or was paired; for once the country gentlemen refuted what Peel had said about their dinners and lack of discipline. ‘When the tellers forced their way through the crowd on the floor of the House towards the Speaker’s chair, and the black hair and immense whiskers of Fremantle [Conservative Chief Whip] were seen to be on the right hand side, a great roar went up. The Conservatives shouted and stamped and clapped, and when the result announced – for the resolution 312, against 311 – they shouted and stamped again.’ One vote was enough. The Government was finished.

… Gladstone replied at length. He welcomed the principle of direct taxation, but found six objections to income tax. He would prefer to revive the tax on houses, which the Whigs had abolished in 1834. Peel responded courteously to his junior colleague with counter-arguments. He had a devious motive for circulating Gladstone’s paper to other Ministers, believing that a house tax would be so unpopular that income tax would seem attractive by comparison. Finally on 24 January the Cabinet approved a proposal for income tax pitched at a slightly higher threshold than Goulburn had suggested in July with exemption for those earning less than £150 a year.

[Gladstone, in examining proposals to change the Corn Laws] … was struck by the way in which Peel clung to as much of the familiar detail of the old arrangements as was compatible with his aims, thus reducing the points of disagreement to a minimum. ‘Until we were actually in the midst of the struggle’, he wrote on 26 February, ‘I did not appreciate the extraordinary sagacity of his parliamentary instinct in this particular.’

A Manchester free trade manufacturer called Barlow sent Peel two pieces of velveteen of the highest quality. He accepted with thanks, writing that his wife would convert one into a cloak, and he would use the other himself. He did not notice that the elegant design of the cloth of a stalk and ear of wheat had the word FREE on a scroll beneath it. The velveteen was a political manifesto. The press was told, the Manchester Guardian picked up the story, The Times followed, speculation grew. Punch enjoyed itself … There was no neat way out of this. Peel returned the velveteen, writing clumsily that he had not noticed its ‘allusion to matters that are the subject of public controversy’.

The Charterists had failed in May 1842 to persuade the Commons to receive a mammoth petition, six miles in length with (it was claimed) three million signatures. They had gained no sympathy even from the Radicals in the Commons … By contrast, the Anti Corn Law League was noise where it mattered politically, in the Commons and among the middle-class electorate. Ministers and the Conservative Party were enraged at the way in which Cobden and Bright stirred up the trouble for which members of their own League were party responsible. Such employers threw men out of work, introduced short time, and tried to cut wages … Yet the League appointed lecturers who went round the industrial areas exploiting grievances as if they were brought about solely by a selfish aristocracy who cared only for the Corn Laws … Peel and Graham decided against prosecution, but set about compiling a damaging dossier on the League’s agitation which eventually appeared, thanks to Croker, in the Quarterly Review in December 1842.

As usual Peel used Arbuthnot as a channel to the Ultras in the Commons and Croker to reach the readers of the influential Quarterly Review. These letters, carefully drafted and likely to pass from hand to hand, were for Peel the nearest approach to radio or television broadcasts today.

A pattern established itself [in Colonial expansion under Peel]. Local commanders, missionaries or entrepreneurs occupied fresh territory, usually on the pretext of defending what they already had. By the time the government at home received this news, the fact was accomplished. Those concerned had significant backing at Westminster or in the City of London. Provided that no great further expenditure was needed it was easier for Ministers to acquiesce, often with a grumble, than to try to reverse the fact.

[In response to O’Connell’s success of mass meetings for the repeal movement [to repeal the 1800 Act of Union], and a sense that the key points of agitation were clerics trained at Maynooth, Peel sought to bring the church closer] The main move towards the Catholic Church must come in the form of generous finance – private and public …

Of course he [Peel] wanted to have it both ways, to preserve his political position while achieving his objective. As it became clear that these two might be incompatible he had no hesitation about the choice. In his exalted mood it was much more important to repeal the Corn Laws than to save his premiership. By this choice he destroyed his own political position and sent his party into the wilderness; but he gained something which he had never consciously sought, namely popularity among the great mass of people as the man who brought them cheap bread. The real test came two years later. The Charterist movement under its leader, Fergus O’Connor, planned a gigantic demonstration on Monday 10 April 1848 in support of its political demands. A petition with five million signatures was to be presented at Westminster by a huge crowd which would first gather on Kennington Commons in south London … The Charterist plan was to install a National Assembly which would replace Parliament until the demands in the Charter became law. The Queen left London for Osborne. Even members of the Cabinet believed that by Monday evening Britain would be under a provisional government … Only 150,000 Charterists turned up on Kennington Common. They were outfaced by the police and abandoned the idea of a march on Westminister. The petition was trundled to Westminister in a cab. In the afternoon it began to rain, the crisis passed, and the Duke ordered the soldiers back to barracks. There was trouble later in London and northern cities and a large number of arrests; but the big danger was over.