Born To Run. Bruce Springsteen (Simon & Schuster 2016)

A very engaging and enjoyable biography that gets a delicate balance just right. Biography is a tricky project to get right, the lives of others are of minimal interest to others outside of a very small, usually connected, circle. Fame does not mean that a life is any more interesting, just that the larger , unconnected circle of people who are familiar with the some aspect of a person's life is larger. Getting the balance right between sharing details about what has made the person famous with enough personal details to support the claim to be a biography is tough. Bruce Springsteen has managed it with grace, charm and sharp humour.
Bruce Springsteen never had a full time job other than being a musician, it is a career he has pursued in spite of hitting a low point that would have served as a full stop to most. He was played a set with an actual teenage garage band in their suburban garage, not as a teenager but as an adult musician desperately hustling work. The desire to play never wavered and the sheer intensity of this comes across consistently through the book, increasing fame has not diminished or increased it, it has simply been an outcome of the brutal determination to do what he feels is job.One of the great pleasures of the book to a fan of his music like myself is the time Bruce Springsteen takes over the details of the process of writing, recording and playing his music. It is fascinating to see what music he talks about and what music he does not, what gets details and what gets mentioned.
Bruce Springsteen is a very deliberate musician, constantly aware of his own limitations and working to compensate for them, writing music with a plan in mind. This does not make the process any easier and the description of how the songs have been written is deeply engaging. His appreciation that what he had in mind and the way the audience understands them is welcome. His exploration of his life as working musician in a business is great, the dynamic balance between himself and the musicians he has worked with, in particular the E Street Band, is explored with sympathetic detail.
The other significant aspect to this book is his relationship with his parents, in particular his father from whom he inherited a difficult mental landscape. His openness about his mental health struggles is understated and natural, is is presented as part of his ongoing existence. The episode where his father and a friend organise a fishing trip in Mexico is a joy, the strange places that family bonds take us is beautifully described.
Bruce Springsteen has traveled very from from his roots because he was wiling to work incredibly hard and make the most of opportunities that came his way. When he got the chance to sing with the Rolling Stones and rehearse with them, he revealed the secret of his long career, he is a unashamed music fan. That is the deepest thread in this book and the one that allows the reader to share the journey with pleasure.

KRAZY. George Herriman, a Life in Black and White. Michael Tisserand. HarperCollins Publishers 2016.

A hugely engaging and enjoyable biography of George Herriman, who created the newspaper comic Krazy Kat and developed it over an extraordinarily sustained period of creativity that lasted for decades.
There are two major themes in this book and Michael Tisserand does justice to both, the first is the racial context to George Herriman's life and the second is is life as a creative professional. George Herriman was a Creole from New Orleans who spent the greater part of his life declaring and being accepted as a white American, his nickname was George the Greek. George Herriman was committing the single most serious crime that he could carry out in social terms in the overtly racially divided USA of the time, he was "passing". By doing this he was directly confronting and undermining the most important tenant of the racial social creed, that a white person was intrinsically superior to non-white people and that their superiority was written on their skin for all to see. If in fact that skin was telling a lie, appearing to be white when the facts of family were otherwise was to effectively show up the complete nonsense for what it was, a lie put about by one group to support their dominance over others, a simple power play backed by nothing but violence and hatred.
No group responds well to such a direct and unassailable attack on something so precious to the structure of their lives, "passing" had fatal consequences for many, their treatment especially vicious to provide a warning to others.
George Herriman lived his life standing on this knife edge and never faltered, his secret was a secret for years after his death, Michael Tisserand carefully raises the question regarding exactly what George Herriman knew himself, his father had made a choice when George was very small so it is possible that he was not aware of his own heritage. Equally there are pieces of work that can be read without forcing the conclusion that he was aware of a hidden racial identity. Michael Tisserand does not step beyond the evidence, he does provide a very vivid context of the racial forces for forcefully and publicly at work in the USA. If George Herriman was conducting a fully conscious life as a Creole in a White skin then his ability to manage the mental strain and impact throughout his life without betraying himself in the slightest is the only aspect of his life more astounding than his work.
The second theme of this book is the extraordinary creative professional life of George Herriman, newspaper cartoonist. Michael Tisserand places George Herriman directly in his professional context as a member of a wide spread group who illustrated the news first and as photography took over provided comics for newspapers. George Herriman was part of a group of professional cartoonists who were together at the emergence of the art form and ho created many of its most enduring strips. The way that Krazy Kat developed from the desire to anchor a career in a continuing strip is deeply engaging, Krazy Kat was the end result of a lot of other efforts that had varying degrees of success until the star emerged. Having storming success with single strip comics, it was when Krazy was given a full page on a Sunday that George Herriman revealed the unplumbed depth of his creative genius. A simple framework of unrequited love between a kat, a mouse and a dog the confines that would choke another liberated George Herriman.
Krazy Kat in the Sundays never achieved the heights of popularity that others did, still it had a hugely loyal audience, though George Herriman spend his life downplaying his work and fretting that he would loose his employment.
Krazy is a very enjoyable book and a lovely tribute to an extraordinary man whose contribution to the sum total of human happiness is beyond measure.

Castlereagh. Enlightenment, War and Tyranny. John Bew. Quercus (2011)

A very engaging biography of a fascinating man who has the extraordinary ill luck to be vilified by by two great English poets in stunning memorable ways. The words of the poets, Byron and Shelly, captured a very vivid strain of popular comment about Robert Stewart, Lord Castlereagh, as a brutal reactionary and a lackluster, second rate political schemer. John Bew scrapes the mud off to take a more considered look at Castlereagh and to evaluate his very considerable achievements.
The most  important point about Castlereagh is that he was the right person in the right place at the right time, he had a willingness and capacity to do what had to be done for the horribly mundane reasons of  political and social necessity at the time regardless of the the current intellectual climate. Castlereagh was an Ulster Presbyterian, brought up in an Enlightenment tradition of political liberalism that was the bedrock support for the development of  self-governing Ireland. That he was vital to to the success of the Act of Union which removed the Irish Parliament was a breach with his original social and political community in Ireland that never healed. One of the most striking aspects to the change by Castlereagh and one of the defining characteristics of his life that Jhn Bew effectively brings out, is that the breach was not an intellectual bonfire or conversion by Castlereagh. It was much worse than that as far as his former colleagues were concerned, they would have been much more forgiving of a romantic conversion to another faith. Instead it was a  simple understanding that the current situation would not stand. A change was going to come and Castlereagh, as he was to do all his life, worked to bring it about peacefully rather than wait for an explosion.Castlereagh was to suffer all his life from a determination to adhere to the bruising details of reality and to push actions based on that rather than on the flavorsome ideals that his contemporaries enjoyed so much.
Following the demise of the Irish Parliament Castlereagh was elected to the House of Commons, this process in itself is a wonderful drama of politics and patronage, and became a member of Tory Party led by William Pitt. The Napoleonic wars were being fought and in England there was considerable support for Napoleon as the heir of the French Revolution and the idea (if not the substance) of Liberty. As Secretary of War, Castlereagh lead a determined political campaign to defeat Napoleon and to support British national interests. He was a vital support for Wellington and became one of the most influential people in Europe at the Congress of Vienna after Napoleon's  first defeat and exile.After the Battle of Waterloo the post-war economic depression and civil disturbances cemented his reputation as a blood stained reactionary. His eventual suicide was greeted with scarstic pleasure by his most determined, Irish, enemies.
Castlereagh's biggest problem was his greatest strength, he was a technocrat  who was significantly more concerned about the process than the city on the hill, he was a competent speaker at a time when ability with rhetoric was highly prized and most of all his greatest successes were what had not happened. The Irish Parliament did not implode under the weight of its own entitled, corrupt incompetence, Napoleon did not strangle Britain, Europe did not fall apart in a post-Napoleonic series of wars between Austria and Russia. It is very hard to get get credit for an invisible success.
One of the most interesting aspects to the book is also something invisible and that is the impact of the fact that Castlereagh was Irish and dominant in an English institution. Castlereagh was vilified to an extraordinary extent by his opponents even by the standards of the time and it would seem reasonable to trace some of the outrage to offended pride. Being lead by someone who would be considered a social, political and racial inferior was very likely a factor in the extremity of the response he provoked. John Bew never address the question in any sort of detail which is a loss to a very fine study. John Bew is a first rate writer, he brings the details of the time to life with care and clarity and in doing so reveals an extraordinary and ultimately, very attractive, man.

John Stuart Mill. Victorian Firebrand. Richard Reeves. Atlantic Books (2007)

This is a superb biography of an extraordinary man. The title of the book is brilliantly chosen, John Stuart Mill was truly a firebrand and the importance of his work is still incendiary today. John Stuart Mill is a very unusual man, an English public intellectual whose writing was aimed directly at shaping and influencing public policy. As a rule intellectuals are not welcome in open public policy debates in England or Ireland, we have a preference for technocrats, professional administrators and professional politicians. Intellectuals are seen as essentially not engaged with the dirty work of public policy and their contributions are given less weight because of that. Mill escaped this tendency to be sidelined partly because of the times he was active in, partly because he was a professional administrator and later a professional politician, chiefly because he strove embody his ideas in his own life.

Mill was a fabulously prolific writer, he wrote on economics, politics, women's rights and a host of other topics. His writing is dense and lucid, he moves argument in a considered logical manner that remains easy to read and invigorating to encounter. Mill is not a strikingly original thinker, he is a profound one, he takes ideas and subjects them to rigorous scrutiny and develops insights from thus scrutiny. He also lived life to the greatest extent that he could and the details of his life are as interesting as his work.

John Stuart Mill's essay "On Liberty" is required reading anywhere and anytime elites confuse their interests for the public good, that is everywhere and all the time. This biography bring a great, passionate and movingly human man to life and reminds us that we are privileged to be standing on his shoulders.

The Real Oliver Twist. John Waller. Icon Books Ltd (2005)

Robert Blincoe was the child of an unmarried mother who was left at the workhouse in the parish of St. Pancras in London at the age of four in 1796. This placed him on the lowest rung of a rigid, hierarchical society which considered poverty the fault of the poor. As a inmate of a parish workhouse he was saved from starvation by the deeply begrudged charity of the local community. His future was bleak in the extreme, the parish was desperate to reduce the drain on its resources by moving the children on, one method was to apprentice the children to various trades. Robert Blincoe was so anxious to leave the workhouse that he hoped to be taken on by a chimney sweep, the most dreaded outcome for workhouse children, the conditions were appalling and life expectant short. In the end he was apprenticed to a cotton mill in Lancashire where he was subject to lavish abuse and degrading working conditions. Robert Blincoe defied the expectations of society to rise to a position of stable prosperity and his children were educated. He was to become a central figure in the factory hours movement due to his biography which told his extraordinary story.

John Waller places Robert Blincoe firmly within the political, economic and social contexts that he moved through. The use of child labour in the cotton mills and the whole issue of factory labour, the enormous and savage political debates that surrounded them are clearly explained. That Robert Blincoes biography had an influence on the writing of Oliver Twist is strongly suggested, it certainly had a significant impact on other novels.

This is a really well written book, the relationship between Robert Blincoe and his society are clearly developed and demonstrated. John Waller does not over argue Robert Blincoe's significance nor does he diminish his exceptional nature. This is not an impartial history, John Waller has clearly expressed views which give the book a thread of anger and passion which it deserves. This is a vivid, articulate, uncomfortable book that reveals that the same narrow threadbare arguments that were used to justify child labour have not gone out of fashion today. Superb.

Escape in Iraq. The Thomas Hamill Story. Thomas Hamill & Paul T. Brown. Stoeger Publishing (2004)

On Friday April 9th 2004 Thomas Hamill was kidnapped by Iraqi fighters and on Sunday May 2nd 2004, 24 days later he escaped and was rescued by a military patrol. This gripping book is the story of how Thomas Hamill found himself in Iraq, how he survived his captivity, how his family survived the pressure of his absence. Thomas Hamill was not a solider, nor did he have any special training. The reason he was in Iraq was the most basic one imaginable, he need the money that that he could earn there as a civilian contractor to support his family back in America. In America Thomas Hamill had to drive trucks long distance to support his farm and family and the struggle to make ends meet was just getting harder all the time. Iraq represented a great chance to accumulate some money to get a little ahead and take pressure off his family.

His convoy was attacked and he was injured and taken prisoner. I think it was the fact that he was not a solider that was a contributing factor to his survival, he was just a regular working man much like the people he met. The differences were balanced by strong similarities and they achieved a sort of rapport that allowed him to survive. His descrptions of the kindness he was shown, the small interactions he had with his captors are very moving. He was never sure if he would be killed, he kept his spirit enough to finally sieze his chance to escape.

For a non-American reader like myself, the deep and strongly expressed religious faith that Thomas Hamill expresses all the time is very striking. This book is a great reminder that we humans really are extraordinary beings.

Conan Doyle Detective. Peter Costello. Robinson (2006)

This is a shadow biography of Arthur Conan Doyle, tracing his life through the real life crimes that he was interested in or involved in. Part of the argument running through the book is that the rational, deductive methods that Sherlock Holmes used were the natural thinking processes that Conan Doyle used and applied to crimes that caught his attention. It is an interesting book with a lot of curious detail and the author makes the most of the evidence.

There is a notable weakness in the book however and that is the lack of direct evidence in a lot of cases, there are a lot "could have" and "must have" moments in the book. Peter Costello pushes the evidence to the limit, he does not overstep the mark, there is a little more argument and suggestion than substance. This is not to suggest that the book is flimsy or that Peter Costello has not done formidable research, he has, it is simply that direct evidence from Conan Doyle can be scarce.

Where there is a direct involvement the details are collected and the story is very effectively told, the case of George Edalji is told with great clarity and skill. The whole context for the episode is gone into and the additional details are fascinating. The same is true for the Oscar Slater case, the long tails of each case are followed up to the very recent past. Equally Conan Doyle's championing of the spiritualist cause, something which evokes embarrassment rather than anything else in other writers, is treated with respect and candour. The intertwining of spiritualism and criminal activity is explored with care and there is a surprising amount of evidence brought to light. The great affection Peter Costello has for Arthur Conan Doyle both as the creator of the immortal Sherlock Holmes and as a man who was willing to work to fight injustice is clear and elevates the book. This is a worthy addition to the books about a great and honourable man.

The Politics of Pleasure. A Portrait of Benjamin Disraeli. William Kuhn. Simon & Schuster UK (2006)

Benjamin Disraeli remains the most unlikely person to have become Prime Minister of The United Kingdom, even more unlikely he did so as the leader of the Conservative Party. Disraeli was born a Jew and baptised a Christian at the age of twelve, he was very probably gay, certainly flamboyant, wrote a number of best selling novels, and went into politics in part to gain protection from being arrested for debt.
William Kuhn explores a thesis that Disraeli was significantly autobiographical in his novels, not overtly so, that he explored his own life and expressed himself most truthfully in his fiction. Therefore they key to understanding the man lies in his novels and the relationship that writing them played in the rest of his life, political and personal.
Disraeli was surprisingly frank in his novels about his likely sexual orientation,William Kuhn examines each of Disraeli's novels as commentaries by Disraeli on his own life. They were an opportunity to review himself and his circumstances and to organise his life into a more pleasing pattern. As Disraeli became more involved in politics he wrote much less, he had a different use for words.
Disraeli's relationships with women were critical, he wrote in one of his books, " a female friend, amiable, clever, and devoted is a possession more valuable than parks and palaces; and without such a muse, few men can succeed in life,none be content".
Disraeli had a series of very deep and rewarding friendships with women throughout his life, and while he undoubtedly married for money, his marriage developed in a genuine love relationship.
Benjamin Disraeli was a extraordinary man, he was a dandy but never a fop, a flamboyant writer who loved the power words gave him in politics. He loved pomp and ceremony,he developed a deep friendship with Queen Victoria, had crushes on young men all his life and his deepest relationships were with older women. This book presents a very clear and balanced picture of a very singular man, it is well written, thoughtful and clear. Well worth reading.