Owlbadger
All Quiet on the Western Front
My year of WWI reading is coming to a close with less than two months to go. It’s fitting that towards the end I turned to what is probably the most famous book to come out of the war, Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the …
Looking back in my diary, I found the day I bought this book: Saturday 4th March 2023. I stumbled on it while browsing in the back room of the Flea Market on Market Street. It’s a beautifully produced large Folio Society volume in perfect …
I’ve had The Country House At War ever since it was published by the National Trust to commemorate the centenary of the end of WWI in 2018. I bought it because it was written by my uncle, Simon Greaves. He was, I think, retired at the time, …
After reading John Morrow’s very technical history of the WWI air war, The Great War in the Air, I felt the need for a more personal account. I’d read Cecil Lewis’ Sagittarius Rising a couple of years ago, which was widely suggested, but …
I continue my deep dive into everything WWI. I wanted to read John Morrow’s The Great War in the Air after seeing it recommended on a Reddit post about the best books on the air war of WWI. It was first published in 1993, well within James …
Until a year ago I was unaware of Guy Pratt. Although I’m a huge Pink Floyd fan, I mostly ignore anything they did after The Wall. I’m certainly not enough of an anorak to notice the name of the session bass player they hired after Waters’ …
This book forms part 3 of Simon Heffer’s ambitious 4 volume history of the UK between the start of the Victorian era in the 1830s to the outbreak of WWII in 1939. It covers the 4 years of WWI from 1914 to 1918. The other 3 volumes all cover …
This is the third volume of Seigfried Sassoon’s trilogy of novelised memoirs. It follows Memoirs of an Infantry Officer which I’d just read. It’s the slimmest of the three books and has only taken me a short time to read. It describes the …
Memoirs of an Infantry Officer
This was another Folio Society volume, printed in 1974 around 50 years ago, closer in time to the book’s original publication in 1930 than to the present day, and liberated from my Dad’s bookshelf. I’ve no idea if he’d ever read it. It was …
My continuing obsession with all things WWI took a turn away from history books to this, probably the most famous memoir of the war. It’s another of my Dad’s Folio Society volumnes that I’ve inherted. I wonder if he ever …
Nick Lloyd takes about 500 pages to describe the complete military engagement on the Western Front in WWI. This means that the core facts about the battles take centre stage, and there’s not an awful lot of room to go into detail, either at …
This was a very light and entertaining little book. I finished it in just four days, which might be a record. Palin is, as you’d expect, an excellent and engaging writer, and he effortlessly relates the life of his Edwardian ancestor. It’s …
Published in 2014 on the 100th anniversary of the beginning of WWI, this is Max Hastings’ overview of the beginning of WWI from the assassination of Franz Ferdinand to the first Christmas of the war at the end of 1914. This was one of the …
William Hickey, born in 1749 into Anglo-Irish gentry, lived through the height of the Georgian renaissance during the reign of George III. Although his profession was that of an attorney, his real passion in life was fast living. …
I read Andrew Roberts’ biography of Churchill a few years ago which I very much enjoyed. This similar sized book on George III is just as readable and interesting, and very much a education for me because I know relatively little about the …
Peter Turchin is the founder of a new kind of scientific history named “cliodynamics”. He and his team have collected a vast database of historical data: on populations, economic statistics, epidemics, laws, and heath data. It covers most …
This is probably one of most badly written books I’ve read in a very long time. It’s only because I wanted to know the history of the band that I stuck with it. It’s not just badly written, but it’s also a fawning hagiography, that feels …
This is a very attractive Folio Society volume of Kipling short stories that span his entire career. It one of the many Folio volumes that I’ve recently liberated from my late Dad’s collection. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything of …
Who We Are And How We Got Here
The book describes the revolution currently taking place in archeology thanks to the technology of ancient DNA sampling. It reveals a rich pattern of human dispersal and mixing over the past 100,000 years. In the very distant past it shows …
This has been a fascinating read. A story of imperial arrogance and hubris followed by nemesis. The British and French manoeuvring against each other for geo-political gain after the fall of the Ottoman empire. Literally drawing a straight …
Peter “Ratty” Hince was Freddie Mercury and John Deacon’s roadie through the 70’s and 80’s. A rollicking fun filled tale of life on the road with one of the world’s biggest bands. Rather than a simple narrative, it has chapters …
What a fantastic collection of stories. Certainly one of the most enjoyable books I’ve read in a while, and a rare fiction read for me. Read into that what you will. Although the stories are fictional, they are based on Mitchener’s …
The book opens with Bishop Ussher’s calculation of the age of the earth. Drawing from biblical and classical sources he estimated that creation occurred on the 23rd October 4004 BC. It ends with current estimates of 4 billion years, …
The book is based around the premise that the growth in scale and complexity of human societies - to today’s “ultra-societies” - is the result of inter-group military competition over a scale of many thousands of years. Somewhat …
This is a very “female” history; fitting I suppose for a female monarch. Hilton spends a lot of words on how Elizabeth dressed and behaved. The central theme being that she was both a woman, but also a prince in the masculine sense of the …
What an excellent overview of China’s evolution into the planet’s prime threat to peace. Williams’ obviously has an agenda, and that’s to demonstrate that the era of engagement with China is over, and the world needs to urgently move to …
A rather hit-and-miss book. Some sections were very interesting. I especially enjoyed the ones about how you get paid in the music business, or rather how it worked in the late 20th C. and how to “make a scene”. Some excellent interesting …
It’s an excellent overview of the first quarter century of social media, from the early days of blogging in the 90’s through MySpace, then Twitter and Facebook, and finally onto TikTok. Fascinating because it’s also a personal history. I …
It’s been a very enlightening and entertaining read. Although he says it’s about western civilization in the broadest sense, it’s more accurately a history of art. Clarke knows his art and has very strong opinions about it. There’s no …
An excellent and very well written account of how the BBC has grown and evolved over the last 100 years. I especially liked the early chapters about its foundation in the early 20’s following WWI and how it firmly established its reputation …
The tale of a JET program participant dumped into very rural Yamagata straight from university in the UK, and then over the next ten years succeeding as the biggest Japan YouTuber. It’s a great story with lots of quirky characters on the …
What an epic tale! Bob Spurdle joined the Royal New Zeeland Air Force at the beginning of WWII and was immediately put on a boat to the UK and into the battle of Britain flying a Spitfire. He was a member of Sailor Malan’s famous squadron …
Kim Darroch was the UK ambassador to Washington for the tail end of the Obama administration and into Trumps time in the Whitehouse. He was forced to resign after somebody in the UK government leaked his diplomatic reports that were …
A very idiosyncratic history of English farming told through the story of a single farm, Woodston, in Worcestershire from the stone age through to the present. It’s made very present because Lewis-Stempel’s grandfather was the farm manager …
I got about half way through this and given up for now. Much as I love Tom Holland for his execellent podcast, I find his prose quite hard work. That and the endless latin named characters that I have trouble keeping up with. Anyway …
The last chapter finished with a very moving account of their last gig followed by Neil Peart’s retirement and then untimely death of brain cancer. He very ably describes how after being united in making music with the same two guys for 40 …
A very good biography of Jeff Bezos and his creation, Amazon. Very interesting about Bezos’s childhood and upbringing; the story of how his biological father lost all contact and knowledge of him until Brad Stone hunted him down could be …
A very well produced and written book, full of her excellent photos. It reads like a who’s who of early 20th century art with Man Ray and Piccasso all playing large parts. Lee Miller herself comes through it all as a most extraordinary …
The Ape That Understood The Universe
I’ve really enjoyed it. A superb read. I don’t think there was much in it that was entirely new to me, and it was largely preaching to the converted. I’ve been fascinated by the ideas of evolutionary psychology for some time now. It …
The bulk of the book covers the years between 1962 when Emerick first arrived at Abbey Road Studios aged just 15, through to 1970 and the recording of Abbey Road. From Revolver onwards he was the primary mix engineer for all the Beatles …
This has been quite a profound read for me, and very much changed how I look at politics and religion. I very much liked the metaphor of the monkey and the elephant to describe how people react intuitively to strongly emotive issues (the …
A funny, self-depreciating, and very honest account of being a teenage girl in the 80s and a Britpop star in the 90s. It’s all the more poignant for me because this was very much my era too - Wender is just a year younger. Very good on the …
Overpaid, Oversexed, And Over There
Hepworth was a presenter of the BBC’s Old Grey Whistle Test through the late 70s and 80s and knows more than anyone about the history of rock and pop music. He’s written several books on the subject, but this is the first one of his I’ve …
Twilight of the Gods, the third volume of Ian Toll’s Pacific War trilogy. It covers the last year of the war including the naval battles around the Philippines including the largest naval battle in history, the Battle of Leyte Gulf. …
Part two of his three volume history of the pacific war. The book covered the middle war period, from the middle of 1942 through to the end of 1944 and encompasses the Solomon Islands campaign through to the Marianas invasion. The …
A real page turner. I do love a good WWII history. I haven’t enjoyed a book as much for quite a while and have been spending an hour or more every evening with it. He expertly zooms out to explain the big political and strategic picture, …
I’ve finished part 1, the first 100 pages. I enjoyed it, but I would have enjoyed it far more as a young man yearning for adventure. It’s a young man’s book. That devil may care, “do it for the story”, attitude, to hitch across the United …
It’s a lovely slim Folio Society volume, illustrated with some very nice wood engravings and beautifully printed. It came with a slip case, like all Folio books. I picked it up in one of the second hand bookshops in town. It was very …
A very enjoyable read. Full of the enthusiasm and energy of youth. Amazing that he was only 17 when he joined the Flying Corps, was just 18 when he flew patrols over the battle of the Somme, and then a captain commanding a squadron by the …
I bought this on a visit with Mum to Charleston Farmhouse in the summer. Only later did I realise that it’s by the same Frances Spalding who wrote The Real And The Romantic that I really didn’t get along with. Here though …
What a wonderful book this is. A beautiful poetic description of growing up in a Cotswold village in the 1920’s before electricity, cars, or radio. When the edge of the valley was the limit of the world and life revolved around farm and …
A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth
A complete overview of the last four billion years. Of course it meant that most geologic periods were skipped over in a chapter or less. For example, the Jurassic and Cretaceous, the entire Dinosaur era were rushed through in a single …
I haven’t finished reading Graham Nash’s autobiography, Wild Tales, but I’ve got to the 1980’s, he’s settled down in Hawaii with the woman of his dreams and had some kids, and I don’t think I’m particularly interested in his photography …
It was 1985, I was twenty years old and just back from nine months volunteering in India. I’d decided not to go to university, but instead to try my luck as a rock star, all I needed was a band.
At first I tried answering adds in the …
A superb telling of the first Roman millennium, from Romulus to Caracalla. It’s much more than just a tale of events. Beard is very good at explaining the sources, and helping the reader understand how contemporary the record is, and what …
Lamb was a naval aviator flying Fairey Swordfish - the Stringbag of the title - during WWII. He was involved in Dunkirk and then later the famous Taranto raid when his squadron sunk a large chunk of the Italian navy. Later he flew secret …
The book’s core argument is that western society is much the better for being a meritocracy, but that it’s threatened by the consolidation of power within the elite and a populist backlash. He makes a very good historical case that …
He has a simple and compelling thesis, that change in musical tastes and styles almost always comes from marginalised and excluded groups in society; foreigners or lower classes, almost never the elite. Transgressive music promoting …
Quite an excellent Swiftian cautionary tale, showing how an alternate reality of totalitarian control can be created. Of course it’s designed to show how the Bolsheviks and especially Stalin corrupted the Russian revolution, but it has the …
His diaries of the Brexit years 2016 to 2020, during which he was a foreign office minister, first under Boris Johnson and then later Jeremy Hunt. It’s a wonderful, catty, gossipy, day-by-day account of the absolute chaos and disorder of …
A hugely enjoyable, affectionate, self-depreciating, memoir of a p-39 Airacobra pilot based in New Guinea during WWII. It’s very much a love story of a pilot with his cantankerous and unreliable plane, the Nanette of the title. How she …
Rude, opinonated, snarky, grumpy, memoir of the authors four years or so of first creating and selling a stratup, then selling to Twitter and himself to Facebook, followed by his experiences of working inside the social networking beast. …
It’s been a fascinating read and taught me much about 20th century French history, especially the second world war and the Algerian war, about which I knew little or nothing. De Gaulle himself is an extraordinary character, both infuriating …
Part autobiography, part popular science. An excellent introduction to the nuts and bolts of scientific research, its competitiveness and its excitement. He describes what it’s like to win a Nobel prize in great detail. I also learnt …
Huge detailed biography of Kate Bush. Excellent on her meteoric rise to stardom and all the presures related to it. Great fun on the difficulty of having all your band members fall in love with you. Excellent read.
Autobiography of one third of Emerson Lake and Palmer. Comes across as a very nice guy, but pretty average as a rock memoir.
Superb 500 year history of the Anglo Saxon invasion and unification of England between 500 and 1000. A real Game of Thrones.
Continuation of the Rush history into the 1980’s. Not as enjoyable since the music they made then wasn’t very good. Some insight into tensions in the band which surfaced at that time.
Detailed uber fan history of Rush in the 1970’s. Lots of great detail, but a bit repetitive at times.
Personal account of the final year of the WWII Burma campaign from the viewpoint of an ordinary soldier. Brutal and honest about war. Incredibly moving. Slightly marred by comparisons with the present day at the time he wrote it, which will …
Legendary producer Joe Boyd gives his personal perspective on the sixties musical revolution. Brilliant on the late 60’s London underground scene.
The Weirdest People In The World
Evolutionary psychologist examines what made western europeans psychologically able to create the modern world. Gives Western Christianity a central role (a similar argument to Tom Holland’s Dominion). Fascinating new idea for me was …
Brilliantly written acount of D-Day and the Normandy campaign in WWII by my favourite WWII historian.
This is the third part of the Owlbadger guide to Yes. It covers, what I’m calling their ‘late classic period’, the …
This is the second part of the Owlbadger guide to Yes. It covers, what I’m calling their ‘early classic period’, the …
This is the first in a series of Owlbadger guides, where we look at the work of one band or artist with a critical …
“Awaken, My Love!” is the 2016 studio album by Donald Glover, under his stage name Childish Gambino. A modern take on 70’s psychedelic funk and somewhat of a Prince tribute, it manages to combine crowd pleasing melodies with …
This is the 2011 self named debut album of instrumental supergroup The Aristocrats. A textbook exercise in instrumental rock. No overdubs, just virtuoso guitar, bass and drums playing fusion infused rock.
The Aristocrats is a band platform …
Flying Microtonal Banana is the ninth studio album by Melbourne psych rockers King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. Released in 2017 as part of their five albums in one year project, it’s a psychedelic masterpiece of driving rhythms and …
Dojo is the debut album by Jouis, Brighton based graduates of the local BIMM music school (the name is a French word that translates roughly to “High enjoyment”, apparently). A quintet when the album was recorded in 2015, and …
Released in October 2016, this is the debut album by the Lemon Twigs. The creation of the teenage D’Addario brothers, Brian and Michael, it’s a work of quite astonishing precociousness.
Influences from the classic past of pop and rock run …
Seal St. Lawrence was my primary school, a tiny church of England school attached to the parish church.
Both were built in 1865 by Horace Wilkinson to commemorate his daughter. The building itself looked like a large victorian house facing …