Autumn 1066

The Blurb

Down the centuries the British Isles has always been seen by invaders as a legitimate target for exploitation. This novella concerns the last few weeks of Anglo-Saxon occupation, ending on the 14th of October, 1066.

In Autumn 1066, author Jack Eason gives a great sense of ‘place’, of detail. The reader is right ‘there’ in that poignant year, marching, shivering with September cold (as ‘…no warming fires were allowed lest ‘enemy spies would soon spot their approach.’)

From the very first few lines, Eason, practising his unique drycraft, begins to weave his particular brand of magic on his reader. Eason glamour’s with well-crafted dialogue, drawing his reader into the time and into the action. To accomplish this, the author proffers a gentle blend of informative nomenclature coupled with familiar speech, to ease the reader into his story without distancing with words too unfamiliar, which is a criticism frequently made of Bernard Cornwell’s epics.

I long to read more

Martin Bradley

My review

I am a huge fan of British history and Mr Eason has done a terrific job of sharing the history surrounding the defeat of the last of the Anglo Saxon kings and the start of the Norman period of rule in an interesting and entertaining way.

The book starts with King Harold’s men marching to do battle with Harald, the Norwegian King, who had arrived in Scotland ready to do battle for the English crown. Harald is aware that William of Normandy is also preparing for battle against him. The descriptions of the terrible circumstances of the Anglo-Saxon Fyrd are detailed and fascinating. I wondered how the soldiers were able to fight after spending days marching in such miserably cold conditions.

This book is well researched and highlights the politics and uncertainties of the day. It is reminiscent of Shakespeare’s works with its allegiances, intrigues and collaborations between friends and foes. I must admit it made me rethink my own anxieties which don’t extend to having a new king thrust upon me following a disastrous battle. The cruelty and harshness of punishments are eye opening and shocking and Mr Eason has included the good, the bad and the ugly of battle during this time.

I highly recommend this novella to people who are interested in history or just a jolly good battle and its consequences.

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Visitors by WJ Scott

The Blurb

Twelve-year-old Brody, and his kid brother, are sent to stay with their reclusive Aunt Sally, when their mom falls seriously ill. But, they soon discover things are not as they appear, and a strange phenomenon is happening in the small retro town.
What mystery is Tucker’s Mountain hiding?
Unsure of who or what they can trust, the boys embark on a hunt for answers that reveals more than they bargained for.

My review

Visitors is an intriguing short read about two small boys who are sent to live with their aunt in a small town in the USA. Brody, the older boy, aged twelve, is aware that his mother is very ill, possibly dying. He feels responsible for looking after his younger brother, Tom. The boys haven’t seen their aunt for a few years, but when she collect them from the airport, Brody immediately notices how youthful she looks. As they drive through the small town that is near Aunt Sally’s small holding, he also noticed that the cars and certain other features of the town are old fashioned and are from the 1950s. His aunt gives him a glib excuse for this but it makes him curious. Other strange occurrences and odd restrictions on the boys freedoms make their presence known and the two boys set out to determine what is going on in this strange town.

This is a well written tale with a happy and fulfilling ending which I would recommend to readers of family dramas with an interesting twist which makes this a sci-fi book.

Purchase Visitors

I am over at Writing to be Read today with a second post about the Second Anglo Boer War propaganda poetry. This post presents the pre-war propaganda position of the British Empire and includes a poem by Rudyard Kipling. Thank you Kayle Lynne Booth for hosting me.

In my post entitled Second Anglo Boer War propaganda Poetry – the Boer side of things, I gave a brief overview of the circumstances that led to the Boers declaring war on the British Empire for the second time.

The late 19^th century saw a significant increase in imperialism in Britain, spurred on by the theories of social Darwinism which argued that the biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest should be applied to sociology and politics. This imperialism provided an ideological foundation for warfare and colonisation in the name of the British Empire.

Journalism was used to disseminate these ideas to the British public and, in the years leading up to the Second Anglo Boer War, newspapers were characterised by extreme pro-war propaganda, which was strictly controlled by the British High Commission in South Africa, Sir Alfred Milner.

After a holiday to South Africa in early 1898, Rudyard Kipling became friendly with Cecil John Rhodes, a British mining magnate and politician in southern Africa, Leander Starr Jameson, the leader of the botched Jameson Raid which aimed to overthrow the Transvaal government in December 1895, and Sir Alfred Milner. Kipling cultivated these friendships and came to admire these men and their politics. Before and during the Second Anglo Boer War, Kipling wrote poetry in support of the British cause in the Boer War.

One of Kipling’s early propaganda poems was The Old Issue which is published in his The Five Nations book of poetry.

Continue reading here: https://kayelynnebooth.wordpress.com/2020/06/22/second-anglo-boer-war-propaganda-poetry-the-british-side-of-things/

My son and I have different opinions on the relevancy of Shakespeare in our modern world. Greg thinks Shakespeare’s works have become irrelevant and would prefer to study more modern writers who have written about issues that have shaped our modern world.

He would rather study 1984 by George Orwell which is about totalitarianism, discrimination, tracking and other issues that, in his opinion, are still a concern today. He sees Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury as being relevant because he does not see people burning books in Western society.

I disagree with Greg on both counts but I am limiting this post to my thoughts about the relevancy of Shakespeare, who just happens to be one of my favourite authors.

These are the reasons that I think it is still worthwhile for students to study literature:

We all quote Shakespeare all the time

Shakespeare invented over 1700 of our common words. He did this by changing nouns into verbs, changing verbs into adjectives, connecting words never before used together, adding prefixes and suffixes, and devising entirely original words.

Some of my favourite Shakespeare originated words are green-eyed, assassination, bloodstained, lustrous and obscene.

Continue reading here: https://kayelynnebooth.wordpress.com/2020/06/19/is-shakespeare-still-relevant-400-hundred-years-after-his-death/

What Amazon says

“… Sebastian said: But there is an obstacle, a principle of hers that she’s read of in a book by a woman called Mary Wollstonecraft…”
“… Women should be wives and companions to their husbands…”

Did Wollstonecraft, the mother of Mary Shelley, author of ‘Frankenstein’, fill the farm girl’s head with too many ideas of feminism?

When Sally Sefton runs away from Sebastian at the altar on her wedding day there is a desperate chase to find her. Some of her friends think they know why she ran. But only Cathy Priestley thinks she knows where. Her chief bridesmaid suspects Sally may have joined the Christian Israelites. Will they find her before the group sails on a missionary tour abroad? The split causes a bitter dispute between Sebastian and Wesley, her brother. While feelings are running so high there seems to be no hope of reconciliation between the families.

Book One in the series, ‘The Quarry Bank Runaways’, tells the much earlier tale of their fathers when they journeyed on foot to Hackney workhouse in London. They were then boy apprentices who had escaped from the Cheshire cotton mill, desperate to find their destitute mothers.

Book two, ‘Mules; Masters & Mud’, is about what happened to the apprentices during the Industrial Revolution, when they were qualified cotton mule spinners. Serious events, including the Peterloo Massacre, impinge upon the lives of Thomas Priestley and Joseph Sefton.

My review

The Mule Spinners’ Daughters is the third book in the Tales of the Quarry Bank Mill series. I have read all three and particularly enjoyed the introduction of a more female experience and perspective in this latest book.

The book starts by reintroducing the reader to the Sefton and Priestly families and I welcomed the reminder of who the various family members where and the backgrounds of Joseph Sefton and Thomas Priestly.

The story starts with the beautiful Sally Sefton being jilted at the altar by a young man named Sebastian Brewster. Sebastian is a new addition to the story, but the fact that he arrives drunk to his own wedding and decides he’s changed his mind about an aspect of their futures lives he has clearly previously agreed to, immediately makes him a distasteful person, especially if you have read the previous book and already grown to love the sweet but spirited Sally.

The story then regresses to the time when Sally first meets Sebastian, the second son of the local undertaker, Jonas Brewster, when he assists, firstly, with the funeral arrangements for Sally’s father, Joseph, the best friend of Thomas Priestly, and a short while later, her older brother, Gabe. The deaths of these two family members leave Sally and her younger brother, Wesley, to run the farm, together with their Uncle Daniel. It also means that Sally is a woman of some wealth as she owns a share in the farm.

Sebastian and his older brother live firmly beneath the thumb of their domineering and sarcastic father and the sensitive Sebastian chafes under his father’s rude and heavy handed treatment of him. He longs to get away from his father and create his own wealth. When he meets Sally, and learns of her circumstances, marriage to her seems to be the opportunity he has been waiting for. Sebastian has plans for Sally’s money after they are married.

The Priestly family also feature strongly in this book with the focus being on the kind and intelligent Catherine Priestly. Catherine decides she doesn’t want to work in her father’s store and sets her mind to becoming a teacher. Her path to teaching success is beset with some irritations and problems, particularly the seemingly arrogant James Longton, a teacher with more experience than Catherine who is determined to show her the error of her teaching methods.

The two romances are tied together by the false Prophet Wroe, who is much admired by Thomas Priestly who has attended a number of his religious services. Thomas introduces both Catherine and Sally to the Prophet’s church.

I enjoyed the character development in this book. It was lovely to see Catherine growing into an independent young woman with enough strength of character to see the error of her hasty judgement of James and discover his good points. Her loyalty to Sally is also wonderful to read about.

Sally remains strong willed and spirited and appears to have been led astray by the charms of the selfish and snobby Sebastian, but her natural levelheadedness and honesty overcome adversity in the end.

These stories are extremely well research and the author blends the history with the fictional elements of this story seamlessly. If you enjoy reading about life during the early to mid-19th century packaged as an interesting family drama, you will definitely love this book.

Purchase The Mule Spinner’s Daughters

I have also read and enjoyed the first two books in this series.

You can read my review of The Quarry Bank Runaways here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R2A8CQ16EU09MU

You can read my review of Mules; Masters & Mud here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07BTLMQBZ

I am over at Writing to be Read today with a post about the Second Anglo Boer War propaganda poetry and a cover reveal for my forthcoming novel, A Ghost and His Gold, which is about this war. Thank you, Kaye Lynne Booth, for hosting me.

Background

For those of you who do not know, a Boer is the Dutch and Afrikaans word for “farmer”.

Britain occupied the Cape in South Africa in 1795, ending the role of the Dutch East India Company in the region. After the British occupation, the infrastructure in the Cape Colony began to change as English replaced Dutch, the British pound sterling replaced the Dutch rix-dollar and a freehold system of landownership gradually replaced the existing Dutch tenant system.

Between 1835 and 1840, the Great Trek took place when approximately 12 000 Boers from the Cape Colony migrated into the South African interior to escape British control and to acquire cheap land.

Over time, the Boers achieved the independence of their two republics, the South African Republic (Transvaal) and the Orange Free State which shared borders with the British controlled Cape Colony.

When Sir Alfred Milner took over as Governor of the Cape Colony and High Commissioner for Southern Africa in May 1897, relations between Britain and the two Boer republics had been strained for some time. The Boers had already successfully defended the annexation of the Transvaal by the British during the first Anglo Boer War. Milner knew that an independent Transvaal stood in the way of Britain’s ambition to control all of Africa from the Cape to Cairo and that, with the discovery of gold in the Transvaal, the balance of power in South Africa had shifted from Cape Town to Johannesburg.

After the discovery of gold in the Transvaal, thousands of British and other gold seekers called Uitlanders, flocked to the Witwatersrand. The Boers considered that the Uitlanders threated the independence of their republic and refused to give them the vote. Milner used the Uitlander issue as a pretext to provoke the Boer government. The two republics declared war on the British Empire on 11 October 1899 and the second Anglo Boer War started.

Continue reading here: https://kayelynnebooth.wordpress.com/2020/06/15/second-anglo-boer-war-propaganda-poetry-the-boer-side-of-things/

A Ghost and His Gold by Roberta Eaton Cheadle: Cover reveal

Leeds Castle in Kent, England is built on islands in a lake formed by the River Len to the east of the village of Leeds.

The original castle comprised of a simple stone stronghold and was built in 1119 by Robert de Crevecoeur. It was used as a military post during the time of the Normal intrusions into England. During the 13th century, Leeds Castle belonged to King Edward I and it was one of his favourite residences. King Henry VIII used it as a home for his first wife, Catherine of Aragon.

We visited Leeds Castle just before Christmas in December 2009. It was cold and snowy that year and it started to snow at the end of our visit which was very exciting for my boys who had never seen snow before. The castle was decorated with a Disney theme which delighted three-year-old Michael who dreamed of being a knight.

What Amazon says

What do YOU think?

Does this question engage you or take you out of your comfort zone? Does it put you on the spot? REFLECTIONS is award-winning author and former educator John Fioravanti’s answer.

Offering his interpretations of fifty quotes by contemporary and ancient thinkers alike, John dives deep below the surface of words and explores the deeper meanings that shape his view of the world.

Deeply personal and presented in a self-effacing manner, these self-aware reflections will encourage you to dig deep within yourself and to discover more about the underlying truths that guide you.

Without trumpets or fanfare of any kind, John Fioravanti aspires to inspire you!

My review

This book is a wonderful collection of quotes from a spectrum of people who have all achieved great success. The manner in which each individual has aspired to his/her goals or greatness is reflected in most of the quotes and the author provides an interesting interpretation of what each quote means, for everyone, but also in terms of his own life, aspirations and achievements.

I related strongly to many of these quotes and enjoyed the variety of thoughts shared in this book. The quotes are attributable to people from all walks of life and from a number of different eras throughout history. It was fascinating to see how many characteristics and driving forces within highly successful people in life are still relevant today. Some of the historical figures whose quotes are included in this book are Florence Nightingale, Aristotle and Anne Frank.

There are also a number of quotes by motivational speakers, writers, poets and political activists all of whom share the common goal of striving towards a better world for all people. I did not know all of the people quoted, as many of them are American, but the author has included a mini autobiography at the beginning of each analysis so I was able to appreciate each persons contribution to society and mankind even if I had not previously heard of them.

A great read and one I highly recommend.

Purchase REFLECTIONS: Inspirational Quotes & Interpretations by John Fioravanti

Have you ever gone on a literary pilgrimage, and if so where and why?

I have done a few literary pilgrimages to visit the homes and other places associated with famous poets and authors I admire. The reasons for my visits are because I am absolutely fascinated by people and how they lived and worked and wrote. I love seeing their homes and learning more about them.

During our trip to the UK in August 2017 we visited Stratford-upon-Avon and visited the home of Anne Hathaway as well as the birth place of William Shakespeare.

Have you visited Stratford-upon-Avon? If you had to go on a literary pilgrimage, whose home would you visit?

I have been to numerous other famous houses including the Bronte Museum, the home of Robert Burns, the home of Charles Darwin, the home of Erasmus Darwin and Sherlock Holmes’ house. We have also visited The Globe Theatre in London which was fascinating.

I would have visited more but we have to be fair during our holidays so it alternates between one female choice of destination and then one male choice. Luckily for me, I am the only female in our family of four. I wonder who decided on the venue selection mechanism – tee hee.

Rules:

1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

The Three Rondavels in Graskop, Mpumalanga, South Africa, are three round mountain tops with slightly pointed tops. They look similar to the traditional round or oval African homesteads made with local materials called rondavels and this is the reason for the name.

These three geological formations were also once known as ‘The Chief and his Three Wives’. The flat-topped peak was named Mapjaneng (‘the chief’) after a legendary Bapedi chief, Maripi Mashile, who defeated invading Swazis in a great battle near here. The three peaks are named after his three wives (from left to right) – Magabolie, Mogoladikwe and Maseroto.

What Amazon says

If you ever find yourself on the Strange Hwy—don’t turn around. Don’t panic. Just. Keep. Going. You never know what you’ll find.
You’ll see magic at the fingertips of an autistic young man,
•A teen girl’s afternoon, lifetime of loss.
•A winged man, an angel? Demon—?
•Mother’s recognition, peace to daughter.
•Danny’s death, stifled secrets.
•Black man’s music, guitar transforms boy.
•Dead brother, open confession.
•First love, supernatural?—family becomes whole!
You can exit the Strange Hwy, and come back any time you want.
See, now you know the way in, don’t be a stranger.

My review

Strange Hwy: Short Stories is, as its title suggests, is a collection of intriguing short stories written about those defining moments in the lives of humans when occurrences and situations have unexpected and momentous impacts on individuals and their families. The author has written with deep insight into such occurrences and his accurateness in defining the possible fallout is quite frightening. The reader is pulled right under the skin of each specific character and experiences their fear, pain and suffering.

My three favourite stories were as follows:
Alterations: This is a story about a young teenage girl, Madeline, who declares, right up front in the story, that she was indirectly responsible for the death of her father. Madeline comes from a middle class American family and her father works at the near by ship yard, overseeing the building of the ships to the specifications set by the US government. Her mother is conservative and also quite naive and these qualities, together with Madeline’s natural curiosity and sense of adventure, create a terrible situation for the family. A Russian family move in next door and appear to be a father and his daughter. The father plays beautiful music on the piano and Madeline’s mother is keen for her to befriend the daughter in the hope that her father will undertake teaching Madeline. Madeline does befriend the daughter, a woman of the world, with disastrous consequences.

Wordless: I particularly liked this story because of its overarching quality of hopefulness. Jamie Lynn is a bright young girl who is a high achiever at school and in life generally. As a result, she is bullied at school by other girls who feel threatened by her success, but this doesn’t get her down. Jamie Lynn has decided on what she wants from life and worked out the path to achieve her ambitions. She also wants to help her father who is illiterate. Jamie Lynn undertakes to teach her father how to read and sets about this task with great fortitude and determination.

Looking for Lucy: This was my favourite story in the collection. I really enjoyed its paranormal element and the fact that it is also, ultimately, a story of overcoming problems in life and achieving happiness and success. Vrable is the son of a wealthy land-owning farmer who is a bit dull and set in his ways. His mother, a bit of a fun loving woman, strays and has an affair which leads to her moving out of the family home and moving to the city. Vrable goes with her and only sees his father periodically. Vrable is lonely and ends up befriending the granddaughter, Lucy, of their elderly neighbour. Lucy’s parents are both gone, we never found out how or where, and she is being brought up by her grandmother who is sick at the time Vrable meets her. Vrable’s friendship with Lucy gives him a new perspective on life and results in a change in the state of affairs that has befallen his family.

Purchase Strange Hwy: Short Stories