Back to the Classics: Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh (1956)

The Partition of India in 1947 is something I've been interested in for a long time but it wasn't until I read Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh that I had any idea of the scope of the tremendous upheaval, tragedy and heartache it caused. An arbitrary line drawn by an 'Empire on whom the sun was setting,' divided a nation and created the twins countries of India and Pakistan. Former neighbours and friends became deadly enemies, people lost their homes, and an estimated one to two million lost their lives.
The author chose a true-to-life work of fiction to tell his story. Every character in the story was modelled on a real person that passed through Khushwant Singh's own life. He was about 32 years of age at the time of Partition and witnessed firsthand the atrocities committed by Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims, and records them without taking sides or showing favour. He and his family were forced to flee from Lahore in 1947, leaving behind his home, his belongings and his closest friends.

The Story

In 1947 the new state of Pakistan was formerly announced, setting in motion the mass exodus of ten million Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs. Northern India was in chaos and only in the remote villages on the frontier was there any semblance of peace.
Mano Majra was one of these villages, known mostly because it boasted a train station. Not that many trains stopped there. In fact, it was only two slow passenger trains, one from Delhi to Lahore in the mornings and another from Lahore to Delhi in the evenings, that were scheduled to stop and then only for a few minutes. The express trains and the morning mail train rushed through without pausing. Goods trains shed and collected wagons on the sidings, and throughout the night the villagers could hear the whistling and puffing of engines and the clanging of metal couplings. The trains were the villagers' alarm clocks, signalling their mealtimes, their siestas and their prayer times. That is, up until the summer of 1947.

After Partition, the trains became less punctual, disturbing the rhythm of the village. A unit of Sikh soldiers arrived and machine guns were mounted at the railway station. Trains coming from Delhi stopped and changed their drivers and guards before continuing on to Pakistan. Trains from Pakistan heading to Delhi with their Hindu and Sikh refugees would run through without stopping.
But one morning, the train from Pakistan stopped at Mano Majra and the only person to emerge alive out of the fifteen hundred on board was a guard from the tail end of the carriages.

It was a botched up surgical operation. India's arms were chopped off without any anaesthetic, and streams of blood swamped the land of the five rivers known as the Punjab.

An order came to evacuate all the Muslims in Mano Majra to a refugee camp and from there, be placed on a train to Pakistan. Sikh agitators arrived in the village after the Muslims had left and drummed up support for a revenge attack on the next train to Pakistan. For hundreds of years the Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims had lived together as neighbours in this village and now those former neighbours and friends who had just left were to be murdered.

Iqbal, born a Sikh and educated in England, came to Mano Majra with his head full of theory to spread his message of communist reform. Learning that the train to Pakistan was to be sabotaged, he found he had nothing to say to the people of Mano Majra:

Should he go out, face the mob and tell them in clear ringing tones that this was wrong - immoral? Walk right up to them with his eyes fixing the armed crowd in a frame - without flinching, without turning...
Then with dignity fall under a volley of blows, or preferably a volley of rifle shots. A cold thrill went down Iqbal's spine.
There would be no one to see this supreme act of sacrifice...It would be an utter waste of life! And what would it gain? A few subhuman species were going to slaughter some of their own kind - a mild setback to the annual increase of four million...
In a state of chaos self-preservation is the supreme duty.

If you really believe that things are so rotten that your first duty is to destroy- to wipe the slate clean - then you should not turn green at small acts of destruction. Your duty is to connive with those who make the conflagration, not to turn a moral hosepipe on them - to create such a mighty chaos that all that is rotten like selfishness, intolerance, greed, falsehood, sycophancy, is drowned. In blood, if necessary.

It was left to another, a most unlikely character, the local 'budmash' or worthless thug, to put his life on the line for the sake of someone he cared about. 

Final thoughts

This was a brutal, gross, and at times crude novel. It's not the sort of book you'd leave sitting on your coffee table and I don't recommend it unconditionally, but it was a heartfelt, candid and literary account written by an excellent author. I learnt more from this one book of fiction than I would have gleaned from a shelf-full of political or historical titles. It was a powerful and awful account. Although there wasn't a political theme to the book, I couldn't help imbibing the political atmosphere of those days. Mano Majra was a miniature India that mirrored the whole nation. It also mirrored humanity in its portrayal of the fluidity of human reasoning - we can justify anything we decide to do. We are so readily manipulated by the opinions of others and the voices of those who stir and agitate.

The photography in this edition of the book is the work of Margaret Bourke-White who lived and travelled in India during 1946 and 1947. She was sent by Life magazine to cover the emerging nations of India and Pakistan after spending four years in Europe during World War II where she witnessed the Nazi concentration camps. According to one of the articles below, some British soldiers and journalists who had witnessed the Nazi death camps claimed Partition’s brutalities were worse.

The copy I have above is out of print but available secondhand or there is this edition here which doesn't include the images by Margaret Bourke-White. The images are online here.

Further reading:

The Great Divide: The violent legacy of Indian Partition

Khushwant Singh (1915-2014) - Obituary

BBC article - The Hidden Story of Partition and its Legacies




Train to Pakistan is my pick for the Back to the Classics 2016 category for a Classic by a Non-White Author.

Reading Europe: Turkey - The Road From Home by David Kherdian

David Kheridian prefaces the story of his mother, Veron Dumehjian, with the statement by Adolf Hitler below. Hitler was referring to the Turkish Government's decision twenty-three years previously that all Armenians living in Turkey were to be destroyed.

 I have given orders to my Death Units to exterminate without mercy or pity men, women, and children belonging to the Polish-speaking race. 

It is only in this manner that we can acquire the vital territory which we need. After all, who remembers today the extermination of the Armenians?

Adolf Hitler (August 22, 1939)

The author uses his mother's voice to tell her own story, from her childhood growing up in a prosperous, loving home with her extended family in the Armenian quarter of Azizya in Turkey, up until her mid-teens.
The Armenian population made up about ten percent of the population of Turkey prior to World War I but with the rise of nationalism, the Ottoman Army used the cover of war to settle the 'Armenian Question' and to bring about the 'Turkification' of the country. Talaat Pasha, as the Minister of the Interior, was the chief architect of this process.

September 16th

To the Prefecture of Aleppo:

You have already been advised that the Government, by order of the Djemiet, has decided to destroy completely all the indicated persons [Armenians] living in Turkey.

All who oppose this decision and command cannot remain on the official staff of the empire.

Their existence must come to an end, however tragic the means may be; and no regard must be paid to either age or sex, or to conscientious scruples.

Minister of the Interior, TALAAT.

Throughout the country tens of thousands of Armenians, which included Vernon and her family, were forcibly deported to the Syrian Desert.
By about 1920, one and a half million out of the two million Armenians living in Turkey at the start of the war had been killed. Today, it is estimated that there are only about 50 to 70 thousand Armenians in Turkey but for years the Turkish government has refused to acknowledge this massacre of its Armenian citizens.

The Road From Home is a 1980 Newbery Honor Book and is a simply told story about a young girl's journey of faith, courage and hope in the midst of this little known period of history.
The book goes into some of the details of how the Armenian deportees were treated: the youngest boys were circumcised and converted to Islam, the oldest sold into slavery; the women who were willing to convert were attached to harems; those who didn't convert were raped and then either murdered or sold to the Arabs.
I was shocked to read about what happened to some of the refugees who managed to reach Smyrna on the western coast of Turkey. After three years of Greek administration, their rule ended in that city and the Turks took over and began to march through the streets. Veron escaped and crowded onto the quay with other refugees when the Turks set fire to the Armenian quarter. French, American and British ships were in the harbour ready to take their own citizens but they made no move to help the refugees. However the Italians were shouting to the people nearest to them to jump and swim to their small boats so they could be saved. The Turkish soldiers blocked off any escape from the fires and people either died or threw themselves into the sea. A raft load of refugees was attempting to leave the shore when two Turkish soldiers flung kerosene over them and set them alight.
When people tried to swim out to the large ships only the Italians would take them aboard. The English poured boiling water down upon them and the Americans were lined up on their decks with their movie cameras going!

Veron lost most of her family during this period but nonetheless the story is full of hope and has a lyrical quality. Yeah! The author includes a map showing the places mentioned - I don't know why all authors who write books relating to history don't do this. It annoys me no end when they don't because it is so helpful and helps me to connect with the story. Age appropriateness -  high school age (around 14 yrs and up or a read aloud with younger students; there's no offensive or inappropriate language). Adults would also appreciate it, especially as there probably isn't a great deal written on this subject.

All the love that was given me since we left home I had simply taken for granted, but I was no longer the child that I had been when we started on our
journey. Something deep inside me, which I knew was love, was going out to all the people who were with us on our march. Everything was being shared; no one thought only of himself, but rather, it seemed as if each of us put the other person first. We all were trying to make the other person's load lighter, and for some reason this, more than anything we might have done for ourselves, made our own load lighter as well. I realised that without the children to be saved, the elders might not have found the reason to go on, and without the elders to guide us, we, of course, would have been helpless victims.

Sonlight Curriculum schedules this book in Grade 10, World History.

Back to the Classics - The Five Red Herrings by Dorothy L. Sayers (1931)

Lord Peter Wimsey, although an Englishman, was well-received in the close-knit fishing and artistic community of Galloway and had passed many a season in the area. One night when he was having a drink at the local pub, a dispute broke out between Campbell and Waters, two of the resident artists, and they came to blows.
Campbell was universally disliked, 'a devil when he's drunk and a lout when he's sober,' and since his arrival in the community there had been nothing but rows and bickering. After the men were forcibly separated, Campbell stormed off in high dudgeon into the night.
The next day he was found dead at the bottom of an outcrop of granite; his body lying face down in the burn and an unfinished painting on a sketching easel on the rock ledge above. There seemed little doubt that Campbell had accidentally fallen as he stepped back to observe his painting. But then Wimsey noticed something everyone else had missed. He declared that it was a case of murder and that it had been committed by an artist.

'...I don't mind betting this is the most popular thing Campbell ever did. Nothing in life became him like the leaving it, eh, what?'

There were six suspects, all of whom detested Campbell and had grievances against him. Five of the suspects were red herrings; one was the killer, and it took all the ingenuity of Wimsey and the local 'pollis' to piece events together and decide who was responsible.

It was a marvellous day in late August, and Wimsey's soul purred within him as he pushed the car along. The road from Kirkcudbright to Newton Stewart is of a varied loveliness hard to surpass, and with a sky full of bright sun and rolling cloud-banks, hedges filled with flowers, a well-made road, a lively engine and the prospect of a good corpse at the end of it, Lord Peter's cup of happiness was full. He was a man who loved simple pleasures.

I relished the setting of The Five Red Herrings - a part of Scotland about 180 km south of my birthplace, and there is quite a bit of Scottish brogue in the dialogue, which I know sometimes causes problems if you're not familiar with the tongue. The BBC audio version is good and is narrated by Patrick Malahide who does a pretty decent Scottish accent, for a sassenach, although two of the police detectives sound almost identical.

Elizabeth George, a mystery writer herself, had this to say about Sayers:

While many detective novelists from the Golden Age of mystery kept their plots pared down to the requisite crime, suspects, clues, and red herrings, Sayers did not limit herself to so limited a canvas in her work. She saw the crime and its ensuing investigation as merely the framework for a much larger story, the skeleton - if you will - upon which she could hang the muscles, organs, blood vessels and physical features of a much larger tale.

George said that Sayer's writing was like a tapestry and this is so true. I've read a number of the Lord Peter Wimsey novels and there is a  richness and attention to detail that you don't usually find in detective fiction. I enjoy her literary allusions, Latin quotations, the intellectual stimulation and the humour woven into her novels.
Speaking of humour, in The Five Red Herrings Wimsey decides to re-enact the crime, having guessed the murderer's identity but having insufficient evidence to make an arrest. The Chief Constable, Sir Maxwell, is chosen to be the corpse and Wimsey plays the murderer.

'Now, corpse, it's time I packed you into the car. I probably did it earlier, but you'd have been so uncomfortable. Come and take up your pose again, and remember you're supposed to be perfectly rigid by now.'

'This may be fun to you,' grumbled Sir Maxwell, 'but it's death to me.'

'So it is,' said Wimsey. 'Never mind. Ready? Up you go!'

'Eh!' said Macpherson as Wimsey seized the Chief Constable's cramped and reluctant body and swung it on to the back seat of the Morris, 'but your lordship's wonderful strong for your size.'

'It's just a knack,' said Wimsey, ruthlessly ramming his victim down between the seat and the floor. 'I hope you aren't permanently damaged sir. Can you stick it?' he added, as he pulled on his gloves.
'Carry on,' said the corpse in a muffled voice.

A nice little extra included in the Hodder and Stroughton editions of Sayer's Wimsey novels, (pictured above) but not in the HarperTrophy or Dover copies, is a short and entertaining 'biography of Lord Peter Wimsey, brought up to date...and communicated by his uncle Paul Austin Delagardie.'


Sayer's Lord Peter Wimsey's mystery classics are scheduled as free reads in the Ambleside Online Year 12 curriculum, although we've used them at a younger age after Agatha Christie's novels and the Father Brown series by Chesterton had been read to death.


This is my entry in the Back to the Classics 2016 - Classic by a Woman category

Reading Europe: The Netherlands - Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

Girl With a Pearl Earring is set during the 17th Century in the Dutch city of Delft. It is a work of historical fiction involving the artist Johannes Vermeer and this painting:

 Girl With a Pearl Earring, 1665

This is a quick and quite enjoyable book to read and is told from the viewpoint of Griet, a 16 year old girl sent to work as a maid in the Vermeer household.
When Griet's father is blinded in an accident at work, she must work to help to support her parents and her younger sister. Griet's brother, Frans, has already been apprenticed out and lives elsewhere.
Griet goes to live with the Vermeer family and becomes a little besotted by the artist. There is friction between Griet and other members of the household, including Vermeer's wife, Catharina, and this escalates when Vermeer asks Griet to grind expensive pigments for him and later uses her as a model for his 'Dutch Mona Lisa.'

It was strange to meet so many new people and see so many new things in one morning, and to do so apart from all the familiar things that made up my life. Before, if I met someone new I was always surrounded by family and neighbors. If I went to a new place I was with Frans or my mother or father and felt no threat. The new was woven in with the old like the darning in a sock.

Chevalier's writing is quite descriptive and overall she captures a sense of the times but Griet's character sometimes spoiled the story for me. The novel would have had more appeal for me if its intended audience was clearer. There were a couple of places where I thought it went beyond the place I'd feel comfortable giving it to someone in their mid-teens. On the other hand, it lacked the depth I'd expect from an adult novel - characters were a little flat and undeveloped, and the ending felt rushed.
Not much is known of Vermeer's life but Chevalier obviously did quite a bit of research into the artist's life and coupled it with her imagination to paint a picture for her readers.

I liked this part of the conversation between Vermeer and Griet when she had asked him if his paintings were Catholic (Griet was a Protestant):

"It's not the painting that is Catholic or Protestant," he said, "but the people who look at it, and what they expect to see. A painting in a church is like a candle in a dark room - we use it to see better. It us the bridge between ourselves and God. But it is not a Protestant candle or a Catholic candle. It is simply a candle."

"There is a difference between Catholic and Protestant attitudes to painting," he explained as he worked, "but it us not necessarily as great as you may think. Paintings may serve a spiritual purpose for Catholics, but remember too that Protestants see God everywhere, in everything. By painting everyday things - tables and chairs, bowls and puckers, soldiers and maids- are they not celebrating God's creation as well?"

The maid Griet is fictitious, but many of the other characters in the book were real people in Vermeer's life - Anton van Leeuwenhoek, the 'father of microbiology;' Pieter van Ruijven (Vermeer's patron), Vermeer's wife, Catharina, and her mother, Maria Thins, for example. These links to actual historical people were interesting as were Chevalier's attempts to fill in the background of this celebrated and mysterious portrait. If you would enjoy a mix of some art history and a light read, this would be a good book to while away an evening or two on.





Linking this to Reading Europe Challenge 2016: The Netherlands 

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (1898-1970)

Where do I start?  Where do I begin with my thoughts on this grim, harrowing, exquisitely written novel of World War I?

This is my third encounter with this story. The first was in my late teens; the second about fifteen years ago. The book made a deep impression on me when I read it previously, but even so, I wasn't prepared for the strong emotional impact it had the third time around. 
An outline of the story doesn't do the book justice. Quotes are difficult to extricate without losing the flow of the passages. You really need to read this compelling work of literature to understand its power.

Although All Quiet on the Western Front is not a memoir, the author drew on his own first-hand experience of the First World War. Erich Maria Remarque (formally Erich Paul Remark) was born in Northern Germany in 1898. He was sixteen when World War I started in 1914. He was called up for military service in late 1916, and sent to the front in mid 1917. Wounded by shell fragments during the offensive in Flanders, he was evacuated to a military hospital and worked there as a clerk for some time afterwards. The war ended before he saw further action.

This book is intended neither as an accusation nor as a confession , but simply as an attempt to give an account of a generation that was destroyed by the war - even those of it who survived the shelling.

All Quiet on the Western Front was first published in Germany in 1929 under the title 'Im Westen nichts Neues.' Its literal translation is 'Nothing New on the Western Front,' and it is the first person account of a nineteen year old soldier, Paul Bäumer.
At the age of eighteen, Paul and six of his school companions were marched down to the local recruiting office by their schoolmaster, Kantorek, to enlist.

...there were thousands of Kantoreks, all of them convinced that they were acting for the best, in the way that was the most comfortable for themselves.

But as far as we are concerned, that is the very root of their moral bankruptcy.

...We were forced to recognise that our generation was more honourable than theirs; they only had the advantage of us in phrase-making and cleverness.

I found an audio version of the book narrated by an Englishman with a distinct English colloquial accent. It annoyed me at first and I almost decided to stop listening as it didn't seem authentic. But as I got further into the story, I realised that if you just changed the names, the soldier could have been German, English, Russian, Croatian...French. It was irrelevant for the most part, although there were some aspects that related mainly to German soldiers (e.g. the rations they received were much inferior than those supplied to the English).

Listening to someone else tell the story this time around allowed me a different view that I didn't get previously. It is a universal story that could have been told by any number of young men caught up in the insanity of war.
When I read the book years ago, I didn't have four boys who were similar in age to many of the unfortunate youths who were conscripted into the army, therefore some of the most emotionally moving scenes for me were those between Paul and his Mother:

Paul  goes home on leave. His sister hears him and leans over the stairwell:

'Paul - ' she shouts, 'Paul - '
I nod, my pack bangs against the banisters, my rifle is so heavy.
She throws the door open and shouts, 'Mother, Mother, it's Paul -'
I lean against the wall and grip my helmet and my rifle. I grip them as hard as I can, but I can't move another step, the staircase blurs before my eyes, I thump my rifle-butt against my foot and grit my teeth in anger, but I am powerless against that one word that my sister had just spoken, nothing has any power against it. I try with all my might to force myself to laugh and to speak, but I can't manage a single word, and so I stand there on the stairs, wretched and helpless, horribly paralysed and I can't help it, and tears and more tears are running down my face.

Paul's mother has been ill for months. The doctors say she probably has cancer. On his last night at home she comes into his room and sits there, often bent double with pain, until it is nearly morning. Paul makes out he is asleep but in the end he can't take it any longer and pretends to wake up.

...she asks softly, 'Are you very frightened?'
'No, Mother.'
'I wanted to say something else to you. Be careful of those French women. They're no good, those women out there.'

Oh Mother, Mother, to you I'm still a child - why can't I just put my head in your lap and cry? Why do I always have to be the stronger and calmer one, I'd like to be able to weep for once and be comforted, and anyway, I'm really not much more than a child - the short trousers I wore as a boy are still hanging in the wardrobe. It was such a little while ago, why did it pass?

'I shall pray for you every day, Paul.'

Oh Mother, Mother! Why can't we get up and go away from here, back through the years, until all his misery has vanished from us, back to when it was just you and me, Mother?

'You really mustn't send me your rations, Mother. We get enough to eat out there. You need it more here.'
How wretched she looks...this woman who loves me more than anything in the world...
Oh Mother, Mother, it is quite incomprehensible that I have to leave you! Who has more right to have me here than you?
...there are so many things we should say to each other, but we shall never be able to.

Remarque's writing is realistic in describing the war and the common soldier's lot, but it is interspersed with complex thoughts and ideas. The loss of dignity, terror, hopelessness, the tenuous hold on life - there is so much in this book. It has relevance for every generation and has the power to speak into our modern conflicts.
All Quiet on the Western Front is said to be the greatest novel written about the First World War, which doesn't surprise me. The fact that it was written by a man who was on the 'other side' also makes it quite unique.
The Nazis burned Remarque's novel when they came to power in 1933. It was seen as 'degenerate,' and a betrayal of the German military.

The factory owners in Germany have grown rich, while dysentery racks our guts.

The months drag on. This summer if 1918 is the bloodiest and the hardest...Everyone knows that we are losing the war. Nobody talks about it much. We are retreating. We won't be able to attack again after this massive offensive. We have no more men and no more ammunition.

Remarque moved to Switzerland a day before Adolf Hitler became chancellor and in 1938 was stripped of his German citizenship by the Nazis.
Later, his sister was tried for making anti-Nazi and 'defeatist' comments. She was convicted, sentenced to death and beheaded in 1943.

In 1942, George Orwell wrote:

The picture of war set forth in books like All Quiet on the Western Front is substantially true. Bullets hurt, corpses stink, men under fire are often so frightened that they wet their trousers. It is true that the social background from which an army springs will colour its training, tactics and general efficiency, and also that the consciousness of being in the right can bolster up morale, though this affects the civilian population more than the troops. (People forget that a soldier anywhere near the front line is usually too hungry, or frightened, or cold, or, above all, too tired to bother about the political origins of the war.)



Linking this to Back to the Classics 2016 - Re-Read a Classic From School or College,  Reading Europe and Keeping Company

2016 Classic Children's Literature Event: Sir Nigel by Arthur Conan Doyle

During the month of April I'm linking up at Simpler Pastimes for Amanda's Classic Children's Literature Event. I hope to read at least two books for the Event and here is the first (I cheated and actually started before the 1st April...): Sir Nigel by Arthur Conan Doyle.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is best known for his Sherlock Holmes' detective character but he also wrote some excellent historical novels. 

In 1891, Doyle's novel, The White Company, was published. This book tells of the adventures of Sir Nigel Loring and his men and is set during The Hundred Years' War. Fifteen years later, in 1906, the 'prequel,' Sir Nigel, was published. This book, set at the beginning of the war, details the exploits of the squire before he became a knight. 

Nigel of Tilford is the last in a long line of a famous but now impoverished family. Brought up by his aged grandmother, the Lady Ermyntrude, Nigel is small in stature but has a heart full of chivalrous intent, and is determined to win honour and become a knight. 

Together with his lusty attendant, Aylward, they find adventure and seek their fortunes in England and France alongside Edward III, the Black Prince and Sir John Chandos, a Knight of the Garter.

If you've read The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood and Otto of the Silver Hand by Howard Pyle, you will get an idea of what to expect from this book. Doyle's humour is reminiscent of Pyle's Robin Hood. Sir Nigel is brimming with humorous episodes and downright fun as Nigel follows his romantic ideals and goes about 'winning worshipful worship.' However, there is also much serious content and brutality that reflects the time period of the story, which is also the case in parts of Otto of the Silver Hand, but even more so in Sir Nigel. 

A couple of instances of the more serious aspects of the book which come to mind: 

In Chapter XI of the story, the reader is introduced to Sir John Buttesthorn and his two daughters, Edith and Mary:

...Never had two more different branches sprung from the same trunk. Both were tall and of a queenly graceful figure. But there all resemblance began and ended.

Edith was yellow as the ripe corn, blue-eyed, winning, mischievous, with a chattering tongue, a merry laugh, and a smile which a dozen of young gallants, Nigel of Tilford at their head, could share equally among them. Like a young kitten she played with all the things that she found in life, and some there were who thought that already the claws could be felt amid the patting of her velvet touch.

Mary was as dark as night, grave-featured, plain-visaged, with steady brown eyes looking bravely at the world from under a strong black arch of brows. None could call her beautiful, and when her fair sister cast her arm around her and placed her cheek against hers, as was her wont when company was there, the fairness of the one and the plainness of the other leaped visibly to the eyes of all, each the clearer for that hard contrast. And yet, here and there, there was one who, looking at her strange, strong face, and at the passing gleams far down in her dark eyes, felt that this silent woman, with her proud bearing and her queenly grace, had in her something of strength, of reserve, and of mystery which was more to them than all the dainty glitter of her sister.

Later on in Chapter XII, Edith is deceived by a cunning nobleman into running away with him after he makes a false promise of marriage. Nigel, Mary and an old priest seek out the couple and find, as they expected, that the nobleman had no intention of marrying Edith but it was not until Nigel had a dagger at the man's throat that Edith saw through the deception. She returned home chastened and thankful that she had escaped from a situation that would have brought shame and disgrace to both herself and her family.

This situation was handled so well by Doyle that younger readers could get a sense of the moral peril Edith was in without being burdened by information above their heads or maturity level. 

Some other scenes occurred which may be too intense for some younger readers:

The butcher of La Brohiniere had captured some of Nigel's company and imprisoned them in a castle and when the English tried to make an attempt to free them, La Brohiniere started to hang some of the men from the parapets. When Nigel later succeeded in finding a way into the place where the English were imprisoned, he found a strange and horrible scene:

It was a great vaulted chamber, brightly lit by many torches. At the farther end roared a great fire. In front of it three naked men were chained to posts in such a way that, flinch as they might, they could never get beyond the range of its scorching heat. Yet they were so far from it that no actual burn could be afflicted if they could but keep turning and shifting so as continually to present some fresh portion of their flesh to the flames. Hence they danced and whirled in front of the fire, tossing ceaselessly this way and that within the compass of their chains, wearied to death, their protruding tongues cracked and blackened with thirst, but unable for one instant to rest from their writings and contortions.

Sir Nigel would appeal to anyone interested in historical, well-paced, adventurous types of book. I'd recommend it for confident readers who have enjoyed books by  authors such as G.A Henty, Rosemary Sutcliff, Henry Treece, and especially Howard Pyle. Each of these authors wrote realistic historical fiction for children. Most of my children read this book around the ages of 10 to 12 years and thought it was a great story. Moozle (11years of age) is reading it for the second time. I think the humour throughout is an added attraction for her and helps to keep the story buoyant.

The passages you may want to pre-read before handing the book to your children are from these two chapters which I've linked to a free online version:

Ch XII How Nigel Fought the Twisted Man of Shalford

Ch XX How the English Attempted the Castle of La Brohiniere

There is an excellent audio version narrated by Stephen Thorne:

Arthur Conan Doyle was proud of the research that went into his historical novels and he wrote this explanation about the content of Sir Nigel:

I am aware that there are incidents which may strike the modern reader as brutal and repellent. It is useless, however, to draw the Twentieth Century and label it the Fourteenth. It was a sterner age, and men’s code of morality, especially in matters of cruelty, was very different. There is no incident in the text for which very good warrant may not be given. The fantastic graces of Chivalry lay upon the surface of life, but beneath it was a half-savage population, fierce and animal, with little ruth or mercy. It was a raw, rude England, full of elemental passions, and redeemed only by elemental virtues. Such I have tried to draw it.

Classic Children’s Literature Event for the Month of April

This is the second year in a row I'll be participating in the Classic Children's Literature Event hosted by Amanda at Simpler Pastimes.  During the month of April read as many Children's Classics as you wish, post about them on your blog and then link your post up at Simpler Pastimes. There is also an optional read-along title, Emile & the Detectives by Erich Kastner. It's not too late to join up, the rules are simple i.e. read a Children's Classic/Classics written prior to 1966 & write a bit about it. So come and check it out.

I hope to read at least two books this month for the challenge and I'll add them here as I decide on the titles.

1)  Sir Nigel by Arthur Conan Doyle (1906)

2)  A Little Bush Maid by Mary Grant Bruce (1910)
3)  Golden Fiddles by Mary Grant Bruce (1928)

Cover Her Face by P.D. James (1920-2014)

Sally Jupp was 'pretty, intelligent, ambitious, sly and insecure.' Docile and grateful on the surface, she was employed as a parlourmaid in the Maxie household after being highly recommended by Miss Liddell. Nothing was known of Sally's past, except that she was orphaned as a child and brought up under the care of a guardian. An unmarried mother, she had been living at the St Mary's Refuge for Girls run by Miss Liddell, and was said to be Miss Liddell's 'favourite and most favoured delinquent.'
Sally had not been long in service at the Maxie household when she began to undermine her superiors and display arrogance towards other members of the household.

One evening she dropped a bombshell by announcing her engagement to the Maxie's only son, Stephen, a doctor. Not long after this event, Sally was found strangled in her bed and suspicion fell upon the whole household. When Detective-Chief Inspector Adam Dalgliesh arrived on the scene to investigate, Sally's enigmatic past came to light and with that, the murderer also.

I've always enjoyed P. D. James's literary writing style but often her stories are disturbing and push the edges of what I feel comfortable with. Once or twice I didn't finish a book because of this - A Certain Justice (1997) was one of those. I don't think I even got as far as the second chapter.  

Cover Her Face, a domestic whodunnit and her first novel, was published in 1962, and unlike some of her later books, had a similar feel to some of the golden age detective fiction I've read.
Set in an English village, the story revolves around the family manor. The local vicar makes an appearance, the household servants are loyal. All up, a cosy sort of mystery that kept me guessing until the very end.

I thought James's device of divulging the characters' thoughts as they were  interviewed by Dalgliesh added to the mystery. There was some nice little psychological rumination by each of the major suspects that cleverly lifted the suspicion from them just when I thought I'd guessed the culprit.
There was a poignant little twist at the end which revealed a softer side to the chilly, cerebral character of P.D. James's sleuth.


The title is taken from an English Renaissance play, The Duchess of Malfi, Act IV, scene II:

 'Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle: she died young.'

I enjoyed these quotes by the author which are taken from this interview:

'... I was educated in the state system at an old-fashioned grammar school in Cambridge. In those days state education was very good, but I had to leave at sixteen because university was not free and my family could not afford to pay for me. I would have loved to have gone to university, but I don’t think I would necessarily have been a better writer, indeed perhaps the reverse. Looking back I feel I was fortunate: we had dedicated teachers who were attracted to Cambridge, which is a very beautiful and stimulating city, and stayed. They were women who would have been married but for the slaughter of men in the First World War. Only one had been married and she was a widow. They gave us all their dedicated attention. When I left school I had read more Shakespeare and other major poets than many a university graduate today. It astounds me how narrow and limited their reading is compared to ours.'

'I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism. The only way to react is to get up in the morning and start the day by saying four or five vastly politically incorrect things before breakfast!'

So good! 



Cover Her Face by P. D. James is my choice for A classic detective novel in the Back to the Classics Challenge 2016.