The Irregulars by Jennet Conant
The Irregulars
by
Jennet Conant
Simon & Shuster © 2008 416 pps. $27.95 (Amazon $18.45)
A Review by Colin J. Edwards
Five weeks after my second birthday, at around 4 o’clock on a Saturday afternoon while having tea at my family home in London, Adolf Hitler exploded into my life. He decided to send 348 bombers – Heinkels, Dorniers and Junkers, plus 617 Messerschmitts forming a block 20 miles wide and filling 800 square miles of sky – to kill me. He didn’t succeed, but by the end of the war 60,000 British civilians were not so lucky. Until the middle of 1944 there were more British civilian deaths than military. I do not profess memory of the start of the Blitz, but I do remember the end of it – and the aftermath.
This experience makes me a sponge for anything to do with World War II – and there is never a shortage of subject matter. My latest read has been Jennet Conant’s The Irregulars.
I found Conant’s work engrossing. I had difficulty putting it down and almost read it at a sitting. The work is essentially a biography of Roald Dahl. Had it been advertised as such, it would have never left the store as I always found his writing a little quirky. But it is so much more than that. It is the story of a very attractive, wounded flying ace (Roald Dahl), who is sent to the British Embassy in Washington in 1942.
He graduates from Air Attaché to intelligence agent whose sole purpose is to infiltrate the rarefied air of Georgetown society and use it as a springboard into US government circles. He achieves this by wooing the women and wowing the men with the ultimate aim of influencing decisions in England’s favor.
In the process of depicting this, Conant introduces us to everybody who is anybody in World War II America. Dahl’s nefarious sexual exploits are described with dignity and charm, and are never sordid. According to Conant, all of the agents were extremely handsome and charming, which tended to pall over time. But then; perhaps they were. This story of deceit, duplicity and moral ambiguity is meticulously researched and beautifully written, and I will certainly be seeking out other work by this very talented lady.
If it never occurred to you that Great Britain had spies in America during the Second World War, I urge you to read this and be amazed. Whether you invest $18.45 in Amazon, or borrow it from your local library, get this book. You will not regret it.
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The Last days of the Romanovs
The Last days of the Romanovs
By Helen Rappaport
St. Martin’s Press ©2008 254 pps $25.95 (Amazon $16.52)
A review by Colin J. Edwards
Tragedy at Ekaterinburg.
Ye-ka-tyer-in-boorg. That is the only pronunciation I will be giving from a book where the unspeakable are also the unpronounceable.
I know why this book was written, what mystifies me, is why it was published?
Everyone knows the story don’t they? The Tsar and his family brutally oppressed the Russian people for centuries until they took the opportunity to fight back and do to him what he had done to them. There have been attempts to add a little mystery to this as to who was murdered and who wasn’t, but the fact remains: he (and she) who lives by the sword will (ultimately), die by the sword. However, the Tsar Nicholas II industry is nothing if not persistent, as it was only as recently as April last year that the Russian authorities announced that all of the Tsars family had been identified and accounted for. This was not good enough for the Russian Orthodox Church who still do not recognize the remains as being those of the Tsar and his family. Let us hope that Rappaport’s book will close the door on this imperishable saga.
Ms Rappaport has put her considerable erudition of all things Russian into this work. When 6% of a book is bibliography, can anyone doubt that the author is on top of her subject? Authors and critics of whom I have the greatest respect have been so complimentary of Rappaport’s book, I hesitate to offer my own opinion. How do you follow “…quite simply stunning …”(Alison Weir), “That perfect blend of history …”(Susan Hill). These women are not chums of Helen by any chance – are they?
To depict a moment in history of which almost everyone is aware, and make it fresh and stimulating is a difficult task and one, I regret, beyond Ms Rappaport. She has trawled through mountains of documents and studiously recorded them in separate chapters in the nature of a thesis. Even so, I tend to doubt the accuracy of some of her observations. Her scene setting benefitted perhaps from a little artistic license, and there are some factual ‘howlers’. Also distracting was her lack of sympathy for the ‘cause’. Are revolutionaries always dirty and drunk? Is she really telling us that a necrophiliacs assault on the Tsaritsa was recorded by someone as a contemporaneous note?
I applaud that she was trying an interspersion of family scenes with individual biographies. But this did not work, and was an obstacle to narrative flow.
The last days of the Romanovs is a depressing read. If Russia was as bad as Rappaport describes it, dying would have been a blessed relief. Bad things have to be recorded, but do they need to be written about ad nauseam?
Helen Rappaport is a Russian expert, and if Russian history is your thing you will find all you ever needed to know – even to the angle they wore their hats – about the last days of the Romanovs. But for the rest of us, be content that the Tsar and his family were all reburied with appropriate ceremony in Saint Peter and Paul Cathedral, St.Petersburg on July 17 1998, where they were able to look down or up upon it.
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Dali and I
Dali and I
by
Stan Lauryssens
Thomas Dunne Books (2008), Hardcover, 304 page
A Review by Colin Edwards
Dali and I is a supremely readable book. This is due in no small measure to the dubious character of the author. Lauryssens is at once a playboy, thief and confidence trickster – not to mention a successful author. He is so proud of his ability to deceive, that one wonders how much reality there is in this alleged autobiographical work. His actual writing however is suspect, so listening to an audio book beats wading through his convoluted prose.
Stan Lauryssens is a 63-year-old Belgian who oscillates between London and Antwerp. His literary career started by writing fake interviews with Hollywood stars for Panorama magazine. He graduated from this grubby little endeavour to masquerading as an art investment consultant exclusively selling works purporting to be by Salvador Dali. For this, he ended up in jail for an all too brief period.
The book recounts in fantastic detail how he lied and cheated his way from poverty to conspicuous affluence, and back again. He unsuccessfully attempts to assuage his guilt with a veiled suggestion that his ‘marks’ were just as dishonest as he was – perhaps more so. A Robin Hood in Armani suits and exotic motorcars.
At no time does he ever suggest that his actions were anything other than fraudulent; however, I think that this is a moot point. A genuine Dali is one painted and signed by him. There is ample evidence to suggest that Dali stopped painting in the late forties, so every ‘Dali’ since then is a fake. If all the work since the forties is faked, how can one fake be more fake than another fake? Ipso facto, fakes are genuine: or as genuine as you can get. However, it was Lauryssens intention to deceive (mens rea) regardless of the provenance of the goods he sold, he therefore committed the offense of obtaining pecuniary benefit by deliberate deception. That makes him a criminal.
I had the feeling that Lauryssens was working to a deadline as the story became more ragged and fantastic towards the end. Impossible situations were resolved as if by magic. He pleads absolute poverty (wearing the same clothes that he wore in prison etc.), but that does not seem to inhibit his air travel.
Whether or not Mr Lauryssens is deceiving us as he did his luckless clients, I know not. Certainly all the people he exposes are long dead, so there can be no betrayal there. In any event, Dali and I is a very enjoyable read, and I thoroughly recommend it. One is almost encouraged to seek out more of Lauryssens’s work, safe in the knowledge that that really would be fiction.
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