A Very English Scandal (TV series)

Amazon's algorithms have been recommending A Very English Scandal to me for a while now to watch on Prime Video. This seemed like a good time to check it out, after my recent reading of The Ivy Crown rekindled my interest in historical fiction.

A Very English Scandal is a three-part miniseries about the Jeremy Thorpe scandal in the 1970s. Thorpe was a British MP who had a homosexual relationship with a man called Normal Scott. It was secret, as homosexuality was still illegal at the time, and over the years Thorpe made quite an effort to cover it up. Eventually that led to a murder attempt on Scott, and a public trial. The series covers the better part of 20 years, from the affair in the early 1960s until Thorpe's trial in the late 1970s.

The series spends a good amount of time following the lives of both Thorpe, living the life of the rich and powerful; and of Scott, who was neither. I appreciated the background, since I had zero knowledge of the events around the scandal. From a quick web search, it looks like the series was fairly accurate to the real events.

Of course, historical fiction is only as good as the ability to make the events come to life. I was impressed with A Very English Scandal on this front, and much of the credit for that goes to the actors. Hugh Grant and Ben Whishaw were great as the two leads, and several of the supporting characters gave memorable performances as well. I particularly liked Alex Jennings as Peter Bessell. Judging from all the awards that the series won, it appears I'm not alone in enjoying the performance.

An easy theme to identify in this series is how the criminalization of homosexuality caused major problems in people's lives as they were forced to hide their true selves. While the criminal aspect is gone in most places these days, there are still significant social issues for LGBT people that can have a significant impact. I think a deeper theme here is that living a lie, whether it's hiding from the law or your neighbors, rarely stops with just the lie. It leads to more extreme measures to cover yourself; most people won't go as far as conspiracy to murder, but there's still an impact. Whether you approve of a person's lifestyle or not, they're still human beings and deserve the chance to be themselves.

A Very English Scandal is entertaining, teaches a bit of history, and is short enough that it won't take much of your time. Recommended.

The Mueller Report - Who Will Fix The System?

After the better part of two years, the "Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference Into The 2016 Presidential Election" (better known as the Mueller report) has finally been made public. Most of it, anyway...roughly a third of the pages had something redacted. There's been a ton of reaction from people all over the political spectrum, but it's amazing to me how little is being said about preventing it from happening again.

The report came in two parts: volume one talks about impact on the 2016 election by Russian agents, and volume two is about attempted obstruction of justice by President Trump and his allies. That's an oversimplification but close enough for my purposes. A lot of what's in there is not new...a lot of the Russian interference stuff was already released in previous indictments, and you'd have to be hiding under a rock not to know of the many ways that Trump had been pushing back against the investigation. In both areas, the investigating team basically says that evidence exists but isn't enough to bring criminal charges against the President.

The reaction that I've seen, both in the media and anecdotally, has been largely split down party lines: Republicans are happy that Trump isn't going to court or (at least for now) being impeached; Democrats are upset about the exact same thing, complaining about those redacted sections and promising to continue to investigate. For his part, the President is, as usual, making grand exaggerations about how good this is for him.

Let's forget President Trump for a minute, difficult as that may be no matter which side of the aisle you happen to inhabit. Look at what the report is saying without coloring it with your feelings about the current administration, good or bad. A foreign power was able to impact a United States Presidential Election, in a significant enough way that criminal charges were brought against the foreign perpetrators. Then a President was able to place obstacles in the way of the investigation into that election interference, with enough evidence that the investigators could not exonerate him but not enough to lead to criminal charges.

Where is the great outcry from every United States citizen against a system which allows this to happen? Where are the lawmakers putting forward reform packages to combat the problem? I hear a lot of complaining - Trump supporters that he's being unfairly targeted, Trump opponents pushing for more investigation and possibly impeachment - but very little about fixing the system.

I suspect we're going to hear a lot about the Mueller report during the 2020 Presidential and Congressional elections over the next 18 months. I'm going to be much more inclined to listen when candidates leave aside the partisan rhetoric for or against Trump, and instead focus on how we prevent this travesty from happening again.

The Ivy Crown by Mary M. Luke

The Ivy Crown by Mary M. Luke
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

English royalty isn't something I'm particularly interested in. Most of what I know comes from the occasional Jeopardy category about the various Henrys and Richards and Edwards (which I almost always get wrong). But I was looking for something from the 1500-1800 timeframe and The Ivy Crown caught my eye, about Katherine Parr, the sixth wife of Henry VIII. And I was somewhat surprised at how much I enjoyed it.

The Ivy Crown is historical fiction, as opposed to an academic biography, which certainly helped make it entertaining. In the author's note, Mary Luke says that she enjoyed being free from the restrictions of direct quotes and citations, and I think it shows in the writing style. Having said all that, I still think the "historical" part of this book is the primary focus, not the "fiction" part. Luke may have imagined some of the happenings in Parr's life, but it's all in a framework of true history.

The Katherine Parr in this book is an intelligent woman who devoted herself to family and friends. She asked very little from life for herself; only her eventual final marriage to Thomas Seymour really came from her own desires. By all accounts she was well-loved by almost everyone she met, making few enemies and many friends. Even when she fell out with various people over political and religious issues, she did her best to reconcile when the situation changed. When reading historical fiction, I always wonder how much the person's life and reputation has been burnished by the author; in this case, I don't think Parr's life needed much help to stand out.

Parr lived through some very interesting times, with Henry VIII running around on his various wives and declaring himself head of the Church. She wasn't directly involved in most of it, but since she was friendly with many of those involved, all that upheaval played a large role in her life. And then, of course, she ended up right in the middle of it all when she became Henry's sixth queen. That lasted only a few years before the king died, and then Parr herself had only a few more years before dying after her daughter was born.

I knew in a general sense that people's lives in those times had much different norms than we do today, but Luke's writing really brings it to life. Children used as pawns in power games, the casual misogyny that women suffered, people dying from "the sweats" on a regular basis, teenagers married and having children, the nobility living richly while commoners barely survived...it was a very different time and mostly not in a good sense.

There are a bunch of intriguing characters in The Ivy Crown besides Katherine herself. Anne Askew, who became a martyr in the power struggle between Catholics, the Church of England, and Protestant reforms. The Princess Mary, Parr's childhood friend and eventual stepdaughter. Thomas Seymour, who would become Parr's fourth husband. And many more, from the famous to the common.

I highly recommend The Ivy Crown to anyone who enjoys a good story of a life with plenty of drama and intrigue. Even better if you're interested in the specifics of 16th century English royalty, but I don't think you need to care about the historical period to enjoy the book.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The Book Thief is an uncomfortable book.

The setting is Germany in World War 2, certainly an uncomfortable place. The central character, Liesel, loses her brother, is taken from her mother, and placed with a foster family. Nearly everyone they know is poor, struggling to survive, even before the war comes to their doors.

The writing is uncomfortable, at least for me. The style is simple and easy to follow, but I found it uninteresting and was often bored. Very little happens in this book, it seemed to me. There are few major events and those are described quickly, with the majority of the book taken up with the slow, steady grind of difficult daily life.

Death is quite literally present throughout the entire book, because he is the narrator. Taking an interest in Liesel's story after she is present at his duty several times early in life, he tracks the minutia of her life for several years. This sounded intriguing to me at first, but interesting observations from the point of view of Death were few and far between.

I can see why The Book Thief is an important story. It describes a difficult but important time and place. But the style is emphatically not for me.

Deepak Chopra's Enlightenment series

Deepak Chopra's Enlightenment series tells semi-historical fictional tales of several key religious figures: Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad.

Let me say right up front that I have no interest in Chopra except as a storyteller. He's got some really strange ideas about "quantum healing" that can be dangerous when people abandon real medical treatments to pursue them. He puts way too much stock in the ability of the mind to influence the body and the world around you. His views on spirituality and religion are centered on the human mind, not the divine (although he might argue they're the same). I have zero interest in any of that.

So why read these books? I like to think that I'm open-minded enough to consider a story (or any other work of art) on its own merits, not pre-judge based on the person on the dust jacket. Historical fiction based on key religious figures is an interesting concept, and I'd been looking for books that fit into the time periods of the lives of those figures. In a way, this is another form of my love of alternate history...just slightly different subject matter than the usual wars and political intrigue.

Buddha is a story in three parts: the birth and early life of prince Siddhartha, his abandonment of wealth and status to live as the ascetic monk Gautama, and finally his enlightenment as Buddha. The book ends just as his teaching years were beginning, which made sense to me - as I understand it, he taught for nearly 45 more years and that could be an entire other book. It's a personal story, following Siddhartha/Gautama/Buddha on his journey to enlightenment, with little focus on Buddhism as a religion (other than an explanatory epilogue). Chopra kept the story moving throughout, and the Indian cultural and religious references were fascinating.

Jesus is set during his early life, before the ministry set forth in the gospels. Jesus falls in with zealots plotting rebellion against the Romans, Gentiles searching for God, even a holy ascetic. Rather than the perfect faith of Jesus in the Bible, this Jesus is unsure much of the time, but finds his way by learning acceptance of God in all things. I thought the story really captured the feel of the times; the average Jew just trying to stay alive and fed, the Romans trying to keep the lid on a rebellious province, the zealots pushing so hard for freedom that they'd pay any price.

Muhammad uses the perspective of many different people who were close to Muhammad at various points in his life to tell his story, from close relatives to family servants to business partners. The picture that emerges is a serious and kind man, but certainly not a great leader or orator. Until an angel comes to Muhammad, and changes his life by giving him the command to recite. It's not easy to go against his nature, first as a speaker, then a leader, and in the end becoming a warrior and ruler. This portrayal was a more difficult one to accept than that of Buddha or Jesus, in my opinion; Muhammad's direct involvement in holy wars makes the picture of an enlightened leader much less believable.

I think that a reader's reaction to these books is going to depend entirely on mindset. I approached them as stories that happened to feature some familiar characters and settings, and in that I was not disappointed. Chopra is a fine storyteller, whatever you may think about his beliefs. But if you expect adherence to the orthodox portrayal of these religious figures, or deep spiritual insights into their stories, you're looking in the wrong place.