THE TRIBES OF BRITAIN Who Are We?And Where DoWe Come From?
by David Miles
Phoenix, £9.99
Polish plumbers and Hungarian handymen; Slovakian chefs and Romanian nannies are much in the news at the moment, but this does not make them new. They are only the most recent of many waves of immigrants to the British Isles. Miles shows that from its prehistory, through the Roman occupation and the Anglo-Saxon period, the Dark Ages, the Viking and Norman invasions, right on to the colonial immigrations after the Second World War, Britons are a multi-ethnic and interbred people — mongrels, if you prefer.
Miles is an archaeologist, but his is a multi-disciplinary approach. It is a pity that he omits any analysis of our rich and eclectic language but he does draw admirably on history, demography, sociology, biology and even climatology in this wide-ranging cornucopia written in brisk, crisp prose. Change is the only constant: “A Huguenot church on the corner of Brick Lane (in London) and Fournier Street, which had become a Wesleyan Chapel in 1819, was converted to a synagogue in 1898.
Today it is a mosque.” Miles’s wry humour (“Churchill was a brand as much as an author”) leavens everything.
Advertisement
Miles’s insights may not make the process of assimilation any easier to manage — it was, is and always will be difficult. But what he does leave us with is hope: we have done it before and, with good will and good fortune, we will do it again.
BEYOND GLORY Max Schmeling vs Joe Louis, and a World on the Brink
by David Margolick
Bloomsbury, £9.99
At 10pm Eastern Standard Time on June 22, 1938, 100 million people around the world gathered by their radios — at the time by far the largest audience ever for anything. In New York the world heavyweight boxing champion, the African-American Joe Louis, was to fight for the second time the only man to knock him out: Max Schmeling of Germany.
Much more than a title was at stake. The militarisation of Nazi Germany clearly presaged war. Then there were racial issues. Leaving Germany aside, Louis was loved or loathed in America along strictly racial lines. Idolised in the Bronx or his native Detroit, he was excoriated in, for instance, Boston. Thirdly there was the question of anti-Semitism. Jews controlled the boxing business in America. To complicate matters, Schmeling’s manager was a Jew, yet across America, Jewish organisations were boycotting the fight.
Advertisement
So Margolick has chosen a pregnant moment in the history of boxing and the wider world. The trouble is his passion for the particular. Gleaned from newspapers of the day, this is a meticulous re-creation of the two Louis-Schmeling bouts and other fights. (Louis won the second, by the way.) But we cannot see the wood for the trees. Nor do we feel empathy for either protagonist, or the causes that they stood for. The book is well written and well researched, but can be micro-history gone mad. Who cares if Louis caught the 9.10 or the 10.11 train to anywhere?
THE CHAINS OF HEAVEN An Ethiopian Romance
by Philip Marsden
HarperPerennial, £8.99
Marsden has been highly praised for three previous travel books. This fourth is about the northern highlands of Ethiopia, a place still so remote that few foreigners have been there. Marsden first visited Ethiopia in 1982, when the north was closed because of civil war. Returning 20 years later, he found it open to his persistence, stamina, capacity to endure discomfort and ability to walk miles.
Advertisement
The result is a remarkable insight into the lives of anchorites, rebels, subsistence farmers and women such as Negisti, “sitting on a stool”. He explores Ethiopia’s long history along the way. The common theme is Christianity, for which northern Ethiopia has remained a cradle. Here is Prester John, and the ancient rock-hewn churches of Tigray. Marsden’s interest is in “that now vanished region where the known world recedes and the imaginary one begins” .
There is no index — a shame in a book as rich as this — and poor reproduction makes the photographs pointless. And the prose? Marsden is lauded as the great contemporary stylist of his genre. But with his over-use of very short sentences, he tries too hard for me: “The path entered the gully. It became steeper. The wind increased. The sweat was cold against my cheek. This was a desolate place.” Elliptical is not always profound. The substance of this work is as good as can be, but the form is overwrought. One thinks of the princess and the pea.