5 comments about Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle.

1. This is a very readable and engaging biography of Arthur Conan Doyle. While many people only think of him in association with the stories of Sherlock Holmes, in fact Conan Doyle (his compound last name) was a multi-faceted man who grew up in poverty, became a medical doctor, served on a whaling ship in the Arctic, and worked in an Army hospital during the Boer War. He began his literary career writing stories for magazines, and one of these stories concerned a detective named Sherlock Holmes. The Sherlock Holmes stories became popular, although Conan Doyle did not consider them serious literature and would come to consider the demand for this character as pulling him away from his efforts at more important works.
   
   Conan Doyle lost many close relatives during WWI. Perhaps as a result of this he developed a deep interest in spiritualism, and this interest gradually began to absorb his life as he left off literary pursuits to advocate for spiritualist research via press and podium. This advocacy led many to lose their esteem for the creator of Sherlock Holmes since they assumed that Conan Doyle and Sherlock must be one and the same in personality and temperament.
   
   I was interested to learn that Conan Doyle wrote his detective stories by determining the ending, and then working back toward it. Thus his character's "brilliant observations" and deductions were always carefully planned by knowledge of the solution before it was apparent to the reader. While Sherlock's powers of observation and deduction came to represent a paradigm of rational scientific proof, in reality they were an illusion working back from given solutions. In the same way, Conan Doyle would advocate for spiritualism by pleading for people to restrain their skepticism, and believe in order to know. Seen in this way, the contrast between his flinty-eyed detective and the real-life Conan Doyle's interest in spiritualism seems less dramatic.
   
   Overall, this book read like a novel and was a good balance between Conan Doyle's whole life story and the part of it that involved Sherlock Holmes.



2. Teller of tales is a biography of Arthur Conan Doyle, writer of the Sherlock Holmes series. I was required to read a non-fiction book and write a review for the book on amazon.com. At the time, I had just been introduced to the Sherlock Holmes series, and was currently reading my way though a collection of these novels. I was intrigued by he author's unusual writing style, and somewhat ashamed that I knew nothing about him, so I decided to read his biography.
   
   The author of this biography, Daniel Stashower, addresses a lot of controversies pertaining to Conan Doyle throughout the book, rationalizing some of Conan's more unusual decisions and actions while keeping an impartial 3rd person tone throughout the entire book. "Many critics assume that the reason for Conan's actions were this, but at the time Conan was going through this. It can be speculated that..."
   
   The book was very entertaining and thought provoking. Conan Doyle himself is an interesting character, though he is nothing like his famous book character. Besides eth actual storyline, there were many great books written during Conan Doyle's time period, but none of these books are required reading through high school. After reading this, there are many novels I want to look into, novels that I would never have heard of otherwise. Although I feel it is a shame that many kids my age never have and never will read these stories, I can't remember enjoying any book I was forced to read.
   
   Daniel Stashower has written several mystery novels of his own along with writing this biography. He is also a freelance journalist, and his writing has appeared in The New York Times and many others. However, it is easy to tell that he is a credible author when reading Teller of Tales.
   
   I can only think of one drawback to this book, and it wouldn't be fair to hold this against the book or the writer. I personally can't read more than one book at a time. Since I stopped reading my Sherlock Holmes collection to read this novel, and since the book makes many references to these stories and stories by other authors that I would like to read, the task of finishing this book has become somewhat painful.



3. Daniel Stashower's biography of Conan Doyle is well written, as one would expect from the author of the Houdini mysteries, but never profound. We are given the great man's public life without any deep examination of the inner man. The result is a rather straightforward narrative, interesting because Conan Doyle led a fascinating life, but with all the weight of a magazine profile. The complete absence of citations reinforces this impression, and there are no footnotes, although a comprehensive bibliography is included.



4. Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle was a complex and honorable man. Toward the end of his life he embraced spiritualisim as he did everything else, wholeheartedly, and this led to many people dismissing him as a crackpot. However, as author Daniel Stashower pointst out, such was not the case. Conan-Doyle really believed in life after death. This belief filled the void in his life that was left when he renounced his belief in the Catholic Church. Daniel Stashower has written an even-handed fair biography of Conan-Doyle. The book is well researched and Conan-Doyle comes to life on these pages. Conan-Doyle, of course, is best known for creating Sherlock Holmes but as Stashower shows Conan-Doyle wrote many more works of fiction and non-fiction in his long career. If you want to have an idea of what made the man behind Sherlock Holmes tick then I recommend this book highly.



5. Years ago I read the biographies of Conan Doyle by John Dickson Carr and Charles Higham, and even tried to get beyond Sherlock Holmes by reading as much as I could of Conan Doyle's other fiction. Therefore I thought I knew something about Conan Doyle as a writer and as a person, but Stashower's fine book was still a revelation to me; it's not an exaggeration to say that I found new insights into Sir Arthur on nearly every page.

   Stashower has done his research, but he is also unafraid to use Conan Doyle's semiautobiographical fiction, not to mention his poetry, to provide windows into the inner Sir Arthur that Sir Arthur's own autobiography carefully conceals.

   Sir Arthur, of course, created a character that (along with Tarzan) is one of the immortal icons of adventure fiction, a character as popular today as he was when his short stories first hit the STRAND Magazine like a thunderbolt. One thing everyone knows about Conan Doyle is how deeply he resented the fame of Sherlock Holmes, but even here Stashower has some startling information to relate.

   He is particularly good on the last couple of decades of Sir Arthur's life, when his seemingly mindless advocacy of even the most infantile and transparently fradulent aspects of Spiritualism, and his output of nearly a dozen unreadable religious tracts, left almost all of his readers convinced he had lost his mind. His endorsement of the authenticity of some photographs of fairies supposedly taken by two little girls (who had actually cut the tiny figures out of very familiar magazine ads for Fairy Soap!), and his calling in a psychic detective to "solve" the not-very-mysterious disappearance of novelist Agatha Christie, were the final straws for even his most tolerant fans.

   On top of it all Sir Arthur was a terrible judge of the relative merits of his own fiction, and anyone who attempts to read his entire fictional output, as I did some years ago and as Stashower obviously has, will see how sadly he frittered away and squandered his unique gifts as a "teller of tales."

   How could a man who created one of the immortal icons of rationality be in person so gullible, irrational, foolish and unworldly? Well, Stashower does as good a job of explaining the apparent paradox as anyone will probably be able to do. Highly recommended.

2 comments about The Wild Geese of the Antrim Macdonnells.

1. I discovered this book's existence from a bibliography in a similar book about Hugh O'Neill, the Earl of Tyrone (that of the Flight of the Earls), by Sean O'Faolain. This is a related story about the similar exile and diaspora of the Ulster clan McDonnell around Europe, following the Protestant usurption of Catholic James II in the Glorious Rovolution. It details the different cadet branches of the of McDonnell family from different generations who left Ireland and formed Irish Regiments, fought for foreign kings, aswell as supported the Jacobite cause from abroad.
   
   It is a truly astonishing tale of Irish family history aswell as personal narrative European history of the conflicts and wars fought within Europe throughout the 17th and 18th centuries.
   
   However, because of the former it did seem to be a book that can only be fully appreciated by fellow McDonnells and not necessarily by the general reader, who could, through certain tracts react by exclaiming, "so what?" to it all. Because of this I have to say I also struggled to remember the different McDonnells and their kinsmen despite three genealogical charts contained in the book.
   
   The research is excellent, however, using the Stuart Papers at Windsor and several other archives around Europe. The writing is clear and concise and despite the complicated narrative which travels from one family and time period in each chapter I felt I came to understand a small part of Irish history in Europe.



2. This book examines the problems confronting the Irish immigrants to Europe by concentrating on the lives of a series of emigrants from one Irish family, the MacDonnells of Antrim. A continuous succession of MacDonnells served in the armies of Spain, France and Austria between 1600 and 1820. One of them kept a diary of his experiences with Bonnie Prince Charlie in the '45 rebellion, another was a Spanish admiral at Trafalgar. Other Irish families covered by the book include the O'Neills, Magennises, O'Briens, Maguires, Butlers, Wogans and Sarsfields.

5 comments about The Green Dragoon.

1. This is the only bio of BT, so there are not many options besides this book if you want to learn more @ the dragoon. More than half the book is his career and love life AFTER the American Rev. Dated prose.



2. This book is an excellent read on Banistre Tarleton. One of the best commanders of horse-mounted troops in history of the world.
   
   This shows the human side of Tarleton and shows how his reputation as a wild eyed killer is underserved propaganda, like most anti-loyalist and anti-british statements are.
   
   We need more books like this detailing the forgotten heroes of the struggle ad less books based on propoganda and subjective rhetoric.



3. Banastre Tarleton was, in many ways, something of an ideal young man, measured by the standards of English eighteenth century culture. Highly literate, well-educated, and brilliant as a cavalryman. As a cavalry colonel for the British side in the American Revolution, he participated in several key victories, particularly in the Carolinas, before being defeated at Cowpens and, again, at Yorktown. Tarleton was (and remains) reviled by American partisans as the cruellest of the English warriors, and though Bass relates several unsavory episodes in unsparing detail, he was not quite the unregenerate scumbag that is so often featured in popular histories. Having said that, his later career in English politics was an unmitigated disaster: constantly up to his eyeballs in gambling schemes, he flitted from party to party and had an unerring knack of finding the wrong issue on which to campaign.

   Mary Robinson, his long-suffering mistress, was an entirely different kettle of fish. Something of an underrated star of English literature, she was also one of the great actresses of her day. Her story in many respects resembles that of her contemporary, Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire (who makes several appearances in these pages), especially given her dalliances with Whig politics. In other respects she reminds one of other great female intellectuals of this era such as Gertrude de Stael or (a little earlier) Madame du Chatelet.

   An engaging joint biography of two strong, if star-crossed individuals.




4. Clearly one of the best books written on Banastre Tarleton. Clear, clean prose on a most complex man. A highly intellectual biography, perhaps over some heads in many ways--but well worth the effort. The book makes clear that it is important to remember that there was another side to our revolution.



5. This is an exceedingly poor rendition of the most horrific British officer to serve in the field during America's rebellion.

   Tarleton was evil incarnate from the American point of view. He managed to amass a record of war crimes that put even the British to shame. However, to spend almost 500 pages on this sop's truly useless life is such a complete waste of the reader's time that one has to feel sorry for the author. There is nothing to be gained from reading this book, unless, of course, you identify with people who are failures in every facet of their lives.

No comments about Goodbye to All That and But It Still Goes On.

1 comments about Sir John Hawkins: Queen Elizabeth's Slave Trader.

1. Those of us raised on tales of the Armada, and the gallant defense of the English homeland, will immediately recognize Sir John Hawkins as one of the fabulous Four heroes who repelled the Spanish attacks (the other three being Howard, Drake and Frobisher). Less admirably, Hawkins is also notorious for his freebooting in the Carribean, wherein he sought to bust the Spanish monopoly on slave-trading. Like Sir Francis Drake, Hawkins was a master of staging a phony "raid" on local Spanish officials who were all too keen to buy the Englishman's wares - but needed to stage a token resistace to the interlopers in order to satisfy King Philip that the dreaded English had forced them to trade at gunpoint. Kelsey tells Hawkins's life story passably well, but the narrative is, for the most part, an unexciting one; for a character this infamous, one might have expected something more.

1 comments about Life at the Court of Queen Victoria: 1861-1901 : Illustrated from the Collection of Lord Edward Pelham-Clinton, Master of the Household : With Select.

1. A very excellent book for those interested into the aspects of Queen Victoria's court life. A definite must read. This is a rare jewel of a find.

3 comments about Anne Boleyn.

1. I loved this book. Lofts, generally credited as a romance writer, is an intelligent, insightful biographer who isn't afraid to let her passion for the subject show. It would have benefited by being longer, but stands as a wonderful introduction to Anne. Some of the information is superseded by more recent researchers, but Loft's novelist's skill at pinpointing what motivates people really brings Anne & her contemporaries to life. Genuine psychological insight isn't lacking, & the book is lavishly illustrated. Buy it today.



2. I just got this book again because this is the book I checked out from the library when I was 12 which started my lifelong enchantment, fascination and passion for Anne....and for english history. It's an easy, but very informative read. And there are many gorgeous illustrations, and some unusual ones as well.
   
   Lofts always has a wonderful sense of history and her writing is intuitive and deeper than most.



3. This biography of Anne Boleyn is short and quite accurate. There are a ton of illustrations in the book that really contribute to the overall effect. I life the fact that the author didn't overly sypathize with Mistress Anne but didn't try to persecute her either.

   A great book for someone who wants to learn more about history but doesn't have time to delve into a 500 page book that is full of dry, useless information.

1 comments about Boudica.

1. I put this `groundbreaking biography of the True Warrior Queen' (if you believe the publishing headline) down thankful I had only borrowed it from a library. The problem with this latest effort to investigate the reality of one of Britain's most famous female leaders is that is it emotionally biased. A fact cheerfully admitted by the author in the introduction where her search for "edgier role models" meant "a warrior queen called Boudicea had a particular resonance with a young impressionable child on the lookout for strong and feisty mentors" (page 6). Alarm bells began to go off as I progressed through the introduction that this was a biography seeking to confirm the heroic fantasy figure myth of Boudica rather than provide a somewhat drier, dispassionate account of one of Britain's most enduring legacies. A quote on the jacket from a periodical stated "The book's principle achievement is the humanizing of a legend". I confess I found it did precisely the opposite.
   There is no denying the author's passion for the subject but it proves detrimental in the novel's presentation and factual outlay. You can easily get swept along by Collingridge's excitement as she trots round the halls of academia and various parts of the British landscape but the danger is that the presentation of `facts' become believable when there is in fact no firm foundation. A good example of this comes on page 159 where the author chooses to take the meagre facts of the death of Lindow Man and create some kind of heady ritualistic death scene based on pure fantasy. This kind of emotive scene setting continues throughout, from the opening chapters that skim rather loosely through Roman history till half way through when we get a screenplay description of her final battle. Phrases like: "The clash, when it came, was electric - a fusion of light, sound and white hot energy as the leading soldiers cut a gash through the mass of British warriors, dividing them, annihilating them" (page 242) will make the academic reader pause somewhat.
   So, having felt I was sitting through a film rather than a historical biography, it was somewhat better to get to the second half of the work where the author does offer a new set of interesting analysis on Boudica's impact on Britain's cultural history from Milton to Celtomania, Gray and then Queen Victoria and Margaret Thatcher. Indeed, the second part of the work does make it worth reading and anyone with knowledge of Boudica would do well to actually start at chapter 15.
   This is a somewhat unique biography in that the passion of the author for the subject is detailed up front and the reader is swept along in a bright-eyed way . Unfortunately, only someone who has studied the period in some detail will recognise the constant stream of `facts' that aren't quite right or aren't fully explored. As such it is a good starter biography for pre-graduate or interested readers but people wishing to delve more deeply into the history of the period and Boudica herself will have to go elsewhere for that drier historical analysis that would be required. I suspect most of my disappointment came from the jacket statements that set an expectation that wasn't met and personal knowledge of the period and the subject meant inconsistency and emotive language was easily spottable, all of which meant the inevitable conclusion that the work confirms the fantastical nature of our perception of Boudica rather than ending up with a quiet respect for the reality of what this legendary warrior queen achieved for her people and subsequent generations.

2 comments about Camilla: The King's Mistress : A Love Story.

1. While I felt that this was an interesting read I felt the author painted an unfair portrait of Diana. She portrayed Diana as a crazy, unstable shrew and yet it was Charles refusal to end his relationship with Camilla that caused Diana to be so unhappy and angry. I don't think there are very few women on this planet that would be happy and accept the fact that their husband has a mistress for 20 years that he refuses to give up after marriage. It proved to me at least, that Diana was justified in her ending her marriage and giving up the throne. The author paints Charles and Camilla as 2 poor lovers who go through hell just to be together. I felt no sympathy for either of them. But it is an engrossing book none the less.



2. An even and informative tale about Camilla Parker-Bowles, a poor little rich girl who may someday get her prince.

   What we learn is that the upper class in the UK is alive and sick with its own moral code. Do what you want, just don't talk about it.

   I like the author's style of writing, but don't really care for Camilla.

No comments about A Bundle from Britain.