“Never Had It So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles”, by Dominic Sandbrook

928 pages, Abacus/Little, Brown UK, ISBN-13: 978-0349115306

Never Had It So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles by Dominic Sandbrook is, in a word, brilliant. So, just what was it really like on that sceptred isle half a century ago? For Yanks like me, Britain during this time comes down to The Beatles and tea; but there was, or course, so much more to that earth of majesty between 1956 and 1963. The Suez War, smack-dab in the middle of the 50s, marked a significant national milestone and one with which Sandbrook chooses to begin his magisterial study of this other Eden. The title comes from Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s perhaps most famous phrase – “[l]et us be frank about it: most of our people have never had it so good” – for which he and was widely accused of taking a complacent attitude towards the consumer society, then roaring along. In retrospect, his term as prime minister – from January 10^th, 1957 to October 18^th, 1963 – is seen by many as a benign era, comparable with the Eisenhower years in the States which partially overlap this time, which are remembered by Americans as a golden era before the Kennedy Assassination and the upheavals of the 60’s.

The eight years covered by Sandbrook were riotous and fluctuating, but for all that the author has managed to hold onto a theme of sorts, that “[t]he yearning for an alternative to the old-fashioned, complacent Conservatives who were thought to be running the country into the ground”. The revolt of the early 60s against the old Tory order was more social rather than political, with the mood being articulated by TV shows like “Beyond the Fringe” and “That Was the Week That Was”, or the magazine “Private Eye”. The mood wasn’t so much a desire to change the system – certainly not to burn it all down – but rather to open it up to more people. As a proper historian, Sandbrook avoids drawing modern parallels, but the reader can’t avoid being struck by the cunning of history. With the Tories gone, the 60s were meant to end elitism and bring a meritocracy; instead, they cleared the road for a new elite which sustains itself in power by insisting it is against the establishment and an education system which makes it all but impossible for bright working-class children to get on (sounds familiar don’t it, Yanks?).

There are hundreds of killer quotes and anecdotes in Never Had It So Good. Colin Wilson (whose demented claims to be the “major literary genius of our century” were taken seriously by literary London for a year or so – oh, never heard of him? Don’t fret about it, son), fell from grace when the father of his girlfriend burst into his flat with a horsewhip crying, “Aha, Wilson, the game is up! We know what’s in your filthy diary!” and forced Wilson to hand his mucky and grandiose ramblings to the Daily Mail. When Selwyn Lloyd was offered a post at the Foreign Office by Churchill, he replied: “But, sir, there must be some mistake. Except in war, I have never visited any foreign country. I do not like foreigners. I have never spoken in any foreign-affairs debate in the House. I have never listened to one”, to which Churchill replied, “Young man, these all seem to me to be positive advantages”. While dense with detail and overloaded with oratory, Never Had It So Good is never, ever boring as it tells the tale of Britain in this traumatic time of change and adaptation. Again, in a word, brilliant.

“Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West”, by Hampton Sides

624 pages, Anchor, ISBN-13: 978-1400031108

First, a disclaimer: while Hampton Sides’ (great handle, huh?) Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West would appear to have Kit Carson as its lead, he is, in fact, a supporting character in the Conquest of the American West; President Polk and the Army of the United States are the real stars of this epic, which makes the subtitle of the book a little misleading…well, make that a lot misleading. But don’t be put off, Dear Reader, as the Conquest of the American West is most certainly explored in all of its bloody, dusty glory. Sides’ detailed book touches on several well-known subjects of the West, ranging from the ill-fated Donner party, to the wars with Mexico and the American Civil War, and the eventual attempt to subdue and conquer the Native American tribes. While the book mainly discusses the Navajo, it also touches on the other Native tribes, as well, in an even-handed manner: it is so tempting to see Native Americans as always good and aggrieved and the encroaching Americans as always bad and bedeviling, but the truth, of course, is so much more complicated. There were several groups of people fighting over land and resources, especially competing tribes of Indians, so when the Americans joined the fray, it was like just another tribe laying claim to the land around them – albeit a tribe with superior technology and resources. Nobody “stole” anything from anyone: the most powerful tribe won and kept the spoils, as other tribes had won and lost in the past.

Sides, like the mountain men he writes about, has a talent for encapsulation: his thumbnail sketches of these characters are comprehensive and concise at the same time, from the commander of the Army of the West Stephen Watts Kearny, to the ambitious “pathfinder” John C. Frémont, to the murderous parson Major John Chivington, to the governor of New Mexico Charles Bent, to the enigmatic curate of Taos Padre Antonio Martinez, to the Navajo leader Manuelito, to the diarist and correspondent Susan Magoffin and, last but not least, to Narbona, one of the wealthiest Navajo of his time due to the number of sheep and horses owned by his extended family group and the de facto leader of the Navajo nation. Sides had originally set out to write a book on the removal of the Navajos from Canyon de Chelly and their Long Walk to the Bosque Redondo, hundreds of miles from their homeland, where they were told to become farmers on a decidedly unsuitable plot; but in the course of his research, a much larger story unfolded, the story of the opening of the West, from the heyday of the mountain men in the early 1800’s to the clash of three cultures, as the newcomers from the East encountered the ancient Puebloans and the established Hispanic communities in what is now New Mexico, to the Civil War in the West and its aftermath.

It is to Sides’ credit that he has given all sides a chance to say their piece. It might be easy to say the author was “pro-Indian” or “pro-Army”, but he really isn’t; I believe that he presented the best and the worst of all parties involved. History is messy and complicated, and at the time events are occurring no one knows or understands how events will be viewed by future generations; it’s so easy to look back and think “If only…” Sides presents that messiness and how some of those complications came to be.

“Dune Messiah”, by Frank Herbert

331 pages, Ace Books, ISBN-13: 978-0441172696

Dune Messiah is the second of Frank Herbert’s Dune series, which is comprised of six novels in total (not including all those books that his son, Brian, and Kevin J. Anderson are writing; don’t get me started). It takes place twelve years after the first book, where we see that Paul Atreides – “Muad’dib” – rules as Emperor of the Known Universe and as the Fremen messiah. In this role, he unleashed a holy war which conquered (reconquered?) most of the known universe and slaughtered 61 billion people; while Paul is the most powerful emperor ever known, he is powerless to stop the lethal excesses of the religious juggernaut he has created; he is also chained to his prescient visions, knowing that there are things he simply cannot avoid. Damn, it’s tough running the Universe.

This first sequel to Dune is only about 330 pages long, but it’s still a dense and complex read, lacking as it does the narrative drive of its predecessor since there is no longer any compelling villains like the Harkonnens to help propel the story forward (welllllll…okay, I won’t spoil it; you gotta read the book). Plot threads and characters from the original that were implied to be of great importance in the future only warrant a brief mention or are totally ignored; likewise, Dune Messiah continues Herbert’s tendency from the original to not depict major events or plot twists, but leave them only to discussion after the fact. The original Dune, for all its thematic complexity, was still a fairly straightforward “Hero leads a rebellion against evil villains” tale, while the sequel purposely unravels this prototypical plotline in favor of…something else. Overall, Dune Messiah, despite the denseness of the work, is a quick read, but it feels more like an epilogue to the original Dune than a proper sequel.