...and the answers...

[chickenfeet]

...to Spot that Passage which went down like the Norwegian entry for the Eurovision Song Contest.

1. David Fischer Albion's Seed
2. Iris Murdoch The Sea, The Sea
3. Anthony Powell The Military Philosophers
4. E.P. Thompson The Making of the English Working Class
5. James Davidson Courtesans and Fishcakes

Comments

[coughingbear]

I should have got 2 and 4. They did seem familiar, but I couldn't place them at all. Anyway it's always interesting to read these things so I don't think you should worry people didn't get them! (& it makes me think perhaps I should have another go at Anthony Powell).

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

& it makes me think perhaps I should have another go at Anthony Powell

I seem to be quite successfully at pimping Mr. Powell!

On a vaguely related tack, can you recommend any good books on the navy in the mid to late 19th century? If there was anything comparable to Rodger's Wooden World I would be little short of ecstatic.

[coughingbear]

There isn't anything comparable to Rodger's Wooden World, I'm afraid. Oliver Walton has worked on the social history of the second half of the 19th century, and finished his thesis last year; I don't know if it's being published but I hope so. There is a book called Rule Britannia. The Victorian and Edwardian Navy by Peter Padfield which although limited, and definitely written as a popular history, does try to look at the different types of work done by the RN in that period and the methods used, and to consider the sailor as well as the officer. Henry Baynham's Before the Mast, which you may know, is a sequel to From the Lower Deck and includes various useful personal accounts and letters from the 1840s to 1880s. If I think of anything else I'll let you know!

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

I'm quite surprised that there hasn't been more work done on the Victorian navy. One might have thought that the apparent decline in competence between Trafalgar and Jutland would have been worth a look.