Books of the Year: Politics, History, Culture and Ideas
Bella Caledonia, December 24 2024
Gerry Hassan
As Christmas approaches and people have bought their presents here is my review of my books of the year. Perfect for all those post-Christmas and New Year presents, book tokens and people who you forgot about and know you shouldn’t have!
Nearly every book listed below was published in 2024 but there a couple of exceptions published in 2022 and 2023 which I only got around to this year – and which I think are very relevant!
Corrine Fowler, Our Island Stories: Country Walks Through Britain, Allen Lane.
Corinne Fowler relocates the histories and memories of Empire back to the UK through a series of walks. This brings out rich and in places hidden histories about places and people some of which are deeply uncomfortable for some of the participants. Fowler walks her walks well and knows first-hand the metaphorical minefields she is navigating having been targeted by the history reactionaries for her work with the National Trust of England on slavery.
Alan Lester (ed.), The Truth about Empire: Real Histories of British Colonialism, Hurst.
This is an important intervention in the ongoing history wars taking on a host of the Empire apologists. In particular it gives special attention and analysis to the work of Nigel Biggar and his book Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning made all the more relevant by Biggar’s elevation to the Lords in Kemi Badenoch’s recent peerages. A thoughtful counterblast to Telegraph/Mail hysteria and disinformation.\
Russell Jones, The Tyranny of Nostalgia: Half a Century of British Economic Decline, London Publishing Partnership.
British declinism is everywhere today but it is also true that it has been one of the defining characteristics of the UK post-1945. This book addresses the causes of such attitudes and finds a UK struggling to face up to its demons and vested interests, irrespective of who is in office.
Aeron Davis, Bankruptcy, Bubbles and Bailouts: The Inside History of the Treasury since 1976, Manchester University Press.
The Treasury has been the driving force of UK government for decades and despite this it has escaped forensic examination in public. This is the story of the Treasury, the Chancellors who have headed it and its civil servants, along with a scrutinising of what has become known as Treasury orthodoxy which extends its influence across government.
Andrew Blauner (ed.), On the Couch: Writers Analyse Sigmund Freud, Princeton University Press.
The impact of Freud’s ideas changed Western civilisation, and this thoughtful book tries in one volume to come to terms with that and offer a set of engaged and sometimes critical perspectives. It addresses the therapeutic model (the good and bad), confession, trauma, meditation and even Freud’s dogs.
John Ganz, When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s, Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
How did the US end up with Trump? Ganz’s answer is that the answer can be found in the right-wing eco-sphere which emerged in the 1990s post-Reaganism in the likes of Pat Buchanan and Josh Limbaugh. Setting themselves against centrist Clintonism and old boy Republicanism they embraced a world of paranoia, rage and conspiracy theories which fuelled the fire of what was to come.
Nick Bryant, The Forever War: America’s Unending Conflict with Itself Unabridged, Bloomsbury Continuum.
Bryant’s account starts with the original sin of America’s foundational story: the pretence of equality (or equality for men) alongside the reality of slavery and genocide. This produced a domestic deceit which has been unable to come to terms with the racism and violence America is based upon. All of which has created a set of emotions ready to be played by demagogues and populists in a story which show no sign of ending in the near-future.
Sheila Rowbotham, Reasons to Rebel: My Memories of the 1980s, Merlin Press.
A treasure of a book filled with hope, humanity and optimism. Rowbotham brings to this book the qualities she has brought to her politics: a constant insightfulness and ecumenical spirit combined with searching to build alliances for change. Pivotal to her politics are these qualities and a belief in a politics of socialist feminism influenced by class and sexual equality. At the book’s conclusion Sheila observes: ‘My yearning is to bring a smile of recognition across the generations, revive submerged visions and strengthen the resolve of those in left movements from below to keep on keeping on.’ An alternative account to the 1980s to the conventional fare.
Tariq Ali, You Can’t Please All: Memoirs 1980-2024, Verso.
Tariq Ali has been a prominent left-wing campaigner since the end of the 1960s and whatever his inner voices has always exuded a degree of self-certainty, writing at one point in this biography: ‘There have been other versions of this story. This is the only one that bears the seal of total accuracy.’ Despite that this is a non-stop global tour championing the causes of anti-imperialism and national liberation – although one which does not publicly want to address the many shortcomings of the ultra-left. Still more often than not Ali is on the side of the forces of light.
Adam Shatz, The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon, Apollo.
Frantz Fanon died in 1961 at the age of 36 but his writing and thinking is critically relevant today. Central to his work is the idea of decolonisation and addressing not just its legacies but the ongoing practices of power and domination which stem from it. Fanon was a revolutionary voice who believed in the possibility of living in a post-colonial world: a future still relevant today. A superb introduction to Fanon and his ideas.
Colm Toibin, On James Baldwin, Brandeis University Press.
2024 marked the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of James Baldwin. This short book of 147 pages by Irish novelist Colm Toibin is both concise and informative and an excellent and very personal introduction. Toibin locates Baldwin in the context of other great American and radical writers and the wider issues which defined his life: the struggle for respect and equality of black America most notably, as well as the places which shaped his life.
Mark Rowlands, The Happiness of Dogs: Why the Unexamined Life Is Most Worth Living, Granta Books.
Do not be put off by the title of this book as this is not a book just about dogs. Rather it is a set of reflections on what makes dogs happy and content, what we humans can learn from them, and from this ruminates on what happiness and even consciousness is. On the way this book touches on existential and philosophical questions doing it in an accessible way.
Max Boot, Reagan: His Life and Legend, Liveright.
Reagan has been one of the most consequential US Presidents since FDR and one of the most misunderstood, something not aided by the relative scarcity of serious biographies of his life. Boot’s take is a critical one, but he understands the importance of his political life and journey leading to his Presidency. Reagan is a figure who needs to be understood paving the way for the right-wing transformation of the US Republicans ultimately leading to Trump. And as a plus point neo-con Douglas Murray in The Spectator hated it.
ALARMING SECTION
Kemi Badenoch, Conservatism in Crisis: Rise of the Bureaucratic Class, Renewal 2030.
This pamphlet formed the intellectual ballast (if that is the right description) of Kemi Badenoch’s campaign for the Tory leadership. The main factors holding Britain back are the vice-like grip of ‘the bureaucratic class’ and their suffocation of ‘the market class’. Hence, the need for deregulation, culture wars and the onslaught on ‘the woke’ in an analysis where inequality and climate change get barely a mention. Do not say you have not been warned!
Tony Blair, On Leadership: Lessons for the 21st Century, Hutchinson Heinemann.
Whatever his many flaws Blair clearly had leadership skills and qualities. Now post-Premiership he wants to tell us all the things he has learned as a leader and how today’s class of politicians should take a masterclass from him. This is a bizarre book which sees political leadership as a form of CEO management with little democratic scrutiny; judged by its contents he seems to have no real self-awareness or insight into his mistakes in office and their consequences. Bizarrely given a favourable review by Nicola Sturgeon in the New Statesman.
CULTURE AND MUSIC
Joe Boyd, And the Roots of Rhythm Remain: A Journey Through Global Music, Faber & Faber.
Boyd is a musical legend who was there at some of the great musical points of the last fifty years as an active participant producing the likes of Fairport Convention, John Martyn and Nick Drake. This book goes beyond that and is a history of popular music beyond the West giving a platform to the talents and voices of the Global South. It is a breathtaking overview: challenging Western assumptions with all the usual musical suspects of the 1960s and 1970s having at best a walk-on part (including even the Beatles!). Superb on the likes of Brazilian and Indian music.
Richard King, Travels Over Feeling: Arthur Russell, A Life, Faber & Faber.
The renaissance of Arthur Russell posthumously after his death in 1992 has been nothing short of miraculous. One of the true musical polymaths and pioneers he combined a classical musical training with a love of club and dance music. King’s book not only honours Russell but the lost New York of the 1980s and early 1990s where experimentation and breaking boundaries were the norm before the corporatisation of even alt-culture.
Ann Powers, Travelling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell, Harper Collins.
This isn’t a conventional biography of Joni. Rather Ann Powers, a journalist and music writer, comes to appreciate Joni’s music later in life. In so doing she interjects in places her own story into her appreciation of Joni, but does so in a way which provides a fascinating take on her music, her creativity and position as a woman in a world very male dominated – and even more so in the 1960s and 1970s. This book takes Joni seriously as an artist while exploring her many twists and turns and is to this reader the best account I have read on her so far.
Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair, The McCartney Legacy: Volume 2: 1974-80, Deyst.
For decades post-Beatles McCartney’s reputation was critically rock bottom seen as too eager at people pleasing and such musical abominations as ‘Mull of Kintyre’ and the Frog Chorus. Now with the passing of time Macca’s solo work as well as his experimental side in the Beatles and after is being rightly celebrated. This multi-volume set is the most comprehensive yet speaking to everyone who was around McCartney in the 1970s. Volume One covered 1969-73 up to ‘Band on the Run’ and the second volume takes us to just before the murder of John Lennon.
Christophe Lebold, Leonard Cohen: The Man Who Saw the Angels Fall, Luath Press.
At last Leonard Cohen gets the serious, immersive biography that he deserves from a French based literary academic who knew him in his later years. This portrays the many faces and aspects of Cohen musically, artistically and as a person, and comes as close as anyone can to understanding him and what drove him. An exceptional and important book on a one-off talent. And as a plus published by Edinburgh’s Luath Press.
Michael Marra, A Can of Mind and A Tin of Think So, Assai Records.
At long last over a decade after his death in 2012 Dundee-born Michael Marra has had a fitting tribute. This combines a beautiful book about Marra containing reproductions of his art and other mementos along with short essays from those who knew him (full disclosure: I have a short essay on meeting Gil Scott-Heron and connecting him and Michael). Available in a limited edition in a music box set containing an album of Michael’s music and all sorts of gorgeous artifacts. Great to see such love and it begs the question: when will Michael’s musical estate get sorted out and his back catalogue rereleased?
Finally, a closing word about Jeremy Seabrook (1939-2024) who passed away at the age of 85. Seabrook had a deep humanity and voice, addressed post-imperial and post-industrial challenges in the UK and globally, and did so in a manner always curious and avoiding dogmatism. Never in tenured academia it was no accident that he wrote in a jargon free style to appeal to the widest audience.
His books cover the decline of the labour movement, importance of neighbourhood, global capital’s exploitation chains in the UK and India, and growing up gay in post-war Britain. At the end of What Went Wrong? Working People and he Ideals of the Labour Movement (1978) he quotes Mr Llewellyn, a retired miner:
It is a sad thing, we have to start from scratch. All over again. What we fought for in the old days has receded so far from us; even the issues have been forgotten. It seems a shame. I thought I would see socialism in my lifetime. It looked like it, even in 1945. We’ve got to start all over again. I shan’t be here to do it but there will be those who will.
Kind of puts the tribulations of Starmer’s Labour government in context.
