A Mansion for Murder, by Frances Brody

Frances Brody’s A Mansion for Murder is her latest Kate Shackleton novel, and it features a real place – Milner Field, near Saltaire in West Yorkshire.  Kate is a private investigator, working with Jim Sykes and her housekeeper, Mrs Sugden. In 1930, Kate receives a mysterious letter from Ronnie Creswell, addressed to Mrs Gerald Shackleton, inviting her to meet him. Not many people would address her using her late husband’s name so she’s intrigued enough to accept the invitation. However, when she arrives at his home, she learns that Ronnie drowned that day. Kate and her colleagues get drawn into investigating Ronnie’s death and some possible industrial espionage at the mill where he worked.

Once again, Brody’s nailed the narrative tone of an intelligent professional woman. Most of the book is narrated in the first person by Kate, but suddenly switches to third person when Brody needs to include a scene without her. This can be a little confusing, but I figure it’s a small price to pay for reading such good books.

The characters are well delineated and not so many that the reader gets confused. The plot is plausible and moves reasonably briskly. There are no laugh out loud moments and the tone is gentle and measured, primarily due to Kate’s narrative voice.  There were a few errors in the early proof copy that I was given for review, but I’m sure they will be fixed before publication. None of them distracted the reader very much as it was obvious what was meant.

I really enjoyed the book and I strongly recommend it if you enjoy British mysteries set between the wars. The plot was unusual, although I guessed whodunnit for once by a process of elimination.

- Colin

Paperback, £8.99. Published 20-10-22.

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Researching Local History: Your Guide to the Sources, by Stuart A. Raymond

This book is going to cost me so much money! No, not the price of the book (which is very good value indeed, given current book prices), but many of the other books and journals that Raymond mentions. I was unaware of several of the journals and I also now have a long shopping list of books. To be fair, though, several of the journals he mentions make older issues freely available online.

If you are really interested in researching history yourself, rather than reading stuff written by others, this book is invaluable. Before finishing Chapter 2, I was weeping with joy because I’d bookmarked a website containing stuff I’d previously been told wasn’t available online. (Private Bills of Parliament authorising the construction of railways in the 1800s, since you ask!) By the end of the book, I had many more bookmarked sites. Stuart Raymond has been studying local history for over 50 years and REALLY knows his sources. 

The book is structured well, with chapters covering a wide range of aspects of historical research. The chapter, “Preliminaries to Research” tells the reader where to find sources about sources. That is, it suggests bibliographies, websites, specialist libraries and societies that can provide lists of sources for your chosen topic. The Museum of English Rural Life was a new one for me. That one chapter contains references to:

100+ Webpages

50+ Books

10 journal articles

“People and Population” doesn’t just mention the usual suspects such as the births, marriages and deaths registers, but also sites like www.histpop.org that give summary reports based upon census information. Several chapters refer the reader to articles in scholarly journals such as the Agricultural History Review, where the issues from 1953-2018 are freely available online.

The chapters inevitably overlap. The Domesday Book, for example, appears several times. That’s understandable: it tells us who lived somewhere and what they did; what the land was used for; how much it was worth; etc. Initially, I was a little impatient with the numerous references to the National Archives guides but then I realised that Raymond’s one line reference to a well-written comprehensive 2–3-page guide prevents his book being much, much longer and more expensive. Thank you, Mr Raymond!

Do I have any quibbles? Yes – and you will share this first one... There’s not enough about MY area of research. I guess it depends upon your chosen area of research. I’m interested in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, so all the references to muster rolls and manorial court records won’t help me. I wanted more about municipal records of Urban District Councils, for example. However, it is highly unreasonable to expect an author to deliver a general guide that greatly assists everyone and also gives huge detail about every specialist area. As the introduction warns, “In a book of this length, it is not possible to deal with all the sources and topics that might be of interest to local historians. Nor is it possible to provide the detail that might be thought desirable.”

Secondly, a book published in 2022 probably ought to refer to GIS databases such as ukdataservice.ac.uk. And thirdly, although Raymond rightly mentions the excellent British Newspaper Archive, he doesn’t warn the reader about the often-appalling quality of the OCRed text that often thwarts searches for specific phrases.

I cannot believe how useful this book is and I’m about to recommend it to everyone on my MA degree course. Thank you, Pen and Sword, for sending me an early copy to review – and thank you, thank you, thank you, Mr Raymond for writing this book.

- Colin

Hardback, £16.99.

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Radical Victorians, by James Hobson

Radical Victorians by James Hobson tells us about a group of Victorians (obvs!) who defied convention in various ways: espousing vegetarianism, teetotalism, cremation, women’s legal equality and many other views that were ahead of their time. The individuals are:

- Anna Kingsford

- Frances Power Cobbe

- Ann Jane Carlile

- Florence Cook

- Sir Henry Thompson

- Isabelle Holmes

- Elizabeth Wolstenholme-Elmy

- Richard Pankhurst

- George Drysdale

- Annie Besant

- Edward Truelove

- Charles Bradlaugh

- Josephine Butler

- W.T. Stead

- Stuart Headlam

- Keir Hardie

- Henry Hyndham

- Sir Charles Dilke

- Francis Dalton

To my shame, I had only heard of five of them and, as I read Hobson’s book, I realised I actually knew very little about those few. This is perhaps not surprising. Hobson has chosen people who change the future but (mostly) didn’t live to see their views accepted. Thus, the book excludes Florence Nightingale and Charles Darwin – their views were radical when first proposed but were fairly mainstream when Queen Victoria died. Francis Dalton was a great scientist but made one huge misjudgement: eugenics. Whilst the basic science may be correct - racehorses can be bred for stamina, potatoes can be bred to resist blight - the moral consequences are shudderingly deplorable. Modern cancel culture is writing him out of history, which is a shame, as he did achieve some great things: the first weather map in a newspaper; breakthroughs in fingerprint technology and statistical methods.

Hobson sets the context for each life, explaining the standard contemporary views and showing how unusual the above team seemed to other Victorians. Many of them had the luxury of wealthy parents and could afford to throw themselves whole-heartedly into fighting for good causes - as Hobson puts it, they were part of “the leisured intellectual elite.” Some, however, like Keir Hardie, the founder of the Independent Labour Party, were desperately poor.

That brings me onto my one cavil with the book. Many - most? All? - of the cast list were known to each other, and they pop up in each other’s chapters. The trouble is, I can’t remember whether, when we read about Elizabeth Wolstenholme-Elmy going to see the work of Josephine Butler, we have read about Butler yet or not! And there are thirty-five mentions of Charles Bradlaugh before we reach the chapter dedicated to him. It’s all good stuff, but the interconnectedness makes it confusing. I know E.M. Forster told us to “Only connect!” but I sometimes wonder if Hobson has taken the instruction to extremes!

The book is well-written and provides a lot of interesting information about each life. It’s not as dry as you might expect. I shall read it again, and I know I’ll get more out of it on a second or third reading.

- Colin

Hardback, £25. Publishing date: 30-05-22. Pre-order with us now!

Worn, by Sofi Thanhauser

This book confronts us with the awful realities of the textile industry, uncovering a world where the people who make our clothes now are seldom paid what they deserve and are often harmed by the industry. The book has sections on linen, cotton, silk, synthetics, and wool. As Sofi explains, “… the history and reportage [this book] contains is weighted towards understanding the U.S.’s role in building a global garment trade that touches every corner of the world.” Although it's definitely U.S.-centric, part of the section on wool describes the author’s visit to Woolfest in Cumbria one year.

This is not a light read. Although the narrative is mostly about Thanhauser’s visits to factories; people’s homes; and workplaces, it is very fact-heavy and depressing reading. Cotton uses 8,500 litres of water to make 1Kg but wheat only needs 900 litres. About 24 per cent of the world’s insecticide is used for cotton farming, polluting water supplies. A pair of jeans uses 20,000 litres of water – the amount that could be used to grow the wheat needed to bake a loaf of bread every week for a year.

It's unlikely that anyone looking for cheap clothing on the UK high streets has any idea of the human activity (and suffering and exploitation). It might also be unlikely that they care.

- Colin

Hardback, £20. Find it in the History section!