If you can ignore the very bloke-ish blurb on the covers and the fact that Fergus Fleming is Ian Fleming’s nephew, this is a thorough set of biographical snippets on an Arctic, Antarctic and Saharan explorer theme. After all, what is a desert but a hot dry version of the icebound wastes at the poles.
I still delight in the fact that one of the earlier and most astute explorers was William Scoresby. For a long time I’d assumed Philip Pullman had made up the name Lee Scoresby. Perhaps he did – although I doubt it – but I like the idea that aëronaut explorer Lee and and arctic explorer William share a surname and a sense of decency.
Back to the book – worth a read if you’re interested in 19th Century English Explorers.
The Adventures of Maud West, Lady Detective – Susannah Stapleton
Alternating chapters of newspaper articles by or about Maud West and Susannah Stapleton’s slow and steady sleuthing to uncover the life and times of ‘London’s Leading Lady Detective’.
Makes me wish I could ask my nanas about their lives, growing up at the start of the 20th century, a couple of decades behind Edith Maria Barber aka Maud West.
Kate Teltscher follows eighteenth century East India Company man George Bogle on his diplomatic trade missions to Bhutan and Tibet in the hope of opening up opportunities in Qing China, as British imperial ambitions emerge under Governer-General Warren Hastings.
I am loving these recent retellings of the Greek Myths from the women’s perspective.
Natalie Haynes’ A Thousand Ships is, not surprisingly, the story of the Trojan War and the siege of Troy, triggered by Helen whose face launched those ships, and Paris – and the golden apple, but primarily for the story of where it came from and the three Goddesses vying for its accolade.
Penelope, relentlessly weaving and unweaving – and – my favourite chapters – writing increasingly exasperated letters to her errant husband-with-wanderlust, the wily Odysseus. Andromache, Cassandra, Hecabe (Hecuba when I was at school), and lesser known women whose passing mentions are fleshed out into, well, flesh and bones.
