I was looking forward to this book having enjoyed Frank McLynn’s previous superb joint biography of Villa and Zapata. However while the focus of the Villa and Zapata study was on explaining the significance of the two men in the context of their times and places, in this instance Frank McLynn attempts to argue for the significance of Marcus to all ages.

This leads to two problems with the book. On one hand a tendency to compare Marcus with later leaders which seems a bit anachronistic. Second, despite estabilishing Marcus’ responsibility for a ferocious persecution of Christians during his reign, which included many deliberately sadistic executions in contravention of Roman law, and despite Marcus’ genocidal tendencies in his wars against the German tribes, the author is determined to convince the reader of Marcus’s inate humaneness and philosophical significance.

Thought is important as the origin of action. But no matter how novel or insightful Marcus’s philosophy may be, something that is a central concern of this book, it does not absolve transgressions. And judged by his actions Marcus was a ruthless and bloody man who, in addition to his personal crimes, bequeathed the Roman empire its worst emperor, his son Commodus. Consequently McLynn’s argument of the importance of Marcus as one of the great people of all time seems overstretched and internally contradictory. As I read the book the figure I was most reminded of was not Churchill, Grant or Smuts, who McLynn discusses, but rather the Bosnian Serb war criminal Radovan Karadzic – a learned but pretentious man who showed his true face as a bloody warlord and debased his learning in war crimes and the persecution of minorities.

Overall the book feels like it could have done with a more robust editing, both to challenge the sort of fundamental problems suggested above, but also to discipline McLynn’s language and tendencies to show off his own erudition: for his next book Frank McLynn should be reminded that less is more.

 Since its publication Doris Kearns Goodwin’s biography of Lincoln has rightly become regarded as a modern classic. It is an exquisitely written account of Lincoln’s life from his birth in poverty in Kentucky, through a period in child slavery (by the modern definition of that human rights abuse), to self education and success as a lawyer, politician and President during the worst constitutional crisis in US history, to his death in the Petersen boarding house in Washington DC.

Tolstoy described Lincoln as a “humanitarian as broad as the world” and Kearns Goodwin’s approach to demonstrating the truth of this judgement is to focus on the relationships between Lincoln and his cabinet ministers, particularly Seward, his Secretary of State, Stanton his Secretary of War, Chase his Treasury Secretary, and to a lesser extent Welles his Navy Secretary, Bates his Attorney General and Blair his Postmaster General. Seward, Chase, and Bates were Lincoln’s principle rivals for the Republican nomination in 1860 and it was unprecedented for a President to bring such rivals into his “political family” as Lincoln did. But, such was the crisis that the nation was facing with the threat of secession from the slave states in response to the election of even a “moderate” anti-slavery candidate such as Lincoln, Lincoln felt that he had to have the most capable men for his cabinet. That some of them, particularly Chase, felt that Lincoln was an unworthy candidate and unqualified to be President added to the challenge that Lincoln faced.

Lincoln’s genius as a visionary, writer and speaker are well understood and well demonstrated in this biography. The book details his evolving thinking on the issue of slavery from a “moderate” anti-slavery position to an increasingly radical one as a result of contact with the anti-slavery struggle itself and with the likes of Fredrick Douglass and the ordinary black soldiers who were risking their lives to defend the Union: “There have been men base enough to propose to me to return to slavery the black warriors of Port Hudson and Olustee, and thus win the respect of the masters they fought. Should I do so, I should deserve to be damned in time and eternity”, he said at one stage.

In addition Kearns Goodwin book illustrates Lincoln’s managerial genius, arguing convincingly that it emerged from his enormous decency and magnanimity, and that it was fundamental in ensuring that such a disparate group as his cabinet acted together in the national interest in time of an unprecedented national crisis.

Lincoln’s lovely gift of humour and intense like-ability shine through the biography and consequently the devastating tragedy of his assassination still resonates down the centuries. This book is a fitting tribute to the greatest figure of the 19th century and one of the greatest figures of all world history.

Michael Collins could lay reasonable claim to be both the father of modern guerrilla warfare and one of the principle founders of Irish democracy. The fact that he achieved so much before his tragically early death at the age of 31 makes his story all the more remarkable.

I first read this book shortly after it was published in the 1990s. Rereading it in 2012 I was struck by the breathtaking scale of the achievement in the writing: drawing on the accounts of members of Collins’ Intelligence operation Coogan provides a detailed and compelling account of the intelligence war. In addition he provides a gripping account of the peace initiatives that led to the Truce and a facinating description of the negotiations that led to the Treaty. Probably the piece de resistance of a book that is overflowing with extraordinary detail is his account of Collins’ Northern policy: here Coogan wields a wealth of evidence to present a powerful argument that when other so called Republicans were preoccupied with silly disputes over the presence of the Oath of Allegience to the Crown in the Treaty, Collins was, for good and ill, marshalling all his political, diplomatic and military skills in a desperate effort to achieve a united Ireland.

In this book Coogan draws on a wealth of published and unpublished sources and interviews with participants in the War of Independence and Civil War, many personally known to him in his distinguished career as a journalist and editor, to produce the outstanding extant biography of Collins that catches both his personal humanity and historic achievements. In the process he also produces one of the best single volume introductions to this period of Irish history: a gripping narrative relating to how Collins, with a small group of committed revolutionists and patriots, initiates a guerrilla war, breaks the power of British secret service in Dublin and then, at enormous personal cost, turns the military victory into the political achievement of a democratic Irish state.

Collins remains a compelling figure because of both his historical achievements and legacy, and because, in spite of his engagement in some brutal warfare, he remains a recognisably sympathetic and humane person through it all. This book demonstrates all of this and illuminates some of the the great controversies of Irish and British history in the process. The result is quite simply one the best historical biographies available about anyone. It is a veritable tour de force, stunning in the breadth and depth of its scope and utterly gripping.

A masterpiece.

The Squad is an account of the intelligence war waged principally in Dublin, by Michael Collins and the IRA from January 1919 to the Truce in 1921. It is based on a series of interviews given by participants to the Irish Bureau of Military History on the proviso, for many, that they would only be released after the interviewee’s death.

The author does not spend much time contextualising the violence in the politics of the time clearly having decided that, as there are many other books which provide such context, he has little additional to offer. This means that one is pitched almost straight away into the minuatae of intelligence operations with a bewildering array of characters.

However patience with this approach pays dividends: the book conveys the mammoth scale of the intelligence operation Collins undertook and hence the centrality of this in undermining Britain’s capacity to hold Ireland. The book also provides insight into how the ruthlessness and secrecy of the operations led to the moral erosion of some of the Squad members whose subsequent military and democratic conduct was far short of the ideals initially outlined by Collins for them.

Collins insisted that revenge was never to be part of the conduct of the Squad, leading many of the shooters to presume that killings such as that of Lee-Wilson, who had maltreated Tom Clarke after the 1916 Rising, was principally an act of military necessity, rather than an act of revenge. However as generally the shooters were simply given orders to kill not the reasons for the killings there is little substantive illumination on the reasons for some of Collins’ more controversial killings.

Certainly as the war wore on into late 1920 and early 1921 there is a sense that the routinisation of killing led to a toleration of revenge and reprisal comparable to that shown by Lloyd George and his Cabinet in their conduct of the war: Todd Andrews, later a distinguished Irish public servant, who participated in a support role to the Squad in the Bloody Sunday operation in late 1920, noted how the behaviour of some of his comrades resembled that of the Black and Tans.

And, however justifiable was this campaign, the author does not allow the reader to lose sight of the fact that it resulted in the killing, often brutal, of other human beings: in the Squad’s first assasination, of a political detective Patrick Smyth, they used .38 calibre weapons, which they discovered could not dependably put a man down – Smyth struggled on in pain and fear for a long while after the first bullets hit; the assasination of 22 year old District Inspector Phillip O’Sullivan in front of his fiancee, clearly bothered his killers so much in later life that they could not bring themselves to speak of it.

Nevertheless, in spite of the sense of excess towards the end of the war, the book does confirm a general tendency of restraint and growing democratic sensibility by Collins that compares favourably with many of his contemporaries in British or American politics. The experience of the pity of war seems to have been a major factor in Collins’ own growth as a statesman. His loss continues to cast a long shadow on twentieth century Irish history.

Tiberius (the “T” in “James T. Kirk”!)

This is a very enjoyable account of Roman history through the prism of the careers of the first 12 Caesars. These were not nice people. Even the “good” emperors were bloody men slaughtering guilty and innocent alike: Titus, for example, celebrated his father’s and brother’s birthdays by putting to death thousands of prisoners from the Jewish Revolt. The bad ones, like Caligula and Nero, were even more murderous lunatics.

The book takes as its starting point Suetonius account of the lives but develops its own themes and opinions based on other primary and secondary sources. It does seem to presume significant background knowledge of the lives but I found it entertaining and informative even with limited knowledge of many of the lives.

A World on Fire is a remarkable achievement. It is a history of the American Civil War taken from the novel perspective of the relationship between Britain and the US during the war. Hence the principal characters are Lord Lyons, the British representative to the US, Charles Francis Adams, the US minister to London, and Seward the US Secretary of State with a host of other political and diplomatic figures in support.

This approach illuminates aspects of the war little touched upon by more conventional US histories, notably the real risk to Union victory posed by recognition of the South by the European powers, and the closeness to war between the US and Britain on a number of occasions. Consequently this book provides a more critical portrayal of Seward than, say, Doris Kearns Goodwin’s masterful biography of Lincoln, Team of Rivals.

This diplomatic history of the war is told within the framework of a more conventional political and military narrative of the course of the war. Here a perspective on the fighting is offered by, principally, the letters and memoirs of the British and Irish volunteers who fought for both North and South.

At times it is difficult to keep up with the astonishing cast of characters that Foreman has assembled, but it is well worth the effort for the startlingly fresh perspective that this book puts on the American Civil War.

HHhH is the story of Operation Anthropoid: the plot to assassinate the truly vile Reinhard Heydrich, the architect of the genocide of the Jews and Roma, by the Czechoslovak government in exile in collaboration with the in-country resistance.

In spite of being very familiar with the story from other books and movies, I found this one of the most exciting books that I have read in a long time: truly gripping, action packed and ultimately a story of devastating tragedy.

In homage to this Czechoslovakian epic the French author, Laurent Binet, has

Memorial to Czech parachutists, Including Gabcik and Kubis, killed in battle with SS

adopted a very “Kunderian” style, weaving in and out of the story himself, as the Czech writer Milan Kundera often does, with his personal reflections upon it and concerns on how he can do the story and his heroes, Kubis and Gabcik (along with the hordes of other resistants and Czech civilians who made the operation possible and paid with their lives), justice.

Many readers may find this approach irritating and something of a turn-off (I didn’t, finding it engaging and interesting in and of itself), but the substance of the story is still compelling. Binet calls this the story of the single greatest act of resistance in the course of the Second World War. It is hard to argue with that and this book is a fine tribute.

Untying the Knots is an exemplary work of biography and journalism. Shortly after Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s election as pope Paul Vallely, the author, spent some time travelling to Rome and Buenos Aires to meet friends and enemies of the new pope. The result of this research is this book.

Despite being relatively short it is teeming with detail, including sketches of Argentinian politics, the origins and conduct of the “Dirty War”, and the machinations of two papal elections, as well as the origins and career of the new pope, Francis.

The central issues of the book relate to Bergoglio’s personal conduct during the Dirty War and what sort of a pope he will be. In relation to the first question Vallely explores in some depth the key question relating to Bergoglio’s role in the kidnapping and torture of two Jesuit priests by the military junta when he was Provincial of that order.

The answer to that first question is fundamental in Vallely’s assessment of the second. In the end Vallely paints a convincing picture of a man who was politically conservative and personally authoritarian in his youth, making some dreadful mistakes as a result of which some innocent people were killed, imprisoned and tortured. But while remaining quite conservative Bergoglio appears to be someone who, as a result of deep shame at past misconduct and misjudgement, has grown into a generous and courageous figure.

It will be interesting to see the sort of pope that Bergoglio becomes as Francis but Vallely presents considerable evidence to suggest a hopeful prospect based on his radical conduct in the first months of his pontificate.