Back to my Penguin collection. Today’s blog post will mention the six most recent books I have read. What could be more interesting?

I’m not keeping precise figures, but I think I have read, or read through, about 150 Penguins since I started doing this. It’s been interesting reading books I would not normally read, and being able to transport myself out of the 21st century morass back into the (equally horrific, I guess) 19th and 20th.

Anyway, here goes:

1. Tacitus on Britain and Germany. That’s the title, but the book actually contains two long essays/short books by the Roman writer Tacitus. One, called Agricola, is the biography of his father in law, who helped Britain gain control over much of what is now England, and who became the Roman governor of England in the first century C.E. Tacitus clearly liked his father in law and relished his accomplishments. The second essay, Germania, gives Tacitus’ opinions of the German tribes who lived in what today would be the north of Germany and were, by and large, not under Roman occupation (although some of the tribes were allied with Rome). He talks about a sparsely occupied country with nothing one could call a city or even a village, about people who love to fight (internally or against foreign invaders, and who when not fighting are just lazy as they sit around waiting for the next fight. Tacitus’ Germans are strictly moral and monogamous (the punishments for transgressing morality are severe and rarely needed), poor agriculturalists who wear out their soil and move on, and who live a simple (if alcoholic) life style. They are all attractive and strong, with blond hair and blue eyes, and value their independence and lifestyle. The book also contains a 50 page essay by the translator, H. Mattingly, which nicely sets the tone for Tacitus’ writing.
2. Salome and Other Plays by Oscar Wilde. These were enjoyable to read if a bit simplistic; probably better to see if staged well. The story of Salome is simply that – Salome is the god daughter of king Herod, is attracted to and frightened by John the Baptist. She is promised anything she wants by Herod, and asks for (and gets) the head of John on a platter. Weird story, to be sure. The second play – A Woman of No Importance – tells the story of a member of the British aristocracy who hires a young man, a protege, to be his secretary, although the man seems to have no qualifications for the job. It turns out that the young man is the aristocrat’s son (a fact long hidden from the son) with a woman whom the community thinks is widowed, but in fact is an old lover of the aristocrat. The young man – who himself is in love with a young American visitor – finds out, and a bit of chaos results. The third and last play in the book is An Ideal Husband, similar to the Women of No Importance, is also the story of British aristocrats. A woman married to an up and coming politician is proud that her husband is a paragon of ethics, and supports him in avoiding making decisions that would compromise his ethical standards even if they are unpopular. But she does not know that his entire rise as a politician is based on the lack of ethics in his early political life and when she finds out……
3. The third book is a book of Maxims by La Rochefoucauld. The books starts with a nice background piece by the translator, L.W. Tancock, on the status of French intellectuals of the 17th century during the time of Louis XIV. Theatre was big (Moliere, for example), there were salons with regular attendees each trying to outwit the other, one of whom was La Rochefucauld, who put together maxim after maxim (a popular written art form of the time). The maxims himself bored me to death, so I read a few pages and skimmed the rest. Times have changed, I guess. The book contains 641 maxims. Give me a number and I’ll tell you what it says.
4. The fourth book, Edmund Campion, by Evelyn Waugh. Not a novel, like most of Waugh’s work, but a biography of a churchman living during the time of Elizabeth I. England was in religious upheaval, with Elizabeth determined to have the Church of England pretty well completely displace the Roman Catholic Church in England. Campion was a brilliant student, attractive in every way, who became an Anglican priest as a result of his Oxford studies, but who grew more and more attracted to Catholicism. He left England and went to northern France where a Catholic seminary had been set up to train Englishmen as Catholic priests, as this training was no longer available at home (who knew?). Campion taught there and the went to Rome where the Pope designated him as one of a small number of English Catholics who would return to England, without publicity, to assure English Catholics that the Church was still alive and to attract more into the priestly training abroad. Campion did so and, after a fair amount of success, was arrested, refused to recant his religious affiliation and was hanged. A true story. Very well told.
5. Book five was a novel, Greenmantle, by John Buchan. It’s the second novel by Buchan I have read as a Penguin; the first – set in Scotland and telling the story of a bunch of young bored educated Englishman who wanted to have some daring fun to destroy their boredom and get them back into the swing of things – had a stupid plot (I thought), but was so well written that the plot could be excused. Greenmantle, set during World War I, involves a young Englishman recruited to be a spy by infiltrating first Germany and then Ottoman Turkey to interrupt a plot by the Germans to enlist the entire Muslim world as German allies. The book, very politically incorrect for 2023 reading, was, to me, not worthwhile.
6. Finally, Life in Shakespeare’s England, an anthology of short Elizabethan pieces (written when Shakespeare was writing) to give a flavor of England at the time. The chapter titles tell the story: Stratford, The Countryside (Folk, Sport, Festival), Superstition (Ghosts, Witches, Fairyland, Astrology), Education (Child and Parent, Grammar School, University, Travel), London (the Road to London, First Impressions, Disorders, Temptations, Dress and Fashion, and the Plague), Books and Authors, Theatre (Morals, Playhouses and Beer Gardens, the Audience, the Actor, Puritan Opposition), The Court (Queen Elizabeth, the Courtier, Masques, the Death of the Queen), House and Home (Houses and Furniture, Gardens and Orchards, Housekeeping and the Table, Sleep and Health), Rogues and Vagabonds, and the Sea. Interesting to read through (for the most part); interesting reference.