A truly well-written autobiography can be sheer pleasure to read. I believe that Lorna Sage’s ‘Bad Blood’ is a classic of the genre. Her name briefly hit the headlines when I was at school. She was of my generation and did the ‘unforgivable’  in the tiny village of Hanmer, in Flintshire, North Wales in the sixties. She became pregnant at the age of sixteen, while still at school.

The autobiography recounts her vicarage childhood, living with her eccentric grandparents until her father returned from the army. She tells of the trials of bullying at school as well as her bleak family life. Although Lorna was convinced that marriage was not for her, her pregnancy made her a teenage bride.

In what was liberal and forward-looking thinking in the sixties, Lorna and her husband, Vic Sage, were both admitted to Durham University where both earned firsts. Lorna became a distinguished literary critic before her death from emphysema, just days after her autobiography won the Whitbread Prize for Biography.

Paddy Ashdown, A Fortunate Life

Ed. note: Paddy Ashdown is the guest speaker Tuesday 2 June at the Chateau de Prangins. The event is  sponsored by Executives International. Details, registration He will also be appearing Wednesday 1 July at a book signing at Off the Shelf in Geneva, followed by a presentation at an evening event sponsored by the British Swiss Chamber of Commerce at the Hotel Beau Rivage.

Paddy Ashdown, for eleven years leader of the UK Liberal Democrats, Britain’s third political party, has a special significance for Genevans. For years he was one of us, and his love of skiing, the Alps and nearby Savoie and Burgundy rings through his autobiography. He even has a French son-in-law and French grandchildren.

Paddy’s Bedford School reports claim that he had ‘no aptitude for languages’.  He modestly declares in a footnote that, when asked how many languages he speaks, he says he has forgotten six and is ‘nowadays only comfortable in French’. This from a man who has the equivalent of a first class honours degree in Chinese and who, in the course of a thrilling career, has functioned in Hindi, Malay, German, and what used to be called Serbo-Croat!

Such modesty is typical of the man we feel we know well from his political days. Many of us remember his years in Parliament, the initial triumph in the Yeovil seat and the growing strength of his party. We recall a scandal where he was hounded by the press. We sympathise with the failed ambition to partner Tony Blair in a move towards the proportional representation and constitutional reform that the UK’s third party would so warmly welcome. This section of Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon’s autobiography leaves us with a sense of  ’déja vu’ where we love Paddy for his honesty. In the current British political climate of corruption, it is refreshing to read of such political passion, defence of liberal ideas and devoted enthusiasm for a cause.

But this section of the autobiography (just over a third) pales in significance compared with the other parts: the accounts of Paddy’s school years, his leadership of a commando in Borneo, the Special Boat Service, time in Belfast, and his deeply emotional involvement with the cause of Bosnia Herzegovina.

Paddy admits, several times, that a privileged education has led him into his ‘fortunate life’, but Bedford was not easy. Gifted at sport but not keen on the academic aspects of school, he survived  early years of rough-and-tumble of a public school because of his ability to fight.

At 18, he chose the Royal Marines rather than a university. That is where the really exciting sections of the book begin. The descriptions of the jungle patrols of his commando are in such evocative prose that we feel as though we have shared the experiences – like the parachuting, and  nerve-wracking underwater entries and exits from a submarine during his Special Boat Service years.

The most moving element of the work is, undeniably, the involvement with the Balkan crisis. Lord Ashdown himself says in his prologue,

two of my Technicolor days, the best and the worst, fall consecutively in the second week of August 1992. Together they form not just a memory but also somehow a distillation of the theme of my life; that of conflict and its human consequences when the beast of intolerance and bigotry gets loose. Looking back, this seems like a subterranean stream which has appeared, vanished and re-emerged, never completely leaving me, since my earliest days.

He is speaking of his meeting with Radovan Karadzic and subsequent visit to  the brutal prison of Manjaca.

His description of Bosnia Herzegovina, where he spent nearly four years as the International High Representative and European Union Special Representative, is simply beautiful. We live with him and Jane, his wife, through four moving years there.

We leave this book feeling immense admiration for such a gentle and honest man who has given his life so generously for causes he truly believes in.

There is the light-hearted side too! A wealth of anecdotes enriches this autobiography and raises a smile on almost every page – like the wonderful one about a lecturer’s demonstration of how to survive – eat a live frog sandwich - or the description of coping with Balkan politics – ‘like herding cats’.

Paddy Ashdown’s autobiography, A Fortunate Life, can be obtained in Geneva from the English Bookshop, Off the Shelf.

It is not difficult to understand why Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader is such an international success. Unlike The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, this late twentieth century example of Holocaust literature is entirely plausible and sheds a new light on a period of history that is no longer in the living memory of the majority of us.

The story is told in three parts, with a brief epilogue. Michael, at the age of fifteen, is seduced into a passionate sexual relationship with Hannah, a much older woman. In the course of their encounters, he reads aloud to Hannah. His life is changed forever but he never becomes emotionally close to Hannah and does not understand why she flees when promotion is offered in her job as tram conductor.

Years later, Michael, as a law student, is a spectator at a trial of war criminals and is surprised to find Hannah in the dock. As the trial unfolds, Hannah becomes the scapegoat for the group of SS guards who had allowed a convoy of concentration camp inmates to burn to death in a locked church. A lone survivor is the witness who will indict Hannah. Michael becomes horribly aware that Hannah would rather accept the guilt than admit that she could not read. He is faced with the dilemma of intervening or honouring Hannah’s pride and dignity. She is sentenced to eighteen years in gaol.

During her imprisonment, Michael reads books on tape and sends them to Hannah. As she masters the art of reading, her understanding of the past changes. Michael’s own life has been a series of unsuccessful relationships. When the date of Hannah’s release approaches, he feels responsibility towards Hannah.

In the context of history, the readers recognise that there can be no ‘happy’ ending to such a story. We can only admire the subtle way that Schlink, a Professor of Law and a former judge, concludes his narrative. The novel was published by Phoenix Fiction and has also been made into a successful film.

Mistaken Identity

The clean, attractive cover with two pretty blond US university students smiling on it, is one reason for buying this text. The summary on the back cover is equally riveting. Mistaken Identity is not fiction. Unbelievable though it is, it really happened.

Five students were killed in a road accident in Indiana. We are given little information about the accident but we learn that Laura Van Ryn, severely injured and comatose, was taken to hospital, while the Ceraks buried their daughter, Whitney.

For five weeks, the Van Ryns and Laura’s boyfriend sat at Laura’s bedside in a darkened room, watching over their heavily bandaged daughter until she began to react to stimuli and, to her psychotherapist, declared that her name was Whitney.

The text takes us from the day of the accident to the present. It is written by the two families. To a European, perhaps one of the most surprising aspects of the work is the way that the faith and belief of the two families helps both of them to live with what has happened and come to terms with the tragedy.

God plays a large part in the novel – possibly a disconcerting presence for many who do not share such active faith, but certainly a help for both families who have remained friends even after the astonishing mistake.

December, Elizabeth H. Winthrop

Elizabeth J. Winthrop’s December is a thought provoking novel about an eleven year-old girl who has stopped speaking. We enter Isabelle’s world in December, in New England, as her parents, Wilson and Ruth, search desperately for a solution.

Isabelle’s school has allowed this artistic and musical adolescent to complete her assignments at home but can not accept this situation any longer. Ruth has given up her legal practice to cope with Isabelle but she is reaching the end of her patience.

We hear the story through the discussions of the parents, through their thoughts and the mind of Isabelle. We witness frequent family occasions in the kitchen and in restaurants where Isabelle is fed mouth-watering American childhood delights. With Ruth and Isabelle, we meet the helpless and tactless psychologist, the headmistress and the art teacher in the parent/child art class. The story is set against a wintery New England and New York landscape.

Like the three main characters, we are trying to pick up clues to explain Isabelle’s enforced silence – family stresses, a dying pet, the death of a squirrel. Even Isabelle is trapped in her own silence. We become as anxious as the characters to find a solution.

This is such an unusual novel. It is refreshingly different, revealing no villains but simply a normal family in the throes of a crisis. It is well worth reading.

Maps of My Life, Guy Browning

Guy Browning loves maps and each chapter of Maps of My life is prefaced by a map. Some of these are real maps of exotic places, with hilarious annotations. For example, Thor Heyerdahl figures in many of them, usually ‘unable to admit a navigational mistake here’.

Others are mind maps. We see a map of Guy Browning’s ego as it was systematically reduced by a ‘North Oxford Girl’. We see his mother’s mental map of the Isle of Wight which places it convincingly somewhere between New Zealand and the Indian Ocean.

The text is ‘laugh-out-loud-funny’ as we follow Guy Browning from his early childhood in Botley to young adulthood. He is almost invariably accompanied by his brother, the ‘Fatted Calf’ who succeeds in all his ventures, while Guy Browning is self-deprecating and frequently fails.

Guy’s father is an Oxford don who believes in subjecting his family to long marches. Gentle fun is poked at his inability to acquire a real car for the family or to give house-room to a television set once the boys have reached secondary school age. Each of these situations, and dozens more, is the source of a humorous anecdote, as the family moves around the world on sabbaticals or holiday trips.

This is a delightful comic read by a very amusing writer. Guy Browning also writes for the Guardian.

Meg Rosoff’s novels are popular with mature teenage readers. She writes about young, independent thinkers who are placed in unusual situations, without the influence of adults. They have exciting experiences and have to act resourcefully. The novels are gripping.

How I Live Now introduces a disaffected young American girl who arrives to live with her four fascinating teenage cousins in a strange England that is just on the verge of an even stranger war.

Daisy falls in love with her cousin, Edmond, and that love guides her through the confusing situation she is soon plunged into when a twenty-first century terrorist-driven war blankets out all news. We are seeing and hearing through Daisy and only slowly piece together the puzzle.

Daisy finds herself crossing a war-torn country with her delightful young cousin, Piper, in search of Edmond. Piper’s survival skills are invaluable but Daisy’s love and maturity are equally important. The novel culminates with a very clear message about the harmful effects of a war.

What I Was is equally enthralling but in a different way. This time, the protagonist is male – a schoolboy in a remote boarding school who develops a passion for Finn, a young person living alone on an East Anglian island.

Finn’s competence and way of life are enchanting to the schoolboy narrator, and he longs to be Finn or share Finn’s life. Slowly a relationship develops but it is shattered by the crisis that occurs.

Meg Rosoff holds a surprise for the reader in her final pages. This is fine writing for a teenage or even an adult audience.

Attractively bound hard-backed books containing lots of information seem to be big sellers among the piles laid out for Christmas. E: Foley and B. Coates ‘Homework for Grown-ups – everything you learnt at school … and promptly forgot’ is yet another in the series.

I received my copy as a gift and dipped into it rather casually at first. I was soon thoroughly enjoying some of the masses of information the book provides. It is embarrassing to get halfway through each chapter and confront ones own ignorance. In mathematics, for example, I got as far as a decagon but what is an icosagon?

Homework for Grown-ups

This is a treasure of a compendium of facts we like to think we know. It deals with English, Mathematics, Home Economics, History, Science, Religious Education, Geography, Classics, Physical Education and Art – a fine rounded education. (’Whose history?’ I hear you ask. There’s an eclectic dabble including Marathon, Yarmuk, Agincourt and the Somme.)

Homework for Grown-ups is certainly a useful book to have around if you need to know where your pancreas is or the name of a Greek letter. There are even test papers at the end of each chapter. My only criticism is that the authors didn’t provide an index of all that useful information.

After many years spent laboriously teaching and learning languages, I was surprised to learn that teach yourself have a series of one-day courses. My Greek is minimal. I have the ten words most people share – kalimera, yasu, ne, ohi, efharisto and so on. We have a holiday in Greece coming up so why not?

The course comes with its CD and booklet and uses a mere fifty basic words. Liz teaches Andy on the plane. He is a bit of a clown but his low brow comments have some value as mnemonics. For example, he talks about throwing moss when he has to learn ‘thromos’ (street).

An advantage, for me at least, is that the course uses the script I am used to – that reduces the problem!

The idea behind the course is that it is infinitely better and more polite to have a smattering of a foreign language and at least to try to communicate, rather than expecting everybody else to speak English. The Independent claims that Elisabeth Smith’s one-day courses are “a language lifeline … fun, fast and easy”.

You can attempt French, German, Italian or Spanish in the same way, but I have yet to find out whether my ‘one-day’ skill will be any use at all.

Three lively little hardback books, published by Michael O’ Mara Books would make ideal presents for an elderly relative who seems to be becoming forgetful.

I Used to Know That by Caroline Taggart contains just about enough basic information to give its reader a set of GCE passes or average SAT scores.  There are chapters on basic English, mathematics up to the level of quadratic equations, chemistry, physics, biology and so on.

The General Knowledge chapter at the end contains intriguing up-to-date information like the new name for Pluto (Eris) now that it is no longer a planet.

It is rather daunting to realise that you have forgotten which US Presidents were assassinated or whether the Cretaceous period came before or after the Jurassic. This small volume lists all that sort of information as well as some rather irreverent comments. Take, for example, the remark that President Ford is remembered largely as the man said to be so dumb he couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time.

Two other works in the series are My Grammar and I (or should that be ‘Me’?), also by Caroline Taggart with J A Wines, and I before E (except after C) by Judy Parkinson. Neither is as dull as it sounds. The second of these lists hundreds of mnemonics for recalling significant information that we are sure to have forgotten.

Can you list the heads on Mount Rushmore? I couldn’t, but the mnemonic ‘We Just Like Rushmore’ reminds me that they are Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt. The book is full of similar mental tricks.