Books

After a bit of gap, I read a couple when on holiday for a couple of weeks and am now that I am back, am starting another:

• Domination by Alice Roberts - looking at the rise of the Christian church over the first few centuries as an extension of the Roman empire - just doing empire stuff by other means. Solidly written and well evidenced.
• Smuggling Under Sail In The Red Sea by Henry de Montfreid - A fascinating account of the author's hash smuggling expedition in the 1920s. I would put it broadly under travel writing, since he clearly loves being away from the 'civilised' world and writes best in those sections. All the casual racism that you would expect from the era, though.
• Bleak House by Dickens - some recent editorial about falling literacy and comprehension quoted the opening passage of the book and prompted me to pull it from the shelf. As with so many, I had Dickens forced upon me at school and my contrarian streak dominated my opinion of his writing for a long while after, but I did eventually realise that, had I been allowed to find his work myself, I would have enjoyed it. A good few decades have passed since then and I can appreciate it free of baggage now.