Well-described walks for longer stays and stout boots.

This is my review of Madeira Walks: Leisure Trails Volume 1 by Shirley Whitehead,Mike Whitehead.

These 41 walks all begin with a useful chart to show length, approximate time needed (possibly somewhat underestimated for those who want to take their time), variation in height, whether circular or one way, vertigo risk and refreshments en route. They are clearly described with details of method of access and return, key features on the way, illustrated with photographs of the scenery and a small map, which often looks hard to follow so the Discovery Walking Guides Ltd Madeira Tour & Trail 1:40,000 super-durable waterproof map is also recommended. All routes require sturdy footwear with a good grip, since paths are often uneven and slippery from springs and moss. I noticed many walkers using poles for stability or confidence. Walks with a low vertigo risk unsurprisingly tend to offer less dramatic views.

Since, although reliable, Madeira buses tend to be infrequent, a taxi is likely to be necessary at least one way for many of the walks making it tempting to opt for an organised levada walk tour instead. For those with limited time on the island or not very hardy walkers, I would recommend the walks which link in with bus services to major points of interest e.g. Walk 1 from Praia Formosa in West Funchal to the fishing village of Camara de Lobos – this walk can be commenced earlier, say at the Funchal Lido or even the Fortaleza do Santiago near the Funchal teleréfico to Monte. Walk 7 from the viewpoint of Eira Serrado, accessible on the No. 81 morning bus, gives striking views on the hairpin track down to Curral das Freiras (the Nun's Valley), although it can be slippery on the mossy rounded steps. The No. 8 walk in the Ecological Park is interesting, although despite the evidence of recovery from a largescale fire, I was depressed by the sight of blackened, leafless trunks. Walk No. 19 from Ribeiro Frio (Bus 56 or 103) is a short, easy walk to viewing balconies giving dramatic views of the peaks.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

Madeira Walks: Leisure Trails Volume 1

Useful and fascinating

This is my review of Madeira Tour & Trail Super-Durable Map by David Brawn.

This very clear and durable map is excellent for planning and keeping to a route, or simply understanding in retrospect some of the extraordinary terrain encountered e.g. on the drive from Funchal to Santana. I gather that some of the leisure routes shown are out-of-date, but with the continual risk of landslides this is perhaps inevitable. I would be reluctant to drive a hire car on the narrow switchback roads, so regard this largely as an aid to planning itineraries and walking.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

Madeira Tour & Trail Super-Durable Map

More than first meets the eye

This is my review of MADEIRA A SHORT ILLUSTRATED HISTORY by joana de Freitas.

A readable, wide-ranging and very informative social, economic and political history of Madeira with some fascinating old photographs, from the navvies risking their lives on precipices to construct the famous irrigation channels to an early titled tourist leaping in a flamboyant high dive at Reid's Hotel.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

MADEIRA A SHORT ILLUSTRATED HISTORY

Life encroaching on art

This is my review of Le Quatrieme Mur (Prix Goncourt Des LycEens 2013) by Sorj Chalandon.

The “fourth wall” of the title is the invisible barrier between the imagined world of the cast on stage and the reality of the audience and the outside world. It is 1982, and French historian Georges whose true love is the theatre promises his dying friend the enigmatic pacifist, Greek Jew Samuel Akounis that he will stage Anouilh’s “Antigone” during a negotiated cease-fire in a bombed Beirut cinema using actors drawn from opposing Lebanese groups: Antigone will be played by a Palestinian refugee, her lover by a Muslim Druze, her autocratic father by a Christian phalangist, his guards by Shiites and so on. Georges’ wife Aurora, understandably dismisses this as a dangerous folly, and the explosive flash-forward of the opening chapter indicates from the outset that the project will not end well.

Its achievement or otherwise does not really seem to be the point: just as Anouilh used the Greek tragedy to honour the French resistance to Nazi domination, Chalandon seeks to reinterpret it through the drama of the futile, self-perpetuating Lebanese conflict. It is not merely a simple case of individuals who have been conditioned to hate each other laying aside their grievances. Ironically, each player is persuaded or permitted to take part by a different cultural interpretation of the Greek tragedy. Yet when a resurgence of violence breaks through the fourth wall, roles are reversed and distorted as real life becomes the drama.

This novel is often theatrical and soaked in symbolism, as when Samuel gives Georges sand from Jaffa for the Palestinian actors who have been forced to leave their land – this has an obvious parallel with the earth Antigone insists on scattering over her brother’s corpse in defiance of her father Creon.

Some of the most powerful passages are descriptions of the Palestinian camps and the tension created by snipers, reflecting Chalandon’s background as a journalist. There are some strong play-like dialogues, although I agree with the reviewer who found a lack of development in the characters who tend to be stereotypes of the groups they represent. After somewhat rambling and disjointed opening chapters, this novel turns out to be both original and to have a carefully constructed plot which falls into place at the end like pieces of a puzzle. Yet it is undermined for me by the “stagey” approach permeating many scenes, rendering them artificial and contrived with a reduced potential to move the reader. I often found the sentimentality mixed with extreme violence quite distasteful, as when a sniper insists that Georges grasps his leg to feel the vibrations when he fires his weapon, only to start quoting Victor Hugo. Is this intended to redeem him by suggesting that he is a man with a soul despite his brutality?

I am not usually put off a book by my dislike of the main character, but in this case was often repelled by the self-absorbed, naïve, misguided, unstable narrator, clearly “turned on” by violence, who casually abandons the wife and child he professes to adore, who falls for his leading lady and lets everyone know it, who lies to people because he is too cowardly to admit the truth, not to mention his casual exposure to great risk of the driver Marwan who loyally assists a project about which he is profoundly sceptical.

The novel irritated me as I read it, but left me with a sense of ambiguity both as to what the author intended and what I actually drew from it.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

Le Quatrieme Mur (Prix Goncourt Des LycEens 2013)

Nice photos but short on practical detail

This is my review of Berlitz: Madeira Pocket Guide (Berlitz Pocket Guides) by Berlitz.

This attractively produced little guide provides a useful summary of the main points of interest when planning a short visit, but I found it quite hard to use during my holiday because it proved short on precise details of public transport and the geography of places bearing in mind that Madeira is lacking in clear signposts and information boards for tourists. It does not consider sufficiently how places appear from the viewpoint of a total stranger.

For instance, it would be useful to know which buses useful for excursions start near the "Teleféricos" cable car to Monte, or that on leaving the bus from Funchal at Ribeiro Frio you need to walk on up the hill round to the left to find the start of the levada walk to the viewing platforms, and so on.

The guide would have benefited from more maps and walking routes (say from the Funchal Lido to Formosa Praia and on to the fishing village of Camara de Lobos, rather than chatty descriptions of say "leviathan" sperm whales (which actually resemble black logs in the water except when they dive). The index is also unclear since it does not highlight the main reference to each place e.g. for the highlight of Monte it's page 41.

I found the Lonely Planet Pocket Guide less "pretty" but of much more practical use.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

Berlitz: Madeira Pocket Guide (Berlitz Pocket Guides)

The Revenant – I ain’t afraid to die any more, I’d done it already

This is my review of The Revenant [DVD] [2016].

Based on a true story, this is an epic tale of survival in the bleakly beautiful lawless wilderness of 1820s America’s western frontier. When a hunting expedition is brutally torn apart by marauding Indians bent on stealing the valuable “pelts” to sell to the French settlers, the Americans rely on Glass to use his skills as a guide to get them back to the fort before the snows set in, but after he is horrifically wounded in what will no doubt become a famous “bear scene”, they have to decide whether to put him out of his misery, or leave him in the care of two group members.

The unrelenting pain and misfortune suffered by Glass, in an Oscar-deserving performance from Leonardo di Caprio, would be intolerable to watch but for the skill of the photography and direction – how on earth were some of the scenes produced? – and the stunning scenery, in particular the mountainous panoramas on a vast scale. Although, as is often the case, Glass is made both to suffer too much and yet to keep overcoming each setback against the most overwhelming odds, there is a fascination in seeing how he uses a mixture of ingenuity and what he has learned from the underestimated Indians in order to survive. Despite his toughness, he has a rapport with the Indians amongst whom he has lived, even fathering a half-Indian son by a woman he clearly loved. He seems genuinely to appreciate nature: at one point when he may be on the point of being murdered he appears to stop in his tracks to observe a dramatic avalanche in the distance. We gain an insight into the fragility of frontier life, where men are forced to compete for scarce resources and some like Fitzgerald are driven half-mad by past traumas.

The Director ends the drama in perhaps the only way possible to avoid corny sentimentality. My sole reservation is that it was not only the Indians and the French who needed subtitles. It was impossible at times to grasp what most of the Americans were drawling, in particular the villainous Fitzgerald. Although I could usually work out what had happened, it was frustrating to be unable to grasp it straight away.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars


The Revenant [DVD] [2016]

Never quite what they expected

This is my review of Between Two Worlds: How the English Became Americans by Malcolm Gaskill.

This is a detailed study of the colonisation of the Atlantic shores of North America by some 350,000 English migrants during the seventeenth century. With the Mayflower in mind, we may tend to think of them mainly as Puritan dissidents seeking religious freedom in Utopian communities, but many were adventurers and entrepreneurs lured by the prospect of developing fertile lands or the labouring poor hit by population pressure in England, who together with “reprieved felons, prisoners of war, kidnapped children and adolescents” often found themselves “pressed into indentured service” as a replacement of the old feudal system. Malcolm Gaskill presents the contrasts between the New England settlements creating a jumbled geography of English place names, the tobacco plantations of Virginia, and sugar plantations of the West Indies with their growing reliance on African slave labour.

I had not appreciated the extent to which settlers fought each other: those arriving to claim a grant of land might find it already being farmed by earlier arrivals. The subsequent brutal genocide of the native Indians may be understood, although clearly not condoned, as a response to the bloody raids in which bands of Indian, sometimes in league with the French, would creep out of the woods to wipe out a New England settlement. Clearly, the colonies suffered from the lack of realism of successive monarchs and establishment figures who supported ventures without supplying sufficient resources to give a reasonable chance of success. “Colonial news was old news” so that by the time a pioneer reached home with favourable reports, life back in say, Jamestown could have become very grim. Another aspect I had failed to consider was the extent to which different nonconformist groups carried their differences into the New World. Legislation against Catholics in England drove them to emigrate too, with the result that Maryland became feared as “too Catholic” by some Virginians, compounding the problem that it was regarded as encroaching on their rightful territory.

Malcolm Gaskill is clearly hugely knowledgeable on his subject, which he has chosen to explore through a tidal flow of specific examples, ordinary individuals and incidents, often quoting verbatim from original texts. He creates vivid snapshot impressions of pioneer life: images of euphoria turning to despair as the harsh, winters set in, or the unexpected short-lived paradise of gorging on Maine lobsters and swapping the heads for beaver skins with the initially well-disposed because yet to be abused Indians who rowed out to meet settlers.

My problem was the author's bombarding of the reader with a disjointed, indigestible switching between different characters, topics, regions, even in the same paragraph, with analysis which often seems either self-evident or somewhat woolly. I found myself trying to get round this by using the index to follow threads which intrigued me, such as the fate of one Mary Rowlandson who fired on Indian attackers to defend her home, only to be taken prisoner, yet survived to write a best-seller on her ordeal, mentored by the wonderfully named Increase Mather. Too much effort is needed to sift out a coherent grasp of, for instance, relations with the Indians or an analysis of the “witch trials” which seem so much more extreme than equivalent prejudice in C17 England.

I am also puzzled that the author did not extend his coverage up to the American War of Independence, nor include a little more background on the opponents of English colonisation, notably the French and specific Indian tribes.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

Between Two Worlds: How the English Became Americans

Slip sliding away

This is my review of Revolutionary New Massaging Liquid gel Insoles that actually work (UK 6 – 7).

The delivery and refund service were excellent but I disliked the way that the thin layer of liquid gel inside the insole slides about with every step – a bit like walking on a water bed. I'm more used to gel that is solid, but "gives" to pad one's feet.

Although I take size 7 shoes, my only choice was to purchase insoles size 6-7, which meant they fitted in my shoes easily, but left a small gap top and bottom. This was less of a problem than the gel in perpetual motion. I was also worried about the possibility of the gel leaking over my shoes as the insoles wore out.

The insoles seem more expensive than some "solid gel" alternatives which I have found more effective and comfortable, apart from the disadvantage of having to cut them to size.

⭐⭐ 2 Stars

Revolutionary New Massaging Liquid gel Insoles that actually work (UK 6 – 7)

One of many eye-catching designs to brighten up a rainy day.

This is my review of Galleria Rainy Evening Auto Open/close Folding Umbrella.

I like the distinctive and highly original urban street design on this umbrella so much that when a spoke on my first umbrella snapped in a gale in a way that I could not repair, I found an identical replacement on Amazon. Of course, I now have concerns that this damage may happen again, so find myself protecting the umbrella from the wind rather than myself.

One thing which has always surprised me is the lack of a cover for the umbrella. This means that it always looks a bit untidy rolled up when not in use.

No one, of course, will ever dare take this umbrella out of the rack "by mistake" when they've forgotten their own!

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

Galleria Rainy Evening Auto Open/close Folding Umbrella

Rambling about the world in quest of adventures

This is my review of The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft by Claire Tomalin.

After somehow failing to appreciate Mary Wollstonecraft’s importance, perhaps because of the anti-feminist backlash which arose after her death and dominated British society until the C20, I have at last been won over by Claire Tomalin’s excellent biography, rightly praised by the historian Plumb: “There is no better book on Mary Wollstonecraft, nor is there likely to be”.

Mary is portrayed very honestly, warts and all, as often controlling and opinionated, in her youth prone to dominating less intelligent and assertive girls, yet demanding their affection. Once she had discovered the sexual attraction of men, she could repel them with her intensity, even naively suggesting on at least two occasions some kind of “ménage à trois”, and in turn was bitterly disappointed by their preference for relationships with pretty but less clever women, although they seem to have enjoyed the stimulus of her conversation. On finding herself pregnant for a second time, her insistence on marriage to the philosopher-writer Godwin seems in contradiction to her feminist principles, but she cannot be blamed for seeking some security after being driven to attempted suicides (she was prone to depression) over the humiliation of abandonment by her fickle lover Imlay, leaving her with a small daughter.

On a more positive side, Mary was courageous if foolhardy, setting off alone to experience first-hand the French Revolution in Paris despite the danger of the psychopathic Robespierre and the guillotine, or to Scandinavia with a baby and nursemaid in tow, to help solve Imlay’s financial problems. An original thinker on the basis of experience of unfair treatment as a girl and of her reading rather than formal education, she displayed a surprising confidence, being one of the first to launch into print against Edmund Burke’s attack on the Dissenters as a dangerous force likely to bring dangerous revolution in England: her “A Vindication of the Rights of Man” brought her instant fame, on a par with Thomas Paine. Determined to support herself, she was not afraid to approach her influential publisher Johnson with a request for work.

Ironically, her widowed husband Godwin not only tarnished her reputation by his frankness over her practice of “free love” but belittled her in stating, “The strength of her mind lay in intuition….yet in the strict sense of the term, she reasoned little”. In fact, what shines out across the span of more than two centuries is the coherence of her thoughts, her wry wit and eloquence. For instance, while acknowledging the violence of the French Revolution, she justified the need to achieve greater quality: “to preclude from the chance of improvement the greater part of the citizens of the state…can be considered in no other light than as monstrous tyranny…. for all the advantages of civilisation cannot be felt unless it pervades the whole mass.”

The death in childbirth of a vigorous, healthy woman who had recently found happiness was very poignant, but Mary would have been furious had she lived to read such observations from female writers as “ “in the education of girls we must teach them more caution than is necessary for boys…they must trust to the experience of others… must adapt themselves to what is”, “girls should be more inured to restraint than boys”, “must soon perceive the impossibility of their rambling about the world in quest of adventures”.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft