Month: October 2014

T.K. WHITAKER

PORTRAIT OF A PATRIOT

ANNE CHAMBERS

DOUBLEDAY IRELAND 449 pp €26.99 e book €17.99

On 21 March 1957, his first day, the new Irish Minister for Finance, James Ryan, received an outspoken and blunt analysis of the Irish Economy written by his Departmental Secretary, T.K. Whitaker. No punches were pulled. “Without a sound and progressive economy political independence would be a crumbling façade.” Policies of protectionism were condemning “the people to a lower standard of living than the rest of Europe.”

Unless there were new policies, Whitaker wrote “it would be better to make an immediate move towards re-incorporation in the United Kingdom rather than wait until our economic decadence became even more apparent.” Strong words from a civil servant to his political master, but words that needed to be said.

Few would dispute his right to be regarded as the greatest living Irishman. Indeed in 2001 Ken Whitaker was voted Irishman of the Twentieth Century. Now rising ninety eight, and happily still with us, the modest and brilliant architect of modern Ireland is the subject of Anne Chambers’ latest absorbing book.

Despite those quotes, T.K. Whitaker was no Sir Humphrey. He defined his approach as giving Ministers the best possible unbiased advice when policy was being considered, and, once decided on, carrying out that policy to the best of his ability, regardless of personal views.

In 1957 he was just forty and already acknowledged as Ireland’s most brilliant civil servant. His advancement through the ranks from clerical officer upwards had been meteoric, culminating in his appointment as the youngest ever Secretary of the Department of Finance. On the way he had found time to acquire a Master’s Degree in Economics from London University as well as the admiration and appreciation of his opposite numbers in other countries.

The state of Ireland’s economy in 1957 was both serious and critical and heading towards becoming terminal unless a new approach was taken. Between 1949 and 1955 Ireland’s GNP increased by just 10.5%, compared to 36.5% in the rest of Europe. In 1957 2% of the population – almost 60,000 people – emigrated. Yet De Valera, still clinging on at seventy five, was on recent record as stating that despite this terrible economic and social situation, the restoration of the Irish language was “Fianna Fail’s greatest national objective.”

Something clearly had to give. And it did. The strong man of the Cabinet, and heretofore leading advocate of protectionism, Tanaiste Sean Lemass, recognising how critical things were, performed a volte face and threw his weight behind Whitaker. The rest is history. Lemass became Taoiseach in 1959 by which time, Whitaker, given the green light, was proceeding with reforms.

First up, in 1958, was the seminal “Economic Development “ document, written by Whitaker and a small dedicated team in Finance, eventually published, unusually, under Whitaker’s name. The paper analysed the principal deficiencies in the economy sector by sector, and was followed soon after by a white paper, the Programme for Economic Expansion, in which the Government endorsed Whitaker’s ideas and proposed policies for growth up to 1963 including export- oriented expansion, the encouragement of inward investment and movement towards free trade. The modest targets were achieved, critically boosting the country’s morale by showing that things could improve. Further programmes followed. The economy, and Ireland, were never the same again.

Chambers’ book is packed with fascinating detail on the political and economic events of the years that followed as Ireland grew economically and, with Ken Whitaker’s sure hand at the tiller, opened up towards Northern Ireland, to international organisations and towards the emerging EEC. He was never afraid to speak his mind and rapidly became the close confidant of both Lemass and his successor, Jack Lynch.

A Northerner from Rostrevor, he developed a close personal relationship with Northern Ireland Premier Terence O’Neill in the course of a number of transatlantic voyages to attend IMF meetings. This led to the ground-breaking O’Neill Lemass meetings in 1965, which initiated a dialogue between the two parts of Ireland and which continued under Lynch. He also fostered the beginnings of official cross border cooperation, some of which have now found institutional expression. He thought long and hard about how relations between the two parts of the island might be improved.

This stood him – and Jack Lynch, and Ireland – in good stead when O’Neill’s reforms withered and the North began to slide towards chaos. A passionate opponent of violence, he presented a thoughtful position paper to Lynch as early as November 1968 pointing clearly to the ruinous costs of any reunification and advocating a long term strategy of good neighbourliness. By then he was clashing with his Minister, Haughey, and shortly afterwards moved to become Governor of the Central Bank. The book describes him as reticent over why he left Finance aged fifty-two, so we can only speculate.

When chaos became widespread violence, his support for Jack Lynch in facing down Haughey, Blaney et al was crucial – another reason for his country to thank him. And, for a generation, he continued to provide thoughtful and reasoned contributions to the search for peace. The sections on Northern Ireland in the book are among the most fascinating. Yet there are chapters also on his family, including his personal bereavements, which affected him deeply, and on his love for and work on the Irish language. There are plenty of passing references to our economic debacle of recent years. There’s a catch-all chapter also, entitled “A Man for All Seasons” which is clearly one image the author has of her subject.

Ken Whitaker was born in the Year of the Rising. It would be fitting if he were there to celebrate its centenary. No one deserves the Centenarian Bounty more. A book worth reading.

12/10

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6ytyt

DISOBEYING HITLER

RANDALL HANSEN

FABER & FABER 442 pp, €23.99, e book€12.53

Last week Paris celebrated the seventieth anniversary of its liberation, largely intact, from the Nazis. How and why this occurred is one of the themes explored in this book on the resistance, at various levels, by Germans to Hitler during the last year of World War Two.

Hitler, “a maniac of ferocious genius” in Churchill words, continues to fascinate, with hundreds of new books on his era appearing annually. The Second World War – his war – was the most destructive in world history. By its close, at least sixty million were dead, millions more displaced, the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe obliterated, and hundreds of European cities destroyed.

Could it have been even worse? Taking the failed July 20 Assassination Plot as a starting point, Randall Hansen explores some of the legends about the last months of the War. Did Prussian General von Choltitz “save” Paris? Did Albert Speer (as he claimed) almost singlehandedly frustrate Hitler’s instructions to destroy Germany’s industry and infrastructure as its enemies closed in? Did the German armies in the west “give up”, concentrating instead on fighting the Soviets?

As Hansen notes, it could all have been different. Had the stock market not crashed in 1929 the Nazis would have been a footnote. Had Hitler lingered longer in a Munich pub in 1939 the war would have been over swiftly. And, had the July 20 meeting taken place underground, as originally intended, Stauffenberg’s bomb would have killed Hitler, possibly sparing – even then – millions of lives, and Eastern Europe from Soviet domination.

Hitler survived, wreaking a savage vengeance on the plotters and purging the Wermacht. Yet by then the writing was on the wall, with all but the most fanatical Nazis realising that defeat was inevitable. For the German generals, as their armies retreated the issue became increasingly whether and how to surrender, a dilemma that would become more acute as they were pushed back into Germany itself. Any compromise, any withdrawal, ran contrary to the insane instructions from Berlin to fight to the end and destroy everything in the enemy’s path, and, moreover risked death also for family members.

Many commanders chose to fight. In the remaining nine months a brutal defensive war saw more Germans killed and more German cities destroyed than in the previous five years. But many also chose compromise, by different methods, sometimes by surrender, sometimes by rapid withdrawal, sometimes citing lack of men or equipment to carry out any scorched- earth policy. Their varied reasons included calculated self-interest, growing disenchantment with the regime’s brutalities and a wish to limit Germany’s destruction. Increasingly also, within Germany itself, they cooperated with local civilians to frustrate Hitler’s designs, with cities like Hamburg, Dusseldorf and Heidelberg surrendering easily, even as Nuremberg and other cities were destroyed.

The major test of this approach came in occupied France. Liberating Paris was very much an Allied priority, and Hitler was well aware of its symbolic and strategic significance. His instructions to the new military governor were clear: Paris was to be a fortress, defended to the end “from the rubble.” The governor, Dietrich Von Choltitz, came with good credentials, his actions in Rotterdam in 1940, and later in Sevastopol, suggesting a penchant for brutality and blind obedience, whatever the orders.

The role of Von Choltitz in saving the city has been disputed since, with the 1960s book and film “ Is Paris Burning?” painting him as saviour, a claim rejected strongly by members of the resistance. Hansen suggests the truth was somewhere in between and more complicated.

Paris was, after all, a jewel of a city, liked and admired by many German officers. Von Choltitz lacked the capability and resources to carry out Hitler’s instructions. Equally importantly he lacked the will, seeing no military purpose in destruction per se and accordingly made only token attempts to fight. Later, in captivity, he condemned the destruction of Brest by its defenders as a war crime – hardly the words of a diehard. Marseilles and Toulon, with their vital ports, similarly fell to the Allies after minor resistance.

On the domestic front Hitler issued a number of orders culminating in the infamous Nero Decree calling for total destruction of Germany’s non-military industry and infrastructure, as part of his nightmare vision of a Gotterdammerung to engulf Germany. The intervention of Albert Speer, Hitler’s former architect and later Minister for Production, was key in heading off much of the threatened catastrophe.

Here again the truth was complicated. Speer could not have done it all on his own as he later claimed. Nevertheless he acted bravely in countermanding or delaying orders, often substituting “paralysis” for “destruction” in re-interpreting the Fuhrer’s commands. He argued successfully to Hitler, who continued to babble on or believe in ultimate victory, that it made no sense, therefore, to destroy utterly what would be needed again when Germany drove the Allies out! Speer’s role, however positive in terms of German recovery after 1945, did not save him from a twenty year sentence at Nuremberg for war crimes.

On the eastern front, what Joachim Fest has called the Third World War, the fighting remained intense to the end. Breslau fell after a mighty siege while Greifsfeld, which surrendered peacefully, endured the usual orgy of rape and murder by the Red Army.

Did this resistance matter? The author is in no doubt. The July 20 resisters provided “ a moral framework of reference for post-war political life in Germany. The post-20 July disobeyers helped ensure that there was a Germany that could be economically, physically and morally rebuilt.”

30/8

ECHOBEAT

JOE JOYCE

LIBERTIES PRESS 343PP €14.99

Veteran journalist and accomplished author Joe Joyce has written another winner.

Echobeat, a compelling and evocative thriller set in neutral Dublin as the Second World War rages, is the sequel to last year’s widely acclaimed Echoland. Paul Duggan, now a captain in G2, Irish Army Intelligence, is back, together with his Special Branch sidekick, Peter Gifford.

The time is the end of 1940 and the stakes have rarely been higher. The world is at war, and Ireland is maintaining a precarious neutrality. Britain has its back to the wall, battered by the Blitz and in danger of being starved into submission as U Boats sink large numbers of its ships. Britain is demanding use of the Irish ports and threatening to cut off vital supplies if refused, with the ultimate sanction of invasion. There are no easy options. With German bombs falling on Dublin and Carlow as 1941 dawns, the choice appears increasingly stark – not whether to fight but who.

A dangerous political tightrope has to be walked if Ireland is to stay neutral and the task of Army Intelligence is to provide the best information it can so that “ whatever happens doesn’t happen by accident,” as his boss tells Duggan. This involves tracking the source and evaluating certain highly sensitive documents about Britain’s predicaments and intentions which have become available, as well as finding Germany’s most active agent in Ireland, Hermann Goertz, on the run and protected by republican and Nazi sympathisers.

Duggan’s duties include monitoring the Liffey Street café frequented by German POWs on day parole. His life gets complicated when he becomes romantically involved with his intermediary, a Jewish refugee, Gerda, who waitresses incognito in the café. Her role becomes central when she is approached by a young Englishman, source of some of the documents. Is he a pacifist, an agent provocateur or a Nazi sympathiser?

The other documents have been supplied through Duggan’s uncle, Timmy, a scheming Fianna Fail T.D., who romances about the war of independence and Ireland’s ability to see off the Germans as they did the British, but who could be the key to finding Goertz. Timmy’s naïveté is pointed up by Gerda when she declares to Duggan that the Nazis would “ put a stop to your guerrilla war very quickly” by shooting twenty or fifty Irishmen every time a German was attacked.

Echobeat is an exciting read and more than just a page turner. The Dublin of the period is portrayed superbly. It was a time of severe petrol rationing, few private cars as a result with people relying on bikes or public transport. Shortages abounded. There was a thriving black market for coal, tea and other rationed items . Smoking was universal, the aroma of cigarettes and burning peat ubiquitous.

Yet life went on. For Ireland was at peace – “ Neutral with a certain consideration for Britain,” to quote Dev. Maintaining that neutrality was akin to a diplomatic chess game. Echobeat shows just how difficult that game was.

Excellent.

10/8

LAST KISS

LOUISE PHILLIPS

HACHETTE BOOKS 437 pp €14.99 e book €8.99

A man’s body is found in a luxury Dublin hotel, stabbed repeatedly and posed in a ritualistic way. The victim is tied similar to the image on the Hangman Card from the Tarot Cards, and with traces of lipstick on his mouth, suggesting a bizarre last kiss.

Called in to help, criminal psychologist Dr Kate Pearson profiles the killer as highly intelligent, suffused with anger and, unusually, female. The organised nature of the murder suggests the killer has struck before, but when, and where, and why. The victim, a shady art dealer, used escorts and frequented a bondage club. Are there clues in his background to the killer? Or is the answer to be found in the Tarot?

Separately, Sandra, a Dublin housewife, becomes convinced her husband is having an affair and that the other woman is stalking her. Her friends offer her sympathy, but little else. She resolves to track and confront her stalker. But Sandra has a past also, as does one of her friends. The murder investigation, and that past, come together in this fine psychological chiller, the third to feature Kate Pearson and her collaborator, Garda Detective Inspector O’Connor.

The pair are thrown together again, and their developing love interest is clear, though very much secondary as the trail leads them to two similar cold case killings nearly a decade earlier, in Paris and Rome. The link identified by Kate is the Tarot, together with the sexual inclinations of the other victims, promiscuous and into S&M, as well as the luxurious staged settings for the murders. When it emerges the Parisian victim was known to Sandra and her friends, the investigation begins to focus.

The case uncovers dark secrets in the past, rooted in a small Wicklow town, with hints of incest and paedophilia haunting the memories of childhood friends. Meanwhile the killer, stalking her next victim, is comfortable and assured as she narrates tracking down her prey and describes her previous murders. As the book builds towards the climax, it becomes a race to see whether Kate, O’Connor and the Gardai can prevent another murder, with the Tarot Death card the motivator.

Louise Phillips goes from strength to strength. “The Doll’s House” won the 2013 BGE Crime Book of the Year. “Last Kiss” is superior and takes her writing to another, more intense level. The pace is excellent, the characters, familiar and new, well drawn and believable. The author explores the powerful effects early contact with evil can have on a child and how a personality can be shaped or perverted by its environment. The book flows well and airs skilfully some of the disturbing themes laid bare in Ireland in recent years.

Highly recommended.
31/7

THE FIRST FIFTEEN LIVES OF HARRY AUGUST

CLAIRE NORTH

ORBIT BOOKS 405 pp €14.99 e book €9.99

Reincarnation has been “done “ before , many times, but not like this. Harry August is a Kalachakra, born on New Year’s Eve 1918 in the washroom of a railway station in Northern England. He lives a normal life, but when he dies he is reborn, on the same date and in the same place. His fate is to repeat this forever but with the complete memories of all his previous lives, so he can build on and change each later existence.

This is a superb novel, part thriller, part science fiction involving time travel and part a serious and reflective look at our times. Harry August is a wonderful character, easy to empathise with. In his various incarnations and using his accumulated knowledge, Harry becomes a doctor, a weapons scientist, a lecturer, a multimillionaire and a master criminal. He dies prematurely, commits suicide, murders ( albeit a serial killer), is murdered, and, where he lives a normal span, normally succumbs to cancer in his late sixties.

He is not unique; there are others, like him fated to be reborn with prior knowledge, but unable to alter history. Their self-regulated role is to be passive spectators of the “lineal” lives and events of their times. To interfere would risk collapsing the whole of existence. Hitler cannot be killed in 1932, JFK cannot be persuaded to cancel Dallas, Hiroshima cannot be saved. There can be some tinkering at the margins – the odd forecast on the horses – but nothing to make waves – no Euromillions mega win.

Harry’s lives, their highs, their lows, his loves, his friendships, his righting of wrongs where he can, are recounted sympathetically and make for an extraordinary story. But then a game changer which threatens his very existence. Near the end of his eleventh life a little girl visits his bedside. She delivers a message “from a thousand years forward in time.” The message is that the world is ending and only Harry can prevent it because only Harry can reach back far enough in time to eliminate the problem.

The threat is real. Harry discovers that many of his fellow Kalachakras are being eliminated permanently or their prior memories wiped. Harry must respond and the novel develops into an enthralling page turning thriller as he chases down his quarry, not just across the world but through several lifetimes before the shattering climax in his fifteenth life.

Claire North is a pseudonym for an acclaimed British author with several successful novels published, all completely different to Harry August. No further information on the writer is available but judging by this many will want to know North’s identity. A really different book which will get people talking. Highly recommended.

13/4

P.S. I wrote this review for the Irish Independent last April. I learned subsequently that Claire North is actually Catherine Webb, author of a number of novels for young adults and fantasy novels for adults under the name Kate Griffin.
Still under thirty. What talent!