Reading for pleasure

Shadows of War

Michael Ridpath (Head of Zeus: £18.99; e-book £5.03)

This spy thriller is set in the period of the so called phoney war of late 1939 until Dunkirk in May 1940. Conrad de Lancey and Theo von Hertenberg are old friends who fear, with the outbreak of war, they may face each other across the devastating trenches that came to epitomise the Great War. Each, within his own sphere of influence, wrestling with patriotism and the shared desire to avoid all-out war, seeks to shape the future. Von Hertenberg is part of the group of conspirators seeking to dispatch Hitler, while de Lancey seeks to defeat those who secretly plot to appease Hitler, including his own father. There is a tightly drawn cast of characters, some imagined and some real, in particular the Duke of Windsor, who has often (and in some recently published books) been cast as the appeaser in chief, disclosing to the Germans the defects and weaknesses in the French military defences and, in this novel, as waiting to regain the throne under a Britain that, while not a German protectorate, would not be at war. This is a well plotted story, ranging across the British aristocracy, Westminster, France and Berlin, with a slow burn of disclosure of those around both men and where the loyalties of those around them actually lie. Very enjoyable.

The Ignorant Maestro

How Great Leaders Inspire Unpredictable Brilliance

Itay Talgam with Lary Bloom (Portfolio/Penguin: £14.99)

A conductor in front of an orchestra is an iconic symbol of leadership and creativity – but what does a maestro actually do in order to create glorious harmony? And what does that mean for the rest of us? These are effectively the two questions which Mr Talgam poses at his many business seminars, given at the highest level to some of the world’s most influential movers and shakers. After a stellar career conducting some of the world’s leading orchestras he moved into the world of business motivation and leadership. According to his testimonials he has done this very well. In this book he shares some of his insights.

Thinking about it, the parallels are obvious. Trying to harness the skills of a disparate group of sensitive people with large egos to create perfect harmony in the way you want it ties in perfectly with the aims of, and issues confronting, many business leaders. Why has no one done this before? It must have taken considerable skill to make hardnosed besuited business people think they could benefit from a wild haired, jeans-wearing artist. We get some flashes of this in the book, some less obvious than others. In music, for example, gaps can be as important as the notes. Mr Talgam encourages us to see them in business as “well defined spaces, encouraging exploration and creative work”. I can understand his embracing of the advantages of “ignorance” in forcing us to seek out the unknown, but his exposition of this is less good. The main part of the book is a review of the leadership styles of six great conductors, from the control freakery of Riccardo Muti and the godfather-like style of Toscanini through to Talgam’s great hero, Leonard Bernstein.

I think I would enjoy Talgam’s seminars very much. Not every great management guru manages to make the transition from the spoken word to the written one. (If you’ve ever tried to read a Tom Peters book, then heard the man himself declaiming his message, you’ll know what I mean.) I’m not entirely sure that Talgam has made the transition as best as he could, but I challenge any leader to study his six conductors and fail to learn a little more about themselves.

Tin Sky

Ben Pastor (Bitter Lemon Press: £8.99; e-book £5.75)

It’s always good for the central figure in a crime novel to be that bit different. Martin Bora is an Olympic equestrian and a concert standard pianist. Oh, and he is also a Nazi, a major in the Wehrmacht, based in the Ukraine following the disaster of Stalingrad. The mystery begins when two defectors both die in unusual circumstances, just as they are about to open up to him as the chief interrogating officer.

Researching this book provides a few more mysteries. Bitter Lemon Press say this is “the fourth in the Martin Bora series”. Ms Pastor’s own website, however, discloses it is the 11th. Although Tin Sky is published only this year in Britain; it dates from 2012. The notes on other books describe him as a colonel. Assuming they were written in chronological order, there must be a few more in the pipeline to look forward to. Pastor’s background is an interesting one. Italian by birth (“Ben” is short for Verbena), she has lived and worked in the US for 30 years, latterly as a Professor at the University of Vermont.

There is a huge (but not an excessive) amount of historical background in this book. I am not in a position to comment on its accuracy, but nothing jars. The characters are believable, including Bora himself. That is no mean feat given his harrowing background. While he has sensitivities, he has no issues with what he would regard as standard reprisals and other horrors of war. This is no ordinary hero and no ordinary crime novel.

Ms Pastor’s other “cycles” – her word not mine – see novels set in WW1 Prague and the Roman Empire of the fourth century AD. This is a tribute to a huge range of scholarship. Taken with her accomplished writing skills, it results in an intriguing and highly readable book.

Cobra in the Bath

Adventures in Less Travelled Lands

Miles Morland (Bloomsbury Publishing: £16.99; e-book £9.49)

As I never read the sleeve notes before starting books sent to me for review, I assumed I was about to read a travel book. Not an unreasonable assumption, given chapter headings such as “Dakota to Tehran”, “No Dinner in Bucharest” and “Return from the Madagascan Tomb”. In fact this is an autobiography. Mr Morland found fortune (and some considerable fame) as an investor focusing, as the subtitle suggests, on less developed parts of the world where, in many cases, he had to help set up a stock exchange so he could start trading in it.

Is the life of a money man of interest? Perhaps not, but Mr Morland is no ordinary money man, indeed no ordinary individual. Brought up in India and the Middle East by a mother from whom any good looking man had to be kept at a distance, and a series of stepfathers or companions, his fairly miserable time at boarding school started to improve once he discovered a talent for rowing. He considers that his Oxford boat race wins may have given him a better start in his career than his degree. But all the while he retained a passionate interest in travel, whether motorcycling across Europe on “The Beast” (his name for the large BMW he bought during his “menopause”), or his frequent trips through Africa and the Middle East. Who else decides to visit Prague and Bucharest at the time of the fall of communism just to see what it was like? How many people in the financial services world can write with relish about how they love a good riot? Many of us may have dreamed of that career break – Morland gave up his job and walked across France with his wife whom he had recently remarried. His account of this, The Man Who Broke Out of the Bank and Went for a Walk in France, reached number five in the bestseller list.

In the acknowledgements section he credits two writer friends whom he asked to mark any passages they found boring. A superb job has been done – there is not a one to be found. This is one of the most upbeat and enjoyable autobiographies you could hope to read.