SUDOKU

Sudoku by T.M.

Fill in the grid with the numbers 1 to 9 so that each row, each column and each 3x3 block contains all the numbers 1 to 9. Solution to October Sudoku on page 29.

BOOK REVIEW With Phillip George

A Thin Line by Anna Charles Castle Lane Books Paperback: 344 pages ASIN: B08CDY62W7 RRP: £8.99

THE FIRST of two books I have read this month is A Thin Line by Anna Charles a novel based on fact set mainly in Amsterdam now, and during the Second World War. The principal character Harriet Parker is given a letter from her dead mother, which leads to a most intriguing family history, most of which even Harriet’s mother was probably unaware of.

At the beginning of the book I imagined I was entering again the world of Ann Frank. But the Frank in this book is a coin of an entirely different currency.

I have some direct experience of the twists and turns of hitherto unknown family history, which, like the book, throws up most unexpected results.

My wife’s family, we discovered only recently, included three transportees, who took the trip to Botany Bay and Van Diemans Land, in the early part of the 19th Century. This story was kept as a dark secret by my wife’s, family. It came to light only after the chance discovery of a note in the family Bible that my wife’s great grandmother had been born in Tasmania. Their story is almost as intriguing as Harriet’s.

The Thin Line is a good read which contrasts the Amsterdam of today with the city as it was under German occupation.

I recall a few years ago having a meeting with a Dutch colleague, who asked to be excused for half an hour while he watched a programme on one of the NPO channels wherein his father was being accused of collaboration.

I recommend this book especially to anyone researching

So, you think you know your Pop music, do you? By John Osborne

 Answers can be found on page 31 

Thanks to those who noted the mistake last month in Q4 – the answer should of course have been ‘Seven’. Guilty as charged!

1. Who had ‘Breakfast in Bed’ with UB40, in 1988?

2. ‘Baby, I Need Your Loving’ sang which Motown group on their 1964 hit?

3. Who were ‘Calling Elvis’ in 1991?

4. According to The Pretenders, ‘Maybe love is in …’ Where?

5. Which late ‘80s band did Eddi Reader front?

6. Who said you're ‘Three Times A Lady’?

7. ‘10 Songs’ is the present album by which Scottish rock band?

8. Who wrote the ‘Birds’ No. 1 hit ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’?

9. Whose 1976 album declared that ‘I’m Nearly Famous’?

10. Name the only instrumental song by the Beatles.

Bonus Question: Who wrote the song in Q10 ?

Great Quotes in Music (123): ‘A concert is not a live rendition of our album. It’s a theatrical event.’ - Freddie Mercury

their own family history.

The other book I have just read is The Doll by Ismail Kadare and translated from Albanian by John Hodgson. At just 166 pages, this is my kind of book. It is biographical, the Doll being Kadare’s mother, and set in Gjirokastra and Tirana.

Gjirokastra was not only Kadare’s birthplace but that of Enver Hoxah, and indeed some would argue he owes his survival to that accident of geography, although Enver was not known for such sympathetic behaviour. The sombre mood of the City of Stone, Gjirokastra, is captured here as the backdrop and, like much of Albania, set in the aspic of the early part of the last century.

When reading Kadare I often speculate, whether the Albania we know today would have been different, had the MP for Yeovil (1918-23) Aubrey Herbert accepted the throne there, instead of taking Hilaire Belloc’s advice to ‘stay at home and lay down a good cellar’.

This book will find a place in my library beside Richard Ford’s parental biography Between Them, another charmingly short book.

Perhaps Kadare’s survival has given rise to the genre ‘measured realism’, compared to Ford’s ‘dirty realism’.