The Proud Tower

I shared a while ago that I was reading Barbara Tuchman’s The Proud Tower. Well, it’s a pretty long book but I finished it a few days ago and finally feel ready to share a few words about it. You could argue that I’ve actually read another book in the interim (a Jeffrey Deaver book I just finished) and that I’m jetlagged and hanging around in Seattle airport on the way to Honolulu. You certainly could make that argument.

I really liked The Proud Tower. I don’t think I enjoyed it as much as The Guns of August but that’s because it didn’t have as much of a single linear narrative. It was great to see the anarchists, the socialists and the traditionalists, and to imagine them overlapping. The feeling of a clash of ideas comes through really clearly and it’s interesting to see the ideas passing between the major European countires (and America…which is whatever).

Tuchman describes a lot of people as being incredible orators…either it was an era of unusually good oration (possible), or she sets a low standard for “finest orators of the age”.

It’s funny: none of the problems with the ideas discussed felt foreign or alien to me, and in fact, they felt prescient and current. Anarchism is all well and good, but for a movement you need organisation and who is going to organise the anarchists? The two branches of socialism: theoretical purity and pro-overthrowing capitalism, versus the more grounded ‘work within the system’ has echoes of pretty much every left wing movement today. Monty Python lambasted the left for splitting…but it’s good to see that they were following in a long long tradition of the left being unable to hold themselves together. Finally, the traditionalists clinging to the glories of the past and the notion of noblesse oblige, rather than embrace any of this whole “treat people the same” malarkey.

The brief diversion (or maybe it wasn’t a diversion) into German music was fascinating. I’m not so good with classical music history and it’s interesting to see Strauss placed so contemporaneously, and to hear how his music shocked and appalled some of the more traditionalist composers.

The Dreyfus affair, too, was entirely new to me, and a bit of a page turner. I’d heard of Zola but didn’t really know why (unless we’re talking about Gianfranco Zola, in which case, it’s obviously his stint at Chelsea). What a ballsy dude, just defaming dudes left, right, and centre, just to force them to take him to court.

The only time I’d ever really read about the Unions was in works about Thatcher and the battles of the 1970s and 1980s. It was cool to hear about their earlier incarnations, fighting battles that ultimately helped secure the working week as we know it.

I don’t know what my next history book will be, but I hope it’s at least half as readable as Tuchman!