Maya Jasanoff "Liberty’s Exiles: The Loss of America and the Remaking of the British Empire"

Since my year studying Problems in Australian History back in 1971 I've been interested in the reasons behind the British colonisation of Australia and a cursory glance at this title sitting in the Recent Arrivals section of the local library suggested I might find something of interest herein. As it turned out, there's nothing much that links the Loyalist refugees to Australia's First Fleet, but it was definitely an interesting read.

History tends to be written by the winners, and the conventional wisdom of American history probably leans towards Republican Revolutionary victory rather than Loyalist courage in the face of defeat, so over the years it has been difficult to avoid an impression of patriotic revolutionaries against despotic Red-coated tyranny. I have memories from childhood of a Walt Disney TV series called The Swamp Fox starring Leslie Nielsen as Revolutionary War hero Francis Marion.

In that sort of setting you're not going to find too many references to the fact that when the British evacuated New York and other cities in November 1783 they took 75,000 civilian refugees with them. At the start of the struggle as many as one-quarter of colonists had been inclined towards loyalty to Britain rather than the Continental Congress.

Seven years of struggle and forced persuasion reduced that support significantly, but there was still a substantial Loyalist rump willing to go into exile, largely to Canada, the Bahamas and Jamaica with some venturing as far as Sierra Leone, the venture that had lead me to expect there just might be something related to Australia's First Fleet contained herein.

As it turned out, there wasn't a great deal, although one of the earliest suggestions of Botany Bay as a site for British settlement came from Loyalist James Matra, who'd been an able seaman on Cook's voyage that called there in 1770.

This account, based on extensive research through the archives of all the major Loyalist destinations and the records of the Loyalist Claims Commission, set up to compensate the refugees for their losses and reward their fidelity to the crown provides what could well be the definitive history of the Loyalist diaspora around the Atlantic.

Loyalists, the reader learns, came from most classes and ethnicities, including Creek and Mohawk leaders looking to protect their communities against American expansionism and included Mayflower descendants alongside recent immigrants, Anglican clerics with Methodist preachers and Quaker practitioners, back country farmers from the Carolinas and urban sophisticates from New York and Boston, colonial administrators beside butchers, bakers and candlestick makers and Benjamin Franklin’s son William.

Loyalists opposed revolutionary anarchy, the Boston Tea Party’s fancy-dressed hooliganism, mob-rule tar and feathers. They saw those Boston merchants groaning about taxation as ingrates unwilling to contribute to the coffers after British taxpayers had protected their interests through the French and Indian War while paying, on average, one-fiftieth of the impost on British residents.

Around sixty thousand Loyalists departed for exile, at least eight thousand of them free blacks, with an additional fifteen thousand slaves added to the exodus. Their descendants played a significant role in the British expansion in India (Benedict Arnold’s sons), and with Sierra Leone's Freetown founded by 1,200 black Loyalists literally on the doorstep of a major slave trading depot.

The fate of the blacks, both free men and slaves makes for particularly interesting reading, with many of them finding their way to Nova Scotia rather than more obvious destinations like the Bahamas or Jamaica. The difficulties slave owning Loyalists experienced in Britain's largest Caribbean colony are also explored against a backdrop of slave rebellions in Santo Domingo.

An interesting read, though it didn't deliver what I'd been looking for when I started reading, which is, in its own way, a significant recommendation since I kept ploughing through a hefty volume when I could have been shooting it straight back to the Library.

John Tully "Dark Clouds on the Mountain"

Given author John Tully's position as a lecturer in Politics and History at Victoria University it's safe to assume Dark Clouds on the Mountain is a one off rather than a title in an ongoing series. Apart from a number of titles in the realm of Southeast Asian history there's an earlier fiction title in Death Is the Cool Night that, based on this title is worth seeking out, but one doubts we'll be seeing any more of Jack Martin, born Martinuzzi, left-leaning Tasmanian detective with working class roots.

There's plenty of detail here that would, in an ongoing series, have been glossed over, particularly when it comes to the back story. A series would have these details spread out, and Martin's past as a top athlete in a small town could have been an interesting element as he went about tackling issues (not necessarily murders, if the town's small enough to have that gun cricketer/footballer that people of a certain age remember years later you're not going to get an interesting murder case every couple of months). The broader community tends to have limited contact with the Police, so repeated oh, yes, I remember you incidents through a series would, I think, work, but this title is, as far as I can gather, a one-off.

We've got the regulation family dramas you tend to get in a police procedural, lurking behind the main action with the threat of violence around the corner, though we see the aftermath rather than the actual incident.

On the subject of aftermaths, it's the aftermath of World War Two, and the subsequent wave of immigration and its impact on working class Tasmania that drives the main plot lines. Martin's father was an Italian communist who fought with the partisans in the Balkans but was murdered in Hobart in 1948. Martin grew up with his mother, a hopeless alcoholic, and her father in Queenstown, did a trade, tried his luck on the mainland, but couldn't hack the big smoke.

As a result he's moved back to the Apple Isle, joined the police force, married and now has a teenage daughter whose politics bring her into the edge of the plot line, so the paternal concern factor adds another aspect to the main character's mental processes.

That's his back story, and it's one that ties in with a couple of others as antisemitic graffiti is scrawled on the synagogue in Hobart, a Greenie protest encampment is attacked in the forest near Queenstown and a Jewish tailor is found dead in Hobart.

Other back stories work backwards to Nazi war crimes, death camps in the Ukraine, young left wing campaigners for Palestinian rights, right-wing extremism, Slavic prejudice and domestic violence.

Throw in a touch of the old workplace rivalries and police corruption for good measure and you may be thinking formulaic, but it works.

Run those elements together, and the result could be a messy tangle, but Tully keeps it tightly wound as the dark secrets, Nazi plots, family tensions interact in a web of intrigue. It's well paced, easy to read and full of seemingly authentic detail, real locations and sharply drawn characters in a predominantly working class setting.

On the strength of this one I'll be seeking out Death Is the Cool Night and I'll be keeping an eye out for subsequent volumes. Highly recommended.

Colin Irwin "In Search of the Craic: One Man's Pub Crawl Through Irish Music"

British journalist Colin Irwin may have spent much of the seventies and eighties as  assistant editor of Melody Maker and written about singer-songwriters, folk rock, and traditional folk for The Guardian, The Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent,  Mojo and fRoots but his real passion, from what I can gather through reading In Search of the Craic lies in the traditional Irish music that might find its way from time to time into concert halls and major venues but is best sampled in the environment from which it emerged.

Doing that, at least as far as Irwin is concerned,  involves an extended pub crawl through the back blocks of the Irish countryside with the occasional spell in a major centre and regular encounters with characters who may or may not be legends of the genre (though he tracks down plenty who are).

Late nights, early morning, the black stuff by the bucket load and an abundance of music provide the fuel that powers a book that's part travelogue, part music history, part whimsical observation and high on the Enjoyable Read Index.

On the strength of this one I'd be interested in tracking down his In Search of Albion: From Cornwall to Cumbria: A Ride Through England's Hidden Soul though I think I'll be giving his biographies of Dire Straits and Abba the big flick pass.

Steve Almond "Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life"

I suppose in a different generation and a more promising geographic location I, too, could have been a Drooling Fanatic. By author Almond's definition DFs mourn their failure to make it as rock stars or one-hit wonders or near-misses or bar bands or wedding bands or KISS cover bands or midget KISS cover bands which explains the different generation remark.

It didn't take me long to realise anything approaching rock star status was out of the question, whereas a decent collection of music could help get me into slightly hipper circles than would otherwise have been the case. I was way too early for Kiss, who struck me as a formulaic quest for a section of the demographic that was at least a decade behind my back. While you could see where they were coming from, it wasn't territory you really wanted to revisit.

On the other hand, wannabes, geeks, professional worshippers ... who acquire albums compulsively … and cannot resist telling other people sounds awfully familiar. Some personality traits exist beyond musical generations.

Almond's DFs, in other words, equate reasonably closely to Hughesy's music freaks, and a glance through the contents when I spotted this title on the shelves in the local library suggested a read that might fit in with some aspects of my writing projects.

As things panned out, given that generational shift (Almond fits into the circa-Nirvana grunge scene the way I fitted into the classic expressions of late sixties experimentation) there wasn't much that fitted in with the projects, though there was plenty of familiar territory.

A career in journalism and a spell teaching writing means we're talking a bloke who writes well, delivers his points with verve and gusto (well he would, wouldn't he? He's a music freak writing about his obsession) and the result is an entertaining read that demonstrates the music freak isn't going to be disappearing off the face of the Earth any time soon.

He seems to suggest that we're all, potentially, Drooling Fanatics, a proposition Hughesy's inclined to discount, but that's probably the geography and demographic I've been associating with over the past forty years.

Almond, on the other hand, thanks to journo spells in El Paso and Miami and exposure to live music scenes where people I've never heard of can manage to carve out an almost viable musical career while still flying under the radar of mass recognition has plenty of first person experiences that fit into the Drooling Fanatic side of things.

Looking at it, he was probably in the right place to get hit badly by the music bug in areas far enough from the big time to leave him free to explore local music in between visits by passing megastars, though he manages to get a couple of newspaper paid gigs to cover the Grammys and similar exercises you and I might see as junkets but working journos know are located in an adjacent postcode to Purgatory.

An interesting read that had me rolling over to the iTunes store to check out a few of the lower profile acts he name-checked and enthused over without having the investigation move too much further than an Oh, yeah, this Ike Reilly dude's got a few albums out and a click on the sound samples that sounded like things I've heard before somewhere without paying it all that much attention. A glance at the eleven tracks on Nil Lara didn't suggest anything out of the pleasantly Latin, so it's probably a case of you really needed to be there at the time.

Exposure to an abundant supply of strong drink would, of course, have helped. Almond probably wouldn't have got a lot out of the equivalents in these parts (Kieran McCarthy springs to mind here).

On the other hand, his lists, starting from Bands Shamelessly Overexposed by the 'Alternative' Press through Ten Things You Can Say to Piss Off a Music Critic, Rock's Biggest Assholes and The Many Silly Names of Rock Star Spawn may not be serious, but are entertaining reads.

That's where Almond, with the provincial background in regional newspapers differs from your common or garden metropolitan rock critic. They may be in the right locations to catch the cool gigs, check the latest trends from close up (after all, they're where the action supposedly is, aren't they?) enjoy the junkets that come with prominence and access, meanwhile, for the humble journo toiling away in the back blocks…

Sort of like the sixty-year-old fan tucked away in the wilds of north Queensland, innit?

An interesting read. As noted, your reaction is going to reflect your own experience, though that’s hardly a surprising conclusion.