Lust for Learning

Fall of Troy

Cambridge mediaeval literature scholar Charles Moseley brings us his philosophical and engaging memoir ‘HUNGRY HEART ROAMING’ which is now available through Black Spring Press. 

The Lancashire native and passionate fen walker begins his personal journey (of sorts)  by describing the singular starling that traces the dusk skyline before swooping back into the murmuration. This metaphor for the solo traveller is evocative because Moseley next  introduces  his impressionistic student self trudging in the dusty footsteps of Saint Paul through Greece, Corinth and Rome.  Soon we are transported into this ancient holy world by a backpacking Cambridge Scholar who confesses to a 'hot lust for understanding ever just beyond your grasp.'

Whether traveling for pleasure in the great museum of life that is Europe or as a sought after (but unknown) specialist guest lecturer in South America, Moseley is blessed with the poet’s eye and writes comic descriptive passages; as a young student in Crete he dodges a seismic 'twitch of the earth's skin' and later quietens as his wife tells him to stop talking and simply look out at the sea. Far from being ‘tediously loguacious’ the writer delights in piecing together world history. From Greek mythology, to European cultural appropriation, critical writing about the Bizantine empire, to saluting ancient poets such as Pope, Wootton, Donne, Dante, to witnessing the gloom of Tuetonic Tallin and then on towards symposiums in Albania and back, the old adage that once a 'lecturer, always a lecturer' rings true. What recurs is we are given insights into the dark natures of human existence which have plagued western thinking since the downfall of Troy.  Moseley is a kindred sage to the poets he so admires. 

There are serious undertones into these darker epochs as the author describes the nonchalant rise of power in Vienna of a failed art student by the name of Adolph and this insight into cultural and historical Vienna,  Prague, Bucharest and other parts of Europe re-visited from the 60's till now describe a scholar and soul who is not blind to the atrocities humans commit in the face of the most civilised, noble or religious pursuits. Moseley's writes about Franciscan Friar Michele De Cunheo on the Columbus mission to St Croix in Antigua in the seventeenth century and the research is singularly harrowing and critical of man's willingness to indulge in sadistic pleasure. 

Equally adept at mining a darker theme, the philosophical style also serves to ridicule the emptiness of the pursuit of power and a comic aside (of which there are many) imagines the lonely Greek gecko as if a childless old man, who 'contemplates whatever geckos contemplate'. 

Fans of an off beat travelogue will not be disappointed. There is loads which will appeal to those who look for clues and secrets of ancient civilisations on obelisks hidden in the museums and libraries of the Bizantine era. Also there is an understated but mordant British wit and irony in this book including how friendly local Cretans in Greece preferred Brits to German tourists in the 1960's. 

Moseley can sometimes get carried away with digressions but this is all part of the charm and we feel that we are in the hands of a wry observer but also a passionate and spiritual man on a quest for understanding life through history and world travel. Equally important is this role as a Cambridge scholar and poet who continually pushes to understand more.  

In much the same way Claire Tomalin cast her meticulous eye towards Charles Dickens in 'A Life', Mosley shares his own inimitable interest in life in 'Hungry Heart Roaming'. 

Man on a white horse?

Consider the Lilies by Iain Crichton Smith

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The title almost put me off but was hooked soon enough. And who are you to ask anyways you stunning excuse for a man? (Anyhow that is the tone of the old dear and I just loved it.) Aside from the feisty old lady who rules her old farm house, it is about the Scottish clearances - and the exodus to NS and other parts of Canada. The old lady is notified by a fat man 'on a white horse' that she is about to be kicked out of her farmhouse where she has lived all of her life, and is suitably indignant. It is very poetic with rural images that last and has elements of Brian Moore's "Lonely passion of Judith Hearne" and Margaret Laurence's "The Stone Angel".



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Dad's jokes are still 'Dad' jokes (in the 1850's?)

The Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Dad's jokes are still 'dad' jokes.



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No Rest for the Writer

Just After Sunset by Stephen King




A book of recent and not-so-recent, short stories. Liked the story "Rest Stop". It had me laughing, aloud, in the library. "Rest Stop" is a justice story for cowards who beat their wives. The story had it all tension, laughs, entertainment value and was told simply. The wit and sense of humour make this story stand out. He has still got it.

A good find is also The Cat from Hell. This is a story from the 1980's archives which never made into a published volume of stories and shows why Stephen King dominated in the seventies and eighties.

There are some weaker stories in the book and you get the sense that Stephen King can stick whack them out and has a few more "Rest Stop(s)" in him.



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Down and out with Russians in Paris (and London..)

Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Working in a busy hotel kitchen as a busboy/dishwasher 'plonguer'in 1930's Paris is hard work as the detailed accounts of the stress, heat and pandemonium in the Paris hotel kitchens attest; young Eric Blair describes the turbulence of the political climate in 1930's Paris with a strange youthful stoicism, especially the exiled world of down at the heels but still proud Russian Émigrés. Switching countries, the London tramp scenes don't quite have the same flair as the scenes amongst the working waiters and plongeurs in Paris and the matter of fact style will do little portray tramps as people with their own hard luck stories however this grim style is also very effective and takes you deep into the hard boiled luckless world of the petty thieves 'screevers' and 'glimmers' of London. The descriptions of tramping in and around the East End offer telling insights into the interior worlds of faceless men when one admits 'there is never anywhere to sit down for any length of time'. Before he was Orwell, Blair was a young man, trying to make it pay. The two epochs come to life in all of their dingy and grimy resolve to press on through hard times.



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