Three Heroes

Historical: John Sanders' Nicholas Pym, like a 17th century James Bond.

Contemporary (at the time of writing): Ian Fleming's James Bond.

Futuristic: Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry, like an interstellar James Bond, although the first Flandry story predates the first Bond novel.

The order of the creation of these characters is the reverse of their fictional chronological order.

A meeting of buccaneers on Tortuga, attended by Pym, parallels Goldfinger's "Hoods' Congress," attended by Bond. The Mafia and SMERSH are represented at the Hoods' Congress. Real historical buccaneers attend the meeting in Tortuga. In both cases, a man is murdered leaving the meeting.

In such series, a heroine is usually a single-volume character to be disposed of between volumes. See The Structure Of A Series: Ian Fleming. (Scroll down to the section on "Heroines.")

In the Pym series:

the heroine of Volume I has died in childbirth before the beginning of Volume II;

despite her association with Pym, the heroine of Volume II remains a Royalist and Pym shoots her when she tries to assassinate Cromwell;

if I remember right, Pym meets someone at the end of Volume III whom he marries in Volume IV;

Volume V, which I have not read, is a flashback to a time earlier in Pym's career so we already know that its heroine, if any, will not be around later.

Equality In The Bible And Dornford Yates

A character asks why the Bible does not command equality. Because there was a smaller surplus of wealth when it was written. Also, the Bible contains many barbaric laws which we rightly ignore.

Socialists know that their doctrine is unnatural, therefore wrong? No, sir, they disagree with you about it, which is a different matter.

Books That Exist Within Dornford Yates' Universe

The History Of The Pleydell Family by Vandy Pleydell.
White Ladies, the history of the Pleydells' ancestral home.
Berry Pleydell's Memoirs.
the "Dornford Yates" books, written by Boy Pleydell.

Thus, three Pleydells are authors. White Ladies may be written by a government appointee since the house has been handed over to the nation.

We have the "Dornford Yates" books but not the other volumes.

Since the Epilogue to the tenth and last Berry Book is a letter written by one of the servants, we at last learn the first name of Jonah's servant, Carson.

Berry And Co.

My copy of Berry And Co. by Dornford Yates, which looks like this:

not like various other editions (see here):

was printed without a publication date;
begins with a dedicatory letter dated November, 1920;
was given as a present at Christmas, 1929;
does not have the Pleydell family tree;
contradicts that tree in its text. (See Other Cousins.)

White Ladies

Henry the Eighth suppressed a very rich abbey in Hampshire. However, when his men arrived, the Abbey plate (gold chalices, platters, flagons etc) was not to be found so the King's men burned the abbey to the ground and hanged the Abbess from an oak. Five years later, some time in the 1540s, White Ladies was built on the site and was given an oak front door which was still in place in the early twentieth century at which time a dowser discovered that the Abbey plate had been buried in the large wine cellars which were still in use.

The Pleydells owned White Ladies from an early date, possibly from the beginning, because:

in 1652, Nicholas Pleydell was succeeded by his only child, William.
-copied from here.

In 1663, a sun-dial bearing the year date and the initials, W.P., was erected in the garden of the old dower-house, which passed out of the hands of the family in the early nineteenth century.

In 1937, Berry Pleydell and his family became unable to maintain White Ladies and handed it over to the nation to be used as an official retreat for the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. An era ended. 

Other Cousins

This family tree appears in most editions of Dornford Yates's ten Berry Books, except that it is wrong as shown here. Daphne Pleydell marries Jonathan Mansel. That is correct. However, the family tree as shown here makes Jonathan Mansel a son of Bertram Pleydell and does not show Daphne as a daughter of Bertram, which is obviously wrong. 

As I wrote in The Five, Boy winds up married to Jill and there are no great-grandchildren of the first Bertram listed here.

In And Berry Came Too, CHAPTER VI, Berry claims that he himself bears the name of a great-great-uncle, Bertram, although the family tree shows us that he also bears the names of his own father and grandfather. Thus, he, Berry, should be listed as Bertram/"Berry." Otherwise, "Berry" might have been construed not as an abbreviation of Bertram but as an independent name. See here. Similarly, the texts of the books confirm that "Jonah" is an abbreviation of "Jonathan."

Thus:

Berry bears the name of his father, grandfather and great-great-uncle;
Berry's first cousin and wife, Daphne, bears the name of her aunt;
Daphne's brother, Boy, bears a name that reads like a shortened version of his own father's name, Bois;
their first cousin, Jonathan/"Jonah," bears the name of his father.

In Berry And Co., CHAPTER VI, Boy, the narrator, has another cousin, Madrigal.

In Berry And Co., CHAPTER X:

Boy, the narrator, describes Berry and Daphne as second cousins;
there is yet another set of cousins, Vandy and his sisters, Emma and May;
Vandy and Co. would have inherited White Ladies if not for the birth of Berry;
Vandy wrote The History Of The Pleydell Family;
in 1652, Nicholas Pleydell was succeeded by his only child, William.

The Five

By the end of Dornford Yates's Berry series, Boy Pleydell is both first cousin and brother-in-law to both Berry Pleydell and Jonathan "Jonah" Mansel. Jonah's sister, Jill, has married Boy whose sister, Daphne, is married to Berry. Thus, these five grandchildren of Bertram Pleydell comprise:

two brother and sister pairs;
two married couples;
one bachelor -

- yet remain just five people.

They have no children. The family turns in on itself and ends. They also consider that the world in which society has changed and in which they have been unable to maintain their ancestral country mansion is not worth living in. 

Dornford Yates' Universe

This post will mean nearly nothing to almost anyone. Its purpose is, as far as possible, to re-arrange Dornford Yates's interconnected titles into chronological order of fictional events. Some revisions will be necessary.

The Brother Of Daphne (before Adele) 
The Courts Of Idleness (Boy meets Adele)
Berry And Co. (Boy becomes engaged to Adele)
And Berry Came Too (set earlier, before Adele) 
Anthony Lyveden (Boy engaged to Adele)
Valerie French (Lyveden marries Valerie) 
Jonah And Co. (Boy and Adele married; Eulalie; Jill becomes engaged)

Blind Corner (Mansel with Chandos and Hanbury, not with Berry, Boy etc; "Rose" Noble; Punter) 
An Eye For A Tooth (direct sequel to Blind Corner; Mansel; Chandos; Hanbury) 
Perishable Goods (Adele's affair with Mansel; Chandos; Hanbury; "Rose" Noble; Punter) 
Blood Royal (Chandos marries; Hanbury) 
Fire Below (Hanbury marries; Chandos) 
She Fell Among Thieves (the Hanburys dead; Chandos, widowed, marries Jenny; Mansel)

Maiden Stakes (a collection; Chandos Books are fiction written by Boy!; Toby Rage) 
As Other Men Are (a collection; Simon and Patricia Beaulieu; the Master) 
She Painted Her Face (Porus Bureau) 
Shoal Water (the Wet Flag; Mansel) 
The Stolen March (the Beaulieus; the Master; Auntie Emma; Eulalie; Porus Bureau) 
Adele And Co. (Boy and Adele still married; Jill married with children; Auntie Emma; the Wet Flag)
Gale Warning (Mansel, Chandos and Bagot) 
Red In The Morning (sequel to Adele And Co. and Gale Warning; Mansel; Chandos; Bagot; Jenny; Auntie Emma; Punter; Toby Rage; Falcon) 
Safe Custody (Punter; Bugle) 
Storm Music (Bugle) 
Cost Price (sequel to Safe Custody; Mansel; Chandos; Jenny; Punter)

And Five Were Foolish (a collection) 
Period Stuff (a collection, including four Falcon stories) 
The House That Berry Built (Mansel helps Falcon; Jill, widowed, marries Boy) 
The Berry Scene (Adele's departure mentioned; the Beaulieus; the Lyvedens; Toby Rage; Jenny)
Ne'er-Do-Well (Falcon reports back to Mansel, Chandos and Jenny) 
This Publican (written by Boy before As Berry And I Were Saying) 
Lower than Vermin (also written by Boy before As Berry And I Were Saying) 
As Berry And I were Saying (all "Dornford Yates" books are written by Boy) 
B-Berry And I Look Back (sequel to As Berry And I Were Saying) 
Wife Apparent (written by Boy during B-Berry And I Look Back)

Dornford Yates' Characters' Interactions

This post will be subject to revision as more books are read or reread.

Simon Beaulieu interacts with the Master in "Simon" in As Other Men Are and again in The Stolen March and then with the Pleydells in The Berry Scene.

Eulalie interacts with the Pleydells in Jonah And Co. and with the Beaulieus in The Stolen March and is mentioned by Boy Pleydell in Adele And Co.

Porus Bureau makes minor appearances in The Stolen March and She Painted Her Face.

Toby Rage appears in:

"Toby" in As Other Men Are;
"Childish Things" in Maiden Stakes;
the Chandos novel, Red In The Morning;
the Berry collection, The Berry Scene.

Richard Falcon appears in:

the collection, Period Stuff;
the Berry novel, The House That Berry Built;
the Chandos novel, Cost Price;
Ne'er-Do-Well, narrated by Chandos.

John Bagot narrates Gale Warning, which features Richard Chandos who narrates nine novels, including Red In The Morning, which features John Bagot.

Jonathan Mansel is:

"Jonah" in the ten Berry books and in "Letters Patent" in Maiden Stakes;
"Mansel" in six of the eight listed Chandos books and in three other novels.

Richard Chandos:

appears in ten novels;
narrates nine, although only eight are listed as "Chandos books";
is mentioned in The Berry Scene where his wife, Jenny, appears.

Anthony Lyveden and Valerie French:

are each the title character of a novel;
marry;
are mentioned by Simon Beaulieu in "Simon";
appear in The Berry Scene.

The criminal nicknamed "Auntie Emma":

appears in The Stolen March;
is defeated by Mansel and the Pleydells in Adele And Co.;
is killed by Chandos in Red In The Morning.

For the sequence of novels featuring the criminal, Punter, see:

The Structure Of A Series: Dornford Yates II

Predictions

HG Wells wrote:

Anticipations;
Mind At The End Of Its Tether.

I thought that a character in a novel by Aldous Huxley published in 1919 said that the next big social crash would come in about twenty years... but I cannot find a novel with that year of publication in Huxley's bibliography.

"'If you ask me,' said Berry, 'we're doomed,'..."
-Dornford Yates, And Berry Came Too (London, 1936), CHAPTER III, p. 94.

"'...my opinion is that, before many years have gone by, this civilization of ours is going to come to an end.'"
-Dornford Yates, The Berry Scene (London, 1947), CHAPTER VIII, p. 223.

"'The end of this civilization is overdue.'"
-Dornford Yates, Ne'er-Do-Well (Cornwall, 2001), p. 9.

Yates and his characters decried the passing away of the kind of society in which they had been happy whereas I disagree with them and applaud many of the social changes that happened in the twentieth century. However, did Yates possess some deeper insight into the nature of the current civilization?

The Berry Scene

I enjoy fiction by authors that I disagree with, like Poul Anderson, but right now Dornford Yates is getting me down:

class-hatred is promoted by self-interested politicians;
Communists are bad people;
the beating up of a Communist is a source of amusement.

As long as it is not too badly affected by climate change, the English countryside remains to be appreciated whether or not society continues to be divided in the way eulogized by Yates.

Dornford's Discrepancies

Dornford Yates' mega-series comprises:

10 Berry Books, narrated by Boy Pleydell;
8 Chandos Books, narrated by Richard Chandos;
maybe 13 other works with overlapping characters.

The Pleydell's cousin, Jonah, and Chandos' friend, Mansel, are the same person;

Chandos appears in ten novels and narrates nine although only eight are listed as "the Chandos Books" because the ninth that he narrates features a different central character;

according to the Chandos Books, Chandos not only narrates but also writes these eight volumes as true accounts of his adventures whereas, according to some installments of the Berry series, Boy Pleydell writes the Chandos Books as works of fiction;

the second Chandos Book, Perishable Goods, makes no sense as a work written and published by Chandos because it reveals the secret affair between Jonathan Mansel and Adele Pleydell and even ends by saying the Jonah and Adele have successfully kept this secret - even though Chandos now publishes it!;

by contrast, the sixth Chandos Book, An Eye For A Tooth, should have been the second but Chandos was unable to write it earlier until a certain (other) lady had died;

Chandos conceals the identity of the villainess of the fifth Chandos Book, She Fell Among Thieves, but does not conceal it very well because we are told that -

her first name is "Vanity";
her nickname is "Vanity Fair";
she was married three times and thus had four surnames;
her husbands were Russian, American and Spanish;
her maiden name was "Blanche";
her second married surname was "Brooch."

Chandos and Mansel have to tell Falcon of Scotland Yard of their adventures even though Chandos has supposedly published his accounts of many of these adventures.

Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy From Page To Screen

Scenes are left out, shortened or changed. I am not going to conduct an exhaustive analysis.

In the first book, Blomkvist visits his ex-wife and daughter, then visits his sister and her family, then is rung by Frode at the Millennium office whereas, on TV, the ex-wife and daughter are not mentioned and Blomkvist is rung by Frode while visiting his sister.

A necklace inherited from Anita was introduced on TV as a way of differentiating between Cecilia and Anita in a single photograph. In the book, Blomkvist had seen what he thought was a single woman in many group photos before he found another photo showing two almost identical women side by side. Also, Henrik Vanger had photos of Harriet's window open and closed, showing that someone had been in her room on the day when she disappeared. Then Blomkvist found a third photo with a face in the window. He thought that it was Cecilia although it turned out to be Anita. On TV, Henrik had the photo of the woman in the window and thought that it was Harriet. Then Blomkvist thought that it was Cecilia because the woman was wearing Cecilia's necklace but Cecilia said that she had inherited it from Anita.

In the book, Blomkvist visited Anita in London and traced her call to Harriet in Australia whereas, on TV, Anita was dead and Lisbeth discovered that there were two Anita Vangers, one dead, the other in Australia.

Blomkvist did not find a photo enabling him to identify Martin Vanger but instead broke into the old Nazi, Harald's, house and had to be rescued by Martin.

In the second book, the blond giant:

hallucinates;
runs when he sees Lisbeth resurrected;
is apprehended and tied up by Blomkvist;
but escapes when two cops come to collect him -

- whereas, on TV, he:

dodges when the resurrected Lizbeth fires at him;
runs when Blomkvist's car approaches.

Blomkvist had driven all the way, not gone by train first.

Blomkvist did not see Lizbeth attacked outside her flat and find the bag containing keys that she had dropped. Instead, Lizbeth visited Miriam in hospital and dropped the keys there.

The Structure Of A Series: Dornford Yates IV

See here.

After further reading and rereading, I think that the second group of Chandos and related novels should be reorganized thus:

Safe Custody
Shoal Water
Adele and Co.
Storm Music
Cost Price
Gale Warning
Red In The Morning
Ne'er-Do-Well

The four volumes that feature Falcon of Scotland Yard are:

Period Stuff
Red In The Morning
The House That Berry Built
Ne'er Do Well

Jenny is prominent as Mrs Chandos in:

Cost Price
Gale Warning
Red In The Morning
The Berry Scene
Ne'er Do Well 

See Bibliography.

The Structure Of A Series: Dornford Yates III

Dornford Yates' ten Berry books subdivide not into two fives but into a six and a four.

1914-1936
The Brother Of Daphne (1914), pre-War
The Courts Of Idleness (1920), before, during and after WWI
Berry and Co. (1921)
Jonah and Co. (1922)
Adele and Co. (1931)
And Berry Came Too (1936)

I am currently rereading Yates so might have to revise some of these statements. And Berry Came Too is set during a summer between two chapters of Berry and Co. (or something). The theme is upper class life in the period that we recognize as between the Wars.

1945-1958
The House That Berry Built (1945), War approaches, ancestral home sold
The Berry Scene (1947), a review of the whole period
As Berry And I Were Saying (1952)
B-Berry And I Look Back (1958)

The last two are memoirs which step outside the fictional continuity.

The Structure Of A Series: Dornford Yates II

In the preceding post, we summarized the first six Chandos books:

Blind Corner
Perishable Goods
Blood Royal
Fire Below
She Fell Among Thieves
An Eye For A Tooth 

Because An Eye For A Tooth is an immediate sequel to Blind Corner and thus an extended flashback, this sequence of six novels chronologically ends with She Fell Among Thieves and thus with Richard Chandos' engagement to Jenny. (George Hanbury, having died between Fire Below and She Fell Among Thieves, is seen alive again, but for the last time, in An Eye For A Tooth.)

The remaining two Chandos books, Red In The Morning and Cost Price, form a sequence with five other novels by Yates:

in Safe Custody, because Mansel had killed "Rose" Noble in Perishable Goods, the thug, Punter, now works for Harris who dies trying to steal the treasure of Hohenems;

in Shoal Water, Mansel defeats The Shepherd, a patron of the thieves' kitchen, The Wet Flag;

in Adele And Co., Mansel and his cousins defeat Daniel Gedge, another patron of The Wet Flag;

Gale Warning (see the previous post) ends with Richard and Jenny Chandos and Mansel on holiday in Freilles, France;

Red In The Morning begins in Freilles where Mansel and Chandos encounter Punter, then Gedge, the former now working for the latter, and Mansel also meets Toby Rage who had appeared in "Toby" and in "Childish Things" and will later appear in The Berry Scene;

in Cost Price, Punter informs another thief, Friar, of the Hohenems treasure but Mansel and Chandos intervene;

in Ne'er-Do-Well, Chief Inspector (now Superintendent) Falcon, who also appears in four short stories in Period Stuff, informs Mansel, Chandos and Jenny of one of his investigations. Falcon is also in Red In The Morning and The House That Berry Built.

Adele And Co. is one of the ten Berry books narrated by Boy Pleydell.

(There is a British consular official called Pleydell-Smith in Ian Fleming's Doctor No.)

The Structure Of A Series: Dornford Yates

(I am currently rereading Dornford Yates' novels after a gap of about fifty five years so some of what I write here might have to be revised.)

In Gale Warning:

Jonathan Mansel, Richard Chandos and George St. Omer have been fighting crime outside the law for a while;

the mastermind, Barabbas, organizes the murder of St. Omer;

however, St. Omer's friend, John Bagot, joins Mansel and Chandos and helps them to bring down Barabbas;

Chandos' wife is called "Jenny."

You might deduce from this account that Gale Warning had been preceded by several earlier volumes of a Mansel/Chandos/St. Omer series? Instead, it was preceded by six Chandos books that gradually paved the way for the situation as described in Gale Warning.

The Opening Diptych (= Two Volumes)
In Blind Corner, Mansel, Chandos and George Hanbury (not St. Omer) defeat "Rose" Nobel and appropriate buried treasure.
In Perishable Goods, Mansel, Chandos and Hanbury defeat a kidnapping and blackmail attempt by Noble and Mansel kills Noble.

A Second Diptych
In Blood Royal and Fire Below, Chandos and Hanbury, without Mansel, have adventures in a fictional European country and both wind up married.

Two Further Novels
In She Fell Among Thieves:

Mansel is back;
but Hanbury, Hanbury's wife and Chandos' first wife have died;
Chandos meets and will marry Jenny.

An Eye For A Tooth:

is a flashback sequel to Blind Corner, set before Perishable Goods;
therefore, shows Hanbury still alive;
retroactively transforms the opening diptych into a trilogy.

That leaves only two Chandos Books, Red In The Morning and Cost Price, set after Chandos has married Jenny and they are also set after Gale Warning. There are other complications to be addressed later.

Mansel And Chandos

Eight listed "'Chandos' Books" by Dornford Yates feature and are narrated by Richard Chandos.

Chandos also narrates a ninth novel, Ne'er-Do-Well, and appears in a tenth, Gale Warning.

Thus, for present purposes, we can refer to ten Chandos books.

Jonathan Mansel is:

"'Jonah' in Yates' ten "'Berry' Books" and in one other "Berry" short story, "Letters Patent";

"Mansel" in eight of the ten Chandos books and in two other novels, Shoal Water and Gale Warning.

Mansel's and Chandos' antagonist, "Punter," appears in the related novel, Safe Custody.

The ninth and tenth 'Berry' books and "Letters Patent" are set in an alternative continuity, where:

Mansel's cousin, Boy Pleydell, the narrator of the 'Berry' books -

has, like Cecil William Mercer (Dornford Yates), worked as a barrister;
thus, has not always been a "man of leisure";
wrote the "Dornford Yates" books, including the Chandos novels, as works of fiction under that pen name.

Addendum: Boy was also a barrister in The Berry Scene.

Dornford Yates

After a gap of over fifty years, I am rereading Dornford Yates' Chandos books and reading his non-series thrillers.

Richard Chandos narrates eight Chandos books and Boy Pleydell narrates ten Berry books.

Jonah in the Berry Books is Mansel in the Chandos Books and other thrillers.

Inspector Falcon features in some short stories and in Ne-er-Do-Well narrated by Chandos and guest-starring Mansel.

The Chandos book, Red In The Morning, is a sequel to the Berry book, Adele and Co, and to the non-series thriller, Gale Warning.

 The Chandos book, Cost Price, is a sequel to the non-series thriller, Safe Custody.

Mansel appears in Shoal Water; Mansel and Chandos in Gale Warning.

There are other connections.

Lancaster Youth For The Environment

I should have reported on the third LYFE demonstration, today in Lancaster, on this blog but instead I described it in the combox on another blog so see here as well as here.

American Gods II

See American Gods.

One modern god travels in a stretch limousine and another speaks from a TV screen. There are mythical helicopters.

I do not know whether the amusing hitch-hiker, Sammi, will return as a character.

"'Oh. Right. Got it. No problem. I am so with you.'" (7, p. 139)

She tells another story about Norse sailors praying to Odin:

"'...my favorite god story, from Comparative Religion 101. You want to hear it?'" (7, p. 145)

I am enjoying the novel more rereading it after watching the TV serialization.

American Gods

Neil Gaiman, American Gods (London, 2001).

Part 1, Shadows
1
Low Key Lyesmith is Loki Liesmith but who is Sam Fetisher?

Shadow is asked whether he has black ancestry and doesn't know but he is black on TV.

COMING TO AMERICA 813 AD (pp. 58-60)
Would Norse sailors pray to the all-father or to Aegir? See the combox here.

COMING TO AMERICA 1721 (pp. 80-88)
This is a good short story. It informs us that pixies were originally called "piskies."

Obviously there is more to the novel than this. I have watched Season 1, Episode 1, of the TV adaptation and have reread the book to p. 94 of 501.

This Blog This Month

One post about a novel.

Three posts about a film nominally based on a novel about Stieg Larsson's characters.

Eleven posts occasioned by a novel based on a TV series.

One post about a TV series.

This summary.

Seventeen posts.

Addendum: eighteenth post, about another novel, which has been adapted as a TV serial, here.

Adam Adamant Lives!

Adam Adamant Lives! should be a prime candidate for revival in films or in an Alan Moore graphic novel.

Part of the origin story was that the title character, who had been in suspended animation from 1902 to 1966, had already been known as a popular hero before his suspension. A young 1960s woman who had been a fan of Adam Adamant the historical figure becomes a close up fan of the real guy here and now. What could be better?

There could be several series set in:

the Victorian and Edwardian periods;

the '60s;

the future, as Adam and the villainous Face go back into suspended animation.

Apparently, Adam's finances were unexplained but that could easily be fixed with an inheritance and/or a government agency investigating his suspended animation.

The Two Versions Of Thrush

In The Man From UNCLE TV series:

a woman who appeared in a single episode claimed to have founded Thrush and was not contradicted;

Thrush was not an acronym.

Thus, within the TV series, these have to be accepted as the facts of Thrush.

However:

David McDaniel's carefully crafted and ingenious account does far more justice to the size and complexity of Thrush;

it is easy to assume that that woman in a single episode was deluded or lying.

Indeed, it is strange that this character and her claim appear only once and therefore are missed by anyone who did not see that particular episode.

On TV, a single Ultimate Computer was constructed and destroyed before it could be used. We may deduce from McDaniel's account that more were built. The UNCLE Chronology which claims that the prototype Ultimate Computer was built in 1898 goes beyond McDaniel's account and fits UNCLE into the expanded Wold Newton universe. However, McDaniel does state that Thrush pioneered information technology. See Thrush History II.

The Search For Thrush Central

(i) In The Man From UNCLE TV series, Thrush Central was merely referred to.

(ii) In The Rainbow Affair by David McDaniel, UNCLE learns that Thrush Central is tripartite and mobile with three Ultimate Computers.

(iii) In The Hollow Crown Affair by David McDaniel, "...U.N.C.L.E. misses raiding Thrush Central by mere minutes." See The UNCLE Chronology here.

(iv) In The Final Affair by David McDaniel, UNCLE destroys the three Centrals and invades Thrush Island. When Solo asks a Thrush guard who is on the other end of a phone line, the guard replies "My boss," and assents when Solo inquires, "The Boss? Acting Central?" (p. 87) UNCLE captures the island. End of Thrush as an international organization.

Two Sequences

From James Bond's first encounter with SMERSH in Casino Royale by Ian Fleming to UNCLE's eventual destruction of Thrush as a global organization in The Final Affair by David McDaniel is one long literary sequence although it might not be easily recognizable as such.

The highlights are:

Bond's defeat of SMERSH;

Krushchev's disbandment of it;

Blofeld's recruitment of former members of SMERSH and of similar organizations into SPECTRE;

Bond's destruction of two versions of SPECTRE;

his assassination of Blofeld in Japan;

his reinstatement in the Secret Service and continued conflict with the KGB;

the introduction of Thrush on TV;

the elaboration of Thrush in original novels by David McDaniel;

the eventual destruction of Thrush.

There is a second sequence:

SPECTRE originated in a screen treatment;

from there, it moved not only into Fleming's novels (see above) but also into the James Bond films;

in the films, SPECTRE's numbered members were controlled by a mysterious Number One;

this numerical system was duplicated by the totalitarian Village in The Prisoner TV series;

the Prisoner realized that he was Number One and destroyed the Village.

In Casino Royale, Bond bankrupted Le Chiffre who was then assassinated by SMERSH. This tradition of the evil organization eliminating its own failures was continued both by SPECTRE and by Thrush.

Three Organizations

There are three versions of SMERSH:

a real WWII counter-espionage organization;

a fictional organization introduced in Ian Fleming's first James Bond novel;

an organization described in a dodgy dossier that was handed in to The Sunday Times and that influenced Fleming's presentation of the fictional organization in his fifth James Bond novel.

(This explains, if it does not excuse, Fleming's claim, in an initialed author's note, that From Russia, With Love presents an accurate account of SMERSH.)

There are perhaps three versions of SPECTRE:

a fictional organization in a screen treatment by Ian Fleming, Kevin McClory and Jack Whittingham;

a fictional organization introduced in Fleming's novelization of the screen treatment;

a larger fictional organization introduced in the first Sean Connery James Bond film.

There are two accounts of Thrush:

it is introduced in The Man From UNCLE TV series;

it is creatively elaborated in David McDaniel's original UNCLE novels.

Since Fleming had planned a James Bond TV series and also had some input into the UNCLE TV series, there is a direct line of descent from SMERSH through SPECTRE to Thrush. Furthermore, former members of the disbanded SMERSH joined SPECTRE and former members of the WWII SMERSH might well have joined Thrush.

Thrush In McDaniel's Novels

I think that The Man From UNCLE TV series and novels developed separate terminologies. Thus, "Thrush Central" on TV but "the Council" and "satrapies" in the books, although David McDaniel pulled it all together and gave Thrush a history.

Ward Baldwin, the "Satrap" of San Francisco, was the same age as Thrush. Thus, it had always existed in his experience and he was seventy five when to his surprise it was destroyed in 1970. However, he had been primarily interested in the scientific research aspect of his work for the organization and his life continued without much change after 1970.

McDaniel in effect created characters and an organization that had never been seen in the TV series.

Confirmations

In the 1960s, when I was a fan of the James Bond novels, the James Bond films and The Man From UNCLE TV series, I thought that the Ultimate Computer would be able to match a male character with a perfectly compatible female partner. David McDaniel's The Final Affair reveals that Napoleon Solo married a Thrush agent on precisely this basis. Thrush faked her death when she reported that she would be unable to turn Napoleon.

At least twice in the TV series, there were major power conflicts within Thrush. Mandor, describing himself as "the second man in Thrush" and pretending to defect, got UNCLE to close down only those Thrush bases that were not loyal to him. Two agents were to release a gas that would destroy free will in all human beings except those who were protected with them in their base. They were to be joined there by the current leaders of Thrush but decided to release the gas before those leaders arrived... Of course, UNCLE thwarted the plan in any case. The Final Affair confirms the occurrence of "...a power struggle which had shaken the whole Hierarchy." (p. 56)

Raduysya Mariye

In David McDaniel's unpublished novel,  The Final Affair, Illya Kuryakin prays on a battlefield:

"Raduysya Mariye, blagodati poliaya, Gospod s't'voyu; blagosloyenna ti mezhdu zhenami i blagosloyven' plod' chryena tvoyevo Iisus'. Syvataya Mariye, matyer' Bozhi, ya molu o nas' gruishnikh' ninui, i v' chas' smyerti nashyey. Amin'." (pp. 94-95)

I recognize the prayer because of:


the positioning and repetition of "Mariye";

the positioning of "Iisus";

the phrase "matyer' Bozhi," which looks like "mater (mother) of Someone";

The James Bond novels, which tell us that SMERSH means "SMERt SHpionan," "Death to Spies";

"smyerti," which could be a genitive plural of "smert."

When a few words have been identified, others seem to follow, e.g.: "chas' smyerti nashyey" = "the hour of our deaths"?

Thrush History II

According to Ward Baldwin's reminiscences in The Final Affair:

the First Council was only five men;

the early Hierarchy used Hollerith cards to maintain a central information service about professional criminals in London at the end of the nineteenth century;

the Hierarchy became international in the first twenty years of the twentieth century, partly thanks to the Great War;

the Thrush symbol first appeared on a blazer badge in Chicago in 1923;

the first and fourth decades of the twentieth century were periods of internal reorganization and of a broadening power base;

the Hierarchy profited from both sides during WWII;

the Hierarchy is information, which cannot be destroyed.

We want to read more. David McDaniel transformed an impossibly powerful and well-resourced conspiracy into a barely plausible and fascinating organization with an unexpected history and a unique, complex and intricate structure.

Thrush History

The UNCLE Chronology.

According to this Chronology:

the founders of Thrush first met in 1895;

they built the prototype of the Ultimate Computer in 1898;

they were first called the Circle of Life, then the Krafthaus;

they became "Thrush" in 1919;

Madame Nemirovitch, who joined Thrush in 1922, later claimed to have founded it;

Thrush kept a low profile and possibly helped the Allies during WWII;

the UN and UNCLE were founded in 1946;

Thrush was in major disarray and UNCLE nearly raided Thrush Central in 1968;

the Final Affair was in 1970;

conjecturally, Napoleon Solo became Harry Rule 1972-1982;

Justin Sepheran revived at least part of Thrush in 1983.

These are just the events and dates that I happen to be interested in.

Nothing Ends But It Changes

Nothing ever ends. Having years ago read David McDaniel's The Dagger Affair, in which he introduces the Technological Hierarchy, and having just read McDaniel's The Final Affair, in which UNCLE at last destroys the seventy five year old Hierarchy, I should now read the intermediate volume, The Rainbow Affair, in which McDaniel introduces the idea of the three Ultimate Computers. For those of us who watched The Man From UNCLE TV series and wondered about Thrush, McDaniels provides very satisfying answers about the history and structure of the organization.

Thrush and Patrick McGoohan's Village are two successors of Ian Fleming's SPECTRE. In fact, Thrush is a synthesis:

SMERSH was a state organization for world domination;
SPECTRE was a private organization for private profit;
Thrush was a private organization for world domination;
the Village was - what?

Bond defeated, and Krushchev disbanded, SMERSH;
Bond destroyed SPECTRE twice, then killed Blofeld;
UNCLE destroyed Thrush;
the Prisoner destroyed the Village...

The Village imitated the SPECTRE practice of numbering its members and concealing the identity of "Number One." Which state or other organization ran the Village? The question becomes irrelevant as the Village becomes an allegory for society.

The Final Affair

SPOILER ALERT for anyone who has not yet read The Final Affair by David McDaniel.

No wonder Thrush was so difficult to destroy. It was necessary first to locate and simultaneously capture three mobile Ultimate Computers, then to locate and attack Thrush Island. (There is a SPECTRE Island in one James Bond film and a Thrush Island in this one UNCLE novel.) Even then, national THRUSH leaders will try to re-internationalize the organization. This makes sense of Return Of The Man From UNCLE.

 The biographical details of the main characters as given in this novel differ from the details as given in the recent prequel film. (See here.) In the novel, Solo was still in school in 1949, not leaving the US Army and joining CIA in 1945, and Kuryakin came from the Russian navy, not from KGB.

Three Sequels

Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy has three sequels:

an unpublished manuscript by Stieg Larsson;
two novels by David Lagercrantz;
a film with the same title as Lagercrantz's first novel.

In that third sequel, Lisbeth, now a vigilante, even wears either an eye-mask or white face paint that resembles a mask: an interesting transformation of the character into a standard series avenging heroine.

Meanwhile, I enjoy rereading Larsson's trilogy.

Salander, Vigilante

Some one-off characters are potential series characters, e.g., Frederick Forsyth's Avenger. That is what happens to Lisbeth Salander in the film, not the novel, The Girl in the Spiders' Web. In this version, she regularly attacks men who have abused women and raids their bank accounts for the benefit of the abused women.

Whereas the Swedish TV dramatizations of Stieg Larsson's Millennium novels are recognizable adaptations of Larsson's texts, the Spider's Web film is simply different from the novel after which it is named and should have been given a different title.

As such, it is an interesting adaptation of the original characters.

The Girl In The Spider's Web Film

Stieg Larsson wrote a published trilogy and an unpublished manuscript.

David Lagercrantz has written two published novels based not on the unpublished manuscript written by Larsson but only on the characters created by Larsson. For comments on the first of these two novels, see here.

The film, The Girl In The Spider's Web, is only nominally based on the first novel by Lagercrantz. Thus, it is at two removes from Larsson's trilogy. Lisbeth has become a vigilante against men who hate women. Thus, Lisbeth's known character is fused with the familiar image of a screen vigilante. Bruce Wayne is personally motivated to fight against all crime whereas Lisbeth is motivated to fight against a particular type of crime but this differentiates her from the original Lisbeth who took action against particular men but did not set out to wage a war against all women-hating men.

The Fox by Frederick Forsyth

Etruscan is indecipherable. Hackers do not have to decipher top secret passwords, just find out what they are, but how do they do that? Is hacking on the scale described in The Fox possible? Is anyone doing it?

Two novels by Forsyth end with a big political change:

the restoration of Tsarism in Icon;
the overthrow of Kim III in Korea in The Fox.

On the other hand, The Fox, like Wells' The Time Machine and The First Men in The Moon, ends with a return to life as normal because the Fox loses his hacking ability.

Instead of SMERSH, the Russian President now contacts a London-based billionaire who hires criminals. The climax with the elimination of the sniper and then of the Russian intelligence chief is neat.

Where The Line Is Drawn XXVIII

"They could reinterpret international legal conventions as they pleased, they could label all criticism as anti-Semitic, they could blast Palestinians from the air, they could take their land and water, and they could get away with it. Because the world would be tolerant." (pp. 220-221)

"...a number of Yemini Jews took to wearing T-shirts which read: 'I'm a Yemini Jew', to avoid being mistaken for Arabs and attacked." (p. 221)

When a member of staff at the Hebrew University was asked whether he understood the significance of making Arab workers wear yellow tags for identification, he replied that the tags were orange.

"It is never right to conflate tragedies, but it is also wrong to use one tragedy to justify another, as Israeli propagandists have done." (p. 222)

"So worried is Israel by the memory of the Nakba that in March 2011 the Israeli Knesset passed the Nakba Law, depriving any state-funded body that commemorated the Nakba of its budget. In this way, Israel is attempting to erase the memory of the most traumatic event in Palestinian history." (p. 223)

So there are Holocaust deniers and Nakba deniers.

"...the Sephardi Chief Rabbi declared that non-Jews should not be allowed to live in the land of Israel." (p. 224)

Where The Line Is Drawn XXVII

"By Easter week 2016, six months after the [uprising] began, thirty Israelis had lost their lives and over 200 Palestinians had lost theirs. Thousands were imprisoned, including over 400 children." (p. 217)

Resist, yes. Resist with violence, no. Would the Israeli response be less violent if all the resistance were non-violent? I don't know. A pointless question.

International pressure is needed. Boycott and disinvestment. Israel is racist.

Where The Line Is Drawn XXVI

14 Lunch At Everest: Beit Jalla, 2013
"...Judy was one of the women who in December 1988 started Women in Black, holding vigils every Friday at which they carried 'Stop the Occupation' posters in Hagar Square in Jerusalem and endured the hostility of passers-by." (p. 210)

During the uprising that began in October 2015, some resistance was violent, some not, but:

"The Israeli government responded with violence, defining all resistance as terrorism." (p. 216)

Citizens were encouraged to carry weapons and:

"The Palestinians who were shot were often left to bleed to death." (p. 217)

A sergeant in the Israeli army medical corps found a Palestinian lying on the ground bleeding from a bullet wound and shot him point blank in the head. He said, "'This terrorist must die.'" (ibid.) His family hugged him, the Israeli public considered him a hero, thousands demonstrated to support him, 60% of young people thought that he had done right and Netanyahu "...called his family to express his support." (p. 218) Netanyahu also said that fences and barriers would defend Israel "...against the wild beasts." (ibid.)

Where The Line Is Drawn XXV

13 Israel At My Doorstep: Ramallah, 2009 (pp. 193-203)
"As the years went by, the border closed in on us. Israel drew closer and closer to Ramallah. By January 2009, Israel was a mere five kilometres from my home. It had been ten years since I could walk in the valley near my house or drive down the road to A'yn Qenya, to enjoy the spring there." (p. 193)

"On 8 October 1990, after the massacre at Al Aqsa when Israeli police killed some twenty Palestinians and injured over 150, some settlers on their way home shot at the window where my wife was standing. Had Penny not ducked, the bullet would have struck her in the head." (p. 194)

"...the grave of Baruch Goldstein, who murdered twenty-nine Palestinian worshipers at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron in 1994, had become a venerated site." (p. 198)

A settler asked Shehadeh what he was doing there and told him:

"'I'm different from you. I'm living here. Really living here, not just like you.'" (p. 199)

"The man we had encountered was a notorious settler called Flicks, who always came to the village, blocked the road, threw stones at the houses and once threw fruit juice at young men standing by the side of the road. He always went through town on his way to pray at Yad Yair." (p. 200)

(Yad Yair was a shrine to the memory of a murdered settler, Yair Mendelssohn.)

Institutionalized racism: Flicks feels entitled not only to settle but also to abuse those who already live there.

Where The Line Is Drawn XXIV

12 Shocking News: Ramallah, 2006 (pp. 179-191)
The "shocking news" is of the serious illness of the author's Israeli friend, Henry.

Three passages in this chapter are relevant to life and death in Palestine:

"When I arrived home, Ramallah was in mourning. The latest Israeli airstrike on the Gaza Strip had killed fourteen people in twenty-four hours, six from one family who last year had lost four of its members. Among the dead were two infants." (p. 182)

"That morning the body of a young man from the Jewish settlement of Itmar who was kidnapped and killed was found..." (p. 185)

The army arrested a masked young man who confessed. Then:

"The army stormed into Ramallah and arrested Hamas legislators and ministers..." (ibid.)

Henry emailed:

"...an Israeli
"Targeted assassination missile murdered a woman and her seven children:
"How can that be called war
"But bloody, bloody, bloody bloody, bloody, bloody, bloody revenge..." (pp. 187-188)

(I have reproduced the six repetitions of "bloody" and five commas from the text.)

Where The Line Is Drawn XXIII

11 Forbidden Roads: Jerusalem, 2004 (pp. 171-178)
This short chapter must be read in its entirety to be appreciated.

"My agitated mind revived the memory of the death of a relative soon after the occupation. He had been driving alone near the Latrun salient, close to the border with Israel. He was stopped by an army jeep and killed. The soldiers took his black-and-white-checked keffiyeh, dipped it in petrol from his car and set his corpse on fire. A few days later his burnt remains were found by a shepherd." (pp. 175-176)

"The Israelis have been inflexible, allowed to get away with their crimes because of the sympathy felt towards them because of the Holocaust. But this emotional dispensation would eventually run its course." (p. 177)

Israel is also supported for strategic reasons, which cannot last indefinitely.

Once, in a discussion about Israel in a magazine letter column, I argued that all states should be secular and was accused of advocating an Islamic state. The argumentative principle here is: if you dislike what someone says, then denigrate it whatever way you can, even at the expense of forgetting the content of what was in fact said.

Where The Line Is Drawn XXII

Shehadeh writes that certain well dressed and assured members of the Palestinian Authority would never feel any guilt or responsibility because they did not:

"...have an active populace ready to hold [them] accountable." (p. 170)

There are two concepts of leadership: those who "...managed to remain where they were - on top..." (ibid.) and those who encourage and give a lead to popular action.

"...I wondered who to blame for the death of the young men in Jenin. Israel and its brutal policies, of course, but also the Palestinian leadership for its failure to lead. If it couldn't assume responsibility for its own people, its failure was criminal." (ibid.)

Shehadeh condemns "...the appalling actions of the Palestinians who killed innocent civilians..." (p. 159), the brutal policies of Israel and the criminal failure of the Palestinian Authority. I agree with him - but, living on a peaceful, racially mixed street in the North West of England, I am not in danger of being fired at by both sides.

Where The Line Is Drawn XXI

"Perhaps it was a mistake not to bring up the subject of how [Henry] could situate his office in a house that had been taken by force, with no compensation paid to its original owners. Yet somehow we had to conduct our friendship on a plane above and outside politics. How long this would be possible, I didn't know. I suppose it would depend on whether I could remain calm." (p. 158)

There is a spectrum of possible responses from not caring how Henry had acquired the building to severing all contact with Henry - to bombing his office. Shehadeh is somewhere on the spectrum between not caring and severing contact. Some people think that anything that a government does is right.

Where The Line Is Drawn XX

"Shehadeh's Jewish Israeli friend, Henry:

"...lived in an attractive, quiet area with parks and clean, well-ordered streets - amenities that our cities could not enjoy after the large-scale confiscation of Palestinian land." (pp. 155-156)

"What made our meetings easier was that this time Henry and I were politically on the same side. My heart was not with this armed struggle against Israel, which I saw as futile, but I was still trying to understand and make sense of it all and needed Henry's help." (p. 156)

Injustice can and should be opposed by campaigns, demonstrations, lobbies, boycotts, strikes, occupations and, unless we are pacifists, sometimes by armed struggle. Communities and individuals certainly have a right of self-defense against an oppressive state.

Accidental Associations

Because of a reference to the Azores in Julian May's The Many-Colored Land, I reread "Hob's Leviathan" in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: Worlds' End and then remembered what was happening with my family and also my work in 1993, twenty six years ago. See also Literary Associations.

Where The Line Is Drawn XIX

10 Crossings During The Second Intifada: Ramallah, 2000 (pp. 155-170)
"In September 2000, five years after the Oslo Accords, came a second, more violent intifada. Israel immediately imposed more restrictions on movement and forbade us from using many of the roads." (p. 155)

In September 2000, I stopped working in Merseyside and started to work in Lancashire. This meant that I again lived full-time in Lancaster instead of commuting once or twice weekly to a bed-sit in Merseyside. Over the years, the bed-sit had moved from Crosby to Southport, both in Sefton, to Knowsley to Liverpool. Of course, I did not have to pass through military check-points while traveling.

Although I am involved in political activities, I am no way as well informed as many of many comrades on foreign affairs and international struggles. I remember that Palestine was an issue when I was at University in Dublin in the 1960s and when I was at Manchester Polytechnic, 1981-'82. Then this second intifada was still in the future. I was also under pressure at work in 2000 and might have been even less aware of less immediate (to me) issues.

"...in West Jerusalem...the municipal government, which was also responsible for East Jerusalem, provided well for all its Jewish residents while neglecting its Palestinian residents." (ibid.)

There is injustice and resistance.