Wednesday 20 December 2017

2017's Best Podcasts

This year I have mostly been listening to Podcasts whilst cycling around Denmark.  The usual suspects  BBC Radio 4's podcasts - In Our Time and Great Lives plus the Friday Night Comedy - have been much enjoyed travelling companions but for me 2 independent Podcasts have stood out:

James Holland's Chalke Valley History Hit and;

Dan Snow's History Hit have proven to be very high quality productions with fascinating topics.  

The Chalke Valley History Hit provides roughly hour long talks recorded at Chalke Valley History Festival's over the years and topics this year have ranged from Andrew Marr's take on Brexit and Tory leadership contenders to succeed Theresa May to Bettany Hughes' history of Istanbul.  Himmler's Great Niece talks of the struggles of the family in coming to terms with their infamous relative whilst James Holland tells the story of Dunkirk. For me though the best episode was undoubtedly the one in which Jung Chang spoke of the Empress Dowager Cixi.  This particular episode talks of a figure that will be unfamiliar to Western Audiences by an author with a superb grasp of modern Chinese history and who herself witness Mao's cultural revolution 1st hand.  If you listen to nothing else from 2017 listen to this podcast.


Dan Snow's history hit has a similar wide sweep but is wonderfully prolific and reactive to ongoing world events with 'emergency podcasts' on Theresa May's calling of the UK General Election in 2017 and then another on the unexpected outcome of that election, the troubles in Catalonia and the toppling of Confederate memorial in the US as well as Donald Trump's policy of recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital provide great topics for Dan and his expert witnesses to provide historical insight on these current events.  The rate at which Dan produces high quality insightful podcasts is stunning - sometimes new episodes appear on a daily basis and the historians who contribute are leaders in their fields - from Margaret MacMillan to Mary Beard to Anne Applebaum to Niall Ferguson

Highly Commended:

Other podcasts that I have dipped in and out of this year include:



Brian Moore's Full Contact which given how much I dislike Moore's commentary on rugby matches on BBC has been a revelation as it is balanced, informative and very enjoyable though I tend only to listen on International weekends it has been a must listen in a Lion Year.

Remainiacs - only recently discovered this keeps me in my happy place.  Ian Dunt and crew with 'a no flim flam Brexit podcast for everyone who knows that leaving the EU won't be un morceau de gateau. We're not sick of experts and we won't shut up and get over it.'

The Outdoors Station - Bob Cartwright has passed the 10 million download mark thisyear and still produces this excellent podcast the highlight this year for me being his 2 Moors Way Trip from South to North across Devon.  Bob also produced a You Tube record of the trip well worth a watch.

Friday 8 December 2017

Ascent; a life spent climbing on the edge by Chris Bonington; read 28 November 2017

I am no climber, and never will be but have enjoyed, both vicariously and with envy, the adventures of Bonington though it is now over 30 years since I read Bonington's 'The Everest Years' that lead me to go on to read his other autobiographical works – 'I chose to Climb' and 'The Next Horizon'.  I was dubious whether a new autobiography would add much to what I had already read, other than to refresh my memory, especially as 'The Everest Years' had ended with the then 50-year-old author's summiting of Everest it was unlikely that age would bring greater adventures. How wrong I was.
Of course, there is familiarity in his re-telling the tales of the Eiger, Annapurna, K2, the Ogre and Everest adventures but not only did the author continue to climb in the Himalaya in his sixties and elsewhere – notably in Morocco - into his seventies (indeed the book opens with his climbing the Old Man of Hoy aged 80 in 2014) but this is also a more personal book than his earlier autobiographies.  There is much more here on the author's earlier life with many gaps filled in by his mother's unpublished autobiography.  The early unconventional (for the 1940s) family life is covered with honesty – his father's desertion and his mother's arguments with her own mother, her same sex relationship and attempted suicide are all here.  Also here is the story of his own long 1st marriage to Wendy and the support she gave not only to her often absent husband but also to the partners of the many climbers lost on expeditions – the roll call is long as Bonington, in reflective mood, notes that 'Four of the eight lead climbers on Annapurna's south face died in the mountains, all of them great friends. Of the four of us who climbed Kongur, I have been the only survivor for over thirty years, after Al Rouse died in 1986.'
As Bonington was a trailblazer for the professionalisation of Mountaineering in Britain – and one of the 1st to make a reasonably good living from it, not only has he been the face of Mountaineering in the British media for 50 years he has had to work to maintain that position in order to continue to earn his crust.  It was this logic that drove him to be a reporter covering the Eiger Direct climb and after a stint of photo-journalism covering Blashford-Snell's 1968 expedition that led him back to lead expeditions in the Himalayas in the 70s and early 80s.  In that time, the nature of the game changed from siege to Alpine style climbing and for most of this period Bonington was away from home and at the same time Bonington's fame, if not fortune, grew. When asked 'how I justified it when I had a wife and two sons. There is no justification; it was my thirst for adventure, undoubtedly selfish, that drove me on' Bonington is honest but I feel a little too hard on himself – after all he did need to earn his crust though undoubtedly his family paid a price.  With frank honesty he discusses that price that was paid as he chronicles his oldest surviving son's late teenage drug habit and run ins with the law.  This could be laid at the feet of an absent father but happily Joe is today himself a successful businessman in outdoor adventure so, perhaps, his father's influence has been more favourable than he credits.
The final chapters of this superb book are both poignant and inspirational.  They tell of the tragedy of the developing illness (MND) and  loss of his wife, Wendy and the intense grief that this brings but they also tell of the development of a new romance and that love is never closed no matter one's age.  This is an enthralling and inspirational book that should make anyone's Christmas reading list – you don't need to be a climber , or even an outdoors person to enjoy it.  The final words I shall leave to Sir Christian Bonnington:
"What I wanted was to make every single day of my eighties mean something, get out and climb and walk, enjoy my grandchildren, keep working and make life as rich and exciting as it possibly can be."