Tsing-Boum!, Commissaris Van der Valk and Indo-China in Crime Fiction

Funny how so many of the great crime and espionage writers have taken excursions to Asia in their careers. Of course Graham Greene wrote The Quiet American (1955) about Indo-China and set largely in Saigon while John Le Carre’s The Honourable Schoolboy (1977) is still by far one of the best books about Hong Kong, and one of the only featuring Vientiane. Eric Ambler, the great espionage writer of the 1930s, dipped into Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore and Indonesia in Passage of Arms (1959). In fact that’s a pretty good reading list to kick of 2014 if you haven’t read those books.

One writer who also has a fleeting venture to the region is Nicholas Freeling, the creator of the Commissaris Van der Valk series, of which there are about a dozen novels featuring the Amsterdam-based detective. Tsing-Boum! (1969) is one of the later ones in the series and has the Commissaris travelling to France and Belgium on the trail of a murder which has its origins in the French debacle at Dien Bien Phu (a central event for Greene too obviously) and recriminations that ratchet down the decades….

 

Anna May Wong – Happy Birthday

Anna May Wong – born today in 1905….seen here in Limehouse Blues (1934)

Uncle Bill, the problems with “official” biographies and WW2 Burma

Though the publishers loudly trumpet it – I’d argue that “written with the full co-operation of the Slim family” is a worry rather than an endorsement. There is a problem with biography, or writing about anyone who has ancestors still knocking about (believe me, I should know!) – they tend to see their ancestors differently to the historian, the biographer or the story teller. Consequently they get very defensive and irate if you deviate from their family-agreed script (again, believe me, I should know!). This is why “official biography” is invariably boring and rote compared to the “unofficial” – the “official” biographer always has (either metaphorically or actually) a concerned and censoring descendent looking over their shoulder as they write. A biogapher must be able to research and interpret a person without fear or favour….Yes, you get access to all sorts of things; yes, you avoid treading on any toes and ending up in feuds with unhappy family members (I know, I know) who think anything less than sainthood for their esteemed ancestor is treachery, but you don’t inevitably capture the subject….

That’s the problem with this new biography of Field Marshal Viscount Slim, Uncle Bill – it’s largely a piece of fluffery to big up the man and so ensure co-operation from the family – it’s official, approved and we get all the minor charitable acts and the sort of things families like to boast about but not so much of the man himself with all the messy conundrums Slim, and the rest of us, are all made up of. Still, for those characters that are not being “officially” bio-ed here things get more interesting – Stilwell and his hatred of the Brits, the vainglorious Wingate, the problematic Chinese of course and Chiang Kai-shek’s failure to commit in Burma. Worth a read, but with the same pinch of salt you take tales of your marvellous old Uncle Stan from your loving old Aunt Agatha…

In 2011 the National Army Museum conducted a poll to decide who merited the title of ‘Britain’s Greatest General’. In the end two men shared the honour. One, predictably, was the Duke of Wellington. The other was Bill Slim. Had he been alive, Slim would have been surprised, for he was the most modest of men – a rare quality among generals. Of all the plaudits heaped on him during his life, the one he valued most was the epithet by which he was affectionately known to the troops: ‘Uncle Bill’.

Born in Bristol in 1891, the son of a small-time businessman, he was commissioned as a temporary Second Lieutenant on the outbreak of the First World War. Seriously wounded twice, in Gallipoli and Mesopotamia, he was awarded the Military Cross in 1918. Between the wars he served in the Indian Army with the Gurkhas and began writing short stories to supplement his income.

Promotion came rapidly with the Second World War, and in March 1942 he was sent to Burma to take command of the First Burma Corps, then in full flight from the advancing Japanese. Through the force of his leadership, Slim turned disorderly panic into a controlled military withdrawal across the border into India. Two years later, having raised and trained the largest army ever assembled by Britain, Slim returned to drive the enemy out of Burma and shatter the myth of Japanese invincibility which had hamstrung Allied operations in the East for so long. Probably the most respected and loved military leader since the Duke of Marlborough, he later became a popular and successful Governor-General of Australia in 1953, was raised to the peerage, and died in London in 1970.

A Rather Risque Happy New Year in a Chinese lanterns sort of way….

A parasol, a lantern and a bit of titillation to get is started on 2014….From the French (of course!)…

Happy New Year…in a year Chinoiserie style of course

China Rhyming strides forth into 2014….with more of the same….

Merchant Adventurers – Tudors Looking for China in the Wrong Place

James Evans’s Merchants Adventurers is the story of the English 1553 expedition to find a northern passage to Asia and so avoid Spanish controlled waters. Of course there is no northern passage but Tudors in search of China, what a way to end the year’s China reading, or start 2014’s….

A Little Festive Treat – Hermoine Gingold Sings “Cocaine” and Vincent Price Does Opium

What better at this surreal time of year than the great Hermione Gingold singing Cocaine with visuals added from the 1962 Vincent Price movie Confessions of an Opium Eater. Click here for some entertainment.

Some background – Hermoine Gingold was the great and much loved entertainer and actress who’s cabaret shows were legendary – Cocaine is featured on two of her cabaret albums – La Gingold (1955 but this song probably record in 1953) and Live at the Cafe de Paris ( a couple of years later in the 1950s). As an actress most people know her from Gigi and The Music Man. Who exactly wrote the words for Cocaine is somewhat of a mystery (to me at least) – nobody I can find is credited indicating that it was Gingold herself (she was a very funny writer – just try her autobiography if you don’t believe me). Interestingly, and also adding a hand in the song, might have been Eric Maschwitz who was Gingold’s husband at the time – Maschwitz had worked as a lyricist in the 1930s and 40’s and the two were married between 1926 and 1945. Here two China Rhyming interest overlap – during this time Maschwitz worked in Hollywood for MGM and while there had an affair with Anna May Wong and reputedly wrote the song These Foolish Things for her when they separated and he returned to London (see my blog post on Maschwitz and Wong here).

Now to Confessions of an Opium Eater from 1962, based rather loosely on the Thomas de Qincey book (giving de Quincey, who wrote the book in 1821, a rather deserved IMDB entry!). A Vincent Price vehicle, it was rather poor. It was known in the US – where apparently de Qincey’s book was thought to not be well known as Souls for Sale and Evils of Chinatown.

And a Final Merry Christmas on Boxing Day….

From the early 1900s….(when attitudes were different!!) – but you get the sentiment…