Alex Butterworth

This is a vivid insight into the society and culture of Pompeii during the twenty-odd years leading up to the 79AD eruption. I thoroughly recommend it as preparatory reading for a visit to Pompeii, or as follow-up reading afterwards. One of the authors is a novelist, the other a historian: the result is a delightfully lively intertwining of history and fictional vignettes. which are based on the lives of people who are known to have lived in the city. And, for all those who learned Latin through the Cambridge Schools books - Caecilius makes an appearance. To sum up: this is a very easy-to-read, absorbing book and a great way to learn more about the background of the period.… (meer)

Why is this book a must-read? The detail is amazing! The author makes you feel as if you know the people of Pompeii, largely due to his use of the graffiti, documents found, and the archaeological record. It was fascinating to see the passage of time and events in the years leading to the city's destruction and the horrific deaths of its inhabitants. Did you know that Pompeii had suffered a terrible earthquake years before the big event? I didn't. The final chapter was a real page-turner but at the same time was hard to read. I didn't want anyone to die, especially not the children. Sometimes history just doesn't let you have the option of a happy ending. I think what I will take away from this book most are just how very human people always have been, for better and for worse, and just how fragile our lives really are.… (meer)

Alex Butterworth has put a huge amount of work into this, essentially a history of anarchism and its off shoots from the Paris Commune to the First World War. In parallel he traces the shadowy world of spies, provocateurs, agents, double agents and triple agents and general betrayal fermented by the Okhrana in particular. Despite the title, this is not a world that never was - it was a world that very much existed and there were plenty of corpses to prove it.

Its a fascinating period - the birth of modern surveillance and manipulation techniques, the birth of terrorism as individualist anarchists adopted "propaganda by deed" - largely bombing outrages and assassinations, and the repressive responses of the governments of France, Russia, Italy and Spain (with Britain taking a much more tolerant attitude). Readers will be particularly struck by some of the parallels with today; young men burning with passionate idealism, with little to lose, manipulated into violence and seemingly content to die. The panicky response of government will be familiar too

Butterworth is good on the main characters; the ubiquitous Louise Michel, the saintly Kropotkin, the shadowy Rachovsky, the tireless Malatesta. But a stream of other characters weave in and out of the narrative sometimes with a gap of 100 pages - by which time you've forgotten who they are. Yes, there is a list of Dramatis Personae to help with this, but its still confusing. As for the world of secret agents - well, Butterworth has done well to achieve the clarity that he has given the lack of documentation of much of this, but I defy any reader to make sense of the actions of the agent variously known as Hekkelman, Landesman and Harting and especially those of Evno Azef .

Some events are handled well. The rise of the Commune, the subsequent deportation to New Caledonia of the survivors, the development of revolutionary emigre society in London, the rise of violent anarchism in the early 1890s. But in general the scope is just too broad to keep track of a lot of the threads that Butterworth spins out but doesn't really tie back together

Very worthy, and a mighty effort of research, but only about 70% successful I'd say… (meer)