Category: Reading Challenges

Buchan of the Month/Book Review: Memory Hold-the-Door by John Buchan

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Buchan of the Month

MemoryHoldTheDoorAbout the Book

John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir (1875-1940) completed his autobiography not long before his death. A highly accomplished man, his was a life of note. Although now known by many chiefly as an author, he was also an historian, Unionist politician and Governor General of Canada. Although he stated that it was not strictly an autobiography, Memory Hold-the-Door provides a reflective, personal account of his childhood in Scotland, his literary work from his time at Oxford University to the famous Hannay and Leithen stories and his extensive public service in South Africa, Scotland, France in the Great War, and Canada. Known in the United States as Pilgrim’s Way, Memory Hold-the-Door was reportedly one of the favourite books of John F. Kennedy.

Format: Hardcover         Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 1964 [1940]  Genre: Nonfiction, Memoir

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk ǀ Amazon.com
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find Memory Hold-the-Door on Goodreads

My Review

Memory Hold-the-Door is the penultimate book in my Buchan of the Month reading project for 2018.  You can find out more about the project plus my reading list for 2018 here and read my introduction to the book here.   Memory Hold-the-Door is also one of the books I read for Nonfiction November.

On 5th February 1940, Buchan wrote to his sister, Anna, ‘I have finished my novel [Sick Heart River] and my autobiography’. The following day, Buchan suffered the cerebral thrombosis that ultimately proved fatal and he died on 12th February.  Some time before Buchan had told a correspondent that Memory Hold-the-Door was ‘not an ordinary autobiography or any attempt to tell the unimportant story of my life; but rather an attempt to pick out certain high lights and expound the impressions made upon me at different stages’.

Buchan made a deliberate choice not to write about anyone still alive, including family members, so there are only a few passing mentions of his wife and children in Memory Hold-the-Door.  There is, however, this lovely sentiment: ‘I have been happy in many things, but all my other good fortune has been as dust  in the balance compared with the blessing of an incomparable wife.’

There are generous and astute pen pictures of contemporary figures of note with whom Buchan came into contact during a life and career that encompassed the law, colonial administration, publishing, journalism, work in military intelligence, service as an MP and as Governor-General of Canada, as well as the writing for which he is now best known.  Such figures include Lord Grey, Arthur Balfour, Lord Haig and King George V.

Of the latter, Buchan writes: ‘He did me the honour to be amused by my romances [by which Buchan means his adventure stories and historical novels], and used to make acute criticisms on questions of fact.  Of one, a poaching story of the Highlands [which I assume to be John Macnab], he gave me a penetrating analysis, but he approved of it sufficiently to present many copies of it to his friends.’

I particularly enjoyed Buchan’s portrait of his friendship with T. E. Lawrence which to me appears insightful despite Buchan’s own remark that ‘there is no brush fine enough to catch the subtleties of his mind, no aerial viewpoint high enough to being into one picture the manifold of his character’.   Buchan recalls, ‘He would turn up without warning at Elsfield [Buchan’s Oxfordshire home] at any time of the day or night on his motor-cycle Boanerges, and depart as swiftly and mysteriously as he came’.  Buchan remembers Lawrence’s ‘delightful impishness’ but also his depression following what he considered his failure on behalf of the Arabs.  Buchan writes: ‘In 1920 his whole being was in grave disequilibrium.  You cannot in any case be nine time wounded, four times in an air crash, have many bouts of fever and dysentery, and finally at the age of twenty-nine take Damascus at the head of an Arab army, without living pretty near the edge of your strength’.  Quite.

Most touching are the portraits of friends, many of whom sadly died in the First World War (as did one of Buchan’s brothers, Alastair) .  Some of these portraits also appear in Buchan’s book These For Remembrance, originally privately printed.

Elsewhere in Memory Hold-the-Door he writes about his student days (including some high jinks) at Oxford University, his admiration for America and its people, his love of fishing and mountaineering, and his experience of the absurdities of the House of Commons (which I suspect may be largely unchanged).  ‘There are seats for only about three-fourths of the members, and these seats are uncomfortable; the ventilation leaves the head hot and the feet cold; half the time is spent dragging wearily in and out of lobbies, voting on matters about which few members know anything; advertising mountebanks can waste a deal of time; debates can be as dull as a social science congress in the provinces…’  However, for balance, he does go on to say that ‘speeches are shorter and of a far higher quality than in any other legislative assembly’.

The book is written in Buchan’s customary effortless prose style and while some of the people he writes about may no longer be familiar to or of interest to the modern reader, it does give a fascinating insight into an admittedly elite stratum of society of that time and Buchan’s personal philosophy and beliefs or his ‘creed’ as he refers to it.  About his own writing, he describes himself as a ‘copious romancer’ and ‘a natural story-teller, the kind of man who for the sake of his yarns would in prehistoric days have been given a seat by the fire and a special chunk of mammoth’.

One of Buchan’s last acts as Governor-General of Canada was to sign that country’s entry into the Second World War.  With remarkable prescience, he writes in the final chapters of Memory Hold-the-Door of his fears for the future.  ‘We have lived by toleration, rational compromise and freely expressed opinion, and we have lived very well.  But we had come to take these blessings for granted, like the air we breathed. […] Today we have seen those principles challenged… We have suddenly discovered that what we took for the enduring presuppositions of our life are in danger of being destroyed.’   Indeed, Buchan had remarked earlier in the book that ‘the study of [history] is the best guarantee against repeating it’.

Next month’s Buchan of the Month is Sick Heart River, Buchan’s last novel which was published posthumously.  Along with Mr. Standfast, it is my favourite of his novels.  Look out for my introduction to the book next week and my review towards the end of the month.

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In three words: Reflective, friendship, personal

Try something similar…Unforgettable, Unforgotten by Anna Buchan

John BuchanAbout the Author

John Buchan (1875 – 1940) was an author, poet, lawyer, publisher, journalist, war correspondent, Member of Parliament, University Chancellor, keen angler and family man.  He was ennobled and, as Lord Tweedsmuir, became Governor-General of Canada.  In this role, he signed Canada’s entry into the Second World War.   Nowadays he is probably best known – maybe only known – as the author of The Thirty-Nine Steps.  However, in his lifetime he published over 100 books: fiction, poetry, short stories, biographies, memoirs and history.

You can find out more about John Buchan, his life and literary output by visiting The John Buchan Society website.

Book Review: Song of Praise for a Flower by Fengxian Chu and Charlene Chu

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Song of Praise for a FlowerAbout the Book

For nearly two decades, this manuscript lay hidden in a Chinese bank vault until a long-lost cousin from America inspired 92-year-old author Fengxian Chu to unearth it.

Song of Praise for a Flower traces a century of Chinese history through the experiences of one woman and her family, from the dark years of World War II and China’s civil war to the tragic Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution, and beyond. It is a window into a faraway world, a sweeping epic about China’s tumultuous transformation and a harrowing yet ultimately uplifting story of a remarkable woman who survives it all and finally finds peace and tranquillity.

Chu’s story begins in the 1920s in an idyllic home in the heart of China’s rice country. Her life is a struggle from the start. At a young age, she defies foot-binding and an arranged marriage and sneaks away from home to attend school. Her young adulthood is thrown into turmoil when the Japanese invade and ransack her village. Later her family is driven to starvation when Mao Zedong’s Communist Party seizes power and her husband is branded a ‘bad element.’  After Mao’s death in the 1970s, as China picks up the pieces and moves in a new direction, Chu eventually finds herself in a glittering city on the sea adjacent to Hong Kong, worlds away in both culture and time from the place she came from.

Format: eBook, paperback (488 pp.)                    Publisher:
Published: 21st November 2017    Genre: Memoir, History, Non-Fiction

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk  ǀ  Amazon.com
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find Song of Praise for a Flower on Goodreads

My Review

Sometimes you read a book that puts everyday petty concerns into perspective.   Song of Praise for a Flower is such a book.

The subtitle ‘One Woman’s Journey through China’s Tumultuous 20th Century’ barely does justice to the remarkable story of Fengxian Chu contained within the book.  It’s a story that her cousin, Charlene Chu, helped translate from manuscript into book form, adding historical and cultural context where necessary but never losing Fengxian’s powerful narrative voice.

Fengxian’s story takes the reader on a journey from the constraints of a traditional Chinese upbringing through separation, bereavement, ostracism, poverty, near starvation, physical hardship and cruelty – some at the hands of individuals and even family members, some at the hands of the state.  Such is the suffering depicted, that at times it is definitely not an easy read.

However, it’s also compelling as a story of determination, fortitude, love and triumph over adversity.  It’s also a source of great wisdom:

  • ‘One important lesson I have learned is that happiness does not fall from the sky; it is earned through painstaking effort.’
  • ‘Age gives us wisdom, but it doesn’t always give us answers.’
  • ‘Life can be a song or a whine. I prefer to sing.’

Along the way, the reader learns much about Chinese culture, customs and ways of thinking and the events of a period of extraordinary political and cultural change in China’s history.  Probably the aspect I found most difficulty with was Fengxian’s seemingly fatalistic attitude to life.  Even when poverty results in family bereavement, she ascribes this to ‘bad fate’, believing ‘good fate’ would have seen the bereaved born into a wealthier family. To me, this seemed to contradict some of Fengxian’s belief in the importance of effort in attaining happiness.

How Fengxian survived what she did and lived to tell the tale is both amazing and inspiring.  In her dedication, Fengxian writes: ‘It is my own belief that one of the most priceless possessions one has in this world is his or her story.  Each life is a drama.  Some scenes are sweet and joyful, others tragic and sad. But what is most important is one’s performance…reaction in the face of adversity, and…willingness to participate.’

Judge for yourself by reading an excerpt from the book here.

I was introduced to the opportunity to read this book thanks to Penny at Author Marketing Expert and received a review copy courtesy of its co-author, Charlene Chu.  Song of Praise for a Flower was a book I read for the Nonfiction November reading challenge.

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In three words: Inspiring, dramatic, uplifting

Try something similar… (fiction) The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck or (nonfiction) The Inn of the Sixth Happiness [original title: The Small Woman] by Alan Burgess

About the Author – Fengxian Chu

Raised in Hunan Province, China, Fengxian Chu spent most of her life living and working on a farm. She attended college briefly, but her education was interrupted when the Japanese army invaded her village in the 1940s. A writer and poet from a young age, she is unique among her generation of rural Chinese women, the majority of whom never attended school and are illiterate. Song of Praise for a Flower is Fengxian’s first work to be published, and among the only known first-person accounts from a woman of her generation about life during China’s turbulent past century. Now in her 90s, she enjoys gardening and spending time with her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. She resides in Shenzhen, China.

Charlene ChuAbout the Author – Charlene Chu

Co-author Charlene Chu, Fengxian’s first cousin, grew up in the United States and wrote the English rendering of Song of Praise for a Flower. A financial analyst well-known for her work on China’s economy and financial sector, she is quoted widely in the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Bloomberg, Business Insider and other media outlets. She holds an MBA and MA in International Relations from Yale University. Song of Praise for a Flower is her first book. Charlene splits her time between Washington, DC and Hong Kong. (Photo credit: Goodreads author page)

Connect with Charlene

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