The Raven's Book Bunker

The Raven's Book Bunker Featuring the novels, blogs and various musings of Rohase Piercy (author of 'My Dearest Holmes') and Charlie Raven ('A Case Of Domestic Pilfering').

This is such a beautiful concept, sharing a series of recipes in honour of the various brave women who've been incarcera...
08/09/2026

This is such a beautiful concept, sharing a series of recipes in honour of the various brave women who've been incarcerated by the Iranian regime in Evin Prison (where the author herself is still a prisoner) - I wish I could have enjoyed it more than I did, but I found the presentation rather confusing, with several different women being mentioned at once, and their backstories sometimes told in footnotes and sometimes within the text - often with some of the details of their 'crimes' and treatment glossed over, or so it seemed to me. I'm sure this is because some of the things these poor women undergo at the hands of the prison authorities are so awful, so humiliating, that the author did not want to describe them too graphically, but for a Western reader it made everything somewhat vague and confusing. Which is a shame, because I wanted to honour and remember at least some of the women in my heart - I know about Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, of course, having followed her story, but most of the others are still vague, indistinct names to me.
The recipes are wonderful, but even there I have a niggle - I'm a savoury-over-sweets girl, and of the sixteen recipes, only two are savoury - the rest are so very sweet and rich that instead of salivating I was left feeling slightly nauseous!
However this is still a brave and unique read, and something that I hope will raise awareness in the West of what Iranian women are going through all the time under the current brutal and misogynistic regime.

I really enjoyed this, the third in the 'Women of Troy' series and a worthy successor to 'The Silence of the Girls'.'The...
06/09/2026

I really enjoyed this, the third in the 'Women of Troy' series and a worthy successor to 'The Silence of the Girls'.
'The Voyage Home' concentrates on the fate of the prophetess Cassandra, daughter of the defeated King Priam of Troy, awarded to King Agamemnon of Mycenae as a trophy of war and taken 'home' with him to Mycenae as a concubine. It's mainly told in first person from the point of view of Cassandra's allotted personal slave Ritza, whom readers of the trilogy will remember as the herbalist whose concoctions offered relief to women suffering the effects of sexual violence; though occasionally the perspective shifts to include those of Cassandra herself and of Clytemnestra, Agamemnon's Queen, who for the whole ten years of the Trojan War has been plotting revenge on her husband for his sacrificing of their daughter Iphigenia to ensure a fair wind for the Greek fleet departing for Troy.
Anyone familiar with the Greek myths knows how the story unfolds: Clytemnestra and her accomplice Aegisthus (not her lover, in Barker's version) succeed in killing both Agamemnon and Cassandra, and his son Orestes returns to avenge his death, in cahoots with little sister and confirmed Daddy's girl Electra. But what happens to Ritza, who both loves and hates the mad, God-tormented mistress to whom she is bound intimately and at close quarters, and who has reasons of her own for wanting to escape the palace at Mycenae? As always, Pat Barker presents the ordinary lives and perspective of the lowly, downtrodden women on the margins of the Greek epics with authenticity, empathy and credibility. An immersive and ultimately satisfying read!

31/08/2026

This is a ground-breaking book that everyone should read! Delving deep into historical records, parish records, literature, language and the structures of Tudor society, Miranda Kaufmann proves beyond doubt that the lives of people of African descent living in Tudor Britain were actually very different from what is popularly supposed. Tudor England was a hotch-potch of different nationalities, particularly in the big cities, and when it came to foreign individuals, three things mattered: their nationality, whereby one might judge their political allegiances; their social standing - ie were they nobility, trade, military or servants (and if the latter, what grade of servant); and crucially, their religion, Christianity being the only faith that entitled one to a respectable identity, marriage licence, decent burial etc. The colour of a person's skin, while it may have been remarked upon in passing, was not a matter for judgement. And while commonly referred to as 'Blackamoors' or 'Negroes' - words which have a loaded connotation to modern ears - these descriptions of Black individuals were no more pejorative than the words 'Frenchman' or 'Spaniard' (indeed less so, given the state of relations between France, Spain and Tudor England!)
The histories of ten Black Tudor individuals are brought to life in this volume: John Blanke, Trumpeter to King Henry VIII; Jacques Francis, a salvage diver employed to retrieve treasure from the sunken Mary Rose; Diego, a sailor who accompanied Sir Francis Drake on his attempted circumnavigation of the globe; Edward Swarthye, a porter in the service of Sir Edward Wynter; Reasonable Blackman, a silk weaver living with his family in South London; Mary Fillis, a London seamstress; Dederi Jaquoah, a West African Prince who resided in England for two years in order to learn the language and establish favourable trade negotiations; John Antony, a sailor and right-hand man to a former pirate; Anne Cobble, a pr******te famed for her 'soft skin'; and Cattelena, a 'singlewoman' of Almondsbury in Gloucestershire, living independently and selling dairy produce from her cow.
All are fascinating to read, and give the lie to the modern historians' assumption that 'the racialised chattel slavery that developed Colonial America was based on a mind-set imported from England.'
Indeed, Tudor and early Stuart Britain boasted proudly that in sharp contrast to enemy states Spain and Portugal, 'England has too pure an Air for Slaves to breathe in'; William Harrison in his 'Description of England' wrote towards the end of the 16th century that 'As for slaves and bondmen, we have none ... if any come hither from other realms, so soon as they set foot on land they become as free in condition as their masters, whereby all note of servile bo***ge is utterly removed from them.'
'The English Guinea grade in this period was not a slave trade', emphasises Kaufmann; 'In 1620, Captain Richard Jobson was offered the chance to buy some young female slaves on the Gambia River, but refused. He told the African merchant, Bucko Sano, that the English were 'a people who did not deal in any such commodities, neither did we buy or sell one another, or any that had our own shapes'; this was largely true for the Tudor period and remained so for the first four decades of the seventeenth century'.
Of course as we all know, things sadly changed after that and Britain became a major participant in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, to our shame; but I'd like to think that this earlier conviction that Britain had 'too pure an Air for Slaves to breathe in' had something to do with the early abolishing of slavery in England in 1772, and Slavery Abolition Act for British Colonies in 1833.

A beautifully written plea for the Rights of Nature, and in particular for the rights of rivers to flow unimpeded to the...
17/08/2026

A beautifully written plea for the Rights of Nature, and in particular for the rights of rivers to flow unimpeded to the sea and to be free from pollution. Rivers in both New Zealand and Ecuador have been granted these rights in law, and it is to Ecuador that Robert Macfarlane first takes us - from the chalk streams of his native Cambridgeshire to the Rio de Los Cedros that runs through Ecuador's famous cloud forest. We then journey to the Tamil Nadu region of India where several rivers have been declared officially 'dead' due to human pollution; and finally, to the Magpie River that flows into the Gulf of St Lawrence in Quebec.
Each journey involves Macfarlane in some intense relationships, both with the strong and colourful local characters who guide and befriend him (and whom he pays tribute in kind and thoughtful detail) and of course with the rivers themselves, and the natural world through which they flow.
The question that forms the title of the book is actually answered right at the beginning of the narrative, by Mcfarlane's young son Will, who opines that of course a river is alive, and that his father's book dealing with that question will therefore 'be very short'. By the end of the narrative the reader is left in no doubt that a river is not only alive, but is a very powerful and numinous entity - almost, in Mcfarlane's own words, 'a god' - whose wishes and thought processes may be very different from those of humanity, but whose right to flow free from pollution, and from being bricked in or concreted over or dammed, is important not only for the health of its immediate environment but also ultimately for humanity.
It takes a while to read and absorb this book, but it's definitely worth spending time over.

This book has lots of my favourite things in it! The River Thames, and Victorian and modern London; the River Tigris, an...
31/07/2026

This book has lots of my favourite things in it! The River Thames, and Victorian and modern London; the River Tigris, and Ancient Mesopotamia. And threaded through it all is the journey of a single drop of water, journeying through the water cycle through millennia and carrying the memory of all it has witnessed and been part of.
There are three interlocking narratives, told in alternating chapters. In Victorian London, a young boy from the slums, is determined to educate and better himself, and in adulthood becomes an expert on the interpretation of cuneiform, and in particular the translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh - ultimately travelling to the site of ancient Nineveh to try and salvage missing parts of the poem. In 2014 in Iraq, a young Yazidi girl absorbs the history of her family and culture from her grandmother, a water diviner and mystic, as they try to flee the persecution of Islamic State. And in present-day London, a young hydrologist of Iraqi descent struggles to free herself from family pressure to stay in a failing marriage, and meets a tattooist who specialises in ancient cuneiform symbols.
It all links together beautifully, singing the mysteries of Water and Time, and my only reservation is that some of the linking images (eg the lamassu, the human-headed Bulls displayed in the British Museum, and the lapis tablet bearing a dedication to the Goddess Nisaba) could have been showcased more subtly, rather than brought to the reader's attention at every conceivable opportunity, which makes the narrative seem overly contrived.

Such a beautiful and heart breaking read. The narrative style is is clean and straightforward, pared down to the essenti...
20/07/2026

Such a beautiful and heart breaking read. The narrative style is is clean and straightforward, pared down to the essentials, but carrying an emotional punch that will ring true with anyone who is either getting older themselves and looking back, or who has cared for an elderly relative in their final months.
Bosse (Bo) is a stubborn but vulnerable old man whose body has been gradually failing for some time; he lives alone in the house he shared with his wife Frederika, who is now in a nursing home suffering from dementia and no longer able to recognise or relate to either Bo or their son Hans.
Bo is visited by carers four times a day and by Hans at regular intervals, and conducts regular phone calls with his best friend Ture; but his constant companion is his beloved dog, Sixten, to whom he is devoted.
When Hans tries to broach the subject of Sixten's future, pointing out that Bo can no longer care for a dog properly, and that taking walks in the woods at the end of the garden has become a safety hazard, Bo is filled with rage against his son and swears to fight to the bitter end to keep Sixten by his side.
In his mind, Bo keeps up a running conversation with his wife Frederika, keeping her abreast of all the developments and reminding her of all the little details of their life together over the last sixty years. He also reminisces about his own childhood, as the only child of an abusive father and a downtrodden mother, and in the course of his wanderings down memory lane remembers how determined he always was to be a different, and better, kind of father to Hans; he wonders whether he succeeded in this, whether there is time to make amends for all his mistakes as a parent, and finally, whether Hans might have his best interests at heart after all, and be a better son that he's giving him credit for.
All of us who are parents of adult children go through similar thought processes from time to time, and as we approach the end of life the questions grow more urgent, the excuses we've always comforted ourselves with start to ring hollow, and the self-judgement hopefully becomes clearer and more honest. Written in the form of a dairy, interspersed with brief reports from Bo's carers over a period of five months, 'When The Cranes Fly South' is a novel of searing psychological insight and human compassion, beautifully told.

This is a beautifully written, haunting novella set in 1843 - the year of the Great Disruption in the Scottish Church, a...
17/07/2026

This is a beautifully written, haunting novella set in 1843 - the year of the Great Disruption in the Scottish Church, and one of the latter years of the Clearances, where whole communities of the rural poor were turned out of their homes and forcibly relocated by Scottish landowners wanting to clear the land for crops and sheep.
John Ferguson is a Presbyterian Minister involved in setting up the new Free Church (free, that is, from the patronage of Scotland's landowners who had the power to install ministers of their own choice on their estates). Recently married, he worries that he is sacrificing his wife's comfort and security to his strongly held principles, as he has lost his former stipend and they are now facing poverty.
Feeling that he has no choice but to accept a commission from landowner Henry Lowrie to travel to a remote Scottish island and prepare its final inhabitant, known only as Ivar, for eviction and relocation, John leaves his wife Mary to the care of her sister and brother-in-law, promising to be back in a month.
Left behind in Perth, Mary learns only belatedly how dangerous the mission could be for her husband, marooned on the island alone with a wild man who speaks no English, but a combination of an old Scots dialect and the ancient Shetland language, Norn. Fearing for his safety, and having received no communication of his safe arrival, she bravely resolves to follow him and bring him home.
Meanwhile, John has suffered a bad fall on his first day on the island; Ivar finds him unconscious, brings him to the house where he's lived alone for decades with only his horse Peg, an old blind cow, and several chickens for company, and tends to him as he slowly recovers both his wits and his memory.
Left lame and badly injured, John is dependent upon Ivor's care and grateful for his kindness and ministrations; he cannot bring himself to reveal the real reason for his presence on the island, and for the next three weeks the two men live together, slowly developing a halting language of communication along with strong, unacknowledged feelings for one another.
But what to do? What's to become of John's mission, his Free Church, and more importantly, his wife? When Mary finally arrives on the island, only a matter of days in advance of the Lowrie family's steward who is to carry out the eviction of Ivar, a quick decision has to be made.
This is a story that will stay with me, so thoroughly researched and narrated so sparely and yet so lovingly, with the ending left nebulous but hopeful; though I do wish there was a way to find out what happened to the old blind cow, whom I will now worry about for some time!

Drawn back to his native town of Eastbourne by the illness, and then the death, of his beloved mother, Howard Cunnell re...
15/07/2026

Drawn back to his native town of Eastbourne by the illness, and then the death, of his beloved mother, Howard Cunnell reminisces about the various stages of his life, from boyhood to late middle age. An 'East of the Pier' boy from a working class background, he delves into his experiences of footloose travel, marriage, fatherhood, alcohol dependency, and the challenges of finding his feet as a writer. Born by the sea, he is constantly drawn to beaches, both at home on the South Coast of England and on his travels - Mexico, Hawaii - and his love affair with these liminal, elemental spaces sighs through the narrative like waves on shingle. It's beautifully written, with long, meandering sentences that turn in on themselves like receding waves and sometimes last for several pages, yet manage to keep their sense and coherence.
The lead character is not so much Cunnell himself, but his beloved mother, Gillian, who raised him and his brother single-handedly after his feckless father walked out on them, and whose courage, resilience and optimism have obviously been an inspiration to him; and he's blisteringly honest about his own mistakes and shortcomings, so this is very far from being a 'misery memoir'.
The South Coast is my own patch, and I greatly enjoyed hearing beautiful descriptions of the South Downs, Cuckmere Haven, Beachy Head and of course Eastbourne itself which I've visited many times, taking the scenic bus route from Brighton; so I'm delighted to be the proud possessor of a signed copy of this book!

Well, having read and thoroughly enjoyed Steve Cavanagh's latest Eddie Flynn novel, 'Two Kinds of Stranger', I thought I...
03/07/2026

Well, having read and thoroughly enjoyed Steve Cavanagh's latest Eddie Flynn novel, 'Two Kinds of Stranger', I thought I'd start at the beginning and have a go at his first.
'The Defence' introduces us to New York conman-turned-lawyer Eddie with a cracker of a story, in which he's being forced by the boss of the Russian Mafia to represent him in court where he's facing a murder charge - the alternative being the torture and killing of Eddie's beloved 10 year old daughter Amy, whom the Mob have kidnapped. The whole narrative takes place over a period of around 36 hours, and involves bomb threats, clandestine phone calls, corrupt cops, several physical fights, dodgy witnesses, and the necessity for Eddie to keep a cool head, think on his feet, and continually second-guess and outwit not only his blackmailers but also the slick and confident prosecution team.
It certainly kept me on my toes, but it failed in the credibility department - something that always makes or breaks a thriller for me, and that Cavanagh obviously gets better at as the series evolves, because I had no such qualms about 'Two Kinds of Stranger'! For example, I just cannot believe that a lawyer, no matter how quick-thinking, pressure-driven and apt at sleight-of-hand, could argue and win two searing court hearings in 24 hours on no sleep, one snack, several neat whiskies and a few strong coffees after having been knocked out cold, punched in the ribs and thrown to the floor several times, never mind also carry out a dangerous climb down the side of a building from one window ledge to another and back again ... oh, and with only two toilet breaks, both of which are spent not attending to the call of nature but making whispered calls on a pilfered mobile!
But maybe that's just me ... and it hasn't put me off Steve Cavanagh or Eddie Flynn, to whom I feel I'm in danger of becoming quite addicted!

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