The Way Home – Tales from a life without technology by Mark Boyle

 

It is quite fitting that I did not pay any money for this book. It is stranger and more appropriate too that I found it on a wall in an alleyway.

I walk to work every day, and my route takes me away from traffic and down a series of quite safe alleyways between rows of houses. There is frequent fly tipping that I have to dodge. On one such occasion in October last year I saw a pile of fly tipped bags, and the fly-tipper with a conscience had obviously decided to put the books he was throwing away visible on a wall so that someone might take them and re-use them. It was about to rain, so taking pity I picked one up. It’s certainly the strangest circumstances in which I have chosen a book to read.

 It turns out I knew of the author already. Mark Boyle has cause a stir in recent years, and I first came across him in an episode of ‘New Lives in the Wild’ on Channel 5, presented by the impossible-not-to-like Ben Fogle. At the time, Mark was experimenting with a life without money.

 As the title suggests, he has taken his way of living a little further and now lives in a house he built himself; with no electricity, running water, internet or heating other than wood fires. Here’s the rub: he’s not doing it to change the world. He knows that for almost everyone else it would be impossible and that we can’t all live the way he does. He’s doing it not to escape the world but to approach nature and live a more real life.

 He is particularly cutting in his criticism of smartphones and the way that many people seem to now be addicted to them. It must be an interesting perspective to stand outside and watch all of this happening. There are few other people who have divorced themselves more completely from the technology of the Twenty-First Century. He explains that it is all by degrees, and that life is a question of where you draw your line in the sand. For example, he uses a spade to dig the soil in order to grow food. I hadn’t even thought of a spade as technology, and yet it is a device designed to make our lives easier, just like almost everything else.

 His perspective also allows him to see some of the hypocrisies of people’s behaviour. He notes wryly that when he was an eco-warrior running a health food shop he sold vegan products to happy customers which was shrink-wrapped in plastic. The food they were eating, although vegan, was factory produced and imported from another country.

 There is an ambiguity about money in this book. His progression from ‘No-Money-Mark’ to a person rejecting technology brought publicity, a column in The Guardian and requests for interviews. He seems to have stoically replied by letter, and written in pencil. However, there are frequent references to evenings of craic and beer, so it must be assumed that he either has generous friends with whom he exchanges work or food for favours, or that he does spend some money.

 He is a frequent reference of previous thinkers on ecology and it is good to read that he has a deep knowledge of Thoreau, Wendell Berry and others. I will certainly be looking up Aldo Leopold, who I was unaware of before. There is a good Further Reading list at the end of the book.

The final irony of this book is that he hand-wrote it by candlelight, but realised that unlike Wendell Berry (whose wife types his manuscripts, an act of love) he could not impose on anyone to type up his book so he compromised and sat for seven days to prepare his manuscript for publication by word-processing it.

But then life is a series of compromises.

A fascinating and thought-provoking book. I’m glad I found it.

George V Never A Dull Moment by Jane Ridley

 

The last major appraisal of the life of George V, the grandfather of the present monarch, was by Kenneth Rose and published in 1983. The time is right for a reappraisal, as Rose and his most significant predecessor Sir Harold Nicholson were both mindful of the opinions of the surviving members of the royal family. Nicholson’s book in 1952 was censored in part.

 

Jane Ridley is a skilled and entertaining biographer who has already tackled the life of Edward VII, George’s father. This new study draws extensively on previous work but has the advantage of a longer period of hindsight. Only the present queen remains of anyone who knew George.

A valuable source not available in the past is George’s personal diary. As a naval man it is not a reflective journal, more a record in list form of the people he met and the thousands of birds that he shot when visiting the Great Houses of England.

 

So what is there to learn about this king, who oversaw the First World War and the Great Depression? It seems that previous history has been unkind to him. Most people regarded him as a dull and uninspiring man. Jane Ridley suggests that ‘normal’ may be a better adjective than ‘dull’, and that this image was intentional. In turbulent times Britain needed a steady, calm king and it was lucky that George was able to fill this role.

Many of the significant events of the first half of the Twentieth Century that are usually attributed to politicians have George’s influence. Particularly noteworthy is the way that he influenced the career of James Ramsay MacDonald. Privately George’s politics were that of a Tory country squire, but it seems that he didn’t let these views affect his impartiality in matters of national importance. Ramsay MacDonald was the first Labour Prime Minister, and developed a good relationship with his monarch. When he should really have resigned from the head of the National Government he was encouraged to remain in place by George, and to continue to steer a largely Tory cabinet.

 

Jane Ridley makes it clear that this book could have been a double biography – Mary, or May, was George’s lifelong companion. She had been engaged first to Eddy, George’s troubled older brother. However, it is wise that George was the focus because there simply isn’t enough information about Mary to justify half of this book. Some interesting revelations emerge. Mary was a kleptomaniac, and responsible for many of the riches currently enjoyed by the House of Windsor. She was acquisitive in the extreme. It was not by accident that some of the Romanov jewels ended up in her hands.

In her later years Ridley shows how vital May was for George, and how she perhaps was the first modern member of the royal family who knew how to manipulate her limited influence to maximum affect.

 

The poor relationship between Hanoverian monarchs and their children has become quite a cliché. George was the father of David (later Edward VIII), Bertie (George VI), George (Duke of Kent), Harry (Duke of Gloucester), Mary (The Princess Royal) and Johnnie.

It seems that George had a great affection for his children, in contrast to many of his ancestors. His relationship with David deteriorated rapidly in the 1930s, but prior to the distress caused to George by David’s liaison with Wallis Simpson, he was nurturing and tried to prepare his son for kingship. He was a kind and generous father to Bertie. The only dysfunctional relationship was the one that George and May had with their youngest son, John. They distanced themselves from him and only saw him occasionally. Ridley suggests that his early demise may have been a relief for his parents. It is a sad chapter in their lives and easy to impose twenty-first century values onto the situation when George and May were Victorian.

 

George’s early life is particularly well written, and goes a long way to explain how he was shaped by a poor education and unloving parents. After the death of Eddy and the realisation that he was destined for the throne, Victoria became a prime influence on George. For nearly ten years her will was exercised and George was a compliant grandson. However, the appalling education he received was the most significant factor that limited him in later life.

 

The last years of his life were tinged with sadness, and Jane Ridley has presented his declining health well. Tobacco was the main killer, in a time when there were few pointers to the effect that smoking had on health. Indeed, one measure that George had of his recovery after major surgery was that he was able to smoke a cigarette. His sons were similarly cursed.

 

George emerges from this latest reassessment of his life slightly better than before. His noisy charm, love of his family, and careful diplomacy have been reaffirmed. It is a thoughtful portrait, and worthwhile as it adds colour and depth to the first half of the Twentieth Century.