There are three places in the world where Private John Simpson Kirkpatrick, (also known simply as Jack Simpson) is immortalised in bronze. One statue is in South Shields, England, and the others are outside the Australian War Memorial in Canberra and the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne. Simpson’s extraordinary bravery at Gallipoli in 1915 has passed into legend and most Australian children learn his story in their history lessons.
 
A considerable number of books, articles and even plays have featured Jack and with each outing it seems his myth grows even greater, so this recent publication by Kelso McEwan Yuill makes for some refreshing and enlightening reading. The author has taken a different approach and rather than producing another hagiography has gone in search of Jack’s family: who they were and how their genes and the environment in which he was raised combined together to create this brave young stretcher-bearer who, according to Colonel [later Sir] John Monash, his Australian commanding officer at Gallipoli, “knew no fear and moved unconcernedly through shrapnel and rifle fire” in his determination to carry wounded men to safety on the back of a donkey.
 
Some of the fantasies perpetuated in previous accounts are overturned, just one example being the accident which supposedly crippled Jack’s father in 1904 when in fact Robert Kirkpatrick continued to work and did not die until 1909. The story of Sarah Simpson (Jack’s mother) who lived for a time in luxury in Malaga appears here for the first time, and there are further revelations of family feuding, adultery, illegitimacy and mental breakdown, all of which might combine into a saga worthy of anything that other Tyneside legend, the author Catherine Cookson, could have devised.
 
Jack had healthy self-belief and was not backward in offering his opinions - some of which may be considered a touch racist and sexist by today’s standards - about all that was wrong with “louse bound England” or what the womenfolk in his family needed to be doing in his absence. Nor was he above a bit of swagger and exaggeration or deliberate obfuscation when it might suit him. His comments are not edited out of the extracts from his letters as has been the case in some previous biographies. If you have not read about Simpson before you will gain a good sense of what he was really like; fearless and cheerful in spite of the odds but, above all, a young man with a firm conscience about doing what was right.
 
The book is exceptionally detailed, with many photographs. Interspersed within the chapters are paragraphs describing what was happening politically or socially at the time and these help to set the family’s situation in context. Several chapters are devoted to the ups and downs in the career (and love life) of Jack’s sea-going father, Robert Kirkpatrick; a man often forced to take jobs well below his qualifications in order to keep his growing second family off the bread line. This part of the book will be fascinating for anyone interested in what the life of a Scottish seaman was like around the end of the 19th Century. The Appendices also provide family trees and much additional detail about Jack’s extended family, many of whom were also seafarers.
 
Some typographical and editing errors have slipped through in the text, especially in regard to apostrophes, but these are minor issues compared to the extensive research and scale of the information it contains. Not just on Jack Simpson, but in the way people lived at a time when life could be brutal, family tragedies were almost commonplace and there was no social welfare to prop you up financially.

Recommended not just for its new information on the legendary “Man with the Donkey”, but for anyone researching family history in general before and after World War I and it would also be a valuable addition to any historical or genealogical library.
 
With much appreciation to the author for sending me a copy.
 
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This novel takes place in San Francisco and features two main female characters who are linked across time by a beautiful emerald ring.
 
The present-day wearer of the ring, Sarah Havensworth, is procrastinating on finishing a novel for her thesis when she stumbles across a story in an old newspaper about two dressmakers who went missing in 1876. She suddenly realizes she has found the true story she is destined to write. As she digs through archives and visits relevant locations in the city, she slowly becomes aware that she’s unraveling a sinister mystery that is linked to her own husband's high society family. Sarah is also hiding her own secrets about her past and when some unknown individual discovers what it is that she is researching, she is subject to blackmail.
 
In 1876, Hannelore (Hanna) Schaeffer and Margaret O’Brien are two seamstresses at the mercy of an unsympathetic employer. The two young women become close friends, drawn together in their struggle against prejudice towards immigrants, poverty, and violent family relationships. When wealthy cousins, Robert and Lucas Havensworth, visit the shop, events are set in motion that will bring both joy and a terrible tragedy. When Margaret disappears, Lucas and Hanna search for her, falling foul of both the mean streets of the Barbary Coast and a wealthy family determined to hide the truth, no matter the cost.
 
The novel is a fast-paced and easy read and the historical details of San Francisco in the 1870s are especially evocative and well-described. Both Hanna and Sarah are worthy portrayals for their respective time and situation, but there are rather a lot of coincidences and loose threads [no pun intended], plus a hurried and questionable conclusion.

[Spoiler alert.] 

Violence against women can never be condoned, whether in the past or today, but the big downer for me with this particular title is its Epilogue where evil avoids its comeuppance. This may be acceptable in true crime or even a novel in a darker or literary genre, but in one such as this which appears to be aimed at a readership that usually cheers to see justice win over male aggression and privilege, it just feels disturbing.
 
Three stars - with reservations.
 
(Thanks to Edelweiss for the ARC.)

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In London in 1828, Elizabeth Coxen meets John Gould through her brother, Charles, who is employed by Gould as a taxidermist. The emotional connection between Elizabeth and John is immediate and thus begins a loving, although often challenging, partnership that will see Elizabeth taking on the responsibilities of wife and mother as well as illustrator of John’s books on the natural world.
 
We share at an intimate level the usual cares of a woman juggling her art with the demands of domestic life as well as the deep heartaches suffered in her loss of her babies. When John plans a voyage to Australia to document that continent’s unique fauna, Elizabeth faces her hardest decision in leaving some of her infant children behind in England at a time when life expectancy was fragile and communication took many months.
 
Whether in the hub-bub of London, on the high seas, on the rough streets of Hobart or the windswept Liverpool Plains, the evocative descriptions of 19th Century life and travel can’t be faulted. Many famous individuals of the time also pass through these pages, including Charles Darwin, Edward Lear and Lady Jane Franklin, and their characters are as carefully delineated as Elizabeth’s illustrations.
 
It is not easy reviewing a novel that is as awe-inspiring in the quality of its narrative as watching a bird-of-paradise strut its dazzling plumage. If you are an ornithologist, twitcher or wildlife artist you will adore this book without question. For anyone else with only a mild interest in birds - and less in the skills of taxidermy or the slaughter of beautiful creatures in the name of science - there may be problems with some of the content and its lengthy detail, but there can be no disputing it is a superb imagining of the life of a woman overshadowed by male achievement and must score five stars.
 
(Thanks to NetGalley and Affirm Press for the ARC.)

Booktopia

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