Somerset

Ask the average person to name a Great War battle, and they will probably come up with The Somme, or perhaps Paschendaele. Few would mention Arras. It was certainly shorter than the more infamous prolonged slogging matches, officially lasting from 9th April to 16th May 1917. A brief historical background: after the Battle of the Somme ground to a halt in November 1916, the German army began planning a strategic withdrawal between Arras and Reims. The effect of this would be to shorten their line, making defence easier. The Germans called the new line the Siegfriedstellung, while the British and their allies called it the Hindenburg Line. The withdrawal was conducted with great skill and secrecy, and the Germans conducted a scorched earth policy on the terrain they vacated. The Sam Mendes film 1917 was set against this backdrop.

In the spring of 1917, the British planned a major offensive either side of the ancient city of Arras, and J.M. Cobley makes this the climax of his novel. The main protagonist, Robert Henson, is a farmer’s son from Somerset and he enlists with the county regiment, the Somerset Light Infantry. We follow him through training and early skirmishes with the enemy, along with other men who become his close friends, and Cobley makes clever use of the contrast between the Cider With Rosie idylls of life in rural England and the harsh realities of life in the British Army. The author does, however, make the telling point that for some young men the plentiful – if unimaginative – army diet was actually a huge improvement on what they had been used to at home.

Robert Henson soon learns the difference between life out of the line and the very different world in the trenches, where insanitary conditions, rats, lice, dead bodies and haphazard meals – not to mention the danger of sudden death – are ever present. Robert’s skill with a gun – honed since he was a young lad hunting rabbit, pheasant and hare on his father’s farm – comes back to haunt him when he is chosen to be part of a firing squad who must execute two lads who have cracked under the pressure and deserted.

Cobley is not much given to mysticism in this book but, like many who have visited the old battlefields and stood in the silence contemplating the fallen, he senses a crucial link between time, landscape and dramatic events:

“The land sweeps. The mind strays. The soil can be swept away, but the heart is deep-rooted. It always returns. The land, broad and deep, is home. The warmth of the farm and the embrace of the hills, the coldness of the battlefield and the pulse of blood are one in the earth.”

No novel set in the Great War will – for me – ever come close to John Harris’s magisterial Covenant With Death, but Jason Cobley’s novel is up there with the challengers. The closing pages reveal that the author has a personal connection to Robert Henson. Cobley’s military research is pretty good, and he leaves us with a heartbreaking account of the cruelty of war, the pity of war and the devastation that war brings to the lives of ordinary men and women. We also have a sober – and sombre – reflection on the interweaving mysteries of time and memory. A Hundred Years to Arras is published by Unbound and is out now.

Please read the novel. Then, if you are minded, click here to read more about the real life Robert Gooding Henson.

Back in the day when I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue was actually funny, and I’m talking about the late 1970s, one of my favourite rounds was Late Arrivals At The Ball, where a servant announces the arrival of . . . cue wonderful and bizarre puns, such as:

(The Astronauts’ Ball) Mr and Mrs Secondstoblastoff and their Scottish son, Fife
(The Booksellers’ Ball) Mr & Mrs Zeen, & their disgusting daughter, Margaret – known as ‘Dirty Maggie’
(The Butchers’ Ball) Mr and Mrs Poundamince and their son, Arfur

I only mention this because twice now, within a few days, I have found a crime series to which I have come very late. This, for an avowed fan of police procedural novels, is pretty damning. At least the Trevor Negus novels featuring Danny Flint was only a three book series, but much to my shame I find that there have been ten previous books in the DCI Nick Dickson series. All I can do, is review the eleventh – Dying Inside – and mutter “mea culpa.” Below, numbers one to five in the Nick Dixon Books.

Nick Dickson works for Avon and Somerset Constabulary, so his beat covers much of England’s glorious West Country from Bristol down to Weston super Mare. He is relatively recently promoted, which is good for his salary and pension, but has dragged him into the vortex of tedium which includes mission statements, performance reviews and coma-inducing courses with titles like Developing Inclusive Management Styles In A Modern Police Service. ( I just made that up, but a pound to a penny something very like it actually exists) Dixon, like his creator, is a former solicitor, so he is very wise to the standard stunts pulled by defence lawyers, and it also accounts for his rapid promotion through the ranks. Witnesses often remark that he looks “too young to be such an important officer”, to which his response is usually a neutral smile

Here though, he has dead bodies to deal with. Not so good for the victims – firstly a number of sheep, secondly a dodgy accountant and then an HMRC manager investigating fraud – but good for Dixon’s state of mind. The two humans and the sheep have all been killed with fatal shots from a powerful crossbow. Were the sheep just practice targets while the killer honed his or her skills, or were they unrelated incidents? And what is the true story behind the ocean-going yacht owned by the dodgy accountant capsizing and sinking taking with it one of its crew, Laura Dicken?

Bit by bit, Dixon completes the jigsaw, and is convinced that the deaths are revenge attacks by one of the people who were lured into a scam which ruined their pensions and left them more or less destitute. With his bosses anxious for him to wrap the case up and devote himself to the serious business of Neighbourhood Watch Liaison Committees and Diversity Webinars, Dixon has one or two surprises up his sleeve before the case can finally be closed. Dying Inside is a thoroughly entertaining read, full of twists and turns, and is published by Thomas and Mercer. It is out in paperback and Kindle on 22nd June.