Page 93 - All About History - Issue 52-17

Reviews

PIRATES: TRUTH

AND TALE

The lives of pirates as you’ve never seen them before
Author Helen Hollick Publisher Amberley Publishing Price £20 Released Out now

he word ‘pirate’ summons up childhood Scottish privateer who had spent four years
tales of swashbuckling nomads out at sea, living as a castaway after he was marooned by
looting valuable treasures and storming his captain, showing all sides of a group of lesser-
through dangerous seas on a belly of rum. known individuals. With each chapter covering a
THollick values these precious childhood different area – and often era – of the pirate world,
connotations and fills in the now adult mind from pirate codes to myths and legends about
with truths and facts, talking the reader through what really happened on board the pirate ships,
what they should know about the Golden readers can devour the book in one or dip in
Age of piracy. It’s not just that the author has and out of chapters, and still have their thirst for
created highly entertaining content, but she has pirate knowledge quenched.
also created a cache of biographies, drawing Hollick takes the reader on an adventure
upon a few valuable names from the history thanks to her ability to connect with the reader,
books as examples of real-life pirates such as in addition to the use of intense imagery. The
Grace O’Malley, a Tudor pirate who gave Queen author has created a book that is all the more
Elizabeth I sleepless nights, and Frenchman enjoyable because it feels like a work of fiction,
Daniel Montbars, aka ‘The Exterminator’. with the added benefit of well researched truths.
Despite our belief that all pirates were baddies, Hollick delves into the upkeep of pirate ships,
some of the characters in the book are looked medicine, entertaining sea shanties, murder, love,
upon more favourably, such as William Dampier, sunken treasure and mysterious ships, making it
the man who came to the rescue a well known a truly superb read.

JOSEPHINE BAKER

This graphic novel biography dances like
nobody’s watching
Creators Catel and Bocquet Publisher SelfMadeHero Price £14.99
Released Out now
osephine Baker certainly packed a lot And those are just the edited highlights,
of drama – and history – into her life. which is the only real problem with Catel
Growing up on the wrong side of white and Bocquet’s hefty black-and-white graphic
and destined for domestic servitude and novel. Even at 500 pages, it all whizzes by
Jan early marriage, she absolutely refused too fast with so many big names and big
to let her star quality be silenced in an age ideas reduced to cameos to the extent that
where opportunities for black women were the full-page biographies and timeline in
few. Travelling to France, where she was the postscript become essential references.
served by a white waiter for the first time, But Catel and Bocquet have been here
courted by white suitors and applauded before, with their similarly hefty Kiki de
by a white audience, she found her calling, Montparnasse, a biography of the 1920s
becoming the iconic chartreuse of both the nightclub singer and model, Alice Prin.
stage and silver screen. It’s a small criticism in the grand scheme
Rather than abandon the world she had of things though, and Josephine Baker offers
escaped from to become ‘politely black’, a vibrant window into a changing world,
Baker instead became fiercely political – she the thick black lines capturing her character
spied for the Free French in World War II, so effortlessly, from the seductive arch of
stood as a Civil Rights icon and possible her back and the oiled ringlet of hair, to the
heir to Martin Luther King, and adopted a incredible motion of performance. So what
‘rainbow tribe’ of orphans to try and show if context passes by so fleetingly? If all the
the world a better way of life. world’s a stage, then Baker is the star.
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