Ed Douglas

25 Truths is an inspirational guide built around Christian principles, and is meant to be used as a tool to open discussions about character and values with your pre-teen and teen.

25 Truths is intended for kids from grades 6-12. My son is entering 6th grade, but I felt that some of the things mentioned were beyond what he needed to hear or could understand. However, my son is only eleven, and he has Asperger’s Syndrome (which means that while he’s very intelligent, he’s not as mature as most kids his age), so a “typical” sixth grader may be different.

Some of the things that I felt (or noticed) were beyond my 11-year-old included:

Mentions of extramarital affairs and infidelity (He’s asked me what cheating is on other occasions; I’ve told him that it means having sex with one person when you’re married to another. I try to talk plainly to him without overwhelming him with information. He said, “Okay,” and moved on, but I think it’s a little more than he can comprehend at this point.)

Mention of The Shack in the section on forgiveness, in which “a man’s young daughter is abducted and viciously assaulted and killed during a family vacation.” There is no way I could read this to my kids. My 11yo would have nightmares for a week and probably have an anxiety attack worrying about something similar happening to someone he knows.

I just skipped over the parts that I thought would be an issue for him. For the most part, I think that the book is very well done and can be utilized to open a dialogue between parents and teens about important issues. Even with younger children, I was able to adapt it to our needs.

I received this book free from the author in exchange for an honest review.… (més)

Himalaya: A Human History runs from early history through the 21st century, but much of it is centered on the eras of the British East India Company and the subsequent Imperial Raj. While Tibet, Nepal, and Bhutan were never a formal part of the Raj (nor was Sikkim, though Sikkim has since been absorbed into post-colonial India), there were major interactions between these mountain kingdoms and India, both pre-British and during the British era; and some lowland border areas such as Darjeeling (as its name indicates, a major center of tea production) were actually a part of the Raj.

There's also substantial discussion of the relations between the Himalayan regions and China, including some discussion of colonial/imperialist Britain's opium wars as well as present-day Sino-Tibetan relations and the effects on both Nepal and India.

An excellent book, and one that's so rich and complex as to require a reread. The reason I've given it four rather than five stars is because of the absence of any footnotes or endnotes. There's an extensive bibliography, but it's unannotated and thus of minimal value. There are many issues where annotated authorities would be helpful, because you won't get such support from the laundry-list bibliography. I'd especially like to have had supporting references to the CIA's activities in Tibet.… (més)

This is a highly deceptive book. Looking at it in the bookshop, you could be forgiven for thinking that it was a book of high-quality photographs of Kinder Scout and the Dark Peak, with some linking text. Only when you start reading do you realise that the "linking text" is actually a work of great complexity and scholarship, covering the range of human experience as reflected in our varying relationships over centuries with Kinder Scout.

On the way, the author writes, at some length but with an easy style, about history, politics, ecology, agriculture and literature. He relates how the Dark Peak influenced writers from Daniel Defoe (who described Kinder as "a houling place") through to a range of nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers, many of whom are now forgotten.. A Sheffield man himself, he nonetheless talks at length about Manchester and the influence that city, its citizens and its societies has had on the Scout, and vice versa. (When I visited offices in Manchester back in the early 2000s, I never realised, when I looked out of the window at the eastern horizon, that I was looking at Kinder.) The level of detail about Manchester and its pre-World War I German community is remarkable; along the way, we meet L.S.Lowry; A.V.Roe, of aviation fame; Neville Cardus, the great cricketing and musical journalist; and Ludwig Wittgenstein, the philosopher.

Ed Douglas writes about war, recounting the stories of some of the aircraft wrecks that still litter the high ground some eighty years later; he writes about the ecology of the Kinder plateau, starting from the sphagnum moss under his feet, to the apex predators of past (wolves) and present (birds of prey), and how each have been driven to (near) extinction by competing users of the moorland. The exclusive use of the moors for grouse shooting - replacing sheep as the primary economic use of the landscape - is discussed at length, and with some equanimity, before the author tells the full story of the rambling and outdoors movement, and gives a short history of the events leading up to the Kinder Mass Trespass of 1932, and some of the subtexts to the ways ramblers were treated, sometimes for reasons totally unconnected with the question of access.

The story takes in a wider area than Kinder; in particular, there are many references back to the drowned villages of Ashtopton and Derwent, now vanished under the Ladybower reservoir complex. As a native of Derbyshire, the turn of a page often brought back a memory, or an association, that renewed my sense of belonging in a way I'm quite unused to. The fact that this is a book written with that sense of belonging front and centre shows the power and infectiousness of that sense.

The book dates from 2018, and so poses some questions about the future of environmental protection legislation in the light of the UK's decision to leave the European Union two years earlier. It is too early to draw conclusions on that, though it is a topic hardly mentioned in all the Brexit debate. Ed Douglas has had some fifty years' experience of walking the hills and moors, and Kinder Scout is his spiritual home; and this is evident in almost every word of the text, and the appropriate choice of photographs from John Beatty. His photographs are not always conventionally picturesque; they have been taken in all weathers and at all times of day (and night), and often take viewpoints or show conditions most people would not consider fit for photography. But this means that the book is as complete a portrait of this part of the Dark Peak as it is possible to show.

Along the way, both Douglas and Beatty keep on finding odd connections with a range of subjects and people who you would never think would have connections with Kinder. The result is a highly resonant book that is a constant delight to anyone with even the slightest interest in, or knowledge of, the area.… (més)