The Faber Book of Reportage by John Carey

An absolutely staggering book. A hundred or so eyewitness reports of events throughout history from Plato to Aztecs to Vietnam, ranging from a single to a dozen pages. It could be retitled ‘Man’s Inhumanity to Man’ as it consists mostly of war, death, massacres, and suffering - Irish famine, black hole of Calcutta, slavery, nazi medical experiments, human sacrifices etc. There are a few light-hearted stories but they are far outweighed by the grim. The story that I found the most fascinating was from 1568 when an English slave trading ship was abandoned in the Caribbean and the crew get captured by bow and arrow wielding natives, death marched through disease swamps to be made prisoners of the Spanish then tortured and executed by the inquisition. Crazy story. Surprisingly horrible was ‘Conditions of life aboard the French galleys in 1703’. Just abysmal the suffering of the prisoner rowers. I heard about the book on the private eye podcast, it was Ian Hislop’s beach read…