HIP BOOK REVIEW: My Battle of Hastings
By Xiaolu Guo
Published by Chatto & Windus. £18.99
REVIEW BY HUGH SULLIVAN
Xiaolu Guo, an award-winning writer and film-maker, spent the year 2022 living alone in a small one-bedroom flat on St Leonards sea-front. She had been residing in London with her partner Steve and their daughter Moon, but she wanted her own room ‘just to write and to think by myself”. London was too expensive for that: hence Hastings. This book is a diary of her thoughts and impressions through the year.
A month into Xiaolu’s stay, the Russians invade Ukraine. She decides that, in a period of contemporary war, she will focus on a war of nearly 1,000 years ago: the Norman invasion of England. It seems to her an apposite time, as well as place, to pick the bones – figuratively and almost literally – of the Battle of Hastings.
But her method is not that of a standard Western historian nor of a professional journalist. The clue is in the title: it’s her battle, not anyone else’s. She introduces herself as an immigrant (from China), an artist and a woman, and makes it clear that these are the credentials that she is here to apply.
PECULIARLY INTROSPECTIVE
She laboriously reads up the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles for the years in question; examines the statue of King Harold and Edith Swan-neck in West Marina Gardens; drops in on the Hastings Museum where a local enthusiast lists for her the human make-up of each army, their respective clothing, weaponry and accessories; and eventually she takes Steve and Moon to watch a modern re-enactment of the battle. But her research is, for most of the diary’s pages, peculiarly introspective, projecting her own thoughts and feelings onto her surroundings rather than offering objective descriptions, and rarely interesting herself in how the modern population of Hastings and St Leonards are living their lives around her.
Xiaolu does hire a local builder Andy to replace the windows in her flat, and reports his diatribes about Poles and migrant refugees. She hangs about the Bluetits group of out-of-season swimmers on the beach below. And it’s gratifying to read in the closing acknowledgements that, during her research, she “loved reading the local paper, the Hastings Independent, a constant source of anecdotes and information”. But one can’t help wondering whether she might have sourced more from closer engagement with her neighbours.
WILFULLY COUNTERFACTUAL
This is, though, to misunderstand the genre. Many Western travel writers have travelled to the locations of past civilisations – Egypt or Sumeria or Mexico, as the case may be – to spend time examining ancient stones, archaeological finds or abstruse artistic records. They hope to draw inspiration from the local scenery, which may or may not retain elements of the former age they are researching. Of the people who live there now, they often report little or nothing except in their passing roles as tour guides or hospitality providers. Xiaolu is in similar terrain even if coming from an opposite direction.
It renders hers a somewhat unreliable witness as far as contemporary Hastings is concerned. Her topography appears at times wilfully counterfactual: “Starting from the pier, I took a long walk towards the White Rock Theatre…” “The museum is a century-old red-brick building in the hilly part of town” (where exactly is the non-hilly part?). She refers to a local paper as the Hastings Daily.
DISTANCE BETWEEN THE HAPPENING AND REPORTING
Her political observations also seem under-informed and over-judgmental. She takes the side of the Saxon Haestingas as the oppressed victims of the invasion, but doesn’t consider whether their forefathers inflicted similar depredations on the Celts who inhabited the shores of Sussex before them. She tells the legend of Canute as if he was surprised by the refusal of the waves to obey his commands, whereas the story all English schoolchildren learn is that he was demonstrating to his courtiers the limits of kingly power.
As to modern British politics she describes the news – including the war in Ukraine, the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the removal and accession of three successive prime ministers (Johnson, Truss, Sunak) – as “ever-maddening”, and complains that its reportage by modern chroniclers is undertaken “with eagerness, participation and a sense of confusion. There is no distance between the reporting and the happening”.
Xiaolu intends, on the contrary, to put plenty of distance between the happening and reporting, retaining through her diary pages her self-proclaimed alien status as cover for any lack of comprehension.
IT FLOWS EASILY
My Battle of Hastings follows two previous memoirs of hers, Once Upon a Time in the East and Radical: A Life of My Own, both of which have received high praise in literary circles. So has this: the front cover of the book quotes Iain Sinclair, poet, essayist (and, as it happens, owner of a neighbouring flat in Marine Court): “Magnificent, brutal and poetic”. Lauren Elkin, Franco-American cultural critic, tells us on the back: “This is urgent, compelling, but also delightful writing, a book about war unlike any you’ll ever read”.
So don’t let me put you off. It flows easily, though the £18.99 price tag for a rather skimpy 180-odd pages confirms that, while Hastings is the shoot location, it’s not the target audience.
We hope you have enjoyed reading this article. The future of our volunteer led, non-profit publication would be far more secure with the aid of a small donation. You can also support local journalism by becoming a friend of HIP. It only takes a minute and we would be very grateful.
Leave a Reply