Ian Hopkinson

Author's posts

May 02 2025

Book review: It’s a Continent by Astrid Madimba and Chinny Ukata

I picked up It’s a Continent: Unravelling Africa’s History One Country at a Time by Astrid Madimba and Chinny Ukata at Waterstones, I was looking for books on Africa – preferably written by Africans – this was one of a very limited selection on the shelf.

The authors identify as British-Nigerian and British-Congolese, you can read a bit more about them on their podcast website here. As they say at the beginning of the book, they are not historians and this is not a history text book. They describe it as a collection of stories you never heard at school which I think is fair.

The book comprises short chapters on each of Africa’s 54 countries (and one disputed territory). They focus on one element of the country’s history – varying between pre-colonial history, the colonial period and post-independence. Often they are focused on an individual, typically they are only a few pages long . They are fairly relaxed in style with the odd sarcastic aside. I can imagine they follow the style of the podcast.

Of my recent reading about Africa, An African History of Africa was a sweeping fairly academic chronological history of Africa which was not really tied to individual countries, and covered the independence movements fairly briefly. Africa is Not a Country is a more thematic book which is focussed on the present. As the author’s say, It’s A Continent is the stories of history we hear at school but for Africa rather than for Britain. It has the effect of making the countries of Africa feel more distinct.

One of the recurring themes was how countries gained independence, this is where the many-country coverage helps because common features arise. The world wars, particularly the Second World War produced an expectation of some payback for the lives and resources committed by the colonies to the war on the side of their colonial masters. Secondly, the US/Britain Atlantic Charter of 1941, which envisaged a post-War future, led to the foundation of the UN in 1945 which had self-determination (i.e. independence ) at its core. Furthermore the colonising forces, generally France and Britain, could no longer afford to manage their colonies. Germany had been forced to give up its colonies (centred around Tanzania, Namibia and Cameroon) in the aftermath of the First World War, they were transferred to France and Britain.

The post-independence pathway shows a rather depressing regularity too with independence heroes either turning slowly more and more authoritarian or being rapidly replaced by despots (often from the army, trained and backed from outside the country). Madimba and Ukata reference this in their glossary, referring to a Coloniser Handbook and a Despot Manual.

It’s easy as a Western European to look down on the imperfect democracies of Africa. However, we have our own share of conflicts in Europe. Since World War 2 there have been three dictatorships (Spain, Portugal and Greece) which ended (early) in my lifetime. Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union have broken up fairly violently, Czechoslovakia seems to have managed to split peacefully but this is exceptional. There are a number of secessionist movements in Europe. The US is currently demonstrating how young democracies are not immune to returning to authoritarian rule. To this Africa has the added difficulty of artificial borders created by colonisers, infrastructure designed to extract resources from countries rather than support its residents, deliberate divide and rule policies during the colonial period and post-independence interference either as part of the Cold War or by the pre-independence colonists.

Reading through the chapters there were a couple of surprises, it turns out that Russia briefly had a foothold in Africa via the town of Sagallo in Djibouti which was “acquired” by Nikolay Ivanovich Ashinov in 1885. Ashinov appears to have been a complete con man and Russia quickly lost Sagallo to the French.

I was also surprised to discover that their are two European cities in Morocco, Ceuta and Melilla which are heavily funded by the EU to prevent them becoming an entry point into Europe for African migrants. Unsurprisingly the Moroccans want them back.

One of the nice things about the book is its universal coverage, so as well as the big favourites like Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt and so forth we hear of the small islands – Comoros, Seychelles, São Tomé and Príncipe, Cabo Verde, the Chagos Islands) and countries like Togo.

I was born in the seventies, I became politically aware around 1980 when the first wave of independence movements had passed and the final few were being completed – the formation of Zimbabwe was one of my earliest political memories. Over my lifetime the news stories from Africa have largely been of civil war, dictators and natural disaster (I’m including famine here, though that is rarely wholly natural). Britain largely sees itself as a fairly benevolent colonial power which is reflected in popular culture. Madimba and Ukata have a very different point of view which I believe is probably correct.

I enjoyed this book, to start with I was a bit put off by its casual style but it makes it rather engaging and readable. I am now curious about the foundation of the UN and its role in African independence movements.

Apr 08 2025

Book review: Brilliant Bread by James Morton

This is the first time I’ve reviewed a book on bakery, or any other sort of cooking. My review is of Brilliant Bread by James Morton.

I was recommended this book by a friend, I like it because it explains why you are doing what you are doing from the point of view of a scientist (Morton trained as a doctor). So, for example, I always assumed that to get a good crust you needed to bake absolutely as hot as you could but in fact to get a good crust you bake slightly cooler for longer which allows for a thicker, crunchier crust to form. I also learnt to wet my fingers before coaxing dough in a bowl, and not to over-flour my kneading surface.

Morton is explicit that he is writing as an enthusiastic amateur rather than a professional. He argues professionals are likely adapting recipes “down” to work in a domestic kitchen. Morton is a runner-up for the Great British Bake Off, so he is somewhat more than an amateur. His writing is relaxed, and readable. In places his extreme youth shines through which I found endearing.

The book is comprised of 11 chapters, three of which are on techniques (kneading/proving and sourdough starters) and basic materials and equipment. Breadmaking requires remarkably little in the way of equipment, this is where Morton’s recent life as a baking student comes into play. He recommends scavenging in skips for baking stones (only suggesting it is best not to use asbestos!). I did a little better than this, scavenging a limestone floor tile as a baking stone from my own garage. A dough scraper is the only essential he mentions; these cost little more than pennies but are definitely worth having. I made much less mess once I started working with a dough scraper. It turns out I had a suitable sharp blade to cut my dough before baking. I am hankering for a cast-iron Dutch oven though. He is similarly relaxed on ingredients, recommending in most cases that you get the cheapest available.

Morton is a big fan of bread making being being quick and easy to fit in around life (principally by pausing things by putting dough in the fridge) and by using no-knead techniques where kneading to develop the gluten network is replaced with just waiting. I quite enjoy kneading, and it seems to work rather better than waiting. I feel delaying proving in the fridge needs a bit of practice, I suspect I need to allow the dough to warm up fully when it comes out of the fridge.

Sourdough has a technique chapter of its own, and rather dominates the second half of the book. Sourdough is bread that is risen using a homemade yeast concoction (a starter). I must admit to being slightly wary of this. It has the air of Tamagotchi for middle-class people who will bang on endlessly about their starter. I think this came out of the early COVID pandemic period where bread flour and yeast were in short supply. My views are probably coloured by a possible intolerance to sourdough (or rather histamines) as a result of long COVID. Anyway, I will probably keep a sourdough starter as a pet for at least a little bit.

The remaining eight chapters are sets of related recipes: basic breads, breads to impress, breads with bits, advanced yeasted breads, sour, doughs to enrich your life, laminated doughs and nearly breads. The “breads to impress” tend to be those of a different form such as fougasse, bagels, pizza, and naan which have some variations in their process from basic breads. Also included in this chapter is “revival bread” which includes left over bits of bread, I’m not entirely sure why you would do this! Advanced yeasted breads are the trickier ones which use wetter, harder to handle doughs and add sourdough starter as a flavour rather than a raising agent. The “nearly breads” range from tortilla and bannock (similar to Irish soda bread) to outright cake (muffins and banana bread).

At the moment I am working my way through the recipes in the book from the start (I’m making a wholemeal loaf as I write). I feel Brilliant Bread has given me the tools to see where I’ve gone wrong and to improve. On my second attempt at the basic white bread recipe I won the accolade of “Best home-made bread I’ve ever tasted” from my wife, so I’d say I’m happy to recommend this book!

Mar 27 2025

Book review: When the Naughty Step Makes Things Worse by Dr Naomi Fisher and Eliza Fricker

Another book in the parenting thread: When the Naughty Step Makes Things Worse by Dr Naomi Fisher and Eliza Fricker.

The title describes the central theme of the book; some children simply don’t respond to the widespread, traditional punishment / reward method of parenting. If you try to put them on the Naughty Step they will refuse to go, and get ever angrier about it. As the authors highlight a motivated child has a higher stamina for opposing your parenting strategies than you have for executing them! You will typically have other things to worry about; a child can fully commit their energies to opposition.

They describe these children as “pressure sensitive” – they are made anxious when they feel under pressure to do something and their behaviour arises from this – finding ways to avoid the thing, elsewhere this is given a diagnosis of “pathological demand avoidance” (PDA). Their answer to pressure sensitive children is “low demand” parenting with the aim of widening the child’s “window of tolerance” for demands over a long period.

Fisher talks about how parenting was “invented” in the 1950s with the work of Baumrind and their demandingness/responsiveness model. It extends behaviourism, which sees animals trained by a combination of reinforcement (reward) and punishment, to the training (raising) of children with the addition of responsiveness which is trying to meet the needs of the child and being emotionally warm with them.

I sometimes wonder what fraction of animals refuse to be trained under the behaviourism model. When I reviewed Other Minds (all about octopuses) I read about efforts to measure the intelligence of three octopuses:

… two octopuses in their study put in some effort to carry out the tests presented whilst Charles insisted on squirting water at the experimenters and being otherwise uncooperative. It does make you wonder whether measures of animal intelligence are more a combination of willingness and intelligence. 

The authors refer to behaviourism models of parenting, somewhat tongue in cheek, as Good Parenting(TM). It is relevant to highlight the contrast because much of the internal battle for a low demand parent is the opinions of others, and whether they are right: are we here because we are poor parents? what does my parenting look like to other people? What are people thinking? Largely the author’s prescription is to ignore these outsiders except where necessary (other family members and professionals with important roles).

Thinking about pressure sensitive children it is easy to see how they struggle at school where systems of punishment and reward are becoming ever harsher. Furthermore in a classroom environment there is little scope for responsiveness. Therefore schools end up being strictly authoritarian environments which absolutely don’t work for a fraction of children, and greatly stress a further proportion. My experience of schools is that they have little appreciation or understanding of the existence of pressure sensitive children. Many of the children mentioned in the book have been pushed out of the mainstream school system, some are in special schools or home education.

After the preamble chapters talking about the group of children in question, and earlier models of parenting, The authors spend several chapters talking about different aspects of low demand parenting in practice, communication, behaviours, emotions, and screens. They are pretty positive about screens – highlighting that games like Minecraft offer pressure sensitive children a complex world which they control completely and often it is the only thing they will engage in. Most of the practices of low demand parenting are captured in acronyms – REACH, FLASH, JOIN UP. The core is to throw away your previous concepts of Good Parenting(TM) and seek a more equal relationship with your child (rather than trying to force them into conformance), join them with what they are interested in (for a while my wife and I played Fornite with our son), and focus on the necessary (sitting at the table eating healthy homecooked meals without your elbows on the table may be an ideal but sitting in front of the TV eating beige food is actually fine).

It is a bit difficult to judge the age group this book targets, much of the start feels like a discussion of younger children – at primary school and earlier but there are frequent mentions of children going into adolescence. One of the stories in the final chapter tracks that of my now 13 year old son almost exactly – apparently fine and doing very well in school until the demands of secondary school were overwhelming with an exit into online school.

There is a chapter on self-care for parents, a subject touched on earlier in the book in coping with the disapproving looks of other parents. This chapter uses techniques like radical acceptance, visualisation and mantras which I’m familiar with from counselling.

Despite being over 400 pages long When the Naughty Step… is an easy read. The text is broken up with Fricker’s cartoons, personal stories and various tables and exercises. Each chapter ends with a dialogue between Fisher and Fricker (which I found really useful), a bullet point summary and some suggestions for further reading.

I sometimes worry I have joined the cult of Fisher / Fricker, in common with many parents whose children have not been entirely straightforward to raise, I will enthusiastically recommend their books (and webinars). I think the core of their success is that they identify very clearly how our children are, when few others do, and reassure us that it is not the end of the world, when most are trying to convince us it is.

Mar 19 2025

Book review: Africa is not a country by Dipo Faloyin

My next review is of Africa is not a Country: Breaking stereotypes of modern Africa by Dipo Faloyin. It follows a thread of books I have read on Africa and Black people in the UK and elsewhere, this was prompted by the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020.

Africa is not a country is about viewing Africa from an African perspective. It is comprised of 8 parts, the first of which is a thumbnail sketch of the author, and his family, and where he grew up in Lagos. Faloyin is Nigerian with part Yoruba and part Igbo background although he was born in Chicago and now lives in London. He paints a vivid picture of his upbringing very unlike my own, mainly because his family is clearly very sociable and loves cities (or at least Lagos).

The second part goes on to talk about how the 54 countries of Africa came into being, starting with the Berlin Conference in 1884, in which the Western powers agreed to divide up Africa; no Africans participated, despite requests. One thing that struck me was that outside the conference politicians as senior as Gladstone in the UK knew that what they were doing was wrong. The US refused to sign the General Act of the conference, despite being participants. It isn’t clear whether this was a decision made on moral grounds. The 54 countries is something I think I will return to as a number, for comparison Europe has 44 countries, half the number of people and a third of the land area so we might expect Africa to be rather more diverse than Europe.

As a British European I don’t like to dwell too long on the colonial period. This part of the book highlights the preference of the British to out-source the colonisation problem to private companies, in particular the Royal Niger Company, which was taken over by Unilever (a former employer of mine) in the 1920s and only ended its existence in 1987. King Leopold II of Belgium’s subjugation of the Congo (essentially for his own personal gain) is spine-chilling – over the 20 years after the Berlin conference half the population, 10 million people were killed.

The division of Africa into arbitrary countries that did not follow ethnic or any other native pattern had consequences in the post-colonial period; the countries created at independence were naturally unstable so conflict was inevitable. However, the African consensus is that it is best to stick with these countries rather than attempt a wholesale reorganisation. This is not a peculiarly African problem, we can think about the fighting as Yugoslavia fell apart, and the Soviet Union, and the secessionist movements in Spain or Irish reunification.

Many of my early memories of Africa represented in the UK were of Band Aid, and the Ethiopian famine (1983-5). Faloyin sees this as the birth of modern white saviour imagery (I don’t disagree with him). Band Aid projected an image for all of Africa of famine and misery whose inhabitants could only be saved by the intervention of white Westerners – this theme has been repeated endlessly since then. It feels like things are changing though, for the 30th anniversary of Band Aid in 2014 there was a pretty large backlash with musicians with African backgrounds refusing take part. Of the leaders of the Aid/Relief movement Bob Geldof, for his part, essentially said the means justified the ends whilst Lenny Henry was more reflective on the appropriateness of the “white saviour” narrative.

The theme of representation gets a reprise in a later part of the book where Faloyin talks about representations of Africa in the movies which are usually highly stereotypical. This chapter is genuinely laugh out loud funny, as the author says it is a pastiche of Binyavanga Wainaina’s “How to write about Africa“. I hadn’t appreciated quite how revolutionary the film, Black Panther, was in terms of it’s representation of Africans. Actors in Black Panther did not act as generic Africans, they took on national or region speech and habits. Somewhat to my surprise Faloyin cites Coming to America as an earlier film in the same vein – sadly from Hollywood this appears to represent the full list of African films.

Faloyin talks about the story of post-independence democracy in seven types of dictatorship: cold war dealmakers, god-playing colonial masters, revolutionary heroes, opportunistic families, civil-war peacemakers, founding fathers and (rarely) unhinged madman with taste for human flesh. He does this through brief sketches of 7 post-independence leaders Siad Barre, Sani Abacha, Robert Mugabe, Paul Kagame, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Obiang Nguena Mbasogo, and Muammar Gaddafi. Some of these dictators have fallen, but others and others like them remain in place. All of them have been supported to some degree by the West or the Soviet Union – sometimes both!

The chapter on looting is perhaps the most shameful for a British European since it is ongoing; the “Scramble for African” in the 19th century is beyond our reach – it happened in at least our great-great grandparents time. But in terms of looted artefacts it is my generation, people like me, in museums in my country who hold a tight grip on the artefacts taken (violently) by British forces during the Scramble with little obvious will to return them. Much of this discussion is based on the Benin Bronzes, these were not just taken, the sophisticated cities that held them were destroyed. Faloyin states that 90% of Africa’s cultural artefacts are now outside of Africa but of the 900 or so Benin Bronzes held by the British Museum, 800 or so are in storage. When Benin Bronzes went on (loaned) display in Cotonou, capital of Benin 275,000 people went to see them.

France, Germany, and Belgium were also heavily involved in looting artefacts – the Germans seem to have a particular enthusiasm for human remains which fed into their race science research.

It is fair to say there has been some progress on the return of artefacts to Africa but mainly in writing reports, with minor organisations returning a few artefacts with great fanfare, and foot dragging. Faloyin estimates that the number of artefacts under discussion for return is around 10% of the total.

Jollof, a rice dish from West Africa is a bit of a recurring theme through the book, clearly of critical importance to West Africans, and the author, but perhaps included for relief from some of the more serious chapters.

The book finishes with some vignettes with modern Africa, through protests in several countries, culture and the story of Botswana who fortunately discovered their diamond deposits after independence from the British and has thrived as a country since. Faloyin is optimistic about the future, he sees a young continent with a lot of positive things going on and perhaps signs of the end of the post-independence conflicts.

Jan 29 2025

Game Review: Black Myth Wukong

In a break from usual service I am reviewing a “computer game”, Black Myth Wukong by Game Science Interactive Technology. I started gaming in the early eighties when I was an early teenager, I think there was a bit of a break when I went to university then I continued into my early thirties (around 2000). There was then a pause until a while after my son was born, we got a PlayStation 5 in Christmas 2021 “for him”.

Since then my favourite games have been Horizon Zero Dawn, Horizon Forbidden West, Elden Ring, Lies of P and Ghost of Tsushima. I bought Black Myth Wukong with my Christmas money – a child once again! In common with my other favourite games it falls into the category of “action role-playing” game.

Black Myth Wukong is based on Journey to the West, a 16th century Chinese novel which I know from an eighties TV series which I remember by its short name “Monkey”. In the game you play the part of “the Destined One” (a monkey) whose task is to retrieve the six relics of Sun Wukong.

The action takes place over 6 chapters, it is closest in style to Lies of P, that’s to say the chapters involve a roughly linear path with battles with minor characters who respawn and bosses who you must defeat to progress. Defeating a character brings rewards, “will” which is the unit of progress used to upgrade your character and buy upgrades and consumables and also items. Fighting is action rather than turn based. Your weapons are a trusty staff (which can be replaced and upgraded through the games), and various spells which fall into several categories: active spells, defensive spells, transformations, spirits, vessels. There’s a huge range of spells and so forth to choose from. My favourite is “Pluck of Many” which summons a posse of replica monkeys to fight for you (but only for a brief period).

Black Myth uses the traditional trifecta of health, stamina and some consumable spell substance (Mana in this case) to indicate your current status. A couple of vessels and spirits are tied to a second mystical substance, Qi and spells have a cooldown period so you have to wait to use them again. Health is recovered by drinking from your gourd which contain a variety of upgradable drinks and “soaks” which have various effects. I think it’s best to think of the “soaks” as teabags! You can also collect a variety of modifying relics which can be equipped to boost various characteristics.

I liked the upgrade and progress mechanics, there are extensive skill trees but you can re-allocate “sparks” freely at the save points (shrines). Dying does not lose your accumulated will, which is an irritating feature of Elden Ring and similar. I have died futilely so many times in Elden Ring attempting to retrieve my accumulated experience points.

The graphics in Black Myth are stunning, a step above even Elden Ring and Lies of P which are excellent. This will be down, in part, to Unreal Engine 5. The chapters also have quite different visual styles – the first chapter, set on Black Wind Mountain is lush forest, the second Yellow Wind Ridge is scorched desert, the third the New West is snowy mountains, the fourth The Webbed Hollow is a creepy, cavernous underground environment, the fifth Flaming Mountains is a scorched volcanic moonscape, the final chapter Mount Huaguo is a mountainous, forested open world. In addition there are a couple of “secret” areas which are accessed by completing quest lines. The gameplay also varies a bit with chapter with some chapters like Yellow Wind Ridge and The Web Hollow feeling close to open world.

Your enemies are well-designed and have a very wide range of attacks, your own spells are very varied and both are rendered beautifully. I found the dodging animations particularly satisfying. I thought the in-game dialogue and interactions with characters was pretty good. Games Science is a Chinese studio and were a couple of places where translation seemed slightly odd (I’m thinking of the “non-white” and “non-able” bosses).

There is no difficulty level selection, so if you are struggling with a boss to progress then you have to “git gud” which is sometimes a pain. I have a sneaking suspicion that some of those most challenging bosses are amenable to tactics which you simply need to find rather than being straightforward battles of skill and reflex. Fall damage is not an issue until it is, in parts of Chapter 3! There is very limited parrying in Black Myth, which some will miss.

I got about a month of play out of Black Myth for the first run through, amounting to 98 hours gameplay but there is New Game+ to play and a couple of challenge features where you can refight bosses, this is well used to beat those foes that you first struggled with early in the game.

Overall I loved Black Myth Wukong, I can’t wait for the rumoured DLC