"Broken Blood: The Rise And Fall Of The Tennant Family" 1987 BLOW, Simon
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"Broken Blood: The Rise And Fall Of The Tennant Family" 1987 BLOW, Simon

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"Broken Blood: The Rise And Fall Of The Tennant Family" 1987 BLOW, SimonBLOW, Simon [224] pp. Faber & Faber 1987 8 3 4" x 5 3 4" VG VG Scroll Down for (12) Additional Scans: And yet, could the age of the conquering bourgeoisie flourish, when large tracts of the bourgeoisie itself found themselves so little engaged in the generation of wealth, and drifting so rapidly and so far away from the puritan ethic, the values of work and effort, accumulation through abstention, duty and moral earnestness, which had given them their

BLOW, Simon

[224] pp.

Faber & Faber

1987

8 3/4" x 5 3/4"

VG/ VG

Scroll Down for (12) Additional Scans:

‘And yet, could the age of the conquering bourgeoisie flourish, when large tracts of the bourgeoisie itself found themselves so little engaged in the generation of wealth, and drifting so rapidly and so far away from the puritan ethic, the values of work and effort, accumulation through abstention, duty and moral earnestness, which had given them their identity, pride and ferocious energy? ... The fear – nay, the shame – of a future of parasites haunted them.’ These sentences, from the Marxist historian E.J. Hobsbawm’s The Age of Empire, 1875-1914, would make the perfect epitaph for Simon Blow’s history of his maternal grandmother’s family, the Tennants. Or for a Thatcherite tract on Britain’s decline from Victorian values. Or for a great novel like Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks. The rise and fall of a mercantile dynasty is a rich old subject, and can be approached from several angles. Which will Simon Blow’s be? ‘If I was more Tennant than anything else,’ he writes, ‘I began to wonder who the Tennants were. Should I be proud, worried or ashamed? What influence was this blood likely to have over my destiny?’ It sounds like another search for identity – ‘the curse of the age’, as E.S. Turner recently remarked à propos of Gloria Vanderbilt’s autobiography.


Well, at least this isn’t an autobiography – though perhaps it would be more amusing if it were. The first half traces the Tennants back to their origins as subsistence farmers in Ayrshire. At the turn of the 18th century, one of them was apprenticed to a weaver and developed an interest in bleaching – then an area of growth in the textile industry, since everyone was looking for a fast chemical process to replace the space and time-consuming laying-out of linen on meadows. Tennant teamed up with a trained chemist called Macintosh, who later immortalised his name by inventing a waterproofing method. Together they patented a bleaching powder and set up a factory at St Rollox near Glasgow. By 1830, it was the largest chemical factory in the world, creating a lot of wealth for Glasgow and a sky black with fumes.

The next Tennant, John, went on developing, expanding and diversifying the business, which already had a branch in the City of London. A multi-millionaire by the age of 25, John was a typical early Victorian entrepreneur, perhaps not even all that untypical in not being married to the mistress of his solid Glasgow mansion who was also the mother of his children. Her name was Robina. Robina’s son Charles was born in 1823 and succeeded his father as head of the firm. He bought an estate at Glen in Peebleshire, and built a baronial castle on it where he brought up 12 children by two successive wives to hunt, shoot and fish. He sent the boys to Eton and acquired a collection of paintings, a house in Grosvenor Square and, in 1885, a baronetcy – after which he was known as ‘the Bart’. By this time the business empire was already beginning to decline, partly because of a general recession, and partly because Ludwig Mond, the founder of ICI, was using more advanced chemical methods: in the end he was able to force Tennants into a partial merger.

Up till now, Blow has munched his way conscientiously through uncongenial material: the Scottish Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, Radicalism, even insider dealing and the defeat of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar – none of these subjects really seems to turn him on, though some of the Tyrian purple has leaked into the prose and produced phrases like ‘Society gave a brittle laugh.’ But with the Bart’s children he is at last into Society, and things begin to brighten up. Society, according to Blow, was slumbering under a pall of stuffy philistinism, waiting for the unconventional Tennants to kiss it awake. The kiss was administered by the girls: Charlotte, who married Lord Ribblesdale; Lucy, who married Thomas Graham-Smith; Laura, who married Alfred Lyttelton; and Margot, who considerably later married Asquith and had the highest profile of them all. The male Tennants of that generation were not conspicuous for profiles. Laura and Margot’s unconventionality consisted in managing without chaperones and turning their bedroom at Glen into a snuggery where they discussed books and ideas with men. This, says Blow, was ‘to crystallise that group of leisured but sensitive country-house people who came to be dubbed “the Souls”. Lately the group has had a revival of interest shown in it.’ Blow does nothing to keep the interest going. The character he homes in on is his own great-grandmother Pamela Wyndham. As described by him, she is such an outsize monster that she brings the book to life and runs away with what there is of it. She was a great aristocratic beauty; her vanity and self-absorption were monumental; and she smothered her sons with the kind of love that has to be instantly and demonstratively returned with knobs on. When her eldest son was killed in the First World War, she turned to Spiritualism. She was horrid to her daughter (Blow’s grandmother), who consequently failed to develop a heart and turned into another kind of monster, a bolter. (She was, in fact, one of the models for Nancy Mitford’s famous Bolter in The Pursuit of Love.) She abandoned her children and had an insatiable ‘need to be noticed’. Blow rather imprudently describes this failing as ‘a feature among Pamela’s descendants’.

The feature didn’t come out in her eldest surviving son, Christopher, the second Lord Glenconner: so Blow doesn’t devote much space to him, though he regrets that in 1963 he sold the family firm to Consolidated Goldfields. He has more to say about the two younger brothers, David and Stephen. David led a rackety life with three wives and a lot of drink. Blow gives him no credit for founding the Gargoyle Club. But he descrves some: in the Twenties, Thirties and Forties, the Gargoyle, though a nightclub and not a café, was a London version of the artists’ and intellectuals’ hang-outs in Paris, Vienna and Berlin.

Stephen Tennant became an enfant terrible, the love of Siegfried Sassoon, and a fairly famous aesthete. He died this year. In 1894, a decade or so before David and Stephen were born, Kipling wrote a poem which might have been about them – ‘The “Mary Gloster” ’. He rolled them into one and made them the child of a Glasgow shipowner, though it could just as well have been an industrialist. The self-made old man, ‘Sir Andrew Gloster, dying, baronite’, addresses his son:

I know the kind you are.
Harrer an’ Trinity College! I ought to ha’ sent
you to sea –
But I stood you an education, an’ what have you
done for me?
The things I knew was proper you wouldn’t
thank me to give,
And the things I knew was rotten you said was
the way to live.
For you muddled with books and pictures, an’
china an’ etchin’s an’ fans,
And your rooms at college was beastly – more
like a whore’s than a man’s.

It’s lucky Sir Andrew didn’t see the sale, in October, of Stephen Tennant’s house and collection of camp bibelots. And it’s a shame Blow didn’t decide to end his book with Stephen’s death. He clearly has it in for the present Lord Glenconner. The pages devoted to him are unpleasant (without being in the least bit interesting). Of course one wonders a bit what happened to make Blow so disgruntled: but even more how Faber and Faber could decide to publish a book written in media-speak clichés, punctuated by mistakes of grammar and syntax, and even with its whiff of rancour so very dull.

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abcdiana_reads
Houston, US
★★★★★ 4
“I belong to myself”
Format: Kindle
This was definitely a high fantasy with deep world building and layered mythology. As a mood reader, I should have known better than to go in blind (rookie mistake), so it took me a minute to find my footing. But once I did? I was fully invested. I really liked the FMC and her perseverance. Her quiet sorrow spoke louder than any scream..a heartbreak she carried alone cus the world never paused long enough to notice. And the love triangle yall?! Well done, well played. I can’t speak on it much but I will say I had my heart set from the beginning. And in the last few chapters my adrenaline was thru the roof! Let’s see where book 2 takes us “Because it takes a small man to be ruled by fear and a large one to show mercy. And anyone can see you are no small man.”
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Reviewed in the United States on January 28, 2026
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Cassandra Serenity
West Palm Beach, US
★★★★★ 5
6 Star Immersive Read
Format: Audiobook
5 Stars (+1 with the audio for 6 stars) immersive read. Synopsis: After a brush with death and the loss of her father, Silla Nordvig has fled to the Road of Bones. A perilous journey north to safety and freedom. But the Road of Bones is a dangerous place filled with man, monster, and monsters who are men alike. After a second encounter that should have killed her, Silla decided to hide in a wagon bound North. A wagon owned by the notorious Bloodaxe Crew, a band of mercenaries on their own mission. Will she make it to Kopa in the North, to freedom and safety, or will she be hunted down by what travels the Road of Bones with her? Review: This is an INCREDIBLE read. The book is amazing and the audio made it legendary. All hail Islay Jacobs, a single narrator that put on a full cast performance! A fantastic Viking based Romantasy set in a world where magic users, Geldra, are despised, warriors fight monsters for honor and coin, and few are truly safe. An epic adventure, sizzling romance, hidden secrets, corrupted power (with quotas), unparalleled world building, found family, and not enough books out yet! There are so many good twists in this story, some caught me completely off guard which is impressive. I am normally quick with plot points and while I did pick up on several, a few had my jaw on the floor. Each character was richly crafted, the story driven by their strengths, needs, desires, fears, and flaws. I can see why so much of the world has been drawn to this story. I’m late to the party, but I can’t wait to continue in this world.
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Reviewed in the United States on March 27, 2026
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Julie Mc
Port Orchard, US
★★★★★ 5
Road of Bones was just what I needed!!!
Format: Kindle
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5 from me! The Road of Bones Silla Nordvig is running for her life from the Queen’s assassin and the King’s Claws (The Klaernar) but she doesn’t know why. She and her father were attacked by warriors on the road to home where he was killed, he admitted he wasn’t her true father, but that’s about all he could say before he died in her arms. Now, Silla has joined the Bloodaxe Crew, trying to make her way north on the Road of Bones to safety. The Road of Bones by Demi Winters is a Romantasy for those who absolutely love some romance with their fantasy. It’s Vikings and warriors at their finest. I felt the book was a little bit of a slow start, although there WAS action from the first chapter. But as soon as Silla realized she had to run for her life, the action was non stop. The plot was so well done, the story just built upon itself, and we learned more and more about Silla as her memories returned and her assassin got closer. As we discovered more about Silla, we learned more about the Bloodaxe Crew. Both Silla and the Bloodaxe Crew (each member) have such great back stories. Silla is such a well fleshed out character. We see her as a simple kitchen maid who has little self-esteem, but longs for the freedom to be herself, and we grow with her into a woman that knows herself and is ready for just about anything. She goes through so much on her journey on the Road of Bones and we are there with her for every minute. We get to see her fall in love, and we see her when she goes through betrayal. The way she reacts internally shows just how much she grew throughout her journey. The supporting characters, Jonas, Ilias, Hekla, and Rey were all extremely important to Silla’s story in his or her own way, and made the book all that much more rich and layered. Jonas seemed to have become enthralled with Silla, but things happen there that cause serious trauma. Hekla is a great friend to Silla and watching that relationship flourish was simply a joy, and Silla was able to come into her own as a warrior through Hekla’s tutelage (with Rey’s help). And, Rey, we can never forget about Rey…he was terrifying to Silla in the beginning, but somewhere he turns into a pillar of strength for her and I, for one, cannot wait to see what happens with that relationship. In the end, I consider Road of Bones to be a work of art. If you are looking for a Viking Romantasy that is fun, a little dark, and absolutely heartbreaking, this should be your next read.
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Reviewed in the United States on February 12, 2026
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Lark
Chelsea, US
★★★★★ 3
I'm done
Format: Kindle
I survived. I made it through the book! This is a very slow book. Like... incredibly slow. I get that it's world building, but there also needs to be a sense that this world is worth caring about. The good side is that the author has lovely writing. And the audio book reader is fantastic. But the story itself is paced incredibly slowly and without the depth needed to care about the characters or world. I fell asleep a few times with the beautiful reader and lovely words... telling a story I just wasn't interested in The downside is that Silla is one of the most annoying main characters. She is weak and naive, with essentially no backstory. She's traveled all over with her father but apparently cooking and bread are her only skills. No worldliness. No experience with men or, well friends at all. Yet on the flip side she's able to learn fighting skills in a few weeks and starts outright flirting quite detailed within a few days. So is she a naive weak maiden or a hidden temptress warrior? No idea. Not sure she knows either. The other character backstories are also quite shallow. Like a few lines were written and that's all that needs to be said. But...it is lovely writing. I bought the 2nd book at the same time that I bought the first. I honestly have no desire to read the 2nd but curiosity has me wondering if it actually gets to storytelling.
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Reviewed in the United States on March 13, 2025
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Literary Lure
Louisville, US
★★★★★ 4
Wolves in disguise, magic, and political intrigue!
Format: Audiobook
📖 The Road of Bones by Demi Winters Rating: ⭐⭐⭐¾ (3.75/5) This book had me at "let them think us lambs, when truly, we are wolves." The Road of Bones delivers on atmosphere and world-building, though I was initially drawn in by promises of fantasy romance with a strong female lead. What I got instead was a first book that's laying serious groundwork - heavy on political intrigue and lighter on the romance than I expected. Silla Nordvig's journey along the thousand-mile Road of Bones is genuinely compelling. Fleeing after her father's murder with the queen's assassins on her tail, she's constantly testing her limits. The Viking-inspired setting feels fresh, and the magic system stands out as something I haven't seen before. When the Wolf tells her, "Careful, Sunshine. The sharp part bites," I couldn't help but smile at their developing dynamic. The pacing occasionally stumbles, but the character development keeps things moving. Silla's transformation from hunted to hunter unfolds beautifully against the backdrop of political machinations. The emotional moments hit hard, especially as she discovers her own strength in a world determined to break her. For a first book in a series, it establishes a solid foundation, though I wish the romance elements weren't quite so slow-burn. If you're looking for immediate romantic payoff, you might be disappointed, but if you enjoy watching characters and worlds unfold with patience, you'll find plenty to love here. 📦 What to Expect ✨ Epic Fantasy 💖 Slow Burn Romance 🔥 Grumpy/Sunshine Dynamic 🤯 Complex Politics & Power Struggles 💔 Deep Emotional Growth 🦴 Magical Beasts or Sentient Magic ⚔️ A Lead Who Fights for More Than Survival 📚 Book Tags Keywords: Dark Fantasy, Magic, Romance, Political Intrigue, Found Family, Survival, War Tropes: Grumpy/Sunshine, Enemies to Reluctant Allies, Found Family, Mentor/Protegé, Slow Burn, Power Couple Triggers: Slavery, Violence, War Themes, Grooming (discussed), Sexual Assault (mentioned, not shown), Emotional Abuse, PTSD 🎯 Final Thoughts If you're in it for the long haul and appreciate a fantasy that takes its time building something meaningful, The Road of Bones is worth the journey. Just know you're signing up for a series that's just beginning to show its teeth.
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Reviewed in the United States on November 8, 2025

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