Paperback reviews: Naturalists at Sea, Cowboys and Indies and Parliament: The Biography Volume 2: Reform

Murphy's 'Cowboys and Indies' is a racy history of the record biz runs from 1853 to 2014

Naturalists at Sea, by Glyn Williams (Yale, £14.99)

This gripping account of scientific travellers in the 18th and 19th centuries reveals that, despite the importance placed on their work by governments (the first British settlement in Australia was Botany Bay), relations between boffins and crews were often fraught.

When Joseph Banks withdrew from Cook’s second expedition in high dudgeon (“He swore… like a madman,” reported a midshipman), he was replaced by Johann Reinhold Forster, who in turn was described as “one of the Admiralty’s vast mistakes… an incubus”. Williams concludes with Darwin, who wrote from the Beagle, “I hate every wave of the ocean.”

Cowboys and Indies, by Gareth Murphy (Serpent’s Tail, £9.99)

Murphy’s racy history of the record biz runs from 1853 (conception of first recording machine) to 2014 (digital overtakes CDs) but it mainly focuses on the Sixties and Seventies.

The torrent of anecdotes includes innovatory genius Sam Phillips demanding “anything up to 40 takes”, the Stones ousting their manager Andrew Loog Oldham by recording “shabby improvisations of finger-fumbling sludge” in 1967, and David Geffen, whose roster for Asylum included Joni Mitchell, the Eagles and Bob Dylan, though Don Henley later remarked: “Asylum was an artist-oriented label for about a minute.”

Parliament: The Biography Volume 2: Reform, by Chris Bryant (Black Swan, £10.99)

The past 200 years at Westminster may not sound the most scintillating subject but Bryant scores with a lively thematic approach.

The hanky-panky that derailed Sir Charles Dilke in 1867 leads to a consideration of “extravagant spirits” including Lewis Harcourt (aka Loulou) and Palmerston (aka Lord Cupid). George Brown’s public collapse prompts an alcoholic survey including Pitt the Younger, who gave a three-hour speech after vomiting port, and Alan Clark, whose diaries reveal that his fuelling on “a delicious Pichon Longueville” produced a less successful performance.