King Dido

by Alexander Baron, Ken Worpole (Introduction)

1911, London. The police collaborate with racketeers to keep an uneasy peace, periodically broken by violent gang wars. Dido Peach comes to prominence by breaking the unwritten rules of the street. For a brief time he rules the underworld. His fall is spectacular, shaking even the callous and vicious neighbourhood in which he is trapped.

Genres: Fiction, Crime, London, Historical Fiction, British Literature

443 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Alexander Baron (4 December 1917 – 6 December 1999) was a British author and screenwriter. He is best known for his highly acclaimed novel about D-Day entitled From the City from the Plough (1948) and his London novel The Lowlife (1963). His father was Barnet Bernstein, a Polish-Jewish immigrant to Britain who settled in the East End of London in 1908 and later worked as a furrier. Alexander Baron was born in Maidenhead and raised in the Hackney district of London. He attended Hackney Downs School. During the 1930s, with his schoolfriend Ted Willis, Baron was a leading activist and organiser of the Labour League of Youth (at that time aligned with the Communist Party), campaigning against the fascists in the streets of the East End. Baron became increasingly disillusioned with far left politics as he spoke to International Brigade fighters returning from the Spanish Civil War, and finally broke with the communists after the Hitler–Stalin Pact of August 1939.

Baron served in the Pioneer Corps of the British Army during World War II, experiencing fierce fighting in the Italian campaign, Normandy and in Northern France and Belgium. As a sapper, he was among the first Allied troops to be landed in Sicily, Italy and on D-Day. He used his wartime experiences as the basis for his three best-selling war novels. After the war he became assistant editor of Tribune before publishing his first novel From the City from the Plough (1948). At this time, at the behest of his publisher Jonathan Cape, he also changed his name from Bernstein to Baron.

Baron's personal papers are held in the archives of the University of Reading. His wartime letters and unpublished memoirs were used by the historian Sean Longden for his book To the Victor the Spoils, a social history of the British Army between D Day and VE Day.[3] Baron has also been the subject of essays by Iain Sinclair and Ken Worpole.

As well as continuing to write novels, in the 1950s Baron wrote screenplays for Hollywood, and by the 1960s he had become a regular writer on BBC's Play for Today, for drama serials like Poldark and A Horseman Riding By, and BBC classic adaptions including Jane Eyre, Sense And Sensibility, and Oliver Twist.

Reviews

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A novel published in 1969 but set nearly 60 years earlier in a slum district of London’s East End, in a fictional street called “Rabbit Marsh”. One of the novel’s many strengths is the way it conjures a vivid picture of the East End during the Edwardian era. See though my last paragraph for some caveats to my rating.

I’d initially thought this was a novel about the rise and fall of a gangster boss, but it would be wrong to use that word about the book’s lead character, Dido Peach, since he never actually has a gang. Dido is one of 3 brothers being raised by a devoutly Christian mother. Despite living in the slums Mrs Peach has raised her children to be “respectable”.


“It was beyond her even to envisage life outside Rabbit Marsh. She detested the street, but the effort of keeping herself and her family apart had given her a pride that she would not willingly lose. Only here could she feel above others. In a more genteel environment she would have felt inferior, crushed, afraid even to step out into the street for fear of her neighbours’ scorn. Here it was she who could feel scornful. So in her wish-world she asked for nothing to be different — except that certain things in her family fell out otherwise than as they really were.”


Dido is an inarticulate man, but also one of strong emotions and great pride. That pride leads him to take a stand against a small-time local gang boss, after the latter insults his mother. Dido becomes “King Dido”, the “protector” of the inhabitants of Rabbit Marsh, who pay tribute to him accordingly. But how long can one man stand against both his rivals in the underworld and the cruel and vindictive local Police commander, Inspector Merry?

This is an impressive piece of work. The perspective switches between the various characters, allowing the reader to understand the thinking of even the least attractive of them. One aspect was how often people misunderstood each other. A character would act in a well-meaning way, but would not realise their actions had created the opposite impression from what had been intended.

So, a strong plot, impressive characterisations, vivid background, excellent writing – what’s not to like? Well, this is one of the most unsentimental novels I’ve read. I’d go as far as to call it cynical. I got a sense of foreboding as I read along, a feeling that Dido was in the grip of an inexorable fate. I won’t say whether that is realised or whether Dido escapes the walls closing in on him, but the overall mood of the book was a bit depressing. I would say that this was a novel I admired rather than enjoyed.

[K.J. Charles]

Powerfully written, psychologically convincing, compelling storytelling, amazing description, and I cannot take another minute. It's too goddamn stressful and utterly, painfully hopeless. For good reason, because this is a story of people trapped by poverty, lack of imagination, inability to fight for better things based on a solid understanding they'll only be dragged back down, and the horrific social rules that deny women bodily agency and men emotions at all. It's an indictment of pretty much everything.

Which is exhausting and clearly things are going to go tits up for all the characters and I'm not inclined to read another 100pp to find out how, so DNF. But if you want the British literary novel version of grimdark, or bleak social realism of 1910 with amazing description of the slums and how people lived, i'd highly recommend this, because it is very good.

[Andy Weston · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting piece of historical fiction, but I don't think it is Baron at his best, that accolade reserved for The Lowlife.
Set on the eve of the First World War, in 1911, as the coronation bells at Westminster inaugurate the reign of George V, it tells the story of Dido Peach, who is drawn into the violent world of protection rackets and gang warfare. The Peach family who reside in Rabbit Marsh near Brick Lane, his two younger brothers are rough and impressionable, despite their widowed mother's guidance, the life of crime seems unavoidable.
Baron himself grew up in the East End, in a similar slum; written in 1967 this is very much a story of 'angry youth', but Dido does attract some sympathy, driven to defend his family from the surrounding squalor and to take them to a middle class life.
The stongest features of the novel are Baron's observations on the East End slum life, class oppression, and period detail. Against it, is that it is a depressing read, there are few, if any, parts of optimism, brightness, or levity to the book; the best writers on dark subject matter do manage the occasional moment of respite.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

The very definition of 'compelling'. Like being ordered to sit down, be quiet and listen without interruption to the tale of a man trapped between lack of internal imagination and external circumstance. Grim and inevitable. Should be recommended to all fans of London novels, crime fiction and good writing. Picked up on this via the equally excellent 'Invisible Ink' by Christopher Fowler (Strange Attractor 2012): 100 authors no-one reads anymore but for no good reason. Well worth a delve.

[Nigeyb · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first book I have read by Alexander Baron (1917-1999) having heard very positive things about his work. He was a renowned London author, best known for his novel The Lowlife (1963).

His first novel, From the City, from the Plough (1948), was a best seller. It was based on Alexander Baron's own war service, fighting across France from the Normandy D-Day beaches. Baron went on to write many London novels which were similarly based largely on personal experience and observation.

King Dido (1969) is set in the years leading up to World War 1 and it's a gripping thriller about crime in the East End. It tells the story of Dido Peach, who is drawn into the violent world of protection rackets and gang warfare. Peach, a contradictory character, has his late father’s violence and strength combined with his mother’s concern for living a respectable, decent life. He rules his two younger brothers with a rod of iron and tries to live up to his mother's expectations. His family’s attempt to lead a virtuous life brings them into conflict with a local family of thugs led by the monstrous Ginger Murchison. Dido Peach and Ginger Murchison engage in a vicious and vivid street fight.

The novel abounds with memorable characters, not least Inspector Merry - a cunning, ambitious and relentless policeman.

Full of extraordinary period detail, the book graphically and authentically evokes the world of the early twentieth century East London slums. This alone makes it a special book, however this detail is also aligned to a genuinely gripping story and an array of unforgettable characters. A superb book. I cannot wait to read more of Alexander Baron's work.

[Pirate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent read. A superior version of Peaky Blinders set in London with Dido the principal character the man of the house keeping his two younger brothers on the straight and narrow or almost as well as ensuring his brow-beaten mother is cared for. The atmosphere of early 20th century London is superb and a broad cast of characters including the sinister manipulative Inspector -- Merry maybe by name but not by nature -- and his unique way of suppressing crime....one sympathises with Dido by journey's end. A man who wants to do well by honest means is pushed into a corner and his fall from grace is as sudden as it is brutal as is his behaviour.

[Wayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoy this author's work. An interesting tale on many fronts. The flowing sentence and paragraph structure makes it an easy read. Nice bonus. Well recommended.

The 4th book read by Alexander Baron. A much under rated writer.

[Mike Futcher · Rating 5 out of 5]

"… beneath the servility accorded to a master there is always malice." (pg. 314)

A fine example of Alexander Baron's talent and appeal, King Dido is an accomplished character-driven story with a social conscience. It is a very bleak novel – particularly in its too-abrupt ending – as it follows the rise and fall of Dido Peach, who ascends rather accidentally to prominence in the criminal underworld of his slum in the East End of London (the year is 1911). Dido is a fascinating character and a tragic one – as Ken Worpole's introduction notes, there is something of the Heathcliff about him (pg. 15). His rise is facilitated not by ambition but by righting wrongs done to his family, and from then on it is a combination of his pride, his family ties and his social status as one of the working-class 'scum' in the eyes of many, that eventually dooms him.

Baron takes this opportunity to comment – perceptively but never didactically – on the nature of power and influence, not least in how the powerless react to power. This can take the form of petty resistance (see the quote with which I opened this review) or bovine acceptance. The latter is where Baron's social conscience shines through. Dido is a tough but fair man, honest and simple, who just wants to do right by his family. This code of honour leads him to overthrow the local gang leader and he finds himself taking the unwanted mantle. "Dido was a law-abiding man… The fight with Ginger had been fated. He still could not question its rightness. But since then his life had not been his own" (pg. 246). His attempts to better himself and to return to a clean-living life are foiled by class prejudice, the environment in which he lives and his own lack of conviction, itself seasoned by his life of deference to those 'above' him. Baron seems to be using Dido's arc to represent the trials of all those whose lives' course is not their own to determine; when he speaks of "all the inimical forces that had driven him to the slaughter" (pg. 349), there is an empathy here for Dido's rut that would not be out-of-place in modern socially-conscious portrayals of crime-ridden neighbourhoods like The Wire.

This is heavy stuff and, as I have said, it is a bleak novel. It is almost Dickensian in style, but without that author's occasional penchant for sentimentality. Nevertheless, Baron is a gifted writer and the book never feels plodding or hectoring. In fact, it is a very smooth and easy read, helped no doubt by Baron's keen sense of character and setting. When you're reading King Dido, you feel like you live amongst these characters. But if it is character and setting that gives the book an accomplished quality, it is its sense of social compassion which gives it endurance and vitality beyond just literary craft. It is this which validates Baron not just as a wordsmith but as an artist. Towards the end of the novel, as Dido's options are slammed shut on him, he realizes that "it was fight or go under now" (pg. 274). Perhaps that was always the case: this hard-nosed assessment could be applied to all of his 'choices' in the novel. Indeed, it could be a mantra for the whole working class, who remain – in Dido's time, in Baron's time, and in ours – as the fighting classes and, sadly, the struggling classes.

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe this isn't the best book to read as an introduction to Baron, who people have described as one of Britain's best post-war novelists. The story was uninspired and the writing clumsy, I thought. The best part of the book were the vivid descriptions of East London circa 1911; the rotting tenements, the communal toilets, the working horses, the reality of Dickensian child-labor, the danger and desperation of the streets.