Examining Nick Tosches' book on the life of Sonny Liston

Tosches’ book was titled Night Train: The Sonny Liston Story in the United Kingdom in contrast to its original American title The Devil and Sonny Liston.

My discovery yesterday of the publication of this article which examines Nick Tosches' biographical treatment of Charles "Sonny" Liston has just inspired me to fish out my copy of the Tosches book.

Sandwiched between biographies on Joe Frazier and Louis Armstrong, I have not opened it for a good number of years and can hardly believe how many years ago I acquired it. Accompanying the inscription of my name is the date of purchase: "27 April 2000".

The publication of Tosches' book was looked forward to by many boxing afficionados. The last treatment of Sonny's life had been that of Rob Steen which was titled Sonny Boy: The Life and Strife of Sonny Liston. It is another boxing biography among my collections and again cannot help but marvel at the passage of time. My inscription finishes with "20th of March 1993".

I recall that many aficionados were not enthralled by Steen's book and even fewer were thrilled by Tosches' effort.

It took some time for me to appreciate that many readers of the sport of boxing prefer what I would describe as a "meat and potatoes" stylizing of a biography. In other words, one that is linearly arranged, devoid of the penmanship of the hyper-intellectual overly devoted to thematic interludes on issues of culture and philosophy.

While the hard-boiled journalistic style of Budd Schulberg and the participatory journalism of Norman Mailer and was largely appreciated by the average boxing book reader, the efforts of writers such as Steen and Tosches were angrily dismissed.

Why?

I think Tosches was seen by many as fundamentally an interloper. In other words, he was cynically a non-aficionado using the rich history of sport, its litany of characters and the drama that intrinsically attaches to a contest between two gloved combatants in a squared ring for the selfish purpose of enhancing their credentials as a writer.

Also, Tosches' emphasis on the Mafia underworld at the expense of giving a more structured account of Liston's boxing career did not go down well. Neither did his unflattering evaluation of Muhammad Ali as the apotheosis of "mediocrity". Moreover, his penchant for "macho writing", described by the New York Times's reviewer as "his complex, heavy-breathing metaphors", struck boxing readers as akin to the exhibition of a show-off circus juggler.

I personally have no such qualms and seek to extract whatever knowledge and enjoyment that I can from each biography I read regardless of the author's stylization. If the biographer's aim is to present the "truth" and the essence of a person, there are a variety of ways of achieving this, including Tosches' strategy of framing Liston and his existence in America via Aristotelian ideology.

And I of course look forward to absorbing Narjisse Moumna's deconstructions of Nick Tosches' method of attempting to uncover the truth and the essence of Charles "Sonny" Liston.

The Architecture of Absence | ALMA Magazine

© Adeyinka Makinde (2026).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

Captain Eugene Simon Karpe: The U.S. naval officer whose suspected assassination inspired Ian Fleming to write the James Bond thriller From Russia, With Love

Portrait of U.S. Navy Captain Eugene Simon Karpe (Public Domain).

In February 1950, Eugene Simon Karpe, who for the previous three years had served as the U.S. Navy Attache to Romania, was returning to the United States when his mutilated body was found in a train tunnel near Salzburg, Austria.

He had been travelling on the Orient Express.

An Austrian railway lineman told reporters that both of Karpe's legs had been severed and found lying approximately sixty feet away from the rest of his body.

There had been no signs of struggle and no blood found inside the compartment. A spokesman for Austrian National Railways stated that all the doors into the train's sleeping cars opened inward and that if Karpe had lost his balance and fell, one of the doors would have had to have been left open at the last stop.

Karpe was said to have suffered from gout which made it difficult for him to stand erect.

But the reason why his death was suspected of being a political assassination engineered by one or more of the secret services of the Communist Bloc is that Karpe's close friend Robert A. Vogeler, an executive of the Hungarian subsidiary of International Telephone and Telegraph, had been arrested, tried and convicted in Hungary for what the authorities described as "espionage and economic sabotage".

It was speculated that the Hungarian authorities believed that Captain Karpe had, along with Vogeler, been a member of an allied spy-ring and that his death had been a political assassination. He had visited Vogeler's family in Vienna three days before his death, and Vogeler's wife had spoken of receiving three mysterious phone calls from a woman speaking perfect English who asked her:

"Have you heard about your friend?"

The caller then hung up. The calls occurred before news of Karpe's death was made public.

On his last visit to America, Karpe's brother-in-law recalled him saying the following:

"I kind of hate to go back to Europe. They are always keeping a close watch on me and know every move I make."

"They" referred to the communist authorities.

Karpe was buried at Arlington Cemetery on March 16th, 1950.

In 1952 a Romanian named Ryan Petrescu confessed to having killed Karpe by pushing him off the train prior to stealing important documents from him. He claimed that he had done this with the help of two accomplices. He also told the authorities in Switzerland who apprehended him that he had been acting under "orders from a foreign organisation." However, the Swiss police who disbelieved the 24-year-old law student's claim took no further action.

Karpe's death remains shrouded in mystery to this day.

NB

. While posted in Romania, Karpe was also a naval member of the Allied Control Commission (ACC) -the joint governing body of the Allied powers in occupied Germany and Austria after World War 2, which consisted of representatives from America, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. It exercised supreme authority to supervise demilitarization, denazification, and the administration of post-war Germany.

. During World War 2, Karpe served as the captain of a destroyer in the Pacific theatre.

. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis in 1926.

. He won the Legion of Merit and the Navy Commendation Ribbon.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2026).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

Lieutenant Colonel Marcelino da Mata: Portugal’s Most Decorated Military Officer

 

Lt. COL. Marcelino da Mata photographed in full dress uniform (AI-treated Public Domain photograph).

Born into the Papel ethnic group in Portuguese Guinea (now Guinea Bissau), da Mata volunteered to serve in the Portuguese army in the early 1960s in place of his brother who had been conscripted.

He went on to fight in the Portuguese Colonial War (1961–1974) during which he participated in 2,412 military operations -mostly in Portuguese Guinea.

The most notable operations were:

. Operação Tridente (1963/64)

. Operação Mar Verde (1970)

Tridente was a combined operation aimed at eliminating the guerrilla presence from the Como Achipelago, while Mar Verde was the amphibious invasion of Guinea-Conakry.

He was a member of the Portuguese Commandos, an elite unit which specialised in counterinsurgency operations against the guerrillas of PAIGC (African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde / Partido Africano para a Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde) which was led by Amilcar Cabral.

The guerrilla campaign was successful despite Cabral's assassination in 1973.

Da Mata received the following medals:

. Cruz de Guerra (War Cross) for acts of bravery. He received five in all.

. Appointed to the Order of the Tower and Sword, Portugal’s highest military decoration for valour.

He remained in Portugal after the Carnation Revolution of 1974 and was detained for a period. He served from 1960-1990. He lived quietly in Portugal until his death in 2021 from complications related to COVID. He was 80 years of age.

Da Mata's funeral was attended by senior military officials and his death acknowledged by the Portuguese president. 

© Adeyinka Makinde (2026).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

The Naval Ranks of Rear Admiral And Commodore: A Tale of Controversy And "Confusion"

Joseph Edet Akinwale Wey, the Nigerian Chief of the Naval Staff photographed in 1968. (AI colorised via Grok).

This photograph of J.E.A. Wey displays shoulder boards which consist of a large eight-pointed star with a cross sword & baton and an eagle which reveal his rank to be that of a rear admiral in the old style used by the British Royal Navy, with the eagle replacing the royal cypher.

But for me the photograph recalled the often-fraught history of distinguishing the ranks worn respectively by rear admirals and commodores.

At one point I suspected that his shoulder board could have represented a 1960s era Nigerian translation of the rank of a Royal Navy commodore. And if so, that the picture library where I discovered it would have been wrong about the year in which the photograph of taken because Wey had been a commodore up to June 1967.

This confusion between the shoulder boards of rear admiral and commodore stems from the history of some naval captains been appointed as commodores. The first issue to clear up is that the designation of commodore was in fact not a rank but an appointment of a senior captain who exercised a high level of responsibility. This covered roles at sea such as serving as the commander of a squadron of ships or as the head of major shore establishments including naval bases.

The appointment was essentially temporary although it often formed a crucial stepping stone for an officer enroute to becoming a rear admiral. Indeed, a commodore (First Class) was entitled to wear the rank stripes of a rear admiral on the lower sleeves of his reefer jacket. However, when wearing either a great coat or the all-white service dress with a short, stand-up collar, commodores of the 1^st class had a distinct set of shoulder boards (also known as shoulder straps) which consisted of a large anchor, two small eight-pointed stars arranged horizontally and royal cypher.

This was depicted in the 1956 movie The Battle of the River Plate in which the figure of Commodore Henry Harwood, the commander of the South Atlantic Squadron was portrayed by the actor Anthony Quayle.

Anthony Quayle as Commodore Henry Harwood in The Battle of the River Plate.

But the mild confusion of the past has intensified in contemporary times.

In 1997, commodore became a substantive rank in the Royal Navy -equivalent to that of an army brigadier. They also inherited the shoulder boards, once worn by rear admirals, that is, the large eight-pointed star, cross sword & baton and royal cypher. Thus, when the old-style rear admirals shoulder boards are sold to collectors, a good many vendors often describe them as ones worn by commodores.

It means that images or depictions of rear admirals in the past may also be misunderstood. An example of this can be found in the James Bond movie You Only Live Twice which was released in 1967.  Ian Fleming, the author of the novel upon which the film was based, revealed ‘M’, the fictional head of the British Secret Service, to be a retired vice admiral named Sir Miles Messervy ('M'). But in the movie the actor Bernard Lee who portrays Messervy wears the old-style Rear Admiral's shoulder boards. Today, a Royal Navy rear admiral’s shoulder boards consist of two eight-pointed stars arranged vertically, a crossed sword & baton and royal cypher.

Bernard Lee as the Ian Fleming created Sir Miles Messervy ('M') in You Only Live Twice (1967). Lee is wearing the old-style shoulder boards of a Royal Navy rear admiral which today would be worn by a commodore.

It should be noted that the "confusion" over the Rear Admiral and Commodore rank has its own story in the United States.

Originally a title granted by the Secretary of the Navy to naval captains who as in the case of the Royal Navy were granted special responsibilities such as the command of a naval squadron, or as in the case of the famous Matthew C. Perry, the commandant of a navy yard, the U.S. Navy in 1982 decided to create the substantive one-star rank of "commodore-admiral". This was renamed “commodore” until the rank of rear-admiral (Lower Half) was established in 1985. It retained its one-star status in contrast to the two-star status of rear admiral (Upper Half).

The reformation of ranks was largely due to complaints made by disgruntled officers from the other branches of the U.S. armed forces. For instance, army brigadier-generals when embarked on joint operations often perceived themselves as being superior in rank to rear admirals -despite their two-star status- because they were originally promoted from the rank of captain, a senior rank but one not that of a flag officer.

Meanwhile in Britain, it was discovered that even after the transforming of commodore from an appointment to a substantive rank, senior Royal Navy captains of six years seniority were being paid the same salary as British Army brigadiers and Royal Air Force air commodores. But as was the case with the United States military, these issues have been sorted out to quell inter-service grievances, as well as to establish uniformity with other militaries belonging to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.

And as is the case with the Royal Navy, the contemporary Nigerian Navy rear admiral does not wear the shoulder boards worn by Joseph Wey in 1968. Today they consist of two small six-pointed stars arranged horizontally, a crossed sword & baton and an eagle. In contrast, the board straps of a commodore display a small six-pointed star, an anchor and an eagle.

Rear Admiral (left) and Commodore ranks in today's Royal Navy

Note.

Joseph Wey was also a member of the Supreme Military Council and later became the Chief of Staff Supreme Headquarters. He was compulsorily retired in July 1975 after the coup which overthrew General Yakubu Gowon and brought Brigadier Murtala Muhammed to power. His final rank was Vice Admiral.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2026).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England. His late father was a Nigerian Navy officer, and he has presented lectures to naval officers and other officers of the armed forces on the Naval Warfare Course run by the Naval War College Nigeria.

Adeyinka’s article "The Bonny Landing: The anatomy of Black Africa’s first amphibious operation, July to September 1967" was published in the August 2024 edition of The Mariner's Mirror, the international journal of the Society for Nautical Research.