dovegreyreader scribbles

Jerome 'what does the K stand for' Jerome.

'It is the most remarkable thing. I sat down with the full intention of writing something clever and original; but for the life of me I can't think of anything clever and original - at least not at this moment'

That's probably the plight of many a blogger, but it was also the dilemma of Jerome K. Jerome who proceeds to bewail his impecunious state of affairs.This has all come to his attention because he had his hands in his pockets where, expecting to find small change to rattle, he finds none.
Just the fluff probably.
Actually I love doing that in a shop; clearing out the dregs of shrapnel from my purse, coin by coin as the poor shop assistant looks on and I imagine how long that night's cashing up will take as I painstakingly count out £6.99 in very small change plus a bit of fluff, which I throw in for free.
Klapka!
Now I know what the K stands for, or thought I did but in fact this may all be wrong.
Jerome's father, a minister, suffered the middle name of Clapp, and was fondly known as Parson Clapp by his congregation. Passing it onto his son possibly an honour that Jerome found wanting and so subtly changed it to Klapka in memory of a Hungarian war hero. He was luckier than the siblings who were all blessed with the oddest selection of names ever invented.
I've had a little wander through Jerome K. Jerome territory thanks to Hesperus sending along The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow and while we're on the subject of the publisher, this cover gets 10/10 in my book.
It must be three-quarters of a lifetime since I read Three Men in a Boat and I never made it as far as the book which many say is even funnier, Three Men on the Bummel.
I wasn't that up on JKJ either so always good to find that an active Society exists in his memory.I have been known to join these in the past when an author takes over my life.
The Margaret Atwood Society possibly the most disappointing to date. Very tricky to join from the UK but undaunted and besotted I ploughed on valiantly with Paypal to my U.S. representative Bluestalking Reader in Chicago, who then sent off the subs for me.I'm not sure what I was expecting but all I got was one measly newsletter and that was that.
No welcoming letter from Peggy with a badge and a certificate, perhaps a bookmark.In fact I got more when I joined the PDSA Busy Bees as an eager eight-year old I seem to recall, and I collected enough tin foil in return to build an Apollo spacecraft.
I'd have done the same for Peggy.
But after a week of serious reading a good chuckle was certainly in order and here's a book that is going into my desk at work to brighten those glum moments.The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow is a timeless little compilation of funny gentle irony.Perfect self-effacing, bubble-bursting humour and an unblinkered look at a variety of subjects from Being Shy and Being in the Blues, to Babies and Cats and Dogs a la 1886.
On the subject of Babies JKJ ponders,

'Why do babies have such yards of unnecessary clothing? It is not a riddle. I really want to know. I never could understand it.Is it that the parents are ashamed of the size of the child and wish to make believe that it is longer than it actually is?'

His thoughts proceed randomly on why never to call a baby 'it' when you can't decide whether it's a boy or a girl (expect to be more unpopular with 'its' mother than if you had murdered a large and respected family in cold blood and afterward deposited their bodies in the water companies reservoir.) and even funnier

'a man - an unmarried man that is - is never seen to such disadvantage as when undergoing the ordeal of 'seeing the baby'.

His account of the ordeal must remain intact, unquoted and in the book because it had me in stitches and you need to read it for yourselves to get full comic effect.I suspect every generation needs its writer who sees through the gloss and the bluster to the often ridiculous core of the ordinary and Jerome K. Jerome served the late Victorian era well.
I'm trying to think who serves us well in this respect now.Garrison Keillor comes to mind over in the US but do we have some UK equivalents?
The late, much-missed Linda Smith of course, any others?

Singled Out: How Two Million Women Survived Without Men After the First World War

If dead mothers abounded in Victorian fiction then, in reality, living, breathing, would-be mothers were queuing up in abundance in the aftermath of the Great War. The dearth of available young men forcing many women to abandon the predicted path of marriage and child-bearing and forge new trails in that unwanted and uncharted territory of singledom.
I know I may have thought about all this before, known about it in an approximate way, but never quite so completely until now.
I am reading Singled Out : How Two Million Women Survived Without Men after the First World War by Virginia Nicholson and thus far it is heart-wrenching. There was no other available role for women, their lives were defined by men and by marriage and that was all they had been prepared for.The panic and despair seems difficult to imagine in 2007 when the problem is deemed not so much the dearth as the difficulty of finding the right one.No such problem of choice in the 1920's, if he was male he would do.
I am now starting to realize that we probably owe these single women a huge debt.Often scorned, humiliated and reviled many blazed new and exciting trails against all the odds, others quietly and sadly got on with life.The descriptions of the public torment and victimisation they were prey to are profoundly moving and I now feel dreadful for playing outside Old Miss Garrity's house at the top end of Queen Anne's Gardens when we were roller skating eight year olds.
We knew full well the sight of children enraged her and if we kept at it long enough she'd totter out and scream at us and as soon as she'd gone in, shame on us, we'd do it again.I'd better do the Miserable Offender routine and say the General Confession twice which is the best a lapsed Anglican can come up with forty-six years on.
The first fifty pages read so far have elaborated in detail just how heartbreaking the situation was, often short extracts from private diaries portraying, in just a few lines, years of anguish and sorrow.
There are countless literary references too and it would be easy and of interest to compile a wide-ranging and fascinating reading list from Virginia Nicholson's examples.
A quote from Elizabeth Bowen's 1955 book A World of Love instantly reminds me that I have yet to read anything of hers and must. A description of 'the sabotage wrought by one soldier's death on two generations of living women' surely some of the most succinct and moving words that could be written to describe any premature loss of life,

'[Guy] had it in him to make a good end, but not soon; he would have been ready to disengage himself when the hour came, but rightfully speaking it had not ... it was simply that these years she went on living belonged to him, his lease upon them not having run out yet. The living were living in his lifetime; and of this his contemporaries ... never were unaware. They were incomplete.'

My first introduction to the writing of Virginia Nicholson Among the Bohemians : Experiments in Living 1900-1939 and I immediately added her to my list of current women writers who are offering immaculately researched and accessible books on a wide range of historical themes. Judith Flanders, Pamela Norris, Frances Spalding, Kate Williams and probably countless others are writing books which both inform and entertain; page-turning narratives that keep me engrossed and leave me feeling a whole lot wiser by the final page.
New trails have opened up and I'm off on a frolic of my own after the initial signposting, books like this are worth their weight in future reading.

Dead mother plots

I'm working my way through an enviable stack of books from Cambridge University Press on your behalf and may be at it sometime.It's a chore but someone's got to do it and yes, need you ask, I'm scribbling all over them, everywhere.
I'm drawn, like Kiera Knightley to a fountain, towards books with titles like Literature and Medicine in Nineteenth Century Britain From Mary Shelley to George Eliot  and Death and the Mother From Dickens to Freud, Victorian Fiction and the Anxiety of Origins.
It's sad I know and it normally stops there because these are usually very expensive books, too expensive to buy unseen and sadly not in the possession of Devon Libraries either. So I drool over the titles and dream on about the uncharted waters that still lie out there for me and the nineteenth century novel.These are the titles rarely mentioned unless you've been given a reading list for a degree or similar and they seem like a very well-kept secret to me.
However Cambridge University Press have sent me a stack to assuage my longing and just to see if I can flag them up for ordinary readers like me and thee, so I'm in a sort of state of advanced literary nirvana.
Despite that rather scary title with its mention of Freud and anxiety of origins, Death and the Mother by Carolyn Dever has me jaw on floor with observations that for some reason have just never occurred to me before. My copy already riddled with underlinings and marginalia because yes, the Victorian ideal of the family and in particular motherhood is readily and easily identified, but why had it never really dawned on me before that just about every Victorian novel written is motherless in some form or another?
Incapacitated, abandoning or dead mothers proliferate and Carolyn Dever digs up all the dead mother plots and rakes them over in spectacular fashion.The first chapter, entitled The Lady Vanishes, grabbed my attention immediately.Fictional maternal mortality far in excess of actual Victorian maternal mortality apparently

"it is far more dangerous to give birth in a fictional world than in any region, under any conditions, within any social class in Victorian Britain."

The stall is set out and what follows makes fascinating reading.Each chapter prefaced by a contemporaneous and actual medical account of a nineteenth century birth or associated event before plunging into seemingly scary and pretentious subjects like Psychoanalytic Cannabilism.
Now I don't profess to be an expert on any of it but that chapter was  riveting and I was heartened to see mention of dear old Winnicott's theory of the "good-enough mother", a line oft-quoted in the health visiting sphere.
I did see mention of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak on one page so I quickly turned it over for fear of loss of confidence, because really these books are supposed to be for the big guns aren't they? The MA / phD'ites out there, the thesis and dissertation writers but actually I find they are fine for you and me too.
Though I also suspect books like this are there for other academics to pick scholarly holes in too, I'm really impressed with how much I've understood and discovered from Death and the Mother already and there are great chapters on The Woman in White, Bleak House and Daniel Deronda to come so I'm quite excited, especially as I've chosen Bleak House as my Dickens of a Read for this Christmas and I'm already on a slow but steady read of Daniel Deronda.
In Bleak House of course we have a special case, in fact we apparently get three dead mother plots for the price of one as Carolyn Dever highlights the fact that Esther Summerson  "loses" her mother not once but three times in the novel.
More about my Dickens of a Read when the sleigh bells start in earnest and I've got the dgr troika out of mothballs, but if anyone feels like joining me in a Bleak House read over the Festive season to help keep me on task I'd be more than grateful. I'm a known disaster with Dickens and so it'll be a minor miracle if I get past the halfway stage, but I do keep trying, year on year and perhaps the thought of the Carolyn Dever analysis will keep me on track.
I know I know, don't tell me, it's a heinous crime, you all adore Dickens, Bleak House is his best book, the opening paragraph is his best, but I struggle with him, I really do. The Tinker meanwhile has read most of them several time over.
Meanwhile I'm on the look out for Victorian novels where the mother lives and suddenly I can hardly think of any can you?

Independent crime

Extracting a selection from new arrivals in recent weeks I have quite a Crime Fest in progress so here are just a few.
Poisoned Pen Press UK, independent, specialising in crime fiction and a subsidiary of the popular US version, well-produced books, great reads.
I've already enjoyed quite a bit of The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R.King, Mary Russell, new side kick for Sherlock Holmes, who has taken the veil in his retirement.The bee-keeping one that is, but not quite lost the sleuth touch.It's a brave and masterly resurrection of the old boy.
What is it about bees and beekeepers that adds such an intensity to a book?
When Dig, A Morgue Mama Mystery by C.R.Corwin arrived I couldn't wait. This is St Mary Mead heads to Ohio with Maddy Sprowls as the US Miss Marple with a bit of the old hang loose attitude thrown in. No sighting of wrinkly stockings or knitting so far. In her youth Maddy Sprowls a Kerouac beat fan, so along with fellow ex-beatniks, Gwen Moffitt-Stumpf and Effie Fredmansky how can this book fail? I'm completely enthralled.
Off to the Oregon desert next with Death Pans Out by Ashna Graves and this is what makes these books so exciting and different. I've become so used to reading UK , French or Nordic based crime, it's good to hear things are just as bad in Oregon or Ohio.
Gallic Books have pulled off two very good sequels to their first offerings a few months ago, publishing the best of French popular fiction in translation.
I am page-turning The Pere-Lachaise Mystery by Claude Izner as fast as I can because it's, well a page-turner.I'm really hoping Victor Le Noir's grave gets a mention.
If anyone's venturing into Russian reading, especially War & Peace, then don't miss The Officer's Prey by Armand Cabusson. Set in 1812 It does exactly what is says on the tin, 'combines the suspense of a thriller with the compelling narrative of a war epic'. I'm two thirds through and hope to be three thirds through soon.
So far I'm inclined to agree with Jessica Mann in The Literary Review, the murder mystery is almost an adjunct to the war action but it is almost better for that because the military sleuth character of Captain Quentin Margont is brilliantly established, quite a dashing chap all round and he should gather quite a following if this is to be part of a series, which it is.The next one presumably awaiting translation.
Finally a selection of books by Martin Edwards published by Allison & Busby and I have high hopes for these if the critical quotes are anything to go by,
'a clever psychological thriller' - Sunday Telegraph
'one of Britain's most exciting crime writers' - Liverpool Post
'Martin Edwards writes terrific crime novels' - The Guardian
'in the manner of early P.D.James' - Kirkus Reviews
More, more, can't wait to make a start and get to know DCI Hannah Scarlett. I have The Coffin Trail, The Cipher Garden and, the one I like the sound of most, The Arsenic Labyrinth at the ready.Wondering again, as I was with David Baldacci, how on earth ordinary people come up with all these plots I see Martin Edwards is a partner in a legal firm.
I'll report back on whether you should trust him with your bank details or pin number, though I have a strong suspicion he may be one to keep away from the implements in your garden shed.

In the Wake - Per Petterson

I used to be quite disciplined about the six books I have on the go at any one time and it has always worked perfectly for me, but with so many books arriving I struggle to keep my hands off them instantly and soon I'm in a mess with about ten half-reads scattered around the house.This still seems reasonable because I know of some people who stop by here who have about seventy-three on the go.
Then I carry them all around the house because who knows what may strike me as perfect for the next available reading slot in my day?
I've restored a bit of good old fashioned matron's order to the ward, the bed wheels are all facing the front and I am back on my six...for a while.
Last week I picked up a book I had bought back at Houston airport in July.
I was totally captured by Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson, so In the Wake seemed like a good addition to my fast-growing Nordic shelf. This is actually the Picador UK cover, sorry the US one I have is dire not very good by comparison, I'm amazed I bought it actually.
I suspect Per Petterson is cornering the market for the introspective Nordic male with big life issues to resolve because here the theme repeats itself, but sufficiently differently (can you say that? Is it a legal combination of words? I'd hate to have the grammar police blue-lighting in) as to be of new interest.
Arvid Jansen is our man, he's a writer, he's had a rough ride and this is where Per Petterson excels because you get outcomes of rough ride instantly but you only discover quite how rough in little narrative drips as the book proceeds and protagonist starts to recover and to reclaim his sanity and his life.
So two stories, one going forwards, one going backwards.
I think I'm making this about as clear as mud, but then Arvid's a bit hazy about a great deal in the beginning so reader clarity only possible when Arvid starts to get a grip.
Now I think I may have made things worse.
It's a telling and intuitive account of grief, guilt, families and how to survive them, tragedy, love, loss, solace and comfort, all the usual themes but wrapped up in the character of a writer who perhaps sees life differently.

'I am writing myself into a possible future'

Arvid is also a writer who reads and frequently conveys the power of the written word of others in his life.Often references to books he has read in the past and how just the recollection recreates the mood, a theme I warmed to instantly because I know it well and I expect you do too.In Arvid's case those recollections often straws to be clutched at in moments of sheer desperation.
There are some acutely revealing moments in the book and Per Petterson's writing has the power to make you stop and think and visualise constantly.A passing moment when Arvid visits his father in hospital and sees the strong man of his life crying that had me in shreds. Simply written but hugely evocative imagery and the title takes on new resonance once you've turned the final page.
Finally let's not forget to thank Anne Born for her translations of In the Wake and Out Stealing Horses, thus bringing some of the best of Norwegian fiction to my doorstep and possibly yours when it may otherwise have stayed pining in the fjords.
And in case anyone from Norway visits let's thank them too and before anyone gasps and says they didn't know I was fluent in Norwegian, I cheated.
If you cut and paste you will see that this virtual translation thing is a load of old rubbish, much of my original sentiment about Norway having fjords, Grieg and making Per Petterson a National Treasure seems to have been lost.The living breathing translators out there have absolutely nothing to fear.

Denne er en briljant bestille og noen lever inne Norge er ikke alene men også meget heldig å har den fjords Edvard Sorg og Likemann Gynt bortsett fra likeledes Per Petterson. Hvis du har ikke fremstilt seg en Nasjonal Skatt du må gjøre så denne øyeblikk fordi vi ville hvis han var ours.We kunne gjøre med noen få til Nasjonal Kostbarheter fordi vi har en stor ledig stilling der hvor David Beckham pleide være.

World Book Day preview

News in The Guardian of a long list to make your eyes water as Book Clubs are to be invited to choose 'hidden gems' to be lauded on World Book Day, March 2008.
Good to see the Voice of the People getting a word in edgeways, but this list so daunting as to phase even this prizelisteria sufferer, so I'll just hang around in the shadows until a shortlist of ten emerges in February.
But am delighted to see I've read a whopping great big nine of the hundred
Needle in the Blood by Sarah Bower
House of Orphans by Helen Dunmore
Gathering the Water by Robert Edric
Water for Elephants by Sarah Gruen
The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davis
Salt and Honey by Candi Miller
The Girl From the Chartreuse by Pierre Peju
Things to Make and Mend by Ruth Thomas
A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews
but add in the ones I've been meaning to read for ages
Footprints in the Sand by Sarah Challis
The Mathematics of Love by Emma Darwin
Hunting and Gathering by Anna Galvada
Gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson
The Time of Dying by Reina James
Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl
and that all sounds a bit better.

Mandatory Training Day

Like most people who work for a large organisation I have to attend something called Mandatory Training.
It takes up a whole week day and will include subjects such as Fire Training, Manual Lifting and Handling, Human Rights, Data Protection, Health & Safety et al et blah et groan etc.
A selection of dates are usually given to us early in the year and we quickly plan ahead so that we are unavailable.
I know this may possibly shatter your image of me as a dedicated NHS employee, but that can't be helped, it's not my favourite day in the year and I might as well be honest.
Even changing the name to Corporate Catch Up Day hasn't fooled me.
I was given an early December date back in January and despite my protests that I knew for sure that on that exact day I would, with absolute certainty, be doing the developmental assessments on the babies born in May in the morning and be visiting the babies born at the end of November in the afternoon, I was informed I had to be there.
Somehow the date has loomed like a very big blot in my consciousness ever since.
None of the drama of  resuscitation training in store, that's done on a separate day but the last time I did Manual Lifting and Handling Training we did drive the hapless instructor rapidly towards a nervous breakdown, the tricky scenario to be sorted was as follows,
"The weekly consignment of fifty large boxes of toilet rolls have been delivered to the wrong door of the hospital, how would you resolve this problem safely?"
We split up into small groups with a flip chart and big coloured pens and, after debating the reasons why a tiny cottage hospital was using so many toilet rolls and that perhaps the menus needed to be revised, we settled on an excellent solution which we bullet pointed on our flip chart.
In essence, we'd contact the delivery company and advise them of the error of their ways requesting that they return forthwith and deliver the toilet rolls to the correct door. If it rained in the meantime and the toilet rolls got wet we would not be paying the bill and trusted that the company would feel suitably riven with conscience over all the patients now severely compromised by the lack of toilet tissue.
We quite liked this robust approach which seemed commensurate with our role as Band Six employees (via Agenda for Change banding has replaced grading ) but apparently it was the wrong answer and we expressed our collective dismay that the correct one just hadn't occurred to us.
We were supposed to divide the boxes down into liftable sized packages, keep our backs straight, bend at the knees to pick them up and then, holding them at waist level and close to the body, walk them around to the correct door. If there were enough staff available we could set up a line and pass them one to another for increased efficiency.
I can't wait for this year.

Girls Night In go out

In amongst the hustleybustlyhurlyburly of the week I've enjoyed making a tiny quilted offering for some friends in their eighties who surprised us all and got married a few weeks ago.I've added a border and quilted this little 6" block as a memento and just hope they like it.The wedding such a suprise that I can't make the celebratory lunch today because I've had the Girl's Night In Pampering weekend booked for months.
We headed off on Friday for an overnight stay in a lodge to ourselves at Nigel Mansell's Country Club and yet again there is going to be mass disappointment.
I've forgotten to pre-book tickets to look around the Nigel Mansell World of Formula One Racing Museum.
I did this last time and you could just sense the dejection as we peered through the locked doors at row upon row of Nigel's racing helmets in glass cases.
It looked so interesting.
We save and save the money, start growing our eyebrows months in advance to make the Eyebrow Shaping worthwhile, attempt to muster some fingernails for the French Manicure and generally enjoy a great Girls of a Certain Age celebration.Much lounging by the pool and a bit of a swim, because really we should, but we care not a jot about cellulite and give the gym an extremely wide berth.
This is all about self-indulgent care for the carers because we all work in a busy doctor's surgery.
I'm also in charge of poolside reading.
Thankfully I haven't failed with this and so will return this evening not only gleaming with health, but completely up to date on all the celebrity goss because it's Hello, OK and Grazia time. Last visit I was completely up to speed on Lembit Opik and his Cheeky Girl and when I mentioned it on the blog had a huge surge in hits, so was only sorry I hadn't been able to muster something salacious.
Sorry, sorry ...if you've come back again because I've mentioned Lembit, I'm really sorry, nothing new.
Good grief it's like saying "Walkies" to a dog isn't it?
One of the Practice Nurses is in charge of the Midnight Feast, partaken after the Friday evening dinner which is many courses long and many glasses full.
Later, several do have a job to walk a straight line back to our lodge.
Once there we get into our night attire, this year de rigeur is Primark £3.50 fleecy pyjamas (mine are aqua with purple stars) and natter away into the early hours.We don't of course break Nigel's house rules and take any alcohol of our own into our lodge.
Last time the Midnight Feast was Rennies and hot water but this time we're having Gaviscon which will make a nice change.

I've seen it!

I've seen it!
For someone who never goes to the cinema, this is amazing because I've seen a film before it's out on DVD.I much prefer to watch a film as part of a popcorn-crunching crowd of one or two from the comfort of my sofa at the exact moment when I want to watch it.
But, thanks to the friends who dragged me out to the local arts centre which becomes a cinema when the need arises, I've seen it.
I read the book the week it was published in 2002 and I loved it, one of his best, hasn't written a better one since.
So the film, would I enjoy it?
Well the seats are chronically uncomfortable at this arts centre turned cinema, nowhere for your legs to go and I'll be honest I rarely enjoy going there.
This film was going to have to work very hard to take my mind off my squashed legs.
Verdict : *WARNING* Some spoilers.

• Realise I know every other person in cinema.
• Don't rise to comments like 'the baby's waking in the night' as am off-duty.
• As film starts realise I recognise name of the producer.
• Film dragging a bit in the early stages.
• Nice location/house.
• Feet now cold.
• Did she really need to jump in that fountain?
• Colin Firth did wet clothes better in my humble opinion.
• Now feeling colder.
• Truth be told,starting to get a teensy bit bored.
• Busy day at work, trying to stay awake.
• Realise why I don't go to cinema often
• Suddenly understand retrospective filming technique, outcome precedes event.
• Quite clever
• Things pick up towards the middle
• 1940's hospital nursing scenes good, nothing much different to 1972.
• Legs have been to left and right, now consider draping over shoulders of person in front.
• Loved the rendition of the hymn on the bandstand at Dunkerque/Dunkirk
• Person next to me VERY upset about the horses.
• Person in front of me VERY upset about the sloppy brains.
• Didn't realise brains made that noise when they fall out.
• Twist at the end felt better than the book.
• Knew about the Balham underground disaster from Bugle Boy, strange to think...
• Sad but didn't cry.
• Everyone around me crying.
• Home for hot chocolate.
• Bookhound very grateful to have been excused seeing film.
• 

My daemon

I certainly enjoyed the first in the trilogy of Philip Pullman's books and am now reminded I should read the rest, plus the website for the forthcoming film is ace.
The last time I did my daemon over on The Golden Compass it was a crow, today otherstories reminds me to try again and it would seem to have transmogrified into a fox called Tarquin.
If you agree or disagree with my seemingly odd selection of qualities, and say so, I'll be given something else.
Really I'm after a hare like otherstories because they are my highly favoured animal, especially if it has to sit on my shoulder and berate me all day long.I'm obviously not humble or proud enough and should probably get out more.
A fox on my shoulder with a Gamekeeper in the house is a high risk strategy and never a good idea.
If you apply for your daemon please come back and tell us who you've been given, because I'm feeling right daft sitting here with this fox draped around my neck.

The Whisperers

Once I'd got into the swing of Russian reading with War & Peace it was only a short hop into just about every other unspellable Russian novelist on my shelves, but at the same time a glaring gap in my knowledge was exposed. It became apparent that, as a child of the 1950's, Russia only meant spies and the Cold War, I had no real depth of understanding about Russia the country or the people, beyond James Bond.
To the rescue Orlando Figes and his measured and fascinating guided walk through Russian history and culture, Natasha's Dance and huge thanks to Daphne who stops by here for the recommendation.
Orlando Figes must know all there is to know about Russia but doesn't rub your nose in it with extraneous and irrelevant detailed analysis.
I sometimes sense with non-fiction (and with fiction come to that) that I am being treated to a blow by blow account of an authors's arduous and expensive research trip and will be told every last detail whether I want it or not.
Mostly I don't and the book starts to wilt around the edges and sink in the middle for me.
Not so Orlando Figes, so when The Whisperers, Private Life in Stalin's Russia published by Penguin, arrived, despite weighing in as a good sized newborn and being 740 pages long, I was not in the least deterred.
It's good to pick up a readable non-fiction book and go cover to cover and Orlando Figes is eminently readable, but others are disappointed, one critical reviewer of The Whisperers seeing fit to tell us,

' With such a rich vein of material, it is a shame that the author has not mustered greater intellectual ambition...this is a decent book written in a companionable style.'

Goodness, aren't people grudging and rude? Or is that what LitCrit is?
Hip hip hussar for decent companionable style I say, that means it's fine for us lesser mortals, put it on your Christmas list, at least it won't just sit unread on the shelf for the next ten years.
The Whisperers draws on hundreds of secret family archives from private homes across Russia, detailing life for millions of Russians under the tyranny of Stalin.Life lived at a whisper because you couldn't be sure who to trust, or life whispered as a treacherous betrayal of friends and family to the powers that be.
It's an unimaginable degree of fear and mistrust and I have barely scratched the surface of this book, but it's one I'll return to time and again.The insidious spread of terror, everyone suspecting everyone else of being a spy or a traitor and gradually people retreating into,

'a private world of truth...keeping a diary was a way to carve out a private realm free of dissembling, to voice ones doubts and fears at a time when it was dangerous to speak.'

The dialogue with the self, a safe place to voice inner thoughts, safe as long as no one found it of course.
Finally those diaries now see the light of day.
The sheer stomach-churning-ness (new word alert) can only be guessed at until you start to read this book and the bleak reality is gradually revealed. Standing by a husband who had been arrested placed an enormous strain on  the family, anything, literally anything could and did happen; eviction from homes, dismissed from employment, deprived of rations or wives dispatched to a labour camp minus the children.
The whole subject always returns me to the words and life of Anna Akhmatova and her magnificent poem Requiem.
The story is well known.Having lost her husband to a firing squad and then enduring the lengthy imprisonment of her son, Anna Akhmatova chose to stay in Russia and bear witness to the horrors and I don't even need a hint of a tint of an excuse to quote from Requiem in my favoured translation by Stanley Kunitz.

'The stars of death stood over us.
And Russia, guiltless, beloved, writhed
under the crunch of bloodstained boots'

True to Brodsky's maxim that "at certain periods of history it is only poetry that is capable of dealing with the reality", Akhmatova was a good sort of whisperer too. Her unsayable words, too dangerous to be written, whispered amongst a select group of trusted friends who would commit them to memory, still capable of sending shivers down the spine,

'Quietly flows the quiet Don;
into the house slips the yellow moon.

It leaps the sill with its cap askew,
and balks at a shadow that yellow moon.

This woman is sick to her marrow-bone,
this woman is utterly alone,

with husband dead, with son away
in jail. Pray for me. Pray.'

So much to absorb from The Whisperers I think it'll keep me going for years, or at least until Orlando Figes has written his next one.

A Question of Trust - Onora O'Neill

I seem to have the happy knack of sitting next to someone I should probably know but I don't.
Some years ago at an event in Cambridge I found myself sitting next to a very friendly lady at lunch who introduced herself to me as Onora O'Neill.
Hands up, never heard of.
In fact the programme stated she was actually Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve and the principle of Newnham College but I was still none the wiser.We chatted away over the quiche and the waldorf and she took a great interest in what I did for a living and family matters. Offspringette had just been accepted for her traineeship at the BBC so we had a very long chat about all that and I possibly said something mildly pessimistic about the state of the NHS.
Actually make that a definite.
If we met again now I'd have to update and tell her that after all that expensive training Offspringette did not love the underground life of the darkened studio as much as she thought she would, was not impressed at Life With Auntie, so the free spirit in her threw it all in earlier this year for a life on the ocean wave.
No change in the condition of the NHS from where I sit.
It was only later when she spoke at the event that I discovered that not only did I think Onora O'Neill was a gifted and enlightened speaker, but the BBC obviously thought the same as she had given The BBC Reith Lectures in 2002.
So my interest was piqued when those lectures, published as A Question of Trust came my way, because I've also been dipping into a recent biography My Father - Reith of the BBC written with searing honesty by his daughter Marista Leishman.The lectures founded in honour of her father 'in recognition of his contribution to culture and national life' .
What an unusual book for me to be gripped by on a Sunday morning but for anyone who works in a public and highly accountable organisation this is a must read, because even five years on plus ca change in fact tout et plus mauvais (blame babelfish if that's wrong). To be honest it's them at the top as well as the pond life like me at the bottom who should be reading this book, but its interest is far-reaching because whether we work for them or not we all use or rely on those organisations on a regular basis.
A philosopher's view of trust and deception and asking whether and how trust can be restored in a modern democracy.
Sounds slightly dry as dust?
Not a bit of it, Onora O'Neill builds up a coherent and readable argument throughout her five Reith lectures, carefully highlighting just how trust in public service organisations has dissipated down the years and how much worse things have been made by the very systems put in place to try and restore that trust.
The wisdom is frequently simple but profound,

'Plants don't flourish when we pull them up too often to check how their roots are growing: political institutional and professional life too may not flourish if we constantly uproot it to demonstrate that everything is transparent and trustworthy'

Firstly outlining the fundamentals of a trusting society, Onora O'Neill then identifies astutely where we may have gone astray,

'The pursuit of ever more perfect accountability provides citizens and consumers, patients and parents with more information, more comparisons, more complaints systems; but it also builds a culture of suspicion, low morale and may ultimately lead to professional cynicism, and then we would have grounds for public mistrust.'

Ah yes, cynicism.
Heaven knows how we try not to, but heaven knows we fail daily.
Accountability was supposed to create transparency when in fact it has frequently created the opposite,

'Transparency can encourage people to become less honest, so increasing deception and reducing reasons for trust'

'Deception is not a minor or a marginal failure. Deceivers do not treat others as moral equals; they exempt themselves from obligations that they rely on others to live up to'

The examples quoted from the NHS are those familiar to us all and from the inside painfully obvious to us all. We are now compelled to practice defensively in order to cope with a system which has us target-driven and marched up the litigation path with far greater frequency.Mountains of paperwork and record-keeping now the only definitive paddle to keep your head above water when you are stuck up the creek, but the one also most likely to trap you in a morass of mud when you are faced with writing it, often in triplicate.
That said, subpoena me to appear in court and I'll be delighted to have a wheelbarrow full of the stuff, paperwork that is, not mud.

Onora O'Neill puts together a cogent analysis of the dilemma and some pragmatic suggestions for change which will be music to the ears of many,one that particularly touched a chord with me,

'If we want a culture of public service, professionals and public servants must in the end be free to serve the public rather than their paymasters.'

This and so much more of interest packed into one small book, plus the most fascinating final chapter on the powerful institutions and professions who have escaped the revolutions in accountability and transparency, namely...well, no I couldn't possibly comment, I think you'll have to read this excellent little book to find out but I promise you won't be disappointed.

Do you or don't you?

Do you or don't you write in a book that is.
I've talked about it on here before, but there's been some interesting debate over at Stuck in a Book about the whole matter and I was slightly disconcerted to see a long line of "would never dream of it" commenters, all suffering from Chronic Antipencillitis.
Surely I can't be the only miserable offender?
Feeling mildly of the inferior 'spare though them that confess their faults' mindset I bravely posted a 'come on you lot live dangerously' comment of my own just to make myself feel better and redress the balance.
Perhaps the other book defacers would delurk and join me and the penitent would be restored.
Except I'm not in the least bit penitent.
In fact, I scribble in books and I'm proud of it and to my knowledge no one has died as a result.
Of course I'd never write in a book that belonged to anyone else, but books that are mine whilst I'm on earth seem fair game and I now write in every one I read.
I don't think I'd be able to write this blog if I didn't have my pencil quotes and underlinings to go back to, plus my page at the front.Nothing sacred about my books, they are living and working extensions of my mind which as I get older is feeling slightly more full to overflowing, marginalia becometh a necessity not a sin.
Words that sum up the book as I'm reading, often a family tree if it feels complex, page numbers and gems of lines from the author, sometimes a message that the book will have hit me with suddenly and like a sledge-hammer, often a flash of blinding truth gone in an instant unless I write it down.
Don't anyone suggest a notebook or post-it notes because those are never around when you need them whereas I have furnished the entire house with pencils.
I am heartened in that case to read in The Guardian that Nicholas Lezard has the same disease. My books would look very familiar to Nicholas and be unlikely to induce a bout of apoplexy because here's what he does,

" I have a method when reviewing books that involves making a pencilled note on the flyleaf whenever the author makes an interesting point. Just a page number and a short memory-jogging quote"

Thank goodness for that.
To get a book that has someone else's marginalia is even more special somehow.I have a beautiful first edition of A Writer's Diary by Virginia Woolf, in its original Vanessa Bell dust jacket, complete with that first owner's thoughts scattered throughout.
A list of page references on the endflap and I consider endlessly the connections between them.
What were they researching?
I ponder their lives.
To Hilary from Kenneth, Christmas 1953. I was three months old.
I share their reading of this book and I've added a few thoughts of my own, as if to carry on the unbroken thread of reading and loving this book down the years.My books are lent to me while I'm living and breathing, one day they will move on. It all then makes me feel strangely honoured and privileged and somehow my scribbling becomes essential.
Perhaps whoever gets it next may read mine and add theirs, better not leave this one to Stuck in a Book in that case:-)

At the Jerusalem

I've had a very welcome and perfect introduction to the writing of Paul Bailey thanks to a regular reader of this blog who kindly sent me a parcel of Paul's books.
Old Soldiers was one of my choices for our War Reading themed evening at Endsleigh last week and my original thoughts on that book are here. The book still resonates in my mind now, its depth took me completely by surprise and I think that makes it an excellent introduction to Paul Bailey's gentle but deeply perceptive writing.
Now I've read Paul's first novel At the Jerusalem in this handsome little Bloomsbury Classics edition, very must-have. First published in 1967 when Paul was actually thirty, but written when he was twenty-eight.
This makes it a very remarkable book indeed.
Anyone who has read Elizabeth Taylor's Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont but who hasn't read this one may want to do so quite quickly. It was the reviews of At the Jerusalem that prompted Elizabeth Taylor to write her own book and the character of Ludovic Myers is based on her observations of Paul working in Harrods.Elizabeth had expected to find someone a "trifle wizened" and must have been bemused and surprised when she realised how young he was.
Deposited by her family in a nursing home, Faith Gadny struggles to come to terms with this slow and steady decline towards the end of her life. The affinity with a prison is not lost on Paul Bailey and he points up so much that is institutional about The Jerusalem that you begin to think prison might be the better option.There are certain periods in a person's life when they seem to become open territory for anyone to make a comment which they may otherwise keep to themselves.
I think pregnancy is one for sure.
Suddenly everyone has the inalienable right to tell a woman she looks well / tired / huge / unrecognisable / pale and poor Mrs Gadny at the opposite end of the spectrum suffers deeply humiliating moments when her privacy is invaded mercilessly because the system demands it.
Her fellow detainees are equally beautifully drawn making this another of those books that stays in the mind long after the final page, I can visualise every one of the characters from Paul Bailey's fine attention to detail drawn up in so few words.
It's quite an unnerving book to read in many respects, because for someone so young Paul Bailey's powers of observation are acutely and uncannily mature and unremittingly accurate. Bearing in mind that this was written in the pre does-he-take-sugar era he has homed in on on the saddest aspects of the care of the elderly and, though I'm sure times have changed, the book still has huge relevance.Paul must have watched and listened very carefully because the dialogue in At the Jerusalem is peerless, even down to the episodes of rambling thought which I was about to accredit to the elderly per se, but actually, as if it isn't obvious, I'm a rambling thought person and it won't be that long before I start recounting it all out loud I'm sure.
Faith Gadney must join the ranks of fictional old ladies who matter and deserve to be remembered along with Laura Palfrey and Hagar Shipley, in fact, put the three of them in a home together and expect a hunger strike over the diet of chewy meat and junket quickly followed by a break out, possibly along a tunnel they've been digging with their crochet hooks.
Perhaps a dash too much Count of Monte Cristo for me of late?

National Cranford Day

I think the BBC could have done away with trailers for this series because I'm aware I've hardly shut up about it but I make no apology.
A series like this which take us nicely up to Christmas feels like a variation on a weekly Advent calender.By the end of Episode One I'll suffer a brief pang of regret, yet again, that I didn't make the Christmas cake in October and by Episode Three I'll know I really should have thought about our Christmas cards.
By Episode Four I'll be wondering whether anyone would notice if we didn't send any and by Five the decision will have been made. As evidence, I submit the year I wrote great long epistles to all foreign friends, had the cards ready to post long before last posting date and then found them gathering dust in the glove box of the car in February.
We'll also have decided which bit of the house gets the most decorations, this year I'm voting for the kitchen to get the bling.I'm up for the Christmas bough in the corner which I haven't done at least since last year, more of that soon if I win the vote.
In preparation Cranford proved to be pure reading manna from heaven and one of the loveliest of books I've read in ages.
Loveliest doesn't really do my delight at the read any justice at all, but if you are planning to watch the up-coming series then it's really worth indulging in this little ounce of perfection beforehand, you've got a few hours left.
My recollections of forty years ago a little hazy so it was like a new read and one that I indulged with an eye on the cast and the roles they will play and, not being much of a film-going person, this was quite a treat for me. Suddenly I picked up all the little nuances and character traits so exquisitely placed by Elizabeth Gaskell and found myself marking up in my mind what I hope to see in the production.
Cranford is in places an almost laugh-out-loud funny book and in complete contrast to the melodrama of both Ruth and Mary Barton which rest half read on the shelf here. They both felt much to overwrought for comfort reading over last Christmas and in the end I gave up.That said the content of both books is still in my mind and I know I could pick up and carry on where I left off with ease and will do soon.
As I turned over the final page of Cranford my eyes settled on an unread copy of Sylvia's Lovers and I almost, nearly but not quite, opened it to make an immediate start, so full of the joys of Elizabeth was I. That's my trouble, off I go on a gorge and feast on everything there is, then I dilute down that original brilliant read and get hyper-gaskellitis or hyper-eliotitis or worse.
I needed to let the Cranford experience stand alone because it was truly a very special read and one to be cherished.
So with a gargantuan dose of willpower I stopped myself.
All that aside I can't wait for the moment when Matty Jenkins explains her method for dealing with her fear
of being

"caught by her last leg, just as she was getting into bed, by someone concealed under it."

Over to you Dame Judi and the BBC.

Is this fish bigger than...

We had an interesting fish-related day yesterday.
While Fred Buller was interviewed on Radio 4's Today programme about The Domesday Book of Giant Salmon, Bookhound and I trotted off to the Topsham Museum where he was scheduled to present a copy of the book on Fred's behalf to the museum archives and to thank them officially for the use of that fantastic cover picture of the 61lb 4oz Topsham salmon (that's sixty-one!) caught on the River Exe in 1924.
It was 4ft 6ins long and had a girth of 29ins so all in all quite a bit bigger than Posh Spice.
You see I do pay attention and read Hello magazine.
Having been caught and sold to MacFisheries at the going rate of  just over 3s/lb in old money (the fish, not Victoria Beckham) someone saw sense as the filleting knife was poised over this big boy and decided he should be stuffed and mounted for posterity rather than steamed, garnished and digested.
For this intervention we must be unfeignedly thankful.
What made yesterday's event so special was the fact that there to receive the book on behalf of the museum was Jim Voysey, son and grandson of two of the fishermen holding that original fish.Jim told us they would both have been immensely surprised and proud to find themselves on the cover of a book.
Jim is standing in front of his grandfather 'Old Dick' and that is his father Jim, known as 'Noll', at Bookhound's right shoulder.
Isn't history amazing when you see it like that?
After the formalities, we chatted for ages to a little gathering of old River Exe salmon fisherman and even I could have stayed all day.
Forget the subject if it doesn't happen to be your own and just listen to the wisdom and humour of a passing generation with a story to tell. In this case hilarious doesn't come close and all in that beautifully broad and deep Devonshire accent. It was good to touch base with the heritage of what was a little fishing community, but which is now a bustling and very up-market town full of designer shops, patterned wellies with laces up the front, and posh sailing gear.
I had a little guided tour around a museum that is well worth a visit if ever you are in the area. Somehow you expect little museums in the backstreets of tiny places to be a bit sad and depleted. Not so Topsham Museum and I reckon there must be so much of interest lurking unknown and unseen in so many of these treasure troves around the country. Someone should trek off on a nationwide tour with a camera and then write a book on it, in fact I'll go and do it if someone pays my train fare, I bet we'd be pleasantly surprised at the finds.This one is run tirelessly by volunteers and it is all an absolute credit to their unpaid dedication, nothing shabby about it at all.

To my great surprise, as well as being a completely furnished and preserved 1930's house with an amazingly equipped kitchen, there was a Vivien Leigh Room. I discovered that Vivien was related by marriage to the large Topsham family who had lived in the house, the Holmans, and was a frequent visitor to the area. Walls decked with fantastic pictures and memorabilia from Gone With the Wind but the very best thing of all?
Vivien Leigh was allowed to choose one item to keep from her wardrobe for Gone With the Wind and she chose the nightgown, so there it is, exquisitely displayed in a glass case in the Topsham Museum. It is quite stunning and I was slightly awestruck to see it in a setting I least expected.
Who'd have thought it?
Ceremonial over we forced ourselves into the second-hand bookshop as one must.Nothing but nothing leapt off the shelves into my arms, so off for a lovely lunch to celebrate a very happy and successful day.

He was robbed...

One of my favourite reads of recent times Unimagined by Imran Ahmad (remember the cuddly Imran on the cover?) was up for the Young Minds Book Award last night.
If you want a first hand account of one of these events from the victim's point of view rush to Imran's blog because it had the tears rolling down my face.
Of course he was robbed, but generous in defeat and, if you've read Unimagined you'd expect no less.If you haven't read it do so very soon because it's brilliant and you certainly want to read it before the film version comes out and Imran becomes a superstar...he'll have to play himself, no one else will do.

I hate David Baldacci...

Well if that doesn't get him here nothing will because I have to have words with David Baldacci when he shows his face.
Meanwhile, now I realise why just about every passenger on board Rhapsody of the Seas had one of his books nestling on their sun-kissed laps. Everywhere you turned there was evidence of Baldacci, either delicately splayed, pages down on loungers whilst lady owners swam in the pool, or splayed on hairy oiled chests while the men dozed in the Caribbean sun. Actually you'd have to be dog tired, or on a cruise across the Gulf of Mexico, to fall asleep over a Baldacci I must say and I've thoroughly enjoyed my very first one, The Collectors which I now see is the sequel to The Camel Club so I'm out of order again.
No matter David Baldacci writes very convincingly and this one stands alone with ease.
Several intricate plots interweaving and David Baldacci, if you've arrived, what on earth were you thinking of?
How is a person supposed to sleep? Just tell me that, how can you embark on the most excruciatingly riveting plot in this book and then carry it on into the next one, as yet unpublished, when I need to know what happens NOW, this minute.
Set mostly in the Library of Congress Rare Book's Division and librarian Jonathan DeHavan has that disease familiar to all who visit this blog, "bibliomania, the world's gentlest obsession".Sadly it's quickly and mysteriously the death of him (don't panic he was in a state of tertiary extremis ) so time for the heroes of The Camel Club to step in and resolve.
Meanwhile con artist Annabel has lined up the heist of the century and at this point you ponder the mind of a writer who can come up with these ideas, until I saw that in a previous life he was a corporate attorney. It's so clever, in fact beyond clever, that I'd advise anyone who knows David Baldacci not to accidentally disclose their PIN number to him and for goodness sake don't leave your wallet or handbag unguarded around the man, you may end up thirty million in the red.
As the plots cleverly merged with a nice twist which I loved, I was starting to panic.
One plot definitely wasn't resolving and I only had a few pages to go.
Surely David Baldacci's not going to unravel this in that time?
Come to think of it, I'd have been disappointed if he had.
In amongst the characters in this book, one who shone, the pudgy librarian and Camel Club member Caleb Shaw. I loved Caleb, he's a real jobs-worth who finds himself unwittingly breaking the law under the influence of his friends and it all terrifies him.Caleb doesn't just worry, he feels all of his organs shutting down, or faced with an element of danger finds his heart pushed into defib.On the subject of characters I think you can get your name in a David Baldacci novel in return for a charitable donation, meanwhile this one's already gone off to the Tinker who I think will really enjoy it.
I'd better go back and read The Camel Club and get my hands on the next one soon or there'll be murder. David just sit down over there where I can keep an eye on you, I'm sorry but you can't leave until it's finished.
By the way, I think dovegrey would make a really good codename for a spy, don't you?
Just a suggestion of course David...heavens I do hope the man's got a librarian's sense of humour.

Oh what a perfect day.

With the sun lower in the sky, and sitting tucked in out of the chilly wind, it's like the Gulf Of Mexico out on our verandah this morning, so we've just been sampling the delights of hot winter sunshine over a pot of coffee and very peaceful it was too. Even better after a visit from the hedge-trimmer this week we can see Cornwall without having to stand up.
Cornwall, you are looking gorgeous today.
Then I come in to share it with you and Rhosymedre by Vaughan Williams is playing on the radio. I walked down the aisle to that many years ago having decided I wanted a quiet and gentle entrance to this whole marriage thing rather than a grand fanfare.
It all seems right for the day somehow.

The Cambridge Companions to my Oxford Friends

Having stopped myself over-indulging in Gaskell fiction, it wasn't quite enough so I've allowed myself a little indulge in The Cambridge Companion to Elizabeth Gaskell where I eagerly set upon an essay by Audrey Jaffe comparing Cranford with Ruth.
If I love Oxford World's Classics then I should maintain a healthy varsity balance with the Cambridge Companions which have been faithful friends down the years too. If I'm set fast upon reading one author I head straight here to see if I can have a Cambridge Companion for the journey. So often books like this can be like reading double dutch (with apologies to all visitors from the Netherlands), literary tomes not meant for us mere mortals, so to find a series that presents readable and accessible commentaries and essays on a huge range of authors is a treat.It is these I often look to for some in depth reading if I want it. Enough in one volume to save you finding a dozen others.
So my thoughts on Elizabeth Gaskell the person are confirmed,

" a writer for whom generations of readers.critics and scholars have felt an undisguised tenderness..an unfeigned capacity for spontaneity, for sympathy and for pleasure endeared her to her contemporaries"

More thoughts on Cranford on Sunday which is National Cranford Day here in the UK, but they are plumped up nicely with the notion that the characters are detached from cultural conventions of economic and social subservience to men and to now view the book as slightly more than a humourous little read based on trivial feminine concerns. Seeing the wider picture may not be to everyone's liking or need and that's perfectly fine, but I do like to get my moneysworth out of any book I take the time to read. If Mrs Gaskell sought to explore the issues surrounding progress and change and the fact that census returns showed the women outnumbering the men by a hefty margin, and then attempted to create a fictional community dominated by women to see what would happen, then I'm all for knowing that and much more. I shall be watching carefully to see how the men are portrayed in this TV series because as Jaffe argues,

"Although it is staunchly on the record as wishing to exclude men...Cranford is both fascinated by them and unable to function without them."

I'm inspired to pick Ruth up again having read this comparitive study and nor to date, in the entire book, have I come across any reference to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak which quite gladdens my heart because the mere mention and I get those palpitations that tell me I'm out of my depth.
When I return to Mary Barton and North and South there is a great essay on Elizabeth Gaskell's two Manchester novels by Jill Matus to help me through. An excellent piece on Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Bronte by Linda H.Peterson and when I finally allow myself to pick up Sylvia's Lovers, a fascinating look at the novel in the context of historical fiction by Marion Shaw. Plenty more and all guaranteed to expand my knowledge base about a woman described as "a dove in the public sphere".
David Cecil famously compared Elizabeth Gaskell favourably with her contemporaries George Eliot and Charlotte Bronte who he felt were "not ordinary women" in fact he described them in 1934 as

" ugly, dynamic, childless, independent, contemptuous...in the placid dovecotes of Victorian womanhood they were eagles. But we only have to look at a portrait of Mrs Gaskell, soft-eyed beneath her charming veil to see that she was a dove."

Ah, bless. Elizabeth can come to visit this dovecote any time she likes.
I have used many of the Cambridge Companions down the years and keep a regular eye out for new ones, Margaret Atwood was mine the day it was published and Virginia Woolf and George Eliot are well thumbed and copiously underlined and annotated. For anyone out there like me, with little access to university libraries, but still with that lifelong learning itch, these books make the perfect emollient. If you fancy a bout of readily obtainable and informed background reading then look no further. Also some more Cambridge University Press titles coming soon, I'm on a mission to kidnap some of these off the degree and MA reading lists and into the domain of the ordinary reader, I've been missing some great books and I think you might enjoy them too.

Free Book Prize Draw

I just can't comprehend my generosity in sharing news of a free book prize draw happening here when if I kept quiet I'd stand a better chance of winning the book myself. Oh well never mind, quick get your names in the hat you know how we all love a prize draw, mine's in there already for a copy of the latest from Alasdair Gray.
Not altogether sure whether one of those cats is lined up for a bit of feline judging, we'll see.

Letters of Ted Hughes

I'm sure A.N.Wilson didn't lose any sleep over my failings with Winnie and Wolf, probably lost far more over being told in error by his publisher that he'd made the Booker short list when he hadn't, but anyway I'm delighted to find that he and I are completely in step over another recent publication so perhaps we can be friends after all.
Letters of Ted Hughes has arrived and the clocks must stop, the world must stand still, which here means the kitchen floor must go unwashed and the washing is many days in arrears.
A.N.Wilson was so engrossed he missed his bus stop.
It's a quiet and closely guarded secret no more that I adore anything remotely connected to the late and much lamented Poet Laureate Ted Hughes.It all started one very late night back in 2000 when I was sitting writing an OU assignment to this rubric

"Nostalgia for an imperial past may be mediated in a very oblique way in literature, oblique not only in subject matter but in the form and style that is its embodiment" Discuss this statement with reference to the work of any two writers.

Never let anyone suggest that six years of studying with the Open University is an easy route to a degree.
I'd flogged my way through a day of home visits and a never-ending baby clinic, come home to the family, done the usual evening things with them and they had all headed off to bed, leaving me sweating blood over my now seemingly unwise decision to try and use the poetry of Philip Larkin and Ted Hughes in response.
It was late and getting later and a vast and disparate amount of information was not flowing creatively and intelligently into an essay worthy of submission, in fact it was all a congealed heap.
In desperation I switched on a tape Ted Hughes Reading his poetry.
I'd never heard his voice before, but having got me into this mess perhaps the man himself could inspire 3000 words?
I jumped a mile because, completely unexpectedly, out poured this deeply resonant Yorkshire bass voice, wrapping itself immaculately around the words of The Thought Fox.

I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

It all echoed and disappeared into the dark silence of a Tamar Valley night, and I was done for.
Since then I have acquired, in that bibliomanic fashion I can be prone to, just about every book ever written, by or about Ted Hughes and so when Letters of Ted Hughes selected and edited by Christopher Reid and published by Faber arrived from Amazon this week I was beyond a little over-excited.
The book was already on its way when I read A.N.Wilson's review in the Daily Mail last week but I loved the man for admitting,

"he comes before us in his prose letters, stretching across his entire writing life and he emerges as an overpoweringly interesting and impressive person...I was transported instantaneously into a vision of life which was so much more interesting than my own."

There's the essence of this book, because you don't need to be an admirer of the poetry of Ted Hughes to discover the man beneath and it is all revealed in this utterly readable volume. Through his mountains of correspondence shines the figure so cruelly and unfairly vilified throughout his life and there are moments of huge emotion lurking therein.
Ted Hughes was an old-fashioned letter writer, perhaps one of the last of the breed, but he considered a hand-written letter as worthy of literary excellence as any poetry or prose for publication, making this volume one great big reading treat.Be prepared to weep early on over something as simple as his account of a hedgehog trapped indoors because in the words of Ted Hughes it becomes so much more, as does everything he turns his eye and then his pen to.
Unusually I started at page one and have carried on in this fashion because I can't bear to miss a word. Looking ahead for a sneak preview I've read one of the most moving letters a father could ever write to help a son whose mother has so famously commited suicide.The revelations around the cathartic publication of Birthday Letters make for very emotional reading indeed. I don't know if A.N.Wilson cried on the bus but I'd have been blubbing enough to close the Thames Barrier.
And what of that essay?
Well it seemed to write itself in the end thanks to that voice and this gift of a quote from Ted Hughes which I used for the final lines. It had cleverly pointed me in the right direction from the start and two poems, The Horses and Wodwo then served me well,

"Maybe all poetry...is revealing of something that the writer doesn't actually want to say, but desperately needs to communicate, to be delivered of. The writer daren't actually put it into words, so it leaks out obliquely, smuggled through analogies".

That and so much more is communicated and delivered in this volume of selected letters and in the end Ted and I earned a respectable 88%, but this book is worth far far more, in fact impossible to place a value on it and I will treasure my copy forever.

Endsleigh Salon preview

Here we are again, second Tuesday in the month and thanks to the generosity of Oxford University Press, this evening the Endsleigh Reading Salon is about to embark on a long-term and very exciting reading project.
As many who visit here will know this is a very egalitarian, non-elitist, everyone welcome reading group with a difference I set up for local readers.Faced with a love of books and no funding, I had the choice of only two possible venues, the ancient cold and draughty, corrugated iron village hall or the local 5* hotel, a listed building tastefully furnished, log fires crackling in the grate through the winter months, a library fit for the Dukes of Bedford and set in extensive grounds with far-reaching views across the Tamar Valley.
On the off-chance I opted for the cap-in-hand beg for charity approach at the hotel first before collecting the keys to the village hall and figuring out how those calor gas heaters worked.
Alex Polizzi at Hotel Endsleigh jumped at the idea and they have accommodated us with the warmest of welcomes and in great comfort for over a year now, all at no charge and keeping us regularly supplied with tea and coffee served in Wedgewood cups and saucers.The group has settled down to about ten regular members, the bookish chat is second to none and we laugh like drains along the way too.
We have been pondering the logistics of fitting in some reading of the Classics whilst maintaining our rather laissez faire "all read a different book" approach which works like a dream on our regular themed evenings. We hit on the idea of choosing one author, all setting off and choosing a book of our choice by said author and then perhaps devoting the final half an hour or so to discussing what we'd read.
OUP very kindly offered to supply us with the books from the Oxford World's Classics range and we plan to critique the introductions too.
So we came up with four authors we'd like to nail.
The choice wavered and havered, someone begged us not to choose Henry James and we heeded their plea because it was heartfelt, and we quickly ruled out Austen, Bronte, Dickens and Eliot in this round as 'already read quite a few of '.
Eventually we hit on a selection that either few of us had read, or who we'd read but felt we'd like to do justice to in some group discussion. All quite different, Alexandre Dumas, Edith Wharton, Thomas Hardy and Anne Radcliffe.
A huge box of books has arrived ready for this evening and I thought I'd give the Endsleigh-ites who stop by here, and all of you, a little flavour of what's to come.
I'll be reporting back here every so often on how the project is going but I've peeked in the box, pulled rank and craned out a copy of The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, all 1000 pages of it.
At this point let me say, I think it was noble of me not to grab the shortest Dumas, The Black Tulip while I had the chance.Few if any of the group had read any Dumas and I only recall The Count of Monte Cristo from that great BBC Sunday night TV series back in 1964 starring Alan Badel when I would have been eleven.
The thinking was that I'd open the book reeeeeally carefully, not bend the spine, read a bit and if I didn't like it I could surreptitiously crane it back into the box and pick another one (don't tell them will you?).
Except I've rapidly thrown my lot in with Edmond Dantes and he's quite the moody teenager.
Typical 19 year old, can't get him out of bed in the mornings and his room is filthy.
"Edmond" I said "this might be the Chateau D'If  but there is absolutely no need for all that green slime on the walls"
"No I absolutely don't want to know what it is, just get this place bottomed this minute."
I might have to hang around because I think he's going to do something stupid, a bit of tombstoning would be just like him.
Tsk, these youngsters.
So there can be no turning back now, which is a pity because I've got my eye on The Three Musketeers as well and then there's The Man in the Iron Mask.

My friend Peggy

Margaret Atwood, how do I love thy writing, let me count the ways.
It's Margaret Atwood I have to thank for the inspiration to start writing this blog now I think of it and I keep a picture of her near to my desk to remind me. I had an unusual viral neuritis episode a couple of years ago which settled on the nerves in my neck and arms and kept me off work for six months, unable to drive and equally in too much pain to sleep.
After mystifying doctors and caving in pitifully and feeling far too sorry for myself for a few weeks, I suddenly gathered some resolve together and took to all-night reading. Occasionally I'd make some real cocoa (only this would do for some reason) switch on the news and follow the hourly bulletins on the demise of footballing legend George Best. Then I'm sorry to admit that I'd think uncharitable thoughts, of which I'm not proud, when I heard George "was sleeping peacefully and not in pain".
It was time to get back to the distractions of the Battle of Austerlitz, because I tucked War and Peace under my belt in week one. This was swiftly followed by a raft of Trollope's Pallisers and then the entire oeuvre of Margaret Atwood in succession from first to last seemed like a great idea.
Peggy and I became really good friends, although she doesn't know this, but I had suddenly accessed a new reading plain and completely understood her writing. It was as if I had refocussed a blurry lens and could now see quite clearly.
I've just been reading an enlightening little book from Souvenir Press by David Cecil called The Fine Art of Reading. David Cecil voices that same sensation far more eloquently, which you'd expect from his inaugural lecture as Goldsmiths' Professor of English Literature at Oxford in 1949.

"The spirit experiences an extraordinary sense of expansion and exaltation when, after a long and arduous process of self-adjustment, it suddenly finds itself responding for the first time spontaneously and delightedly to a hitherto unappreciated author"

Of course I'd have much preferred not to have been ill to discover that The Blind Assassin left me hyperventilating and Oryx and Crake had me reeling, but, silver linings and all that, I also knew that there were probably plenty of other people out there who thought likewise, and if they didn't I'd better get out there and tell them.
I moved on to read CanLit in general and made some wonderful discoveries about the literature of this amazing country and finally discovered The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence and the irascible nonagenarian Hagar Shipley.
Moral Disorder by Margaret Atwood has sat on the shelf for almost a year waiting to be read and I picked it up as I sought a prescription for my recent bout of dontknowwhattoreaditis.It's going to sound corny but it was like reading an old friend and Peggy has not disappointed one iota.
I was immediately tuned into that Peggy wavelength and with it came that strange sense of optimism I had when all this was happening before, the power of books can never be underestimated it would seem.
The book is a collection of short stories several of which shape up into part novel and the rest stand alone. Vintage Atwood seems too much of cliche but they are written with her usual eye for the slightly unusual, the off-the-beaten track moment that pulls you up short and makes you stop and think.
Margaret Atwood notices the odd things about people, those traits that can be missed unless you look closely.Perfect prose and neatly into the swing of things by page two.
An elderly couple moving into old age together and Tig is one of those people in life who thrive on being the bearer of bad news, his wife (we assume) feels differently,

"..if Tig must respect my need to wallow mindlessly, free of all bad news, before the first cup of coffee, shouldn't I respect his need to spew out catastrophe so he himself will be rid of it?

'Oh. Sorry,' he says. He shoots me a reproachful look.Why must I disappoint him like this? Don't I know that if he can't tell the bad news to me, right now, some bilious-green bad-news gland or bladder inside him will burst and he'll get peritonitis of the soul? Then I'll be sorry."

Well, it takes my breath away, because tell me how anyone could describe that any better and then tell me who but Margaret Atwood could write it just like that?

11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month 2007

I think the Remembrance Day Parade is attended by more and more people every year here in Tavistock and just a shame that the roads can't be closed briefly and traffic diverted so I don't almost get killed trying to take pictures.
This year a squad of Royal Marines came out from Plymouth and led the ranks of ex-servicemen, Brownies, Scouts, assorted Beavers and Cubs, Air Cadets et al all following the Town Band along the main road.
The Tinker in his white beret is usually placed at the rear of the local Royal Marines contingent because the ex-Commandoes in their green berets like to take the lead, but this year he was plucked from obscurity along with the only other WW II veteran, Tom, and promoted to the front row of the parade squad.
They set off at a fair old left-right-left-right lick after the Regimental Sergeant Major had informed his men they looked like a herd of feral cats.Take at look at these old boys, they know how to do it...and they did.

Our London day

I'm sticking with the theme for today of all days and then I think we'll let Bugle Boy have a little rest after all this activity. It's been a truly memorable week and probably more to come but I have a stack of books lined up to share on here and we must move on to them.
Despite the trying journey home, the Tinker and I did have a great day in London with the delightful Sophie Rochester, the PR whizz who has worked very diligently with Long Barn Books on promoting the book.
We quite enjoyed being met by a big car at Paddington and being whisked off across the city for media appearances.
Out through Chiswick, where we waved to Curzon, and onto the Sky TV studios where Channel Five news is tucked away.
Sitting in the Green Room whilst the Tinker was taken off to make-up, we had passed three lads dressed in desert gear who had done the previous interview. It transpires they were three brothers off to Iraq. The first question the Tinker was asked, live on air, was what advice would he give them.
Quick off the mark he came up with the perfect answer, he wouldn't presume to give them any advice, they're fighting a very different war and they've been trained to do it, they're highly skilled and they'll do a great job.
It all went extremely well, he was as cool as an arctic convoy and surprised people all day long as they looked for a doddery old man with a zimmer frame and in bounced this very sprightly chap.No one would believe he was eighty-two and they all found it even harder to believe that fourteen year old boys had gone to war in 1939. Many a laugh through the day at the suggestion that he must have lied about his age to join up because there is still incredulity surrounding the idea that fourteen year olds went into active war service, but when you look at the book cover he looks about ten, let alone trying to fool anyone into thinking he was sixteen.
After lunch we were off to BBC Television Centre to record an interview with Radio 5 Live. More trying to spot celebs but not a single one to be seen, but then it was radio, we hadn't a clue what they look like. That interview will be broadcast this morning on 5 Live at about 10.45am in the lead up to the Silence at 11am.
Then back into central London for an interview with the Daily Express Online and a welcome pot of tea.Reporter Nicola McCafferty had certainly done her homework and asked intelligent and interesting questions and the hour whizzed by. I was flagging a bit, the Tinker was firing on all cylinders and was on top form.
Needless to say today we will be out at the Rembrance Day parade, pondering on all the exciting and unexpected events since the last one, but as the Tinker says, as the silence begins he can't help but recall all those fourteen year old boys, his friends, who died.

Compulsory people watching

As the Tinker and I approached the platform at Paddington last night, at a measured pace because we had reserved seats, the melee around us was hurling itself towards the 17.33 train with a vengeance. We followed a gaggle of very loud and over-excited Hooray public schoolboys, ranging from about twelve to fourteen years old at a guess and a harrassed mother with two very large lurcher dogs loping alongside.
Firstly let me clarify that I have no problem with public schoolboys.
I'm sure the majority are polite, thoughtful and considerate young men and a credit to their parents, but I had a sick feeling, call it a premonition, that we'd find Family Hooray in Coach C, possibly within spitting distance of seats 9 and 10A forward facing, because that's the sort of luck we have.
We took our time, the train was heaving, not even standing room and eventually reached our seats only to find them occupied by part of Family Hooray and no seat reservation tickets to be seen because they were in the Middle Hooray's pocket.
We soon disabused him of the notion that the seats were theirs and with this another woman seated opposite wagged her finger at him and said "I told you, it's a £200 fine if you remove those," and gave me one of those weary looks which spoke volumes. "This is going to be a very long, tedious and debilitating journey".
The Hoorays were en route from boarding school (wish I could have caught the name) with friends in tow, to a weekend at their holiday cottage on the North Cornish coast. I won't name that place but I sincerely hope Doris is OK because the plan was to head off and stone her windows at midnight because this had been huge and jolly fun last time.
Mother of the Hoorays was sat behind us, oblivious to all because she was glued to her mobile and, apart from intermittent loss of signal, when she loudly assisted  with French and Geography homework from across the aisle, she remained welded to it for the entire journey.
The Hoorays settled down at the table opposite and clearly saw it as their inherent duty to entertain the entire carriage for the whole journey.
This involved vast amounts of messy eating, climbing on seats to reach the luggage rack at five minute intervals, telling jokes, wandering up and down to play jokes on other people and make them look ridiculous and generally being obnoxious.The Geography homework done on Mother of Hooray's laptop deserves a C-, the Pyrennees were not in Scotland the last time I checked.In fact I'd be looking for a refund on the school fees there.
But what of the goss from the mobile phone behind us?
Film director, divorced from famous film production company owner and  Father of Hoorays.The whole carriage was informed of his name...no I couldn't possibly say but we all agreed, he should have known better than to offer eldest son his air miles when he's worked b****y hard to earn that money for himself for his trip to Oz.Can you believe it?
But what of the the film script? Well fortunately for all of you, part of my day job frequently involves accurately recalling lengthy conversations and then writing down the details afterwards.
Yah, well darling, it's so sad, Rachel Weiss has turned down the part. It's tragic, can't be done for the money, Uma might be interested because word is she wants to get into a part about divorce and Will Smith, really we should approach Will for the lead man in this one darling.Oh I WOULD LOVE to get Kate Winslett, she'd be perfect.Blanchett's busy I know that, she couldn't possibly fit it in.The budgets for Lorelei are a shambles, £10,000 for three weeks of digital? No way, I'm not doing it, I'm just not doing it and what on earth are they thinking of paying the cameraman £400 a day, the same as the .....tunnel, noise missed this bit but probably the tea lady. Off to New York this week, romantic weekend with boyfriend lined up but had three meetings to go to, timing all wrong.
Oblivious to the existence of, or any consideration for their fellow man, I doubt Family Hooray were even aware that the rest of us had ears, but it was priceless as a covert system of eye contact camaraderie spread around the other passengers.Spirits were raised when one teenage Hooray asked Mother of Hoorays for his cuddly muslin nappy and proceeded to suck his thumb, the silence was momentarily golden but after a quick fix he was back in the groove.
Periodically the dogs were taken for a walk up and down the train.
Have you ever tried to turn a lurcher on its axis to face the other direction in the aisle of a train? They have a very wide turning circle unlike my Ford Fiesta which turns on a sixpence.
At some point the canine's rear end is going to be right in the face of whoever is seated there (the Tinker) and when shifted any dog does an instinctive shaking from head to foot which pollinated the carriage with a dusting of dog hair each time and has us all coughing and sneezing.
It has to be said that the lurchers were the best behaved of the lot, though I fear for their street cred if seen in the fields around here wearing those brightly coloured beaded and embroidered designer collars.Calling out "Che Guevara come here," when the bigger one ran off might also raise a few eyebrows.
Had they had wind I might have been feeling less benevolent, but the dogs seemed to be on the side of the majority, looking mighty fed up with their existence and after three hours we were all feeling of like mind.
It all confirms my theory that dog and people-watching is endlessly fascinating, the Tinker sat by bemused watching the fourteen year olds of today strut their stuff, and I do wish Family Hooray well.
Today they are on a private surfing lesson because the rip tides and currents on the North Cornish coast are notoriously treacherous.
No I'm not going to say it.

Hallelujah

I'm tempting providence I know but I feel like living dangerously, British Telecom may have finally found the fault on the phone line!
This might not sound like great cause for celebration but after a million phone calls to India and losing our broadband connection every night at 6pm and most weekends for the last four weeks we are more than quietly delighted.
One BT engineer suggested that we lost the signal at 6pm GMT because that's when the US logs on en masse which struck us as a bit bizarre.
Is the whole of the North American continent connected via the village exchange too?
If so why did it take us so long to get the hundred people needed before we could have broadband?
Diagnosing a problem in Devon from India has its limitations and though the operators have been unfeignedly polite and helpful it was the man up the pole a mile down the lane who eventually sorted things out.
In the meantime we have replaced every bit of telephone technology in the house, re-routed the entire system via the kitchen (warm and dry in response to the tsk-ing over possibility of damp socketry) channelled the signal through the electrical circuit and bought the receiver plugs at great expense, made sacrifice to the Patron Saint of the Telephone, St Diallingtone, and were fast running out of ideas.
Perhaps normal service can now be resumed but you have no idea how much has been lost in the disconnection, just as I finish writing a post and click 'save' the signal flutters and fades to nought and I sit here frantically selecting all and copying before it times out.
I'm a nervous wreck and the only good thing to come of all this is that I can now sit in a nice warm kitchen or even stay in bed and write dgr scribbles.
Later today I'll give you the lowdown on our exciting media filled day in London, from the chaffeur-driven Chrysler 300 trip across the metropolis to the Sky TV studios, right through to the train journey home on the 5.33pm Friday evening London to Exeter train.
If you never read another single word on this blog then you need to know this much right now, and please heed this advice, never ever travel on the 5.33pm Friday evening London to Exeter train.We are still recovering but it was almost worth it for the goss I have to bring you from the 3 hours of mobile phone conversation going on in the seat behind me...darling I so wanted Rachel Weiss for that film but she rang me today, it's not going to happen, we may have to offer it to...

The Thousand Nights and One Night

Mention of Jan Pienkowski a while back and in the comments a reference to a favourite Christmas book which is one of our family favourites too. I'm not going to mention Christmas again for weeks and weeks because I can hardly believe that the adverts have started and the radio is revving up with sleigh bell music already. I'm really good at ignoring it all because we don't let Christmas begin here until about a week before and the tree is usually a Christmas Eve affair.
But I do love the Jan Pienkowski book Christmas with his trademark illustrations and the St James text so I expect that will feature on here a bit nearer the time.
But that's no reason to be deprived of the joy of Jan and thanks to Puffin books we have something to keep us going.
A copy of the newly published The Thousand Nights and One Night has arrived, the story retold by David Walser with illustrations by Jan Pienkowski.
Confession, I've never actually read these cover to cover and have only really gathered the whole Shahrazade (as it is spelt in this version) thing via osmosis and snippets of stories here and there. Acted in the occasional pantomime version of Aladdin, bit of Ali Baba now and again but beyond that not a lot.
There's a great introduction to this version, so now I learn they are unconnected stories woven into a whole by the familiar overarching tale of Shahrazade, staving off  execution with her nightly telling of a tale to the vengeful King Shahryar.
Collected over a period of five hundred years it is thought they took their final form in the 14th century but many date back to the 7th or 8th century. Finally translated in 1704 by a Frenchman and then again by Sir Richard Burton. There's confusing for you because it's not THAT one of course but the Victorian explorer one.
Jan Pienkowski describes the allure of the tales from his childhood in Poland and the joy of travelling around the fabled cities of the stories as he gathered his sketches together for this book,
"the dappled, latticed light and shade, the brilliant splendour of the colurs of the East, these are imprinted on my mind. I hope I have conveyed hints of them to you"
What can I say?
Feast your eyes on this because the colours far surpass anything you could wish for, rich jewel-like backdrops for Jan's perfect silhouette illustrations, always so expressive and telling a story of their own. There is so much to see in each one, I loved them and think children will be equally impressed.Look at that little spider dangling outside the frame of the picture; that's what children notice and I almost missed as I scanned and cropped this picture.
Children have far more vivid imaginations than grown-ups, little fingers pointing out all those tiny details that we miss, and there is so much to see in each picture.
As if that wasn't enough there's a red silk ribbon marker and the page edges are gold blocked which gives it all a very special book feel indeed.
There is also quilting inspiration a-plenty here and I was reminded of Dilys Fronks a favourite quilter who, now I think about it, has perfected the art of Jan Pienkowski in fabric. I think Dilys deserves a blog post of her own because her work is truly inspirational and you can then have a good laugh at all the Dilys's I've started and then never quite managed to finish.
The back drop is a joy to create but the black bits are fiendishly tricky.

The media star prepares...

It's the weekend we've all been waiting for and the Tinker and I are on the starting blocks and ready for the off to do all the publicity for Bugle Boy.
Long Barn Books have lined up plenty of interviews for him and tomorrow we head off very early for a long day in London where a car will meet us at Paddington at 10am and whisk us all over the metropolis.
Appearances as follows
Tonight finally we are assured is the piece on Westcountry News at 6pm...perhaps.
Tomorrow we think the interview with Channel 5 News will be broadcast live at 11.30am.
Then we get lunch.
We then whizz off to Broadcasting House where he will pre-record an interview with Rachel Burden to be broadcast on BBC Radio Five Live on Sunday at about 10.45am.
Then off to do an online interview for Express Online.
Then we get tea and cakes.
Then we hop on the train home.
On Sunday the Tinker, weather permitting, will be out marching with fellow veterans at the local Remembrance Day Parade here in Tavistock and you'll spot him a mile off because he's the only one in a white beret, and now everyone who has read the book knows why.I'm going to try and film this and upload onto here, don't hold your breath.
At this point I have to say we are all bursting with pride for him. I will be alongside over the weekend, straightening tie, beret and medals just as my mum would have done (she would have LOVED this) and am thrilled for him to finally, after 68 years, be enjoying a very unexpected but very well-deserved moment in the spotlight.
He's a very special dad that's for sure.

The Paris Review Interviews

I fell head over heels for The Paris Review Interviews Volume One when it was first published by Canongate and I've read and browsed the book above and beyond the call of duty.
It has that bright yellow cover so redolent of fin de siecle Paris and is printed on lightweight paper with deckle edges, French flaps complete the look and create a wholly desirable book.
Some of the interviews have led me by the hand into reading previously untried authors and I can now count Jorge Luis Borges amongst them because his interview made him sound such a heart-warming and genuine man.I also understood why I may have struggled with the writing of Saul Bellow.
So when The Paris Review Interviews Volume Two arrived I was all a-flutter with excitement. Then I got the book out of the envelope and had to conceal my dismay.
An ordinary book.
No French flaps, no deckle edges, no floppy paper.
How was I going to bond with a book as ordinary looking as this?
Lucky then that I turned straight to Toni Morrison's interview and read it right through.
Toni has got Canongate out of deep water here at dgr scribbles because no matter the look of the book, what an AMAZING interview and what an incredible woman. I knew that anyway, but to read this interview just confirms everything I'd ever thought and surmised about her. Toni Morrison shares her deepest insights into her writing and thereby her life and I was in her thrall.
I should imagine aspiring writers could be well-served by reading this interview alone, they may not agree with all that Toni says, but valuable if only to help map their thoughts about their own writing.
Here's Toni on her fictional characters,

"So you can't let them write your book for you. I have read books in which I know that has happened - when a novelist has been totally taken over by a character. I want to say, You can't do that. If those people could write books they would but they can't. You can. So you have to say, Shut up. Leave me alone. I am doing this."

and here on style and Toni's thoughts on less is more in fictional writing,

"I was always conscious of the constructed aspect of the writing process, and that art appears natural and elegant only as a result of constant practice and awareness of its formal structures. You must practice thrift in order to acheive that luxurious quality of wastefulness - that sense that you have enough to waste, that you are holding back - without actually wasting anything. You shouldn't overgratify, you should never satiate"

Page after page of fascinating discussion from Toni Morrison and, as an introduction to this interview, and all the others in the book, a setting of the scene, telling details of the circumstances in which the interview took place, the location, the way the interviewee reacted and behaved.This adds an extra and finely nuanced dimension to the whole because you are made acutely aware, if it were needed, that these are actually only human beings, just like the rest of us, though some of them would like to be thought of as superior beings, that much is also clear.
In Volume Two prepare to meet Graham Green, James Thurber, William Faulkner, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Robert Lowell, Eudora Welty, Philip Larkin, Alice Munro, Peter Carey, Stephen King and more.
I expect a plethora of new reading trails to open up the minute I read all these over the next few months and for that I must be truly thankful and therefore think I can forgive the absence of a French flap and a deckled edge just this once.

The Octogenarian Review

Occasionally a book arrives for review and I send it off to The Tinker for a first read because it's right up his street. As the world now knows, he's 82, going on 83 and a very discerning and avid reader so the book will either receive a resounding seal of approval and make its way off around the octogenarian circuit, or be handed back to me with the whataloadofoldcodswallop epithet.
Does anyone ever ask octogenarians to review books?
Are they an audience who are consulted and considered regularly by publishers?
I suspect not but they are here. Think of the lifetime of reading and experience they bring to a book and let me tell you they have no truck with political correctness either.If these books make it through the fiery furnace of the Octos then they are truly worth reading.
Agent ZigZag, The True Wartime Story of Eddie Chapman Lover, Betrayer, Hero, Spy by Ben Macintyre and published by Bloomsbury came back basking in not stellar but galactic praise and The Tinker was mightily impressed with it.Thought it was going to be as dry and dust but couldn't put it down by page ten. One of those where you just have to know what happens next and I suspect one of those that would be loved by all fans of dangerous books for boys.
I haven't read the book but I gather Eddie Chapman, World War Two espionage maestro, might have been working for both the Germans and the British at the same time and was therefore a man of many contradictions.

"Inside the traitor lay a patriot, inside the villain a man of conscience. The problem for Chapman, his spymasters and his many lovers was to know where one ended and the other began."

By all accounts Eddie struck The Tinker as a likeable villain, no ethics, no morals, would steal from his own mother and yet there was an honesty aNd faithfulness to a friend or a cause even while he was double crossing them.The Tinker was intrigued, was Eddie's criss-crossing one side to the other about courage or a desire for adventure and a bit of complexity to his life?
He certainly received no financial reward and clearly the Germans valued him more than the British, they awarded Eddie the Iron Cross, the British didn't see fit to offer anything.
Eddie a spy until his final days and this book apparently very moving in the last pages when he finally meets his German spy master.
Another book which is still doing the octo-rounds is one sent to me ages ago and they've all swooped on it eagerly. The Long Exile A True Story of Deception and Survival Amongst the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic by Melanie McGrath published by Orion and I haven't set eyes on the book for months so forgive me for lifting plot details from the Times online.

In the early 1920s, while filming Nanook of the North, his famous documentary about the Canadian Arctic, Robert Flaherty had a brief affair with an Inuit woman and fathered a son. Thirty years later, Josephie Flaherty, brought up among his mother’s people, was one of the unwilling guinea pigs in a Canadian government experiment to resettle Inuit in Arctic wastelands. McGrath’s scrupulously researched, skilfully written story of what Josephie endured in the unwelcoming far north is heartbreaking – and made even more poignant by the involvement of the unacknowledged son of the man who did more than anyone to create the outside world’s image of the Inuit.

Reports back tell me that they've all learnt things they didn't really know having grown up with the film version of Nanook of the North since childhood, and the book portrays it all with huge sadness. "Fancy tricking them into thinking they were heading for a land of plenty when there wasn't a single thing to be shot for dinner".This didn't go down well.
I've plenty more books to send on the Octo-circuit so more thoughts from them soon. Meanwhile they've all been reading anything and everything they can on The American Civil War and the last I heard they fancied a Greyhound Bus trip around the historic sites.Now going along as "carer" for the Caribbean cruise was one thing and seemed like my duty, but I'm keeping quiet about the Greyhound bus trip.

The Rain Before It Falls

Someone very kindly recommended The Rain Before It Falls by Jonathan Coe to me by e mail and I can't for the life of me remember who, but a big thank you. I added it to an Amazon order for free postage and as soon as it came out of the box last week I just knew I wanted to read it NOW.
How?
Well by the cover of course.
I've been upbraided elsewhere online recently over my perceived shortcomings in judging Suite Francaise by its cover, which for me felt false and contrived and failed completely in any message it needed to telegraph to me about the book. It still does and I still haven't read that book.I will eventually.
But here's a cover which just reeled me in and I hope to goodness it stays in place for the paperback, because the monochrome depths and significance of that photograph worthily sell the book both before and after you've read it. It's a masterstroke of brilliant, interpretational graphic design which, if as a reader you can invest with some visual relevance to the whole, maximises the reading experience from memorable to forever memorable.
I'll gush a bit more about that in a minute.
For reasons unknown I've allowed the Jonathan Coe bandwagon to pass me by over the years, and to do that with any popular author always leaves me with plenty of unanswered questions, not least, are they really as good as everyone says they are?
Time to find out and The Rain Before It Falls seemed like a good place to start, though I hear this one is unlike anything he may have written before, so perhaps not?
Rosamond, the ageing spinster found dead in her armchair with a tape recorder and a pile of family photographs near by, a record still going round on the turntable and clearly we are in for a gradual revealing of the family history mediated through Rosamond's eyes and voice. The eyes are important because she is doing it all for the benefit of Imogen, a distant relative who has been blind since her childhood.
So the scene is set for a story told from beyond the grave, there's probably a proper literary name for that, a Bildungsroman a morte or something.
Using twenty photos as prompts Rosamond proceeds and using the "I shall tell you that...but first I must tell you this" device to great effect, Jonathan Coe builds up a subtle and very clever state of suspense and anxiety about the life and times of this family.
Truth be told it's a book pervaded by sadness.
Even the potentially happy moments are blighted by sadness, and the gradual exposure of a family with all its defects makes for glimpses of selfishness, of love misplaced or withheld, of prejudice and assumptions as the sins of the fathers, but in this case the sins of the mothers too, all revisit and take their toll on the various children.
This is all as much about letting go of that history and starting over if such a thing were possible and in many ways Jonathan Coe permits that through Rosamond's steady and seemingly reliable narrative voice as she interprets the reality behind the images for the as yet untraced and unsighted Imogen.
You do have to work through some harrowing tragedy to reach the redemption of sorts, but Rosamund completes her task, and thereby closure, with great courage.
So what about the cover?
Well gush and more gush because to me it's pure genius.The picture has real resonance with events in the book for a start, but it does much more than that. Amongst other things this book is about the "deceit of the photograph", in a what- lies- beneath- the- surface sort of way. A moment captured in a still that may or may not tell the whole truth. Plenty of analogies to be made about events frozen in time.
But once I'd turned the final page I sat and reflected for ages on what I'd just read and as I stared at the cover, both front and back, my thoughts about the book crystallized.
Call that dog Fate and the ice Life and you realise that you often don't have a great deal of control over what life may throw at you.The trick is all about keeping your balance and changing your centre of gravity appropriately when the going gets slippery. Everyone around you might be wobbling and you might not execute a perfect triple salchow, but at least you stand a chance of staying on your feet.
I loved this book and now I'm intrigued  and I will be reading much more of Jonathan Coe in the future.
On the strength of this one, yes, he really is as good as everyone says he is and I might just have to frame this cover.

The Parson - Anna Kavan

I picked up another of Anna Kavan's remarkable novels, The Parson, one of the last of her books to be published and this one post humously after the discovery of the manuscript in amongst Anna Kavan's papers at the McFarlin Library at the University of Tulsa.
There is something other-worldly about Anna Kavan's writing and I enjoy it immensely. When I turn the final page I feel as if I've been a on a bit of an extra-terrestrial excursion and have to reground myself in my surroundings. You certainly know you've had one of the most intense and concentrated reading experiences possible and it's easy to see why Anna Kavan has migrated into cult status. She takes you deep into the recesses of the human mind and you emerge the other side slightly disorientated.
Her heroin addiction has probably helped this move into cult considerably and it's good to read anything by Anna Kavan with Jeremy Reed's fascinating biography to hand. A Stranger on Earth The Life and Work of Anna Kavan is a revealing and moving account of the agonies of Anna's life as one of the first registered heroin addicts and offers a much deeper awareness of her writing as a result.
The Parson, still published by Peter Owen as were many of Anna Kavan's books in her lifetime, recounts the unlikely and very unbalanced love story between the outsider,the gentle and unassuming but besotted army officer Oswald and Rejane, the manipulative and wealthy heiress with an acutely refined sense of her own beauty and power. Here's what Rejane thinks when she looks in the mirror,

"The love she'd always felt for her own beauty was her deepest, most sincere emotion, and for a while she was oblivious of everything but the reflection. She had no thought but the admiring wonder inspired by that lovely face, almost luminous in the dulled light, more radiantly beautiful than she'd ever seen it".

You get the feeling that Anna Kavan would like to slap Rejane and she effectively does so within the pages of this book, because as a reader you can't warm to her even a fraction.
The Parson the story of the greatest mismatch of all time.
Anna Kavan uses the desolate setting of unnamed Northern moors to full effect.Cold and barren she invests them with a malevolence that is both sinister and increasingly malicious as the saga unfolds.With little effort on the part of Rejane, Oswald is completely seduced and degenerates from a kindly rather unassuming misfit into something of a monster. He behaves disgracefully towards Rejane for which he then suffers great pangs of existential regret.
For an acutely observed portrayal of a mind in turmoil Anna Kavan must take the victrix ludorum (I've tweaked the Victor bit because I know my Latin teacher of forty years ago is out there with her red pen)
The Parson is a perfectly pitched little novel with a huge story to tell and a book that would warrant several reads before you'd even scratched the surface.
Then turn to the life of Anna Kavan and read how she lived an existence outside the boundaries of the Arts world.A misfit and an outsider herself, sufficiently different and averse to the literary social scene and  therefore looked on with suspicion and contempt by her contemporaries.Nursing a strange psychiatric history and one it's difficult to unravel from the heroin addiction, a chicken-egg situation, but whatever the conclusions Anna Kavan's psyche seems to have been all a bit of a debilitating muddle.
Last words to Jeremy Reed,

'Anna did not network or play the game because she had something better to do - write. She believed,as her sort of sensibility does, that the work should speak for itself, and in an ideal world it would...Anna herself was especially sensitive, especially vulnerable and intent on escaping nothing.Her strength lay precisely in her difference'.

Oh no, typical woman here, not quite last words, I have more Anna Kavan to read and I relish the thought and hope some of you might give her a try. Jeremy Reed doubts that Anna would have found any consolation in being rediscovered in death after so much neglect in life, but I disagree.
With the passage of time I would like to think that Anna might be quietly and humbly honoured.

 

Cramming for Cranford

In readiness for the forthcoming BBC production of Cranford I thought it was time to dust off my copy of Elizabeth Gaskell's novel and have a re-read.I can easily sneak it into my 19th Century Rehab reading which you may recall was supposed to aid my recovery from Booker longlist reviewing and a surfeit of contemporary literary offerings.
The trouble is I keep relapsing because a new book will catch my eye and have to be read before the moment passes.
I haven't read Cranford since I was about fourteen and it was a set book at school. In fact it was no chore because I remember loving it. I had a bad  bout of hyper-gaskellitis last Christmas when I read too much Elizabeth so a small dose of Cranford should suffice.My passion for Oxford World Classics editions remains undimmed with this stunning and expressively beautiful cover.
The BBC cast list, with Dame Judi Dench at the helm as Miss Matty Jenkyns, looks stellar and I can't wait for this one to appear.
I'm quite a few televised Gaskell's behind and really should catch up. I bought the DVD's ages ago when Amazon were having a clear out but always like to read the book first so Wives and Daughters is waiting patiently.
Meanwhile my thoughts on Cranford some forty years after first reading will be on here soon and it will doubtless be a good moment to share some thoughts from one of those unassuming looking books bought second-hand which I knew would come in handy one day.Female Friendships and Communities, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell by Pauline Nestor.
Then there are the Winifred Gerin and Jennifer Uglow Gaskell biographies and the letters and the journals, stop, stop, there I go again, just Cranford this time round.

Gents

Scott Pack was offering review copies of Gents ages ago but did I really want to read a book about cottaging in a gent's toilet?
Probably not I thought, but eventually I caved in and said send me one. I read it  and have spent since September 21st trying to think how to write about a book about a gent's toilet.
It's not easy and then Kirsty over at Other Stories  threw down the gauntlet, closed her eyes, and dashed in and has written a great review so I thought I must just get on with it.
Firstly I'm not going to indulge in a single pun in this post, nothing about being flushed or going down the pan or bog standard or anything like that, if it happens it'll be unintentional, even though the author's initials are WC, nope I'm not even going to draw attention to it.
But what of the book?
Ez, Josiah and Jason work in a gent's toilet in London, that's a well staffed loo if ever there was one and Ez, as the new and very unworldly-wise cleaning recruit is shocked by the daily cottaging in progress.The Social Services committee know it is
"an habitual place of assignation"
Eventually Mrs Steerhouse pops in to do an inspection and have a cup of tea in the Gent's and decrees that steps must be taken to stem what Ez sees as a
"tide of perversion".
Mrs Steerhouse frames it in slightly more politically correct tones,
"There will always be incidents in a busy metropolitan latrine...but I am sure we all agree that the reputation of this place must improve."
What follows is almost a comedy as the steps are taken and suddenly all the jobs are on the line as custom dwindles.However it's not a comedy as Ez, Josiah and Jason play out their various prejudices and each take their moral stand. Forced to examine their own consciences they all reach conclusions that reflect the various attitudes held by society today.
I've been trying to think about this and I think I can honestly say that down the years I've never knowingly been in a gent's toilet, so I can't vouch for the veracity of the atmosphere, the aroma, the working conditions or the goings-on.
Mind you soliciting in the gents is not just a city event.
There was a very well-known set of local rural toilets here, near a main roundabout but concealed by a miniature forest, wherin many a local reputation was besmirched down the years. Even a rumour of a rumour of a car being parked nearby was considered sufficient evidence of an assignation and in a small town with a very well-established and talkative grapevine that was curtains for the victim.
Eventually the forest was cleared and the doors are now visible to all and sundry and I doubt anyone ever goes near it.
There, I've done it, I've reviewed Gents at last!
PS And yes, in response to the comment, I did enjoy it and would recommend it, that's the only way a book gets this far:-)

Sunday Confessions eventually

After a minor dearth brought on by the postal strike suddenly everything posted since early October arrived on the same day a while ago. Apologies but my sympathies for the postman were limited as he struggled up from the gate with a stack of parcels that completely obscured his vision.
Even the mighty Jane Austen completely dwarfed by this mountain, and there can be little doubt as to how I'll be spending my weekend. I can't begin to describe what an exciting prospect a vision like this is to a bookaholic in my advanced state.To sift through and find the gems I already know are in there is like prospecting for gold with the certain knowledge you're going to find some, and there was me thinking I didn't know what to read.
Two Raven's Press have sent me a pile of books following my love of Prince Rupert's Teardrop and I'm consistently impressed with the production quality of these books, I'll let you know about the content soon.
Gallic Books are those popular French contemporary novels being translated into English and I picked up The Officer's Prey by Armand Cabasson at random,snuck off for a crafty afternoon snooze and managed a hundred pages before I realized it was dark and possibly I should put in an appearance downstairs before it was time to go back to bed again.The Pere-Lachaise Mystery by Claude Izner (actually Parisian bookselling sisters) seems like an essential read for a Pere Lachaise cemetery addict like me.
Proof copies are now amongst my favourite reads because the cover design gives me no visual clues, so I have no idea what to expect.Well my thoughts on Devotion by Nell Leyshon nearer to publication time in February but that won't stop me writing about her writing which is brilliant and now I wish Nell Leyshon was Jodie Picoult and there was a back list of twenty novels, then we could have one a month and actually that still wouldn't be enough.
Holding that pile up, a new Beatles biography from Piatkus, Can't Buy Me Love by Jonathan Gould. This is reported to be a "stunning recreation of the 1960's in England and America through the prism of the world's most iconic band" so a mix of cultural, sociological and musical history which sounds like an interesting combination.On the back a quote from George Harrison 'The Beatles saved the world from boredom', never ones to underestimate.
Bill Liversidge sent me the funniest e mail asking if I might like to read his book A Half Life of One but he didn't want me to think he was bribing me in any way with the offer of the free book. Bribe away Bill said I, same rules apply, if I don't love the book it doesn't find its way onto the blog.
No time to waste must make a start.

Bottoming the house

Given the rare occurrence of a day home alone, you'd think that when blessed I'd be ready with some fabulous schemes for utilising the time wisely.
Not so this week, it caught me unawares.
Busy at work, busy with the Tinker's book and suddenly is was upon me and nothing really at the ready for salving the soul of a quilting knitter who feels a bit craft-deprived right now. I'd already made a pact that I must not start a new textile project until I've finished at least some of the unfinished ones, including The Millenium Quilt now seven years over deadline.
New knitting projects forbidden until the four disparate socks had a matching friend.
Plenty of reading to do as always, but more pressing was the need to "Bottom the house".
Though the men here do their level best 'tis only I who seems to be able to achieve the required look.
I've decided I'm neither a naturally gifted nor organised bottomer of a house.I think this might be an innate and subconscious reaction to a well-organised working life.
I tend to do top - bottom - top - middle - top - bottom - more bottom - a bit more top - some extra middle until eventually there are bits of it all in a state of half-doneness. Along the way something really pressing will leap out and demand to be done instantly and this week, inbetween transporting top debris that belonged at the bottom, for some reason it was the kettle in the middle that caught my eye.
I stopped everything and decided to descale it.
I'd bought the stuff weeks ago and even took the trouble to put my glasses on to read the instructions because it seemed I may have inadvertently bought a chemistry set.
OUST I was assured would remove 20% more limescale which was annoying because I was hoping for a 100% success rate at the first attempt.
Yes, now I admit it, I probably should have read as far as the health warnings.It was only when I was on the second sachet and gleefully exhorting the recalcitrant bubbling cauldron to cleanse thyself, that the Gamekeeper ran in gasping and flung all the windows open. I hadn't noticed the instructions about wearing a mask and in any case I didn't have one to hand.But I suppose the air could have been considered fractionally depleted and maybe that was why I couldn't smell anything out of the ordinary and was perhaps feeling a bit light headed.
The sticking point was the dire warning  DO NOT BOIL. Trying to prevent anything boiling on an Aga requires intense skills of observation and nil to distract the observer, so I shouldn't really have hopped across to the laptop to check e mails.
I made a rapid and complete recovery; you tend to when one of your adult children tells you off for being so daft, and proceeeded to pick up where I had left off middle - top - bottom - middle - shed - top - car - middle - drat this is a complete waste of time - bottom on chair - read.

Another recon. mission

Prize sighting and thanks to P.K.Munroe, of Thursday Night Letters fame, for this one in Foyle's, Charing Cross Road.
Prepared to risk danger by asking for the book in a loud voice, and to commit acts of derring do by realigning stock face out, Agent P.K. was mildly disappointed to find none of these subversive strategies were required.
The book was uncamouflaged and plainly there for all to see.
It had completely evaded me that the surname Chester, when filed alphabetically under World War Two, places us shoulder to shoulder with the great man himself.
Meanwhile we settle down to watch Westcountry News for the third night running in the hope that we haven't been displaced tonight by ducks walking through the centre of a village, or a biodynamic farm run on the moon and manure, which is what happened last night.

Simple Gifts

Here's a generous idea from publishers Canongate to promote the ethos behind a new book.
Gift Day on December 15th
Sign up and pledge a gift to someone on that day from your portfolio of creative talents and, if you are in the first hundred to do so, Canongate will send you a gift copy of the book The Gift, How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World by Lewis Hyde.
I'm often asked how I make any money from this blog and I look a bit blank.
Money? Good heavens no, not a penny EVER, I do it all for free and for the love a good book, it's my gift to the Nation:-)

My Lady Scandalous

Despite my best efforts I've never quite bonded with Georgette Heyer. I think I may have randomly picked up some of the weaker ones and cast them rapidly aside but I know there are plenty of Heyer fans out there and, if time permitted, Jo Manning's book might actually almost make me redress the balance and dive headlong in.
My Lady Scandalous, the Amazing Life and Outrageous Times of Grace Dalrymple Elliott, Royal Courtesan is a readable and often rather irreverant romp through the Regency era chez courtesan extraordinaire Grace.
Grace flaunted her assets at the English aristocracy with alacrity and guile and left in her wake a heap of names that moved in the absolute upper strata of society. Lord Cholmondely was smitten to the tune of not one but two Gainsborough portraits of Grace, one in 1778, the year that Grace gave birth to a little Georgiana who may or may not have been the offspring of the Prince of Wales.
Turning her attentions to the French aristocracy when the going got a little tough in the UK ,and never one to mess about in the lower echelons, Grace headed for the wealthiest of the lot, Philippe, Duc D'Orleans. Timing was not her special gift though,and Grace found herself within a whisker of the French revolution and a neck's length of the guillotine.
I haven't read cover to cover but I did spend a fascinating evening browsing this book and thoroughly enjoyed all the anecdotal asides and snippets of sociological and cultural information that Jo Manning has interspersed throughout the 400 pages.
Included is a really helpful explanation of The Peerage which is complicated if you live here (especially if you don't belong to it) so must be the very devil to understand if you live elsewhere. I now know a little more about Duke, Marquis, Earl, Viscount and Baron v Duchess,Marquess, Countess, Viscountess and Baroness. Who I must call Lord and who gets the "Oi Your Grace" when we meet in the street, in case I ever need it. There's even  the ever-helpful list of how to pronounce those names whose spelling bears no resemblance to the saying of them.
Hands up everyone who's been saying St Aubyn instead of Stubbs.
Oh, that was just me again was it?
Why didn't you all tell me?
As an American author, Jo Manning takes a no holds barred approach and speculates in a refreshingly un-British way on aspects of the Regency era that British reserve may have left unsaid. Her sweeping and it must be said, slightly judgemental comparisons with present-day aristocratic and even Royal scenarios will make many people squirm uneasily.
But do you see?
There's me, all serf-like, reserved, British and subserviant, and couldn't possibly tell you what they are for fear of ending up through Traitor's Gate and into the Tower, but Jo can tell it as she sees it and why not? She's a good long rowing boat's journey away from the place.
As an aside I wouldn't have believed it, but it was in this book that I learnt that Tim Bentinck, who plays David in The Archers, is actually the twelfth Earl of Portland but sadly sans money or property, which is probably why he's busy with Ruth and Pip, Josh and Ben and that family and those cows.
I've also got to mention Madame Tussaud because of course one visits this blog, though probably doesn't have to worry about a reprieve within hours of the guillotine and the hair cut already.Poor old Madame T. or Marie Grosholtz as was, then had to work on the heads fresh off the chopping block, making masks of them on her lap including Marie Antoinette and Robespierre.Francois Tussaud to the rescue and Baker Street beckoned which must have been something of a relief.
The guillotinesque descriptions take no prisoners so be sure not to read over a plate of brawn.
All in all a fascinating book, not quite a biography and Jo does venture into a rather chatty familiarity at times which for me deflected from any serious historical influence that the book may have had, but still a useful and fascinating read for non-UK based Heyerettes and even the home-spun ones might find something of interest here.

Who on earth is Belle Da Costa Greene?

A reading life is full of strange and unpredictable coincidences not least those connections between two reads which are poles apart in genre and yet somehow merge and overlap into the same territory.
An Illuminated Life, Belle Da Costa Greene's Journey From Prejudice to Privilege by Heidi Ardizzone published by W.W.Norton is one of those biographies that looks sumptuous but who on earth was she?
I bet you all know, but for the minority few like me who don't I'll tell you.
This is the biography of a librarian.
Belle Da Costa Greene was hired by wealthy New York banker J.P.Morgan in 1905 to collate and catalogue his rare book and manuscript collection.If you thought JPM might be on the lookout for a highly qualified librarian then think again because Belle was young and inexperienced in the art of wearing the squeaky shoes and the cardigan but she adored books and knew that was where she wanted to work.

"Belle knew that her chosen work as a librarian hardly fit the image and attitude that her flamboyant mischievous soul demanded "Just because I am a librarian...doesn't mean I have to dress like one""

So now we'll have a little rest while the librarians who visit here take deep breaths and plan their comments, I can't wait because I know they are the wittiest of the lot.
The other drawback could have been that Belle was fractionally on the wrong side of the colour line with black ancestry on her father's side and raised "in a family of colour" in Washington DC. In fact despite being distantly related to the singer, Paul Robeson, Belle effectively crossed the colour line.
Crossing the colour line is a new concept for me and one I have never read about in any depth, so it is this that makes for enlightening reading in the first hundred pages or more that I've covered so far. Belle never actually lied about her background but nor did she fully embrace it and many struggled to describe the strange beauty of a woman who became increasingly powerful as she sat at the right hand of one of the wealthiest men in America. For me this was all new information and all the more engrossing for that, coupled with the fact that Heidi Ardizzone's writing style is eminently readable and absorbing.
I will read this one right through because I am intrigued to see just how the enigmatic Belle becomes what she does, a world-famous celebrity whose New York life was "dazzlingly white, upper-class, upper-crust, high culture". How and why did she make her choices and you have to admire or perhaps feel sorry for a woman who felt compelled to take four to ten years off her age for her entire life.
The book that immediately jumped into my mind was Love Across  Colour Lines, Ottilie Assing & Frederick Douglass by Maria Diedrich, and the story of their twenty-eight-year relationship.That's another 375 pages of unread book sitting here forlornly, but Frederick Douglass and Richard T.Greener, Belle's father worked together so perhaps I have a reading trail opening there.
But the real coincidence was much more ordinary really because simultaneously I'm reading The Collectors by David Baldacci and hey ho it's all about intrigue and mystery in the Library of Congress's Rare Books Division.Librarians both dead and alive stalk or lie amongst the shelves, bibliomaniacs and cardigans abound, the shoes squeak loudly and even the revered JPM gets a mention.
OK librarians, it's all yours.