dovegreyreader scribbles

Olympics update ...

Well what a feast this is for someone like me who might, just might, have been averagely good at sports in adulthood had I not set my sights on a career in nursing, and then discovered that my legs wouldn't carry me much further than my bed at the end of a shift. We tried we really did, games of squash, bit of swimming in the open-air pool in the middle of Holborn office blocks (is it still there?? The Oasis??) and that was about it. But at school I had loved it all, hockey, gymnastics (at which I was rubbish, but could dream) athletics, swimming the lot and I would always try something new.

A lovely comment appeared on Facebook from someone who thinking they would have no interest whatsoever in the Olympics surprisingly finds themselves open to a raft of new and unexpected things, and perhaps that might be one of the wonderfully positive aspect to all this. Yes there has been plenty to criticise, and glitches with seating and food queues, but it seems LOCOG are onto it all pretty fast and sorting it, and meanwhile we have just been revelling in it all tucked away down here in Devon.

Watching Judo whilst having coffee at the kitchen table with the Tinker this week...

'That was an origami' he said..

'No dad, that was a haiku.'

You see we know nothing about it... actually I do know a bit. We learned Judo in the sixth form on the basis that we were young women off out into the world and a bit of self-defence confidence might come in handy, so I used to be able to do an Osoto gari and a Tai othoshi with the rest of them.

The rowing is top of our list and shaping up into a fantastic run of finals for Team GB, and we will be shouting ourselves hoarse when hopefully the Coxed Fours meet their close rivals the Australians on Saturday morning.

We've had a go at rowing too would you believe and I have the evidence.

Bookhound and I both rowed for Plymouth Amateur Rowing Club when we first moved west after our wedding in 1976, so I know exactly how hard it is to 'sit' a boat...ie balance the thing' and that is before you have even thought about all the multi-tasking involved in twizzling that oar feathering the blade without catching a crab, and the sliding up and down on the seat with your feet tied into the shoes. The thing is you can't stop in the middle of a race, up oar and plead that you are a bit puffed, or the skin's coming off your hands, you have no choice but to keep going, and by crikey it hurts.

This picture was taken at Paignton regatta in 1978 and that really is me sitting next to the back (ahem, there's probably a proper name for that seat ) my hair in 1970's bunches...

This was Coxed Fours (lord knows where we'd have ended up without someone steering) and you can just see the cox wearing a life jacket which he needed and we could have done with one too because, yes, this was rowed right out on the open sea...

Frankly it was all terrifying and very choppy and I suspect at this moment, as we left the beach, my oar was wedged in the sand and I was probably wondering how best to change my mind about all this.

My favourite picture (because of course we still have the scrapbook) is this one of Bookhound seated in the bow...that's it, I knew it had a name. This was the Head of the Tamar race in that same year, eight miles of torture up the Tamar and back again and I took this picture leaning precariously over the top of the Tamar Road Bridge whilst holding a very expensive camera...

If Team GB are searching for the elusive golds they are surely going to come from the rowing venue at Eton Dorney any day now.

Then there's the Three Day Eventing... I can't be doing with the dressage but bring on the rest, and what a nail-biting day that has been watching show jumping when we might never normally give it a second glance.

The Men's Gymnastic team were awesome on Monday, we watched all that too all of which is finally making us master the TV remote as we constantly switch between channels. How apt that Team GB leave 100 years inbetween medals.

The swimming... well we are claiming the fifteen-year old Latvian gold medal sensation as our own given the fact she attends school and trains in Plymouth alongside our very own Tom Daley. He's had a rubbish year has Tom, with the death of his lovely dad Rob, so we will be rooting for him every inch of the way from the tip of that ten metre board right down to the water when his individual event happens. 

The sofa has a dent in it, a nice comfy recess, I have knitted half a jumper for Offspringette and mastered the first two crochet stitches, the plan being to teach myself crochet whilst watching. Two stitches doth not an Afghan blanket make, but I am hopeful of progress.

So how about you... been watching??

Favourite moments??

Has any of it reminded you of your own sporting endeavours??

Dent in your sofa??

The Happy Campers meet Simon Garfield @PortEliotFest

Simon Garfield, (author of Just My Type, that lovely book on fonts) could be forgiven for thinking that the Happy Campers stalk him at Port Eliot Festival year on year, but actually...well they do. He is a very firm favourite of theirs, and mine, and very kindly popped into the tent to say 'hello' and very nice things about dovegreyreader this year, and sign our Visitors Book....here are The Happy Campers' adulations thoughts on Simon's talk in the Bowling Green tent about his new book On the Map’ to be published on 4^th Oct 2012.

 

Simon Garfield is getting to be rather a favourite with the Happy Campers. The man is such a genius that last year he had us thoroughly fascinated by fonts and poring over print. Moreover, he has the patience of a saint when confronted by the HC in determined autograph hunting mode (more of that later).  When we saw the festival programme, which said that he would be ‘turning his narrative flair to maps’, we were intrigued, as we had not heard that he had a new book out.

And maps…?

An interesting route for the guru of fonts and typography to take - perhaps he had released his inner cartographer? (apologies to Robert Macfarlane).

So it was with a warm fuzzy feeling we heard Mr Garfield refer to Port Eliot as his spiritual home: we are starting to think of this small corner of England in a similar way ourselves. And the festival programme is a work of art in itself, isn’t it, a worthy souvenir. But there is a small cloud on Simon Garfield’s Port Eliot horizon….. the map of the site is lacking in any kind of emotional resonance.

Where are the people, the events, the wit of, say, the Glastonbury festival map?

Apparently this paragon of map virtue has interesting details woven into it, like ‘crayfish paella mountain here’ and ‘creepy soulless old weirdo‘  to describe the presence of a very famous venerable canonised pop icon who shall remain nameless in the interests of me not being pursued by a team of corporate lawyers.  This annotation, of course, is in the style of ‘Here Be Dragons’, which as any fule kno is authentically blazoned across the uncharted sections of many a medieval map.

No?

Like so many things later proved to be tosh, the here be dragons malarkey was, according to Simon Garfield, born out of a mis translation  (remember Cinderella and the glass slipper?) Dorothy L Sayers gave the phrase its first place in literature when she wrote ‘Here be dragons to be slain…..’ in her book ‘Catholic Tales and Christian Songs’. So as usual with Simon Garfield, after only five minutes or so your head is being stuffed full of fascinating facts.

He shows us a Facebook map; a world image defined by light tendrils. It is a map of connections, a record of the links made by millions of keyboard presses. China is not on it. Facebook is not big in China.

His talk makes me want to buy the book.

Who would have thought that the people of Hereford rubbed away a small area of the Mappa Mundi because before it became a valuable artefact many a local stubbed their finger on the place on the map they reckoned was home?

Or that Churchill and Roosevelt owned identical globes so when they spoke to each other at a distance they could pinpoint exactly the same places during their strategic discussions?

Or that maps, too, can be the object of someone’s collecting mania to such an extent that a master criminal razored out priceless maps from ancient books in such institutions as the Bodleian library?

Another reason why Simon Garfield is such an entertaining talker is that he is a great gossip.  Snippets about Patrick Moore, the famous astronomer - he delights in being wrong! - are followed by anecdotes about map dealers, who are not an engaging bunch, being both self important and physically unprepossessing. I could supply some more detail, but the lawyers are looking over my shoulder again….

All too soon the talk is over. We have to be back at the DGR tent five minutes ago. Nonetheless I leap up and ask Mr Garfield to sign the map in the back of my festival programme, ‘Here Be Dragons’ style.

He kindly transcribes my suggestion – next to an arrow pointing to the campsite, he writes

‘Here be the Happy Campers- over excited!!’

 

Meet Little Nell...

We seem to be cornering the market in cute here but had thought the puppy wouldn't be arriving until after the Olympics... wrong, and so last Tuesday evening we set off to collect Little Nell.

This you may recall is the litter of Sprockers (Springer x Cocker spaniel) that the Gamekeeper's dog Rusty has sired, three sisters and we had pick of the litter. 

Well how impossible is that because what on earth are you supposed to look for.

In the end we agreed we wanted one that looked like Rusty.

But after years of Alpha Male dogs we wanted the little girl that looked really quiet and un-boisterous...

Perhaps a little over-awed by us and by life...

So not the one that leapt into our arms the minute it saw us and squeaked 'I'm yours'

We'd look for the one sitting at the back...

The one getting crawled over by the others...

It wasn't hard. Two completely brown ones looking uncannily like Tag, the Gamekeeper's new acquisition, and one predominantly white one with a few brown markings (more Rusty-like) getting trampled on by her pushy sisters.

Yes. I know it's going to show the dirt and we'll regret this after a muddy walk...

And there will be white dog hairs everywhere...

We had the meeting to sort too so we decided to get that done and dusted immediately.

Bit of skirting around by Magnus who quickly decided Nell could be his mum, whilst Nell quickly decided that Magnus could sub for her sisters left behind, and to our complete surprise they curled up together in the dog crate and slept like little angels.

That angelic pose didn't last of course and they now spend the day bundling and slam-dunking each other whilst the classic impasse involves each grabbing the other's tail between baby teeth and not letting go. We are having huge fun just watching them, but, at eight weeks old the pair, it is a bit like having non-identical newborn twins. To the vets on Monday for injections for both of them...and we'll just have to put them together into the old Trago Mills cat box done up with bailer twine because we only have one.

And do you remember another cat who used to do this on the kitchen table??

 Isn't it funny how cats just know exactly where they want to be.

And only four weeks since his arrival as a shivering bundle that could sit in the palm of the hand, don't kittens turn into proper cats so quickly.

 

 

Astonishing...

Wow, well that was incredible... and how kind of Danny Boyle to include Great Ormond Street in the year that the October 1972 set will be gathering in London from all corners of the world in September for our forty year reunion, that felt very special.

We sat up and saw every competitor into the stadium, though may have dozed off a bit between Guam and Spain, but we thought the whole spectacle was awesome, eccentric, very British, serious when it needed to be (as in the poppy moment) and so very funny when we were expecting otherwise..Mr Bean and the Queen.

So today we are in serious watching mode and have already been on the edge of our seats for this..

 and who can believe that we have found the red button, pressed it and are now rooted to this..
This is what the Olympics is all about...I have not the first clue about cycling, no interest in it whatsoever and now I am a nervous wreck about things like the peleton and six minute leads and workman-like rhythms and dogs running across the road (and back again!)  and how they can ride hands-free and pull things out of their jerseys, or hang onto the car while someone leans out and tightens the saddle and not fall off.

I must dash because the peleton are approaching Box Hill and will need me. I had a near-death experience there on youth club ramble in about 1970, when for a joke I started running down through the woodland on the steep side and couldn't stop.

Hoping Team GB know what they are doing allowing this six minute lead to build ahead of them...

Tonight we will be moving across to the Aquatics Centre for some real medal hopes....oh isn't this all brilliant.

Happy Olympics and memories of Tokyo 1964...

It was only a matter of time today before I went up in the loft (actually for that read 'before Bookhound went up in the loft' ) and dug out my Tokyo 1964 Olympic scrapbook

We were scrapbook-crazy as children and this one reminds me just why I have always loved the Olympics so much, and why I am more than over-excited about what is to come over the next two weeks. For sure things will go wrong, tha traffic will snarl up, more drugs cheats will be outed, the naysayers are shouting loud on Twitter and Facebook and there's me happily ignoring all that and getting all teary-eyed at 8.12 this morning when all the church bells rang across the country to celebrate the arrival of The Day.

We could hear them echoing across from the village, and in a jiffy I was remembering the October day in 1964 that Mary Rand won her gold medal in Tokyo, the head teacher dashing into the classroom at Sherwood County Primary School in Mitcham to tell us all.

The lesson stopped and we measured out 22ft 2ins on the classroom floor. It was a new world record and this Britain's first gold in any field event since 1908... the eleven year-old me was very impressed with Mary, especially when she went on to win a silver medal in the Pentathlon and bronze in the 4 x 100 relay.


I was a mad keen runner and wannabee long jumper in those days having bagged 13ft in the Brownie Sports Day event (I was pint-sized then) and 22ft looked an awful long way. I remember loving this picture of Mary's daughter celebrating and thus it won a place in my scrapbook...

A few days later Ann Packer won gold in the 800 metres and there was her fiancee Robbie Brightwell waiting for her on the finish line, and then this picture of pure happiness...

 Then blow me down if a few days later Lynn Davies won the Men's Long Jump with a leap of 26ft 5 &1/2 ins..

We all need heroes and heroines as children and these were mine, but I was also hooked on the Olympics everafter, and if the legacy for Britain's children from London 2012 gives them a fraction of what those athletes of 1964 gave me, and at such an impressionable age, then every single penny will have been very well spent indeed.

And just to show that I was not entirely partisan, and clearly must have recognised success wherever it occurred, here's the cutting that appears on the very first page of the book...

I expect plenty of you will be among the billion around the world expected to be watching the Opening Ceremony tonight, here's hoping it all goes well, how can it not with the brillaint Danny Boyle in charge. Let the Games commence in the true spirit of the thing, good luck to all your competitors in whichever country you are from/in/supporting and dovegreyreader will still be here, more Port Eliot posts will drift on, in amongst the Olympic 'Did you see that ...' stuff.

And meanwhile just look who has nabbed the best seat in the house...

 

Robert Macfarlane @PortEliotFest

I had been looking forward to ALL the events in the dovegreyreader tent and had been doing my 'homework' for weeks beforehand. It is a real treat to be able to create a relaxed and informal space within which to ask our questions and listen to the writers talk, but I knew it would be an extra special occasion to talk with Robert Macfarlane about The Old Ways. This has been such a special book for so many of us, and I know that personally it has transformed not only the way that I walk along but the thinking that takes place as I do so.

The audience and I had plenty of questions for Robert and he gave wonderful replies ... connections with Edward Thomas, paths that need walking and our right to roam, where to walk barefoot (The Isle of Lewis), risk aversion, walking in fearful territory...The Broomway and Ramallah and I think the pictures tell their own story about how relaxed and enjoyable this all felt... 

Robert Macfarlane talking in the dovegreyreader tent at Port Eliot 2012 © Tommy Hatwell (all rights reserved)

Robert Macfarlane signing books in the dovegreyreader tent at Port Eliot 2012 © Tommy Hatwell (all rights reserved)

More thought about the gifts and the Knitsuke, whilst not exactly knitted, did allow us to incorporate a Devil's Eyeball stone collected (legally) from Ascension Island by The Weatherman (also answers to Mr Knit Angel) whilst on a six month posting there during the Falklands conflict. It was a little kit which we called There and Back Again..the old ways of navigating.

Robert Macfarlane and his knitsuke in the dovegreyreader tent at Port Eliot 2012 © Tommy Hatwell (all rights reserved)

You might also notice that Robert didn't escape the yarnbombing either...that wristband made by the Knit Angel while Robert spoke.

Next the quiltsuke.

Well I loved making this...a hand appliqued and quilted picture of Robert's sea voyage from Lewis to the Shiants which is recorded in The Old Ways...

Robert Macfarlane and his quiltsuke in the dovegreyreader tent at Port Eliot 2012 © Tommy Hatwell (all rights reserved)

Out of sight is a little boat heading for the Shiants (my thanks to Google Earth for helping me get them in the right place) and for the record, the beams from the lighthouse (I checked, it is on the north of the island) are quilted in glow-in-the-dark thread which really does, and the ribbon that ties the whole thing up into a scroll is Cornish tartan for a Cornish festival.

I said it to Robert and the audience, and do you know what, I'll say it again here...if The Old Ways doesn't win prizes I will eat my walking boots.

 

Brian Selznick and his knitsuke @PortEliotFest

Thank you for that wonderful account Happy Campers and my thanks to Brian for an equally memorable event in the dovegreyreader tent the next day. As a footnote, and last but definitely not least, each guest left the tent with their knitsuke, the tradition we inaugurated last year with Edmund de Waal's knitted hare with amber eyes. We do like to know they have gone to happy homes and here is the hare seated contentedly in Edmund's studio...

and admiring the pots...

Edmund de Waal's Hare With Amber Eyes knitsuke Port Eliot 2011

As usual we had thought long and hard about our knitsuke and quiltsuke gifts for each guest, and my thanks to the Knit Angel, not only for making all the knitsuke but also for responding to my last minute pleas for strange but entirely appropriate items. I meanwhile hand quilted the quiltsuke for England through Wimbledon and with kitten assistance... whoever got the piece that I made through the Andy Murray match...well I can only apologise.

For Brian we could easily have knitted a silent film...or a railway station perhaps, but had much more fun with the mouse from Hugo, complete with a key and a heart ...

Brian Selznick's dovegreyreader knitsuke © Tommy Hatwell (all rights reserved)

It might look uncannily like a rat but you will just have to believe that this is a gurt big West Country mouse, the sort that tap dances in our loft every winter. The eagle-eyed amongst you will have spotted that Brian is also holding the one that we made earlier too, which came out even more rat-sized after a bit of a felting issue. In the end that seemed entirely right given that Brian works in small scale and his work is enlarged. so he is thankfully homing them both. That large one kept appearing from nowhere and scaring the living daylights out of us in the run up so were quite pleased to wave it on its way...

Brian Selznick & dovegreyreader & the knitsuke © Tommy Hatwell (all rights reserved)

...and Brian was absolutely delighted as you can tell from this picture when he first saw them... 

Brian Selznick glimpses his dovegreyreader knitsuke Port Eliot 2012 © Tommy Hatwell (all rights reserved)

The Happy Campers meet Brian Selznick @PortEliotFest

Enormous thanks to The Happy Campers who have started filing their reports so here's the first, and please note all these pictures were taken at the second event at the dovegreyreader tent, not the Bowling Green, as you will be able to tell by the absence of the ... oh you'll figure it...over to The Happy Campers...

One half of the Happy Campers - © Tommy Hatwell (all rights reserved)

The other half of the Happy Campers - © Tommy Hatwell (all rights reserved)

The Happy Campers had pitched their tent with expert speed and competence, thrown their motley possessions around inside and put on a brew before the heavens opened. It was exactly the same as last year, apart from the fact that then there was no brew, yours truly having forgotten the pan to boil the water…..No such lapses today - our 2012 Port EliotFest had been organised with lists, more lists, schedules and contingency arrangements. Nothing would be forgotten, lost, missed, regretted or double booked because I had a master plan, designed with military precision to make the most of every minute of this fantastic three day festival.

 

A glance at the first page of said plan reminded us that our first event was a trot round to the Bowling Green to hear Brian Selznick, author of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, talk about the process of crafting his children’s books. He combines beautifully drawn picture sequences with text, to tell wonderful, imaginative stories. They are hefty tomes too, not ones for reading last thing at night when arm muscles are a bit tired. I was eager to see the man behind such unique creations, and hear him explain how his book inspired Scorsese’s Oscar winning film, Hugo. When asked how he wished to be introduced to the Port Eliot audience, he said ‘Oh, tell them that I wrote a book and it was made into a film.’ Such self - deprecation is disarming.

Brian Selznick ~ dovegreyreader tent Port Eliot 2012 © Tommy Hatwell (all rights reserved)

Wearing intense orange skinny jeans, Brian Selznick is tall and slim, with dark curly hair. He bounces on to the stage and immediately radiates an energy, humour and enthusiasm which are infectious. ‘I am going to stand so you can see my pants’, he quips (nb he is American, so for pants read trousers, not Y fronts). The pants are startling against the bright green of the tent backdrop.  In no time at all he is sharing the details of how he came to write children’s books; certain that if he cared about the character and the things the character was interested in, then the reader would care too. Maurice Sendak, who wrote Where the Wild Things Are, advised him to ‘make the book you want to make’, and the word ‘make’ really does capture the essence of Selznick’s books as visual works of art that have been truly crafted.   He goes on to talk about the connection between film and book; how he wanted to make the book feel like a movie, to use the ‘page turn’ of a picture book to mimic the things a film can do - those cinematic features.  When the page in a picture book is turned, everything changes and transforms, so there must be a way, he thought, of making the experience of reading a novel feel like watching a movie.

Brian Selznick eye to eye with Wonderstruck © Tommy Hatwell (all rights reserved)

One of the things Brian Selznick does is to take out all words which are purely descriptive and replace them with picture sequences, so the reader moves through time as the picture sequence is read. Another device is how the ‘close up’ of a picture mimics the zooming in of the movie camera.  When Scorsese filmed the ‘picture sequences’, in the book, he deliberately simulated the ‘page turns’ using cuts. So film technology enhanced the story, and the story helped to shape the film. Apparently Scorsese used every drawing in The Invention of Hugo Cabret in the film storyboards. The film was like a realisation of the book’s images, it gave them scale and showed how things might relate to each other. ‘Everything became real in front of your eyes’ said Selznick. In the end the script and his own story merged so that he couldn’t remember what was script and what was book text, but the illustrations kept their purity.

The author now sees the film Hugo as a vision of his book, the particular vision of the director. We are shown stills from the film Hugo, which help us to understand this vision and Selznick then goes on to explain how he draws… how a drawing starts as a list of words which say how the drawing will look. He then makes thumbnail sketches, which turn into bigger drawings. Information from research and photographs is then used to finalise the image, which is actually about a quarter of the size of the drawing which appears in the book.

 It is surprising how thrilled Brian Selznick was for his book to be adapted by Hollywood. He is a scion of a great film director, and you would think he would take the Hollywood thing in his stride, but he was as over awed, he says, as anyone else when Scorsese came calling. We all laugh when he says with pride ‘my baby married royalty!’

The audience enjoying Brian Selznick at dovegreyreader tent Port Eliot 2012 © Tommy Hatwell (all rights reserved)

 

I didn’t think beforehand that hearing Brian Selznick talk would be my 2012 Festival highlight. Sometimes you get a real sense of being in the presence of a truly original talent.  I couldn’t wait for Saturday morning when he was going to be in the dovegreyreader tent…..I rushed off to buy a copy of his latest book, Wonderstruck, and I recommend that you do, too. 

Brian Selznick's books © Tommy Hatwell (all rights reserved)

PS from dovegreyreader... Thank you Happy Campers. Post to follow about the knitsuke we presented to Brian before he left...very funny moment.

 

 

 

 

 

The day after the weekend before...

It's been that sort of day.

You know the one, a bit like arriving back from a camping holiday probably (not that I'd know) but one where you have taken along the oddest assortment of things that all have to go back in their respective homes once they have been washed, dried and aired.

Thank heavens for a sunny day to get all the quilts that we hung in the tent out on the line...

I will catch up on here drekkly with short posts and a couple of my favourite pics from each event, the rest of them have gone up on the Flicker album this evening, and I know Team dovegrey will be filing their reports eventually, and I have so many thank you letters to write too....no slacking for a while yet.

One of my favourite pics...The River Cottage Forager with his knitsuke..

We said best check in the book first before eating.

This meanwhile was where my brain was stored for the entire weekend...

Talking with nine authors in three days is a bit like studying for nine exams so had my notebook disappeared I think I might have just run away.

Now I'm home I'm not quite sure where my brain is, but normal service will be resumed the minute I find it because before we know it we'll all be sitting down to watch the Opening Ceremony.

London 2012 is almost upon us and I can hardly wait.

 

Saturday @PortEliotFest

Just heading off to 'do' Sunday.. Robert Macfarlane, Kate Summerscale, John 'Forager' Wright and Helen Rappaport but you can be doing Saturday while I'm gone.

All the pics are on Flicker and now catalogued under each event so you can do one at a time... keep an eye out for the knitsuke and the quiltsuke as you look, it was a dazzling day and I am going to have some truly joyous thank you letters to write after all this...

Vocal Harem were in fine voice and had an absolute Festival ball... more about that to come

 Right, got to dash and beat the traffic, see you later.

Friday @PortEliotFest

Dear Everyone,

Wish you were here...

We really really do because after an early shower rainstorm the fine weather has finally arrived and looks set fair for the rest of the weekend we hope, so we will all be topping up our vitamin D levels. Susie Parr swam into our first event and might almost have persuaded me that I could quite possibly do this thing called swimming in a costume in a freezing cold lake/river/sea... absolutely no wetsuits allowed. I'm still thinking on it.

An error in the size of our tent meant that we then had to evacuate our little bijou abode while the tent crew moved in to put up a pavilion-sized palace in its place, and quite amazingly the knitting just carried on to one side regardless. We quickly re-convened and welcomed Tracy Chevalier, author of Girl With a Pearl Earring who talked about and read from her next novel The Last Runaway. I had mistakenly read that as 'Runway' on the website and quite thought this was a novel about airports, so imagine how relieved I was to find it is about the underground slave railway and that quilts play a part in the book. Tracy and I did a little quilt show-and-tell..mine the still unfinished Kayaker's baby quilt (this is me remember) and there was a twenty-nine year old Kayaker taking pics in front of me...some mirth ensued whilse we agreed it was at least a wonderful archive of 1980's Laura Ashley fabrics. Tracy's quilt was beautiful and you will see some pictures in the link at the end of this post.

Fran and Carol have done a valiant job with our Flower Show entry...

We await a verdict tomorrow... This Sceptered Isle (not quite complete in this pic..missing the crown) and we went for a bit of a Coronation theme with a little gaggle of ermine-clad peers with which we were well-pleased.

And Mrs M who blogs at This Sight of Morning has been tweeting wonderfully  for us all day so hopefully you have all been able to follow our progress on the feed over here >>>>>>

Big day tomorrow, more authors plus the Vocal Harem set on the Bowling Green stage so must away to my bed...so excited and so much information stored up my brain refused to switch off last night, so tonight it feels about ready for a rest. You will find a Flicker stream of today's pics here... many a funny-face and eyes in need of sleep pour moi, but it will all give you a flavour of the day and my thanks to the Kayaker for the pictures.

 

Thursday morning pre @PortEliotFest

We are going to be keeping ad hoc live blogging hours for the foreseeable future and, as we await the arrival of Team dovegrey, here are a few pictures of what the house looks like before Port Eliot Festival, and the daft thing is I had tided it all up because we have visitors. The fact that the Kayaker arrived home yesterday too, and wheeled a bike and half his belongings into the midst of it all is neither here nor there because I am thrilled that he will be coming to Port Eliot and doing photos for us. Offspringette will be there on Saturday and Sunday too, so almost a full family house...the Gamekeeper too busy getting ready for his pheasants to arrive to take time out, but funnily enough the pheasants are reared over at Port Eliot so we'll wave to them.

Fran arrived last night and is, as I write, probably downing the biggest farm breakfast known to mankind over at our friend Rosie's lovely B&B before heading over here for a morning of final preparations. Then after lunch we will load the van, cross the Tamar and head over yonder into Cornwall and make a start on decking out the tent. We to and fro from home over the weekend because you know me and camping...

The kitchen table is currently Flower Show planning area (This Sceptered Isle...foliage class) very embryonic and awaiting the arrival of the creative minds and the foliage (mustn't forget the foliage) Fran and I went for a long walk yesterday evening and have our sources ready...

Along with Fran, the Knit Angel and the Weatherman will be here any minute with their niece, the very lovely Becky, who is a knitwear designer and currently all we need to know is can she knit a crown out of wheat. 

 Bookhound is in charge of food and already paying homage to the Aga..
and we have a box of provisions...

 A stack of old quilts ready to hang and drape and cover chairs in the tent...
The knitsuke and the quiltsuke for our guests are all finished and packed and we will show you these as we go along. The Knit Angel and I have had great fun making them, I've done the hand quilted ones which have been both Wimbledon and kitten assisted, so the odd character-giving wonky stitch is a given..

Books are sorted and bagged ready for each day's authors, I knew those bags from the British Library would come in handy ...

Joining Team dovegrey over the weekend and event-reporting will be Carol, who comments here and loved the festival and the tent so much last year, and also with us now and then, Mr and Mrs M. Many of you may know Alice C who blogs here... Alice will be tweeting like crazy for us. The Happy Campers (bless them) will be popping up everywhere and were already counting the sleeps and feverishly excited days ago.

And finally, look who is coming with us to sit on the sofa...

So we are on holiday in Orkney and the Tinker says to me...

'Did you ever finish that cushion you were doing of Rocky?'

'No Dad, this is me remember... on the frame, one line done and haven't picked it up again...'

'Hmm...'

'Hmm...be lovely to have it for the sofa at Port Eliot...'

So I took it round to him on June 14th (approx) and the phone call to say it was finished came on July 7th.

I did make it into a cushion though, so I have at least done something towards it.

Right, I must away to the fray, more blog posts as and when and keep an eye on the Twitter feed over here >>> because Team dovegrey will be putting instant pics on there all through the festival. You can follow us on Twitter too if you want, or just click through from the side bar and it should take you there.

If anyone reading this will be at the festival and wants to 'help' with the dovegreyreader Flower Show entry you will be most welcome. You will find Fran, up to her neck in foliage, co-ordinating the installation in the Flower Show tent from mid-morning tomorrow (Friday)

 

 

 

Foraging...

There's nothing worse than someone pitching up to speak at the dovegreyreader tent and dovegreyreader not knowing them. They will know me because I shall be wearing my new dovegreyreader scarf, spotted at the Cider Press craft centre at Dartington on that miserable dripping July day when we went to see Hilary Mantel. And talking of the weather, how fortuitous is that... the jet stream chooses this very week to move back up north where it belongs, and we have uninterrupted high pressure heading in for the weekend.

So I have been watching River Cottage again just to be absolutely sure I know John Wright when I see him, though it will help if he is wearing his hat and carrying a basket nonchalently over one arm.

For those who don't know, John Wright is The Forager on Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's TV programme River Cottage, and John is usually grubbing around for pig nuts or plucking some wild garlic leaves for a garnish (with Felicity Kendal mind you...it's not all bad) while Hugh is off doing really exciting things like catching a shark for tea, or scooping up a roadkill specimen off the road, all of which is then presented for Sunday lunch or something. But I have been reading John's books and this foraging thing looks very exciting too, especially to someone like me who surely lives in the midst of the forager's land of plenty.

We heard on the radio the other day that all gardens should have a square metre of nettles, so with our square acre of them we are now feeling particularly righteous. When I hinted to Bookhound that I may be tempted to knock up some nettle soup he didn't seem very enthusiastic..

'Let me know what it tastes like...'

So perhaps John can help with a bit of conversion, because I have been reading his book Hedgerow and can see this could save us a fortune at Fortnum & Morrison's. The foraging can all start barely a foot from the front door with the Ground Elder apparently, and surely I have enough to feed the world.

'I think it is fair to say that Ground Elder is not a popular plant. It was introduced to these islands at some point lost to history by a perosn who would sap our strengthe and will...we have 'tomato blight' and 'pea root rot' but never 'Ground Elder wilt' or 'bindweed botrytis'...'

But it is edible. In the Middle Ages an ineffective treatment for gout, but collect the young leaves (before the flowers or you have a laxative on your hands) and you have a substitute for parsley... or cook them and have parsley-flavoured spinach... or make soup, or quiche...yes really, oh yes and one more use..

'If you keep guinea pigs it is well worth feeding them with as much Ground Elder as you can - it gives a lovely fresh flavour to the meat.'

I can see we are going to be laughing our socks off with The Forager.

If you think this might be a bit of a geeky, specialist book think again, because it is the most entertaining read. John, as we now know, has a wry sense of humour as he works his way through all the free food out there as well as a very helpful section entitled Poisonous Species..

'Alongside 'don't play with matches', 'remember to clean your teeth' and 'mind the cat', something that most children learn at their mother's knee is 'never eat wild berries or plants'. Childhood lessons are difficult to unlearn....'

They are indeed and thank goodness I now think I know what this is...

The lane was festooned with it last year, and though I doubt I would have thought 'Mmmm jam' without checking first, odder things have happened. Anyway I 'think' it is Black Bryony and we'd have known it if we'd spread this on our toast. Thinking you know and being sure you know seems to be the big issue here, so I have plenty of questions for John when we get to Mushrooms. 

Many of you will have read about The Horse Whisperer author Nicholas Evans, and his family's terrifying and ongoing ordeal after picking and cooking what he thought were Ceps. It transpired they were the deadly webcap Cortinarius speciosissimus and worse still...imagine discovering the next day that you are in serious trouble because the side effects are about to cause renal failure and damage your spinal cord.

John offers very clear guidance about all this including several pages of advice and information about identifying a fungus as well as suggesting that the mushroom hunter never relies on one book alone for diagnosing his haul. Personally I'd need fifty books but even then I'd still be worrying about the dialysis, and I wonder if I am alone with that caution??

A quick straw poll...would you or do you, even with seemingly positive identification, eat fungi that you have collected in the wild??

But apparently John will take the fear out of all this so we'll see and before you know it I'll be cooking Cep, pancetta and thyme tart long with the rest of them, because each book in the series has a lovely recipe section. 

There is Edible Seashore too...how to know your Dulse from your Gutweed and how to kill a crab properly but also, in all three books, fascinating information about conservation and the legalities of foraging and who owns what and where. By John's own admission this is a nightmare...

'I defy anyone not having a firm and comprehensive grip on the law to collect half a dozen different things from the beach for his or her tea without committing an offence. There are so many exciting crimes and misdemeanours to choose from...collecting Mussels in Hampshire east of a line running north/south through the Needles Lighthouse after 4pm during the Oyster season...or six prawns in Northumberland (though five is legal)...'

Oh yes, I can see another great session beckons in the dovegreyreader tent.

Sunday July 22nd at 2pm

 

 

 

 

 

Mrs Robinson's Disgrace ~ Kate Summerscale

Preparations are now well underway here for the dovegreyreader tent at next weekend's Port Eliot Festival, and of course you are ALL coming along too so I hope you are sorting out your festival wellies (the forecast says the sun is going to shine but I have mine anyway ...wait 'til you see them) and your festival gear...you know... all those rainbow/striped/multi-coloured/patchwork clothes up in the loft that you bought in a fit of extreme wrecklessness and then felt a bit daft wearing to Tesco's. Well now is your chance because wherever you are you will need to look the part.

You will see that I have added a Twitter feed over here >>>> which, even if you are not a tweeter, will keep you up to speed with what is happening as I twitter away through this week and then live from the festival. The usual array of blog posts from roving Team dovegrey will be coming your way too of course, but they won't be quite so instant.

Meanwhile I have had a wonderful stack of books to work through in readiness for all the authors we will be welcoming to our plein air literary salon...here are just a few.
 

I had heard Kate Summerscale talking very enthusiastically and convincingly about Mrs Robinson's Disgrace pre-publication earlier this year so I have been looking forward to reading this one. Subtitled The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady I picked the book up and that other diary, the one we all loved back in the 1970s, immediately came into my mind... The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady.

I am sure you all remember it and someone's going to own up to having the tea cosy whilst I'll let on that I had the peg bag. The book a facsimile of the

original, written and illustrated by Edith Holden and published to great acclaim along with matching tea towels, biscuit tins, curtain fabric... you name it and you could buy it in that ubiquitous Edwardian lady floral design, all of which so suited the era of the £6.30 Laura Ashley frock and that whole nostalgia thing.

Somehow I doubt the same reverence will be accorded to the diary antics of Mrs Robinson because given the subject matter all I have been doing since reading it is humming Here's to You Mrs Robinson from The Graduate. I have been welded to Mrs Robinson's Disgrace for two days solid, barely able to put it down in order to keep screaming 'that is sooo unfair' at this true but almost inconceivable account of mid-nineteenth century divorce proceedings.  

When bad-tempered, grumpy Mr Robinson stumbles across his wife's diary and, shock horror, discovers he is actually married to a warm-blooded woman who feels there should be more to life and love than the mechanics of procreation, well the poor man's flabber is well and truly gasted. Setting aside his mistress and his two illegitimate children it is to the divorce courts Mr Robinson scurries with indecent haste, because apparently if there is a delay between the discovery of the infidelity of the wife and the husband's subsequent instigation of legal action this can endanger a successful outcome. A successful outcome seems to be get shot of the wife, claim the children and presumably carry on with the mistress as before.

Implicated in Mrs Robinson's rather racy account of events is the much-respected advocate of the water cure, Dr Edward Lane, a family man of high repute and I spent the entire book thinking 'Well did they or didn't they' because on this hinges Edward's downfall if the case is proven. 

Whatever the outcome poor Isabella's disgrace is a given as the inner workings of her mind are read out in court in her absence and published in the newspapers for all to snigger over. At one point even Queen Victoria intervened complaining that this and other similar cases really were putting one off one's Royal breakfast as one read all this in one's early morning papers.

And heaven knows how many times I said 'Poor Isabella' as she is first married to Edward Dansey almost twenty years her senior who dies quite quickly of a 'diseased brain, and then to the disagreable Henry Robinson. Isabella seems to have had the good sense to refuse him three times before finally capitulating and entering into 'dreaded wedlock' with a man she clearly doesn't love but widowed and with a son to raise perhaps it was the money and the promise of security. Two more sons arrive in quick succession and meanwhile Henry is building up a successful engineering business and frequently away from home.

The meeting and subsequent friendship with Edward Lane is delineated in fine detail by Isabella in her diary as are her obsessions with ... well everything in trousers it might seem, as various other men become the focus for her obsessively amorous and flirtatious attentions. The case, which becomes a much-publicised national scandal, rests on whether the diary is truth, or the fiction of a woman suffering from delusions of an extremely romantic nature which she has foolishly commited to paper. This in keeping with the Victorian penchant for the morbid self-absorption, the dark reflections and the confessional possibilities that a diary can command.

The reader (well this one anyway) was completely drawn in by the injustice shown towards Isabella Robinson. The double standards applied to the men and the leniency shown towards their behaviour whilst the women silently suffer the constraints imposed on their lives, and then all the uncertainties and who to believe, as Kate Summerscale skilfully extracts the evidence from countless well-referenced sources.

The book works at another fascinating level too, as contemporaneous events are drawn in to help set the scene ...the great stink of London in those mid-nineteenth century years when the summer temperatures soared, the Thames is barely flowing, thick and foamy as it is with raw sewage, while rank unbreathable air cloaks the city. The concurrent scandal of Charles Dickens's dumping of the well-worn Catherine in exchange for a younger model is in progress and the exhibiting of Augustus Egg's triptych of the fallen woman is causing quite a stir. But best of all the writing and publication of Flaubert's Madame Bovary in 1856. It is in 1857 that Henry discovers Isabella's diary and whilst there is no evidence that she may have read Madame Bovary, Isabella recounts a coach ride of her own as Edward accompanies her to the station, investing it with plenty of cause for suspicion. So could she have known about the book...could that have added to the power of her stifled and love-starved imagination... it's all open for speculation and that is the joy of a book like this and something at which Kate Summerscale excels, leaving the reader to conduct their own interrogation of events and arrive at their own verdict

Everyone will reach their own conclusions over the Did They/Didn't They question. I decided for my own satisfaction, that if they had, Isabella, so devoted to recording every last detail in her introspective and very personal for-her-eyes-only diary, would not have spared herself the delight and pleasure of recording the colour of Edward's combinations... and how he may have struggled to get them off... or the finickity palava of getting all her buttons undone, to say nothing of Edward's scaling of the crinoline.

Yes indeed we have questions galore for Kate Summerscale, it promises to be a great event.

Sunday July 22nd at 12.30pm.

 

Lamorna Cove

What was it that planted the first cottages in such a spot as this, so wild and lonely and difficult of access? There was surely suitability for something in this cove which made it seem a desirable abode. I conclude it was its very loneliness that fitted it for occupations which thrive best when seen by fewest eyes. - Arthur H. Norway, 1898.

Arthur H. Norway (no I didn't have the first clue either ...Nevil Shute's father, civil servant and a writer) here talking about the very beautiful and secluded Lamorna Cove right on the most south-easterly tip of Cornwall. But it seemed like a good idea, having spent a happy few hours soaking up the Cornish landscapes in Laura Knight's paintings at the Penlee House Gallery, to then go and see that landscape for ourselves, and given that we were only a few miles from Land's End, we'd go there as well if only to be able to say that we had actually travelled from John O'Groats to Land's End in the month of June 2012. You will note it was so windy at John O'Groats that the Tinker and I could barely stand.


O.K so we've been there now, and the predictably tacky theme park feel to Land's End just has to be ignored as you fight your way through the attractions to get sight of the famous rocks, and wave to New York and America 3147 miles away....which has suddenly made me stop and think how wonderful the internet is for shrinking that distance down to the merest click of a switch.

So we headed off to Lamorna Cove, the tiny hamlet nestled in a lush green valley that leads down to the sea, and which had proved to be such a magnet to so many of the Newlyn artists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
And it's not hard to see the attraction...the blue palette would be working overtime, the lapis lazuli, the ultramarine and cobalt, some Prussian Blue, the teal and turquoise...all my most favoured colours. The sea was stunning as you can see, and we had fortunately picked June's single sunny day to visit. We walked a little way up on to the coastal path, though we were really decked out for comfortable gallery viewing not rock scrambling, but I did fancy posing as one of those models in a Laura Knight painting.

Dame Laura Knight The Cornish Coast, date unknown Oil on canvas, 65 x 76 cm Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales © Reproduced with the permission of the Estate of Dame Laura Knight DBE RA 2012 All Rights Reserved.

 

dovegreyreader sitting on a cliff at Lamorna Date June 29th 2012 © Reproduced by kind permission of Bookhound All Rights Reserved :-)

The rock formations even started to look familiar from the paintings......so it was easy to imagine Laura Knight standing up here at her easel. She was famed for being a real stalwart of the outdoors and would cycle down to Lamorna and perch up on the cliff-tops looking down the steep perspective onto the sea below...which we had a go at too, and fear not, this is not nearly as precarious as it seems.Lamorna a magical secret little place, though probably not such a secret and, having negotiated the steep single width lane down to the cove on a quiet day in June, I'm not sure I would be so keen to try it on a sweltering hot holiday-traffic-day in August, but we've found it now and we will certainly return. There are walkable coastal paths for miles around with stunning views, and all beckoning us back.

 

 

Robert Macfarlane & the Kindle Daily Deal

My thanks to Curzon and Rebecca who both alerted me to the Kindle Daily Deal today and understandably I was in there like a shot....

The Wild Places and Mountains of the Mind both by Robert Macfarlane, and both available today for 99p each.

 

Cadhay Manor redux

I have been saving this post for what I knew would be Hilary Mantel week so yer 'tis.

Cadhay Manor mentioned in the acknowledgements in Bring Up the Bodies and if ever a house can be considered a palimpsest, Cadhay Manor is it, each aspect could have been built in an entirely different era

Cadhay Manor, Devon

...and as Karen, our guide, talked us through the history of the house on that visit back in May, and the changes that successive owners had made on it, a picture emerged of the house as a sort of living breathing entity. It all felt like history up close and personal, perhaps because the current owners seem to love it as much as the Haydon family must have done back in about 1550 when they decided to build a house in this idyllic location...

The Stewpond, Cadhay Manor, Devon

... using a wealth of local materials including Salcombe sandstone, the same as used for nearby Exeter Cathedral.

Pointing out hints of Montacute House, (up the road at Yeovil)  our guide made it clear that this was about showing off your wealth and imitating the best as well as incorporating the latest 'must have'. This turned out to be a Long Gallery and when the house passed into the hands of a nephew of the childless John and Joan Haydon, Milady Haydon, also Joan, just had to have one.

It's a bit like us wanting a new kitchen I suppose.

Joan's (the second) father had been the Keeper of Mary Queen of Scots from 1585 to her execution, so the family by now are upwardly mobile and would expect to entertain, therefore wealth and status must be visible and a house with a suitable amount of 'wow' factor slowly emerged. We all agreed that taking this much trouble over your stonework was all about impressing the weekend visitors...

Karen our guide talked us through all this in the most wonderful style, and as we stood in the Courtyard of the Sovereigns, with Henry VIII, Edward VII, Mary and Elizabeth looking down on us it wasn't hard to imagine them all having a rip-roaring jolly good Elizabethan time....

The Courtyard of the Sovereigns, Cadhay Manor, Devon

..and then to imagine the house through the Civil War...and on through history.

It was fascinating to hear of the political machinations and shifting allegiances of those connected with the house at the same time as I read Bring Up the Bodies. It seems a bit like a political and religious form of Natural Navigation, licking your finger and holding it up to the wind of change whilst hoping it doesn't veer in the opposite direction before you have made your choice and chosen your route.

Joan's (the Second) father. William Paulet, Great Master of the Household under Henry VIII, seems to have been as wily as the best of them, hopping from the Protestant Lady Jane Grey to the Catholic Queen Mary but quickly swearing fidelity to the cause of Elizabeth when it became apparent that this might be a wise move

Handed down through the family, and frequently sold outside the family when life was tough and debts accrued, the house hit hard times, and when someone finally arrived who could afford to carry out the repairs architectural fashions had moved on apace. By 1730 Tudor hearths really were very last year, and who cares about the original features when you can have panelling and cover the whole lot up, and those mullioned windows...well they'll have to go. Time for some Georgian sash windows, the zenith of good taste, and the picture above shows that thankfully at least some of the mullions remained.

Owners and tenants came and went through the nineteenth century as did the furniture, bits were 'modernised' and doubtless more layers added to the fabric of this stalwart of a home, making it all a bit of a mish-mash, but it was the arrival of someone with money ( Dampier Whetham,) at a time when the Arts and Crafts movement was the 'thing,' that proved to be the structural salvation of Cadhay. Successive owners continued to pour in the money and the love and the alterations, yet beneath it all lies the beating heart of the original Tudor home and it was easy (with Karen's help) to see how, though it can all be overwritten for centuries, that heart can never quite be erased, and it is that heart so much in evidence now that I think made this such a lovely visit. The house exudes a unique 'lived in' warmth where the modern sits comfortably alongside the old, much as it does at Port Eliot where, incidentally, you are quite likely to see a surfboard propped up beneath a painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

I expect some of you, like us, may live in a palimpsest of a house, it doesn't need to be stately, but perhaps you too have layers and layers of previous ownership. It is something I had hardly considered before. The way we expect to see and admire stately homes which are preserved in aspic, and how amazing that so many of them are, given the overwhelming need most of us have to move in and start changing everything to suit our own life style, but also how refreshing to see them still being lived in and loved too....and how I love those special little nuggets of information..the floorboards in the Long Gallery purposely cut short by the Elizabethan chippies to flout the laws that stated the wood could be requisitioned for ship building should England find itself at war, the boards hardly long enough to make a rowing boat at Cadhay.

I suspect the current owner of Cadhay, Rupert Thistlethwayte, sees himself as a curator charged with the responsibility of caring for and sustaining this home for his allotted time. There is a happy and comfortable mix of the old alongside the new which always works in my book.

The Long Gallery, Cadhay Manor, Devon

Though damaged by successive alterations the original ceiling of the Long Gallery (before the room was divided into two floors) reminded me of the Great Hall at Dartington, but also of interest the fact the carbon-dating suggests these timbers are at least sixty years older then the building, so recycling alive and well for the Tudors and no doubt, as Karen suggested, plenty of spare building materials around from defunct monasteries....and look, there's the window of the Solar, high up on the end wall.

The roof of John Haydon's "Great Hall", Cadhay Manor, Devon

When asked how he had managed to hang onto his head through such turbulent times, William Paulet, father of Joan (the second) and who died in 1572 was reputed to have said..

"Ortus sum e salice non ex quercum"... 

'I am sprung from the willow not the oak', and for all that oak is the mainstay of this house it would seem, it too has adopted the flexibility of the willow in order to survive.

Thank you for a lovely afternoon Cadhay, we'll be back...because those were also the best-looking scones we have seen in ages.

 

 

Hilary Mantel at Dartington

"The King had left Whitehall the week of Thomas More's death, a miserable, dripping week in July, the hoof prints of the royal entourage sinking deep into the mud as they tacked their way across Windsor.'

And on a remarkably similar and potentially miserable dripping day in July, we topped High Dartmoor on a right royal progress of our own, to hear Hilary Mantel talking about Bring Up the Bodies at Dartington. In the wake of a night that had apparently seen double the month's average rainfall you might expect any traverse of the moor to be a bit of a problem, well on foot, or horseback, probably dreadful but the water drains quickly into the fast-flowing rivers making big trouble elsewhere but the roads were fine. Not so fine at Dartington though, where, having checked online, we already knew that the overflow parking was subject to...well... overflow. So having taken the executive decision to park down at the Cider Press, don the walking boots and head up to Dartington Hall from there it seemed churlish not to nip into Cranks Restaurant for a bowl of soup (saints preserve us ... still looking forward to soup in July, this is tragic) before the trek.

But how apt that we were going to see Hilary Mantel at Dartington Hall given that it had briefly been in the possession of two of Henry's wives, Catherine Parr and Catherine Howard, and now we would be hearing about the eventual natural death of one, Katherine of Aragon, the demise of another, Anne Boleyn and the emergence of yet another Jane Seymour... that's 62.5% wife coverage in one day, not bad. Sadly Dartington not feeling its usual glorious and inviting festival self without the sunshine, and the gardens all a bit rain-sodden and bedraggled, so let's hope the weather picks up for the rest of the week.

But for now we must imagine the summer of 1535, it is July, it is wet (this bit of imagining is very easy) and Henry and his entourage set off on their Royal progress through the West Country before finally arriving at Wolf Hall in September, and as Hilary Mantel took us along for the ride the audience seated in the Great Hall was spellbound.

There can be no grander setting in which to imagine all this, and how easy that is to do when it is Hilary Mantel who is breathing life and passion into it all.

The King's child-like ability to enjoy himself, easy-going, affable and charming when required, but beneath the surface lies a seething mass of fears, quaking uncertainties, regrets and a surprisingly tender conscience. Henry so readily influenced by the last person he has spoken to can nevertheless hear the future scratching away like a rat, exposing all his insecurities.

But what's worrying him now?

Well there's Anne for a start. Another mass of insecurities, assertive, abrasive and a mistress of the art of alienation and there are rumours of amorous dalliances and plenty of suspects.

Anne as a Queen, unrecognised by every country in Europe, and were France and Spain to unite they could just walk in and take England for their own.

Then there's the tricky issue of the lack of male issue, no heir to the throne...

...and then there's the sentence of excommunication hanging over Henry's head. Hilary Mantel likened this to a fatwa...think of Salman Rushdie, except think national, any one in the country would be within their religious rights to murder the King.

No wonder poor Henry can't sleep, and in the dark and solitary hours of the night can only call for Thomas Cromwell and beg him to sort this for him. Henry needs two things to happen, a rapprochement with the Emperor and a third marriage that would be undisputed, and the inscrutable Cromwell can only have thought..." Cheers mate, thanks a bundle" (my thoughts...Hilary didn't say that). Thomas Cromwell must set to and make alliances with old foes, enemies who hate him with a passion, but who thankfully (for now) hate Anne marginally more. What happened next was a conspiracy, and conspiracies by their very nature are 'off the record' .. bring on the novelist.

Hilary Mantel's talk was interspersed with beautifully delivered readings from Bring Up the Bodies before some time for questions afterwards... the replies here are almost but not quite verbatim.

Haven't you been too nice to Thomas Cromwell...

Let's wipe the slate clean. We have been propagandized, blame the Victorians who started to cast Thomas Cromwell as a villain. Perhaps it was an objection rooted in snobbery and class...Cromwell famously refused to accept an invented pedigree and so many aspects are lost to history... a private life very well-concealed.

Did you purposefully give a voice to Tudor women...

There is very little on the record for Jane Seymour, but the man who marries his mistress creates a vacancy and Jane was shrewd and self-controlled and had occupied a ringside seat, as a Lady-in Waiting for many years. The women who surrounded Anne must have been party to the conspiracy.

Why have you chosen to write in the present tense..

It was implicit from the first line as I imagined hearing the voice from above looking down on the action...it felt close up and filmic, and film is always in the present tense. By the end of that first scene I felt I had finally arrived as a writer, doing what I should be doing. There was a 'rightness' to it. All the important decisions about the book were made there and then. My husband read it and said 'This sounds like life in an East End tower block...' and I thought ' Good.'

Why did you feel it necessary to use 'He Cromwell' so often when Cromwell speaks ...surely the reader would know...

Readers either got it in Wolf Hall or they didn't and for those that didn't I decided to seal off ambiguities. I have gained a new public and a bigger audience and if they were confused I had a responsibilty to address that, but expediency also prevailed because ultimately, as I wrote, the 'He Cromwell' seemed to denote his gradual increase in power and greatness and importance.

Why was Thomas More portrayed so negatively..

Because he was seen from Thomas Cromwell's point of view.

Are you inspired by portraits and places..

Absolutely yes but there are problems. Hans Holbein accompanied the Royal party on their progress and painted many of them but it is an equivocal source, often the names were incorrect....though finally one portrait has recently been almost confirmed as Rafe Sadler. But it all helps and it is vitally important for me to build up a cultural hinterland...to see what they saw.

Do you ever weary of the research...

It is like walking down a path and being drawn on by what may be around the next curve. I know what I know when I need to know it and of course it doesn't all go on the page, but I read and read until I hear the characters start to speak.

Might you carry on and write about Elizabeth I...

Never say never, but most of the time I want to give her a good slap. a writer must have a subject thay can work with.

Cue prolonged and heartfelt applause before we nipped down off our window-seat perch and headed for the signing queue. You can probably spot me here from the skinny jeans, the Scarpa boots and the little dovegrey rucksack...

and does any writer sign a book with more of a flourish than this...

The advantage of leaving the car parked down at Cranks Restaurant was that by the time we returned it was now tea time, and we were gasping. We really shouldn't have, but we did... that Banoffee Pie too good to miss.

and before you ask, that picture on the front of my notebook ...well if only I had thought to double check before I stuck it on there, but it was from the Penlee House Gallery...and perhaps it is by Dod Procter, but I can't be sure.

On the way home, across a misty mizzly Dartmoor, Bookhound and I chatted endlessly about what a great event this had been, and what an inspiration Hilary Mantel is, both as a writer and a speaker, but given her health issues what an inspiration on so many other levels too....all sufficient to make her a National Treasure in my eyes, I will brook no criticism of her, Booker Prize number two should be on the cards, and let's just hurry up with the Dame thing.

 

 

 

Bring Up the Bodies ~ Hilary Mantel

Having bought the book I had a deadline.

Tickets had been purchased to hear Hilary Mantel talking about her Wolf Hall sequel Bring Up the Bodies in the Great Hall at Dartington last Saturday, July 7th. I had been online at one second past the hour on box-office opening day to be sure of securing seats, which for once was a very sensible move as apparently they had sold out in the merest flash of an axe blade.

So I absolutely had to finish the book before I went in case there were any spoilers.. just supposing someone asking a question spills the beans (it always happens) lets slip that Anne Boleyn parts company with her head or something.

There were several false starts. Sixty or so pages in (for the second time) I had mistakenly transported Bring Up the Bodies to Orkney and back thinking it would be great holiday reading, except on this occasion I was wrong. Clearly my book brain does what I need it to and switches off dramatically when I am on holiday to allow my looking brain to take over for a while. 150 pages in and perhaps I could have taken the book anywhere and managed, as I had discovered with Wolf Hall (will I never learn).

The reader is the interloper here, the 'foreigner' whose initial presence raises suspicions, conversations might be a little guarded, information cloaked in secrecy, and the reader will need their wits about them if they are to immerse themselves invisibly into the day to day flow of things, which barely seem to have missed a stride to let them in the door. Then the task is to blend in seamlessly as part of Hilary Mantel's Tudor fabrics and furnishings, and with eyes in the back of the head just watch and listen and figure it all out as the conspiracy. the plotting and the intrigue and the fear gathers pace around them.

The secret of success, I have discovered, is to relax into the book, to feel and smell and hear it, something which Hilary Mantel makes incredibly easy as her brush moves effortlessly back and forth from the particular to the general. This world so familiar to its inhabitants must be made likewise for the reader, and once I spotted the little whispers of inclusion that were offered I was in...

...heard the rustle of the satin sleeves,

...noticed the way someone's status, upwardly mobile, is denoted by their clothing as it moves from canvas to worsted to damask,

...tasted the food... the lemon cakes flavoured with lavender, the elderflowers simmered in sugar syrup and poured over halved strawberries...noticed the primrose petal on the cheese cake.

...wandered through the noisy St George's Day celebrations with the cloth and paper dragons swaying through the streets.

...spectated and gasped as the jousting unseats yet another who has failed to break his instinct, because given a chance the that instinct will always be to swerve at the last minute.

...looked on as that minxy Anne Boleyn falls out of favour,

...and meek Jane Seymour waits patiently in the wings.

So I have now finished the book after reading the first sixty pages three times, but on the third occasion I had cleared the reading decks properly, only allowing interventions that offered respite, as I made my way back in time and back into the heart and mind of Thomas Cromwell, Crumb to his friends, Cremuel to those for whom English is not their first language, and me stepping nervously towards the end of the book. I could hardly bear to imagine how Hilary Mantel, no slouch when it comes to writing up a bit of eviscerating blood and gore, would deal with all this... i.e. the be-heading bit, to the point where I had to make sure I timed this right. For example I suspected it wouldn't do to read the final fifty pages last thing at night and then expect to sleep any time soon.

I was right.

Of course we all know the outcome in general terms but quite how the story of Henry and Anne happens day to day has to be up for discussion and some surmisation, something which Hilary Mantel elaborates on in an author's note at the end of the book...

'The circumstances surrounding the fall of Anne Boleyn have been controversial for centuries. The evidence is complex and sometimes contradictory; the sources are often dubious, tainted and after-the-fact. There is no official transcript of her trial, and we can reconstruct her last days only in fragments, with the ehlp of contemporaries who may be inaccuarte, biased, forgetful, elsewhere at the time, or hiding under a pseudonym...'

And what of Cromwell himself..

'Where to begin with Cromwell? Some start with his sharp little eyes, some start wih his hat...wherever they begin, the final impact is the same: if he had a grievance against you, you wouldn't like to meet him at the dark of the moon...'

And I am instantly reminded of the man so well established in my mind from Wolf Hall, and now from Bring Up the Bodies, with the most wonderful and evocative opening to a book imaginable, reminding me of those significant life events that may (just may) have made Cromwell into the man he has become. As he watches 'the girls'... the hawks soaring and swooping, birds of prey out on the hunting grounds, on a day...

'so clear you can see into Heaven and spy on what the saints are doing.'

and the birds become a transmigration of the souls of his dead wife and daughters, Cromwells grief is writ large and I imagine it like sign-writing in the sky that is going to hover over everything he thinks and does in the next 400 pages.

This is what I love about writing like this, a catalyst that allows my imagination to soar off on a frolic of its own, and I was gone a while, because though it may have been an invention of my own I then constantly envisaged Cromwell as a hawk too. A man of prey with that hawk's-eye view overseeing everything, missing nothing, pouncing and swooping on his own victims when they came within his reach and his need.... and I quickly diverted to Ted Hughes's poem from The Hawk in the Rain... Hawk Roosting..

I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed. 
Inaction, no falsifying dream 
Between my hooked head and hooked feet: 
Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat. 

The convenience of the high trees! 
The air's buoyancy and the sun's ray 
Are of advantage to me; 
And the earth's face upward for my inspection....

Much later in the book Hilary Mantel confirms what I think I already know...

'He once thought it himself, that he might die of grief: for his wife, his daughters, his sisters, his father and master the cardinal. But the pulse, obdurate, keeps its rhythm. You think you cannot keep breathing, but your ribcage has other ideas, rising and falling, emitting sighs. You must thrive in spite of yourself; and so that you may do it, God takes out your heart of flesh, and gives you a heart of stone.'

This, like so many points in the book, a moment when I had to close it and think about what I had just read carefully, dwell a while on the implications, though truth be told I was also procrastinating about finally finishing a book that I didn't want to end...perhaps because I knew the axe thing was coming...but also because I almost can't bear the wait for the final book of the trilogy. 

The end when it does come is mercifully swift for both Anne and the reader and involves a well-concealed four-foot long sword rather an axe, whilst the plotting and machinations to achieve it all are breathtaking in the extreme. Cromwell, doing Henry's dirty work for him is quietly terrifying and if ever there was a book that ensured you feel the fear of those that come under his gaze... well this is it.

It all sent me back to Ted Hughes and the final stanza of Hawk Roosting... 

The sun is behind me. 
Nothing has changed since I began. 
My eye has permitted no change. 
I am going to keep things like this.

And, whilst Cromwell may well yearn for the day (to borrow from Ted Hughes) that his 'eye has permitted no change. I am going to keep things like this' we all know there may be trouble ahead. Cromwell may be the master at keeping one step ahead (sorry) of the game when he sits on top of the world, but has already admitted that his head feels a little wobbly on his neck. Thomas Cromwell of all people knows how precarious and potentially untenable his position may become, so I am impatiently and deliciously intrigued to see how Hilary Mantel will ultimately present his downfall.

As for Hilary Mantel's Dartington event... inspirational, more on that later this week.

 

 

 

 

Dear Team Middlemarch...

On bended knee here... the brougham finds itself mired in a little metaphorical mud.

The combination of unexpected kitten, an excess of Wimbledon and my Port Eliot reading and stitching preparations have not been conducive to settling down calmly with George Eliot and I see no window to do so on the visible horizon.

So would you mind very much if we postponed next weekend's Middlemarch discussion about Book IV Three Love Problems until after Port Eliot and after the Olympics??

I would rather do this properly than rush, so my suggestion is that we re-convene over the weekend of August 25th-26th, and I'm hoping that is alright with you all.

 

Magnus discovers sun puddles and his shadow...

This is definitely like having a new baby around but I am a health visitor after all and we all know how much babies love routine and respond to cues, so we have managed to get Magnus the Tiny into a round of play, handling, food, litter tray, sleep, play, handling etc. Thus far his world extends as far as the kitchen with occasional accompanied forays into the TV cosy, while we get him used to us being around, the noises of the house and also train him to respond to the 'This is Your Food' sound of the spoon ringing on the dish. You can't train cats to do much that is biddable beyond this we have found, but hopefully it will be the way we can call him in from the great outdoors when he is eventually let loose.
 

He has a Magnus-gym of assorted playthings...cotton reels, bells, ping-pong balls, little furry mice etc dangling from string, some balls of wool, bubble wrap, a few empty boxes and a wind up hamster (from the Tinker) all of which he gives much high-spirited attention along with discovering things like his own shadow and the restful benefits of elusive but occasional sun puddles

Current favourites??

Hours of fun with an egg box and a mushroom brush...

Meanwhile the Dowagers are still giving him a wide berth, but they are coming around very slowly.

As you can see the little chap is making good progress, getting the hang of the self-grooming thing and at his last weigh in (kitchen scales) had gained a magnusificent 12ozs...
 
Just for today we might call him MagnusMurrayPuss because we will all be living the stress of Andy Murray and the Wimbledon final this afternoon. For those who haven't heard... Britain has a player through to the Men's Singles Tennis final for the first time in umpteezillion years so it's all a bit of an occasion and given that Virginia Wade won the Women's Singles in the year of the Silver Jubilee, wouldn't it be nice if Andy could bag it for this Diamond year.

Port Eliot Festival 2012

The weekend of July 20th/21st/22nd draws near and preparations are reaching a relaxed Port Eliot Festival fever-pitch here if such a thing is possible... i.e. lots to do but we are being very laid back about it and enjoying the making and the reading. Currently my table of relevant books to be read/ perused looks something like this...

The Festival will be taking a sabbatical next year so we need to make the most of this one and it promises to be bigger and better than ever.

I am busy making the quiltsuke, whilst the Knit Angel has been to visit this week laden with the knitsuke, so we have gifts for our guests which feels like the most important thing...well probably on an equal footing with the flower show entry, the teas, the tent decor, the books, the questions for the guests, the baskets of wool and the knitting etc etc.

Talking of knitting, enormous great big thanks are in order to Rowan Yarns who have very kindly agreed to help keep the dovegreyreader tent fed with wool this year, and about which my stash is very relieved. I tend to hyperventilate when stocks diminish and the popularity of this last minute idea...the baskets of knitting for people to sit and do while they listened, took us all a little by surprise last year, so this year we will be well-stocked.

I am also very grateful to Katherine who has been my Personal Festival Planner this year, doing all the liaison with the guests, and the programming schedule for the dovegreyreader tent which will hopefully look something like this again ... especially the sunshine bit which must all be stock-piled up somewhere surely.

Anyway here's a sneak preview of the tent line-up with some links to relevant blog posts or websites...

Friday July 20th

2:00 Susie Parr ( The Story of Swimming)

Susie's one and only chance to convince me that this wild swimming thing is a good idea and that I would be mad not to try it...
 
4:00 Tracy Chevalier (Why Willows Weep - Ed & Girl with a Pearl Earring)

Tracy will be talking about Why Willows Weep, ( the Woodland Trust anthology) and I have some Vermeer questions too.

Saturday July 21st

10:30 Brian Selznick (The Invention of Hugo Cabret)

Is this exciting or is this exciting?? Having loved The Invention of Hugo Cabret, and now Wonderstruck, I am really looking forward to meeting the man behind the book and those wonderful pictures.

12:00 ‘Remembering Angela’ with Ali Smith and Michele Roberts

Ali and Michele will be talking about Angela Carter... this promises to be a wonderful session

1.30 - 3.30 ** Lynne busy with another event ** Vocal Harem singing on the Bowling Green

Quick change into concert rig and Vocal Harem, who have done an uncustomary summer regroup especially for the Festival, will doubtless be taking the Bowling Green by storm.

 4:30 Zita West

Zita was a midwife for thirty years before setting up in private practice and now advising on conception, pregnancy and fertility issues. We have already talked on the phone and I can see that between us we may need two hours not 45 minutes.
 
Sunday July 22nd

11:00 Robert Macfarlane (The Old Ways)

Need I say more...

12:30 Kate Summerscale

I am reading Mrs Robinson's Disgrace, Kate's most recent book and loving it, and having heard Kate speak about the book pre-publication I know this is going to be another great event 

 2:00 John Wright 

John may be better known to many as The Forager a la Hugh Fearnley - Whittingstall so I plan to ask him how we can all stop shopping at Tesco's and live off the highways and byways, know our Hemlock from our Henbane and not mistakenly eat anything fatal. The books have arrived (thank you Bloomsbury) and I am already sensing that John has a wonderful sense of humour...this should be good.

 4:00 William Fiennes 

This will be the second year that William has closed the festival in the dovegreyreader tent ...we had the most wonderful event last year and I'm sure 2012 will be equally brilliant.

Oh yes and one last thing, we need to talk about the Flower Show entry so thinking caps on everyone

If you come up with some ideas we will try and incorporate as many as we can, we have a few thoughts but more always welcome. As you know we go for more of the over-the-top fun installation than a neatly crafted exhibit, and of course no pressure but we did win First Prize last year.

This year we are entered in...

• Class Seven This Happy Breed, An arrangement for a party 24" x 24" to be viewed from the front 
• Class Eight This Sceptered Isle An arrangement of foliage 24" x 24" to be viewed from the front

The overall theme is a bit Shakesperean given the quotes from Richard II Act II Sc i ... This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle, this earth of majesty etc etc and with lashings of Jubilee and Coronation I should think.

Over to you.

A Trick I Learned From Dead Men ~ Kitty Aldridge

Sometimes the planets are aligned in a book's favour the minute it arrives chez dovegrey...

• It is delivered with the rest of the post, a cup of tea and breakfast to the bedside on my day off.
  
  
• I don't have to be anywhere else.
  
  
• It is raining and blowing a hoolie outside so I can't think of a good and sane reason to get up.
  
  
• I don't need scissors or talons to get into the package.
  
  
• I have momentarily put down the very good book I was reading in order to have a rest, stare out of the window and see if I can spot a fox in the front field and have a think about the very good book before I pick it up again.
  
  
• That very good book I set aside happens to be Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel and what is in this package which I have opened with ease but a book about an undertaker....it's meant.
  
  
• The first sentence of Chapter One of this book about an undertaker is as follows...
  
  

'You knock first before you go in. You don't wait of course.
   Good morning,Mr Gillespie. Lee here. Nice day.
    Everyone is known by their formal name: Mr, Mrs, Miss. We have not yet had a Lord or a Lady, but we had a Doctor and a Major. Babies and kiddies are thir first name. Everyone is someone. They have status, the dead. Derek said that. It's true, you're somebody when you're dead. you get respect.' 

And the rain it kept on raining, Bookhound kindly brought me another cup of tea and I just kept on reading Kitty Aldridge's wonderful new novel A Trick I Learned From Dead Men, and I loved every word. I am trying to think of any other novels that take the lid off (sorry) the funeral business and can only come up with The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh.

Lee Hart is twenty-five next birthday, an apprentice undertaker at Shakespeare & Sons, and it is in his first person voice that the story is told.

Lee lives with his step-father Lester and his brother Ned who is deaf, and Kitty Aldridge floats in enough early clues for the reader also to know that Lee's mother has died recently and that his step-father is sufficiently grief-stricken to have taken root in front of daytime TV and not moved a muscle since. And all does not seem quite normal with Ned either...

'As I raise my door key, I catch sight of my brother Ned stepping out of his bedroom window on the first floor. Ned is not everyone's cup of tea. I hear the twang of springs. Ned appears over the hedge in mid-air, frog legs then drops out of sight again. Twang...'

The 'twang' soon explained...

'We got the trampoline second-hand:an Emperor twelve footer (no safety net) thirty-nine pounds off eBay...'

By page ten I am completely convinced by Lee and drawn along with his narrative voice which Kitty Aldridge has pitched to perfection. It is a voice that will make your heart weep but not in a slushy, sentimental way because a great deal of the book, and Lee's outlook on life, is not only deadly (sorry) serious, but also wry and funny as he recounts the day to day events at funeral director Shakespeare & Son and at home. Lee is ever the long-suffering and cheerful optimist in the face of many a depressing situation...but that doesn't include his work which he loves, and his colleagues for whom he has much respect...

' I for one would rather be dead with Derek than alive with some people...'

And Lee Hart has ever so very slightly restored my rather shaky confidence in the whole 'undertaking' thing...

'I don't blame the medical profession, they have a job to do, same as, but. As far as they are concerned life is everything, end of. The difference is they don't rate you once you're dead and we do. I'm just saying. It all boils down to this: they believe life is sacred, we believe death is too.'

Actually I think us nurses probably do see death as sacred, and some of the most memorable and moving moments I have experienced in my nursing career have involved dealing with the aftermath of death whilst on night duty  ... in that strange hour before the rattle of the early morning tea trolley starts its progress down the ward, the night hush still prevails and the dawn light would be creeping up over the London skyline. But it was good to hear Lee say that all the same. 

I suspect for many professionals who deal with death on a daily basis some well-placed cheeriness and humour is essential for survival, and thankfully I felt Kitty Aldridge, who seems to have spent some time with undertakers researching this book, treads on the right side of that fine line...witness Mrs Whitmarsh...

'What d'you call that? Derek is referring to Mrs Whitmarsh. I have finished Mrs Whitmarsh and reckoned her to look good for someone who is dead.
    She looks grey, says Derek. She looks ill son. Get some colour on her before the resus team arrive.
    Despite Derek's superiority I do not take this lying down.
    I was going for a natural look I say....'

and I am laughing my socks off respectfully as Derek continues...

    Well, you've overdone it. She looks terrible, he says. Dear God. No one wants to see their relative looking dead Lee. They want to see the face they loved back when, OK? An approximation of the good old days. Christmas morning after a nip of sherry. That's the look you're after...'

There will be trauma and tragedy and more sadness for Lee but from somewhere he seems to summon up endless resilience, and Lorelle the florist from 'Fleurtations' doesn't know what a little treasure of a loving and caring young man she is... well I won't spoil it.

I am now taking a summer sabbatical from my Loss and Bereavement online day job but more books have arrived, which I suspect may not be to everyone's taste, but which seem certain to offer me more new and non-fictional perspectives on all this... a boxed set entitled The Natural Death Handbook. I'll be re-visiting this one when I am back in harness in September but my thanks to the NDC for asking if I would like a copy and for sending it when I said yes please.

Meanwhile I would really love to see A Trick I Learned From Dead Men do well for Kitty Aldridge. Kitty has taken a taboo subject and achieved that fine balance, writing engagingly and openly, and with great sensitivity and humour about something most of us just don't like to think or talk about.

I'll end on a smile and leave you with old hand Derek's immortal words of advice to Lee...

'No good them going out looking worse than when they came in here...'

Well quite.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Laura Knight in the Open Air ~ Penlee House Gallery, Penzance

"Dame Laura Knight painted the series of canvases of clothed figures in the open air on the cliffs near Lamorna, either all in 1917, which seems unlikely even with her extra-ordinary compulsion to work, or more probably in the period 1916 to 1919 and possibly up to late 1920...

and I'll bet many of will know the paintings even if you may have been unaware that they were by Dame Laura Knight.

Dame Laura Knight The Cornish Coast, date unknown Oil on canvas, 65 x 76 cm Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales © Reproduced with the permission of the Estate of Dame Laura Knight DBE RA 2012 All Rights Reserved.

These are the paintings that frequently grace the covers of To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf...



and if you happen to be in the West Country this summer be sure to take a detour to the Penlee House Gallery & Museum in Penzance and spend a few hours at their latest exhibition... Laura Knight in the Open Air which is open until 8th September. I can promise you won't be disappointed, not least because the most stunning painting, unseen in this country for 102 years, is on loan from a gallery in South Africa for this exhibition.

Flying a Kite, Dame Laura Knight 1910 Oil on canvas, 150 x 180 cm Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town © Reproduced with the permission of the Estate of Dame Laura Knight DBE RA 2012 All Rights Reserved.

Flying a Kite, painted above the hilltop in Newlyn in 1910 and shown to great acclaim at the Royal Academy that year, was immediately purchased by Sir George Clausen for the National Gallery of South Africa (now Iziko) in Cape Town where it has been ever since. Tipped off that it was no longer on display there, a year of painstaking negotiations have secured the loan of the painting which will tour with this exhibition, before heading to the Yale Centre for British Art in America, returning to Cornwall for display at Penlee House until at least spring 2015.

The exhibition, hung through four separate galleries and covering wide-ranging themes and subjects, from landscapes to gypsies at the horse racing at Ascot, also includes another painting, a true juxtaposition to the idylls of Cornwall, that had us transfixed.

Dame Laura Knight, whose husband Harold was also a respected artist, was engaged as a war artist and depicted the Nuremberg War trials; The Dock, Nuremberg is on loan from the Imperial War Museum for this exhibition. It is a remarkable and perhaps one of the few visual records of those events, with each prisoner viewed sitting in the dock and looked down on from above, whilst to the left blends in the devastated, war-torn landscape of a country still burning from Allied bombings. It is a painting that makes you think on many levels...clearly visible and recognisable are many of the prisoners, including Goering and Hess, listening or in conference with their legal representatives. So you wonder what they are discussing... is it professions of innocence or confessions of guilt... and then you wonder how many of those carefree kite-flying children in 1910 may ultimately have become victims of the wars to come.

The hallway linking the galleries houses a display case of Laura Knight-related books and photographs as well as some wonderful etchings, all confirmation were it needed of this artist's talent and versatility with both subject matter and setting.

Then be sure to head on upstairs to view the museum exhibits as well as a further gallery hung with some of Penlee's resident paintings. These include works by Samuel 'Lamorna' Birch, Stanhope Forbes and Walter Langley... much-loved Newlyn artists all, and many more including Dod Proctor who lived in Tavistock as a child before heading off to art school and thence to Cornwall. If you then decide to head off to the Newlyn Art Gallery just a mile or so around Mounts Bay in Newlyn itself, be prepared to find a modern and innovative exhibition space that, as far as we could see, holds none of the traditional paintings but nevertheless a pleasure to view along with the fine views of St Michael's Mount.

So Bookhound and I spent a very happy few hours exploring the delights of  Penlee House last week (great cafe too) and came away enthused about the artistic skill and the perspectives, the colours (Laura Knight uses blue like no other) and the landscapes, and with ideas fermenting away for our own respective areas of creativity. I was home and onto the fabrics within minutes... Bookhound is threatening to get his watercolours out again after many, many years of  'being very busy' and not...and please will you all shout loud enough and MAKE HIM DO IT because I am now going to officially out him on here as a very good artist.

So while I deal with the fall out from telling you that, here are the details from the exhibition press release...  

Penlee House Gallery & Museum, Penzance  

16 June – 8 September 2012

The redoubtable Dame Laura Knight (1877-1970) was a great celebrity in her time and her work is loved as much today as it was at the height of her fame.  From her earliest days in Nottingham and Yorkshire she wanted to paint in the open air, which blossomed when she came to Cornwall, where she embraced the county’s wonderful light, its seas and rocky coast, as well as plunging into the colourful life of the artists’ colony.  Her long and successful career included becoming both the first woman ever elected as a Royal Academician and the first artist ennobled as Dame Commander of the British Empire.  

This summer, Penlee House Gallery & Museum in Penzance is staging the first ever major exhibition of Laura Knight’s paintings to be held in her beloved Cornwall.  Called In the Open Air, the show looks at the paintings she executed in the landscape, including her iconic views of women on the Cornish coast through to the wide and beautiful panoramas of English farmland spread out below the Malvern Hills from her golden years as a painter....

Flying a Kite alone is probably worth coming to the exhibition for, but other treats make it a truly unmissable show.  As well as Cornish works such as The Beach (Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle), Spring (Tate London) and A Summer’s Day at the Rock Pool (Private Collection), the show includes the evocative paintings of gypsies that made Laura Knight famous in the late 1930s, such as Gaudy Beggars (Aberdeen Art Gallery) and Ascot Finery (Dundee Art Gallery). 

If you can't make it West then fear not, the exhibition will be heading out on tour to both Nottingham (Djanogly Gallery 22nd September to 4th November)  and Worcester ( City Art Gallery 17th November to 10th February 2013) And if you can't get to those venues either check out the Dame Laura Knight website which catalogues all the galleries which hold her work around the world, so perhaps there is one near you. If you know of any works anywhere not listed then John Croft ( Dame Laura Knight's great-nephew) would be thrilled to hear from you I'm sure.

After my last lot of dithering over whether to buy or not to buy books at the recent Eric Ravilious exhibition, naturally I caved in and bought the book of the this one, which I have now read and can also highly recommend, and which the gallery have sensibly priced at £5 off the retail price and just 54p more than Amazon.

Elizabeth Knowles gives a good account of the life and work of this gifted and versatile artist whose work I have loved for many years, and the reproductions of the paintings are predictably splendid. The book makes a welcome addition to my Newlyn artists' shelf which also includes the book which first set me properly on the trail The Shining Sands - Artists in Newlyn and St Ives 1880 - 1930 by Tom Cross

I mean what's not to love about paintings like this...

Dame Laura Knight In the Orchard Oil on canvas, 61 x 51 cm Private Collection, courtesy the Fine Art Society

As for the Virginia Woolf connection, I would love to have discovered that they had met... or that Virginia had viewed the paintings and thought 'Gosh, one would love to see those on the covers of one's novels one day' but sadly I am to be disappointed, as this extract from Virginia's diary for December 19th 1938, and a discussion about the possibility of Honours to be bestowed, reveals...

'John says that 2 cabinet ministers are in favour of giving me the OM. The other candidates are Clemence Dane and Dame --- the painter who does circuses. So the compliment is not as high as I should like: though it is true I was chosen... I mean, preferred; but its only lunch party gossip at Kenneth Clarks...'

Kenneth Clark was at that time the 'brilliant young director of the National Gallery, and the 'Dame' was indeed Laura Knight. In the end none of them received the Order of Merit so gossip it was, but I fear Virginia might not have been as pleased about the book jackets as I had first thought.

 

My thanks to Katie at the Penlee House Gallery for providing these pictures and permission for me to share them with you. 

A Game of Hide and Seek ~ Elizabeth Taylor

Elizabeth Taylor's centenary week is upon us (July 3rd the actual day) and having been booked last autumn to take part in the Elizabeth Taylor centenary celebrations at Reading Library I had a plan.

Of course I would re-read ALL the books.

I had made a good start with In a Summer Season followed by The Soul of Kindness and A Wreath of Roses before I realised the event was months away and I would have done a great deal of other reading in the meantime. I was more than likely to end up with a mass muddle in my head ...A Summer Wreath, Mrs Palfrey at the Harbour, A View From the Palladian so I called a halt and re-grouped deciding to focus on the book I would be doing with the reading group, Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont, and the book I would sit in on with the other reading group if I could, At Mrs Lippincote's, both re-reads for me.

Then I would choose one previously unread book and come to it completely anew.

I would hope it wouldn't let me down, but would give me a sort of microcosm of everything that I feel Elizabeth Taylor does so well, a frame of reference that I could use during the panel discussion at the end of the day. I know it has often been the case that every new (to me) book by Elizabeth Taylor I read becomes the 'best' one I have read so far, but this time, honestly, I think I might really mean it.

A Game of Hide and Seek  Elizabeth Taylor's fifth novel published in 1951, and it is about this time that Elizabeth, according to Robert Liddell in his book Elizabeth and Ivy, with her popularity gaining ground, started to experience the malice of the reviewers, the knives were out... it's a funny old world isn't it.

Harriet and Vesey, meet first as eighteen-year-olds and again some twenty years later. Harriet, the daughter of a suffragette and quietly and obsessively in love with Vesey who wants to be a writer and with the world at his feet, whilst Harriet's world will venture no further than marriage. The game of hide and seek is not only the one that Harriet and Vesey play with the children that Harriet is 'minding', they will play a game of hide and seek with each other and their love throughout their lives.

Harriet's eventual marriage to Charles is predictably staid, Vesey's career in writing migrates to the theatre, wanders all over the place and never breeds success, and when they do finally meet again twenty years later and finally dance together, trust Elizabeth Taylor to bypass the waltz and choose a tango for them.

It is a moment of pure Taylor-esque understatement which allows the reader to fill in the gaps...

'He simply did not allow her to falter and her nervousness began to change to elation....Remotely, the figures of other people drifted at the perimeter of their enhanted space of floor. They dictated their own music...'

If we spent the day wondering quite how Elizabeth Taylor achieves what she does with such economy perhaps this moment in this book encapsulates it, especially if the reader may be wondering what Charles, Harriet's husband looking on, makes of it...

'Now they danced with perfect grave precision and in silence. They made some ritual of the dance. some pact as if they were alone; ecstatic, in its true sense. They made an exhibition of themselves, Charles thought.'

There really isn't much more the reader needs to be told is there.

There are moments of great and memorable hilarity in the book too. The scenes where Harriet is working in a department store perhaps the funniest I have read in a very long time as Miss Brimpton, Miss Lazenby and Miss Lovelace initiate Harriet into this peculiar world where the women reign supreme, though of course it is the men who are supposed to be in charge.

'Their hours were long so they spared themselves any hard work, filched what they could; went up to elevenses at ten...set their hair, washed stockings, drank tea. Nothing was done in their own time that could be done in the firm's.'

Home beauty treatments of a depilatory nature are conducted in the staff room with the odd nod to a bit of customer service if they really have to and Miss Lazenby sets the trend..

'She has scarcely any eyebrows left. Just an inflamed expanse.'

That of course only the start and when the sales team move onto facial hair just make sure you are not sipping a drink or eating, or you will choke and need sorting out..

'Miss Lovelace removed her chicken broth from the gas-ring so that Miss Lazenby could heat the little pan of wax...
We spread it on and tear it off, ' Miss Brimpton directed.
'Then we'll have the chicken broth,' Miss Lovelace put the pan back on the gas-ring.
'On the upper lip first dear,' Miss Brimpton advised Harriet, 'Slightly downy if I may say so.'
'Anyone else would be insulted,' Miss Lazenby said dreamily. 'I call mine a bloody moustache.' 
'Well that's up to you dear, what you call it...'
Harriet obediently spread the melting wax around her mouth.
'I'm doing my beard as well,' Miss Lazenby said recklessly...

I wasn't disappointed, A Game of Hide and Seek the perfect book to demonstrate Elizabeth Taylor's skills at populating a novel swiftly and decisively with memorable characters, giving each a recognisable voice. Then establishing and exploring an emotional landscape and mapping it out with all those paths that make up the journey of a good novel, love, boredom, humour, loneliness, lovelessness, longing, parting, loss and ultimately...well I couldn't possibly say. But pinned down and trapped on the page along the way, and often at a slant, the ennui of women's lives, harnessed to convention and gently interrogated for the reader by a writer who is perfectly in command of her material. Characters who we somehow come to know well enough to predict accurately how they may react in any given situation and to the point where the author doesn't need to tell the reader much to set them off on the right trail.

In her introduction to the new Virago edition Elizabeth Jane Howard captures the essence thus....

The subtle and the seldom dealt with paradox of the ordinary and the original, the universal and the unique is something that this novelist really understands; it could indeed be said to be her hallmark. 

So on this her centenary week, my sincere thanks to Elizabeth Taylor for all the reading pleasure she has given and I know will continue to give me. 

 

 

 

Colourboration ~ Blue

Firstly I have to say Happy Canada Day to Canada, and I'm sorry you've missed the Red colourboration which would have seemed very appropriate, so I hope you don't mind Blue, which nevertheless still offers me the most perfect of Canadian opportunities as you will see...

Top left clockwise...

Yes I still love my Kindle for certain types of reading but we spotted this on the Pilgrim Fathers' memorial at the Mayflower Steps on Plymouth's Barbican. It is part of a semi-circular brass frieze that we keep saying we must nip along and do a brass rubbing from one day, but the blue-ish green patina of the bronze means I can squeak it into Blue.

I still covet a metre or three of Mark Hearld's Doveflight fabric.. 

And my tribute to all things Canadian today, the inimitable, inestimable Joni Mitchell and the LP cover that speaks volumes to me...of sixth form days and blowing a whole day's wages from my Saturday job at Woolworth's on this LP. I still love every single track.

Tucked away in the corner, the baby llama wool that is now my warmest baby llama jumper.

Cadhay Manor had a lovely display of blue and white china.

The bluebells seem to have excelled themselves this year, sometimes they come and go and we barely see them, this year weeks and weeks of a stunning blue haze along the lane.

With a fair wind and a ridge of high pressure we never take for granted the acres and acres of unbroken blue sky we can see from here...and bless the weather vane which we inherited with the house and which squeaks and clanks around over our heads on a stormy night.

Bookhound and I had a day out down in Cornwall this week. Mostly to see an art exhibition, more of which soon, but we also took in a diversion to Lamorna Cove near Land's End and sat up on the cliffs in glorious sunshine wondering quite how the sea manages to be these exquisite shades of blue.

I'll leave you with Joni and don't forget to check out what my partner in colour, Ellie Wherevertheroadgoes has been looking at...