dovegreyreader scribbles

The Gown ~ Jennifer Robson

I seem to be happily becalmed in the 1940s with my reading at the moment and I'm in no rush to seek out the wind or the currents that will move me on. Contemporary fiction just isn't cutting it right now; everything I pick up seems to be ticking off the 2019 'woke' PC boxes and if I'm honest I'm a bit weary of it, maybe life seems real and uncertain enough without 'making it up'. I know it will pass, and that fiction is all about reflecting the moment, but for now becalmed in reliable waters is fine. When a visitor to Tinker's Cott backalong recommended The Gown by Jennifer Robson (alongside additional praise from a librarian in Canada) I was ready to disappear into a jolly good book, especially one that involves needlework, and this one more than lived up to hopes and expectations.

The engagement has been announced between Princess Elizabeth and Philip Mountbatten in July 1947 and tensions are running high in the Norman Hartnell workrooms as the decision about who will design and make the dress for the wedding on November 20th is awaited. Ann Hughes and Miriam Dassin, as the Mayfair fashion house's most accomplished embroiderers, would be obvious choices for the more intricate work. Whilst Miriam, having fled from the traumas of post-war Europe has a tragic past,
Ann (for reasons various) will have an uncertain future, but for this brief moment in time the women will forge a close and supportive friendship, heads bowed over the embroidery frames. Of course Norman Hartnell's design is the chosen one, Ann and Miriam are the chosen workers and what follows is a credible and intriguing account of those few frenetic months in which hundreds of silk motifs (silk...imagine the slip and the fray) must be appliqued invisibly onto the wedding gown and train and embellished with pearls and all sorts of precious. There was a small kerfuffle when it was thought the silk worms to make the silk may have been Japanese (until recently an enemy) so much relief when they were found to be Chinese in origin. 

Woven into this narrative is that of Canadian Heather who, in 2016, finds some embroidered samples in her grandmother's belongings after her death in Toronto. It slowly becomes apparent that the motifs closely resemble those on the Royal gown, but how on earth have they ended up in her Nan's possession on the other side of the Atlantic, and with n'er a mention of any connections to the making of the dress, being an embroiderer or perhaps working for Norman Hartnell.

My mum was born a month after the Queen in 1926, always had an affinity and so was immensely proud to have been married a month before the Royal wedding, and perhaps now I understand why. The excitement must have been at fever-pitch in a post-war Britain desperate for some cheer and a bit of pageantry, and that excitement is well-conveyed in The Gown. The smallest details adding to the whole...women across the country sent the Princess their ration coupons for the fabric. The coupons all had to be returned as they were non-transferable, but how desperate the women must have been to see their real-live Princess in a fairy-tale gown marrying the man she loves. The couple had been secretly engaged for some time but the King insisted the announcement could not be made until after Princess Elizabeth's twenty-first birthday; fever pitch doesn't cover it really.

There will be the secrets that must be kept, all the girls in the workroom sworn to secrecy about the dress, windows blocked out against prying eyes and predatory journalists doing their best to weasel their way into the lives of the girls in the hope of a scoop. The details about the stitchery were wonderful. The rules of the sewing room overseen by the strict but benevolent Miss Duley; washed hands, no nail varnish or make up allowed for fear of staining the fabric, the care taken in marking up the designs (nothing more than needle marks to guide), stitch-by-stitch needle-turned applique and women deeply immersed in the flow, oblivious to time as they created their gown and train fit for a Princess. Norman Hartnell makes regular appearances and by all accounts seems to be an all-round good egg. Approachable and understanding he knows talent when he sees it and nurtures it accordingly, and as the big day arrives both he and Miss Duley are keen for everyone to feel they have contributed. Both Ann and Miriam will be suitably rewarded with an unforgettable memory each and every  woman in the workroom, especially those who haven't been directly involved with the sewing, will be invited to place a stitch in the final motif to be appliqued so that they call all now say with pride 'I worked on the Princess's dress.'

For a while Ann and Miriam's lives are seamless (sorry) as they work all hours to complete the dress,  and through the men they both meet a sense of their futures starts to emerge. Will they both ultimately be happy and fulfilled, will there be sadness, well I couldn't possibly comment, however good and true friends are indeed for life and Jennifer Robson leads the narrative towards a very fitting and moving denouement that had me biting my lip with emotion at the end.

It was page 236 before I finally caved and looked up a picture of The Dress. I'd never really paid it much attention in the past, but once I had this image in my head it was a treat to check out pictures of it and by page 330 I was watching Pathé News film footage of the actual day. Jennifer Robson's descriptions of the crowds and the atmosphere within Westminster Abbey came to life and I loved it all.

Another book to add to the stitchery reading shelf but I'm intrigued...has anyone else read The Gown and if so did you enjoy as much as I have or not...

And the quest goes on for more stitchery reading if you have any more suggestions, my stack is growing...

 

 

 

The World of Wolf Hall

Standing at the check-out in Waterstones the other day and a little pile of books caught my eye...

The World of Wolf Hall - A Reading Guide to Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall & Bring Up the Bodies

A free 50 page booklet that will also be published free on Kindle. 

'Please do take one,' said the assistant.

'Ahead of the release of The Mirror & the Light, the stunning conclusion to Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall Trilogy, revisit two of the most celebrated novels of our time.

Bringing the opulent, brutal Tudor world of Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII to glittering life, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies have thrilled and delighted readers, critics and prize judges alike. Both novels won the Man Booker Prize and have sold over five million copies across the globe.

This reading guide takes you through the story so far, introduces you to the main players, explores the key themes and offers reading group questions to discuss.

The stage is set for The Mirror & the Light. After Henry’s marriage to his third queen, Cromwell attains riches, status and unprecedented power. But how long can his luck last – a blacksmith’s son who has risen to be an earl?'

'Your whole life depends on the next beat of Henry’s heart’ it said on the back cover and I thought, yes it absolutely does. I'm already in a state of feverish excitement about The Mirror & the Light  (all 864 pages of it) and this has helped fuel it no end. I've had a quick read through and, though I usually avoid them, this little book is splendid. Time lines, summaries, key dates, main themes, reminders and an interesting section on the 'the trilogy's relevance today'...

'Nothing makes a book more readable than discovering that a world a million miles away - or five hundred years ago - shares the same concerns as our own...'

A while back now Bookhound and I had nipped across the Tamar Valley to Cotehele on a Monday morning, assuming that it would be deserted, which it was but for another couple walking ahead of us around the garden. I knew instantly that I was following in the footsteps of Hilary Mantel and her husband...I nudged Bookhound, he nudged me...'You know who that is' we both whispered. They sat on a seat and we walked past and on. You'll be relieved to know that I didn't do the fan girl thing, because who knows whether Hilary was hoovering up some atmosphere for the final stages of the book (there could be no better place to do it) and far be it from me to jeopardise the unfinished project.

I'd better confess to this though...

'Sit on that step and I'll take your picture,' said Bookhound knowing full well that I was the least important player on the stage...

I've been suggesting to every bookshop I go in that if they will open at a minute past midnight on March 5th 2020 I promise I'll be there on the doorstep waiting to buy my copy.  After all, why should the Harry Potter children have all the fun. No takers so far but I'll keep on pestering until someone relents, and shouldn't March 5th be declared a National Day of Reading while were at it.

I had been wondering about a reread of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies and this little book has really fired me up to revisit and refresh my memory on how wonderful both books were. I know not everyone has pitched their tent in this camp but I certainly have. I've been in this for the long haul since I read the first page back in 2009. I'll admit it took two goes to get into Wolf Hall, but once in I couldn't bear to leave. I've downloaded both audio books too so I'm looking forward to some winter listening while I sew.

There was so much about the books to love. The Tinker read them too, I kept his paperback copies (just because) and we had some wonderful discussions about both. I think he would have agreed with these words of Hilary Mantel...

'The essence of the thing is not to judge with hindsight, not to pass judgement from the lofty perch of the twenty-first century when we know what happened. It's to be there with them in that hunting party at Wolf Hall, moving forward with imperfect information and perhaps wrong expectations, but in any case moving forward into a future that is not predetermined, but where chance and hazard will play a terrific role.'

Meanwhile, if you are a Wolf Hall acolyte too hie thee to your local bookshop and nab one of these while they have them...

Is anyone else planning a reread...

Did you love them as much as I did...

Or maybe you haven't read either book...

Or maybe you struggled with them...

Anyone else planning to camp outside a bookshop on March 5th 2020...

 

 

The Stopping Places - A Journey Through Gypsy Britain ~ Damian Le Bas

Bringing you up to speed on more of my deckchair reading, which now seems such a distant memory, the sunshine having been replaced by the torrential rain that we knew had to come. All we can say is God bless it for keeping the bore hole happy.

Bookhound and I spent a carefree day or two wandering around the very last Port Eliot Festival back in July. The Kayaker was doing all the outdoor photography workshops for the festival so we kept out of his way, rolled up as usual for Mik Artistik's set before wandering around all the 'talking' tents, dipping in and out of events various. This dipping in and out is fine until you dip in on the end of an event that you wished you'd dipped into from the start. And so it was with Damian Le Bas talking about his book The Stopping Places A Journey Through Gypsy Britain. Quietly spoken, thoughtful and considered in his responses and we were both impressed enough to hot foot off to the book tent to buy said book afterwards. 

Damian Le Bas takes to the road for a year in order to explore his own Gypsy heritage as well as find the 'atchin tans', or stopping places recounted to him by his great-grandmother. These the traditional camping sites around the country where the Gypsies would stop and find work for a while before heading off again. Replacing the horse-drawn with the combustion engine, Damian's transit van becomes his home as he starts to explore his own Romany heritage and somehow strikes a fascinating balance between the old and the traditional and the new and increasingly maligned travelling community of today. 

There will be horse fairs and cemeteries, lay-bys and grassy verges with much to learn from it all, as well as a road trip to the Camargue in the South of France. And then there's the Romani language and the origins of the Gypsies themselves, initially thought to have come from Egypt (hence the derivative name) though the language suggests a closer connection with India. But with layers of 'borrowings'  too, from Persian and Slavic and all hardly surprising for such a peripatetic community. The language is used freely throughout the book and a glossary at the end helped enormously when I get stuck on 'poshrat' ( half-blood, specifically a mixed-blood Gypsy), 'radgey' (mad) , 'ruvengo' ( of the wolves) and especially 'kushti chokkers' (nice boots). and now, of course, I see from whence Del Boy (Only Fools and Horses) borrowed his best lines.

And now of course I’m reminded of that 1970’s holiday in a horse-drawn caravan around County Mayo on the west coast of Ireland. The horse knew the way, which was fortunate, but also knew how to open its food box on the back of the wagon and had eaten most of it on the first day. 

The fair comes to Tavistock this week, and with it the Gypsy community. Their trailers will be parked in the Meadows and the town's annual Goose Fair will take over the Square and the entire length of Plymouth Road on the second Wednesday in October.  The geese come along and join in the fun too though no one mentions the C*******s word.

It's always a day of extreme weather, it will either tip down with rain or be gloriously hot, but we can cope with any amount of that because for a single day the town ignores the Rest of the World, is unanimously happy, plays games only one in a hundred can win and buys a load of things it might not necessarily need, but enjoys the day for the fun of it.

On the evening before the day itself the fairground offers free rides for local schoolchildren (every parents' worst nightmare...'Are you going to Free Rides?'....'I suppose we'll have to'...) schools are closed the next day and everyone heads into town.

Each year there is a common denominator gimmick toy that the children will all be playing with until it breaks. I well remember the year of the inflatable viking axes. The town was sufficiently armed to repel any Nordic invaders for weeks afterwards.

The fair lasts long into the night and when you wake up the next morning there will be no sign of it. Gone, stalls packed up until next year, but for the rides which stay for the rest of the week in the town car park before moving on. One of the joys of my health visiting life was the occasional new birth visit to a Gypsy baby during Goose Fair week, first find your trailer but never so warm a welcome as I sat surrounded by any amount of ornament and colour and a very frilly and doted on baby.

I've barely scratched the surface here but was intrigued about so much in The Stopping Places, not least the way that Damian Le Bas quietly made me examine my own prejudices. Maybe inculcated in me as a a child, when I remember my mum being distinctly unnerved when a Gypsy woman handed her a bunch of heather and then asked quiet aggressively for the money. I might even have come away from that encounter with a stern warning about  'avoiding Gypsies' and I think Damian Le Bas, as he attempts to square their present reputation with their traditional past, willingly admits to the problems. The community regularly gets a bad press but I am now mindful of so much more than I was...of their tradition and heritage, and the seriousness with which many quite rightly still hold dear to that.

If you have read The Stopping Places I would love to know your thoughts...

 

 

 

A Single Thread ~ Tracy Chevalier

Happy memories still of interviewing Tracy at Port Eliot Festival backalong and I always look forward to a new book from her.

A Single Thread, centred on the city of Winchester and its Cathedral, follows the life of Violet Speedwell in the early 1930s. One war barely over, another beckoning, and life for single woman is often precarious and complicated with many social constraints. There is loneliness, prejudice, fear, and in many cases poverty, so when Violet volunteers and joins the cathedral embroiderers there will be much to learn but also friendships within the cathedral community to be forged.

Woven into the book is the manifest and devastating impact of the grief of the First World War. It remains lasting and unresolved, deep and debilitating and it seems to touch everyone, as does the presence of fewer men. 'I'm so tired. I've been tired since 1916'.... but there is great solace to be found in tradition, in this case, church embroidery with its meticulous handiwork and demands for perfection alongside the age-old art of bell-ringing. It could be argued that perhaps both are a means for those who might be feeling dis-empowered to feel in control of a small fraction of a country's way of life. A life that has spiralled out of control and taken something of a hammering, but god willing some aspects may never change. The reliable fall-back position is always there, always will be.

I couldn't help thinking what a pleasure it must have been for Tracy Chevalier to research this book, and whilst I had a few issues with plots and their twists, and a nasty character who seemed relentlessly overwrought, this sat in a happy balance (for me) with the intricate and fascinating details of campanology and needlework. Violet will help make the hassocks and what a joy these are to see in so many of the churches that we visit.

We had the Blessing of the Bell Ropes in the village church a few weeks ago.

This might seem like rather a non-event, but in a tiny church with a tiny congregation, raising the funds to replace the ropes was a major endeavour and one worth celebrating....and really we don't need much of an excuse for a get-together. The tower and its bells were all that survived of a devastating fire in the 1950s and the church was rebuilt to half its former size. The new ropes are in the traditional Devon colours of green, black and white and the blessing was combined with the monthly Songs of Praise. We started with eight verses of The Bellringer's Hymn...

Ring out! ye bells below.
Your thrilling notes entwine,
Let music Heavenward flow
To blend with peals Divine.
God's praises sound
And without fault
His name exalt
With every round.

Written in 1947 and sung to the tune 'Tavistock' (you'll know it when you hear it) this hymn has been adopted by the Devon Bellringers Association. The organist lost count after five verses, and then after seven, but we all just called out 'Three more' and 'Last one' and we got there in the end with huge smiles on our faces. Thus the scene was set for us to sing our way through all the old favourites finishing with The Day Thou Gavest Lord is Ended. This one always makes me want to cry when I get to the verse

'As o'er each continent and island,
The dawn leads on another day,
The voice of prayer is never silent,
Nor dies the strain of praise away.

But how lucky we are that our bells are still rung and ring-able and that we can still gather and be pleased about it. The social gathering afterwards a wonderful chance to catch up on all the local news.

As Violet sits and listens, and William Carver makes the calls in the Winchester Cathedral belfry in the 1930s, it may be slightly less ambitious but little different in our village church belfry ninety years on.

'Rounds and then Grandsire  Caters...Look to. Treble's going...

Go Grandsire...and the order of the bells changed, then changed again...'

Thankfully Violet will find ways around the vulnerabilities and restrictions imposed on her, along with the courage to thrive and find happiness and fulfilment, and so as I turned the final page of A Single Thread I realised I was very pleased to have read it.

If you have read A Single Thread I would love to know your thoughts...

Do any other campanology or needlework-themed novels come to mind..

Footnote : I’ve just started The Gown by Jennifer Robson, a novel about two women working for Norman Hartnell and creating Queen Elizabeth’s wedding dress, and the first hundred pages have been excellent.

Tove Jansson

The Tove Jansson bus came and seemed to have gone for me quite a few years ago, or so I thought.

New translations were being published and much love for Tove was evident around the interwebs yet somehow I never quite jumped on the wagon. I've dipped in and out, and the shelf of books has grown year on year thanks to Nat at Sort Of Books. Nat has kept the faith and sent me new editions of each Tove Jansson book as they became available, but, as I think I may have mentioned a while back, it was the arrival of a proof copy of the forthcoming Letters From Tove which finally tipped the balance.

That and a summer of starting and stopping more books than I care to remember. 

I was in need of An Autumn Reading Project.

There is nothing I love more than to explore the life and work of one writer but it's something I have stopped doing in recent years. I end up gorging, finding out far too much and spoil it for myself, but I had a feeling this wouldn't happen with Tove. 

Born in Helsinki in Finland at the outbreak of World War One in August 1914, Tove Jansson would become famous for her illustrated Moomin books and perhaps less famous for her adult novels and short stories. Recent translations by Thomas Teal have rectified that. The Moomins, first made an appearance in 1945 and featured heavily in my library borrowing through the 1950s but it is only in recent years that Sort Of Books have made the adult fiction available.

A word of praise for the beauty of the books. French flaps...don't we all love a French flap and the Moomins reprinted in their original hardback format (for smaller hands) and iconic livery.

I have now read all three available novels and my thoughts on The Summer Book (third reading of that) The True Deceiver and Fair Play will appear dreckly over the coming weeks and I will be working my way through the short stories too. It strikes me that reading Tove Jansson is like stepping through the back of the literary wardrobe into a Narnia-like world of magic and difference. There's still plenty of snow but the landscape is changed, quirky, often eccentric but exciting too and so very refreshing for that. 

It is Letters From Tove, published this week, that currently has my heart.

'Out of the thousands of letters Tove Jansson wrote a cache remains that she addressed to her family, her dearest confidantes, and her lovers, male and female. Into these she spilled her innermost thoughts, defended her ideals and revealed her heart. To read these letters is both an act of startling intimacy and a rare privilege.

Penned with grace and humour, Letters from Tove offers an almost seamless commentary on Tove Jansson's life as it unfolds within Helsinki's bohemian circles and her island home. Spanning fifty years between her art studies and the height of Moomin fame, we share with her the bleakness of war; the hopes for love that were dashed and renewed, and her determined attempts to establish herself as an artist.

Vivid, inspiring and shining with integrity, Letters from Tove shows precisely how an aspiring and courageous young artist can evolve into a very great one.'

Reading volumes of letters is always fascinating for the insights. I prefer them to diaries which perversely often give me too much insight and Tove's letters are absolute treasures. She was a prolific writer and I'm currently enjoying her long, chatty and illustrated correspondent to her parents; her mother Signe Hammarsten, an artist and illustrator, and her father Viktor a sculptor, the letters as near as I think I could get to being in conversation with her. I have been known to write airmail letters like this to Offspringette...they start and I add to them for the next week or so...tiny little life events of home and family. 

Letters From Tove, will be serialised on Radio 4 in the week leading up to Christmas and, from the little I have read so far, it promises to be wonderful. A nod to a beautifully presented hardback book too, 500 pages of high quality paper and binding.

As I embark on my journey with Tove, please do come along if you would like to and I would love to know your thoughts...

Were the Moomins part of your childhood too...

Have you read any more of Tove Jansson's books...

And what about handwritten letters...

I fear books like this will be unknown for the future generations...

Can e mails possibly hold the same magic...

 

And the winners are...

The names are out of the cat-hat and a copy of Surfacing by Kathleen Jamie will be on its way to...

Check your inboxes you lucky people.

Magnus xx

Rising Ground - A Search for the Spirit of Place ~ Philip Marsden redux

Whilst writing about Philip Marsden's new book Summer Isles here a few days ago I went down into the scribbles basement to revisit my 2015 thoughts in his earlier book Rising Ground - A Search for the Spirit of Place and decided to bring it back into the light...

February 15th 2015...

One of the most immediate and surprising effects of reading Rising Ground by Philip Marsden is the whole notion of those landscapes of childhood...

'On to these blank places - known only as the 'hill' and the 'combe' - I sketched the map of my childhood... for years...whenever I heard the word' childhood' , it always brought to mind a picture of the hill and the combe...'

Though Cornwall is not the landscape of Philip Marsden's childhood, it is the place he now calls home and the subject of his wanderings in Rising Ground, and with that comes the debate about where exactly is home...

Is it the place where you were born...

Is it the house you grew up in...

Is it the house you make your own...

Home is certainly a shifting concept, and one that my recent reading of The Snow Geese by William Fiennes gave me much to think about,  and as Philip Marsden made his way around the county it was fascinating to see what might attract his attention. As he proceeded to elaborate on that search for the spirit of place I found my own childhood landscape pictures appearing in my mind, conjuring up 'so much of a life,' and it all made me think how key those landscapes of the child's eye are.

It's true... apart from the daily accumulation of views of the Tamar Valley views from home, do I really remember any landscapes as vividly and as clearly as those I knew then?

And the reason I was going to love Rising Ground as much as I did, is that my most deeply embedded childhood landscapes, apart from those around our suburban home in Surrey...Mitcham Common, Seven Islands Pond, Coldblow Lane, Three Kings Pond, the Beehive bridge... yet the landscapes I remember with greatest sea-bright clarity are those of the north Cornish coast. 

One of those 'aunts' and 'uncles', that so many of us gained after our parents made wartime friendships, lived in Tintagel where they ran a market garden, and we would go there for two week-long summer holidays in the early 1960s, in the days when there was just one gift shop (Camelot Crafts) and an old Land Rover to take us up and down to Merlin's Cove. Or us children (they had two sons of our age) all primary school age, would wander off on our own down to St Nectan's Glen, or walk through Rocky Valley to Boscastle, or maybe go on mass day-long family excursions to Bossiney Beach, or for twilight summer evening swims along the coast at Port Gaverne...and if I think of childhood and holidays these are the landscapes that conjure themselves up with very little effort , though that might be an age thing too...

Philip Marsden's own journey to Tintagel focuses largely on the sham of the castle and the equally dubious legacy of Arthurian legend with which the town is now awash, though thankfully the childhood landscape, blossoming and unfurling again in my imagination, withstands the onslaught and I cling onto that visit to see King Arthur's absolutely original Round Table where he of course sat in conference with his very genuine and courageous Knights. I suddenly remember, apropos of an odd connection, that it was whilst on one of these holidays that my 'aunt' , a teacher at nearby Delabole School, set me up with a copy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S.Lewis as my holiday reading and that was me sorted.

Philip Marsden writes about the recurring motif in idealised places: a sense of enclosure or encirclement. Well, my childhood landscape of Tintagel has the wagons circled protectively around it, and interestingly any number of return visits, and witnessing the horror of the changes, does nothing to dent the happy remembrance.

But there is a lot more of the county to explore in Rising Ground, and if you know Cornwall, or even if you have only read about it, then you may well see it with renewed eyes through these pages, I certainly have.

Bodmin Moor, if I am honest, has always been something to drive across to get to somewhere else in Cornwall. It doesn't fill me with that sense of well-being and peace and quiet that Dartmoor does, and for that I blame Daphne du Maurier (amongst others) for the bleak portrayal that seeped into my teenage consciousness as I lapped up the novels (Rebecca whilst sitting on the beach at St Ives). I react emotionally to the beauty of Dartmoor but objectively to the desolate, slightly spooky atmosphere of Bodmin...and we can see it rising in the distance from our garden here in the Tamar Valley, but still no allure, no sense of reverence. Philip Marsden succeeds where I fail as he walks out on the moor in search of, and discovering, that Neolithic spirit of place as he recalls the words of an archaeologist...

'Imagine how depleted your people would be after a harsh winter. Imagine the spirit of loss blowing across the moor.'

I can half see it now and I probably need to do a little more than just drive across Bodmin Moor in the future.

There are fascinating chapters about Quaker William Cookworthy and his 1768 recipe for porcelain, a very exact combination of ingredients, glaze, slip, kiln temperature and time, utilising the Cornish china clay, and that had us nipping into Plymouth Museum to check out the china cabinets that we always walk past to get to the more interesting things like a Dame Laura Knight exhibition. 



Plymouth porcelain is robust but with the delicacy of lace, translucent to light, chimes when tapped (we didn't check that out) and very hard to copy. Apparently only Willam Cookworthy ever made true porcelain successfully in the UK, and only for a very brief period of time in the city of Plymouth, and how many times have we driven past the China House pub on Sutton Harbour without knowing that this is where Cookworthy's factory is thought to have been. Spode, Wedgwood and Minton swooped after Cookworthy's death but apparently never quite matched the perfection of his porcelain.. And William Cookworthy was an enterprising man in many other ways too...the desalination of seawater, discovering the cause of scurvy, helping Smeaton develop the lime that would be used to rebuild the Eddystone lighthouse (now on Plymouth Hoe)

Don't you just love books like this that take you on a journey of discovering new things, and remembering some old things too and even better when the places are on the doorstep. Rising Ground created connections in every direction and many more explorable characters and places that I haven't mentioned, poet Jack Clemo, tracing the River Fal, finding the magic in amongst the embarrassingly commercialised shambles that is Land's End. Land's End so dreadful that Bookhound couldn't face it, sitting outside while I went in just so that I could say I had been there.

If you have an interest in Cornwall, or sensing that spirit of place anywhere, then Rising Ground is the book for you and well worth a read, but meanwhile

...what thinkest thee all about this idea of childhood landscapes being firmly fixed in the imagination...

...can you see yours I wonder, and if so I'd love to know where it is because I reckon between us we could probably cover every continent.