dovegreyreader scribbles

Happy Half Hours ~ A.A.Milne

'How does a nation pull itself together again after a disaster? How do we move on from overwhelming experiences?...'

...asks Frank Cottrell-Boyce in his introduction to the Notting Hill edition of Happy Half Hours - Selected Writings of A.A.Milne (published October 20th) and I had to wonder whether this little volume was a product of recent events or a happy coincidence. Whatever its recent provenance there can be no doubt it is the perfect book for our times.

Writing in the aftermath of the First World War Alan Alexander Milne, so well known by me and mine for Christopher Robin, Winnie the Pooh and When We Were Very Young must have been struggling with profound demons. Alan was a pacifist at heart and yet signing up for active service, as a signalling officer in France, witnessed first hand the devastation he had been so keen to avoid, and in the years to come, as Frank Cottrell Boyce suggests...

'Luck carries with it a sense of responsibility. Lucky survivors often feel they have been saved for some great purpose, or at least they should make the most of their opportunity.'

And who can argue with the fact that A.A. Milne did that and more.

Each piece in this beautiful linen-bound edition is a gem. Four or five pages of engrossing reading whether it be ...

Sorting out a library...

'So then your library is is not just for reference. You know as well as I do that it furnishes your room; that it furnishes it more effectively than does paint or mahogany or china.'

Sorting out the bath...

'While the water was running out this morning... I got Paradise Lost off by heart..'

Trying to put on weight because your wife says you look like a herring...

'Every now and then doctors slap me about and ask me if I was always as thin as this

Discovering a spring...

'I forget who discovered the source of the Nile, but probably he felt much as I did...'

I meant to ration these to one a day but in the end I was a fully paid up member of the Just One More club because these are essays to lift the spirits if they need lifting, or to keep them uplifted if you were happy enough in the first place.

There is a wonderful essay about Midsummer Day that makes perfect sense.

'Why should the days begin to get shorter at the moment when summer is fully arrived?'

Honestly, the times I've thought that. Just as the fun is starting this little cloud of despond hovers with the thought that the nights are drawing in and some bright spark always announces it with glee online somewhere (not me I hope) 

'Sometimes I think that if June were called August and April June these things would be easier to bear.'

In fact I'm doing something similar with Offspringette in New Zealand.

'Right, so it's really February for you isn't it?' I said a few months ago.

It was odd but just as I'd noticed the August day when the light seemed to be changing, Offspringette had noticed the light returning to the South Island skies. I was warned about the light when I visited but nothing could have prepared me for that dazzle of blue as I stepped off the plane in Christchurch and we headed up into the Port Hills for my first glimpse.

And of course all you Southern Hemisphere readers know this anyway. August is still winter, summer is coming in November.

And talking of travel perhaps one of my favourite essays 'Geographical Research'. I have A Level Geography to thank for my love of maps but likewise A.A.Milne loves them too...

'I always enjoy those periodic excursions to my atlas...'

And I wonder has the atlas gone out of fashion thanks to Google Maps and satnav.

Will the next generation have lost the art of map-reading...

I mentioned that reading Rose Macaulay's The Towers of Trebizond recently had me scurrying for the Bartholomew's Handy Atlas. Published in 1923 I love it for the faded colours and the names. I don't want an updated version, I want to believe that the old countries still exist, the old boundaries and names like Mesopotamia and Persia, Prussia and Galicia. And there was Trebizond, on the Black Sea.

The last thing that remained was to find my copy of When We Were Very Young but I'll save that for another day, along with the story of the day Bookhound and I met the real Christopher Robin.

I have a few novels by A.A.Milne on the shelf but have to admit this really is my first encounter with his adult writing and it certainly makes me want to read more. His humour is funny and self-deprecating, his writing conveys no sense of his own importance. Whether this is true to the man I have yet to find out, I hope so, but as Frank Cottrell Boyce suggests..

'Milne's gift to write amusingly about the most trivial things is far from trivial. It's a kind of blessing. The kind that can put you back together again when all else fails.'

Meanwhile, have you read any A.A.Milne for grown-ups. I have just two on my shelves, Chloe Marr and A Table Near the Band.

And are we losing the skill of map-reading...

And essays in general...do they appeal to you or not and if so do you have any other collections to recommend.

 

A Conversation...

Bookhound and I were having one of our conversations the other day, it went a bit like this...

Me : 'Clocks go back this weekend.'

Him : 'That means it's only five weeks to Advent and the C*******s bough coming into the kitchen.'

Me : 'But surely it was only last week we packed the deccies away and put them in the loft...'

And we suddenly realised that this year had somehow vanished, and we have no real markers for it other than those we'd prefer to forget. No month in New Zealand obviously, but that apart no umpteen trips out hither and yon to places new or loved to look back on at this stage in the year. They do say that a set routine is the quickest way for time to feel as if its passing too quickly, which is why we often do spur of the moment trips out. 

Falmouth for the day...

Penzance and Lamorna...

Lanhydrock to look at Tommy Robartes' room...

The house and orchards at Cotehele...and who can forget the Monday morning we walked around alone but for two other people...Hilary Mantel and her husband, and I had to suppress all notions of fan-girl adoration and let them walk in peace...

'Bookhound might have been whispering 'Don't you dare.' in my ear as well.

A jaunt along the North Cornwall coast...

A jolly along the highways and byways of Devon to find some obscure but beautiful little church that I've read about...

And all the country and village shows, the rows of golden honey at Okehampton Show...

Morwenstow for that view across to the sea from the church, and the best tearoom ever.

Say we went out two or three times a week somewhere, that would be 120 or more excursions between January and now, and this year we can probably count them on one hand. I won't go on or we'll all end up maudlin and miserable, but if nothing else their absence has done something very strange to the passage of time this year.

We had a good think and we managed to scrape up a few. The visit to Coleton Fishacre and the snowdrops at St Raphael Huccaby on the way home came to mind..

 

It's not a complaint because it’s the same for most of us and there have been unexpected upsides too, but it suddenly, in a strange instant, felt as if time had telescoped in on itself, it really had stood still, and I wonder if anyone else had noticed this.

Is it just five minutes since you packed away last C*******s and maybe you're wondering what this year's season will hold?

All I can say is if you hold anything, hold the faith that this will pass,  and of course our bough will be coming in as usual, and in the meantime some of us have The Mirror and the Light to contend with. before then.

Talking of which...

I accumulated quite a few of these little reading guides The World of Wolf Hall, by picking one up every time I was in Waterstones...would anyone who is joining our slow November read like one? There's a very handy list of key dates and characters, an elaboration of themes and some historical context.

You can also order the guide free on Kindle here, but for those non-Kindlers I have seven copies, which will be on their way to the first seven people, based in the UK, to email their address to me dovegreyreader at gmail dot com

UPDATE: The seven copies have now all found their forever homes. Thank you for your emails, in the post on Monday. 

 

Troubled Blood ~ Robert Galbraith

Well of course I was going to love a book that occasionally references the music and lyrics of Joni Mitchell as a reminder of life’s foibles. Court and Spark makes an appearance in Troubled Blood , as do several of the later albums. If you are a fan of Joni then you might only need to read 'Love came to my door, with a sleeping roll and madman's soul...' 

the tune will swiftly follow and you'll be singing the next few lines...

He thought for sure I'd seen him
Dancing up a river in the dark
Looking for a woman
To court and spark

 

Robin finds it unsettling. It doesn't sooth or cheer her and it is unlike anything she has listened to before...strange melodies, absent hooks, everything feeling unfinished and left open, according to J.K.Rowling writing as Robert Galbraith.  Robin feels defensive, confused and sad, but there is acknowledgement of the beautiful soprano voice which 'tumbles and swoops over piano and guitar chords' and a recognition that Joni songs are really hard to sing along to (unless they've been a part of your life, and you've been listening to and loving them for fifty years, as so many of us have).

And I'm thinking stick with it Robin, all will become clear, Joni will work her magic eventually.

Having bought Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith in solidarity with JKR the question was would I ever read it. At 900 pages this was going to take some commitment so I opened the first page with trepidation and not a lot of optimism. Except we have really enjoyed the Cormoran Strike series on TV. and in part due to the casting. Tom Burke as the imperfect hero is perfect; rugged and gruff, the Afghanistan war veteran turned private detective, the amputee with issues and the rock star father who he refuses to recognise, while Holliday Grainger as his side-kick Robin Ellacott is the best foil. Arriving at the agency as a temp, Robin has proved her worth and now works as a private detective alongside Strike. She is gutsy and intuitive and much-appreciated by her boss, though he often has strange ways of showing it. There’s an underlying theme of unrequited love, of the will-they-won’t-they variety which JKR seeds in the imagination of the viewer and reader more than she gives voice to on the page, and all added to with the Joni Mitchell references for an aficionado like me.

Troubled Blood is the first of the series I have read and I still haven’t seen Lethal White so I’m leap-frogging the action a bit, but JKR is excellent at filling in the details and reading this book is, much to my surprise, ensuring I will go back and read Lethal White along with The Cuckoo’s Calling, The Silkworm, and Career of Evil. 

Having had my very public meltdown about The Casual Vacancy and it’s slightly dubious plot (for me) surrounding social workers and safeguarding, I have to confirm that this was not the path to a lifelong refusenik state about everything else J.K.Rowling writes. One book doth not a prejudice make, it doesn’t work like that and thank goodness. Anyway, I picked up Troubled Blood and set too. There was Cormoran in his flailing coat living his slightly chaotic day to day life, and the lovely Robin bringing stability and masses of instinct to the office, along with a new secretary Pat who stands no nonsense from any of them and I was straight in. 

GP Margot Bamborough has gone missing years previously and her daughter, who was very young at the time, decides to employ Cormoran Strike and his agency to try and solve the mystery of her disappearance. The Joni connection soon reveals itself...

'That was Margot's religion. Joni Mitchell, she raved about that album...'

It's absolutely no good me trying to run through the plot because there's so much of it. So many twists and turns but I'm pleased to say, apart from getting slightly bogged down in the astrology sections, I kept up with the pace whilst marvelling at what a brilliant storyteller can achieve. And a storyteller who doesn't simplify, one who credits her reader with the ability to keep up with all the dangling threads that will eventually be caught up into a tidy ending.

Maybe...

Like so many of these detective series we're going to be kept dangling about the love interests. Yes Susan Hill I'm looking at you and poor Simon Seraillier, and perhaps Peter James and the Roy Grace series, though I'm way behind on those and whether the missing wife ever turns up ...DON'T TELL ME.

Anyway I’ve lugged this huge book around with me for three weeks. Upstairs, downstairs, read it at the breakfast table, in the garden, in front of the fire, sitting in the car, because I actually loved the world of Cormoran and Robin so much, and their rapport, that I really didn’t want to leave it. 

Last Chance Lost from Turbulent Indigo tells the story of the end of a love affair and, as Robin is listenin, I'm thinking noooooo, don't do it to me JKR, just don't because she has her readers in thrall to the possibilities of a Cormoran-Robin relationship...

Last chance lost--
The hero cannot make the change
Last chance lost--
The shrew will not be tamed
Last chance lost--
They bicker on the rifle range
Blame takes aim
Last chance--
Last chance lost.

Of course I couldn’t possibly say what happens but I can say that I loved the book, loved the fictional world, had to set everything else aside while I read it, and immediately started The Cuckoo’s Calling when I’d turned the final page in order to stay put. I’ll admit to a bit of a cheer too, 900 pages will be good practice for The Mirror & the Light when we start in November.

Hands up any Cormoran and Robin fans...

And the Joni fans too. We haven’t had a Joni adoration session for a while now.

A Quick Trip to....

In the same way that I had no idea I wanted to go to Trebizond with Rose Macaulay, I really had no intention of reading my way to Brazil until a copy of Brazil That Never Was by Dr Andrew Lees, Professor of Neurology at The National Hospital in  London, arrived from Notting Hill Editions. 

If you don’t know them these little books are really worth checking out, and with The Season of Gifts on the distant horizon (way too soon to give voice to the word) they would make excellent presents for those difficult to buy for people. I’ve got a little shelf full so I’m going to pick one every so often to read and write thoughts on here. I love a good essay and Notting Hill Editions, in their beautiful linen-bound livery, are just the right length to engage the grey matter and give it a work out. The company was founded by Tom Kremer, the man responsible for bringing us the Rubik’s Cube, who had a vision to revive the art of the essay 'and to create exceptionally beautiful books that would be lingered over and cherished' and that and more has certainly been achieved.

If I can make a personal connection with a book or a writer, the book nags for my attention even more than usual, and there were three lovely connections with Brazil That Never Was...

Firstly, I walked past Andrew Lees' place of work, the National Hospital in Queen’s Square, every day to go on duty at Great Ormond Street in the 1970s. I’ve never been inside but along with the Homeopathic Hospital next door and what was then the Ospidale Italiano across the way, those three places were markers on my way to work.  

Secondly the book is set partly in the docklands of Liverpool where a young Andrew is taken by his father on their regular trips from nearby St Helens to watch the ships come and go. 

‘Liverpool was an impermanent place of passage, full of silos and stores, simultaneously a space of entrapment and liberation. We felt the pull, but we’re too afraid to put out to sea...’

My mum was born and raised in the dockland area of Liverpool 8, The Dingle. She was born at No 4 Elswick Street (where the TV series Bread was filmed) which ran downhill towards the River Mersey and my grandfather worked on the docks for most of his life. I have fleeting yet vivid childhood memories of this view...

I never knew my grandfather because it was a tragic accident on the docks that would end his life before I was born.

My aunt (my mum’s sister) married a merchant seaman who would eventually become a captain for the Elder Dempster shipping line, and so when the yellow funnels of Elder Dempster got an early mention from Andrew Lees I was nicely in tune with Brazil That Never Was. One of Uncle Frank’s ships, the Apapa, was bombed and sunk during the war and he spent three days in a lifeboat awaiting rescue, none of which dimmed his love of the sea (and I suspect time away from my aunt who was what we called ‘Very High Maintenance’ & led him a fairly miserable life). He was a Yorkshire man, short and stocky and very jolly, with the characteristic seaman’s gait and we adored him. He’d come home from the Africa run bearing palm nuts and melons, and little tables inlaid with ebony and ivory, and stories of his travels, and we would marvel at it all and to think we actually knew someone who’d been to Africa.  

And it is Andrew Lees’ childhood imagination that is first fired up about Brazil when his father gives him a copy of Exploration Fawcett, the story of one intrepid explorer’s search for a lost civilisation in the depths of the Brazilian rain forest in the 1920s.  Percy Fawcett is an unusual character. Born in 1867 and seen as one of the last great Victorian explorers, Fawcett's belief in the supernatural was powerful enough to to propel him into a search for 'beings of great mystical power' who he was convinced were to be found in the depths of the Mato Grosso of Brazil.

Bartholomews Handy Atlas 1924 comes to the rescue again...

Percy Fawcett's adventures inspire belief and trust in a young Andrew Lees and the question is, as an adult, do you cling to the childhood story or do you dissect and explore it for yourself. Eventually the pull is too great and Andrew Lees sets off for Brazil in pursuit of the truth. 

‘following the ancient Atlantic path laid down by the whales. The unbounded horizon had now become a promise....’

Incidentally, did anyone else hear on the radio recently that in recent months, since the world and the seas went quiet, whales have heard each other clearly for the first time in two hundred years. I was astonished and surprisingly moved by that.

There were two more personal connections which resonated with me, the first being A Level Geography, where, for our sins, we would suffer a triple lesson on a Friday afternoon, our region for study was South America and, as if this were to get any more tortuous, the teacher couldn’t pronounce her ‘rs’ other than as a ‘w’. It wasn’t her fault, none of it was, but what else were we supposed to do every time she said ‘Wio de Janeiwo’ but quietly mimic.

I’m not pwoud of it now, weally I’m not.

The other unexpected connection with Andrew Lees was this...

‘My maroon Kent stamp album, with its heavy leaves imprinted with delicate quadrille, has more stamps from Brazil than any other country...’

Do children still collect stamps? I'm thinking fewer and fewer letters arrive with a stamp these days, it must be a dying hobby, but ours did and, having been given my mum’s stamp album,  I was a fanatical child philatelist for a few years. Always on the look out for the Cape of Good Hope blue triangle turning up unexpectedly in one of those packs I’d  send away for on approval with my pocket money. Not a lot of them were genuine I’m sure, especially the Polska ones, and we could never afford to buy them so had to send them all back, but we all doted on our stamp albums, and now I’m thinking how much world geography we learned as a result. 

My Brazil page looked (and still looks) like this...

Andrew's has slightly more to commend it...

‘Their drab correios mostly depicted national heroes, but there were two of the capital, one depicting two lines of Imperial palms at the Jardim Botanico, and another labelled ‘Saudade’ showing an angel and a small church on a hill. 

I knew my stamps off by heart too and reaching for the album off the shelf this week and flicking through was a very familiar revisiting.

Andrew Lees will eventually make the journey to the Mato Grosso in search of his childhood hero and whether or not he lives up to the imagination is something I couldn't possibly reveal because it is one of this little book's best secrets, creating a compelling and fascinating story even for me, who had no intention of heading for Brazil on the page or otherwise.

I’m thinking I’m probably not the only one travelling in my imagination right now. I seem to be popping to New Zealand almost daily, so I’m wondering where you are heading off to in your imagination...please do share your current most coveted destination in comments. I reckon we’d probably cover the world if we tried. 

And meanwhile enjoy a little round of the tune that Andrew's father would croon as they travelled home from their Liverpool days. 'That tune sends me' he would say to his son, and I have to agree...

The melon story incidentally was legend in our family....

We were staying with the Liverpool family and Uncle Frank had just sailed into port. He walked in the door with a melon under his arm and we had never seen one before. ‘Don’t  pick it up in case you drop it, because it will split in half and then we’ll have to eat it straight away,’ was the instruction we were given. And there it sat, day after day, goading and tormenting me, until eventually I did pick it up, I did drop it, it did split in half and we did have to eat it. Mission accomplished though I was in terrible trouble. Worth it though, never say ‘don’t’ to a seven year old like me.

The Hare and the Moon - A Calendar of Paintings ~ Catherine Hyde

I've admired Catherine Hyde's artwork for years, but without realising it via the cards that come from lovely friends on birthdays, high days and holidays with the beautiful pictures. I do usually look for the artist's name but it takes a while for their style to become familiar enough to be recognised.

And I have my favourites...

Anyone who drives into Cornwall will know the Nearly Home Trees...

Cookworthy Knapp on the A30 near Lifton. A small copse of  beech trees and a proper landmark that we all know and love.

But this could just as easily be us with the woods behind..

 

I had enough of a back-catalogue of memory for Catherine Hyde to recognise her work when I saw this book on a visit to the Elementum Gallery in Sherborne last autumn.

The Hare and the Moon, and as I saw it on the table my first thought was hares, because of that Paul Durcan poem about his father's spirit returning unexpectedly as a hare...

'I saw that his soul was a hare which was poised
In the long grass of his body, ears pricked.
It sprang toward me and halted and I wondered if it
Could hear me breathing...

I stood up to walk around his bed
Only to catch sight again of the hare of his soul
Springing out of the wood into the beach cove of sunlight
And I thought : Yes, that's how it is going to be from now on.
The hare of his soul always there, when I least expect it;
Popping up out of nowhere, sitting still.

The poem is included in the Candlestick Press pamphlet In Memoriam . They sent a copy to me after my dad died and I now try and send a copy to anyone I know who has been bereaved.

So with my resolve already weakening at the sight of a hare, as I opened The Hare and the Moon my next thought was ' If I see a barn owl I'm buying this'.

Well of course I saw a barn owl, they are one of Catherine Hyde's specialities...

But then I have the book and will it just sit on the coffee table for the occasional glance or does it have a greater purpose. The clue is in the title because this is a calendar, so I sat it on a bookstand on January 1st and decided to open the pages through the month, and each successive month through the year, because the book works like an almanac.

The names of the moons, a flower, tree and bird for every month, and a hare leaping across the page throughout the year...

"Waking from the winter solstice a hare begins her journey. Through the landscape and its changing seasons, moving in harmony with the moon. Atmospheric and gorgeous paintings show the hare running in January, watching in February, leaping in March until it comes full circle, sleeping in December. Twelve textless double-page paintings of the hare’s journey are accompanied by three full pages of art showing a tree, a flower and a bird for each month. This rich celebration of flora and fauna includes hawthorn and cowslips, swallows, blackbirds, buzzards and owls, harebells, holly, olive, Rowan, poppies and much more. Titbits of text – folklore, fairytale, myth and legend complimenting the art."

Who could know that 2020 would be the year it has...

When we saw in the new decade last New year's Eve did any of us imagine this...

We still step back occasionally and look at 2020 and ourselves with some incredulity...

At how we've adapted and accepted, and what a turning point this is, a first in our lifetime.

And then we all just get on with it...masks, being careful, following the rules, not putting anyone at risk, lending a helping hand where needed, being there for each other, and looking with such pleasure on The Hare and the Moon every time I walk in the room, and thinking could there have been a better year for such a book. Few words, but meaningful; enough to give me a thought for the day and ground me in the immutable, the things that won't change.

For October, The Hunters Moon, The Wild Moon, The Frosty Moon, The Thunder Moon, the Magpie, the Pomegranate and the myth of Demeter and Persephone. We’ve travelled through snowdrops and primroses, swallows and barn owls, a touchstone for all the things of permanence and year-on-year constancy. I’m looking forward to starting all over again in January.

 

I'm thinking there must be more books that would work in this way so all suggestions very welcome, but meanwhile this would be a fine addition to any wish-list for a forthcoming season of gifts (which I couldn't possibly name). But you know what we always say... give them a long enough lead-in time or you only have yourself to blame if you end up with the celebratory biography of the year.

 

The Towers of Trebizond ~ Rose Macauley

‘Take my camel dear,” said my Aunt Dot as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass.’

A priceless pearl among that string of wonderful first lines from novels and on a par with the fame of The Go-Between perhaps...

'The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there...'

or Anna Karenina for 

'All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,”

But my less odorous companion than a camel, as I started reading Rose Macaulay’s final novel, The Towers of Trebizond, has been my trusty little 1923 Bartholomew’s Handy Reference Atlas. Bookhound found it on his shelves when I was reading, cycling and walking the Silk Road and the Hindu Kush from my armchair a while back. and it has been invaluable ever since.

Recent plague reading had necessitated locating Caffea, also on the Black Sea. The Mongolian horseman had famously laid siege to Caffea in 1346 but were dropping like flies from a rather unusual illness. It quickly became clear that with rapidly diminishing troops they were going to be defeated until they embarked on the first known use of biological warfare. Catapulting the corpses over the city wall and into the besieged city soon had the Black Death rampaging in Caffea and from there it would make its stately progress into Europe and beyond.

It’s where it all began apparently, except many now suggesting that's all the stuff of medieval myth, but you have to agree its a good myth if so, and I'll bet George Martin used it in Game of Thrones somehow.

Barthy's thankfully sorted me out.

With its beautiful and delicate pastel shades of blush rose pink, gentle lilac, primrose yellow, the lightest hint of green and nice downy peach denoting countries various, and all belying the fact that bloodshed and war and heaven knows what had been involved in this springtime paint chart of constantly shifting boundaries. And so to The Towers of Trebizond, but where on earth was Trebizond.

There it was on the Black Sea...

...and I was immediately transported with Laurie, Aunt Dot (Dorothea Ffoulkes-Corbett) Father Hugh Chantry-Pigg and Dr Halide as they make their way by land and sea to the Black Sea shores (taking the camel with them ) for a bit of missionary work.

'The Asia shore heaved down to Troy plain, and between them the Hellespont ran green and widened out presently into the Sea of Marmara...'

'We voyaged all day, and before dark Istanbul could be seen ahead, and it is true that it must look more splendid than any other city one comes to by sea...'

Unfortunately the mission is not without its rivals...

'I wonder who else is rambling about Turkey this spring. Seventh Day Adventists, Billy Grahamites, Writers, diggers, photographers, spies us, and now the BBC. We shall all be tumbling over each other. Abroad isn't what it was.'

Aunt Dot proceeds on her missionary work making a beeline for the woman as the easiest targets, no obstacle too great that it can't be surmounted, whether that involved the wrath of the menfolk who object strongly to any upending of the status quo and banished the women behind locked doors..

'They had now become to her shackled, gagged and oppressed slaves, who must be liberated at once.'

...or the impossibility of the terrain. That's the camel's problem not Auntie Dot's, and it certainly does have some unpredictable mental health issues.

The humour is dry; whip smart observations that pin down the funny side of the serious (I'm afraid I share this sense of humour too) yet is not acerbic or sarcastic and certainly not cruel, arrogant or demeaning. In other words it's pitch perfect and laugh-out-loud funny.

And this is all set against a backdrop of breath-taking scenery. Rose Macaulay had certainly travelled these shores and knew it well doing justice to her sense of place. It's intrepid and laced with a powerful sense of history and change...

'The ghost would be brooding on the woody cliffs and ravines, haunting the citadel and palace, scornfully taking no notice of the town that Trebizond now was.'

Is any book's highest accolade that it makes you want to go there. I certainly felt that way about my journey with Rose Macaulay.

And another thing... Aleppo, Palmyra, Amman, Jericho, Cana, Nazareth Tyre, Damascus. Place names we now sadly only associate with war and destruction, but still Biblical in my lexicon and as Laurie makes her way alone on board the camel through the Holy Land towards the end of the book I was in tune with her sense of  timelessness overlaid by the troubles and changes of the 1920s.

'Twas ever this and doubtless shall be. 

So there you have it. The Towers of Trebizond, I've been there at last. A book I have been meaning to read for years and a wonderful introduction to the writing of Rose Macaulay.

And now I'm wondering has anyone been to Trebizond...

Is it still a destination or a terrible disappointment...

If you have read the book please do share your thoughts...did you laugh or was that just me and mild Covid derangement syndrome, where everything needed to be funny or else...

PS I reckon it was the camel that did it...comments are sorted and back to normal...and breathe...

The Mirror & the Light, and shall we...

Firstly a few housekeeping details... an update on the Comments, or lack of, situation

Thank you to those who let me know there were gremlins and my apologies to Handheld Press that it happened on the very day I had posted about  Potterism by Rose Macaulay and their very kind offer of a discount. Fear not the discount code EMILIE can be used with any of their books by Rose until October 25th and if anyone wanted to leave a comment on that post now please do. More Rose Macaulay to come.

Sadly it looks as if comments will have to stay unthreaded for a while, and I’m really sorry about that because it makes replying to each other that bit more stilted and convoluted. Apparently there is a glitch with certain browsers and Typepad have no plans for a fix just yet. The other option is to import something new to manage comments, third party and complicated (to me...say the letters HTML and I'm away off across the horizon) and it involved adverts and subscriptions and exporting every existing comment (70,000 of them) which then can't be  brought back, and giving them access to every last detail about whether I have sugar in my tea etc and oh dear, it's all too terrifying.

My best suggestion is perhaps to put the original commenters name clearly at the beginning of your comment if it is a specific reply and let’s hope we can soldier on and keep in touch and keep the conversation flowing here as we have been. Please whatever you do don't stop leaving comments, I know from the emails I had last week that many of you value the contact and interaction as do I.

Some of you were also getting a security warning which shouldn't happen as the scribbles is fully compliant. That was due to a few old rogue links on the sidebar that weren't, so I've been through and deleted or altered the troublemakers and hopefully all should be well now. Please do let me know if you have a problem as I pay a monthly fee for all this to work and be secure and advert free etc. so Typepad are very quick to respond when I ask for help.

Meanwhile, we are all doubtless plodding along through the World Situation with patience and forbearance and I had a thought as we hit the winter months here in the Northern Hemisphere...and you are all toasty warm in the Southern Hemisphere....

 

Own up...who else has a copy of The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel which they bought on publication day or soon after and with every intention of reading that instant..

And then lockdown came along and we all thought ‘Perfect, I’ll read it now’.

But somehow it just didn’t/ couldn’t / wouldn’t happen.

Believe me I tried, started and stopped and started again and stopped. Tried once more but my concentration was off on a frolic of its own and the book just defeated me. I think maybe it wasn’t cheerful enough, or I was just in completely the wrong mood.

I was desperately disappointed not to see the book on the Booker shortlist but delighted to catch Hilary Mantel in conversation with James Naughtie at the digital Budleigh Literary Festival, and to read this lovely Q & A article over the weekend. I had also done a dash into Waterstones last week to pick up a copy
of Mantel Pieces, the new collection of Hilary Mantel's essays.

'Fiction redirects us to mystery and chance, and doesn’t assume that people know their own minds or hearts,’ says Hilary Mantel, and it has all spurred me on to try again.

So I was wondering whether anyone fancied a slow, shared meander of a read of The Mirror & the Light, maybe through November and into December? That gives us the rest of October to be getting used to the idea, and do some arm strengthening exercises before we start in earnest. 

No set schedule and nothing strenuous in the way of analysis from me, just an occasional ‘welfare’ post to make sure no one has tendinitis or has cut off the blood supply to their lower half. I’ll just be asking how everyone is doing and we have comments to exchange thoughts, but it’s also that nice warm fuzzy feeling that comes from reading the same book at the same time and knowing that we’re in it together.