dovegreyreader scribbles

Happy New Year....

I think in time-honoured blogging fashion I should have been doing a list of "My Best Reads of 2010" over the last few weeks but I kept putting it off. It's been good to read everyone else's but when I tried to do mine it proved completely impossible. As I scanned the 2010 Book Thoughts list over here >>>> or the 2010 list over here <<<<<< I just couldn't choose and in the end I didn't want to. I don't read a book unless I'm enjoying it so take it from me that everything I've read this year deserves to be on the list.

So I'm really sorry but we went out for lunch and shopping instead of doing that list today and all that remains for me to do is wish you, one and all, a very happy, peaceful and gentle New Year.

We're not New Year's Eve party animals these days, but we will have a nice dinner tomorrow and will be feeding a pensioner Tinker too now that he's eaten all the turkey we sent him home with on Christmas Day. So tonight we'll be here in our slippers knocking back the hot chocolate (me) and the whisky (Bookhound) whilst trying to stay awake and enjoy everyone else's fireworks from here to Lands End, all from the comfort of our own verandah at midnight.

This will also be the year that I don't leave one of those candles (with pretty leaves and things buried in it) burning on the coffee table whilst we watch the spectacle and come back in to find a minor blaze in progress...why do I find it so hard to light the woodburner but so easy to ignite the house?

Rest assured we'll be raising a glass/mug to 2011, to all our family and friends, to all of you and sending my sincere and grateful thanks to every one of you for taking time out to come and read and comment on the scribbles. Here's to another year of very happy reading, great debate and some exciting books to look forward to.

Have a good one x

Hats on...

I have long been of the opinion that I don't suit a hat and I think you can probably see my point...

So for the last however many years a hat has not been an essential item of my core wardrobe...until this winter that is. I just about survived last winter hatless and not wanting to look ridiculous, but this year I couldn't care less. I have suddenly reached that point in life when I'll wear purple if it's warm especially as my head seems to have reverted to its neonatal state and started to lose vast amounts of heat.


I think the error of my hat ways has obviously been about style, with a misguided adherence to the form of the cloche, combined with wishing I had at some time in my life had the thick long blond hair like Mary Hopkin or the  bone structure that would make me look like Twiggy. That's clearly not going to happen now either but suddenly I wondered about a beret.

However having grown up with this picture I had been understandably reluctant to return to the genre, if you look carefully you will see those ears are folding under the weight of that beret and I do remember it being the size of a dinner plate.

So a new knitting book arrived which seemed to offer some hope. It's written by a new convert to the ancient art and is aimed at the novice knitter and Purls of Wisdom The Book of Knitting by Jenny Lord is replete with some fashionable language and attitudes.

'... it's fun, relaxing, gives you the excuse to watch crap telly...'

'...knitting is no longer relegated to the happily retired.'

Apparently it's all about connecting us with our ancestors, though I'd have to disagree with the suggestion that women's lib made us all put our knitting away. Some of us kept the faith and were libbed and egged on by that Twiggy pattern and Fiona wool at 2s/6d a ball...

...so we never actually stopped, and we weren't knitting two piece suits to wear with our pearls either.
No we were knitting those His & Hers Patons Husky jackets weren't we.

Nor do I think that knitting in the 1980s was the 'byword for skint and failed to make the grade', at least not here chez dovegrey. Yes admittedly the knitting world was waiting for Kaffe to come along, and yes we were skint because the interest rate on the mortgage was 15%, but skint wasn't ever going to stop me knitting. Anyway that all probably says far more about me as a knitter of a certain vintage rather than being any criticism of Jenny Lord's encouraging clarion call to the modern-day knitter, so I was delighted, having set off on the beret trail, to find a Classic Beret pattern in the book.

Having acquired some lovely yarn, Katia Azteca, half way between Aran & Chunky weight I was all systems go. It knits up nicely on 5mm needles and gorgeous colours which, though 50/50 wool and acrylic blend and thus normally against my religion, looks and feels soft and warm and affordable at £6.75 per 100gms for an experiment that might end up on Etsy.com. So I set up the KnitPro circular needles, cast on with glee and  immediately replaced the ordinary rib with a springier offset one to cope with any largeness of head. I was on the increases in no time...*K9 Inc1; repeat from * to end of round and the number steadily increased with each row as I knitted the brim.

Now I don't know about you but if I increase I always do it with a nice tidy M1 stitch, picking up the loop inbetween the stitches and knitting into the back of it, so off I went gaily on a beret frolic of my own until several rounds later it was patently obvious I wasn't supposed to have these spare 7 stitches at the end of each row. I had been telling myself that this beret perhaps had some clever and increase-less chunk at the back or something.
Isn't it amazing how long you'll carry on knitting knowing full well it's wrong but hoping for a miracle?
Thinking you know best when in fact you don't and expecting any minute it will all come right?
Finally I look at the instructions regarding abbreviations or 'Skills' as Jenny calls them...
Increase one (Inc1): p 70
I turn to p 70 with a heavy heart...
Knit into the front and back of the same stitch... big difference, my M1 has thrown the numbers out entirley, cue frogging.
So still no beret to show for it and in the meantime I've bought one, on the basis that if this works I'll need several, and which I'm experimenting with in the privacy of mine own home and all before I hit the streets wearing it. So far things are looking hopeful...no wild guffawing as yet but no pictures either.

 

 

A Happy Kindlemas...

I hope you've all been having a wonderful Christmas break, and to those on the East Coast of the USA, I hope you are safe and all have furnaces firing on all cylinders. We're majoring in thaw and slush right now.

Well along with so many others I have homed a Kindle this Christmas. Brought it in from the cold, snuggled it up in a nice festive leather cover which also props itself up...

....and discovered to my complete joy, that though nothing else picks up any sort of wireless signal from the far reaches of the sofa (quite a trek and several thick walls away from the kitchen and the router)  the Kindle has no problem whatsoever.

So I have been sitting in comfort, browsing and downloading samples before finally announcing with great delight that I had bought the second in the Stieg Larsson Millenium Trilogy as my first purchase...

'The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest... it's safely in there for only £2.30, yeeeeees result.'

'Oh so you've read The Girl Who Played With Fire as well have you?' said Offspringette.

'Oh...er...no...er right, hold on, won't take me a minute.'

Someone else who has been missing Rocky more than the rest of us put together in this cold weather is also very pleased with her gift from Santa...

Sixteen years of being an unspoiled cat in this house poor things, sleeping where they can, being turfed out at 10pm to go and fend and hunt and curl up in the shed, and suddenly they are given a luxury fur-lined basket by the fire and allowed to stay there all night. Being the Sue Ellen of the feline world and therefore never averse to a bit of comfort, Muffy took to it as to the manor born, whilst rufty-tufty Tess, sister of Rocky has thus far refused to go anywhere near hers. Rocky would have had something to say about all this and of course would have needed one the size of a tractor wheel.

So now I'm all ears waiting to hear about your gifts...

Eggy Missmuss...

...as the Toddler Gamekeeper used to say and here's wishing you all a warm and peaceful Christmas Day and a gentle time for anyone who may not be feeling too festive.

We're almost there, the tree is done...

and we've been into the sorting office to collect the rest of our post, a sackful including another fifteen books, (eek)

The lane is still impassable to anything but a 4x4 driven by people who know what to do with the gears (i.e. not me) and still no sign of the gas lorry to refill the underground tank, so we can only hope it lasts out long enough for the Aga to cook the turkey. Just a bit of wrapping left to do, but Offspringette and I mixed and cooked whilst listening to the Nine Lessons and Carols from King's College this afternoon as the winter sun dazzled in through the kitchen window and set magnificently in a crystal clear sky.

We're also working very hard to keep the birds fed, now counting five different Robins who seem to have declared a territorial truce over Christmas in order to feast at our various tables, and we've had an unusual seasonal visitor too..

In fact when we climbed into the loft to find the decorations, and then spent an hour looking for the lights (until I remembered they had conked out and I'd thrown them away last year,) it also became evident what all those mice had been working on this winter... please look away now if you are from the RSPCE or are of a delicate disposition.

 

 

Tinselled -up yet?

Good news, we've found a tree and it's in its pot and tied up to the hook on the ceiling ready for a big push on the deccies tomorrow.

Look away now all vegetarians....

...the turkey had led a happy free-range life on the farm up the road but is now deceased and delivered unto us and will need a huge squeeze to get it in the oven,

OK, all clear now vegetarians...

Bookhound and the Kayaker are venturing off to do the final sprout shop any day now... they may be gone some time, and Jim the Postie managed to get as far as us today but no further. We haven't seen him for days so it was a bit of a full-on drop, plus we took in our neighbour's post and drove it down to them in the Land Rover before venturing on into town ourselves, because believe this or not, I hadn't bought a single Christmas gift.

This isn't as bad as it sounds, we are a tiny family and only really buy for each other, and all children are indicating that they would rather see envelopes this year in preference to a huge pile of things they don't really need right now, so we will oblige. But there is still the question of the stockings, I can't bear not to do them so I find boring but useful day to day things to fill them.

The Tinker meanwhile has requested an oven glove and that's all, I expect it will be supplemented with a jar of pickled onions or something just to spoil him.

No sign of a thaw here with plunging night temperatures keeping us fire-huddled; though the snow is now packed down it's solid ice making the lane only exitable by Land Rover, and anyone wanting to go anywhere in a car from here has needed a tow up to the main road. We crept into town very carefully, the side roads are still treacherous and Bookhound was doing all sorts of exciting manoeuvres with the gear box whilst chunnering things like Low Ratio. I'd be hopeless and rarely drive the thing being famed as I am in a previous life for lurching a Land Rover sideways into a ditch up on a very snowy Dartmoor. I had to find a farmer with a tractor to tow me out and was never so embarrassed or cold or wet in my life.

So amongst the post drop were twelve lovely books, including a proof copy of the eagerly anticipated new novel from Edward St Aubyn At Last, due for publication in May though I'm not sure how long I can keep my hands off it. It's the moment Patrick Melrose has been waiting for all his life, the death of his mother, and was one of those I chose for the 200 words in The Times on books I am keen to read in 2011. The piece was in last Saturday and edited dwon but did include new novels from Ann Enright, Paul Bailey and Edward Docx, and can we expect a bigger blessing next year than a new novel from Sebastian Barry? On Canaan's Side will be published by Faber in August.

Another in today's batch that has also picqued my interest The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh. When a book is the subject of a 9-publisher auction there has to be something to commend it, and though not published until Auguest 2011 the proofs are out very early bearing the words ' the Chocolat of 2011.'

Is now the time to confess that I still haven't read Chocolat or should I keep quiet?

But in amongst them all another one I have been looking forward to since the minute I heard about it... Katherine Mansfield The Story- Teller  by Kathleen Jones, a new biography published by Edinburgh University Press. They very kindly contacted me a while ago to ask if I'd like a copy and I'm afraid my reply went back with indecent haste, so how lovely to have a finished copy before Christmas. Bookhound made a move to swipe it off me and wrap it up for a Christmas gift...fat chance. This is often the time of year I get Katherine Mansfield's stories, diaries and notebooks off the shelf and start dipping into them again so that's now a definite plan.

So how are you all doing? Tinselled-up and turkey at the ready?

The Lunar Eclipse in Devon Part Two - wherein I get very cold

So I puffed my way up Rocky's Field in my pyjamas... Galileo would have been proud of me, we are kindred spirits.

The Lunar Eclipse...

Now don't say I don't spoil you but I felt it was worth it for something that hasn't happened on this day since 1638, and won't happen again until 20something and long after we're all gone...

 

More snowreading... South Riding ~ Winifred Holtby

I don't know about you but being a bit traditional I never buy a copy of book when it's serialised on TV in the 'advertising the series' edition, it's against my religion. If I decide to read it I'll hunt out an old edition, so when BBC books very kindly sent me a copy of South Riding by Winifred Holtby I headed straight for my shelves to find the old Virago copy and do a compare and contrast exercise. I know I know, what's to compare, we all love our Viragos but in the wake of a TV series it's obvious which one is going to grab the attention of the viewers, and if that gets more people reading Winifred Holtby then hallelujah.

South Riding is to be serialised early in 2011 and adapted for television by Andrew Davies, so my first thought was an obvious one along the lines of expect sexed-up fireworks that might have made even Winifred sit up and take notice.

Writer Andrew Davies says: "What appealed to me most about South Riding is how fresh and relevant it feels, even though it was written and set in the Thirties. It's a terrific love story but it's also a portrait of a whole community in turmoil, with the country in recession, and bitter struggles between the advocates of change, like our heroine Sarah the new forward-thinking headmistress, and the forces of conservatism embodied in Robert Carne.... It's also full of rich comedy, with some wonderful minor characters, splendidly cast. I feel as if we've rediscovered a forgotten masterpiece."

I hadn't read South Riding but having received the heads-up about the series and now the book, and knowing that I'm a stickler for reading beforehand if I can to get an idea of the characters in my own mind before I see someone else's interpretation, I decided I'd give it a go.

I opened the first page of my nice shiny new BBC edition and a funny thing happened. Apart from the fact that this is proving to be a brilliant read and I can't imagine why I haven't read the book before, I was also trying to place the characters on the cover in parts various and in a way that is, to my surprise, really enhancing the read. Actors we know well Anna Maxwell - Martin (Bleak House) and David Morrissey (everything) star along with Penelope Wilton (most recently Downton Abbey, but for me has the midas touch for any role she plays) and Peter Firth (Harry Pearce in Spooks). Now I'm wondering how they are going to play the parts, which bits will be included, which left out due to time constraints (just three hours in total)  and already I can see that this has the potential to be a great production.

So South Riding my second read for Christmas and though 1930's Yorkshire perhaps slightly far removed from Hilary Mantel's 17th century revolutionary France, yet in other ways perhaps not. Plenty of fermenting discontent evident, class-warfare is rife and skullduggery abounds, just no guillotine as yet.

But what I am also sensing as I read the book is that Winifred Holtby might not have been quite so shocked at an Andrew Davies adaptation (I'm only assuming here based on past Davies form) as I might have first thought. I have always felt huge sympathy for Winifred, no slouch in her own right, but in my mind so often seen as playing second fiddle to Vera Brittain... Bookhound and I came across their shared home in Doughty Street on a recent trip to London..


Yet emerging from that same crucible of the Great War, Winifred Holtby seems to be a fearless writer. One who is completely unafraid of confronting the truth about women's lives along with uncomfortable issues which were doubtless usually confined to hushed whispers, rarely committed to the pages of 'respectable' fiction back in the 1930s. I suspect that Winifred took the word on the page as far as she dare, hoping that one day someone would add in what for her may have been the unsayable... the other bits, and as we know nothing is 'unsayable' for Andrew Davies, the master of those 'other bits'.

Snowreading...

Thanks to the snow I've been doing a lot of this (and thanks as always to Mary Azarian for the picture) and though I may be no further on in my Christmas preparations, I have established some Christmas reading which seems like a sensible bass note to have in place. I have a feeling everything else will now trill along nicely in harmony and just happen.

My recent read of Alexandra Harris's Romantic Moderns was so enjoyable and equally as inspiring as to be slightly disconcerting, it's quite spoiled me for anything else for a while. Somehow one book has stopped all the reading clocks and constantly kept my mind ticking along with ideas about new reading trails for next year. I have been dipping in and out of a huge pile of books now accumulating on the table,

...plenty of diaries and letters, lots of non-fiction and poetry as well as fiction... but I'm not ready to start any of that yet.

I'm not even sure why choosing special Christmas reading seems to be so imperative, but it does. It is a welcome break from the day to day routine and perhaps a chance to admit temporary defeat with a few books which, even though 3/4 read, have been hanging around a little too long. No enthusiasm can be dredged up to persuade me back to their pages and over the final hurdle, yet they dangle around on the edges of my consciousness like huge obstacles stopping me from moving on, so I have cleared those decks for now.

Well snowed-in this weekend, and with every excuse to do it (not that I needed one)  I settled down with yet another pile of books to search for a nice involving epic or three, discarding quite a few along the way until finally I think I might be there. A hundred pages plus into each, plots and characters nicely established, imaginary worlds panning out and I look at each one and can't wait to pick it up again, so I'll share those three in brief instalments this week and I'd love to know about your Christmas reading too.

Firstly a big sprawling epic was required. I always head for Dickens at Christmas and seem to fall flat on my face, and though Our Mutual Friend is an old favourite, I read the first 50 pages and nothing was happening so, with apologies to Chas as usual, I quickly surrendered.

Our recent discussion about Hilary Mantel, and our corporate double-yearning for both her recovery to full health and a sequel to Wolf Hall pronto, reminded me that I had been threatening to read A Place of Greater Safety all year but had never quite managed the timespan and period of concentration in which to get stuck in. After all I had to read the first 60 pages of Wolf Hall twice before I had my bearings and this one at 872 pages is vast and therefore surely trickier, plus I know only a Les Miserables amount about the French Revolution, possibly less than I did about Thomas Cromwell. The book itself is a little unwieldy; an over-stretched hand span holding the spine soon had me in trouble, so I nestled it on a comfortable pillow with good effect ...like a little square head resting expectantly 'neath the guillotine perhaps, and to my complete surprise there I was immediately up and running in 18th century France. Already I am seeing this is history a la Mantel, embroidered with a richness of texture and colour, sights, sounds and smells leaping off the page, every sense brought into play to give the detail that places the reader right there in the midst of  the world she wants us to know. I feel sure many of you have read this, but if you haven't and you enjoyed Wolf Hall, here's the perfect pacifier while awaiting the sequel.

Talking of beheadings there has been a wonderful description of Mary Tudor's Queen of Scots' (thanks Val in comments) botched decapitation. Hilary Mantel does gore quite exquisitely and with such precision, unlike the axe which needed three shots at Mary before she came asunder, and then the mouth that kept moving for fifteen minutes afterwards and the... sorry I forgot, you might be eating.

 

 

 

Snowbusiness...

I'm hoping you are all hunkered down and warm, or if you are in sunnier climes keeping nice and cool, in which case these pictures should help.

Not a lot of snow in our bit of Devon (I can hear Canada guffawing at this mere 3" sprinkling) but enough to make driving the two miles up to the main road a 4x4 affair rather than a Fiesta one.

One fish casualty when it dawned on us last week that the granite trough had been iced over for slightly longer than usual and perhaps we should investigate... three left.

The view across the currently "still and likely to stay that way" deceased Escallonia hedge onto the lane and the fields beyond never fails to make me stand and stare whatever the season.

Bookhound ventured to the top of Rocky's Field (yes we are still missing the old cat) this morning for the view that never fails to take our breath away... it always seems to give some context and perspective to rural life, not a soul in sight, just us and how muffled and quiet everything becomes when it snows.


As for Christmas is it soon?
Not a lot has happened here in readiness because the spirit of the season still doesn't seem to have descended yet, and this despite last Saturday's Vocal Harem choir appearance as guests at the Stannary Brass Band Christmas concert in the Parish Church.


Stannary Brass were superb, Angela Rippon compered from the pulpit and we interspersed with some old favourites and also sang our new Christmas repertoire which was all very well received. Dress code thermal so I wore enough layers to cope with the Battle of Austerlitz, and had it warmed up in the church, or had my wonky thermostat kicked into action, I would likely have needed an ambulance. As it was I maintained an ambient core temperature throughout thus causing nil disruption, a blessing for which everyone present should be thankful.

We do hear the turkey is getting fatter and I am contemplating my Christmas reading, but parcels haven't arrived, we haven't bought a tree because our usual places don't have any, no decorated bough in the kitchen yet... and truly it really doesn't seem like a day since I packed it all away last year. I don't quite feel ready to get it all out again, perhaps tomorrow.

Do you find this happens some years?

 

The Madness of George III by Alan Bennett ~ Devon-style

Gosh, we know how to put on a good show down here in Devon, and, thanks to a timely raid of the operatic society's costume cupboard, we looked the part too for the Endsleigh Salon Christmas extravaganza and our reading of The Madness of George III by Alan Bennett and published by Faber.

Well sort of.

Mr & Mrs Amanda Vickery may well have found fault with the period detail but there's nothing like wearing a set of curtains converted into a frock to get in the mood for a bit of pre-Regency-themed thespianism. My set of brocades apart from weighing a ton were delightfully warm, we could have graced any window with elegance.

As promised lots were drawn for the parts and I was simultaneously Fox, Sheridan and Fitzroy which doesn't explain why I was wearing a frock, but I'd taken a fancy to it early on so it was too late to stop me. My tripartite personality meant I occasionally had a whole page of reading to myself and so in true lovey fashion made the most of the spotlight. Accents slowly went by the by and when German (Queen Charlotte now to be known as Mrs King) or Irish (Sheridan) all seemed to segue into Welsh it seemed far easier to slip into Tavy-speak which added a sprinkling of local flavour and even more hilarity to the production. The King, having spent an inordinate amount of time at stool or in a strait jacket swapped roles with the Prince of Wales during the interval for a change of personality.

We had music as requested in Alan Bennett's stage directions and what a resounding success this was thanks to Rebecca and her Georgian iPod with its little Georgian speakers. There was plenty of Handel's Royal Fireworks but also a scene that commences with Zadok the Priest. Little did we realise how carefully Alan Bennett had choreographed this scene, because as we read through, lo, our rendition also peaked at the exact moment that the music did likewise.

And nor were we without other essential props...

Though it would be improper to single out one performance above all others I think we would all like to commend the Pitt/Pepys/Continuity reader for her Oscar-winning contribution and who can forget that dramatic line uttered with such passion and sincerity...

'The stool is good. A model of its kind. May I congratulate Your Majesty on another splendid stool.'

Or Queen Charlotte uttering her immortal words in broad Devonshire...

'The oversized turbot. I rue the day he was born' as she looks disdainfully at her feckless son.

And of course our thanks to the hotel and the staff, not only for homing us through the year but who came in with our trays of tea as usual, took one look at us and did a runner.

For any book group who haven't tried this yet and who may have contemplated an evening of play-reading I think we'd all recommend it. Apart from the fact that The Madness of George III  was hugely enjoyable and we managed to fit it all into three hours, (which included much messing about with costumes etc,) we all agreed that we had taken away a great deal from the reading of the play and gained much more that had passed us all by on the solo reads beforehand. There were moments of poignancy and great sadness in the midst of the humour, and Alan Bennett surely the master at planting those moments in amongst the talk of madness and chamber pots.

Eat your hearts out Equity, the Endsleigh Salon Players will be treading the boards again for sure.

 

 

Reasons to be Cheerful about Publishing - Part Two

I've just had a bit of an exciting moment writing a little commissioned piece for The Times on the books I am looking forward to in 2011 and I think it will be in this Saturday's edition. The trouble is the word limit was a mere 200, I mean on a normal day that barely gets me into the second paragraph on here so it has been an exercise in unaccustomed precision...actually that's not true, I have to use wordly precision in the day job, so dovegreyreader is where I can go word-mad. See look 93 words already and I've hardly said anything, it's hopeless...now 104.

In order to do justice to the slender piece, I spent another morning with the catalogues spread across the kitchen table and browsed... and browsed...and browsed, and realised that what I had already suggested with RTBCAP 1 is definitely true, 2011 is to be a stellar year for books. I managed by some miracle to squeeze ten books into that piece, but so many more were begging for inclusion that I've picked out a few more here for you to add to your wishlists and library reservations.

First stop the Granta catalogue and an intriguing looking title, Night Waking by Sarah Moss (February 2011). It segues nicely into some of the titles I flagged up up in RTBCAP 1 with its location on a remote and uninhabited Hebridean island. Author Anna Bennett has a book to write but also a toddler and a disturbed seven-year old to care for plus the puffin-watching scientist husband who has brought them all there. Haunted by the discovery of a baby's skeleton in the garden and letters from a nurse sent to introduce modern medicine to  the island in the 1870s... I could go on but I'm up to 264 words and have many more books to go, so I won't. But that sounds promising to me.

From the same stable and given this year's penchant for troikas and all things Russian, I like the sound of The Possessed - Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them by Elif Batuman (April 2011) because apparently it 'is quite unlike any book you'll have read before' and will 'send you back to your bookshelves with a sublime buzz'.  Elif Batuman follows the foosteps of her favourite authors both literally and metaphorically as she searches for the answers to the big questions via Tolstoy's estate and a possible murder, thence to Samarkand and St Petersburg, and on the trail of Pushkin in the Caucasus. Fresh readings of the great Russians are promised and though I still haven't quite grasped the premise I'm up for anything that offers a new slant on Russian literature, and apparently there is much humour here too.

The Journey of Anders Sparrman by Per Wastberg (April 2011) is of that thorny genre the biographical novel which does sometimes throw me, but I do love the sound of this life... a Swedish scientist, explorer and abolitionist who travelled with Captain Cook and was a forerunner to Charles Darwin as he journeys to China, Tahiti and South Africa. A beguiling soul is to be rescued from oblivion which we can only applaud and as historical chronicle the novel can't be faulted apparently.

From Portobello Books The Report by Jessica Francis Kane, (March 2011) a novel based on the true story of the worst UK civilian disaster of World War II, the Bethnal Green tube tragedy which claimed the lives of 173 people. As truth is disentangled from rumour, decisions must be made about how much truth a community can bear. It is decades later when the case is re-opened by a survivor that the facts can finally emerge. Hilary Mantel rated Jessica Francis Kane's short story collection highly and classed her as an author to watch.

The Rest is Silence by Carlo Guelfenbein ( May 2011) is translated from Spanish and will apparently appeal to fans of Isabel Allende, that's me and probably plenty of you. Tommy, twelve years old and with a weak heart finds himself unable to join in with his cousin's games and so settles under the table after a family lunch and records the conversation. Inevitably he's going to hear things he's not supposed to and with other family members harbouring their own griefs much is left unsaid between as the novel moves towards its... No that's quite enough of the plot,  but the novel had been high in the bestseller lists around the world which though no guarantee of success here in the UK bodes well.

From Bloomsbury, Lucky Break by Esther Freud (April 2011). I have not kept pace with Esther Freud's writing since reading Summer at Gaglow and Hideous Kinky but should have done because I enjoyed both those very much indeed, so I am ready and waiting for this one. A huddled circle of nervous dramatic arts students are told that at this drama school they will taught to Act, trained not to perform but to truly Be. In the hands of Esther Freud I fully expect this to be a wonderful expose of the behind the scenes (sorry) shenanigans because as I recall she has a way of getting to the truth of those seemingly sham and false life situations.

From Corvus comes Mozart's Last Aria by Matt Rees (May 2011) better known by me for his crime series set in the Middle East but now turning his hand to a new setting. It is 1791 and Vienna's brightest star is convinced he has been poisoned, his death within six weeks opens up one whole can of concertos as rumours abound about infidelity, bankruptcy and murder. It is Mozart's sister who investigates, searching for clues in the bewitching last opera, The Magic Flute. For an operatic philistine like me this purloining of the great life for a crime novel doesn't worry me in the slightest, in fact, knowing how much I have enjoyed Matt Rees's other crime novels, I suspect I will enjoy this one as a great page turner. Others among you may feel differently.

Fields of Ice by Arabella Edge (February 2011) from Picador tells the story of Franklin's final expedition to the North-West passage after which he was never heard from again and all told through the eyes of the ship's chief steward. I have Andrew Lambert's  biography so could just as easily return to the source and this novel may well inspire me to read more, but Arabella Edge also tells the story of Franklin's wife who spent years and a great deal of money trying to find her husband so I'm interested.

Also from Picador, The Devil's Garden by Edward Docx (April 2011) his first novel since Self Help was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2007. I sense Conradian Heart of Darkness themes as scientist Dr Forle finds himself on the last inhabited river station before the impassable interior and with an expedition to lead into the forest glades where may lay important revelations about evolution. Witnessing something he cannot 'unsee' presents Forle with many dilemmas and takes him deeper into a world of mystery and violence where he will be faced with his true self and have to make some very tough decisions. That's my precis of Picador's precis so make of it what you will but I enjoyed Self Help and am looking forward to this one

1262 words and counting and still not finished, plenty more great reads to shout from the rooftops so you can see how impossible 200 were and I will let you know about those other 10 when that little piece has been published.

 

 

 

 

 

The Endsleigh Salon Christmas Extravaganza.

It's tonight and I am more excited than is good for me, the Endsleigh Salon Christmas gathering of the book group with a difference and we have been looking forward to this almost since the last one, the highlight of our year and for 2010 we are pushing the boat out very big time.

First up, the Secret Santa limit is as usual set at £1.50 for the Christmasiest giftette you can find. Then same room, same place, same time and having always threatened to have ourselves a theatrical evening and read through a play, tonight's the night. Thespians the lot of us thanks to Faber who came up with the perfect production for us when I asked if they could suggest something funny and suitable for about fifteen people. A stroke of brilliance from the drama department and their suggestion of The Madness of George III by Alan Bennett went down a storm with the salonistas.

So we will be performing to an audience of no one but ourselves from scratch, no rehearsals, nothing and it all promises to be hilarious.

Look, even Alan Bennett is looking forward to a complete massacre of one of his many masterpieces...

What could be better and more perfectly contemporaneous with our surroundings?

Imagine Georgiana's early 19th century weekend houseparties at Endsleigh Cottage, her holiday retreat deep in the Tamar Valley. Someone from the village has spent three days plumping up all the feather mattresses (yes really) the Bedford's staff have all arrived in convoy followed by the guests travelling down from London with all the latest gossip about events at Court. Surely they would have talked about George's rather embarrassing ailments, and doubtless in the very room we sit in and to the background of the very same listed wallpaper, whilst looking out of the same windows onto the same gardens...

'My dear...you should have seen him...yes...in his nightshirt they say... and the water... well we're told aubergine is the new purple... darling, I'm thinking of having the drawing room painted in that new colour from Farrow & Ball...King's Kidney.'

Anyway we have embraced the thespian challenge with much enthusiasm. A theatre company's costume department has been raided for a few wigs and frocks, the ubiquitous nightshirt will doubtless be much in evidence and we're all bringing along 'a prop' each ...watch out for a dozen chamber pots. To avoid tantrums we are drawing lots for the parts as we arrive tonight, and will probably have to play several each but we'll get around that...

Curtain up and pictures to follow of course.

Threads of Feeling@ The Foundling Museum

Coram Fields in London has long been in my consciousness as the venue of choice to escape to from the rigours of the sluice; an excursion off the ward and the place we would be sent to as junior nurses at Gt Ormond Street with children in tow to give them some fresh air.

So off we'd trot in our capes, pushing the children along in ancient pushchairs and prams past the circular chapel building which used to extend out into the hospital driveway. Little had changed in the 1970s from this 1940's picture and incidentally, we'd also 'give them some fresh air' by wheeling cots out on to those balconies. The heatwave summer of 1976 quite memorable for sitting out there feeding babies at 3am. As if by magic the scrapbook produces this picture of me early one morning, ward 4AB (standing right where that red dot is!) Neonatal & Abdominal Surgery, a little baby called Nicholas and with the breeze billowing in my gown. Those were the days when I could see a baby perfectly clearly that close up in my arms...now I have to hold them about three feet away.

On those excursions we'd turn left along Great Ormond Street, left at the old School of Nursing at the bottom and into Lamb's Conduit Street and on across into Coram Fields, site of the old Foundling Hospital and where, to this day, adults are only allowed in if accompanying a child. But as per usual I knew little if anything about the Foundling Hospital, and can only imagine that we were so engrossed in the heritage of our own alma mater we couldn't be bothered with the heritage of anyone else's.

So off to the Foundling Museum in Brunswick Square on that London trip to see the Threads of Feeling exhibition and to discover more about the history... and what a lot I had to learn, not only about the foundlings but who knew about the importance of the textiles.

The London Foundling Hospital was established in 1739 by Royal Charter, and work now undertaken by the modern charity Coram makes this England's longest-established children's charity with a paper archive that occupies 250 metres of shelf space. Record-keeping has been of the utmost importance from the beginning and it was searching these archives whilst researching his book Dress of the People that led historian John Styles to discover that herein lay the best collection of accurately dated everyday 18th century textiles in the country.

Incidentally I now discover that John Styles is Mr Amanda Vickery whose current TV series of her own book Behind Closed Doors - At Home in Georgian England has me transfixed. Ms Vickery has a wonderfully saucy twinkle in her eye and to her voice as she peeks behind those doors and I'm loving the series.

I now have both "His and Hers" books off the shelves and will be delving into them soon, in fact the BBC are excelling themselves this winter with Mary Beard on Pompeii coming up this week too, all far more TV than I usually watch but all good for the knitting progress now I've moved on from fingerless gwubs to berets...more about beret disasters to follow.

Back to the foundlings and those 5,000 small textile items pinned initially to the clothing of the babies who were left in the hospital's care and subsequently transferred to carefully documented paper records for each child, or snippets of clothing cut off and meticulously dated. There was always a chance a child could be reclaimed and these 'threads' of connection were vital evidence given the hospital's preference for changing a baby's name on admittance.

It was all a lottery in the truest sense, far more babies than space so the mothers would draw a coloured ball from a bag, white signalled yea subject to checks for age and infectious disease, black signalled nay. That process meant the acceptance between 1749 and 1756 of only 803 babies out of 2,808 brought to the doors. Parliamentary funding, which removed the selection process for just four years from 1756 to 1760, saw the acceptance of an overwhelming 14,934.

Those are quite staggering numbers to contemplate and unsurprisingly the death rate among babies admitted was a massive two thirds, though John Styles in his excellent little guide book does set those numbers in context; at this time over half the babies born in London would die in infancy and those left at the Foundling Hospital would be amongst the most vulnerable.

Poignant doesn't come close really. Who could have imagined how emotional it would be to look at those little scraps of fabric,

Many of them crumpled and stained and to think of the babies left there with these tiny signs of their existence.


Fascinating to look at the documentation too, each baby's admission form with its checklist of garments, items of clothing that have long since disappeared... biggin, barrow, mantle, clout, pilch as have many of the fabrics ... charming names like camblett, fustian, cherryderry and linsey-woolsey. Google gets me no further than Biggin Hill when I try to investigate the clothing though I do have some ancient knitting patterns for a pilch.

The staircase at the Foundling Museum is the one from the original building which was eventually demolished in the 1920s and not hard to imagine the trudge of little booted orphan feet climbing up and down.

The stairs complemented for this exhibition by a beautiful ribbon installation in the stairwell created by VV Rouleaux another shop in London I have always been meaning to visit

They saw me coming because there was some replica fabric to buy, so just one piece now in my stash because of its association with this moving little note left with Foundling no. 8959, a girl admitted 19 June 1758...

'Florella Burney Born june the 19: 1758 In the Parish off St.Anns SoHo. not Baptize'd, pray Let partiuclare Care be Taken'en off this child, As it will be call'd for Again...'

 

 

Ink in the Blood ~ Hilary Mantel

I am quite excited about this because I have been reading extracts and abridged bits and all sorts everywhere from Hilary Mantel's recent hospital diary Ink in the Blood, written when she was very seriously ill earlier this year. Routine surgery to resolve an intestinal obstruction (routine for her surgeon apparently until he got in there) became a six hour marathon of mammoth complexity for someone whose inner workings were snarled up by the inevitable adhesions caused by long-term endometriosis. Recovery was hampered by the inevitable wound infections and weeks on what I assume was the newish but painfully restricting  and awkward vacuum-assisted closure method to try and resolve this. I suspect Hilary Mantel has indeed been to the brink and back both physically and emotionally.

Can I be really honest and say that though my first thought was a massive amount of sympathy for Hilary Mantel and the nightmare of suffering she must have endured, it was swiftly followed by a rather selfish second thought, a terrible one along the lines of 'I wonder how much longer this means we'll have to wait for the Wolf Hall sequel'... I know, I'm deeply ashamed of that thought too and if anyone reading this can get a message to our 'ilary, please let her know I do quite understand and will wait as long as I have to, just concentrate on getting better.

When I read the first abridged extract I knew I was reading something very extraordinary as Hilary Mantel stares down that debilitating illness head on and unflinchingly writes about it as only she can, and I knew I wanted to read it all, properly and slowly, so very good news that Ink in the Blood is at least to be published as an e book download for the princely sum of 99p and available via all digital retailers next month.

If that doesn't include Waterstone's and the Sony e reader then my decision will almost be made, I might have to buy a 'KinYouKnowWhatdle'.

 

 

Sorry about this...it's fishing

I am so sorry about this but we have got to talk about a fishing book today or there'll be trouble, no logs, no building, no shopping, no cooking... you can see that's far too great a risk to take. I note that the last time I did this the blog post garnered one comment so I don't have high expectations for arousing your interest, but needs must, so if you could bear with me I'd be grateful.

I'm not the only one to have been gallivanting off to London because Bookhound braved the snow and ice to get there for a book launch last week. Farlow's of Pall Mall the venue for the unveiling of Fred Buller's sequel to The Domesday Book of Giant Salmon... er... The Domesday Book of Giant Salmon Volume II. More of the Largest Atlantic Salmon Ever Caught.

Actually I'm really thrilled about it all, honestly. Working on a book like this is like having an all-absorbing creche to send your husband to on a regular basis as he disappears into his study for hours on end to check out the legitimacy of the catches, research the locations and examine and verify the photos with a magnifying glass for signs of ...heck dare I use the word... doctoring. Then I go in and slap a cup of tea on the desk and there's a sharp intake of breath as precious letters and documents are carefully extracted... and I am caught in the net and have to look at the latest picture on the screen and admire a dead fish as effusively as possible...and then I have to listen to the details. Even our Canadian visitors were involved this year, bringing over a book with more useful  information and only published there... bless Kevin and Sheila for driving out to source the only copy in Calgary (hope you didn't get a parking ticket or worse Sheila!)

Bookhound and Fred have been good friends for a number of years and it has been Bookhound's greatest pleasure to be invited to help with the compilation and research for both books which detail all the salmon caught on a fly (no cheating with worms here) weighing over 50lbs. The postman brings many letters from Fred (who doesn't compute) and the phone trills many times a day with calls from around the world when these books are in the making of, and if Bookhound's out I have to remember to tell him things like "Oh Norway rang" when he comes in, because we have inadvertently become part of Mission Control for all news of giant salmon wherever they may be caught. In fact Norway rang as Bookhound was heading back down the motorway to home, and as Fred has declared this to be his final book I suspect I know who will taking on the Giant Salmon mantle for Volume III... Even More of the Largest etc

Published by Constable & Robinson the book is beautiful, perfect for the fisherman in your life for Christmas, and you can read a write up of the event here with His Truly's picture, and there's Fred, now 84, wearing Bookhound's jacket because it was a mighty chilly but wonderful night and that poster is now on Bookhound's wall.

 

Team Tolstoy ~ " Still the cannon-balls whistled and flopped..."

здравствулте! и как вы Team Tolstoy, and can it really be that we have survived yet another battle having barely had time to regroup after the last one?
I must admit I wasn't expecting that quite so immediately, no sooner settled in the drawing room than off to fight at...was that the infamous Battle of Austerlitz?

Even I remember that from school history.

Here in the UK and down here in Devon, we've had the most perfect weather for reading War and Peace, not a lot of snow for us but the most magical Narnia-like scenes with day-long hoar frosts that edge every single leaf in ice. The hedgerows looking like a glorious confection but with a heaviness to the cold and a murky mist that made walking along the lane feel quite oppressive, so I settled down and read this month's W&P ration in an afternoon (inclusive of nap) huddled next to the woodburner yet again, and perhaps came some way to knowing a fraction of how cold the real place must have been.

So Pierre, seemingly ill-versed in the ways of the world is to be fleeced of his fortune, and what a spectacle that proved to be, enough to have me groaning as I read. Suddenly he is the most popular man about town, and how unaware the gullible and trusting Pierre seemed to be of his appeal as he is naively bounced into marriage with the beautiful but apparently empty-headed Helene. Poor Marya meanwhile (who I can't help but love) is not coping at all well with the mating game and plumps for fidelity to her family and her father rather than betrothal to Prince Anatole ... wise decision Marya, wise decision. I felt desperately sorry for her though, so out of place in that world of glamour and I definitely wanted to whisper in her ear...don't trust that duplicitous Bourienne woman whatever you do.

I think I'm gradually extracting a real sense of the virtues, or lack of them, attached to these various families...the Bolkonskys seem to verge on the eccentric but with true and sincere hearts beating in there, whilst if you found yourself married into the Kuragins, as is poor naive Pierre, you'd have to be concerned. The Rostovs on the other hand seem like all round cheery good eggs.

This battle, whilst still confusing, did seem to have its emphasis slightly less on complex flanking strategy and much more on character revelation. Basically I understood that the Russians rather complacently had marked Napoleon down as "over there" when in fact he was "BEHIND YOU", or at least not where he was expected as in on the doorstep ready to pounce, and the Russians took a trouncing.

I happened to read all that just after the UK had taken a bit of a trouncing from the Russians with the doomed 2018 World Cup bid.
Had we been a mite complacent about our chances?
Did we get our come uppance?
Did we as a nation slink off to lick our wounds?
Yes to all of those.
That little and seemingly minor national defeat, and inflicted by a nation we'd quite like to stand tall against at every opportunity, gave me the tiniest sense of how the Russians might have felt after Austerlitz. Obviously no one died in the World Cup debacle so it was only the tiniest comparable feeling of national humiliation in the face of overweening hubris, but it was enough.

What a contrast between the leaders, Napoleon expressionless and imperious as he surveyed the bungling Russian army from his superior hilltop position, the handsome and revered Tsar Alexander a dejected, broken and defeated man. Then of course we took a few hits on the field and I'm as concerned as the next person about Andrei, but what a magnificent moment as he lies injured on and gazes at the sky. Our boy is learning some harsh lessons

'Everything seemed so futile and insignificant in comparison with the stern and solemn train of thought that weakness from loss of blood, suffering and the nearness of death, aroused in him. Looking into Napoleon's eyes Prince Andrei thought of the insignificance of greatness, the unimportance of life which no one could understand, and still greater importance of death, the meaning of which no one alive could understand or explain.'

And I now have rather a ridiculous question about cannonballs... were they full of something like gunpowder that exploded on impact, or just great big round heavy lumps of something and it was your bad luck if you happened to be standing in the path of one when it landed?
Whatever they seem to do an awful lot of damage...

'Suddenly a cannon-ball hissed so low above the crowd that everyone ducked. It flopped into something moist, and the general fell from his horse in a pool of blood.'

So Team Tolstoy I think you can see I'm really enjoying this a great deal but it's over to you for the more intelligent and serious analysis, and do excuse me because my aseptic technique is required in the field hospital... yes, yes I know, that's Flo and it's the wrong war.

 Next month's reading, if you're keeping to the schedule, is a slightly bigger chunk :: Book Two Parts 1 & 2 (about 120 pages in my edition) and the troika stops back here on January 9th 2011 to discuss.

 

 

 

 

Getting to Grips with Ghosts ...Susan Hill & Sarah Waters in conversation @ The Royal Society of Literature

It seems light years since that first evening of my three-day trip to London, but having arrived at lunchtime and spent the afternoon in the V&A Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green and then done a quick nip to The Women's Library in Aldgate, it was time to scoot over to The Strand. Somerset House in fact for my evening mixing it with the "Fellows" at the Royal Society of Literature because membership seems to include a great number of the nation's revered writers who have been elected in.

At this point perhaps it would be helpful to outline the current aims and objectives of the RSL founded by King George IV in 1820, to ‘reward literary merit and excite literary talent’.

'The aim of the Royal Society of Literature is to nurture, celebrate and defend Britain's outstanding tradition of writing. To this end it organises public lectures and debates, makes awards to new and established writers, and campaigns for the encouragement and appreciation of authors.'

Well I can heart all of that having discovered the RSL via a chance find of the annual magazine in Waterstone's, now readily available to the un-fellowed general public and well worth reading.

So I walked along the Embankment and climbed umpteen flights of stairs up to the venue to hear Susan Hill and Sarah Waters in conversation with Philip Hensher on the subject of ghost stories, and all to the lively accompaniment of the opening night party for the ice rink next door resonating through the walls... what a shame. A cold winter's evening in London, the building lending itself perfectly to some subdued lighting and whispered talk of all things ghostly, the Kenneth Clarke lecture theatre packed out, and all had to be spoken at full volume into microphones in order to compete with the band. Never mind, this is England, everyone soldiered on and tried to ignore it all and concentrate on the matter in hand.

Philip Hensher opened proceedings with an extract taken from Casting the Runes by M.R.James investing it with sufficient atmosphere for us all to be increasingly oblivious to the backing singers.

Asked about her own approach to ghost stories, Susan Hill cited several favourites, A Christmas Carol, The Turn of the Screw and the writing of M.R.James before elaborating on the challenge she has taken up of attempting to write slightly longer ghost stories, hence The Woman in Black and I would add Mist in the Mirror. Quoting M.R.James's economy and his own premise that whilst reticence creates effect but blatancy ruins the good ghost story, Susan proceeded to talk about the slow build up required and the constant need to stop and leave the reader waiting and wanting thus creating a fine balance between satisfied and unsatisfied.

Sarah Waters shared her own favourites, The Monkey's Paw by W.W.Jacobs and The Keepers of the Wall / Well (my apologies, I think the singers were hitting a final line so I didn't quite catch this title or the author, so that's your starter for ten) before talking about her own slant on gothic and the eruption of the irrational, the poltergeists and uncontrolled energy that she had invested in The Little Stranger whilst also applying herself to the complexities of post-war class differences.

On questioning from Philip Hensher about the malevolence of inanimate objects, Sarah Waters confirmed her fascination with this and their relevance to the ghost story whilst Susan Hill favoured the malevolence of place citing the overgrown garden as used in her recent novella The Small Hand as an example. Incidentally, concerned at avoiding any pigeon-holing into the genre of ghost story writer, Susan assured us that she has promised not to write another for five years...you read it here and if you haven't already heard the news, The Small Hand is to be televised by the BBC next Christmas.

Discussing the writing of the ghost story as a technical challenge Susan shared her tips...a list of ingredients needed to make it work, and whilst a ghost may seem obvious it is imperative that it does not induce laughter and must have a reason and purpose to be there, atmosphere to be created, a sense of place and weather, whilst Sarah Waters starts with an effect and likes to build up the uncanny within the boundaries and rules required by the paranormal whilst 'making strange'.

Asked whether ghosts have to be malevolent Susan said no and cited The July Ghost by A.S.Byatt as evidence whilst Sarah mulled over the scenario of the unwelcome return of the loved ones who may not seem as appealing as they had in life and offered John Charrington's Wedding by E.Nesbit as a good example.

Philip Hensher suggested that The Small Hand begins where M.R.James leaves off and asked how Susan created that crescendo of tension to which Susan offered her instinct and experience as a writer and feel for the pace by way of explanation.

Audience questions followed and much discussion that, despite changing cultural norms and a far less repressed society, the ghost story retains its nineteenth century popularity and perhaps that's about its timeless ability to delve into the human psyche and probe what lies beneath, perhaps it chimes with deepest fears. The talk ended with suggestions for forgotten ghost stories and authors so I came away with a nice list to explore before heading out into a cold London night to walk along the Strand with these in mind...

The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton and links to several online editions here
Elizabeth Bowen - The Demon Lover
Kipling - They
Mrs Oliphant - The Open Door
Henry James - The Jolly Corner

My thanks to the RSL for the kind invitation and to the friends I met there, if you're reading this it was lovely to meet up. Now I'm sure you'll be able to add your favourite ghost stories to the list so please do, I'm in the mood for reading more.

Romantic Moderns ~ Alexandra Harris

This might be a complete dog's dinner of an offering because I haven't even finished the book yet, but I couldn't stop myself writing something about Romantic Moderns - English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper by Alexandra Harris along the way because it is proving to be a truly inspiring read.

It was Rev Cheryl who first waved the flag of enthusiasm for Romantic Moderns in comments here which was quite enough to put it to the top of my list, and you may recall this was my treat buy in Foyle's after the World Book Night editorial meeting. I knew before the train home had reached Reading that Rev Cheryl had advised us well and I have been welded to the book ever since.

The deserved winner of this year's Guardian First Book Award and with doubtless a clutch more prizes to come, the book takes as its central theme the artists and writers of the 1930s and 1940s. Alexandra Harris delineates the explorations they made between the 'modern' present and what seemed like a quaint nostalgia for the past. A wealth of fascinating literary and artistic names populate the stage and all rubbing shoulders with the notion that the past needn't be dismissed and left behind, in fact it was important to retain it and demonstrate that it could succesfully be incorporated into the present.

I am trying to read sensibly and slowly because each chapter is a little microcosm of inspirational reading trails with enticing titles like The Canon Revised, The Weather Forecast, Village Life, Parish News, Variations on a View, Dreaming of Manderley. I want to appreciate every single one in depth so once I've finished I plan to re-read the book a chapter at a time and follow up those trails very slowly through next year, so if anyone else wants to join the Romantic Moderns journey you will be most welcome.

Sorry, avert your gaze all those whom this doth sore offend, but as I've read I've made the oddest notes and nabbed quotes in the front of the book as usual which I need to go back to. They meant something exciting and inspiring at the time and will do so again, so I need to fully explore the context and read around in much more depth.

"Virginia Woolf as 'light brightening and widening'..."

"distance lends enchantment..."

"tradition of sympathy mixed up with not caring..."

"the democratization of the country house... explore that"

"marginalia as an ongoing conversation... yes, that's me"

"the effect of writers on the countryside eg Top Withens assumes significance+++ when Emily Bronte and Wuthering Heights are added in..."

"how language has changed the texture of the land..."

"the cycle of threat and survival..."

and so on, all a complete mish mash that I want to explore further.

I've noted a few over-arching themes too..

'The anxiety of artistic identity..."

"How to safely weave nostalgia for the past into the present in a balanced and tempered way, without falling back on the seeming constancies of nostalgia in the face of an uncertain present...hmm"

As I've read I've been listing lives I want to know more about, writers whose books I must read, artists whose work I must gaze at.

Elizabeth Bowen - I have struggled with her fiction on the past, but having learned that she was the successor to Virginia Woolf's style that may be why her books require a little extra stamina. I've already started The Last September and I'm hopeful. Some time ago I also bought a book of Elizabeth Bowen's essays and they lead me into the whole world of the Anglo-Irish, and the notion of the Big House of which I know little beyond the exhibition I saw whilst in Dublin, so those trails beckon.

John Betjeman - I'm always happy to stray into JB territory and Alexandra Harris offers some new perspectives on the man we all feel we know so well.Time to read Summoned by Bells again.

Eric Ravilious - a perennial favourite, timeless appeal and art that speaks to the core of Alexandra Harris's themes, the past and the present overlaying but not suffocating each other... I 'understand' this picture now. We recently stumbled on an exhibition of the photos of James Ravilious in Truro Museum, and now I recognise the significance of those photos too, James seems to have continued his father's work via the camera lens. More about Eric Ravilious on the Imperial War Museum site.

E.M.Forster - well now it's really finally time to read Howards End,  a book that I have given up on so many times (shame on me) perhaps because I had never really considered its context carefully enough.

Roger Fry - Mr Groundbreaking in the art and design world it would seem and Virginia Woolf's biography of him has sat here for years unheeded.

Stevie Smith - I'm sure I have Novel on Yellow Paper here somewhere but another writer I have largely ignored despite all that waving not drowning she's been doing at me... or was it drowning not waving? Whatever, hold on Stevie, I'm diving in.

Stanley Spencer  - Bookhound's favourite artist...

...no shortage of books about Stanley here and we did two trips to the Tate to catch the exhibition a few years ago too, plus I then went to stay with a good friend in Maidenhead so we did the Stanley Spencer trail down to Cookham. Time to get those books off the shelf and have a good look.

Edward Bawden - Another artist I know of and often recognise the work but I know nothing about the man.


The Pipers - John and Myfanwy 

I have Frances Spalding's biography of the Pipers and yet again know and recognise the iconic work, but that's as far as it goes. I knew little about how important they were, a sort of artistic bridge between the past and the present.

And so the list goes on Florence White, Flora Thompson, White's Selborne,and doubtless more because I'm still three chapters aways from the end but one name crops up constantly, T.S.Eliot.

I hadn't quite appreciated the power that one man had to guide cultural and aesthetic thinking but there is little doubt that T.S.Eliot was incredibly influential on the artists and writers of the time. I had coincidentally been reading Four Quartets recently but without the benefit of the knowledge that Romantic Moderns has now invested in the poem. The Wasteland made sense the day I heard a recording of T.S.Eliot reading it and I have a recording of Ranulph Fiennes reading Four Quartets v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y so I'll hope for even more enlightenment.

I suspect Romantic Moderns may resonate differently with each reader, but for me it's been like basking in the gentle glow of a constant literary and artistic flame. It covers an era I thought I knew quite well but how wrong could I be. I definitely hadn't appreciated the finely nuanced sensibilities of the time and the pleasure I have had from learning so much reminds me, if ever I needed reminding, of the power of a single book to invigorate my thinking and revitalize my reading.

That Romantic Moderns flame will flicker on brightly into 2011 for sure.

I think I want one of these...

My thanks to Ruth for sending this link ...

 

Badaude paints in Paris

Badaude, the artist j'adore, has been commissioned to paint a Christmas window for the Shakespeare & Co bookshop in Paris this weekend, one of the spiritual homes of Ulysses thanks to the vision and tenacity of  then bookshop owner Sylvia Beach. Badaude is sleeping in the bookshop (as you do with this bookshop)  and is busy with the brushes as I type, with regular progress updates on her blog.

The theme is a literary dinner party with James Joyce at the piano creating the knees up (yes, dear reader, I too saw that piano) and our artist has been concentrating hard on Allen Ginsburg's derriere today and is now asking for suggestions about the music James Joyce should be playing. My suggestion of Come Into the Garden Maud quite likely to upset good friend Yeats and therefore perhaps not a good idea.

Being an artist of the Immature School myself (limited if any progress beyond the age of 6yrs) I always find real pleasure in watching gifted others creating something like this, and sneakily sat and watched Badaude draw whilst at Port Eliot last year, saving her from that wasp sting you may recall. She ran an innovative little scheme a few weeks ago to provide some comic books for the children she was teaching... in return for sending a book from  her Amazon wishlist she sent out two signed posters, so I now have some treasured Badaude of my own on the Book Room wall.

It all makes you want to be in Paris right now, but failing that we can but admire the progress and cheer her on from afar.

Dear Diary...The Persephone Lecture 2010 ~ David Kynaston

So how many times have you started writing a diary in your life?
Do you still write it or have you stopped?

Yet another start made earlier this year here and sat looking out on the gorgeous view from this little table in the window in the hope that I might succeed if I had a special place to sit, so why do I drift and eventually forget to write it?

Perhaps because for me it always seems like a load of uninteresting, unnecessary trivia and tosh with a tendency towards the mawkish that I and the world, (though heaven forfend the world ever saw it)  can manage without, far too embarrassing for its seeming mundanity even if I am the only person to read it.

However I left the Persephone Lecture given by David Kynaston recently completely inspired to take it all up again... properly...for the 105th time. Whilst all diaries are a valuable historical resource it would seem women's diaries are especially so, and for exactly those reasons that I have given up on so many occasions, women bother to record the trivial events that are the bread and butter of the social historians of the future.

David Kynaston the author of Austerity Britain and Family Britain, recounted a moment of epiphany when it dawned on him just how important a woman's diary was as a historical source; that each person's life was of equal validity and worthy of inclusion in any account of the history of an era and this the moment that caused him to re-think the type of history he wished to take into account.

The diarists he mentioned were Jenny Hill whose 1950's diary is kept at Winchester County Records Office,  Judy Haynes of Chingford whose diary opened a door onto Middle Englandand whose daughter Pamela was in the audience, Gladys Langford, born in 1890, Vere Hodgson of Few Eggs and No Oranges fame and of course perhaps the most well known, Nella Last who compiled hers as part of the Mass Observation programme.

David Kynaston proceeded to elaborate on the historical value of the diaries, how representative or not they may be in the face of far fewer working class diarists and the bias of those in existence to the south of the country, but nevertheless the diaries were contemporaneous, autobiographical and undistorted and predominantly by woman, thus giving a female point of view to domestic, local and occasionally national events. I sat and looked around the elegant room at the Art Worker's Guild in Queen's Square, as the portraits of the great and eminent (and mostly men) peered down at me and had a little revelation of my own, all fuelled by David Kynaston's insistence, about the importance of everyone's offerings not just the seemingly great and the good.

On my return, Bookhound, a prolific diarist himself for the last five years or so and always nagging me to start one, produced as if by magic a blank Moleskinne notebook and I'm back in the groove, writing it all down because who knows how useful it may be for the historians of the future to know that last week a Barn Owl circled the Branwolery (yes really) or that I personally am very happy about the Royal Wedding and wish Wills and Kate much happiness, or that we've had an unusually early and rather challenging cold snap this week. And apparently, if you write about similar national events from your own perspective that is even more useful because then comparisons can be made and different points of view explored.

Currently I have written amongst other things for the last four days 'Must read War & Peace' and now I really must.

So do you or don't you keep a diary?

 

 

World Book Night launches today...

... and the fruits of my trip to the editorial meeting in London a few weeks ago can now be revealed. I have included some extracts from the press release for you and of course the all important list of books that will be given away on 5th March  2011.

From today, 2 December 2010, members of the public are invited to apply to be one of the 20,000 givers of 48 copies of their favourite book chosen from a carefully selected list of 25 titles. Most givers are expected to be passionate readers who will take pleasure in recommending a book they love to other readers. However, World Book Night will also encourage givers to pass the books on to others who either may be reluctant readers or who are part of communities with less access to books, bookshops and libraries. 960,000 books will be distributed by givers and a further 40,000 will be distributed by WBN to people who might not otherwise be able to participate.

The World Book Night website www.worldbooknight.org will serve as the primary means through which members of the public can apply to be a giver. People will be asked to say in up to 100 words why they want to give away a book chosen from the list and the sort of people they would like to give it to. Information about World Book Night will also be available via libraries and bookshops across the UK and Ireland. The closing date for entries is 4 January 2011.

The 25 titles selected for the inaugural World Book Night are:

Kate Atkinson - Case Histories (Black Swan)

Margaret Atwood - The Blind Assassin (Virago)

Alan Bennett - A Life Like Other People’s (Faber/Profile)

John Le Carré - The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (Penguin)

Lee Child - Killing Floor (Bantam)

Carol Ann Duffy - The World’s Wife (Picador)

Mark Haddon - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Vintage)

Seamus Heaney - Selected Poems (Faber)

Marian Keyes - Rachel’s Holiday (Penguin)

Mohsin Hamid - The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Penguin)

Ben Macintyre - Agent Zigzag (Bloomsbury)

Gabriel García Márquez - Love in the Time of Cholera (Penguin)

Yann Martel - Life of Pi (Canongate)

Alexander Masters - Stuart: A Life Backwards (Fourth Estate)

Rohinton Mistry - A Fine Balance (Faber)

David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas (Sceptre)

Toni Morrison - Beloved (Vintage)

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Half of a Yellow Sun (Fourth Estate)

David Nicholls - One Day (Hachette/Hodder)

Philip Pullman - Northern Lights (Scholastic)

Erich Maria Remarque - All Quiet on the Western Front (Vintage)

C.J. Sansom - Dissolution (Pan)

Nigel Slater - Toast (Fourth Estate)

Muriel Spark - The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Penguin)

Sarah Waters - Fingersmith (Virago)

Alan Yentob Creative Director, BBC and member of the World Book Night editorial committee says:

“BBC Two will host World Book Night from its inception on December 2 through to the event itself on 5 March. Whether as a giver, recipient or viewer, we hope that BBC audiences will be inspired to get involved with this groundbreaking project.”

Author John le Carré says:

“No writer can ask more than this: that his book should be handed in thousands to people who might otherwise never get to read it, and who will in turn hand it to thousands more. That his book should also pass from one generation to another as a story to challenge and excite each reader in his time -that is beyond his most ambitious dreams.”

 Author Margaret Atwood adds:

 “When Jamie Byng told me about World Book Night, I was amazed not only by its magnitude but by its simplicity. The love of writing, the love of reading – these are huge gifts. To be able give someone else a book you treasure widens the gift circle. I was thrilled to be asked to support World Book Night, and doubly thrilled that The Blind Assassin was chosen to help launch it. Long may its voyage be!”