Random Jottings of a Book and Opera Lover

The Messenger of Athens - Anne Zouroudi

The stream of terrific books from Bloomsbury doesn't seem in any danger of drying up and this one floated my way and had me incommunicado for most of last weekend while I became totally immersed in this, the first I gather, of The Mysteries of the Greek Detective.

"When the battered body of a young woman is discovered on a remote Greek island, the local police are quick to dismiss her death as an accident.  Then a stranger arrives, uninvited from Athens, announcing his intention to investigate further..."

The stranger "a fat man" arrives early one morning on the island of Thiminos and visits the police station only to find that the body has already been buried and the case dismissed by the obviously corrupt and venal Chief of Police who challenges his authority to investigate the death of Irini Asimakopoulos. Asked who he is the Fat Man replies "My name is Hermes Diaktoros.  I expect you're surprised at my name: Hermes Messenger.  My father's idea of humour.  He was a classical scholar"

Ignoring all opposition the Fat Man books in at the local hotel and starts asking questions with varying reactions of hostility and fear.  The general consensus is that Irina was an unfaithful wife who had committed suicide and his interference is resented.  One by one he talks to those who knew her: her husband Andreas, her uncle Nickos, the man she became infatuated with and who rejected her, Theo and a picture begins to emerge of a bored, depressed woman desperate to escape from the bleak island:

"from the sea the island showed exactly what it was; rock, one huge rock, so undercut by the salt water of the southern Aegean it seemed to float free.....the cliff faces were sheer, where the slopes were gentler, they were all thin dirt and stone. There was little else: a few black pines rooted into the mountainsides...thorny run down shrubs between the boulders"

As layers of deception, jealousy and spite are uncovered, the Fat Man punishes the transgressors in his own way, dispensing an eye for an eye brand of justice.  The police chief, who pressurises local wives to sleep with him in order to save their families and/or husbands from prison for some slight misdemeanour, ends up on a ferry with one of the cuckolded husbands who exacts a swift revenge on him;  a vicious attack on Irina by a member of the community finds a scorpion reposing in her handbag; the cowardly lover who deserted her is tarred and feathered and dragged through the town for all to see.  On the other hand, those who were kind and those islanders who have suffered are rewarded.  One abandoned wife who, in order to hide her shame, had to pretend to be a widow learns that her husband is finally dead and she is now free to do as she chooses.    Nikos, Irina's uncle who loved her and looked out for her, and who is dying painfully on his own, is taken by the Fat Man to his long estranged sister so he is not alone when the end comes.  Once he is satisfied that the death of Irina has been avenged the Fat Man leaves:

"Approaching the headland at the bay's end, the yacht began a turn to starboard.  The clouds were lifting in the blustery wind and between their cracks a few rays of weak sunshine fell in spotlights on the Aphrodite's decks.  The fat man moved up to the prow and stood, legs braced, hands at his back, like a commander of the fleet judging the sea.  As Lukas watched, the clouds moved back together, the spotlights were extinguished, Aprhorodite slipped round the headland and she, and the fat man, were lost from view"

So who is the Fat Man?  Well, just remember his name ' Hermes Messenger' and the fact that a he was sent by 'a higher authority in Athens' and his method of punishing transgressors and rewarding virtue.

Almost as if the Gods on Olympus had decreed it so.....

Brilliant and I am already looking forward to the next one. 

100 things about me - Gone

I read an article the other day in a daily newspaper about a woman who was horrified to find that details she had posted on Facebook had turned up on a sex site and she had lots of very weird people contacting her.  While I thoroughly enjoyed the 100 Things About Me (who wouldn't enjoy talking about themselves...) I had slight misgivings while putting them together and then this morning I received an email from a fellow blogger who pointed out to me the dangers of all this information on the blog, and said that it would be very easy to track me down and identify me. She cited a friend who had her identity pinched in this way which was used to get a new passport and benefits book.

While not wishing to sound paranoid about all this,  I have therefore decided to take the posts off the site.  I have printed them out and also all your lovely comments and responses which I very much appreciated but the posts themselves have now been deleted.

Shame isn't it that these sorts of precautions have to be taken.  I leave it up to anybody else who has done this exercise to have a think and my thanks, once again, for the warning.

Riddle of the Romanovs

This was the title of a programme on Channel 5 this evening which I have just finished watching.  I am currently reading Helen Rappaport's heartbreaking story about the final days of this family and their dreadful end.  Their deaths have been surrounded by conjecture and theories for 90 years, there must be very few people around who  have not heard of Anna Anderson, claiming to be Grand Duchess Anastasia.  She insisted she was the surviving daughter of Nicholas and Alexandra, an astonishing fiction which she steadfastly maintained to her dying day.  She persuaded people who actually knew the Russian royal family that she was who she claimed to be, she knew secrets, family secrets that nobody else could have known which gave credence to her claim.  I well remember reading all about her as a teenager and finding it all so romantic and interesting and have to confess I was bitterly disappointed to find that her DNA revealed after her death that she was the daughter of a factory worker without a drop of royal blood in her veins.

I have always found the Romanovs fascinating since I first read Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert Massie, originally published in the 1960s and have read various biographies about them, read some of the wilder theories about their death and/or escape and also a wonderful selection of letters between Nicholas and his wife which reveal that they loved each other till they died.  I am one third of the way through Helen Rappaport's book and it is clear that, despite all the trappings of royalty and the etiquette and court life surrounding them, they were essentially a family unit happy with ordinary every day family life.

This programme dealt with the recent findings of remains some little way away from the graves uncovered in the 1990's containing the bones of the Tsar and Tsarina and three of their children.  But where were the other two?  Did they escape and what happened to them? 

Well, we had a DNA specialist and a forensic scientist looking at the discovered remnants.  This was programme making of the most portentious kind.  The usual blurred, black and white fake action shots of the Romanovs being shot, close ups of Russian peasant faces distorted with hate, endless questions:  Did they shoot them all?  Did some of them escape?  What happened to them? Will the team be able to put and end to the mystery? blah blah blah repeated ad nauseam.  The fact that the DNA was so small that it might not be possible to identify the bodies was presented as a tragedy of huge proportions and meant to keep the viewer in suspense (it didn't).  We actually had a farcical test of using a replica of the gun which killed the Tsar to shoot at a bodice with precious stones sewn onto it, to see if a bullet would ricochet off thus proving certain of the reports of the murderers that some of the children could have survived as they had sewn jewels into their underclothes.  I thought this was totally unnecessary as I have never come across anybody that seriously denied this was an option. 

Endless questions about the possibility of a Romanov heir and then we learn that the Kremlin had given the scientists top level clearance to view the reports of the killers sealed in Lenin's Secret Archive (cue film of descent into a bunker sealed with doors which would withstand a nuclear attack), close ups of the documents and gasps of awe from the scientist.  If I hadn't wanted to find out what was happening I would have switched off as I was becoming increasingly irritated by the presentation and the droning voice of the commentator.  It was padding pure and simple as really the heart of the programme and the result would have taken up five minutes on a news bulletin but this was an hour long, so we had to wait.....

Then at the end the solution was given and yes, it was proved beyond doubt that these bones were the bones of the missing two children, one a girl and one a boy, so that we knew that here were the last remains of Alexis and one of his sisters.  It was deeply sad and made the way the programme was presented even more tawdry and commercial, but at least we now know that these bones will be interred with their parents and siblings and the family will be together again. Film of the children playing together and on board the imperial yacht and laughing and looking so happy was very moving, here were these innocent children totally unaware of the awful fate awaiting them.

A pretty poor programme but the subject matter transcended the trite presentation. Nobody could fail to be moved when contemplating this tragedy and, once more, I wondered how George V who decided not to give sanctuary to his cousin and his family, lived with his conscience the rest of his life.

Can there be any greater pleasure...

...she confided in her neighbour the Canadian minister for overseas trade 'than to come across an author one enjoys and then to find they have written not just one book or two, but at least a dozen?"

This is the Queen speaking and it is a quote from Alan Bennett's The Uncommon Reader which I am sure most of us now know is a simply gorgeous conceit of a book all about the Queen becoming an ardent reader.  It is wonderful and beguiling and I adore it, but this sentence, put in the mouth of the Queen, is pure Alan Bennett and it is a quote that just leapt off the page and hit me in the eye.

This is something that I have had happen to me so many times in my reading life and the knowledge that there are numerous books by a newly discovered author just waiting for me to discover is one of the best feelings in the world.

The reason for this ramble is that I have finally discovered the Mapp and Lucia books by E P Benson and I promptly fell headlong in love and wondered why I had neglected them for so long.  They are witty, funny and needle sharp and I am adoring them and will write about them later when I have gathered my thoughts.

I know full well there are so many of you out in the blogsphere who are huge fans and, as I asked earlier in my post on Narnia (I have finally got hold of a copy of the Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe) would love to hear your thoughts.

This realisation that I have a new author to read (albeit only six books and I know I will binge on them and then suffer withdrawal symptoms) is such a wonderful pleasure and I felt this even more after having just watched a programme on the television which moved me to tears, a programme about men and women who have gone their entire lives without learning to read. 

One woman featured in this week's programme, Linda, loves books, they make her go 'all wibbley' - we can all understand that - and she is desperate to read and, what is more, read Shakespeare.  She sees the sonnets and the patterns the words make and so wants to be able to understand but she has a block in relating the appearance of letters to their sounds.  By the end of a month she is making more progress than she has ever done in her life and the expression on her face when she realises how to string letters together to make words and that she is starting to read, was one of such happiness I completely choked up.  All of us, who read without thinking, cannot have any idea of what it must be like not to be able to do so.  I cannot imagine my life without books and yet the adults featured in this programme have had years of feeling inadequate and stupid.  One grandmother ended up reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar, the first book she had ever read in her entire life and is coming along beautifully.  She knows that she will soon be able to read to her grandchildren and her life is transformed.  I found it all incredibly moving.

I started writing this post, with this quote, before the start of the programme and believe me, after watching it, I find it means so much more to me.  Can't Read, Can't Write runs on Channel 4 for the next three weeks and, for those visitors who are UK based, please take a look at it and see if you feel the same as I do right now.

Amenable Women - Mavis Cheek

I have seen Mavis Cheek's books on the 3 for 2 tables at various booksellers and toyed with the idea of reading them, but have never got round to it.  A birthday present of a Waterstone's card found me looking at her latest, Amenable Women, gorgeous cover with the portrait of Anne of Cleves on the front which caught my eye and made me pick it up and open at the first page.  Covers are SO important as we all know and not sure I would have looked at this without it.

When the story starts Flora Chapman is at the funeral of her husband, Edward, who had died in a bizarre ballooning accident.  He was dashing, handsome, full of life, adored by his daughter Hilary who is bereft, and admired by the entire village of Hurcott Ducis where they have spent most of their married life.  Edward was also a pompous, self centered bore who belittled his wife and took all the limelight for himself.  In truth, Flora is not a grieving widow and is secretly rather glad to see the back of him.  She has to tread carefully though as Hilary is genuinely grief stricken at the death of her father, and the rest of the village expects a certain mode of behaviour from his widow.  Flora decides to take a look at the history of Hurcott Ducis which Edward was writing, rather badly, just before he died.  She is a historian herself and is intrigued to discover that Anne of Cleves lived in their house and as she feels a sense of sisterhood with a woman dubbed The Flemish Mare (Edward used to call Flora Bunface), decides to undertake some research of her own, under the guise of editing Edward's magnus opus ("it will be a memorial to daddy" says Hilary) and find out more about this wife of Henry VIII.

Many moons ago I read a book by Margaret Campbell Barnes, My Lady of Cleves, and found I had a great sympathy with Anne and that she had been rather underrated by historians.  Let us not forget that though she did not find favour with Henry, she did not end up in the Tower of London, nor did she lose her head but became respected and regarded as the 'Sister of the King', she retained the affection of both Mary and Elizabeth, and though she never married she remained in England for the rest of her life, finally by an ironic twist, living out her days at Hever Castle, the home of Anne Boleyn.  Not bad going for a divorced woman in Tudor times.

Mavis Cheek employs the time switching device again with which I am becoming increasingly familiar this year, but I have yet to tire of it (though perhaps I might soon...) and we have Anne's own thoughts on this book and her potrrayal by Hans Holbein:

"...then there was a book, My Lady of Cleves, and that is even more absurd.  It suggests that I had an affair with the King's painter, Hans Holbein, which is why he painted me to look more beautiful than I really was - an apologia for my apparent plainness - by suggesting that it was beauty in the eye of the loving beholder rather than in the flesh he painted"

Fact is, if you look at this portrait, there is nothing plain about Anne or Anna of Cleves as she must be called, at all.  She was an intelligent, well educated woman who just did not happen to please Henry.  Of course, the thought never crossed Henry's mind that she might not have taken to him much - by this stage of his life, the golden youth had vanished and he was fat, cruel and had a permanent open ulcer on his leg that must have stunk to high heaven, so why he still felt he was a good catch, heaven only knows.

Anne is so fascinating that she is in danger of taking over this book and I feel that Mavis Cheek felt the same way and has a bit of a struggle keeping us interested in Flora who seems determined to keep her light firmly under a bushel. I found myself wanting to shout at her to Get a Grip and to shut up that ghastly daughter of hers who seemed incapable of acknowledging that her mother had a life and intelligence of her own. The reader can understand that Flora wishes to keep Edward's real character hidden from her (she discovered shortly after his death that he had been having an affair) but it is to the detriment of her own growth.  The denouement is not totally satisfactory. Flora has researched and made a discovery about a local memorial stone to Anna put there by Queen Elizabeth and has worked out why it was there and for what purpose, a task that Edward dismissed as unimportant, and even in the moment of her triumph she allows this to be high jacked and credited to Edward.  I could have screamed.

The truth is, of course, that this is probably what would happen in reality, but this is a book and I wanted a more solid ending which I was not given.  I shall, however, read more Mavis Cheek.  I liked her quiet wit and slight asperity in her style of writing and am pleased to see that she has quite a few books listed, enough to keep me happy for a while.

And finally, Henry did not, as is often reported, refer to Anna as "A great Flanders mare."  That particular quote was coined by Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, who wrote "The History of the Reformation of the Church of England."

Not many people know that..

Book Draw - Mistress of the Revolution

I would like to introduce you to a member of the family - his name is Alpaca and he has been part of our life for some thirty years now. As you can see he is pretty venerable and is suffering from thinning fur and his eyes have been sewn back in at least three times, and is beginning to show his age.  Alpaca is much loved and will always have a home with us until his fur finally disappears and his ears fall off, but we are hoping this will be a long way ahead.

As I mentioned in an earlier email, Henry has been getting a bit above himself recently, as we saw from the last draw when he got very difficult indeed, and this time has been practicing his French accent and muttering Merde under his breath at very frequent intervals, prior to the draw for Mistress of the Revolution.  I am all for a touch of verisimilitude, but felt he was going a tad too far so when Alpaca asked me if he could have a quiet word and then said he would really love to do a book draw, I realised he had been feeling left out, so agreed immediately.

So here he is making the draw and as his arms are rather short, he had to use his ears but he was thrilled to bits to pull out the name of the winner which is below.

So, Kim please send me your address and I will get this in the post to you as soon as possible.  Congratulations!

Classical Comics

It is nearly a year ago, as I have just discovered from a search on Random (gosh how time flies when you are having fun), that I mentioned I had received copies of previews of a new series of Classical Comics.  The ones sent to me were three versions of Henry V and I blogged about it here.

Karen sent me the full copies quite some time ago now and I have been shamefully remiss in not mentioning them before as I had promised to do, but the TBR pile just kept growing, like Topsy, and they ended up getting buried under the ever growing heap.  I am now talking about them because I spotted the versions of Henry V and Macbeth on the bookshelves at the Globe shop yesterday.  There had obviously been a full pile there but it had thinned considerably and only one copy of HV left and a few of Macbeth.  I was delighted to see them in such a prominent position and note that they were selling well.  I am sure there are Shakespeare lovers who will turn their noses up at these publications, but I am not one of them.

I am speaking as one who did not watch or listen to any Shakespeare for over  30 years as I found it all soooo boring and I lay this squarely at the feet of my teachers and the incredibly dull and unimaganitive way Will was taught at my school.  My feelings about my convent school and the standards of teaching there are well known to regular bloggers so I will not bore you again. 

I rediscovered Shakespeare just a few years ago and after watching the school parties at the Globe on Friday, I felt envious that I had not had the same experience as they. All those years wasted.  I mentioned in my earlier post that I hate using the word 'accessible' as I think this is an ideal that can lead to serious dumbing down (witness the new presentation of the First Night of the Proms which I dare not start on about otherwise this computer screen will implode), but in this case, if these books make Shakespeare more accessible than I am all for it.  They come in full text or plain text with the same wonderfully drwan illustrations throughout and I can highly recommend them.

On checking their website www.classicalcomics.com I note that coming up are Jane Eyre, Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol.

Great stuff.

The Globe Theatre

Yes, that is where I went yesterday and that is where I spent a simply wonderful afternoon watching a matinee performance of the Merry Wives of Windsor and I think I can safely say I have not laughed so much for ages.  My friend Linda and I were in the top gallery, front row seat, from where we had a wonderful view of all that was going on, could look down on the groundlings and would have been in a perfect position to chuck fruit and veg if we had not liked the play.  I simply adore going to the Globe. It has the most wonderful atmosphere, everyone who is there is expecting to have a jolly good time and to be thoroughly entertained, and they are.  The afternoon performance of MWOW was sold out as was the evening performance of King Lear.  Some members of the audience I got chatting to were going to both. This wonderful theatre receives not a penny piece in subsidy from anybody and I cannot help but be thankful for this, no government set targets to meet, no inclusivity, no ethic minorities that they have to allow for and keep happy - and the odd thing is that this theatre probably does all that without even thinking.  The place was simply heaving with people, vast amount of whom were under the age of thirty with loads of teenagers and school trips in evidence, and all having a hoot.

Christopher Benjamin, who I used to meet years ago as a reader when I worked at Highgate Library and who was in the Forsyte Saga (the first series) at the time, was Falstaff and was very very funny and, at the end, when he is brought to book for all his misdemeanours, quite touching.  The entire cast was solid and acted beautifully, even the 'rude mechanicals. who I normally find singularly unfunny in all Shakespeare's plays, whose comic timing was spot on.

Star of the show, however, which I am not sure was intended, was not Falstaff but Master Ford,  the jealous husband played by Andrew Havill, one of those actors whose face is familiar and who is always around, but never lauded.  Five minutes into the play, everyone suddenly twigged that he had based his characterisation on Basil Fawlty as created by the wonderful John Cleese. The expressions, the furious shaking of fists behind people's backs, the walk, everything.  Slightly puzzled by this, though it worked simply amazingly well, until I happened to open my programme in the interval and came across an article 'To the Manner Born' in which The Merry Wives is likened to a sitcom and there was a picture of Basil Fawlty himself.  Not sure that purists would approve but I, and everyone else in the Globe, simply loved it.  I would say that when he came to take his bow the applause was loud enough to take the roof off, but as the Globe does not posses one this would prove a tad difficult....

Before the play started I fell into conversation with two very nice ladies who persuaded me, with no difficulty whatsoever, to become a Friend of the Globe.  £38 a year and then realized that with my now available concession, it was £30 so no argument really.  This gives me advance booking, free entry to the permanent exhibition and tours of the Globe, 10% off at the shop etc etc.  I thought this was jolly good value for money and was leaving to go into the theatre when I was called back 'oh and as this is the 21st year of the Friends and as you have joined today, here is a gift for you'  and I was handed a box in which resided a Friends of the Globe mug.

Just what I needed.

Guess where I went today?

Thanks and Prize Draws

Thank you to everyone who has visited and left messages on my first half of 100 Things about me which made me giggle when I started listing all these daft and silly things - the other 50 is nearly done though I feel I might be scraping the bottom of the barrel with these - we shall see.

This is to remind everyone that the draw for Mistress of the Revolution will take place this Sunday.  Henry, Henri, is getting in full Gallic mode and has been annoying me all week by muttering Libertie! Fraternite! Egalite! at regular intervals and has taken to eating lots of Brie with disastrous results on his digestive system so shall be glad when this is done.  If you have not put your name down in the comments section on the post please do so here.

I have two more books lined up, from nice kind lovely publishers, and next draw will be very soon so keep an eye out for it.  It is a book I have already burbled about and think is wonderful and I am going to burble some more, so be warned.