Random Jottings

A few days away

I am currently sitting on my bed in my lovely hotel room with my feet up and drinking tea.  Grandparents 1 and 2 and family all went from a long walk from Iken Church to the Maltings. Glorious day and here are a few photos of our afternoon. Barbecue tonight.

I am already knackered...

Recent reading - mixed bag

What is it that makes a book readable and another one where the writing makes you feel like you are wading through a field full of treacle?  If you have the answer do let me know.

My reading last week consisted, among other murders and mayhem, two historical non fiction books. The first was The Crown in Crisis, countdown to the Abdication by Alexander Larman.  Oh dear I thought do I really need another book on this but I admit to a fascination with the whole thing so got hold of it and it was very very good.  There were letters and information I had not read before not least this prescient and shrewd reading of Edward and Mrs Simpson by Sir Sydney Waterlow, the British Ambassador to Greece:

"....there is something appealing about him, something charming and good with such good intentions" but he despaired of his companion "Mrs S is essentially the response to his craving for domesticity and it is a serious response. For that reason I think she has come to stay".  He went on "the problem must be hopeless for the characteristic marks of this type of American female are precisely those which must aggravate the situation, perpetual restlessness and a vacuum as complete as that of the prairie or small town from which is originally descends. What can be hoped from mating restlessness with restlessness, vacuum with vacuum?"

It is very difficult when reading through this book not to ponder on the current situation in the Royal Family. Edward and Bertie were close and kept his brother abreast of all relevant court papers and matters of state but this trust did not extend to his dealings with Wallis. "The two brothers who had been close began to drift apart....the situation at Balmoral had been like a nightmare. Bertie felt he had lost a friend and was rapidly losing a brother". Bertie had counselled Edward not to do anything he might regret and this was regarded as a slight to Wallis with whom he was now obsessed.  All very familiar and very sad.

Over the years I have read many books on the Abdication and my sympathies, such as they are for this ghastly pair, are now with Wallis.  Yes, she had an eye to the main chance and wanted to be in society and cut a swathe but she was very clear sighted about it all. She called herself Wallis in Wonderland and was under no illusion that it would come to an end and so she was making the most of it while she could. Unfortunately for her she found that Edward was like a limpet and there was no getting rid of him. Even when she did try to withdraw, mainly I feel because she was terrified of the situation she was in, he threatened to follow her or to kill himself. She was, to put in bluntly, lumbered with him and I feel she should be given her due that she tried to make a life for them both though at times she must have felt as if she was dealing with a sulky child.

The fact that she kept in touch with her ex-husband Ernest Simpson for some time and wrote rather sad letters to him after the Abdication and her marriage speaks volumes.

I was fascinated by this book - obviously well researched and meticulous in detail and well written. I can recommend this as one of the best books about that turbulent time. It ends with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor leaving the country and deals with the events leading up to this. Their life afterwards which seems to aimless and sad is well documented in other books.

The other title I read, or attempted to read, was The Mystery of Charles Dickens by A N Wilson. In the last three years he has produced a book on Queen Victoria and also a biography of Albert - how he can produce these two and this one in such a short space of time makes me wonder just how much research and effort he put into it. One assumes he employed a band of drones to do all the hard work for him.

The books on V and A were clumsily written and very boring and I skipped whole chunks of it as the prose was just, for want of a better word, dead. It was dull and irritating. So why I bought this one I know not except it was about a man I find totally fascinating and one of my favourite authors.  But AN Wilson manages the impossible, he makes a book about Dickens utterly turgid. Here is an example of his matchless prose. Dickens is dying.

"Death has a way of bringing to light hidden things which the dying one wished never to be disclosed. Could it be, as his eyelids flickered and he prepared for the ultimate mystery, that the curtain was not going to come down but up; that the garish lights of the theatre were to be turned up and the actors found unprepared upon the stage?"

Yuk.

So the book goes on. I skipped huge chunks as I became increasingly irritated with this egoistical style in that the author constantly brings himself into the narrative.   The coup de grace comes near the end of the book when AN Wilson likens Dickens Nicholas Nickleby and the awful things that happened in Dotheboys Hall, with his own dreadful schooldays. It seems that the author had a vicious headmaster and equally vicious wife and was beaten with huge enjoyment by the master in question, while the aformentioned master ....let us just say that the phrase which covers this would be "got off on it" if you will forgive the vulgarity. AN Wilson is more precise but I see no reason to inflict this totally unneccessary piece of information on you all.

This book has received excellent reviews so it is clear that I am not worthy and do not appreciate it.  Well, I can live with that. I thought it was dire and I ended up throwing it across the room.  I reached for Pickwick Papers and read a chapter of two to restore my equilibrium.

I have made a note: Elaine do not buy a book by A N Wilson ever again. My fear is he may now turn his eyes onto the Brontes. Just think what he would make of Emily and Heathcliff and Charlotte and her love for her professor. I shudder....

Random Ramble

I am off to see the family today. How nice to be able to say that and know that things are slowly reverting back to normal. I refuse to say “new normal” as it is an expression that drives me potty.

And before I ramble, I may just say that another thing that drives me potty is some of the marketing emails I have been receiving. I have just had one drop in my in box from Marks & Spencer urging me to “shop the staycation edit”

I might just throw up...

OK so what have been doing and the answer is Not a Lot. I make sure, during these times, that I have a structure to my day no matter how relatively uninteresting it may be else I wander around like a tit in a trance. So my routine is to have my morning cuppa, eat a banana or a piece of fruit and then go out for my walk. Now, I loathe exercise in any shape or form. If I was a spy and captured by a foreign power and they wanted to know my secrets, forget pulling my toenails out, just bung me on a treadmill. I would tell all within a minute.

BUT my resolve during lockdown was NOT to regain the weight which I have been working hard at losing.  Our WW meetings were on Zoom as there were no workshops and I made the decision that I was not going to allow this virus to make me fat again and resolved just to maintain weight. And I have. I have made myself walk each day so that it is now an ingrained habit and if I don’t do it I feel vaguely guilty.  I average a mile a day (there was one day when I managed four but that just about finished me off so has not been repeated) and I have managed to keep to this.   On checking my health app since 1 April and taking note of my daily walk it now seems that I have walked over 100 miles since the beginning of lockdown. This stunned me so much I had to have a lie down.

I am wittering so back to the routine.   I get back indoors, have a shower, a drink and then my breakfast.

Then I do chores or anything that needs doing. The other day I was looking at my carpet and thinking Elaine you really need to get the hoover out. So I did.  Cleaned the flat and then I went outside into our flat entry hall and hoovered that as well. We do our own cleaning as the company that did it was dire. I then got the spray polish out and did the windowsills etc. By this stage I was getting a bit fanatical and when I started cleaning the windows called a halt. Enough Elaine.

I have lunch, sometimes a bijou napette, well quite often actually and then full of virtue I decide to do nothing. Wimbers cancelled this year so the BBC have been delving into the archives and have been showing all sorts of fantastic matches over the last thirty years.  It was wonderful to see the Ivanisevic/Rafter mens final again, great to see Andy creaming it, and of course St Rog of Fed was showcased in order to allow Sue Barker to go into full gush and drool mode.

Some of the older matches now seem a tad slow even the fabled Borg McEnroe finals. I watched a bit of one of them but the sight of McEnroe with frizzy hair, headband and permanent scowl was even less endearing than when I first watched and so I switched off.

And the Ladies!! OMG how dire and slow and pat a cake the early ones were. The 1977 final when Virginia Wade beat Betty Stove. Excruciating. Simple shots that todays ladies would sprint for just left, no effort made. No attempt to return difficult serves. It was so boring.  

They showed a few of Steffi Graf and boy she was simply terrific. But on the whole dreary.

And the interesting thing to note was the commentary. In the vintage matches we had Dan Maskell and Mark Cox.  Most of the time we watched in total silence with Dan or Mark interjecting an incisive and to the point comment. Ten years later, still pretty quiet but a bit more chat. Ten years later Henman and McEnroe, but still not too much chat. Then present day and we have Castle, Lloyd, Henman, McEnroe, Boris et all in full twitter non stop drivel mode. It was most marked.

I have done some reading. One excellent history and one biography that enraged me so much with its ponciness, no other word will do,  that I threw it across the room.

More on that later.

Au reservoir

Random Video - I talk about Eva Ibbotson

I am really enjoying doing these videos as it gives me a wonderful chance to talk about anything which is great fun.  I have just recorded one in which I talk about one of my favourite authors, Eva Ibbotson. I hope you enjoy it.

 

As always, I welcome comments and requests for subjects for future chats.

The books I discuss are:

A Company of Swans

Morning Gift

Madensky Square

A Glove Shop in Vienna

Magic Flutes

Countess below Stairs

Enjoy!

 

Recent reading and received

I have been reading in a very desultory fashion the last couple of months. I have found it impossible to settle down and concentrate. Isn’t it odd when you think you are going to have all this time and so we can do some really serious reading and then find you really can’t be bothered?  Annoying as well.

I have been re-reading a lot of crime and lots of romance as well which seems to soothe my soul and relax me.  It has given me some ideas for a future video as I get really cross when romance is dismissed and viewed with contempt as it frequently is.  But that is for another day.

So what have I got on the table at the moment?

I have just finished The Geometry of Holding Hands by Alexander McCall Smith. This is the latest in the series featuring Isabel Dalhousie, philosopher, and I find these books a great joy. I gave up on the rest of the output of this author sometime ago as I found the books were all appearing as an amorphous blob in my mind and the 1st Ladies Detective Agency just turned into a ramble. Nothing wrong with a ramble but you do need a little something to happen now and then. I came across the latest one in the library a few months ago and thought I would give it a whirl but gave up after one chapter.

Now these Dalhousie books also ramble but because Isabel is a philosopher and her musings have a point and they are interesting and amusing.  If you want a fast paced story then these will not be for you but I love them and find them enormously satisfying.  Each volume hinges on a philosophical point and idea. There is also the pleasure of following Isabel’s family life and her growing sons, her younger husband Jamie and their relationship and her niece Cat who, in this book, is clearly heading for disaster.  I have all these on my shelves and all in hardback as I am collecting the lot. This winter it is my plan to start at No 1 and read them all over again.

The Mystery of Charles Dickens by A N Wilson. I ordered this with a slight feeling of trepidation as I do find this author vaguely irritating but when he is writing about a subject or person I love then I find I cannot resist. However , the same irritations are rearing their head already and I am only two chapters in. I recently read his biography of Albert, Prince Consort so how he has had time to produce this latest tome I really do not know.  One sentence really jarred with me in that particular biography when he referred to Queen Victoria as “drooling over Albert” which I thought was totally unsuitable in a book purporting to be a serious biography.

You may think I am being picky and perhaps I am but I found myself tut tutting at the phrase, referring to Peckham where he had a house for Nelly Ternan as an area that was “fast being swallowed by by jerry built houses” and a row of villas “built on spec”.  Now I am sorry but if you are referring to a Victorian suburb you do not use these terms and I found it jarred. And I find his grammar somewhat lacking. “We know little about Nelly Ternan, she was part of this, obviously she was”. Again I found this jarred.

OK call me a pedant. I don’t mind. I shall carry on reading but but but....

As antidote to this I am very much looking forward to reading Jane Austen by Tom Keymer, subtitled writing, society and politics. It is a neat small sized book from OUP and dropped through my letter box today. I have already turned to the chapter Passion and Persuasion.  Austen’s writing was felt to be lacking in passion, not least by Charlotte Bronte, but oh my goodness, the letter from Captain Wentworth at the end, the pouring forth of his feelings - well, blimey, passion abounding and one of my most favourite pieces of all literature.

I will report back in due course but I have a feeling I am going to enjoy this.

Spam Tomorrow by Verily Anderson a memoir set in the second World War which has shades of Diary of a Provincial Lady for me, not necessarily because of the setting, but more the style and dry wit of the writing.

”when I asked the local chemist for line and disinfectant, he felt it was only fair to allow the first aid post to claim me......half a dozen VAD’s made a rush at me and treated my small abrasion as though my whole head had blown off”

Published by the wonderful Dean Street Press.

And, finally, The Woman in the Wardrobe by Peter Shaffer another wonderful title from the British Library Classic Crime Series.

Enough to be getting on with methinks.

The Random Rant is back

People have been asking why I have not had a Random Rant for some time. Well the answer is simple, I did not think that this was an appropriate time to moan about trivia or things that personally irritate me when there was so much awfulness in the world.

It looks as if we are coming to the end, or the beginning of the end, in dealing with Corona though I cannot see us ever returning to the life we had before it struck us all. We have to become used to the “new normal” a phrase I simply hate.

But there have been things that have roused my ire over the last few months so perhaps can now venture forth in Ranthood and write about them.

First up – Slebs.  Or people who think they are famous and think that they know all about everything and that everyone is simply dying to listen to their views on anything. Being in lockdown and denied their usual access to being in the limelight and flashbulbs and red carpets, they have taken to making meaningful videos telling us how they empathise with us all and we are all in this together. Yeh right.

One of the earliest Sleb Vids was Madonna, that shy retiring lady who wished to share her thoughts with us all. There she was filmed sitting in a bath (why?) with rose petals scattered over the water and surrounded by candles.  She mused on the meaning of life and generally rambled and wittered. I am not sure she got the appreciation she was expecting. One wag on Twitter merely said that he was worried when she let the water out that the petals would clog up her drains….

Then up pops Kate Winslet.  She spoke to us about the dangers of the virus and how we had to be careful etc and she said she knew about this because she had been in a film called Contagion all About a Virus. If I remember rightly, she died fifteen minutes in but even so this made her an expert so up she popped.   Her little homily was met with widespread derision and rightly so.  Acting does not make you an expert on anything – you might as well assume that as George Clooney played a doctor in ER he can whip out an appendix at the drop of a hat. I could go on…..

I simply cannot understand why actors or Slebs feel we are interested in their thoughts on politics etc. It has always puzzled me.  If Meryl Streep was giving a talk on acting then I would watch, listen and learn because she knows what she is talking about. If, however, she decided to impart her opinions on politics, climate change or anything else, I don’t want to know.

Here in the UK we have an ex footballer Gary Lineker pontificating on about politics and, in particular, Brexit as if he actually knew what he was talking about and was an expert. He is perfectly entitled to his opinions and views but again, I don’t want to know. If he did a chat about football, fine that was his profession.

Emma Thompson – a wonderful actress but my god she is a smug righteous luvvie. She called the UK a “a cake-filled misery-laden grey old island.” and decided to become an Italian citizen with her luvvie husband Greg Wise. So off they go to Venice and leave all us proles and bores behind. Lo and behold we enter lockdown and she flies back to the UK and says she is now going to stay. Her mother is ill and she wants to be with her – fine, good reason but no doubt she will make full use of the NHS and all the health facilities she can afford for her mum, despite the fact this island is such a dump.

Colin Firth, aka Mr Darcy, took out Italian citizenship after Brexit which he loathes. He had an Italian wife so no doubt it was all lovely for him.  Four years later his marriage has broken up and I gather he is back having retained his UK citizenship all the time.

So now we come to Mainstream Media or MSM as it is catchily called. 

I defend the right to have a free press. I would hate the press to be censored as it is in other countries and to have facts and news hidden from us. However, my opinion of some of the press and the level of reporting over the last few months has really staggered me.   When we had Cummingsgate (those of my readers in the US will have to look him up – just google Dominic Cummings and lockdown and see what you get) the behaviour of the media was simply appalling. An entire gang of press photographers, tv reporters and photographers were shrieking and screaming outside his house, some of them literally spitting with anger and fury, no social distancing of course and resembling a baying mob. It was vile.

Cummings had to hold a press conference at No 10. The press demanded it and then turned round and said he should not be holding it in the garden there as he was not a government minister, only an “adviser” and it should not be allowed. True.

He took the conference and answered and responded with total courtesy and in a quiet manner a stream of aggressive questions from the press gang sitting in rows. The standard of questioning and the total lack of any kind of coherence was simply astounding. My granddaughters would have questioned with more clarity.

OK and this now leads me onto the BBC. Yes, I know I can hear you sighing OMG she is off again. And yes I am. Sorry.

Last year it was announced that the free TV licence which is given to the over 75’s in this country was to be rescinded as it was too expensive.  The reaction to this was exactly what you would expect. Now there are plenty of people in that age bracket who can afford a licence but plenty that cannot and if those decide not to pay, they run the risk of being carted off to court and, in extreme cases, can end up in jail.   I watch, at the most, about three hours a week of the output of the BBC, sometimes less than that, and yet I still have to pay for it.  While we entered lockdown, Tony Hall the outgoing director of the BBC announced that it would be put on hold while the country was in the throes of the pandemic. And then on the very day that Cummingsgate (see above) was dominating the news he quietly slipped out an announcement that from August the free tv licence was being stopped.

Pusillanimous is the word that comes to mind.

(Must mention here that the average age of the BBC viewer is 45 upwards and yet the BBC has just cancelled a quiz programme called Eggheads because the people who watch it are “old”. They are aiming for the youth market most of whom are streaming on their phones or watching Netflix. I am trying to work out the logic of the cancellation of this programme added to the taking away of the free tv licence, thus alienating their core audience).

I am now coming to the main complaint about the BBC that has riled me over the last few months. The presenters and interviewers – just who do they think they are?  Sky is just as bad in case you think I am homing in only on the Beeb and Channel 4 not far behind.   If you are a presenter or interviewer your job is to speak to the person in front of you, ask them questions, elicit straight answers, if possible, and press hard if they are being difficult or duplicitous.

You are NOT there to air your own personal opinions.   Many presenters think they are now the story, the person of importance.  They are now “personalities” they appear in glossy magazines, they do photoshoots, they are on Twitter and Instagram.  Once again, they fall into the trap of thinking they are important.

Emily Maitliss was blatant about her opinion of Dominic Cummings on Newsnight and after receiving a deluge of complaints from viewers, the Beeb had to reprimand her and issue an apology (this is not the first time this has happened regarding Ms Maitliss) and she was “furious” and accused the BBC of not treating her with respect.

If you are on a commercial tv station then perhaps you can get away with this but not if you work for the BBC which is funded by the taxpayer and is meant to be impartial.  Well that has been a joke for years.   

I look back on the days of Robin Day, Jeremy Paxman, Brian Walden and others.  These three could get under the skin of somebody trying to avoid a question or who behaved dubiously, they were forensic in their questioning, they were never aggressive or rude (though Paxman could be abrasive) but the point I am making here is that throughout the years of watching them or reading their words, I NEVER KNEW WHAT THEIR POLITICS WERE. I have put this in capitals to emphasis this as I think it is a vitally important point.

I have views on all matter of things to do with politics but I have no intention of ranting about them here on my blog though it is a perfect platform to do so, because why should I think that anybody would want to know?  Of course with friends and family we can hold discussions and argue and agree and disagree, but that is private.   Let us say that I suddenly became famous for one reason or another and was being interviewed, why would I think I can suddenly start airing my views? I am not an expert on anything.   Just because you have a high profile an an Oscar or two in the toilet why do you think you are an intellectual thinker who can lecture us all? Answer comes there none.

I have watched it get worse and worse during 2020 and I cannot see it ever getting any better.

Now I hardly read the newspapers, I just dip in and out and I never watch the news on the tv. I had not done so for over twenty years but thought I needed to when all this started. After watching one expert on the BBC tell me one thing about the virus and then turn over and find another expert on another channel saying the total opposite, I decided Enough. 

In the midst of all this I have had problems with my electricity supplier which is a rant for another day.   I am more interested in sorting that out than I am in listening to another total nonentity telling me what to think and posting a pouting selfie of themselves at the same time.

Oh and another thing – all these high faluting people singing on balconies and playing musical instruments and showing their love and solidarity, DON’T GET ME STARTED.  One family was stopped by the police from coming into their garden and playing string quartets which they had been doing to “lift the spirits” of the community.  Every Single Night.  I like string quartets but I don’t want to hear one every evening when I am trying to eat my dinner. Nor do I want an amateur tenor belting out Nessun Dorma from a seventh floor balcony.

We have suffered enough….

OK rant over.  I can’t even moan about Wimbledon and Pippa Middleton because it has been cancelled.  It is All Too Much to Bear.

——————————————————————————————————————————

PS - I am writing this extra paragraph just to say that nobody should come to a conclusion as to how I regard the entire Cummings/lockdown episode. That is a subject that has caused so much vile abuse and vitriol on twitter that to even mention it there is a dangerous thing to do. For this reason this post will not be linked to my twitter feed which I have had to clear out in the last month, deleting and blocking. My rant is aimed at the press behaviour during the few days it was front page news.

Felixstowe Book Festival 2020 - Brought to you on line!

The weather is so beautiful at the moment that a visit to Felixstowe this weekend would have been wonderful but, alas, along with other festivals this year has had to be cancelled. We had a superb line up and the social media people have been working away and liaising with authors and have come up with a pretty packed programme for anybody who wishes to log on. The upside of this of course is that you can join in anywhere in the world which is a bonus.

Here is the programme:

On Friday evening we have a talk from Nick Holland who will be talking about Anne Bronte. I am really looking forward to this!

Nick posted on Twitter and here are the details and how you can join in wishing Anne a happy birthday

For details of how to log on and zoom in please visit the website Felixstowebookfestival.co.uk which has a comprehensive guide so you can visit us.

Do come along and support the Festival.

Random Video - your views

 

Random Video - I talk about the British Library Classic Crime Series

After my first foray into what I understand is called ‘vlogging’ which I always think sounds vaguely unsavoury, I received good feedback and nice emails and messages and though it was meant to be a one off to discuss Helen’s book, I was asked to do more so I have.

I am talking today about the British Library Classic Crime series which I absolutely love and I enjoyed doing this.  I see that my hair has grown since the first video and if I do not get to the hairdresser soon by the time I get round to the next one I shall look like one of the three witches from Macbeth...

So here it is and, once again, I would welcome feed back and comments.

 

Many thanks

I see the video has caught me at an odd looking moment. It gets better.....

Re-Reading Josephine Tey

Why is it during this lockdown period when I have plenty of time on my hands I do not blog more often? I intended to but then slothdom (is that a word?) overcomes me. I have been doing plenty of reading and lots to write about so I am awake early this morning and I shall get on with it.

You will see from the title of this post that I am re-reading Josephine Tey. My introduction to her was as a child when I remembered a radio serial that I listened to of her book Brat Farrar and finding it totally gripping. I have a copy of this on my shelf and it has been there for years so decided to have a crack at it last week. And it was when I started reading I realised that though I knew the story I had never actually read the book.  I just assumed I had.

The summing up of the story is simple: "A stranger enters the inner sanctum of the Ashby family posing as Patrick Ashby, the heir to the family's sizeable fortune. The stranger, Brat Farrar, has been carefully coached on Patrick's mannerisms, appearance and every significant detail of Patrick's early life, up to his thirteenth year when he disappeared and was thought to have drowned himself"

We know right from the start that Brat Farrar is an impostor. The author makes no attempt to hide it and, indeed, the story is told from Brat's viewpoint and we are privy to his thoughts.  Beause of this the reader feels empathy with him and does not condemn outright which we would do if it was coming at us from another viewpoint.

His twin Simon is at first disbelieving that he is his long lost brother but then accepts him with as good a grace as possible.  Brat realises that Simon knows he is not Patrick and is relieved by this. But the pretence continues. There is the odd incidenct when Simon lends Brat his horse to ride, a horse that has a nasty trick of knocking off his riders and causing their death....

So if Simon knows he is not Patrick, why does he not say so?   It was at this point of the story that my rememberance of the radio serial came flooding back and I realised I knew the ending.  But it did not matter as the written word was so different.  Kept me pinned to my sofa all afternoon. Wonderful.

The Franchise Affair.   Robert Blair is a country solicitor living in Milford where nothing happens and hs life is ordered and happy. Or is it?

"At exactly 3.30 pm on every working day Miss Tuff bore into his office a lacquer tray covered with a fair white cloth and bearing a cup of tea in blue patterned china and, on a plate to match, two biscuits; petite-beurre Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, digestive Tuesday, Thursdays and Saturdays.......Once or twice lately an odd alien thought had crossed his mind, irrelevant and unbidden. 'This is all you are ever going to have' and with that thought came a moment's constriction in his chest. Almost a panic reaction...."

And then the telephone rings and it is Marion Sharpe who lives with her mother at a house called The Franchise. They have been accused of kidnapping and beating a demure young schoolgirl, a school girl who seems to know all about the house and its contents and who accused them of keeping her locked up in the attic. Her story rings true.

Tey's Inspector Alan Grant appears in this title but is on the periphery, it is actually Robert Blair, galvanised into action and falling in love with Marion, who turns amateur detective to find out the truth.

This is one of my favourite Tey titles and I read it again with huge enjoyment. Yonks ago I remember an old black and white film starring Dulcie Gray and Michael Dennison and it was frightfully British and full of frightfully clipped accents and it was wonderful. (I have just checked it out on Amazon and it is there with this comment underneath: "How very English, and how very 1950s this movie is! Its tone is mostly subdued, quiet, unassertive and resolutely un-daring; it never shouts at the audience and even permissible melodrama is kept at a minimum. And yet, look at how shocking the story essentially is - and reflect just how sensational and nasty a modern-day version might be! ") I think I may have to watch it again. There was a remake in 1988 with Patrick Malahide perfectly cast as Blair but this seems to be unavailable on DVD so I turned to good old You Tube and found the entire six episodes were available and spent a happy morning watching it. It was as good as I remembered.

Miss Pym Disposes. Another title that I could not remember reading but once I started it I realised I had though many years ago in the mists of time.  Leys Physical Training College is famous for its excellent discipline and its spectacularly athletic students. Miss Lucy Pym, who has had an unexpected successful book on psychology  published later on in her life, is pleased and flattered to be invited to lecture there by her old school friend Henrietta who is the headmistress.

She finds it rather a wearing place to be at first. "A bell clanged. Brazen, insistent, maddening.....Miss Pym looked at her watch. Half past five!"

Her lecture to the students has gone well and she is determined to leave and return to her quiet London life. But something makes her stay on, after all what has she to return to? She has no family, nobody expecting her back and she realises what an uneventful life she leads. Rather like Robert Blair in the Franchise Affair. So she stays and
observes. 

This is a slow burner of a book - the death does not occur until nearly two thirds into the narrative but I think this is a masterly move. We, the reader, have been taken along with Miss Pym and watched and noted the relationships between the students, the underlying feelings and after a while you realise that there is an unbearable tension building up. It is lightly hinted at but it is there and you know something pretty awful is going to happen. When it does it is not a surprise but it is still shocking.

Miss Pym stumbles on something which reveals to her what has really happened. But she hesitates to go to Henrietta and tell her. Instead "Miss Pym disposes" and comes to a decision....and then finds that she might have been wrong.

Stunning book. Yes and I do mean stunning. Not in the sense that something happens every page and that there is derring do and masses of detection. Au contraire. Miss Pym Disposes and the other titles I have read are brilliant at building up a scene at keeping the reader in a state of tension and What is Going to Happen Next frame of mind.

Josephine Tey's writing is wonderful. It is spare, it is elegant, not a wasted dot or comma, not an exclamation mark in sight, no hyperbole just a beautifully flowing narrative which is so easy to read that you might not realise just how good she is.

I have read all her books - though I may had forgotten I had - but there are a few more to re-read and off I go.