Random Jottings

Lazy Week- tennis, books and more tennis

It has been cold and rainy and dank here in downtown Colchester and so I have done very little but stayed indoors in a huddle with a rug over my knees.  Having had a smart meter installed it has hit home just how much electricity I use in the winter and most of it needlessly. I have become quite anal about it all and watch the figures like a hawk (hence rug over knees instead of putting heater on) and after careful watching I have discovered the following:

• It costs 1p each time I make a cup of tea
• it costs 2p to brew up coffee in my electric percolator
• it costs 10p to have a shower

Well, yes that is cheap, ok but wait until the heating goes on. I do not have central heating but heaters in each room that I can put on and off as I wish, and one day last week it was really cold so I had them on nearly all day. At the same time I had the oven on, batch cooking, and also the immersion heater to make sure I had plenty of hot water. Zut alors!! Quelle horreur (forgive me slipping into the vernacular but I have just watched the last two episodes of Spiral on BBC 4, a superb French series and the language is in my mindset). The figures on the meter flicked by with shattering speed.

During the summer I built up a credit balance on my account despite my supplier telling me I owed them £300 which they swiftly checked and turned into £120 credit when I rang up and bollocked them for their mistakes, but will be using up this balance pretty quick. No matter I hate being cold.  But a smart meter is an eye opener.

Anyway enough of my power rantings. I have been diverted from my obsessional watching the figures click on the meter by the fact that the Nitto ATP Tennis finals have been on the telly and I have been glued I tell you, glued.

Quite wonderful at last to see Fed, Raf and Djoko all knocked out and none of them in the final. The so called NextGen (stupid marketing name) have finally started to make their mark and this week I have watched superb matches from Zverev, Thiem, Medmedev and Tsitsipas who have produced some astonishing tennis. 

As well as beating their opponents they have had to deal with a partisan crowd when Rafa is on court - find it difficult to watch him twitching and fussing and yanking his shorts out of his bum crack - but he is an incredible tennis player.  Whoever plays Novak has the crowd on their side as he seems to be fairly unloved by audiences. I am not quite sure why.   And of course, any poor unfortunate sod who is playing the Smugmeister, Roger, has to content with the entire crowd baying and barracking and cheering your faults. This happened to Novak this week and it was really awful and I found myself feeling sorry for him which does not happen often I can tell you. Even the commentators had a go at the bad behaviour of the spectators.

The Federer fans are in a league of their own when it comes to blind adoration and obnoxious behaviour so I tend not to watch his matches. This week, however, some of the tennis was of such a high standard that it would have been criminal not to.  To sum up, one Fed Fan was holding up a gigantic banner saying "And on the eighth day God created Federer".

I rest my case.

Oh and finally all this tennis is on Amazon Prime which has improved enormously in the last year. Some of the smaller ATP tournaments they cover they have NO COMMENTARY until the final. Oh the bliss of it. Wonderful and it really shows how little it is needed.

The BBC covered the tennis in the afternoon this week so I decided to tune in and check it out. Five minutes of Henman and Castle wittering and I switched over to Amazon Prime straight away.  And I know we should not comment on appearances but FFS will somebody get Sue Barker a stylist and a hairdresser?

My reading has also been of the Non-intellectual-non Booker prize winning variety this week. Actually, most of my reading is like that when I think about it..

New Michael Connelly - The Night Fire. Bosch is now retired but still chasing down cold cases and sorting out criminals. Always well written, always tense and tight and I thoroughly enjoyed this read. I have also just watched the latest series of Bosch on Amazon Primer which is spot on (I am not being paid a retainer by Amazon I promise it is just they have some good stuff)

The Flood - Kristina Ohlsson.  A Bergman and Rech Scandi thriller. This is the sixth and looks like being the last as the author has made it clear she is getting a bit fed up with them. Sad as I really liked them though this last one was a bit rambling. However, it led us up and down dale and tricked the reader into thinking one thing and then telling you Big Mistake.

Home Work - Julie Andrews.  A memoir of her Hollywood years. Enormously engrossing and enjoyable. On screen she comes across as the Doris Day of her time - sweet and virginal, beautifully spoken and sooooo English, but in this book she comes across as a real hardworking human being. Her early life spent touring around music halls before she got her break was not much fun.  I loved it.

One of the chapters was all about the making of Thoroughly Modern Millie which she said was not the wonderful film they were hoping to make and I spotted it was being shown on tv that week so decided to record it. And yes, it is a bit slow and Carol Channing is an irritant, but there are some delightful numbers in in and very funny moments. I loved it all over again. I remember seeing it in the cinema on its release so that dates me a bit. 'sigh'

And I am currently reading the latest Jack Reacher Blue Moon by Lee Childs. Why I do not know. They are all the same. It was half price in Waterstones, which was cheaper than the Kindle edition, so I got it but now I am wondering why I bothered. Ah well.

Off to stay with a friend for a few days. I have a Christmas Prize draw coming up and more of that later and next weekend I am in Bath so am taking Persuation with me.

Lunch now and then tennis and that is it for the day.

Au reservoir.

 

Peter Lovesey - Inspector Diamond books

First of all, apologies for lack of posts. I have been busy and have just had my grandchildren to stay so exhaustion, happy exhaustion I hasten to say, is the order of the day and I am still recovering.

It is now nice and quiet and I am sitting in my favourite chair with the laptop and a rug round my knees to keep me nice and warm and so here I go.

Years ago when I worked in the library system I discovered some books on the shelves Highgate Library by an author called Peter Lovesey.  They were set in the Victorian period, so appealed to me straight away, and featured Sargeant Cribb. I took one home, read it, loved it and then proceeded to read them all.  Some time later I was delighted to see that there was a tv series coming up and starring one of my favourite actors, Alan Dobie (later I loved him in War and Peace when he played Andrei and was quite quite wonderful).

And then what? Well, nothing really. I did not read any more Lovesey and years passed and I did not think any more about him UNTIL a few years ago I picked up a book in Waterstones, a paperback by PETER LOVESEY.  Surely it cannot be the same author I read all those years ago I thought. He must be dead by now (My apologies to you Peter. I am so glad you are alive and kicking).

I read it and, as I usually do when I discover a series I like, I got hold of them and read the lot. I galloped through them and thoroughly enjoyed them and this year when I was in a bit of a reading lull, I fished out my Kindle and decided to read them all over again.  First time when I do a blitz read like this I get carried along by delight at all the books waiting for me and zap along. And then a second read is so enjoyable as I take my time a bit more and savour them.

This is what happened this time and oh how I enjoyed reading about Superintendent Peter Diamond and, what made my reading even more enjoyable, is that they are set in Bath one of my favourite cities in the UK, and as I am familiar with some of the landmarks used in the books, I can place the characters which enhances enjoyment (and that is a very long sentence...)

Inspector Diamond is overweight, dresses badly in crumpled suits, wears a trilby and can be seen to be overbearing and stubborn, but underneath this somewhat unattractive exterior there lurks a kind hearted man who adores his wife Stephanie, and grudgingly their cat, and supports his team through thick and thin.

The writing is sharp and flows along beautifully and also is very funny.

"Asked to wait in the showroom he felt like Gulliver in Lilliput surrounded by miniatures ......Finely made as they were to a man as incorrigibly clumsy as Diamond, such exquisite little pieces represented a thousand potential hazards. It was a mercy when he was called into the managerial suite.  Having negotiated the showroom without mishap, the big man tripped on an afghan rug and lurched forward, grabbing Barnaby's outstretched hand and practically dragging him to the floor. Bits of china around the room rattled but nothing was broken.

'Never look where I'm going' he admitted ' when I was a kid my knees were permanently covered in scabs'

Barnaby looked more shaken than his guest"....

If you are looking for a good crime series to read and have yet to discover Peter Lovesey then I can wholeheartedly recommend these books. Well thought out plots and a main character that you cannot help warming to.  Whenever he is in trouble or needs to sit quietly and think he goes to Bath Abbey:

"On the west front were carved a number of figures attached to twin stone ladders. The founder had dreamed of angels ascending to heaen and his vision had been immortalised this way.....as sometimes happened in medieaveal church architecture, a touch of humour had crept in. At odds with the iconography, certain of the angels were clearly descening the ladders head first.

Diamond's sympathies were wholly with these misfits trying to come down against the flow. How they would pass the aspiring ones just below them was anyone's guess.

The dilemma spoke to his troubled brain in terms of personal crisis and never failed to lift his spirits.....he'd find a way to move on. He always did"

I am going to Bath in a couple of weeks and I fully intend to go and look at the West Front and seek out these angels.

Do read these books. You will love them.

Oh and one of his colleagues is a policeman called Wigful. Superb. Sounds like a character from the Barsetshire chronicles.

 

Recently Received at Random Towers

I have just spent half an hour sorting through my TBR table and shelving books I have written about, put to one side those I will not be reading or reviewing and then another heap of books to feature in this post.  I also have a bag for the charity shop so am feeling a tad better about the pile which is now somewhat reduced. (I went to a book fair over the weekend and came back with another twelve so I needed to make some space....)

Tenterhooks - Ada Leverson.  Some years ago I found a book called The Little Ottleys in a second hand bookshop.  It was one of those wonderful Virago Green editions and I never let those go. I knew nothing about the author and had never heard of the title but I brought it home, sat down and read it and simply loved every word. I blogged about it here.

This is the second in the series and has been reissued as a stand alone by Mike Walmer who runs a small publishing company in Australia and who has sent me some lovely books over the years (he has also reissued the first in this trilogy). I will keep my battered old Virago copy, natch, but this one will sit alongside it.  If you click on the link I have inserted in the above paragraph it will take you back to my original review which, to my astonishment, I note was in 2016. Time flies when you are having fun.

As you all know by now the British Library Classic Crime series is top of my list of favourite publishers and this week a knock on the door and a delivery of a nice padded bag and inside three from BritLib.  Death in Fancy Dress - Anthony Gilbert. This is a name that keeps popping up when I am chatting to detective fiction lovers and I have yet to read any of his titles. This will now be rectified.

The action takes place at a country house (well of course it does) where a fancy dress ball is in full swing and in the middle of the revelry Sir Ralph Feltham is found dead.   OK now that sounds to me a simply perfect setting and I am looking forward to reading this one.

The Christmas Egg by Mary Kelly. "Chief Inspector Nightingale and Sargeant Beddoes have been called to a gloomy flat off Islington High Street. An elderly woman lies dead and her trunk has been looted. The woman is Princess Olga Karukhin, an emigree of Civil War Russia and her trunk is missing its glittering treasure..."

Well if you don't want to read this after that blurb then I will have nothing more to do with you...

The Pocket Detective 2 - puzzles, brainteasers etc. I have yet to finish No 1 but delighted to receive this and though I hate the expression Stocking Filler this is just perfect to pop in a sock or whatever you use. 

Shakespeare for every Day of the Year - edited by Allie Esiri.  This is a simply gorgeous book. It looks lovely with a beautiful cover and just begs you to open it up.  As the title says this book has a quote or a passage or a scene from Shakespeare for every single day. I have this on my bedside table and have been checking it in the morning while drinking my tea. Today it is the turn of All's Well that ends well, Act 2, Scene 3.  Now I do not know this play, my ignorance is total, and the scene is set by a summing up of the action before you read.

"A young aristocrat called Bertram is forced into a marriage by the King of France to Helena the orphan of a mere doctor. In this passage the King promises to pay her dowry. It is possible that Shakespeare played the part of the King, as a contemporary report notes that he played 'kingly parts'"

Tomorrow which is Halloween we have, of course we do, the Three Witches from Macbeth...

I am trying to avoid mentioning CHRISTMAS but have to say that this would make a gorgeous pressie to a Shakespeare loving/book loving friend.  Sure we all have a few of those.

I still have more titles to go but it is coffee time. In the words of the great Arnold Schwarzenegger "I'll be back"...

The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton

The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton - Edith Wharton is one of my favourite writers. I discovered her some 25 years ago and I remember going on holiday to Italy one year when my girls were in their early teens and being accused of not listening to them as I was so engrossed in my book. They were right....the book was The House of Mirth the ending of which totally poleaxed me. It remains one of my favourite by this author.

Over the years I worked my way through all her titles and have them all on my shelves. The vast majority of them are the old "Green" Virago editions which I love and always will. If I am in a second hand bookshop and spot a Green cover I am off like a homing pigeon to see what it is. I have even been known to buy duplicate copies of those I already own as I cannot bear to see them languish in obscurity (at the moment I have three copies of the early Virago Diary of a Provincial Lady with which I will not part).

I have Wharton's Ghost stories scattered among old and battered editions (none of which will be binned I hasten to reassure you) but this edition hard back recently issued by Virago is simply gorgeous.

The accompanying press release reads as follows:

In these powerful and elegant tales Edith Wharton evokes mood of disquiet and darkness within her own era.  In icy New England a married farmer is bewitched by a dead girl; a ghostly bell saves a woman's reputation. Brittany conjures ancient cruelties; Dorset witnesses a retrospective haunting and a New York club cushions an elderly aesthete as he tells of the ghastly eyes haunting his nights"

All these stories are chilling and unsettling. There is nothing ghoulish or outwardly fearsome to alert you but rather a gradual feeling of dread as the reader progresses.

It is difficult to highlight a particular story as they are all, simply, superb. BUT I am going to. Pomegranate Seed - a recently married woman whose husband has been widowed is worried by mysterious letters arriving which clearly haunt and upset her spouse.  She sets out to find out the identity of the writer....

All Souls.  A woman alone in a house on the night of All Souls.  I found this one really really scary.

And, in my opinion, the best one of the lot. "Afterwards". A couple buy an old  house in the country. They are told, after enquiring, that there is no resident ghost but are then told that if they think they have seen one they will not know until "afterwards".  That is all I am going to say but I think it is a tiny masterpiece and chilled me to the marrow.

This is a wonderful new hardback edition from Virago and my thanks to them for being gracious and generous and sending me a copy. It is beautiful and elegant but Be Warned. If it has a sticky label on the back, be very careful when trying to remove it as it nearly took off a piece of the cover when I tried to do so.

But a wonderful present for Halloween or for Christmas or for any time.....

Yesterday's Random Rant - Empowerment, mindfulness and all that Jazz - A follow up

I seem to have touched a nerve with this Rant of mine as I have had loads of comments on the blog and off blog. Most of the comments I have received have agreed with me, but the ones on FB and twitter are not totally in synch with my thoughts and that is fine.

A couple of tweets took issue with me saying I was fed up with Inspirational Women and we all needed role models to look up to and I could not agree more. I have made it clear that this is a personal view and slightly tongue in cheek (though I meant every word), and yes, young girls and women need to know they can aspire to great things - if they want to. And I feel that so many of these articles can make you feel a bit despairing "Oh I can never do anything like that" and make you feel a bit useless. So I think there is a balance to be sought.

When writing I made the point that women do so much and all unsung. In their way they are inspirational, they do wonderful things but nobody gets to know about it.  And all the time in the back of my mind was the rememberance of something that I had read and loved and expressed my thoughts.  Woke up this morning and remembered it. So I took the book down from the shelves and here is what it said:

"But we insignificant people with our daily words and acts are preparing the lives of many Dorotheas, some of which may present a far sadder sacrifice than that of the Dorothea we know.

Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth.  But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive; for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs"

The last page of Middlemarch by George Eliot.

Perfect.

Random Rant - Empowerment, mindfulness and all that Jazz

Just to confirm that this is a Rant so ignore if you wish.

I have been reading Good Housekeeping for years.  Its title is really anachronistic these days but it would be difficult to change the title, much though the editorial team might like to, as it is such a well known brand.  It has changed and moved on with the times but I have to say that over the last year or so I have begun to find it rather irritating.

The latest edition really got me cross. First of all, the woman on the cover was Fiona Bruce. Now this is purely a personal thing - many of my regular readers know that this woman drives me mad. The BBC use her for anything they can lay their hands on - a few years back she did a series of historical progs on the Beeb, none of which she was qualified for, and she is the perennial host on Antiques Roadshow and now, gawd help us, she fronts Question Time. She also pops up on the news. It seems she is multi talented....

But as I said this is a personal thing and merely started me off feeling twitchy. So I read on. The usual reader's letters, beauty products, suggested gifts for Christmas, nothing to get worked up about all pretty inoffensive.

Then we come to the Trail Blazers. Woman who have Made their Mark. Well what is wrong with this Elaine I hear you cry? Well, nothing at all. Merely that I am getting fed up with reading about them.  We have the Managing Director of Penguin, then a Doctor of science who wants to make science more accessible to girls and women, then the female CEO of Citroen. Nothing wrong with this at all. All high powered, all guaranteed to make the rest of us feel totally inadequate.

Further on we come across Women who have all had to Reinvent themselves for various reasons.  One woman raised a family then decided to become a student and take a degree in social work (most of these woman seem to manage the financial side of it all - perhaps having a husband working helps). Another was a high flyer in corporate life who got sick of it all and gave it up when her child was ill - very good and understandable reason (she makes it clear that her husband was able to support them). So she spots an market opportunity and starts making 'bees wax wraps'. Don't ask. Needless to say she is successful and now works harder than she did in her earlier marketing job. Rather defeats the object methinks. Another woman was deserted by her husband but she picked herself up, started a web site marketing housekeeping, cleaning etc and then branched into catering and cooks meals for parties etc.

So what is wrong with all of this? well nothing but honestly I am getting So Tired of Inspirational Woman full of Empowerment.  One month we had women off climbing up Mount Kilimanjaro or swimming the Zambesi or deep sea diving or setting up a charity in the middle of the Sahara (ok I made that last one up but you get my drift).

I am sure all the magazine wants to do is inspire us.  Well some of us do not want to be inspired. We have enough to do already with working, raising a family, holding down a job (which is probably boring and repetitive but has to be done) without reading about these Superwoman who, incidentally, have obviously been made up to look totally glam for the magazine photoshoot. Do we ever see a woman who is knackered and shattered who has been up all night with a baby or exhausted from the commute home?

OK I am on a roll.

I come to an article on the MENOPAUSE. Another one full of all the suffering and angst this can cause.  I DON'T WANT TO KNOW. I AM NOT INTERESTED.

Flick over the page. An article on a mother coping with her son who wants to be a woman. Then an article on how to overhaul your life and beome creative and transform your health and improve your mental wellbeing.   By now I am feeling exhausted.

Now I come to the finance pages. How to be MINDFUL of your money. Yes Mindful. I read on and find that if you take a mindful attitude you will feel happier and less stressed and we must identify our bad habits - seems many of us have unhelpful beliefs about money relating to our childhood - there I knew my mum making me put pennies in my money box would come back to haunt me.

So we have a guide to Managing Money Mindfully. I have to practice money visualisation. We have to concentrate on making our debt get smaller. Apparently our brain then gets the message that this must be done. Note: only money visualisation I do is to plan how to spend it when I win the Lottery.  Every month we have to have a Money Cleanse. No not money laundering but a Cleanse. After reading this section what it boils down to is checking your bank balance.....

Bear with me gentle readers, I am nearly finished. 

The back page of this mag always has a "Celebrity" asking questions about their life and making us all feel a bit pig sick.  It bears no relation to real life at all. Imagine asking Benedict Cumberbatch when he puts the bins out - that sort of thing.

This time it was an Actress, I refuse to call her an actor and she tells us that she would rather not cook for friends but eat out (wouldn't we all deary?) Asked what food she could not live without she anwers, perfectly reasonably, chocolate. But not a Yorkie or a bar of Dairy MIlk is good enough. No it has to be "good dark chocolate, preferably a single origin bean" A Single Origin Bean??

Of course her kitchen cupborad must-haves are cloves, garlic, chamomile and spearmint tea, almond milk, sea salt and blackpepper, chickpeas and tasty bread.  (Mine are tinned tomatoes, pasta and baked beans just for the record)

And then the final touch that made me throw the magazine across the room.  Apparently she is now into "simple, fresh vegetarian food" and do you know what her signature dish is - this fresh simple food?  Roasted beetroot and baked feta cooked with lemon thyme, served with blood oranges and chickpeas in a rich shallot and fresh flat leaf parsley and mint herb dressing.

FFS. No I am not going to just leave the initials. For fuck's sake.

This magazine is for women.  And most women just get on with it. We don't do mavellous inspiring things. We live our lives. We raise our children. We hold down jobs. We cook, yes we do. We also clean. We shop. We look after our families, aged parents. Now I left a marriage when I was 52. I had to remake my life, my social life and deal with the fall out I had created by my departure. It was hard it was miserable but I bloody well got on with it. I do not think I have done a wonderful thing. I do not think I am inspirational. I just wake up each morning and do what has to be done. I have not gone walking along the Great Wall of China for charity, I have not scaled Mount Everest. I have not written a novel nor have I started an online business. I just live my life like millions of ordinary women.

Now I appreciate this is a personal rant and many of you may love reading about Woman who are Empowered etc etc and that is fine, but I honestly feel when reading articles like this that it can make you feel that you have achieved very little in life and become dissatisfied. It does not affect me this way, as you will have gathered by now if you have read this far. I just get pissed off with it all.

So tonight I will be sitting eating my ready meal from a well known chain store, in my nightie, watching Strictly Come Dancing and feeling perfectly content with my lot.

I sometimes long for the days of Women's magazines when you got a few short stories, a serial, a few recipes and a knitting pattern....

Reading round up

After ploughing through A N Wilson's biography of Prince Albert I felt in need of a little light relief so I re-read a couple of Agatha Christie (Five Little Pigs and the Man in the Brown Suit) Enjoyed them all over again.  I also read several light romances, none of which I can remember now, which were light and frothy and very relaxing. I do love a romantic novel.

I picked up the latest Harry Hole book The Knife by Jo Nesbo which cannot be categorised as light reading. Throughout this series Harry has lurched from alcoholism to sobriety and back again and in this book we find he is once more hitting the bottle as his wife has slung him out. There is a particular nasty murder very near home which sobers Harry up as he goes in search of the killer - he is pretty sure he knows Who Dun It. A rapist who has recently been released from prison who has a vendetta against Harry and his family.  The story of this repugnant man runs alongside the investigtion and Nesbo plays all the tricks in the book to try and make us think they are linked. The plot twists and turns and I can honestly say that when the murderer was revealed I was shocked as that person had never crossed my mind. Absorbing read even if it gets a bit near the knuckle at times in terms of violence.

Many Rivers to Cross - Peter Robinson. The latest Inspector Banks story all of which I have read with gradually decreasing enjoyment. The author likes rock music and music of the sixties and seventies and we are left in no doubt about this as he hauls playlists into every volume.  In the earlier tighter and tauter books this was very much on the periphery but in the later books it crept in and seemed to take over to the detriment of the narrative. I got the feeling that it was needed to pad out the story.

The latest starts with an incredibly artificial opening with two characters, one of whom featured in the last story, discussing the UK and Brexit and it is very clear from the discussion that Peter Robinson thinks we are all going to hell in a handcart that the country is racist and divided and an unpleasant place to live.  They then get stuck into Trump by which time I was getting very irritated.  I am not the slightest bit interested in the author's politics whether they agree with mine or not. When I purchase a detective story I do not expect a current affairs diatribe I want a good story and I want the writer to get on with it.  Despite my irritation I did read the book and felt, as I have the last two or three, that it was boring and I found myself skipping chunks to get to the end.

I am not alone most of the reviews on Amazon seem to say the same as me "The constant references to current affairs, most notably Brexit, appeared to be an opportunity for the author to bang a personal, opinionated, drum which I certainly don’t need from pleasure reading".

It is now in the charity shop bin and I do not think I will bother with any more by Mr Robinson.

To the Land of Long Lost Friends - McCall Smith. The latest in the interminable saga of the No 1 Ladies Detectve Agency which have now become pure whimsy and move at the pace of a sloth. I think the kindest word for this is meandering. I shall leave it there.

Anglican Women Novelists - edited by Maltby and Shell.  I have mentioned this before and was looking forward to reading it. Unfortunately it suffers from 'academic speak' so dense and long winded that you have to work really hard to work your way through the verbiage. Think Henry James multiplied by twenty and that will give you some idea.  The chapter on Noel Streatfield used the words 'nurture and nurturing' thirteen times with a few 'patriarchical' thrown in for good measure.  These essays made the subject matter sound dreary and boring and as they were covering Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Goudge and P D James to name a few, that takes some doing. Very disappointing.

I have just started the ghost stories of Edith Wharton. I have read many of these before but this is a lovely new edition from Virago and I will be writing about them nearer Halloween. They are wonderful.

And I raved about Eagle of the Ninth in an earlier post. This garnered lots of comments and one of my readers told me I MUST read Knight's Fee by Sutcliff. Well, I did and it reduced me to floods of tears. It was simply superb,

Prince Albert - A N Wilson

”it was with some emotion that I beheld Albert who is beautiful”.

This is the entry in Queen Victoria’s Journal after she clapped eyes on Albert and fell instantly in love with him.  This love never wavered and though their marriage has been portrayed as a love match and a happy one, I feel that Albert took full advantage of Victoria’s adoration.

My interest in Queen Victoria began in 1964 when, as a mini skirted teenager, I worked in a library and was in charge of the book reservations.  Elizabeth Longford published her seminal work on the Queen that year and it was a huge success. The first warts and all biography of her, previous ones having been overly deferential, it showed the Queen as a living, human being, with frailties and faults like us all. I managed to get hold of it when the reservation list finished and read it through in one weekend and was enthralled. 

After reading this, gosh did I feel sorry for Albert having to live with this woman who yelled and shrieked and followed him from room to room haranguing him when they had a row. What a saint putting up with that I thought. Over the years of reading practically every book and biography of V&A that I could lay my hands on, my opinion changed. A year ago I read the excellent biography by Julia Baird which I think is the best since the Longford, and this placed me firmly in Victoria's camp.

And so to the A N Wilson's book Prince Albert The Man who Saved the Monarchy.  It seems to be an accepted fact that Albert is entitled to be so named and others have the same opinion, but after reading Wilson I am wondering why. It is made clear throughout that Albert’s endless stream of letters, memoranda, thoughts and ideas were regarded as “interference” and rather annoying by the Prime Minister and Cabinet members and Wilson narrates that many of his suggestions were ignored and that most of his endlless work was totally pointless. At one point the Queen raised the question of Albert’s status (the Prince of Wales was now growing up and would soon outrank his father) and she wanted a title for her husband so he could take precedence over their son. It was mooted that he becreated the Duke of Edinburgh (a title which we know well) but this was turned down as it would mean Albert would have a seat in the House of Lords and a vote, and this was the last thing Parliament wanted. Hence, he became Prince Consort which meant he ranked above his son but, as far as I can make out, is a meaningless title.

Albert’s good looks which had enraptured the Queen soon vanished and he became an unhealthy looking middle aged workaholic, largely self inflicted as he distanced himself from his wife whose love and neediness tired him out. I genuinely feel he loved her and the first years of their marriage were happy and fulfilled, but the endless pregnanancies and the suffering of the Queen after each birth with what would now be diagnosed as post natal depression, exhausted him and he escaped from it as often as he could.

Bear in mind that Queen Victoria had nine children. Yes nine in twenty years. She was tiny, barely five foot and yet she produced child after child and with each pregnancy her dependence on Albert grew so that he was King in all but name. It is clear from correspondence between the Prince and his adviser Stockmar that this was the plan from the start. A young Queen needed a Man and Albert, with his superior intellect and education, was designated for this position from an early age. The fact that Victoria adored him was a bonus. My view is that he traded on this to a huge extent.  

Albert had a habit of withdrawing from scenes and leaving the Queen fuming and frustrated. He then took refuge in his study and wrote letters to her. And my goodness these letters are cold and unfeeling and if, after producing my sixth or seventh child, I had received one of these, I would have thrown the Orb and Sceptre at him. Their tone chills me to the bone.

"I am trying to keep out of your way until your better feelings have returned and you have regained control of yourself. You on the other hand want to talk it all over with me again, you make a parade of your suffering before my eyes so as to make me feel your reproaches still more keenly.

I am ready to ignore all that has happened and take a new departure and try in future to avoid anything which might make you unhappy and your state of mind worse. Cure it I cannot. You alone can do that"

and

"I can give you a good certificate this time and am pleased to witness your own improvement. My advice is to be less occupied with yourself and your own feeling"

So did he save the Monarchy?  When Victoria came to the throne she had unlimited powers and could interfere as and when she liked as Peel found when he beccame Prime Minister and she scuppered his administraiton in order to get Melbourne back.  Albert put a stop to this as he felt the Crown should be separate from politics, though as I have mentioned above this did not stop him bombarding the Prime Minister with notes and suggestions.

Where he did save the monarchy was on the domestic side and how it was viewed by the public. Prior to Queen Victoria’s reign the four Georges and William were hardly an example one would wish to follow. Debauched, spendthrift, they were a pretty horrendous bunch. This all changed when the Queen married Albert and settled down tp producing their family and presenting themselves to the country as a role model of how family life should be. Paintings, and later photogrphs, of this blissful mother, father and children were publicised and over her long reign the monarchy was transformed and, yes, saved. (It wobbled a bit when she withdrew from public life). This model of the Royal Family endures to this day. But before we endow Albert with all the princely virtues let us not forget that the Queen was widowed at 42 and ruled for another forty years on Her Own and was highly respected and revered throughout Europe and the world. Free of Albert's censorius put downs and his view of her educational abilities, she blossomed.

One of my favourite letters I came across when reading  the excellent Roger Fulford editions of her letters to her daughter in Prussia, was when I found she had told Vicky;

"I am afraid I am going to do something that Dear Papa would not like"

And I thought YES!

I found this book rather hard going and felt I was wading through it at times and I am not sure I appreciate the author’s style.  There was one phrase which really leapt off the page and I found profoundly irritating when he described the newly wed and blissfully happy Victoria as “drooling over Albert”.   Drooling? If I had been AN Wilson’s editor I would have whipped that out straight away. It does a total disservice to the Queen and it made me very cross.

Overall, not a biography I will return to though the chapters on the Great Exhibition were fascinating and the best part of the volume. It showed Albert at his best, determined to showcase the industrial talents of the Empire and the amount of work that was undertaken by him and his committe was incredibly daunting. Imagine organising the Olympics in 2012 and you have some idea of the huge tasks which faced them.  Only without the internet and email....

A curate’s egg of a book. For me at any rate.

The Eagle of the Ninth - Rosemary Sutcliff

The question I asked myself when reading this simply wonderful book, was why have I not read it before?  I am sure there are many of you, O Gentle Reader, who ask the same.  I loved Rosemary Sutcliff as a child and teenager but the books I read were Brother Dusty Feet, Simon, The Queen Elizabeth Story and my most favourite of all, The Armourer’s House. These were all set in the Tudor period and the Eagle of the Ninth and others were all dealing with the Roman and early ages in which I had little interest.

In the last few years Slightly Foxed have reprinted, to my utter delight, the Carey family novels written by Ronald Welch. I read all of these in my youth and adored them and they became very difficult to track down and, when found, were very expensive.  Slightly Foxed were very good to me and gave me several review copies which I shamelessly begged for. I then realised they were limited editions and felt conscience stricken and made sure I purchased the rest.

Now these wonderful peeps are reissuing the four Sutcliff novels set during the last years of the Roman occupation of Britain and with the original illustrations to boot. I looked at them, do I want them I thought? I never read them. But oh they are so gorgeous. Yes I will. So The Eagle of the Ninth and the Silver Branch arrived and I sat down to start Eagle.

It is a simply glorious book. In the foreword by the author we are told that around the year AD 117 the Ninth Legion which was stationed near where York now stands, marched north to deal with a rising among the Caledonian tribes and was never heard of again. Eighteen hundred years later during an excavation at Sichester a wingless Roman Eagle was dug up. Nobody knows why it was there just as nobody knows what happened to the Ninth Legion and Rosemary Sutcliff put these two mysteries together and wrote this book.

Centurion Marcus Flavius Aquila had asked to be sent to Britain because of his father who had been in the vanishing Ninth Legion and he hoped that he might find out what had happened to him.   When involved in a local skirmish some months later he is badly injured and his career as a soldier comes to an end. He then resolves to find the missing Eagle of the Ninth.  He has an uncle in Britain with whom he convalesces and lives and while there saves the life of a slave, Esca, who he buys and who becomes his companion and friend.  It is he who accompanies Marcus when they set off on their journey to the north of England to search for the Eagle and solve the mystery.

While this part of the book and the lead up to their mission is fascinating, it is after they track down the missing Eagle (pretty sure I am not giving anything away here) that the book becomes enthralling.  They are hunted down by their pursuers and it is totally thrilling and exciting and had me on the edge of my seat. I was not expecting to feel that at all and it kept me pinned to my sofa for the rest of the afternoon until I finished it.

And that was when I started to wonder Why have I not Read this Before? And to contemplate my idiocy.  But then I changed my mind for the simple reason that after reading voraciously all my life I have made a discovery. I have found a book, and three more to follow, which is such a joy and has delighted me so much.  Not often that happens and when it does it is wonderful.

Oh the writing. What can I say? everyone who has read Sutcliff will be laughing at my rediscovery of just how superb is her prose.

"The autumn was a bad time for Marcus, feeling wretchedly ill for the first time in his life, always in pain and face to face with the wreckage of everything he knew and cared about.....he was desperately homesick for his own land for now that they seemed lost to him, his own hills grew achingly dear.....the shivering silver of the olive woods when the mystral blew the summer scent of thyme and rosemary and little white cyclamen among the sun warmed grass...and here in Britain the wind moaned through the desolate woods, the skies wept and the gale blown leaves pattered against the windows..."

 And this - so beautiful

"The soft uncertain lamplight cast a delicate web of radiance over the table, making the red Samian bowls glow like coral, turning the withered yellow apples of last year's harvest to the fruite of the Hesperides, casting a bloom of light over the fluted curve of a glass cup, kindling there a pointed scarlet flame in the heart of a square flask of Falernian wine, strangely intensifying the faces of the men who leaned each on a left elbow round the table"

I have the second book in the series to read and the other two are winging their way towards me as I speak. These books are superbly produced so elegant to look at and to hold and, for me anyway, the bonus that they are illustrated by C Walter Hodges who is one of, if not my most, favourite illustrator who enhanced every book he ever worked on.

In the middle of the big publishing houses and the endless stream of Shades of Grey and Da Vinci Code type drivel, these books from Slightly Foxed are like perfect gems.  If you love Rosemary Sutcliff and remember her from your childhood, as I do, then you know that when I say every word she writes is perfectly chosen and just right for the sentence in which it is embedded, I am speaking true.  You may have battered and loved old copies of these books on your shelf. Well, treat yourself and head over to the website and order these.  Give yourself a present.  You won't regret it.

 

Random in London

I am just back from a couple of days in London, lovely and totally exhausting and so glad to be home. I love London and the hotel I was staying in a Tavistock Square is slap bang in the middle of the area where I lived and went to school in my years in the city and it was so nostalgic to be there.  I was meeting a friend for lunch the first day - she was over from Australia to watch the cricket so she was a happy bunny - and we had a catch up on all the gossip and chat.

I had a walk through St James Park and up the Mall. The park was full of flowers and is such a beautiful place slap bang in the middle of London. 

The next day I was attending a study day at Buckingham Palce the subject being Queen Victoria's Buckingham Palace and the current exhibition of the same name.  Victoria loved living there as a young Queen and then as a wife and we heard how she and Albert reorganised and transformed the palace to suit a growing family.

All this took place in a gorgeous room overlooking the palace gardens. When we arrived there was tea and coffe, sparkling and still mineral water and lots of lovely biscuits. We had to go through security and be checked and lurking outside the Palace, as I found when asking directions to a restaurant where I was meeting friends for lunch, were very large burly men in uniform with machine guns strapped across their chest. All a bit daunting but they were very friendly and sweet though I am under no illusion that they would have had me on the ground and handcuffed in a trice if I had made a wrong move.

Lucy Peter who had curated the exhibition (and in this case curated is the correct word and not just the current usage that fashion houses etc employ) spoke to us about the changes and building made by the Royal Couple. Originally built for a royal family with no provision for children, this had to be altered to accomodate the growing family of V & A.

Helen Rappaport, who has written a wonderful book on Victoria and Albert, as well as her glorious Romanov trilogy, then gave a talk about the marriage and how the Queen coped after Albert's death which I found rather moving. As Helen was also the historical consultant on the first series of Queen Victoria we had some rather amusing insights into that as well.

Then followed a tour of the State Rooms and the exhibiton itself which was beautifully organised, as is everything to do with Royalty. I have not been around Buck House for some years and had forgotten just how gorgeous it is and oh the gallery! Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Canaletto - stunning paintings all the length and breadth and just so breathtaking to see them in their glory.

Then back to our room for another talk by Lucy in which she told us of the research needed and the work done to set the exhibiton up. By the time the day had finished the Palace was closed to the public and we were escorted in groups across the inner courtyard which made me feel very grand. When we emerged at the front of the Palace underneath the balcony, spectators were obviously wondering who we were so I gave a regal wave or two....

In the morning I had caught a bus to Trafalgar Square and then wandered up the Mall and through St James Park on my way to the Palace. I had forgotten just how much I loved London's parks which are always an oasis in the city. And the bonus of seeing the guards riding up the Mall to the palace as well put the icing on the cake.  When I left it was almost dusk and all the lamps along the Mall were lighting up. So beautiful and I strolled slowly towards Admiralty Arch. By this time reality had kicked in as I realised I had spent most of the day walking and on my feet and my shoes, which had fitted me last year and no longer do due to my weight loss, were slipping off my feet and they were aching like mad. I made it to Trafalgar Square where I thought I would catch a bus but was so tired I thought sod it and hailed a cab and went back to my hotel where I duly collapsed on my bed and discovered I had a wopping great blister on my right foot.

A simply gorgeous day and as I had had a good lunch I relaxed in my room with a sandwich and a cup of tea and had a good shower and relaxed. I was asleep by 10 o'clock.

I love London. It has a buzz about it and in the sunshine which I had all my stay it was even better. But it was equally lovely to get home and just be on my own in peace and quiet in my little flat.

As Dorothy said “there’s no place like home”.....