Random Jottings

Random Cooking - I have made minestrone soup

Just the day for making soup. Do nip over and check this out

https://randomjottings.typepad.com/random_and_the_great_colc/2021/12/minestrone-soup.html

I wish it could be Christmas every day - Millie Johnson

Many of my lovely Random Readers know I am a bit of a misery when it comes to Christmas. I loathe the commercialisation of it all, the mad orgy of spending and the tacky ads on the telly.  My favourite part of the festive season is Carols from Kings on Christmas Eve and sitting in the warm and watching it and feeling happy. Much better than Christmas Day which I always found a bit of a let down and, as a child, boring. 

OK just call me the Grinch. I don't mind.

I also dislike books that are full of Christmas Cheer when everyone is happy and people fall in love and everyone sits and sings carols and everyone is so....well need I go on? No.

BUT I have just read a book by Millie Johnson - I wish it could be Christmas every Day which has a snowbound setting, food, wine, cheer, love and sentiment and I sat down last week and read it through and simply loved it.  My inner grinch was banished and I wallowed. I am not quite sure why.

All a bit Agatha Christie'ish as six people all end up stranded by a snowstorm in an old pub in a village called Figgy Hollow.

Bridget had arranged to meet her husband to finalise their divorce which had been dragged out by their mutual acrimony.  Luke leaves behind his pregnant partner to sign the papers so they can both get on with their lives. 

Mary is driving her workaholic boss Jack to a meeting which is cancelled at the last minute and they, too, have to seek shelter. She is the cliche - a PA in love with her boss and she had been hoping that being with him would finally make him notice her.

Charlie and Robin were on their way to a luxury hotel in Scotland for a very special Christmas when they end up joining their fellow travellers in Figgy Hollow.

The mysterious inn is well stocked with Christmas food and drink.  The only entertainment they have is a radio with a local DJ playing old records, there is no wifi and no phone signal.

So these six disparate travellers all get together and make a Happy Christmas for themselves and the results, which I predicted - wrongly, will come as a surprise to everyone.  It is sentimental and warm hearted and I normally circle round this in a book, especially if it is overdone.  I checked my dictionary and the definition of sentiment given was  "expressing, appealing to, or being moved by sensitive or tender emotions, such as love, nostalgia, or pity".  

All of these are evident in this book but they are leavened by understanding, common sense and also wit.   This book is funny as well as being touching and the narrative takes us along and I could not put the book down until I had read it.

I discovered Millie's books a couple of years ago. How? Found one in a charity shop and took it home and if anybody gets cross that this purchase took away from supporting the author's work, I should tell you now that I enjoyed it so much I worked my way through all of her books over a period of six months. And bought and paid for them all too. I was pleased to do so.

Figgy Bottom is a place of joy, sadness and coming to terms with life and it is a difficult place to find or return to as our protagonists discover. Where has it gone?

I am going to give you a clue. Think Brigadoon.

Go on look it up...

Random Telly

I have spent the last week feeling pretty dire and unable to move with the ache in my back. This always happens when I spend time with the family as I have bungalow legs and they live in a three storey house with a loft extension and the loft extension is where I sleep.  Also we are always busy and we went into town and then out in the evening. So I have spent most of the last seven days propped up in my armchair with my feet up and a hot water bottle on my back. I tried to do my physio exercises but they were impossible so I just told myself to do nada.

So a lot of TV and, apart from University Challenge and Strictly, I find I hardly watch BBC at all. Most of my viewing is on other channels or Amazon Prime, which has tennis on this week, Sky which has had cricket, or Netflix.  All of this I pay to watch and am happy to do so. I do not expect free programming and when Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells complains that he or she cannot watch the Test Matches because they have to pay, I think well why not?  I do not have the sports package any more as all the tennis is now on Prime and all I watch is cricket. So I have a rolling monthly payment for cricket only as I have no desire to pay for motor racing, football etc. 

Over on Channel 5 there is a new series of the PD James detective, Dalgliesh.  As you well know by now, I am a huge admirer of this author's writing, her plotting, narrative the lot.  The books have depth and character and though sometimes I feel like yelling at Adam oh do stop internalising and angsting (sorry if that is not a word) and Get on With it, he is one of my favourite detectives.   I remember an acient series back in the seventies which was good and about ten years ago we had Martin Shaw, an actor of very limited ability in my humble, who spent most of the series wandering around with a furrowed brow and a pained expression.

So we have the latest and what do we have? Well, Bertie Carvel, who I do not know as an actor at all, looks the part and is very charismatic and charming. BUT and here we go again, he spends most of each episode wandering around with his hands in his pockets looking at things, furrowing his brow and gazing at the sky. I think we are meant to think he is Thinking Deep Thoughts and Pondering when in fact he just looks constipated.  It is all rather tedious as the producers obviously want us to show he is an intellectual and has hidden depths but surely there must be a different way of getting this across?  I would think his script for each episode must cover not more than a couple of pages as he spends most of his time Looking.

And natch the stories have been tweaked and, once again, all a bit tedious. Kate Miskin, his sargeant is a a well rounded character in the books, a mature woman who has worked hard to overcome her disadvantaged poor council house estate upbringing.  In this series she is played by a mixedd race actress, very competently, but I feel is miscast.   By making her mixed race this means that she can come up against a male DS who is an unreconstructed Male Chauvinist Pig who subjects her to a lot of racial offensive remarks.   He is painted in such broad strokes they must have had to use a wasllpaper paste brush.  Subtle he is not. Totally unneccessary but this then gives the producers a chance to virtue signal big time by having Dalgliesh tell this bloke that he will Not Tolerate Prejudice of any kind and do I make myself clear?

I know all my readers well so I am sure you will not misunderstand all of the above but it does get rather irritating after a while.   If any of this added to the dramatisations then well and good but it does rather feel as if it has been shoehorned in.  I think this is Dalgliesh Lite as the depth and compelling characterisation of her books has been mainly ignored and it is all surface.   I am watching because it passes an hour or two but on the whole it is disappointing. However, on checking the reviews it seems I am in the minority...

OK well I am rambling as per. Also watching Shetland which IS the BBC and I love this series and throughly enjoying this, mainly because of Doug Henshall who I think is gawjust, not sure why but I also adore his accent. And the scenery makes me want to visit the Shetland Isles so much.

If you want mindless tosh may I recommend a film on Netflix, Red Notice, starting Ryan Reynolds and The Rock.  A totally silly caper movie with loads of derring do and though there are fight scenes aplenty, they are done with humour and style and are totally unscary.  One scene when our two heroes find themselves in the middle of a bullring (don't ask) with a bull about to charge

Hero 1    Stand still, don't move bulls have bad eyesight and cannot see us if we stay still

Hero 2    Are you sure about that?

Hweo1    Yes I saw a documentary by David Attenborough about it

Hero 2    I think you saw Richard Attenborough and that was Jurassic park

Hero 2    Yes that's right.  Jeff Goldblum was there.  RUN!!!!

Incredibly silly but huge fun.

And that has been my week. My back now feels much better but you know what? The ache and lousy week was worth it for the weekend with my family.   I went to a service in the Chapel at St Johns where their simply superb choir sang the Faure Requiem. I freely admit that when they started singing, my throat closed up, my eyes pricked and tears fell. I spent most of the service just overcome with it all and by the time we reached In Paradisium and those soaring voices lifted up I had a hard job not to really howl into my hanky. And then afterwards walking through the colleges. Glorious.

Driving home the M11 was closed and I was sent off on a mad detour so my journey was twice as long as it would normally have been, but I was in such an uplifted state I did not really mind.  So though I paid for it and have been popping painkillers all week that memory has kept me going.

Au Reservoir

 

Remembrance Day

I am glad that Rembrance Day is still treated with dignity and that so many of us take part and observe the two minutes silence and take time to think. We need this peace and quiet each year and even more so it seems to me as I, personally, feel we are currently  living in a world of chaos and disorder.

I am off to Cambridge to be with the family this weekend and I have the immense privilage of being able to attend a performance of Faure's Requiem tomorrow morning in the chapel at St Johns.  It will be wonderful.

Pistachio cakes

I have just put up the recipe for Pistachio cakes which I tried a few weeks ago. Check it out!

https://randomjottings.typepad.com/random_and_the_great_colc/2021/11/pistachio-cakes.html

George V - Jane Ridley

I have seen Jane Ridley as a talking head on various programmes on the television and she always struck me as being an enthusiastic and supportive reviewer of her subject and this was borne out by my reading of her biography of Edward VII, (review here) a few years which I found a fascinating fully rounded portrayal of his life and personality. In the foreword the author said that she had enjoyed being in Bertie’s company and hoped the reader would too.  Well I certainly did.  So it was with great interest I read her new biography of George V.   And the same thing happened.  By the time I had closed it up I found I had become fond of George and had enjoyed his company. Jane Ridley, whose writing is impeccable and research admirable, seems to have the knack of finding good qualities in her subjects.

My main fascination with this book, though his political acumen was far more than we would think, is in his relationship with his family.   His mother, Queen Alexandra, clung to her children and after the death of her elder son, even more so.   George adored his mother, spoke to her every day, and allowed her to organise his life even after his marriage to the annoyance of Queen Mary.   However, she infantilised him and, in a letter, written to him after he had set off on a voyage with the navy she penned:

“Every morning I woke with a jump and a start and expect to see you standing before me with your poor dear tear-stained little face”

He was twenty-five at the time.

Very close to his elder brother, Eddie, George was devastated at his death and found it difficult to realise that he was now in line to be King.   Eddie had become engaged to Princess Mary of Teck who Victoria thought was a nice sensible girl who would manage him and bring him up to scratch – as we all know by now Eddie was a vacant young man lacking in any sense of purpose or intelligence. 

Of course, a good princess cannot be allowed to go to waste and after Eddie’s death and with unseemly haste, or so it seems these days, George proposed to her and was accepted.   One cannot help but feel for May, as she was known, an intelligent and well read girl, being passed around as if she was a parcel. No choice in the matter as her family were impoverished and the idea of being Queen certainly appealed to her.

The generally accepted view of George and Mary is one of a stern faced upright couple and their portrayal as cold unfeeling parents has remained.  He hectored and shouted at his children and the Queen was reported to be afraid of him.   Sadly, both were unable to express their feelings either to their children or to each other but George’s letters to May show his love for her as he wrote to her three days before their wedding:

“It is just two months today that we became engaged, how quick the time goes, I loved you then very much now I adore you”

As Ridley points out this sounds like a man hoping that if he says something often enough it will come true.   A year later George wrote this to his wife:

 “When I asked you to marry me I was very fond of you but not very much in love” and in her widowhood Queen Mary reflected that she knew her husband was not in love with her when they married but fell in love with me later.

It was a long and enduring marriage and more successful than many thought it would be as a critic at the time said waspishly “she is in love with the Crown irrespective of whose head may wear it”

Both George and Mary were underestimated by the general populace and, indeed, the Royal family many of whom apotheosised her as dull and boring.  This may have been because both of them disliked socialising and going out to banquets and balls and had very little small talk unlike the court of Edward VII.   But Mary was intelligent and well read in complete contrast to her husband who had very few intellectual interests.  

They spent as little time in London as possible and stayed at Sandringham as much as they could.  Few public duties were expected of George even though by now he was the Prince of Wales,  though it is worth noting that his father Edward VII made sure he saw papers sent to him and kept him in the loop, unlike Queen Victoria who kept her heir firmly in the cold.  George scheduled his functions and appearances around the shooting season. For seventeen years, according to Harold Nicolson “he did nothing at all but kill animals and stick in stamps”.  Nicolson then went on to say that though he was not worried about the shooting (we would think differently today as the amount of animals and birds slaughtered by George was huge) he thought he was idle. “The moment he marries and settles down at York cottage the basic stupidity of his character becomes apparent”

This is a rather vicious and nasty  comment because George was not stupid. Yes he lacked intellect and was old fashioned in many ways, but he was a practical and a good man who worked hard and wished to do the very best he could in the role which fell to his lot.  On reading of his interactions with the various governments over which he reigned, and his relationship with Prime Ministers, no matter which party the represented, it becomes clear that his thoughts and his behaviour were based on sound common sense. Not flashes of intellectual brilliance but what he thought was the best solution for the country.

Mary supported him throughout.  She revered the institution of Monarchy and saw it as her life’s work and duty to put this above all else and this is where the reputation of being a cold hearted mother was formed.   It is clear from reading this biography and also the brilliant book about her by James Pope-Hennessy, that she loved her children dearly.   The Duke of Windsor, even when he was at his most bitter about his family, recollected the evenings spent sitting with her while she read to him and they discussed matters.   The Queen wrote him loving letters when he was an adult saying how easy she found it to talk to him and how much she appreciated sharing confidences with him. This is not an unloving mother, but as previously mentioned, her carapace of shyness grew stronger and harder to breach the longer she was on the throne.

George was another matter entirely.   Uncomfortable with his eldest son who he viewed as a bit of a wastrel and disapproving of his love life, his relationship with him worsened as he got older and in a famous quote said that David would ruin himself after his (George’s) death and he hoped that the throne would to his brother and then to Lilibet.  And of course he was right.

I have barely touch on George’s political views – I leave that to more scholarly reviewers to do so. I have, however, to mention his part in the matter of the murder of the Romanov family as he has been accused by many of a lack of action.   I am in two minds about this but having read other books on the Romanovs it was clear that getting them out of Russia was a lost cause from the start though I do believe that the King was somewhat relieved to find he could, politically, do very little. Expedience saved him from having to make a decision.

A modest man in truth who, when being cheered and applauded during the celebrations of their Silver Jubilee, said that about the people “they must really like me for myself” .

I liked him too.

Random Ramble on a Saturday

I have decided it is time for a Ramble. NOT a rant, I promise. At least I hope not.

I just thought I would check in and see how you are all doing and to say, once again, how very much I appreciate all the comments and thoughts you post on Random.  It is now over fifteen years since I started my blog and it has become such a part of my life that I cannot remember how I did before I started it.  It has, over the years, brought me great joy and over the last eighteen months has been a lifeline so my grateful thanks to you all.

So it is a October afternoon here at Schloss Random - the weather over the last week has been rather lovely. Mild and glorious blue skies and when out for my walk it is a treat to see all the changing colours of the leaves. This is my favourite part of the year before the dark and drear sets in and the early afternoons get murky. I have just purchased a shed load of candles as I love lighting them and putting them in my window. I wake up early in the mornings these days and I put a candle in the window to cheer people up who are having to leave for work in the dim light. 

I was out for a walk a few days ago and picked up loads of cones and brought them home and sprayed them and use them as a candle decoration.

Tomorrow I intend to start my Christmas cake. I have just posted re this over on my cooking blog which I have revived and enjoying it very much. Do check it out here.

As you will have seen from the recent posts I have been doing a lot of crime reading and re-reading and though I have also been deep in the Chips Channon diaries Volume 2 (of which more anon) and a marvellous new biography of George V (again, more anon) most of my reading has been of the light variety. Apart from crime I have read and already forgotten a couple of books which rejoince in titles such as The Little LIbrary and Cake Shop at the end of the Pier or the Little Yarn Shop on the River and which paint a life of instant success when setting up a small business.   Most misleading. A bit like the latest John Lewis advert for home insurance which has had to be withdrawn as it was made clear that no underwriter would cover the deliberate destruction of a home by a ghastly child. Sadly, life is not like that much though we might like the idea of living by the seaside and flogging home made cakes to the locals.

I freely admit I am not looking forward to the winter this year as 2021 has been a rather dismal year for me in many ways. I am sure I am not alone.

BUT the light on the horizon and why I am feeling optimistic for the future is the fact that after a dismal four minute phone call with my GP re my arthritis who basically said nothing could be done, I was old and just take pain killers, I had physiotherapy. It took four telephone calls, one phone triage and two further online triages but I persevered and finally got a face to face appointment a few weeks ago.

I struck gold with Callum. He not only showed me exercises to do and gave me a programme for same, but he sat down and went through everything with me and made it clear that arthritis was not the end of the world, that I could manage it and, best of all, when I asked him when I would need a hip replacement as the GP said (or rather the receptionist did) my arthritis was severe told me this was wrong.   Said the chances of me needing an operation were remote.  I felt as if a weight had been lifted off my shoulders and I practically burst into tears when I heard this.  I had been in pain and worried about the future and would I be able to travel and worrying and now all that has gone. I am doing the exercises and they are helping and I am coping beautifully. All I needed was some reassurance and a discussion with someone who seemed interested.

My daughter Kathryn has also told me she has booked her long service leave and is coming from Australia next summer for THREE months. Yes three.  So perhaps I can get through the winter after all...

Oh and I went to the hairdresser and said Oh just cut it off I am fed up with it. Well, he did.  I went to bed that night feeling distinctly chilly around the neck, got up the next morning and pottered into the bathroom totally forgetting I had had my hair done. Spotted myself in the mirror and reared back in shock. I am now getting used to it..

Keep well everyone and do keep visiting. I love you all x

Random on Brit tecs - Dalgliesh

During lockdown last year I rediscoveredJosephine Tey and I had forgotten what a wonderful writer she was. It is difficult to convey the sheer pleasure of such lucid, elegant and seamless prose which makes reading such a joy.  It is no surprise that after this rediscovery I decided to return to another writer whose writing falls into the same category as Tey, the kind of writing which flows, seemingly so easily, not a extraneous verb, adverb, comma or full stop. 

I came late to PD James, picking up one of her books at a book fair for 50p years ago and thinking that it looked interesting.  It was A Taste for Deathand opened with the discovery of two bodies in a church in London, both with their throats cut, one of them being a Cabinet Minister who had recently resigned from the Government. So an intriguing premise.

I should have read the books in order but I never do, I just grab them when I see them but last week I read her first Dalgliesh Cover Her Face (if I remember rightly this is a quote from the Duchess of Malfi and Agatha Christie uses it in Sleeping Murder.  I am just showing off here.....).

This title was published in 1962 and it has dated somewhat with class distinction a central theme. The victim, Sally Jupp, is an unmarried mother and, of course, back then such a person was regarded as a pariah.  While I feel PD James wants to feel sympathy with her she does portray Sally as a sly manipulative piece of work and her murder hardly comes as a surprise.  But this was the first in the Dalgliesh series and as the author became more certain of her ground and her characters they grow and expand.

A Certain Justice was next. Venetia Aldridge, QC is a distinguished barrister with a knack of arousing dislike in her colleagues and friends.  Her fierce drive to be the best and her ambition has led to an estrangement from her daughter and conflict with her fellow barristers in Chambers.  On the retirement of the current Head of Chambers, Venetia will take over, an event that is not greeted with any joy by Dyysdale Laud, who thinks it should be him, by the Clerk Harold Naughton who Venetia wish to be rid of and replace with an office manager, by the timid secretary who Venetia despises and other colleague who wish her ill.  Venetia's intolerance and impatience with them all is exacerbated by the crisis with her daughter Olivia who has become engaged to a young man, Ashe, who Venetia has just defended in a murder case.  He was acquitted because of her brilliant defence but it is clear that he is guilty.  For the first time in her life Venetia is powerless to act.  No surprise then that she is the victim.

The Private Patient was the last Dalgliesh and I think it is one of her best.

Rhoda Gradwyn is an investigative journalist, who has booked into a private clinic for the removal of a disfiguring scar on her face, inflicted upon her by a drunken father during her unhappy childhood. She has kept this scar as a badge of her determination not to let life defeat her, but now feels it is time to rid herself of this unsightly mark and to face up to her past.  She is looking forward to a successful operation and a convalescence at the beautiful manor house in Dorset which is the clinic's headquarters. 

Her operation takes place, all is well and she settles down to sleep in her bedroom.  In the middle of the night she awakes, she knows somebody is in the room and looking up she sees a dark masked figure coming towards her....

Dalgliesh and his team are called in and there follows the usual complex, beautifully plotted narrative which leads us to a denouement which is not quite the end of the story, as there is an added twist in the final chapter which is not totally cleared up, leaving the reader to wonder.

I remember posting on this some years ago and highlighted this paragraph which is so beautifully descriptive and made me feel in great sympathy with Rhoda and I insert it here again with no apology for so doing:

"Eight years ago she had taken a lease on a house in the City, part of a narrow terrace in a small courtyard at the end of Absolution Alley near Cheapside, and knew as soon as she moved in that this was the part of London in which she would always choose to live........many generations had lived in it, born and died there leaving behind nothing but their names on browning and archaic leases.........although the lower rooms with their mullioned windows were dark, those in her study and sitting room on the top storey were open to the sky, giving a view of the towers and steeples of the City....an iron staircase led from a narrow balcony to secluded roof which held a row of terracotta pots and where on fine Sunday mornings she would sit with her books or newspapers as the Sabbath calm lengthened into midday and the early peace was broken only by the familiar peals of the City bells"

I found myself liking Rhoda, probably because I too find it essential to find time to myself and to be on my own.  We are given the background to Rhoda's life and how she was scarred; her friends, not many, she was essentially solitary person, her desire to finally come to terms with her disfigurement.  Not necessarily an immediately lovable character but PD James tells us enough about her that we feel sadness that her life came to a sudden end and, what is worse, knowing in her last few minutes, that this was it, this was death coming towards her....

Brilliant.

In the last two weeks I have read Death of an Expert Witness, Death in Holy Orders and have now embarked on The Lighthouse.   It has been so long since I read them that I had actually forgotten the identity of the murderer though a glimmer of memory towards the end of one of them alerted me. One I had so forgotten it was a wonderful surprise to discover Who Dun It if that is an appropriate description. Perhaps not...

I still have another eight or nine to re-read and am looking forward to enjoying them all over again. Today is a windy, wind and leaf swept autumn day and is just perfect for staying indoors, keeping warm and reading.

Adam Dalgleish is in the tradition of elegant, fastidious detectives from Ngaio Marsh's Roderick Alleyn to Sayers Lord Peter, vulnerable and at times capable of great sensitivity.  Odd how the British detectives (I count Ngaio Marsh as British as the vast majority of her stories are set in England), despite multiple murders and gory details, manage to maintain this air of tea on the lawn, and servants in the kitchen below stairs, even though Adam certainly doesn't fit into that category.

 

Difficult to convey to you just how much I love her writing. The word mellifluous comes to mind the definition of which is  "(of a sound) pleasingly smooth and musical to hear".  Reading her prose and hearing it in your inward ear this description is perfect. Here is an example of her writing which I hope shows what I am trying to say in my muddled way:

 

"London had laid its spell on him and though his love affair with the city, as with all loves, had had its moments of disillusion, disappointment and threatened infidelity, the spell had remained ..... the panorama beneath him never failed to enchant. He saw it always as an artefact, sometimes a coloured lithograph in the delicate shades of a spring morning, sometimes a pen and ink drawing, every spire, every tower, every tree lovingly delineated, sometimes an oil, strong and vigorous. Tonight it was a psychedilic water colour, splashes of scarlet and grey latering the blue black of the night sky, the streets running with molten red and green as the traffic lights changed, the buildings with their squares of white windows pasted like coloured cut outs against the backcloth of the night"

 

Isn't that just perfect?

 

At time of posting I have been reading my copy of the Radio Times and note that next week Channel 5 is starting a new dramatisation of P D James so it will be interesting to see how it is done and if they stick to the stories and don't change the endings. Once can always hope. I remember the first series yonks ago which I thought were well done and then there was one short, very short, series with Martin Shaw as Dalgliesh who I thought was pretty poor. I am not a great admirer of his as on the odd occasion I have stumbled across something he was in, he seemed to spend all his time with a pained expression on his face and looking as if there was a nasty smell somewhere.   Totally underwhelming.

 

We shall see.

 

The Private Patient was the last Dalgliesh and I think it is one of her best.

Rhoda Gradwyn is an investigative journalist, who has booked into a private clinic for the removal of a disfiguring scar on her face, inflicted upon her by a drunken father during her unhappy childhood. She has kept this scar as a badge of her determination not to let life defeat her, but now feels it is time to rid herself of this unsightly mark and to face up to her past.  She is looking forward to a successful operation and a convalescence at the beautiful manor house in Dorset which is the clinic's headquarters. 

Her operation takes place, all is well and she settles down to sleep in her bedroom.  In the middle of the night she awakes, she knows somebody is in the room and looking up she sees a dark masked figure coming towards her....

Dalgliesh and his team are called in and there follows the usual complex, beautifully plotted narrative which leads us to a denouement which is not quite the end of the story, as there is an added twist in the final chapter which is not totally cleared up, leaving the reader to wonder.

I remember posting on this some years ago and highlighted this paragraph which is so beautifully descriptive and made me feel in great sympathy with Rhoda and I insert it here again with no apology for so doing:

"Eight years ago she had taken a lease on a house in the City, part of a narrow terrace in a small courtyard at the end of Absolution Alley near Cheapside, and knew as soon as she moved in that this was the part of London in which she would always choose to live........many generations had lived in it, born and died there leaving behind nothing but their names on browning and archaic leases.........although the lower rooms with their mullioned windows were dark, those in her study and sitting room on the top storey were open to the sky, giving a view of the towers and steeples of the City....an iron staircase led from a narrow balcony to secluded roof which held a row of terracotta pots and where on fine Sunday mornings she would sit with her books or newspapers as the Sabbath calm lengthened into midday and the early peace was broken only by the familiar peals of the City bells"

I found myself liking Rhoda, probably because I too find it essential to find time to myself and to be on my own.  We are given the background to Rhoda's life and how she was scarred; her friends, not many, she was essentially solitary person, her desire to finally come to terms with her disfigurement.  Not necessarily an immediately lovable character but PD James tells us enough about her that we feel sadness that her life came to a sudden end and, what is worse, knowing in her last few minutes, that this was it, this was death coming towards her....

Brilliant.

In the last two weeks I have read Death of an Expert Witness, Death in Holy Orders and have now embarked on The Lighthouse.   It has been so long since I read them that I had actually forgotten the identity of the murderer though a glimmer of memory towards the end of one of them alerted me. One I had so forgotten it was a wonderful surprise to discover Who Dun It if that is an appropriate description. Perhaps not...

I still have another eight or nine to re-read and am looking forward to enjoying them all over again. Today is a windy, wind and leaf swept autumn day and is just perfect for staying indoors, keeping warm and reading.

Adam Dalgleish is in the tradition of elegant, fastidious detectives from Ngaio Marsh's Roderick Alleyn to Sayers Lord Peter, vulnerable and at times capable of great sensitivity.  Odd how the British detectives (I count Ngaio Marsh as British as the vast majority of her stories are set in England), despite multiple murders and gory details, manage to maintain this air of tea on the lawn, and servants in the kitchen below stairs, even though Adam certainly doesn't fit into that category.

 

Difficult to convey to you just how much I love her writing. The word mellifluous comes to mind the definition of which is  "(of a sound) pleasingly smooth and musical to hear".  Reading her prose and hearing it in your inward ear this description is perfect. Here is an example of her writing which I hope shows what I am trying to say in my muddled way:

 

"London had laid its spell on him and though his love affair with the city, as with all loves, had had its moments of disillusion, disappointment and threatened infidelity, the spell had remained ..... the panorama beneath him never failed to enchant. He saw it always as an artefact, sometimes a coloured lithograph in the delicate shades of a spring morning, sometimes a pen and ink drawing, every spire, every tower, every tree lovingly delineated, sometimes an oil, strong and vigorous. Tonight it was a psychedilic water colour, splashes of scarlet and grey latering the blue black of the night sky, the streets running with molten red and green as the traffic lights changed, the buildings with their squares of white windows pasted like coloured cut outs against the backcloth of the night"

 

Isn't that just perfect?

 

At time of posting I have been reading my copy of the Radio Times and note that next week Channel 5 is starting a new dramatisation of P D James so it will be interesting to see how it is done and if they stick to the stories and don't change the endings. Once can always hope. I remember the first series yonks ago which I thought were well done and then there was one short, very short, series with Martin Shaw as Dalgliesh who I thought was pretty poor. I am not a great admirer of his as on the odd occasion I have stumbled across something he was in, he seemed to spend all his time with a pained expression on his face and looking as if there was a nasty smell somewhere.   Totally underwhelming.

 

We shall see.

Adam Dalgleish is in the tradition of elegant, fastidious detectives from Ngaio Marsh's Roderick Alleyn to Sayers Lord Peter, vulnerable and at times capable of great sensitivity.  Odd how the British detectives (I count Ngaio Marsh as British as the vast majority of her stories are set in England), despite multiple murders and gory details, manage to maintain this air of tea on the lawn, and servants in the kitchen below stairs, even though Adam certainly doesn't fit into that category.

 

Difficult to convey to you just how much I love her writing. The word mellifluous comes to mind the definition of which is  "(of a sound) pleasingly smooth and musical to hear".  Reading her prose and hearing it in your inward ear this description is perfect. Here is an example of her writing which I hope shows what I am trying to say in my muddled way:

 

"London had laid its spell on him and though his love affair with the city, as with all loves, had had its moments of disillusion, disappointment and threatened infidelity, the spell had remained ..... the panorama beneath him never failed to enchant. He saw it always as an artefact, sometimes a coloured lithograph in the delicate shades of a spring morning, sometimes a pen and ink drawing, every spire, every tower, every tree lovingly delineated, sometimes an oil, strong and vigorous. Tonight it was a psychedilic water colour, splashes of scarlet and grey latering the blue black of the night sky, the streets running with molten red and green as the traffic lights changed, the buildings with their squares of white windows pasted like coloured cut outs against the backcloth of the night"

 

Isn't that just perfect?

 

At time of posting I have been reading my copy of the Radio Times and note that next week Channel 5 is starting a new dramatisation of P D James so it will be interesting to see how it is done and if they stick to the stories and don't change the endings. Once can always hope. I remember the first series yonks ago which I thought were well done and then there was one short, very short, series with Martin Shaw as Dalgliesh who I thought was pretty poor. I am not a great admirer of his as on the odd occasion I have stumbled across something he was in, he seemed to spend all his time with a pained expression on his face and looking as if there was a nasty smell somewhere.   Totally underwhelming.

 

We shall see.

 

Cooking blog - I write about soups

Do nip over and check. I love making soup and particularly at this time of year

https://randomjottings.typepad.com/random_and_the_great_colc/2021/10/soups-soups-soups.html

Random on BritTecs - Posh Tecs: Wimsey and Alleyn

Brit tecs could be a misnomer here as we all know that the creator of Roderick Alleyn came from New Zealand but as she spent most of her life in the UK and her detective could not be more British I have included her books.

It was not until 2006 that I discovered Doroty L Sayers. I picked up and read Gaudy Night and fell in love.  I don't regret the missed years, au contraire, I am now glad and happy that these were saved up for me when I have all the time in the world to read and can sit for hours and indulge myself.

I then went on to read all of the Wimsey books, some titles several times (Gaudy Night I seem to read every six months) and never tire of them.  And as I have always linked Lord Peter and Roderick Alleyn together I thought I would post about them.

After reading the entire oevre I was then struck with the similarity between Peter Wimsey and Roderick Alleyn, both of whom at times do strike me as being slightly fey and tend to overthink. I always feel that they both have a very think skin.

Both are 'gentlemen detectives' though Roderick Alleyn is a real policeman and a member of the CID, while Lord Peter regards it as a hobby.  They are both elegant, wear their clothes well, are interested in the theatre, music and books.   

They both marry strong women with their own careers:  Lord Peter marries Harriet Vane, who writes detective stories and Alleyn's wife, Agatha Troy, is a famous and distinguished artist.  Harriet and Troy also share a similar trait, both have a prickly personality in that they both fought their feelings and, initially, did not wish to marry.  Harriet because she disliked being beholden to Lord Peter who saved her from being convicted of murder, and also did not wish to lose her independence, and Agatha, a very private woman, who disliked her husband's profession very much.  As she was involved with a murder investigation (Artists in Crime) shortly after their initial meeting, this is hardly surprising.

As with all good detective stories, each has his 'side kick', usually of the plebeian order, Lord Peter has Bunter (who, in many ways is a more of a snob than his master) and Alleyn has Inspector Fox, who he calls rather whimsically (if you will forgive the use of the word) Brer Fox.  Both are essentially there to admire and appreciate their superior, usually uncritically.  Readers know that Bunter and Fox are devoted to their masters and would lay down their lives for them.

Both Alleyn and Wimsey moved in high society circles; both had aristocratic mothers, Alleyn had a brother George ( a 'silly ass') who was a diplomat and Wimsey had a brother Gerald (also a 'silly ass') who held the fictional title of the Duke of Denver.  One of my favourite Marsh novels is Death in a White Tie which is set in the Season and where a murder takes place at a grand social occasion.  Beautifully described and written this shows Ngaio Marsh had a very good working knowledge of the aristocracy and its comings and goings at this time.

The 'gentleman detective' has, of course, continued in the books of Elizabeth George and, to some extent, in PD James Inspector Dalgliesh stories (as well as being a policeman he is also a poet).  Elizabeth George is an American writer who has a huge admiration for the English detective novel and has striven to recreate this genre.  The current editions of the Sayers have a foreword written by her in which she makes no secret of her admiration for these books. 

Sadly, her detective, Inspector Lynley (who is a member of the aristocracy and is called 'Tommy' by his friends for heaven's sake) is a pastiche and not really believable.  He is self obsessed, angst ridden and continually doubting himself and his motives.  He also has a 'pleb' side kick, Barbara Havers, very much a member of the working class, no musical tastes, eats junk food, wears trainers and dreadful anoraks, and is a complete contrast to her boss.  Though she will not admit it, she is devoted to the Terrible Tommy and it is her detecting that solves the problem most of the time. Lynley marries an equally self obsessed, ghastly wife called Helen who is, without doubt, the most irritating female I have ever met in fiction (with perhaps the exception of Irene in the Forsyth Saga, who I wanted to shake most of the time.  My sympathies were always with Soames who I felt showed remarkable forbearance towards his wife but that is a blog for another day).   Elizabeth George had the sense to kill her off to my relief which vanished pretty quickly when I realised it merely gave Lynley the chance to wander off and treat us to hundreds of pages of more angst and introspection.    I have read all of the George books but finally called a halt as one of them used the horrific James Bulger case as a plot device which I found utterly despicable. 

(I essayed an attempt to read a recent one after ignoring them for several years and, yes, still as verbose and rambling so have finally put them to bed)

I do wonder who had influenced who in the Peter/Roderick output and if either of these authors had read the other and, on checking bibliographies, can see that the first D L Sayers novel was published in 1923 and Ngaio Marsh had her first, A Man Lay Dead, published in 1934 so she would have had ample time to read, and be influenced by, Lord Peter Wimsey. I have been hunting out some references on Ngaio's thoughts on DL Sayers and have found this:

"She had cordial relations with Christie and Allingham but loathed Sayers, and was one of the most vehement proponents of the cruel rumour that Sayers was a pathetic, dried-up old biddy who created Harriet Vane as an author avatar because she had fallen in love with Lord Peter Wimsey".  

This is rather horrid and I find it a bit upsetting that she had this view of DLS, a biography of whom I recently read which shows that this is rather wide of the mark.

and then this:

"Miss Idris Campanula and Miss Eleanor Prentice in Overture to Death are both vicious caricatures of Dorothy L. Sayers. Eleanor Prentice is a passive-aggressive, sex-hating, shrewish, bitter harpy who literally cannot control herself when she hears the ringing of church bells and is driven to madness by the possibility that she might miss Sunday service. Idris Campanula is a vicious, screeching tartar who tries to control people with money. Even their names are allusions: "Campanula" means "bell ringer" and is an allusion to Sayers The Nine Taylors, while Miss Prentice of the Hall is a reference to Prentice-Hall, Sayers's publisher"

NOT very nice and yet, despite this, her creation owes a lot to Wimsey.   Perhaps she was a tad miffed that she had not come up with a 'gentleman detective' first. And, quite frankly, the way she writes about Alleyn it was clear that she had also fallen into the tap of being in love with her creation.

I have discovered two marvellous illustrations by Robert Fawcett (1903-1967) who achieved fame as a book and magazine illustrator.  "As he was slightly colour blind, Fawcett did not excel as a painter, but he was an excellent draftsman and designer, with a strong eye for detail. He produced story illustrations and full-page ads that appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's Weekly, Holiday, Cosmopolitan and numerous other magazines".

They are both from Final Curtain in which Troy is persuaded by Thomas Ancred to paint his father, Sir Henry Ancred, a retired actor and Knight of the Realm.

"The man who stood before the unkindled hearth was tall and stooped a little. His hair, which had the appearance of floss, stood up thinly like a child’s. He wore glasses and blinked behind them at Troy.

“Good afternoon,” he said. “I’m Thomas Ancred."

  

The second shows Troy at work painting Sir Henry, who is in costume as Macbeth, one of his greatest parts.

I love both these illustrations and if you Google Robert Fawcett and check him out, his catalogue of work and illustrations is simply fascinating.

I adore the Golden Age of crime writing and part of its charm is the manners and speech of the time. Marsh is stuck in this time warp in all of her books, even the later ones written in the 60s and 70s, which makes them sound rather dated to say the least. She has a slightly mannered and camp style which appeals to me enormously and after an extended run of Marsh I find the words insufferable, impertinent and tedious start to litter my conversation....

Of course after reading D L Sayers I find myself saying 'Don't cha know' and pronouncing dropping as droppin' and getting a bit high and mighty.    I then remember Lord Peter saying to his faithful Bunter to whom he gives an enormous amount of leeway 'borderin' Bunter borderin' just to remind him not to overstep the mark.

After a tough crime novel set in the US or an enigmatic and dark one set in Scandinavia or a glut of serial killers, there is something soothing about returning to this era of 'teckery' (and that is a Marshism!)

Who do you prefer - Alleyn or Sir Peter? Or, like me, do you love them both...