What is it that makes a book readable and another one where the writing makes you feel like you are wading through a field full of treacle? If you have the answer do let me know.
My reading last week consisted, among other murders and mayhem, two historical non fiction books. The first was The Crown in Crisis, countdown to the Abdication by Alexander Larman. Oh dear I thought do I really need another book on this but I admit to a fascination with the whole thing so got hold of it and it was very very good. There were letters and information I had not read before not least this prescient and shrewd reading of Edward and Mrs Simpson by Sir Sydney Waterlow, the British Ambassador to Greece:
"....there is something appealing about him, something charming and good with such good intentions" but he despaired of his companion "Mrs S is essentially the response to his craving for domesticity and it is a serious response. For that reason I think she has come to stay". He went on "the problem must be hopeless for the characteristic marks of this type of American female are precisely those which must aggravate the situation, perpetual restlessness and a vacuum as complete as that of the prairie or small town from which is originally descends. What can be hoped from mating restlessness with restlessness, vacuum with vacuum?"
It is very difficult when reading through this book not to ponder on the current situation in the Royal Family. Edward and Bertie were close and kept his brother abreast of all relevant court papers and matters of state but this trust did not extend to his dealings with Wallis. "The two brothers who had been close began to drift apart....the situation at Balmoral had been like a nightmare. Bertie felt he had lost a friend and was rapidly losing a brother". Bertie had counselled Edward not to do anything he might regret and this was regarded as a slight to Wallis with whom he was now obsessed. All very familiar and very sad.
Over the years I have read many books on the Abdication and my sympathies, such as they are for this ghastly pair, are now with Wallis. Yes, she had an eye to the main chance and wanted to be in society and cut a swathe but she was very clear sighted about it all. She called herself Wallis in Wonderland and was under no illusion that it would come to an end and so she was making the most of it while she could. Unfortunately for her she found that Edward was like a limpet and there was no getting rid of him. Even when she did try to withdraw, mainly I feel because she was terrified of the situation she was in, he threatened to follow her or to kill himself. She was, to put in bluntly, lumbered with him and I feel she should be given her due that she tried to make a life for them both though at times she must have felt as if she was dealing with a sulky child.
The fact that she kept in touch with her ex-husband Ernest Simpson for some time and wrote rather sad letters to him after the Abdication and her marriage speaks volumes.
I was fascinated by this book - obviously well researched and meticulous in detail and well written. I can recommend this as one of the best books about that turbulent time. It ends with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor leaving the country and deals with the events leading up to this. Their life afterwards which seems to aimless and sad is well documented in other books.
The other title I read, or attempted to read, was The Mystery of Charles Dickens by A N Wilson. In the last three years he has produced a book on Queen Victoria and also a biography of Albert - how he can produce these two and this one in such a short space of time makes me wonder just how much research and effort he put into it. One assumes he employed a band of drones to do all the hard work for him.
The books on V and A were clumsily written and very boring and I skipped whole chunks of it as the prose was just, for want of a better word, dead. It was dull and irritating. So why I bought this one I know not except it was about a man I find totally fascinating and one of my favourite authors. But AN Wilson manages the impossible, he makes a book about Dickens utterly turgid. Here is an example of his matchless prose. Dickens is dying.
"Death has a way of bringing to light hidden things which the dying one wished never to be disclosed. Could it be, as his eyelids flickered and he prepared for the ultimate mystery, that the curtain was not going to come down but up; that the garish lights of the theatre were to be turned up and the actors found unprepared upon the stage?"
Yuk.
So the book goes on. I skipped huge chunks as I became increasingly irritated with this egoistical style in that the author constantly brings himself into the narrative. The coup de grace comes near the end of the book when AN Wilson likens Dickens Nicholas Nickleby and the awful things that happened in Dotheboys Hall, with his own dreadful schooldays. It seems that the author had a vicious headmaster and equally vicious wife and was beaten with huge enjoyment by the master in question, while the aformentioned master ....let us just say that the phrase which covers this would be "got off on it" if you will forgive the vulgarity. AN Wilson is more precise but I see no reason to inflict this totally unneccessary piece of information on you all.
This book has received excellent reviews so it is clear that I am not worthy and do not appreciate it. Well, I can live with that. I thought it was dire and I ended up throwing it across the room. I reached for Pickwick Papers and read a chapter of two to restore my equilibrium.
I have made a note: Elaine do not buy a book by A N Wilson ever again. My fear is he may now turn his eyes onto the Brontes. Just think what he would make of Emily and Heathcliff and Charlotte and her love for her professor. I shudder....
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