Random Jottings

Outfoxing the digital revolution - Slightly Foxed

The editions are limited to 2,000 and numbered by hand by the traditional bookbinders, Smith Settle, near Leeds. (Much printing these days is done overseas.) They sell for £12.50, but their early publications, such as Rosemary Sutcliff’s Blue Remembered Hills, can now be found on second-hand book website Abebooks for £80.

via www.telegraph.co.uk

This was in the telegraph yesterday and there is a great little video to go with it.  Delighted they are getting the publicity and that they are making a profit.   As you know, I recently visited the Bookshop, see my post here, and love the SF editions. The Dodie Smith wonderful, see here and I am more than happy to beat the drum for publishers of this kind.  We need them and though I love my Kindle, my delight and joy in this sort of enterprise will never die.

Beaton, Carluccios and Slightly Foxed

Up to London today to meet a friend and to attend the Cecil Beaton Portraits of the Queen exhibition at the V&A.  No matter how hard I tell myself that getting on the train is voluntary and that I am no longer commuting, I find it very hard to shake off the feeling of apprehension when I drive to the station and park my car, preparatory to boarding the train. Thirty years of commuting takes a lot of forgetting.

But this visit was for pleasure and my good friend Curzon and I duly met up and took ourselves off to the V&A, which is my most favourite museum in London.  I simply adore going there and could wander around for hours. This time we just focused on the Cecil Beaton and though we arrived before our allotted time we were allowed and as it got rather crowded towards the end, was rather pleased we have been a tad previous.

Most of the photos were familiar to me, having featured in many magazines and books over the years.   His pictures of Queen Elizabeth (before she became the Queen Mother) in the lovely white crinolines she wore when she visited Paris are really quite beautiful.  The Parisians had been rather sneery about the Queen's sense of dress and style and so these pictures quite took them by storm and the visit was hugely successful.

We had a series of photographs from the current Queen as a small child, through her teenage years, up to and beyond her Coronation and I know it is difficult for people nowadays to realise it, but the Queen was simply beautiful when she was younger.   Old black and white newsreels of the then Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip shortly after their marriage show a devastatingly starry couple - Liz and Phil knew all about glam long before Princess Di came along.   Quite a few portraits of Prince Philip I had not seen before when he was in full naval uniform and he was dashing and handsome and no wonder the Queen fell in love with him.   Some charming shots of Princess Anne as well, all golden curls and prettiness which showed how like her is her daughter Zara.  

I make no bones about the fact that I am a supporter of the Monarchy.  As history was my favourite subject at school and still is, the thought that there is a long line of rulers stretching back through the centuries is totally fascinating and when we stopped and looked at a film of the Coronation which is on a loop during the exhibition I still got goosebumps when I saw the pageantry and the beauty of it all.  Am very much looking forward to the Jubilee celebrations.

We nipped into the V&A shop which is one of the best Museum shops around and felt very virtuous that I did not buy a thing.  Quite easy actually as the only item I really wanted was a glorious silk scarf, light as a feather and floating like a cloud, which was a snip at £145............

Lunch at Carluccios - I know this is a chain/franchise whatever, but it doesn't feel like it and the food is always good and the staff very friendly and charming.  It has become a custom with us that we always to to Carluccios and was glad to find a branch just opposite South Kensington Tube station.

Then a walk down to Gloucester Road to visit the Slightly Foxed bookshop which I had forgotten was so near and which has been on my list of places to visit for some time.   Charming gentleman behind the bijou counterette who was ready to talk about books at the drop of a hat and was highly knowledgeable and friendly to boot.  These are not always the characteristics of most book shop assistants these days so should be appreciated when found. 

Could not leave without a purchase. Well, I had resisted the lure of the silk scarf so I bought two Slightly Foxed editions, with which I am rapidly falling in love, The Young Ardizzone a biographical fragment of Edward Ardizzone and simply crammed full of his gloriously wonderfully drawings. Looking forward to reading this.  The other purchase was A House in Flanders by Michael Jenkins. This was originally published by Souvenir Press and I had a copy of that edition and reviewed it here.  I really loved it but then passed my copy onto somebody and then immediately regretted it so was glad to have the chance to have this back on my shelves once more.  This edition has a postscript added to it by the author as well so it is well worth having.

And then home on the train, where I did my usual commuter thing, and fell asleep all the way home. No doubt I had my mouth open and was dribbling but I don't care and woke up when the train clicked across to come into Colchester station. That change in the sound of the track always woke me up and it worked again today.

Gorgeous day - a good friend, good books, good food - who could want more?   And I get to go to bed tonight with the serene thought that I don't have to get back on the train and commute in the morning.

Oh how I love being retired....

Dodie Smith - not just 101 Dalmatians

Along with most of us I suspect, I only knew Dodie Smith as the author of 101 Dalmatians and it remained this way until in my mid-forties I came across a battered old green Virago edition of I captured the Castle and realised it was the same author. I read it and loved it and that was that. I knew no more of her or anything else she had written for years until I read Look back with Love, my current book of the month, re-issued in the lovely Slightly Foxed Editions.

Won't repeat myself, here is what I said then and this delightful tale set me in search of the other volumes of autobiography available.  It goes without saying that I am reading them in the wrong order, but this is because I reserved them at the library where they had to be dug up out of an archive somewhere in the bowels of Essex and I have to take 'em when I can get 'em.

So the fourth one first - Look Back with Gratitude and this covers her life in the US during the war. Her husband, Alec and their Dalmatian Pongo, set sail for New York to see America and to check on her play Dear Octopus which was running in the Big Apple.  Alec was a conscientious objector and part of their departure was to avoid him being conscripted into the war in any way and though this was not advertised as the main reason when they left, I doubt that many of their friends were unaware of this. They lived in California and were drawn reluctantly in the film world, mainly because they paid well and they needed the money but they made many lasting friendships there including Christopher Isherwood, whose story about Sally Bowles became a successful play, I am a Camera. It seems that Alec was the person who suggested this. Isherwood at first pooh poohed the idea but then took it on board and the results are well known.

Though I thoroughly enjoyed this memoir, I did have slight difficulty coming to terms with the fact that effectively, they fled the UK throughout the war and only returned when peace was declared.  I am well aware from my readings of Noel Coward's letters and diaries that he was excoriated for going abroad, though it turned out later he was engaged in intelligence work, so I wonder how the great British public reacted to the exit of the Beesleys?   Sorry, Beelsey is Alec's surname and I admit this sounds like a title from Harry Potter...

The third volume Look back with Astonishment, which I read after the fourth (as I said I never do things the correct way) covers the period in her life when she realised she could never make a career on the stage as she was just not good enough and she ended up working at Heals. Yes, good old Heals still in the Tottenham Court Road in the same building as photographed for this book.  My abiding impression when reading this is that she got away with murder; seemed to do more or less what she liked; was bossy and lost her temper at regular intervals; was given time off ad nauseam when she had her first play produced and yet managed to retain a part time job at Heals.  I did wonder what her fellow workers thought of all of this, surely they must have resented it?   Throughout this volume Dodie talks about a man with whom she is having an affair and who she called Oliver.   Since then I have discovered that 'Oliver' was in fact, Ambrose Heal himself, so no wonder she was more or less allowed the run of the place.   She also got her furniture at a discount............

Having read these volumes and found them interesting, witty and full of wonderful cameos of the actors, actor managers and film stars of that period, I then found myself in the position I sometimes find myself in after reading an autobiography, of not sure that I liked the writer very much.  The first volume Look back with Love was totally enchanting but Dodie was writing about her childhood and her family and was not quite so centred on herself. I think the problem, for me, is that the rest of these volumes is all about her, and naturally so.  Have said this on many occasions I know, but when you write an autobiography or diaries, it is difficult to hide one's real character, they are always a give away, and Dodie gives away quite a bit here.  She met her husband Alec when he worked at Heals, he was seven years younger than her and became totally devoted. She viewed him as a rather sweet young man but warned him off falling in love with her. Impossible for him not to know about the identity of 'Oliver'. He supported her, helped her, financed her when she was broke and eventually became her manager when she became a full time playwright.  But, if there is one thing that will make me change my mind about Dodie it is the fact that she gradually came to realise what she had got, she ended her affair with 'Oliver' and married Alec though this was not until she was in her forties and they had been together for years.   They then had the most wonderfully happy marriage and she shows herself at her best when she writes about him:

"Of course I had known I should miss Alec, but during our wild rush to get me off I hadn't had time to think just how much I should miss him......I felt ill with a sense of loss....during our thirteen years in Amercia we had been separate for less than half a dozen nights...now we shouldn't see each for months. Was he as distressed as I was?"

Well, yes he was and on checking her biography it seems that they both lived well into their nineties and their happiness was total and enduring.  I have now reserved Dear Dodie by Valerie Groves at my library as I feel I need another viewpoint other than that of Dodie herself.   Last year I read all of the Journals of LM Montgomery, heartbreaking in places, and then a biography and it was incredibly interesting to see the emotional outpourings of the journals were harnessed within the biography and a balance created.  So looking forward to the same when the library lets me know it has arrived.

All of these books are out of print but seem to be available on Abe Books, Amazon etc and if you are interested in this author, they really are worth a read.

It was only after starting this Dodie binge that I discovered, serendipity of the highest order, that several of her novels are being reprinted, The New Moon with the Old; The Town in Bloom and It ends in Revelations.  These are being published by Corsair in March 2012 and I will be trying to lay my hands on copies of same.

An intriguing lady....

Look back with Love - Dodie Smith

A couple of years ago I reviewed a book called Kisses on a Postcard.  I started the post by saying 'this is a lovely lovely book'. I felt that was the only way I could describe it and how much I had enjoyed it. Well, here I go again.

Look back with Love is a lovely, lovely, lovely book.  It is charming, it is delightful, it is beguiling, it made me laugh and it made me cry and I adored every single word of it and was very sad to finish it. I gather that Dodie Smith has written other volumes of autobiography, out if print it seems, and I am now going to track them down.

This particular title has been reprinted by Slightly Foxed Editions.   Now, I love this quarterly. I don't subscribe any more, not because I don't want to, but simply because I never got round to reading them. Each quarterly is packed with fascinating articles all screaming out Read Me Read Me and I used to feel so guilty at the ever growing heap in the corner.  This is why I cancelled so many subscriptions as I just could not keep up.  However, those lovely people at SF send me the odd Quarterly very now and then and also ask if I would like to post about one of the articles in one of the editions so I am a lucky lady and appreciate their kindness very much.

Valerie Grove, Dodie's biographer, writes the preface to this elegant little edition. 'Dodie said she never felt quite grown up.  This may sound like an excuse for tiresome behaviour but Dodie did retain all her life a childlike charm, being under five feet tall with a high pitched girlish voice. She was an only child, a singularly precocious, egocentric and thoroughly original one'

When I was about twelve I read The Hundred and One Dalmatians and simply adored it and loved the idea of The Twilight Barking as well. It appears that Dodie wrote this out of sheer irritation at Enid Blyton's success and of course it became a huge seller and there have been film versions of it ever since.  But then I grew up, discovered the Virago green covered editions and read I capture the Castle, totally unaware that the author was the same person. There are many great opening lines with which we are all familiar but surely 'I write this sitting in the kitchen sink' must rank as one of the great ones as Cassandra Mortmain writes in her diary.

The key to Dodie's plays, her drawing room comedies, to the romantic novel and to her children's stories all lie in her childhood.  Look Back with Love is one of the funniest and delightful childhood biographies I have read, reminded me in places of Gwen Raverat's childhood in Cambridge, both children seemingly surrounded by a collection of aunts, uncles and grandparents who are bursting with enthusiasm, wit and eccentricity.  When I had finished the Dodie the thought crossed my mind that I wished I had had an eclectic bunch of relatives like this and then I sat down and went through my family and came to the conclusion that I had.  I may ponder on this a bit and do my own childhood post some time - be warned.

"I find it strange that I could read quite difficult music several years before I could read a word, or rather when I could only read one word, for Nan did manage to teach me my letters and I could pick out the word 'the'; I sometimes read all the 'thes' in a story and felt very intellectual"

"Have I mentioned that I sang? And of course I also danced. I fear many children played, danced, sang and recited but I doubt if many of them could count on such ecstatic audiences as I could; nobody made much secret of the fact that I was a genius, but alas, it wore off with my fair hair"

Just a little flavour of this book.  I beg you, please do get hold of a copy. If you are feeling miserable, it will cheer you up, if you are feeling ill (as I was when it arrived) it will make you feel better and, if you are already well and happy, it will make you even more so.

Sheer and utter delight from start to finish.  I will end as I started. This is a lovely lovely lovely book.

Slightly Foxed - Elizabeth Goudge

"You must have had the experience of finding yourself so absorbed by the world conjured up in a book that you read it ever more slowly – battling the urgent desire to find out what happens next – because you can’t bear to get to the end"

These are the opening lines of an article on Elizabeth Goudge by Elisabeth Ingles in the latest edition of Slightly Foxed.  This writer has always been one of my favourite authors and the title that Ms Ingles chooses to write about is The Dean's Watch which just happens to be my joint Goudge favourite (the other being The Little White Horse). 

The Dean's Watch certainly falls into this category and as I read this article I kept saying Yes, that is how I felt as well and I had that lovely feeling one gets when you meet a kindred spirit who feels the same way about a well loved book.   Elisabeth Ingles says she can date her interest in medieval cathedrals from the time of reading the Dean's Watch and, though she does not name the city, it is clear that it is Ely from the description of the cathedral on the fens. I visited Ely a few years ago and it was impossible for me not to wander round and remember the little clock maker Isaac who forms a friendship with the formidable Dean, Adam.

"He strikes up an unlikely friendship with Isaac who, plucking up all his courage, offers to teach him about the wonders inherent in the microscopic technology of his superb watch: ‘All his life [Adam] had loved chil­dren and poor people, and such child-like trusting little oddities as the extraordinary little man sitting opposite to him . . . But he never knew what to say to them and his unfortunate appearance always frightened them.’ Isaac is not brave enough to cope with an inter­ruption from the Archdeacon, however, and sidles behind the butler ‘like a terrified crab seeking cover behind a rock’ before Adam can get him to say more about the mechanism of the Deanery clocks"

There are so many wonderful characters in this book - Isaac's sister, repressed and unhappy, Polly their little maidservant full of joy and happiness at life in general, the Dean's bored beautiful wife who discovers too late how she was loved and loved in return, Job, the young apprentice who works with Isaac and is in love with Polly....every single person in this book is fashioned with delight and love. It is one of the most enchanting books I have ever read and yet it is not cloying or sentimental, it has a sturdy practicality to it as well.  I have long lamented the fact that Elizabeth Goudge's works are out of print, save for a very few and do wish that some enterprising publisher would reissue them all. Capuchin Press have republished Green Dolphin Country, a brilliant tour de force and a few of her historical novels are available, but other than that you will need to hunt them out in second hand bookshops or via the internet.  I started collecting them years ago and have two shelves of them - duplicates of some titles as I will not part with them and I have a very good edition of The Dean's Watch, complete with dust jacket that I treasure and, having checked on Amazon, appears to be a collectable first edition. I won't be parting with this one either.

"Although The Dean’s Watch is not action-packed, the changes described in it are profound. In that sense it is every bit as satisfying as a novel by Mrs Gaskell, sharing something of the small-town flavour and the fascination with the minutiae of ordinary everyday lives. It is a deeply Christian work, but in a way that is not off-putting for non-Christians. What it celebrates is the power of self­less love – agape, not eros – to affect every aspect of its characters’ lives, and the reader’s too"

Slightly Foxed is a treasure chest of articles on all aspects of reading, and has a wonderfully eclectic mix of contributers and such a joy when you open up a copy and realise one of your own particular favourites is being highlighted. Thank you Elisabeth Ingles for writing about The Dean's Watch.

Slightly Foxed also publishes selected titles - could I put in a plea that perhaps The Dean's Watch might be considered for reprint at some stage?

Latest edition with this article in full is now available. Do check out the Slightly Foxed website which gives details of how to subscribe, their bookshop which I am determined to visit when I have the opportunity and also the books they have published and which you can order on line.

Slightly Foxed

I was recently contacted by Slightly Foxed and asked if I would like to write on Random about same and of course I am simply delighted to do so.  The more people know about this publication the better.

I am going to own up straight away and say that I no longer subscribe to Slightly Foxed. Not because I thought it wasn't worth it, it so is, but simply because I had no time to read it.  I was working at the time and they plopped through the letter box and were put on the pile and never read and in the end I gave up. I have picked up the odd copy here and there and have always enjoyed it so as this request to review SF also came with a copy of the Winter edition I said oh yes please and here I am.

What I have always loved about SF is its look and feel. Just the right size to pop into a handbag, good paper and printing font, and it looks classy.  Inside the articles live up to one's expectations.   I have just glancing down the index of the Winter edition and first on the list is Happy ever After by Daisy Hay (author of The Young Romantics) - all about Daisy Ashford and her delightful book which she wrote when she was a child called The Young Visiters (no I have not made a typo that is how it is written). I have had this book for years and think it is quite quite wonderful. Here is a taster:

"Bernard placed one arm tightly around her. When will you marry me Ethel he uttered you must be my wife it has come to that I love you so intensely that if you say no I shall perforce dash my body to the brink of yon muddy river he panted wildly.

Oh dont do that implored Ethel breathing rarther hard......Oh Bernard she sighed fervantly I  certinly love you madly you are to me like a Heathen god she cried looking at his manly form and handsome flashing face I will indeed marry you"

She certainly did love him as by the time they returned from honeymoon they had seven children....

Other contributors are Juliet Gardiner, Sue Gee and Diana Athill so you can see the standard is stratospherically high.  I actually submitted an article once but it was turned down and looking at it again recently I can understand why.  Not very good!

As well as the magazine Slightly Foxed has started producing its own editions of chosen books.  I was delighted to find that they are now publishing A House in Flanders which I reviewed earlier here.  I chose this as my book of the month at the Wood Green bookshop and found that Souvenir Press have now licensed SF to produce it.  A simply beautifully and elegiac piece of writing and I think I am going to have to get hold of a copy of this again as I gave my older edition away.     BUT what has really caught my eye is Edition No.12 The Young Ardizzone who is one of my favourite illustrators, I actually wrote about him earlier here and so I feel my credit card is going to take another bashing when I order a copy.   I was meant to go up to London last week on three occasions and all of them had to be cancelled because of the snow which was infuriating, not least because on one of those days several members of my on line reading group were going to the Slightly Foxed Bookshop in Gloucester Road.  Still, this is a simply a pleasure deferred and next time I am in town I am determined to go in and say hello.

And of course now that I have reacquainted myself with SF, well you can guess what I am going to do can't you?   Yes, I am going to take out a subscription again.......