Desperate Reader

Welford Road Cemetery

2012-02-11T22:29:00.002Z

A weekend off just before Valentines day and how do we choose to spend our Saturday? We went for a walk in a cemetery, it turns out we've both wanted to visit Welford Rd for a while. I've walked past it a few times but never been inside despite a love of Victorian graveyards - perhaps because it's not the sort of thing you necessarily want to do alone.

Today however was perfect, there was enough snow around to make everything look desperately picturesque and also make it clear how many rabbits infest the place. Apparently they undermine the graves, and although we didn't see any (to much sense to be out on such a cold day) there were enough footprints around to make it look like a 'Watership Down' re-enactment had just taken place.

There were also a lot of snow drops around too, although as we're a week or so behind London and the South they're not at their best yet - another visit might be on the cards. This cemetery is bordered by busy roads, is next to the university, overlooks both a football and rugby stadium, and has a train line running past it - it's not exactly peaceful but it's empty of people (living ones anyway) and clearly a haven for more than rabbits. Sadly there's also been quite a lot of vandalism in the past - grave stones deliberately toppled, and grave sculpture stolen - fortunately things are improving (there's a friends of group which seems to be doing sterling work in the way of restoration and general care) and this place is an oasis. It's a wonderful mix of everything from high Victorian to Art Nouveau, the graves are closely packed, many of them must have cost serious money and speak of extreme devotion and devastation. It's quite a place.

In which I have Great Expectations

2012-02-10T23:26:00.000Z

Despite being the lucky recipient of a small library of books about Dickens from Oxford University Press it still came as a bit of a surprise to me that this week would have seen his 200th birthday. I knew that there was a 200th anniversary of some sort I just hadn't been paying that much attention because generally I'm not that much of a fan. When I realised that Tuesday was the big day it struck me as an amazing coincidence that I'd just started reading 'Great Expectations' (though in truth it's more likely that I'd finally picked it up because of all the background Dickens activity, I certainly bought it just before Christmas as an alternative to watching the mini series)

'Great Expectations' has turned out to be a bit of a revelation (as well as having possibly the best ever title for a 'classic') - it's funny, properly and deliberately funny, which I never saw coming. My low expectations were based on a humourless television series from some time in the late 70's which I saw when I was far to young, but also when there were only 3 channels available so you had to take your chances and make the best of them. I'm pleased that I missed this years (no doubt lavish and excellent) take on it because at least I'm coming to the book fresh and also because I have nagging feeling that no adaptation would do it proper justice.

All of which has made me wonder - have I actually read 'A Christmas Carol'? I thought I had but now it occurs to me that I might not of, I've seen several versions - the same goes for Oliver Twist, but have I read either of them? And if I haven't how will the books compare to what I think I know of them? When I was a child and television consisted almost entirely of Delia Smith and snooker (or so it seemed) I was far more likely to discover a classic in book form and then see a film version (Jane Austen) but at some point that changed (Elizabeth Gaskell). Being by nature a reader I'm back to discovering things through the printed word and after years of thinking I didn't care at all for Dickens am being forced to consider that perhaps I just don't care for other peoples versions of him.

Perhaps because it's late I find that a worrying thought - on reflection most of the Jane Austen adaptations I've seen have been pretty naff compared to the originals, fun to watch, but really my life would be poorer if I thought that was all there was to her writing. What else have I been missing out on? And if there's a moral to this ramble it's this - if you think you know Dickens (or any other classic author) pick up a book and make sure.

Whisky Classified - David Wishart

2012-02-08T21:57:00.000Z

As I may have already mentioned several times - I love a good whisky (by which I will always mean a Scottish single malt, I accept that other people make excellent whiskey/whisky/rye/bourbon and so on but it's scotch that really works for me and I'm sticking with it) and I love reading about it just as much as drinking it. Maybe more, there is after all no hangover from reading.

For a long time I was faithful to the Micheal Jackson guide but it does no harm to be promiscuous with books and I've been flirting with David Wishart's 'Whisky Classified' just recently after spotting the 10th anniversary edition. What grabbed my attention was the sub title 'Choosing Single Malts By Flavour' - this is a terribly fashionable way to approach Whisky at the moment (and may seem obvious to the uninitiated) but ten years ago it would have been revolutionary. Back in October I spent a whole day re arranging the malts at work along flavour profiles (defined by our buyers and I'm inclined to argue with some of their classifications - but that's another story) before this Whisky was arranged and marketed by geography which has it's advantages but struggles to accommodate the huge variations in style you can get from distilleries pretty much next door to each other.

The Jackson guide is excellent but at its heart it's a catalogue which assigns each malt a score that's purely the result of one man's personal opinion. Jackson's was a learned, generally reliable opinion, but in all the years I used the book I don't remember seeing any break down of how he reached a score. Wishart's system is different - he breaks down a dozen flavour profiles - convenient once you work out what he means (this was for me the hardest thing about learning how to taste wine, but once you break the code it's a really useful tool), divides distilleries into clusters, and uses a plethora of charts - all designed to help you identify what you like.

He also has a pronunciation guide for each whisky; Gallic is a tricky language so I'm grateful to have it confirmed that Allt A Bhainne is pronounced owlt-ah-VAN-ya or that Dailuaine is dal-YOO-in for example (also I've just amused myself and the Scottish one by confirming the pronunciation of Springbank, Longmorn etc). It's a little thing but I like attention to detail. After that each whisky gets an entry about it's history,a tasting note, and a break down of it's flavour profile. Honestly I'm impressed - there's a lot of information for the reasonably knowledgeable (such as myself) with plenty of room for debate, but for the novice I can't imagine a better place to start. I like this book so much that I'm going to phone our training department tomorrow and suggest that this is the book we should be using (it's far better than the one we have).

The Whores' Asylum - Katy Darby

2012-02-05T23:19:00.000Z

The luxury of generally reading books that have stood the test of time is this; any issues I have with them are subjective and entirely personnel to me, the writer is probably long dead - I feel free to say what I like and I rarely find anything negative to say because after all a book doesn't become a classic because of it's many faults. Reading a book hot off the press is a different thing altogether, it makes me far more critical which is okay, but I find myself looking for faults which is not on the whole why I read.

The first twenty pages of 'The Whores' Asylum' didn't entirely bowl me over but I carried on, the next twenty pages were better, and by the third time I picked it up I realised I didn't want to put it down. The back blurb bills this as 'enjoyable gothic romp for fans of Sherlock Holmes, Sarah Waters, and Susanna Clarke's 'Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell''. I can go along with the Holmes bit, haven't read any Sarah Waters and thought that 'Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell' would really have benefited from some serious editing. I think there's also a bit of a debt/nod to Faber's 'The Crimson Petal and the White' and although Diana Pelham is not the heroine that Faber's Sugar is that's hardly a criticism. Initially, and this was the reason for my ambivalence until I got into the story, the language feels a bit contrived - to self conscious an approximation of Victorian idiom but either it settled down or I stopped noticing.

The story itself is a sort of mystery with a femme fatale at the centre of a web of men. Her nemesis is Edward Fraser who plays the role of best friend to two of her victims. Edward is a prudish, generally innocent young man, who immune to Diana's charms sees the worst in her. His intentions and motives are all for the best but it's through his agency that most of Diana's misfortunes befall her. The man they're both fighting for is Stephen Chapman - a brilliant young doctor, after that things get complicated...

Edward, Stephen, and Diana all tell different bits of the story ostensibly in letter form (though I doubt that Diana's section would really have been written, as suggested, for her unborn child - it's not the kind of thing you would want them to know but that's a little niggle) which works for me. Diana initially seems to be a villain but turns out to be something else entirely, Edward is flawed but likeable - a decent but sometimes misguided young man. Stephen is the object for both their passions and it's good to find a book with friendship at it's heart with all it's complications - it's not always about sex.

I loved the way Darby played around with my perceptions of who was in the right or wrong in a situation whilst all the time exposing the double standards in attitudes between men and women, between the respectable and those who've been caught out. It's not a perfect book but it's a real page turner, and better than that, is thought provoking. This is Darby's first book, it will be interesting to see what she does next, but personally I have very high hopes for future brilliance from her.

The Times

2012-02-02T22:17:00.001Z

Dad's been having a clear out and has sent me the copy of 'The Shetland Times' from the week I was born - not the day because it was, and still is, a weekly paper. There's more in it these days but this one made interesting reading partly because it reflects concerns about the burgeoning oil industry and the cold war - one correspondent to the letters page asks if the public have considered how the building of an oil terminal will make the them a priority target in the event of a nuclear war - but mostly because of the small adds. Baby sitters for 15p an hour, bank accounts with between 9.5% and 11% interest, 10lb bags of salted herring ...

Dad and I were both surprised to see the North Start Cinema advertising x rated films. In so many ways the past is another country, but being British some things remain constant - complaints about a royal wedding extravaganza and observations on the wettest November ever have a familiar ring to them.

Shetland Ramblings

2012-02-01T14:13:00.000Z

Homesickness appears to be an incurable ailment. It's quarter of a century (and far more than half my lifetime) since I lived in Shetland but it will always be where I'm from and looks like it will always be where I think of as home - it's not as if I have any illusions about island life, or if I'm even sure that it would still be for me (though give me the chance and I'd go back in a flash to try it out at least). The end of January always makes me want to head north (a desire that probably wouldn't survive first contact with the weather) mostly because of Up-Helly-Aa, although this year impressive Aurora displays are added to the siren call (I don't want to infringe anybody's copyright but have a look at some of the pictures and videos here at Burra Bears).

Up-Helly-Aa is a big deal (I think it might be the biggest fire festival in Europe) and although there are several burnings all across Shetland now the big one takes place in Lerwick on the last Tuesday of every January. When I was a child it was a hugely exciting day partly because school closed half day on the Tuesday and everything closed on Wednesday so that people could recover (this is still the case). Shetland is a small place, really large crowds are rare so the best part of a thousand men marching through town with flaming torches has quite an impact. It really is a sight to see and judging by the palpable excitement on my facebook page it's still as big (if not bigger) deal than ever. Excellent pictures here.

It probably doesn't help that I'm currently reading Mairi Hedderwick's 'Shetland Rambles' - set in midsummer which is even more beguiling (there's a promise of sun and reasonable warmth). I had to put it to one side to finish a book group read but will have more to say about this one very soon. Also it's cold which makes me hanker after new knitwear, my favourite jumper is now over a decade old and has finally reached a point where repairs are ineffective. It's a long way to go for a jumper but there would be gloves and a scarf too... My Porch went to Hawaii for his island fix, arguably my parents didn't do me any favours imprinting Shetland on me - now if only I could bring myself to believe that.

Bedtime Stories

2012-01-30T23:20:00.002Z

The first pay day of the year has rolled round and with it the first amazon order (dispatched and can't wait for it's arrival) I'm particularly excited by a collection of short stories put together by Michael Simms. Simms is responsible for 'The Penguin Book of Victorian Women in Crime' which all but doubled my wish list. 'Dracula's Guest' has (amongst others) vampire stories by Mary Cholmondeley and Mary Elizabeth Braddon - that's why I've bought it, the rest is all bonus.

Everyman's collection 'Bedtime Stories' was another holiday read and is a thing of beauty, it's not just the charming dust jacket but the turquoise cloth cover, the matching ribbon, the little bit of contrasting purple stitching at the top of the binding, and that the pages are stitched not glued - it's a very nice package. The link with 'Dracula's Guest' is that for bedtime the stories are of a generally dark often ghostly nature. Nothing to terrifying - not so as they would keep you awake, but enough to make you glad to be tucked up in bed (possibly with a hot water bottle and a hot chocolate) with good lighting at your fingertips.

Some of these I've read before - there's an A. S. Byatt and an Angela Carter both of which I've got in other collections but am happy to read again, the rest of the collection is to diverse to pin down without listing them all (which would be dull for me to do). Short story collections are my answer to e-readers; I never really understand why they aren't more popular, a well crafted short story is a wonderful thing - a beginning middle and end in as little as a couple of pages. I love the economy and completeness of a good short story (but get unreasonably irked by ones that feel like they still have more to say).

Collections like this particularly appeal to me a - the mix of things I want to read and which it would never have occurred to me to have a look at, it leads to all sorts of discoveries alongside the comfortable knowledge that there are likely favourites in there. I've read about half of 'Bedtime Stories' so far and may not pick it up again for months, or maybe I'll take it to bed with me in a minute and try to choose something that won't scare me silly, but it earned it's cover price with an Isak Dinesen short 'The Sailor Boy's Tale'. The sailor boy rescues a falcon from the rigging of his boat and later when he kills a man on his way to meet a girl the falcon reappears to help him in the form of an old Lap woman. It's a very effective fairy tale from a writer I normally have no interest in - 'Out of Africa' is one of those books I've failed to read (tried it perhaps to young, haven't ruled out giving it another go) and I had no idea that she'd written so many other things including a couple of collections of short stories. Guess what's gone on my wish list now...

Christmas Pudding - Nancy Mitford

2012-01-29T23:03:00.000Z

This was a Christmas present and completes my Mitford collection (though I still hanker after the complete Penguin edition) and is the last of my Christmas-y reading for a while. It's almost a month since I actually read this book (whilst on holiday) when I took copious notes of my opinions and doubtless brilliant insights. Unfortunately I've no idea what happened to my notebook. I had it a week or two back but there have been guests and entertaining since then and in a mismanaged attempt to look tidy and organised I've lost god knows what useful things (the hot water bottle stopper with a working seal has also disappeared and it's quite likely that I won't be able to put my hand to my cheque book for a while). I'm sure it'll turn up one day (hopefully with a missing necklace and my scattered wits).

Meanwhile it seemed like a good idea to write about this book before I forgot all about it. 'Christmas Pudding' was a bit of a revelation at a point where I'd begun to think of Mitford as decidedly over rated and over exposed. It's not that I particularly disapprove of the Mitford industry - we all have to make a living and they're an interesting family albeit mostly in terms of the people they knew - but Nancy wasn't really a prolific writer of books (8 fiction, 4 non fiction?) and her legacy is one of decidedly mixed quality. 'Highland Fling' is never better than average (although still amusing and it was her first novel so allowances can be made) 'Wigs on The Green' is mostly a curiosity, well worth reading, but butchered by Nancy in a failed attempt to placate her fascist sisters. Seeing as that didn't work it's a shame she never let rip with all her original intentions - that would have been a book to seek out. 'Pigeon Pie' is another curiosity with lots to enjoy in it but again - distinctly average.

'Christmas Pudding' is in another class, it was Nancy's second book and has a touch of magic to it. The story is a romp with romance shot through with a hint of bitterness - nobody makes bitter as funny as Nancy can. She's also talking about a world she knew; bright young things in London, and the landed gentry in the Cotswold's. The existence she describes is terrifying; the central characters -Sally and Walter Monteath have just produced a daughter (which seems somewhat feckless as they have not a bean to live on) fortunately baby Elspeth's christening gifts ought to bring in a few bob once they're hocked. They live hand to mouth cadging off richer friends with seemingly no thought for the future - the embodiment of the bright young thing - but Mitford throws in an odd little New Year's day scene where everyone sits around hungover to the eyeballs and looking every minute of there age, she's well aware that the party will end.

There are other wonderful creations; Paul Fotheringay the misunderstood writer whose tragic masterpiece has been hailed as the comic tour de force of the season and Bobby Bobbin - the boy. The boy is a creature, or perhaps a force of nature that has all but vanished (I hope he still exists within the enclosure of a few select private schools) teenagers are not the same at all. Bobby is wonderfully unlikely to the modern eye but is such a popular type in fiction that he must have existed...

This isn't quite Mitford at her mature best - not much Mitford is - but it's really very enjoyable and I highly recommend it. It's a good thing that Capuchin and Penguin have done re releasing these titles .

The Thin Man - Dashiell Hammett

2012-01-27T22:52:00.001Z

My reading still has a vaguely Christmas-y feel at the moment as I'm working through the books I bought myself to get in the mood but didn't get to before the big day (not to mention the ones I was given as well - a whole pile of treats awaiting attention). Long dark nights and crappy weather make me crave classic Noir, I don't mind if it's in book or film form but I've got to have some. 'The Thin Man' has a particularly appealing blurb as well: "Ex-detective Nick Charles plans to spend a quiet Christmas holed up in a hotel suite with his glamorous wife Nora, their pet Schnauzer and a case of good Scotch. But then a bullet - riddled corpse and a missing inventor (not to mention a beautiful young woman) force him out of retirement..."

Despite several bullet ridden corpses this isn't an especially festive read (Christmas only gets the barest of mentions) but it is good Noir. Hammett is the man credited with inventing the genre, Raymond Chandler called him "The ace performer" and he worked for Pinkerton's detective agency - so there's a chance it's not all fiction. Chandler treads very similar ground and I don't think anyone does hard boiled quite as well as he does - (but then without Hammett would there have been a Chandler?) it took a few chapters to shake off the comparison (Hammett has more humour) but eventually the ace performer came through.

Hammett himself has quite a history - detective, veteran of both world wars, communist (black listed and jailed), TB and no stranger to a drink or two. The most striking feature about 'The Thin Man' is the amount of alcohol consumed - it was published not long after prohibition ended but is set against a background of speakeasy's and spectacularly heavy drinking -whisky for breakfast and then drink after drink - it's almost a surprise that anyone was sober enough to plan and commit murders, more of a surprise that Nick Charles is sober enough to solve a crime - especially one as ingenious as this.

What makes the book, as with all the best Noir (and this obviously reflects my own personal preferences) are the one liners, Hammett would have held his own in conversation with Mae West and Gypsy Rose Lee. He's smart and funny with an eye for absurdity as well as a general world weariness, there is no doubt that Hammett believed things could be better and was angry that they weren't .

Penguin keep slipping these little Noir gems out ('In a Lonely Place', 'If I Die Before I Wake' a whole lot of Chandler...) and I can only hope that they both find more and that someone (I'm looking at you amazon recommends) makes more effort to bring them to my attention. Potentially good news is that Johnny Depp is involved in a project to remake 'The Thin Man' - the old black and white films are brilliant but these are cracking good books and some remakes could be fun.

Something to celebrate (again)

2012-01-26T00:28:00.000Z

I've just finished washing up post Burns night supper - we ate a lot of Haggis, recited a modest amount of poetry, had a few drams, had some fudge, and in my case a spoon to much of cranachan (with rhubarb - I love that stuff, but my god it's rich). Before the Scottish one I was ambivalent about Haggis but he loves it and I've learnt to. I truly love Burns night though, it's such an easy dinner to cook so there's no stress, and it's great to have something to look forward to at the end of January. It's been noticeably lighter the last few evenings, spring is on it's way even if it'll be a while in getting here which is something worth marking with friends and a celebration. Also how good it is it to have a night dedicated to a poet? And with Whisky! We need more of it.

Of Books and Cake

2012-01-23T23:14:00.000Z

At about the age when I started to think I was to cool for the delights for books like 'Kidnapped' I went on a school trip to London, we were let loose for lunchtime outside the National Gallery and somewhere round the corner from St Martin-in-the-Fields we found a Cranks wholefoods and the best piece of carrot cake I've ever had. It was rich, and dark, and moist, light, and fruity, and spicy - altogether lovely, and has lived long in my memory.

Sometime later I found a copy of 'The Cranks Recipe Book' amongst my step mothers cookbooks complete with a carrot cake recipe (and now how I blush over for my teenage self) which I copied into the back of Virginia Woolf's 'To The Lighthouse' which I spent most of that summer dragging around trying to read. I managed to finish it but can't honestly say that I either understood or enjoyed a single page - the only reason I still have it is because of that recipe scribbled (without instructions because I Knew How to Bake Cake so little details like cooking time and temperature, or even sort of flour have been dismissed as being for amateurs). Perhaps I will continue to keep it as a reminder that I once thought I knew everything I would ever need to... (And who knows maybe I did and have just forgotten most of it.)

I do however remember that the cake I baked bore no resemblance to the fabled version from that school trip, Both book and recipe have remained untouched for at least a couple of decades but sometimes you just want carrot cake and I've yet to find a take on it that's just all that it could be so I thought I'd go back to the beginning as it were. The cake that came out of the oven is okay but quite frankly ordinary (but at least I remembered to take it out of the oven in time) - the search continues so if anybody has a recipe that comes out quite dark and rich ideally with sultanas in it I'd be very pleased to have it.

Kidnapped - Robert Louis Stevenson

2012-01-22T20:02:00.002Z

'Kidnapped' was a childhood favourite - or more specifically a favourite from the years that seem to be classed as young adult now; a term I'm a little bit suspicious of but I assume covers the stage when one grows out of The Famous Five but doesn't yet feel compelled to walk around with a conspicuous copy of something Russian. (I wonder if there's a polite term for that phase?) I probably had a battered Puffin Classics copy back in the day but it's long gone, so a few years ago I felt impelled to purchase a rather more grown up looking Canongate version (it looked exceptionally scholarly) which has kicked around the shelves ever since waiting to be picked up until finally I was in the mood for something Scottish and Victorian.

A few pages in and I wondered what I'd signed up for - it was clear that 'Kidnapped' wasn't entirely the book I remembered (it was also clear that I didn't really remember much about it). Re-reading it, it's a much more complex novel than I would have imagined a week ago. Having started this post the Scottish one and I have spent the last 2 hours discussing Jacobite's, the suppression of the clans, and Scottish independence. I grew up with a romantic notion that the Jacobite cause was a noble one and that Bonnie Prince Charlie was a hero (in Shetland where traditionally there is little love for the mainland Scot) He grew up being told that Bonnie Prince Charlie was a nasty little man, foreign at that, who was the ruin of the Clans (in the Highlands where you might imagine a different attitude would prevail).

I assumed that a good portion of my pro Jacobite sympathies were culled from 'Kidnapped' but reading now I see no evidence of enthusiasm from Stevenson. His Alan Breck Stewart is in most ways a ridiculous little (literally - his lack of hight is frequently referred to) man with a distinctly skewed idea of honour and morality. Resourceful and brave certainly, but also overly proud, vain, quick to take offence, manipulative, and unscrupulous. He certainly has no qualms about taking a second rent from his clansmen who can ill afford it so that his chief can live in some comfort and safety in France. David Balfour - the Lowlander happy to swear his allegiance to King George is on the other hand a model of youthful integrity whose only discernible fault is his inability to tell when he's on a tidal Island.

As a children's book it's a ripping yarn which manages to mix the fairy tale elements of a young man destined to find he's the long lost rightful heir of an estate and fortune, with adventure on the high sea's, a life and death journey across a wild landscape, and just a little humour. As a grown up book there is far more humour, more tension, more horror and plenty of the duality that the introduction in my edition insists upon. David leaves behind a world of certainty for one where nothing is assured and where the weather is as much his enemy as the red coats are.

As for 'Kidnapped' itself - well the chances are anybody reading this will already have know it reasonably well, but should you be on the look out for a copy I absolutely recommend this edition. The notes, glossary, introduction, and maps are excellent (I learned stuff) and as a book to provoke conversation it has a lot going for it - not least as it feels remarkably relevant in a time when Scottish independence is very much on the news agenda.

Here Be Dragons - Stella Gibbons

2012-01-17T20:44:00.000Z

An apt title for a sometimes provoking book. Tanya Izzard wrote an interesting post about 'Christmas At Cold Comfort Farm' and a story in it she found particularly problematic 'Cake' - I somehow missed it out on my first read but can now see why she had an issue with it. I don't find it as troubling as Tanya did though it's undoubtedly the weak link in the collection. However I do agree that when reading Gibbons there is often something that jars in her work.

'Here Be Dragons' spends most of it's time being absolutely brilliant but there are moments when it totally falls down. At it's best this is the story of Nell, daughter of an ex vicar - he's undergone a crisis of faith and illness which has left him unable to provide for his family, because of this Nell and her parents have moved to London where a successful aunt has lent them a house in Hampstead. The top floor of the house is occupied by an ex husband, his new wife, and Nell's cousin John.

John is destined for National Service but meanwhile is wondering round bohemian London's clubs, espresso bars, and darker corners in search of material for his novel. Nell falls for the charms of her cousin and allows him to lead her into this world - sometimes she enjoys it but mostly she sees through the artifice of rich kids playing at poverty. Nell has different ideas of how her life should be, she's experiencing real poverty and has no taste for it. A first job in an office bores her whilst offering no real prospects and then she discovers waitressing. It offers her better money and allows her to plan for a future where she'll have her own cafe.

I like this - it was refreshing to read about a girl who wasn't going to be a writer or similar, Nell will clearly succeed (I like to think far beyond the imagination of 1956 when this was written). Her mix of inexperience, determination, and character are all convincing - the attraction to her comparatively exotic cousin makes sense as doe her flirtation with his friends and lifestyle, but so does her own inherent conservatism.

Cousin John is less convincing, Gibbons doesn't resist throwing out dark hints about his probable future, she also gifts him with genius and a sort of omnipotent ability to meddle in others affairs - neither of which always hit the right note. On the other hand she hits off exactly how smugly irritating 19 year old boys can be (a few days with my brother were testimony to her skills of observation*).

Nell's parents are another strong point. Her father's loss of faith is described in moving, and again convincing terms. How that story resolves itself feels just as truthful. It occurs to me that this is a difficult thing to get right, but Gibbons definitely pulls it off. Her love of London and of Hampstead also come through, the portrait she draws of them is nostalgic now, and surprisingly beautiful from a woman I associate with a love of the countryside.

The real bit of grit in the oyster for me though is when she talks about the increasing number of coloured faces in her cityscape. Descriptions come across as slightly uncomfortable and poorly integrated both onto the plot and the portrait she draws of the city. It's something that shouldn't have been noticeable and because it is, it irritates me.

All of those niggles aside I loved this book whilst I was reading it and still do. Gibbons is a good writer with a lot to offer - she certainly deserves to be back in print and I really hope that this particular title graduates from print on demand to easily available. It's quite possible that Nell will become one of my all time favourite fictional heroines - never would I have thought 300 pages about a girl who wanted a tea shop could have been so compelling.

*I love my brother and understand there's no point in trying to argue with him even when he comes out with real crap. I look forward to spending time with him in the future when life has destroyed many of his adolescent hopes and dreams. Alternatively he can buy me drinks so I can drown my sorrows whilst sincerely congratulating him on his luck.

Marzipan and Cherry Cake

2012-01-16T21:08:00.000Z

The last slice of Christmas cake went at the weekend and as I'd got into the habit of tea and cake (and have been desperate to use my Kitchen Aid) it seemed only reasonable to bake something by way of a replacement. Ages ago I saw a recipe in Susannah Blake's 'Afternoon Tea Parties' which looked like it would fit the bill. It seemed perfect because it uses marzipan, glacé cherries, and ground almonds all of which I had bits of hanging around after Christmas baking. I was half tempted to use apricots instead of cherries as I had some of those hanging round as well but on reflection cherries were the right way to go.

The marzipan in this cake is brilliant, it managed to recall the eaten cake whilst being totally different (much lighter and therefore much easier to eat a big slice of) and the whole almond and cherry thing is always a winner. I'm showing a picture of what the cake would have looked like if it hadn't not been ready when the rest of dinner came out the oven and more than ready when dinner was finished and I remembered it again (oops) it still tasted great* - especially with a cup of tea. The recipe also came with a brilliant tip, my oven is old and it seems likely the thermostat is a bit off. Long story short the tops of slow baked cakes are generally a little on the crispy side by the time the cake comes out and somehow it had never occurred to me to put a bit of tin foil on top of them for the last 20 minutes of cooking time. It works however and it's something I'll remember.

Marzipan and Cherry Loaf

175g butter (room temp)

175g caster Sugar

3 eggs

175g self raising flour

85g ground almonds

175g glacé cherries

75g (chilled) marzipan grated.

A 2lb loaf tin lined, and oven at 180/gas 5

Mix the butter and sugar until light and creamy before adding the eggs one at a time and then the flour and almonds. Stir in the cherries. Put half the mix in the tin, sprinkle the marzipan on and top with the other half of the mix. Bake for about 45 mins then put a bit of foil on top and finish off for another 25 mins. Cool and eat.

*The cherries aren't burned/caramelised, they're posh Waitrose ones that come in an upmarket dark cherry colour. Honest.

Rachel Ray and why Trollope sometimes annoys me.

2012-01-15T20:20:00.000Z

I love Trollope; I really do, but not blindly. The first ofhis books I read was ‘Cousin Henry’, I had mixed feelings about it but realisenow that it couldn’t have been a better introduction because like ‘Rachel Ray’it shows both the best and worst of him as a writer. The biggest problem I havewith Trollope is his habit of repetition, for example;

“She thought only ofhim, how beautiful he was, how grand, - and how dangerous; of him and hiswords, how beautiful they were, how grand, and how terribly dangerous! She knewthat it was very late and she hurried her steps, She knew that her mother mustbe appeased and her sister opposed,- but neither to her mother nor her sisterwas given the depth of her thoughts. She was still thinking of him, and of theman’s arm in the clouds, when she opened the door of the cottage at Bragg’sEnd.

Rachel was still thinking of Luke Rowan and of the man’s armwhen she opened the cottage door...”

Trollope uses this trick all the time and on occasion itworks really well underlining a point, it’s also a useful tool in making thedetails of the plot stick in the readers memory – something I suppose wasespecially helpful if you’re reading a chapter a week (that quote is the end ofone chapter and the beginning of another). However in ‘Rachel Ray’ – as inother places – it’s a device that he employs far too often, it becomes (to me)an annoying distraction from the plot which I just want to unfold. ‘Rachel Ray’is 400 pages in my edition, if it was 300 pages long it would be a far betterbook.

I haven’t yet read Trollope’s autobiography but have readabout it a few times – it seems that it did his reputation no end of damagepartly because he advocated approaching writing as a job to be done rather thanwaiting for inspiration to strike. Apparently it was his habit to sit down eachmorning before work at the post office commenced and bang out a prescribednumber of pages. On the whole I’m sympathetic to this approach but here it feelslike nothing has been discarded and that when in doubt he’s simply rehashedpoints he’s already made. If Luke Rowan is referred to as a potential wolf insheep’s clothing once it’s a question that’s asked twenty times. The readerknows he isn’t but has understood the doubts of Rachel’s family long beforeTrollope has tired of reminding us.

He’s also been accused of anti-Semitism and this is thefirst time in his novels that I’ve seen where that comes from. There is anelection during the novel; the two opposing candidates are Mr Butler Cornbury –squire’s son representing the landed Tory element, and Mr Hart – Liberal Jewishtailor down from London and Not A Gentleman. On the whole I’m indifferent toracial attitudes in older fiction – it’s easy enough to overlook casuallymentioned prejudices and assume that in more enlightened times the author wouldmost likely share my own views. Here however there is an argument (repeated)that a Jew shouldn’t be allowed to stand for parliament in a Christian country,Mr Hart’s supporters are the more villainous of the books characters andnaturally it bothers me that an authorial voice I’ve come to consider friendly suddenlycomes out with opinions I can’t feel comfortable with.

In fairness it’s just as likely that Trollope was making uphis daily word count when he kept returning to the question of whether Jews(and Catholics) ought to be accorded the same parliamentary rights asProtestants and he doesn’t do a bad job of giving both sides of the argumentbut his Conservatism (never much in doubt) is very much to the fore.

None of this makes me want to give up on Trollope, or makeme think less of him as a writer (or a person) but it does make it clearer tome why he isn’t as well known as Dickens. With better editing (I’m back to therepetition) Trollope’s reputation would stand much higher but as it is hisshortcomings are too obvious to always ignore, happily he has the talent tomore than compensate for the bad and overall I think it makes for a richerreading relationship.

Rachel Ray and what I love about Trollope.

2012-01-14T22:21:00.000Z

Catherine Pope at Victorian Geek (who has read her waythrough all of Trollope’s considerable oeuvre – which I think is more than Iwill ever do) has recently done a couple of posts on her top ten, and tenterrible Trollope’s. I’ve read eight of his forty seven novels so far, none ofthem obscure titles and am beginning to know what to expect – when he’s good he’sthe best thing since Jane Austen, the rest of the time he’s nowhere close.Catherine has Rachel Ray in her top ten and I can see why, but for me it’s theperfect example of everything I love about Trollope and everything I really don’t.

The plot of ‘Rachel Ray’ is a simple enough boy meets girlaffair – Rachel lives with her widowed mother and widowed sister in genteelpoverty on the outskirts of Baslehurst. Mrs Ray is a woman in need of a husbandsupport if ever there was one with the result that she leans rather heavily onher eldest daughter Dorothea Prime. Dorothea has a tragic sort of past –married in her teens to a young curate who survives a mere 6 months beforeDorothea is left to go home with only £200 a year, a taste for low church preaching,and a penchant for good works to sustain her. She’s a woman who’s inclined tosee the worst in people and find sin everywhere.

Between these two Rachel’s life has been extraordinarilysheltered – hot buttered toast and cream for tea is the height of debaucheryand aside from country walks with the local brewer’s daughters she sees nothingof society. The boy is Luke Rowan who’s come into a share of the brewery muchto the dismay of his partner Mr Tappitt who had come to consider the concernall his own. Luke is a coming young man determined to have everything all hisown way and with all sort of new fangled ideas about brewing decent beer(Tappitt doesn’t), he’s also new to the area. Luke and Rachel fall in love inquick order and despite Mrs Ray’s fears that he may be a wolf in sheep’sclothing come after her lamb, and Mrs Prime’s conviction that he’s the worsttype of godless fiend, it’s eventually decided that he probably isn’t that badand is allowed to pay his addresses to Rachel. She accepts him and all looksset to be happy ever after when sundry complications ensue.

Mrs Tappitt had designs on Luke for one of her own daughtersand isn’t prepared to let Rachel walk off with the prize without a fight, MrTappitt also wants a fight, he’s convinced that brewing good beer will be theruin of them all and isn’t prepared to be taught his business by a boy half hisage. Mrs Rowan senior isn’t happy either, she wants her son to make a more advantageousmatch and is quite happy to let the Ray’s know it. Mrs Prime is determined toput a spanner in the works whilst at the same time juggling a proposal from MrProng (her preacher) who seems as interested in the lady’s money as the lady,and finally Mrs Ray is bought to such a state of doubt that she forces Rachelto break with Luke. How will it all end happily?

The best of Trollope is that his villains are rarely toovillainous, or his heroes to heroic – they are all eminently human and in thiscase it’s very easy to sympathise with the Tappitt’s as well as wondering ifLuke really as a steady enough character to be suitable for Rachel. There’snothing sensational about the plot but it’s a definite page turner, there aretimes when it seems quite doubtful that there can be a happy ending (though ofcourse we still know there will be).

Trollope is also excellent on the nuancesof class and social position which is particularly fascinating here where hedeals almost exclusively with the bourgeoisie and their politics as they relateto the everyday workings of a small rural town. Broadly speaking nothing muchhas changed in the way these places work in the last 150 years and I do thinkthat it’s his eye for these details that are a great source of Trollope’sstrength as a writer. The love story is nothing special, his empathy for hischaracters is and raises this quite above the ordinary.

That’s the good – next time I’ll tell you why Trollope issometimes the most frustrating writer I think I’ve ever read.

A Dangerous Time of Year

2012-01-12T08:55:00.000Z

Seville oranges have appeared at work and despite the fact that my freezer is still inconveniently full of last years haul (I thought I was on top of it until my mother came round with what feels like half a hundredweight more she'd been looking after for me) and I have many, many, jars of marmalade of increasingly unknown vintage hanging around the place I'm finding them hard to resist.

I came late to preserving - or perhaps it's not something one naturally turns to much before one's thirtieth year - but some time not long after then I started to develop an interest, by the time I was thirty five it was more like a passion, possibly when I hit forty it will be a full blown obsession. Meanwhile I'm still acquiring books on the subject, have taken to squirrelling away old jam jars (which friends and family now surrender as a matter of course), peruse the Lakeland Plastics catalogues with the same furtive enthusiasm that teenage boys (presumably still) hold for top shelf magazines, and am £50 away from a maslin pan to call my own.

The most recent book to join the fold is a reprint of what the cover assures me is Beryl Wood's classic 'Let's Preserve It'. It was a Christmas present from mum and I'm delighted with it; a proper A-Z of mostly jams, jellies, marmalades, and chutneys with side lines in the way of vinegars, pickled walnuts, and preserved lemons. So far I've only browsed so it may well be that there are all sorts of other good things in there. I'm strongly reminded of Niki Segnit's 'The Flavour Thesaurus' in the way that so many flavours are paired - it's an approach that I find endlessly beguiling and inspiring (although getting my friends to share my enthusiasm/eat the results of the more picturesque combinations can be an uphill struggle).

I'm hoping I can resist the urge to buy more Sevilles, given that their season is a short one (only a few weeks) I may do all right and can concentrate on using up existing stores. Discovering a love of marmalade came about the same time as I discovered an enthusiasm for making it, both came like a bolt from the blue some time in 2006 - though even after my damascene moment there's only so much of it I can eat, mint and pineapple jelly however may be a different matter (quince and pumpkin jam however you can probably keep). This is a fascinating little book for the light it shines on previous generations of careful preservers (many of the recipes clearly have a venerable provenance) as well as for world of flavours it's suggesting to me. The instructions are brief to the point of economy so it's perhaps not the best book for a new initiate to the dark arts of preserving but otherwise it shows every sign of being indispensable.

Private Eye - The First 50 Years an A-Z - Adam Macqueen

2012-01-08T23:08:00.002Z

After my birthday, Christmas, sales, the generosity of Penguin (a huge parcel of Adrian Mole thank you very much) and others, as well as a general lack of self control I think the book situation is getting a bit out of hand. I've spent a good portion of this morning scooping up errant volumes from the floor (where many have been forming precarious towers - not I hope in some sort of escape bid) and piled them all in one place, there is a much smaller stack of books already read. Some of these books have already been mentioned in passing but all cry out for more attention here as well as a more permanent and ordered home on a shelf they can call their own so it looks like I've got my work cut out.

First off the pile is 'Private Eye - The First 50 Years an A-Z', I wanted this from the moment I saw it but held off for lack of funds (and in the hope that someone would give it to me, nobody did) so was delighted to find it half price in Waterstone's when I was uncharacteristically flush. Back in the day, though certainly not including the Al Fayed owned re-launch in the mid 90's, I was generally a fan of Punch - more cartoons less pointed satire. It's a sad admission but my grasp of current affairs isn't quite up to getting the best out of Private Eye, that and without finding it offensive I can't always summon up a sufficient sense of outrage against it's victims - though as I get older that's changing.

I do however (and can't quite believe I'm admitting this here) have a bit of a crush on Ian Hislop and admire the Eye's publish and be damned attitude as well as the way that it's steered away from sex scandals (which on the whole are probably not in the public interest however amusing they might be from time to time). The more I read about the Eye though the more intrigued I am and each time I put this book down (which isn't easy, the last two nights I've still been flicking through it at 2am hours after picking it up for an intended 10 minutes) it's with an increased conviction that the stories behind and about the magazine are probably more interesting than anything I'll ever find inside it.

Of course that opinion might change if I read 'Private Eye' more often - which I might; after 50 years it's enough of an institution to appeal to me and Adam Macqueen has done a brilliant job of portraying it as a brilliantly anarchic gang of talents committed to exposing hypocrisy, criminality, and foolishness in those who should know better. I watched an interview with Hislop once where he explained that as editor of the Eye he basically had to be whiter than white - you can't go slinging that much mud if you have skeletons in your own cupboard - and for all those who've complained about their treatment in the Eye it would be well worth remembering that if they'd behaved better in the first place they wouldn't have anything to fear.

The G-String Murders - Gypsy Rose Lee

2012-01-08T00:02:00.003Z

I truly hope tonight's browsing history doesn't lead to any particularly colourful spam (on the whole I can't recommend looking for images of vintage G-Strings) but I try to be thorough and some of the wardrobe descriptions in 'The G-String Murders' are rather outside my experience (which is mostly confined to M&S's finest). I have a few of the Femmes Fatales titles from the feminist press but this is one of my favourites (along with Vera Caspary's 'Bedelia') I bought it just before Christmas which looking at the prices now was clearly just in time.

Given that burlesque has become so popular over the last few years (it's even reached Leicester) it surprises me that this book is all but out of print, it's also a damn good read - Gypsy rose Lee out quips Mae West which is quite impressive. The plot is a bit creaky but the atmosphere, slang, characterisation, and one liners are all brilliant, although I should warn anyone lucky enough to pick up this particular edition that there seems to be a lot of typesetting errors. Not enough to render the book unreadable but enough to be noticeable and annoying, however forewarned is forearmed and however niggly it became it's still such a good book that I didn't care in the end.

Gypsy Rose lee is the eponymous heroine of the book as well as our guide backstage in a burlesque theatre at the seedy end of 1940's New York. There are dancers - many past their best days and resorting to some desperate cosmetic measures, mobsters, impresarios, a lot of drinking, plenty of cat fights, some colourful language - basically you can pretty much smell the smoke and feel your feet sticking to the floor. Unfortunately all is not well at the old opera; Lolita La Verne (who nobody liked) has been found dead, strangled with a G-String, someone has tried to strangle Gypsy, and as if that wasn't enough the Princess Nirvena (blackmailer) also turns up dead in the Gazeeka box (no idea) anyone could be the culprit and it's a question as to whether the killer will be caught because the cops seem more interested in the chorus girls...

I know really pulpy Noir is my thing and not everybody feels the same - but honestly what sensible person could resist an opening like this:

"Finding dead bodies scattered all over a burlesque theatre isn't the sort of thing you're likely to forget. Not quickly, anyway. It's the little things, incidents that don't seem important when they happen, that slip your mind.
With me, for instance. As long as I live, I'll remember seeing that bloated, bluish face, the twisted, naked body, and the glitter of a G string hanging like an earring from the swollen neck. Sometimes, even now, I wake up in a cold sweat with the sounds of a body squashing on the stage, and Dolly Baxter's screams in my ears."

Irresolutions

2012-01-06T22:54:00.001Z

Well I'm back from my break albeitreluctantly and still have a few days off to sort myself out before it's backto work. It's odd to be home, my flat is taking a while to warm up andeverywhere I look there are jobs to be done. The biggest and most intimidatingof these is to sort out an incipient damp problem, my upstairs neighbour had aleaky pipe which has left my bathroom ceiling in a state - this is no worse nowthan when I went away so it looks like that problem is undercontrol, unfortunately there seems to be another leak inthe airing cupboard. It's going mouldy. I'm not happy.

Upstairs seem nice and will doubtless behelpful but I still foresee weeks if not months of chasing plumbers,house agents, insurance companies and all the other crap that goes along withthese things. It's not the start to the New Year I would have chosen but is probably indicativeof things to come - the best laid plans and all that. It's also another reasonwhy I'm not making any resolutions this year, I tried last year andfelt vaguely frustrated that all the good intentions, small asthey were, kept being pushed aside by more insistent issues - this yearI'm taking it as it comes, my resolutions will be made and carriedout on a daily basis rather than grand ones where I will constantly let myselfdown by failing to be consistently better organised and such like.

Meanwhile the borders were as lovely asever, my favourite bookshop (Main street books trading) came up trumps, I read somecracking good books, got disappointed at Glenkinchie distillery(closed due to wind damage) but happily missed the worst of the Scottish gales- although we still saw trees down everywhere - it really blew, froze lookingat Melrose Abbey, ate my chocolate reindeer, and generally wish I’d never left.

Happy New Year

2011-12-30T22:50:00.002Z

I'm off to my (parents*) winter retreat for a few days (me, the Scottish one, my brother, my brother's rabbit, my father's dogs... and others) which I hope will be peaceful and idyllic - well there's nothing wrong with hoping. I have a suitcase full of Victorian novels and warm jumpers, a bottle of single malt waiting for me, and a chocolate reindeer for emergencies so think I have the basics covered.

I hope that everyone reading this has something equally good to look forward to and that the New Year brings good things for all.

*It's flats - we retreat to one small corner, but the picture has a pleasingly Mitford feel for someone who finished 'Christmas Pudding' on the bus home tonight

The Joy of Dictionaries

2011-12-29T21:12:00.001Z

One day my friend the blonde will let me take pictures of her collection of dictionaries - I have never, even in a university library, seen so many or on so many different subjects. So far she's resisted my attempts to sneak in with a camera on the grounds that her house isn't tidy enough (tidier by far than mine though) but one day... My own collection of dictionaries and reference books is a small affair by any standards never mind hers but I still like to have books to hand.

True enough the internet is a wondrous and useful thing but sometimes it's hard to find what you want amongst all the other stuff on there, though more often my problem is that I only find what I want and not so much of the incidental stuff along the way (I know this isn't the usual problem - maybe it's my age). The great thing about something like 'The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations' is that I can browse in it for hours - or minutes as time allows. I spent a lot of Christmas and Boxing day flipping through my new copy and would keep it by my bed if I thought it wouldn't keep me awake for hours. It's the sheer variety of stuff in there (and the pretty blue and yellow ribbons - my old university colours which feels like a happy coincidence). I briefly entertained myself texting the blonde Goethe quotes in German which she understands, I don't though so when she replied in kind I came unstuck. I found some cracking stuff about sailing which I think I'll soon have cause to repeat, and swore yet again that I should actually read Dorothy Parker and not just her quotes.

It's not even as if I'm a crossword aficionado or need this sort of thing for essays or the like, I simply find myself really enjoying time in the company of a book like this. I look at it and it seems full of promise and possibility; sentences that could lead to entirely unexpected and new (to me) writers - because clearly I need more books in my life - oh yes, the dictionary is my favourite present of Christmas (excluding the half a kitchen aid which wasn't for my birthday).

The Company She Keeps - Mary McCarthy

2011-12-28T21:25:00.000Z

It feels like an age since I've finished a book (I read of others managing to get through 160 + a year with a slight feeling of envy - 60 is doing well for me) but now that work has calmed down, my stress levels have fallen, and I no longer want to crawl into bed the moment I get home it's time to tackle my to be read pile.

I started 'The Company She Keeps' weeks back and was, until yesterday, in two minds about it. I didn't love 'The Group' when Virago reissued it a couple of years ago but liked it enough to pick up 'A Charmed Life' when I saw it second hand which I found a much more satisfying read. 'The Company She Keeps' was McCarthy's first book and feels semi autobiographical, each chapter is a self contained story and all of them have Meg Sargent somewhere in them. Initially she's an unattractive character; shallow, self absorbed, promiscuous, and a snob, but slowly and without McCarthy noticeably making Meg more sympathetic I found myself warming to her.

I think it's because there are no real excuses for her behaviour that it starts to become acceptable - in the final chapter Meg's seeing a decidedly second rate psycho analyst who assures her that it's all due to a repressive upbringing - she seems unconvinced: it's to easy. I can't quite imagine how this book would have read when it was first published in 1942 but it's fair to say that Meg is a woman we've all met - the difference being that it's no longer normal to marry at 20 and not unusual to have the sort of complicated sex life that Meg engages in which takes away some of the shock value.

The pay off for me came in the final chapter when Meg/McCarthy takes a good look at what bothers her - a failure to be happily middle class, or a decent socialist, along with the realisation that the accessories of her New York liberal lifestyle all covered in there "own patina of social anxiety" fill her with disgust. McCarthy has also answered a long held question for me, for years I've wondered why so many of the husbands in the books I read are architects - Meg's second husband is an architect "the perfect compromise candidate, something halfway between a businessman and an artist". In her case it's an admission of failure to be one thing or the other.

My over all impression of McCarthy is that she could be a bitch, when she turns that on other people as she does in 'The Group' I find it mildly repellent, when she takes that same view of herself it's really effective and totally compelling.

More New Books

2011-12-26T21:28:00.002Z

Back home from my mother's (she does the best turkey ever - fact) and have had a peaceful boxing day playing with my new books and anticipating an evening eating too many mince pies whilst watching Poirot. Having got a whole pile of readable presents I still felt compelled to hit the Waterstone's sale today which I'm slightly torn about, I feel quite strongly that there are days when everything should close down and boxing day is one of them. It's not a religious thing, although religious festivals are as good an excuse as any, it's that I think life would be so much nicer if there were more days we could all spend with family and friends. I'm lucky in that I currently work for a company that does close on boxing day which is becoming increasingly rare in retail. Truthfully though we could all wait to shop for another twenty four hours in favour of a bit more time contemplating things more important than the pursuit of a bargain.

So yes, I came home and then I went shopping and managed to come home with Dan Lepard's 'Short and Sweet' (half price) 'Private Eye the First 50 Years' (half price) and 'Great Expectations' - probably won't watch it but do plan on reading it - it's long overdue that I try and have another crack at Dickens and I'm a little bit in love with the idea of Miss Havisham although I have no idea if the reality will match the myth. To make myself feel better about it I'm telling myself it was good to spend money locally and in supporting the high street - which it is.

I'm particularly pleased to have a new dictionary of quotations - the rather magnificent Oxford edition from my friend L, she gave me (at my request/hint both times) a dictionary of quotations for my 18th birthday so there's a neat symmetry about getting this one twenty years later. 'Let's Preserve It' is just a brilliant little book that I look forward to spending more time with, I'm also quite excited about getting to grips with 'River Cottage Veg Every Day!'. The remaining paperbacks are crying out for more investigation but look like an inspired set of choices so more of those in the future.

I hope that you all had as good a Christmas as I did with excellent company, a little bit to much to eat and drink, and presents that make you feel lucky and generally privileged in the friends you have (mawkish I know but it's the season for it).

Happy Christmas

2011-12-24T14:12:00.000Z

I'm finally done with work (for the next three days anyway) and am scrubbed clean, with presents all wrapped, in a warm and fragrant if still untidy flat. All I have to think about now is what I'm going to read, what to drink, and what to wear (in that order) and I couldn't be happier - nothing is ever perfect but this is close so here's wishing anyone reading this a Merry Christmas and a wonderful break from the everyday nonsense of life.

New Books

2011-12-19T22:58:00.000Z

Now that I can realistically count down the time left at work before things calm down (four and a half days, thirty nine hours, or a lot of minutes) I'm beginning to plan my holiday reading. This is a ritual that I love and another reason that I don't really think an e-reader is for me - eyeing up the possibilities, trying to predict my reading moods, balancing a wildcard choice along with something worthy and wordy, and finally remembering to follow the golden rule of no more books than knickers when you pack to go away - its not a bad way to unwind.

These beauties are a collection of review copies, birthday presents, and purchases, some of which will definitely come away with me. Nancy Mitford's 'Christmas Pudding' is an obvious choice, as is 'The G-String Murders'. 'The Whores Assylum' looks promising but isn't officially out until February so that might wait, and of course there may well be books for Christmas too... Also I also have shelves full of things I've meant to read for ages, I think a Trollope may be on the cards, and I wouldn't rule out a Walter Scott either - but then I'd like to read some more Wilkie Collins and now it's all getting a bit Victorian. I also have some Dorothy Whipple that needs reading, it's been a while since I've read any P.G. Wodehouse. I have a George Mackay Brown, about one hundred and fifty Virago books, plenty of Stella Gibbons, and who knows what else (is this the year for 'Moby Dick'?). The consideration and anticipation is almost as good as the actual reading.

Christmas cooking (well it’s an excuse to use my Kitchen aid)

2011-12-18T23:42:00.001Z

Today I have finished the candied oranges dipped inchocolate that have been in the making for the past week – chocolate stagewhich was messy but satisfying, made fudge, finally used the star/tree cuttersI was given last year (mine are small tree’s but I’m pleased with the results,and also couldn’t imagine eating a biscuit as big as the biggest star in theset). We also tried what has now become the week before Christmas cake.

It’s a cake that my father (winner as you may remember of ‘BestFruit Cake Baked By A Gentleman’ at the Walls agricultural show) can be proudof – he’s clearly passed on the fruit cake baking gene, he also reminded me that mymother makes a darned good cake as well which I guess is where the gentlemanbit comes into the equation (she does too). Either way it tasted good and come the New Year I’mdefinitely getting ‘Short and Sweet’ I think Dan Lepard may be the way forward.

All this kitchen activity combined with a heavy week at workhas meant not much reading but there is a book post coming soon...

The Lives of the Novelists – John Sutherland

2011-12-14T22:54:00.000Z

Yesterday was my birthday – I spent the day working which issomething I’m going to try and avoid next year because the result has been vaguelydepressing, it turns out that a lovely weekend doesn’t make up for nine hoursof hard graft lugging heavy boxes around, a freezing wait for a bus that’s late(at my age getting in from work after 9pm feels too late), and finally homealone for a sandwich before bed. I can, and do, do that at least twice a weekanyway, it didn’t make the day feel special.

What has made me feel special though is presents and I’vehad some lovely ones. Most intriguing is from my friend L who’s given me a potof soil filled with mystery bulbs – it’ll be months before I know what’s inthere but that isn’t going to stop me from looking everyday anyway. Anothergratefully received gift (from my sister who received some pretty heavy hints)was John Sutherland’s ‘Lives of the Novelists’ – a history of fiction in 294lives. I’ve not been able to resist it (and only partly because I’ve had my eyeon it for what feels like an age) and have been dipping in and out whenever I’vehad the opportunity over the last 48 hours.

I’m not the biggest fan of biography but this book suits meperfectly because each writer is delineated with admirable brevity – on averagetwo or three pages each – in which space Sutherland manages to pack in the salientfacts along with a few more salacious/gossipy details; it’s more than enough tobe going on with. So far I’ve been reading about authors I already know butlook forward to being informed and possibly tempted by a whole lot that I don’t.

294 seems like a fairly arbitrary number (surely he couldhave found 300?) but then this is also an unashamedly personal view of literature– presumably the history of one man’s reading journey, which makes it all themore intriguing. I wanted it for reference, am already quite inspired by it,and wonder now where else it might take me and what else it might prove to be.Doubtless I’ll let you know.

Christmas Cake

2011-12-10T20:01:00.001Z

I'm actually quite proud of this cake (although that may change when we actually try eating it, I mean it should be good seeing as I followed the recipe and all but you never know until you cut a slice do you) and am relieved it's turned out pretty enough to share, especially after the lack of faith both my mother and the scottish one displayed when I described what I wanted to do. They admit they were wrong now, though it's sadly not often that my 'artistic' vision works out the way I pictured it so they had some cause for doubt. This time though it's worked and because the chance to decorate it was the whole reason to bake the cake I feel as smug as a cat that's not only got the cream, but the sweet spot on a cushion by a fire.

It's fair to say that the cake itself is a little lumpy and uneven (rustic?) which might not have been as noticeable if I'd managed not to roll the marzipan quite so thin (but it leaves me with enough to bake into something else so that's okay). The ready roll icing was new to me as well and much softer than I expected so it's full of little dents and what not which are now artfully covered by ribbon. After that I spent quite some time looking for an appropriate picture of a stag (google stag and it's not just deer that you get) made a stencil, practised on a piece of paper (an example of forethought which is quite un-typical) and then proceeded to sprinkle edible glitter over the cake, myself, the work-surfaces, and the floor, which means soon it will be everywhere which is at least festive.

Humbug or Another long week at work.

2011-12-09T23:41:00.001Z

Ahh, Christmas – a time of good will to all and such like,unless you’re shopping. I haven’t had much time to open a book this week partlybecause everything is now in full swing for the big day and even when I’m notactually working I’m mostly tending to the days cuts (two new ones because thecardboard boxes hate me) and bruises (a cracker across the back of my handwhere I trapped it between a rolling cage and an immovable object – possibly anothercage, possibly a wall, maybe a shelf, I was too busy swearing to notice whichisn’t good because the same spot will inevitably get me again until I identifyit to avoid.) After all that excitement all I really want to do is try andscrub off the dirt and sleep.

It has been a trying few days and I can’t help but feel thatit’s in the public interest to share a few don’ts with you. Don’t for exampleask your harassed wine merchant for a bottle of wine you think is called “Chateaude something”, adding that it may be French and probably red doesn’t actuallynarrow the field much. Accept that if you don’t actually know what you want you’renot in a position to ask for it, I can and will recommend something I think youmight like but can’t promise that it’s the same thing you don’t know the nameof.

Don’t keep asking the same question, the answer willinevitably remain the same. For example lady proffering a miniature bottle ofBailey’s “How big is this” me “it’s a miniature so 5ml’s”, “That’s quite small”“yes (not saying it but the clue’s in the name MINIATURE), “Have you got abigger bottle?” “why yes, we have bottles and litres.” “Oh, do you haveanything smaller?” “Just the miniatures.” “you see it’s for a present and Iwant something bigger than this but smaller than that.” “I’m sorry we only havethese sizes.” picks up a bottle of something else “do you have anything in thissize?” “Well we have that.” “Do you have Baileys in this size?” “No.” “But Iwant it in this size, are you sure you don’t have any?” “Yes, we only have thesizes I’ve shown you.” “But it’s for a present and this size would be justperfect.” “.....Can I help you with anything else at all madam?” In truth thisconversation went on for a lot longer than you could believe possible andhappens many times a day. I will eventually snap and say what I’m thinking andget sacked.

It’s not appropriate to say to a total stranger who’sputting bottles on a shelf that you like to see a woman on her knees. It’sreally not appropriate to explain that you want German wine because it’s loweralcohol content means that you can drink a lot of it and still maintain youenthusiasm (the customer was more explicit) in the bedroom.

It’s all very well asking your wine seller to “Check out back”but out back today I had 16 cages of stock and a full cellar, each cage weighsabout a third of a ton and at the moment each one is surrounded by a whole lotof other stuff. It’s not easy to find anything amongst that lot so ~~come back laterand stop bothering me~~ be nice when you’re asking and don’t get impatient if youhave to wait. We all have better things to do and whilst I’m on it “Can youshow me your Chardonnay” is something that’ll take a while.

Mulled wine, Glühwein, and Glögg are essentially the samething, we happen to sell mulled wine, if you don’t like the mulled wine we sellplease consider making your own. It’s not hard and will be better thantearfully insisting that Glühwein is very different – I can’t actually doanything about it. It’s not ‘too much trouble’ to make bucks fizz. Adding fizzywine to orange juice is unlikely to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.Truthfully adding a sachet of pre mixed spices to wine isn't a big effort, and if you want a non alcoholic version adding the sachet to red grape juiceisn’t a killer either.

The answer to ‘Where is the £10 bottle of gin?” is Asda, Ican’t remember what wine you might have bought from us sometime in the summerwhen it was on an offer, wanting something reduced because the label isslightly damaged AND YOU WANT IT FOR A PRESENT makes you sound cheap, I’m gladyou’re not my friend. I look forward to Christmas being over – although beforeit is there will be a lot of harassed men who suddenly realise that it’s the 23^rdof December and they’ve done nothing about it, and I will have said we had ituntil yesterday about a thousand times.

Christmas At Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

2011-12-05T22:55:00.001Z

Bought from the newly improved Waterstone's who are (joy of joys) experimenting with single book price cuts rather than multi-buys. I read 'Cold Comfort Farm' ago but don't think I really got it. I keep meaning to try again because it's so generally loved and I don't like feeling that I'm missing out but I also want to read some of the books it parodies in the hope that it'll give me more insight - but I'm not sure I can face the doom and gloom yet.

Because of all the above the Cold Comfort sequels have never appealed to me as much as other Stella Gibbons have, but it's that time of year and Christmas in the title swung it. Imagine my joy to discover that this is a collection of short stories and only the title one is set on the farm. They all started life in magazines like 'The Lady' and 'Good Housekeeping' which is a sure sign of quality. Perhaps in homage to the general ambience of Cold Comfort Farm a lot of them deal with unhappy marriages and unfulfilled women but I find that cheering at a time of year when so much of the imagery around me seems designed to point out that I don't have a perfect life (and after all how many people do) .

It turns out that Gibbons writes a cracking good short story - small but perfectly formed. Gibbons is very much of her time and quite happy to take easy shots (at bohemians versus sensible married people and the like) but she has the humour to carry it off. My favourite is 'Golden Vanity' where a slim legged grey eyed English beauty spends her time daydreaming over romantic novels, passing up the chance for real romance whilst she does so. The pay off it that her dark handsome hero author turns out to be a woman... I like to think that she had Georgette Heyer in mind.

I'm inclined to think that this is Stella Gibbons at her best (you can keep 'Cold Comfort Farm' - even if it's sacrilege to say it) or at least it's a concentrated dose of all that she does best and a nice showcase of her talents. There's a lot more I could try and say about this book but Nicholas Lezard (who is after all a professional) has already done it better in the weekend Guardian so instead of me paraphrasing him do have a look.

Preparations / Procrastinating

2011-12-04T22:48:00.001Z

I had good intentions for today which involved Christmas card writing and some festive baking but got off to a bad start after an epic oversleep wiped out the morning and a big dose of apathy put paid to cards (tomorrow or maybe Tuesday I swear). On only a slight tangent I've been canvassing my friends about Christmas decorations and whether to bother. Once upon a time when I still lived at home we had a tradition of no decorations before my birthday (just over a week away), when I started living alone I made an effort for the first few years because I like decorations but recently it's seemed pointless. Ironically although I no longer have to work 60+ hour weeks over the festive period I feel like I'm at home less than ever and much as I love putting decorations up I hate taking them down. Everything seems so dismal without them and January doesn't need much help with being dismal, also with no one in to see them it's increasingly hard to find reasons to do it.

However the consensus seems to be that decorations are the way forward so I'm aiming for a compromise. My Fair Isle bunting has gone up - it's not tinsel so it can stay up indefinitely as far as I'm concerned, and the stick tree my sisters ~~boyfriend~~ gentleman caller made has come out. (I drenched it in pine essential oil to make it smell festive but it mostly smells like disinfectant now so that wasn't one of my best ideas. Whisky might have been more appropriate - it's working for the cake.) More concessions to the season are on the way but need some consideration, chief amongst them being what to put on the tree. I've thought about meringues to look like dollops of snow which I think is a pretty idea but may look a bit silly in this case, biscuits or gingerbread are another option but I'm worried that it might end up looking somewhat like I knitted the whole thing out of yoghurt, and then there's the proper old fashioned sparkly but specifically Christmasy baubles which will have to come off. What to do?

Ten books from the last twelve months.

2011-12-04T00:13:00.001Z

Books of the year lists are a bit of a departure for me but Ithought I’d give it a go, indeed I meant to do it for the first of December butdidn’t get organised in time – which is why lists like this generally are adeparture for me. However it’s the season to look back on things and havinglooked back at books it feels like it’s been useful – and slightly surprising.I’ve not perhaps read as much as I hoped I might this year but that’s par forthe course (damn having to work for a living and its constant getting in theway of more entertaining things) but although there have been a lot of goodbooks – this is after all the year that I finished Trollope’s Barchester chronicles,read my first Walter Scott, and worked through Mrs Oliphant’s Carlingfordseries – I don’t feel that it’s been a vintage year. It’s not a struggle tocome up with ten books I’d happily recommend, anything I’ve written about I’vebeen enthusiastic about, but it’s been quite hard to identify the ones thatreally stood out – the books which might make it to my fire shelf.

Somehow though I managed, and so in no particular order herethey are – all read between December 1^st 2010 and December 1^st2011. First up is Matthew Sweet’s ‘West End Front’ from a couple of weeks back.The more I think about it the more time I have for this book. It’s a lot of thedirtier side of war which we do well to remember, it’s also a lot of storiesthat deserve to be told, thoroughly entertaining, and at times desperately moving.All good.

Another recent read was Constance Maud’s ‘No Surrender’ fromPersephone books. Not the best novel ever written but possibly a contender forthe most passionately heartfelt. It has an enthusiasm for a cause that’sinfectious. It’s also a book that makes you question how much things have changed,and how much has stayed the same. The answers aren’t entirely encouraging foranyone of a feminist persuasion and again these are things which should bethought about otherwise nothing will ever change for the better.

Mark Girouard’s ‘Enthusiasms’ also makes the list, partly becauseit’s a lovely thing in itself, partly because it’s entertaining, but mostlybecause it’s a showcase for the virtues of good scholarship – whatever they’rebeing applied to.

A.S Byatt’s ‘Ragnarok’ was easily my most anticipated titleof the year, it didn’t disappoint. I read it months ago but there are stillbits that run through my head. I think Byatt is at her best when she writesshort stories and novellas; she’s pretty bloody good when she writes epicdoorstops as well but I find her shorter books perfectly polished jewels – or somethinglike that anyway. She’s just very, very, good.

Preparation/anticipation for ‘Ragnarok’ featured KevinCrossley-Holland’s ‘The Penguin Book Of Norse Myths’ which I approached in themanner of a chore. It wasn’t, and good intentions to read far more saga’sfeature for next year.

John O’Hara’s ‘A Rage to Live’ was a great big messycompelling wonderful book – I love vintage for reprinting him (and so manyothers). He’s a slight departure from my normal middle brow women – rather lesstea and a nice sit down with a scone, more dirty martinis and a few too many ofthem.

Sticking with sleazy was Mae West’s ‘The Constant Sinner’ –not just an eye opener. I have more Mae West to read which is something to lookforward to. She’s everything I hoped in the way of one liners and wisecracksbut underneath that there’s a veracity that makes the heroine Babe Gordon stickwith you.

I’m a big fan of Victorian literature and if I’d read LadyAudley this year she would be a shoe in, but I didn’t and I also really loveMrs Oliphant so I’m going with ‘Phoebe Junior’ the last of the Carlingfordchronicles. I think it stands well alone, has a cracking good plot, and rips ofTrollope with style. That’s virtually the perfect Victorian novel in my world.

The last two books on my list are both a little bit Noir.Vera Caspary’s ‘Bedelia’ which had a twist I didn’t see coming and which turnedsomething run of the mill into something extraordinary. Dorothy B. Hughes ‘In aLonely Place’ was even darker – and nothing like the film which is good, but anentirely different story. Dorothy B. Hughes was a Persephone find and sincethen I’ve come across a few of her other titles. Persephone’s ‘The ExpendableMan’ is so far the best; ‘In A Lonely Place’ is a very close second.

Now I need to go and get a head start on next years list.

The Gentle Art of Cookery – Mrs C.F Leyel and Miss Olga Hartley

2011-11-30T23:20:00.001Z

This is part of the classic voices in food series thatQuadrille are producing (I quite fancy the Eliza Acton as well) and the firstthing you notice about it is what a lovely looking book it is. Christmas treegreen, scarlet, and silver with lovely creamy pages - it’s the scarlet colouredpage edges that are really doing it for me though. After I’d got over howpretty the book was I read a bit about the authors, Hilda Leyel was an expertherbalist, set up the Culpeper shops and the Herb Society in 1927. Olga Hartleywas her assistant as well as a suffragist journalist and author; both womensound fascinating but its Hilda’s voice and tastes that shape the book.

‘The Gentle Art ofCookery’ was written in 1925 but feels startlingly modern which says a lotabout the cyclical nature of food fashions and perhaps even more about thevision that Hilda had. She veers towards the vegetarian, champion’s seasonalfood (although that’s not unusual for the 1920’s) and has a penchant for exoticingredients and cooking with flowers (in fact many of my own kitchen preoccupations). There is a menu plan for an Arabian night which appeals to me,the memory of a Middle Eastern banquet at my friend Mary’s house in the summeris still fresh, it’s wonderful food for sharing and talking over.

I’ve spent quite a lot of time dipping in and out of thisbook – I’ve been meaning to write about it for weeks – and really like it, itfeels different and imaginative as well as being interesting for the history,but I have to agree (a little begrudgingly) with the introduction. This isn’t abook for inexperienced cooks (Hilda also says this) the recipe’s are given withthe same sort of brevity that can make Elizabeth David (by the by this was oneof David’s first cook books and she apparently remembered it with gratitude andaffection) so frustrating to cook from if, like me and Julian Barnes, you’re apedant in the kitchen. There are good idea’s aplenty, many of them far ahead oftheir time (a chapter on cooking for and with children is something I’m notused to seeing but also really liked) but there’s also a lot that’s very muchof its period – lot’s of gelatine based creams – and some which call for trulyterrifying quantities of things. One recipe calls for a peck of primroses; that’sa unit of volume equal to two gallons/nine litres, or basically a LOT ofprimroses, so good to read about it, maybe not for making.

I do however fancy mixing up some wassail; 6 pints of beer,4 glasses of sherry, sugar, lemon and nutmeg, 4 slices of toast – leave tostand for 3 hours, bottle and drink within a few days. I have no idea what thetoast is for or would do to the drink (or who I would get to drink it) but itsounds intriguing, as does the Rumfustian...

Michael Jackson’s Malt Whisky Companion

2011-11-28T23:05:00.001Z

I love whisky – it wasn’t always so, single malt is notgenerally the first drink of choice for a young woman – my nights in thestudent union veered between gin and Guinness (very bad Guinness at that), postgraduate drinking also featured gin and increasingly wine which eventually ledto a job in wine. Wine is a fascinating but it’s a big subject and trying toget to grips with it is a mammoth task. The people that I worked with knew alot and I wanted my own little niche. That’s where the whisky came in, we solda lot of it and people would keep asking me about it so I had to learn aboutit.

The more I learnt the more interested I became untileventually I could drink the stuff without wincing, from there it was a smalljump to real enthusiasm (in moderation of course – whisky hangover’s are vileand to be avoided) and now it’s a passion only a little way behind books. Ofcourse it helps that there are plenty of books about whisky...

The best of these (for my purposes) has always been ‘MichaelJackson’s Malt Whisky Companion’. Sadly Michael Jackson passed away a couple ofyears ago and the current edition (no 6) was finished off by others. It’s stilla great book (although they’ve let some foreign whiskies sneak in and I’m notsure how I feel about this – there are other books for that kind of exoticism)and as I’ve spent most of the weekend with it I thought I should take a momentto celebrate it here.

It’s basically a dictionary of malts with a little bit abouteach distillery and then a description with score of all their current bottlings.Really simple and totally fascinating for anyone who likes a good list. Whiskyisn’t for everyone but if you do happen to be fond of a dram and a book to readwhilst considering it this is such a good book.

The Penguin Book Of Victorian Women in Crime – edited by Michael Sims

2011-11-26T22:06:00.001Z

I wanted this book after reading ‘Red Pottage’ – I washankering after more New Women and Victorian lushness and thought it would hitthe spot. Naturally therefore I didn’t pick it up for at least a month by whichtime the mood had gone. ‘Red Pottage’ is a seasonal sort of book, a lot of theaction takes place in autumn against a backdrop of golden leaves and crispevenings finishing up in a snow flurry. It was very evocative back in Octoberbut that mood has passed now, fortunately I’m all about the short story at themoment so haven’t abandoned ‘The Penguin Book of Victorian Women in Crime’ to takeits chance on a shelf somewhere.

I regularly read that short stories don’t sell which just asregularly surprises me. I love short stories and have numberless collectionsand anthologies (by which I mean I can’t be bothered to count them but they maywell run into the hundreds by now); I particularly like anthologies findingthem the perfect travel companions. They’re also just the ticket for this timeof year. Christmas is happening in retail – this is the last pay weekend beforethe big day, I’ll find out on Monday if my predictions for an exhaustingly busyday came true (I have the weekend off and am not sorry to put back theinevitable cuts, bruises, and frayed temper a few more days).

I find this time of year hard going, it’s physicallydemanding in a way which leaves me with very little energy to concentrate onanything much, and then even when not working there seems so much to prepare,or finish, or generally take care of before the imaginary full stop that isChristmas day. Reading fiction is a blessed escape from the (mostly reasonablebut numerous) demands of customers but giving a book the attention it deserves –well it doesn’t always happen. Shorts are a different matter, a good anthologyis a great way of finding new writers, and if one story in my chosen themedoesn’t hit the mark I can be pretty sure the next one will.

‘Women in Crime’ is mostly short stories but there is alsoan isolated chapter from an Anna Katherine Green novel which makes me long toread the rest of the book. (Sims has edited an earlier Anna Katherine Green forpenguin; ‘The Leavenworth Case’, it’s on my wish list and I’m hoping someonetakes the hint). Grant Allen’s ‘The Adventure of the Cantankerous Old Lady’ wasvery funny (looks like penguin are releasing one of his novels next year – alsoon my wish list...). The list of happy discoveries hasn’t ended there.

The other thing I really enjoyed about ‘Women in Crime’ ishow many of them there were, mostly as detectives sometimes as villains. Despiteprotestations that the lady detectives (and villains) are still the very modelsof femininity it’s somehow encouraging to see the Victorian mind admitting thatwomen could be more than the angel in the house.

Lady Audley’s Secret – Mary Elizabeth Braddon

2011-11-26T00:49:00.001Z

Oxford world’s classics have a new edition of ‘Lady Audley’sSecret’ out which is worth celebrating, and perhaps more to the point, reading.Lady Audley was love from the first page for me, I’m only sorry I didn’t readit when I first picked it up twenty years ago. It would appear that I’mprogrammed to enjoy sensation fiction but even so Lady Audley is something abit special – within the framework of attempted murder, hidden identity, disappearances,blackmail, insanity, and arson there is a subversive message that thevillainess is perhaps as much sinned against as sinning, and the hero isn’tsuch an appealing character either.

This was one of the first books I blogged about (here) inthe two years since I’ve read plenty more sensation fiction but nothing better,more complex, subtler, or thought provoking. This book really should be betterknown and more appreciated and so (ahem) if you only read one Victorian novelthis year please make it ‘Lady Audley’s Secret’...

Stir up Sunday

2011-11-21T22:50:00.001Z

Stir up Sunday - Wikipediatells me that the name comes from the collect in the Book of Common Prayerwhich is read on the last Sunday before advent, I associate it with The Archerswhere I first heard the term in relation to baking. It’s also the traditionalday to make Christmas pudding and mincemeat, and if it doesn’t need a long timeto mature it’s also a good day to make your Christmas cake.

Coincidentally I didmake my first Christmas cake yesterday, but only discovered the synchronicitywith the dates afterwards, it’s going in my diary for next year (just so Iknow). If the cake is good it’ll become a fixture and I have to admit that it’sreally going to test my patience waiting another 5 weeks to see if it’s anygood. I have an inkling that it will be acceptable because the top got a bitcrispy and I decided to slice it off and in the process I tried a little bit. Therecipe used was the Dan Lepard I’ve been sitting on for the last year and ifnothing else it’s made my flat smell amazing.

I didn’t make thecake in my new toy – I wanted a bigger bowl and it’s not a recipe that callsfor much mixing bar the folding in of the fruit and – well it just seemed moreappropriate to do it by hand. However the Scottish one has been encouraging meto use the Kitchen Aid (part of me still thinks I should have waited but it wasa part easy to ignore) and so I thought perhaps I should. So I did and madeanother Lepard cake – Hazelnut and Prune – there’s a link to it on theChristmas cake page. It’s pretty good but calls for quite a lot of nutmeg whichI will halve next time because currently I feel it tastes a bit virtuous and alittle unbalanced; which is as much a reflection on my heavy handedness asanything else – I may have erred on the side of excess.

The hazelnut andprune effort went through the mixer which was extremely satisfying, sosatisfying that I felt I had to bake something else and so opted for the Gugelhupfrecipe in ‘Tanta Hertha’s Viennese Kitchen’. It’s turned out well but I’m notsure it’s for me (hard to tell at the moment because I burnt my mouth on a veryhot piece of lamb stew and everything tastes a bit off). This version doesn’tuse alcohol which might add a bit of richness – instead its lemon and almondbased and perhaps a bit subtle for someone geared up to Lebkuchen and heavierfruit cakes. I’ll keep eating it until I’m sure. I could probably have carriedon baking all night but perhaps fortunately ran out of ingredients. I love mynew Kitchen aid.

The West End Front – Matthew Sweet

2011-11-20T22:54:00.001Z

The wartime secrets of London’s grand hotels – I quite likedthe sound of this book but wasn’t entirely sure so cheekily asked Faber if Icould have a copy. Very nicely they said yes which turned out to be a splendidthing for me because it’s easily one of the most enjoyable books of the year(which has also just been read out on radio 4 where it’s probably just still availablevia iplayer) which feels like a fitting reward for stepping outside of myfiction comfort zone.

‘The West End Front’ is broken down into ten chapters coveringAliens (the foreign national sort as opposed to any other sort of visitors)Reds, Players, Brigades, Cons, Parents, Subterraneans, Traitors, Majesties, andStrikers. The brilliance of the book is that each chapter concentrates on acouple of key characters whose individual stories are both very personal yetlikely to be the same for countless others throughout the war.

As a nation it seems we’ve got into the habit of seeing theWar as it is in period films – stiff upper lips whilst everyone stays calms andcarries on, possibly whilst making do and mending or digging for victory. It’seasy to celebrate the best that was bought out in us, easy to ignore the lessadmirable elements of the national character which is why a book like this istimely. For my generation all our grandparents had fought in the war, and ourparents had very likely grown up in it or its immediate aftermath so it’ssomething of a shock (not a very pleasant one) to realise that this is all onthe edge of living memory now. Sweet has done an excellent job of illuminatingsome of the things we might otherwise collectively forget.

The hotel and restaurant trade has always been cosmopolitan andtherefore its employees were particularly vulnerable under the internment act –all those Italians and German waiters (and anyone else suspected of being thewrong sort of foreign or having the wrong sort of politics), porters, kitchenstaff – hundreds of them carted off to prison camps regardless whilst the authoritiestook their time deciding what to do with them. It should probably be a causefor shame but I don’t think it’s much talked about.

The chapter on reds is an opportunity to redress the ideathat all were equal under the blitz regardless of social status. Not true itseems. If you could afford to stay in the Savoy (for example) you had access tocomfortable bomb proof quarters and plentiful food when the sirens went off. Ifyou lived in the east end in 1940 you didn’t – this was before the undergroundwas opened up for shelters. The Communists didn’t believe it was very fair andmarched on the Savoy one night, when the air raids started the hotel wasobliged to shelter them which it seems failed to delight its more affluentcustomers.

I think though the most moving chapter in the book is ‘Parents’it basically tells the story of Mary Pickwoad, a fairly ordinary young womanwho had an affair with a married man. She was careless enough to find herselfpregnant, fell into the hands of an eminent but unqualified plastic surgeon/abortionist,and finally bled to death in room 365 of the Mount Royal Hotel. It seems shewas all but expunged from her family history – not quite a secret, but not muchmore than a veiled threat of what happened to girls who didn’t behavethemselves. Sweet tells Mary’s story with compassion; it’s undoubtedly atragedy – and the worst thing about it, it was by no means an isolatedincident.

It’s an excellent book, full of gossip and scandal but neverlosing sight of the points it wants to make. Sweet’s style is conversationaland snappy; his research impeccable – the result is a readable and timelyreminder that the truth is far more complex and fascinating than our cleaned upfilm version of the past so often is.

I couldn’t be more excited

2011-11-19T21:21:00.001Z

I don’t know how he knew it was what I wanted (unless it wasthe incessant hinting) but the Scottish one has given me a kitchen aid (itshouldn’t officially be mine for another 3 weeks but I picked it up last nightand was actively encouraged to unwrap it). I’ve wanted one of these beautiesfor ever – or at least for the last fifteen years. I am unbelievably excited,as is my mother who has a theory that you’re not a proper woman until you havea food mixer – getting her first Kenwood chef was a seminal experience apparently.Still she may be right, she normally is, even when saying things that mightraise an eyebrow. I know you shouldn’t get too carried away by things buthaving wanted one of these for such a long time having one in my home – neitherChristmas nor birthdays have been this exciting for almost thirty years, andnow all I have to decide is what to mix in it first.

Five reasons to be cheerful on a gloomy November day

2011-11-16T21:27:00.001Z

I’ve been feeling slightly sorry for myself recently, workhas been hard with no promise of let up until after Christmas (actually it’sgoing to get a lot worse before it gets better), my patience with humanity as itexhibits itself in customer form has hit some all time lows and my back hurts(which is a distraction from my arm and ankle hurting at least). The economy isnot encouraging either, neither common sense nor austerity particularly appeal tome and I feel like I’ve been exercising both for quite long enough now, if Ihad a budget I’d blow it on something extravagant but despite it only being midmonth I’m already reduced to scrapping around for coppers and counting downuntil pay day.

However the sun finally shone this afternoon and I had anexciting parcel from Prospect books which added to a few other recent packagesencouraged me to pull myself together and realise it’s not all that grim. Itmight be a while before I manage to read my way through all these beauties andmeanwhile I can’t wait to share...

Pride of place goes to ‘Tripe: A Most Excellent Dish’ byMarjorie Houlihan. It only arrived this afternoon and I’ve done nothing morethan glance at it but the title alone was enough to make me smile. It’s ahistory of tripe in Lancashire along with a collection of tripe recipes fromaround the world. Leicester has a tripe stall on its indoor market sellingwhite and brown versions, both look revolting and I’ll take some convincing toactually try the stuff. Regardless Prospect’s English Kitchen series is alwaysfascinating and I look forward to reading about it if not to eating it.

The book I’m currently enjoying is Matthew Sweet’s ‘West EndFront’ about life in London’s great hotels during the war. I picked this up tohave a look at it and couldn’t put it down, it’s much better than I expected (Imean I thought it would be good but had no idea it would be this good) thereare plenty of books which I should have read before I got to this one andplenty of other things I should be doing when I’m reading it but it’s irresistible.

‘The Gentle Art Of Cookery’ also landed on my doorstep recentlyand is one that I meant to have a better look at before I got distracted by ‘WestEnd Front’. This is a lovely looking thing complete with coloured page edges(we can’t think what the proper word for that is). I’ve dipped in and out of itenough to know that it’s as good as it looks – more on that soon.

‘Women’s Suffrage in Shetland’ by Marsali Taylor camecourtesy of my father late last week. Mrs Taylor was my English teacher (and avery good one too) and again all I’ve done is open this and have a quick look,first impressions are excellent so I’m looking forward to spending more timewith it – two obsessions in one handy volume – what a treat.

Last but not least is Jane Robinson’s ‘A Force to beReckoned With’ a history of the WI. I’ve been tempted by a few of Robinson’stitles in the past but this is the first one I’ve got my hands on. It soundvery promising and again I’m really looking forward to getting stuck into it.If only there were more hours in the day.

Cake expectations – or a tale of two cakes*

2011-11-13T23:27:00.001Z

I have never made a Christmas cake before, or for thatmatter baked a proper fruit cake. This is partly because fruit cake isn’t myfavourite and partly because I go to my mum for Christmas and my dad for NewYear – mum is an excellent cook who makes a brilliant cake. Dad once won aprize for Best Fruit Cake Baked By A Gentleman in the village show (he likesfruit cake) he also married a professional chef second time round and hisyoungest daughter has been well trained in baking matters – they always havegood cake too, making another has seemed like cake overkill.

However making your own Christmas Cake feels like a rite ofpassage that a person should go through (if so inclined) before they’re 40 (a dreadfulsounding anniversary that’s now only a couple of years away) so I think thiswill be the year. Actually I also though last year would be the year when I cutout a Dan Lepard recipe from The Guardian - but I still have the clipping and Iwant to make the cake more than ever. Truthfully I’ve never been that much of aLepard fan but that’s just changed, Verity told me I must get ‘Short and Sweet’but I momentarily thought I had enough cook books and should save money fordull things like bills and bus fares (it may be that I was wrong).

What my tatty clipping didn’t make clear was how long thecake could keep or if it needed to be made long in advance so I asked Verityvia twitter what she thought (she is after all a seasoned fruit cake baker) shesuggested I tweet Dan himself which I was about to do when I found he’d alreadysent me an answer. I was deeply impressed; I mean how many people would be thatefficient and helpful? I’m now filled to the brim with goodwill and ‘Short andSweet’ has gone on my wish list. It’s not even that I’m thinking ‘aha here’ssomeone who can be bothered with questions whenever I have a cake query’(although that’s a temptation albeit one I’ll quash) but that this man caresenough about his work to clarify a point gives me tremendous confidence in him.Incidentally the cake will keep well wrapped up in a cool place and can be fedwith hard liquor if desired.

Cake number two is a Two Fat Ladies Chocolate Whisky Cake.It was a Jennifer Paterson contribution and is the first thing I’ve cooked outof a book I see was a birthday present in 1997. Every book has its day. Thiscake calls for 3oz of sultanas soaked overnight in 4 tablespoons of whisky, 6ozof plain chocolate melted with 4oz of butter and put aside to cool whilst 3eggs are separated, the yolks to be whipped with 4oz light soft brown sugar andthe whites to be whipped separately and set aside. Meanwhile a grated orangerind, the whisky and sultanas, the cooled chocolate mixture, and 2½oz of choppedwalnuts can be folded into the yolk mixture followed by ¼ of a teaspoon offreshly grated nutmeg, and 2oz self raising flour. Finally gently fold in the eggwhites and pour the whole lot into a prepared 20cm cake tin. Pop it in an ovenat 180°C/gas 4 for an hour or until a skewer comes out clean then leave in thetin for a further 15 mins before turning out. JP suggested a buttercream andwhisky icing to top with but I didn’t bother this time.

I wish I’d taken a picture before we ate it, but didn’t soyou’ll have to imagine how good this cake looked (actually my tin was a bit bigso it looked a bit flat, but tasted great). I have lots of similar recipes butthey all cook in about half the time – it seems these days we like our cakes agood bit fudgier – but this way is excellent, rich but surprisingly light intexture. I also really like the addition of fruit nuts and flavourings; theyworked fantastically well together making this cake feel like something reallyspecial.

*Because it’s a while since I’ve had a pun never mind tworeally terrible puns in a blog title and I’ve missed them.

The Sun King – Nancy Mitford

2011-11-11T23:08:00.001Z

My introduction to Nancy Mitford came in the form of anomnibus edition containing ‘Love in a Cold Climate’, ‘The Pursuit of Love’, ‘TheBlessing’ and ‘Don’t Tell Alfred’ (though possibly not in that order). Herblend of funny and elitist seemed desperately sophisticated to my younger selfand though I haven’t read them for a long time I imagine I’d still enjoy thosebooks given that I had fun with ‘Wigs on the Green’, ‘Pigeon Pie’, and ‘HighlandFling’.

Nonfiction is a different kettle of fish so despite knowingabout the four biographies that Mitford wrote I’ve never felt that tempted bythem. However someone at Vintage very kindly offered me some of their re-printsand I couldn’t say no and having said yes had to start reading. So far I’vetackled ‘The Sun King’ and as members of my online book group already know Istruggled with it a bit. It didn’t help that I came to it straight after myGeorgette Heyer binge (it occurs to me that in a Heyer book Mitford would be a villainess).As a biographer Kloester is quite discreet and very thorough. Mitford isneither, nor is she much of an historian, or balanced, or impartial.

She’s also a confirmed Francophile which I am not to thepoint that people who are really annoy me – I mean France is okay and everythingbut my experience of it does not lead me to believe it’s an earthly paradise,and furthermore several of their winemakers are lax in the matter of bar codeswhich marred my working life for a decade. However once I’d got past all thatthe book began to grow on me. What Mitford seems to have done is trawl throughthe history cherry picking all the juiciest scandals (poisoning, witchcraft,Devil worship, secret marriages, infidelity, and so on) and through italtogether with her personal take on the characters involved. She liked the SunKing (although inexplicably she spends almost a page discussing his appearance withreference to how exotic/Jewish it was which feels shockingly inappropriate in apost war book.

She approved of Mme de Montespan despite her dabbling in theblack arts, but I don’t think she found Mme Maintenon (a later mistress,possibly wife) as attractive – there are certainly no attempts to defend herless appealing characteristics as there are with Mme De Montespan’s. Now that I’vegot used to Mitford’s tone I’m quite happy to read on and find what she has tosay about Frederick the Great, Voltaire, and Madame de Pompadour and canrecommend ‘The Sun King’ in all its gossiping, bitchy, partisan glory (withsome reservations – this isn’t for the faint hearted, easily offended, or theliberal – I would no longer invite Mitford to my fantasy dinner party).

The Devil’s Cub – Georgette Heyer

2011-11-07T22:27:00.001Z

This will (probably) be the last Heyer post for a while,though I could happily spend the winter reading through her entire output, newbooks are calling. When I re read ‘Sylvester’ I knew I’d still like it, it’s alater book and show’s Heyer really at home in her world. ‘The Devil’s Cub’ wasfirst published in 1932 so is a period piece in every way. It’s also straightout melodramatic adventure and it occurred to me that a book that was probablymy very favourite in all the world when I was 13 (beating even ‘The ScarletPimpernel’) might not be quite as good as I remembered.

I only meant to reread my favourite bits (when Dominicshoots the highway man, when Mary shoots Dominic, and of course the bit at theend when everything come together – which I duly did late at night until Ifinally went to sleep thinking it was okay but a bit overblown. The next day Iwas away from home and took another book to read – which made me realise that Icouldn’t wait to get back to ‘The Devil’s Cub’.

If I was marooned desert island disks style my book choice/luxurywould be a complete set of Georgette Heyer. Marooned in adult life with billsto pay, troubles to negotiate, and a hundred unexpected disappointments (my buswas late, I missed a parcel delivery, I don’t have a dishwasher – you know thesort of thing) it’s a great thing to have something to rely on. It doesn’tmatter how many times I read something like ‘The Devil’s Cub’ the humour withwhich Heyer wrote always feels fresh even if I spend more time now marvelling overhow she makes a plot hang together however unlikely it is.

Despite all this I would hesitate to recommend Heyer toanyone. I tried my youngest sister on a few of her books when she seemed theright kind of age – sister liked them but didn’t fall in love with them as I did.Heyer’s a wonderful writer but her particular brand of escapism clearly isn’tfor everyone, one of the pleasures of blogging and my online book group hasbeen finding other fans out there to share my enthusiasm for her with.

As for ‘The Devil’s Cub’; well if a whirlwind romancebetween a man who abducts the wrong sister whilst fleeing the country havingshot his man in a gaming hell, is then shot by the abductee whilst she tries toconvince him she’s really a virtuous sort of female, followed by a chase acrossFrance as they keep getting separated, another mismatched but very much in lovecouple, and the hero’s colourful family also in full pursuit... sounds likeyour cup of tea – well look no further, you’ve hit the jack pot.

Georgette Heyer: Biography of a Best Seller – Jennifer Kloester

2011-11-06T21:52:00.001Z

This book was a very kind gift from Elaine Random Jottingswho quite correctly thought I would be interested in a life of one of myfavourite authors. I’m not generally much of a biography/non-fiction reader butafter a few Heyer based conversations I was really keen to read this in thehope that I would get to know the woman behind the books. Kloester isprotective of her subject which suited me; Georgette Heyer was notoriouslyprivate and though I don’t doubt that she would have found the idea of beingwritten about nauseating (a phrase she seems to have used a lot) I think thisbook respects her boundaries. There are no salacious details, but then therearen’t any in her romances either – it’s not what you go to Heyer for, and thereprobably isn’t very much for people who aren’t fans – but there are no shortageof fans out there so I don’t fear for Kloester’s sales.

I knew from Wikipedia that money troubles were a theme ofHeyer’s career but I hadn’t really taken on board that from the age of nineteenshe was taking responsibility for her family’s finances. Her first advance wentto her father and after his sudden death a few years later she becameresponsible for keeping her mother and two younger brothers, a responsibilitythat never seems to have come to an end. Later on she was the sole breadwinnerin her own household whilst her husband re trained for the bar and this was beforeshe was really earning big money. Life for Georgette seems to have been a veryunromantic series of demands from the Inland Revenue and constant work to keepeverything going – which is something most of us can relate to.

It also seems like she was somewhat let down by people whoshould have been taking care of her – publishers and accountants mostly,publishers who didn’t bother to read her work but just took the books and mademoney from them, and an accountant who royally messed up her finances.

I think too I now understand why so many critics have beenhostile to Georgette. The first clue was her lack of a university education –Dorothy L. Sayers made much of hers and it didn’t do her any harm. Mostlythough I think it was her sound sense of the commercial that denied her therecognition she latterly craved. It doesn’t seem to matter that a book is wellwritten, funny, intelligent, or that thousands want to read it – it’s seeminglya lapse of taste to provide the public with what they want. Heyer’s reality wasthat she had to sell books; that she had a gift for writing best sellers isn’tsomething she should be despised for.

I think that had she concentrated on morecontemporary fiction, and been less prolific, Heyer would have been seen as amuch more serious proposition – but where would have been the fun in that? Herbooks are the perfect vehicles for escape, her craftsmanship superlative, and Idon’t think anyone has ever done what she did better.

Chocolates!

2011-11-05T23:17:00.000Z

It’s bonfire night and seven years to the day since I gotthe keys for my flat – to celebrate I’m listening to (but sadly can’t see any) fireworksgo off somewhere in the distance and feeling sorry for myself because my backaches – oh how it aches, seven years ago I was more resilient and better off...Ah the rewards of home ownership. One thing I wouldn’t swap though is having myown kitchen in which to make as much mess as I like and with no considerationof anybody else’s needs. It is the best thing about living alone, whichtruthfully I don’t much care for, but god knows I would hate to share a kitchenagain.

My last really quite messy experiment was of a suitably celebratorynature for an anniversary – I have finally braved the mysteries of temperingand made my own chocolates (not chocolate, that was made by Green and Black’sand very nice it was too). This is something I’ve wanted to have a go at foryears but it’s always looked quite difficult (or at least fiddly) and thegubbins to do a good job (chocolate thermometer, moulds, maybe a marble slab, asuitable brush, a scraper thing if you’re going to use a slab, dipping forks,and of course ingredients) well by the time you’ve collected them the smartestoffering from Charbonnel et Walker or Rococo begin to look like real bargains.Or so I thought.

‘Miss Hope’sChocolate Box’ suggested some handy shortcuts and after a long timeprocrastinating over the price of moulds and a thermometer online I foundsatisfactory but cheaper equipment in a kitchen shop. (I was delighted, and sowere they – both items had been flying off the shelves). The end result is thatI made the salted caramel sea shells I’ve been dreaming about since I firstread the book. It was a bit fiddly, you have to work quickly and it’ll take abit of practice to get the chocolate shells a uniform and satisfactorythickness but it turned out not to be too hard or to take as long as I thoughtso I plan to make lots more...

Five Books

2011-11-03T09:30:00.000Z

This is Simon Stuck in a Books idea, I liked it last time hedid it, I like it even more now because after all what appeals more to anyreader than getting to nose around other’s books? So without further ado here’s my list startingwith:

The Book I’m CurrentlyReading

Jennifer Kloester’s Georgette Heyer Biography of a bestseller. This was also the last book I was given (by Elaine Random-Jottings –thank you very much Elaine) it’s great, a really interesting read for Heyerfans as well as shining a light on the economic reality for women looking toearn a living from writing in the mid twentieth century. These are the authorsI feel most at home with – seeing the figures is illuminating.

The Last Book I finished

Georgette Heyer’s The Devil’s Cub. Inspired by Kloester’s book appearing and now my reading itI’ve been revisiting a couple of Heyer’s to see how they read to my morecritical adult self – I find she’s still wonderful. There’s a real temptationto re read the lot which I’m only going to try and fight because I have such ahuge pile of unread books to tackle.

The Next Book I Want To Read

There are actually two books at the top of the pile and Ineed to choose one before I go to work in an hour. Helen Zenna Smith’s Not SoQuiet has been hanging around for a while and seems appropriate given the FirstWorld War subject matter. With armistice day coming up, and for the first timehaving a friend on active service – well it seems important to put some timeaside to think about what Remembrance day is for. On the other hand and at therisk of seeming very shallow – just look at that new edition of Mitford's The Sun King, how can I wait toread that? Also it feels like a natural follow on to the Heyer’s...

The Last Book I Bought

Hawksmoor At Home was an amazon purchase, it turned up on Monday(at 7.30am and thank you post man for laughing at my dressing gown/ pyjamacombo) inevitably there has been a purchase since I technically bought this onebut I’m counting the Hawksmoor book. It’s beautiful and should really havestayed on my Christmas list but I lacked the self control. This isn’t the sort ofcook book I normally buy but it illustrates a particular and very Britishmovement in cooking which I’m currently a little bit fascinated by. There’s arecipe for marmalade brownies which sounds amazing and a whole lot of stuffabout cocktails and drinking which is (ahem) useful research for work.

The Last Book I Was Given

Was as I have mentioned the Kloester biography, but not longbefore that Cardigan Girl Verity sent me Tea With Bea. If you buy a lot ofcookbooks –which we both do- you will inevitably find some that either feellike a duplication of recipes you already have or which on closer inspection justdon’t really reflect your own style of cooking. I think this is particularlytrue of baking books. Verity wasn’t sure about this one but it appeals verymuch to me. I haven’t used it yet because some of the cakes are on a fairlyepic scale but I have friends coming to stay next weekend so the time is ripe.

Lavender Ladies

2011-11-01T23:03:00.001Z

Years ago I used tohave a bit of a thing for White Lady cocktails (without the egg white – I can’tbring myself to do it somehow) and a much harder head when it came to drinkingthem – those days are mostly behind me now, just recently though the gin has been calling.It may be because of all the Agatha Christie I’ve been watching where predinner drinks are de rigueur, or the books I’ve been reading where the samething applies. It always sounds so nice when it’s theoretical and hangoverfree.

What really tippedthe balance though was a wine friend telling me about a Lavender Lady – it’s arare thing to find a cocktail name that’s genuinely amusing but this one did itfor me. At the time we were vague about where the Lavender flavour came frombut Bompas and Parr made have a recipe for something that calls for Lavenderinfused gin – no messing around with essential oils just flower heads steepedin gin for a couple of days – what could be easier.

The result is an exceptionallypowerful and really quite delicious drink – the bits floating in this one arelavender flowers – a result of my underestimating the straining power of mycocktail shaker. Ingredients are 1 measure of lavender infused gin (take a jamjar of gin add a teaspoon of flowers leave to infuse for 24 hours) 1 measure oftriple sec (Cointreau being about the best – though I would love to try thiswith Chase Marmalade Vodka because a) I love marmalade and b) it would haveeven more of a smoky old lady vibe to it) and 1 measure of lemon juice. Putmasses of ice in a shaker, add the spirits etc, shake like mad, strain, pour,and drink.

The Haunted Looking Glass – Ghost Stories selected by Edward Gorey

2011-10-31T23:22:00.001Z

I’m not normally very organised when it comes to themed seasonalreading – it’s rare that an event coincides with a book I want to pick up andit’s hard to see why I should read something that doesn’t immediately appeal tofit the calendar (though truthfully I have a sneaking admiration for those wellorganised souls who have a proper reading plan and seem to stick to it – I’msure it must be far more productive and illuminating to be that disciplined.)However last week I had a train journey and for train journeys I like shortstories.

Looking for something suitable I found ‘The Haunted LookingGlass’ which I bought last year after I saw it mentioned (I wish I could rememberwhere – if anyone has blogged about how they read this every Halloween I oweyou a thank you). I wanted it because I’m a fan of Edward Gorey’s illustrationsparticularly and books generally. His personal selection of ghost stories wouldbe far too good to miss out on – or so I reasoned. I was right; it’s also a bitof a bonus that this is such a lovely nyrb edition (if you like that sort ofthing).

I find short story collections make the perfect travellingcompanions for shortish journeys with lots of stops and starts and only partlybecause I’m exactly the sort of person who could miss a stop because I’mabsorbed in a book. A really long journey will accommodate an equally epicnovel but being away from home for a night, especially if it means goingthrough somewhere like London – well so many impressions make it hard to knowwhat sort of book will strike the right mood. A good anthology (or I willbegrudgingly admit, a Kindle) should have something that hits the spot, theextra advantage of the short story is that it only ask for short bursts ofconcentration at a time.

‘The Haunted Looking Glass’ was a very well manneredcompanion, Gorey’s selection picks a fine line between gloriously camp and alittle bit scary (fortunately for a woman spending a night in a strange room, burieddeep in a nest of labyrinthine corridors, in an old country house, on an~~isolated golf course~~ blasted heath nothing was outright terrifying). The mostdisturbing tale from my point of view was R. H. Maldon’s ‘The Thirteenth Tree’;Maldon relies on some suspicious shadows to inflict the shivers on his readersto good effect. I could laugh off Bram Stoker’s rats, had no fear of R. L.Stevenson’s body snatchers, admired E. Nesbit’s ‘Man Sized in Marble’ – but nothingwas getting me out of bed until daylight after the Maldon.

These are all good old fashioned ghost stories, perfect fordark nights accompanied by warm drinks, so much so that I can see it becoming atradition to pick up this book every time the clocks go back (although to bestrictly accurate I read most of it in broad daylight – which is perhaps why I’mso blasé about the rats...)

Sylvester or the Wicked Uncle – Georgette Heyer

2011-10-29T22:59:00.000+01:00

It’s been a busy sort of week starting off with someenergetic box shifting and winding down with a course on presentation skillsand the welcome chance to catch up with not one but two other bloggers. Passingthrough London on Thursday I managed to catch up with Claire Paperback Readerwho made me go the Primrose Bakery and eat cake. (I went with a maltedmarshmallow affair which was so good I’ve bought some Ovaltine to experimentwith. Malt – if it’s good enough for whisky it’s good enough for cake.) Today Imet up with Elaine Random Jottings who very kindly passed on a copy of JenniferKloester’s new Georgette Heyer Biography.

We had a really satisfactory chat about our respective lovefor Heyer and bemusement at how reviled she seems to be in certain quarters.The rest of my day has been spent nose buried in Kloester’s book and slightlyregretting that I’ve separated myself from my Heyer collection for the weekend.After the first flurry of conversation around the new bio a couple of weeks agoI thought about having a re-read of at least one Heyer (but I have no selfcontrol over things like this; one will not be enough) ‘The Castle of Otranto’made me want ‘Sylvester’.

Without precisely having favourite Heyer’s ‘Sylvester’ isundoubtedly one of the books I’ve read most often over the years – I have noidea how many times now – and which has stood the test of my aging and changingtastes. She is a fairly consistent writer – I don’t think there are any realduds amongst the fifty or so titles still in print; though this does make memore curious about the books she suppressed, consistent too in her reworking ofa handful of plot devices some of which will appeal more than others accordingto mood.

For me the appeal of Georgette Heyer is a combination ofknowing exactly what you’ll get (romance in a swish setting), humour, andimpeccable research. What makes her special is the way she handles hermaterial, my problem with most historical novels that have come way since Heyeris that the details feel like window dressing with an overall effect that lackscohesion. Heyer creates a world that feels complete and real after its fashion.After Heyer it had to be the classics for me – which is another debt to chalkup to her.

As for ‘Sylvester’ – I imagine anyone reading this is eitheralready a fan and knows it or never will be (which is fair enough, we can’t alllike the same things) but just in case the plot is something like this:Sylvester is the Duke of Salford, young, rich, and not bad to look at despitesome unusual eyebrows – clearly he’s in need of a wife. Phoebe Marlow is theshy daughter of his mother’s dearest friend (who died in childbirth) so he decidesto look her over. There is a wicked stepmother who’s bullied Phoebe intosubmission but failed to beat the imagination out of her so after one not veryglittering London season Phoebe has returned home and penned a gothic romance –using Sylvester as the model for her villain because she found him insufferablyarrogant.

Marriage to the villain in your novel probably never feelslike a good idea so Phoebe runs away with her friend Thomas in the teeth of asnow storm, all hell breaks loose behind her. Somehow Phoebe and Sylvester findthemselves trapped by the snow in an isolated country inn where he gets overhis anger at being humiliated and she realises he’s quite nice really. Afterthat things get complicated – her novel comes out but life has imitated art inthe most embarrassing ways and the path of true love is threatened by misunderstandings.All comes right after a mad chase across France for a missing nephew and we canimagine they live happily ever after.

It could be awful but Heyer’s trademark charm and lightnessof touch make it fun. She’s a careful observer of human nature – certainly enoughso to keep her characters clear of parody as they play out there roles and she’sfunny. The book is full of crisply delivered one liners that even after theumpteenth time of reading can make me laugh out loud. The weather has beengrotty and work has been exhausting but what does that matter when you have theperfect book to escape into (and good friends with whom to share yourenthusiasms).

Red Pottage – Mary Cholmondeley

2011-10-24T23:37:00.000+01:00

After ‘No Surrender’ I wanted more vaguely Victorian feminism,‘Red Pottage’ was close to hand (on top of a pile of books waiting to find ahome) and as stuck-in-a-book had said such nice things about it as well Ipicked it up. From the moment I discovered Wilkie Collins I’ve been consciouslyattracted to Victorian novels, especially the ones that have stayed the courseand stayed in print – classics aren’t classics for nothing. It’s the one thingI really miss about old Virago, they don’t really print nineteenth centurytitles anymore, and though heaven knows there’s really no need to see anotherversion of a Bronte book a few more Mary Cholmondeley’s wouldn’t go amiss.

I have tried to find out a little more about Mary but didn’tget very far; her Wikipedia entry is brief and a little sad, some of her otherbooks are still available either for e-readers, or at prohibitive expense in paperversions, the sort that have no blurb and demand a leap of faith I just can’tafford to make. ‘Red Pottage’ is the book that made Cholmondeley into somethingof a celebrity (back in 1899), is described as a satire (none of her othernovels seem to be) and is for all I know the only one worth reading.

But it really is worth reading – if you ever wondered howpeople managed before television this is the answer, big absorbing books withmoral dilemmas, an extensive cast of characters, and plenty of sensation. ‘RedPottage’ would make a splendid miniseries, is in fact so full of lushdescriptive scenes that I half felt I was watching it rather than reading.

The action opens with Hugh Scarlett, young man about town,deciding to break things off with his married mistress and coincidentallyfalling in love at first sight with Rachel West. Unfortunately he’s too late withthe mistress, her husband has already guessed what’s going on and hasdetermined on his revenge. The two men are to draw spills, the one who picksthe shorter has 5 months in which to do away with himself (it would have been 4but for the partridge season). Hugh picks the short straw and is sentenced accordinglybut will he have the strength of mind to see it through? His rival LordNewhaven doubts it and so sets another trap for Hugh...

Meanwhile there’s Rachel, orphaned and destitute she’s beenearning a hard living as a secretary but has recently come into a fabulousfortune and has returned to society. Along with money Rachel has the gifts ofcompassion and being an excellent listener; not inconsiderable attractions. Shealso has a best friend – Hester Gresley. Hester has imagination, excellentbreeding, and a gift for writing – she too, despite being physically ordinary,is a woman men are attracted to, but seems to have decided on a life of work.Hester has had a sheltered upbringing in the care of an aunt who wasparticularly careful of whom she should mix with. Her aunt’s death has left herwith very little money, and rather worse, the expectation that she will make ahome with her brother and his family.

The Reverend James Gresley is a problem, it’s not so muchthat he’s a bad man, but he’s desperately narrow minded and absolutely incapableof seeing any view point but his own. In this he’s helped by an adoring wifeand a social circle somewhat below that to which his sister is used. Hester isa constant irritant to her family; they in turn are breaking her health througha lack of sympathy.

There’s a lot going on in this book, some of it funny, someof it desperately poignant – the few spoilers I’ve given here come nowhere nearto giving away the whole. Reading it for the first of what I hope will be a fewtimes I was mostly struck with the Gresley family who really spring to lifefrom the page. Cholmondeley stops just short of making James a villain or aPooter like grotesque. He’s infuriating but human which turns out to be apowerful combination.

The relationship between Hugh and Rachel is the other great strengthof the book. Rachel knows, or thinks she knows all about Hugh’s past misdemeanours.She forgives him his transgressions with Lady Newhaven, but finds it much harderto forgive his conduct over the straws which she also knows about. Eventsunfold in such a way that Hugh feels he’s off the hook but he allows Rachel tobelieve he was never on it. When she discovers the absolute truth she’s devastatedand this too feels real and gives the book a power that raises it above satire.

'Red Pottage' is everything I admire and enjoy in Victorianwriting, more than that finding books like this are what makes reading such apersonal pleasure to me – if you think it might appeal to you at all find acopy.

The Castle Of Otranto – Horace Walpole

2011-10-23T13:01:00.001+01:00

Gothic revival architecture is something I’ve always foundappealing, it’s all that exuberant decoration bordering on excess and thentaking it a step further, it makes it look like someone was having fun (thoughclearly no one was thinking about what a nightmare it would be to dust) andthat can’t be a bad thing (unless you have to dust it). Horace Walpole was anearly champion of the Gothic revival, his Strawberry Hill a stage set for hisimagination to play on.

Having discovered the architecture the literature soonfollowed but I’ve been better at collecting gothic novels than reading them. Ibought ‘The Castle of Otranto’ 18 months ago on the back of the excellentStrawberry Hill exhibition at the V&A and still hadn’t read it when I sawit come up on the classics circuit. It’s a short book and this seemed like agood opportunity to buckle down – after all if you’re going to read gothic atall you really should get the book that started it all ticked off the list.

Having read Otranto my overall feeling is just that – one ofbox ticking, I’ve done it and I don’t need to do it again. Horace Walpole isnot a brilliant novelist - though he does have some dazzling ideas. It’s hardto gauge how I’d have felt about ‘The Castle of Otranto’ if I hadn’t alreadyread ‘Northanger Abbey’, or ‘Frankenstein’ or a good chunk of ETA Hoffman andplenty of others besides. I can just about imagine that it must have caused somethingof a stir when first published; with its collection of walking portraits,creaking doors, visions, death via giant mystical helmets, mysterious knightsand damsels in distress there’s plenty to enjoy. It’s a testament to Walpolethat plenty of people did enjoy Otranto and more than that took up his ideasand made some great books out of them.

Reading some of theother responses to ‘The Castle of Otranto’ from the classics circuit I findmyself wanting to defend it – there are plenty of redeeming features; Manfredis a decently complex villain with a lot on his shoulders, Theodore the patternbook hero with a positively suicidal desire to show his heart and soul are purejust manages to stay on the right side of parody, and Bianca the maid - wellshe belongs to eighteenth century London rather than 11^th centuryItaly and is a great comic touch.

I’m pleased to have finally read this book, just for thecuriosity value alone it was time well spent. I think it will add to myappreciation of Scott when I come to read him again, and hope that it will helpme with Thomas Love Peacock and Ann Radcliffe when they come off the shelf.Mostly though it’s inspired me to want to reach for Georgette Heyer’s ‘Sylvester’where she does her own parody of the Gothic novel, it’s a while since I’ve readit and I’m wondering how it will hold up.

No surrender – Constance Maud - Persephone Books

2011-10-19T22:50:00.001+01:00

A week or two back Simon Stuck in a Book asked what was moreimportant plot, character, or writing style? This book was very much on my mindat the time because, and Persephone are quite upfront about this, the style isn’tup to much, the plot isn’t up to much, and honestly the characterisation isn’tup to much but it’s still a brilliant read. When I started it, it was in thehope that it would be interesting as an historical document – a rarecontemporary fictionalised insight into the suffragette movement, and not toohard to read. Expectations were far exceeded by the irresistible page turning qualityof what I’m guessing must have been a labour of love for Constance Maud.

She was clearly very passionate about the cause and althoughMaud never went to prison herself she knew several people who did – with thisbook the devil is in the detail, it’s the descriptions of meetings, of court,and of prison which really ring true and which in turn are thoroughly gripping.The other thing that’s important, and which I didn’t really expect, is that theheroine of the piece is a mill girl – Jenny Clegg. I did at least know howimportant working women were in the suffragette movement – and it amazes me howthese girls found the time, money, and energy to work as they did andcontribute to a cause outside that of keeping body, soul, and home together –it’s a true testament to how vital the issues they faced were.

Jenny lives at home with her parents and a collection ofbrothers and sisters, her mother is a downtrodden drudge, her father a drunkardwith a taste for gambling, but this is as nothing to her sister Liz’s husbandSam. Sam is not only violent (in the first chapter he turns up at the familyhome with a dog whip intent on fetching back his wife) he’s sold two of hischildren to an aunt and uncle in Australia without their mothers knowledge. Thepoint that Maud makes is that not only are these men entitled to their wivesearnings they are also legally allowed to beat them and mothers have no rightsover the children they bear – they aren’t joint guardians, children are the propertyof the father. All this and more is pushing Jenny into the women’s movement anda clamour for the vote because she believes it’s the only way anything willchange.

What the women want are better provisions for health andsafety within the factories they work in, better provision for education, theright to work in jobs that pay a living wage, for fathers to maintain theirchildren, for parity in divorce laws – in short to be properly represented forthe contribution they make to society and to be protected by the law. The booksother heroine is Mary O’Neil a member of the landed and mill owning classeswith political connections. After a visit to Jenny’s mill she takes up aninterest in the cause which sets her at odds with her family. The women in Mary’sclass are far better protected and far more likely to be Anti’s – although asMaud points out a few times as strongly as these women objet to the idea of thevote and the erosion of their position as the angel in the house they aren’tprepared to go to prison or otherwise court opprobrium in the way theirsuffragette sisters are.

Belief in their cause and actions to further its aims leadboth Jenny and Mary into prison and into hunger strikes in a system where classand connections make a difference. This book was written in 1911 when themilitant movement was still relatively tame; the criminal acts the women areconvicted of mainly consist of window smashing, the treatment they meet with disproportionatelyharsh. As Maud makes clear women weren’t treated as political prisoners but ascommon criminals, the hunger strikes are a protest against this and theestablishments answer of force feeding leads to one of the novels most powerfulscenes.

‘No Surrender’ should be a curiosity documenting a strugglelong won but sadly 100 years later we still don’t have the kind of equalitythat Constance Maud dreamt of and worked for. This is a significant book bothas a reminder of how far we’ve come and how far we have to go – and why fairnessis worth fighting for. Of all the Persephone books I’ve read and loved (I havejust over 40, have read about 30, was only underwhelmed once) the only one thatmatches ‘No Surrender’ in terms of making a point is Dorothy B. Hughes ‘TheExpendable Man’. ‘The Expendable Man’ is technically the better book but ‘NoSurrender’ is written with a passion and conviction behind it that makes it farmore than the sum of its parts. It may be riddled with faults but it’s utterlycompelling, not to mention enjoyable, to read. I cannot recommend it highlyenough.

Vintage Flowers – Vic Brotherson

2011-10-17T23:55:00.000+01:00

Who doesn’t love a good florists (apart possibly from peoplewith hay fever)? In Leicester we run mostly to supermarket flowers which leaveme plenty of room to be beguiled by the florists stalls I see in London, Iparticularly like the one in Liberty’s and have spent more than one trainjourney home fantasising about a) being given those sort of flowers and b) whatmy life would have been like if I’d walked into a florists rather than an offlicence one fateful day. In my imagination (and I quite accept that the realitywould be very different) it would be all very artistic and marvellous, involveno drunks, and be terrifically well paid.

Generally I content myself with books on the subject – I havea small collection which occasion raised eyebrows and derisive comments from mymore militant friends but which my mother approves of and I’ve just got anotherone; Vic Brotherson’s ‘Vintage Flowers’ (unexpected vouchers = guilt freepurchase of possibly unnecessary items, how I love vouchers). Flower books aren’tlike cook books (I planted some Chinese lanterns 3 years ago because I couldn’tfind them for sale cut and I’m still waiting for them to get big enough to use)I don’t really get the opportunity to buy, grow, or arrange flowers like this (thepark just opposite my flat has some tempting things in it but I believe it’s acriminal offence albeit not a very serious one to pinch hydrangeas from apublic space) but the pictures are great.

It’s another world inside this book, one filled with vibrantcolour and effortlessly chic and cheap flea market finds which turn intoperfect vases. My life could absolutely be like that, oh yes it could, if onlyI had the space for keeping all those pots in (yes that’s what’s missing – cupboardspace). What really sold me on the book were the first lines of theintroduction “I have been a florist since I was 21. It is all I can do and Iwouldn’t change it for the world. It started out as an accidental career...” Whatwould have happened if she too had walked into a wine shop? After that momentof recognition it just got better.

The colours in here are incredible, perhaps some of them are too much for everydaybut perfect to cheer me up after a long grey day. I’m attracted to the mix oftraditional and occasionally ironic, dream of finding the perfect old jug induck egg blue, and feel freshly initiated into the mysteries of oasis andchicken wire. It's also just possible that this is the year I'll go all provincial lady and plant some indoor bulbs. Heaven.

So what do you think of Georgette Heyer?

2011-10-15T23:52:00.000+01:00

It’s probably true that you learn something new every day; onTuesday for example I learnt that Georgette Heyer wrote through the nightfuelled by Gin and Dexedrine (Radio 4, Woman’s hour). I’m currently fuelled bycocoa and gingerbread and have wanted to be in my bed since ten to eight.

I found Georgette Heyer’s books through an English teacherwhen I was thirteen; she lent me ‘These Old Shades’ and I never looked back.(At the time I was a little bit obsessed with ‘The Scarlett Pimpernel’ and it’sa mercy that someone did steer me towards other books.) It never occurred to meback then that Heyer might be considered second rate, I loved her books – most ofwhich I’ve read many times, they saw me through my teens and have been acomfort ever since. I’ve never accepted that Heyer should be a guilty pleasure;her writing is simply a pleasure but somehow she does seem to rile people.Carmen Callil apparently said “she just used ‘Jane Eyre’ and jiggled it around57 times”, this is unfair partly because Heyer is clearly re-jiggling Austen andpartly because poor girl meets rich (married) man wasn’t a new story whenCharlotte Bronte hit on it, it’s also typical of the mean spirited commentsHeyer attracts.

I don’t know what she was like as a woman, I’m curious toread Jennifer Kloester’s ‘Georgette Heyer – Biography of a Bestseller’published a week ago, the reason for the Woman’s hour segment, and the subjectof a very negative review in ‘The Guardian’. Listening to Kloester she’sclearly as protective of Heyer as I sometimes feel. I don’t often readbiographies (or non-fiction) and can’t afford to be buying new books at themoment (which in practice so often means instead of spending £20 on one book somehowspending much more on half a dozen) but this one is tempting.

The Guardian piece is odd – Rachel Cooke apparently likedHeyer’s books but rips into the woman behind them describing her as sour,snooty, cynical, snobbish, rapacious when it came to money, and mean spiritedtowards other writers. Heyer’s son the late Sir Richard Rougier. also comes infor a swipe, reminding us that he’s the judge who claimed not to know what abouncy castle was (which I’m okay with, middle aged men should probably avoidbouncy castles anyway. He’s also the judge who said that “fashion consciouswomen should be able to dress attractively and even provocatively withoutfalling prey to sex attackers” which seems more to the point and entirelylaudable.)

It seems that the teenage Heyer was wrong for disliking Freudians,bohemians, and studio parties. Wrong for conducting her own contractualnegotiations for ‘The Black Moth’, wrong for being the main breadwinner in thehousehold whilst her husband retrained as a barrister, wrong indeed for caringabout the money she made from her work, but these are all things I findadmirable. I hope that Koestler’s biography is a success and meets with rathermore favourable reviews along the way – there is self interest in this; thereare half a dozen out of print novels, Heyer suppressed them in her life time,most of them are contemporary rather than historical fiction and I would loveto read them – enough interest and maybe someone will dig them out and dustthem off for a re-issue?

Peyton and Byrne British Baking – Oliver Peyton

2011-10-12T22:23:00.001+01:00

I’ve been a fan of Peyton and Byrne ever since St Pancrasstation reopened with one of their tea shops in it. If I’m with my mother it’sthe first thing we do after getting off the train, if I’m on my own it’s mylast stop on the way home - but I live in the provinces and am a little bitstumped by the idea of celebrity bakeries and tea shops (Magnolia, Hummingbird,Primrose, Bea’s of Bloomsbury...) we just don’t have that kind of thing uphere, nice cafe’s certainly (Mrs Bridge’s Tea room is probably the best) butnothing anyone would buy a book about. Or have heard of. Because of this it’staken me a while to warm to the idea of the Peyton and Byrne book which cameout in March (I was convinced it had been around much longer and was sosurprised to see it had a March publication date I’ve had to mention it).

I started to weaken in the summer after having a very niceslice of chocolate orange cake in the Mainstreet Trading Company (Excellentbookshop, excellent cafe) as we left I saw Peyton and Byrne propped up in thewindow. Then my friend C recommended it as did Paperback reader and it lookedso reasonably priced on amazon so I gave in and ordered. Sadly (but I knew thisbefore buying) the Chocolate and Orange cake isn’t a P&B recipe (it wasgood, good, cake) and when the book first arrived I was a bit ambivalent aboutit, which wasn’t a problem because I half had it in mind for a Christmaspresent to a sister (which another copy may yet be).

My problem with the book is that because it’s entirely mysort of baking I felt I already had a lot of the recipes covered, everythinglooked nice, nothing looked new. However the proof is in the baking and itseemed unfair not to give it a go (just as well I’ve decided to keep it, sistermay not have been impressed with a butter spattered Christmas offering). I madethe Marmalade loaf cake, and what would have been Lemon Semolina cake if I’dhad almonds and lemons but I didn’t so used walnuts and marmalade which made itgo a funny colour but tastes great.

Apart from the bonus of mopping up a whole lot of odds andends in the cupboard (I have a mountain of marmalade to match the similarmountain of Seville oranges taking over the freezer – recipes that involve orcan be made to include marmalade are at a premium) both cakes turned out impressivelywell. Both are still moist and generally splendid after a couple of days, theycooked in the stated time, the marmalade loaf especially has a great richnessof flavour that keeps on developing, and the batter didn’t escape over the sideof the tin and cover my oven in cake cinders (which happens more often than Icare to share – these recipes really fit the tin size given)

Because of this (and the butter stains) the book’s a keeper,there’s always room for another version of a recipe if it’s a better version,and although it feels a touch sacrilegious there’s room too for a book thattells you how to make your own version of the mighty Tunnock’s Teacake (warning- these need to be eaten on the same day as making, but that’s probablydoable...)

Votes for Women

2011-10-10T23:39:00.000+01:00

It’s only a matter of weeks before the latest Persephonebooks hit the shelves, particularly exciting this time because of ConstanceMaud’s ‘No Surrender’. It may be that I’m missing something obvious but it seemsto me that the battle for women’s suffrage is rather glossed over in popularhistory. What I remember from school is the Pankhurst’s, from university a fewdetails about the contagious diseases act more Pankhurst’s and somewhere alongthe line a mention of Millicent Garrett Fawcett. I definitely came away withthe impression that it was a middle class movement, that Emmeline and ChristabelPankhurst got women the vote almost single handed, and that Emily Davisonshould have known better.

I can’t remember how I came by ‘Votes for Women, The ViragoBook of Suffragettes’ but it was an eye opener which made me hunt out morebooks which wasn’t as easy as I imagined it might be – everything had to comefrom amazon; I had neither internet or computer at the time so it was more ofan effort than it sounds. As history goes this is really quite exciting stufffilled with character, action, injustice, faith, betrayal, feuds, and scandal -also it makes a nice change from The War (actually come to think of it eitherWar) so why isn’t it more popular? The edited highlights that I was taught hardlydo justice to the history.

There is a story, probably apocryphal, about Emily Davies,Elizabeth Garrett, and Millicent Garret (Fawcett). Emily and Elizabeth were friendsand the tale goes that one night when Emily was staying with the Garrett’s thetwo older girls and a much younger Millie were sat by the fire talking aboutthe women’s cause. Eventually Emily sums the matter up like this; she wouldsecure higher education for women - she went on to co-found Girton College,Elizabeth would open up the medical profession – she became a doctor after along struggle - the second woman to have her name on the U.K. Medical Register,the first to have qualified to do so in Britain. After that they decided thatMillie would have to get votes for women which arguably she did far moretowards than the Pankhurst’s and all their stunts.

I haven’t been able to find a biography of Millicent GarrettFawcett and do not understand why her name isn’t better known. It bothers me tothat the role that working woman played in demanding a vote isn’t celebratedmore. I was taught plenty about how perfectly foul conditions were for workingwomen in mills and factories across the country – long hours, low pay, harshconditions. I don’t remember being taught that a strengthening trade unionmovement refused to admit female co-workers, or actively sought to keep womenout of better paid employment, or that the emergent Labour party turned its backon working women.

So there you have it, some of the reasons why I’m reallyquite excited by the prospect of having another piece of Suffragette literatureto add to a collection which fiction wise pretty much consists of H.G. Wells’ ‘AnnVeronica’, a mention in E.F. Benson’s ‘Mrs Ames’, and Cicely Hamilton’s ‘William- an Englishman’ (which is also a Persephone book). Any suggestion for morewould be gratefully received.

Cocktails – Bompas & Parr

2011-10-10T01:17:00.002+01:00

Though perhaps a better title might be 'Something for the Weekend'. There are lots of things Ilike doing on a Sunday afternoon but that doesn’t include trying to find atrain fare from Leicester to Carlisle for under £100 via a dodgy internetconnection, or for that matter from Leicester to Reading. 4 solid hours ofsearching later and I think I’ve cracked it but it all rather depends on whathappens at the train station tomorrow...

After all that efforts I would dearly love a drink (perhaps something which would go down well with Downton Abbey) sadly the one that I’mitching to try sounds both overly potent and a bit extravagant for an ordinary (albeitfrustrating) Sunday. A nice cup of tea will do stand in duty but lacks something in the louche decadence department.

A basic understandingof cocktails and their ordinary ingredients is a part of my job (drinking themisn’t in the description) and I’ve experimented with a few books over theyears. The first thing I learned is that making cocktails isn’t as easy as Iimagined – the method really matters. The second thing I learnt was that peopledrink some crap; cocktails go through some dire fashion cycles. Still its work,you have to do it and when I discovered margarita’s I thought I’d give thewhole thing another whirl. The results were a lot better mostly due tocarefully following instructions.

This so far (and I’ve done a bit of research) is the bestcocktail book I’ve found. It covers the basic recipes and technique both ofwhich are vital, have those at your fingertips and everything else should cometogether. The technical information is spot on, I know - I had to sit an examon this stuff, which would have been more fun to revise for if I’d had thisbook at the time.

Mixed in with the practical bits are anecdotes about Bompasand Parr projects (the architectural punch bowl) improbable concoctions (acocktail made with ambergris which as the authors point out is bitchinglyexpensive, another with ether which would certainly fulfil the requirements forlouche and degenerate – what sort of hangover would ether inflict?) thepostmodern (buckie milkshakes) and tricks of the trade (things involving creamwhipper’s which are probably only really for professional use, and found in thesort of bars you don’t really get this far from London– nice to know how it’sdone though).

There are also instructions for Sabrage – the art ofcracking open a bottle of champagne with a sabre. A kitchen knife is thesuggested tool here if you lack a sabre but I’ve found in the past that a sawworks well to – whatever comes first to hand. Sabrage is a party trick whichshouldn’t impress but generally does, you need to make sure no one is in frontof you, take a bottle of fizz and hold it by the bottom, line it up so that youhave the seam of glass running up the bottle away from you, then take areasonably weighty knife (sabre, or saw) and run it blunt side smoothly,swiftly, and with reasonable force down the bottle until you hit the lip of theneck. This is the weakest part of a bottle under tremendous force from the wineinside, if all goes according to plan the top snaps off cleanly (flying severalfeet) and you don’t spill too much.

And as for the recipe I really want to try; Black Gin punch.A concoction of gin, vermouth, madeira, honey, pineapple, cinnamon, cloves,sugar, orange, lemon, and more, all to be served hot in a teacup. It sounds muchmore exotic than mulled wine, and much stronger. I can’t practically make it asthe recipe stands but hope that I can produce a slightly watered down versionin more manageable quantities. Wish me luck.

Enthusiasms – Mark Girouard

2011-10-07T22:18:00.000+01:00

I have long been enthusiastic about Mark Girouard – his ‘Lifein the English Country House’ was probably the best read of my degree so it’s apleasure to get to know the man behind the books a little better. After reading‘Enthusiasms’ I googled Girouard, surprisingly because he’s well respected andconnected, I didn’t find much about him beyond his age (80).

This is an odd little book, easy to read, hard to writeabout (I’ve been trying for 3 days). The first half chronicle various projectsand thoughts – mostly about writers, the second half is a series of potted familybiographies. Girouard has some fascinating ancestors (his would be the best ‘Whodo you think you are?’ ever). Overall (and this is why I think his age wasimportant enough to mention, although I feel slightly bad mannered for doingso) it feels like a collection of things he wants to share before the momenthas gone but also a throwing down of the gauntlet. This isn’t just aboutsharing memories or holding forth on a pet theory it’s an invitation,explicitly made in many instances, to pick up the baton.

I’m strongly reminded of two other books; ‘The Hare withAmber Eyes’ for the family stories – Girouard also has his collection ofobjects (they are variously books, portraits, medals, letters and diaries.There have been more but over the years they have been lost – a collection ofcrystals which he thinks the cleaning lady had, or been given away - pen usedto sign an important treaty went to a fellow historian) and a Jewish ancestry.The difference is that he doesn’t fetishise his things in the same way – or atleast not openly and that he chooses to concentrate on the very remarkable achievementsof the Solomon clan who turn out to be well worth celebrating especially SaulSolomon who was a dwarf but also a moving force in South Africa in the middleof the nineteenth century. He fought all legislation which sought to bringdistinctions against class, colour, or creed, was the parliamentary kingmaker andaltogether a serious proposition – it’s a very inspiring story.

The other book that came to mind was Susan Hill’s ‘Howards Endis on the Landing’. The similarity is in the format and the sharing ofenthusiasms and prejudices (as well as some pretty impressive name dropping)but I prefer Girouard. I feel he has more of a metaphorical twinkle in his eyeand never more so than when talking about Walter the VictorianCasanova/pornographer and Lionel Sackville-West (a reference to his delicious tartmade my mother think this was a cookbook, she soon realise her mistake.) I hadhalf forgotten the historian’s predilection for throwing in the odd risqué anecdote- I assume as a test to see if the student is listening – it’s an effectivemethod. I had never heard of Walter but am intrigued by him now, the importantthing about him being that nobody has ever cracked his identity. Girouard wasdistracted by an attempt to do so for a while but everything leads to dead endsand he finally gives up – which makes the process no less fascinating.

The academic process is better applied to an early JaneAusten fragment where there is a convincing argument to have it re-dated (I’mno expert on this but the theory is persuasive) and Oscar Wilde gets a drubbingwhen his down and out in Paris income is added up. There is also a dowagerDuchess of Devonshire in the mix (not the present one) and a really gooddebunking of a Tennyson myth. It’s an odd little book in its mix of topics butit’s thought full and thought provoking – definitely worth picking up.

This is what bookshops are for.

2011-10-03T23:12:00.000+01:00

I have in the past complained about my local Waterstone’s –the staff are pretty good (excellent even) but the overall selection has beenup and down. It doesn’t help that it used to be an admirable branch of Dillon’swith three floors of books and elegant sweeping staircases. The staircases andfloors remain but are now befouled with paperchase, a costa coffee, and until recentlya travel agent. The later has gone and the books are creeping back but even sothe selling space is only half what it once was and it’s been hard in the lastyear to find anything tempting in there.

It got so bad at one time that I thought the branch wasprobably slated for closure and blew all my loyalty points on a book I didn’tespecially want (‘The Morville Hours’ which is probably as good as everyonesays it is but has somehow so far resisted being read by me) because I wasafraid it was a case of use them or lose them. However things are looking up –something that I sincerely hope is a result of new ownership and here to stay.I really truly believe there is a place for big high street bookshops but Ialso believe that they need to play to their strengths and not get hung up withtrying to compete with internet suppliers and supermarkets.

Deep discounting has its place; heaven knows price is moreof a consideration than ever for most of us at the moment and who doesn’t likea market but there are other considerations too. I’ve bought a few booksrecently, some online and some in person, both transactions have reminded mewhy I love real life shops. Amazon were responsible for delivering my sisters birthdaypresent, happily I ordered in plenty of time because it arrived a week laterthan there estimated delivery time – which is just about as long as I wasprepared to wait before trying to get hold of them to complain.

Books I’ve ordered for myself are on the way but because oneof them is bulky (but cheap) they’re coming via courier. I hate this, I will beat work when they try and deliver. I, like everyone else, always am. It will bea good ten days to two weeks before I can be at home on a week day to get myparcel (which makes me lucky because at least I sometimes get week days off), Iwill be given the option to pay extra to get my goods on a Saturday (whichdefeats the point of buying cheap in the first place) or I can dig out mypassport and try and find a driving friend with a sat nav to take me towhatever labyrinthine industrial estate buried deep in the midlands they chooseto incarcerate my books in.

How much nicer was it to walk into a shop and find the veryVintage print on demand Stella Gibbons that have been sitting on my wish list unavailablefor the last two months there on the shelf. It hasn’t cost me more to buy likethis which is nice (at £9.99 each this was always going to be a mild extravagance)but having held the books I couldn’t let them go (presentation is particularlygood for p.o.d). But it got better, the girl behind the till was clearly aGibbons fan – she may have been responsible for these being on the shelf in thefirst place – she told me about ‘Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm’ coming soon(which I knew already but shows excellent sales technique as well as beinggenerally helpful).

I’ve debated for weeks about buying these books and probablywould have for months more, I’m pleased to have done my bit to persuade Vintageto bring out regular (cheaper and prettier please) editions of their fullGibbons range, and to have spent my money locally. It was altogether everythinga shopping experience should be - a timely reminder that service, knowledge,and instant gratification are worth paying a bit extra for especially if allthat comes with a well chosen, suitably eclectic choice of stock.

Jane Eyre – What’s it all about then?

2011-10-02T22:43:00.000+01:00

A couple of weekends ago I went to see the latest filmversion of ‘Jane Eyre’ with the blonde, I quite enjoyed it, she fell asleep.Twice. Which was a shame because she could have translated the French bits thatI couldn’t quite decipher because the captions on the screen (and this was aspecifically captioned for the hard of hearing showing – our presence there wascoincidental) where actually below the screen with only the tops of the lettersvisible. Nobody complained which is shame on us really because I’m sure wecould have found a cheaper venue in which to nap and be confused in.

I’ve read Jane Eyre a couple of times, first as an abridgedversion when I was really quite young, and the full version maybe ten yearsago. In-between there have been countless film versions and TV adaptations whichhave made another re read unattractive. I struggle a bit to be truly enthusiasticabout any of the Brontë’s ‘The Tenant of Wildfell Hall’ annoyed me when I readit (I was 17, it may be that I’d have more empathy for the heroine now), ‘WutheringHeights’ was a good read whilst reading but Heathcliff is hardly the idealromantic hero for a modern woman. ‘Jane Eyre’ was also a good read whilst Iread it but it’s easy to feel you know the plot to well what with all the aforementionedadaptations and critical gubbins about the book, and there ends my Brontëreading.

Part of my Brontë problem, and thisis especially the case with ’Jane Eyre’ are the critical evaluations I’ve readabout it. On the whole I try and avoid works of literary criticism as experiencehas taught that they reduce me to indignant dribbling incoherence – which wouldbe okay in itself, but I also feel the need to share my anger with all sorts ofpeople regardless of whether they share my passion for the topic or not. So itwas when I read Elaine Showalter’s assessment of Jane full of feminist and Freudianinterpretations. I’m not convinced that it’s fair to assess a pre Freud writer bypost Freudian standards. All well and good to make what you will of Charlottethrough her writing but another thing altogether to assume that she meant herwords to be interpreted in such a way.

Post film and during a half heartedtidy I picked up John Sutherland’s ‘Can Jane Eyre Be Happy’ and read the titleessay again. I was indignant first time (of course she could be happy) andstill indignant now but this time because I can’t see Rochester as a Bluebeardcharacter, if there has to be a comparison with a fairy tale I see Jane Eyre asthe story of Beauty and the Beast. It seems to me that if Rochester had wantedto dispose of Bertha there would have been a couple of easy ways out –incarceration in a foreign asylum under a false name (which is Lady Audley’sfate) or a discreet ‘accident’ which should be simple enough to arrange givenher predilection for roof tops and fire setting. Because of this I believe thathis motives are kind enough. The same with Adele – apart from having to have achild in the house to need a governess without whom the plot would be nowhere, italso suggests that on some level he wants the family life that his wife’s maladyprevents.

I also think too much is made ofBertha’s madness in a feminist kind of way. Nothing else would quite fit butmental illness still carries quite a stigma, nothing to what it would have donewhen Charlotte wrote her book – it’s the only thing I can think of that makesRochester’s proposed bigamy at all sympathetic. I can forgive the madwoman inthe attic (we all come with baggage) I find the dressing up as a gypsy womanand the whole Blanche Ingram episode rather harder to understand (the gypsy bitwas wisely dropped from the film in favour of some strenuous gardening whichcertainly made Rochester look more attractive.) I can’t help but feel that it’sthis rather than Bertha that Rochester has to be punished for.

Happily the introduction to my ‘JaneEyre’ - written by Michael Mason seems remarkably sensible, if a little opaqueat times, it’s a definite relief to read something I can agree with even if itdoesn’t make me think as deeply as the ones I believe are wrong do.

The C Word

2011-10-01T23:04:00.001+01:00

On the warmest October day on record (or somewhere near it)when I’m in a sticky heap by the window hoping for a cool breeze and cursingfreshers week – excited 18 year olds newly emancipated from any sort ofparental supervision are right bloody noisy - I’m mostly thinking aboutChristmas. I know it’s early, and hot out (which coincidentally has madedefrosting the freezer a far speedier than expected job, Saturday night’s rockround my way) but I’ve already had a lecture at work from an old lady who wasn’thappy that she couldn’t buy her mince pies yet.

I know it’s the done thing to protest that Christmas crap getsin the shops earlier every year but I’m not convinced and I like these next fewweeks when it’s still kind of subtle and there’s no pressure to write cards orspend. I love thinking about what I’ll get people or make for them whilst itstill feels like there’s all the time in the world to do it. I love seeing whatshape Christmas is going to take in the shops – it looks like it’s going to beretro again. I really love having something to look forward to – that’s partlyChristmas and partly the week off at the beginning of January that’s alreadyturning into the light at the end of the tunnel.

This is because already work is all about Christmas; a stockpile of Frangelico is on its way – last year’s lessons have been learned andthis time the customers will get there monk shaped hazelnut liquor. They will notappreciate the forethought and effort that goes into this – things I hate aboutChristmas include people who leave everything to the last minute and yetimagine that anything they want to purchase will be available to them insteadof having been bought already by other much more organised people. To be fairthis happens all the year round, there’s just more of it at Christmas.

Another thing I don’t altogether enjoy is how physicallydemanding the whole thing is. 23^rd December last year (traditionallythe busiest day) we sold a generous 5 tonnes of booze, at the end of the daythe shelves were as full as at the beginning – the difference being severalbruises, cuts, and aches everywhere as well as dirt that feels it will neverscrub off your skin, the impression (by which I mean reality) that you havesaid the same thing a thousand times over, dreams about bottles, and the desirenot to deal with anyone again for a very long time.

But just for know and despite the sunshine I can daydreamabout the gingerbread tree I WILL make, the relaxed time spent with familywhere my sister and I WON’T fall out over what to watch on television and ageneral sense of good times and new beginnings ahead.

The Wine Dark Sea – Robert Aickman

2011-09-29T21:57:00.001+01:00

It feels like a while since I’ve written about fiction (I’mnot counting ‘The Prisoner of Happy Hansel’). Truthfully I’ve not been able tosettle down to reading much recently; I have a book group book that I need tofinish and it seems to be taking forever and due to the one book at a time rule(this thing’s on a deadline after all) I feel bad if I pick up anything else.Short stories however can’t possibly count so I’ve been reading lots of those,and newspapers, and cookbooks – why is it taking me so long to finish one shortnovel I wonder?

Robert Aickman’s ‘The Wine Dark Sea’ arrived a few weeks agocourtesy of Faber Finds. A while back I found a Faber Find in Oxfam, carried ithome gleeful, and then threw an almighty sulk because it was riddled withtypesetting problems. After a comment to that effect on another blog RichardKelly (Faber Finds editor) sent me an email where he very graciously promisedme a copy of this particular book, I couldn’t say no.

As my previous experience of Aickman was limited to the bitsof ‘The Unsettled Dust’ I managed to wade through ‘The Wine Dark Sea’ has beena bit of a revelation. I still don’t know much about Aickman but I understandwhy Faber Finds want to reprint him now, and why Kelly himself is a fan. I’mquite impressed that he went to the trouble of getting in touch (Kellyobviously, not Aickman who died 30 years ago – that would be far too much likeone of his own stories). It’s the sort of thing I have to do (grudginglysometimes) for difficult customers – it’s nice to be on the other side of theequation, and of course it works, I’ve gone from someone who didn’t have a goodword for this particular imprint to someone who sings praises and leaps to thedefence of Faber when occasion demands.

My first impression was that this was a collection of ghoststories – I started with one called ‘Your Tiny Hand is Frozen’ where a mandevelops an unhealthy relationship with the telephone and a voice on the otherend of it. It’s deeply unsettling both as a tale of the supernatural andbecause I can no longer imagine how I functioned without my mobile phone. Ilove the way that Aickman plays with the idea of something simultaneously connectingthe user to the outside world and cutting them off from it. The next story thatattracted me was ‘Never Visit Venice’ which is also deeply unsettling but fordifferent reasons, not so ghostly but rather straight up horror. By the time I’dfinished the title story it became clear that Aickman just deals in the odd.This is the kind of odd that sticks in the mind worrying away at yourimagination until you’re not at all sure what’s what.

The end result isthis; I’ve had some very strange dreams, spend less time with my telephonealways within arms reach and will probably be reaching for this around Halloweennext year when I want something a little bit spooky but also reasonably subtlewith it. I’m also confident about spending my hard earned cash on Faber Findsthat appeal to me in the future which is daunting because their list is longand full of temptation.

Lebkuchen

2011-09-26T22:24:00.000+01:00

Monday afternoon off and I’ve spent a fair chunk of itfinishing off yesterdays baking. More Lebkuchen which have managed to find anappreciative audience (and I’ve still got quite a lot of dough left, thepromise that it would make 40 seems to have been a bit conservative but I’m notcomplaining). I got a new electric whisk on the way home and fresh yeast aswell so I could have another go at the current buns. They rose this time –erupted might be a better description, I turned my back for a few minutes andthe whole lot came damn near to escaping.

The buns are now out of the oven and have had a vote ofconfidence from both myself and the Scottish one – still annoyed aboutyesterdays rubbish results, and having walked into John Lewis as they unpackedthe Kitchen Aid of my dreams (a rather fetching dark blue) I’m somewhatunderwhelmed with the new whisk (not a fetching blue colour) but at least Ifeel like I’ve regained control of my kitchen which is something.

I liked the Lebkuchen so much that I’m giving a slightlyamended version of the recipe (tailored to what I had in the cupboard) in ‘TanteHertha’s Viennese Kitchen’:

250g runny honey

125g golden caster sugar

1tsp ground cloves

3tbsp ground cinnamon

80g unsalted butter

90g of dried apricots

150g of mixed nuts – I used mostly hazelnuts with somealmonds as the original recipe suggested but imagine walnuts would be nice too.

2 large eggs + another egg to glaze the biscuits

500g plain flour

1tsp bicarbonate of soda dissolved in a tbsp of water.

Mix the honey and sugar in a pan and bring to a gentle boilstirring until the sugar is melted, add the spices and set aside to cool alittle.

Melt the butter.

Whizz the fruit and nuts in a blender until they’re at breadcrumb consistency and add the flour.

Beat the two eggs until frothy and then mix all the wet ingredientswith the dry. It’s a stiff mixture, I started with a wooden spoon and ended upkneading it altogether with my hands which worked much better. Flatten into a manageableslab, wrap in clingfilm and chill in the fridge for a good few hours.

When the dough is good and cold and hard heat the oven to160°C/ gas 3, roll it out to about half a centimetre thick, and glaze thebiscuits with beaten egg before they go in the oven. They will be done in about20 – 25 minutes, are wonderful, and will apparently keep for about a month inan air tight container (some chance).

Cracking Nuts

2011-09-25T22:57:00.000+01:00

I love my mother; she is a wonderful generous woman with anamazing array of talents and achievements including a way with a telling astory that’s irresistible. I love that her generosity extends to garden the produceher flat bound daughter couldn’t get anywhere else, and am only mildlysuspicious that it’s always things which take an eternity to deal with, (kilosof plums, cherries, and hazelnuts) and make a sticky or crunchy mess. Today I’vecracked the shells of about 2 kilos of hazelnuts, thankfully my friend C cameround for coffee and did the last of them – between us we put in some 4 hourswork. There are worse things than hitting nuts with a hammer – I’m now a crackaim, they are now all beautifully preserved in honey and I daresay that in aweek or two I’ll have located (probably by standing on them) all the shards ofshell that dispersed in the traditional manner of shrapnel around the kitchen.

It has been a proper kitchen day although one with mixedsuccess. The nuts and honey look good but as that was a task of attritionrather than skill any pride in it is restricted to the stamina C and Idisplayed in getting through the job. More impressive –I feel – has been myfirst attempt at Lebkuchen. I’ve never made biscuits quite like these before,not that they’re especially challenging – but they felt quite exotic, I thinkit was the boiling honey and the profligate use of clove and cinnamon, maybe itwas the dissolving bicarbonate of soda or the vaguely unexpected inclusionfruit and two types of nut, or wondering why it’s called gingerbread when there’sno ginger – but no, on reflection it was definitely the smell.

The honey, clove, and sugar element was as black and stickyas tar, it also got everywhere and on everything (I’m still sticky despite someserious scrubbing) but I deeply enjoyed making these, I wish I’d realised thatthe dough is meant to rest for 24 hours before luring C with promises ofbiscuits – I made some anyway after a mere 4 hours (nut crushing time) and theyseem fine, but will see tomorrow if even more chilling makes a difference. Iexpect it won’t but you never know.

The recipe called for dried orange and lemon peel which Ididn’t have and couldn’t find in town so I used apricots that desperately neededseeing to instead which I think sounds nicer anyway and you can’t argue thatthe Austrians don’t like apricot (I realise as I type this that I’m basing thisentirely on an ancient episode of Two fat Ladies which has inexplicably stuckin my head – I’m sure they were right though...) There were still apricots leftand because C doesn’t like sultanas, and because the Lebkuchen looked like itmight be a non starter I thought I’d make fruit buns with them. Disasterfollowed wherein insult was added to injury.

casualties

My poor electric hand whisk gave up the ghost - which it’sbeen threatening to do for a while and brings the number of hand whisk casualtiesup to 4 (I have form with these and hoovers). It means a serious, andexpensive, dilemma. I can’t do without some sort of mixer and as another whiskgives up the ghost I have to admit that perhaps I really do need (as opposed tojust want) a kitchen aid (such a middle class sort of a problem). I might conceivablyhave the money for one by March. I can hear the siren call of the credit card -almost every fibre of my being is telling me to be extravagant but there is avery quiet voice urging common sense and debt avoidance and I can’t help butblame the dastardly buns for all of this nonsense.

Twas the bun mix that didthe damage causing one of the hooks to cease turning for good and all, which Icould have been philosophical about had the little devils risen. They would not;the mix sat leaden in the bowl, and sat leaden on the tray. You get to a pointof no return with bread where you feel you have to see it through just in caseof a miracle. There was no miracle and they went straight in the bin. I’mblaming this on a dodgy sachet of yeast, and they would have been so nice ifthey’d worked. Thank god for the Lebkuchen.

Tante Hertha’s Viennese Kitchen – Monica Meehan and Maria Von Baich

2011-09-23T00:01:00.000+01:00

Tante Hertha’s Viennese Kitchen was left just outside my dooryesterday morning. (Postman doing a pretty good milk tray man impression at themoment – love the postman who will climb the stairs to my flat, so much nicerthan the postman who left a little red note in the letterbox telling me I couldhave my post in 48 hours if I would go and fetch it myself from a skanky back alleybehind the railway station). Sadly I had to go to work almost immediately anddidn’t get home until just before 11pm desperate for a bath, bed and sleep. At3am I was still leafing through Tante Hertha.

A few years ago I was beguiled by the Tessa Kiros bookswhich sort of mixed family history and food. ‘Falling Cloudberries’ is anexcellent book which deserved all the plaudits it got, ‘Apples for Jam’ has agood chocolate cake recipe in it and then there was ‘Venezia: Food and Dreams’,the pages are gilt edged, the bookmark is black velvet, the illustrations arelavish and I’ve never used it once not least because I find it impossible toengage with however lovely it is to look at.‘Tante Hertha’s Viennese Kitchen’ is just as lovely but infinitelymore engaging, an object lesson in how to do this sort of book properly.

Hertha was the aunt and great aunt of the daughter mother teamresponsible for this book. She was a nurse during the First World War afterwhich she became a society photographer. The Second World War and communismrobbed Hertha’s family of estates in what was to become Slovenia (like all thebest Austrians Hertha was a baroness) and the photography business wentdownhill. Nothing daunted Hertha (who didn’t marry but shared an elegantapartment with her mother and a sister in law) went into catering working froma kitchen which was also a bathroom. She sounds like the most amazing woman.

Hertha kept a notebook of her recipes which were almost lostin a clear out but were happily rescued by Maria Von Baich and this book is theresult. I gather that everything has been tested and where necessary tweakedand updated, the book is a nice bit of biography, background on old Vienna,photo’s which create an ambience, lots of notes and tips, and a really goodselection of recipes. The emphasis is on sweet things; cakes, biscuits, andtortes but the savouries aren’t neglected and for someone who doesn’t reallyknow it looks and feels very authentic. The sweet bias makes sense because whatI do know about fin de siècle food is that the savoury bits don’t always dateso well but everyone loves cake.

Reading this I was also really reminded of ‘The Hare WithAmber Eyes’ – the parallels are obvious; an aristocratic family falling on hardtimes, the Viennese setting, and a concentration on the small details ofeveryday life, as well of course as a treasure rescued and passed down thefamily. Better though is that this treasure can be shared – these recipes areliving history and a celebration of a remarkable woman. At the weekend (after I’vecaught up with some sleep) I will be making Lebkuchen which I love to buy buthave inexplicably never made – and am not even sure if I have another recipefor. There are all manner of other biscuits I want to try, and the thing that’sreally caught my imagination; meringues to use as Christmas tree decorations,apparently these were traditional and are baked with cotton attached forhanging purposes. I haven’t bothered with a tree for the last two years butthink I might have to this year just so I can do this.

‘Tante Hertha’s Viennese Kitchen’ is published by a companycalled New Holland which is new to me but coincidentally amazon recommended ‘NotesFrom A Swedish Kitchen’ this evening which comes from the same stable. It looksintriguing and has gone on my wish list (who would have imagined that I've beenlooking for just such a book – damn you amazon with your temptations). If it’sanything like as good as Tante Hertha it will be impossible to resist.

The Prisoner of Happy Hansel – M. B. Paxton

2011-09-21T11:10:00.003+01:00

I found this book on the curiosities shelf of an Age Concernshop in Leicester and had to buy it. Happy Hansel (meaning happy gift just-so-you-know)was the name of my primary school. ‘The Prisoner of Happy Hansel – A tale of SmugglingDays’ sounds promising doesn’t it? A quick look confirmed a Shetlandconnection, and really who more appropriate could have picked up this book...

It was part of something called the ‘Excelsior Library’ orselect stories by authors of repute and looking at the officers and agents wasavailable throughout the empire and America. I can’t find when it was writtenand the book itself is unhelpful in that respect but the overall feeling islate Victorian. By authors of repute the Excelsior Library means evangelically Christianand I have to say this was a truly terrible book by any standard I can think tomeasure it against, even an idea of Christian self sacrifice.

14 year old Maidie is sent to live with her Aunt Rachel andUncle Occo on their Shetland estate whilst brother Jack heads of to Jamaica totry and sell some land to restore the family fortune and buy back the home theylost. After a few weeks of not being allowed to read Tennyson and beingexpected to be clean and tidy Maidie has a fight with her aunt and runs off tosulk in peace. She falls asleep in a handy fishing boat waking some hours laterto find herself at sea with a group of smugglers, tenants of her uncle who hassuspicions of their activities. When they find her she’s handed over to asaintly old grandmother and devout young fisher boy to be taken care of.

She stays with them for 10 months whilst her uncle and auntassume she’s been drowned - this despite still being on the family estate andnot really being a prisoner at all (this might be possible to imagine in thewilds of Canada or Australia, but I hope British children where less credulous).By and by Maidie learns to think of others, help around the croft, and to shareHaco and his grandmother’s love of Jesus. The old lady’s faith was born oflosing 7 sons and a husband to the sea in 6 months – the son she has left isthe unsatisfactory smuggler Daniel.

The climax of the action comes with a storm and a wreckedship. Maidie, Haco, and another young fisherman, Jarum, that Haco has managedto dissuade from his former smuggling ways set off to try and rescue some ofthe crew before the ship is totally broken up on the rocks. They manage to savea sailor and a gentleman (who turns out to be brother Jack returning toShetland despite presumably being told that his sister had died and having no particularbusiness there) and are just about to attempt to get back to shore when theyrealise that a child is still on board.

On a clear suicidemission Haco jumps onto the foundered vessel to rescue the boy when the wholelot goes down and they’re both drowned. Returning to shore Maidie collapsesinto a faint for two weeks, the grandmother has died in the night (which savesher the grief of losing another family member) and everyone else becomes good Christianson the back of Haco’s example.

It was all very silly and as Christian messages go I’mclearly too much of an unreformed sinner to understand it. Paxton uses theplace names of my childhood but not the geography – although I think he musthave known Shetland a bit because a lot of the dialogue is in dialect which ismuch more convincing than the plot. Meanwhile I find myself very grateful for EnidBlyton and the generally much higher quality of children’s literature that Ihad when I grew up.

The Complete Fairy Tales – George MacDonald

2011-09-18T22:23:00.000+01:00

This weekend has been a prime example of why I shouldn’tlive on my own. I would say it’s been a master class in procrastination exceptthat procrastination would imply rather more useful activity. How can it bethis time on Sunday evening already and why does making a cup of tea feel likean impossibly demanding task? I am never this unproductive when I’m in company,and the worst of it is that I could have spent the weekend reading if I’d onlybeen honest enough to admit I wasn’t going to do anything very useful with mytime.

At least I did manage to finish ‘The Complete Fairy Tales’of George MacDonald. It’s been a long journey – truthfully I feel like I’veread several books in one which is natural enough; the tales come from severalbooks, some of them are almost novella length, and they span MacDonald’s careerwith a definite change in mood. MacDonald himself almost came my way as achild. I had an illustrated copy of ‘The Princess and the Goblin’ but I got ittoo late to have it read to me and possibly it was a bit challenging to read tomyself, either way I never did read it and am now not too sure what happened toit which is a shame because I’d read it now with pleasure.

This copy of Fairy Tales is a lovely floppy American paperbackthat I ordered from amazon a couple of years ago, half read one story from anddidn’t pick up again until Helen from A Gallimaufry reminded me of it. I thinkI bought it because I was going through an enthusiasm for Scottishness but itseems fitting that I read it in the grip of an enthusiasm for the fantastic.MacDonald turns out to be a sort of missing link (only missing from my reading experience)who ties together E T A Hoffman and C S Lewis with David Lindsay and A S Byatt.

The stories themselves start with the (quite literally)light hearted ‘The Light Princess’ all about a young woman who lacks gravityuntil she can be made to shed a tear for a handy prince. MacDonald has rather aline in Princesses, there is also Little Daylight which is essentially areworking of ‘The Light Princess’ and both are versions of Sleeping Beauty.Both are genuinely funny as well as having the traditional moral, more originalis ‘The Shadows’ about an old man who becomes king of the faires and is carriedaway by the shadows to see how they live.

Slowly though the stories get darker, fairies are lesshelpful, more spiteful, and sometimes downright wickedly frightening – so it isin ‘The Carasoyn’ where they steal children and threaten to return them inbits. And then there is ‘The Wise Woman, or The Lost Princess: A Double Story’.This one is definitely novella length and although the humour isn’t lacking andneither is the moral – spare the rod and spoil the child. I would feel easierabout it if the two particularly unpleasant children weren’t girls; I think thecrimes of temper and self complacency are ones that boys are just as guilty of butthe point is that the angry princess is being tamed to be a good daughter andbetter wife – she will even be able to black her masters boots.

Otherwise like all the best fairy stories you feel likethese are rooted in every and any time. MacDonald’s humour hasn’t dated at alland he deserves his place on the bookshelf – I really would have loved to havehad these told to me and now would love to tell them.

Fairy tales, being poor, and Oranges

2011-09-17T23:55:00.000+01:00

If I was to take George MacDonald literally I would suspectthat the fairies had left the building this week. I’ve either not slept at allor slept too much, been to hot or too cold, undercooked or burnt things, andbeen unable to settle down to reading anything very much. I’ve been working myway through George MacDonald’s ‘The Complete Fairy Tales’ – on the traditionalfairy time line; what should have taken a few hours has inexplicably taken days.

Arthur Rackham

I don’t know if my inability to concentrate on anything verymuch book wise has been influenced by the number of short story collections Ihave stacked up waiting to be read at the moment. It’s mostly been the FairyTales, but there have been forays into Robert Aickman’s ‘The Wine-Dark Sea’ andI really want to be reading some John O’Hara shorts that are currently layingin a seductive manner by my bed. That and there are a bundle of novels andnovellas I can’t wait to get to including Trollope’s Palliser series, andshould I order a handful of the Stella Gibbons print on demands from Vintage?

Truthfully I can’t afford to buy anything at the moment andwhen I can the first thing on the list will be work shoes (sensible black oneswith nothing fun or frivolous about them) and although at £9.99 a throw theVintage reprints are cheaper than a lot of print on demands they’re still not especiallycheap and there are so many tempting titles. The dilemma is this – it seems theNevil Shute’s that started out as pod’s were so popular that they quite quicklymade it onto the main list (Is this what happened with the Somerset Maugham’sas well I wonder?) Should this happen for Gibbons it will mean more of thereally very pretty covers (if I didn’t care about the covers I’d probably havean e reader so it does matter) and most likely slightly lower prices – both goodthings. But if people like me don’t buy the books now...

Going back to the fairies and the kitchen – the kitchen hasbeen strange recently. Again if I took MacDonald literally I would be blamingthe little folk and certainly cultivating better domestic habits. My freezer isweird (what follows is gripping edge of the seat stuff) I’ve been slowly emptyingit with a view to a defrost since the spring so now it’s mostly full ofapproximately a half hundred weight of Seville oranges, a brace of elderlygrouse, and something that’s buried in perma frost. I don’t remember buying somany oranges and am beginning to suspect that they’re somehow multiplying.Irrationality born of late nights and lack of sleep you think? Well the hashbrowns I found last week tasted of orange, and more sinister the kippers Idefrosted last night smelt of oranges. Kippers. Kippers can normally hold theirown in the scent stakes. And really – there are a lot of oranges. Got to dosomething about the oranges.

Alice Thomas Ellis

2011-09-13T10:32:00.002+01:00

Or Anna Haycraft as I should probably learn to think of her,although I rather like the name she choose for herself – it feels of a piece withher writing. Alexander Lucie–Smith (goggling him was a fascinating diversion) haswritten about her for the latest issue of 'Slightly Foxed'. (And how I wish I’dthought of that name first.)

Anna/Alice was a Catholic, she was also a wife, mother,writer, cook, hostess, editor, and almost a nun but of all these things it’sher religion that she chooses to mention and generally draw attention to in somany of her books so it’s no surprise that the article is called ‘From Conventto Kitchen Table’ or that as well as being her friend, and she his editor,Alexander Lucie-Smith is also a priest. I found Alice Thomas Ellis throughVirago, firstly with ‘Fish, Flesh, and Good Red Herring – A gallimaufry’ andlater when I picked up a book in Waterstone’s because it had an apple on thespine. This was ‘The Sin Eater’ and was swiftly followed by ‘The Summerhouse trilogy’(which is a masterpiece that I cannot recommend highly enough). These were reprinted around 2004 but since then not much has appeared.

Lucie-Smith wanted to re-read his friends novels but foundher unavailable from his favourite second hand book shop and in his library,not only unavailable but unknown (I hope he looked on amazon next where herbooks are cheap and readily obtainable). I think what surprises me is thatthese books aren’t that old. ‘Fairy Tale’ which is wonderfully disturbing waswritten in 1996, one of her books was shortlisted for the Booker (admittedly in1982 which is longer ago than I like to admit given my own age) some of thebooks were televised, and according to Wikipedia Charles Dance was looking toturn ‘The Inn at the Edge of the World’ into a film in 2009. So how is it thata writer who was clearly popular, as well as critically acclaimed can disappearso quickly?

I will be forever grateful that Virago have a soft spot forcatholic lady authors (Carmen Callil’s convent education was certainly good forsomething). I’ve found so many writers to admire who have this one thing incommon. It’s not the religion that attracts me, at least not directly, butsomething in the way the world is shown that’s deeply attractive however darkit gets (this goes for male catholic writers too; Evelyn Waugh exemplifies manyof the things I love about Alice Thomas Ellis).

I can’t put it better than Lucie-Smith did so I’m quoting partof his conclusion:

“She would not have cared in the least if her novels died,but I think they deserve to live: they are sharp, beautifully observed, wellwritten and above all true – true to life, true to what comes after life andoften overshadows it. They are never entirely without hope, though they resistthe modern temptation to think overmuch of human nature and human possibility.”

I think so too and hope that ‘Slightly Foxed’ does for some what Virago did forme – introduce them to a really wonderful writer.

Everything is covered in Damson.

2011-09-11T22:27:00.000+01:00

Or too much of a good thing soon becomes a sticky mess. On Wednesdaymy mother came round, I was quite excited when she called ahead to ask if Iwould like some ‘big’ bags of damsons. She turned up with ten kilos of fruitfrom her neighbour who had clearly had them for a few days because quite a lotof them were a mushy (and mouldy mess). Nothing daunted we sorted out enough ofthem to fill the largest pan I could find (that would be about three kilos,could have gone to four but was beginning to do the maths and panic a little)

I thought I’d make jelly to avoid having to deal with thestones in any meaningful way (oh what it was to be innocent) but betweentalking to my mother and trying to impose some semblance of order before alater visitor arrived I didn’t measure out the water properly (this occurred tome much, much, later when I realised I’d been following a jam recipe). After alot of boiling however I had quite an impressive amount of sloppy pink stuffand with the help of my friend and a jelly bag improvised out of chairs andembroidery paraphernalia we managed to pour the contents of a red hot and veryheavy pan into the muslin and through that into a large bowl. Mostly. I gotdamson juice on myself, the floor, several chairs, and the kitchen table – allof which was predictable. I didn’t ask and haven’t been told if my friendremained stain free but he provided wine and we had the sort of evening thatlulls you into a false sense of security regarding domestic projects

Next day I managed to remove the bowl of juice from thefloor and put a lid on it against further developments. The slimy pulp provedharder to deal with. The thing is there was such a lot of it and it was surprisinglywet and unappealing to touch. I’ve never attempted to deal with quite so muchall at once (and god knows I have a new insight and appreciation for more professionalpreservers). I was on my way to work and didn’t have a lot of time butsomething had to be done. The end solution (it seems I don’t perform as wellunder pressure as I always thought) meant when I got home the sink in thekitchen was slightly blocked, and so was the bath. Also the bathroom was coveredin dried fragments of damson, as is everything that’s been in the sink and bathever since. This includes me.

After the clean up it was time to start boiling, which iswhen I realised I’d miss measured the water in the first place and forgotten tomeasure the liquid I did have. More messing around and splashing later and Ithink I threw in enough sugar. It got hot, and then hotter yet, which isn’treally the best way to spend a Friday evening after a long day at work cappedby a bus running half an hour late and with a very early start for more workthe next day. Finally though I thought setting point had been reached. It hadn’tas it turned out, but I wasn’t to know that until the next day. Meanwhile I wentto sleep exhausted.

Remembering when weekends where about not staying in slavingover a hot stove I spent Saturday night re boiling my damson gloop until itlooked blacker than a pit of hell and boiled over. More cleaning and a finaldecant into re sterilised jars and I think I’m onto something. Which is goodbecause I have no shortage of whatever it is I’ve made. It’s not as good withmeat as I hoped and is a bit runny to use instead of jam but it’s a lot like pomegranatemolasses which is hopeful. Any suggestions about what to do with it will begratefully received.

Ragnarok – A.S. Byatt

2011-09-08T23:32:00.000+01:00

For me one of the most attractive things about the Ragnarokmyth is that it is the end of the gods rather than the end of the world so it’srather galling that this is generally dismissed as a later Christian nodtowards resurrection. I see it as a perfectly brilliant way of being able tohave your mythical cake and eat it; by assuming Ragnarok has happened you canmove onto new beliefs whilst still leaving room in your imagination for anolder world view which on a wild winters night - or the disconcerting whitenights of a northern summer - or during the cataclysmic reality of a world warmay not seem so very far away from possibility. I mention this because A.S Byatt also dismisses the idea of renewal and I thought I might hold it against her, but she does it in such a way that I can't. She really is very, very, good.

I’ve been anticipating this book for what has probably beenthe best part of a year now, I even read ‘The Penguin Book of Norse Myths’ in preparation (and very good it was too). A.S. Byatt is without doubt myfavourite living writer particularly when she’s writing short stories andnovellas. It might have been a question as to whether this book could ever liveup to my hopes for it – honestly it far exceeded them.

It’s a good myth to start with, though I think this is thepoint to say that I’m a bit vague about the difference between myths and fairytales. I think I can tell the difference when I’m reading one but an actual definitionremains elusive, not least because I feel that there are elements in many mythswhich are basically fairy stories but put them all together and they become morethan the sum of their parts. Most deities are fairly one dimensional but the Norsemen had Loki, a shape shifting Lord of Misrule, a god of chaos and curiosity,both Odin’s foster brother and the agent of Ragnarok. In short a complicatedcharacter.

What Byatt does with Ragnarok is tell it through the experienceof a thin child in wartime. The child takes what she needs from her readingwhich is not necessarily belief but something more like recognition. Meanwhile Byattuses (and I liked this too) the traditional structure of the cycle to add inher own lists of things that the child does believe in – nature and theweather, although we know what the child doesn’t, that these common things areno longer common, the destruction continues.

As all good story tellers should Byatt also adds her owndistinct twist to events. The chapter on Jörmungandr the world serpent is my favouriteand will bear several rereading (as will the whole book). Jörmungandrin this telling is cast into the sea as a small creature who eats then devoursand all the time grows until she spans the earth. All the time she becomes evermore monstrous and angry until the day when she’ll join her father and brotherfor the final battle.

Like all the best books finishing this has left me feelingslightly bereft, intent on reading again soon, and desperately curious tofollow up with more reading around the subject. The hard back is pricy, thekindle version more reasonable, I’m glad I got a proof copy and didn’t have towait for the paperback because I think this may be the best book I’ve read allyear – there is stiff competition for this title, none of them have been duffs.Honestly this book is worth picking up.

Monday

2011-09-05T22:08:00.003+01:00

On Mondays I generally finish at lunchtime which is nice,but this is after getting up at 6am to be at work in the first place which Idon’t enjoy so much. It’s always a toss up between being a glass half empty, glasshalf full kind of a day. Today turned into a glass half full when I found thisin the letterbox when I got home. It was utterly unexpected and even after abrief look it’s still something of an unknown quantity but it’s a long timesince a book title has made me laugh like this (my mother was amused too, butthe Scottish one was appalled). I don’t know quite when I’ll read this but I loveProspect books, a parcel from them has never failed to make my day and althoughI suspect this is a change of pace from the last book I got from them (thesuperlative ‘Cakes’ by Geraldine Holt) here is a picture of ‘Testicles: Balls inCooking and Culture’ which I hope will raise both a smile and enough interestto encourage all and sundry to go and look at Prospect's website.

The Birthday Cake Book – Fiona Cairns

2011-09-04T23:46:00.000+01:00

I’m still feeling a little despondent, a state not helped bythe weather today – what I was hoping for was a basically dry day because theplan was to go to Burghley for the last day of the horse trials. The plan wasfollowed but somewhat dampened by a torrential downpour (we should probablyhave changed our minds before paying up to get in) with the result that we wereboth grumpy but never at just the same time so a cycle of mild bad temper wasinstigated. This wasn’t improved in my case when we got back to Leicester tofind it dry and sunny. The Scottish one very sensibly dropped me off at my flatand fled back to the country to dry out in his own good time, meanwhile I gotto spend some quality time with ‘The Birthday Cake Book’ which arrived on Fridaybut was too heavy haul around all weekend.

I’m finding it hard to settle on reading anything at themoment. The book I have on the go is good and I want to finish it but I can’tseem to keep my attention on it. Which is another reason I love cook books –and books with pictures generally I suppose. ‘The Birthday Cake Book’ actuallydistracted me from crap on television (and a half hearted intention to dolaundry and write letters, but almost anything else would have sidetracked mefrom those jobs) which is a big step forward and gave me something lovely andescapist to think about which I appreciate too.

I really liked ‘Bake and Decorate’ which had some great anddo-able looking cake decorating exercises and did rather wonder what thisfollow up would be like. ‘Bake and Decorate’ seemed to have it covered – theanswer is that ‘The Birthday Cake Book’ steps everything up a level. TruthfullyI think I might be a little bit out of my league here, I’m just not sure that Ihave the patience for some of the projects, or perhaps even more importantlythe audience – so it’s a very good thing that each one come with a candlerating which indicates if something is easy, requires some effort, or is challenging.The other thing that I think is particularly brilliant about both Fiona Cairnsbooks is that the cakes look obviously home made in the pictures. There aresmall flaws that are reassuring to look at because the overall effect is stillstunning and it encourages me to believe that I could achieve these things.

Going back to the idea of an audience, these are cakes witha wow factor; painted Russian dolls made from sponge with a lime and vodkasyrup filling, a crystal skull which puts Damien Hirst’s diamond effort toshame, and a bucket and spade cake complete with crushed biscuit sand andchocolate sea shells all really stand out. Also ‘The Birthday Cake Book’ islikely to feature heavily as a present for baking friends over the next fewmonths especially if I think they may be persuaded to make me one of thefollowing: a Blackberry, Lavender, Rose, and white chocolate cake, a butterscotchcake which has amazing hazelnuts on it (they’ve had a sort of toffee appletreatment but also been allowed to drip so they’re all wispy and incrediblelooking), and a perfect heart shaped affair with eau de nil icing, a bunch offresh violets on it and some nifty ribbon to hide any messy bits around thesides. That last one is also the cake I most want to attempt myself, I’ve neverused sugar paste so have no idea how easy it is to get that flawless lookingfinish (it has a two candles for some effort required rating) but I love it.

Inspired by all the pictures I made my first Sachertortetonight. Fiona Cairns gives a flourless recipe but I wanted something a littlemore traditional so made the Fortnum and Mason version (sort of, Fiona replacesflour with almonds, I used a bit of both). There’s an episode in a Molly Keanebook where someone makes a Sachertorte and it’s desperately complicated as wellas involving a profligate number of eggs. My recipe turned out to create aprofligate amount of washing up as I used 3 bowls just for the cake, never mindicing it – after which the half dozen eggs required were a mere bagatelle. Happilyit turns out that it’s just my sort of thing; richly chocolaty without beingvery sweet and with a slightly decadent feel to it. The ganache threatened tosplit (was actually a claggy mess) but was rescued by a thorough beating withan electric whisk and now I can go to bed feeling like something other than asoaking came out of today.

How could I resist a bottle with an Otter on the front?

2011-09-03T11:14:00.000+01:00

Single malt whisky is a bit of an obsession for me, not inthe way that books are, but not so very far behind either and it’s very much onmy mind at the moment. I have one, perhaps two, maybe even three whiskytastings to organise over the next few weeks which might get interesting interms of crowd control. I have also started, or at least I’m trying to start acollection of Malts, this development is partly a holiday hangover when for thefirst time I bought more than I could drink (or arguably afford) but also becauseafter more than a decade of telling people what Whisky to buy for investment purposes I think Iactually know what I’m talking about at last so am finally willing to chance myown money on the venture.

The reason I find it hard to collect is because once I’vemanaged to get my hands on something rare and special the temptation to breakinto it is overwhelming. What after all is the point of getting your hands on alittle bit of liquid history if you can’t taste it, share it with friends, andgenerally bore the socks off of those who don’t give a damn about it byanalysing your drink to the last drop? Sure it may increase in value byhundreds of percent in a very quick time, but again what’s the point of havingsomething in your hands that you can never hope to afford again and not knowwhat it tastes like? This time though, and with heroic self restraint I’ve puteverything in the bottom of the wardrobe and wedged the door shut so until Ineed a winter coat it should be safe. (Yes that’s right, the warming spiritsare safely hidden away until the weather gets cold –is this plan flawed?)

The reasons Whisky, specifically Scotch whisky (I don’tdoubt they make good spirit elsewhere - but they can keep it) fascinates me somuch has changed over the years. When I started out working in Oddbins I wantedsome area that was mine, happily the more complicated wine stuff was covered bypeople far more knowledgeable than I had the energy or liver to compete withbut my vaguely Scottish roots made Whisky feel like a good fit. Initially Ididn’t much like drinking it, but the romance of the marketers caught myimagination and the tipping point came on a tasting day organised by Bowmore.There was a moment’s trepidation as I sat on a train to Manchester at 7 in themorning when I really realised that by 9.30am I would be hitting the firstdrink of the day. It turned out to be less daunting than I feared (we spat alot).

In the beginning I was very much in love with the idea ofWhisky as an expression of place, each malt born of its own particular bit ofthe landscape and I liked the idea of something not only home grown but with a longand distinguished heritage. Some of that turned out to be off the mark. Malt Whiskyas we know it has only been around for roughly my lifetime, before which it wasall about the blends with odd exceptions (it’s blended, branded, Whisky theyrescue from ‘The Cabinet Minister’ in Whisky Galore). It was Glenfiddich who inventedour concept of a ‘single malt’ – meaning a whisky from a specific distillery.There are just over a hundred distilleries in operation at the moment and plentyof spirit sloshing around from mothballed, bulldozed, or burnt out ones buteven so you might think it would be a simple enough matter to try most of them and know what made each oneunique.

The difficulty and the magic is that each ‘single malt’ isactually a carefully married together selection of different casks each one ofwhich is discernibly different. It’s someone’s job to put them altogether untilyou get the drink they feel best expresses that distillery and then to go onmaking something that tastes the same year after year. It’s the wood that causesthe variation and it seems you can’t ever predict quite what it will do. Thereare a myriad of other decisions regarding peat, shape of the stills, length offermentation and distillation, where you take the cuts in the spirit... all of whichaffect the kind of whisky you can make, but it’s the 10 to 20 years in woodthat really seems to matter (or so I believe at the moment).

Gone are my ideas of the pure essence of a place captured effortlesslyin a bottle, but I think in this case the reality is better. A good whisky isthe result of craft and time, it’s endlessly complex, there are an infinite varietyto choose from, and things are always changing. The Whisky I’m sipping tonightwent into cask about the time I fell into the wine trade. When he was 18 I gavemy brother a bottle distilled the year he was born (his parents drank it whichimpressed neither of us). The essence of the place is still in the bottle, butI realise now that it only gets in there after a great deal of effort andpatience.

August Folly – Angela Thirkell

2011-08-29T23:34:00.003+01:00

I find the end of summer beginning of autumn a deeplydepressing time of year, no season of mists and mellow fruitfulness for me,instead it’s all downhill until after bonfire night when the promise of properlygrim winter perks me up no end. As I’ve got older I’ve collected more and morereasons to dislike these next couple of months and probably less control overhow the season makes me feel – wonderful things could, and sometimes do happenbut I feel like I’m programmed to retreat into a cup of tea (possibly somegiant chocolate buttons) and the thing that really saves me from myself – a goodbook.

Books have been the answer at least since the autumn when Iwas eleven and read ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel’ 16 times in a row to keep the bluesat bay. It worked then and it works now. Looking round for something that wouldcheer me up on a bank holiday Monday that has been so grey and damp I’ve had tohave the lights on since morning like it was winter already I hit on AngelaThirkell’s ‘August Folly’. It seemed appropriate for what will probably be thelast book I finish this month, and which summed up nicely how I felt today inits title, it turned out to be just what I wanted.

I have perhaps half a dozen Thirkell’s on the shelf, mostlythe old penguin editions, all clearly much read if not necessarily by me, andall exasperatingly out of print. Given the current market for rediscoveredbooks and Thirkell’s apparent popularity on the web it seems almost incrediblethat no one has picked her up yet – she feels ready for a revival to me and ‘AugustFolly’ would be a good place to start – one frustration with previous Thirkellreads has been coming midway into a sequence and then being totally unable toget my hands on either the previous or next book in her Barsetshire (sameBarsetshire as Trollope) series.

‘August Folly’ workswell as a standalone book, and so for the first time I don’t feel cheated atthe end, otherwise it follows the same formula as all the others – lots ofcounty families going about their business, a handful of terrifying andbloodthirsty schoolgirls, a young man with a crush on an unobtainable (butgenerally amused and kind) older woman, and at the end of it all true love andmarriage for at least one (sometimes more) happy couple. What lifts them out ofthe ordinary is the sense of humour – it’s the place names that I particularlylove with Winter Overcotes and Winter Underclose being favourites, Thirkellalso seems to have a thing for double entendres which crop up to often and are,I think, to broad to be accidental (I’ll bet she was a hell of a woman to down abottle of sherry with).

‘August Folly’ borrows more than a setting from Trollope –sort of hero Richard Tebben is a hobbledehoy in the mould of John Eames (from ‘TheSmall House at Allington’) and like Johnny he covers himself in glory afterfacing down a bull. There is something in the authorial tone which casts a nodto Trollope too. I think he might have enjoyed the exchanges between Gunnar thecat and Modestine the donkey (I learnt from reading a ‘The Tapestry of Love’that Robert Louis Stevenson travelled the Cevennes on a donkey called Modestineand lo in the very next book I read there is a donkey called Modestine – a referencewhich otherwise would have flummoxed me) which so easily could have beenrevoltingly twee but are instead deliciously funny.

It seems from the little I’ve read about her that AngelaThirkell didn’t take her own work terribly seriously which is perhaps half itscharm, she was quite prolific and there’s an undoubtedly dashed off feel inplaces. The other half of the charm comes from plots which despite being littlemore than sunlight and foam maintain an inner integrity because they make nobones about what they are.

The Tapestry Of Love – Rosy Thornton

2011-08-28T23:53:00.002+01:00

About a year and a month ago I had an email from RosyThornton asking if I’d like a copy of her book to read, these kinds of offersare – I was going to say always exciting but actually sometimes are slightly baffling(the person who offered a vampire romance aimed at teens clearly didn’t read myblog first and I’m not tempted by self help books from American preachers –although the blond begs me to say yes to those). The chance to get a copy of ‘TheTapestry of Love’ however was flattering; I had already seen good thingswritten about it and thought it might be just the thing for some lazy latesummer reading.

I don’t know why I didn’t read it straight away, possibly becauseit was a hardback and seemed like a big book to carry around (I have a largerhandbag now than I did last summer – makes all the difference) but the longer Ileft it the guiltier I felt, by Christmas it had become a chore to be faced,and in March I wrote a post about feeling guilty over the pile of unreadhardbacks that weighed down the shelf (which it seems I opened in exactly thesame way as this one which shows I’m consistent I suppose). Finally late summerhas arrived again and suddenly ‘A Tapestry of Love’ started to look temptingagain.

Now I’ve read ‘A Tapestry of Love’ the guilt has gone (itwould have lurked on if I hadn’t liked the book). It is a perfect late summerread. Catherine Parkstone is a likable heroine, in her late 40’s, divorced for8 years, children grown up, and off to the Cevennes mountains for a new startin the south of France. Part of the romance is the easy way in which she’saccepted into her new community and the way her fledgling business as anupholsterer takes off. Never mind the tall dark and handsome Frenchman acrossthe way who cooks as only a Frenchman can, who hasn’t daydreamed about movingsomewhere beautiful to make a living out of something they love? Well I have atany rate and although I didn’t imagine France the basic fantasy is the same.

Catherine’s place in her new community is threatened firstby family complications, then by bureaucracy, and finally by that tall dark etcFrenchman. Family appears in the form of a sister who looks likely to beromantic competition, a son as self contained as his mother, and a daughter whowon’t settle to a job. There’s also the mother back in England in a home with Alzheimer’sand the ex husband who maybe wants a bigger part in Catherine’s life again.

There were momentswhen I felt like it was all a bit to idyllic and easy - and then Catherine’s motherdies, there’s nothing sensational about it but the way Thornton handles it ismoving and feels real. It’s at points like this that her gift as a writerreally comes through. There is a balance that makes the whole thing deeplysatisfying, like I said perfect late summer reading.

Westwood – Stella Gibbons

2011-08-24T23:23:00.000+01:00

‘Westwood’ turned out to be a bit of a reading journey forme - it looks quite innocent but at 448 pages there’s a lot in there to thinkabout. First published in 1946 but set during the latter years of the war thisis, apparently, the book that Stella Gibbons was proudest of. Lynne Truss haschampioned it for some years first as a classic serial for radio 4 and nowthrough the introduction of this Vintage reprint and in at least one recentnewspaper feature – in short it came with some expectations attached.

The first page was promising, Gibbons trademark descriptionsof nature, in this case reclaiming bombed out London streets, are deeplyevocative and for me at least irresistible but after that I stalled a bit.There were a couple of references to ‘the second world war’ which with someother bits and pieces of phrasing felt clumsy, almost stilted, and stopped mereally falling into the plot as much as I wanted to. However when all the scenesetting and introducing of characters was done with the distracting feeling oftoo much explanation disappeared and by the end of the book I could see whyGibbons was so proud of it – which is rather what happens with the heroinescharacter so perhaps it was all deliberate...

I suspect that the other problem I had with the first halfof the book was Hilda, again I had high expectations of Hilda the down to earthbeauty who sees through all the pretentious nonsense that her friend Margaretfalls for but she doesn’t seem quite real. Bought up on a diet of Mary Wesleywith suspicions confirmed by Marghanita Laski’s ‘To Bed With Grand Music’ Gibbonsoften repeated descriptions of Hilda as a chaste forces sweetheart are oddlyunconvincing, I can appreciate that in 1946 this was the kind of girl we wouldhave wanted to imagine but the frequent affirmation that she never goes too farwith her string of service boys makes me feel that the lady doth protest toomuch. That she only spends time with the rather horrible Gerard Challis becauseshe feels sorry for this decidedly middle aged playwright is however entirelybelievable.

Margaret Steggles – the heroine of the piece- is an entirelydifferent thing though. She is a masterpiece and definitely earns Gibbons theright to be compared with Austen. When the book opens Margaret is 23, ateacher, unhappy with her life and in London with her old friend Hilda lookingfor a house for her parents to live in. The Steggles home is not a happy onedue to Mr Steggles wandering eye and Mrs Steggles bad temper. Margaret herselfis a passionate, impressionable, and very awkward young woman. She longs for Artand Beauty and possibly a little romance but unfortunately is a little to plainand a bit too high brow to be attractive to men.

The chance finding of a ration book brings her into contactwith the Niland’s and Challis’s – intellectuals in the form of painters,playwrights and glamorous women. Margaret is smitten despite these people beingpretty awful – Hilda wouldn’t be fooled for a moment – and taking every opportunityto dump their children on her and generally impose on her infatuation. As a wayto get closer to the Challis’s Margaret strikes up a friendship with Zita, a Jewishrefugee who lives with them at Westwood. Zita is rather a figure of funthroughout the book, but in the end it’s she who really transforms Margaret.

For example it’s Zita who takes Margaret to concerts properlyintroducing her to music, Zita who goes to the theatre with her, who helps herbecome more chic, and who shows that a physically plain woman can yet beattractive to men. I don’t think I’ll spoil much by saying that as the bookends Margaret is happier, more confident and far surer of herself and herpersonality, all of which makes her more attractive and a much nicer person forthe reader to be with.

What really sets this book apart though is the very endwhere Gibbons describes her gentle powers – Beauty and Time and the Past andPity and Laughter. These are the things that will help Margaret come what may;if she can’t find earthly love she will at least find comfort in work, duty,friendship and the arts. I find it remarkable because it’s rare to be told thata woman can be happy and fulfilled without some form of physical love. (I thinkMargaret will have her romance, she’s been kissed by the last chapter and notjust once or by one man – I feel sure there will be more). There’s no pretencethat an unmarried life would be an easy or desirable one for her, but areminder that there will always be consolations for disappointment if you’reprepared to make the best of what you have. It’s good to have a happy endingwhere the girl doesn’t need to get the boy.

Two years, a few books, and a lot of cake later

2011-08-22T20:20:00.000+01:00

Desperate Reader is two years old today which has caused a moment’sreflection on my part. Last year I talked about what a great thing blogging hasbeen for me, how many lovely people I’ve met, the new ideas it’s introduced meto, the cakes baked – all of which is still very much true. I’ve also read alot of books I wouldn’t have without the self imposed discipline of sharing mythoughts about them which is probably the best thing of all (wonderful peopleexcepted).

It’s not that I read more now than I did before but that Ihad fallen into a terrible habit of not finishing things. The combination of nolonger being able to afford much of a social life and realising that secondhand books aren’t necessarily disgustingly defiled objects impregnated with mildew,crumbs, and terrifyingly unidentifiable stains has helped me reconnect with anever very dormant passion for reading and it helps me get through the day justas it did when I was a child/misunderstood (because aren’t they all) teen.

I could wish for a more fulfilling and better remunerated job(I could even apply for one but the pay off would be to lose the security ofthe position I have and when I consider that it doesn’t look so bad) buthowever ambivalent I might feel towards my day job at the end of a particularlytrying shift knowing that I can escape into a book until I’m fit company forcivilised people again – well it’s rather marvellous.

If there has been a reading highlight of the last year thatparticularly stands out it’s finally getting round to Trollope, I’m 7 books inwith dozens left to explore and though I’ve undoubtedly read better individualbooks I don’t think anything else has bought the same feeling of overallsatisfaction or the feeling of being on the threshold of a long and satisfying relationship.

Anyway enough of that, I have fresh fruit that needs to beturned into preserved fruit before it turns itself into rotten fruit, possiblya cake to bake, defiantly a herring to deal with or my flat will stink in a waythat not even a very good book will allow me to escape from, and celebratorynew books to squeeze onto a shelf (somehow). I’ve been pretty sure for a whilethat Oxford World Classics exists just to make me happy – if further confirmationwere needed it arrived today in the form of a totally unexpected book thatlooks both short and improving (the best kind?). Whatever saint or deityoversees the discovery of old green Virago’s smiled on me today as well when Ifound this little haul in an Oxfam, and I think I did okay out of Waterstone’scurrent 3 for 2 fiction deal at the weekend when I came away with one book I’vewanted for a while, one I would have wanted if I knew it existed before, and aWalter Scott who may well turn out to be the new Trollope.