Cornflower Books

Where's your reading taking you?

   

    Since I was in Oxford in real life last weekend, I'm 'staying' there for now by virtue of my current reading. Dorothy L. Sayers's 1935 novel  Gaudy Night is set in the mid-1930s, and features Shrewsbury College, a women's college of which Harriet Vane is a member, and to which she returns for a Gaudy only to find malevolence in the shape of poison-pen letters, obscene graffiti, and the burning of a pile of gowns.

    So far, Lord Peter Wimsey has made only an incidental appearance, and at my stage in the book he is abroad and Harriet is investigating the goings-on herself, but doubtless he's set to return soon. I'm loving the period feel of the book and the comparatively closed world it depicts - one which the author knew well.

    Closer to home but a little further back in time, I'm also greatly enjoying Annette Carruthers's The Arts and Crafts Movement in Scotland: A History. It's so beautifully illustrated that I am taking it slowly and not paging through to look at photographs ahead but letting the images keep pace with the text and savouring both.

    So I'm in a rich, visual world of craftsmanship and artistry between the 1860s and the 1920s, and also in a cerebral one some ten years later, and both are suiting me fine.

    Where's your reading taking you?

To The Morse Bar

    Apologies for the quality of the pictures, but they were taken as surreptitiously as possible across a crowded room.

    This is The Morse Bar in Oxford's Randolph Hotel, dedicated to Inspector Morse, and to his creator Colin Dexter whose portrait you see above.

    I'm sorry John Thaw isn't clearer, but these are some of the photographs of him which decorate the walls of the bar, and below is the special Morse cocktails menu with drinks devised by the staff in tribute to our hero. As it was 4pm when I was there, all I had was a tomato juice, but I suspect the man himself would have preferred a pint of beer.

    If you're interested in Oxford detective fiction, there's quite a comprehensive post on the canon here.

Costa, Kerr, and comments

    The shortlists for the Costa Book Awards were announced last night, and you can find them all here.

    I'm especially interested in the Novel and First Novel categories as I've read some of those books: in First Novel, I'm very pleased to see Kate Clanchy's Meeting the English, which I reviewed here, and I hope it gets the recognition it deserves. Meanwhile in Novel I have read three of the four books - Kate Atkinson's Life After Life, Maggie O'Farrell's Instructions for a Heatwave (post here), and the late Bernardine Bishop's Unexpected Lessons in Love (post here) - and can recommend them all.

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    If you have access to BBC iPlayer, do watch last night's edition of the arts programme Imagine which was a profile of the author and illustrator Judith Kerr. What a charming lady, and how incredibly sharp and sprightly for a person of 90 - I hope I'm able to run upstairs as fast as she does should I reach that age!

    Two little details which made me smile: the monster from her husband Nigel Kneale's famous series Quatermass and the Pit had three legs in tribute to the symbol of its creator's homeland (being Manx-born myself, I rather like that), and Judith Kerr's son Matthew, when learning to read, was so bored by the 'Janet & John'-type reading schemes he was given that he said he would learn with the Cat in the Hat books, and so he did.

    Dr. Seuss must have served him well for Matthew Kneale is now, of course, a famous novelist, and if you haven't already read his wonderful, wonderful English Passengers (which features a Manx smuggling vessel, and which in 2000 won the Whitbread Award, as the Costa Book Award was formerly known), then do.

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    I'm enjoying reading about everyone's favourite children's books in the comments on yesterday's post, so do please keep them coming and enter the draw for the Bodleian cards and bookmarks. I'm also delighted to see some unfamiliar names among the commenters, readers who haven't made themselves known before but have done so now - it's lovely to hear from you!

A little Oxford giveaway

    I was in the Bodleian Library shop on Saturday (incidentally, one of the warmest places in Oxford on what was a cold weekend) and I bought a few postcards and bookmarks to give away to two readers.

    Since I was visiting Oxford for a C.S. Lewis event, I had to get the appropriate cards, so we'll call this first lot 'the Lewis set' as the cards are facsimiles of the famous Puffin Books covers of three of the Chronicles of Narnia; they date from the 1960s, and the illustrator was Pauline Baynes. I'll pause here to quote briefly from Alister McGrath's biography of Lewis: it was Tolkien who recommended Pauline Baynes to Lewis when his publishers insisted on illustrations for the books, "In the end, Baynes's relationship with Lewis turned out to be rather formal and distant. They appear to have met only twice. One of these two meetings was a highly perfunctory and brief discussion at London's Waterloo Station, during which Lewis frequently consulted his watch, anxious not to miss his train. (Her diary entry for that day was rumoured to read 'Met C.S. Lewis. Came home. Made rock cakes.') It was not an easy relationship, particularly when Baynes learned that Lewis, having been very positive about her illustrations to her face, was somewhat more critical of her artistic gifts behind her back - especially her ability to draw lions."

    Along with the cards, I'll give you two bookmarks which picture beautiful books from the Bodleian collection; the first is The Christmas Bookshelf, which features unusual 19th. and 20th. century titles, and the second is Flowers, early 20th. century books from the classification 'Natural Sciences, Botany, General: Flowers & their culture'.

    The next lot, 'the Oxford set' comprises the Hobbies bookshelf card and matching bookmark, a map of Lyra's Oxford taken from the book of that name by Philip Pullman, illustrated by John Lawrence, a card of the Bodleian oath, the declaration every reader is required to repeat aloud on seeking admission, and a bookmark showing a selection of Victorian children's books from the Opie collection.

    To enter the draw - which is open to all, no matter where in the world you are - please leave a comment on this post naming a favourite children's book of yours, and please state whether you would prefer the Lewis set or the Oxford set or are happy with either. Incidentally, if you have any trouble leaving a comment (I've had reports of intermittent difficulties), please email me using the link in the right-hand sidebar, let me know what error message, if any, you got, and give me the name of your favourite book and your preferred prize and I'll make sure you are entered in the draw.

C.S. Lewis, a commemoration

    I've been in Oxford for the weekend, attending a special event to celebrate the life and legacy of C.S. Lewis.

    For almost thirty years from 1925, Lewis was a Fellow of Magdalen College, and his shadow still looms large there. To mark the fiftieth anniversary of his death, the College invited members and guests to an afternoon of lectures on his life and works followed by a commemorative dinner; among those who attended were former students of Lewis's, others who knew him, and many like me who had come to pay tribute to the man who had opened a magical world to them, or had touched them in other ways through his writings.

    The book in the picture is my childhood copy of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. I took it with me and read it again over the weekend, and found on the back page the application form for membership of the the Puffin Club which as a ten-year-old I had neatly filled in but for some reason had not sent; seeing that and reading the book again was like re-encountering my younger self, and I think Lewis would have understood that feeling.

    The afternoon began with a talk by the Revd. Professor Alister McGrath, whose biography of Lewis I have just read and can warmly recommend, and who was speaking on the symbiotic relationship between Lewis and Magdalen. He traced Lewis's path to the college - it was not a straightforward one - but once there he was found to be a natural teacher who talked to people, not at them, and who, with his "port wine and plum pudding voice" packed the lecture room and opened up works of literature with an unusual lucidity.

    Professor McGrath talked of the Thursday evening Inklings meetings in Lewis's rooms in New Buildings (above) when works-in-progress were read and ideas were sparked, but in referring to the all-male environment of which Lewis was a product, and defending his subject against allegations of giving his female characters subordinate roles, he was quick to make the point that Lewis was "discerning of talent and blind to gender" when it came to the teaching and discussion of English Literature.

    The second speaker of the day was Mr. Walter Hooper, a charming American gentleman whom I can best describe as 'couthy'. I wish I could recount at length his many anecdotes and his recollections of his correspondence, friendship and working relationship with Lewis - he was his secretary during the final months of Lewis's life, his biographer and the editor of his collected letters. Invited to attend Inklings meetings, Mr. Hooper said he had never experienced anything like them: "you were your best in his company," he said. The warmth and affection with which he spoke was as great as his admiration for the man whose work he had first come across as a young soldier in 1953 when he kept a copy of Miracles hidden under his shirt and read a page or two at every opportunity while on exercise, and whom he remembers with the utmost fondness all these years later.

    The Revd. Dr. Michael Piret, Magdalen's Dean of Divinity, then talked about Lewis's time as Vice-President of the College, and read many excerpts from a drama which exists in College archives, Lewis the Bald, a tragi-comedy penned by Lewis in which the author reveals both a high degree of self-awareness, and a sharp, clever wit and clear-sightedness when it came to his colleagues.

    The final speaker of the afternoon was Lord Williams of Oystermouth, better known to most of us as Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury; his book The Lion's World - A journey into the heart of Narnia was published last year. He spoke on fantasy fiction and fairytale and of Lewis's view that being supremely about something that isn't us, it is of moral importance to the young: "in a world of agency, magic, supportive animal friends, the ego is not at the heart of it," and destructive self-interest is put aside. His thesis was closely argued and more complex than my summary might suggest, but his analysis of Lewis's fiction was a fascinating one, and when asked to whom Lewis's mantle has been passed, he spoke with the authority of a deep knowledge of the field of Philip Pullman (ironically, as Alister McGrath describes him, "Lewis's most strident critic"), Alan Garner - particularly for books such as Thursbitch and Boneland which Lord Williams commended as "utterly haunting and remarkable", and of course, the Harry Potter series, "a most interesting fusion of the school story and fairytale, and a work about atonement and redemption".

    The day concluded with dinner in Hall at which a toast to C.S. Lewis was drunk, the petits fours appropriately included Turkish Delight, and at which Lewis's godson Mr. Laurence Harwood spoke and read extracts of three of Lewis's letters, including one full of wisdom, consolation and encouragement which he had received from his godfather at a difficult time in his youth. It was a fitting end to a day which remembered a man whose brilliance as a scholar and teacher shaped the lives of many young people, whose clarity and fluency as a speaker and communicator opened many minds to faith, and whose writing continues to inspire and delight.

Cornflower Book Group - The Pillow Book

   

    What did you make of The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon?

    "I have written in this book things that I have seen and thought, in the long idle hours spent at home, without ever dreaming that others would see it. Fearing that some of my foolish remarks could well strike others as excessive and objectionable, I did my best to keep it secret, but despite all my intentions I'm afraid it has come to light."

    Genuine? Disingenuous? Calculating? We shall never know, but whatever the purpose of these writings or the intentions behind them, they have endured and been read for 1,000 years.

    Part diary (and The Diary of a Provincial Lady came to mind on occasion), part series of still lifes, a commonplace book, a social history, its anecdotes akin to episodes of a soap opera, its gossipy comments not far from tweets at times, its lists much like those often seen on blogs; elsewhere the author's keen observation and appreciation of a scene make for entrancing reading, and as the translator Meredith McKinney says in her introduction to the Penguin Classics edition, from "deep inside the moment of experience", she teaches us to see.

    Caustic, snobbish, prone to extreme and sometimes crass juxtapositions, condemnatory, dogmatic, Sei Shōnagon lived in a rarefied world where appearance was everything, but if as she says above she set down her thoughts for herself alone, then she had no need to temper her words and moderate her feelings in consideration of others' sensibilities. Allowing her the scope that that intended privacy permits, what she gives us across the centuries in her "handbook of poetic references" is largely a thing of beauty. She finds rain "so unpoetic", so I part company with her there, but I smiled at her dislike of sloppy diction and language unbecoming to the speaker, and I admire her eye - and memory - for detail, and love her evident genuine delight in so many things, and that she finds it "fascinating that things like [the effect of dew on foliage] can utterly fail to delight others"! She is unique in her mindful attention to the slightest thing, and so while in some lights the book is, as the translator says, "a crazy quilt", it also has its own sense of order and identity.

    Which parts - if any - caught your interest? Did you love her lists, enjoy her minute observations, become involved in her narratives? Did you warm to her enthusiasm and appreciation of beauty, or did you find her uncompromising attitudes uncongenial? Would this book prompt you to read more Japanese literature or discover more about Japanese culture, either in the present day or in the past? Are you tempted to begin a Pillow Book of your own - a diary or scrapbook of things which catch your attention and engage the senses?

Round and about

         As we have a whirlwind tour of Edinburgh on the other blog today, let's continue the touring theme here with a visit to a few places of interest:

    -    Claire King has some wise words for aspiring writers.

    -    Fanny Blake has good tips on editing.

    -    Celia Rees talks about inspiration and serendipity (and more).

    -    Heywood Hill are offering you the chance to commission a portrait of your favourite author.

    -    This review of Elizabeth Jane Howard's All Change (the fifth in the Cazalets series) says it's "as impressive as anything she has written". (If you don't already know EJH's memoir Slipstream, I do recommend it.)

    -    On the subject of writers' biographies, Lyn is reviewing a new book on Georgette Heyer.

And a couple more

 

    Since we were talking yesterday about bargains for the Kindle, and comments seemed to indicate an appetite for more, here are a couple of books which I haven't yet read but about which I've heard great things, and both are currently available at very low prices.

    Kate Forsyth's Bitter Greens was reviewed recently in The Good Book Guide (which I heartily recommend, by the way) and although it was firmly on my radar before that, phrases such as "breathtaking in its imaginative virtuosity" and "utterly original, a book of mesmerising power", had me pressing the 'buy' button.

    It's a new interpretation of the tale of Rapunzel, but it features a real-life character, Charlotte-Rose de la Force, a writer of historical fiction who was exiled to a convent by Louis XIV and while there wrote the version of Rapunzel that we all know. Kate writes about the story behind the book here, and talks more about it in this video.

    

    The Somnambulist by Essie Fox was one of Channel 4's TV Book Club Best Reads of 2012, and you can see Essie talking on the programme about her Victorian Gothic mystery in this short clip.

    "Very evocative, brilliantly researched, and plot-wise it's very, very clever," said Meera Syal in her summing up, and here's the gist:

    "When seventeen-year-old Phoebe Turner visits Wilton's Music Hall to watch her Aunt Cissy performing on stage, she risks the wrath of her mother Maud who marches with the Hallelujah Army, campaigning for all London theatres to close. While there, Phoebe is drawn to a stranger, the enigmatic Nathaniel Samuels, who heralds dramatic changes in the lives of all three women.

    When offered the position of companion to Nathaniel's reclusive wife, Phoebe leaves her life in London's East End for Dinwood Court in Herefordshire - a house that may well be haunted and which holds the darkest of truths..."

Another bargain

   

    Those of us with Kindles are doing well on the bargains front just now as yet more excellent novels are being offered (temporarily) at very low prices. The latest of these I've spotted is Kate Atkinson's Life After Life, which I loved unreservedly; I covered it in this post on the author's Edinburgh International Book Festival appearance, and while I know it has perplexed some readers, I do think it's a tour de force.

Edited to add: the temporary offer has now closed.

Some other sort of world

   

     "In 2008 the London publishers Harper Collins invited Diane Simpson, a professional graphologist, to examine some specimens of the handwriting of C.S. Lewis. Simpson had no idea whom she was investigating. She found the 'small, neat script' suggestive of someone who was 'guarded and careful' with sharp critical faculties. Simpson also noticed something else. 'I wonder whether he has a garden shed of sorts (or some other sort of world) in which to disappear when he chooses.' Simpson was absolutely right. Lewis did indeed have 'some other sort of world' into which he would disappear - an imagined world we now know as Narnia."

    From C. S. Lewis: A Life by Alister McGrath.

    Friday the 22nd. of November 2013 is the 50th. anniversary of the death of C.S. Lewis; on Saturday the 23rd. I shall be attending a very special commemorative event which I hope to write about here. Meanwhile, though, I'll give you a little more food for thought in the shape of the succeeding passage from Alister McGrath's biography, for while there was of course a great deal more to Lewis than 'just' his authorship of The Chronicles of Narnia, I find the following very interesting:

    "Let us pause at this point. Narnia is an imaginative, not an imaginary, world. Lewis was quite clear that a distinction had to be drawn between these ideas. The 'imaginary' is something that has been falsely imagined, having no counterpart in reality. Lewis regards such an invented reality as opening the way to delusion. The 'imaginative' is something produced by the human mind as it tries to respond to something greater than itself, struggling to find images adequate to the reality. The more imaginative a mythology, the greater its ability to 'communicate more Reality to us'. For Lewis, the imaginative is to be seen as a legitimate and positive use of the human imagination, challenging the limits of reason and opening the door to a deeper apprehension of reality."

The literary tapestry

    I've already shown you the Robert Louis Stevenson panel of The Great Tapestry of Scotland, but here are some more details from panels which feature writers or books of one kind or another, from law books to works of scripture, philosophy, political economy, etc., and even the 15th. century allegorical poem, The Buke of the Howlat!

    Looking at J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan there (as Sir Walter Scott appears to be doing but is not, as the actual panels are far removed from one another) makes me think that a tapestry devoted to Scottish literature could be a similarly wonderful thing.

New and notable

   

    Among the current Kindle bargains is Marika Cobbold's Drowning Rose, which I reviewed here and which was one of my top novels of 2011.

   

    Another of my Cornflower Blues of that year was Louise Levene's Ghastly Business (which is great fun), so I'm pleased to see that Louise has a new book coming out in February; The Following Girls is set in the 1970s.

   

    One of the 2012 Cornflower Blues was Harriet Lane's Alys, Always which I thought was a brilliant debut, so we have something more to look forward to next year when Harriet's second novel, Her, is released.

   

    Going back to my first Cornflower Blues list (2006), I included Gwen Raverat's memoir Period Piece and described it as "a joyous piece of writing". It's about to be re-issued by Slightly Foxed, and you can read all about it - and place your order for the new edition - here. The video shows how these handsome books are made:

A thousand years ago ...

   

     "... in a world in many ways unimaginably different from ours, a lady at the imperial court of Japan settled herself in front of a precious bundle of paper and began to write the extraordinary work later called Makura no sōshi, known to English readers as The Pillow Book. In it she wrote about her world, in a voice so vividly alive that we find ourselves in the presence of a woman we recognize as we would a friend.

    The world Sei Shōnagon lived in and wrote for us was the intimate world of the court ... As we read her apparently crazy quilt of vignettes and opinions and anecdotes, we find ourselves deep inside this world, and feel her responses along our own nerves.

    ... Sei Shōnagon's writing revels in the nuances of sound and scent - the soft tap of a lid placed on a kettle, the faint sussuration of fire tongs gently stirring ash in a brazier, or the lingering scent from someone's incense-impregnated clothes resonate with peculiar intensity. Visual awareness is also acute; the glint of firelight on a metal clasp or the glow of a glossed-silk robe receives loving attention.

    This is perhaps to be expected, in a dark interior lit largely by an occasional oil lamp or brazier fire, or pale daylight filtered through fine blinds. What is unexpected and astonishing, however, is the vivid and detailed visual awareness of clothes. A figure some distance away, in a poorly illuminated room, will be recalled years later with an enthralled description of the details of clothing, colour and fabric. It is undoubtedly the case that Sei Shōnagon was particularly finely attuned to and observant of such matters ..."

    That's from Meredith McKinney's introduction to The Pillow Book, and this is just a gentle reminder that it's our book group book for this month, and we'll be talking about it here from Saturday, 23rd. November - everyone is welcome to join in.

Coming Home - Sue Gee at the Slightly Foxed Readers' Day

    Sue Gee is a writer whose books I love, and so when I saw that she was to be speaking at the Slightly Foxed Readers' Day, I had an extra incentive to go to London for the event.

    A quick look at the posts on Sue's novels The Mysteries of Glass, Reading in Bed, and Earth and Heaven, and her short story collection Last Fling, will show something of the calibre of her work, and highlight the characteristics which keep the reader coming back for more - she's someone I look forward to reading because, to put it simply, she's so good at what she does.

    Sue's talk at the Readers' Day was titled Staying On and Coming Home because she discussed and explained her admiration for Paul Scott's Booker Prize-winning Staying On - which is about 'old colonials' who have stayed on in India after Independence - and contrasted that story with her own new novel Coming Home which features a couple who have left India in 1947 to make a new life for themselves back in Britain. She commented on the pathos of Paul Scott's book, and on its dry humour, and she explained that for Scott's characters - as for her own - India was the defining experience of their lives.

    I have recently read Coming Home (which was provisionally titled The Tiger of Tulsipore, in case anyone has been looking out for a novel under that name) and I'd say it too is marked by pathos and dry humour, and of course by Sue's trademark keen observation and beautiful rendering of a scene, whether its focus is external or on a character's interior life. It's about Will and Flo Sutherland who met and married in India and almost immediately left the country to return to Britain. Now with two small children, they are setting up home on a ramshackle farm in Devon, and while Will puts his all into the back-breaking work, Flo picks up her pen and starts to write the story of their time abroad. The novel follows them through the years as Bea and Fred grow up, Will's career changes and progresses, and Flo struggles to find a path for herself. It is a very poignant book, for of course there are many ups and downs in the Sutherlands' lives, and some scenes and passages are very sad indeed; to that extent it reminded me of Joanna Cannan's Princes in the Land* in its portrait of the disjunction between expectations and reality, and of how a woman can so easily lose her way.

    Sue spoke about her own family background, for this book is her most autobiographical and in many respects it is the story of her parents, her brother and herself. She was moved to write it when on her father's death she was left tapes he had recorded of all his old India stories, for like Will, he was there until 1947, and of course had told his children of his life and exotic adventures in that other world. Hearing those tales again, Sue decided to use this personal history as the basis for a novel about families, their dynamics, and how it is all too easy to get 'lost' in them, missing a turning as one tries to find one's own way of 'coming home'. Its arc of experience reaches from that all but vanished world of the 1940s to the post-colonial age, and it is a perfect period portrait, but it's chiefly a very human story and one with great resonance. I strongly recommend it.

                                                  ~~~~~

    *Speaking of Persephone Books, in Coming Home Flo is given a copy of Kay Smallshaw's How To Run Your Home Without Help (there's a brief passage from it here); I'll leave the reader to discover how useful she finds it!

Slightly Foxed Readers' Day

    I've been in London this weekend, especially to attend the Readers' Day hosted by that excellent literary periodical Slightly Foxed. We have subscribed to the quarterly since its launch almost ten years ago, we look forward eagerly to each elegant edition, and have followed many of the bookish trails towards which it has gently pointed us - if you don't already know it, do take a look.

    On Saturday, at the Readers' Day in the Art Workers' Guild in Bloomsbury, we were able to experience Slightly Foxed made flesh as it were, meeting other readers (a lovely bunch) and enjoying talks from speakers who enthralled, entertained, and stimulated their avid audience. It was an event of the nicest, most interesting kind, and neither Mr. C. nor I could have had a better time.

    Sara Wheeler - complete with newly broken arm in a sling - took to the stage first to tell us about her latest book O My America!: Second Acts in a New World, an account of the life-changing experiences of six British women who travelled to the New World in the 19th. century. Among her subjects, Sara talked about Fanny Trollope (mother of Anthony), whose writings, incidentally, Tracy Chevalier read while researching The Last Runaway, and Fanny Kemble, the actress and celebrity of her day, but I'm pleased to see that the book also includes the doughty Isabella Bird who ought to be better known these days.

    The next speaker was Sue Gee, and I'm going to save Sue for a post of her own, so please stay tuned for that, and I'll move on now to Ursula Buchan who gave such an amusing, clear-sighted talk about the Dig for Victory campaign, as covered by her book A Green and Pleasant Land: How England's Gardeners Fought the Second World War. Ursula's many period photographs illustrated her talk in often hilarious fashion, for example, can you imagine the expressions on the faces of these two little people who had been looking forward to an ice-cream and found there were only carrots (an important source of vitamin A) on offer!

    Illustration was key to the next talk as it was given by the great Sir Quentin Blake, and what a delight this was. Sir Quentin's work in recent years has often left the confines of the page and spread to the larger canvases of walls in museums and hospitals, the sides of buses, and even a whole building, 'wrapped' in wonderful Blake fashion for a particular purpose. He showed slides of many of these projects, each one so perfectly suited to its environment, and he talked engagingly about his creative process and his collaboration with Roald Dahl, "it was like being led astray by a naughtier schoolboy," he said. His recent books include Beyond the Page and Words and Pictures.

    After lunch, we reconvened to hear Grant McIntyre share his passion for the Aubrey-Maturin novels of Patrick O'Brian and explain why the books are read and loved by so many people who find their richness of detail, complex characterisation, and drama - among other things - make them much, much more than just 'a naval yarn'. To get us further into the spirit of things (if you'll pardon the pun), grog was served, and a clip from Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World was shown, and while many members of the audience were already firm O'Brian fans, Grant's talk will certainly have persuaded others to discover the books.

    The final speaker of the day was Virginia Ironside who, in conversation with Sue Gee, discussed the brighter sides to getting older. Virginia's recent novels No! I Don't Want to Join a Bookclub and No! I Don't Need Reading Glasses are 'diaries of growing old disgracefully', sound both very positive and extremely funny, and she provided a warm and witty end to the formal part of the event. 

       After Virginia's talk we had to rush off to catch a plane so couldn't stay for tea and the marvellous array of homemade cakes which were being served to those who could linger a while; there was also the opportunity for more book-buying, courtesy of the Slightly Foxed Bookshop which had brought a tempting range of stock, available to browse at breaks throughout the day.

        As you can see, this was a truly splendid day for book-lovers, and I look forward to next year's.

Break of Day in the Trenches

    The darkness crumbles away.

It is the same old druid Time as ever,

Only a live thing leaps my hand,

A queer sardonic rat,

As I pull the parapet's poppy to stick behind my ear.

Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew

Your cosmopolitan sympathies.

Now you have touched this English hand

You will do the same to a German

Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure

To cross the sleeping green between.

It seems you inwardly grin as you pass

Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,

Less chanced than you for life,

Bonds to the whims of murder,

Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,

The torn fields of France.

What do you see in our eyes

At the shrieking iron and flame

Hurled through still heavens?

What quaver - what heart aghast?

Poppies whose roots are in man's veins

Drop, and are ever dropping:

But mine in my ear is safe -

Just a little white with dust.

Isaac Rosenberg (25th. November 1890 - 1st. April 1918)

 

There is a brief commentary on the poem here.

Saints of the Shadow Bible

   

    Mr. Cornflower writes:-

    John Rebus, the gritty Edinburgh detective hero of Ian Rankin's superb series of crime novels, has been ageing 'in real time' ever since the first book appeared in 1987. As a lifetime of cigarettes, booze and Scottish junk food take an increasing toll on his raddled body, Rankin has had to show a great deal of ingenuity in explaining how the grizzled old soak, against all the odds, has managed to cling on in various shady corners of a police force increasingly intolerant of the old ways.

    The latest book, Saints of the Shadow Bible, plays deftly with the theme of old against new, as Rebus finds himself fighting two battles: to solve a series of crimes involving leading figures on both sides of 2014's independence vote, while at the same time playing a double role as part of an investigation into police brutality and corruption in the early 1980s, in which he was - and is - uncomfortably implicated. As always the pace is sharp, the plotting deft, and the evocation of place and atmosphere brilliant.

Out in paperback - Motherland

    Out today is the paperback edition of Motherland by William Nicholson, and as it's one of my top novels of the year so far, I wanted to shout about it a bit more, so here's what I had to say back in March:

 

    2012. Alice Dickinson - whom readers first encountered in The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life - goes to France to meet the grandmother who has only just learned of Alice's existence. "You come from a long line of mistakes," Pamela Avenell tells her, "and one true love story".

    It's that love story which is at the heart of William Nicholson's superb new novel, a book whose characters link it to the loose Sussex trilogy - The Secret Intensity ..., All the Hopeful Lovers and The Golden Hour - but which also stands alone. It's a masterly piece of work from a writer whose gifts include an unsurpassed ear for dialogue, a fluency in the telling of a story which keeps the reader turning the page while yet wanting to linger in and savour the moment, and an empathic insight into the hearts and minds of each of his characters. You can tell that I loved every word of it.

    In 1942, Kitty, an army driver stationed in Sussex, meets Ed, a Royal Marine Commando, and his best friend Larry, a liaison officer attached to Canadian Army Combined Operations. Kitty falls in love with Ed, but both Ed and Larry fall in love with her - sanguine, accepting Larry wishes his rival well, and then the two men take part in Operation Jubilee, the catastrophic Dieppe Raid - in which the casualty rate was almost 70% - and Fate plays her hand.

    Setting the book in England during the Second World War and in India shortly after it, William Nicholson uses real events to test his characters and real people to play opposite them. It's a winning combination, never stilted or contrived, but plausible and convincing, and in his Author's Note he quotes his sources and acknowledges his debt to the work of his wife, the social historian Virginia Nicholson, and in particular to her book Millions Like Us: Women's Lives in the Second World War.

    If you're not already acquainted with William Nicholson's work, don't lose a moment, and read him at the earliest opportunity - he is that good.

What to look out for

    OUP have brought out a centenary edition of Alain-Fournier's The Lost Domain: Le Grand Meaulnes translated by Frank Davison and with an introduction by Hermione Lee, and you can see Dame Hermione talk briefly about the book here. What she says is very interesting, especially in the light of our CBG discussion on the book; had I not already read it, her summing up would draw me in.

    This leads me to wonder whether there is not a place for the equivalent of a set of signposts at the beginning of certain books - in addition to the conventional introduction which I always read after the text as it so often gives away crucial parts of the plot - more a 'what to look out for', a pointer towards key themes, stylistic quirks, and so on, which would inform your reading, as Hermione Lee does in her short video, with the detailed analysis and contextual exposition and comment being left for later.

Handpicked books delivered to your door

   

    May I point you in the direction of The Glenogle & Bell Book Company, a new venture just launched by Vanessa and Malcolm Robertson - formerly of The Edinburgh Bookshop - by which you can take out a monthly subscription to have specially selected books delivered to you, or to a friend as a gift. The company are offering a wide range of packages for all ages, interests and tastes, and these will be further customised to ensure that the recipient gets something special every month. Read Vanessa's blog for more information, and have a look at the packages themselves - I'm sure that given the Robertsons' background in publishing and bookselling they will contain delights aplenty (and I can't say I'm not tempted myself!).