Cornflower Books

Wildfire at Midnight

 

 

    Strange goings-on at a remote hotel on the Isle of Skye in the early summer of 1953 are the subject of Mary Stewart's second novel, Wildfire at Midnight.

    Model Gianetta Brooke, still bruised from the end of her short marriage, arrives at Camasunary for a few weeks of rest and relaxation. Her fellow guests are an odd assortment of people, and from the emotional undercurrents which seem to run between them she gets the impression that she has unwittingly walked into the middle of a drama of some kind. Just how dangerous the situation is quickly becomes apparent, and as that drama plays out on the slopes of the mighty Cuillin, where even in summer the weather can turn from benign to deadly in mere minutes, Gianetta encounters murder, mystery, superstition ... and her ex-husband.

    I'd describe this jolly good read as a 'locked room' detective story on a mountainside with a wee dash of The Wicker Man and The Thirty-Nine Steps; I enjoyed it very much indeed.

    For more Mary Stewart, have a look at Touch Not the Cat, and - as an aside - this post.

Inspiration

 

    "Connie visited [artist and designer] Norman Wilkinson at his riverside home Strawberry House, by Chiswick Mall ... As she explored and admired the house, Connie came across something that suddenly jogged her memory: hanging in the sitting-room was a copy of Richard II Holding the Red Rose of Lancaster, the painting that she had seen as a child in The Studio magazine. She explained how she had been so excited by it, the lavish richness combined with austere formality: 'I remember to this day', she wrote, 'the parterre of delicate, exquisite even strange flowers: flaked and ticked pinks, curious foxgloves, panachée roses ...the minute and elaborate detail of the smallest flower.' She told Wilkinson that this painting had inspired in her a creative interest in all kinds of flowers, whether wild, exotic, rare or commonplace. The artist was pleased when he heard that she had liked it so much because, he told her, it was he who had painted it when he was very young. He quoted some lines of Milton from Lycidas which had inspired him:

    Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,

    The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,

    The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet,

    The glowing violet,

    The musk rose, and the well-attired woodbine,

    With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,

    And every flower that sad embroidery wears. "

    From The Surprising Life of Constance Spry by Sue Shephard.

    A lovely example of links in the long chain of inspiration, and if you're interested in flowers and the wider social scene in Britain from the 1930s to the '50s I'd recommend the book warmly.

Books in brief: The Tree

   

    Following on neatly from Orchard, John Fowles's The Tree is, as William Fiennes describes it in his foreword, "a sui-generis polemical memoir-essay". It's a collection of recollections and observations, suitably dendritic in form, ranging from anti-Linnean sentiments to a skewering of the essence of art and Fowles's own creative process. It's a short book but it offers much to think about and would, I am sure, repay re-reading.

    Just by the way, I wouldn't have thought of bracketing JF together with Elizabeth Goudge, but among several references in the book to paintings is one to a favourite work of his, Pisanello's The Vision of Saint Eustace ("this ambiguous little masterpiece"), which features so memorably in Miss Goudge's The Herb of Grace.

Orchard: A Year in England's Eden

   

    The English orchard which Benedict Macdonald and Nicholas Gates have studied through the seasons over the course of several years and describe in such eloquent detail in their book Orchard: A Year in England's Eden is in effect a portal to the past, allowing them to experience the natural world their (great-)grandparents would have known, decades ago.

    Run organically and managed with the lightest and most sensitive of hands, the orchard is one of few such environments to survive in an age of tightly controlled and chemically-dependent farming and food production, but its owners' approach has led to its achieving an extraordinary ecological balance with a place for everything - or every creature, you might say - and everything in its place.

    A landscape literally "singing with life", the orchard's habitat supports a rich variety of insects, birds and mammals, and effects a natural regulation which allows it to be productive - its apples and pears become cider and perry - while performing a vital function of conservation.

    That such important parcels of land have been lost at such a rate in the name of 'progress' in recent years is a disturbing thought with which we are becoming all too familiar, but books such as this one and James Rebanks's English Pastoral remind us that there where there's a will, there's a way, and even small changes to the way we manage our gardens, parks, and farmland can have far-reaching effects.

    Orchard, as with English Pastoral and Dara McAnulty's Diary, opens the reader's eyes and ears to what's around them, fostering a habit of observing, learning, and understanding how the natural world works and how we might help it.

    I'll leave you with the book's final paragraph:

    "It's late afternoon on New Year's Eve. An eerie hush blankets the orchard. The snow has locked the apples away. Sad and mute, once-warring thrushes cluster in the hedgerows as the fading light turns them to grumpy, huddled shapes. The old apples lean, it seems, a little more than at the month's beginning; their outstretched forms pleading in silence. Below the furrowed tentacles of pears, a tidy rank of new trees lies carefully planted. These tiny pioneers stand bolt upright: young cadets, frozen in a never-ending salute to their elders. The deep blue dims and the old trees fade. As the moon silvers the orchard's wrinkled skin, only fierce orchard robins will sing for this vanishing world."

Words and music

   

    Alexandra Harris* is always worth listening to, and recently she was Michael Berkeley's guest on Private Passions, offering a rich and interesting selection of her favourite music.

*Posts on her work are here and here.

Wise words

... from Charlie Mackesy for a new year. Wishing you well!