Cornflower Books

Three things

  1. Escapist reading - Book Barmy quotes Neil Gaiman

  2. Always Take Notes - Lady Antonia Fraser (about to turn 90!) is the latest guest on this interesting podcast.

  3. Happy birthday, Beatrix Potter - born on this day in 1866 and the subject of a current V&A exhibition.

Quiet, please

    A thread on Twitter the other day, started by US literary agent and former editor Sarah Bowlin, asked which "quiet" novels people love. Publishing is so often focused on books which are "not quiet", she said, but she loves the "quiet" ones too, and so do many others, for it won't be a surprise to readers of this blog that the response to her question showed clearly that there are many, many fans of novels which are understated, unshowy, unhyped, but which in their more intimate scale, often concerned with the domestic, the mundane, the still, small voice of calm, are every bit as immersive and as satisfying to the reader as their louder, bolder, counterparts, and often become true long-term friends, turned to in all moods.

    Click the link above to see the full range of recommendations. Among those I offered or seconded are JL Carr's A Month in the Country, Mollie Panter-Downes's One Fine Day, Dorothy Whipple, Elizabeth Goudge, William Trevor, Jane Gardam, John Williams's Stoner, Barbara Pym, Anita Brookner, All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West, Elizabeth von Arnim's The Enchanted April. Lots of Persephone books fall into the quiet category, as do some delights from Dean Street Press. If you can add to the list via a comment below, please do!

Three things

    A few things which have caught my eye and may be of interest to you:

 

   Starting on 18th August, Sky Arts* are broadcasting a new four-part documentary series, Wonderland: "In one remarkable fifty-year period an unforgettable collection of classic children’s literature was created in Britain. An extraordinary range of writers turned to a form of writing where they created “Wonderlands”, “Neverlands” – places of happiness in which children were portrayed as living in a happy world, where sorrow and the difficulties and tragedies of adult life were simply removed."

    The series explores the lives of the authors of those stories - "Arthur Ransome, Kenneth Grahame, A. A. Milne, J. M. Barrie, Rudyard Kipling, Erskine Childers, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Lewis Carroll, Beatrix Potter - and reveals the pain and tragedy behind their words."

*Edited to add: re. access, see comment below.

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    Dean Street Press now have a Facebook group, so if you're a fan of golden age mystery and mid-century women's fiction (among others) you might look in there.

    My most recent Dean Street reads are Apricot Sky by Ruby Ferguson and Mrs. Lorimer's Quiet Summer by Molly Clavering, both lovely, restful books.

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    I very much like the sound of Fellowship Point by Alice Elliott Dark, out now in the US and on Kindle in the UK, coming here in hardback in September. This is what the book's editor has to say about it: