Cornflower Books

Recently read

    Favourites among them: The Silver Branch and The Other Bennet Sister (a delight!).

Good lines: on writing

 

    " ... books are a uniquely portable magic."

    "Reading is the creative centre of a writer's life."

    " ... there is a huge difference between story and plot. Story is honourable and trustworthy; plot is shifty, and best kept under house arrest."

    "The leisurely luxury-liner experience of a long, absorbing novel like The Far Pavilions or A Suitable Boy has been one of the form's chief attractions since [Clarissa and the like]. I believe each story should be allowed to unfold at its own pace, and that pace is not always double time."

    "The scariest moment is always just before you start."

    "Having someone who believes in you makes a lot of difference."

    Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

February's books

    The origins of fairytales; the best of nature writing; the wonderful world of words; a highly imaginative novel about a boy with an extraordinary gift; an intricate mystery for Poirot to solve.

    All very enjoyable, but I think the Richard Mabey takes the prize this month.

January's books

    All good, but the top three on the pile were the highlights: The Armourer's House by Rosemary Sutcliff is pure delight, Juliet Nicolson's The Great Silence 1918-1920 Living in the Shadow of the Great War, fascinating and moving in equal measure, and The Appeal by Janice Hallett is ingeniously, brilliantly done!

An old favourite

    Today's email from the London Review Bookshop was on J.L. Carr, whose books are currently being reprinted by Penguin as Modern Classics. I've spoken here often about Carr's masterpiece A Month in the Country, but after this morning's prompt I do so again in case you don't already know the book - it's not to be missed. For those who are familiar with the novel, Byron Rogers's biography of its author is very much worth reading too.

Recommending ...

     Apricot Sky by Ruby Ferguson is a delight! As Candia McWilliam says in her introduction to the new Dean Street Press/Furrowed Middlebrow edition (the book having first been published in 1952), "the plot of the novel is, simply, life, as lived by irresistible characters with humour, optimism, and affection". And of the writing, " [it's] a ballad in prose; the 'refrains' are singingly chromatic accounts, most often of weather, land or sea, [...] it's something like watching tweed being made, the bright threads combining to offer veracity to nature. She lays down colour with plein-air freshness and sincerity." She's spot-on about this funny, warm, light-hearted romance, the engaging story of a Highland family set just after the war. 

    White Spines: Confessions of a Book Collector by Nicholas Royle is a quest narrative set in second-hand bookshops. It's about the collecting impulse, the 'completist' mentality, the thrill of discovery, and the quiet pleasure of mooching around among old books. In Nicholas Royle's case, the quarry is the white-spined Picador paperbacks published from the 1970s to the '90s, but whether you define the hunt as 'hobby' or 'obsession', it's a rich and lively account of the world of books, writers, writing, and how those things can shape and furnish a life. 

   Devorgilla Days by Kathleen Hart is aptly subtitled A Memoir of Hope and Healing. Kathleen outlines but doesn't dwell on the very tough times which led her to buy a small white "sugar cube" of a cottage in Scotland's 'book capital', Wigtown, but it's clear that her easy acceptance by the community there, the friendships she has made, and the new sense of purpose and joy in life that she has found in her adopted home are of especial value given what she's weathered. Her core message applies to anyone, whether they are experiencing rough water or plain sailing: "Have a go. It's fine once you're in." In other words, choose expansion over contraction, try something and see, and don't be afraid to start over. Kathleen will show you how.

A loyal and fervent advocate

   

    A letter from Philip Larkin to his Faber editor Charles Monteith, the latter having turned down Barbara Pym's latest novel An Unsuitable Attachment:

   ' "... what I feel is this: by all means turn it down if you think it's a bad book of its kind, but please don't turn it down because it's the kind of book it is ... Personally, too, I feel it is a great shame if ordinary sane novels about ordinary sane people doing ordinary sane things can't find a publisher these days. This is the tradition of Jane Austen and Trollope and I refuse to believe that no one wants its successors today."

    Larkin was writing his own manifesto: "I like to read about people who have done nothing spectacular, who aren't beautiful or lucky." He wanted to read about people who can see "in little autumnal moments of vision, that the so called big experiences of life are going to miss them". That such things "are presented not with self-pity or despair or romanticism, but with realistic firmness and even humour." Larkin, now excessively riled, went out on a limb, saying that this was the "kind of writing a responsible publisher ought to support (that's you, Charles!)".  ...

    Monteith had suggested that Pym had not sufficiently developed as a writer, but Larkin was having none of it: "I think development is a bit of a myth; lots of writers don't develop, such as Thomas Hardy or P.G. Wodehouse, nor do we want them to. That is how I feel about Miss Pym." '

    From The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym by Paula Byrne.

    As we know, Barbara Pym did not remain out of favour for she went on to be (re-)published to great acclaim, but it was Larkin's championing of her, along with Lord David Cecil's, that eventually turned the tide.

Recent acquisitions

    I bought these the other day, posted them on Instagram, and got so many comments raving about The Other Bennet Sister. Have you read it - or any of the others?

Still here!

   

    I'm not sure where the weeks have gone, but I am still here and have books to talk about. There will be posts coming on recent good reads, Devorgilla Days by Kathleen Hart and White Spines by Nicholas Royle, but for today, a word or two on a few others.

    After long being on my radar I've now read my first Louise Penny: I thoroughly enjoyed Still Life, especially its village setting and central character Inspector Gamache, and despite a bit of an over-stretched plot device I am definitely in the market for the next in the series.

    Anthony Horowitz's The Word is Murder was cleverly done, with the author putting himself into the book as an aide to an investigating officer. I don't read much crime, but this struck me as a nice twist on the norm.

    Agatha Christie: First Lady of Crime edited by HRF Keating is a reprint with a new introduction by Sophie Hannah. To get the most out of it you'd probably need a closer acquaintance with Dame Agatha's work than I have, but nonetheless it includes many interesting observations on what makes her the famous and enduring success she is.

    On to another huge bestseller: Rosamunde Pilcher. I recently re-read The Shell Seekers with much pleasure. It's a warm bath of a book, immersive and comforting, but what struck me was the editorial licence it displayed - nowadays a similar manuscript would be extensively pruned.

    As to current reading, I've just begun Ruby Ferguson's Apricot Sky and I'm delighted so far. It looks like being a sweet and happy story and has already had me laughing out loud. Stay tuned ...

Bookshop open!

    Here in Scotland bookshops re-opened this week. We popped up to Topping & Co. this morning and bought the above: the A.J. Ayer is Mr. C's, we'll both read Edmund de Waal's acclaimed Letters to Camondo and Leo Marks's* Between Silk and Cyanide, while the Christopher Lloyd and Paula Byrne's biography of Barbara Pym are for me.

*Leo Marks was the son of Benjamin Marks of Marks & Co, the bookshop at the heart of Helene Hanff's 84, Charing Cross Road.

Spring cannot be cancelled

    This is a delight! 

    Spring cannot be cancelled: David Hockney in Normandy by Martin Gayford is a book of enthusiasm (and enthusiasms) which centres on engagement, so that looking becomes seeing, and listening, hearing. It’s full of insights, discoveries, wisdom, and above all, the joy of living.

    In conversation (by phone or email) with his old friend, art critic Martin Gayford, David Hockney reflects on all manner of things while painting the coming of spring in the Normandy landscape in which he’s made a home. They talk about Hockney's work - of course - but range across the history of art as well. Poetry is quoted, the challenges of painting rain noted, puddles are analysed for their peculiar charm. Both men have so many references at their fingertips, their exchanges could have been pompous or self-satisfied, but there's none of that here. Instead, their easy back-and-forth is - as the jacket copy says - "an uplifting manifesto that affirms art's capacity to divert and inspire".

    I loved Hockney’s freshness, his sense of wonder (still, at 83), his broad knowledge, and the deep pleasure he takes in the natural world. Reading it is like eavesdropping on a fascinating discussion which you hope will go on and on.

    It's a beautifully produced book, and pure pleasure to read.

Books in brief x 3

       You don’t have to be knowledgeable about cricket to enjoy Peter Pan’s First XI. Kevin Telfer’s account of JM Barrie’s extraordinary collection of players - Arthur Conan Doyle, PG Wodehouse, AA Milne, to name a few - evokes an era and a literary milieu as well as showing Barrie through the lens of his sporting obsession.

    Ursula Buchan is to be commended for her research and her writing in A Green and Pleasant Land: How England’s Gardeners Fought the Second World War. Fascinatingly detailed and an excellent read.

    Bizarre but nonetheless compelling, Margery Allingham’s Traitor’s Purse sees Albert Campion save the world in wartime. Very slick, and not a word wasted. More on it here.

Homes and gardens

    John Harris gardens at Tresillian House (you may have seen him recently on Rick Stein's Cornwall) and in The Natural Gardener he combines a lovely chatty memoir with much practical information on his method of gardening which is to utilise the power of the moon - specifically as its phases affect the water table. Lots of good tips and links for further reading combined with the sort of advice you'd get from a highly experienced, wise gardening friend.

    I posted a passage yesterday from Lucy Worsley's Jane Austen at Home. It's a really lively book - written con brio - and I found it fascinating. It makes me want to go back to the novels and re-read now with a much greater understanding of the sub-text. Incidentally, I bought this book (a while ago) because it fell off a high shelf in Blackwell's and landed at my feet. For those who read significance into such things, I've yet to discover its defining purpose - other than to be a jolly good read!

    The World of Elizabeth Goudge by Sylvia Gower is a reprint by Girls Gone By. It's very much 'in the footsteps of' EG, visiting the places in which she lived and which provided inspiration for her books. Again, it will prompt (re-)reading and provide another layer of understanding, and I'm glad to have it alongside the novels.

Worsley on Brontë on Austen

 

    "Jane's fictional world was so perfectly, minutely and solidly constructed that it took another brilliant and unusual writer, Charlotte Brontë, a generation later, to pull it down. Brontë memorably described Pride and Prejudice as 'a carefully-fenced, highly cultivated garden with neat borders and delicate flowers - but no glance of a bright vivid physiognomy - no open country - no fresh air - no blue hill - no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen in their elegant but confined houses.' She concludes her demolition job with 'these observations will probably irritate'. Yes, Charlotte Brontë, they do irritate, as you could hardly have written Jane Eyre unless Jane Austen had previously constructed something worthy of demolition."

    From Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley (a most enjoyable read).

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.

Diary of a Young Naturalist

   

    "Over the years, a wall of stone and beautiful ivy has grown up around me, and only family and wildlife are allowed in."

    I've been reading Dara McAnulty's Wainright Prize-winning Diary of a Young Naturalist, an account of four seasons of his young life. Still only sixteen but wise beyond those years, Dara's autism informs a deep and sustaining knowledge of and relationship with the natural world in his native Northern Ireland and beyond. Reading his words, you're struck by his intense sensory engagement with weather, flora, fauna; the energetic shifts of land-, sea- and cloud-scapes as backdrops to the flight of birds, the industry of insects, the essence and purpose of a single blade of grass or a giant, ancient oak.

    While the press and pull of people and the manmade world can make it hard for Dara to find his place and point of balance, nature's stimulus opens his heart and mind. Wildlife is his refuge but also his purpose, and capturing his experiences and concerns on the page not only lets him relive them - an important processing function for him - but allows the reader, irrespective of where they live, to see what is around them.

    His depth of feeling comes from a place far beyond 'mere' observation but rather an exquisite and deeply forged connection to the natural world which amounts to almost a symbiotic relationship. As both a loving guardian of our planet and an eloquent advocate for its natural treasure and its necessary protection, Dara's is a voice to heed and his example one worth following.

It was a wonderful room to wake up in ...

    "... Dreamless nights came to an end with no harder shock than that of a boat's keel grounding on a lake shore. Sunlight streamed in through the three tall windows and, as I lay in bed, all I could see was layer on ascending layer of chestnut leaves, like millions of spatulate superimposed green hands, and the crystalline sky of October framed by the thin reflected blue-white, or thick milk-white, or, where the sun struck, white-gold surfaces of the walls and window-arches and embrasures."

    From A Time to Keep Silence by Patrick Leigh Fermor.

Looking forward to re-reading ...

    ... Random Commentary, a compilation of Dorothy Whipple's notes and diaries from the 1920s to the 40s. I found it in the library a few years ago and enjoyed it very much.

Books in brief: Travels on my Elephant

 

    One of those 'Mad dogs and Englishmen ...' memoirs, the late Mark Shand's account of a trek across India with his elephant Tara is vivid, lively, and not without emotion. 

    A man who led a colourful life, Shand turned his adventure into a cause, eventually founding the conservation charity Elephant Family which establishes wildlife corridors, protecting habitats so that animals can thrive.

    I found the book fascinating, for its portrait of India, for what I learned about elephants, and for what it says about how to live.

    Hankies at the ready!

Purchases and presents

    Good reading ahead.