Cornflower Books

Browsing and buying

    Does the fact that the Norrington Room's Philosophy Help Desk was unmanned when I was there the other day suggest that it was the nihilists' shift or perhaps the immaterialists'? "Come back at noon for a platonist, or at 3.00 if it's nominalism you're after..." It reminded me of this.

    Enough nonsense - Blackwell's yielded several books, as the photograph shows. I'm looking to Nigel Warburton's A Little History of Philosophy to fill the (many, large) gaps in my knowledge. Julian Baggini says of it, "Warburton packs a heck of a lot into what is something of a Goldilocks volume: neither too much nor too little, the exegesis neither too thin or too thick and lumpy, his Little History can be consumed as a nourishing treat in its own right or provide the perfect fuel to kickstart anyone's journey into philosophy."

    Matthew Dennison's Eternal Boy: The Life of Kenneth Grahame is, I fear, a very sad tale as the author "charts with consummate poignancy the life of the author of The Wind in the Willows - from bookish bachelorhood to the torment of an emotionally arid marriage touched by tragedy".

    Ronald Blythe's In the Artist's Garden was, as this post shows, among the delights of last year's reading. His The Time by the Sea: Aldeburgh 1955-1958 looks at his involvement in the early years of Benjamin Britten's Festival. "It is a tale of music and painting, creativity and landscape. It describes the first steps of an East Anglian journey, an intimate appraisal of a vivid and memorable time." D.J. Taylor calls it "one of the best thing [Blythe] has written".

    In the bookshop's spirituality section I came upon Living on the Border: Reflections on the Experience of Threshold by Esther de Waal - "There is a traditional saying of ancient wisdom: 'A threshold is a sacred thing.' In some places of the world, in some traditional cultures and in monastic life, this is still remembered. It is something, however, that we often forget today. To take time to pause at a threshold - be it a place, or a moment between one action and the next - is to show reverence for the handling of space and time, and respect for those we meet. Pausing allows us to let go of all the demands and expectations of the previous activity, and to prepare for the encounter with another. In company with the poets and artists of the Welsh border country in which she lives, Esther de Waal explores what this ancient wisdom has to teach us about our public lives in the world today."

Friday reads

   

    Apologies for the rather sporadic posting of late - time and inspiration have been in short supply.

    My reading has been a bit wobbly too, but now I'm in the safe hands of William Boyd, well on with - Love is Blind and happily following the adventures of piano tuner extraordinaire Brodie Moncur in fin de siècle Paris and beyond. So far I very warmly recommend it.

 

   

    Top of the arrivals pile, meanwhile, is a book by Kate Humble; Thinking on my feet: the small joy of putting one foot in front of another "celebrates the simple, fundamental act of walking, the remarkable effect it has on our minds and bodies and the pleasure of moving through the world at walking pace". I opened it at the end just now (looking to see if there was an index) and happened to read the last couple of pages; they contain a touching, charming story which augurs well for the rest of the book.

 

        

     In the 'forthcoming' category, there's Eternal Boy, a biography of Kenneth Grahame by Matthew Dennison due out on 1st. November: "During the week Kenneth Grahame sat behind a mahogany desk as Secretary of the Bank of England; at the weekend he retired to the house in the country he shared with his fanciful wife Elspeth and fragile son Alistair and took lengthy walks along the Thames in Berkshire, 'tempted [by] the treasures of hedge and ditch; the rapt surprise of the first lords-and-ladies, the rustle of a field-mouse, the splash of a frog'.

    The result of these pastoral wanderings was The Wind in the Willows: an enduring classic of children's literature; a cautionary tale for adult readers; a warning of the fragility of the English countryside; and an expression of fear at threatened social changes that, in the aftermath of the World War I, became reality. Like its remarkable author, it balances maverick tendencies with conservatism. Graham was an Edwardian pantheist whose work has a timeless appeal, an escapist whose withdrawal from reality took the form of time travel into his own past."

    Where's your reading taking you just now? Any good books in prospect?

Marsh-lands

 

    Something to look forward to (although as it won't be out until 2021 we'll have a bit of a wait) is a new book from neurosurgeon Henry Marsh*. His next will be 'using neuroscience rather than surgery as a starting point for an exploration of what makes us human. He will reflect on the life of his own brain - having spent a lifetime fixing other people's - and ask what light neuroscience can shed on his past, present and future, blending the latest scientific discoveries with autobiography, storytelling and discussion about modern medicine, to create "a work of science, literature and memoir like no other".'

    If you don't already know Henry Marsh's prize-winning Do No Harm and his equally good second book Admissions, look out for them - I'm sure you won't be disappointed.

*Recently the castaway on Desert Island Discs.

Did not finish

    I can't remember when I last abandoned a book - it is very rare for me not to finish - but I have re-shelved Long Live Great Bardfield having reached the halfway mark. 

   Horses for courses, as they say.

This week's acquisitions

    Where has the time gone? 

    I am way behind with everything, it seems, not least responding to your recommendations on last Friday's post, all of them much appreciated.

    In the end I decided on Tirzah Garwood's autobiography Long Live Great Bardfield as my next book, and 150 pages in I've got very mixed feelings about it, but perhaps she's just about to get into her stride and my reservations will fade away. We shall see.

    In other reading, the rest of the pile above arrived this week: plenty to enjoy there.

Life's work

 

    

    To the book festival again, to hear Hilary Spurling and Jenny Uglow discuss the art of biography with reference to their latest books, Anthony Powell: Dancing to the Music of Time and Mr. Lear: A Life of Art and Nonsense.

    "Are the best biographies written by women?" asked chairman Richard Holloway. "It takes a man to point that out," said Hilary Spurling. The ladies agreed that the modern 'trend' in biography of "books you want to read" was largely started by Michael Holroyd, with similar freshness in the works of Richard Holmes*, Claire Tomalin, Victoria Glendinning, and Hermione Lee. Broadly speaking, though, men tended to concentrate on the lives of military leaders and statesmen (i.e. on power) while women inclined more to examine writers and artists. Hilary Spurling declared an extreme interest in other people, and this nosiness, as she called it, which Jenny Uglow shares, makes them adept at picking up information which someone more interested in a subject's work rather than their private life - as was the emphasis in the past - might not pick up.

    Could the ladies write about someone they didn't like? "In the same way an actor can play an unpleasant character", said Hilary Spurling, while Jenny Uglow added that loving the subject's work was the more important thing: "exploring the person who made X".

    On to specifics, and a brief overview of the books under discussion. Jenny Uglow was in the happy position of being asked by her publisher what she'd like to do next, and in feeling a personal involvement with Edward Lear was quick to claim him, as she put it. Born in 1812, the 17th of 19 children, Lear was brought up by an older sister in the manner of a Regency girl, occupied with sketching, the piano, and botany. He was an outsider, always felt his nonsense was unimportant and wanted to be known first and foremost as an artist - David Attenborough considers him the greatest natural history painter of his age and collects his work. It is the tension between the different sides of the man which fascinates, she says.

    Hilary Spurling first met Anthony Powell when she was 24, literary editor of The Spectator, and invited him to lunch. They later became close friends, and her biography of him has given her more pleasure to write than any other book. Powell's 12-part A Dance to the Music of Time "changed the novel in a way no-one else has done", and in its vision, depth and breadth puts him alongside the likes of Kafka, Balzac, and Stendhal. His dislocated youth, tyrannical father, rackety early adulthood, and wartime experiences enriched his life in biographical terms, and Jenny Uglow commented that Hilary Spurling's book conveys the "texture" of the world in which Powell and friends were living.

    Asked about the scope of their writing, per book, both ladies agreed there must be no "fenced-off areas" - "you go as deep into your subject as you can", said Hilary Spurling, "and it's the biographer, not the subject, who makes the book interesting or not." Jenny Uglow put it thus: "You delve, and ask, and open, and that's the magic of it."

    As to the impact of the digital world on future biography, "There may be deletion and obsolescence, but the past won't escape us," they said with heartening assurance.

    

*Mr. C. warmly recommends Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer.

Skymeadow: Notes from an English Gardener

    Observational, philosophical, romantic, optimistic, grounded, organic ... some of my notes on Charlie Hart's Skymeadow, a worthy addition to the shelf of gardening memoirs. Charlie's book is not a 'how to', or a straightforward 'what I did', but rather an account of the creation of a garden and the fledging of a career at a period of life marked by both grief and joy.

    Charlie explores territory that is deeper and wider than his seven acre hillside plot in rural Essex as he describes how the death of his father and then the illness and passing of his mother coloured his engagement with the land and inspired his prodigious efforts at shaping a garden which was a product of his idealism yet rooted in practicality. As he learns to face anxiety and emotional pain, to somehow reach an accommodation with feelings which can so easily blight growth, he discovers the link between horticulture and healing, gains the confidence to be at ease with himself, and settles with his family into a new life in a place "whose essential character is cheeriness".

    I found Charlie's efforts admirable. The energy - both physical and emotional - which he invests in his garden is enormous. Yes, he's a dreamer (and here's to us!) and he often bites off more than he can chew, but he's resourceful, positive, sensitive - in the best way, open and honest, generous of spirit, modest and frank. It's an appealing combination of traits and tendencies, especially when applied to the art and craft of garden making, and the result is a book both heartening and uplifting. I enjoyed it greatly.

Now, where were we?

    I'll spare you all the dramatic details, but my absence over the last few weeks has been down to Mr. C's having double pneumonia requiring hospitalisation. I'm glad to say that he is now much recovered and back at work, and life is returning to normal*.

    Posts may still be sporadic though, as when things were at their worst I couldn't read at all - I began three or four books (by reliable authors) and found I simply couldn't engage with them. As the patient improved I turned to Will Schwalbe who, in Books for Living: A Reader's Guide to Life, provided the warm, intelligent, naturally comfortable voice I needed. More on it soon, I hope, as I pick up the Cornflower reins again.

 

*Even when 'normal' equates to 'a bit dull', there is a lot to be said for it!

The Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize

   It's entirely by chance that we've had a flurry of Slightly Foxed posts in the last few days - I am not affiliated to the Fox in any way, purely a fan - but having flagged up the SF Best First Biography Prize a little while ago it would be remiss of me not to mention the winner which was announced last night and is, as you see above, Edmund Gordon's The Invention of Angela Carter.*

    Just by the way, six years on from this post I am still no further forward Carter-wise. 'Twas ever thus.

 

*It also won the Somerset Maugham Award.

On my desk today

   

    -    The Illustrated Dust Jacket 1920-1970 by Martin Salisbury - such delights here! More on it soon.

    -    Significant Others: Creativity & Intimate Partnership edited by Whitney Chadwick & Isabelle de Courtivron. "An original and revealing series of essays on artist and writer couples whose literary and artistic renown has been compounded by the fame - or notoriety - of their relationships." This looks fascinating,

    -    as does A Secret Sisterhood: The hidden friendships of Austen, Bronte, Eliot and Woolf by Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney. Examining creative connections, this book "offers a new perspective on established literary figures" (Tracy Chevalier).

If you're on Instagram ...

    ... pop over to @cornflowerbooks and you'll see that in conjunction with Slightly Foxed, I'm giving away a copy of The Real Reader's Quarterly, issue 21, as part of their #getfoxed60 celebrations.

    Full details are on the post for the above picture.

    If you're interested in books published by Slightly Foxed, I have recent posts on two of them, Rosemary Sutcliff's Blue Remembered Hills, and I was a Stranger by John Hackett, and a snippet from Richard Hillyer's Country Boy.

Bag a Classic

    Just in case you haven't seen it, Persephone Books are running a Mothering Sunday offer on their bestselling Persephone Classics. Until Saturday 10th. March*, all 12 of the Classics will be available for £7.50 instead of the usual £10.

    I haven't read The World that was Ours or Cheerful Weather for the Wedding but I can warmly recommend the other ten, and particular favourites include The Fortnight in September (post here), Someone at a Distance (by the excellent Dorothy Whipple), Agnes Jekyll's Kitchen Essays (see this post and this one), and Good Evening Mrs. Craven by Mollie Panter-Downes.

*Order by the 8th. for delivery in time for Mothering Sunday.

The Reading Cure

    

    Laura Freeman was 13 when anorexia took hold of her. A pernicious illness, it blighted her growing up, dominated her teens and early 20s. Around 15 years on, Laura has the measure of it, and in writing The Reading Cure: How Books Restored My Appetite has come to understand that though battles may be lost, as she puts it, the war can yet be won.

    I can't recommend this book highly enough. What you might expect to be a painfully self-regarding, reiteration of dark times is something quite other. It could have been uncomfortably heavy, ponderously introspective, as distressing as distressed, but it is none of those things. Laura's account of reading as salvation, restorer of "relish", is instead graceful, balanced, elegantly observational, and above all hopeful, positive, and forward looking.

    It's the most beautifully written book, for as Laura describes how Dickens "slackened the knots" of her illness, Siegfried Sassoon put her on to eggs, MFK Fisher won her over to butter, Hardy drew her back to milk, and JL Carr's Mrs. Ellerbeck led the way to Yorkshire pudding, she savours those books and characters, and recounts with lightness and eloquence how they fed not only her "trencherman's greed for books" but bolstered her appetite for food, allowing her to see it as friend, not foe, and amounting to "a whole library of reasons to eat, share, live, to want to be well."

    Laura reads widely and with discernment, choosing to spend time in the company of authors who can delight, entertain, inspire, and hearten. Take Laurie Lee, for instance: "his writing, walking and eating had a propulsive, infectious energy"; Patrick Leigh Fermor's adventuring and "happy, effortless" enjoyment of food signalled in her a small moment of personal liberation, a relaxation of the self-imposed rules that had hitherto made meals joyless. Molesworth ("my hero, my knight in rusting armour") makes her laugh, Harry Potter sparks a spell of "voluptuous reading" of childhood favourites.

    Virginia Woolf, Laura acknowledges, has been both congenial fellow-traveller on a hard road, and stark warning. "No other writer has helped me make sense of my own mind, nor offered such a rubric for how I might mend it," but in the end, of course, Woolf could no longer "rein in and stable her galloping horses, tie them and keep them in hay". This fact, however, makes her resolve to "fight for life and health all the more fiercely".

    To illustrate her mental state when in the grip of the illness Laura uses the analogy of a library, but one of broken windows, fallen bookcases, damaged, disordered books: a place of wreckage, not retreat. Her reading over the years has helped her to right her mental furniture, reordering, repairing, making good and strong and whole again, and ultimately her message for anyone suffering anorexia, or depression, "or any other head illness or heart sickness" comes from T.H. White's Merlyn:

    "Learn something," Laura says, "It is the best medicine. It is the only thing that never fails. In my case that has meant reading, most of all. Galleries and church-haunting, too. But it needn't be book-learning, it might be a language, an instrument, the names of wildflowers, the calls of town-garden birds, fifty years of county cricket scores, or how to make bread, mix watercolours, thread a needle, anything that takes you out of yourself. That is the real magic, not Merlyn's mustard-pot sorcery."

    Do read this book, whether or not you've been afflicted or affected by mental illness. Read it as a book-lover; read it to read with fresh eyes - or sharpened tastebuds; read it for fellow-feeling and hard-won wisdom, and for the sheer joy of taking pleasure in good things.

So much to tell

    One more brief word about So much to tell, Valerie Grove's biography of Puffin Books editor Kaye Webb, which I very warmly recommend. It's an intimate portrait of a woman who was hugely influential in the world of children's literature and childhood reading in the 1960s and '70s, and an affectionate, admiring look at that golden age and the person who did more than anyone to shape it, someone who, as Kaye's friend and former employer John Grigg* said, "brought pleasure and inspiration to generations of young people lucky enough to be born in a book-friendly era, and opened worlds of adventure and creativity for them." I am one of those young people, as I'm sure are many of you.

    So much to tell, so much to enjoy.

    

*If you've seen the second series of The Crown you'll have come across John Grigg, a.k.a. Lord Altrincham.

The picture is of some of my Postcards from Puffin.

To hear from Kaye Webb herself, listen to her Desert Island Discs.

Friday reads: a force of nature

    I'm pretty far on with So Much to Tell, Valerie Grove's excellent biography of Kaye Webb (from which I quoted the other day). I've now reached the Puffin years where our subject is shown as something of a force of nature, sweeping all before her (though sadly the same could not be said of her personal life). Her charm, enthusiasm, extensive connections, and instinct for what makes good literature meant that she was able to build a list of children's authors that was second to none and a byword for quality.

    I'm greatly enjoying the book, and you'll get a flavour of it from this talk by Valerie Grove.

The Edwardian Lady

   

    I got hold of a copy of Susan Tweedsmuir's The Edwardian Lady after Tim Pears mentioned it in his acknowledgements in The Wanderers  and said it had proved useful, (and I can see which passages in his novel were directly influenced by it).

    It's a series of recollections and observations on life - as Lady Tweedsmuir knew it - in the Edwardian era, and is a concise, eloquent, affectionate picture of that "unselfconscious" age.

    I should imagine the author was an excellent person to know. On the page she comes across as kind, thoughtful, appreciative, conscientious, modest, and with an interest in people, books, and ideas which speaks of a lively mind and an engaging personality.

    Published in 1966, this is a very personal look back from fifty years on at various aspects of Edwardian life and people. For example, the chapter titled The Edwardian Lady's Books, from which I quoted yesterday, goes on to discuss popular works of the day, many of them now unread, but just to show how fashions come and go, here's what she says about one author: "A writer whom I do not hear mentioned now but whose prose style I greatly admired, was Elizabeth von Arnim ..." - who among us has not read at least The Enchanted April?

    Touching on the Edwardian kitchen (she mentions Lady Jekyll - see this post and this), the Edwardian Lady and her Garden (Constance Lady Wenlock's gardening outfit shown here rather says it all), she speaks with great fondness of Edwardian Scotland. Marrying into the Buchan family, she came to know well the small town of Peebles, not far from us here in Edinburgh, and was struck by the loveliness of the surrounding country, "the brisker air of the north", and the relative intimacy of life in a close-knit community.

    Shopping in Peebles was a far cry from visiting the London emporia to which she was used. "Mrs. McGillivray, the greengrocer, on being asked what fruit she had in that day, would answer cheerfully, 'Nothing startling in the pear line'." Mr. Veitch sold fishing tackle, Miss Smith kept the sweetie shop, and at Mr. Goudburn's the baker, "every kind of delicious 'tea bread' was to be found." If you've read Priorsford by O. Douglas (the pen name of Anna Buchan, Susan Tweedsmuir's sister-in-law), you'll be familiar with the place.

    "I am sitting in my room at the falling close of a winter's day with the sky outside my window turning a faint rose colour, which puts me into the right mood for recollecting the past," says the author at the beginning of this book. Her memories are here most charmingly collected.

Reading aloud

     'I fear that reading aloud is another pleasure that has gone by the board with the coming of mechanised amusements. This is sad from a family point of view, as there is no bond like shared love for some story read aloud and enjoyed round the fire.

    In my family we often say, "Do you remember that Christmas when we first read The Turn of the Screw, or those holidays when we discovered The King with Two Faces?" My husband read his own books to us aloud chapter by chapter as he wrote them, and our children were always given (by me) something to do with their hands, drawing or sewing, for children are fidgety creatures, and are a restless audience if their hands are not occupied.'

    Susan Tweedsmuir, The Edwardian Lady.

Country Matters

   

    I've been reading Clare Leighton's Country Matters, illustrated - of course - by the author. It's as handsome an edition as her Four Hedges (snippets here and here), and imbued with the same connection to the land, the seasons, the timeless links between past and present, even in an era of fast change and 'progress' (the 1930s). Her wood engravings have great strength, movement, charm, and are the perfect counterpoint to the keen observation of her text.

 
   "At first sight the Ploughing Match resembles an ocean upon which ships cross and recross. The teams as they keep to their separate furrows can hold no intercourse. So at sea do ships pass, but never meet. But no, it is not a sea. Rather is it an enormous loom. The strips of pale stubble are the warp stretched tight across it. The furrows are the woof. Their lines of chocolate-coloured silk cross the stubble at right angles. The teams are the shuttles, ten in number. Slowly they move over the field, drawing the deep-brown silk behind them. But it is not only on the earth that this design is woven. Above, in the blue sky, it is repeated. Long white clouds pass across the firmament, parallel with the stubble, and at right angles to horse and plough. So, in two elements weaving proceeds."

    Her portraits are of primrose-picking, tree-felling, the village flower show, the cricket match, the fair ... each a glimpse of rural culture, character, and custom. But this is no eulogy to a disappearing age, rather - in her words - "a record of an enduring world [...] Romance need not live only under thatched eaves, drawing its water from moss-covered wells. It can survive the invasion of the tractor and the radio. It feeds upon an attitude of mind [...]"

Acclaimed but never entirely content

    

    

    "Mrs. Uttley's best selling status as an author was based on a few, relatively simple formulae - the vivid recollection of a vanished rural England for the pleasure of the nostalgic and curious reader; the creation of several closely-knit and wonderfully described communities of animals, in which the real world was mixed with magic, and in which some danger and suffering was contained by the security and goodwill of the wider community, and the writing of many precise and thoughtful essays that sparkle even more brightly with the passing of time.

    Her success was, however, achieved at the cost of much pain, for herself and for others, as she relentlessly pursued her objectives. Indeed, Penelope Fitzgerald was to describe her as 'a self-deluding romantic ... and a compulsive housekeeper, patching and jam-making in an heroically untidy kitchen ... it is impossible not to think of her as a sorceress, a story teller whose tales were produced only at mortal cost.'"    

    Denis Judd, The Private Diaries of Alison Uttley.

Biographical details

    The shortlist for the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize has been announced today (judges' comments follow each book):

    David Jones, Engraver, Soldier, Painter, Poet by Thomas Dilworth

       This comprehensive life of the great Modernist poet-artist David Jones is the fruit of a lifetime’s research and understanding, and brings new light to shine on Jones’s rare originality and genius.

    The Invention of Angela Carter: A Biography by Edmund Gordon

        In this finely judged and elegantly written biography, Gordon teases out the truth behind Angela Carter’s fictions about her own life, while recounting the brilliant and volatile career of this born writer, critic and fabulist.         

    This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor by Adam Kay

        A best-selling, no-holds-barred account of life at the coalface of the NHS by a comedian and former doctor, hilarious, horrifying and heartbreaking by turns.

    Young, Damned and Fair: The Life and Tragedy of Catherine Howard by Gareth Russell

        A stunning reappraisal of Henry VIII’s fifth wife, as scholarly as it is readable, that uses extensive research into her household to bring her chequered story vividly to life.

    The Uncommon Reader: A Life of Edward Garnett by Helen Smith

        An exemplary life of the writer and editor with a gift for spotting genius, champion of Conrad, Galsworthy, D.H. and T.E. Lawrence and Somerset Maugham, literary godfather to the Edwardian age.

    Kenneth Clark: Life, Art and Civilisation by James Stourton

        As a new version of Civilisation comes to our screens, the complex figure of Kenneth Clark, aesthete, broadcaster, writer and cultural panjandrum, is dissected in this perceptive and entertaining biography. 

    The winner will be announced on 6th. March.