Cornflower Books

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.

                                                    ~

    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.

                                                    ~

    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:

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.

When life gets too fraught ...

... reach for pure romantic escapism.

    So says Dorothy Dunnett, born on this day in 1923 (and thanks to Alice for the reminder). No apologies for again posting this lovely interview by Jenny Brown which puts me in awe of Lady Dunnett's industry, her research skills, and of course her ability as writer and storyteller.

    Should you not know her work there's a short post on The Game of Kings, the first of the Lymond Chronicles, here, but Alice recommends the House of Niccolò series so to mark the writer's birthday I've ordered a copy of Niccolò Rising from Blackwell's.

    For more of the lady herself listen to her Desert Island Discs here.

Lees-Milne on ...

... John Gielgud: "charming but inattentive. In conversation sophisticated remarks patter off him like undirected raindrops."

... Bamber Gascoigne (aged 7): "a sensitive, delicate and adventuresome little boy."

... Ralph Vaughan Williams: "a very sweet man, with an impressive appearance. He is big and broad and has a large head with sharply defined features, and eyes that look far into the distance."

... Beatrix Potter (Mrs. Heelis): "an unbending, masculine, stalwart woman, with an acute business sense. She was rather tart with her dim husband and adored her sheep, not for sentimental Beatrix Potter reasons but for hard-cash Heelis ones."

... T.S. Eliot: "dark, swarthy, professorial, retiring, quizzical, diffident - a medical practitioner or undertaker's clerk."

 

From James Lees-Milne, Diaries, 1942-1954

Writers' portraits: Dame Ivy Compton-Burnett

    "At 2.15 I joined the Hills at Miss Jourdain's and Miss Compton-Burnett's where they were lunching. A great occasion. Margaret Jourdain is patently jealous of Ivy Compton-Burnett, whom she keeps unapproachable except through herself. The two have lived together for years and are never parted. They are an Edwardian and remarkably acidulated pair. The coiffures of both look like wigs. Miss C.-B., whom I consider to be the greatest living English novelist, is upright, starchy and forthright. There is a bubbling undercurrent of humour in every observation that she makes, and she makes a good many, apparently hackneyed and usually sharp, in a rapid, choppy, rather old-fashioned upper-middle-class manner, clipping her breathless words. She enunciates clearly and faultlessly, saying slightly shocking things in a matter-of-fact tone, following up her sentences with a lot of 'dontcherknows', and then smiling perceptibly. She has a low, breasty chuckle. She has not unpleasing, sharp features, and her profile is almost beautiful. But she is not the kind of woman who cares tuppence for appearances, and wears a simple, unremarkable black dress which she smoothes down with long fingers."

    James Lees-Milne, Diaries, 1942-1954

    You can hear some of Dame Ivy's observations in an interview she gave to Studs Terkel in 1962. Part I is here, and part II here.

    The 'almost beautiful' profile may be seen here. The 1942 portrait above is by Howard Coster.

"I just think, I'll start and we'll get somewhere."

 

    That's Kate Atkinson on the writing process on Desert Island Discs.

    I applaud her choice of luxury!

 

    There's a post on Transcription, Kate Atkinson's latest novel, here.

Looks interesting

       "Legendary Authors and the Clothes They Wore examines fifty revered writers—among them Samuel Beckett, Quentin Crisp, Simone de Beauvoir, T.S. Eliot, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Malcolm Gladwell, Donna Tartt, John Updike, Oscar Wilde, and Tom Wolfe—whose work and way of dress bears an idiosyncratic stamp influencing culture today. Terry Newman combines illuminating anecdotes about authors and their work, archival photography, first-person quotations from each writer and current designers, little-known facts, and clothing-oriented excerpts that exemplify their original writing style.

    Each entry spotlights an author and a signature wardrobe moment that expresses his or her persona, and reveals how it influences the fashion world today. Newman explores how the particular item of clothing or style has contributed to fashion’s lingua franca—delving deeper to appraise its historical trajectory and distinctive effect. Legendary Authors and the Clothes They Wore is an invaluable and engaging look at the writers we love—and why we love what they wear—that is sure to captivate lovers of great literature and sophisticated fashion."

    Published today.

    Postcards from 100 Writers and Artists.

Telling tales

   

    "I remember that as a child I was so absorbed in my tellings to others that they could see what I saw. I could always get an audience. Not that I looked for one, the telling was all, or rather, the seeing. I don't think I write for children, any more than the great Miss Potter. For what? Whom? Well, myself, perhaps; I never think of an audience, that would kill everything. I think all children's books are grown-up books. When children's books are children's books they are not worth reading."

    P.L. Travers, quoted in Tellers of tales: children's books and their authors from 1800-1964 by Roger Lancelyn Green.

    You can hear Pamela Travers' Desert Island Discs here.

Harper Lee

    Thank you for what you gave us. May you rest in peace.

Plum and friend

    Mr. C., Wodehouse fan that he is, found this picture of P.G. and dachshund in Blackwell's on Saturday. I was elsewhere in the shop at the time but when he showed it to me I went and bought my own copy. It was on a stand with many other writers' portraits, all grim, dour, miserable, tormented-looking souls to whose pictures I wouldn't give house room; Plum and Jed, however, are welcome on my desk - thank goodness for smiley people who write cheery books!

    Here's a gallery of writers and their dogs by photographer Jill Krementz.

Writers' portraits - Nancy Mitford

    William Acton, brother of Harold, drew all the Mitford sisters; above is Nancy, and here - at The Swan Inn, Swinbrook (close to what was their childhood home) are reproductions of all six portraits.

    Nancy's novels The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate are two of my all-time favourites (though I don't care for the covers on those editions), and her letters are also wonderfully entertaining: try Love From Nancy: The Letters of Nancy Mitford or The Mitfords: Letters between Six Sisters (there's a post on it here).

Picture of the day: a literary celebrity

 

Just Margaret Atwood. You know. #literarygiant #theheartgoeslast #thehandmaidstale #margaretatwood #marytoddlincolnandfamouspeople #FLOTUS #marytoddlincoln #bookstoredog #shopdog #parnassusbooks #dachshundsofinstagram @randomhouse @penguinrandomhouse @parnassusbooks

A photo posted by Mary Todd Lincoln (@marytoddlincolncoffman) on Oct 19, 2015 at 2:36pm PDT

    Mary Todd Lincoln Coffman, and a person.

    See more of Mary Todd Lincoln here, and visit her at her place of work here.

Writers' portraits - P.D. James

    This 1996 portrait of the late P.D. James was painted by Michael R. Taylor, its setting the sitter's study in her London home. Baroness James commented in the course of this interview that as depicted here, hers is "the face of someone who has looked on the darker side of life."

    Click here for an audio interview from 2009 in which P.D. James discusses the qualities she admires in men and women and with which she endowed her detective Adam Dalgleish; the background to and influences on her writing career; the detective novel's ordering function; the implicit contract between reader and writer, and the fascination of plotting detective fiction.

    Having read many James novels over the years, I'm revisiting her work by beginning with her first book, Cover Her Face, which I am much enjoying.

Writers' portraits @edbookfest

 
   I've missed the first week of the Edinburgh International Book Festival as I've been somewhat under the weather, but to give all of us absent friends a flavour of it I thought I'd post one of its 'sidelights', if I can put it that way, the gallery of writers' portraits by Edinburgh photographer Chris Close which you can find around the festival site in Charlotte Square Gardens.

    You can see a few of Chris's great pictures here, and if you're on Periscope and following Edinburgh Book Fest (@edbookfest) you can catch a short film of him at work, photographing A.C. Grayling, and talking about some of this week's shots.

    Chris has collected 100 of his best pictures in a book, Between the Lines: Portraits of Authors, and if I can get up to Charlotte Square in the next few days I'll look out for his postcard portraits which are on sale in the bookshop.

    Shown here is, of course, Colm Tóibín.

There once was an ugly duckling

      Hans Christian Andersen and friend, a 'climbing sculpture' in Central Park.

A writer's library

    Now here's a thing: a chance to buy a writer's library (or part thereof).

    London booksellers Heywood Hill are selling George MacDonald Fraser's working library, "over 2500 books including the historical source material and fictional influences for all his work, not least the incomparable Flashman novels". Follow the link above for more information, including some of what is included in the sale.

    I like the autobiographical lines Heywood Hill have chosen for their page -

    on writing:

"Anyway, for whatever reason, the bug of the senachie, the Highland teller of tales, seems to have bitten me early, and has never let go."

    and on editing:

"I am not normally receptive to suggestions, which I suppose makes me an editor’s nightmare. I make no apology for this; they're my books..."

    George MacDonald Fraser's daughter Caro Fraser is a writer, too, and I have on my shelf, though as yet unread, The Pupil, the first of her series of novels of legal life, all of which look very appealing. Do you know them?

Writers' portraits - Hilary Mantel

    I'm glad to read that Hilary Mantel is pleased with this portrait by the young artist Nick Lord. It is to go on show at the British Library later this month and will be the first image of a living writer to be hung there.

    Its subject said, "I didn't want to look as if I was just sitting, contemplating the daffodils, but as though I might have an impact in the world". I think she's got her wish.

Life itself is a story

    "To me and my kind, life itself is a story and we have to tell it in stories; that is the way it falls."

    Rumer Godden, quoted by Anne Chisholm in Rumer Godden: A Storyteller's Life.

Writers' portraits - Robert Louis Stevenson

Click to enlarge

    This is the Robert Louis Stevenson panel from The Great Tapestry of Scotland. It includes the door knocker from the Stevenson family's house at 17, Heriot Row*, Leerie the Lamplighter, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Fidra, the island in the Forth on which RLS is said to have based his map of Treasure Island, The Land of Counterpane, his Samoan name Tusitala, that is Teller of Tales, and other references.

*There's more at RLS in Edinburgh: his homes and haunts.

    Here is RLS painted by John Singer Sargent, and here the same painter has captured him in an informal scene with his wife Fanny. Sargent said "he seemed to me the most intense creature I had ever met."

    There are two portraits of Stevenson by Count Girolamo Nerli, and the sitter said of them "the oil [above] represents me as I am, the pastel as I would like to be”.

    This last is a sad picture, I think, because it seems to speak of what might have been; it was painted two years before his death at the age of only 44.

    Although he was a literary celebrity in his day, RLS's writing was greatly out of fashion for much of the 20th. century, but according to this article, critical interest has been increasing and "reading this Mozartian and mercurial writer remains for many as for Borges, despite critical neglect, quite simply 'a form of happiness'."

Writers' portraits - Robertson Davies

    This post will just scrape in before the 28th. of August is over, and the date is important because it is the 100th. anniversary of Robertson Davies's birth, something I confess I would not have been aware of but for this short piece this morning.

    Happily, I still have lots of his books left to read, but those I have read - including Fifth Business with our own book group - have been marvellously rich reads, distinctive of voice, strong in narrative pull, and fascinating in content and ideas. If you've yet to discover his work, do try him soon (his three great trilogies, for example, Salterton, Deptford and Cornish, or The Cunning Man), and as Martin Chilton says in that article, take one on a long journey* and you may find, as he did, that the miles pass very pleasantly.

    For more of the man himself, here is a television interview from the 1970s, and here is his Paris Review interview from which come a few bons mots with which to end:

On the work-in-progress - "I hope it turns out well. But with novels, like cakes, you never know."

On writer's block - "I might enjoy a wee block, just to have time to catch my breath."

On endings - "...if the story is any good, it must have an inevitability."

On clarity - "I am a writer much given to light and shade, and I firmly believe that to know all is to despise all."

On selective details - "there must be a few tricky bits in my books or they wouldn’t be books by me."

                                                ~~~~~

    *Speaking of journeys, I asked you the other day which books you'd pack as good travelling companions, and you gave such a wealth of suggestions that if we took them all, no journey would have a dull moment. I'll be drawing a name out of the hat tomorrow (Thursday) so if you haven't entered and would like a chance of winning that EIBF book bag, leave a comment on that post now.