1930s

Cheerful Weather For The Wedding

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I finished Julia Strachey’s Cheerful Weather For The Wedding the other day – I’m reading short books in snatches while writing my dissertation, and this is one of the Persephone Books is one I’ve meaning to read for a while. Elaine at Random Jottings gave it to me many moons ago, but somehow it’s only just worked its way to the top of the pile.

Well, I’m very glad Elaine could spare it, as I loved every second! This short novel (120pp) all takes place on the wedding day of Dolly and Owen. And it’s very, very funny. There is a semi-serious romance storyline through the centre of it (should Dolly be marrying Owen? Will they actually get married?) but it is the host of secondary characters which make this novel (or perhaps novella?) so amusing. My favourites are brothers Robert and Tom – the latter spends the entire novel trying to persuade the former to change his emerald-coloured socks: “Robert, your mother would desire you to go upstairs instantly to take off those bounder’s socks, Robert, and to change into a respectable pair. Will you go, Robert?” He is distraught lest their schoolfellows – ‘men from Rugby’ – be at the wedding and witness this calamatous social faux pas. Robert’s iterated response is “Go and put your head in a bag.” I kept hoping these two would crop up, even though they essentially said the same thing every time they appeared, it was done so amusingly and accurately that I could have read pages of Tom’s serious monotone and Robert’s complete lack of care.

And then there’s dotty Nellie-from-the-village, one of the ‘help’:

“The gentleman that come to see about the hot pipes out in the lobby, said to me, ‘ have two of my own,’ he said, ‘what are both of them big strapping great boys by now. And oh… good golly! – what devils and demons they do be!’ he said. ‘Well,’ I said to him, ‘my son Teddy is exactly the very same thing over again,’ I said. ‘All the time this cigarette-smoking, they pointed boots, and all of it, why, devils and demons isn’t in it with such as they are,’ I said. No. Very decidedly not!”

The whole family, and especially servants, are very funny characters – slightly ridiculous, but not too exaggerated as to not ring true. I suppose that’s why the humour is so good – rooted in the actual. Sort of a less-hyperbolic PG Wodehouse, perhaps. Crossed with Virginia Woolf.

According to IMDB there is a film of Cheerful Weather For The Wedding due in 2010. The only information about it at the moment is that Sinead Cusack is attached – I suppose she’ll play Mrs. Thatcham. I’m not sure the novel will make a good film, actually – sometimes lines which are great written down lose everything when spoken. Still, I’ll keep an open mind until I see it, which I undoubtedly will.

If you’re wavering on Cheerful Weather For The Wedding, I encourage you to give it a go (though this comes with a warning that not everyone agrees with me: see this review by Vintage Reads) – it’s recently been released in the beautiful Persephone Classics edition (pictured) which should make it more easily available… and I might just have to get myself a copy of that one too. I think it’s entered my Top Five Persephones, and since I’ve read all or part of over thirty, that’s not bad at all.

Making Conversation

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Persephone Books very kindly sent me a copy of Making Conversation by Christine Longford to review, and I actually read it a month or two ago, but was waiting for it to be available on the website before putting down my thoughts here. And, of course, that means I’ll have to search back into the depths of my memory…

The novel follows Martha from childhood through school and into Oxford University. She is an awkward girl, and, as the Persephone website says, ‘her besetting trouble is that she talks either too much, or too little: she can never get the right balance of conversation.’ This is evident from the opening pages, where she marvels at the inexpensive price of the brooch given to Ellen, the cook-general. (“You little idiot.. Now she won’t think anything of it. People like that don’t, if you tell them the price.”) Very intelligent but equally detached, she seems to meander through school and interaction with ‘paying guests’ at home (very definitely not a hotel) – where her mother advertises as an ‘Officer’s wife’: ‘This was mostly true. The military connexion grew fainter with the years. It was some time since Major Freke had written too many cheques, and disappeared.’ Martha isn’t quite precocious, but her indifferent responses at school and habit of repeating what she doesn’t understand (“Miss Spencer pulled my hair, and said I had committed adultery”) might give that impression.

Time passes, and Martha becomes a student at Oxford University. This was the part of the novel I enjoyed most, reflecting on the ways in which things have changed. Not least, apparently, the propensity to send people down all the time, and the illicit parties at men’s colleges offer a glimpse of the past. By the time Martha gets to university, her personality seems to have completely altered – which is probably true to life, but a little off-putting in what is tantamount to a Bildungsroman. She is pretty outgoing, even vivacious; jokey, flirty and chatty.

The new introduction by Rachel Billington compares the novel to Cold Comfort Farm, at least in terms of being a classic of English humour. Well… I don’t quite agree. Making Conversation is an excellent portrait of a character not often depicted sympathetically in the early twentieth century – the female academic, the intelligent but quiet girl – but isn’t ever laugh-out-loud funny. Lots of diverting sections, and a certain amount of amusing turns of phrase (for example the quotation below) but I don’t think Longford’s priority is hyperbolic comedy, as Gibbons’ was.

‘She would renounce all the lusts of the flesh. It would save a lot of trouble, and as she wasn’t a success on the carnal side, she might as well give it up. In that case, there would be no need to marry and have a family; and she could become famous as a Homeric scholar.’



And, as always, the presentation of the book is perfect. We know what to expect from the outside, but the endpaper (yes, Col, I’m going to talk about the endpaper) is one of my favourites from Persephone yet, apparently from a 1931 dress silk.

In conclusion – another welcome inclusion in the Persephone canon, and with invaluable, and quietly amusing, insights into another aspect of a disappeared world.

Two People

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Hurray for Capuchin Classics, reprinting an AA Milne novel – Two People, which was first published in 1931. A slightly less significant event in the Two People timeline is January 2003, when I first read it. This was back in the days when I could really blitz a single author, and read everything they’d written – by the time I read Two People (doing quick sums) I had read 29 books by AAM in the space of two years. Gosh. I’ve read only nine since, so I was pretty much getting to the end of the available AAMs.

With plays, sketches, essays, short stories, an autobiography, pacifist literature, poetry and, of course, children’s books to his name, his novels have always felt a little like an afterthought. Not quite the same joyously whimsical Milne of the early days, nor yet the serious Milne of the Second World War. And, for the most part, I have forgotten everything that happens in his novels. What really remains is a single image from the book – for Mr. Pim it is a pair of orange curtains; for Four Days’ Wonder it is a haystack; for Chloe Marr it is a woman looking into a mirror. For Two People I mainly remembered those two people standing by a pond… which turned out to be fairly insignificant.

As Ann Thwaite points out in her short introduction, and is evident to any who has read her very excellent biography of AAM (in print, or available from a penny on Amazon), Two People is pretty autobiographical. Not only is the male half of those two people a writer, but the portrayed marriage between Reginald and Sylvia Wellard bears a striking resemblance to that between Alan Alexander and Daphne Milne. There are two novels in Two People – one about a naive rural novelist seeing his first book, ‘Bindweed’, become a success in London literary society; one about a man married to much younger, beautiful woman who is not his intellectual equal.

And that’s the crux. Sylvia is often wise, always kind, ludicrously good – but she doesn’t understand Reginald’s jokes, ignorantly assumes any obstacle will be simple for him, would be content to live a quiet, unassuming life in Westaways – a thinly disguised Cotchford Farm, the Milne’s Sussex residence. At first I though Sylvia’s astounding beauty was showing the prejudiced viewpoint of Reginald, but people all over the place stumble over themselves and exclaim involuntarily at her beauty – which is sweet but a little exaggerated and, it has to be said, no true depiction of Daphne Milne.

Ann Thwaite warns in her introduction that even those who ‘have an aversion to novels about writers’ will enjoy this. I didn’t know people had such aversions – I think novels about novelists are fascinatingly revealing about the author. But there is much more to Two People than that – I’d be astonished if anyone could finish the novel thinking Reginald wholly appealing (his views about laying on water for villagers are rather reprehensible, for example) but, much more importantly, it is an honest and true depiction of a marriage. Says I, who is not married, but certainly it seems to deal with the genuine, everyday issues that a marriage would face – with temperaments as catalysts, rather than adultery and murder and all those extremes.

Being Milne, the novel is also very funny. I recognise that AAM is an acquired taste – some find the whimsy a trifle sickening, whereas I find it delightful and clever. Two People isn’t the most representative of Milne’s work (I’d look towards The Sunny Side for an in-print example, from Snow Books) but I do encourage you to seek it out. Milne’s non-children’s work is seriously underrated, and I loved this novel upon re-reading it. Bright but also with a serious undertone – and possibly the nearest thing Milne wrote to an autobiography of his marriage, since his actual autobiography It’s Too Late Now rather skirted around it.

Here’s a scene which illustrates the perils-facing-a-writer strand, and the humour (they’re at a tennis party):

“Fella in the Sixtieth out in Inida with me wrote a book,” said Colonel Rudge suddenly.

“Oh?” said Reginald

“Fact,” said the Colonel. “Fella in the Sixtieth.”

Reginald waited for the rest of the story, but it seemd that that was all. The Colonel was simply noting the coincidence of somebody over here writing a book and somebody in India also writing a book.

[…]

“Tranter, that was the fella,” came from his right. “Expect you know him.”

Reginal awoke and said that he was afraid he didn’t. (Why ‘afraid’, he wondered. Afraid of what?)

“Well, he wrote a book,” said the Colonel stubbornly. “Forget what it was called.”

[…]

“What d’you say your book was called?” said the Colonel, evidently hoping that this would give a clue to the title of Tranter’s book.

“Bindweed,” grunted Reginald, feeling suddenly ashamed of it.

“What?”

“Bindweed!” (What the devil does it matter, he thought angrily.)

“Ah!… No, that wasn’t it. Bindweed,” said Colonel Rudge, pulling at his moustache. “That’s the stuff that climbs up things, what? Gets all over the garden.”

“Yes.”

“Thought so. […] Sort of gardening book, what?” said Colonel Rudge.

“What?… Oh… No.”

“It is the stuff I mean, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

“The what-d’you-call-it.”

“Is what?”

“What I said. Climbs up things. Gets all over the garden?”

“Oh yes, yes. Always!”

“What d’you say it was called? This stuff?”

“Bindweed.”

“Yes. And what d’you say your book was called?”

“Bindweed.”

“That’s right,” said the Colonel fretfully. “That’s what I said.”

This, thought Reginald, is one of the interesting people brought down from London who want to talk to me about my book.

Russian Here, Russian There

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I love the Alice illustrations so much that I’m a bit reluctant to move on from them… but I suppose they’re still there for me and anyone else to look at. And if my copy of the Alice books weren’t in Somerset, I’d have definitely re-read it by now… as it is, I have instead finished a book I’ve been dipping in and out of for quite a while now. One of those books to read at bedtime – it’s EM Delafield’s Straw Without Bricks: I Visit Soviet Russia.

The astute among you will notice that this isn’t the title in the little picture accompanying this post… blame latterday publishers. Straw Without Bricks is an account of EM Delafield’s experience after her American publishers asked her to visit Russia and ‘write a funny book about it’. She does so as herself and, though her voice is often quite similar to that of the Provincial Lady’s in other books, there is no suggestion that this is one of the Provincial Lady series… in fact, it’s not even written as a diary. The Provincial Lady tag was just added in reprints to sell more copies. Tsk.

Violet Powell’s so-so biography of EMD makes little mention of this book, except to say that it wasn’t very successful, and generally judged to have been a bad idea (and EMD may have shared this opinion). I imagine that was largely because at the time of publication, 1937, the world wasn’t quite ready for an honest appraisal of life as a tourist in Soviet Russia. For readers of 2009, it is a fascinating book – EMD does write in quite a light style, but this is certainly not the ‘funny book’ that her publisher was hoping for. Delafield’s own political leanings were to the left, though not as far as Communism, and she treats the country and its inhabitants seriously. Much of this is with a subdued horror – at the indoctrination, the lack of freedom, the systematic removal of beauty and individualism – but she never makes Communism’s adherents appear ridiculous. The humour is often directed towards her fellow tourists, or such quintessentially British anxieties as having to wait around for something to happen, or wondering how to pass someone one is keen not to engage in trivial conversation.

Her accounts of visiting factories, maternity wards, farms are all deeply interesting – a very true version (one assumes) of a little-accessed situation, without being dry or documentary-style. In the end, it is the absence of a moderate reaction to Soviet Russia which frustrates and baffles EMD:

‘My fellow travellers all have opinions of their own which they regard, rightly or wrongly, as being of more value than mine. Most of them are pessimistic, and declare that they don’t ever want to come back again, and that the Crimea was lovely but the plugs in the hotels wouldn’t pull, and Moscow was interesting but very depressing.

Some, on the other hand – like Mrs. Pansy Baker – are wholly enthusiastic. (There is no juste milieu where the Soviet is concerned.) How splendid it all is, they cry, and how fine to see everybody busy, happy and cared-for. As for the institutions – the creches, the schools, the public parks and the prisons – all, without any qualification whatsoever, are perfect. Russia has nothing left to learn.’

As I said, Straw Without Bricks isn’t written in a diary format – in fact, the format confuses me a little. I don’t know the publication history (perhaps, like the PL books, this appeared in Time and Tide?), but most the book seems to be organised in separate but linked articles – sketches or anecdotes centred around certain events or people which vaguely follow on from each other, but could be read individually. The first eighty pages, though, are all about a Soviet Commune EMD lived in – a section followed, anachronistically, by an essay about sailing out to Russia. Odd. But easy enough to cope with, so long as temporal logic isn’t sought to join these sections!

This book isn’t as good as the Provincial Lady books proper, or rather it’s different. Those are some of the warmest, funniest, truest books I’ve ever read, and I will read and re-read them for the rest of my life – Straw Without Bricks performs a wholly different task, and is in its own right an important, touching, sensible and informative book with many sparks of humour which is recognisably EMD. Occasionally I found myself wishing she’d simply written the ‘funny book’ her publisher asked for; in the end I realised how much more sensitively she’d approached the task, and the result is much more appropriate, even if somewhat less immortal.

The Family Reunion

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Yesterday evening I was in London, possibly the first time I’ve gone up ‘for the evening’ in a cosmopolitan sort of way, to see ‘The Family Reunion‘ by T. S. Eliot. It’s being performed at the Donmar Warehouse Theatre, which is in a very nice little area of London called Seven Dials. Agatha Christie aficianadoes – I’m looking at you, Colin – might be able to tell me if there’s any connection with The Seven Dials Mystery? If I ever had to live in London, that’s where I’d like to live. I imagine a day’s rent is more than I could earn in a year.

Why did I want to see the play? No literary reasons at all, I’m afraid – it was the cast. Does that make me strange? Mel suggests it does. But no matter – it was quite an exceptional line-up: Penelope Wilton, Sam West, Gemma Jones, Una Stubbs. I daresay the others deserve their names in lights, but it was for these four (in that order) that I was excited. Most especially Penelope Wilton – in fact, I found the play by Googling her name. She’s wonderful in Iris and Calendar Girls and Pride and Prejudice and everything, probably, but the main reason I wanted to see her was because of The Borrowers. This was one of the programmes we grew up watching, and it felt surreal to have one of the stars mere feet away from me. Even more surreal when Homily Clock (aka Penelope Wilton) started having a conversation with Prince Caspian (aka Sam West).

I should probably mention the play itself… a mother and aunts and uncles are gathered for the homecoming of Harry, who hasn’t been to their grand house for eight years. In the interrim Something Has Happened to him, involving his much disliked wife, and it’s had all sorts of effects on Harry. That’s about as much concrete plot as I could grasp – much of the play focuses on the relations between relatives and mindsets, and leads into a curious philosophical staging which might be summed up as ‘there’s more to life than there seems’. I don’t know if T.S. Eliot was a Christian when he wrote ‘The Family Reunion’, but it seems very much the work of someone who is starting on the path – realises there is more to life than meets the eye, and wants to explore it. Occasional bursts of humour, mostly provided by Una Stubbs, and some rather creepy boy apparitions (who at one point appear behind a door in an instant; no idea how they did that), and another effect which I found wonderful. Quite often four members of the cast would suddenly move together and speak in unison, Greek Chorus-like, revealing their shared psychologies. Could have been affected, but instead worked very well.

This might all have been a bit of a babble: difficult to make plain what I thought about such a complex play. I must read it. I’ll finish, instead, with some more celebrity-spotting – we were followed into the theatre by Celia Imrie! (Maybe there to see Calendar Girls co-star Penelope Wilton?)

Miss Buncle’s Book

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One of the books I got for my birthday was a new Persephone – Miss Buncle’s Book by D. E. Stevenson. My lovely friend Lucy, who knows more about modern fiction than anyone else I know, gave it to me – so thank you Lucy! D. E. Stevenson is one of those authors whose name has been at the back of my mind, and on my shelves, for years – but never made it to actual reading. I have two or three already, but have been on the lookout for Miss Buncle’s Book for quite a while, as it is reportedly Stevenson’s best. The folks at Persephone Books obviously agree, and have made this hard-to-find title a lot easier to find. The premise is difficult to dislike – Barbara Buncle, a quiet, amiable lady in a quiet, amiable village decides to write a novel, and features all her neighbours in it under thinly disguised names. Luckily for her all the villagers seem to have surnames which are adjectives or nouns (Bold, King, Pretty) or with obvious associations (Fortnum/Mason; Dick/Turpin) and this all adds to the fun. The village all read the novel, and are scandalised at the accurate (and thus not always flattering) depiction of themselves – and are determined to root out the identity of ‘John Smith’, the alias Miss Buncle chose for herself.

A rather wonderful idea for a novel, which somehow doesn’t get too complicated, Miss Buncle’s Book would have been even better in the hands of Angela Thirkell, and a literary classic if E. M. Delafield had penned it. As it is, D. E. Stevenson’s writing isn’t quite as good as her ideas – a lot of cliches and unoriginal turns of phrase which prevent the novel from being in a higher league. Don’t misunderstand me, this is better than a lot of writing out there, but Persephone so often publish those whose writing is exceptional (perhaps my recent immersing in Katherine Mansfield has spoilt me for lesser writers, which is most of ’em) that I didn’t expect to have to be on cliche-watch.

Having said all that, Miss Buncle’s Book is still a delight. The characters are fun and the situation very amusing. She handles it all with liveliness and a healthy dollop of whimsy, and I would certainly recommend the novel wholeheartedly – it just doesn’t quite become the classic it could have been.

Homage to Catalonia

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As promised, today I’m going to write about Homage to Catalonia. Perhaps I should start by acknowledging Obama and everything – but since I know less than nothing about the whole thing, I’ll just say that I was rather hoping he’d win (in an unfounded sort of way) and always imagined he would.

Right. To the Spanish Civil War. Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell was one of two works (the other being an Auden poem) which were chosen by our tutor to represent ‘Literature of the 1930s’. If I had to choose a decade about which I knew the most, I’d plump for the 1930s, but nothing like either of these texts. My knowledge centres around the novel, perhaps with a little drama thrown in – I’d hoped to do my presentation this week (I’m now doing Theatre and Revolution next week) and I’m quite glad I was too late. Interesting as I found Homage to Catalonia, I feel completely unqualified to present a paper on it.


For those who don’t know – and I’d like to point out that Our Vicar did know – Homage to Catalonia is non-fiction. It’s more or less autobiography, military autobiography if you will, of George Orwell’s experiences fighting in the Spanish Civil War. It’s one of those events which wasn’t taught much in school – it was wheeled in every now and then to explain certain reactions towards World War Two, but has been rather overshadowed by it. The only thing I knew about it, really, was that Julian Bell (Virginia Woolf’s nephew) died there, bombed whilst in an ambulance. So Orwell’s text really informed me, and what is more it was written in the six months after he returned to England. WW2 hadn’t started, and all the events were fresh in his mind.

Despite not being hugley interested in military history, I found Homage to Catalonia absolutely fascinating and incredibly engagingly written. My only experiences with Orwell before were, like a lot of people, 1984 and Animal Farm. Although they both have evident left-wing morals, I hadn’t realised quite how active Orwell had been for the left-wing cause – and the same great writing that he uses in these novels is transferred to discussing life ‘at the front’.

I say ‘at the front’. Some of it is, and he describes the unreality, frequent tedium, and unexpected priorities: ‘In trench warfare five things are important: firewood, food, tobacco candles and the enemy. In winter on the Saragossa front they were important in that order, with the enemy a bad last.’ After a spate there, he is back in Barcelona, once more faced with frustrating inactivity and boredom. And later he is shocked by the fact that the voluntary militia he joined, the POUM, is being used as a scapegoat by the government to blame for all ills – even while they are fighting for the cause.

Perhaps I should pin my colours to the mast. I am more or less a pacifist, probably through inclination as much as ideology; I find the concept of warfare sickening, and also find it unfathomable that Orwell cannot connect the danger, indignity and pain he experiences with that of the men on the other side of No Man’s Land. I recommend Homage to Catalonia – and I certainly recommend it – for Orwell’s exceptional writing and for interest, definitely not as a how-to manual or political treatise!

My copy is from the 1986 Complete Works – most editions after this have moved two chapters to be appendices, supposedly based on notes Orwell left – these are the two most overly political chapters, and what is left is more his personal experience. The tutor leading discussion was rather scandalised by this, but it makes the book much more captivating for me. And captivating it certainly is – if you’re intrigued to find out more about the Spanish Civil War, or if you are simply interested by the 1930s as a period, I think Homage to Catalonia would be an excellent starting point.

Brontes and Woolies

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I’ve been meaning to write a post about The Brontes Went To Woolworths by Rachel Ferguson for quite a long time, and somehow it never quite happened – perhaps it’s the prospect of having to write ‘Brontes’ so often, without the necessary accents. I know *how* to find them, but to do it everytime… it’s probably best just to pretend they don’t exist.

Anyway, it’s now been so long since I read the novel that I can’t remember all that much about it. What’s more, most of the blogosphere appear to have been read it this year – Danielle’s review; Lady Bug’s Books’; Cornflower’s; dovegreyreader’s. Sorry if I’ve missed some people out, and I’m sure I have, but those are the ones I could lay my hands on – in the unlikely event that anyone hasn’t heard about this book, I advise clicking on one those links for a proper summary of the book! Mine will be brief…

“How I loathe that kind of novel which is about a lot of sisters”, is how this novel about sisters begins. They’re all rather mad, and I can’t remember any of their names, but their important characteristic is that they create fantasy personalities, which cluster around them. Not their own personalities, nor other fantasy people – but rather they choose people (sometimes a doll, sometimes – centrally – a judge they’ve encountered only in the newspaper) and have conversations about and with these people. Which all becomes rather complicated when the judge in question becomes an acquaintance, and has to learn how to act the part he has already been given.

And it’s all rather dizzying. But in a quite brilliant way. As reviews of Edward Carey’s Alva & Irva recently, and Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead by Barbara Comyns a while ago (see the 50 Books…) demonstrate, I’m rather a fan of the quirky and surreal, and Rachel Ferguson dishes this up with abandon. So I can only add further endorsement to the recommendations others have already given – The Brontes Went To Woolworths is charming and zany and I can remember the feeling of reading it, even if all the other details escape me.

The other thing I can bring to the party is a different picture, since my copy is an old hardback. What an odd cover. More intriguing, Rachel Ferguson (known to many of us as author of Persephone Books title Alas, Poor Lady) is also ‘”Rachel” of Punch’ – hmm, wonder what she wrote there… might have to get a copy up in the Bodleian and have an investigation…

Untouchable

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My Masters starts on Monday, and I’m scurrying through my reading list – so today I’ll mention another one. Would have read more this evening, if it weren’t for a rather exciting interlude when a cat decided to make our house her home. She (I think she) was very reluctant to leave, and I was very reluctant for her to leave, so she stayed for a while. And I fell a little in love…
ANYWAY. The novel I’m going to mention today is the most recent one on my reading list, being published in 1935 (not sure how this gets into Literature and Empire 1880-1930, but no matter) – Untouchable by Mulk Raj Anand. Anand takes the position of one of the ‘untouchables’ as the focalisation for his novel – a member of the lowest strand in the caste system. One of the outcastes, in fact: Bahka. He is a latrine-cleaner, but one with aspirations to become a ‘sahib’ – an aristocrat.

Anand’s decision to use Bahka as his protagonist (though not narrator) was controversial at the time, but demonstrates the unfairness and idiocy of the creation of ‘untouchables’ – wherever he goes he must shout out, to alert others to his arrival. If they touch him or are touched by him, they must wash. Imagine people screaming “Polluted! Polluted!” if they come into contact with you – and imagine becoming resigned to the supposed justice of this? Anand writes Untouchable fuelled by the injustice of this system, and his anger at it, but is wise enough to let the narrative do the work, rather than scream and shout. We see Bakha, a kind, sensitive and aspirational boy being gradually worn down by the caste stigma – which also relates to something I read yesterday in E. M. Forster’s A Passage To India, about an Adonis-like ‘untouchable’ seen in the street:

‘He had the strength and beauty that sometimes come to flower in Indians of low birth. When that strange race nears the dust and is condemned as untouchable, then nature remembers the physical perfection that she accomplished elsewhere, and throws out a god – not many, but one here and there, to prove to society how little its categories impress her.’

Untouchable is quite short, but a powerful narrative which tells me an awful lot about something of which I was almost wholly ignorant. It’s also very readable and interesting, and I definitely recommend it.

Mapp and Lucia

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I can’t believe I’ve been blogging for over a year and not made mention of a series of books which I’m sure you all either do love or will love – the Mapp & Lucia series by EF Benson. I’ve recently had the pleasure of watching Elaine at Random Jottings succumb to Elizabeth and Emmeline, and it has set me off re-reading. I’ve only read the first four of the six, actually, and if you throw in Tom Holt’s well-respected sequels (in the style of EF Benson) then I have only got halfway. More news on Benson sequels very soon…


For those who don’t know, EF Benson wrote Queen Lucia in 1920, Miss Mapp in 1922, Lucia in London in 1927 – and by 1931 had the brilliant idea to bring his creations together in Mapp and Lucia. I haven’t read the final two books, as I say, but presume that the characters remain united enemies in them. Mapp and Lucia are not likeable characters, by any means – both with their varying pretensions and self-delusions, but both holding sway over their neighbourhood, there is inevitable friction and competition when they meet. And these characters, especially when they meet, are an absolute delight to read about. We laugh at them, we are fond of them, we realise how intimidating it would be to meet them in real life.


My dear friend Barbara-in-Ludlow introduced me to these books, back in 2004, very kindly lending me her beautiful Folio edition. These were returned when I went to university, and I bought up the Black Swan paperback editions. Very nice, even featured in my post about favourite book covers – but I did hanker for the beautiful Folio editions. When I was reading Barbara’s, I was so worried I’d get them dirty that I read them with custom-made brown-paper covers. What can people have thought I was reading… Anyway, I found this boxset secondhand in Oxford, and was utterly delighted. Annoyingly, I have to use my glasses to read them (never know why this is true of some books and not others – nothing to do with font size) but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.


Advance apologies to anyone who now must go out and buy this edition… but it’s worth it.