Two non-fiction titles I’ve read recently…

Here are some very quick thoughts about a couple of non-fiction books I’ve read in the past few months. I expect a similar round-up of recent fiction reads will follow before too long – watch this space!

A Woman of Passion: The Life of E. Nesbit 1858-1924 by Julia Briggs

I didn’t know much at all about E. Nesbit – only that I loved her books as a child, and then rediscovered her as an adult writer a few years ago, with the incomparably delightful The Lark. So I dove into Briggs’ book, knowing that Briggs was a renowned biographer and expecting a treat. And it was… maybe weird? The biography is very good in many respects, particularly Briggs’ acute literary eye. She melds critical analysis and biographical detail so well, often slipping off onto tangents that would feel irksome if they weren’t so well observed. Here’s a bit…

The contrast between E. Nesbit and Kenneth Grahame is revealing: Grahame, here [The Golden Age] and in The Wind in the Willows, creates an ideal fantasy world – dreamlike, safe and largely sealed off from the disappointments, embarrassments and sheer muddle of daily life, though paradoxically Grahame’s writing is at its most powerful when it hovers on the edge of acknowledging its own evasions. E. Nesbit’s fictional world never had the irresistible imaginative appeal that his has had, being at once less perfect and more vital. The world of her books is as elusive, confused, messy and absurd as the world of lived life. When she makes use of fantasy elements, whether in the form of a children’s game or as some magic power present in her story, her characters are constantly brought up against the hard edge of things-as-they-are, often with hilarious, and always with informative consequences.

I learned a lot about Nesbit’s associations with the Fabians, about her progressive left-wing politics, and (most unexpectedly and enjoyably, for me) the period where she devoted herself mainly to identifying the ‘real’ author of Shakespeare’s plays. What I could have done without were the many rather prurient passages devoted to the people that Nesbit or her husband had affairs with. Briggs doesn’t feel completely at home with the more gossipy parts of a biography, and perhaps overcompensates for that by flinging herself into them with abandon. I also found the darting back and forth to comparisons between Nesbit’s life and her books a bit tricky, since it meant we were introduced to works piecemeal, often with a half dozen fleeting mentions before they were introduced properly.

An interesting and forthright biography, and certainly an enjoyable read, but I think I might prefer the apparently more discreet and probably more chronological biography by Doris Langley Moore – which seems the source of many of the details here.

The Long Week-End by Robert Graves and Alan Hodge

This social history of the interwar period was published in 1940, so it’s impossible to imagine anything more hot off the press. It’s the sort of book I could either write several thousand words about, or a mere handful – and either one would conclude ‘get this book, have it on your shelf, dip in and out of it with delight’.

Graves and Hodge cover literature, art, sport, politics, religion, fashion, the press, and many more aspects of everyday life – taking us through all the years in detail, so we are left with specific understanding of the progression of all these elements, rather than an amorphous sense of what happened ‘in the interwar period’. Almost every page will have a detail you’ll want to share. I particularly liked the fact that movie subtitlers were known as ‘came-the-dawner’s – and this snapshot of a craze which was as short-lived as the more recent British examples of loombands, fidget spinners, or tanks of tiny fish to nibble your ankles in the middle of shopping centres:

In 1922 the craze was for a simple gambling device known as ‘Put and Take’. It was a small six-sided top which players, after putting money into a pool, each spun in turn; and then acted according to the order printed on the side that lay uppermost when it fell — ^put one more coin to the pool, or two or three; or took one or two; or. took all. People spun their tops on luncheon table, on the bars of pubs, on the covers of magazines in railway carriages. For a few months scarcely a home was without its top, then suddenly the game entirely ceased. The simpler the craze, the more universal its scope, and the swifter its end.

It’s an invaluable book. I only wish I could remember all the fascinating details I read – but since there is no through narrative here, it’s worth having on a coffee table to dip into at whim, and enjoy.