What I Read At Christmas

Happy Christmas! I hope you had a lovely time – hopefully better than last year. I went to my parents’ house, as did my brother, so it felt like a lovely family Christmas. Very relaxed, if you don’t count the fiendish board games and quizzes. And plenty of reading, of course. In fact, the two books I finished have rather beautifully pairing covers.

A Snowfall of Silver by Laura Wood

Last year, on the recommendation of Sarra Manning on Instagram, I bought Laura Wood’s A Snowfall of Silver – and I was saving it for a special occasion, because it felt like it would be the perfect book to read at Christmas. And, goodness me, it was.

Wood’s novel was published last year, but is set in 1931. The briefest synopsis sold me: 18-year-old Freya runs away from Cornwall to London, because she is desperate to become an actor. Her sister Lou lives there – probably with her boyfriend Robert, Freya suspects, though outwardly he lives elsewhere. And so Freya turns up on her doorstep, having taken the train and feeling very dramatic about the whole thing. As Lou points out, she could equally have arranged to stay with their parents’ permission, but to Freya’s mind that wouldn’t have set the tone.

On the train, she meets a tall young man called Kit – he is reading a book, has broad shoulders and freckles, and it is instantly obvious to the reader that they are destined to be together. He also works with a theatrical company, though not as an actor, and is able to get Freya introduced to the director – who is a bit past his heyday, but is still deeply famous in Freya’s corner of Cornwall.

One thing leads to another and Freya goes off on a six-week tour, as an assistant to the woman in charge of costumes. The attractive, volatile cast, the grande dame, the wide-eyed ingenue – all the puzzle pieces are in place for a rollicking, delightful journey.

It’s published as young adult fiction, but I think any adult would find it great fun too. We might not fall for the central love story with quite as much naïve joy, not least because Kit is never fully fleshed-out and is more a place for a younger reader to superimpose their own fantasy, but it’s still a really lovely book. My main quibble was that Lou and Robert seemed too fun to get so few pages – so I was pleased to discover that Wood has written an earlier book where they are the main characters. I suppose it spoils that they end up together, but in this sort of book that is never in doubt.

Infused by Henrietta Lovell

The other book I started and finished was Infused by Henrietta Lovell, published in 2019 – a non-fiction book with the subtitle ‘Adventures in Tea’, given to me for my birthday by my friend Lorna.

Lovell is the owner of Rare Teas, a tea brand that sells leaf tea and which I have now ordered a little pile from. In Infused, Lovell takes us all over the world with her as she goes in search of the finest teas – and her ways of describing the adventures, the tastes, and the quiet but passionate joy of sampling nuances between different infusions is all very, very infectious. The humble teabag is dismissed throughout Infused, including some industry secrets on why even the fancy brands aren’t giving you great stuff – and while I doubt I’ll become a leaf tea drinker exclusively, I do want to try some Rare Tea and see how differently I can experience my favourite drink.

But even if you hate tea, there is a lot to enjoy in the way Lovell writes, and the way she approaches the adventures she’s experienced – from crafting a tea for the RAF to exploring Malawi to climbing mountainsides in search of the rarest teas. While she is clearly an expert, she writes with a fervour that is accessible – and admits her own incapability when it comes to certain aspects, like hand-rolling tea leaves.

Choose good tea, tea sourced directly from a farmer rather than faceless brokers. The knock-on effect of that choice will be manifold. You’ll be supporting communities around the world, people trying to work their way out of poverty into a sustainable future. You’ll help maintain great skills and keep craftmanship from disappearing under mechanisation. You might even force the giant conglomerates to change the way they do things.

This is a call to arms, comrades.

And there is no hardship in this calling. In choosing to drink good tea, we might change the world and give ourselves the greatest pleasure.

Others on the go…

I got about halfway through Stella Gibbons’ Enbury Heath, a delightful novel about three siblings inheriting a legacy and buying a small cottage together. I also started Ian Hamilton’s The Keepers of the Flame, about the history of literary estates and biography through major figures of literature, from Donne to Plath. All my Christmas reads have turned out to be good in one way or another, and were carefully chosen. And, of course, there were a pile among my Christmas presents…