A reading medley

I've read a mix of books recently, but not yet blogged about any of them. Two of them were very interesting non-fiction , Coastlines by Patrick Barkham and The Edge f the World: how the North Sea made us who we are by Michael Pye.

Patrick Barkham's Coastlines, subtitled The Story of our Shore  is a ramble round those parts of the English coast which are owned by the National Trust under Operation Neptune, which was set up in 196, to protect those same parts from development - places such as Brownsea Island in Dorset, part of the Isle of Wight from the Needles, Tennyson Down and Blackgang Chine, part of the Durham coast, where coal mining took place. Many are popular spots for visitors, while others are small, less significant places, known mainly to local residents. 
A bit of a rag-bag of stories, but an interesting read, especially if one has visited any of these coastal areas. The writing usually flows well and each chapter ends with references to walks in the area, relevant maps and further readings. Should one want to follow these up, they would provide a lifetime of excursions and reading.

The Edge of the World : how the North Sea made us who we are by Michael is an historical look at the development of Northern Europe after the Romans left, about AD 400 up to the latter part of the 17th century. The author's premise is that the North Sea was at least as important in the cultural, political, social and any other development of Northern Europe as the Mediterranean sea. He has chapters on the Book Trade, Fashion, the Invention of Money,  and the Plague laws, all containing interesting anecdotes, and documented examples of how individual people or  groups took part in these activities or helped develop them. But much of what he quotes is fragmentary and although the author puts a lot of emphasis on the sea and the development of trade and shipping, it is not very detailed. A very interesting read but at times frustrating, as for me it raised almost as many questions as it purported to answer.  I think that most people with some interest in history and what happened after the Romans left Britain will enjoy it, but may also want to read more detail elsewhere.



Sarah Dunant's Blood and Beauty is one of her historical novels set in the Renaissance about the Borgias, specifically Pope Alexander Vl and his children Lucrezia and Cesare. Although a novel, obviously much research has been done, but this does not impinge too much on the story, as Sarah Dunant tries to concentrate on the thoughts and feelings of the characters which are may not necessarily be part of recorded history. Lucrezia comes across in this tale as a more sympathetic person than the myths that have come down to us would make us believe, but Cesare and his father the Pope seem to be as bad as they have been described by history. An interesting and enjoyable  read despite  or because of the scheming , mayhem and numerous murders for which the Borgia papacy was famous.




I picked up The Parasites by Daphne DuMaurier on a visit to my local library, as it was one of her novels I hadn't read. It is the story of the Delaneys, Maria, Niall and Celia and their talented parents. Maria is a talented actress, Niall a composer of popular songs, Celia cares for her increasingly frail father, a renowned singer. Their mother was wonderful dancer, their childhood one of touring with their parents. It is Maria's husband Sir Charles Wyndham who describes them as parasites. This comment cause the three Delaneys to reflect on their lives, their relationships to each other and their parents. Maria and Niall are not actually related to each by blood, as each is the child of Pappy and Mama by previous relationships. Celia is half-sister to both. The novel moves back and forth in time from their reflections of the past to the weekend which changes all their lives.  

Recent Doings

 Two concerts and a visit to an abandoned medieval village have been part of the entertainment recently while in France. The concerts, both held in small village churches were both delightful though very different from each other. The first concert  we attended  together with about 60 other people, local residents, second home owners and their visitors was in the church at Le Vaulmier, was part of a series organised by the Festival of Baroque Music in the Auvergne with Cantica Sacra. Concerts  are usually held in some of the many Romanesque and other churches in the Auvergne region. The two women musicians making up  a part of Cantica Sacra, Bogumila Gizbert-Studnicka (harpsichord)and Paulina Tkaczyk (flute and harpsichord) were excellent and played a variety of Baroque music. The second concert was by a solo pianist, Jean Baptiste Mathulin  and was superb. This took place in the church in Trizac, a large village a few miles away, under the auspices of  Les Hauvergnales,  a local organisation holding a series of events celebrating the village and its area.
I also visited the site of Cotteughes, an abandoned village on the plateau de Trizac. The abandonment took place during the latter part of the 14th century, possibly due to a variety of causes, including the Plague, the I00 Years War, which affected the Auvergne quite badly, and a change in the climate for the worse, making life up on the plateau which is over 1200 metres above sea level, that much more difficult. The site has been excavated, but few articles of interest have been found. 

The guides to the visit were a lady who was very knowledgeable about the history of the site, and a gentleman who explained the local plant life, of which the former inhabitants  made good use. Cotteughes is situated close to the Marilhou stream, which also has a small waterfall not far away through a pretty woodland path.

The Marilhou cascade, September 2015.

 This year the waterfall may not be so full of water, as this region  has had no rainfall for several weeks now, and the local farmers are beginning to move their cattle down from the high summer pastures,  they are now so dry the grass is insufficient to feed for the animals.

Anna of the Five Towns

Anna of the Five Towns is the first novel by Arnold Bennett that I have read. Quite how I 've managed to avoid reading him, one of the more prolific writers of the 20th century, I don't know. This tale was published in 1902. Arnold Bennett seemed to fall out of favour later in the 20th century, but is apparently having a bit of a revival at the moment.
Anna story is of a young woman who inherits a large sum of money from her  long dead mother, having been brought up in a life of drudgery and plain living under her father's thumb. The setting is the Potteries, where Bennett himself grew up and used a setting for several of his stories. Anna is wooed by a young Non-Conformist minister, Henry Mynors, but she also has feelings for Willie Price, son of Titus Price, who runs a pottery business in a building owned by Anna. Titus is behind with his rent, and eventually becomes bankrupt and commits suicide. Anna realises she loves Willie, who plans to leave for Australia, but she marries Henry, to whom she has become engaged, while Willie also kills himself.
Bennett evokes the grimy atmosphere of the Potteries, and contrasts it with a holiday Anna takes with friends, a family with a daughter about her age.Beatrice, who is a lady of leisure compared to Anna, whose life is one of much domestic drudgery, despite her newly gained wealth. Women are not portrayed as being capable of business, yet many of the women of the period and place worked in the potteries, often of painters of the wares used in the home, cups, saucers, plates and so on.
Considering that this was first published in 1902, Bennett probably reflects the attitudes of the time, only for them to at least begin to change after the First World War, a few years in the future from the setting of this book.

Some recent reads

I've neglected this blog for a while, but have still been reading, both for personal interest and for the book club I belong to, the reading for which is still usually enjoyable.



One of the latter reads was The cellist of Sarajevo by Stevan Galloway, describing the cellist who sat outside his apartment in Sarajevo during the nearly four year long siege of that city and played for 22 days to remember the 22 people killed in a mortar attack on a queue for bread. There are only 4 main characters, including the cellist; two men one of whom has to collect water for his family, an older man who meets a long lost friend while out searching for bread, and a young woman who is sniper and is given the job of protecting the cellist while he plays. The privations of life in a modern city under siege are carefully made clear, while the characters show us the courage of ordinary people in an extraordinary situation. Although desperately sad  and moving at times, nevertheless a great and uplifting read.



Another intriguing read was a debut novel by Cecelia Ekback, Wolf Winter. Set in Sweden in 1717, a time when Sweden was involved in several wars, taking away many of the male population. Maija and her husband and two daughters move from Finland to northern Sweden to take over a relative's small farm on Blackasen mountain. Shortly after arriving, the two girls find a dead body and run home to inform their mother. Maija wants to know how he died and who killed himwhen it is revealed he didn't die a natural death. The story follows Maija's search for the truth, while also managing the farm on her own while her husband goes away. The winter she and her daughters endure is very hard, made more difficult by the failure of the summer harvest. 
A well researched historical novel and also very accomplished writing for a debut novel. The sense of menace both from other people and nature itself is very successful.





For a complete change of reading material, I picked up Philip Hoare's The Sea Inside. Philip Hoare is a local author to me, as he lives in Southampton. He swims daily in Southampton Water. This book is about the sea, not just the local part of it but the wider oceans and their inhabitants, particularly whales and dolphins, our nearest marine cousins. His descriptions of whale watching in various parts of the world and of visiting Tasmania and finding that the Tasmanian devil may not be extinct are fascinating. A discursive and interesting read.

Brexit thoughts

On Friday morning I woke up in our holiday home in the rural Cantal to the news on French radio that Britain had voted to leave the European Union. My immediate feeling was one of immense sadness and despair.
I'm also getting a bit tired of the vote to leave being blamed on the older generation. As an over 65 year old, I'm of that generation, but voted to remain along with 40% of fellow over 65's, and as I had voted to stay in Europe in the vote held in 1975, two years after we joined what was then called the Common Market.
Britain has always been a part of Europe, geographically, politically and culturally. Our history has been European since before the waters rose after the last Ice Age and cut us off from the continent of which we were part. The world  and Europe now is even more interconnected than has been in the past, with the Internet and more efficient transport links - are we going to demolish the Channel tunnel, a physical link to the continent? between Britain and the rest of Europe
French news media is full of constant opinions as to what happens next between Britain and the rest of Europe.
We live in interesting times, as the saying goes and time will tell whose predictions about the future of Britain will be realised.

Spring reading

It is well and truly spring, despite the fact that I'm still wearing layers of clothes.With variable weather and chilly winds, it seems that spring is here to stay a while. But at least when the sun does appear, it now has some actual warmth in it, rather than just looking good. Out on a walk yesterday, through some woods, I saw violets and wood anemones, as well as some pulmonaria and a few orchids just appearing.

Wood anenomes

Wild violets

 In the cooler and wetter spring days, I've been doing some reading .Rosie Thomas' Daughter of the House, set in London just after World War One was an enjoyable read Nancy Wix is the daughter of Devil Wix and his actress wife Emily, and has no desire to act on stage, in the theatre owned by her father.After the war the men returning from the fighting want their old jobs back .However, Nancy has a gift which will help save the theatre now fallen on hard times, as the variety shows of the past are no longer popular with audiences. Nancy's gift is a sort of clairvoyance, developed with aid of the mysterious Mr Feather, which proves very popular with the post First World War audiences. Nancy has an affair with a wealthy businessman who sets her up in her own flat. I found this tale , with its descriptions of the lifestyle of the "bright young things" of the twenties and as the tale progresses, hints of more disruption in Europe to come, an engaging read. I have enjoyed several of Rosie Thomas's novels, and this one was well up to standard.
Another recent read was The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd. This novel is set in early nineteenth century Charleston and is about slavery. The two main characters are Sarah Grimke and her personal slave Hetty, also called Handful.. The story alternates between Sarah and Hetty's points of view. Sarah's family were rich, her father a judge and plantation owner, but while Sarah's brothers are sent away to be educated, Sarah herself receives little in the way of education, although she can read anything in her fathers extensive library. She even teaches Hetty to read, although this was against the law. Sarah Grimke was a real person, a abolitionist in the early to mid nineteenth century, at a time when slavery in America was seen as necessary in the southern States and when women had few if any rights nor expectations of education or work, other than marriage.
Cecelia Ekback's Wolf  Winter is a debut novel and a very accomplished one. Set in Swedish Lapland in 1717, the story tells how Maije and her husband and two daughters settle in a small place on Blackausen mountain. The atmosphere of menace starts early in the story with the discovery of a dead body by Maije's daughters. Maije's search for the truth behind this killing leads to all sorts of discoveries among  the people of the small settlement and the local townspeople, despite their efforts to cover things up. Well-researched and well-written with a very successful sense of atmosphere and menace, this was a very interesting read.

A few quick thoughts

I've been doing some reading, but haven't posted my thoughts for a while. One book I found an interesting read was Richard Flanagan's The Narrow Road to the Deep North, which was 2014's Booker prize winner. The story of Darrigo Evans, a Tasmanian who becomes a doctor just before the Second World War. He joins the Australian army , becomes an officer and is eventually posted to the Asian theatre of war, where he becomes a prisoner of the Japanese and one of the many men who were forced to build the notorious Burma railway. A large part of the book describes the appalling conditions of that situation, but also tells of Darrigo's attempts to make life easier for the men. In contrast to the horror of war, Darrigo's experiences with women, his wife and others are tenderly narrated.


I actually enjoyed Niall Williams The History of the Rain more, although it was only (!) longlisted for the 2014 Man Booker prize. Narrated by Ruth Swain, lying in her attic bedroom under a skylight streaming with rain, surrounded by her father's library.Although it seemed a little slow to get into, when Ruth begins to tell her family story, I became absorbed in the book. We all have family stories behind us, as well as making our own. Ruth tells of how her father grew up, how his family first came to Ireland, how her parents met and her father's attempts at farming on their 14 aces of unsuitable land. Ruth's comments on the events around her are delightfully sharp and funny, and the writing is lovely. Ruth's descriptions of her father's books and her relationship to a huge number of individual titles is fascinating, as is the importance of actual physical books to her, her father and grandmother.
A wonderful story of lives as they are being lived, about human failings and sadness, but also about hope and persistence.

D J Taylor's The Windsor Faction starts from the assumption that Wallis Simpson died on the operating table and that Edward VIII carries on as king. It's a "What if history had been different" story, which makes for interesting fiction, especially as in this tale, several of the characters are real. The extracts from the diaries of Beverly Nichols are a nice touch - I've only read a few of his gardening books in the past, and Edwards behaviour seems to be based on the many biographies and memoirs that are about him. We also get a different point of view, that of Cynthia Kirkpatrick, who returns to England from Ceylon as World War Two breaks out. Cynthia becomes a secretary at a literary magazine, and also is involved with Tyler Kent  and eventually is asked to work for MI5. The atmosphere of what is called "the phony war" is evoked very well, and the whole story is enjoyable, especially as we know the eventual outcome of the war in real life, but is not apparent at the end of this story.