Arsene Lupin, Gentleman -Thief by Maurice Leblanc

16 March 2010 00:01

This is another random book which I borrowed from my local library, I had never heard of Maurice Leblanc but apparently he is very famous, although more so in France as you would expect.

This is a collection of short stories which seem to have been published in a magazine around 1907. The character of Arsene Lupin is variously a burglar, thief, con man and detective and the stories were styled on Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories.

Well I have never liked Arthur Conan Doyle’s writing (I suppose that that is sacrilege to a lot of people and from a fellow Scot too but it is just a fact) so this wasn’t really my cup of tea either. However if you are keen on Conan Doyle then you will probably like Maurice Leblanc.

For some reason I just am not impressed with the characters which these authors came up with.

I do love vintage crime though but I think that the women crime writers were head and shoulders above the men. Sayers, Christie, Allingham, Tey and more all have an edge and style that none of the men seem to have. I wonder why?

There’s probably a Ph.D. thesis there for someone.

No Comments »

Categories: Books

Tags: , , , , , ,

BBC’s The Forsyte Saga

15 March 2010 00:00

My husband bought me The Forsyte Saga boxed set on 7 DVDs for Mother’s Day. Well, he’s not a bad lad and of course it was really cheap from The Guardian. (£19.99)

I’m really shocked that this was first screened in 1967, so I was only 8 years old. I remember that I loved it and certain parts of it have always stuck in my memory. I think it was actually on quite late at night, I’m sure that it wasn’t meant to be viewed by 8 year olds but as I was the youngest in my family by quite a long way, my bed time tended to be forgotten about. Lucky me.

It was a BAFTA and Emmy award winning series but of course it is in black and white which doesn’t really bother me, I love watching vintage films which are often in black and white too.

So I’ve been having a great time watching it again whilst my husband was out at a football match, and I’m already on episode 5. As you would expect after all this time it is a bit dated but that hasn’t spoiled my enjoyment. Some of the acting is really good but some is quite bad. The love scenes are terrible, really hammy so they are an absolute SCREAM. I think it was all a bit too much for the BBC to cope with in 1967. I certainly remember that it was talked of in the newspapers and thought to be not quite ‘nice’ and a bit risque.

I think that the cast was well chosen, apart from John Bennet who plays the part of Philip Bosinney. His acting is fine – apart from the hilarious love scenes – but he is just too old for the part, he looks older than Soames a lot of the time.

For some reason I have never liked the actor Kenneth More who plays the part of young Jolyon, but again he doesn’t spoil it for me.

As an 8 year old, I remember being a fan of Soames and I still think that he was very badly treated by Irene. Eric Porter was perfect as Soames.

So my Mother’s Day present has been a great success and I can’t wait to watch the rest of it.

No Comments »

Categories: BBC, DVDs

Tags: , , , , ,

Footsteps in the Dark by Georgette Heyer

13 March 2010 00:01

I didn’t get around to signing up for the Georgette Heyer tour on the Classics Circuit but I thought I would read and review one anyway.

Footsteps in the Dark was first published in 1932 which just suits me fine, I love vintage thrillers. I hadn’t read any Heyers before this one and I was very pleasantly surprised by it.

At first I thought that I had fallen into an episode of Scooby Doo as all the ingredients were there – two male characters, two females and a spooky house which all of the locals said was haunted, and I kept expecting a huge mutt to come lolloping into the story but it didn’t happen.

Plenty did happen though and Heyer managed to throw lots of comedy into the mix as well as the mystery and suspense. The storyline wasn’t exactly original but I found the main characters to be really likeable.

Perfect for bedtime reading or for when you are travelling or needing a bit of distraction from real life as it was just a light, entertaining read.

I must admit that the reason that I haven’t read any Heyers before is sheer snobbery. I worked in libraries before having my family and we were all quite disdainful of Heyer even although we hadn’t actually sampled her. I think she was just out of fashion at that time and because her only readers were ‘ladies of a certain age’ we thought the worst. My grandmother was a huge fan and so I should have known better, as granny was keen on classics too.

So I’m going to have to get stuck into her work and see what the regency ones are like.

It has just occurred to me that I am now a ‘lady of a certain age’ myself. Hmmmm.

No Comments »

Categories: Books

Tags: , , ,

Scottish words: skellum, ken speckle

11 March 2010 00:00

I noticed whilst I was reading Greenmantle that John Buchan was ‘doing his bit’ in keeping Scottish words going as far back as 1915 when he wrote the book.

skellum

He has his character Sandy using the word – skellum – which means a rascal, rogue, a ne’er do weel (never do well).

ken speckle

Ken speckle means that someone is well recognised, well known.

Whilst I’ve seen this phrase written down plenty of times, I’ve only ever heard it used in speech once. It was by a very old man in Kinross high street and it was the first time I had come across the word but I think it is an easy one to guess the meaning of. So, despite John Buchan, it isn’t doing too well and I’m going to use it whenever I can. Of course it can be written as all one word.

Apparently kenspeckle is originally from Ole Norse and I’m pretty sure that skellum is too given the fact that it starts with sk.

No Comments »

Categories: Nostalgia, Scottish words

Tags: , ,

Greenmantle by John Buchan

10 March 2010 00:00

Greenmantle is the sequel to The 39 Steps but there is much more to this book than the previous one. Set in 1915, Richard Hannay is recuperating at Furling country house in Hampshire after having been wounded at the Battle of Loos. He is expecting to be given command of his own battalion but when he gets a telegram from the Foreign Office, he ends up working undercover with others.

Sir Walter Bullivant has already lost his son on the same mission. When Harry Bullivant died he had 10 bullets in him but managed to say one word ‘Kasredin’ before he died. With just a few more clues Richard Hannay takes up the trail.

Going undercover as a South African Boer who hates the English, Hannay pretends to be on the side of the Germans, who are planning to stir up revolt amongst the Muslims. He is aided by three others, Peter Pienaar a South African, John S. Blenkiron an American and Sandy Arbuthnot a Scot.

First published in 1916, this book has a much more convoluted storyline than The 39 Steps. As you would expect from an adventure/spy novel which is almost 100 years old, it contains rampant racism, homophobia and sexism but this doesn’t detract from the enjoyment of the story.

As you can imagine, Greenmantle was a huge bestseller during the First World War.

Given the state of the world today, nothing much seems to have changed in all that time, except we aren’t fighting Germans now.

The writer Allan Massie said ‘Maybe Greenmantle should be a set-book for our security services.’

It could only help – they need something.

An enjoyable adventure story.

No Comments »

Categories: Books, Scottish literature

Tags: , , , ,

Snowdrops

8 March 2010 23:38

You wouldn’t believe from looking at this blog that gardening is my main hobby. It certainly hasn’t featured much and that is mainly because the weather has been so awful, even the so called summer didn’t make an appearance for the third year. But for the first time since before Christmas we are without a hard frost – for three days in a row – amazing. It’s beginning to feel a bit like spring but I reckon my garden is about six weeks behind where it should be.

There isn’t much sign of life except for the beautiful snowdrops which we bought ‘in the green’ from the Cambo Estate at Kingsbarns near St Andrews. I’ve planted lots of snowdrop bulbs before but they always failed to come up. Someone told me that mice eat the dry bulbs. The Cambo snowdrops are really unusual ones and they are actually multiplying in our garden, which is a great bonus.

Cambo is well worth a visit if you enjoy plants and woodland walks.

The photos in this post are from my own garden.

No Comments »

Categories: Gardening

Tags: , , , ,

Classic Children’s Literature

7 March 2010 23:36

I’ve made a bit of a study of classic children’s literature over the years and although I don’t count myself an expert on the subject, I felt I just had to write to The Guardian Review about last week’s article by A.S. Byatt.

So I was really pleased to see that they had actually published the letter yesterday and illustrated it with a cartoon.

Letters section of Guardian Review 6/3/10

For some reason the Review letters aren’t on the website so I can’t link to them. I took a photo of the page instead. Here’s a close-up of my letter and their cartoon which was by Tom Gauld.

In general it was quite a good article but I do think that Byatt might have made some mention of the fact that so many of the authors she mentioned were actually Scottish.

I find that people from England tend to take it for granted that the great children’s classics were written by English writers. However, J.M. Barrie, George MacDonald, R.L. Stevenson, Kenneth Grahame and A.A. Milne were all Scottish. In the case of Milne, I believe he was born in England but brought up by Scottish parents and had a grandfather who was a church of Scotland minister. Just thought I’d mention it.

No Comments »

Categories: Books, Scottish literature

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

3 March 2010 22:23

This book was first published in instalments in the London Journal in 1862 and it was hugely successful. I can’t understand how I have never come across Mary Elizabeth Braddon before, I’ve only ever worked in libraries, but anyway I was lucky enough to come across this book in my most recent trip to my local library.

At 476 pages long it’s a fairly chunky read but I found myself getting through it very quickly – always a good sign for me. I really enjoyed it. It’s very much in the Wilkie Collins mode and indeed he is given a name check by the author towards the end of the book. But I actually think that Braddon is even better than Collins. To me, the characters were more likeable and realistic.

The storyline features blackmail, bigamy and murder – what more could you want? Well of course the usual ‘mad’ Victorian woman too. Apparently, up until this book was published wicked women were always brunettes and it all changed with this book as Braddon’s villainess is beautiful, blonde and dainty.

Thackeray said: ‘If I could plot like Miss Braddon I should be the greatest novelist that ever lived.’

Henry James,Dickens,Tennyson,Gladstone and Queen Victoria were also admirers.

If you enjoy reading Victorian ‘sensationalist’ novels, I think you would like this one. I’m certainly going to be looking for more by Braddon and I will probably re-read this one at some point.

I read this book as part of the Thriller & Suspense Reading Challenge 2010.

No Comments »

Categories: Books

Tags: , , , , , ,

Scottish words: Going for my messages

2 March 2010 23:40

Obviously this one is more of a Scottish phrase although I didn’t even realise that it was Scottish until I moved to the south of England for a few years in the late 70s.

I was met with puzzled faces when I said to people ‘I’m going for my messages’. They just couldn’t think what I meant by it and I thought that everybody used the word messages to mean food shopping, so I was really surprised when I had to explain it to them.

It is probably more common to hear people saying ‘I’m away for my messages’ – and they just mean that they are going to the supermarket.

In the days of my childhood when children were allowed to roam the streets on their own at a young age it was common to see them being sent for a message and that could mean something like picking up the dry cleaning or paying a bill for their mother. We were given quite a lot of responsibility in those days as youngster.

When you think about it, it sounds a strange thing to say. So I can see why Sassenachs were completely in the dark as to what I was talking about. Poor sowls.

11 Comments »

Categories: Nostalgia, Scottish words

Tags:

Chocolate, Banana And Toffee Pie

1 March 2010 23:57

This one went down well with the whole family. It will serve 6.

For the base:
65 g/2½ oz unsalted butter
250 g/9 oz chocolate digestive biscuits

For the filling:
397 g/13 oz tin of condensed milk
150 g/5 oz plain chocolate
120 ml/4 fl oz creme fraiche or single cream
1 tbsp golden syrup

For the topping:
2 bananas
250 ml/8 fl oz creme fraiche
2 tbsp strong black coffee

Melt the butter in a pan. Crush the biscuits using a rolling pin if you don’t have a food processor. Put the crushed biscuits into a bowl and add the melted butter. Mix well and press onto the base and up the sides of a 23cm/9in loose-based flan tin. Leave to set.

To make the filling: Place the unopened can of condensed milk in a saucepan of boiling water and cover with a lid. Lower the heat and simmer for 2 hours. Do not allow the pan to boil dry. This caramelises the condensed milk and you can buy this ready made in tins if you don’t want the faff of doing it yourself.

Remove the pan from the heat after 2 hours and leave it until it has completely cooled. Do not open the can whilst it is still hot, it is very dangerous as the contents are under pressure due to the heat.

Melt the chocolate with the 120 ml creme fraiche or single cream and golden syrup in a heatproof glass bowl over simmering water. Stir in the caramelised condensed milk and mix well, then spread the mixture over the biscuit crust.

Slice the bananas and arrange them on top of the chocolate filling.

Mix together the 250 ml creme fraiche and coffee then spread the mixture over the bananas.

Decorate with grated chocolate or chocolate curls. The easiest way to make chocolate curls is to use a potato peeler on the edge of a bar of chocolate.

No Comments »

Categories: Desserts/Puddings, Recipes, Sweets

Tags: ,

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »