No Wind of Blame by Georgette Heyer

29 August 2010 00:13

This book is a murder mystery and I must say that I prefer these ones to Heyer’s romances, but I’m not a huge fan of romances anyway. I didn’t read the blurb on the back of this book until I had finished it, and I’m thankful that I didn’t as it gives away part of the mystery. Why do they do that? The main detective in this book is Inspector Hemingway but as he doesn’t really have a huge personality I found that he didn’t contribute much to the flavour of the whole thing.

Heyer manages to combine murder mysteries and humour successfully which is a nice dimension to her books and I can’t think of any other crime novelist who attempts comedy. Well, I suppose Dorothy Sayers did but not to the same extent.

At 348 pages this is quite a thick book as vintage crime goes, and I had put off reading it for a while for this reason. But it was actually a really quick read and enjoyable. It was first published in 1939.

I wouldn’t call the first paragraph an interest grabber: “The Prince is coming by the one-forty-five. That means he’ll be here in time for tea. Well, I do call that nice.”

This is a classic country house mystery, usually a good start for any thriller. The house, called Palings, is owned by Mrs Ermyntrude Carter who had been a chorus girl in her day, and she has a husband who spends his time squandering his wife’s money and is a general liability. His cousin Mary is also part of the household.

The rest of the characters consist of the neighbours, the local doctor
and Vicky who is Mrs Carter’s daughter and fancies herself as a bit of an actress.

The crime doesn’t occur until about a third of the way through the book so part of the mystery is figuring out who the victim is going to be, as well as who is the culprit.

Georgette Heyer seems to be unable to write anything which doesn’t have a dollop of romance in it but it doesn’t descend into the gloopy, schmalzy sort.

Dorothy L. Sayers said Miss Heyer’s characters and dialogue are an abiding delight to me… I have seldom met people to whom I have taken so violent a fancy from the word “Go”.

One thing I must mention is that the only other Ermintrude that I have ever come across before is of course the cow in The Magic Roundabout. O.K. the spelling is different. But at the beginning I couldn’t help thinking of Ermintrude the cow whenever the character of Ermyntrude Carter was speaking.

If you want a reminder of that iconic BBC programme for children of all ages, have a look here.

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Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain

26 August 2010 23:33

I dug a lot of books out of the attic during my recent clean up and decluttering binge, and one of them was Testament of Youth which is Vera Brittain’s autobiography from 1900 – 1925, definitely one for keeping and re-reading. This book was first published in 1933 and the BBC dramatised it years ago.

I think I saw the tv programmes first but soon after that I bought the book and the sequel Testament of Experience.

Vera Brittain was one of the very few women to get into an Oxford College in 1914 but after one year she gave up her studies to become a VAD nurse and ended up nursing in London, Malta and at the Front in France. It’s a heart-breaking read as all of the young men close to her are lost, including her fiance and her beloved brother Edward. But if you are interested in World War 1 then this is a “must read”.

Vera became a pacifist and was active in the League of Nations. She did get married and her daughter is Shirley Williams, who was once a lib-dem M.P. and is now in the House of Lords.

I think I’ll buy the dvds because I haven’t seen the series since it was first shown.
I like this anniversary cover although it isn’t the one which I have, mine has Cheryl Campbell on the front, she played the part of Vera in the series.

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The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale

16 July 2010 00:29

or The Murder at Road Hill House.

I got a hardback copy of this book as a birthday present but just about every charity shop that I have been in recently has had a paperback copy, so it looks as if everybody has already read it.

Kate Summerscale wrote this book which is based on a true crime which took place in 1860 in a large detached Georgian house in Wiltshire. The family woke up one morning to discover that their small boy was missing from his cot. The house and grounds were searched and eventually his body was found. The grieving family are suspects.

Jack Whicher of Scotland Yard is sent for, he is a famous detective at the time that the profession is in its infancy. The whole country is horrified by the case and Whicher is sent letters from all over the country from people who think they can help him solve it.

The case inspired Wilkie Collins, Dickens, Conan Doyle and Mary Elizabeth Bradden amongst others, but it was years before the true identity of the murderer was known.

Kate Summerscale has interspersed the story with other cases from the era. It is breathtaking how stupid the murderers often were. They seemed to be good at leaving articles of clothing behind at the crime scene, which just happened to have their names sewn into them! Or maybe Mr. Whicher did a lot of ‘fitting up’.

He does seem to have been one of those detectives who decided immediately who the culprit was, because he didn’t like the look of them. I doubt if he was always correct.

Unfortunately there are still detectives around like that today and it takes years for their victims to have their convictions overturned. At least nowadays they aren’t hanged.

I did enjoy this book, although it does skip around a bit between various different cases. If you enjoy a Victorian sensationalist novel now and again, you should like this taste of the real thing.

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Hampton Court Palace Flower Show

12 July 2010 10:17

I had really been looking forward to this show but I don’t know what happened. I completely missed it on TV. I think it was on too early for me as I tend not to watch anything in the early evening during summer.

Anyway, luckily you can watch it on the internet nowadays so I’ve been trying to catch up with it.

Take a look here, if you are interested in gardens and plants.

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To Kill a Mockingbird at 50

8 July 2010 00:23

I enjoyed watching the BBC documentary To Kill a Mockingbird at 50. I watched it last night and it will be available to watch on the iplayer for another 12 days. The film is 60 minutes long.

Andrew Smith had been hoping to get an interview with Nelle Harper Lee but of course she didn’t oblige him, although her presence did seem to be felt by him as he travelled around Monroeville. She did allow her sister Alice to speak to him and friends and neighbours contributed to the film too.

I found it interesting anyway and hope you like it too.

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Birthday books

21 June 2010 09:32

I was lucky enough to be given a copy of The Gathering Night by Margaret Elphinstone for my birthday. This photograph of me reading it in our garden makes me look a bit weird I think, worryingly my husband thinks I look normal in it.

I was also given The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale which is about a true murder mystery which took place in 1860 and inspired Wilkie Collins and other writers.

Last but not least is a lovely book, Plants in Garden History by Penelope Hobhouse. It’s beautifully illustrated if you like plants, flowers and garden plans.

I can’t resist visiting second-hand bookshops which are quite thin on the ground in this area but when I was in St Andrews I bought myself:

Hungry Hill by Daphne du Maurier as I am trying to read all of hers.

Moonfleet by J.Meade Falkner. It’s a classic tale of mystery and adventure in a Dorset smuggling village. For some reason I love smuggling tales.

The Best of Saki (Hector Hugh Munro) who was killed in the trenches in the First World War. It’s a book of short stories.

Last but not least School for Love by Olivia Manning. I’ve been meaning to read more of her books. I read and loved The Balkan Trilogy and The Levant Trilogy. The BBC serialised The Balkan Trilogy as The Fortunes of War in 1987 starring Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh. I think anyone interested in WW2 would love these books.

I was given lots of DVDs by Duncan and I was especially pleased to get The Shipping News. I read the book recently and was so immersed in it that I really missed it when it was finished, so now I can revisit the story via the film. It’s too soon for a re-read.

So, as you can see I was a very lucky birthday girl and that TBR pile just keeps growing.

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Chelsea Flower Show Highlights

31 May 2010 02:09

I’ve really enjoyed watching the Chelsea Flower Show, well I always love it. But all good things must come to an end. You can view the highlight show here, it lasts about an hour.

Not long now until the Hampton Court Flower Show. Can’t wait.

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BBC Forsyte Saga (again)

5 April 2010 11:04

I’ve been having a bit of a Forsyte-fest since I was given the original BBC set from 1967 for Mothering Sunday. I’ve watched all 26 episodes and although it seemed a bit dated at first, it wasn’t long before I forgot that it was in black and white and I got engrossed in the whole thing.

As I mentioned before, some of the love scenes in the earlier episodes are an absolute scream, but they did become more natural looking as time went on. Maybe the actors had started to do a bit more than acting with each other by that time.

I still think that the casting was better than the recent ITV version. Nyree Dawn Porter was so much better as Irene than Gina McKee was, although Nyree didn’t get the distinctive walk of Irene either. You would think it would be an easy thing for an actress to master – a sexy bum waggling walk, which Galsworthy described her as having.

For the most part, the ageing make-up was well done too. Although for some reason the character of June’s face looked dirtier as she got older.

Susan Hampshire will always be Fleur to me, I think she was just perfect for the part and her husband was played by the actor Nicholas Pennell, who I think did a good job. I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t seen him in anything else, but apparently he was in The Saint, which I never watched. At some point he moved to Canada and acted in a Shakespearian company there. Maybe the parts just didn’t come up for him in Britain. Sadly he died when he was only 56.

So all in all, I thoroughly enjoyed my present. It was an absolute bargain, bought from The Guardian website for £19.99.

The Forsyte Saga was hugely popular when it was first broadcast in Britain. Pubs closed early (in England – Scottish pubs were shut on Sundays way back then; only hotels could sell drink and then only to “bona fide travellers”) and churches rescheduled their evening services.

It was subsequently released in Australia and America where it was just as popular and it became the first serial sold by the BBC to the Soviet Union. More than 160 million viewers around the world watched the serial.

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BBC Radio

21 March 2010 15:57

For me, silence is never golden as I suffer from tinnitus, so I like to have some nice background noise as often as possible, so that the ringing noises are drowned out.

So when I’m in the kitchen I always have a radio on. We have two there, one of which is permanently tuned to 5 Live, which can be quite annoying because most of the time they seem to be talking about football. Plus they speak as if it is actually important, when IT IS ONLY A GAME.

The other radio was a present from son number 1 – a digital one which is retuned often. I love the World Service but quite often it is engulfed by football too. Radio Scotland is good for more local news and travel reports.

On Sunday I’ve been listening to Jarvis Cocker on Radio 6 whilst I’m cooking the Sunday roast and probably won’t be able to do so for much longer as it is in line to be cut in order to save money. We all know a much better way of making cutbacks, just half the pay of the fat-cats at the BEEB, they’ll still be getting too much money even then.

I’m maybe the last person in the world to have discovered Radio 7. Son number 1 steered me towards it one night last week and they were transmitting programmes from 1943. I think it was a celebration of the BBC’s 21st birthday. Great stuff. So during this week I’ve been listening to Alan Bennett and Nick Hornby giving readings.

Of course I can always listen to it on the iPlayer too. It helps to drown out not only the tinitus, but also the horrible noises which our computer is making from time to time. I think it must be on its last legs, poor thing.

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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.

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