The Rival Monster by Compton Mackenzie

Posted on 10 October 2024 by Katrina

Book Cover

The Rival Monster by Compton Mackenzie was published in 1952. This very prolific author is better known for writing Whisky Galore and The Monarch of the Glen. This book features a lot of the characters from the Whisky Galore books, with the same daft humour.

In a previous book (which I haven’t read yet) a flying saucer had apparently been seen attacking the Loch Ness monster and it is feared that it had either killed the monster or scared Nessie off, to take up home in another loch.

But there have been lots of sights of another monster and it definitely isn’t Nessie as it has huge teeth and comes onto the land. The tabloid newspapers are agog and one of them is putting up a prize of £250 for anyone who gets a photo of the monster. A young English palaeontologist makes his way to the island of Todday, hoping that finding the ‘monster’ will boost his academic career.

The twins Muriel and Elsie Waggett have almost given up hope of ever getting a life of their own off the island, and their mother just dreams of moving back to London, close to her sister.

This is a really light-hearted romp with a lot of the humour revolving around Mr Waggett, the pompous incomer who had been head of the Home Guard during the war. He’s even worse than Mr Mainwaring of Dad’s Army fame.

The Hunterian, Glasgow – Charles Rennie Mackintosh – his dark furniture

Posted on 8 October 2024 by Katrina

We’re back at The Hunterian in Glasgow again, with the photos I took of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s dark furniture.

It’s easier to see the slightly Japanese influence in these designs I think.

I’m not sure whether I prefer his white or black furniture, but I think that the white for bedrooms is prettier – and it won’t show up the dust as much!

Anyway, if you happen to be in Glasgow and you admire Charles Rennie Mackintosh you should definitely make time to visit The Hunterian, which also has a lot of art on show, but that’s another blogpost I think.

The Hunterian, Glasgow, Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Posted on 6 October 2024 by Katrina

Back in August we visited The Hunterian in Glasgow, it’s the oldest public museum in Scotland. We hadn’t been there for quite a few years. They have a lot of original Mackintosh furniture on show, it was saved from a building that the couple had lived in and he had redesigned, but after their death the building was due to be demolished, luckily the contents were saved and stored until a new home was found for them.

The Hunterian is the perfect location. I took lots of photos but as his furniture tended to be either black or white I’m splitting the photos up.

As you can see today it’s the white interiors. They’re so light and airy.

The above were all in the bedroom. Below are from the living room.

If I’m recalling correctly the wall art above the fireplace below is just a copy of a work done by Margaret Macdonald. I think the originals deteriorated a lot over the years.

If you happen to be visiting Glasgow the Hunterian is a great place to see C.R. Mackintosh’s designs and if you have the time you might want to see his wonderful House for an Art Lover which was not built in his lifetime, but ony fairly recently to his plans. It’s situated in Bellahouston Park in Glasgow.

Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers

Posted on 3 October 2024 by Katrina

Book Cover Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers was first published in 1933. My edition is a Hodder reprint from 2016.

The very successful advertising agency Pym’s Publicity has taken on a new copy-writer by the name of Death Bredon, it is of course Lord Peter Wimsey looking exactly like himself but claiming to be his disreputable cousin Bredon when he is recognised.

There had recently been a death within the offices of the company. Victor Dean had fallen down a metal spiral staircase, but was it purely an accident or a dastardly murder? Lord Peter is engaged to go undercover and get to the bottom of the mystery, but the bodies pile up before he cracks the case. In some ways the plot seems quite a modern one involving fast living upper class types and illegal substances, but I suppose there’s nothing new in crime.

There’s an introduction by Peter Robinson.

I read this one about 30 years ago and as I’m quite a fan of Sayers it was about time I had a re-read. It doesn’t feature Harriet Vane, those ones are my favourites, but it’s still really enjoyable, with what I’m sure was a very authentic setting as Sayers got the idea for the book while she was working as a copy-writer in an advertising agency. It’s thought that she came up with the famous Guinness adverts featuring a Toucan. She injects plenty of humour into the tale with quick witted wordplay as you would expect from such characters.

LOVELY DAY FOR A GUINNESS - Alcohol Advertisement Wall Poster Print - 30cm x 43cm / 12 Inches x 17 Inches

Kenilworth by Sir Walter Scott – Classics Club spin

Posted on 1 October 2024 by Katrina

I completely missed the deadline of 22nd, September for reading Kenilworth for The Classics Club spin, in fact I completely forgot about it until the email popped up asking if I had finished my spin book – I hadn’t even started it. Anyway, I got down to it straight away, it took me a week to finish it, it’s 568 pages long, my edition dates from 1908, it was a prize given to my granny-in-law for ‘general exellence’ at St Gabriel’s Church in Govan. I wonder if she ever ploughed her way through it, she was a big Georgette Heyer fan. The book was originally published in 1821.

I can’t say that I enjoyed this one. I usually get used to Walter Scott’s garrulous writing style fairly quickly but this one felt like a real drag.

The setting is mainly Kenilworth Castle which was owned by Robert Dudley (Earl of Leicester) Elizabeth I of England’s favourite. The whole thing is just Walter Scott’s version of what went on in that Tudor court where men were jockeying for Elizabeth’s attention in an attempt to climb the greasy pole and maybe even become her husband.

Dudley thinks he has a good chance of catching Elizabeth but crucially he is already married to Amy Robsart, although it is a secret marriage. Obviously things don’t end well for Amy.

There’s a lot more to it of course, I don’t think that it helped that I already knew how the story would end. I don’t think I’ll darken Scott’s door for quite some time – if ever.

I would really like to visit Kenilworth Castle sometime though, meanwhile I’m making do with this You Tube video with historian Dan Snow.

Stories for Summer and days by the pool – British Library short stories

Posted on 29 September 2024 by Katrina

Stories for Summer and days by the pool is a collection of short stories published recently in the British Library Women Writers series.

It features stories by well-known female writers:

The Pool by Daphne du Maurier

Carnation by Katherine Mansfield

Kew Gardens by Virginia Woolf

Requiescat by Elizabeth Bowen

Exile by Sylvia Lynd

Black Cat for Luck by G.B. Stern

The Sand Castle by Mary Lavin

The Shark’s Fin by Phyllis Bottome

The Lovely Evening by Mary Norton

In a Different Light by Elizabeth Taylor

In and Out of Never-Never Land by Maeve Brennan

Afternoon in Summer by Sylvia Townsend Warner

The Fortune Teller by Muriel Spark

Men Friends by Muriel Huth

It’s a really entertaining compilation, as a woman who has been know to get sunburnt on a grey day I must say that I’ve never lain on a beach reading, or by a pool for that matter, but if you are that way inclined this book would be perfect. I really enjoyed most of the stories despite not being a huge fan of short stories in general.

My thanks to British Library who sent me a copy of the book to review.

The Rectory Mice by George MacBeth

Posted on 27 September 2024 by Katrina

The Rectory Mice by the Scottish writer George MacBeth was published in 1982. He’s known mainly as a poet, but later in his life he wrote some novels and books for children, this one is aimed at 10 year olds I suspect but as always with good writing, it’s entertaining for any age. It’s illustrated by Douglas Hall. The setting is a rectory in Oby, Norfolk.

It’s 1914 and at least three generations of a family of mice are living very comfortably in an old rectory, the only thing that upsets them is the clanging of the bell which alerts the rectory servants. They are extremely clean mice (impossible) so their existence is unknown to the house inhabitants, including the cats. Everything is hunky dory until they hear of the beginning of the war. War always means a lack of food, they’re worried about their cheese rations.

But when one of the mice sees what turns out to be a zeppelin floating past they realise that there is more than just a lack of cheese to worry about. As time goes on a new man joins the staff of the rectory, he’s a German prisoner of war, and he brings with him something which is going to change everything for the mice.

This is a charming book although you have to suspend your disbelief as the mice can read and Grandfather Mouse often consults the dictionary in the library. It reminded me a bit of The Borrowers by Mary Norton which I loved.

Blackwell, Arts and Crafts house, Lake District

Posted on 26 September 2024 by Katrina

So here we are back at Blackwell again, but we’re in a very different setting now. The hall is almost medieval in design and is quite dark. The architect deliberately designed the rooms so that you were moving from dark oak panelling through this corridor to light, very light indeed.

So much in this beautiful room is similar (ish) to Rennie Mackintosh’s Hill House in Helensburgh. Again there are sitting neuks by the fireplace, perfect for curling up with a book. I’m fairly sure that the frieze at the top of the wall and the ceiling is papered with Lincrusta, a kind of wallpaper which incorporates plaster designs sandwiched between the paper. It’s on the ceiling too, a fairly inexpensive way of adding luxury to a room, I think you can still buy it today.

The corner cupboard below is flanked by two stylised trees, natural motifs are all around the house in the decor, particularly rowan berries, and apparently when the house was taken over after a long period of neglect there was a rowan sapling growing inside this cupboard!

I think all of the rooms have window seats.

But the white room has two window seats, one with a view of the garden, above and a great view of Lake Windermere below.

It’s such a shame that Blackwell was never a real family home, just a holiday house for a short time in the summer. The pottery in this room is by Willem de Morgan – it’s stunning.

Blackwell, an Arts and Crafts house, Lake District

Posted on 22 September 2024 by Katrina

When we were in the Lake District a few weeks ago one of the places on our list to visit was Blackwell, an Arts and Crafts house. I must admit that I hadn’t even heard of it until quite recently. It’s an absolute jewel.

Blackwell has always been a holiday home which is really sad, it would have made a wonderful family home although I suppose the winters in the Lake District can be quite grim. The house was designed by Mackay Hugh Baillie Scott. It’s not far from Bowness on Windermere.

The photos above and below are of the Hall. The stained glass design of tulips and blue birds looks much better in reality.

The hall is a large room, you could easily hold a dance in it. The copper lighting is original as is the peacock frieze at the top of the walls. This is actually wallpaper which has been recently refurbished. As you can just see on the left there’s another cosy seating area.

We joined in a guided tour which was interesting. Some of the designs are very reminiscent of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, he and Baillie Scott were designing at around the same time and were often competing for the same commissions. Of course Baillie Scott was also of Scottish descent.

The hall is a bit of a mixture of Tudor style, with its oak panelling and early 20th century styling. The guide thought that the fireplace was a nod towards Art Deco although the house is a bit early for that, the Dutch Delft tiles around the fireplace seemed a bit incongruous in the setting, but they are attractive. Every house should have at least one window seat I think, and this house has a few. They are perfect for reading in but the scenery outside might be a bit too distracting.

Or you could sit in the window below, the light should be good anyway.

This part of the house is quite dark, it was deliberate, to contrast with the bright light of the rest of the downstairs, but I’ll leave that for another post.

Blackwell stands above Lake Windermere, below is a view from the driveway towards the lake.

The Other Side of Stone by Linda Cracknell

Posted on 20 September 2024 by Katrina

The Other Side of Stone by Linda Cracknell was published in 2021 by Taproot Press. The time switches between 1831, 1913, 1990, 2003, 2006 and 2019, but it’s never confusing. It’s a quick read at just 146 pages, I think it’s really well written. The setting is rural Perthshire. It is a novella although some people have described it as a collection of linked short stories.

It begins with a stonemason cutting the keystone of a Perthshire woollen mill, he chisels the date 1831 into it, but on the inside face that nobody will ever see he carves a secret mark.

Basically this is the history of a building over the years, from its beginning to its end. We often say when we’re in old buildings “if walls could talk” and that’s really what Linda Cracknell has done in this book. The woollen mill has seen strikes and strife particularly in 1913 when they are so disgruntled that immigration to Canada seems like a good move to some. But the wife of one of the mill workers just hopes to get her husband to sign papers to allow her to be able to train as a nurse, she needs his permission and it looks like he’s never going to give it. She becomes a suffragette which gains her husband a lot of sympathy – from the drunken men anyway.

In the later years the mill’s fortunes decline, as almost all of them did, until the land it was built on is returned to an agricultural use again, and a circle of some sort has been completed.

Pining for the West

Meanderings about recipes, books, craft and more