Milly, Molly, Mandy by Joyce Lankester Brisley

Posted on 7 December 2024 by Katrina

Milly, Molly, Mandy by Joyce Lankester Brisley was first published in 1928. I bought my copy of the book just a couple of weeks ago, it’s a lovely 90th anniversary edition. This is a series of books, compilations of short stories with Millicent Margaret Amanda as the main character, she’s Milly-Molly-Mandy for short. I didn’t read this series as a child and I think back in the day when my boys were youngsters they would definitely have classed Milly Molly Mandy as for girls only.

The blurb says: Milly-Molly-Mandy is always ready for some fun, whether she is going to a party, blackberry picking or running errands. Along with Toby the dog, little-friend-Susan and Billy Blunt, she can always find something to do in her tiny village in the countryside.

The stories have lovely quaint illustrations, in fact before finding this book I had only known the author as an illustrator, specifically of Adventures Of The Little Wooden Horse.

Joyce Lankester Brisley came from a talented family of artists with both of her sisters having successful careers in art too.

Lamentation by C.J. Sansom

Posted on 5 December 2024 by Katrina

Lamentation Book Cover Lamentation by C.J. Sansom was published in 2014 and it’s the sixth book in the Shardlake series.

Shardlake has been employed by Queen Catherine Parr, supposedly to track down a valuable ring of hers which has been stolen, but in reality he is searching for a book which she has written and which could be construed as a work of heresy. Catherine has plenty of enemies within the court, as ever King Henry VIII’s supposed loyal courtiers are intent on manipulating him for their own familial advantage.

The Queen will be in danger of being burnt at the stake for heresy if she can’t find her stolen book which is called The Lamentations of a Sinner, and so might Shardlake. She regrets not having burnt it when she could.

In this one Shardlake gets involved with men who are a lot more dangerous than he realises, and he and his male employees end up being outfought by men who are hardened fighters compared with them.

This was a good one although for my liking there was a bit too much jeapordy involved for Shardlake and Barak.

I love the historical notes at the back of these books. Sansom certainly put in a lot of research time and his description of Henry VIII in his final year or so seem very authentic and likely.

Marjory Fleming by Oriel Malet

Posted on 2 December 2024 by Katrina

Marjory Fleming by Oriel Malet was first published in 1946 by Faber and Faber, but it has more recently been reprinted by Persephone Books, it’s their number 17.

Marjory was born in 1803 in Kirkcaldy and buried there too at the age of just eight. We lived in Kirkcaldy for 26 years and her grave is in Abbotshall Church, near where we lived. After her death she was regarded as a bit of a child prodigy because she left behind her quite a lot of her writing which is now housed in the National Library of Scotland. Robert Louis. Stevenson wrote “Marjory Fleming was possibly – no, I take back possibly – she was one of the noblest works of God.”

Oriel Malet has written a fictional account of Marjory’s short life. The family lived above a bookshop in the High Street, but from the age of 6 she was taken to live with her much wealthier cousins in Edinburgh. Cousin Isabella was keen to take on Marjory as a bit of a project and strangely Marjory’s parents were happy to giver her up to that branch of the family – for three years!

No doubt Marjory was very happy to be in a much wealthier and more sociable household, it’s thought that she may have met the young Walter Scott there as he was a friend of the family. I can’t help thinking that as she seemed to be the life and soul of her own family (maybe too much for her mother to handle) it must have been a wrench for her father whom she seems to have most resembled in personality.

Anyway, we don’t even know for sure what it was that killed Marjory but it was probably some form of meningitis. The memorial to her in Abbotshall Church was only erected in 1930. I did read Pet Marjory by Dr John Brown some years ago which had more of her actual writing in it as I recall.

Sadly my copy doesn’t have the dust jacket.

Warkworth Castle, Northumberland

Posted on 30 November 2024 by Katrina

So here we are back at Warkworth Castle in Northumberland, it’s a great place to visit but isn’t so accessible for disabled people like many of these places. It’s owned/run by English Heritage, it was owned by the Percy family in Tudor times. You can see my previous post here.

Parts of it are covered but others are open to the elements. I must say that the stonework looks in really good shape.

Below is quite a grand staircase.

But the stairs below aren’t for the faint hearted.

Below is a really lovely part of the castle which is roofed, it’s a sort of ante room and I can imagine people millling about in it chatting, and sitting on the window seats.

I really admire vaulted rooms although I’m always a wee bit nervous of them, I have to remind myself they’ve been good for centuries so are unlikely to fall on me!

I spotted this teeny wee iron lion rampant badge from the bottom of a flight of stairs, it seems to have been set above what looks like a stone sink, but it might have been a cupboard. The lion rampant was the Percy family’s emblem/badge, but is of course better known as Scotland’s emblem.

Below is a view of Warkworth village taken from just outside the castle. It’s a lovely wee place with plenty of eateries, but we were on our way further south so didn’t have much time to spend exploring the place, we spent so much time in the castle.

Hickory Dickory Dock by Agatha Christie

Posted on 27 November 2024 by Katrina

Hickory dickory dock – agatha christie – 1st book club ed. 1956.

Hickory Dickory Dock by Agatha Christie was first published in 1955. It’s a Poirot book.

When Poirot’s normally perfect secretary Miss Lemon makes three mistakes in one letter that she has typed for him he realises that there is something seriously wrong with her. It turns out that Miss Lemon’s sister is having problems at her work. She is a matron at a hostel for students, and things have been disappearing. It seems that there’s a kleptomaniac living within the hostel, a strange conglomeration of items have gone missing. Miss Lemon’s widowed sister is worried, as is Miss Lemon. Obvioulsy Poirot has to investigate, and things take a much more serious turn when one of the students is found dead.

This is a book that I’ve had in the house for years, unread. That is probably because I much prefer the Miss Marple books to Poirot, of course this book is still a good read.

I might be strange but it’s the Art Deco style of the Poirot episodes that I appreciate most about them, although there’s not quite enough of it, in my opinion. What is your preference, Marple or Poirot? If Marple which one? There are quite a few to choose from, all good but Joan Hickson is my favourite.

I’ve just checked and it’s over ten years since I read an Agatha Christie book. How did that happen?

Nancy at St Bride’s by Dorita Fairlie Bruce

Posted on 25 November 2024 by Katrina

Nancy at St Bride’s by Dorita Fairlie Bruce was first published in 1933, but my copy is in an omnibus edition published in 1937 along with That Boarding-School Girl and The New Girl and Nancy.

Chapter I is headed On A Clyde Steamer. The boat which will take the schoolgirls to the Scottish island location of their school is waiting for them at Greenock Pier. Nancy Caird is a new girl, a junior who has never been to school before. It turns out that she’s a handful and a half with no boundaries or inhibitions. In fact she thinks that rules are there to be broken and she’s always on the look-out to cause mayhem, no matter what the consequences are. A typical Nancy as we have experienced. Each of us had a mother called Nancy.

Christine Maclean has been given the job of looking after Nancy and explaining the rules to her, the job of monitors and such, but Christine’s good friend Sybil who is a bit of an awkward personality herself, makes matters worse when she appears to be siding with Nancy and doesn’t take matters seriously at all.

This one took a different turn from what I expected it to as it got close to the end, which was a nice surprise really, as there was a bit of a comeuppance for Nancy. I was slightly disappointed that given the Scottish setting there wasn’t more of a sense of place somehow, but maybe that was me expecting too much. There were quite a few Scots words used within the dialogue though.

I have most of the author’s Dimsie books in original hardback, but I had to buy them online, I was also sent several of the books by a very kind woman who was looking for a good home for her collection.

I was amazed to find this Nancy trilogy in an Oxfam bookshop, at a very reasonable price too, so it’s still possible to find old books like this when you least expect to.

Sadly my copy doesn’t have its nice dust jacket – but you can’t have everything!

Knitting – a cardigan for Isobel

Posted on 23 November 2024 by Katrina

I’ve been doing quite a lot of knitting recently – but I’ve also been forgetting to take photos of the cardigans before giving them to my granddaughters. Anyway, the photo below is of my most recent one. I used Paintbox yarn for it, and the others, and it seems to survive the washing machine, always a bit of a worry if you haven’t used the yarn before.

As little girls have been growing faster than I can knit I’ve made the cardigan in a larger size, this is supposed to be for a seven year old but I think it’ll just be a wee bit too big for Isobel, the four year old. The pattern I used is from a book published in 1987. The Country Diary Book of Knitting by Annette Mitchell. Back then Country Diary (of an Edwardian Lady) things were everywhere.

Heartstone by C.J. Sansom

Posted on 20 November 2024 by Katrina

Heartstone Book Cover Heartstone by C.J. Sansom was first published in 2010 and it’s the fifth book in the Matthew Shardlake series.

It’s June 1545 and the setting is London, then Portsmouth. Henry VIII is now married to Catherine Parr and he’s not long for this world. He has put on even more weight and his leg ulcers are getting worse, but that hasn’t stopped him from starting a war with France. The road to Portsmouth is packed with soldiers, a massive English army to take on the French. Shardlake and Barak are heading that way too.

Shardlake is determined to get to the bottom of why a woman called Ellen is a patient in Bedlam, she’s terrified of the outside world and has been in Bedlam for over 20 years, but who is paying her fees and why was she put there in the first place?

This is a great read which really gets into the nitty gritty of what life must have been like for the soldiers and sailors who had often unwillingly been pressed into service of the King. In no time anyone travelling within the multitude is infested with fleas and lice. This is the time when the ship the Mary Rose sank so disastrously and it features in the story.

I have quite a lot of faith in C.J. Sansom’s historical details, but he did slip up with his knowledge of hunting when he wrote about servants gutting deer after a hunt. It wasn’t done quickly enough so the meat would have been inedible as deer have to be ‘gralloched’ (disembowelled) as soon as they are killed. But that’s me nit-picking

Heartstone is 715 pages long, which can be a bit off-putting especially when you have a lot of books waiting to be read, but in no time you can read 100 pages and not realise it. I think that’s proof of how well written this series is.

Warkworth Castle, Northumberland, England

Posted on 15 November 2024 by Katrina

A couple of weeks ago we were away in the north-east of England, just for a few days, seeing places we hadn’t visited before and catching up with old friends who live there. We had a great time, and the weather behaved itself beautifully, apart from heavy rain for about 15 minutes as we got to Seaton Delaval, an English National Trust property near Whitley Bay.

But it was Warkworth Castle that we visited first as we stopped off on our way down south. It’s a ruin, but a very impressive one. It was the home of the Percy family, I must admit that I didn’t realise that the Percys originated from Scotland with the first Earl being a son of King David of Scotland who gave it to his youngest son. That solves the mystery of why they have the Scottish symbol of the lion rampant everywhere. In fact when we were in a Carlisle bookshop I overheard two men talking about a local historian who believed that Scotland went all the way to the Lake District, and they agreed. One shopkeeper who enjoys holidays in Scotland told me that she thought that Scotland was like the Lake District – on steroids!

The setting of the castle couldn’t be better to my mind anyway, as you can see from the view below, through the remains of a large window.

There’s also a great view of the River Coquet from the other side of the castle.

There are really two separate ruins, with the one above being in much better condition than the one below as you can see.

I took quite a lot of photos, but I’ll leave it at that for the moment. If you ever find yourself in Northumberland and you enjoy a good castle/ruin you should definitely visit Warkworth, the village at the foot of the castle is very quaint, obviously a destination as it has lots of eateries.

My Friend My Father by Jane Duncan

Posted on 13 November 2024 by Katrina

My Friend, My Father Book Cover

My Friend My Father by Jane Duncan was published in 1966 and it’s the thirteenth book in the ‘My Friend’ series. The setting is mainly north of Inverness.

Young Janet Sandison lives with her parents on their small farm in the hills, World War I isn’t far away but it’s an idyllic life for Janet as she’s at the centre of her loving extended family. It’s her relationship with her father that’s most important to her and luckily he’s a wise and kind father who manages to avoid spoiling Janet, even after the tragic death of her mother.

This is a great read which takes Janet from northern Scotland to wartime England as an adult when she joins the WAAF and eventually on to a Caribbean island, but always with the company of her father, even if only in letter form. As you would expect from a Jane Duncan book there’s quite a bit of humour too.

These books are semi-autobiographical, very much inspired by her own life experiences. She also wrote the Janet Reachfar children’s books which are still in print today.

As it happens she was born and grew up in Renton, Dunbartonshire not far from where I grew up, but I don’t think there is a blue plaque anywhere for her. She also wrote under the name Janet Sandison.

Pining for the West

Meanderings about recipes, books, craft and more

Author Archives: Katrina