Category Archives: Books

Christmas Days by Jeanette Winterson

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Christmas Days Book CoverI borrowed Christmas Days by Jeanette Winterson from the library and it looks like it might be the only Christmas related book that I’ll get around to reading this year. It was first published in 2016 and amazingly it’s the only book that I’ve ever read by Winterson. I enjoyed it and I’ll definitely read more of her books

Christmas Days is a mxture of short stories, biography, recipes, poetry and anecdotes, with quite a lot of humour thrown in. It’s illustrated in black and white by Katie Scott and all very entertaining. I don’t know if you could call it ‘name dropping’ but she does mention a lot of fairly well known people that she had befriended, she even spent many Christmases with Ruth Rendell until her death. Jeanette Winterson comes across as being a very kind and forgiving person, a good friend and in the end a good daughter to her father. Her mother is named Mrs Winterson throughout the book, and if you ever watched Oranges Aren’t the Only Fruit when it was on TV years ago you will know that she had good reason for that.

 

Over the River by John Galsworthy

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In Over the River by John Galsworthy Dinny Cherwell’s younger sister comes home from India where she had been for all of the seventeen months of her marrriage to the much older Sir Jerry Corven. She has left her high ranking British army officer husband as she’s unable to put up with his cruelty and brutality any more, she’s been thoroughly humiliated by him.

On the voyage back Clare has begun a friendship with Tony Croom, a man nearer her own age. He has fallen in love with Clare, but it’s all very platonic as far as Clare is concerned.

When the dastardly husband arrives in London to make Clare go back to him in India he’s outraged that as far as he is concerned she’s already moved on in her life. If she doesn’t go back to him he will sue Tony Croom, naming him as co-respondent in the divorce case, despite the fact that there is no evidence of infidelity. It will ruin Tony’s life, especially as the husband intends to ask for £2,000 as ‘damages’ from Tony.

This was a really good read, it features Fleur Forsyte and Michael Mont as minor characters.

As usual Galsworthy was writing about the hypocrisy of society, it was almost impossible for ordinary people to get a divorce, but even for wealthy people it wasn’t straightforward, especially if only one of the spouses wanted a divorce.

I can clearly remember the shenanigans that people had to get up to even in the late 1970s, involving private detectives and chamber maids in divorce courts as ‘witnesses’ to infidelity – not that Clare and Tony got up to anything nefarious at all, it just looked it.

 

 

Flowering Wilderness by John Galsworthy

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Flowering Wilderness  is the second last book of the last Forsyte trilogy (End of the Chapter), a nine book series which for years I thought ended with the death of Soames Forsyte, just as the TV dramatisation did – but it didn’t.

The year is 1930 and Dinny Cherrell (Cherwell) has fallen head over heals with Wilfred Desert, a fairly impoverished poet. He had been the best man at Dinny’s cousin’s (Michael Mont) wedding to Fleur Forsyte, and a few years after that he had caused ructions within that marriage which led to Wilfred leaving Britain for the Middle East. When he returns to London it seems that Wilfred is as besotted with Dinny as she is with him so all should be sweetness and light, but a rumour has reached London that while Wilfred was living in the Middle East he had been forced to renounce Christianity and become a Muslim – at the point of a gun!

Nowadays that would be a no brainer but back in 1930 among the upper classes it was an outrage – what sort of man wouldn’t be happy to have his brains blown out rather than abandon Christianity?  Not that Wilfred was any sort of believer anyway.

Dinny doesn’t care a hoot about it all, and she’s happy to get married and follow him back on his eastern wanderings, but her parents think very differently, and when Wilfred makes matters worse by writing to a newspaper admitting his ‘conversion’ it makes the whole situation impossible as far as Dinny’s family is concerned.

This is a great read, Galsworthy’s books are full of social history, often highlighting the hypocrisy of the law, and of those in society who think they are above everyone else. I suppose Galsworthy was the Dickens of his day, but I’m not a big fan of Dickens, controversially (no doubt) I think Galsworthy is a better writer.

I’m now half way through the last book in this series, Over the River, and I hope to be able to review that one soon too.

Milly, Molly, Mandy by Joyce Lankester Brisley

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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

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Lamentation Book CoverLamentation 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

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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.

 

Nancy at St Bride’s by Dorita Fairlie Bruce

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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

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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.

A Cardigan

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

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Heartstone Book CoverHeartstone 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.

 

My Friend My Father by Jane Duncan

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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.