Category Archives: Books

The Small Army by Michael Marshall – 20 Books of Summer 2023

Posted on by

The Small Army by Michael  Marshall was published in 1957 and it’s the true account of the evacuation of children from Guernsey in the Channel Islands during World War 2. Guernsey is just twenty miles from France and the Germans invaded early in the war.

The war-time home of the author’s Guernsey school Elizabeth College was at Whitehall House in Derbyshire. The boys had to get permission from their headmaster to visit the nearest town which was four miles away, and they had to walk. They made their own entertainment which mainly consisted of training to fight when they were older, intending to get back to Guernsey and fight the Germans and free the island. One of the boys was keen on science and he was able to make weapons, I don’t know how he managed to get a hold of the chemicals he needed, but he must have done so as there were plenty of explosions which the local farmers put up with. It was known locally that there were gangs of boys playing war games, but in such a rural area it was ignored for a long time.

By the end of the war some of the boys were as old as 17 and 18 and when they were able to get back to Guernsey their plans of hunting down collaborators more or less evaporated and they set about gathering as much of the weapons and ammunition which the Germans had left behind. The island was rammed full of stuff and the older boys set up a company to sell the equipment to companies who had arrived from the British mainland to buy up as much as they could. Nobody in authority stopped them from doing so! The boys made a lot of money with no questions asked about their right to ownership of the abandoned equipment including searchlights, compression pumps, radio sets, optical instruments, tool chests, field telephone sets and miles of cable. It was a very lucrative business operated by the two eldest boys who were by then young men.

The book has photographs of the rocket projector that they built as well as the lists of the members of the organisations, suitably decorated in a schoolboyish manner.

This was an interesting and at times amusing read about schoolboys who wanted to take on the German invaders on their own home ground instead of being sent to the relative safety of the British mainland. They certainly had that “we’ll fight them on the beaches”  mentality.

Metamorphosis by Penelope Lively – 20 Books of Summer 2023

Posted on by

I picked this book up from a library which I shouldn’t even have been mooching around, but I couldn’t help myself. I can’t pass an open library. Obviously it didn’t appear in my original list of  20 Books of Summer.

Metamorphosis by Penelope Lively is a short story collection which was published in 2021, the stories date from the 1970s to 2019. I have to say that I’m not a huge fan of short stories, but I do really like Penelope Lively’s writing, and although I have a lot of Lively’s books (some unread as yet)  I didn’t have this one at home. As you would expect though in a collection some stories work better than others,  or just appeal more.

For me it seemed like she saved the best one until last. Songs of Praise is about a memorial service for an artist who also happened to be a wife and mother of three adult children. With the children all giving their own thoughts on their mother and mentally reviewing their past, then the husband following them with his thoughts  and in a sort of novelist’s take on a split screen on TV we get a totally different slant on the life led by the whole family as his thoughts take an alternative turn from what he is actually saying.

However I enjoyed all of the stories although a few of them left me slightly bemused as for me the endings were a bit abrupt which left me wondering why. Maybe I missed something!

There’s an interesting introduction by the author, and the description on the fly cover says:

In intimate tales of growing up and growing old, chance encounters and life-long relationships, Lively explores with keen insight the ways that individuals can become entangled in history, and how small acts ripple through the generations.

 

Elizabeth I and her world by Susan Watkins – 20 Books of Summer 2023

Posted on by

Elizabeth I and her world by Susan Watkins is a lovely book with sumptuous photographs by Mark Fiennes. I borrowed this one from the library just last week, I must admit that it was the photos that really attracted me and I had intended just drooling over all the Tudor portraits, grand buildings, jewels, gardens and paintings of various scenes, but when I began to read it I quickly realised that I wanted to read it all. Despite knowing quite a lot about the Tudor courts and Elizabeth there was still a lot to learn from this book. Elizabeth may have made some mistakes as a youngster but she certainly learnt from them and seemed to know intuitively how to stay on the right side of her people.

This was a great read. It was first published in 1998 and then again in 2007 in paperback.

Bridal Path by Nigel Tranter – 20 Books of Summer 2023

Posted on by

Bridal Path by Nigel Tranter was first published in 1952 but my copy is a 1996 reprint. The cover illustration is from a painting by the Scottish artist Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell called The Dunara Castle at Iona. Nigel Tranter wrote a huge amount of historical fiction, but this one was a contemporary novel, and it was such a good laugh, just what I needed.

It’s set in the 1940s, on a remote Hebridean island called Eorsa.  Ewan MacEwan had been a prisoner of war, which was bad enough but now he is a widower and is having a tough time looking after his young son and daughter and running his farm too. Kirsty and Ewanie are more than a handful for him and if they’re not getting lost among a whole load of sheep they’re falling into the sheep dip. According to his uncle it’s time he looked for a new wife, but there has been so much inter-marriage on the small island that there’s nobody left that Ewan isn’t already related to, and he draws the line at marrying a cousin. So it is decided that he will go to the mainland to look for a wife. All the men are giving him advice on what to look for in a wife, all things that might help in the running of a farm such as having strong legs, a deep chest (?) not from the terrible island of Erinsmore, not a Campbell and not a Catholic!

Ewan has been given directions to an inn at Oban on the mainland and has been asked to deliver a salmon to the woman there, this sets off a police chase as they’re sure he’s a poacher from Glasgow and Ewan ends up running all over the hills ranging for miles and miles. He finds shelter in various remote cottages and meets up with some women such as he has never met before. As you can imagine with women living in remote locations some of them are determined to make the most of this manna from heaven in the shape of a man (with money) looking for a wife. Ewan is fairly terrified at times!

There’s such a lot of humour in this book, it was quite a tonic really. There’s a lot of dialogue in a Highland dialect which is really just with the English words being said in a different order and I think it’s easy to get used to the rythym of it.

Dimsie Among the Prefects by Dorita Fairlie Bruce – 20 Books of Summer 2023

Posted on by

Dimsie Among the Prefects by the Scottish author Dorita Fairlie Bruce is the fourth book in her Dimsie series and it was published in 1924.

It begins with Hilary Garth in disgrace,  something she’s not a stranger to, in fact her grandparents are at their wits’ end with her and they’ve decided that it’s time to give up on her being educated at home by a governess, she needs the more strict regime of a boarding school. Part of the problem is that Hilary’s parents had died in India when she was very young and her grandparents had always spoiled and indulged her for that reason. Their own daughter Rosamund isn’t best pleased however as Hilary will be at the same school she is, and she’s not keen to have her out of control niece at what she regards as her school.

Hilary is of course thrilled to be going to school and she seems to spend all her time thinking up ways of causing mayhem, ‘inventing’ adventures. She quickly becomes the dominant character in her dorm as the other girls are so easily led.

Dimsie can see some parallels with her own behaviour as a junior, but she’s a prefect now and thinks that she will be able to deal with Hilary and sort her out. At the same time Dimsie is having to help Rosamund with her problems within the school, but it’s an oversight by the local council which leads to the most serious incident, as you would expect, all’s well that ends well.

I was very lucky to be sent lovely old copies of most of this series by a very kind lady in London who was looking for a good home for her Dimsie books. Thanks again, Clodagh.

 

A Year Unfolding by Angela Harding – 20 Books of Summer 2023

Posted on by

A Year Unfolding by Angela Harding, A printmaker’s view,  is a lovely book.  I asked Jack to buy me a copy for our fairly recent wedding anniversary. Actually it was supposed to be for my birthday but he didn’t get around to getting a copy fast enough for that!

You might have seen Angela Harding’s art illustrating various magazine articles, but it’s so much nicer to have them in a book. The art is accompanied by her thoughts on what has inspired her over the years and often her memories of being in the countryside and by the sea. There are quite a few poems by Welsh poet Edward Thomas, mainly on the subject of nature.

It didn’t take me long to read A Year Unfolding but it’s the sort of book that I’ll be dipping into constantly, just to savour the illustrations and prose. A real treat.

 

Hannah The Complete Story by Hannah Hauxwell and Barry Cockcroft – 20 Books of Summer 2023

Posted on by

Hannah Hauxwell  was a bit of an unexpected celebrity in 1973 when her lifestyle was filmed by the BBC’s Yorkshire television. I think it was part of a series called A Hard Life about  people who weren’t living a sort of ‘normal’ life. This book tells how it all came about.  To begin with Hannah was only 46 but she seemed much older as her life was like something from another century. She was the last person standing in a family which had lived in the Baldersdale area of County Durham for several generations. Nothing had changed in all that time, apart from Hannah being left to do all the farm work on her own. There was no running water in the farmhouse and no electricity. There was a small stream about forty yards from the house and often the ice had to be broken on it with a pick axe. There was no road to the farm and Hannah was so desperately poor that she couldn’t even afford the luxury of a dog for company as she could hardly afford to feed herself. She was dressed in rags. Baldersdale is in north east England, County Durham and it was settled by Vikings which is how the area got its name, Balder was Odin’s son in Norse myths.

Despite all that she radiated contentment, she wouldn’t contemplate leaving her harsh life. Hannah understood what was important in her life and it was the land, her ‘beasts’ which were mainly cows, and her love of music and books. Although she was shy she was very talkative whenever she did get into company, making up for all that time when she had nobody to speak to. Her cheerful and stoical personality shone out on TV apparently – and the viewers adored her.

This was a good read, I had heard of Hannah before reading the book, but I hadn’t realised that her farm was near where we have been visiting friends in the north of England. I didn’t see the TV documentaries, I don’t think I would have been that interested in watching them when I was 13 or 14, after all she wasn’t T.Rex or Bowie, but I did see her being interviewed on Wogan, she seems to have taken the country by storm, and her personality captivated viewers all over the world, and they sent her gifts and cards which filled up her home. Life was a bit more comfortable with the money that she got for making the documentary. At least she wasn’t in danger of starving to death! She was even invited to royal garden parties and was voted Woman of the Year.

Hannah reminisces about all the neighbours who used to live in the dale, back in the days when it was quite well populated. It was a hand to mouth existence for most of them, but if anybody had a bit of spare food they shared it around with the neighbours. The narrative switches to Barry Cockroft from time to time as he explains the background of how he came to make the documentaries and people’s reactions to Hannah.

She eventually realised that  she couldn’t continue that way of life forever.  She couldn’t stand another freezing cold winter and she did sell her farm and moved to a cottage in a nearby village. This is an entertaining and informative read, full of  social history, there are a lot of photos of the neighbours over the years, and it’s funny in parts. Hannah was a character.

One Year’s Time by Angela Milne – 20 Books of Summer 2023

Posted on by

One Year’s Time by Angela Milne was first published in 1942, but it has just been reprinted by British Library. I must say that as soon as I started to read this book I turned back to the publishing details to check them out as I could hardly believe what I was reading. The setting is the late 1930s and it begins in London.

Liza had been at a New Year’s party the previous evening and had met Walter there for the first time. She is just about to start painting the floor in her living room when the telephone rings. It’s Walter, he has looked her number up in the phone book and he would like to come round to her place. Liza is keen for him to visit her. To be fair so would I be, anything to postpone having to paint a floor would be a welcome.  But by page 7 they’re in bed!

Liza is a secretary, in a very staid company, and Walter is training to be a barrister, something he’d like to avoid. Very quickly Liza is besotted with him and she’s suppressing all her own wishes, matching her actions to what he wants in life because she’s afraid that she’ll lose him if he realises what she really wants. She knows that he has had lots of affairs in the past, sometimes with married women. Clinging to him would put him right off her.

When Walter announces that he wants to go away to the country and write a book Liza gives up her job to be with him. She pretends she’s his wife and keeps house for him and they strike up a friendship with Kate and Maurice, a married  couple who live nearby. Of course Walter doesn’t even try to write a book, he’s just lazing and reading. It’s an idyllic time for Liza anyway,  despite the fact that she realises that she’s more or less walking on eggshells. She really has to be true to herself if she’s going to find happiness, but spinsterhood is beckoning to her and she’d rather avoid that.

Kate has guessed that they aren’t married, but Liza doesn’t see Kate as being a danger. Walter has given up calling Liza darling and has moved on to calling her ‘ducky’. For me this is a dead giveaway, I’m never keen on people calling their other half ‘darling’ instead of using their name, it smacks of being afraid of calling them by the wrong name, but ducky is definitely a demotion!

This all makes it sound quite grim, but it isn’t. There’s quite a lot of humour in it. Angela Milne was A.A. Milne’s niece and she wrote for Punch.

From a social history point of view this book was a real eye-opener for me as we’ve always been told that the introduction of the Pill in the late 1960s had led to the permissive society, but it seems that there was always a lot more ‘illicit’ sex going on than I would have thought, we can’t blame wartime because the war hadn’t quite started yet.

Thank you to British Library who sent me a copy of the book for review. I really enjoyed it and it’s just a shame that the author never wrote any more books. There could have been a sequel about Walter dodging the war in some way and marrying someone who definitely didn’t race him into bed within 24 hours of meeting him.

As ever with this series there are interesting snippets of information about the decade it was first published and a thoughtful and informative Afterword by Simon Thomas.

The Princess of the Chalet School by E.M. Brent-Dyer

Posted on by

The Princess of the Chalet School by E.M. Brent-Dyer was first published in 1927 and it’s the third book in the Chalet School series which I’ve started to revisit since reading some of them as a youngster. I can’t really say it’s a trip down memory lane as I don’t remember too much about them, or maybe I just read the later books.

Princess Elisaveta has never been to school before, having been educated by governesses. She doesn’t know it but the heir to the throne in her country would like to get his hands on her to try to force the king to abdicate in his favour.

Meanwhile. Miss Bettany has employed a new matron without interviewing her, and it isn’t long before she realises that that was a big mistake.  The matron is a ghastly woman with a shrieking voice and she thinks the worst of everyone, but particularly dislikes Jo as she’s the headmistress’s sister, she even dislikes the baby of the school, The Robin! In no time flat the matron’s behaviour has upset the whole school.

A lack of communication leads to danger for Elisaveta and Jo. Miss Bettany is busy with her wedding preparations as well as the running of the school. but all is well – of course.

Nowadays we might think how unlikely it would be that a princess would be at the Chalet School but you don’t have to suspend disbelief too much as there were lots of what we would call minor royal European families around even in the 1920s. Such fun!

 

Comes the Blind Fury by Douglas Rutherford – 20 Books of Summer 2023

Posted on by

Comes the Blind Fury by Douglas Rutherford was first published in 1950.

Harry Forsythe and Paddy Regan had been in the army together in WW2 and they have been having a bit of a hard time settling into civilian life at the end of it all, they decided to set up a detective agency. They were just beginning to think that it was a mistake as they had no clients at all, when one turned up in the shape of Angela Dove, a young woman who was worried about her brother Robert. He had gone to France and Angela hadn’t been able to contact him at all. She’s worried as their step-father is a wealthy businessman, and she suspects that someone might have kidnapped Robert.

Harry gets the job of going to Paris to try to track Robert down, but his subsequent phone call to Paddy ends abruptly and Paddy fears the worst.  Of course Paddy has to follow his partner to Paris to see what has happened.

I don’t want to say much more about the plot, but it features Scotland Yard and a chase to Zurich. I really enjoyed this thriller, I think it’s the first book that I’ve read by Douglas Rutherford whose bio on the back of this Penguin crime reads like one of those spoof bios you sometimes see. He was a Counter-Intelligence Officer in WW2 and that background in espionage and international crime obviously gave him the ideas for his writing career.

I must say though that whenever I read about a private detective and a young female client I inevitably think of Bogart and Bacall, but this book doesn’t seem to have been made into a film.