The JMW Turner Exhibition, Edinburgh

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Below is a JMW Turner watercolour titled A River in the Campagne. It was the first time that these Turner paintings had been shown in Edinburgh, they are normally exhibited in Dublin, just for the month of January. This year Edinburgh and Dublin did a swap. It was much busier than usual of course and we ended up standing in a queue for over two hours before we could get in, the first hour we were actually outside in the cold, it was a relief to get into the building.

A River in the Campagne, JMW Turner, Edinburgh, Vaughan exhibition

The painting below is of Bellinzone, Switzerland. This exhibition was so crowded I couldn’t get a straight view of most of the paintings, hence the squinty photo below!

Bellinzone , Switzerland, JMW Turner

Below is Turner’s view of Sunset at Ostend Harbour. He had a great way with skies.

Ostend Harbour, JMW Turner watercolour

Below is a very stormy Plymouth.

Plymouth, JMW Turner watercolour

Below is a very different sort of storm at the Grand Canal in Venice.

Storm at the Mouth of the Grand Canal

Below is The Doge’s Palace in Venice.

aThe Doge's Palace and Piazzetta

Turner’s Fishing Boats at Folkstone is below.

Fishing Boats, Folkestone, JMW Turner watercolour

Below is his view of Edinburgh which as you can see has a lot of reflections in it, so annoying.

Edinburgh, JMW Turner, watercolour

The painting below is of a beech tree, maybe not as dramatic as the rest of the paintings in the exhibition but it’s beautifully detailed. As ever, click on the photgraphs if you want to see them enlarged.

Beech Tree, JMW Turner watercolour

My Scotland by Val McDermid

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My Scotland by Val McDermid was first published in 2019, it has beautiful photographs by Alan McCredie and a foreword by Nicola Sturgeon, and is published by Sphere.

This is a beautifully produced book, with sumptuous photographs which are linked to some of her book locations. To begin with the focus is on Fife, where Val was born and grew up, there are plenty of places to ignite the imagination of a novelist, and it seems she has been salting away ideas since she was a youngster. This first chapter was all very familiar to me as I lived in Kirkcaldy for 26 years, and in the area where she lived, but it was nice to read of her links with the various places.

The East Neuk coastal communities feature, she mentions that most people probably never get through the doors of  the old fishermen’s cottages but by coincidence, I also have relatives who lived in George Street, Cellardyke – as her aunt and uncle did. The atmospheric St Andrews nearby couldn’t be missed out.

There’s a chapter about Glasgow, a place she fell in love with as a young journalist, and then fell in love with again after she had moved away, and returned to find it much changed. It’s a city that’s close to my heart – as I was born there.

Obviously Edinburgh features, often there are excerpts from her books, linked to whichever area the chapter is about, and she mentions that even when a book had a mainly English setting she would feel the need to send her characters to a favourite area, somewhere in the Highlands where she had holidayed. At Loch Leven, by Kinross, Val is photographed on a bench where in a book she had placed a murder victim, overlooking the island where Mary, Queen of Scots had been held prisoner and eventually escaped from.

Linlithgow also gets a mention, for the ugliness of the 1970s/80s buildings that have been stuck right next to beautiful 18th century buildings. It’s one of my favourite towns, it’s so historic, but there’s no doubt you have to avert your eyes from the concrete brutality that was given planning permission in the centre of the town.

Obviously the Isle of Skye features too, a favourite place for lots of people, more than the places though this book is a really entertaining read and Val McDermid comes across as having a really warm and friendly personality. It was good to be in her company while I read it.

I borrowed this one from the library.

 

Hex by Jenni Fagan

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Hex by Jenni Fagan was first published in 2022 by Polygon.

Hex was inspired by the 16th century North Berwick witch trials. It was a time when King James VI became obsessed with witchcraft and it was the women of Scotland that paid the price, any female who was just a wee bit different, spurned advances from men,  had an interest in herbalism and healing, or had something that a man wanted – maybe money or land – was in danger of being targetted and accused of being a witch. The book is dedicated to Geillis Duncan.

Iris, a 21st century woman is trying to contact Geillis via a seance. Iris wants to contact Geillis to comfort her in her last night on earth, in the cold filthy cell which is three levels below the High Street  (Royal Mile) in Edinburgh.  Geillis is due to be hanged on the 4th of December 1591 and Iris does manage to contact her.  Geillis tells Iris about the torture she had had to endure, which led to her confession of witchcraft and to her implicating others,  all innocent of course, just to get them to stop the pain and humiliation.

Iris is furious at the way 21st century women are being treated, and she tells Geillis about it.  In many ways there have been no improvements in the way men behave towards women and she rages at the daily attacks on females by men. “Sharp tongues get women killed.”

The Scotsman describes this book as being ‘Elegant and angry in equal measure.’

This was a great read, there were just a couple of things that annoyed me. There is no way that a 15 year old girl (Geillis) would use the word okay in 1591, and she wouldn’t know the word ‘teenage’ either.

It’s a very quick read at just 101 pages.

 

 

 

Angela Harding – a jigsaw puzzle

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When we visited The Hepworth in Wakefield last year we bought ourselves a jigsaw puzzle in the shop there. The puzzle is of The Salt Path book cover which was designed by the talented artist Angela Harding, I really like her work. At the time I thought it would be not too difficult to put together –  as ever I was wrong. After getting the edges completed I sat there for about an hour before getting one piece in! I was quite despondent, but when you do start to put bits together there’s a great sense of satisfaction. I might make this the last puzzle of the winter though!

Angela Hartnett Jigsaw Puzzle

Library books

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I thought I’d mention the books that I’ve borrowed from the library – so here goes.

 

I had a look at the online catalogue to request the next book in Val McDermid’s Karen Pirie series, but my attention was caught by her book titled My Scotland so I picked it up recently and have just started to read it, I think I’ll really enjoy it and it has lovely phoptographs by Alan McCredie.

The Inn at the Edge of the World Book Cover

 

I also borrowed The Inn at the Edge of the World by Alice Thomas Ellis. I know it was a blogger who recommended this one, but have no idea who. The setting is a remote Hebridean island.

 

 

 

Next is Hex by Jenni Fagan. It’s a retelling of the North Berwick witch trials.

 

 

Raven Black by Ann Cleeves. I don’t think I’ve read anything by her but I have watched some of the Shetland series on TV.

 

 

 

Lastly I requested The King’s Messenger by Susanna Kearsley which is historical fiction. The setting is Scotland and England in 1613

 

So it seems that all the books I have from the library at the moment have Scottish settings.  January has been a very Scottish month, I must broaden my horizons!

Feel free to tell me what you have borrowed from your local library recently.

The Wind That Shakes the Barley by James Barke – Burns Day

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The Wind That Shakes the Barley by James Barke was first published in 1945 and it’s a fictional account of the early years of the Scottish poet Robert Burns.

His father William Burns has moved to the village of Alloway (an incomer) and built with his own hands the small cottage that we now think of as Burns Cottage, despite not being a builder. He intended to farm in a small way, and when he has finished the building he brings Agnes Brown to view it, she’s happy with it and they decide to marry. It’s a much tougher life than either of them would have thought, although William is a hard worker the soil is poor, stony and boggy, and it’s difficult to earn enough money to pay the rent to the landowner, never mind to feed and clothe the children that are born to them. William wants his sons to have an education so for a few years he determinedly pays for them to be tutored.

But that ambition falls by the wayside as money becomes tighter and the eldest son Gilbert and Robert are used to pull the plough, like animals, despite having little in the way of nourishment and strength.

William Burns is an Old Light (Auld Licht) Presbyterian, very strict in his religion, so by rights his God should smile on him, but things just get worse over the years. To make matters worse William realises that his second son Robert (Robin as they call him) has an eye for the girls, William’s not happy about it, and neither is Agnes. But Robert is always after the local girls, in love as he thinks but really in lust. His first illegitimate child arrives, but marriage was never on the cards. This book ends with the death of William, haunted by worries to the end.

This book was loved by readers at the time, but apparently the Burns scholars/fans of the day were not at all happy with it.  It’s well-written for the most part but at times it is  a bit clunky, particularly the love scenes. I was surprised that there’s not all that much in the way of description of Alloway and its surrroundings. We visited a few years ago and I was struck by how scenic and pretty the place is, it isn’t more to the fore, it’s described as a miserable area.

Most of the book is written in plain English but occasionaly it’s written in the Ayrshire dialect, which is probably a bit challenging for some people. I really liked this one which is the first in a four book series by the author. I read it to celebrate Robert Burns’s birthday, he was born on the 25th of January 1759.

You can see some of the photos that I took here when we visited Alloway a couple of years ago.

 

 

Petworth Park by Turner – at The National Galleries for Scotland

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We went to the Turner exhibition in Edinburgh this week, it was the second attempt as he tried to see it last Friday but the queue was long and it was going to be an hour before we even got into the gallery. We had to give up as we didn’t want to get a parking ticket.

In some ways things were even worse when we went back on Tuesday as the end of the queue was outside the Royal Scottish Academy and it was cold. We were out there an hour before we got into the building. Then another hour inside the building before we got in to see the Turner paintings, the ones that are usually in Dublin.

This view of a sunset at Petworth Park is one of my favourites.

Sunset over Petworth Park

I’ve also added Petworth House to our list of places to visit – eventually. I’ll blog about more of the exhibition soon, it comes to an end at the end of January.

My Friends the Macleans by Jane Duncan

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My Friends the MacLeans by Jane Duncan was first published in 1967 and it’s part of a long series of the author’s ‘My Friends’ books. The books are all very autobiographical I believe.

The setting is the Caribbean island of St Jago where Janet Alexander and her husband Alexander Alexander or ‘Twice’  ás he is known have gone for a visit, but they end up staying there for a number of years when Twice is offered a good job there.

Their lives are more or less taken over by the social round on the island and as it’s all still very colonial in atmosphere Janet realises that there are sinister undercurrents. She’s longing to go home to Scotland.

I have to say that I really didn’t enjoy this one as much as the others I’ve read in this series, it didn’t have much in the way of humour. The author and her husband did live on a Caribbean island for some years, but it seems that she wasn’t very happy there.

 

Dimsie Goes Back by Dorita Fairlie Bruce

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Dimsie Goes Back by Dorita Fairlie Bruce was published in 1927, my Oxford University Press copy seems to be a first edition.

In this one Dimsie has been asked to come back to the Jane Willard Foundation for one term to help out the headmistress Miss Yorke, who is looking a bit ‘seedy’ as far as the girls are concerned.  Dimsie will be working as school secretary.

Dimsie is now engaged to be married, the older girls who know her are glad that she’ll be coming back, she had been Head Girl in the past and with a lot of common sense she could be just what is needed as things haven’t been going very well in the school recently.

The behaviour of senior girls has deteriorated badly, with the prefects and even the Head Girl happy to ignore the rules. Even worse than that is the influence of Coral Danesbury who comes from a very wealthy family and thinks that she should get special treatment from the staff, even offering to get her mother to pay the headmistress extra if she can have a room to herself for a study. Already her shared study is stuffed full with silk cushions and ornaments – all against the rules. But a majority of the girls look up to her and want to emulate her style. Face powder and anti-freckle lotion have become popular despite being against the rules.

Dimsie helps some of the girls set up a revived Anti-Soppist League.

This was a good read, there’s quite a lot of humour with a new girl Lintie Gordon being allowed to bring her puppy with her. Lintie is only nine years old and it’s thought she won’t be so homesick with her dog Jeems being at the school. He’s an absolute scamp and is always in trouble, but never for long as he’s just too sweet to be angry with. Through Dorita Fairlie-Bruce we’re told what is going through his mind, which is always amusing, she was obviously a dog lover as they often feature in her stories.

 

St Martin’s Church, Bowness on Windermere – ex slave’s gravestone

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Back in September we had a few days away in the Lake District, and visited St Martin’s Church in Bowness on Windermere. While Jack was looking for  Commonwealth war graves I had a walk around the outside of the church and when I got to the back of the church I found this lonely gravestone.

St Andrew's Church, Bowness on WindermereGravestone

If you click on it you’ll be able to read it, anyway the inscription says:

In memory of Rasselas Belfield,

A native of Abyssinia,

who departed this life on the 16th Day of January 1822.

Aged 32 years.

A slave by birth I left my native land

And found my freedom on Britania’s Strand

Blest Isle! Thou glory of the Wise and Free!

Thy Touch alone unbinds the Chains of Slavery!

I suppose that there were people in the congregation who objected to a black man being buried in the church graveyard, and a compromise was sought resulting in poor Rasselas being buried on his own at the back of the church in a very gloomy dark spot, on his own.

I doubt if many people ever find his grave. My first reaction was surprise that he had been allowed to be laid to rest in the churchyard – swiftly followed by outrage at them sticking him out of sight of any others, for fear of the burial ground being contaminated presumably. Apparently there is also the gravestone of a slave trader in the same graveyard but no doubt he has a better location.

It seems that Rasselas was bought by an army officer who hailed from Bowness, and he became part of his household.

St Martin’s has unusual decoration on the walls, it seemed a bit Eastern in design, but beautiful.

Stained Glass, St Martin's Church, Bowness on Windermere

Below is a photo of the side chapel.

Choirstalls, St Martin's church, Bowness on Windermere