Six in Six – 2023

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Jo at The Book Jotter has been hosting Six in Six  for ten years now.  I’m sure it’s not too late to join in. I haven’t got around to reviewing all of the books I’ve read yet.

Six historical fiction books

1. The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell

2. The Return of the Railway Children by Lou Kuenzler

3. The Sound of Coaches by Leon Garfield

4. Digging for Victory by Cathy Faulkner

5. Dear Mrs Bird by A.J. Pearce

6. Henry VIII The Heart and the Crown by Alison Weir

 

Six by Scottish authors

1. The Big House by Naomi Mitchison

2. In Place of Fear by Catriona McPherson

3. The Freebooters by Nigel Tranter

4. Hue and Cry by Shirley McKay

5. Music in the Dark by Sally Magnusson

6. Voices of the Dead by Ambrose Parry

 

Six non-fiction books

1. Elizabeth and Mary edited by Susan Doran

2. Landskipping by Anna Pavord

3. Gather Together in My Name by Maya Angelou

4. Rival Queens by Kate Williams

5. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

6. Bawden, Ravilious and the Artists of Great Bardfield (not reviewed yet)

 

Six children’s books

1. We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea by Arthur Ransome

2. The Big Six by Arthur Ransome

3. King of Shadows by Susan Cooper

4. The Stronghold by Mollie Cooper

5. The Stolen Lake by Joan Aiken

6. Little Plum by Rumer Godden

 

Six by male authors

1. A Use of Riches by J.I.M Stewart

2. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

3. Cue for Treason by Geoffery Trease

4. The  Fortnight in September by R.C. Sherriff

5. Liza of Lambeth by W. Somerset Maugham

6. The Blotting Book by E.F. Benson

 

Six books I’m looking forward to reading soonish

1. Sing Me Who You Are by Elizabeth Berridge

2. One Year’s Time by Angela Milne

3. America by Franz Kafka

4. Jeeves   Joy in the Morning by P G Woodhouse

5. Race of Scorpions by Dorothy Dunnett

6. In Pursuit of Clarinda by Mabel Esther Allan

 

 

 

Oxburgh Hall, Norfolk, England

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We stopped off at Oxburgh Hall in Norfolk on our way to the ferry that was taking us to the Netherlands last month. It’s now owned by the National Trust but originally it was built for Sir Edmund Bedingfeld’s family in 1482, but over the years it has been reconfigured a lot with each generation wanting to pull bits down to add whatever was fashionable at the time. The moat is only about three feet deep so it wasn’t really ever meant to be for defensive purposes, but it adds to the grandeur of the place. We had a guided tour of the outside of the building before going inside. I recommend doing that if you visit as it’s very interesting. Although the front of the hall (below) has been changed over the years it is basically original.

Oxburgh Hall Entrance Gate, Norfolk

From the side you can see the quite elegant bridge to the doorway. There was a bit of consternation while we were there as there was a ‘drowning’ teddy bear at the other side of the bridge and two worried looking wee girls waiting for help to get it out.

Oxburgh Hall , Norfolk

The photo below is of the back of the hall. It has been demolished and rebuilt a lot over the years to suit the prevailing fashions, I don’t think it was ever an improvement.

Oxburgh Hall ,Norfolk

Oxburgh Hall , Norfolk

The Bedingfelds were a prominent Catholic family with links to Mary,Queen of Scots and the Oxburgh Hangings which were worked by Mary and Bess of Hardwick are on show too as you can see below. People can be rather scathing about the amount of needlework purported to have been done by Mary, Queen of Scots, but she didn’t have much else that she could do over the years she was imprisoned, and of course she had the help of her ladies in waiting too

Oxburgh Hall Tapestry , Norfolk

You can read more about the history of the hall here.

A Use of Riches by J.I.M. Stewart – 20 Books of Summer 2023

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A Use of Riches by J.I.M. Stewart was first published in 1957.  He also wrote under the name of Michael Innes, those books quite often feature the world of art, as does this one.

Rupert Craine is arranging his will. He’s a very wealthy banker, his hobby is collecting expensive art and he’s married to a much younger woman who had been a young widow. She has two sons by her first husband, aged 10 and 12. Their father had been a very successful artist and his work is much sought after, he had been killed in WW2. Rupert and Jill have two much younger children together.

Life is good, until a telegram arrives from Italy, it seems that the first husband is still alive. Rupert and Jill go to Italy to deal with it, thinking there must have been a mistake.

This was quite a good read, but it was slightly spoiled by the personality of Rupert which is stiff upper lipish. He seems like a bit of a cold fish (as was said about Soames Forsyte)  although a distinct improvement on the first husband! He just seems like an unlikely character to me.

This was one of my 20 Books of Summer 2023.

The Thistle and the Rose by Jean Plaidy – 20 Books of Summer 2023

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The Thistle and the Rose by Jean Plaidy was published in 1963 and if you’re interested in Scottish history reading this book will probably teach you quite a lot, in a painless fashion although I must say that at times Plaidy’s writing style seems quite stilted, certainly when compared with writers like Hilary Mantel and Alison Weir. This is the eighth book by Plaidy featuring the Tudors

The book begins in the Tudor court of Henry VII, not long after his heir Prince Arthur has died.  Only Princess Margaret, Prince Henry and Princess Mary are left, but Margaret is of an age to be married off and Henry VII negotiates with the Scottish King James IV. Margaret is sent to Scotland to become a Stuart Queen and be a political pawn for her father. Unexpectedly Margaret falls for James IV and for her new country, despite it being obviously poorer than England. She has at least escaped her father’s famous meanness. But James had had an even worse father, he wanted nothing to do with his son, giving him no love or time. Despite his upbringing James was a good and successful king.

When James dies at the Battle of Flodden Margaret is made Regent, she has one small son and gives birth to another soon after her husband’s death. The Scottish ‘nobles’ are of course all fighting among themselves and Margaret ends up losing her children and the Regency. Her brother Henry VIII is no help at all.

I liked this and might try to track down the others in the series. It’s amazing how often Stuart kings died, leaving young children at the mercy of men who want the power for themselves. History does indeed repeat itself.

This is one of my 20 Books of Summer 2023.

 

 

 

Some Fife scenery

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It was my birthday fairly recently, but as we had been travelling a lot I decided I didn’t want to stray far from home on that day. We just went out for lunch to a place nearby, and after that we went for a wee walk and I took some photos along the way.

Fife scenery, Scotland

The field is close to the historic village of Falkland.

Fife scenery, Scotland

Fife scenery, Scotland

Fife scenery, Scotland

Then it started to rain so we went home. I had a good day though.

Fife scenery

The Return of the Railway Children by Lou Kuenzler – 20 Books of Summer 2023

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The Return of the Railway Children by Lou Kuenzler was published in 2018 and is of course a sort of sequel to E. Nesbit’s The Railway Children which was first published in 1906. I’m often quite wary of sequels like this but as this one has a World War 2 setting I thought it was worth giving it a go. I’m glad I did.

Edith lived in London with her mother as the bombs rained down on the city.  They had sheltered down in the underground stations during the night, but when Edie’s school shuts down her mother decides that it’s time that she sent her daughter to live in the countryside where it should be safer. Edie isn’t happy about it but with her mother planning to do her bit by flying newly built aircraft to their RAF bases she realises that she’ll just have to go, at least she’ll be staying with her Aunt Roberta, but due to a mysterious family schism Edie doesn’t know her aunt at all, but we do – she’s Bobbie from the original book! Aunt Roberta ends up taking in two more evacuees and along with Edie they are the new railway children who have a similar adventure – minus the red petticoat, and featuring some wartime adventures.

This book is well written and different enough from the original book so it doesn’t feel like a rip-off. My one compaint is that in a letter written to Edie from her mother she ends it with   xoxo.  The author should have stuck to using just x for kisses because that xoxo thing is very modern and I think originally American.  I remember seeing it first about 12 years ago and I was a bit mystified at the time.

This is one of my 20 Books of Summer 2023.

Dala horses – a Swedish thing

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I think it was Constance @ Staircase Wit who reviewed a book which had a Dala horse on the cover, and if I’m recalling correctly she didn’t know anything about Dala horses. They’re from Sweden, apparently they’ve  been made for years, a sort of folk art and presumably the money from selling them would have helped  families to survive financially through the long northern winters, in the same way that Black Forest wooden carved figures did.

Dala Horses

I’ve had the  horses in the photo above since the 1960s-70s. To be exact the three teeny weeny ones were bought by Jack during the glory days of an educational school cruise when he visited Stockholm and I bought the others myself from bric-a-brac shops and the biggest one very recently from a charity shop. I’ve just looked on Ebay and they seem to be selling for stupid prices, I paid £2 for the largest one just about six weeks ago.  When we visited Stockhom a few years ago the shops had Dala horses on everything, cushions, bedding, T shirts, keyrings, cookie cutters, the usual tourist stuff but we didn’t buy any horses as they weren’t such nice quality as the vintage ones. The ‘outrider’ on the right is a souvenir from St Petersburg when we visited the city a few years ago, he was made in Archangel, a very northerly place and it has always seemed like an unlikely name to me, the young woman who served us in the shop was surprised that we had heard of the place. The horse has a lot of personality though for a wee bit of painted wood.

Friend and Foe by Shirley McKay – 20 Books of Summer 2023

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Friend and Foe by Shirley McKay is the fourth book in the author’s Hew Cullan mystery series. The setting is St Andrews in 1583. At the back of this book there is a glossary of Scots words used by the author which I imagine will be useful to some readers, I must admit there were a few that even I didn’t know, but I think they’re always easy to take a guess at from the context.

It’s over three weeks since I read this book and so much has happened in the time since I finished it that some of the details of the mystery are a bit of a blur to me, but I did really enjoy it.

Hew’s sister Meg isn’t really happy in her new home in St Andrews, but her physician husband Giles works at the university and must live within the town. Meg misses her old home which is just a few miles outside the town, but she had a garden there where she grew the herbs she needed to make her lotions and potions. Giles is worried about her and has begun to extend their home so that Meg will have a place of her own where she can continue with her own herbalism.  But they find themselves in trouble when it looks to others that their renovations have an ulterior motive.

Hew has made more enemies and things are just too hot for him in Scotland, it looks like he’ll be leaving home for his own safety, but will he be jumping from the frying pan into the fire?  It looks like the next book in this series will find Hew in England again.

 

Voices of the Dead by Ambrose Parry

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Voices of the Dead by Ambrose Parry has just been published and I was lucky enough to be sent a digital copy of the book by the publisher Canongate via Netgalley.

The setting is Edinburgh, 1853, where Raven is finding life tough as a father to little James who always seems to be crying and it’s taking a toll on his marriage as Raven spends a lot of his time avoiding family life.  When he gets a message that he’s needed, body parts have been found at Surgeons’ Hall, it’s grim but Raven is glad of the excuse to get out of his home and avoid more tantrums from his small son.

The city is being visited by an American mesmerist who is holding meetings and trying to drum up interest in it, claiming it as being scientific. Sarah, Raven and Simpson’s assistant is frustrated at not being allowed to study to become a doctor, despite her knowledge and experience, she’s keen to find out more about mesmerism, hoping it might be a way forward for her.

When more body parts are found McLevy the detective has to be told, and he always does his best to make things even worse than they are.

This is the fourth book by Ambrose Parry – aka the author Christopher Brookmyre and his consultant anaesthetist wife Marisa Haetzman, I believe that she provides the details of the medical history, amongst other things. I’m really enjoying this series which combines murder mysteries with history and social history in a Victorian Edinburgh setting.

 

 

 

Eva Trout by Elizabeth Bowen

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Eva Trout by Elizabeth Bowen is the author’s last completed novel. It was first published in 1968.

Eva Trout has been abandoned by her mother just after her birth and brought up by nannies. Her father is fabulously wealthy, but he also abandons her when he commits suicide leaving Eva all of his money. She’s still a schoolgirl and ends up living with one of her old schoolteachers, one of the few people that Eva had liked.

The women that her father had employed to look after Eva had all had English as their second language, so she has picked up their way of speaking English and doesn’t seem at all normal.  Constantine, her father’s old business partner is in control of her money and Eva doesn’t trust him.  As soon as she can Eva takes charge of her own life, something that she’s not really equipped to do, and her actions have big repercussions for others.

I’m sort of conflicted about this book as I really didn’t like Eva for a large part of it and for me the ending was too abrupt.