This book was first published in 1983 and I think it's supposed to be set around then so I don't suppose it can really be called vintage crime, but it does read like it. Michael Innes had his first crime fiction book published in 1936 so he had a very long writing career, as well as an academic one too. His crime fiction is a bit like that of Dorothy Sayers in that they aren’t just light fiction and they do have allusions to more literary books along the way, and to art in general.
In Appleby and Honeybath – as it says on the cover – two masterminds of detection fiction-together for the first time. They have both been invited to – yes, you guessed it – a country house weekend! The now retired Sir John Appleby has been asked along with his wife Judith because she is a distant relative of the owners. Charles Honeybath has been commissioned to paint the portrait of the house owner, Terence Grinton.
Whilst Honeybath is wandering around the house looking for inspiration for a setting for the portrait he comes across a dead body in the library – as you do! Honestly, this book is like a game of Cluedo in fiction, there’s even a character called Mrs Mustard. But somehow that all seems to add to the charm of the whole thing and I ended up enjoying it.
It’s perfect bedtime reading or if like me you are feeling a bit under the weather. It’s a very quick read at only 155 pages.
A wee bit of an update
It’s only when you have what feels like a hot roll of barbed wire lodged in your throat that you realise just how often you have to swallow, otherwise you never have to think about it. And that’s how I’ve been for about 5 or 6 days now. I think it’s only the third time in my life that I’ve almost completely lost my voice.
I haven’t been able to get on with my garden work due to having this horrible throat infection because I just don’t have the energy required for digging up the old crazy paving path which is the next thing on the gardening agenda, and I don’t want to make myself any worse than I already am.
So I don’t have any before and after photographs to show you, but I did take one of some cyclamen in an old upside-down chimney pot, there are some old lobelias there too, I know I should have chucked them out but if there are some flowers still going I can’t bear to uproot them.
This chimney pot design has 6 ‘pockets’ around it which are supposed to stop your chimney from drawing smoke down into your house, but when you use them as planters they are handy for putting crocus bulbs in for some early spring colour or any plant with a nice trailing habit in the summer.
Katrina’s 2011 Reading List
Amanda at The Zen Leaf has decided to read a classic book each week, which I think is a great idea, and as I decided that I’m not going to do any challenges in 2011 I’m going to be doing something similar.
This is a list of 52 books which I’ve compiled from various book cases and piles in our house, it’s a mixture of books which I’ve bought and inherited and this is just scratching at the surface of the unread books here. They aren’t all classics but most of them are pretty old, some are quite obscure I think. I’m hoping to read and review one a week which I should manage quite easily even although I don’t skim read.
I’m planning to have a sprinkling of seasoning in between in the shape of vintage crime, books recommended to me, any others from my book piles that shout READ ME, and newer books via the library.
Hannie Richards by Hilary Bailey
An Awfully Big Adventure by Beryl Bainbridge
The Overlanders by Dora Birtles
Any Human Heart by William Boyd
The Power House by John Buchan
Heroes by Thomas Carlyle
Selected Stories by Anton Chekhov
Basil by Wilkie Collins
Uther and Igraine by Warwick Deeping
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
Poor Folk by Dostoevsky
The Gambler by Dostoevsky
Uncle Bernac by Arthur Conan Doyle
The King’s General by Daphne Du Maurier
Castle D’Or by Daphne Du Maurier
Hungry Hill by Daphne Du Maurier
Julius by Daphne Du Maurier
Deerslayer by J. Fenimore Cooper
The Lady of the Camellias by Alexandre Dumas
The Popular Girl by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Swan Song by John Galsworthy
End of the Chapter by John Galsworthy
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov
The Quiet American by Graham Greene
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
The Naulahka by R. Kipling and W. Balestier
Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively
The Deer Park by Norman Mailer
Shadows of Empire by Allan Massie
The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
The Blessing by Nancy Mitford
Coming Home by Rosemary Pilcher
Harriet Dark by Barbara Rees
The Pirate by Sir Walter Scott
The Talisman by Sir Walter Scott
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
Roderick Random by Tobias Smollett
Memento Mori by Muriel Spark
The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark
The Amateur Emigrant by R.L.Stevenson
The Silverado Squatters by R.L.Stevenson
A Dedicated Man by Elizabeth Taylor
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The Claverings by Anthony Trollope
Virgin Soil by Ivan Turgenev
Men at Arms by Evelyn Waugh
A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh
Nana by Emile Zola
Therese Raquin by Emile Zola
Well, I make that 52.
I’ve just finished reading Anthony Trollope’s The Belton Estate which I’ll be reviewing at The Classics Circuit on December 10. I’m about to start on Rosamunde Pilcher’s September and after that it’s the biggy, yes – War and Peace. I may be some time!
The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher
This book was first published in 1987 so I’m really late in getting around to reading it. I know it was amazingly popular when it first came out but I was surprised when I looked at the BBC Top 100 book list that this one is number 50 on it. It’s for that reason that I thought I would read it and the fact that Rosamunde Pilcher has lived in nearby Dundee since her marriage to a Scottish soldier in 1946 and brought up her family there. So I suppose she can be regarded as a Scottish writer.
The Shell Seekers is set all over the place though with Edinburgh just being mentioned a few times. The main action takes place in the English Cotswolds and Cornwall and the story is a family saga which encompasses three generations of the Stern/Keeling family.
Laurence Stern is an artist who marries Sophie, the daughter of a friend. The huge age gap between the couple doesn’t seem to be a problem and their only child, Penelope enjoys a Bohemian lifestyle with her parents, living in London, Cornwall and France until the outbreak of World War II. After hearing about what was going on in Germany from some refugees Penelope decides to join the WRENs the next day but it isn’t exactly the sort of war work which she had been hoping to do as she’s a glorified servant, waiting at tables and she regrets joining up. It’s just the beginning of her troubles.
In later years with three grown up children Penelope discovers that her father’s paintings have become fashionable again and are fetching eye-watering sums of money at auctions. Unfortunately two of Penelope’s children have turned out to be a lot like their snobby, avaricious father and they are determined to persuade her to sell The Shell Seekers which is a large painting which was given to Penelope by her father and she is one of the three children portrayed in it.
I enjoyed the book, it’s an old fashioned family saga I suppose and as most of us have experience of growing up within a family and the same sorts of situations come up all the time, just because of the multiple personalities involved, it all has a sort of recognisable feel about it but it has the advantage that it doesn’t put your blood pressure up, as it would in real life!
Admittedly we don’t all have expensive paintings hanging on our walls but you know what I mean, there aren’t all that many families around who don’t have someone in it who feels hard done by, and of course they are usually the very ones who are the most selfish and self-centred. It all makes for a very cosy experience, now I’m looking forward to starting Rosamunde Pilcher’s September soon. I’m not sure if it is regarded as a sequel but it certainly has one of the characters in it.
I had intended to review this book around about St Andrew’s Day (Nov 30) – but I decided to read September for that date as that book is actually set in Scotland.
Tamara Drewe (the film)
At last the film Tamara Drewe – see below – reached our local cinema so we went out to the flicks this evening, we hadn’t been for ages, not since we saw The Station in fact.
I loved the Posy Simmonds series which was first published in The Guardian newspaper years ago but is now published as the graphic novel Tamara Drewe.
I really enjoyed the film. It’s set in Dorset (Thomas Hardy country) and there is some lovely scenery. Nicholas Hardiment is a successful writer of crime fiction, but he and his wife Beth have opened their house up to putative writers and whilst Nicholas is busy being a pompous eejit his wife is doing all the hard work of baking and cooking and keeping their lovely farmhouse in order.
All is not well, because Nicholas can’t stop having little dalliances which results in a very public bust up, with much effing from the very well cast guests. Actually the whole thing was well cast, even the local schoolgirls who are so bored out of their minds from having to live in such a backwater that they take any opportunity to cause a bit of mayhem.
So when Tamara Drewe moves back into the farmhouse next door and takes up with Ben who is the drummer in a famous band the girls just have to do a bit of meddling.
Well it made me laugh anyway, I’d recommend it to anyone.
Here’s One I Did Earlier
I’m nearly finished the canvas work sampler that I’m working on at the moment but I completed this cushion cover a while back. It’s a very simple design as you can see.
I love quilts and this is based on a traditional American patchwork pattern. It was quite relaxing to do and I was able to use up a lot of odds and ends of wool left over from other projects, so it was all very economical.
This pattern came from the lovely book- Mary Norden’s Needlepoint. I think it’s quite a good book for beginners.
As you can see I changed the design slightly to make the fences go all around the houses.
The pattern is called Home Sweet Home.
Bargain Hunt at Edinburgh
It was the last antiques fair before Christmas at the Highland Showground at Ingliston near Edinburgh yesterday. We went along, not really with the intention of buying anything for ourselves because we’ve got enough ‘stuff’ really. But I thought it might be an opportunity to get some Christmas shopping done. Yes, I think that’s the first mention of that dreaded ‘Ch’ word here.
The BBC happened to be filming a Bargain Hunt programme at the time, unfortunately by the time I realised I could take some photographs of the proceedings – Tim Wonnacott had disappeared. But here are a couple of photographs of the blue team and their ‘expert’.
I ended up buying some books which I will get around to reading some time but I really bought them because of their bindings, and also they were really cheap. Charles Rennie Mackintosh designed book-bindings for Blackie and Son and I’m sure these are some of his.
I think they’re lovely anyway and I didn’t get around to reading Carlyle’s Heroes before I had to take it back to the library. This edition cost me a whole 1 of our Earth pounds!
I also bought some more old prints of Dumbarton Castle, Loch Lomond and one of Ravenscraig Castle. One Christmas present was bought, which I can’t say anything about because I want it to be a surprise. Thankfully we are sensible at that time of the year and really just stick with giving presents to close family members otherwise it just gets too silly and expensive.
So anyway, a good day out was had by all at Ingliston Antiques Fair.
William at War by Richmal Crompton
There were quite a lot of children’s books that I didn’t get around to reading until I had children of my own, I think I went on to reading books for adults at quite an early age. I caught up with a lot of them when I had kids of my own and read Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, the Narnia books and lots more as my boys were growing up, but still I avoided reading Richmal Crompton’s books.
So when Niranjana (Brown Paper) mentioned that she had the full collection of Just William books I began to think that maybe I had missed out on something good. Niranjana appreciates E.F.Benson’s Mapp and Lucia books – always a good sign I think!
So I’ve started off with William at War, which as Niranjana said, seems to have been cobbled together from Crompton’s other Just William books. I did enjoy all the scrapes that William Brown gets into, always with the best of intentions really. I read an Enid Blyton book earlier in the year just to see how I felt about her writing nowadays and I have to say that compared with the Malory Towers book which I read, Crompton’s writing is much better. I think the vocabulary is much wider, even although William does seem to be saying ‘jolly’ and ‘ole’ constantly.
But I can see why I avoided the books for so long. It was just too much like real life for me as a youngster but now it’s quite a nostalgia trip. As the youngest of five children my nearest sibling in age was my brother William who is five years older than me, and although he wasn’t born until the 1950s he was just exactly like William Brown as a wee boy. So he was a complete nightmare as a big brother. Especially as he didn’t seem to have a rival gang of ‘Outlaws’ to torment – so I took the brunt of it all.
This book brought it all back – catapults, peashooters, bows and arrows and all. My brother’s catapult was a heavy metal thing with industrial strength rubber and he could quite easily have killed somebody (me) with it.
I’m pretty sure that my brother William didn’t read these books but he did balance a bucket of water on top of my half-open bedroom door once and of course when I pushed the door open I was drenched with cold water and hit by the bucket. William Brown planned to do this in the book too. But all such nonsense didn’t stop my brother William from being very much my mother’s favourite.
Spookily I resembled the characeter Violet Elizabeth Bott as a child with my red hair and even a lisp, and annoyingly I still have a lisp, which I hate but I’m quite happy with the red hair.
Now it’s just a laugh and my brother and I get on really well together so I can look back with pleasure. I’ve got another ten Just William books to read through now.
Armistice Day
This is the First World War Memorial at Kirkcaldy in Fife.
And to the right is the Second World War Memorial.
In Remembrance.
Edwin Morgan – poet
“Finally, to Queen Elizabeth Hall on London’s South Bank, where the toast is Edwin Morgan, Scotland’s first national poet, who died in August aged 90. A great Scot, a great man of letters. A man with a very sweet tooth. So it seemed a fine idea from the Poetry Society to mark the occasion by distributing Tunnock’s Snowballs – individually wrapped marshmallows covered in chocolate and coconut flakes – to the audience. The sweets were brought from Glasgow and each carried the message: “A treat from Glasgow.” Alas, they could not easily be given away, because when managers at the Queen Elizabeth Hall realised that the sweets had not been risk-assessed, they banned them from official circulation. Still, it mattered not, for word spread and, oblivious to the dangers, members of the audience helped themselves to the confectionery. Poetry and silliness. Edwin would have pronounced it a fine night.”
The above is an extract from The Guardian Diary of 5/11/10 by Hugh Muir (last item here).
I know that we Scots are well known for having a sweet tooth and a general love for all things bad for you, but really, how daft can you get.
Why would anybody think that a Tunnock’s Snowball would have to be ‘risk assessed’? I’ve been told that Tunnock’s biscuits and Teacakes are very popular in Canada and Newfoundland but apparently they haven’t heard of them in London. Why something that is obviously commercially made and wrapped in cellophane would be deemed to be unsafe for consumption is beyond me.
I think Edwin Morgan would have laughed. I’m glad that I wasn’t one of the people who had to clean the hall afterwards though, Snowballs are incredibly messy and sticky, bits of coconut flakes would have been all over the place.
If anyone comes around to visit me, the kettle gets put on immediately and it’s a fair bet that Tunnock’s Snowballs will be amongst the delights on offer.