I bought this book a good wee while ago at a library book sale and as often happens with my own books I just didn’t get around to reading it. It was only when poor old Clarissa’s death was reported in the news that I remembered about it. When I did get around to reading it I was left wishing that I had read her previous book Spilling the Beans first, I’ll have to look out for that one as this one was quite a hoot, she was a wonderful eccentric. Her full name was Clarissa Theresa Philomena Aileen Mary Josephine Agnes Elsie Trilby Louise Esmerelda Dickson Wright, so I think that her parents must have been fairly eccentric too!
The book was first published in 2009 and is really a year in her life as it’s split up into the months of the year with each month having a recipe at the end of it.
It’s one of those books that you can’t help stopping reading every now and again and sharing some of the contents with whoever happens to be nearby. That can be a bit annoying I’m sure for the person that you’re reading the excerpts out to but I must say that Jack appreciated all the interruptions. Clarissa had such a good sense of humour and really didn’t give a damn about what people thought of her, a great combination. I thought I went off at a tangent when I was having conversations but I think that she was even worse than me for that, but it all makes for an interesting and enjoyable read on subjects which you would expect, like food and alcohol (she had been an alcoholic) to euthanasia, bees, politics, and the scandal featuring Margaret (Duchess of Argyll.) You have to be a certain age to remember that one and I must say that the quality of sex scandals hasn’t half gone down in recent years! And I’m just scratching the surface of topics.
She was delightfully un-politically correct which is so refreshing nowadays, even although I didn’t always agree with her points of view. She was a big supporter of the Countryside Alliance and of hunting, shooting and fishing which didn’t endear her to the many pressure groups who are against such things. In fact she was on a death list as those anti-hunt people seem to always be very violent themselves. I did go into her Edinburgh Grassmarket bookshop some years ago but sadly she wasn’t holding court at the time. You can read her Guardian obituary here.