Lynne Reid Banks 1929 – 2024

It’s not all that long ago that I  was surprised to discover that the author Lynne Reid Banks was still alive, but news of her death was printed in today’s Guardian.  You can read her obituary here.

The first book by her that I read was The L-Shaped Room which was the first book in a trilogy.  It’s a great read and although it’s getting on for 50 years since I read it there are still parts of that book which are very vivid in my mind. I passed my copy of the book on to Jack who at that time read mainly Science Fiction, then my mother read it, she read mainly books of the family saga type, particularly Catherine Cookson who was hugely popular at that time. Both Jack and my mother really enjoyed The L-Shaped Room too, it was made into a film starring Leslie Caron. She later went on to write books for children, the most well known one being The Indian in the Cupboard.

Since then I’ve enjoyed several more books by her, but I still have a few to read. She was a fair old age though, 94 so she might have been ready to go, unlike some authors recently who popped off far too early.

If you haven’t read anything by Lynne Reid Banks you should give her a go.

Path to the Silent Country by Lynne Reid Banks

Path to the Silent Country by Lynne Reid Banks was first published in 1977 and it’s the sequel to the author’s Dark Quartet.

This book begins with Charlotte paying a visit to her friend of many years Ellen. Charlotte had thrown herself into work in an attempt to fill the void that had appeared with the death of Emily, Anne and Branwell in quick succession. Even the well-loved curate Willie Weightman had died unexpectedly.

Ellen’s neighbourhood is agog, there’s a rumour that Charlotte wrote Jane Eyre. She didn’t bother to disguise the many characters that she had taken from real life, and readers had recognised them, alarmingly sometimes they had recognised themselves, and Charlotte would be thrown into the company of some of those people at Ellen’s.

She’s very glad to get away from Haworth though and her increasingly tyrranical and selfish father. He’s terrified that she’ll leave him, a few men have been showing an interest in her, but Charlotte isn’t really interested, apart from anything else, she finds one of them repulsive, he has red hair and freckles!! (so have I) I wonder if he really existed as it is a typical way of a writer making a character instantly unlikeable.

She has been taken up by some celebrities of the day, particularly Thackeray and Mrs Gaskell of course and she finds a sort of happiness, but can’t stay away from Haworth for too long, her father is furious about being left with just the servants to look after him. But he’s even more angry when he realises that his curate is interested in Charlotte. Of course Patrick believes that Charlotte’s constitution isn’t strong enough for marriage and its inevitable consequences. Sadly he was correct. This was an enjoyable read

The author had access to lots of letters written by Charlotte to her friends so I’m not sure how much of her imagination she had to use. We have Charlotte’s husband Arthur to thank for the personal belongings and letters that he conserved on her death, realising they would be important to people in years to come, you can even see her spectacles and wee bits of jewellery displayed in the Haworth Parsonage, along with pens, a writing slope and clothing.

However the idea of the Brontes remaining anonymous writers for long was shot down by one of the Haworth guides when we visited. The post office is still where it was when the Brontes were sending off their many manuscripts to lots of different publishers, it’s a stone’s throw from the parsonage, and they were being returned to the parsonage under the surname Bell. There are no secrets in such a small community and you can be sure that the post-master/mistress and anyone else in the queue at the post office will have noticed all those parcels being sent off by the sisters, possibly Branwell was the only one who didn’t know what was going on!

Dark Quartet by Lynne Reid Banks

Dark Quartet by Lynne Reid Banks was first published in 1976 and it’s a biographical novel of the Bronte family, given its subject matter it’s a sad read and Lynne Reid Banks admits that she felt daunted by the task, she split the book into five parts beginning in 1821 and ending in 1848-9.

Obviously some of the Bronte’s own novels are very autobiographical which must make it easier to write about those parts of their lives, then there are so many books about them and letters written by them. If you’re at all interested in their writing and the family then possibly there’s not much new in this book, but it’s still an entertaining look into their lives with some embroidering around the facts.

I’ve always been fairly anti-Patrick Bronte, their father, as he has always come across as an intensely selfish person, and the root of all his beloved son’s problems. I suppose it’s inevitable that the only son in a large family is going to get special attention, Branwell was spoiled by his sisters as well as his father and no doubt by his mother too when she was alive, it absolutely ruined him. Favouritism within a family always does ruin the recipient as they just can’t cope when they realise that within the outside world they’re nothing special, which is why I dislike favouritism so much. It’s why I couldn’t enjoy The Master of Ballantrae as much as I had hoped.

Anyway, as you’ll realise this is an even more than usually scanty ‘review’ of a book, but I did enjoy it, however my enjoyment was enhanced by the fact that I’ve visited Haworth Parsonage so I could imagine all the movements within the house as they went between the rooms, or walked around the table, or died on the sofa. The guides at Haworth Parsonage are very good and there were quite a few bits of information from them which could have been used in this book – but weren’t. There’s no mention of how awful the local death rate at Haworth was, with at that time the highest mortality rate in the entire country. That graveyard just outside their front door is absolutely packed with bodies, thousands of them, and despite the fact that the house is at the top of a very steep hill it still managed to get flooded with water from time to time, water which had been siphoned through bodies basically, it was a nightmarish situation.

I’m hoping we’ll go back to visit again someday as the church wasn’t open when we were there.

The Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks

The Indian in the Cupboard  cover

The Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks was first published in 1980 and probably just about everyone who is interested in reading it has already read it or seen the film, but I only picked it up because I noticed that it was written by Lynne Reid Banks. It’s over forty years since I read her L-Shaped Room trilogy and loved it – as did Jack and my mother, two people who would normally have very different tastes in books.

Omri is one of three brothers and when his birthday comes around his brother Gillon gives him an old cupboard for his present, not that he had bought it, he just found it lying around in the alley where the bins were kept. Gillon’s pocket-money had been stopped as a punishment, so that was the best he could do for a present.

Omri is quite disappointed by his presents, his best friend Patrick had only given him one of his old plastic figures – a Native American Indian. The cupboard has a lock on it and Omri’s mother thinks she might have a key which would fit it amongst a lot of old keys she has. Sure enough one does fit and when Omri decides that the best thing he can do with his Indian is store it in the cupboard – the magic begins. I know that the toys coming to life is a bit of a cliche but that’s probably because we’d all love it to happen.

This was a great read and Lynne Reid Banks managed to create a really authentic family with great interaction by the brothers.

Have any of you ever watched the film and if so – should I?

Book purchases

One of the best things about travelling around the UK is having the chance to visit different secondhand bookshops, not that there are that many of them left nowadays mind you. However, I did manage to buy eleven books on our recent trip to the Lake District, Derbyshire and Peterborough.

Books Again

My first purchase was in Penrith:
The Star Spangled Manner by Beverley Nichols – first published in 1928 but my copy is from 1937. It’s obviously his thoughts on America, a place he travelled in extensively. It’s a very nice and clean copy in fact I think it might never have been read.

At the same place I found:
The Sea for Breakfast and The Loud Halo – both by Lilian Beckwith. I’ve never read anything by her, but her books were very popular when I worked in libraries yonks ago. Again the books are in great condition, I love the covers.

Two Persephones were my next purchases – from the great bookshop in Buxton. I could spend all day in there but the old books are a bit pricey. These reprints were very reasonable though:

Gardener’s Nightcap by Muriel Stuart
Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple

Somewhere, I can’t remember where, I bought Voices in the Wind by Evelyn Anthony. I used to read her books back in the 1970s but this one was published in 1985.

I bought a few books aimed at children: Pigeon Post by Arthur Ransom, Flight of the Grey Goose by Victor Canning and The Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks.

Over the Mountains by Pamela Frankau turns out to be the last in a trilogy, so I’ll have to track down the first two.

The last two are non-fiction:

The Blessings of a Good Thick Skirt by Mary Russell which is about women travellers and their world.

Lastly I bought a nice old copy of In Search of England by H.V. Morton This book has been reprinted a lot since it was first published in 1927 but my copy is from 1943 – complete with dust jacket.

Not a bad haul I think. Have you read any of these books?