Reading Again

King Charles brocade
The stitch on the yoke of King Charles I shirt when he went to his execution

Took me ages to finish ...

'A Gambling Man', the book by Jenny Uglow about Charles II and his Restoration to the Throne after the execution of his father King Charles I and the Interregnum by the Parliamentarians.
What a difficult life he led and he behaved gallantly and impeccably most of the time, except where his poor wife was concerned.  His extra-marital affairs are the stuff of legend, he had several illegitimate children and was a target for any ambitious courtier who could find a handy female to use in their power play.  He simply couldn't resist. His wife, Queen Catherine had repeated miscarriages and had to sit by as she was humiliated by his mistresses.

I hadn't realised before what a heroic part he and his brother James played during the Great Fire of London.  When the officials panicked the royal brothers took charge, got out there, organised fire crews and demolition of buildings to create fire breaks, stood in bucket lines and worked through the night.  Don't let those curly wigs fool you.  They were pretty tough.


Now reading

The Beach by Alex Garland
It's gripping.  You just know it's going to turn nasty.  Off they go to Eden, to get away from the world, taking all their cultural references and emotional baggage with them.  Funny and tragic.  I don't know how I'm going to follow it up.  Jane Austen might be a bit of a cultural leap from this.

The Reluctant Cook

Mine is the 4th edition printed in 1956

The Reluctant Cook, yep, that's me most of the time.  I have a huge collection of cookery books and I refer to them a lot.  But I don't do more cooking than I absolutely have to.

However, this week I made my special mincemeat recipe.  I don't like shop bought mince pies - too rich.  Here is a  recipe for Lemon Mincemeat cut out of a Woman's Weekly magazine long ago.

Lemon Mincemeat (vegetarian)
Makes 3 and a half pounds (1.75kg)

Rind and juice 3 lemons
8oz (250g) caster sugar
1lb (500g) cooking apples
8oz (250g) currants
8oz (250g) raisins
8oz (250g) vegetarian suet
Pinch salt
1/2 level teaspoon cloves
1/2 level teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 level teaspoon ginger
1/4 (150ml) sherry

Pare the rind off the lemons with a potato peeler.  Put in a pan, cover with cold water and simmer for 20 minutes.  Drain and chop finely.
Strain the juice of the lemons and put in a bowl with the rind and sugar.
Peel, core and grate the apples and add to lemon mixture together with the rest of the ingredients.
Mix well.  Cover and leave overnight before pressing firmly into jars.
Store in a cool dry place.

Cute

The 1960s Girl About Town

This picture comes from 'Dolls' Dressmaking' by Winifred Butler - 1962

I think I got this in a second hand bookshop a few years ago.  It shows little girls all the things they need to know to make clothes for their dollies.  It ranges from the very simplest techniques to the more complex and structured.

I can't help feeling that I would have been one of the little girls who quickly gave up on it, but just looking at it makes you feel happy to be alive.

Books

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

One of the earlier novels, Jane Austen is poking gentle fun at contemporary novelists and their overblown plots and narrative.  She matches her plot and the reactions of her characters against those of other authors.   This would be dangerous and almost formulaic if it were not for some of the brilliant characterisations encountered along the way.  John Thorpe, for instance, made me so angry.  He is insensitive, acquisitive, possessive and careless of the way he damages the chance of happiness for others.  On the other hand Henry Tilney, the romantic hero is a little disappointing.  Can't quite understand what he's about and there is a rush at the end of the book to wrap it all up happily.  While not my favourite Austen novel, it's still wonderful stuff.



The Burning Wire by Jeffery Deaver

Crime thriller in the usual Deaver mould.  I've read several now and usually find them a good page turner, but this one dragged a bit.  I think I just wasn't in the mood.


A Gambling Man by Jenny Uglow

About the return of Charles II to his kingdom and how he lived the balancing act between all the various factions, some of whom had  been instrumental in the execution of his father and his own exile.  I didn't know very much about the Restoration, I'd read a few of the plays of the time and some of the poetry, but for me there was a big gap between the English Civil War and the Industrial Revolution.  This book joined up so many things for me - the background to the plays and poetry, the way the gentry reclaimed their lands after they had been confiscated by Cromwell and allowed to fall into ruin, how they set about 'improvement' and sowed the seeds of the agrarian revolution experimenting with new methods of cultivation, and new crops like turnips and potatoes.  How they were keen to re-establish the unity of High Anglican church and state as they had understood it, how they acted harshly against non-conformists - Puritans, Quakers and Baptists included.  And how their violent backlash caused many of those groups to emigrate to America, eventually contributing to the shape of our modern world.  This is a book that makes you think.

Right now in the Greenhouse

The Scarborough Lily - Vallota
Flowering Right Now in the Greenhouse

This wonderful plant given me by a close colleague years ago produces lots of babies each year and rewards me late on in the greenhouse with these amazing flowers. It took me some years to get it to flower and I must confess the secret is a bit of neglect and some liquid feed in the early summer. It doesn't like very much water in winter and if too moist the leaves turn yellow, limp and a bit nasty.

When I first got it I scoured my books to find out about the Scarborough Lily and the best information was in an old gardening book of 1933 - The Wright Encyclopaedia of Gardening by Walter P. Wright, a wonderfully informative book with good practical tips and sketches. 

The cover - a coloured woodcut by Robert Gibbings

The rather grubby and tatty cover fell off long before I owned it and has been carefully slipped inside.  This is what I love about old books.  The best ones show how much they have been appreciated.

Still reading...

An abandoned dairy and barn in Oxfordshire - a miscellaneous photo

Enduring Love by Ian McEwan first published in 1997
Intense and suffocating psychological thriller - so well written that right until the end you aren't sure who is sane and who isn't


A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini published 2007
Desperately sad tale of two women living in Afghanistan through the turmoil of recent history and about their power to endure and to love.  I put it off for a long time because I knew it would be hard to read at times, but I am so glad I did read it.  It's a wonderful book.


Currently reading ...
George Eliot - The Last Victorian - a biography  by Kathryn Hunt
A surprising tale of Mid Victorian weirdness.

Inside the Barn - a sturdy and intricate roof

And still more reading

Relic of the days of coach travel
Milestone on the old road between Salisbury and Marlborough, now only a track
There's a fair bit of coach travel in Sense and Sensibility

A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel
About the Movers and Shakers of the French Revolution and how the movement began to destroy itself.  A huge book, meticulously researched and then developed into a detailed fictional account.  It is an extraordinary work of the imagination.   A challenging read, but worthwhile.  Hilary Mantel went on to write her masterpiece, Wolf Hall.

The Garden Cottage Diaries - My Year in the Eighteenth Century by Fiona J Houston published 2009
An account of the author's undertaking to live for a year as a Scotswoman would have lived at the end of the eighteenth century in a small cottage.  There are some lovely photos and interesting recipes.  What is striking is how much effort was involved in achieving even the basic necessities of life.  Fiona Houston appears to have been a very hardy and resourceful person.  I don't think I could have withstood the cold and damp and even she admits to being worn down by it.

Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
I enjoyed this so much.  Got very annoyed with Marianne for her self indulgence, but remembered that really, she's only a teenager.  Couldn't really believe that Elinor would begin to forgive the dreadful Willoughby, who however good looking was simply a cad to lead poor Marianne on like that and would be a cad in any century.  As for the Steele sisters - we've all met 'em.  And kept remembering Alan Rickman in the Emma Thompson film adaptation playing Colonel Brandon, dressed in country clothes walking alone and morose along a pontoon on the river in dappling sunlight with a fishing rod and followed by his dog.  Sexiest thing I ever saw.

Stitch Dictionaries

Published by Arco in New York, 1985

I love Mary Thomas and Barbara Walker, but perhaps my favourite stitch dictionary is one that I bought at a car boot sale for 50p.  No dust jacket and a bit scuffed and marked here and there The Arco Guide to Knitting Stitches is a treasure.  It's A4 size but not very fat and inside it's unfussy.  Just lots of stitches with pictures of beautiful swatches and the directions for making them, no commentary, just picture and pattern.  Of course, I spend most time studying and trying out the slip stitches - my favourites.

The builders have started work and the garden is being trampled, so I have begun to swatch obsessively to take my mind off it.  I'm working my way through the Arco Guide.

Latest Reading

Picked up in a Charity Shop at the weekend - mid 1950s

The Wonder Book of Railways
This is the 21st edition of this obviously much-loved book.  The pictures are a joy.  The Man Who Can helped me date it by supplying information on the engine it describes as the most recent of its class. He had a copy when he was a little boy (in the early 70s).  He also had a gigantic and very detailed train set in the roof of his parents house.  In his late teens he swapped this for his first car.



The Great Game by Peter Hopkirk
Published 1990
A fascinating book about the struggle between Britain and Russia for supremacy in Central Asia, including Afghanistan and all the neighbouring fiefdoms as well as Persia and even Tibet.  Lots of young officers, (very young some of them) trekking out alone into uncharted wastes and mountains to check on what the other side was doing, trying to win allies among the people who lived in these wild places and charting new territories.  Britain was trying to protect its possessions in India and constantly feared an invasion by Russia either through Afghanistan, or from the Caucasus via Persia (modern day Iran).  Russia was always looking for opportunities.  This tussle lasted right through the nineteenth century and many, many people died. 
They are still dying. Helmund, Kandahar, Kabul, Jelalabad.  Same places, different generation, different reasons.


Parrot and Olivier in America
Published 2010
Shortllisted for the Man Booker Prize
A fictional account of two unlikely and unwilling emigrants to America in the early nineteenth century and their reactions to the American Dream.  The New World looking back at the Old.  Subtle and entertaining.

Some quite difficult reading

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

I avoided the recent television adaptation and went for the book.  An extraordinary book about a man you feel you can never quite get the measure of.  A book about the intensity of  forbidden sex, but ultimate failure to make an emotional connection that can bind the Stephen to the person he loves so passionately.  The passages that will stay most vividly in my memory and where it seems Stephen is most alive are those describing the horror of life and the waste of lives in the trenches of World War I.

Pity The Nation by Robert Fisk

Published in 1990 about the war in Lebanon in the 1980s.  I have had this book for years and should have read it back then.  A big, distressing book.  The saddest thing of all - nothing changes.

People Who Love Books and Knitting



A plain little book in the Pitman Series - 1933
By Osma Palmer Couch


Interesting how often you find that people who love to knit also love books.  They don't just enjoy a good read, they truly love books.  There's something about the tactile quality, I think, as well as the reading experience. 

The Frontispiece
"A sun-room that owes its colourful charm to a bright cross-stitch
design embroidered with wools on monk's cloth, or sand serge"

Anyone following this blog will know I have a bit of a thing about books.  Among it all I  have a bit of a collection of vintage knitting patterns and knitting books,  as well as books on embroidery and dressmaking.  But to see the work of a real collector, take a peek at Susan Crawford's blog.  One can only dream.
Susan Crawford's Books

"A little girl finds woolcraft edges useful for her dolly's clothes"





Pride and Prejudice

There's a lot of walking in Pride and Prejudice, (published 1813)
Left -  a couple in morning walking dress 1818 and on the right, 1817

I promised myself at the beginning of the year that I would read all Jane Austen's six completed novels in 2012.  I have just finished Pride and Prejudice which I first read about forty years ago.  I had always believed my favourite Jane Austen novel to be Persuasion, but I am now completely taken with Pride and Prejudice.  I recently watched the adaptation with Colin Firth.  ( I usually avoid any film or TV adaptation before reading a book), and I'm impressed at the interpretation.  It didn't spoil the book for me at all, rather added to the excitment.

I can only think that many years ago in my early teens I couldn't appreciate some of the subtleties of the novel and I think that you do have to focus and on occasion re-read paragraphs, particularly the passages of narration to understand what is being conveyed in language that is beautiful, but more elaborate than we are now used to. 

There is real humour and frankness.  It tells a lot about the English and a lot about the class system and the place of women at the time.  Class and the role of women form the setting for the proud behaviour and
prejudicial beliefs which are gradually unravelled as feeling and good sense take over.

I rather love Mrs. Bennett, silly woman, and am rather cross with Mr. Bennett who brought it all on himself, then gave up, retired to his study and let his younger daughters run wild.

I've heard people complain that Jane Austen didn't write about the great national events taking place at the time and I know that Charlotte Bronte wrote disparagingly of the confinement of Jane Austen's characters in their elegant homes.  Fine, but not everyone lives on the moors and experiences wild, raging and deadly passions.  There are truths in Pride and Prejudice about the way us normal folk live and think.  And I defy anyone to read of the proud Mr Darcy and his slow realisation of love without knowing that however formal his expressions right to the end, something very dramatic has taken hold of him to make him defy his original prejudice.

Take a look at this link to see what the man about town (and country) would have been wearing.
Regency costume for gentlemen

More reading

First flowers of the year

The Coffee Trader by David Liss
Gripping yarn based in Amsterdam in 1659 where a merchant gambles everything on the early futures market.  Many twists to the plot.  David Liss also wrote A Conspiracy of Paper - another good yarn. 

The Reluctant Hero by Michael Dobbs
Sort of OK thriller

This Thing of Darkness by Harry Thompson
A big, wonderful book about the voyages of The Beagle and in particular Captain Fitzroy who turned a dumpy little surveying brig to one of the most efficient and famous ships in the Royal Navy.  It was Captain Fitzroy who invited Darwin to accompany him on his trip to the South Atlantic.  This book tells their story and tells of the physical, psychological, moral and spiritual challengest they faced.  It charts their extraordinary discoveries, the early stages of the destruction of native peoples in the lands they visited and the gradual destruction of the principles and beliefs of people like Captain Fitzroy, the true hero of the novel.  There is humour and sadness in this book which was long listed for the Man Booker Prize.  Even more remarkable and sad that it is the debut novel of a man who died too young to write more.  I got it in a charity shop and it was the best 50p I ever spent.

Christmas Reading

Christmas at Mum's

Over Christmas I have  been reading Charles Dickens' Christmas Stories, a little edition that includes :
A Christmas Carol
The Cricket on the Hearth
The Chimes
The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain
The Battle of Life

Lots of Victorian sentimentality, angelic women and bad men.  Lovely.

Other recent good reads have included

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
A beautiful book about some very ugly times.  It's about the things people do to and for each other and how words can work for good or evil and it's about survival.

The Age of Elegance by Arthur Bryant
Written in 1954 with a very patriotic and rather rose-coloured view of life in early nineteenth century England and the English, it is very good on the battles with Napolean and gives rather amusing depictions of European royalty.  He describes the Prince Regent (future George IV) in 1814

'Though not yet fifty-two, he was enormously fat; his great backside, tightly swaddled in bright white inexpressibles, was one of the sights of Society'.

Bryant used huge numbers of contemporary sources and I enjoyed reading it for what were obviously first hand accounts by soldiers and politicians, but when it came to the 'editorial' kept reminding myself that his view of the world would not be mine.

The Making of Victorian England by G.Kitson-Clark
First published in 1962 this book uses a lot of words to explain that there was no cut-off point at which Britain suddenly entered The Victorian Era.  There was no fanfare or clap of thunder which meant that we were suddenly all Victorian.  A lot of the behaviours, practices, customs and injustices of the eighteenth century continued right up until the 1870s and beyond.  The book is very interesting on the development and influence of Dissenters and their rejection of the Church of England.  Also the development of political parties.  But it was hard going - why use two words when fourteen will do?

Beaker Button

A new shop called Beaker Button has opened up near me - at The Fairground Craft and Design Centre at Weyhill.  You get a lovely welcome and Jen who runs it stocks some very nice yarn, with more coming in all the time.  I went to get Christmas presents and shouldn't have been looking at wool shops at all, but hey-ho.  What can I say?  

Absolutely scrummy mossy green 4 ply

Also in stock are kits for making Dorset buttons and some cards of buttons already made up.  I have always been fascinated by this craft which once provided a livelihood for many in the west country who would proudly say when asked, 'I do buttony'.  Sadly, the advent of machine made buttons took away their livelihood and they fell on hard times. 

Jen does workshops and here is her website.
Beakerbutton

Another Dorset connection is that Weyhill is the site of the famous Weyhill fair where thousands upon thousands of sheep were brought by drovers from all over the South of England.  Itinerant workers would go as well, to sell their labour or their expertise and it was at one of the Weyhill fairs that the Dorset novelist Thomas Hardy had the future Mayor of Casterbridge sell his wife.

I haven't read The Mayor of Casterbridge.  Thomas Hardy always makes me a bit depressed and having got through Far from the Madding Crowd, Tess of the D'urbervilles, The Woodlanders  (the last two are extremely sad), I'd need to be feeling particularly bouyant to tackle the Mayor of Casterbridge.

Reading

A stand of beech - end of October

The photo bears no relation to the post.  I just like to look at it.  The post is about what I've been reading lately.

E.M. Forster - A Passage to India.
All these years and I've never read it, but have seen the film which doesn't quite do it justice.  It's wonderful.  Like Henry James, but with more happening.

Arundhati Roy - The God of Small Things
Very sad, I found it upsetting.  It's about how easily fragile lives are damaged.  Wonderful writing from the viewpoint of a child.

Jo Nesbo - The Snowman
Billed as the next Stieg Larsson (The Girl with the Dragon Tatto), this was gripping with many twists and turns.  A good page turner.

Trea Martyn - Elizabeth in the Garden
Fascinating story of the rivalry between Robert Dudley Earl of Leicester and William Cecil Lord Burghley for the favour of Queen Elizabeth I.  They competed extravagantly to build fantastical gardens at The Earl of Leicester's house at Kenilworth and Cecil's home, Theobalds.  The gardens were designed to celebrate the Queen and all the emblems of her cult.  The book tells the story of the Queen's visits to these houses and the entertainments that were arranged for her.  They spent the equivalent of millions of pounds, but neither of these gardens exist today.