What I've been reading

Sorry for the lack of posts over the last couple of weeks. I've been reading quite a bit but didn't have the time or the will to post anything. So, I've decided to do a little pre-Christmas wrap-up of what I've been reading & what's next off the tbr pile.

Hard Going is the latest Bill Slider mystery from Cynthia Harrod-Eagles. This is one of my favourite series. It's witty & very funny as well as being a good, traditional police procedural with lots of investigative legwork.Slider & his team are investigating the murder of retired solicitor Lionel Bygod. He's found in his study by his cleaner, his head bashed in. Bygod seems to have been a philanthropist, helping anyone who asked for legal advice yet his small circle of friends knew nothing about his life before he moved to Shepherd's Bush. Slider's investigations lead to a scandal in Bygod's past that may have had far-reaching consequences. The personal lives of the team are as interesting for me as the investigation. Slider & his wife, Joanna, are expecting their second child & considering the changes a new baby will bring. Slider's father, George, lives with them & is happy to babysit but he has a new lady friend & Joanna fears that she'll be the one to give up her career as a musician if childcare becomes a problem. Commitment-phobic Jim Atherton had finally settled down with Emily but their relationship has hit a rough patch & Slider is concerned. Detective Superintendent Porson is as full of malapropisms as ever. "Don't want any excuse for Mr Wetherspoon to cast nasturtiums on our efficiency."

The Old Wives' Tale by Arnold Bennett was the choice of my 19th century bookgroup & another excellent choice it was. This was my first Bennett although he's been on my radar for a while & I'd like to read more of his books. Sophia & Constance Baines live in Bursley, one of the Five Towns where Bennett set much of his fiction. Their parents run a drapery shop although their father has been incapacitated for years. The story is about the different choices the sisters make. Constance lives in Bursley, in the same house all her life, marrying Samuel Povey, the head shop assistant, taking over the shop when her father dies & spoiling her only child, Cyril. Sophia elopes with Gerald Scales, a commercial traveller, & ends up in Paris, living through the siege of 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War & becoming the owner of a pension. The sisters are reunited at the end of their lives & are able to reflect on the paths they chose. I loved this book. Reading it in instalments was a good way to read it because each section is so complete. The sisters are together at the beginning & the end of the book but we first follow Constance over twenty years & then go back to Sophia's elopement & follow her life. The story is full of humour & quiet moments of revelation & I knew these women & sympathised with the choices they made - even if I couldn't always agree!

Mrs Griffin Sends her Love & other stories is the last book by Miss Read. It's a collection of short stories & essays she wrote, mainly for magazines like Country Life & The Lady throughout her career. I especially enjoyed reading about how Miss Read (a pseudonym for Dora Saint) came into being, "Miss Read was born fully clothed in sensible garments and aged about forty. She was born, in fact, when I was struggling to write my first book and needed a village schoolmistress as the narrator." After writing several of the Fairacre books, Mrs Saint decided she needed a change & created the village of Thrush Green. These books were in the third person & afforded more scope to investigate village life. Both series have been extremely popular & the illustrations of John Goodall have been a key factor in this. Unlike some authors & illustrators, this partnership seems to have been a happy one from the beginning & Miss Read pays tribute to their partnership in an essay called "The Author & the Artist". I also enjoyed the very funny stories about teaching, the funny things that children say & the joys & trials of being a supply teacher. This is a lovely book that can be dipped into or read straight through as I did.

Round the Christmas Fire is a collection of stories from Vintage Classics. There are some old favourites here such as an extract from A Christmas Carol by Dickens (which I'm listening to again on CD read by the wonderful Miriam Margolyes), Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons & Dylan Thomas's A Child's Christmas in Wales. I especially enjoyed rereading Edith Wharton's ghost story, Afterward, which is one of my favourite stories where a young married woman sees a ghost but doesn't recognize it as such until long afterwards when her husband has disappeared & the significance of the date of the encounter becomes clear. There's a wonderful story by P G Wodehouse, Jeeves & the Yuletide Spirit, where Bertie falls foul of Sir Roderick Glossop, who becomes even more convinced that Bertie is a certified lunatic. There are also extracts from Nancy Mitford's Christmas Pudding (which I still haven't read) & Laurie Lee's Cider with Rosie. I read a story a day which was the perfect way to read this anthology.

The Assassination of the Archduke by Greg King & Sue Woolmans tells the tragic story of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand & his wife, Sophie. Their murder in Sarajevo in June 1914 was the spark that led to the outbreak of WWI. However, the book is much more about their love story which was remarkable. Franz Ferdinand became the heir to the Hapsburg throne after the death of Crown Prince Rudolf at Mayerling (he murdered his mistress, Marie Vetsera, & then killed himself). Franz Ferdinand never got on well with his uncle, Emperor Franz Josef & his decision to marry Countess Sophie Chotek didn't improve their relationship. The Imperial Court was one of the most rigid & hidebound in Europe &, although Sophie was from an aristocratic family, she wasn't considered a suitable bride. Eventually, they were married morganatically which meant that Sophie couldn't share Franz Ferdinand's rank & their children would have no rights of inheritance to the throne. Their marriage & family life was blissfully happy although it was continually blighted by the petty, malicious attitude of the royal family, the aristocracy & Court officials who used the strict rules of etiquette & precedence to snub Sophie at every turn. She bore all the insults with grace & polite calm but Franz Ferdinand was furious & it only led to a greater estrangement from his uncle & the establishment. He wrote to his stepmother, one of the few people who supported the couple,

The wisest thing I've done in my life is to marry my Soph. She's my everything: wife, adviser, doctor, friend - in a word, my entire happiness... We love each other just as much as on our first day of marriage and nothing has marred our happiness for a single second.

The visit to Sarajevo in June 1914 was mismanaged from the beginning. The security arrangements were totally inadequate. The Habsburgs were hated in Serbia & the visit was to take place on St Vitus's Day, a significant Serbian national holiday. Franz Ferdinand was reluctant to go at all as he feared assassination & was well aware of the tensions in the Balkans. The couple were murdered by Gavrilo Princip, a member of a radical group called The Black Hand. The consequences for Europe were devastating but the consequences for the couple's three orphaned children were also immense. The story of what happened to the children, Sophie, Max & Ernst, makes for sobering reading. They suffered merely for being the children of the Archduke & were persecuted by both the Imperial regime & the Nazis during WWII. This is an excellent book which tells a little-known story very well. The authors have had the co-operation of Franz Ferdinand & Sophie's descendants, eager to tell the true story of their ancestors & correct some of the rumours & lies about Franz Ferdinand, whose life has been long overshadowed by the manner of his death.

Wish Upon a Star is another lovely romantic comedy from Trisha Ashley. Cally Weston is a single mother. Her daughter, Stella, was born with a heart defect &, when experimental surgery in the US becomes Stella's only hope for a normal life, Cally goes home to the village of Sticklepond to live with her mother, Martha, & save money. The locals get behind Cally & Stella & soon there are all kinds of projects on the go to raise money. Cally's work as a cookery writer means that she can work anywhere & every penny saved from not living in London goes towards Stella's treatment. Baker Jago Tremayne has a kind heart & a special line in croquembouche. He & Cally become friends & Jago's gingerbread pigs help with the fund raising. Cally & Jago are made for each other, if they can only get past their shyness & disentangle themselves from their previous disastrous relationships. If you've read any of Trisha's previous books set in Sticklepond, you'll recognize many of the locals. This is a warm, funny story with lots of baking & food as is always the case in Trisha's books. It's perfect Christmas reading.

I've also been reading some short stories on my Kindle by Katie Fforde, Laura Lippman, Deborah Moggach & Joanne Phillips. I think I'd better write a separate post about those as this post is already too long!

Now, what's next? I've been listening to some excellent podcasts lately. I've just discovered (with some help from my friend, P) how to connect my iPad to my car's speakers with a thingamajig that plugs into the cigarette lighter. So, I've been able to listen to some of the podcasts I'd downloaded as I drive to work as a change from audio books. I'm a big fan of the BBC History magazine podcasts & the BBC also have podcasts available from Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time series (just listened to a great discussion about the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066) as well as the Book Club, Open Book, Desert Island Discs & Women's Hour. This week, I've listened to Margaret Drabble talking about her new book, The Pure Gold Baby, & a discussion on A Good Read about Antonia Fraser's book about her life with Harold Pinter, Must You Go? Libraries are wonderful things so I've downloaded the Drabble from our ebook collection & the Fraser will be waiting for me on my desk when I get in on Monday. I'm also about to start reading Penelope Lively's new memoir, Ammonites & Leaping Fish, & the latest Open Book podcast features an interview with Lively about the book. Perfect!

Winter in Thrush Green - Miss Read

After reading the obituaries & blog posts about the death of Miss Read last week, I just had to read one of her books. I realised that I'd listened to Winter in Thrush Green on audio not long ago as the plot came back to me with a rush but it didn't matter. I enjoyed sinking into the atmosphere of autumn & winter in a Cotswold village & meeting the villagers of Thrush Green again.

There's great excitement when the corner house is finally sold - & to an eligible single man or maybe a widower or maybe (worst of all) his wife is arriving as soon as the house is put to rights. Harold Shoosmith, who happily turns out to be a bachelor, has lived abroad for most of his life & speculation runs riot as to whether he's been in the Army, Navy or Air Force & whether he spent his time in Africa or Asia. It turns out that Harold was drawn to Thrush Green after a lifetime working for a pharmaceutical company in Africa because of his admiration for the missionary, Nathaniel Patten, who was born in the village. Harold soon becomes involved in local activities & is in great demand as a guest at parties such as that given for Halloween by Dimity Dean & Ella Bembridge, friends who have lived together for many years.

The vicar, Charles Hemstock, soon becomes close friends with Harold. Charles envies his cosy domestic arrangements as the vicarage has been a cold, dismal place since Charles's wife died. Charles is a kind, thoughtful man, much loved by his parishioners but sadly unable to cope with his slatternly daily help so his home is comfortless & lonely. Charles & Harold soon become involved in organising a celebration for the centenary of Nathaniel Patten's birth & a committee is formed to organise the commissioning of a statue of the great man.

The village school is run by Miss Watson with Miss Fogerty as her assistant. When Miss Watson is attacked in her home by a thief, it is shy, fluttery Miss Fogarty who takes charge & shows her worth to her formidable headmistress. It seems possible that the same man responsible for the theft of Miss Watson's few pieces of jewellery could also have been stealing Dotty Harmer's eggs but, apart from Dotty's idea of setting a man trap to catch the thief (if she can retrieve the trap from the county museum that her father donated it to), there are few clues to his identity. That doesn't stop grumpy sexton, Albert Piggott, from playing sleuth in the intervals he can spare from tidying the graveyard & sipping a pint at the Two Pheasants.

Albert's slovenly ways are about to get a shock from his old schoolfriend, Nelly Tilling. Now a widow, Nelly, plump & energetic, has set her sights on Albert, who needs taking in hand since his daughter, Molly, married Ben Curdle & moved on with him & his family's travelling fair. Love is in the air as bossy Ella Bembridge realises that her cosy life with Dimity in their cottage could be about to change if she's right about the growing attraction between her friend & Harold Shoosmith.

Winter in Thrush Green is another cosy, comforting instalment in the lives of the villagers of Thrush Green. I love the way that Miss Read describes the passing of the seasons, the coming of Christmas & the hazards of a hard winter. The delights of early spring end the book with the unveiling of the statue of Nathaniel Patten. Life isn't all ease & happiness. The attack on Miss Watson & Dotty Harmer's serious illness when she's snowed in to her remote house, are good examples of how Miss Read doesn't sugarcoat the realities of village life. Not everyone in the village is kind or honest & the intimate knowledge everyone has of everyone else's business can be a curse as much as a blessing. This lack of sentimentality as well as the beautiful descriptions of nature & the endearing characters she creates are the reasons why I love to read her books.

Another reason why I love Miss Read is her love of cats. I've also just read Tiggy, a short memoir about one cat that crept into Miss Read's affections. Tiggy is called a memoir & it's a true story about one of Dora Saint's cats rather than the fictional story of one of Miss Read's cats. I admit I was confused at first because Miss Read's cat in the Fairacre book is called Tibby. This is a very short book, only 40pp in my e-book version but it's charming. The author swears off owning a cat because she's lost several cats to the passing traffic & feels it's not right to put any more cats in danger. Her mind is changed by the arrival of a little black & white cat, starving & with five kittens to feed. At first, Miss Read thinks that a hedgehog has been eating the bread & milk she's left out at night but she realises that it's a cat. She calls her Mrs Tiggywinkle or Tiggy after the hedgehog in Beatrix Potter's story.

Tiggy's determination to keep her family safe & alive impresses Miss Read so much that she can't resist taking the family in. The story of how she gradually wins Tiggy's affection & trust & then sets about taming the kittens & finding them homes would appeal to any cat lover.

Miss Read

Dora Saint, who wrote as Miss Read, has died at the age of 98. Miss Read is one of my favourite writers of comfort reading. Her books about life in Fairacre & Thrush Green are familiar, full of humour & interest but never sentimental or twee. I've reviewed some of her books here & here but fortunately I have many more on the tbr shelves so I'm not going to run out any time soon.

There's a lovely obituary here. My favourite quote is from H F Ellis, the literary editor of Punch (I didn't know Miss Read had written for Punch) who called her his favourite contributor. "She had no arrogance at all and didn't feel her work was sacrosanct, and she never minded revising it. In a way she is like Jane Austen. She writes about what she knows and never goes beyond it." Dora Saint seems to have had a happy, fulfilled life with a devoted following of readers, mostly library users which seems very appropriate to me. Her books never made her a fortune but provided a steady income that allowed for a few luxuries. I can't imagine the author of the Fairacre books as a jetsetting glamourous author in the style of Jackie Collins. It seems right that her life was quiet, steady & full of good things, just like her books.

Summer at Fairacre - Miss Read

I've written before about my love of Miss Read. Her books are so evocative of the English countryside in the 1950s & 60s, just at that point of change when the modern world was intruding on traditional rural ways. It's an idealised world but not sentimental. Miss Read's love of nature is unmistakable & is one of the delights of reading her books.

Summer at Fairacre takes place over a period of months from late spring to the first hint of autumn. Everyone delights in the warmer weather as winter finally ends & nature walks & gardening are the order of the day.

The unseasonable and chilly weather suddenly changed, and May became 'the loveliest month' which the poets praise.
Sunlight flooded the ancient schoolroom, and chalk dust danced in the slanting rays. The massive brass inkstand on my desk gleamed like gold, and little rainbows glanced from the glass over the photograph of our Queen, centrally placed on the rear wall, in the most honoured position...
The cherry tree in the Post Office garden dangled white flowers, and everywhere, it seemed, the fruit trees were breaking into a froth of blossom and tender green leaf. The lilac bush in the most sheltered corner of my garden was in full bloom, and the heady scent floated up to my bedroom window in the warm nights.

Miss Read is spared the threat of her house being given a good spring clean & bottoming by Mrs Pringle's bad leg flaring up. However, when this means that Mrs P decides to give up her job as school cleaner as well, Miss Read has a dilemma on her hands. Allow hopeless Minnie Pringle to wreak havoc or begin the search for a new cleaner - for her own house as well as the school. Mrs Pringle may be tyrannical & obstinate but she's an excellent cleaner & will be very hard to replace.

Miss Read's friend Amy decides to give her husband James a taste of his own medicine & takes herself off without warning for a few days. James is distraught &, on Amy's return after a relaxing time at a spa resort & in Scotland with her niece, Vanessa, becomes much more attentive. Henry Mawne, on the other hand, knows exactly where his wife is. Elizabeth has gone home to Ireland to try to convince a cantankerous aunt to leave her inconvenient house & go into a nursing home. Henry, meanwhile, is lonely & at a loose end & takes to visiting his single female friends in the evenings, causing gossip & upsetting their routines.

The Coggs family has its share of misfortune. Feckless Arthur is sent to prison & then Mrs Coggs is taken ill & goes into hospital. Miss Read's pupil, young Joseph, stays with her at the schoolhouse & they both enjoy the company. The school's Sports Day is a great success & Miss Read is secretly thrilled when Joseph wins a race. Miss Read is apprehensive when she's asked to give a talk on children's literature, especially when she learns that one of the other speakers is to be Miss Crabbe, a woman with very decided ideas on children's education who she's clashed with before.

The village jumble sale results in the usual drama & vying for prized positions among the ladies who run the stalls. Jumble sales always remind me of Barbara Pym but Miss Read's jumble sales have none of the subversive humour & gentle sarcasm of Pym. Miss Read is thwarted in her desire to buy a gorgeous chocolate cake but manages to buy a fruit cake instead. She witnesses Mrs Pringle's very decided ideas about selling shoes & watches a newcomer defeated in her attempts to get the better of the redoubtable Mrs P. The baking summer weather is broken by a tremendous thunderstorm that fills the water tanks & refreshes the gardens although its fury isn't appreciated by everyone,

The first distant rumblings of thunder came as the children played after school dinner. Then it came nearer, and vicious lightning cracked the skies. I called the children in, just as the first spots of rain began to fall.
Within ten minutes there was a deluge. Raindrops spun like silver coins in the playground, and the chalky dust at the edge of the field was first pock-marked and then turned to silt within seconds....
The noise was tremendous and awe-inspiring. Thunder crashed and lightning flashed, and I could hear some wailing from the infants next door. My own class was scared, but silent, under the onslaught. I pitied anyone caught in the storm. One would be drenched to the skin in a matter of minutes.

The end of summer resolves everything & life returns to normal with the approach of autumn. Miss Read's world is a very reassuring one & I love visiting Fairacre & Thrush Green from time to time. The beautiful illustrations in my Houghton Mifflin edition are by J S Goodall.

There's a copy of Summer at Fairacre, and many other books by Miss Read, available at Anglophile Books. 

Thrush Green - Miss Read

Thrush Green is the first book in this series by Miss Read. I’ve listened to several others in the series on audio but then decided I should start at the very beginning.  I’ve been tempted by these lovely Houghton Mifflin American paperbacks (although still with the beautiful original drawings by J S Goodall) so I have the first two books on the shelves.

This first book takes place over one day, May Day, when the fair run by the formidable Mrs Curdle, comes to Thrush Green. As morning breaks, the caravans arrive with the stalls, rides, animals & games. Mrs Curdle has been coming to Thrush Green for many years but there are rumours that this will be the last year. She’s getting old & her health isn’t good & she doesn’t feel that she has anyone to hand the running of the fair on to. Her grandson Sam is a bad lot & her other grandson, Ben, has been sullen & out of sorts for months. Mrs Curdle looks forward to consulting old Dr Bailey, the only doctor she trusts after he safely delivered her son, George, many years ago.

Dr Bailey is also feeling his age &, after a bout of illness, is trying to come to a decision about his practice. He has a young GP, Dr Lovell, helping out & he wonders whether he should offer him a partnership. Dr Lovell is enjoying his time in Thrush Green very much, especially since he met beautiful Ruth Bassett. Ruth is staying with her sister & brother-in-law after her fiancé left her just before her wedding. Her broken heart is mending slowly & Dr Lovell is hoping that he can spend more time in Thrush Green to help with that healing. Grumpy Albert Piggott makes his daughter, Molly’s, life a misery with his complaints & bad temper. She has started working at a pub some distance away, only coming home at weekends, but her hopes are centred on the fair. Last year, Molly & Ben Curdle spent an enchanted day together & she has waited all year to see him again.

Bossy, dogmatic Ella Bembridge & her timid friend, Dimity Dean, have several dramas to cope with over the course of the day & eccentric Dotty Harmer causes Ella some pain with a case of Dotty’s Colliwobbles after eating some of her quince jelly. This is a lovely, gentle book, introducing most of the Thrush Green characters. Before the day is over, decisions will be made that affect the lives of several residents of Thrush Green.

Reading books out of order can have its downside. I was pleased to find out in this book why Dotty’s cat was called Mrs Curdle. This had puzzled me as I’d read a couple of the later books in the series & had no idea who Mrs Curdle was & why a cat would have such an unusual name. Perfect comfort reading.

Storm in the village - Miss Read

Miss Read is one of my favourite authors & one of my favourite comfort reads. Her stories of village life in the middle of the 20th century give me a warm glow whenever I think of them & an even warmer glow when I’m reading one of her books about the villages of Fairacre or Thrush Green. Miss Read (we never know her first name, like the second Mrs De Winter) is the schoolmistress of Fairacre School. She mostly tells her stories in the first person & we’re obviously meant to think of Miss Read the author & Miss Read the character being one & the same. Although Miss Read is the pseudonym of Dora Saint, I think we’re pretty safe in assuming that the books are based on Mrs Saint’s career as a teacher.

Miss Read is a very contented spinster, a bit slapdash in her housekeeping, but kind, responsible, a little old-fashioned in her teaching methods, but always doing the best she can for her pupils & her friends in the village. She’s also not above a sharp retort when someone tries to take advantage of her good nature, but she thinks a lot more of these than she actually says. She’s a great lover of nature & this is one of the joys of the books. In Storm in the Village, it’s the first day of summer holidays,

Nothing can beat a village, I thought, for living in! A small village, a remote village, a village basking, as smug & snug as a cat, in morning sunlight! I continued my lover’s progress, besotted with my village’s charms. Just look at that weeping willow, plumed like a fountain, that lime tree murmerous with bees, that scarlet pimpernel blazing in a dusty verge, the curve of that hooded porch, that jasmine – in fact, look at every petal, twig, brick, beam, thatch, wall, pond, man, woman & child that make up this enchanting place! My blessing showered upon it all.

Of course, trouble comes to idyllic villages as often as it comes to any other setting. There are plans to build a new village between Fairacre & Beech Green to accommodate workers from the atomic energy plant nearby. The chosen site is the Hundred Acre Field, owned & farmed by the Miller family for over a hundred years. The villagers are divided about the plan. There are those who abhor any change at all, those who foresee trouble when hundreds of town people settle in the countryside, those who are appalled at the desecration of good farmland & those who object because the famous local artist, Dan Crockford, used to paint there. Then there are those in favour of the plan. Water & sewage would be laid on for the nearby villages as well as the new estate, more public transport would be convenient, the newcomers would provide extra business for the village shopkeepers & the nearby town of Caxley. There would be more opportunities of employment for school leavers & the older children would have the opportunity of going to a bigger, more modern school on the estate. Miss Read is worried by the prospect of her village school closing or being turned into an infant’s school.

As well as the upheaval over the new estate, Miss Read has to deal with her young assistant teacher falling in love with a very unsuitable man, & with the declining health of her dear friend, Dolly Clare, who had taught at Fairacre School for over 30 years until her retirement. There’s also a lot of humour in the Fairacre books. Mrs Pringle, the school cleaner, is a prophet of doom who mangles her words &, although too superior to gossip, always knows the latest news on any scandal. She bullies Miss Read unmercifully about her slovenly housekeeping but any retort from Miss Read only leads to Mrs Pringle dragging her bad leg, a sure sign of trouble to come.

The books manage to be nostalgic without sentimentality, in the best tradition of writing about the English countryside. Although the books were written from the 1950s to the 1990s, they seem to be set mostly at that point of change where the centuries old traditions of country life were being challenged by the social & economic changes of the post WWII period. Miss Read is only too aware of the troubled homes of some of her pupils with drunken fathers or feckless mothers to overcome & the children in the books are realistically naughty, not many little angels here.

I’ve read quite a few of the Fairacre books but I’ve only just started on the Thrush Green series so I have lots of enjoyably nostalgic, comforting reading ahead of me. I especially like the lovely US paperbacks published by Houghton Mifflin. Fortunately they kept the original illustrations by J S Goodall which add so much to the charm of these gorgeous books.

There's a copy of Storm in the Village, and many other books by Miss Read, available at Anglophile Books.