Matilda, Rudolf & Bill

I've read three excellent books in the last week so I thought I'd write one post with all three as I don't think I'll have time this week to write longer posts & I don't want to forget the details. In a way, they encapsulate my reading interests. A historical biography, a 19th century novel & a murder mystery.

Matilda of Flanders was the wife of William the Conqueror. Biographies of early medieval women are few & far between because there is very little information. Queens & abbesses are the only women whose lives may be chronicled at all & almost always in relation to their family - father or husband. Matilda was the daughter of the Count of Flanders, descended from the royal houses of England & France & very proud of her lineage. It is said that when she was told that William, Duke of Normandy wanted to marry her, she refused contemptuously because he was illegitimate. William had succeeded his father as Duke at the age of nine & surprisingly had survived the endless plots & assassination attempts. The chroniclers say that he rushed to Flanders, grabbed Matilda by the hair & beat her unmercifully. She was taken to her rooms more dead than alive but, when she recovered from her injuries, declared to her father that she would marry no one but William. This is one of many legends & stories about Matilda that Tracy Borman debunks. The chronicle that relates the story was written 200 years later & there is no known contemporary source for the story.

Tracy Borman has been able to get a little closer to Matilda than to many other medieval queens because she often acted as Regent of Normandy when William was in England - most famously in 1066 when he was defeating King Harold but also in the difficult years afterwards as he was consolidating his rule. Matilda was an active Regent, signing charters & conducting diplomatic negotiations with neighbouring rulers. Even after her eldest son, Robert, had grown up & she shared the regency with him, Matilda was the dominant partner.

The marriage of William & Matilda was considered a happy one & they had at least nine children. Conflict between them intensified, however, as their sons became adults. Matilda's favourite was the eldest son, Robert, contemptuously called Curthose (short-boot) by his father on account of his short stature. His stature may have been inherited from Matilda who was a tiny woman, only just over four feet tall. William had no time for the boy &, although he was destined to become Duke of Normandy, he was ignored by his father in favour of his younger brothers, William (later William II of England) & especially Henry, the youngest. Matilda's support for Robert, even to the extent of supporting him in a rebellion against his father, soured her relationship with William, although he was said to be devastated by her death.

Tracy Borman's biographies are always well-written & full of the details about women's lives that I find fascinating. I enjoyed her earlier books about Henrietta Howard & Elizabeth I very much. Matilda was a forceful woman, not content to be merely the subservient partner in her marriage, & that was unusual in this period. I enjoyed finding out more about her life.

The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope is a classic adventure story with a gorgeous romance as well. It's probably one of the most famous adventure stories of all time & has been filmed at least twice - with Ronald Colman in the 1930s & Stewart Granger in the 1950s. Rudolf Rassendyll, a descendant of the royal house of Ruritania (but on the wrong side of the blanket) has inherited the red hair of the Elphbergs & enough money to idle his time away. He decides to visit Ruritania for the coronation of his distant cousin, Rudolf V. As soon as he arrives, he becomes involved in misunderstandings because he looks so much like the King. The two cousins meet & spend the night before the coronation drinking. The King's jealous brother, known as Black Michael, drugs the King's wine, hoping that his non-appearance at his coronation will allow Michael to usurp the throne. When the King can't be wakened from his drugged sleep, Rudolf is persuaded to take the King's place.

Rudolf is coached in his role by two of the King's retainers, Colonel Sapt & Fritz von Tarlenheim. With their help, he is crowned King &, when they discover that the King has been kidnapped by Michael & is being held at his castle of Zenda, Rudolf continues the impersonation while plans are laid to free the King. Rudolf doesn't plan to enjoy his new role so much or to fall in love with beautiful Princess Flavia, the woman who is expected to marry the King although she doesn't love him. Rudolf must play a wily game, as Michael & his henchmen can't expose him without exposing their own misdeeds. The scene is set for an exciting story of plots & counter-plots, sword fighting & romance. There's also an extra layer of complexity to the story as Rudolf realises that he would be a worthier King than his cousin but is too honourable to allow him to die so that he can remain King & marry the woman he loves.

Bill Slider is one of my favourite detectives. Cynthia Harrod-Eagles has written over a dozen books in this series & I always look forward to meeting up with Bill again. Melanie Hunter is an ordinary young woman. She works at the Natural History Museum, lives with her real-estate agent boyfriend in a flat in Shepherd's Bush, loves her dog, Marty. There seems no reason why she should have gone missing, let alone be murdered. But, when her neighbour reports her missing, & then her body is found soon after, Slider's team start digging into Melanie's life & find that she had secrets.

Melanie's father was killed in a train crash when she was a teenager. Her mother remarried, a strict, unsympathetic man who Melanie never liked, but after a few rebellious years, Melanie settled down, studied hard & became a palaeontologist. Her career was on track, she was living with her boyfriend, Scott Hibbert, & they planned to get married. Scott had gone to a friend's wedding for the weekend, Melanie had drinks with her friends, came home, went out again almost immediately taking only her keys & disappeared. Downstairs neighbour, Ronnie Fitton, alerted the police because Melanie would never have left the dog alone. However, when Melanie's body is found & the investigation starts, no one's secrets are safe. Fitton murdered his wife in a notorious case & spent years in prison. Scott Hibbert wasn't at his friend's stag night as arranged & Melanie's stepfather's alibi for the night in question looks increasingly shaky. Melanie was loved by everyone but someone must have had a motive for killing her. Was it someone who loved her too much?

Cynthia Harrod-Eagles writes a beautifully-constructed police procedural with clues, suspects & red herrings a-plenty. Bill & his team are old friends now. Jim Atherton, suave, too clever for his own good & now, after many commitment-free years, settling down with Emily & their Siamese cats. Rita Connelly, a newer member of the team, compassionate, clever & determined to do well. My favourite character is Detective Superintendent Fred Porson. Porson's malapropisms & mangling of the language are hilarious but he's a supportive boss & lets Slider get on with the job with minimum interference, except when the Press are demanding arrests. Bill's family life is also happy with his wife, Joanna, baby son George & his father all sharing the house. Harrod-Eagles is such a good writer & Kill My Darling is an absorbing novel that I read virtually in one sitting.

Muriel Spark Reading Week

Simon & Harriet are hosting a Reading Week in April about all things Muriel Spark. I think Spark is a brilliant choice as her novels are all quite short so easily read in a week, her books are readily available & she wrote fiction & non-fiction. I'm going to swim against the fictional tide & reread her book on Emily Brontё, first published in 1960 & last read by me in the 1980s. It was written with Derek Stanford & examines the life & the work with special reference to the poetry. As you can see from the lovely badge created by Thomas, Muriel Spark Reading Week runs from April 23-29. Visit Simon & Harriet's blogs for all the details about how it will work.

Sunday Poetry - John Donne

I was surprised to come across this poem by John Donne in my anthology as it's another variation on the Passionate Shepherd to His Love poems I've featured recently by Marlowe & Raleigh. It's called The Bait & Donne has really just taken the first two lines & the verse form of the Passionate Shepherd & beautifully explored the image of his lover as a water nymph, attracting every fish & young man) to her with her beauty & her sun-like brilliance. Of course, a nymph can be treacherous as well as inviting & although the lover is enthralled by her, he doesn't seem sure that it's a good place to be.

Come live with me, and be my Love,
And we will some new pleasures prove,
Of golden sands and crystal brooks,
With silken lines and silver hooks.


There will the river whispering run
Warmed by thy eyes more than the sun.
And there the enamoured fish will stay,
Begging themselves they may betray.


When thou wilt swim in that live bath,
Each fish which every channel hath
Will amorously to thee swim,
Gladder to catch thee, than thou him.


If thou to be so seen beest loath
By sun or moon, thou darkenest both,
And if myself have leave to see,
I need not their light, having thee.


Let others freeze with angling reeds,
And cut their legs with shells and weeds,
Or treacherously poor fish beset
With strangling snare or windowy net.


Let coarse bold hands from slimy nest
The bedded fish in banks out-wrest,
Or curious traitors, sleave-silk flies,
Bewitch poor fishes' wandering eyes.


For thee, thou needst no such deceit,
For thou thyself art thine own bait;
The fish that is not catched thereby,
Alas, is wiser far than I.

Six months on...

It's been six months since Lucky & Phoebe came to live with me & here are a few photos I took the other night. It's always easier to get photos of Phoebe because she loves to pose.

Lucky is shyer but it was such a lovely, warm evening that she was too comfortable to move. I think this is a particularly serene photo. Actually they both look content (they've just had dinner) & quite pleased with life.

It's been an exciting six months. I've had to learn to worry less & trust that Phoebe knows what she's doing & won't fall off the roof & that Lucky will always return from her wanderings around the neighbourhood.  They get on together quite well although they're not at the curling up together for a snooze stage yet. They both sleep at the bottom of my bed, just on opposite sides. We've had a lovely time getting to know each other & as long as I keep up the expected standards of service, I hope they'll be with me for many years to come.
If you want to remember the early days, have a look here & here.

Agatha Christie's Murder in the Making - John Curran

I suspect that a book like Murder in the Making will be almost impossible to write in the future. In an era of email & computer crashes, there will be few caches of manuscripts & notebooks to be pored over by an eager researcher. In 2005 John Curran was lucky enough to be given access to Agatha Christie's notebooks. The 73 notebooks, stored in a cupboard at Greenway House in Devon, were of varying sizes & colours, sometimes just a few pages had been used, sometimes the book was nearly full of notes. Christie seems to have just grabbed the nearest notebook when she had a thought or wanted to plan a story. She also didn't bother about dating the entries. Often there was just a name or a title, sometimes in almost illegible scribble. Curran has spent the last few years painstakingly deciphering & transcribing the notebooks. It's been a labour of love &, I suspect, it became an obsession. The results are fascinating for anyone who loves Christie's work or just wants some insight into the working methods of the most successful detective novelist of the 20th century.

Murder in the Making & the earlier book, Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks, are aimed at Christie aficionados The plots are discussed in detail & the endings are often revealed. These are books to read after you've read the novels. Picking up the first book, I remember thinking that I would just dip in & read a few bits here & there. I didn't think I would be able to read a whole book full of cryptic jottings. I was wrong. I found the first book riveting & Murder in the Making is no different. Curran's encyclopedic knowledge of the books is invaluable as he can spot an allusion to a published book or short story at a hundred paces. Even when the names have all been changed & the plot twist has been substantially altered, Curran is able to point out the ways the notes were used in a finished story. This is part of the notes for Lord Edgware Dies,

At theatre - CA's performance - H's reflections - Is JW really such a good actress? Looks round - JW - her eyes sparkling with enthusiasm. Supper at Savoy - Jane at next table - CA there also (with Ronnie Marsh) - rapprochement - JW and Poirot - her sitting room - her troubles. I'll have to kill him (just as waiter is going out) Enter Bryan (and CA). JW has gone into bedroom. B asks what did she say - means it - amoral - would kill anyone quite simply

The linking passages are excellent in setting the scene for the various stages of Christie's career. There were periods when she was publishing two books a year, including a Christie for Christmas as her publishers liked to call it, working on short stories & a stage play or two as well as accompanying her second husband, Max Mallowan, to an archaeological dig in the Middle East.

The book also includes a new version of the Miss Marple story, The Case of the Caretaker's Wife, an article Christie wrote about her invention of Poirot & a letter she wrote to the Times supporting A L Rowse's theory about Shakespeare's Dark Lady. There are also lists of unused ideas from the notebooks. Even at the end of her life, Christie was still jotting down ideas for future books. Unfortunately her ability to extend these ideas into novels had gone.

Murder in the Making is a fascinating insight into the creative processes of an incredibly successful novelist. I found it interesting to see how often she used the same idea - least likely suspect, intentionally misleading the reader in the first chapter - but every time she made the plot twist fresh. Even a reader who had read every Christie would have trouble spotting the trick & that was the secret of her great success.

Sunday Poetry - Anonymous Elizabethan

Today's poem is an anonymous lyric from the play Fedele & Fortunio or The Two Italian Gentlemen, translated from the Italian in 1584. The play was considered popular & influential in its day but has only survived in a few extracts, songs & poems. The picture of the lovers is from here.

If love be like the flower that in the night,
When darkness drowns the glory of the skies,
Smells sweet and glitters in the gazer's sight,
But when the gladsome sun begins to rise,
And he that views it would the same embrace,
It withereth and loseth all his grace:


Why do I love and like the cursed tree,
Whose bud appears, but fruit will not be seen?
Why do I languish for the flower I see,
Whose root is not, when all the leaves be green?
In such a case it is a point of skill
To follow chance, and love against my will.

The House at Sea's End - Elly Griffiths

The House at Sea's End is the third book in the Ruth Galloway series by Elly Griffiths. I read the first two books in the series over a year ago & enjoyed them very much. However, I was going through my anti-crime fiction period when this was published last year so I've only just gotten around to reading it.

Ruth Galloway is a forensic archaeologist living on the Norfolk coast. She's often called in to help the police when bones are discovered. This is how she met DCI Harry Nelson. The immediate attraction between Ruth & Harry resulted in Ruth's pregnancy after a one night stand. Ruth decided to continue with the pregnancy alone as Harry is married & neither of them really wanted a relationship. The tentative relationship that has developed between Ruth & Harry is the main attraction of this series for me. Ruth is an unconventional heroine. Overweight, unfashionable, a loner, & now, juggling work with caring for her daughter, Kate. Harry is a native of Blackpool & only moved to Norfolk at the urging of his wife, Michelle, when promotion beckoned. Harry is blunt & touchy but a good policeman who is confused by his feelings for Ruth & overwhelmed by his love for hid new daughter. He also loves his wife & their two daughters. By the end of this book, the well-kept secret of Kate's parentage looks as though it may be about to crack.

The investigation involves the discovery of six skeletons on a remote section of the coastline where erosion has revealed their burial place.  The skeletons had their hands tied & the men had been shot in the back of the head. When isotope analysis discloses that they were of German origin, attention turns to the legend that German troops had attempted to invade Britain along the Norfolk coast, during WWII. On the cliffs above, Sea's End House, owned by politician Jack Hastings, is also affected by erosion & looks as though it will topple into the sea at any moment. The Hastings family have lived in Broughton for generations & Jack's father had been in charge of the local Home Guard. Could the skeletons have been part of an advance force sent by the Germans? If so, how did they die? Then two old men, former members of Broughton's Home Guard, die in suspicious circumstances, just as they were about to talk to a German academic who is researching the aborted invasion. The WWII mystery of the German soldiers suddenly becomes a modern murder investigation. Ruth's investigation of the historic remains intersects with Harry's search for the truth as the elderly survivors of the Home Guard are conveniently murdered before they can talk.

I do enjoy this series. The setting is atmospheric. Ruth lives in a desolate area called the Saltmarsh with no neighbours for miles. Ruth has few friends. Old school friend, Shona, & the druid, Cathbad, who is sometimes a little too perceptive for Ruth's comfort. As I said earlier, the relationship between Ruth & Harry is very subtly handled & is always interesting. I don't usually like present tense narration & it always disconcerts me although, I must say, once I'm into the story, I don't notice it. My main complaint is that Ruth is in peril of her life at the end of every book & I'm a bit sick of it. I enjoyed the setting up & investigation but the dénouement left me cold. I think we've had every variation on Ruth being attacked in her lonely house, on the marshes, on a remote beach with the tide coming in etc etc. I know it's fiction but I would love Ruth to get to the end of the book with a little less effort next time! The new book in the series, A Room Full of Bones, has just been published. I'm looking forward to it.

I'm not sure when I'll post my next book review as I've done very little reading since Tuesday when my copy of series 2 of Sherlock arrived in the post. The first series of Sherlock was one of my TV highlights of last year & I couldn't wait for the new series to come to a TV screen near me so I ordered the DVD as soon as it was available. Martin Edwards has reviewed all three episodes on his blog. It is brilliant. I've watched two episodes & I'm looking forward to watching the third tonight. I love the way the writers have updated the original stories so cleverly. I could go on & on but the allusions to the originals (Geek Interpreter, Speckled Blonde), the number of direct quotes from the original stories, usually from Sherlock are so well-done. The way that the relationship between Holmes & Watson has been updated but not changed in essentials. The excellent performances from Benedict Cumberbatch & Martin Freeman. I've read the Conan Doyle stories many times & I can't help but think that knowing the originals adds to the enjoyment of watching Sherlock.