We walk on the bones of the dead Novelist Kate Atkinson is particularly good at bringing the past to life through ordinary objects, habits, food and personal recollections. She has written some great criminal capers featuring her detective Jackson Brodie, but it’s the history-drenched novels that appeal most to me. And so to her latest, … Read more
In the wake of the armistice in 1918, Monet gave his Water Lilies to France. Panoramas of battlefields and war fronts were popular; Monet offered a water garden instead. The donation consists of eight massive, multi-paneled mural canvases (spanning roughly 91 to 100 linear meters total) designed to envelop the viewer in a continuous landscape … Read more
The History: All Change Here I Do not lean out of the window. When they enclosed the common land, peasants lost their grazing rights. A watercolour farmhouse. Shire horses, Lion and Captain, pulled the plough, delivered green meat to the brewery. In the Great War, sometimes you could hear the guns from France. One Sunday … Read more
Just a few pics from a recent trip. Here’s just one painting from the excellent exhibit at The Imperial War Museum Beauty and Destruction: Wartime London in Art It’s by Ethel Léontine Gabain, who was commissioned by the War Artists’ Advisory Committee, WAAC, in 1940. In spite of poor health, she travelled all over the … Read more
Coming through the security check at Heathrow recently, my carry-on bag triggered an alert and was pulled aside for inspection. At the request of the agent, I opened the bag. “Anything sharp?” she asked. I suddenly had a moment of dread that I had foolishly packed the Swiss Army knife in the side pocket. You … Read more
A Postal Worker with the BEF in 1940 In my hand I hold a small pocket diary for the year 1940, printed for gardeners by the Royal Horticultural Society. Its pages offer advice on pruning fruit trees, planting seedlings, and preparing the soil for spring. Yet in the blank spaces between that advice the diary … Read more
A neighbor recommended an Off-Broadway play: Douglas Lackey’s Hans Litten: The Jew Who Cross-Examined Hitler. We saw it last Saturday. In one memorable scene, concentration camp prisoners are ordered to sing the Horst Wessel Nazi anthem”Die Fahne hoch,” ( “Raise the Flag”), in celebration of Hitler’s birthday. Instead, Litten leads them in the defiant German … Read more
Clifford Witting’s Measure for Murder (1941) belongs to that strand of Golden Age crime fiction whose pleasures lie as much in social observation as in puzzle-solving. One of the enduring appeals of the genre is the glimpse it can provide into an England now almost unrecognisable, yet still just within living memory. Here that includes … Read more
What if the man you’re rooting for in a wartime darkly comic thriller is also a serial killer? In Mr Bowling Buys a Newspaper (1943), Donald Henderson gives us just that: a shabby, lonely public-school man with a bleak past, a murderer burdened by a morbid wish to be caught. (You can read the novel … Read more
All this week The Daily Poem from The Paris Review has featured work by Alberto Caeiro, Álvaro de Campos, and Ricardo Reis. In other words, it is featuring the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa (1888 – 1935). See the sidebar below for the explanation from the Review. On Tuesday, there were three sonnets by Álvaro de … Read more
One of the pleasures of events like the #1952Club is the chance to stumble across something unexpected and delightful – and A Perch in Paradise by Margaret Bullard is exactly that. Why this deliciously wicked novel has not been reissued by one of those publishing houses that specialize in forgotten gems by women is a … Read more
“We were young and we were keen; Europe was in flames, and we were ready for whatever came.” “I used to think that war would make one braver, harder—but instead, it only makes one tired. The glamour of it wears off quickly when you’re pulling bodies from the wreckage.” Train to Nowhere by Anita Leslie … Read more
Hope I’m not jumping the gun here but the #1940Club starts next week and I’ve been gearing up and getting ready. The idea is simple. It’s a fun event with no pressure because you can choose anything from the year and read as much or as little as suits you. You can share on your … Read more
Norman Pearson returned towards the end of January, after an absence in Spain and Portugal, bearing two bananas, two oranges and a pineapple. The bananas and oranges were simple, Hilda and I had one each. Apart from a few green apples and some berries in Cornwall, it was the first fruit that we had tasted … Read more
Researching Marienbad and the Savoy led me to Erika Mann and all the gossip, scandal, politics, and drama of her family. I wanted to read her account of life in pre-war Germany The Lights Go Down in part of my preparation for the 1940 Club and here. I couldn’t track down a copy so I … Read more