……but before all that: it’s the tenth Annual Lowdham Book Festival this year and it’s taking place in various locations around the village of Lowdham (just north east of Nottingham on the A612) plus one or two other locations and lasts until June 27th. Amongst the well known names that will be making an appearance this year are Jenni Murray (of Radio 4), Stephen Booth, Gillian Slovo and the railway writer Geoffrey Kingscott who will be talking about Lost Railways and Lost Stations. The box office number for all the events is 0115 966 3219. For more details about all the events go to the website.
Keeping Healthy
Last time I mentioned Dr Alice Roberts’ new book about the origins of our species: homo sapiens (see the previous edition of this blog). Dr. Roberts’ first book accompanied her first TV series in 2007 : Don’t Die Young [Bloomsbury £20 9780747590255]. In it she describes the principle organs of the human body and what we can do to help them all stay healthy and function properly. By understanding how your organs work and how to look after them, you stand a better chance of a healthier life. The book is lavishly illustrated (I really mean that) with many colour photographs, some of minute bacteria, cells etc, magnified 1000s of times as well as lots of colourful diagrams of our insides. There’s even an electron microscope photo of split ends – hair damaged by bleach. In the introduction, Dr Phil Hammond says “Most people haven’t experienced the joy and wonder of dissecting a fellow human, but this [book] is the next best thing”.
If you’re not too keen on photos of your internal organs, just have a look at the special sections at the end of each chapter, where ways to keep your brain/liver/kidneys etc in good order are listed. I think I’ll just stick to that and try and follow Dr Roberts’ advice, one of the main points being to eat five portions of fruit and veg a day.
…and if something suddenly goes wrong…
…you might need an ambulance. This is where Tom Reynolds comes in. Tom works for the London Ambulance Service and for the past 6 years or so he has been publishing a blog about his daily experiences as an ambulance driver: Blood Sweat and Tea [The Friday Project £7.99 9781905548231] and More Blood, More Sweat and another Cup of Tea [The Friday Project £12.99 9781906321406] are both collections of excerpts from Tom’s blog about the many and varied experiences he has in his job.
Written in bight-sized chunks, you can dip into the book at almost any point to get a picture of what it really means to be an ambulance driver – answering emergency calls which might be a little old lady who has had a fall or a victim of a stabbing or just someone who has had a cough for a couple of weeks and just can’t seem to get rid of it. The situations he has to deal with range from the tragic to the ridiculous – they are all in a day’s work – as are the dangers all ambulance drivers have to face, whether it’s driving at high speed through heavy traffic or coming into contact with life threatening infections. Then there are all the abbreviations they use such as FRU (Fast Response Unit) and FBUA – you’ll have to read the book to discover what that stands for!.
I picked up Blood Sweat and Tea from the library. At first I thought I wouldn’t like the format of the book, but I started reading and found it hard to put down. Try it.
“He’s tall, he’s dark and, like the shark, he looks for trouble” – that’s a description of Lucifer Box, the central character in a series of quirky espionage novels by Mark Gatiss. I’ve just read Devil in Amber [Pocket Books £7.99 9780743483803] and thoroughly enjoyed it, though the plot became so incredibly complicated as it went on that there’s only space here to give you a rough idea of what it was all about. It takes place sometime in the 1920s or’30s (it’s left intentionally vague) when Box is asked by his employers (known as the “Royal Academy” – a sort of MI5) to eliminate a chap with the unlikely name of Olympus Mons. Mons is determined to take over the world with the help of the Devil himself and Lucifer Box’s sister Pandora (Lucifer and his sis don’t get on). The book begins in New York and finishes in North east England via Norfolk. Lucifer encounters, and is helped by, a most unlikely collection of characters. It’s action packed right from the start.
Mark Gatiss is of course one of the League of Gentlemen (the award winning TV series), so it’s not surprising that his novels might be very offbeat. He says that most of his inspiration comes from the Flashman novels, but I would describe it as a sort of James Bond with a touch of Bertie Wooster. To see a short video of Mark talking about the third – and probably the last – Lucifer Box novel (Black Butterfly Simon and Schuster £15 9780743257114) go to the publisher’s website.
Incredible..but true?
There’s just one more episode to go for the fascinating series presented by Dr Alice Roberts: “The Incredible Human Journey” on BBC2 on Sunday night. Dr Roberts takes us all over the world to some of the most unlikely places in search of clues to the reasons why homo sapiens was the only species of human being to survive. Of course there’s a book to go with the series, out now: The Incredible Human Journey [Bloomsbury £20 9780747598398]. I’m hoping that Nottinghamshire Libraries will stock it, but from past experience TV tie-ins are not always purchased.
Echoes of “Heartbeat” ?
This next title reminds me of an uncle of mine who was a country bobby in Northamptonshire, who used to regale us with tales of his exploits. In those days anyone caught doing wrong (usually a poacher or petty thief) was more likely to get a good hiding than be arrested. Somehow I don’t think Mike Pannet will have similar tales to tell about his life as a country policeman in rural Yorkshire. His new book You’re Coming with me Lad [Hodder and Stoughton £12.99 9780340918760] is more likely to remind people of the books by Nicholas Rhea (Constable on the Prowl, Constable around the Village etc) except that Mr Rhea’s books are now regarded as novels rather than non-fiction. (Nottinghamshire Libraries moved its stocks of “Constable” titles from the biography shelves to the fiction quite a while ago). In the publicity for Mike Pannet’s books (his first one was Now Then Lad [Constable £7.99 9781845298111]) he is being compared to Gervase Phinn and even James Herriott, so he’s one to watch out for.
You’re Coming with Me Lad will be published on 25th June and not long afterwards Mike Pannet will be at W H Smith in Mansfield for a signing session – I’ll give the date later. My thanks to Margaret of W H Smith Mansfield for the information
New from Peter James
Former film producer and horror novelist Peter James is now firmly established as a good whodunit writer. His latest police procedural novel is out this week: Dead Tomorrow [Macmillan £16.99 978-0230706866] has been hailed as one of his best yet.
Well, actually oil and coal have been found in both counties of course, but two new books shed more light on specific areas: a brand new book Oil under Sherwood Forest by Janet Roberts [published by the author £4.99 9780956190208] tells the story of oil production in Nottinghamshire.
Driving through the sleepy village of Eakring today, you would find it hard to believe that this was once the centre of oil production in the UK and provided a source of oil for the war effort that “the U boats could never sink”. Janet’s excellent little book tells the story of oil production at Eakring and how a team of American engineers was brought over from Oklahoma in secret to the Eakring area to help sink the oilwells. The team was accommodated at Kelham Hall alongside the monks belonging to the Society of the Sacred Mission. The oilmen certainly turned heads when they ventured into nearby Newark dressed in loud shirts and looking every bit like cowboys. On being asked what they were doing in Britain, they said they were here to make a movie.
We also read about the problems caused for the men who were working long shifts, but having to survive on the same rations as everyone else and the only fatal accident when a worker fell 55 feet. The final chapter brings the story right up to date with the unveiling of the ”Oil Patch Warrior” statue and the opening of the museum at Duke’s Wood south of Eakring. An essential read for anyone wanting to know about Nottinghamshire’s industrial history or the history of oil exploration in Britain. The only other book about oil exploration in Nottinghamshire was published in 1973 and is now out of print.
In her blog, Janet Roberts explains how she researched the book and her involvement in writing a play about the oil patch warriors.
Now to Derbyshire coal, or, to be more precise, the coal mining area of Bolsover. Published last year, Bolsover: castle, town and colliery by Philip Riden and Dudley Fowkes [Phillimore £14.99 9781860774843] is a title in the “England’s Past for Everyone” (EPE) series. This is a general history of the Bolsover area since prehistoric times, but the book points out that Bolsover has never been more than a minor market town. Even the building of a castle and the subsequent building of a mansion on the site of the castle failed to give the place that impetus needed for substantial expansion. . It was the coming of coal mining and then the railways of course that made the biggest difference to the area and much space in the book is devoted to that. Apart from the story of mining in the Bolsover area, there is still plenty to interest the local historian, apart from industrial history, and this book does the job well. The outlying settlements such as Whaley Thorns, Carr Vale and Stanfree are not forgotten and there are plenty of maps and photographs.
I bought my copy of the book just a few weeks ago: I’ve only read the first chapter and I’m looking forward to having time (!!) to read the rest, but I hope I don’t encounter any more errors – there are only minor “typos”, but sometimes I do wish the proof readers had done their job a little better!
According to the EPE website, another book in the series, this time about Hardwick Hall, Estate and Village is in preparation – I’ll look forward to that.
The days of the “open road”
If you are enjoying or have enjoyed the BBC 4 series “Britain’s Best Drives”, (currently on BBC2) then the book of the series might be for you. Britain’s Best Drives by Richard Wilson and Nigel Richardson [ Headline £16.99 9780755319008] describes six different drives in various parts of Great Britain, following routes in 1950s guide books, which were filmed for the series. For each drive Richard Wilson drove a different car, but all of them dated back to the era which many regard as the golden age of motoring.
As we follow Richard on his circular tours we read about the characters he meets and we get plenty of historical information, but there isn’t an awful lot about the way the car performs or how the route or road has changed since the day when the guide book he is using was published. These are very individual accounts and whether you enjoy reading them or not is very much a matter of personal preference. I have to say I didn’t read the whole book.
New novel from Jo Brand
The stand-up comedienne Jo Brand, well known for being partial to cake, has just brought out her third novel The More you Ignore Me [Headline Review, £12.99 9780755322312] which draws on her experience as a psychiatric nurse, which was her job for 10 years before she turned to show business. It’s described as “hilarious, poignant and darkly comic”.
Jonathan Foster is a local author from Mansfield Woodhouse who recently published a book about the life of scientist and inventor Harry Grindell Matthews : The Death Ray [Inventive Publishing £11.99 9780956134806]
The other week I spoke to him about the book and asked him why he decided to write about this largely forgotten scientist. Matthews was well ahead of his time, having invented the world’s first mobile phone: many of his inventions had military uses, but his relationship with the Ministry of defence and other parts of HM Government was fraught with difficulties. Listen here whilst Jonathan explains more about this inventor and find out why this character was “one of the best kept secrets of twentieth century Britain”.
A plague fantasy
I tend to shy away from novels set in the distant past – often full of tales of derring-do, knights in shining armour and so on, but I’ve just read – and thoroughly enjoyed – something a bit different. The Company of Liars by Karen Maitland [Penguin £7.99 9780141031910] is set in fourteenth century England , 1348 to be precise, when it rained every day from Midsummer’s Day to Christmas Day and which was a particularly bad year for the Black Death. Our narrator is one known simply as Camelot, a peddler or hawker, someone who sells so called religious relics. It’s a novel about a journey which begins in a town in South West England at about the time when a new outbreak of the plague is beginning.
It is thought that the plague has entered the country via the ports and harbours, particularly Bristol, and so everyone who can tries to escape the pestilence by heading East or North. Though Camelot would prefer to be alone on his journey, a number of people in one way or another join him in his effort to escape the plague. They include Rodrigo, a minstrel with his pupil Jofre, a young couple, the woman heavily pregnant, Zophiel with his horse and cart and mysterious collection of boxes, which he jealously guards. Then there is Cygnus, one of whose arms appears to have been replaced by a swan’s wing and a strange little girl and a woman companion. The girl, Narigorm (a name reminiscent of a Tolkien or Harry Potter novel) seems to be proficient in reading the runes and her prophesies have an eerie habit of coming true.
Their journey is a long and arduous one, often sleeping in the open at night, and beset with arguments amongst the companions. At night they often hear the howling of a wolf and this sets everyone’s nerves on edge: is it a real wolf, or is it someone trailing them, waiting for the right moment to steal or murder? Then, their numbers begin to dwindle as one by one the companions meet untimely deaths. The first is found hanging from a tree, the next is brutally murdered.
As the story progresses, the reason for the word “liars” in the title becomes apparent: each character professes to be something they are not or they have a guilty secret. Even Camelot has a secret which is not revealed until very near the end. It is this vulnerability that the strange girl Narigorm plays on.
I found this book fascinating and compelling soon after I began to read it and it is just occasionally a little gruesome (but this aspect is not overdone). At times things became so spooky, that I felt a shudder or two – and that’s no exaggeration. Not everyone is enthusiastic about this novel – have a look at this review from the Telegraph, reproduced in the Mediaeval News blog, but don’t let it put you off.
Books to look our for
Just published: Mr Toppit by Charles Elton [Penguin £7.99 9780141038001] – about fame, fortune and the problems an inheritance can bring.
Ruso and the Demented Doctor by R S Downie [Penguin £7.99 9780141027265] – a who-dunnit set in Roman Britain.
Down River by John Hart [John Murray £7.99 9781848540958] is one of Richard and Judy’s 2008 Summer reads, so I thought I would give it a try. Adam Chase has been living in New York for five years after being acquitted of a murder. The only evidence against him was given by his stepmother. Prompted by a call from his friend Danny, Adam returns to the small town in Rowan County where he grew up to see his family once again, but is met by hostility and suspicion. Almost as soon as he arrives, a girl whom he believes to be the daughter of his father’s best friend (revelations later in the book prove otherwise) is savagely assaulted, and soon after, the remains of his friend Danny are found in a remote spot.
Naturally the police are suspicious of Adam, but Adam’s former girlfriend Robin is a policewoman and manages to keep him out of jail. Adam sets out to find out the real murderer and who committed the latest atrocities. As events unfold, many family secrets from the past gradually see the light of day, such as the real reason why his mother committed suicide many years ago. Adam’s apparently close knit family turns out to be more and more dysfunctional as the tale unfolds. As the author says in his acknowledgements at the end, dysfunctional families provide lots of good material for authors.
I don’t think I was ever totally happy with this book – perhaps it was the style or the expressions used which sometimes caused me to do a double take- or perhaps it was the characters themselves who seemed to be miserable most of the time! I’m not sure, but I did want to finish the book, which did get a little more like a page turner as I got very near to the end. A deckchair read I would think.
Trying to follow that…
I like variety, but I don’t like books that look as if they are going to make me miserable. Unfortunately when I turned to The History of Love by Nicole Krauss [Penguin £7.99 9780141019970] – another Richard and Judy recommendation, this time from 2006 – I found an opening that seemed to be quite depressing. It begins with Leo Gursky describing the lengths he goes to to make sure that he doesn’t die on a day when he has not been seen by anyone. But there’s far more to this book than that: many years ago in Poland, our main character Leo wrote a book called “The History of Love” about a girl called Alma, but he has long forgotten about it. The book survived and a teenage girl who was named after the girl in the book sets out to find her namesake.
Now, perhaps you are thinking that I should have continued to read this as you shouldn’t be put off by the opening pages of a novel – read a bit further. Well, maybe I will, but not for the moment as I took up a totally different novel which I’m really enjoying and I’ll tell you about that one next time.
One man and his dog
I really enjoyed a recent BBC2 documentary series about the recreation of the simple life of a crofter in a remote part of the Scottish Highlands. If you did too, then you might like the book that goes with it: Beachcomber Cottage by Monty Halls [BBC £11.99 9781846076213] tells how the author renovated a roofless cottage, raised livestock and grew his own vegetables as well as joining in with the life of the local people, watching wildlife and enduring a yearning for the mod-cons of urban life and plagues of midges.
The book has plenty of colour photos including some great ones of his dog Reuben, who obviously thoroughly enjoyed his time out in the wilds. During their last night in the cottage before returning to the more comfortable life, Reuben became very agitated and would not settle. It appears that they may not have been alone in that remote spot: Monty writes that he had always had a slight feeling that he was not the only resident in the lonely bay which his cottage overlooked.
BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week…
…is My Mame is Daphne Fairfax [Hutchinson £18.99 9780091921033] the autobiography of Arthur Smith. See the Radio 4 page for more details. Should be good.
Also next time:
An interview with Jonathan Foster from Mansfield Woodhouse whose book The Death Ray: the secret life of Harry Grindell Matthews [Inventive Publishing £11.99 9780956134806] has just been published.
I really enjoyed Jeremy Paxman’s short series of documentaries on the Victorians and how their lives are portrayed through the paintings of the age. If I enjoy a documentary series, I’m always on the look out for the book – the so called TV Tie-in. Unlike some tie-ins, The Victorians; Britain through the Paintings of the Age [BBC £25 9781846077432] stands perfectly well on its own. Jeremy Paxman doesn’t mince words and his style is witty and entertaining. He begins by saying that Victorian art is certainly not fashionable today and that quite a lot of it isn’t very good, but it is the way life in the Victorian era is portrayed by the painters and some photographers of the age that is the real point of this book. Not only do we look at Victorian life through its paintings, but we also find out a little about the lives of the artists and the methods they used – Gustav Doré, for instance, who had a photographic memory and didn’t like to be seen sketching in public so lurked in dark corners making notes and sketches.
I hesitate to use the phrase “lavishly illustrated”, but that phrase accurately describes this book. So, when you’ve read the text, you can still come back to the book time after time for the many paintings reproduced in its pages – if you like that kind of art, that is. The period of the industrial revolution is certainly one of my favourite periods in British history, so I’m putting this book on my “wants” list. Read the Guardian review here
In memory of Humph
It’s hard to believe that it’s over a year since the death of Humphrey Lyttelton, well known jazz musician and, more importantly for me, host of the popular Radio 4 panel game “I’m sorry I haven’t a Clue”. At the beginning of each show, Humph would read out a short comic history of the town in which the show was being recorded. These scripts, by Iain Pattinson, are funny just to read in a book, but Humph’s delivery made them hilarious. Of course the best way to relive those joyous moments is to listen to some of the shows again, but this collection of scripts of the introductory talks, Lyttelton’s Britain [Preface £14.99 9781848091078], is a close second. Here’s just a short excerpt from the piece about Nottingham : “The greatest bare-knuckle fighter of the Victorian age was born in Nottingham, one William ‘Bend-e-goes’ Thompson, probably the most famous British boxer until Frank ‘Down-he-goes’ Bruno.
National Year of Reading becomes Reading for Life
The National Year of Reading (NYR) has now finished and it has been hailed a success: it’s claimed that there has been a significant increase in library membership amongst certain socio-economic groups and an increase in library membership nationally – in fact 2.3 million new library members were recruited between April and December 2008. We’re not given the figures for the same period the corresponding period in 2007 however.
Be that as it may, the NYR has now rebranded itself as Reading for Life and has a new website (http://www.readingforlife.org.uk/) aimed at the general public as well as teachers, librarians and other interested professionals. They are also going to promote the value of reading using “media and brand partners”, so watch out for Where’s Wally promotions on milk cartons and a Horrid Henry promotion in Iceland stores amongst other schemes.
Found on the Internet..
If you are keen on second hand and antiquarian books then you might already know about The Book Guide. It lists secondhand and antiquarian booksellers in the UK, has a calendar of book fairs and auctions and offers advice on looking after your own books as well as a directory of bookbinders.
Have you ever been to a “book town”? Hay on Wye isn’t the only book town in the UK, but it is probably the best known. A recent article in the Independent offers a guide to book towns, such as Atherstone in Warwickshire and Wigtown in Scotland, but it doesn’t mention a book village (not big enough to be a town) called Burnham Market in Norfolk. Well, at least when I was there last, there were at least 3 bookshops: perhaps there’s only one left now (according to the Book Guide website)
When you visit a public library, what sort of atmosphere do you expect to find – or rather, what level of background noise are you comfortable with when choosing a book? Do you want complete silence? Or are you happy with conversations quietly going on as well as the usual sounds of books being stamped and people walking in and out? What about background music ? I certainly wouldn’t like it, but Gloucestershire County Libraries obviously think their readers (or as they say now, customers) would like it, according to the Daily Mail. Already four libraries now have sound systems and play background music in an attempt to attract more people through the door.
Personally I think there are too many shops these days which play background music: we don’t want libraries to follow suit. I can’t remember hearing background music in WHSmith or Waterstone’s the last time I visited. It’s all part of public libraries trying to be something they are not: I ‘m quite happy with a few computers around the place or being able to borrow DVDs (as long as they are not all “last year”), but playing music all the time is going too far.
In Sarajevo
Back in the 1970s I was lucky enough to go on holiday to what was then the old Yugoslavia. It was a tour rather than a holiday in the sun and we visited several places which were to feature heavily in news bulletins about the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s – Dubrovnik, Mostar and Sarajevo. That however wasn’t the reason I picked up one of the 2009 Richard and Judy booksThe Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway [Atlantic Books £7.99 9781843547419]. The novel is inspired by a cellist, who saw 22 people killed by a mortar shell as they waited to buy bread near a market. The cellist decided to play Albinoni’s Adagio on his cello out in the open street once a day for 22 days afterwards.
It’s not a story which explains how the conflict came about. Instead, the book centres around the lives of three people who spend a large part of their time trying to avoid being shot at by the snipers in the surrounding hills as they go about their daily business. There’s Kenan who has to make regular journeys across the city to get water from the brewery (the only source of fresh water) for his family and their grumpy neighbour. Dragan is lucky enough to still have a job, but his wife and son have escaped to Italy to avoid the carnage. He has to cross the city to get bread from the bakery for himself, his sister and her husband. Both have to work out their routes carefully and try to judge the right moment to cross a street where they are vulnerable to the snipers’ bullets. Then there’s Arrow – not her “real” name – who is a recruit to the militia which is trying to protect the city as best it can. She is assigned to protect the cellist during his daily performances out in the open street.
This is certainly a short but powerful and graphic account of life in Sarajevo during the siege, which lasted nearly four years. I have to say that I wasn’t sorry to finish it – perhaps because this wasn’t really my kind of book. It’s not that I want to block the horrors of war from my mind, but we see similar scenes almost every day on our TV news programmes and perhaps I really wanted something completely different. However I’m glad I read it – and I’m glad I visited Sarajevo all those years ago.
As promised, more humour.
I could do with some light relief now and who better to provide it than Barry Cryer and Graeme Garden with their hilarious Radio 4 comedy The Doings of Hamish and Dougal: You’ll have had your tea? [Preface £16.99 9781848090231] I’ve always been a fan of BBC Radio 4 humour, though I have to say that the really good comedy shows currently on Radio 4 are few and far between, especially now that we no longer have “I’m Sorry I haven’t a Clue”. “The Doings of Hamish and Dougal” is only a 15 minute programme, but it’s full of laughs as you would expect from those two. It’s currently on BBC 7 and you can catch up with it on the iPlayer (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00jr5r9) . It’s a mixture of good old fashioned humour, echoes of Monty Python and “Round the Horne” and I find it very funny.
The book is a collection of scripts. Now I don’t normally take to programme scripts but I certainly make an exception here. Just the kind of thing to cheer you up.
Next time – a bit more humour plus a certain Mr Paxman.
As promised in Blog 50, here is an interview with the former Mansfield Town, Blades, Spirites and Bristol City player, Paul Holland. Paul is currently doing signing sessions for his new book, Talking Double Dutch [Breedon Books, £16.99, 9781859836972]. If you missed him in Mansfield last Saturday, he will be at Waterstone’s, Chesterfield from 10 am to 12 noon this Saturday (18th April) and in Waterstone’s Nottingham the following Saturday from 11 am to 1 pm. My thanks to Paul for coming to Mansfield for the interview.
The fall of an English Dynasty.
Wentworth House in South Yorkshire is a stately home, but it isn’t one that is open to the public: in 1902 it was the largest privately owned house in Britain and it still is today. The house is the starting point for the story of the Fitzwilliam family : Black Diamonds by Catherine Bailey [Penguin £8.99 9780141019239]. I’m grateful to my friend Janet for letting me borrow her copy – she had certainly enjoyed reading this incredible story. Shortly afterwards, two more people also recommended the book to me, so I just had to read it and I’m very glad I did.
The story of the Fitzwilliam family is centred around this ancestral pile, Wentworth House, whose east front is nearly twice as long as Buckingham Palace. The family has a very complicated history and researching it must have been especially difficult for the author due to a “bonfire” of sixteen tonnes of family papers held in 1972. Most of the book details the lives of William Charles de Meuron, 7th Earl Fitzwilliam and his son William Henry Lawrence Peter, 8th Earl Fitzwilliam: I was very grateful for the handy family tree at the start of the book which I needed to refer to quite a lot at first.
The book begins with the fight to prove William Charles’ (Billy’s) inheritance to the title since his father had taken his wife to a remote part of Canada where his son was born and no records had been kept. The Fitzwilliams were coal owners – that is they owned land under which coal was mined – and they also had two collieries of their own. There are many enthralling episodes in the lives of the two earls, but here is just one example; working conditions and pay for miners in the very early part of the 20th Century were extremely poor, but the Fitzwilliams were among the better employers in the industry. In 1912 the threat of civil unrest amongst the mineworkers and other trades was very real. It was the beginning of the reign of King George V and in order to strengthen the position of his throne against the threat of revolution, a public relations exercise was staged in which the King and Queen visited Wentworth in order to see for themselves the way miners worked underground. The description of their visit to Wentworth and their reaction to a serious mine disaster in a nearby colliery (not owned by the Fitzwilliams) during their stay is enthralling and moving. In spite of the disaster, the King went ahead with a visit underground at one of the Fitzwilliam collieries. It is curious to note that in their royal highness’ letters of thanks sent after their stay they make no mention of the disaster and yet at the time both the King and Queen were visibly moved by the tragedy.
It is about two thirds of the way through the book, that a new family – the Kennedys – is introduced, but it is quite a while, perhaps too long, before we are allowed to find out what their connection is with the Fitzwilliams. We read about Katherine (Kick) Kennedy’s romance with Billy Cavendish, eldest son of the Duke of Devonshire and the agonising over whether the marriage should go ahead. The Kennedys were staunchly Catholic and the Devonshires Protestant. Not long after Billy Cavendish is killed in action in the second world war, much to the relief of Rose Kennedy, Kick’s mother, Kick falls for Peter Fitzwilliam, from another aristocratic, but, again, Protestant family. This part of the story has another tragic ending.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, but it seems not everyone would say the same. In his Guardian review of the first (hardback) edition, Roy Hattersley criticises parts of the book for their resemblance to a romantic novel. It’s true that the writing style does seem to vary from time to time, but I think that is all part of the enjoyment of the book. I urge you to read it and form your own opinion.
It was roughly about this time last year that I started to write my weekly book blogs for the Chad. I can hardly believe that I’ve been able to keep it up for so long, so reaching the fiftieth posting – if I’ve counted correctly- is something of an achievement. To upload a new post every week seemed a daunting task at first, but I’m still going strong – and that’s the way I intend to continue. I’d like to thank everyone who has viewed my postings over the past months, especially those who subscribe, and for the comments I have received; your comments are very welcome.
Attention footie fans!
A former member of the Stags football team has just published his own autobiography: Paul Holland’s Talking Double Dutch [Breedon Books £16.99 9781859836972] came out last month and is on sale both in bookshops as well as in the Chad Reception on Newgate Lane in Mansfield, alongside John Lomas’s End of an Era: Mansfield Town: the football league years. If you’d like a signed copy, Paul Holland will be in WHSmith in Mansfield on Saturday 11th April between 11am and 1pm. If you can’t make it then, he is in Chesterfield the following Saturday and at Waterstones, Nottingham on April 25th. I’ve just recorded an interview with Paul and this will hopefully be available with my next posting towards the end of Easter Week.
and for Monarch of the Glen fans..
If you enjoyed watching the BBC TV series “Monarch of the Glen“, you’ll probably know that the series was loosely based on the Scottish novels by Compton Mackenzie and ran to 64 episodes, the last one being broadcast in October 2005. The main difference was that the TV series was set in the present day, whilst Mackenzie’s novels are set in the 1930s and ’40s.
I’ve just been reading one of the novels in the Scottish series by Mackenzie – not the one called Monarch of the Glen [Vintage Classics £7.99 9780099529545] , but Hunting the Fairies . This is about the laird of Kilwhillie, Hugh Cameron, who has reached the age of 50, but not yet found a wife. The American owners of a neighbouring estate are unable to spend the summer in Scotland and ask Kilwhillie (the laird is usually known by the name of his estate) to provide accommodation for a few weeks for their friend Mrs Urquhart-Unwin – known to her friends as Yu-Yu – and her daughter Deirdre. Yu-Yu is a member of the Ossianic Society of Boston, Mass. and especially interested in Celtic Mythology. She is very keen to “collect” songs and stories that have previously been “uncollected” and, if possible, to record the songs of the fairies. As with all moneyed people in those days, they bring the kitchen sink with them and Yu-Yu has her own clarsach (harp) and sound recording machine.
But Yu-Yu has a rival in the shape of Mrs Wolfingham, who is also a member of the same Ossianic Society and is determined to outdo Yu-Yu by collecting and recording more and better examples of the Scottish mythology and folklore in order to impress fellow members when she gets back to Boston. Mrs Wolfingham just so happens to arrive soon after Yu-Yu and stays close by. The pair eventually come face to face at a dinner party. The antics the two get up to and who comes off the best in the end is cleverly told. In addition to that, Kilwhillie contemplates proposing to Yu-Yu’s daughter in spite of the 30 year age difference; what he really wants is a way of acquiring a son and heir.
It’s what I would call an entertaining, lightly humorous story. It’s set against the backdrop of magnificent Highland scenery and peppered with Gaelic words and phrases which are not hard to decipher (but very hard to pronounce – even Kilwhillie has trouble doing that). It’s a very absorbing tale and well worth the effort of acquiring a copy. On checking the online catalogues of Notts and Derbyshire Libraries, I found that only Derbyshire has a copy and that is in their store at Derby, which can presumably be requested at any library in the county. Hunting the Fairies can be easily picked up from several online second hand booksellers.
The evening of Friday 3rd April is when the winners of the several categories of the Galaxy British Book Awards will be revealed at the Grosvenor House in London’s Park Lane – these publishers certainly know how to celebrate. For all the nominations in the different categories, including the Richard and Judy best read of the year, visit the Waterstones website, or you can pick up a “Shortlist magazine” free at WHSmiths and other outlets. You can vote for your books of the year at www.galaxybritishbookawards.com.
A book with “no literary merit whatsoever”….
… at least that is the claim in the blurb of this book. It is a crime novel, but not as we know it; it is a murder investigation, a fantasy and in parts a horror novel. The Somnambulist [ Gollancz £7.99 9780575082144], by Jonathan Barnes, is the strange story of a Victorian illusionist, Edward Moon, whose chief claim to fame is to be able to thrust several large swords through the body of his accomplice, known only as The Somnambulist, without causing any loss of blood or discomfort as the main attraction of his nightly performances. Moon does have a sort of “sideline” – that of solving murder cases and when he is called in by Inspector Merryweather of the Yard to help with a couple of murders, it seems at first to be an open and shut case. But the mystery soon deepens, when it appears that some strange religious sect is involved – I use the term “sect” very loosely – and is trying to take over Victorian London to introduce a completely new way of living.
Apart from The Somnambulist himself, who is unable to speak and is addicted to milk (!), the novel is peopled with a host of very strange characters. There is very ugly Thomas Cribb who claims to have lived in the future as well as in the past, a man covered in fish-like scales who is found to have committed the first two murders and the body of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, which has been preserved in a semi conscious state by the religious sect, since it was apparently Coleridge’s original idea to set up the religious colony. Perhaps the cleverest and most surprising turn of events is about three quarters of the way through the novel, when the identity of the narrator is revealed. If you don’t mind a few grotesque and gory descriptions and you enjoy a bizarre, ridiculous and sometimes implausible plot, this is for you. I was sorry when I got to the end, as I was enjoying it so much.
Jonathan Barnes now has a sort of sequel to “The Somnambulist”. The Domino Men [Gollancz £7.99 978-0575082311] is set in present day London, but some of the characters in the previous novel seem to have survived into the 21st Century. I haven’t read this one, but I’ll put in a request for it at my local library.
By the way, don’t confuse Jonathan Barnes with Julian Barnes,(whose new novel Nothing to be Frightened of [Vintage £8.99 9780099523741] is just out in paperback).
Peeking at the Peak District
I believe I’ve mentioned already Peeks at the Peak by Ann Beedham. Well if you enjoyed that , there’s a second volume now available [ Youbooks £12.99 9781905278244] Both books look at a random selection of historical sites in the Peak District and east Derbyshire as well as famous people connected with the area. Each topic is covered by two to four pages of information and photographs, many in colour. Volume 2 includes the spa town of Buxton, Fanshawe Gate Hall, near Holmesfield, and William Gell, the man from whom the Via Gellia road takes its name. Printed on A4 size art paper, both volumes would make an ideal present for anyone interested in the Peak District, but they are more than just gift books.
STOP PRESS
See this weeks’ Chad- page 33 - for a chance to win a copy of a new book “The Death Ray: the secret life of Harry Grindell Matthews”. This is the man who invented what was in effect the very first mobile phone ( – in 1909!) and whose most famous invention was the “death ray machine”.
Last time I mentioned Dr Alice Roberts’ new book about the origins of our species: homo sapiens (see the previous edition of this blog). Dr. Roberts’ first book accompanied her first TV series in 2007 : Don’t Die Young [Bloomsbury £20 9780747590255]. In it she describes the principle organs of the human body and what we can do to help them all stay healthy and function properly. By understanding how your organs work and how to look after them, you stand a better chance of a healthier life. The book is lavishly illustrated (I really mean that) with many colour photographs, some of minute bacteria, cells etc, magnified 1000s of times as well as lots of colourful diagrams of our insides. There’s even an electron microscope photo of split ends – hair damaged by bleach. In the introduction, Dr Phil Hammond says “Most people haven’t experienced the joy and wonder of dissecting a fellow human, but this [book] is the next best thing”.
Written in bight-sized chunks, you can dip into the book at almost any point to get a picture of what it really means to be an ambulance driver – answering emergency calls which might be a little old lady who has had a fall or a victim of a stabbing or just someone who has had a cough for a couple of weeks and just can’t seem to get rid of it. The situations he has to deal with range from the tragic to the ridiculous – they are all in a day’s work – as are the dangers all ambulance drivers have to face, whether it’s driving at high speed through heavy traffic or coming into contact with life threatening infections. Then there are all the abbreviations they use such as FRU (Fast Response Unit) and FBUA – you’ll have to read the book to discover what that stands for!.
“He’s tall, he’s dark and, like the shark, he looks for trouble” – that’s a description of Lucifer Box, the central character in a series of quirky espionage novels by Mark Gatiss. I’ve just read Devil in Amber [Pocket Books £7.99 9780743483803] and thoroughly enjoyed it, though the plot became so incredibly complicated as it went on that there’s only space here to give you a rough idea of what it was all about. It takes place sometime in the 1920s or’30s (it’s left intentionally vague) when Box is asked by his employers (known as the “Royal Academy” – a sort of MI5) to eliminate a chap with the unlikely name of Olympus Mons. Mons is determined to take over the world with the help of the Devil himself and Lucifer Box’s sister Pandora (Lucifer and his sis don’t get on). The book begins in New York and finishes in North east England via Norfolk. Lucifer encounters, and is helped by, a most unlikely collection of characters. It’s action packed right from the start.
There’s just one more episode to go for the fascinating series presented by Dr Alice Roberts: “The Incredible Human Journey” on BBC2 on Sunday night. Dr Roberts takes us all over the world to some of the most unlikely places in search of clues to the reasons why homo sapiens was the only species of human being to survive. Of course there’s a book to go with the series, out now: The Incredible Human Journey [Bloomsbury £20 9780747598398]. I’m hoping that Nottinghamshire Libraries will stock it, but from past experience TV tie-ins are not always purchased.
This next title reminds me of an uncle of mine who was a country bobby in Northamptonshire, who used to regale us with tales of his exploits. In those days anyone caught doing wrong (usually a poacher or petty thief) was more likely to get a good hiding than be arrested. Somehow I don’t think Mike Pannet will have similar tales to tell about his life as a country policeman in rural Yorkshire. His new book You’re Coming with me Lad [Hodder and Stoughton £12.99 9780340918760] is more likely to remind people of the books by Nicholas Rhea (Constable on the Prowl, Constable around the Village etc) except that Mr Rhea’s books are now regarded as novels rather than non-fiction. (Nottinghamshire Libraries moved its stocks of “Constable” titles from the biography shelves to the fiction quite a while ago). In the publicity for Mike Pannet’s books (his first one was Now Then Lad [Constable £7.99 9781845298111]) he is being compared to Gervase Phinn and even James Herriott, so he’s one to watch out for.
Now to Derbyshire coal, or, to be more precise, the coal mining area of Bolsover. Published last year, Bolsover: castle, town and colliery by Philip Riden and Dudley Fowkes [Phillimore £14.99 9781860774843] is a title in the “England’s Past for Everyone” (EPE) series. This is a general history of the Bolsover area since prehistoric times, but the book points out that Bolsover has never been more than a minor market town. Even the building of a castle and the subsequent building of a mansion on the site of the castle failed to give the place that impetus needed for substantial expansion. . It was the coming of coal mining and then the railways of course that made the biggest difference to the area and much space in the book is devoted to that. Apart from the story of mining in the Bolsover area, there is still plenty to interest the local historian, apart from industrial history, and this book does the job well. The outlying settlements such as Whaley Thorns, Carr Vale and Stanfree are not forgotten and there are plenty of maps and photographs.
If you are enjoying or have enjoyed the BBC 4 series “
The stand-up comedienne 
I tend to shy away from novels set in the distant past – often full of tales of derring-do, knights in shining armour and so on, but I’ve just read – and thoroughly enjoyed – something a bit different. The Company of Liars by Karen Maitland [Penguin £7.99 9780141031910] is set in fourteenth century England , 1348 to be precise, when it rained every day from Midsummer’s Day to Christmas Day and which was a particularly bad year for the Black Death. Our narrator is one known simply as Camelot, a peddler or hawker, someone who sells so called religious relics. It’s a novel about a journey which begins in a town in South West England at about the time when a new outbreak of the plague is beginning.
Down River by John Hart [John Murray £7.99 9781848540958] is one of Richard and Judy’s 2008 Summer reads, so I thought I would give it a try. Adam Chase has been living in New York for five years after being acquitted of a murder. The only evidence against him was given by his stepmother. Prompted by a call from his friend Danny, Adam returns to the small town in Rowan County where he grew up to see his family once again, but is met by hostility and suspicion. Almost as soon as he arrives, a girl whom he believes to be the daughter of his father’s best friend (revelations later in the book prove otherwise) is savagely assaulted, and soon after, the remains of his friend Danny are found in a remote spot.
I like variety, but I don’t like books that look as if they are going to make me miserable. Unfortunately when I turned to The History of Love by Nicole Krauss [Penguin £7.99 9780141019970] – another Richard and Judy recommendation, this time from 2006 – I found an opening that seemed to be quite depressing. It begins with Leo Gursky describing the lengths he goes to to make sure that he doesn’t die on a day when he has not been seen by anyone. But there’s far more to this book than that: many years ago in Poland, our main character Leo wrote a book called “The History of Love” about a girl called Alma, but he has long forgotten about it. The book survived and a teenage girl who was named after the girl in the book sets out to find her namesake.
I really enjoyed a recent BBC2 documentary series about the recreation of the simple life of a crofter in a remote part of the Scottish Highlands. If you did too, then you might like the book that goes with it: Beachcomber Cottage by Monty Halls [BBC £11.99 9781846076213] tells how the author renovated a roofless cottage, raised livestock and grew his own vegetables as well as joining in with the life of the local people, watching wildlife and enduring a yearning for the mod-cons of urban life and plagues of midges.
I really enjoyed Jeremy Paxman’s short series of documentaries on the Victorians and how their lives are portrayed through the paintings of the age. If I enjoy a documentary series, I’m always on the look out for the book – the so called TV Tie-in. Unlike some tie-ins, The Victorians; Britain through the Paintings of the Age [BBC £25 9781846077432] stands perfectly well on its own. Jeremy Paxman doesn’t mince words and his style is witty and entertaining. He begins by saying that Victorian art is certainly not fashionable today and that quite a lot of it isn’t very good, but it is the way life in the Victorian era is portrayed by the painters and some photographers of the age that is the real point of this book. Not only do we look at Victorian life through its paintings, but we also find out a little about the lives of the artists and the methods they used – Gustav Doré, for instance, who had a photographic memory and didn’t like to be seen sketching in public so lurked in dark corners making notes and sketches.
It’s hard to believe that it’s over a year since the death of Humphrey Lyttelton, well known jazz musician and, more importantly for me, host of the popular Radio 4 panel game “
