Findings – Kathleen Jamie (2005)

As many regular readers of my blog may have noticed, I don’t read as much non-fiction as I often feel I should. I tend therefore to be a little picky about what non-fiction books I do read. Having seen several reviews of Kathleen Jamie’s volumes of essays this has been on the horizon of books I must read for a little while. Finding myself in the mood for something a little different I downloaded it to my kindle just the other day deciding to read it straight away. Now that is the wonderful thing about e-readers isn’t it? Instant gratification.

Scottish poet Kathleen Jamie’s stunning collection of essays, focus on the natural world. With lyrical prose and acute but sensitive observations – Jamie beautifully evokes all aspects of the Scottish landscape. There is a wonderful calmness to Kathleen Jamie’s writing which I instantly connected with, her imagery is beguiling and strangely memorable, as if one really has seen it oneself.

In the essay which opens this collection, it is mid-winter, and amid the preparations for Christmas, Kathleen Jamie ruminates on the symbolism of lightness and darkness.

“We couldn’t see the real dark for the metaphorical dark. Because of the metaphorical dark, the death-dark, we were constantly concerned to banish the natural dark.”

From her kitchen window Jamie watches a peregrine, listening to it call to its mate, conspiring with a local garage mechanic to watch the peregrines through his hidden telescope. In ‘The Braan Salmon’, Jamie presents us with the haunting image of an awe inspiring Salmon run, where the Salmon are deliberately prevented from following their instinctive route back to where they were born. There are many such images, images that will stay with me for some time, a dead minke whale on the beach, a boat surrounded by dolphin, the view of the Edinburgh skyline from Calton Hill. For me however the most enduring image is that of the corncrake. The corncrake is a small rare Scottish bird, that I am now firmly in love with. Crex-Crex (the call of the corncrake) my favourite of the essays and one I can see myself returning to. It starts with a description of that well known painting; the Haywain by Constable.

“The point is, when Constable packed up his easel at the end of that summer’s day, what he would have heard as he walked home through the fields – indeed, what we could hear if we could step into his painting – would be the call of the corncrake. A corncrake is a brown bird, a kind of rail, not ten inches tall, which prefers to remain unseen in tall damp grass. Its call – you’d hardly call it a song – is two joined notes, like a rasping telephone. Crex-crex is the bird’s Latin name, a perfect piece of onomatopoeia. Crex-crex it goes, crex-crex”

Kathleen Jamie emerges from these essays as someone I liked enormously, she and her family are very much a part of the book, but it is the natural world itself which is the real star. This book has brought my April reading to a very satisfactory close, and has certainly left me wanting to read Kathleen Jamie’s second volume of essays Sightlines. I will hold of buying that one just for the moment – but I am certainly now looking forward to it.

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Mr Briggs’ Hat – Kate Colquhoun (2011)

Accounts of infamous historical crimes and trials have become quite a popular genre of late, and I can see why. This is the third or fourth of such books that I have read with enormous enjoyment. Allowing the reader an insight into the workings of the police force and justice system, on which so much of what happens today is based, is endlessly fascinating. I love flicking through the old photographs and always enjoy the excerpts of newspaper reports from the time. It is these details that bring the cases to life, ensuring that we as readers begin to see those people from the past as fully fleshed out real people, who are not so very different from us.

“The small terminus at Fenchurch Street was tucked into the south-eastern corner of the part of the capital known as the city, disgorging noisy hordes of passengers from its four platforms into the streets beyond. Jostled, clutching his cane as he descended the steep stairs to the entrance, Thomas Briggs emerged under a warming sky filled with clouds smudged by greasy smog. His habitual route to work took him along Fenchurch Street, past a labyrinth of multiplying lanes and crowded courts and then across the broad sweep of Gracechurch Street. Down to his left was the River Thames with its clattering harvest of steam and riverboats; straight ahead was Lombard Street, gateway to the stone maze of mile-square city.”

On the 9th July 1864 Thomas Briggs a 69 year old banker was viciously attacked in a first class train carriage travelling from Fenchurch Street to Hackney in the city of London. The blood spattered empty railway carriage was discovered by two other bank clerks who raised the alarm. Inside the carriage were a walking stick and a battered hat, a hat which prove crucial, as it was later identified as not belonging to Mr Briggs. Later Thomas Briggs was found badly injured near the railway line, he never regained consciousness. The hunt for Britain’s first railway murderer was underway. The horrific murder of a respectable family man in a locked first class railway carriage played upon the fears and fascinations of the Victorian public, which was so fond of the sensationalist literature of the time.
Detective inspector Richard Tanner was initially put in charge of the case, later Detective Dolly Williamson led the London side of the investigation, when enquires took Tanner to New York. For the authorities soon had their quarry in their sights, a young German tailor who days after the murder was bound for New York aboard ship, the London police were soon in pursuit. However there were lines of enquiry that the police failed to investigate fully and while there were many convinced of who the guilty party was, there were others uncertain that every possibility had been explored correctly.
Kate Colquhoun takes a balanced view of the case, neither coming down on one side or the other. The truth of what happened on the 9th July 1864 may be in a one sense, a matter of public record, or indeed be never really known. This utterly fascinating book – brilliantly recreates the times in which a terrible crime took place, showing how the public’s appetite for news surrounding the case fuelled the intense press interest on both sides of the Atlantic. By the time of the trial everybody in England seemed to know almost everything there was to know about the defendant and the police’s evidence. Could there ever have been a fair trial?
I enjoyed this true crime book enormously; well written and excellently researched it shows the potential fallibility of the justice system. I have a recent BBC programme that was made about this case, saved to watch later this week. Though I suspect that a one hour documentary won’t do justice to this fascinating book.

 

 

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Under Storm’s Wing – Helen Thomas (1988)

It may still only be February, but I think it is possible that I have just read a book that is almost certainly going to end up on my top books of 2013 list. Under Storm’s Wing contains both volumes of memoir by Helen Thomas, ‘As it was’ and ‘World without End’, further memoirs of her meeting with people such as DH Lawrence, Robert Frost and W H Davies, some memoirs of her youngest daughter Myfanwy Thomas, some of Helen Thomas’s letters to friends, as well as Robert Frost’s letters to Edward Thomas.
I originally bought a cheap old 1930’s edition of Helen Thomas’s first volume of memoirs ‘As it was’. Realising that the second volume was quite expensive second hand, and that this edition published with further memoirs and letters was available I decided I would buy it as well. I am so glad that I did. I suspect I cannot do justice to the beauty of this book, the poignancy and beauty of the writing is quite remarkable – Helen Thomas emerges as a wonderful woman, warm, intelligent and full of the understanding needed to live with the difficult and demanding man who was the love of her life.
Helen Thomas (1877 – 1967) became the wife of writer and poet Edward Thomas (1878 -1917) who is now numbered among the war poets of World War I. Thomas wrote all of his poetry during the last two years of his life. When World War I broke out, Edward Thomas was thirty six, he would not have had to enlist and yet he did – and in 1917 was killed at the battle of Arras. In 1922 Helen Thomas published the first volume of her memoirs ‘As it was’ which recounts beautifully and with breath-taking honesty the story of her and Edward’s courtship and the first years of their marriage. Helen was a young woman ahead of her time, absolutely sure of her love for Edward, fully confident of the rightness of their relationship, she enters into a sexual relationship with him before they are married. Believing in the idea of free love, Helen has to be persuaded by her bohemian friends that marriage to Edward is the only thing she can do when she falls pregnant. Edward Thomas was a man who loved to walk, walking mile upon mile – his love of the open air and English countryside was as much a part of him as his writing. He understood the countryside in a way few people do, and Helen shared this love. Together they walked many miles, Helen’s arm through his, her hand in his pocket. Edward Thomas suffered from almost crippling depression, and in the second volume of Helen Thomas’s memoirs ‘World without End’ published a few years after the first volume, we see how this illness impacted terribly upon their marriage. Helen however understood Edward and knew how to deal with his darker moods with tact and love.

“In an unconscious way as I grew older I came to realise that everything that is part of life is inevitable to it, and must therefore be good. I could not be borne high upon the crest of ecstasy and joy unless I also knew the dreadful depths of the trough of the great waves of life. I could not be irradiated by such love without being swept by the shadow of despair. The rich teeming earth from which all beauty comes is fed with decay; out of the sweat and labour of men grows the corn. We are born to die; if death were not, life would not be either. Pain and weakness and evil, as well as strength and passion and health, are part of the beautiful pattern of life, and as I grew up I learned that life is richer and fuller and finer the more you can understand, not only in your brain and intellect but in your very being, that you must accept it all; without bitterness the agony, without complacency the joy.”

Three children are born to the Thomas’s and they have to move house several times, they struggle with poverty and with Edward’s depression, yet through it all, what comes across so wonderfully through Helen Thomas’s writing is the absolute togetherness of this couple. Edward Thomas making his living as an essay writer and critic, he occasionally has to go away to work, and during these times Thomas makes friends with other writers, many of them now very big names. Among his friends were Robert Frost and Arthur Ransome and six of Robert Frost’s letters to Edward Thomas are published in the appendix of this edition. I don’t think I shall ever forget Helen Thomas’s account of Christmas of 1916, the last that Edward and Helen have together, before the heartbreak of Edward’s departure back to the front, from where of course he never returned.

This collection of memoirs and letters is an absolute joy and worth every penny that I spent. I now want to read more about Edward Thomas, I have of course now added several more books to my amazon wishlist, including some of Edward Thomas writing about the countryside and a biography of the last years of his life.

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The Old Ways – Robert Macfarlane (2012)

I am a bit of a walker  though nothing like this man Robert Macfarlane -now he’s a walker! – but this book will delight walkers and non walkers alike. It certainly has me wanting to pull on my boots. A Christmas present from a good friend – I have been looking forward to this one.

Robert Macfarlane set off from his Cambridgeshire home to traverse the pathways, cartways causeways, ancient tracks, and even the sea paths that cross the British Isles, and many territories beyond. He explores the landscape and its formations, and resurrects old voices and ghosts that went before. His explorations recount pilgrimages and rituals that build to make a history of landscapes. He meets walkers and artists along the way – each of them made in some way by these landscapes they inhabit. Macfarlane has an acute knowledge and understanding of artists and poets and this book is filled with their voices and touched by their influence.
Macfarlane’s boots take him to Scotland, to Wiltshire and the South Downs, but his journey doesn’t end there. His journey takes him to Tibet and to the politically unstable Palestine, and to the old sacred pilgrim route in Spain, meeting Miguel Angel Blanco who has Macfarlane tells us, created one of the most astonishing libraries in existence – I tend to think it must be. A basement lined with shelves – boxes containing books a library in short sounding unlike anything I have heard of.

“A basement in Madrid: its wall lined from ceiling to floor with shelves. On the shelves: hundreds of wooden boxes, ranging in size from narrow cigar case to shallow treasure chest. The boxes were all open at their outwards-facing end, and the mouth of each box had an identifying number burnt into it. Held in each mouth was the plain linen-covered spine of what appeared to be a book, though some of these spines were thicker than the spines of any book I had ever seen before. Pinch-holes had been cut into the boxes so that the books they contained could be gripped and slid out, as one might pull loose a brick from a wall. The spines of the books were unmarked by text and were different colours: orange, mulberry, taupe, black, scarlet. The effect was postmodern baroque: Pompidou colours for a vast Wunderkammer.”

Macfarlane’s lyrical prose is impressive, it captures perfectly the beauty of the world, its vastness and complexities the different landscapes and the surprises that can still be found.

“Late in the afternoon, between the first and second peaks as counted from the west and the sixth and seventh as counted from the east, I came across a natural cave in a subsidiary granite outcrop, big enough to hold two people lying side by side. It had been part adapted as a shelter. One end had been blocked up with piled stones. There were two tea light candles, and a half full water bottle. I couldn’t have asked for better accommodation, combining as it did shelter and remoteness. I moved my belongings to the cave, and when dusk came I lit the candles, and my shadows flickered off the rock interior.
The night: a milk-white half-moon, cool air. Owls in the forests below, their hoots pushing through the dusk. The light soughing of wind in the pines. Sound drifting, two shooting stars.”

For me the most memorable figure of this book is Edward Thomas a First World War poet and a great walker – a man whose history and work has obviously had a profound effect on Macfarlane. The final chapter of the book which recounts Thomas’s life and death was particularly poignant and reminded me of another book I had wanted to read.
A while ago I saw a book review of As it was by Helen Thomas – wife of Edward Thomas – on Booksnob’s blog and reading The Old Ways made me want to know these people better – well I have ordered a copy of As it was, now from Abebooks.

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My Family and Other Animals – Gerald Durrell (1956)

This was really the perfect book for me to take to my sick bed with. I have been really ill with a very severe cold, chest infection and major flare up of asthma. I have said before how re-reading old favourites are like meeting up again with old friends, and when better to do that, than when one is feeling rotten.
Gerald Durrell was a world famous conservationist and founder of the Jersey zoo which specialised in conservation of endangered species. He is however just as famous for his series of books about his family and his animals. The first in that series of books is My Family and other animals, and from the moment that Gerald Durrell introduces us to his hilarious eccentric family, the reader is hooked.

“I have attempted to draw an accurate and unexaggerated picture of my family in the following pages; they appear as I saw them. To explain some of their more curious ways, however, I feel that I should state that at the time we were in Corfu the family were all quite young: Larry, the eldest, was 23; Leslie was 19; Margo was 18; while I was the youngest, being of the tender and impressionable age of 10. We had never been certain of my mother’s age for the simple reason she could never remember her date of birth; all I can say is she was old enough to have four children. My mother also insists that I explain that she is a widow for, as she so penetratingly observed, you never know what people might think.”

When young Gerry and his family move to Corfu it is 1935. The world in general and Corfu in particular are very different places to today. Gerry is allowed at first to run fairly wild, later he is instructed by a series of unusual tutors. This wonderful freedom allows the young boy, who is already fascinated by everything to do with the natural world, to fully explore the beautiful island that he finds himself on. With his trusty dog Roger at his heels Gerry explores, finds all manner of species to further fascinate him, all while making friends with the locals. Over the next five years Gerry takes all manner of creatures home to his long suffering family, an owl, a giant gull, scorpions, and a gecko among other things. Remarkably perhaps, these various pets are greeted by Gerry’s mother with surprising relaxation, although his pompous elder brother Larry is often driven to distraction. The consequences of these animal guests are often hilarious, one memorable incident involving a mother scorpion with dozens of tiny babies fastened round her body being put in a matchbox and left on the mantelpiece by Gerry as he rushes off to eat his dinner. I’m sure you can imagine the rest. Gerry’s family are every bit as entertaining as his animal friends, more so in fact. Larry the future novelist is a small terror, often furiously inconvenienced by Gerry’s animals; he has more interest in literature and writing. Leslie’s passion is shooting and guns, while Margo concerns herself with diets and beauty regimes. For me though it is Gerry Durrells mother who is the real star, at times rather vague, she nevertheless manages to manage her peculiar squabbling family with both charm and a marvellously laid back attitude.
Almost as soon as the family arrive on Corfu they meet the excitable Spiro, who immediately takes the family under his wing. Spiro busies himself arranging their villa accommodation, generally looking after the family and making himself indispensable. The Durrells soon collect around them a collection of good eccentric friends to add to the menagerie at home. As well as Spiro, is Gerry’s tutor the bird loving Mr Kralefsky and scientist and philosopher Theodore Stephanides who befriends Gerry on a wonderfully equal footing, the two regularly exploring and investigating together, their shared enthusiasm taking no account of a vast difference in ages. Gerry seems to have had as much of a talent with people as with animals, as he makes friends with a shepherd, The Rose-Beetle Man and later a convict in his travels around the island.
Gerald Durrell writes with wonderful humour and affection, and into the story of his and his family’s time in Corfu he weaves his immense enthusiasm and curiosity for the natural world.

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Thomas Hardy – Thomas and Florence Hardy (1928)

As regular readers of this blog may be aware I am a great fan of Thomas Hardy. I will shortly be embarking on my fourth reading of The Mayor of Casterbridge for my on-going Hardy reading challenge. I was therefore looking forward to reading this book, not at all sure why I had left it so long.
Possibly one of the most interesting and intriguing things about this book is its rather odd history. The authorship is now firmly credited to be that of Thomas Hardy himself and his second wife Florence Hardy. However that was not what was originally intended. First published after Hardy’s death it was presented to the world as a biography, written by his wife Florence. Written in the third person, containing many letter and diary extracts it has the appearance of a biography. However within a fairly short period of its publication, it was generally accepted that it was in fact almost entirely the work of Thomas Hardy himself. Florence Hardy is credited with some of the early parts of the finished book, as well as some later insertions. So it is obvious that Hardy fully intended to practise what many have seen as a deceit in the publishing of his life. Presumably he wanted to exercise full control over what was left behind.
I found reading this book a very mixed experience – there were parts I enjoyed a lot, there were parts I found rather tedious and overall I found it quite frustrating. Hardy the man remains very much in the shadows. I did find it very peculiar to read excerpts of Hardy’s letters and diary entries obviously written in the first person – and therefore presented to us the reader as “straight from the horse’s mouth” interspersed with the 3rd person voice of the “biographer” who we now know to have been Hardy himself. I did enjoy the sections about Hardy’s early life and strangely his later life – which I found rather poignant. I also enjoyed reading some of Hardy’s diary entries and letters and some of things pertaining to the novels I found fascinating – although sometimes frustratingly brief despite this book’s length. The writer that emerges is a surprisingly unambitious man, although often irritated by criticism; he was frustrated by how his poetry was received, once he had finished with prose completely after publishing The Well Beloved. Hardy was a poet at heart, it was something he had always written, this was something his readers at the time were largely unaware of; some saw his sudden switch to poetry as peculiar and didn’t treat it seriously at first.
I suppose the Thomas Hardy I carry with me in my head and my heart – is the young man who wrote Under the Greenwood Tree – the young man who travelled to Cornwall and there met his first wife Emma.

When I set out for Lyonnesse,
A hundred miles away,
The rime was on the spray,
And starlight lit my lonesomeness
When I set out for Lyonnesse
A hundred miles away.
What would bechance at Lyonnesse
While I should sojourn there
No prophet durst declare,
Nor did the wisest wizard guess
What would bechance at Lyonnesse
While I should sojourn there.

When I came back from Lyonnesse
With magic in my eyes,
All marked with mute surmise
My radiance rare and fathomless,
When I came back from Lyonnesse
With magic in my eyes!

It is hard to remember that he was also a man who lived through the First World War. Along with other literary giants of the time, Hardy was asked to attend a conference at the time the war broke out. The conference was intended to aid with the organisation of public statements by well-known men of letters. In the 1920’s Hardy was an elder man of letters who a visiting manager of the Oxford Dramatic society met with, and remembered..

“There was in him something timid as well as something fierce, as if the world had hurt him and he expected it to hurt it him again. But what fascinated me above all was the contrast between the plainness, the quiet rigidity of his behaviour, and the passionate boldness of his mind, for this I had always believed to be the tradition of English genius, too often and too extravagantly denied”

I will continue to love Hardy – but I can’t say I find him a reliable chronicler of his own life. There is too much missing, no doubt they are things he considered too private to talk about – and yet because of that he remains still something of an enigma for me.

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Jane Austen: Selected Letters – (selected and with an introduction by) Vivien Jones 2004

I must start off by saying I do love Jane Austen. In July I re-read Northanger Abbey during my first month of re-reading, and it made me want to re-read everything of hers soon. I then bought this book of letters and a collection of her juvenilia. I wanted to love this collection, was fully prepared to be captivated by Jane Austen’s life. So it is with some regret I have to say I was a bit disappointed. I had failed to remember that these are private letters, their intended audience only that person to whom they were addressed – usually, though not exclusively Cassandra Austen. It would also appear that the Austen family – possibly not surprisingly – disposed of many of her most private letters in the years following Jane’s death.
The letters cover a period of 21 years and are filled with the minutiae of everyday life. Like so many of Jane Austen’s characters, she and Cassandra spent a lot of time away from the family home, visiting for instance the homes of other members of the family, caring for sick relatives or on purely pleasurable visits to London and Bath. The letters that Jane sent Cassandra then, when they were apart, are filled with family news, local gossip, descriptions of new gowns, and details of balls attended.

“There were twenty dances and I danced them all, & without any fatigue. I was glad to find myself capable of dancing so much & with so much satisfaction as I did; – from my slender enjoyment of the Ashford Balls (as Assemblies for dancing) I had not thought myself equal to it, but in cold weather & with few couples I fancy I could just as well dance for a week together as for half an hour.” (Letter to Cassandra Austen 1798)

I think had there been say fifty pages of such letters – they would have been just charming and interesting enough to be satisfying. However for me there was just a little too much similar content, at times I got a little bogged down by it. That is not to say that there is nothing of interest – there is – and Jane Austen’s wonderful style in itself is an absolute joy. What a marvellous letter writer she was, of course this was a time when gently brought up young women did write a lot of letters. What does shine through so beautifully though is Jane Austen’s deep affection for her sister Cassandra, and indeed her family as a whole. Little in jokes and snippets of a private language used by her and a niece, show us how important she must have been to her family. One can only guess at the loss they must have felt when Jane Austen died at just 41.
One thing I really loved however – and which there wasn’t quite enough of for me – was Jane Austen’s references to her own novels. The novels which she refers to as being her children, and that we, all these years later are still reading and talking about.

“P&P is sold. –Egerton gives £110 for it. – I would rather have had £150, but we could not both be pleased, & I am not at all surprised that he should not chuse to hazard so much.” (Letter to Mary Lloyd 1812)

One thing this collection has done for me is to make me all the more enthusiastic about re-reading the other novels. I’m pretty sure I will read one during my month of re-reading in January.

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Tea by the Nursery Fire – Noel Streatfield (1976)

It has been a little while since I read anything non-fiction, it does seem that this year I haven’t often been in the right frame of mind for it. So when this one came my way it did look just the thing to get me back to reading the occasional non-fiction work.
Tea by the Nursery Fire; such a lovely title, it conjures up images of a bygone age. This was a time when the women from one section of society brought up the children of another. The author of this book is of course a very well-known children’s writer, the perfect person one would think to tell the story of an adored children’s nanny. First published in 1976, this lovely little edition has been brought out this year by Virago press.
Emily Huckwell was born in a Sussex village in the 1870’s to a large family, her mother and her grandmother had both been in service up at the big house, and it was here that Emily was destined to go. So at the age of eleven, her hair up for the first time, wearing her first full length skirt Emily goes to the big house as a nursery maid. A good hearted girl well used to nursery work – having had to help her mother when she was very ill – Emily was able to show her potential early. However her time at this house was to be fairly short. When a visiting young lady tears her dress, Emily offers to repair it, being a gifted needlewoman. The young lady is Mrs Sylvia Burton, who was soon to have her first child. Sylvia requests that Emily goes to them as under nurse, and so Emily moves to Longton Place, not far away, where she starts her long career as nurse and later Nannie to the large family that Sylvia has. That first born child, John, however always retains a particularly fond place in Emily’s heart.

“In the gentle peace of the nursery week faded into week and month into month, all so like each other it was hard to remember time was passing. Except by flowers. Emily had always loved flowers and now she taught the children to love them. The first celandines, a picnic to pick primroses to decorate the church for Easter. Wood anemones, cuckoo flowers and the black thorn. Then, with a rush, the summer glories, the May trees, the rhododendrons and the azaleas; Longton Place was famous for its azaleas.”

Admittedly there is no real depth to this memoir – which actually reads rather like a novel – though it is charming and deeply affectionate. This simple uneducated woman played such an enormous part in the lives of the children of one family that the stories of her life and work were talked about and savoured, to be written down. She must have been a truly lovely woman. Even when Emily has a terrible private grief to contend with, her thoughts are always with the children in her care. She fights for them when they are ill, counsels them as they grow and start out on their own lives, worries about them while they are away at school. This is a fascinating period of British history, in the company of Emily we see the children’s father go off to the Boer war; we see the preparations for the coronation of Edward VII, the outbreak of World War 1, the advent of the motor car. Through these changing times Emily is a calm and loving presence in the lives of John, Henry, Thomas, Mary Matthew and Lucy, and soon it is their children who Gran-Nannie, as she comes to be called, is serving tea to by the nursery fire.
This was an enjoyable, fairly light memoir, which rather suited my mood this last couple of days.

 

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The Other Elizabeth Taylor – Nicola Beauman (2009)

I first read this biography in January 2010 – when I had only read three of Elizabeth Taylor’s novels. I have now read all but one – and have read some of the short stories too. Re-reading this book was for me a marvellous experience, as I feel I know Elizabeth Taylor a little better through her writing, and so I read it with a different perspective this time.
A few months ago I attended the Elizabeth Taylor day at Reading library with my friend Liz. It was a very good day, but as I said at the time the elephant in the room was this book. Although Nicola Beauman had permission for this book from John Taylor, Elizabeth’s husband, her son and daughter and some of her friends, notably Elizabeth Jane Howard, (who spoke that day) were very angered by it.
In this chronologically arranged biography of Elizabeth Taylor’s life and work, Nicola Beauman has written with affection, understanding and honesty. Although a great friend of Elizabeth Bowan, Ivy Compton Burnett and Barbara Pym, Elizabeth Taylor didn’t really move in literary circles – she didn’t attend the sort of events that many other contemporary writers did. She mainly stayed quietly at home, and was a wife and mother first, a writer second. Nicola Beauman asks the inevitable question, had Elizabeth Taylor been a writer first, would she have been a greater writer than she was? And did her name play a part in her having been so overlooked. For she has been overlooked, both by the literary establishment of the time – despite many really excellent reviews by other well thought of writers – and as a great English novelist since her death. For example Olivia Manning inexplicably loathed her work (as did others) and was often quite vicious about her. Elizabeth took any criticism terribly to heart, and it frequently led to her doubting her own abilities. She was short listed for the Booker prize for Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont in 1971 but failed to win any awards during her life.
Of course at the centre of this biography, and what makes it controversial, for some, are the extracts from letters between Elizabeth and her lover Ray Russell. Elizabeth Taylor married in 1936, and later at the end of the 1930’s she became friends with Ray Russell, they later became lovers. They corresponded for years, and when her husband told her it had to end, she ended it. Her family were very important to her, they came first. However she continued to write to Ray, though they didn’t meet again. Sadly it seems that Ray always loved her, and the view we have of him, presented to us by Nicola Beauman, is of a sad old man never reaching his full potential, he married late, and never got over the one great thing that happened to him. Elizabeth Taylor was a wonderful letter writer, many of the letters she wrote to others were destroyed long ago as were her instructions (she too would have hated this biography) but many of the letters to Ray Russell survived, and they show us how even in private she was a gifted, emotional writer.
While reading I couldn’t help but put myself into the shoes of Joanna Kingham and Renny Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor’s daughter and son. If Nicola Beauman had been writing about my mother (who is a similar age to Joanna Kingham) I would have been enraged, and offended. One thing that I hadn’t picked up on last time I read this book, leapt off the page for me this time. Nicola Beaman tells us that Elizabeth knew David Blakely – the man murdered by Ruth Ellis the last woman to be hung in England. She suggests that Elizabeth Taylor may have been slightly attracted to him; he was a man who seemed to attract older women. He is apparently the basis for the character of Dermot in In a Summer Season. I found this fascinating but had Elizabeth Taylor been my mother – I have found the following slightly offensive.

“Finally, Elizabeth – ironically and savagely – used herself as a model. She knew that despite the public persona of the well-behaved housewife to whom not much ever happened, she had a streak in her, indeed more than a streak, of the angry, obsessive, ruthlessly focused egotist. Privately she may not have set herself apart from Ruth Ellis the year before: one of the reasons for her anguish may have been that she thought, there but for the grace of God…”

Yet, for the enthusiastic reader of Elizabeth Taylor, this biography is a must, it is utterly compelling and the Elizabeth Taylor, who emerges from the inevitable shadows that all biographies leave behind them, is a woman I like enormously.

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The Maul and the Pear Tree – P D James and T A Critchley (1971)

I downloaded this book to my kindle to read while away, I had thought it would prove an engrossing holiday read and help boost my non-fiction reading which has been fairly dismal this year. I have only read a couple of PD James’s novels and I believe this has been her only true crime book thus far.
Using what records that remain P D James  and T A Critchley attempt to re-create the sensational case of the Ratcliffe Highway murders of 1811.  Needless to say after such a passage of time – not all records do still exist ( or should I say existed in 1971) and so although this is a readable book which does go some way to exploring the infamous crimes and the various people caught up in it and particularly those suspected, it is certainly not without fault. With so many primary sources missing, the authors, had to fall back on atmospheric descriptions of the area of London, which is much changed today, and in this, the reader can see the hand of an experienced fiction writer.  There are however long excerpts from newspapers and witness statements and other public records which do help to bring these dark and violent times to life. The book is just as much a social history of the London docks and inadequate policing system as it is the story of two dreadful murders. The authors do manage to bring the seething docklands to life,  with it’s numerous public houses, sailors and night watchmen. They also highlight the dreadful inadequacies of the policing system. There was at this time no formal police force, a system of magistrates and their few police officers and elderly night watchmen were all that lay between the public and  terrible violent assailants like that of the Ratcliffe Highway murderer. In conducting such a high profile investigation these public servants were hampered by having no system to work to, there was no pooling of information, and many mistakes were made. Certain prejudices were brought in to play allowing suspicion to fall immediately upon those of Irish or Portuguese descent.
John Williams a sailor lodging at the Pear Tree soon comes under suspicion and is arrested and charged, but apparently kills himself in prison. P D James and T A Critchley then set out their own theories in the matter of John Williams possible guilt or innocence. Some of their theories I found perfectly plausible, others rather less so, one theory in particular, for me strayed a little too far into the realms of invention – that John William’s suicide could have been homicide!
Overall this was a diverting read, there a few slightly duller moments – but I do sometimes struggle to enjoy non-fiction.

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