The Dark of Summer - Erik Linklater

When I found this book - about a decade ago in a second hand shop where it later emerged it was somewhat over priced - I bought it because it was that rare thing, a novel set in Shetland. Since then Linklater has had a bit of a revival, with various reprints of some of his better books around. 'The Dark of Summer' (which is available as both an e book and a paper book in the Bloomsbury Reader series) is from the latter end of his writing career and probably isn't one of his better books (I have a few more titles and really should get round to reading them) but it's still worth seeking out.

The action takes place over a bit more than a decade, starting in the Second World War and ending in the 1950's. Tony Chisolm is a career soldier who finds himself en route to the Faroe Islands looking for a spy on a Shetland Bus sort of set up. The spy is found, already dead, and is transported to Shetland where the corpse might be used to trap another spy (there are shades of The Man Who Never Was about this ,or so I think). There's a storm (evocatively described) and then an encounter with an eccentric local laird which sends the book off into a tangent when it adopts and adapts the story of The Giffords of Busta all mixed up with a drunken Jacobite and memories of the '45. Later on a preserved body in a bog echoes the finding of the Gunnister Man (he was dug up 5 years before this was published).

After that interlude it's back off to the war in Europe, then later Korea, with some recuperating in Singapore, with plenty of time to muse about nationalism, patriotism, the nature of compassion, what war does to a soldier, the importance of loyalty and tradition, why men become soldiers, the neccesity of a good library of female authors when on a longish stint at sea in the Royal Navy, and the difference between cowardice and bravery. Then finally it's back to Shetland to fish and fall in love.

Linklater served in both world wars, and Korea, he lived in Orkney for many years, and obviously knew Shetland and the Faroe Islands. It's an old fashioned book that sprawls all over the place with a bit of a boys own adventure feel to it, but it's also a rattling good read with some very funny lines, and interesting insights. This is the second time I've read it, I hope it's not the last.

Finally I can't resist sharing this - Chisolm, en route for the Faroe's has the captains cabin on the converted trawler the Navy are using. There is a book shelf full of Virgina Woolf, Colette, Rosamund Lehmann, and Elizabeth Bowen amongst others (including Chisholm's mother). Later he questions the captain (who doesn't know about his mother) about this...

'Do you read no authors but women?

'Not at Sea,' he said. 'The sea has two disadvantages: it's salt, as I mentioned before, and there are no women on it. Not in war-time. So female authors are a necessity, as well as a luxury. All those books - and some are a lot better than others - contain a woman who's undressing herself. Oh yes, they do! Some of them only unwrap their sensibility and their intelligence, but even they give you the feeling that there's a bed behind the door. But most of them take you on a beautifully observant, roundabout walk, that might be a little bit boring if you didn't know where it was leading; but it's leading you all the time, with unfaltering purpose. The whole thing - the whole female art of novel writing - is an exquisitely prolonged strip-tease.

I don't know precisely how tongue in cheek Linklater is being here, definatley a bit, but I love the way that in the middle of all the spy and storm at sea shenanigans he stops to throw this in.

Fortnum & Mason The Cook Book - Tom Parker Bowles

I officially started my Christmas planning today (I bought some cards and an advent calendar, then a bottle of Edunburgh distillery Christmas gin as a reward for being so organised, and then this cookbook because I was on a roll with the rewards and had some Waterstonrs vouchers, and so it will continue.) I know it's still October, but I also know if I don't think about it now I won't enjoy it.

The Fortnum & Mason Cookbook was irrisistable - I don't remember the first time I went there, probably some time in the late eighties (I do remember being shocked that a plain white t shirt cost £60 on one visit) but for a long time no trip to London has been complete without looking in. I love the windows, the wine and spirits are always worth a look, and they're one of only a few places in the country that stock Caron's Tabac Blond perfume. It's an established treat to go and buy something from the patisserie (currently Canelés - which you cannot find in Leicester) after seeing an exhibition at the RA. They have Grains of Paradise in their spice range. They have good tea in even better packaging, and the staff wear tailcoats.

It's an institution, a tourist destination, it's where Peter Wimsey (or more likely, Bunter) purchased provisions for his honeymoon with Harriet, I always find something interesting in there, and I have a deep affection for the place (along with a healthy admiration for their marketing strategy).

The book itself is a reflection of all these things. Tom Parker Bowles says he hopes its a cookbook that will be well used - and it might be, though it's not altogether my style of food. I'm not sure anybody needs to publish a recipe for porridge (especially one which is essentially the same as on the side of a packet) and probably not for rice pudding (with or without jam) either. On the other hand the seed cake recipe looks great, the instructions for a baked ham sound good too (much better than the recipe I struggled to find, despite owning hundreds of cookbooks, last time I tried to bake one).

On the whole the recipes reflect the charm of the shop though - they're smart versions of very traditional things with the odd twist (summer pudding flavoured with rose water and decorated with rose petals, lamb cutlets with a red current and mint glaze along with a whisper of HP sauce). There are things that sound decadently (impractically) luxurious - caviar boiled eggs where the eggs need to be boiled for 6 minutes, cooled, have the yolks removed, scramble more eggs (with double cream) then refill the boiled egg shells with the scrambled eggs and top with caviar (I am never doing this). And then the surprisingly practical and appealing (the ham and the seed cake again). There are also charming illustrations, a lot of them by Edward Bawden, from the Fortnum & Mason archive and lots of little bits of history.

I haven't cooked from it yet, but I've certainly enjoyed this afternoon reading it, which has had the same feeling of escaping from everyday cares that visiting the shop gives me - and on that basis alone it's a winner.

More praise for Furrowed Middlebrow

Just over a week ago Simon from Stuck In A Book posted this In Praise of Furrowed Middlebrow. To recap someone who keeps changing their name has left a series of one star reviews on Amazon against all the books that Dean Street Press have published in collaboration with Scott from Furrowed Middlebrow. 

It seems unlikely that the person in question has read all the books - why would you read so many books by authors you're clearly not enjoying, or go to the trouble of tracking down some fairly obscure titles to do so? Which makes me wonder why anyone would go to the trouble to be so negative, none of the answers I come up with are particularly encouraging.

I've followed Scott's blog for a while now, and enjoy his enthusiasm as well as his general taste in books, I've followed Dean street Press for even longer - they seem like nice people - so I want to add my voice in praise for what they're doing. 

Any publisher who wants to devote themselves to rescuing long forgotten titles, especially when they're helping restore the easily lost voices of generations of women, get my thanks and praise. If it's not your cup of tea it's easy to ignore these books - they're not piled high in every bookshop, it seems unlikely that they're having any noticeable impact on sales for hard up contemporary authors, but for those of us who are interested it's great to have easy access to these books. 

I bought a couple of titles (e versions, they're on my phone, it will take me forever to get round to reading them because I rarely do e books, but it was the end of an expensive month and the cheap option) but they look good, and like Simon I want to balance the negativity of those reviews with a moment of positivity. 

Not that I have an issue with negative reviews, certainly not when they're specific as to the issues the writer has with the book (and I'm confident that the reviewer actually read the book) but in this case they aren't in any way helpful - and have hopefully, thanks to Simon, had the opposite effect to the one intended. 

Island for sale

If I had a spare 2 million I'd consider this - Tanera Mòr, the largest of the Summer isles is still for sale. It has 9 houses, a cafe, it's own stamps (and post office) some nice beaches and a good anchorage (the last of which is probably the most important factor to life on an island). It may not be the easiest place to get too. I have no idea how bad the weather gets in winter though I suspect that getting off the island would be the easy bit compared to a winter treck from Achiltibuie (nearby mainland village) to Inverness (nearest Marks and Spencer's) 80 miles away, but the views are stunning...

The current owners are also willing to split the island into 3 lots - though you'd be stuffed if you didn't like the neighbours, it's not that big an island. There are details and pictures Here and Here but what really attracts me to it is that Tanera Mòr is where Frank Fraser-Darling wrote (or at least where he was writing about) 'Island Farm' - so it does, sort of, come with an instruction manual. It's worth bearing in mind that Frank and Bobby found the island's principal residence, the old school house, so uncomfortable that they moved into a sectional hut...

The island might be well out of my price range but the Little Toller edition of 'Island Years, Island Farm' is not. It's a wonderful book (which you'd probably have time to read in the trip between Achiltibuie and Inverness) I wrote about it a few years ago Here and there's more about it on Little Toller's website Here.

Apple Day Fail

I think Friday was officially Apple day, but it was yesterday when there were enough mentions of apple cake, apple pie, apple tart, and probably cider on Twitter to make it trend (at least in the corner of Twitter I think of as home) and to give me a craving for Apple cake.

Unfortunately by the time I got home and realised I didn't have any apples the only retail outlet that could have obliged was the local Tesco metro. I thought about bundling up and heading out to buy some but was stopped by the near certainty that all I would find were some slightly bruised gala apples. Maybe a golden delicious. Neither being apples that excite me it seemed like the perfect time to use up some of last weeks baked quinces instead.

I have two recipes for Apple cakes, one uses 700g of sugar which basically rules it out unless it's going to be eaten by a lot of people (it's good, but that's So Much Sugar) and a River Cottage one for Apple pudding cake (I'm writing this in my iPad which automatically capitalises Apple, and I'm writing it for the second time because I accidentally deleted the first draft, and I've rather lost the will to correct it) which is brilliant.

It's This Recipe here, it doesn't use almost a kilo of sugar, and does help me use up some of the huge pile of ground almonds I seem to have collected. It's also really quick to throw together which is another bonus. I used orange flower water instead of almond extract as I'd already baked the quinces with orange flower water.

The result smells great, and tastes just as good, but I think it's the end of my experiments with quinces. I love the smell and flavour of them, but remain unconvinced by the slightly grainy texture (I feel the same way about pears, which would also be good in this cake). From now on its just quince jelly for me - which is more than enough to be going on with.

Cold Earth - Ann Cleeves

For no very good reason I've not (yet) really read Ann Cleeves Shetland books (three quarters of 'Raven Black' and now 'Cold Earth' don't really count). It's a long time since I started reading 'Raven Black' so I'm not sure quite why I didn't click with it. I think it might have been because the Shetland that Cleeves described was an unsettling mix of families and different to the one I know which became distracting.

After reading 'Cold Earth' I'm inclined to go back and start at the beginning though (maybe when I get the mountain of books staring at me from across the room is a little bit more under control - so it could be a while) more especially because I've enjoyed the TV series - though I'm well aware it's quite different to the books.

Back in the book... It's a cold wet February day, And Jimmy Perez is at a funeral. It's Magnus Tait's burial to be precise (first met as the main suspect in 'Raven Black') and the inevitable reflections are abruptly cut off by a landslide ripping the place apart. In the aftermath Perez spots a scrap of scarlet against the wall of a devastated house, then finds the body of a dark haired woman that no one seems to know.

He becomes increasingly obsessed with finding out who she was, and when it becomes clear that her death was no accident, who murdered her. There's also a burgeoning relationship with superior officer, Willow Reeves, to balance with his responsibilities as a single father, and as the rain continues - the danger of another land slip.

Cleeve's familiarity with Shetland really comes through, which is no surprise. She's been visiting for over 40 years, and gets the landscape, and more importantly the weather, right. It must be a gift to a crime writer to have somewhere with such erratic mobile phone signal and weather that can suddenly close the islands off from the mainland for days at a time. It sets the scene for a community where people have to depend on each other to get through the dark days of winter. Where strangers are rare, or stand out, amongst extended family and old connections, and where keeping secrets is a serious business. The bad weather gives the book a slightly claustrophobic edge too - what would it be like to sit at home during those long hours of darkness, listening to the wind and rain, and wondering who might get bumped off next?

Cleeves has also caught the changing nature of the community; The older generation encountered in the first books are slipping away, she notes the number of different accents to be found in the islands - a legacy of gas and oil employment. The tension between a transient workforce living in flotels and other temporary accommodations against a settled community that will still be there when they're gone - and the uneasy sense that the good times bought by the oil money may be on the way out put big question marks up against the future. That she is documenting those changes is the main reason I'd like to go back and read the whole series - I think these books might be even more interesting with hindsight.

Lost In A Pyramid & Other Classic Mummy Stories - selected by Andrew Smith

I've been excited by the idea of this book ever since I first saw mention of it months ago. It did not disappoint, but then the British Library classics never do (they certainly haven't yet). What I was hoping for was a book that would have a bit of gung ho boys own style adventure, some humour, and something to think about - I got all of that and a Mummy story from Louisa May Alcott.

Before I saw the book I had assumed that the hay day of the Mummy story might have been in the 1920's when Howard Carter was excavating Tutankhamun's tomb (I may also have had 'Death on the Nile' at the back of my mind). I was wrong, the stories that make up this collection date from between 1869 and 1910. I knew about the Georgian craze for the Egyptian, but had not considered the impact the building of the Suez Canal had, or the presence of the British military for the proceeding decades.

On reflection though it makes sense, not just because of the historical events unfolding in Egypt, but because of the Victorian view of death and the mystical. Between Darwin's shocking new theories about evolution on the one hand and a growing interest in Psychical research on the other - never mind the official introduction of crematorium's in the middle of the 1880's it's hardly surprising that Mummies were so appealing, or that so many of these stories have a curse narrative.

There's also an interesting light thrown on contemporary views of colonialism. The racial stereotyping of native characters might be uncomfortable, but the Western traveller in Egypt doesn't appear in a particularly flattering light either and there's much implied criticism.

Meanwhile for all out bonkers, throw everything at it and see what sticks, fun there's the genius that is 'The Story of Baelbrow' by Kate and Hesketh Prichard. I'm including spoilers here because I can't resist sharing this. There is a remote and ancient country house, built on the sight of an ancient burial mound (of course) and (of course) it has a ghost. The ghost seems to have been getting a bit frisky, the ladies have been disturbed, and eventually a housemaid is found dead - but how. So (of course) Flaxman Low, detective and psychic (what else), is called in. He forms certain deductions and on a dark and stormy night (naturally) things come to a head when it turns out that (look away now if you don't want to know) the ghost was in fact not just a ghost, but also a vampire, and it's possessed the body of a Mummy. It is dispatched with extreme prejudice. I am so glad Andrew Smith unearthed this one.

Grant Allen's 'My New Year's Eve Among the Mummies' was another treat. I've thoroughly enjoyed everything I've read by Allen, and this one is delightfully tongue in cheek with a bit of a chill at the end. 'A Night With King Pharaoh' by Baron Schlippenback is the one that's particularly interesting for its unflattering portrayal of everyone, but basically it's a really strong collection with each story offering something interesting.

It's also, and most importantly, fun to read. I prefer tales of the supernatural that still let me sleep at night, these do, but they're also just creepy enough to satisfy the craving for something a little bit spooky that comes with the season. Highly recommended.

Kitchen Sunday

After what seems like ages of feeling under the weather I'm finally myself again, though the appearance of Christmas in all the shops whilst I was lying low and taking antibiotics for a week is a bit disconcerting. Where has the time gone? How on earth is it half way through October? And isn't it getting dark early now!

It is however undoubtedly mid October, I've seen the schedule for wine related events at work for the next few months so it's clear there's no escaping Christmas, and the dark nights are another hint to get organised. To that end I've spent my day going through cupboards, cooking, and generally tidying.

I'm trying to be more restrained on the preserving front this year (I might have overdone it the last couple of years) but it's quince season and quince jelly is R's favourite so not making it would be just wrong - that and I love making jelly. With the quince and star anise (from Diana Henry's brilliant  'Salt, Sugar, Smoke') I particularly like the way a pale pink cloudy liquid turns into a crystal clear jelly with a colour somewhere between russet and copper.

I had left over quinces so I roast them with a vanilla pod, myrtle, sugar, lemon juice, and orange blossom water. I'm not overly convinced by the texture of quinces so knowing what to do with left over ones is always a bit of a quandary. I found lots of packets of ground almonds though and I think I'll like them together in a cake. The syrup tasted lovely so I've earmarked that for a semolina cake.

There was also bread baking, the first stages of making a rye sourdough starter, and a stew. It's been a while since I really spent a day pottering in the kitchen, I'd been missing it and it feels good to have made the effort. It'll be Christmas cakes and puddings next, which will just possibly reconcile me to the passing of the year, it'll certainly get me back in the cooking habit.

Quinces - hopefully on their way to being delicious...

Why Art History Matters.

It seems the last exam board offering Art History as an A level is dropping it, which might not seem to be a big deal to many people, especially with so many other things going on in the world right now, but I think it's worth talking about.

My degree is in History of Art so I have opinions about this, starting with the way I've seen the subject characterised over the last few days; too soft, too dry, too elitist - all of which I take issue with. My state school didn't offer Art History as an A level, though I wish it had, but it did form a significant part of the Art A level. This turned out to be a very good thing for me, without that portion of the course I wouldn't have got the result I did, and couldn't have gone to the university I wanted.

I didn't do this because it looked like an easier option, but because it was the more interesting one. To understand what you're looking at when you look at a picture it really helps if you have a decent grasp of the historical context it sits within. That means a decent working knowledge of the politics of the time, it's philosophies, the politics of artists and patrons, and religious upheavals. You can't help but become familiar with Greek and Roman mythology, plenty of the bible, and quite a bit of the apocrypha as well. A passing knowledge of contemporary books, poetry, and drama also helps, as does some understanding of scientific thinking. There is iconography to be decoded, maths and colour theories to be understood, and always the people who created the art, and paid for its creation, to be thought of. It's many things, but not soft.

In fact what it offers is a good all round education in the arts, encourages excellent academic discipline, useful transferable skills, the pleasure to be found in looking at really beautiful things, and a better understanding of who we are and where we come from. The history of art is the history of human creativity. What the canon celebrates may well be (is) flawed, but dig about a bit - we're all there somewhere.

What really bothers me however is the perception that it's an elitist subject, the preserve of posh white people. My school was lucky in that we had an enthusiastic, enlightened, and open minded teacher who shared his love of the subject with us and made it accessible. Making us say why we liked or didn't like the images we looked at in each lesson was arguably one of the most useful thing I learnt to do at school.

The difference a dedicated A level would have made comes down to awareness, and that can improve accessibility too. We choose the subjects that will shape the course of our education at a ridiculously young age, encouraged down whatever path seems likely to yield the best exam results, and with (at least in my experience) very little idea of what else might be out there. Studying a subject that encourages the exploration of so many other disciplines can only be helpful. It's also a chance to look, to really look, at our shared cultural history.

It's also worth thinking about just how much art we own as a nation, much of it free to view, in galleries up and down the country. It's there for all of us, or at least it is until public funding cuts go to deep, and a lot of it is there thanks to Victorian ideas of self improvement. It's quite a legacy, and again makes me question why we encourage this idea of elitism.

History of Art. It might always have been a fairly marginal A level in terms of the number of schools offering it, or students taking it. Not being able to sit it is no bar to taking a degree in the subject, and yet I can't help but feel we're all a little poorer for this decision. 

1947 Book Club

I had reading plans for this week but they've been stymied by a nasty chest infection which totally wiped me out, and destroyed my ability to concentrate on anything very much. I can only imagine how much fun I've been to be around.

It's vexing not to have read something specially (Chatterton Square had been waiting for this, but there's no chance I'll get to it in time now) but I can at least link back to books previously read.

First up is Dorothy B. Hughes' In A Lonely Place which is a fantastically atmospheric bit of noir by a mistress of the art . It seems I was full of a bug and a total misery the night I wrote about that too. Never mind, the book is brilliant.

Second is T. H. White's Mistress Masham's Repose which was unexpectedly joyful, Kate Macdonald has written an excellent piece about it for the 1947 club. The copy I read has gone back to its owner and now I'm thinking I need to get my own, and also read more White.

And last for tonight the book of my favourite film, Compton Mackenzie's Whisky Galore. It's a wonderful book, funny and affectionate - a classic for a reason, and one that I can't recommend highly enough.

National Poetry Day

In my little corner of the Internet it's all about National Poetry day today (and my youngest sisters birthday, Happy Birthday, Sophie) so inbetween naps and antibiotics that what I've been thinking about. (I've got a bitch of a chest infection which won't shift, it's been almost a month of feeling like death warmed up. I should have gone to the doctors earlier which is making me feel like an idiot for trying to tough it out and getting so run down in the process.)

I know we occasionally had poetry inflicted upon us at primary school, and remember encountering it in an altogether more positive way at junior high level. At about the same time I took to writing (really awful) verse as I assume many adolescent's still do. It wasn't until the first term of A level English when we studied Keats that I really began to understand the pleasure to be had from reading poetry though, or to get an inkling of the power that can be stored in a few well chosen words.

It's a pleasure that lasts.

I'm sharing Jen Hadfield's The Moult' to celebrate the day, it, and more can be found Here

The Moult

Stay out of the sun:
we can all see you. Stop picking fights
above your weight. We've this high

golden bowl of heather and moss
company of whaups and cries and
mutters in the wind; the long

draught of islands

and blinding sea.

Shelter in the hoodoos and pluck
your fur - fine smelt caught on heather
and shining reeds -

ruing it as I do, this flying
gleaming floss snatched back
and spent by the wind.

Freeze when the sunlight hits you

you're not invisible. Scratch off

your dreamcoat of silver money.
Rest downwind in the sun. Run
double-jointed when the valley dims.

Jen Hadfield
from Byssus (Picador, 2014)

Norman Ackroyd

I fell in love with Norman Ackroyd's work a couple of years ago when I first saw his 'A Shetland Notebook' (a collection of sketches done from the deck of a boat, they're basically rough impressions and notes to be worked up later - and utterly magical). Since then I've spent quite a bit of time eyeing up his aquatints online in a deeply covetous manner.

There is a gallery in Thirsk (Zillah Bell) which holds an extensive collection of Ackroyd prints and was on our route between Rievaulx abbey and Harrogate so we stopped to have a look - and I bought one. Which was extravagant, but after 2 years thinking about it isn't something I'm going to regret.

The extravagance is relative, to my eye this is a thing of beauty which will be a joy forever, I had the money for it, and honestly I can't think of a better way to spend it than on art. Prints are a comparitivley affordable way of collecting, and be they woodcuts, Lino cuts, screen prints, aquatints, engravings, lithographs, (the list goes on) there's a lot to love.

Really though, this post is just about sharing something I'm beyond delighted with.

Before framing

The magic moment, back from the framers - you already know what it looks like but now you get to unwrap it, know it's all yours, decide where to hang it, and generally enjoy yourself. Love this bit.

And framed, it's a terrible photo. Sorry! 

Incidentally, the title is 'Scarborough', somewhere I've never been, but I do love the mood of this image. 

A Little Local Murder - Robert Barnard

This was the second Barnad I read, and it's the other one that Pan have recently re issued. Again I'm not entirely sure about the cover, it's very pretty and it sums up the idyllic country village image that the residents of Twytching would surely relish... But for a book written in 1976 it just doesn't seem to have the right tone. It doesn't hint at the edge to Barnard's humour either.

The village of Twytching is on tenterhooks with the news that the local radio station us Hong to make a programme about them to be broadcast with their twinned town in America. Mrs Deborah Withens (who I assume references Mary Whitehouse) who is accustomed to ruling the place with a rod of iron assumes she'll get to choose who appears in the show, and it seems everybody wants to appear on the show.

Not all is as idyllic as it seems though, there have been nasty anonymous letters doing the rounds, people are frightened, and when the first villager chosen turns up dead it all begins to get very nasty indeed.

It's a frequently funny book, but darker than 'The Case of the Missing Brontë'. There's something disconcertingly real about the murder and the solution to it which is at odds with the humour. The result is a very effective but slightly uncomfortable tension running through the book which makes it hard to pin down.

On the whole I preferred 'The Case of the Misssing Brontë', which seemed less complicated, but the two books together make for a good introduction to Barnard. They're sufficiently different to make it clear that he does more than one thing, and to indicate which thing the reader might want to pursue in his writing. For me it'll be the more obviously funny books - but that's a choice based on personal preference rather than quality considerations.

Knitting...

I spent the hottest days of September (when it was a steamy 30 degrees, what a time to get a cold) contracting a bout of bronchitis which has left me well enough for work but pretty much wiped out for anything else. It's certainly made concentrating on reading harder than I'd like, so after a fair amount of falling asleep over books I have up and got the knitting needles out instead.

I want a neck warmer, something smaller than a cowl, which won't get in the way of the stock of a shotgun when I go shooting, but will be warm. Something in Fair Isle should fit the bill in terms of warmth, but getting the sizing right - snug enough not to get in the way, loose enough not to be distracting, and not to deep, is proving a challenge. (One that's watching would probably solve, but where's the fun in that?).

My first attempt was a bit to snug for me so I've given it to a friend as a birthday present (someone who doesn't wear their hair in a bun so has a bit more wriggle room putting it on). I took cake  and stones too so whatever they thought about the knitwear there was something to be wholeheartedly pleased with!

I do like the pattern though, and think one more repeat (horizontally) will have it just about right. We'll see.