Our Xmas dinner

We did a sort of desert islands choice this year - with each person not needing to take the Bible if they so wished. 

Sheila

Dictionary with a magnifying glass.

Opera 101: A Complete Guide to Learning and Loving Opera by Fred Plotkin, Placido Domingo.

Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas with the Richard Burton recording.

Luxury: sun cream and a self-fluffing towel.

Chris

Tinker, Taylor, Soldier Spy by John Le Carré

Swiss Family Robinson, unabridged, by Johann Rudolf Wyss

Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust

Instead of the Bible – The Nations Favourite Poems

Luxury: bed

Jo

The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway

Half a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by Tobias Smollett
The Prophet - Kalil Gibran

Luxury: never-ending diary and supply of pencils.

Donna

First edition Geographers’ A-Z Atlas of London and Suburbs with House Numbers, produced under the direction of Phyllis Pearsall.

The Good Soldier, by Ford Maddox Ford

Maus by Arte Spiegleman

Luxury: bath with continual running hot water and equally self-fluffing towels as Sheila.

Caroline

Smile for the Camera by James Gray

My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell

The Balkan Trilogy by Olivia Manning

Luxury: iPad to view photos and compile crossword puzzles.

Bridget

To Kill and Mocking Bird by Harper Lee

Fairy Books Collection of Andrew Lang

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Luxury: hot shower and the another self-fluffing towel

Marion

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

A book about code breaking

The Education of Hyman Kaplan by Leo Rosten

The largest possible book about plant identification/a global compendium of flora and fauna

Luxury: pair of tweezers.

Also mentioned 

Cider with Rosie - Laurie Lee

Cider with Rosie is a memoir of a childhood. We are taken on a journey from the time he and his family move to Slad, an isolated Cotswold village. We are introduced to his chaotic but loving family life, learn of the shock of school, his adventures with the opposite sex and his part in mischievous acts. He tells of growing up without a father, his relationships with his mother, sisters and friends, as he moves toward manhood. We hear of his sexual awakening with Rosie, this loss of innocence and naivety and what it was like when he finally lost the characteristics that made him the sweet boy he introduces at the start.

  In the first chapter Lee describes a three year old's  perception and misconceptions: small in relation to objects around him, for example when he got lost in the grass, on the family's arrival at their new home, "I had never been so close to grass before. It towered above me and all around me, each blade tattooed with tiger-skins of sunlight". His sense of adventure is communicated through the use of metaphors and similes. He describes things in a very simple, natural way that makes you feel you are there in his world. He uses wonderful descriptive detail and our discussion drew similarities with Dylan Thomas and Thomas Hardy.

  Whilst surrounded by a loving family, he tells of the harshness of ceasing to be the youngest child. "I grew a little tougher, a little colder, and turned my attention more to the outside world, which was now emerging visibly through the mist". Lee says he grew a little tougher, as a result of not been allowed to sleep in his mother's bed and he thought this was the end of the world. But he was growing up and soon realised that there are other things in life for him to discover: school, friends, girls and the wonderful local characters and all their history. We particularly loved the Grannies and their relationship despite never talking to each other, how different they were and how they were able to teach the boys so much about the older generation.

  We speculated if Lee's encounter with Rosie was a key theme in his childhood as he used this memory as the title. Laurie Lee has written about the coming of age of the nation as well as the boy.  The book gives a detailed account of a childhood that seemed filled full with fun, adventure and typical childhood mischief. Yet it is also about loss: loss of traditions, of innocence, of his father and the loss those who never returned from the war.

  This charming, autobiographical novel, peopled with characters we all liked drew pictures of a rural  world and upbringing, whilst long gone had elements that we recognised from our own childhoods.

An October walk in Slad

This was billed as a flat 4 mile walk.  Here are some photos taken by Donna (her copyright). Two people didn't come and two gave up and went and sat in the pub in Sheepscombe and had a laugh. It turned out to be a warm sunny day with some wind however, by 5.30 there was driving rain to drive home through.

The White Woman on a Green Bicycle - Monique Roffey

George and Sabine Harwood arrive in Trinidad in 1956 intending to stay for two years. They stay for fifty and raise their family there. Although Sabine dislikes it intensely, her husband is very much at home and this is the cause of considerable unhappiness in their marriage. Sabine makes quite an impression in the early years. A beautiful woman of French descent she makes a striking picture riding around on her green bicycle. But life on the island wears her down and she becomes argumentative and disagreeable. The story covers their life on the island, their relationship with their children and each other, and Sabine’s obsession with Eric Williams, a local politician to whom she writes hundreds of letters, all unsent, as a way of unburdening her frustrations and unhappiness. The novel starts with their later years when George is a journalist for the Trinidad Guardian writing all the upbeat, good news stories the younger journalists won’t touch. The corruption in Trinidad, where there is no justice or opportunity for the native population, is illustrated in Talbot’s vicious beating by the police at the beginning. The early chapters cover George and Sabine’s strained, tortured relationship, George’s discovery of Sabine’s letters to Williams and his unsuccessful attempt to help Talbot, the son of their maid. George’s humiliation at the hands of the police is followed by his illness and his death and Sabine’s shooting of Bobby Comacho.

   Then the story goes back to their early life, its unhappiness and complications. Sabine hates Trinidad: George loves it and becomes a wealthy landowner and minor celebrity. After the attack on his house and the devastating attack on his dogs, George agrees to leave but they miss the boat and are fated to stay. The description of the island and the complex family relationships and the language draw the reader in to the story. Musical Venus is wonderful. The story covers so many aspects of life too:race, relationships, families, expat communities, politics and religion. There is much love and hate in the book. Bobby Comacho is vile. He stands for the state of things that were supposedly going to get better post-colonialism. For Sabine he epitomised all that had gone wrong with Trinidad. Her crime is shocking but understandable. Overall a good read.

Rites of Passage - William Golding

Edmund Talbot, a rather pompous aristrocrat, narrates the story on board a British warship. He is off to be Govenor of New South Wales and is writing in a journal given to him by his godfather who, we suspect, has sent him off to the other side of the world to get rid of him. The book has a familiar Golding theme: man’s reversion to savagery when he is isolated from his usual society and its rules. Here they are out at sea: in more ways than one. Another theme running through the story is class division and the assumption of higher status which is not deserved. Talbot is quite an enigma. Initially he feels above the Reverend Colley whom he dislikes and finds amusing but then he becomes a mediator between Colley and the Captain but this is through vanity. Talbot is a gossip and unlikeable. The story starts off in a superficial, quite comic way. Colley is initially absurd, especially his behaviour in the drunken incident but then the action darkens when he dies of shame and we realise why. The characters are generally an unpleasant lot. Golding’s early C19^th  prose is convincing. The reader gets a completely different picture of Colley from his journal which has touching elements and reveals the story as it goes on. An interesting read: in small doses for some!

She Landed by Moonlight, by Carole Seymour-Jones

 

This is the story of Pearl (Marie / Pauline) Witherington who was a British agent working with the French Resistance during the Second World War. She was parachuted into Occupied France on 22^nd September 1943, and lived by her wits till she returned to London at the end of the war on 20^th October 1945.

Pearl grew up in Paris, and had not only an innate understanding of the French people and language, but also through having to cope with very dysfunctional parents had learnt valuable survival skills which prepared her for her role as a secret agent.  She had also fallen in love with her neighbour, Henri Cornioley, and was motivated to return to France under any pretext to fight beside him against the Occupation.

As it turned out Pearl did more that – she was made circuit commander of one of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) networks with more than 500 maquisards (Resistance fighters) under her command. The appointment of a ‘foreigner’ and a woman raised a lot of eye-brows amongst the locals, but Pearl was tall, pretty and got things done. Henri became her lieutenant, though he almost uncovered the whole operation by foolishly blowing their cover when a German patrol, keen to arrest Pearl, appeared at the chateau they were using for their operations. Henri fired a shot hoping to find out if the approaching men were Germans or maquisards! Despite his shortcomings, Pearl did marry her childhood sweetheart and they were able to bring up their daughter, Claire, in more peaceful circumstances.

According to the details of this account of Pearl’s war efforts there is no question that her work was heroic and courageous, as she succeeded in baffling the enemy and commanding a divided group of maquisards, in particular in the support of the D-Day invasion. As recognition, Pearl was awarded a civil MBE, as opposed a Military Cross, which she refused to accept. She quite rightly claimed that there was nothing civil about what she did: ‘I was personally responsible for the training and organisation of 3000 men for sabotage and guerrilla warfare.’ She continued to dispute the discrimination against women at the time not to be recognised for military achievements, and was awarded a CBE in 2004. Finally, her proudest moment was to be presented with her parachute wings, by which time she was living in a retirement home, reminiscing her brave maquisards and the battles of 1944.

Despite the beautifully romantic title of this book, the actual story is rather drawn out and verging on the tedious in some parts. It is constantly morphing from a thrilling narrative to an indiscriminate detailed historical account, bombarding the reader with information that is often superfluous to the main story. An excellent eye-opener to the lives, events and day-to-day concerns of those living through the Occupation, but it could have been half the length and twice as gripping.

Under Milkwood - Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas' most famous work. We listened to Richard Burton read on a rather fuzzy CD player but the spirit of the play was not lost and we all enjoyed it, many of us following the text. The play is as relevant now as it was when first written. Its story is at times sad and funny and sometimes even mundane.
  My copy for some reason refers the it as a fairy tale of gnomes - we didn't get that. Though the Welsh are often small - they aren't that small. It also printed the name of the place with one G instead of the two in the manuscript. Those who had Kindles found other discrepancies as the words were sometimes changed for some sort of puritanical reason - not sure why editors think that they can change words written by an author to pander to the sensibilities of some readers. We did discuss the fact that Thomas in so short a book was able to paint such a wonderful picture of life compared to some modern authors who need to write hundreds of additional unnecessary pages - we have mentioned this many times.
  The play tells the story of one village, Llareggub. We enter into the dreams of the inhabitants and rise with them as dawn breaks. We learn of their foibles, their desires and their secrets. As the day passes the villagers go about their business, the postman opens letters, sweets are sold, a husband reads pretends he is reading about the saints when in fact he is reading how to poison his nagging wife. There is unrequited love, there is bigamy - though very amicable - there is laughter and fun in a long marriage and there is the sorrow of lost loves.
  As day ends and nightfall approaches so the village returns to its bed and dreams.
  The format of the play is particular to Thomas. Instead of one narrator he uses a number who interject and tell us who is speaking so for example
Sinbad
Oh, Mr Waldo
First Voice
sighs Sinbad Sailors

which reminds us that this was a radio play though now played many times on stage as I first saw it but in fact found it difficult to follow.

Dylan Thomas was foremost a poet and there are a number of poems in the play which I actually found less convincing while the play itself is so beautifully written that it seems like one long poem - can you make sense of that! His rolled together words, his use of nouns and adjectives as verbs, his metaphors and similes are an English teacher's gift. They are much easier to understand than Ulysses. What about these:
bread-pudding bed
unmelting ice maiden daughter veiled for ever from the hungry hug of his eyes
voice of the vacuum cleaner

we read and we know exactly what he means - that is a rare talent indeed.

Mukiwa - A White boy in Africa

MUKIWA by Peter Godwin

I admit to being a bit concerned about my choice of this book.  I am an old Rhodesian, a “when we” as we get called in South Africa for our predilection to reminisce at great length about the wonderful country we used to live in, a country that no longer exists, and indeed has not even been heard of by many young people.  It is all history now, and it seems odd to be relegated to history.  This book is the story of a man, and a nation, recounting their respective transitions from innocent childhood to terrifying adult knowledge for the man, from colonial administration to black governance for the country.

It is in three sections.  The first and the longest is the warm and funny story of his childhood in the Eastern Highlands of Rhodesia, his father an engineer on a big estate, and his mother the General Medical Officer for the Melsetter area.  He is surrounded by kindly black servants, and his parents are busy, so a lot of his time is therefore spent with his nanny Violet, and he learns to speak fluent Shona.  His parents are relatively liberal, and, what stands out for me, is that through them he learns the importance of respect for everyone regardless of the colour of their skin.   This section is full of wonderful tales, funny, sad, heartbreaking:  his membership with Violet of the Apostolics with their red and white “gammonts”; the tale of Mr Arrowhead.  His mother takes him with her when she goes out on call, so he learns about death at a very young age, starting with the murder of Oom Piet Oberholzer by the Crocodile gang, and he also attends post-mortems.   One review I read compares this first part with My Family and Other Animals, which recreates childhood in a similarly evocative fashion.

He takes us through the pains of growing up.  He has to go away to school, away from his beloved Silverstream, and eventually for secondary school to Salisbury to attend St George’s College (incidentally the same school that all the male members of my own family attended).

The second part of the book describes his years of national service in the BSAP.   He is participating in a brutal civil war he has little belief in, against people for whom he holds a certain sympathy.  Like many he feels that majority rule should come sooner rather than later, and he sees his role as holding the place together until this happens. He has to deal with fighting between the Matabele and the Shona, which results in many more Africans being killed than whites. Anger, fear and terrible atrocities take their toll.  What strikes me most forcibly about this period of his life is how young he is, just 18 or 19, and yet he seems to be an old head on young shoulders.

He then goes to Cambridge where he studies law, and returns to Rhodesia just before it becomes Zimbabwe, and starts practicing in Salisbury.  He eventually becomes a journalist, and the final part of the book deals with his undercover excursions into territories held by the notorious North Korean trained Fifth Brigade.    His activities result in his being declared an enemy of the state, but he is able to escape before he is arrested.  Black majority rule is finally in place, but with only fragile hopes for a better future.

It is a tragic, painfully honest and heart-wrenching memoir, rather than an autobiography. He admits to the foibles of memory, and changes names, or creates composite characters to protect his contacts.  What I like best about it is that it is completely non-judgmental, he never indulges in hindsight to judge past events.