Three Country Wives

Using a narrow focus can sometimes reveal more than a longer, wider view; thus it is with Rural Hours. Taking a look at a short period in the lives of three well-known authors, each of whom has already been exhaustively examined by others, Harriet Baker has brought out a moment in each life, that transformed the person.

In every case, it was a move to the country. Virginia Woolf was a decade older than the other two women in this book: Sylvia Townsend Warner and Rosamund Lehmann, but she knew, if not intimately, both of them.

In 1914, after a protracted illness during which time she wrote nothing, Virginia and Leonard moved to a house in Sussex, and after a short temporary stay, bought Asheham. Leonard still spent most of the time in London, but Virginia was convalescent and he monitored her daily life, by the constant exchange of notes and letters (mostly still extant). Ms Baker concentrates on a single volume of writing, neither a diary nor a notebook – a small bound book of plain pages upon which, on a more or less daily basis, Virginia has written an observation. There is no “I, me, mine” in this writing, merely “walked the Downs” and lists of flowers, butterflies and occasionally people seen on her wanderings, she was especially interested in the German prisoners of war that were working in the fields, and some of the notes show “the harvest brought in”, or exchanges with the farmer’s wife and the scarcity of eggs, flour and on the obverse of some of the pages are lists of the prices of some staple foods – eggs, bread and milk.

This was the first writing that Virginia had done for two years. The Asheham notebook does not feature in the collected works, not is it treated like her diaries, and it is quite different from any of them. Observational, accurate but impersonal.

The next section deals with Sylvia, her move from an awkward situation in London to Dorset, and her sudden exhilarating love affair with another woman. In the spirit of socialism that she endorsed, Sylvia bought a modest workman’s cottage, without running water or electricity and lived in a frugal, self sustaining life, not using her wealth to improve the cottage, but enjoying its eccentricities and the exigencies of living in such a basic manner.

The final section is Rosamund Lehmann’s move to Berkshire. She was also avoiding a difficult marriage, and moved with her son to a small cottage. Her brother, John, worked at the Hogarth Press with the Woolfs, hence the connection with Virginia. It covers the years and heartache of her affair with Cecil Day Lewis, her hopeless anticipation that it would be resolved in his leaving his family to marry her, and her despair when he did just that, but married another woman.

In an epilogue, Harriet Baker brings everything together with the Woolfs’ life at Rodmell and the other two writers’ reaction to Virginia’s sudden death.

This is not about their writings, though all three were, indeed, published writers. It is more about how the countryside changed their perceptions, of themselves and of their surroundings – as if time had slowed down and a new awakening made them notice the patterns and renewal of nature, and thereby renewed in them the spirit to live again.

And another wordsmith

Also widely reviewed, Burma Sahib is a novel about the early and formative life of the man who became George Orwell. Eric Blair is sent, through parental pressure, to Burma to learn to be a policeman. As a rookie, he is everything that he should not be, and is passed in his probationary period from one outpost to another. Even once he has moved up a notch, to full service as a police officer, his life is not without it failures. Eventually, invalided home. he finds his true metier – thank goodness!

Paul Theroux has fleshed out this novel from Orwell’s own account and other contemporary references, many of them uncomplimentary. It is a marvellous insight into a misfitted life. Funny, painful and blisteringly frank about Blair’s contempt for his superiors, for colonialism and the Raj in particular.

On unofficial business

This was passed on to me on its way to the charity shop and I will admit to being somewhat undetermined about its content. Partly because, I think, I knew people who really had been part of the SOE, whose work I respected and whose writings I have read, and indeed, re-read frequently.

Pam Jenoff makes no secret of the fact that this is fiction, that she has taken liberties with the stories of the undercover agents who were sent out to France in advance of the invasion of Europe towards the end of the Second World War. In The Lost Girls of Paris we are arrested in the first instance by a discovery of a suitcase and a bundle of photographs that end up in the hands of a stranger. Grace Healey, the one with the photos, is intrigued and does her level best to find the owner and return the photos and this leads to a long and involved quest.

Between the chapters covering her searches, we meet the young women in the photos who were recruited into the SOE and sent to France. As the title suggests, some of them never returned.

All this is true, not these stories, but ones very like this. My difficulty with this novel is that is contains a treachery so vile, so depraved and so violent that is becomes a travesty which besmirches the reputation of the SOE, and other branches of the War Department.

I have the privilege of knowing several people in the SOE, some of them on active service and some in the secret offices in Baker Street. This novel does them no favours. If you really want to know about the SOE and the various people involved you would be much better reading their books.

Which is not to say that there are not many novels by other authors whose characters are part of the SOE clandestine operation, just I would suggest, not The Lost Girls of Paris.

Lent is spent

These are the books that I read during Lent. The book by Rowan Williams, quondam Archbishop of Canterbury, is a meditation and explanation of the ways in which the Eastern Christian philosophy differs from what one might loosely call, the Roman Catholic. Going right back to the Desert Fathers, The Very Reverend Williams looks at the reasons why the monastic discipline got going in the early Christian life; and it was about the things that stand in the way of our relationship with God, our passions. In shorthand – The Seven Deadly Sins (of which there are actually eight but seven is a more significant number). The book was the chosen Lent book for Southwark Cathedral, London and is as relevant to a Christian today, as it was to those men and women who retreated to the desert to find God. Though the book does not recommend the retreat from the world, but for us to embrace it fortified, with the self-knowledge that this short series of expositions offer.

The House by the Thames was given to me because a friend, the new Dean of Southwark Cathedral, now lives in one of the houses that this book is about. If you have ever travelled down the Thames from Westminster Bridge in a guided tourist boat – and it is a journey that I strongly recommend – you will be fed a number of urban myths as you pass various sites. One of them is that Sir Christopher Wren lived in one of the houses is this little terrace. He may, quite possibly, have lived on this site, in just the same way as Charles Dickens may have once lived in Tavistock Square, the actually building now long demolished, but which does not stop there being a Blue Plaque on the said building. The opposite is true of this little row of houses: the Council have put up a notice saying “this is not where Christopher Wren lived”, but it doesn’t stop the gawpers. Disconcerting if you look up from writing your sermon to see a number of tourists peering in at you.

The Antony Beevor book, Paris after the Liberation is an eye-opener. Obviously, a great deal of it is about General de Gaulle. Written in collaboration with Artemis Cooper, they had access to the notebooks and diaries of Duff Cooper who was the British Ambassador in Paris at the time, and someone who stayed for pretty much the whole of the Second World War, and saw first hand the machinations of the un-elected government after the fall of the Vichy regime; there are acres of archives on various aspects of the post war period, but this book concentrates simply on the city and its environs; the factions and people who manipulated the story for their own ends and those that manipulated the situation for the good of France. People and historians alike differ strongly in their views of this protracted post-war period. It is well known that many collaborators slipped through the net and took positions in the de Gaulle government, expediency meant that this was a necessary compromise and was not restricted to France.

Edgelands in one of those books, which I frequently pick up simply because it follows a path that has memories for me, now that I am not wandering around myself. Sasha Squire is the wife of the Member of Parliament for part of that area, and also grew up on that coast; she walks the west coast path, writing lucidly and poetically about the places, features, colours and scents that the path, sometimes vertiginously, follows around Devon and Cornwall. There are lots of books likes this, I recommend Robert MacFarlane and Raynor Winn (authors that I have written about in this blog). As an aide memoire of earlier times, they are a wonderful resource; and as an encouragement to get out there and experience the British coast in all its variety for yourself, they are hard to beat,

Between the unethical and the legal

I was given this as a birthday present. My goodness, it is some read! I was rather amused to discover that David Barclay has in some fanciful way (though the family might not agree) managed to persuade himself that his family belonged to the Scottish family, the ones who founded the famous bank – in your dreams?

This is the story of the Barclay twins, David and Freddie, who rose from poverty to extreme wealth in a matter of four decades. How they did it, and why they did it has had to be deduced by the author, because none of the family would cooperate, and nor would many of their closest associates and friends. Nevertheless, Jane Martinson ploughed on through whatever opaque documentation exists in the public domain – and it is not the whole story by any means.

The stress throughout is that the twins did nothing illegal, but they managed to accrue enormous wealth with a combination of guile, sharp practice and asset stripping which made them a fortune, balanced against unrestricted loans, and the money that they made then vanished into offshore accounts the complexity of which made accounting for each penny impossible, with shell companies, trusts and transfers adding to the financial fog.

At the height of their success they owned The Ritz Hotel Piccadilly, The Telegraph, a Channel Island so small that it is invisible on a map, and a huge portfolio of property in Central London. Yet, when it all crashed to the ground – family feuding and divorce contributing largely to the failure, but made worse by the background of the global banking crash, Frederick could maintain that he had not got the wherewithal to pay his divorce settlement, his wife found herself, homeless and with a bank overdraft.

From a place on The Times Rich List to penury, David died before the true extent of their indebtedness was revealed and Frederick, owing to an earlier settlement when they were in their fifties, found himself at the mercy of his nephews.

Quite a saga – a tax free lifestyle that ended up costing the ordinary taxpayer millions.

Plus ça change

Although I read Hotel Moscow a few weeks ago, I could not think quite what to say about it. Talia Garner has written several books about the Jewish Diaspora, this is one of them. In this novel, Brooke, an American daughter of Holocaust survivors, suffers from second generation survivor trauma (a real issue even to the third generation, by the way). In spite of her background, she goes to Russia after the fall of Communism when Yeltsin opened the gates to Russian capitalism. Brooke is visiting a group of women factory workers, and some of the female organisers who are setting up a symposium. With her background in business, Brooke feels she could make a difference.

Meanwhile, as it is Lent, I have been listening to The Red Hotel by Alan Philips on Audible [my go-to place when I am sewing or knitting] this takes us back to a different hotel, The Metropole. During the Second World War, before, and especially after Germany attacked Russia, international journalists flocked to Moscow to see what was happening. Stalin ordered that they should all be housed in the same hotel, given access only to a very limited view of “The Front”, that is: nothing at all where it was really happening and at staged military camps that concealed the actuality (no embedded journalists in those more secretive, not to say paranoiac times). The Red Hotel in question was full of people who required translators, Alan Philips set out to tell a different story, but found himself drawn to tell the various stories of these exceptionally brave women. One false move and you might find yourself in the other red hotel, the Lubyanka.

And then Alexei Navalny suffered a “sudden death syndrome” and all of the things I might have said about these two books, one a novel and the other non-fiction, made me want to share with you how little has changed in all those nearly eighty years. Both these books bring to life something which may seem very shocking, but a bit remote.

Another important book that this brings to mind is the equally appalling story of the other lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky who was beaten to death, also by Putin’s henchmen for daring to challenge the official narrative. The book is called Red Notice (sub title How I became Enemy No 1) by Bill Browder which I posted on under the title Something Rotten on 21st September, 2017. Apart from the obvious, Bill has been on the radio recently anyway, it also explains something that occurs in Hotel Moscow. The vouchers that were given to all the workers in all the factories, offices and other outlets on the fall of communism, and why, when they were an insurance for the future, nearly everyone had to sell them.

These books are both about women. They are also substantially about tyranny, corruption, deceit and danger AND nothing much has changed.

Oh my darling Clementine

Probably not the best title, but Rory Clements does write captivating books and invites readers to blog about his novels. It is now Lent, so I am eschewing fiction, but with Munich Wolf I have adopted the Mastermind approach – as Clive Myrie says (and other presenters before him) “I have started, so I will finish”. I had just a couple more chapters to end the book.

And what a book. Rory Clements has, I hope, begun a new series. I think his great advantage is that his previous series do not go on too long before he starts something fresh. His focus in now on Munich at the very beginning of the Nazi party, in the early 1930s. Hitler has failed at one putsch, but that has not stopped the momentum of the rise to power, but at the start of Munich Wolf he is not yet in power, in fact there is an internal struggle between various factions – for example the Brownshirts are out.

The shocking murder of a young woman begins an investigation by Sebastian Wolf, selected from on high especially for this sensitive task. But how do you solve a murder when the corruption “from on high” will stop at nothing to prevent you from finding the truth?

Sebastian is offered an assistant, who appears to be an absolute worm of a man. How is that going to play out?

Just an add on: it is well worth looking up the background history of some of the actual characters in the narrative, those who existed in reality: Putzi Hanfstaengl & Rudolf von Sebbotendorf would be a good place to start, then there is Anton Drexler and all those Hs & Gs – Hitler, Himmler, Herman Göring, Joseph Goebbels

This is just the start of what might turn out to be marvellously nuanced partnership, I do hope so.

Pity Ukraine

I read this debut novel when it was first published. At the time, 2009, the world was settling down to the reunification of Germany and the breakup (often violently) of the Soviet Union. But, apart from being persuaded to give up their nuclear arsenal, Ukraine was hardly on anyone’s radar. (Bar one man, the President, who was just finding his feet under the top desk in Russia).

Under This Unbroken Sky is a family history which starts with an exodus. A Ukrainian family make their way to Canada under a deal which should have meant security and land, providing they clear and farm a certain amount of land within a certain time. Easy, you might think, except this was native forest. Once cleared the land was fertile, but the task ahead was monumental.

Shandi Mitchell has chosen a singularly unlucky family, and when the book opens the father is newly released from prison, where he has spent a year and his wife and family are perched on land that on paper belongs to his sister. He is not eligible for a parcel of land – but the arrangement is that he will buy it back as soon as he can. What could go wrong?

In this poignant narrative of family, loyalty, betrayal and ill-luck, the courage shines through. The writing is clear and unadorned, and nature in all her glory and finery and danger is ever present. Coyotes will take your livestock, and fire will take your harvest but nature also provides – wood for building, fruit and cover and the sky is huge above the opened ground. Humans are more fragile and devious though.

To be or not to be

It does not take long to realise that Enter Ghost is about a great deal more than a production of Hamlet. Even though the title rather suggests that it might be.

A British woman arrives in Haifa to stay with her sister. They are of mixed backgrounds and much of the family history only comes down to them through various aunts and uncles and snatches of conversations that only make sense in retrospect.

Sonia Nasir, an actress is taking time out while she recovers from a disastrous love affair. After decades away from Palestine, she returns to visit her elder sister, Haneen. While there, she is asked to fill in the parts of Gertrude and Ophelia in an amateur production which is being directed by Haneen’s friend, Mariam.

As with anything that goes on in that troubled country, nothing is either quite what it seems or straightforward. There are casting issues, funding issues and political issues, not to mention the sheer difficulty of travelling between zones to reach rehearsal places, and each other,

Then a piece of secret information is leaked to the Press and everything becomes even more complicated.

Isabella Hammad does not skate over the political nuances of putting on an English play in Arabic, and interpretation is all. This is a beautifully constructed novel. A clear and unemotionally presented version of the extremes that coexist, the hostility and the camaraderie lying side by side in the hot sun.

It is not the play that is the thing, it is the circumstances in which it is presented.

Libya Lost

If you have followed my blog, you will already know that I am a huge admirer of Hisham Matar, a Libyan author in exile. His new novel, My Friends, has a distinct before and after event. Two Libyans, Khaled and Mustapha, attend a university in Edinburgh, but decide on a whim to go to London. They arrive at a weekend when there is a demonstration outside the Libyan embassy in St James’ Square.

What happened then is seared into the memory of anyone who was sentient on 17th April 1984 when a young police woman was fatally shot outside the embassy while on duty. Yvonne Fletcher’s killing is well known and remembered, memorialised in fact. What is less well advertised was that several of the protesters were injured, some very seriously, and then Margaret Thatcher’s government allowed all the members of the embassy to leave the country, including the person who stuck a gun out of the window and sprayed a London Square with lethal bullets. This is the before and after event.

Over the years that follow, Khaled and Mustapha are linked by this event, which for their own protection and that of their families, they have to keep secret. So profoundly suspicious and with tentacles that spread far and wide, Colonel Gaddafi’s secret service have eyes and ears on the ground. Each Libyan knows that when abroad, trust no one, especially not your own countrymen as some of them are reporting back anything that you say or do. Later on in the novel the two men meet and become friends with a writer, also adrift in exile. None of them can safely travel to Libya, which involves a complicated deception, as their families yearn for their return.

Hisham Matar knows full well, from his personal experience the dangers of association. Kidnapping and executing anyone perceived to criticise Gaddafi’s regime was routine, and the family would also be in jeopardy, or alternatively used to keep the criticism in check.

My Friends is a poignant and moving narrative of friendship, courage, fear, partisanship and the horrors of tyranny; and family life. Brilliantly evoking the period and the aftermath, the so called Arab Spring.