The Young Ardizzone

As I mentioned before Christmas (in the post from which I swiped this photo) I got a lovely Slightly Foxed edition of Edward Ardizzone's The Young Ardizzone (1970) from my Virago Secret Santa, and I took it away with me for my few days of indulgent reading at the end of 2012.  It was the first book I finished in 2013, and it amuses me that the year I found most elusive for A Century of Books was the first one I completed in 2013 - not that I'm doing that project this year.  BUT it is going on Reading Presently.  And what a lovely gift it was!  It is - but of course - wonderful.

There are lots of teenage girls out there who go mad for Justin Bieber, or young boys who idolise football players (I'm afraid I can't name any who weren't playing back in 1998).  In my own off-kilter way, I'm in danger of becoming a total fanboy for Slightly Foxed Editions.  They're just all good.  There are other reprint publishers I love, as you know, but I think these are the most consistently wonderful offerings.  No duds.  Excuse me while I put a photo of the editorial team on my wall.  Ahem.

Edward Ardizzone's childhood seems to have been rather unusual, where parenting is concerned.  He was born in 1900, in Tonkin, Vietnam, but moved to Suffolk, England when only five.  His father, however, stayed behind, moving around Asia - visiting England at intervals, moving his family around the country (for he was certainly still married to Ardizzone's mother, who spent four years out in Asia with him when Ardizzone was at boarding school) but playing minimal part in Ardizzone's childhood.  The chief figure was his tempestuous grandmother - Ardizzone often describes her going 'black in the face with rage', but adds that she 'was normally gay, witty and affectionate'.  More diverting relatives!  Lucky Ed.

I always love reading about people's childhoods, but I loved Ardizzone's more than most, because it   took place in East Bergholt.  I'd initially thought, flicking through the book, that only a chapter or two took place in East Bergholt - but he is, in fact, there for a few years.  It's the village where my grandparents lived for about 40 years, and Our Vicar's Wife was there for her final teenage years, so I know it pretty well.  I even recognise the house Ardizzone lived in from this little sketch.

A very lovely village it is too.  Here are some of his recollections:

Yet certain memories are with me still.  A particular picnic in a hayfield during haymaking; a fine summer afternoon in a cornfield when the stooks of corn became our wigwams.  A certain rutted lane with oak tree arching overhead and hedges so high that the lane looked like a green tunnel leading to the flats below.[...]Not far from the old parish church, with its strange bell cage planted down among the tombstones, was a round bounded on one side by a very high red brick wall.  Set in this wall was a small gothic door.  It was of wood and decorated with heavy iron studs.  Beside this door was a wrought-iron bell pull.

It's all quite simply told, but works well with the simple pictures.  The name Ardizzone meant nothing to me when I received the book, but I did recognise his illustrations - although I don't know where I encountered them - which are throughout the book as a delightful accompaniment.  I must confess, to my unlearned eyes his draughtsmanship is not the very finest, and the comparisons Huon Mallalieu's Preface makes with E.H. Shepard and Beatrix Potter seem a trifle generous.  But, even with those reservations, his illustrations enhance the memoir no end.  It is almost all done with lines and crosshatching, just a dot or two to suggest facial expressions.

Ardizzone didn't enjoy school greatly - there are some incidents of bullying which seem to me quite shocking, but he only really mentions them in passing, without any suggestion that they have scarred him for life.  And, indeed, his various school exploits take up most of the book - with plenty of cheerful moments, especially when describing respected schoolteachers.

I only wish Ardizzone hadn't whipped quite so quickly through the final section of his autobiography - where he explains (in three or four pages) his progression from being shown by the London Group, favourably reviewed at the Bloomsbury Gallery, commissioned to illustrate a Le Fanu collection, and finally a successful children's author/illustrator.  He rattles through it all at breakneck speed, which is a shame, as it sounds a fascinating period in his life.  So many autobiographers find their own childhood much more interesting than the rest of their life, and many of their readers would find everything interesting.  Oh well.  Mustn't grumble; I'll accept what Ardizzone has given us.  And what he is given us is rather lovely.

Song for a Sunday

Happy Sunday, folks.  Bridget Jones's Diary is one of only three films that I have seen twice at the cinema, and it has a pretty fab soundtrack (once you let Geri Halliwell quietly out the back door).  Here's Rosey and 'Love'.

Stuck-in-a-Book's Weekend Miscellany

Welcome to the first Weekend Miscellany of 2013!  I hope you had a lovely Christmas and New Year, whoever you were with.  As of Thursday, I'm back in Oxford, having refuelled on cat, countryside, and family.

1.) The blog post - lovely Thomas at My Porch has had a clear-out, and (as well as admiring his lovely shelves) you can put your name in the draw for his duplicate Dorothy Whipple books.  US residents only, though, since he wanted to keep the Whipples in a country where they're difficult to find.  It's open til 31st January.

2.) The link - I've yet to listen to it, but Mary has passed on the info about a Radio 4 programme on the incredible Margaret Rutherford.  Click here for it.  If I had a time machine, I'd probably (mis)use it just to go and see her on the stage as Miss Hargreaves.  What bliss that would be...

3.) The book - I really loved The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets by Eva Rice (it was in my top books of 2008), so I was very excited to receive a review copy of her new book, The Misinterpretation of Tara Jupp - with a lovely note from Eva too.  My reading will be taken up by Vanity Fair for the foreseeable future, but Eva Rice's is one of many 21st century books I've been holding off until A Century of Books was finished.  If it's half as good as The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets, then I'll adore it!

And not forgetting... the readalong of Cheerful Weather for the Wedding is coming up soon!  A lovely lot of people seemed keen - see here for details - I suggest we post reviews sometime in the week beginning Monday 28th January, and I'll post links and have a discussion here.  Fun fun!

2012 in First Lines

I seem to have all manner of year-in-review posts appearing or in the pipeline, but I can't resist the one Jane reminded me about, which started with The Indextrious Reader, I think.  It's quite simple - use the first lines of each month on your blog, to give an overview of your blogging year (albeit one which is amusing rather than very useful!)  This probably isn't the ideal meme for me, since I tend to start my posts in a meandering way, eventually getting to the point after a paragraph or two...

January: "I have set myself the 2012 challenge of reading a book published in every year of the twentieth century..."

February: "I didn't come back from Hay-on-Wye empty-handed (surprised?) and I thought I'd share my spoils with you."

March: "The first book I read from my recent Hay-on-Wye haul was Kay Dick's Ivy & Stevie (1971) about Ivy Compton-Burnett and Stevie Smith."

April: "I feel I should do an April's Fool... but I can't think of anything.  So let's have a Song for a Sunday as normal, eh?"

May: "A very quick post today - in case you missed it on my previous post, Annabel/Gaskella has taken up the challenge of nominating another author for a reading week, and designing a great badge, and so... Beryl Bainbridge Reading Week will be hitting the blogosphere June 18-24!"

June: "There has been a bit of a theme on SiaB this year, hasn't there?"

July: "I had a lovely break in Somerset, and was surprised by how well my little sale went - I'll head off to the post office tomorrow, laden with parcels."

August: "One of the weirder tangents my thesis has taken me on is the depiction of Satan in 20th-century literature..."

September: "Saturday night was a big barn dance for my parents' wedding anniversary and my Mum's birthday, with about 100 people coming."

October: "Time for the third and final update on how A Century of Books is going!"

November: "Stu is otherwise known as Winston's Dad, and knows more about literature in translation than anyone I know."

December: "Happy Weekend, one and all.  And happy December, no less."


Well, wasn't that productive?  Do have a go yourself - and let me know in the comments if you have done so!

Reading Presently

thanks to Agnieszka for making the badge!

This will be the page for 2013's project, where I'll list my 50 Reading Presently books - books that were given to me as presents, along with their givers.  I will never use the word 'gifted' as a verb, or 'gifting' at all.  *Shudder*

1. Moranthology by Caitlin Moran - from my brother Colin
2. The Young Ardizzone by Edward Ardizonne - from Verity
3. What There Is To Say We Have Said : Eudora Welty & William Maxwell - from blog-reader Heather
4. The Diary of a Provincial Lady by E.M. Delafield - from Thomas
5. House of Silence by Linda Gillard - from Linda
6. A Spy in the Bookshop ed. John Saumarez Smith - from Lucy
7. Return to the Hundred Acre Wood by David Benedictus - from Verity
8. Is It Just Me? by Miranda Hart - from Lucy
9. How The Heather Looks by Joan Bodger - from Clare, maybe??
10. Room at the Top by John Braine - from John H.
11. Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn - from Ruth
12. The Easter Party by Vita Sackville-West - from Hayley
13. The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright - from Nichola
14. Skylark by Dezső Kosztolányi - from Our Vicar and Our Vicar's Wife
15. Bassett by Stella Gibbons - from Barbara
16. The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel - from Colin
17. The Help by Kathryn Stockett - from dovegreybooks reading group
18. Four Hedges by Clare Leighton - from Clare
19. Books, Baguettes, and Bedbugs by Jeremy Mercer - from Charley
20. Some Tame Gazelle by Barbara Pym - from Mum
21. Virginia Woolf by Winifred Holtby - from Lucy
22. Of Love and Hunger by Julian Maclaren-Ross - from Dee
23. Oxford by Edward Thomas - from Daphne
24. Young Entry by Molly Keane - from Karyn
25. Dumb Witness by Agatha Christie - from Fiona
26. The Flying Draper by Ronald Fraser - from Tanya
27. A House in Flanders by Michael Jenkins - from Carol
28. The Restraint of Beasts by Magnus Mills - from Mel
29. The Queen and I by Sue Townsend - from OUP colleagues
30. Mr. Skeffington by Elizabeth von Arnim - from Rachel
31. Six Fools and a Fairy by Mary Essex - from Jodie
32. Cullum by E. Arnot Robertson - from Clare
33. Symposium by Muriel Spark - from Karen
34. Beowulf on the Beach by Jack Murnighan - from Colin
35. Pink Sugar by O. Douglas - from Clare
36. Time Will Darken It by William Maxwell - from Barbara
37. Hetty Dorval by Ethel Wilson - from Becca
38. Phantoms on the Bookshelves by Jacques Bonnet - from Clare
39. Faulks on Fiction by Sebastian Faulks - from Mum and Dad
40. The Compleat Mrs. Elton by Diana Birchall - from Diana
41. The Underground River by Edith Olivier - from Jane
42. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris - from Laura
43. A Reader on Reading by Alberto Manguel - from Lorna
44. Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh - from Colin
45. My Grandfather and Father, Dear Father by Denis Constanduros - from Mum and Dad
46. The Best of Archy and Mehitabel by Don Marquis - from Barbara
47. Ten Days of Christmas by G.B. Stern - from Verity
48. Together and Apart from Margaret Kennedy - from Rob
49. Midsummer Night at the Workhouse by Diana Athill - from Mum
50. Black Sheep by Susan Hill - from Colin

Caitlin Moran is basically Dickens.

I’m going to start this review by getting all hipster – bear with me one moment while I put on my oversized specs and dig out some ironic vinyl records – and say that I loved Caitlin Moran before it was cool to love Caitlin Moran. Granted, I don’t buy a newspaper myself, or subscribe to The Times online, but my father and brother regard The Times as second only to Scripture and I flick through it when I visit either of them. More specifically, I have read Caitlin Moran’s columns for years. I don’t always agree with her, but I always find her brilliantly, ingeniously funny. The sort of funny that makes reading a newspaper actually fun.

Following on from the success of How To Be A Woman, which I have borrowed but have yet to read, a selection of her columns has been published under the title Moranthology. Geddit? Good. Her topics are widespread – a lot of celebrity-culture and arts & entertainment, but also just the world around her, from new dresses to Gregg’s pasties to tax (she’s pro.) Here’s how she glosses her inspirations in the introduction:

The motto I have Biro’d on my knuckles is that this is the best world we have – because it’s the only world we have. It’s the simplest maths ever. However many terrible, rankling, peeve-inducing things may occur, there are always libraries. And rain-falling-on-sea. And the Moon. And love. There is always something to look back on, with satisfaction, or forward to, with joy. There is always a moment when you boggle at the world – at yourself – at the whole, unlikely, precarious business of being alive – and then start laughing.

And that’s usually when I make a cup of tea, and start typing.

Caitlin Moran and I are unlikely ever to be friends. This is largely – though not entirely – because all her friendships seem to be assessed on the willingness with which said friend will breakdance, drunk out of their minds, in seedy clubs at four in the morning – or how much they admire Ghostbusters, which I’ve never seen. But, should our paths ever cross – at, say, 7.30 am, as she is stumbling back from a faux-Victorian strip club with Lady Gaga, and I am blearily crawling to the corner shop to get milk for my morning tea, not wearing any glasses because for some reason that only feels like a viable option in a post-caffeine world – should we meet, perhaps we would bond a little. Bond about our love of books (she champions libraries wonderfully; ‘A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life-raft, and a festival’) and our distrust of the Tory Party. Maybe even about how great Modern Family is, although that’s not mentioned here. But that might be it. I’ve never seen Sherlock, and I don’t much care for Doctor Who - these admissions are probably enough for Moran to cement-bag me to the bottom of the Thames, a la Mack the Knife. The columns where she reviews or goes behind the scenes of these shows are near-pathological in their adoration.

And, of course, there are plenty of other things we don’t agree about, or enthusiasms we don’t share. That’s beside the point. Moran could write about how much she likes dead-heading roses to make bonnets for foxes, and she’d make the hobby seem not only amusing, but rather bohemian and cool. Because Moran just is cool, without seeming to try at all. The sort of cool which entirely embraces self-deprecation and wears absurd foibles as badges of honour – and makes everything she writes seem adorable and awesome. (The only time I felt disappointed by Moran was when she referred to the ‘anti-choice’ movement. However strongly people may disagree over the issue of abortion, I’ve always deeply admired the almost-universal respectful use of ‘pro-life’ and ‘pro-choice’ by those who oppose either one. Because, Moran – as well you know – absolutely nobody takes an anti-life or an anti-choice stance. That is never their objective.) But, that aside, she doesn’t put a foot wrong. She can babble about Downton Abbey, declare her hatred of children’s book/TV character Lola, or opine on her holidays to Wales, and it’s all just brilliant. And it’s brilliant because she has her tone down pat – a way with simile that is always innovative and hilarious (she, for instance, describes X Factor alum Frankie Cocozza as having ‘a voice like a goose being kicked down a slide’) and a clever mix of high and low registers which is positively Dickensian – throwing slang in with perfect judgement. Because (see above) she’s so cool.

And that mention of Dickens isn’t careless. Caitlin Moran is basically a 21st-century Dickens, with crazy awesome hair. In amongst all the hilarious columns on the ugliness of fish names or how someone stole her hairstyle, Moran gets in some serious social politics. So, like Dickens, she is incredibly funny – but uses the humour to slip in social commentary; the difference being that Dickens would give us a plucky urchin at the mercy of Sir Starvethechild. It would be glorious, but his point would be rather lost in a thicket of the grotesque. Moran, give or take some emotive wording, just tells it as it is.

Moran grew up on a council estate with eight siblings and parents who were on disability benefits. As she says, ‘I’ve spent twenty years clawing my way out of a council house in Wolverhampton, to reach a point where I can now afford a Nigella Lawson breadbin.’ But she still knows what poverty was like firsthand, and writes movingly, sensibly, and brilliantly about various issues to do with cutting benefits or alienating the poor.

All through history, those who can’t earn money have had to rely on mercy: fearful, changeable mercy, that can dissolve overnight if circumstances change, or opinions alter. Parish handouts, workhouses, almshouses – ad-hoc, makeshift solutions that make the helpless constantly re-audition in front of their benefactors; exhaustingly trying to re-invoke pity for a lifetime of bread and cheese.

That’s why the invention of the Welfare State is one of the most glorious events in history: the moral equivalency of the Moon Landings. Something not fearful or changeable, like mercy, but certain and constant – a right. Correct and efficient: disability benefit fraud is just 0.5 per cent. A system that allows dignity and certainty to lives otherwise chaotic with poverty and illness.

Who but Moran could write about her hatred of creating party-bags, her love of David Attenborough and her friend with schizophrenia who has to move cities in order to retain state-given accommodation? Not in the same column, you understand, but I wouldn’t put it past her. Moran has won all sorts of awards, I believe, and I would say that she deserves them – but, quite frankly, she is the only columnist I ever read. I’ve been enjoying her columns for years (some in this book are, naturally, revisits for me) and I’m so delighted that they’re now available as a book. I’ve got my fingers crossed for another, since this can only represent a small percentage of her output. But I’ll count my blessings with this one (thanks Colin for giving it to me!) and urge you to seek it out. Like I said, Moran is basically Dickens. Hilariously funny, socially conscious, rocks some impressive sideburns. Well, two out of three ain’t bad.

More Statistics!

Happy New Year!

You'll be sick of these soon... but what is the new year for but to share book-reading statistics?  I'll be revisiting the meme I started a few years ago - quite a simple one.  I'll be doing some comparing with the results I got in 2011.

Number of Books Read
135 - rather more than the scant 106 I managed last year.

Number of Books Bought
I don't know, and you shouldn't guess.

Fiction/Non-Fiction Ratio
95 fiction, 40 non-fiction - a higher percentage of non-fiction than ever before, which seems to be a growing trend - but does not reflect the books I have waiting on my shelves...

Male/Female Authors
45 books by men, 90 by women.  My reading is always slanted towards female authors, but not usually this much.  Maybe I should make 2013 the year of the male author.  But I won't.

Re-reads
Only 9 this year, and most of those were for my thesis.

Biggest turn-around in opinion
How could I not have realised how brilliant One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes was the first time?

Oldest book read
Castle Rackrent (1800) by Maria Edgeworth.  And I didn't like it.

Newest book read
My friend Karina's Shrinking Violet (2012).  And I loved it!

Shortest title
Mamma by Diana Tutton.  Which unwittingly reveals my confession that I have read it, and never wrote about it!  It's not very much like Guard Your Daughters.

Books in translation
Only 8, which is far fewer than I'd imagined - from French, Swedish, Spanish, German, and Czech.

Most books by one author
6 each by Sylvia Townsend Warner and Muriel Spark - no surprises there, since I wrote a chapter on Sylvia Townsend Warner and co-led Muriel Spark Reading Week.

Place names in book titles
The Abbess of Crewe, Mrs. Harris Goes To Paris, Mrs. Harris Goes to New York, The Westminster Alice, Brighton Rock, The House in Paris, Lovers in London, Reginald in Russia.

Animals in book titles
Dear Octopus, When God Was A Rabbit, His Monkey Wife, Dewey the Library Cat, Lady Into Fox, Gentleman Into Goose, The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies.

Strange things that happened in the books I read this year
I loved doing this bit last year.  Ok... A donkey played chess, a man turned into a teapot, another man turned into a bug, several people turned into flowers, parliament turned up with Alice in Wonderland, a ring turned people invisible, someone sought lots of Mr. Browns, someone sought lots of Mr. Blacks, a woman was haunted by a reappearing corridor, a nunnery was bugged, and a man married a monkey.


If this all sickens you completely, go and enjoy C.B. James' irreverent take on end of year stats!