Country Boy - Richard Hillyer

Goodness, it feels an age since I wrote a proper honest-to-goodness book review.  Let's see if I can still remember how to do it.  Well, what better way back into the hurly-burly of reviewing than with one of Slightly Foxed's latest Editions?  The review practically writes itself, because it seems impossible that SF will ever put a foot wrong with their endlessly delightful memoir series.  Country Boy (1966) by Richard Hillyer [real name Charles Stanks. You can see why he changed it] is no different.  Review in short: it's wonderful, and you'll love it.

photo source

I made the deliberate decision not to look up Hillyer's post-memoir career, because I thought it would be more interesting to see what I thought about his recollections of childhood and teenagehood without any sense of where his path might go - and I never read introductions until the end, of course.  So I shan't spoil it for you either, except to say that Hillyer doesn't get as far as discussing his career, or even his adulthood - instead, the memoir ends as he moves into a different section of his life.  And for some reason I don't want to spoil that shift either.  At times, the memoir is as tense and exciting as the plottiest novel, and it pays not to know much in advance.

Hillyer was born into a poor farm labouring family in a small village in Buckinghamshire in the first years of the 20th century - in a village Hillyer calls Byfield.  As the grandson of a farm labourer myself, I found it especially interesting to read how my life might have been had I been born a few generations earlier - and the oppressive sense Hillyer reiterates throughout that, though he loves his family and has some friends, ultimately there has never been an escape from Byfield for its non-wealthy inhabitants, and only a windfall or very good luck will enable him to attend grammar school, let alone find a world outside that determined for him by his circumstances.  As a second-generation university attendee, it was more or less assumed from the outset that I would at least have the chance of going to university, but for first-generation university students, I imagine it all felt a bit different (perhaps Our Vicar will comment on this...)  (Of course, with the huge increase in fees in recent years, and thus the clear indication that our government doesn't value higher education in the same way that it values schools, things have swung back the other way.  But that's as political as I'm going to get on Stuck-in-a-Book!)

Hillyer writes simply and touchingly about his family, and seems to have had an observant eye for his parents from an early age - as all children do, I suppose, which must be quite disconcerting for the parents at times.

I have no kind of fear or constraint with my father.  Mother is different, you never quite know.  Things went on in Mother's head that were difficult to guess at.  Father is always easy to understand.  For him life was simple and had no worries.  If he worked, and earned what money he could, Mother would see to the rest.  In a dumb, speechless sort of way he loved and admired her beyond all things, and believed her capable of dealing with any crisis which might arise for any of us.  Beyond that his thoughts did not go.

In any marriage where one partner is idolised and bowed down to by the other, there is the opportunity for the powerful partner to abuse this obeisance, knowingly or unknowingly.  In the case of the Hillyer family, his mother (thankfully) doesn't.  There is no tyrant - rather each family member plays a role in a fully-functioning machine.  It's terribly tempting to (mis)quote "poor, but ever so 'umble" - yet that is precisely what they are.  The stringent hierarchy of class in the village is nothing to celebrate, but the way people behave within it is often moving in their determination just to get on with life, and value the importance of family and friends rather than pipe dreams.

After quite a bit about his parents, I was surprised about how quiet Hillyer was being about his brother John, and thought perhaps they didn't get on very well.  They were, after all, very different.  But towards the beginning of chapter 10, this beautiful passage appears:

We were brothers, but there was more than brotherhood between us, a special relationship, that was entirely satisfactory to us both.  We were two people, as different as could be in our ways and thoughts, and yet each perfectly accepting the other.  He would listen to my confidences without understanding them or trying to; just taking them as coming from me, and no doubt making sense so far as I was concerned, but outside his sphere.  Not treating them as trivial, because they were not his own; listening to them patiently but making little comment, and taking them just as a part of me.  He was the outlet for all the odd notions that milled about inside me, and all the better outlet because he made no effort at all to influence me.

What nicer testimony to a brother - or, indeed, to a friend - could there be?  Hillyer has such a touching way with words which, even amidst descriptions of the mindlessness of his menial apprentice farm work, or the visit of the lord of the manor, can bring out the most moving and acute sentence.

One of the main differences which set Hillyer apart not only from John but from everyone else in the village was his intellect.  In a section which all of us bibliophiles will love, he describes stumbling across a furniture store which also, somewhat indifferently, sold bundles of books.  The idea of owning a book was new and wonderful to Hillyer - and his earnings were soon redirected to this source of joy and the wider world.

Life at home was drab and colourless, with nothing to light up the dull monotony of the unchanging days.  Here in books was a limitless world that I could have for my own.  It was like coming up from the bottom of the ocean and seeing the universe for the first time.

Anybody interested in rural life in the early 20th century will relish this book, of course, but its appeal goes further than that.  Anybody who believes that a love of literature can be an act of escape will love this book.  Anybody who values the bonds of family, ditto.  And anybody who appreciates simple, evocative, kind writing will want a copy of this memoir too.  Slightly Foxed - you've only gone and done it again.

Great British Bake Off: Series Four Final!

Well, where were we?  You turn you back for one moment month, and almost all the bakers have exited the tent.  It's the final - or the finale, if you will.  My favourites - Howard and Beca - have got the chop, and it's an all-female final three: Kimberley, Frances, and Ruby.  In case you've not seen the episode yet, I shan't reveal the winner until the end of the post.

First, some Bake Off news.  Guess who was reading my recaps?  Only blinkin' Howard!  He references them in this tweet to me, which was exciting if a little unnerving.  And if you want to read about the language of some of the things they've been baking, I wrote a piece for OxfordWords.  Ok?  Ok.  Let's set this ball rolling, and get our Bake Off on.

Mel and Sue are looking, as ever, gloriously like the Mums contribution to a half-hearted, no-budget school sketch show, and maintain a love for blazers which nowhere states, but everywhere implies, a covert sponsorship deal with Boden. Of all the wonderful things that make GBBO great, they might be the best.  Even above Mary Berry, in terms of if-they-went-the-show-would-be-ruined.  Indeed, this is exemplified by how awful that children's series was, without them.  I'll even forgive them the unnecessary flatulence joke.

The preview seems to suggest that Kimberley will be cross, Frances will crack and start naming objects around her ("spoon! spoon! spoon!"), Ruby will keep her rageful-neutral face, and the whole thing will be decided by a variant of the egg and spoon race.

This year's final is mercifully short of finalists confiding in us that it's the final, saying how much it means to them to be in the final etc. etc., so it gives me an opportunity to do a bit of it for them.  Or, rather, tell you how I feel about the contestants after a break of a few weeks.  (Incidentally, I'm not screencapping the bakers walking towards the tent, because they have thoughtlessly circumnavigated the bridge this week.  Give us a chance to say goodbye to the bridge, BBC2!  Rude.)

There's been a lot of talk in social media about Ruby flirting with Paul, etc., and while I don't think there is any justification in that allegation, she certainly seems to have been given rather an easier ride by both Paul and Mary than someone like poor Frances.  I think Mary might be under the impression that Ruby is her granddaughter.  Obviously I've not tasted Ruby's food, and perhaps the flavours are as great as the judges say, but her presentation and consistency certainly haven't seemed good enough to get to this stage.  "I just have to avoid having an episode," Ruby alerts the viewer.  What sort of episode?!  Does she have anger management issues?  Is she a werewolf?  So many questions, so few answers.

My thoughts about Kimberley haven't really changed over the series.  She still seems to be an exceptionally good baker, but just too cool and together for me to empathise with her.  If she'd 'accidentally' flung a plate of scones on the floor, she might be my favourite.  But that accolade is now reserved for...

Jury (of one person; me) was out on Frances in the first week or two, but I swiftly grew very fond of her boundless creativity and endearing gawkiness.  I can imagine her knitting a beret for a beagle, and that is a compliment.  She was self-aware enough not to be annoying, and presentation-wise she produced wonder after wonder - yet Paul, and even Mary, started getting really mean with her, repeating that mantra 'style over substance' every time they spotted her across the baking tent.  Poor Frances seemed quite crushed, and at one point Sue (bless her) even jumped to her defence.  "I need to bake my flipping socks off," she says - and thus her transformation into an Enid Blyton character is complete.

The signature challenge!  A savoury picnic pie, whatever that means.  Almost everyone pays rapt attention to Mel's explanation that it must be served out of the tin.

Or is she carrying an invisible tightrope pole?

Ok, reader, here's my problem with this challenge.  Mary stipulates that the layers inside the pie must be, well, in layers - defined and separate.  As, apparently, indicated by this gesture (which could equally well be the cover of Mary's inaugural hip-hop album):

But who wants to eat a pie like that?  Surely if the flavours all go well together, then you actually want them to be altogether?

Frances gives us a little primary school lesson on how rainbows appear, with nary a mention of Noah, which acts as a segue into her seven layered pie.  The BBC's magical colouring book is, as always, in play.  I particularly appreciate how, for a pie which depends upon its layered interior, they've decided to make it as difficult as possible to see the inside.  Maybe they didn't have all the right colouring pencils?

But they consistently get their apostrophes right.  Well done, BBC.

Mary gives a little shudder or two of joy at the description of the pie, which would have been in contention for OFFICIAL ANDREX PUPPY MOST ADORABLE MARY BERRY MOMENT if it weren't for something rather special that comes up later...

We haven't headed back to the bakers' homes for momentary glimpses into their lives for a while, have we?  Well, with only three bakers left the glimpses are rather longer and more purposeful - and include adorable childhood photographs, like this one of Frances:

I assume Frances doesn't still live with her parents, but nonetheless it is to Momma and Poppa Frances' house that we've gone, and I'm getting definite kitchen envy.  While in this kitchen, Frances' Mum asserts that she can't smell because she was kicked in the nose when she was fifteen - a story told sotto voce while Frances talks about something else, so that I didn't even notice it the first time.  I feel like it deserves a sombre silhouette-talking-in-darkened-room segment at the very least (perhaps an episode of Panorama? Does that still exist?) but instead Frances makes a delightfully catty comment about her lack of substance.

SUCH a nice shade of green. And that cute window!
One day I will live in a house which is nothing but kitchens.
And bookshelves.

And she talks about having won the hurdles in her youth (trivia #254: my brother has a fear of hurdles, having broken his arm while hurdling once) and, cottoning on to the show's love of punnery, says "I've certainly hit some hurdles throughout this whole process."  I choose to believe it is simply unfortunate editing that makes this the next shot:

Ruby is having troubles of her own.  Her vegetarian pie (which sounds amazing - halloumi, couscous, sundried tomatoes, mozzarella - sorry, my computer is malfunctioning from my mouth watering) is covered in lattice-pastry, and Design Queen Frances is doing the same.  "It's a bit like appearing at a do wearing the same dress as someone else," Ruth says (in my paraphrasing), "but the other person wearing the dress is a 6'3'' Brazilian supermodel."  Which I think is hilarious.  Well done, Ruby.

Were you aware that Ruby was a student?  I think it might have mentioned once or twice during the series.  Every time she is on the screen.  Well, they're hammering the point home, and Ruby claims that she's been doing all her baking in her bedroom.  Somebody flick through the tenancy agreement, stat.  Her Mum seems fun, and they obviously enjoy hanging out in the kitchen together - although it couldn't be clearer that the cameraman has told Ruby's Mum to stand and watch, and she looms awkwardly in the corner while Ruby slowly chops an aubergine.

Ruby, as always, is self-doubting in the corner - while Sue takes on Mel's usual role of issuing dire warnings in the voiceover about how horrendously wrong pastry can go.  I am notoriously bad at rolling pastry and, while I've found a recipe for sweet pastry which rolls like a dream, I haven't got one yet for savoury pastry.  Hence this, when my friend and I tried to make a quiche...

Nailed it.

"Kimberley has already made her pastry," says Sue in a voice that is smug, if it is possible to be smug vicariously.  Not only that, but she's made pastry in three colours - green, pink, and (er) pastry-coloured.  The pink pastry (coloured thus by beetroot powder) is shaped into little pigs to go on the side.  Because the pie has pork in it.  Is is just me, as a vegetarian, who finds that a little macabre?  Or adding insult to injury?  Cute, though.

And for her home-life VT she is strolling along the Thames (was it the Thames? I think so) with her boyfriend Giuseppe.  Can we talk for a moment about how ridiculously attractive this couple are?

Sickening.  I feel that, being handsome, clever, and rich (maybe), and having lived twenty-something years in the world with very little to vex or distress her, Kimberley doesn't need to win this.  She's already basically a Disney princess, but one with a brain.  AND she never dropped scones on the floor.

Because it's pastry week, there's plenty of talk of soggy bottoms, but it all feels a bit perfunctory at this stage.  I'm more interested in how delicious Ruby's halloumi is looking.  I can't tell you how much I love halloumi.

I want to make a 'hallo, me' / 'halloumi' joke. Bear with me. HALLO, ME HALLOUMI.
Nailed it.

And now - because I know you've been waiting for it - is the OFFICIAL ANDREX PUPPY MOST ADORABLE MARY BERRY MOMENT.  When Frances' back is turned, Mary, Mel, and Sue launch at her leftover asparagus and wolf it down.  And, yes, Mary was pirate-eating.

The pies are all ready to come out of the oven, and Ruby's efforts to get hers out of the tin resemble the finesse and coordination that I usually show at such times.

But, oh my goodness, it looks wonderful when it's out.  Whereas Kimberley, who would never make such a teatowelly mess of extracting her pie, has got something rather soggy and unappealing.  Revenge of the pigs?  Who's to say. (YES.)

Judgement time.... DUH DUH DUUUUH.  For a show which makes so much of people opening oven doors or the length of time to bake a bread roll, there has been surprisingly little of the DUH DUH DUUUH variety when it comes to judging.  Instead, Frances gets the usual 'good bake' from Mary and Paul, and adorable gasps of wonderful from everyone's surrogate mothers, Mel and Sue.  (They also remind me of those affectionate people at sports days who fawn over the children whose parents couldn't make it.)

To hammer home the rainbow theme, Frances has also baked in
an entire dove and olive branch.

Kimberley's pie has fallen apart altogether, and gets "almost like a glue" from Paul.  Mary leaps in with the old faithful "seasoned very well" (a euphemism for 'an aesthetic disaster').  Whereas Ruby's looks perfect:

As Paul says, "You've finally come up with something that looks like Frances made it."

When Paul asks Ruby what they should be expecting to see inside, she replies "Hopefully some layers" in the most despondent, wry voice ever - for which I love her a little more.  I'm a big British cynic at heart, me.  I'd love to see her on America's Next Top Model, where all the girls squeal in frenzied glee at meeting the CEO of a plastics recycling company or the assistant paint-mixer for the country's third biggest supplier of emulsions.  She'd stand at the back, arms folded, inadvertently death-staring everyone.  It would be amazing.

Also amazing is her pie.  I want it right now.  As Mary says, "I think this is an excellent example of a vegetarian pie - what a difficult thing to get right."  If only more places would realise that vegetarians don't only want 'cheese and onion' in their pies.  (Revenge of the pigs is complete!)  (I realise that in this scenario I have somehow become the pig, but... er, it's a metaphor.)  (Oh, I don't know, leave me alone.)

Paul and Mary are sent to 'frolic in the buttercups' (the very thought... eugh) and the bakers are given the technical challenge of making sweet and savoury pretzels.  I didn't even know you could get sweet pretzels, and I can't really imagine they'd be especially nice.

"Who makes a pretzel?" says Ruby wonderfully, and perhaps it's not too late for me to love her - and the editor, who segues immediately into Kimberley saying "I've made bread like a pretzel."  What, pray (as my friend pointed out) is like a pretzel?

Tell me... what is baking?

Paul explains how to make a pretzel to Mary, who must know already, and wanders madly through the first, second, and third person so that his explanation sounds oddly like a recipe translated into and back out of Russian.

Frances explains that she's good at kneading dough because she often gives her friends massages - as she says this she is flinging her dough violently onto the table, and it conjures up lines of Frances' friends with broken and disfigured necks, wincing when they see her enter a room.

Everything is going well with making the dough, but nobody seems able to make the pretzel shape. Paul's instructions have had the old Russian treatment again, and sound (as Sue observes) like the rudiments of a gymnastics routine.

But it doesn't much matter what shapes they've concocted, as the next step is dropping them in boiling water and bicarbonate of soda - and that's where things go awry.  Sue warns, over the voiceover, that the pretzel dough 'only needs to be in for seconds' (which could thus be anything up to and including eternity) and we pan to Ruby leaving hers for a nice long soak.  Sue wanders over and comments cheerily "They've been in a while" in a manner which is neither subtle nor, at this point, particularly helpful - but bless her for trying.

Paul and Mary re-enter the tent to judge the baskets of pretzels, and they all look pretty impressive to my undiscerning eye.  "There's a sort of pretzel-look about that one" seems pretty damning with faint praise, but Mary's "That's a lovely orange flavour" is similarly damning.  I could make something a lovely orange flavour.  Just add orange zest.  But we all know Mary's love of strong fruit flavouring.

Kimberley's are leagues ahead of the other two, and although Ruby comes second and Frances comes third, it's much of a muchness down the bottom end of the table.  Even Kimberley gets the comment from Paul "It's the closest thing to a pretzel, but don't clap."  Ouch.

I included this picture just because I think Mary looks adorbs, but I hadn't spotted before those framed pictures of pies and cakes in the background.  They seem to be by the same 'artiste' who is forever launched on the magical colouring books.  Also: how many series in do you think we'll get before (a) Paul learns how to be natural with his arms, and (b) starts wearing blazers?  Do Boden have a men's range?  Get on it, Bake Off stylists.

It's time for the very last challenge of series four - and, hurray!, the bridge!

Bye, bridge. Take care.

Thankfully there was no Welcome To Cake History section this week (although some have been unusually interesting of late) so instead Paul and Mary recap the entire first half of the show, for anybody who's flicked channels after Holby City, or whatever else was on.

And the showstopper challenge is... three-tier wedding cake!  In earlier series they've made entire tea parties in the final challenge, so this one doesn't sound all that tricky to me.  Essentially they're making lots and lots of sponge cake.  To divert attention from this, Paul follows Mary's lead and attempts to flog his hip-hop album.

Frances is making a 'Midsummer Night's Dream' wedding cake - although what it has to do with the play I can't think, unless a donkey is shoved in the middle of it - and decorating it with dried beetroot, sweet potato, pineapple, and mango.  That sounds horrifying to me.  Dried fruit I can understand - but in what world is sweet potato a fruit?

We haven't had a Mary Berry Reaction Face for a while, so perhaps it's time to see what she thinks of dried sweet potato?

sweet mother of what now?

Kimberley is making a wedding cake covered in the word 'love' in many languages, and Mel pruriently asks whether she has anybody in mind.  Kimberley coyly confesses that the bottom layer of the cake is her boyfriend's favourite flavour - which leads to an altogether more adorable Mary Berry Reaction Face:

Cleverly, Kimberley has made 'cake pops' and pours her chocolate fudge cake mixture over it.  She's also making poppy seed butter cream, which sounds absolutely heavenly, and something I'll be trying soon - but I've noticed that they tend to make butter cream which is much gloopier than the variety I make and, dear reader, it troubles me.

Ruby is making a cake which sounds equally delish, particularly the passionfruit/raspberry section.  And it strikes me for the first time that these Magical Colouring Book pictures are made after the fact, hence why this one so accurately resembles the end result.

But Ruby is no fan of weddings.  She considers them an 'exercise in narcissism'.  Lovely - there goes her chances of snaring a baking column in Your Wedding.  Kimberley, meanwhile, is doing clever things with circles.

I wonder what it would be like if I tried to make it... A quick reminder, everyone:

Excuse me, I'm writing my acceptance speech for Baker of the Year.

And look who's back!

Well, and several other GBBO bakers too, but it's Howard we're all here to see.  He's cheering on Frances, Beca is championing Kimberley, and interestingly Glenn just says 'I think Ruby will win'.  Not especially effusive, but then there are incidental shots of trombones and small girls in polka dot dresses to montage.

Back in the tent, Mary Berry is reiterating that Ruby is 21 - "very young!" - adding that she has "always winged it a bit".  I'm pretty certain Mezza Bezza has never used that expression before or since.  We've whipped through the baking process pretty quickly, and somehow everybody iced their cakes without me noticing.  Indeed, we've come down to the final bits of decoration, and Frances has somehow sourced a great big tree trunk.  Ruby is struggling, and her decoration does look a bit ham-fisted... (revenge of the pigs!  No, wait, wrong baker.)

Aaand.... they're done!  Cue rather sweet group hug.

The joke with caramelised sugar went too far
when they all had to be taken to A&E.

Judging time!  But not before we've had three rather curious shots of the bakers staring poignantly at their creations.

I've got to say, for the showstopper challenge in the final of the fourth series, I'm not particularly impressed by the way any of them look.  Ruby's is especially amateur, without the icing even being even, while Frances' is fine but rather unambitious.  Perhaps she was terrified of providing style over substance?  Kimberley's is my favourite - I love the quilting detail - but even her cake isn't anything to write home about.  Which I have been doing on occasion, actually, but generally by email.  Hi Mum!

Ruby's critique doesn't go very well, and she does have a bit of a cry, the poor thing.  Paul has to lug Frances' cake (and tree trunk) across the room, and - perhaps dizzied by this display of masculinity - the judges are very complimentary.  "I think the bride would be surprised" is one of the odder things Mary says.  It's apparently a compliment, but since every bride who doesn't appear on Don't Tell The Bride would choose the flavours herself, then surprise can only be a terrible thing, leading to a ruined honeymoon and a protracted journey through the courts to get a full refund.

Of course, most cakes look like this after an ant infestation.

"If you know what you want and you set out to get it, there's always a good chance you can achieve that - otherwise, what's the point?" Kimberley, just before her judging, sweeps away decades of children's television telling us it's the taking part that counts, and it's not her finest hour.  Mary isn't impressed by her finish, which I thought was nice, but they love the poppyseed filling (drool) and give the flavours a general thumbs up - but find the chocolate cake dry.

And now it's time for that egg and spoon race.

Yes, I'm reusing screencaps. What of it?

Paul and Mary repeat everything they've already said.  "We'll always remember Ruby's picnic pie," says Mary - which, since it was a matter of hours ago, is no great testimony to her baking legacy.  They're proud of Frances for learning, and - yes - say everything about Kimberley that they said earlier in the episode.  And honourable mention for OFFICIAL ANDREX PUPPY MOST ADORABLE MARY BERRY MOMENT comes when she suggests that Mel, rather than Sue, might win the trophy.  And by trophy I, of course, mean cake stand.

And the winner is...
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

FRANCES!

I'm not ashamed to say that I clapped my hands with glee and shouted "yes!" - I was so certain that it would be Ruby or Kimberley that it came as a wonderful surprise.  She was definitely my favourite of the final three, totally deserved it, and was touchingly shocked at her win.

And the final moment of my recap must go to old Howard, who takes the opportunity to have a sly dig at Deborah and, in his accompanying clip, reminds me why I love him so.  I like to think that he, Mel, and Sue will all go on activities holidays together.

Thanks all for your kind words and enthusiasm this series!  I know I only recapped five episodes, but it somehow felt like I'd done the whole series - I definitely wouldn't have put in the hours if it weren't for your encouragement and good humour.

And thank you, GBBO, for being such a delight!  The final episode got the most views of any programme on BBC2 since records began, and they'll all be back next year... hopefully, so will I.

My Thesis....

Turns out, like a fool, that I'm going out tonight - so I'll be late watching the Great British Bake Off final.  I will, however, be recapping it!  But maybe not very promptly.

One of the other things I've promised you is a bit more insight into my DPhil, now that it's over.  I started it in the autumn of 2009, a couple of years into Stuck-in-a-Book, so since then it has been a constant companion to my blogging, and many of the books I've read for my DPhil have appeared here.  You might be surprised at how many haven't been related; when I decided to go back and do some graduate study, one of my main self-stipulations was that I'd still have time for recreational reading.  Books and reading mean too much to me to have them exist only as part of an academic apparatus.  Perhaps that's one of the reasons it took four years rather than three, but better four contented years of enjoying reading than three miserable years of hating it, I think you'll agree!

It felt astonishingly good to finish.  I enjoyed most of my time doing my DPhil, and I'm definitely glad I did it, but I was also very much ready to finish.  It's mentally exhausting, and quite isolating, and I'm looking forward to having colleagues and shorter deadlines!

It's difficult to know where to start in explaining the 92,957 words I handed in (and the 70,000 or so words which got cut along the way), so I've decided the easiest way is to give you a one-sentence summary and the contents page, so do ask about any bit which interests you!

In one sentence... my thesis was about middlebrow novels between the world wars which used the fantastic (i.e. set in the real world, but something supernatural happens) and sought to explore connections between manifestations of the fantastic and social anxieties affecting the middlebrow reader.

And now the contents page (I've cut out page numbers).  If you see typos, don't tell me!

Introduction: ‘There may be not one marvel to speak of in a century, and then […] comes a plentiful crop of them’

Chapter One: Placing the Middlebrow and the Middlebrow Place

--‘The British, with their tidy minds / Divide themselves up into kinds’: between the brows

--“I am not an Intellectual and don’t wish to be thought one”

--‘This literary allusion not a success’: playing with the classics

--The places and communities of middlebrow reading

--‘Good service for the ordinary intelligent reader’: the role of the Book Society

--The fantasy of the ideal home

--The home in flux

--Servants and the geography of the home

Chapter Two: ‘Adventures of the everyday are much the most interesting’: Finding Room for the Domestic Fantastic

--Minding Ps & Qs: commonsense, etiquette, and inheriting the Gothic

--‘The duration of this uncertainty’: questioning the fantastic 

--‘Slipping from waking into sleep’: turning points

--The complicit reader and the style(s) of the fantastic

--‘The Oedipus complex was a household word, the incest motive a commonplace of tea-time chat’: the middlebrow Freud and the fantastic language of psychoanalysis

Chapter Three: ‘My Vixen’: Marriage and Metamorphosis

--‘Hold her husband and share his ecstasy’: marriage and sexual knowledge

--Woman-as-animal

--Woman-as-plant

--Non-fantastic versions of metamorphosis

--Observer and observed

--Metamorphosis of the domestic

Chapter Four: “Creative Thought Creates”: Childlessness and Creation Narratives

--Frankenstein: the modern creation novel

--‘A rather muddled magic’: (lack of) method in the domestic fantastic

--Blurring the line between creator and created

--The creative power of desire and the difficulty of identity

--Adoption, agency, and non-fantastic creation

--“I hate her and I love her and – I’m half afraid of her”: power struggles

--Miss Hargreaves, madness, and the God complex

  

Chapter Five : ‘She can touch nothing without delicately transforming it’ :

Re-creating Self in Lolly Willowes

--‘A sort of extra wheel’: Laura and the Willowes’ home

--‘One of these floating aunts’

--‘A Constant Flux’: the quasi-metamorphosis of Laura Willowes

--'The bugaboo surmises of the public’: subverting stereotypes of the witch

--‘You are too lifelike to be natural’: Laura’s Satan

--‘She smiled at the thought of having the house all to herself’: Laura’s independent space

  

Conclusion: “Is this really a part of the house, or are we dreaming?": Fantastic Novels as Alternative Spaces

--Why the fantastic?

--The fantastic as investigation

--After the Second World War

America: The Bloggers

This post is a bit delayed because I spent the weekend at home in Somerset, celebrating that (a) Colin had passed his driving test - first time, donchaknow, which is no mean feat in the UK, and (b) I had handed in my DPhil thesis.  There will be more on that soon, honest, I just have a lot of catch-up posts to write, not to mention a pile of ten or fifteen books to review for your infotainment.  But first things first; I told you about the books I bought, and now I want to tell you about the bloggers I saw.

Well, you probably already know - it was Thomas from My Porch and Teresa from Shelf Love.  If you click on the 'My Porch' link there, it'll take you to Thomas's report of our time together - I'll be doing a more emotive version, and probably thus less coherent!

When I decided I was going to visit Lorna in Washington, I knew that I wanted to catch up with two of my favourite bloggers (both of whom I had previously met on English soil) but that I only really had weekdays free, as I wanted to spend my weekends with Lorna, since that was the main purpose of my trip.  Well, I ended up being lucky enough to see a lot of Thomas (who is, may I just say, one of the kindest and nicest people I've ever met - blush from afar, Thomas) and both of them were free to go for a Friday drive around bits of Virginia, looking for bookshops.

I've already told you the books I got; Thomas's pile are in the post linked about, and Teresa tweeted hers here.  Yes, that is Miss Hargreaves in her pile, guess who put it there?  There was a tense moment when I spotted a Virago One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downs (such a good book) for only $1.40 and both bloggers wanted it - in the end they flipped a coin, and Thomas was lucky, but Teresa certainly didn't do badly for Virago books that day.  Both of them came away with wonderfully teetering piles of books; I only bought four, but that was because I'd bought so many others already, and was worrying about baggage weight... and I think you'll agree, book shopping is huge fun whether or not many books are bought.  There's nothing I like more than browsing shelves of secondhand books in great company.

We took it in turns to take photos outside the various bookshops...

...and I was introduced to the joy that is Dairy Queen.  I realised later that I had been to DQ a few times in the Philippines, but this trip (and my delicious double fudge cookie dough Blizzard) made me all the more sad that the UK is sadly lacking in DQs.  Get on it, UK.

All in all, it was a delightful day and I think we all had a great time, chatting away about bookish things nineteen-to-the-dozen, and I'm sad that it's likely to be a long time before we can have a repeat of the day.  I came to the US to see a very dear friend and her husband who had moved away from England, and ended up leaving four good friends behind.  Poor friendship/geography economics, perhaps, but a price worth paying for a wonderful time.