My review of My Hard Heart: Selected Fiction, by Helen Garner

My Hard Heart: Selected Fiction

by Helen Garner

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I loved Helen Garner's style from the time I read with awe her Monkey Grip (1977) and, until now, never got around to exploring much else of hers - that's no excuse, of course, but life and other reading just gets in the way sometimes. But I vividly remember wishing I could do what she did at that time. Such a bar raiser and role model this talented soul must have been for so many emerging wordsmith hopefuls over the decades.

Anthologies are popular reintroductions to writers, and follow-ups, after reading their novels. In the latter category, I read with intrigue in my ongoing quest to seek out seasoned Aussie writers who grab me. I enjoyed Garner's acute observations of human nature. I relished her evocative backgrounding. Her voice is richly authentic. Her fragmented sense of form I found bravely effective. Her suburban characters endeared and revolted me as much as they seemingly do their author, amounting to fine depictions. 

Although hard going in parts, the anthology's looming sense of inertia typifies a suburban Australian mindset of not long ago or even today, where intellect feels futile and family or mateship comes first. The combined greasy despondency and simmering tetchiness across the stories captures something as fundamentally Australian as its weather, if you can muster the grit to sit through it. This seems to be Garner's intended effect and, as always with this author, she nails it magnificently.

So, in some ways these pieces struck me as cathartic exercises, a soul-baring foundation of much great modern literature.

I was compelled to keep reading, with the timelessness of her human dilemmas loud and clear throughout. 

Helen Garner hardly needs my validation after her achievements. A notable Australian literary behemoth, one must admire her work's longevity in such a fast-changing scene. Whilst she has been criticised by some for merely 'transcribing her diary material into fictional form', in her defence it needs reiterating that autobiographical fiction is the chosen genre of some of the greatest writers of all time. Raw truth punches harder, for many including this reader, than even the most elaborately contrived story plotting, character arcs and formulism of much popular fiction.

My quest for home grown Aussie writers to embrace continues. Thank you, Helen Garner, for earning your place near the top of my list.

You are among our very best, always.

My review of The World According to Garp, by John Irving

The World According to Garp

by John Irving

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

After rescuing this curled up thirty-plus-year-old paperback from a railway platform waiting room bin, The World According to Garp would not be re-dumped. Rehoused and adopted, it kept me up way too late into the night, for all the best reasons.

This funny, evocative, at times poignant tale by John Irving had me hooked from the outset. It's no wonder he went on to score a raft of awards, for print and screen. The narrative chronicles the life of T. S. Garp, whose strong-minded single mother, nurse Jenny, wanted a child but no husband.

After we see Garp through his comical formative years he grows up to become an author. His mother, Jenny, also writes on the sly, eventually gaining greater acclaim than Garp. Jenny's autobiography, A Sexual Suspect, makes her a feminist icon with a cult following known as the Ellen Jamesians, named after a small girl whose tongue was cut out by rapists. Jenny's bizarre cult members cut out their tongues in tribute to young Ellen Jamesian. His mother's infamy is a bone of contention to the less radical Garp who, maintaining filial loyalty, is inwardly torn.

John Irving's characters have a quirky realism that thrills and resonates authenticity. Even the most absurd situations are engaging and credible, worthy of bringing a wicked smile to anyone's face. Central themes include gender roles, sexuality and death.

The first paperback edition won America's National Book Award for Fiction in 1980. The 1982 film adaptation, starring Robin Williams in the title role, saw John Lithgow and Glenn Close respectively nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role and Best Actress in a Supporting Role, at the 55th Academy Awards.

Not my usual genre, I haven't read anything like it. Highly recommended for a lighthearted but good, solid read.

*Footnote - always check railway platform waiting room bins.

My review of Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell

Gone with the Wind

by Margaret Mitchell

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Margaret Mitchell received 38 publishing rejections before the lucky Macmillan publishers accepted Gone with the Wind. Her only novel published in her lifetime, it sold 30 million copies (with two sequels authorised by Mitchell's estate published more than a half century later). Mitchell won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for this epic of the highest order, of more than a thousand pages.

Set in the American Civil War and Reconstruction, this tracks the cunning antics of wealthy Southern plantation owner Gerald O'Hara's daughter, Scarlett, who must do what she must to survive sudden destitution.

There's a touch of the Scarlett O'Hara in the best of us. Tainted more with her father's forthright Irish blood than her gracious mother Ellen's French ancestry, she's strong-willed, self-centred, at times petulant, but ultimately practical and ever true to her own heart. This complexity makes her the great literary heroine she is and not simply a spoilt Southern princess who deserves a good slapping down. No wonder Hollywood interviewed 1400 actresses before settling on the extraordinary Vivien Leigh to capture her fabulous persona for the 1939 film, which won eight Academy Awards.

Written from the slaveholder's perspective, Gone with the Wind is Southern plantation historical fiction. Though often placed in the historical romance sub-genre, it arguably lacks all the romance genre elements and contains other elements not found in romance novels. It also fits the coming-of-age, or Bildungsroman structure, chronicling archetypal southern belle Scarlett from adolescence to adulthood.  

Mitchell's working title had been the novel's last line, Tomorrow is Another Day. Also considered were Bugles Sang True, Not in Our Stars and Tote the Weary Load. A metaphor for the end of the South's way of life before the Civil War, the eventual title comes from Ernest Dowson's poem Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae sub Regno Cynarae:

'I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,

Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,

Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind...'

Scarlett uses the phrase when pondering whether her home-plantation, 'Tara', is still standing or if it is 'gone with the wind which had swept through Georgia'.

Pampered Scarlett survives an extreme reversal of fortune, rebuilding Tara cotton plantation and her own self-esteem, in the post-war South. Starkly contrasting with her gentler sister-in-law Melanie Hamilton's qualities of trustworthiness, selflessness and loyalty, Scarlett displays shrewd, manipulative, deceitful, even superficial traits, her first priority being money.

Similarly contrasting are Scarlett's two main men: her sensitive, gentlemanly, almost effeminate love interest, Ashley Wilkes (played onscreen perfection by Leslie Howard). He is Melanie's cousin who marries her as promised, devastating Scarlett who wants him for herself. Too passive and earnestly principled for Scarlett, he is perfectly matched with the softer, altruistic Melanie. A planter by inheritance, Ashley represents Confederate defeat, foreseeing and too readily accepting that cause's end after the Civil War. His very name signifies blandness, invoking the colourless vision of ash. His limpid gesture at 'real men's' activities is purely tokenistic. His entire family, according to Scarlett's father, was 'born queer'. Yet Ashley is 'the Perfect Knight' in Scarlett's mind, even throughout her three marriages.

Scarlett first begrudgingly marries the shy and loving Charles Hamilton. Soon after, he dies of pneumonia, never reaching any battlefield or even seeing their son, Wade. She then callously steals her sister Suellen's fiancé, Frank Kennedy, an older, unattractive man whose money Scarlett has in mind to pay Tara plantation's taxes. This middle husband is a remote figure, never understanding Scarlett's ruthless business tenacity. After not so long he is shot through the head attempting to defend Scarlett's honour after she is attacked. He leaves Scarlett with a daughter, the homely, simple Ella Lorena.

But then comes Scarlett's third husband and other main man, the hard-drinking 'black beast' Rhett Butler (personified on celluloid by Clarke Gable). When not idling away his hours wheeling and dealing, gambling or dallying with prostitutes in Belle Watling's brothel, dandyish Rhett shows Scarlett his 'large brown hands', growls 'I could tear you to pieces with them' and even brutishly rapes her in their marital bed. Accused of being a 'damned Scallawag', Rhett is one of those Southerners who willingly accept the Republican reforms or, who Mitchell writes, 'had turned Republican very profitably'. For this injustice he is written as having a 'swarthy face, flashing teeth and dark alert eyes' and labelled a 'scamp, blackguard, without scruple or honour'. Even in the war's earlier years, Rhett is tagged a 'scoundrel' for his 'selfish gains' profiteering as a blockade-runner. Scarlett meets her match with this straight talker, who puts her firmly in her place and gives her a daughter, the strong-willed Eugenie Victoria 'Bonnie Blue' Butler.

Mitchell's cast of thousands has the reader fully absorbed, enthralled, waiting to see what happens next and to whom - and my, those frocks! Mitchell's use of colour symbolism, especially the red and green, were wisely adopted for the movie. Who can forget 'that' red dress Vivien Leigh wore to the party, or her green velvet tasselled DIY 'curtain' frock. Yet whether the inevitable comparison with the movie or not, certain characters remain forever with us. Not only those from Scarlett's household, we also become fondly acquainted with the delightful Melanie Wilkes née Hamilton (given onscreen life by Olivia de Havilland). Unforgettable too is Melanie's deliciously eccentric Aunt Pittypat Hamilton, in Atlanta, with whom Scarlett and Melanie, assisted by Prissy, go to stay at one stage. These are all Mitchell's 'goodies'. Her 'baddies' comprise a cavalcade of scoundrels incorporating Yankees, carpetbaggers, Republicans, prostitutes and overseers. Every smallest character is given immense readability.

Indeed, Tara plantation and its surrounding landscape is a character in itself, raising great speculation around its real-life basis. Of this and her players, Mitchell insisted:

'I made Tara up, just as I made up every character in the book. But nobody will believe me.'

The novel examines the old South's class system, comprising the white planter class, such as Scarlett and Ashley, and the black servants whom Mitchell splits into two types: her first is the loyal, higher-class house servants, such as Mammy, Scarlett's childhood nurse who once belonged to Scarlett's grandmother, raising Scarlett's mother, Ellen. Loyalty and longevity have made Mammy Tara plantation's 'head woman'. Closely aligning Mammy's special status is Gerald O'Hara's valet, Pork, his wife Dilcey and their daughter Prissy, Wade's nurse. These more elite slaves stand by their masters even after being technically freed by the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation and 1865 Thirteenth Amendment. Mammy never considers a life away from Tara, recognising her freedom to come and go as she pleases, declaring: 'Ah is free, Miss Scarlett. You kain sen' me nowhar ah doan wanter go.'

Then there are the field slaves, working under foreman Big Sam. These lower-class slaves are mostly taken away by Confederate soldiers to dig ditches, apparently never returning. Though Mitchell acknowledged there were 'loyalist' field slaves who stayed on the plantations after emancipation, not exercising their new freedom, none are included in her novel. Mitchell's stereotypical 'docile and happy' slave depictions, with none angry or dissatisfied with their lot, were disparaged for over simplification. Critics accused Mitchell's work of fitting a convenient common white denial of the black South's interminable hardship, misery, suffering and injustices. Others, however, argued that, politics aside, Mitchell's contentious characterisations did have a certain authenticity.

Regardless of what has been said about Mitchell's 'ethnic slurs' in her narrative's portrayal of slavery and African Americans, these characters were endearingly immortalised by legends Hattie McDaniel, as stalwart Mammy (earning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, the first African American who get one), and Butterfly McQueen as flighty Prissy, whose wondrous portrayals remain etched in all our hearts and minds, e.g.

-Mammy: It ain't fittin'... it ain't fittin'. It jes' ain't fittin'... It ain't fittin'.

-Prissy: Lawzy, we got to have a doctor. I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' babies. 

On theme, the author said: 'If Gone with the Wind has a theme it is that of survival. What makes some people come through catastrophes and others, apparently just as able, strong, and brave, go under? It happens in every upheaval. Some people survive; others don't. What qualities are in those who fight their way through triumphantly that are lacking in those that go under? I only know that survivors used to call that quality 'gumption.' So, I wrote about people who had gumption and people who didn't.' — Margaret Mitchell, 1936: 

As a non-American I learnt from Mitchell's fine historic detail, gained insight into the American spirit that I had previously scratched my head about. This novel will surely retain longevity for endless generations of readers. 

Fiddle-dee-dee! Everyone should experience it at least once before they die.

My review of The Duchess of Windsor and Other Friends, by Diana Mosley

The Duchess of Windsor and Other Friends

by Diana Mosley

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Writing came naturally to Diana Mitford Mosley, whose formidable intellect and extraordinary life resulted in a ream of published volumes: book reviews, memoirs, essays, diaries - even her letters to various friends and relatives had such readability and were of such historical value they were published in volume after volume. 

This biography of the Duchess of Windsor, like the author's other works, makes no claim of impartiality - she wrote what she thought, through the filters of her own direct experience and famously individualised world view.

There were many more academically penned biographies of the Duchess of Windsor, but none by authors who knew her, whose personal life she had been a part of. Such is the value of this contribution to the massive Wallis Simpson canon. 

I could read anything by Diana Mitford Mosley, having a natural bias for seeing her works in a positive light. The most engaging of her writings, as has been noted by various critics of this biography, are indeed to be found elsewhere.

This is perhaps not the book a Wallis Simpson novice reader might turn to for the dry history, any more than being one a novice Diana Mitford Mosley reader might initiate themselves with - it is simply an impassioned addendum to the author's countless other literary contributions and a qualified last word to Simpson's infinite detractors.

This piece has the uniqueness of being penned by a longstanding friend, a natural authority on elements of the woman more formal biographers could not capture. Others also wrote from a more negative bias, a key agenda behind this author's wish to set certain records straight about the woman beneath the unkind myths popular history has wrapped her in.

Diana Mitford Mosley was renowned for speaking her mind on contentious topics, few topics being more so than the Duchess of Windsor. Being a fan of this author and an avid historian, there was never the faintest possibility of my disliking this biography - though I can appreciate how the uninitiated Mitfordian may find it underwhelming, as may those seeking out meatier documentations of this polarising subject.

The touching intimacy of this book's penmanship, with its tributary endnotes, is what sets it apart from less biased Duchess of Windsor biographies. It was almost certainly never meant to be of as much academic value as other Simpson biographies, being pointedly more about setting certain public records straight from an insider's perspective.  

All these things considered, this book's harshest critics are, in their blinkeredness, simply missing the most fundamental reasons for its existence. It being far from the first Wallis Simpson biography or first Diana Mitford Mosely piece I have read, my expectations were shaped accordingly.

I read it in one night and admired it for exactly what it is - the eloquent narrative of a loyal friend.

My review of Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy

Anna Karenina

by Leo Tolstoy

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is one of the most gorgeous rides I've had. 

This is the tragic Russian tale of a married aristocratic socialite's affair with wealthy Count Vronsky. It also follows country landowner Konstantin Levin, who wants to marry Kitty, sister-in-law of Anna's brother Oblonsky. Events unfold against a backdrop of rapid change resulting from the reforms of Emperor Alexander II. Tolstoy's use of real historic events lend authenticity to the fictional events of his characters.

Impacting on these characters' lives and thoughts are such innovations as jury trials, elected local governments, railroads, banks, telegraph, increasing public awareness due to a freer press, and a class reshuffle as the ruling aristocracy becomes gradually upstaged by the emerging business class.

Accordingly, the narrative examines Russia's then feudal system, politics, religion, morality, gender and class structure. Themes include hypocrisy, jealousy, faith, fidelity, family, marriage, society, progress, carnal desire and passion, and personal connection to one's land.

At approximately a thousand pages divided into eight parts, this is narrated in third person, shifting between characters but focusing on the opposing attitudes and lifestyles of protagonists Anna and Levin. The tone alters according to character telling the story. Stepan Oblonsky's thoughts and actions are delivered in a markedly relaxed manner, while Levin's social encounters are decidedly tense (this character being sometimes thought Tolstoy's semi-autobiographical portrayal of himself). Part seven, depicting Anna's thoughts and ruminations, makes groundbreaking use of that stream-of-consciousness fluidity later adopted by greats like James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner. 

Fyodor Dostoyevsky declared this 'flawless as a work of art'. Vladimir Nabokov concurred, admiring the 'flawless magic of Tolstoy's style'. I agree with both. I felt as if I was in the story, a bystander, a participant.

Many adaptations have eventuated, including operas, ballets and stage and radio plays, some of them jarring. A popular standout was the 1935 movie starring Greta Garbo, Fredric March, Basil Rathbone and Maureen O'Sullivan. Another was the 1977 BBC series, starring Nicola Pagett, which in ten parts successfully covered so much more than any single sitting attempt. Ardent Tolstoy fans, who often insist that no screen version has captured the genius of his writing, may be biased but correct.

Tough going at times but worth every minute. I was like a kid after Christmas when I closed the last page.

My review of The King's Speech: How One Man Saved the British Monarchy, by Mark Logue and Peter Conradi

The King's Speech

by Mark Logue and Peter Conradi

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

For history buffs, and baby boomers especially, these glimpses into the first half of the twentieth century resonate powerfully. This being the era passed down to us orally by parents and grandparents, we are intrigued by accounts of events that shaped our elders and immediate forebears. The period rekindles memories of our late loved ones, adding insight to their generational formation. 

This epoch's significance for us is its context. Our lives are rooted in these world events, even though most of us had not yet arrived. So close does it lie to our own pending genesis, we can picture the world into which we or our parents were conceived.

Wallace Simpson, Edward VIII's abdication crisis, World War II, the young Queen Mum, our own Queen Elizabeth II as a tiny girl not intended to reign – all these ingredients make for nostalgic reading. 

Whilst it was arguably the award-winning movie, co-starring Australia's Geoffrey Rush as Aussie royal speech therapist Lionel Logue, that brought this tale to the wider world, this book from which its screenwriters gleaned priceless detail is a standalone piece, co-written by Logue's grandson Mark.

Not penned in fictional form, the storytelling has a natural authenticity. Drawn from personal diaries, it takes us to the heart of things.

Australians will appreciate the early lives of Lionel Logue and his wife in a developing post-colonial land in its infancy, still many weeks' sea voyage away from the heart of empire.

For anyone who has touched on speech presentation, basic elocution, or ventured further into remedial speech therapy, insights to Logue's technique will fascinate. Two 1930s tongue twisters brought down to us are worth trying: 'Let's go gathering healthy heather with the gay brigade of grand dragoons' and 'she sifted seven thick-stalked thistles through a strong thick sieve.'    

I read this in three cosy nights and loved it.

My review of Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens

Great Expectations

by Charles Dickens

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Without a doubt my favourite Dickens novel. First serialised in 1860-61, this Victorian classic, narrated in first person though not autobiographical, chronicles orphaned protagonist Pip's formative years around the Kent marshes, then in London, in the early to mid-1800s.

The story opens circa 1812 with seven-year-old Pip's frightening Christmas Eve graveyard encounter with escaped prison ship convict Abel Magwitch. The man scares the child into stealing food and a file to grind away his shackles, from Pip's custodian sister's kitchen. The next day, as Magwitch brawls with a fellow escapee, soldiers recapture the pair and return them to the ship, bound for the penal colony of New South Wales.

We next meet wealthy spinster recluse Miss Havisham, a jilted bride permanently clad in her old wedding dress, cloistered in her dilapidated house. She asks Pip's Uncle Pumblechook (actually Pip's brother-in-law's uncle) to source a male playmate for her young ward, Estella. After visiting Miss Havisham several times, at the old woman's urging Pip becomes enchanted with the petulant girl.

As they mature, Estella goes away to study, on the Continent, while Pip becomes his brother-in-law Joe Gargery's blacksmith apprentice. One day a lawyer, Mr. Jaggers, arrives at Joe's shop, announcing that an anonymous benefactor has provided Pip with a generous allowance. The conditions require Pip to move to London and become a gentleman. Assuming Miss Havisham his provider, Pip visits her to find Estella returned from overseas and more disdainful than ever.

After years pass, gentrified Pip gets himself into financial debt in London. Convict Magwitch returns from New South Wales a wealthy, self-made man and, to Pip's horror, reveals himself to be the mysterious longstanding benefactor. With a warrant out for Magwitch's arrest in England, he risks being captured and hanged. Pip and his friends Herbert Pocket and Startop hatch a plan for Magwitch to flee by boat. Pip also now discovers that Estella is Magwitch's natural daughter with Jaggers's housemaid, Molly, whom Jaggers had defended in a murder charge. Jaggers had then assigned Estella to Miss Havisham for adoption.

Pip learns that Miss Havisham's eccentric matchmaking behaviour is driven by her desire to avenge men, that she has used Estella to break Pip's heart. After Pip confronts the old woman with this in a showdown, she accidentally sets herself alight. Pip rescues her from the flames but she dies, remorseful of her cruel machinations.

Caught escaping England, Magwitch is jailed and becomes gravely ill. Visiting, Pip informs him that Estella, his daughter, is alive, but Magwitch dies behind bars, narrowly escaping his scheduled hanging. On losing Magwitch's lavish allowance after his sudden death, Pip is no longer a gentleman.

Having taken ill himself, Pip faces arrest for debt. His widowed brother-in-law Joe arrives in London, nurses Pip back to health, pays off his debt and returns to Kent. Pip realises that in his selfish pursuit of romance and riches, he has neglected kindly Joe, now alone in the world. Ready to make amends and begin anew, Pip returns to Kent to propose to his childhood companion Biddy, only to find that she has just married Joe. Pip begs Joes forgiveness anyway, and receives it. Promising to repay Joe's money and kindness, Pip moves to Egypt to live with Herbert and his wife, working as a clerk.

On another homecoming eleven years later, Pip revisits the ruins of Miss Havisham's house, where he finds the now widowed Estella, who had been harshly ill-treated by her husband, Bentley Drummle. She asks Pip's forgiveness for her past treatment of him, declaring that misfortune has changed her for the better. Taking Estella's hand, Pip leaves the old Havisham house, foreseeing 'no shadow of another parting from her.'

These characters seem deeper and more dynamic than the more widely satirical ones of Dickens' other works in a denser, more concise telling. The title refers to the 'Great Expectations' Pip holds of coming into his wealth and his elevation from bumpkin to gentleman. 'Expectations' refers to its Victorian definition, 'a legacy to come'. This title infers that wealth versus poverty is a significant theme, while others include social class, empire and ambition, love and rejection, homecoming, crime and the power of good over evil. Pip has great ambition yet fights guilt over various things almost throughout the book. The plot explores the social strata of Georgian England.

Of the numerous screen adaptations, many have been widely disappointing, the one notable exception being director David Lean's brilliant 1946 version, starring John Mills as Pip, Bernard Miles as Joe, Alec Guinness as Herbert, Finlay Currie as Magwitch, Martita Hunt as Miss Havisham, Anthony Wager as Young Pip, Jean Simmons as Young Estella and Valerie Hobson as the adult Estella.

Masterful storytelling with haunting eccentrics like the frail and embittered, but generous, Miss Havisham, never leaving her house since that fateful day at the altar, inhabiting a shadowy, unlit world of cobwebs and mice. The cold and beautiful Estella, who our hero falls for, is someone we hope will come to her senses about him. Pip's bossy sister and big-hearted brother-in-law, their extended family who come and go, somehow resonate powerfully even today.

The sounds and sights and smells of the story's many and varied scenes are remarkable.

Exquisite.

My review of Loved Ones, by Diana Mitford Mosley

Loved Ones

by Diana Mitford Mosley

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Charming reminiscences by arguably the most eloquent published Mitford sister. Diana was perhaps less frivolously funny, in print, than novelist sister Jessica, less gritty than activist Jessica and less straightforwardly sentimental than duchess sister Deborah Mitford.

This exquisite collection of pen portraits, of central figures from Diana's life, includes memories of Lytton Strachey and Dora Carrington|, her onetime neighbours and friends. Violet Hammersley, an author, close friend of her mother's and prominent Mitford childhood figure. Writer Evelyn Waugh, a very close friend. Diana's former brother-in-law Professor Derek Jackson, a leading physicist. Lord Berners, a dear friend she often stayed with at Faringdon House. Prince and Princess Clary, friends of hers after the Second World War. The final portrait is of her second husband Sir Oswald Mosley.

Some are true gems, e.g. Violet Hammersely:

'She was rather small and very dark, with black hair and huge dark eyes, and she had an expression of deep gloom. She had a rather low, hollow voice, and although she often laughed it was as if unwillingly. Her garden, at least the only garden of hers I ever saw, was a discreet green. When I first knew her, she was already a widow, and widow's weeds became her. To the end of her life, she was swathed in black scarves and shawls and veils; in later years not exactly in mourning, because many of her clothes were dark brown, but the whole effect had something more Spanish than French about it. Once when she was slightly annoying my sister Nancy, who used the powder and lipstick universal among our generation, by saying: "Painters don't admire make-up at all," Nancy retorted: "Oh well Mrs. Ham, you know it's all very well for you, but we can't all look like El Greco's mistress."'

The book features historic photographs of the subjects.

Actually, three of these pen portraits were republished in Diana's extensive 2008 collection The Pursuit of Laughter, so any fan who has read that collection will only find three unread ones in this earlier, shorter one.

Having, at her lowest point, been dubbed the 'most hated woman in England' for her romantic link to Brit fascist leader Mosley, then spending much of WWII in Holloway jail uncharged under wartime clause 18B, Diana remained disarmingly charming to all who met her. Never becoming bitter, she wrote in a published letter to her sister Debo: 'Being hated, as you know, means nothing to me.'

A remarkable figure of dignity and elegance, she wrote delectably, complete with Mitford 'shrieks' and 'teases' - if of a more understated, tongue-in-cheek variety than those of her published sisters.

A must read for any Mitford fan.

My review of Chocolat, by Joanne Harris

Chocolat

by Joanne Harris

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I gained kilos reading this book (is that what they call a spoiler alert?).

Chocolat topped the Sunday Times bestseller list and won the 2000 Creative Freedom Award, 2001 Whittaker Gold Award and 2012 Whittaker Platinum Award. It was shortlisted for the 2000 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award and 2001 Scripter Award. This novel's raging success encouraged Harris to write its sequels The Lollipop Shoes and Peaches for Monsieur le Curé.

Chocolat's big screen adaptation, starring Johnny Depp and Juliette Binoche, was nominated for eight BAFTAs and five Oscars. Like most books whose screen adaptions I saw first, this was slightly different to its onscreen counterpart, but we have to remember always that the book came first (i.e. it's often ultimately not the book but the film we should question). Nevertheless, I found the similarities greater than the differences, loving film and novel equally.

Synopsised as 'a darkly magical modern folktale centred on a chocolate shop owner, Vianne Rocher', Joanne Harris's evocative, sensuous pros has us drooling for, almost able to smell, the irresistible confection at the heart of the title. The characters are richly yet humbly drawn. We see inside many heads, examining closely the cross section of universal human issues affecting this beautiful township's residents.

Major themes addressed in much of Harris' literary work include the mother-child relationship, food having certain emotive quality and magic and horror hidden in ordinary things. Her works are influenced by Grimms’ Fairy Tales and Norse mythology. Unsurprisingly, she has been awarded several honorary doctorates for her extraordinary contribution to English literature.

Chocolat to me reads like the classic storytelling some were fortunate to have read to us as children. Each page of text turned appears simply yet charmingly formed, as if to pull no punches. Sensing no hidden tricks, we soon into the tale trust this author, readily following her along the delicious winding path she leads us down.

I closed the last page feeling satiated, pacified, optimistic - as I do after eating chocolate. A rare, traditional-style read that warmed the cockles of my heart.

My review of The Forsyte Saga, by John Galsworthy

The Forsyte Saga

by John Galsworthy

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

This is for me the definitive period saga, by Nobel Prize-winning John Galsworthy. The reader follows the intertwined characters' lives for many years and several generations, with the collection comprising three hefty novels breaking down into five volumes:

The Man of Property (1906)

Indian Summer of a Forsyte (1918)

In Chancery (1920)

Awakening (1920)

To Let (1921)

Almost everyone I've known had seen this before reading it, including my great-grandparents. Two silent film adaptations, 1921 and 1922, captivated some Galsworthy devotees but attracted erstwhile print-shy masses who became converts, running out in droves to buy the cumbersome books. 

Similarly, a high calibre 2002-3 miniseries starring Gina McKee and Damian Lewis, with an endearingly wrinkly Wendy Craig, proved a satisfying recreation for some author fans but a watchable inspiration for the new millennium's page-reluctant youth, hoards becoming seduced into reading it, fuelling a modern-day sales resurgence.

My own adolescent introduction to this extensive fictional family was via the classic 1967 TV adaptation with a cherubic young Michael York, the then stellar Nyree Dawn Porter, pretty ingénue Susan Hampshire and the all-accomplishing Margaret Tyzack (featuring, as Smither, the wondrous late Maggie Jones who would later win British hearts as Coronation Street's acerbic-tongued, gallows-humoresque Blanche Hunt).

The saga concerns the trials and tribulations of a twin-pronged nouveau riche British family, whose not so distant forbears were farmers. The author's own 'new money' upper-class family was not unlike this fictional one he so meticulously chronicles. The materially acquisitive protagonist, solicitor Soames Forsyte, is incurably unfulfilled despite his ever-expanding assets and status, his heart remaining shattered over first wife Irene.

Soames' rival cousin, painter Young Jolyon, who is actually older than Soames, was originally the family's favourite until deserting his wife for their daughter's governess, forever since thumbing his nose at society. The latter, however, subsequently remarries Soames' ex-wife, Irene, concreting their cousinly enmity.

Themes threading these volumes together include those common to the historic family saga genre: blood feuding, changing generations, mortality, ambition and duty versus desire.

There was something about the older Forsytes I found more endearing, their often-comical arch snobbery, their handwringing at not having quite yet reached that 'old money' mark, their whacky foibles, quirky prejudices and neurotic manifestations of status anxiety. 

The younger generations, as the saga progresses, have less edge, having mostly seen the errors of their forebears' ways and adapted for the 'better' (making them blander all round). They also represent the later period, as we compare them to their elders and their new epoch to times past. This characteristic is necessitated by the very concept of family saga. It demonstrates the loosening of restraint, the attitudinal progress time brings.

That necessity of genre notwithstanding, it is the very eccentricities, queerness and glaring shortcomings of the older, earlier Forsytes that makes them such colourful reading subjects (as was the case with those earlier penned, unforgettable characters of Dickens and other great nineteenth century masters from which Galswworthy's style seemingly draws considerable inspiration). 

Unlike some great sagas, this one never departs from English society's upper strata to glimpse the characters' lower-class counterparts, reminding us, perhaps, of the author's somewhat stifled cloistered upbringing. As if offsetting that limitation, there is sufficient of the 'downstairs' (the timeless, classless, primal) in some of these multidimensional, magnificently drawn 'upstairs' characters, whose humaneness at times transcends the abstract of class. Though they are all, superficially, defined by their staunch social status, we are frequently reminded of that humble, if ambitious, farmers' blood still coursing through their not yet fully gentrified veins. This paradoxical edge to the Forsytes is charming, sometimes laughable, sometimes sad but makes them always accessible to us, the reader.

It took me many months, with breaks between volumes but, having selected it as midwinter bedtime reading, I remained blissfully unhurried about the mammoth task. Was often unable to put it down and switch off the bedside lamp, getting in 'just another quick chapter before I nod off' then noticing the dawn glimmering in through the blinds. I was left feeling nauseatingly smug as I closed the final page of the final book.

By no means a quick, easy or lazy read, this detailed body of work demands intense focus or continuity evaporates. The mental investment, however, is worth the rewards, as we end up on intimate terms with a remarkable family. If you love historical sagas, The Forsyte Saga is considered by aficionados to be the original, the ultimate one of its kind. This is something you will have seriously missed out on if the effort is not made. A magnificent work from a master storyteller.

My review of Nicholas and Alexandra: The Classic Account, by Robert K. Massie

Nicholas and Alexandra: The Classic Account of the Fall of the Romanov Dynasty

by Robert K. Massie

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

More than five decades after its publication, this book still glows of those hallmarks that would later earn American author and historian Robert K. Massie a Pulitzer Prize. His interest in this last handful of ruling Romanovs was triggered by his son having haemophilia, as had Tsar Nicholas II's son, Tsarevich Alexei. The author's love of his subject sparkles from start to finish.

Massie's immaculate detail and empathic biographical style is on a par with that of the great Lady Antonia Fraser, who not until two years later penned her definitive Mary, Queen of Scots (1969). This extraordinary craftsmanship alone is worth the five stars I rated it with.  

With access now to material still classified in 1967, today's reader might be forgiven for dismissing parts of this work as outdated and incomplete propaganda, notably penned by an American during his country's Cold War with Russia. And yet, penned by a man who would devote most of his life to studying Russia's Imperial family, we sense this book's accuracy and personal impartiality. The nowadays obvious information gaps made no difference to me, as a novice reader of this time and place. I learnt from what was there, remaining captivated and enthralled throughout.

Its lack of political bias is admirable. Sure, Massie paints vividly the ugliness of rabid Bolshevist extremism over the towering bloodline autocracy it usurped, but his compassionate treatment of that toppled autocracy is generous for a writer from the democratic thinking U S of A.

The international lead up to World War I is insightful and informative. There would surely be no neutral way of depicting Germany's almost deranged Kaiser Wilhelm II in the context of this history, but thankfully he is no central player in this biography. 

I came to like and understand the human side of these misunderstood historical figures, the Romanovs, otherwise passed down to us under bitter revolutionary prejudice as personifications of an icily detached, staunchly autocratic elite. Their abominable treatment at the hands of Russia's revolutionaries is truly heart wrenching.

Tsar Nicholas we see as a mild-mannered man, perhaps weak in certain areas of rulership, but a good, kind, decent husband, father and son. It has been all too easy for anti-imperialism to downplay the sheer enormity of his empire and the lifelong commitment he inherited then handed over when facing defeat. He believed he was doing what was right for Russia. For all his Imperial droopiness, sincerity, integrity and likeability are his redeeming qualities. This cousin of King George V of the United Kingdom, to whom he bore such a striking physical resemblance, was a gentle, pious man who lived for his family and country.

I felt deeply for Nicholas's wife, the unpopular and ostracised (German born) Alexandra Feodorovna (Alix of Hesse), another cousin of King George V of the United Kingdom and granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Their children are beautifully, poignantly drawn, especially their only son, Alexei, without whose tragic hereditary illness (probably passed down from Queen Victoria) there would have been no Rasputin in this picture and perhaps therefore no violent rulership overthrow, so possibly no Bolshevist state.

The 'holy' yet sinister Rasputin is an enigmatic character shrouded in mystique and debauchery, but not without usefulness or heart. He will always intrigue readers, as will poor Alexandra's desperate support for him, the only person seemingly able to keep her tiny boy from death by bleeding. That contentious relationship between the Tsarina and the hard living peasant priest was callously used an excuse to trigger the almost inevitable revolution.

This book was the basis of a 1971 Academy Award-winning film of the same title, starring Michael Jayston and Janet Suzman in the title roles, with greats like Michael Redgrave, Laurence Olivier, Timothy West and Roy Dotrice, featuring the wondrous Irene Worth as the Dowager Empress Maria and Fiona Fullerton as Anastasia. Whilst the film has become stylistically dated, Massie's book remains untainted by the passage of over half a century.

I intend to read it again someday, which is the highest compliment I can give any book. Before I do that, I feel compelled to read Massie's 1995 update and elaboration of this work, The Romanovs: The Final Chapter, written when the Soviet Union fell, and records of the Romanovs were released. I somehow doubt, however, that for all its newer material, that follow up work could have come even close to his original, in sheer quality and readability.

As an ardent devotee of the historical biography genre, I cannot recommend this special treat highly enough to my reading peers.

My review of Wait for Me! by Deborah Mitford

Wait for Me!

by Deborah Mitford

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

For Mitford sisters' fans, Deborah is essential reading. The youngest, she achieved the highest rank, as Duchess of Devonshire. She was too young to know the earlier Mitford households, Batsford House then Asthall Manor, which were mythologised as 'Alconleigh' by sister Nancy in the bestselling semi-autobiographical novel The Pursuit of Love. 

Instead, Deborah grew up at Swinbrook, which their father built and the older Mitford girls despised due to its lack of historic charm or communal library (which had been most of their autodidactic bedrock).

In some ways therefore a standalone, Deborah lacked her siblings' unfulfilled yearnings for formal education, instead relishing her rural childhood and many animals. She loved horse riding and many of her father's country interests, which the others (except for 2nd eldest Pam) longed to escape.

Perhaps because of these adored formative years, she was arguably the most well-adjusted Mitford girl and was noted for always treating people of every social stratum equally.

When She married Lord Andrew Cavendish, younger son of the 10th Duke of Devonshire, in 1941, there was no thought of him inheriting the dukedom, the couple living in various bucolic settings on the fringes of her in-laws' estates. She otherwise went around England with her army husband, whose military pay was pretty ordinary.

Only when Andrew's older brother William, Marquess of Hartington, was killed in action in 1944 did he unexpectedly become heir. When Andrew became the 11th Duke of Devonshire on his father death in 1950, Deborah was a Duchess!

Post-war inheritance taxes of 80% approx. (a bill of £7 million or £220 million in 2016) meant selling off much of the vast Dukedom of Devonshire estate to pay for retaining the jewel in its crown, historic Chatsworth House.    

As the new Duchess, Deborah faced the mammoth task of resorting Chatsworth, for centuries the Cavendish family seat, which would open to the public to pay for its upkeep. From scratch she learned to restore and maintain one of Britain's foremost stately homes, becoming the face of Chatsworth for decades, at times manning Chatsworth's ticket office herself.

These projects later extended to other heritage listed sites in the estate. In those restorative arts, and in running a stately home, she became an expert, writing around a dozen books on Chatsworth itself, plus numerous works of personal memoir. In 1999, she was appointed a Dame Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (DCVO) by Queen Elizabeth II, for her service to the Royal Collection Trust.

She became Dowager Duchess on her husband's death in 2004 and died herself in 2014 aged 94, the last surviving Mitford sister.

Her memoir Wait for me! takes its title from her being the youngest and therefore the last in early family outings and activities, always running behind trying to catch up on her tiny young legs. Her teasing eldest sister Nancy always said down to earth Deborah had retained the mental age of an eight- or nine-year-old, never acquiring the airs and graces expected of a grand duchess. Of course, this was Nancy's way with all.

Deborah (nicknamed 'Debo' from an early age) entertained and befriended everyone of world importance, from the Kennedys in the 50s and 60s to Prince Charles and Camilla in the new millennium, yet always had some small anecdote about even the humblest servant.

This striking humility, with her gratitude for the good fortune she enjoyed (and quiet stoicism over the losses of three of her seven babies), makes her writing immediate and engaging. Like most of her famous sisters, she had a natural talent for writing and storytelling and was a true eccentric, at strokes fascinating, moving and hilarious.

Not the fanciest Mitford sister, the wittiest or the archest, Debo is the most solid and grounded of those published. Her photographs from over the decades, from angelic infancy to tulle and diamante bedecked debutante, to hostess of twentieth century world leaders, are breathtaking.

Of all Debo's books, this one in particular is the icing on the cake for any Mitford canon devotee. She does not disappoint!

My review of Atonement, by Ian McEwan

Atonement

by Ian McEwan 

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

This historical family saga is one of my favourite literary works, which surprises me as it was written not in antiquity with my other all-time favourites, but in 2001. My introduction was director Joe Wright's 2007 BAFTA and Academy Award nominated movie, starring James McAvoy and Keira Knightley. Then when I read the book, Ian McEwan's pros had me glued. 

The stylistic element is the strongest hook. Had it been told less masterfully, this tale may have had little more going for it than its sweeping timespan and those popular mid twentieth century historical landmarks that just tickle the outermost reaches of living memory. The beautifully structured story divides cleanly into three parts: 1935 England; World War II England and France; then modern-day England.

It begins on a sweltering summer day in 1935, when thirteen-year-old aspiring writer Briony Tallis, at her wealthy family's grand country estate, makes a clumsy and naïve error of judgement which will ruin lives:

Having received her maternal cousins, twins Jackson and Pierrot and their older sister Lola, as summer houseguests, Briony writes a play for the four youngsters to perform at a family gathering. But her three cousins have come from an unsettled home, with their parents expected to separate.

In the oppressive heat, Briony becomes exasperated motivating her disorientated cousins into order for the play. Unable to push them to her standards, Briony seeks solace in an upstairs bedroom, from where she witnesses through a window what looks like an altercation, down below at the front garden fountain.

Her older sister Cecilia, home from Cambridge University, is involved in a flirtatious tiff with childhood friend Robbie Turner. Son of the Tallis family housekeeper and nowadays Cecelia's fellow Cambridge student, Robbie is also home on leave. Briony misconstrues the scene, concluding that Robbie is being aggressive to Cecilia. 

Back at his home Robbie writes several drafts of a love letter to Cecelia, handing a copy to little Briony, outdoors, to deliver. As Briony skips away with it, Robbie realises he has accidentally given her the wrong draft, one he had meant to discard, containing obscenities. En route home with Cecelia's letter, Briony opens and reads it, becoming shocked and perplexed as to Robbie's intentions.

Later at home, Briony walks in on Robbie and Cecilia making love in a quiet corner of the family library. Having come to think Robbie a 'maniac', Briony misinterprets their lovemaking as rape and feels protective towards Cecelia, who is saying nothing.

A dinner party is held to welcome home Briony and Cecelia's older brother Leon, who brings along his wealthy friend Paul Marshall. During this, young twins Jackson and Pierrot are discovered to have run away, possibly in fear of being forced to appear in Briony's play, possibly in distress over their own uncertain domestic situation. The party forms a posse, searching the darkened grounds for the boys. Briony happens upon her older cousin, Lola, apparently being raped by a man whose identity is veiled in shadow. 

Back at the house everyone fusses over a shocked and bedraggled Lola, who seems unable or reluctant to identify her assailant. The twins are still missing. Briony takes it on herself to speak out, accusing Robbie Turner of the awful deed. Robbie is still outdoors, possibly afraid to return and hand himself in, maybe awaiting his next victim. The police are called and Briony identifies Robbie to them as the rapist. She claims to have recognised his face in the dark. Having eventually found the missing twins himself, Robbie then arrives back at the house as day breaks. He is arrested, charged and jailed for Lola's rape, with only Cecilia and Robbie's mother believing his protestations of innocence.

The story jumps to World War II, after Robbie has served some years in jail. He is released for army enlistment, to fight in the war. Cecilia has left home and trained as a nurse, severing contact with her family for allowing Robbie to go to jail. Robbie and Cecilia have only maintained contact by mail, since she was earlier forbidden from visiting him in jail. But before Robbie is sent to France, the couple meet once briefly during Cecilia's lunch break, sharing a kiss before separating.

In France, the army retreats to Dunkirk. Badly injured, Robbie seeks out shelter. There he thinks about Cecilia and reflects on past events, still puzzling over possible reasons for Briony accusing him. The memory of his brief final meeting with Cecilia is all that keeps him going, his only aim being to see her again. He falls asleep in Dunkirk, the day before evacuation.

Back in England, remorseful eighteen-year-old Briony has refused her place at Cambridge, instead training for nursing in London, as if undertaking some self-imposed duty of penance. With the benefit of hindsight and maturity, she has realised the gravity of her terrible mistake five years ago. She now suspects it was Leon's friend, Paul Marshall, who she saw raping Lola. 

This suspicion is strengthened when Briony attends Lola's London wedding to Paul Marshall. After watching these twisted nuptials, Briony journeys to face Cecilia at her sparse rented flat near Balham, to make long overdue amends. Robbie is there, home on leave. As the couple refuse Briony their forgiveness, she insists on trying to make amends by initiating legal proceedings to exonerate Robbie. Briony offers to change her original statement (even though Paul Marshall will never be held responsible for his crime because of his marriage to Lola, the victim). However, the couple point out that Briony would be seen as an unreliable witness, if suddenly admitting her own lies. 

In London 1999, we read seventy-seven-year-old Briony Tallis, a successful novelist with terminal dementia, tell us her dying truths. She has penned an acclaimed novel (the book-within-a-book we've read in parts one and two of this novel) in which Cecilia and Robbie are reunited after Dunkirk. In reality, however, they never met again, as Briony here humbly acknowledges.

Old Briony concedes that Robbie most likely died at Dunkirk, from septicaemia caused by his injuries. Cecilia was probably killed by a bomb that destroyed gas and water mains above Balham tube station. Whilst Briony's plotline of Lola's wedding to Paul Marshall was true, Briony had not, in reality, visited Cecilia at her rented flat near Balham to make amends. Such is often an author's purpose in fiction - to imaginarily undo wrongdoings. To atone themselves of something they otherwise cannot. 

Briony justifies her rewriting of history in reuniting Cecilia and Robbie, claiming she saw no point offering her readers a pitiless ending. No sense or satisfaction, she rationalises, could be drawn from that. She also wanted to give Robbie and Cecilia their due happiness by bringing them together. Since they could not reunite in life, Briony permitted them this in her fiction.

By tracking older Briony's life journey, the reader has examined the human need for personal atonement.

This had the makings of an instant classic, with all the qualities of so many great epics yet the intimacy of those deeply personal works we curl up with on cold winter nights. It is no wonder it sold so well, was shortlisted for the 2001 Booker Prize for fiction and listed in 2010 by TIME magazine as of the 100 greatest English-language novels since 1923.

Impossible to predict where the story is taking you, yet utterly compelling, this is a haunting mystery but so much more. One of those rare, special novels that will likely never date, which everyone should read at least once.

My review of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, by Patrick Süskind

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

by Patrick Süskind

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Set in eighteenth century France, this is the story of olfactory genius Jean-Baptiste Grenouille and his murderous quest for the perfect scent. An olfactory take on a foreign time and place, this blew my mind. No wonder it sold over fifteen million copies.

The darkly enigmatic 2006 German thriller movie, which I watched first, was remarkable. Rising UK star Ben Whishaw took the title role, flanked by Hollywood stalwart Dustin Hoffman and Royal Shakespeare veteran Alan Rickman. The novel, though, in a class of its own, must have seemed near impossible to adapt to even the deftest filmmaker.

How Patrick Süskind achieved this sensuous masterpiece, how long it must have taken, is unimaginable. The somewhat protracted premise resembles that of some great European classic:

Our protagonist is born at a stinking fish stall in Paris. His mother, whose previous four babies born thus have arrived dead or dying, expects him be the same. She cuts his umbilical cord and leaves him for dead. But when baby Grenouille cries aloud from the fish heads and guts, his mother is caught and tried for multiple infanticide. Found guilty, she is hanged.

Grenouille's various wet nurses find him too greedy so offload him to others. When given to a parish church, he is assigned a wet nurse named Jeanne Bussie. Jeanne returns Grenouill to the priest, Terrier, complaining that he drinks her dry and has no scent, she claims he is possessed by the devil.

Unconvinced, Terrier dismisses the wet nurse and holds Grenouille himself. Curious, Terrier takes a smell, but there is indeed none. When Grenouille awakens and sniffs the air, Terrier feels that the baby is sniffing his soul, examining his deepest secrets. Recoiling, he too now considers the baby a devil. He runs across town and leaves the infant at an orphanage on the outskirts of Paris.

Endowed with extraordinary olfactory capacities, Grenouille navigates the orphanage using only smell and seldom sight. Unafraid of much and readily accepting of discipline, Grenouille grows up cold and emotionless. When the orphanage proprietor realises Grenouille can sniff out hidden cash, she becomes unnerved and apprentices him out to a tanner. 

Grenouille the youth explores Paris in his leisure time, memorising its symphony of urban odours. With no specially preferred scent, he greedily seeks out any he can. Paris is filthy, its inhabitants crammed together into ancient, narrow streets. One day, after memorising all these stenches, he encounters one quite unlike all the familiar filthy ones. Tracing its source to a young virginal girl slicing plums, his heart races.

Unacquainted with love or affection, he is perplexed by his newfound arousal for this virginal female scent. Edging closer to better smell her, he causes the girl to startle. She turns, sees him and freezes in fear. Grenouille covers her mouth and smothers her. He strips her, lays her on the ground and smells her scent until it leaves her body, along with her life.

He memorises her scent, the first one he has ever perceived as 'good'.  Pleasantly dazed, Grenouille returns to the tanner's shop where he sleeps. He decides he must become a creator of scents, the greatest perfumer in the world, so as to recreate this virgin's scent.

In his quest to isolate and preserve aromas, he becomes apprenticed to a once great perfumer, Baldini, proving himself a talented pupil. His special ability to discern and dissect scents helps him create fabulous perfumes that restore Baldini's profile, making him Paris's most popular perfumer. 

So begins a long and convoluted journey that traverses the French countryside to, amongst other places, Grasse, home of the great perfumers, all the while inside the head of this exquisitely monstrous character who we somehow both condemn yet understand. 

Whilst the novel explores the olfactory sense and the relationship with emotions that scents carry, it is also a story of universal human morality.

Consuming Süskind's pros became such an all-consuming experience that the tapestry like plot became almost incidental. If you never read this book, you will have missed out on something truly magnificent. Not a quick read or an easy one, but indisputably worth the weeks spent bleary-eyed, page-flicking into the wee small hours with a tortured little bedside light begging to be switched off.

My review of Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel

Wolf Hall 

by Hilary Mantel

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Hilary Mantel surpassed herself with this new and unique take on Thomas Cromwell: zealous English Reformation advocate and chief minister to King Henry VIII.

Not only did she successfully break the mold of this erstwhile villainously drawn character, but she also found her own unique version of 'olde English' language to tell her tale of a fascinating man. (I was hearing distinctly Chaucerian echoes from these weightily bound pages.)

We see blood pumped into his cheeks, air breathed into his lungs, rounded dimension and human authenticity duly awarded to a figure suffering an all too often two dimensionally dastardly literary treatment by so many. Here we see beneath his hard, scheming shell, wherein lurks a smart yet endearing family man, deeply respectful of his old master, Cardinal Wolsey and sincerely eager for social reform.

Mantel's everyday Tudor world is one we feel we have really visited, smelled and tasted, her characterisations exquisitely raw and appealing.

This is not a book to be skipped through, but is immeasurably rewarding for the requisite patience and focus it demands. Whilst I actually liked its sequel, Bring Up the Bodies, far better, that does not detract from this first instalment's well deserved 5-star rating from me.

The 2015 six-part BBC TV adaptation, with the wondrous Claire Foy as Ann Boleyn truly lived up to the book.

My review of Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë

Wuthering Heights

by Emily Brontë

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

My first reading of this was under force, at school. I loathed it. When I more recently came across it and, for some reason, reread it, I loved it in its entirety. We come to appreciate things, as adults, that we despised as kids.

Adaptations have found their way into four films (the most memorable being director William Wyler's Academy Award winning 1939 version starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon), countless radio incarnations, three TV series, a ballet, three operas and a musical show. 

This, Emily Brontë's first and only novel, appeared in 1847 under the nom de plume Ellis Bell, a year before she died aged 30. Her sister Charlotte then edited Wuthering Heights and arranged its posthumous second edition publication in 1850. Its depiction of human cruelty was contentious, challenging Victorian morality ideals, examining religious hypocrisy, social class and gender roles.

Central themes are passion, jealousy and vengefulness. Smouldering, swarthy Heathcliff and his great love Catherine and many adversaries are described impeccably by earthy housekeeper Nelly Dean, who I'd so like to have a pot of tea and a natter with.

Set on the North Yorkshire Moors between roughly 1771 and 1803, mostly in flashback form, Wuthering Heights is the story's farmhouse setting. Arriving in 1801 to rent nearby Thrushcross Grange, wealthy southern gentleman Mr. Lockwood seeks peace and recuperation. He visits his landlord, Mr. Heathcliff, at his remote neighbouring moorland farmhouse, Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff is coarsely mannered, his teenaged mistress of the house reserved and their young male servant seemingly some family member.

During his visit, Lockwood becomes snowed in at Wuthering Heights. He is reluctantly escorted to a bedchamber, where he finds books and graffiti of one-time inhabitant Catherine. He has a nightmare in which ghostly Catherine attempts entry at the window. Lockwood's cries rouse Heathcliff who arrives at the room. Believing Lockwood, Heathcliff opens the window to let in Catherine's ghost, but nothing happens. Transferring Lockwood to his own bedroom, Heathcliff returns to watch the window.

Next morning, after Heathcliff escorts Lockwood back to Thrushcross Grange, housekeeper Nelly Dean recounts to the guest the story of Wuthering Heights' family:

Flashback to thirty years before. Then householder Mr. Earnshaw, on a trip to Liverpool, adopts a homeless gypsy boy, brings home to Wuthering Heights and renames him Heathcliff. Earnshaw's son, Hindley, feels replaced in his father's affections by Heathcliff, turning bitterly jealous. Hindley's sister Catherine befriends Heathcliff, spending hours playing daily with him, out on the moors. Hindley is then packed off to boarding college.

Three years on, when Earnshaw dies, Hindley returns as master of Wuthering Heights with his new wife, Frances. He allows Heathcliff to stay but relegates him to servant status.

After ambling one day to Thrushcross Grange, spying on the Lintons for fun, Heathcliff and Catherine are caught trespassing. Heathcliff is sent home while Catherine, injured by the Lintons' dog, is taken in to recuperate. Remaining with the Lintons some time, Catherine is affected by their gentility. She returns to Wuthering Heights more refined and scorns Heathcliff's roughness. When the Lintons visit, Heathcliff dresses up to impress Catherine and starts an argument with Edgar Linton. Hindley locks Heathcliff in the attic. Catherine tries comforting Heathcliff, who vows revenge on Hindley.

The following year, after having a son, Hareton, Frances dies. The widowed Hindley turns to drink, then moves away for a while. 

Two years on, when Catherine and Edgar Linton become closer friends and then lovers, she distances herself from Heathcliff. Catherine confides in Nelly that Edgar has proposed and she has accepted, although she loves him less than Heathcliff, whom she can't marry due to his low rank and poor education. She instead hopes to use her position as Edgar's wife to elevate Heathcliff. Eavesdropping into this conversation between Catherine and Nelly, Heathcliff hears Catherine reason that it would 'degrade' her to marry him, though he misses her admission to Nelly her love for him over Edgar.

Heathcliff runs away, disappearing without a trace. Distraught, Catherine makes herself ill out of spite. Nursing her to health, Nelly and Edgar soon pander to her every whim to prevent relapse.

Three years on, Edgar and Catherine have married and live together at Thrushcross Grange. Heathcliff returns, a wealthy gentleman, to Catherine's delight and Edgar's chagrin. Edgar's sister, Isabella, falls for Heathcliff, who encourages her infatuation as a means of revenge. Catherine locks herself in her room, making herself ill again through spite and jealousy.

Heathcliff assumes residence at Wuthering Heights, habitually gambling with Hindley and teaching Hareton bad habits. Hindley has to mortgage Heathcliff the farmhouse to pay his gambling dues and debt. When Hindley dies, six months after Catherine, Heathcliff becomes master of Wuthering Heights. He elopes with Isabella Linton.

When they return some months later, Heathcliff hears of Catherine's illness. With Nelly's aid, he visits her secretly. Catherine's condition turns out to be pregnancy. After giving birth to a daughter, Cathy, Catherine dies. Isabella, pregnant herself, deserts the brutal Heathcliff and flees south, where she gives birth to a son, Linton, before falling ill. She dies and Edgar travels south to retrieve his nephew, Linton, to adopt and educate him.   

Young Cathy, meanwhile, has become a beautiful, spirited girl. Though usually seldom leaving Thrushcross Grange, she ventures farther afield in her father Edgar's absences. Riding across the moors to Wuthering Heights, she discovers her cousin, Hareton. When her father returns with her other cousin, the weak and sickly Linton, the boy's father Heathcliff prohibits Edgar custody, insisting that Linton live instead at Wuthering Heights.

Three years later, on the moors, Nelly and Cathy run into Heathcliff, who takes them to Wuthering Heights to see Linton and Hareton. Heathcliff hopes Linton and Cathy will marry, making Linton heir to Thrushcross Grange. Linton and Cathy begin a secret liaison, echoing that of their respective parents, Heathcliff and Catherine, as youngsters.

The following year, after falling ill, Edgar's condition worsens while Nelly and Cathy are out on the moors, where Heathcliff and Linton trick them into entering Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff holds them captive, enforcing Cathy's marriage to Linton. With Linton's help, Cathy then escapes, returning to the Grange where her father dies.

As master of Wuthering Heights and now Thrushcross Grange, and as Cathy's father-in-law, Heathcliff insists she leave the Grange and move to Wuthering Heights. Soon after she arrives, Linton dies. Though her young cousin Hareton shows her kindness, Cathy becomes entirely withdrawn.

Here, Nelly's long flashback catches up to the present. Lockwood soon tires of the moors, announcing to Heathcliff his departure. Returning to the area by chance, eight months later, with his tenancy at Thrushcross Grange still valid, he lodges there again. Finding Nelly living at Wuthering Heights, he enquires what has happened since he left.

She explains that she moved to Wuthering Heights to replace departing housekeeper Zillah. Hareton, after an accident, became confined to the farmhouse. During his convalescence, he and Cathy became close and got engaged. Heathcliff, after seeing visions of Catherine, stopped eating for four days and was found dead in Catherine's old bedchamber. He was buried next to Catherine.

Readying to leave, Lockwood passes the graves of Catherine, Edgar and Heathcliff. He pauses to contemplate the stillness of the moors.

This is Victorian gothic at its finest. Chilly, ghostly, disturbing and ravishingly beautiful literature that will never be successfully emulated - thank goodness.

My review of The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins

The God Delusion

by Richard Dawkins

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

This is a great read and will, I suspect, be more confronting to agnostics than to worshippers, it's thoroughness and well-argued points really putting the reader on the spot and making them think, rationally.

English biologist Richard Dawkins is a professorial fellow of New College, Oxford and former holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford. He therefore has no need to seek profile, as certain of his detractors attacked him for over this mega seller. Most true religious believers I've spoken to remain unthreatened by Dawkins' powerful polemic. Some have accused him of preaching atheism in the same way religious zealots proselytise. That was not the impression I came away with. Nor do I believe Dawkins guilty of polarising here, that mind-split was already centuries old before he was born. He certainly fuels it well though.

In December 2006, this reached No.4 in the New York Times Hardcover Nonfiction Best Seller list, remaining on the list for 51 weeks. By January 2010, the English version had sold over 2 million copies.

I read it with some deep grins and pensive frowns. I found this as meticulously researched and presented as I expected of such a preeminent academic. He's at times a cranky old debater, almost comical in itself, but his passion for logic and reason is mightily impressive.

Not something you can flick casually through, I don't think, but the requisite intellectual effort is stimulating, the end result rewarding the cerebral value inestimable.

Some things need spelling out sometimes and here's a splendid example of that.

My review of Mary Boleyn: The Mistress of Kings, by Alison Weir

Mary Boleyn: The Mistress of Kings

by Alison Weir

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Like all Weir biographies this delivered and more, for me.

The historically sneered at 'loose' sister of Anne Boleyn, wife of Henry VIII's favourite Gentleman of the Privy chamber, was the daughter of an Earl-envoy and Countess-Lady-in-Waiting to both Queen Elizabeth of York and Catherine of Aragon.

A queen's Maid-of-Honour, Mary was also the esteemed aunt of Elizabeth I. And the dearly beloved mother of two top ranking courtiers (her daughter Lady Knollys became Elizabeth's chief Lady of the Bedchamber, her son Henry was created Baron Hunsdon and Knight of the Garter). Also, sister to two siblings famously executed for high treason and incest.

Like her sister, Anne, and their ambassador father, Thomas, Mary spent time in the French royal court. She was rumoured to have had affairs there, including with King Francis himself, who on record later referred to her as 'The English Mare', 'my hackney' and 'a great slag, infamous above all'.

She becomes a more interesting figure when seen contextually, in amongst a varying range of players. Some have criticised Weir for this approach, wanting a more zoomed-in exclusive of Mary. I see its purpose and liked this wider angle, seeing where she slotted quite differently into various lives rather than some two-dimensional glance at her bare particulars (if you'll pardon the pun).

Someone, someday, had to give Mary Boleyn this break, so who better to do it than this excellent popular historian? Alison Weir's research on even the scantest of possibilities is immaculate, always marvellously coherent. To her credit she is rightly cautious around presenting theory as fact. Some have expressed frustration at the resulting ambiguity which I conversely feel shows depth and integrity.

In the absence of harder evidential material, earlier writers' unchallenged reduction of this poor creature to the 'great and infamous whore' made it all too tempting for literary hoards to follow suit, make Mary fair game, pass her along (if you'll pardon this pun also). Hence this book's raison d'être.

Examining Henry VIII's potential paternity of Mary's eldest two offspring has been done aplenty before, mostly in the affirmative, whereas Weir introduces a feasible negative option of answering this hairy old question: Henry acknowledged neither as his, while famously and publicly acknowledging his other illegitimate children of other mistresses.

Important, too, examining whether Mary was the elder or younger sister of Anne, which could have served to address their logical places in the cue to Henry's privy chambers (rather than one sister being simply 'easier' than the other).

It's established that Anne's methodology of keeping Henry waiting for years was carefully steered and driven by the ambitious Boleyn elders, while Mary's earlier liaison had been less politically contrived, more spontaneous. I still sense that the vulnerable, if impetuous, Mary was prey to the lusty king, while he in turn became prey to the ambitious Anne (who herself became prey to the anti-Boleyn faction).

I enjoyed Weir's closer look at widowed Mary's later love marriage to the lowlier William Stafford. And of her consequent banishment from court by her embarrassed sister Queen Anne, confirming much about hard hearted Anne and leaving the reader empathic towards Mary. This was a woman ruled by her heart, contrasting with her ruthless and (I believe) younger sister.

Whilst the temptation has been to conclude that Mary, who would sadly wind up in obscurity, was the more scatterbrained of the two sisters, it was ultimately she who, literally, kept her head.

Can't see how any history reader would not relish this superb work.