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s of the aeons before yesterday third raters driven by grudges arrant xenophobia and an inability to comprehend or indeed to think it worth teaching the basics of history or economics so having got that off my chest thank you there will undoubtedly be more despairing pro twenty first century bleatings from me as we move ever more swiftly to the referendum clifftop how does the honours system fare in books once upon a time it seems things were much simpler some chaps were knights principally because of their prowess at killing other people in a very sporting manner and others were lords principally by dint of being the sons grandsons and great grandsons of other chaps who had not only been awfully good at killing people but who had impressed some king or other himself a chap awfully good at killing people but with the added finesse of getting other chaps to do at least some of the killing for him and been given a slightly casually carved off chunk of britain to go and be mini me in sorry make that go and hold in the name of king whoever presumably on the grounds of keep your friends close and your enemies even closer many of these lords were brothers or younger sons of kings the whole thing is the teeniest bit testosterone fuelled girls only got to be ladies by marrying or being the daughters of knights and lords which is one in the eye for all those mothers who told their daughters that being a lady is all about good manners and having a hankie on you at all times and what all this leads to in bookish terms is of course thomas malory s morte d arthur sir gawain and the green knight read the fabulous translation by simon armitage and tennyson s idylls of the king now i come to think about it that s a knight and a lord doing the writing come on ma am a knighthood for mr armitage please it does not take a social commentator of genius to spot that the whole world of arthurian legend is really frightfully county where darling absolutely everyone knows everyone else and is titled has a huge country estate and enjoys blood sports oh and the girls hang around in inappropriately flimsy frocks and lust after the brawny chaps rather than the infinitely rarer thoughtful ones gawain for example brave and handsome and with an iq struggling towards a whole number on the evidence of the text or indeed arthur himself the last man on the planet to spot what is going on between his wife and freud thou shouldst be living at this hour lancelot all this land owning brings us to shakespeare william himself didn t have much of it but what he had he held grimly moving boundary stones to gain an extra few inches on his fields in stratford and buying the biggest house in his old home town but knights lords and kings were his stock in trade and his english history plays are awash with people called suffolk warwick and york a moment s inattention at the theatre and one can feel high and dry in a sea of people addressing each other as leamington spa or chipping sodbury bringing about strong feelings of solidarity with winnie the pooh who querulously enquired three cheers for pooh for who why what did he do when you add into the heady mix the fact that there were very few christian names to go around you can see what a social nightmare living in mediaeval england must have been as exemplified in the snappy little dialogue between queen margaret and the duchess of york in richard iii it s act 4 scene 4 if you re dying to read on queen margare t tell o er your woes again by viewing mine i had an edward till a richard kill d him i had a harry till a richard kill d him thou hadst an edward till a richard kill d him thou hadst a richard till a richard killed him duchess of york i had a richard too and thou didst kill him i had a rutland too thou holp st to kill him queen margaret thou hadst a clarence too and richard kill d him the queen is cheating at this point because the duke of clarence the one who gets drowned in a butt of malmsey has a perfectly good first name george which has the unique selling point of being unbagged by anyone else in the play although to be honest there are so many bit parts for lord this and lord that any one of whom might have been known to their friends and relations as good old george that i m afraid i did not go and look them all up for you sorry but to end on a bright note the northernreader household has long presumed that penelope wilton s damehood must have been lost in the post today hurray and hurrah it arrived to a truly great actress congratulations posted in uncategorized tagged aa milne alfred tennyson christopher marlowe michael bond penelope wilton simon armitage thomas malory william shakespeare 3 replies week 114 showtime posted on june 4 2016 by the northern reader 5 it used to be called the season and jolly tiring it was too never part of the coming out which meant something quite different then balls and aristocratic hob nobbing which formed the invisible web binding together the members of a now vanished caste i look back in astonishment to realise how many of the london season events were an occasional part of my childhood not a horsey lot we were not the family that counted the days to royal ascot badminton and the epsom derby although a later extremely mild interest has led me before now to cheltenham and goodwood in the days when it was still about horses wimbledon as i have confessed before has left memories only of acute and almost terminal boredom the highlight used to be the chelsea flower show i had some halcyon years living on a houseboat practically next door and in the days when members day meant you and one or two other people pottering blissfully about in frocks gents lounge suiting in the sunlit acres ah it was very heaven those blue remembered hills whereon celebrity had not been invented since those far off days the northernreader household its back turned against the metropolis hurrah has found its pleasures in a harmless addiction to country and county shows if you have yet to experience a day spent in comfortable footwear solemnly debating the relative merits of different breeds of perfectly darling sheep make this your breakthrough year we have happy memories of years and years of drinking pimms and watching the pole climbing no really at the new forest show only our morbid dislike of traffic kept us away from the royal welsh since becoming adopted citizens of northumberland our cravings are splendidly fed by the northumberland show and that was where we were to be found yesterday knee deep in cattle pigs dogs and tiny children driving tanks around a field the country show has seldom if ever featured as a key locus in fiction which is a shame because all human and indeed sentient life is there a splendid setting for comedy tragedy love and mayhem i suggest pg wodehouse s love among the chickens explores many of ukridge s get rich quick ideas but sadly exhibiting at the local show is not one of them incidentally when did chicken farms fall from favour as an absolutely sure fire thing for making love or money wodehouse s breezy chaps are always falling back of the idea as a perfect scheme but betty macdonald s the egg and i and indeed one the plot twists and turns in dorothy l sayers unnatural death would tend to suggest that there is a melancholy or even a sinister side lurking among our feathered friends race meetings have become synonymous with jilly cooper territory in fiction if not in life haven t read one and haven t encountered burly lotharios with barbara cartlandish names so cannot claim any right to judgment here and of course with dick francis s thrillers which marry detailed knowledge of the racing world with the most wooden characters since thunderbirds and are therefore known collectively there are about a million of them in the northernreader household as the woodentops go to the races the london season in all its debutantish horror lies behind nancy mitford s the pursuit of love and love in a cold climate and is even more clearly brought to life in her sister jessica s memoir hons and rebels ef benson s lucia in london charts his heroine s attempts to break into high society if you haven t read the mapp and lucia novels the best recommendation i can give to entice you in is that benson completely nails the significance of saying no with emphasis to mean i never heard anything so marvellous and it thrills me through and through please go on at once and tell me a great deal more and if that doesn t make you want to add benson to your much cherished jane austen and other wasps shelf i despair let us shake off the dust of london and retire gratefully back to the country and its social pleasures our first glimpse of tess red lips and sash white dress and all in hardy s tess of the d urbervilles finds our heroine skipping round the maypole i have only to recall it and the several hundred dutiful essays retelling it to me handed in each year by undergraduates to know that the moment when i can re read tess has not yet dawned more enjoyable might be peter tinniswood s play the village fete i don t know it but he was such a good writer that i m looking forward to making its acquaintance now i ve stumbled upon it miss read of course is as ever a splendid source of fetes fairs and jamborees as is barbara pym and why has it only just dawned on me how much those terrific writers have in common if all else fails we can revisit enid blyton s mary mouse who in mary mouse and the garden party performs the useful function of setting out all the hard work that lies behind such a festive occasion in so much grim detail it put at least one impressionable young reader off anything to do with such jolly community get togethers for very many years ah how are the mighty fallen this summer i use the term loosely having looked out of the window i find myself organising a village midsummer night s party and running the raffle for the village fete and on both days the sun will shine print frocks will be worn bunting will flap and best of all there will be books it s beginning to look like a northernreader summer posted in uncategorized tagged barbara pym betty macdonald dick francis dorothy l sayers ef benson enid blyton jane austen jessica mitford jilly cooper miss read nancy mitford peter tinniswood pg wodehouse thomas hardy 5 replies week 113 flat posted on may 21 2016 by the northern reader 6 with thanks to ronald searle this is how i imagine the managing agents must look i have spent the last few weeks which have felt like geological eras edging towards selling a flat no despite what our current beloved leader s sidekick would have you believe this does not mean that i am rachman reincarnated leafing through my property portfolio in the bond like fastnesses of northernreader towers i had a small lump sum and in the absence of any pension too young hurrah for a state one and too female to have ever been offered a private one a flat seemed like a slightly better return on capital than say a bank account if only bonuses and indeed salaries were capped to the interest rates these people offer it also offered the humble pleasures of drastically improving britain s housing stock one flat at a time and being a model landlord just call me pollyanna so much less rude than poor deluded fool what has actually kneaded the iron deep into my soul however has been the managing agents who as the same unsavoury individuals but wearing a multiplicity of hats hold the freehold act as their own surveyors do their own conveyancing and don t maintain and run the building dante thou shouldst be living at this hour because managing agents are a sub species below even estate agents bankers and politicians enough of the brutalities of real life how about flats in fiction strangely enough none of the occupants of literature s flats and apartments seem cursed with managing agents the male of the species is often attended by a housekeeper sherlock holmes s mrs hudson or a valet margery allingham s albert campion with the disreputable lugg dorothy l sayers lord peter wimsey and his man bunter bertie wooster and jeeves male detectives it seems are irresistibly drawn to the flat as an address yes i know bertie isn t a detective unless of course you count as you should his triumphant work in the case of aunt agatha s pearls aka aunt agatha takes the count in wodehouse s the inimitable jeeves hercule poirot is another denizen of an apartment block relying on george for sustenance and clean socks i cannot think of a single example of a chap who fends for himself in a flat or one whose narrative trajectory is marked by such mundanities as popping to the shops or doing the washing up several of the males of the flat dwelling species do however display a keen interest in the nicer points of interior design not holmes obviously but wimsey favours a terrifically modish primrose and black scheme at one point and poirot prides himself on manifesting le dernier cri of art deco and jolly uncomfortable and foreign it is all made to sound flats occupied by women in fiction cover a wider social range but all i think are meant to give us some sense of the freedom that can be enjoyed by a woman living in a city while the flats themselves may vary from the steamy bed sits of john betjeman and edna o brien territory to the fabulous luxury of delysia lafosse s love nest in winifred watson s miss pettigrew lives for a day they all offer the promise of a life less ordinary and in particular of a life not spent darning a man s socks virginia woolf quite rightly identifies a woman s need for a room of one s daphne du maurier looking frankly grumpy own before she can find a sense of self how very much more the autonomy of a woman with a living room a bedroom a kitchen and a bathroom and be it noted as an advantage of flat dwelling for people with better things to do no garden i m not sure that the physical structure of the building is ever specified but mary smiling s home in cold comfort farm simply must be a flat albeit a sumptuously huge one all those brassieres because to flora poste and to us the widowed mrs smiling is the embodiment of a certain sort of freedom which comes entirely ah the wise jane austenishness of it from her possession of a good fortune and her consequent total absence of need for a husband what a bore sex is stella gibbons implies your age and your inclinations will tend to colour your response poor old flora economically and hormonally driven to end up dwindling into a wife and if by chance you haven t read congreve s the way of the world now is the moment if only i d remembered it in time for last month s northernreader book club when we talked about the books we would like to make the film of apartments lived in by women on their own do bring with them in fiction i hasten to add not in life the dubious aura of being a kept woman think of linda s beautiful flat in paris in which she is installed why is installed ...