Book #5/2018 84, Charing Cross Road

84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I first read 84, Charing Cross Road back in the 70s. It is timeless. I came across this paperback and couldn't resist reading again. It is a beautiful, classic memoir of friendship and bibliophilia, twenty years of correspondence between Helene Hanff, an American writer in New York, and Marks & Co. antiquarian booksellers in Charing Cross Road, London where Frank Doel became her main correspondent.

Letters, books and quips crossed the ocean from 1949 until 1969 and a friendship flourished as Marks & Co. supplied the rare editions Helene was unable to find in New York.

84, Charing Cross Road is combined here with its delightful sequel The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, a diary kept by Helene when she finally made the trip to London.

This is a book for all book lovers - an unmitigated delight.

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Book #23 Quieter Than Killing

Quieter Than Killing by Sarah Hilary
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A new DI Marnie Rome novel is always something to savour. This is the fourth in a remarkable series and Sarah Hilary just keeps getting better. Erudite writing with a very complex plot.

A vigilante is at loose on the streets. A child is in danger. Sometimes staying silent is the only way to survive...

DI Marnie Rome and her bagman DS Noah Jake are once again treading the mean streets of London investigating a series of vigilante assaults, that are terrifying in their horrific nature. The attacks seem random. There are victims - and victims of victims, enough to make your head spin. And suddenly it becomes personal for Marnie when her family home is ransacked, the tenants savagely beaten and there are signs that the burglary (is that what it was?) can only have been committed by someone who knows her.

When a child goes missing Marnie is horrified to learn that no one has reported it and it becomes evident that the young boy is the son of a man currently incarcerated at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Does her step-brother Stephen have anything to do with this? Past events are brought into the chilling present, where street gangs are rife. And where does Noah’s brother Sol fit into this? What is Sol so scared of?

There are pages of brutality that are hard to read. The treatment meted out to the kidnapped child is harrowing. And how are all these events linked?

This is dark, compelling and emotionally intense. There are passages that I read over several times for the sheer quality of the writing:

” ‘Detective Inspector Marnie Rome’. He liked the round sound of the words, like pebbles, like those from the beach where his dad carried him down to the sea. He whispered the pebbles to the room, ‘Detective Inspector Marnie Rome’, and stared at the light under the door until the yellow line came back. When it opened——“

Set aside time for these 400+ pages because, once started, you will not want to put it down. And I wonder how soon it will be before we read about a newly promoted Detective Chief Inspector Marnie Rome? It might be just speculation on my part; I will just have to wait and see….

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Elizabeth Taylor in London

I have a recording of this wonderful poem, recited by Elizabeth Taylor. It features on the album ‘Elizabeth Taylor in London’. The musical score was composed by John Barry. 

Elizabeth Taylor in London was a CBS-TV television special broadcast on 6 October 1963.

UPON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE by William Wordsworth

Earth has not anything to show more fair:

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

A sight so touching in its majesty:

This City now doth like a garment wear

The beauty of the morning: silent, bare,

Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie

Open unto the fields, and to the sky,

All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.

Never did sun more beautifully steep

In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill;

Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!

The river glideth at his own sweet will:

Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;

And all that mighty heart is lying still!

Book #17 The Outrun

The Outrun by Amy Liptrot
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a beautiful read, stark and unflinching as Amy Liptrot recounts the story of her alcoholism, how she faced her demons and has stayed 'dry' for more than two years. She returns to Orkney after more than a decade away, drawn back to the Outrun on the sheep farm where she grew up. Her father's mental illness was as much a part of her childhood as the wild, carefree existence on Orkney. In spite of this she moved to London and a hedonistic lifestyle that virtually destroyed her. Her move back to Orkney proves to be her redemption, trying to come to terms with what happened to her in London. She slowly makes the journey towards recovery from addiction.

Amy's writing has a prose-like quality that sings: "...when my heart soars. I see starlings flocking, hundreds of individual birds forming and re-forming shapes in liquid geometry, outwitting predators and following each other to find a place to roost for the night. The wind blows me from behind so strongly that I'm running and laughing".

Her honesty is often overwhelming and yet also exhilarating. Her descriptions of these Northern Isles and the small communities that live here draws me more and more to a visit. Captivating.

I loved it.

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Rochester - loved by Dickens

In 1998 Rochester in Kent lost its city status owing to the outgoing council neglecting to appoint ceremonial "Charter Trustees" to continue to represent the historic Rochester area, an error not even noticed by the council for four years until 2002. Rochester stands at the lowest bridging point of the River Medway about 30 miles (48km) from London.

Rochester was a city loved by Charles Dickens. Anyone who's ever thumbed through the likes of Oliver Twist, David Copperfield or The Pickwick Papers will know that the landscape and people of 19th Century Kent provided rich pickings for Dickens.

The town is home to a number of important historic buildings, the most prominent of which are the Guildhall, the Corn Exchange, Restoration House, Eastgate House, Rochester Castle and Rochester Cathedral. Many of the buildings in the town centre date from the 18th century or as early as the 14th century. The chapel of St. Batholomew's Hospital dates from the hospital's founding in 1078. 

With my interest in the county of my birth I have started to collect books about "The Garden of England" and have found www.abebooks.co.uk  to be an excellent source. I purchased "Rochester: A sketch in pen and verse" by MALCOLM JOHN here, published in 1977 by John Hallewell Publications.

It includes a selection of verse by the author accompanied by prints based upon sketches drawn by Katherine Kimball in 1912. Katharine Kimball was born in New Hampshire. After studying at the National Academy of Design she went abroad to continue her studies, not in Paris, whose academies were still largely closed to women, but in London at the Royal College of Art. She pursued her career in England, exhibiting between 1906 and 1940 at the Royal Academy and the R. E. (the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers), of which she was elected an Associate. Her art was influenced by her admiration for the work of James McBey. As with many talented women artists of her pioneering generation, information about Katharine Kimball is hard to come by, although her work is in the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, the Boston Museum of Fine Art, the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Bibliothèque d'Art et d'Archéologie in Paris. Many of her etchings show scenes in France.

I have also tracked down a book entitled "Dickens' Rochester" by John Oliver at Abe Books. I shall look forward to reading it.

24 Live Another Day

Jack Bauer is back. He's in London, and so is Chloe, who looks more like a punk groupie than an ex, disenfranchised CTU agent. I missed the first three minutes. ITV used a typical ploy of an over-run. Programme due to finish at 8:57pm on ITV (to allow for adverts before the 9:00pm start of their next airing) concluded at 9:02pm. As I switched channels to Sky 1 I realised what ITV had done. A rather pathetic attempt to spoil the start of a new blockbuster on another channel in the hope that viewers would switch back to them. Stuff and nonsense. I had already set my Virgin box to record all episodes of '24 Live Another Day' and I will have to watch these first two episodes again, merely because I missed the first three minutes! Which clearly has an impact on the plot-line.

Soon picked up the thread though and in typical '24' fashion the action was intense, the plot line emerged (I think), Bauer, as usual, seemed unassailable, but, wait a minute, what the hell are all these US agents doing running around the streets of London armed with automatic weapons like they own our capital city?!

All great fun though, and we now have to wait for the next episode every Wednesday for the next 10 weeks. Maybe I should have waited to watch all episodes back to back!

London Grammar's live performance of Wasting My Young Years

http://www.youtube.com/v/c1rpiIDF3hs?autohide=1&version=3&attribution_tag=HfPqBTjbHw3HheUSbViyGw&autohide=1&showinfo=1&feature=share&autoplay=1

This tour-de-force by Hannah Reid of the band London Grammar is truly spellbinding. A year ago this trio from London hadn't released a note of music. Today their CV includes a number 2 album "If You Wait" and the attentions of the Radio One Breakfast Show. And the band has just returned from its first US tour.

This is fabulous music.