Gone to Earth – Mary Webb

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The ninth book in my reading of the first ten Penguin Books in first edition all done in their 90th anniversary year, and the first one I’ve struggled to get into. I think it is partly down to the dated handling of the subject matter, a young girl pursued by two very different men but mainly due to the use of phonetic Shropshire dialect whenever characters, especially Hazel, speak. This does make reading the book almost 110 years after it was first published quite difficult, I may live in Shropshire, in fact only a few miles from where the book was written, but I’m not from here originally and I’ve never heard dialect as broad as it is depicted in the book. As a brief introduction to quite a simple bit of dialogue here’s Hazel explaining why she is afraid of the small wood known as Hunter’s Spinney at midsummer and the way she is put down, and will continue to be put down by Mrs. Marston.

”In Hunter’s Spinney on midsummer night there’s things moving as move no other time; things free as was fast; things crying out as have been a long while hurted.’ She suddenly opened her eyes and went on dramatically ‘First comes the Black Huntsman, crouching low on his horse and the horse going belly to earth. And John Meares o’the public, he seed the red froth from his nostrils on the brakes one morning when he was ketching pheasants. And the jeath’s with him, great hound−dogs, real as real, only no eyes, but sockets with a light behind ’em. Ne’er a one knows what they’s after. If I seed ’em I’d die,’ she finished hastily, taking a large bite of cake.
‘Myths are interesting,’ said Edward, ‘especially nature myths.’
‘What’s a myth, Mr. Marston?’
‘An untruth, my dear,’ said Mrs. Marston.

I’ve got an idea from the context what ‘the jeath’ is but it’s not a word I have ever seen before or indeed can find in a dictionary. As for the characters Hazel is depicted as a rural innocent, yes she’s aware of sex and reproduction as it happens with the animals around her in the countryside but not really as it applies to her so she is confused by the interest she raises in both Edward Marston, the chapel parson and his rival local land owner Jack Reddin. Her mother died when she was young and she was left to be raised by her father who is only really interested in his harp and his bees so never had a female to explain things to her, by the time the book starts she is eighteen and never had a relationship with a man or indeed wanted one, but all the same she is a bit too innocent, too fay, to be entirely believable as a character. The book revolves around the conflict between the two men and Hazel not sure where she should be and whom she should be with, this isn’t even resolved when she marries the priest, in fact she is if anything more drawn to Reddin after that point.

I have to say that although I did get to the end of the 284 pages it was a struggle, none of the characters drew me in particularly except perhaps the parson Edward and even he I felt needed a good talking to so that hopefully he would stop pussyfooting around Hazel and just take control of their lives together, unfortunately nobody had that chat with him. I guessed something similar to the ending was going to happen as I couldn’t see any other way Webb could draw to tale to a logical conclusion but the book was still strangely unsatisfying and the first of the ten books from Penguin’s original production that I haven’t really enjoyed. It’s entirely likely that I’m not the audience she was writing for, it was after all made into a film by the great British film-makers Powell and Pressburger so it was obviously highly thought of at the time, it’s just not for me.

Camelot – Edited by Jane Yolen

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This collection of new short stories was published in 1995 by Philomel Books which is now a children’s imprint of Penguin Books but at the time was a division of the Putnam and Grosset Group, Philomel does seem to have had a varied history of owners over the years since it was formed by Ann Beneduce in 1980 taking the poetic name for a nightingale and has always specialised in children’s titles which I hadn’t realised when I picked it off the shelves to read. Frankly the only reason I own the book is that it contains the first printing of the Terry Pratchett story ‘Once and Future’, I used to buy various anthologies just to track down Pratchett short stories but since 2012 when ‘A Blink of the Screen’ was published which gathered presumably all his fiction short stories together in one volume I’ve stopped the hunt. Pratchett’s story tells the tale of the pulling of a sword from the stone only in his version it’s controlled by a time traveller who has built an electromagnet into the rock so that he could control who succeeded, needless to say his plan doesn’t work out a expected. Interestingly in ‘A Blink of The Screen’ Pratchett states:

There’s a lot more of this deep on a hard drive somewhere. It may yet become a novel, but it started as a short story in Camelot, edited by Jane Yolen, in 1995. I’d wanted to write it for nearly ten years, I really ought to dig out those old discs again…

Sadly he didn’t live to have another go at it.

Of the nine other stories, and one song by Jane Yolen, the only other author I have heard of is Anne McCaffrey, famous for her Dragon Riders of Pern series of novels, and her offering ‘Black Horses for a King’ is probably the best of the collection, closely followed by Pratchett. Frankly the McCaffrey story is strong partly because she largely ignored the brief and simply wrote a good short story with nothing to make it Camelot apart from the leader of the warriors being called Lord Artos, which is probably close enough to Arthur to be included. The story is actually the first part of the novel ‘Black Horses for a King’ by McCaffrey which came out in 1996 so either she was inspired to continue the tale, and develop it into the story of the early days of British cavalry, in a way that Pratchett considered doing with his contribution or she was already working on the novel and simply extracted part of it when asked to supply something for this collection.

The real joy in the book are the lovely illustrations by Winslow Pels who has just the right amount of mystical whimsy for the book. The one above is for ‘Excalibur’ by Anne E Crompton who was sixty five when she wrote this story and a well established writer of children’s stories although this is the only example of her work I own, I quite enjoyed it but not enough to seek out any of her other works.

The other stories included along with Amesbury Song by Jane Yolen and Adam Stemple are:

  • The Changing of the Shrew by Kathleen Kudlinski
  • Wild Man by Diana L Paxton
  • Gwenbwyfar by Lynne Pledger
  • Holly and Ivy by Jaes D Macdonald and Debra Doyle
  • The Raven by Nancy Springer
  • All the Iron of Heaven by Mark W Tiedemann
  • Our Hour of Need by Greg Costikyan

I cannot find any examples of this book being reprinted after coming out in 1995, so I’m guessing it wasn’t a great seller and as the best parts are available elsewhere it has probably had its day.

J R R Tolkien and C S Lewis in Puffin

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This blog is coming out a day earlier than usual, on Monday the 11th May 2026, to mark the exact anniversary, one hundred years ago, since Tolkien and Lewis first met. To celebrate the occasion I have chosen to look at the very different histories of the two authors famous children’s books with relation to the best known publisher of paperbacks aimed at this market, Puffin Books an imprint of Penguin Books. Although Lewis was the first of the two to appear in Puffin, for reasons that will soon become clear I’m going to start with Tolkien and Puffin Story Book PS161 published October 1961 with a lovely cover by Pauline Baynes which wraps round the whole book, but without most of the pictures from the Allen & Unwin hardback. The only image retained was the map and that was at the insistence of Tolkien who felt that it would be difficult to follow without its assistance, but the omission of most of the illustrations wasn’t to be the biggest problem with this publication.

Allen & Unwin didn’t have a paperback imprint of their own that that could publish Tolkien in the 1960’s but they were also worried about devaluing the brand as they were making good money selling Tolkien in hardback but after talking with the author they decided on a limited run of 35,000 copies to test the market for a paperback. Puffin duly published the book and as usual five copies were sent to the author requesting one to be signed and sent back for Sir Allen Lane’s personal collection, this Tolkien duly did, it was only a few months later that he noticed what would become a deal breaker. First I will show an early passage from the 1961 Puffin edition:

and now the same section from the 1966 Unwin paperback:

The original dwarves has become dwarfs, checking revealed dwarfish rather than dwarvish and elfish replaced elvish, Tolkien was not happy to say the least but it was too late to do anything about it. It appears that the printers, Cox and Wyman, had made the changes and quoted The Oxford English Dictionary as their authority, unfortunately for them Tolkien was Merton Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford University and had worked on the OED so he was even less impressed by this argument. Tolkien did not allow Puffin to reprint ‘The Hobbit’ or indeed publish any others of his works and Sir Allen Lane’s copy in the Penguin Archive in Bristol is believed to be the only signed example, as he would apparently refuse to sign any Puffin copies put before him. A lot of this I knew but for extra details, including the last bit regarding signed copies, or lack thereof I am indebted to the article by Jules Burt in Penguin Collectors Newsletter 100.

Now let’s move on to Lewis and his Narnia series of seven books, these were all published by Puffin although like Tolkien none of his other works were published by Penguin Books, but not because he refused publication, unlike Tolkien the Narnia books went through multiple reprints at Puffin. Pauline Baynes had illustrated the original hardbacks and provided new covers for the Puffin editions which also ties these books nicely to ‘The Hobbit’.

Oddly as can be seen from the lists below Puffin didn’t publish the Narnia books in order, the Puffin list first:

  • PS132 – The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – October 1959
  • PS173 – Prince Caspian – April 1962
  • PS192 – The Magician’s Nephew – June 1963
  • PS205 – The Last Battle – January 1964
  • PS229 – The Voyage of the Dawn Treader – March 1965
  • PS240 – The Silver Chair – June 1965
  • PS244 – The Horse and His Boy – September 1965

Actual first publication sequence and probable correct reading order

  • The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – published by Geoffrey Bles 1950
  • Prince Caspian – published by Geoffrey Bles 1951
  • The Voyage of the Dawn Treader – published by Geoffrey Bles 1952
  • The Silver Chair – published by Geoffrey Bles 1953
  • The Horse and His Boy – published by Geoffrey Bles 1954
  • The Magician’s Nephew – published by The Bodley Head 1955
  • The Last Battle – published by The Bodley Head 1956

There is a good argument that ‘The Magician’s Nephew’ should be read first as it covers events well before any of the other books, also ‘The Horse and His Boy’ is actually set towards the end of ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’. One thing is absolutely clear however and that is that ‘The Last Battle’ should not be read fourth as it is definitely the last book in the series.

Tolkien and Lewis were the ‘star’ members of a literary group called The Inklings who met regularly at The Eagle and Child public house in Oxford to discuss their ongoing works. Tolkien was rather dismissive of Lewis’s overly Christian allegorical novels, such as the Narnia series, as he didn’t regard them as serious literary works unlike his own output which he slaved over for years. But despite disagreements the two men remained friends for decades with Tolkien regularly visiting Lewis before his death in 1963. Tolkien survived him by ten years.

The Narnia books are now published by Harper Collins rather then Puffin, but still have the original, and iconic, Pauline Baynes illustrations inside them over seventy five years since they first appeared.

Everyday Life is Full of Math – Jun Mitani

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I have recently been introduced to the excellent series of recreational mathematics books from A K Peters/CRC Press and I thought I would start with the one that I have which is aimed at young adult readers, so aged fourteen upwards, to introduce maths pupils to concepts that their school would probably not cover, but which are thought provoking additions to the syllabus. Mitani is a professor of Information and Systems at the University of Tsukuba, Japan specialising in geometric modelling techniques for computer graphics and he does cover some to the basic concepts of this work in one of the chapters. But this book grew out of posts he was making on X (twitter) on everyday maths which have been expanded to make each chapter but even then they are not long. There are thirty three chapters covering a wide selection of topics in just 187 pages so no individual section is daunting for somebody using this book as their first venture into recreational mathematics. The book is also heavily illustrated which makes the probably unfamiliar concepts explored within it more understandable to those first dipping their toes into maths for fun. Hopefully they also have inspiring maths teachers like I did, thank you Mr. Braybrooke, Mr. Roberts and Mr. Jones.

Some of the ways of looking at what for me are well known mathematical ideas are new to me and are fascinating because of their fresh approach, for example the chart above is actually the first thousand digits of pi after the decimal point. You read it from left to right then front to back so the front row represents the first fifty digits which I have split into five blocks of ten digits for ease of display in this blog i.e. 1415926535 8979323846 2643383279 5028841971 6939937510. Unfortunately the question below the chart is somewhat given away by the title of the chapter ‘Looking at Pi’ but the diagram beautifully illustrates the randomness of this irrational number, and also makes it easy to spot the Feynman Point (near the back left) where unexpectedly you have six consecutive nines from position 762.

No book introducing recreational mathematics could possibly avoid magic squares but again Mitani has an unusual spin on the idea, yes he explains ‘normal’ magic squares where all the row, columns and both diagonals add up to the same value but he then goes on to examine the example of the one inscribed on the Passion facade of Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. My photo of that magic square can be seen below, note the absence of 12 and 16 and the duplication of 10 and 14 but this allows for an even greater number of combinations. Here not only do all rows and columns along with the diagonals add up to 33 but so do the four shaded 2×2 squares, the centre 2×2 square, the four corners, opposite sides (14+14+2+3) and (11+8+9+5) and the diagonal opposites (11+14+3+5) and (14+9+8+2). A truly special magic square on a truly special building.

But you really notice the country of origin for this book when you find chapters on origami, the art of paper folding. One of the notes on the rear cover includes “Introduces math found in real life, like origami”, a more Japanese statement it’s difficult to imagine. There are four chapters dealing with aspects of paper folding, one of which, shown below, is specifically origami and is no where near as complex as the chapter tile implies at first sight, but does allow explorations in the field of topology.

The final chapter I want to highlight is even more Japanese specific as it relates to the seating pattern on the iconic bullet trains, the first really successful high speed train network in the world. The maths here is actually very simple but neatly explained and other chapters include aspects of a famous combinations puzzle, the Tower of Hanoi, Pascal’s Triangle and my favourite the still unproven Collatz Conjecture which would lead to a prize of $830,000 if you could prove it. The best thing about Collatz Conjecture is it is so easy to understand, but why does it apparently always work, you could win the prize either for proving that it does always work or alternatively finding an example where it doesn’t. I remember getting obsessed by Fermat’s Theorem when I was the age this book is aimed at, again a very simple concept with a huge financial prize for the person who solved it. That however has now been done, which is possibly why Mitani doesn’t have a chapter on that.

The book is available from Routledge. My one, very minor, criticism is that although the book is clearly print on demand no attempt has been made to run the file through a spell checker to convert from American to English spellings when printing in the UK, although this would have been a simple exercise to do. Having said that, the book is otherwise excellent and I wish it had been available when I was thirteen or fourteen and starting to get interested in the neglected corners of mathematics.that aren’t covered at school.

The Vampyre – John Polidori

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Although entitled ‘The Vampyre’ by John Polidori in fact this book consists of three short stories by different writers but all concerned with vampires, The first is indeed the story by Polidori but it is followed by ‘The Stranger’ by Karl Adolf von Wachsmann and the final story is a chapter removed before publication from Bram Stoker’s classic ‘Dracula’, This book is the latest title from the Penguin Little Black Classics and was published on 4th September 2025 over eight years since the last single volume addition to this series appeared ‘The Constitution of the United States’ (published 6th April 2017), which was itself just over a year after the last significant addition of thirty six books on 3rd March 2016. Originally created to mark eighty years of Penguin Classics with eighty books on the 3rd September 2015 and priced at just 80 pence each this latest addition is £4.00, so we have seen a considerable increase in price although this book at 111 pages is significantly larger than examples from the first eighty, but not the second batch where one of this length would have been £2.00.

Let’s look at the stories individually, whilst not giving away any endings:

The Vampyre – John Polidori

This story deserves to be better known if only because of its history. John Polidori was Lord Byron’s doctor and was one of those tasked with writing a ghost story one wet and miserable evening by Lake Geneva in 1816, the others being Byron himself, his fellow poet Percy Shelley and Shelley’s teenage companion Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. Only Mary produced a classic, published under her later married name of Mary Shelley, and that was of course Frankenstein which I wrote about last year. The Vampyre is actually a combination of Byron’s attempt and Polidori’s later rewriting and was published in 1819, a few months after Frankenstein. The story concerns an English gentleman named Aubrey who soon after meeting the unusual but fascinating Lord Ruthven suggests that they travel together on a European tour which was so fashionable at the time. During the journey he becomes highly discomforted by Ruthven’s character and ultimately they go their separate ways, Aubrey heading to Greece to study the ancient ruins but ending up falling in love with a young Greek girl who is tragically killed and Aubrey in trying to save her falls into a deep fever when he realises she has died only to find Lord Ruthven at his bedside as he recovers. The two set off again together, but are ambushed by bandits and Ruthven is himself killed by their attackers, or is he?

The Mysterious Stranger – Karl Adolf von Wachsmann

This anonymous 1860 translation of von Wachsmann’s ‘Der Fremde’ (The Stranger) was first published in German in his collection ‘Erzählungen und Novellen’ (Stories and novellas) from 1844 over fifty years before Stoker wrote ‘Dracula’. The later unofficial translation didn’t even credit von Wachsmann never mind the translator so its origins were as mysterious as the stranger it features, but it is highly likely to be an inspiration for the famous novel, not just in the setting of the Carpathian mountains but also the vampire control of wolves and the description of the aristocratic undead main character. At around fifteen and a half thousand words it is also the longest tale in this small collection.

The story concerns an Austrian knight who after inheriting a large estate in the Carpathians decides to set off with his daughter Franziska and a niece Bertha as her companion along with the young Baron Franz von Kronstein who in enamoured with Franziska but she is not interested in him. To avoid bad weather they end up taking a route through a forest but delays mean that it gets dark before they clear the woods and they are set upon by a hungry pack of wolves. Fortunately they are near a ruined castle and thinking to get respite there they head that way only to encounter a pale mysterious stranger who is capable of scaring the wolves away but then vanishes. Many weeks later as the estate is coming into order they decide to head back towards the ruin one afternoon and again encounter the stranger just as dusk has fallen and thanking him for their deliverance they invite him to call on their castle sometime. This he duly does and whilst Franziska is impressed by him the others are wary of his taciturn manner and refusal to eat or drink despite joining them during their evening meal. He continues to call over the coming weeks, always after night has fallen and refuses all sustenance but is clearly improving as he now has a better build and colour in his cheeks, Franziska however is getting paler, has a mysterious wound on her neck and is having strange dreams of being visited by the stranger at night…

Dracula’s Guest – Bram Stoker

By far the shortest tale in the book, according to Florence Stoker, Bram’s wife, this was apparently removed from ‘Dracula’ as the book was overlong. Taking this chapter out would not however have represented much of a cut as the published novel is well over 160,000 words (419 pages in my copy) and this story is roughly 5,000 words or less than five times the length of this blog entry, so either the revisions were significantly more extensive than just this chapter or the reason for its exclusion were different. It was first published in 1914, two years after Stoker’s death and seventeen years after the novel came out. The story features an unnamed Englishman, presumably Jonathan Harker, staying in Munich and deciding to go for a drive in a carriage provided by the inn up to the surrounding hills. The innkeeper warns the driver not to be back late because of the date, it is April 30th so Walpurgisnacht is upon them when darkness falls, a time of evil spirits.

After a while the carriage reaches a crossroads where the horses are spooked and Harker wishes to go down one of the side roads but the coachman refuses explaining in broken English that there is a deserted and ruined village down there where terrible things had happened. Harker insists and ultimately as the coachman is so afraid that his limited English deserts him Harker tells him to head back to Munich leaving him to explore on foot. After making his way down to the ruins there is a sudden storm and Harker seeks shelter but the only thing with cover is an old mausoleum with an iron spike through its roof, the door oddly swings open when he leans against it and the horror begins…

Although I greatly enjoyed both Polidori’s and Stoker’s tales the best to my mind was Wachsmann’s. This blog is being posted a couple of days before Walpurgisnacht in honour of Stoker’s chapter which is set on that night.

1066 and All That – WC Sellar & RJ Yeatman

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1066 and All That is a 20th century classic piece of humour written by two people who although they worked together many times afterwards never achieved the level of success of this, their first book, ever again. Walter Sellar was a school teacher at various private schools in England including his old alma mater Fettes College and ending up at the highly prestigious Charterhouse. Appropriately he originally taught history although later on switched to English, he also wrote humorous pieces for Punch magazine as did Robert Yeatman although the two originally met at Oriel College, Oxford after the First World War. Yeatman came from a relatively prosperous family involved in importing Port wine in connection with Taylor’s Port but largely worked as an advertising copywriter and executive for such businesses as Kodak. The introduction of this Folio Society edition was written by broadcaster and stage director Ned Sherrin and very informative it is too, as it has anecdotes from several people who knew both men including Yeatman’s son Bill who recalls that his father had a sign on the gate CAVE CANEM (Latin for Beware of the Dog) when someone pointed out that burglars wouldn’t understand the notice he replied “Then they are not the sort of burglars we want.” I think this gives a good insight into the humour that you will encounter on reading the book.

As the subtitle states it is “A Memorable History of England, Comprising All the Parts You Can Remember, Including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates”. The two genuine dates are The Battle of Hastings in 1066 which led to the Norman conquest of England and 55BC which was the date of Julius Caesar’s first and not entirely successful foray onto the British Isles, this last one is followed by the observation that “Julius Caesar was therefore compelled to invade Britain again the following year 54BC , not 56 owing to the peculiar Roman method of counting”. We then proceed to race through English history up until World War I, several people, including Ned Sherrin, have written follow up volumes taking the history further on in a similar style to the original but none of them have really caught the public imagination the way ‘1066 and all That’ did in 1930 when it was first published as ably illustrated by the fact that 96 years later it is still in print.

A lot of the humour revolves around confusing dates, events and people in a way that would have been all too familiar to Sellar during his time teaching, such as the appearance of two Henry V’s, Part I and Part II as in the Shakespeare plays and the chapter on Henry VIII which begins:

Henry VIII was a strong king with a very strong sense of humour and VIII wives, memorable amongst whom were Katherine the Arrogant, Anne of Cloves, Lady Jane Austin and Anne Hathaway.

There are also various test papers inserted amongst the main text which sometime bear a passing relevance to what has preceded them but more often are there just to allow a slightly less structured series of jokes to step away from the list of monarchs and battles which school history textbooks at the time were fixated upon and which are the basis of this parody. History is not really taught like this anymore in British schools, lessons nowadays bounce around the past and places in a seemingly random manner, when I was at school we plodded through English history in sequence reaching the Gunpowder Plot (1605) after three years of studying just before I gave up the subject, not that I didn’t enjoy history I just didn’t like the somewhat tedious sequential nature of the teaching although I understand the reasoning behind it. Sellar and Yeatman were partly inspired by this rote learning to produce the book and also ‘Our Island Story’ by Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall which was a major children’s text at the time and depicts some events as desirable and others as undesirable leading to ‘1066 and All That’ and its emphasis on Good Things and Bad Kings. Now that history isn’t taught in the manner parodied I wonder if ‘1066 and All That’ will survive, I hope it does, although you do need to have learnt a lot of real history in order to get a lot of the jokes and it’s therefore possible that it may not.

The Folio edition is designed to look like a school textbook of the period which has been wrapped in brown paper to protect it from ink stains, an all too common issue when young people are using fountain pens at school, I remember several books receiving this treatment during my school days although I never managed to make such a mess as seen on on the cover of this book brilliantly designed by David Eccles. It has the original 1930 illustrations by John Reynolds which are so perfect for the book that few editions have ever changed them.

Trains and Buttered Toast – John Betjeman

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This selection of Betjeman’s radio talks was first published in 2006, twenty two years after the Poet Laureate died and for anyone unfamiliar with Sir John’s prose work this compilation edited and selected by Stephen Games is an excellent introduction. The talks range in date from 17th February 1932 to 6th July 1975 although it should be noted that this last one, concerning the great hymn writer Isaac Watts, is an extreme outrider in the selection and the second most recent is from 1952 so the vast majority are from the 1930’s and 40’s. I grew up listening to Betjeman on the radio or watching him on television extolling the virtues and vices of architecture he either liked or loathed and of course travelling around Britain, preferably by train and introducing me to poetry. It is only when writing this article that I realise that he has been dead for forty two years as of next month and wonder how many people know of or read him today? He was a man of forthright opinions, although always expressed in a polite manner as befits a much loved gentleman of the old school, and his statue in St Pancras railway station is fitting as he campaigned so hard to save this wonderful building. For me the most successful of the forty eight talks are the ones concerning places rather than people, there are twelve biographical works in the book including one autobiographical snippet about Christmas and the final talk is a bit of an oddity in a book as it is entitled ‘John Betjeman reads a selection of his own poetry’ which clearly he doesn’t in this case although the explanations as to why he chose specific works and a little insight into them is well worth reading. A line from the 1937 article on Swindon gives a hint as to why I loved the talks about places:

Swindon is full of good hearts and ugly houses – and it’s the ugly houses I’m going to talk about.

Sir John must have received some remonstrations about this talk as in later essays he says some nice things about Swindon, although not too nice, he doesn’t change his overall position, but does at least find some parts of the city to like. It puts me in mind of his poem Slough, also written in 1937 which begins:

Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough
It isn’t fit for humans now,

He was obviously having a bad time with urban planners in 1937. However it’s not by any means a negative book, there is much to celebrate and Sir John does so, highlighting amongst other the beauty and history of the out of the way parts of Exeter and the joys of returning to England during World War II in his brief breaks from being British press attaché in Dublin after being rejected for active service.Even just reciting the names of villages brings him comfort in 1943 appreciating the words in the spirit of a true poet, and yes all of them are real, I’ve been to several of these:

To think of the names is to feel better – Huish Episcopi, Whitchurch Canonicorum, Willingale Spain, Tickencote, Bourton-on-the-Hill, Iwerne Minster, Piddletrenthide, South Molton, Wotton, Norton, Evenlode, Fairford, Canons Ashby, Bag Enderby, Kingston Bagpuize.

The biographical works are mainly split into two sections ‘Eccentrics’ and ‘Christian Soldiers’, which I think tells you a lot about the selection, however in the ‘Christian Soldiers’ section is a talk on St Petroc, the patron saint of Cornwall where Betjeman manages to give a presentation of a man that he freely admits at the beginning virtually nothing is known, The inclusion of Pugin by Sir John is not surprising if only for his detailing on The Houses of Parliament in London and the Irish eccentric Adolphus Cooke Esq. of Cookesborough would be funny if it wasn’t ultimately so tragi

The title of the book comes from an early part of Betjeman’s autobiographical poetic work ‘Summoned by Bells‘ and relates to the comfort he found as a pre-school age child in his teddy bear Archibald. Indeed the words ‘Buttered Toast’ appear five times in this work which says a lot about the simple pleasures that Sir John would fondly celebrate.

There will be more of John Betjeman’s travels around Britain in August as part of my annual summer theme.

The Samurai – H Paul Varley with Ivan & Nobuko Morris

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This book is far more than the story of The Samurai in Japan, rather it is a history of Japan from the medieval period through to mid to late 19th century because to understand the development of Samurai it is essential to place them in context and as this warrior class was a significant feature of Japanese society for over a thousand years. Despite the book covering all of the Samurai Period, which is generally considered as running from the Nine Years War, which started in 1051, and concluding with the abolition of the Samurai class in 1876, the book actually starts on 26th February 1936 in a military attempt to overthrow by assassination the Japanese government and bring back the Emperor as the ultimate ruler. These junior soldiers were inspired by the Samurai of old, but unlike previous centuries the Emperor wasn’t interested in being made absolute ruler again and the senior officers of the army soon quashed the mutiny and those involved in organising it were dealt with swiftly, often by execution, without having a chance to declare their ideas in a court. This was not the first time that such an uprising had occurred in the 1930’s but it was the last; and the only subsequent appearance of the Samurai spirit in Japan would arguably be by the Kamikaze pilots of World War II. After highlighting these modern day examples the book then leaps back to the end of the Heian Period (794-1185 AD) to cover the Nine Years War and the later Three Years War (1086-88) and the rise of the Samurai fighter during those conflicts.

Early warfare in Japan was a particularly strange form of fighting and would have greatly confused a westerner if they had seen it. The Samurai would enter the field of combat and determine which of their opponents was an honourable, similarly ranked, foe and then once the armies had paired off they would effectively fight duels, only moving on to another enemy once they had defeated their current opponent. Gradually warfare evolved into something we would recognise with planned movements of blocks of men and greater strategy rather than one on one combat. This probably grew from the rise of the Shogun or General commanding whole armies on behalf of his Emperor which occurred more often during the Mongol invasions of Japan during the Kamakura Period (1185-1333 AD). This also led to the creation of one of the most remarkable documents on medieval Japanese warfare ‘The Mongol Invasion Scroll’ which covers both of the invasions and the successful repelling of Genghis Khan’s troops, although he didn’t accompany his warriors on either occasion. Below you can see a story of a particular Samurai during the second invasion which highlights the ‘code’ of these specialist warriors.

All very odd, but as stated above later conflicts were more ‘normal’ to western understanding and through the Ashikaga Period (1392-1573 AD) we see opposing warlords attacking each others fortifications and the book explores the various rivals for the throne and then during The Period of Unification (1573-1600 AD) a combined army was to make its first foreign invasion, that of Korea, up until then Japan had largely ignored the rest of the world and even when they had come across guns had largely rejected them as not appropriate to the man to man combat favoured by the Samurai.

It should be noted that the book is not for the faint-hearted, there are several references to seppuku or ritual self disembowelment often incorrectly known in the west as hari-kiri, a cruder term literally meaning belly slitting. There is even a three page eye witness description of the ceremony being performed in 1868. But the concept of a Samurai committing suicide dates back to the middle of the Heian Period and it would be done to avoid being captured in battle, to atone for a particular unworthy action or even more bizarrely for westerners to admonish the Samurai’s lord and master. Samurai generally wished to avoid being captured as there was no concept of ransoming prisoners or prisoner swaps as occurred in medieval Europe, instead they would quite often be severely badly treated as it was deeply dishonourable to be captured alive, not that this would happen often as massacres seem far more likely that the taking of prisoners. The authors make the point that ritual suicide is so common in the Japanese medieval war tales that it is unusual to go more then two or three pages without at least one account of seppuku.

Print by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1798-1861) depicting the ceremonial forging of a sword, attended by the fox spirit

The book was first published by Weidenfield and Nicholson in 1970, my copy is the Pelican first edition from 1974. I greatly enjoyed this exploration of a very different, at least to those of us in the west, civilisation and it was extremely well written assuming no prior knowledge of the subject matter so was an ideal introduction to a history I knew little about.

They Came From SW19 – Nigel Williams

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I had completely forgotten I owned this book, it was only when looking for another title that I found it tucked away at the back of a double stacked shelf. In fact I don’t even remember reading it or indeed ever buying it, it is the 1993 first paperback edition with no indication that I picked it up secondhand so presumably I bought it when it came out, but it gives all the impression of being new and unread despite being over thirty years old. For people unfamiliar with British postcodes SW19 is Wimbledon and this is the second book of Williams’ Wimbledon trilogy, so called because they are all set there, but unlike most trilogies they have nothing else in common, no characters appearing in more than one book or linked plot lines etc. This means that it doesn’t matter if you haven’t read the others, but maybe I spotted it was the second book and put it on one side intending to get volume one, ‘The Wimbledon Poisoner’, but never did.

The title, and indeed the cover, imply that this is probably going to have something about UFO’s, and it does, although to a much smaller extent than expected. Williams develops the characters of Mr. Marr, Purkiss and Walbeck in the first few chapters as Wimbledons self appointed extra-terrestrial vanguard only to have Marr apparently abducted and then forgets all about the other two less than half way through the novel as they never appear again, it’s as though he completely changed his mind regarding the plot but couldn’t be bothered to go back and tidy up loose ends. Instead the book is mainly a parody of a cult like Christian community, the fictional ‘The First Church of Christ the Spiritualist’ whose one and only place of worship is in an out of the way part of Wimbledon. We see the shambolic church through the eyes of fourteen year old Simon Britton, whose parents were both members of the congregation, although at first he isn’t that interested, being more concerned with UFO spotting out on the common at night with Marr, Purkiss and Walbeck. Indeed, unlike his mother, his father seems equally unsure about his adherence to the pretty odd ways of the church but we don’t get to explore this for long as he dies of a heart attack during chapter one and for most of the book he only exists as reminiscences from Simon and in a couple of probable sightings of his ghost. The church is after all called Christ the Spiritualist and they are big on talking to and experiencing the dead. Members of the church are round the Britton’s house as soon as the news breaks, not to offer condolences, but to organise a seance to contact the recently departed Norman.

As I said this is a parody of a cult style church, although parishioners see it as another Christian community with some extra rules and traditions which can mainly be traced back to its founders who communicated with the dead on a regular basis. Apparently getting most of the tunes for the hymns used from John Wesley who dictated them directly to Rose Fox. The fact that most of them differ only by a few notes from Methodist classics suggest more plagiarism rather than spiritual intervention but that would be denying the faith. Not all can be traced back to Wesley though…

This is from the service where the awful Quigley family are doing their best to convince Simon to become closer to the church, for reasons that will become clearer later in the book, instead he uses the opportunity to spread the word himself, but about alien visitations rather than Christ’s resurrection, which the church believes is happening soon. Like quite a lot of similar groups in the 1990’s they see the two thousandth anniversary of Christ’s birth, and or death, as highly significant and that is probably the most sensible of their beliefs beyond that of mainstream Christianity. Indeed the odd doings of the church and Simon’s desperate desire to keep them from ever interacting with his school friends are far better written and funnier than the alien spotting part at the beginning of the book which only really continues after Simon’s alien inspired schism in the church which possibly explains the change in direction of the novel. I quite enjoyed it and most of the plot lines get tidied up at the end in a mainly satisfying way, with the obvious exception of Purkiss and Walbeck. I wasn’t expecting a parody of a niche Christian community or indeed of spiritualism, from the cover ut it works quite well. I’m not sure I will hunt out the other two books of the trilogy, it was good for a quite read but doesn’t inspire further investigation of Williams’ output

William – EH Young

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Continuing with my project to read the first ten Penguin books in first edition to mark the 90th year of Penguin publications I have now reached book eight, William by Ethel Hilda Young. Now almost completely forgotten Young was a popular writer in the 1920’s and 30’s indeed this book, first published in 1925, made its eighteenth edition when published by Penguin in 1935 which is a considerable number of copies produced in just ten years so she clearly had a readership. I continue to be surprised by how good the first ten Penguins are, obviously Allen Lane was trying to start off his new venture with as good a selection as he could put together but he struggled to get reprint rights from a lot of the existing publishers, this one was from Jonathan Cape who were co-operative. Like Susan Ertz and Beverley Nichols I had never heard of Young, but also like those I have greatly enjoyed reading the book and being introduced to a sadly neglected author. I have heard of both of the two remaining writers that make up the first ten Penguins, but haven’t read anything by either of them, so this voyage of discovery will be continuing for another couple of months yet.

William and Kate Nesbitt have five grown up children, one son and four daughters, and by the time of the book all apart from the youngest daughter have married and left the family home in Upper Radstowe, a fictional town but which appears to be based on Clifton, with the docks of Radstowe below being based on the city of Bristol and the foundation of William’s wealth with his flotilla of vessels providing goods shipping along with passenger carrying pleasure steamers. They met when he left the Merchant Navy and set up on his own gradually growing his fleet as the family grew. As the book was written in 1925, the Nesbitt’s clearly met and were married in the late Victorian era and it becomes clear as the book progresses that although William has embraced the changing times Kate’s moral compass is firmly stuck in the straight laced Victorian era and this would result in conflict between the couple that have grown comfortably familiar with each others routines and mannerisms over the decades. The first half of the book introduces all the characters and their inter-relations and builds up a happy prosperous family with each person having their own quirks and William as the father and grandfather to a largely adoring and expanding group of people. Indeed by about half way through I was thinking that yes I like these characters who are so well fleshed out by Young that you really feel you know them but what is going to happen as something must as it is too much happy families.

Then daughter Lydia made a surprising move, she upped and left her husband in London and moved in with an aspiring writer in an out of the way place in Somerset. The book then takes a dramatic turn with William, who has always had a particular soft spot for Lydia beyond his other children, defending her right to live her life as she chooses being against Kate whose Victorian upbringing cannot consider one of her daughters ‘living in sin’ and who attempts to turn the whole family against Lydia. The upsetting of the quiet life of the Nesbitts and the gradual resolution of the ructions within the family is beautifully drawn by Young and the reader is pulled in all directions as first one side and then the other takes precedence as Kate gradually works through her outrage at both Lydia and her lover and also at her abandoned husband who seems to be making insufficient effort to win her back.

Whilst attempting to do some research on Young for this blog I came across this article by Rebecca Hutcheon, Research Fellow at the Faculty of Business and Creative Industries, University of South Wales, which I totally agree with and I’m pleased to see that my guess that Radstowe was based on Bristol is confirmed. I don’t have any other books by Ethel Hilda Young, indeed none of her other works were published by Penguin so although this title presumably sold well enough they weren’t inspired to print any others. The most recent published retrospective of her works was in the 1980’s and was printed by the feminist publisher Virago, however they only have ‘Miss Mole’ still in their catalogue but did have several more including ‘William’. If you can find a copy I do recommend the novel, it is very much of its period, but so are the Brontë sisters and Jane Austen and as Hutcheon points out in her article Young has much to recommend her amongst those great writers of relationships and family tensions, yet is closer to our own time so the characters are somewhat easier to relate to.