Saturday Snapshots – Castles

Published on by Margaret14 Comments
Bamburgh Castle seen from Lindisfarne

This is Bamburgh Castle, off the coast of Northumberland south of the Holy Island of Lindisfarne and on Monday when we went to  the Island, it was clearly visible on the horizon. The sea was shimmering in the sunshine.

I posted a photo of Lindisfarne Castle when we visited the island in March. Early on Monday morning it was raining but it soon stopped and the sun came out, even though it remained extremely windy.

The Castle was originally an Elizabethan fort protecting the harbour. It was built between 1570 and 1572 and was garrisoned for over 300 years – guns and soldiers were removed in 1893. Now it is owned by the National Trust.

The photo below is of Lindisfarne Castle taken from the walled garden designed by Gertrude Jekyll north of the Castle. The site of the garden was where the soldiers of the fort had formerly grown vegetables.

Lindisfarne Castle

Inside the Castle it’s an Edwardian house, designed by the architect Edwin Lutyens for his friend Edward Hudson, who was the founder of Country Life magazine. By 1902 the castle was derelict and Lutyens turned it into a holiday home for Hudson. It’s both homely and dramatic. There are columns and rounded arches; the rooms are all small  – you can imagine yourself living there. The dining room in the old Tudor fortress has a vaulted ceiling with a wide arched chimney-piece. It had once been a bakery and there is an old bread oven next to the fireplace.

Lindisfarne Castle Dining Room

These days you can get married in the Ship Room, so called because of the wooden model ship that hangs from the ceiling, flanked by two Dutch 17th century chandeliers:

Lindisfarne Castle Ship Room

For more Saturday Snapshots see Alyce’s blog At Home with Books.

Visual – Booking Through Thursday on Friday

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

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So ‘¦ the books that you own (however many there may be) ‘¦ do you display them proudly right there in plain sight for all the world to see? (At least the world that comes into your living room.)

Or do you keep them tucked away in your office or bedroom or library or closet or someplace less ‘œpublic?’

This is a very easy question to answer:

My books are on display as you come into the house – in the hall and living room as well as in the study and all the bedrooms. I have a few cookery books in the kitchen too. Actually I have too many books to hide them away anywhere and I have no wish to do so. As Cicero wrote:

A room without books is like a body without a soul.

and Anthony Powell:

Books do furnish a room.

 

 

L is for L S Lowry

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L S Lowry was an English painter well known for his urban paintings of industrial towns like Salford in Lancashire, scenes peopled by his ‘matchstalk men and his matchstalk cats and dogs‘ (I always thought it was ‘Matchstick’ not ‘Matchstalk’, until I checked the song lyrics today!)

What is less well known (at least to me) was that he also painted many scenes of Berwick-upon-Tweed a seaside town he regularly visited from the 1930s until a couple of years before his death in 1976.

There is a Lowry Trail around the town and here are some photos of one of the locations:

This is ‘On the Sands‘, oil on canvas 1959 (click on the photo to enlarge), showing his matchstick figures. The shelter became dilapidated and was restored in 2001. This is how it looks today:

There is actually a little beach behind this scene:

This is my contribution to ABC Wednesday L is for …

Teaser Tuesday

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Teaser Tuesday is a weekly event hosted by MizB of Should be Reading.

I’ve just finished reading Agatha Christie’s The Man in the Brown Suit, which is one of her earliest books. It has a very complicated plot about a diamond robbery, an accidental death at a London tube station and a murder in a remote country mansion. I’ll write about in more detail about in a later post, but for now here is a teaser:

For in each suspicious instance Pagett had been shown as the directing genius. It was true that his personality seemed to lack the assurance and decision that one would suspect from a master criminal – but after all, according to Colonel Race, it was brain-work only that this mysterious leader supplied , and creative genius is often allied to a weak and timorous physical constitution. (page 148)

And the last few sentences in the book show Agatha Christie’s interest in anthropology:

‘Congratulations and love to the latest arrival on Lunatics’ Island. Is his head dolichocephalic or brachycephalic?’

I wasn’t going to stand that from Suzanne. I sent her a reply of one word, economical and to the point:

‘Platycephalic!’ (page 238)

Crime Fiction Alphabet – Letter M

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The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie is my choice to illustrate the letter M in Kerrie’s Crime Fiction Alphabet.

This is Agatha Christie’s 6th book, published in 1926, one of her best known books and possibly one of the most controversial because of its solution to the mystery. I hadn’t read it before, but I knew a bit about it from reading Agatha Christie’s Autobiography, in which she wrote:

Of course, a lot of people say that The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is cheating; but if they read it carefully they will see that they are wrong. Such little lapses of time as there have to be are nicely concealed in an ambiguous sentence … (page 352)

I won’t write any more about the controversy – no spoilers!

Set in the village of King’s Abbot, the story begins with the death of Mrs Ferrars, a wealthy widow and the local doctor, Dr Sheppard suspects it is suicide. The following evening Roger Ackroyd, a wealthy widower who it was rumoured would marry Mrs Ferrars, is found murdered in his study.

Poirot has retired to King’s Abbot, to grow vegetable marrows, not very successfully. He’s missing Captain Hastings who is living in the Argentine, so when he is asked to investigate the murder he enlists Dr Sheppard, who lives next door with his sister Caroline, to help him and it is Dr Sheppard who narrates the story. Caroline is a most interesting character who takes a great interest in other people and likes to know everything that goes on in the village. She is, possibly, a forerunner of Miss Marple as Agatha Christie wrote in her Autobiography:

I think it is possible that Miss Marple arose from the pleasure I had taken in portraying Dr Sheppard’s sister in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. She had been my favourite character in the book – an acidulated spinster, full of curiosity, knowing everything, hearing everything: the complete detective service in the home. (page 448)

This has to be one of my favourite Agatha Christie books. It’s full of believable characters, suspects aplenty including Major Blunt, an old friend staying with Ackroyd, Flora, Ackroyd’s niece and her mother, his sister-in-law and poor relation, Geoffrey Raymond, his secretary, Ursula Bourne, a parlourmaid who may not be all she appears and Ralph Paton, Ackroyd’s adopted son who has large gambling debts.

The setting is that of the quintessential English village where Poirot appears as an mysterious foreigner. Dr Sheppard’s first impression of him is that he must be a retired hairdresser because of his immense moustaches. He also doubts his ability to solve the mystery and described his as

… ridiculously full of his own importance. It crossed my mind to wonder whether he was really any good as a detective. Had his reputation been built up on a series of lucky chances? (page 80)

Of course, it hadn’t and Poirot meticulously works through the timing of events, and disposes of all the suspects to find the culprit. It was only towards the end of the book that I began to realise who it had to be.

  • Hardcover: 237 pages
  • Publisher: HarperCollins; Facsimile edition (2011)
  • Language English
  • Source: My own copy, part of an issue of The Agatha Christie Book Collection partwork published by Agatha Christie Limited

Sunday Salon – Historical Fiction

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Historical fiction has long been a favourite genre and although these days I seem to be reading more crime fiction, it still has an irresistible draw for me. So, I was really pleased when my son gave me The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Penman as a Mother’s Day present today. It’s about the life and times of Richard III. I find Richard a fascinating person, accused of killing his nephews and I’ve read about him from Shakespeare’s play, Richard III to Josephine Tey’s Daughter of Time and Alison Weir’s non-fictional The Princes in the Tower. Now I can become immersed in the period of the Wars of the Roses to Richard’s death at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485.

More historical fiction came to my attention this morning when I read that the Walter Scott Prize Shortlist has been announced. This is the 2nd Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. Last year’s prize was won by Hilary Mantel for her novel, Wolf Hall. the winner will be announced on June 18th at the Borders Book Festival at Melrose.

The shortlist for the 2011 award is:

  • The Long Song by Andrea Levy
  • C by Tom McCarthy
  • The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
  • Ghost Light by Joseph O’Connor
  • Heartstone by C J Sansom
  • To Kill A Tsar by Andrew Williams

The only one of these I’ve read is – Heartstone by C J Sansom. This is Sansom’s fifth book in his 16th century England, Matthew Shardlake series. Heartstone is set in 1545 as England goes to war with France. I thought it was good but not as good as his earlier books, but it is very good on the details of life in Tudor times. Sansom’s research is excellent, his characters are well drawn and the atmosphere and sense of place are convincing.

Andrea Levy’s The Long Song is the next book for discussion at my Book Club at the end of this month, so I’ll be reading it soon. I haven’t read any of Andrea Levy’s four earlier books so I don’t know what to expect. It’s set in Jamaica as slavery came to an end. At the back of my copy there is Bonus Material – Andrea Levy writes about how she came to write The Long Song. I think I’ll start by reading that.

I know very little about the other books, but as I wasn’t too keen on Tom McCarthy’s Remainder and I gave up twice with David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, both of which I know other people rated highly, I may pass on those.  That leaves Joseph O’Connor’s Ghost Light which does sound appealing and I’ve downloaded a sample on Kindle to find out more. This article in The Scotsman has more details.