James Hogg – BooksPlease

It’s been a while since I posted about the books I’ve borrowed from the mobile library van. It’s one of three mobiles in the County Library service that comes round once a month, visiting villages and remote rural areas. It parks near our house. This week I borrowed three books.

The Daylight Gate by Jeanette Winterson. I thought this looks promising. The Trial of the Lancashire Witches in 1612 was the first witch trial to be documented. Thomas Potts, a lawyer, wrote his account: The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the County of Lancashire. It’s supposedly an eyewitness verbatim account and Winterson follows the historical account and the religious background in telling her story. The places are real places and the characters were real people, although she has taken liberties with their motives and means. She states that the story of Alice Nutter (not the Alice Nutter of history) and Elizabeth Southern is her own creation and has no basis in fact. And she was pleased that there might have been a connection with Dr John Dee, and with Manchester, London as well as with Shakespeare himself. And she says: ‘Pendle Hill is still the enigma it ever was though the Malkin Tower is long gone.’

The Forest of Pendle used to be a hunting ground, but some say that the hill is the hunter – alive in its black-and-green coat cropped like an animal pelt.

Good Friday, 1612. Two notorious witches await trial and certain death in Lancaster Castle, whilst a small group gathers in secret protest. Into this group the self-made Alice Nutter stakes her claim and swears to fight against the rule of fear. But what is Alice’s connection to these witches? What is magic if not power, and what will happen to the women who possess it? (Amazon UK)

The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea by Sebastian Junger I took this off the shelf and flicked through the pages, wondering what to expect from this book, described as creative nonfiction. It recounts a storm in October 1991 that resulted in the fishing boat Andrea Gail going down off the coast of Nova Scotia with the loss of all six crew members.

In 2000, the book was adapted by Warner Brothers as a film of the same name, starring George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg.

It was the storm of the century, boasting waves over one hundred feet high—a tempest created by so rare a combination of factors that meteorologists deemed it “the perfect storm.” In a book that has become a classic, Sebastian Junger explores the history of the fishing industry, the science of storms, and the candid accounts of the people whose lives the storm touched. The Perfect Storm is a real-life thriller that makes us feel like we’ve been caught, helpless, in the grip of a force of nature beyond our understanding or control. (Amazon UK)

Little Ern! the Authorized Biography of Ernie Wise by Robert Sellers and James Hogg. For years I loved watching comedians Morecambe and Wise, also known as Eric and Ernie, on TV. Their partnership lasted from 1941 until Morecambe’s sudden death in 1984. And watching their shows years later they still make me laugh.

Even though they are the most famous comedy double act Britain has ever seen, until now there has never been a biography of Ernie Wise. Seen by some as just the straight man in the partnership, in fact ‘Little Ern’ was regarded by his peers as a great comedian in his own right. It took no ordinary talent to be the perfect foil for the genius of Eric Morecambe, and to be his friend, business partner and co-performer for nearly forty years. Morecambe’s personality flared with ego and insecurity, and theirs was a personal relationship that had to be nurtured as carefully as were their on-screen personas.

Nearly thirty years after their last appearances, the pair still dominate the landscape of British comedy, and are loved and revered as ever. With the cooperation of Ernie’s widow Doreen, and drawing on unpublished material from the family archive as well as interviews with friends, Robert Sellers and James Hogg have shifted the spotlight sideways to examine for the first time the true and patient genius of one of the greatest entertainers of his generation. (Goodreads)

The idea of The Sunday Salon is to imagine we’re in a large reading room discussing the books we’re reading.

Today is a good day for reading. Yesterday the sun was shining drawing me outside. But today the sky is grey, the light is dull and I’m content to stay indoors and read. So far, however, I haven’t done much reading. I’ve watched Countryfile, tidied up a bit, made soup and done an Alphapuzzle or two. Countryfile was good – John Craven visited Kew Gardens to celebrate its 250th anniversary, there was a fascinating film of salmon migrating to their spawning grounds in the River Severn and what was to me a truly terrifying look at a mountain bike trail in the Lake District, plus lots more.

Back to books, this morning I continued reading two of the books I have on the go – The View from Castle Rock by Alice Munro and The Madonna of the Almonds by Marina Fiorato. Both are proving to be absorbing reads. For links to these books see the sidebar.

My Tuesday Teaser this week was from Alice Munro’s book, with a brief description of the lower Ettrick Valley where her ancestors came from. The Laidlaws emigrated to Canada in 1818 and the account of their voyage across the Atlantic is made more vivid by entries from Walter Laidlaw’s journal. He had brought with him a book to write in and a vial of ink held in a leather pouch strapped to his chest under his shirt. He had the idea from his cousin, James Hogg, the poet and shepherd. It doesn’t sound an easy crossing:

On the afternoon of the 14th a wind came from the North and the ship began to shake as if every board that was in it would fly loose from every other. The buckets overflowed from the people that were sick and vomiting and there was the contents of them slipping all over the deck. All the people were ordered below but many of them crumpled up against the rail and did not care if they were washed over.

Inevitably reading this book has raised more questions for me – just who was James Hogg for one? My own resources are a bit limited but I do have A Book of Scotland, edited by G F Maine. This is an anthology of Scottish prose and verse and comments on Scottish life and character. It contains several poems by James Hogg who was born in 1770 and died in 1835. I also have Scotland: the Blue Guide, which tells me that he was known as the “Ettrick Shepherd” and was a protege of Sir Walter Scott. There is a monument marking his birthplace and his grave is in the churchyard. He and other men of letters including Scott, Carlyle and Stevenson used to meet in Tibbie Shiels inn. This led me on to look at various websites and well away from Munro’s book, but it’s fascinating how one thing in a book leads on to more and yet more. I found this website about Tibbie Shiels Inn – the inn is in the Scottish Borders 48 miles south of Edinburgh overlooking St Mary’s Loch, on the isthmus between St. Mary’s Loch and Loch of the Lowes about halfway between Selkirk and Moffat. Now I’m wondering if it’s possible for us to stop and have a look at it on our way to see my son and family next time we visit them.

I also found another helpful website Books from Scotland where I came across a book on James Hogg called The Electric Shepherd by Karl Miller. This looks absolutely fascinating. James Hogg taught himself to play the violin as well as writing poetry and the novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner and was a friend of Wordsworth and Coleridge.

I don’t want to write about The Madonna of the Almonds today because I’m enjoying it so much I just want to get on with reading it. But I have to mention my reaction to the title. I associate it with paintings of the Madonna and Child, most notably The Madonna of the Rocks by Leonardo Da Vinci and in a frivolous vein with”The Fallen Madonna of the Big Boobies” by the fictional painter Van Klomp from ‘Allo, ‘Allo!

And so now after looking at what others are reading in the Sunday Salon it’s back to books before cooking dinner.