#blogjune 27 Franklin and Eleanor

Youtube is a great historical resource! I have been reading Hazel Rowley's Franklin and Eleanor: an extraordinary marriage (Melbourne University Press, 2011) and just idly flicked in a search to Youtube as one does. Yes, there is Eleanor at the Human Rights Declaration at United Nations and also masses of other stuff from the FDR collection including family movies as well as more notable speeches and occasions.


Eleanor was an amazing woman and I have read other stuff on her and seen at least one documentary. This book by Hazel Rowley is a really enjoyable read. It's well-researched and well-written and has some great photographs. As she focuses on the relationship between Eleanor and Franklin the part of Eleanor's life that is mainly featured is that between her marriage in 1905 and Franklin's death in 1945, though the context of before and after is well set. I got a bit confused with all the relatives in the beginning and think that perhaps a family tree would have made a good addition to the book! But that's a minor quibble!

#blogjune 25 Lord Peter: the end

Weeks ago when I was sick I started reading or rather re-reading Dorothy L. Sayers' crime fiction. I quickly romped through the books (mostly in ebook form - Stanza and Amazon) and then with some misplaced reluctance turned to the Jill Paton Walsh novels about Lord Peter Wimsey.

Novels past, I was left only with short stories and today I finally finished the last volume of her short stories: Lord Peter: the complete Lord Peter Wimsey stories. I have really struggled to complete this volume as short stories are simply not my favourite type of writing. I know they can be beautiful gems of construction but I really prefer the development of plot and character to be found in a longer work.

This volume is a compendium of all DLS's Peter Wimsey stories and some of them I reread recently in other collections such as Striding folly and In the teeth of the evidence. Don't get me wrong, some of these stories are very clever pieces of detection and there are passages that I love. One such is the scene in "The learned adventure of the Dragon's Head" where nephew Lord St George is visiting and purchases a secondhand book that turns out to provide an interesting mystery. How about this for writing?

"Yes, Uncle Peter," said the viscount dutifully. He was extended on his stomach on the library hearthrug, laboriously picking his way through the more exciting-looking bits of the Cosmographia, with the aid of Messrs. Lewis and Short, whose monumental compilation he had hitherto looked upon as a barbarous invention for the annoyance of upper forms.

These short stories contain lots of little gems that are reminiscent of her full-blown novels. I am very glad I have read them again but so wish there were more novels. Short stories are not the same.

#blogjune 23 The First Merchant Venturers

It's winter here in Melbourne and tulip time. I had some lovely tulips for my birthday and yesterday got some more - red and yellow ones. Tulips always remind me of Egyptology and Bill Culican. Bill was an archaeologist and ancient historian who instilled in me a passion for the subject when I was an undergraduate. But tulips and Egyptology? Well, Bill always used to claim that tulips became popular in Holland and Western Europe as a result of an expanding interest in Egyptology in the 18th century.

I don't really know how true this was but it certainly made a good story. What I do know is that one year when I was teaching in his subject he hauled me into his office before a lecture, handed me a bunch of tulips, told me to go quickly to the lecture theatre and not be seen with him. When he referred to the spread of the tulip trade and its links with Egyptology I was to rise up and present him with the tulips :) All of this was to be a joke for the benefit of another lecturer who was going to be present. I duly presented the tulips on cue and Bill continued lecturing without a blink. Peter collapsed with laughter and we moved on. Maybe you had to be there to understand.



Bill's specialty (or one of them) was the Phoenicians and he supervised my honours thesis that looked at potential Phoenician influence on a Roman cult. His publication, The first merchant venturers: the ancient Levant in history and commerce, was published by Thames and Hudson in 1966 and remains a great read. The Phoenicians were and are fairly elusive figures in the history of antiquity. Bill's comparison of them to their favoured pomegranate is one that always sticks in my head and could be said to describe a number of things and people:

" Luscious but hard of skin, wholesome but fragmentary, vivid but shallow, seedy but ever refreshing, ripe but enduring, and if not the most palatable, at least the most shapely fruit."

Bill Culican died an untimely death in 1984 at the age of 54. He was sorely missed then and still is now. You can read Graeme Clarke's eulogy at his funeral here. But every time I have tulips in the house they bring a smile to my face because of him. And it's been great to remember him today.

#blogjune 22 Five books meme

I'm rather late at getting to this Five Books Meme that others have been doing since last week. But I had other things to say. Now I am on a roll and getting ahead of myself.

1. The book I’m currently reading: Book? I am currently actively reading three books and really always have a couple on the go. The current ones are: Dorothy L Sayers Lord Peter: the complete Lord Peter Wimsey stories, In tearing haste: letters between Deborah Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor, edited by Charlotte Mosley, and Patrick Leigh Fermor A time to keep silence. The first book is my final book in my self-imposed reading-all-Wimsey-books challenge. The other two arose from the death of Paddy Leigh Fermor last week and my wanting to read his works.

2. The last book I finished: That would be Dorothy L Sayers In the teeth of the evidence, a collection of her short stories.

3. The next book I want to read: Anita Heiss Paris Dreaming as I articulated recently in another #blogjune.

4. The last book I bought: In tearing haste: letters between Deborah Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor, edited by Charlotte Mosley (a quick 1-Click on Kindle means that I have been reading this in hard copy as well as on my iTouch and iPad).

5. The last book I was given: Niki Segnit The Flavour thesaurus which I was given for my birthday in May.

This meme is probably pretty boring to those of you who have been reading my #blogjune posts as I have already blogged about all of this books separately. I have linked to the other posts to give you my further comments.

#blogjune 18 Manhattan dreaming

Interested in life in the world of art galleries, life in Canberra, sexist footballers, life in the Big Apple, the sights and sounds and wonders of arriving in New York? Anita Heiss' chicklit novel, Manhattan dreaming, published by Random House, has all of this and more. It's a quick fun and funny read set in the life of Lauren, an indigenous art curator, who hails from Goulburn but has a ball when she hits New York City.

Anita is a great ambassador for indigenous Australia and I have long admired her speaking skills and the writing and storytelling work she has done with teenagers. This is the first book of hers that I have read, but after I finished I went straight out and reserved the sequel, Paris dreaming! It's next on my pile of books to start!

#blogjune 14 In tearing haste

When Patrick Leigh Fermor died last week, I went to the library catalogue to hunt out my Fermor favourites. Much to my delight I discovered a book I didn't know. Edited by Charlotte Mosley, In tearing haste is a collection of letters between Patrick Leigh Fermor and Deborah Devonshire. The correspondence which is two-sided (i.e. I mean there are letters from both of them) spans the period from 1954 to 2008. It is illustrated by a great series of photos of them and lots of other familiar bods and ends in a poignant one taken in 2008 at Edensor with both of them, backs to the camera, heading away from the viewer.

I have just been dipping into it since I brought it home but think it deserves a solid cover-to-cover read now!

#blogjune 11 Last gift of time: life beyond sixty

I first started reading Carolyn Heilbrun's writing decades ago under her pseudonym of Amanda Cross. Her crime novels about a feisty academic feminist, Kate Fansler, really stood out for me among other early feminist crime fiction which was very issues based and not necessarily good writing or attractive publishing. Cross' novels, on the other hand, were well-written reflective pieces with a good story line and, at that, usually a storyline set in academic circumstances which I understood.

In 1970 an investigative journalist discovered who was the real person behind Amanda Cross and I came to know the writing of Carolyn Heilbrun herself, such as the classic Writing a woman's life. Heilbrun, atheist, feminist and a woman with strong views, had decided that she did not want to live beyond the term of a natural life i.e. 70, the Biblical three score years and ten though as an atheist the Bible was not a construct that ruled her life. The Last gift of time: life beyond sixty was written when she was approaching 70 and looking back on the last ten years of her life. She decided then that the time was not right but when she was 77 ended her life at her own time and in her own place and space, in a room of her own indeed.

I read and savoured these essays when they were published in 1997 and I was in my 40s. Since then as 60 has relentlessly approached family and friends, not to mention me, I have dipped into them again and again and bought copies as gifts. Recently I thought of these essays when a friend was dealing with her brother's impending death. They were probably inappropriate for that occasion but I pulled the volume down to revisit it and enjoy her reflective prose. And they are very apt for me in my current environment of dealing with the situation of two parents in their late 80s who are moving to nursing homes.

A couple of days ago Paddy Leigh Fermor died at 96. He was still living part of the year in the Mani and part in England. He is reputed to have still been writing and revising. Carolyn Heilbrun decided at age 77 in full possession of her faculties to choose her own time of ending her life. My friend's father, John, who is 90 and has dementia was a member of the Euthanasia Society but now he is in a high care dementia ward and doesn't know what euthanasia means. There are many pathways. But I really recommend that people read Carolyn Heilbrun and savour her prose.