a gallimaufry

on Beatrix Potter and Brer Rabbit

Perhaps you missed the slight kerfuffle about Beatrix Potter recently? I certainly did; it wasn’t until I was chatting on the phone on Sunday with M that it came to my attention. M had read about it in The Times; Beatrix Potter was being accused of cultural appropriation by some crazed academic because Peter Rabbit was a talking rabbit like Brer Rabbit, and Brer Rabbit stories were originally told by enslaved Africans. We both thought this seemed a bit silly.

Curious, I found the article in The Conversation by Dr Emily Zobel Marshall. It is a really interesting article! I am so glad to have read it. If you are a Potter fan, I urge you to do the same. And if you are a fan of Enid Blyton, for once she comes out of it well!

(Beatrix Potter, illustration for The Tale of Peter Rabbit, published by Frederick Warne, London, 1902; found here)

Zobel Marshall makes a compelling case that Potter knew and loved the Brer Rabbit stories of ‘Uncle Remus’ and drew on them for the plots of some of her stories as well as some of the language. Fearful of plagiarism and accusations of plagiarism, Potter herself never publicly acknowledged the link; since then very few academics have acknowledged the link either.

Finally, Zobel Marshall sites this refusal to discuss Potter’s use of Brer Rabbit as part of a wider appropriation of Black culture, in which Black culture is used by predominantly white culture and not acknowledged.

I mean, can any of this actually be disputed? The article is measured and well argued. I do disagree with her claim that the plot of The Tale of Peter Rabbit, of the trickster stealing food, being the ‘plot [that] is the main storyline in most of Potter’s tales’. The plots of most of her books are quite different. Still, I was curious about M’s interpretation of the article, based as it must have been on what they read in The Times. And a cursory Google brought up a list of furious headlines in the right-wing press.

I couldn’t read The Times article because it is behind a paywall. I think it must be this one. I note the use of the word ‘stole’; not a word that Zobel Marshall used once in her article, as far as I could see. However, inflammatory headlines in the Daily Express (‘Beatrix Potter Accused of ‘Copying’ African Slaves’ Stories for Peter Rabbit) and the so-called news site GB News (‘Now Peter Rabbit is Under Threat by Woke Mob as Beatrix Potter Attacked’) were followed by reasonable summaries of Zobel Marshall’s article so perhaps the Times article is also better balanced.

Not so Libby Purves’s reaction in the Daily Mail: ‘Academic Accusing Beatrix Potter of Stealing Peter Rabbit Needs a Lie Down.’ To be honest, I never have high hopes of the Mail and this is an opinion piece, but I do respect Purves and was therefore very disappointed by what I read. Purves admits that what Zobel Marshall writes is ‘fairly convincing’ but the problem is her tone: ‘her essay seems to be designed to whip up indignation and division between cultures — and, I suppose, supply a box-fresh new dose of white guilt’. Purves then goes on to explain that cultures have always borrowed from and influenced each other, which is not Zobel Marshall’s point, and to complain about the term ‘cultural appropriation’.

(A.B. Frost, illustration for Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, by Joel Chandler Harris, published by D. Appleton and Co., 1911; found here)

Purves uses Zobel Marshall’s article to make a wider point, and I intend to do the same with hers. I find her reaction absolutely typical of those people who lose their wigs when the National Trust dares to include information in their properties that a family enriched itself through slavery or who immediately tell you, when the topic of slavery comes up, that Black Africans profited from slave trading too. Why are they so frightened about accepting historical fact? Why can’t we say that some British families profited enormously from the transatlantic slave trade? Why are we only supposed to feel pride in our past and not shame as well? Why can’t we acknowledge it if we draw on another cultural tradition for our own creative work?

Beatrix Potter wrote and illustrated wonderful books that we still enjoy today, and she drew on the stories of Brer Rabbit to do so. See – it’s not difficult to make a start, is it?

Happy 2023!

A belated Happy New Year! I hope you all enjoyed the holidays and have started 2023 in the nicest ways possible.

For me, one of the highlights of Christmas this year was going to see the Royal Ballet’s production of The Nutcracker in London with my mother and daughter. It was everything you would want a ballet to be: beautiful music, expertly played by the orchestra; lovely sets and costumes, and, most important of all, exquisite dancing. Not that I am an expert, but I actually cried a bit while watching it, and more than once too. The audience was filled with little girls in sparkly velvet and net dresses and it was one wonderful, happy experience. It’s shown every year and I thoroughly recommend it.

After a frantically busy couple of months, I finally and tardily finished reading Brian Attebery’s absolutely brilliant new book, Fantasy: How it Works, which I reviewed for Shiny New Books. If you don’t have time to wade through my turgid prose, just go out and buy/borrow it. It explains why fantasy isn’t just childish escapism, and analyses lots of books to discuss how it works and what it does. All in a very readable, chatty style.

(And look at that gorgeous cover!)

For the rest of the holidays, I enjoyed lounging about reading both in the UK and here in Belgium. In fact, I have rearranged a corner of the sitting-room for maximal reading and lounging pleasure. It’s also easier for me to write there, for I have been writing (just not here).

I spent September to the endish of December following the Golden Egg Academy 12-week Write Your Successful Children’s Novel course. It was brilliant and if you are thinking of writing for children, I highly recommend it. There are no entry requirements, and week by week you learn how you actually put a book together, what to think about, what to develop and how to structure it. It is really practical, and handily it’s distance learning so you can do it at your own pace. Pretty much every week there is a Zoom or FaceBook meeting with the course leader, Imogen Cooper, who is just the nicest person as well as hugely experienced, and you can ask questions and get advice. At the end you can send in your first 2000 words plus a synopsis for one of the Golden Egg editors to evaluate. I have to say that the feedback was very helpful and perceptive.

After another busy few weeks at work I am keen to get back to work on my book. One of the elements I hadn’t been sure about was having a dual narrative, and the editor suggested that sticking to one viewpoint would be better. My book’s other massive weakness, caused by my tendency to plot as I go along rather than before I start, is that there is too much going on and not enough focus on the main theme. So it’s time to prune and plan (at least a bit) before getting back down to writing. The feedback has really enthused me to carry on. I hope to have a reasonable first draft ready by the end of the summer, so that I can re-apply for the 12-month course on developing your children’s novel.

Because of all this I have mainly been reading children’s novels, especially recently published ones. Here are some of them, in short!

The Poisoned Pie Mystery, by Nicki Thornton  

A boy to whom accidents just keep on happening, a talking cat who is also a master detective and a lot of cake… This is a brisk and chirpy novel for children of about 9+. The author does something quite daring with the parents, which I did not see coming.

The Hounds of the Mórrigan, by Pat O’Shea

An older work but a wonderful immersion into Irish mythology, as Pidge and Brigit journey through a magical landscape in search of a drop of the Mórrigan’s blood. Truly magical, the many joys of this book include the characterisation of the children, who act and speak like real children, and the creatures they encounter.

Children of Blood and Bone, Tomi Adeyemi

In a mythical sort-of version of Nigeria called Orïsha, the maji are people who used to have magical powers but lost them suddenly twelve years ago. Now they are oppressed and enslaved by the majority kosídan and their cruel king, but maybe there is a way for teenaged Zélie and her friends to restore magic and end the tyranny. This is the first YA novel I have ever read and my was it bloodthirsty! But the story is compelling and I loved the setting.

The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place, by Julie Berry

I don’t think this book is very well known outside the US? But it should be. An exciting opportunity is delivered to the students of St Etheldreda’s School for Young Ladies in nineteenth-century Ely, when their horrid headmistress and her brother both drop dead: poisoned. Rather than informing the authorities, the girls decide to continue as usual and enjoy their freedom, pretending that the two victims are still alive. Of course, this becomes increasingly farcical and meanwhile the murderer is still lurking about. A bouncy entertaining read and the American author gets pretty much everything British spot on and believe me that is high praise.

 

Golden Egg Academy

Once again I have been ignoring this blog… Increasingly, I wonder what it’s for, maybe it will just peter out… 

My latest excuse is that my free time is being hoovered up by the Golden Egg Academy’s 12-week course Write Your Successful Children’s Novel. An embarrassingly long time ago now I actually completed a children’s book which was, in retrospect, objectively terrible on pretty much every level. But I did finish it, which is something! Anyway, I sent it to a few agents and unsurprisingly none expressed the tiniest amount of interest.

I didn’t give up, and started writing another book which I think has more promise – at least this one has some dramatic tension, for a start. However, I kept changing my mind about fundamental aspects of it and starting again and faffing. Eventually I conceded that I really didn’t have much idea what I was doing and if I wanted ever to produce something a child might want to read, I would have to pull myself together, inject some discipline and get some help.

The Golden Egg Academy was set up by Imogen Cooper, who used to be Editorial Director at Chicken House. She felt frustrated that she received many interesting submissions which had promise but needed much more work and guidance than a publisher could give. In particular, there were talented writers who did not understand the craft of writing, or how writing for children differs from writing for adults. The Academy offers courses and workshops for picture book writers as well as novel writers, of different lengths and for writers at different stage of their writing process. It is unusual in that it is specifically for children’s books and the team is made up of industry professionals rather than writers or academics.

I am really enjoying the course I’m following. There’s one module per week, with videos, slides and tasks, and at the moment we are grappling with my great bugbear, structure. (One of my great bugbears, should I say.) Although there are live Zoom and FaceBook sessions (yes I have finally joined FaceBook but only for this course!), plus feedback on the beginning of your novel, you can do most of it at your own pace and the materials remain accessible for the duration of the universe. This is a terrific bonus if you have a job, a family or other demands on your time. There’s also a FaceBook group for everyone on the course where we can talk shop, which is fun. Everyone is lovely and friendly. I mean, if my novel would just write itself now I would be in heaven.

So for now I am going to go back to my post-it notes and my 32,000 flabby words. I will also try and write a bit more here, and I have two books to review for Shiny New Books which both look exciting. But you’ll have to wait for those...

 

From Spare Oom to War Drobe: Travels in Narnia with my Nine-Year-Old Self, by Katherine Langrish

When I was nine years old I wrote a book called Tales of Narnia, and I still have it. In spiky blue ink, written in my best handwriting with only occasional crossings-out and spelling mistakes, it runs for eighty-six numbered pages and fills an old hard-covered notebook from front to back. [...] I covered the notebook with a paper wrapper which I painted dark blue, and stuck a poster-paint picture I’d made of Aslan on the front. He looks very stiff, very yellow and rather cross.

So begins this lovely ramble through C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. It is really for people who, like Langrish, adored the books when they read them as a child but perhaps have not revisited them since. So a chapter is devoted to each book, including a detailed retelling each story and extensive quotes. As we explore, Langrish considers how Lewis’s personal beliefs, the historical situation (shortly after the Second World War and during the Cold War) and literary and folkloric works contributed to each book. Her knowledge is impressive but lightly worn, so that it’s like reading along with a good friend whose ideas you mostly but not completely agree with.

Langrish is even-handed, although she admits she likes some books more than others (and does anyone truly love The Last Battle?), she is alert to beautiful writing wherever she finds it. She considers the darker side of the books: racism? Yes, definitely. Misogyny? More mixed. There are strong girls in every book, and some great villainesses; but on the other side there is the Susan problem and, though I don’t think Langrish mentions it, no strong and likeable adult females. Do these problems mean that we shouldn’t read the books any more? Of course not!

And I had not realised it, until Langrish pointed it out, how thoroughly Lewis loathed schools. There are plenty of references to them in the books and they are always awful places.

I was impressed by Langrish’s tracing of motifs and plots to their source material. This includes Victorian and Edwardian children’s books and fantasy literature, Mediaeval and Renaissance poetry, fairy tales, Greek, Roman and Norse myths, the Arabian Nights, Christian theology and of course the Bible. Lewis’s uses of these gives different flavours to the books: for instance, there is a strong debt to E. Nesbit in much of The Magician’s Nephew, but more of a Mediaeval romance feeling to The Silver Chair. Langrish also argues persuasively for the influence of more recent history on some of the books. So Maugrim’s secret police surely draws on the Cheka and the Stasi, Nickabrick on the struggles of Irish revolutionaries, and the silver chair on the horrors of trench warfare.It is all very illuminating and gave me a new respect for Lewis’s skills as a children’s writer and as someone who understood children. (The only real remaining mystery: why did Edmund love Turkish Delight so much?) Langrish’s emphasis on her own responses to the books keeps it from ever threatening to become dry. Passages such as Aslan’s death and rebirth, or the creation of Narnia, still move and delight her; Caspian’s lengthy back story bores her.  A particular joy is how she contrasts her adult reactions with her child ones. At the end of The Silver Chair, grown-up liberal Langrish disapproves of the way Jill and Eustace deal with the bullies but nine-year-old Katherine loved it.

This is the kind of book to read on a rainy Sunday afternoon with the kind of tea and toasted muffins you would eat in a faun’s cave in Narnia. Although you will then spend your Sunday evening grubbing about in the attic looking for your battered Puffin paperbacks...

(All the illustrations on this page are by Pauline Baynes; this last one is the cover illustration for The Last Battle - rather different from the one on my Puffin edition!)

The Sword in the Stone, by T.H. White

I’ve had a copy of The Once and Future King hanging around for several years now, and every time I see it I think, ‘I really want to read that!’ and then I don’t. And I feel a little guilty because when I finally picked it up it wasn’t really to read it in its own right, as it were. As I may have mentioned, the third and last Sylvia Townsend Warner reading week is coming up. Since STW was accomplished at so many forms of literature, I’ve always tried to include a variety in my reading for this; she wrote a biography of T.H. White which I thought would be nice to write about for this year.

Alas, second-hand copies including delivery to Belgium are now so expensive that I have changed my mind. The very least I could do to make it up to T.H. seemed to write a post about this, his most famous book in his Arthurian quartet.

The Sword in the Stone is about the boyhood of King Arthur; specifically, his education. The boy Wart has been fostered by Sir Ector and brought up alongside Sir Ector’s biological son, Kay, in the Castle of the Forest Sauvage. Lost in the forest one day, Wart stumbles across Merlin’s cottage and Merlin decides to become his tutor. Naturally the lessons Merlin teaches are not the tedious grammar ones to which Wart has been accustomed up until now. He is transformed into different animals and birds and in one of my favourite episodes he and Kay meet Robin Hood and rescue Friar Tuck and the Dog Boy from Morgan le Fay’s fortress, CastleChariot. Finally, on a trip to a jousting tournament in London, Wart draws out a sword from an anvil because Kay needs it. This sword is the magic one which proves he must be the next king of England.

(John Lawrence, illustration for the Folio Society edition of The Once and Future King, 2013)

I will quote the description of Morgan Le Fay’s castle here because I love it so much:

It was a castle made entirely out of food, except that on the highest tower of all, a carrion crow was sitting, with an arrow in its beak. [...] It rose from its lake of milk in a mystic light of its own – in a greasy, buttery glow. It was the fairy aspect of Castle Chariot, which the Oldest Ones [...] had thought would be tempting to the children [Wart and Kay]. It was to tempt them to eat. [...] They plodded over the filthy drawbridge – a butter one, with cow hairs still in it – sinking to their ankles. [..] In the end they came to the inner chamber, where Morgan le Fay herself lay stretched upon her bed of glorious lard.

People sometimes talk about ‘comfort books’, and this is a comfort book. A ‘bed of glorious lard’! It is a comforting book to read, because it is amusing, it is about childhood, it is grounded in a wonderful natural world and it allows wish-fulfilment. Like Narnia, the world of the Castle of the Forest Sauvage is a place we long to visit. It is a self-consciously ‘hyperreal’ version of the Middle Ages, with proper snowy winters and old oak trees and feasts and jousting, all the Middle Ages one could wish for. Society is ordered and dangers are successfully overcome. And it is funny. However, it was also a comforting book for White to write. According to Kevin Crossley Holland, in the foreword to my edition, White had a miserable childhood and for the rest of his life used education as a means of comforting himself. So in this novel Wart learns what it is like to live in an ant society and a goose society; when to fear a pike; what falcons discuss at night. And we learn how to shoot a bow and joust a knight on horseback and hunt a wild boar – but like Wart, we have fun while we learn.

White writes in a dry, amusing tone and there are great comic moments in this novel. He also has a lot of fun with the concept of historical fiction, throwing anachronisms around gleefully to underline the fantastical nature of the book. Look, he seems to be telling us, it’s just a story, let’s enjoy ourselves! And we do.

(Photograph of T.H. White, found here)

Hexwood, by Diana Wynne Jones

Some thousand years ago in February I wrote about The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern and postulated that it might have been influenced by video games. (This was, I admit, quite a reach since I don’t play video games, but knowing very little about something has rarely prevented me from pontificating.) Anyway, in the comments we wondered about a subgenre of fiction influenced by video games. Chris mentioned Codex by Lev Grossman but I don’t think we came up with any others.

Now, perhaps here is a third novel to add to that subgenre: Diana Wynne Jones’s Hexwood, from 1993, which uses elements of gaming as its plot in a far more fundamental way than I think Morgenstern did.

First of all, what is Hexwood? To teenaged Ann, lying in bed with a virus, it is the housing estate on which she lives – with Hexwood Farm, a derelict old place behind crumbling walls. People enter it but never seem to leave. To Hume, it is a woodland filled with strange creatures, a castle, a white van. To the Reigners, it is an old library and archive on Earth, a remote and backward outpost in their intergalactic empire.

But in all these guises Hexwood houses the Bannus, an ancient computer whose function is to make decisions by creating an ever-expanding theta-field and:

live action scenarios of any set of facts and people you care to feed into it. [It] acts little plays for you, until you find the right one and tell it to stop.

What does that mean? It means that it generates an alternative reality into which it pulls people and circumstances. In this alternative reality the people play out different scenarios, on and on, until an outcome is reached and someone stops the machine. And each of these scenarios is itself a sort of alternate reality, since the people playing them have no memory of the previous versions.

At the beginning of the book, a young man called Harrison Scudamore has succeeded in getting himself employed by Rayner Hexwood, the manifestation of the Reigner Corporation on Earth, and has switched on the Bannus. More and more people are being sucked into it to play out its scenarios. Can anyone stop it – and how? 

This device of the playing out of versions of a similar story is very like that of many video games, in which you have a character and a set of circumstances and at each stage a variety of possible decisions which shape the way that the game moves. And one (or possibly more!) set of decisions will lead you to a successful outcome and the winning of the game.

In many of her novels, Diana Wynne Jones uses alternate worlds and realities (The Homeward Bounders, Fire and Hemlock, the Chrestomanci series, to name but a few), so the conceit of the computer game is obviously attractive to her. The Bannus layers different realities over each other, but what is ‘real’ and what is ‘game’ is further complicated by the lies and misdirections of some characters and the confusion of others over who they ‘really’ are – since they inhabit more than one identity. Furthermore, time is not linear but skips back and forth. The Fisher King has apparently been in his castle for years at the beginning of the novel, but in fact only arrives there halfway through. (This makes much more sense in the book.)

Hexwood I think goes further, in asking questions about free will and control, which again come from the device of the video game. When someone plays a video game, they know they are playing and they know what their goal is, even if they only have control over their own character. In Hexwood you are in the game, but you don’t know it, you think you are in the ‘real’ world and acting from your own free will. The Bannus is the one who is playing, and without your consent or even knowledge, since your memory is wiped each time.

Wynne Jones make the parallel with political systems clear. If the Bannus, compelling people to play a game they do not understand and removing parts of their memories to do so, has a sinister aspect, how much more does the Reigner Corporation, which seeks to control and (mis)shape people to suit their own ends, treating them as having no more value than some pixels on a screen? The training of children to become Servants – official assassins to the Reigners – is truly chilling. Yet the power of the Corporation, like that of the Bannus, seems so great as to be unstoppable.

Of course, there is a lot of fun too. Wynne Jones also throws in dragons, a robot, Arthurian legend, a magician and problematic middle managers, all handled with her customary verve and humour. It is complex and even the outline I have given is not accurate because what happens right up until the end of the novel is that your perception of what is happening – and even what the Bannus is – is constantly shifting (due to the lies and misdirections I mentioned before). It’s also a timely reminder that the checks and balances built in to any system of government are both deeply important and deeply vulnerable so we should fight for them while we still have them, ahem British government (yes I know it is a cheap political point sorry).

What do you think? Have you read Hexwood? Can you think of any other novels which use video games in some way?

wittering on

Happy Monday, everyone!

Summer is definitely over now, and with it the pleasure of life opening up again after the Covid-19 restrictions. The numbers of people admitted to hospital and dying are slowly rising, here in Belgium and also across much of Europe. It all feels as if we’re in March 2020 again – but this time, with all the Brexit highlights of 2019 thrown in: the dire warnings, the impending deadline, the uncertainty over whether agreement between the UK and the EU can be achieved, the fear that it won’t.

So I’m back to checking the news every five seconds and I note that I haven’t read much over the last few weeks, though I have started a lot of books. A noticeable exception was the latest instalment in Christelle Dabos’s fantasy quartet: The Memory of Babel.

This series, The Mirror Visitor, is set on what might be Earth in the future, after an event called the Rupture which has split the planet into many pieces, called Arks. The Arks float in a shared atmosphere and each one has a presiding Family Spirit, who has special Powers, some of which can be inherited by their offspring. Ophelia, an unassuming archivist, is able to ‘read’ objects with her hands as well as to bring them to life; she also has the more unusual ability to travel through mirrors. To her surprise, a marriage is arranged between her and Thorn, the arrogant, rude Treasurer on the icy Pole Ark. What is the purpose of this marriage?

Unravelling this and associated mysteries brings Ophelia repeatedly into danger as she explores the origins of the Arks and the Spirits themselves. The books unspool at a tremendous pace and are quite complex (I had to reread the first two because I had forgotten so many important details). There is steam punk, a floating city, people who can fold space or create illusions as real as reality, a nightclub in the catacombs, murders, disguises, doubles, a circus, an animated woolly scarf. Reading, libraries and books are of central importance and I feel convinced that the secrets of the world’s origins are going to be quite meta. I’ll have to wait at least a year to find out!

I have also decided to avoid a Leonard Bast demise and put away some of my books. For a while now, I’ve been havering between two positions: (1) I love all my books and will not be parted from them and (2) I don’t really care about most of my books and am too weighed down by materialism and the need to possess things – let me bet rid of them all! I have read with admiration of people purging their bookshelves down to a core of books they really love, and have looked enviously at other people’s extensive book collection while re-reading a book I’ve had for thirty years.

Since we have an attic, I finally decided to take the easy way out, not make a proper decision and put some books into boxes up there. Then I spent months on and off wondering which books to keep up there. It seemed better to emboxen whole categories of book, rather than skim through the shelves and pick out some I thought myself less likely to re-read in the near future (which might then languish for ever). This past weekend I finally did it. Books that went up there: most of my old children’s books (though by no means all) and what I call ‘girly fantasy’ (Patricia McKillip, Theodora Goss, Peter Beagle, etc.). Detective fiction may also go up there.

Behind the piles of books I found some forgotten treasures lurking on the shelves! This was an unexpected bonus.

But now, gazing at the wall o’ books in the sitting room, I am bitterly regretting the impulse a few years ago that made me re-shelve my fiction, poetry and plays chronologically. It’s actually not very practical AT ALL. I want to return to alphabetical order! However, I do not think I can face the massive task of re-shelving once more...

(Gratuitous painting by the Napolitan artist Colantonio of St Jerome in his study; obviously the lion is the best bit but St Jerome is almost as untidy as I am; painted 1445–6 and now in the National Museum of Capodimonte; found here)

of face masks, cats and magic hens

Excitingly, things are changing here in lovely Belgium. This week my daughter E, clutching her two-months’ pocket money, and I went to actual shops for the first time since everything closed down. This was a careful exercise as each shop had subtly different variations on the theme of safety. How many people were permitted in the shop? Was it obligatory to carry a basket? If obligatory, did you have to disinfect the basket yourself or use one which the staff had already disinfected? Could you pay with cash? (Generally, not.) If you were paying with a card, did you have to use a little ear stick thing to tap in your PIN code?

Furthermore, although we plan to make our own face masks my husband K had bought a box of disposable ones and I had decided that this shopping trip might be a good opportunity to try out wearing one (we have to wear them on public transport and I will at some point before the end of June have to travel on the bus to school). There were instructions on the back but what sort of fool needs instructions to put on a face mask, for goodness’ sake? This sort of fool, obviously. We encountered a former student of mine who is a trained nurse. He helpfully pointed out that not only should I have pinched it over my nose but I was in fact wearing it inside out.

Wearing a face mask was irritating. Perhaps because I had put it on wrongly, it seemed to poke my right eye rather a lot. But it also changed my behaviour, I later realised. I felt surprisingly free of any urge to be friendly or chat. I did what I had to do in each shop with just enough politeness, and left. It is a little bit like when you wear sunglasses and think you’re invisible. Nobody could see the lower part of my face and whether or not I smiled, so I didn’t bother, and then I didn’t bother with much else in terms of sociable behaviour either. I felt disengaged, very separate from everyone except E. I didn’t even feel like talking to my former student, or other acquaintances we saw; there was too much to say and nothing to say and I wanted to go back home. Was it just the mask? Was it also the effect of isolating at home? Will it persist?

Home these days is a bit like a furry version of the set of Kill Bill. Nala (I didn’t choose her name) our cuddly fluffy tortoiseshell pussy-cat, has gone full psycho-killer and every sun rises on fresh corpses strewn around the kitchen. This morning was a record five. We bury the dead rats in the garden but individual graves and funerals are now a thing of the past and there’s a mass grave behind the greenhouse. I know rats are not exactly the most desirable of neighbours although I have a soft spot for them (before you think Dark Thoughts about my housekeeping skillz I should point out that our house is attached to a barn wherein our landlord keeps dozens of hay bales and the food for his chickens and donkeys in uncovered bins, total rat heaven) and if Nala doesn’t keep the numbers down then our landlord puts out poison which is a horrible death, but I can’t help feeling depressed at this wanton slaughter. (She does sometimes eat them, which at least ameliorates it a bit.)

(Nala, on patrol)

More cheerfully, we have some new hen friends. Frosty and Sparkle, the resident ladies (I didn’t choose their names either), had as good as given up laying in March. Sometimes an egg would carelessly drop out as they were strolling round, but like as not they’d tread on it. So a few weeks ago, when it was once more allowed, we acquired two pullets to keep them company: Dorothy Robin and Matilda Misty (no, nor their names). But Dorothy Robin turned out to be Not As Other Hens. Was she magic? Or was she just a supreme escapologist?

(Dorothy Robin and Matilda Misty at home)

As anyone with any chicken experience knows, introducing new hens is a fraught and upsetting time with bullying aplenty. Frosty immediately developed an intense hatred of Dorothy R and actually leapt on her (I’ve never seen that happen before). Then suddenly Dorothy was on the other side of the fence, looking surprised, among the gooseberries. How did that happen? Surely she could not have squeezed through one of the small holes in the fence?

(Frosty asks if you want some of this)

Over the next few days, Dorothy Robin kept appearing in odd places. We found her on top of the shed. We found her strolling through the potato trenches. We found her with next-door’s chickens, pretending not to know who we were. I did feel mean returning her to the run and we did separate the hens for a couple of days. On a few occasions, she took Matilda Misty with her, though Matilda didn’t like straying far from the run and would hang round the gate hoping to be let back in.

And then she just stopped. Perhaps, now that Frosty was being friendly, she felt no need to escape. Perhaps her magic powers wore off. Perhaps our alterations to the run thwarted her. But now she’s everyone’s best friend. And when the forces of evil next mass over Belgium, I think we know which little red hen will be the only one capable of defeating them.

(Dorothy Robin contemplates saving the world)

How are you all getting on? Are you reading, or not reading? Reading something different from usual? Far from getting stuck into all those demanding tomes I’d hoarded for years against some sustained reading time, I am unable to cope with anything more intellectually or emotionally demanding than selected vintage detective novels and children’s books. Worryingly, given that the Reading Week I’m organising is looming, I do not feel up to reading Sylvia Townsend Warner (she is just too disconcerting and too liable to slide a knife between your ribs for me at the moment, love her as I do). I’ve just rollicked my way through Alex Bell’s Polar Bear Explorers’ Club series, and am dusting down my elderly copy of Nine Tailors. I don’t seem capable of anything creative and I am still obsessed with reading the news to an unhealthy extent. Poor E has been finding it all very difficult and won’t be going back to school this term. For her, the Harry Potter audio books have been an absolute lifeline. She’s just starting book five but I am already worrying about what else I could find for her when she finishes them. Any suggestions (she’s ten) gratefully received.

plague reading

With the spread of Covid-19 now officially being declared a pandemic, it struck me as time to dust down my copy of the father of plague literature, the Decameron.

It is 1348, and Florence is being ravaged by plague. Ten young aristocrats take refuge in a palace a couple of miles from the city, and to entertain each other take it in turns to tell ten stories. It is twenty-five years since I last read this and I cannot remember much about the stories, but the back cover tells me ‘Ranging from the earthily comic to the profoundly tragic, they encompass marital misunderstanding and thwarted passion, the simple joys of physical love as well as bawdily exuberant tales of deception and hypocrisy shamed.’

For yes, I am stockpiling – books. (I find it fascinating that the British stockpile loo paper of all things, I mean, most of us have hands...) I teach in an adult education centre and many of our students are retired, so it is entirely likely that we’ll be sent home at some point even if I don’t catch coronavirus myself.

The Decameron may prove a little rich and to be honest at the moment, anxious as I am about the elderly and sick, especially my parents, I favour comfort reading. So alongside tales of mediaeval raunch, I am stockpiling:

• Armadale, by Wilkie Collins, to lose myself in (this isn’t truly stockpiling since I borrowed it from my mother when I was last visiting her)
• Two new-to-me Frances Hardinge novels, Twilight Robbery and Gullstruck Island

And I am looking out:

• The Ogre Downstairs and The House of Many Ways by Diana Wynne Jones 
• The Lord Fish by Walter de la Mare
• the Carbonel books by Barbara Sleigh.

In sad times I like reading and rereading children’s books. They satisfy a nostalgic yearning in me for my childhood, which was close to idyllic, and at the same time they soothe and reassure with their happy endings. Even just sorting through them, choosing what I want to read (which of course may have changed by next week) is comforting.

What about you? What books do you turn to when you are anxious or unhappy? Do you have any good recommendations?

brian wildsmith

One of my very favourite childhood books (admittedly, I have a lot of favourite childhood books) is a picture book called Blue Bird, which my parents gave me for my birthday when I was five. The story is a simplified version of Maurice Maeterlinck’s Blue Bird and is wonderful, but what makes this book special is the beautiful, beautiful pictures. I loved it so much I devoted not one but two Puffin Club bookplates to it.

(Illustration of one of the secret rooms in the Palace of the Night, from Blue Bird, OUP 1976; from here)

(Madam Berlingot, from Blue Bird, from here)

(The Fairy Bérylune, from Blue Bird, from here)

If you are a child of the 1970s like me, you will almost certainly have recognised the unique style of the illustrations even if you don’t remember the name of the artist. He was Brian Wildsmith, and although he died in 2016 today is his birthday and he would have been ninety years old. Tamsin Rosewell (@autumnrosewell) and James Mayhew (@mrjamesmayhew) are organising a Twitter celebration (#wildsmith90) so I thought I’d add something here, as a tribute to one of the greats of illustration. I have drawn on his Wikipedia entry as well as other sites and interviews to which I’ve linked.

Brian Wildsmith was born in 1930 in Penistone, West Riding. He went to school in Sheffield and at seventeen, determined not to follow his father down the mines, studied at the Barnsley School of Art, from where he won a scholarship to the Slade in London. During his time there (1949–52) he was something of an outsider, unable to afford oils and canvas so spending his lunchtimes drawing and studying the Old Masters in the National Gallery. In 1955, after his National Service (he taught music at the Royal Military School of Music), he got married, started teaching art at Selhurst High School and began designing book jackets for John Murray and drawing line illustrations for publishers including Faber and Faber and Oxford University Press.

(Brian Wildsmith at work; photograph from his obituary in the Guardian by Julia Eccleshare)

Wildsmith was foremost a painter and loved colour, and it was his great good fortune that the 1960s saw enormous improvements in colour-printing technology. His other piece of great good fortune was Mabel George, of Oxford University Press, who gave him his first chance to illustrate a children’s book in colour. Mabel George was a brilliant editor who took over the children’s department of OUP in 1956 and also launched the careers of Charles Keeping and Victor Ambrus as well as many writers. As an experiment, she commissioned Wildsmith to illustrate the Arabian Nights (1961). The TLS review savaged it:

‘We now descend to the lowest depths with Brian Wildsmith's vicious attack on the Arabian Nights [...] these pointless scribbles, which do duty for drawings, wander aimlessly about the page[...]’

Mabel responded magnificently:

‘Take no notice, Brian. We make up our own minds here. We’re now going to do an ABC.’

Brian Wildsmith’s ABC went on to win the Kate Greenaway Award in 1962 and his career was made. (I learnt about Mabel George, who was a truly impressive person, here.)

But according to this lovely interview he gave to Joanna Carey in the Guardian, that horrible review remained engraved on Wildsmith’s heart for ever.

(Illustration from Fishes, OUP 1968; from here)

In 1971, Wildsmith and his family – he had four children – emigrated to France with a grand piano and settled in a house in an olive grove in the south. The Blue Bird, my beloved picture book, was published in 1976. It sprang from an invitation Wildsmith received from George Cukor two years earlier: Cukor was going to film Maeterlinck’s play in the first ever US/Soviet co-production in cinema: would Wildsmith like to design the sets and costumes? I had never even heard of this film which apparently was a flop; a pity, but still it gave rise to this marvellous book.

Wildsmith was prolific: he published 82 books, mainly with OUP. Many of them he wrote himself, despite initial reservations which he expressed to Mabel George. In an interview for the Independent, he told Susie Mesure:

‘I said, “But Mabel, my English is terrible. I always got terrible marks at school.” But she said, “Brian, I have editors with inkpots full of full stops and commas. It’s ideas that count and you’ve got them.” And it took off from there.’

I have a couple of other books he illustrated, which I also love very much:

(Illustration of Mother Goose from Mother Goose: A Collection of Nursery Rhymes, OUP 1964; from here)

(Illustration from Mother Goose: A Collection of Nursery Rhymes, from here)

(Illustration from The Oxford Book of Poetry for Children, edited by Edward Blishen, OUP 1963; from here)

Looking at his pictures on the internets, I recognise others that we must have borrowed from the library:

(Birds, OUP 1967; from here)

(The Lazy Bear, OUP 1973; from here)

His use of colour is striking; it can be bold or subtle, but he’s also acutely aware of pattern and uses patchwork a lot in his pictures of houses and landscapes. The colours can be very intense but are often balanced by large areas of white space. You can see the influence of 1960s psychedelia in some of his work too. The other very striking element is the texture of his pictures. They are very painterly, and again vary from thickly laid swirls and dabs to delicate washes and splashes, given extra clarity by the pencil drawing beneath, embellished with waxy strokes of pastel or layers of collate. When you look at his pictures, they are alive and joyful.

As they sing, he is big in Japan, where a museum dedicated to his work was opened in 1994 and in 1996 he illustrated Katie and the Dream Eater, written by Her Imperial Highness Princess Takamodo of the Japanese Imperial Family. But he is not so big in the UK and many of his books remain out of print; perhaps today’s celebration will go some way to rectifying that.

(Illustration from Wild Animals, OUP 1967; from here)

In the Guardian interview with Carey, Wildsmith said this, which seems a good note to end on:

‘Children are all-important, and so is art ... Art is food for the soul. And books are a child's first encounter with art so I felt it was a way I could make a contribution to the world. A drop in the ocean maybe, but picture books offered a chance to communicate the importance of things such as kindness, compassion, friendship, beauty.’

(from The Lion and the Rat, OUP 1963; found here)

EDITED TO ADD: fellow Wildsmith fans, there is a new website devoted to his work here! His son has also set up a Twitter account, @brian_wildsmith, and you can see all the pictures posted by readers in celebration of his birthday if you follow the hashtag #wildsmith90. Joy!