The V&A Book Club

Recently, I set up a book club at work with the help of some colleagues, one of whom you may know as Book Snob. It is very democratic as we all put book suggestions into the hat and we all bring cakes to share around - cake is essential for fuelling literary discussion. Last Wednesdays' choice was Being Dead by John Crace which, although a short book, sparked a lot of lively discussion and I came away with lots of new ideas to think about.

Being Dead is a lyrically written examination of death. The two middle-aged protagonists are murdered in the sand dunes where they first had sex together. They are both scientists, complex characters and die in a horrific way - together. It is this togetherness that is the guiding light within, what would otherwise be, quite a depressing read.

Although, would this be depressing if it weren't for the fact that we are not at peace with death? We cannot handle our own mortality and we tend to move away from confronting our fragility - essentially we are all on our way to the end of our lives. We are powerless over our own deaths as Crace starkly shows us. Crace also highlights the arbitrary nature of death - we never know when our last day will be or how we will die and his character Celice was killed mid-sentence, in full flow and in her prime.

Joseph and Celice are an ordinary married couple going about their lives. Celice is bored and disappointed and she is still trying to find her way through life. Joseph is quiet, a bit odd and loves his wife. He wakes up on his last day with an overwhelming desire to go back to where they first met and romantically rekindle their sexual spark in the location of their first passionate encounter. It is this amalgamation of their ordinariness and their going on a special trip that makes their death, and the manner of their death, more stark as they are cut down in the midst of a sacred and fragile act.

The fragility of their love-making is transposed onto the fragility of their very being - in minutes they are both dead and nature, science and ultimately fact, start to take over, but perhaps it is not as depressing as it may seem. Joseph and Celice are united in death:

Joseph's grasp on Celice's leg had weakened as he'd died. But still his hand was touching her, the grainy pastels of her skin, one fingertip among her baby ankle hairs. Their bodies had expired, but anyone could tell - just look at them - that Joseph and Celice were still devoted. For while his hand was touching her, curved round her shin, the couple seemed to have achieved that peace the world denies, a period of grace, defying even murder.

It is the 'period of grace' which is presented to the reader throughout the novel. Their bodies are not sanitised by our rituals of death such as cleaning, make-up and disinfectant. Instead, Joseph and Celice are allowed, for a time, to blend with nature - to become part of the natural processes of life and death.

The book is at times an uncomfortable read, Crace goes into the detail of decomposing bodies at great length (maybe I just have a weak stomach) but the novel has stayed with me and made me consider my own mortality and how I think about death.

I would never have chosen to read this book had it not been for the V&A Book Club; which is entirely the purpose of a book club - to encourage us to pick up books we wouldn't have done ordinarily. I try to keep my reading horizons broad but, I admit, I do read a lot of early twentieth century literature so the book club has led me down a new reading path and I am looking forward to our meeting next month.

The bell chimes again

The Radcliffe Camera, Oxford

Firstly, apologies for my absence. The past two weeks have flown by and I have not had a minute to spare and any seconds that I have found have, of course, been spent reading. Once I was over the flu, work and life took off and I am currently doing two part-time courses at City University which are enjoyable but with a full time job, blog, friends and family something is going to be neglected and sadly, it has been Bloomsbury Bell.

In the midst of the chaos I did manage to go away to Oxfordshire for the weekend for flu recovery and an escape from the madness of my diary at the moment. We visited the new Ashmolean which, was truly stunning and the perfect escape from the driving wind and rain which greeted us on the morning of our trip. The museum does not only provide a refuge from the weather but from the hustle and milieu of the Oxford shopping streets which, on a Saturday, were heaving.

The new galleries are light, spacious and full of the Ashmolean's wonderful collection which spans centuries of archaeology and art. Instead of a warren of gloomy galleries all leading further into the bowels and depths of the building, the new galleries invite panoramic views, space and light so you can stand in a gallery and see into many rooms at the same time as this photo shows.


Walkways pepper the building so you catch glimpses of other visitors in various parts of the space.


I particularly liked the paintings galleries as they have a great collection of medieval art and also a room dedicated to the Pre-Raphaelite movement which included this stunning portrait of Jane Morris, entitled Reverie, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.


The muted, autumnal colours and thoughtful pose of Jane Morris make this portrait utterly enchanting. I have always wanted pre-raphaelite hair, but sadly I have poker strait, boring hair which refuses to conform to any sort of style. So, standing in front of this beautiful portrait in the Ashmolean my mind did not soar to higher plains - I was thinking about my hair.

Once I had moved on from my vain navel-gazing I found The Hunt in the Forest by Paolo Uccello which is an extraordinary study in perspective as it completely draws the viewer in to the centre of the action. The colours are still so vibrant considering it was painted in 1470.


During the trip I found a rival for my favourite library - previously written about here - as we discovered the village of Bampton which has the prettiest little library that I have ever seen.


I can easily imagine spending hours in there with the rain pattering on the window and the cosy cardigan wearing librarian stamping and cataloguing books. The library was closed when we arrived but I had a good look in through the windows and saw comfy reading chairs and a delightful childrens area. Paradise.

Lady Lazarus

Lady Alexandra Curzon (Baba)

For the past few days I have been bedridden with one of those seasonal viruses which make everything except sleep and watching rubbish telly, impossible. The title of this post alludes to the title of Plath's poem Lady Lazarus but I thought it was fitting as I had been reading so much about the upper classes before I fell ill. Thankfully, I have been well enough to read today and have continued to be gripped by Anne De Courcy's biography of the three Curzon sisters, The Viceroy's Daughters.

Irene, Cimmie and Baba were the three daughters of Viceroy Curzon and were born during a time when the British upper classes were at their ruling zenith. Irene was born in 1896, Cimmie (Cynthia Blanche) was born in 1898 and Baba (Alexandra Naldera) was born in 1904. Their mother Lady Mary was the daughter of an extraordinarily rich American, Levi Ziegler Leiter. Due to Leiter's wealth all three Curzon sisters were heiresses of a vast sum of money.

The biography charts their lives and is a fascinating insight into the lives of the wealthy during the early twentieth century. Cimmie was the first wife of Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists, and the book delves into both the rise and demise of this murky political party. The lives of the three sisters are set against the backdrop of the wider goings on within society at the time, as much to contextualise their lives as because their lives were entwined with many political leaders of the day.

What startled me was the extent of the bed hopping that occurred between the higher levels of society. They were apparently insatiable in their extra-marital appetites. It seems that as long as no one openly spoke about it, anything went.

This is a fantastic read to transport you to the glamour, glitz and gossip of the first half of the twentieth century and was exactly what I needed to help me recuperate.

Invitation to the Waltz by Rosamond Lehmann

Dancers at The Cafe de Paris in 1932

When we were teenagers, my best friend and I would spend hours excitedly preparing to go out to a party or nightclub. We would spend an entire afternoon in her bedroom going through boxes of make up deciding what to use. Clothes would be tried on, discarded and tried on again as we attempted to find the perfect party ensemble. In a flurry of perfume, hairspray and glitter we would listen to saccharine pop and dream about the perfect boy that we would meet during the perfect evening.

We would arrive at the party with our expectations full to the brim. Bursting with nerves and excitement we would enter the room and search for people we knew. Gradually, people would start dancing and I would slowly fall back down to earth. Tugging at my ill-fitting clothes and looking for a quiet corner I would scan the room and see people pairing off and realise that actually the party in my head was a different place. The best part was sitting in my best friend's utility room eating a bowl of Alpen, dissecting the evening before heading upstairs to a bed that her mum had put a hot water bottle in. I would snuggle down under the duvet and store my dreams for the next time whilst feeling a little bit closer to them coming true.

Invitation to the Waltz tells the story of Olivia Curtis who is invited to attend her first dance at the age of seventeen. Like myself, and all teenage girls, she excitedly plans what she is going to wear and takes the red material that she received for her birthday to the local dressmaker to create something dazzling for the dance. Olivia is a thoughtful girl and unlike her sister Kate is not so comfortable with her appearance. Kate spends time thinking about and planning her appearence with an air of expertise whereas Olivia awkwardly tries her dress on back to front and pours too much perfume on to her hair.

The dance is hosted by the Spencers who are local aristocracy. Lady Spencer's jewels dazzle Olivia as she "was handsomer even than Queen Mary, in the same sculptural style, but of a more classical cast of features. A gown of silver brocade moulded her opulent but well-controlled contours; a parure of diamonds and sapphires set off the imposing architecture of her bosom and a tiara flashed above the severely carved wings of her grey hair". Olivia dances with a succession of old men all playing to her sympathetic nature and between dances she anxiously aims for the safety of the cloakroom unless she is intercepted by another ill-suited partner.

As her sister Kate finds the perfect boy at her perfect dance, Olivia grapples around through the various representatives of masculinity present at the dance. She encounters the poet Peter who is paranoid, drunk and vulnerable. She dances with Tim the young man who was blinded in battle in the first world war and she has an altercation with the roguish, wealthy and arrogant Archie. Finally, Olivia meets Rollo Spencer out on the terrace with whom she feels at ease for the first time during the night. He is honest, charming and, irritatingly, attached to Nicola. Eventually, Olivia falls asleep on a chair as she waits for her sister to finish dancing.

As Olivia is able to recount the entire evening to her mother with youthful and innocent enthusiasm, her sister Kate is detached. Through the establishment of an understanding with Tony Heriot she has left Olivia behind, "I've left it all behind me. She looked at Olivia lying back on the settee, her eyes black and small with sleep. We won't be able to talk over the dance, exchanging every detail for hours and days. I can't share tonight with her. Olivia's too young." The dance is the catalyst for change for both the sisters, their relationship with each other has shifted as Olivia too realises that Kate has gone down a path which Olivia cannot yet follow, "I'm left behind, but I don't care. I've got plenty to think about too."

Lehmann's portrayal of a young girls' first dance pierces to the heart of the experience. The social anxieties, the pressure and the excitement are all enmeshed. Olivia is thrown into a social melting pot between the sexes for the first time and slowly she starts to learn about herself. It is here for the first time that she notices a class difference between herself and her friend Marigold Spencer "The friends she flew to join now were not their friends. They were those who would tread with her the prosperous, mapped road of coming out, whose mysteries and allurements were to be the natural setting of their days and nights." Olivia realises her middle-class status for the first time and what this will mean for her.

This novel is a beautiful and insightful account of a young girl poised on the edge of adulthood - slowly testing herself in the wider world but still able to flee back to the comfort of childhood. As I dipped my toe in to the water of parties and clubbing, I still longed for the bowl of Alpen, my cuddly toy cat and the comfort of a hot water bottle at the end of the night. And it is this aspect of being in between, of waiting, of being ready but of not being ready that Rosamond Lehmann perfectly portrays.

On being published

The Persephone Books endpaper design for High Wages by Dorothy Whipple

I have finally received my copy of The Persephone Biannually through the post which is not only exciting because I love reading the Biannually but because in this edition of the Biannually I have been quoted in the 'Our Bloggers Write' section! I found out last week from Rachel at Book Snob and was immediately bursting with excitement as it was completely unexpected and made my week. But I had to wait for days and days before my copy came through the letterbox. At long last it arrived and I frantically ripped open the plactic wrapper like a mad woman and there it was - in print. My quote is happily next to lots of other quotes from familiar bloggers such as Simon at StuckinaBook, Claire at Paperback Reader, Claire of KissaCloud and Rachel at Book Snob.

Once the excitement of seeing my little quote in print faded I was able to settle down and read the Biannually. I am now completely over excited by the publication of Dorothy Whipple's High Wages. I cannot wait to find out what happens to Jane who works in the Draper's shop. Whipple, is fantastic at characterisation and bringing the ordinary, everyday, monotonous and tedious aspects of humanity to life with a view to dissection. She is highly moral in tone and a tad all-knowing but you can sink in to one of her books and look over her characters shoulders as they battle with ordinary aspects of life during the early twentieth century. History books leave out the 'small things' so it is to writers like Whipple that we turn to gain a sense of what went on in the domestic world; what went on in everyday life. I cannot wait to get my hands on the latest Whipple offering from Persephone Books.