The Windsor Knot by S.J. Bennett

 

I've added a slightly random note to be reading of late - as a library user I have access to Borrowbox, a collection of e- and audio-books. Actually I preferred the library's previous option, which seemed to have a slightly larger choice, and I was happily working my way through most of Ian Rankin's recent books, with a lengthy wishlist to follow. However, for some reason they changed provider, and the new one appears to have a booklist geared to Northumbrian readers, with a huge collection of L.J. Ross's local mysteries which, I'm afraid, I really don't like.

What I did like when I borrowed it on spec, however, was The Windsor Knot, by S.J. Bennett, a mystery set at Windsor Castle, with Her Majesty in residence for the spring and a month of "less formal" socialising. A Dine and Sleep (apparently it's a Thing) has been held, with a mix of new and regular guests for a "Fête à la Russe" organised by Prince Charles. Now, it's the morning after, and while the various guests are finishing their breakfast before leaving, Her Majesty is informed that a young Russian pianist has been found dead in his room, in rather compromising circumstances. Soon the police will be crawling all over the scene of crime - with utter discretion, of course - and generally upsetting the servants.

The evening had gone rather well. The entertainment had been good - Brodsky, the pianist had played Rachmaninov, followed by some scenes by two Russian ballet dancers, and Brodsky had returned to the piano to play some dance music. The Queen had retired at her usual time, but had been happy for the party to continue, and as she had left, Brodsky had been dancing with one of the ballerinas while the playing had been taken over by the wife of a Professor of Russian Literature.

But now Brodsky is dead. Questions must be asked. Was he just a musician? Has there been a lapse in security? With all these Russians about, could this be an assassination attempt by Putin or the FSB? Could Brodsky even be a sleeper? The police lean rather to this possibility, although the Queen is quietly sceptical. The officer in charge of the investigation is suitably senior, but he's over-promoted and condescending, and Her Majesty is not impressed. Fortunately, the Queen is a bit of an old hand at solving mysteries, and with the help of her new Assistant Private Secretary, Rozie Oshodi, she sets about doing some investigating herself. After all, she's met lots of experts who can be consulted.

The Windsor Knot is a pleasant and gently humorous mystery with some very likable characters. The Queen is portrayed by an author who's obviously done her research: she describes herself as a "royal watcher" and talks interestingly on her website about her background and why she felt able to write this book. I'm not a royal watcher, but it strikes me that she paints an insightful and convincing portrait which takes into account the Queen's long reign, in which she must have noticed a thing or to about people in general, and depicts her as generous and human and pretty shrewd. And meticulous and admirably self-disciplined, even in her thoughts. We see a good deal of the action from HM's point of view, albeit secondhand, and I particularly enjoyed the scene where she drags three senior policeman out on a muddy dog-walk. She's well matched too, by Rozie, who's still feeling her way into the job; here the relationship between the Queen and her new assistant is beautifully developed, as Rozie learns to intuit what can't be said by a monarch and to become a loyal and trustworthy helper.

I should add a word about the reader of the audio version, Samantha Bond. An excellent and fluent performance, with distinguishable voices, perfectly paced - which, incidentally, matches the plot - and none of those irritating little mispronunciations which can accumulate to flaw an otherwise good reading. Bond is certainly a candidate for my list of top-ten readers and, I can tell you, I'm picky. But she nearly earns her five stars just for being able to pronounce "valet" (with the T sounded, please and thank you).

So, all-in-all, excellent book, excellent reader - I look forward to the next in what I hope will be a series, A Three Dog Problem. The title certainly pleases. I may even go so far as to pre-order it. 

  

Retiring

 

I've just been looking at my blog archive figures. I started posting here in 2007, and for several years, while I was working in Edinburgh and commuting daily, I posted fairly regularly - about every 10 days or so for 5 years. Then I started freelancing and working in London, where I spend 3 or 4 days every couple of weeks, and often travelled on to Devon to see my parents, so I was spending a lot of time on trains. I got quite a lot of reading done, but not much blogging. When I was made redundant I continued freelancing, and when I wasn't working I didn't want to be anywhere near a computer! And freelancing was tough - I always seemed to have either too much work or none at all and meanwhile, the Devon trips continued and got more and more demanding, so I changed track and spent almost 5 years in a blissfully menial job with English Heritage. When I lost both parents over a short time I was able to start getting involved in my local community, though that ceased with lockdown as we were shielding my husband. who's disabled.

And now I've retired! So maybe I'll start blogging again. After all, I've read a lot of interesting books over the last few years. And I'm involved with several literary societies, so activity hasn't ceased, by any means - I've been reviewing on Goodreads, too. But the focus has shifted slightly - still lots of Golden Age crime, still lots of classic children's literature, more ghost stories, more audiobooks.

Last year's reading was mostly undemanding. One author showed up more than any other, and that was Mark Hayden. His King's Watch series provided me with endless amusement - I think I've read most of them three times by now but the come up fresh every time. Similarly with two other authors I've found recently that I will buy anything by: Sarah Painter, whose Crow Investigations series has a slightly Rivers of London vibe, and - very differently, Karen Menuhin's 1920s-set series which begins with Murder at Melrose Court. There are so many authors writing period detection in a stately home setting that they just get terribly same-y after a while. Menuhin's Major Heathcliff Lennox unashamedly cuddles his dog and, in the one I'm currently reading, carries a small plump kitten in his pocket. All three have excellent audio versions too. More on all three anon.

Retirement feels like a Very Good Thing.

A Distant View of Everything by Alexander McCall Smith

If you are just embarking on this series, there are spoilers here! 

 I really hadn't expected, when I read the first Isabel Dalhousie novel, The Sunday Philosophy Club, that I would one day be reading the 11th in the series. I thought a book about a polite Edinburgh lady with a predilection for philosophy would be just too niche. But here we are, some 16 years later (yes, I read the first almost immediately it was published, because I couldn't resist the title) - quite a lot has happened in Isabel's life, in a very quiet sort of way. She's acquired a husband and two children, something that looked rather unlikely in the first book. However, she still lives in the same house, with Grace her housekeeper, and she is still editing the Journal of Applied Ethics. 

 It was the Journal which really drew me to the series - I too was working, in Edinburgh, on a small academic journal in those days, and I recognised and identified with many of the issues Isabel faced as editor. In fact, they often made me laugh out loud. Indeed, my favourite moment from the series is still the never-posted reply to one of her contributors. I could have written that myself! Isabel's investigations - or "interventions" as she terms them - may have started with a sudden death, but the issues are more often of an ethical nature than an exciting one. McCall Smith says he doesn't think we celebrate kindness enough, and there is a great deal of it within his books. When Isabel finds herself lacking in kindness, she generally takes herself to task. But although she can be punctilious to the point of being maddening - to both reader and, sometimes, her friends - she is also human and sometimes just plain wrong. 

 Edinburgh life is entirely recognisable to anyone who's ever lived there, which is another of the series' charms (though not necessarily infallibly so - I am not a great fan of the author's Scotland Street series), though McCall Smith patronises a better class of eatery than I can afford. 

 The plot hinges on whether a personable man is preying on wealthy women. Isabel's friends are the sort of people who can afford to admire works by the Scottish Colourists with the familiarity of those who have inherited one along with their gracious Georgian residences. McCall Smith name-drops various real-life Edinburgh denizens from time to time, and Colourist paintings have featured in more than one of the books. I was glad not to have too much of Isabel's "sainted American mother" here, she's an offstage character who has never appealed to me. 

I listened to the audio version of the book. There have been several readers throughout the series, but I like Karlyn Stephen, who reads here. She has a soft voice, which suits the subject matter, and a fairly generic accent - characters are distinguishable, which is important, and Isabel's lengthy musings (have they got longer?) remain lively enough to avoid longueur.

I wrote about Isabel Dalhousie once before, for anyone who is interested. 

Cluny Brown by Margery Sharp

In Margery Sharp's novel of this name, twenty-year-old Cluny lives with her Uncle Arn in Paddington and assists him ably in his plumbing business by taking messages and doing the accounts. But she is of concern to her family - her uncle, his sister and his brother-in-law - because they think she doesn't "know her place": she's outgoing, adventurous, full of curiousity about the world, and this leads her to decide that she can take tea at the Ritz or be invited to parties. She's a complete innocent, and can't see any reason why these things are unacceptable - if other people can, why shouldn't she? It's decided, thanks mainly to Aunt Addie, that she must go into service as a maid in the country house of Sir Henry Carmel in Devon.

Even before she arrives Cluny's behaviour is most un-maid-ish - befriending the dog of a one of the Carmels' neighbours on the train, she is invited to go and walk it on her days off, and since the dog doesn't wish to be parted from her, she is given a lift to her new place of employment in the neighbour's Rolls-Royce. Cluny's first letter home to Uncle Arn begins: "There are twenty-seven rooms, Queeen Elizabeth slept in one of them but I have to share. The other girl is called Hilda. She had a baby last year but Mrs M. overlooked it. You tell that to Aunt Addie."

Esatblished at Friars Carmel she meets "the Professor", a writer who has fled Nazi Germany. Invited by their son for a stay of indefinite length, Belinski is warmly welcomed into the household by Andrew's parents - Lady Carmel explains her understanding of the situation to her husband: Mr Belinski is a Professor, who has been ill and now needs peace and quiet. Andrew, wrapped up in his own  concerns, does nothing to disabuse his parents of this harmless notion, feeling that the explanation is well-suited to their kind and comfortable complacency.

 Belinski recognises Cluny as a misfit like himself and understands her, perhaps, better than she understands herself. When she tells him she doesn't feel as if she belongs anywhere he replies with what she regards as a magic phrase, "For you, I imagine, the whole universe is to let." Her imagination thus fired, what she will do with this idea is one strand of this quietly funny book.

In contrast, the other strand is what will happen to Andrew. Concerned that there will be another war, he frets about his future, and while his parents hope that he will come home and settle down to run the estate, he pulls away from what he calls "Lord of the Manorishness". At the same time he is vying with his friend John for the attentions of the attractive and self-assured Betty Cream, who firmly rejects them both. Although Andrew's position of privilege makes it seem as though he has much greater autonomy than Cluny, he feels trapped by both past and present.

In 1946 Cluny Brown was transported to the US and made into a romantic comedy which loses all the subtlety and humour of this very English novel. Life at Friar's Carmel is so harmonious, peaceable and comfortable that Belinski has none of the irritations that allowed him to work successfully.  Meanwhile Cluny, despite being "only" a parlourmaid, is able to escape the eye of the housekeeper often enough to form a sedate courtship with a widowed pharmacist in the nearby village. A "rom-com" demands effervescence and caricature, but what makes this book work are the tenderly-drawn characters with their little faults, foibles and escapisms. No great histrionics here, but gentle satire.

The Lady Hardcastle Mysteries by T.E. Kinsey

 The Lady Hardcastle books are proving to be a very enjoyable series. I received the latest, The Burning Issue of the Day, from Netgalley, but before I read it, I finished all the earlier ones first. 

The first book, A Quiet Life in the Country, introduces us to our two main characters, widowed Lady Hardcastle  and her diminutive but capable ladies' maid, Florence Armstrong, and to the English country setting, but it breaks the mould in fun ways: the country house to which they move is a new build, Lady Hardcastle has a racketty background spying for the Empire, Armstrong has been trained in martial arts by a Shaolin monk, the local Inspector of Police actually welcomes their help. Events are narrated by Flo, with a general sense of irreverence:

I was up with the lark on Saturday morning, and resolved at once to make enquiries as to the sleeping habits of larks. Do they really rise early? ‘Up with the lady’s maid’ might be just as evocative of early rising but perhaps open to unfortunate misinterpretation.

The period setting (1908 at the start of the series) is well done in an understated way - it's become fashionable to give lots of detail, but here it's sketched in fairly lightly, which is fine, and the odd anachronism is either knowing, or too incidental to rankle. Perhaps there's a little too much mixing of the social classes, but the nouveau riche are, accurately enough, vilified by pretty nearly everyone, while the local country folk get ‘salt of the earth’ treatment.

The mystery is slight (apparently the original version of the book was episodic but it's been streamlined into one in this edition), with a certain amount happening off-stage, but it's coherent enough to be entertaining. All in all a good start to a series, and more than amusing enough to carry the reader on to the next instalment:

‘...we can be detectives. You can be Watson to my Holmes.’ ‘But without the violin and the dangerous drug addiction, my lady,’ I said. ‘As soon as the piano arrives from London that will make an admirable substitute for the violin. And I’m sure we could both have a tot of brandy from time to time to grease the old wheels.’ ‘The slow-grinding ones?’ ‘No, ours shall be lightning fast.’

The relationship between eccentric widow Lady Hardcastle and her maid is a joy, and the trickle of backstory elements always leaves one reader wanting a bit more. I was pretty much hooked from the very beginning, as Lady H and Flo find themselves a new house and set about furnishing it (including, of course, with daily help and cook). The exchanges between them are always beautifully judged and are full of gentle acerbity - for instance, Flo rarely refers to her employer as ‘my Lady’ except when she disapproves of her actions, they bicker over who is to drive the new car, and so on. One has the sense of a long-established relationship based on mutual respect and affection, and a certain amount of saving each other's skins:

‘You’re welcome, my lady. I shall yell uncouthly when breakfast is served.’ ‘We need a gong.’

The second book, In the Market for Murder, is also episodic, offering four short mysteries, and consolidating the rapport between the reader and characters. The cases mostly centre on their local village, with cattle markets, pub ghosts, cricketing trophies and so on. By book three (Death Around the Bend) however, we are given a ‘proper’ full-length mystery, as Lady Hardcastle and Flo are invited to join a house party for some motor racing, and this offers a little more room for development of the subsidiary characters, which is all to the good since the reader then starts to care about the ‘who’ and ‘why’ as well as the ‘how’. Flo is in the ideal situation of course, when a murder is committed, to hobnob with the servants and get all the gen on family and visitors, as well as on the staff themselves.

A short story, Christmas at the Grange, follows, with Lady H visiting friends for the festive season and Flo in attendance like a good lady's maid, but able, as before, to move with ease between above and below stairs (although Sir Hector takes a very unholy delight in offending his sister by including Flo in the festivities). As Christmas stories go, it’s a good ’un.

Book 4,  A Picture of Murder, finds Lady H and Flo offering to host a visit by some moving-picture makers as their friends, the Farley-Strouds, have unfortunately had a kitchen fire. (Lady F-S doesn’t take advantage though, she lends a surly maid and a more amenable footman to help out, the Hardcastle establishment only running to part-time help.) Even for our intrepid heroines, who stumble over murders at the drop of a hat-pin, the rate at which their guests start to meet untimely ends is a bit disconcerting, especially when there’s no motive that makes any sense. The cast of subsidiary characters is beginning to look like old friends, by now, and we’ve definitely started to get to know the village of Littleton Cotterell. We get some more about the past, too, with perhaps a presentiment of trouble to come?

With the fifth in the series, The Burning Issue of the Day, the author takes the light-hearted amateur detectives - we know by this time that their background has been much more serious, but they have retired from living on their wits in the service of HMG - and gives them something a bit more serious to get their teeth into. A death has occurred which may have been the result of suffragist sabotage, and a young suffragette is on trial for her life. Can they save her, despite the opposition of the (male) Bristol establishment? I felt that the author genuinely wanted to talk about the suffragist cause and that it wasn't simply a subject to hang a mystery on. Kinsey re-introduces a character from A Picture of Murder, the journalist Diana Caudle who, despite initially clashing with Lady Hardcastle, looks set to put in appearances in future episodes. She fulfils the role of ambitious young career woman, nicely complementing the two more in-period ladies.

I see there is another on its way - good-oh!

A Conformable Wife by Alice Chetwynd Ley

Somehow or other I missed Alice Chetwynd Ley's books when I was younger, and A Conformable Wife is the first of hers I've read. It will not, however, be the last, for I found it charming.

It is very much in the style of one of my favourite authors, Georgette Heyer, including the familiar formula of eligible young woman meets eligible bachelor, sparks fly, there are obstacles to overcome before they, and we, reach the inevitable happy ending, and so on. Like Heyer, I'm sure that Alice Chetwynd Ley's books will explore the many possibilities offered by this pattern in very entertaining fashion, and amongst her books I will expect to find mistaken identities, dastardly villains, abductions (usually foiled), misunderstandings between lovers, young men going to the bad through gambling... all the vicissitudes which Georgian society can throw up, and all leavened with humour and warmth.

The attraction of the Georgian period is, I guess, that some women were beginning to have a small degree of autonomy, particularly if they were widowed, when they might respectably manage their own incomes unless very young. It was also a time when women were beginning to write for publication, so we have, in their own words, the start of a recognisably modern, female sensibility. The rising middle class was a factor too, as more and more people became wealthy and respectable while not necessarily belonging to the aristocracy - though it obviously helped if you could marry a duke's daughter or a younger son, the latter almost invariably in need of an urgent injection of merchant-class money.

In A Conformable Wife, the Hon. Julian Aldwyn has decided that it's time he was married, and seeks a suitable wife, one able to manage a large household, and of respectable origins, obviously. His sister suggests her girlhood friend Henrietta Melville, who has kept house for her family until his death; despite being wealthy in her own right she now lives in her family home as a dependent relative of her brother and his resentful wife - it's not easy when the servants all defer to the former, instead of the present, mistress. Aldwyn, who in modern terms is positively phobic in his avoidance of love, having been once-bitten, proposes a marriage of convenience, since this will provide the rather dowdy Henrietta with her own establishment, and besides, they seem to get along quite well together. Henrietta retorts, in essence, that she's never had any fun in her life and doesn't see why she shouldn't have some now, and anyway, she'll marry - if ever, which at twenty-six, she doubts - for love, thank you.

Thus the stage is set for all the required elements, and the action moves to Bath, which is rather livelier than the family home. Henrietta embarks on a makeover, so that Julian fails to recognise her when he eventually turns up, and he's duly horrified by the number of conquests she has made. Need I say more?

Chetwynd Ley, like Heyer, is careful about her period detail, although - here, at least - she doesn't wield cant with such bravura. Perhaps she prefers not to compete? At any rate, readers shouldn't find themselves jolted out of the Regency by the annoying anachronisms which are all-too-common nowadays. Bath is well-portrayed and researched, but not in distracting detail - the author feels no need to show off her scholarship. Altogether, A Conformable Wife turned out to be an excellent place to begin my acquaintance with this author, and I look forward to many more of her books. My thanks to Sapere Books and NetGalley for my review copy.

Becoming Mrs Lewis by Patti Callahan

I saw this title on NetGalley and was interested as I'm one of the many who grew up on the Narnia books, progressed to C.S. Lewis's adult books and later enjoyed the film Shadowlands, about his marriage to the poet and author Joyce Davidman.

What I hadn't realised when I requested the book was that this is a fictionalised version of that story, though it makes much use of letters between the two from their first correspondence - Davidman wrote to Lewis because his description of his religious conversion struck an immediate chord with her. He replied, and a lengthy and intimate exchange grew up between them. In many ways, fictionalisation is a good choice for biography - it serves to remind us that any account of another's life is necessarily a fiction, even when we have their writing to base it on (come to that, it's the case even when they've written it themselves). Initially though, it gave me some problems, because I found it rather overwritten - later, I told myself that Davidman (events are told in the first person, from her point of view) was, as a poet, given to wielding words dramatically, so a degree of self-dramatisation was appropriate.

I think the book's author,  Patti Callahan, admired both Davidman and Lewis fairly uncritically, so I found myself reading between the lines quite a bit. Not with the sort of vilification that met Davidman when she had the "effrontery", as many saw it, to marry Lewis - they seem to me to have been a very successful couple, despite his qualms about her divorced state, their relationship being a genuine marriage of two minds - but I found Callahan's version of Joy quite hard to like, and I think that might well hold true for the real person. But then, I find Lewis quite hard to like too, if I'm honest - though the Inklings fascinate me and I find them eminently readable, I don't think I would actually like any of them.

I suppose my biggest problem was with the account of Davidman's first marriage, to fellow author William Gresham. He certainly comes across as a pretty loathsome person, but I suspect that during the time they spent together they would both have seemed, to me at least, self-centred and histrionic, probably bringing out the worst in each other. After her conversion to Christianity (she was Jewish, non-practising, and had flirted with communism – a much greater sin in the US than here in the UK), Davidman left her husband and two some for an extended research and writing trip to to the UK, during which she planned to meet Lewis in person. I can understand that she felt her writing was suffering at home, and that she needed to write to earn, but still found it hard to reconcile the length of time she was away from her children, particularly since there were already signs – according to Callahan’s account, at least – that at least one of the children feared their father, who had an explosive temper and was possibly a suicide risk.

Readers who share the Lewises' religion will almost certainly enjoy this retelling of their relationship, while those who, like me, are interested in the Inklings will find much of interest, albeit secondhand. I imagine for many it will provide an impetus to go back to Lewis's own non-fiction and some may be inspired to further explore Davidman's poetry, which is oft-quoted, which didn't appeal to me. I did, however, find a previously unread author amongst Davidman's Oxford friends (unfortunately, long out-of-print and therefore almost unobtainable). I found myself sympathising again with C.S. Lewis's brother Warnie who, although much troubled, seems to have been a gentle individual, and enjoyed an American's impressions of the shabby shambles in which the Lewis brothers lived in peculiarly English fashion. At one point I had wondered whether to give up on the book altogether. I’m glad that I didn’t, because I did end up enjoying this rather poignant story. Thanks go to NetGalley for providing me with a review copy.