If you had told me at the beginning of 2015 that I’d have read two reincarnation romances before the year was over, my response would probably have been along the lines of doubt that two such books existed. But, yes, they do. The first one I read was Ferney by James Long – but over fifty years earlier, Elizabeth Goudge had written The Middle Window (1935) which had a similar idea at its heart.
This is actually the first Goudge book I’ve read, which is probably a rather unusual place to start. It came as part of a postal book group, otherwise this cover wouldn’t have inspired me to pick it up (nor yet would the tagline ‘a lively story set in the majestic Scottish Highlands’), though I ended up really enjoying it – particularly the first half.
The Middle Window is very definitely divided into halves. The first – set in the 1930s – concerns Judy, a London-dweller, whose life is changed when she looks into the three windows of an art gallery. Each displays a painting: one is a cityscape; one is a country cottage. In the middle window is a painting of the wilds of the Scottish highlands. For some reason, Judy believes that her life must follow the path indicated by one of those paintings. This isn’t the last time that the title of the novel will be significant, but Judy (as you may have guessed) opts for the middle window and the Scottish highlands.
Being in the happy position to be able to afford to take a ten week holiday, she advertises to rent a house there, and goes with her parents and her fiancée Charles to Glen Suilag. It’s a beautiful but neglected mansion in the middle of nowhere. There is no running water (which horrifies Judy’s mother, Lady Cameron) and little by way of local amusements. The only company seems to be a grumpy old servant, Angus – who greets Judy by saying “Mistress Judith, ye’ve coom back”.
I loved this section of the novel. The descriptions of being released from the city into the countryside rang true with me, and in fact the scene with the painting inspiring Judy’s decision – coming alive, so she can feel the breeze and see the mountains – is strikingly similar to scenes in Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Lolly Willowes and Elizabeth von Arnim’s Father. But how would I cope when the reincarnation bit kicks in? Well, the hint is there in Angus’ welcome, and grows apace as Judy feels like she already knows the area. She also feels like she already knows Ian, the Laird of the Manor, who is staying in the village. He is a passionate, amusing, and educated man; a contrast to her nice-but-dim Charles. Ian works as an unpaid doctor in the little village, treating things which aren’t serious enough for the local hospital which, in those days before the NHS, was beyond the means of the poor locals. (Curiously, these minor ailments include a boy who has cut two fingers off; I’m wondering if that denotes an injury less appalling than it sounds.) Oh, and they take a trip to Skye that reinforces how much I really must visit it one day.
Judy and Ian gradually fall in love, and also gradually realise that it is not the first time they’ve met – but the first time was in another life…
“A man living a life is like a man writing a book. He may break off after a few chapters but he comes back to his work again and again until the book is finished.”
“And will you and I come back again and again through the centuries until we have built paradise in our glen? Faith, but Glen Suilag will grow mightily tired of us.”
“No! We are as much a part of it as the bog myrtle and the heather. It does not tire of its children.”
That conversation actually takes place in the second half of the novel, which takes place in 1745. Here they are Judith and Ramand, who fall in love and marry only a day before Ramand is called away to fight in the Jacobite rising for Bonnie Prince Charlie. This is period of history I know very little about, so The Middle Window was surprisingly instructive, helping put in context lots of terms I’d heard but without knowledge.
I had to fight my natural aversion to historical fiction, but that actually didn’t end up being my problem with the second half. It’s just as well drawn, character-wise, as the first half (for they are essentially the same characters), but the end of the first half essentially tells us what will happen at the end of the second half. I shan’t spoil it now, but the link is a flashback Judy has – which gives away the end. Of course, plot is not the only thing to read for, but it removes some of the tension – though there is a bit of a twist which goes some way to atone for it.
Despite, on paper, being a book that shouldn’t interest me, I actually really liked The Middle Window. And what I mostly liked about it was the style and humour of the writing. The humour is more evident in the first half, and it’s great; it’s centred around how insufferable the rest of the family find Judy. She’s rather a great heroine to read it, but must be endlessly frustrating to live with – as this indicates:
Lady Cameron sighed. Judy’s recent saintly mood of meditation and withdrawal had been distinctly trying, leading her as it did to leave her galoshes about in awkward places and take not the slightest notice of anything said to her, but it had at least been harmless. The same thing, she felt, could not be said of this new phase. She knew quite well, from painful past experience, that when Judy drew her belt in tightly like that she was about to be tiresome.
Little turns of phrase throughout demonstrate Goudge’s skill as a writer, even as early as her second book. Some might be too put off the theme, but – having spent years immersed in 1920s and ’30s fantastic fiction – I was willing to suspend my disbelief and enjoy it. My only wish is that she’d spent the whole time in the 1930s, with perhaps flashbacks to 1745, rather than giving equal space to both halves when there couldn’t really be equal tension or reader engagement.
Others who got Stuck into it (and generally hated it!):
“Gar. What a tiresome story this was. I feel all bilious; I think I need to read something crisp and witty to cleanse my emotional palate.” – Barb, Leaves and Pages
“This, unfortunately, is the first book by Elizabeth Goudge I have ever wished I hadn’t read. I disliked Judy Cameron heartily.” – Jenny, Shelf Love
Here is a whole bunch of things to delight you this weekend. Truth be told, I noted most of these down last weekend – but hopefully they’re still relevant!
1.) I’ve only read one Josephine Tey novel (which I don’t think I’ve reviewed yet, have I?) but others of you with more Tey knowledge might well be excited by this article in Vanity Fair (and a forthcoming biography!)
2.) The Booker shortlist came out a while ago. And Lila wasn’t on it. Which is rather embarrassing for them. C’mon, Booker judges, history is gonna think you were rather silly about this one.
4.) If you have access to Channel 4 online, then Penelope Keith’s Hidden Villages is a must-see. The series has finished now but plenty of episodes are available online. It sounds like a spoof, but it’s not: Penelope Keith wanders from village to village, marvelling over their histories and meeting old folk who remember the good old days. Plus everywhere is beautiful.
5.)Do check out a fascinating essay Victoria/Litlove has written in Numero Cinq on four types of liars.
Oh, and I’m very excited at the response to The 1924 Club! I’m hoping for lots of unexpected books to be unearthed – so do keep hunting on your bookshelves.
(As usual, enormous thanks to Annabel, Harriet, and Victoria for their hard work and enthusiasm – and a sad farewell to our publicity impresario Jodie, for whom Issue 7 is a last hurrah.)
Hi everyone – thanks for not nagging me last week, when I quietly cashed in my ‘one week off from recapping’ that I think I’ve used every year. You’ll never get to hear my thoughts about… whatever that episode was about. I’ve already forgotten. But, hey, here’s chocolate week!
It’s semi-final week; Mel and Sue optimistically refer to them all as ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ – one of them might just about scrape into that category – and, one quick recap of last week’s episode (I’m still not sure what it was about) over, we pan to Mel doing her best (or, we might charitably hope, he worst) impression of Forrest Gump. Which, fyi, is a terrible film, in my opinion.
Apparently this estate doesn’t run to a bench.
Time for some Lacklustre Steps. What should we read into the order of the contestants? Nadiya’s folded arms? Tamal wearing a T-shirt while At Home We Have An Aga is in a massive coat?
In all likelihood, nothing.
It’s semi-final week, so it’s time to recap the whole series in soundbites from previous episodes. Taken altogether, we learn that sometimes the contestants are good, and sometimes they aren’t so great. There is – you will be surprised to learn – no clear frontrunner. Everybody doubts their own abilities, except Ian who thinks he’s in with a good chance – and, yet again, we don’t get a hint of their homelives. How are we to know whether their partners/children/colleagues think they’ll win or not?
Blazer Watch is a riot of blue:
“Hold on guys – I thought I was wearing blue this week.”
Mel: “This week it’s the thing I love most in the world.”
Sue: “Guinea pigs?”
Mel: “No, chocolate.”
Though doubtless scripted and rehearsed, Sue is obviously amused at her badinage, and can’t keep the laughter out of her voice while she announces the signature challenge – which is chocolate tarts.
I do like this as a challenge, because it’s another one that people might well want to make at home, as well as offering the bakers plenty of scope for variation and originality. Yumster.
Nadiya requests that they don’t mention that it’s the semi-final – which goes against what the producers have planned for the episode, which is – as always at this stage – to mention it every five minutes. And by ‘mention’, I mean ‘define’. If you weren’t aware that the semi-final was the week before the final going into this episode, you will be by the end.
Paul spices up this bon mot by saying that a mistake ‘could be fatal, going into the final’.
Well, yes, but only if that mistake is inadvertently adding strychnine.
There is a problem, with making chocolate tarts: there’s not much to explain to the viewer for a while. The bakers try to make adding cocoa powder to a shortcrust pastry mixture seem daunting and dramatic, but… it’s not, really, is it?
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the kitchen.
The trick to making good chocolate pastry is, apparently, making it the right consistency – so Sue confides in the voiceover. So… like regular pastry, right?
Watching this with friends, I asserted that somebody – most likely Ian – would be adding an unsuitable savoury ingredient to their chocolate tart. So I was pleasantly surprised to kick off with this delight from Tamal. Chocolate, raspberries, and pecans are among my favourite ingredients, so this looks wonderful. They keep going on about how simple it is, of course.
What it’s got to do with New York, I can’t imagine.
Demonstrating the technical know-how which explains why she’s paid the big bucks, Mary points out that chocolate is already dark, so it’s tricky to see when it’s baked. She’s also obviously as smitten with Tamal as every single viewer is:
So dreamy…
The editing team for GBBO know what the viewers want, and have taken to including Nadiya Expressions in between other shots, entirely irrelevant to what is going on or being said. I ain’t complaining; they’re always priceless.
At Home We Have An Aga is, of course, festooning her tart in everything she can think of, and seems quite apologetic about this when explaining her plan to Paul and Mary. Of course, since she doubtless submitted her plans for each round months ago, she can’t actually do much about it now… More importantly, she does seem to have some sort of macaron Tourette’s. She just can’t help baking them; it’s involuntary. At least she’s only using sweet ingredients.
Do they have… antlers?
They’re all using flour or icing sugar or something to stop their chocolate pastry sticking when they roll it. I’m always too worried it’ll mark the pastry and have white splotches on it, when I make chocolate pastry, and just trust to turning it as much as possible. Just so you know.
Over to Ian’s desk. What are you making, Ian? A nice caramel and chocolate tart, mayhap? Perhaps putting in some traditional, sweet ingredients? I’m sorry, I must have misheard you. Because you can’t possibly have said “bay-infused caramel”. I’ll pop off to the GP to get my hearing replaced.
WHEN WILL THIS MADNESS END
Nobody has ever eaten a chocolate and caramel tart and lamented the lack of a herbaceous border. I’m so angry right now.
Let’s move right on to Nadiya. She’s using a heck of a lot of peanuts, which I guess is fine, only I hate them. And peanuts so often pop up and ruin otherwise delicious-sounding chocolate brownies and the like.
Nadiya also waffles on about adding some starch thing to fats to turn them into powders, and nobody has a clue what she’s talking about. Mary laughs loudly to cover up the awkwardness.
And a moment later she WINKED! #MaryForPrimeMinister
At Home We Have An Aga is worried that her filling (passion fruit custard… mmmm) might turn into… (you guessed it)… scrambled eggs! Always, always, scrambled eggs. Meanwhile, Nadiya doesn’t want to add too much salt to her caramel, because she doesn’t want it to be savoury. Listen to this lady, Ian.
She also worries, a bit later, that she might have ‘overset it’. I don’t know what that could mean? How can something be too set? As she rescues her tart from one of the freezers (which, you note, no longer say ‘Smeg’ on them after the BBC got embroiled in some freezer bias scandal a year or two ago), somebody from the props department has stumbled upon a Chinese gong, and gives that an experimental clash.
Early feedback: I don’t hate it.
Despite my bay-themed rage earlier, I have to admire the gloss Ian has got on his tart. This is quite spectacular. There are mirrors in my house that are less reflective than this.
DeliNARCISSUS.
Bakers are piping and spreading and spraying (?) and making white-chocolate bay leaves (??); At Home We Have An Aga has accidentally made some macarons.
Oops.
And… we’re done! They certainly all look delicious, even if there is an unpleasant peanut butter surprise in one of them. Could someone be a doll and steal Tamal’s for me?
I’ll wait.
Mary loves the combination of textures; Paul can’t decide whether or not he likes it (it looks a bit as though he’s waiting for a producer to tell him in his ear), and eventually thinks he probs does.
Over to Ian’s Bay – they can’t taste the bay. Which can only be a blessing. But it otherwise goes well, give or take. It cuts well, according to Paul, whatever that means.
Mary likes Nadiya’s despite not being a peanut fan. Maybe there’s hope for me yet with peanut-flavoured desserts? Mr Hollywood likes it so much that he dishes out one of his handshakes.
Check out how much Mel is eating!
Nadiya, of course, plays her cards close to her chest, keeps her poker face, and doesn’t give away the faintest indication of her feelings.
But what about At Home We Have An Aga and her medically-induced macarons? Well, Paul thinks the tart looks attractive, despite there being no obvious tart beneath the forestry. Appearance-wise, they’re pretty delighted, and the taste is ok – but her dessert has split. Oh dear… Paul doesn’t like her macarons. “If you’re going to do a macaron, do it properly,” he says – at which Mel gasps, and is only a millimetre away from saying “Oh NO he didn’t.”
In the post-judgement interviews (where, as usual, the bakers have been dispersed throughout the grounds – and Tamal seems to have fought his way into the Secret Garden), Tamal does what he seems to believe is an impersonation of Paul. Now, I yield to few in my inability to do accents, but Tamal is now one of those few.
He seems to think Paul grew up in… Birmingyorkshire?
Onto the Technical Challenge! And it’s a Bake Off first – staggered starts. Nadiya, Tamal, and Ian abandon poor At Home We Have An Aga in the tent. She shrieks “don’t go!” and Ian makes entirely inexplicable gestures to her, which hopefully this photo goes some way to capturing:
Sue suggests that it’s “all gone a little bit Lord of the Flies“, which suggests I need to give it a re-read.
And… chocolate soufflés! The instructions seem to be “make a soufflé” – which, despite her ten thousand French recipe books, At Home We Have An Aga has apparently never made. I, with my zero French recipe books, have made one once, with someone else, but it was a cheese soufflé, which I can only imagine is rather different. I certainly don’t remember making a meringue to go in it, but I also don’t remember anything else about my life, so I might well have done.
When Baker no.2 comes in, At Home We Have An Aga says “I’ve never been so happy to see you, Ian.” I’m sure she didn’t mean it to sound super insulting. Ian’s reaction to being told the challenge is, frankly, minimal – but the cameraman makes the most of potential drama with a sudden zoom. One that I can only adequately convey in a… GIF!
The same inspired cameraman has obviously spent some time lining At Home We Have An Aga’s head with the sun-window.
With just a hint of being-filmed-behind-a-mug.
Everybody essentially panics. None of them have made a chocolate soufflé before, and apparently they’ve also all forgotten how to make anything at all. Ian worries about making a creme pat. At Home We Have An Aga isn’t sure about her meringue. Nadiya stares in confusion at an egg, wondering how you get the inside bit out.
Most confusing, though, are the paperclips. Nadiya and Mel have a little de-brief about them, leaving neither any the wiser.
“MAGIC beans, you say?”
Mel is also rather taken aback by Nadiya’s sass, when she says she’ll use the paperclips to file souffles under ‘never bake again’. It’s rather a fab little moment.
Despite the time staggering, we see all the bakers put their soufflés in the ovens in one single montage. Come hell or high water, the editors won’t let go of the putting-in-ovens montage. Nor, of course, the staring-in-ovens montage. Those will both be there with the cockroaches when the apocalypse is over.
“…yep, still there.”
The bakers now have 45 minutes to do nothing but clutch their faces in increasingly uncomfortable-looking positions. At Home We Have An Aga (one assumes) makes macarons.
Because the soufflés need to be served immediately, Paul and Mary have set up a little table for two facing away from the bakers’ stations.
For some reason, presumably either thrown by the change in the challenge, or with a voicebox addled by drinking cooking sherry straight from the bottle, Mary decides to whisper all her critiques.
Considering all their anxieties, the bakers all do pretty well. They aren’t keen on Nadiya’s lumps of unmixed meringue, but otherwise it’s more or less thumbs up all round. At Home We Have An Aga wins the challenge, followed by Tamal and Ian, with Nadiya bringing up the rear. For some reason, they felt they needed to restore the status quo with the gingham altar before they could tell anybody the results.
Mary ain’t a fan of change.
Three of the bakers talk about how glad they are that they didn’t come last, including this adorable pat-self-on-back from Tamal:
But Nadiya did come last, of course, and has a little cry in front of the camera, which was too sad for me to screencap. (*Whispers* don’t worry, Nadi, it’s gonna be ok.) Let’s whip straight to the Backstage Area of Pointless Debriefing. At its most pointless, this week, as Mel poses the Pulitzer-level insightful questioning of “Would you say, Paul, that it’s quite difficult to call who the three finalists are going to be, this year?”
“…yes.”
In her defence, it’s certainly trickier to call who the finalists will be this year than previous years. Cos I can find those on Wikipedia.
Back into the slightly less pointless part of the tent, they’re making chocolate centrepieces. They have to be three dimensional – so no drawings of centrepieces will be accepted! And presumably any that break into the fourth dimension will also be disqualified.
The bakers, we learn, are feeling nervous. Paul pops up to tell us that this is “the last chance to get into the final next week” – he’s clearly been reading and re-reading the definition of semi-final until he’s blue in the face.
Incidentally, has there ever been a baked centrepiece outside of the Great British Bake Off? I’m pretty sure that I’ve never been at a meal with one. And are you allowed to eat them? At which point in a meal? So many questions, so few answers.
Tamal is making a bell tower – it doesn’t seem to be specific one, which is probably just as well, since I don’t think there are any real bell towers that masquerade as octopodes. (Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I know my plural of octopus).
Mary goes all schoolteacher and asks him if he can pinpoint the difficult bit she’s thinking of; he entirely disregards the question.
At Home We Have An Aga is making ‘the cocoa carousel’, which I’m pretty sure she’s chosen just because of how good that sounds in a Scottish accent. I love anything carousel-themed (except, oddly, going on carousels) so this is winning points in my book. And she even made her own horse-shaped cutter. Mel quizzes her on how she made it but, before she can tell us, Paul mocks it. He claims it looks like a dog; I’m pretty impressed by it, myself.
This is not a positive teaching style, Paul.
Now, guys, I love Nadiya – you know I do – but I’m pretty cross with what she makes this week. Yes, it is replete with ‘modelling chocolate’ – a concept I am convinced that she made up – but her chocolate peacock doesn’t seem to involve any actual baking. There are a couple of half-hearted biscuits flung down near it, but for the most part it seems to be a rice krispie cake, of the variety made predominantly by nine year olds.
That’s right, Nadiya, conceal your shame.
Yes, it’s chocolate week – but it’s also The Great British BAKE Off.
Ian is making a fully-functioning well. I just don’t know what to say.
Well, well, well.
It dips down to a mixture of white chocolate and lemon, which doesn’t sound like a nice combination, does it?
Not a lady to steer clear of the garish, Nadiya recalls how fondly the judges looked on her electric blue ‘nun’, and is rolling out bright blue chocolate.
Yep, I’m pretty sure this isn’t a thing.
SOMEHOW we are over 42 minutes into the episode before we get our annual investigation into tempering chocolate. Have you missed it? “GRAINY TEXTURE”. Mel’s voiceover seemed to be leading into a trip to a Bournville factory or Kidderminster-based chocolate-eating competition, or something, but – no – we stay in the tent.
“I’m just making the white chocolate truffles,” says At Home We Have An Aga, pouring what is evidently a spirit into her bowl. Oh, brandy apparently. “I always think booze and white chocolate go well together,” she says, despite having only legally have been able to drink for about a year.
Call children’s services.
Here is a quick shot of the ONLY baking that Nadiya does in this challenge:
You’re lucky you’re great, Nadiya, because if this were anybody else I’d be KICKING OFF right now. Anybody else except Tamal, of course.
The Chinese gong gets dragged out again for Ian’s metal contraptions, btw and fyi.
There’s lots of tempering and piping and whatnot. And the first big drama of the challenge comes as At Home We Have An Aga is assembling her shortbread… oh nooooo! To her credit, she deals with it surprisingly calmly.
Probably the brandy.
And, just like that, the ‘centrepieces’ are finished. We’ve only got time for three irrelevant establishing shots of the sky and some corn, and it’s judgement time. Here they are:
Tamal’s bell tower looks best from far away, says Mary, but up close his piping ain’t all that. However, the biscuits and whatnot are doing their job well. Amusingly, when they say nice things and the camera pans to him, he’s giving himself that pat on the back. When they say less nice things, the pat is retracted.
Yeah, I see you, Tamal.
Ian’s well centrepiece is described as ‘very contemporary’ by Paul – yes, he made it just then. But the handle snaps off when he tries to pull the bucket up. Mary pirate-eats the shortbread, and is a big fan of it, but would have liked to see more chocolate work.
I think At Home We Have An Aga’s looks stunning (though they think it has too much ‘bloom’, or something). Mezza and Pezza don’t like the taste of much of it, sadly, and the whole carousel crumbles to the table. “It doesn’t taste as good as it looks,” Mary sums up.
Nadiya is the fourth baker to turn down assistance from Sue, in carrying her bake to the table – why does she keep offering? Why don’t they accept it? – and the judges are rightly impressed by the beautiful design. At no point is it mentioned that she has barely baked anything at all.
Indeed, it’s enough to secure her Star Baker!
And, demonstrating the complete lack of importance attached to the technical challenge, going home is poor (let me use her name for the first time since episode 1) Flora. I’ll miss you, my dear, but I shan’t miss typing out that ridiculously long nickname I gave you.
Well, my two favourites (Tamal and Nadiya) have made it to the final, and I’m cheering on either of them. See you all for the final!
Once an idea strikes me, I can never resist starting up a blog-community-project, whether that be a readalong or My Life in Books or A Century of Books or whatever. This particular idea excites me, because it is endlessly reusable, and should create something really interesting: welcome to The 1924 Club, which I’m co-running with the very lovely Karen of Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings. I’m thrilled she agreed to run this with me, as you’d have to go a long way to find a blogger as well-read, engaging, enthusiastic, and generally fab as Karen.
What is the 1924 Club?
Glad you asked. The idea is to get everyone reading from a particular year – reading whatever you’d like to, so long as it was published in 1924. Then Karen and I can bring together all the reviews (and as many reviews of 1924 books that are already on people’s blogs as possible) and we’ll have a great overview of the year. It should be really fascinating, to get a wide and varied sense of what was going on in publishing throughout one year.
Why 1924?
It could have been many different years, really, but 1924 seemed to have a lot of significant works published, as well as generally being an interesting time. If the project is a success, we can repeat it in the future with other years.
How do I take part?
Just post your reviews of a book or books published in 1924 between 19-31 October; during that time we’ll also have gathering-up posts available where you can let us know links to your reviews, as well as any other 1924 book reviews you’ve ever written. Later we’ll do round-up posts with links. And do feel free to use the button/badge!
What should I read?
Ideally, what you want to read! Hopefully you’ve got a few books on your shelf that would suit – you might need to do a little bit of homework, but that should be fun too. I’ve got a few up my sleeve, but I’m planning to read The Crowded Street by Winifred Holtby, for instance, and maybe The Garden of Folly by Stephen Leacock.
This Wikipedia list and this Goodreads list are also helpful (a word of warning – double-check the Goodreads suggestions before committing to them! Some are a little off in their dates). And, if you’re stuck, here are some possibilities:
A Man in the Zoo by David Garnett Skylark by Dezső Kosztolányi The Green Hat by Michael Arlen The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher The Rector’s Daughter by F.M. Mayor The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie Pink Sugar by O. Douglas The Matriarch by G.B. Stern Something Childish by Katherine Mansfield A Passage to India by E.M. Forster The Constant Nymph by Margaret Kennedy The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann Messalina of the Suburbs by E.M. Delafield
Seducers in Ecuador by Vita Sackville-West When We Were Very Young by A.A. Milne
But, more than anything, I’m hoping you’ll surprise us by hunting out unexpected 1924 gems!
Let us know if you’re planning on joining in, and do share any advance tips for 1924 wonders…
It’s been an enormous delay, because of internet issues, but – we’re back! In this episode, Rachel (Book Snob) and I debate rural vs urban settings in novels, then have a Jane Austen battle between Pride and Prejudice against Sense and Sensibility. We also address the all-important question we’ve thus far ignored: tea or books?
SO sorry we’ve been away for ages, but we’ll be back regularly now. I know Rachel’s missed it as much as I have, and we’re very excited to get back in the swing of things. Do let us know if you have any comments on the podcast, or recommendations for future podcast topics.
(Apologies for the sounds of aeroplanes at intervals…)
Here are the books we mention along the way (including the authors’ names we missed out!):
Armadale by Wilkie Collins Let Me Tell You by Shirley Jackson
‘The Lottery’ by Shirley Jackson Westwood by Stella Gibbons Night and Day by Virginia Woolf The Years by Virginia Woolf Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy Emma by Jane Austen Ferney by James Long The Midnight Bell by Patrick Hamilton Corduroy by Adrian Bell South Riding by Winifred Holtby One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence Hostages to Fortune by Elizabeth Cambridge The L-Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks
Elizabeth Gaskell One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark Excellent Women by Barbara Pym Some Tame Gazelle by Barbara Pym Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym
Charles Dickens Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen Mansfield Park by Jane Austen Persuasion by Jane Austen
Fanny Burney Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
My Mum, known here as Our Vicar’s Wife or OVW, but more commonly known as Anne Thomas, was one of the shortlisted winners of a Jane Austen short story competition, and now her story ‘The Power of Nurse Rooke’ can be found, starting on page 175, in the collection Beguiling Miss Bennet. So I’ve asked her to tell us all about it! Over to OVW…
Tuesday 22nd September saw OV driving me across southern England to Chawton, Hampshire, for the launch of the third Chawton House short story award’s anthology: Beguiling Miss Bennet, which comprised the 20 winning entries. The main remit for the competition was that stories must draw from the characters in Jane Austen’s works –both her well known completed novels and her other works – and that they could occupy any era, world or genre the writers wished.
You may imagine the delight with which, in 2014, OVW (me) rolled up her sleeves, sat down at her desk with paper and pencil, and screwed up her face in fierce concentration. What a challenge! What a delight! But, how to choose from the dozens of clamouring contenders?
My thoughts immediately went to P&P and S&S, but I reluctantly laid those ideas aside, for my namesake was calling me – Anne.
‘If one stays… I think it need be only one … if Anne will stay, no one so proper, so capable as Anne.’ Ah, Captain Wentworth, I was putty in your hands! Persuasion it must be – but whom? I could not choose the main characters – how could I do justice to them in ‘no more than 2,500 words’?
My imagination scanned the shoreline – no, not Lyme. I headed in my mind’s eye, to Bath – not to Pultney Street or Laura Place – no, I wandered down to Westgate Buildings and almost bumped into a busy little figure emerging from the shadows. Of course! Nurse Rooke!
The denouement of Persuasion rests heavily upon the figure of Mrs Smith. Laid up with some kind of wasting disease and seemingly helpless, she holds the key to unlocking the true nature of Mr William Elliot. She alone can save Anne from a disastrous marriage. But how does she know what is happening outside the four walls of her lowly room? Her only excursions are to the baths – helped by Nurse Rooke, who has clearly taken pity on her and is working to help her recover both health and the wish to live again. It is Nurse Rooke who forms the link – upon whom the plot relies.
Over the preceding months, the plight of 18th and 19th century women, left without male support, had been the focus of much thought as I researched and wrote a book set in Victorian England. Before the Welfare State and the Emancipation of Women, their fate was often a sad and lonely one. Mrs Smith, widowed and alone, wronged, sick and running out of money, was lucky indeed to fall into the hands of Nurse Rooke. This small vigorous figure began to grow in my imagination. I explored her possible history and those of her true life sisters. I found it fascinating to track them as they moved about the country, making a living in whatever way they could, using their gifts to stay out of the gutter and to keep a decent roof over their head.
In Jane Austen’s works there are two kinds of single women – those who are protected and those who are not. And of the unprotected, there are those who fall amongst friends and those who are seduced by deceivers. In Nurse Rooke I found a strong woman with a sense of humour, no fear of hard work and a determination to do good. She is resilient, amusing, hopeful and loyal. She deserved her five minutes of fame – so I gave them to her – and had great fun along the way.
Meeting the other authors who travelled to Chawton for the launch was a delight. It was wonderful to chat with them about their creations and to chew over the fun we all had writing their stories. The book is a delight – there is something in it for everyone. The stories are varied and the reader bounces from one to the next, never quite knowing where they will be taken next. The only disappointment is that of saying goodbye to each story – one is always left wanting MORE!
So, let Miss Bennet beguile you – you know it makes sense!
Beguiling Miss Bennet is available from the 22nd September 2015, priced at £8.99. ISBN: 9781909983304. Beguiling Miss Bennet is the third in the series of anthologies of the winners of the Jane Austen Short Story Award. The first two are Dancing with Mr Darcy (ISBN: 9781906784089) and Wooing MrWickham (ISBN: 9781906784324) both published by Honno Press.
Is this theme a first for the Bake Off? It’s gone Victorian! Sort of! If you discount pretty much everything about Victorian baking! It does give a world of opportunities for jokes about Mezza’s age, and also provides one of the better Mel and Sue intros of the series – in which they hide in this tree and sing a heavily adapted version of An English Country Garden – a song which was first collected some 17 years after Queen Victoria died.
That’s the level of historical accuracy you can expect from this episode, folks.
The bakers walk down those pitiful steps, wander into the tent, and Mel voiceovers that Victorian times were great for baking. Nadiya confides that she hasn’t baked a lot of Victoria recipes – well, what a surprise – and we’re already straight into Blazer Watch. It’s pretty much business as usual, though Mel is pepping things up with a full-on Easter parade of spring colours.
They’re making ‘raised game pies’ for the Signature Challenge – and my little heart sinks. Remember how I couldn’t cope with seeing a lot of meat and fish being cooked? This week is pretty tough for veggies. There is a lot of bits of animal being dumped on counters. The first time around I spent most of this section subtly looking to my side, rather than at the screen, so goodness knows how I’m going to recap it.
Paul-the-baker says it’s getting near the end, and “The slightest mistake…” – he then pauses, and realises that slight mistakes are still more or less immaterial, in a world where not filling your vol-au-vents is apparently de rigeur – and limps to the end of the sentence with “…isn’t something you want to be doing, really.” Powerful stuff, Paul.
He looks a bit crestfallen about it.
And, snarf snarf, the next shot we see is Tamal knocking an egg on the floor. The cameraman does one of his trademark creepy looks-like-nobody-knows-I’m-here shots of said egg.
Is this really the best angle you could get?
Mary waffles about how much the Victorians liked pies, and sounds precisely as though she’d personally known each and every Victorian.
“Tommy loved a pie, and Jane loved a pie. Louisa? Oh, yes, she blinking loved a pie.”
Paul-the-baker is first up for describing his pie, and its ingredients sound like a stock count for a wildlife park. His concession to non-meats is juniper berries and shallots, which might make quite a nice pie on their own. But I suppose the Victorians weren’t famed for their vegetarianism. The pie includes wild boar, which I’d have sworn was illegal, but he does make a nice little pun on it.
Those arrows could be pointing at anything.
He shows his tin and, as appears to be the case whenever literally anything is mentioned, Mary wanders into a lengthy reminiscence about baking in Victoria days. She is thus charmed by Mat’s genuine antique tin, which looks neither functional nor hygienic.
He quite literally attributes its provenance to “My mate Dangerous Dave’s mum Sheila”.
Do you want to see bits of animals chopped on boards? Well, the next montage will thrill you. Sigh.
Tamal is using Arabian spices and pre-minced lamb in a plastic container. And thus the charade of being a Victorian challenge crumbles to dust before anything is even in the non-Victorian ovens. I was hoping they’d have to use Victorian utensils – and maybe, should the producers be so inspired, wear ridiculous cloth caps and call Paul “the guv’nor”. Instead, there are electric mixers a-plenty, and I feel CHEATED.
Nadiya lists the spices she’s including in her pie, the first of which is orange. Is orange a spice, Nadiya? Is it? Mary – clearly on my side in the above paragraph – tells her that many of the spices she’s using wouldn’t have been available to Mr and Mrs Victorian, which earns her this Nadiya Death Stare.
“I’ll Victorian you in a minute.”
The episode is basically one long History of Baking, so Mel makes the most of the voiceover by harping on about social standing as much as possible. Indeed, she seems to say the same things about it each time. I refuse to believe that the Victorian social scale was determined solely and irreversibly on pies. (Actually, strike that, it sounds entirely plausible.)
At Home We Have An Aga apparently entered pheasant-cooking competitions at school (the tabloid press are thrilled) though, as her anecdote continues, it increasingly seems like she was the only entrant. “I was called Bird Girl for a while after that!” she concludes.
Imagine giving this lass a nickname! The very notion.
Ian, meanwhile, describes himself as having a passion for picking up dead animals on the road and cooking them. Yes, he uses the word ‘passion’.
Sadly we don’t get a Mary Berry Reaction Face when he says it’s called ‘Roadkill Pie’.
It also has guinea fowl in it… has he murdered the egg-producing wunderkind of last week’s episode?
The disembodied head of At Home We Have An Aga starts a saga about how long her pie should be in the oven.
Paul and Tamal offer advice, look anxious, and it’s quite sweet how collaborative they are. Game pies apparently have to reach 65 degrees – thankfully all Victorians owned portable food thermometers, it seems, and this is replicated in At Home We Have An Aga testing hers – which is only 26. “26?!” says Paul, fraught. “It ain’t helping being out there,” says Mat, somehow entirely as one syllable. Then Mat and Paul lean on counters and look astonished at her tactics.
Food thermometers offer plenty of scope for people to stand and say numbers at random, which is always a pleasure. Thankfully, at the last minute At Home We Have An Aga has got hers to the right temp, and the chances of giving Mary Berry food poisoning are pleasantly decreased. Her pastry has clearly also burned, but I think she’s beyond caring.
There are some rather lovely pastry decorations – did you know, I wonder, that the decoration on a Victorian’s pie was indicative of their social standing? – and Tamal’s is looking particularly lovely.
Give or take some leaking/burning/something.
Less impressive is the decoration on Ian’s bird pie. He thinks it worthwhile to point out that he’s added an eye – which is quite literally just a hole.
My favourite moments? Paul saying he wishes that Mat had included bacon. Mat pointing out that he did include bacon. Paul trying to pretend that he knew that. A close second to this sequence, though, is Tamal getting a Paul Hollywood Handshake, at which he giggles nervously, bless him.
“This old thing?”
Everybody does relatively well, it seems, even At Home We Have An Aga – who looks both rather charming and like an extra from a BBC adaptation of a children’s book, sat under this tree.
Despite being a History of Baking episode at every moment, we’re still treated to a segment where Sue nods and puns at an unsuspecting academic – this time about Mrs Beeton, who apparently wasn’t available for interview.
It does include the fun anecdote that Mrs B’s first published recipe was for sponge cake… but she forgot to include flour. Equally amusing is that the Professor telling Sue all about it says ‘sponge CAKE’ as though she’d never heard the term before. She also, for some reason, is granted two long, lingering, silent shots where she tries unsuccessfully to find something to say in response to Sue’s jokes.
The Technical Challenge is super fun. They’re making… tennis cake! We pop off to see Paul and Mary in their side-tent, and get this establishing shot:
which suggests sunset, immediately followed by one clearly filmed some hours earlier:
Nothing gets past me.
This one looks super fun. I’ve never heard of a tennis cake before, and I have a feeling that the same sentiment could have been expressed by almost every Victorian, but that doesn’t stop it being a fun challenge.
Of course, it’s the decorating that’s tricky. Making a fruitcake in a cuboid is pretty standard fare, and even Mel’s fraught voiceover and Tamal’s comments on the chopping of fruit can’t convince us otherwise. Wisely, the show spends no more than three minutes showing the fruitcake-baking process.
Just when you were thinking that these cakes were a nice change from the meat-fest of challenge one… apparently they’ve got gelatin in them. “I think the Victorians might have worshipped gelatin,” ponders At Home We Have An Aga, doubtless correctly. Hers ain’t going so well, and we get a #bincident, albeit quite a low-key one.
I’m still inclined to blame Diana.
And they’re colouring their grass. We see lots of shots of very light, white greens… then this from Mat, who has apparently only ever seen grass in the form of Astroturf outside a Mario Brothers themed pizza restaurant.
It really puts the ‘b’ into ‘subtle’.
“It looks different from everyone else’s, doesn’t it?” he says. Nadiya can’t help but say ‘yes’, and does well not to say more. Lurid colour aside, it’s also got a grainy texture, and so he can’t spread.
The voiceover tells us that cakes, if not left in the oven long enough, may not be cooked properly. Who would EVER have thought that?
The bakers have to try to remember what tennis courts and nets look like. Lots of delicate white piping going on at most of the stations. And meanwhile, over at the radioactive workstation…
There is some debate between the bakers whether to put their icing in the fridge or the freezer or… the oven? Mat flings his in there, which suggests that he’s not watching anybody else’s actions. Which I guess is admirable? There is a glorious moment where Nadiya finds out that he put it in the oven, and they stare at each other in bewilderment for about twenty minutes.
“…oven?”
And… they’re done. Nadiya’s net is the only one that’s looking good. Even when complimented on it, all she can do is be plaintive about Mat’s net-baking. It’s an obsession. But this fab little cake nets (AHAHAHA) her best baker in the technical challenge.
Here is Mat’s – which Paul, quite accurately, describes as having the net from Hades.
And suddenly those icing blobs look like the flames of eternal torment.
Unsurprisingly, he comes last.
One quick debrief later (which, I have to confess, I didn’t listen to) – and we’re onto the Showstoppers: Charlotte russe. It’s got ladies fingers, bavarois, and jelly. Yup, that’s a third challenge in a row with gelatin in it.
It’s all sounding very good until Paul-the-baker says he’s going to put rosemary in his jelly. Paul, Paul, Paul. We’ve spoken about this. How often will you put savoury ingredients in sweet things, bakers? No. Stop it.
He’s also planning on doing some fruit carving, which Colouring Pencils man wisely decides not to illustrate, and Paul H offers the sage explanation “It’s all about what you do with the knife.” Well, quite. Even with this informative tidbit in mind, Mel still asks if he’ll require a tiny hammer and chisel, earning her this look of disgust from The Hollywood:
“You… IDIOT.”
Mat is only using strawberries – for every single element of the filling. I quite admire that, to be honest. At Home We Have An Aga, on the other hand, is using dozens of ingredients – including pomegranates, to which Paul responds with all the horror that would be more justifiable in Persephone.
Ian has a wooden “ladies’ fingers chopper”, which sounds horrifying and like the opening to a serial killer horror film.
Nothing particularly eventful is happening, unless you count me forgetting to note down what people are making as eventful. Jellies, sponges, the odd unexpected Italian meringue. And At Home We Have An Aga is preparing a back-up plan in case Mary doesn’t find the bake to her liking.
A bake-up plan, if you will.
Will American viewers understand the verb ‘trollied’, I wonder?
Mat appears to have filled his with a tuna mayonnaise.
It’s not looking good for him, in every sense of that phrase.
“The title of this cake is…” starts Ian, and I wince. Things go wrong when bakers start titling their cakes, Ian. Puns excepted. But the punning expert of earlier is fully into fruit whittling. Not gonna lie; they’re impressive – even if that apple doesn’t resemble any swan I’ve ever encountered.
“It’s what I like doing,” he says to Sue – apparently to the exclusion of all other activities. He’s lost friendships, careers, marriages to the sweet, sweet lure of carving fruit.
Already (because I’ve written so little about this challenge), everything is coming out of the ovens and fridges and wherever else they’ve been stored – but Mat has reached the age-old kitchen dilemma of moving something from Surface A to Surface B. I’m sure all of us who enjoy baking at home can attest to how often this stage leads to breakages! Thankfully Paul and Nadiya combine again to help him out. They are becoming something of a dream team.
I mean, Mat still goes home, but they tried.
There is a spillage! Mat’s response is Shakespearean in proportion.
Alas, poor bavarois…
Here are some of the lookers:
“Queen Victoria would be proud” – Mary B, who would know.
And, oh dear, Paul ends up with a flood. A very macabre looking flood.
Cheers, whoops, and many congratulations to this week’s star baker – who is very sweet on the phone to his mum about it.
BLESS him.
It’s been pretty clear throughout the episode who’s going home, and I’ve already spoiled it for you. Bye, Mat! I still can’t believe how little we heard about you being one of England’s Bravest. Thanks for being funny; you were fabs.
It’s been a fun week on the show. Next year I hope they go the whole hog and blackout the electricity. See you next week! (And, yes, next week is probably this week.)
In consecutive weekends I’ve been to Cambridge and London and thought, on the whole, that I wouldn’t buy any books. Obviously that bit is a lie. I bought some books in both those places, and here they are – along with one which arrived in the post this week.
Virginia Woolf and the Raverats ed. William Pryor I looked at this covetously when it came out, but it was super expensive – thankfully I stumbled across a heavily discounted copy. It’s such a beauty of a book, woodcuts inside and all, and I will never have enough books about Virginia Woolf.
Brief Candles by Aldous Huxley
I want to keep up my reading of non-sci-fi Huxley, and this was a lovely copy. Other than that, I know nothing about it. Oh, Wikipedia tells me that it’s short stories. What does it say about me that I probably wouldn’t have bought it if I’d known that?
Vanessa and Her Sister by Priya Parmah
Remember what I said about Virginia Woolf back up there? Also, my book group is doing this next year. Because I suggested it.
About Time: an aspect of autobiography by Penelope Mortimer
This sounds fun – particularly as I want to know more about the background to The Pumpkin Eater.
H.G. Wells and His Family by M.M. Meyer
I have no idea who Meyer is, but apparently he/she knew H.G. Wells and his family. I’m always more interested in memoirs by people who knew the greats than I am in scholarly biographies (much though I also like those).
Confusion by Stefan Zweig
I have been meaning to read some Zweig for ages. Not this one particularly, but the Pushkin Press editions of his books that I found in the London Review of Books bookshop were so beautiful that I wanted to buy one. And I basically picked it at random from the few that were there.
A Monstrous Regiment by Richmal Crompton
This one came through the post. I get abebooks wants alerts for obscurer Richmal Cromptons, and this was the first time A Monstrous Regiment came up in over a decade. (Also: hurrah for Bello bringing lots of RCs back!)
Death Leaves A Diary by Harry Carmichael
I don’t know anything about this, but a Golden Age detective novel with a title that fab? Yes please.
By the way, which in London I also had a nice catch-up with Rachel – who now has the internet, finally, so ‘Tea or Books?’ will definitely be back soon. The hiatus has been so frustrating for us! (She didn’t buy any books, despite my tempting her. Wise woman.)
If you had told me at the beginning of 2015 that I’d have read two reincarnation romances before the year was over, my response would probably have been along the lines of doubt that two such books existed. But, yes, they do. The first one I read was Ferney by James Long – but over fifty years earlier, Elizabeth Goudge had written The Middle Window (1935) which had a similar idea at its heart.
