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.)
As I mentioned recently, I spent last weekend in Cambridge at a conference about Elizabeth von Arnim. It was really enjoyable; the people there were divided between those who knew everything about E von A and those (like me) who really like her, but haven’t read them all (I’ve only read about eight). The panel I spoke on had three people (including the chair) who’d published books about von Arnim… and me. But they made me feel very welcome, and I spoke about one of her lesser-known novels, Father (1931).
Rather than replicate my paper, I’ll do something more akin to my usual book reviews – though stealing some of the same research! Father is a novel that reminded me an awful lot of Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner. In both, an unmarried woman is desperate for her independence, and not to be subservient in her relative’s home. For Laura Willowes, it’s her brother’s home; in Father it’s – you guessed it! – the father’s. Jennifer is 31 and a slave to her widowed father, a writer; she laments ‘the years shut up in the back diningroom at a typewriter, with no hope that anything would ever be different’. Only things are different. Father is getting married again, to Netta, who is younger than Jennifer. She sees her opportunity for escape: she can move to the countryside.
Through and beyond father she saw doors flying open, walls falling flat, and herself running unhindered down the steps, along Gower Street, away through London, across suburbs, out, out into great sun-lit spaces where the wind, fresh and scented, rushed to meet her […] Jen, her wide-open eyes shining with the reflection of what she saw through and beyond father. She could feel the wind – she could feel it, the scented fresh wind, blowing up her hair as she ran and ran…
And, like Laura Willowes, she does move to the countryside. Only things aren’t quite as uncomplicated as she’d hoped. Waiting for her, in that village, are James and Alice – the vicar and his tyrannical sister – who make an interesting parallel to Jennifer and her father. Alice is also a spinster, but holds all the power in her brother’s house – and is keen to dissuade any possible sisters-in-law who might oust her from the vicarage.
Among Elizabeth von Arnim fans, I don’t think Father is particularly well-regarded, but I thought it was excellent. Most of her novels seem to concern marriage, whether happy or unhappy, so to see her tackle the much-discussed issue of ‘surplus women’ in the interwar years was very interesting – and Jennifer is a great character. With her love of nature, her unconventionality (she sleeps outside on a mattress when she first arrives), and her naive but firm belief that she can escape her father’s domain, she is an attractive and engaging heroine.
Though dealing with some slightly sombre issues at times, von Arnim can never leave her humorous tone completely to one side. There are some very funny scenes – particularly, perhaps, one where James and Alice are both trying to abandon the other one in Switzerland (it makes sense in context), though Jennifer’s quirky world-view makes many otherwise mundane sentiments wryly amusing to read.
I’m always intrigued about the effect a choice of title has on a novel. If this one had been called (say) Jennifer, it would feel very different. Though her father isn’t on the scene all that often, calling the novel Father makes him feel curiously omnipresent; it seeps throughout the narrative. A clever decision on Elizabeth von Arnim’s part.
Not the easiest of her books to track down (unless you have a Kindle, where it’s probably free [EDIT: maybe it’s not…]) – and also not up there with her best novels – but definitely an entertaining and interesting one which I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend. And a perfect companion to the excellent Lolly Willowes!
AKA a very weird book indeed. Over the years quite a few people have asked me if I’ve read Zuleika Dobson (1911), since it is often seen as the quintessential Oxford novel (after Brideshead Revisited, perhaps, but with the advantage of actually being in Oxford for the whole thing). Well, I hadn’t – and now I have. And what a strange little book it is. This review, incidentally, will have quite a few spoilers – because it’s difficult to write about otherwise, and because they’re probably pretty well known, and some covers give them away. I certainly knew most of the plot before I read it, and it didn’t much matter.
So, what happens? Zuleika opens the novel by turning up to Oxford; she is the niece of the Warden of Judas College (which, incidentally, does not exist – here’s a fun Wikipedia list of fictional colleges) and is there on a visit. Despite being ‘not strictly beautiful’, she is certainly beguiling. And beguile she does. Literally every man she meets (blood relatives excepted) falls in love with her on sight. It’s tiring.
Chief among these admirers – though initially the least disposed to reveal it – is the Duke of Dorset. He is diffident and buttoned-up, and doesn’t appear to be in love with her at first – which sparks off her love for him. Only when he reveals that (but of course) he does adore her does her love fade. It’s all very silly, but isn’t intended to be taken at all seriously. How can one take seriously a novel where nobody behaves with the slightest rationality?
It gets worse. And this is where the spoilers come in. The Duke swears he will die for her, if she does not love him. The idea spreads. And, as rowers race down the Cherwell or Isis or whatever that stretch of the Thames is called (after 11 years I still can’t remember), almost every single undergraduate in Oxford drowns himself for love of Zuleika.
Does she feel guilt about this mass suicide? She does not. Indeed, she remonstrates with the sole undergraduate who chickened out of the thing – in one of the most wonderfully composed insults that I can recall reading:
“You,” flashed Zuleika, “As for you, little Sir Lily Liver, leaning out there, and, I frankly tell you, looking like nothing so much as a gargoyle hewn by a drunken stone-mason for the adornment of a Methodist Chapel in one of the vilest suburbs of Leeds or Wigan, I do but felicitate the river-god and his nymphs that their water was saved today by your cowardice from the contamination of your plunge.”
What makes such a bizarre and surreal novel enjoyable? It certainly isn’t any spark of realism. Indeed,it is closest to a Greek myth. Zeus and Clio are introduced halfway through, but even before this it feels like mythology – in people’s heightened reactions, unlikely actions, and superlative traits. Zuleika is essentially a goddess of beauty – albeit one with occasional feet of clay, and a rather unpleasant character. But it was a moment of genius to make her an amateur (and terrible) magician. Some glorious moments of comedy come from that.
Most importantly, though, Beerbohm writes like a dream. He can turn a sentence beautifully, in the way of people like Oscar Wilde or Saki (whatever else these gents’ works have in common). The prose is a delight to read, but it does open to the accusation: is it all sparkle and no substance? Perhaps, but I don’t mind that, if the sparkle is done brilliantly. Zuleika Dobson is often described as a satire, but I couldn’t work out what it could possibly be a satire of. A satire must have a grounding in truth, and I couldn’t spot it here – unless it is that love makes people do stupid things.
But it doesn’t matter. I doubt a novel like this could exist outside of, say, 1890-1914. It is absolutely of its time. But I never think anything is ‘dated’ – I never know what people mean by that term; a discussion for another day, perhaps – and this curiosity is still great fun to read. Just don’t go looking for a moral.
Having gone through quite a weird ‘freefrom’ week, we’re back to service as normal with… pastry! And some rather nice pink shirt/blouse/flower matching going on between Mel and Sue. Almost enough to ignore their intro. Were these ever good? I’m starting to doubt it.
First off, thanks to those kind people who identified Mat’s accent for me! Not one I’ve heard before, it seems, though I’ve definitely been to BOTH the Sussexes.
Nadiya is still glowing from being Star Baker last week – though correctly summarises that it is another week. Tamal, my friend, would you like to be Star Baker this week?
In a shock turn of events, it seems he would.
So, #BlazerWatch. Erm, guys. The linedance pose is catching. This is the end of life as we know it.
And Mel’s pink looks more orange-pink now.
They’re making frangipane tarts, which is an opportunity for Sue to ‘show off’ her Italian accent. Isn’t a frangipane tart just a Bakewell tart? Have Bakewell got litigious? While Paul mutters something about gluten, Mary knows what the public wants – and gives us the first ‘soggy bottom’ of the series. And doesn’t she look delighted to have done it?
“I’m so NAUGHTY!”
Mel (in the voiceover) and the bakers (in the real world) all pretend that we might not know how to make shortcrust pastry, and earnestly tell us that it should resemble breadcrumbs. Well, quite. Mat leaps miles up in my estimation for scorning a mixer (and the other bakers for using them). He stumbles down a little for having two pineapples and… radishes? on his counter. It doesn’t bode well.
“You don’t want a sticky dough, at the end of the day,” says Paul-the-baker. If you’ve only got dough at the end of the day, Paul, sticky or otherwise, then you’ll probably have failed the challenge.
Alvin isn’t poaching his plums, he is fanning them. Mel gurns and winks and all that sort of thing, but he manfully ignores her. Paul is poaching his pears – is poaching the new proving drawer? – and is apparently making ‘my version of a Christmas frangipane’. Is there a generally-accepted version of a Christmas frangipane? I’ve been missing out.
“How’s it going to look when you’ve finished? What sort of look are we looking at?” says Paul H, not having had our advantages with Colouring Pencil Man (and apparently thus relapsing into gibberish). “The pears will be going in a circular motion,” says Paul-the-baker. An automaton?? This gets better and better.
Tamal is the first baker of the night to wave alcohol under Mary’s nose – he’s using mulled wine.
One of Ian’s guinea fowl started laying eggs. I mean, sure.
Thank goodness the international egg shortage is finally over.
Nadiya is keen to tell both camera and judges that her tart will, basically, taste of nothing. Mat, on the other hand, is making a piña colada tart, trumping Tamal’s mulled wine with a massive mason jar of rum. Mary immediately lunges for it.
“It’s a forgiving pastry” – Ian. I’m starting to realise that I don’t need to add much commentary to today’s quotations. Instead, let me remind you of the time my friend and I made a quiche. Bear this in mind when I start mocking the simplicity of the task.
(To clarify: I can make pastry, honest.)
The tent are divided over whether or not to blind bake. Mat says he blind bakes “because he read somewhere once that people do”, or some such. When I make Bakewell tarts, I don’t blind bake, fyi. And I think Mary Berry’s recipe for Bakewell tart says not to.
At Home We Have An Aga and Paul come to blows over having trimmed her pastry before blind baking it; Mel and Mary rather adorably rush to her defence, and he panics and reverts to saying “Thank you very much”, as he does in every silence.
At Home We Have An Aga pre-empts being crowned the Frances of the series by acknowledging that she may care too much about the appearance of her bakes. Well, Frances won, so I wouldn’t worry too much about that. Someone who should be worried – yes, thank you, that segue was all my own – is Alvin, who is rather behind everyone else, and has a half-baked solution about not putting much frangipane in, or something.
Half-baked! Geddit? Geddit?!
Meanwhile, At Home We Have An Aga is making amaretti biscuits, despite not knowing yet whether or not she’s going to put them anywhere.
Mel starts using a million abbrevs (“ten mins on your frange, obvs”) which led to a flurry of friends texting me to point out the similarities between Mel and myself. Or the sims, if you will. (I assume you won’t.)
The tarts are looking delish. People are glazing, icing, and – yes – scattering amaretti biscuits all over the place. Alvin is… still staring into the oven. Oh dear.
Onto the judging. OH. Paul wants a blind bake. I don’t know what to believe any more. Ian does quite badly, and Nadiya has… a soggy bottom!
aaaand drink!
Over at Mat’s station – Mary can’t taste enough rum! Oh noooo! I think, Mary my love, that’s what they call immunity.
Mary isn’t happy with the amaretti at At Home We Have An Aga – “just leave them out” and Mary and Paul argue about whether or not it’s bitter and burnt. But worse is to come over at Alvin Corner. His frangipane isn’t baked.
Mary is on the hunt for rum.
It’s rather heartbreaking. He keeps whispering “I’m so sorry” and I want to give him a hug. After that, Tamal does rather well – which apparently enrages Paul the baker (in a clip which, let’s face it, was probably filmed hours later).
So, quite a few people did surprisingly badly on a more or less simple bake – but the judging was very harsh. And, oh lord, Alvin is talking about the fact that his father was a general in the army and failure wasn’t an option, and I am getting vivid pictures of an eight year old Alvin being sent to his room in disgrace for not whittling the perfect flute or something.
Yes, flute-whittling is apparently my go-to benchmark for success.
So moving on, dear readers, apparently we can’t have any home videos, but we can have a story about someone who once almost died by falling into an eight-foot pie. Sue is given a brief – and, one assumes, entirely fictitious – history of the event by an out-of-work Bruce Springsteen impersonator.
“They buried it because it was off” – genuine thing said by man
All of this segment has to be a spoof. I’m starting to think the BBC has been hacked by trolls. The eyebrows of the gentleman in the supposedly genuinely old-timey video from Denby’s Baking Past are, by themselves, enough to suggest foul play.
Back in the tent, the bakers stare nervously around them, and the technical challenge is unveiled. If you thought things were traditional earlier, then… they’re doing flaounes. These are apparently big in Cyprus during Lent, so of course they make perfect sense for Britain in September. Mary hadn’t heard of them, and it’s more than likely that Paul has made the whole thing up. Though he wouldn’t be the first Paul to have a fondness for Cyprus. #BibleJokes
They look pretty nice, though.
Oh, and they’re cheese-filled. Lent in Cyprus sounds fun. At Home We Have An Aga isn’t so sure. “It just feels wrong. The whole things feels wrong.”
Ian has put his cheese/sultana mix into the proving drawer. Things have gone too far.
Nobody seems to love mastick (or however you spell it), which is grainy and smells like pine trees and/or industrial cleaner. Flaounes are suddenly starting to sound a whole lot less tempting. They’ve also got yeast and everybody’s kneading it, which makes it seem like Paul has sneaked bread into pastry week. At Home We Have An Aga is certainly perplexed, but I’ve shown her perplexed face once already today, so you’re not getting it again.
Everybody is interpreting ‘fold in the corners’ differently, and Tamal informs the others that he hates them. Being, it seems, the anti-Ugne, it just sounds adorable.
The whole thing is over surprisingly quickly (presumably owing to the amount of time we saw Sue stand in a field where a pie was alleged to have been buried), and Paul and Mary come out to judge. They are judging based on qualities that the bakers couldn’t possibly have known needed to be there, like height or where the sesame seeds are. Since we’ve not seen any food pics for a bit, here’s some flaounes – as well as Nadiya’s excellent photocard face.
Mary clearly doesn’t know what she’s supposed to be looking for either, so throws in her usual comments about ‘lovely colour’ and ‘even’. I half expect her to start on the prettiness of the tablecloth. Tamal comes last, followed by Alvin and Paul. The top three are Ian, At Home We Have an Aga, and… Mat! Who looks incredibly surprised. And then salutes.
Tamal is quite witty about having seemed too cocky and being beaten down by the universe. Alvin, on the other hand, is completely dejected.
It’s raining and storming for the final challenge. Things aren’t looking good for Alvin. It’s the first time I can remember them not bothering to say more than one person in the ‘who’s in danger’ bit. Basically, he’s going. Can he make a miraculous comeback with vol-au-vents?
Spoilers: no, probably not.
They’re all making puff pastry, and this feels like a re-do of all the other puff pastry episodes we’ve had in the past – but with the added bonus of Nadiya smashing hers with a rolling pin in a violent frenzy, grimace on face.
Run, Ian, run!
Ian is making squid vol-au-vents, which is something that even Beverly Moss never thought of, and he suggests that jet black food is ‘a bit risqué’. I assume he means ‘risky’, right? Because otherwise I don’t know what to think or where to look. Paul is keen to get as ’70s as possible, and is including prawns. At Home We Have An Aga, on the other hand, is being daring and modern, with chocolate pastry. Oh, in the other one she’s got Parma ham. Order is restored.
But nobody is using a little olive.
‘Vol-au-vents’ is very amusing in Mat’s accent, by the way. It’s like one long glottal stop.
There’s a lot of meat and fish going on in the tent, and I always lose interest a bit when that happens. At least, with the vegetarian-friendly recipes, I can fool myself that I might make them one day. Also, this is veering suspiciously into ‘cooking’ territory, and that ain’t baking. No saucepans, please.
Tamal was inspired by an amazing sandwich. Bless him. Tamal for Prime Minister!
Nadiya’s face while rolling is an absolute joy. You lucky things, you get ANOTHER GIF.
She also seems to spend the whole of this section staring balefully at everyone else. It ain’t going so well for our Nadi. At some point she made a second pastry, but I seem to have been looking the other way when that happened. Mel comes over to whisper that she might want to put some filling somewhere (although it’s not really filling if it’s not filling anything, is it?)
Piping bags have been discarded; bakers are cramming filling in by hand. Nadiya has given up putting anything in at all. And I haven’t got a clue what’s going on here:
It’s all been pretty chaotic. Let the judging begin! I can’t say any of them look especially showstoppery, so just the one from At Home We Have An Aga in the Hall of Fame this week:
Pretty, in the way that an abstract painting is pretty.
At the other end of the spectrum… deconstructed vol-au-vents from Nadiya.
Is this a wind up? (Think about that for a while, and a BRILLIANT pun will be unveiled.)
But, bless her, they love the filling and she has a full-on cry.
Apparently egg yolk dripping down Mary’s hand is a good thing – though it sounds unsanitary to me – because our Mat is Star Baker.
Going home… well, it’s no surprise (even after Nadiya’s catastrophe), and it’s probably for the best for the sake of his nerves and, more to the point, mine. Your apologies broke my heart. We’ve loved having you, Alvin, you’re fab!
I’ve got a new phone, and everything happens more quickly! It also enables me to join the world of Instagram, and I am definitely not being a responsible user so far. I’m hoping to make it more of a book-centric place (see below for an image of my bookshelves that went up yesterday! #nofilter and all that) but it’s also a personal one, so there will be a bit of a mix. Anyway, Instagram users, make yourself known so I can explore it more! It’s @simondavidthomas.
I know that instagram is having huge potential. I will be able to grow my instagram handle quickly with Nitreo. So I will able to reach huge audience and can share thoughts from my books. It is just awesome that I will able to communicate with huge number of people whenever i want because of instagram. To know more about ingramer.com, go through our site.
Is ‘freefrom’ week a first for Great British Bake Off? I think it might be. What’s not new is Sue and Mel talking nonsensically before the opening titles. A strange joke about rubbing someone down in silver foil, and we’re ready to go.
And what else is not new? The cameraman is still finding ever more inexplicable ways to obscure the contestants as they walk in.
Would it kill them to have a shot where we can just, y’know, SEE the bakers?
Ian, apparently in the belief that pride comes before GOOD stuff, talks about how brilliant he is and, lols, the other bakers hate him.
All in good fun, we think, until, one-by-one, the other bakers confirm that they want Ian dead. Tamal starts off his day trip to the 1990s by saying he thinks Ian is making the other bakers ‘look a bit pants’ – the first time any of us have heard the word ‘pants’ used in this way since about 1998. And Nadiya turns her ever-exaggerated facial expressions to menacing.
Easily the least convincing is Alvin, who laughs nervously at the very thought of being menacing.
#BlazerWatch (yes I hashtagged it, what of it?) is a riot of springtime colours. I’m pretty sure Sue is recycling a jacket here, and Mel has gone eye-shriekingly yellow. Mary, as per usjz, comes out on top.
I’m not going to mention Paul until he starts wearing blazers again. One word, though: CUFFS.
They’re making ‘sugarfree cakes’. I give that inverted commas because THESE ARE NOT SUGARFREE CAKES. I don’t understand whose dietary requirements these cakes could possibly suit. Loads of them are adding honey or syrup ‘instead’ of sugar. BUT HONEY AND SYRUP ARE MOSTLY SUGAR. There’s something about refined or unrefined sugar, which rather goes over my head, but what these cakes are NOT is sugarfree. ARGH.
Mary (in a lovely little garden – her giardino segreto, perhaps) tells us that sugar is an important ingredient in a cake. Whip out your notebooks, boys and girls, we’re doing some learnings.
“Also add flour, probably. Where’s my cheque?”
Over with Paul, he’s saying that some of the bakers will use fruit – but that apples and pears should be avoided because (a) Cockneys will get confused, and (b) they don’t carry enough flavour. Instead, he suggests, they should use ‘something more robust, like an orange, like a lemon’. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, he suggests sweetening their cakes with a lemon.
As though to spite him, our first baker – Ian – is using pear. He’s also throwing in carrots and honey. Mat, meanwhile, who looks ever increasingly like Postman Pat, is making a fairly traditional carrot cake, and doesn’t even seem to be adding any form of melted sugar as his sugarfree ingredient. Good on you, Mat.
I love me a carrot cake, and Paul’s sounds delish too – pecans and sultanas are also being added. More importantly – is Paul-the-baker the ghost of Paul-Hollywood-past? He seems to get paler every week.
“Man of the worldly mind!” replied the Ghost, “do you believe in me or not?”
“A good polenta cake is worth having,” says Mary to Tamal. Interestingly, WordPress thinks ‘polenta’ is a typo, and offers ‘tadpole’ as the only correction.
Alvin is making a pineapple upside-down cake. “It’s simple; classic,” he says, clearly already wracked with anxiety lest it be too boring. “It’s my go-too!” he confides to the camera, then laughs in a moment of unnerving hysteria.
Bless him.
Ugne has decided (possibly realising that these cakes aren’t free from anything at all) to make hers gluten free as well. We get a bizarre moment of Sue saying ‘hello?!’ in astonishment, practically waggling her glasses up and down Eric Morecambe-style. How does Mary Berry feel about it?
Mary Berry Reaction Face says… no.
Ugne threatens to use purple icing.
At Home We Have An Aga (and, let me be clear, I’m very fond of her – the nickname is only in jest, but is too far gone now to be changed) has made at least four tiers to her cake, and joins the putting-in-oven montage that we’ve come to expect. If my oven had three shelves, it wouldn’t have taken five hours to make the Windtorte.
“I am putting them in the oven,” she says, accurately.
Nadiya is making no-cook blueberry jam for the centre of her cake, which doesn’t only seem to be no-cook but also no-blueberry. It apparently consists entirely of basil seeds (c.f. fig.1) and water.
Her sweetener is molasses. WHICH IS BASICALLY SUGAR.
At Home We Have An Aga is making madeleines to go around the outside of her cake. The takes me back. BA-DOOM-TISH. But, seriously, she always seems to go the extra mile, but still hasn’t made it to Star Baker contention territory.
It only feels like a moment since cakes-in montage, and we’re ready for cakes-out montage. Despite the tension-building drums, nothing of note happens here. Nothing, that is, except for the case for dismissal growing against medical larcenist Tamal.
To make matters worse, he’s injecting blood orange.
He says it’s 50% one thing, 50% some other thing, and a bit of something else – sweetly corrects his 50%/50% statement, and sighs “Ahhh… maths”. Somewhere, Mr Simpson is eyebrows-raised, hoping for a mention. I’ve got your back, Mr S.
Most of the tent are making mascarpone icing (‘mascarpone’ being another word WordPress can’t cope with; ‘mascara’ this time). I do have a question about Tamal’s (and probably most people’s). Why do they insist on using a food mixer thingummy for EVERYTHING.
I said this last year, but I don’t own one of these. I can see where it would sometimes be useful, but bakers should be quite capable of making icing or a sponge mix by hand. Is there some sort of covert sponsorship deal going on? Am I going to bring down the BBC? Can I get a refund on the licence fee I paid last week?
Meanwhile, Alvin is spreading honey on his (to me) rather underwhelming-looking upside-down cake. And he’s done. He nervously asks Ian if his cake is too simple, a question which Ian wisely pretends not to hear.
He’s got THIRTY MINUTES left.
I don’t think there’s any connection with Ugne saying “If we play it safe, it would be boring. We can do boring every day.” But the editing is undoubtedly unfortunate, pitting the tent’s scariest (though also lovely) baker against its most anxious. At least Alv is spending his time well:
“Any clothes need ironing? Any flowerbeds need weeding?”
And – OH NOOOS – Ugne’s cake starts to collapse. She blames it on the top layer breaking, but that doesn’t seem to explain why the whole thing is subsiding, oozing whatever bizarre purple concoction she has smothered it in, as well as the top layer of chocolate. She decides the best course of action is to stand in front of an open fridge, prodding it with a spatula.
What you see here is Nadiya getting halfway through an expression of concern, then shrugging and wandering off.
The editor cruelly goes between the wonderful looking cakes (Ian’s with flowers embedded all around looks particularly impressive) to Ugne’s mess. She’s raided the garden for some decoration that she has decided (in a moment, we must sympathetically assume, of insanity) might distract from the apocakelypse.
Here are some prettier ones:
Tamal does well, as does Paul. Bizarrely, they think Ian’s might look too simple (?!) and ‘pear’s not going to bring anything to a party in a sugarfree cake’. Paul says Mat’s doesn’t look baked, but it turns out it is, and thus ends the shortest emotional rollercoaster in history.
Ugne’s checkerboard doesn’t come out quite as she’d hoped, and I hope this also serves as a warning to anybody who was considering browny-purple as an icing colour choice in future:
Brilliantly, Mel starts chomping on the accompanying flowers – only to be told that they’re not edible. She subtly spits them out.
They don’t seem to mind too much that Alvin’s cake is super dull; instead, he gets tidal waves of compliments from M & P. These are the same people who thought that Ian’s was too simple. Paul-the-baker nods appreciatively. And, in the aftermath-interviews, Ian is NOT CHUFFED.
Technical challenge time! And it might be the least appetising one to date. Gluten-free pittas. Nadiya is all of us:
“…wut?”
Pittas join the pantheon of GBBO technical bakes that in no way reward the effort required. Just buy them from a shop, people. Even Paul’s array of pre-made pittas look soporifically dull.
I pitta the fool who has to eat these.
It’s the first of many times we’ll see Mary make a pocket in a pitta. If you thought her fixation on violets was ridiculous, wait til you discover how obsessed she is with wearing pittas as gloves.
They’ve all got packets of brown powder but, fear not, this isn’t more of Tamal stealing from work. It’s something that, mixed with water, takes the place of gluten, or something. When I’ve made gluten-free things, I’ve just used gluten-free flour. May I recommend it as a preferred method? Oh, and Tamal, not content with the patois of 1998, rewinds a few years more to describe the mixture as ‘rank’.
I mean, he’s not wrong.
They all seem to be doing surprisingly well with the dough, though. It’s very soggy, but they’ve made admirable-looking doughs – as this shot, taken from under Ugne’s arm, demonstrates:
Oh, Tamal’s isn’t going so well. Poor old Alv has had pitta once in his life, and recalls it looking like ‘a triangle’. Sue blanches, but womanfully says nothing. Is he thinking of a samosa? Is he saying words at random?
This panning shot, rushing through the flowers, literally made me feel dizzy.
The bakers and voiceovers are mercifully brief on the topic of proving, and Alvin runs through every conceivable shape for his pitta, before openly copying those around him.
“Grey and dense” says Mat, popping his head up from behind the desk, and making my jokes too obvious. Also, where is his accent from? He sounds like somebody pretending to be Northern, while chewing toffee. And Ockham’s Razor suggests that that’s what he must be.
There is nothing interesting about these pittas, visually at least. We see them wrapped in tea towels (why?), plonked on boards, and eventually lined up on the gingham altar. A last minute blow on hers renders Ugne’s entirely unhygienic.
The judging? Well, friends, AT NO POINT TO MARY OR PAUL EAT ANY OF THEM. It’s so strange. Do they note their colour and shape? Yes. Do they wave them up and down? Yes. Do they shove their hands in them? Hell, yes. But they never taste them. Why? (Also: repetitive mentions of ‘envelope’ spark interest from Postman Mat.) My favourite moment is Mary saying “These are round, aren’t they?” in wonderment, and apparently needing confirmation from Paul’s expertise on this point.
The world’s dullest technical over, and Alvin comes last, followed by Tamal and Ugne. The top three are At Home We Have An Aga, Paul, and Nadiya. I think Nadiya is pleased.
#ChetnaArms
You know what *I* miss, folks? Home videos. We haven’t had one in weeks. They’re really wasting having a fire fighter and an anaesthetist on the squad, not to mention a student. At Home We Have An Aga probably writes on the floor, or something, like Ruby. Ugne is a body-builder, for Heaven’s sake. What do you need, GBBO producers, before you’ll show us awkward three-second clips, filmed in the rain, of people presenting Victoria sponges to their assembled family and colleagues?
Back in the tent, it’s the showstopper challenge: dairy-free ice cream rolls. The very notion. Let’s be honest, they know that ice cream gave them their best ratings last year, and they’re hoping to recapture the magic. To do judges and presenters justice, #bingate is not mentioned, even covertly. Unless it was SO covert that I didn’t spot it.
The bakers are mostly using coconut milk, which comes in BBC-friendly non-brand tins.
It always seems like anything they’re thinking of making might turn out to be scrambled eggs if things go wrong. Every recipe is one false step away from being scrambled eggs. It’s a humbling thought.
Alvin is using a Filipino ingredient that Paul compares to suncream – and Mary, getting her own back for the hair-dye comment of last week, suggests it’s what he’s been using for years. That man does love a tan. Alvin’s looks unappealingly luminous in the BBC Colouring Pencils evocation of it.
Soylent Green?
Mel gets the green stuff on her tongue because of course she does. Bless her. Paul-the-baker is making a dessert island – geddit? Dessert/desert? Geddit? [wipes eyes]. A few people are going tropical, indeed, with pineapples and mangoes all over the place.
Oh, hark, they’ve found a xylophone.
Ugne is making a peanut butter ice cream *gag* with grape jam *gag* and the whole thing sounds revolting. Her ‘I need this to work today’ is followed by a laugh, but I think we can all still agree that it’s the horse’s-head-in-bed of comments.
Ian’s doing a… dessert island. It’s the joke that just keeps on giving.
Nadiya says of her mousse that she’s putting it in the freezer, because leaving it out will make it too runny. Could THIS be the #bingate reference I’ve been waiting for?
Apparently forgetting his – now, how to put this nicely – horrendous piping on the biscuit box, Paul-the-baker is making wobbly palm trees and… shuttlecocks?… to decorate his sponge roll.
My friend Adam plays a GBBO drinking game which includes drinking when bakers stare into ovens. He was in my house when this episode was on, and we didn’t happen to have any alcohol in, otherwise this montage would have left him unconscious.
Oh no no no.
Alvin is a bit fraught, and we get a shot of Paul-the-baker staring in consternation at him, in silence, before reluctantly saying “D’you want a hand, Alvin?” He looks and sounds precisely like Phil Mitchell at this point.
To give him credit, he does then lend a hand.
I’ve also skimmed (or at least semi-skimmed #hahaha #ohnohedidnt) over the final section of the challenge, as it’s mostly people taking things in and out of ovens, or in and out of freezers. It does include Sue pointing out the flaws in Ugne’s jam placement, suggesting that she’s picked up quite a bit in her years on the show.
The less said about Paul-the-baker’s fondant sunbather, the better. Let’s not sully ourselves, people.
Ian has a mini breakdown, and can’t remember the word ‘marzipan’. In this strange tent of savoury and sweet being entirely interchangeable, his suggestion of ‘parmesan’ wouldn’t actually be that scandalous. (And, oh, WordPress spellchecker, I do mean parmesan, and not partisan.)
And, just like that, we’re finished. Here are a couple of the beauties:
This doesn’t show off the lovely bunting properly. Everybody loves bunting.This is truly spectacular. Well done, Nadi!
Highlights:
Mary says she’d be proud if she’d managed to make Tamal’s.
Mat didn’t realise that a Swiss roll and an ice cream roll were different things.
Nadiya’s is undeniably wonderful, but it’s curious that Mary congratulated her chocolate ice cream for ‘masking’ the coconut.
Alvin continues to call Paul ‘sir’. I don’t really like it.
Ugne’s is a mess, but tastes good, and (bless her) she has a little cry.
Mary, Paul, Mel, and Sue debrief while the bakers loll about in deck chairs, each and every one of them looking grumpy – I know I would be after a day like that. Then we’re ready for them to unveil Star Baker…
Hearty cheers all round! Fans of the adorable will enjoy Nadiya talking about how her kids will be proud of her.
And going home…
She whispers something to Sue – could it be “I won’t forget this”? – and definitely looks like she’s strangling her… but, I jest, she was a sweetie really.
Well, I’ll be spending my weekend writing a conference paper for the Elizabeth von Arnim conference which is (ahem) next weekend. Excellent planning, Si. I’m speaking about Father, which (since Virago didn’t reprint it during their flurry of E von A reprints) isn’t particularly well known – but it’s rather fab. More on that soon; for now, a book, a blog post, and a link.
1.)The book – I’ve been meaning to read it for ages, but since I haven’t managed it yet, I thought I’d just let you know it exists. It’s 43 writers writing about how much they love reading. Blissful, no? Thanks Bloomsbury for sending me a copy – I am really looking forward to finding time to read it.
Well, I’ll be spending my weekend writing a conference paper for the Elizabeth von Arnim conference which is (ahem) next weekend. Excellent planning, Si. I’m speaking about Father, which (since Virago didn’t reprint it during their flurry of E von A reprints) isn’t particularly well known – but it’s rather fab. More on that soon; for now, a book, a blog post, and a link.