So, how many books did you THINK I’d buy?

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I had a lovely time in the Lake District and Edinburgh – absolutely falling in love with that city, after spending more or less three whole days tramping its streets. I met Karen from Cornflower, which was an absolute joy. We *had* met previously, when I’d only been blogging for only a fortnight… now that we e-know each other quite well, we were able to have a really nice, bookish chat, and delicious lunch. And I was nosey and asked to look at her bookshelves… lots to approve of, and talk about, and generally all very nice!

We popped into a nearby bookshop, where Karen bought one book on my recommendation/insistence (Provincial Daughter by RM Dashwood, a sequel to EM Delafield’s Provincial Lady books, and by EMD’s daughter, ‘Vicky’ herself). I bought, um, five… and in the five days I was away, bought seventeen books. Cough. Well, you KNEW this about me when we became friends, you can’t judge me now…

Here they are!


1. Everyday Quotations from Shakespeare
Goes through the plays one by one, showing where ‘quotations from Shakespeare in everyday use’ originated. Amusing to see which quotations were apparently in everyday use in the 1920s.

2. Elizabeth and Her German Garden – Elizabeth von Arnim
I already have the Virago copy, but this lovely little edition from 1905ish was too nice to leave, at a £1

3. The Gate of Angels – Penelope Fitzgerald
Bought on the encouragement of Karen (Cornflower blog). I loved The Bookshop by PF last year.

4. The Moving Toyshop – Edmund Crispin
Again, at least five people have told me to read this. And it came looking like one of the old-fashioned green Penguin Crimes, so I was smitten.

5. To the Is-land – Janet Frame
Volume One of her autobiography. More on Frame below…

6. Nightingale Wood – Stella Gibbons
General view is that this is sub-Cold Comfort Farm, but it was in a charity shop, so I thought why not…

7. The Other Side of the Bridge – Mary Lawson
I was very impressed by Crow Lake (wrote about here) and still get a fair few people coming to S-i-a-b through Google searches for it.

8. Manservant and Maidservant – Ivy Compton-Burnett
I’ve got my copy!

9. Robert and Helen – Elizabeth Jenkins
Since I was enjoying The Tortoise and the Hare…

10. Faces in the Water – Janet Frame
Been meaning to read this New Zealand author for ages, and I love novels about madness. I think I first saw her name on dovegreyreader’s blog?

11. Singled Out – Virginia Nicholson
Why don’t I already own this? Already been talked about lots across the blogosphere, I wanted a book by which to remember the great little independent shop in Grasmere – chose this one. The shop, Sam Read’s, had only one copy of each book, but they’d been wisely and lovingly chosen. And included Miss Hargreaves…

12. Three Fantasies – John C. Powys
Looks like it might be useful for my research… apparently he uses everyday situations to explore the fantastic.

13. Adeline Mowbray – Amelia Opie
1804 novel based on the life of Mary Wollstonecraft. Need to read more from this period, and having appreciated Janet Todd’s non-fiction Death and the Maidens about the Shelley/Wollstonecraft circle, this could be a winner.

14. Drawn From Life – EH Shepard
The second volume of Shepard’s illustrated autobiography – I remember the first being charming, the writing as well as EHS’s superlative drawings.

15. The Jasmine Farm – Elizabeth von Arnim
Another nice old edition of an E von A..

16. The Egg and I – Betty Macdonald
Heard good things about this, and it had a lovely cover…

17. The Rebecca Notebooks – Daphne du Maurier
I’ve had my eye on this for ages… every step I take with DdM seems to go downhill after Rebecca, so hopefully this will redress the balance.

Stuck-in-a-Book’s Weekend Miscellany

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I’m back from my travels, pleased to see that my posts all appeared when they were supposed to, and delighted to find so many willing Ivy Compton-Burnett readers! Hayley asks whether she’s likely to enjoy Manservant and Maidservant after having given up A Heritage and Its History – the answer, probably, is no. In for a penny, in for a pound, with Miss C-B – her novels are all very similar and it’s unlikely that you’ll hate one and love another. Verity asked whether we could choose a Virago ICB, but having looked on Amazon the four that Virago Modern Classics reprinted are in quite short supply, and quite pricey too, so it will probably be best to stick with Manservant and Maidservant since it’s in print in the US. Is that ok? I recommend you go and get copies now, if you fancy joining in, and we’ll aim to read it during October/November? Let me know what you think about the plan…
(by the way, it was also published in the US as Bullivant and the Lambs)

More about my trip to Grasmere and Edinburgh, very soon, and apologies if I haven’t responded to an email yet – I have 300 waiting in my inbox.

1) The book, for this weekend’s miscellany, was waiting for me when I got back from Edinburgh. I must confess that I hadn’t heard of J.B. Priestley’s Delight (1949) – also reprinted, and hopefully on its way to me – in which he wrote dozens of little essays (two pages or so each) about things which caused him delight. It sounds an, indeed, delightful book – probably more difficult to write than a Grumpy Old Man collection, but much nicer to read. Well, an anthology has been created in aid of Dyslexia Action and the London Library, called Modern Delight. All sorts of folk have been invited to share things which cause them delight, and it looks like a surprising and happy book. Who knew that Jeremy Paxman liked frogspawn, or Joan Bakewell motorway service stations? John Carey on ‘beekeeping’ and Lynne Truss on ‘perfectly captioned cartoons’; Nick Hornby extolling Bexhill-on-Sea; Erica Wagner proclaiming the delights of peeling chickpeas – how appropriate to choose such a miscellany for my miscellany! Might appeal more to UK readers than non-UK, for the famed people might not be famed beyond these shores. But how nice to see proper, credible names – and many writers – rather than reading that Katie Price likes horses or Wayne Rooney has a fondness for potatoes. Can’t wait.

2) The blog post – I haven’t been able to read blogs this week, so shall link to something not very bookish, but very yummy: the recipe for the cake Karen aka Cornflower made for my visit to her this week. And it was delicious!

3) The link – Simon B at the Bodleian sent me a link to an article on the BBC’s website: What does your bookcase say about you? I can’t agree with the included sentence ‘books aren’t essential’ (is this woman MAD?) but there’s some fun stuff in there too. I’m very fond of my Argos bookcase, which slopes from five units at the right to two at the left, but the rest of my bookcases were mostly nabbed from my parents…

Ivy Compton-Burnett

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A few months ago I wrote about Ivy Compton-Burnett’s Parents and Children, and a few of you said you hadn’t read the great lady before, but would be interested… I’m looking at you, farmlanebooks, Simon S, Paperback Reader, and Pamela Terry! I recently read Robert Liddell’s Elizabeth and Ivy, about the friendship between Elizabeth Taylor and Ivy C-B, after seeing the book mentioned in Nicola Beauman’s biography of Elizabeth Taylor (reviewed here). It’s an interesting book, mostly because Liddell had the (possibly unique) advantage of being friends with both writers, but it’s also rather clumsy at times. He quotes a lot of the letters, and Taylor had a disconcerting habit of transcribing lengthy conversations in her letters… quoting layers of quoting gets rather confusing. Still, a good resource.

But that’s not what I’m writing about – since some of you expressed interest in ICB, I wondered if you’d got any further, and whether or not people would be interested in doing a group read of one of her novels? You’ll either love or hate, and you’ll know by about page 10. I’ll do this quite informally, but I’d like to know who’d be interested – we could read, say, Manservant and Maidservant alongside each other, comparing notes, and it will act as a first step into the world of Ivy. And, quite possibly, a last step – but I definitely think you should test the water. For my money, Ivy C-B is one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. And trust the prophet not to be appreciated in her own land – scandalously, none of her books are in print in the UK, though the New York Review of Books Classics does a rather beautiful edition of Manservant and Maidservant, pictured. (It was originally published in the US as Bullivant and the Lambs, but has been reprinted under the original, English title).

Let me know if you’re interested, and hopefully we’ll get something going before long!

The True Deceiver

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Since most of the authors I like are dead, it’s unusual for me to wait with excitement for a book to be published. I can normally just buy the backlist from abebooks, and work my way through them… well, Tove Jansson is dead, but she also wrote in Swedish, so I’m having to wait for the wonderful Thomas Teal to translate them. Tove Jansson is one of my favourite writers, and I couldn’t wait for The True Deceiver to be published – it’s coming out in October, but I begged an advance copy because I just couldn’t wait any longer.

All my reviews of Jansson’s previous books are under this link, which will take you to my thoughts on The Summer Book, A Winter Book, and Fair Play. Those who don’t like Jansson call her books boring – and if you read books primarily for plot, then she won’t be the author for you. But if you choose your books for character, writing style, and atmosphere – I’ve never come across any better writer. As Ali Smith writes in her wise introduction, Tove Jansson is ‘the opposite of charming’. Her books do not charm, they are far too honest for that, but they certainly appeal. She does not believe that the opposite of charming is repulsive – the opposite of charming is truth. So many modern novels assume human nature is disgusting, and that the only significant acts are ugly ones – Tove Jansson’s writing quietly, mesmerically shows characters who are beautifully real.

The True Deceiver is a little different from the other Jansson books I’ve read. Still set in snowy Sweden, still focusing on the co-existence of two women (a theme found in The Summer Book and Fair Play), there is more of an edge to this novel. Katri Kling is blunt, friendless, and entirely honest without being malevolent. She is blunt not because of malice, but because she sees truth as far more important than etiquette, and isn’t encumbered by emotions. She loves only two things – numbers, and her brother Mats, ‘a bit simple’. Katri’s character is shown in the way she is said to speak: ‘Other people talk, you make pronouncements’. Living away from the village, in ‘the rabbit house’, is Anna Aemelin. She is a disorganised, semi-reclusive illustrator of children’s books (yes, Tove was the illustrator of the Moomin books, but the very opposite of disorganised). Anna’s talent is the depiction of the woodland floor, in great, caring detail. But she has to include rabbits in her pictures, and the rabbits are covered in flowers – all the letters from fans, young and old, ask her why they are covered in flowers, and she always makes up a different answer. She never works on these books in the winter, so her paintbrushes are hibernating, as it were.

Katri takes some food up to Anna’s house, and develops an interest in the lady… but why? She fakes a break-in at the elderly artist’s home, to persuade her that she needs companionship… and so, with her brother and her dog, moves in. The motives for her actions are mysterious; the unacknowledged battle for power between Anna and Katri continues silently and subtly. Who is deceiving whom? And what effects are the women having on the lives and personalities of each other?

Katri starts sorting out Anna’s muddled finances and contracts. A portion of each financial victory is set aside for her brother – ‘Every time she wrote a captured sum of money into her notebook, she felt the collector’s deep satisfaction at finally owning a rare and expensive specimen.’ She even perfects the forging of Anna’s signature, and her writing style. And yet her motives remain unclear.

“Attention,” Anna said. “Giving another human being your undivided attention is a pretty rare thing. No, I don’t think it happens very often… Figuring out what someone wants and longs for, without being told – that probably requires a good deal of insight and thought. And of course sometimes we hardly know ourselves. Maybe we think it’s solitude we need, or maybe just the opposite, being with other people… We don’t know, not always…” Anna stopped talking, searched for words, raised her glass and drank. “This wine is sour. I wonder if it hasn’t stood too long. Don’t we have an unopened bottle of Madeira in the sideboard somewhere? No, let it go. Don’t interrupt me. What I’m trying to say is that there are few people who take the time to understand and listen, to enter into another person’s way of living. The other day it occurred to me how remarkable it is that you, Miss Kling, can write my name as if I’d written it myself. It is characteristic of your thoughtfulness, your thoughtfulness for me and no one else. Very unusual.”

“It’s not especially unusual,” Katri said. “Mats, pass the cream. It’s simply a matter of observation. You observe certain habits and behaviour patterns, you see what’s missing, what’s incomplete, and you supply it. It’s just a matter of experience. Get things working as best you can, then wait and see.”

“Wait and see what?” said Anne. She was annoyed.

“How it goes,” Katri said, looking straight at Anna, her eyes at this moment deeply yellow. She continued very slowly. “Miss Aemelin, the things people do for one another mean very little, seen purely as acts. What matters is their motives, where they’re headed, what they want.”
Jansson’s talent lies in showing the great depths of human interaction in the most unassuming ways. Skim through The True Deceiver and it might seem that not much happens, but read at the gradual pace her writing deserves, you realise what an unusually talented writer Jansson is. I haven’t read anything better than her collected output, especially in terms of style, from the last fifty years. Of course I am reading at one remove, and I cannot praise Thomas Teal’s translation enough – though I can’t compare it to the original, the result is so perfect that I can only assume Jansson and Teal are on the same wavelength. A real treat, and I do hope desperately that Sort Of Books continue to publish further translations of Jansson’s novels – and in such beautiful editions, too.

Suspicious

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I’ve been meaning to write about The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher for so long, that I’ve forgotten absolutely everything I was going to say… but I wanted to hear your thoughts, so this will be a very brief thought about the book, and a wider question about the genre.

For those who don’t know, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale – which was hugely popular, won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction, and is still in the bestselling list on Bloomsbury’s website – blurs the boundaries between non-fiction and fiction. That is to say, doubtless Summerscale’s research is impeccable – but the pace and style of the book borrow much from fiction. It tells the story of an 1860 murder in a country house, ‘perhaps the most disturbing murder of its time[…] For the country as a whole, the murder at Road Hill became a kind of myth – a dark fable about the Victorian family and the dangers of detection.’

For it was this murder that kicked off the idea of the detective, which has spawned a whole, beloved genre of fiction. Mr. Whicher was his name, and Summerscale’s book is as much about his history, and the genesis of the detective, as it is about the gruesome murder of a young boy. Like the archetypal detective novel, the murder must have committed by someone in the house, one of the supposedly grieving family.

Summerscale’s book has the excitement of a detective novel combined with the historical interest of a true, important story – she can use real newspaper articles alongside pacy accounts of the events. It is a brilliant formula, which only occasionally flounders… because it is a true story, there can only be twists as ingenious as actually happened. The ending (for the murderer is unveiled) would doubtless be a dozen times more fiendishly plotted in an author’s imagination. But it would be churlish to complain – the idea for the book is very clever; the execution impressive, and Whicher’s legacy fascinating.

As far as I know, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher is the first book to recreate a true murder in quite this way. And, unusually for such a successful book, I haven’t come across any copycat writers trying to reproduce the idea. So I’m asking you – do you know of anything in a similar vein, where fact and fiction blur? I can only think of books like Author, Author by David Lodge, where a true story is openly fictionalised – none where a true story is simply lent the narrative structure of fiction.

And, of course, your thoughts on The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher? A book group favourite, I suspect huge swathes of Stuck-in-a-Book readers have read this, and I’m intrigued to know what you thought… Did you find Summerscale’s approach worked? And what on earth is she going to write next?

Seriously Useful

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I’ve had A Seriously Useful Author’s Guide to Marketing and Publicising Books for ages – I meant to write about it weeks and months ago, but it hid on the shelf, and somehow it never happened… I have the acclaim of *almost* being included in this book, written by my friend and fellow-Oxfordshire-resident Mary Cavanagh. I wrote a bit about blogging and marketing books, which was nearly included… but the cut at the last minute. Still in the acknowledgments, though! But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Mary Cavanagh’s first novel was The Crowded Bed, which I wrote about here, and she knows a thing or two about marketing and publicising. More or less single-handedly, she managed to sell a significant number of this novel – published by the apparently erstwhile Transita. She’s turned her knowledge to good effect in this Seriously Useful guide.

I’m not an author (not yet!) so I’ve skim read through this book, but should I ever have a manuscript under my belt, I’ll definitely return to Cavanagh’s book. She starts off from pre-publication – ideas about the book cover, editing, and generally about the book industry. Then Cavanagh comprehensively looks at all the areas authors can use to promote their books – book launches, using the television, radio, newspaper, literary festivals, superstores, and the internet. Here’s where the book bloggers come in – Cornflower, Random Jottings, Dovegreyreader, Vulpes Libris, and Bookwitch have all contributed bits talking about the interaction between bloggers and writers. Certainly, a blogger is far more likely to accept, read, and write about a first-time low-budget author than a national newspaper is, so I think Cavanagh has got the focus just right there.

Though Mary Cavanagh’s book will be Seriously Useful to more or less any author, if they don’t have a six figure budget for publicity, it is especially handy for self-publishing authors – Cavanagh has published through both an independent publishers and off her own bat, so she knows what she’s talking about.

I know most Stuck-in-a-Book visitors are primarily readers, but there might well be a writer or two out there who could use this guide… though, if you’re reading this, you’ve got the blog-reading bit down to a tee already!

On my travels…

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Tomorrow I’m heading of to the Lake District, and then onto Edinburgh on Tuesday, returning to Oxford on Friday. So I’m going to try that trick from my last trip, and set up some posts to appear throughout the week…

To kick off, I’ll let you know which books I’m taking with me. I’m spending the equivalent of a day on public transport, so will hopefully get through a fair few! Actually, before I do that, I must thank you for your suggestions for old films. It led me to Amazon, where I bought three of your recommendations in a Classic Films Triple (3 films on one DVD, I think, or at least in one DVD case) – it has The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, A Matter of Life and Death, and the one I’m really looking forward to, I Know Where I’m Going. I see that the price has gone down from £8.98 to £7.18 since I bought it… Alongside those I bought Gaslight, which wasn’t mentioned, but I’ve been meaning to watch it for ages.


So what books am I taking with me? Along with Susan Hill’s Howards End is on the Landing, which is shaping up to be one of my favourite books of the year, I’m taking the following:

The Tortoise and the Hare – Elizabeth Jenkins
For the Cornflower book group… plus it’s been on my shelves for years.
Mr. Weston’s Good Wine – T.F. Powys The Venetian Glass Nephew – Elinor Wylie
Came across these two whilst researching my masters, and both looked interesting. And the Powys title is a quotation from Emma, so what’s not to like?
A Very Short Introduction to Biography – Hermione Lee
My supervisor last year has been busy… a fascinating topic, looking forward to seeing what Dr. Lee has to say about it.
Olivia – Olivia (aka Dorothy Strachey)
I took this on my last holiday, and didn’t get around to it. Second time lucky.
Summer at the Haven – Katharine Moore
Apparently a novel set in an old people’s home which is also cheerful! Well, being one of Joyce Grenfell’s friends, how could it not be?
English Correspondance – Janet Davey
Picked up on a whim, modern novel about letters arriving after a bereavement.

Have you read any of these? Anything to say? By the time I read your comments I’ll hopefully have read most of them, but I’d be interested nonetheless… And who knows, I might even find internet in Scotland.

Stuck-in-a-Book’s Weekend Miscellany

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Happy weekend everyone! I’ll be busying myself over the weekend trying to write lots of posts which will appear at intervals over the next week, as I’m off to the Lake District and Edinburgh. Will try to remember to take my camera… and, of course, give you a list of the books I buy along the way. I *might* buy none, of course, but I’ve already pencilled three secondhand bookshops into my itinerary, and there are sure to be more… Someone said to me the other day that, what with the review books I’m sent, I must never have to buy books anymore… cue hollow laugh from me.

As always, a link, a book, a blog post.

1) The link – Abebooks’ Weird Book Room. You’ve probably all seen those books of strange title collections – well, Abebooks have devoted a section of their website to it, and you can submit ideas too. I spotted the link on Liz’s blog. I’m especially drawn to Nuclear War: What’s in it for you? and People Who Don’t Know They’re Dead. And who wouldn’t want to read Cheese Problems Solved? Towel Origami – just think of those wasted mornings in the bathroom where my towel has been sat, simply folded in half?

2) The blog – not long ago I started reading Claire’s blog Kiss A Cloud, which is both beautiful and bookish. More or less any link would whet your appetite, but the most recent post seems a good place to start. It’s following a meme from Book Bloggers Appreciation Week – talking about which books you’ve read because of other bloggers. Claire mentions Woolf, Persephone, and I Capture the Castle amongst her finds, so how could I not be smitten? I so admire bloggers with great camera skills – mine seem to be all taken at night, of books leaning against walls.

3) The book – I’ll be writing about this soon, as I’m *really* having trouble resisting it whilst I read the books I should be reading. It’s Howards End is on the Landing by Susan Hill (a brave choice of title, since I imagine there will be errant apostrophes in ‘Howards End’ whenever the book is mentioned). Subtitled a year of reading from home, the book is a series of essays a la Anne Fadiman’s Ex Libris, which documents Hill’s decision to read only books from her shelves, for a year. She explores books she’d forgotten she owned, or had never read, or simply wanted to read again. I’ve only read four pages so far, but it has some lovely excerpts: ‘A book which is left on a shelf is a dead thing but it is also a chrysalis, an inanimate object packed with the potential to burst into new life.’ Hill’s writing can be a little forthright for my tastes, but I’m sure that won’t spoil a book so deliciously, well, bookish. It’s out on the 15th October, and doesn’t it have a beautiful cover?

Miss Hargreaves – winners!!

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How lovely to have so many people enter the draw for Miss Hargreaves and the bookmarks. 60 people in total, since I had to excise the two Anonymouses… I do hope you’ve been inspired to go and read the book, even for those who weren’t lucky enough to win today…

Enough suspense. Drum roll, please… the winners are:


Liz!! (of this blog) and fleurfisher!! (of this blog)

The Bloomsbury Group bookmarks go to…


Cornflower!! (of this blog)

I’ve turned out to be very lucky, since I’m going to see Liz and Cornflower face-to-face… so fleurfisher, could you send me your address, to simondavidthomas @ yahoo.co.uk?

There were too many names for me to write them all down and get Patch to pick, so instead I made use of the randomiser on Random.org, and used the names at the bottom of the list.

If you do review Miss Hargreaves, do send me a link to your review – or, if you don’t have a blog, I’d be happy to post Miss Hargreaves-related thoughts on here, from anyone. Or pop a review on Amazon, of course.

The Lady Vanishes

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My favourite cinema in Oxford – nay, in the world – is The Ultimate Picture Palace on Cowley Road. True, it’s not especially palatial, and the uncharitable might comment that it’s only ultimate in the sense that you might die there – but it’s head and shoulders my favourite cinema. It even has its own website, but that is its only concession to modernity. That and electricity. I don’t know when it was built, but it has an aura of the 1960s about it, inside. I would say they’ve not updated it since the 1960s, but only yesterday they seemed to have changed the seating. It still feels old.

The first time I went was to see Vera Drake in 2005. I’d spent my first term at Oxford believing it to be boarded up, but discovered that this was in fact simply their decor choice. My friend Phoebe and I went, we were the first people there… we entered this dark, old room – painted inside entirely in very dark red – and it felt rather like something from a horror film. Towards the end the film simply stopped in the middle of a scene – I thought perhaps it was a clever arthouse comment on the film’s theme of abortion, but it turned out that the reel had come unstuck, or something.

I love everything about this cinema – from the raffle-style ticket they give you as you enter, to the entire lack of machinery, to the friendly amateur style of those who run it, to the fact that the whole exterior somehow resembles a railway station. If you’re ever in Oxford, do try and see it – it holds loving cult status amongst Those Who Know.

And all this is just the charm of its aesthetic. The films it puts on are equally wonderful. The Ultimate Picture Palace does play some recent films, a couple of months after they hit big chain cinemas, but also does a great line in old films, foreign films, and old foreign films.

And so yesterday I went to see Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes (1938). I hadn’t seen it before – though I have seen the 1979 remake, on television years ago – and have wanted to for a while. The ticket cost me more than the DVD would on Amazon, but the UPP is such an experience. Only 7 of us were at the screening – perhaps they thought it was The Lady Varnishes, which would be like watching paint dry [a quick credit to my library colleague, another Simon, for that witty quip].


Perhaps everyone has already seen The Lady Vanishes – if not, I recommend you do so. Despite loving 1930s literature, I find it difficult to track down 1930s films with the same success, so it’s wonderful when they are available. The plot was taken from Ethel Lina White’s novel The Wheel Spins, and is summed-up in Hitchcock’s choice of title. A young woman called Iris befriends an old governess in an hotel, and gets onto a train with her – shortly after having been hit on the head by a flower pot. The old lady, Miss Froy, looks after Iris – gives her tea, sits with her in the compartment. The blow which Iris sustained to her head gives her concussion and she drifts off – when she awakes, Miss Froy has vanished – and everybody else in the carriage denies that she ever existed. Is Miss Froy a hallucination, or is something altogether more suspicious going on? With the help of cocky Gilbert (Michael Redgrave in the role which made him a big name) Iris is determined to work out what’s happened.

I was delighted to see Dame May Whitty – who was rather wonderful in Mrs. Miniver and is another who’d make an admirable Miss Hargreaves – as the Vanishing Lady in question. The rest of the cast is wonderful, including Margaret Lockwood and Googie Withers, and a wonderful pair of characters called Charters and Caldicott. These very English gentlemen watch proceedings with a no-nonsense, cynical eye, more concerned about the cricket they’re missing than the woman who’s missing. Exploring Wikipedia, I discovered that the characters, played by Nauton Wayne and Basil Radford, were so popular that they popped up in another two films and several radio broadcasts. The actors also played very similar double-acts in a further sixteen films and radio serials. The days of established double-acts in films, appearing as different characters but always together, seem to have gone.


And, of course, Alfred Hitchcock isn’t a bad director either. Some stunning moments – I especially liked one where the train travels over a viaduct, really beautifully shot. You can forgive the opening pan across a toy train and some plastic figures…

I’d love some recommendations for other 1930s, ’40s and ’50s films to watch. I love Mrs. Miniver (as long as you don’t think about the book), Went The Day Well?, and, of course, Brief Encounter. Others in a similar vein, please…