Book Updates

Good news for any committed Mitfordophiles who live in the U.K.  If you cannot wait for Deborah Devonshire’s autobiography; ‘Wait For Me,’ to come out in paperback, The Book People are selling it for an extraordinary £6.99 plus post and packaging.  If you order over £40 of stuff from them your p&p is also free.  They have some fantastically priced bargains if you are looking for Christmas presents and £40 is easily spent.

I have added another book related side bar to my blog.  It is cunningly titled; ‘The Book I Shall Be Lusting After Most This Week.’  It is going to get a lot of exercise in the run up to Christmas.  This week I am intrigued by the book: ‘The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance,’ by Edmund De Waal.  It looks utterly fascinating and has been getting rave reviews in the broadsheets. 

A work of non fiction, De Waal is a ceramicist by trade, but if the reviews are anything to go by, he can cheerfully give up the day job should he ever tire of it.  He uses the book to trace his family history by exploring a collection of Japanese netsuke which belonged to various members of his family.  He traces their story and that of the netsukes at the same time.  I love netsukes, and I love history and family history in particular. What’s not to love?

I would love a real netsuke.  I have a reproduction one UE bought me from the British Museum shop several hundred years ago when he still loved me and thought I was worth buying beautiful things for.  It is in the shape of an octopus, and although it is only a reproduction, I still love it dearly.  I have never dared  to try to buy a real one.  There are tonnes of fakes out there, and I don’t mind buying a copy if I know it’s a copy, but I would be severely bummed out to buy what I imagined was real, only to have a fake. 

Anyway, to get back to the subject of books.  I am just about to finish Dominic Sandbrook’s epic; ‘State of Emergency’.  I know I have written about it several times here now, but I really do think it is worth shouting to the rooftops about this book.  It is completely and utterly fascinating.

Sandbrook is a superb historian because he makes what he is writing about come alive.  Rather than reading a textbook, this is like having a chat in a pub with an incredibly knowledgeable mate.  I have no idea what Sandbrook is like in real life, but I am kind of picturing him as the historical version of Stephen Fry, or the younger brother of Simon Schama.  He is righteous, and it’s not often you’ll hear me say that about a historian.

The book focuses on the history of Britain between 1970 and 1974, taking Ted Heath’s term of office as its core narrative.  This may sound boring, but trust me, it isn’t at all.  The material is organised in thematic chapters and there tends to be a chapter of political issues followed by a focus on more of the social history side of things.

What I really like is that Sandbrook tries to avoid sweeping generalisations.  He seems to try to be scrupulously fair.  He acknowledges that the media and journalists may have painted the scene a certain way, but presents the material from different angles. He shows you the thinking of the day, he shows you the way material was skewed and then he shows you how it was for the ordinary person in the street.

At this level, his chapters on the troubles in Northern Ireland for example, make for fascinating reading.  His contrast of facts and figures and first person accounts juxtaposes with the understanding of how political decisions were taken and is then contrasted against what the regular British public thought.  He takes a similar approach to feminism, the relaxation of morality laws and the strikes.

He is also fascinated by the seemingly trivial things that other historians leave out.  He frames our perception of the time through the television we watched, quoting extensively from programmes like Dr. Who and The Likely Lads.  In the chapter on feminism he talks quite a lot about On The Buses, which is most entertaining.  He looks at what we were reading and what we were listening to in terms of musical taste as well.

It is a brilliant book, clever, chatty, incisive and compelling.  This is the third of his books (they start in the fifties), and there is another one in the pipeline I am thrilled to say, although I cannot imagine it will be swift in coming.  I have been waiting for this volume for a couple of years, so I must distract myself with the thirty thousand other books all clamouring to be read.  Most of which are piled in a teetering mound by the side of the bed.

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