Dotty

I am hugely, almost obsessively, interested in the history of my country. I look at castles, abbeys and palaces and wonder at the lives which must have been lived therein; at costumes and jewels and who designed them, who chose them and who gifted them; at weapons and the thoughts of sons lost and at the everyday pots and bric-a-brac which survive against all the odds.

Melrose Abbey

My wonderment turned into embarrassment whilst playing ping-pong one day: as the scores were called out, an important date from history was married to them. “Anne Boleyn beheaded! Ah yes, Divorced, Beheaded, Died, Divorced, Beheaded, Survived”. I knew none of this detail – my education was rooted from an early age (a drawback of our education system) firmly in two disciplines: science and language. History, geography, art and philosophy belonged to other people. The family I married into were those “other people”.

The easiest way to begin my education seemed to be through the well-documented lives of our monarchs. I think that I can say, without too much controvercy, that the most interesting monarch who springs to mind is Henry VIII. I read voraciously, first biographies of the king himself then his wives and then back a little and forward a little. As I got a grasp of the era I became mesmerised by the politics, the courtiers, those who risked life, reputation and fortune on the whim of one person…

Henry VIII - Holbein

I read fact and fiction, learning (as with newspapers) to sniff out and disregard bias and supposition. I placed people on maps, marvelling at distances travelled on horseback, and went to those places where great people stopped to stretch their aching limbs and plunge the unfortunate hosts into debt we would be proud of today.

Every so often I make myself move forwards (or back) from the comfort of my nucleus: but then trip up from lack of material – currently I am stuck on James VI/I. Why is there not a plethora of material on this boy-king who united two kingdoms? Alternatively I am sucked (most enjoyably) out on a tangent to seek out texts on the players, rather than the stars: a big fat biography of Sir Walter Raleigh awaits me (a man whose pickled head was kept by his wife!).

What I have found is that there is almost an equal amount of gems to dross, and I would welcome any comments on which you think falls into either camp. I list a small selection here:

Alison Weir
Henry VIII King and Court; The Six Wives of Henry VIII; The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn; Innocent Traitor (fiction/fact)

Phillipa Gregory (fiction)
The Other Boleyn Girl; The Constant Princess; The Queen’s Fool

CJ Sanson (fiction)
Dissolution;  Dark Fire; Sovereign; Revelation

Hilary Mantel (fiction)
Wolf Hall

Jane Dunn
Elizabeth & Mary

Raleigh Trevelyan
Sir Walter Raleigh

I have italicized those books which I felt had little merit or added little to my knowledge.

There are also, of course, the works of David Starkey and Lady Antonia Fraser – but I would be very interested to hear of those you have read which will widen my comfort zone.

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A very special guest review by my lovely friend Bruno (he is SO grown-up!)

Love makes the world go round – it’s a nice thought. And when contemplating such a notion it’s also nice to have a book in front of you that reinforces the idea. However, in the case of one character from Love in the Time of Cholera it could almost be ‘sex makes the world go round’. But I’m jumping ahead of myself a bit now. Backtrack.

Love in the Time of Cholera tells the story of Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza. And in case you’re worried, there’s more love in the tale than cholera, so it’s perhaps not as morbid as the title suggests. Fermina and Florentino live on an unnamed Caribbean island at the turn of the century. She’s a feisty though somewhat unsure vision of gorgeousness, and he’s a slow but steady unassuming type. Outward appearances could suggest the hare and the tortoise, but in many ways the book is about what happens behind closed doors, and metaphorically speaking that includes perception versus reality when it comes to the characters and their private lives.

The title of the book could almost be Unrequited Love in the Time of Cholera, for the majority of the tale sees Florentino carrying a torch for Fermina that she blatantly refuses to acknowledge. She doesn’t try to put the torch out, because to her it doesn’t even exist. We follow their lives for fifty years, or thereabouts, and because the story see-saws between these two characters and their very different experiences, it remains constantly engaging.

Written in a ‘warts ‘n all’ style, we often see the people and the places at their most base. However, this is contrasted with flowery, almost poetic prose that gives even the most unpleasant of events a sort of fatal romanticism. The book also feels older than it really is. First published in 1985, it harks back to the style of the classic romance novels, though there’s also enough spice to keep the modern audience engaged. There is sex in the world of Fermina and Florentino, and in the case of the latter it’s numerous and all out of wedlock. But it’s not gratuitous. On Dotty’s Doris Day-o-meter (zero being the sort of thing that would even put Ms Day’s feet to sleep, and ten blowing the dial off the o-meter in a super-saucy, super-cloud of super-sex steam) the book scores a solid five. It’s neither overly racy nor boringly prudish.

However, having spent the last four hundred words heaping praise on the novel, I must say the end left me a bit cold. As the story unfolds there are times when unpleasant things happen to the characters, establishing that unpleasant things happen in the world of the novel and applying a sense of mortality. I thought this was going to be carried through to the end and provide the finales’ dramatic climax. I was wrong. Though this isn’t enough to taint the story as a whole, and I’d still recommend the book if you want your world to spin a little bit faster on the axis of love.

Wow – don’t you just want to go out and buy that book? I’m getting my order in now … I’ll let you know if it does reach #5 on the Doris Day-o-meter

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What a jolly film: it’s him, no it’s him, no him, no her, HER?, oh no, him (bang!), noooo… its the dog!, it’s the cat! (What cat?), it’s the statue (no not that one, silly…). It’s the communion wafer… what? Whoa – ouchy ouchy……..! When did it finish? Do you think they’ll get married? Oh I do hope so. Maybe there will be a sequel? Shall we go out again one day? Oh YES!

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