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C.S. Burrough
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The United Kingdom
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Sydneysider C.S. Burrough began life in the UK. After studying Performing Arts full-time he worked on West End theatre productions and toured shows internationally for nearly two decades, settling in Australia in the early 1980s. He has written and published since 1989 in anthologies and newspapers, producing full-length works, novellas and short stories and is a prolific book reviewer. Several of his works are held and catalogued in the National Library of Australia, and most are listed at AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource. His historical saga Or Forever Be Damned (2014) was published by Silky Oak Press. He is a Featured Contributor in the Soul Vomit: Domestic Violence Aftermath (2014) anthology, by Broken Publications. He is a c Sydneysider C.S. Burrough began life in the UK. After studying Performing Arts full-time he worked on West End theatre productions and toured shows internationally for nearly two decades, settling in Australia in the early 1980s. He has written and published since 1989 in anthologies and newspapers, producing full-length works, novellas and short stories and is a prolific book reviewer. Several of his works are held and catalogued in the National Library of Australia, and most are listed at AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource. His historical saga Or Forever Be Damned (2014) was published by Silky Oak Press. He is a Featured Contributor in the Soul Vomit: Domestic Violence Aftermath (2014) anthology, by Broken Publications. He is a contributing author to the Showcase: Spark (2024) anthology by Tale Publishing.
For previous work see AustLit: https://tinyurl.com/vvn87rf
Other links:
C S Burrough book review blog:
https://csburrough.blogspot.com/
Amazon.com Author page: https://www.amazon.com/author/csburrough
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Or Forever Be Damned
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Soul Vomit: Domestic Violence Aftermath
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Showcase: Spark
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C.S. Burrough (Goodreads Author),
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My review of Jean Rhys: Life and Work, by Carole Angier
Jean Rhys: Life and Workby Carole AngierMy rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Having read the thin earlier version and this subsequent thick-as-a-brick edition, I strongly recommend the latter if time is on your side.
Life was brutal to Jean Rhys, and she let us know it in her deliciously wry, self-deprecating, sometimes hilarious way. Her incompetence at life was magnificently offset by her profound talent f
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Published on September 22, 2025 20:15
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This historical family saga is one of my favourite literary works, which surprises me as it was written not in antiquity with my other all-time favourites, but in 2001. My introduction was director Joe Wright's 2007 BAFTA and Academy Award nominated
This historical family saga is one of my favourite literary works, which surprises me as it was written not in antiquity with my other all-time favourites, but in 2001. My introduction was director Joe Wright's 2007 BAFTA and Academy Award nominated movie, starring James McAvoy and Keira Knightley. Then when I read the book, Ian McEwan's pros had me glued. The stylistic element is the strongest hook. Had it been told less masterfully, this tale may have had little more going for it than its sweeping timespan and those popular mid twentieth century historical landmarks that just tickle the outermost reaches of living memory. The beautifully structured story divides cleanly into three parts: 1935 England; World War II England and France; then modern-day England. It begins on a sweltering summer day in 1935, when thirteen-year-old aspiring writer Briony Tallis, at her wealthy family's grand country estate, makes a clumsy and naïve error of judgement which will ruin lives: Having received her maternal cousins, twins Jackson and Pierrot and their older sister Lola, as summer houseguests, Briony writes a play for the four youngsters to perform at a family gathering. But her three cousins have come from an unsettled home, with their parents expected to separate. In the oppressive heat, Briony becomes exasperated motivating her disorientated cousins into order for the play. Unable to push them to her standards, Briony seeks solace in an upstairs bedroom, from where she witnesses through a window what looks like an altercation, down below at the front garden fountain. Her older sister Cecilia, home from Cambridge University, is involved in a flirtatious tiff with childhood friend Robbie Turner. Son of the Tallis family housekeeper and nowadays Cecilia's fellow Cambridge student, Robbie is also home on leave. Briony misconstrues the scene, concluding that Robbie is being aggressive to Cecilia. Back at his home Robbie writes several drafts of a love letter to Cecilia, handing a copy to little Briony, outdoors, to deliver. As Briony skips away with it, Robbie realises he has accidentally given her the wrong draft, one he had meant to discard, containing obscenities. En route home with Cecilia's letter, Briony opens and reads it, becoming shocked and perplexed as to Robbie's intentions. Later at home, Briony walks in on Robbie and Cecilia making love in a quiet corner of the family library. Having come to think Robbie a 'maniac', Briony misinterprets their lovemaking as rape and feels protective towards Cecilia, who is saying nothing. A dinner party is held to welcome home Briony and Cecilia's older brother Leon, who brings along his wealthy friend Paul Marshall. During this, young twins Jackson and Pierrot are discovered to have run away, possibly in fear of being forced to appear in Briony's play, possibly in distress over their own uncertain domestic situation. The party forms a posse, searching the darkened grounds for the boys. Briony happens upon her older cousin, Lola, apparently being raped by a man whose identity is veiled in shadow. Back at the house everyone fusses over a shocked and bedraggled Lola, who seems unable or reluctant to identify her assailant. The twins are still missing. Briony takes it on herself to speak out, accusing Robbie Turner of the awful deed. Robbie is still outdoors, possibly afraid to return and hand himself in, maybe awaiting his next victim. The police are called and Briony identifies Robbie to them as the rapist. She claims to have recognised his face in the dark. Having eventually found the missing twins himself, Robbie then arrives back at the house as day breaks. He is arrested, charged and jailed for Lola's rape, with only Cecilia and Robbie's mother believing his protestations of innocence. The story jumps to World War II, after Robbie has served some years in jail. He is released for army enlistment, to fight in the war. Cecilia has left home and trained as a nurse, severing contact with her family for allowing Robbie to go to jail. Robbie and Cecilia have only maintained contact by mail, since she was earlier forbidden from visiting him in jail. But before Robbie is sent to France, the couple meet once briefly during Cecilia's lunch break, sharing a kiss before separating. In France, the army retreats to Dunkirk. Badly injured, Robbie seeks out shelter. There he thinks about Cecilia and reflects on past events, still puzzling over possible reasons for Briony accusing him. The memory of his brief final meeting with Cecilia is all that keeps him going, his only aim being to see her again. He falls asleep in Dunkirk, the day before evacuation. Back in England, remorseful eighteen-year-old Briony has refused her place at Cambridge, instead training for nursing in London, as if undertaking some self-imposed duty of penance. With the benefit of hindsight and maturity, she has realised the gravity of her terrible mistake five years ago. She now suspects it was Leon's friend, Paul Marshall, who she saw raping Lola. This suspicion is strengthened when Briony attends Lola's London wedding to Paul Marshall. After watching these twisted nuptials, Briony journeys to face Cecilia at her sparse rented flat near Balham, to make long overdue amends. Robbie is there, home on leave. As the couple refuse Briony their forgiveness, she insists on trying to make amends by initiating legal proceedings to exonerate Robbie. Briony offers to change her original statement (even though Paul Marshall will never be held responsible for his crime because of his marriage to Lola, the victim). However, the couple point out that Briony would be seen as an unreliable witness, if suddenly admitting her own lies. In London 1999, we read seventy-seven-year-old Briony Tallis, a successful novelist with terminal dementia, tell us her dying truths. She has penned an acclaimed novel (the book-within-a-book we've read in parts one and two of this novel) in which Cecilia and Robbie are reunited after Dunkirk. In reality, however, they never met again, as Briony here humbly acknowledges. Old Briony concedes that Robbie most likely died at Dunkirk, from septicaemia caused by his injuries. Cecilia was probably killed by a bomb that destroyed gas and water mains above Balham tube station. Whilst Briony's plotline of Lola's wedding to Paul Marshall was true, Briony had not, in reality, visited Cecilia at her rented flat near Balham to make amends. Such is often an author's purpose in fiction - to imaginarily undo wrongdoings. To atone themselves of something they otherwise cannot. Briony justifies her rewriting of history in reuniting Cecilia and Robbie, claiming she saw no point offering her readers a pitiless ending. No sense or satisfaction, she rationalises, could be drawn from that. She also wanted to give Robbie and Cecilia their due happiness by bringing them together. Since they could not reunite in life, Briony permitted them this in her fiction. By tracking older Briony's life journey, the reader has examined the human need for personal atonement. This had the makings of an instant classic, with all the qualities of so many great epics yet the intimacy of those deeply personal works we curl up with on cold winter nights. It is no wonder it sold so well, was shortlisted for the 2001 Booker Prize for fiction and listed in 2010 by TIME magazine as of the 100 greatest English-language novels since 1923. Impossible to predict where the story is taking you, yet utterly compelling, this is a haunting mystery but so much more. One of those rare, special novels that will likely never date, which everyone should read at least once. ...more |
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After this sitting considerably far down my Mitford history reading list, I was taken by its erudition. My expectations were cynical, knowing it was penned by family insiders: author Jonathon Guinness, 3rd Baron Moyne, is the eldest son of Diana Mitf
After this sitting considerably far down my Mitford history reading list, I was taken by its erudition. My expectations were cynical, knowing it was penned by family insiders: author Jonathon Guinness, 3rd Baron Moyne, is the eldest son of Diana Mitford Mosley by her first husband Bryan Guinness; his co-author is his daughter the Hon. Catherine Guinness. My tainted expectations could not have been wider off the mark. Not only is there a marked absence of family bias, but the wordsmithing outshines every Mitford biography I have read. He does his forebears proud, his craftsmanship a testament to this clever bloodline. His being schooled at Eton and Oxford, one might expect this standard, but others with similar academic foundations have produced less impressive works. I did not find, as certain readers have implied, any pro-Conservative slant to the narrative (the author was a Conservative Party Parliamentary Candidate). Wary of rightwing undertones, I here found objectivity from start to finish. Graced with impartiality, the content may stop short of censuring history's political right, which is not tantamount to partisanship. I did sense, in certain of Jonathon Guinness's references to his novelist aunt Nancy Mitford, subtle retributory tones on behalf of his mother Diana who spent most of WWII in prison partly thanks to Nancy. That history, well documented by all Mitford biographers, goes like this: After leaving her first husband for British Union of Fascists leader Sir Oswald Mosley, Diana spent time in Germany with Hitler and his inner-circle in the prelude to WWII, aiming for a Nazi-approved radio station for the BUF which never eventuated. When Mosely was imprisoned early in the war under 18B as a potentially dangerous person, Diana was initially left to do much of his bidding on the outside. Nancy was summoned by MI5 to comment on how 'dangerous' she thought her younger sister. Putting patriotic duty before blood, Nancy said she thought Diana 'highly dangerous', swaying the government's decision to lock up Diana too. Separated from her babies, Diana was accordingly detained without charge or trial for years, subject to the horrors of Holloway Jail. Diana never learned of this sisterly betrayal until late in life and Mosley never learned of it. So, one could understand any tinge of injustice felt on his mother's behalf by this author, who as a youngster witnessed her long imprisonment. Yet this is barely evident, if only hinted at (how much of the text his co-author daughter Catherine contributed is unclear). The telling of Mosley's career itself is presented minus the fascist-bashing righteousness of many, from a rational 'setting-the-record-straight' standpoint. That seems fair considering the author is Mosley's stepson. It carries no hint of the fascist apologist we might anticipate. (Prior to this book, after Mosley's death his birth son from his first marriage to Lady Cynthia Mosley, Nicholas Mosley, had written harsh volumes against his fascist father, for which Mosley's widow Diana never forgave her stepson.) I confess to being least taken by the convoluted earlier histories and lineages of the Mitford sisters' two grandfathers, Algernon Freeman-Mitford ('Barty') and Thomas Gibson-Bowles. Even so these are more impeccably detailed than any other Mitford historian's efforts I've encountered. To call this author's archival prowess masterly is a gross understatement. This book, Mitford descendants can keep in stately libraries and others can consult through the mists of time. I wish I had read this particular Mitford history sooner as it surpasses all others. With Jonathon Guinness in his mid-nineties as I write this review of a book published forty years ago, there still feels to be some carryover from these remarkable sisters, all now long dead. A self-proclaimed Mitford aficionado, I now see this as the definitive biography of this canon. ...more |
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Oct 12, 2025 09:45PM
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A must for all Jean Rhys aficionados. This was her first ever published writing, which came about by chance and desperation. Those who read her posthumously published unfinished autobiography Smile Please will know that the story behind these Left Ba
A must for all Jean Rhys aficionados. This was her first ever published writing, which came about by chance and desperation. Those who read her posthumously published unfinished autobiography Smile Please will know that the story behind these Left Bank stories is a great one: In 1924 Ella Lenglet nee Williams (later Jean Rhys) was alone, destitute and starving in a run down Paris hotel room. Her husband of five years, French-Dutch journalist and songwriter (and spy) Jean Lenglet, was in a French jail for what she described as 'currency irregularities'. After visiting him one day, she took articles he had written to a newspaper contact to try and sell, so she could eat. The newspaper contact sent her on to someone else who asked her to go away and translate them, which, being multilingual, she successfully did. That contact finally declined her husband's translated articles but liked her translation style and so, as a final thought, asked her whether she, Ella, had ever penned anything herself. Perplexed but desperate, she showed the person some samples of her diary, which included a few rough sketches of life in the Paris she inhabited. So impressive were these that the rapidly thinning Ella was sent on to another contact, eventually coming face to face with English writer and publisher Ford Maddox Ford. He was instantly impressed and took her under his wing, mentoring her and inviting her to move in with him and his common-law wife, Australian artist Stella Bowen. Under Ford's tutelage her stories were developed into The Left Bank, and Other Stories and published in his Transatlantic Review. It was with this release of her first published fiction that Ford persuaded her to use nom de plume Jean Rhys. Ford published a generous introductory foreword, praising her 'singular instinct for form,' for which she became so loved by her readers many decades on. 'Coming from the West Indies,' Ford explained here, 'with a terrifying insight and ... passion for stating the case of the underdog, she has let her pen loose on the Left Banks of the Old World.' Such was the advent of Jean Rhys' unlikely writing career. It was also during this period, while living with Ford & Stella, that Jean's turbulent affair with Ford took place under Stella's nose, resulting the break up of Jean's marriage to her jailed husband - all to be later fictionalised into what would become the first Jean Rhys novel, Quartet (1928). But that cathartic act of vengeance is another story. So, these Stories From The Left Bank have quite a tale of their own. These preliminary short stories that made young Ella Williams history and launched newly invented Jean Rhys are filled with her personal hallmarks: her vivid characterisations, her evocative, filmic scenes, her succinct, incisive take on life through the eyes of the downtrodden, of the outsider looking in. Breathtaking. Not to be passed over by any of her readers. (NB A selection of these are also included in Jean's Tigers Are Better Looking anthology). ...more |
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Blood Sisters: The Women Behind The Wars Of The Roses
by Sarah Gristwood (Goodreads Author)
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Framing this period as a female saga has become a popular theme. This example, conceptually sharp and intriguing, stands higher than some of recent years. My usual history reading centres on the pre- and post- Tudor periods, which offers context for t Framing this period as a female saga has become a popular theme. This example, conceptually sharp and intriguing, stands higher than some of recent years. My usual history reading centres on the pre- and post- Tudor periods, which offers context for the popular, multidimensional Tudor period itself. My usual history reading also often centres on the female players, invariably more humanly depicted than the stick-like male players and so more accessible. Women in non-fiction and fiction alike make for better drama (e.g. who is the more fascinating, Henry VIII or his six wives?). We hear not of 'drama kings' only drama queens. They make for more fascinating studies than their men. Their social positioning at that time necessitated limitations both subtle and severe in formal power structures, creating complex tensions. This typically narrowed the women's options: to politically scheming, under the guise of marital and maternal dutifulness. With notable exceptions, this usually required more silent anguish, patience, sagacity and prolonged focus, with little or no outside counsel, than most men could muster. (We thankfully also encounter the token termagants here and there, to fire things up). Survival often required them to become devious, thick-skinned creatures. Sarah Gristwood's take on these murky politics, times and events is presented in a more studious, less 'popular' style than others it sits amongst. (I relish both styles, having fun and frivolity with the latter.) Gristwood prioritises erudition over sensation, without becoming overtly dry. Though I have read both more entertaining and more impenetrable versions of these events, this one strikes an attractive chord of balance. The Cousins' War, or Wars of the Roses, is a tangled web that has left many put off by its hefty timeframe and complexity. Many a lay historian has skimmed over it, drawn to the more popular Tudors, only to end up devoid of vital context. Such works as this help address that issue. Here we enjoy candid close ups of, for example, the proud and tempestuous Cecily Neville, wife of Richard 3rd Duke of York, who narrowly lost her grand opportunity of becoming queen when her husband died at the Battle of Wakefield. Cecily's illustrious Plantagenet brood included not only King Edward IV, but usurping Shakespearian villain Richard III whose fall at the Battle of Bosworth Field made way for the Tudors. Cecily's ill-fated third son was the Duke of Clarence, whose 'private execution' was long rumoured to have involved drowning in a butt of Malmsey wine. Juxtaposed against hard bitten Yorkist matriarch Cecily is her notably less aristocratic new daughter-in-law, the legendary beauty and romantic figurehead Elizabeth Woodville. Already widowed with children, Elizabeth married Cecily's eldest son Edward IV in secret, becoming his queen consort to Cecily's chagrin and widespread courtly disapproval. Accused by her adversaries of bewitching Edward into marriage, it was from this great-grandmother that Queen Elizabeth I got her name and her fiery red hair. Then there's the pious, erudite and parentally ambitious Lady Margaret Beaufort, of impeccable ancient stock and mother of Henry Tudor (Henry VII). Her web of machinations probably included wooing her husband Lord Stanley, previously a Yorkist player, to side ultimately with the Lancastrians, ensuring Henry VII's victory. With her son's rise to monarchy Lady Margaret became England's first lady, outranking even her daughter-in-law queen consort Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville. Shadowed, as always, by her fellow central female characters is Cecily Neville's grandniece Anne Neville, daughter of Warwick 'the Kingmaker', tossed from suitor to suitor, from the Lancastrian to the Yorkist sides, then dead at twenty-eight. As wife of the deposed King Henry VI's Lancastrian heir, Edward of Westminster, Anne became Princess of Wales and daughter-in-law to the fierce Margaret of Anjou. Widowed young when Prince Edward died at the Battle of Tewkesbury, Anne later became the Yorkist Duchess of Gloucester and then Queen of England as the wife of King Richard III who, it was rumoured, poisoned Anne in preparation to marry his niece Elizabeth of York - a marriage which never eventuated due to Richard's fall in battle to Henry Tudor, who would marry Elizabeth himself, ending the thirty year conflict between his house of Lancaster and hers of York. Traditionally downplayed by historians due to a lack of material, Anne is sadly once more presented in a ghostly light, though Gristwood no doubt suffered the same drawbacks as others, faced with the dearth of personal detail about Anne to draw from. After the immense popularity of the dramatised White Queen TV series, based on Philippa Gregory's series of novels about this same circle of women, any keen reader of this period would be seriously missing out by excluding 'Blood Sisters' from their non-fiction. Highly recommend this important book, especially to those seeking to distinguish the hard facts from the syrupy folklore of this complex episode of English history without becoming numbed by the convoluted series of dates and battles that fill so many non-fictional accounts. ...more |
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Oct 09, 2025 11:24PM
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My first reading of this was under force, at school. I loathed it. When I more recently came across it and, for some reason, reread it, I loved it in its entirety. We come to appreciate things, as adults, that we despised as kids. Adaptations have fou My first reading of this was under force, at school. I loathed it. When I more recently came across it and, for some reason, reread it, I loved it in its entirety. We come to appreciate things, as adults, that we despised as kids. Adaptations have found their way into four films (the most memorable being director William Wyler's Academy Award winning 1939 version starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon), countless radio incarnations, three TV series, a ballet, three operas and a musical show. This, Emily Bronte's first and only novel, appeared in 1847 under the nom de plume Ellis Bell, a year before she died aged 30. Her sister Charlotte then edited Wuthering Heights and arranged its posthumous second edition publication in 1850. Its depiction of human cruelty was contentious, challenging Victorian morality ideals, examining religious hypocrisy, social class and gender roles. Central themes are passion, jealousy and vengefulness. Smouldering, swarthy Heathcliff and his great love Catherine and many adversaries are described impeccably by earthy housekeeper Nelly Dean, who I'd so like to have a pot of tea and a natter with. Set on the North Yorkshire Moors between roughly 1771 and 1803, mostly in flashback form, Wuthering Heights is the story's farmhouse setting. Arriving in 1801 to rent nearby Thrushcross Grange, wealthy southern gentleman Mr. Lockwood seeks peace and recuperation. He visits his landlord, Mr. Heathcliff, at his remote neighbouring moorland farmhouse, Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff is coarsely mannered, his teenaged mistress of the house reserved and their young male servant seemingly some family member. During his visit, Lockwood becomes snowed in at Wuthering Heights. He is reluctantly escorted to a bedchamber, where he finds books and graffiti of one-time inhabitant Catherine. He has a nightmare in which ghostly Catherine attempts entry at the window. Lockwood's cries rouse Heathcliff who arrives at the room. Believing Lockwood, Heathcliff opens the window to let in Catherine's ghost, but nothing happens. Transferring Lockwood to his own bedroom, Heathcliff returns to watch the window. Next morning, after Heathcliff escorts Lockwood back to Thrushcross Grange, housekeeper Nelly Dean recounts to the guest the story of Wuthering Heights' family: Flashback to thirty years before. Then householder Mr. Earnshaw, on a trip to Liverpool, adopts a homeless gypsy boy, brings him home to Wuthering Heights and renames him Heathcliff. Earnshaw's son, Hindley, feels replaced in his father's affections by Heathcliff, turning bitterly jealous. Hindley's sister Catherine befriends Heathcliff, spending hours playing daily with him, out on the moors. Hindley is then packed off to boarding college. Three years on, when Earnshaw dies, Hindley returns as master of Wuthering Heights with his new wife, Frances. He allows Heathcliff to stay but relegates him to servant status. After ambling one day to Thrushcross Grange, spying on the Lintons for fun, Heathcliff and Catherine are caught trespassing. Heathcliff is sent home while Catherine, injured by the Lintons' dog, is taken in to recuperate. Remaining with the Lintons some time, Catherine is affected by their gentility. She returns to Wuthering Heights more refined and scorns Heathcliff's roughness. When the Lintons visit, Heathcliff dresses up to impress Catherine and starts an argument with Edgar Linton. Hindley locks Heathcliff in the attic. Catherine tries comforting Heathcliff, who vows revenge on Hindley. The following year, after having a son, Hareton, Frances dies. The widowed Hindley turns to drink, then moves away for a while. Two years on, when Catherine and Edgar Linton become closer friends and then lovers, she distances herself from Heathcliff. Catherine confides in Nelly that Edgar has proposed and she has accepted, although she loves him less than Heathcliff, whom she can't marry due to his low rank and poor education. She instead hopes to use her position as Edgar's wife to elevate Heathcliff. Eavesdropping into this conversation between Catherine and Nelly, Heathcliff hears Catherine reason that it would 'degrade' her to marry him, though he misses her admission to Nelly her love for him over Edgar. Heathcliff runs away, disappearing without a trace. Distraught, Catherine makes herself ill out of spite. Nursing her to health, Nelly and Edgar soon pander to her every whim to prevent relapse. Three years on, Edgar and Catherine have married and live together at Thrushcross Grange. Heathcliff returns, a wealthy gentleman, to Catherine's delight and Edgar's chagrin. Edgar's sister, Isabella, falls for Heathcliff, who encourages her infatuation as a means of revenge. Catherine locks herself in her room, making herself ill again through spite and jealousy. Heathcliff assumes residence at Wuthering Heights, habitually gambling with Hindley and teaching Hareton bad habits. Hindley has to mortgage Heathcliff the farmhouse to pay his gambling dues and debt. When Hindley dies, six months after Catherine, Heathcliff becomes master of Wuthering Heights. He elopes with Isabella Linton. When they return some months later, Heathcliff hears of Catherine's illness. With Nelly's aid, he visits her secretly. Catherine's condition turns out to be pregnancy. After giving birth to a daughter, Cathy, Catherine dies. Isabella, pregnant herself, deserts the brutal Heathcliff and flees south, where she gives birth to a son, Linton, before falling ill. She dies and Edgar travels south to retrieve his nephew, Linton, to adopt and educate him. Young Cathy, meanwhile, has become a beautiful, spirited girl. Though usually seldom leaving Thrushcross Grange, she ventures farther afield in her father Edgar's absences. Riding across the moors to Wuthering Heights, she discovers her cousin, Hareton. When her father returns with her other cousin, the weak and sickly Linton, the boy's father Heathcliff prohibits Edgar custody, insisting that Linton live instead at Wuthering Heights. Three years later, on the moors, Nelly and Cathy run into Heathcliff, who takes them to Wuthering Heights to see Linton and Hareton. Heathcliff hopes Linton and Cathy will marry, making Linton heir to Thrushcross Grange. Linton and Cathy begin a secret liaison, echoing that of their respective parents, Heathcliff and Catherine, as youngsters. The following year, after falling ill, Edgar's condition worsens while Nelly and Cathy are out on the moors, where Heathcliff and Linton trick them into entering Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff holds them captive, enforcing Cathy's marriage to Linton. With Linton's help, Cathy then escapes, returning to the Grange where her father dies. As master of Wuthering Heights and now Thrushcross Grange, and as Cathy's father-in-law, Heathcliff insists she leave the Grange and move to Wuthering Heights. Soon after she arrives, Linton dies. Though her young cousin Hareton shows her kindness, Cathy becomes entirely withdrawn. Here, Nelly's long flashback catches up to the present. Lockwood soon tires of the moors, announcing to Heathcliff his departure. Returning to the area by chance, eight months later, with his tenancy at Thrushcross Grange still valid, he lodges there again. Finding Nelly living at Wuthering Heights, he enquires what has happened since he left. She explains that she moved to Wuthering Heights to replace departing housekeeper Zillah. Hareton, after an accident, became confined to the farmhouse. During his convalescence, he and Cathy became close and got engaged. Heathcliff, after seeing visions of Catherine, stopped eating for four days and was found dead in Catherine's old bedchamber. He was buried next to Catherine. Readying to leave, Lockwood passes the graves of Catherine, Edgar and Heathcliff. He pauses to contemplate the stillness of the moors. This is Victorian gothic at its finest. Chilly, ghostly, disturbing and ravishingly beautiful literature that will never be successfully emulated - thank goodness. ...more |
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'I also think a volume of letters will have to wait until everyone's dead, don't you, because of hurt feelings?' Diana to Deborah, 17 August 1980. Such was this potential 834 page can of worms, comprising just an estimated five per cent of the sisters 'I also think a volume of letters will have to wait until everyone's dead, don't you, because of hurt feelings?' Diana to Deborah, 17 August 1980. Such was this potential 834 page can of worms, comprising just an estimated five per cent of the sisters' letters, yet effectively telling six interrelated life stories: the daughters of David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale and his wife Sydney Bowles (Sydney's father founded English Vanity Fair and The Lady magazines, employing son-in-law David to manage The Lady). The Mitford saga lends credence to the adage 'truth is stranger than fiction'. You couldn't invent such tales. Hardly a week went by in the 1930s without one of this sextet making headlines. The opening letters, from 24 July 1925, show the interwar halcyon years, the English country lives of the Mitford girls. Mainly home-educated by governesses, most are well read thanks to their grandfather Algernon Freeman-Mitford's legacy which included a stately family library. Debutante of 1922 and Bright Young Thing Nancy is 20, flitting to and from her London and Oxford social scenes. Pamela is 17, Diana 15, Unity 10 and Jessica 7. Little Deborah is just 2, her first letters not appearing here until she approaches her tenth birthday in 1930. To subsidise her father's tight allowance, Nancy starts writing, encouraged by literary amigo Evelyn Waugh. Initially uncredited in society gossip columns, she then sells signed articles, until in 1930 The Lady gives her a regular column (presumably helped by family connections). She soon attempts novels, basing characters on relatives, friends and acquaintances. If Nancy's literary enterprise is a gamble, her love life is a fiasco. She is soon ditched after a futile lengthy engagement to effeminate gay aesthete Hamish St Clair Erskine, four years her junior, second son of the 5th Earl of Rosslyn and ex-lover of her brother Tom. On the rebound, she is engaged to erratic Peter Rodd, second son of Sir Rennell Rodd the soon-to-be ennobled Baron Rennell. The marriage will become largely a sham. But Nancy's exploits are eclipsed by the younger Diana, who in 1929 wins over her naysaying parents and marries brewing heir Bryan Guinness who will inherit the barony of Moyne. Such a great society beauty is she that family friend James Lees-Milne calls her 'the nearest thing to Botticelli's Venus that I have ever seen'. Evelyn Waugh dedicates his novel Vile Bodies, a satire of the Roaring Twenties, to Diana and Bryan. Her portrait gets painted by Augustus John, Pavel Tchelitchew and Henry Lamb. Diana triggers scandal in 1932 by leaving her husband for British Union of Fascists (BUF) head Sir Oswald Mosley. As Mosley does not intend leaving his wife 'Cimmie' (Lady Cynthia Curzon, daughter of Lord Curzon, former Viceroy of India) Diana lives in a flat as his mistress, until in 1933 Cimmie dies of peritonitis. With Unity along for the ride, Diana then ingratiates herself with Adolph Hitler's circle on Mosley's covert bidding for a commercial radio station on German soil to fund Mosley's BUF. In 1936 Diana and Mosley secretly marry in Joseph Goebbels' Berlin house, with Hitler a guest. Unity is meanwhile swept away, a Hitler devotee and Third Reich fanatic, basing herself in Germany much of the time. In 1937 teenage Jessica, the 'red sheep' of the family, having long saved to run away, elopes to Spain with second cousin Esmond Romilly, Communist nephew of Winston S Churchill. Romilly finds work reporting for the News Chronicle and, after legal obstacles caused by their parents' opposition, they marry and move to London, in the poor industrial East End. On 20 December 1937 Jessica has a baby, Julia, who dies the following May in a measles epidemic. In 1939 Jessica and Esmond emigrate to the USA. When WWII starts Esmond enlists in the Royal Canadian Air Force, leaving Jessica in Washington D.C. carrying another daughter, Constancia. After a bombing raid over Germany, Esmond goes missing in action on 30 November 1941. Nancy meanwhile discovers in the summer of 1938 she is pregnant but miscarries. In early 1939 she joins her husband Peter Rodd in the South of France as a relief worker, assisting Spanish refugees fleeing Franco's armies in the civil war. Soon afterwards Rodd, commissioned into the Welsh Guards, departs overseas and Nancy, back in London, has her second miscarriage. The early war years are gruelling for all, except maybe Pamela who always took life in her stride. She has married the brilliant 'rampantly bisexual' scientist and heir to the News of the World Derek Jackson (becoming the second of Jackson's six wives). From around now too, relations between Jessica and Diana permanently freeze, their political rift so deep it becomes personal. On 29 June 1940 Diana, prised from eleven week old Max Mosley, is interned without charge in Holloway Prison under Defence Regulation 18b, a dangerous person to the state, tagged 'England's most hated woman'. With Mosley already interned separately in Brixton Prison, Diana pines for her husband and four sons (two from each marriage). The couple reunite in Holloway in December 1941, lodged in a flat on prison grounds, thanks to Mitford cousin-in-law Prime Minister Winston S Churchill. Both are released in November 1943, on grounds of Mosley's ill health, and placed under house arrest until war's end at Mosley's Crux Easton property in Berkshire. Nancy's first four published novels, satirical farces, have seen no great acclaim. Her husband fights overseas. She does war work in London's blitz, first as an Air Raid Precautions (ARP) driver. Then at a Paddington casualty depot, writing with indelible pencil on the foreheads of the dead and dying. Then in a canteen for French soldiers evacuated from Dunkirk. Also helping refugees billeted at her parents' London house in Rutland Gate, requisitioned to accommodate Polish Jews evacuated from Whitechapel. An affair with Free French officer André Roy results in a third pregnancy. Nancy again miscarries, with complications leading to a hysterectomy in November 1941. Convalescing, at a loose end she works as an assistant at Heywood Hill's Mayfair bookshop and literati hangout, becoming the shop's social nucleus. Unable to reconcile with war, Unity publicly shoots herself in the head at Munich's Englischer Garten. She survives with bullet lodged in brain. Hospitalised unconscious in Munich for weeks with Hitler suppressing news coverage, she is 'missing' to her family in England. After two months her parents Lord and Lady Redesdale hear from a clinic in neutral Switzerland, where Hitler has had her sent. Transporting Unity home by ambulance, Lady Redesdale becomes her carer. Permanently impaired with a mental age of twelve, Unity is volatile and incontinent. This compounds the stress on the Redesdales' marriage, caused by political differences. They permanently separate. Deborah at first helps with Unity, then after marrying in 1941 roams England following in-training Cold Stream Guards husband Andrew Cavendish, second son of the 10th Duke of Devonshire. By war's end she has lost two babies, her only brother Tom, four best friends and two brothers-in-law. Her husband has unexpectedly become heir to his father's dukedom. The post war years I found the most gripping. Unity dies aged 33 from her lingering gunshot wound. Nancy enjoys a literary breakthrough with The Pursuit of Love, gives up on her unhappy marriage and moves to Paris to be near new love of her life, Charles de Gaulle's right hand man Gaston Palewski. Bedecking herself in haute couture she becomes an ardent Francophile, nicknamed by her sisters the 'French Lady Writer'. Diana and Mosley, social pariahs through their politics, move to France near to Nancy, becoming friends and neighbours of fellow pariahs the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (the abdicated King Edward VIII and twice divorced Wallis Simpson, whom he has married). The 1950s are for me the centrepiece of this epic, with the sisters at their peaks. Nancy's writing career soars while her adoration of Palewski is never fully reciprocated, their coupling never formalised. His diplomatic career and other romances leave Nancy in the shadows, over years their relationship trickling to naught. Nancy's acerbic wit, irresistibly funny, shields a tortured woman. Unrequited love, loneliness and sisterly jealousy are thought her underlying issues. She also reveals having felt unloved by her mother (a complaint shared by none of her sisters). Deborah has become Duchess of Devonshire, soon-to-be hostess of royalty and world leaders (she is also related to the Kennedys by marriage). She administers historic Chatsworth House, her husband's 35,000-acre family seat which was institutionalised for WWII. Planning to move in, she oversees its colossal restoration. She is also Châtelaine of Bolton Abbey estate in Yorkshire and the Lismore Castle estate in Ireland. She involves herself in local charities and functions, supervises staff, shares her husband's interest in thoroughbred racehorses and breeds Shetland ponies. Jessica, war-widowed and remarried, could not be more different. Renouncing her gentrified roots, she is a naturalised American and Communist Party USA member, living in Oakland, California. In her 10 November 1951 letter to Deborah, who contemplates visiting, Jessica writes: 'We lead an extremely non-duchessy life here. For instance, if you want to stay with us you would have to sleep on a couch in the dining room, we don't have a spare room here ...' Jessica becomes an American civil rights figure and bestselling author as celebrated as Nancy. The older of her two little boys, Nicholas, is killed in 1955 when hit by a bus. She never speaks of it. Mellowing, she resigns from the Communist Party in 1958. Pamela, teased fondly by her sisters who nickname her 'Woman', shuns world affairs and keeps to country life. This is reflected in Poet Laureate John Betjeman's unpublished poem The Mitford Girls, ending with a line about his favourite: 'Miss Pamela, most rural of them all'. Living variously in England, Ireland and Switzerland, she is the least active correspondent (perhaps mildly dyslexic, notes the editor), yet deliciously dotty. Divorced with huge settlement, she sets up home with an Italian horsewoman, her life companion. Never remarrying, she is thought to have become 'a you-know-what-bian' as Jessica writes to her husband in 1955 when first visiting Europe with her American family. The sisters' frail old father Lord Redesdale dies in 1958. His estranged wife, their mother, soon follows. As the seasons turn we witness the inevitable peaks and troughs, stumbling across some heartrending tragedy, fabulous triumph or side-splitting gem. Take for instance Nancy's shriek-worthy nickname 'Pygmy-Peep-a-toes' for five-foot two-inch Princess Margaret, who is constantly in the headlines over her affair with Group Captain Peter Townsend and whose open-toed shoes Nancy thinks vulgar. Or Deborah's nickname 'Cake' for the Queen Mother, given after a wedding where, on hearing the bride and groom are about to cut the cake, QM exclaims 'Oh, the cake!' as if having never seen it happen before. Their drollery and regal 'Mitfordese' drawl recurs throughout ('Do admit!' 'Do tell!' 'Please picture!') As the 1960s and '70s unfold we see the sisters age and face social revolution, while old grievances to one another fester. These include: whether Jessica's memoir Hons and Rebels invents episodes of their growing up years to match Nancy's fictionalised versions in The Pursuit of Love; whether their brother Tom, killed in WWII, was a Communist supporter, Nazi sympathiser or neither; and Nancy's spitefulness. Diana, Deborah and Jessica become grandmother's (one of Jessica's two African American grandsons will later become legal scholar and Professor of Law at Yale James Forman Jr.). In 1972 Nancy, in poor health, is made a Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur, and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). She is soon diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma, dying on 30 June 1973 at home in France and cremated, her ashes buried in England alongside sister Unity. We now witness the remaining sisters forwarding each other's letters when ganging up against each other beneath the smiling repartee. Later ones, after Nancy's agonising death, betray simmering resentments towards her and Jessica, the two who forged independent careers rather than leaning on marriage for wealth. This backstabbing of the self-made two is by the most privileged two, Diana and Deborah, though Deborah is more Diana's sounding board for the most part. As the only sister to remain consistently on speaking terms with all the others, Deborah is the natural mediator, though this becomes harder as her husband battles alcoholism. As they further mature, we see their growth, especially of Diana (once 'England's most hated woman'), essentially so kind yet understandably tortured in rare moments. In exile with Mosley, she has time to ponder, more so after his 1980 death. She suffers from deafness. She writes prolifically, memoirs, biographies, book reviews, translations and commentaries on her heyday, ever remorseless of her pre-war connexions. In A Life of Contrasts: An Autobiography she reiterates, 'I didn't love Hitler any more than I did Winston [Churchill]. I can't regret it, it was so interesting.' Only years after Nancy's death will Diana learn from released classified files of Nancy's treacherous role in her wartime internment. Nancy had 'informed' British Intelligence agency MI5 that Diana was 'a ruthless and shrewd egotist, a devoted fascist and admirer of Hitler [who] sincerely desires the downfall of England and democracy in general.' She had later made official behind-scenes noises to prevent Diana's release. Though Jessica had also (from America) lobbied against Diana and Mosley's release, she had not later feigned amity, unlike neighbourly Nancy whom Diana had devotedly supported through her protracted terminal illness. Towards the close of the 20th century two more sisters leave us. Pamela, hospitalised after a fall, dies in London on 12 April 1994. Jessica dies in the USA of lung cancer, aged 78, on 22 July 1996, her ashes scattered at sea. She is survived by her widower and two of her four children. Her deep rift with Diana is never healed, their only brief contact having been while politely visiting the dying Nancy. The voices taper down to Diana and Deborah, the only two left in the new millennium. The last published letter, from Deborah to Diana, is dated 5 January 2002. When Diana dies in Paris in 2003, leaving no sisters for Deborah to exchange letters with, there's a poignancy finishing this enormous book. Diana was described in a Daily Telegraph (16 August 2003) editorial, after her death, as an 'unrepentant Nazi and effortlessly charming.' According to her Daily Telegraph obituary, a diamond swastika was among her jewels. She was survived by four sons: author Desmond Guinness; Jonathan Guinness, 3rd Baron Moyne; Alexander and Max Mosley. Her stepson, novelist Nicholas Mosley, wrote a critical memoir of his father for which Diana never forgave him. Two of Diana's grandchildren, Daphne and Tom Guinness, and her great-granddaughter Jasmine Guinness, became models. Deborah lived eleven more years, producing published works from memoir to gardening to cookbooks, a whole series on Chatsworth House. Made a Dame Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (DCVO) for her service to the Royal Collection Trust, she died widowed on 24 September 2014, aged 94. Her funeral was attended by family and friends, six hundred staff, the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall. She is survived by three of seven children, eight grandchildren (including model Stella Tennant) and eighteen great-grandchildren. We cannot pity this youngest, longest living and most advantaged sister, who had such a good innings, yet she comes off as the stalwart figure of the piece and enormously likeable. Charlotte Mosley's masterful editing and footnoting is a work of art, her generous chapter introductions setting the scene for each period. There's an indispensable index of nicknames, of which the Mitfords had so many, plus a helpful family tree and scholarly rear index. One must concur with J.K. Rowling's comment on the front cover: 'The story of the Mitford sisters has never been told as well as they tell it themselves.' This is the ultimate Mitford fan ride. ...more |
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Diana Mitford Mosley, tagged on this book's cover 'The Most Controversial Mitford Sister', died in Paris in 2003 aged 93. The onetime associate of Adolph Hitler, who attended her 1936 wedding to British Union of Fascists leader Sir Oswald Mosley at J Diana Mitford Mosley, tagged on this book's cover 'The Most Controversial Mitford Sister', died in Paris in 2003 aged 93. The onetime associate of Adolph Hitler, who attended her 1936 wedding to British Union of Fascists leader Sir Oswald Mosley at Joseph Goebbels' Berlin home, was famously 'unrepentant' to the last about political leanings that led her to Holloway Prison without charge or trial, on MI5's advice, for most of WWII. 'They'll go on persecuting me until I say Hitler was ghastly,' she said in a late life interview. 'Well, what's the point in saying that? We all know that he was a monster, that he was very cruel and did terrible things. But that doesn't alter the fact that he was obviously an interesting figure.' 'It was fascinating for me, at 24, to sit and talk with him, to ask him questions and get answers, even if they weren't true ones. No torture on earth would get me to say anything different.' This brave, frank singularity was her lifelong hallmark, besides her aristocratic standing, two highbrow marriages and legendary beauty, which her novelist friend Evelyn Waugh said 'ran through the room like a peal of bells', with author-friend James Lees-Milne declaring, 'she was the nearest thing to Botticelli's Venus that I have ever seen'. But with her sisters seemingly vying for notoriety, rationalising their race with 'Diana started it', her role as instigator of this famous contest would always have had strong readership pull, even had Diana herself never written or published a word. A selection of diaries, articles, portraits and reviews, introduced by youngest sister, Deborah Mitford, The Pursuit of Laughter (the title a homage to oldest sister Nancy Mitford's 1945 novel The Pursuit of Love) is testament that Diana did write: prolifically, on a mind-boggling range, with extraordinary eloquence and despite her lack of formal education. The six Mitford girls were home schooled, some as infants by their mother under the Parents National Educational Union (PNEU) scheme, but mostly by governesses. An Edwardian upper-class prejudice lingered, that saw public girls' schools middle-class, even common. (Their brother Tom prepped with them until aged eight, then boarded at Eton, eventually reading law in Berlin). The basics their parents thought customary for gentlewomen were reading and writing; basic arithmetic for keeping household books; French, deemed essential for their class; enough geography and history to avoid seeming ignorant in polite society; music, needlework and deportment. Their advantage over peers, however, was free-range access to their Batsford Park home library, the repository of a remarkable collection made by their grandfather, Algernon Freeman-Mitford 1st Lord Redesdale, whose country estates their second-in-line father inherited when his older brother died at war. This library, which moved house with them to Asthall Manor, their father set up away from the Asthall house, in a barn with armchairs and grand piano. It became their autodidactic meeting point, where the foundations of their intellectual lives were laid. Unimpeded by adults, they relished being left here to their own devices. While Nancy Mitford and Jessica Mitford longed to be sent to public schools, most of them, especially Diana, shuddered at the thought. Diana was later a day student at Cours Fénelon finishing school in Paris's rue de la Pompe, the year's enrollment including lectures from visiting Sorbonne professors. In Paris she was painted by her mother's old family friend, Belle Époque portraitist Paul César Helleu, who lived near her hotel and took her around. One such painting appeared in L'Illustration, making her the envy of the school. Far from home and unsupervised, Paris was her first taste of independence. Her Cours Fénelon year was cut short, however, when she was kept home in disgrace one recess, having left open her diary. Her parents found details of an unchaperoned afternoon cinema date with a young man, which she admitted was 'a frightful disobedience and an almost unforgivable crime.' She wrote 'I learned more at the Cours Fénelon in six months than I learned at Asthall in six years.' Back in rural England, with the crowding Mitford brood and parents, her London escape would be marriage, sooner the better. So, her higher education was at the school of life, embraced by those 'Bright Young People' of the Roaring Twenties. The literati. Etonion, Oxfordian and Cantabrigan alumni. Writers, artists and great intellectuals who flocked to her and first husband Bryan Guinness, himself a lay poet-novelist, heir to the barony of Moyne and one of England's richest men. The radiant newlyweds, having wrangled for parental nods to marry so young (eighteen-year-old Diana a freshly presented Court debutante) with the groom's exceptional wealth, were instant leading Society figures. Evelyn Waugh dedicated Vile Bodies, a satire of the Roaring Twenties, to the couple. Diana's portrait was painted by Augustus John, Pavel Tchelitchew and Henry Lamb. They drew various sets: aesthetes, like Harold Acton, Robert Byron, Brian Howard, Henry Green, Roy Harrod; pre-jet jetsetters, such as Emerald Cunard, Duff and Diana Cooper, and Lady Violet Astor's daughter; cerebrals, like John Betjemen, Lytton Strachey and his girlfriend Dora Carrington; and Noël Coward's theatre crowd. Only the dimmest soul could fail to soak much of this up, Diana the antithesis of dim. Not writing about it would have been a far worse crime than anything she might later face suspicion over. Mitford sister buffs have favourites, mine the eldest Nancy, who mythologised her kin as 'the Radletts' in autobiographical novels The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate after Diana 'started it all' by scandalously dumping her besotted millionaire spouse for the much older, married, alpha male political livewire Mosley (who refused to divorce for Diana but, soon prematurely widowed, became marriageable). (Diana's actions were thought a catalyst of competitive sister Unity's public ingratiation of herself to Hitler. Diana even first brought the pair together, on a German trip to visit their brother Tom, Unity tagging along. Both events were thought catalysts of sister Jessica's infamous reactionary elopement with Communist cousin Esmond Romilly, nephew of Winston Churchill.) Yet most Mitford buffs read outside their favourite sister, drawing comparisons, cross-referencing the sources of this highborn sibling rivalry. Jessica Mitford's 1960 autobiography Hons and Rebels I found confirmative of Nancy's fictional Mitford/Radlett family portraits. Similarly with the priceless 2010 memoir Wait for Me! of Deborah Mitford, Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, friend of the Kennedys and restorer of historic Chatsworth House. Then I read Diana. Whilst I find Nancy's playful sophistication the most entertaining, with Deborah's warm recollections the most easily digested, Diana is surely the most articulate, her intensity sometimes hard going perhaps due to her more studious genres – she never wrote fiction and her 'portraits' of high-profile loved ones have a distinctly more scholarly tone than any other Mitford memoirist. To dub her a widely read intellectual firebrand, cultured beyond words, would be gross understatements – she was formidable. In equal measures too, charming, witty, audacious, at times teasingly funny. This intoxicating mix makes her prose irresistible. Having moved to France a post-war pariah with husband Mosley, the couple established publishing company Euphorion Books. There Diana translated Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's two-part magnum opus Faust. Other Euphorion publications under her aegis included La Princesse de Clèves et autres romans (translated by sister Nancy Mitford, 1950) and Hans-Ulrich Rudel's memoir Stuka Pilot. She also edited several of her husband's books In 1965 she wrote the regular column 'Letters from Paris' for the Tatler. She edited fascist cultural magazine The European for six years, contributing her own articles, book reviews and diary entries. She specialised in reviewing autobiographies, biographies and the occasional novel, with commentary of her own experience of the subject, for The Daily Mail, The Times, The Sunday Times and Books & Bookmen. She was the lead literary reviewer for the London Evening Standard during A.N. Wilson's tenure as literary editor (he called her the 'most beautiful, most intelligent, and most beguiling of the celebrated Mitford sisters.') The Standard resumed publication of her book reviews from 2001 until her death in 2003. She wrote the foreword and introduction of 1975 biography Nancy Mitford by aesthete and family friend Harold Acton (on whom Waugh's Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder character Anthony Blanche was based). In 2007 The Mitfords: Letters between Six Sisters was published, a compilation including many to and from Diana, edited by her daughter-in-law Charlotte Mosley. Diana's own books included: A Life of Contrasts: An Autobiography (1977), The Duchess of Windsor and Other Friends (1980) and her memoir Loved Ones: Pen Portraits (1985). From these she built a considerable fan base. Strangers with the worst preconceptions, on meeting her liked her despite themselves. Called 'effortlessly charming' by all, from early acquaintances to wartime Home Office interrogators, to late millennium media interviewees, she was loved by each Mitford sister of whichever ideological bent. Many held blind to her dazzle, unable to reconcile her old association with the Nazi regime, never dropping her old moniker 'the most hated woman in England'. But in a 2001 letter to sister Deborah, she maintained: 'Being hated means absolutely nothing to me, as you know.' Some people are simply more than their politics, Diana Mitford Mosley a pure gold example. I was spellbound by this collection of her writings. ...more |
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C.S. Burrough
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It was known in its day as 'the Ilford murder'. Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters were British lovers hanged for the murder of Edith's husband Percy. Their 1922 Old Bailey trial became one of the biggest scandals of the still stuffy, Edwardian-mi It was known in its day as 'the Ilford murder'. Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters were British lovers hanged for the murder of Edith's husband Percy. Their 1922 Old Bailey trial became one of the biggest scandals of the still stuffy, Edwardian-minded era. Edith's love letters were used as prosecution material in court … and published in the national press for all to sniff at and tut over (journalist Rebecca West publicly tagged Edith 'a shocking piece of rubbish'). As the older married woman (a mere twenty-nine) to her twenty-year-old lover, Edith was smeared ('cancelled' in todays' patois) and demonised as an adulteress. A jezebel, a temptress. More or less a sorceress, who had bewitched naïve young Freddy and seduced him into killing her dull, disinterested yet violently jealous husband. It happened thus: On 3 October 1922, in the East London suburb of Ilford, Edith and husband Percy were walking home after a night at a London theatre, when an assailant leapt from the darkness and fatally stabbed Percy. When police tracked the murderer, merchant seaman Freddy Bywaters, and discovered his romantic link to the abruptly widowed Edith, she too was arrested as Freddy's accomplice. Both were found guilty and hanged in January 1923, he at HMP Pentonville, she at HMP Holloway. Edith's executioner, John Ellis, was reportedly traumatised by this finality, after she spent her concluding hours of life hysterically crying and screaming. Each were buried in unmarked graves in their respective prison grounds, as was customary. Edith would later be exhumed with other executed women, under a prison rebuilding program, and reinterred at Brookwood. Freddy was not. Edith was framed throughout the trial as a foolish, impetuous woman from humble beginnings, who had married more for convention than love. Only at the final hour did her plight draw brief public sympathy, with the hanging of women considered abhorrent (none had occurred in Britain since 1907). The case fleetingly became a cause célèbre. Yet there was nary a skerrick of evidence to convict her, just the straitlaced prejudice (and perhaps veiled jealousy) of 'respectable' married ladies, institutional misogyny of a patriarchal judicial system, and prudish demurral to recognise a complex, intelligent woman aeons ahead of her time in a society still metaphorically trussed-up in stays and starched collars. The lovers had a platonic history predating their romance. Freddy was a friend of Edith's younger brothers and had once lived with her family before moving out into the world. Returning in his late teens, he met her again through her family. Now married to Percy, the bright, career hopeful Edith introduced the two men who hit it off. She gradually saw the handsome, homecoming Freddy in a new light, potentially pairing him off with her sister Avis when the quartet holidayed on the Isle of Wight. But nothing eventuated with Avis and Freddy, and as a newfound friend of Percy, Freddy was invited to lodge with the married couple, the trio at first happy. Soon, however, Edith and Freddy's affair unfolded, at first secretly. As Percy grew suspicious, fireworks were sparked. Edith was flung across a room hitting a chair, her arm bruised black from shoulder to elbow. Husband and lover locked horns, with the latter sent packing. She was by no means alone. The married upper classes and bohemian elite brazenly slept with who they liked, though it wasn't much talked about in polite society. But Edith's aspirant, lower middle-class breed had stiffer rules of morality to adhere to. The hypocrisy stank. If this had happened a century later, post #MeToo, Edith's conviction would be laughed out of court, with global sisterhood protests erupting via social media teamwork. Published in 2018, this astonishing dissection of a fatal extramarital tangle by Laura Thompson (no relation to Edith or Percy) delivers a 444-page forensic juggernaut, arguably unparalleled in scale or scope in its genre. Admittedly, such fleshed out intensity may not be for everyone, especially those rushing to grab a lunchtime pulp read from a railway platform kiosk. It took patience at the outset, but once into the pace I was hooked. This is surely among Laura Thompson's greatest works (I had already read and loved her earlier biographies Life in a Cold Climate: Nancy Mitford and Take Six Girls: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters). On narrative power alone, she could write about Thomas the Tank Engine and captivate no less. Her incisive study of the human psyche is razor sharp, her absurdist tongue-in-cheek wit and droll asides hilarious. Fellow author and biographer Kate Colquhoun describes this infamous case, on the book's back cover blurb, as 'another dark parable of society's vilification of women. Intelligent... A tantalizing investigation'. I agree wholeheartedly. Highly recommended reading. ...more |
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Restoration monarch Charles II I had long procrastinated reading on, until this splendid book appeared before me. At once admiring this elegant product, its cover art and back page snippets, I was compelled to take it home. This great-grandson of the Restoration monarch Charles II I had long procrastinated reading on, until this splendid book appeared before me. At once admiring this elegant product, its cover art and back page snippets, I was compelled to take it home. This great-grandson of the executed Mary, Queen of Scots and son of the executed Charles I was invited to take the throne following the Interregnum. Known as the Merry Monarch, his court was a den of hedonism, his subjects loving his looseness after the puritan Cromwellian protectorate, or de facto Republic. He sired a dozen acknowledged bastards by seven mistresses. Charles II was not merely the most infamous royal sleazebag of them all, he was a respected patron of the arts and sciences and had his work cut out in restoring England's shaky monarchy and seeing his kingdom through several great disasters. His watch saw London's Great Plague eliminate approximately 100,000 people, thinning the capital's population. Also the Great Fire of London, famously ignited in Pudding Lane and destroying over 13,000 houses, 80-odd churches and old St. Paul's Cathedral. The fire's aftermath saw Sir Christopher Wren add his splendid architectural mark to London's rebuilding, initiated by Chares II. Charles also reinstated the theatre, initiating two acting companies and legalising acting for women, after a long puritanical spell wherein theatre was considered frivolous and banned altogether. Leaving no legitimate heir, he was succeeded by his brother, the less popular, more zealously Catholic James II, whose short reign reached an abrupt halt when he was overthrown for producing a Catholic heir and suspected of aiming to steer then staunchly Protestant England religiously backwards. I enjoyed studying this lovable, decadent, cultured rogue, whose mistresses included legendary orange-seller-turned-actress Nell Gwynn and notorious Barbara Villiers who bore five of his royal bastards. While the Restoration is still not one of my favourite periods, Jenny Uglow lured me in, guided me well and made it accessible in a way no other has. Recommended reading. ...more |
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Charming reminiscences by arguably the most eloquent published Mitford sister. Diana was perhaps less frivolously funny, in print, than novelist sister Nancy Mitford, less gritty than activist sister Jessica Mitford and less straightforwardly sentime
Charming reminiscences by arguably the most eloquent published Mitford sister. Diana was perhaps less frivolously funny, in print, than novelist sister Nancy Mitford, less gritty than activist sister Jessica Mitford and less straightforwardly sentimental than duchess sister Deborah Mitford. This exquisite collection of pen portraits, of central figures from Diana's life, includes memories of Lytton Strachey and Dora Carrington, her onetime neighbours and friends. Violet Hammersley, an author, close friend of her mother's and prominent Mitford childhood figure. Writer Evelyn Waugh, a very close friend. Diana's former brother-in-law Professor Derek Jackson, a leading physicist. Lord Berners, a dear friend she often stayed with at Faringdon House. Prince and Princess Clary, friends of hers after the Second World War. The final portrait is of her second husband Sir Oswald Mosley. Some are true gems, e.g. Violet Hammersely: 'She was rather small and very dark, with black hair and huge dark eyes, and she had an expression of deep gloom. She had a rather low, hollow voice, and although she often laughed it was as if unwillingly. Her garden, at least the only garden of hers I ever saw, was a discreet green. When I first knew her, she was already a widow, and widow's weeds became her. To the end of her life, she was swathed in black scarves and shawls and veils; in later years not exactly in mourning, because many of her clothes were dark brown, but the whole effect had something more Spanish than French about it. Once when she was slightly annoying my sister Nancy, who used the powder and lipstick universal among our generation, by saying: "Painters don't admire make-up at all," Nancy retorted: "Oh well Mrs. Ham, you know it's all very well for you, but we can't all look like El Greco's mistress."' The book features historic photographs of the subjects. Actually, three of these pen portraits were republished in Diana's extensive 2008 collection The Pursuit of Laughter, so any fan who has read that collection will only find three unread ones in this earlier, shorter one. Having, at her lowest point, been dubbed the 'most hated woman in England' for her romantic link to Brit fascist leader Mosley, then spending much of WWII in Holloway jail uncharged under wartime clause 18B, Diana remained disarmingly charming to all who met her. Never becoming bitter, she wrote in a published letter to her sister Debo: 'Being hated, as you know, means nothing to me.' A remarkable figure of dignity and elegance, she wrote delectably, complete with Mitford 'shrieks' and 'teases' - if of a more understated, tongue-in-cheek variety than those of her published sisters. A must read for any Mitford fan. ...more |
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“I must write. If I stop writing my life will have been an abject failure. It is that already to other people. But it could be an abject failure to myself. I will not have earned death.”
― Jean Rhys
― Jean Rhys
tags:
jean-rhys-write

“A room is, after all, a place where you hide from the wolves. That's all any room is.”
― Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight
― Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight

“My life, which seems so simple and monotonous, is really a complicated affair of cafés where they like me and cafés where they don't, streets that are friendly, streets that aren't, rooms where I might be happy, rooms where I shall never be, looking-glasses I look nice in, looking-glasses I don't, dresses that will be lucky, dresses that won't, and so on.”
― Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight
― Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight

“A room? A nice room? A beautiful room? A beautiful room with bath? Swing high, swing low, swing to and fro...This happened and that happened...
And then the days came and I was alone.”
― Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight
And then the days came and I was alone.”
― Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight

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