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Aug 2021
9:47pm, 26 Aug 2021
21,266 posts
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Columba
No. Unity, - or whoever it was who idolised Hitler and took tea with him on occasion.
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Aug 2021
7:11am, 27 Aug 2021
34,104 posts
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LazyDaisy
No, a lady in Sheffield -these are Mass Observation diaries 
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Aug 2021
9:35pm, 27 Aug 2021
21,270 posts
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Columba
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Sep 2021
11:17am, 4 Sep 2021
23,070 posts
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Serendippily
I haven’t reread this yet but have reread it within the last 5-10 yrs and that feels fairly recent these days
There’s a line in there about the kind of book you read sitting on a windowsill with an apple - this is that book for me, with all its class assumptions of lifestyles and window styles. I found it’s “I saw something nasty in the woodshed” “did it see you?” theme both helpful and funny growing up, clinging on to your trauma is a pretty exhausting business all round, and if you can find a way to move on it’s very much worth doing, not just for yourself but those around you. I laughed at Elfie skipping about like a shy fawn and Adam and his liddle mop and Judith and her dark obsessions, taking them all as a pop at literary tropes rather than country living. But then I’m a townie at heart and willing to take on trust that the life of the filthy old rich is immeasurably improved by a practical housekeeper, with or without an accompanying brass band and that nowadays they just can’t get the staff. It was written ten years after Gatsby and around the same time as the Wodehouse Blandings novels and I think it fits very much into that post war nostalgia for country house living
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Sep 2021
11:21am, 4 Sep 2021
23,071 posts
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Serendippily
Oh yes I bet the racism would really jump out now
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Sep 2021
11:53am, 4 Sep 2021
23,072 posts
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Serendippily
Enjoyed the review peregrine. I’m quite keen to reread it now, and see what I make of it
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Sep 2021
11:42pm, 19 Sep 2021
930 posts
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Peregrinator
I thought I should read at least one of Stella Gibbons' other 24 novels. I went for Westwood, published in 1946. Pretty sure that Stella Gibbon is not "the Jane Austen of the 20th century - The Times", but it is quite readable. It covers an area (women in the war-time home front) that I haven't read about elsewhere.
Some views and phrases in it were contemporary but now regrettable. She is very definite about social levels and dividing lines, and people either unconsciously crossing them, or consciously trying to not cross them, with lots about pretentiousness applied to upper class artists and writers, and foreigners and their funny ways. As that's applied mostly to a German wartime Jewish refugee, it is uncomfortable. One of the characters says "She's a good little soul ... and rather wonderful too. Her people were Jewish. They lived in Hamburg. They lived in Hamburg and - oh well, its a beastly story". Best not to speak about it, is possibly how people at the time would have reacted, but now seems callous and under-values the character. Stella Gibbons is rather down on marriage, partly from her own experiences I think, and from the loss of opportunity that getting married resulted in the '40s and 50's. But I felt that, unlike Cold Comfort Farm, the main character had depth and evolved through book. If anyone is interested in reading Westwood, I can forward it.
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Sep 2021
7:29am, 20 Sep 2021
49,717 posts
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LindsD
That's interesting. Thanks Pere.
We were doing some work with an institution that was founded on slavery wealth and encountered that "best not to speak of it" attitude amongst the older volunteers only recently.
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