dovegreyreader scribbles

Beating the Bounds ~ Holloway by Robert Macfarlane, Stanley Donwood & Dan Richards

2013-05-22T00:15:00+01:00

I have come to the borders of sleep,
The unfathomable deep Forest where all must lose
Their way, however straight, Or winding, soon or late;
They cannot choose.

Many a road and track
That, since the dawn's first crack,
Up to the forest brink,
Deceived the travellers,
Suddenly now blurs,
And in they sink....

Edward Thomas knew much of holloways and Robert Macfarlane quotes this poem in his latest book Holloway, produced with fellow writer Dan Richards and artist Stanley Donwood. The book is a slim but rich and intense fusion of words, observations and drawings compiled after the three returned to the holloway that Robert Macfarlane had explored with Roger Deakin in 2005. That excursion is recounted in The Wild Places...

'There is wildness everywhere,' Roger had written once, 'if we only stop in our tracks and look around us.' To him, the present-day and the close-at-hand were as astonishing as the long-gone and the far-afield. He was an explorer of the undiscovered country of the nearby.'

The holloway (known in Devon as a green lane) just a few yards from our front gate, has become a special place to us in the nineteen years that we have lived in this house, and as I Beat the Bounds with renewed enthusiasm I am getting to know every inch. I spot every new heap of badger or rabbit digging, each newly broken branch, each recently shifted stone.

It now occurs to me that this of course is the rabbit's own 'holloway'.

Our green lane is little known or used by anyone else; perhaps a few horse-riders, the man from the RSPB who comes to do an annual bird count, and may be just very occasionally some Sunday bikers who, having found it on the map, have to ride it perhaps on the Climbing Everest principle, because it is there. It occurred to me as I walked up with Nell the other day that it is largely us and our footfall that are now wearing and keeping the path patent and passable.

'They are landmarks that speak of habit rather than of suddeness. Like creases in the hand, or the wear on the stone sill of a doorstep or stair. they are the result of repeated human actions. Their age chastens without crushing. They relate to other old paths & tracks in the landscape - ways that still connect place to place and person to person.'

According to Robert Macfarlane none of these paths are younger than 300 years old, in which case maybe it's our turn in history to know and connect with this one, and we never fail to wonder about that history as we walk.

Who may have built the stone sides and what labour it must have involved...

...and who may have used it, and how.

And we think about odd things too... what if a horse and cart were coming down as one was going up, well then what... that debate kept us going the full length of the holloway one day.

Can you drive a horse and cart backwards in a confined space...

Would this little place, about half-way up, with some extra width have made a passing place...

I'd buy a seat and make it a Sitting Place

And a special treat, some words especially for you all from Robert Macfarlane, and a request....

"I have come to realise, in the eight years since I first wrote about holloways, that many people share my fascination with these sunken lanes, which have been harrowed down into the landscape by the passage of feet and rainwater (and sometimes 4x4s...). People have sent me photographs of the holloways they know, the paintings and sketches they have made of them, maps with their locations indicated, or the stories, memories and folklore they associate with them. Something about the idea of a path trodden by unknown predecessors, something about the everyday pleasure of walking and following these lanes, and something more mysterious about the symbolic power of the holloway as an image (tunnel, rabbit-hole, vortex, portal to the underworld), seems to draw the imagination of many.

Last year, the artist Stanley Donwood, the writer Dan Richards, the letter-press printer Richard Lawrence and I self-published a small book about holloways from first principles. The first principle being a lump of lead. That lump of lead was melted to cast fresh type, which was used to set the text, which was then hand-printed onto soft thick Somerset wove paper pages, which were then ordered, stitched and bound, to make an ISBN-less book in an edition of 277. A year on, Faber and Faber have published a hardback version of that book, *Holloway*. They have also set up a site where people can post their own images of holloways and sunken paths. So - if there is a holloway you know or have known, it would be wonderful if you considered adding it to the gallery. The first few have begun to appear. I have this notion that, if the gallery gathers enough images, we might tag each of them to their location on a map, and in this way create a holloway cartography. The holloways don't need to be English or British, though, or especially old or deep. There's one from Normandy already up there. And perhaps the youngest holloways are barely a few inches in depth; perhaps holloways run through cities rather than only through the countryside.

The site is here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/holloway/ I'm told you have to be a member of flickr to be able to post; I'm also told that if you're not, it's easy to join. But I know little about the internet and its ways. If flickr defeats you, as it has defeated me, you can always send your photos to johng@faber.co.uk, with a quick note saying they're for the holloway gallery, and with any info about location, photographer and such like for a caption. Thank you!"

My photos are in already so please do send yours too, and now scroll down where Magnus awaits with gifts.

Prize Draw copies of Holloway by Robert Macfarlane

2013-05-22T00:14:00+01:00

Hello chums, Magnus here.

Not a lot to report to be honest, I'm plum tuckered out keeping the Tinker stocked up with fresh rabbit. I leave him half a one, carefully dissected, outside his front door every morning because I can never resist having a little nibble first, but it's all demanding and exhausting work and between you and me they all seem less than grateful.

Now as regards this holloway, well I don't go up there much but of course you-know-who is out there every five minutes flaunting those ridiculous ears...

And Faber are kindly offering FIVE copies of Holloway by Rob, Stan and Dan (we're good mates, the chaps know a decent cat when they see one) so names in comments as usual and I will draw the winning numbers in about five rabbits' time.

Thinking about Oklahoma...

2013-05-21T19:25:13+01:00

...and sending good wishes and warm thoughts to anyone affected by this devastating tragedy.

I've just been watching the news, and the massive tornado cutting a swath through those communities, and trying to imagine 200mph winds and how terrifying that must have been. I'm hoping America have the U.K. equivalent of Shelterbox and the means for people who have lost everything to create at least a temporary home very quickly.

And then the most heart-warming moment of the woman being interviewed on Sky News at the site of her flattened home, and grieving the loss of her dog, at which point out crawled the missing dog from underneath the debris, almost right next to her and into her arms.

Take care America, as always at moments like this, we are thinking of you.

Grace and Mary ~ Melvyn Bragg

2013-05-20T00:15:00+01:00

I wonder if anyone else heard Melvyn Bragg on the radio recently, taking no prisoners as he urged the BBC to up its game with Arts programming in the face of increasingly high-standard competition from Sky and Channel Four. He was forthright and very direct ( thank heavens we still have people who can be, and broadcasters who will air such ascerbic criticism of themselves...I love the BBC for it) about programmes shifting from BBC One to the remoter outpost of BBC Four, as well as reducing in frequency, and as far as I can tell only seem to 'star' Alan Yentob these days. It would be nice to see a few new presenting faces. Sky Arts have snapped up super model Lily Cole who has a Cambridge double first in Art History as well as modelling for Alexander McQueen, Auntie would do well to take heed.

Anyway thus was Melvyn perfectly positioned upon my radar when his latest novel Grace and Mary arrived. I can't proclaim much success with his previous novels, and given the focus of this one on ageing and dementia, I wasn't hopeful that Melvyn and I were about to become friends, but on this occasion some disparate planets aligned favourably.

I watched the recent six part series The Village (a BBC success in my book, though not a universal one I gather) because it ties in wonderfully with some of my Beating the Bounds research in connection with our village war memorial. Two lads from the farm that surrounds us here died in the Great War and are named on the memorial. Having harboured all manner of imaginings about how that loss may have impacted on the family, and getting quite caught up in the emotion of thinking about them walking these fields, and what their last visions of home may have been as they lay dying in the trenches (maybe that view from our window even) I decided to find out more. I found out plenty about the family and it has all been a real revelation (which I am still writing up for a future post) but the BBC series gave me some context (fictional or otherwise) for how life may have been lived here at the time.

Grace and Mary, though set in the present day, is also interwoven with a narrative of village life through the Great War. John is visiting Mary, his elderly mother, in a nursing home..

'The mother and son meet mostly in the middle of the last century. After the war. Her disintegrating memory can still take her there... Now she is in her tenth decade, he has just gone seventy, and slowly the roles are reversing... they can still draw warmth from the embers of those days...'

John is treading a gentle path through the miasma of his mother's vascular dementia...

'It was as if it had been sent up from the deep to punish the audacity of the human race in so steadily and cleverly increasing its life span...this creeping undergrowth which strangled the roots of thought.'

Convinced he can still reach the mother he knows, John recreates the story of Grace, Mary's mother. In re-telling the story of Grace's life, and Mary's, and this mother she hardly knew, John hopes to rebuild memory for her, clinging valiantly to the glimmers and brief improvements he hopes this brings to Mary's condition. Except as we know, there is little that can be done to reverse the relentless progress of vascular dementia as it wreaks its trail of destruction...

'...broken and frayed, silted up, chokingly webbed in the intricate threads of ageing...'

Judging by many of my previous reading encounters with this subject, and for reasons various, I expected to find this all thoroughly depressing and far too painful to read. When someone you love has suffered this it can make for hard-earned reading pleasure best avoided. I felt sure I would be waving the white flag of surrender by page fifty, but Melvyn Bragg has been through this too, with his own mother, and his sensitivity to his subject and the depths of love and endless patience, and soothing and caring that John offered his mother won me over, as did the interwoven narrative of Grace.

Writer's take many routes with the subject of dementia and this may be one of the few that has worked for me. I'm a nurse for goodness' sake, I should be able to cope with it, and in real-life I can, but on the fictional page I am highly and subjectively censorious. I need to read of endless kindness being offered to anyone suffering from dementia and the minute an author strays from the path of compassion I'm afraid I just get too upset, invoke reader's prerogative, close the book and move on.

In Mary's world, as constructed by Melvyn Bragg, and in the ideal world that we would hope all dementia sufferers would be cared for, the nurses are endlessly patient, understanding that there will be 'differences of days' and these must be accommodated. When Mary spits her tablets back at them, or becomes abusive, they leave her time to regroup before trying again. But they do try again and with kindness, and they coax the food into her, and sips of drink from the spouted cup, and doubtless those drinks are within reach just in case Mary can manage it herself, and her personal care is dignified and thorough.

It is all sad and poignant, not sentimental... ultimately strangely heartening and giving me the courage to read on.

Strong-willed, single-minded and very determined, Grace's resilience will also be tested to the limits as she mourns the loss of her own mother who died shortly after her birth. It is well-recognised that childhood loss, even of an unknown parent will need to be grieved many times over and Grace is no exception. Finding her way in the world she eventually finds work as a maid in a local home for the wounded soldiers of the Great War.

You can perhaps now see how my walking, watching and reading planets aligned... the lads from the farm and The Village (with a lead character called Grace, brilliantly portrayed by Maxine Peak) all segueing perfectly into this book.

There is a moment in Grace and Mary when Grace and her employer are discussing fiction...

'Agnes enjoyed talking about the characters - were they believable? That was the crucial thing, she said. if you didn't believe in a character how could you possibly go on? And did the writers cheat with the plots?'

No cheating with plot that I noticed and I believed in every one of the characters, even the shadowy and deceitful Alan who Grace falls in love with in the convalescent home, and his embarrassed and evasive parents who Grace finally plucks up the courage to visit when it becomes clear ... no I couldn't possibly spoil it.

But talking of the word, do you remember the days of 'convalescence'??

Days of rest and recovery and recuperation from illness that would set you up properly for life again.

Now it seems you are just so many days post-op/post-viral/ post-chemo until you are well enough to go shopping again.

Themes of memory and loss, recollection and reconnection surround an underlying sense of belief ... in faith, in self, in the soul and in others, and in human nature to prevail for the greater good, as Melvyn Bragg weaves together three generations of a family in Grace and Mary to create a novel that I couldn't put down, and that I knew had been quietly and profoundly moving as I turned the final page.

Just to say...

2013-05-19T11:51:48+01:00

Some of you may recall, as part of the Edward Thomas project on here a couple of years ago, a lovely post that included some pictures of a beautiful, hand-illustrated and bound edition of Edward Thomas's poem Adlestrop, done by ninety-year old Harold Page, Fran H-B's father.

Fran has been a daily visitor here for years, comments regularly, and we meet up occasionally, and indeed Team Edward Thomas saw that work for real as Fran brought it with her when we took tea with author Matthew Hollis as part of the project.

On arriving in Sussex for a few days walking the South Downs with Fran last Monday, before I headed into London, she broke the news that Harold, now ninety-two, had been taken into hospital the day before. All was stable and family support was in place, and Fran had very much wanted my visit to go ahead.

We talked a great deal about her Dad during my stay, and I was almost brought to tears by the sight of the most beautiful book, hand-written and bound by Harold which displayed some of his work as a gift for members of the family. As an artist, with architect's training, Harold had quickly excelled at the art of calligraphy which he took up as a hobby in his seventies, rapidly gathering in diplomas which should have taken many years to achieve.

I had never met Harold, but I learned from Fran that he was a quiet, gentle unassuming man, immensely modest about his talent and utterly thrilled when he saw that blog post and imagined others seeing and enjoying his work.

It was with much sadness that I received Fran's e mail to say that Harold had died suddenly but peacefully on Friday afternoon, and I just wanted to send Fran, her Mum and her family, our love and thoughts and to wish them gentle days ahead.

Harold Page has left the most incredible legacy in his art work and we can but hope for an exhibition, or even a book eventually, I can promise you it would something to behold.

Home...

2013-05-18T00:15:00+01:00

I'm home and with my boots planted firmly in Devon for the forseeable future, and with my head teeming with so much that I have seen in just those few days away.... aren't A Few Days Away such a good invention.

The Fiction Uncovered evening was predictably amazing. It was a treat to meet up with my fellow judges again, and also the Fiction Uncovered team who have worked really hard to make this initiative work, and we all have everything crossed for their next round of Arts Council funding, and so good to finally meet and talk with all the authors after months of getting to know their books. Chair of judges Louise Doughty gave a brilliant speech, introducing each author's book before presenting them with a beautiful hand-bound edition in a slip-case,along with a Kobo e reader and six months membership of the very atmospheric and exclusive club where the event was being held. So exclusive there is no sign on the door and the building so Ancient London you need crampons and ropes to cross the wonky floors and get up the stairs. We suggested, rather tongue in cheek, that this membership 'gift' be extended to the judges in future, so whilst we may not benefit those ahead of us just might... maybe. I was separated from my camera by about ten foot of floor and about a hundred people, so no pictures from me though there was an official photographer so I expect some will emerge, but it was good to chat to lots of people about books and reading and this.

I still genuinely nurse very modest notions of the impact or the reach of dovegreyreader as I sit writing it tucked away here in Devon, and for me that's best because I still find myself amazed and slightly over-awed when people spell it out to me... lots of lovely people said very nice things, and in turn I spent a lot of time saying how much it depended and thrived on all of you too, so please take a minute to pat yourselves on the back... just don't put your neck out doing it or anything.

I couldn't resist heading out round the corner to look at Foyle's window ...

... which will have a display of the books for the next two weeks, and how good they those books looked, what breadth and depth there is to our choices, and how proud I felt to have been part of it all. That hard reading work coming to fruition and carrying on with it through the worst winter I have had for plagues and shocks and life-changes since...since... oh probably since the last time.

And alright, so I did ask someone if they would mind leaning slightly further long the window so I could get this shot...

and then asking them to move back again so I could get this one...

Thank you whoever you were.

But en route to London I had spent a few days walking the South Downs with Fran H-B. We gave ourselves a Ravilious Day and a Bloomsbury Day and my sincere thanks to Fran, a Sussex native, for giving me such a wonderful taste of the joys that are to behold in this amazing landscape.

The weather didn't stop us checking out the Long Man of Wilmington...

before heading up and over the top of his head for the heart-soaring Ravilious views.

The Cuckmere Valley, Beachy Head, the Seven Sisters followed, and the next much sunnier day Berwick Church, Monk's House (home of Virginia Woolf) and Charleston. More soon when I have thought it all through and have the dovegreyreader perspective on it all.

Meanwhile, should I ever think about getting even a little bit above myself, there is no greater leveller than coming back to the realities of home.

There is no more cold and desolate place than Paddington Station at 10.15 pm.

The waiting rooms are closed except for the glowing warmth of the First Class lounge, forbidden territory for us mere mortals, and there is nowhere to sit on the platform bar the ledge on the war memorial while you wait for the train crew to let you board. Realising I hadn't really eaten all day I could wait no longer so perched and ate my M&S chicken salad in the hope it wasn't deemed too irreverent..

The Night Riviera Sleeper cradle-rocked me back to Devon in that sort of almost-sleep that isn't quite, and where Bookhound was miraculously waiting for me at 5.30am. I had two loads of washing done and out on the line by 8.00am.. so as we were etc but refreshed and with lots to tell you.

It's @FictionUncovered Day

2013-05-16T00:15:00+01:00

So, if all goes according to plan, this evening I will be in London celebrating with the Fiction Uncovered 2013 authors and their books and guests various.

My thanks to chair of judges Louise Doughty and fellow judges Sandeep Mahal and Courttia Newland who have made the whole process such a pleasure, and to the team at Fiction Uncovered for inviting me to do this and for being so helpful and patient (Help... I've lost all the e book versions, can you resend them) and so accommodating when I was confined to my kitchen table and Skype for some of the meetings... and had to watch them all eating Sandy's homemade samosas at the other end.

I think we have come up with a great and varied selection of reading, and I have personally enjoyed each and every one of these books so I hope many of you will enjoy them too...

The Fiction Uncovered 2013 selection is

Lucy Caldwell - All the Beggars Riding

Lucy Caldwell was born in Belfast in 1981. She read English at Queens' College, Cambridge and is a graduate of Goldsmith's MA in Creative & Life Writing. She is the author of novels Where They Were Missed (2006) and The Meeting Point (2011), which featured on BBC Radio 4's Book at Bedtime and was awarded the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her stage plays, Leaves, Guardians, and Notes to Future Self, and radio dramas, Girl From Mars, Avenues of Eternal Peace, Witch Week, have won awards including the George Devine Award and the Imison Award. In 2011 she was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature for her body of work to date.

“The cul-de-sac that is an affair with a married man…loved precisely because he is the sort who won’t leave his wife and children for fear of hurting them. Patrick’s death exposes the fabric of this fragile and tangled web, offering a jagged, searing and intense perspective on love, loss, the chaos of memory and so much more. Grief is what you feel, mourning is what you do, and in this insightful and memorable novel Lucy Caldwell displays a real understanding of that as she explores the lives and the fall-out for the children.” Lynne Hatwell

Anthony Cartwright - How I Killed Margaret Thatcher

Anthony Cartwright was born in Dudley in 1973. He is the author of two previous novels, The Afterglow and Heartland. His books have been shortlisted for several established literary prizes. He worked as an English teacher in East London for a number of years and is currently a school writer-in-residence as part of the First Story project. He lives in North London with his wife and son.

“While some books capture the spirit of a specific time and place, others paint a broad canvas which speaks of timelessness and exact a relevance all of their own. Cartwright manages both in this masterful exploration that has the quiet power of a pebble thrown into a stream, creating ever increasing circles; a boy, a family, a community, a country; to explain not only what happened in ‘80s England, but how we reached the here and now. An urgently necessary work.” Courttia Newland

Niven Govinden - Black Bread White Beer

Niven Govinden is author of novels We Are The New Romantics, Graffiti My Soul, and Black Bread White Beer. His stories have appeared in Five Dials, Time Out, Pen Pusher, First City, BUTT, and on Radio 3. He has been shortlisted for the 2010 Bristol Prize and longlisted for the 2013 DSC Prize.

“A couple’s relationship exposed through the excruciating grief of an early miscarriage, and Niven Govinden’s novel explores every painful corner of this less-written about and much-misunderstood subject. Amal and Claud struggle to make sense of what has happened to them against a background of assumptions, high expectations and social pressures. This is a fluent, involving and beautifully written novel that takes the reader’s sympathies and emotions to the quietest, often most unrecognised limits of human pain.” Lynne Hatwell

Nikita Lalwani - The Village

Nikita Lalwani was born in Rajasthan and raised in Cardiff. Her first novel, Gifted, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and won the Desmond Elliot Prize for New Fiction. Nikita Lalwani was shortlisted for the 2008 Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year. She lives in London.

“In The Village, Nikita Lalwani goes to a world few readers will have heard about, a model prison in India, set up as a social experiment, where people who have committed murder live in a self-sustaining community. Ray Bhullar is part of a documentary team from the UK, living in the village for two months - but she soon discovers that issues of guilt and culpability are far more complex than first appears. Lalwani has a rare gift for getting inside character; you believe equally in the team from media London and a poverty stricken woman who has murdered her husband, in a tough, engaging and often funny read where all your preconceptions will be overturned and no-one is quite how they seem.” Louise Doughty

Nell Leyshon - The Colour of Milk

Nell Leyshon's first novel, Black Dirt, was long-listed for the Orange Prize, and shortlisted for the Commonwealth prize. Her plays include Comfort me with Apples, which won an Evening Standard Award, and Bedlam, which was the first play written by a woman for Shakespeare's Globe. She writes for BBC Radio 3 and 4, and won the Richard Imison Award for her first radio play. Nell was born in Glastonbury and lives in Dorset.

“Set in 1830, we follow the personal journal of a fourteen-year-old farm girl with hair the ‘colour of milk’. Mary is the youngest of four daughters who has a strong spirit and desire to learn how to read and write. This book follows the growing relationship between Mary and the local vicar where she is sent to live to care for his invalid wife and to serve as a domestic servant and where she also begins to learn. She sets out her story in her own unique, halting prose, telling the truth in her brutal surroundings. Imaginatively conceived, Nell Leyshon has perfectly captured characters of its time and beautiful prose filled with truth, hope and anticipation that makes this novel a pure joy to read.” Sandeep Mahal

James Meek - The Heart Broke In

James Meek was born in London in 1962 and grew up in Dundee. His novel The People's Act of Love (2005) won the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, the SAC Book of the Year Award, was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize and has been published in more than thirty countries. His latest novel The Heart Broke In (2012) was shortlisted for the Costa Book Award 2012 and his novel We Are Now Beginning our Descent (2008) won the Prince Maurice Prize. He is the author of two other novels and two collections of short stories. His journalism has won a number of British and international awards. He lives in London.

“James Meek is one of our best novelists and surely the nearest thing the UK has to a John Irving; his fat, compulsive, brilliant books have wide ranging narratives that cover world issues as well as the stories at the centre of the human heart. Ritchie Shepherd is a television producer with a dark secret; his sister Bec an idealistic scientist with a troubled love life. As both of them struggle to make sense of their father's death at the hands of the IRA and their own complex lives, Ritchie is forced to betray his sister to the tabloid press lest his own secrets be revealed. Few novelists writing today have such an acute ear for the nuances of family life and relationships - but Meek never forgets to set his human stories in a social context, making him a supreme contemporary satirist as well storyteller.” Louise Doughty

Amy Sackville - Orkney

Amy Sackville was born in 1981. She studied English and Theatre Studies at Leeds, and went on to an MPhil in English at Exeter College, Oxford, and an MA in Creative & Life Writing at Goldsmiths. Her first novel was The Still Point.

“A truly talented writer, Amy Sackville has finely constructed a beautiful, mystical novel of love, obsession and loss. Set on a remote Orkney island, Richard, a sixty-year-old English professor is captivated by his lovely young bride. The story unfolds slowly, beginning with excitement and the allure of romance, but the mood changes into something darker. The atmosphere is intense and the change dramatic, as Richard’s love grows obsessive. Sackville’s skill is in her poetic, lyrical writing, full of rich and emotive feelings, the ebb and flow of the waves and descriptions of the beauty, colours and wildness of the islands. An impressive novel.” Sandeep Mahal

Rupert Thomson - Secrecy

Rupert Thomson was born in Eastbourne, and educated at Christ’s Hospital School and Cambridge University, where he studied Medieval History and Political Thought. He is the author of eight critically acclaimed novels, including The Insult, which was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize, Death of a Murderer, which was shortlisted for the Costa Prize, and The Book of Revelation, which was made into a feature film by the Australian writer/director, Ana Kokkinos. In 2010 he published a memoir, This Party’s Got to Stop, which won the Writers’ Guild Non Fiction Book of the Year. His new novel, Secrecy, was inspired by the life and work of the eccentric Sicilian wax artist, Gaetano Giulio Zumbo. Rupert Thomson has recently moved back to London.

“A splendorous, dark examination of the artist's mind set in a politically tumultuous Florence where shadowed streets and alleys mask cruelty and beauty in equal measure. Secrecy, like one of Zummo's visionary creations, is a twisted hybrid of fantastical reality, stark and terrifying, that compels you to acknowledge its existence. Daringly bold and decadent, as only Thompson can.” Courttia Newland