On books.

Percy Dearmer (1867-1936) was an inventive and creative churchman. His son, Geoffrey Dearmer (1893-1996), was a fine WW1 poet who was re-discovered when he was aged 100. His grand-daughter, Juliet Woollcombe, now in her 80s, fulfilled the ambition of his feminist circle: she was ordained a priest in 1994. There is much more to be said about this remarkable family, and not least about its women. I attempt to tell some of that story, which I characterise as a pilgrimage, below the fold. Read more...

In my late father's papers I recently came across a typescript of Tides of Invasion: The Selsey story, a pageant by Geoffrey Dearmer. I knew the author was a distinguished WW1 poet, long neglected, who had one important but slight Selsey connection. Light investigation revealed nothing about Tides though it was great to find that Juliet Woollcombe, the author's daughter, knew a great deal about it and shared some ancilliary material as to its sole performance in 1965. Still, I have seen no other evidence of the pageant's existence or performance. Read more...

Stanley North was aged 28 when he made an imagined medieval manuscript of part of the Book of Common Prayer, "The Lord's Supper", the Communion service, in 1915. Its 150-odd pages became famous, in a circuitous way, when another of his illustrated manuscripts was given honourable mention in a famous series of "Girls' Books" by Elsie J Oxenham. More below the fold, as one might say in the world of newsprint.

  Read more...

Robert Harris has the knack of good timing. His new book is The Act of Oblivion about Charles II's legislation of 1660 and the subsequent treatment of the Regicides who tried and beheaded his father Charles I in 1649. This historical thriller arrives just as Charles III ascends the throne. That's a neat Carolingian coincidence without obvious connection, as yet. Oblivion is highly relevant more because it concerns so many conundrums and dilemmas which are as rich now as they ever were. Let's enumerate some of them. But I also stress this really is a ripping yarn, an outstanding historical novel and a thriller. Read more...

I enjoy and admire William James very much, though of his books I have only read Pragmatism more or less properly, and that several years ago. Recently, I came across WJ's essay, "Why is life worth living?" and found it firmly concerned with the issue dearest to me: what ought and can an individual contribute to human consciousness? Reading WJ more widely (if secondhand), it is thrilling to find that he beautifully bridges the 19th, 20th and 21 centuries. Read more...

I am interested in the fashions which blow through children's fiction and, a related matter, child-rearing mantras. This is a matter of the stories we tell children, and the stories we tell about them. They are as interesting for their consistency through our recent centuries as they are for their differences. Read more...

I recently (May, 2022) spent a wonderful few hours at the villa in Bath, Somerset where Ras Tafari, Emperor Haile Selassie spent 1936-40 in exile from his country, Ethiopia, which had been over-run by Italy's Fascist troops. Selassie has resonated with me since I talked with two of his admirers. I interviewed Bob Marley in July 1980 and read Wilfred Thesiger's A Life of My Choice (1987) and at some point interviewed the grand old man of desert travel and SAS action. It seems that of the two only Thesiger knew the Emperor personally. Here are a few reflections on the Emperor, and his place in history and in Bath. Read more...

This post attempts to put the books of Filson Young (1876-1938) my grandmother's second husband) into some sort of context. FY (as he was widely and familiarly known during his mostly very successful life as a writer) is the subject of a fine biography (available on this site). I aim to get rid of most of his books, because they are available online as full texts or facsimiles. Read more...

I am downsizing the collection of books I have inherited from my parents or bought for myself. Easiest to get rid of guiltlessly are those volumes (mostly per-1930) which can be found full-text or facsimile online (mostly at Hathi Trust, Internet Archive or the Gutenberg Project).

This post is a rough survey of my parents' library. I tend to list the hard copy volumes and note whether they are available online. If they are, I will let the hardcopies go to Oxfam, etc. My point is that their books represent a particular family background but more generally, the tastes of their time. Either way, they are a snapshot of a civilisation. Read more...

We are missing a huge opportunity to cheaply and globally spread pleasure and much else. I am a fan of the digital reproduction of real world artworks, indeed of hardcopy images of every sort, whether 2D or 3D. This piece discusses these issues as applied to maps, paintings, drawings, embroideries, fabrics and - last but by no means least - stained glass windows.  I am drawing attention to our generation's failure to post online digital images at medium or high resolution a far greater abundance of artwork. I am hoping to encourage publishers and owners of medium- and hi-res images, and curators of real world images, to get behind this sort of work. (Elsewhere I look at the 2D and 3D digital facsimile world of Factum Arte.)

I hope these four case studies may make the points. Read more...