Great Literary Friendships Janet Phillips (Bodleian, £16.99)
Imagine our debt of gratitude to Ezra Pound, who edited a young poet and made him dump ‘He Do the Police in Different Voices’ and instead call his long poem The Waste Land. Bless Maxwell Perkins who rejected ‘Under the Red, White and Blue’ and insisted on The Great Gatsby. Which gets me to the book at hand.
I fell for it immediately. Not for the cover (more decorative than bookish), but because I already have two volumes on the subject, The Company They Kept: Writers on Unforgettable Friendships, in which writers describe the personal and intellectual relationships they’ve had with fellow writers and artists—Seamus Heaney on Thomas Flanagan, Joseph Brodsky on Isaiah Berlin: a literary wander into private lives without feeling prurient.
I thought that Great Literary Friendships would be more of the same, but it’s not. These friendships are created by the writer and live in the pages of novels and plays. If this sounds rather academic (the author is an editor at Bodleian Library Publishing— her modest biography was nine words long, including her name), don’t worry. A few pages in you feel as if you are in the company of a sprightly, charming, wellread friend who has read—and re-read during lockdown—many books you have read, quite a few you’ve meant to read and a few you’ll give a miss. You also realise early on that she reads more attentively than you do.
Denne historien er fra February 16, 2022-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra February 16, 2022-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Kitchen garden cook - Apples
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The original Mr Rochester
Three classic houses in North Yorkshire have come to the market; the owner of one inspired Charlotte Brontë to write Jane Eyre
Get it write
Desks, once akin to instruments of torture for scribes, have become cherished repositories of memories and secrets. Matthew Dennison charts their evolution
'Sloes hath ben my food'
A possible paint for the Picts and a definite culprit in tea fraud, the cheek-suckingly sour sloe's spiritual home is indisputably in gin, says John Wright
Souvenirs of greatness
FOR many years, some large boxes have been stored and forgotten in the dark recesses of the garage. Unpacked last week, the contents turned out to be pots: some, perhaps, nearing a century old—dense terracotta, of interesting provenance.
Plants for plants' sake
The garden at Hergest Croft, Herefordshire The home of Edward Banks The Banks family is synonymous with an extraordinary collection of trees and shrubs, many of which are presents from distinguished friends, garnered over two centuries. Be prepared to be amazed, says Charles Quest-Ritson
Capturing the castle
Seventy years after Christian Dior’s last fashion show in Scotland, the brand returned under creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri for a celebratory event honouring local craftsmanship, the beauty of the land and the Auld Alliance, explains Kim Parker
Nature's own cathedral
Our tallest native tree 'most lovely of all', the stately beech creates a shaded environment that few plants can survive. John Lewis-Stempel ventures into the enchanted woods
All that money could buy
A new book explores the lost riches of London's grand houses. Its author, Steven Brindle, looks at the residences of plutocrats built by the nouveaux riches of the late-Victorian and Edwardian ages
In with the old
Diamonds are meant to sparkle in candlelight, but many now gather dust in jewellery boxes. To wear them today, we may need to reimagine them, as Hetty Lintell discovers with her grandmother's jewellery
