Reading Matters

Beatrix Potter plaque marks her childhood home

I don't know how many times I've walked past this attractive plaque over the past 13 or so years, but whenever I see it I curse myself for not having a camera. Thank goodness for smartphones, because when I strolled past it on Saturday afternoon, during a 15km walk to Chelsea and back (for lunch and then cake), I finally managed to take a snap.

The wording on the plaque reads:

Beatrix Potter, writer and artist, 1866 to 1943, lived in a house on this site from 1866 to 1913, erected by The Boltons Association, The Beatrix Potter Society and Frederick Warne & Co. in 1988.

It's located (almost) on the corner of Old Brompton Road and Bolton Place in Earls Court. To see a map of the location and find out some information about the author, visit the London Remembers website.

English Heritage suspends London's blue plaque scheme because of funding cuts

If you have ever traipsed around London you may well have spotted the odd blue disc or two adorning the facade of certain buildings. These are part of English Heritage's blue plaque scheme, which commemorates "the link between notable figures of the past and the buildings in which they lived and worked".

Many of these plaques celebrate writers — the one pictured right, for instance, marks the building where Lytton Strachey, critic, biographer and founding member of the Bloomsbury Group lived between 1880-1932.

The scheme, believed to be the oldest of its kind in the world, has been running for 146 years. But today English Heritage announced it is suspending the scheme because of Government funding cuts.

This isn't the first time the scheme has been suspended — it was put on hold from 1915 to 1919 and 1940 to 1947 because of war-time cutbacks — so let's hope it is reinstated very soon. But I wouldn't hold my breath: the present Coalition Government is ruthless when it concerns anything to do with culture and the arts — dare I mention the closure of Britain's public libraries?

Over the years I have much enjoyed spotting these literary landmarks — here's a few I've sourced from my photographic archive.

Patrick Hamilton: 2 Burlington Gardens, Chiswick
I wrote about this plaque when it was installed in February 2011.

Sir Henry Rider Haggard: 69 Gunterstone Road, West Kensington
I have walked past this building thousands of times over the past 12 years and never noticed it until very recently — he is most famous for penning King Solomon's Mines.

George Eliot: 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea
It's not entirely clear whether this is an "official" plaque — it doesn't seemed to be referenced on the English Heritage site. I wrote about this residence when I happened to walk past it last year.

Oscar Wilde: 34 Tite Street, Chelsea

Charles Dickens: BMA House, Tavistock Square, Bloomsbury
Again, not sure this is an "official" blue plaque.

Ian Fleming: 22 Ebury Street, Belgravia
I wrote about this plaque last April.

Thanks to @MarDixon for alerting me to this story.

Writing Britain: an exhibition for literature lovers

If you live in London you could be forgiven for thinking that the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and the London 2012 Olympics were the only big events happening this summer. But lovers of literature haven't been forgotten: for the next four months the British Library is staging a spectacular exhibition that showcases treasures from the nation's English language heritage. And what an exhibition it is!

I was recently invited to go on an exclusive curator-led tour of Writing Britain: Wastelands to Wonderlands and more than a week later I'm still mulling it over.

There are so many incredible items on display that I came away feeling totally overwhelmed. I'm not sure what impressed me most — that there were so many books and manuscripts on display, some of which have never been seen by the public before, or that it was so cleverly arranged in themes, rather than chronology. Its breadth and scope, which covers everything from William Shakespeare to JK Rowling — and everything in between — is equally breath-taking. 

There are more than 150 literary works on display divided into six different themes — rural dreams, dark satanic mills, wild places, Cockney visions, beyond the city, and waterlands — relating to various British landscapes and environments.

Exhibition highlights

There are (literally) dozens of highlights — and if you're a fan of the English classics you won't be disappointed, because it's stuffed to the brim with Brontes and Hardys and Conan Doyles et al. But given my preference for 20th and 21st century literature, I was delighted to see:

• Kazuo Ishiguro's manuscript for The Remains of the Day

• Angela Carter's manuscript for Wise Children

• George Orwell's manuscript map, diary page and letter illustrating his experiences in the north of England, later published as The Road to Wigan Pier
  

• JG Ballard's manuscripts for Crash and Kingdom Come
  

• Ian McEwan's typewritten manuscript for On Chesil Beach

• Daphne Du Maurier's early plan for Rebecca, which was used as evidence when the author was unsuccessfully sued for plagarism. (See the US District Court stamp in the photograph above.)

• JK Rowling's original manuscript for her first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, which she famously wrote in a cafe in Edinburgh. Interestingly, the curator confessed that the last time they borrowed this manuscript from the author, it was simply popped in the post, but this time around it came via special delivery!

I found it particularly fascinating to see the handwriting of so many famous writers and the notebooks or type of paper they chose to write in: Charles Dickens' was particularly messy and full of scribbles; Arthur Conan Doyle's was scrupulously neat and tidy; Angela Carter had a preference for yellow legal pads; and Lewis Carroll drew amazing pictures and had perfect print-like writing.

How to book a curator-led tour

If you fancy visiting the exhibition, it runs until 25 September 2012. I would recommend giving yourself at least an hour, possibly two, to check it out. As well as letters, photographs, manuscripts, notebooks, maps, drawings, poems and song lyrics to look at and admire, you can also listen to sound recordings and watch a short film.

For a limited time visitors can get a curator-led tour for the normal ticket price of £9 — I highly recommend this as it helps to have someone explain what you are looking at and why certain items were chosen or acquired.

The curator-led tours take place every Tuesday evening between 6.30 and 7.15pm — the first one is tomorrow, June 7 — and every Thursday between 3.30 and 4.15pm until 5 July. The special tour tickets can be booked online or at the British Library box office. Don't miss it!

Authors' Walk of Fame, Toronto

You've heard of the Hollywood Walk of Fame. And if you've ever been to Hong Kong you might be familiar with the Avenue of Stars.

But have you heard of the Authors' Walk of Fame in Toronto, Canada?

According to the official website, the Toronto Book Awards were established in 1974 to honour "books of literary or artistic merit that are evocative of Toronto". There were three winners in the first year: William Kurelek's O Toronto, Desmond Morton's Mayor Howland and Richard Wright's In the Middle of a Life.

The awards have been issued annually ever since — the finalists and winner share the $15,000 prize pool — and winners include everyone from Margaret Atwood (Cat's Eye, 1999) to Anne Michaels (Fugitive Pieces, 1997). (There is a full list of winners here.)

Sadly, the associated plaques on the Authors' Walk of Fame appear to have stopped in the early 1990s. Which is a shame. I really enjoyed accidentally (but not literally) stumbling upon the walk during my visit to Toronto earlier this month.

 

The walk is located near the Horseshoe Tavern on Queen Street West in Downtown Toronto.

Wouldn't it be great if more book awards were memorialised in this way? Which awards would you like to see set in stone?

A visit to the World's Biggest Bookstore, Toronto, Canada

When I recently went to Toronto — or should that be Toronno, because that's how the locals pronounce it — I had envisaged that I would visit book stores, such as Chapters and Indigo and Pages, to stock up on Canadian novels. But my trip was far from literary. I didn't do any reading. And I wasn't interested in buying books, especially as my baggage limit was 23kg.

It was only when scooting around town on a rather cold, miserable day on one of those jump-on, jump-off tourist buses that Mr Reading Matters spied this barn off downtown Yonge Street that I suddenly had an itch to visit it. We did so the next day.

The store wears its badge of pride on its red-and-white facade in giant 20-foot letters. But is it really the world's biggest bookstore? According to Wikipedia it isn't — that honour goes to a branch of Barnes and Noble in New York — but when it opened in 1980 (in a converted bowling alley) the claim was true.

That said, it does have 20km of shelving and I think I might have explored at least half of it!

The interior is divided into sections for different genres and categories of books. (Apologies, I didn't take photographs: I'm of the old school which believes you should ask permission before photographing the interior of shops and I was too busy perusing the shelves to do that.) It also includes a rather shoddy "discount" section at the rear filled with decorative household items — candles, cushions and so on — and children's toys. (Bypass it unless you're looking for something especially cheap or tatty to buy.)

Of course, I headed to the fiction section, where I was hoping to find an area devoted solely to Canadian writers. There was one, but it wasn't particularly good and in the event I found that most Canadian-penned novels were already nestled alongside their international counterparts on the literary fiction shelves. I honestly could have spent all day browsing this part of the shop — roughly the equivalent size of the fiction floor in Waterstone's Piccadilly branch here in London — but I was conscious of boring Mr Reading Matters half to death. We spent maybe an hour in the shop, enough to get a flavour of it and for me to find several tomes to purchase.

It was only while standing in line for the cash register that I spied another sizable section filled with heavily discounted hardcover novels — all billed as "something for mom" as part of an upcoming Mother's Day promotion — which I'm glad I hadn't seen earlier. I would have  bought most of this stock except for that pesky baggage allowance!

Here's my haul — all Canadian except for Water Ghosts, which was just $3.99

• Vincent Lam's The Headmaster's Wager (this was a gift from KevinfromCanada)
• Jane Urquhart's Sanctuary Line
• Lauren B. Davis's Our Daily Bread (I actually bought this at Toronto airport)
• Elizabeth Hay's Alone in the Classroom
• Shawna Yang Ryan's Water Ghosts
• Wayne Johnston's Human Amusements

If you fancy visiting the World's Biggest Bookstore (a division of Indigo Books) you will find it at 20 Edward Street, Toronto, Ontario M5G 1C9, Canada. Tel: (416) 977 7009.

Remembering John McGahern (12 November 1934 – 30 March 2006)

"The best of life is lived quietly, where nothing happens but our calm journey through the day, where change is imperceptible and the precious life is everything..."

Today marks the sixth anniversary of Irish writer John McGahern's death.

Last March I had the privilege of going on a self-guided trip to "McGahern country" but never got around to blogging about it — apart from a quick post about the John McGahern Library at Lough Rynn Castle Hotel, just outside of Mohill in Co. Leitrim.

Mr Reading Matters and I stayed at the rather wonderful (and luxurious) hotel for a couple of nights. It was the perfect base to explore the area, where McGahern spent much of his life.

The weather was glorious — blue skies and sunshine, so unusual for Ireland where it can teem with rain for months on end. And as we tootled along the roads of McGahern's native Leitrim we got a real sense of the beautiful landscape — rolling green hills, woodlands and lakes — that the writer loved so much.

Of course, there's no "McGahern Country" map that you can follow — Discover Ireland hasn't wised up to that one yet — so much of our adventure was based on internet research and reference to a tour that Trevor Cook made a few years ago.

We got lost a few times, and had one hair-raising episode in our hire car when we thought the wilds of rural Ireland would swallow us whole. We were looking for the farmhouse that McGahern had supposedly spent some time in as a child, but the gravel road we followed — and which we had spent a good half-hour looking for — lead us a merry dance through bumpy terrain and a wild woodland. Eventually it turned into a boreen (rural track) masquerading as a swamp.

As the hedgerows closed in around us and the surface of the track got muddier and muddier, it seemed inevitable that we were going to get bogged (not long after the photograph above was taken the road conditions deteriorated drastically). But Mr Reading Matters, who was driving, held his nerve and pushed on through (I kept my eyes closed). And then, just when we least expected it, we turned a corner where there was a quiet stretch of tarmac waiting to meet us. The sense of relief was enormous.

We never did find that farmhouse.

But we did find plenty of other landmarks associated with McGahern. Here are some of them:

This plaque on the footpath in Ballinamore commemorates McGahern's last novel, That They May Face the Rising Sun, which was published in 2001. It sits at the foot of a memorial bench (see the photograph at the top of this post).

Fenagh Abbey, in Fenagh, which is built on the site of a 6th Century monastery founded by St Caillin. It sits atop a hillside overlooking the local village and surrounding landscape. In That They May Face the Rising Sun, this is the graveyard where Johnny Murphy is buried.

The Barracks in Cootehall, just over the border in Co. Roscommon, which is where McGahern's father, a guard, was based and where the family, including John, lived. This is also the basis for the barracks in McGahern's debut novel of the same name.

This is McGahern's plain but dignified grave. He is buried with his mother, who died of breast cancer when he was 10 years old, in the grounds of St Patrick's church, Aughawillan. The inscription on the cross reads: "Susan McManus McGahern, NT / 2 May 1902 - 28 June 1944 / John McGahern / 12 November 1934 - 30 March 2006"

You can read all my reviews of McGahern's work on my McGahern page.

Trevor Cook's piece on how John McGahern can help you better understand life is also worth a read.

And McGahern's obituary published in The Guardian is worth revisiting if you wish to find out more about his life and his work.

The Venetian island that inspired Ernest Hemingway

I've just returned to a rather wet, drab London after three days away in exotic — and sunny — Venice, one of my favourite places in the world. (This was my third visit.)

It's usually at this point I wax lyrical about a book shop I visited on my travels or share my bounty of bookish finds, but alas when one goes abroad to a European country English-language books can be hard to find. And anyway, the whole point of the trip — which was a lovely surprise and treat from Mr Reading Matters — was simply to get away from London, relax and enjoy a few days respite from the never-ending job hunt, not to find material for the blog!

Still, I can't help myself, can I? When we visited Torcello, an island 10km north-east of Venice, Mr Reading Matters mentioned that it had a connection to Ernest Hemingway. Now, I've never read any Hemingway although there's a few in my TBR, so this little literary fact didn't exactly blow me away.

But the island did.

It was gorgeous and rustic and oh-so peaceful, in complete contrast to the hustle-and-bustle of Venice proper. We got there via two vaporettos shortly before noon. The sun was out and, aside from a large group of French teenagers on a school excursion, we pretty much had the place to ourselves.

There's not very much on Torcello — except lots of long reed-like grasses, a cobbled pathway along a canal and a famous bridge (see above).

A view of the campanile of the Church of Santa Maria Assunta on the Venetian Island of Torcello. Photograph reproduced from Wikipedia under a Creative Commons Licence.

There's also a few houses, a museum and the beautiful Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, founded in 639 and filled with the most amazing Byzantine mosaics on the floor and walls, and the church of Santa Fosca. Unfortunately the majestic campanile, which we had particularly wanted to see, was under scaffolding, hence my use of the Wikipedia image above.

The island also has several restaurants and an inn, the most famous of which is the Locanda Cipriani (see above), which is where Hemingway stayed in the autumn of 1948. According to the inn's official website, he spent the whole month of November "at Locanda Cipriani, dividing his time between duck hunting, writing his novel Across the River and Into the Trees and at his table alongside the Locanda's fogher. The impressions and memories of that November in Torcello are forever imprinted on the pages of his novel".

He loved the island so much he apparently returned with his wife in 1954, although the description on the inn's website is a little purple-prosed: "It was a day filled with caviar and vodka, in the gentle springtime sun."

At the time I hadn't clocked that this was Hemingway's establishment of choice, and we ended up eating in a restaurant a little further away that had tables on an outdoor terrace. It turned out to be the best way to appreciate the island's rustic charms because as we sat eating our lunch in the sun — seafood pasta accompanied by a carafe of red wine — we could hear a rooster crowing next door and the sound of chickens scratching in the garden, while a rather fat-looking cat sat at our feet.

I can entirely appreciate why Hemingway apparently fell in love with the place and kept coming back. Now all I need to do is to hunt out a copy of the book that the island inspired!

The house where George Eliot spent the last few weeks of her life in 1880

Cheyne Walk is a lovely street in Chelsea that is lined with tall, elegant houses that overlook the Thames. It has many literary (and artistic and musical) connections. And if you walk along it and admire the houses your eye will spot numerous blue plaques heralding who lived and died there in times gone by.

Number 4 will be of interest to fans of George Eliot, for this is the house she spent the last few weeks of her life before she died of kidney failure in December 1880.

According to my copy of London: City of Words, George had "moved there with her young husband, John Cross, after the death of her long-term partner, George Lewis".

The entry for No 4 Cheyne Walk on the British History Online Website adds: "On December 3rd the house was taken by the famous novelist, Mrs. Cross, better known as George Eliot, whose residence, short as it was, has given it its chief interest. She came here with high hopes of better health than had latterly been her lot and of gaining pleasure from the beautiful riverside; but it was only for a few days. She caught a chill at a concert in St. James's Hall, and died on the night of December 22nd."

This illustration (see left, published via Wikipedia Commons) shows what the house looked like in 1881.

You might also like to know that Keith Richards, he of Rolling Stones fame, moved into No 3 during the summer of 1969. What funny neighbours they would have made had George and Keith lived in the same century!

A visit to Martello Bookshop, Rye

One of the first things I do when I go on holiday is look for a book shop — hence I have a whole series of posts on this blog about book shops I've visited.

My last out-of-London visit was to the Martello Bookshop in Rye, which is a beautiful medieval town near the coast in East Sussex. The High Street is particularly pretty — it is rather narrow (just one-car wide) and is lined with elegant shopfronts. It sits on top of a hill, affording terrific views over the surrounding area, and there are cobble-stoned laneways running off it lined with Elizabethan houses. It's all very quaint and picturesque.

When I popped into the bookshop, at the port end of the street, it was very quiet — it was midweek and I was the only one browsing. But a succession of locals kept dropping by, requesting orders, and there was a nice friendly vibe to the place.

The shop is very small, but the selection is varied and includes the usual suspects: local interest, fiction, cookery, children's, new releases and so on.

I snapped up a two-volume set of E.F. Benson's Mapp and Lucia series for £4, which I was delighted to find. Benson has a Rye connection: he lived there for many years and served as mayor in 1934. Some of the stories are set in a town called Tilling, which is supposedly based on Rye, so I am looking forward to reading them to see if anything is recognisable.

I also purchased PG Wodehouse's Something Fresh, which was on sale for £3, only to discover that I've already read it. In my defence, it did have a different cover. (Does anyone else do this — buy books they already own by mistake?)

If you fancy visiting the Martello Bookshop you will find it at 26 High Street, Rye, East Sussex. Tel: 01797 222242. They don't seem to have an official website, but you can follow them on Twitter @MartelloBooks

Reykajavik becomes fifth UNESCO City of Literature

Congratulations to Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland, which has just been named as a UNESCO City of Literature.

It now joins four other cities — Edinburgh, Melbourne, Iowa City and Dublin — in celebrating and promoting literature in all its many facets.

The official press release is here.

My reviews of Icelandic literature — mainly the novels of Arnaldur Indriðason — are here.