100 Good Things About Growing Old, # 34 - I stop throwing out books

I've realised it doesn't matter if I don't continue to clear out my books and I don't get rid of any more of them.

 At first, I took photographs of the piles I was about to take to the charity shop, in case I missed them, or wanted to remind myself of why I was chucking them out. The pile above was one of my very early disposals, and I have never missed any of them.

 Similarly, this second pile of disposals has never been missed.

The Martin Amis dual biography, with his father Kingsley, did make me pause a little, hence it got its own picture, centre stage.  However, I have never thought of it since disposal.  I can't even remember which charity shop I took it to. There is more to say on this subject.

I had, initially, been taking them to my nearest charity shop, which I can walk to.  After a few trips, I noticed that none of my books were actually on the shelves. I enquired about this, and was told that, unless the books were in pristine condition, and particularly if paperbacks, as new. they would not be sold in this charity's network of shops.  What would happen to them, I asked, aghast.  If of vintage interest (I did not bother to find out what qualified as vintage, being so disgusted with what followed), they would go to the vintage branch shop. Everything else would be sent to poor foreign countries that need books, or be pulped.  That was my last visit to this charity, and henceforth I have favoured Oxfam, which takes anything and is grateful.  I have seen my books on their shelves, and they put their books in order properly.

This is what my downstairs bookcase looked like before operations commenced.  It's still pretty much the same.  Some books have gone upstairs  - that brown one, third from right on middle shelf, is a case in point.  It is a biography of Lord Mountbatten. I read about a third of it, lost interest, but thought I might come back to it later, so it has gone from immediately opposite my desk to upstairs in the spare bedroom.  However, others have replaced it, so the shelf is still double stacked.  I am proud to own copies of historical biographies of Edward I, Edward II, Edward III and Edward V.  These are all now in the gap shown above.  I volunteer at a historical property which was built in the reign of Edward I, and occupied by the same family through the reigns of Edward II and III.  Edward V is not part of this collection, and I intend at some point to donate this book to the Richard III visitors' centre in Leicester, but as yet I have not felt ready to let it go.

Above, this is what my upstairs bookcase in the spare bedroom looks like.  It contains four sets of shelves like these, all floor to ceiling, all double stacked.

I have given some away to charity shops. The above biography is beautifully written, and I read and enjoyed it, but knew I would never need it again because I can't be bothered to actually read any novels by Trollope.  I find them too long and boring.  I might have persevered in my youth, when how to occupy the long hours of the day seemed a problem.  Now that I am not even working, but no day seems long enough for all I want to achieve in it, life is too short for Trollope.

Here are the three novels which I gave away with the biography, all completely unread, and never regretted.

However, after several months of sorting and disposing, I realised I was becoming rather sad and unhappy.  Nothing else having changed in my life, I came to the conclusion that it was because I had chucked out enough, and should stop.  In fact, I concluded that I do not NEED to chuck out any more books.  I was scraping on a sore nerve by trying to find more books that I could do without.

I've got rid of all the ones which were completely painless, and the next tranches which I thought to get rid of were causing me pain, and making me feel regretful in anticipation.  Enough is enough.

This afternoon, I took back to the upstairs bookshelves three armfuls of books which I had brought downstairs ready to give away, but had found I couldn't get as far as doing so.  I already feel much better.  It's sort of the opposite of a purge. 

If anything, what has been purged is the guilt about owning so many books, and the accompanying thought that I should reduce my collection. I feel a calm sense of satisfaction.

A People's History of England by A.L.Morton

I mentioned this book in my last post, in connection with The Left Book Club.  I dug out my previous review of the book, reproduced below.

A find from the Salvation Army bookshop.   It cost 10p, but I had difficulty buying it even at that price, because the volunteer behind the counter showed a preference for putting it into the rubbish bin.  I expressed horror, and he tried to placate me by saying that actually it would be recycled.  I continued to declaim against pulping books.  Was it perhaps a literal interpretation of the wording on the cover: “Not For Sale to the General Public” – that caused his attempt to prevent me buying the book?

I persisted, and ultimately, giving me the impression that he was doing me a great favour, he let me pay 10p for it, so I shut up about the sin of pulping books in case he changed his mind.

It is true that, on the cover, the words "NOT FOR SALE TO THE PUBLIC" appear in bold capitals.  However, the book was published in 1938, and has passed through at least one second-hand store, as there is a price of 50p pencilled on the flyleaf.  I doubt whether such scruples were the cause of the problem, more the ancient and run-down condition of the tome, perhaps lowering the tone of the “Sally Ann”.

Anyway, I finished it.  Oh, how glad I was to come to the end.  I had to force myself to persevere to the last page.

The book, from which I had high hopes of learning what it was like to be a peasant or a woman throughout history, (under-represented, I agree, in conventional histories)  disappointed me hugely on this score.

It presents English history entirely in terms of class struggle.  This interpretation was muted in the first eighteen centuries of the Christian era, since the classes then struggling against their persecutors were, in turn, the upper middle, then the merchant and then the bourgeois class.

For none of these will a true leftie will have the slightest sympathy. In fact the author can barely disguise the disgust with which he is forced to acknowledge their role in paving the way for the only people worth anything, the industrial working class.

By the time we got to the industrial revolution, I was considering suicide.  I realised that I was suffering from survivor guilt.  It was hard, in fact, to understand quite how the human race has survived at all, given the poverty, exploitation and general misery described. One begged for mercy, as one traced the steps by which the ruling class tramped on, starved and extracted wealth from the rest of mankind.

The increasingly frequent cycles of bust, following increasingly short and fragile periods of boom, present a further cause for ongoing anxiety. It was only huge wars, World War One in particular, (the book was completed in 1937), which interrupted this process of terminal decline.  The economic theory underpinning the book insists that capitalism really does not have any future. But wait, isn't that what the left is really all about? The book is propaganda, after all, not history.   And only members of the “oppressed working classes” count as the “People” of the title.  Anyone who is not oppressed by a minority elite is not a person at all.   This is a book written in a single key – the tone-deaf propaganda of the hard left. 

Margaret Cole - a forgotten figure

Two weeks ago, I sprained my ankle.  The accident happened in part due to my haste in wishing to visit some new charity shops in a town I haven't visited before.  I've been sitting with my foot up and reading.

So here is a post in homage to my great affection for both books and charity shops.



"Growing Up Into Revolution" by Margaret Cole

This book is a first edition, but only because it was never popular enough to call for a second.  The book was marked by the charity shop as £1, then marked down to half price.  I would have bought it anyway.

 



Did Michael steal, buy or donate the book from/to the Library?

It was written in 1948, published in 1949, and owned by someone called Michael Graham in 1950.

I have touched on Margaret Cole in a post about detective stories, but my interest in her originated in two facts.  Firstly, she was an exact contemporary of Vera Brittain - both born in 1893. I have written several posts about Vera Brittain and her contemporaries. And even male contemporaries.

Secondly, Margaret was a pioneering female writer, socialist and feminist.  Of course, these are among the reasons why Vera interests me, but Margaret differs in one major respect.  She was less involved in World War One.  Margaret's husband, GDH Cole, was exempted on account of vital war work, and her brother, Raymond Postgate, was imprisoned as a conscientious objector.  (Vera is, of course, most famous for her War biography, "Testament of Youth").

Margaret, much less famous altogether, did not write anything so memorable.  Her autobiography is a fairly amateurish and intimate effort, and all the more charming and interesting for that. 

She is brazen about her middle-class upbringing - a family home in which two maids slept in the attic, a father who was an academic at Cambridge, and servants from the first day of her married life.  In this she is no different from Vera Brittain.  Both write without a trace of apology of having a live-in couple to "do" for them, and nursemaids for the children. 

It's hard for someone like me, and my contemporaries, to read this without fury and scorn.  Having had no such luxuries, we struggled to bring up our small families, of two children maximum, and achieve anything at all in professional working life.  A woman had to be truly exceptional in energy, ability, contacts, and confidence to do more than work part-time or anywhere other than a school.  This was in the 1970's before the Equal Pay Act, before free nursery provision and before extensive maternity pay and leave. 

However, we did have washing-machines and vacuum cleaners.  These are, in my view, the top two labour-saving devices.  Later, we had dishwashers, tumble-driers and microwaves.  Disposable nappies came along in time for the second child.  We had fridge-freezers, central heating, electric ovens, indoor plumbing. And our own car, and bank account. 

Without domestic help, (in pre-war days one servant of some kind per actual family member seemed the norm) Margaret and Vera (and all the others) would have had to spend their entire time scrubbing floors, operating mangles and dolly-tubs, boiling water on primitive gas stoves, washing up without rubber gloves, walking to local shops every day for perishable foods, and lighting fires on open hearths which then had to be cleared and emptied daily.

So really, for women without her "standard of living" (Margaret's own words) anything they wrote would be likely to be "Got up at six.  List of chores.  Put children to bed, went to bed, end." Every day for three decades.

Margaret writes about her relationship with Beatrice Webb, who was born a generation earlier.  For that generation, all the above applied, but it was also necessary to have NO children (Beatrice was childless), and ALSO to have a private income.  Because doing any kind of work at all would have been incompatible with achieving something in the realms of thought, social activism, and writing.  Virginia Woolf, born thirty years after Beatrice and ten years before Margaret, wrote about this memorably in her essay "A Room of One's Own".  Life was also tough for any man born without contacts or independent wealth, but it was not nearly as bad for a man.  They did not have to do any domestic work, or bear and nurture children.

So although one's first reaction is fury on learning that Margaret was educated privately at Roedean, (synonymous with "elitist" during my Sussex childhood), one has to accept that for women, certainly, conditions of life were such that nothing could be achieved at all without a certain level of advantage. It does not mean that Margaret was a hypocrite, or insincere in her devotion to liberal socialism.

The work of Beatrice Webb, founder member of the Fabian Society, co-founder of the London School of Economics, and of the New Statesman, provided a platform for efforts a generation later by those who fought for women's rights in the 1920's and 1930's.  People like Margaret Cole continued that work, and she and her Fabian contemporaries helped to build the platform which led to the first truly successful Labour government in 1945.

You have to read a book by Vera Brittain's daughter, Shirley Williams, called "Politics is for People" to realise just how integral the aims of Labour party pioneers have been to the society we take for granted today.  Here's a list of the objectives Baroness Williams noted down in the 1960's, which have since been enacted in law.
(Although such is the pace of change that some of them have been written out again, or they survive under different names).

The Freedom of Information Act
Educational Maintenance Allowances
Parent Governors and School Councils
Traning Allowances for Youth Unemployed
The Scottish Assembly
Devolution and Regional Government generally
Flexitime
Biotechnology and Renewable Fuels
Private Finance Initiatives (PFI)
Regional Small Business Agencies funded by central government
Breaking down social segregation in housing

In fact, the only idea Baroness (sic) Williams listed which has not been pursued to the Statute Book is the abolition of Private Education. 

Margaret Cole, her husband and her contemporaries worked tirelessly to pursue the fundamental aim of improving the lot of the large majority of people born without privilege or advantages.  The fact that all these people were privately educated, and owned homes which even Cabinet Ministers would today find beyond their reach, is not the point.  Although in truth it's taken me a while to get that point in perspective.  And, crucially, Margaret Cole was a mother of three, in a time when mothers were not expected to do anything at all outside the home.

She dedicates her book to her first-born, her elder daughter Jane.

Jane, born in 1921, went to America as a war bride in 1946.  Her mother writes movingly of the normal emotions and reactions of grandparents being strained to the utmost because of the 3,000 mile distance between them.

All in all, this book is a fascinating insight into a lost and forgotten age.  We should pay more attention to history, and facts. Young women today who revel in their freedoms, their careers and their more equal relationships, might be surprised to learn that less than 100 years ago their lot would have been entirely different, were it not for the work of people like Margaret Cole.  Of whom almost no one has ever heard. 


 

 

No time like the present

Is this the naffest gift ever?



Why is it that unasked for gifts, from people who are not one's friends, are so awful?
Because they are bought without thought, from an online menu, ready wrapped, with a pre-printed unsigned tag.  This one came from a commercial organisation, and ticks all those boxes.

What are the gifts that mean most?  A carefully selected book, even if it is from a charity shop.  A hand-made item of any sort, even if it is from a charity shop.  A candle, some hand-cream. 

What would I like most for a gift?  Peace, charity, goodwill, friends, and the gift of keeping my mouth shut more of the time.

What are the other gifts I should be glad of possessing? 

As I steam into my sixties, I am uncomfortably aware that life is not going to go on for ever.

So the wonderful quote on the exterior wall of the British Library, as you approach from St Pancras Station, is apt:

"Today is a Gift, That's Why They Call it the Present".

Chucking Out Books

Deselected

It hurts to chuck out books.  I've got to do it, though.  Horrified to discover that some of the pile above have not been opened for over 30 years, since we moved to this house in fact.

 

I put them into piles -

 

1. dustbin  - Items so out of date that not even a charity shop would want them - old guide-books and maps - the type of thing which you would now use the internet to research.  But not proper books.

 

2. charity shop which has gift-aid card - the better quality hardbacks which it might be worth the time and trouble of recovering gift-aid.

 

3. charity shop which virtually gives books away (no sorting - 49 pence universal pricing and on top of that two for the price of one) - poor quality paper-backs not worth spending time over.

 

4. charity shop which sorts books and has sections for classics and antiquarian -  penguin classics, those silver-grey spines dating from the 1970's, once much-loved, but not read since, well, the 1970's.

 

5. fellow book-lover.  I gave him 3 classic, little-known works, of dry irony.  Caveat - "do throw them away if you don't want them!"  Fellow book-lover physically shuddered, throwing up his hands in protest at the very idea.  He is ten years younger than me, and has not yet reached the stage of having to get rid of his books.

 

6. garage pending pile.  Pending what?  - Pending probable abandonment by taking trip to charity shop not listed above. My friend, who helped there, said that this shop regularly sends van-loads of books to be pulped.  It cannot be me that takes the decision to throw them out.  If that is the fate that awaits.  This pile includes those orange Penguins, which are three novels by DH Lawrence. I could never read them again.  Horrible, sexist, over-emotional stuff.  They are real books, though.  It's like taking a dog to the vet for the last time.  Dogs know. Do books know?

Holiday Reading

 



Here is a book I picked up at a Sue Ryder shop.  It was outside in a box marked "two for £1". So old and rundown that it did not merit a place on the bookshelves inside. 

 

(The other one I bought for the £1 was a slim paperback of Shakespeare's sonnets, a substantial section of which is printed upside down.  Odd).

 

The book does not have a date inside it, either in the opening print credits or in the editor's introduction, so I did not know from which decade it hailed.  I guessed the 1930's.  It does smell. This reminds me of my friend, who won't buy a second-hand book on principle because they don't feel nice, and they smell.  I will admit it doesn't feel nice. 

 

I've since looked it up on Amazon and my guess was apparently correct, mid-1930's. 

 

I bought it because I had a great friend many years ago who enthused about Bentley's book "Trent's Last Case", much praised as a classic detective story. 

 

Further, I do love an old hardback, especially one from the 1930's.  And I do love a "dip-in and dip-out" type of book, which seems like ideal holiday reading.

 

The treasures within exceeded even my expectations.  There was a story by Ronald Knox, the uncle of Penelope Fitzgerald.  Penelope Fitzgerald made her name with a biography of all her uncles.  It is called "The Knox Brothers" and I bought it (of course) after reading the excellent biography of Penelope by Hermione Lee.  It's in a pile to come to later, in the winter I think.

 

I admit the detective story by Ronald Knox was not very good, but it is indicative of the snobbery and elitism of the 1930's, that if you were from the upper middle class, with an Oxbridge education, and preferably a man as well, you could get mediocre work published. 

 

Another story is by GDH and Margaret Cole, a husband and wife team of elite 1920's academics, who are more usually noted for their socialist economic theories.  I had no idea that they also wrote detective stories.  Again, it is not particularly brilliant, but sheds an interesting light on their otherwise austere public image.

 

The best story I have read so far in this collection is by Dorothy L Sayers, still a classic author in print and still being adapted for TV and other media after all these years. 

It is the only story which has so far made me want to read more by this author.  Oh, and one other thing, of course, is that Dorothy L Sayers was a contemporary of my great heroine, Vera Brittain.  They were students together at Oxford.

 

The common feature of the other selections I have read is that they are ALL set in one of three locations.  Either in an Oxford College or a gentleman's club or in the home of an eccentric old upper-middle-class gentleman.  This old gentleman invariably has a housekeeper or butler, lives alone and has been found dead, usually by the housekeeper/butler, who is immediately cast as a suspect.  Really it is a little bit tedious, and I stopped after reading four of these.  Another feature of the less well-written stories is that they make heavy weather of laying out the clues and the hindrances to discovery of the eventual murderer. 

 

It's interesting to note this as a stage in literary development, though, a curiosity, and a little light entertainment from time to time. 

 

The book is definitely holiday reading only, and I have put it aside for the time being. 

A Perfect Afternoon

Started at the Oxfam shop, where I was due to meet my friend after her Saturday morning volunteer shift ended at 1.00pm.  Any excuse to visit a charity shop is most delightful, and to add to the pleasure there was an Age Concern shop right next door.  I bought "My Dear, I Wanted toTell You" by Louisa Young, in the Age Concern shop.  This is a novel set in the First World War, by the grand-daughter of Robert Falcon Scott's widow, Kathleen, (from her second marriage), and was serialised on Woman's Hour on publication, so I am looking forward to reading it.

Passing next door to the Oxfam shop, I was delighted to find there a set of two cassette tapes of Shirley Williams giving talks to Woman's Hour (didn't realise the common link until this afternoon), in 1996.  She is talking about her childhood, about being the daughter of one of my favourite authors of all time, Vera Brittain, and then moving on to her life in politics.  Great listening- thank goodness we didn't throw out our last ghetto blaster in a recent clear-out, as it is the only machine in the house which I can play the tapes on.

Next I picked up a copy of "The Mitfords, Letters between Six Sisters" (published 2007), edited by Charlotte Mosley, a Mitford daughter-in-law (the surname tells you which one).  This, I nearly said, would add to my collection of Mitford books, but I don't actually have this collection.  I have passed every book on to elder daughter, and she has enjoyed them just as much as I have. Jessica Mitford's famous "Hons and Rebels", two novels by Nancy, a biography of all six sisters by Mary Lovell, and lastly, Debo Devonshire's memoir, "Wait for Me".

The last is very recent, and I purchased it following a visit by elder daughter and me to Chatsworth, which we both enjoyed very much.

I was about to leave with my friend, when I spotted  W Somerset Maugham's "Cakes and Ale", a very old book first published in 1930.  I don't find WSM interesting in himself, but having just read some biographical works about Thomas Hardy, I have come across a reference to this book several times.  Apparently it contains a descriptive parody of TH, which caused great offence to the latter's widow, Florence.

To my surprise, my friend told me her book group  had read this book.  As she is thinking of leaving her book group because they persist in picking boring books, this was not a great advertisement.  However, as I said, I have a particular motive for buying this, and may not read all of it.

My friend and I then went for lunch and spent the next three and a half hours talking non-stop.  This was most enjoyable.

Later, after I returned home. I was still in non-stop talk mode, and this annoyed hubby during "Strictly".  He put up with it for so long, and then could stand it no longer. "Will you PLEASE stop talking!"  He is, as I have said before, a man of few words.

However, nothing could detract from the pure pleasure of an afternoon spent with a very old friend, which included two charity shops, a kitchen shop, and much talk about books, our daughters, our holidays, families and a long shared history.

And So To Windsor and the Knights of the Garter

Taking with us the afore-mentioned book by the  ex-King, HRH the Duke of Windsor, KG, in order to look up references in the extensive index.  We were both fascinated to learn, in the great hall of St George, of the derivation of the Knights of the Garter, (KG).  Only in the mid-twentieth century was anyone not a Duke, Earl or Lord, or King of a foriegn land, designated with this honour. 

Round the walls of the hall are wooden panels, each listing, in numerical order, the name of every one of the  Knights since Edward III created the order in the distant past.  Each has his number. We have just reached the thousands, and I wanted to see who had the magic number 1,000.  It was Prince William, in 2008.  How lovely. We both think the world of the handsome prince.

As far as I could see, Stanley Baldwin was the first of common blood to be named KG.  Could it be a coincidence that he was also the Prime Minister who firmly blocked every avenue but abdication from the haplessly besotted Edward VIII? The designation is in the gift of the Sovereign. 

I had picked up from the book that the two brothers were very close, particularly in boyhood.  The popular story is that it was Elizabeth, the late Queen Mother, wife of younger brother George (who became George VI on the abdication), who put the boot in for the Windsors and spoiled any chance of reconciliation. Who knows. 

Anyway, it was interesting to note how no-one except Montgomery of Alamein and a handful of Conservative Prime Ministers (among them Margaret Thatcher) had made it on to the list.  We both found it amusing to note that Tony Blair has not been honoured, nor Gordon Brown.

I remarked ruefully that it was far too late in life now to make it my ambition to be honoured with the title of Knight of the Garter.

Later, we walked over the river to Eton.  I spotted an Age Concern shop, and acquired my eighth small teapot of the year, this one being a striking 1950's design in black and white.  It cost £1.  Hubby spotted a Gary Rhodes cookbook for £2.50 and bought it.  This is an amazing breakthrough - getting my husband into a charity shop at all, and then him actually buying a book!

A Fun Five Minutes

At lunchtime yesterday I went into the Amnesty International Bookshop on Mill Road, Cambridge.  Normally I try to resist the temptation, although it is  a mere three minute walk from my office.  I could probably buy up half the shop if I went in there every day.

Once I get in there, a feeling of intense excitement comes over me, similar to that which I feel on entering a large library.

All the books are beautifully categorised and each category is alphabetically ordered, so that it is easy to find a book one wishes to buy.

The till lady recognised me, and remembered that two years ago I asked to be notified when any book by Barbara Pym came into stock.

She pointed to a pile of Barbara Pym books which had just been donated, and were still sitting in a pile waiting to be shelved.  Since I made the request, I have bought almost all of her books, from various sources, but there was still one left I had not read, so of course I had to have it.  Next she showed me a biography of Barbara unknown to me, so I bought that as well, although it was a rather poor quality paper back.

We tried to remember the title of an edition of Barbara Pym's letters and diaries,  both of us failed.  We chatted about our reading habits, the relative pleasures of second-hand versus new books, and what might be the merits of the Kindle.  We agreed that, although all books look the same in the Kindle, and there is no pleasure in holding and looking at it, yet it has advantages.  Notably the free down-load of many classics and other out-of-copyright books.  I mentioned that a friend had downloaded some Dickens material which is unavailable outside academic libraries.

Via our use of libraries, we got on to the subject of HG Wells.  (I am currently reading David Lodge's recent and partly imaginary biography, on loan from my local library). "The man was obsessed with sex," was my verdict.  We were unanimous in our disparagement of HG.  She summed him up as "an unpleasant old goat!" which I thought completely apt.  Leading on from this train of thought, I spotted what is probably the only novel by Rebecca West which I have not read, so naturally that was also added to my purchases.

About to leave the shop, highly pleased with my haul, I suddenly remembered what I had come in for.  Ordnance Survey maps for my holidays this year.  Needless to say, there were none suitable for my planned journeys.  But I went out of the shop with a pile of books and a feeling of warmth, well-being, and the pleasure of having communed with a fellow book-addict.

Barbara Wootton "In a World I Never Made"

So, back to my book that almost no-one else has heard of.   I picked this book up in a National Trust second-hand bookshop on my holiday in Norfolk.  When my friend arrived to join me, complete with Kindle, I showed her my trophy.  She thinks second hand books are tacky and doesn't like to touch them.  Later on, she asked me if I'd heard of Barbara Wootton.  Seems my husband isn't the only one who doesn't listen to me!

Her question arose from the Ilkley Literature Festival.  Seems someone has written a biography of Barbara Wootton and was due to attend the Festival for a talk and book-signing.  Someone else then, has seen interest in this hitherto forgotten person. Maybe she will develop a following.

Barbara Wootton was born in 1898, to upper-middle class parents. Against her mother's wishes, she fought for the right to study a subject of her choice at University.  She lost her husband (of a day and a half's standing) in the First World War.  Are you following the drift of this?  Yes, it is because of my interest in Vera Brittain that I was first drawn to look up BW.

At that point most similarities come to a full stop.  Barbara was a very different person from Vera.

Barbara led, to all intents and purposes, the life of a single woman, even though she had in fact married her first love.  She also married a second time, although she eventually left George and they never had children.  The latter fact was because of the unsatisfactory character of George. 

BW led an exemplary life in public service, and was a career woman throughout.  This, in fact, was probably due to her mother's influence.  Her mother, a classics don, instructed young Barbara on her wartime engagement, at 19, that she must continue her education.  "My mother was ....adamant that the engagement should make no difference to my academic career.  No one knew what might be ahead, or when I might need to earn my own living, so I must at all costs equip myself with that essential prerequisite to independence, a university degree."

After taking an exceptional first-class degree, BW continued to be an academic and to serve as a magistrate, a BBC Governor, and on many public committees.  She was honoured to be one of the first four women admitted to the House of Lords. Her work pioneered the "Social Sciences".

You read a book of autobiography, not just to find out the dates and the facts.  You long for the emotion, and the nuggets.

Here are the nuggets.

BW wrote scornfully in Chapter 2 of the difference between her own reaction to multiple bereavements by the time she was 21, and the reaction of VB.

"Indeed, what infuriated many of us, when Vera Brittain published her "Testament of Youth" was the impression she conveyed that she alone of the nurses with whom she worked had to endure the anxiety of knowing that her beloved was at the front." 

Sorry, BW, impressive though your credentials, you are completely wrong.  VB conveyed no such thing.  What she DID do, incomparably well, was to convey every nuance of emotion, every stage of apprehension, bereavement and grief, in such a way that millions the world over could understand.  This is because she is a writer.  BW, an academic and social scientist, stated a few bald facts and, shocking though they were, never touched a nerve, in me at least.

Later on in the book BW comments on the journey of all those women born in the 1890's, who were brought up without any expectation of ever getting the vote, and lived to see women enter Parliament and begin to influence far-reaching changes in the law which would eventually lead to the Womens' Movement of the 1970's.  A further nugget is related below.

Her close associate in the journey towards independence, a school-friend called Dorothy, became a leading doctor, "renowned throughout the world for her medical researches.  When she was about to receive an honorary degree from an overseas university, a newspaper man, looking down the list of honorary graduands, was heard to remark that he had not previously realised that Dorothy could be a man's Christian name."    I still laugh when I re-read this.

Finally, though, BW will be remembered, not for her writing, but for her contribution to society and her place in the pivotal years between the First World War and the 1960's

And more of my self-indulgent activities on holiday

Two visits to Felbrigg (National Trust) second hand bookshop, two visits to Blickling (National Trust) second hand bookshop.  Dropped in on two second hand book shops in Norwich.  Bought four books in all.