Books – Page 2 – derrickjknight

The Adventure Of The Christmas Pudding

Exactly 74 years ago to the day from this date Collins Crime Club published

In her foreword to this delightful first entrée Dame Agatha speaks of her own joyful childhood memories, acknowledging their part in the celebration which brought an adamantly reluctant Hercule Poirot into the party through the diplomatic persuasion of Mr Jesmond acting on behalf of the Commonwealth. “If one wanted to sum up Mr. Jesmond in a word, the word would have been discretion. Everything about Mr. Jesmond was discreet. His well-cut but inconspicuous clothes, his pleasant, well-bred voice which rarely soared out of an agreeable monotone, his light-brown hair just thinning a little at the temples, his pale serious face. It seemed to Hercule Poirot that he had known not one but a dozen Mr. Jesmonds in his time, all using sooner or later the same phrase – “a position of the utmost delicacy.” ” is an example of the writer’s skill in penning a complete portrait with few phrases. Each of the personalities in the tale are equally well presented – with insight, sensitivity, humour, and knowledge of people from all walks of life.

In her well-crafted style Christie presents the characters attending the Christmas and Boxing Day events, the possible crime, the suspected perpetrators, and the perspicacious Poirot.

We have an excellent description of the dinner and its traditions; a nice confusion over which puddings to serve when; a practical joke which backfires; a touch of mystery; and a few surprises.

The jacket of this first edition owes to its cellophane wrapper its rather more pristine condition than that of the ex-library edition pages. One of the collection bequeathed to me by my Auntie Ivy, I suspect she bought this as discontinued, for it bears the turned down corners produced by multiple readers not using bookmarks and

various stains I would prefer to imagine as those of the eponymous puddings, which, of course put me in mind of my own book featured in

Chocolate Surprise Pudding

The two now much older grandchildren who cooked the pudding mentioned above are currently fully occupied on their own matters, preventing them from joining my daughter Louisa on her own visit today when she will stay for two nights.

Louisa suffered much delay on her journey from Nottingham. ETA is now 8.30 p.m.

When she arrives we will all dine on succulent roast lamb; mint sauce; boiled new potatoes; soft spinach; firm broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, Brussels sprouts, and tasty gravy, with which I will drink Paarl Shiraz 2023.

The House Of Bernarda Alba

This is the third of Federico García Lorca’s Three Tragedies in the Folio Society edition of 1977. As usual I have presented the illustrations by Peter Pendrey as they lie on their pages in the context of the author’s clear scene directions.

The play has an all female cast, with the only male character, being the focus of conflict and rivalry never appearing on stage.

We have an embittered controlling woman who battles to maintain appearances of harmony in a family of daughters barely concealing seething hatred. “I’m not interested knowing what you’re feeling inside; that’s your business; but I like to see an illusion of harmony at least.” “Do you understand?” – this last sentence is an indication of her domination over all but her youngest, whose equal spirit seeks the changing life of the future, while her mother clings to the old ways.

The poet’s language includes such as “until she looks like a squashed lizard when the children have finished with it” or “I love the way that priest sings…..his voice soars up and up like water filling a bucket little by little”. Songs in verse carry repeated phrases like “Open doors, open windows, /Village maidens draw near/The reapers beg roses/For the hats they wear”, yet the perception of the condition of women is encapsulated in this three sentence conversation: A. “Men get away with everything.” Another A. “It’s the ultimate punishment to be born a woman.” M. “Not even our eyes are our own.”

The appearance of the eldest, possibly dementing, woman in the final act symbolises loving mothering as she tenderly carries a baby lamb.

As the oppressive heat out in the village threatens an impending storm, so the stifling suppressed conflict among the sisters portends an emotional explosion within the airless house of mourning.

Sue Bradbury’s translation is fluid and seems to me who has no Spanish to convey the original language.

Here are Peter Pendrey’s last two accurately expressed lino-cut illustrations.

This evening we dined on a rack of pork spare ribs in barbecue sauce; Jackie’s special fried rice; carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, and runner beans, with which I finished the Cabernet Sauvignon.

Blood Wedding

Storm Ashley treated us more gently than expected today, only blowing over one heavy potted pot, so I stayed in and reviewed ‘Blood Wedding’.

The second of Federico García Lorca’s three tragedies in the Folio Society’s collection has a different approach to the story of feuding families and forbidden love than that of Shakespeare’s better known Romeo and Juliet.

Lorca focusses on contrasts, alternating prose with verse; dark with light; music and gaiety with tension and a sense of doom; warm colours of pink and yellow with colder white, grey, and blue.

Lyrical language and the tuneful verse of the happier moments exemplify the poet’s ear. It is noticeable that the joy of the guests is not reflected in the apprehension of the Bride.

As usual the author is very clear in his scene directions to set the mood of the sequences,

noticeably those introducing Act One, Scene Three (the room, the Maid’s character, and the unease of the Mother and son).

The Beggar Woman symbolises Death and Doom, while Moon casts light as the inevitable tragic conclusion unfolds, perhaps not quite as expected.

Peter Pendrey’s linocuts are here presented as set in their pages, shared with examples of the author’s writing.

Regarding Shakespeare’s play of a similar theme I have previously posted

Romeo And Juliet

featuring an altogether different set of illustrations.

Elizabeth visited us for a short time this afternoon, because Efford Recycling Centre where she was booked to tip some rubbish was closed, presumably on account of the storm.

This evening we dined on Royal Spice home delivery of excellent Murgh Masala (only one chilli strength) and plain paratha for me, which I drank Kingfisher; and paneer shashlik for Jackie. We shared special fried rice.

Yerma By Federico García Lorca

We were very fortunate at Southampton General Hospital this morning because my BCG vaccine procedure began on time and 20 minutes later I was ready to go home, This meant that we were on our way out of the building when an ear-bursting bellow vied with piercing higher tones from the tannoy system instructing everyone to clear the building by the nearest available exit. It seemed that the whole world then walked slowly towards the main doorways. No-one panicked which was a good thing. By the time we had walked to our car, those who still had appointments or work inside, continued to mill about outside. I had warned others approaching that they could expect an evacuation. We recognised many of them as we escaped by car.

It is interesting that I had forgotten the acute discomfort I experienced for the first 48 hours after the first session; I was soon reminded after we returned home. Never mind, I know it will pass.

I spent much of the afternoon reading the first of the three tragedies in the Folio Society’s collection by Federico García Lorca.

The frontispiece above is clearly a portrait of the author himself and that on the front board probably Yerma. This tragic figure struggles with her longing for a child to whom she talks while caressing her empty womb and wishes for passion from her cold husband while trying to suppress her own. She lives in a society where a woman doesn’t count as one unless she has children. Identifying with this belief she engages in fertility rites to help her conceive, yet clings to her honour.

García questions this through the voices of his largely female cast, including gossiping washerwomen; young girls; a sorceress and her acolytes; and the silence of her husband’s shrivelled sisters.

We have music and dance, and the poetic language one would expect from the writer that García is. “The rain smoothes the stones by falling on them, and then the weeds grow – people say they are useless – ….but there they are, I can see them moving their yellow flowers in the wind.” “Have you ever held a live bird in your hand? ….Well [pregnancy is] like that; only in your blood.”

Even the scene directions are telling (Pause. The silence intensifies and without any outward indication one is aware of the struggle between the two) or (The second sister appears and goes over to the doorway, where she stands like a statue in the last light of the evening)

Sue Bradbury, the translator, provides a knowledgeable and well written introduction to the writer and his work.

Presenting Peter Pendrey’s Lino-cuts as they lie on the page offers examples of the poet’s writing.

Wood pigeons are heavy, ungainly, birds more like barrage balloons than delicate creatures who could manage to feed on the crab apples I see beyond my window as they cling precariously to the bending branches and tear at the fruit, dropping as much as they consume. Today they faced the afternoon gloom and allowed rain to drip from their plumage.

This evening we enjoyed further portions of Hrodle Chinese Take Away fare with which I drank one glass of La Macha viña San Juan Merlot, Syrah, Tempranillo 2023.

The Castle Of Otranto

Today I finished reading

With devices such as living artworks such as sculpture magnified to be too huge to be accommodated by the eponymous castle and a portrait painting transcending decades to carry the likeness of a future protagonist, Walpole has woven a story of seemingly star-crossed lovers; of deceit; of manipulation; of usurpation; of intrigue; and of thwarted sexually abusive abduction in which a tyrant battles to maintain his ill-gotten possession of title. “At that instant the portrait of his grandfather …. uttered a deep sigh and heaved its breast.”

Romance, links with a bygone past, mystery, and menace; the essential ingredients of the Gothic novel, are all brought to play in this lasting classic of the genre.

Effects of the weather such as winds of varying strength and dramatic claps of thunder; of sudden sounds; of light and darkness are employed to feed the fears of a young woman seeking refuge in unfamiliar corridors and stairways of “a subterranean passage…..blasts of wind that shook the doors she had passed, and which, grating on the rusty hinges, were re-echoed through that long labyrinth of darkness… ” she flees the advances of a powerful man who would make her his possession. “She heard him traverse his chamber backwards and forwards with disordered steps; a mood which increased her apprehensions.”

Much of the story is presented in dialogue between the various protagonists at which the author is very skilled. “..whatever be the cause of —‘s flight, it had no unworthy motive. If this stranger was accessory to it, she must be satisfied of his fidelity and worth ….. his words were tinctured with an uncommon infusion of piety. It was no ruffian’s speech; his phrases were becoming a man of gentle birth.” “Persuade her to consent to the dissolution of our marriage, and to retire into a monastery…..”

The introduction by Devendra P. Varma is most informative, itself in delightfully descriptive prose.

The frontispiece and these other imaginative lithographs are all by the incomparable Charles Keeping.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s penne pasta arrabbiata sprinkled with Parmesan cheese, with which I finished the Malbec.

The People’s Act Of Love

Today I finished reading James Meek’s acclaimed novel published in paperback by Canongate in 2006:

Set in the period between the end of the First World War and the Russian Revolution this is a book of Twenty-First Century Modernity and beyond.

Much more than a murder mystery story involving deception, cannibalism, religious fanaticism, self-mutilation, war, and terrorism this work discusses humanity’s dual nature present in all of us, and what we present to others. Ultimately, who can be trusted with anything?

Reflecting on the title, what is the act of love? There are various manifestations including and beyond physical “mechanisms”, depending on the views and behaviour of the main protagonists. Meek’s description of the normal physical act is sensitive and beautifully detailed.

With the breadth and scope of one of the great Russian novels couched in the spare precision of an award-winning journalist constrained by allotted space having the ability to expand with more lengthy description engaging all the senses, Meek judges the pace of this story providing perfect word pictures. “The locomotive came over the bridge, a dark green beast streaked with pale corrosion, like malachite, creeping across the thin span with a string of cattle wagons in tow. The whistle sounded down the gorge and the weight of the train bore down on rotting sleepers with the groan of wood and the scream of unlubricated iron and steel. It crawled on as if there were many ways to choose instead of one and flakes of soot and pieces of straw drifted through the air towards the river. One of the wagons was rocking from side to side and above the noise of the engine and the train there was a hacking sound as if someone was taking an axe to a plank.” or “When Elizaveta ‘Timurovna fell silent it was light and tranquil in the dining room, with windows on two sides, dust spinning in sunbeams, the ticking of a clock and the swish of cloth as the maid…..poured tea.”

Other similes and metaphors include: “He was looking inside the bag. His hands fluttered against the inner sides, like a trapped bird, getting madder.” “…..the striding cacophony of important boots was already out of hearing.” “…took so many bullets in the neck that his head popped back like the stopper on a beer bottle.”

The author deals well with dialogue in which he displays a complex knowledge of human nature, including the power of group pressure and the herd instinct.

Of 1919 we are told “It’s a different kind of war. One where you can’t understand who is on which side.” Like much of this work it is so relevant to today. We have already moved from the age of hussars honourably facing each other wielding sabres to destruction from the skies inflicted without even seeing those being killed; taken to a horrifying new level in the 21st century where there appear to be no acceptable rules.

Early photography; a lengthy letter; group meetings; elaborate, fabricated, descriptions of imagined environments; are all devices employed to present the story.

This evening we dined on oven battered cod and chips; baked beans, and fresh tomatoes with which I drank a glass of the Malbec opened two days ago.

The High Path

“Ted Walker [1934-2004] was one of the foremost English poets of his generation, with five critically acclaimed books published between 1965 and 1977, beginning with Fox On A Barn Door.

“His work eventually encompassed short stories, radio and television drama, travel writing, and two volumes of autobiography – notably The Last Of England, which he read in serialised form on BBC Radio 4 in 1992.

“In a parallel career as a teacher and interpreter of literature, he fulfilled roles as diverse as creative-writing tutor in prisons, writer-in-residence in primary schools and longstanding lecturer at the British campus of a private American college.

“Ted was born in Lancing, west Sussex, the son of a Birmingham-born carpenter who had found work in the south-coast construction industry. Educated at Steyning grammar school and St John’s College, Cambridge, where he read modern languages, he became a teacher in London.

“Success as a poet came early to Ted Walker, and he and wife Lorna were able to move to Hunston, in his beloved Sussex. Characterised as a nature poet, in his sharp-focussed depictions of the natural world he utilised nature to place our human concerns in proper perspective. Accruing major awards in his 20s, he had published five collections of poetry by his early 40s and then, as he put it in a poem, “My muse went AWOL.” “I haven’t had a poem in years,” he would say. Fifteen years in the end.

“It is not surprising that his most substantial works are his autobiographical volumes: The High Path (1983) and The Last Of England.

“The first vividly evokes the wartime childhood of one (in George MacBeth’s phrase) “too young to fight and too old to forget”.” https://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/apr/02/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries1

Today I finished reading ‘The High Path’ which, perhaps because he was just seven years my senior, but more likely the clarity of his memory and descriptive skills, he has the ability to evoke my own memories. I, too, remember the shortage of money in my family, dependent upon the weekly wage of a working man when priority was given to payment of the rent for fear of eviction, and on the skilled economy of the housewife-mother’s home cooking; being a scholarship boy at a Grammar school struggling to catch up with more privileged pupils better prepared for the mysteries of geometry and algebra; lobbing brown paper bagged water bombs over the doors of unsavoury lavatories, and competing to piss highest up a wall.

The poet’s love of language I also share. Walker’s autobiography is packed with spare, full, detailed description, alliteration, metaphor, and simile, involving all the senses, particularly of hearing, since the ear is so important to a poet. Even with the writing of a blog, I pay attention to how it would be read aloud.

For his first ten years the author was an only child albeit aware of his parents’ loss of a younger sister who lived only a few days.

The tradesmen he describes in immediate post-war England are those I too, remember, when a wire cutter was used to cut blocks of cheddar cheese in the days before pre-packed supermarket fare; and the cash-carrier payment method in department stores where money handed to the counter assistant was carried in a container on overhead wires to the cashier in a lofty perch who popped the change in the container, returning it to the counter (a job my sister tells me our mother had before marriage). “Far more interesting [to pre-school Ted] were the tradesmen’s horses which put their huge heads over our roadside hedges and tossed back their heads to get at the oats at the bottom of their nosebags. The tradesmen themselves were worthy of close observation, too, each belonging to a unique species of human kind, each with his own colour and smell and sound. The clinking milkman was the first to call……While his trailing sourness yet lingered in the outhouse, the brown baker snapped back the hasp of the gate; and he smelt warm and deliciously of buns as he flipped open the creaking lid of his wicker basket for our tin loaf…….” the copper boiler which simmered and steamed…”

“The living-room was more constricted than any I have been in since; we had no option but to be in a close family” is an example of the dry wit that litters his prose. Here is another: as a consequence of “Constipation, despite my best wailings and protestations my mother would insist on ramming a piece of green soap (she tried not to let me see it, but I saw it right enough) up my backside. The pain was searing. She would lift me on to the big lavatory, tell me to be a good boy, leave me to my task; then I would strain and heave, wanting so much to please her, wanting above all else to be rid of the gnarled vegetable of agony that rooted deep in my insides. There would be heard a minor but gratifying plop, and I would cry out with relief: but when I was lifted off, and we examined my achievement, all we saw in the clear water was the sliver of green soap……”. Fortunately I do not share the reason for this description of potty training, but many of us will identify with the need to please with the required achievement.

I also remember the steam trains described with the poet’s alliteration of “a monster so enraged that it smothered them in gouts of hissing breath. A perpetual light drizzle of condensed steam…..”

We, too, had a GP who would always make a home visit whenever called, and perhaps as a result died of a heart attack in his forties.

Walker takes us through infancy; primary school days (reminding me of my shared terror on a first day entering a playground full of swarms of noisy children); postwar playing on bomb sites; first long trousers (which I ripped while climbing a tree the day before Grammar school for which they had been bought); first fumbling for the mysteries of girls, (despite celibacy before marriage, in my case for fear of mortal sin); first love, (mine more normal, in that it ran its course) which in his case lasted through early marriage and his wife’s early death – I also have memories of the latter.

Diane Barker’s illustration for the book jacket shows young Ted with his home made gun practising for membership of the Home Guard.

Elizabeth joined us for the afternoon and stayed for a dinner of Jackie’s wholesome chicken stewp with a fresh, crusty, French baguette. I drank more of the Garnacha; my sister drank tea; and the Culinary Queen drank Diet Coke.

The Berlin Diaries Of Marie Vassiltchikov Part Two

July to December 1943

Now the daily diary resumes with dramatic descriptions of the air raids and their effects on the populace, buildings, and locations.

“Wednesday, 28 July. Hamburg is being bombed daily. There are very many victims and it is already so badly hit that practically the whole town is being evacuated. There are stories of little children wandering around the streets calling for their parents. The mothers are presumed dead, the fathers are at the front, so nobody can identify them. The NSV [the Nazi Social Service] seem to be taking things in hand, but the difficulties are enormous.”

“Sunday, 24 October……I have a new urgent assignment: the translation of the captions for a large number of photographs of the remains of some. 4,000 Polish officers found murdered by the Soviets in Katyn forest near Smolensk…… Roosevelt has expressed the wish to receive the full, unadulterated story – a thing he is, apparently unable to do in the States because his entourage….. intercept and suppress any report unfavourable to the Soviet Union.”

“Wednesday, 24 November…….She soon returned with an old lady on her arm, wrapped in a white shawl. She had stumbled into her at the street corner and, peering into her grimy face, had recognised her own eighty-year-old mother, who had been trying to reach her, walking through the burning town all night…..”

“Friday, 26 November……. The park looked like a battlefield in France in the 1914-1918 war, the trees stark and gaunt and broken-off branches everywhere, over which we had to clamber…… These last days innumerable inscriptions in chalk have appeared on the blackened walls of wrecked houses: [e.g. ‘Dearest Frau B, where are you? I have been looking for you everywhere….. or ‘[Everyone from this cellar has been saved!’]….. Gradually as people return to their homes and read these messages, answers start to appear, chalked underneath…..”

“Saturday, 27 November…….Everywhere in town large fires are still burning in the backyards and it is, apparently, impossible to put them out. These are Berlin’s recently-delivered coal supplies for the winter! We often stop before them to warm our hands, for these days it is colder indoors than out…… “

January to 18 July 1944

This section continues with details of the worsening daily lives of Germany’s residents and the build up to 20th July.

” Sunday, 2 January …..My nerves are not improving and I was jolly frightened when some bombs came whizzing down in our vicinity. Also, having to sit up every night, sometimes for hours, is becoming exhausting.”

” Monday, 3 January ……I find the harassed faces of the people more depressing even than the desolate aspect of the town. It must be this constant insomnia, that never gives one time to recuperate, be it only a little.”

” Tuesday, 4 January…… Haeften himself asked Loremarie to quickly fetch some twenty-pfennig stamps for him. She fund none and came back trailing a snake of one-pfennig stamps in her wake…..”

” Sunday, 30 January ….. I am deeply depressed: Tatiana has still no news of Paul Metternich and Heinrich Wttgenstein is dead…..”

” Sunday, 6 February …. On 26 December, our old postman….. fell ill with pneumonia. His family had been evacuated, so Maria and Heinz brought the old man downstairs and fixed up an improvised bed in the kitchen. No doctor could be reached and he died on 28th……he lay in state on the kitchen table, surrounded by candles….[ for another six days ]”

” Friday, 23 June…….The journey was pretty awful. At Görlitz I had to wait hours for the Dresden train and when it arrived I could hardly squeeze in. Somebody tossed a bouncing baby into my arms and jumped into another carriage and I had to hold it all the way to Dresden. It screamed and fidgeted and I was in agony….. At Dresden the mother retrieved the infant and I waited another three hours for a train…..”

” Sunday, 2 July…. After dinner we had a long discussion with a famous zoologist about the best way to get rid of Adolf. He said that in India natives use tigers’ whiskers chopped very fine and mixed with food. The victim dies a few days later and nobody can detect the cause. But where do we find a tiger’s whiskers?…..”

” Monday, 10 July…… we discussed the coming events which, he told me, are now imminent…….I continue to find that too much time is being lost perfecting the details, whereas to me only one thing is really important now – the physical elimination of the man…….”

19 July to September 1944

Here the author relates the failure of the 20th July plot and the savage retribution meted out to many, involved or not.

” Thursday, 20 July…… Gottfried Bismarck burst in, bright red spots on his cheeks….He told me I should not worry, that in a few days everything would be settled…..

“Count Claus Schenck von Stauffenberg, colonel on the General Staff, had put a bomb at Hitler’s feet during a conference at Supreme HQ at Rastenberg in East Prussia. It had gone off and Adolf was dead….

“….it was past six o’clock…… “There has just been an announcement on the radio: “A Count Stauffenberg has attempted to murder the Führer, but Providence saved him…..”

” To the very end of her life Missie was reluctant to admit how much she knew about Count von Stauffenberg’s plot prior to 20 July. But the many random hints she keeps inadvertently dropping, starting with that first mention of ‘The Conspiracy’ on 2 August 1943, through the plotters’ persistent urging that she help keep Loremarie Schönburg away from Berlin, and ending with that all-revealing entry of 19 July 1944 with its ‘We [i.e. Adam von Trott and she] agreed not to meet again until Friday’, show that she was far better informed than she claimed and that she even knew the exact date of the planned coup!”(George V.)

Large scale arrests of actual or suspected plotters and their families followed immediately. “Many of those arrested were indeed not only savagely beaten but cruelly tortured, the most common practice being finger-screws, spiked leggings and even the medieval ‘rack’. It is to the lasting credit of the 20th July plotters that only a few were broken…..” (George V.)

A People’s Court was convened to rival Stalin’s Moscow Show Trials. Almost all those summoned were summarily executed. ” Thursday, 22 August ….. It appears they are not simply hanged, but are slowly strangled with piano wire on butchers’ hooks and, to prolong their agony, are given heart booster injections…..”

“To this day, the exact number of those executed in connection with the 20th July Plot remains a subject of controversy. According to official Nazi sources those arrested after the coup numbered some 7,000. A total of 5,764 persons were charged with high treason and were executed in 1944 and a further 5, 684 in the five remaining months of Nazi rule in 1945….” (George V.)

January to September 1945

With the Russians advancing on Vienna and with constant air raids to endure, Missie worked as a hospital army nurse and eventually as an escort to many refugee children and tells of her ultimate journey to freedom.

EPILOGUE

Tells of Missie’s marriage to American Peter G. Harnden on 28th January 1946, and brings us up to date with many more of the protagonists of the diary.

Categorised as Books

The Berlin Diaries Of Marie Vassiltchikov Part One

My Folio Society edition as well as several important maps, contains a good assortment of photographs of which I append only a selection.

Here is the title page and frontispiece.

“The author of this diary, Marie (‘Missie’) Vassiltchikov, was born on 11 January 1917 in St Petersburg, and died of leukaemia on 12 August 1978, in London…

“Missie’s [White Russian] family left a Civil War-torn Russia in the spring of 1919 from the (sic) Crimea, aboard a British naval squadron that had come to rescue the surviving members of the Imperial family. She grew up as a homeless refugee – in Germany, in France and in Lithuania……. France, where Missie spent most of her childhood, was in the twenties and thirties the centre of Russian émigré public and cultural life…. all her life and whatever her circumstances, she remained a staunch Russian patriot and a believing Orthodox” (From the foreword of her younger brother George,

who edited the diary from 1940 to 1945, and added linking paragraphs placing the context of the Second World War.)

January to December 1940

Missie’s accounts of the year 1940 show that the experiences of Berliners were not that dissimilar to those of Londoners; both were subject to air raids; both spent time in shelters; basic needs were in short supply. She also speaks of the anti-Nazi groups with whom she was in touch. I have selected a few extracts which I hope will give a flavour of her experience and sense of humour. There are also some of George’s links.

” Tuesday, 12 March Mamma (who is on her way from Silesia to Rome) telephoned from Vienna to say that Georgie has disappeared. When the train stopped at some small station on the way, he went to check their luggage. Without his noticing it, the luggage van was uncoupled from the main body of the train and joined on to another. He is now hurtling towards Warsaw. He has both their tickets, no passport and only five marks to his name. Mamma is waiting for him hopefully in Vienna.”

” Friday, 22 March… I dislike him cordially and am tempted to give him a shove when he leans far out of the [train] window to get a breath of air after one of their rows…..”

” Thursday, 4 April ….. “Nobody in Germany is supposed to know what the rest of the world is up to except what appears in the daily papers and that is not much….”

“The normal method of execution in Nazi Germany was beheading by means of a miniature guillotine. But is some cases ( such as high treason ), Hitler had ordered the reintroduction of the medieval axe.” (George V.)

” Monday, 22 April…. We are fasting rather severely. Our Church allows us to disregard this in wartime, on account of general malnutrition. But we have so little to eat anyhow that we want to save up some coupons for Easter.”

” Sunday, 28 April…… for some time now, our bosses had been complaining about the inexplicable consumption of unaccountable quantities of w.c. paper. At first they concluded that the staff must be suffering from some new form of mass diarrhoea, but as weeks passed and the toll did not diminish, it finally dawned on them that everyone was simply tearing off ten times more that he (or she) needed and smuggling it home…..”

” Tuesday, 7 May ….. We are allowed approximately one jar of jam a month per person and, butter being so scarce, that does not go very far…..”

” At the outbreak of war [P.G.] Wodehouse (a British subject, but a longtime American resident) was living with his wife at their home in Le Touquet, where the Germans caught them just as they were about to escape occupied France. Interned as an enemy alien, he was eventually released at the request of the USA (which was not yet at war). In Berlin the representative of the American Broadcasting System talked him into making five broadcasts for the American public, describing his experience. These broadcasts – witty, slightly ridiculing the Germans – were totally apolitical…….” (George V.)

” When the Soviet troops took over Lithuania, Missie’s father was visiting Vilnius……. The family had remained popular with the local population and in due course guides were found who volunteered to smuggle him across the border into Germany. They happened to be poachers who used to ‘work’ his forests and when he reached German soil and was about to pay them off, they refused, saying: ‘We’ve had our reward many times over….when you still lived here!’ ” (George V.)

“Friday, 12 July……Peter Bielenberg is a lawyer from Hamburg….married to a charming English girl, Christabel….. They have two little boys. The elder one, aged seven, was expelled from his school for having protested when his teacher referred to the English as Schweine…..”

“It was only after the failure of the 20th July coup that Missie learnt about Hasso von Etzdorf’s key role in the anti-Nazi resistance, and that his earlier aloofness when discussing politics was merely elementary caution.” (George V.)

January to June 1941

“Tuesday, 27 May The Bismarck was sunk today. The German Admiral Lutjens went down with her.”

Missie’s note [ September 1945 ]: “From this [June] day on, nearly two years of my diary are missing, even though I kept on writing it almost daily. Some pages I destroyed myself. Others I concealed in the country home of a friend in what is now Eastern Europe, where they may still be to this day; or where, as likely as not, they were discovered and removed to some local archive or, even more likely, burnt as rubbish.

But then in the confusion of the hectic years that followed, it seems a miracle that so much of my diary survived at all.”

INTERLUDE:

July 1941 to July 1943

Missie’s note [ written in the spring of 1978, the year of her death ] “I will try to give a short account of those events that had a lasting impact on our lives and of what happened to me, the family and some of my friends [ between 22 June 1941 and 20 July 1943 ], so that the reader may find it less difficult to go on with the daily account when this resumes.

During this period Missie kept up correspondence with her mother; from these we learn of the deteriorating conditions for residents of Germany while Hitler’s attentions were focussed on the Eastern Front.

“Tatiana married Paul Metternich on 6 September 1941. It was a joyous event except, of course, those who were at the front or who has already been killed or were too badly injured…..

That night Berlin had one of its worst air raids to date……”

Random excerpts from Missie’s diary discovered after her death describe the shocking effects of Allied bombing; of the effect of the battle for Russia on those White Russians living in Germany; and of her diminishing list of friends who had not been killed.

As the tide of the war began to turn “everyday life in Berlin had also changed radically. The USA’s entry into the war has been followed by a mass exodus of …… the last bastions of social life in the capital. And the heavy losses on the Eastern Front, which were beginning to affect every family in Germany, in themselves discouraged frivolity. From now on, the daily efforts of the author and her friends – or rather of those who were not on the fighting fronts – would be focussed essentially on physical but also on ethical survival – against hunger, Allied bombs and, presently worsening political tyranny and persecution.” ( George V. )

(Because of the length of my feature on this important book, I have decided to break it up in order to spare my readers – more will appear in Part Two soon)

A Mistake Discovered Too Late

This morning I received a telephone response from Abby of Southampton General Hospital PALS (Patient Advice and Liaison Service) concerning the manner of my discharge from hospital on 24th August (https://derrickjknight.com/2024/08/25/four-days/). I made it clear that I wanted to prevent this happening again to anyone else. She will discuss this with the relevant department and report back to me. I am under no illusions that the system will change other than perhaps ensuring that the discharge doesn’t happen on such a day when necessary help is not available.

We then transported another 13 spent compost bags of green refuse to Efford Recycling Centre and came home with two plant stands purchased from the Reuse Shop.

After lunch I finished reading the last story in my Folio Society collection from the work of Maria de Zayas.

Beginning with a dramatic description of a tempest and cleverly led escape to security by an exceptional male character in that he is honest, caring, and seeking answers to

the scene pictured in this illustration by Eric Fraser, it is in fact the treachery of women leading to the typical male cruelty. A woman’s lies result in the honour murder of an innocent man and the disparity of the two women in the picture.

The device for recounting the story is the falsely dishonoured man explaining it to the honourable protagonist and standing by his extreme cruelty as justified revenge.

Maria de Zayas closes with: “It is my opinion, incidentally, that some women suffer innocently. They are not all guilty, as is commonly supposed, and the ladies present might consider this: if the innocent….must pay for imaginary crimes, then what ought not to be the punishment of those who pursue their vicious follies in all reality. It is worth noting that, at the present day, men have such an adverse opinion of us that even if we endure innocent suffering they still decline to do anything about it.” In fairness, she has granted a happy ending to the good man of this tale.

Later, I watched the next episode of Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams.

This evening we dined on salt and pepper, and tempura prawn preparations with Jackie’s colourful savoury rice.

Category: Books