DUSTY OLD BOOKS

Memoirs of Moominpappa

2011-02-10T20:43:00.000-08:00

Poor old Moominpappa. He always seems to be on the verge of a mid-life crisis, whether it's running away with Hattifattners, or tackling lighthouse-keeping. But in this book we find out the psychology behind the strangely vulnerable father of Moomintroll: It turns out he was abandoned as a child and deeply scarred by the terribly strict orphanage that took him in, which he only escaped from by literally running away to sea.

As always with Tove Jansson's Moomin books, the dark and fearful possibilities of such a scenario are delivered in a text bubbling with optimism and charm. And so, as Moominpappa recounts his mis-spent youth through his long awaited volume of memoirs, we are taken on a dazzling adventure of surreal and bizarre experiences.

Crucially, this book is not just about Moominpappa; he meets the fathers of Snufkin (The Joxter) and Sniff (The Muddler, who marries a Fuzzy)along with the inventor Hodgkins. We meet the mother of Little My (The large, round and jolly Mymble who has more children than can easily be counted, of which Little My is the smallest; it is suggested the The Joxter may have fathered any number of them...).

We discover the Niblings, who eat noses; The terrible Ghost-of-the-forgotten-bones; the appalling Hemulen Aunt with an obsession with arithmatic; the clumsy, short-tempered and remorseful Edward the Booble (presumably a cousin to a Brontosaurus; those he kills by accidently treading on them get their funerals paid for) and the eccentric and jocular king, Daddy Jones, who has a bizarre fixation with practical jokes.

We also discover how Moominpappa found his beloved Moominmamma, and some editions of the book have a useful gallery at the back in which all the main players in the series are introduced.

This is the last of the Moomin books to be really brillful of whimsical nonsense. After this point the books become more introverted, more beautifully observed, quieter... and exquisitely melancholic.

This book seems to exist in two versions. The Exploits of Moominpappa is the book I know and love and grew up with. But a revised edition, with a new "Prologue" was published in America, called Moominpappa's Memoirs. This latter title is a slightly different read, the translation (by Thomas Warburton) apparently tweaked. i prefer the "exploits" - the original incarnation - personally.

Either way, fasten your seatbelt as you ride on the Amphibian Flying miracle that is the "Oshun Oxtra" for a thrilling tale of boyhood escapades and growing up thoroughly independent and free. No wonder Moominpappa found life in Moominvalley just a little bit...safe!

Marvellous Moomins 3: The Moomins and The Great Flood

2010-11-29T21:41:00.001-08:00

It’s extraordinary to realise that the very first Moomin book, published in Swedish in 1945, was not translated into English until 1991. Even then, it was issued by a Scandinavian publisher, never by a British company.

In truth this is very much an early book. The story seems a little like a draft for something not quite resolved, although it does enlighten the Moomin reader on certain points. In later books references are made to a great flood as well as a nasty incident involving Moominmamma and the Ant Lion. They are all explained here, as a bereft Moominmamma and Moomintroll search for the long lost Moominpappa (who has gone off with the dreaded Hattifattners), and meet “The Little Creature” (who we know now as Sniff) and the very strange Tulippa, an elegant woman with blue hair (surely modelled on the fairy in Pinocchio).

A much shorter book than the subsequent volumes, it hops and skips along introducing little gems and moments of peril alongside others of great charm in a typical Jansson way. Even if not fully formed, it is still an important book, filling so many gaps in Moomin mythology.

What really interests me is how different the Moomins look. Tove Jansson originally drew a Moomin on a wall at home to defy a relative, and subsequently used the character as a “signature” device on her political cartoons, published during the war. Only later did the Moomin develop the rounded and friendly snout and expressive features known and loved throughout the world. Even the mouth was to move! Traces of this development can just be seen in the illustrations for “Comet in Moominland” , but by “Finn Family Moomintroll” her drawing technique and her characters are completely resolved.

One other thing I noticed in these early drawings is the scale; the Moomins are tiny pint-sized creatures, as images of them alongside human-scale bottles and spectacles testify.

This is essential reading for any lover of the Moomins – or indeed anyone interested in the creative process. It’s like gaining a little glance at Tove’s secret cupboard of roughs and plans, a flick through her sketchbooks and a glimpse into her wonderfully creative, imaginative and surreal mind.

Marvellous Moomins 2: Comet in Moominland

2010-11-24T20:59:00.000-08:00

"Strike me pink!"

This, the second Moomin book to be published in English (in 1951), actually (and confusingly) predates Finn Family Moointroll and introduces the first meeting between our heroes Sniff and Moomintroll and the remarkably self-contained Snufkin.

In this book we meet old Uncle Muskrat, the unusual Snorks, a poisonous Snork-eating bush and the short-term memory of the Silk Monkey (indeed this is her only book appearance).

When peculiar omens fortell catastrophe, our merry band of creatures set off to the Lonely Mountains to see if the "star-with-a-tail" warnings really mean a comet is on it's way. The story tumbles along in a cascade of adventures and its lightheartedness hides a deeper message: It was written in 1946; the idea of a Comet destroying the earth was Tove Jansson's response to the horror of Hiroshima in 1945.

Overcoming disaster and tragedy are playfully explored - this could be read to all but the youngest child, although I remember a big fear of comets for a while after reading this. I would worry about every shooting star I saw... but then I grew up during the cold war and the fear that gripped Tove was still part of the world we lived in then.

Significantly, this and Finn Family Moomintroll differ greatly in their overall feel to the later books. They are much more light-hearted and less introspective. Could that be something to do with the translator? (Elizabeth Portch only translated these two. The others are the work of Thomas Warburton). Or was it simply the case that Tove was gently finding her way, getting to know her characters? I love being able to trace a development from this book through to the last.

Comet in Moominland is full of Tolkein-like elements - they sing little parodies of those in the Lord of the Rings, and our heroes on a quest are very Hobbit-like in their innocence. It has a charm and deep understanding of the trials and ridiculousness of family and friendships. Sniff and Moomintroll bicker; eyes are rolled at Moomintroll's infatuation with the splendidly vain Snork Maiden; and Moominmamma sends her child out into the world with the quiet confidence that Tummy Powder is a necessary item of luggage...

There are very many editions of the book. The first, with it's remarkable scarlet cover is beautiful, but I suppose I have fondness also for the Puffin paperback, as that's the copy I first read around 40 years ago. Here are a selection from my Moomin cupboard. Enjoy... and "Strike me pink!"

The Marvellous Moomins 1: Finn Family Moomintroll

2010-09-25T11:12:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I posted on Dusty Old Books. Work has kept me busy. But it's time to celebrate the printed page again, and I can think of nothing better to do that with than my favourite author: Tove Jansson.

Everywhere I’ve been this year I’ve seen Moomins in Bookshops, Kitchenware shops, Greetings card & gift shops. Bags, books and badges, knitted cuddly toys and cups; out of print titles reinstated; lectures given, articles published. Even in her lifetime, Tove Jansson felt overwhelmed by the “moomin-boom”. I wonder how she would feel now. Once, the Moomins seemed slightly exclusive, a delight that only a certain type of person really “got”. And I knew a lot of people who didn’t quite understand their brilliance. But now they have been embraced in our climate of retro-chic as must-haves for the Cath Kidston set.
So where has the Moomin-madness of this summer come from? The estate has been successfully exploited by Tove’s niece Sophia to celebrate 65 years of Moomins: for the first book was published in 1945. That particular book, “The Moomins and the Great Flood” was only very recently translated into English. The immediate sequel was “Comet in Moominland”, but this was not to be the first title to be published in English. That honour fell upon the third title “Finn Family Moomintroll” and so I am beginning my survey of Tove’s work – over several posts – with this book.
From my legendary Moomin cupboard I have – with trembling paws – taken out my first edition from 1950. Immediately hailed as a new children’s classic, this is beautifully produced, with embossed boards and a dust cover. Inside, the book has a magical map of Moominvalley which folds out to almost four times the size of the book. This was reproduced on a single page in later editions, and only the first edition has a fold out example of this exquisite, fantastical plan, which, on the reverse has an eccentric letter from Moominmamma herself (surely one of the greatest maternal figures in all literature).

The back flap of the dustwrapper asks if the reader “would like a picture of the Snork Maiden to put on the mantelpiece?”. And there she is, a voluptuous cut-out design. And who wouldn’t want the Snork Maiden on their mantle-piece?

For those unfamiliar with this book (shame on you), it tells the tale of one summer – from Hibernation and Spring through to Autumn, in Moominvalley. Here we are introduced to Moomintroll (son of Moominpappa and Moominmamma) and his friends Sniff and Snufkin who find a Hobgoblin’s hat that can enchant anything placed inside. This can be a good thing – like turning eggs shells into magic clouds. But it can also be a considerable problem, like when an encyclopaedia of Outlandish Words is brought to remarkable life. We also meet the Snorks, the Muskrat, the lugubrious Hemulen, the enigmatic Hattifattners, and the “Big grim and terrible” Groke, who freezes everything she touches. The adult domestic world of verandahs and stoves is beautifully caught by Jansson, and contrasts with the high adventure of the “children” of the story. Getting rid of the magic hat is not all that easy... and what would happen if the Hobgoblin himself – a great magician – came to Moominvalley?

What I like about Jansson’s storytelling is that little things matter, like the folklore of butterflies in spring or Snufkin’s need for solitude. And I like that while much is fun and frolicsome, there is often danger and threat lurking. It is an idyll... but sometimes one with dark clouds seen out of the corner of the eye. In fact this is one of the lighter and funnier stories. Later in the series the books become darker and more satisfying and, finally in Moominvalley in November, deeply moving.
Also tucked inside my copy of Finn Family Moomintroll is a letter. While I recognise that Tove Jansson, like the Moomins ,was not a person to whom possessions mattered, this letter is, I confess, valuable to me. In the event of a fire (and after securing safety for my family) this would surely be the first thing to rescue. For the letter is written to me, by Tove Jansson herself.

In 1993 I had a book published in Finnish. Although Tove was a Swedish speaking Finn, I felt excited and honoured to have a book published in “the land of the Moomins”. I wrote a long, rhapsodic letter to her. I had no address, so I drew a Moomin on the parcel and put, simply: To Tove Jansson, Helsinki, Finland.
I didn’t think anymore about it. There seemed no point dwelling on a parcel that might never arrive (and what a story Tove would have spun out of such a dwelling of thought). With the letter I had sent the Finnish edition of my book (“Madame Nightingale will sing Tonight) and some other books. And it wasn’t written or sent to expect a reply. It was sent with gratitude and admiration. A sort of gift.
Then, one quiet unassuming January day, a letter arrived. The carefully crafted handwriting , graphically clear and beautifully spaced, should have raised my expectations.
Surely this letter was a letter from my Finnish pen-friend Tarja, who I had corresponded with since we were both 7 or 8 years old? But then I saw the stamps.
Moomin stamps.

Inside was a letter from the great lady herself, with kind works about my illustrations (can you imagine how much that meant to a novice artist like myself?), and what seemed to be genuine gratitude and humility regarding my words about the Moomins. She seemed genuinely touched that my world had been coloured by her Moominvalley, and that their morals and eccentricities had reflected the foibles of myself and my family and that they had, I felt, projected themselves upon the minds and hearts of the next generation. Which can only be a good thing.
It would no doubt have horrified this most elusive, hermit-like author to know how I cherished the letter and how special it felt to have what seemed like a tiny part of her. But any writing is that. She gave the whole world a part of her with all her books and pictures.

In any case, she was one of the great observers and recorders of human life. She would have understood, just as she understood Sniff and his avarice as well as Snufkin and his solitude. For in the Moomins, these strange and melancholic trolls, we see ourselves, our lives, our families and our fears. The Moomins are in some ways more real than any gritty novel or PC picturebook. And that is what makes them the work of a genius.

Saviour's saviour!

2010-07-18T22:42:00.000-07:00

My good friend, the wonderful writer Saviour Pirotta, has sent a lovely contribution to this growing list of adored dusty old books. This one was not always adored; it haunted him for years and only a chance encounter brought reconciliation. Read on to find out how!

"Being a bit of an apple convert, I have been toying the idea of getting an ipad, even though my macbook air is still in its nappies, less than six months old. But something in the advert on telly put me off. More books than you can read in a lifetime? What a depressing thought.

Surely that's turning reading into a chore, even worse - an unattainable goal. No matter how many books you read, you are going to miss the finishing line, Mr. The grim reaper will have to finish the job for you!

And what about the pleasure of discovering something new. What about happinstance? What about coming across a book, an author you have never read while skiving in a bookshop or a car boot sale, a charity shop? What about hearing about a title at a dinner party? Do those books go at the end of the queue after the ipad selection?

The idea brought back memories of something that happened to me recently, something I call my Christmas miracle.

As a child I used to attend the Roman Catholic equivalent of the Sunday school, except that this took place every day after school. Every Friday we watched a slide show, with a teacher telling a story. He [it was always a he. This club was strictly for boys. The girls had their own club] would stand under the screen and when he wanted the slide changed, he rang a small bell to alert the projectionist at the back of the hall.

One year we watched and heard a Christmas story. One image from the slide show struck a chord with me and continued to haunt me well into adulthood. It was the picture of a lonely man, struggling home through the sleet with an absurdly tiny Christmas pudding in his hands. The teacher said, 'Christmas is a time for families, but even the lonely single man in his garret can enjoy the lord's blessings.'

Sitting in the dark of that hall with the beam of the projector's light shining above me, I had a terrible sense of deja vu that my lot might be like that lonely man's. One day I was going to be that lonely man struggling home through a storm with a Christmas pudding for one.

As I grew older, every time I was turned down by a prospective date, that solitary man's ravaged face would float into my consciousness, always staring through me with baleful eyes. I grew so terrified of ending up alone all my life I allowed myself to overstay a long and loveless relationship.

When I moved up to Yorkshire, newly single and for once able to afford more than a garret, I found myself looking through a pile of books at a car boot sale in Bingley. A small book, the size of a Ladybird caught my eye. It was called A STRING OF BLUE BEADS. I'd never heard of it but I loved the old illustrations, and the tagline said 'by the author of THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD, one of my favourite films [although admittedly I have over a hundred favourite films]

When I took the book home, I realised it was the story of the lonely man with the Christmas pudding. The illustrations were done by a different artist from the one who had drawn the slides used at the Cathecism class but there was the unlucky chap from my nightmares, still alone on Christmas eve, in this version of the book drinking a solitary cup of coffee in a bar. His name was Pete Wakefield. I was glad to put a name to a face that had haunted me for so long.

I raced through the story and, would you believe it, it has a happy ending. Out of the blue, Pete Wakefield meets a lovely girl who is in love with him. No more Christmas puddings for one for the lucky fellow! And no more nightmares for me, not that particular Christmas one anyway. I felt somehow released from a, from I don't know what. It was like turning on a torch in the middle of the night and finding out you haven't gone blind after all, there's a power cut. And somehow, I can never imagine the same thing happening with all my books and stories on an ipad, not in a million years, let alone a lifetime."

a blast from the past

hello, old chap. Long time no see!

a happy ending!

Thanks again Saviour for a wonderful story!

A Tale of Two Chitties

2010-06-10T02:35:00.001-07:00

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was not the first ever film I saw at the cinema. But that trip to the grand Odeon in Lowestoft in 1969 made the biggest impression on my childhood. I was five, and was swept away by the idea of a flying car, dreams coming true, toot sweets and a child catcher. In those days of course you only saw a film once. No videos or DVDs to endlessly watch over and over existed. I had the Music For Pleasure record to sing along to. I had the Corgi toy with flip-out wings. And I had books…

I remember vividly my father coming home from Work with Ian Fleming’s “Complete adventures of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang the magical car”.

But what a shock!

This wasn’t the fairground-coloured car, the shining, gleaming polished car, the fine-four-fendered friend of the film!!! This was a green dragon of a machine, dangerously powerful and smelling of oil, in audacious illustrations by John Burningham.

I sulked. I refused to read it. It wasn’t the Chitty I knew and loved…

And then I got an early reader book (“I can read it all by myself”), adapted by Al Perkins and with illustrations by B Tobey.

This time the car looked right. It had red and yellow wings and a silver bonnet. I liked it so much I even tried to cut an illustration out “to keep forever” (as it were), although I stopped when I realized I was ruining the picture on the other side…

But when I actually read it… where was Baron Bomburst? What had become of Truly Scrumptious? The Child Catcher? The scene at Beachy Head cliffs? For while the car matched the film, the story did not, following instead the original Ian Fleming scenario reasonably faithfully.

For when I did read the original Ian Fleming stories, I was astonished to realize the story was completely different. I was blown away.

Set in the Swinging Sixties, Commander & Mrs Pott (there is no Truly or Grandpa) and their children Jeremy and Jemima cannot afford a family car - Commander Pott is a failed inventor. But when his Whistling Sweets bring an unexpected fortune, they begin to look for the right car. “Not one of the black-beetles that all look the same”, declares the Commander. And when at last they find a rusting old racing car at the back of a dilapidated garage…”They all had the same look in their eyes. The look said: ‘This must once have been the most beautiful car in the world.’”

Of course they buy it and the Commander restores it. Jeremy and Jemima notice the intriguing number plate: Gen 11 – surely that spells… genii ?

In this original story the magic is no dream. It really happens. The car – an “eight litre, super-charged Paragon Panther” - painted in British Racing Green - really flies and floats and saves the family repeatedly from all sorts of tricky situations, most especially from their encounters with the dastardly Mafioso-type gangster Joe The Monster and his henchmen, who are hatching an evil plot to steal money from the famous Bon Bon Chocolate Shop in Paris. It is they who kidnap the two children, and who bring the expected James Bond type villainy into the story. The adventuresome plot, sparklingly written with a pithy wit by a master storyteller should be in every boy’s library, not least for Burningham’s fabulous and evocative illustrations.

It was hard for me, at five, to understand how fast and loose film makers play with stories. Seeing the film first made it very hard for me to adjust and accept these books. Because apart from a car and a surname (Pott), they have nothing in common.

Nowadays I love both on their own terms, the film with it’s flaws and fantasy, the book with it’s rollicking boys-own- adventure.

So how did the film become so different to the book? Ian Fleming’s story was inspired by childhood trips to Higham Park where he saw one of the original Chitty Bang Bangs (there were three) and met the owner-driver, a mysterious Count Zborowsky. His stories, written in the early sixties, were made up for his convalescing son Caspar, and were amongst the last things he wrote before his early death in 1964.

The film – produced by the James Bond film team – hired a little-known writer (and friend of Fleming) called Roald Dahl to create a script. It was not wholly successful and his original draft has never been published: that WOULD be interesting! The script was then completed by the Bond film writer Ken Hughes. And characters like Bomburst, the Child Catcher and Truly Scrumptious do have a certain Dahlian flavour about them.

I still think the original stories deserve to be filmed; perhaps one day they will. But with the stage musical and film still so firmly wedged in the public’s consciousness, it would be hard to compete. And should the car look like Burningham’s dangerous beast or the film’s sparkling and polished “Fantastmagorial machine”?

Helping Hands

2010-05-24T22:20:00.001-07:00

Here's a funny little book, by Oliver Senior: How to draw hands. It's part of a huge series of guides to drawing specific things. Others titles include, Trees, Birds, Locomotives, Perspective, Merchant Ships (!), Rolling Stock (!!!), Churches and cathedrals... etc. I must try to find some. They are tiny but charming little books.

The title page reveals the vintage: first published 1944. It would be impossible to show these hands with a cigarette today. Back then it must have seemed the most natural use for idle hands. How times change.

In book illustration today there is an encroaching dismissal of academic drawing skills. Things can be whizz-banged through a computer and bad drawing is very often forgiven as "quirky". I suppose I'm rather old-school, in that while my own drawing is a long way from ideal, I do respect traditional skills, those of observation and recording information through drawing. It's a skill that is fading in our modern digital age and I think the ability to draw well is essential to any artist. The 20th century, and artists like Picasso, changed everything of course, but these people could in fact draw. Even Tracy Emin can draw (Beware: name-drop coming) - I was at art school with her (albeit in different departments; we never spoke), and she regularly hung up large dramatic drawings of contorted figures.

Hands are known to be tricky to draw. And most art students of a certain age will remember the horror of filling sketchbooks with drawings of their left hand (unless they were left handed of course!). Personally I find feet harder. And what I really need is a book on how to draw horses feet. Now that would be useful. It's not on the list though. Perhaps no-one else can draw them either...

Castles on the Ground

2010-05-19T21:42:00.000-07:00

I some respects this is a rather ugly little book. I don't know if it ever had a dust cover but the dingy brown boards are matched by the pea-souper gloom inside. I love John Piper's work, and the period of art and illustration to which he belongs, but his illustrations here, taken from lithographic prints I think, all have a post-war late 'forties air of grime and coal dust, bonfire smoke and twilight. It really doesn't make one want to live in England.

One can still admire the way he carves images out of tone, and elaborates them with dynamic, eccentric line work. There is no shortage of atmosphere. Yet they seem ill-matched to a text - by J.M. Richards - that "celebrates" (or at least discusses) suburban living.

Chapter One: The Englishman's Home, provides the title of the book, in the sense that the reserved English psychology is in search of a castle to hide inside, and other chapters explore the "Anatomy of Suburbia", "Compactness above all" and "This desirable residence". Taste, and "vulgar pretentiousness" are explored, as is the thorny issue of class... from a middle class perspective.

Richards captures the intimacy of what was then (and still in some ways is) Modern Living: "In the hall, in addition to the faint smell of furniature polish we would have noted an even fainter scent of Pear's soap coming from the downstairs cloakroom".

Writing in 1946, Richards is inevitably rather dated in many of his views. But not always. As someone who is currently living in Letchworth Garden City, in Hertfordshire, I was especially interested to read: ""how the Garden City was invented by Ebenezer Howard as an inspiring social theory but declined, through repeated emphasis on inessentials, into a retreat for cranks and a subject for the misplaced enthusiasm of the well intentioned". Now that could have been written yesterday, and is particularly pertinent with a "town centre redevelopment" currently under way.

Other things are ridiculous statements: "A legitimate complaint against suburbia is that it spreads itself too widely. As the motorist drives out of town along his concreted highway, his hopes of green fields are frustrated mile after mile".

There seems to be no understanding of the changes modern living - and motor cars - was bringing. Of course roads were quieter then, and it must have been hard to anticipate the congested roads we have today. But the very concept of fast individual travel is what has created an ever increasing need for suburban living. Roads - concreted highways - are the ultimate enemy of green fields. Not to mention pollution. I wonder what Richards would make of modern housing estates, Wimpey homes, high rise flats and all the other blots on the landscape which for some people is the nearest they get to having a castle of their own.

Letchworth Garden City may have lost it's way, but at least it had a vision, a dream, at it's core, however diluted it has become. Today there is little integrity when it comes to developing houses - pack 'em in, seems to be the philosophy.

A really odd little book, just 80 pages long. I suppose this is an interesting glimpse of social and architectural history (the book was published by The Architectural Press). I shall keep it... if only for the gloomy and brooding illustrations.

Jiri Trnka's Midsummer Night's Dream

2010-05-06T03:10:00.000-07:00

Here's a real unmissable treat! a rare book of work by that Czech magician of puppets and art, Jiri Trnka. He's a bit of a cult animator and artist. Those "in the know" love his work, but it remains hard to find. Hardest of all is the film he created of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. Only once was it broadcast - on Channel 4 around 20 years ago with Richard Burton narrating. No DVD has ever been commercially issued.

So here is a dusty old book I cherish for allowing me to relive the memory of his exquisite, and rhapsodically beautiful animated film.

This book retells the story simply, and illustrates it largely with photographic stills, plus original drawings. It was only when I saw the drawings that I recognised Trnka's work as an illustrator: he brought the Grimm bothers and Hans Christian Anderson to delicate, witty and elegant life for me when little, but no doubt being unable to pronounce his name, I'd not registered who the illustrator was until I saw this book, given to me by my good friend, the illustrator Pam Smy.

Trnka, who died in 1969, was Prague based and produced many other magical films, often based on Czech folklore. He was, appropriately awarded the Hans Christian Anderson medal for his services to children's literature just a year before his death.

A Midsummer Night's Dream was probably an exotic subject for a Czech animator, and he gives it a proper Greek (as opposed to the oft-used cod-Elizabethan) setting. The enchantment he creates in the magical forest and the charm of his rather fey but stoll sensual Titania, and his Bacchus-like Oberon, emerging from Nature, is dazzling. And all the workers have true and funny characteristics. Yet all is still elegant and graceful. Even Bottom has an elfin charm in this irresistable film. The stop-motion technique, as usual, has great humanity and depth to it. I have not seen a single modern animated film that can match it.

Happily, a few snippets of this beauitiful film exist on Youtube. So if you love these images as much as I do, click HERE for the real thing. The man was a genius and deserves to be celebrated and loved...

The Big Clean-Up

2010-04-17T00:17:00.000-07:00

This is one of those child-hood books that sticks in the memory and subtly influences all sorts of every day things, and possibly how I view the world. This is not the very copy I had as a child. That went missing in a house move and I've lamented it ever since. At least until I found this replacement copy.

And everything is exactly as I remember, from the quirky line drawings, to the simple colour, to the understated (and therefore witty text) to the the brilliant concept.

Harvey Weiss has taken the age old theme of a child with a messy room and turned it into an brilliant fantasy of imagination, resourcefulness and (in a modern world) recycling.

When Peter (and his doleful hound Maurice) are told to clean up his bed room, he gets two boxes. One is for things to keep, the other for things to throw away. But like most children (and adults;mysdelf included), letting go proves difficult, especially when you have a good imagination.

Peter conjours all sorts of elaborate contrivences, mostly for the benefit of Maurice, and convinces himself of the usefulness of just about everything he pulls from the pile of "rubbish".

A cotton reel inspires a contraption for Maurice in the event of tha splinter in the paw; a small stick could bne the railing of a veranda on a luxury dog house with pool and heli-pad; while an old rusty key might be just the very key needed to rescue poor old Maurice from a rather gothic and evidently dangerous dungeon prison!

Funny, charming, clever and touching, it's an overlooked masterpiece. It's an American book and I suspect circulation in the UK has always been limited and how I had a copy as a child I have no idea. But I'm jolly glad I did, even though the end result is that I cannot, to this day, bear to throw anything away...

For those who appreciate Wisteria and sunshine...

2010-04-01T01:11:00.000-07:00

Before discovering this book I had never heard of "Elizabeth of the German Garden", as the author - in an attempt to hide her identity from her husband - liked to call herself. That name came from her first autobiographical novel, "Elizabeth and her German Garden". It created a sensation and Elizabeth von Arnim (her real name) was soon being described as a contemporary Jane Austen. She didn't just write witty trifles in the "Diary of a Provincial Lady" style, though. Her novel "Vera" is a dark thriller and this - "The Enchanted April" - is an exquisite novel of manners and social dilemmas, with a darker undercurrent of loss and redemption and forgiveness, all set in the giddy 1920s.

Lottie Wilkins is trapped in an unhappy marriage and is clearly depressed. But a chance reading of an advert in The Times at her ladies club transforms her life. The advert reads: "To those who appreciate wisteria and sunshine". The piece offers a small mediaeval castle in Italy for the month of April. It seems an impossible dream, until she meets Rose Arbuthnot, with a face "like a disappointed Madonna" (Whose husband writes scandalous novels about fallen women under a pen name). What if together they take the castle, share the costs, and escape? Two other unhappy, damaged women, one old and sour, the other a young and beautiful socialite, join them.

Can a place and climate heal their sadnesses? A sentimental thought perhaps but a theme explored with humour and poignancy. More importantly, the book examines the idea that beauty, and escape, can bring an understanding that love cannot be weighed and measured. The experience brings each of them a clarity of thought. Although the this proves cathartic and painful, the overwhelming beauty of San Salvatore transfigures their view of the world. But what about the husbands? Can it redeem them in their eyes as well? Lottie is so overwhelmed with guilt at enjoying herself that she takes the extraordinary step of inviting the very man she has escaped from to join her in Italy. And that's when the fun really starts.

As the old dowager says... in her day, husbands were seen "as the only real obstacle to sin" !

This first edition of the 1924 novel has a particular significance for me, for one of the first dates I took my wife on was to see a film of the novel, starring Miranda Richardson, Joan Plowright and Josie Lawrence. Shortly after we enjoyed our first holiday with her Italian family, in Tuscany during April. The flower pressed in the book - given as a Valentine gift - is from that holiday. It's a dusty old book I reread every April. With it's memories, pressed flowers, associations and above all it's storytelling, it never fails to enchant.

A book and singer

2010-02-24T00:23:00.000-08:00

On Sunday night an epic journey got me to London's Southbank for an historic performance: The Chelsea Opera Group were presenting Nelly Miricioiu in La traviata, a role she has sung with fame and glory all over the world. Although she had not sung the role for 19 years, the Romanian born diva wanted to sing it once more, and especially in London where she now lives.

To celebrate the performance I took with me two gifts for the Prima donna: A camellia shrub, on the verge of flowering, and an antique and valuable copy of the book that inspired Verdi's immortal opera: La Dame aux Camellias, here translated as "The Lady with the Camellias". If you think you don't know the story, you'll be surprsied to realise you do really: If you've seen Garbo's Camille or Love Story or Moulan Rouge with Nicole Kidman, then you know the story.

The title "La traviata" means "The woman led astray" or, more succinctly, the "Fallen woman" or even "The Courtesan". And this early edition, with "a new foreward by Alexandre Dumas fils" is quite lovely. Illustrated with real engravings, bound into the book, by Albert Lynch and published in 1889, I suppose it's the celebrity publishing event of its day.

For La traviata is a true story. Alexandre Dumas fils (son of the author of The Three Musketeers etc.) had a short but passionate affair with Marie DuPlessis, a legendary Parisian courtesan, who died in 1847 aged just 21 years. She had, in her short life, a series of wealthy and well-to-do "protectors", including the fledgling writer Dumas fils. He was devastated to discover she had died (of consumption, that most romanticised 19th century disease) and wrote the novel in a white heat of grief and inspiration. Subsequently a play, the tale impressed Verdi who completed his opera in 1851, just 4 years after the real "Camille" had died. Thirty odd years later, this lavish edition of the novel proves how popular the story became. And that was, in part, because of the scandal: This was a largely true and contempory story, unheard of in the opera house especially. Indeed the premiere in Venice was a fiasco, according to Verdi, because of the immediacy of the story and it's exploration of morals.

Violetta/Camille/Marie is forced to abandon her one true love by his overbearing father, worried that her reputation will destroy his family (and his daughter's impending marriage). Noble and self-sacrificing, our "tart with a heart" discreetly leaves her lover (Dumas, but in the novel "Armand" and in the opera "Alfredo Germont"), only to be publicly denounced as a whore by him at a Parisian soiree. No amount of remorse or reconciliation can alter her fate: she dies in his arms in one of the most heartbreaking scenes in all opera.

I admire Nelly Miricioiu enormously. She suffered terrible things under the Communist regime in Romania. Despite a cold (maybe because of it) she delivered a dramatic and truly harrowing portrait of a dying woman, clinging on to every last shred of happiness, and was rewarded with a standing ovation.

Such was the crowd around her dressing room I was unable to deliver the book or the bush. The camellia is outside waiting for another opportunity. The book is posted and I hope it will still be a suitable gift even if it arrives after the event. Due to engineering works I had to dash home at the end.

It is a beautiful book and one that I have cherished for many years. But this was a special occasion and it seemed to me to be the perfect way to thank a singer who has given me so much joy with her performances. Brava Nelly!

More Minton

2010-02-17T21:38:00.000-08:00

This beautiful book, published in 1949, is a wistful, melancholic yearning collection of thoughts on the country, by H.E. Bates no less, who was obviously strongly drawn to the rural life. One can see that in his novels of course, but here everything rings particularly true.

Inevitably with the war so recently ended there was a search for something real and familiar and unspoilt. One hears that in British music of the era: Elgar's 'Cello concerto is a perfect example (even if composed 20 years earlier as a response to the First World War). This book is perhaps a counterpart to those feelings of loss and change and sadness, but also a pantheistic sense of hope through nature.

With chapters ranging from "Clouded August thorn" and "Overture to summer" to "Wealden Beauty" and "The Garden on leave", you soon get the idea of the direction of the prose, although Bate's is careful to remind us, surveying a dereclic house he once longed to live in, of "the destructive element of our time."

These autobiographical ramblings take place largely in Kent and Sussex, and it was a perfect match to have John Minton - himself a pacifist of course - to illuminate the pages. Unusually, his line drawings are printed in what I will describe as "Yew Tree Green" and they are beautiful. The rhapsodic response to Bate's words and once again a little nod to Samuel Palmer, bring out the very best in Minton.

There are exquisite chapter headings, full page drawings and lovely title page decorations. The words and image are unusually well matched here and this is truly a cherished book, for I find myself so in tune with much of the book, and in complete admiration of the drawings, I couldn't be without it on my shelves.

Old Herbaceous

2010-01-27T22:04:00.001-08:00

This dusty old book, by Reginald Arkell, is a touching and wistful story about an aging gardener during a time of change and his relationship with old Mrs Chatteris. Lady Chatterley's gardener he is not, but the book is charming and touching with little bits of old fashioned wisdom scattered around the pages.

What really makes it desirable (and is the reason I spotted it) is the illustrations by John Minton, one of my favourite artists, and one whose life is every bit as poignant as any story.

His distinctive line graced many post-war books; notably he illustrated Elizabeth David's cookery books. He belongs to the great era of British artists, to the tradition of Eric Ravillious and Edward Bawden, the golden age when Radio Times comissioned real artists and they casually gave them little gems to print. Minton was born in 1917 and in the second World War was a conscientious objector. Prone to depression (and alcohol) he died of a drugs overdose at a tragically young age. One can only imagine what he might have gone on to achieve.

The bucolic scenes of rural happiness have a nervous edge to the line work. In hindsight one could almost image a troubled hand made the pictures. And yet I always felt he drew with such confidence and purpose. Certainly his approach (carried on by many subsequent book illustrators in the 1960s) was a huge influence on my work. It also looks back, I think, to an earlier age of British art, for in Minton I can see a worthy heir to Samuel Palmer, which is about the highest tribute I could pay the man.

Carnival of Venice

2010-01-11T11:23:00.000-08:00

It will soon be that time of the year again, when the people of Venice put on their fantastical masks and take to the Grand Canal to celebrate their famous carnival. Today I listened to Donizetti's Venetian opera Lucrezia Borgia and I was suddenly reminded of a bizarre and beautiful book, which is one of the greatest arguments against the Kindle. For this book is hand made. Beautifully. It is completely unique.

It is called Navi Venete, and no author or illustrator stakes a claim on it. It is entirely anonymous and yet made with unwavering love and dedication. Inside the board covers, stitched into the book, are a collection of around 25 exquisite if rather naive paintings of Venetian ships. Some are taken from mosaics, others from paintings by Giotto or Tintoretto. Others from real ships. They range from tiny little boats, to battleships, and on to the splendid ceremonial ships of the spectacular carnival itself, with the city's protector, the Lion of St Mark proudly standing on flags of gold.

I have never been to Venice. It seems almost superfluous when so many other people have been. And yet I long to go. No doubt I would be bewildered by the light and the details on the architecture and get in a tizzy about how on earth to paint it and then struggling with the realisation that I am, alas, not J.M.W. Turner. But go I will...one day.

Until then, Leyla Gencer sings Donizetti's music and these beautiful little paintings fill my head with dreams and hopes of what I might one day discover when I finally get there.

Another garden

2010-01-08T10:59:00.000-08:00

From my friend Saviour. A lovely vintage edition...

A Child's Garden of Verse

2010-01-06T01:51:00.000-08:00

It was Phyllis Ann Wangui Ramage who reminded me of R.L Stevenson's "A Child's Garden of Verses", and it has been wonderful to rediscover all my various editions. I bet Kindle will never have every illustrated version available. How much will be lost if these higly varied approaches are lost in the rush to homogenise our digital world.

As a child I had just one book of these poems, illustrated by Hilda Boswell, which I still have and love with my sister and I's disrespectful scribbles within... Like a large format ladybird book, it would be easy to dismiss these illustrations as emphatically literal but, notwithstanding nostalgic eyes, I have enormous respect for these illustrations.

Interpreting verse like this "straight" is the hardest thing of all to do, and Boswell does it superbly, and always from a child's point of view. When witches and fairies are asked for (in "From a Railway Carriage" for example - which I can still recite from memory!) then you get exactly that. As a child I really enjoyed that value-for-money approach, and more importantly, it really allowed me to understand the poems very easily and quickly.

By contrast, I have a very old edition, from 1904, with fascinating and exquisitely designed illustrations (in an Art Nouveau manner) by Charles Robinson, full of the expected eccentric detail. Yet would I have been so enchanted by these as a child? I suspect not, although the words remain as wonderful. These are almost too designed, too sophisticated for the playfulness of the verse.

Apart from A. A. Milne, I can think of no other collection of Verse like this for children and that's a surprise now I pause and think about it. This seems to capture childhood with uncanny accuracy. The idea of going to bed in summer when the sun still shines. Hiding behind the sofa and imaging armies in the fire. Building a ship on the stairs out of pieces of furniature or cities out of building blocks. Going dangerously high on a swing.

It all rings brilliantly true, remarkably so for the age of the poems. Of course it's all very white upper middle class (even though other countries and races are mentioned and imagined in some of the verse).I wonder what publishers would make of it all now. No doubt editors would be sharpening their red pencils. But to what benefit? Children should not be underestimated in their ability to understand different worlds and cultures to their own. I understood the context as a child perfectly well.

The other two editions take a more personal view of the verse. Roger Duvoisin, the Swiss illustrator, is one of my all-time heroes. His illustrations date from the 1940s, his heyday, and the black and white drawings in particular have a hauntingly beautiful atmosphere. The colour endpapers are just gorgeous.

With the Provensens we go to the 50s, and in particular to America; their illustrations show the influence of American folk art as much as design practise of the time.

I love these books one and all, and it's wonderful to see all these different interpretations. What I particularly realise as an adult is how very touching and emotional the last few poems are, especially "To any reader". I confess I skipped those as a child. Now I can barely read them as the emotion in them is so potent.

"As you will see, if you look
through the windows of this book
Another child far away
And in another garden play..."

Anyone nostaligic for their own childhood, or who has been through the joy and emotion of raising a child will respond to the touching recognition of time passing, leaving only a trace of a memory:

"And it is but a child of air
That lingers in the garden there."

All the world's a stage...

2010-01-02T22:25:00.000-08:00

The Children's Theatre Book ("For young dancers and actors") by Cecile Walton is the sort of book that just isn't produced anymore. There are plenty of modern activity books for children, all in garish full colour and with busily-designed pages that put you off immediately. This wordy and worthy book, published in 1949, is far more discreet and lengthy at over 100 pages, but somehow the thoroughness and the concentration required is far more inspiring, more mysterious, more satisfying than the gaudy modern counterparts.

Here, two rather middle-class children Paul and Pauline are encouraged by the kindly old Mr Curio to discover art, movement, expression and performance. Inspired, we are then shown how to make a toy theatre, in some substantial detail. Prosceniums, curtains, lighting and scenery are all explored.

Other chapters cover drawing, mime, the history of costume, "Make up and make believe" and even feet get their own chapter. Deportment and gesture are things modern children would barely be able to grasp I suspect.

It would be easy to dismiss this as a rather dry and old fashioned "lesson" book, yet what a treasure trove of imagination it contains. There are many beautiful drawings (not least the balletic endpapers)and there are even black-and-white reproductions of pertinant Old Masters, from Botticelli to Degas. One chapter is called "Another World". This book takes us there in more ways than one...

'Twas the Night before Christmas...

2009-12-24T02:10:00.000-08:00

'Tis the season to enjoy traditions. Often reading an old favourite can be a quiet personal tradition. I have my own festive favourites that I'll be re-reading over the holidays. But here's a lovely Christmas tradition from Gerry Mayfield that makes me realise that I should be making more of my own favourite books and rituals...and sharing them with family and friends.

"As a child I have memories of being read 'The Night Before Christmas' on Christmas Eve before hanging our stockings on the mantelpiece and shouting up the chimney to Santa, our heart's desires. I often wonder if my parents got any surprises on that day!

However I digress. When our eldest was young I managed to acquire a board book of the poem which I then read to her each year. Not just on Christmas Eve though on any night on the run up to Christmas. We became word perfect but still reading the words and looking at the pictures together invoked a magic not to be found in just the recital. Our eldest went to university as our second child was born and each year I would follow the same tradition with our youngest. Again we are both about word perfect and reading is not restricted to Christmas Eve only.

This year we asked our eldest when she was coming over on Christmas Eve and we were told that she would be over for 'The Night Before Christmas'. Each year she still comes 'for the reading' and we have a real tradition in the making. Lizzie, although 12 now, will still have the reading and Cate, 18 years her senior, will be there for it too.

Whose this book is is a guess, but I like to think it's mine and will have the privilege of reading it to any grandchildren we do have with, hopefully, our 2 daughters watching and listening.

The copy isn't particularly old nor dusty at the moment as it has already been out this year, but without it the tradition would die immediately."

Thank you Gerry for sharing this. I've now found our version - not very old or dusty either. Gerry's book is obviously of a certain vintage that reminds me of my childhood (I had lots of "Dean" books I remember). I must also find our video of Tom and Jerry's Night before Christmas, which I just love. What else can I add, except...

"Merry Christmas to all and to all a Good Night!"

James

Compliments of the Season!

2009-12-21T22:07:00.001-08:00

Here's a lovely little "King Penguin" given to my wife by her sister many years ago, although the book was pretty vintage even then. It's a short history of the Christmas Card, and is illustrated with assorted and typical examples.

A lovely keep-sake and as we approach another New Year and move, at frightening speed, towards the end of the first decade of the 21st century, I find myself clinging to visions of the past like this, rather than embracing the digital future. But whether you are with me on that one or not: "A Merry Christmas to all my readers" !

xxx

THOSE OLD GREEK HEREOS by Saviour Pirotta

2009-12-16T21:50:00.000-08:00

A powerful reminder, from Saviour Pirotta, of the imporrtance of books in childhood: they shape us and influence us all our lives:

"I received a parcel of letters from a school in America this week. The children have been doing a project about Ancient Greece and read my ORCHARD BOOK OF FIRST GREEK MYTHS. Their teacher had suggested they each ask me a question, which I will answer in a class email sent to her. Most of them wanted to know if I liked Greek Myths when I was a child. The answer, of course, is 'yes, I loved Greek Myths.' I pored over pictures of Greek legends and heroes before I could read the often dense text in the books. When I did learn to read, I devoured every version I could lay my hands on! I re-worked the stories to suit my own ideas. The landscape where I grew up is quite similar to Greece's, so it wasn't hard to imagine monsters rearing their heads out of caves, or triremes coming round headlands in the med.

Writing back to the kids made me think of the old Greek Myths books I had, and the wonderful colour plates in them. I thought I'd share some of the most inspiring ones with the readers of this wonderful blog."

from the Ladybird book, Alexander The Great.

From Charles Kingsley's The Hereos. The Illustrations are by H.M. Brock.

Kingsley and Brock again!

From Look and Learn Annual, [the 1974, I think}

Another pic of Bellorophom on Pegasus

One of my own versions, illustrated by Jan Lewis

Thankyou Saviour.

Saviour blogs about historical fiction for kids at
Swords and Sandals

A Weekend of finds by Mary Mayfield

2009-12-16T21:35:00.000-08:00

Here are some extraordinary discoveries from Mary Mayfield, both irreplaceable and rare (and dusty?), but quite different to each other. Thank you Mary for letting me post these.

The first is a Latin-English Dictionary. Here’s what Mary said about it:

“This is one of last weekend's finds. sitting on a shelf, in my parents' spare room, was an English-Latin dictionary dated 1774.

No one actually knows where this came from - it's last move from was from my grandmother's house to theirs, about 30 years ago.

It has 2 inscriptions - Bridget and ------- Sharp 1820 (possibly 1829) and a fainter one from 1831, possibly to someone Parker or Barker.

Presumably these are distant relatives but no one knows…”

Mary went on to say how it had been:

“sitting next to an old car manual belonging to (husband) Gerry that looked like it had been chewed by mice!
I just wish we knew more about this.”

Well me too, so any information you might have, do post it!

Mary’s husband went on to say:

“It is 235 years old. It's described by some as a school dictionary and we have seen someone with one that is 236 years old. There is a handwritten inscription in the front but it is mostly illegible as the ink has faded but the inscription has 2 dates - 1820 and 1830. One wonders if the people mentioned were relatives or whether it was a find in a secondhand bookshop by an earlier generation of the family.”

And Saviour Pirotta called it

“A real treasure!”

And he’s right of course. What a beautiful and fascinating thing to have, full of history and mystery!

The second book from Mary is Buster Brown by R F Outcault. She writes:

“An extremely scruffy picture book from my mother's childhood, although she received it second-hand,copyrighted 1905 by The New York Herald. It's lost the cover completely and was folded in half and pushed in a cupboard.
A series of cartoon adventures each with a little "lesson" at the end - this one disapproves of Teddy Roosevelt shooting wild life for publicity.
I think this was originally a newspaper cartoon strip though I'm not sure if it was aimed at children exclusively - the bit here about "a president going out armed with a gun and a camera and a press agent" doesn't sound like children's material.”

Glorious finds! Thanks again Mary for sharing these on Dusty Old Books!

Costume Cavalcade

2009-12-04T23:24:00.001-08:00

For many years I have collected costume books and good ones are surprisingly hard to find. Here are a few pages from my favourite: Costume Cavalcade by Henny Harald Hansen (there's a name to be reckoned with!), with its one hundred gorgeous plates. One of the most important things that any illustrator can do is learn about costume and fabrics; how they hang and fall, how they fold, how they function in different eras. It's one thing to become an expert at life drawing, but how many children's books feature nudes?

Costume Cavalcade is falling apart, but it remains the most useful of all my costume books for the images have a delicious clarity. Those costumes from before the great era of fashion plates (the early nineteenth century) are taken from famous masterworks. See if you can spot a bit of Uccello, a snippet of Fragonard, a taste of The Book Of Hours. Other plates not shown have glorious costumes from Vermeer to Velazquez.

The Regency costumes were especially helpful when illustrating Rossini's La Cenerentola (Cinderella), which I gave a Mozartian/Rossinian setting.

The book's vintage (1950s) is revealed in the final plate, with Audrey Hepburn inspired figures (all very Roman Holiday), but I also find the Edwardian he-men and the bathing beauties irresistable!

Treasure hunting with Saviour Pirotta

2009-12-01T09:24:00.000-08:00

Many thanks to Saviour for letting me post his recent haul of Dusty Old Books. Treasures indeed, and full of the obscure and unexpected things - words and pictures - that give inspiration to writers and artists. You just never know what direction your imagination will go in...

"TREASURE ON A SUNDAY MORNING!

9.55am What to do when you've stumbled home at the crack of dawn on a Sunday morning and can't yet go to bed but are too razzled/tired/antsy to do anything productive? I know, put on the kettle, sit back in a comfy armchair and and force your bleary eyes to focus on a Kindle...not. But look, there's a distraction from all this wonderful information and literature that must be stored in this modern little appliance...a table top sale in Victoria Hall, just round the corner. Perhaps they might have the latest ebook there......

11.00am - Return home definitely unkindled! Never mind, here's a few old bits of tit and tat to be had for £8.00 in total!

Treasure was the junior version of Look And Learn. This annual from 1974 includes comic strip stories about Ancient Greece and Hiawatha. There are also Chinese legends, facts about animals and the story of the printing press.

A little curio from, I guess, the 1940s. The text is really simple, the pictures all have one major colour. The sort of thing I would have memorised as a kid and acted out. No author is credited!

One of two books James would really appreciate, this includes articles about the Ballet Rambert, the Dance Centre in London and loads of brilliant photos of the greats at work
A photo from The Tina Ballet Book, showing a still from an American ballet based on The Wizard of Oz. These two dancers are the wind that carries Dorothy to the fabled land.

Another for James, this books is about all aspects of dance, including modern and classical ballet and folk.

From People Who Dance - a dancer in Italy!

The cover of this one says it all, really. Packed with astounding, high quality photos.

This poor book wasn't particularly well looked after but it seems to have given someone a lot of enjoyment. Christmas stories without presents or Christmas trees? Now there's a novelty."

by Saviour Pirotta

A Pleasant Surprise by Mary Mayfield

2009-11-27T08:40:00.000-08:00

A fascinating revisitation of a childhood book from Mary Mayfield. It raises interesting questions about what is suitable for children, and whether some older ideas would get published today. Thanks Mary for letting me share this!

Toby and his Little Dog Tan or the Great Detective of Fairy-land.

Written by Gilbert James and illustrated by Chas Pears.

"This is one of my mother's favourite books from her childhood, in the 1920s. The hero, Toby, is woken in the night by a little red man come to summon him to help retrieve the stolen pearls of the Queen of Fairyland. He is transported, through a badgers' set and along an underground river, to meet the Fairy Queen and then off, via the bad fairies town and an escape on a stork's back,
meeting a variety of talking animals along the way, to track down the thief, rescue the pearls and prevent wolves invading England.

I've always found it be a terrifying book. My mother tried to persuade me how wonderful it was but I was frightened by the illustrations, particularly the little red men.
When, years later, she's tried to get my daughters to read it, I've always said "Don't. It's horrible".
So, I went to find it, intent on sharing with you the horrors of early 20th century children's literature and was amazed to discover that the writing is actually quite funny. It starts by describing Toby as a very clever boy but adding "His teacher did not think so but then she wore eye glasses".
The little red man explains to Toby that when the Queen's pearls are lost or stolen "all the fairies get stupid, and cross, and sleepy". "I suppose" said Toby, "you are stupid though you don't seem cross, or - but you do look crosser now than you did before"
Later on, little dog Tan is trying to sniff out a field mouse "and putting his nose in the air and waving it - his nose I mean - of course, he could not wave the air, at least, I don't think he could, but one never knows"

Some of the illustrations I'm sure would never find their way into a modern children's book. The little red men still look like devils to me, even after all these years, and the picture of Toby, armed with a pick-axe, and Tan fighting the fox is bloodthirsty.
Even so, I'm really pleased to have gone back to this book and eventually enjoyed it - thanks to James and his Dusty Old Books."

Mary Mayfield

The Story of Ferdinand

2009-11-19T10:32:00.000-08:00

I'm sure many people are familiar with this children's classic - the first book about "pacifism" I ever read - but I hate the thought of anyone missing out, so just in case... here it is. The story, by Munro Leaf is deceptively simple and begins: "Once upon a time in Spain..."

What follows is a beautifully shaped fable with superb drawings by Robert Lawson, and was first published in 1936. Ferdinand is not like other bulls. They all butt their heads and fight. But Ferdinand prefers to sit in the pasture under his favourite cork tree and just smell the flowers. As he grows older his mother worries - but "even though she was a cow" (cue much hilarity) eventually understands her calf is happy.

One day the other bulls are showing off to impress the matadors, hoping to be picked for the bull fight.

However when Ferdinand accidently sits on a bee, the matadors misinterpret his apparent wildness and take him away to Madrid, where "all the lovely ladies have flowers in their hair..."

Astonishingly, the book was banned in Spain and Nazi Germany as subversive, yet the conclusion is as touching and tender as Ferdinand himself - but I won't give it away just in case this little gem has slipped through your literary net. If so, seek it out and fall under it's kindly spell. My copy may be dusty and old and falling apart, but it has been reprinted many times and I hope it is still in print!

Nebula to Man

2009-11-12T22:21:00.000-08:00

Possibly the maddest book in my collection, this is a Darwinesque narrative poem describing the scientific progress on earth from it's creation through to early man. It takes 450 pages of rhyme and many Edwardian illustrators to get us to "Modern times". The chapters are all accurately and sequentially titled after the various eras: Triassic, Jurassic, Cretacious etc. I would have loved this as a child, and the highly literal and representational images of prehistoric life are very simular to those in Arthur Mee's Encyclopaedias, if any of you are old enough to remember those. They were part of my child-hood.

"But life on land persues a chequered course,
As Law holds on its way, without remorse."

I couldn't put it better myself.

Published by J.M. Dent in 1905 this is (understandably) a first edition and is disarmigly didactic and cheerfully inaccurate ; the dinosaurs would not pass muster today. It reminds me of the magnificent Victorian concrete dinosaurs at Crystal Palace Gardens, with horns-on-noses where there should be none, and the bi-ped dinosaurs slithering on all fours. Science (and what publishers are looking for) has moved on, not always to mankind's benefit, alas. I wonder how the twentieth century would be mapped out in narrative verse, as an appendix to this mighty volume?

The provenence is interesting too - it's from a library of a Spiritualist Society in Essex which housed Conan-Doyle's library. When my parents ran a second-hand book shop they were invited to clear out unwanted books. I went along to help and fell in love with this Nebula. It was a strange experience: obviously we felt scrutinised, being amongst mediums in a large Agatha Christie style mansion. In fact the Society was extremely pleasant and welcoming. Nevertheless, I half expected the ghost of Margaret Rutherford (who my grandmother once met in Kew Gardens; she was utterly enchanting by all accounts) to appear and admonish us for taking the books. As ABBA's Fernando played on their radio we discovered that anything they did not agree with had been "edited" with scissors... but the Nebula was intact. Many books had book-plates declaring them the personal property of Conan-Doyle, and Sherlock Holmes fans gave my parents a very good price for them.

Nebula to Man is probably a worthless book, having no apparent Conan-Doyle link. But to a once dinosaur-mad kid it was the most fascinating and bizarre book in the entire library. I love it. It's mad, it's ridiculous, the rhymes don't even scan. But I know it will never end up on an ereader!

Saviour Pirotta: Things that Kindle can't do yet - part two

2009-11-07T01:14:00.000-08:00

Saviour Pirotta has written a Lovely personal collection of thoughts and memories, tied together by books:

"James blogged about tatty tv tie in DUSTY OLD BOOKS a while ago. It set me thinking about another thing [in fact, two things] that Kindle can't do yet, and probably never will.

My parents were not the sort to waste hard-earned cash on pressies. They weren't alone. No one I knew when I was a kid ever received gifts, not ones wrapped up in wrapping paper and decorated with ribbons and a gift tag anyway. We all got a bag of fruit and nuts for St. Martin's Day in October, lucky money from grandma for New Year and - if we'd behaved 365 days out of 356 - a gelato for our name Saint's day. [Mine is St Saviour's Day in mid-July, so gelato was a real cool treat]

One Christmas eve, though, my brothers and I all got dressed in our Sunday best and we took the bus to town. My eldest brother was starting secondary school and dad had decided he needed a geometry set. While at the stationer's cum bookshop cum lotto office cum rosary bead seller's, my father was suddenly struck down with a momentary lapse in meanness. He said we could all choose something from the shop.

My brother Lino picked a double pack of card games: Snap and Old Maid. I made a dive for the bookshelves. Now up to that point I only had four books in my precious book collection, mainly because my parents disapproved of any tome that did not have Nihil Obstat printed on the title page. Nihil Obstat is Latin for No Objection, which meant the church had not found anything in the book that might corrupt a susceptible mind.

The oldest book I had was a Victorian copy of Kingsley's The Water Babies. It had belonged to my great aunt Agnes, who'd very diligently drawn and coloured in swimming cossies on all the naked water babies combing the rock pools in the ocean. I also had two Ladybird books, one about the Holy Land and another about the USA, where my great aunt had worked as a nanny for a young couple in Hollywood. And I also had - although no one in the house knew about it - a tattered copy of Enid Blyton's The Happy House Children, which I'd nicked from the English RAF family next door just before they left for their new assignment in Hong Kong. This was easily my favourite book so, needing to grab something before my dad regained his senses, I picked The Mountain of Adventure. It was an Armada paperback, and the pride and joy of my collection for years.

Now some time after this, I bumped into the novelist Nicholas Monsarrat [as one does] vainly trying to get water out of a roadside pump the local kids had vandalised. We got talking and he told me that one of the most precious moments in an author's life occurs when he receives a parcel containing advance copies of his latest book. From then on, I used to waste a lot of time wrapping my beloved copy of The Mountain of Adventure in brown paper and pretending I was Mrs Blyton savouring that precious author moment of laying eyes on her latest book for the first time.

Imagine my confusion then, dear blog reader, when years later I walked into the library at my secondary school for the first time and realised that the copy of The Mountain of Adventure my heroine Enid lovingly caressed at that sacred moment of authorship might not have been an Armada paperback like mine, but a hardback book, with a dust jacket and a completely different picture on the cover. What was going on?

The librarian, a very kind jesuit whose patience would be tested to the limit in the five years I was at that college explained the concept of different EDITIONS to me. Major novels, he said, were issued in hardback first, for the cognoscenti who collected books. There might be different editions for book clubs, and different covers to suit the tastes of the English-reading public in various British colonies. If the book proved popular, there would be a paperback editon. And if the novel was made into a film, there would be a tie-in. Some books have had hundreds of different editions, especially the classics that have been around for a long time.

Which brings me, in a very roundabout and self-absorbed way, to my first objection about Kindle. What about different editions? Kindle might issue books with a screengrab for a cover, very much like the kind of artwork you get when you download a song on iTunes. But would that be enough to entice a new reader, to make him want to go back to the novel time and and time again? I don't think so. Book lovers will always want beautiful editions, and that's why I for one will not be forking out for an ereader.

PS: My second objection? You can't really give an ebook for a present. How can you wrap it? What would you put under the Christmas tree, the token, a print-out of the receipt? Bah! Humbug?"

Saviour Pirotta

Thanks, Saviour, for permission to post this on the blog!

Bilibin and Rimsky

2009-10-26T12:11:00.000-07:00

Just for Doda, a little more Ivan Bilibin. Undoubtedly one of the great illustrators, he also found fame as a designer of sets and costumes, especially for operas. Russian operas are so often developed from folk and fairy tales, or at least thoroughly Russian subjects, and so this was an deal niche for him to explore. Of all Russian composers it was Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov who proved his perfect inspiration. Here a vintage Leningrad-published book all about the Kirov opera and ballet (now renamed the Mariinsky of St Petersburg)has some fascinating evidence of Bilibin's work in practise. The end papers are in fact based on Alexander Golovine's famous curtain at the exquisite theatre (Golovine preceeded Bilibin as set designer, collaborating with Korovin and Bakst). But the black and white photographs, poor though they are, show early productions of two Rimsky-Korsakov operas that Bilibin cast his spell over: Rimsky's masterpiece, Kitezh (my favourite opera)and The Tale of Tsar Saltan (see my earlier post on Bilibin). Just click to enlarge.

Even in these murky photos his brilliant ability to use space, his decorative obsessions, the order and structure of folk art and icons, all show through. If only I had a time machine...

The other little book is a real curio, a lovely biography of Rimsky-Korsakov, a misunderstood and much maligned composer of operatic fairy tales. I believe he is an under-rated genius, who isn't fashionably tormented like his colleagues Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky, but instead expressed himself quite differently, introsopectively and with splendid dignity. A devoted family man his tragedy was more private. He lost two beloved children in infancy and can it be entirely a coincedental that this most pantheistic of composers favoured stories of snowmaidens and water sprites who can never grow up and find love? Instead they perish, melt, become rivers or - at best (like the heroine Fevronya in Kitezh) - meet their lovers in the afterlife.

All of this inspired the greatest things from Bilibin, so it is quite appropriate that the little glued plate on the cover of the biography should be one of his drawings: a costume for a boyar from Rimsky-Korsakov's The Tsar's Bride.

Tatty TV Tie-ins

2009-10-26T01:43:00.000-07:00

You find them everywhere: junk shops, charity shops, car boot sales. And the frisson of recognition and memory is powerful to anyone of a certain age. In the 1970s there was a surge of classic children's book adaptations: Heidi, The Secret Garden, The Railway Children... it was a golden age. I know it continued into the 80s, but then, sadly it slowly began it's tragic decline. Anne of Green Gables was especially popular in our house. To this day my sister and I call our mother "Marilla". Kim Braden (now, what became of her?) was perfect...and I mean perfect... as Anne Shirley, the temperamental orphan in search of a kindred spirit. The BBC films were made around Constable Country I believe, in Suffolk, which made a very credible Prince Edward Island. So much of L.M. Montgomery's invented mythology entered our lives and however good the newer Canadian films are (and Megan Follows is superb as Anne), these earlier films - the first series I believe irretrievably lost or damaged (and certainly never issued on DVD) - captured an innocence and tenderness that was surprisingly memorable. I suppose they must have left "plenty of scope for the imagination" as Anne would have said. And I confess to a bit of a crush on Ms. Braden...
The other TV tie in here is a simular vintage but from Australia, bought in by the BBC. I can only assume it is likewise lost as no DVD seems to exist, which is a great pity as I remember it so vividly I can still sing the theme tune. Seven Little Australians is a haunting and ultimately tragic story of an Australian family, set at the end of the 19th century. A classic "down under" it doesn't seem as well know in Britain. It's a little sentimental, as one might expect, but powerful nontheless, and a few hints of E. Nesbit and indeed Montgomery.
That these memories, filled with the sound of tea cups and the smell of Battenburg and the promise of Mr Kipling, as we settled down as a whole family to watch the tea-time classic serial, can be held by a tatty TV tie-in is remarkable. There are more handsome editions of both books out there. But none that mean more to me. Custard Cream anyone?

Saviour Pirotta: Things that Kindle can't do yet...

2009-10-24T01:15:00.000-07:00

From Saviour Pirotta comes a lovely collection of things found inside books. Thanks, Saviour for permission to post!

"In a comment in his wonderful blog DUSTY OLD BOOKS, James Mayhew observed, Just this weekend in a sunday newspaper a journalist was saying how she was looking forward to "not having a dusty pile of books beside the bed". And I thought: I LOVE my pile of dusty books beside the bed, finding lost books, finding books I didn't know I had, finding letters or pressed flowers inside, inscriptions and postcards; memories of a previous reading in another place. All this quite apart from illustrations and the actual words intended by the author!

It made me think of the ephemera I have left in my books over the years:

train and bus tickets from journeys in other countries;
paper napkins with bar logos;
restaurant bills from special meals, messages out of fortune cookies, theatre and concert tickets, notes from meetings with editors, party invitations, even sweet and chocolate wrappers.

Who will find them when my books pass into new hands?

And will their new owners pause to think about the person who placed them there?

Will they try to imagine what I looked like, what I thought of the meals I had eaten, the shows I had seen, the places I visited?

I certainly treasure the things I find in old books. I think of them as the bookmarks of someone else's life.

Sometimes, just for fun, I try to make up stories about them, imagining different ways how, why and when they ended up in these books?

Here are a few things I have discovered nestling between yellowed pages over the years.

What do you make of them?"

Saviour Pirotta.

More from Mr Mayfield.

2009-10-23T08:56:00.001-07:00

Very many thanks to Gerry for another great story about his own collection of dusty old books... Enjoy!

"These 2 books are special to me for slightly different reasons.

The first is Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. I have an admission to make about this book, which I shall come to later. I received it when in hospital at the age of 7.

I spent quite a few periods in hospital around the time and to be in hospital for my seventh birthday was especially depressing for me.

But to my joy I received this book as a present from the nursing staff on the ward. At the age of seven it was beyond my reading ability, but non the less I was delighted and treasured it. I later went through a phase of liking the plainness of the single colour of the boards on the books and removed it's flysheet for it never to be replaced. Because it was past my reading age, it went on a shelf and was, in part, forgotten for many years. Much later I did try to read it, and here is the admission, but... I found the attitude of Defoe (and probably his contemporaries) towards non white peoples to be offensive and could not bring myself to actually finish it. Perhaps a shame and I may yet try again but... I still treasure the book as a mark of the nurses' kindness.

The other book 'Tales of Brave Adventure' was also one of the first books I 'owned'. I had 4 brothers and so got to 'own' very little. I received things passed down and was, in turn, expected to pass them along. But this book was mine, for none to share. A selfish attitude perhaps, but also a little island in a big sea. I was given this book by a neighbour for caring for their cat while they were on holiday when I was about 8. I treasure this for the ownership of it where everything else disappeared and deteriorated through others neglect. It may be a little tatty now, but it is nearly 50 years old."

Gerry Mayfield

Seeing London

2009-10-19T10:36:00.001-07:00

One of my very favourite children's books is this out-of-print gem by an American called Dale Maxey. A voluminous Red Elephant with roller skates is a symbol for a London bus, and takes a pair of children on a thorough and in-depth tour of our capital city. There are too many pages to show you here. But the disarmingly naive maps (with my infant scribbles) and the whale in the Natural History Museum are typical. I remember vividly my first trip to the big city. Coming from Suffolk it was A Big Event, and although I was only 3 or 4, I still can picture the big Blue Whale. Of course it is still there...and I have seen it many times since... but I remember that first visit and throwing a coin on it's tail from the balcony.

Then there's the museum of London with the Fire Of London panorama, also embedded in my memory and included in the book. As I grew older I would "collect" memories of my visits to the places in this book, which was an ideal souvenir of them, and educational too, with the ornate signs on Lombard Street revealed (are they still there?) and the whispering gallery of St Paul's remembered. It would be hard to reprint this book as I daresay it is hopelessly out of date (but no more so than the fashionably retro This Is London by Miroslav Sasek, recently republished). But I love it for the smoky 1960's Chim-Chim-Charoo atmosphere of a grey London, still with soot and rain and hidden secrets.

Saviour Pirotta: Treasures rescued, treasures lost...

2009-10-15T21:26:00.000-07:00

A beautifully written and rather tragic tale from the brilliant Saviour Pirotta:

"A few weeks I was on my way to the bakery round the corner when I caught sight of a pile of old books overflowing out of a skip. At first I thought someone had dumped a boxful on top of the detritus you usually find on skips. A quick poke in the debris and I discovered it was actually the other way round. The skip was full of books and someone had plonked a few bits of broken furniture on top. There must have been a few thousand volumes in there. Dozens of students from Shipley College up the road were milling around the skip, their eyes glued on their mobile phones. None felt in the least bit compelled to have a poked around.

I popped into the newsagents’ nearby. Did they know were the books had come from? It turned out that the place next door had been a second hand bookshop. It had closed a few months before I’d moved to the village. The owner, a taciturn historian, had suffered a stroke and, unable to operate the business, had closed it down but refused to relinquish the lease back to the council. Apparently he had lived the last years of his life alone with his books, unable to sell on the stock and unwilling to part with it for free. Now that he was gone, workmen had been sent in to clear and fumigate the place before a new business took it on.

Where were the books going? I enquired. Surely, they weren’t just going to be dumped in a landfill site like so much worthless rubbish? It seemed they were. No one wanted them. No school, no college, not even a dealer could be found to offer them sanctuary. I texted a quick SOS to some friends, book lovers like me, who surely would come to the rescue? One of them owned a shop selling vintage memorabilia; she might find some of the books a new home and make a bit of a profit in the bargain.

The best went a long time ago, came back the reply from the only person who bothered answering. Only rubbish left. Don’t bother.

I delved in to see what the rubbish was. A 60s compendium of JM Synge’s plays! It included The Playboy of the Western World and Riders to the Sea, a brilliant one-act play! How could scripts like that be classed as rubbish? I also found a Nelson edition of John Buchan’s Greenmantle, its red cover slightly faded but still in good condition! And several copies of those Pan Books of Horror I used to treasure in the 70s, but which went to my brother when he married! A woman in a spotted kaftan ambled across the road. What kinds of books was she interested in? I asked. There were all sorts in here. She didn’t want any of the books on the skip, as it turned out. They might be mildewed, for heaven’s sake! What she was after was the bookcase she’d spotted from half way up the hill. A good clean and it would be as good as new for her doll collection, she reckoned.

I helped her dig out the bookcase but we soon attracted the attention of a young community liaison officer. Did we know that it was a criminal offence to dig around in skips, without the express permission of the owner? I knew it would be futile to explain that the owner of the books was too dead and cremated to give his permission. The woman in the kaftan and I both scuttled away, me carrying an armful of rescued books, the woman carrying the bookcase on one shoulder, like a female Jesus bearing his cross.

That night, I returned to the crime scene, but the skip had been replaced by a near-empty one. No books in it; they’d been taken to the landfill site. But I did rescue a lovely wooden box that seemed to have once held jars of ink or paint. It’s sitting in my shed at the moment, waiting for a free moment when I can clean it up and give it a good lick of linseed oil to bring out the grain.

I can’t bear to think about the books I didn’t manage to rescue are, though. Would the taciturn historian be watching over them from wherever he is? And, as they slowly disintegrated in the rain and the frost, their precious words erased forever by the elements, would he be shedding an afterlife tear at the dawning of an age when his beloved books count for so little? I hope so, for as I look at my own books, safe on their shelves for at least as long as I live, I am reminded of thought provoking line from Cleopatra. As Elizabeth Taylor in the title role watches the flames engulf the once famous library of Alexandria, she screams at Caesar: Neither you nor any other barbarian has the right to destroy one human thought!"

Thanks to Saviour Pirotta for permission to post his story.

from Mary Mayfield...

2009-10-15T08:12:00.000-07:00

Beloved books from Mary Mayfield. Thanks so much for sending these pictures and sharing the story behind the books. I love a bit of embossed gold as well...

"Granddad's Books
These are very special books to me as they belonged to my mother's father who died a few years before I was born. By trade, he was an engine driver working for Barber & Walker pits on their private railways around Eastwood, Nottinghamshire; by the time of WW2 he was in charge of running their goods depot. In his spare time, he grew mushrooms which were sent down to Covent Garden market, built his own wooden-framed caravan, travelled around on his motorbikes and experimented in what must have been cutting-edge technology - building a succession of radios and, ultimately in 1939, built a television set - the first person in the village to have one!
Back to the books - a series of 12 classic novels from Odhams Press dating to the 30's and a four part "Gardening for Amateurs" from Waverley Book Company from the 20's. There were a couple more of his books which have disappeared (I remember a book titled "Your Fate in the Stars") but not many as ours wasn't a household full of books.These two sets of books though were looked after by my Grandmother, perhaps as mementoes for I don't ever remember her reading them - in fact I think I was the only person interested in their contents.They are all well used books - not falling apart but it's obvious that they have been read or referred to more than once but this must have been only by Granddad. As a child I thought they must be incredibly dull as they were always kept wrapped in brown paper to protect their covers and, although I claimed them as a teenager, I was never allowed to remove it.Only after I married and moved them to a new home did the covers come off."

Mary Mayfield

The Illustrated Book...with a difference

2009-10-14T01:03:00.000-07:00

This book caught my wife's eye because of my love of music. Imagine our surprise to discover that the rather sentimental prose was accompanied not by distinctly average engravings, as first appeared to be the case, but by hundreds of incredibly fine HAND DRAWN illustrations, put directly onto the page of this bound book.

By whom? The author? Someone who loved the book so much they couldn't resist? Perhaps a lover of the author?

The romantic possibilities are endless. For this reason I cherish the book. Someone must have loved it so much to have wanted to create the best drawings they could muster, and in abundance. There are over a hundred of them. I can think of very few people who, in our digital age, would bother to see something like this through. It makes the book an exceptionally personal and intimate item, as in a way all books can be. It is not a great book nor one I read from often. Rather, it is a unique and curious object that I leaf through and wonder about from time to time. I think the idiosyncraties of the published form are endlessly fascinating, and the stories they further create in my mind are valuable and cherished.
The words within are all linked to music by Mendelsohn, Verdi, Wagner and other Romantic composers. Extracts from their music is quoted throughout, and the books has sections called "largo" and "allegro".

The book is copyrighted 1898 and produced by the Knickerbocker Press New York. This is not a first edition but one of many reprints. And yet, with these many drawings it is surely unique!

Old Man River

2009-10-08T21:40:00.000-07:00

Forgotten, misunderstood, neglected, much maligned. Here is a man who did as much as Martin Luther King, but whose political views resulted in appalling abuse during the McCarthy witchhunts in America. For he was accused of being a Communist. As so often, my love of something - or someone - comes from a childhood memory, which is that of my father playing Paul Robeson's records. I have since collected many original 78 rpm records, and they are some of my most cherished things. This little book is not a biography. It is a statement. A personal explanation of Mr Robeson's views and reasons. It is a rebuff to those Americans who turned against him. And it is a sensitive and deeply moving insight into the racism and segregation suffered by black Americans in the 20th century.Perhaps Mr Robeson was naive. His reception in the Soviet Union and his observations of racial equality cast a long shadow on his homeland. Certainly the principles of a communist ideal must have been attractive. The reality was somewhat different and he in no way endorsed what Stalin did. Indeed he never joined the Communist party as such, but spoke out against racism so passionately - and used the Soviet system as an example of an alternative - that post-war America became nervous.

He was adored in Britain and celebrated all over the world. Back in American he and his audiences were - incredibly - stoned, leading to riots. He was dragged through courts, humiliated, stripped of his dignity and refused his passport. At the height of his career as a singer and actor (he played Othello to great acclaim in London), he was imprisoned in his own country. Today he isn't really celebrated as he should be. He risked everything for his people and I adore this book as it contains such humanity, such courage and emotion. He was a great speaker and a fine, good man. He paved the way for President Obama. But I don't believe this is a book that will ever turn up on Kindle...

"To be free - to walk the good American earth as equal citizens, to live without fear, to enjoy the fruits of our toil, to give our children every opportunity in life - that dream which we have held so long in our hearts is today the destiny we hold in our hands." PAUL ROBESON: HERE I STAND.

Train spotting

2009-10-07T22:06:00.001-07:00

Like a lot of boys I grew up loving trains. Proper trains... steam trains. I adored these Little Red Engine books by Diana Ross (I'm guessing that's not the Disco Diva...but who knows?). Certainly I much preferred them to Thomas the Tank Engine and co. Originally they had illustrations by Lewitt-Him, about whom I know nothing, except I love the design and order of the illustrations. Later books were illustrated in a very simular vein by Leslie Wood, and these books have been reissued. But Lewitt-Him's have not which is a shame. In any case the originals, with colour separation, lithographic covers are so much more beautiful than full colour modern covers, as is the matt paper within. I especially love the cover underneath the dustwrapper of Leslie Wood's illustration (bottom picture), just gorgeously simple. In the stories, which take me right back to home and my childhood, the Little Red Engine has remarkably straightforward adventures: In The Little Red Engine gets a name (which I think is possibly the first book in the series) he carries the King on the main line. "And then they came to a tunnel, the first it had ever been through. It took a deep breath: WHOOOOEEEEEOOOOO!" To a train mad kid that was poetry! His reward is to be named "Royal Red" by Special appointment to His Majesty the King. Quite right too!

Old favourites from Gerry Mayfield

2009-10-07T09:47:00.000-07:00

A great story from Gerry Mayfield - thanks for sending it!
"I have a couple of old books at least that fit the bill.

The first was a prize from 1st year secondary school (now year 7 of course) and it is now dog eared, but cherished as much for the personalised impersonal message in the front declaring that this is to 'Gerald Mayfield' and was 'Form Prize 1L'. I got to choose the book from a table full and then attended a prize giving session one evening to receive it.

At the time I felt 6 feet tall as I had really worked hard at this because I had not been placed in the top form, which was my rightful place, and with the winning of that prize went promotion to my goal of 'Form 2C'. I read and reread the book as a child and now it sits amongst the other children's books and rarely has a page turned. Would I part with it? NO! I hated school and no one will know what it cost me to win it - it is a badge, a memory and a treasure
.

The second seems a cheat but only today I realised how dear the book is to me. We are in desperate need of shelf inches and I have gone through my own personal stuff to see what I would sacrifice. I identified a group of 3 'haynes' manuals. I have always loved the smell of oil and the blood on the knuckles from trying to get into that awkward place to release that awkward nut. I rebuilt my first motor bike at 17. It was a BSA Starfire C15 and it cost me £29. I moved onto a Bantam and spent a fair amount of time nursing that and eventually passed my test. I did the sums and realised I could JUST afford to get a real bike. I went along for a look see and purchased (on my brother's signature) a Norton 750 Interstate Commando. It became my pride and joy and I spent lots of hours working on it. I couldn't do that without a 'haynes' manual and I read it even when there was nothing need doing. It might need doing soon, mightn't it? That book helped me put a new clutch in when it failed doing nearly a ton in the fast lane. It helped me get the lights on when the rectifier failed coming back from Blackpool. It helped me get the isolastic mountings sorted when she bucked in the corners. But more than all that the book carries all those memories, of all the bikes of my youth. The smell of it, the feel of it contains too much. I could not get rid of it and I returned it to the shelf and I may, seriously, add it to my reading list again."

More on Bilibin

2009-10-07T02:35:00.000-07:00

I feel Bilibin will feature on this site rather often. Even today he is little known and under appreciated. He was not just an illustrator but also a famous designer of sets and costumes, in particular for operas. The illustrations here are from two sources. One is the programme for a season of Russian Opera in Paris in 1929. For this he produced designs for Rimsky-Korsakov's The Tale of Tsar Saltan (after Pushkin). Here is the spectacular front cover and one of the set designs.

The set shows the Island of Bouyan where an enchanted Swan Princess will turn Prince Guidon into a Bumble Bee (cue the composer's famous "flight" for orchestra!). The image is in the Ashmolean in Oxford (incorrectly assigned to another Rimsky-Korsakov opera, The Invisible city of Kitezh). 30 years earlier, when the opera Tsar Saltan was premiered, Bilibin produced an illustrated book of Pushkin's original poem, which was dedicated to the venerable old composer. The picture from the book is a scan of a first edition. Imagine it! Rimsky-Korsakov may have held this very book in his hands! As noted in an earlier post, these picture books were lavishly produced with sumptuous glossy inks (almost like oil paints - a process called chromolithography) and with gold as a fifth colour. Pictures alas cannot do justice to the fabulous colours and textures of this VERY dusty old book.

BRING OUT THE BOOKS

2009-10-06T23:28:00.000-07:00

So Kindle has been launched in the UK. Hurrah! But is that the death of books? Of course not! Beautiful old books will always be celebrated. Here, then, is a new blog to remind us of something Kindle can't do yet. Which is... to become a magical intimate individual gift, something to write in, to give or share, press flowers in, love and look upon with memories, reassuringly unchanging (apart from the dust). And with a left hand page and pictures too! Here's a rare edition (1912) of Ivan Bilibin's Russian Wonder Tales, a collection of folk tales with a selection of illustrations by the great Russian illustrator. These images were first produced for a series of magnificent and luxurious picture books in Russia. This more modest selection was the first book published in Britain with his work. The retellings are by Post Wheeler and the publisher is A & C Black. The embossed cover is badly damaged and Bilibin's image hard to distinguish (it shows a scene from The Firebird). But the patina of age lends atmosphere and mystery and tells another story. The story of those who held the book, loved it and cherished it and then passed it on. Produced during Russia's most turbulant times, it must have been a very special reminder of all that was lost to any refugee who saw it...