Just possibly I am turning into the history of sexuality/reproduction version of the kind of person who niggles about railway trivia or errors in military uniform in books/movies/tv etc? ('You have an engine of [class] running on [line] at [date], which was not possible'/'Officers of X regiment at Y date did not wear Sam Browne belts'/etc)

Am kind ( Read more... )

Now on chapter 1 of the Dangerous Ambition book, which is on my beloved Dame R's childhood and youth.

Oh yeah - her heart belonged to Daddy? she wanted to become him? Reading The Fountain Overflows for clues - okay, she does admit that West changed things, like the age she was when her father left, which is more than the ghastly Anthony Panther ( Read more... )

What I'm reading

Cressida Connolly, The Rare and the Beautiful (2005), about the extraordinary Garman siblings, who make the Mitfords look tame, and 'Sanger's Circus' in The Constant Nymph like staid suburbanites. I have a few obscure fact niggles: I don't think the National Vigilance Association had anything to do with adoption, but I give the ( Read more... )

Comment by somebody to an FB friend's post of that thing about 'If someone from the 1950s suddenly appeared today, what would be the most difficult thing to explain to them'.
Divorce. It used to be shameful. Because of having been born in the 50s, I still don't trust divorced people.

W.T.F. I say W.T.F.

How much notice does one take of the ( Read more... )

Dept of, I knew that, sort of: Cryptic crossword solvers played a vital role in military intelligence during the second world war.

Dept of, not immune to the attraction of Neanderthal Man: The downside of sex with Neanderthals.

Dept of, like no divorced couple ever remained friends: The secret letters of Wallis Simpson are sensational - but don't ( Read more... )

As previously indicated, this week is largely about 'apply seat of pants to seat of chair' Textbook Revision stuff and it's eating most of my time, attention and thoughts.

Though for all I know people may be passionately interested to know:

- Stephen Cretney's history of family law, yay! Why did no-one tell me about this (actually I think I have ( Read more... )

Sistahs doin it for themselves:

(Except, you know, this one wasn't just doing it for herself): Jayaben Desai, leader of the Grunwick dispute, dies aged 77. Though can I, at 5 ft 1 in, register my irritation at people who say things like 'She was 4ft 11 tall, but an absolute lioness'.

A rather different form of resistence to hegemonic requirements ( Read more... )

As far as I can tell, the last time I did one of these was in early August, bad hedgehog, no biscuit. During the interim I have logged nearly 50 titles in Visual Bookshelf and that does not include some rereads and a fair amount of random browsing, especially in my collected volumes of Katharine Whitehorn.

What else I read:

( Non-fiction )

Because I am a bit baffled by this:
I am a 54-year-old widow, with four adult children. My husband died suddenly of a massive heart attack two years ago. My problem is in coping with my decision, as a practising Catholic, to remain celibate for the rest of my natural life; I cannot be the only person in this position. I thought as time passed this ( Read more... )

Fox! in the garden! jumped the fence!

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Slow British Library wifi is slow. But free.

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In a case for annulment of marriage, on the grounds of the husband's impotence, I cannot help feeling that an additional reservation about his manhood would have been registered by the court on discovering that, being in North America on holiday in late ( Read more... )