Shute is particularly fascinating if you're interested in the history of flying, how Motor Gunboats of the Coastal Forces operated and suchlike matters. Less so in some of the zany quasi visionary, quasi (half-baked) religious ideas in, for example, 'Round the Bend' and 'An Old Captivity'. On romance, mixed and sometimes a bit too innocent, though he has the knack of writing believable characters. On class conventionally of his time. I regularly reread some, occasionally others, a few not at all.
I’ve read “On the Beach” and “A Town like Alice”, probably in the last 5 years. Haven’t seen the films.
I like some Kipling. “Stalky and Co” is probably the only one I’ve read more than once, partly because it was a favourite of my husband’s grandmother.
I like Nevil Shute’s work. There are two fine early short stories published together under the title Stephen Morris, and I happily re-read most of his works: Lonely Road, Ruined City, Landfall: A Channel Story, Pied Piper, Pastoral, The Chequer Board, No Highway, A Town Like Alice,
The Far Country, Requiem for a Wren.
Kipling is a masterly short story writer, deserving of his Nobel prize, and more nuanced on race and empire than is commonly reputed.
Reading comments here about Jennings triggered a memory that there had been a television adaptation. And so there was: https://imdb.com/title/tt0379122/
All episodes are unfortunately lost.
I just discovered the "Shutists" group on FB, so clearly a few people do still read Nevil Shute. I liked Slide Rule and also In the Wet, which was written in the 1950s and is set in the 1980s. Fascinating to see what someone thought it might be like.
I’ve read “On the Beach” and “A Town like Alice”, probably in the last 5 years. Haven’t seen the films.
I like some Kipling. “Stalky and Co” is probably the only one I’ve read more than once, partly because it was a favourite of my husband’s grandmother.
"Stalky and Co" is hair-raising! I particularly remember the story in which the chaplain co-opts our heroes (via an ambiguous and deniable suggestion) to "persuade" a sixth-form bully to change his ways
via extreme torture.
This is all presented as the system working very much as intended!
That puts me in mind of 'Vice Versa,' by F. Anstey. Same idea as Freaky Friday (child changing bodies with parent) but in Victorian England, featuring a boy's boarding school. My husband says it is the only realistic portrayal of boarding school he has ever found.
I’ve read “On the Beach” and “A Town like Alice”, probably in the last 5 years. Haven’t seen the films.
I definitely recommend watching "A Town Like Alice". Virginia McKenna is brilliant as Jean Paget as she transforms into a brave and resourceful leader of the group of women and children traipsing across Malaya.
So many writers that I’ve not heard of here, but I don’t think anyone has mentioned Elizabeth Goudge. Kuruman introduced these books to me 20 years ago. The only book of Goudge’s that seems to stay in print is “The Little White Horse”, possibly because it’s a children’s book and was given a big endorsement by J K Rowling.
I guess it says something that it is the only Goudge book available on audible.
Goudge wrote in a time when publishers didn’t expect writers to stick to a certain style of novel, so Goudge’s books range from historical fiction and ecclesiastical fiction to fantasy. I keep two copies of “The Scent of Water” so that I always have one to loan out to anyone who is recuperating - it’s a beautiful, human and quiet novel, set in a country village, where not much happens but where all human experience is.
I’ve read “On the Beach” and “A Town like Alice”, probably in the last 5 years. Haven’t seen the films.
I definitely recommend watching "A Town Like Alice". Virginia McKenna is brilliant as Jean Paget as she transforms into a brave and resourceful leader of the group of women and children traipsing across Malaya.
The book was adapted for TV in around 2000, including a lot of the material that was left out of the b&w movie, also covering the second part of the book set in Australia. Very good indeed as I remember.
So for those of us who haven't read Elizabeth Goudge before, @Clarence, is The Scent of Water a good place to start, or would you recommend a different way in?
Good writers do get rediscovered - Elizabeth Taylor being a case in point, recently reprinted in Virago Modern Classics. Unfortunately though I have tried, I can't really get on with her.
I hadn’t realised Elizabeth Goudge was out of print. I haven’t read “The Scent of Water”. My favourites are “Linnets and Valerians” (more an older children’s book) and “Island Magic”, but I also enjoyed the Herb of Grace trilogy (which has a considerable amount of reflection on theological issues of suffering).
This thread is full of books I love and is constantly inspiring me to revisit old favourites!
So for those of us who haven't read Elizabeth Goudge before, @Clarence, is The Scent of Water a good place to start, or would you recommend a different way in?
I think so, but others might say ‘The Dean’s Watch’, or if you love weird time travel in Scotland themes, try “The Middle Window” (don’t know if Diana Gabaldon read Goudge, but there’s hints of Outlander - but written long before it!).
I like them too - I probably got the suggestion from folks here. The first one (which I think is the one mentioned by @RockyRoger) is my favourite by quite a way. I'm a bit of a sucker for stories which take faith as something normative and manage to do it without setting off some alarm or other in me about how they do it, and this was one of them - but no doubt someone else would find it twee or something.
Very much approved reading in my Triddie childhood ( Cold War & all that). After all the good Don always managed to get the better of his old adversary
I acquired this from a second-hand bookshop last week! I like it very much and Peppone is not at all portrayed as a bad lot. In fact Christ is often to be seen gently rebuking Don Camillo for his bad behaviour to the mayor. The interesting thing to me is that not only is faith normative, so is the Communist Party and so too is having a tommy-gun in your church!
Of course he isn’t. What you fail to realise is how the 1950s RCC ( when the Index was alive and well) latched on to Din Camillo as a latter day Defender of the Faith.
I read the Dom Camillo when I was really young and still read them 70 years later. And those little illustrations are just the proverbial icing on the cake!
My favourite Don Camillo story is the one where he manages to get on a trip round Soviet Russia organised by the Communist mayor. He is asked to look for the grave of an Italian soldier from the Second World War by the soldier's mother. I don't know how to do spoilers, so I'll just say that particular story has a poignant ending.
Does anyone read Jon Creasey any more? I have a friend who enjoys his books, along with other quite obscure 1940s and 50s authors. Murder mysteries - the one I read had the murder set in Sydney Opera House as it was being built.
I don't know how fashionable they are or aren't these days, and they haven't aged well in every aspect, but - I adore everything written by John Wyndham. I expect that Day of the Triffids still gets quite widely read, but I don't know about the others. While his portrayal of women leaves something to be desired (understatement!), his science fiction concepts and the logical progressions he explored within them are fascinating, and still have something to say to us today.
I remember my former workplace having a large selection of books by Miss Read, stories of both Fairacre and Thrush Green. I had a couple I bought for holiday reading at a cheapo shop, and enjoyed them. Anyone here a fan?
I don't know how fashionable they are or aren't these days, and they haven't aged well in every aspect, but - I adore everything written by John Wyndham. I expect that Day of the Triffids still gets quite widely read, but I don't know about the others. While his portrayal of women leaves something to be desired (understatement!), his science fiction concepts and the logical progressions he explored within them are fascinating, and still have something to say to us today.
"The Chrysalids" set in the aftermath of a nuclear war, and "The Kraken Wakes" set in a world of rising sea levels, are both worth a re read.
And everyone knows the Midwich Cuckoos which has been adapted for TV or movie more than once.
Apropos John Wyndam, as a youn lad I loved 'The Outward Urge' which was his forecast of spaceflight. Brazil was seen as the next 'superpower'. This, alas, didn't happen. My favourite Wyndam remains the restrained 'The Kraken Wakes'.
Can I mention, Peter de Vries's 'The blood of the Lamb' published, I think, in 1961? This still helps deal with the death of my beloved first cousin at the same age and from the same illness.
Miss Read used to be very popular on the second hand market, among the same sort of demographic who asked "Have you got any Catherine Cookson?" I read quite a few of them when they were in stock, and enjoyed the gentle country life atmosphere of the stories.
I had scary dreams about Triffids for years, never saw any of the film versions of Wyndham's books.
There are old musty libraries right across former British colonies (Kenya, Zambia, Zimbabwe etc) still stocked with shelves of Rudyard Kipling and Rider Haggard. I read Mowgli and the Jungle Book when I was a child in what was still called Rhodesia and loved his stories until I tried to reread him in my late 20s. Sometimes there's no nuance or subtlety at all, just chauvinist white supremacist rubbish. As with Haggard, the underpinnings of so much of the 'white boys adventuring in darkest Africa' myths are all about Empire and glorifying conquest and subjugation.
I had similar misgivings reading books by John Buchan. I love The 39 Steps film (Hitchcock version, naturally) and enjoyed reading the book and then subsequent ones featuring Richard Hannay but the casual anti-semitism, misogyny and racism was difficult to get past.
To me the interesting thing about Kipling is that these imperial paens - which are really front and centre; he often says explicitly that he is doing this - are at odds with something else which is also going on. So in "Jungle Book" the "official" Kipling line is that Mowgli, being a human, is intrinsically superior to the animals; he is able to impose his will and it is his right to do so. But actually the focus is often elsewhere - the wisdom and tolerance of Baloo - the loyalty of the wolves who take Mowgli in - the rules under which the Jungle operates. And this "something else" is what makes the stories attractive.
I think there is a similar tension in nearly all Kipling. For example in McAndrew's Hymn the eponymous Scots engineer is strongly in favour of Calvinism and steam engines. But there is an extraordinary section in the midst of the poem where he finds himself almost persuaded by a pantheistic nature mysticism... but then he rejects this as a cunning temptation... and Kipling "officially" agrees with him, but one gets the idea that Kipling could surely not have written the "temptation" so powerfully without being "tempted" in this way himself....
It is quite true that Kipling is a jingo imperialist, perhaps even by the standards of his age. But he is aware that there could be a different way of looking at things, and I think he has an underlying yearning to escape from his official pith helmet.
With Kipling there are stories like Lispeth and On the City Wall where if you didn't know better you'd think they were by a critic of Imperialism.
Saki is often quoted as an anti-semite. It's been so long since I've read any that I can't give even hints of examples- except for The Unrest Cure (I think that's the title) in which someone's antisemitism is played on as a savage practical joke, so savage that it's very hard not to see it as critique.
I'm pretty certain from vague memories that it's not just that story leading to the accusations, but you do wonder why that one story sticks out so.
I had scary dreams about Triffids for years, never saw any of the film versions of Wyndham's books.
The 70s (? no, computer says 1981) one which was on telly when I was a kid, freaked me out well and truly. A bit like Dr Who - not so much whizz-bang space opera, more 'unreal sh*t coming to a normal street just like yours'. The blind people looting shops, and the main man (I can't say hero, I guess) helping an older woman futilely grappling with a tin of coffee, by giving her an equally futile tin of beans. And the music....waadiddlywaadiddlywaadiddlywaadidyBAAABAAA :0
Comments
I agree. It's on my "must re-read" pile.
I like some Kipling. “Stalky and Co” is probably the only one I’ve read more than once, partly because it was a favourite of my husband’s grandmother.
The Far Country, Requiem for a Wren.
Kipling is a masterly short story writer, deserving of his Nobel prize, and more nuanced on race and empire than is commonly reputed.
https://imdb.com/title/tt0379122/
All episodes are unfortunately lost.
"Stalky and Co" is hair-raising! I particularly remember the story in which the chaplain co-opts our heroes (via an ambiguous and deniable suggestion) to "persuade" a sixth-form bully to change his ways
I definitely recommend watching "A Town Like Alice". Virginia McKenna is brilliant as Jean Paget as she transforms into a brave and resourceful leader of the group of women and children traipsing across Malaya.
I guess it says something that it is the only Goudge book available on audible.
Goudge wrote in a time when publishers didn’t expect writers to stick to a certain style of novel, so Goudge’s books range from historical fiction and ecclesiastical fiction to fantasy. I keep two copies of “The Scent of Water” so that I always have one to loan out to anyone who is recuperating - it’s a beautiful, human and quiet novel, set in a country village, where not much happens but where all human experience is.
The book was adapted for TV in around 2000, including a lot of the material that was left out of the b&w movie, also covering the second part of the book set in Australia. Very good indeed as I remember.
Good writers do get rediscovered - Elizabeth Taylor being a case in point, recently reprinted in Virago Modern Classics. Unfortunately though I have tried, I can't really get on with her.
I'd agree. Have you tried 'Diary of a Pilgrimmage?'
This thread is full of books I love and is constantly inspiring me to revisit old favourites!
I think so, but others might say ‘The Dean’s Watch’, or if you love weird time travel in Scotland themes, try “The Middle Window” (don’t know if Diana Gabaldon read Goudge, but there’s hints of Outlander - but written long before it!).
Luckily the rest of us caught on early…
"The Chrysalids" set in the aftermath of a nuclear war, and "The Kraken Wakes" set in a world of rising sea levels, are both worth a re read.
And everyone knows the Midwich Cuckoos which has been adapted for TV or movie more than once.
There are old musty libraries right across former British colonies (Kenya, Zambia, Zimbabwe etc) still stocked with shelves of Rudyard Kipling and Rider Haggard. I read Mowgli and the Jungle Book when I was a child in what was still called Rhodesia and loved his stories until I tried to reread him in my late 20s. Sometimes there's no nuance or subtlety at all, just chauvinist white supremacist rubbish. As with Haggard, the underpinnings of so much of the 'white boys adventuring in darkest Africa' myths are all about Empire and glorifying conquest and subjugation.
I think there is a similar tension in nearly all Kipling. For example in McAndrew's Hymn the eponymous Scots engineer is strongly in favour of Calvinism and steam engines. But there is an extraordinary section in the midst of the poem where he finds himself almost persuaded by a pantheistic nature mysticism... but then he rejects this as a cunning temptation... and Kipling "officially" agrees with him, but one gets the idea that Kipling could surely not have written the "temptation" so powerfully without being "tempted" in this way himself....
It is quite true that Kipling is a jingo imperialist, perhaps even by the standards of his age. But he is aware that there could be a different way of looking at things, and I think he has an underlying yearning to escape from his official pith helmet.
Saki is often quoted as an anti-semite. It's been so long since I've read any that I can't give even hints of examples- except for The Unrest Cure (I think that's the title) in which someone's antisemitism is played on as a savage practical joke, so savage that it's very hard not to see it as critique.
I'm pretty certain from vague memories that it's not just that story leading to the accusations, but you do wonder why that one story sticks out so.
The 70s (? no, computer says 1981) one which was on telly when I was a kid, freaked me out well and truly. A bit like Dr Who - not so much whizz-bang space opera, more 'unreal sh*t coming to a normal street just like yours'. The blind people looting shops, and the main man (I can't say hero, I guess) helping an older woman futilely grappling with a tin of coffee, by giving her an equally futile tin of beans. And the music....waadiddlywaadiddlywaadiddlywaadidyBAAABAAA :0