Harriet Devine's Blog

City of Shadows by Ariana Franklin

Why oh why isn't Ariana Franklin (aka Diana Norman) better known? Married to the celebrated British journalist and film critic Barry Norman, she produced an impressive number of highly intelligent and superbly researched historical novels, most of them thrillers, before she sadly died in 2011. I've reviewed several on here including this one and have loved them all. 

The best known and most recent were set in the early middle ages, perhaps the period she knew and loved best. But City of Shadows (2006), which I'd never even heard of before I got it for my birthday a week or so ago, takes place in Berlin in the 1920s and 30s. This is a most intriguing story, mixing fact and fiction in a seamless way and having the most unexpected twist at the end - I certainly didn't see it coming and had to go back to the beginning to see if I could see it prepared for in any way.

Franklin invariably creates strong, feisty, outspoken female protagonists, and Esther Solomonova is certainly one of them. In her early twenties when the book begins, she is working as a secretary to the Russian Prince Nick, a supposed (but actually fake) aristocrat who runs a chain of nightclubs. He values her for her skill in languages -- several including her native Russian), her intelligence, and the fact that he can sleep with her from time to time. Esther disapproves of him but is fond of him -- however, her loyalty is considerably stretched when he tells her they are going to rescue a young woman from an asylum and hope to pass her off as the Grand Duchess Anastasia, who supposedly escaped from the slaughter of her family at Ekaterinberg a few years earlier.

Despite her misgivings, Esther takes pity on the girl, and soon they are living in a respectable flat, provided by Nick, and accompanied by Natalya, a stripper whose parents used to work for the family of the Tzar. Their job is to coach Anna, as she now gets called, so that she can be formally accepted by the remaining members of her family.

You see where the fact and fiction comes in. Yes, Anna Anderson was in an asylum, she did claim to be Anastasia, but Esther, Nick, the detective Schmidt who becomes Esther's lover, and all the dreadful thugs and crooks who are trying to murder Anna are presumably figments of Franklin's imagination. Later in the book, which has moved forward to 1933 and beyond, Hitler puts in an appearance as do many of the well-known figures who surrounded him.

This is a thriller, and a very exciting one, but it is also full of fascinating and clearly accurate historical background on Berlin, as it moved from the terrible poverty and inflation after the First World War to prosperity and Fascism under the rulership of Hitler. Some of this I already knew, some was new to me -- in particular I learned a great deal about the appalling treatment of the Jews under the Romanovs which highlights the tragedy that they moved from that country to Germany with even worse results. So it's a thoughtful, and thought-provoking novel -- I won't forget Esther in a hurry, or indeed Anna Anderson, who we only ever see through Esther's eyes, though by the end we have learned a lot about her (partly fictional) origins. She is a figure who has fascinated people since she first appeared in 1922, and here we have a new view of her, and one which I found entirely convincing.

City of Shadows is out of print (publishers, are you listening?) but there are plenty of copies to be had on AbeBooks. Great stuff. 

Shiny Poetry Competition

While we Shiny editors are all slaving over hot computers to get next week's edition off the ground, we thought we should remind you that you need to write and submit your entry to the Shiny Poetry Competition.  With a nice broad subject (Reading -- so you could even write about the Berkshire town and get away with it), a 25-line limit and some tasty prizes, what's not to lose?

It's a fact that many people write poetry secretly, perhaps never thinking of publication. But it's also an obvious fact that some of those poems are probably really good. So if you have even a faint hope that yours might be, just bite the bullet and send it in. Full details here. 

Girl Reading (Angelica Bell)

 

I posted this lovely painting on here about five years ago, but thought it was time to give it a re-run. It's by Vanessa Bell, and shows her daughter Angelica, possibly at Charleston, which I visited a week or so ago. I've just re-read Angelica's autobiography Deceived with Kindness: A Bloomsbury Childhood, a most beautifully written and moving book which seems to me to go to the heart of those hugely talented artists and writers. Brave and brilliant they certainly were, but they made some mistakes, and Angelica's upbringing was undoubtedly one of them. Not only was she not told until she was seventeen that Duncan Grant was actually her father, but she was allowed to wander in and out of various educational establishments, always treated as if she was different because of her background. 

Strangely enough my own upbringing had certain things in common with Angelica's. For one thing, she was a student at the London Theatre Studio, where my parents both taught. We both spent a period of time wandering around Rome on our own in our teens, for one thing, fending off the advances of lustful Romans, but we also went to the same school, Langford Grove, presided over by the wonderfully eccentric Mrs Curtis. Now defunct, it was an extraordinary place, quite unlike any other school I've ever heard of. And I too was allowed to drop out of education if I chose to, never completing my A-levels though I started them twice -- lovely parents but a bit too laissez faire, I suppose. (You can read about my own experiences in my childhood memoir, Being George Devine's Daughter, if you're interested). 

Unlike Angelica, though, I had a happy childhood in general, and a good relationship with my father, busy and often absent though he was. The saddest thing about Deceived with Kindness is the fact that Angelica so much regrets that she didn't have the chance to develop a filial relationship with her biological father while she was growing up. He lived with them, of course, but the lack of knowledge undoubtedly made a huge difference. Happily they grew closer after her mother's death. Deceived with Kindness is a great book -- do read it if you haven't already.

Do I Miss England?

"England! With all thy faults I love thee still,"

So wrote Byron (seen here dressed as a Turk) -- you can read the whole poem here, and very witty and delightful it is. I suppose Byron was in many ways the quintessential expat, loving the adopted country he settled in but missing certain things about his home (freedom of speech, beefsteaks, and a 'seacoal fire' among others). 

I sort of concur with Byron, though not for the same reasons (certainly not the beefsteaks), but in fact I much prefer my adopted country, France, to almost everything in the UK. Strangely enough I've never had much of an attachment to Englishness. In fact as a child I always identified strongly with my father's genetic heritage (Irish Greek on one side, Irish Canadian on the other) rather than my mother's very English one -- though it was great to discover (thanks, Ancestry!) that she could trace her roots back to Alfred the Great and beyond. And all my life I've felt happier outside my native country. 

However, having had such a lovely time in England recently, I do realise there are a few things I do miss. You might think that one of them was my family, but actually, though I love them all more than I can say, I (and they) are quite happy with the visits we pay each other fairly regularly (plus Skype, FaceTime, What'sApp, email). And when we are together, we enjoy each other all the more for it not being such a regular occurrence.

 I miss libraries! This one was my little local library in Temple Cowley, in Oxford, where I was lucky enough to live before I moved to France. Of course Oxford has some spectacular libraries, but this one was just round the corner and would get me books from the much larger Central Library -- and of course there was the Bodelian if I was craving to do some research. Naturally the French do have libraries, but all the books are in French -- boo!

And I miss charity shops. You almost never see one in France, not where I live anyway, whereas every small town in the UK has several, and very wonderful places they are -- there's a double whammy every time you buy something, as you benefit others as well as yourself. Of course we do have the amazing Emmaus instead, where terrific bargains can be found, and the equally great vide greniers, or attic sales, so I'm not losing sleep over that one.

 And what about National Trust houses (and let's not forget Charleston Trust -- see my last post)? Well, naturally there are plenty of chateaux over here too, but though I've been to some that are stunning on the outside, none them measure up to the brilliantly reconstructed interiors which make a visit to an English stately home so memorable. No cream teas here, either.

But none of these things will tempt me away from the peace and quiet, the glorious landscapes, the empty roads, the little local markets, the lovely food, the fun of learning another language and another culture... Sorry England. I don't hate you, and I'm happy to visit you from time to time, but you won't catch me moving back in a hurry. Wales, on the other hand, is pretty amazing, so that's where I'd go if I was thrown out of France!

 

 

Cat by Duncan Grant

Yesterday was my birthday and I did something I'd been longing to do for decades -- visited Charleston Farmhouse, home of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, the celebrated Bloomsbury Group painters. It was quite as wonderful as I'd always known it was, but more so in the sense that you were really in the presence of those wonderfully painted doors, windows, fireplaces, walls, tables, chairs, chests of drawers and everything else you can think of, with which, as I'm sure you know, they decorated the whole inside of the house. And of course there are their own, and other peoples' paintings everywhere, including this famous and glorious cat. 

I expect many people will have seen Life in Squares on the BBC recently, a very evocative and touching three part series telling the story of this brave, sometimes foolish group of artists and social pioneers. If not, seek it out at once. It was filmed at the house and in the lovely garden, on which luckily the sun was shining yesterday. Heaven.

 

Woman Cooking

Although I've been enjoying Simon's posts on The Great British Bake Off, I haven't been watching the programme -- in fact I'm not a great lover of cakes, pastries, biscuits and pies (I know, weird). But I do like to cook, and my eye was caught this week by this very charming picture of someone doing just that, in a rather simpler and less frantic way than obviously happens on the GBBO. In fact it all looks rather scarily clean and tidy, not very much like my kitchen when I'm in the middle of cooking.

This is by the Swiss artist Felix Valloton (1865-1925), who was perhaps best known for his woodcuts. Apparently he liked to paint scenes of domestic interiors, and I like to look at them, so hope you will too.

My Week

If I've been a bit quiet here lately, it's not because I haven't been busy. For one thing I've been doing a lot of proof reading, which has become my sort-of part-time day job -- it's mostly academic essays and articles, and this must be one of those times in the year when lots of them are getting ready for submission. But much more enjoyable is a piece I've taken on for a friend -- a novel, which she's hoping will be published before too long. It is a sheer delight to read -- very funny, but also quite thought-provoking. I hope to be reviewing it in full before too long.

Meanwhile I've also been reading, for Shiny 7, which seems to be looming alarmingly soon (well, early October). I've got two books on the go, one of which is The Girl in the Spider's Web. Stieg Larsson's trilogy divided opinion a lot, but I was one of the ones who loved it. So it was a bit of a gamble taking on this continuation by David Lagerkrantz -- could it possibly measure up? You'll have to wait for my review next month to find out but I'm about halfway through and enjoying it more than I expected. It's nice to meet those familiar characters again, and I'm pretty gripped by the plot.

In complete contrast -- well, not all that complete, since both are crime novels, but as far apart on that spectrum as you could be, probably -- I'm immersed in one of the British Library's latest Crime Classics. This is by J. Jefferson Farjeon, the author of  Mystery in White, which became a runaway bestseller last Christmas. Farjeon certainly knows how to put together an intriguing story -- this is a classic 'country house' mystery, with a larger cast and a more complex plot than Mystery in White but none the worse for that. There are some truly fascinating characters here, and the whole thing is delightfully in period (1936, to be exact). So far there've been three bodies -- a very unpleasant blackmailer, his even more unpleasant wife, and a complete stranger who was spotted the day before at the railway station. All very intriguing and I have no idea who could have done it -- the MP with a dodgy past? The ageing Earl, contemplating adultery with the pretty actress? The lady crime novelist? The society painter? His friend the gossip journalist? Or someone else entirely? Great fun. 

Called Back by Hugh Conway

Isn't that the most amazing cover? It's actually the original, not of the first publication of the novel, but of the 1929 reprint by The Detective Club, whose logo (not that they would have called it that) of the masked man with gun you can see in the bottom right-hand corner. The Detective Club was launched by the publisher Collins in 1929, and it is their 21st century incarnation, Harper Collins, that is producing this delightfully promising and attractive series of reprints. You won't be surprised if I tell you that the introduction to this one is by Martin Edwards, who has become the world expert on vintage crime (and on whose blog I first saw this mentioned).

But what about the book, I hear you cry? Well, it's a corker, in my opinion. First published in 1883, thus preceding Conan Doyle's Study in Scarlet by four years, it was a huge success in its day, selling 350,000 copies in its first year and causing Conway to be hailed as the new Wilkie Collins. And indeed, this is really more of a sensation novel than a detective novel, though a certain amount of detecting does go on. The story is narrated by one Gilbert Vaughan, an independently wealthy man with a rather curious history. Unlucky enough to be struck blind at the age of 25, he manages to become relatively independent, and one evening leaves his London house for a stroll down the road, certain that he will be able to find his way home. But the plan goes wrong and he finds himself in a strange house, where he witnesses a murder taking place -- he can't see, of course, but he can hear enough to know what's going on, including the pitiful cries of a young woman in the adjoining room. He somehow manages to escape, but has no idea where the house was situated.

Fast forward a few years. Vaughan has regained his sight, and is on a tour of Italy. One day he sees a most beautiful girl outside a church, and falls head over heels in love. His advances are initially rejected, but he sees her again in London and her uncle, one Dr Manuel Ceneri, agrees to their marriage. But Pauline, though exquisitely beautiful, quiet and docile, has been mentally damaged by some un-named even in the past (no prizes for guessing what this might have been, though Vaughan doesn't guess) and is so childlike and innocent that the marriage remains one in name only. After some time, Vaughan decides he cannot continue without learning the truth of her condition, and in order to do he undertakes an incredible journey to the wilds of Siberia, where Ceneri is now being held as a political prisoner. And at last he learns the truth and then has to make his way all the way back to London, where... Well, you'll have to read it to find out.

It would be easy to pick holes in this story, but why bother? Yes, it demands a little willing suspension of disbelief (which, as Coleridge said, constitutes poetic faith) but that in no way detracts from the enormous liveliness and fun of the novel. 

Why, you may be wondering, do we not know more about Hugh Conway? This was in fact the pseudonym of Frederick John Fargus, a one-time sailor who became a businessman and a writer of supernatural stories and thrillers. Sadly he died at the age of 37, having hardly begun what could have been a brilliant career. So it's great that he's getting another airing. Well done Harper Collins -- I hope to read more of this excellent new series before too long!

People Bathing

 The summer is coming to an end, and I don't know about your neck of the woods but round here in Western Europe it's been quite a mixed bag -- some boiling hot gloriously sunny days and some chilly ones with pelting rain. But it's the sunny ones I shall remember with huge pleasure. So here's a picture of one such -- it's called The Bathers, and painted by the Russian artist Konstantin Somov (1869-1939). I think this is rather an amazing painting -- incredibly evocative of hot summer days, of course, but it's the composition that's so powerful -- as if the artist was standing at the top of a high tower, looking down across the river. You really get the sense of the heat of the day -- the bright sun, and the deep shadow, which is clearly very welcome to the watching ladies. Nice,

Woman with Cat

It's usually Saturday when I post paintings on here, but this one caught my eye this morning and thought it was rather apt. I now have two tabby cats, a grown up one and a baby, but hadn't realised until recently that there are many types of tabby. Tiger, the baby, looks rather like the one in the painting ('Lady with Cat' by John Arthur Malcolm Aldridge), apparently a 'classic tabby' (?) but Bob, the grown-up, is what's called a mackerel tabby, with white bits. Both very beautiful, though. Here's Bob.