100 and counting

The Century Girls by Tessa Dunlop

1918 was a momentous year in so many ways - the end of World War One, the partial granting of the vote to women and the murder of the Russian royal family to name but a few. It was also the year my nan was born.

Because of this last fact I was fascinated to read Dunlop's Century Girls. Not all of these remarkable women were born in 1918 but they are all around the same age. They come from all walks of life and have lived fascinating, normal lives.

While obviously none of them lived the same life as my nan there were little tidbits in each narrative that I knew could have been applied to her. It was a good mix of rural and city tales plus remembered those who were originally born in Empire countries. The women also span all economic classes which brings in very different view points too.

The book is mostly told in a chronological fashion, taking bits from each remarkable lady to make a rounded, female, history of the last 100 years. The book is wonderfully chatty in style but never overly sentimental. I loved it.

My nan - 26th June 1918- 14th April 2008

(picture from my sister)

Hic!

Gin Glorious Gin by Olivia Williams.

Electronic proof provided by netgalley.com

I'm not sure this book was good for me, until I read it I didn't think I liked gin but after reading this book it may be that I don't like the tonic rather than the actual gin. I do think that a great deal of taste testing may be called for...

Olivia Williams' book takes us through the history of gin - how it went from being a luxury drink to being Mothers' (and almost London's) ruin - think Hogarth - and then back again to being a premium drink.

There is a nice balance in the book between history, anecdotes to amuse and recipes to try or avoid. There are also detailed descriptions and illustrations of how the different stills work to make the different types of gin.  The convoluted history of the distilleries, and product, always remain clear and I loved seeing how it all fitted together to make an interesting snapshot of social history.

At the very end of the book there are some recommendations of bars to try, pubs to find and also of different gins, their flavours and their mixers.  All of this is useful information, especially to a gin novice like myself.

Gin is again an up-and-coming fashionable drink, in Norwich there will be two gin specialist bars before very long, and after reading this book I did head out to one of them to try the product. Apologies for any incoherence and typos this has caused in this blog entry!

for the record today's choice of Elephant gin, ice, fresh strawberries and bitter lemon was very palatable :)

An honour

Meeting Captain Alan Bean, astronaut (retd)

This past weekend I was in the presence of a truly great and inspirational man. Thanks to the efforts of Ken Willoughby, and Space Lectures, Mr Norfolkbookworm and I had the opportunity to go and hear one of only 12 men to walk on the moon speak.

It may have been a little crazy to drive from Norwich to Pontefract for a 90 minute talk but in the week that we lost another space legend (Scott Carpenter - fourth American in space) it seemed like the right thing to do.

Captain Bean flew on Apollo 12 and also on the second Skylab mission but his talk was not a dry "we did this, then we did that" lecture it was profound, poignant, fascinating and funny. One of the other audience members has done a wonderful job transcribing the event and if you'd like to see what caused me to have a huge lump in my throat and to join in a spontaneous standing ovation I reccommend having a read. It isn't a dry nerdy thing at all and you need no particular knowledge of the space programme to enjoy it.

After the talk Captain Bean signed autographs for the audience and spent a few moments with everyone in the queue - all 470 of us...

I felt as start stuck as a teenager meeting One Direction!

Book review including Cakes and Ale...?

Shakespeare's Local by Pete Brown

On the main road leading from London Bridge, a spit and a cough from The Globe Theatre, is a pub whose origins can be traced back to the time of Chaucer. In fact it stands near enough next door to the Tabard Pun, from where Chaucer's pilgrims departed in the Canterbury Tales.

In this book by beer writer Pete Brown the fascinating 600 years of the building's history is peeled back slowly and carefully. The reader learns about the history of the area, the history of beer and of the Inn itself.

As some one who likes this sort of personal history, and Pete Brown's style, I liked this book immensely. Unusually for me I did find it a book to dip in and out chapter by chapter as it was quite dense but I still read it over the course of 2 weeks rather than it laying discarded for months!

On my first trip to the Southwark area in a while I did search the building out, and while I only had time for a lemonade this time I will be back to have a more detailed look and to poke around into some of the remaining galleries.

As for whether or not this was Shakespeare's Local - you'll have to read the book to find out!

Pioneering

The Harvey Girls - Lesley Poling-Kempes

One of the first books I remember buying for myself was The Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder - all about the story of an American pioneer family moving West towards the end of the 1800s as America itself spread west.
I devoured the whole series of these books and later as an adult read biographies and critical responses to the books and despite now being able to see their faults, racist attitudes and hidden messages, I still love them and the whole idea of the growth of the Wild West.

As I may have mentioned (!) we've just come back from the west of America and one of the things that still surprises me is how new the area is in terms of being a place where westerner live. We went to towns that were younger than my grandparents and even the state of Arizona is 100 until next year.

In a lot of the gift and book shops we visited this book kept catching my eye, and on getting home I did treat myself to a copy and it was a lovely, if a bit disjointed, social history of the working women who helped open the west of America for white migrants.

Harvey was strongly connected to the railroads and as they expanded west he made sure that he built hotels and restaurants along the lines so that where ever the trains stopped people could get consistently good food and lodging. As well as employing local people he took advantage of the growing freedom of women, and economic need, and employed women from all over the country. As well as their wages they got full bed and board and often became some of the best wage earners in their families.

The Harvey hotels are mostly gone now but the legacy lives on as his family still run some of the gift shops at some of the west's National Parks - only fitting as it was Harvey that opened the areas up to the public but building hotels and extending railway lines to encompass them!

This book is a mixture of Harvey's history, the railroad history and the personal history of the Harvey Girls and is a fascinating read if, like me, these things interest you. It is pretty niche to be honest but still fascinating and a reminder that in some places history is far more recent than in the UK!