Berwick Church: Bloomsbury Baby!

If any readers of this blog ever find themselves meandering about in East Sussex they could do a lot worse than to visit the wonderful Bloomsburyfied church at Berwick. This is where we were only last week and as well as having splendid views of the South Downs, the inside of the church is literally plastered in the bold, beautiful and thoughtful work of Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and Quentin Bell.

Like nearby Charleston House, where the artists lived, there is hardly a scrap of blank space that goes unpainted. Regular readers may remember that I am fascinated by the so-called Bloomsbury interiors – that is to say the unconventional things which members of the Bloomsbury group did with the inside of their houses. This is also a Bloomsbury interior – but a public one and a religious one which shows these artists to be even more inventive and remarkable than I thought before. Grant and Bell were not at all religious, of course, but they did not belittle their religious subjects. They really knew how to use space and how to adapt and co-exist with the world around them.

As far as I can tell, Duncan Grant did most of the painting and in particular, he is the creator of the depiction of “Christ in Glory” on the chancel arch. He combined religious images with local landscapes to powerful effect. Thus, below Christ and the angels rolls the Sussex countryside and the scenes and faces of local life are all around the church. The murals were painted during World War II and below Christ and the angels sit, on the left three local servicemen in their uniforms (one of whom died before the war was out), and on the right the Bishop and the Rector who commissioned and supported the murals. Painting patrons into pictures was of course a strong feature of Italian renaissance art and the Italian influence on these murals was what struck me immediately. They feature so much that is English but in some ways, they are very foreign. They seem to be two things at once, without losing the essence of either.

Vanessa Bell followed Duncan Grant’s lead in her depiction of the Annunciation in which Mary and the angel Gabriel (posed, incidentally by the writer Angelica Garnett and Chattie Salaman) sit against a backdrop inspired by the gardens at Charleston House. Again, the familiar and the foreign, the sacred and profane, the timeless and the contemporary are placed within one frame and the result is startling. As you will see from this post, I got a bit overexcited with my picture taking....

And if that was not enough excitement for one day, my husband (who is himself becoming something of a master grave-finder having, only last year found Diana, Unity, Pamela and Nancy Mitford) spotted the grave of Cyril Connolly, which rather inspires me to finally read his book Enemies of Promise, itself a long term resident of my TBR pile. For another, more misanthropic day methinks...

Treasures of the bedside Lilliput – part 1 (Nancy Mitford’s Christmas)

Regular readers may remember that although I am not a worshipper, I am definitely an admirer at the book shelf of the legendary Nancy Mitford. I think that she is funny, and it is as simple as that. So, I was thrilled to settle down with my Bedside Lilliput and discover that a short and festive tale from the comic Nancy was first behind the cover.

This short story is called Aunt Melita’s Christmas Party and it is classic Mitford – all dysfunctional families and acerbic comments. Aunt Melita likes to think of herself as the Queen Bee of her family Christmastide and although they don’t declare themselves to be willing, they all seem to comply. Even her husband, who is nobody’s idea of a natural Father Christmas. It captures beautifully how we all end up doing things at Christmas without being at all sure why.

Introducing The Bedside Lilliput….

Along with many odd interests, I have for some time, had a lingering fascination in the history and content of a little and long since deceased literary magazine called Lilliput.

Lilliput was founded in 1937 and was dedicated to humour, short stories and little pieces on art and literature and so on. I first became aware of it because it was Lilliput that first published Sisters by a River, the first novel (maybe you can’t quite call it a novel, but that is another blog post) by one of my favourite writers, Barbara Comyns. The novel was published in instalments under the title “The Novel Nobody Will Publish” and that rather acted as a catalyst for somebody to publish it.

When I took a closer look at the annals of Lilliput, I discovered that Barbara Comyns was very much at the non famous end of its contributors. Here was a magazine which regularly featured the work of Nancy Mitford, Monica Dickens, V. S. Pritchett, Robert Graves and Patrick Campbell to name just a clutch.

My “Lilliput project” has been a casually looking out for information and references kind of affair – rather than a fiendishly searching and hunting down every tiny clue mission. Maybe that is why it has taken me so long to find that which I now proudly hold in my hands: a lovely volume called The Bedside Lilliput.

The Bedside Lilliput was published in 1950 and draws together short stories and other snippets that appeared in the magazine between 1937 and 1949. In his foreword the editor Richard Bennett wrote:

“There is always the possibility that Bedside Books may actually be placed beside beds. If this should happen to the Lilliput Bedside Book, may I wish the reader a good bedside lamp and pleasant dreams?”.

I know that it is 60 years since publication, but yes, Mr Bennett, you can, and thank you very much. It is right by my bed, and I hope to blog about its contents as I go along.

The book bloggy detective strikes in Oxfordshire: Swinbrook church and the grave of Nancy Mitford

1 August 2010 was the day that I ceased to be a bride. That’s right folks; it was our first wedding anniversary. For a bit of a break from London and in recognition of the fact that we are still speaking to each other, we decided that a weekend in Woodstock was in order. We went on walks, ate pies, drank wine, talked, got squashed by tourists in Blenheim Palace and got chased by wasps in Blenheim Palace gardens. Finally, on the way home, we were terribly English and decided to go “the scenic way”. When we drove past the SWINBROOK sign, we both said that we thought that it was significant in some way; where had we heard of it before?

I am grateful for a well read husband and have to admit to the world here and now that he remembered before I did: Swinbrook was the childhood home of the Mitford sisters and is the resting place of quite a few of them.

And so, to our list of first anniversary activities, we added grave hunting. The results are here for you to see. If anyone knows why there is a small mole carved on Nancy Mitford’s grave, you will have my undying gratitude.

The Weekly Portrait: Nancy Mitford by Mogens Tvede

Going bananas on Nancy Mitford. Well, only for this week.

Mooching with Mitford

I have been reading Love in a Cold Climate in rather warm circumstances. Firstly, in unseasonably steamy St. Petersburg and secondly, in an only slightly cooler London, where I now sit and reflect on what is basically a fun read.

Nancy Mitford’s Love in a Cold Climate is the follow on from her classic In Pursuit of Love and is narrated by the familiar Fanny Logan – a thinly fictionalised version of Mitford herself. Fanny is an unmistakably upper class girl, but her status as the abandoned child of the bolter - a notorious society floozy allows her to stand both at the heart of and also slightly outside the society which she describes.

This time, Fanny’s tale is that of Lord and Lady Montdore and their adored daughter and prize possession Polly. Lord and Lady Montdore are immensely wealthy and an oddly matched pair. He is a grand patrician gentleman and ex Viceroy of India and she is a grasping, vain, self regarding social climber who carries a bit too much weight. Their daughter Polly, born in the twilight of her mother’s child bearing years is an acknowledged astounding beauty but a bit of a wet fish socially, which, with a mother like that, is hardly surprising. The matching of Polly to a man of suitable wealth, status and standing is her mother’s life work, tacitly supported by her father. However, the machinations of human nature, the downright contrariness of the younger generation and the urge to rebel will all unite to give the Montdore’s something that they are not expecting.

I should probably be straight and say that I do not think that Nancy Mitford is really a great writer. I think that her dialogue is fun and characterful but her prose does not match it, and underneath her satire of the upper classes is a rich vain of showing off that she was one of them. The customary groan having been got out of the way however, there are two, really super things about Nancy Mitford’s novels and Love in a Cold Climate is no exception.

Firstly, they are side-splitting, floor-rolling, handbag-dropping funny. I even laughed on the tube, and that is not something that one sees often. For me, the most comic character is the mouth frothing Uncle Matthew who only comes into Love in a Cold Climate a few times, but always to great effect. Mitford had a great talent for laughing at those she knew and making them look ridiculous. Uncle Matthew is a pastiche of her father, Lord Reedsdale, who was, by all accounts (although, admittedly, hers is the main one...) every inch as potty as his literary incarnation.

Secondly, they are fascinating period pieces, which open a window on a world long lost and strangely contorted by the events of the 1940s. The Montdores and their crew represent a form of old world splendour which even at the time Nancy Mitford put pen to paper, was ebbing away. She was not a writer who tried to write about things she did not know about – this world of country house weekends and bridge parties and debutante balls was her world and it really shows in the way that she wrote.

Other opinions that I have enjoyed can be found at Bianca’s Book Blog, Life in a Pink Fibro and Vulpes Libris. The pictures are my own, rather battered copy of the novel, a lovely shot of the lady herself and a picture of Nancy Mitford and her famous sisters.

St. Petersburg in a Nancy Mitford frame of mind

I was properly mortified on Thursday evening when I opened an email from Frances at Heywood Hill inviting me to the launch of the new Capuchin Classic, Nancy Mitford's Highland Fling. Regular readers of this blog will know that I am a great fan of the mint green voyage of rediscovery that is Capuchin. The reason for the mortification is two fold. Firstly, by the time I opened the email, the party had practically already started, and secondly, I couldn't go in any case, as I was already on my way to St. Petersburg.

It was our first time in the "Venice of the north" and in Russia and what a time it was. We had a wonderful taste of Russian culture at the wedding of dear friends and topped it off with a splendid tour of some of the city's sights before dragging out weary and sleep-deprived bodies back home last night.

How much reading did I do? Well, not as much as planned. I spent most of the flight out sad about having missed the Capuchin bash, and most of the flight home, fast asleep. I feel like a very naughty book blogger. The book that I had with me, and which I did read a bit of was Nancy Mitford's Love in a Cold Climate - the lovely, if slightly dilapidated copy that you see here. More reflections on that; later.