My fiction is arranged alphabetically by author, like many bookshops. Between Raymond Chandler and GK Chesterton are two slim volumes by Dane Chandos. Have you read him or even heard of him?
I have just finished the last of the three books by Frank Gardner that I was given for my birthday: Crisis. The first two are autobiographical and this is a thriller with an unimaginative title.
It was only towards the end of June that I wrote about Frank Gardner’s memoir, Blood & Sand. I may have omitted to mention that I was given three of Frank Gardner’s books for my birthday this year.
I really don’t recommend DitA, a cocktail invented by Hemingway. If you have a death wish here’s how to make it, in his own words: “Pour one jigger absinthe into a Champagne glass. Add iced Champagne until it attains the proper opalescent milkiness. Drink three to five of these slowly.”
Fourteen years ago in Riyadh, in June 2004, BBC reporter Frank Gardner was shot eleven times. The cameraman with him, Simon Cumbers, was killed but Frank survived.
When we were both about seventeen I went on a short trip with my cousin, who is almost exactly my age. She drove us to visit our grandmother in Bournemouth and then to stay with her uncle and aunt near Salisbury.
People say “what goes around comes around”, EM Foster says “only connect” and Anthony Powell wrote Dance to the Music of Time to make the same point at somewhat greater length; a saga with which I struggled a bit early on, but once WW II came along I was hooked.
The royal wedding somehow reminded me of Tancredi’s betrothal to Angelica in The Leopard and the famous quotation: “se vogliamo che tutto rimanga come e’, bisogna che tutto cambi”.
Red-veined sorrel (Rumex sanguineus) is easy to grow, decorative and edible. Like spinach it’s rich in potassium which lowers blood pressure and I expect it to become very fashionable in gardens great and small.
Durham University is a hot-house for lifelong friendships and (not always lifelong) marriages. A conspicuous success is John and Katie who live on their farm in Northumberland. Their daughter, Lucy, was brought up on good plain cooking and shoot lunches. Now she has spread her wings.