Too much, too soon?

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Cynthis Harrod-Eagles, Eowyn Ivey, Erin Morgenstern, Harriet Lane, Jonathan Coe, not doing housework, Patrick Gale, the ironing mountan

Can you ever read too many good books?  It’s not even the end of February and this year’s reading list so far has already got enough brilliant reads for a Best Of 2013.  It’s making me nervous, fate doesn’t allow you to continue having such good fortune and I dread to think what dross is in store for me in the coming months.

This is so true…

I’m an impatient reader and because I’ve got a serious book buying habit there’s always more to read on my overflowing shelves so I freely abandon books if I find them boring.  So far this year there hasn’t been a single book I’ve felt like giving up (now that’s tempting fate, big time).  The least enjoyable book of this year was a book club read, The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim by Jonathan Coe, which was superbly written but somehow didn’t engage me, though it was still interesting.  I kicked off January with the wonderful The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, dazzlingly imaginative and so good that I immediately sent it on to my daughter in Le Mans because I knew she’d adore it too.  Then there was one of Elaine Simpson-Long of Random Jottings ‘s recommendations, the Bill Slider books by Cynthia Harrod Eagles, sly, witty detective stories.  Even better there are twelve of them.  That was followed by Harriet Lane’s Alys Always, which is called a thriller on the cover, I wouldn’t necessarily agree but it’s a superbly assured book, concise, utterly readable, don’t want to put it down book.

I finally got my hands on Magnificent Obsession, another of Elaine’s favourite books and she’s right, it’s first class biography; that was followed by Waiting for Sunrise which isn’t William’s Boyd’s best book in my opinion, but considering that his bar is set at Any Human Heart that’s hardly a damning criticism.  WFS is far, far better than most of the books that I read In 2012.  There was also Eowyn Ivey’s magical and enchanting The Snow Child and just when I was convinced my run of superb books must come to an end I picked up one of my charity shop finds, When God Was A Rabbit by Sarah Winman.   Quite a few reviewers didn’t like this book, found it too whimsical and thought she’d included too many elements – which is true in a way but I still absolutely loved it.  It’s laugh out loud funny in places (and I rarely find books that amusing) and the sheer energy of her writing is fantastic.  Definitely one to watch.

 

This reading habit is infectious

The list goes on; I always love Susan Hill’s Simon Serraillier books and The Betrayal Of Trust didn’t disappoint, Curtis Sittenfield’s American Wife, another charity shop find, loosely based on Laura Bush was a great read even if I didn’t enjoy the last section much, and I was only only a few pages into our February book club read, Rough Music by Patrick Gale, before I was thinking, Why the hell haven’t I read this author before?  As soon as I’d finished I started looking up his backlist.

See why I’m worried this can’t go on?  It’s a good thing that I’ve got Dalmatians who need walking for an hour a day otherwise the combination of all this lolling around reading and putting in heavy duty writing time too means I’d shortly not be able to fit on the sofa.  Of course, something’s had to give – the housework.  I’ve been conducting an interesting experiment to see how long I can leave things before the other members of the household crack.  As far as the dusting is concerned, it looks like never; however the daughter couldn’t take regularly passing an ironing pile that was rapidly approaching Everest like proportions and did the lot.  Twice.

Since then it’s grown again, and I suppose I shouldn’t really expect her to do it all again.  The only thing is I’ve just started another of Elaine’s recommendations, The Coroner by MR Hall and it’s an absolute cracker…

Grounds for Divorce No 1

You go to the post bix every day for a week hoping that the book you’ve ordered – Magnificent Obsession by Helen Rappaport –

has arrived.  Finally it does, you bring it home, upwrap it, and leave it on the kitchen table to savour later.

When you come back, you find your husband – who normally describes anything you like to read as ‘rubbish’ and ‘girly’ – already 30 pages in.  He look up and, with the air of someone who’s afraid you’re about to insist on having his last Rolo, says, ‘You don’t mind if I read this before you, do you?’

I reckon a literate judge would agree that swiping someone’s new book prives ample grounds.  On the other hand Waiting For Sunrise by William Boyd which the OH has been longng for arrived this afternoon.  I finished reading Bill Slider at lunchtime…

The Best Reading of 2012

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Ernest Hemingway, Lindsay Davies, Madeline Miller, Robert Radcliffe, Sarah Dunant, Sarah Turnball, William Boyd

One of the sites I really enjoy is Book Group Online which is exactly what it says on the label, an online book discussion group with intelligent, polite commentators and moderators who don’t have little Hitler complexes and as far as I know have only ever banned people for trolling and never for simply disagreeing with the site bosses.  They also have a very useful section for listing what books you’ve read during the year which I find embarrassingly useful – I could complain about my ageing memory but I have a nasty feeling that it’s never been that good, but of course I can’t remember exactly.  Sadly Book Group Online has disappeared during the last week, it’s even gone from Google and I’ve got a nasty feeling that might be the end of it.  I’ll miss the site, and I’m really going to miss my book lists which go back several years.

So, without the aid of notes, here are some of the best books I’ve read during the last year – as they say on Strictly, in no particular order.

Almost French by Sarah Turnball, quite simply one of the best books I’ve read about living in France.  It’s amusing too.

Mad World by Paula Byrne which I read only a few weeks ago.  I re-read Brideshead Revisited afterwards and found having all the background information fascinating.

The Song of Achilles was a wonderful romp – there’s no other word for it – through the Illiad.  It’s a deceptively easy to read book, a real page turner but one that stays with you afterwards, even the scenes which I knew well from studying Latin in at school still had the power to shock.  And at long last I know why Achilles sulked in his tent.

Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant sat unread on my bookshelf for three years and when I finally picked it up I couldn’t understand why I’d deprived myself of this wonderful book for so long.  Set in a convent in Ferrara in 1570, just as the council of Trent was starting to reform monastic and conventual life, it paints a picture of the life in enclosed orders, for women who hadn’t necessarily chosen to take the veil, that is completely unforgettable.  It’s also got a cracking good plot.  It’s not a faast read but that seemed to suit the leisurely pace of life in a convent.  Definitely one the the best, and most memorable books of the year.

I wrote about Under An English Heaven when I read it, and looking back after eight months I can say it still deserves its place as a thoroughly memorable book.  Everyone I’ve lent it to, male and female, young and, ahem, not that young have adored it too.

I freely admit that I loathed Hemingway, I caused a terrible storm in my book group by saying I didn’t want to read another Hemingway, For Whom The Bell Tolls had left me feeling queasy and I’d never have picked this up if Claire from Word By Word hadn’t said that in her opinion this was one of the best books about Paris she ever read.  So I took this to read in Paris.  Clare was right, I loved it.  I’m still shying away from any of his books that have killing in them, be it bulls or people.

Amongst other great books I re-read Any Human Heart by William Boyd for the book group and it’s just as good the second time round, one of his best, if not his best book, in my opinion.  English Passengers by Matthew Kneale is flawed, it’s too long especially the last part, but is still a terrific read.  It’s set in Tasmania in the early nineteenth century and can be uncomfortable, especially if like me you’re half way through it and realise that your great-great grandfather was stationed in Hobart at the time so may well have been one of those persecuting the Aborigines.  Before I Go To Sleep is riddled with plot holes and unliklihoods but I defy anyone to put it down for long enough while they’re reading it to analyse the plot and let the inconsistencies occur to them.  Michelle Paver’s Dark Matter was a spooky atmospheric page turner, no I didn’t shudder like the book blurb promised but then I’m distressingly pragmatic, it was very good.

I have a feeling that I would have had Bring Up The Bodies and The Night Circus in this list as they were earmarked for my Christmas reading but I had to read  a truly dire book for the book group so I could pass it on to someone else who needs it.  All I can say is that I bitterly resent wasting two days of reading time on sentimental, badly written drivel and I’m not going to be able to say what I feel as the person who chose it is very nice and might well be hurt at an honest appraisal.  I’d ploughed my way to the last page (reading one word in three), put it down with a sigh of relief and saw my daughter had left a copy of Nemesis by Lindsay Davies on the table.  It was exactly what the book doctor ordered.  She’s sharp, she’s funny, her characters are great, she can plot and it doesn’t matter in the slightest that my inner pedant is noting that senators’ sons in ancient Rome were hardly likely to say, ‘We’re stuffed,’; the world she’s created is so vibrant that my inner pedant doesn’t give a toss. What a good way to finish off 2012.

Up To No Good

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book characters, Dalmatians, dedications, Kindle, Theo Wayte, Up To No Good

Up To No Good is now out on Kindle at a very modest price and much to my surprise I didn’t have any of the problems uploading it that I had with Something Stupid, so what they say about practice making perfect must have some truth in it!

Yet again Theo Wayte has come up trumps with the cover;

It’s even more gorgeous than the one she created for Something Stupid and that’s saying something.  And credit and thanks must also go to Roger Porter, Theo’s neighbour, who dealt with the complicated technical stuff.

Up To No Good is my French book, most of the action takes place in a holiday cottage in the grounds of an English owned vineyard and the setting is quite like a place that used to belong to my brother but I have to add that none of the characters are based on real-life ones except for the Dalmatian Lily, who was modeled closely on Plum, our first dog in France.

I have loved all my dogs but Plum was one of the special ones, the dog of my heart, perhaps of my lifetime.  She was very beautiful and had a huge amount of charm, whenever we took her out we’d be stopped by people asking to pat her and when she was happy or pleased to see you, like Lily in the book, she’d wrinkle her nose up so much smiling that she’d make herself sneeze.  You always knew when the first person had got up in the morning because a series of sneezing explosions would come from the kitchen door as soon as it was opened.

When Plum was nearly 5 she had her first epileptic fit.  We didn’t get internet until Plum had been ill for nearly a year, if we’d had it when she was first ill I’m sure she’d have had a normal lifespan.  Vets can’t be expected to know all about canine epilepsy, there are a whole range of different causes for it and treatments, and the information and help from the canine epilepsy websites was incredible.  Our vet was very open to trying out anything I suggested as a result of my internet researches, even if he thought they probably wouldn’t work, and between us by changing her diet completely, juggling her medicines and putting her on thyroxine we cut her fitting down from several a week to once every two months.

A year of fitting violently, often with one following another in quick succession had left her damaged, not badly, her spark had gone but she was still my loving friend, following me around so closely that she became known as the Dogstacle because I couldn’t step backwards or I’d tread on her.  She was always in the chair in my office when I was writing and occasionally I’d have to stop to leap up and catch her if she started to have a fit so she wouldn’t fall out and hurt herself.

Then an idiot locum vet gave her the wrong medicine and destroyed her immune system.  She began to get one infection after another.  I corrected the proofs of Up To No Good sitting in Plum’s basket with her head on my lap because my presence seemed to calm her.  She died two days later aged nearly seven.

That’s why Up To No Good is dedicated to Plum, it really is her book.

Mad World

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Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh, Paula Byrne

In early 1944  Evelyn Waugh applied to his commanding officer for three months leave of absence from the army to write a book.  He gave various reasons for why the army wouldn’t miss him, including the disarming admission that he was unsuited for a desk job as he was no good at admin, he was also honest enough to admit that the book would be no use whatsoever for propaganda purposes.  Eventually he got his way and Waugh retired to Devon to explore the idea that was obsessing him – the idea that became Brideshead Revisited.

Paula Byrne’s fascinating book is about Waugh and the Lygon family who were the inspiration for the Flytes in Brideshead Revisited.  The Lygons were from the very top echelons of the English aristocracy, their father Earl Beauchamp was a good looking bon-viveur, charming, fabulously rich and one of the most important men in the Liberal party, they were brought up in Madresfield Court, a huge rambling house in Worcestershire, there were seven children, three of whom became close friends (and a lover in one case) Waugh’s, Hugh the second son, feckless, not very bright but utterly charming and loved by all;

Hugh Lygon, principal inspiration for Sebastian Flyte.

Lady Mary – known as Maimie, the most beautiful of the sisters,

Julia Flyte was a composite character but had a lot of Maimie Lygon in her.

and the youngest daughter Lady Dorothy, usually called Coote, who was the model for Cordelia. The Lygon’s should have led untroubled, gilded lives of luxurious ease yet the family was ripped apart by one of the biggst scandals that had ever hit the English aristocracy, something that was made even more bitter by it being Lord Beauchamp’s brother in law, the Duke of Westminster,  who orchestrated his downfall.

Mad World works magnificently on two levels, firstly it’s an absolutely riveting story of the times and the people.  Paula Byrne is very good at describing the anger that Evelyn Waugh’s generation felt towards that of the previous one for allowing and fighting in the first world war and how much it separated them from what went on before. The Lygon’s were hardly your usual stuffy, hunting, shooting, fishing members of the aristocracy either, the girls behaved with a surprising freedom, one, Lady Sibell, was the mistress of Lord Beaverbrook for many years and Maimie, the most beautiful of the sisters, had a series of lovers.  Hardly the demure, heavily chaperoned debutantes that were supposed to epitomise well brought up girls of the 20’s and 30’s.

Secondly Mad World satisfies the inner geek of people like me who love finding out background information about favourite books.

Diana Quick (Julia) and Anthony Andrews (Sebastian) bore a remarkable resemblance to their real-life inspirations in the 1981 TV adaptation, Evelyn Waugh, who based Charles Ryder on himself, looked nothing like Jeremy Irons.

It’s particularly rich pickings for the literary geek in fact as Evelyn Waugh wove his stories around events in his own life, people he knew and places he’d been too.  Madresfield Court appeared in one of his earlier books, Brideshead is modeled on Castle Howard – just like the TV series, though the chapel at Brideshead is an exact description of the real one at Madresfield down to the angels wearing arts and crafts printed cotton smocks.

Waugh was no straightforward reporter though, his genius lay in the way he could take two or three people he knew and twine them together to make something different with his or her own voice.  And he wrote dialogue beautifully, was a consummate writer of prose and was very funny too – in short he was a superb writer…

The final reason why I enjoyed this book so much is a very personal one because it re-established Waugh as a reasonably decent human being for me.  About fifteen years ago I read Selina Hastings’ biography of Waugh which presented him as such a deeply unpleasant person that it put me off reading his books.  I know you shouldn’t judge a book by its author’s personality but sometimes it’s hard not to be coloured by it. Paula Byrne’s Waugh is far from faultless but he’s human and a very good friend, when Maimie Lygon fell on hard times in the 5O’s Waugh sent her substantial sums of money and no-one who had so many people who were very fond of can be all bad.  So I can start re-reading Waugh with unalloyed delight.   I’m off to England today and I know what books I’m looking out for.

Re-reading waugh after fifteen years, it’s going to be such a pleasure.

Something Stupid

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Kindle, Something Stupid

I’m thrilled to say that Something Stupid is at last out as an e-book with this gorgeous new cover by Theo Wayte.

I say at last because I’d inadvertently signed myself up twice to Kindle using two different email addresses, my personal one which I buy things on and my writing one which I don’t.  It caused a considerable amount of confusion in Amazon’s computer brain which couldn’t work out why two different people called Victoria Corby were both claiming worldwide publication rights to the same book.  Of course computers can’t get their circuits round the idea that human beings make mistakes so each time I tried to publish the book it would get bounced back after twenty-four hours because there was a query over who did hold the publication rights.

You may well ask why I didn’t simply delete one of my identities.  Simple.  Because I couldn’t.  Just like Hotel California, ‘You can check out any time you like but you can never leave…’

Fortunately, unlike Hotel California, a heartfelt plea to the Help desk that all of this was doing my head in worked and my final attempt at getting Something Stupid on linewas successful.  However, as far as Kindle’s concerned there are still two Victoria Corby’s who write books with the same title.  I wonder what will happen when I try to publish Seven Week Itch.

Bookish Pleasures

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Phoenix Book Sale

One of the consequences of living in France is that I suffer from acute book browsing deprivation.  There are a couple of bookshops with English language sections in Bordeaux but I don’t go there that often, besides I don’t know what the buyer in one of the shops reads but it definitely isn’t to my taste.  There is a charming little librarie in Cadillac which sells tea along with toys and books and has a tiny selection of surprisingly varied and good English books, I’ll go in and yearn but as they’re 12 euros each they’re a treat for special occasions only.  Otherwise I largely have to rely on book sites on the internet.  They’re wonderful, I rely on them, but you have to know what you’re looking for, you don’t get to browse, to pick up books at random, to see something that you’d never have thought of…

Unsurprisingly the bi-annual Phoenix book sale – about 15,000 second-hand books for a euro each – has the same effect on me as truffles do on a pig.  To be honest I don’t need to buy any more books, there are enough in the to-read bookcase to last for a year and that’s not counting what’s crammed on other book shelves.  But try telling a pig in a truffle wood that it’s had its ration for the autumn…  Anyway all the proceeds go to helping abandoned animals so you could say that by adding to the piles of unread literature in the house I was just doing my bit for charity.

I got there a bit late so the initial rush was over which meant more space just to look and see what might catch my fancy.  Rather a lot as it happens –

Not all of them are for me, my youngest daughter has just discovered Mary Stewart and I don’t think she has The Ivy Tree.  I read about The Magicians by Lev Grossman on a blog and thought it sounded her cup of tea so that was lucky find.  So was Ernest Shackleton’s account of his journey to the South Pole which is the sort of book I’d never think of looking for on the net.  Child 44 and Even Steven are for my husband, he also seized Tim Pears’ Disputed Land with an ‘Is this for me?’  No actually, it’s for me, but I’ll allow him to borrow it.  He is really pleased with Ernest Shackleton’s South, his account of his journey to the South Pole though.

I’d vaguely registered that if I ever saw Perfume from Provence by Lady Fortescue I’d buy it but there’s no way I can claim that I need the prettily illustrated Dear Cassandra, Jane Austen’s letters to her sister – but I’ve got it.  I met Rosin McAuley last year, she’s absolutely charming, I’d read two of her books and was delighted to come across Singing Bird.   I have to confess that I’d never heard of R K Narayan, but it looks delightful and there were a couple of Scandi crimes by new authors, a Paula Gosling I’m sure I haven’t read and the third volume of M M Kaye’s autobiography in a pristine hardback, Pure by Andrew Miller and Fire and Woodsmoke by Claude Michelet which describes itself as ‘a powerful saga of one family in the heart of rural France.’  Irresistable!

I’m always riveted by what other people buy.  There was one woman with an armful of misery lit, all with pictures of miserable children and one word titles like ‘Beaten’, ‘Abused’ or ‘Forsaken’, another whom I heard saying to her friend, ‘I’m done, I’ve been round everything and I’ve chosen myself a book’.  She came to a book sale with a choice of 15,000 with the intention of chosing one book?

Unnatural I call it.

84 Charing Cross Road

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Helene Hanff, The Olde Wine Shades

I read 84 Charing Cross Road years ago and though I couldn’t remember much detail about it, it’s always lodged in my mind as one of those delightful books that should be re-read some time.   When Lucy from Literary Relish posted about it this week I was prompted to have a hopeful look in the bookcase, for I was sure my copy had disappeared several years ago, and there, among the H’s and  tucked in a corner, was a slim, battered paperback copy of 84 Charing Cross Road.

Note to eldest daughter who informed me I was anal when I rearranged my books in approximate alphabetical order (first letter only, it really doesn’t worry me if the Austens are in front of the Atkinsons) – being anal has its uses sometimes.

For those who’ve never come across this wonderful little book before it’s the correspondence between Helene Hanff,  a New York writer and playwright, and Marks and Co, secondhand booksellers of Charing Cross Road.  It starts in 1949 when good second hand books are rare and expensive in New York and England is under the grip of worse rationing than during the war.  They send Helene the books she craves, she sends them a food parcel as a Christmas present and then panics because there’s a 6lb ham in there and it’s occurred to her that the owners, the Marks’ might be kosher.  The letters continue for twenty years, Helene is always saving up to go to London and meet everyone in the bookshop but one financial crisis after another gets in the way, until finally it’s too late.

This book is a joy, it’s not meaningful, it’s not going to change your life, it’s just sheer, unadulterated pleasure from beginning to end.  Helene Hanff was bossy, opinionated and certainly didn’t share my tastes in books, she didn’t like fiction for heaven’s sake and writes of finally getting round to Jane Austen and ‘going out of her mind’ for Pride and Prejudice – she refused to return her library copy until Marks and Co sent her one of her own but she’s an utterly sympathetic character.

This edition also contains the sequel which i hadn’t read before, the Duchess of Bloomsbury about when Helene was finally able to make her longed-for trip to London after the English publication of 84 Charing Cross Road.  By then the bookshop had closed and one of her chief correspondents was dead though she had a warm friendship by letter, and then in person, with his widow.  She seems to have had a ball, she was entertained so much that she could afford to stay on in her hotel for an extra two weeks due to all the money she saved by not having to pay for her own dinners.

On July 19 she was taken to the Old Wine Shades in St Martins Lane which dates from 1663 and is the only City pub to have survived the Great Fire of London.

In the 60’s there were plans to raze this and put an office block in it’s place…

I worked there one summer and spent half an hour on the net trying to find out which year Helene visited just in case  I might have served her.  I didn’t, she was there in 1971 which was before my time.  What did surprise me is that she said she was taken there for ‘sherry at eleven’.  The Old Wine Shades was very genteel in those days, it only started serving beer the year before I worked there – pubs serve beer, the Old Wine Shades was a wine bar… but I don’t remember any of the City gents who streamed in through the doors as soon as we opened at eleven having anything so innocuous as a sherry.  They went for double whiskeys, usually several, and would then move on to a roast beef sandwich accompanied by several glasses of wine.  At closing time, three o clock they’d return to their offices and get down to the serious business of managing the nation’s money markets.  Anyone ever wondered why Lloyds was such a Horlicks?

Returning to the point, 84 Charing Cross Road is an absolute keeper and belongs on every booklovers bookshelf.  if you don’t have a copy already, do yourself a favour and hunt one out.

Look At This!

Tags

book covers, cover design, ebook, Theo Wayte, writing

A few months ago I posted about the problems I was having in coming up with new cover designs for my books.   I wanted something that was slightly more grown up than the originals, Something Stupid was once classified as Teenage Fiction purely because of the pastel cover and I know that my novels have always appealed to older readers as well as younger ones.  I thought about going to a professional cover designer but the ones I could afford were all American, very good but you only have to spend five minutes in an American bookshop to see how different their covers are to ours.  My books are quintessentially English and I don’t think I’d be doing them any favours by making them look American.  Of course if they were ever taken up by an American publisher who got behind them that would be different…

My husband designed several covers for me some of which were wonderful – the rubber duck with hearts all over it floating in the swimming pool was particularly memorable, as was the vortex with our cat staring out from it – but weren’t really quite the sort of thing for my type of light women’s fiction.  So then I did what I’d thought of right at the beginning and hadn’t acted on for some reason, asked my brilliantly talented friend Theo Wayte to design me a series of covers for the three books, all different but with a common style to link them together.

Theo wasn’t a book cover designer then; she is now.  See below.  She’s an artist and a calligrapher who does menus, place cards, seating plans, illustrated manuscripts, certificates, awards, labels – anything in fact you want which needs fabulous writing and the eye to know exactly what goes where.  There was a picture in Hello magazine of Michael Jackson at a huge party with one of Theo’s menus in front of him (gold writing on black card).  Oh and she also makes things, personalised wrapping paper, stamp boxes, pen jars, greeting cards, book marks…. which she takes to craft fairs and go like hot cakes.  As I said, seriously talented.

After a little bit of doubt if she was capable of doing it (ha!), Theo came up with this:

I just love it, it’s got that touch of difference I was looking for though it’s still indisputably feminine.  It might not work as a cover on a physical book when stacked up on a table but it’s really going to stand out amongst all the other drawings, pastels and photographed covers in the women’s fictions section of the Kindle store.  That’s what I need, for people to click out of interest, see that I have some genuine reviews going back several years and, who knows, they might actually buy it.

Never Too Late

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Andrea Camilleri, Mary Wesley, Patricia Angadi

Amongst all the doom and gloom written about your chances of ever getting a book published, one of the “truisms” that is stated over and over again is that if you’re a little past school leaving age you’re going to find it twice as difficult.  As well as being a superb writer you’ve got to be young, fit, gorgeous and generally make it really easy for the publicist to get your photo in the papers – unless of course you’re a celeb when it doesn’t matter what you look like as things will still be easy for the publicist, and your writing skills don’t matter as someone else will have written the book for you.

Us – ahem – older ones are advised to stock up on support stockings and denture fixative and yes, dear, enjoy your writing, it’s very good for you dear, helps with that nasty Alzheimer’s, but do it for your own pleasure but don’t expect to get it published because frankly dear, you’re waaay past it and just don’t have your finger on the pulse any longer.  What do you mean you’d be writing for people like yourself who read lots and lots?  There are young writers doing that.

Of course there are exceptions to the rule – Mary Wesley being a glittering example. She’s actually an exception to two rules; the one that says you can’t make it when you’re old as she wrote seven best-selling novels between the ages of 70 and 79. and the one that states if you’ve been published once and weren’t a big success you’ve pretty well had it – she  published two children’s novels when she was in her fifties which didn’t do much.  Joyce Windsor wrote a charming novel called After The Unicorn when she was 70 but frankly neither of these ladies can hold a candle to Patricia Angadi for general vim, get up and go.

Patricia Angadi was a middle class girl, an unsuccesful debutant and artist who  fell in love with an Indian, she married him in 1943 against her family’s wishes (some of her friends never spoke to her again), had four children, set up the Asian Music Centre with her husband, introduced Ravi Shankar to the Beatles and finding herself short of money, aged 54, trained as a teacher. Patricia painting George Harrison and Patti Boyd’s portrait.

When she was in her sixties her husband went back to India, Patricia refused to follow him, started dating, turned her house into a commune and threw outrageous parties.  She then retired,  and with time on her hands ,started writing.  The Governess was published when she was 70 and another six followed.

Andrea Camilleri, the creator of the wonderful Inspector Montalbano, is another late bloomer and exception to lots of rules.  To be polite he’s no pin-up – and he published two novels in his early fifties which weren’t successes, then when he was 69 he wrote a best seller.  The first of the Inspector Montalbano books followed two years later, he published the 19th this year.  He’s 87 and is still working as a TV and theatre director.

As someone who felt on her 20th birthday that she was already past it – hell, my teenage years were over and I hadn’t done any of those glamorous things that you saw college students doing in Coca Cola ads – I find all of this enormously encouraging and inspiring too.  Fortunately I’m not in need of support stockings or denture fixative yet but I have to be realistic and admit that I’m middle-aged and which probably puts me at even more of a disadvantage – there’s a story in “Septuagenarian’s big break-through” none in “Middle-aged woman publishes book” – but that still doesn’t mean I can’t make it.

Perhaps I should dye my hair grey though…