46. Random Literary Discoveries

My mother is an internationally renowned expert on the Mitford sisters (at least as far as I am concerned) and as a result I was introduced to The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate at a relatively young age. (Explains a lot.) I have also read a monstrous biography of Nancy Mitford by some shrivelled up old hack who was patently jealous. Not an easy read. Anyway, other than that my exposure to the Mitfords and their world has largely been vicariously via the parent, when she reminds me that she has the ENTIRE canon ready for my reading pleasure whenever I should wish it... (I think she sees it as some kind of inheritance.)

Also while I was growing up, a pair of rather gorgeous looking books used to tempt and haunt me in equal measure because I would long to read them and then be put off by the florid prose within. These were A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water by Patrick Leigh Fermor.

So (I'm getting there, promise) the other day round the parental gaff I spy a book by the youngest (and only remaining) Mitford sister Debo who is now 90 but still raising chickens and a force to be reckoned with. I was interested in this book because I had seen the old girl on the TV and been impressed. Got through that slight tome in a matter of minutes and went sauntering off down the bookshop in Whitstable to see if I could find something else by or about her as it seemed that sort of a weekend. Without instruction, Herself handed me a book of letters between Debo Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor that not only span a 60 year friendship but also the entire middle of the last century and many of its most interesting events. Both are mad, funny, posh, but brilliant in their way and swallowing the book almost whole was great and now I'm reading his travel writing because everything literary comes full circle in the end. In my life, anyway.

I love these random literary discoveries. It was through this kind of wandering that I discovered Elizabeth Knox, Elinor Lipman, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Andrew Miller, Eudora Welty, Alan Bennett and many many others. My life so far has not included much actual wandering and perhaps I should see about changing that, (TOO BUSY READING!) but for now I'm happy roaming about the literary landscape, footloose and fancy-free. It doesn't always pay off, but when it works it is a source of immense pleasure and hence one of my precious 365.