There isn't a new Booking Through Thursday question this week, so I'll just make something up -- here are the books I bought in England. (Looking at the stack like this, I guess I can see why David grew alarmed as the trip went on, but this doesn't even approach that heady fortnight of my youth when I came home with no less than six volumes of Virginia Woolf's diaries and letters! -- in hardcover!)
From Waterstone's in Kensington High Street, the Lucy Worsley book I've already mentioned, Jane Austen at Home. I got distracted by some library books which of course had to be back before the due date, so I've not finished this yet, but it's no fault of Worsley's.
After having not one but two concierges at the Marriott in Regents Park stare at me in utter mystification when I asked if A to Zeds can still be had, David surprised me with a visit to Stanford's in Covent Garden. This is a truly wonderful bookshop, possibly the place to go in London for maps and travel books. I asked the sales clerk, and he said, "Yes, of course!" and showed me a whole shelf of that famous street atlas, which restored my faith in Britain at once. We could all have spent hours at Stanford's -- I think it's three floors, and we only visited one -- I bought How to Read Castles by Malcolm Hislop, The Walker's Guide to Outdoor Clues and Signs by Tristan Gooley, and the spiral-bound A to Zed.
The only souvenir guidebooks we bought were for Windsor Castle, Ightham Mote, and Bodiam Castle. Believe it or not, I was actually trying not to buy a lot of books! but I think that Ightham and Bodiam were my two favorites of the Stately-Homes/Castles we visited.
At the New Place bookshop in Stratford-upon-Avon, The Shakespeare Circle and Finding Shakespeare's New Place, the latter of which I am especially interested to read, of course being fascinated with Elizabethan houses, not even counting the Shakespeare angle.
It has nothing at all to do with Chartwell, and I'm not really sure why there were so very many cookbooks in the shop there -- maybe Churchill really liked his suppers! -- but that was where I happened upon Sophie Thompson's My Family Kitchen -- and at about a third of the cover price. I adore Sophie Thompson, and I like to cook, so all three of these together were Fate.
At a narrowboat/information-center/souvenir-shop at Stratford-upon-Avon, I confess I bought a number of little how-to narrowboat books including -- obviously a weakness of mine! -- a cookbook. Pork fillet and dried-apricot casserole on the first page -- doesn't that sound good?!
The book shop at Sir John Soane's Museum was also a place where I could have spent hours, but the only book I came away with was At Home with the Soanes by Susan Palmer, wh. I haven't had a chance to do more than flip through to see the illustrations, but David has read it and says it's very good.
So some of these books were actually relevant to what we were doing or seeing those three weeks -- the canal how-to books, obviously, and the castles book, and the Shakespeare, certainly -- and some were just serendipitous finds, which I think is a happy outcome altogether!
I just listened to Tristan Gooley on a podcast of Radio West. Now I have to find the book!
Posted by: Mary Lou | August 10, 2017 at 05:42 AM
ooooh Lucy Worsley - she is fantastic!!! She often pops up on tv and is actually a complete hoot - you can tell she loves her work, she is quite fantastic - I will have to investigate the others, but I also recommend Mary Beard for Roman Britain (or even Roman Rome :) ) and also Janina Ramirez for early Christian - medieval - renaissance UK - she is also a fantastic storyteller. One of the best things about holidays in other places is the potential for reading yourself into a whole different mindset
Posted by: juliet brown | August 13, 2017 at 03:02 PM