Martin Fone's Blog, page 59

Magnolia Tree Of The Week

So, farewell to what was reported to have been Britain’s tallest magnolia tree, somewhat incongruously growing in Lilliput, a suburb of Poole in Dorset. Its fate was not sealed because its size was out of proportion with the diminutive stature of the place but because it had fallen into decay.

Standing around 60-feet tall and planted around 50 years ago, it was a distinctive feature of the area. Still, the magnolia tree with the largest spread of any of its kind in the country, to be found at Lukesland Gardens in Devon, still remains and we will have to be content with that.

The Man In The Shed

At first glance, 78, Banbury Road looks to be a fairly unremarkable house in a part of north Oxford’s suburbia, but closer inspection will show it was for logophiles one of the spiritual centres of lexicography. A blue plaque, inaugurated on October 21, 2002, by the then Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire, Hugo Brunner, announces that Sir James Murray lived there between 1885 and 1915.

By any stretch of the imagination, Murray was a remarkable man. Born to a tailor he quickly showed an aptitude for languages, gaining competence in some twenty-five, including Arabic, Hindi, Tongan, and ancient Gothic. Initially, he followed his father’s footsteps, becoming a tailor, then a book binder, before realising his ambition to be a teacher. He became headmaster at Hawick Academy in 1857 where he developed a particular interest in the English language.

By 1879 while he was a schoolmaster at Mill Hill School near London Murray was appointed editor of an exciting new project, the compilation of the New English Dictionary, which later became The Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Combining the task with teaching, progress was painfully slow and only the first volume, covering the words A to Ant, published in 1884, and a second, covering Ant to Batten, published in 1885, had appeared when he made the momentous decision to give up teaching, move his family, a wife and eleven children, to Oxford and devote his life to lexicography.

He moved into Sunnyside, now no 78, then the northernmost house on the east side of Banbury Road, flanked by fields owned by St John’s College. He received permission to erect a corrugated-iron building, which he called his Scriptorium, where he could work, although the College stipulated that it could not be built in the front garden. It was eventually positioned behind the house and to the north, sunk about fifteen feet into the ground so that it would not obscure the view of the next door neighbour.

From there for the next thirty years he laboured on his Herculean task, a perfectionist often having to fend off criticism of the dictionary’s slow progress. Conditions were spartan and although there was a small stove to provide heat in winter, Murray and his assistants, including some of his children, had to wear coats to keep warm and, unsurprisingly, Murray developed pleurisy because of the conditions.

Citations and definitions of each word were laboriously transferred on to slips of paper from which they were eventually distilled into entries for the dictionary. The slips eventually weighed around three tons. Murray sent an Appeal for Readers to libraries and bookshops around the Anglophone world, inviting them to send in contributions of definitions and quotations for inclusion in the dictionary. One of the most prolific postal contributors was William Chester Minor, a murderer staying at their Majesties’ pleasure at Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane, who sent in over 12,000 citations.

Such was the volume of post generated by Murray’s operation that, rather like Father Christmas, an envelope addressed simply to Mr Murray, Oxford was enough to ensure its safe delivery. Murray and his team sent out masses of correspondence and to ease the burden of posting, the Post Office erected a post box outside his house, the first man to be accorded that distinction. As we shall see next time, though, it was no ordinary post box.

Matchstick Of The Week

It must have been a tad disappointing to have spent 4,200 hours over eight years building a replica of the Eiffel Tower out of matchsticks, believing that it would be the tallest matchstick structure, only to be told that you had used the wrong sort of matches. This is the fate of Richard Plaud from France when he sent details of his erection to the judges at Guinness World Records (GWR).

It was an enormous undertaking using more than 706,000 matches and 23kg of glue. Originally, Richard had cut the combustible heads of the matchsticks himself but realising that this was a very time consuming process, he bought headless matches from a manufacturer. This proved to be his downfall as GWR told him that his submission was to be disqualified because it was not made of matches commercially available.

Richard’s plight must have struck a chord with the judges who have subsequently rescinded their decision. At 7.186 metres it is now officially the world’s tallest matchstick structure.

Somebody At The Door

A review of Somebody at the Door by Raymond Postgate – 240115

Sometimes when surfing the world wide web it is possible to go down so many rabbit holes that you forget what it was you were initially trying to find out. I got this feeling as I read Raymond Postgate’s Somebody at the Door, originally published in 1943 and reissued as part of the British Library Crime Classics series, the first of two books in his Inspector Holly series. The book has an unusual structure which makes it feel like a collection of short stories book ended by a murder mystery.

The story starts off promisingly enough with a train journey. A carriage allows the author to assemble a collection of characters who would otherwise be unlikely to be together but in Postgate’s case at least five of the other nine passengers in the compartment in which Henry Grayling is travelling not only know him but have reasons to hate him. According to his wife, Renata, after getting off the train, Grayling arrives home later than he is accustomed to in a distressed state, collapses, she takes him first into the kitchen to see what is the matter with him and then to bed, before summoning the doctor and the vicar. Grayling dies shortly afterwards and after a post mortem it is established that he died from inhaling mustard gas.

The questions that Inspector Holly has to determine is how the mustard gas was administered, when and by whom and whether the empty attache case found near his house in which he was carrying his firm’s wages had anything to do with the attack. His working assumption was that the mustard gas was administered in the railway compartment, a theory supported by the fact that the two sitting nearest to Grayling, Charles Evetts and the vicar, had symptoms suggestive of being in close proximity to mustard gas.

In pursuing his enquiries, Holly, a dour, meticulous and not overly bright man, unearths the backstories of the prime suspects and the reasons for their animus towards Grayling. The vicar suspects that Grayling is only a churchwarden for the societal position rather than through any commitment to the Christian faith and, more importantly, in his role as a Councillor has been on the take, something the Vicar was going to expose when the time is right. Holly, though, cannot believe that a vicar would commit a murder.

Charles Evetts, who works for the same firm as Grayling, had been caught by him for stealing some chemicals to induce his girlfriend’s abortion, a procedure from which she subsequently dies, and has been blackmailed by a fellow employee. That he is anxious to serve King and country is, in Holly’s eyes, to his favour rather than a cause for suspicion. Ransom in the same Home Guard unit as Grayling has been humiliated by him over the use of gases. Then there is a German, Mannheim, probably refugee but who has been denounced by Grayling as either a Nazi or a sympathiser.

The story behind Mannheim’s arrival in England is a novella in its own right, a tale of how some earnest British socialists uncover a plot to hand over refugees seeking passage to safety to the Nazi authorities. In pursuing the case, one of them pays with his life. Frankly, this is the most interesting part of the book and there is more active investigation and deduction than is exhibited in solving the Grayling murder. The final suspect is Hugh Rolandson who is having an affair with Renata, which Grayling has rumbled and is threatening to expose with the consequence that he, Rolandson, and Renata will be ruined.        

Only at the end does Holly work out that he has been on completely the wrong track from the start and a fresh examination of the suspects and their possible motives reveals another solution. This is a murder that probably could not have been committed other than in wartime. Several of the suspects have access to and been trained in the use of poison gases and the blackout means that lighting is at best dim and in rooms where there is no blind impossible to switch on.

Postgate treats the denouement rather brusquely, as though Grayling’s murder was only a plot device to allow him to explore the more interesting backstories. It gave the book a very disjointed feel, but there are some interesting episodes and he captures the wartime atmosphere well.

Old Git Gin

As someone who is in their seventieth year and growing more cantankerous and curmudgeonly by the day, I was drawn to Old Git Gin when I was surfing the pages of Drinkfinder UK’s website on the look out for new gins for my cabinet. A striking name for a spirit is one way to grab attention in the crowded marketplace spawned by the ginaissance, but it is a ploy that can be double-edged. Go too far and it runs the risk of consigning the spirit into the category of gimmicky and just playing for the laughs rather than being a serious player in the gin scene.

Perhaps that is why the distillers through their marketeers go to great lengths in their blurb to give some context to their choice of name, presenting a gin that will convince even the staunchest curmudgeon who thinks that the nation’s favourite spirit “isn’t made like it used to be” that they are wrong. So Old Git is used in the sense that the drink is one which is made as it should be, a welcome return to the gins of our forefathers.

It is a rather deep and somewhat unconvincing line of argument, the immediate impact of the name being one of amusement leading to a wry smile rather than a reflection on the way things are. I am sure that the marketeers see it as an impulse buy to give to the old man in your life as a novelty present. That might also be the reason behind its competitive price, albeit for a 50cl bottle.

There is also an air of mystery as to the brains behind the gin. The bottle says that it is “distilled by one of the UK’s Master Distillers” without disclosing their identity, the only clue being at the bottom of the rear label which says it “is distilled and bottled by In Vino Ltd”, who seem to be based in Cheadle Point in Cheshire. That said, on some sites on the internet there is a reference to East Sussex.

At least there is clarity as to what goes into the spirit and how it is made. The label on the rear of the bottle informs us that the botanicals are juniper, citrus peel, cardamom, and summer berries, double distilled “with passion” in 200 litre copper alembic stills to produce “a generous gin…packed with exotic botanicals for a gloriously full flavour”. The base spirit is made from English sugar-beet.

My concerns that this might just be a novelty gin were immediately dispelled when I removed the cork and was greeted by a heady aroma of juniper and citrus. Clear in the glass this is a spirit that is not ashamed to give juniper its head, combining well with the citric elements and summer berries to produce a refreshingly smooth, dry drink with a notably cardamom-full finish. With an ABV of 41% it packs a punch without being overly powerful and is tasty enough to make a second glass difficult to resist.

The bottle itself is made of clear glass, circular, tall (for a 50cl bottle) and slim, rounded shoulders leading to a longish neck topped off with a black cap and an artificial stopper. Think of a slimmed down version of Portobello Road No 171. The main feature on the front label of the bottle is a cartoon of the eponymous old git, with a walrus moustache and a drinker’s nose, a man undoubtedly of fixed views and has nosed his way around a myriad gins and other spirits in his long and colourful lifetime.   

For aficionados of London Dry Gin pared down to its essential traditional components, this is “made just as it should be”.

Until the next time, cheers!

The Case Of The Seven Bells

A review of The Case of the Seven Bells by Christopher Bush – 240113

The thirty-fifth in Bush’s long running Ludovic Travers series, originally published in 1949 and now reissued by Dean Street Press, The Case of the Seven Bells is a tale of identities, vaulting ambition, and love. However, as is his wont Bush takes a long and winding route through a complex, perhaps overly complicated, plot before delivering a satisfying and ingenious resolution to the puzzle. The reader can afford themselves more than a little chuckle when they realise that Travers has had a vital clue in his possession for ages without realising it, although it would have shortened the novel by about a hundred pages.

Travers is still in sort of a limbo with his pal, George Wharton, still showing no signs of imminently stepping down from the Yard to set up their long-talked of detective agency. As a result he helps out at Bill Ellice’s agency where this adventure kicks off. Maudie Brown, a barmaid working at The Seven Bells for the last three weeks, comes in visibly distressed with a story that she had overheard some spivs discussing a proposed robbery with the word grange cropping up and then they threatened her with a knife if she spilt the beans. Apart from reassuring her, there is nothing that can be done, but there is something about both Maudie and her story that does not sit right with Travers.

The next episode sees Wharton inviting Travers to accompany him to investigate a robbery at Carr’s Hill that seems to have gone wrong, with the thieves shooting the householder. It turns out that the victim is Audrey Grange, a famous actress who had rented the property on a short-term basis to study the role of Jinny Patman, a barmaid, that she hoped to get in a forthcoming movie based on Matthew Riche’s best-seller, Number Thirty. Grange had kept her whereabouts secret, even her estranged husband, fellow actor, Harlan Wyster, who arrives at the scene shortly afterwards, did not know she was staying there, or so he claims. Grange’s demise opens the role up to Merril Holme, her rival and now the current squeeze of Wyster.

Was this the grange that Maudie was talking about? Any attempts to establish the facts from the horse’s mouth are thwarted by Maudie’s disappearance. Travers and Wharton are forced to explore the show business aspects of the case, Travers’ marriage to the former dancer, Bernice, who is now back on the scene albeit intermittently, proves useful in opening doors. What was the significance of a photograph of Bobinot in Grange’s room and the strange behaviour of her stepfather, Frank Merlin? And how did the report of the sound of a baby crying near the scene of the crime fit in?

In their usual inimitable style, Travers and Wharton get to grips with the case, Wharton taking the credit for any of Travers’ theories that prove correct. Their methods seem more collaborative in this story, although there is still a rivalry between the two and it is, as usual, Travers who pieces it all together. Seasoned Bush aficionados will have picked up enough clues about barmaids and timings to anticipate the reveal at the end, although there was one character who I thought would have played more of a role in the crime than they did. The resolution of the mystery of the baby crying is amusing and its elimination from consideration makes the path to resolution of the case easier.

My principal disappointment being with the characterisation of the protagonists. Thespians have a reputation of being flamboyant and eccentric, but for me they did not really come to life, a missed opportunity I felt. Bush’s focus seemed to be spinning a plot of fiendish complexity with the characters just pawns to be moved around when necessary. A missed opportunity in what otherwise is a thoroughly enjoyable book.

The Rescue Of The Forrest Hall

By the time the crew of the Louisa had completed their herculean task of dragging their vessel the thirteen miles up and down Countisbury Hill with a little help from their friends and eighteen horses, launched it, and rowed an hour out to the Forrest Hall, the stricken ship had managed to drop its anchors but was still drifting slowly close to Hurlstone Point. Some of the lifeboat crew boarded it to await the anticipated arrival of two tugs, while the rest kept the Louisa close by but at a safe distance, a feat that required them to keep rowing continuously.

Shortly after daybreak the two tugs arrived and, after successfully attaching a rope to the Forrest Hall, towed it across the Bristol Channel to Barry, with the Louisa following on in case the ship encountered any further difficulties. They arrived at Barry at 6pm that evening and after being fed and resting awhile at the Seamen’s Mission, the lifeboatmen set out once more to row across the Bristol Channel, reaching home at 11.30 am on January 14th.

With all crew members safe and the Forrest Hall repairable, its grateful owner, a Mr R H Fry from Liverpool, donated £75 towards the cost of silver watches and chains which were presented to the crew members of the Louisa, Jack Crocombe and the second Coxswain, George Richards, receiving gold watches and chains. Each crewman also received £5, but this astonishing feat of endurance and derring-do was not marked at the time by the award of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution’s (RNLI) “Victoria Cross” gold, silver, or bronze medals. The cost of making good the damage to property caused during the overland trek and flood damage to the Lynmouth lifeboat station came to £27 5s 6d.

Both the centennial and quasquicentennial anniversaries of one of the most remarkable feats in the RNLI’s history were celebrated with re-enactments of the overland trek, albeit in daylight and, for the treacherous stretches, using mechanical assistance in the form of tractors. Even the weather played its part, being almost as foul for the centenary celebrations as it had been a hundred years earlier.

Curiously, this was not the end of the ill fortune that dogged the Forrest Hall. On February 27, 1909, on a journey from Newcastle in Australia to Antofagasta in Chile with a cargo of 3,127 tons of coal, she ran aground on the coastline of Ninety Mile Beach on the far northern tip of the North Island of New Zealand, the only known case of a ship going ashore in calm seas and in clear daylight conditions, a subsequent inquiry recorded. All the crew were rescued and its wreckage can still be seen at low tide. There were suggestions that the captain, John Fenn Collins, had been experiencing epileptic fits on the voyage and had recklessly ignored the advice of his crew.

The RNLI has a proud record of fulfilling its mission to save lives at sea over two centuries. Long may it continue.

Good By Stealth

A review of Good By Stealth by Henrietta Clandon – 240112

John Vahey, a prolific Northern Irish writer, published books under six pseudonyms, including Henrietta Clandon. Good by Stealth originally came out in 1936 and is one of four of Clandon’s works reissued by Dean Street Press, and is reminiscent, without the twist, of Richard Hull’s 1934 debut, The Murder of my Aunt. There is no murder, no mystery, but the narrator, Edna Alice, is accused of that most heinous of crimes, often perpetrated by frustrated spinsters, of being the author of poison pen letters. The introduction includes an excellent and fascinating synopsis of the history of poison pen letter writing, a phenomenon which has been replaced by the more widespread trolling via social media.

The book is written purely from Edna’s perspective in the aftermath of her custodial sentence of twelve months after being found guilty of writing poison letters that caused distress to and ruined relationships of some of the worthies in the county town of Lush Mellish. It only takes a few pages for the reader to recognise that their narrator is distinctly odd, one who has a strongly developed sense of paranoia. She claims she has inherited an enhanced sense of perception from her mother and a determination to pursue what he believes to be right to the bitter end, a trait which bankrupted to him.        

Edna is socially gauche, unafraid to make her opinions known, and a cultural snob, who considers the artistic, literary, and musical woeful in comparison to her finely tuned talents. She has a succession of dogs which cause terror amongst the local cats, dogs, and children, each of her pets, though she can only see their shining virtues, come to a sticky end. No wonder, despite her best efforts to integrate herself into the life of Lush Mellish, where she had just settled, she is given the cold shoulder. As one of her teachers said to her, “you are always right. Strange isn’t it”, a perceptive comment that gives a clue to her psychological make up.

Nevertheless, Clandon manages to elicit some sympathy for his monstrous creation, not least when she is persuaded to stand for election to the Council and promised support from all quarters, only to receive three votes. It is little wonder that she developed a complex plan, learning the lessons from other letter writers whose identity had been rumbled, to send anonymous letters to certain members of the community. Her purpose was not financial gain but to improve the morals and standards of behaviour of the citizens of Lush Mellish. In other words, to do good by stealth.

The recipients, however, did not see it that way and the authorities began their campaign to entrap Edna and bring her to justice. Clandon evokes some sympathy for Edna as we learn of the activities of a solicitor, Power, who cosies up to Edna after rescuing her dog and gradually through a series of seemingly innocuous questions over several encounters leads her to give vital information which seals the case against her. If Edna’s moral compass is a little wonky, so is that of the authorities and when the inevitable happens, the reader cannot help feeling that Edna is as much the victim as the transgressor.       

By modern standards, the accusations made in her anonymous letters seem quite mild and Edna’s sentence unduly harsh. As another reviewer has suggested, the obvious solution would have been for her to up sticks and move elsewhere, but this is not in Edna’s psychological make up. She has inherited her father’s stubbornness and determination to see things through to their natural conclusion.

As well as being a fascinating study of the mind of a poison pen letter writer, the book is humorous in style with some wonderful and memorable scenes. If you like a quirky take that ploughs a furrow less travelled in the hackneyed world of crime fiction, this is the book for you. Superb.

Dacorum Decorum

With the bladder of public finance under intolerable pressure, the future of the Council-funded public toilet looks bleak, causing consternation amongst those who fear the prospect of being caught short with nowhere to relieve themselves. If that was not bad enough, a new threat has emerged; the prospect of receiving a fine for peeing in the countryside.

Dacorum Borough Council in Hertfordshire, it has been reported, have handed £88 fines to at least two men who stopped at laybys and went into the woods to relieve themselves. Apparently, the Council employed enforcers lying in wait in the laybys. One of the victims, who suffers from a weakened prostate, had stopped at a layby on the A41 near Kings Langley to take “a discreet wee”.

In the eyes of Dacorum, and other councils too, taking a wazz off-road and out of sight constitutes an offence of littering and perpetrators risk being fined, only 22% of the revenue derived this way going to the Council’s coffers, the balance going to the private contractor hired to enforce the law. Drive along any road and there are more egregious forms of littering which no one seems to do anything about. At least urinating leaves no visible lasting trace.

Many have accused Dacorum of taking the piss and there is every prospect of a lawyerly dust-up. A sign of a civilised country is to have enough public toilets to allow those who feel the need to relieve themselves in comfort. As we are no longer anywhere near that point, the only viable option for many is to take a discreet wazz out of sight. Wildlife and dogs urinate willy-nilly in the countryside and, as Darwin pointed out some time ago, we evolved from them. It might be an example of evolutionary regression, but Dacorum’s attempt to establish decorum in the countryside needs to be resisted.

Minute For Murder

A review of Minute for Murder by Nicholas Blake – 240108

The problem with putting an author on a pedestal, as I have done with Nicholas Blake, the pen name of Cecil Day-Lewis, is that when you come across a book that falls slightly below their expected standard, you feel more disappointed than you would have done if you had read a fair to middling book from an author you have no particular feelings for. This was my overwhelming sense when I had finished Minute for Murder, originally published in 1947 and the eighth in Blake’s Nigel Strangeways series.

It is set in the last few months of the Second World War, the German war having ended but the theatre in the Far East is still awaiting its devastating denouement. Strangeways is working as head of the Editorial Unit of the Visual Propaganda Unit of the Ministry of Morale, a position that allows Day-Lewis to draw directly on his experiences as a publications editor at the Ministry of Information. His descriptions of office life, the foibles of and tensions between members of the staff ring true and one of the strengths of the book is his understanding of character and their psychological make up.

In my experience office parties are best avoided but an impromptu one held at the ministry to celebrate the return of a conquering hero, Major Charles Kennington who had pulled off an audacious capture of a leading Nazi, ends in tragedy. Nita Prince, secretary to the Director, Jimmy Lake, dies in front of her colleagues, having been poisoned, seemingly by a cyanide capsule which the Major had brought to show his former colleagues.

Soon afterwards, Jimmy is found stabbed, an attack which he survives, but utters some words which have profound significance in understanding who was behind Nita’s death. However, what has led to the assault on Jimmy is the uncovering of a plot involving blackmail and the passing on of secret files. In the context of the war, this is the more serious crime but in the book it is little more than a subplot that focuses attention on three other characters and then is suddenly dropped, only to be resuscitated towards the end as a sort of distraction motive. It is all very curious and as well as elongating the novel makes the story seem a bit disjointed.

The key to the mystery is a love quadrangle involving Nita Prince who is having an affair with Jimmy and was once engaged to Kennington who just happens to be Alice Lake’s twin brother. There are only two credible suspects and the culprit is fairly obvious but the way the murder was committed involving an eye for theatre and no little legerdemain is ingenious, requiring just the eponymous minute for murder, although I wonder whether it really could have been pulled off.

The plot is not as complex as some of those in Blake’s other books but there is much to admire, not least the author’s confident, erudite but engaging style. There is a wonderful episode of mental duelling in the penultimate chapter which leads to the culprit finally cracking, a tour de force which is worth reading the book just to enjoy. Nigel Strangeways is a calm student of human psychology and puts his suspects into situations where he can obtain vital evidence from their reactions, physical or physiognomic.

Sadly, we learn that Nigel’s wife, Georgia, who featured prominently in The Smiler with the Knife (1939) had been killed earlier in the war. She will be missed.

This is a good, solid murder mystery but by Blake’s standards, not one of his best.