Martin Fone's Blog, page 77

Mason’s Dry Yorkshire Gin Distiller’s Strength

It is always fascinating to discover why someone is enthused enough to go to the trouble of distilling and then trying to market their own gin in a market that is not short of products. In Karl and Cathy Mason’s case, it was a frustration at the time that too many gins tasted the same. There is a northern saying that if you want ow’t doing, do it yourself, and the Masons did just that, launching their own unique twist on gins appropriately enough on World Gin Day in June 2013. By 2014, having purchased their own still named Steve, they distilled their own products in their distillery in Bedale in North Yorkshire, Yorkshire’s only operational distillery at the time.  

Ten years later they have ten gins and four vodkas in their stable, according to their website, although, curiously, their Mason’s Dry Yorkshire Gin Distiller’s Strength, which I picked up at the Constantine Stores, headquarters of Drinkfinder UK, and described on the label as a “Special Edition” seems no longer to be available, its place taken by their 10th Anniversary Gin. With an ABV of 53%, the 10th Anniversary Gin is a comparative lightweight with an ABV of 52%, Distiller’s Strength is not strong enough to be classed as Navy Strength but is still comfortably stronger than many of the run of the mill gins spawned by the ginaissance.

Sensibly, Mason uses the same bottle shape for all their gins, differentiating the different varieties through the colour and design of the labels. The bottle is circular, made from crystal clear fluted glass that looks a little like St Paul’s cathedral as it narrows to a medium-sized neck leading to a copper-coloured top with a cork stopper. The white rose of Yorkshire is embossed on the bottom of the bottle together with what look like coordinates.

The labelling uses a dark blue background with bold lettering in white and copper. There is no mistaking who made this gin and what variety it is, epitomising a no-nonsense Yorkshire approach. It promises me “juniper, citrus and warming spice” which is “smooth, intense, and distinctly robust” made “the Masons Way” to create the best gin possible by being uncompromising on quality and taste.

As is the way with Distiller’s Cuts or Navy Strength gins, the distiller takes the botanical mix from one of their regular gins, ups the calibration of the botanicals and reduces the degree of watering down, to create a stronger and more robust spirit. Basing Distiller’s Cut on their Original Gin, I knew that I would be in for a big hit of juniper, some punchy citric notes and then the fennel, liquorice and cardamom coming in for a spicy and peppery finale.

All these elements were present on the nose and in the glass the spirit remained almost clear with a little louching with the addition of a tonic. It did not disappoint, the elements working well to produce a complex drink which will deliver a much welcome glow as the nights draw in and the temperatures drop. Impressive.

Until the next time, cheers!

The Case Of The Corporal’s Leave

A review of The Case of the Corporal’s Leave by Christopher Bush – 230725

I seem to be going through a run of murder mysteries which present two solutions. Christopher Bush’s twenty-ninth novel in his Ludovic Travers series, originally published in 1945 and reissued by Dean Street Press, is a case in point where Travers, now discharged from the army and acting as a special consultant to the Yard and his old sparring partner, Superintendent George Wharton, come up with two radically different interpretations of the events. To add spice to the proceedings Travers has a death on his conscience, his attempts to force the issue causing a suspect to take their own life, although his claims to have been a murderer seem to stretch the point somewhat.

Travers’ change of role adds a different perspective to his sleuthing. He is no longer the gentleman amateur sleuth but part of the Scotland Yard machinery, ostensibly taking direction from Wharton, although given a relatively free hand. The relationship between the two has always been fractious and a lot of Travers’ narrative deals with his disappointment that Wharton does not open up more to him with his thoughts and theories and that he is only too willing to take credit for the ideas of others, only after sitting on the fence to see whether there is any substance in the theories or not. From Wharton’s perspective working with Travers can be a frustrating experience as he too is prone to develop and work on his own theories only to pull the metaphorical rabbit in the form of a plausible solution out of the hat at the last minute and often to the discomfort of one of the Yard’s senior officers.

A character firmly in the wings is Travers’ wife, Bernice. She is continuing her war service as a nurse up north and the couple seem to live their married life separately, only communicating by letter. In this case Travers encounters two femmes fatales and it is clear that it would not take much for him to veer off track. Perhaps when the war is over Bernice will become more than the most peripheral of peripheral characters and perhaps, Olive Owen-like, become a sounding board for Travers’ more outré theories. We will see.

The principal murder victim, Sir William Pelle, is another character who has a wafer-thin skull, always a useful device for causing the death of someone the assailant did not intend to kill. Pelle, a retired Indian civil servant who has recently taken over responsibility for the gifts section of a charity, the Indian Famine Relief Fund, and on his way to meet Francis Kenray to have some jewels valued that he was carrying around in an attaché case goes missing. His body is later found in a railway wagon having had his head stoved in and with visible traces of sugar on his clothing. Who killed him, why and what happened to the jewels forms the basis of the investigation.

Along the way we meet some interesting characters, some picaresque, like the jewellery thief Harry the Snoot, some outlandish like Bertram Dale, one of the last of the great Edwardian eccentrics, and some mysterious and alluring at the same time, like Grace Allbeck imbued with great physical strength, and Marion Blaketon, who runs the Prisoners’ Reformation Society, which the Yard believes to be a front for more nefarious activities. Charitable organisations that might or might not be meeting their lofty aspirations is a minor theme in the book.

The imminence of the eponymous Corporal’s leave deters Trigg from informing the authorities that he had discovered Pelle’s body in his truck and removed it into a railway waggon, a vital piece of evidence that Travers unearthed through cultivating Kenray’s employee, Tom Fulcher. A bomb dropping from the sky in true deus ex machina style injuring Travers and killing Wharton’s principal suspect and a suicide wrap up the General’s case for him, but had it also saved him from having egg on his face if Travers’ reconstruction of the curious affair of Sir William Pelle was correct?

As usual with Bush, we have a well-constructed plot that dovetails the two interpretations of events nicely and there are enough clues diligently spread through the text to enable the reader to make up their own mind as to which version is correct. However, I felt the book as a whole lacked the urgency and spirit I usually associate with a Bush novel. It was enjoyable but not one of his best.

The Echoing Strangers

A review of The Echoing Strangers by Gladys Mitchell – 230723

First, the good news. The Echoing Strangers, the twenty-fifth in Gladys Mitchell’s Mrs Bradley series and originally published in 1952, is one of her more accessible efforts, despite her efforts to muddy the waters with a plot which can be quite difficult to follow at times. It is also quite funny in parts, especially the sections surrounding a cricket game between two rival villages and the enmities and desire to win at all costs that it arouses. The non-British reader need not be put off by the fact that there is a lot of cricket as little understanding of the subtleties of the game is required.

For the fans of detective fiction there are more clues scattered around the text than in some of Mitchell’s other books and her psychologist sleuth, Mrs Bradley, attached to the Home Office, has to do more detecting than usual. The book centres around two murders committed hundreds of miles apart but the nexus is Francis and Derek Caux, two beautiful identical twins who were separated at the age of seven after their parents were killed in a car crash by their guardian and grandfather, the cricket mad Sir Adrian Caux. Francis was so traumatised by the car crash – his twin was not in the car at the time – that he is both deaf and dumb.

The book opens with Mrs Bradley on the river in the depths of Hampshire where she sees a youth walk away after pushing a middle-aged woman into the water. Mrs Bradley and George, her chauffeur, rescue the woman, Miss Higgs, who seems unusually phlegmatic over her experience and discover that the culprit is Francis. She is also on the spot when the body of a misanthropic naturalist by the name of Campbell is found fixed to the underside of a boat having been bludgeoned to death after Francis has recreated the scene in plasticine.

Meanwhile over in Norfolk Tom Donagh has secured a summer position as a tutor to Derek Caux, a pretext for employing his not inconsiderable cricketing talents during Sir Adrian’s cricket week. On the first day of the bitterly contested match between the two local villages, the opposition captain, Witt, is found dead in the dressing room having been bludgeoned with his own cricket bat. All the players have a plausible alibi except Derek Caux, whom his grandfather had ordered off the field just before the murder.      

Both Campbell and Witt are blackmailers, a class of criminal that Mrs Bradley regards as worse than a murderer. After all, a murderer gets their crime done and dusted in seconds whereas the blackmailer takes sadistic pleasure in prolonging their victims’ distress and so she has little sympathy for the dead men. Nevertheless, the causal links with the Caux family and the psychological complexities that each of their characters present intrigues her that she decides to investigate with the help of Donagh and her favourite policeman, Gavin of the Yard, who is engaged to her secretary.

Mrs Bradley, once she gets her teeth into the cases, soon discovers that Francis is not deaf and dumb and that the twins play on their identical looks to pursue a vendetta against their murderous grandfather. Her encounters with the local publican, Cornish, and the charwoman she engages, Mrs Sludger, are moments of high comic drama. In the end it is a simple case of revenge and while the culprits are not difficult to spot, the interest of the book is in the way the indefatigable sleuth unravels the mystery.

The bad news is that there are some pretty unsavoury opinions, at least to modern eyes, along the way. Sir Adrian Caux is clearly a eugenist, not a characteristic that invites any particular comment, and Francis’ PTSD is treated unsympathetically. The twins, effete if not gay, are also treated as objects of fun and scorn.

Still, there are more positives than negatives and Mitchell for once has produced a mystery that is both fun and one that does not require membership of MENSA to follow.

Flying The Aspidistra Again

There are around a hundred recognised species of aspidistra, the number having increased significantly once China opened up to visitors again in the 1980s, but the one most commonly gracing Victorian living rooms was Aspidistra elatior. Aspidistras only came to these shores in the early 19th century.

The hothouse at Colvin’s nursery in Chelsea was home to one of the earliest aspidistras to reach Britain, the informative Gardens Trust blog reveals. This “very curious” and “previously unrecorded” plant was named Aspidistra lurida or the “Dingy Flowered Aspidistra” in John Bellenden Ker’s Botanical Register of 1822. Its provenance was a mystery; “of the place whence or the time when introduced nothing seems known that can be relied upon, nor have we met with any sample in either the Banksian or Lambertian herbariums (sic),” he wrote. Within a year it was appearing in Loddiges’ catalogue of hothouse flowers.

In 1824 John Damper Parks presented the Horticultural Society with a new species, Aspidistra punctata, collected on his travels in China. It “first flowered in a bark-bed in February and March 1826” in the Society’s gardens in Chiswick, its Transactions (1830) noted, describing it as “an obscure but curious stove-plant”.

While Parks had settled the question of the aspidistra’s origins, the mystery of how it was pollinated was not solved until 2017. Scientists from Kobe University revealed that the plant did not rely on visits from slugs as had previously been thought, but had evolved a clever strategy to attract fungus gnats. With its flowers appearing at ground level, often covered by leaf litter, and giving off a strong, musty, fungal odour, the fungus gnats are tricked into thinking it is a mushroom. They dive into the centre of the plant’s flowers, collect its pollen, and then transfer it to other plants as they fly on.

The aspidistra first became a popular houseplant in Paris, assuming “an important place in the decoration of apartments”, according to William Robinson’s Gleanings from French Gardens (1868). By 1873 the Gardeners’ Chronicle was proselytising the wonders of Aspidistra lurida, “one of the best window plants, capable, as it appears, of resisting almost any hardships to which plants in such circumstances are subjected…this plant and its variegated variety is grown largely in France and Belgium in windows, corridors etc, and might with advantage be more often employed here for like purposes”.

The seeds sown by the Chronicle’s writer bore fruit and what was good enough for the Parisian bourgeoisie soon became an object of desire for the aspiring British middle-classes, its hardiness and undemanding nature appealing to those with only the slightest tinge of green on the end of their fingers. However, this was to prove the Aspidistra’s undoing.

So ubiquitous, so hardy and so long-lived was it that what had once been an object of pride after several decades was now looking past its best, often handed down the generations, and gradually shunted from the drawing room to “the whatnot, near the ‘atstand in the ‘all”. During the interwar years it had become a music hall joke, and by the 1950s, with the boom in housebuilding and the rise in home ownership, the aspidistra’s presence jarred with the yearning to create a brighter, modernist future. It was supplanted in our affections by the yucca, also a member of the asparagus family, cacti, and rubber plants.

Nevertheless, the aspidistra owner’s dilemma over what to do with their plants lingered well into the 1970s. In July 1973 the BBC’s Nationwide programme ran a story on the quest of Putney resident, Mrs Arnold, for a new home for her unwanted but well-cared for seventy-year-old aspidistra. Salvation came in the form of the hothouse at Syon Park. Not all aspidistras were so lucky.

Houseplants are once more on trend, Britons spending more than £300 a year on them and 35% of us purchasing at least one in 2021. While valued for improving our wellbeing, they can be angst-inducing, with 48% of twenty-five to 39-year-olds worried about keeping them alive. The solution is obvious; cue the low maintenance, almost indestructible aspidistra. It might be flying once more.

Lost Word Of The Day (60)

One of the consequences of Covid lockdowns was people’s willingness to allow their hair to assume its natural colour. As a result, there seems to be a greater abundance of canities around, a medical term from the early 19th century meaning the whiteness or greyness of hair.

It was derived from the Latin adjective in its masculine form, canus, which meant white, grey or hoary, and spawned the English adjective canitude which can be applied to a variety of subjects including hair, snow and frost, or the froth on water.

To comment on someone’s canitude seems so much politer than coming out baldly and remarking on the greyness of their hair.

Lost Word Of The Day (59)

As I was struggling with a heavy box the other day, I consoled myself with the thought that I was bajulating, the present participle of the now obscure verb to bajulate meaning to carry a heavy burden.

Its origin is not clear but is thought to have been derived from a badger, the term used to describe an itinerant wholesaler who would buy corn and other commodities in one place and then carry them off to sell in another location. The word is on record from the 13th century, one Richard le bagger being recorded in 1297 in Hipperholme. A description of Malton market from 1642 noted that “the market is the quickest aboute 9 of the clocke -because the badgers come farre”.

If I sell the contents of the box, I will be following a long tradition and resuscitating a word that sheds light on the mercantile world of our ancestors.  

The Colour Of Murder

A review of The Colour of Murder by Julian Symons – 230721

Perhaps to my shame Julian Symons is a writer I have not investigated, although I enjoyed his ‘Twixt Cup and Lip in Martin Edwards’ Christmas themed collection of short stories a while back. Symons was more than a crime writer, publishing in his lengthy career books on social and military history, biography, and literary criticism amongst other subjects. The Colour of Murder was originally published in 1957 and has been reissued as part of the excellent British Library Crime Classics series.

I romped through the book, fascinated by how Symons produced a very distinctive and memorable take on a genre that by then was creaking at the seams. Neither an inverted murder mystery nor a whodunit in the classic sense nor exactly a psychological thriller it takes features of all to produce a book as good as I have read for some time.

The book falls into three unequal parts. The first is a series of transcripts of conversations that John Wilkins has with his psychiatrist. We learn of his home life, trapped in an unhappy marriage with the frigid May, of whom his mother disapproves, his work in the Complaints Department of Palings, a London store off Oxford Street, and his growing infatuation with a librarian, Sheila. From the minor details of what is quintessential a boring, conventional life led by millions in this country, we get the sense of things building up to some kind of crisis point. By the end of the part, the halfway point of the book, we still do not know what – of course, we suspect murder – but Symons is more concerned that we get the picture of a deeply unhappy man whose fantasies are the only way that he can escape from the crushing monotony of his life.

The second part is the murder trial. As this section of the book opens, we are not sure who is on trial, although we soon find out that it is Wilkins, nor whom he is supposed to have killed. The victim, it emerges, is Sheila and the case against Wilkins seems to be a fairly open and shut. Prone to blackouts at moments of extreme crisis, Wilkins cannot account for his whereabouts at the time at which Sheila was violently assaulted and killed, despite attempts by his counsel to discredit the evidence of some witnesses as to the time they saw him and some less than helpful testimony from friends and family.

Mrs Wilkins, who like all good mothers should, refuses to accept her son’s guilt and employs a private detective, Lambie, to carry put a more diligent enquiry than the police to reconstruct his movements on the night in question. Lambie unearths a sex worker with a social conscience, one whose testimony, at the risk of her reputation and future earning potential, fills in some of the missing hours and gives confirmation that the blood found on his jacket came from a cut he sustained whilst opening a can of beans. However, the evidence of a prostitute does not carry the weight that it should do.

The trial includes an early form of forensic evidence, the Benzidine test, which is able to detect the presence of the slightest traces of blood. This is confidently presented by the prosecution that it was proof positive that Wilkins’ clothing was splattered with Sheila’s blood. However, in a fascinating exchange, the defence counsel manages to demonstrate that the test was not all that it was cracked up to be. It would be some decades before DNA tests provided more definitive evidence.

The jury reaches its conclusion, but in the short epilogue, the third part, an alternative solution is put forward which to this reader, at least, seemed more convincing, but, curiously, Symons does not make much of it, just leaving it hanging in the air. Symons paints a convincing picture of a man trapped in his miserable life and who seems to be destined to be one of life’s victims, a convenient scapegoat. His one hope of escape, into the arms of Sheila, is closed when he learns that she has just become engaged to another, but it is still a surprise that it is she rather than May who is murdered.

The ending might be considered a tad unsatisfactory and there are loose ends aplenty, but I did not mind that. There were plenty of interesting characters, no little humour, a psychological case study, and an inventive twist on the crime fiction genre. You cannot ask for more than that.

Isle Of Bute Gorse Gin

The Isle of Bute or Eilean Bhòid or An-t-Eilean Bhòdach to give it its Gaelic moniker, is situated in the Firth of Clyde off the west coast of Scotland. Rothesay, its principal town, is home to the Isle of Bute Distillery whose story began in 2018. Several friends who were sailing around the island swapped yarns about their visits to Bute in years past and got to wondering why no distillery had established itself on the island for many years.

Fast forward a few months and equipped with a 200-litre Portuguese copper still called Audrey and two recipes in mind, they began to produce small batch craft gin, using locally sourced botanicals. Since 2020 they have steadily been increasing their range of spirits, which now includes five gins including the world’s first oyster gin, and a rum. Initially the spirits were distilled in Glasgow, but production has now been transferred to the island under the careful eye of Simon Tardivel, the head distiller. Isle of Bute Gorse Gin came from one of the original two recipes.

Their Gorse Gin uses juniper, handpicked gorse, coriander, angelica, lemon, vanilla, and coconut as its botanicals which are macerated in the still with grain spirit and water from the nearby Loch Ascog. As Audrey is gas-fired, she gives greater depth of flavour and added complexity to the distillation, they claim. After a distillation process lasting precisely eight hours, the ending distillate is collected and diluted with loch water until it reaches the required ABV, 43% in the case of their Gorse Gin.

The spirit is then bottled and labelled by hand into their distinctive perfectly round, squat bottles. Made of clear glass it has a rounded shoulder leading to a small neck, a wider lip, and a wooden cap with a synthetic stopper. The label on the front of the bottle is simplicity itself, a black square with the profile of the island on top and the name of the gin in white and copper lettering. There is a good reason for the small label as it allows the illustration of the yellow gorse flower which is printed on the reverse of the rear label to be seen through the bottle.

The label at the rear is more informative, although in need of a good copywriter, telling me that “the glorious gorse flower, sourced exclusive (sic) from Mount Stuart, gives our gin a floral nose with hints of coconut and vanilla reminiscent of a summer’s day walk along the Argyll Coast”. My bottle is number 279 from batch 23, distilled on May 12, 2021.

There is no doubt that the gorse is the star of the show, the juniper content to take its place in the background to give the perfectly clear spirit some body and allow the creamy, slightly sweet coconut and vanilla flavours to come to the fore before more herbaceous and peppery notes give a lingering and lasting aftertaste. In the mouth it belied its strength and the selected botanicals worked well to provide a refreshing and moreish drink, perfect for an early evening snifter.

Isle of Bute distillery is another of the small batch distilleries that are opening up on the Scottish islands with a mission to exploit and showcase their local botanicals, a brief that they have well and truly fulfilled. Fans of the more floral, herbaceous gins should enjoy this. You never know, I might pluck up the courage to sample their Oyster Gin, a concept, at the moment, I am still trying to get my head around.

Until the next time, cheers!

The Abbey Court Murder

A review of The Abbey Court Murder by Annie Haynes – 230720

The Abbey Court Murder, the first in Annie Haynes’ Inspector Furnival series, was originally published in 1923 and has been reissued by Dean Street Press. A century has passed since this story first hit the streets and it does show its age. There is something quaint about the police and other leading protagonists travelling around in horse-drawn carriages and as a story it is nothing if not melodramatic.

The nub of the story is a woman with a past that threatens to catch up with her and her desperate attempts to stop it from ruining her happiness. Judith aka Lady Carew is approached by a man from her past who demands that she sees him at 9.30 pm that evening at Abbey Court. She deceives her husband to make the appointment but is so discombobulated by the thought of her nemesis’ return that she drops a vital piece of paper that alerts Lord Carew to what she is up to.

At Abbey Court with feelings running high – naturally she has taken Lord Carew’s revolver -she tussles with the man who turns out to be a ne’er do well whom she married some years earlier, bigamously, the lights go out, a shot is heard, the man is killed, and in a panic she flees the scene, meeting a man, whom she also recognises from her past, on the stairs.

Having got home, she discovers that her dress is covered in blood, and she tries to dispose of the potentially incriminating evidence only to be thwarted by her less than trustworthy maid, Celestine. Judith has left enough clues for the dimmest of policemen to establish that she had been on the scene at the time of the murder and so afraid that she could be arrested at any minute is she that her health deteriorates and her once idyllic relationship with her husband deteriorates.    

Then enter Lord Westerham who has eyes on Peggy, Lord Carew’s half-sister, but Lord Carew is set against the marriage. Westerham uses his knowledge of Judith’s past and her visit to Abbey Court – of course, he was the man she encountered on the staircase – to further his cause and Carew reluctantly agrees.

Furnival of the Yard is set the task of solving the murder at Abbey Court. While his superiors see it as an open and shut case and expect him to bring the Carews in, Furnival, not one to jump to conclusions, is not so sure. His diligent investigations reveal that there is more to the case than meets the eye. While the resolution of the case is fairly evident to the seasoned reader of these types of fiction, Haynes does a good job in keeping the story going with enough twists and turns to keep her audience engaged, and the scenes describing the murder are excellent, atmospheric, and creepy.

Crime fiction in the 1920s was just cutting its teeth and it is fascinating to see how serious practitioners of the genre were struggling to establish a writing style suitable for the genre and for the mass audience they were hoping to attract. Haynes’ style shows the hallmarks of a battle to emerge from the sensationalism of the pot boilers and penny dreadfuls, with swooning, trembling hands, and faces affected by creeping pallor aplenty, and a certain floridity of style to a plainer, more workmanlike prose that became commonplace a decade later. This sense of transition also shows itself in the plot itself, part romantic melodrama, part sensationalist fiction, part murder mystery stocked with villains straight out of central casting.  

Even though it shows its age, it is well worth a read and I hope in the next two stories Furnival emerges from the shadows to become a much more rounded figure.

Anna Where Are You?

A review of Anna, Where are You? By Patricia Wentworth – 230717

At times reading a Miss Silver story gives you the impression that here is an author, an excellent storyteller with a knack of engaging the reader from the start, going through the motions with a tried and tested formula. Happily, Anna, Where are You?, originally published in 1951 and the twentieth in her Miss Silver series, does not fall into that category. Also going by the title of Death at Deep End, it is one of the best that I have read so far.

In the end, it is another piece of crime fiction where a knowledge of the obscurer corners of English literature, in this case Tennyson’s Enoch Arden, will serve you in good stead. It goes some way to explaining the reasons behind the murder of Peveril Craddock, owner of Deepe House, the self-centred and domineering husband of Emily, and self-proclaimed leader of a colony of eccentrics. It does not, however, who had committed two brutal bank robberies which resulted in the death of three bank officials. All the police know is that the banks were robbed by two people, the first robbery by a man with a shock of red hair and a youth, and the second by a man with a severely bandaged head and a beautiful woman.

A fortuitous spillage of red ink on some bank notes taken in the first heist leads the police to Deepe House where, coincidentally, Miss Silver has inserted herself as a governess, ostensibly to give Mrs Craddock some much needed respite but really to track down Anna Ball, a friend of Thomasina Elliott, who has disappeared without trace, who had recently worked there. Miss Silver renews her partnership with Inspector Frank Abbott in what at first glance seems to be a perplexing set of cases and where there is a premonition that there is more to come.

The denouement of the case is one of Wentworth’s best, Thomasina finding herself in grave danger, Anna revealing her true colours and in a rather demented fashion tries to take anyone and everyone down with her, and the final unmasking of the shadowy Mr Sandrow, the eminence grise behind the bank robberies. I had my suspicions as to their identity but was not certain until the big reveal. Hats off to Patricia on that score.    

One of the fascinating features of the book was Wentworth’s portrayal of Thomasina. She initially comes across as a deeply caring, loyal friend, intensely troubled by the radio silence from Anna Ball, so out of character from a woman who had always been in touch, so much so that she puts a simple notice in the paper which gives the book its English title. However, even before we meet her, the reader realises that Anna is a much more complex character, described as difficult and aloof. When the two have their final showdown, the scales fall from Thomasina’s eyes. She learns that Anna despised her, found her patronising, and when she had the opportunity to escape from her clutches, she grabbed it with both hands, especially as the route she chose offered her financial independence, albeit temporarily.

Thomasina seems no luckier in love than in her friendship, with a tempestuous relationship with Peter Brandon who orders her to drop her hunt for Anna. Thomasina’s unwillingness to concur is a source of friction between the two and throughout the book they are forever arguing. It is usual for Wentworth to include a healthy dose of romantic interest in her stories with the female often simpering and naïve, but here she portrays a different sort of relationship even if the expectation at the end is that they will live happily ever after.

The colony allows Wentworth to introduce a range of eccentrics, the best being Augustus Remington with his penchant for embroidery. Miss Silver, a mixture of sharp observational powers and a razor-sharp intelligence masked by her dowdy and genteel appearance, is on top form as she sorts the wheat out from the chaff.

Moral of the story: never quote Tennyson in front of a Tennyson expert.