Ellie Jackson’s reading journey

Posted on September 26, 2022 by Val Hewson

Here is another of the guest blogs from the Sheffield Hallam University students working with us through the Ideas into Action programme. We ask the students to write their own reading journey (a task they seem to enjoy, as they’re rarely given the opportunity to think about reading for pleasure) and to review a book or author popular with our original interviewees, all born at least 60 years before the students. It’s always interesting to see our material through the eyes of people born in this century, and we hope that the chance they get to look back increases their understanding of the world when their grandparents and great-grandparents were young.

Ellie’s memories of visiting the library and discovering Enid Blyton are pin-sharp.

As a child, I was introduced to books from the first moment I can remember. I was born and raised in a small town on the outskirts of Nottingham, and moved to Sheffield in September 2020 to complete my degree in English Literature. I was taken to the library in our small town multiple times a week by my grandparents, with rows and rows of more books than I could count. This experience is encapsulated into my memory; my younger self being completely mesmerized by them. I later realized that the library probably had no more books than a couple of hundred, a miniscule amount as opposed to other libraries I have visited after this. And so my reading journey began at a young age; the earliest books I remember reading are the Tales of Beatrix Potter and the Winnie the Pooh collection. My parents would read them to me before bedtime each night over and over again. I was fascinated by how the pictures in the books came to life, from the authors’ writing and the way my parents would adopt a new tone for each character. In my room I had a bookcase of around 200 books, and even more that were given a space in our spare bedroom as my parents would never throw them out, and I must have gotten at least five new for each birthday and Christmas.

My grandparents have always had a vast impact on my life in general, but more so when it comes to my reading experiences. I never had a positive reading experience during my years at primary school. Having to make my way up the reading stages with the Biff and Chip book collection was something I dreaded and remember asking my then teacher, if I could read The Wind in the Willows, or Peter Pan. I sped through the books, and I knew I could read more advanced ones. I was told that I was lacking in punctuation and quite far behind in writing skills than most of the other children in my school year, and that I needed extracurricular sessions with my English teacher after school. I became completely disheartened and despite knowing I was a great reader and it being my favorite pastime, I started reading less and less. My grandparents would collect me from school each day, and later informed me that they had noticed I wasn’t as interested in reading anymore, and no longer wanted to sit with my nose buried into a book before dinner. And so, instead of taking me to the library to borrow a book, they had taken me into their attic and let me have the choice of what I would like to read. From this day, I discovered multiple authors that have had a huge impact on my personal reading journey so far, such as Enid Blyton’s The Famous Five, as well as Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte and Charles Dickens. After listening to many of the Readers’ Voices interviews on the Reading Sheffield website, I realized myself and Margaret Young both shared our first reading experiences and with our grandparents, as her grandfather was an ‘avid reader’ and grandmother read classic novels much like the ones I was introduced to by my own grandparents, ‘Dickens and so on’.

As I was searching through the Reading Sheffield website to find more of others’ reading journeys, I came across Gillian Applegate’s interview, and despite being born 61 years apart, I noticed we share a similar enjoyment in reading Charles Dickens, specifically Great Expectations. This story is one I remember well and also studied during my GCSEs and came across again during my first year of university. I enjoyed watching the BBC adaptation of Great Expectations almost as much as I enjoyed reading the book for the first time, and found a love for watching TV and film adaptations of other celebrated novels too. Gillian also discusses her love for historical novels, which definitely resonates with myself as I prefer to read classic, timeless novels such as Wuthering Heights and War and Peace, both of which I have appreciated in the past few years.

Enid Blyton’s work as a whole has inspired much of my reading journey, The Magic Faraway Tree and The Enchanted Wood becoming my favorite books for years of my childhood after being read by my mum before bedtime. I also used Enid Blyton as a case in point within my Extended Project Qualification at A level, discussing her as an author but also arguments put out through the media about her work. I absolutely loved creating this project as her books had been a huge part of my childhood, and I achieved an A*. Regrettably, in order to complete my degree, I have many great (and some, in my opinion not so great) books that I have to read, consequently causing a lack of reading for pleasure and rather for work purposes. An example of the books I haven’t enjoyed so much throughout my modules is Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe and A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki. Both are great books for those who enjoy adventure fiction, and I loved the psychological analysis of both novels involving Freudian analysis. However I personally did not engage as well with these novels as I have with the others I have studied, such as Defoe’s Moll Flanders and Animal’s People by Indra Sinha. I hope to begin reading much more for myself from now on and to work on managing my workload of novels along with ones I am personally eager to read, as there are so many books still sat on my bookshelf that I feel guilty for neglecting, while picking up the same books I have been reading all year. I have recently commenced reading Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers for the other half of this project, and plan to purchase the rest of the collection to this book for my own reading pleasure.

Here is Ellie’s review of Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers..

My Reading Journey

Posted on September 21, 2022 by Val Hewson

For the last couple of years, Reading Sheffield has taken part in Sheffield Hallam University’s Ideas into Action project. The participating students examine our research and read a novel popular with our readers born in the 20th century. Then they write their own reading journey and review the novel. For many of the students, it’s a new experience to write about something as personal as their reading history. They say too that they have often never heard of the novel they review, or don’t know much of the context in which it was written.

Here is a powerful reading journey about the impact, both physical and imaginative, which reading can have. The student has asked to remain anonymous.

One of the earliest memories I have of myself as a child is where I was curled up next to my mother, both of our bodies wrapped in the sheets with only the warm faint glow of the lamp’s light to illuminate our faces and most important of all: the words scribbled upon the page of the book she was reading to me. I found great comfort in her warmth as one of her arms wrapped around my body, causing my head to rest on her chest and the other firmly holding the book into place, so I could be in awe of all of its illustrations and languages. Most importantly I was in awe of how my mother read.

Her sweet voice seemed to make the author’s words come to life in a way film never could. The way she mimicked certain characters’ voices helped to give me a sense of immersion. It encouraged me to imagine the characters right in front of me, talking with me. As though I was their friend. As though I myself were a character in one of these pages. Is it any wonder why I chanted ‘Again! Again! Again!’?

The fact of the matter is, I was surrounded by all forms of literature work, and often finding reality boring and unkind, I’d purposefully attempt to sneak a book off the shelf in desperate notion to create some form of escapism. To me, it truly didn’t matter what I was reading, even if I couldn’t understand the words, even if the phrasing of the words themselves were strung together in ways that would intimidate me, I would still persevere and read on. It didn’t matter to me that I didn’t understand the deep intricacies of the violent nature of men or their beautifully woven words of peace and love throughout the works of non-fiction. As long as I was reading, I didn’t have to interact with the world, and that’s what mattered to me the most. To this day I still regard reading as a private activity, something to only be indulged in with myself and by myself.

Hence why my first experience to the library was an odd one. On the way there my body was riddled with immense giddiness that I tried my best to rein in. Well, as much as an eight-year-old could rein in anyway. I knew my expression didn’t hide my joy, or for a better term, it couldn’t hide my joy. My mother’s hand had already enveloped mine and I squeezed it in turn to silently showcase my brimming glee.

The steps towards the library seemed magnificent to me. I soon imagined how it was a replica of what I had read in the books. I looked up in awe as from my view, the top of the building seemed to tickle the clouds with its touch. My imagination soon encouraged me to envision a flying creature of sorts (truthfully, I imagined a tiger with wings) looming over just above those same clouds, watching me with eagerness.

It all seemed to be going fine so far, right? Of course, that’s what I thought of as well, until we stepped foot and made our way into the building then I saw other people. Now this may confuse you, after all you may ask, ‘Well, what else did you expect? It’s a library.’ This is where my thinking becomes nonsensical so allow me to explain.

Whenever I read, I became completely under control of whatever the piece was, regardless of its contents. Due to this I let myself be engulfed and, in my mind, I let myself be vulnerable. I grew so attached to fiction and it morphed into something so private in my mind that when I saw people there with the same interests as me, rather than make me tremendously happy, it scared me.

Honestly, I couldn’t tell you how I got from that position to soon seating myself down on a hardened chair, my eyes scanning the pages of the book right in front me, yearning to know just why this version of Cinderella gave me the perspective of the stepsisters and not Cinderella herself, but I’m so grateful it happened.

It wasn’t long before I was at the mercy of the words again, and once again nothing else mattered, once again, it was just the book and I. Soon I began to venture out to my primary school library when allowed to and I’d find myself reading Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, The Tempest, etc.

I soon found myself immersed in the stories of the Celtic warrior Boudicca and the Egyptian Pharaoh Cleopatra. I wanted to be just like them, strong, intelligent, brave, willing to do anything for ones they love. I still do. Some things never change.

My love for reading only grew as did my experience of life in general. I soon learned that reading didn’t only enhance my life, but how through reading I was able to engage in life, constantly balancing the two. My cousin would often gift me her unwanted books, that were in pristine condition on the sole basis that she knew I would love to read.

It would take every ounce of my self-control to not tear the bag right from her hands there and then. On those days I’d spend the rest of my day reading what was gifted to me. If I correctly recall my current total for most books read in a day is roughly five to six. I’m determined to beat it one day.

Throughout my degree I find myself reading more to not only widen my collection but to ensure I succeed academically. Do I still love to read? Yes, absolutely. I remind myself that excelling academically is only a benefit to wider reading and not the sole reason why I choose to engage in it. I still write my stories, sonnets and poems that are not addressed to anyone else but I.

I am proud to call myself a writer and a reader. Writing forced me to acknowledge myself, and reading, no matter whether it be from a book, or a video game, allowed me to fall in love with myself and that is something no one can take away from me, but I’d sure like to see them try.

Reading Memories

Posted on September 16, 2022 by Val Hewson

By Lynne Gibbons

Our friend Lynne Gibbons shares her reading memories, prompted by her book group’s choosing to read Lucy Mangan’s Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading (London, Square Peg, 2018).

I really enjoyed Bookworm and I’m sure it will have sparked many memories for all our group. I can imagine there will be lots of ‘I loved that…’ and ‘I couldn’t stand that!’. I was reminded of books from my own childhood, from my daughter’s childhood and from my days teaching infants.

I’m still quite partial to books labelled ‘for children’ or ‘YA – young adults’. (That’s a whole other discussion – should books be age categorized at all?) I have to confess that I caused great arguments at my Lancashire book group, by recommending YA books. The one they really hated was The Knife of Never Letting Go (Walker Books, 2013) by Patrick Ness, but I was so sad when they were quite dismissive about Here Lies Arthur (Marion Lloyd Books, 2011) by Philip Reeve. I won’t expand on either book, but I still recommend them!

I still have some books from my childhood, including the Enid Blytons shown below. Apparently I had hysterics whenever the blue book was suggested. In that one, Mary Mouse, who was the family’s nursemaid, left the children because they were so naughty. She did return in the end, but I obviously couldn’t stand the upset and eventually I took to hiding it! ‘Not the blue book – don’t read the blue book!’

Post-war books look so sad now, but my Dad sought out some lovely picture books for me and later enrolled me in the Children’s Book Club. I think it was run by Foyles and happily it didn’t seem to have specific boy or girl choices, so I read lots of Biggles, by Captain W E Johns, as well as Dodie Smith!

I also accumulated piles of pre-war, vintage volumes from jumble sales, mostly run by the local Labour Party. I loved Susan Coolidge’s Katy books, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women series and L M Montgomery’s novels about Anne Shirley. But I have to say some of the more obscure volumes were puzzling, to say the least! Two Missionary Ladies in Tibet or Little Maid Marigold? These books are ‘prize fiction’, that is, moralising novels given as prizes for punctuality and the like at school or Sunday School in late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. The photographs below show a prize book, Doreen (London, John F Shaw, 1928), by Charles Herbert, and the bookplate awarding it to Ivy Eyre. I think Ivy was a friend of my parents from the Labour Party.

Little Maid Marigold (London, Religious Tract Society, 1902) is by Eleanora H. Stooke. Two Lady Missionaries in Tibet (London, S W Partridge, 1909) is by Isabel Suart Robson and includes a photograph of the two ladies, Annie R Taylor and Susie Carson Moyes, and a fascinating 30-page catalogue of the publisher’s Popular Illustrated Books which range in price from 6s to 3d. The Missionary Ladies come in the 1s 6d list.

And there was always the library to borrow books from! Highfield was my first one, when I was aged 4.

Thanks to Bookworm, I was reminded of a conversation with my friend Frances. She never had a doll’s house when she was a child. Her lack of this toy has stayed with her as my ‘blue book’ horrors have with me. Did we suffer any long-term consequences? I don’t know but the memories are sharp. I’ve recommended to Frances that she read Rumer Godden’s The Doll’s House (London, Michael Joseph, 1947). This is a surprisingly dark story about the dolls who live in the house. When I checked in Bookworm, it turns out that Lucy Mangan knows and loves this book too.

Tea, cake and books

Posted on September 4, 2022 by Val Hewson

On Saturday 3 September we held a tea party to support Mary Grover’s new book, Steel City Readers. We want to raise £12,500 so that the publisher, Liverpool University Press, can make the book free to download online.

Steel City Readers is based on the memories of 65 Sheffielders. We asked them about the books they read for pleasure between 1925 and 1955. (You can read or listen to the interviews in full here.) Mary explores their compulsion to read when there seemed little to be gained, the background – home, school, library – to their reading and the effect of factors like class and gender on their reading choices.

The tea party was a wonderful occasion. Tea, cake and talk about books. What’s not to like?

We heard from Mary, who described how she researched the book, formed the narrative running through it and put her own reading journey into it.

*Some of the books informing Steel City Readers*

The Sheffield artist Lizz Tuckerman brought along some of the pictures from her exhibition In Praise of Libraries, illustrating the reading journeys of some of our interviewees.

*The Lord Mayor and other guests viewing Lizz Tuckerman’s pictures*

Sheffield poet Eleanor Brown read poems inspired by our interviewees. You can read the poems in Eleanor’s latest collection, White Ink Stains, published by Bloodaxe Books and available from local and online booksellers.

Slaap kindje slaap
Sleep baby sleep
Daar buiten loopt een schaup
Outside is a sheep
Een schaap met witte voetjes
A sheep with little white feet
drinkt eijn melk zo zoetjes
who drinks his milk so sweet.
from White Ink, by Eleanor Brown, in White Ink Stains (Bloodaxe Books, 2019).

Julia Banks and Shirley Ellins, two of our interviewees, described the pleasure and pride they had gained from their participation in Steel City Readers. Julia talked about her life in the Netherlands, learning Dutch nursery rhymes to help her young children as they went to nursery school. Shirley told how reading helped her discover her passion for history, the subject she taught for many years.

Our special guests were Sheffield’s Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress, Councillors Sioned-Mair Richards and Jackie Satur. The Lord Mayor, who regularly reads to groups of schoolchildren in the Lord Mayor’s Parlour, spoke about what reading meant to her and about her discovery of books like The Little House on the Prairie series, Little Women, school stories, Susan Coolidge’s Katy books and Jean Plaidy’s historical romances, to name but a few.

*Councillor Sioned-Mair Richards, Lord Mayor of Sheffield*

Many thanks to everyone who worked so hard to make the tea party so enjoyable.

Here is the link to our Just Giving page. We are grateful, especially in these hard times, to everyone who has donated so far, and hope for more donations.

Steel City Readers

Posted on August 2, 2022 by Mary Grover

By Mary Grover

Reading Sheffield’s main activity this year is to raise money to support ‘Steel City Readers’, the book by our founder, Dr Mary Grover, about reading for pleasure in Sheffield between 1925 and 1955. The memories of the Sheffield readers we interviewed for our oral history project are at the heart of the book. We want to raise £12,500 to make ‘Steel City Readers’ free to download through an Open Access Licence, so that anyone may read it. Here is our Just Giving page where you can make a donation.

When you joined the queue of boys waiting to ask Mary Wilkinson to dance, you didn’t know that you were in for something more than swinging a girl round ‘in a room with a lovely bouncy floor above the garage on Psalter Lane’. For, in between dances, Mary brought out her ‘Confession Book’.

With this and a fountain pen, the resourceful girl soon extracted from her friends, male and female, but mostly male, their innermost desires. Each person had to ponder how to conclude a set of prompts like these:

‘I am going to marry for . . ‘
‘My favourite girl is . . .’
My favourite dance band is . . . ‘ (Harry Roy being the ‘Marmite’ band)
My favourite author is . . .’ (Most of them were thriller writers like Edgar Wallace and the authors of the long-running Sexton Blake series.)

Reading Sheffield discovered Mary’s precious time-capsule ten years ago when we set out to explore the books that mattered to Sheffield readers in the Thirties and Forties. We interviewed 65 readers from all over Sheffield, born before 1945, about what they read when they were growing up.

Mary’s Confession Book is a treasure because people who are not famous, like Mary and her friends, rarely leave records of how they thought and read. Yet, our personal histories and our tastes are individual and surprising, and reflect the times in which we grew up.

The first reader whose memoir I explored did indeed become famous. He was born long before our readers and his reading could easily have derailed a career which was to see him inventing the process of creating stainless steel. Yet Harry Brearley’s first love was reading.

Like most of our readers, Brearley had no books at home and even less schooling. He had no access to books from municipal libraries, so, being the resourceful child he was, he made his own. He became a bottle washer in a chemistry laboratory, went to night school, and was inspired by the great educator and philanthropist, John Ruskin. The boy kept borrowing Ruskin’s economic treatise, Unto This Last, copying it out, page by page. He bound the pages with scraps of leather he had scrounged and created a copy of Ruskin’s great work that was his to keep. A formidable achievement, but it was Sheffield’s good fortune that he decided that ‘Reading, there was no living in it’. He turned his attention to the chemistry textbooks lent him by the head of the laboratory.

*Adele Jagger aged about 16 in the back garden of 277a Ecclesall Road*

For most of our readers, growing up during the Depression, the Second World War and the hard times that followed, there was, still, less of a living to be made from book-learning than there was from taking up a good apprenticeship, if you were lucky enough to be offered one. So why were so many of the people we interviewed gripped by the reading bug and the desire to entertain and educate themselves by reading? For many, with little encouragement, reading became a kind of addiction. Adele, born in 1942 whose father was a painter and decorator, never saw either of her parents hold a book yet, as she put it, ‘something gets hold of you, doesn’t it?’ When I suggested to Doreen, born in 1934, that when she started courting there might not have been time for reading, she was quite tart with me: ‘You can read and dance, Mary!’ Doreen had to leave her grammar school early for lack of parental support. Mary Wilkinson had to leave school early because the family printing business folded. Both girls never let the absence of a School Certificate rob them of an education. They kept on reading.

Most of our readers depended on Sheffield’s superb libraries for the books they read but annuals and comics also changed people’s lives. When Fred Jones from the Manor got tuberculosis in the Thirties at the age of 8, he was a non-reader: ‘I just couldn’t fathom it’. He was sent to Nether Edge isolation hospital and thanks to a mound of comics donated by an imaginative benefactor, he came out fluent, ‘never able to put a book down’ and got to night school.

Fred’s story is told by one of our interviewees, Malcolm Mercer, a boy who never passed his 11+ but became headmaster of Parson Cross School largely because of his own reading. When he left school at 14 to become a shop-assistant he bought himself a notebook and recorded everything he read. He borrowed books from Park Library, setting himself his own curriculum, which included Scouting for Boys, Lord Beaverbrook’s Success, 100 Tips for more Trade and Tolstoy’s Tales of Courage and Conflict.

Steel City Readers is inspired by the pleasure Malcolm, Doreen, Mary and others found in the books they hunted down. Liverpool University Press is publishing it as an e-book which will make it free to readers globally, but an author must find £12,500 for the licence fee and other costs to publish it. Will you help Reading Sheffield pay the fee? If you could make a donation, perhaps in memory of someone you know whose life was changed by reading, we would be most grateful and you would be contributing to preserving Sheffield’s history.

The Good, the Bad and the Extraordinary

Posted on July 17, 2022 by Val Hewson

By Val Hewson

This month our sister project, the Sheffield Hallam Popular Fiction Group, is celebrating its tenth anniversary by publishing a collection of reviews, The Good, the Bad and the Extraordinary: Exploring Popular Fiction 1900-1950.

*We think this wonderful cover image is a publicity photo for Sheffield Libraries (Picture Sheffield. Ref: u02265. Used with permission)*

When the idea of a book was first suggested, we felt that members of the group should choose the books and authors they wanted to review. This was risky, as we might have ended up with 20 Agatha Christie reviews, but the strategy paid off. There are 22 authors and 25 books in The Good, the Bad and the Extraordinary. There is everything from children’s classics to dystopian science fiction, from politically radical to conservative, published between 1908 and 1950, mostly British – but also Russian, Canadian, Austrian and French – some still popular and others long forgotten. No Agatha Christies, but she gets lots of attention elsewhere, so we don’t feel guilty.

Helping to edit the reviews gave me the chance to revisit books I know well, like L M Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables (a friend for 50 years now), but also to get to know books new to me, like Vicki Baum’s Grand Hotel. The work made me wonder if our Reading Sheffield interviewees said anything about the authors chosen for the anniversary book.

Dennis Wheatley appears to be the best remembered, with at least 15 interviewees mentioning his tales of espionage, war and the occult. Chris F (b. 1939) recalled:

… the house library at school had one or two Dennis Wheatleys and they all had the salacious bits in them and we all knew where they were, pages 27 and 28, and if you opened the book, they were well-thumbed.

Dorothy Latham (b. 1931) revelled in L M Montgomery’s stories of Canadian girlhood:

My absolute passion was Anne of Green Gables…I adored all the series. If I’d have had a daughter – which I didn’t. I had two sons – she would have been called Anne…I adored it, and I – I was just absorbed with it.

For James Green (b. 1936), Rafael Sabatini brought back family memories:

My mum always used to read romances. And my dad’s two favourite authors which you very rarely hear anything about now were Rafael Sabatini, and Jeffery Farnol. And I think, if I remember right, they’re mainly historical novels about French revolution, and you know, that sort of thing.

Ken M (b. 1928) told of borrowing Leslie Charteris’ Saint books from ‘a tuppenny library down at Fir Vale shops that had a huge selection of stuff’.

Warwick Deeping, Ethel M Dell, Mazo de la Roche, Josephine Tey, Compton Mackenzie and others all appear in at least one interviewee’s account of reading. Alan B (b. 1944) told of being asked at school to name a famous author and answering ‘Mazo de la Roche’, who was one of his mother’s favourites: ‘I was laughed at and … I perhaps realised that perhaps all our authors aren’t equal!’ And here’s James Green again, on Hank Janson, whose ‘not very well written’ books excited many of those charged with upholding public morals:

And Hank Janson was a detective who was a bit Mickey Spillane type. And they were considered very very racy. In fact, the teacher would take it off you if he caught you reading one of those.

Madeleine Doherty (b. 1940) is our only interviewee to mention Charles Williams, a member of the Oxford ‘Inklings’, along with C S Lewis and J R R Tolkien, who wrote Christian fantasy thrillers. Madeleine was ‘hooked’ on Williams’ books, but they made her uneasy: ‘they were weird, they were weird. Sometimes I used to frighten myself’.

Some of the authors chosen for review by the Sheffield Hallam reading group do not feature at all in our interviews: Gaston Leroux, Lettice Cooper, Pamela Wynne, Lady Eleanor Smith, Vicki Baum, Valentine Williams, Mary Dunstan, Yevgeny Zamyatin and Ethel Carnie Holdsworth. This doesn’t mean that they weren’t read by our interviewees but simply that they weren’t remembered. My bet is that many, if not all, were read.

In some cases, books were made more popular by being made into films. Vicki Baum’s novel, Grand Hotel, for example, was a huge success and the 1932 film, starring Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford and John Barrymore, made it still more popular. The case of Lady Eleanor Smith is similar: her 1941 Regency romance-with-touches-of-horror, The Man in Grey, was the source of the first and very successful Gainsborough film of the same name, with the sterling British cast of Margaret Lockwood, Phyllis Calvert, Stewart Granger and James Mason. Ethel Carnie Holdsworth and Gaston Leroux also wrote novels that were adapted for films.

Even where there were no films to help, there were libraries. Tuppenny libraries of the sort found at Fir Vale would certainly have stocked the thrillers of Valentine Williams and the romances of Pamela Wynne, and Lettice Cooper would have featured in the book lists of many subscribers at Boots Booklovers’ Library on Fargate. Sheffield Libraries might also have had copies of some or all of these, as the City Librarian, J P Lamb, took a much more liberal view of fiction than many of his counterparts. Lamb believed that popular books helped establish the reading habit in people, and stocked his branch libraries with Ethel M Dells and Edgar Wallaces, as well as classics.

Whether they are well-known and/or admired today, or lying for now unloved on the shelves of second-hand bookshops, all the authors featured in The Good, the Bad and the Extraordinary are interesting for what they tell us about the times in which they were written.

The Good, the Bad and the Extraordinary (ISBN 978-1-4717-0438-3) is available from Amazon or can be ordered from any good bookshop.

Mary Jones and her Bible: Prizes

Posted on June 27, 2022 by Susan Roe

By Sue Roe

When I was about ten, my family moved from Wybourn to Abbeydale Road in Sheffield. I changed schools and made new friends – especially a girl called Janet. She was a Methodist and after a while I started going to her church. I also went to Sunday School with her. As in many Sunday Schools, books were given as prizes for attendance etc. I distinctly remember getting one myself: it was Mary Jones and Her Bible by Mary Carter. It may have been for getting a high mark in the Scripture exam.

I am sure some people are familiar with Mary’s story: how she at the age 15 walked 26 miles barefoot to Bala to buy a copy of the Bible in Welsh. She was the daughter of a poor family from LLanfihangel; her parents were devout Methodists. Welsh Bibles were scarce and she saved for six years until she had enough to buy one. Sadly, I no longer have the book but I have a clear memory of the cover.

This got me thinking about school prizes and Sunday School prizes too. I won two school prizes: the first was a Bible when I was in the second year (Y8 in today’s terminology) at grammar school This must have been in my church-going days. The second was in the Sixth Form (Y12): T S Eliot’s Collected Poems. I saw myself as more intellectual then!

Several of our Reading Sheffield interviewees mention such prizes. Often they belonged to their parents or even grandparents.

Winnie had a vivid memory of one such book which was probably from the Salvation Army Sunday School:

We didn’t have books at home. Don’t think mother could afford them anyway, only the odd one that were prizes … In fact I’ve still got one or two of mum’s old books.
MG: Have you? What are they?
Winnie: Yeah, from her being ten years old.
MG: Really? Winnie: Yes. Jessica’s Prayer

Frank had similar memories:

Me mother and dad both had a bookcase full of books, one that me dad made, and it was full of books, at least 2 shelves of books in there. I think most of their books came as things like Sunday School prizes. I remember the Dog Crusoe, know that one? And there was another one, a series of books, thin paperback books he had, I can’t remember the author, about a character called Bindle. He was a Jewish man in London at the time of the outbreak of the First World War and they were very very tongue-in-cheek.

Yvonne’s parents had a collection housed in a bookcase:

Yvonne: She [Yvonne’s mother] also possessed books she’d won as prizes at Sunday School as a girl. But other than that, there was no child reading material available in those days because it was the wartime and it just wasn’t there
SR: Did your mum have a bookcase? Was it a little one? A big one?
Yvonne: Oh, it was a free-standing bookcase. There was a bureau in the middle, there was a cupboard underneath, and there were two bookcases. It wasn’t crammed full of books but my mother’s prizes were at that end, my dad’s were at that…
SR: What sort of books did she have as prizes?
Yvonne: One in a box in there that I’ve still got was a copy of Lorna Doone which I won’t part with. And I read that. I couldn’t get into it at first when I was younger but as I got older I read it again. I also read The Prisoner of Zenda. That was one of my mum’s prizes.

Shirley Ellins speaks of:

… the famous Shakespeare that mother won as a child when she was 14 from Crookesmoor School for Progress, before she left; complete works, complete with wonderful Victorian paintings and photographs of Victorian actors and actresses. Which is my pride and joy.

Betty N remembers her grandmother’s copy of A Peep Behind the Scenes, by Mrs Walton and published by The Religious Tract Society. Betty was so attached to it that she tracked down a copy in a junk shop.

I’m quite amazed but it’s true that I could read that before I went to school. My Grandmother’s had been a school prize. It had a bookplate for a school prize in her copy. But that was the first book I ever read.

Mary S has memories of prizes belonging to different members of her family:

They had all these ghastly Victorian … you know, educational novels, like Peep Behind the Scenes. That novel called Peep Behind the Scenes, that grandma thought was wonderful? All the kind of Sunday School prizes kind of books … we’ve still got all the Sunday School prizes that various bits of the family got.

Some interviewees won prizes themselves.

Josie remembers there wasn’t much money for presents so she had books for Christmas and birthday presents but she recalled other sources:

JH: … also schools used to give them out as prizes, and Sunday School used to give them out.
MG: Did you get any prizes?
JH: Yes, and it was always a book.
MG: And where were you allowed to choose your book from for the prize, or did they choose them for you?
JH: Sometimes they gave you a list and you could either put like, as I got older, cookery book or romantic novel or boy’s book or whatever. There was categories and you could actually choose at some places, but not all. Sometimes they just chose and gave what they thought was suitable.

Christine has similar memories:

I used to win prizes as well at school (a real swot!) and I won form prizes and we were always taken to the bookshop and the books I chose I’ve still got them and some were non-fiction and I got The Cruel Sea and C S Forester’s The Good Shepherd. And then Best Foot Forward, which is a war story about someone who lost his leg[s] and is a bit like Douglas Bader.

Several remembered going to Andrews Stationers on Holly Lane in Sheffield to choose their book prizes. Gillian won the prize for English Literature at school:

So we went to Andrews and I didn’t just manage one, I got two books. I got Ivanhoe and Emma by Jane Austen. And it’s all got ‘School Prize: Gillian Stannington’.

Margaret Young went to the Methodist Book Shop to choose her prize:

Er, yes. I once took the scripture exam in Sheffield and came second in Sheffield, with 98 marks. We had to go the Montgomery Hall to be presented. So I had a book token, and whenever I got book tokens from church – I was at Walkley Methodist Church, on South Road – or the scripture exam, they used to take me to the Methodist book shop in Chapel Walk to buy books. This occasion, I remember I got an Arthur Ransome book, which was quite a thick book – it was a good token!

These prize books were treasured by our interviewees; many are still on their bookshelves.

How did your Nan cook Christmas dinner?

Posted on January 1, 2022 by Val Hewson

By Val Hewson

In December 2021, I gave a talk in Sheffield Central Library about what vintage recipe books can tell us about our heritage, both individual and shared. Here are my slides and notes from our Events page, along with a related paper written for the Inheriting the Family project on Research.

During the talk I asked the audience to recall the cookery books important to them. About 20 people responded on cards, anonymously – an unscientific, but interesting, survey. They quoted a wide range of books, from Mrs Beeton to Nigella, domestic goddesses both, from the 19^th to the 21^st centuries, from kitchen ranges to smart ovens.

The cards suggest that we identify recipe books with their authors – Delia Smith, Mary Berry, Marguerite Patten and the rest. The recalled titles are often not quite right, half-forgotten while the authors stick in our minds. They are acquaintances, if not friends.

Marguerite Patten (1915-2015), for instance, appears twice on the cards. She worked for the Ministry of Food during World War Two and then became a regular on radio and television.

My first recipe book was by Marguerite Patten. Everyday Cook Book in Colour.[i] Sold second hand by the local library! Started a lifelong love of cookery.
Marguerite Patten. WW2 Home front / Rationing recipes (not exact title). Could be Victory Cookbook. Has many recipes for non-meat meals/vegetarian meals.[ii]

The Observer journalist, Katherine Whitehorn (1928-2021), conjures up for a whole generation memories of leaving home, being a student, the first job, getting married and making do:

Cooking in a Bedsitter by Katherine Whitehorn.[iii] Given to me late 1960s or early 1970. I had left university and was working and flat sharing in London. This is the 1st cookery book I owned.

Cooking in a Bedsitter, often reprinted, must have been tucked into suitcases by many anxious parents.

Then we have Elizabeth David (1913-1992), whose championship of French and Italian cuisine fired a revolution in British food.

Elizabeth David. French Provincial Cooking.[iv] This is more than just recipes – can sense the location and smells and sights and people.

To illustrate the point:

… the most enjoyable of French country meals; unexacting ones, ordered and served with the minimum of fuss. An omelette, perhaps, followed by the sausages which were a speciality of the local butcher, a vegetable dish and some cheese; or perhaps snails and a homely stew, intended probably for the patron’s own dinner but gracefully surrendered; or a vegetable soup, a slice or two of country-cured ham and a beautiful big green artichoke; and on another occasion, a langouste with a mayonnaise which was among the best I have ever tasted, because of the fine quality of the Provençal oil which had gone into it, and which was followed by a dish of tender young string beans of that intense green and delicate flavour which only southern-grown beans seem to acquire.
Elizabeth David, French Provincial Cooking, introduction (Kindle edition).

Unsurprisingly, Delia Smith, Mary Berry and Nigella Lawson all feature on the cards too. They are among our most familiar television cooks, with Delia and Nigella, if not Mary, needing only first names. Delia gets three mentions altogether, more than anyone else.

Mary Berry. Her recipes are straightforward and easy to follow.
Have bought lots of cookery books over the years but the one I always go to and is my favourite is Delia’s Cookery Course. I also have Mary Berry’s Cakes, which I use often.[v]
Nigella Lawson, How to be a Domestic Goddess.[vi]

The first of all celebrity cooks is named just once, still an icon 160 years after the publication of her Book of Household Management.[vii] Often imagined as an old lady in black bombazine, another Queen Victoria, Isabella Beeton died from complications in childbirth in 1865, aged 28, and never knew of her fame.

*Isabella Beeton, by Maull & Polyblank, 1857 (National Portrait Gallery, Creative Commons licence).*

*Engraved title page of Beeton’s Book of Household Management, Wellcome Library copy, 1861 (public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)*.

Mrs Beeton – lots of plain, uncomplicated recipes which don’t require a huge range of ingredients (unlike many of the modern, contemporary ones!)

At this point, you may be asking where the men are. On the whole, they are absent.

1000 Recipe Cook Book. Delia Christmas Book. Nigel Slater’s 30 minute Recipes.[viii]

Not all the books quoted are by celebrity cooks. Good Housekeeping has published dozens of books, ranging from the encyclopaedic to the pamphlet, since it was founded in the USA in 1885 and the UK in 1922. Here we have (along with an honourable mention for Woman’s Weekly).

Good Housekeeping Cookery Book.[ix] Bought by my mother-in-law when first married in 1973. The book I used with really good instructions which I used a lot when I was young was Woman’s Weekly.

and the unfortunately unidentifiable:

Good Housekeeping book.

Three more books which are warmly recommended are:

Readers Digest Farmhouse Cookery Book.[x] They give information and the background of the different recipes. Lots of different categories, so a simple index.
Marks & Spencer c 1971/2.[xi] Can’t remember title! A4 paperback. Now has no cover, stored in a ring file binder. Used every week!
1970. Dairy Book of Cooking.[xii] From the milkman. Also remember Be-Ro.

Ah yes. Be-Ro. The books of baking recipes produced since the 1920s by this flour manufacturer are by some way the most popular with the Central Library audience.

Thomas Bell founded a wholesale grocery firm near the Tyne quays and railway station in Newcastle in the 1880s. Among his top-selling brands were ‘Bells Royal’ baking powder and a self raising flour. Following the death of Edward VII, it became illegal to use the Royal name. As a result, Bell decided to take the first couple of letters from the each of the two words of the brand name and turn them into the more catchy sounding ‘Be-Ro’.
Be-Ro – Home

Be-Ro ran demonstration events to promote their products and, when people asked for the recipes, the recipe books were written. There have been about 40 editions so far, and they seem to be both well-remembered and loved.

Be-Ro Home Recipes, published 1978. I bought this when I got married. The only recipe book I have kept after 7 house moves. Simple ingredients available. Recipes can be adapted – ingredients added. All you need to feed a small family.
The Be Ro Cookery Book. I was born in 1957. The Love of Cooking.[xiii] Sonia Allison. Bought for me in 1970s by my aunt as a good basic cookbook and still used today. Also loved by my daughter.
Be-Ro book. Good Housekeeping complete. 1975ish. Foodaid Book, celebrity contributed. (Terry Wogan, Delia Smith)
BeRo. Still my ‘go to‘ for basic recipes.
The Be-Ro cookery book. I still have one of my mums books, which I use regularly for scones and pastry – I love it!

It is at this point that I admit to fellow feeling. The Be-Ro book published around 1957 is the only cookery book I associate with my mum, and the gingham-aproned girl pictured on the cover has always been secure in my memory.

Once again, I realise that recipe books have a remarkable ability to awaken memories and to start conversations.

[i] Patten, Marguerite, Everyday Cook Book in Colour (London, Hamlyn Books, 1969).

[ii] Patten, Marguerite, The Victory Cookbook (London, Hamlyn, 1995).

[iii] Whitehorn, Katherine, Kitchen in the Corner: a Complete Guide to Bedsitter Cookery (London, Macgibbon & Kee, 1961). Re-titled and re-published: Cooking in a Bedsitter (Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1963).

[iv] David, Elizabeth, French Provincial Cooking (London, Michael Joseph, 1960).

[v] Smith, Delia, Delia’s Complete Cookery Course (London, BBC, 1982). Mary Berry has written several books of cake recipes including: Fast Cakes: Easy Bakes in Minutes (London, Headline Home, 2018); My Kitchen Table – 100 Cakes & Bakes (London, BBC Books, 2011); and Mary Berry’s Simple Cakes (London, BBC Books, 2014).

[vi] Lawson, Nigella, How to be a domestic goddess : baking and the art of comfort cooking (London, Chatto & Windus, 2014).

[vii] Beeton, Isabella, Beeton’s Book of Household Management (London, S O Beeton Publishing, 1861).

[viii] Barrett, Isabelle and Harrop, Jane (eds), 1000 Recipe Cookbook: Recipes for all occasions (London, Octopus, 1960). Smith, Delia, Delia Smith’s Christmas (London, BBC Books, 1990). Slater, Nigel, The 30-Minute Cook: The Best of the World’s Quick Cooking (London, Michael Joseph, 1994).

[ix] Good Housekeeping Institute, Good Housekeeping Cookery Book (London, Ebury Press, 1972).

[x] Reader’s Digest Association (ed), Farmhouse cookery: recipes from the country kitchen (London, The Association, 1980).

[xi] Hard to identify. The Marks and Spencer archive lists several cookery books from 1977 onwards, including: Wright, Jeni, St Michael Cookery Library: Cooking for Special Occasions (Sundial Books Ltd, 1977) and Selden, Elizabeth, St Michael Cookery Library: Family Meals (Sundial Books, 1977).

[xii] Allison, Sonia, The Dairy Book of Home Cookery (London, Wolfe Publishing, 1968). For the Milk Marketing Board? Sonia Allison rates a second mention below.

[xiii] Allison, Sonia, The Love of Cooking (London, Collins, 1972).

Chris Hopkins’ Reading Journey, part 2: Milly-Molly-Mandy, a Giant Reading Cushion, and a Book Sale

Posted on December 13, 2021 by Val Hewson

By Chris Hopkins

Chris Hopkins is an Emeritus Professor of Sheffield Hallam University. An expert on the British novel in the first half of the twentieth century, he is the author of Walter Greenwood’s Love on the Dole: Novel, Play, Film (Liverpool University Press, 2018) and editor of the Walter Greenwood: Not Just Love on the Dole web/blogsite. The first part of his reading journey is here.

In Part 1, I recalled a more-or-less specific reading memory about one time and place where I read, and about one publication, Treasure. Part 2 will range across three separate reading memories, centring more on libraries, books, and bookshops from the nineteen-sixties until the nineteen-seventies. Each memory is sharp at the centre, but fuzzy round the edges.

When I was reading Treasure, and I’m sure before, I certainly recall going often in the afternoon to East Sheen Public Library with my younger sister and mother. I recall that my younger sister liked to borrow the Milly-Molly-Mandy books by Joyce Lankester Brisley to be read from at bedtime. I also recall that this was not a favourite with my mother because she disliked having to read out the strings of cumulative repetition which are a key device in the books, and which also inevitably involve frequent readings out of Milly-Molly-Mandy’s own name. For example, in the first story (‘Milly-Molly-Mandy Goes Errands’) of the first book (Milly-Molly-Mandy Stories,1928), Milly-Molly-Mandy is asked to do more and more errands by her family all in one trip to the village, and she has to keep repeating them in her head to make sure she remembers them. After four pages of accumulation Milly-Molly-Mandy has arrived at this string:

Trowel for Farver, eggs for Muvver, string for Grandpa, red wool for Grandma, chicken-feed for Uncle, needles for Aunty, and I do hope there won’t be anything else!
Milly-Molly-Mandy Stories (1928), p.5, Macmillan Children’s Books, kindle edition.

Of course, these repetitions are the entertaining things about the story-telling in these books, and I know that many people have fond memories of them. Lucy Mangan in her own excellent reading journey article in the Guardian (15/2/2018) has indeed rightly argued that every Milly-Molly-Mandy story is a virtuoso exercise in structure and sequenced detail: My life as a bookworm: what children can teach us about how to read | Children and teenagers | The Guardian .

Nevertheless, my memory is that my mother did not enjoy reading them aloud, though generally I’m pretty certain she enjoyed reading aloud and was herself certainly a keen reader. I would much rather recall a different memory of bed-time reading, but sadly this is the only one I can find in my head. I am absolutely sure I would have had my choice of bed-time story too, but I cannot recall a single choice I made! Still, below I have a more characteristic memory of my mother and books.

I think my next reading memory is of my GIANT READING CUSHION. My elder sister bought that for me, I think because she thought my habitual lying-on-my-stomach-on-the-floor-reading-position (see my reading journey Part 1) must be uncomfortable. I’m not sure this had bothered me, but I was quickly converted to the giant reading cushion, and did most of my reading stomach-down on it for the next ten years or so. It was a square brown cushion, comfortably stuffed, measuring about three feet by three feet, and it came from Habitat. My mother thought the brown colour was a bit dull, so in a project which must have taken some time and dedication, she made it a cover of brightly coloured and patterned patchwork squares. That brightened it up (though again I don’t think I was bothered that much by the brown – oh dear was I completely aesthetically insensitive in those days? – but did appreciate the energy put into personalising my reading environment). I certainly took it to university with me, and did much of my reading on my BA (Eng. Lit, of course) on its comforting base. By the time of my MA (Eng. Lit again …), I seem to have parted company with it, but I don’t remember when or where. Perhaps it just fell apart from age and was humanely disposed of? Anyway, it wouldn’t have fitted into my MA study-bedroom, which was distinctly smaller than my undergrad ones. I wish I had a photo, but I don’t think one exists.

My third and final reading memory for this part of my reading journey is of W.H. Smith’s sales table near the front entrance in the branch in Richmond-upon-Thames (it’s still there and in business). I don’t know whether Smith’s had a permanent sale in those days (early nineteen-seventies), but in my memory there seemed to be a book-sale every time we went to Richmond. We were certainly still users of public libraries in East Sheen and Richmond, and I was a keen user of my school library, but nevertheless my mother would generally buy me my choice of book from the table – well, anything up to about 35 pence (this may not be a correct memory, but I think then that non-sale paperbacks often cost something like 50 to 75 pence). I usually went for archaeology (before I was gratefully received into Eng. Lit, I was going to be an archaeologist – an interest I retain), though I sometimes wandered into zoology. I remember buying and reading with great pleasure a book on Przewalski’s Horse – I suspect translated from Polish. I think I would remember the cover photograph, but searches on online booksellers have not so far turned up anything I recognised (for an account of this noble creature see for starters the Wikipedia entry: Przewalski’s horse – Wikipedia).

However, I do still have on my book-shelves two books my mother kindly bought me from that Smith’s table. Here they are (both published in 1973, both hardbacks, and with a non-sale price of £1.50!). I still think they are nice books and am pleased to have kept them.

Whan thǣt hit bee Yeol

Posted on September 30, 2021 by Val Hewson

By Val Hewson

More on literary food. Here is the tale of Sheffield Literary Club’s Christmas dinners.

Whan thǣt hit bee Yeol? Yes, well may you pause. It means ‘when it’s Christmas’. Notice ‘Yeol’, which is more usually written as ‘Yule’. The phrase is taken from the menu for a Christmas feast organised by the Sheffield Literary Club in the early 1930s. ‘Feast’ is the operative word: this was no simple roast dinner.

The Literary Club started life as the ‘Sheffield Poetry Club’ in 1923 and, with the change of name perhaps recording wider interests, lasted until the 1960s. It was a largely female and middle-class group, with members having to pay an annual subscription of at least 5/-. The Club had high ideals. The Sheffield Daily Telegraph in 1923 commented:

Here is an opportunity for Sheffielders to refute the ancient taunt that Sheffield is unliterary, that it is ‘at the very nadir of culture’.

The original prospectus promised that:

… poetical plays will be read by lovers of drama; recitals will be given by elocutionists, of the less known good poetry; papers, and discussion on them will cultivate the essay form and encourage debate; original verse-making will be encouraged by inviting the authors to read their works.

The Club’s literary tastes were conservative. In the early years members discussed Austen, Byron, Milton and Tennyson at meetings. They shunned the avant-garde. This all deserves a blog of its own (and one day I will write it) but for now let’s focus on Christmas.

As my colleague Mary Grover has observed, ‘nostalgia for a pre-industrial world was central to the Club’s original identity’.[i] Perhaps it was even nostalgia for a world which never existed. The 1923 prospectus promised a Christmas supper ‘at which all the beautiful English customs will be revived’ and Club papers show that there was an Old Customs committee. It was ‘Merrie England’ with a vengeance, reminiscent of the ideas beloved of Professor Welch and mocked by his subordinate Jim Dixon in Kingsley Amis’ novel Lucky Jim (1954):

‘The point about Merrie England is that it was about the most un-Merrie period in our history. It’s only the home-made pottery crowd, the organic husbandry crowd, the recorder-playing crowd, the Esperanto…’ He paused and swayed …His head seemed to be swelling and growing lighter …
Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim (1954), Kindle edition, loc 4151.

The first Christmas supper in 1923 seems to have been modest enough but through the 1920s and 1930s the celebrations got more and more elaborate. The event was usually described as ‘ye soper æt Cristenmæsse of ye witenayemot and clubbe of lettres’ [the Christmas dinner of the literary club and its committee], and there were toasts, mummers, a gesteur, the Mayster of Ye Feste, Fader Cristenmæsse and more.

Here is the menu, with appropriate Shakespearean quotations, from around 1935:

Hu Thei Don in Cutlerstoune [Sheffield] Whan thǣt hit bee Yeol
Fare
(‘Dost thou understand thus much English?’)
Fortune speed us! Thus set we on.
Sewe [Soup]
‘He is pure air and fire.’
‘He’s of the colour of the nutmeg.’ And of the heat of ginger.’
‘Good sooth, she is the queen of curds and cream.’
Fisch [fish]
‘Must I bite?’ ‘Yes, certainly.’
Turkey
’Tis no matter for his swellings nor his turkey-cocks, God pless you, Aunchient Pistol! You scurvy, lousy knave, God pless you!’
Ye Heved of Ye Boore [The Boar’s Head]
‘Whose tushes never sheathed, he whetteth still.’
‘Why, I pray you, is not pig great? The pig or the great, or the mighty, or the huge, or the magnanimous, are all one reckonings, save the phrase is a little variations.’
Plume-poding [plum pudding]
‘Why then comes in the sweet o’ the year.’
‘I cannot do’t without counters. Let me see: Three pound of sugar; five pound of currants; rice – what will this sister of mine do with rice? But my father hath made her mistress of the feast, and she lays it on. I must have saffron to colour the warden pies; mace; dates; none, that’s out of my notes; nutmegs, seven; a race or two of ginger, but that I may beg; four pound of prunes, and as many raisins o’ the sun.’
‘O that ever I was born!’
Sherries – Sack Ale – posset
‘Shall I have some water? Come Kate and wash!’
‘Desist, and drink.’
‘I could not find him at the Elephant,
Yet there he was!’

‘Ye Heved of Ye Boore’, ‘plume-poding’ and the rest were all part of a performance in which the members played a part. At the start,

Ye gests and clubbefelawen schal standen, eche behindan hys siege, and ye Mayster of ye Feste schal pronownce ye Bletsung … And all ye companinie schal seyen ‘AMEN, AMEN, and AMEN! … [The guests and club members will stand behind their chairs, and the Master of the Feast will give the blessing … and the company will say ‘Amen, Amen and Amen!’]

In time Fader Cristenmæsse arrives. The Uschere sing:

A jolly wassail Bowl,
A wassail of good ale
Well fare the butler’s soul
That setteth this for sale!
Our jolly wassail! Our jolly wassail!’

‘I have many towns and countries to visit and must start with Cutlerstoune,’ says Cristenmæsse, and goes on, no doubt to popular acclaim in Yorkshire:

Nay, but to cry truce with jesting, I do love the North
Hath not our greatest trouvère,
Your own poet of Somersby [Tennyson], written
‘That bright and fierce and fickle is the South
And dark and true and tender is the North.
Say to her I do but wanton in the South
But in the North long since my nest is made.’
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Princess: O Swallow.

The Feste finally ends after a short break ‘for a man somewhæt to strechen his shanken’ [for everyone to stretch their legs] and a Toast to ‘Absent Friends’.

Presumably it was the Old Customs committee that lovingly and happily researched, composed and argued over this. There is ritual, bell-ringing, singing, quotations from Shakespeare and other Greats, Latin tags and Elizabethan, Middle and Old and – surely! – cod English. ‘Clubbefelawen’? ‘Erthenobbes?’ [Club members and potatoes to you.]

As might be expected, World War II put a stop to all this, and the custom was never revived in post-war austerity. By then the general sentiment was for making the new world, rather than re-making the old. What did the Club members feel about the Festes? I like to think that some enjoyed the playacting, while others took the evening desperately seriously and still others groaned at the thought of it.