A visit to the Cathedral Church of St Michael in Coventry.... by Adèle Geras

Back in early April,  Celia Rees, of this parish, Linda Newbery and I met in Coventry with the express purpose of visiting the Cathedral of St Michael.  We felt  quite triumphant when we got together because we'd been trying to arrange this outing since before the Pandemic.  Something always came up....and we felt at times as though we'd never make it, but at last we succeeded. 

 

I took the photograph below at a station, as I was on my way. I'm afraid I can no longer remember whether it's Nuneaton Station or Coventry and Google won't help me. Whatever....it was on the way to meet Linda and Celia that I saw it and it lifted my spirits in  a way that I felt boded well for the whole day. 

 After meeting up and a bit of mild rejoicing that here we were at last,  we walked along to the Cathedral. Celia, who knows Coventry well and has visited often, led the way and I was delighted to see the sky with its dramatic clouds, reflected on a the walls of a rather impressive modern building.

And of course, Coventry wouldn't be Coventry  without Lady Godiva.

But we were here to visit the Cathedral. I've known about it since childhood and can't understand why it's taken me 60 years to get to see it. I can remember when it was consecrated in 1962. I was still at Roedean School, and we knew all about it. Our Art teachers had kept us up to date as it was being constructed. Its progress mirrored my school life and there were frequent photographs in the press between 1956 and 1962. I was at school from 1955-1962.

The photograph above and the next three photographs that follow  show the ruins of what was left of the Cathedral after it was bombed in November, 1940.  The decision taken to leave the ruins as they were and raise a new Cathedral alongside them was an inspired one. What it means is: anyone who approaches the present day Cathedral, designed by Sir Basil Spence, has to walk through the past....it's a sobering experience and one that ensures that the events of 1940 can never be forgotten. 

But the emphasis everywhere here is on Forgiveness. There are many, many references to it  all over the Cathedral.  All the art is uplifting. Nothing is grim, nothing is forbidding.  Anyone who has visited this place will notice that I didn't photograph the Graham Sutherland tapestry and there's a reason for that. Ever since I first saw a reproduction of it as a schoolchild, I'm afraid I have not liked it at all. I apologise for this....I had hoped that when I saw it in real life, I might change my mind, but alas, I didn't. Readers who would like to see it can find it on Google easily. 

What I loved best in the Cathedral was the West Screen: a wall of glass etched with flying angels. It's known as the Screen of Saints and Angels. This is the work of John Hutton and it's completely beautiful. It truly does give the impression that angels are trapped in the glass. The three photos below give some impression but  you have to see the real thing to get the full effect.

The other highlight of the visit for me was seeing the  Baptistry Window. This photo doesn't do it justice. You need the light. Even postcards of the Window can't convey how beautiful it is. It was designed by John Piper and made by Patrick Reyntiens and there are 195 panes of glass in colours ranging from white to the deepest possible reds and blues. 

But the message of the Cathedral  is reconciliation. Below is the Charred Cross. It's made from two of the medieval roof beams, found in the rubble of the Cathedral when it was bombed.  A Cathedral groundsman called Jock Forbes set up this sign of Christ's suffering instinctively. The beams were bound together and placed first in the Sanctuary of the Ruins. In 1978, it was brought to its present site, inside the Cathedral. The beams were first held in place with medieval roof nails. The original Cross of Nails has become a symbol for peace and reconciliation, recognised all over the world. 

While we were having lunch, we realised that we hadn't been to see the statue of St Michael's victory over the Devil, by Jacob Epstein. This has become the best - known artwork associated with the Cathedral. To me, it says: even with forgiveness, and even with reconciliation, we must also acknowledge the work of the Devil and strive to overcome it. We didn't have the energy to go back so we will  have to visit again. I'm very happy to start planning a second trip.  And I was pleased that I'd found  a St Michael fridge magnet in the gift shop. 

LUCY BOSTON: An artist in everything she did. Edited by Victor Watson. By Adèle Geras

Victor Watson (see photo at the end of this piece)  was for many years  an academic at Homerton College, Cambridge and an expert on children's books. He edited The Cambridge Guide to Children's Books in English (CUP 2001). He was Chairman of Seven Stories during its development and eventual opening in 2005 as the National Centre for Children's Books. He has written novels for children and a novel for adults called Time After Time. I ought to say that he and his wife Judy are friends of mine and  I have visited their house  and admired their beautiful garden. I only mention this because Lucy Boston, the subject of the book I'm writing about here, was also a passionate gardener  and many visitors to the  Manor House in Hemingford Grey go precisely to see the beautiful garden Lucy Boston created. I have written about it on this blog. http://the-history-girls.blogspot.com/2012/06/manor-hemingford-grey-by-adele-geras.html

   

    

This collection of essays has many Japanese contributors because Japanese academics had put together a book of essays about Boston and many of their pieces are translated here.  In  Japan, Lucy Boston is a much -loved and much- studied writer. Many Japanese visitors come to England and visit the Manor, paying tribute to her not only as a writer but also as a patchworker, a poet, an artist, and a gardener.  The book is very well-titled. Victor himself has written an essay on her Green Knowe books and another on her other fiction, as well as an introduction.

    

Diana Boston, Lucy's daughter in law and the devoted chatelaine of the Manor,  has written about the patchworks, Lucy's garden and about Lucy as an artist. When you visit Hemingford Grey, Diana is the one who shows you the patchworks which lie spread out on a bed and can be seen one by one. Last time I visited, Diana asked me to put on the white gloves (to protect the fabric) and help her fold back each quilt so that other visitors could see their full beauty. I"ve never forgotten that day. 

Hemingford Grey  is perhaps the oldest inhabited house in England.  If you visit as a reader of the Green Knowe books, you will find many objects and places you will recognise from the novels. Victor's work in bringing us these essays is cause for rejoicing.  It will help enormously in encouraging new readers, new fans to Boston's works, and hopefully enthuse a whole new generation of fans. 

There's a piece by Jill Paton Walsh at the end of this book which is very moving and personal. She was a good friend of Lucy Boston's and she wonders whether the novels will be enjoyed at a time which is on the surface so very different from the days when the Green Knowe books  first appeared.  Tik Tok, the metaverse, AI bots and the like are the prevailing background to reading today, but I am quite sure there must be those people still who would greatly appreciate the haunting prose and wonderful narratives of these novels. They were only published as children's books because their author insisted on her son's beautiful illustrations being part of the whole. The Japanese, of course, are quite relaxed about adults reading illustrated stories and they are also perfectly accustomed to ghosts....it's no wonder that Lucy Boston is still being studied there. I hope very much that this lovely volume brings new readers to the work and new visitors to Hemingford Grey. Victor Watson has put together a collection that's both enjoyable to read and beautiful to look at. Lucy Boston would definitely have approved. 

The Young Pretender by Michael Arditti Reviewed by Adèle Geras

(Before I begin , I'd like to thank Michael Arditti for sharing these pictures with me. I'm afraid that, probably owing to my own technological incompetence, I was unable to upload all of them straight to this blog, so I photographed some  of Michael's images with my phone and what you are seeing is a photo of a photo. Apologies for this....to readers and to Michael, who was very helpful. The cartoon reproduced below is one of many contemporary cartoons, but Michael owns a copy of the one shown here. I hope that the layers of unreality might add to the theatrical tone of this piece. )

I am posting this some time before the publication by Arcadia Books of The Young Pretender: the  dramatic return of Master Betty  at the end of April 2022, in order to permit anyone reading this post to put in a preorder. Preorders help writers enormously because the more of them there are, the more noticed this will be by the purveyor of books whose name some people don't like to mention but which looms very large in writers' affairs. The vaguely Georgian note  is catching....purveyor, indeed...but it's easy to fall into after you've read this short and fascinating novel. 

Michael Arditti has an interesting and varied backlist. I've reviewed another of his books on the  Writers Review  blog. It's called Widows and Orphans and it's wonderful. It is also as different from The Young Pretender as you can imagine. It's the story of a man trying to rescue his local paper from being taken over and is also a novel about domestic dilemmas and personal lives. Arditti has also written two Biblical epics (Of Men and Angels and The Anointed) and I have read both. They're enormously erudite and very long so I recommend reading them on a Kindle, but I do recommend them. Michael Arditti is a wonderful writer. He is also a critic and is clearly enthralled by both the reality and the illusion of the theatre. 

In the Acknowledgements, Arditti says: 'In writing The Young Pretender I have adhered to what is known of Betty's life, while freely filling in the extensive gaps.'

The method he's adopted to write about Master Betty is to adopt his voice. Indeed, he may be said to have become Betty, because every word seems so genuine, so heartfelt and so accurate that it's easy to imagine that this is a memoir by the actor. As a child star   he was also known  as The Young Roscius.  He played Hamlet  (and many other rôles) at a very young age and then fell out of favour.  In 1806, Master Betty (now to be called Mister Betty, as he has to tell everyone he meets) returns to Bath, six years after his last starry appearance.  "I am six years older now, ten inches taller.....Should my name spark a recollection,; my figure swiftly dispels it..."

 

We learn along the way about Betty's family, and his rise to fame. We see details of the huge acclaim that greeted his every appearance. William Pitt, the Prime Minister, came to see him perform and Betty was the toast of the town in every way. I make a point of providing no spoilers so I won't say  more about the plot, but there is one, even in a book as short as this and which is so carefully based on the historical record. 

Arditti's huge achievement is tuning in to the authentic voice of his protagonist, narrator and star. I am completely convinced  that this is exactly how Betty spoke and how he would write. In the days when I used to visit schools, I sometimes told the children that writing novels was like having a huge dressing-up box at my disposal and that I was allowed to put on the costumes and pretend to be whatever I felt like being:  a fat black cat or a retired ballerina or....anyone at all. Arditti has clearly enjoyed inhabiting the 18th century and he is fluent in its language and preoccupations.

It's also instructive to read about how our forefathers dealt with the matter of celebrity in the days long before Twitter and the rest of the social media we have to grapple with. Trolling, and cancelling and gaslighting etc have been part of our lives for a long time.  Britney Spears would recognise much that befalls Betty and the way that audiences can consume their idols happens today as it did then. The young are vulnerable. Control is always there: eat this, don't eat that, see this person, don't see that person....some of the ways in which Betty was treated recall what we know of the childhood of  Frances Gumm, who became Judy Garland. If you're a vessel for the dreams of many people, it's hard to be yourself. 

Another thing I found interesting was the level of detail about the actual running of the theatres in the Georgian period. Actors had 'circuits'. Actor managers were the ones who arranged tours. Rehearsals were often negotiable. You met the other actors at the first rehearsal. Stage business was fixed on before you began: where you'd stand and how you'd move once on the stage and so forth. Then the words came in later. I  learned, for example that at this time, what I used to call  'flats' when I was on the stage were called 'flat -scenes': literally flat pieces of wood and canvas which were pushed into place to depict the background.  I enjoyed seeing what hasn't changed since those days as  well as what has. 

After this book appears in April, I will repost an updated version on the Writers Review blog. But History Girls and their readers can get in early and preorder. It's a delightful thing to do. You order the book, spend the money and then forget you've spent it. And  then one day a book magically appears in the post, or on your Kindle. It's always a wonderful surprise when that happens and will be in the case of this delightful novel in particular.  

EVENTS, DEAR BOY, EVENTS..... by Adèle Geras

 There really is no excuse, so I am going to come clean.  It's been so long since I posted on this blog that I had forgotten completely that it was my turn to write a piece for yesterday and I am grateful to the eagle-eyed Sue Purkiss for reminding me ....I have dropped everything and run to my laptop, desperately trying to think of something interesting to put into this intimidating expanse of white. I apologise for this lapse. Lord knows, there's been enough going on in the world over the last few weeks to make everyone forget most things, but I am not going to write about Current Events. 

Rather, I'm going to put up a few photos of what I've been doing over the last six months: the time that's elapsed since my last post. 

Apart from Covid news, which everyone knows and which I'm also not going to write about, this last six months has been concerned with launching a book in the middle of a pandemic, and trying hard to get back to work again on the novel that comes next. 

So on March 4th, 2021 Dangerous Women, by Hope Adams (my pseudonym) was published. 

I had a wonderful bouquet of flowers from my publishers, Michael Joseph, and a very lovely Zoom Launch, complete with  tins of cocktails sent in advance. I had signed lots of tip -in sheets and stickers to go in the fronts of books, but when the shops opened on April 12th, no copies of  Dangerous Women were visible in Cambridge. Since then, I've seen one copy in Heffer's, (who had stocked five copies) but that's the only one I've seen in the wild. It's true that I haven't been around much visiting other shops but I hear it's  selling reasonably well, so I'm hoping that someone somewhere has seen it. All the reviews I know of seem to have liked it so I'm happy. And the paperback is due early next year, I think, with a different striking cover. I adored the hardback cover, too but the paperback is lovely in its own way too!

My mind is now turning to my second novel as Hope Adams. It's based on the work of the Scottish artist, Phoebe Anna Traquair. 

At first, I thought I would have the artist herself as a character in my novel, much in the same way that I put the read Kezia Hayter and Captain Charles Ferguson into  Dangerous Women, but I soon realised that because of the demands of my plot,  I needed to create a fictional character based on the artist, while using her beautiful work for my purposes in as faithful a way as possible.  The book will be set in Edinburgh in 1899, so I hope will have elements of the Gothic about it. Here is one example of Traquair's work: 

This is the Mortuary Chapel in the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh. Children figure large in my novel....I think. I have yet to write a single word though I've been planning for a very long time.

For the rest, I've had a very pleasant summer. In the Cotswolds, in a Spa where my daughters took me for a weekend, (last year's Christmas present!) along with my granddaughter....that was  real treat. I've looked after my granddog for a week, and kept on walking and reading and watching far too much television.  I've been up to London to  see Leopoldstradt by Tom Stoppard and that was lovely: a real pleasure to be in a theatre again. 

I hope very much that the next time I write on this blog I'll have a more considered post to regale you with! I will put the date in giant letters on every calendar....

TOUR D'HORIZON by Adèle Geras

The phrase 'tour d'horizon' is one I heard on  the 4th February, when I was on my walk, listening to one of my favourite podcasts. It's called The Rest is History and every episode is a conversation between Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland, both of them wonderful talkers and excellent historians and writers of accessible and fascinating books.  For this episode, on China, they had Michael Wood as their guest and the hour -long discussion of China's history was described as only touching the surface....glancing across the whole horizon...of an enormous subject.

 

So I decided to call my post by the same name because that's what it is: a glance across the last six months of the Pandemic, which has changed our lives in all kinds of ways and done very strange things to the ordinary unrolling of each day. In many ways, I'm leading exactly the same life I always do: in my house, by myself, getting on with my stuff.  There was a time, as recently as September 16th, which is when the photograph above was taken, when it was possible for me to get on a bus and go and meet my friend Caroline Wilson in the garden of Emmanuel College. She showed me this magnificent tree, the oldest in Cambridge and we sat there on a bench in the sunshine having coffee from a flask and wondering what the autumn would bring. I'd just read a book by Richard Powers called  The Overstory and so trees were on my mind and this one  had a history of many hundreds of years. 

Trees again....all through this time, in hard lockdowns and easier times too,  I've been walking in my own neighbourhood. I always have an eye out for the trees and this shot taken in late October shows them at their best.  I do an hour a day and sometimes I go through a suburb which has grown up from scratch about five minutes from my front door. When we came to Cambridge in 2010, there was nothing but fields between our house and Addenbrooke's Hospital. Now there's a whole suburb there, called Great Kneighton, complete with school, Medical Centre, and lots of imaginatively designed (for the most part) houses and flats. There's Hobson's Park  in the middle  of Great Kneighton and that has a lovely bird reserve. You can look over the bird reserve and see the blue curve of Royal Papworth Hospital in the distance. You'll see a photograph of this towards the end of this post. One of the things I most admire about the design of Great Kneighton is the imaginative planting of many different varieties of trees and shrubs which is still going on. Only yesterday gardeners were busy putting in lots of saplings. 

One of the joys of being in Tier 2 in November was still being able to meet a friend in the park for a walk. Judith Lennox and I walked a lot on Jesus Green in Cambridge and ended our walk sitting outside at a pavement cafe back in the day when this was still allowed. The weather was cold but it was such an enjoyable thing to do. 

The date on the photo above is New Year's Eve. Helen Craig (of Angelina Ballerina fame) and I went walking in Great Shelford Recreation Ground. I went there once about nine years ago to watch my grandson playing football but here it had been raining.  There's a lot of Great Shelford history attached to Helen. Her daughter-in-law is the writer Sally Christie who still lives in the village.   Sally is the daughter of Philippa Pearce, who is arguably the most famous person to have lived here. Philippa's children's books,  especially Tom's Midnight Garden, are classics and several (like Minnow on the Say) are set along this stretch of river. There's now a memorial arch to Philippa a few yards away from the river, at the entrance to the children's playground. 

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On another walk, on January 6th, I came across the little star labelled HOPE. I regarded this as an omen for my new book, which is being published on March 4th under my pseudonym HOPE ADAMS. It's a novel called Dangerous Women, and my publishers, Michael Joseph in the UK and Berkley in the USA (where it came out ten days ago) have done wonders online to publicise it and ensure that the world  is aware of it. Still, it's odd  not being able to visit bookshops and I'm looking forward to the world of books returning to normal by the time the paperback appears.

What the little star did turn out to be an omen for was the Vaccine. I had my first jab at my local Medical Centre and was able to walk there and back. This lovely young woman was my vaccinator and the whole process took minutes. All most efficiently and kindly done and it's the vaccines which give me the expectation that one day this pandemic will end and we will be able to see everyone again, just as we did in those long ago days before Corona virus hit us. It goes without saying that I'm full of admiration and praise for everyone in the NHS who has worked hard to deal with everything that's been thrown at them. But I'm also grateful to shop workers, delivery drivers, bus drivers, teachers, home schoolers and everyone else who's worked their socks off to make things bearable. Most of all, though, I'd like to thank every scientist who's worked on ways of vaccinating us, finding drugs to  help us if we get sick and every single person who's had to deal with this strange situation in the best possible way. 

The blue building is Royal Papworth Hospital, part of the Cambridge University Hospitals, which with Addenbrooke's just behind it, employs thousands of people and contributes to the welfare of the area and the nation in so many ways.  I'm not about to write any fiction about the Pandemic, but it will be interesting to see the novels and dramas that emerge in future, reminding us of what went on, all over the world. This is a particular moment in history and I've had a ringside seat for it, in front of my television. We take television for granted but it's been a real life saver. I've also read reams and reams about the situation in newspapers and  I'm grateful to all journalists, film makers and broadcasters. They showed us the world and explained it at a very strange time.

Phoebe Anna Traquair by Adèle Geras

This is a self -portrait of the Scottish artist,  Phoebe Anna Traquair.  Until about eighteen years ago, I had never heard of her and when I mention her name, very few people in England know who she is. Although she was born in Dublin in 1852, she's associated with Scotland and in particular with Edinburgh where she lived with her husband, Ramsay Traquair, a professor of palaeontology  She is an artist of the most astonishing variety and as well as her murals, she illustrated books, designed jewellery and created the most beautiful embroideries. She died in 1936.

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Many years ago, I received a Christmas card, with a beautiful image of angels on it. I made a note of Traquair's name, and of the fact that the image was from the Song School of a Cathedral in Edinburgh. And I put it in the box where I keep all images I can't bear to throw away. Then, in 2009, I was a speaker at the Edinburgh Literary Festival.

 To cut a long story short, we found the Catholic Apostolic Church. It is now a wedding venue called the Mansfield Traquair Centre and I do urge anyone who can to make every effort to see it in real life. 

When we visited, the place was quite empty. Only the building itself was there to wonder at. The walls were covered with most beautiful murals, illustrating for the most part, the story of the Wise and Foolish Virgins. I fell in love with Traquair's images at that point and determined to find out what I could about the woman who painted them.

Flash forward many years. Much happened. We moved to Cambridge. My husband died. I decided to write a different sort of novel under a pseudonym: Hope Adams. My first novel under this name, Dangerous Women, comes out from Michael Joseph (and Berkeley in the USA)  in February next year, and that's about the Rajah Quilt. I have written about it on this blog.

What I do in the Hope Adams books is: I superimpose a fictional story, invented entirely by me, on to what's known about a real artist. In the case of Dangerous Women, it was Kezia Hayter, and when I began thinking about what I could do next, my thoughts immediately turned to  Phoebe Anna Traquair.

I bought a book by Elizabeth Cumming, called  Phoebe Anna Traquair, 1852-1936,  published by the National Galleries of Scotland and in 2019, I made a trip with Helen Craig to Edinburgh and met Elizabeth, who showed us round the Mansfield Traquair Centre and told us  much both about the artist and the way she went about the work. She has been enormously helpful to me throughout the process so far and I'm very grateful to her.  Traquair was a small woman and used a scaffold to reach the enormously high spaces.  The thought of her, in her overall, and with her red hair bound up in a cap, covering that vast space with beautiful images was fascinating and moving. 

In the 1880s and 1890s, mural decoration was an art form much admired by the Art and Crafts movement. Traquair was part of a thriving artistic community in Edinburgh and beyond. 

Between 1885 and 1901  she worked on the decoration of three Edinburgh Buildings: the Mortuary Chapel of the Royal Hospital for Sick Children, (later moved to a new hospital and repainted), the Song School at St Mary's Cathedral and lastly, the Catholic Apostolic Church in Mansfield Place.


This is an image from the Song School and when I saw it,  I recognised the scarlet-winged angels from that long ago Christmas card. 

I am now in the process of  working out my fictional story with which the work and life of this marvellous, under- recognised artist will be entwined. The title is there already, I think, though nothing is ever fixed till it's fixed. Her Scarlet Wings is what the book is called at this stage....I'm looking forward to spending the next few months with these images in front of my eyes. 

The Rajah Quilt and I....by Adèle Geras

There will be very little by way of illustration in this post. I am unsure of what's in copyright and what's not, so unless I'm quite certain of  not contravening any laws, I'm going to leave this piece with no pictures of the very thing I'm writing about: The Rajah Quilt.  Below is a photograph of the cover of a  book I have, published by National Gallery of Australia and given to me by Carolyn Ferguson, of whom more later.... 

In 2009, I visited an exhibition called QUILTS at the V&A in London. Among the many astonishing and beautiful pieces of patchwork, there was one that particularly caught my attention. This was a coverlet made by some of the transported female convicts on the ship Rajah, which set off from London in April, 1841 bound for van Diemen's Land (modern Tasmania).  I stood in front of it for a long time, amazed at its beauty and struck by its interesting  history.

On this voyage, the convicts were accompanied by Kezia Hayter, a young woman of 23, who was a relative of George Hayter, one of Queen Victoria's court painters. She had been helping the Ladies of the Prison Committee to make life for women prisoners in London's gaols more bearable and she was appointed as a Matron to accompany the women on the Rajah and help them acquire  needleworking skills which would come in  useful in their new lives on the other side of the world. 

I realised, as soon as I left the V&A, that one day I would write about this story: the voyage and the making of the patchwork.  

More than a decade later, in early 2021, a novel by me, called DANGEROUS WOMEN, will be published simultaneously by Michael Joseph in UK and Berkley in the USA. It will, however, not appear under my name but under my pseudonym: Hope Adams.

I have three reasons for adopting a pseudonym for this book. The first is: it's not the sort of book I have ever written before (a historical novel for adults, inspired by a real event) Secondly, Hope Adams is the name I used to submit the book to publishers. I didn't want anyone who read it at that stage to be influenced one way or another by knowing about my other books.  And thirdly, it feels right to have a new name for what has been a kind of reinvention of the sort of book I write. I chose Hope because I was living in hope all the time I was writing the book over the last few years, and Adams because it's at the beginning of the alphabet and because, unlike Geras, you don't  have to tell people how to pronounce it. The pseudonym is not a secret. I've already done events under that name, and I will be putting up tweets from and about Hope Adams' progress and the publication of the novel on Twitter. 

Between 2009 and 2017, I thought about the book and picked it up and put it down from time to time. In 2010 we moved from Manchester to Cambridge. I wrote two novels Cover Your Eyes and Love or Nearest Offer (pub Quercus pbk) which could be described as 'women's fiction.'

In 2018, I wrote the first 20,000 words or so of what became Conviction. I submitted it to an agent (Nelle Andrew) under my pseudonym and felt very lucky that she offered to represent me. 

A lot of hard rewriting then followed and in early 2019, the novel was bought in a two- book deal. This is a link to the  piece about it in the Bookseller: 

https://www.thebookseller.com/news/michael-joseph-snaps-devastating-debut-inspired-convict-ship-1175156?utm_source=Adestra&utm_medium=email&utm_term=&utm_content=&utm_campaign=Morning%20Briefing%20-%20280120

I was much relieved to see this appear, because almost from my first sight of the Rajah Quilt, I've been worried that someone might beat me to it, and write a novel about this historical event before my own book appeared.  My next novel, which I hope to be writing this year, is inspired by the  work of the  Scottish artist, Phoebe Anna Traquair.

I said I would mention Carolyn Ferguson again. When we moved to Cambridge, I met her again after not seeing her for several decades. We were at school together but had lost touch entirely. Then she emailed me and it was a happy coincidence that we'd both ended up in Cambridge. But even better....and ever so slightly spookier...Carolyn is not only a gifted quilter herself but also an expert on 19th century textiles who has written quite extensively about ... the Rajah Quilt. I felt as though I'd been gifted a cross between a wonderful resource and a special guiding light for the novel: someone who was as struck with Kezia Hayter's achievements as I was. I cannot overstate what a  great help to me she's been. If the book has any historical authenticity, it's thanks to Carolyn.

I've not said much about what happens in the story, apart from the one fact we know: that the patchwork coverlet was made. I've  is constructed a fictional narrative around what is known about this very well-documented voyage. I hope that readers will enjoy the book and give Hope Adams  a welcome when she appears in the shops next year. 

SLATE by Adèle Geras

This beautiful paperweight was a present to me from Linda Newbery on my 70th birthday, five years ago. It's always on my desk and is one of my Top Treasures. 

It was made by a master craftsman called Bernard Johnson out of slate.  I've always been very fond of this material. We take it for granted most of the time. Many people use slate chips in their gardens, and I bought a set of slate coasters from a gallery shop in a museum that I can no longer locate in my memory. It's beautiful stuff and the best slate in the world comes from Wales. 

Last month, I wrote about the copper of Parys Mountain on Anglesey. And on the same visit, to my friends Bob Borsley and Ewa Jaworska, they took me also to Snowdonia. We went to visit the National Slate Museum at Llanberis which was just up the road from this idyllic scene.

The museum is located in the now disused workshops of the Dinorwic Slate Quarry and it's beautifully organised and laid out. We started out by looking a very informative video, which explained how four slate workers' cottages had been moved lock, stock and barrel to this site, and set up to show how the men who worked in the quarry lived at different historical periods. We were also told that nowadays, no slate is quarried here because China produces it much more cheaply.  

We then went into a large, pleasant space, where a delightfully chatty man was about to demonstrate the art of cutting slate. He had an enormous rectangle resting against one knee and with a thin chisel he chipped away at it, knocking it gently all the way round and after a few knocks, a layer of the whole thing seemed almost to fall of the bigger block as single sheet, which looked impossibly thin. Below is a photo of the various sizes of the slate and I took this photo because I loved the names given to the different proportions: Princesses (24" by 14") Duchesses (24" by 12") Countesses (20" x 12") Wide Ladies (16" by 12") Broad Ladies (16" by 10") Narrow Ladies (16" by 8")

Below is a photo taken in one of the cottages. This is the parlour and the only downstairs room apart from the tiny kitchen on the ground floor. It dates from the beginning of the 20th century. There's one cottage that is from 1969 and in that one we saw a bath and an inside toilet  and I recognised many of the fixtures and fittings from the days of my youth.

After visiting the Slate Museum, we went to the Llechwedd Slate Caverns, near Blaenau Ffestiniog.  You can do all kinds of things there, like zip across disused workings on a wire. Which was clearly not the kind of thing I was up for! But we did go on the Explorer Tour, which involved strapping yourself into a Army truck and driving to the highest point of the old workings. And  then down again. Malcolm was our intrepid driver. At one point, we had to reverse down a slope with a dizzying gradient and I just shut my eyes. There were other times on the drive when I decided I didn't want to look but mostly, it was amazing and very exciting.  The photos below show what the terrain looked like...

...and also what used to be there before work stopped in the quarry. 

After I got home, I started not taking my slate for granted. I looked more carefully at my garden slate chips. I admired anew the coasters I use every day and thanked Linda and took my hat off to Bernard Johnson all over again. And the very next day, in the Times, I saw the photo below. It shows the roof of the Serpentine Gallery in London, made from slate by artist Junya Ishigami. What cam I say? Slate rocks!

A LOVESOME THING.......by Adèle Geras

Part One

The other day, I visited the Cambridge University Botanic Garden with two old friends from my schooldays. Since coming to live in Cambridge in 2010, I've visited often but not often enough. Every time I go there, I promise myself to be there for longer. To look more carefully at all that's growing there; to examine the marvellous specimens in the glasshouses.  But the truth of the matter is, I generally go there for  lunch or tea with friends, and we end up strolling through the wonderful forty acre site. Situated right in the middle of Cambridge and very close to the station and to many bus routes, it's a real oasis. You go in and immediately you are in a sort of paradise, an enclosed space which takes you into a landscape of trees and water and grass and, according to the time of year, different flowers and shrubs. 

The photographs here are my own. I could have taken hundreds more. The Botanic Garden was founded in 1826 by John  Henslow, who was Charles Darwin's mentor and teacher. It's now part of the University and there are many scientists involved in all kind of fascinating experiments in plant science and related fields. It's very user friendly, especially since the café opened a few years back. The food is excellent and it was the first place I noticed which provided a bookshelf full of picture books for its youngest customers. You can sit outside under umbrellas and be surrounded, in the case of  my last visit, by beds of beautiful irises.

  

For someone who loves gardens so much, I have a very lazy relationship with them. I'm happy to walk in them, write about them, photograph them, discuss them, enjoy them in every way. The one thing I'm not prepared to do is work in a garden. I do not like gardening, but I like the results of gardening. My own garden is much better now than it was nine years ago when I moved into my house, and that's not thanks to me but to the local firm which has been looking after it, Atlas Gardens. I'm very grateful to them.

Part Two.

 I visited the RHS Chelsea Flower show with Linda Newbery (a very good hands-on gardener who knows everything about plants of every kind) and Celia Rees, whose garden I haven't seen but who also strikes me as very knowledgeable. I've never been before and by the end of the day I'd walked over 8 kilometres: something I've never done before. It was a day so full of sensations and sights that I'm going to struggle to describe it here. Maybe many of you have visited and know all I'm going to say, but for those who haven't, here are my impressions.

A bit of history first. I had no idea that the RHS was founded by John Wedgwood, son of Josiah Wedgwood in 1804 and that the inaugural meeting of the seven men who were the first members of the new Society took place at Hatchard's bookshop in Piccadilly. The Wedgwood Garden was most beautiful, and had a pavilion next to it full of equally lovely china and delicious-looking teas, like Strawberry and Cucumber.

I was delighted to see that there was a real emphasis throughout on Education. The RHS are very good at spreading the word, through their gardens, the number of shows all over the country that they put on and the way they encourage everyone to live in a greener, more sustainable fashion.

We didn't get to see the D-Day 75 Garden close up. All the tickets for the day we were there had been sold. But its presence at Chelsea is an education in itself. The Chelsea Pensioners paraded while we were there, and there were thousands who saw them and talked about them with their friends and the history passes on...

Below is one of my favourites: an African garden that emphasised the importance of educating girls. The motto Education Changes Everything chalked up on the blackboard is a good one and one that applies everywhere in the world.

The Welcome to Yorkshire Garden won the People's Choice prize and I voted for it. What struck me about Chelsea (and I had to keep asking Linda about it!) was the fact that every one of these small gardens had been created from absolute scratch and that in a matter of weeks an empty wasteland is transformed every year into a gathering of most beautifully-designed gardens. This one had lock gates and water and a cottage and you could have sworn it had been there for hundred of years.

The Japanese garden was my absolute favourite, I think, but I wouldn't have the courage to shower in that building on the left! You can't see it from the photo but it is a shower room...maybe the glass becomes opaque in some magical way when you turn on the taps.

Thematically, wildness was the thing. All the gardens were unkempt and I was delighted to see this and feel much less guilty about my lawn now. I was particularly impressed with this flight of very unkempt steps.

Here is the notice that greets you at the entrance to the Artisan Gardens. It's made of strands of wool and is full of beautiful colours. 

Here are some foxgloves, for no better reason than that they're beautiful. And the bees were having a wonderful time crawling into them.

The Main Pavilion was astonishing. A huge area in the marquee filled with every kind of flower and plant and lots of wonderful vegetables too, some of which seemed surreal in their cleanness and hugeness, like illustrations from a children's book. 

There were notices all over the show and this was my favourite and I am putting it here because I love the way it's expressed. That last line has the force of poetry. Also, it's true.