As part of the sale, we had to clean out the attic of the farm house. There were several totes, containing possessions from Andrew, Julia and Julia’s Dad. They proved to be a literary treasure chest.
They included three books by Roald Dahl : Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life; Boy: Tales of Childhood; and, George’s Marvelous Medicine.
From Farley Mowat, High Latitudes: an Arctic journey (with a foreword by Margaret Atwood); and Colin Fletcher, The Man Who Walked Through Time.
A separate box contained thirty volumes of Granta, a quarterly paperback magazine of new writing, published by Penguin, from #21 to #69. For example, #21 The Story-Teller includes contributions from Bruce Chatwin, Oliver Sacks and Primo Levi (1987).
The icing on the cake was the Signet classic, George Orwell, Animal Farm with a new Preface by Russell Baker(1996).
Thank you, to Brent Hall, who responded to the link on Lonnie Donegan and skiffle (see blog post HERE), with two additional links showing the trajectory from Donegan via James Page to Led Zeppelin.
Via Brent Hall, check out Lonnie Donegan’s “Rock Island Line“, “Mama Don’t Want to Skiffle Anymore” and “Led Zeppelin“.
Wonderful entertainment !
Postscript
We rescued the Hunter chest from the wood shed and returned it to the rightful owners, the Hunter family.
Acknowledgements.
Through gifting links, we find a sense of community. The above books represent only a subset from the ‘treasure chest’. En route, I appreciated the feedback from Jane, Peter, Andrew Ronay and others overseas. Heather and Edward enjoyed the results with me.
References
Roald Dahl, 1990, Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life, Penguin.
Roald Dahl, 1986, Boy: Tales of Childhood, Puffin.
Roald Dahl, 1983, George’s Marvellous Medicine, Bantam.
Farley Mowat, 2002, High Latitudes. An Arctic Journey, Steerforth Press.
Colin Fletcher, 1989, The Man who walked through time., Vintage Books.
George Orwell, 1956, Animal Farm, Signet Classic.
Granta 21 The Story-Teller. Spring 1987.
’The Story-Teller. What does it suggest? Folk-tales, myths, sea voyages, a cartoon campfire. In short, a way of writing that is distinctly “unmodern”.
Ernest Blair Experiment 