Last Year's Travels: Stockholm

Our first trip last year was to Sweden for a couple of days in Stockholm. This time it was just myself and M - our youngest stayed home with her sisters in charge. It was January. It was cold! Anyone with any sense was indoors ...

... or not! Even in January the main streets of the old town, Gamla Stan were busy 

I hadn't realised that Stockholm is built on a series of islands, so travelling anywhere meant crossing bridges.

It was the sort of weather where doing things that involved being indoors were most appealing. We visited the royal palace where we watched the changing of the guard before scuttling back into the warm.

An unexpected discovery was the Museum of Medieval Stockholm. A plan to build an underground car park for the Swedish parliament building had been abandoned when an archaeological dig discovered part of the medieval city wall and various other medieval sites. The car park site was instead used for a museum incorporating the archaeological finds and various full scale reconstructions.

On our second day we took a ferry to Djurgarden in search of more (indoor! warm!) museums.

In a complete change from the previous day we went for a bit of pop culture at the ABBA museum. We grew up during the ABBA years and M once saw them perform live, so we could hardly miss this one. 

For me the highlight of our trip was the Vasa museum. The Vasa warship sank in Stockholm on its maiden voyage in 1628 and was salvaged virtually intact in the early 1960s. It is now beautifully displayed in a purpose built museum. The photographs below don't do it justice - I couldn't find an angle that gives a true impression of its size.

Part of the carved stern of the Vasa ...

January may be a cold time to visit, but Stockholm does winter well. We didn't skate, but it was fun to watch. 

  

There were even some Christmassy reindeer brightening up the cold evening.

One small cautionary tale ... We knew that alcoholic drinks would be expensive in Sweden, so were surprised to find brandy on a restaurant menu at a very reasonable price. I wasn't tempted but M was, to two glasses. It was only when the bill arrived that we realised that the brandy was priced per 10ml, not by the glass. Oops!

100 Books for 2018: 11 to 15

Book 11 - Conundrum (Jan Morris) [Audio]
I first encountered Jan Morris when I was looking for a book about Trieste (there aren't many in English!). I loved her book as well as the city, and became intrigued by her own story as it was made casually clear in the book that when she first discovered Trieste it was as a young soldier named James.  The young James Morris was a choirboy at Christchurch Cathedral in Oxford. He joined the Army just after the Second World War and served in the Middle East in an intelligence role. After leaving the Army he became a journalist and was foreign correspondent for a series of major newspapers, including several years based in Egypt. He was part of Sir Edmund Hillary's Everest expedition and was the journalist who broke the news to the world that Everest had been conquered (in code, to maintain the scoop). He became a prolific travel writer, with books including classics about Oxford, Venice and New York. He married the love of his life and had five children, then in his forties he underwent sex change surgery. Forced by the law to divorce his beloved Elizabeth, they lived separately for a while, but continued to function as a family. When same-sex marriage was legalised in the UK they remarried, and are still together in their nineties. Conundrum is Jan's account of her experience of her gender (the conviction that she should be a girl came to her at the age of four, while sitting under her mother's piano stool), and her experiences before and after undergoing her physical change of sex. It was written in the 1970s, at a time when even the word  transgender was largely unknown. The story of one of the more extraordinary aspects of an extraordinary life, written by a master of her craft.
**** 4 stars

Book 12 - A Book of Silence (Sara Maitland)
Divorced and with her children grown up, author Sara Maitland found herself increasingly drawn to a life of silence, spending time in remote places with either no or minimal contact with other people. An "Anglo-Catholic socialist feminist" who converted to Roman Catholicism, this book explores her attempts to understand the meaning and spirituality of silence, and to work out the place of silence in her own life. Beautifully and thoughtfully written.
**** 4 stars

Book 13 - The Merchant's Tale (Ann Swinfen)
The fourth in Ann Swinfen's series set in 14th century Oxford. Like the first three, an enjoyable and easy read.
**** 4 stars

Book 14 - Terms and Conditions: Life in Girls' Boarding Schools 1939-1979 (Ysenda Maxtone Graham)
I was intrigued by this one as I was a boarding school girl myself in the late 60s and 70s. The book is based on interviews with former boarding school girls rather than any detailed research. Boarding schools and their pupils both varied widely, and the experience as a whole tended to depend on whether there was a good match between the individual and the school. Given the casual way in which some parents chose a school this could be very much a matter of luck! No startling insights, but quite readable.
*** 3 stars

Book 15 - The Secret Life of Bletchley Park (Sinclair McKay) [Audio]
We live very close to Bletchley Park, the centre of British code-breaking in the Second World War. The achievements at Bletchley are now thought to have contributed significantly to shortening the war. I have read quite a few books about the Park and its personnel, which included Alan Turing.  Listening to the audio version I had a feeling I had read this book a few years ago, but I can't remember for sure. Whatever, it is a good introduction to the story of Bletchley Park.
**** 4 stars

It's a Small World

Or, at least, a small continent. From our part of the UK it is incredibly easy to hop over to mainland Europe. The main budget airlines fly out of two London airports, one of which is under 30 minutes from us, and the other 75 minutes if there is no traffic. Over the past three years we have taken advantage of discounted flights to as much of Europe as we can manage. Last year we went on short breaks to Stockholm, Disneyland Paris, Normandy (by car and ferry), Gdansk, and Genoa. We also took a longer summer trip by rail across central Europe, visiting Switzerland, Austria and the Czech Republic. Smallest daughter also went on a school trip to Lille (France). This year we have already been to Disneyland Paris again, and have trips lined up to Rome, Genoa again and Greece.

This sounds incredibly decadent, but most of our flights have worked out at less than £50 return, and sometimes much less. Our middle daughter is spending the year studying at the University of Genoa in Italy, and she has truly mastered the art of the cheap flight - the lowest fare she has managed so far has been £4.25 to return to Italy after Christmas! She gets the benefit of a student discount and flying to a small and less popular airport, but this still boggles my mind - it costs as much for a two station, ten mile hop on the train. Popping home for the weekend is as easy as it was from her UK university. And when she is there she gets the view in the photo below from her apartment window. The other pictures in the post are also from our trip to visit her in Genoa last October.

Every time we travel, I realise again just how privileged we are to live at a time when the world has shrunk so that we are able to explore so many extraordinary places so easily. In a speech a couple of years ago Prime Minister Theresa May, pandering to the more insular faction of her party, said "If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere". In my view she couldn't be more wrong. I am a proud citizen of the UK (though admittedly rather less proud as we endure the embarrassing shambles that is Brexit), but also love being a citizen of Europe - I am not sure I can quite claim "citizen of the world" as I haven't ventured further afield yet. Even if Brexit means we lose the right to live, work and study anywhere in Europe, I don't intend to let it rob me of my identity as both British and European.

Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms

The world divides into those people who will happily go to events alone, and those who need company. I fall into the former category, which is a good thing as I am interested in a fair few things that M would consider among the deeper levels of hell. One of these is medieval history.

The British Library has had an Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms exhibition on display since October which I had been very much wanting to see. Time was beginning to run out as the exhibition ends next month, so on Thursday I took myself off to London to see it. Our trains to London run into a station handily placed just a five minute walk from the British Library, so I can be there in about an hour, door to door. My plan was to see the Anglo-Saxon exhibition in the morning, then to get lunch at either the British Library or the British Museum, and to go to the exhibition on Ashurbanipal and the Assyrians currently on at the British Museum in the afternoon if I had time. In fact the Anglo-Saxons exhibition took me so long to absorb that I ended up just having a quick wander round the free gallery at the British Library in the afternoon before heading home. Ashurbanipal will have to wait for another day - I do hope to make it though, as Ashurbanipal's library is one of my favourite exhibits at the British Museum and I would very much like to know more about him.

I was vaguely aware that the exhibition was an important one with much of the most important Anglo-Saxon material in the world brought together for the first time. I didn't buy a catalogue so working from memory here, but the list of items on display was pretty extraordinary. In no particular order it included:

• The earliest surviving copy of Bede's Ecclesiastical History
• Codex Amiatinus, the oldest complete Latin Bible (written on parchment so enormous, maybe 12 inches thick?) - made in England but now in Italy
• The oldest copy of the Rule of St. Benedict
• The Lindisfarne Gospels
• The earliest copy of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
• The earliest surviving letter in English
• The agreement between Alfred and Guthrum which established the Dane-law
• Domesday Book

These are just the tip of the iceberg - other items that I particularly liked were an Anglo-Saxon world map, a book personally annotated by both Saint Boniface and Saint Dunstan, and a beautifully illustrated herbal describing the uses of various plants (parsley for snake bites, apparently). There were also some artefacts on loan from museums, including sword embellishments from Sutton Hoo, part of the Staffordshire Hoard, and the Alfred Jewel (up there with Ashurbanipal's library as one of my all time favourite museum exhibits). Photography was not allowed, but here is a picture I took last year of the Alfred Jewel in its usual home, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

I have also added a couple of pictures from outside the British Library: a giant statue of Isaac Newton in the forecourt (above), and the roofline of St. Pancras railway station behind the modern library building. It was a beautiful, bright (but cold!) morning, with a perfectly clear blue sky.

The British Library has various articles and featured items from the exhibition on its website here.

100 Books for 2018: 6 to 10

Book 6 - The Diary of a Bookseller (Shaun Bythell) [Audio]
This is Shaun Bythell's record of his trials and tribulations as the owner of Scotland's largest second-hand bookshop in Wigtown. Some are the inevitable consequence of working with the public, who often have somewhat unrealistic expectations of what they can expect from a bookseller. Then there is Amazon, with which Bythell has what can only be described as a hate-hate relationship! Coincidentally I heard an interview with him on the radio a few days ago - he has now stopped selling through Amazon after a technical error led them to deactivate his account, no great loss as the prices there are so low as to be unprofitable. Although I only gave the book 3 stars it was more of a 3 and a half, and I think I would have enjoyed it more as a book rather than an audio book. An easy and entertaining read / listen.
*** 3 stars

Book 7 - The Lost Plot (Genevieve Cogman)
This is the fourth book in the Invisible Library fantasy series - I wrote about the first here. This time the action takes place in a 1930s style parallel version of New York, where two dragons are competing to secure a court position, a competition to the death which could also cause considerable collateral damage. The protagonists, librarian Irene and her dragon apprentice Kae, are there to rescue another librarian who has become caught up in the contest. I very much enjoy the fantasy universe Genevieve Cogman has created, balanced between the rational nature of dragons and the chaotic,  influence of the hypnotic fae, and the Lost Plot was another good read.
**** 4 stars

Book 8 - Flesh and Blood: A History of My Family in Seven Maladies (Stephen McGann) [Audio]
This book is family history at its absolute best. Stephen McGann, the Liverpool actor best known for playing Dr. Turner in the Call the Midwife TV series, tells the story of his family (both past and present) through the lens of the medical traumas and diseases which defined much of their lives. The book begins with the starvation which drove his ancestors from famine riddled Ireland, and moves on through pestilence, exposure, trauma, breathlessness, heart problems, and necrosis. The medical theme unifies the diverse stories of his family members, and brings home some of the harsh realities of life in the past while also reminding us that good health is not something we can ever take for granted. If genealogy and personal history interests you, then I highly recommend this book.
***** 5 stars

Book 9 - Take Six Girls: the Lives of the Mitford Sisters (Laura Thompson)
I first discovered the Mitford sisters through reading Nancy Mitford's Love in a Cold Climate many years ago. It is hard not to be fascinated by the six sisters, and by how a single family could produce a writer (Nancy), a fascist (Diana), a Hitler groupie (Unity), a communist (Jessica), and a duchess (Deborah). Only the second sister, Pamela, seems to have kept a rather un-Mitfordish lower profile. This book was interesting, but I am afraid it bugged me by seeming to show a preference for Diana, the wife of British fascist leader Oswald Mosley. Diana maintained her loyalty to Mosley and his extreme right-wing views throughout her life, and I found it hard to summon up any sympathy for her. Nancy, on the other hand, was treated far more critically for being sharp and independent. As a result I found it hard to empathise with the author's picture of the sisters and gave the book only 2 stars.
** 2 stars

Book 10 - The Huntsman's Tale (Ann Swinfen)
The third in Ann Swinfen's medieval mystery series. This book moves the location from Oxford to the countryside when Nicholas Elyot takes his family to help with the harvest at his cousin's farm. An unpleasant new lord of the manor is shot during a hunt and Nicholas needs to uncover the killer. Another very enjoyable book.
**** 4 stars

100 Books for 2018: 1 to 5

Thanks to a combination of busy life and spending too much time getting sucked down an internet black hole in which I puttered from link to link, my lifelong book reading habit suffered. In 2017 I rebooted my Goodreads account and committed to reading 52 books as my 2017 Book Challenge. I hit 55. Last year I decided to stretch myself and go for 100. I finished the final book at 6.30pm on New Year's Eve! I use Goodreads to keep tabs of the books I have read and want to read; I give the books I read a star rating there, but rarely write reviews. I'm going to test my memory and try to write brief reviews of last year's 100 books here, a few at a time. I use the word "read" slightly loosely as I also count audio books. I usually listen to an Audible book in the car when commuting to work, and also download some free audio books from the library (the app for these can be frustrating, so I use it less than I otherwise would).

Book 1 - Beyond the Snow: the Life and Faith of Elizabeth Goudge (Christine Rawlins)
I am a fan of Elizabeth Goudge's gentle, uplifting writing, and enjoyed her autobiography, The Joy of the Snow, so had high hopes of this book. I can't remember much detail now, but large chunks were simply quotations from Miss Goodge's writing. Disappointing.
** 2 stars

Book 2 - Women and Power: a Manifesto (Mary Beard)
Mary Beard, Cambridge professor of classics and presenter of some excellent TV history programmes,  is one of my favourite voices of reason on Twitter. This short book contains slightly extended versions of two lectures given in 2014 and 2017 and is intelligent feminism at its best, drawing on historical examples from the classical world through to the present day.
**** 4 stars

Book 3 - Jane Austen at Home (Lucy Worsley) [Audio]
I like Jane Austen. I like reading (and hearing) about Jane Austen. Lucy Worsley (also a TV historian) is a Curator of the Historic Royal Palaces and an expert on the history of domestic spaces. She puts Jane Austen into the context of the various homes in which she lived, and does it well. I finished this book with a much better understanding of Jane.
**** 4 stars

Book 4 - How to Go Vegan (Veganuary)
Last year I signed up for Veganuary and committed to eating vegan throughout January. The people at  Veganuary do a great job of providing online resources, and for 2018 they published How to Go Vegan.  I found it an excellent introduction to the hows and whys of veganism, encouraging rather than dogmatic. While I never intended to commit to veganism for the long term, I found I enjoyed eating a plant-based diet and largely stuck to it for most of last year, though eating vegetarian/pescatarian when on holiday, and occasionally succumbing to non-vegan cakes, biscuits and chocolate! This year I want to work on eating ethically, trying to find a balance of eating a mainly plant-based diet, supplemented with a limited amount of traditionally raised meat, sustainable fish, traditionally produced cheese and yoghurt, and free range eggs.
***** 5 stars

Book 5 - The Novice's Tale (Ann Swinfen)
This is the second in a series of medieval mysteries set in Oxford in the 1350s in the aftermath of the Black Death (I read the first, The Bookseller's Tale in 2017). The protagonist is Nicholas Elyot,  a bookseller and single parent of two young children, who lost his beloved wife to the plague. A former scholar, who left his studies in order to marry, he moves smoothly between the two Oxford worlds of the townsmen and the university. Each book in the series is well researched, and although the characterisation builds from one book to the next I think they could be read as stand alone stories. In The Novice's Tale Nicholas becomes involved in the hunt for a novice nun who has gone missing from nearby Godstow Abbey. Sadly Ann Swinfen died last year and the series ends prematurely with the fifth book. If you enjoy gentle historical mysteries I recommend these.
**** 4 stars

So Where Did That Year Go?

I want to blog. I like to blog. I forget to blog. It seems I forgot to blog for a whole year.

This year, I will blog!