D. Barber, The third plate (2014)
N. Boulton, How I won the yellow jumper (2010)
P. Fitzgerald, Human voices (1979)
A. Maitland, Wilfred Thesiger (2007)
G. Maxwell, A reed shaken by the wind (1957)
A. Tinniswood, The long weekend: Life in the English Country House Between the Wars (2016)
This has been a great month. Barber first: I liked this a lot, about sustainable farming, but I bought in on the strength of articles like this and I wanted there to be a lot more about grains. I liked the middle, about pigs and fish, but it wasn't as strong as the vegetable sections. So a miss, but a great one. Next: Tinniswood on country houses was a treasure chest of anecdote and wonderfulness. How you react to stories of mad aristos is a key driver of politics. I love them; A less so. It's probably why we vote how we vote. However, while lovely, I missed analysis and and numbers. At one point, he takes a small sample of Debrett's to assess the numbers losing their stately homes over the period. That's just lazy. Third: Human voices lovely, particularly good for me due to the BBC colour, but excellent generally.
However, inevitably, BOTM had to come from the cluster of Thesigania (my neologism), prompted by reading Maxwell's book on the Iraqi marshes. Reading both and then the biography was fascinating, as the layers of legend were stripped away in order. Maitland's biography is too long, and spends too much time too early, but still fascinating. In the end Thesiger's own work is the best. I recall, the first time I read them, I preferred this to Desert Sands. I can't remember why now, but it is a wonderful description of fascinating, fragile world, destroyed by modernity and Saddam.
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