Tales from the Second Hand Book Trade 2

A bookseller specialist buys a large academic collection from an old professor--mostly sexology, sexual politics,folklore censorship and moral studies. He gets them for a reasonable sum, but part of the deal is that he takes 10,000 porno paperbacks stored in the outhouse. Reluctantly he hauls them all out and takes the paperbacks to the recycling where they are pulped. Pulp to pulp.

Painstakingly he lists the scholarly works and offers them to a University library that he has ties with. They reply that, sadly, they have most of these books and what they really need is actual porn paperback fiction, 'we have all the books on censorship' the librarian says 'what we need to work on is the material that was being censored - we need thousands of them, but I'm afraid we can only pay $10 each.'

An indignant Susan Hill answers her critics

A cri de coeur from the 18 year old debut novelist Susan Hill on the perils of sensationalist journalism and pre-publication hype can be found in the Autumn 1960 issue of the Coventry-based arts magazine Umbrella. On first reading 'A Sudden Smash of Fame' this seems an  unusually vehement complaint  for a teenaged first time author to make, but perhaps not when we consider that 1960 was the year of the ‘Lady Chatterley Trial’.

Hutchinson had accepted Hill’s debut novel The Enclosure while she was still an eighteen year old pupil at Carr’s Hill School in Coventry. Somehow the papers had sniffed out the story and all hell broke loose. The Daily Mail (quelle surprise) was the worst offender. The young author was accused of having written a ‘sex-ridden sensational novel’ ‘(Hill’s words) and the press generally was condemned for  exploiting a teenager’s naïf responses to questions from hard-bitten reporters anxious for a salacious story, and of making things up. For instance, from an innocent refusal of a cigarette one reporter had written that Hill disliked smoking. When, in reply to a question on whether she liked the novels of Francoise Sagan, Hill had replied ‘I like her style very much, but not her themes ‘, this appeared as ‘I think her themes are trite---she is finished’.

Continue reading →

The World’s Worst Author makes an enquiry

Here it is in the letters pages of The First Edition (September -October1924) a curious letter from Amanda (McKittrick) Ros, not quite latching on to the idea of collecting or what the magazine was about.

Poor Amanda---blissfully unaware that her books weren’t collected for their literary merit, but for their production of unintended hilarity. At Oxford in the 1920s undergraduates like Evelyn Waugh and John Betjeman were admirers and it is said that the Inklings, whose members included C.S.Lewis and J.R.Tolkien , held competitions to see how much of a novel or poem by Amanda Ros could be recited before the reader began to laugh uncontrollably. Because most of her books were published privately in small editions, copies weren’t easy to come by. They have remained quite scarce ever since, largely due to loyal followers, who eagerly snap them up. However, today, with her star slightly on the wane, copies, including very early editions, can be found on the Net for under £70.

Continue reading →

The wrong Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill - the novelist

The British prime minister, historian and wartime leader Winston Churchill became Winston S. Churchill to distinguish himself from the now forgotten and somewhat unsaleable U.S. novelist Winston Churchill (no relation.) His friendly and diplomatic letter on the subject  is a model of its kind and has been preserved.**

Pretty decent thing to do, but at the time (1899) the American novelist was well known and his books selling very well. To add to the confusion the novelist Winston was also a passable painter. Also our own Churchill wrote one novel, Savrola, in 1900. The American Churchill wrote many novels mostly with titles beginning with C - The Celebrity, The Crisis, The Crossing, Coniston etc., They occasional show up on eBay being sold as if by the great politician ( the American Churchill also dabbled in politics). Wikipedia says "...the two are still occasionally confused, mostly by sellers of second-hand books…" - slightly  dismissive, but possibly not untrue.  They are known to have met at least once and also to have corresponded; a signed letter from WSC to WC would be quite a valuable item!

A good WSC oil painting now goes for several hundred thousand pounds, the American Churchill (who appears to have been more than a Sunday painter) cannot be in this league. Must check an art price site…

Continue reading →

Barbara Taylor Bradford – the early works

The best-selling English novelist Barbara Taylor Bradford's early works were mainly  about interior decoration and 'homemaking.'  They include Decorating to Please Him (How to be the Perfect Wife Series) and Etiquette to Please Him (How to be the Perfect Wife Series). They appeared between 1968 and 1969. BTB's 'perfect wife' paperbacks seem to be aimed at the Stepford Wife archetype and they came out when The Female Eunuch and The Feminine Mystique were on the best seller lists. Nowadays they have a distinct vintage flavour and some dealers even try to get big bucks for them at Amazon. Generally BTB collectable prices for her novels are on the low side, romantic fiction being one of the least collected genres. The Marie Corelli of our age* she is said to be worth £150 million+. Sadly the story about her heating the water in the lake on her estate, so that her pet swans might paddle about in comfort during the winter months, may not be true - BTB says the previous owners of the property had installed it.

Of course many best selling writers wrote very ordinary, forgotten books before they struck gold - Neil Gaiman's rare and valuable book on the boy band Duran Duran, Arthur Bryant's Unfinished Victory (it showed Nazi sympathies in 1940 -he tried to destroy most copies, hence the book's rarity.) Dan Brown's 187 Men to Avoid: A Survival Guide for the Romantically Frustrated Woman (written with his wife in 1995) and Dean Koontz porn paperback from the 1960s Hung! Not forgetting the great thriller writer Ernest Bramah's 1894 debut English farming and why I turned it up. [Suggested  by JK - for which much thanks]

* Her earliest works were of a religious bent like those of Marie Corelli  - in 1968 she wrote Children's Stories of the Bible from the Old and New Testaments.

The Ghosts of Glamis

Found -  The Ghosts of Glamis - a typescript, apparently unpublished, from around the 1960s. Glamis is the seat of the Queen Mother's family, the Bowes-Lyons, and is said to be the most haunted castle in Britain. There is the Grey Lady who haunts the chapel, a tongueless woman haunting the grounds, a young black servant boy haunts the seat by the door to the Queen's bedroom, also the ghost of the gambler and hell raiser Earl Beardie has free range of the house (he lost his soul to the devil in a card game). There are more. The castle is also mentioned in Shakespeare's MacBeth, and the murder of King Malcolm the II is supposed to have taken place in one of the rooms.This seems unlikely as the castle dates from the 14th century and the murder from the 11th century. The typescript is of unknown provenance but seems to have been written for publication...

Continue reading →

A Very Private Dinner, 1912

In the year of the Titanic and the Antarctic disasters here is the handwritten menu --found among the papers of Ernest B Rubinstein, of a special meal—possibly a marriage feast—held by members of the Rubinstein and Laurance families at 42, Boundary Road, South Hampstead.

Not that remarkable you would think, although on closer inspection some of the dishes are unusually named -- 'Sole distrait a Laurance,' 'sauce Agnes', 'poires matrimonial,' 'gelee avec raisin d’etre'. If the dinner was held to mark a marriage—and 'poires matrimonial' strongly suggests this-- then it was a marriage that produced one of the most original children’s writers of the twentieth century.

That writer was Patricia Rubinstein, aka Antonia Forest (1915 – 2003 ), who was born three years after the dinner, later attended South Hampstead High School, just a few minutes walk from 42, Boundary Road, and who learned her love of literature, and particularly drama, from her stage-struck father, Ernest B. Rubinstein, whose signature heads the list of diners that appears on the reverse of the menu.

Others signatures include that of Kate Rubinstein, an Irish Protestant whose marriage to Ernest introduced her into a Jewish circle in Hampstead whose members were to contribute their signatures and messages to Patricia’s autograph book of 1924—another item found among the Rubinstein papers. Two other Rubinstein signatures on the menu were probably those of Ernest’s siblings.

It could be said that Antonia Forest guarded her privacy every bit as jealously as J. D. Salinger did his own. For most of her life she lived quietly in Bournemouth. Even her devoted fans did not know her real name and in one of her very rare interviews she studiously omitted any meaningful details of her parentage and early life that might help a biographer. Because of this, the career of her father as a prominent theatre critic, versifier and amateur playwright, has remained shrouded in mystery---until now. But we can at least surmise that the much more prominent man of the theatre, Harold Rubinstein (1891 - 1975), who as a lawyer defended Lady Chatterley’s Lover in 1960, was a relation-- possibly a nephew.[RR]

Adah Isaacs Menken – A Victorian Lady Gaga

Today, the actress and poet Adah Isaacs Menken (1835 – 1868) has been largely forgotten and when her name crops up at all it is usually in association with Algernon Swinburne, with whom she reportedly had an affair. But in the mid nineteenth century, both in her native USA and in Britain, she was the Lady Gaga of her day—a sensational performer in various erotic guises and at one time the highest paid actress in the world.

Like Lady Gaga, she entered show business early and with some éclat. She also seems to have been obsessed with dressing up in outrageous costumes that reflected her need to regularly re-invent herself. Like Gaga too, she changed her name. She had begun life as plain Ada McCord, a child with Creole blood, but later, each of her three marriages gave her a chance to add exotic elements to her name. By her death she had adopted both the name and the faith of her Jewish husband. Today, in some quarters of the States, her Creole ancestry has made her a black icon of female liberation.

Menken had always expressed an interest in writing poetry and by her early thirties she had amassed enough material for a book. Tragically, in 1868 at the age of just 33, she died suddenly of peritonitis complicated by TB and a few days later, Infelicia was published privately—presumably through the auspices of her husband. Though heavily influenced by the invocatory style of Walt Whitman, Infelicia, reflects a good deal of her genuine literary talent, and it is easy to appreciate the effect it must have had on a generation of female freethinkers from the 1870s onwards.

Continue reading →

A.N.L. Munby book collector, academic and ghost story writer

Found - a scarce pamphlet outlining the life of Alan Noel Latimer ('Tim') Munby (1913 - 1974). He was born on Christmas Day, hence the unused name 'Noel.' The Victorian diarist and poet Arthur Munby ('Man of Two Worlds' of Derek Hudson's book) who 'adored the roughest working-girls' and was for years secretly married to his kitchen-maid was his great-uncle. As a schoolboy and as an undergraduate (at King's College, 1932-35) he collected books; for a brief period after graduation he worked at Quaritch's bookshop. During the war he joined the Territorials (Queen Victoria Rifles); he was captured at Calais in 1940 and held as a prisoner of war in Germany for 5 years. On his return to England he worked at Sotheby's, then in 1947 was appointed College Librarian at King's. He is best known for an excellent collection of ghost stories The Alabaster Hand. Ghost fiction watchers Boucher and McComas praised the stories in The Alabaster Hand as 'quietly terrifying modernizations of the M.R. James tradition.' M.R. James was also a Cambridge academic and Cambridge produced several other writers of fantastic fiction.. The pamphlet is typical of the slim memorial papers  turned out at the great universities when a distinguished or well known colleague had died.

Continue reading →

Horror in the Night by Richard Macgregor (aka MacGregor Urquhart )

A local dealer has this graphic artist's illustration for a lurid book cover. He thinks he may have bought it from someone selling a quantity of book cover illustrations on card (gouache, watercolour etc.,) by the railings on Bayswater Road about 30 years ago. Art (now mostly kitsch and worse) is still sold there every Sunday. Often these illustrations  have lettering so you can see the title, but not in this case, and no artist had signed either.

By sheer chance he found the actual book that had used the illustration - in a box of SF, fantasy and horror paperbacks.  The book was Horror in the Night, a short story collection by Richard Macgregor published by Digit in London in 1963. Not a lot is known about Macgregor, these were 5 short horror stories and he seems to have written 5 other books between 1963 and 1964 for Digit. Titles like The Deadly Sun, Creeping Plague, The Day a Village Died --- a category that came to be known as Doom Watch fiction, possibly post apocalyptic in content. A further book Taste of the Temptress came out in Sydney in the mid 1960s published by Eclipse, so he could have been Australian -this was also published by Digit so possibly not (also it seems he was from Essex - see the excellent Bear Alley.) As for the artist it could be one R.A. Osborne (1923 - 1973) art director of Digit at the time and responsible for many of their covers including Macgregor's Day a Village Died, the story of a village plagued by killer ants.

This piece first appeared at our old site Bookride and since then new information has come to light via dealer Cold Tonnage and the IMDB database. It seems that his real name was MacGregor Urquhart. IMDB's short biography says he 'was a writer and actor, known for The Powder Monkey (1951), John of the Fair (1951) and The Malory Secret (1951). He died on March 17, 1967.' His first work of fiction appeared in the early 1960s  so it seems that his writing career followed his spell in movies. Further investigation shows he was also a playwright with at least one published play Investigation. A Pay in Three Acts (Evans, London 1958.)

Robert Byron and Tripadvisor review Balkh

Balkh is in northern Afghanistan and  is one of the oldest cities in the world, possibly the oldest. Tripadvisor make this claim, as does Robert Byron writing in 1937 in the supreme travel book The Road to Oxiana. Balkh is still known locally as 'the Mother of Cities.' It was the centre of Zoroastrianism and under the Greeks it was renamed Bactra, giving its name to the surrounding  Bactria territory. Balkh is now, for the most part, a mass of ruins but has an extremely long history, going back to the 26th century BC and further - when the plains were fertile…

Continue reading →

Literature dead (1870) says Katawampus

Found in an obscure short-lived journal  The Trifle of September 1912 (edited  by Ernest Hicks Oliver, a writer on yachting and history.) Oliver  quotes the writer and lawyer Sir Edward Abbott Parry ('Judge Parry') the  speaker at the annual ladies' night debate of the Hardwicke Society. It is amusing to see someone declaring reading dead over 100 years ago- in fact in the view of the diehard Parry since 1870 - when the Elementary Education Act set the framework for schooling of all children between the ages of 5 and 13 in England and Wales.

There were many objections at the time  to the concept of universal education, primarily it was felt by some that it would make the poor 'think' and become dissatisfied with their lives, it might even encourage them to revolt. Parry's objections are more on aesthetic and elitist lines...He was a fairly prolific dramatist and writer for children. At the time of this speech he was writing Katawampus - A Musical Play for Children of All Ages and Katawampus: its Treatment and Cure:

The demand for good literature ended about 1870, when the Education Act came in and literature went out. Since that date every citizen has been taught to read, but not to know what to do with his reading. Any rubbish for which he has a taste is constantly supplied to him, he is exercising enormous influence on the so called literature of today. Men's ideas are formed today, not by their fathers and mothers in their homes, but by codes shot  from education departments, and carried out by half educated people. Good taste in books and literature is born in the home, and it is impossible to get it in schools. Today the demand for literature is really in the hands of the feeble-minded, who are in the great majority, and rule the market. One piece of evidence as to that feeble-mindedness is to be found in problem plays and problem novels. There is nothing in literature more degrading than the vogue for such plays and novels. People are not assisted by them in understanding any great problems, they are only enabled to swagger around as those who know a little more than their neighbours.

The Enchanted Forest

Came across a book about the New Forest in Hampshire - The Enchanted Forest by Gladys Mackenzie Forbes (Mate & Sons, Bournemouth circa 1930). It is attractively illustrated in black and white by the young artist Jacynth Parsons and is written in a sort of poetic, evocative prose that was popular at the time in nature writing. This piece is about the gypsies who had long been in the New Forest and is a somewhat romanticised view of their world. This is the New Forest of Augustus John and and Juliette de Bairacli Levy both of whom had befriended the forest dwelling gypsies.

Green-Wood Fires

Aromatic sweet scented smoke hangs in the windless air like a grey-blue curtain, and mingles itself with the autumn mist. A stream sings lazily along, and the mist changes its singing into plaintive sadness, as it also does the sharp thin music of distant children's voices. A dog's bark has a note of mystery, and all things seem far away and unreal.

Down in a sleepy sheltered hollow is a picturesque encampment of gay coloured gypsy vans, yellow, green, gold, and crimson, decorated with the brooms and rush baskets, by which the gypsies make a living, and looking like distorted giant toadstools against the glory of the woods. Each van has its own graceful plume of smoke, which gradually widens out, until it is lost in the blue grey curtain. In the centre of the ring of vans, is a large fire, made from the green-wood, gathered by the gypsy children, who are far afield after still more fuel, it is their voices which vie with the streams faint song.

Over the communal fire from crossed sticks, hangs a large black pot whose steam has the most inviting odour. Near the fire, women are busy with a culinary duties, and almost in silence the men are tending the animals, lean horses, and small sturdy donkeys, while several nondescript dogs group themselves hopefully around the simmering pot. Obviously the gypsies have only just arrived, yet already the hollow has an air of home, and is fragrant with green-wood smoke, and the good smell of savoury food. When darkness falls, the campfire will glow redly, and its smoke have an even  sweeter scent. One leaves the homely hollow, and the gay caravans, reluctantly, and with a tiny pain of regret.
To very few of us, for even a short time, is it made possible to live in such a simple, sane, and happy way.

Young Gypsies by Augustus John

Simon Raven – poet and Greek scholar

Found - in a 1949 Cambridge University magazine Imprint, very early work of the British novelist Simon Raven. This is the first issue of the magazine, edited by J.M. Grundy of Caius College (Raven was at King's College in his second year after completing National Service.) Raven contributes 2 translations from The Greek Anthology by anonymous authors. There is much mention of Greek literature and mythology in his subsequent novels, especially in his magnum opus The Roses of Picardie. His first novel The Feathers of Death was published nine years after these translations:

TWO POEMS  (translated from the Greek of unknown authors)
                         1
Who garlands for my tomb,
Who scented oils will bring,
Who feeds high the fire,
Makes vain offering.

While yet I live, be kind;
No wine on ashes pour -
Thus only mire is made of him
That's dead and drinks no more.

                         II
Nymphs and cold pastures, this
Tale the bees must hear
This tell them as they wander
The spring ways of the year:

That old Leucippus perished
Under a winter's sky,
Laying his nets at midnight
Where the light-foot hare goes by.

His care of hive and garden
Has with him an end:
The peak has now no neighbour,
The meadows mourn a friend.

The themes of death and mourning are addressed by him in a later piece 'Memento Mori' at The Spectator where he quotes his own translation. It is interesting to compare his translation of the second piece with an earlier prose translation by the classical scholar J W Mackail:

Naiads and chill cattle-pastures, tell to the bees when they come on their spring-tide way, that old Leucippus perished on a winter's night, setting snares for scampering hares, and no longer is the tending of the hives dear to him; and the pastoral dells mourn sore for him who dwelt with the mountain peak for neighbour.

A flier for The War of the Worlds (1897/1898)

"...across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us."

Found - a review slip or pre-publication publicity (a flier) in a first edition of H.G. Wells The War of the Worlds (Heinemann, London 1898) one of the greatest Science Fiction novels of all time.  The novel had previously appeared in serialized form in 1897, published simultaneously in Pearson's Magazine in the UK and Cosmopolitan magazine in the US. The reviews are from magazines and newspapers of the time including one from a French paper Mercure de France which says that Wells surpasses Jules Verne.

Continue reading →

An Ear for Murder

Found - a rare and sensational Australian pulp mystery/ thriller from the late 1940s. Unknown to online malls and the great bibliography of crime fiction by Allen J Hubin, although he lists other titles by Max Afford. It is titled An Ear for Murder (Frank Johnson, Sydney, no date). The inside cover reads:

This is a Magpie novel - read it now it will hold you to the end.
What manner of creature was this, to whom the slaying of his victim was not enough? What manner of foul beast was it whose bloody fingers must perform the further savagery of mutilation? What strange secrets lay behind the locked doors of the mysterious, corpse-guarded study? These are the questions answered by world-famous criminologist Jeffery Blackburn in this punch-packed story of murder on the loose. With thrills on every page, this grand story of crime and detection is a "must" for murder-fiction fans. You won't be able to put it down until you've turned the last page.

The book appears intelligent and well written , the sleuth's day job being a professor of higher mathematics. The claim on the cover 'No crime could be more horrifying in its ferocity' may be something of an exaggeration..the plot involves a crazed novelist, a millenarian sect and a titled British millionaire stockbroker. There are as many as 100 books in the Magpie series, not all thrillers or even fiction.


Vulcan 2

The second part, from the fascinating forgotten work Oddities: A Book of Unexplained Facts (Allan, London 1928) by R.T. Gould, on the non-existent planet Vulcan. The first part can be found here.

Vulcan Landscape (from Star Trek, the Motion Picture)
 Leverrier, once convinced as to the real character of Lescarbault's discovery, lost no time in performing the necessary calculations which that worthy had found so baffling. He obtained, for the new planet's mean distance from the sun, about 13,000,000 miles, and for its period of revolution 19 days 17 hours. Lescarbault, who had seen Mercury in transit over the sun with the same telescope, and the same magnifying power, on May 8, 1845, considered that the new planet (which he decided to name "Vulcan") had a disc rather less than a quarter as large. Accordingly, Leverrier calculated that Vulcan's volume was probably about one seventeenth that of Mercury. It did not escape him that, supposing its mass to be in anything like the same proportion, Vulcan could not be held responsible for more than a small fraction of the disturbances observed to be taking place in Mercury's orbit.

   He also calculated that Vulcan ought to be in transit on the sun's face on or about April 3rd and October 6th of every year, at which times it should, of course, be visible in the same manner as it had been to Lescarbault. He did not hold out much hope of its being seen at other times, since he computed that its lustre would be so feeble that it might easily remain unseen, even during a total eclipse of the sun.*

   * Proctor has questioned this statement. By his calculations, Vulcan and Mercury, seen during eclipse at their greatest angular distance from the sun, would appear about equally bright.

 Continue reading →

R.T. Gould and The Planet Vulcan 1

T.T. Gould & his wife Muriel
Found - a fascinating forgotten  work Oddities: A Book of Unexplained Facts (Allan, London 1928) by R.T. Gould. Rupert Thomas Gould (1890 – 1948), was a lieutenant Commander in the British Royal Navy noted for his contributions to horology. While in the navy in WW1 he suffered a nervous breakdown. During long recuperation, he was stationed at the Hydrographer's Department at the Admiralty, where he became an expert on various aspects of naval history, cartography, and expeditions of the polar regions. He gained permission in 1920 to restore the marine chronometers of John Harrison, and this work was completed in 1933. Jeremy Irons played him in Longitude, a dramatisation of Dava Sobel's book about John Harrison Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, which recounted in part Gould's work in restoring the chronometers.

Something of a polymath, he wrote an eclectic series of books on topics ranging from horology to the Loch Ness Monster. He was a member of the Sette of Odd Volumes (Brother Hydrographer) and the book Oddities is dedicated to the club. He was a science educator, giving a series of talks for the BBC's Children's Hour starting in January 1934 under the name "The Stargazer", and these collected talks were later published. He was a member of the BBC radio panel Brains Trust. He umpired tennis matches on the Centre Court at Wimbledon on many occasions during the 1930s. This is the first part of the chapter on the planet Vulcan (more to follow)-

 Continue reading →

How to be Happy on the Riviera 4


The concluding part of a posting of a complete book How to be Happy on the Riviera by Robert Elson W. (Arrowsmith Ltd., 11 Quay Street, Bristol, 1927).The appendix has a wealth of information, much of it aimed at the long stay vacationer and the expat or 'remittance man' (similar to the trustafrian of our time). The address and name of the British Consul in Monte Carlo (G W Hogg) the address of the British Library and the Anglo-American Library (in the Grand Hotel building.) There was even a weekly paper for the British abroad,The Cote D'Azur,that came out on a Friday. There is good advice for those who 'winter abroad' -- Hyeres is suggested for those who like it quiet, Monte Carlo for those who want it lively (but the bathing is poor). Also invaluable advice for the journey there, that might still hold true:-
"Don’t trust the time-tables as to there being a restaurant-car on any train southward from Paris (except the Calais–Méditerranée); bring a tea-basket with you and be prepared to grab things from the buffets at the Gare de Lyon and at Marseilles, or you may go foodless."

Continue reading →

How to be Happy on the Riviera 3

The penultimate part of Robert Elson's 1927 book dealing with indoor and outdoor amusements and of course gaming. There is a good description of a Gala dinner which has the authentic 1920s tone:

 "A gala dinner may be ...a more elaborate entertainment indistinguishable from a fête, the room being decorated for the occasion–sometimes in a really artistic manner–and a good programme of show-turns provided. There are sure to be surprises–toys to make noises with, balloons, etc. The peculiarity of surprises is that they are always the same. Occasionally really attractive gifts are distributed, or prizes given in connection with dancing or a tombola (raffle). If you are in an appropriately happy-go-lucky mood, a gala is usually quite enjoyable. It is good to play the fool sometimes, pelting and being pelted by the occupants of neighboring tables with little coloured balls, and trying to hit people at a distance with harmless projectiles. Also, you never know what may come of it. A happily-married lady of my acquaintance first made her existence known to her husband by hitting him on the ear with a flying sausage; he asked her to dance, and the thing was as good as done."

Such goings on would have been vieux jeu by the 1940s. Interestingly many fetes described have gone - The Venetian Fete at Cannes has been replaced by a film festival, car shows and uphill car racing at Monte Carlo has become the Rally, but the Burning of the Boat still goes on and the Battle of Flowers - so all is not lost.

Continue reading →