Another Bookish Holiday…
Just back from London and had a marvelous time (is it possible to have any other kind?).
For a little atmosphere, I read Marie Belloc Lowdnes creepy London classic, The Lodger on the outbound flight. Based loosely on the Ripper murders in the 1880s, this novel delves into the weird psychology of what it would be like to discover you’re sheltering a murderer.
I don’t know why it is, but the lodger’s eccentricities bring to mind Jeremy Brett’s Sherlock Holmes almost to a T. Odd, but there it is. And definitely no less enjoyable because of the characterization.
Of course I couldn’t be in London without dropping by Maggs Bros at 50 Berkeley Square. (For new readers, Maggs is the site of the amazing internship I lucked — with lots of help from my friend, Julian Wilson — into this past summer.) I was in the front shop, browsing the shelves, and as coincidence would have it, my eyes fell straight onto a 1932 edition of said Lodger, inscribed by the author to an aspiring writer, for £100. Tempting, to be sure.
My next stop was just around the corner, the famous bookshop at 10 Curzon Street: Heywood Hill. You may remember my mention of the book by the same name, The Bookshop at 10 Curzon Street, which contains letters between the shop’s founder, Heywood Hill, and Nancy Mitford, who kept the shop going when Hill was called up for duty in December 1942.
The purpose of the visit was to surprise a Maggsian friend of mine, Jeffrey Kerr, who’s just been named managing director of Heywood Hill. I was the one more pleasantly surprised in the end, though, as Jeffrey introduced me to John Saumarez Smith, who edited The Bookshop, gave me a great tour of the place and sent me on my way with a new biography of Agatha Christie by Laura Thompson, which isn’t yet available in the States. Agatha Christie: An English Mystery is worth a look, as Thompson got not only the endorsement of Christie’s family but also unprecedented access to the very private Queen of Crime’s literary estate. You can get your copy now from HH for just £20.
Happy reading,
Elizabeth Frengel
