Letter

Many people have gone away on holiday and London has begun to have an enjoyably quiet feel. Even Emily is in France for ten days, before she leaves Persephone to go to Penguin. I cannot imagine how we will manage: we all so much appreciate her warmth, energy and efficiency and she will be hugely missed in Lamb’s Conduit Street. (For the moment the office is being run by Celia.)

Just before Emily left we had a Persephone Tea at The Abbot’s House in Abbots Langley: this is where Marghanita Laski lived during the war and it is the model for The Village. Fifty people were shown inside the beautiful house, were able to wander round the delightful garden, and then listen to the owner telling us about the history of the house and about the changes in village life since Marghanita Laski lived there (the most important one is that nowadays there is a tremendous sense of shared community).

Because this week was quieter I was able to get to two inspiring exhibitions, the Impressionists by the Sea and the Mary Fedden, both at the Royal Academy (cf picture below of the latter).

Meanwhile, in the media, both printed and electronic, there have been many more comments about the two books I have just read: firstly Andrew Keen’s The Cult of the Amateur. The New York Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani defined Keen’s book as ‘a shrewdly argued jeremiad against the digerati effort to dethrone cultural and political gatekeepers and replace experts with the “wisdom of the crowd.” I also read Tim Dowling’s very funny novel about bloggers and the life of a London journalist, The Giles Wareing Haters’ Club (of which extracts can be read on the Guardian website).

The critic Michael Dirda reviewed the Zachary Leader biography of Kingsley Amis in The Chronicle of Higher Education. I have a soft spot for Amis because he was one of the few critics to realise that Elizabeth Taylor was a great novelist. Dirda concludes, after wondering why Amis’s work is not better known: ‘I suspect that [his] life and public persona have got in the way. In his youth he behaved like a cad and bounder; in his later years he grew into a mean old sod, a woman-hater, and a reactionary bigot. Initially pegged as humour, his work grew darker and darker, savage indignation replacing Lucky Jim's relatively genial sparkle — which is what most readers wanted more of.’

Meanwhile, do read this hilarious and provocative review of Madame Bovary’s Ovaries, by Denis Dutton of Arts and Letters Daily. Robert Fulford wrote this appreciative piece about the incredible Dutton in Canada’s National Post.

Mary Fedden, Still Life by the Sea, 2006. Oil on canvas © Mary Fedden

Nicola Beauman
15 July 2007
Lamb’s Conduit Street