Hi Dear Folk,
How are you all holding up without a hug? So big hugs and handshakes to all. I'm afraid that even when we are let out, things will not be the same. I can't see handshakes and hugs being freely given to strangers anymore, at least not for a long while, and that's very sad.
As you know if you follow me on Instagram, is that I'm reading The Kingdom By The Sea, A Journey Around Great Britain, by Paul Theroux. This book has been in my personal library for a long while, I started it years ago but could not get into it.
It was published in 1983. His travels around the coast of Britain and Northern Ireland was during the time of the Falklands War. Theroux sticks to the coast line as much as possible, it takes him along windswept headlands, quant villages, but also past nuclear power plants, old dockland areas and industrial towns that have seen better days. In the eighties I was newly married and living in the States, but would go back to the UK for long holidays.
I started the book with the preconceived notion, that it would read something like the book by Susan Branch My Love Affair With England, but no, it is the UK without the rose coloured glasses, the gritty side of people and places. It is worth a read, it makes me think back to that time, how things were in the eighties, how some things have changed and some are still the same.
Moving on to the thought of the rabbit hole of reading. While in Wales, he, Paul Theroux, mentions Taliesin, and I remembered that Frank Lloyd Wright named two of his houses, Taliesin Spring Green in Wisconsin and Taliesin West in Arizona.
Taliesin in Welsh history was a Brythonic poet, a Celtic poet in sub-Roman times whose work possibly survived in a Middle Welsh manuscript, The Book of Taliesin. Taliesin a renowned bard who is believed to have sung at the courts of at least three Brythonic Kings. Now of course he Frank Lloyd Wright used the name Lloyd which is a Welsh surname and his mother's name was Anna Lloyd Jones, her forebears emigrated to Spring Green, Wisconsin, from Wales, hence the connection. I always thought Taliesin was an interesting name for a house.
Now down another rabbit hole while reading Kingdom By The Sea, were some quotes from the Ulster poetry of Louis MacNeice, who wrote so well about the sea. "Upon this beach the falling wall of the sea..." and my favorite "That never satisfied old maid the sea. Rehangs her white lace curtains ceaselessly." I will never again go down to the sea and not think of that quote, the old maid rehanging her lace curtains, the white froth of lace as the waves crash, I love it.
So then I went on to who was Louis MacNeice, born in Northern Ireland? I was not familiar with him. It seems that he was a counterpart of W. H. Auden while at Oxford along with Cecil Day Lewis, who were all part of the Auden's circle. He was a contemporary of John Betjeman and Anthony Blunt who he was a life long friend. All these names I know.
The Day-Lewis I am familiar with is the actor, Daniel Day-Lewis, well Cecil was his father, I found that interesting. He often plays an Irish part, although born in London, but his father Cecil, was born in Ireland, hence connections.
And of course who does not know Anthony Blunt, who had close association with the royal family as the curator of their art collection. He was recruited by the NKVD, later to become the KGB, while he was at university. He worked for MI5 but was spying for the Russians. He never was publicly outed at the time, because of the high circles he moved in and the scandal it would have caused, let alone the embarrassment with the Americans.
See what I mean about Rabbit Holes. Well wasn't that diversionary.
Stay well, keep safe.
Christine
