YESTERDAY MORNING

 

 

A very English childhood

by Diana Athill

 

Diana provides a sharp evocation of a traditional childhood in this classic memoir full of insight, candor and wit.

Her childhood was unfashionably filled with happiness, based in a Norfolk country house with servants, the pleasures of horses and the unfolding secrets.

This is the England of the 1920s, seen with a clear and unsentimental eye from the vantage point of England today.

It was a privileged and loving life, but did it equip her to be happy?

The fear of looking silly will strike a chord with any one who remembers growing up.

It is her third volume of memoirs about which she spoke on radio 4’s “Talking to myself’

 

SCHEHERAZADE

 

SCHEHERAZADE

GOES WEST

Different cultures in different harems

by Fatema Mernissi

 

“ I soon noticed that most of the men grinned when pronouncing the word ‘harem’.

I felt shocked by their grins. How can any one smile when invoking a word synonymous with prison, I wondered.’

Fatema’s grand mother grew up in a harem and she installed in the young Fatema the need to ‘use her wings’ , to travel, to make the most of freedom and to take advantage of every opportunity to absorb knowledge.

Here in this eye opening book, Fatema discovers that often western women are just as much controlled as those which live out their lives in the harem.

Do we really have the freedom we suppose?

By making us reexamine our western culture , she forces us to swallow up some home truths.

Perhaps we are actually imprisoned in a western harem?

 

Frigates

 

FRIGATES

by James Henderson

Light, swift, daring: frigates were the cruisers of Nelson’s navy, commanded by bold, young, courageous officers, ranging the oceans of the world alone or in packs, seeking the enemy and usually finding him.

Although the swashbuckling spirit of these almost incredible sea adventures has been captured in the best naval fiction , the story of the frigates of 1793-1815 has never been told as a continuous narrative.

James Henderson’s vivid writing has the reader pacing the quarter deck with the first lieutenant or muzzle loading or the smoky gun deck of a 44- and his descriptions of frigate and naval technicalities make it easy for the reader to assess such famous actions as the encounter by challenge between HMS Shannon and of equally powered USS Chesapeake, which was captured by boarding after fifteen furious minutes