Furniture: Twentieth Century Design by Penny Sparke

This was a concise history of modern furniture design (although it only went up to 1986). Some snippets:

Teak furniture was very popular in the 1950s, apparently because the war in Indo-China meant that huges swathes of forest were cut down for military access. Who knew?

The Scandinavians have always had a socialist angle to their furniture production, designing it to fit in small flats and so that good design was available to all. The Italians, not so much.

Political control of furniture can only work up to a certain extent. After austerity furniture was abandoned in Britain after the war, so was the style. People chose exactly what they wanted to spend their money on and it wasn't the official style. Nanny states today, please note.

Day 298; Book 288

The Last G.I. Bride Wore Tartan by Fred Urquhart

Well, this is educational. I'm afraid I had never heard of Fred Urquhart and yet he was a prolific and well-received author in his day. Here's a link which includes his biographical details. This is a book of short stories which are at one time very definitely written just after the war, yet also surprisingly modern. Perhaps it is just that we are used to seeing this era depicted in films of the time, which of course were much more subject to censorship.

Urquhart knew the painters Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde. See how educational a book-a-day can be? I hadn't even realised they were real characters when I was reading the John Byrne play *blushes*

Day 297; book 287

In other news ...

I made grilled peaches last night. Yum and thrice yum. Halve the peaches and take out the stones. Dip the cut sides in icing sugar. Grill cut-sides up under a low heat (you can turn it up once the peaches are nicely warmed). Take out when the sugar has gone brown and crispy.

How strange ...

I added a post yesterday about the books I read at the weekend, and now it's disappeared. I can see the books on my list so I'm not imagining it ... Just a quick summary then of the vanished books: This Book Will Change Your Life by A M Homes (dark, funny, ultimately hopeful); The Accusers by Lindsey Davis (Roman legal goings-on); The Lovers by John Connolly (dark, dark, maybe ultimately hopeful).

Day 296; Book 286

The Road to Ruin by Siegfried Sassoon

Sassoon seems to one of the less-well-known of the war poets, at least nowadays (which makes me want to read him more).

The Road to Ruin is a poem published in 1933. In it Sassoon visualises what might happen over the next 10 years. His nightmare vision is obviously concerned about war coming again, but it is written in the vocabulary of the First World War, with London succumbing to gas. It's ironic that the next war was to end with a weapon more terrible than he was able to imagine.

Day 293; Book 283

Cock-a-Doodle Doo by Robert S McLeish

This is "a Scots comedy in one act" published in 1990 but set before the First World War. It's an amusing farce and looks as if there would be plenty of laughs if you saw it performed. The dialect is consistent but it looks like Glaswegian to me - still maybe the farm where it's set was near Glasgow ...

Day 293; Book 282

In which I am put in the shade by a lady of 91!

Thanks to Jo for alerting me to this news item, which is all about Louise Brown, 91, who joined her local library in 1946 and since then has borrowed at least 6 books every week, recently increasing it to about 12 every 7 days! Mrs Brown, I salute you!