A podcast about the writing of ‘Most Beautiful Princess – A Novel Based on the Life of Grand Duchess Elizabeth’ :

Most Beautiful Princess

 

 

Happy New Year!

I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’

And he replied, ‘Go into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way!’

So I went forth and finding the Hand of God Trod gladly into the night He led me towards the hills And the breaking of day in the lone east.

So heart be still! What need our human life to know If God hath comprehension?

In all the dizzy strife of things Both high and low, God hideth his intention.”

(Minnie Louise Haskins)

More of the Fascinating Life of Queen Victoria

 

The Fascinating Life of Queen Victoria

Most Beautiful Princess

A new video of the background to: “Most Beautiful Princess “- A novel based on the life of Queen Victoria’s granddaughter, Grand Duchess Elizabeth of Russia

 

Charlotte Bronte’s Lost Book

An interesting article about the auction of a lost book by Charlotte Bronte:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2060600/The-Brontes-ultimate-taboo-As-lost-book-Charlotte-Bronte-auctioned-truth-literatures-oddest-family.html

(Incidentally, if you are interested in the Brontes, please see here for a post about Emily:

Emily Bronte the Mystic   )

Brother Sun & Sister Moon

I was 17 when I first saw “Brother Sun & Sister Moon” and it moved me more  than anything I had ever seen before or have seen since. I taped it with an ordinary old fashioned cassette player pressed up the TV and over and over again I played the tape (complete with the door bell ringing or someone coughing outside the room!) over and over again. It said everything I wanted to say.

Time and time again throughout the past 3 decades I have returned to that old cassette and still, after all this time, though it sounds rather wobbly now, it raises the same feelings of innocence, transparency, and the real beauty of the soul. At 17 I spoke of it to teachers who said it is ‘merely Hollywood’ and to lecturers (I studied theology – though it taught me nothing!!) and they smiled in a kindly but not really helpful way. “If the purpose of life if this loveless toil we fill our days with, then it’s not for me. There must be something better. There has to be. Man is a spirit…he has a soul and that is what I want to recapture: my soul! I want to climb trees, swim rivers, feel the firm clasp of the earth beneath my feet, without shoes, without clothes….a beggar…yes! Christ was a beggar…”

Some of the theologians argued that man isn’t spirit; and some of the lecturers with whom I spoke said, “It’s just an ideal.” It left me wondering sometimes, why did people preach one thing, but then when you believe it, tell you it can’t be done or it’s just an ideal or a dream and ‘you have to be practical’ ? Well in the 30 + years since first seeing it, my belief in it has never gone away. Sometimes it has been dimmed or hidden or obscured and sometimes I have almost forgotten it, but it’s still there like a dearest friend.

It took a long time to realise that Christ was nothing like a beggar – on the contrary, abundance is the natural way of being for all of us; but I believe in everything else in this beautiful extract and no argument in the world can change that. It just speaks directly to the heart and soul and I love it…as I do, this beautiful scene….which is beyond lovely:

The Burning of the Leaves

This wonderful poem by Laurence Binyon so captures the season! Here in England, it will soon be Bonfire Night and that, together with Poppy Day (Remembrance Day) creates such a sense of nostalgia and pensiveness. This year there seem to be more colours than ever in the fallen leaves and the autumnal days of late have been particularly beautiful. This picture was taken today at Temple Newsam.

Now is the time for the burning of the leaves.

They go to the fire; the nostril pricks with smoke

Wandering slowly into a weeping mist

Brittle and blotched, ragged and rotten sheaves!
A flame seizes the smouldering ruin and bites

On stubborn stalks that crackle as they resist.

                                            Wandering slowly into a weeping mist

The last hollyhock’s fallen tower is dust;
All the spices of June are a bitter reek,
All the extravagant riches spent and mean.
All burns! The reddest rose is a ghost;
Sparks whirl up, to expire in the mist: the wild
Fingers of fire are making corruption clean.

The last hollyhock’s fallen tower is dust;
All the spices of June are a bitter reek,
All the extravagant riches spent and mean.
All burns! The reddest rose is a ghost;
Sparks whirl up, to expire in the mist: the wild
Fingers of fire are making corruption clean.

Now is the time for stripping the spirit bare,
Time for the burning of days ended and done,
Idle solace of things that have gone before:
Rootless hope and fruitless desire are there;
Let them go to the fire, with never a look behind.
The world that was ours is a world that is ours no more.

They will come again, the leaf and the flower, to arise
From squalor of rottenness into the old splendour,
And magical scents to a wondering memory bring;
The same glory, to shine upon different eyes.
Earth cares for her own ruins, naught for ours.
Nothing is certain, only the certain spring.

 

 

 

 

Lord Tennyson & The Isle of Wight

Here is a beautiful site about Alfred, Lord Tennyson and the Isle of Wight:

http://www.lordalfredtennyson.com

 

An Interview With ‘Miss Read’

A really interesting and lovely interview with ‘Miss Read’ – the author of the Thrush Green series and many more books beside….

Interview with ‘Miss Read’