Wait for Me and Book Barn visit.

Not much reading this week - tired at the end of each day and so could do no more than read a couple of pages of The Daughter of Time, which I will sit down and finish as soon as I've posted this. However, I've just been pottering about on Amazon and realised Debo Devonshire's newly published memoirs are on sale for £9 (publisher's price £20). So I did not resist (in fact I didn't try very hard) and they are now winging their way Bath-wards. As an online book group friend said about these only yesterday - 'Eekington Squeakington!!'

I paid a visit to the Book Barn on Monday afternoon after accompanying a friend to a hospital appointment in Bristol. My goodness, they're in a mess! They are apparently rearranging stock, but there were piles everywhere, it was sooo disorganised and all the Viragos had gone. I asked the two women on the till and they clearly didn't know what Viragos were, still less where they'd gone (sigh...). At least everything is currently £1, so I returned with eight books. But I suspect they're actually withdrawing all the decent stuff for internet sales and it would never surprise me to see the place shut to callers. Let's wait and see.

Taking cuttings

I've just taken half a dozen cuttings from the Cornish fuchsia I found at St Anthony in Meneage a few years ago. It's hardy and forms a good hedge there in the Cornish fashion, along the steps down to the churchyard. However, it's a much lusher type than the usual Cornish fuchsia. As this photo should show, the leaves are reddish, the stems very red and the flowers larger and more vivid, with a dark blue centre. The parent plant in Cornwall was heavily affected by last winter's deep frosts and I lost all but one of my own cuttings which were in the greenhouse. I'm aiming to cover a quite difficult area of my own garden with it, at the top of my front steps in a narrow poor-soil bed between the wall and my boundary fence.

I also took some cuttings from a fuchsia I 'borrowed' from Cadgwith last September. I was walking up the hill to the car park and saw a small, rather neglected looking fuchsia with unusual flowers. They were small and unshowy, but were two red colours - again the photo should make this clear (although I think it looks rather more pink than it should). There was one stem suitable for a cutting and I have to confess I decided to take it. It travelled all the way home in the top of a water bottle and it was touch and go through the winter as to how well it was rooting and growing. However, once I potted it on early in the Spring, it raced away and grew into a sturdy small potted specimen, covered in these delightful red flowers. I don't know whether it's hardy, so once I've increased my stock, I'll plant one out in the open ground next year and see how it does!

BBC archive and Daphne du Maurier

I've been fascinated in recent weeks by the three-part series the BBC has broadcast on 20th Century British novelists. Drawn from its extensive archive, it featured interviews with the great and the good of the inter-war years, the 50s and 60s and then the more recent period. The first episode featured the voice of Virginia Woolf (apparently there is no film archive of her), Somerset Maugham, GK Chesterton, Robert Graves, PG Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh at his most outrageous and many others, leaving me literally squealing with delight! The second featured the  Angry Young Men et al, and the last one centred around the Booker Prize as its theme, with a very youthful (but ever disdainful) Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Angela Carter and so many more.

This all led me to the archive itself, where I discovered there are many full length original interviews, both with the authors I've mentioned and others who didn't make the cut for the three hour-long programmes. I've just spent a very happy hour watching a 1971 interview by Wilfred De'ath with Daphne du Maurier. Relaxed and natural, the programme followed her around her final home, Kilmarth (the dower house to Menabilly) along the cliffs to the sea in her daily walk and a view of Par harbour and into her writing room and comfortable sitting room. There they discussed the influence of her father Gerald, her solitude (she readily agreed to being a 'drop-out'), and her relationship with her husband Tommy. She took De'ath into the cellars where there were box after box of typescripts and the camera showed us the original of Rebecca, while she read the first few lines.

It's a quite wonderful programme, which I never knew existed (I was 11 at the time) and although I have the Cliff Mitchelmore interview, which can be bought from the du Maurier Centre in Fowey on DVD, this one is much better, and a rather more likeable Daphne emerges.

I anticipate many more happy hours exploring the archive, which you can find here.

Adam Sisman

Just back from seeing Adam Sisman talk about his Hugh Trevor-Roper biog at Topping's. Not such a big crowd as usual, but Robert was there to introduce him and there was a very animated and thorough Q&A session afterwards. I was particularly interested in Sisman because of his earlier biog of AJP Taylor, who was one of my heroes in the Sixth Form doing modern history A Level. The book is not cheap @ £25, so it's going on the wishlist to wait for the paperback.

And in other news...I raised £15 for the DEC Pakistan Flood appeal from selling cakes and plants at work this week.