Sunday, 7 November 2010

Inter-War Reading

I've just finished a book I really enjoyed, The House at Riverton, by Kate Morton.  It might or might not be 'chick lit' but let's just call it a historical novel.  I will read it again, of that I'm certain.  Not only that, but at the end, the author lists some of the resources she used to recreate the period and I'm planning on finding as many of those as I can.  Just in case this sort of thing interests you, I thought I'd share the book list:

The Rare and the Beautiful by Cressida Connolly









1939: The Last Season  and










The Viceroy's Daughter

by Anne deCourcy









Vita: The Life of V Sackville-West by Victoria Glendinning (I've linked the hardback version because of the image, but there are far cheaper paperbacks






The Mitford Girls by Mary S. Lovell













Life in a Cold Climate by Laura Thompson

The Bronte Myth by Lucasta Miller











Voices from the Trenches: Letters to Home by Noel Carthew








The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen








Paris 1919 by Margaret Macmillan









Forgotten Voices of the Great War by Max Arthur










A Punch History of Manners and Modes by Alison Adburgham


The Repression of the War Experience by W. H. River  (Apparently a paper published in The Lancet, a British medical publication)



(There may be music playing on this site; I wouldn't know, as my sound card is out of order...).

'Moving Frontiers and the Fortunes of the Aristocratic Townhouse' by F.M.L. Thompson (apparently a widely quoted article published in a 1995 issue of The London Journal - back issues $120 each...)

Michael Duffy's website: www.firstworldwar.com

Secondary sources:


(far cheaper in the UK than in the US)

Myself When Young by Daphne du Maurier







The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh, edited by Charlotte Mosley


Esther Wesley's account of 'Life Below Stairs at Gayhurst House (on the Stoke Goldington Association website)

The Essential Handbook of Victorian Etiquette by Professor Thomas E. Hill









Manners and Rules of Good Society or Solecisms to be Avoided, published by 'A Member of the Aristocracy', 1924.








Authors: 


(I'd never heard of the last two).


Films
UK television production Upstairs Downstairs

Guess that's my reading list for 2011 sorted!

1 comment:

BOHEMIAN CONTESSA said...

I'm so delighted to find your blog. The list you've compiled is what I have been looking for--I too, have had a much greater life than I had imagined.