Deborah Devonshire
The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett (Profile Books, £9.99) is small, short, cheap and perfect. It is a gem among the dross, without a wasted word. It conjures a picture so skilfully that whenever I see the Derbyshire County Library van in the village I see Norman and his employer inside discussing their lists of books to borrow. Several bedside copies have already been taken away by my guests. I don't blame them.
Black Diamonds by Catherine Bailey (Penguin Viking, £20) proves truth to be stranger than fiction. It tells the history of the Fitzwilliam family, with its convoluted relationships, living in royal style at Wentworth House, the biggest-by-far private house in England.
Their vast fortune came from coal — the richest seams in the country ran under their land. The most fascinating part of the story is the Fitzwilliams' relationship with the thousands of miners they employed. In spite of their wretched housing and starvation wages, the miners preferred to work for Lord Fitzwilliam than for a faceless corporation. The park at Wentworth was traditionally their recreation ground and when in 1946 Manny Shinwell proposed to despoil it with opencast to within a few yards of the house no less a man than Joe Hall, Yorkshire NUM president, wrote a letter of protest.
Even more extraordinary is the photograph of Billy Fitzbilly, 7th Earl, teaching the pit-pony drivers to play polo during the 1926 General Strike. These two occurrences seem incredible to anyone like myself who experienced the bitter 1945 election in a mining constituency and knew the feelings of the miners towards the coal owners. This is a history lesson with the oddest twists.
These two books are quite enough for one year, but there is a brilliantly edited book of letters that I cannot mention because I would have to declare an interest. Bother.
Previous page
