Yesterday I finished reading Jane Austen: a Life by Claire Tomalin. I’m going to write more about it in a separate post because today the sun is shining and soon I’m going out for the morning.

There are many books written about Jane Austen – thousands of volumes and tens of thousands of articles so why a write any more? But Claire Tomalin’s biographies are always excellent and this one is no exception. She writes that Jane Austen

is as elusive as a cloud in the night sky.

And yet she has written such a clear account, quoting from original sources – letters and diaries, that I now know so much more about Jane Austen than I did before. Inevitably it has made me keen to re-read her novels as soon as possible.

But that won’t be today, or tomorrow as I’m still reading those two mammoth books shown in the sidebar – When the Lights Went Out and After the Victorians. I read a little from these most days, and of the two I’m enjoying After the Victorians more. Yesterday I read about the power of the press, in particular of Lord Northcliffe over the Government in the run up to the First World War. He was both loved and loathed. Rudyard Kipling, writing for his cousin Stanley Baldwin when Leader of the opposition, likened the power of the press to “that of a harlot”.

Kipling is a fascinating character and by one of those strange coincidences that often happen his name cropped up again this morning when I was reading Geranium Cat’s post on his story Thy Servant the Dog. This then prompted me to pick up and read a couple of Kipling’s Just So Stories – How the Whale Got His Throat and How The Camel Got His Hump. I like his poem with that one – If we haven’t enough to do-oo-oo We get the hump, although I can’t go along completely with this verse

The cure for this ill is not to sit still,

Or frowst with a book by the fire;

But to take a large hoe and a shovel also,

And dig till you gently perspire.

I did the digging yesterday and much prefer sitting and reading a book!

Finally just a word or two about Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. I’m re-reading this after watching the film last Wednesday. I first read it years ago and had forgotten the detail so I enjoyed the film without that annoying thought “that’s not how it is in the book!”  But my husband had only finished reading it the day before so he knew that’s not how it is in the book!  I’ve given up expecting or even wanting films of the book to be the same as the book.