The Aardvark Blog

Anyone feeling like some love to warm this cold climate?
12/05/2021

It's Jenny Aardvark here updating the Aardvark Blog so Mr Aardvark can eat his soup for lunch - and does he need it! We have nearly burned through all our firewood in our (garage-sized) log shed and we can't believe that we are still need to have the wood burner running this late in the year. We have been really pleased to see all the customers who have braved the weather to come and "enjoy" their takeaway coffee and cake in the wind and rain - and sometimes the wood burner has been required to thaw them out after.

Something we have been talking about a lot this week is BBC One's Sunday prime time adaptation of the incomparable Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love. I really enjoyed the first episode (and will not be streaming it all on iplayer in one go as I need something to look forward to), whereas Mr and Mrs Aardvark have more mixed feelings. Even if the casting wasn't always "right" for our conceptions of the novel (and, honestly, pleasing everyone with this sort of adaptation would be an impossible ask) I felt the performances and most of the production values were strong enough to mean that it really didn't matter. Something that really divided the Aardvark team was the choice of music - for me it did not take anything away, even though I do actively listen to the music of the period myself, but Mr and Mrs Aardvark were not so convinced. We have had many interesting discussions on the production's take on the nature of the central relationship between Fanny and Linda. I did have to gently mention to Mr Aardvark that he may not have found it particularly relateable or realistic because he has never experienced the mixed blessing of being a 17 year old girl. As a final note on all that, I definitely feel that an adaptation is just that - and there is a lot to be said for being brave enough to produce something that is held so dear by so many with a 21st century reading of its themes and characters. If it entertains, and manages to get my 14 year old step-daughter reading Nancy Mitford, then it will have done its job as far as I am concerned!

To keep us busy during the cold and rainy weather we have put together another Bookshop.org reading list of things Mitford-related to tide everyone over and keep everyone cosy until the weather and lockdown restrictions ease. Of course, we have included some of the most famous novels of Nancy, and the correspondence and memoirs of other notable (and some notorious) Mitfords. We also wanted to include some other novels and memoirs from the period. I first started reading books from the 30s and 40s when I picked up some of my parent's vast collection of green Penguins aged 13 or so - Agatha Christie, Edmund Crispin, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham, Patricia Wentworth etc. A detective novel we decided to include on the list was Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers, which we think is an exceptional novel and addresses in its own ways several of the themes addressed in Mitford's works. Sadly, we could not find some of the books that we wanted to include on bookshop.org - they are either out of print or published by a company that are not available on their platform - but we would also like to recommend the novel Mariana by Monica Dickens, the novels They Were Sisters and The Priory by Dorothy Whipple, and the memoir First Childhood by Lord Berners (the real-life Lord Merlin) - available here at a bargain price from Aardvark!

Stay safe everyone, and don't be shy of telling us your own recomendations or opinions if you drop by the shop!