Books looking at the big apple

Is it possible to find a city where ideas grow and apple trees thrive? Or is sustainability and the opportunity of being-true-to-yourself a too difficult match for urban planners? Words by Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs). 

Review of two interesting books. The Apple Orchard by Pete Brown
and What we talk about when we talk about cities (and love) by Andy Merrifield.

Deep love of a place isn’t a given. So many people grow up in the sort of car-dominated suburbia where place has been so subsumed by the individual’s own home that love of place is dying. Small wonder that most suburban-raised children’s dream is to escape for the bright lights where things actually happen. Or they believe they do: punk, celebrity, academia, riches… 

At their best cities are a place where you can live your authentic self. The village gossip (in the club/pub/tube) is admiring, not judgmental. Chance meetings turn out to be a pleasure when there are millions of people you don’t know surrounding you.

Many writers who’ve escaped the smallness of the burbs, or the dullness of what they feel is provincial, fall very passionately for big city living. I’ve just finished reading Andy Merrifield’s What we talk about when we talk about cities (and love)and come away with a simmering set of thoughts about how to live well in crowded places. Merrifield’s book (perhaps more rightly an extended essay) tends to the philosophical, but we get this via his own life’s journey and obsessions with Marshall Berman (and thus New York), city soul-searching and his romance with fellow university colleague, Corinna. The book is much deeper than this summary though and sometimes I found it hard to follow, mostly because I wasn’t aware of Marshall Berman’s work. And, whisper it, I’m not that fond of New York. Or music. Sorry....

That said, I’m a city lover too – minute exploring the small corners of big places is my particular passion. I wanted to read this book to find out more about making cities work well for people, but that’s not the book Merrifield is writing, so I can hardly criticise him for this. 

A working class lad from Liverpool, often selfish and with scant interest in the past is an interesting guide to the cities he loves. His book takes us without apology through his often whaaaaat! behaviour (eg, dating a university student with such carelessness about his own lecturer power; insisting on going out on his own the night he arrives home to NYC after the long weekly commute from his uni job in Boston) but it also introduced me to an intellectual and predominantly male world of city talk shop. There is a softer side to the book, the love story of course, but also his friendship with aging Berman and a fascinating re-look at the work of Jane Jacobs. Her book The Death and Life of Great American cities is full of ideas, mocked by many back then, still has a big impact on some eco-thinkers and those who wish cities to be more people-friendly..

Merrifield doesn’t leave the city much – not in this book at any rate. In contrast another city resident, Londoner Pete Brown, clearly loves his urban base but adds extra energy writing about The Apple Orchard precisely because he has to leave the city to tell his story. I bought this book – in a Stoke Newington wine shop where you can refill your reds and olive oil - to give to my brother, who lives in the countryside and has an orchard. Actually, I think you only need five trees to claim this title… It was nearly autumn and I imagined he’d find it fascinating, and possibly helpful, before the great juicing he organises with friends and family each year. 

The chapters are divided into neat sections – as if slicing an apple with a pocket knife - through blossoming, fruiting, ripening, harvesting, celebrating, transforming, slumbering, taking us on Brown’s journey around the orchards.  In real life this urbanite does a lot of cider tasting and is, bizarrely, allergic to apples. But this particular set of twists gives him a unique voice. I rushed through this book, savouring the weather, the trees, the technique (unchanged for 2000 years), the people.  

As a bonus the apple world breeds characters and Brown’s interviews let us get to know the people well enough to both sympathise with their approaches and reveal the tribalism that afflicts the apple world. Every specialist world maybe?

Both books were an adventure for me. From Apple Orchard I learnt more about these wonderful trees (and a surprising amount about mythical Eden which probably didn’t have an apple when it was first dreamt up, because apples were not then in the Middle East – their birthplace is central Asia). From What we talk about when we talk about cities (and love) I upped my modernistic knowledge and puzzled over the many different ways people can love cities. I can’t imagine enjoying chatting with Merrifield but his passion for cities isn’t so dissimilar than mine, it’s just we have different ways of loving them - I like the closeness, the village feel within them, the possibility of sustainability. He likes the adventure, the grit, the music, the deep thought and the way you can thrive without "hellos" from every street corner. He likes following his heroes too. 

But that ability for such a range of people to live happily (or just live) in a city is of course Merrifield's starting point.

But are cities still working well? Can you still love them if you yearn for a more people-friendly type of living?

Cities thrive thanks to diversity of ideas, income and people; they are spoilt if dominated by the rich taking over all those crumby places the poor meet, artists colonise and the explorers discover. Living in a city ought to offer the chance to meet people very different from yourself without having to “buy” the experience as a tourist or buy out the "others". At their best a crowded city becomes more friendly - a place we squeeze past each other in the coffee shops, meet as volunteers or bump into each other in the street where kids can play safely. This doesn't really happen yet, and to do that successfully people in cities have to forgo that bit of personal privacy Merrifield so loves and communicate better with each other. 

I write as an eco bunny and my dream is that such conversations - cautious at first, then maybe properly deep - can be enjoyed under newly planted apple trees lining a car-calmed street. Or maybe under the blossoming canopies starting to spring up on the grassy strips between estate blocks thanks to groups like The Orchard Project who love both apples and towns. 

So two good books: both written by men and possibly best given to men. Perhaps like me (not a man!) they are a perfect pair to offer as a present and get some fascinating conversations going? Let me know what you think of them.

The Apple Orchard: the story of our most English Fruitby Pete Brown (Particular books, £!6.99)

What we talk about when we talk about cities (sand love) |Andy Merrifield (OR Books,

Blind love: Munnings the horse painter

The village of Dedham is in a sublimely pretty corner of Essex  - especially on an autumn day. Many tourists come here on an art pilgrimage seeking to find out more about two artists with deep connections to this East Anglian landscape. Many of us are familiar with Constable and his famous horse-drawn 'Haywain', painted at nearby Flatford Mill, but what about the equestrian artist Alfred Munnings (1878-1959)? Words by Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs).

Books about Munnings at the Munnings Art Museum shop.
Munnings excelled as a plein air painter, capturing the good times and summer light,
and starring beautiful horses, girls in frothy dresses, canvases filled with gypsy life,
backdrops of the River Stour countryside, racehorses. 

I love horses but they are horrible to draw: those sleek limbs bend so awkwardly when my pencil tries to fix them to paper. And their hooves! How does a horse stand on such a little sloping triangle? These are not questions you need to ask when you see the work of Alfred Munnings hanging at his dream home, Castle House just outside Dedham which is now an art gallery so packed with his realist horse canvases that you can almost smell the sweet hay breath of his subjects.

If you know your horses you can see the thickened tendons of a racehorse turned hunter, the tucked up posture of a horse on the first world war front line, the tail flick of a gypsy pony brushing away a summer fly. But mostly Munnings paints the most beautiful horses, at peak condition. A lot of these are his own horses. Perhaps his most famous works are the race starts (which bizarrely I find I confuse with Degas' paintings) and the colourful carnival of travellers at Epsom Down during Derby race week or at horse fairs like Lavenham in nearby Suffolk.

As a bonus the Munnings Art Museum has a wonderful cafe, which opens two hours before the exhibition. The food is terrific and the setting bucolic - green lawns, green fields, birdsong.

My wife, My horse and Myself by AJ Munnings. This painting has been criticised as
"defiantly British" so it's is quite a nice touch that the horse's name was Antichrist.  (c) Munnings Art Museum

This is easy art: Munnings had an eye for beauty with a happy focus on horses and good looking women. Even for that period he was considered rather old-fashioned, although that didn't stop him liking a party. Born on 8 October in 1878, Munnings was brought up in a mill, just like the one Constable painted in The Haywain (Flatford Mill). His natural artistic skills saw him apprenticed to a lithograph printer at 14 years old. Over the years he developed a conservative style that many art critics lampooned. At the same time he had real antipathy to modern art (eg, Picasso, Henry Moore, Salvador Dali). Indeed his resigning speech as the President of the Royal Academy, in 1949, focussed exactly on modern art's limitations. It didn't go down that well with the diners.

Munnings was embroiled in the hunting set and made a good deal of money doing expensive portraits for the Belvoir Hunt followers, and others. His first big London show was in 1913, Horses, Hunting & Country Life at Leicester Galleries. By the 1920s he could charge £500 a canvas, which is £21,000 in today's money.

He met his second wife Violet McBride, who loved to hunt, at Richmond horse show. They married in 1920. She clearly brought him social status and many equestrian commissions.

He bought his first horse when he was in his 20s and kept riding until the end off his life. Munnings knew how much he owed to his horses (quoted in the book pictured above AJ Munnings by Stanley Booth on sale at the Munnings Art Museum): "Although they have given me much trouble and many sleepless nights, they have been my supporters, friends - my destiny in fact. Looking back at my life, interwoven with theirs - painting them, feeding them, riding them, thinking about them - I hope that I have learned something of their ways. I have never ceased to understand them."

Munnings Museum is in this yellow painted house. When AJ Munnings moved
here he called it his "dream home".

At the collection my friend Eugenie and I quickly found favourites. Eugenie loved Shrimp, the young traveller man often painted on a cheeky grey Welsh pony called Augereau.

I fell for a showstopper, painted in 1932 - My Wife, My Horse and Myself. It's a conceited but beautiful painting of Lady Munnings riding sidesaddle on a stylish English thoroughbred outside her beautiful country home. To the side her proud husband smiles by a canvas of the same painting. It's a show off portrait of Munnings' possessions, capturing the swank (albeit horse-centred) lifestyle of this miller boy-made-establishment. It also owes plenty to the then popular hunting writer, Surtees who barked (surely he must have barked!): "Three things I never lend - my 'boss, my wife and my name". It was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1935, a rocky time in British finances, which might well be why it's also been dubbed: "the most defiantly British picture of the 20th century". Strangely it's the sort of insult that Munnings would have been taken as a compliment.

Painters Constable and Munnings would still recognise the River Stour at
Flatford Mill, just in Suffolk. It's now a very popular tourist spot.

I'm a huge fan of dog and horse portraiture, so it's always been painful to me that the late Victorian and early Edwardian animal painters, in particular Munnings but also Landseer (who painted Monarch of the Glen) and the stunning equestrian artist Heywood Hardy, all fell out of fashion as the shock of the new art exerted its magnetic pull. Country life may not have ended in the 1930s, but these days it feels as over as the time when families crowded into the mill cottages, six sharing a bedroom, and never left the county, never mind the country. You can see exactly what I mean if you also have time to visit little Bridge Cottage, now a National Trust property (free entry) a few miles over the fields at Flatford Mill.

But that doesn't stop a real sense of joy when you see Munnings' wonderful paintings - this collection has more than 4000  - in his old home in this elegant Georgian family house. It's a visual delight to go into every room, and the studio, and see pictures which such a strong sense of place (there are around 150 on display).

I've been longing to see Munnings' paintings, but took my time figuring out
how to get from Manningtree train station, Essex (seen here with a glowing sunset).
 

Munnings' work can be written off as sentimental or chocolate-boxy (if you really don't like horses that is) but he had such grit. Next year expect a complete rehang as Castle House is taken over by the portraits Munnings did in 1918 of the Canadian Cavalry Brigade as a war artist on the front line in France.

Munnings, by then pushing 40, has been blinded when he was just 19. For most of us a thorn striking your eye would be a life disaster. For a teenager starting out on his artistic career, without much money behind him, this should have signalled the end. Somehow Munnings overcame the disability forcing his sole good eye to let him paint well - damn well - again.

Gallop over to see his paintings in the house where he lived if you get the chance. And don't forget to take a break at the Garden Cafe.

How to get there: An early autumn day was perfect for the four or so mile walk across the
water meadows from Manningtree station via Flatford Mill (plus 20 more minutes from Dedham village). A friend with a car was a bonus. There are also taxis from Manningtree and a bus (see Munnings Art Museum website, then double check with coach provider).

• More info at https://www.munningsmuseum.org.uk 
• Address: Castle House, Castle Hill, Dedham, Colchester, Essex CO7 6AZ. Admission £10. Currently on show, permanent collection and wonderful paintings of days out in wooden row boats, Munnings and the River.
• Munnings Art Museum closes for the winter on 31 October 2018 and reopens on 23 March 2019 with Alfred Munnings' WW1 Canadian Paintings (admission £8).
• Check Garden Cafe opening times cafe@munningsmuseum.org.uk, tel: 01206 322127 (option 5) 

This changes everything: history makers

Is there a bit of England you are passionate about and why? Looking at the new Historic England publication, A History of England in 100 Places, is a wonderful way to explore. Words by Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs).

Recommended: new book from Historic England.

Growing up in a rural corner of east Hertfordshire has left me with a sentimental longing for an undulating patchwork of wheat and barley fields criss-crossed by footpaths and bridleways. In the valleys are small rivers, though another county might write them off as streams. On the top of long slow inclines are mixed hornbeam woods and they're there in the valleys too. Thinking back to the 1970s (when the golf course hadn't been built) I can see again the gamekeeper, who lived next door. He was both hero - whistling his young pheasants up for corn - and agent of horror, hanging his most recent kill on the animal gibbet in a very dark part of home wood. But thanks to him I learnt how to whistle, and confidently ID any larder of dead moles, kestrel, vixen, stoats. Two valleys away there were sheep - you could hear them bleating on the wind, In the opposite direction there were smaller turfed fields and several dairy herds.

Wandering the hedgerows you could have been in the 19th century, or 18th maybe. It wasn't hard to move far further back in time and imagine the Romans' kilns on the valley the other side of Caley Wood, as so many bit of pottery turned up in the autumn plough. Nearby was an old beamed farm house with a tower that the gentry used to watch the hunt where a 20th century bit of redecorating helped uncover Tudor wall paintings.

Another neighbour found a Saxon arrow head on his plot, then brought it to the pub for everyone to see.

Mine was an outdoors childhood in a very small corner of England which many generations have clearly lived in and loved. It's amazing how certain places just tug at your heart.

As an adult I've opted to live in London, because the city is far easier to get around and easier to find paid work. But holidays have mostly been spent exploring Britain, thinking as much about who used to live there back in the day, as what's on offer to enjoy now. That's why I love this new publication by Historic England, A History of England in 100 Places, which cherry picks 100 fascinating places where "irreplaceable" history has happened. Not so much the growing up, more the changes that move life forward.

In all 4,000 people nominated a swathe of the places they love best and then 10 experts  (TV history gurus/celebs including Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson and Mary Beard) whittled down a short list. Lists are meant to spark conversation, but for once this isn't a bucket list of places you must see, which would obviously include Stonehenge and Windsor Castle (as the book does). Instead it's picking out places where momentous things happened which changed the way we live.

At the book launch guests could also look around the
V&A sculpture court. An amazing place for a party.

At the very glam launch party - held in the V&A - one of English Heritage's researchers told me his favourite entry was the Brown Firth research laboratories in Sheffield where stainless steel was accidentally invented. Key note speaker included Tristtam Hunt, the former Labour MP, who now runs the V&A. He was shameless in loving the Middleport potteries entry from his old constituency in Stoke-on-Trent.

I was fascinated by the story of the Euston Arch (the entrance to Euston station) which was pulled down in an act of vandalism in 1961, and is now rubble in a bit of River Lea infill. But it was a wake up call to conservationists about the need to organise better.

And because it's a people's choice, there are chapters which retell the things that working people have had to endure, instead of the super rich. That's how I found out that sad-looking, boarded up Farfield Inn was blasted by the Great Sheffield Flood of 1864, a failed reservoir which killed 240+ people and flattened 600 houses. Ultimately this changed the way reservoirs were built and began a debate about corporate responsibility, but it's not yet a well-known story. 

Also find out about the first railway bridge, built in 1825 for Stockton & Darlington railway which was founded to serve the coal industry. Skerne Bridge is just  a single stone arch in the centre of Darlington, but it's so beloved by locals that they nominated it for every single category.

I sense that this book is going to work hard in my family. It will sit on the kitchen table and be something we argue over deciding on which places to visit, ideally without crowds. Virtual travel is always fun, but I think this book's focus on people and place may even inspire us to actually go to see what the fuss is about. All in all a perfect book with its mix of tourism, English heritage and populist vote. My only regret is that Hertfordshire gets such poor coverage - it's really a beautiful county with more stories in the landscape than even the Brothers Grimm could recall.

• A History of England in 100 Places (Historic England, £20) by Philip Wilkinson

Searching for English Civil War sites of 1642

A quest to find more info about the first battle of the English Civil War at Edge Hill in Warwickshire is thwarted. Or is it? Words by Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs).

It’s lucky I didn’t do home schooling for the whole of my daughters’ educational life. I say this because me and Nell, who has just finished lower sixth, have just spent a whole day trying to find the site of probably one of Britain’s best known civil war battle sites at Edge Hill in Warwickshire. By the end of our hunt we weren’t sure we’d actually seen it… 

Part of the reason Edge Hill – which I know from the internet is big and obvious – is hard to spot is because it’s Ministry of Defence land.  And from experience anyone who is looking for a battlefield will know that years later they are just fields, often with zero clues about the terrible things that happened there. 

Ok, so I couldn’t find a battle site. But it was only because my daughter was studying the English civil war (Roundheads v Cavaliers) that I even heard about Edge Hill. Just in case you didn’t know either it was fought on 23 October in 1642. That’s the sort of easy to memorise date that people use for padlock codes and burglar alarms, but still I didn’t know it!

From the roof at Broughton Castle looking over the
knot garden and moat. What a view. Imagine it with
the Cavalier army coming to get you...

Anyway, Edge Hill was the first of the civil war battles. The Royalists (fighting for Charles 1) won and then headed to the moated Broughton Castle, outside Banbury, in Oxfordshire, to deal with the Parliamentarians living there.  

Over the next four years, fighting was up and down the country with significant battles at Marston Moor in Yorkshire (2 July, 1644) and Naesby, Northamptonshire (14 June, 1645). 

Edge Hill is meant to have a sign commemorating the battle and there’s a four mile walk around it and a 15 mile drive… but we don’t have access to a car and we got rather lost on our walk from the nearby National Trust big house, Upton House.

A key place to visit might have been the Castle Inn (built 100 years after the battle so Prince Rupert did not stay there) which is on the 6 bus route from Stratford-upon-Avon… but the extremely helpful bus driver urged us to hop off at Ratley, just before Castle Inn so we’d be more easily able to find Upton House. And so we missed that commemorative spot.

Distracted from our civil war mission by 1920s
dressing up glamour at Upton House.

On the plus side, Upton House is an easy place to get distracted. Bought by a family with money in 1927 there’s no link to the civil war but plenty of show and tell about the ways soaking an English country house with cash and employing a famous architect (Percy Morely Horder) can make a drafty set of bricks utterly gorgeous. For a few hours we were living in the 1920s imagining invites to a sporting winter weekend with cocktails and chat about art, followed by billiards, squash and maybe a ride out towards that elusive Edge Hill.  

Lord Bearsted made his money as chairman of Shell. Most National Trust houses are filled with bits and bobs from old aristocracy, this one really isn’t. Instead there’s an incredible art collection (the old squash court ended up becoming a gallery) and the most amazing red and silver 1920s jazz bathroom. Along one corridor, which has several rooms of Country Lifecover displays and holidaying on the Riveria, there’s also an impressive collection of Shell posters.

The guides at Upton House do a clever job of keeping their visitors busy. Nell and I were offered a free half hour intro to the house at 12.10pm (which was fab) and then a self-guided tour at 1.10pm. That gave us just enough time to visit the coffee shop, buy a few nick knacks and try to figure out how to get to Edge Hill.

This proved tricky. The heat was one thing (this is the summer of 2018 and relentless 28+ degree days). Figuring out where the bus stopped was another. The National Trust staff/vols, bless them, tried to help but had an old timetable (we knew this because we’d been on the 6 on our journey to the house) which no longer offered a bus at the end of the driveway.  We tried asking for a lift (the cheeky version of hitching) but it was always going to be random if we’d strike lucky or not. We didn’t although several people kindly offered us lifts to Banbury.

Tysoe church in the middle distance. I'm teaching my daughter to find
rural bus stops by following steeples. She thinks I'm very strange.

Optimists to the end, we figured we could walk, see the battlefield, and catch our bus at the village of Tysoe taking us back to AirBnb in Stratford-upon-Avon.

And that’s what we did. It’s just that we think we missed the battlefield and we found the NT map didn’t seem to match the walkers’ footpath signs in the fields. One wheat field was being harvested which was fascinating for my city-living daughter to see the size of modern bales. Under our feet were huge cracks thanks to this summer’s drought. We found a bridleway hugging the top of a hanging wood which gave us glimpses through the trees of a panoramic Warwickshire and then left us a bit confused. 

Looking back towards the wood edge and beyond that
Upton House.

Luckily a lovely woman on a private road stopped her car, sorted us out by pointing towards the Tysoe village church spire and we managed to make it. I can’t correct the map we took off the NT website (which did at least give me some idea about a possible route) as we used instinct relying on the knowledge that as the British landscape was worked in previous centuries by 40 per cent of the workforce, there are always a lot of footpaths that take you in the direction of a village, pub or farm.  Not that this is clear these days as local parishes/counties change the signs to numbers without any clue as to what these numbers mean. What crazy person would give a footpath the name of a bus route? Clearly not one (like me) who hopes to reach a particular point but doesn’t necessarily bring a compass, up to date OS map and 4G.

There are times when the countryside feels like it’s been taken over by men. There’s the ever-faster roads, the obsession with driving, the numerical routes (actually not obvious here in Warwickshire), the computerised/mechanised farming, the vast scale of every field, the super-size kit (tractors, balers, combine harvesters). In short a lack of human scale and – dare I say it a slight obsession with guns, as per the Game Show held the previous weekend nearby at Ragley Hall, Worcestershire.

But for us, thankful to find the 7 at Tysoe (a huge thank you to that bus driver) enjoying the view as we are driven through villages of Tudor-built houses, thatched cottages, pretty front gardens and optimistically-advertised church teas and dog shows at the weekend and suddenly the world is less gender-segregated again. It’s Oh Comely andSimple Thingsversus Dog and Gun.

The Civil War would make a great tour for the thousands of Y12 and Y13 students who study it. It would be interesting for its own sake, but I struggled to find either a tour or a simple way to make this happen. Instead we tourists get passed from visitor honey trap to honey trap. For me and Nell this was beautiful big old houses and the story of Shakespeare’s life and work in Stratford upon Avon – a market town with a lot of shops, cafes, the RSC theatre and 2-3 million visitors annually. 

Beautiful Warwickshire panorama - Edge Hill possibly away
in the far distance on the right.

Maybe I’m bitter because I couldn’t find Edge Hill. But I do wish tourism could be less expensive in the UK and involve far less hours checking bus timetables. I’m not even sure that buying or renting a car would resolve the challenge of getting to know a place properly. My dream is for 1000+ years of history and the characters who lived there to be brought alive by locals explaining the ways that national obsessions (eg, the civil war, banning slavery, London gossip, workable wifi) have impacted on life.  I know the info just hangs on – Tysoe is a corruption of old English and probably refers to a figure of a horse cut into the hill, hence the current area’s name Vale of the Red Horse. It was there in 1607 but is now long lost.  Wikipedia was my learned friend, but where else I could find this info I’m not sure. Villages move with the time, but so much detail is lost that tourists/historynoughts might well enjoy.

To be fair you could say the same about where I live in London. The difference is that no one goes on holiday to Finsbury Park. At least I don’t think they do…

• Broughton Castle, Oxon (near Banbury) is open Wednesday and Sunday afternoons Fantastic place, privately owned. We used a taxi from Banbury station (cost approx £10 one way).
• Upton House and gardens, Warwickshire, run by the National Trust As I've got a NT card it's always fun visiting big houses. This one has many stand out features. Reach it be bus 6 or 7 from either Banbury or Stratford upon Avon. But you will have to walk about half a mile along the road from Radway. it was a nice walk! Or find a way across the fields from Castle Inn (we didn't try this but we should have done).
• Buses 6 7 & from Banbury to Stratford-Upon-Avon are run by Stagecoach (but will be switching to Johnsons later 2018)
• More about the village of Tysoe, Warwickshire.

How to meditate with children using the epic Gita story

BOOK REVIEW: An imaginatively retold version of the Gita battle helps 8-14 year old children learn to recognise their emotions and may also introduce them to ways to repair their mental health via meditation. Words by Nicola Baird - see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs

The book cover of Gita: the battle of the worlds.

A few years ago I took my mum and her sister to see the Mahabharata performed as a contemporary/Kathak dance at Sadler’s Wells. It was a whirl of colour and culture  attempting to take the Mahabharata, an epic Indian poem about the struggle for power between two groups of cousins, the Pandavas and Kauravas who battle for the throne of Hastinapura, to a new dance audience. It was an ambitious task: the story is apparently seven times the length of Homer’s The Illiad and The Odyssey combined. I suspect the Mahabharata is never easy to follow but my mum was totally foxed by this show. “I wish they’d made it easier to understand,” she said and I remember crushingly (wittily?) saying well it was written in 4BC so we ought to be able to follow the main storyline by now.

Here’s another India story basic Gita: the battle of the worlds taken from the Mahabharata canon. I’m self-conscious about trying to follow the story for you my readers, but suspect the back stories are just too much for me. This is no surprise given my knowledge of all things Hindu is exceedingly limited. However this new children’s book is described as a “reimagined adventure story transporting the sacred Hindu verse of the Gita [which comes from the Mahabharata] into a book that is relevant to everybody’s life”. Well, that’s the press release anyway. And I reckon it succeeds.

The Gita tour via blog sites.

The tale focuses on the battle for good and evil played out within the headspace (actually the body) of an 11-year-old boy, Dev whose father has recently died. Dev is a raging emotional wreck. But the battle is between two Princes, Ego (yeah, get that!) and Arjun (our good guy who has Krishna on side). It’s all reported by a sprite-like being, Sanjay.

There is a lot to suspend disbelief over, but actually the story works well as a read-aloud children’s tale. It’s magical, bloody and there are fun moments when your listener might recognise a swamp as a stinky digesting stomach, Ego as a villain or that their own unryuly feelings can be tamed by acknowledgement and meditation.  

The story is illustrated by a pattern master, Soumitra Ranade and you could possibly use some of the pictures for colouring in. 

My favourite image is a flashback of Dev’s handsome father meditating with the Rudrasksha Kriya beads in his right hand. By the end of the story Dev has found a way to deal with his anger and located his own quiet place. It is beautifully described as “like moving from a room in which telephones rang constantly and computer screens flashed and autorickshaws beeped and heat and cold and hunger nagged… to a simple, quiet place, where a single soft breeze whispered up and down his spine.” Who wouldn’t want that feeling of quiet contentment?

Jemma Wayne is a Woman’s Prize listed author. Sonal Sachdev Patel is a British born Indian Hindu that has been meditating for over 25 years. With a friendship that has spanned over thirty years, Jemma and Sonal have danced as toddlers in ballets together, studied alongside one another at Cambridge University and now have worked together on this epic story. With Sonal spear-heading Gita expertise and insight, and Jemma taking the lead on the book’s text, the result was a truly collaborative work, made all the more meaningful by the history and understanding between its creators. Each with two daughters, Sonal and Jemma are feminists and both strive to incorporate ways to speak out on important issues within their careers.

For an introduction to a section of the Mahabharata, taking in battles and poetry this version of Gita: the battle of the worlds is a gentle start and one I’d be happy to read and reread aloud. 

More importantly it introduces a very powerful idea about a meditative way to deal with the sort of adversity in life that there is nothing one can do about. Here the cause is a dead father and being forced to move house - easy for a youngster to spot. The symptoms of an over-active brain pounding poor Dev with misery as he recalls lost friends, tricky exams and an irritating younger sibling will also be easy to recognise, and talk about. 

For any child who has ever felt injustice (you’ll know because they’ll tell you that “it’s not fair”) this is a beautiful learning tool. Congratulations to the authors.

Gita: the battle of the worlds

Sonal Sachdev Patel & Jemma Wayne-Kattan

Harper Collins, £7.99

Getting to know Hughenden Manor, near High Wycombe

National Trust membership is a brilliant way to explore and get some basic history, access to lovely gardens and treat yourself to delicious tea and cake. Most recent trip was to Hughenden Manor, two miles from High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. Words by Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs).

The monument for Disraeli at Hughenden Manor built by his wife.
On this trip Pete (my husband), our daughter Nell and our dog.

Before I had children I promised myself I would never send my kids to a boarding school, unless I hated them. I was 11 when I made this promise! Now that my daughters are 20 and 17 I can admit that my views did change. Of course there's a right time and right reasons to send children to boarding school, but I'm so glad that mine didn't go and were able to use state schools locally. And those kids I know who've been to boarding school (or private schools) seem less like they live in a privileged bubble.

When I was 11 I was sent to a girls boarding school, Wycombe Abbey in Buckinghamshire. I'd never visited it before I arrived with my boater and trunk. Thankfully there was one girl in the same year (still a friend) who'd come from the same old school as me, but I don't remember much else about this school that suited me. In fact my memory is that it was a self-satisfied place that prided itself on producing clever young women which it had picked thanks to their high marks in the 11+. Given that we were a generation who probably were all going to want to (and even have to) work it was strange that marriage was seen as a high priority too. A careers advisor in my fifth form year suggested I should be a farm secretary and learn to do accounts so I could marry a farmer with horses! The lack of ambition offered was pathetic. The lack of pastoral care was close to criminal.

With so many clever, parent-pleaser girls the students were miserably competitive about their grades and anorexia was rife.

My mum talks about her horrible boarding school (a different one) with real affection and humour. It was the girls against rather grim staff. My experience at Wycombe Abbey was a strange deprivation of life's good things - love, humour, food and freedom.  The saving grace was its astonishing Buckinghamshire location. It is still there, one of the country's top girls' private schools, right in the middle of High Wycombe, dominating one hillside of this valley town with its parkland. The boarding house I lived in was located a half mile steep walk from the school buildings reached by a path that took us through a mature beech wood. You couldn't hear traffic and yet it was obvious that on the other side of the wall there was a real world happening.

I left after O levels to attend a different sixth form and really didn't take any friends with me (eg, those intense letter writing, lots of visiting friends). I did at least get removed from an environment I found toxic and went to a sixth form I much preferred which had far less rules and unkindnesses.

It's a shame about the friendships as I remember my Dad promising that he was sending me to boarding school so I would meet lots of people who'd be lifelong friends. I'm sure my own personality had plenty to do with that friendship gap, but when I see the tightness of my teenage daughters' friendships I can see how harmful that must have been. No surprise that for years the words High Wycombe made me shudder. I'd have panic attacks seeing the signs if I was driven past the turn-off on the M40.

No wonder I didn't go and visit the lovely countryside in the area... and then in 2017 we joined the National Trust. It was one of those, OK, "I should just do this" decisions and it's been great. Sutton Hoo in Suffolk was a two day explore. But around High Wycombe, which is just 30 minutes train ride from London, there are some breathtaking Chiltern days out.

Dogs aren't allowed into NT properties so we went for a walk
in the shady woods while Pete viewed the inside of Hughenden Manor.

Hughenden Manor was owned by Benjamin Disraeli (who became the Earl of Beaconsfield), who for some reason was my favourite Victorian PM (actually Queen Victoria's favourite too). The National Trust runs the house now. Visitors can also enjoy the walled veg garden, a formal garden you can play croquet on, a picnic orchard (lovey!) and endless signposted walks in the woods. At the viewpoint over the valley two red kites were circling. It was magical.

When I was incarcerated in Buckinghamshire there were no red kites - they were reintroduced to the Chilterns between 1989 and 1994. Nowadays it is hard to avoid spotting red kites in this area and sobering to think that it was during Disraeli's time they were driven to extinction.

Disraeli was born in 1804, made a love-match marriage (with a widow) and had no children. Politically he was a Conservative (his rival Gladstone a Whig). He was the one who likened politics to climbing a greasy pole. Disraeli is wrongly known as Britain's first Jewish PM, conveniently forgetting that his father had converted his family to Christianity when Benjamin was about 11 years. In many ways Disraeli was similar to Boris Johnson - an outsider (who'd done all the insider things), multi-talented and a politician known for wit and writing (Sybil: or the two nations  by Disraeli, looks at the contrasting lives of rich and poor Victorians).

Even now his Buckinghamshire house feels like a home with its generous entrance hall, modest-sized rooms (compared to a stately home) and a cosy upstairs study which Disraeli allegedly preferred to work in than the formal library crammed with books.

Amazing viewpoint plus two red kites circling (though my camera didn't pick
this up, sorry!).

After a good look at the rooms and a top floor packed with the gifts Queen Victoria gave Disraeli, which weren't always that nice but he was clearly flattered, as intended, we walked up to the memorial Disraeli's wife, Mary Anne, created on the estate, one hill from the house. Goodness knows how she kept the building of it a secret, but the memorial now does offer a fabulous view towards his house and the couple's bedroom with its big picture of Victoria and Albert over the fireplace. On the walk to the memorial there were 11 red kites circling the bailer machines which was both amazing, and slightly sinister - they are of course looking for the many animals that get killed when farmers' harvest.

During this super hot weather it was lovely to be out of London on a Saturday, enjoying a lazy look around a very beautiful place. At the tea shop (in the stable courtyard) our dog seemed to attract the attention of lots of other families, many of whom had driven over to Hughenden Manor from London. It was certainly a change to be in a place that's not a knock-em out destination (like Churchill's home or historically significant like Sutton Hoo) nor on a tourist route so there were less visitors, which meant it was easier to have a really good look around the building.

We bought a BBC series about Disraeli's premiership in the gift shop because... well, I still spend a significant amount of time (and money) thinking about ways to educate my children without them realising film night is actually a crash course in history. And that just might be an unexpected - and happy - legacy from my own unhappy school days.


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BASICS: High Wycombe area

One hour from London, with a railway station on a hill and a massive fortress (girls's school, Wycombe Abbey formerly owned by the Carrington family) dominating one hilly side of the town. Apart from this aberration (the screamingly obvious rich/poor divide) the town is very dull but the countryside around is amazing. Buckinghamshire is wealthy commuter belt as you'll notice - everyone seems to drive.

Easy journey? Yes. High Wycombe 30 mins from London Marylebone

Ticket - weekend Network South East off peak

Highlight? this is the Chilterns an area of outstanding natural beauty, there's lots to see and discover. A National Trust membership is a bonus.

Wish list? Take a bike and explore the nearby beech woods.

Winchester pleasures: cathedral, pubs and easy to use guided maps

Ways to enjoy Winchester - one time capital of Britain - by foot or bike. Words by Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs).

Sun, sunglasses and the great Winchester Cathedral
to explore. (c) aroundbritainnoplane

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BASICS: Winchester

One hour from London, heaps of museums and green space. It's already popular with tourists, the University of Southampton has a campus here and it's a good place to wander.

Easy journey? Yes. Winchester - 60 mins from London Waterloo (train has trolley service)

Ticket - weekday off peak £36.40 return

History? Knock out from the train station

Highlight? Head to the High Street (pedestrianised) then right towards Cathedral close. Or down to King Alfred's statue and the ruins of Wolvesey Castle.

Wish list? Rent a bike and explore the Viaduct Way.

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It’s Monday and I’m in Winchester on business. It doesn’t feel right: the sun is beating down and every other shop seems to be a café or pub with tempting outdoor sitting. Soon we are drawn into Greens Bar, 4 Jewry Street, with the pretty floor tiles reminding us that this used to be the Matisse Café, where the staff are fabulously friendly. Then during the search for cheap sunglasses I meet a man cheerfully selling Royal Wedding editions of the Big Issue, near the Buttercross who promises that he’ll be over to Windsor for the big day. It's a friendly city.

I’ve only been to Winchester once before – crazy, as it is just one hour by train from London – and that was a December mini-break when the Winchester shoppers were again distracted by eateries, but these were pop ups around an ice rink in the gardens by the cathedral.

But now that Winchester Tourism Information Centre has sent me a new link to all the things you can do here, I’ll be exploring it again. One lovely idea is to take a self-guided walk around various Winchester locations. The sunset tour, approx one and a quarter miles, looks a lovely route passing St Giles Hill, The Weirs and the Abbey Gardens. 

Memorial to Jane Austen in Winchester
Cathedral. (c) aroundbritainnoplane

There are also routes for church lovers, history watchers and the literati with Winchester links. I like the look of the tour for Jane Austen fans which takes you to her old home, now a museum, in Chawton, Hampshire. 

You can also find Jane Austen's grave stone and a memorial brass in the cathedral without leaving Winchester. Forgotten what she looks like? Then scrutinise a tenner.

Winchester is famous for being one of England’s former capitals and home of King Alfred the Great (who burnt the cakes). It’s a medieval city which has plenty of green space and is dominated by the amazing cathedral built around the time of Henry VII. Inside, as well as Jane Austen’s grave, you can find a tomb to a fly fisherman - little known fact fly fishing was developed on the River Itchen which flows through the city. 

My favourite spot was the hole in the wall where pilgrims queued up, then crawled into so they could see St Swithin, the former Bishop renowned for curing boils, various nasties and even making dropped eggs whole again. And that was before his posthumous miracle working reputation.

Entry to the cathedral is £8.50 (adult no discount). It’s a breathtaking building inside (and you can always go in for free if you join one of the many daily services). Once you've paid for your ticket, you can get value for money simply by joining an hour-long guided tour, possibly climb the tower stairs for a huge view of Winchester, or just wander with a floorplan until one of the many cathedral guides take pity on you and give you a guided insight to their little patch. We struck lucky and saw the alter screen in a way that turned exquisite carvings into the stories of the saints - all pointed out with a torch beam of green intensity. 

I really should have known by now that St Peter carries the keys of heaven and St Paul carries a sword. But I got the chance to learn that St Swithin’s special object is a bridge.  It gets you thinking about what object symbolises your lifestyle – reusable bag? Coffee mug? Pen? Or more likely mobile phone which certainly achieves miracles. For example, you can ping on to this link and explore more of Winchester’s great outdoors at bit.ly/2jKkRYy 

(supplied by the Tourist Info Centre).

WHAT’S ON10 June: Cycle at Winchester Criterium & CycleFest
Winchester’s city centre streets will close for cycling, racing, and family activities. The 1 km circuit race weaves through Winchester's city centre. First event is the Family Cycle Ride at 9.45am (Registration).  Cyclists start at the top of the High Street, wind their way past the cathedral, then climb the long uphill to the finishing line.

Anytime tour Viaduct Way
Once a freight and passenger railway, Viaduct Way is now part of the National Cycle Route Network Route 23. It passes the Victorian Guildhall, City Mill, Bishop's Palace, and old railway embankment then continues along the River Itchen, famous for its trout, moorhens, and wild flowers.  You can rent bikes from Bespoke Biking, a social enterprise set up to get more people cycling in Winchester, see https://bespokebiking.com or call 01962 441962 which is on the lower floor of the Brook’s Shopping Centre. All sorts available including tagalongs (good for kids) and tandems (good for stories).

Let me know your tips for Winchester visits.