Recent reading

[luzula]

The King’s Touch by Jude Morgan (2002)
Recced by selenak. The main character of this book is Charles II of England’s illegitimate son Jemmy aka the Duke of Monmouth. If you know the history here, you know that this is not going to end happily. It's a brick, but a well written one, and I enjoyed it for the complicated relationship between Jemmy and his father--I feel like it was actually a portrait of Charles II more than of Jemmy. Also, Nell Gwyn stole every scene she was in. <3

I also read two gardening books: Permakultur: framtiden i din trädgård by Ylva, Johan, and Siri Arvidsson (2017) and Hållbar odling i Skillnadens trädgård by gardening guru Sara Bäckmo (2021). I figure it's good to read widely and get various perspectives before I get my own garden. I feel like the trend is towards the no dig method, where if you start with a grass turf, you put cardboard or something on it to stifle the grass and then dump organic material on top, then wait a while and you'll have a bed you can grow things in. I've tried this myself at the family summer place, and it works great. My mom is of the older school, where she likes to weed a lot and keep the earth bare, but I incline more towards dumping more organic material around the plants you're growing to stifle the weeds and add nutrients.

Comments

[regshoe]

The King's Touch sounds cool! I don't know the history that well, though I recognise the name... *looks up to remind myself of details* Ah, yeah, that one.

Gardening research seems to be going well :)

[luzula]

It has all sorts of resonances with the Jacobites at the time of the ’45: Charles is a penniless king in exile, but unlike his great-nephew (grand-nephew?) and namesake, he actually gets to sit on his throne. And Jemmy is an invading Whig whose rebellion is cruelly put down by James II…

[selenak]

-I feel like it was actually a portrait of Charles II more than of Jemmy

Oh, absolutely. It's one of those "Character X as seen by Character Y" narrative constructs, where the narrator isn't the main protagonist - for example, The Shawshank Redemption (where I would say Andy is the main character, though Red, the narrator, certainly is the most important supporting character), and from what I osmosed (not having read the book myself) The Great Gatsby. Hence the novel more framed by Charles' life (i.e. the section after Charles' death really all feels like an epilogue). But as I said in my original review of the book, Jemmy is an inspired choice of narrator for a novel about Charles II because he has an intense relationship with but not uncritical pov of his father, he knows all the players and the only important part of Charles' life he's not around for - the childhood and youth, by necessity -, he makes up for by having an interesting childhood himself.

Anyway, I'm glad you like the novel! And yes, Nell Gwyn did. This might just be my favourite fictional rendition of Nell that I've come across so far. (I felt somewhat let down by a recent play and by a recent novel with her as the main character. The former actually has Nell asking Charles "have you ever imagined not being a King?" (and of all the English monarchs to ask that question...) and vilifies Catherine of Braganza (WHY?), and the later tries for a post modern approach via fragmentary texts and can't really pull it off.)

[luzula]

Well, thanks for the rec, and for the interesting review on your journal! It's difficult not to be charmed by Charles II, even as he definitely has his flaws.

Somewhat related to the topic of Nell Gwynn, have you read the Comfortable Courtesan books by L A Hall, about a successful courtesan and her circle of friends in the beginning of the 19th century? They're very engaging and great comfort reading.

[selenak]

No, I haven't read it yet, though I have heard only good things, and it is on my list.

Re: Charles II, indeed, which is why he's my favourite Stuart. Mind you, I'm sure if you were an exasparated Arlington, I'm sure you'd have found it quite easy not to be charmed. (Arlington, btw, is played by Martin Freeman in the tv miniseries about Charles II which is full of memorable performances, including Rufus Sewell as Charles, Helen McCrory as Barbara Villiers and Rupert Graves as Buckingham.) Back when I first read this novel, it did send me on a spree of reading a non fictional biography of Jemmy and also the letters between Charles and Minette, as reviewed here, and the later contains this wonderful quote from Charles to Minette re: Jemmy which highlights their family dynamic: "Your kindnesse to him obliges me as much as tis possible, for I do confesse I love him very well. I (...) only desire you to have the same goodnesse for James you had the last time, and to chide him soundly when he does not that he should do. He intends to put on a perriwig againe, when he comes to Paris, but I believe you will thinke him better farr, as I do, with his short haire, and so I am intierly yours".

The cardboard or

[jesse_the_k]

less joyfully, black plastic tarp methods works a treat!

Re: The cardboard or

[luzula]

Yeah, I guess that's another method of stifling weeds! But with the drawback of not adding organic material to improve the soil.

[feroxargentea]

The trend definitely seems to be towards no-dig, which is fine as long as you get the deep-rooted perennial weeds out first. You do need the organic matter in the first place of course (befriend someone with horses!)

Actually what I tend to do (being too impatient to wait for the cardboard approach to work) is to strip off the turf, stack it up in a corner (covered up to exclude light) to rot down, and use last year's rotted-down turf stack to bulk up this year's new bed.

[luzula]

Yes, there's someone who keeps both horses and sheep in the village, and I plan to ask them if they have any spoiled silage and/or old straw that I can have. The time I tried the cardboard approach, I made the bed from cardboard + spoiled silage in the autumn and then planted potatoes and squash in it in the spring. I think the potatoes got a little too much nutrients that way, but the squash thrived. But anyway, I didn't have to wait for that long. But I'll keep the turf method in mind as well...

By the way, the neighbours who want to graze their sheep on my lands don't actually butcher them for meat. Apparently they are fancy sheep with pedigrees, which are sold for breeding…

[feroxargentea]

Good news on the sheep! Keep us posted :)

[cahn]

Yay, you read The King's Touch! I thought it was great, as you know, and I'm glad that you enjoyed it :D

[luzula]

Yes, I know you also liked it! It was a good one. : )