November blues

As our already quiet lives are still more restricted, we fall back with some pleasure on reading, listening and watching tv and videos. Henry VII has figured largely since we’ve read, to ourselves and aloud, Thomas Penn’s Winter King. This is a masterpiece - we both found the research and detail astonishing without being boring. It raises a very pertinent theme just now, just what is government for?   Of course, the question has a different resonance in the 15th century, but there are interesting parallels to be drawn between Trump and the King, and between Empson and Dudley and Cummins. Not to be pursued too far. Vote counting did not figure too much then, capital punishment as a political tool not so much now. 

Following that, we have restarted our exploration of the CDs of the BBC series This Scepter'd Isle. The concept, 1000 years of well researched British history written by Christopher Lee, narrated by Anna Massey with readings by Paul Eddington from Churchill’s History of the English Speaking Peoples, is a real tour de force, accepting all the present-day caveats about old-fashioned attitudes. This one will run and run as we dip into the huge archive of recordings. I look forward to revisiting the second set, on Empire, as we mourn this weekend the death of Jan Morris whose Pax Britannica trilogy is one of my favourite books and very good history too. 

Alexander McCall Smith has long been a favourite author of ours.  His are among the sets of books I still try to collect in paperback, and although I like the  Ediburgh philosopher Isabel Dalhousie and of course Mma Ramotswe's whose Botswana Ladies Detective Agency began it all, Our favourites are still probably the 44 Scotland Street series (also Edinburgh) with young co-hero Bertie and his fearsome psychotherapy-obsessed mother Irene never fail to entertain and .  I am just finishing the Peppermint Tea Chronicles, whose plot continues to surprise and delight.

In the real world, we have tried to keep up to date with the awful and complex situation in Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh, the fall-out from the disintegration of the Soviet Union.  We'd planned to go back to visit Armenia this year, but the war has added to the difficulty of doing such a thing, but for our friends in this tiny country, hemmed round by larger and often unfriendly neighbours this has been a dreadful trauma.  I could find nothing better to explain the situation than this from the Guardian.Pashinyan, referred to at the beginning of the piece, is the recently elected Prime Minister who has found himself in a very difficult position.

Beside all this, the last few weeks here have continued beautiful and the photos here reflect this and the autumn colours we are enjoying.