Formidable!

News reaches us from Paris of an exciting new publishing venture strutting its silkily toned stuff around the arrondissements of that fair city. INK magazine is the comely brainchild of the fragrant Mme Salazar-Winspear, lately of Pen Pusher Four, and long-term exile Caroline Rossiter, and this month’s issue, brought to us by the letter X, is a boisterous melée of St Exupéry, Malcolm X, Xanadu, kisses and Aix on Provence, amongst other timeless treats featuring that most penultimate of crosses. Delightfully illustrated, it can be had in the following Parisian establishments:

The Village Voice, 75006
San Francisco Book Co, 75006
Tekné, 75005
The Abbey Bookshop, 75005
Shakespeare & Co, 75010
Café Bonnie, 75010
Le Point Ephemère, 75010
La Passarelle, 75011
La Merle Moqueur, 75020

If you’re interesting in finding out a little more, or even sponsoring this supercool publication, e-mail the lovely Olivia at inkparis@gmail.com.

Travels with a Tangerine

Being on BBC4, and, double whammy, on a Sunday evening, when one often feels fit for nothing more than a big glass of red wine in front of a cheerful fire in any decent local pub, you may well have missed Tim Mackintosh-Smith’s excellent programme retracing his travels in the footsteps of fourteenth century traveller Ibn Battutah, from Tangiers to the furthest limits of the Islamic world, as detailed in his book Travels With a Tangerine. Issue three of Pen Pusher, of course, featured a review of this, and the television adaptation is every bit as rich and glittering as the piece suggested the book merits.

At the risk of sounding like one those dreadfully hammy Grumpy Old Women, unlike much televisual output, this documentary contains no sensationalist voiceovers (“Tim has made it this far. But will disaster strike in the Crimea?”), and therefore no poor imitations of Tom Baker, no exciting camera angles and no recapping. It is, in short, a beautifully shot, fascinating film for the averagely intelligent, and well worth catching next Sunday if you fancy enjoying the red wine from the comfort of your own sofa instead. Alternatively, read the book.

Travels with a Tangerine, 9pm BBC4

The blog of mirth

Although nowadays I generally give peripheral literary works, if that is the right term for related biographies and other works of criticism, a wide berth in favour of literature itself, I am considering jumping back on the bandwagon of intelligent thought for the new Hermione Lee biography of Edith Wharton.

First of all, I attended a number of Professor Lee’s Woolf lectures at Oxford on the strength of her excellent biography of the Great One, and found her a fascinating and extremely erudite literary guide to kitchen tables lodged in pear trees and omnibus trips and other Woolfian fun and games.

And secondly, I find Wharton interesting. I have an odd fascination with the literature of cultural displacement, and once wrote a (rather poor) dissertation on her friend Henry James and the notion of the American abroad. Wharton was even more of a Europhile than the Master, crossing the Atlantic no fewer than 66 times. She felt herself far more at home in Europe, and France in particular, than in her homeland, decrying America in 1904 as “A whole nation developing without the sense of beauty, and eating bananas for breakfast." (Ah, bananas; that eternal symbol of ape-like savagery.) According to Elaine Showalter’s review in this week’s Guardian, Lee’s book primarily concentrates on Edith Wharton as cultural exile, which sounds quite ma tasse de thé.

There’s over 800 pages, and £25 worth of the stuff though, so perhaps it’s one to save for the holidays – particularly as I’m spending Easter near Wharton’s home in the south of France. I can almost taste the pastis already …

A little nostalgia never killed anybody

Prevailing trends suggest that, this season, we all ought to be striding about in shiny futuristic Prada-esque space gear (which in itself is clearly referencing the sixties, but don't get me started on that particular rant), rather than mooning about in ra ra skirts going on and on about how great the eighties were. On screen, period drama seems to be dead in the water. Even James Bond has given up on the tired old shaken not stirred routine. This year, we're mostly looking to the future. But, after a conversation this morning at work about The Animals of Farthing Wood, I feel like bucking the trend (get me!), and reminiscing about childrens books which were actually good. Forget Enid B (satisfying as she is in a predictable, Harry Potter sort of way). Stuff Black Beauty. These are the books you ought to feed your children:

1) Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons series. Even if you hate the idea of little boats, these are outstanding, realistic adventures, with pleasingly feisty children and beautiful Lake District scenery too. No Titty jokes though please.

2) The Animals of Farthing Wood - far, far better than the cartoons. I must have borrowed this from the library every other week for about two years. I remember a Sad Bit though (perhaps involving an elderly badger?) so read with caution.

3) The Chalet School series. Who didn't want to go to school in the Tyrol, or on the run from the Nazis? Honestly?

4) Anything by Anne Fine or Penelope Lively, particularly the latter's The House in Norham Gardens, with its surreal mix of Victorian Polynesia and 1980's Oxford.

5) Nicholas, by Goscinny and Sempé. Enchanting, unsentimental stories of a thoroughly French childhood, now available from Phaidon in a new translation.

I'm sure I'll think of more in time. Anyone else fancy a wander down memory lane? You buy the astroid belts, I'll bring along the Panda Pops.