Reviews, travel writing and musings from a bookish Glasgow girl
Usually I do wrap-up posts at the end of every month, but I’m sure I’m not alone in saying that a) my contributions wouldn’t be very interesting and b) I’m losing track of what day it is, let alone what I’ve done each month. So I thought I would do a round-up of five things I’ve been enjoying in lockdown!
If you’re not interested in old buildings, then you should probably look away now. Although I’ve actually posted about day trips from London before, at the time it was more aspirational than day trips I had actually taken. But hey! Now I’m well-versed in catching 11am trains from Paddington, and I would love to share a few of my recommendations for daytripping from London. I imagine a lot of Londoners would have been to these places, but if you’re visiting London and fancy seeing a bit of the south of England, or are using London as a base to travel around, then I would definitely recommend these locations as a nice break from buzzing London life.
I just graduated with a degree in English Literature and History. Essays, exams and juggling time commitments aside, what that really means is four years of prescribed reading lists – dedicating whole semesters to reading books only by American women; months to ploughing through a never-ending series of books about the sixteenth century. I loved (nearly) every minute of it and I unexpectedly discovered some real favourites during my four years of constant reading, but after four years of unopened books piling up in the corner of my room, it’s a relief to finally find myself free to read whatever, whoever I like. Well, until my MLitt starts.
I’m currently re-watching my favourite TV programme Downton Abbey, meaning that right now I’m pretty obsessed with any books or films that chronicle the upstairs-downstairs dynamic of a twentieth-century great house. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Booker Prize-winning novel, fulfils this perfectly. Stevens, the long-serving butler of Darlington Hall, begins the novel by ruminating on the absorbing and complex question of what makes a great butler. His answer is ‘dignity’ – the ability to preserve one’s innate professionalism regardless of emotional demands; a quality that arguably ensures his status as a ‘great butler’ but serves to stunt his own personal life.
What Rachel Did 