Well if Goudy says it’s ok, then it is!
FOR generations that marvellous series of Wonder Books were a mainstay of pleasure and learning for children. You will either remember them or will have come across them on the shelves of antiquarian booksellers for they are, although rather dated, nonetheless charming and entertaining.
I was reminded of them this week when a bookseller’s catalogue arrived. For as I turned the pages there were three books, none of which I have seen, which made me wonder.
The first, entitled All Behind You, Winston, is an account of mention of Sir Winston’s wartime cabinet. As you know, Grimsby’s wartime MP was Sir Walter Womersley, minister of pensions and the only member to serve in that cabinet throughout the war.
Would there be revelatory details of his contribution of which I have not heard, I wondered.
Then I came across a new biography of the world-famous ballerina Anna Pavlova (1881- 1931). Again, as some of you know, her solitary link with Grimsby has received little elucidation.
For she had an affair with Sir Alec Black, then divorced, who was arguably Grimsby’s most celebrated trawler owner, whose circle of friends and acquaintances stretched far beyond Field House where he lived.
He even named one of his trawlers Pavlova in 1912. Would this be mentioned in the book, I wondered.
The third book awoke much more recent although distressing wonderment. Some months ago a wicked lot of lads broke into a village hall in the south of our county and smashed to fragments a magnificent model railway layout arranged by a local group. My catalogue listed a new book, modelling the East Coast mainline, detailing how to build an entire OO-gauge layout based on the longvanished station at Little Bytham between Peterborough and Grantham where Lord Willoughby of Grimsthorpe Castle near Bourne had built his own private estate railway.
Was this timely book written to soften the blow of vandalism and encourage modellers to press on regardless. I wondered. Finally, and thanks to my old chum Richard Goude long lived in Eastbourne, comes more promising news. He had just finished a new novel. On Chapel Sands is written
by Laura Cumming, a staff writer on The Guardian, a thriller based on the Hogsthorpe and Chapel St Leonards areas including much mention of the tower windmill at Hogsthorpe, a four-sailer of which only the stump remains.
No wonder this time. If Goudy says it’s okay then it is.