How the Years Roll Round

I decided the other week that I'd give Cadfael a rest.  For some while I had been alternating one of that series with 'something else from my shelves' for my bedtime reading, and the canon is almost exhausted, so I thought I might let it last a little longer before either I leave it for good, or begin the re-reads.

I've just picked up a book that I bought some twenty years ago, approximately fifty years after its publication and - irrespective of its content - those two facts alone prompted some ticking in my imagination.  The winter of the book's publication (January 1951) was the winter of my grandfather's death (he was buried on Boxing Day, 1950).

From time to time, as I've researched my family's history, I've been prompted to muse on the combined life-span of parents and children or, even more fantastical, grandparents and grandchildren.  My grandfather was born in 1868, and would have been ten years old when his grandfather died.  I never knew my grandfather, being less than a year old when he died.  Nevertheless, he had probably seen me, and even if not, he would certainly have been aware of the existence of his youngest grandchild.  

So, in the continuous life of these five generations, we embrace a span in excess of 220 years: my grandfather's grandfather made his appearance in the penultimate year of the eighteenth century, and here am I still ticking along into the third decade of the twenty-first.  I could have been touched by someone who, in his early years, might well have been touched by someone who had heard of the rise of Napoleon before he had been defeated at Waterloo!

So much for musing on the history of this book in my possession; what about its content?  It is already exceptional because, unusually for me, I began by reading the introduction.  The book, "The Houses in Between" by Howard Spring, had long been in the author's mind but he'd never got to grips with how he would achieve its aim until he encountered a 99-year-old early in 1947.  He realised what a lot of history she would have witnessed during her life-time, and saw that fact as the vehicle within which he could present the sort of historical novel that was in his thoughts.

So far I have only read the first chapter.  Armed as I am through my history studies, therefore, with an idea of the material to be covered, I have no concept of what experiences will be narrated by this fictitious lady.  Her earliest memory is of the pink-and-silver-clad Queen Victoria opening the Great Exhibition in what must have been an awe-inspiring building, the Crystal Palace in its original Hyde Park venue.

As the author announces in the prologue, the Prince Consort conceived it as a palace of peace, where all nations would meet in understanding; in the succeeding century there have been many instances of completely the opposite, from the colonial wars of the latter nineteenth century to the two worldwide conflicts of the last.

Imagine what delights await me at bedtime in the weeks - and probably months - to come!