AA Milne’s WHEN WE VERY YOUNG Part 1: down to Buckingham Palace with Alice
The Curiously Specific Book ClubShow Notes
AA Milne’s book of poetry for children, WHEN WE VERY YOUNG, was stupefyingly successful – it may be the most successful volume of poetry ever published. In the first part of our adventure, we discover bears everywhere: waiting for us to step on cracks in the pavement outside the Chelsea home where AA Milne lived with his wife Daphne and, of course, his son Christopher Robin; bearskins on guards outside Buckingham Palace; and Winnie the bear herself, a Canadian visitor to London Zoo, whose name inspired a smaller, more fictional bear. We end the episode by asking, quite seriously: when Mother went down to the end of the town, where on earth did she go? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from The Curiously Specific Book Club
In Part Two of our Buchan-based adventure we switch from Scotland to the Kent coast. We’re in search of the eponymous 39 steps. But first we need to locate Trafalgar House where German secret agents are hiding out. We end up at North Foreland, between the homes of a German-hating lord and a German-loving marquess. And, yes, we did find some steps! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
It’s an iconic moment in British literature – John Buchan’s hero Richard Hannay running across a moor with police, secret agents and an airplane all trying to hunt him down. But is it based on any kind of reality? We head for the Scottish Lowlands to find out, taking in abandoned train lines, the site of a car crash and a very remote farmhouse. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
We return to Ramsgate in Kent with Margot Bennett’s brilliant thriller THE WIDOW OF BATH as our only guide. The book was published in 1952, the same year as rock and roll had its birthday. We’re looking for a hat shop and a suspicous employment agency and we’re pretty confident we’ve found both.
A young man with a questionable background is sitting in a small hotel by an unnamed harbour in England. He is ostensibly writing a review. Behind him he hears a party of unseen people come into the hotel restaurant. He knows their voices. They are people from his past. One of them, he had a love affair with. She is now married to a judge. The judge’s name is Bath.
In Part Two we get out of town and attempt to bury ourselves in the Dorset countryside. We start at Dorchester, track down the narrator’s fake hideaway in the Sydling valley and then search for the famous ‘holloway’ where our hero tries to evade his pursuers. Is it a real place? Listen now to find out. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.