Month: May 2021

#BookReview Love and Miss Harris (Company of Fools 1) by Peter Maughan @RandomTTours @FarragoBooks

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Love and Miss Harris bt Poster

Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for Love and Miss Harris by Peter Maughan, the first in his new ‘Company of Fools’ series. My thanks to Anne at Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part in the tour and to Farrago Books for my digital review copy.

Love and Miss Harris CoverAbout the Book

Titus Llewellyn-Gwynne, actor/manager of the Red Lion Theatre, has lost a backer who was going to fund a theatrical tour – when unexpected salvation appears.

Their home theatre in the East End of London having been bombed during the war, The Red Lion Touring Company embarks on a tour of Britain to take a play written by their new benefactress into the provinces.

As they make their vagabond, singing way, they remain unaware that they leave behind in London a man consumed with thoughts of revenge. Revenge which follows them obsessively from town to town, ending in its final act before the last curtain.

Format: Paperback (320 pages)  Publisher: Farrago Books
Publication date: 6th May 2021 Genre: Historical Fiction, Humour

Find Love and Miss Harris on Goodreads

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My Review

The blurb describes the Red Lion Touring Company as ‘a collection of theatrical misfits’ and it’s certainly the case that the members of the company come from a range of backgrounds.  Although the reader doesn’t learn as much about some characters (Simon, Hugo or Lizzie, for instance) as others, their back stories all share a common theme. Namely, the ebb and flow of fortune. At one point, the company’s leading actor Jack Savage, even quotes Brutus’ line from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life, Is bound in shallows and in miseries.’  From time to time, the reader gets a glimpse of the sadness that lies behind the clown’s mask as it were, such as Jack’s memories of traumatic wartime experiences.

The book conjures up the atmosphere of post-WW2 Britain from the bomb-damaged streets of London and the frequent ‘pea soupers’ to the Lyons Corner House cafes and the continuation of rationing.  I also liked how the author peppered the story with theatrical terms, such as references to a ‘dark house’ to describe a theatre closed to the public between productions, ‘flats’ (pieces of painted theatrical scenery positioned on stage to give the appearance of a building or other background) and ‘blocking rehearsals’ (working out where actors should move on the stage for dramatic effect or to ensure clear sight lines for the audience). And, of course, the uttering of the phrase ‘Break a leg’ to an actor about to go on stage.

A secondary plot introduces moments of melodrama although I was slightly disappointed by the author’s choice of a Jewish character to be the villain of the piece, even if the anti-semitism rife at the time is made clear. By the end of the book, some of the characters find a way to leave their former lives – and mistakes – behind and find happiness.  For the others… well, you’ll have to read the book to find out and/or wait for the second book in the series, Miss Harris in the New World, due to be published later this year.

I enjoyed my time spent with The Red Lion Touring Company as they travel the country bringing Love and Miss Harris to audiences keen to experience the joys of live theatre. And isn’t that something we can all identify with?

In three words: Humorous, amiable, lively

Try something similar: Miss Treadway and The Field of Stars by Miranda Emmerson

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Peter Maughan Author picAbout the Author

Peter Maughan’s early career covered many trades, working on building sites, in wholesale markets, on fairground rides and in a circus. He studied at the Actor’s Workshop in London, and worked as an actor in the UK and Ireland, subsequently founding a fringe theatre in Barnes, London.

He is married and lives currently in Wales.

Connect with Peter
Website | Twitter

#WWWWednesday – 26th May 2021

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WWWWednesdays

Hosted by Taking on a World of Words, this meme is all about the three Ws:

  • What are you currently reading?
  • What did you recently finish reading?
  • What do you think you’ll read next?

Why not join in too?  Leave a comment with your link at Taking on a World of Words and then go blog hopping!

Currently reading

The Baby Is Mine by Oyinkan Braithwaite (advance review copy, courtesy of Midas PR and The Reading Agency)

When his girlfriend throws him out during the pandemic, Bambi has to go to his Uncle’s house in lock-down Lagos. He arrives during a blackout, and is surprised to find his Aunty Bidemi sitting in a candlelit room with another woman. They both claim to be the mother of the baby boy, fast asleep in his crib.

At night Bambi is kept awake by the baby’s cries, and during the days he is disturbed by a cockerel that stalks the garden. There is sand in the rice. A blood stain appears on the wall. Someone scores tribal markings into the baby’s cheeks. Who is lying and who is telling the truth?

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson (paperback)

Miss Pettigrew, an approaching-middle-age governess, was accustomed to a household of unruly English children. When her employment agency sends her to the wrong address, her life takes an unexpected turn. The alluring nightclub singer, Delysia LaFosse, becomes her new employer, and Miss Pettigrew encounters a kind of glamour that she had only met before at the movies. Over the course of a single day, both women are changed forever.

The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams (audiobook)

Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Young Esme’s place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word bondmaid flutters beneath the table. She rescues the slip, and when she learns that the word means “slave girl,” she begins to collect other words that have been discarded or neglected by the dictionary men.

As she grows up, Esme realizes that words and meanings relating to women’s and common folks’ experiences often go unrecorded. And so she begins in earnest to search out words for her own dictionary: the Dictionary of Lost Words. To do so she must leave the sheltered world of the university and venture out to meet the people whose words will fill those pages.

Recently finished

Links from the titles will take you to my review.

Pathfinders by Cecil Lewis

This Other Island by Steffanie Edward

A Room Made of Leaves by Kate Grenville (audiobook)

Love and Miss Harris by Peter Maughan

What Cathy (will) Read Next

Sword of Bone CoverSword of Bone by Anthony Rhodes (eARC, courtesy of the Imperial War Museum and Random Things Tours)

It is September 1939. Shortly after World War II is declared, Anthony Rhodes is sent to France, serving with the British Army. His days are filled with the minutiae and mundanities of army life—friendships, billeting, administration—as the months of the “Phoney War” quickly pass and the conflict seems a distant prospect. 

It is only in the spring of 1940 that the true situation becomes clear. The men are ordered to retreat to the coast and the beaches of Dunkirk, where they face a desperate and terrifying wait for evacuation.