Code Name Verity : in which the reader engages with the story and creates something unpredictable.

I kept seeing people recommending this Second World War novel, about a British agent (Scottish!) and her English pilot in occupied France. Eventually, I buckled to the power of suggestion and came by a copy. Then it sat on my 'to read' shelf for ages without quite managing to pull me in. Yesterday, I finally got around to it - and got sucked in with a sort of loud SCHLOOP noise like something going horribly wrong with plumbing. I read the whole thing pretty much at one sitting.

The premise is that it's 1943, and the agent, Queenie, has been captured. The Gestapo have been torturing her (rather more torture description than I prefer to read in general, but I never felt that it tipped over into being gratuitous or self-indulgent) - and she's writing down everything she knows about the British War Effort.

For some reason, she is writing it in the form of a story told from the point of view of the female pilot who flew her to France. Queenie is an aristocratic scion of an old Scottish family, the pilot is heir to modest wealth from the new motor cycle industry, and the story is really about how they have become friends.

( Seriously, read this bit only if you have already read the book. It's a really good and enjoyable book but if you read this first it will spoil it. )

It was a bloody good book though.

Coombe Trenchard: Sculpture gardens and lies about age...

At the weekend we wandered over to Coombe Trenchard, which is mostly a Stately B&B.  But it was advertising a sculpture exhibition in the gardens, and I rather like to look at sculpture.   This wasn't part of the sculpture.  It was just some stone dogs guarding a magnificent gate.   Try and guess how old this place is.  I'll tell you at the end.


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