So there I was on a transatlantic flight last autumn, scrolling through the list of films from which I could choose. Nothing particularly grabbed my attention until I came to ‘Mrs Harris goes to Paris’. That will do I thought and so I settled down to watch it. The film sticks closely to the book, with Mrs Harris being a Battersea cleaner who sees a Parisian designer dress (Dior actually) in the bedroom of one of her clients. She determines that she will save hard, go to Paris and buy herself a posh dress. This is a story where you have to suspend disbelief- I’m good at that!- but it is gentle and fun.
I was pleased to have Paul Gallico put in front of me after very many years. Aged about 12 or 13 I went through a phase where I read anything of his that I could find and there is a lot to discover. His writing life was rather unusual to say the least. Born in 1897 to Italian immigrant parents he went to Columbia University and became a sports journalist for several New York newspapers. In the 1930s he moved to Europe and move he did, living in a wide variety of European cities as well as a spell in the seaside town of Salcombe, Devon in a hilltop house with (to my mind) far too many cats. He spent his later life in Monaco where he died in 1976.
It is impossible to categorise his writing really. His novel The Poseidon Adventure became a smash hit disaster movie with Gene Hackman starring. Money from this enterprise enabled him to write exactly what he wanted for many years; commercially viable or not.
Probably The Snow Goose brought him most fame, an atmospheric wartime tale set on the coast of Suffolk. However, as a 12 year old doing that tricky thing of trying to find a way to segue from childrens to adult books, I loved his books where cats were at the centre. Thomasina and Jennie, are both funny and gentle and provide happy reading if that is what you are looking for. Don’t mistake this for meaning simplistic. They are well written and it is that that makes them a satisfying read. The same description could also apply to the other Mrs Harris books: Mrs Harris goes to New York and Mrs Harris becomes an MP.
Going back to cats, I also was reminded of the books by Derek Tangye, beautifully set in real life Cornwall and full of felines. Derek Tangye had his moment in the publishing sun, in much the same way as Peter Mayle with his A Year in Provence books did in the 1980s. I devoured those too……but not a cat in sight there. Derek Tangye writes in a beguiling way that shows his love of Cornwall, heightened by the contrast it provided after the horrors of the war. There are nearly 20 books here, not sure how many of those I read all those years ago. A Cat in the Window definitely and many more of the Minack Chronicles. It was many decades later that I visited Minack and the amazing Cornish theatre there.
So lots to revisit here, all because of a light hearted film on a long Atlantic flight. Plenty of places to buy out of print books in good condition and at cheap prices. I use Biblio and frequently The World of Books.
Happy reading