Scene: the interior of The Eagle & Child (aka The Bird & Baby) public-house. The Inklings are conversing over pipes and pints.
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How To Live In Your Favourite Book
Not, I hasten to add, in a cheesy cheap merchandise kind of way, but in a altogether richer, more creative and satisfying way.
“We don’t just read a great book, we inhabit it.” So begins Novel Interiors: Living in Enchanted Rooms Inspired By Literature, by Lisa Borgnes Giramonti. She identifies six sorts of literary decor:
cottage cosy (Austen, Dickens, Alcott…),
classic elegance (Thackeray, Waugh, Wharton…),
earthy & natural (Brontë, L. M. Montgomery, Thoreau…),
modern glamour (Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Maugham…),
bohemian chaos (Durrells, Mansfield, Woolf…)
and fantasticated (Colette, Proust, Wilde…).
But what if your style doesn’t fall neatly into one of those mentioned – or any of them at all? Fear not: there is a way.
In Praise of Old Technology: The Hot Water Bottle
“O! Water Hot is a noble thing!” as Tolkien wrote, and he wasn’t wrong. Water Hot in a bath is a fine thing, Water Hot pouring over tea leaves is an excellent thing, and Water Hot warming up your bed is more or less the pinnacle of human civilization.
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