Country life
James and jams
Leanda de Lisle
My husband complains that I have nothing in my head these days but sex and violence, and James VI and I. Since he is absolutely right I am afraid I must make this my farewell column. I should have taken this decision at the beginning of the summer and I apologise to those who have been confused by my disappearance, reappearance and now disappearance once more. I hope the 60,000 readers who take The Spectator will one day enjoy the fruits of my labours.
I'm often asked how I am able to write a history book from the country. Since the man who first asked it also asked whether I would be using primary sources (which is a bit like asking a jockey if he'll be using a horse), I assume this arises from a misapprehension about the accessibility of old documents. A primary source does not have to be written in scratchy ink on some crumbly bit of paper. Most of those that concern me have been published by, for example, the Historic Manuscripts Commission, and if I can't borrow them, then I can get to them as easily as the next person. Some are kept in London, but many others, particularly those of the scratchyink variety, are found in Scotland, Belgium and Spain.
Despite these prejudices against my postcode my book began well in that my agent managed to persuade five of the biggest publishing houses to bid for it on the basis of the outline I provided. It is, however, one thing to write up some grand idea in a few thousand words, quite another to see it through. When, in the early days of my research, an editor at my publishing house asked how I felt things were going I told him that 1 swung from wild optimism to dark despair — I was going to produce a new kind of bestseller; I was going to have to give back my advance and sell homemade jams on street corners. He told me that this was quite normal. Now my jaw is set with a steely resolve.
If I have nothing in my head these days but sex, violence and James VI and I, it is because there is no room for anything else. I hope this means that I won't miss food, because not only must I now withdraw from this column but I must withdraw from eating. Peter has decided to go on a diet. My poor husband was in a shop with my elder son when he spotted some new scales that can tell you how fat you are. They told him he was 25 per cent pure blubber. Our teenage son was 6.4 per cent. I am now instructed to cook nothing more substantial than steamed vegetables. I doubt Robert May's The Accomplisht Cook has any such recipes, but perhaps some of his amusing live frog pies will do. I'd have thought they were guaranteed to cut the appetite.
Peter also intends to visit a personal trainer since he won't be taking his usual exercise this autumn. After all the battles to save hunting from Tony Blair's would-be ban, the sport has been stopped by footand-mouth — and for who knows how long. It's quite an irony, but one that for the most part passes me by. I have to focus if the fruits of my labour are to be a book and not a selection of preserves.
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