Living La Vita Sackville-West Loca...Through A Headache

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Sometimes a reader wants to finish a book not because he/she couldn't put it down but because you just want to get it over with as quickly as possible.

That happened to me yesterday. I had a headache. The sort of invisible vice like one that attacks you on both sides and proceeds to press. It wasn't pleasant. But no matter I was going to finish this book whatever.

And the book was....

They spelt Tehran like that in 1926?

This is an account of her journey to well let's say Tehran in 1926 to join her husband where they also attended the coronation of the King of Persia (as Iran was called at that time). She travels through various countries along the way including Egypt and Iraq.

Ms Sackville-West may have been a poet and gardener, skills I do not possess, but she isn't a great travel writer. The blurb at the back of this book described her as "Lively, humorous, acute and curious". Really? There is just one mention of the Muslim religion in the entire book and that's just a passing reference to a mosque. Other than that nothing. There are in fact (in relation to travels through Muslim countries two references to wine. It's like travelling through Ireland and not mentioning the Catholic religion once.

It is essentially a book of empire. Not all the countries she travels through were part of the British Empire but you get the sense of an annoying upper-class superiority complex. These foreign countries with the foreign ways might have certain things we do not, but we're British and therefore more sophisticated. Couldn't escape the feeling that she would have been a Brexiteer.

It's a thin book (one of the reasons why I decided to plough through despite my headache) but not thin enough. Amazingly despite it's size it still gives the feeling of being padded with the flowery language she presumably knew from being a poet. Trust me it didn't help.

When I finished this waste of time I still had a headache. Trust me I was happier though.

Until the next time.