A likeable book, in part because of the aura of the libraries of my past, with their cardboard ticketing systems and funny little ways. What the pencil marks down the left hand side of the inside of the back cover might be, I have no idea. And I was intrigued by what appears to be the stamp of the 'Times Library' of Wigmore Street - perhaps the bookseller with which Surrey Libraries then did business? A few clicks and google offers, from a 1959 copy of the Spectator:
'What kind of a service can you get? I have been looking at the four libraries you are most likely to consider : W. H. Smith's and Boots, each of which has about 300 branches around the country, the Times Library (42 Wigmore Street, WI; WELbeck 3781) and Harrods Library (Knightsbridge, .SWI; SLOane 1234). Smith's and Boots give much the same service. Each has an 'A' and a 'B' service and the sub-scriptions are the same in each case ('A' service. 30s. a year, 'B' service 15s. a year). The 'A' service includes the newest books and all the books on the shelves. The 'B' service does not include the newest books. The 'A' service entitles you to reserve books; the 'B' service does not. Each service entitles you to one book at a time. Extra books may be borrowed at a daily rate and there is a 'pay as you read' service for non- subscribers'.
So perhaps the commercial libraries offloaded their spent stock to the municipal ones. Whatever may be the case, the book is now the sixth Tomlinson that I own, to which I can add 'London River', a rather engaging picture book with stories about the Thames, the Thames when it was still a working river. A writer of whom I am fond, in part because my senior paternal aunt was said to have been fond of his books. I wonder how many of them would be found in the immediate vicinity of our house, apart, that is, from my own?
But as I say above, a likeable book, with a civilised and essentially optimistic tone which would be unusual in a book written now. A book with good manners, in which you will rarely come across bodily functions or bodily parts usually covered up - in this very unlike the latest number of NYRB which seems to be full of the stuff - perhaps it feels some menopausal urge to try and compete with rappers.
This civilised and essentially optimistic tone despite its being set towards the end of the second world war, about the time that flying bombs were coming in over the channel. Mainly set in an outer, perhaps southeastern suburb of London - with a digression towards the end into the heart of darkness - a digression which figures rather larger in the same author's 'The Sea and the Jungle'. Maybe he was a fan of Conrad, perhaps twenty years older than Tomlinson. Certainly there is plenty of sea and sailors in his books.
Often rather tricky prose, and I often doubt whether I have caught the sense intended. But oddly compelling at the same time.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/dalhousie.html.
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