I’ve just finished reading a book which was recommended to me by a fellow Turkey traveller. She belongs to a book club in Victoria and told me that their most recent pick might just suit me very well.

“The Children’s Book” by A.S.Byatt. publ. 2009

For so many reasons she was right. The saga takes place in England from 1895 until 1919 and follows the lives of the adults and children in several families. The father of one is a curator at the new Victoria & Albert Museum in Kensington, they have a fairy-tale Arts & Crafts country house and many children for whom his wife writes stories. A young runaway from Stoke-on-Trent is found making drawings of a fabulous ceramic artwork in said museum, he is included in family festivities and is eventually apprenticed to a curmudgeonly master potter in Kent. I was quickly hooked on the plot. There are over 600 pages and I found that there is more detailed description of politics, anarchy, and suffragism than is really necessary to carry the tale along. The author seems to need to include all her research into this eventful time. The details of the Paris Exhibition of 1900 are fascinating nevertheless.

A.S.Byatt taught at the Central School of Art and Design and was a senior lecturer in English at UC, London so she does tell a good story and the facts on historical pots, kilns, glazes and the role of pottery manufacture versus studio practice are just fascinating. I recommend this as a good read as you wait for the next kiln to finish firing. Maybe six firings.