Victoria Books

Written by Victoria-based, award-winning journalist Ross Crockford, Victoria: The Unknown City is an in-depth guide to one of Canada's and the world's top tourist destinations. Packed with directions, recommendations, and tidbits of history regarding everything from popular bars to the remnants of the original Fort Victoria to local haunted locations and advice for avoiding long waits and bad seats on the BC Ferries, Victoria is the "go-to" guide for experiencing all the adventure and wonder the city has to offer. Black-and-white photographs and an index round out a solid guide to tourist activities from sports to dining to shopping, nightlife, and experiencing local media. Recommended as a supplemental resource for Victoria vacationers looking to get the most out of their visit.

This book is a collection of essays that address various intellectual, spiritual and political crises that arose in Victorian Britain, and how the Victorians dealt with them. The first four essays are on various "proto-Victorians", including Edmund Burke, Jeremy Bentham and Thomas Malthus. The next six are on John Stuart Mill, Lord Acton, Leslie Stephen, Walter Bagehot, James Froude, and John Buchan. These essays are on various subjects and are not biographical. The remaining four essays are entitled, "The Victorian Ethos", "Victorian Angst", "Varieties of Social Darwinism", and "Politics and Ideology".

As with other writings of Gertrude Himmelfarb that I have read, this book is somewhat dry. However, the author always takes fascinating looks into her topics, and provides the reader with a great understanding into what Victorianism really was about. As an aside, in the book I found the essays on Malthus and Acton absorbing, along with the essay "Politics and Ideology", which was an excellent look at the Reform Act of 1867.

This is the book you need if you're looking for the place that carries that perfect Victorian anything...from dress to decor. Highly readable...I highly recommend it.

The Victorians at War, 1815-1914:
An Encyclopedia of British Military History --

"Raugh . . . offers a comprehensive review of the activities of the British Army during the Pax Britannica. . . . A helpful work of syntheses. . . Highly recommended. Military and undergraduate libraries (particularly those emphasizing 19th -century history or technology), and public libraries."
-M.J. Smith, Jr., Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, March 2005

"This is a very easy-to-use and highly readable book. It could supplement history collections as well as strengthen the reference sections on the Victorian era and on the British Empire. It would be a good purchase for academic and large public library collections, satisfying both the informal researcher and the serious student."
-Patricia Hogan, Booklist, March 15, 2005

". . . is an excellent sourcebook for high school and college students. With over 350 entries, helpful maps, multiple cross-references and a solid, up to date bibliography, this encyclopedia could serve as a good starting point for any research project, particularly one examining British military history in the late Victorian era. . . . as a one volume text, it is an excellent work of reference."
-Stephen M. Miller, Journal of Military History, April 2005

"The Victorians at War, 1815-1914, . . ., is by our distinguished US member, academic and former serving soldier, Lieutenant Colonel Harold Raugh, PhD, FRHistS. This is an amazing encyclopedia of British military history running from `Abu Klea' to `Zululand' with four appendices, a comprehensive bibliography and index. . . . It is an excellent reference work which should be on the shelves of every serious military historian."
-Major Colin Robins, O.B.E., F.R.Hist.S., The War Correspondent, Journal of the
Crimean War Research Society, July 2006.

Violet Keppel Trefusis and Vita Sackville-West had a passionate and tumultuous love affair between 1918 and 1920; they had been childhood friends. The affair ended in 1921. Vita was happily married to Harold Nicolson, although the marriage was troubled at the beginning of the affair, and Violet was unwillingly married to Denys Trefusis in 1919 when she was deeply in love with Vita. The love affair caused a scandal in British high society but was forgotten by 1973 when Nigel Nicolson's `Portrait of a Marriage' brought the details boldly into the public domain. Violet does not appear to have left any intimate papers of her own. In her selective, discreet, memoire `Don't Look Around' (1952) she refers to a diary written in the early 1920's which she still had when she wrote her book. The diary does not appear to have survived and I assume she destroyed this and any other revelatory papers. Vita's letters to Violet were destroyed by Denys in July 1919. Others followed but do not survive but there are existing letters that date from the 1940's and 1950's (excerpts are included in this book).

Vita Sackville-West kept all of Violet's letters, notes and telegrams (I wonder if Violet knew) including those Violet had asked her to destroy. `Violet to Vita' includes virtually all of them. The book is meant to give Violet's point of view to be read alongside Vita's secret memoire as published in `Portrait of a Marriage'. The book has a long, useful introduction in which Mitchell Leaska summarises the love story and offers some analysis. This is a valuable book for those still interested in Violet and Vita (this interest was at its height around 1990 when `Portrait of a Marriage' was shown dramatised by the BBC ). `Violet to Vita' inspired Diana Souhami's `Mrs Keppel and Her Daughter'.

The letters show that Violet was an eloquent, elegant writer (even when dashing off desperate notes). This is her true voice and on many occasions it is irresistible. She had a powerful personality. The letters also show that she was exuberant, idealistic, very emotional, very romantic, ungrounded, clever, intelligent, histrionic, mercurial. She wanted 'freedom' yet was hopelessly dependent on Vita or more particularly Vita's alter-ego, Julian. She was either blind to the risks she was taking or foolishly brave. Violet's uncontrollable passion for Vita/Julian led to consequences that overwhelmed her as the letters show. They also show that Violet and Vita had a real and profound bond between them (scorned as delusional by interested onlookers) that could not be repeated with anyone else - but it was too outré, badly timed, undermined and costly to be permanent. Vita would not break through conventions, hurt her family and fling away her reputation as Violet demanded (and Vita had promised). In this she had the great support of her husband.

Violet's fatal flaw (I think the letters show this) may have been her primary focus on and belief in Julian rather than Vita. Violet had invested too much in Julian. She wrote that she was bonded to Julian body and soul but the letters show that Vita became more distant; there was a dislocation. After Violet's forced marriage to Denys, she would stay true to Julian not realising that Julian had been beaten down in the tumult or that Vita was writing her memoire from July 1920 distancing herself further. By the end of the book we witness the affair and an isolated Violet being 'crushed down', most skillfully by her mother (later, perhaps acknowledging the damage, she would reclaim Violet as her beloved and favourite daughter). It is like watching a vibrant, incandescent flame, Violet, being suffocated.

I found the letters hard to read in one go and I have read them in sessions. Sometimes the letters feel like a bombardment; sometimes they are almost too poignant and private to read. One has to take a break. The absence of Vita's letters is a loss. Ultimately, Vita's memoire and these letters are a miracle because they have survived and been published. This is all down to Vita for keeping them safe and to Nigel for making them available. They do not perfectly complement each other but, together, they are an eloquent posthumous testament to these two extraordinary women. The following excerpt is not from one of Violet's most elegant letters but it gives a sense of Violet's increasingly powerless and isolated position in November 1920 (Vita was distant; Vita's mother spread scandal and denounced the affair; the death-blow would come later from Violet's own mother). She wrote:

"O my darling, I awoke trembling from a dreadful dream of you and your mother. I think you both laughed and mocked me, and since you had no further need for me - O God, it's too awful....

How I wish I was Harold Nicolson! He can be with you as much as he pleases. His words come back to me: 'I have always had everything I wanted' - and I am the begger at your gate..."

If you are curious about these two women, then this is a great book to get. Keeps you wanting to know what comes next.

We caught the Vivienne Westwood retrospective traveling show at the De Young Museum in San Francisco, and were blown away by the inventive, fun, nutty clothes this woman produced. This book serves as a exhibition catalog, although many of the pieces in the show are not in the book, and nothing matches seeing the wild shoes, hats, dresses and frocks in person. The book design is a minor annoyance, as it can be a little hard to find the garment pictured, who was wearing it, or when it was created. And I think frankly the girl has her best work behind her, but the glory of it cannot be exaggerated, or, to put it another way, her exaggerations were truly glorious. Over The Top in the very best way.

Thoreau would no doubt disapprove....

Walking Toward Morning was one of my favorite books to give as a gift. When it went out of print, I was very sad. This new edition is great! It has the same wonderful meditations as the original and a bright new cover for a price I can afford! Victoria has a way of talking about normal real life things in a way that makes you realize that every moment is special and spiritual, without being simplistic or Pollyanna about it. Her words help us recognize the human condition as both difficult and beautiful. It is a truly uplifting book.

Some, well many things in this play don't make a great deal of sense. The characters are first painted to be stereotypical versions of 1950's family members. At first it looks like a sketch. But it immeadiately goes into a series of scenes in which all of the characters live in their own insane world... but they each have a moment of honesty.

And that's why I love this play. You can laugh or be confused by it's absurdity (I laughed... most of the time) but the ongoing theme is that only honesty matters. The people in this play were written to make me feel like they meant every word of nonsense.

This is the "biography" of Alvin, the first manned submersible vehicle developed for scientific research. The book tells the story of Alvin's adventures, from the sub's conception in the minds of a visionary scientist, through the uphill battles for funding and the daunting technical problems in its design and building, to its many triumphs as a premier tool in pioneering advances in our knowledge of the seas. As a science writer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Kaharl had access to the people that made Alvin a reality, as well the sub itself. This isn't the neat, clear, lofty "science" portrayed in TV programs; this is the nitty-gritty world of real science and real fieldwork, full of dangers, surprises, and seat-of-the-pants decisions.