The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, Helene Hanff, MOYER BELL Limited, 1995, 155921144X, 9781559211444, 144 pages. A zesty memoir of the celebrated writer's travels to England where she meets the cherished friends from 84, Charing Cross Road..
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I loved 84, Charing Cross Road so much, I was eager to read this follow-up--Helene finally gets to London! And I was not disappointed. The same verve, making friends wherever she goes, but also still her edge--she ends up instructing a bartender how to make martinis HER way, and pitches a fit at Oxford when her "tour guide" friends won't take her where SHE wants to go and insist on taking her shopping, but this is combined with trenchant comments comparing American and British culture and a sens...more I loved 84, Charing Cross Road so much, I was eager to read this follow-up--Helene finally gets to London! And I was not disappointed. The same verve, making friends wherever she goes, but also still her edge--she ends up instructing a bartender how to make martinis HER way, and pitches a fit at Oxford when her "tour guide" friends won't take her where SHE wants to go and insist on taking her shopping, but this is combined with trenchant comments comparing American and British culture and a sense of reverence and awe that she actually IS in LONDON! Terrific, quick read. I wish I could tour London with her!(less)
Reread, 'cause having read 84 Charing Cross Road again, I had to read the sequel. This is even better than I remembered—I think I recalled it being a bit of a disappointment after 84. It's not; it's just different. And it especially resonated now that I've actually been to London and recognize some of the places Hanff describes and the feeling of finally being in the city you've read about so many times even more. (Although Hanff wasn't exactly going, "Just like it's described in Neverwhere!" Sh...more Reread, 'cause having read 84 Charing Cross Road again, I had to read the sequel. This is even better than I remembered—I think I recalled it being a bit of a disappointment after 84. It's not; it's just different. And it especially resonated now that I've actually been to London and recognize some of the places Hanff describes and the feeling of finally being in the city you've read about so many times even more. (Although Hanff wasn't exactly going, "Just like it's described in Neverwhere!" She's rather more classical than I am.) Like 84, this book is realistically bittersweet—it acknowledges lost opportunities and lost friends—but Hanff's are consistently a wonderful pair of eyes to see the city, and the travel experience in general, through. A friend said recently that she wanted a book to make her feel nostalgic about London—this is so perfect it seems tailor-made.(less) p 24Nora and I were interviewed at Broadcasting House, it’s the only big modern building I’ve seen here and I hope I don’t see another one; it’s a monstrosity—a huge semicircular block of granite, it looks obese. They don’t understand skyscrapers here. In New York they don’t understand anything else. p 121Ena was shocked that I hadn’t been to a single gallery and firmly dragged me to the National Portrait Gallery after lunch—where I amazed myself by going clean out of my mind meeting old friends face-to-face. Charles II looked exactly the dirty-old-man he was, Mary of Scotland looks exactly the witch-on-a-broomstick she was, Elizabeth looks marvelous, the painter caught everything—the bright, sharp eyes and strong nose, the translucent skin and delicate hands, the glittering, cold isolation. Wish I knew why portraits of Mary and Elizabeth always look real and alive, and portraits of Shakespeare, painted in the same era and the same fashion, always look stylized and remote.
"All my life I've wanted to see London. I used to go to English movies just to look at streets with houses like those. Staring at the screen in a dark theatre, I wanted to walk down those streets so badly it gnawed at me like hunger. Sometimes, at home in the evening, reading a casual description of London by Ha...more This is such a great companion/follow-up to 84 Charing Cross. I bought this on a whim at a used bookstore, having read Charing Cross, and this was just so fun and...yaaaaaay.
And of course they were. Look again, and there was a blond, bearded Justice Shallow talking to the bartender. Further along the bar, Bottom the Weaver was telling his ponderous troubles to a sharp-faced Bardolph. And at a table right next to us, in a flowered dress and pot-bellied white hat, Mistress Quickly was laughing fit to kill."
"You find Shakespeare's house and pay your fee to enter--and just to walk up the stairs gripping the huge railing, just to walk into the bedroom and touch the walls, and then come back down and stand in the kitchen that saw him in and out every day of his growing up has to melt the bones of anyone borne speaking English."
"You decide to stop using the world "anachronism" when a seventeenth-century carriage drives through the gates of Buckingham Palace carrying twentieth-century Russian or African diplomats to be welcomed by a queen. "Anachronism" implies something long dead, and nothing is dead here. History, as they say, is alive and well and living in London."
"One of these days I'm going to write a book about living in New York--in a sixteen-story apartment house complete with families, bachelors, career girls, a ninety-year-old Village Idiot and a doorman who can tell you the name and apartment number of every one of the twenty-seven resident dogs. I am so tired of being told what a terrible place New York is to live in by people who don't live there."
And a newsstand's a kiosk, a subway's the tube, a cigar store's a tobacconist's, a drug store's a chemist's, a bus is a coach, a truck is a lorry, buying on time is hire purchase, cash and carry is cash and wrap and as Shaw once observed, we are two countries divided by a common language. I am now going to bed because it's quataposstwelve."
After years of yearning to visit England, Helene finally makes the trip to London in 1971 after the success of 84, Charing Cross Road. Ironically, it is after the massive success of 84, Charing Cross Road, that she manages to travel to London, which she had been dying to visit. Too late to meet Frank Doel, she does meet his wife and daughter as well as a host of people whose life had been touched by her.
She also goes to Oxford, Eton, Stratford Upon Avon, places she always wanted to visit. Her delight and excitement comes through in her memoir. At one point some one asked if she were planning to buy something to take back, and she retorted that, buying something would mean a few days less in England, which was absolutely not an option for her.
In a direct sequel to 84, Charing Cross Road, Helene Hanff finally gets on a plane across the Atlantic and sees the London of her dreams. While there is a certain bittersweet feeling as Important Things have happened to 84 CC Rd and to a crucial character there, and so things are not as they would have been had she visited in the mid-1950s, but nevertheless she is courted around London by publicists and fan...more "They don't understand skyscrapers here. In New York they don't understand anything else."
The tone is a little different as this is written in diary entries rather than in epistolatory form, and the text does lose something being in one voice, although a sassy and amusing voice. Hanff relishes London - Russell Sq, the Tower of London, St Paul's, Claridge's, and even fits in a few trips to Windsor, Oxford, Stratford-upon-Avon and Stoke Poges.
84, Charing Cross is likely one of my favorite books about books, as it reprints the several decades-long real-life correspondence of author Hanff and London bookseller Frank Doel. On the surface, it recounts the love of books that the two shared; as Hanff bought many books through Doel, and had them shipped back to her in New York. But underneath, it is equal parts the growth of a long-distance friendship as well as a snapshot of the post-war world of London and, on the other side of the Atlant...more 84, Charing Cross is likely one of my favorite books about books, as it reprints the several decades-long real-life correspondence of author Hanff and London bookseller Frank Doel. On the surface, it recounts the love of books that the two shared; as Hanff bought many books through Doel, and had them shipped back to her in New York. But underneath, it is equal parts the growth of a long-distance friendship as well as a snapshot of the post-war world of London and, on the other side of the Atlantic, the Big Apple. In light of the current economic recession we are in during this first decade of the twentieth-century, the scarcity of goods and services that Americans and Brits alike had to forgo are unimaginable in our era of easy credit.
The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, in contrast, reprints Hanff’s letters and diary entries that she kept during her first time in London – which was, sadly, several years too late, as she never made it during Doel’s life. Rather, it wasn’t until several years after his passing away, and the dissolution of his bookselling business, that Hanff was able to scrape enough money together to hop a jet eastbound to the UK.
Although I certainly enjoyed reading about Hanff’s first month-long foray in London, as well as the friendships that she made with such people as Doel’s widow and daughter, the Colonel, and the various London media contacts, I honestly felt that this addendum to 84, Charing Cross paled in comparison. (Which likely explains why this was never adapted into a film, unlike the first which starred Anne Bancroft as Hanff and Anthony Hopkins as Doel.)
This sequel to "84 Charing Cross Road" tells of the author’s subsequent and long-awaited visit to London, made possible by the publication of the collection of letters exchanged between herself, a single, childless, Jewish New Yorker and a restrained British bookseller and family man for 20 years following WWII. Hanff was an amazing autodidact and complete Anglophile, an avid student of both British literature and history – a woman after my own heart! Her keen observations and appreciation of al...more This sequel to "84 Charing Cross Road" tells of the author’s subsequent and long-awaited visit to London, made possible by the publication of the collection of letters exchanged between herself, a single, childless, Jewish New Yorker and a restrained British bookseller and family man for 20 years following WWII. Hanff was an amazing autodidact and complete Anglophile, an avid student of both British literature and history – a woman after my own heart! Her keen observations and appreciation of all things British are revealed in diary firm as she recounts the many sights seen and people met during her extended stay. No ordinary tourist, this one. Treat yourself and read this book. Better yet, purchase it in a single volume that contains both 84 and The Duchess and it is likely to become as treasured a volume as mine will always be. These two together will surely take a permanent place in my All-Time Top Ten favorites – or as the Brits would say – favourites. ☺ (less)
I am really liking all the books that I have been reading by Helene Hanff. This was not quite as moving as 84, Charing Cross Road but is actually a good follow up as Helene finally gets to go to London, her lifelong dream. Unfortunately Marks & Co. has closed and Frank Doel is dead, but Helene gets to meet Frank's family and see where Marks & Co. was located. When reading this book I was struck by how different the time was when Helene was writing this book about her trip to London. She...more I am really liking all the books that I have been reading by Helene Hanff. This was not quite as moving as 84, Charing Cross Road but is actually a good follow up as Helene finally gets to go to London, her lifelong dream. Unfortunately Marks & Co. has closed and Frank Doel is dead, but Helene gets to meet Frank's family and see where Marks & Co. was located. When reading this book I was struck by how different the time was when Helene was writing this book about her trip to London. She stayed with people she didn't know and ate dinner with people she didn't know, and went sightseeing with people she didn't know--they were all fans of her book, 84, Charing Cross Road. Somehow I don't see that happening in today's world. I enjoyed visiting London through Helene's eyes and experiences.(less)
I'm VERY glad that my library also had this so that I could read it immediately after 84, Charing Cross Road. I was a little disappointed in the change of format - from letters to diary entries. Diary entries just don't give the same interactions between characters that you get from letters. But I was very glad to read more of Helene Hanff's story. And if this is telling a real story, there may not have been enough letters for a second book.
Since I've always wanted to visit England, I was just a tiny bit jealous of her good fortune. I also thought she should have taken the trip MUCH sooner! That's one thing that helps convince me these books are telling a real story, though. In a fiction book, she would have had to get to England soon enough to meet all the characters we knew and loved from the first book!(less)
This is the diary of Ms Hanff as she is on tour promoting her book 84 Charing Cross Road in London. I loved how her book and love of books brought people together. I loved her attitude towards travel in another country. How amazing that she relied on total strangers to show her around the city she had always dreamed of visiting. Her opinion of the couple who had come to NYC and spent the entire time in the hotel was wonderful.
She says something to the likes of 'my friends read 50 books once, never to be read again, while I read one book 50 times...' I thought this was so interesting. I don't enjoy to read something more than once. She talks of having entire pages of books memorized - ACK! This sounds miserable to me! Where is the joy of the mystery of the plot unfolding? But despite how we chose to read, what we read, etc, I marvel at the link that books provide to those whose paths would otherwise never cross.(less)
I read 84, Charing Cross Road several years ago at the suggestion of one of my professors in library school. I recently got the chance to see the movie with Ann Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins, and it was wonderful! I read this sequel right on the heels of seeing the movie. What a great story. Written in diary form, it tells of the author's visit to London in 1971. What I chuckled at was her reasoning that since her brother gave her $100.00 for the trip, that amount would enable her to stay in Lond...more I read 84, Charing Cross Road several years ago at the suggestion of one of my professors in library school. I recently got the chance to see the movie with Ann Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins, and it was wonderful! I read this sequel right on the heels of seeing the movie. What a great story. Written in diary form, it tells of the author's visit to London in 1971. What I chuckled at was her reasoning that since her brother gave her $100.00 for the trip, that amount would enable her to stay in London an extra week! Times have changed. It is apparent that this woman lived life to its fullest. She was well-read, and well-liked by just about everyone who met her. Her descriptions of what she saw and did in London and its surroundings would make entertaining reading for anyone who is considering a visit to England.(less) http://edufb.net/777.pdf http://edufb.net/176.pdf http://edufb.net/203.pdf http://edufb.net/503.pdf http://edufb.net/77.pdf http://edufb.net/665.pdf http://edufb.net/694.pdf http://edufb.net/101.pdf http://edufb.net/699.pdf http://edufb.net/123.pdf http://edufb.net/416.pdf http://edufb.net/39.pdf http://edufb.net/187.pdf http://edufb.net/147.pdf http://edufb.net/628.pdf http://edufb.net/141.pdf http://edufb.net/202.pdf http://edufb.net/471.pdf http://edufb.net/109.pdf http://edufb.net/310.pdf