What will you be reading over the holidays?
When I’m not trolling through the real estate websites (because I’ve decided to downsize) I’ve been researching my grandparent’s journey after they were forced to leave Russia during the Civil War which erupted as a direct result of the Bolshevik Revolution. So I’ve been reading about the fascinating history of Istanbul (Constantinople in my grandparent’s time). Lisa Morrow’s website Inside Out in Istanbul had been very helpful with my research and I will be catching up with Lisa when I visit Istanbul, the first stop on my journey to trace my grandparent’s footsteps.
Then I looked into France in the early 1920s, a country where so many Russian émigrés fled to. One of the most helpful books I read was Helen Rappaport’s After the Romanovs, as so many of the people my grandparents knew and socialised with were mentioned in her book.
But when I relax, which I hope to be doing over the holidays, I read detective fiction. My preference is for what is now termed “cosy crime”. Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Ngaio Marsh and, more recently, Richard Osman and Benjamin Stevenson to name just a few. I am now, and have always been, a prolific reader. I grew up reading Enid Blyton’s The Famous Five and The Secret Seven. They are controversial nowadays but, as a child, I gorged myself on the adventures the children had, paying special attention to the clotted cream and scones. I had no idea what clotted cream was, but longed to try it. Later I also devoured the Nancy Drew books.
When I grew older I raided my mother’s bookshelves which prominently featured both Agatha Christie and Georgette Heyer who, as well as the Regency books she was famous for, also wrote detective fiction. I also discovered Conan Doyle’s Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The image above was taken from Conan Doyle’s story The Red-Headed League. I read so much in my childhood and teenage years that I simply cannot remember all of the authors who kept me entertained.
There are many similarities between detective fiction and family history research, which is probably why I enjoy both of them. In both, a detective – either a character or a family historian – seeks to follow certain clues in order to get a result or answer questions. On the one hand, the detective is usually on the hunt for a murderer, on the other the family historian is attempting to track down his or her ancestors so as to better understand their lives and the historical events they lived through. Each of them begin with a small amount of information, maybe some letters, or a map, or newspaper articles, and then begin to piece together a story which will eventually lead them to a discovery.
The big difference between detective fiction and family history research is that, while the fictional detective invariably finds the culprit, the family historian is often left with more questions than answers.
Whichever holiday you celebrate, I wish you the best. May you always find a good book to read!
