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(This episode is marked as explicit because of sexual imagery.)

(Background noise might make this episode a challenging listen.)

Season 1 Episodes

The music concept for this week is cool sounds for hot water or smooth tunes for soaking or whatever most makes you think of host Charles Adrian singing along to soul singers like Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding in his warm winter-time bath. The books, meanwhile, are a glorious mixed bag, taking us from nineteen-eighties childcare back to nineteen-thirties housekeeping via Cathar history and ancient Arabic teaching on lesbianism.

The Glory Of The Perfumed Garden by Shaykh Nafwazi is also discussed in Page One 147.

Diary Of A Provincial Lady by E. M. Delafield is also discussed in Page One 126.

When Charles Adrian references How To Boil An Egg at the beginning of this episode, he is thinking of Delia Smith’s book Delia’s How To Cook, which famously included instructions on how to boil an egg. You can find these (excellent) instructions online here.

Kate Mosse, also mentioned in passing during this episode, is the author of a series of historical adventure and mystery novels.

This episode was recorded at the Wilton Way Café for London Fields Radio.

This episode has been edited to remove music that is no longer covered by licence for this podcast.

A transcript of this episode is below.

Episode released: 29th January, 2013.

Book listing:

You And Your New Baby by Dr Miriam Stoppard

The Perfect Heresy by Stephen O’Shea

The Glory Of The Perfumed Garden by Shaykh Nafwazi (trans. H.E.J.)

Diary Of A Provincial Lady by E. M. Delafield

Links:

Page One 147

Page One 126

How To Boil An Egg

Charles Adrian

Episode transcript:

Jingle
You're listening... you're listening to London Fields Radio.

Music
[Walk On By by Dionne Warwick]

Charles Adrian
Hello and welcome to the 20th edition of Page One. I'm Charles Adrian. This is London Fields Radio. We're in the Wilton Way Cafe in Hackney. So I have... I have no book concept this week but the music, on the other hand, is all stuff that I can't help singing in the bath if it comes on. I know that some people do their best singing in the shower. I do mine in the bath. So that was Dionne Warwick with Walk On By and there are some other wonderful songs coming up.

Let me... Let me talk about my first book. This is a... This is a, kind of, How To Boil An Egg for babies. I think you'll see what I mean. It's published by Boots. This... This was published in 1985. It's Dr Miriam Stoppard's You And Your New Baby: The First Twelve Months. There's definitely some good stuff in here but there's some... there's some slightly weird things as well. I'm... I'll just... I'll just read the first page:

Introduction.

Your new baby may not be at all what you expected. She may be much smaller, much more wrinkled, much redder and seemingly very delicate. Don't let that fool you. Babies are much stronger than you think and they're not the inert little bundles that we used to believe they were. From the minute they're born, babies start learning and absorbing information. I hope that this book will tell you what to look out for, what to expect as your baby develops, and suggest how to stimulate her development. I hope too that the practical approach will enable you to resolve any problems you may encounter as well as helping you to get the most out of this exciting first year in your baby's life.
Like most new parents, you may feel some trepidation about your role - and not totally without reason. Parenthood is demanding, it is an enormous responsibility. It implies close communication, loving interest and care from the instant you hold your new baby. And, of course, this is how it should be.
At first, though, you may not feel how you expected to feel. Quite a large proportion of new mothers feel somewhat deflated and inadequate after the birth of their baby. It can be an anticlimax and what sometimes makes things worse is that the expected rush of mother-love may be a bit slow in coming. It may take several days for you to get to know this new person and for her to show any signs of knowing or needing you, and during these first days you may feel emotionally unstable, irritable, and alarmingly close to tears a lot of the time. It's only when the milk comes into your breasts on around the third day that the mother-love hormone is produced. And certainly at this time most mothers do feel a sudden wave of mother-love.
It takes your body about nine months to recover from pregnancy and in the first six weeks it is trying to return very quickly to its pre-pregnant state. One of the inevitable consequences is great tiredness, which is compounded by the effect of a run of broken nights. You will inevitably find too that you have to make a huge adjustment to your lifestyle during the first few weeks of your baby's life. You may be dismayed by your lost independence, inability to work, lack of privacy, the disappearance of freedom of movement. You may also feel a confusing division of loyalties - having to look after your baby, your husband, the house, and everything else.
The baby is, of course, your first commitment and always should be - that is where your priorities should lie and where you should put most of your energy - but it will help enormously if your partner takes an active part in looking after your baby right from the start. If he does, he is less likely to resent the time that you spend with the baby and, even more importantly, he will have a chance to get to know her properly and become really close to her too.
I think that women have helped to create passive fathers. If we want active fathers who are interested in the new baby, who wish to help in any way they can, and don't sneer at doing the 2am feed or changing a dirty nappy, then we have to involve them quickly and magnanimously. Women have frozen men out of pregnancy and early child care by their attitudes. It's very easy to criticise and exclude, and many women do so because they feel childcare is solely their province. It's all too easy to decide...

So there you go. I hope new mothers feel less of responsibility to look after their husbands in 2013. But who knows? Perhaps... Perhaps you who are sitting at home with your baby in one hand and your husband in the other are thinking: “Dr Miriam Stoppard, nothing has changed.”

Let's... Let's listen to some more music now. This is from a compilation album called Out Of Different Bags, which I rather like. This is Marlena Shaw singing A Couple Of Losers.

Music
[A Couple Of Losers by Marlena Shaw]

Charles Adrian
My next book is called The Perfect Heresy and it's by Stephen O'Shea. This is subtitled The Life And Death Of The Cathars and it's... but it's not... despite the... the cod-medieval typeface on the front cover, it's not a rival for Kate Mosse's readership This is actually history. David V. Barrett of The Independent says:

For anyone interested in medieval history, or the less edifying aspects of Christian history, O'Shea's The Perfect Heresy is a splendid - and despite its awful subject matter - an enjoyable read.

And I have to say it is... it chimes with some of my interests, which is... which is why I bought it. This was published in the year 2000 by Profile Books and, rather wonderfully, it has coffee stains on the front suggesting that it... even if it wasn't read, it was at least used. So. And for those of you who think this is... this is going to be a dry tome, just listen to the introduction:

ALBI, AS IN ALBIGENSIAN, the most notorious heresy of all time. On a bright summer afternoon several years ago, I found myself walking the silent streets of Albi in the company of my brother, surprised at having stumbled across a town whose name was familiar. We had come to Albi by chance, having rented a car in Paris a week earlier for an aimless drive southward through the French countryside. It was our version of what the English call “a mystery tour,” a trip with an unknown destination. Once the slate roofs and off-white walls north of the Loire had given way to the warm terra-cotta of the Midi, we began feeling pleasantly disoriented. In Clermont-Ferrand, we had our first confirmed beret sighting; in Aurillac, we backed into an accident; in Rodez, we watched as our waitress fell out of her dress. We had reached Languedoc, France's Mediterranean southwest.
After a long lunch at a truck stop, we cruised into Albi, the...

Jingle
London Fields Radio... it's London Fields Radio.

Music
[These Arms Of Mine by Otis Redding]

Charles Adrian
So now for The Glory Of The Perfumed Garden by Shaykh Nafzawi. The title alone persuaded me that I ought to... that I ought to buy this book. But this... it turns out that this is in fact the “unexpurgated and unabridged sequel to The Perfumed Garden” so I thought, you know, this is sure to be naughty. This was... This was... The Perfumed Garden was translated into English by Sir Richard Burton - he was the first translator. It was originally translated, I think, from Arabic into French and Richard Burton was working from the French and then he went back and he worked from the Arabic. Let me read a little bit about the history of it. So: ”Here,” it says…

for the first time in paperback is an English translation of that part of The Perfumed Garden which, it has always been suspected, is missing from Sir Richard Burton's translation. This first appeared in 1886 and it is known that two years later Burton set to work on a new version, this time bypassing the French source he had used before and translating directly from an Arabic manuscript. It has been surmised that, apart from being more accurate, this manuscript contained material which the French translator had not dared to include. What is certain is that, on Burton's death, his wife gained unrestricted access to his papers and promptly burned all of the fruits of her husband's labours. What is the startling nature of the missing portion which drove Lady Burton to this extreme action? Now, at last, the reader is able to judge for himself.

Or herself, indeed. The Burtons, incidentally... so this isn't Richard Burton the actor, obviously. This is Sir Richard Burton the diplomat and... and traveller and explorer. He and his wife are both extraordinary people. I recommend that you... that you look them up. Let me... Let me read you some of the chapter headings to give you a clue as to what might have been burned. So:

Chapter One: On lesbianism and those who first indulged in it
Chapter Two: On sodomy and the tricks of sodomites, their love for boys and their preference for boys over good-looking girls
Chapter Three: Pretty girls are superior to boys
Chapter Four: Pimps and procuration
Chapter Five: On women, sex and marriage - illutr [sic]... illustrative stories, unusual and humorous anecdotes, and comical tales

Later on we have:

On diverse matters relating to sexual intercourse
On motitation in coitus
On whether a man may gratify himself by using other parts of a woman's body than her vagina

And then it, sort of, finishes on:

Diverse entertaining tales and anecdotes

I'm going to read you a bit from the first chapter - On lesbianism and those who first indulged in it:

Lesbianism is an ancient female practice in which women find sexual gratification and which, in their opinion, minimises the risk of infamy and notoriety. According to commentators on the Quran, the practice made its appearance some years before pederasty. The prophet declared it an unlawful sexual practice.
The first lesbian was the daughter of Hassan Yamani. This woman had gone on a mission to Nu'man Ibn Mundhir, who lodged her in the apartments of Hind, his wife. Now Hind was the most beautiful woman of her day and she it was who was called “the naked one” because of her beauty in the nude. At any rate, Hassan's daughter would not let her be but kept on putting wrong ideas into her head and extolling the virtues of lesbianism to her, saying that in a lesbian union they was to be experienced a delight such as had never been known between a man and a woman, and that there was no risk of disgrace, no danger of pregnancy, and only supreme ecstasy and the indulgence of carnal desire without the fear of any imputations or the need to beware of any consequences. And so at last they came together in sexual union and Hind found a delight in it...

[gasping inhale] That's not even the end of the sentence.

Let's... So let's listen to my next bath track. This is Aretha Franklin with Do Right Woman, Do Right Man and I think my neighbours would attest: I... I do sing along to this.

Music
[Do Right Woman, Do Right Man by Aretha Franklin]

Charles Adrian
So I'm going to finish this... what is... the 20th did I say? I'm going to finish this 20th edition of Page One with The Diary Of A Provincial Lady - or Diary Of A Provincial Lady as I think it more properly is - by E. M. Delafield. I've written that this is “gentle... gentle, silly and fun”. I think that probably more or less describes it. This is a book that I bought in... Warwick, I think it was. A town with a castle anyway. It's a red book, hardback. It has a cloth cover that fades to a, kind of, salmon pink on the spine.

It comes... It cost me £3 and included in the price were two articles from The Telegraph - one... one from 1985 which was written by Susan Hill and one from 1988 which was written by Rosemary Hill. I don't know if that's some kind of clue as the original owners of the book. So both articles about [sic] E. M. Delafield and her experience. This book is... is a fiction, of course, but it's based on... on her real life, I think. She wrote lots of diaries and I think they probably became less and less interesting as they became more popular.

This... So this book was published in 1930 originally. This edition is from 1931. It's…

DEDICATED
TO
THE EDITORS AND THE DIRECTORS
OF
TIME AND TIDE
IN WHOSE PAGES THIS DIARY FIRST APPEARED

and it has illustrations by Arthur Watts. There you go. So you know pretty much as... as much about this book as I do now.

Here is the first page:

DIARY OF A PROVINCIAL LADY

November 7th. - Plant the indoor bulbs. Just as I am in the middle of them, Lady Boxe calls. I say, untruthfully, how nice to see her, and beg her to sit down while I just finish the bulbs. Lady B. makes determined attempt to sit down in armchair where I have already placed two bulb-bowls and the bag of charcoal, is headed off just in time, and takes the sofa.
Do I know, she asks, how very late it is for indoor bulbs? September, really, or even October, is the time. Do I know that the only really reliable firm for hyacinths is Somebody of Haarlem? Cannot catch the name of the firm, which is Dutch, but reply Yes, I do know, but think it my duty to buy Empire products. Feel at the time, and still think, that this is an excellent reply. Unfortunately Vicky comes into the drawing-...

Yes. There we go. I would... I would recommend all of... all of this week's books to anybody who can find a copy of them.

What should I say? This is... This is... This is the end now. This is the end of the 20th edition of Page One. It's the end of January, 2013, when this first goes up. I've been Charles Adrian. This is London Fields Radio broadcasting from the Wilton Way Cafe in Hackney, in Wilton Way - number 63 Wilton Way. It has A. Johnson And Sons written above the window. Do drop into the cafe. Do listen to other shows being broadcast from London Fields Radio. And enjoy my last track of today.

This track gets me going right from the first note. This is by Dusty Springfield who... I mean it's difficult to choose a single track by Dusty Springfield but this... this is magnificent. This is Son Of A Preacher Man. Until next time peeps.

Music
[Son Of A Preacher Man by Dusty Springfield]

[Initial transcription by https://otter.ai]