Year of the Book

We are delighted to have received several responses to our appeal for Year of the Book entries: a book which has changed your life; maybe your first book or one that you return to often. We shall be sharing these in the coming months on the website and in Stanbrook Benedictines.

Reading is so important to me. I spend twice as much time reading as I do watching tv. I can’t remember when I couldn’t read, but I recall at school being sent to a quiet spot to read a simple version of Black Beauty. The books I remember were the usual ones for girls in the 1940s –  Alice in Wonderland,  Ballet Shoes, What Katy Did, although I never came across Winnie the Pooh as a child, only the poems in Now We are Six, which I would copy out at a little home-made desk; the Famous Five of course where I immersed myself in their adventures and as a tomboy identified with George. And I devoured endless school stories: my mother used to threaten that I would have to go to boarding school if I was naughty, and I quite hoped this would happen.

One lesser-known book which I read many times was the Hidden Treasure of Glaston, a mediaeval tale about two lads, one an Oblate who had been left at the monastery to be educated, who search for the holy Grail. I still have a copy. I think this must have been my first introduction to Benedictine monasticism.

My father was a devoted reader, mostly of Russian novels. We had few books in the house, mainly a matched collection of Dickens. But when I was about eight, I can remember exactly where I was when my father announced that there was to be a Library in our London suburb, and when I heard that it was full of books and that you could borrow them endlessly, I was entranced.  Cycling to the Library to change my four books was my joy and I must have read all the books in the Children’s section at least twice.

My maternal Grandmother belonged to Boots’ Library and I am grateful that she always added a Book Token to my Christmas and birthday presents and I would spend hours choosing the book – mostly hardbacks in those days, Geoffrey Trease, Rosemary Sutcliffe, Elinor M Brent-Dyer, and the Biggles books.

As a teenager I still read a lot; by then I had graduated to the adult section of the Library where I noted that the difference was that the title was less of a clue as to what was inside. I read a lot of historical fiction and biography, and I vividly remember reading several times St Thérèse’s Autobiography of a Soul from the school library, covering it in brown paper so that I would not be ridiculed for reading it. I did the same thing much later when on the train reading Holiness by Donald Nichol!

Now in old age reading is my mainstay. I read something religious after lunch, and among my favourites are Thomas Merton whose Letters and Journals I re-read frequently. Also Joan Chittister, Ruth Burrows, Basil Hume, and Benedictine stuff (of course). In the evening I settle down to read for a good two hours, mainly modern literary fiction or biography, often in French, and as I live far from bookshops Kindle is a wonderful boon.
Chris Pritchard (Oblate of Stanbrook)

Please send your entry to Sr Laurentia
crieflodges@stanbrookabbey.org.uk or
Sr Philippa
tessapip@hotmail.com