#BlogTour-‘The Last Landlady’ by Laura Thompson

About the book…

Laura Thompson’s grandmother Violet was one of the great landladies. Born in a London pub, she became the first woman to be given a publican’s license in her own name and, just as pubs defined her life, she seemed to embody their essence.

Laura spent part of her childhood in her grandmother’s Home Counties establishment, mesmerised by the landlady’s gift for creating the mix of the everyday and the theatrical that defined the pub’s atmosphere, making it a unique reflection of the national character. Her memories of this time are just as intoxicating: beer and ash on the carpets in the morning, the deepening rhythms of mirth at night, the magical brightness of glass behind the bar…

Through them she traces the story of the English pub, asking why it has occupied such a treasured position in our culture. But even Violet, as she grew older, recognised that places like hers were a dying breed, and Laura also considers the precarious future they face. Part memoir, part social history, part elegy, this book pays tribute to an extraordinary woman and the world she epitomized

Huge thanks to Anne Cater of Random Things Tours for the blog tour invite and Unbound for my paperback review copy of ‘The Last Landlady’ by Laura Thompson which is out now.

The grandmother of the author comes to life in this memoir of a woman who was the first to hold a publican licence in the UK.

As Laura says-

”She described a dull-lit,part-colored world of dishevelment and discomfort,of ashy grates and a single rusting tap,of cold rotting wood in an outside privy,a world deprived not just of the ease that was her physical milieu but of the basic post-war amemenities.”

Violet ran the pub she was given by the breweries, from the 1950’s through to I think the early 2000’s (the dating is unclear but it is obviously decades that she ruled the roost with an indominatable presence). The way that she is described by the granddaughter who spent so much time with her is painstaking, and lengthy, as Violet is as much the heart of the book as the pub that she ran. It takes 6 pages ,right at the start to detail how she sits at the bar and holds court.

”My grandmother was free in a way that I am not,just as she was constrained as I am not. She was self-absorbed,right enough,but in another way she never gave herself a thought. Imagine that, today.She simply lived ,covered the expanse of her life without heed or hesitation.”

This book is clearly a labour of love to a beloved relative who not only ran her own business, she also lived on her own terms. Witnessed through the eyes of a child through to being a grownup, we see not just how the pub itself developed , but also the social history of the English pub through its glory days as a community hub, through to multi million pound commerical enterprises with identi-kit chains popping up all over the place.

Through Violet’s tale, Laura Thompson used the local pub as a barometer of change and trend. There are lovely vignettes such as the original bar snack of a wedge of cheese with sliced onions laid out for regulars, swiftly whipped away should a non regular take more than their share, and also after Budget Day mutters of ‘I cannot afford to do this any longer.’

The link between personality of the landlady and the attendance in the pub, is gleefully covered, as the memoir is firmly based within this setting,yet the focus is on those who drift in and out of the doors,

I found this an interesting read, at 250 pages it felt a much longer book because it was divided into parts, and not chapters. This made it difficult to find a stopping place, and the intense first person retelling of Violet’s life did, at times, feel tiring to read. It was like one person talking at you for a very long time,and I enjoyed it, but was quite glad to get to the end.

”The landlady-by which I mean the figure delineated in popular culture-exhibits a knowing, winking exaggeration of ‘female traits’. She wears the equivalent of a uniform,designed to signal either good-natured availability(tught,tinselly) or matronly competence (brisk,bosomy).”

An interesting discourse on the role of women in the public eye which is reflected in the personal memories of Laura’s youth, is framed using the pub as a base for social history. As an English institutution, the link between landlady/lord and the success of a pub is now more concerned with the ability to manage, rather than relying on the personality of the licencee. It is a reminisence of years gone by, sad, mournful but not regretful, joyous in the sharing of moments such as celebrations by the local community.

About the author..

Laura Thompson won the Somerset Maugham award with her first book, ‘The Dogs‘, and wrote two books about horse racing while living in Newmarket.

Her biographical study of Nancy Mitford, ‘Life in a Cold Climate‘, appeared in 2003 (re-issued 2015) and was followed by a major biography of Agatha Christie.

‘A Different Class of Murder: ‘The Story of Lord Lucan‘ was published in 2014, and 2015’s ‘Take Six Girls: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters’ was recently sold to television. She lives in Richmond.

Links-http://www.laurathompson.co.uk/