Bookworm by Lucy Mangan

That’s the one.

Ah, "spontaneously generated from his top hat"?

I think Harriet’s change attraction is understandable, I am sure we’ve all started to fancy someone whose skill/kindness/understanding/jokes or whatever grew on us over time.

(See also: Amy and Rory in Doctor Who)

which novel is it where his face is compared to maggots emerging from ripe cheese???

Whose Body? - the first novel.

Try again. Roy Ridley

Ah- the Invisible Man-give me a moment….

This is Roy Ridley-apparently DLS modelled Lord Peter on him…

And by Gaudy Night, he’s turned into a gorgeous, sexy blonde alpha male who is also a scholar, expert cricketer, musician, linguist, punter, all-round polymath, detective. diplomat etc who has the entire senior common room eating out of his hand and whose clothes Harriet wants to rip off.

Though to be fair, even after the heated moment in the punt, H rapidly reverts to seeing him as the intelligence that lurks under "an oddly amusing set of features", or something like that, so I think it's the mind rather than the muscles (and the familiar parrot profile) that do it for DLS.

Some of that might have been because DLS needed to up the quality of her daydream material in the face of tedious work and pretty miserable love affairs!

It’s how completely differently he’s written over the novels in which he appears that amuses me when I reread them now.

He’s originally a sort of Bertie Wooster about town, all amiable parrot profile and exaggerated aristo manner (which novel is it where his face is compared to maggots emerging from ripe cheese???) in the early novels. and even in Have His Carcase, Harriet says dispassionately that he ‘strips better than I expected’ when they go swimming, having clearly imagined him to be skinny and unappealing naked.

But by Murder Must Advertise he’s suddenly a natural athlete, half the women in the novel fall for him, and even a sexually experienced party girl thinks he has a lovely body. And by Gaudy Night, he’s turned into a gorgeous, sexy blonde alpha male who is also a scholar, expert cricketer, musician, linguist, punter, all-round polymath, detective. diplomat etc who has the entire senior common room eating out of his hand and whose clothes Harriet wants to rip off. By Busman’s Honeymoon, he’s so powerfully sexy that Sayers has to quell him on his wedding night by having Bunter scrub him under the pump!

Talking creatures of all sorts were a feature of Narnia, but my postulated clever clogs editor might not have known that. Or anything really.

All the creatures talked didn't they? The beavers certainly did.

Back when LM wrote for the Guardian she seemed genuinely well read and well informed on children' literature. I wonder did she actually write that on her first visit to Narnia Lucy met a talking faun and promised to return to help him, only for some clever clogs editor think that was a mistake and insert the only talking creature they could remember.

He may be a pillock, but he's my pillock, like the deeply annoying boyfriend you outgrew in university but somehow find yourself Googling every so often and he hasn't aged well.

I came to Roderick Alleyn much later in life and instantly fell for Troy rather Rory.

Adored Bookworm and Bookish. Like reading about my own childhood. Can’t imagine a mistake could possibly have lessened the joy taken from it for me.

Peter is a pillock, in all fairness. He may have a late cut that is exceedingly characteristic, and punt terribly well, but I still think that the brains of the operation is Bunter. Harriet, on the other hand, is a goddess.

He’s MINE! Oh, actually, she’s mine and he can go back to the “Princess of moonbeams”. God, I hate Uncle Paul!

Good. I get all jealous and protective when friends turn out to adore Peter W. You can't have him (though tbh Harriet is my true icon).

Just a warning to readers-she doesn’t like Peter Wimsey!!!!! Shook, I am. Shook….

I loved both Bookworm and Bookish. I didn’t notice the Narnia error, but it wouldn’t have put me off the rest of the book even if I had. I did spot the Bert Digweed error in Bookish - which to me is worse than the Narnia error because there’s nobody called Digweed anywhere in the Adrian Mole books (as far as I recall) so she’s either just got the name completely wrong somehow or confused it with a Bert from a different book altogether, whereas the Narnia error appears to just be mixing up books in the same series. Anyway, the Digweed error still didn’t put me off loving the rest of the book. People make mistakes and it doesn’t mean they don’t generally know what they’re talking about.

I’m a bit worried about commenting on here because I’ve already been suspected of shilling for Mangan🤣 but her writing about post natal depression in Bookish is very good.

Spotera!

This all rather speaks to my main beef with Bookworm though, in that Mangan proudly declares she was never a member of the Puffin Club. This could all have been avoided if she had sent that postal order.
Sniffup!

Oh that makes so much more sense! that she's conflating when Edmund pretends Narnia isn't at the back of the wardrobe and when Peter and Susan are all Obviously you didn't meet Aslan, Lucy. That's quite sweet, actually, that it's run together in her head like that. Mea culpa, @splothersdog, you were right, she's got the facts mixed up. I quite like that though, it makes it feel more like you really are wandering through someone's slightly mad childhood memories.