Winterval Is Over

We lack a single snappy term for the collection of religious and secular festivals that cluster round the Solstice and New Year- and when someone tried to supply one a few years back the culture warriors mocked it into oblivion. I rather regret this- or at least for the purposes of this post I do. "Winterval" is neat and witty, an improvement on the anodyne- and sprawling- "holiday season"-and by playing on the word "winter" contrives to incorporate a suggestion of snowflakes and icicles. I think I'm going to start using it again- without irony- and see what happens...

Anyway, today- which is a bank holiday- is the last day of the what-ever-you-want-to-call-it and I've taken down the Christmas tree, packed away the crib and am gearing myself up again for the entertaining business of buying and selling houses...

War And Peace

I read War and Peace in my teens and loved it, revisited it in middle-age but wasn't in the mood and abandoned it part way through the first battle- and now- in what I think I can be allowed to call old age I'm loving it again. I can't understand why it has the reputation of being difficult when Tolstoy's prose is plain and uncomplicated, his characters as alive as any in fiction and his world view much closer to our own than, say, Jane Austen's. Yes, War and Peace is long- but not nearly as long as Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones or Hilary Mantell's Cromwell trilogy or any of those other enormous modern epics that people seem to have to problems with. Perhaps it's just the Russian names...

I'm reading it in the translation by Louise and Aylmer Maude. There are others- but Louise and Aylmer were not only Tolstoy's (younger) contemporaries but actually his friends- and in a position to consult him and ask his advice on knotty points. It's the only English language version that- so far as I'm aware- Tolstoy himself approved. It reads easily- and really, what more can you want?