Leeds Book Club (Medusa): “Black Diamonds: The Rise and Fall of an English Dynasty”; Catherine Bailey

Brief summary of the August meeting of Leeds Book Club (Medusa).

5 members were present with 4 having read the book.

Discussion topics included:-

· general

• non-fiction vs fiction as book club choices
  • general happiness at this selection
• how poetry was not to be selected for the book club

· from the book

• great houses
• jet set
• wealthy
• wars
• mines and miners
• unions
• poor
• poverty
• Americans and the Kennedys
• Politics
• Monarchy
• Paternalistic employers
• Brutal employers
• Religion
• Inheritance, heirs and ancestry
• Nationalisation
• Secrecy amongst the upper classes

· writing style of the book

• Lots of to-ing and fro-ing
• A good read
• A good way of learning history
• Cliff-hangers

Scores

Scores out of 5 for writing style and storyline

4, 3.5, 7.5

3, 4, 7

3, 4, 7

4, 4, 8

Additional Resources

1. Wentworth Woodhouse official web site
2. Wentworth Woodhouse Wikipedia entry
3. BBC documentary about Wentworth Woodhouse:
4. Author interview
5. Desert Island Discs of the-then Minister of Fuel and Power, Mannie Shinwell, who ordered the grounds of Wentworth Woodhouse to be dug up for opencast mining (video).
6. BBC set for new costume drama based on the real-life family history of a clan whose house is so grand it makes Downton Abbey look like a bedsit (Daily Mail, 23 August 2015)

Books that went into the “hat” as the October read:

• If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller, Italo Calvino
• The Bees, Laline Paull
• The Long Earth, Terry Pratchett, Stephen Baxter (came out of the “hat”)
• The Narrow Road To The Deep North, Richard Flanagan
• We Are Not Ourselves, Matthew Thomas