In which: Salley Vickers

This is going to be a long and self-obsessed post, quite unfitted to social media. Sorry.
I’ve always been a reader. My primary school shut at lunchtime on a Friday and I’d get 6 books out from North Watford library in the afternoon and have read them all by bedtime. I read some quite unsuitable things there - Wuthering Heights at about 11. All through school I’d have my own book hidden behind the class reader (that I would have finished the day we got) and I’d generally never get caught. In Sixth form I got a special card at the Leavers’ dinner from the school librarian thanking me for sneaking a huge pile of books I’d misappropriated over the years into her pigeonhole with a sorry note. I still don’t know how she knew it was me. At St Andrews I gave up my Literature degree for Medieval History so I could read what I wanted. I was always destined to be an English teacher, even if it was somewhat delayed.

If you ask most Literature teachers what their favourite book is, the answer is likely to be something canonical, something 19c or early 20c. I have read thousands (maybe tens of thousands of books) and I know what mine is. It’s Miss Garnett’s Angel by Salley Vickers.

That book is about a grumpy history teacher called Julia (Garnett) who retires to Venice, looks at art, and has a mystical experience. I am a grumpy English teacher called Julia and I go to Venice every other year to look at the art in the Biennale and have not had a mystical experience.

Tonight I got to meet Salley Vickers and tell her that it’s my favourite book of the thousands I’ve read. It’s great having Austen or Hardy or Dickens or Brontë (x3) as the author of your favourite novel but you can’t ever say a heartfelt thanks to them. Tonight I thanked Salley Vickers and she was utterly lovely and gracious.