It's been a dull week here so far. 'Dull' could read 'Peaceful' of course. Maybe I should be more positive about the lack of 'interesting' events.

I've read a Dick Francis (oh the shame of admitting it) also Malcom Bradbury 'The History Man' for the first time. Probably it was better (for me) to read it now and be able to see it in an historical perspective. The style is dated but none the worse for that. I re-read 'Jacob's Room' and 'Between the Acts' last week and thought I saw the forerunner of Iris Murdoch, Muriel Spark and Margaret Drabble in Virginia's oddly dreamy, disjointed flow of thoughts and images. 'The History Man' had quite a touch of the early Iris about it (probably the university campus background had something to do with that), only with a more crashing finale. The themes - free love, the position of women, the balance of relationships in a marriage.... well, maybe I've just got old but they don't seem too relevant now. Is it sad that no-one is striving for ideals these days? Politics - maybe we've become too aware that human nature is going to take every ideology to its lowest common denominator in the end anyway. The position of women: things have changed and how much pay or authority or respect a woman gets - well it's become a personal battle and probably rightly so; not all women want the same thing.

There's always the environment I suppose.

The edition of The H Man I read was an excellent example of how not to set a book. A hardback copy put out by the 'Observer' which has virtually no prelims so one falls into the first chapter unaware. The typeface is too black and there is no spacing between the lines; not much white space around the edges either. It made for an unpleasant reading experence, very tiring at night. It's one thing tolerating the small type and lack of spacing in the older paperbacks, they were cheaper, but this seemed to me to be sheer lack of taste and discernment.