Have You Read? A Room With a View

A book for fans of romance, Italy, beating Victorian values, quotes, classical music, classical (i.e. ancient Rome & Greece) references and literature? It could only be E.M. Forster.

We’ve all been on holiday and wanted a decent view, haven’t we? And when you’re a pair of Edwardian Spinsters on the “Grand Tour” to see Italy (The Grand Tour, originally an excuse for rich people to buy art, or in context, a very middle class holiday itinerary) who have been promised just that, it’s inevitable you’re going to moan when you don’t get it. If however the prim Harriet knew what her moaning would result in for her less prim and proper companion Lucy, it’s safe to say she’d be quiet. However, this isn’t a moral story of why you don’t moan on holiday; it’s a story of how much good can happen even if you could moan the whole way from Florence to Tunbridge Wells.

If it was just a romantic story I wouldn’t recommend it. But there’s a lot more to it. Firstly, if you love Italy you will love the descriptions of the scenery around Florence; Italy is where the heart of the story (and the most beautiful scene, in a field of violets with Italy unfolding below it) is set. The book is written to present the beauty of the city of the renaissance and the freedom therein, fighting the combined forces of the Edwardian Middle Class and their medieval world attitudes.

It is filled with period details of a vanished world, from the English residents of Florence (ex-pats who went for culture as much as sun) to the trailblazing elderly spinsters of the age who took enough luggage to fill a small modern aircraft whilst searching for art and culture that wouldn’t offend their delicate sensibilities. It’s a literary book, but one that won’t send you to sleep or break your back carrying it - it’s very near perfect.

The plot itself (grand literary parts aside) revolves mainly around a holiday romance. Not the usual 'meet a local, fall in love, go home, never hear from them' sort - this is before the Great War, so of course the romantic interest is another Englishman. The problem arises from his status not his location; the class system is at its best (or worst depending on your point of view) at this time and across-the-class romance is one of the worst things possible. Add a foreign setting and the possibility of a good marriage being ruined by a holiday fling and you know everyone is going to try and cover it up. You also know that’s exactly what shouldn’t happen.

One of the best things about this book is the way people lower down the social scale are the better characters, whereas the bad and misguided characters are the well-to-do, in an age when people really believed in “betters”. The book reminds its audience of the real things to judge people on, and the importance of knowing yourself, lessons which more than a century later we’ve yet to really learn.

Warning: This book may make you want to go to Florence, or be an Edwardian. Hopefully the first one.

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