The only real writing I’ve managed all year is this article on the National Library of Australia’s Mauritius Collection, for the monthly journal National Library of Australia News. It’s wonderful to see the Library’s beautiful painting of a dodo gracing the July issue’s cover, highlighting the rich holdings relating to Mauritius in their collection. I used the collection during research for Blue Mauritius.

Download a pdf of the article from the Library’s website here. A slightly extended version, fully footnoted and with an appendix documenting all the rare book holdings in the Collection will appear later this year in the Journal of Mauritian Studies. The article begins:

‘Mauritius is but a name to most people in England unless they collect stamps’. Thus begins a treatise on colonial cooking published in the then British colony in 1954. This book, in ‘English and in French with a glossary in Hindustani’, is one of some 4500 items that make up the National Library of Australia’s Mauritius Collection – an outstanding resource revealing the Indian Ocean island to be much more than the sum of the philatelic, tropical and ornithological parts on which its fame rests.

I thoroughly enjoyed researching and writing this. I must find the time to get writing again…

I am very pleased, at last, to be reviewed in the literary pages of my local paper, The Age. I felt some trepidation about this. Would the reviewer damn the whole book on the basis of one clunky sentence (which has happened – it’s a rare book that doesn’t have its clunk, surely a forgiveable offence)?

No. I am happy with the review, entitled ‘A hobby worth sticking with’ by Simon Caterson. (And in true Blue Mauritius fashion, which readers of the book will appreciate, the article is illustrated by a Mauritius stamp, but not a Blue Mauritius!)

He notes that my approach ‘is descriptive rather than analytical but there is material here for readers… who like to speculate about the forces that drive popular culture and the psychology of collectors’. It’s a funny thing that. That the material is there for the interested reader to speculate upon is because I analysed the mass of my research and selected the sliver that best illustrated points I wanted to make in telling a story as I saw it. Subtle analysis? No matter. I think this is a good observation.

Caterson then cites a conversation I had with David Beech, head of the Philatelic Collections at the British Library. I still remember that day with David back in September 2003, spent entirely and enjoyably conversing about the Post Office stamps and the history of philately and stamp collecting. When he dropped that line I scribbled it immediately into my notebook and knew it was gold. I’m glad someone else has picked up on that.

‘Mercifully, for non-philatelists, she has avoided becoming complicated and hypothetical.’ Phew!

And finally, Caterson has appreciated, as I’d hoped, the ‘nicely judged twist in the tale that provides this non-fiction book with an ending you won’t want to give away’. There is a further twist to this twist that I realised in October, which I am not at liberty to explain here. Suffice it to say, if I am allowed to make a very slight change to the ending in the paperback, I will!

As I said, very happy with this review, thanks!

Simon Caterson, ‘A hobby worth sticking with’ , review of Blue Mauritius, The Age, 14 January 2007, A2 p.20.

Blue Mauritius received its first write up in the press (that I’m aware of) in the UK’s Daily Mail recently (11 August). It didn’t make it online, but a copy was sent to me this week. It is mostly a descriptive review (Critic’s choice), and to my chagrin, refers to the ball envelopes as invitations (which I was at great pains not to in the text) and seems to have missed my point about the error theory. However, any publicity is good publicity I’m told, as long as they spell your name right!

Best of all, perhaps, the reviewer describes the book as ‘scholarly but very readable’.

This was one of my greatest challenges – appealing to both general and specialist readers. In the one article I wrote based on my Masters thesis there were more footnotes than text. Once was enamoured of footnotes is an apt description of me the academic.

I finished secondary school a good writer. By the time I had a research degree under my belt I was an excruciating writer, unable to leap small audiences of like-minded academics in a single bound. The Academy almost, but not quite, ruined me for writing. It has taken me some eight years and much effort to remedy this. I know that parts of my book do get bogged down in detail but for the most part it zips along…

So, I’ll say it loud and say it proud – I am beyond the recovering academic stage – I am ‘scholarly but very readable’ and very happy to be so!