Faces and Places
Sir Henry W. Lucy
Read by Ruth Golding
Faces and Places is a collection of articles on nineteenth century travel, events and personalities by the British journalist Henry Lucy, who wrote for the Daily News, a London newspaper. His open letter To Those About to Become Journalists rings as true today as when it was written.
The first article, "Fred" Burnaby, includes a lively account of a balloon trip, while Night and Day on the Cars in Canada and Easter on Les Avants relate Lucy's experiences of rail travel at that time. Other travel tales (A Night on a Mountain, Mosquitoes and Monaco, and Oysters and Arcachon) provide an insight into the Victorian Englishman's attitude to Europe.
Three of the pieces, With Peggotty and Ham, A Cinque Port and Christmas Eve at Watts's, concern the county of Kent, where Lucy had a country house. Christmas Eve at Watts's contains an interesting exposé of Dickens' short story The Seven Poor Travellers.
Other articles are of historical interest: A Wreck in the North Sea is an account of the wreck of the ship "Deutschland" in 1875; A Historic Crowd describes the massive popular interest in the 1871 trial of the Tichborne Claimant; The Battle of Merthyr contains an eye-witness account of the Merthyr Riots of 1831; The Prince of Wales paints a portrait of the future King Edward VII.
Lucy, who also wrote as "Toby, M.P." for the satirical magazine Punch, loved to poke gentle fun, particularly at the establishment, and this is especially evident in A Peep at an Old House of Commons and Some Preachers I Have Known.
This eclectic collection, mostly affectionately humorous, but with moments of great pathos, was originally published in 1892 in The Whitefriars Library of Wit & Humour.(Summary by Ruth Golding) (6 hr 59 min)
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Reader's response
librivoxbooks
Thank you, Philippe. I felt I ought to say that this was my first solo recording, and the sound quality is not up to my usual standard. I am partly through re-recording this, and will note in the description when I have uploaded the better version. Ruth <b>Added 18 Feb 2010:</b> Now re-recorded in full. And I enjoyed it just as much second time round.
I loved listening to this book!
Philippe Horak
A delightful recording. Many thanks to Ruth Golding!
enjoyable, recommended to anglophile history fans
Vivia
The reminisces of the great tichborne trial were interesting, having just read on the same in the wonderful LibriVox work SURVIVORS' TALES OF FAMOUS CRIMES. I've had this crossover experience a lot on LibriVox... wonderful!! thanks for the great reading, perfection.
enjoyable
ged
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. A fascinating window on the past, read brilliantly as usual, by Ruth Golding. Well done and thank you.
intwrestimg!
A LibriVox Listener
enjoyed the stories very much...even more so because of the reader.