Grimm, Not Grim...

 

I wrote in 2020 about my recollections of evenings at Fairview in Fromes Hill as a child, with my grandmother reading fairy tales to us - me, my sister, and Yvonne, our friend from next door at The Manse - in the low glimmer of paraffin lamps and the flickering of the firelight. A lot of the tales were from the Brothers Grimm, read from the exact book pictured, still in my possession, and which was rescued from dereliction by my sister, Karen, when she worked in the bindery at Birmingham University in the 1970s: rebinding it and ensuring that it will last for another hundred years hence; for that is exactly how old this book is. I treasure it as a fond memory of childhood, and I will ensure that it's passed on accordingly when I shuffle off this mortal coil [that's yer actual Shakespeare, y'know].

However, our favourite story above all, and which always terrified us, was The Tinder Box, by Hans Christian Andersen, read from a similar volume to the above, the whereabouts of which is sadly now unknown to me. BTW, the map the book pictured is laid upon is from a contemporaneous volume about North Wales showing the extent of The Great Western Railway coverage of Wales and The Marches in the 1920s: the axis from which my family heritage springs. Nos da, rwan!