RA FRIDAY - RICHARD AND THE SAS : ULTIMATE FORCE vs STRIKE BACK

(IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THIS SERIES YET, I MUST WARN YOU : SPOILERS!)

I wanted to make a comparison between the two series in which Richard plays an SAS soldier / officer. And , since I didn’t mind Strike Back at all, I was ready to re- watch ITV   Ultimate Force (2003). Good God! I had completely removed the silliness of the entire thing! I was just shocked and angry in the end. Furious ! And only when I was,  I remembered it was not the first time! Did British television really broadcast that stuff? Unbelievable and unacceptable!

SAS soldiers overeager to shoot on any possible occasion, ready to lie and to find a capegoat to conceil their mistakes , the regiment before anything or anyone else , catastrophic family relationship but … yeah … they are tough guys , no frailty must be shown. Plenty of aggressiveness and high-handedness, uncaring attitude towards the application of the law, personal revenge. MAD DOGS, indeed (it is the title of one of the episodes). I know this show was meant for lads but such uneducative, immoral, distorted messages should not be sent to any audience, least of all to our youth. I know most of the people who take up a military career must be something like that, but please, don’t glorify them on a TV show!

I don’t like Henno (Ross Kemp) at all! Did his wife leave him? Well done! Doesn’t he say he married her only for her teets? Unbearable! Then? He shouts all the time giving order here and there even when he is not on duty. He ‘s ready to … no more precisely , he lies to the tribunal judges in the first episodes but he can’t bear any betrayal to him or to his friends. In that case he decides what justice is and do justice himself. Just a puffed –up, megalomaniac , crazy but lucid bloke. Blonde MI5 female agent, you are warned. Ex –wife, you just did the right thing!

I don’t like Pete, Laura’s husband. He’s in troubles, shocked and traumatized, removed from ops . He nearly kills his wife in his sleep, he’s paranoic, crazy, violent. I found it difficult to sympathize with him and with his silly wife. Henno helps him, of course. Even his wife – apart from a brief affair with kind- blue-eyed- Ian-Richard– is there always patient to him, everybody’s there for him. I found him unbearable, instead. He is even reactivated after a while though still mentally unstable. He refuses to undergo therapy: he is a man, after all, an SAS soldier, not a maid! I think he is just an irresponsible. He and his friends who cover the truth. They don’t help him at all, in fact.

I didn’t like any of the plots in  the 6 episodes. After watching 8 series of Spooks and the new Sky 1 Strike Back,  I may be a little spoilt or too demanding. But this series was utterly … crap! Chris Ryan collaborated to the scripts in the first two series but then he left. He was certainly scandalized by the unrealistic twists the story was taking. Most of the cast too left in series 3, maybe the scripts were becoming even more absurd.

 Ian Macalwain is not an easily likeable character and he's nothing like Richard, but as a thoroughful talented actor,  he did is best in that situation too. Macalwain is the new arrival in the Red Troop, he has to substitute the previous captain all the guys there used to like very much. Not an easy task.

He doesn’t want to be liked, actually.He wants to be respected and obeyed,  since he’s been appointed the new responsible of the troop. All the men, instead, start working against him, ignoring his orders, especially Henno.

No one better than Richard can find the right words to describe what he had in mind while acting in UF:

“Macalwain is not a bad guy, but he is a bit edgy. I don't think I am anything like him, which is why it is interesting to play him. He's eloquent with a sharp tongue and can humiliate people in an argument, which was really enoyable to play. He comes in as a captain and throws his weight around.

Macalwain begins to grow close to Laura, the wife of one of his men, Pete Twamley. Although ultimately it is she who seduces him by coming to his hotel room, he is soon so deeply involved with her that he is prepared to give up his career to take her away from her violent husband. Horrified, she pulls back, not wanting to leave Pete. But Macalawain is unable to accept this, believing that eventually she will come away with him.

By this time, Henno has found out that Macalwain has slept with Twamley's wife - the ultimate betrayal in his eyes. In the final episode, he takes matters into his own hands during a mission to rescue Colonel Dempsey, the regiment's commanding officer”. (from www.richardarmitageonline.com)

Henno takes matters into his hands ?!? Would you say that a cool blood murder ,with final mocking hiding of the corpse in a freezer and  knowing smiling looks from all the members- officers- included,  is TO TAKE MATTERS INTO ONE’S HAND? Who do they kill? Ian of couse. And why? Because he left Pete’s wife seduce him!

As I told you at the beginning of this post I was just astonished and furious. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The series closes that way. At the beginning of series 3 none of them takes their comeuppance. Nothing happens!

What is the main  difference between Ultimate Force and Strike Back? A great one, indeed. On a shallow note, Richard has greatly improved his look recently. But, seriously, everything sounds more realistic and more human in Sky 1 new series. John Porter is a killing –machine but in order not to suffer for what he does, he kind of suspends reality, dissociate himself from his own actions while killing and, especially, never seems overeager or excited to do it. It just seems an unavoidable cruel necessity to him. He’s got feelings, regrets, nightmares for what he does. He’s got frailties and flaws. The characters responsible for killings and massacres in SB suffer from great or little sense of guilt, but they recognize their mistakes: John Porter, , Gerald Baxter, Collinson himself in the end. The attempt to give a soul to a war killing machine like John Porter was a successful one. It made him someone bearing a torment, someone who needs to atone, someone you can even forgive for his crimes. You’ve got the idea that war is sufference and death, not a game. That’s what counts more to me.

Awfully done, ITV. Well done, Sky one!

P.S. 1

It seems Strike Back will take part to Rome Fiction Festival next July. Let’s see if Italian Press will notice its talented protagonist. Fingers crossed for any news coming out!

P.S. 2

Have you seen SB DVD extras? There’s a long interesting interviews with the crew and Richard says lots of thoughtful things about his experience. I just love listening to him talking about his work and his characters.

Many thanks to my friend Karen for her snappies from Ultimate Force, to www.richardarmitageonline.com for the precious info about Richard's work and to www.richardarmitagenet.com for their incredible screencap gallery.

THROWBACK THURSDAY - THE HOURS by MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM ( 1998)

For this event hosted by Jenny at TakeMeAway , this time I've chosen a beautiful novel I've been recently thinking about since I  re-read  MRS DALLOWAY by Virginia Woolf with my students. THE HOURS by Michael Cunningham is just dedicated to Woolf and her 1925 novel.

Throwback Thursday is a corner to write about good reads from the past. Those books we so much loved and we don't want to forget .

Passionate, profound, and deeply moving, this novel is Cunningham's most remarkable achievement to date, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award. To me it is one the most beautiful and unforgettable reads of the last 10 years.

Michael Cunningham, widely praised as one of the most gifted writers of his generation, draws inventively on the life and work of Virginia Woolf to tell the stories of three different women: Wirginia Woolf herself in the last days of her life before her suicide early in WWII, coping with the troubled writing of her “Mrs Dalloway”; Clarissa Vaughan , an editor living in today New York city , caught in her attempt to organize a party for Richard, her most loved friend and ex-lover who is dying from AIDS; finally, Laura Brown a housewife living in California in the years soon after the War, who dreams to escape her boring ordinary life at least for one day, one day only ...What is the link between the three women? Apparently a very subtle thread: Virginia is writing Mrs Dalloway , whose name is Clarissa like Mrs Vaughan living in today’s New York city, which is also the book Laura takes with her in her brief escape from her world. But the reader will discover deeper connections page after page, till the final surprising revelation .

This novel is Cunningham’s homage to Woolf’s great talent and what I most admired in his style was the capacity to tell the three stories into one recalling Woolf’s indirect interior monologue, very often recalling/quoting her Mrs Dalloway.

Only literature can give sense to our confused, slanting lives. Moreover, literature is the mirror in which life reflecting its image succeeds for an instance to tell about itself. Woolf’s moments of beings are in Cunningham, too. Revelations of life itself.

You can understand how poignantly beautiful this novel is just tasting its Prologue. Three pages I love re-reading from time to time. Do it yourself, here.

Trivia

- On her way to Richard's apartment, Clarissa Vaughan thinks she sees Meryl Streep. Meryl Streep ended up playing Clarissa Vaughan in Stephen Daldry's movie adaptation of "The Hours". In the book, Clarissa Vaughan considers it might also have been Vanessa Redgrave that she saw. Curiously, Redgrave plays the part of Clarissa Dalloway in the 1997 film version of Mrs Dalloway.

- Mrs. Brown is a character in Virginia Woolf's essay, "Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown".

- Two anachronisms are presented by Cunningham in his book. The first is on page 30 (1998 edition) where he writes of Virginia Woolf, "She rises from her bed and goes into the bathroom." Hogarth House was built in 1720 and in 1923, it did not have a bathroom, only an outhouse. The second is on p. 43 where Mrs. Brown in 1949 sees "beside the roses stand cereal box and milk carton..." Although Lucerne Dairy did have milk cartons in 1938, they did not come into common use until the 1960s. These are both corrected in the film Woolf is depicted using a ewer and basin to wash in the morning, and the Browns have milk in a bottle.

After reading the novel, I suggest you to watch the movie (2002) .

It’s actually worth seeing!

JANE IN JUNE GOES ON - GIVEAWAYS, INTERVIEWS & A NEW FILM

JANE IN JUNE goes on for me. I'm  re-reading PERSUASION. I've recently posted twice on My JA Book Club, once introducing the novel and listing some simple questions from my precious book of quizzes, the second time today with some Thoughts on Anne Elliot, this month's heroine.

LOTS OF GIVEAWAYS

This event,  hosted on Book Rat by Misty,  is featuring interviews and great giveaways. Among the guest writers,  my blogger buddy Jane GS, Jane Greensmith.

Here's her interview with Misty and the post with her double giveaway . I particularly loved reading her short stories in the collection Intimations of Austen. Read my review and my interview with Jane. Follow my links, comment and get a chance to get your copy of these jems of Austenesque pleasure.

Alexa Adams is another talented writer of Asten-based fiction, who is also a dear blogger buddy of mine, she wrote an entertaining guest post on Misty's blog, about  the  Concerns of a Crazy Janeite, that is herself! She is also giving away a copy of her First Impressions, A Tale of Less Pride and Prejudice which I had the pleasure to read and review not long ago, after receiving my signed copy directly from Alexa (my review and  my interview). If you want to enter this giveaway, click here and leave your comment!

Don't forget the giveaways running on through all this month on Fly High! and My JA Book Club.

Just have a look at my sidebar!

A NEW PERIOD FILM COMING SOON!

Now,  since we are in an Austenesque mood, I 'd like to close this short posting of mine with some news about and images from a period film coming out soon and starring three Austen heroines! Keira Knightley (Lizzie Bennet 2005), Carey Mulligan (Kitty Bennet 2005) and Sally Hawkins (Anne Elliot 2007), as well as Charlotte Rampling and Andrew Garfield.

In his highly acclaimed novel Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro (The Remains of the Day) created a remarkable story of love, loss and hidden truths. In it he posed the fundamental question: What makes us human? Now director Mark Romanek (One Hour Photo), writer Alex Garland and DNA Films bring Ishiguro's hauntingly poignant and emotional story to the screen.

As children, Ruth (Knightley), Kathy (Mulligan) and Tommy (Garfield), spend their childhood at a seemingly idyllic English boarding school. As they grow into young adults, they find that they have to come to terms with the strength of the love they feel for each other, while preparing themselves for the haunting reality that awaits them.

Watch a beautiful trailer of Never Let Me Go

MY SUNNY, LOVELY SUNDAY

Yes, I know, it’s Tuesday but I had no time to write in the last couple of days. I’m supposed to be on holiday since I stopped giving lessons, but , do you know teachers go on working after that? So, I’ve just found some time to write down a brief report of my delightful Sunday!

I live near Rome, among beautiful mountains and in wonderful wilderness. My town  (Subiaco, on the left,  medieval bridge)  is small and ancient and I love living here. I am always rather busy at weekends and I stay at home coping with the housework left behind in weekdays. Last Sunday I was invited to join two special friends on a trip and decided to leave everything apart: school deadlines and ironing piles, husband and sons!

Ariccia and Nemi are very picturesque small towns I had never been to, they are really close to Rome. The landscape is similar to the one I’m used to , but they are near volcanic lakes, just pretty spots of greenish blue among the mountains. I am usually so attracted by lakes and the sea! But it is odd because I’m afraid of water and can’t swim.

(Ariccia - Rome)

In the morning we visited Palazzo Chigi in Ariccia, a luxurious baroque country residence, which belonged to one of the most powerful families in Rome. It was given to the City of Ariccia on 29th December 1988 under special conditions, by Prince Agostino Chigi Albani della Rovere, and is now a museum and cultural centre, hosting various activities such as exhibits, concerts, guided tours, meetings, and the like.

Begun in the second half of the sixteenth century by the Savelli family, the palace was transformed into a lavish baroque home between 1664 and 1672 using plans by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, with the collaboration of his young student Carlo Fontana.

The most curious place  in the palace is called , “la stanza delle belle”, the room of the beauties; in it, Cardinal Flavio Chigi collected the portraits of his beauties … his lovers!There are so many on those walls, not all of them so beautiful,  but Cardinal F. C. didn’t waste much of his (free) time!

This stunning location has been used to shoot period series and movies more than once. The most remarkable of them is Luchino Visconti ’s “Il Gattopardo” ( The Leopard, 1963) starring Alain Delon, Burt Lancaster and Claudia Cardinale.

It was not only Art and History, mind you! We ate in a typical “fraschetta” (inn) in Ariccia … we ate a lot of genuine, tasty food at a very special price. They said it was an appetizer but , good God! … it was impossible to finish all that goodness!

After lunch we moved to Nemi, a pretty ancient resort overlooking a small volcanic crater lake. We had our dessert there, a very special one, “fragoline di Nemi” (strawberries from the area) with ice- cream. A delicious tasty completion for a great trip. We sat on a terrace, admired the lake, tasted the strawberries and chatted pleasantly. We were free to share our opinions on everything we like or dislike :  books, Tv series, colleagues (we work in different places and they are not teachers like me, lucky them!) , families , next holidays, dream holidays, friends … yes … we talked a lot… am I forgetting anything …? Well, a certain Brit bloke. A tall, dark, handsome guy ... He was very often the subject of our conversation. Any guess?

(Nemi - Rome)

What a lovely Sunday! Thanks to my friends for planning it and driving me there! It was just the right way to gather some enthusiasm and energy to start the school meetings I’m having these days. They can be stressing, they are the worst part of my job: assessing and deciding who fails, who passes ... not easy matters, not stuff that I particularly like.

I only regret I forgot my camera! These pictures are taken from the Net!!!

GIVEAWAY WINNERS!

1. PHYLLY'S GIVEAWAY - MRS GASKELL'S COUSIN PHILLIS

As I announced, this week I'm going to be very strict. Only commenters who added their e-mail addresses have been entered. I'm very sorry for the others,  if they wanted to be entered but  forgot to do it. So, finally,  the  readers/commenters of Phylly's interview on Fly High entered for her giveaway are:

1.Ruth

2.BuddyT
3.Time4t
4.Avalon
5.Iz4spunk
6.Krist
7.Claudia
8.Luthien84

And the winner is ...

CLAUDIA !!! CONGRATULATIONS!!!

2. CHARLOTTE HAWKINS'S DOUBLE GIVEAWAY - THE TEMPEST

Sarah Pawley's, pen-name Charlotte Hawkins, interview and giveaway arose some true interest among many of my readers but only those who added their e-mail addresses to their comments were entered. Here they are:

1. Ana T.
2. Marianna
3. Iz4spunk
4. Nancy
5. Felicia
6. Lunarossa
7. Mesmered
8. Buddyt
9. Adibah
10. Theresa N.
11. WhiteLady3
12. Aik
13. Luthien84
14. Krist

And the  winners are ...

NANCY & LUTHIEN84!!! CONGRATULATIONS!!!

Many thanks to Phyllis and Sarah for their availability, their friendliness and their generosity! Have you visited their blogs? You can find Phyllis at Phylly's Faves and Sarah/Charlotte at From the Quill Tip . If you haven't won this time there are other giveaways running all through the month here at Fly High! Have a look at my right sidebar and leave your comments and e-mail addresses! Off to write to today's  lucky winners.

MY BLOGGER BUDDIES - MEET KATHLEEN

This week I'm proud to introduce another of my special talented buddies. Kathleen is an Art historian, lives and works in New York City,  practises  fencing ,  writes three different blogs, is in search of a rich husband and has a crush on Mrs Gaskell's John Thornton (which is also how I happened to find her in the blogosphere) . Enjoy our chat.

Please, Kathleen, could you briefly tell us something about yourself?

I’ll steal a little bit from my blog bio pages (and Henry James) here: “Her ideas of enjoyment were very simple; she enjoyed putting on her new hat, with its redundancy of feather, and twenty cents appeared to her a very large sum.”

I’m an economist turned art historian and am thus your quintessential over-educated and underpaid recent grad school graduate. I was born and raised in a suburb of Manhattan, and as I bounce back and forth between gritty NYC and landscaped Westchester, I try to lead a life that balances my country-gal ways with my big-city personality. I enjoy hiking and kayaking excursions followed by lazy afternoons on the porch as much as I enjoy exploring the fast-paced Avenues and Cross Streets of my beloved New York City.

I finished my masters in art history last year and since then have split my time between the art world (I worked at the Museum of Modern Art for several months) and the sport of fencing. I have big aspirations – maybe an Olympic team, maybe a book, definitely a PhD, and absolutely a career in a museum. Of course, while I’m working on all those plans, I’m just another blogger waiting to be discovered.

(The Columbia Fencing media guide with Kathleen  on the cover)

 New York City! What is it like to live in such an iconic metropolis? What are the pros and cons according to you?

I pronounce water “waatah” and cheer for the Yankees like it’s a second job. When I go abroad and people ask me if I’m American, I say “No, I’m a New Yorker.” Paris has its boulevards; Rome has its ruins; Toronto has its endearing Canadianess, but I can’t imagine calling any city other than New York my home. It’s inhabitant friendly (great public transport, fantastic restaurants,etc.) and culturally rich (Museum Mile, Carnegi Hall, and so on). But perhaps what I love most about my city is that it allows for individuality. Sure, as home to Wall Street and as the financial capital of North America, there is an expectation that you’ll join the corporate machine. But in truth, it is a city filled with people pursuing their own dreams – whether it’s to own a bakeshop in Tribeca or photograph models on a runway. Go out for a drink and you’ll meet the lawyers and investments bankers you’d expect to knock elbows with, but you’ll also meet writers, artists, athletes, bohemians, and intellects. Does it have cons? Of course. It has its grubby side streets, its overpriced rents, its tourist hotbeds. But all in all, when you’re in New York, you really do believe you can be whatever you want to be when you grow-up.

 (Kathleen in her second job, cheering for the Yankees!)

 Art is your work and it is apparently also something you love very much. You often blog about works of art on Meet me in the drawing room. Can you tell us more about it?

I’m an only child who learned early how to amuse myself – mostly through coloring books. When I was a wee thing, my motto was “you can never have enough crayons.” I always knew that I wanted to puruse some sort of career in the arts – originally as a fashion designer, then as a critique, finally as a curator/academic. I enjoy looking at art but perhaps more than that, I love learning the backstory behind a work. When I’m researching something, I feel like Sherlock Holmes – digging my way through dusty archives, looking for clues in the seemingly mundane, stockpiling hundreds of relevant sources, uncovering a seemingly endless chain of possible leads. If you’re ever looking for me at the Museum of Modern Art, or the Metropolitan, I’m that nerd standing in front of a painting you’ve never heard of taking copious notes with a gleam in her eye.

Have you seen my favourite painting in my sidebar on the right? It was love at first sight wit Friederich’s Wanderer and I just can’t say exactly why. Then I’ve got Monet and the Impressionists as well as Caravaggio among the artists I love. What about you? Have you got a painting which is really special to you? Any artist or movement?

The Wanderer is also one of my favorite paintings! Talk about the sublime!

There are two works that are very important to me. The first is Rodin’s “The Burghers of Calais.” I saw it for the first time when I was 13 and it was the first artwork that ever made me really think about art as something more significant than a decorative flourish. I try to make a pilgrimage to one of the castings every few months (the Met has a complete set of the figures) because it still sends shivers down my spine.

The second work is an 1885 self-portrait by American painter Ellen Day Hale (above). The portrait hung in the 2006 “Americans in Paris: 1860-1900” exhibition at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and I was immediately transfixed by the sitter’s lofty but knowing gaze and the mastery with which she was painted. I was intrigued. What began as an interest in one artist and one painting quickly turned into a fascination with an entire period of artistic production – I’m crazy about art from the 1860s to the end of the 1930s. Thanks to an undergraduate paper I wrote on the portrait, I was accepted back into Columbia for my MA, where I wrote my thesis on Hale.

These days, I’m very much into the German Expressionists – hence my recent attempt at learning German.

German is a very difficult language, but you're tenacious Kathleen and you'll make it!  Now, from languages to ... reading. What kind of reader are you? Where and when do you usually read? Do you prefer to buy or borrow books? What about e-books? Have you got favourite genres and authors?

I’m actually a terrible reader. I love to read, but I’m slow and plodding. I like to underline and highlight and savor chapters. It takes me ages to get through books. Of course, just like you, I love Austen. I just finished Mansfield Park – the only one I hadn’t read. I also adore W. Somerset Maugham, Steinbeck, Vonnegut, and Camus. I’ll read anything, though I tend to avoid fantasy, sci-fi, and contemporary novels (I have too many classics to catch up on). I like to read about people, real or fabricated.

I have a Kindle, which was a MA graudation gift, and I generally have mixed feelings about it. It’s absolutely easier to travel with the sleek digital version of War and Peace. But at the end of the day, I’m a book lover who wants to turn and dog-ear pages while she marks up margins. My bookshelves are my pride and joy.

What is the best book you’ve recently read? And the one you often re-read or leaf through?

I’m currently reading “The Razor’s Edge” and I think it’s destined to become my all-time favourite. It’s highly quotable, so I feel like it will join “Pride and Prejudice” as a book I thumb through almost weekly. The Grapes of Wrath is also one I turn to frequently for one reason or another.

Somerset Maugham, then. Let us know why it was so special to you. Maybe on one of your blogs. I mentioned one of them , Meet me in the Drawing Room, but you’ve recently started writing a second one, They Told Me to Find a Rich Husband. Can you explain what do you love to blog about and what are the differences between them?

My first blog was actually “AlleyKat’s Corner Cafe” – a recipe blog I update rarely, but am still very loyal to. Meet Me in the Drawing Room is a venue for me to express my passions for art, literature, and travel. It was originally conceived of as “Voyages in a Discovery” (referring to the Land Rover Discovery that takes me all around the country), but it inevitably expanded to reflex my diverse but constant interests. My catch-phrase for the blog is “It’s where the ladies entertain and the gentlemen retire” – a reference to the old-time role of the drawing room as a domestic meeting place.

As for They Told me to Find a Rich Husband, that was my attempt at becoming the next Carrie Bradshaw. The content and title are inspired by the #1 piece of advice people give me after they ask what I plan to do with my master’s degree: “Find yourself a nice, rich husband.” It’s a place to make fun of social expectations and male-female relationships. It’s also a place to address what it means to fall in (and out of) love. And sometimes I use it as a place to gush about Richard Armitage... you know, it just can’t be helped.

:o Really? I thought you just had a literary crush on John Thornton and ...I find out now you are instead another victim of Mr RA's blue eyes spell! Welcome on board, K.! But we'll talk about this later. First let's finish talking about blogging.  When and Why did you start ? What has blogging  added to your real lifeI started blogging in the fall of 2008, when I in the early phases of writing my master’s thesis. It was a much needed alternative to the heavy academic research/writing I was doing in grad school. I have always kept a journal and a notebook of “essay ideas,” but the practice of blogging forced me to turn those little jots into something more substantial, even if informal.

My friends keep up with my blogs, which is very nice of them (they must be bored at work!). Often one of my posts will be a jumping-off point for a dinner/night-out discussion, or someone will suggest that I blog about this topic or that event. I started blogging as a way to engage with the public at large. Turns out, generating post topics has been a great excuse for a wine night with my wingmen and women.

I also read about your journeys on your blog. Do you like travelling? What are the places you love travelling to ?

Travel is very important to me, and practically every month I spend a few nights in a hotel room. Thanks to fencing, I’ve been all over Europe and the US for competitions. But of all the places I’ve been, France and Italy are my favorite European destinations – everything about them is captivating. The food, the locales, the people – I just can’t get enough. I also love traveling through Canada. I have family there, but everytime I get to cross the border, I get to pack my hiking boots and kayaking gear. I may be a city girl, but I’m very much a wilderness junkie, and Canada is very much a “Big Wild.”

Here we are now. I perfectly remember how I found you online about a year ago. I was writing a post, Mr Darcy vs Mr Thornton while re-reading both Pride and Prejudice and North and South. Surfing the Net for materials and information I found your letter to Mr Darcy confessing your love for another man to him… It was a brilliant post and I linked it to mine. Can you explain what this letter was about? I just love it! (And I agree with you, as you know!)

I remember how excited I was when you posted on that – you were my first “unknown” comment! I felt like I’d been discovered.

I had just watched the Richard Armitage North & South adaptation when I started penning that letter. As a Victorian-phile (and a modern woman who likes a self-made man), I was totally smitten with Mr. Thornton (and Mr. Armitage). I had been very devoted to Darcy, defending him when my male friends mocked him, but I had to tell him that my heart now belonged to another. It was the right thing to do... I mean, wouldn’t he have done the same for Lizzy?

Do you still love Mr Thornton or are you preparing a letter to him to confess you’ve got a new literary crush?

Hahaha! I think Mr. Thornton is safe. Larry Darrell is appealing, but just isn’t my type.

Finally, period drama and films are something I like watching and writing about on my blog. What about you? What kind of films do you like? Do you like going to the cinema?

I’m also a big fan of period films, and probably most of the movies I list as my favorites are set in the past. I try to keep pace with the current cinema, but as in most things, I prefer the classics.

Glad to discover more about you, Kathleen. Thanks a lot for your kindness and good luck with all the great things you do. See you in the blogosphere!