1925

I had a request the other day for a suitable book for a 95 year old. I suggested a book either written or published in the year of their birth or a book about or by someone who was born that year. Since that year was 1925 this turned out to be a very rich vein indeed.

1925 saw the arrival of ‘Carry On, Jeeves’ by P.G Wodehouse, ‘Mrs Dalloway’ by Virginia Woolf, ‘The Secret of Chimneys’ by Agatha Christie, ‘The Great Gatsby’ by F. Scott Fitzgerald, ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’ by Anita Loos and ‘The Painted Veil’ by W. Somerset Maugham amongst others.

Some exceptional births too: Gerald Durrell, William Styron, Yukio Mishima, Flannery O’Connor, Elmore Leonard, Gore Vidal….The strangeness and perhaps the interest of this is that it puts together in our minds people we don’t necessarily associate with the same time frames.

Last year as a 90th birthday gift I gave books by authors born in 1929 and this put together Anne Frank and Martin Luther King Jr. which again seemed such a pairing.