Two sure things, whatever disaster happens. First there will be a reckoning, and second honest love is never wasted, (Libby Purves's diary 1972)

[grahamg]

I came across this wonderful lady and her writings and broadcasting maybe fifteen or more years ago, (she has written many books of fiction concerning strange family lives showing a marvellous imagination I think, though she's maybe better known as a broadcaster now).

The book I'm quoting from in the thread title I'm just finishing reading for the first time, (though first published in 1998), and concerns her early life up until she reaches adulthood at around the age of twenty five she says, so largely about her schooldays, moving a lot, and living all around the world (he father being a professor and then diplomat), and her college years, spent at Oxford University at the end of the nineteen sixties).

She quotes a passage from one of her favourite authors, (T. H. White):

"The best thing for being sad is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds.
There is only one thing for it then - to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear nor distrust and never dream of regretting. Look, at what a lot of things there are to learn,..., astronomy in a lifetime, natural history in three, literature in six. And then, after you have exhausted a milliard lifetimes in biology and medicine and theo-criticism and geography and history and economics - why you can start to make a cartwheel out of the appropriate wood, or spend fifty years learning to beat your adversary and fencing. After that you can start on mathematics, until its time to learn to plough."

Libby Purves includes that passage (at the end of a chapter) following an account or discussion of the tougher times she had whilst at college, (including a depressive illness).

 

[Pepper]

I looked up Libby Purves at my library site. Unfortunately, she is not represented. However, an ebook by her husband showed up in my research:
One wild song : a voyage in a Lost Son's Wake
Available Now
Author: Paul Heiney Call Number: eBOOK Published: 2015
When Countrywise presenter Paul Heiney's son Nicholas committed suicide aged 23, Paul and his wife, Times columnist Libby Purves, were rocked to the core. Nicholas had been a highly gifted promising young man, albeit he had struggled to keep his head...
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This book seems very interesting. Would you recommend it? I am currently reading several books, but afterward I might try the above. What do you think, graham? Thank you for your introduction to Libby Purves. I enjoyed reading about her. Unfortunately, I have no more room in my apartment to purchase any more books and only borrow them from the Library.

 

[grahamg]

I looked up Libby Purves at my library site. Unfortunately, she is not represented. However, an ebook by her husband showed up in my research:
One wild song : a voyage in a Lost Son's Wake
Available Now
Author: Paul Heiney Call Number: eBOOK Published: 2015
When Countrywise presenter Paul Heiney's son Nicholas committed suicide aged 23, Paul and his wife, Times columnist Libby Purves, were rocked to the core. Nicholas had been a highly gifted promising young man, albeit he had struggled to keep his head...
____________________________________________________________________________________
This book seems very interesting. Would you recommend it? I am currently reading several books, but afterward I might try the above. What do you think, graham? Thank you for your introduction to Libby Purves. I enjoyed reading about her. Unfortunately, I have no more room in my apartment to purchase any more books and only borrow them from the Library.

My mother liked Paul Heiney very much as a TV presenter, (I didn't know about the son dying btw), though I've never read anything he's written, so can't recommend his books.

Not sure if I can find links to Libby's books, or articles, but would think it should be possible to find some.

 

[grahamg]

A few articles here on Libby's career:
https://www.firstwomenatoxford.ox.ac.uk/libby-purvis

Quote:
"Libby Purves was educated in Bangkok, France, South Africa and Tunbridge Wells (diplomatic family!) and read English 1968-71 at St Anne’s. She joined the BBC in a radio studio management job, worked a while in Radio Oxford and then moved to Radio 4 as reporter/ producer and finally presenter of the Today programme. Leaving this, she was for 34 years presenter of Radio 4 Midweek, and made numerous documentaries. She has written for many magazines and newspapers but for the last thirty-odd years been a columnist on The Times. She has published 12 novels and several non-fiction books about sailing, childcare and radio.."

I've found a book extract, (the book is entitled, "How not to be a perfect mother")
https://buriedunderbooks.co.uk/how-not-to-be-a-perfect-mother-by-libby-purves/

Quote:
After all, the perfect way to spend my child-free time is to read about how to parent children, right? As you can tell from the rather fluorescent cover image depicting a ‘busy’ mum, this is quite an old book (first published in 1986), but I thought the basics of childcare can’t have changed that much in thirty odd years.. can they?

What’s it about?
The title is pretty clear, but the introduction elaborates on journalist and author Libby Purves’ central principle: ‘Any mother would lay down her life for her child…but I see no reason to do it every single day’. To that end, she advocates cutting corners where reasonable and practicable, and finding ways to meet mother and baby’s needs at the same time, explaining how she powered through the early pain of breast-feeding by convincing herself that ‘the more breast milk I get down the baby, the less chance there is of having to nurse him through frightening baby illnesses.’

The book covers pregnancy, birth, newborns, bigger babies (lovingly referred to in the chapter title as ‘vandals’!), returning to work, childcare, siblings and holidays, concluding with the words of experienced mothers giving some final bon mots.

What’s it like?
Irreverent in tone, often entertaining and very practical. (Why not let children play with (safe) items that aren’t ‘toys’? Personally I didn’t need any convincing on this score; one trick I relied upon to complete the washing up when my two were small enough to bounce in a chair at my feet was to issue them with a new, extremely exciting item from the pantry to shake about every few minutes.)

Purves advocates hiding items you don’t want to be touched rather than engaging in power struggles and sweeping up the inevitable breakages. She takes a robust attitude towards children who don’t seem to eat enough, recalling that she would ‘just top hunger-strikers up with a warm mug of milk at bedtime and issue vitamin drops, hoping for the best’. It is impossible to argue with the common sense behind these suggestions, and my own experience (both of following and of not following her advice) confirms that the ‘easy option’ is actually the most effective in many respects. (Sitting a small child in front of a plate of peas they’ve already rejected and insisting that they eat every one is time-consuming, stressful and counter-productive.)

Final thoughts
This is an entertaining and practical, albeit slightly dated, guide to several key aspects of parenting the under 5’s. This is absolutely not an instruction manual or a how-to guide, but could make quite a relaxing and reassuring read for a woman expecting her first baby.

 

[grahamg]

Some more extracts from one of Libby Purves's articles or books:
https://www.studocu.com/en-gb/docum...d-social-care/paper-2-extract-020221/20557515

LIBBY PURVES: Don’t dread downsizing – a smaller home makes
you feel like newlyweds!

We did it! We decluttered, emptied sheds, filled skips, overloaded local
charity shops. We defied sentiment and moved on. We downsized! We
admitted that we are, mainly, only two in the house. I contemplated the
sprawling vagueness of my home in Dunwich, Suffolk; the way that long-
beloved objects and furniture were hardly noticed any more. I saw our
yards of dusty, random books (no one needs four copies of The Mayor
Of Casterbridge – how did that happen?).

I shuddered at neglected chests and hampers and deep, deep
wardrobes full of random oddities. (No one needs three snorkel sets,
either.) I admitted that there are limits to the number of stuffed babyhood
toys it is sane to keep. Then there was the stuff inherited when my
mother floated peacefully into eternity, leaving me with great drifts of her
lifetime archives and possessions to sort out. As we hauled and sorted
and stared in amazement at the junk we owned, the very bricks seemed
to sigh with relief.
We left a huge basement library, dining-room and mini-cinema, a big
sitting room, three bedrooms plus guest flat.

We now have two small but shipshape bedrooms and a tiny downstairs
room with a sofabed. I am incurably keen on having people to stay, so
we’ve put a shepherd’s hut in the garden for when the spare room and
sofabed are full. To my husband’s despair, I have also sneaked in one
classy fold-up, a moderately upmarket camp-bed and one lethal World
War I khaki canvas thing. Hospitality is my non-negotiable red line.
No two downsizings are the same, and ours was rural. But many of the
lessons we learned apply to anyone. The first is about clutter. You can’t
cram a quart into a pint pot, as Granny used to say, so be realistic. Take
a deep breath, get some plastic boxes and start half a year before the
move. Categorise things as pure rubbish or charity-shop and jumble-
sale.

Note which of your children, nephews, nieces or friends’ offspring are
setting up home, and ply them with your unwanted furniture, curtains,
crockery and kitchen equipment. It’s nice to think of it being used, and,
frankly, one rarely misses anything. A bonus is that as you reduce the
volume, you rediscover long-forgotten treasures. In the new house are
pictures, objects, photos and nice jugs we hadn’t registered for years,
because they were in the spare bedroom or a dark cupboard.
They spring back to life in their new setting.

Mementos of bygone family and friends spring back, too: not lost but
revived and freshened in memory to smile from new mantelpieces. We
have fewer walls to hang things on, so our huge collages of holidays or
schooldays are out of their dusty frames and in a big, safe art folder.
A Furniture? Face it, some of it just won’t fit. It’ll cramp your new rooms.
Our enormous bed had to go, and the sofa the old dog used to like, and
the stupidly big armchair and that interesting hall cupboard.

Books? We sold a third of them, but the very act of culling* meant the
rediscovery of treasures. There’ll still be somewhere to bung** what’s
left. Family archives, old letters, children’s primary school drawings,
treasured toys for potential or actual grandchildren. Most downsize
homes have somewhere – a glory-hole for such things. And if not, there
is always Big Yellow Storage. Expensive, yes, but it offers a year or two
to convince yourself that some things really aren’t worth hoarding. One is
not a dung beetle, or a dead Egyptian Pharaoh.
A bit sad, you say? A bit Aunt-Agatha? Not at all. It’s more like being
newlyweds again: nesting in the tiny first flat with the wedding-presents.
Honest.

culling* – cutting down
bung** – put, dump

 

[grahamg]

Something here that I think fits in with the views Libby Purves expressed in the book mentioned in the OP I've just finished reading, (called "Holy Smoke").