One of my favourite reviewing experiences was a few years ago, when I read and loved Philip Hoare's England's Lost Eden. It was an idiosyncratic history-cum-travelogue about religious fanatics in the Victorian New Forest. His follow up, which came out at the end of last year but which I am only just reading, is about whales*. I think regular readers can see that they will soon learn more about whales.
As a taster: JFK was a massive fan of scrimshaw (carvings on whale's teeth). In 1963, the First Lady ordered him a Christmas present of a whale's tooth engraved with the presidential seal, but he never got it. It was buried in his coffin.
(Also, shortly before he died, JFK threw a private dinner for Greta Garbo at the White House and gave her a bit of scrimshaw. In her thank you letter to Mrs Kennedy - the Swedes are well polite - she wrote, 'I might believe it a dream if I did not have in my possession the President's "tooth" before me.' Knowing JFK as I don't, but I've heard the stories, I feel I should point out that there were a lot of naughty scrimshaws of one kind and another. Doubt this was one of them, or Garbo wouldn't have written to Jackie, surely.)
*Great cover, no?
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