Wuthering Hats – 9 May 2025

I took a risk a few days ago, left my column of berets intact and donned a straw boater. From inside, the weather looked right: birds able to land without trouble, trees swaying gently. The wind swept the hat from my head the moment I was near the river.

There was that laughing instant when it seems one will easily snatch it from the air and then, triumphant, look around as if to say, ‘that was close. Did you see?’ and a passerby will nod and smile, point even, in a silent reply of ‘good catch!’

But another gust and it was off. Inevitable. The boater and its burgundy ribbon parted ways and it seemed a shame that the former would go unadorned but certainly it was going. My heart soared with it. A new adventure.

I bought it in a charity shop so it had stories before me and now had them afterwards too. Someone downstream might retrieve it, might think, ‘I know exactly who would love this if I can clean it up and add a navy bow to match her favourite jacket.’  

The hat began to flip over and over as its pursuers (more than one person will, however gingerly down a steep bank, trip after a hat on a bright day) gave pointless chase. It spun like a ballet dancer, steady though the audience grows dizzy. And then, it stopped. The wind gave it back, shrugged, showed that it was teasing, just a little joke. Upside down by the edge of the water, the lost hat waited and was retrieved.

This has nothing to do with every book I have read this week being about hats and fate, with every book offering a lifting and a setting down, causing loss, self-consciousness, amusement, anticipation, helplessness and recovery. Or at least, one is not because of the other. Nonetheless…

A Leopard-Skin Hat by Anne Serre is the story of Fanny as seen through the eyes of a close friend of many years, the Narrator. Who was she? A woman lost in thought, once an athlete, never quite a pianist, quizzical, though not about the things in front of her. A woman who carried a large bag in her one good hand and a piece of eternity somewhere about her being.

‘There was more to Fanny than the obstacles she encountered. She also had in her, popping up from time to time, and always when you least expected it, the jovial young woman in the leopard-skin hat she would have been had certain hatches not got battened down one day, by accident, abruptly, as if by a gust of wind.’

The Narrator loves her, the her that stole a leopard-skin hat and the her that cannot bear it. Fanny will die, we know, but not before she soars upwards. Serre’s is a mesmerising novella.

Gabriële by sisters Anne and Claire Berest resurrects their great-grandmother through a meticulously researched biography which emerged as a novel. A woman cycles out from the cover, hat in place, a woman in motion captured momentarily still. She looks quite proper, contained. But Gabriële is off on her own way: a music student in Paris and Berlin; fiercely intelligent; married to Francis Picabia; adored by Duchamp; revered by Apollinaire and Stravinsky; a woman quiet yet exuberant, a ‘sublime chaos.’

On the Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle is stupendous. Reading it, I felt like my hat being spun metres above the ground. I have never had an experience quite like it – I should like to discuss it with everyone and yet I also want to keep it inside me while I mull over how the author pulls it off. For Tara time is passing. For everyone else, 18^th November is repeating. Only Tara knows this. I cannot explain more than that without affecting your experience of the book. Nor can I raise your expectations, or my hat, too high.

The Golden Throne: The Curse of a King by Christopher de Bellaigue follows on from The Lion House with Suleyman the Magnificent now at the pinnacle of his power. It is 1538 and, with parts of Eastern Europe, Asia and North Africa under his control, his attention turns to his successor. He has five sons and whomever he chooses as his heir must kill the other four. We’ve all been there. This is a history book told like a play: the costume department are going to need several hatters.  

While one ruler was troubled by too many heirs, Henry VIII was longing for more. Do pop in at 11am tomorrow to hear about Hans Holbein, The King’s Painter, not to mention the king’s feathered bonnet, from cultural historian Franny Moyle.

Ever since a penguin donned a rubber glove and transformed into a chicken, the power of headwear to disguise has been unquestionable. But one young girl is confused: how can no one else have noticed that their neighbour, pastry chef Mr Wilson, is a dinosaur? His magnificent hat and bowtie combination has everyone fooled. In The Dinosaur Next Door by David Litchfield, Liz goes in search of a palaeontologist who can confirm that Mr Wilson is definitely a dinosaur. But that doesn’t mean that he can’t also bake cakes.

Meanwhile, hats flying off can cause more than hilarity. What happens when all the things one had been keeping under one’s hat are released? In The Hat Full of Secrets by Karl Newson, illustrated by Wazza Pink, Henry has a big secret which he must keep under his hat, if only he had one. When his grandfather offers Henry his, things begin to spill out of it… A superb book for those moving from picture books to chapter books teeming with illustrations and sartorial inspiration. I bet you one white rabbit and top hat that you won’t see the ending coming.

Please don your deerstalkers for the greatest spy story since Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy, though this character is decidedly more smiley. Anna at War by Helen Peters tells the story of a German-Jewish girl brought to England by the Kindertransport. At school she makes friends, learning English quickly, but also faces prejudice, particularly when every household is issued a leaflet giving instructions for ‘If the Invader Comes.’ Then Anna discovers a man hiding in her foster family’s barn, wearing British Army uniform but muttering to himself in another language… Agent Zigzag meets Agent Zo; try to keep your head as you pursue enemies through a lot of hedges.

Finally, here is a poem by Matthew Sweeney about a hat. It is called ‘The Hat.’
May your weekend lift your spirits, if not your hats,
Lizzie

PS If you have made it this far down, you are probably among the few who would like an explanation for the newsletter’s move to a Friday. Will one be forthcoming? ‘It’s a bold move,’ said one gentleman, not unkindly. 

PPS If you have made it this far down, please note my restraint. Not once have I made a joke about papal hats, Conclave or popes in a Volkswagen.