And I always end my letters, Love to the camomile lawn

On recommendations from grimmwire and desperance, nineweaving and I have started watching The Camomile Lawn (1992). Three episodes in, I think my only real complaint is the casting of Sophy.

It's never a direct plot point, but in the novel she's multiracial—she resembles her unknown, possibly-Chinese father to the degree that she can be successfully met at the station by strangers who have been instructed to "Look for a thin chinky child with black hair and slant eyes who looks like a Siamese cat. She stands out among the goosey English." It makes her even more of an outlier at her boarding school, and although her aunt Helena would be outraged at the suggestion, Sophy's heritage is one of the contributing factors toward her dislike of this embarrassing, illegitimate half-niece (effectively stepdaughter) her marriage to Richard landed her with. Our very first external view of Sophy is through her disapproval: "Sophy was small, ten, and her appearance had a touch of the Orient . . . Her cheekbones could be called Slav but not her eyes." I have no problems with Rebecca Hall's acting, but she looks like a dark-haired, dark-eyed English child, and I don't see how difficult it could have been in 1992 to find a ten-year-old actress in London who was actually, you know, mixed-race East Asian. As it is, I think that entire thread may have been deleted from the story. Seriously, Peter Hall.

Otherwise the series so far is one of the best adaptations I've seen, the rest of the casting included. I knew I liked Tara Fitzgerald from I Capture the Castle (2003), but I am really enjoying her as quietly convention-breaking, self-possessed Polly; Paul Eddington is a pitch-perfect Richard, plaintively Blimpish ("I ask you!") and unpredictably true, and Felicity Kendal no more likeable to me than Helena as written, which means she's equally complex. Jennifer Ehle convinces me as Calypso despite not looking like my idea of a heartstopping beauty and I like that Toby Stephens, like the voice of the book, is aware that sensitive, war-scarred, Calypso-stricken Oliver is kind of a prat. The twins are perfectly cast, right down to their eerily parallel acne scars. It's not Ben Walden's fault he keeps reminding me of Denholm Elliott circa The Cruel Sea (1953). And I'm sure there are inventions, but mostly what I notice in the dialogue is compression: whole conversations straight from the book, only reordered slightly or edited for time. The credits music is very catchy. Unless they kill someone off inappropriately or otherwise alter the characters' various ends, I think this will be a very faithful—and impressive—piece of television.

Alison gave me a lovely trade paperback of The Name of the Rose for my birthday. I have the terrible feeling I read it for the first time because someone I had a crush on liked Umberto Eco. Fortunately, I turned out to, too.