BY ROBERT MIGHALL
JOHN MURRAY, 288pp, £16.99THIS BOOK IS THE WORK OF A man with a one-track mind. As Robert Mighall notes on his first page: "I am, and have been for as long as I can remember, obsessed with sunshine. Maybe ev
en addicted." What follows is the author's attempt to explain this obsession and to present a history of our relationship with the sun. He has done his homework thoroughly, winkling out literary quotes that serve his purpose and delving into the meteorological archives to find out what the weather was really like in faraway days sun-kissed by memory.
As one who avoids the sun at all costs, I was interested in what sort of case could be made for this malevolent orb that hangs in the sky waiting to burn fair skin. At first, the defence was flimsy. It appears that our taste for sunshine in this country derives from the fact that we live at the extreme north-western edge of Europe and thus suffer from iffy weather. Well I never! I was also unimpressed with Mighall's disdain of the "sad pastiche of café society" we have created on these shores to satisfy our constant urge to be on the Mediterranean.
Much more entertaining is the description of how sunbathing came into being, a remarkable turnaround seeing as polite society until relatively recently shared my view that sunshine was something only to be soaked up by the poor. The legend is repeated that Coco Chanel invented the practice by accidentally getting tanned on a yacht, but the more entertaining truth is revealed that sunbathing actually started high in the Alps, in sun clinics where rigorously controlled exposure was held to cure a variety of diseases.
A loose aggregation of folk calling themselves Gymnosophists appeared, a nice long and serious-sounding word which actually meant nudists. Before long, Health & Efficiency magazine was starting to turn itself into the very model of soft pornography.
Subsequent chapters deal with various aspects of our relationship with the sun – Escape, Pleasure, Love and Memory. Again, many of the opinions seem self-evident, but the author has a way with a charming anecdote. My only quibble is that there is no mention of PG Wodehouse, whose novels, particularly the Emsworth and Jeeves titles, are the perfect evocation of a perpetually golden English summer that never existed.
Moving into the present, Mighall is suitably dismissive of the Peter Mayle mentality which has so disfigured Provence and parts of Italy, while lamenting the way the British need to feel at home abroad has led to the despoliation of many a foreign coast. I am still not entirely sure who would buy this book, but it would make something different to read on the beach.
The full article contains 475 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
