Ben McNally owns the podium
It’s the final day of the Olympics and I’m looking for a respite in the run-up to the Gold Medal hockey match. If you’re in Toronto, there’s no better place to be than Ben McNally’s Author Brunch at the old lady of King Street, the King Edward Hotel.
I admire Ben for a bunch of reasons, not the least being the bold statement made by his pony tail, worn by a guy who hasn’t fortgotten the joys of his youth but has obviously found new joys in the world of books. He opened Ben McNally Books on Bay Street at a time when independent booksellers had become an endangered species.
By virtue of a lot of sweat and clever ideas, one of which was the Author Brunch which he brought over from his prior employment at Nichollas Hoar, Ben has succeeded in keeping his doors open.
The Author Bunch is an astonishing tribute to one man’s entrepreneurial skill. It’s also a credit to the two hundred or so book lovers who turn up on winter Sunday mornings — some from pretty distant points — to listen to a quartet of writers talk up their books. This morning, I had school teacher Nancy Gilbert from Tottingham on one side and Dawn, a lady from Rockwood, on the other. Both had gotten up early to drive toToronto, as do dozens of others for each of these affairs.
Ben’s a funny guy at the podium but it was from Nicholas Ruddock, author of The Parabolist (Doubleday Canada) who drew the most chuckles. His best line was about how Ben sang in a rock and roll band, one critic likening his voice to that of a “sick crow.”
We also learned what a parabolist is — one who speaks in parables.
The author who interested me most was Lynne Olson, the English historian who has written Citizens of London: How Britain Was Rescued in its Darkest Hour (Bond Street Books).
I learned a lot from an earlier Olson book, Troublesome Young Men, an account of the men around Winston Churchil during his rise to power.
Olson’s new work focuses on three men she credits with shaping the Anglo-American alliance that saved Britain in World War II. Incidentally, it also saved the world from a new dark age of Nazis despotism.
- Edward R. Murrow, the CBS radio commentator, broadcast night after night from “the rooftops of London” and built immense empathy for Britiain among his American listening audience.
- Averill Harriman, whose long and distinguished career ended sadly when he was caught up in a Middle East banking fiasco in the 1990s, engineered the details of the Lend Lease deal that enabled President Roosevelt to beef up Britain’s armed forces in the days before the Americans were in the war.
- John Wynant, the American ambassador to Britain, roamed the streets of London during the worst nights of the blitz. He left everyone he encountered knowing that America really cared about what happened to England.
But Olson tells the human, personal story of these and others who figure in her book. She reveals Wynant had a love affair with Pamela Churchill, the PM’s daughter-in-law (married to the drunken Randolph). When Wynant was moved to Moscow, his place was taken by Ed Murrow.
“London,” she says, “ was the most exciting and vibrant city in the world during the darkest days of the war.” She adds that her book is a tribute to the people who really saved London — the ordinary Londoner who struggled amid death, destruction and rationing, but never gave up.
Thanks Ben McNally for bringing us authors like Ms. Olson and Nick Ruddock, as well as today’s two other authors, Elizabeth Abbott (A History of Marriage) and S.M. Plokhy (Yalta: The Price of Peace). You’ve won Gold.
