Sagittarius Rising

Cecil Lewis' book about his flying experiences in World War I and shortly afterwards was chosen by our Book Club's newest member and chewed over today. We liked it.

Part of the book's charm is its frequent digression into something more akin to poetry than real-life Biggles. "Many times have I been carried away," Lewis writes, "by the unexpected beauties of the foreign scene. But, finally, a man comes home. For nowhere else, I think, does the beech grow just so, noble and straight, crowning the rounded hill."

After the lunchtime discussion, we adjourned to look over the former Cirencester Brewery complex, of which LoCo Glass occupies part. Colin Hawkins made us welcome. Interesting to compare their contemporary British studio work with painted glass of five centuries earlier, such as this St Lawrence fragment in the South Sanctuary window of the great Parish Church, which we wandered round before lunch.

Another part of the Brewery is home to Dorothy Reglar's Colours of Asia. The cloth that Dorothy uses to create her designs is produced on handlooms in Laos - she visits each year: again, her beautiful clothes were a contrast to the richly-decorated blue velvet cope on display in the church - made in 1478.

Yet again, a mild day, and dry. Before catching my bus, I was raking leaves.

Tipping Megan

Our book group has now been going eleven years: the next meeting will be our 40th, so we have been regular if infrequent. Five of us came together for the first time in six months on another fine, warm September day.

This afternoon, we did Evesham, having convened in Pershore at noon. After a good look at the Abbey, it was lunchtime: we ate sitting undisturbed in the garden of a riverside pub, well looked after by Megan, a local young lady who will go far. Indeed, she had already been to Florida often, she told us: her Nan was there now, and complaining of the violence. By contrast, Worcestershire seemed peaceful enough, despite the Saturday crowds.

We were gathering to leave the pub, when the conversation turned - as it does - to the afterlife. A bystander joined in. Exchanges flowed. "We really must go," I said.  "You ought to join our book group," chirped in Richard, the response to which made us all laugh: "Do you have a website?"

"The Testament of Mary"

This was the subject of our discussion at our book group lunch in Cheltenham yesterday. We hadn't met for more than four months, yet still expressed relief that it was a short read. Is our stamina failing as we near our group's tenth anniversary?

I liked the juxtaposition of the mannequin's anorexic legs with the Big Issue salesman feeding a sandwich to his molly-coddled dog in the Promenade.

Painswick

"We are only here for the Beer," we might have said this afternoon. But not quite.

The focus for the Painswick meet-up of members of our book group was John Beer's newly-opened Arts & Crafts Museum, in Gloucester Street: it's housed in the former Christ Church, a square 19th Century building, with a fine Morris & Co. stained glass window at the "East" end, which Beer told us was one of the attractions to his securing the place.

He has been amassing Arts & Crafts (and associated) work over many decades. We first caught a glimpse of it - and him - when we looked over his beautiful but crumbling former home in Priory Street here in Cheltenham in 1994. Caroline was keen to buy it: I less so. The collection has since grown considerably - Pugin, Lutyens, Morris, Gimson, Barnsley, Waals, Russell... It must be among the finest in private hands. But the chief attraction of a visit is John Beer's extremely knowledgeable commentary about all aspects of the work he loves, with many red herrings thrown in for good measure. No pains are too great for tracking down the provenance of a Tiffany chair or extra large, curved walnut table (the BBC).

From the end of this month, the Ashton Beer Collection is only open on Sunday afternoons, over the Winter months: well worth discovering.

Over lunch, we enjoyed discussing The Great Gatsby. I'm sure I have read it before, but it seemed almost a new book - some of it like blank verse, much de nos jours, and altogether gratifyingly brief.

Worcester

Its been nearly five months since our book group convened last: then we met in Birmingham, for a look round buildings in the centre, amongst them the new library in course of construction. Today, it was Worcester's huge new library's turn for a visit: The Hive there only opened last Summer - it felt good and indeed (as it boasts) sustainable. We were impressed.

The exterior, which contrasts markedly with Birmingham, is finished in a dull bronze, reminding me of the Guggenheim in Bilbao - though I rather wonder whether it will last as well. Inside is full of of purpose, comfort and peace, and (besides its 800 study stations) quite a few books. Oh, and at least a couple of quite significant new art works: Robert Orchardson's aluminium mobile, "Kaleidoscope", which hangs in the foyer, making the best use of a light space and people's ability to see it from many angles; and Clare Woods' two-dimensional abstract "Rack Alley", dominating the atrium.

Earlier, our enjoyment of the Cathedral - rather a forbidding building from the outside, especially on a rainy day like today - was greatly enhanced by having Richard Lockett as our guide. His unobtrusive knowledgeability (and wry asides) made the nearly two hours we spent there fly past.

"Skios"

Our only Greek family holiday was to celebrate our Silver Wedding anniversary. The six of us flew into Corfu, where two small hire cars awaited us. In we piled, before setting off up the coast. An hour later, I was unpacking and thinking about a swim, when Leo came in. "Has anyone seen my computer?" he asked plaintively. It turned out we had left it together with sundry other items of luggage on the airport car park tarmac, where we had been preoccupied with sorting out an argument about who was going to travel in which car.

Our Greek island muddle - we were soon able to laugh about it, a reunion taking place very speedily - was nothing to the fictional situation so well imagined by Michael Frayn in "Skios", published earlier this year. It's Caroline's book club choice, and I have now also read it - with huge enjoyment, a lovely comic riff on the theme of owning and disowning your personality.

My photograph shows netting placed in one of the olive groves above Agios Stephanos, where we stayed on our visit 12 years ago.

Birmingham

Yesterday, my book group met in the salubrious surroundings of the Birmingham Art Gallery & Museum restaurant. Not the hautest cuisine, but adequate: we missed our usual pints of bitter. Breaking with tradition, we discussed The Book over lunch, rather than tea. It was the sequel to Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall: Bring up the bodies didn't grab all of us as firmly as it did me, but we seemed to agree that it was worth looking at. Shall I buy volume 3 when it appears? Probably.

Why Birmingham? Because Peter, our newest member, is full of enthusiasm for its examples of Arts & Crafts architecture. So, after we'd looked round some of the galleries and finished our book discussion, he led us down Edmund Street, Margaret Street, Newhall Street and Colmore Row, ending up at St Philip's.

Having admired the late Burne-Joneses there, we went across to St Martin's to look at the very different earlier window by him, saved by a whisker from destruction in World War II.

My companions were taken aback by Selfridge's, hovering over the Bull Ring, but even more by the new Library, to be opened next September, but now already dominating the East end of Broad Street. For my part, the excitement was this (photographed) new kinetic installation in the oculus of the Museum's new History Gallery - by Keiko Mukaide and Ronnie Watt: it was unveiled earlier this year. And whose is the amazing stained glass window on the stairs behind it, without any label?

Warwick

Though I was brought up no more than 16 miles from Warwick, we hardly ever went there, so it remains terra somewhat incognita. I read that no less than eight different families appear to have held the Warwick peerage during the past millennium, so anyone can be forgiven for getting muddled about who did what in Warwick itself. Richard Neville (the Kingmaker) built the Guildhall, whilst it was the earlier Beauchamps who adopted the familiar bear and ragged staff as an addition to their coat of arms.

This lovable-looking bear, though, holds his ragged staff in a rather unusual manner - he is one of several in different poses slung under the eaves of the charming courtyard of the Lord Leycester Hospital. The Hospital, really a glorified almshouse, was founded by neither a Beauchamp nor a Neville, but by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, favourite of Elizabeth I, and younger brother of Ambrose Earl of Warwick. Robert and Ambrose are entombed in the Beauchamp Chapel in St Mary's, Warwick, which is dominated by the golden 15th Century image of the Kingmaker's father-in-law, Richard Beauchamp - hands apart, so he can keep his eyes on the ceiling bosses portraying God the Father and Mary Queen of Heaven.

Those members of my book group who met in the Chapel this morning were lucky in finding a guide who was both unassumingly knowledgeable and generous with it. After we had marvelled at, in particular the carving and glass, she moved on with us to the Chancel, where we beheld the stunning alabaster images of Richard's grandparents: they were, it seems, my 20th great-grandparents for what it's worth - hardly a very exclusive claim, however, in this era of internet genealogy. (Added to which, we have - assuming no intermarriages - more than 8 million other ancestors of that generation.)

"The Sense of an Ending"

Julian Barnes' Booker Prize-winning novella was on my Christmas list, as it's the current read for our book group. My sister Sarah kindly came up with it, and I've now read it (in what is - for me - record time).

It's a sad story, but intriguing, unfolding as it does right up to the penultimate page. Barnes is at his best writing about recollection of the past. "My memory," his narrator sighs at one point, "has increasingly become a mechanism which reiterates apparently truthful data with little variation." My feelings precisely.

Martin Clare RIP

It was some seven years ago now that our friend Steve convened a boys' book group. News has just reached me of the death of
its youngest original member, Martin Clare of Fairford.

Besides being excellent company, Martin seemed to be a jack of all trades: a fine musician and, I gather, amateur dramatist; brilliant with children and young people; a cricketer (winner of the Fairford President's Award in 2005 I note); handyman and house restorer; as an ex-publican himself, an expert on local pubs, and so far as the book group went, a bringer-to-our-attention of wonderfully oddball books such as "The Eyre Affair".

A quick google is frustrating, as he's easily overtaken by the singer Clare Martin, but it reminded me of a typically delightful contribution he made to the Guardian's Notes & Queries. To the question, "Are there any examples of books being improved in translation?", he replied, "I don't know about improvements, but I once saw a French edition of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes book His Last Bow translated as Son Dernier Coup d'Archet. Stupidly, I didn't buy it; I'd love to have known whether the translation of the stories was of a similar quality."

His funeral in Fairford next Monday promises to be a great occasion: so many people will miss him dreadfully, but especially his beloved Nicky, Nick and Gummo of course.

"The Verneys"

We visited Compton Verney in July, to see a marvellous exhibition of Constable portraits, as well as the permanent collections: it's a great day out (and not too far away) - recommended for a visit any time it's open if you have never been.

Those eponymous Verneys are only distantly connected, it seems, to the family who live still at Claydon Hall in Buckinghamshire, about whom I've been reading in advance of our next book group discussion.

It was The Young Elizabethan that got me reading as a teenager - a Verney was I think its founder. And I first came across the great Murray Perahia when he played in Claydon's drawing-room nearly 40 years ago.

I've enjoyed Adrian Tinniswood's account of the 17th Century Verneys of Claydon, published by Vintage a couple of years ago, but I had better not say too much on the subject in case others in the group happen to be looking in. (I doubt it.) I am irked, however, when writers as scholarly as Mr. Tinniswood would no doubt claim to be get basic things wrong. "He rarely came up (sic!) to Claydon more than once a year," he writes about one of the clan who went into trade and latterly based himself in London. "Down" is surely not pedantic, just correct - even if it does require a footnote for American readers!

@ Paice

Richard hosted yesterday's book group meeting. As at our last session, six weeks ago, we were fairly evenly divided about the merits of our choice, The Road Home, by Rose Tremain. Two of us were reminded that we had read her earlier Restoration, and hadn't much enjoyed that either. I for one was baffled that The Road Home should have won the 2008 Orange Fiction Prize: it must have been a bad year. A book with a large hole in the middle, I felt: the main character was a cipher.

We have gone for non-fiction next time: Jonathan Raban's Passage to Juneau: a sea and its meanings. This ties in with the new-found celebrity of Alaska's lipsticked pitbull Governor, and echoes one of our earliest choices The Black Sea when Steve first convened our group, four years ago this month.

The cover of Passage to Juneau includes a puff with a reminder of our last book: "Adrift in foreign lands, eternally questioning the concept of home, Raban crafts a more immaculate, shipshape habitation out of the language than almost all his contemporaries." It's an excerpt from a FT review. The reviewer? Rose Tremain.

I'm not sure when we shall be able to meet next: Richard is usually away in October, and he and Simon were encouraging me to firm up a vague plan to go InterRailing - which means we would be away till late November. We shall see.

Before our book discussion, we were looking forward to a visit to the Moreton Show. With all this rain, though, it would have been a sea of mud so, not surprisingly, it was cancelled. We went instead to the recently-opened Court Barn Museum in Chipping Campden.

A couple of years ago, Richard had taken us round the Court Barn when it was still at the development stage. We were all immensely impressed with the finished product: the displays pull together comprehensively the major contribution the Arts & Crafts movement has made to the life of the Cotswolds. And happily, when there we bumped into one of those most responsible for helping people to appreciate it, Mary Greensted.

But we worried for the Museum's future success. It suffers from real lack of visibility: how can its landlords, the Landmark Trust be persuaded to be more flexible on this front? Would some form of laser projection on the adjoining wall be possible?

Almost the highlight of our day: Richard took us (and his Airedale) round Monique's and his wonderful garden - and the rain stopped.

20th meeting of the book group

A week ago, my book group met in Wells. A long way to go for a book discussion? We are six in number, and one of us has defected from Gloucestershire to Somerset. So we were invited to catch up with him at his new house, near the centre of Wells.

I had been there on weekends when my parents came to visit me at All Hallows; so my last acquaintance with Wells was 52 years ago. I hardly remembered it at all. Simon led us around the Cathedral and precincts: a magical tour, ending in an old prebendary's house, called - why? - The Rib, with the most mysteriously beautiful mediaeval interior.

The book for discussion? Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian. The score? Two of us liked it, two didn't. I didn't (much). 300-odd pages with no dialogue: an impressive attempt at historical reconstruction, but a bit charmless I thought. More interesting as an insight into the author, than the subject.