Welcome to British Isles Friday! British Isles Friday is a weekly event for sharing all things British and Irish — reviews, photos, opinions, trip reports, guides, links, resources, personal stories, interviews, and research posts. Join us each Friday to link your British and Irish themed content and to see what others have to share. The link list is at the bottom of this post. Pour a cup of tea or lift a pint and join our link party!

Last week, I took a look at how the Brits were doing in the Paralympics.

Book: This is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch by Tabitha Carvan
Genre: Nonfiction
Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons
Publication date: 2022

Source: E-book borrowed from the library

Summary:An Australian woman develops an obsession with Benedict Cumberbatch and, then, discovers that she is not alone. This book is about the reasons, individually and collectively, for passionate fandom, and the benefits that can be derived from the experience.

Thoughts: I wasn’t sure if this book would qualify as a British Isles Friday book, being by an Australian author. And, as stated, it’s not about Benedict Cumberbatch. But Benedict Cumberbatch, who is English, is referenced a lot. Also, the appendix is called “this is an appendix about benedict cumberbatch.” You can get a sense of the humorous tone of the book from the introduction to the appendix:

What’s something this book has that Benedict Cumberbatch does not? That’s right! An appendix. Benedict Cumberbatch was at the cinema, a twelve-year-old boy watching Working Girl, when he started experiencing stomach cramps, and a few hours later, he was at the hospital having an appendectomy….
The whereabouts of Benedict Cumberbatch’s internal organs is exactly the kind of information you’ll find in the appendix about Benedict Cumberbatch. But just like Benedict Cumberbatch’s actual appendix, it’s entirely extraneous; you can choose to read it, or not, depending on just how much you’d really like this to be a book about Benedict Cumberbatch.

Feminism is an aspect of this book that I really enjoyed. The author describes a colleague’s cubicle, fully decked out in items with logos of his favorite football/soccer team, the Dragons, including a tattoo on his body. Meanwhile, she gets comments on the Benedict Cumberbatch memorabilia in her cubicle.

He loves the Dragons as much as, if not more than, I love Benedict Cumberbatch. This is, of course, fine because it’s okay for people to like different things. But I do not think this is something he ever has to say.
When it comes to sport, intense passion–the kind that inspires you to get tattooed–is so normal that no one is going to question my colleague about it. I don’t think people even see that his desk and my desk are of a kind. No one is going to ask him “Can you explain this whole Dragons thing?” Instead, they’ll ask “How about that game?”

Later in the same chapter, she talks about scientists learning that female birds sing. They do and always have, but apparently there was a long-running assumption that only the males sing, either to mark territory or to attract mates. Even after a great deal of published work by women, the invalid assumption still makes its way around scientific circles.

It’s time to assume that women sing, make art, and consume culture for reasons that are interesting and valid. Tabitha Carvan quotes from critic Lili Loofbourow’s essay “The Male Glance” in this passage:

“Our starting assumption, to correct for our smug inattention throughout history,” she suggests, “out to be that there is likely quite a bit more to the female text than we initially see.” Look for it, Loofbourow urges, and if you find something, point it out. “And we will be better for seeing as obvious and inevitable something that previously–absent the instructions–we simply couldn’t perceive.”

Appeal: This is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch is a fun book to read and it left me with a determination to like what I like and encourage others to do the same. In fact, I want to share my enthusiasms and be curious about what other people are excited about.

One of my fascinations in the last year or so has been the various free choral concerts performed at St. Martin-in-the-Fields. I have no real explanation for this. I like imagining that I’m in London seated in this beautiful 300-year-old sanctuary. I like that the music calms me, even when I’m only paying partial attention. I like thinking about the lives of the young performers. Check out the St. Martin-in-the-Fields Music channel on YouTube to give it a try.