As I have run out of nice easy escapist books to read (i.e. detective novels), I have been rereading the wartime women boaters' memoirs: Emma Smith's Maidens' Trip, Margaret Cornish's Troubled Waters, and Eily (Kit) Gayford's The Amateur Boatwomen. I've lent Idle Women to Izzi (and Baz) - along with Chris Deuchar's A Boater's Guide to Boating! I was quite surprised on returning to these how well they all read. Smith in particular is good at explaining how boats and boating worked, while Gayford seems to have incorporated some innacuracies. I'm now rereading A.P. Herbert's The Water Gipsies, which at least one of the Idle Women refers to. It's almost as if I'm reading a different book though, as I don't recall it having a great deal to say about canal boating, although maybe I am remembering wrongly.
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