Books

Dreams become simpler: Tove Jansson and The Island

The IslandFrom: “The Island” by Tove Jansson There is a surprisingly large number of people who go around dreaming about…

3 years ago

All the Islands

All the islands I have known become one island whose Eastern coast spreads sandy arms to welcome bathers and sea…

3 years ago

Evacuee Story Lines #3 Evelyn Waugh

I did, in the first weeks of the war, before I got my commission, suffer severely from 'evacuees'.- Evelyn Waugh in…

3 years ago

Hemlock and After and Angus Wilson

‘Oh, I know all about goats,’ Sonia was saying. ‘People give them the same recommendation as the billeting officers did…

3 years ago

Evacuee Story Lines #2 C. S. Lewis

"What are you doing in the wardrobe?" "Narnia business" C.S."Jack" Lewis spent childhood years in a house in Belfast where…

3 years ago

Evacuee Story Lines #1 Nina Bawden

All our stories begin before we are born. Not Just the blue eyes or flat feet we inherit, but the…

3 years ago

Large Dog Eats Anything Loves Children

It’s always fun when a tiresome book about the rules of the English language gets debunked and when some clever…

3 years ago

Ice

I was first drawn to Anna Kavan’s writing through her collection of wartime stories I Am Lazarus (1945) - the…

3 years ago

Anna and Gertrude

“I am not interested in complicated things nor in the commonplace, I like to paint simple things that are a…

3 years ago

All Our Yesterdays with the #1936Club

There was a period in the early 1960s when my parents had a television (in those days you rented) and…

4 years ago