fiction

The Corner That Held Them

On 14 June 1940, Paris fell to the German Army. The British author Sylvia Townsend Warner wrote in her diary.…

1 year ago

Comfort Food and Comfort Books

A recent NYTimes Cooking newsletter from Melissa Clark drew my attention to the article about Raghavan Iyer by Kim Severson …

2 years ago

The Rise and Fall of Spurious George

Two centuries after William Hogarth published his engravings of the decline and fall of Tom Rakewell, Rebecca West wrote a…

2 years ago

The Aspirational Dottiness of Old Age

Here's a treat for those who relish fiction with off-the-wall cognitive mayhem - The Hearing Trumpet Suddenly it seemed as…

2 years ago

Fizz and Filth – Kate Atkinson and Babylon London 1926

A novel by Kate Atkinson is always something to look forward to and I've just finished reading her latest -…

2 years ago

Wilt and the #1976Club

Together with a whole lot of other readers in the UK in 1976, I read Wilt - the first in…

3 years ago

All for Nothing

Hands down, this is the best book I've read all year: All For Nothing by Walter Kempowski.  It's the bitter…

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

Crime Past, Crime Present, and Crime Future

 Many people know that the poet T. S. Eliot was very fond of cats and indeed created some wonderful cat…

4 years ago