I didn’t know Charles Dickens and Alexandre Dumas both died in 1870, nor did I fully appreciate that some of their best known novels were published as serials.
My grandfather expressed consternation when I got a job in the City after university. I remember him shaking his head, saying he’d always thought I should go into the church and have a parish in the West of Ireland with some good fishing and snipe bogs … perhaps woodcock, he added hopefully.
When using the lavatory in an English country house there are two things of which you may be certain: the seat will be wooden and there will be a faded copy of The English Gentleman by Douglas Sutherland.
Primo Levi’s account of the year (1944/45) he was at Auschwitz was published in Britain in 1947 as If This is a Man. I can say no more – I haven’t read it but it is on order.
These authors have recently been introduced to me. I have read the first in the Erast Fandorin and David Audley series and have all the James Marwood historical thrillers ahead of me.