Category: Literature

Meet the Saint

Meet the Tiger (1928) is the first book Leslie Charteris wrote about Simon Templar, aka The Saint. I have the lot on a top shelf and sometimes read one.

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On the Beach

You don’t have to have read Howards End to know its epitaph: “Only connect”. Only one other book has a similarly well known inscription; On the Beach.

Vile Bodies

Vile Bodies (1930) was, as Waugh says, “a totally unplanned novel.”

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A Spot of Lunch

On Friday I had a perfect luncheon at Bellamy’s – smoked eel mousse sealed with a thin layer of aspic and served with melba toast, filets of Dover sole with mashed potato, and île flottante. I still have my teeth but I really enjoy food that doesn’t need mastication – nursery food for grown-ups, a… Continue reading A Spot of Lunch

The Passenger

Last year I was taken by Max-Otto Ludwig Löwenstein‘s wartime memoir, Accidental Journey. You may remember his family were rich Jews and he went to Cambridge before being sent round and about as an enemy alien and joining the British army.

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A Proposal

When Don Calogero’s arrival was announced at exactly half-past four the Prince had not yet finished his toilet; he sent a message asking the Mayor to wait a minute in his study and went on placidly embellishing himself. He plastered his hair with Lemo-liscioy Atkinson’s‘ Lime Juice and Glycerine’, a dense whitish lotion which arrived… Continue reading A Proposal

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Il Gattopardo

“ Nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.” The daily recital of the Rosary was over. For half an hour the steady voice of the Prince had recalled the Glorious and the Sorrowful Mysteries; for half an hour other voices had interwoven a lilting hum from which, now and again, would chime some unlikely word;… Continue reading Il Gattopardo

Moscow Underground

I would not have bought this book. It is a Christmas present. Why not? I have never heard of Catherine Merridale and never read anything by Simon Sebag Montefiori. I know people who bought his Jerusalem: a Biography but none who finished it ; more than eight hundred pages and more than twenty-five hours as… Continue reading Moscow Underground

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Saint Piran and the Millstone

Should you visit the Blackmore tin-streamers on their feast-day, which falls on Friday-in-Lide (that is to say, the first Friday in March), you may note a truly Celtic ceremony. On that day the tinners pick out the sleepiest boy in the neighbourhood and send him up to the highest bound in the works, with instructions… Continue reading Saint Piran and the Millstone

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