Category: Literature

Brasseries and Books

Why are the Eurostar terminals at St Pancras and Gard du Nord always so crowded and, if a train is delayed or cancelled, overcrowded?

The Scarlet Letter

“Preface to the Second Edition. Much to the author’s surprise, and (if he may say so without additional offence) considerably to his amusement, he finds that his sketch of official life, introductory to The Scarlet Letter, has created an unprecedented excitement in the respectable community immediately around him. It could hardly have been more violent,… Continue reading The Scarlet Letter

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Categorised as 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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Categorised as Literature

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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Categorised as Literature

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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Categorised as Literature