Category: Literature

Tears Before Bedtime

Obituaries are usually kind but this is the best The Independent could muster when Barbara Skelton died in 1996: “selfish, sulky, socially unmanageable, agreeable only when she was in the mood – the victim of the incurable boredom which fostered her promiscuity and her notorious rudeness”.

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Categorised as Literature

June Gleanings

I find it some consolation that whatever indignities the Catholic Church has suffered in recent years, it retains its pre-eminence in the art of casuistry. (Letter in The Times from Sir Richard Stagg about the Prime Minister’s marriage at Westminster Cathedral) 10th September 2012. The idea of His Blondness with a finger on the nuclear button… Continue reading June Gleanings

A Dolls’ House

I have finished The Quest for Queen Mary. There was one more especially enjoyable piece: James Pope-Hennessy’s visit to Copenhagen to meet Prince and Princess Axel of Denmark.

The Quest Continues

There are two magnificent set pieces in James Pope-Hennessy’s quest for Queen Mary.

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The Quest

I enjoyed Hugo Vickers’ diaries written when he was writing Cecil Beaton’s biography (Malice in Wonderland) so it was just a step back of thirty years to James Pope-Hennessy’s diaries when he was writing Queen Mary’s biography.

Malice in Wonderland

An arresting picture; it features in an exhibition at the V&A, Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser, about Lewis Carroll’s 1865 book.

Courage Never to Submit

Mary Alison was born in Northumberland and like many Northumbrians had determination and great reserves of strength; she was to need both.

Sasha’s Diary

Politics runs through Sasha Swire’s veins. Her father is Sir John Nott, Minister of Defence during the Falklands war, and her husband is Sir Hugo Swire, Conservative MP and Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, as it then was.

May Gleanings

Happy the man, whose wish and care A few paternal acres bound, Content to breathe his native air In his own ground. (Ode on Solitude, Alexander Pope) At the age of eleven or thereabouts women acquire a poise and an ability to handle difficult situations which a man, if he is lucky, manages to achieve… Continue reading May Gleanings

The Mustang

Lynne Olson’s history of WW II (Citizens of London) has some interesting angles.