Category: Literature

The Splendid and the Vile

Erik Larson may not be familiar to you. I think he is better known in America. At my Thanksgiving picnic-on-a-park-bench that should have been captured by Georges Seurat, my friend the Manhattan banker gave me a present from her sister who serendipitously called in on FaceTime from Boston.

Resistance

Resistance is Owen Sheers’ first novel, published in 1999. Whether his MA from the University of East Anglia in Creative Writing was helpful is debatable. Teaching Creative Writing is oxymoronic – omit first three letters if you wish.

Slightly Bonkers

I try to avoid truisms but we are living through uncertain times not seen since 1940 when, instead of leaving the EU, it looked likely to come to us.

Batsford

It is sometimes instructive to judge a book by its cover. Nobody could mistake the E Phillips Oppenheim cover in yesterday’s post for a treatise on bee keeping, unless the protagonists are being stung.

Good Crap

PG Wodehouse was prolific and successful but there was another genre in the first half of the last century – between the wars – and those authors made more money. Edgar Wallace and Somerset Maugham rivalled our subject today in popularity and earnings.

Farewell to the President

“Gossip and politics, hock and seagulls’ eggs” writes Chips Channon and that encapsulates the tone of his dairies. Two entries though are worth quoting in the light of my recent reading about President Roosevelt.

Strange Stories of the Chase

The Countess of Feversham cut a dashing figure in the hunting field in a red coat and a top hat, as Millais’ portrait would bring out if I could find a colour version.