Category: Literature

A Gentleman of Leisure

There are 1,321 boys at Eton and 821 at Harrow. Of course this fluctuates as boys come and go, sometimes under a cloud. Even after allowing for the greater number of Old Etonians it is apparent that the number of fictional Old Etonians exceeds fictional Old Harrovians by a big margin.

Chacun à Son Goût

Usually readers here are, more or less, on the same wave length as me. At lunch yesterday a friend said that she doesn’t read if my daily dose is about money and another said that she gets incredibly annoyed if it’s about politics.  That’s absolutely OK but what about this?

The Ghastly Affair

Rosherville Gardens was a seventeen acre site on the Thames not far from Gravesend in Kent. It opened in 1837 to provide a day out for Londoners, consisting of pleasure gardens adorned with statues, follies and more than 8,000 specimen trees. Visitors came by paddle-steamer and new attractions were added including bands, jugglers, sword swallowers,… Continue reading The Ghastly Affair

George Sims

This morning, if it’s morning for you – I notice that blog readers do it in the morning. I do because I read blogs too and I read them in the morning. A lot of bloggers have a “blog roll” on their website with the blogs they read. I don’t, mostly because I don’t have… Continue reading George Sims

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Categorised as Literature

The Fox in the Attic

In a recent comment Richard D North drew a comparison between my stay with an aristocratic German family in 1972 and Richard Hughes’ 1961 novel, The Fox in the Attic. I must have read it more than forty years ago and had completely forgotten it, so it was a pleasure to read it again for… Continue reading The Fox in the Attic

Published
Categorised as Literature

Christmas Day

“The bearer, white-turbaned and bare-footed, pulls back the curtains to let in a blaze of sun. Outside the fountains are playing, the birds are shrieking. Cascades of stocks, carnations and petunias hang over the edges of ornamental pools.

Stand Before Your God

Paul Watkins is ten years younger than me, he was born in 1964. His childhood memoir, Stand Before Your God, was published in 1993 and made a huge impression on me.

The World of Yesterday

I bought The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig on the recommendation of an erudite friend. “One of the greatest memoirs of the twentieth century” says David Hare. John Banville adds ” a marvellous recapturing of a Europe that Hitler and his thugs destroyed”.

Love, Cecil

Love, Cecil is a bio-pic about Cecil Beaton. I have read his diaries from 1965 until his death in 1980 so it covers much familiar ground.

Box of Delights

In Salad Days a magic piano is entrusted  to Jane and Timothy by a passing tramp. Frodo Baggins inherits the Ring from his cousin Bilbo and is told by Gandalf to take care of it. For Bertie Wooster in The Code of the Woosters the MacGuffin is an 18th century silver cow-creamer. It is an… Continue reading Box of Delights