Apple Tart is Off

Coastwise Lights, the second volume of Alan Ross’s autobiography has been lent to me by William (Bill) Sansom’s son, Nick. His father features prominently.

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Men of Letters

Yesterday (Letters) Rupert Hart-Davis took his son, Adam, to Eton for his first half (Eton slang for term). I forgot to expand on what became of George Lyttelton’s nephew, Charles, mentioned in the letter.

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Letters

It’s interesting to reflect on how you first came to read an author. Can you remember your first PG Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh, etc?

The Invention of Memory

I was given The Invention of Memory for Christmas three years ago by Alan Higgs. It is by Simon Loftus and traces the story of his family from their arrival in Ireland in 1560 until Mount Loftus burned down in 1934.

In Translation

I am reading, in translation, Joseph Roth’s novella, The Legend of the Holy Drinker, translated and introduced by Wykehamist, Michael Hofmann.

A Drop of Irish

Marigold Armitage is perched on the top shelf of my fiction section between Martin Amis and Daisy Ashford. If you don’t know her books you will certainly be aware of her genre.

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Categorised as Literature

Daytime TV

You don’t watch daytime TV do you? That would be Pointless and show you up as an Egghead. Allow me to digress …

The Flemish Panel

In April this year I wrote about Spanish author, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, and his novels. What better place to pick one up than in Valencia.

Max Beerbohm

So many posts start like this, but here I go again – more than forty years ago … I was given as a birthday present a novel, actually the only one he wrote, by Max Beerbohm. The donor was a university friend, we are still friends and I still have Zuleika Dobson.

In Three Words

Charles Moore writing in The Spectator last week drew my attention to an 80th anniversary that had passed me by.