Category: Literature

Stefan Zweig

Yesterday I inadvertently omitted another novelist born in 1881. But perhaps it’s impossible to omit something inadvertently of which you are ignorant at the time? My host at lunch this week said that he has been an admirer of the Austrian writer, Stefan Zweig, for many years. I had never heard of him and had… Continue reading Stefan Zweig

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Frank Cooper

It’s always worth browsing in a second hand bookshop. So often I buy something I didn’t know existed. This is a collection of interviews by John Mortimer, published in 1986, that originally appeared in The Sunday Times.

The Marches

I’m reading The Marches by Rory Stewart. It is an account of his relationship with his father growing up in the Far East.

The Life

I expected twelve volumes of James Lees-Milne’s diaries to last me through the winter but like a case of wine they were consumed more quickly than anticipated. I finished them with considerable sadness one morning last week.

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Best Books

“It is a good deal more than unlikely that any writer now living will produce a better historical novel than Henry Esmond, a better tale of children than The Golden Age, a sharper social vignette than Madame Bovary, a more graceful and elegant evocation than The Spoils of Poynton, a wider and richer canvas than… Continue reading Best Books

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HP Sauce

“In my father’s house are many mansions” (John 14:2). I stay in a house with many bedrooms and in every one is a copy of Rathcormick: a Childhood Recalled (2001) by Homan Potterton.

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Amlodipine

I have been feeling off-colour all summer. There is a constant metallic taste in my mouth, loss of appetite and general lassitude. I feel tired after quite short walks. I feel twenty years older than I am.

Black Mischief

I am re-reading Black Mischief. It is laugh-out-loud funny. Cyril Connolly was not best pleased to be depicted as the drunk General Connolly with a Negress wife called Black Bitch, although later she is elevated to Duchess and is delighted.

Bees’ Knees

The transformation scene in Richard Strauss’s Daphne, mentioned yesterday, is being played out in reality in my life.

Writers Bloch

On Tuesday morning I was reading James Lees-Milne’s diaries. I have got as far as 1979 and he has formed an intense friendship with Michael Bloch. Later I went to lunch at the Savile and was delighted to meet him there.

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