Category: Literature

Barry Lyndon

Cast your mind back a few years – to 1844, when Thackeray’s The Luck of Barry Lyndon came out. I may have started it years ago but I’m pretty sure that I got bogged down and didn’t finish reading it. Stanley Kubrick read it all and his 1975 film eclipses the book to such an… Continue reading Barry Lyndon

Sweet Caress

Does the title indicate that on the Internet a bit of soft porn always goes down well? A not-so-subtle shift to find a new readership? It most certainly does not and you won’t have been fooled as you recognise Sweet Caress as the title of William Boyd’s latest novel.

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Categorised as Literature

Le Corbeau

Alan Furst writes atmospheric espionage novels, usually set in WW II. His first successful book was Night Soldiers, published in 1988. It is excellent but it left him with a problem, one he shares with Simon Raven, whose Brother Cain was published in 1959.

Professor Lord Pinkrose

Professor Lord Pinkrose is a fictional character in Olivia Manning’s Fortunes of War.  Alan Bennett plays him to perfection in the 1987 BBC adaptation. He is portrayed by Manning as being self-important, self-centred, snobbish and rude. It’s interesting to discover that he is not entirely fictional.

The Schartz-Metterklume Method

It is inevitable when thinking about World War One and the Battle of the Somme (where my Bellew grandfather was seriously wounded) to be confronted by a roll call of the dead. Memorials to the fallen are ubiquitous and rightly so. 

A Walk in the Park

The Yellow Earl’s London house was in Carlton House Terrace. It was in fact two houses knocked into one. Here is an extract from The Yellow Earl, Douglas Sutherland’s excellent biography of the 5th Earl of Lonsdale.

G is for Goshawk

Helen Macdonald garnered praise and the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction in 2014 with H is for Hawk. A substantial strand of the book is about TH White (above) and his book The Goshawk, written shortly before World War II, but not published until 1951.

The Go-Between

What’s up, after reading this remarkable post i am too cheerful to share my experience here with mates This is the sort of spam that arrives. It is atypical only in that usually it’s a desire to share my stuff with their mates, if they have any, and the World Wide Web. A reader has… Continue reading The Go-Between

The Picnic Papers

On Wednesday, for the first time this year, it was warm enough in London to sit out in the garden in the early evening with the awning out. My thoughts turned to picnics and, a glass of chilled dry sherry to hand, I reached for The Picnic Papers. (I put a half bottle of Sauternes… Continue reading The Picnic Papers

Château Bute

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen is Paul Torday’s first novel and his best. It is significantly better than the 2011 film of the same name. The story is as old as the world: hope trumping reality and money over-ruling common sense. Wine production in Wales shares the same themes.