Category: Literature

Yield to Temptation

My attempts to forecast the price of oil and Shell shares have been spectacularly unsuccessful. In the short term, total washouts, in the longer term maybe they will come right. So I decided not to try your patience any further, until I saw a configuration of stars in the financial firmament that I have not… Continue reading Yield to Temptation

Tom, Tom and Harry

Andrew Ritchie’s encounter with Princess Anne, related in a comment on Man in Taxi, leads me to speculate whether he met any other members of the Royal Family.

SS-GB

I meant to tell you about Masters of the Everyday: Dutch Artists in the Age of Vermeer, the current exhibition at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace. It is a remarkably good show. I’m not writing about it because afterwards on my way to lunch. I took this picture on The Mall.

Books about Books

There is a literary genre of which I am particularly fond; books about books. Two examples I have were both presents to me from Andrew Ritchie. 

Published
Categorised as Literature

A Column about Wellington

I am not done with Trim. Besides the cathedral with its Trollopian politics (see I’m a Believer?) two famous people lived just outside, on the road to Summerhill. Indeed my sister and brother-in-law live on that road too.

How To Be One-Up

If you are unaware that Shakespeare died on 23rd April 1616, that state of innocence will not last long. The Bard will be impossible to escape this year, like a virulent influenza. I propose to inoculate you with a small dose that may protect you against getting the willies.

School Stories

It is striking how many successful authors started off by writing school stories: P G Wodehouse, The Pothunters; Evelyn Waugh, Decline and Fall; Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim, though it is set at university.