The Master of the Rolls

If there is a consistent thread that binds the complex tapestry of English history it is inconsistency. Forty years ago we were agog to join Europe … now? But I want to look back to the 13th century.

Quiz Answers

When you open this website sometimes you must think “I don’t want this. This is just what I don’t want. What I want is Wodehouse and I want Wodehouse now.”

Quiz

Put on your thinking cap. Mark Mason has written Question Time – A Journey Round Britain’s Quizzes. I know this because he has an article about it in the October edition of The Oldie.

Gardening

Victoria Summerley (writer) and Hugo Rittson Thomas (photographer) had an original idea in 2015. They would write a coffee table book about gardens in Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire. The outcome was Secret Gardens of the Cotswolds and it was successful enough for them to venture a sequel this month.

Published
Categorised as 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

Published
Categorised as Literature

Christmas Present

Imagine having a dinner party and inviting Mustafa Ataturk, Béla Bartók, Cecil B DeMille, Alexander Fleming, Anna Pavlova, Pablo Picasso and PG Wodehouse.

Bang Bang

There are two things that stop me blowing my brains out: I gave my godson my gun and I’m so curious to know what happens next in the great page-turner which is the book of life.

Concrete

If you have been stuck in traffic driving into London from the M4 you may have noticed this sculpture jammed, like you, between the dual carriageway and a yew hedge. It sits on a brick plinth, untitled and with no indication of who was responsible for this piece of civic art.

Published
Categorised as Sculpture

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.

What’s Cooking?

People who are desperate to make some sort of conversation with me sometimes ask how I think up something to write about every day. Well, I have a fall-back in Robert Redfern-West, an erudite and hugely amusing reader in California (?) who sends me super-stimulating (intellectually) e mails and posts super-duper comments – latest yesterday.