Bookends

‘The Signora had no business to do it, no business at all.’ Many of you will recognise this as Charlotte Bartlett’s words at the beginning of EM […]

Little Clarendon Street in Oxford. If you are of a certain age this address might immediately bring to mind Laura Ashley! In the 1980s I would regularly […]

In 1984 bookmakers refused to take further bets on the winner of the Booker Prize. It was a forgone conclusion. The Empire of the Sun by JG […]

There was a time, many years ago now, when I was quite an authority on children’s books. I read widely and voraciously, led reading groups to extend […]

So this book was a bestseller in 2009. It is back in the windows of bookshops now because of a new Netflix series, closely based on this […]

On my hall windowsill is a group of old Pan paperbacks by Nevil Shute. There are nine of them. Many years ago I went through a phase […]

I watched Lessons in Chemistry on Apple TV. I had no idea what it was all about but I was soon absorbed in the story. The first […]

I’m not altogether keen on hardback books: very expensive, very heavy and somehow they feel very self important. They are certainly not books that I can read […]

The Virtual Christmas Bookshop Welcome to my bookshop; a pop-up shop just open for the festivities. Please do come in. A book is surely the perfect gift. […]

Recently I was in Normandy, Northern France where we were based in the small town of Lisieux. I had heard of the saint: Therese of Lisieux but […]

I came to Ian Rankin late, even though I had known the name and his reputation for a long time. So there are now 24 books about […]

I enjoy my U3A sessions on poetry, prose and plays but sometimes the bits around the edges prove to be the most interesting. Over coffee and a […]

A few weeks ago, I went to see Aspects of Love in London, a West End revival of this Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. Originally it opened in […]

There are now 5 Jackson Brodie novels written by Kate Atkinson whose literary fame began with ‘Behind The Scenes At The Museum’ in 1995. She has won […]

As I walked through Marylebone tube station a large advertising poster caught my eye. A film starring Jim Broadbent and Penelope Wilton of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of […]

In 1989 the government introduced the National Curriculum for primary and secondary schools. In history it dictated what units should be taught. Thus I learnt (and taught) […]

My reading has felt quite heavy of late, what with stories from the southern states of America and from Ireland. I think The Keeper of Stories must […]

In effect I met Bernard MacLaverty in front of the cash desk at Waterstones. Three of his books were there with one of those handwritten 4 sentence […]

Some of you may remember that 2022 was a year when I decided I would read from home and not buy any new books. I did well, […]

Who, I wonder did you see yourself as: Meg, Jo, Beth or Amy? (My allegiance and empathy changed over the years with frequent re-readings.) If you are […]

On one idle afternoon in lockdown (can’t remember which one!) I decided to count my books. It took some time and I rather lost interest by the […]

I am reading Mary Wesley. On my bookshelves there are the 10 novels written by this author in the 1980s and 90s, written by her and published […]

There are many reviewers and writers who have said that a good book is just that, a good book and it really doesn’t matter if the agents […]

How much Greek did your secondary school teach? At my small, country, grammar school we did plenty of Latin but definitely no Greek. However, I was fortunate […]

‘Trollopian’. Do you ever use that word? I wondered whether maybe I had made it up but no it is indeed a bona fide word. When I […]

As a child, one thinks of truth as a completely black and white concept. Something is either true or it isn’t. As one gets older everything becomes […]

Many times I have been taught that a well written short story is the pinnacle of literary achievement. On an intellectual level I can understand this. To […]

In the 1980s Terry Wogan had a very popular chat show on BBC 1. I remember one episode where he was interviewing the author Rosamunde Pilcher about […]

Where do you park in Cookham? I have been there to ponder upon the rather difficult art in the Stanley Spencer Gallery and I have sat in […]

It was a wet, cold Sunday afternoon in January and presumably my homework was done. I was looking for something to read and scanned along my parents’ […]

It was some years ago now that I sat in the Piccadilly Theatre in London and laughed so much that my throat hurt. It would be reasonable […]

I have never been to Cyprus but I find I have childhood memories linked to that troubled island. Firstly, of my mother cooking Sunday lunch with the […]

Regular readers of this column will not be surprised to know that the Christmas list my family asked me to provide in December, contained several books. I […]

I wonder where you were in the winter of 1962/3? I was in Sevenoaks in Kent and I have a clear memory of pressing my nose to […]

Last month I shared with you two books that were brand new, hot off the press. This time the whole series of books is out of print!  […]

I find that I am rather partial to a book of essays. I think they have several advantages. They can be quite random in subject matter which […]

Breathtaking is maybe an overused adjective. It is often applied to views and sometimes to stories. My interest in this word right now is that several times […]

I have bought a good few violins over the years. Several that were tiny fractions of the whole. They were all Chinese, of one make or another, […]

If you ever choose to read the Sunday Times, you might be familiar with the columnist India Knight (once expelled from Wycombe Abbey School, but that is […]

I have read that Jane Austen thought one should only write about one’s own life experiences, hence the microcosms we find within Mansfield Park and Sense and […]

I have had a reading crisis. It doesn’t happen very often but when it does it throws me somewhat. I started reading ‘Shuggie Bain’ by Douglas Stuart […]

You will be relieved to know that I have survived my reading crisis*. (see last month’s Bookends.) I have found some feel-good books and I want to […]

I wonder how many of you received the book: ‘The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse’ for Christmas? It was Waterstones book of the year […]

Do you know Olive? Olive Kitteridge I am talking about, a book written by the east coast American writer Elizabeth Strout. Olive is not immediately a wholly […]

In the few weeks before I set off on the church pilgrimage, I enjoyed wondering about my reading for those ten days. It is fun to match […]

I love books and I love reading so I suppose it is no surprise that I am also very fond of books that are about reading. Maybe […]

I think I have read all of Tracy Chevalier’s novels and particularly enjoyed Falling Angels and Girl with a Pearl Earring. Thus I eagerly awaited my copy […]

All these extra hours and days that many of us have had over the past few weeks and indeed months, should have been an absolute gift to […]

I have no idea what made me pull ‘I’m the king of the castle’ off the shelves of my college library in Cheltenham in the early 1970s […]

I wonder if you are familiar with the term ‘slightly foxed’. It is frequently used by sellers of second hand books and refers to the gingery, freckle […]

I wonder what makes someone write their autobiography? Money, obviously is a frequent motivation but you presumably must also feel that you have something of interest to […]

So, fellow readers, in my literary Christmas stocking are three books, two new and one not so. Down in the toe of the stocking is a small […]