Author: Susan Brice

  • The Pilot’s Wife by Anita Shreve

    The bookcase on the landing has many books upon it that I would have bought and read back in the 80s and 90s. Susan Sallis, Erica James, Katie Fforde and Anita Shreve. All female writers I notice. At that time my reading habits were very different. I was teaching full time and had 4 young […]

  • Nella Last’s War

    The Second World War Diaries of Housewife 49 When I look at the cover of this book I am always in danger of reading it as Nella’s Last War, which would of course be a different thing entirely, although I think it actually must have been just that; her last war. So this is a […]

  • Language

    Very much enjoyed watching Simon Schama’s History of Now on television recently. Realised it truly was my ‘now’ as well. I had lived through the Falklands War, the Russian tanks rolling into Wenceslas Square in Prague, the Berlin Wall going up…and down and the 1964 Civil Rights Act in the USA. Amazing, now, to have […]

  • September 2022

    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 the sunshine by the river and had lunch at the Ferry Inn. But, goodness me, the parking! I suspect that Kenneth Grahame would not have been bothered by […]

  • October 2022

    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’ rather meagre bookshelves. Picking something quite at random I retired to a corner of the sofa, as near as possible to the coal fire, and began. In no […]

  • November 2022

    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 to surmise that I had been watching a comedy performance of some sort but no! I was in fact listening to the author Alexander McCall Smith being interviewed […]

  • Horses and Harnesses

    The library in the Somerset village where I lived as a teenager was small and square and had once been a shop. It was only open on certain days, including Saturday. This was when I usually visited. Luckily I had quite simple reading needs at the time and these bookshelves supplied me well. Pony books, […]

  • December 2022

    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 radio playing Family Favourites In the background, presented by Jean Metcalfe, wife of Cliff Michelmore. I remember love and good wishes winging their way to soldiers in many […]

  • January 2023

    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 familiar with those names then you will have read Little Women by Louisa May Alcott at some point in your life. I have read it countless times, mostly […]

  • Dear Mr Perks

    The best relationship I have ever had with a library was as a sixth former in Minehead. By the time I was doing English A level I was completely obsessed with reading and with literature. It is probably the only time in my life when I truly read around a subject instead of simply reading […]