Category: 2021

  • February 2021

    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 was fortunate enough to receive them all: Barack Obama’s autobiography; poems by Michael Rosen about refugees; Patchwork, a fascinating memoir by a curator at the V&A; and the […]

  • March 2021

    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 a very cold window and trying to count the snowflakes as they started to fall. This was the evening of Christmas Eve and I remember thinking that this […]

  • April 2021

    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 have however checked that actually that are all still available on line as second-hand copies. The advantage here being that they only cost a couple of pounds […]

  • May 2021

    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 is fun and if one essay doesn’t resonate with you then maybe the next one will. They also of course tend to be quite short which can be […]

  • June 2021

    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 whilst reading these books I found that I had stopped breathing. My breath had been taken away. Not something that happens frequently at all. It started when non-essential […]

  • July/August 2021

    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, and trundled backwards and forwards to school and music lessons. And then there was the European violin, from a German workshop. This one was a far finer piece […]

  • September 2021

    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 irrelevant). Sounds fun to me to be allowed to write about what ever you wish, as she does, often in a very opinionated manner. Or, maybe not, there […]

  • October 2021

    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 Sensibility. Jane writes exquisitely about life within the upper middle class of the provincial gentry, both its luxury and its occasional and accidental penury. However, if we extrapolate […]

  • November 2021

    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 which is the recent winner of the Booker prize. The novel has a very autobiographical basis, is exceedingly well written and the description is intense and powerful, but […]

  • December 2021

    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 tell you about them. The first is ‘Sweet Sorrow’ by David Nicholls. This is for me the antithesis of Sally Rooney writing about young love. It is highly […]