Category: 2023

  • December 2023

    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. Not too big and really re-usable; again and again if required. A paperback is not too heavy if you have to post it. It is easy to make […]

  • November 2023

    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 apart from that I was quite ignorant about the area. I learnt that in the Second World War the Allies bombed Lisieux as it was a vital point […]

  • October 2023

    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 his detective John Rebus. I started at the beginning as I like to do and have now just read book number 8: ‘Black and Blue.’ Rebus lives and […]

  • September 2023

    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 discussion about the vagaries of American politics, the person I was chatting to asked if I had read the book Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. I hadn’t, although […]

  • August 2023

    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 1989 and I would have seen it soon afterwards. It was the beginning of the singing and acting career of Michael Ball and he played the young romantic […]

  • July 2023

    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 many awards and indeed has had her work translated into the medium of television. I am definitely having a moment with her books. I have read (and loved) […]

  • June 2023

    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 Harold Fry. (Have you noticed the fashion over the last 10 years for long titles of novels? Some much longer than this one.) I sat on the tube […]

  • May 2023

    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) about the Indus Valley and the ancient civilisation of Benin, neither of which I had even heard of earlier. However, as far as British history went, most teachers […]

  • April 2023

    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 have been an Amazon recommendation, to which late at night I am rather susceptible. I liked the title but I had never read or even heard of the […]

  • March 2023

    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 reviews by one of the booksellers. The shop wasn’t busy and I talked to the girl behind the counter for several minutes … and ended up buying the […]