Category: Musings

  • Moving Forward

    I really can’t remember how I moved from looking at the shelves of children’s books in the library to those of adults. I certainly didn’t get any help or advice; not that I asked for it of course. Walking the bookshops (not the library you note. There is a change in culture and economic wealth) […]

  • Fitzcarraldo

    Fitzcarraldo is a small publishing house, only about 10 years old, based in Deptford, a yet to be gentrified area of London. It had ambitions from the very beginning: to remain independent, a tricky aim for any publishing company, and to specialise in literary fiction, in both original English and in translation. They were prepared […]

  • Like it or not

    Have you noticed how the word ‘like’ is now used in significantly different ways than a generation ago? I started to read up about ‘like’ and almost wished I hadn’t! There is so much going on with this word. I am quite aware that language ebbs and flows, changes, grows etc etc but this particular […]

  • The Lace Jacket

    A lady I met on an art course at Missenden Abbey had brought in a very old lace jacket. It was exquisite. She really didn’t know anything about its history and over coffee we made up a few possible scenarios. I said that the jacket deserved a story and I would write one and send […]

  • Done

    That is it. I am done with Hardy … Thomas that is. I was tempted back to my teenage enjoyment of the Hardy novels by loving the writing of David Nicholls. And, as had been said before, he is consumed by this late Victorian writer. I was looking up the ‘Tess’ quote that Nicholls uses […]

  • PG Wodehouse

    PG Wodehouse died 50 years ago today. I am at the moment watching a TV series with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry as the perfect casting for the two characters but I also remember excellent dramatisations of the books broadcast on radio 4 long ago. Several times whilst teaching I successfully used the Wodehouse books […]

  • Being Taken Back

    Reading (and hugely enjoying) The Memory Library by Kate Storey, (see Readings) the books used within the narrative did indeed take me back. I was inspired to try Virginia Woolf again and I was directed to begin with Mrs Dalloway. I found it an enchanting read, almost a love song to London. It was published […]

  • Rewrites

    Just over a year ago I wrote in this column about originality and derivation, obviously particularly relating to books. A few days ago I read a Guardian article that looks at this subject from a slightly different angle. The appetite for Jane Austen seems to be insatiable. Several very good spin off books that I […]

  • Fine, absolutely fine!

    I wonder what nuances you feel this word has? It became the subject of a protracted discussion over breakfast in my daughter’s NYC apartment recently. It was all about orange juice! We had commented on the deliciousness of the freshly squeezed juice in the hotel restaurant. I went on to say that although not freshly […]

  • The Strand Bookshop

    I was heading for my favourite bookshop in New York City; The Strand, in this case the smaller of the locations on Columbus Avenue on the Upper West Side. My son- in- law’s words were echoing in my ears: if we want to have good bookshops in our neighbourhood then we must use them. Indeed, […]